Wine-Dark Sea: Homer, Physics and Metaphor

Certainty, accuracy, nailing down meaning and fact - we might understand the concept of such an idea, but achieving such may well be an impossibility.

This train of thought was launched by an Internet discussion I found today via MetaFilter, as folks wondered just what the heck Homer meant by the phrase in The Iliad "wine-dark sea".

I confess that as a reader, the meaning of the phrase wasn't literal but figurative - the poet evoked a mood, a feeling with the phrase. Little did I know scholars debated the phrase, with questions like "were the Greeks color blind? The sea is blue not red!"

But debate rages. Can we distill fact from fiction? Is metaphor reality?

In truth, the story of The Iliad was shared by speech and by book and was translated from one language to another and no reporter/investigator contacted Homer to press the question: "What did you mean by that?"

So, debate remains - at least for some. For me, the phrase is more than enough. I have no doubts to its meaning, as I have no doubts about the phrase "rosy fingered dawn", also found in Homer's work. It is what it is.

Yet should you decide to question it too, then the notion of color itself becomes a puzzle and then becomes an immense maze. What is color? Is it light? What is light? Is it a wave? Is it a particle? Is it both?

No question that humans place vast meanings on color and light - Red state vs Blue state swamps American politics today. In certain parts of the world, a lack of color brings life and death struggle, such as the danger an Albino person finds in Tanzania, where such folks are murdered and dismembered as myths of the "magical" qualities of their skin hold great power.

Working in the Arts, as I do, I fully embrace the idea that colors evoke emotional responses, just as music does, just as shape and even time itself does.

Metaphors load meanings into almost all that we do - is there any way to turn metaphor into fact or vice versa? 

Sequester Guts Judicial System

The forced cuts in federal spending means federal public defenders must cut staff by as much as 50%, but the law demands far more expensive private attorneys must be hired to replace them.

"While these cuts have strained the system, the anticipated cuts for next year will be much worse. Because nearly 90 percent of a Federal Defender office’s budget is dedicated to pay salaries and rent, no amount of cost shifting can avoid the layoffs required in the face of the impending shortfall. As a result, federal defenders will be forced to continue laying off between 30 percent and 50 percent of their staff and closing branch offices as early as next month.

" If federal public defenders are not available, courts must pay private lawyers who cost more to do the job."

More details on the judicial impact here.

Drew Johnson's Self Destruction

It was no real surprise Chattanooga's Times-Free Press fired Drew Johnson.

More surprising was his hiring in the first place. As noted by Roy Exum's essay this weekend, Johnson's tendency to fabricate and self-promote was a liability on Day One:

"This week his ego and arrogance leapt from his Twitter account again when he wrote, “I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper's most-read article." That is hardly the truth, no matter how much mileage he was able to squeeze from it. Drew Johnson was fired because he regularly and increasingly antagonized his employer. It is that simple.

To assume it was due to disrespect for the president or even a vulgar innuendo makes for good TV fodder but censorship and politics had nothing whatsoever to do with it – it was a case where Drew Johnson finally gathered enough of his own rope to hang himself. It had been coming for months, I am telling you."

Southern Style Running of the Bulls

After a few months off, I'm easing back into writing about politics and cultural trends, and the notion of an Americanized "running of the bulls" seems appropriate.

Later this month organizers are staging a Pamplona-inspired run in Virginia, with more planned across the South and the West. 

In truth, New Orleans has hosted their own version for some years, though the "bulls" are members of an all-girl roller derby team who whack runners with wiffle bats.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Welcome to World's Largest Doomsday RV Park

Developers are putting together a 2 million square foot bunker where folks can avoid the Apocalypse and enjoy family fun!

"We're becoming a modern day fortress or a citadel with ample security, fully underground storage and all the other amenities that are needed to survive," Vicino said.

"The complex will be a true resort with indoor golfing, a bowling alley and swimming pool complete with a water slide among many other amenities."

Life in the Age of Endless, Invisible CyberWar

The debate and discussion of Cyber War,  which has been underway for more than a decade, is murky, confusing, and of course, full of secrets.

Thanks to recent revelations, the massive scope of surveillance and technology is being exposed ... sort of.

A recent Wired article outlines how large the information gathering business has become and highlights the the global war all of us are deeply involved in:

"Tens of thousands of people move through more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive motion detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh."

Also, a look at one city where digital existence is required - via this report from NPR.

The State Demands DNA Database

The Supreme Court's ruling this week on collecting and storing DNA is yet another loss for American liberty - it bolsters efforts by State and federal officials to require every person in the nation to be cataloged and indexed, and steadily decreases the  concept of privacy.

I note too my view on the issue aligns me with Justice Scalia, a more than rare event.

Arguments for this new legal twist say it gives law enforcement the ability to solve "cold cases" - unsolved crimes. Seems reasonable, say some - but it's a fundamental shift in how our legal system works.

Justice Scalia noted:

"That, Scalia wrote, was the difference between DNA collection and fingerprints. Police take fingerprints primarily for identification, he explained. That’s acceptable because police must identify those they arrest. DNA, on the other hand, is collected for one reason only: “to solve unsolved crimes.” That is not acceptable, he wrote, because it’s exactly what the Fourth Amendment has always forbidden: a search of a person for evidence of a particular crime without any suspicion that he was the perpetrator."

Think of it this way - how would you define the basic function of Laws? Are they written to punish the guilty or to protect the innocent?

If you say "punish"  then your view indicates a belief we are each of us best seen as criminals-in-waiting, Guilty until proven Innocent.

I Am A Time Traveler

There are many moments when I doubt the ever-rising technology of my (our) time is fulfilling the potential, the promise, I expect.

For instance, the marvel of the smartphone I use is diminished as my hands crave a keyboard to type on. I'm no Luddite - I'm just getting old, Time's revenge on the once smart-assery of my own youth.

I was put in this train of thought thanks to writer Stephen King's recent interview on "Fresh Air" as he spoke about his new novel, "Joyland" and his decision to publish it via Hard Case Crime, in paperback. He says:

"Hard Case Crime is a throwback to the books that I loved as a kid,” King said. “We lived way out in the country, and my mother would go once a week shopping, and she would go to the A&P to pick up her groceries. And I would immediately beat feet to Robert's Drugstore, where they had a couple of those turn-around wire racks with the hard-boiled paperbacks that usually featured a girl with scanty clothing on the front.”

I indentify too well with that kind of book action. Spinning wire racks of pulp books and the other rack holding comic books. King's book is set in 1973, the same time when I had the same  limited access to books. Sure, a bookmobile came to town every two weeks, but no pulp was found there, and precious few new books. Like the rest of my family, I read the way an alcoholic drinks whiskey.

Just after I heard the interview I read Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai talking about his company and King's book - linking memory and the tech of publishing, a retro invocation of a craft of ink and paper.

I don't wallow in nostalgia - I am eager to move forward, not back. But Ardai is right that the past - the recent past - is easily forgotten in our InstaWorld. While there exists hundreds and hundreds of podcasts and e-books to be found, you do have to find them. Good sources of new sci-fi and fantasy back in my youth existed too, but finding a copy of Galaxy or Worlds of If or Analog magazines took weeks of hunting. Word of mouth and help from friends remain vital links.

The tactile handling of a book or magazine is vastly different from a digital broadcast or pixeled sentence - not better, just different.

And yes, thanks to digital publishing, you can read what I am writing and thinking now. We live in a world that is different now. And I am oddly realizing I am straddling timelines which are disappearing. If all this seems old fashioned to you - then you missed something amazing.

New Laws Finally Target Sex Trafficking in Tennessee

Precisely two years ago on this date, I was compelled to write about a despicable and horrible reality in Tennessee and the South - the widespread rise of sex slavery and human trafficking.

The TBI had at the time present a report that over 80% of the state was stained with this heinous crime, a deeply disturbing fact. Even worse, those who committed these crimes faced little or no consequences.

Today, I am happy to report, that is no longer the case  - the state has passed 12 new laws to punish those who practice slavery. Tom Humphrey reports:

"The measures amplify a wave of attention since a statewide study in 2011 documented incidents of sex trafficking -- which officials define as coercive adult prostitution and any sexual exploitation of children.

"We have been adding (laws) for the last two years, but this year, by far, is the biggest," said Margie Quin, an assistant special agent in charge at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. "I would label this as sweeping changes.

"Of the laws going into effect July 1  ... Authorities will be able to prosecute those paying for sex - the 'johns' - as traffickers."

Tennessee Education Reform Ignores Models of Success

The obvious flaws in "education reform" pushed in Tennessee and other states by Michelle Rhee and her ex-husband, TN Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, are to heap blame on teacher unions, ignoring the real improvements which focus instead on education itself.

A scathing takedown of Rhee reminds readers:

"Only a tiny percentage of American children attend the kind of expensive, non-sectarian private schools where many of the elite send their children. It is worth noting that these schools generally avoid giving their students the standardized achievement tests that state education departments require, making the results public, and paying teachers on the basis of the scores, and that they almost never claim to be creating hyper-competitive, commercial-skills-purveying environments for their students. Sidwell Friends, of presidential-daughter fame, says it offers “a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders.” That doesn’t sound like it would cut much ice with Michelle Rhee."

More background on Huffman here.

The True Origins of Cat Videos Revealed!

Thanks to a recent discussion of cinema and history by filmmaker Martin Scorsese, I learned that the gigantic presence of cat videos on the Internet has origins dating back to the days of Thomas Edison and vaudeville.

The feline fascinations still perplexes me however. Perhaps the recording and sharing of pet hijinks point to a simple truth: We humans spend many hours playing with our pets in pursuit of utter cuteness. 

Records indicate that in mid-July of 1894, filmmakers employed at Thomas Edison's Menlo Park, N.J. studio filmed a vaudeville act of Professor Welton's Boxing Cats. A 20-second silent movie clip shows Prof. Welton hoisting a pair of wee boxing glove wearing cats via harnesses and slamming them together to make it appear that the cats are boxing in a tiny boxing ring.

Animal acts were a staple of the vaudeville circuit, with dancing dogs and other often painfully exploited critters. Note for instance Edison's decision to film an elephant being electrocuted in an act of sheer cruelty.

Anyway - cats boxing each other in the year 1894.

Stuck in the Non-Digital World

It's true, dear reader, I have been for some weeks now breathing non-digital air, treading non-digital paths, and been absent from this humble and lovable blog.

Constant readers here know I have endless passion for the theatrical world, and since April that is the world and the work dominating my days and nights. Note I am not complaining.

In April work began on a live improv comedy show, a fundraising launch for the Morristown Theatre Guild as we strive to renovate and reopen their historic home. Crazed comedy made up live while the audience watches does take much preparation and I am pleased to say the cast put on a very funny show.

(pictures of this event and others are below)

Next up was the just-completed production of high school students for the Guild's annual Books Alive! program. I was only a producing partner for this show, directed by a local Hamblen County teacher. Still, it consumed my time.

The show, titled "Fairy Tales" presented the stories of Snow White, Red Riding Hood and more. The audiences were made of elementary students who arrived in large groups for shows thru the day. Not only was the cast excellent at their work the audiences of youngsters cheered and howled with great delight as they had their first experiences in theatre.

All thru the two shows above and continuing now are preparations and set building for the Guild's production of the amazing Neil Simon's play "California Suite". This production will play at Walters State Community College, opening May 16.

In all of these endeavors, there exist no online arguments of politics, of social constructs, or other digitalized concerns. Instead, these efforts are linked to the human history of storytelling, of shared experience, of basic communications achieved in person.

It is most refreshing. And it makes all involved, I hope, quite happy.

And now, some photos.

The troupe of Improv comedians.

The student cast of "Fairy Tales", and below, some of the elementary kids pretending to be trees helping to keep Snow White safe.

Freedom Lost: Life In Top Secret America

For more than a decade now, too many lives and too many freedoms have been lost in a battle against terrorism. Policies and strategies created in the frenzied and angry months which followed the attacks on 9-11 chase after an elusive sense of security, transforming our world.

The nature of this astonishing transformation was at the heart of a recent discussion between Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald via Moyers' show on PBS:

"GLENN GREENWALD: There is a Washington Post series in 2010 called Top Secret America, three-part series by Dana Priest and William Arkin. And one of the facts that reported was that the National Security Agency, every day, collects and stores 1.7 billion, that's with a B, billion, emails, telephone calls, and other form of electronic communications by and between American citizens.

And what's amazing is, is that if you look at the case in Boston, the surveillance state, this massive apparatus of monitoring and storing information about us that we've constructed over the last decade that's extremely expensive and invasive really didn't do much. It didn't detect the attack before it started. The attempted Times Square attack in 2010 wasn't stopped because of eavesdropping or government surveillance but because a hot dog vendor noticed something amiss with the bomb that had been left.

So again, the surveillance state doesn't really do much in terms of giving us lots of security. But what it does do, is it destroys the notion of privacy, which is the area in which human creativity and dissent and challenges to orthodoxy all reside. The way things are supposed to work is we're supposed to know everything that the government does with rare exception, that's why they're called the public sector.

And they're supposed to know almost nothing about us, which is why we're private individuals, unless there's evidence that we've committed a crime. This has been completely reversed, so that we know almost nothing about what the government does.

It operates behind this impenetrable wall of secrecy, while they know everything about what it is we're doing, with whom we're speaking and communicating, what we're reading. And this imbalance, this reversal of transparency and secrecy and the way things are supposed to work, has really altered the relationship between the citizenry and the government in very profound ways.

BILL MOYERS: Is it conceivable to you that-- that giving up our privacy and even much of our liberty becomes a way of life in exchange, a trade for security? Tom Brokaw suggested as much the other day. Here he is.

TOM BROKAW on NBC News: Everyone has to understand tonight however that beginning tomorrow morning, early, there are going to be much tougher security considerations all across the country. However exhausted we may be by them, we're going to have to learn to live with them and get along and go forward and not let them bring us to our knees. You'll remember last summer how unhappy we were with all the security at the Democratic and Republican convention. Now I don't think that we could raise those complaints after what happened today in Boston.

GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, I think that is, first of all, it's extraordinary that journalists lead the way in encouraging people to accept greater government intrusion into their lives. The media, journalists, are supposed to be adversarial to the government, not encouraging people to submit to greater government authority.

But I think the broader point is that it's that false dichotomy, that the more the government learns about us, the safer we'll be. In part because what history shows is that when governments are able to surveil people in the dark, generally the greatest outcome is that they abuse that power and it becomes tyrannical. If you talk to anybody who came from Eastern Europe, they'll tell you that the reason we left is because society's become deadened and soulless, when citizens have no privacy. And it's a difficult concept to understand, why privacy is so crucial, but people understand it instinctively. They put locks on their bedroom doors, not for security, but for privacy."

Sen. Rand Paul Reverses Stand On Drones

"I will ask anyone who values liberty to stand with me.”. Sen. Rand Paul


In March Sen. Paul took the Drama Award in the Senate for a chunk of 13 hour performance art, pretending to be deeply worried over use of armed unmanned drones on U.S. soil against U.S. citizens. Classic fear-mongering presented as policy debate.

And his words were 13 hours worth of nothing.

Now, he says even a theft of 50 dollars is enough to have a drone blast the thief to pieces:

"Here’s the distinction, I have never argued against any technology being used against having an imminent threat an act of crime going on,” Paul said. “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him, but it’s different if they want to come fly over your hot tub, or your yard just because they want to do surveillance on everyone, and they want to watch your activities.”

Not that the thief is an imminent threat, just that he may be a thief is enough to draw a death penalty.

Idiocy, ignorance, and a profound lack of understanding of law, crime, technology - that's Kentucky Senator Paul, a verbal stuntman, rebel without a clue.

Tennesseans Get 'Pennies From Haslam'

Today's "Memphis Flyer" editorial is a must read:

"A single piece of progressive legislation, the lowering of the sales tax on food by a quarter of 1 percent, was originally opposed by the administration before its passage in the final days of last year's session. This year, an additional .25 percent cut in sales tax on food is a part of the governor's legislative agenda and on track to pass.

So, while corporations and the wealthy saw their state taxes and potential liabilities drop by thousands of dollars a year, average Tennesseans saw a tax cut of a mere $3.65 annually — which will buy a burrito at your local Pilot Travel Center.

Last year, the governor touted his "Tennessee Economic Miracle" to the chattering classes on cable TV. Since the beginning of Haslam's term, poverty in Tennessee has increased to nearly 17 percent, wages have remained stagnant, and unemployment has tracked national averages. Some miracle.

None of the bills supported by the governor increases job creation or wages, nor do they extend the buying power of regular Tennesseans. Instead, all help wealthier people save money, which is an inefficient, if not downright chimerical, job-creation strategy."

Tennessee Lawmakers OK Drones

"As approved by the Senate, the bill (SB796) says that drones can only be used to search for a fugitive or a missing person, in monitoring a hostage situation or when a judge issues a search warrant authorizing them. Any information gathered otherwise by a drone cannot be used in court and must be destroyed within 24 hours, the bill says.

The House added an amendment saying they can also be used "to protect life and property during crowd monitoring situations." In debate, crowds and traffic during University of Tennessee football games was cited as an example of where drone monitoring might be desirable."

The bill's sponsors project the use of "thousands" of drones over Tennessee.

How Roger Ebert Changed The World

Like so many in the nation and the world, I paused this week to mark the passing of film critic Roger Ebert. He was one of a few writers who shaped how and why I write.

I am a full-blown movie addict, and have been since I was but a wee child. Unless I am working chances are I'm watching movies - and I'm talking about days going past as I watch one after another. There are hundreds of films I've seen hundreds of times. Growing up it was very hard to find writings about movies - not celebrity stories but about the art of making them.

Roger was one of the first people I discovered who championed movies as The Art of our times. His Sneak Previews show which arrived in the late 1970s on PBS with Gene Siskel was a pure marvel - his passion for movies was vivid and endless and through his entire career he was able to manage the tricky task of simply watching a movie and critically exploring it and not letting the critic to overwhelm the simple viewer that most folks are. He often took Siskel to task for reviewing a movie for what it was not rather than what it was.

Prior to Ebert the only critics I had found were Knoxville's own James Agee's collected film writings and back issues of the New Yorker with Pauline Kael's reviews. But her insights lacked that quality Roger had of simply being able to watch a film and be entertained without the film be Something Important to Cinema. He saw and expressed all the layers a movie could have and eagerly shared them.

He had the fortune of being in the right time and place to bridge the movies of the old Hollywood studio system and the emerging auteur viewpoints of visionary directors and writers and chronicled that change as filmmakers like Spielberg and Scorcese rose to be the powers of Hollywood.

Roger met Kael in 1967 and after she read some of his work told him it was the best film criticism appearing in newspapers. By 1969 Reader's Digest published his review of Night of the Living Dead and he was on his way to international fame.

He confessed to being a fan of director Russ Meyer's sexploitation movies and wrote the script for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", a purely ridiculous project, yet it showed how, like the best movies, Roger had many layers too.

What I took notice of thru the 80s and 90s was how film criticism had been broken free from publishers or academia and everyone began to talk and debate the merits of movies just like Roger did. He had a masterful knowledge of films but he also understood the value of subjective views.

And while this has spread among us all, there really aren't many paid critics today who write as simply and with as much style, who can surprise us with what a movie - old or new - can reveal to us about ourselves and our world.

But I am so very grateful to have lived and learned from him. He helped show the world how powerful a movie can be, how we have been exposed to great art which is not contained in a museum - it's a living thing we all share.

N.C. Lawmakers Seek To Establish State Religion

The good thing is that a horrible plan by a state legislature is not from Tennessee. It's from North Carolina - a new bill seeks to establish a single religion statewide.

"The proposed law, introduced earlier this week, states that the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment—which prohibits Congress from passing laws respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion in America—simply does not apply to the states. The bill goes on to proclaim the sovereignty of the states in this matter while proclaiming that each state is free to make its own laws respecting an establishment of an official religion and that such an establishment cannot be blocked by either Congress or the judiciary.

"Joining in the fun, as a co-sponsor of the bill allowing North Carolina to establish an official state religion, is one of the most powerful members of the North Carolina General Assembly, GOP Majority Leader Edgar Starnes. Apparently, expecting a leader in so important a role to show some fealty to the law and the legal underpinnings of the nation is asking a bit too much when compared to the opportunity provided that elected official to score a few political points."

On The Upcoming War Between Tennessee and Georgia

Since the Senate in Georgia is suing Tennessee to claim water and land, what battles will soon take shape?

One writer lays out the likely events in this must read article:

"An insurgency stands the best chance of success of convincing Georgia of its error. Invading Tennessee is easy enough, militarily. Occupying and governing Tennessee is vastly more difficult.

"As a soldier, I fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan; as a scholar, I performed most of the fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation in southern Lebanon. Nowhere in the world, though, have I ever encountered a more brutal, tribal and violent race of people than the Scots-Irish of East Tennessee. Any Georgian occupation force would inevitably get sucked into our petty politics and family vendettas. We might share a language, but Georgia would struggle to relate to its new foreign subjects, let alone entrench its authority over us."