There was good news and not-so-good news from yesterday's long day at the KU Cancer Center.
The first appointment was scheduled at 8 a.m., so our alarm went off at 5:30. My sleep habits have been unpredictable lately, so 5:30 was "normal" for me; for Mohamed it was way too early. I could drink water to swallow all my morning pills, but there was no coffee for me. There was, however, time for my morning injection in the stomach--600 or so of those since we started. We left at 6:30 and drove into Kansas City mostly in the dark.
I got in promptly at 8 for my blood work. The woman who drew the blood was extremely gregarious; she called me "Buddy" at least a dozen times and laughed heartily at my feeble early morning jokes. She wasn't, however, the most competent person I've had. I have prominent veins, and usually the personnel are happy to have an easy shot. She had trouble getting the needle in, and when she finally was able to draw blood, she kept insisting that I watch so that I could see that the blood wasn't flowing smoothly. I don't mind shots or drawing blood, but I don't usually watch as the three vials are filled. This time I didn't seem to have a choice. The blood drawn, she was supposed to leave the IV in since I'd need it for the CT scans. But by now, she wasn't able to get it to flush in my right arm, so she put the IV port in the left arm. Unfortunately, the one she put in was too small, so the CT techs had to take it out and find a place on the right arm. Luckily, after lots of discussion and exploration of the back of my hand, they were more successful in finding a spot in the original vein, and, after my having drunk two large glasses of barium-laced water and wrapped myself in a warm blanket, the CT scans went smoothly.
Then there was a long break. Not having eaten in over 12 hours, I scarfed down a sandwich, some OJ, and some coffee in the cafeteria, and an old friend from my early days at OU, who has lived in KC since 1968 but whom I don't see very often, came to the cafeteria for a 90-minute chat. Then it was back to have the consultation with Dr. Vanveldhuizen. While we waited, a Fellow at the hospital came in. Since the Med Center is a teaching hospital, visits by residents often happen. Sometimes, when the intern (I'm not sure of the accuracy of these terms) is clearly not acquainted with my case history and asks perfunctory questions, I'm irritated by these visits, but Dr. (?) Williams was quite informed, and we had a thorough discussion with him and then with him and Dr. Van.
The good news is that the Votrient continues to be effective against the secondary tumors in my bones and other organs. They continue not to grow. The bad news, however, is that the size of the primary tumor in my left kidney has increased by about 20%. At the last visit, it had grown only slightly; this time, the growth was more significant. So the rest of the consultation was spent talking about my options, which seem to be five:
1) Continue with the Votrient and a wait-and-see attitude. Pros: the Votrient seems to work well on other tumors, especially those in the bones; my body appears to have become relatively well acclimated to the drug. In the last three months, I haven't had to take a break from the treatment. Cons: the Votrient may have lost some or all of its efficacy against the kidney tumor. As I've said, the average length of time that patients in the clincial trials of Vortrient took the chemo was 7.4 months. I've taken it for more than double that time.
2) Switch to another targeted chemotherapy drug, like Sutent. Pros: Sutent is the major alternative to Votrient for kidney cancer and has proven to be effective in many cases. If the Votrient has lost its efficacy, perhaps a new line of attack will work. Cons: like Votrient, Sutent hasn't proven to have long-term (i.e., more than a year) effects. Sutent will have its own side effects, and my body will have to adjust to a new set of conditions.
3) Continue with Votrient but enroll in an experimental drug program to complement the Votrient. Pros: the combination may prove to have stronger effects; I could be helping develop a drug that will be beneficial in the future to people with kidney cancer. Cons: There's a 50% chance that I would be in the control group and be getting a placebo; even if I'm not, there are the same cons as with simply switching drugs; and there would be an increased number of tests and consultations, which, if they have to be done in KC, would be somewhat onerous.
4) Ablation (burning) of the tumor. Pro: less invasive than surgery. Con: a shorter window of time to make a decision, since the smaller the tumor, the more effective ablation is.
5) Surgery to remove the tumor. Obvious pro: the primary cancer is removed. Con: surgery has its own risks, and there would be a recovery period.
What Dr. Van made clear is that neither of the last two options would prolong my life. If they would, one or the other would be an obvious choice. The most they could do, unfortunately, is to relieve possible discomfort or symptoms like blood in my urine as the tumors that remain do what tumors do.
Dr. Van wants to consult with the surgeon who would do the operation, Dr. Holzbeierlein (long names seem to be the norm for my doctors), before we make any decisions. Dr. Holz, as I gather he's called at the Center, agreed to squeeze me in yesterday after I had my $13,200 shot. So we went back to the consultation rooms, but after waiting 30 minutes I was so exhaused (usually I'm midway through my second nap of the day) and the waiting room was so stuffy that I simply couldn't stay awake, so we decided to wait until Dr. Holzbeierlein had had time to review my charts and then to talk to him and Dr. Vanveldhuizen.
The fresh air seemed to revitalize me, and I stayed awake for the whole ride home, but then I crashed. Now it's time for Mohamed and me, in consultation with Dr. Van and Dr. Holz, to make a decision about the next step. I'll keep you informed.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
Monday, I go back to the KU Cancer Center in KC for the once-every-three-months complete battery of tests. We have to be there at 8 a.m, and it's about a 75-minute drive, so Monday will be an early morning. I can't eat or drink anything but water for four hours before the CT scans, but then I'm not going to be hungry at that hour of the morning anyway. I will miss my coffee, though. The tests start with bloodwork. At 8 a.m. there shouldn't be a full waiting room, so that should go quickly. Since I'll need an IV for the scans, they will leave a port in. Then come the CT scans, which are done in the basement of the building. I'll have to drink two full glasses (just under Mayor Bloomberg's limit) of what now tastes just like water. Well, almost like water. The drink causes chills (and for some reason they keep this floor cold anyway), so the nurse will bring me a warm blanket. Sometimes they ask that I change into a gown for the tests. The new models are wrap-around, so nothing risks exposure any more. But usually, I just wear my regular clothes, and once I'm on the table, I have to wriggle my jeans down below my knees. The tests don't take long, and the machine doesn't fully enclose me or make banging noises like an MRI machine. The only moderately difficult part is that I have to put both arms above my head, and my left arm--the one where much of the scapula has been eaten away--doesn't easily extend that far.
After the CT scans, there's always a rather long break before the consultation with the oncologist, Dr. Van. We'll probably meet someone for much needed coffee and breakfast during the break, but still, three hours is a long time to wait. And Dr. Van, who explains things very thoroughly, always runs late. I'm hoping that our 12:30 appointment with him will be his first of the afternoon, so he won't have a chance to have fallen behind. After the consultation, I go to the third floor for the bone-strengthening shot. And then the day is over, and, although there has been nothing difficult, I'll fall alseep in the car on the way home. One minute the Med Center is on my right; the next minute, we'll be pulling into our driveway.
For some reason, I don't worry (much) about these appointments, though occasionally, when I think that, say, my sleep patterns have changed, I can't help wondering whether the change is indicative of something. In general, though, things have been going well. Just a couple of days ago, Mohamed and I were at the dentist's office, and the dentist (the one who had said, "Do we even need to make another appointment") came out and said that they had just been wondering how I was doing, considering that at the time of my first appointment after the diagnosis, the prognosis was less than a year. And there I was looking in the pink of health.
Over the last five or six weeks, the G-I problems seem to have significantly abated. It's not perfect (yesterday was a rare unpleasant exception), but the change really improves the quality of life. What's irritating is that there's no apparent explanation; I haven't changed my diet, for example. In place of diarrhea, however, I have bouts of nausea, usually in the late afternoon. They're not pleasant, but usually don't last long. At that point, however, nothing sounds good for dinner. I may take an anti-nausea (and anti-schizophrenia) pill--I'm still baffled by the combination. And that will help, especially since we usually eat dinner between 7 and 8, so the pill has time to work. I rely on sushi (three or four times a week) and Kraft mac 'n' cheese (it's better not to look at the yellow gunk that passes as cheese) and a few other staple meals. I feel sorry for Mohamed, who far too often gets the reponse mac 'n' cheese or has to run out for sushi when he asks what I want for dinner. At least my appetite, if not varied, is more consistent than it was for a long time.
I still get tired easily. By the time I've done my morning blogging and written some e-mails, actually taking a shower and putting on fresh clothes seems like an ordeal. Either before or after, I may take a nap. And always by 1:30 I have no energy left and curl up in bed with my Kindle, which remains unopened, for a two-hour sleep. In the mornings when I wake, it's as before: once I'm awake, I'm fully ready for the day--no hitting the snooze button for me. But when I wake up from my afternoon sleep, it's a long struggle to become fully conscious. Falling back to sleep sounds so attractive, and even once I finally force myself out of bed, I'm groggy for another ten minutes or so. But then, except for the period with nausea, I have normal energy for the rest of the evening.
My left shoulder is much stronger. I know its limitations (no full extension above my head, no lifting a gallon of milk from the top shelf of the refrigerator), but they're minor. My right hip, however, still bothers me. I had thought that the surgery would be like a hip replacement and that after a month or so, I'd be back to normal. But that was naive. The top half of the femur is titanium; the ball part of the ball-and-socket hip joint is plastic, so there's nothing natural for the muscles to attach to. It's all much better, but going up and down stairs is easier with a railing or with my cane. And dressing and undressing involves multiple turns of sitting and standing, since I can't just stand on one leg. But all of these are minor inconveniences, and generally everything is going well.
Usually, I'd blog again on Monday, but since we'll leave so early and since I won't have the results till Monday afternoon, I'll wait till Tuesday for my next post.
After the CT scans, there's always a rather long break before the consultation with the oncologist, Dr. Van. We'll probably meet someone for much needed coffee and breakfast during the break, but still, three hours is a long time to wait. And Dr. Van, who explains things very thoroughly, always runs late. I'm hoping that our 12:30 appointment with him will be his first of the afternoon, so he won't have a chance to have fallen behind. After the consultation, I go to the third floor for the bone-strengthening shot. And then the day is over, and, although there has been nothing difficult, I'll fall alseep in the car on the way home. One minute the Med Center is on my right; the next minute, we'll be pulling into our driveway.
For some reason, I don't worry (much) about these appointments, though occasionally, when I think that, say, my sleep patterns have changed, I can't help wondering whether the change is indicative of something. In general, though, things have been going well. Just a couple of days ago, Mohamed and I were at the dentist's office, and the dentist (the one who had said, "Do we even need to make another appointment") came out and said that they had just been wondering how I was doing, considering that at the time of my first appointment after the diagnosis, the prognosis was less than a year. And there I was looking in the pink of health.
Over the last five or six weeks, the G-I problems seem to have significantly abated. It's not perfect (yesterday was a rare unpleasant exception), but the change really improves the quality of life. What's irritating is that there's no apparent explanation; I haven't changed my diet, for example. In place of diarrhea, however, I have bouts of nausea, usually in the late afternoon. They're not pleasant, but usually don't last long. At that point, however, nothing sounds good for dinner. I may take an anti-nausea (and anti-schizophrenia) pill--I'm still baffled by the combination. And that will help, especially since we usually eat dinner between 7 and 8, so the pill has time to work. I rely on sushi (three or four times a week) and Kraft mac 'n' cheese (it's better not to look at the yellow gunk that passes as cheese) and a few other staple meals. I feel sorry for Mohamed, who far too often gets the reponse mac 'n' cheese or has to run out for sushi when he asks what I want for dinner. At least my appetite, if not varied, is more consistent than it was for a long time.
I still get tired easily. By the time I've done my morning blogging and written some e-mails, actually taking a shower and putting on fresh clothes seems like an ordeal. Either before or after, I may take a nap. And always by 1:30 I have no energy left and curl up in bed with my Kindle, which remains unopened, for a two-hour sleep. In the mornings when I wake, it's as before: once I'm awake, I'm fully ready for the day--no hitting the snooze button for me. But when I wake up from my afternoon sleep, it's a long struggle to become fully conscious. Falling back to sleep sounds so attractive, and even once I finally force myself out of bed, I'm groggy for another ten minutes or so. But then, except for the period with nausea, I have normal energy for the rest of the evening.
My left shoulder is much stronger. I know its limitations (no full extension above my head, no lifting a gallon of milk from the top shelf of the refrigerator), but they're minor. My right hip, however, still bothers me. I had thought that the surgery would be like a hip replacement and that after a month or so, I'd be back to normal. But that was naive. The top half of the femur is titanium; the ball part of the ball-and-socket hip joint is plastic, so there's nothing natural for the muscles to attach to. It's all much better, but going up and down stairs is easier with a railing or with my cane. And dressing and undressing involves multiple turns of sitting and standing, since I can't just stand on one leg. But all of these are minor inconveniences, and generally everything is going well.
Usually, I'd blog again on Monday, but since we'll leave so early and since I won't have the results till Monday afternoon, I'll wait till Tuesday for my next post.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
I watched the entirety of the third debate last night; I doubt that this time another 60 million or so Americans joined me in making it through all 90 minutes. For sports fans there was competition from both an NFL game and the decisive game of the NLCS, a 9-0 Giants blowout of the Cards. And the debate itself with both candidates seated and foreign policy as the ostensible topic provided fewer occasions for knockout moments. The moderator was lowkey and straightforward, and the audience had taken its vow of silence very seriously.
Mitt Romney adopted his moderate posture, opting for appearing statesman-like and not making gaffes rather than going on the offensive. He abandoned his Libya attack, for example. President Obama was more aggressive, but Romney refused to rise to the bait. This tactic, however, left Romney with nowhere particular to go. He agreed with the President on several issues, stammered many of his answers, and, despite claiming differences with the President on, say, Syria, he didn't enumerate any differences and had no specifics.
Since we still don't know where Romney really stands on any single issue, domestic or foreign, it's impossible to know whether his posture last night really indicates what he believes. It is important to remember that Romney's foreign policy advisors in this campaign are all part of the neocon establishment that promoted Bush's foreign policy. The words "human rights" were spoken a few times last night, but never in any significant way. The fact that during the campaign Romney criticized Obama for ending "enhanced interrogation" and that his advisors have urged him to restore such techniques went unsaid. Just as I've been disappointed that any discussion of environmental issues was missing from the first two debates, so too the omission--on both sides--of a substantive argument about human rights was discouraging, though not surprising.
Both candidates tried hard to move the debate towards domestic/economic issues with very tenuous, at least as they were used, segues from how we can't have a strong foreign policy without a strong nation at home. There was nothing new here (as Bob Schieffer, the moderator, pointed out at one moment), nothing but the same recitation of the same statistics. Whoever hadn't tuned out before, probably let his or her mind drift when Romney began enumerating his vague five points for an economic turnaround that he had used in the first two debates.
So I don't think this last debate changed many minds, even among the so-called undecideds, though as all my friends keep asking, "Who are these people anyway?" As Albert Brooks tweeted, they're the ones who can't find their car. Still, all the pundits and instant polls this morning agree that the President "won" the debate. In part, it was Romney's lackluster performance, his failure to distinguish himself from current policies, and the tangles his shifting positions have entailed (his response about whether China was a friend or an adversary contradicted itself from sentence to sentence). But the President also had some zingers (and they seem to count): his response to having fewer ships (we also have fewer horses and bayonets), his "the eighties called and they want their foreign policy back," his remark that his first trip to Israel wasn't for fundraising, among others.
Obama succeeded too in personalizing the debate in a way that Romney didn't--and didn't respond to. How many times did Obama mention gender equality and the need for protection of women's rights in Arab countries? Why didn't Romney respond at all, since he needs to close the gender gap in this key demographic? (I can speak pundit-talk, too.) Romney never mentioned veterans; Obama did several times. Obama talked about his visit to the Holocaust Museum in Israel; Romney stuck to generalities. Romney didn't make any game-changing gaffes, but he also didn't define himself (can he do this on any issue?) as a potential Commander-in-Chief. Whatever position Romney is taking at any given moment, he usually comes across as sure of himself. Last night, he seemed tentative and unsure, and he didn't wear the cloak of moderate very easily.
Only two more weeks of the campaign that seemingly never ends. In Kansas, there have been virtually no political advertisements. We're safely in the Republican electoral column; the governor is not up for re-election, and there are no House candidates that are challenged. Dennis Yoder, the representative who swam naked in the Sea of Galilee, has no opposition, though at least he had the courage not to sign Grover Norquists's no new taxes of any kind pledge. I can't imagine what it must be like to live in Iowa or Virginia or especially Ohio. After all the talk of the role of money and super-PACs in the election, we in Kansas have no real idea of how that is playing out. The electoral college, which was meant to give slightly increased strength to small states, has decidedly different consequences in reality. Kansas, like forty or so other states, can be taken for granted. So for the next two weeks, no presidential candidate will visit; no advertising time or dollars will be taken up with politics.
Mitt Romney adopted his moderate posture, opting for appearing statesman-like and not making gaffes rather than going on the offensive. He abandoned his Libya attack, for example. President Obama was more aggressive, but Romney refused to rise to the bait. This tactic, however, left Romney with nowhere particular to go. He agreed with the President on several issues, stammered many of his answers, and, despite claiming differences with the President on, say, Syria, he didn't enumerate any differences and had no specifics.
Since we still don't know where Romney really stands on any single issue, domestic or foreign, it's impossible to know whether his posture last night really indicates what he believes. It is important to remember that Romney's foreign policy advisors in this campaign are all part of the neocon establishment that promoted Bush's foreign policy. The words "human rights" were spoken a few times last night, but never in any significant way. The fact that during the campaign Romney criticized Obama for ending "enhanced interrogation" and that his advisors have urged him to restore such techniques went unsaid. Just as I've been disappointed that any discussion of environmental issues was missing from the first two debates, so too the omission--on both sides--of a substantive argument about human rights was discouraging, though not surprising.
Both candidates tried hard to move the debate towards domestic/economic issues with very tenuous, at least as they were used, segues from how we can't have a strong foreign policy without a strong nation at home. There was nothing new here (as Bob Schieffer, the moderator, pointed out at one moment), nothing but the same recitation of the same statistics. Whoever hadn't tuned out before, probably let his or her mind drift when Romney began enumerating his vague five points for an economic turnaround that he had used in the first two debates.
So I don't think this last debate changed many minds, even among the so-called undecideds, though as all my friends keep asking, "Who are these people anyway?" As Albert Brooks tweeted, they're the ones who can't find their car. Still, all the pundits and instant polls this morning agree that the President "won" the debate. In part, it was Romney's lackluster performance, his failure to distinguish himself from current policies, and the tangles his shifting positions have entailed (his response about whether China was a friend or an adversary contradicted itself from sentence to sentence). But the President also had some zingers (and they seem to count): his response to having fewer ships (we also have fewer horses and bayonets), his "the eighties called and they want their foreign policy back," his remark that his first trip to Israel wasn't for fundraising, among others.
Obama succeeded too in personalizing the debate in a way that Romney didn't--and didn't respond to. How many times did Obama mention gender equality and the need for protection of women's rights in Arab countries? Why didn't Romney respond at all, since he needs to close the gender gap in this key demographic? (I can speak pundit-talk, too.) Romney never mentioned veterans; Obama did several times. Obama talked about his visit to the Holocaust Museum in Israel; Romney stuck to generalities. Romney didn't make any game-changing gaffes, but he also didn't define himself (can he do this on any issue?) as a potential Commander-in-Chief. Whatever position Romney is taking at any given moment, he usually comes across as sure of himself. Last night, he seemed tentative and unsure, and he didn't wear the cloak of moderate very easily.
Only two more weeks of the campaign that seemingly never ends. In Kansas, there have been virtually no political advertisements. We're safely in the Republican electoral column; the governor is not up for re-election, and there are no House candidates that are challenged. Dennis Yoder, the representative who swam naked in the Sea of Galilee, has no opposition, though at least he had the courage not to sign Grover Norquists's no new taxes of any kind pledge. I can't imagine what it must be like to live in Iowa or Virginia or especially Ohio. After all the talk of the role of money and super-PACs in the election, we in Kansas have no real idea of how that is playing out. The electoral college, which was meant to give slightly increased strength to small states, has decidedly different consequences in reality. Kansas, like forty or so other states, can be taken for granted. So for the next two weeks, no presidential candidate will visit; no advertising time or dollars will be taken up with politics.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
One of the significant omissions in this Presidential campaign has been a discussion of possible new appointments to the Supreme Court. In the last several elections, this issue has been consistently discussed, most often in terms of the potential for overturning Roe v. Wade. Remember how often Democrats especially were forced to say that they had no "litmus test" for new appointees? I've been baffled about why the issue hasn't emerged, especially on the Republican side, particularly since Justice Ginsburg is the most likely to retire, and a Romney appointment would certainly and dramatically shift the balance of the Court. This would seem like a red-meat issue for Republicans, but it has barely arisen.
In the November 8th issue of the New York Review of Books, Cass R. Sunstein makes an important, but easily overlooked point, a point whose importance is brought home by a decision this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit finding DOMA unconstitutional. DOMA, of course, is the Defense of Marriage Act, a cleverly named act (Republicans are good at misleading names) that never-the-less seems to imply that in an unfettered market economy, heterosexuality wouldn't be able to hold its own.
Sunstein reminds us that only a few cases involve Constitutional issues and that most of the thousands of regulatory rules issued every year, rules that insure implemention of laws (reform of health care, financial regulations, consumer protection, food inspection, and on and on) are settled in other ways. Most aren't challenged at all. Another several hundred go through a review process at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an office that I had never heard of, despite my thinking that I was relatively well-informed about legal and political matters. A small group of these may be challenged in court, usually a federal court of appeals with a three-judge panel. These judges have life-time appointments, and who they are (and who appoints them) will also affect our lives for generations to come. So it is not only the next President's power to appoint Supreme Court justices that it is at stake here; it's also that the appointments, as Sunstein says, "will help to establish the fate of numerous rules designed to protect public safety, health, and the environment."
The Court of Appeals case that caught my attention this week was Windsor v. United States, decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals. It was the second Circuit Court decision to rule DOMA unconstitutional. In this case, unlike the ones that Sunstein is focused on, the issue clearly does involve Constitutional issues and so will make its way to the Supreme Court. But again, it shows the power and impact of the lesser federal courts. In this case, Edith Windsor and her partner, Thea Spyer, had been together for 42 years. They had been married in Canada in 2007, and both resided in New York at the time of Spyer's death in 2009. New York would later legalize same-sex marriage, but it had not done so in 2009. The state did, however, recognize marriages, including common law marriages, that were valid in other states or countries. When Spyer died, she left her estate to Windsor. The IRS socked Windsor with an estate tax of over $360,000, a tax that wouldn't have applied if the couple were recognized as married. But because DOMA specifically overrules the traditional principle that states determine their own laws about marriage and divorce, the IRS stepped in to collect the money. Windsor sued. And the Circuit Court, in a 2-1 decision, made its ruling that DOMA is unconstitutional and that Windsor's right to inherit as a spouse should be protected.
President Obama has instructed the Attorney General not to defend DOMA in the courts. So the non-moving party, i.e., the United States, actually switched sides in the middle of the case. Until 2011, the government defended the IRS. After that, it not only withdrew from that defense, but switched to filing briefs for Windsor. Conservatives stepped into the breach, however, and the Congress formed something called BLAG (the Bipartisan [LOL] Legal Advisory Group to represent the IRS position. One point that's important to note here is that although, thanks to Obama, the Justice Department will not defend DOMA, that doesn't mean that the roughly thousand laws and regulations that affect same-sex couples don't remain in place, adversely affecting the lives of gay and lesbian citizens, including those who are legally married in states that have same-sex marriage or want to be married in states that don't.
On October 18th, the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit joined that in the First Circuit in deciding by a 2-1 vote that DOMA is unconstitutional. The majority opinion was written by Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, a conservative appointed by George H. W. Bush--for once a conservative who is true to actual conservative positions like the traditional notion that states determine their own marriage and divorce policies and that stare decisis remains a controlling principle and should be ignored only in exceptional circumstances. The minority opinion, concurring in part and dissenting in the most important conclusion, was written by a Clinton appointee. It is hard to imagine in today's charged atmosphere that Romney would appoint or a Republican Senate approve a conservative of Jacobs's stripe.
What I had planned to do in today's blog was rehearse the arguments BLAG made in the case and the thoroughness with which the majority opinion demolished them. But I've already gone on long enough about the case itself and will end instead with a couple of observations about how DOMA and its consequences affect me personally. It is important to say, however, although Windsor won at this level, the challenges to DOMA aren't going to end here, and Windsor isn't about to start spending any money that might be eventually refunded to her. This is one issue that is clearly going to the Supreme Court.
Personally, there is no chance that in any foreseeable future Kansas will authorize same-sex marriages. And the state will not recognize marriages performed in other states if those marriages would not be legal in Kansas. Mohamed and I had thought at one point of going to Iowa, my home state, where same-sex marriages are performed. What was frustrating as we discussed this with friends was how many of them assumed that such a marriage would have actual legal consequences for us. DOMA is still the law of the land, and its provisions overrule any state laws. (Conservatives have no compunction about the contradictions between their supposed philosophical principles, here their traditional favoring of state laws over federal "intervention" and judicial "activism.") The two most immediate consequences of DOMA for Mohamed and me would be totally unaffected by a marriage in Iowa. First, if we were a legally married couple, Mohamed's visa status would be simplified; he would be automatically eligible for a green card. Second, like Edith Windsor, he would be in a very different position about estate taxes.
Who the President appoints to federal courts at all levels matters--and matters substantially. The laws and regulations are moving slowly in the direction of less discrimination. But that movement is fragile, and activist conservative courts can undo them with, as the saying goes, a stroke of the pen.
In the November 8th issue of the New York Review of Books, Cass R. Sunstein makes an important, but easily overlooked point, a point whose importance is brought home by a decision this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit finding DOMA unconstitutional. DOMA, of course, is the Defense of Marriage Act, a cleverly named act (Republicans are good at misleading names) that never-the-less seems to imply that in an unfettered market economy, heterosexuality wouldn't be able to hold its own.
Sunstein reminds us that only a few cases involve Constitutional issues and that most of the thousands of regulatory rules issued every year, rules that insure implemention of laws (reform of health care, financial regulations, consumer protection, food inspection, and on and on) are settled in other ways. Most aren't challenged at all. Another several hundred go through a review process at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an office that I had never heard of, despite my thinking that I was relatively well-informed about legal and political matters. A small group of these may be challenged in court, usually a federal court of appeals with a three-judge panel. These judges have life-time appointments, and who they are (and who appoints them) will also affect our lives for generations to come. So it is not only the next President's power to appoint Supreme Court justices that it is at stake here; it's also that the appointments, as Sunstein says, "will help to establish the fate of numerous rules designed to protect public safety, health, and the environment."
The Court of Appeals case that caught my attention this week was Windsor v. United States, decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals. It was the second Circuit Court decision to rule DOMA unconstitutional. In this case, unlike the ones that Sunstein is focused on, the issue clearly does involve Constitutional issues and so will make its way to the Supreme Court. But again, it shows the power and impact of the lesser federal courts. In this case, Edith Windsor and her partner, Thea Spyer, had been together for 42 years. They had been married in Canada in 2007, and both resided in New York at the time of Spyer's death in 2009. New York would later legalize same-sex marriage, but it had not done so in 2009. The state did, however, recognize marriages, including common law marriages, that were valid in other states or countries. When Spyer died, she left her estate to Windsor. The IRS socked Windsor with an estate tax of over $360,000, a tax that wouldn't have applied if the couple were recognized as married. But because DOMA specifically overrules the traditional principle that states determine their own laws about marriage and divorce, the IRS stepped in to collect the money. Windsor sued. And the Circuit Court, in a 2-1 decision, made its ruling that DOMA is unconstitutional and that Windsor's right to inherit as a spouse should be protected.
President Obama has instructed the Attorney General not to defend DOMA in the courts. So the non-moving party, i.e., the United States, actually switched sides in the middle of the case. Until 2011, the government defended the IRS. After that, it not only withdrew from that defense, but switched to filing briefs for Windsor. Conservatives stepped into the breach, however, and the Congress formed something called BLAG (the Bipartisan [LOL] Legal Advisory Group to represent the IRS position. One point that's important to note here is that although, thanks to Obama, the Justice Department will not defend DOMA, that doesn't mean that the roughly thousand laws and regulations that affect same-sex couples don't remain in place, adversely affecting the lives of gay and lesbian citizens, including those who are legally married in states that have same-sex marriage or want to be married in states that don't.
On October 18th, the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit joined that in the First Circuit in deciding by a 2-1 vote that DOMA is unconstitutional. The majority opinion was written by Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, a conservative appointed by George H. W. Bush--for once a conservative who is true to actual conservative positions like the traditional notion that states determine their own marriage and divorce policies and that stare decisis remains a controlling principle and should be ignored only in exceptional circumstances. The minority opinion, concurring in part and dissenting in the most important conclusion, was written by a Clinton appointee. It is hard to imagine in today's charged atmosphere that Romney would appoint or a Republican Senate approve a conservative of Jacobs's stripe.
What I had planned to do in today's blog was rehearse the arguments BLAG made in the case and the thoroughness with which the majority opinion demolished them. But I've already gone on long enough about the case itself and will end instead with a couple of observations about how DOMA and its consequences affect me personally. It is important to say, however, although Windsor won at this level, the challenges to DOMA aren't going to end here, and Windsor isn't about to start spending any money that might be eventually refunded to her. This is one issue that is clearly going to the Supreme Court.
Personally, there is no chance that in any foreseeable future Kansas will authorize same-sex marriages. And the state will not recognize marriages performed in other states if those marriages would not be legal in Kansas. Mohamed and I had thought at one point of going to Iowa, my home state, where same-sex marriages are performed. What was frustrating as we discussed this with friends was how many of them assumed that such a marriage would have actual legal consequences for us. DOMA is still the law of the land, and its provisions overrule any state laws. (Conservatives have no compunction about the contradictions between their supposed philosophical principles, here their traditional favoring of state laws over federal "intervention" and judicial "activism.") The two most immediate consequences of DOMA for Mohamed and me would be totally unaffected by a marriage in Iowa. First, if we were a legally married couple, Mohamed's visa status would be simplified; he would be automatically eligible for a green card. Second, like Edith Windsor, he would be in a very different position about estate taxes.
Who the President appoints to federal courts at all levels matters--and matters substantially. The laws and regulations are moving slowly in the direction of less discrimination. But that movement is fragile, and activist conservative courts can undo them with, as the saying goes, a stroke of the pen.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
I'd wager that few if any of the regular readers of this blog are Republicans or Romney supporters. And I hope that if any were, after last night's debate, they've seen the light. The first debate was too depressing to blog about, but last night President Obama "showed up" and "brought his game"--pick your own cliché. It was an exciting, often tense encounter with the President clearly scoring many unanswered points. (Whenever a writer uses 'clearly' or 'obviously,' a reader can conclude that the writer isn't going to bother to prove his/her points and that what's clear to the writer is likely to be less so to many readers.) The 24-hour-a-day pundits tell us that who "wins' the debate is a matter of style. I've heard newspeople, as well as spokespeople from both parties (including DNC Chair, Howard Dean) say that if you want to know who won, you should turn off the sound and watch the body language. Really? Wouldn't that be like a judge telling the jury not to listen to testimony, but just to watch the lawyers' body language? But given that criterion it seemed to me that Romney, trying to follow up on his performance in the first debate, came out punching, but that he was too aggressive and seemed arrogant as he tried to silence both Obama and Candy Crowley. After that, I thought he sagged a bit, stumbled over many responses, and looked stiff and uncomfortable. He failed--not that I was sorry to see this--to capitalize on many opportunities (he brought up the Canadian pipeline a couple of times, but didn't really make a clear point, especially for the undecided, i.e., low information, voters. According to this morning's news reports, he did provide the unintentionally funny meme for this debate with his "binders full of women." More damaging, I thought, was that after 90 minutes in which President Obama had failed to bring up Romney's remark about the 47% who see themselves as victims and about whom he doesn't need to worry, Romney gave the President an opening by using his last two minutes to talk about his concern for 100% of Americans. Obama, of course, finally pounced. Romney had opened the door.
Romney began once again by trying to be specific with his five-point program (Obama said it was a one-point program: protecting the advantages of the very rich). But his points--cut taxes, get tough on China, etc.--have nothing of the specific about them. I thought there were two especially telling moments: one was when a questioner said that Romney had said he would pay for his tax cuts (his proposals don't even come close) by eliminating or reducing deductions. She asked which of, say, the mortgage deduction, charitable contributions, medical expenses, and educational expenses he would eliminate. As he has done for the last five years, he refused to specify any of these. Instead, he said he'd pick an "imaginary number" as a sort of bucket into which people could lump deductions. He chose $25,000. But Presidents don't get to choose imaginary numbers, and neither should someone who's running for President. Who knows how close to that number an actual proposal might be? And how can any of us figure out how such a number might affect us? (Plus, he ought to take a math course and learn what an imaginary number really is.) The second moment was when Crowley tried to ask a question about in the off chance his numbers didn't add up, a question that was going to lead to whether he would reconsider any increase in taxes, he interrupted her to say that we should trust him, that the numbers did add up. Trust him I don't.
Mainly, his argument during the night was that the recovery hasn't been strong enough, coupled with an endless repetition of the same numbers about the past four years that he used in the first debate and that surely numbed the listeners by his third or fourth listing.
What was interesting was also what was missing from the debate, an indication of how far right the country has moved. There was no mention of the environment, climate change, or global warming. None. On either side. The social issues that so dominated the Republican primary were virtually absent. The Republican party platform's opposition to any government money for contraception arose, but Romney had only a feeble response. Obama scored points on his signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (although again I'm not sure how much low information voters know about the case and the ridiculous Supreme Court decision that followed); Romney had no response except for his "binders full of women." There was no discussion of the unconscionable consequences of the War on Drugs, which has put 2.3 million Americans, predominately men of color, in jail so that we jail more citizens than any other country, including China, hardly a bastion of liberty, with four times our population. There was no mention of LGBT issues, including Obama's real contributions to progress, despite both candidates' evasive responses to re-instating the assault weapons ban and focusing instead on vague notions about strengthening the family. Abortion, and in general women's rights, was never brought up. Obamacare went virtually unmentioned, as did education except in brief, conventional asides.
The most disheartening part of the debate for me was the discussion of energy policy. First, when the topic of high gas prices was brought up, why didn't Obama talk about the role commodity speculators play in determining prices? Or why not talk about the huge government tax breaks (talk about belonging to the 47%!) that ExxonMobil, for example, benefits from and the outlandish profits they are making and sitting on, not investing. Although the President mentioned new stricter standards for car mileage and talked again about wind, solar, and biofuel possibilities, for the most part he sounded like a defender of the big energy companies. It was a battle over clean coal (an oxymoron) and how much he had expanded drilling for oil and natural gas (never mind any environmental consequences). Mitt, of course, would be infinitely worse, but still, I'd like to hear my candidate not sound like a spokesperson for the oil and gas industry.
The big moment for Romney was supposed to be when a discussion of foreign policy arose. The Republicans have been shamelessly exploiting what happened in Benghazi since 12:01 a.m. on September 12th. Both parties had agreed to a moratorium on foreign policy criticism on September 11th, so Mitt waited till one minute after midnight to issue a press release, even though at that point he, like everyone else, had no specific information about what had happened. Obama brought this up, though as an aside, before perhaps his strongest moment of the evening when he said the Republican treatment of what he and his aides had said was "offensive." It hadn't helped Mitt when Candy Crowley had earlier said that Obama had indeed called the Benghazi attack "terror" the day after it happened. Though Mitt tried to respond to Obama's indignation, he looked and sounded (I did have the sound turned on) shaken.
Despite my occasional disappointments in Obama's positions, he came across as strong, clear, and articulate, both in what he said and how he said it. Game on--again--as the pundits will no doubt say. After the debate, in a fit of masochism, I turned on Faux news to see how they were going to spin the debate. (I normally would watch MSNBC, but they've been as obsessed with polling as any network, and I really can't listen to Chris Matthews yell and snort any longer.) But Fox spent ten minutes punting. I'm sure they got their act together later, but then it was time for "Chelsea Lately," and I was ready for a break from thinking about politics.
This week's Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir? Award goes to Eddie Munster, aka Paul Ryan. (The comparison isn't original with me, of course, but once I heard it, I can't get the image out of my mind.) Ryan "ramrodded," according to the director of a St. Vincent de Paul shelter, his way into the shelter for a photo op despite the fact that the kitchen had closed and there was no one to feed, that the charitable religious organization has a policy against being used for political purposes, and that Ryan stayed for only fifteen minutes, just enough time for the photo op of Ryan's supposedly washing pans that looked suspiciously as if they were already spotless.
Romney began once again by trying to be specific with his five-point program (Obama said it was a one-point program: protecting the advantages of the very rich). But his points--cut taxes, get tough on China, etc.--have nothing of the specific about them. I thought there were two especially telling moments: one was when a questioner said that Romney had said he would pay for his tax cuts (his proposals don't even come close) by eliminating or reducing deductions. She asked which of, say, the mortgage deduction, charitable contributions, medical expenses, and educational expenses he would eliminate. As he has done for the last five years, he refused to specify any of these. Instead, he said he'd pick an "imaginary number" as a sort of bucket into which people could lump deductions. He chose $25,000. But Presidents don't get to choose imaginary numbers, and neither should someone who's running for President. Who knows how close to that number an actual proposal might be? And how can any of us figure out how such a number might affect us? (Plus, he ought to take a math course and learn what an imaginary number really is.) The second moment was when Crowley tried to ask a question about in the off chance his numbers didn't add up, a question that was going to lead to whether he would reconsider any increase in taxes, he interrupted her to say that we should trust him, that the numbers did add up. Trust him I don't.
Mainly, his argument during the night was that the recovery hasn't been strong enough, coupled with an endless repetition of the same numbers about the past four years that he used in the first debate and that surely numbed the listeners by his third or fourth listing.
What was interesting was also what was missing from the debate, an indication of how far right the country has moved. There was no mention of the environment, climate change, or global warming. None. On either side. The social issues that so dominated the Republican primary were virtually absent. The Republican party platform's opposition to any government money for contraception arose, but Romney had only a feeble response. Obama scored points on his signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (although again I'm not sure how much low information voters know about the case and the ridiculous Supreme Court decision that followed); Romney had no response except for his "binders full of women." There was no discussion of the unconscionable consequences of the War on Drugs, which has put 2.3 million Americans, predominately men of color, in jail so that we jail more citizens than any other country, including China, hardly a bastion of liberty, with four times our population. There was no mention of LGBT issues, including Obama's real contributions to progress, despite both candidates' evasive responses to re-instating the assault weapons ban and focusing instead on vague notions about strengthening the family. Abortion, and in general women's rights, was never brought up. Obamacare went virtually unmentioned, as did education except in brief, conventional asides.
The most disheartening part of the debate for me was the discussion of energy policy. First, when the topic of high gas prices was brought up, why didn't Obama talk about the role commodity speculators play in determining prices? Or why not talk about the huge government tax breaks (talk about belonging to the 47%!) that ExxonMobil, for example, benefits from and the outlandish profits they are making and sitting on, not investing. Although the President mentioned new stricter standards for car mileage and talked again about wind, solar, and biofuel possibilities, for the most part he sounded like a defender of the big energy companies. It was a battle over clean coal (an oxymoron) and how much he had expanded drilling for oil and natural gas (never mind any environmental consequences). Mitt, of course, would be infinitely worse, but still, I'd like to hear my candidate not sound like a spokesperson for the oil and gas industry.
The big moment for Romney was supposed to be when a discussion of foreign policy arose. The Republicans have been shamelessly exploiting what happened in Benghazi since 12:01 a.m. on September 12th. Both parties had agreed to a moratorium on foreign policy criticism on September 11th, so Mitt waited till one minute after midnight to issue a press release, even though at that point he, like everyone else, had no specific information about what had happened. Obama brought this up, though as an aside, before perhaps his strongest moment of the evening when he said the Republican treatment of what he and his aides had said was "offensive." It hadn't helped Mitt when Candy Crowley had earlier said that Obama had indeed called the Benghazi attack "terror" the day after it happened. Though Mitt tried to respond to Obama's indignation, he looked and sounded (I did have the sound turned on) shaken.
Despite my occasional disappointments in Obama's positions, he came across as strong, clear, and articulate, both in what he said and how he said it. Game on--again--as the pundits will no doubt say. After the debate, in a fit of masochism, I turned on Faux news to see how they were going to spin the debate. (I normally would watch MSNBC, but they've been as obsessed with polling as any network, and I really can't listen to Chris Matthews yell and snort any longer.) But Fox spent ten minutes punting. I'm sure they got their act together later, but then it was time for "Chelsea Lately," and I was ready for a break from thinking about politics.
This week's Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir? Award goes to Eddie Munster, aka Paul Ryan. (The comparison isn't original with me, of course, but once I heard it, I can't get the image out of my mind.) Ryan "ramrodded," according to the director of a St. Vincent de Paul shelter, his way into the shelter for a photo op despite the fact that the kitchen had closed and there was no one to feed, that the charitable religious organization has a policy against being used for political purposes, and that Ryan stayed for only fifteen minutes, just enough time for the photo op of Ryan's supposedly washing pans that looked suspiciously as if they were already spotless.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
When I lived and taught in Bulgaria (1995-96), the country had finally abandoned Communism and was venturing into an uncontrolled experiment in capitalism. The trial got off to a rough start, and the economy collapsed while I was there. We used to joke that everyday during the first semester, the TV news showed a new bank opening, complete with a blessing from an Orthodox bishop, and everyday during the second semester, the news story was a bank collapsing with the money having disappeared to Luxembourg or Switzerland or Monaco. I had put $3,000 into one of the biggest banks, Zemedelski Kredit--and all of it went missing. For days, I'd stand outside the bank (just like in the pictures in our American history texts from the bank failures of the Great Depression), surrounded by a mass of Bulgarians, all shouting angrily, all promised that the money would be available the next day. It wasn't, of course. I felt guilty about my demands: while it wasn't pleasant to lose $3,000, I wasn't going to starve. The Bulgarians around me had lost their entire life savings. As the currency collapsed, my salary as a full professor at Sofia University, the biggest and most prestigeous in the country, fell to $18 a month--and that was if there was actually money to give out. Although my Bulgarian friends continued to be as generous as they could be, Sofia was gray, polluted, depressed, and depressing. (I do want to add that I loved my year in Sofia. I had a great time and made many friends there. But it also had its obvious challenges; even before the collapse, Bulgaria was the second poorest country in Europe. Only Albania was poorer, so, of course, for spring break, three of us--me, a young American, and a young Bulgarian--spent ten fascinating days there.)
In December of 1995, on my way to Paris, I stopped in Vienna to visit Austrian friends there. I felt like a visitor from another planet. They constantly found themselves ahead of me because I had stopped to gape at the brightly lit store windows, decorated for Christmas and full of luxurious displays. I marveled that the streetcars actually had heat and lights. In Sofia, the buses, streetcars, and trams had all been bought from other countries when they were taken out of service there. There was never heat, in winter snow often blew in through holes in the roof, and the lights rarely worked. You had to jump into the street, try to see whether you could read the destination of vehicle on the front, and then jump back out of the way. There were two things I wanted to do in Vienna: visit the home and museum of Sigmund Freud and ride the ferris wheel featured in the film The Third Man.
Last night, TCM showed that movie, directed by Carol Reed in 1949 and set in a post-war Vienna that bore little resemblance to the Vienna of my December visit. The city is slowly recovering from the war; piles of rubble and burnt-out buildings are everywhere. Vienna is divided into five sectors (American, British, French, and Russian with an international zone at the center) with secrecy and competition the norm among the sectors. The economy is still based on a black market, riddled with corruption--and that corruption is the heart of the story. Joseph Cotten plays the naive American, a writer of silly, but popular Western pot-boilers, who arrives in Vienna to meet his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), who is being buried as the film begins. Cotten bumbles his way into the underworld of this society, trying ineptly to make sense of the webs of lies and contradictions that he encounters. For much of the movie, he tries to convince others that Lime's death was no accident, that he was murdered. But then, an hour into the film, he discovers that Lime isn't even dead. In one of the most dramatic and anticipated initial appearances in movies, he sees Harry, alive and smiling, but also running away from him. He's known that Lime was involved in the black market, but because they were friends, he assumes Lime's involvement was petty and relatively benign. What he finally learns, however, is that his friend was selling diluted black market penicillin, which left many children dead of meningitis. and those who did survive permanently hospitalized. And despite Welles's charm and seeming bonhomie, he has not a trace of loyalty--neither to his lover (Alida Valli) nor to Cotten. In the memorable scene on the ferris wheel, the first time the two men actually can talk, part of the tension arises from Cotten's realization that Welles would have no compunction about throwing him from the compartment. The script was written by the Catholic novelist Graham Greene, and the amoral Lime is the first time that the innocent Cotten realizes that real evil exists, that a winning smile and assurances of friendship can disguise something much darker, and that amorality may be a euphemism for real immorality.
The Third Man is an iconic film for technical reason as well. The score is nothing but the famous zither music (if you heard it, you'd recognize it) that plays throughout the film--no Viennese waltzes, no folk dances, just the insistent sound of the zither. What other film makes its audience wait for an hour before the most famous actor in the movie finally appears? Welles is nothing but a shadow in a doorway with a cat, which we have learned earlier likes no one but Lime, purring at his feet until a bright light suddenly illuminates his smiling face. Later in the movie, as Lime flees through the sewers of Vienna, he'll also be seen mainly in shadows until a police spotlight suddenly brings his evil into the light. Indeed, the whole black and white film constantly plays with shadow and light, an appropriate technique as the truth of evil moves out of the shadows. That look reminds us of the great silent German films produced at the Ufa studio, as does Reed's constant use of "Dutch angle" shots--shots where the camera is tilted slightly so that both what's being shot and our reaction to it are just slightly unbalanced. There is also the classic flight of Lime through the sewers, the rat pursued in his natural environment, as the police and his former "friend" close in on him. When Lime is finally trapped, we see a shot from above ground of his fingers emerging from the manhole cover, wiggling impotently. And there are the famous scenes at the burial of Lime/Welles--first faked, the second time real--of Alida Valli walking down the tree-lined allée of the cemetery. The first time, Cotten is in a jeep. He doesn't yet know her, but watches fascinated by her determined walk (and, of course, her beauty). The second time, as the movie ends, he exits the jeep to wait for her. Her approach is long and slow. She reaches where he stands; her eyes never waver as she walks past him and into her future. The last shot is of Cotten, lighting a cigarette, his face expressionless, leaving us to wonder just how much he has actually learned from his encounter with a world where he can't play the good sheriff to the rescue who is a fixture of his paper-thin novels.
In December of 1995, on my way to Paris, I stopped in Vienna to visit Austrian friends there. I felt like a visitor from another planet. They constantly found themselves ahead of me because I had stopped to gape at the brightly lit store windows, decorated for Christmas and full of luxurious displays. I marveled that the streetcars actually had heat and lights. In Sofia, the buses, streetcars, and trams had all been bought from other countries when they were taken out of service there. There was never heat, in winter snow often blew in through holes in the roof, and the lights rarely worked. You had to jump into the street, try to see whether you could read the destination of vehicle on the front, and then jump back out of the way. There were two things I wanted to do in Vienna: visit the home and museum of Sigmund Freud and ride the ferris wheel featured in the film The Third Man.
Last night, TCM showed that movie, directed by Carol Reed in 1949 and set in a post-war Vienna that bore little resemblance to the Vienna of my December visit. The city is slowly recovering from the war; piles of rubble and burnt-out buildings are everywhere. Vienna is divided into five sectors (American, British, French, and Russian with an international zone at the center) with secrecy and competition the norm among the sectors. The economy is still based on a black market, riddled with corruption--and that corruption is the heart of the story. Joseph Cotten plays the naive American, a writer of silly, but popular Western pot-boilers, who arrives in Vienna to meet his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), who is being buried as the film begins. Cotten bumbles his way into the underworld of this society, trying ineptly to make sense of the webs of lies and contradictions that he encounters. For much of the movie, he tries to convince others that Lime's death was no accident, that he was murdered. But then, an hour into the film, he discovers that Lime isn't even dead. In one of the most dramatic and anticipated initial appearances in movies, he sees Harry, alive and smiling, but also running away from him. He's known that Lime was involved in the black market, but because they were friends, he assumes Lime's involvement was petty and relatively benign. What he finally learns, however, is that his friend was selling diluted black market penicillin, which left many children dead of meningitis. and those who did survive permanently hospitalized. And despite Welles's charm and seeming bonhomie, he has not a trace of loyalty--neither to his lover (Alida Valli) nor to Cotten. In the memorable scene on the ferris wheel, the first time the two men actually can talk, part of the tension arises from Cotten's realization that Welles would have no compunction about throwing him from the compartment. The script was written by the Catholic novelist Graham Greene, and the amoral Lime is the first time that the innocent Cotten realizes that real evil exists, that a winning smile and assurances of friendship can disguise something much darker, and that amorality may be a euphemism for real immorality.
The Third Man is an iconic film for technical reason as well. The score is nothing but the famous zither music (if you heard it, you'd recognize it) that plays throughout the film--no Viennese waltzes, no folk dances, just the insistent sound of the zither. What other film makes its audience wait for an hour before the most famous actor in the movie finally appears? Welles is nothing but a shadow in a doorway with a cat, which we have learned earlier likes no one but Lime, purring at his feet until a bright light suddenly illuminates his smiling face. Later in the movie, as Lime flees through the sewers of Vienna, he'll also be seen mainly in shadows until a police spotlight suddenly brings his evil into the light. Indeed, the whole black and white film constantly plays with shadow and light, an appropriate technique as the truth of evil moves out of the shadows. That look reminds us of the great silent German films produced at the Ufa studio, as does Reed's constant use of "Dutch angle" shots--shots where the camera is tilted slightly so that both what's being shot and our reaction to it are just slightly unbalanced. There is also the classic flight of Lime through the sewers, the rat pursued in his natural environment, as the police and his former "friend" close in on him. When Lime is finally trapped, we see a shot from above ground of his fingers emerging from the manhole cover, wiggling impotently. And there are the famous scenes at the burial of Lime/Welles--first faked, the second time real--of Alida Valli walking down the tree-lined allée of the cemetery. The first time, Cotten is in a jeep. He doesn't yet know her, but watches fascinated by her determined walk (and, of course, her beauty). The second time, as the movie ends, he exits the jeep to wait for her. Her approach is long and slow. She reaches where he stands; her eyes never waver as she walks past him and into her future. The last shot is of Cotten, lighting a cigarette, his face expressionless, leaving us to wonder just how much he has actually learned from his encounter with a world where he can't play the good sheriff to the rescue who is a fixture of his paper-thin novels.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
According to the tracking info, my new laptop is supposed to be delivered today. Yesterday, I set aside an hour to transfer documents and photos to a flash drive, so that I could upload them to the new computer. Of course, it actually took about 15 minutes. In doing so, though, I noticed that a copy of a short article I'd written was missing. I'd written it at school, and before I retired, I'd copied the important files from my computer there to the flash drive, but I must have overlooked this one because it's not on the drive or on this laptop. I clearly remember the occasion of writing it. I had a couch in my office on the same wall with the door. I used to take cat naps on the couch: I'd bring a book, settle unseen into the far corner of the couch, pretend to read, and fall asleep, hoping that I'd wake up, book prop in hand, if anyone needed me. One day I woke thinking that I should really do a brief explication of one of the sonnets in Gwendolyn Brooks's sonnet sequence "The Children of the Poor," which I often taught. I went to the computer, wrote the article, and sent it off to the Explicator, which prints only short pieces and which accepted it. The article combines my love of literature with my interest in grammar. It wouldn't be a huge loss-either to me personally or to the world of literary criticism--if I never found my copy. But I'm going to try to reconstruct the argument. Here's the poem, the second in the six-sonnet sequence:
What shall I give my children? who are poor,
Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,
Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand
No velvet and no velvety velour;
But who have begged me for a brisk contour,
Crying that they are quasi, contraband
Because unfinished, graven by a hand
Less than angelic, admirable or sure.
My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device,
But I lack access to my proper stone,
And plenitude of plan shall not suffice,
Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone
To ratify my little halves who bear
Across an autumn freezing everywhere.
The six sonnets begin with people who have no children and trace the progress from a mother's perspective to the children's adulthood. The form Brooks chooses is a hybrid between Italian and Shakespearean. Like an Italian sonnet, it's divided into an octave (rhyming abbaabba) and a sestet. But like the Shakespearean form, the last six lines end with a couplet. The sonnet form has persisted for centuries in English, but after Shakespeare, most poets have preferred the older Italian structure. One reason often given is that poets don't want to compete with Shakespeare, that he prefected the form. I've always thought, however, that poets have seen a danger in the English form: that it's difficult to write a final couplet that doesn't simply make too explicit what the previous twelve lines have implied. The sonnet may seem almost too neatly complete. And that's why Brooks's final couplet is so ingenious.
The couplet begins with the legalistic sounding 'to ratify,' which echoes words like 'quasi' and 'contraband' in line six--not exactly what we think of as poetic vocabulary. But the twist comes with the verb that ends line eleven: 'bear.' Bear is a transitive verb in English; it needs a direct object: one bears something. Simply by its sound, 'across' seems to satisfy that need. Having a cross to bear is a common English phrase. Even in reading the poem, the reader may hear, solely out of expectation, that meaning. And yet there are two problems: it's not 'a cross,' but 'across.' And even if it were the anticipated noun phrase, the sentence would be left with four words that would have no syntactic function. So we have to revise our expectations. 'Across' is a prepostion, but then what's its object? Is it across an autumn? Is that semantically logical? Would that make 'freezing' a gerund that's the object of 'bear'? But we don't normally separate verbs from their objects with an adverb (or adverbial phrase like 'across an autumn') in English. And is "bear a freezing" an English construction. Or is 'freezing' a participle used adverbially to modify 'bear'? But that still leaves 'bear' without an object.
In short, there is no way of finding a satisfactory syntax for the last two lines. And this incompletion is doubly baffling since readers expect the final couplet of a sonnet to supply a tidy ending. Yet the ending is exactly right, for what is the poem about but the inability of the mother/poet to supply "a brisk contour," not to leave the children "unfinished." As the children remain feeling incomplete, so too the reader ends the poem with that same feeling of a sentence "graven by a hand / less than angelic, admirable or sure." The expectations are rich with connotative resonances, but deficient in completed syntax.
What shall I give my children? who are poor,
Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,
Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand
No velvet and no velvety velour;
But who have begged me for a brisk contour,
Crying that they are quasi, contraband
Because unfinished, graven by a hand
Less than angelic, admirable or sure.
My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device,
But I lack access to my proper stone,
And plenitude of plan shall not suffice,
Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone
To ratify my little halves who bear
Across an autumn freezing everywhere.
The six sonnets begin with people who have no children and trace the progress from a mother's perspective to the children's adulthood. The form Brooks chooses is a hybrid between Italian and Shakespearean. Like an Italian sonnet, it's divided into an octave (rhyming abbaabba) and a sestet. But like the Shakespearean form, the last six lines end with a couplet. The sonnet form has persisted for centuries in English, but after Shakespeare, most poets have preferred the older Italian structure. One reason often given is that poets don't want to compete with Shakespeare, that he prefected the form. I've always thought, however, that poets have seen a danger in the English form: that it's difficult to write a final couplet that doesn't simply make too explicit what the previous twelve lines have implied. The sonnet may seem almost too neatly complete. And that's why Brooks's final couplet is so ingenious.
The couplet begins with the legalistic sounding 'to ratify,' which echoes words like 'quasi' and 'contraband' in line six--not exactly what we think of as poetic vocabulary. But the twist comes with the verb that ends line eleven: 'bear.' Bear is a transitive verb in English; it needs a direct object: one bears something. Simply by its sound, 'across' seems to satisfy that need. Having a cross to bear is a common English phrase. Even in reading the poem, the reader may hear, solely out of expectation, that meaning. And yet there are two problems: it's not 'a cross,' but 'across.' And even if it were the anticipated noun phrase, the sentence would be left with four words that would have no syntactic function. So we have to revise our expectations. 'Across' is a prepostion, but then what's its object? Is it across an autumn? Is that semantically logical? Would that make 'freezing' a gerund that's the object of 'bear'? But we don't normally separate verbs from their objects with an adverb (or adverbial phrase like 'across an autumn') in English. And is "bear a freezing" an English construction. Or is 'freezing' a participle used adverbially to modify 'bear'? But that still leaves 'bear' without an object.
In short, there is no way of finding a satisfactory syntax for the last two lines. And this incompletion is doubly baffling since readers expect the final couplet of a sonnet to supply a tidy ending. Yet the ending is exactly right, for what is the poem about but the inability of the mother/poet to supply "a brisk contour," not to leave the children "unfinished." As the children remain feeling incomplete, so too the reader ends the poem with that same feeling of a sentence "graven by a hand / less than angelic, admirable or sure." The expectations are rich with connotative resonances, but deficient in completed syntax.
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