In 2014 I attended the Galway Arts Festival. The great thing about Ireland was that I could turn to the stranger sitting next to me and spend the next half hour discussing the play we’d just seen. In America, they’d think I was some kind of serial killer and leave. On my last night in Galway, I was walking back to my hotel after the play and realized I hadn’t discussed it with anyone. Just then, I guy on a bicycle screeched to to a stop and said, “Did you just see Ballyturk? What did you think of it?” I started talking and other guys on bicycles pulled up. We spent 40 minutes discussing the festival while standing on the side of the road.
It’s a great festival and the Irish are wonderful people. If you ever get a chance to go, do it.
because many politicians violate the norms of democracy, something I had thought all Americans believed it. In an effort to say not just what I’m against but what I’m for, I’ve come up with a nonpartisan list of what these norms are. It may not be complete but is a good summary.
Decisions
Based on objective facts
Arrived at by valid arguments
The goal is fairness and to do the best for everyone.
Norms of Democracy
Freedom of speech, religion, and assembly
Free press
Right to a fair trial
Freedom from cruel and unusual punishment
Government by the will of the people
Equal opportunity for all (but not necessarily equal outcome)
In Conclusion
Isn’t this how we’re supposed to do things in America? This stuff shouldn’t be controversial yet I hear many people advocating positions that fly in the face of these basic values. It is deeply disturbing. If we lose this we’re lost.
Novelist Frank Chin is one of the early activists for Asian-American civil rights. He also knows a lot about Chinese folklore. We went to lunch and had a great discussion. For some reason he had a literary feud with Maxine Hong Kingston. Anyway, I saw a documentary about Frank Chin a decade later at the San Diego Asian Film Festival and introduced myself to the director.
I also had lunch with Danish actress Trine Dyrholm. The film “The Celebration” had just come out and she had a role in it. I remember her telling me that actors could get unemployment benefits in Denmark when they were between gigs. Sadly, I knew nothing about the Dogme 95 movement at the time. If I would have asked her about it, maybe I could have had a walk-on role in Lars Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac.” Oh well!
Thinking of a computer program to write Zen poems reminded me of a meeting with an eccentric poet at the Naropa Institute almost 20 years ago. An older man joined me at breakfast, asked if I was a poet, and then asked how I wrote poems. I described how I developed ideas to which he responded, “I do something different. I wrote a computer program that takes words and phrases from Ezra Pound’s Cantos and combines them into new text. I have a book called Words nd Ends with Ez.”
Of course, that poet was Jackson Mac Low. Even though I didn’t buy his book, I’m glad someone could devote his life to making such goofiness real.
