In A Silent Way

Link to "In a Silent Way", one of Miles Davis's most ethereal, somber, and perhaps hopeful fugues from In A Silent Way (1969).

Dennis Brown "Wichita Lineman" *****Reggae version

This is close to perfection.

A Brilliant Version of 'Wichita Lineman' by Willie Hutch

Feel it, Nee!

Moneyed Interests And How They Derail Congress

How to Get Our Democracy Back

If You Want Change, You Have to Change Congress

This article appeared in the February 22, 2010 edition of The Nation.

February 3, 2010

Yet a year into the presidency of Barack Obama, it is already clear that this administration is an opportunity missed. Not because it is too conservative. Not because it is too liberal. But because it is too conventional. Obama has given up the rhetoric of his early campaign--a campaign that promised to "challenge the broken system in Washington" and to "fundamentally change the way Washington works." Indeed, "fundamental change" is no longer even a hint.

Instead, we are now seeing the consequences of a decision made at the most vulnerable point of Obama's campaign--just when it seemed that he might really have beaten the party's presumed nominee. For at that moment, Obama handed the architecture of his new administration over to a team that thought what America needed most was another Bill Clinton. A team chosen by the brother of one of DC's most powerful lobbyists, and a White House headed by the quintessential DC politician. A team that could envision nothing more than the ordinary politics of Washington--the kind of politics Obama had called "small." A team whose imagination--politically--is tiny.

These tiny minds--brilliant though they may be in the conventional game of DC--have given up what distinguished Obama's extraordinary campaign. Not the promise of healthcare reform or global warming legislation--Hillary Clinton had embraced both of those ideas, and every other substantive proposal that Obama advanced. Instead, the passion that Obama inspired grew from the recognition that something fundamental had gone wrong in the way our government functions, and his commitment to reform it.

For Obama once spoke for the anger that has now boiled over in even the blue state Massachusetts--that our government is corrupt; that fundamental change is needed. As he told us, both parties had allowed "lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system." And "unless we're willing to challenge [that] broken system...nothing else is going to change." "The reason" Obama said he was "running for president [was] to challenge that system." For "if we're not willing to take up that fight, then real change--change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans--will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo."

This administration has not "taken up that fight." Instead, it has stepped down from the high ground the president occupied on January 20, 2009, and played a political game no different from the one George W. Bush played, or Bill Clinton before him. Obama has accepted the power of the "defenders of the status quo" and simply negotiated with them. "Audacity" fits nothing on the list of last year's activity, save the suggestion that this is the administration the candidate had promised.

Maybe this was his plan all along. It was not what he said. And by ignoring what he promised, and by doing what he attacked ("too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in"), Obama will leave the presidency, whether in 2013 or 2017, with Washington essentially intact and the movement he inspired betrayed.

That movement needs new leadership. On the right (the tea party) and the left (MoveOn and Bold Progressives), there is an unstoppable recognition that our government has failed. But both sides need to understand the source of its failure if either or, better, both together, are to respond.

At the center of our government lies a bankrupt institution: Congress. Not financially bankrupt, at least not yet, but politically bankrupt. Bush v. Gore notwithstanding, Americans' faith in the Supreme Court remains extraordinarily high--76 percent have a fair or great deal of "trust and confidence" in the Court. Their faith in the presidency is also high--61 percent.

But consistently and increasingly over the past decade, faith in Congress has collapsed--slowly, and then all at once. Today it is at a record low. Just 45 percent of Americans have "trust and confidence" in Congress; just 25 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job. A higher percentage of Americans likely supported the British Crown at the time of the Revolution than support our Congress today.

The source of America's cynicism is not hard to find. Americans despise the inauthentic. Gregory House, of the eponymous TV medical drama, is a hero not because he is nice (he isn't) but because he is true. Tiger Woods is a disappointment not because he is evil (he isn't) but because he proved false. We may want peace and prosperity, but most would settle for simple integrity. Yet the single attribute least attributed to Congress, at least in the minds of the vast majority of Americans, is just that: integrity. And this is because most believe our Congress is a simple pretense. That rather than being, as our framers promised, an institution "dependent on the People," the institution has developed a pathological dependence on campaign cash. The US Congress has become the Fundraising Congress. And it answers--as Republican and Democratic presidents alike have discovered--not to the People, and not even to the president, but increasingly to the relatively small mix of interests that fund the key races that determine which party will be in power.

This is corruption. Not the corruption of bribes, or of any other crime known to Title 18 of the US Code. Instead, it is a corruption of the faith Americans have in this core institution of our democracy. The vast majority of Americans believe money buys results in Congress (88 percent in a recent California poll). And whether that belief is true or not, the damage is the same. The democracy is feigned. A feigned democracy breeds cynicism. Cynicism leads to disengagement. Disengagement leaves the fox guarding the henhouse.

This corruption is not hidden. On the contrary, it is in plain sight, with its practices simply more and more brazen. Consider, for example, the story Robert Kaiser tells in his fantastic book So Damn Much Money, about Senator John Stennis, who served for forty-one years until his retirement in 1989. Stennis, no choirboy himself, was asked by a colleague to host a fundraiser for military contractors while he was chair of the Armed Services Committee. "Would that be proper?" Stennis asked. "I hold life and death over those companies. I don't think it would be proper for me to take money from them."

Is such a norm even imaginable in DC today? Compare Stennis with Max Baucus, who has gladly opened his campaign chest to $3.3 million in contributions from the healthcare and insurance industries since 2005, a time when he has controlled healthcare in the Senate. Or Senators Lieberman, Bayh and Nelson, who took millions from insurance and healthcare interests and then opposed the (in their states) popular public option for healthcare. Or any number of Blue Dog Democrats in the House who did the same, including, most prominently, Alabama's Mike Ross. Or Republican John Campbell, a California landlord who in 2008 received (as ethics reports indicate) between $600,000 and $6 million in rent from used car dealers, who successfully inserted an amendment into the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act to exempt car dealers from financing rules to protect consumers. Or Democrats Melissa Bean and Walter Minnick, who took top-dollar contributions from the financial services sector and then opposed stronger oversight of financial regulations.

The list is endless; the practice open and notorious. Since the time of Rome, historians have taught that while corruption is a part of every society, the only truly dangerous corruption comes when the society has lost any sense of shame. Washington has lost its sense of shame.

As fundraising becomes the focus of Congress--as the parties force members to raise money for other members, as they reward the best fundraisers with lucrative committee assignments and leadership positions--the focus of Congressional "work" shifts. Like addicts constantly on the lookout for their next fix, members grow impatient with anything that doesn't promise the kick of a campaign contribution. The first job is meeting the fundraising target. Everything else seems cheap. Talk about policy becomes, as one Silicon Valley executive described it to me, "transactional." The perception, at least among industry staffers dealing with the Hill, is that one makes policy progress only if one can promise fundraising progress as well.

This dance has in turn changed the character of Washington. As Kaiser explains, Joe Rothstein, an aide to former Senator Mike Gravel, said there was never a "period of pristine American politics untainted by money.... Money has been part of American politics forever, on occasion--in the Gilded Age or the Harding administration, for example--much more blatantly than recently." But "in recent decades 'the scale of it has just gotten way out of hand.' The money may have come in brown paper bags in earlier eras, but the politicians needed, and took, much less of it than they take through more formal channels today."

And not surprisingly, as powerful interests from across the nation increasingly invest in purchasing public policy rather than inventing a better mousetrap, wealth, and a certain class of people, shift to Washington. According to the 2000 Census, fourteen of the hundred richest counties were in the Washington area. In 2007, nine of the richest twenty were in the area. Again, Kaiser: "In earlier generations enterprising young men came to Washington looking for power and political adventure, often with ambitions to save or reform the country or the world. In the last fourth of the twentieth century such aspirations were supplanted by another familiar American yearning: to get rich."

Rich, indeed, they are, with the godfather of the lobbyist class, Gerald Cassidy, amassing more than $100 million from his lobbying business.

Members of Congress are insulted by charges like these. They insist that money has no such effect. Perhaps, they concede, it buys access. (As former Representative Romano Mazzoli put it, "People who contribute get the ear of the member and the ear of the staff. They have the access--and access is it.") But, the cash-seekers insist, it doesn't change anyone's mind. The souls of members are not corrupted by private funding. It is simply the way Americans go about raising the money necessary to elect our government.

But there are two independent and adequate responses to this weak rationalization for the corruption of the Fundraising Congress. First: whether or not this money has corrupted anyone's soul--that is, whether it has changed any vote or led any politician to bend one way or the other--there is no doubt that it leads the vast majority of Americans to believe that money buys results in Congress. Even if it doesn't, that's what Americans believe. Even if, that is, the money doesn't corrupt the soul of a single member of Congress, it corrupts the institution--by weakening faith in it, and hence weakening the willingness of citizens to participate in their government. Why waste your time engaging politically when it is ultimately money that buys results, at least if you're not one of those few souls with vast sums of it?

"But maybe," the apologist insists, "the problem is in what Americans believe. Maybe we should work hard to convince Americans that they're wrong. It's understandable that they believe money is corrupting Washington. But it isn't. The money is benign. It supports the positions members have already taken. It is simply how those positions find voice and support. It is just the American way."

Here a second and completely damning response walks onto the field: if money really doesn't affect results in Washington, then what could possibly explain the fundamental policy failures--relative to every comparable democracy across the world, whether liberal or conservative--of our government over the past decades? The choice (made by Democrats and Republicans alike) to leave unchecked a huge and crucially vulnerable segment of our economy, which threw the economy over a cliff when it tanked (as independent analysts again and again predicted it would). Or the choice to leave unchecked the spread of greenhouse gases. Or to leave unregulated the exploding use of antibiotics in our food supply--producing deadly strains of E. coli. Or the inability of the twenty years of "small government" Republican presidents in the past twenty-nine to reduce the size of government at all. Or... you fill in the blank. From the perspective of what the People want, or even the perspective of what the political parties say they want, the Fundraising Congress is misfiring in every dimension. That is either because Congress is filled with idiots or because Congress has a dependency on something other than principle or public policy sense. In my view, Congress is not filled with idiots.

The point is simple, if extraordinarily difficult for those of us proud of our traditions to accept: this democracy no longer works. Its central player has been captured. Corrupted. Controlled by an economy of influence disconnected from the democracy. Congress has developed a dependency foreign to the framers' design. Corporate campaign spending, now liberated by the Supreme Court, will only make that dependency worse. "A dependence" not, as the Federalist Papers celebrated it, "on the People" but a dependency upon interests that have conspired to produce a world in which policy gets sold.

No one, Republican or Democratic, who doesn't currently depend upon this system should accept it. No president, Republican or Democratic, who doesn't change this system could possibly hope for any substantive reform. For small-government Republicans, the existing system will always block progress. There will be no end to extensive and complicated taxation and regulation until this system changes (for the struggle over endless and complicated taxation and regulation is just a revenue opportunity for the Fundraising Congress). For reform-focused Democrats, the existing system will always block progress. There will be no change in fundamental aspects of the existing economy, however inefficient, from healthcare to energy to food production, until this political economy is changed (for the reward from the status quo to stop reform is always irresistible to the Fundraising Congress). In a single line: there will be no change until we change Congress.

That Congress is the core of the problem with American democracy today is a point increasingly agreed upon by a wide range of the commentators. But almost universally, these commentators obscure the source of the problem.

Some see our troubles as tied to the arcane rules of the institution, particularly the Senate. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, for example, has tied the failings of Congress to the filibuster and argues that the first step of fundamental reform has got to be to fix that. Tom Geoghegan made a related argument in these pages in August, and the argument appears again in this issue. (Of course, these pages were less eager to abolish the filibuster when the idea was floated by the Republicans in 2005, but put that aside.)

These arguments, however, miss a basic point. Filibuster rules simply set the price that interests must pay to dislodge reform. If the rules were different, the price would no doubt be higher. But a higher price wouldn't change the economy of influence. Indeed, as political scientists have long puzzled, special interests underinvest in Washington relative to the potential return. These interests could just as well afford to assure that fifty-one senators block reform as forty.

Others see the problem as tied to lobbyists--as if removing lobbyists from the mix of legislating (as if that constitutionally could be done) would be reform enough to assure that legislation was not corrupted.

But the problem in Washington is not lobbying. The problem is the role that lobbyists have come to play. As John Edwards used to say (when we used to quote what Edwards said), there's all the difference in the world between a lawyer making an argument to a jury and a lawyer handing out $100 bills to the jurors. That line is lost on the profession today. The profession would earn enormous credibility if it worked to restore it.

Finally, some believe the problem of Congress is tied to excessive partisanship. Members from an earlier era routinely point to the loss of a certain civility and common purpose. The game as played by both parties seems more about the parties than about the common good.

But it is this part of the current crisis that the dark soul in me admires most. There is a brilliance to how the current fraud is sustained. Everyone inside this game recognizes that if the public saw too clearly that the driving force in Washington is campaign cash, the public might actually do something to change that. So every issue gets reframed as if it were really a question touching some deep (or not so deep) ideological question. Drug companies fund members, for example, to stop reforms that might actually test whether "me too" drugs are worth the money they cost. But the reforms get stopped by being framed as debates about "death panels" or "denying doctor choice" rather than the simple argument of cost-effectiveness that motivates the original reform. A very effective campaign succeeds in obscuring the source of conflict over major issues of reform with the pretense that it is ideology rather than campaign cash that divides us.

Each of these causes is a symptom of a more fundamental disease. That disease is improper dependency. Remove the dependency, and these symptoms become--if not perfectly then at least much more--benign.

As someone who has known Obama vaguely for almost twenty years--he was my colleague at the University of Chicago, and I supported and contributed to every one of his campaigns--I would have bet my career that he understood this. That's what he told us again and again in his campaign, not as colorfully as Edwards, but ultimately more convincingly. That's what distinguished him from Hillary Clinton. That's what Clinton, defender of the lobbyists, didn't get. It was "fundamentally chang[ing] the way Washington works" that was the essential change that would make change believable.

So if you had told me in 2008 that Obama expected to come to power and radically remake the American economy--as his plans to enact healthcare and a response to global warming alone obviously would--without first radically changing this corrupted machinery of government, I would not have believed it. Who could believe such a change possible, given the economy of influence that defines Washington now?

Yet a year into this administration, it is impossible to believe this kind of change is anywhere on the administration's radar, at least anymore. The need to reform Congress has left Obama's rhetoric. The race to dicker with Congress in the same way Congress always deals is now the plan. Symbolic limits on lobbyists within the administration and calls for new disclosure limits for Congress are the sole tickets of "reform." (Even its revolving-door policy left a Mack truck-wide gap at its core: members of the administration can't leave the government and lobby for the industries they regulated during the term of the administration. But the day after Obama leaves office? All bets are off.) Save a vague promise in his State of the Union about overturning the Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (as if that were reform enough), there is nothing in the current framework of the White House's plans that is anything more than the strategy of a kinder and gentler, albeit certainly more articulate, George W. Bush: buying reform at whatever price the Fundraising Congress demands. No doubt Obama will try to buy more reform than Bush did. But the terms will continue to be set by a Congress driven by a dependency that betrays democracy, and at a price that is not clear we can even afford.

Healthcare reform is a perfect example. The bill the Fundraising Congress has produced is miles from the reform that Obama promised ("Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange...including a public option," July 19, 2009). Like the stimulus package, like the bank bailouts, it is larded with gifts to the most powerful fundraising interests--including a promise to drug companies to pay retail prices for wholesale purchases and a promise to the insurance companies to leave their effectively collusive (since exempt from anti-trust limitations) and extraordinarily inefficient system of insurance intact--and provides (relative to the promises) little to the supposed intended beneficiaries of the law: the uninsured. In this, it is the perfect complement to the only significant social legislation enacted by Bush, the prescription drug benefit: a small benefit to those who can't afford drugs, a big gift to those who make drugs and an astonishingly expensive price tag for the nation.

So how did Obama get to this sorry bill? The first step, we are told, was to sit down with representatives from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to work out a deal. But why, the student of Obama's campaign might ask, were they the entities with whom to strike a deal? How many of the 69,498,516 votes received by Obama did they actually cast? "We have to change our politics," Obama said. Where is the change in this?

"People...watch," Obama told us in the campaign, "as every year, candidates offer up detailed healthcare plans with great fanfare and promise, only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance industry lobbying once the campaign is over."

"This cannot," he said, "be one of those years."

It has been one of those years. And it will continue to be so long as presidents continue to give a free pass to the underlying corruption of our democracy: Congress.

There was a way Obama might have had this differently. It would have been risky, some might say audacious. And it would have required an imagination far beyond the conventional politics that now controls his administration.

No doubt, 2009 was going to be an extraordinarily difficult year. Our nation was a cancer patient hit by a bus on her way to begin chemotherapy. The first stages of reform thus had to be trauma care, at least to stabilize the patient until more fundamental treatment could begin.

But even then, there was an obvious way that Obama could have reserved the recognition of the need for this more fundamental reform by setting up the expectations of the nation forcefully and clearly. Building on the rhetoric at the core of his campaign, on January 20, 2009, Obama could have said:

America has spoken. It has demanded a fundamental change in how Washington works, and in the government America delivers. I commit to America to work with Congress to produce that change. But if we fail, if Congress blocks the change that America has demanded--or more precisely, if Congress allows the special interests that control it to block the change that America has demanded--then it will be time to remake Congress. Not by throwing out the Democrats, or by throwing out the Republicans. But by throwing out both, to the extent that both continue to want to work in the old way. If this Congress fails to deliver change, then we will change Congress.

Had he framed his administration in these terms, then when what has happened happened, Obama would be holding the means to bring about the obvious and critical transformation that our government requires: an end to the Fundraising Congress. The failure to deliver on the promises of the campaign would not be the failure of Obama to woo Republicans (the unwooable Victorians of our age). The failure would have been what America was already primed to believe: a failure of this corrupted institution to do its job. Once that failure was marked with a frame that Obama set, he would have been in the position to begin the extraordinarily difficult campaign to effect the real change that Congress needs.

I am not saying this would have been easy. It wouldn't have. It would have been the most important constitutional struggle since the New Deal or the Civil War. It would have involved a fundamental remaking of the way Congress works. No one should minimize how hard that would have been. But if there was a president who could have done this, it was, in my view, Obama. No politician in almost a century has had the demonstrated capacity to inspire the imagination of a nation. He had us, all of us, and could have kept us had he kept the focus high.

Nor can one exaggerate the need for precisely this reform. We can't just putter along anymore. Our government is, as Paul Krugman put it, "ominously dysfunctional" just at a time when the world desperately needs at least competence. Global warming, pandemic disease, a crashing world economy: these are not problems we can leave to a litter of distracted souls. We are at one of those rare but critical moments when a nation must remake itself, to restore its government to its high ideals and to the potential of its people. Think of the brilliance of almost any bit of the private sector--from Hollywood, to Silicon Valley, to MIT, to the arts in New York or Nashville--and imagine a government that reflected just a fraction of that excellence. We cannot afford any less anymore.

What would the reform the Congress needs be? At its core, a change that restores institutional integrity. A change that rekindles a reason for America to believe in the central institution of its democracy by removing the dependency that now defines the Fundraising Congress. Two changes would make that removal complete. Achieving just one would have made Obama the most important president in a hundred years.

That one--and first--would be to enact an idea proposed by a Republican (Teddy Roosevelt) a century ago: citizen-funded elections. America won't believe in Congress, and Congress won't deliver on reform, whether from the right or the left, until Congress is no longer dependent upon conservative-with-a-small-c interests--meaning those in the hire of the status quo, keen to protect the status quo against change. So long as the norms support a system in which members sell out for the purpose of raising funds to get re-elected, citizens will continue to believe that money buys results in Congress. So long as citizens believe that, it will.

Citizen-funded elections could come in a number of forms. The most likely is the current bill sponsored in the House by Democrat John Larson and Republican Walter Jones, in the Senate by Democrats Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter. That bill is a hybrid between traditional public funding and small-dollar donations. Under this Fair Elections Now Act (which, by the way, is just about the dumbest moniker for the statute possible, at least if the sponsors hope to avoid Supreme Court invalidation), candidates could opt in to a system that would give them, after clearing certain hurdles, substantial resources to run a campaign. Candidates would also be free to raise as much money as they want in contributions maxed at $100 per citizen.

The only certain effect of this first change would be to make it difficult to believe that money buys any results in Congress. A second change would make that belief impossible: banning any member of Congress from working in any lobbying or consulting capacity in Washington for seven years after his or her term. Part of the economy of influence that corrupts our government today is that Capitol Hill has become, as Representative Jim Cooper put it, a "farm league for K Street." But K Street will lose interest after seven years, and fewer in Congress would think of their career the way my law students think about life after law school--six to eight years making around $180,000, and then doubling or tripling that as a partner, where "partnership" for members of Congress means a comfortable position on K Street.

Before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, I thought these changes alone would be enough at least to get reform started. But the clear signal of the Roberts Court is that any reform designed to muck about with whatever wealth wants is constitutionally suspect. And while it would take an enormous leap to rewrite constitutional law to make the Fair Elections Now Act unconstitutional, Citizens United demonstrates that the Court is in a jumping mood. And more ominously, the market for influence that that decision will produce may well overwhelm any positive effect that Fair Elections produces.

This fact has led some, including now me, to believe that reform needs people who can walk and chew gum at the same time. Without doubt, we need to push the Fair Elections Now Act. But we also need to begin the process to change the Constitution to assure that reform can survive the Roberts Court. That constitutional change should focus on the core underlying problem: institutional independence. The economy of influence that grips Washington has destroyed Congress's independence. Congress needs the power to restore it, by both funding elections to secure independence and protecting the context within which elections occur so that the public sees that integrity.

No amendment would come from this Congress, of course. But the framers left open a path to amendment that doesn't require the approval of Congress--a convention, which must be convened if two-thirds of the states apply for it. Interestingly (politically) those applications need not agree on the purpose of the convention. Some might see the overturning of Citizens United. Others might want a balanced budget amendment. The only requirement is that two-thirds apply, and then begins the drama of an unscripted national convention to debate questions of fundamental law.

Many fear a convention, worrying that our democracy can't process constitutional innovation well. I don't share that fear, but in any case, any proposed amendment still needs thirty-eight states to ratify it. There are easily twelve solid blue states in America and twelve solid red states. No one should fear that change would be too easy.

No doubt constitutional amendments are politically impossible--just as wresting a republic from the grip of a monarchy, or abolishing slavery or segregation, or electing Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama was "politically impossible." But conventional minds are always wrong about pivot moments in a nation's history. Obama promised this was such a moment. The past year may prove that he let it slip from his hand.

For this, democracy pivots. It will either spin to restore integrity or it will spin further out of control. Whether it will is no longer a choice. Our only choice is how.

Imagine an alcoholic. He may be losing his family, his job and his liver. These are all serious problems. Indeed, they are among the worst problems anyone could face. But what we all understand about the dependency of alcoholism is that however awful these problems, the alcoholic cannot begin to solve them until he solves his first problem--alcoholism.

So too is it with our democracy. Whether on the left or the right, there is an endless list of critical problems that each side believes important. The Reagan right wants less government and a simpler tax system. The progressive left wants better healthcare and a stop to global warming. Each side views these issues as critical, either to the nation (the right) or to the globe (the left). But what both sides must come to see is that the reform of neither is possible until we solve our first problem first--the dependency of the Fundraising Congress.

This dependency will perpetually block reform of any kind, since reform is always a change in the status quo, and it is defense of the status quo that the current corruption has perfected. For again, as Obama said:

If we're not willing to take up that fight, then real change--change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans--will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.

"Defenders of the status quo"--now including the souls that hijacked the movement Obama helped inspire.

About Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Harvard Law School, is co-founder of the nonprofit Change Congress

Trades as Sources of Enduring Social Value

When we think about an economy, that is, a system of exchange of goods and services and the corresponding banking and monetary system upon which it is based, we are lead in this day and age inevitably to ask "what work, what goods really have value?"In the emergence of modern industrial economies there has occurred a tremendous differentiation and proliferation of types of work and types of goods. Some of this work, some of these goods are, no doubt, without real value. What is a man? Is he a thing that thinks or is he a thing that desires, that owns and possesses? What real goods does he need? What is of enduring real value to him?

Some of today's work is obviously of dubious social value. Much of today's work is blatantly immoral, much is questionable and certainly some of it is detestable. Where lies the criterion which separates the good from the bad? An obvious question one must ask about oneself and one's work is What do I do for the group, what do I contribute? If the answer is that one does not so much contribute as taketh away, then the answer seems clear: one oughtn't to do such work. But that doesn't even begin to do justice to the complexity of this issue

But man finds himself incaged in time and place, not in cloud cuckoo worlds. There is the need of the basics in life and some extras to be sure. A man needs a trade. And here, again, the question of what kind of work comes to the fore. We are workers by nature and by design and given that fact, it seems fair to say that most good people want to work at something that is of real value that does not take away or deprive others of their own wellbeing. We want dirty hands without "dirty hands". We want to be engaged in work that is real and that matters but we don't want to be affiliated with injustice, corruption, or destruction.

One answer may be found within history. There are common needs that all societies have. There are specific, regional differences in regards to some needs. But these needs show up as perennial industries, things which have a historical presence, things which people worked at again and again over time, evolving and growing but ever-remaining a part of the economy. I am thinking here of the trades, of course, and their ever-present place in civilized (civilizing) polity.
If we think of the social complexity of the twenty-first century and the corresponding emphasis given to students nowadays to become technocrats (not that all technocracy is bad!), we must feel that another option should be presented to them, that is, to become a part of a trade. Those trades which can trace their lineage back to the medieval guilds and further, however sketchily, should stand out as viable work sources for the future on the grounds that they have always been with us and (knock on wood) always will.

Why, you may ask, is this inquiry necessary? Are you suggesting that I become a plumber or an electrician? Let me take these questions in order. First, this inquiry has become necessary because the future seems to be filled with some pretty bleak conditions and it is the fear of this writer that a generation of people are being prepared for jobs and work that may never materialize. This does not mean that our transition to the future cannot bring about a better world order, but I'd like to offer an argument for the value of trades as vehicles of economic activity against a world of increasing social disappointments. We do ourselves a favor by contemplating the values in essential work. The walrus-tusk harpoon shaft carefully carved by the Inuit hunter bears the imprint of social invention, creativity, necessity, and social value as much as any of the finely crafted hedge funds. Our focus should be on perfecting the simple goods of being. So, should you become a plumber or electrician? Well, yes, of course.

Night Ride by Frederich Engels

Bend Over

A little skiing at Mt. Hood (photos courtesy of Stryder)

Mt. Hood Meadows, looking westward.
Ross, Coy, and I in a warm fog...the snow was a damp powder.

Feng, in a moment of existential bliss.

The Forging of the Sampo

First Day Out

No fish today, but then again...who's counting? Topics discussed today: theological non-realism, epistemic justification, environmentalism, hippies, rednecks, strategies for steelhead success. The gold is in the soul.

Hippies and the Cutting of Trees

The cutting of trees spawns strong moral reactions from some. Vlad, a seldom bathing semi-intellectual who is the housemate of my brother in Portland, informs us that one must "respect the tree" in order to take its life. Another barefooted character who is in the circle of the house claims of all things that "trees are more important than human beings".

In Santa Cruz, I recall a withered ancient Black Walnut that had been there since the time of Captain Davenport needing to be removed. The City Council wanted to remove it but met with great public outrage and at last agreed upon steep heading cuts back to the remaining stem. After the cuts were made, hippies ascended into the remaining branches rubbing hemp salve onto the exposed cambium.

Recently I was removing some offending branches from Mrs. Jones' tree which happened to be half in a small organic garden's lot here in Portland. As I was removing them a hippy came out of the woodwork and piped up "hey, that tree can feel that."

"Oh," I said "haven't you heard the news: trees do not have nervous systems!"

And in the pause there was no retort, but, looking down upon him from above I could see that a great thunderclap of Reason had stultified his bird's nest mind.

He bitched a little more about the tree and told me he was an "spiritualist" as though that would let him off the hook and have some currency with me.

" I continued, "Animism is dead now 2000 years. Yeah, the idea that trees have souls with feeling died with the ancient Greeks. Get with it, man. Think it through with the tools of a man appropriate to your age: let slip the last vestige of the magical view of reality that is childhood."

Later he slipped away without comment like a summer plum that had been stripped of its thin coat.

So, you see, there are all of these kind of cases of hippies complaining about the moral problems in cutting trees. And they always come back to how much feeling is there in a tree--as though the moral problem in cutting trees consists in offending the person of the tree. Again and again the problem is that you are not "respecting the tree", that you are "not honoring it", that you are "murdering" it, and so forth. But to my way of thinking all of this talk is nonsense.

And that is why I'd recommend a view of the moral value of nature that is anthropogenic but not anthropomorphic. We can certainly speak about our moral feelings about trees--that they have certain values for us, perhaps even certain moral value unto themselves from our point of view--but to say that trees are moral agents in themselves we court insanity.

A Filed Coin

What value remains in a filed coin?
The silver shaved and filed
flakes and dust meticulously collected
melted into another just like it
Like it enough, anyway
to fool the eye of the merchant.
Fooled twice it seems:
once by the counterfeit,
once by the filed coin and
maybe fooled altogether again
by something too rich to speak.

A Giant Oregon Bigleaf Maple Removal

Feng, MC of Ceremonies posing before the Maple
A groundsman who came with us for the day. He had a red beard and enjoyed smoking.
The maple, next to the professor's house seen in relief.
Our boss.
Climbing the poles and setting rigging, removing the canopy branch by branch.
But these were large branches indeed. Matt, working the GRCS.
The former smackdown champ himself.
End of second day, Feng admires his work.
A heartful thanks!

An Old Growth Climb in Salmon River Valley, Mt. Hood

Douglas Fir, East fork Salmon River, dbh approx. 8 feet, height approx. 290 feet.

Ryan, our friend who set the line
A mid level view--say 150 feet up
Up the last pitch with the Kong.
Coy moving quickly: foot ascender, chest croll ascender, and a single ascender.
Looking towards the base.


Miller time!
Brothers in the high tree tops!

Parrhesia in leadership

A certain employee, lets call him X, suggested that we take this Acer macrophyllum in one fell swoop. I disagreed and we took it in 3, so as to not risk damaging the awning on the veranda and the nearby apple tree. Later, he came to me and asked if it was alright for him to question me, the climber.

I told him that my method of leading the crew is modelled, in part, upon Greek democratic ideals. I told him that in that era there was in the council, the boule, a tradition of 'tell all speech' (parrhesia), useful for the sake of arriving at the best possible judgment. If any one on the crew wishes to propose any idea, I heartily encourage it. Then, we sift through them, and arrive at the most informed judgment.

That is a leadership model that places a premium on justice and truth.

Thoughts on Just Leadership

Portland, Oregon

I have recently assumed the position of lead arborist with a tree care company in Portland. I am the foreman and I am in a position of leadership. A philosophical excursus on leadership is in order.

In the first place leadership is concerned with the care of others. Just leadership--and by that I mean leadership with genuine authority--always proceeds from the point of view of a caring relationship: the leader should be in a caring disposition towards his charges.

Secondly we may wish to distinguish just leadership from petty authoritarianism. I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. Even small pieces of power can be misused, such as when a leader attempts to fulfill some personal need for power, acting out of a Napoleon complex, as it were. Just leadership, by way of contrast, rather describes the way in which a leader subdues his own needs for the sake of the group and its collectivity of individuals.

Thirdly, leadership is only as good as the rules out of which it is constructed. In my case, I insist that everyone follows the ANSI standards on tree work. This way, I--and they--are neither higher nor lower than the objective laws. The merely personal preferences of the leader are thereby constrained by common reason. By insisting that he and everyone follow these rules he gives employees a reason to trust their leader because he is just.

Fourth, a leader must show that he is neither higher nor lower than the work he is prescribing that others do. He must, at least in my particular level of authority, actually do the work that everybody does and show that he is master of their work, of all work.

Fifth, a leader must show by example, becoming a model that he wishes to cultivate in his group. To do the work well and with gusto is, though not a necessary part of justice, certainly a closely attached virtue. Leadership is done by participation in the work of the group as a model for others to follow.





more to come....

How Many Times Do You Have To Be Slapped In the Face to Know You Are Being Slapped In the Face

Belligerism

A man enters a bar and saddles up next to a big guy. The big guy turns to him and says, "stop staring at my girlfriend!"

The man is looking at an empty row of seats and says, "what girlfriend? There's noone there."

"Yeah, you're staring at her right now! Quit staring at my girl!" the big guy says.

"I don't know what you're talking about: there's nobody there!"

"If you don't quit looking at my girl I'm going to have to smash your face in." says the big guy.

On and on it goes. We would describe the big guy's behavior as belligerent wouldn't we?

Belligerent behavior induces conflict, it creates it out of nothing.

In the post-Bush era we can now look back with owl of minerva hindsight and see clearly the regnant political philosophy of that administration now that we are at the close of the age. That philosophy can only be described as belligerent: feigning injury in order to invade and depose the leadership of a country; the treatment of war prisoners at Guantanamo; etc. This philosophy--a philosophy which, I might add, also formed the groundwork of our foreign policy in the Bush years--is rightly described under the rubric of Belligerism. By 'Belligerism', I mean to describe a political ideology that is aggressive and acquisitive, one which is built to produce conflict; a further criterion of Belligerism is that it derive its authority from something other than the will of the public, either actual or theoretical.


The Bush regime, in its communications with the public and Congress, exhibited all or most of the following actions:

1. Assuming a posture of mutual competition and, by the by, affirming the idea of aggressive war. In other words, rewriting the theory of just war to favor pre-emption.
2. Assuming also a certain American Exceptionalism: ours is the correct moral and economic world order. The Roman Empire thought of itself as exceptionalist in a similar way.
3. Foment a distortion or lie about a foreign threat in order to generate a war.
4. In tone, demeanor, and content never accept blame.
5. Act with apparent public authority but not with actual public reason.
6. Make up your own reality; train through propaganda the listening audience in the reality of your fantasy.
7. Using normative concepts like 'Human Rights' as a figleaf for corporate-capitalist extraction of the natural resources of a region and the bubble in the military industrial complex.
8. Exempting itself from public scrutiny through an asserted "executive privilege".

These events are actions brought about by a prior reasoning. That reasoning, exhibited in the bullying tone of Bush Administration rhetoric, not to mention the still unjustified war in Iraq warrant an identification of the Bush philosophy as a paradigm instance of what I have been calling 'Belligerism'.

I should also add that Belligerism here emerges from a democratic social form, which is surprising, since one wants to think only of ruthless authoritarian regimes as belligerent, and they are. For in the case of all Belligeristic regimes, they exercise decision making authority apart from public consent. But because a belligeristic regime need not be an authoritarian one, there is often in belligeristic but democratic regimes a concerted attempt to manipulate and distort that support in the form of "free elections". The government that believes in Belligerism justifies the use of force to coerce consent and may supply it, argumentum ad baculum, to generate support through "democratic" procedures.

Suppose that we evaluate Belligerism on its philosophical merits. What then?

First criticism of it is that it is a recipe for a war without end. It provides other actors in the global public arena with a similar grounds of exclusion from law, inviting endless challenges to international peace.

Second criticism is that it fails the most basic tests of consistency, coherence, and reciprocity one would expect from a fair and trustworthy political philosophy.

Third criticism is that it lacks a self correction mechanism and operates once loose like a runaway train.

more....

Doctor's Park

Whiskey Dick and Cletus ride again! Look at those two sharpies on their shoulders.

The Copper Standard

From Schott's bl;og, NY Times 4/17/09.

Very interesting article describes China's stockpiling of copper with its currency. Clever fuckers, aren't they?

To Leave or to Fight?

The above link is to an article in the Nation online magazine which describes the present attempt of adjunct professors to organize under a union. I believe such an attempt will most certainly fail. Because of that I have chosen to leave academia because I don't believe that it is a fight that can be won by adjuncts. There may be small victories here and there, but the overall war is a losing one. The fact is that higher education is beholden to a model that cannot serve the interests of the teachers/professors. To familiarize yourself with the concrete data, here is a link to the facts about "contingent faculty" on the American Association of University Professors website. Let me give some considerations as to why the current attempt to unionize is bound to fail.

1. There is a perennial oversupply of Phd's in any quarter of academia with the exception of certain niche disciplines like biomedical technology or nursing administration.
2. The modern university is economically built around sports, entertainment, engineering, and nursing. Most academic disciplines have nothing to offer these fields.
3. The long term demographic trends (i.e., numbers of matriculating students) will not support the current oversupply of Phd's.
4. Tuition at colleges and universities has far outstripped inflation for the last ten years. This trend cannot continue and thus, economics dictates that there will not be more money to go around.
5. Many schools lack an endowment capable of furnishing decent wages and benefits for its teaching corps. Those that do have witnessed large hits to their portfolios on account of the financial crisis.

So, unless you are rich and can afford the social battle, you really can't put up a fight against these facts. Those that do are going to be sadly disappointed.

So, to leave is itself the only honorable course.

And that is just what I've done.

Three Reasons for Renewable Energy Now

The reasons for a cultural shift towards renewable energy are many and obvious. Let me give but three of these.

In the first place, there is the argument that renewable--and by that I mean non-hydrocarbon--energy will help curb greenhouse gas emissions. This argument is bolstered by the scientific facts regarding global warming (yes, global warming and not mere "climate change"). The factual aspect of this, namely, that our hydrocarbon usage is causing global warming is contested only by the lunatic fringe and not mainstream science. Second, the moral concern for future generations is again contested only by the lunatic fringe who see a silver lining in a coming apocalypse. Whatever the basis for our moral judgments, we all ought to see the value in bequeathing to future generations a planet that is capable of sustaining life in all of its diversity and a civilization worthy of human dignity.

Secondly, traditional hydrocarbon sources of energy are already in decline even as demand is is increasing worldwide. The scientific data on peak oil is robust and conspicuous. While there are hidden pockets of oil and natural gas, many if not most of these resources will dwindle in the imminent future. Industrial civilization depends on an abundance of cheap energy. If we want industrial civilization, then we need energy. Because that energy is becoming more difficult and costly to find, it follows that some alternative is a practical necessity to sustaining the project of civilization. Some will say that we should just let this industrial phase of civilization wither on the vine because it has brought too much inequality, pollution, and alienation. While that is true, it is also true that in the industrialized countries the life expectancy has been increased by about 50 years per individual and the quality of life has, in many respects, improved. On the whole, then, new forms of energy are needed to continue (at the least) the benefits of industrial civilization. The downsides of industrial society are very real as well, but I believe that they can be dealt with on their own.

Lastly, there are moral reasons for a cultural shift to renewable energy based upon an interest we have in facilitating autonomy. By this I mean that citizens have a moral and economic interest in the production and use of their own energy resources. Morally, a citizen has an interest in preventing the devastating effects of global warming while also working towards advancing the interests of the common good of industrial society. Economically, a citizen has an interest in reducing the costs of their own energy usage. By possessing technologies to produce energy in a minimally polluting fashion, citizens can take hold of this problem and contribute on an individual basis to the solution. Policy and legislation which facilitates this (such as a carbon cap and trade scheme) will greatly enhance individual control over energy production and use both now and for future generations. The alternative is that individuals are forced to utilize the existing hydrocarbon intensive energy infrastructure as it currently stands. They are forced, in other words, to cause global warming and to commit future generations to a diminished standard of living. This does and should sit uneasily with the individual conscience.

These, then, are three powerful reasons for a cultural shift to renewable energy: global warming, peak oil, and individual autonomy.

A Poor Man's Rope Guide

This is a "rope guide" or retrievable false crotch. The arborists doubled 1/2" line (orange) goes up through the halyard shackle, through the ART pulley, and down to the carabiner on the arborists harness. The rope guide is constructed of two aluminum rings spliced onto 8 1/2' of arbormaster (red, white black), and a prusik of 12" dyneema girth hitched to a small aluminum ring (gold). The pulley is attached via a Petzl dogbone, and the retriever is attached via Black Diamond Dynex.
Notice how she is retrieving the line now. The little red ball measures at 9/16" + and it will pass through the pulley but get stuck in the halyard shackle.
pulling through the pulley...
and apply pressure and it pulls the pulley through the ring and the whole assembly drops to the ground. In other words, with this assembly you don't need an actual crotch, but you can just use the stem.

A Good Pair of Boots

Well, actually, two pair. The ones on the left are Hoffmans that I got from Baileys--they've got a steel toe, a rubber footwell, and thinsulate liners--tits boots in Winter. The others are Wesco Jobmasters that I use in the Spring and Fall.

Beauty Bear

A Wisconsin Farm in a Gainsborough Light

As seen with a friend in early September, a farm in central Wisconsin.
But here in the winter season where everything is dormant and white,
I recall that there was upon the farm this shaft of Gainsborough light.

Arne Naess, Ecophilosopher, dies at 96

Norwegian philosopher and founder of the deep ecology movement Arne Naess (27 January 1912 – 12 January 2009) died at age 96. Naess was trained in logical positivism and assumed the chairmanship of the philosophy department at the University of Oslo at age 27. His early retirement from the philosophy ratrace was accomplished at age 57 allowing him to devote himself to political activism and a deeper critique of industrial society and its relation to the natural world that he called 'Deep Ecology'. His own version of that philosophy--Ecosophy T--was developed from a syncretism of Spinoza, Gandhi, and his own earlier work on communication theory. Central to his philosophical view was the idea of nature having an 'intrinsic value' and therefore being worthy of moral concern and respect. Equally important was his notion of self as capable of expansion beyond the narrow ego to encompass (contingent upon spiritual maturity) the whole of nature. On only one occassion did I meet Arne. It was at UC Santa Cruz at a talk he gave on deep ecology. Afterward, as he was leaving the lecture hall I asked him what to do when persons do not share basic intuitions about the intrinsic value of nature. He was old then and with a twinkle in his eye reached down and picked a flower and smiled at me saying softly, "you must show them." Long live the spirit of Arne Naess!

Dowd on Disgorgement; Feng on Decapitation

The above link is to today's NY Times editorial by Maureen Dowd in which she argues that any bank that both received federal dollars and issued bonuses to its staff ought to be forced to give the bonus money back. Amen. 18+ billion dollars in bonuses? These fuckers should be in jail right now. Thats our money lining their pockets. These are the fuckers who created the credit derivative bubble. I'd be all for jailing them for that alone, but this too? The argument that if they don't pay out these bonuses why they (the executives and staff receiving bonuses) will go elsewhere is not only wrong, its immoral: that shit just won't flush. Where else are they going to go? Higher education? Public service? The restaurant business? IT? What? These fuckers don't know the value of money. They're too close to where it is made out of thin air to understand the nature of a productive economy. No, no, I'll tell you what: bring out the guillotines and decimate their ranks, displaying prominently their heads on wrought iron pikes around Wall Street. That would send a message.

Viv's First Ski

Senate Budget Chair Kent Conrad's opening statement concerning debt

The link above is from a Congressional committee meeting of 1/15/09. Wow. A rosy future ahead. An even more awesome statement of the economic outlook is from the meeting on 1/08/09 C-Span broadcast (here).

The Case for a Truth Commission

It is the judgment of this writer that our country stands in need of a truth commission to uncover the full extent of the legal wrongdoing of the Bush Administration. This morning's New York Times column by Frank Rich argues as much. It will be tempting to not pursue such a commission, and we should expect many in Congress to claim that this would be a "waste of Congress's time", that it would prevent Congress from doing the work of the day, and so forth. These kinds of arguments should be seen for what they are: frivolous, conspiratorial, and irresponsible. Let the sun shine upon the festering pustule that is the executive branch so that we can all say, collectively, "never again!"

Into the greedy black hole it goes

Bait and Switch

Breakdown or Breathrough?

Were they evil or merely stupid?

It is astounding to realize how this last congress acted in its bailout of Citicorp. The figures speak for themselves. Citicorp market cap (the sum total of shares x stock price was to the tune of 21 Billion Dollars (End of November, 2008 (CBS)). Then the US monies given: 345 billion US $Dollars. The deal: an "8-10% share" of stock.

Were they evil or merely stupid?

Evil if they meant to funnel public money to a select group of private capitalists in a unwarranted overvaluation of their stock, that doesn't fit with current valuations. (I take it that you will agree that prognosicating future valuations, wherein Citicorp will be worth 345 x 10 (3.45 trillion US $Dollars), the company would have to grow 1000%, which I think dear reader will agree are to be taken with uttermost skepticism.

Stupid if they meant to find a good bargain for the public's money in this filthy whore, Citicorp.

A Moment for an Economic Democracy?

Consider the following quote I have culled from an article by Steve Fraser (here):

"A real democratic nationalization of the banks -- good value for our money rather than good money to add to their value -- should be part of the policy agenda up for discussion in the Obama era. As things now stand, the public supplies the loans and the investment capital, but the key decisions about how they are to be deployed remain in private hands. A democratic version of nationalizing the financial system would transfer these critical decisions to new institutions created by the Congress and designed to pursue public, not private, objectives. How to subject the flow of credit and investment capital to public control ought to be on the drawing boards if we are to look beyond the old New Deal to a new one.

Or, for instance, if we are to bail out the auto industry, which we should -- millions of jobs, businesses, communities, and what's left of once powerful and proud unions are at stake -- then why not talk about its nationalization, too? Why not create a representative body of workers, consumers, environmentalists, suppliers, and other interested parties to supervise the industry's reorganization and retooling to produce, just as the president-elect says he wants, new green means of transportation -- and not just cars?

Why not apply the same model to the rehabilitation of the nation's infrastructure; indeed, why not to the reindustrialization of the country as a whole? If, as so many commentators are now claiming, what lies ahead is the kind of massive, crippling deflation characteristic of such crises, then why not consider creating democratic mechanisms to impose an incomes policy on wages and prices that works against that deflation?"

NOW, this idea should not seem that strange to us--and yet it does. The idea that the public should have decision making authority in corporate entities including banks and auto making firms (more than just voting as consumers), is a part of the idea behind Economic Democracy. We talk a good line in this country about how free we are, how democratic we are, and all the rest of it, but when push comes to shove, off to work we go the slaves that we are unable and unwilling to question or rebel against the corporate entities which run our economy, our lives, and our government. NOW is a moment which could fold towards more democratic control over the economy. Wouldn't that be a victory for democracy?!

Two Beauties

My two beauties: Vivian and Melissa.

Winner Take Nothing (except the jobs of working people)

Where did I ever get the notion that ownership over a company entails having moral responsibilities, e.g. to the employees and shareholders? Capitalism is an amoral system. Must remember this. Must keep this in mind. Must remember this. Must keep this in mind. Must remember this. Must keep this in mind.

Now, here I go off to work. Do I then treat the company and its holdings morally? If it has no moral responsibility to me, how do I have any moral responsibility to it?

Ah. Morality is a one way street, emanating from me out into a world that is indifferent to me. See how that works?

The Unknown Host

What’s in a name? Sometimes nothing…sometimes more. Now and again the universe produces through its random lottery a cosmic jackpot. Such is the case with the aptly named Dave Good. Good in so many respects, perhaps best at the art of the telemark, of which the skiing is but a part.

A couple of years ago Dave mounted me up some second-hand Kazama boards with a used set of Rivas that I’d bought in Berkeley: though it was all I could afford it was, nevertheless, my first telemark set up and I was keen to press them into service. “Why don’t you come with Ute and Mila and I? We’re skiing in to a friend’s cabin in the Sierra Buttes and we’ll ski out the next day.” An opportunity such as this cannot be turned down.

At the gate, I fastened crude “kicker skins” to my skis: short strips of old skins lashed down at the ends with silver duct tape. My friends had better gear than me, but gear is not what makes the man. “Gear is not what a man is, still less has, but merely uses” I told myself, “the man makes the gear.” A sound first principle and one with a much broader application as I would soon learn. It was still early in the season—late December and there hadn’t been a lot of snowfall. The road was covered with only a thin coat of quite slushy snow. We could see the pavement in places and the volcanic soil was still bare under the manzanita.

Poling and gliding, we traced the course of the closed road admiring as we went the rose-hued granite boulders through which flowed the rime-encrusted Salmon Creek and, crossing it, we began the ascent into the upper lakes. The skies greyed over and a chill wind kicked up. Dave led us to a cabin down the end of a spur. The cabin was boarded up and he tried his key but it did not work. “It’s not this one—that’s for sure,” he exclaimed, shaking his head.

We skied single file through some dense stands of lodgepole pine back to our ascending track. I knew this area fairly well and I asked Dave if he knew for sure which cabin it was. “It’s down to the right as you go up toward Sardine Lake” he said. A few isolated flakes trickled from the heavens. A cabin could be seen distantly through a cluster of aspens and we veered into the trees, howling coyote yelps as we gathered speed through the openings between the boles.

Crossing the swale of a small creek, there arose a stout lodge in a broad clearing. Well, we tried the key again and it didn’t work but “you know,” Dave said, “he probably gave me the wrong key.” In the gloaming the air temperature was dropping. We pried the plywood window shutter off the back window and lo! the window was unlocked and slid open. A lithe member of our party slipped into the dark innards.

Rounding the lodge, we unclipped our skis and walked up the steps onto the wide expanse of porch and, from inside, the front door opened. There we prepared our nests in the recesses of what turned out to be a grand summer lodge. We boiled down snow-water for tea, prepared an exquisite supper, and reclined in the yellow light of coleman lanterns humming from the tops of cloth-covered boxes.

We fashioned a teepee of kindling atop a mound of newspaper and soon had a fire roaring in the hearth. Another round of tea was prepared and we enjoyed some silence, letting our eyes follow the flames as they quickly licked split rounds of ponderosa pine, popping open pitch pockets and exploding coals. The ladies giggled in the loft as they bedded down while Dave and I enjoyed a fireside smoke.

In the orange light of the fire we breathed great blasts of purple smoke into the open-beamed room. “You know,” he said pointing the pipe stem at me and exhaling a sweet blast of smoke, “this isn’t our cabin.” In the hearth, the charred logs shifted and a small maelstrom of sparks flurried. Thinking through the implications of that statement, I was not surprised and replied, “we need not worry about that—good men need no invitation.” He laughed and a confidence-inspiring smile rippled across his face. His teeth gleamed white in the firelight.

In the flickering light I could see a bookshelf laden with stacks of old Sunset magazines and a row of books. Amidst that odd melange of Hardy Boy mysteries, Clive Cussler and Danielle Steele novels, a book of Gary Snyder’s poems caught my eye. Remarkable for their purity, these poems had long been a favorite of mine. I opened to a random page and read aloud:

The earth for a pillow

the sky for a blanket

that is true prosperity

Dave nodded his approval at that sentiment, and we both reflected upon our own prosperity. I made a few remarks about the goodness of a lean prosperity and then let it rest.

At daybreak the aroma of french roast filled the still-dark lodge. A pale light began to illuminate the window panes. About a foot of powder had fallen in the night and windblown spumes of sparkling powder lay spread across the porch. The ladies had decided to ski the lower forests while Dave and I chose to ascend into the upper bowls. Having cleaned our pots and packed our bags, we tidied the lodge, split some fresh kindling and hammered the plywood window shutter back into place—respectful to and thankful for our unknown host.