GOP candidates bag Portland debate

What?  No party?

According to Oregon Republican Party Chairman Allen Alley the GOP primary debate that was to take place in Portland on March 19th is cancelled.  There go my plans for Monday night.  Bummer! 

Really, though, it doesn't make much sense for the GOP candidates to have a debate in Oregon.  Consider:

1. Oregon is as blue a state as they get.  Republicans do not hold a single state-wide office.  Governor Kitzhaber's current term is the fifth consecutive term in which Democrats have held the Governor's office.  Both senators and four of five Congressional Representatives are Democrats (including newly-elected Suzanne Bonamici).  Our 7 electoral votes have gone for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 1984.  In short, Oregon is not fertile ground for Republicans.  Must be something in the soil. 
   
2. By my count, there have already been 27 (!) GOP debates so far this election cycle.  And nearly every one of them has produced footage of one or another of the candidates saying something embarrassingly stupid.  Like when Rick Perry couldn't remember which three federal agencies he would eliminate.  Or when Hermann Cain complained that for every woman who came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment, there were probably thousands who did not.  
3. The reception that Republicans get in Portland, while loud and enthusiastic, is not all that friendly.  After his reception in the Rose City back in the late 80s, Bush the Elder called the Rose City "the Beirut of North America."

Too bad.  I would have enjoyed welcoming Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to Portland. 

Actually, there's no need to cancel the debate entirely.  Newt committed to attending back when the debate was announced.  And, as far as I'm concerned, Newt is all that is needed.  He's got at least 90 minutes worth of contradictory positions.  He could have a debate all by himself.

Dig that grin!

Coach Miles and the Hustlin' Owls do it again!

My old college alma mater, Oregon Institute of Technology, triumphed yet again in the Division II NAIA Men's Basketball championship.  Congratulations to Coach Danny Miles and all the Hustlin' Owls!  (Read about the game here.)  The Owls exploded in the second half to overwhelm the Northwood University (Florida) Seahawks, 63-46.  With this win, the Owls tie Bethel, Indiana for most Division II national championships at three.  All 3 titles came under the leadership of Coach Miles.  The other two were in 2004 and 2008.

My place of employ (being a high-tech company) has many OIT alumni (engineering students) on the payroll so there is a lot of strutting and woofing going on today at work. 

OIT's success is a point of pride for me not only because I'm an OIT alumnus, but because Danny Miles is a lifelong friend of the Cariaga clan.  My dad and Danny came to OIT at about the same time, back in the late 60s.  They spent a lot of time together over the years.  When Dad passed in 2001, Danny organized a get-together with some of Dad's football players, my brothers and I, and some of the OIT coaches.  We hung out in the press booth up above dark and empty Moehl Stadium, had a drink or two, and told stories about Dad.  I've always been grateful to Danny for that.

So, congratulations to OIT Hustlin' Owls everywhere on this big victory.  And special congratulations to Coach Danny Miles:  a dear friend to my family, and one hell of a basketball coach.

From the Oregon Tech Athletics web site:

Danny Miles

Danny Miles will begin his 41st campaign at Oregon Tech when the 2011-12 Hustlin’ Owls take to the hardwoods in November. Miles has led Oregon Tech to two NAIA II National Championships, in both 2004 and 2008, while leading Oregon Tech to a NAIA national tournament "Sweet 16" appearance in 2011, finishing with a 30-5 overall mark, including a perfect 19-0 home record - The Owls’ third undefeated season in a row. Miles home win streak now stands at a school-record 57 straight. In the last 15 seasons, Miles has led his squads to an overall 424-110 (.794) record with 13 trips to the NAIA Division II National Tournament. Oregon Tech’s tournament record stands at 28-11, including 13-straight wins in first round games.  Oregon Tech holds the record for most wins at the division II tournament. In his tenure at Oregon Tech Miles has guided 16 men’s basketball teams to the national tournament.

On April 21, 2005 Miles was honored by his alma mater Southern Oregon University as the recipient of the 2005 Distinguished Alumnus Award at a dinner held in his honor on the SOU campus. In March of 2001 Miles was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in Point Lookout, Missouri. He was then awarded the Favell Museums Klamath County Western Heritage Award later that spring. In 1996 Miles was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame. He also has attained similar recognition as a charter member in both the Southern Oregon University and the city of Medford Halls of Fame for his outstanding athletic fortunes.

Afghanistan nightmare

Lord, remember your children in Afghanistan!

The mass murder of 16 people, including 9 children, by a staff sergeant from Fort Lewis is a vision from hell. Initial reports are that the victims were killed in their beds or execution style.  A 2 year-old child is among the dead.

The vision is made all the more appalling in how it illuminates the chasm between US policy and reality in Afghanistan.  There is no purpose to our presence there.  Any purpose we may have had was swallowed up  years ago by the savagery, the cruelty.  As John Gardner wrote in Jason and Medeia:  "War proves itself."

We chose war over law enforcement in our response to 911.  One decade later, the horror continues to grow. 

The perpetrator of the crime must, of course, be prosecuted with the full weight of the law. That is, if we choose to maintain that we are a nation of laws.  If we can't control our military, why bother to keep up the pretense?

It is possible that this latest atrocity, committed by the staff sergeant from Fort Lewis could be one of those catalytic historical phenomena that change everything.  A single grain pushed off the weighting platform of a delicately balanced scale.  Beam forsakes equilibrium.  World tilts.  Maybe. 

Regardless, these 11 years have brought horrors and suffering far beyond anything we were led to expect by war's advocates.  Are we any wiser for it?

Kitchen remodel - before

Goodbye old kitchen!

Tonight is the eve of a major transformation to the Cariaga hacienda. By the end of the day tomorrow, our old kitchen will no longer exist; the new (with alder cabinetry, ample lighting, electric hood, built-in dishwasher, stainless-steel sink, garbage disposal, quartz counter-tops, et alia) will have begun to form out of the wreckage.

Gulp!  It's a big (expensive) step.

We've gone over the plans for the new kitchen in fine detail.  We've asked the contractor all the questions we can think of to ask.  We've been judicious in balancing need and luxury.  We've picked out colors and tiles and cabinet handles.

But it still feels like we're going into this thing blind-folded.  Or, at least, with vision obscured.  Who knows what financial landmines might be revealed as the contractors strip away the passé?  I've heard horror stories about remodels that reveal hitherto unknown problems with the house.  Problems that raise remodeling costs well beyond any worst-case scenarios.

And what, really, will the new kitchen look like?  We've seen the computer mock-ups.  We've examined and compared the various cabinet stains.  We have a vague notion. 

But the only way to ultimately know what the new kitchen will be and how it will work is to see it upon completion.  Which, if all goes according to schedule, will be 5 weeks hence. 

In the meantime, Maty and I will be eating from the refrigerator and microwave (which will be relocated into our living room), taking advantage of the numerous restaurants in our neighborhood, and coping with workmen being in our house all the livelong day.

I'll post photos of the completed job.   With any luck, we will witness our very own Ugly Duckling fable.

Wish us luck!

Adieu!

Book review: Last Call - The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

Daniel Okrent's Last Call - The Rise and Fall of Prohibition is probably as close to an exhaustive history of Prohibition in the United States as one can reasonably expect.  Okrent covers it all:  the sodden state of the general populace in the pre-Prohibition days, the utterly bizarre coalition of forces that made Prohibition possible, the myriad personalities, both dry and wet, that inhabited the political and cultural landscape throughout, and Prohibition's legacy, which is still with us today.

That old adage about politics making strange bedfellows was never more clearly demonstrated than in the decades leading to passage of the 18th Amendment, invoking Prohibition.  Okrent describes the unlikely coalition of suffragists, Southern Baptists, Ku Klux Klan, moralists, Know-Nothings, wealthy industrialists, and women suffering from abuse and neglect by drunken spouses that held together to make Prohibition a reality.  Mistrust and scape-goating between the nation's brewers and distillers, as well as full doses of nativist xenophobia and Bible-thumping racism provided kindling to the unlikely fire.  Colorful historical figures (William Jennings Bryant, Carrie Nation, and political wizard, Wayne Wheeler, among others) completed the forumla.

The book is dense.  Jam-packed with information.  The subject-matter, of course, requires it.  But keeping track of the various players and factions is arduous.  At times, the book is a bit dry (no pun intended).  Okrent is not a poet, but he does liven up the text with humor and simile (with varying degrees of success).

For those fascinated with history, this is an enjoyable book.  Readers might be surprised to learn just how much of the current national zeitgeist is a legacy of the crazy Prohibition era.  When one reads about how hypocrisy, greed, and appeals to base prejudice and ignorance combined to manifest perhaps the biggest farce in national history, it is easier to understand the stultifying behavior of our own modern-day politicians.

In today's United States, the idea that a coalition could form to pass a Constitutional Amendment is nigh on inconceivable.  And how much more so the idea of an amendment that so fundamentally affects individual life-styles?  But, as Okrent points out, it was no less unimaginable in the late 1800s, when the Prohibition movement first stirred to life.  Inconceivable.  But it happened.

Tortilla Flat: The vieja doubts the Blessed Virgin

Dad would sometimes quote from the works of John Steinbeck.  Dad was a big fan of Steinbeck.  He read nearly everything the man ever wrote.  If there were ever a screen adaptation of the writer's work (Cannery Row, East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, et alia), Dad was sure to tune in.

So, naturally, Steinbeck was one of the first "great" authors I read. Sister Paige and I both went through a "Steinbeck phase," where we read everything we could get out hands on.

Steinbeck wrote about life in next-door California, which may explain why his work resonated.  There is a certain mindset among people that live on the Pacific coast.  As a lifelong Oregonian, that mindset is part of me.  I felt a kinship with Steinbeck because of it.

I also attribute my political attitudes to Steinbeck.  I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, after all.  If you have any doubts about where Steinbeck stood on political issues, read Grapes of Wrath.  That'll straighten you right out.

Right-wingers can have Ayn Rand.  I'll take Steinbeck any day.

Today, an excerpt from Steinbeck's wise and hilarious novella, Tortilla Flat. The book describes the lives and adventures of Danny's Friends, a group of paisanos, living near Salinas, California in the 1920s.  In this (abridged) story, hard times have fallen upon the household of Teresina, a local woman with a passel of fatherless children.

Excerpt from John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, Chapter XIII:  How Danny's Friends threw themselves to the aid of a distressed lady.

SEÑORA Teresina Cortez and her eight children and her ancient mother lived in a pleasant cottage on the edge of the deep gulch that defines the southern frontier of Tortilla Flat. Teresina was a good figure of a mature woman, nearing thirty. Her mother, that ancient, dried, toothless one, relict of a past generation, was nearly fifty. It was long since any one had remembered that her name was Angelica.

During the week work was ready to this vieja's hand, for it was her duty to feed, punish, cajole, dress, and bed down seven of the eight children. Teresina was busy with the eighth, and with making certain preparations for the ninth.

On Sunday, however, the vieja, clad in black satin more ancient even than she, hatted in a grim and durable affair of black straw, on which were fastened two true cherries of enameled plaster, threw duty to the wind and went firmly to church, where she sat as motionless as the saints in their niches. Once a month, in the afternoon, she went to confession. It would be interesting to know what sins she confessed, and where she found the time to commit them, for in Teresina's house there were creepers, crawlers, stumblers, shriekers, cat-killers, fallers-out-of-trees; and each one of these charges could be trusted to be ravenous every two hours.

Is it any wonder that the vieja had a remote soul and nerves of steel? Any other kind would have gone screaming out of her body like little skyrockets.

…

You will wonder how Teresina procured food for her family. When the bean threshers have passed, you will see, where they have stopped, big piles of bean chaff. If you will spread a blanket on the ground, and, on a windy afternoon, toss the chaff in the air over the blanket, you will understand that the threshers are not infallible. For an afternoon of work you may collect twenty or more pounds of beans.

In the autumn the vieja and those children who could walk went into the fields and winnowed the chaff. The landowners did not mind, for she did no harm. It was a bad year when the vieja did not collect three or four hundred pounds of beans.

When you have four hundred pounds of beans in the house, you need have no fear of starvation. Other things, delicacies such as sugar, tomatoes, peppers, coffee, fish, or meat, may come sometimes miraculously, through the intercession of the Virgin, sometimes through industry or cleverness; but your beans are there, and you are safe. Beans are a roof over your stomach. Beans are a warm cloak against economic cold.

Only one thing could threaten the lives and happiness of the family of the Señora Teresina Cortez; that was a failure of the bean crop.

When the beans are ripe, the little bushes are pulled and gathered into piles, to dry crisp for the threshers. Then is the time to pray that the rain may hold off. When the little piles of beans lie in lines, yellow against the dark fields, you will see the farmers watching the sky, scowling with dread at every cloud that sails over; for if a rain comes, the bean piles must be turned over to dry again. And if more rain falls before they are dry, they must be turned again. If a third shower falls, mildew and rot set in, and the crop is lost.

When the beans were drying, it was the vieja's custom to burn a candle to the Virgin. In the year of which I speak, the beans were piled and the candle had been burned. At Teresina's house, the gunny sacks were laid out in readiness.

The threshing machines were oiled and cleaned.

A shower fell.

Extra hands rushed to the fields and turned the sodden hummocks of beans. The vieja burned another candle.

More rain fell.

Then the vieja bought two candles with a little gold piece she had kept for many years. The field hands turned over the beans to the sun again; and then came a downpour of cold streaking rain. Not a bean was harvested in all Monterey County. The soggy lumps were turned under by the plows.

Oh, then distress entered the house of Señora Teresina Cortez. The staff of life was broken; the little roof destroyed. Gone was that eternal verity, beans. At night the children cried with terror at the approaching starvation. They were not told, but they knew. The vieja sat in church, as always, but her lips drew back in a sneer when she looked at the Virgin. "You took my candles," she thought. "Ohee, yes. Greedy you are for candles. Oh, thoughtless one." And sullenly she transferred her allegiance to Santa Clara. She told Santa Clara of the injustice that had been done. She permitted herself a little malicious thought at the Virgin birth. "You know, sometimes Teresina can't remember either," she told Santa Clara viciously.

It has been said that Jesus Maria Corcoran was a greathearted man. He had also that gift some humanitarians possess of being inevitably drawn toward those spheres where his instinct was needed. How many times had he not come upon young ladies when they needed comforting. Toward any pain or sorrow he was irresistibly drawn. He had not been to Teresina's house for many months. If there is no mystical attraction between pain and humanitarianism, how did it happen that he went there to call on the very day when the last of the old year's beans was put in the pot?

He sat in Teresina's kitchen, gently brushing children off his legs. And he looked at Teresina with polite and pained eyes while she told of the calamity. He watched, fascinated, when she turned the last bean sack inside out to show that not one single bean was left. He nodded sympathetically when she pointed out the children, so soon to be skeletons, so soon to die of starvation.

Then the vieja told bitterly how she had been tricked by the Virgin. But upon this point Jesus Maria was not sympathetic.

"What do you know, old one?" he said sternly. "Maybe the Blessed Virgin had business some place else."

"But four candles I burned," the vieja insisted shrilly.

Jesus Maria regarded her coldly. "What are four candles to Her?" he said. "I have seen one church where She had hundreds. She is no miser of candles."

…

At Danny's house they held a conference.

This must not be told in some circles, for the charge might be serious.

Long after midnight four dark forms who shall be nameless moved like shadows through the town. Four indistinct shapes crept up on the Western Warehouse Company platform. The watchman said, afterward, that he heard sounds, investigated, and saw nothing. He could not say how the thing was done, how a lock was broken and the door forced. Only four men know that the watchman was sound asleep, and they will never tell on him.

A little later the four shadows left the warehouse, and now they were bent under tremendous loads.

Pantings and snortings came from the shadows.

At three o'clock in the morning Teresina was awakened by hearing her back door open. "Who is there?" she cried. There was no answer, but she heard four great thumps that shook the house. She lighted a candle and went to the kitchen in her bare feet. There, against the wall, stood four one-hundred-pound sacks of pink beans.

Teresina rushed in and awakened the vieja. "A miracle!" she cried. "Come look in the kitchen." The vieja regarded with shame the plump full sacks. "Oh, miserable dirty sinner am I," she moaned. "Oh, Holy Mother, look with pity on an old fool. Every month thou shalt have a candle, as long as I live."

A beautiful story of doubt and faith, no? One might say that Teresina's family was saved from starvation by pilfering lay-abouts. But good luck in trying to convince the vieja of that.  To her, everything is owed to the Mother of God.

Rah, rah, Ricky!

Okay, so maybe he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but at least a President Santorum would keep us safe from --er --well --never mind...

Former (Republican) Congressman Bob Ney, who now works for Talk Radio News Service reports that, heading into the big Super Tuesday Republican primary in Ohio, he received the following robocall from the Santorum campaign:

“Hi, my name is Brian Camenker; I’m a Jew from Massachusetts.
“And, this is Darcy Brandon; I’m a Christian from California. If you believe as we do that marriage and sexuality should only be between a man and a woman, please help us stop Mitt Romney.”
“As Governor, Romney signed ‘Gay Youth Pride Day’ proclamations, promoted homosexuality in our elementary schools, and unconstitutionally ordered state officials to make Massachusetts America’s first same-sex marriage state. Romney supports open homosexuality in the military, the appointment of homosexual judges, and the ENDA law, making it illegal to fire a man who wears a dress and high heels to work, even if he’s your kid’s teacher. When you vote tomorrow, please vote for social sanity and Rick Santorum, NOT for homosexuality and Mitt Romney.”

So, forgive my ignorance, but who are Brian Cameker and Darcy Brandon?  I mean, besides being "a Jew from Massachusetts" and "a Christian from California?" (Never mind Muslims.  We all know that they're in cahoots with homosexuals, anyway.)  Whoever they may be, Ohio Republicans can be glad that Mr. Cameker and Ms. Brandon have clearly delineated the differences between Santorum and Romney.

A vote for Santorum is a vote for procreative, missionary-position sex (which, Santorum assures us, is the only sex that God approves of), while a vote for Romney will have us all hanging out around public restrooms late at night.

And, people please!  If we don't act now to protect our kids from cross-dressing school teachers, next thing you know we'll all be buying feminine hygiene products at the grocery store!

Okay, sarcasm aside, let's have a look at what's going on here.  It's Super Tuesday.  Ten states hold primaries throughout the nation, with 419 of the 1144 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination at stake.  Romney is in good position to win the lion's share of those delegates.  After all, Santorum and Newt Gingrich didn't even make the ballot in Virginia, which is one of today's primary states.

So, for Santorum, Ohio looms large. 

Santorum's been shooting his mouth off a lot, lately, and it's hurt him.  Since his big three state sweep last month, Santorum's gone from serious contender to ostracized religious fanatic.  But in this age of mega-rich political donors, all Santorum needs to stay afloat is to show even a little electoral strength.  Santorum's Daddy Warbucks, Foster Friess, who advocates aspirin between a woman's knees as the most effective birth control method, is surely willing to cut another fat check if he thinks Santorum has any momentum.

But what does it reveal about the nature of Santorum's support that, in pulling out all the stops to win votes, he falls back on that old Republican stem-winder:  the Homosexual Menace?  Could there possibly be a more condescending and contemptuous appeal to ignorance and fear?

What a sad, sad joke.