What the Dog Saw

Just like a batting practice fastball, Malcolm Gladwell’s writing hits me right in the wheelhouse.  He has a really unique way of getting his point across which inevitably causes me to reevaluate the way I look at things.

His newest book is no exception except that it’s not a “book” but a compilation of articles he has written for The New Yorker.  Please do yourself a favor and give it a look.

To get you started here is an excerpt from one of the articles titled “Blowup”.  The article is a discussion of risk, the psychology of decision making, and accumulated errors based around the Challenger explosion.  It is concluded with this paragraph and was originally published in 1996.

What accidents like the Challenger should teach us is that we have constructed a world in which the potential for high-tech catastrophe is embedded in the fabric of day-to-day life. At some point in the future-for the most mundane of reasons, and with the very best of intentions-a NASA spacecraft will again go down in flames. We should at least admit this to ourselves now. And if we cannot-if the possibility is too much to bear-then our only option is to start thinking about getting rid of things like space shuttles altogether.

More on Astrue

Here is another article about SSA’s Commissioner Michael Astrue’s poetic side.  As an aspiring poet, I find him to be inspirational.  As Commissioner of SSA (and my boss), I find him to be thoughtful and plain spoken.

Please take a few minutes of your time to read this article.  As one of the most influential contemporary poets or as the Commissioner of one of the most influential federal agencies, he is a person who is having a significant impact on our culture.

Link here: Regard the Scuttlebutt as true

Mothers

Mothers,

Loving, kind, and sure.

I’ll keep mine

and you can keep yours.

Out of Doors

Since the snow was left behind,

All that’s on this brain of mine,

Is soaking up the Sun that shines!

Good stuff here

We Southerners are proud to claim William Faulkner as one of our own.  As one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, he is proof positive that we aren’t (at least some of us) the ignorant rubes we are sometimes portrayed as.  I ran across his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for literature today and upon reading it, was completely blown away.  I’m amazed that I hadn’t seen before today.  I’m posting it here in case you are like me and somehow missed the boat.

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work–a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed–love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Josiah Travels

A friend of mine is taking a few months to backpack through Costa Rica.  He is blogging about his experience at www.travelwithjosiah.blogspot.com.  Check it out.  He is a really neat guy and I think you’ll find his story interesting.

Familiar

A sound, familiar and welcome,

that recognizable ping.

Not the traditional crack,

yet, the same old thing.

A boy at the plate: 

with a care? Not at all.

Swinging his bat,

swatting the ball.

The noise now declaring:  

a national past time, returned!

Spring is upon us

and winter is spurned!

Random thoughts on a Monday afternoon

I hope one day I get to see the Giant Sequoias.

I want to thru hike the Appalachian trail, all 2000 miles at one time over 4 months.

I’m really, really intrigued by the Greek Ideal of a balanced man.

I want to learn more. I want to worship more. I want exercise more. I want to COMPETE.

I’m ready to go swimming on a hot afternoon.

I love watermelon.

I’m ready to sweat profusely on a 5k run at 8:00 in the morning when it’s already 85 degrees.

I love jumping on a trampoline.

I can still walk-on-my hands farther and longer than anyone I have ever met.

I like the quiet moments when everyone is sleeping and I’m the only one awake.

I like a stimulating conversation almost as much.

I’m worried about our world. We are destroying it’s beauty.

I’m worried about the lack of love for all men not just the ones who share our color, religion, political party.

I feel challenged to stop worrying about it and start living it.

I feel blessed.

Entitlement Creep

“we can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life,”

That was what FDR had to say when talking about Social Security, the program he signed into law in 1935.

He is described as a visionary who helped save our country from economic ruin by some.  By others, he is described as a socialist.  Either way, his wisdom is evident in the statement above.

Today, the same descriptions are being made of Barack Obama.  If he were still alive, I’d like to think that FDR would be reminding the current president of our inability to “insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life.”

The Social Security of today barely resembles the Social Security that FDR enacted.  Along the way we have added additional benefits with the attempt to protect more and more people.

I worry the same will happen with our health care reform.  I have no problem  trying to make health care more accessible and affordable.  However, I do have problem with trying protect one hundred percent of the population from one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life.

Why? It’s just not possible.  And if we begin this journey towards health care reform with that end in mind, we are already doomed to failure and to suffer yet another version of creeping entitlements.

Have you wondered?

If you’ve been reading regularly, (and bless your heart if you have) you’ll have noticed I’ve been on a bit of poetic kick.  You may be wondering where that came from.

I’ve loved poetry for as long as I can remember.  Some of my fondest literary memories are ones of being in awe of Frost and Kipling and Shakespeare (Sonnets, remember?) and Dickinson and many others I was exposed to in high school. 

Recently, I learned some interesting things about the Commissioner of Social Security, who happens to be my boss (I must admit I’m a bit removed from his direct oversight). 

#1 – He is a poet.  He writes under the pseudonym A. M. Juster, an anagram of his real name, M J Astrue. 

#2 – He is a dang good poet.

After reading some of his thoughts on poetry and advice to beginning writers, I have been inspired to try some different things.  So I hope you don’t mind if I use you as a guinea pig.  Hopefully, I won’t chase you away never to return!