Roldo Bartimole writes:

There was one time I felt sorry for Art Modell.

It was in a court room. I’ll get to that.

What bothers me now of the attacks on Modell by our sports writers and fans are that they for so long kissed his ass. He was the Big Dog.

Just as they do now for Jimmy Haslam. Is Haslam any better than Modell? Nah.

Between whining about LeBron James and Art Modell, the town earns a reputation – a city of cry babies.

Modell left Cleveland because he lost political power. He lost it because he was a poor businessman. He could no longer get what he wanted. Dick Jacobs aced him out.

One bad business decision in particular made his trouble public. He tried to scam his silent partner – venture capitalist Bob Gries.

Modell himself owned the Stadium Corp. The firm leased the old stadium from the city. It had a sweetheart deal. Not near as good as Haslam has, however.

Back in 1971 Modell needed dough. Badly. He was heavily in debt. Very high interest rates, up to 21 percent. That’s how Gries became a heftier Continue Reading »

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Some of the nasty partisan war by Republicans against President Barack Obama reminds me of how white politicians – mostly Democrats in this case – played politics against Carl Stokes, the first black mayor of Cleveland.
Stokes, like Obama, shocked political observers by winning Mayor of Cleveland in 1967, defeating oligarch Seth Taft, the grandson of U.S. President William Howard Taft. He was considered the first African-American mayor of a major U. S. city.

Both Obama and Stokes had to face attacks not based solely on politics but on the color of their skins.

There was a similar enmity toward Mayor Stokes, as reflected by Sen. Mitch McConnell. He said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” In Cleveland, the main concern of many was making it impossible for Carl Stokes to govern or be re-elected.

Of course the issues differ as one would expect with the different levels of government – city to national. There is great change too in our news media coverage. But one factor remained the same: race. Both men were, of course, Continue Reading »

Jared Diamond makes a case for an argument I’ve championed for years: we live our lives in fear of distorted perils.

Studies have compared Americans’ perceived ranking of dangers with the rankings of real dangers, measured either by actual accident figures or by estimated numbers of averted accidents. It turns out that we exaggerate the risks of events that are beyond our control, that cause many deaths at once or that kill in spectacular ways — crazy gunmen, terrorists, plane crashes, nuclear radiation, genetically modified crops. At the same time, we underestimate the risks of events that we can control (“That would never happen to me — I’m careful”) and of events that kill just one person in a mundane way.

I lose no sleep over terrorists or crazy gunmen, but I can think of numerous occasions when my hyper-vigilance while driving — possibly the most dangerous activity I engage in daily — kept me alive when someone ran a stop sign, red light or lost control because they were driving too fast for road conditions.

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. — George Orwell’s lede to Politics and the English Language, 1946

*That would be Reform Sex-Offender Laws…

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The carpetbagger from Tennessee didn’t take long find a way to fleece northern sports suckers.

Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, one of society’s takers, will pocket the $100-million naming rights on a property-tax free stadium built, owned and maintained by taxpayers. He already had a sweet deal for a pittance of rent ($250,000) never to increase over 30 years.

And you wonder why Jimmy’s seems always to have a grin, ear to ear.

How many times have I been over this fakery?

Larry and Jimmy and Dan, oh my!

Anything these rich blood suckers want they take. The fix is always in for the Haslams, Gilberts and Dolans. We’ve continually invested too much public money for private interests. Already, they’re lined up to extend the sin tax that should lapse in 2015 after 25 years of hitting Cuyahoga residents.

But we’re all supposed to not see these thefts in progress.

Why? Well, in part surely because of our journalistic deceivers. Can you imagine, for example, the giddy Jimmy “Voice of the Browns” Donovan telling a truth about the stadium deal? How can he be a journalist and a paid promoter of the Browns? More disturbing, the empty-headed, monkey-see, monkey-do of his WKYC teammates – Russ Mitchell, Kris Pickel and Robin Swoboda.

They are illustrative of the phony nature of news Continue Reading »

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The attempt to add an assistant to each of the Cuyahoga County Council members is the first step in the creation of a new public Monster.

It should be cut off RIGHT NOW. Kill it dead.

It’s unfortunate that the very public officials who should be protecting the public are the ones trying to screw the public.

AND MORE IMPORTANT, the County Council members pushing for an assistant to their part-time jobs are giving government service a bad name. Just as the reappointment of Ken Johnson gave Cleveland Council a bad smell.

It’s no wonder that more conservative forces want to reduce government to the size that it can be put in a tub and drowned. They want to kill it. And you can see they sometimes have a point.

The attempt by Councilwoman Yvonne Conwell – whose husband is a Cleveland City Councilman – Kevin Conwell – has been pushing for an assistant to do her job. Maybe she got the idea from hubby. City Council – which has an unacceptable large staff – also has assistant to each member.

What’s important to remember is that Cuyahoga County Council members already have a staff to do its grunt work. The County Council has budgeted Continue Reading »

Carlinisms…*

Why do they call it a TV set when you only have one?

From my dad, of course…

*I associate this kind of word play with the brilliant comedy of George Carlin…

Roldo Bartimole writes:

There were many ironies and more than a few disgusting examples of cowardliness in City Council’s vote to reinstate one of its members who choose to retire to pad his wallet.

Ken Johnson didn’t want to lose his full paycheck. He also wanted his full retirement pension. Greed demanded action.
What a shame that he should have to give up a $74,000 job just to collect a public pension.

City Council voted Monday to reinstate Johnson as a member even though he recently retired. A perfect example of the low level of the moral code in the city.

A dead and deadly city.

I had to check my gut to read about Jeff Johnson’s defense of his buddy Kenny.

That’s because I remember a different Jeff Johnson. The young (and some would say naive councilman of the 1980s, though not I) Jeff Johnson was a fire brand. He (and Dan Brady, now a County Councilman) really brought down George Forbes. They openly attacked and defied Forbes to the point that Continue Reading »

Carlinisms…*

Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

From my dad, of course…

*I associate this kind of word play with the brilliant comedy of George Carlin…

As I approach the mid-point of my 57th year on Planet Earth, I have lamented my lost years, those times in which I did not do great deeds, when, upon reflection of the previous 12 months, I found myself wanting them back so that I might do what I had intended to do at their beginning.

How laughable is that?

Vonnegut, in this letter to his daughter Nanny on 20 November 1972, suggests a better attitude.

You are dismayed at having lost a year, maybe, because the school fell apart. Well — I feel as though I’ve lost years since Slaughterhouse-Five was published, but that’s malarkey. Those years weren’t lost. They simply weren’t the way I planned them. Neither was the year in which Jim had to stay motionless in bed while he got over TB. Neither was the year in which Mark went crazy, then put himself together again. Those years were adventures. Planned years are not. — p. 176

While I did not realize all that I set out to accomplish last year, I did have adventures. That I’ve moved from a liberal to a conservative community – the Gadsden flag flies daily at the end of my road – is one example.

Just out of college, when I first sat down to record my most basic, my universal, principles and formulate long-term (those requiring a year or more to accomplish) goals, one of my principles was:

Avoid complacency by prizing continual learning. Follow paths less taken for they lead to adventure and the marrow of life. Seek opportunities to develop and master my personal and professional skills. Be open to non-structured, experiential instruction by willingly listening to others. Embrace lessons in fields outside my present scope and broaden my horizons to discover insights to challenges.

I have not always lived this Universal Principle well, but I think that back in ‘80s, when I formulated the core my philosophy, my thoughts ran parallel to Vonnegut’s. When we over plan we exclude opportunities for vital, a hah! moments that foster growth. There must be balance, however, else doing nothing so as to be ready when opportunity knocks brings sloth and stupor.

Vonnegut’s message here is that keeping your nose to the grindstone certainly gets the work done, but also leads to a flat nose and, eventually, needing a new grindstone. I can imagine no more horrible existence than that of a draft animal’s perfectly planned life treading the nedders from dawn to dusk. How much worse for a person to be similarly yoked?

I watched Slaughterhouse-Five again last evening and I can see Vonnegut’s idea expressed to his daughter here as well, and perhaps that is one reason he feels: as though I’ve lost years since Slaughterhouse-Five was published…. Billy Pilgrim escapes to Tralfamadore, leaving his always-losing-weight wife and over-planned career as an optometrist (can there be a more ordered life than writing eyeglass prescriptions?) and has just the kind of adventure Vonnegut encourages for Nanny.

May this year be an adventurous one for us all.

Carlinisms…*

Why do we wash bath towels? Aren’t we clean when we use them?

From my dad, of course…

*I associate this kind of word play with the brilliant comedy of George Carlin…

I think that every aspiring journalist should read and heed the advice offered to Mrs. Harris by Kurt Vonnegut. Much of what I think is wrong with Journalism today comes from college educations; not in matters of the world such as science, the arts, social studies or maths, but rather in Journalism. There is nothing anyone can learn about journalism that a good editor cannot teach you in a fortnight, the rest is all practice. Not quite all on one foot, but pretty damn close.

-– to Mrs. Josephine Harris on 13 April 1970

Dear Mrs. Harris

I went to a high school which had a daily paper so everybody was crazy about writing. Many good writers have come from Shortridge — because of the paper. The Student writers get an immediate response from an audience rather than from one tired teacher. This makes writing seem exciting and relevant.

It takes about two years for a student to show important changes in his ability to write. Creative writing programs lasting only a semester or a year simply don’t allow enough time for growth. Ideally, the student should have the same teacher for two years.

The teacher should think of assisting the student to become a writer, rather than think of teaching a student how to write. The teacher should watch for clues as to what the student is attempting to become, then to help the student become that. It is cruel and destructive to make the student try to become something he was not meant to become. He can become only what he was meant to be.

Good luck

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

From Kurt Vonnegut: Letters edited by Dan Wakefieid. p. 157-8

My high school newspaper published, I think, once a month, although it might have been once a quarter, I cannot remember. At Ohio University, however, we had a daily: The Post, which gave the local daily, The Athens Messenger, a literal run for its money and if I have any regrets about college it is that I did not become a posty on day one.

Posties were known for taking barely enough hours each quarter to keep full-time-student status and for maintaining grade point averages that even althletes might have looked down upon, but damn, did they write. A lot. I had not yet learned the lesson that you become a writer by writing and not by taking classes on writing. I cannot think of a single journalist whom I admire and might want to emulate — Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, Studs Terkle, Jimmy Breslin and Mike Royko leap to mind — who went to college to become journalists.

What writers do need are mentors, individuals willing to read and honestly comment on what they are writing.

Carlinisms…*

How come abbreviated is such a long word?

From my dad, of course…

*I associate this kind of word play with the brilliant comedy of George Carlin…

I remember my freshman English teacher — Miss Mary (Granny) Baker — attempting to get a rise out my lethargic class by having us read the bedroom scene from Romeo and Juliet and beating us over the head with the revelatory information that first, the lovers were rousing from a night of sex and that second, Juliet was just shy of her 14th birthday and Romeo not much older. I still remember the frustration in her voice as we all sat there slack jawed and wondering what was for lunch. On the other hand, I remember reading Harlan Ellison’s “A Boy And His Dog” in Mr. Craig’s Algebra class (clearly not assigned reading) and being very interested in the process by which the girl puts on her bra.

I mention this juxtaposition of adolescent reading interest because of the decades-long battle against illiterate, knuckle dragging defenders of decency who protest the reading of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. In Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, editor Dan Wakefield writes:

As [Vonnegut] and his books became famous, there were more and more attempts to censor them, and he passionately defended the teachers and librarians who fought for their right to use them in schools and libraries. After the burning of copies of Slaughterhouse-Five in a furnace in Drake, North Dakota, on orders of its school board, and the banning of it by the school board in Levittown, New York, Vonnegut wrote in an op-ed piece for the New York Times on 24 March 1976 that

Whenever ideas are squashed in this country, literate lovers of the American experiment write careful and intricate explanations of why all ideas must be allowed to live. It is time for them to realize that they are attempting to explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans.

From now on, I intend to limit my discourse with dimwitted Savonarolas to this advice: Have somebody read the First Amendment to the United States Constitution out loud to you, you God damned fool! p. 154

At some point I think we all would like to be able to say that we have arrived at an impasse and that we have to agree to disagree. When, however, the disagreement involves the curtailment or outright removal of basic rights then that option leaves the table. Should parents be able to determine at what age their children are exposed to certain ideas? Of course; and yes, that cuts both ways. That parental decision, however, must not, cannot, be extended to deliberately dumbing down children not of their household for the sake of preserving the delusion that their child must be protected.

Perhaps one rule of thumb might be: if you’re reading only the good parts, then you’re probably not old enough to read the rest.

From Ralph Solonitz, of course…

Note: Ralph originally sent me this art on 22 December.

I’ve been a practitioner of various forms of meditation — beginning with Transcendental Meditation at 17 which evolved into a Buddhist practice in my 20s, a Jewdhist approach in my 30s and 40s and now back to Buddhist in my 50s — for most of my life and while I never fell for the full-blown TM you-can-bring-world-peace-(and learn to fly too) bullshit I found the practice helpful.

As I was reading Dan Wakefield’s introduction to the third section of his Kurt Vonnegut: Letters I discovered that Vonnegut had not shared my view. Wakefield wrote:

[Vonnegut] satirized the stylish popularity of Eastern mediation, saying we had the same thing in the West — reading short stories, which also lowered your heart rate and freed you mind from concerns. He said short stories were “Buddhist catnaps.” p. 76

We are too quick to dismiss the importance of coincidence in our lives, seeking to find meaning in the odd juxtapositions that we notice. Isaac Asimov celebrated coincidences in one of his science essays for Fantasy & Science Fiction when he noted that the at one point, the undiscovered moons of Saturn actually matched up to the correct number of children of that Roman god. I agree with Asimov, coincidences surround us and they have no meaning.

So, I laughed when I came across the passage concerning Vonnegut’s comparison of Eastern meditation and Western short stories because at the same time I check out Wakefield’s book, I also picked up Wendell Berry’s A Place In Time and Sherman Alexie’s Blasphemy two excellent collections of short stories (I can’t remember the last such collection I read) that I thoroughly enjoyed while I’d Gone Thinking.

I don’t know that I’ve been enjoying any catnaps, Buddhist or otherwise, while reading, but I do find myself saddened that reading short stories is no longer a regular part of the American literary landscape. Yes, there are collections and the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Mystery magazines, but outside of a handful of general magazines, there is no longer a place for writers to share a few hundred or a few thousand words with us.

Instead, we have 20-minute plays on television and occasionally, very occasionally, a bit of storytelling on radio.

That sucks.