a fool in the forest

When I'm It Was '64 and '67 and '86 and '88 and -- HEY! ISN'T THAT BOB DYLAN?!?

Ross Douthat included the photo above in a post about Mitt Romney and voters' attitudes toward Mormonism.  I am not going to talk about that post, though you are welcome to read it.  The young fellow with the cowlick on the right in that photo is Mitt; the gentleman on the left pointing out the sights is his father, then-Governor George Romney of Michigan, later the first member of the Romney clan to make a run at the Republican nomination for President of These United States. 

My reason for reproducing that photo has nothing to do with current events, Romney-related or otherwise.  No, my concern is with the past and with where and when that photo was taken: at the site of the 1964 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens.  I attended the Fair with my parents and the elder of my two younger sisters (the youngest being yet too young at the time), and that trip is one I remember fondly to this day.

The New York fair was memorable for any number of reasons.  Several of the U.S. exhibitors hired Walt Disney to construct attractions for them and a number of longstanding Disneyland attractions premiered in Flushing before being transplanted back to Anaheim: Abraham Lincoln was constructed for the Illinois pavilion; the dinosaurs encountered when circling Disneyland by train come from the Ford pavilion (Gov. Romney's arm is stretching across it in the photo); the now long defunct Carousel of Progress was featured in the General Electric pavilion (accompanied by a very loud demonstration of nuclear fusion, power source of The Future).  For better or worse, the Pepsi pavilion was the original home of the infernally catchy "It's a Small World."  (American tourists were smaller then, too.)

Despite the Cold War, the Fair touted a theme of "Peace Through Understanding," and the world's cultural riches were sent to New York without any of the security concerns of today.  Spain sent prime masterworks of Goya (a clothed Maja, not the naked one); Jordan sent some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Perhaps most remarkably, the Vatican pavilion imported Michelangelo's Pietà from St. Peter's.  Eight years later, the scuplture would would fall victim to the sledgehammer attack of Laszlo Toth.  (One viewed the Pietà in New York from a moving walkway, and I distinctly remember it being lit a sort of undersea green.  That recollection is borne out somewhat by the cover of the March 28, 1964, edition of the Saturday Evening Post.)

1964 Fair resources:

• nywf64.com is an extravagantly thorough site devoted to the Fair, with copious maps, photos, etc. 

• Modern Mechanix reproduces the entirety of a 1965 article on the Fair from National Geographic.

The New York Fair did not qualify as a "real" World's Fair, as it lacked the imprimatur of the Bureau International des Expositions.  Among other things, the BIE objected to the Fair running over the course of two years.  (True World Expositions are supposed to run no longer than six months.)

• The comprehensive ExpoMuseum includes extensive coverage of New York, notwithstanding its unauthorized status.

The World's Fair bug bit me bad after that 1964 trip.  My contemporaries are welcome to their Summer of Love, but for me the summer of 1967 will forever be the summer of the [BIE-endorsed] Expo 67 in Montreal.  A true Universal Exposition, the Montreal fair was built on the all-encompassing theme of "Man and his World."  It is memorable among other things for the pavilions of the USA and USSR glaring at one another, each nation touting its prowess in the space race.  The Soviets were toasting the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and were quite chuffed with themselves.  The U.S. Pavilion was architecturally notable as well, designed by R. Buckminster Fuller and housed in an enormous geodesic dome.  Damaged in a fire in 1976, the dome's remnants remain as the Montreal Biosphère.

• Film Trivia: The abandoned interiors of one of the Theme Pavilions from Montreal, "Man the Explorer," were used as the sets for Robert Altman's obscure 1979 dystopian thriller Quintet.

I ended a nineteen year gap in Expo attendance on my honeymoon, which included several days at Vancouver's EXPO86.  Our last Expo venture was to Brisbane, Australia, for EXPO 88.  We flirted with the notion to taking a run at Seville in 1998, or possibly Hannover in 2000 -- electronic music afficionadi know that Expo 2000 featured an advertising jingle by Kraftwerk -- but those plans came to naught. 

There have been no sanctioned world expositions in North America since 1986, and none in the U.S. since New Orleans in 1984.  The U.S., in fact, has not been eligible to host or to participate in an exhibition since 1991, when it was expelled from the BIE for persistent failure of Congress to authorize the payment of dues.  Several Canadian cities are reported to be planning bids for a smaller scale 3-month exposition in 2017, the 50th anniversary of Montreal and the 150th anniversary of the Canadian confederation.

Next up in official expositionary circles is Expo 2008, to be held next year from June 14 through September 14 in Zaragoza, Spain.  This is an International Exposition -- the official site helpfully explains the distinction between "International Expositions" and "Universal Expositions" -- and is to be built around the wholesome theme of "Water and Sustainable Development."

Researching this post, I turned up two notable tidbits relating to the Zaragoza fair.  First comes this little fellow:

This is Fluvi, mascot of Zaragoza 2008.  You may not be able to tell, but Fluvi is "a courageous and funny little drop of water . . [who] will shape a greener and less polluted world with a little help from his friends."  Yes, he's courage, humor, environmental goodness and friendship, all in one soggy little package.  No upstanding mascot such as Fluvi would be complete without an opposite number, of course, so there must be Sec,

formerly "a humble slub," now transformed by environmental contaminants into "an evil being who wants to make everything filthy and vile."  You just know Sec has an incompetent henchman, don't you?  Indeed he does.  Sec is the epitome of the oversimplified environmental villain: he pollutes for the sheer wicked joy of it and he has a lousy HR department selecting his cronies.  Surely he cannot prevail.  (To find out, we will all need to travel to Spain to watch Fluvi, the series.  Be sure not to miss the episode in which Sec reveals "a new design of lavatories that dazzle everybody" but that use waaayy too much water.  It's a good thing there are market forces and thrifty consumers Fluvi and his pals to stop him.)

Now that you have read this far, you have certainly earned a reward, and here it is: Better by far than Fluvi, it's -- New Bob Dylan!

On behalf of Zaragoza 2008 and in keeping with the exposition's aquiferrific theme, Bob Dylan has recorded a new version of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall."  This rendition is in the loopy, loping "ol' man Bob" mode most recently on display in last year's Modern Times.  I think that approach defangs the song a bit, but "Hard Rain" is 45 years old now so perhaps it has mellowed with the rest of us.  In any case, it is still a fine song.

A video for the new "Hard Rain" currently appears on the Zaragoza 2008 home page, linked above.  More information can be found on the related Únete a Expo site, including an array of additional Dylan-related videos and the opportunity to download (descargar) an MP3 version for free.  We are all about service here in the forest, so you can also listen or download right here:

• Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall [Zaragoza 2008 version] [MP3 link]

Now, I have hunted about through Google and Technorati and Bloglines and the Hype Machine, and so far as I can tell I have beaten all of the other weblogs on the block to the punch in posting this tune.  So, for what little it is worth, I proudly declare this A fool in the forest Exclusive! at least until someone else writes it up and I am obliged to define exclusivity down.  Take that, all you cool kids d'un certain age!  And be sure to tell all your friends you Heard It Here First.

After the jump: the video of my personal favorite version of "Hard Rain."  Stay dry, friends.

Tipping Point

Sometime in the past 48 hours or so, I reached and passed through the moment at which I had spent exactly half of my life as an attorney.

Does this mean that, as happened to the unfortunate Darth Vader, I am "more machine now than man"?

Ah, but enough about me.  Let me take this occasion to wish you each and all a Happy Repeal Day!

Repeal Day reminder via reason.tv and Eugene, Oregon, bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler, who writes:

How many forms of pleasure are guaranteed by the Constitution?  None, unless you’re one of those who get an inflated sense of ego from holding a firearm or speaking in public.  Me, I’m going to stick with alcohol.

Salud, freedom lovers!

Have You Anything to Declare?

And remember: even hard won freedoms may be reversible. 

Happy Fourth!

In Praise of Student Athletes (obs.)

Being Michigan-born, I have long had an affectionate spot for President Gerald R. Ford.  The University of Michigan, where Ford played football so successfully in the 30s, is my father's alma mater -- my mother also attended the U of M for a year before transferring to and graduating from Alma College -- and it very likely would have been my own had we not moved to California.  I know which team I will be rooting for in the Rose Bowl on January 1.

Gerald Ford's college football success and his decision to turn down professional offers in order to attend Yale Law School (while also serving as an assistant coach to the Yale football team) have been noted in many of the reports and reminiscences surrounding his passing, and it has causes me to mourn those long gone days when university athletics really involved Student Athletes -- meaning players who were students first and athletes second.  The collegiate playing fields of the 1930s produced a President (Ford) and a respected Justice of the United States Supreme Court (the University of Colorado's Byron "Whizzer" White).  The last college (and pro) football player that I can think of who was taken seriously as even a candidate for the nation's highest offices was Jack Kemp, who spent his college days competing a few miles from where I sit now, at Occidental College.  (Are there any more recent examples I am missing, or was Kemp the last of his kind?  If we expand our college sporting criteria to include basketball, we can get to Bill Bradley, Princeton '65 -- who earns extra prestige by having gone to a school that had no athletic scholarships -- but that is as recent an example as my admittedly limited knowledge of sporting matters yields.)

Today, of course, at the most prominent Football Schools, student status is strictly secondary to athletic prowess.  Those Bright College Days are merely a pit stop on the road to hoped-for NFL riches, and a Super Bowl^TM ring a more sought after long-term goal than public service in high office.  In the contemporary world, it is hard to imagine a serious contender for President coming from college football, or even from the ranks of those who have merely assumed the role of a college football player.

So hail and farewell, Mr. President.  The sons and daughters of Michigan are proud of you.  And to the Wolverines: get out there next Monday and win one more for Gerry.

[Photo, Gerald Ford on the football field at the University of Michigan, 1933, courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.]

Time Time Time See What's Become of Me

It is a matter of no great moment, other than to myself and perhaps some of the several thousand others of whom it is also true, but I will report it all the same:

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of my admission to the State Bar of California.

This means that sometime in early June, 2007 -- I think I still have the skills to calculate the particular date, if I put my mind to it, which I will not on this occasion -- I will have spent half my life as a lawyer.

Discuss.

[Photo of a digital temperature gauge somewhere in Vienna by schaufi (Chris Schauflinger), courtesy of stock.xchng.]

Though They May Have Won All the Battles, We Had All the Good Songs

Forty-one years on, Ron Silliman takes a break from matters poetical to serve as your Thanksgiving one-stop shop for all things related to Alice's Restaurant and the massacree therein.

[Post title adapted from Tom Lehrer's "Folk Song Army" (1965).]

A St. Cecilia Thanksgiving

It has become an annual Thanksgiving tradition on this weblog  -- see prior instances here (2005) and here (2004) -- to post a version of Fairport Convention's "Now Be Thankful."  Today, November 22, is also Saint Cecilia's Day, so the inclusion of music in our holiday observance is especially timely. 

This year, courtesy of The YouTube  -- get it while it lasts, and be thankful -- I offer up a video version of the tune, taken from an outdoor Fairport Convention appearance at Maidstone, Kent, in 1970.  Sandy Denny had departed the band at this point, and Richard Thompson was about to do the same.  Thompson's little grin at the conclusion of this performance is particularly lovely.*

As for another of my annual Traditions, the space following this paragraph will soon be occupied by here is a photograph of the President of the United States pardoning this year's turkey.  No Karl Rove jokes, please:

The White House provides the text of the President's Remarks at the Pardoning.  There is video of the blessed event to be had as well.

Following the presidential precedent of last year, the Nation's Turkeys will be packed off to Disneyland following their pardon, there to appear as Grand Marshals of the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade and to serve out their natural lives under Mouse arrest.  It is to be hoped that the Disneyland birds will be spared the fate of "Clyde," last year's official Pardoned Turkey of the State of Alabama, whose fate it was to be eaten by a wily coyote.

Speaking of clever predators, the presidential turkey pardon turns out to be the subject of a book by Magnus Fiskesjö, a Swedish anthropologist.  A sample observation: 

The Thanksgiving turkey pardon is a prime example of an act that is only seemingly innocuous but actually serves to shape our modern consciousness.  Masquerading as a joke, it is really a symbolic pardoning act which, through public performance, establishes and manifests the sovereign’s position at the helm of the state by highlighting, as an attribute of his position, his power to control matters of life and death.  Alas, the etymological coincidence of the words ‘executive’ and ‘execution.’

Alas, indeed.  Meanwhile, Jack Kelly of American Heritage magazine ladles out heaping platefuls of turkey lore, including the disputed origins of the annual Pardon and this:

Sarah Josepha Hale, among the first American women to write a novel (she also composed 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'), began to campaign for an official Thanksgiving holiday in 1846.  There were only two national holidays at the time, Washington’s Birthday and Independence Day.  Many states adopted the autumn celebration before Lincoln proclaimed it for the entire country during the Civil War. Hale, who had not previously connected Thanksgiving to the Plymouth settlement, mentioned in 1865 that 'the Pilgrim Fathers incorporated a yearly Thanksgiving day among the moral influences they sent to the New World.'  It was not true, but, Smith notes, 'textbooks were retelling the tale of the first Thanksgiving dinner by 1870.'  The myth of that original feasting ritual became established and was embellished by Victorian novelists, who attributed elaborate menus to the struggling Pilgrims.

The President having hurried home from Asia just in time to bestow the Nation's pardon on this fine fowl, it is appropriate to consider the Thanksgiving challenges faced by our fellow citizens in far away places.  Samia Mounts, an American in Seoul, explains the holiday for Korean readers and reports:

Many Americans live in Seoul, and Thanksgiving can be a challenging holiday for them.  They find it a challenge to find a turkey to roast, because the markets in Seoul do not carry turkey.  However, if one is creative, one can overcome any culinary obstacle.  A large chicken can substitute for a turkey, and almost all the other Thanksgiving trimmings are available here in Seoul.

Ms. Mount provides an intriguing recipe for Ginger Peanut Stuffing, which is sure to give your large chicken real global flair.

• Given that characters nicknamed "Turkey" and "Ginger Nut" both appear in Melville's tale of "Bartleby, the Scrivener," one might rename this dish "Herman Melville Dressing."

Or one might prefer not to.

And on those eclectic and festive notes, here's wishing to each of you a bountiful, healthful, mellifluous and Happy Thanksgiving.

    ~~~

*  Apropos of St. Cecilia and the art of which she is patroness, this fool enthusiastically endorses Richard Thompson's 2003 recording, 1000 Years of Popular Music, which covers exactly that: from "Sumer is icumen in" to "Oops, I Did it Again" by way of Henry V, a memento mori ("Remember O Thou Man), mining protest songs ("Blackleg Miner"), Gilbert & Sullivan ("There is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast"), Cole Porter ("Night & Day") and the Easybeats ("Friday on My Mind").   Now available in a deluxe edition with accompanying DVD (which I have not seen myself).

Illustration for Dryden's "Ode to Saint Cecilia" from The Illustrated London Reading Book, by Various Authors (Third Edition, 1851).

Cal: O, Youth!

Let's drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls . . . .

        -- Tom Lehrer, "Bright College Days"

Scheduled to be out of town for depositions in San Francisco yesterday, I took the excuse to run north early for a Sunday afternoon with my old school chum Rick Coencas.  We revisited, for the first time in decades, our haunts in and around our beloved University of California, Berkeley.    (Albeit I am no particular follower of college football, I cannot but boast that at this moment Cal towers undefeated in conference play, #1 in the Pac-10 Standings and, glory be, #8 in the BCS.  Go Bears!)

Having no time to prepare a report of my own, I refer you to Rick's version, which comes complete with loverley photos and a title drawn from a poor joke that I made while we ambled through a fog of reminiscence toward Sather Gate.

Upon Reflection

Mirror in the bathroom I just can't stop it,
Every Saturday you see me window shopping.
Find no interest in the racks and shelves,
Just a thousand reflections of my own sweet self self self self self . . .

-- "Mirror in the Bathroom" (1980) The [English] Beat

I have often said that No One Ever Went to Law School to Learn to Be Humble.  To prove my own point, here are links to two recent items either by or about yer 'umble Fool.

• Lawcrossing is a major online legal job search and recruiting service that also dishes up an online magazine of sorts with articles, columns, interviews, and feature stories on matters legal and/or current.  In a moment of weakness, the site this week features a profile (based on an e-mail interview) of . . . me.  Learn my guilty secrets!  Mock my pretensions!  Wonder at the sinister twinkle in my eye!  Any number can play.

• Of somewhat related interest: On a more serious and useful note, Lawcrossing's "Inside Legal Blogs" column this week features a pointer to shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress.  shlep is devoted to practical discussions on self-help and pro se litigation, and is the brainchild of longstanding online FOTF [friend o' the fool] David Giacalone.  shlep promises to be of interest to those who hope to avoid, when possible, falling into the clutches of lawyers.  (Thanks to David, this post isn't all about me.)

• I also recently published a general purpose article on legal weblogs -- "Letting the Blogs Out: What Weblogs Have to Offer to Risk and Insurance Professionals" -- in the August 2006 issue (PDF) of CLEWS, the newsletter of the Consulting, Litigation and Expert Witness [CLEW] section of the CPCU Society. 
  
  • In case the link to the CLEW newsletter proves to be restricted to CPCU Society members, I have uploaded another copy here (also PDF).

But enough about me, eh?

Wrong in So Many Ways

My alma mater, Cal/Berkeley, comes in for a scolding from the Sacramento Bee's Daniel Weintraub here.  Yes, it's another story on how college student don't know much about history.  The statistics seem to show that students actually grow less knowledgeable over the course of four years.

The post is replete with the usual sorry examples of ignorance -- of the "53% believe Oprah Winfrey discovered radium" variety -- the last being a real headshaker:

Even with their country at war in Iraq, fewer than half of seniors, 45.2 percent, could identify the Baath party as the main source of Saddam Hussein's political support.  In fact, 12.2 percent believed that Saddam Hussein found his most reliable supporters in the Communist Party.  Almost 5.7 percent chose Israel.

Words fail me.