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Absence Makes Blogs Shorter

Monday, December 7, 2009

Brick has been sporadic for some weeks. With luck, it will be more active in December.

National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month

Want an excuse? How about National Novel Writing Month. It’s 50,000 words to create a first draft of a novel (around a 200-page book) in 30 days. November is the one. My third try, and I went past 50,000 by midnight Nov. 30. It contains parts that might work as a beginning, climaxes and conclusions for the end, and scene upon scene to fill the middle. It will take another year or three to revise it to where I could show a savvy friend. The surprise for me is that I thought I’d be creating characters from people I know, but the cast is amazingly fictional.

So that explains November. What about only 10 postings in six months? There’s explanations and excuses. But why not look forward? Besides, my self-editing prevented real junk from littering the shoulder of the Information Highway. Even if that never bothers other people.

Isn’t that always the case on the road?

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Answering machine’s new message

Thursday, October 15, 2009

You’ve reached the voice mail of Ben Pollock. I can’t answer the phone right now because I’m floating above the Ozark foothills inside a balloon — which explains my high-pitched voice — looking for radioactive rabbit droppings.

If you now must ask Where the Wild Things Are, they’re eating supper in their room. And it’s still hot.

Please leave a message after the pop.

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Can’t Vote or Don’t Vote?

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Last week, bored with NPR and between audio books, I had the radio scan for AM talk radio and ended up at KURM-AM, 790. Despite being a Rogers station, longtime host Kermit Womack kept getting calls about today’s Fayetteville school millage election.

It’s not a vote on building a new high school, because that is not mentioned on the ballot. Replacing Fayetteville High School is what officials say it’s about.

On the radio, one ol’ boy came on to say that though he lives in Rogers, he owns property in Fayetteville. It’s “taxation without representation,” he said, because he’d vote “no” if he could but he can’t.

A second ol’ boy called in to say he was in the same predicament, and what’s happened to America.

Kermit handled these calls impressively. He did not challenge their opinions but did not encourage them, either. I wouldn’t have the patience for that so admire those who do.

This representation business has been part of the call-in scene since last summer, the presidential campaigns and now national health reform. It sounds like a cause, unless you think about it. In today’s case, people vote at the precinct where their primary residence lies. When everyone votes just in the city of their main home, it evens out — property tax, sales tax, state reps, lottery referenda — more or less.

The two ol’ boys I heard acted country but were well enough off to own more than one parcel of property.

It might be embarrassing for me or people I know to vote alongside people like that, but a lot will, and for different reasons. Other people I like and respect support the Fayetteville millage proposal. There’s strong feelings, and I haven’t felt so out-of-sorts since McCain-Obama. People today will vote opposite their friends, and that’s uncomfortable. It’s also no excuse. Common sense is at stake.

No one’s going to tolerate whining about today’s election from folks who don’t vote. After today, “did you vote” will be the first question when the talk turns to what should’ve been.

The sport will come in the other questions.

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A Horse Is a Horse

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Copyright 2009 Ben S. Pollock

Identity is a flummox. Sometimes it feels like you spend a lifetime — or the lifetime thus far — pursuing an identity, but your identity may not be you. I’ve heard of two senior or retired professors who said they chose their doctoral fields rather arbitrarily and lost interest as the years rolled by but there they were. Not an economist, not a historian?

That’s on the side of identity as what others know you by, perhaps not what you feel you are. It can be close, but by being close, isn’t it at all. Not a game of horseshoes.

Flummox, above, has its own identity problem. It looks right, but flummox is a verb, despite sitting in the predicate’s seat, a nounship, which is not a word.

Garrison Keillor is recovering from a mild stroke, and yoga the other day gave me a neck ache. I’ll nearly fine, thanks to stretching and walking in the days since. Nothing compared to a cerebral misfire. Garrison no matter how mild last Sunday’s stroke is reported to have been, still has been handed a bomb. Mild means he should recover 100 percent or close to it, vital in his identity as performer. In his guise of writer, he could work despite some disabilities. He left the hospital Friday. As a Minnesotan, his neighborhood infirmary is the Mayo Clinic.

Hold the mustard. What is Garrison Keillor, showman, penman or something else?

I am a writer. But if I was born in 1907 rather than 1957, I’d be writing letters like I post e-mails. Everybody wrote letters then, and that didn’t make them Writers. People were whatever else they were. If they scribbled a sonnet on the day of their marriage or the birth of a grandchild, it was because in school they learned iambic pentameter and abab cdcd efef gg. They remained farmers or preachers or seamstresses.

I have two incomplete novels in this computer. I’d rather not call myself a novelist. I’d hate for anyone to read them, for fear they’d agree I’m not. (Continued)

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Perilous

Friday, September 11, 2009

On Sept. 11, 2001, the United States rejoined its fellow nations in finding itself vulnerable to attack.

Because it was attacked.

Americans had grown complacent since what, Pearl Harbor, 59 years and 9 months earlier?

They aren’t anymore.

While increasingly cautious, which is good, and arbitrarily suspicious, bad, Americans overall have gained little wisdom from 9/11. We’ve fallen back to our habits of labeling rather than identifying, posturing and not pondering, and rashness instead of rationality.

The country moved fairly quickly into not one but two wars propelled by the al-Qaida attacks. Who’s to say if al Qaida or similar groups have changed their plans much because of Yankee firepower. What’s known is that eight years and a wholly different White House later, plans to draw down the military from both fronts are largely set in a vague future.

Meanwhile, the Good Depression (the Great Depression was suffered by the Greatest Generation, and at best we’re just a Good Generation) has settled over the country and worldwide, while every day the government reports slightly improving economic statistics. Similarly, worries over North Korea and Iran — and Israel/Palestine — would be about like they are, had 9/11 not happened.

National and local leaders should be fearless, for these are perilous times. (Yes, local, even on the level of a school tax increase election next Tuesday, where whether this is the right time, the right amount and the right allocation has ramifications for years to come.) What we’re given, what we see, is mere querulousness. Why? Being querulous tempts officials and the opinion conduits, as it’s easier and appears decisive.

But it’s merely distracting.

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GOP School Talk Response

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Copyright 2009 Ben S. Pollock

DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — Republicans are grateful that Barack Obama released a transcript early for his speech today to American schoolchildren. Rather than responding to what he might say — as they usually do in drafting responses to the weekly presidential radio address and the yearly State of the Union, and perhaps missing by a mile — now the GOP can counter point by point in the opponents’ traditional follow-up.

Children who might miss the president’s speech because school district administrators fear parental complaints, now can view the best of both: Obama then Palin, or Obama then Limbaugh or Cheney or McCain or whomever the Grand Old Party suits up for the camera this morning. In the case of educators who planned alternatives to live viewing, like posting a link to the speech video on district Web sites or airing on community access cable stations, now they can add the rebuttal.

While the president’s complete text can be found at whitehouse.gov, the Republican National Committee has not uploaded it yet. Fortunately, Brick was availed of a copy left on a bench near the Confederate statue at the downtown Bentonville Square.

Want a peek? Here are some excerpts. To help guide responsible parties, the conservative speech will be preceded by portions of Obama’s.

The President: “Hello everyone — how’s everybody doing today?”

Counterpoint: Punk, you over there! Tuck in that shirt!

Prez: “When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother (Continued)

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School Tax Tables

Friday, September 4, 2009

No More Foolin’ for Schoolin’

Brick by current policy does not give political endorsements. Now that the Fayetteville School District’s high school plan is set for a public vote, in about 10 days, all I should do is create a nice neutral analysis. Yawn.

Better: Just lay out some facts, in a smirk-free zone.

The Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009, election — with absentee or early voting beginning Tuesday, Sept. 8 — is to choose up or down: To increase property taxes within the Fayetteville School District by 4.9 mills** to finance construction of a new high school on the site of the current Fayetteville High.

The above paragraph is stated in some form in every news article. (More information can be obtained by searching the Web sites of the two news-gathering organizations: nwanews.com and nwaonline.com.) What voters will see on the ballot, though, does not mention the high school.

Really. It is a summary of where the new tax money will go, in broad terms: You can link, but see it now:

School Millage: 47.8 Mill School Tax: The total rate proposed above includes the uniform rate of tax to be collected on all taxable property in the State and remitted to the State Treasurer pursuant to Amendment No. 74 to the Arkansas Constitution to be used solely for aintenance and operation of schools in the State. The total proposed school tax levy of 47.8 mills includes 25.0 mills specifically voted for general maintenance and operation, 17.9 mills voted for debt service previously voted as a continuing levy pledged for the retirement of existing bonded indebtedness, and 4.9 new debt service mills. The 4.9 new debt service mills plus the 17.9 existing debt service mills, which debt service mills will continue after the retirement of  the bonds to which now pledged, will be a continuing debt service tax until the retirement of proposed bonds to be issued in the principal amount of up to $115,825,000 and which will mature over a period of up to 35 years and will be issued for the purpose of erecting and equipping school facilities, and making additions and improvements to existing facilities.The surplus revenues produced each year by debt service millage may be used by the District for other school purposes.  The total proposed school tax levy of 47.8 mills represents a 4.9 mill increase over the current tax rate.”

School District officials and School Board members say, according to news reports, that estimates for the project range $110 million to $115 million. The high school would add ninth-graders. The maximum student population would be 3,000. [I've found nothing about parking for the increased number of teen drivers or improved street access to smooth traffic congestion.] Officials intend for the structure to be “green,” with LEED Silver certification, which at $350,000 of the $110 million is inexpensive. As the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported (Continued)

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Pink “Ayes”

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Let’s get this straight.

Nationalized health care — which would replace greedy insurance companies with overwhelmed government bureaucrats as middlemen between patient and doctor [that's the image being sold], ending the tragedy of uninsured and underinsured Americans –  is socialism.

Rescuing banks — that award huge bonuses to undeserving executives and neared bankruptcy because of loose loan policies, from presuming they could continue to sell defaulting loans to other financial institutions, because the world can’t function without banks — is socialism.

Bailing out automakers — that continued to refine SUVs into ever-bigger fuel guzzlers while blowing off developing gasoline sippers, ignoring sales trends and oil prices, and mismanaged themselves in about every department — is socialism.

Yet, Congress and the president providing $1 billion from which new car buyers receive rebates of $3,500 to $4,500 for trading in older vehicles and/or gas guzzlers — that is not socialism? (Continued)

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Gazpacho Summer Soup

Friday, July 31, 2009

Every summer growing up in Fort Smith, Mom would make Summer Soup a few times. The recipe was from her best friend Isabel, and when we ate at her house, she’d also have Summer Soup. (Isabel also served her own dill pickles, the world’s best.) That recipe, at bottom, will take you back to the kitchens of the 1950s and ’60s. It was healthy and tasty, but for nearly three decades I’ve been preparing gazpacho, inspired by folks like Jacques Pepin and Caprial Pence.

I make gazpacho just once every summer. It’s not that the prep is complicated, kind of long but not bad, but … I don’t know. But I just changed one thing, and now have made it twice in three weeks. It was inspired by a couple of tangential remarks in food blogs about hot soup made with water instead of stock, occasionally, for a fresher taste. Hmm. The base of seemingly every gazpacho recipe is supermarket tomato juice, sometimes V8. If the point of summer soup is to use garden-fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers, why cloud it? (Continued)

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You Say Ganouj, I Say Ghanouj

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Or baba ganoush or baba ghanoush. Baba ganouj is a first cousin to hummus dip (mashed spicy chickpeas), but with eggplant as the base. For shmearing on pita wedges or vegetable sticks. Mollie Katzen in Still Life With Menu likes it as a pasta sauce.

Any kind of eggplant works; the common jumbo globe has the least seeds, according to Cooks Illustrated. Toasting then grinding sesame seeds tastes better than store-bought (Continued)

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