Occupy Alcatraz

Malia Wollan has an article in The New York Times about Alcatraz:

For decades, visitors to Alcatraz Island had trouble deciphering the faded red graffiti on the old prison’s rusted water tower.
Then last month, the National Park Service unveiled a rebuilt water tower with bold red letters reading: Peace and Freedom. Welcome. Home of the Free Indian Land. The freshly painted inscription is an exact replica of graffiti left during the nineteen months when Native American activists commandeered the wind-scoured island four decades ago and claimed it as their own.
“Normally, the federal government is not in the business of preserving graffiti,” said Alexandra Picavet, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service, who said that to her knowledge this was the only example of restored, modern-day graffiti. “The water tower was the occupation’s most outwardly focused message to the world and it is an important part of the island’s history,” she said.
In the early morning of 20 November 1969, some eighty Native Americans sailed to Alcatraz and set up camp. They would stay on the craggy outcropping until federal marshals removed them on 11 June 1971. The group’s demands included establishing a Native American university and cultural center. “We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for $24 in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man’s purchase of a similar island about three hundred years ago,” read their proclamation. That other island was, of course, Manhattan, bought from Native Americans by the Dutch in 1626.
Soon after their arrival, the group found buckets of terra-cotta-colored paint, believed to be left over from the nearby Golden Gate Bridge. Some took to spelling out declarations of native sovereignty and painting raised red fists on the island’s dilapidated prison buildings, including the water tower.
The Park Service spent most of a year and $1.5 million restoring the 250,000-gallon tank and 103-foot steel tower. The task included carefully matching the graffiti’s paint and inviting Native Americans to participate in tracing over the final block letters. Park Service employees say that, in the month since the project’s completion, they have noticed a significant rise in the number of tourists who see the graffiti and ask questions about it.
Still, most of the 1.4 million visitors who come to the island each year come for the intrigue of the federal prison years. From 1934 to 1963, the prison held some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, including the mob boss James (Whitey) Bulger, George (Machine Gun) Kelly, and Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz,. “Most people don’t know anything about our history here,” said Eloy Martinez, 72, a member of the Southern Ute tribe. “They just come over here to get their pictures taken next to Al Capone’s cell.”
For more than a year, Martinez, his wife, Lesee, an Apache, and his four-year-old son lived in a cell overlooking the island’s dock. Now retired and living in Oakland, Martinez regularly boards a boat to Alcatraz to wander the grounds, point out the graffiti, and answer tourists’ questions.
For its part, the National Park Service, which took over stewardship of the island in 1972, has made considerable efforts to preserve evidence of the Native American takeover. Last year, the park installed a permanent multimedia exhibition of photographs and videos from the occupation.
“The occupation of Alcatraz launched an unparalleled wave of modern day American Indian activism,” said Troy Johnson, professor of American Indian studies at California State University, Long Beach, and author of several books about those nineteen months on Alcatraz. In the decade after the takeover, Native American activists occupied more than seventy other locations, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington. “The occupiers awoke the government and the American people to native issues in this country,” said Johnson.
The takeover also served to connect young Native American activists from dozens of tribes. “I’m an urban Indian, not a reservation Indian,” said Sacheen Littlefeather, 66, who spent time on Alcatraz during the spring of 1971. “I learned so much about cultural traditions being on that island with Indian people from all over the country.”
Littlefeather joined a group of Native American college students who, on weekends, would haul in fresh water and food on a resupply boat called the Clearwater, purchased with money donated by the rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Every year, Native Americans from across the country— including many of the original occupiers— still gather on Alcatraz for sunrise ceremonies on Thanksgiving and Columbus Day. But Martinez likes to be on the island on ordinary days, too, when thousands of tourists disembark with iPhones aloft and cameras slung across their chests. Mostly, he talks about history. But sometimes, he cannot help but tell passers-by that many Native Americans still face crippling poverty, high unemployment and a lack of resources and opportunities, just as they did in 1969. “Truthfully,” said Martinez. “I thought more would have changed by now.”

Rico says our treatment of the Native Americans is still one of the saddest parts of American history...

Real and virtual gubs

Barry Meier and Andrew Martin have an article in The New York Times about gubs, virtual and otherwise:

As Electronic Arts prepared to market Medal of Honor Warfighter, the latest version of its top-selling video game, it created a website that promoted the manufacturers of the guns, knives, and combat-style gear depicted in the game.The most recent entry in the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops II, features models of weapons that are made by Barrett and Browning. Among the video game giant’s marketing partners on the website were the McMillan Group, the maker of a high-powered sniper’s rifle, and Magpul, which sells high-capacity magazines and other accessories for assault-style weapons.
Links on the Medal of Honor site allowed visitors to click through on the websites of the game’s partners and peruse their catalogs.
“It was almost like a virtual showroom for guns,” said Ryan Smith, who contributes to the Gameological Society, an online gaming magazine. After Smith and other gaming enthusiasts criticized the site, Electronic Arts disabled the links, saying it had been unaware of them.
The video game industry was drawn into the national debate about gun violence last week when the National Rifle Association accused producers of violent games and movies of helping to incite the type of mass shooting that recently left twenty children and six adults dead at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.
While studies have found no connection between video games and gun violence, the case of Medal of Honor Warfighter illustrates how the firearms and video game industries have quietly forged a mutually beneficial marketing relationship.
Many of the same producers of firearms and related equipment are also financial backers of the NRA. McMillan, for example, is a corporate donor to the group, and Magpul recently joined forces with it in a product giveaway featured on Facebook. The gun group also lists Glock, Browning, and Remington as corporate sponsors.
Makers of firearms and related gear have come to see video games as a way to promote their brands to millions of potential customers, marketing experts said. Magpul and Electronic Arts made a video posted on YouTube about their partnership.
“It is going to help brand perceptions,” said Stacy Jones, the president of Hollywood Branded, a company that specializes in product placement in movies and television shows.
Assault-style rifles made by Bushmaster Firearms have a roster of credits that any actor would envy, including appearances in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, a part of the popular Activision series.
The gunman in the Connecticut killings, Adam Lanza, used a semiautomatic rifle made by Bushmaster, which is a unit of the Freedom Group.
The most recent entry in the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops II, featured models of weapons that are also made by Barrett and Browning. Another popular game sold by Electronic Arts, Battlefield 3, depicts assault rifles and pistols similar to those made by Colt, Heckler & Koch, Glock, and Beretta.
The American military also uses Call of Duty and other video games for recruitment and to train soldiers.
An Activision spokeswoman said she was not able to get a response because of the holiday season. Several other companies, including McMillan, Magpul, Browning, and Barrett, did not respond to telephone calls or e-mails. The National Rifle Association also did not respond. A Glock spokesman could not be located for comment.
In a statement, Electronic Arts said video game makers, like film producers, “frequently license the images of people, sports franchises, buildings, cars and military equipment”. The company added that it did not receive payments for using branded images in Medal of Honor.
A spokesman for the Freedom Group, Ted Novin, said in an email that Bushmaster had “received no payment, nor have we paid for placement of our products in Call of Duty. The gaming and entertainment industry routinely use likeness of our products without our permission,” he added in the email. But he did not respond when asked if Activision had received the Freedom Group’s permission to depict its products in Call of Duty. The Freedom Group is owned by Cerberus Capital. After the Connecticut school shooting, Cerberus announced that it would seek a buyer for the Freedom Group.
Many players of shooting games like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty say they enjoy the simulated violence and the chance to virtually fire weapons even if they never touch a real gun. But, along with gaming fans, firearms enthusiasts have become uncomfortable with the growing ties between video games and gun companies. A few years ago, when the marketer of a semiautomatic pistol, the Skorpion, publicized its depiction in some games, the editor of the Firearm Blog, which follows industry developments, expressed surprise.
“I think most companies want to distance themselves from violent video games,” the editor, Steve Johnson, wrote.
Over the past decade, handguns made by Glock have become such standard fare in movies and television shows that the Austrian manufacturer received a lifetime achievement award in 2010 from Brandchannel, a product marketing website.
Game publishers like Activision and Electronic Arts race against one another to create the most realistic games, said Laura Parker, associate editor for Gamespot Australia, a gaming website. “They believe the use of real-world brands— be it clothing, tactical equipment, or guns— is a way to ensure that games like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor feel as close to real life as possible,” Parker said via email.
Some video game makers use depictions of weapons that are slight modifications of real ones or alter their names, avoiding possible legal complications. But most established video game developers and publishers, given the huge amount of money invested in a game, seek out explicit authorizations or licenses from product manufacturers, said Matthew Syrkin, a lawyer at Hughes, Hubbard, & Reed who represents companies in the video game industry. “There is a material risk in putting anything into a game unless you have a license,” said Syrkin, who added that such agreements also protect manufacturers from having their products depicted in an illegal or unflattering manner.
The Connecticut shooting is not the first time violent video games have been blamed for causing violence, including mass shootings. A similar outcry followed the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado by two teenagers who played Doom, then a popular video game. Last year, a Norwegian who killed 77 said later that he honed his shooting skills by playing many hours of Call of Duty.
In the case of the recent promotional website for partners of Medal of Honor Warfighter, a spokesman for Electronic Arts said it took action after it discovered that gamers could click through to its partners’ sites. “We felt it was inappropriate and took the links down,” said Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, in an email.
But Smith, the gaming enthusiast who wrote about the links, said the company had not gone far enough. Smith said the direct link is gone, but visitors to the site can still search for a gun and “take a few extra steps to buy it. I personally think they should not have real weapons in the games in the first place,” he said. “It’s just bad to link things you can do in a game with tools of death you can use in real life.”

Rico says this is just one of the reasons he never plays these games...

Have an unChristmas

Time has a series of articles about 'things you didn't know about Christmas', leading off with this, by Matt Cardy:

Contrary to popular belief, the Bible does not actually mention a specific date for Jesus' birth. In fact, most historians believe he was probably born in the spring, hence the Bible's description of shepherds herding animals. But, in the fourth century, when the Catholic Church decided to recognize Jesus' birth as an official holiday, Pope Julius I chose 25 December for the Feast of the Nativity. That the date happened to coincide with the pagan festival known as Saturnalia must have been pure coincidence...

Rico says that's why he's celebrating Saturnalia from now on.

Still animals

Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and a member of the House of Lords, has a column in The New York Times about religion:

It is the religious time of the year. Step into any city in America or Britain and you will see the night sky lit by religious symbols: Christmas decorations certainly, and probably also a giant menorah. Religion in the West seems alive and well.
But is it really? Or have these symbols been emptied of content, no more than a glittering backdrop to the West’s newest faith, consumerism, and its secular cathedrals, shopping malls?
At first glance, religion is in decline. In Britain, the results of the 2011 national census have just been published. They show that a quarter of the population claims to have no religion, almost double the figure ten years ago. And though the United States remains the most religious country in the West, twenty percent declare themselves without religious affiliation— double the number a generation ago.
Looked at another way, though, the figures tell a different story. Since the eighteenth century, many Western intellectuals have predicted religion’s imminent demise. Yet after a series of withering attacks, most recently by the new atheists, including Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the late Christopher Hitchens, still, in Britain, three in four people, and in America four in five, declare allegiance to a religious faith. That, in an age of science, is what is truly surprising.
The irony is that many of the new atheists are followers of Charles Darwin. We are what we are, they say, because it has allowed us to survive and pass on our genes to the next generation. Our biological and cultural makeup constitutes our “adaptive fitness”. Yet religion is the greatest survivor of them all. Superpowers tend to last a century; the great faiths last millenniums. The question is why.
Darwin himself suggested what is almost certainly the correct answer. He was puzzled by a phenomenon that seemed to contradict his most basic thesis, that natural selection should favor the ruthless. Altruists, who risk their lives for others, should therefore usually die before passing on their genes to the next generation. Yet all societies value altruism, and something similar can be found among social animals, from chimpanzees to dolphins to leafcutter ants.
Neuroscientists have shown how this works. We have mirror neurons that lead us to feel pain when we see others suffering. We are hard-wired for empathy. We are moral animals.
The precise implications of Darwin’s answer are still being debated by his disciples: Harvard’s E.O. Wilson in one corner, Oxford’s Richard Dawkins in the other. To put it at its simplest, we hand on our genes as individuals but we survive as members of groups, and groups can exist only when individuals act not solely for their own advantage but for the sake of the group as a whole. Our unique advantage is that we form larger and more complex groups than any other life-form.
A result is that we have two patterns of reaction in the brain, one focusing on potential danger to us as individuals; the other, located in the prefrontal cortex, taking a more considered view of the consequences of our actions for us and others. The first is immediate, instinctive and emotive. The second is reflective and rational. We are caught, in the psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s phrase, between thinking fast and slow.
The fast track helps us survive, but it can also lead us to acts that are impulsive and destructive. The slow track leads us to more considered behavior, but it is often overridden in the heat of the moment. We are sinners and saints, egotists and altruists, exactly as the prophets and philosophers have long maintained.
If this is so, we are in a position to understand why religion helped us survive in the past— and why we will need it in the future. It strengthens and speeds up the slow track. It reconfigures our neural pathways, turning altruism into instinct, through the rituals we perform, the texts we read and the prayers we pray. It remains the most powerful community builder the world has known. Religion binds individuals into groups through habits of altruism, creating relationships of trust strong enough to defeat destructive emotions. Far from refuting religion, the Neo-Darwinists have helped us understand why it matters.
No one has shown this more elegantly than the political scientist Robert D. Putnam. In the 1990s he became famous for the phrase “bowling alone”: more people were going bowling, but fewer were joining bowling teams. Individualism was slowly destroying our capacity to form groups. A decade later, in his book American Grace,” he showed that there was one place where social capital could still be found: religious communities.
Putnam’s research showed that frequent church- or synagogue-goers were more likely to give money to charity, do volunteer work, help the homeless, donate blood, help a neighbor with housework, spend time with someone who was feeling depressed, offer a seat to a stranger or help someone find a job. Religiosity as measured by church or synagogue attendance is, he found, a better predictor of altruism than education, age, income, gender, or race.
Religion is the best antidote to the individualism of the consumer age. The idea that society can do without it flies in the face of history and, now, evolutionary biology. This may go to show that God has a sense of humor. It certainly shows that the free societies of the West must never lose their sense of God.

Rico says he never had a 'sense of God', and is happy to see that the number of people who've come to their senses about religion is growing. (Sorry, Rabbi.)

Standing firm

Eric Lichtblau has an article in The New York Times about the NRA:

Leaders of the National Rifle Association said that they would fight any new gun restrictions introduced in Congress, and they made clear that they were not interested in working with President Obama to help develop a broad response to the Connecticut school massacre.
During an appearance on the NBC News program Meet the Press, Wayne LaPierre (photo), the vice president of the powerful gun lobby, was openly dismissive of a task force established by Obama and led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that is examining ways to reduce gun violence. “If it’s a panel that’s just going to be made up of a bunch of people that, for the last twenty years, have been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I’m not interested in sitting on that panel,” LaPierre said, adding that the “NRA is not going to let people lose the Second Amendment in this country, which is supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people.”
At a widely watched news briefing, LaPierre said the NRA’s solution to prevent mass shootings like those that have occurred in the last few years— several of them on school campuses– was to put armed guards in schools nationwide. During the briefing, he and the gun group’s president, David Keene, did not directly address plans proposed in the last week that would ban assault rifles or otherwise restrict the availability of firearms.
But during a round of appearances on the Sunday talk shows by LaPierre, Keene, and Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas who will lead the gun group’s response to the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, they made it clear that the NRA opposed any of the gun restrictions now under discussion and did not believe they should be part of the discussion.
On the question of whether a limit on high-capacity ammunition would reduce the likelihood of mass shootings like the one in Connecticut, LaPierre said in a testy exchange with David Gregory, the host of Meet the Press, that “I don’t think it will. I keep saying it, and you just won’t accept it: it’s not going to work. It hasn’t worked,” LaPierre said.
As for the idea of reinstating a ban on so-called assault rifles, which was in place from 1994 to 2004, he said, “I think that is a phony piece of legislation, and I do not believe it will pass for this reason: it’s all built on lies that have been found out.”
While the NRA has been criticized sharply by gun-control advocates since it broke its silence about the Connecticut shooting, it did receive some support from Senator Lindsay Graham, the influential South Carolina Republican who also appeared on Meet the Press:
“People where I live, I’ve been Christmas shopping all weekend, have come up to me: ‘Please don’t let the government take my guns away,’” Graham said. “And I’m going to stand against another assault ban because it didn’t work before, and it won’t work in the future.’’
On the other big issue in Washington at the moment– negotiations over a deficit-reduction deal to avert tax increases and spending cuts set to take effect after the new year– Republicans and Democrats expressed pessimism about reaching a deal in time, and they spent much of the morning blaming each other for the gridlock.
“I believe the president is eager to go over the cliff for political purposes,” Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, said on Fox News Sunday. “He senses a victory at the bottom of the cliff. I think it hurts our country and hurts our economy.”
But Senator Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said Republicans were the ones playing politics with the fiscal talks and taking the risk of putting the country over the so-called 'fiscal cliff'. “If we go over it, God forbid, and I still don’t think we have to, the American people are going to blame the Republican Party,” Schumer said on Meet the Press.
Lawmakers were not much more optimistic when asked about the prospects of the Senate confirming Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, who is considered a top candidate to to succeed Leon E. Panetta as defense secretary. Hagel has drawn criticism in recent days for his record on Israel and gays. “The Republicans are going to ask him hard questions, and I don’t think he’s going to get many Republican votes,” Graham predicted.

Rico says the country is going over the cliff, and limiting gubs isn't going to help that... (And if they think limiting magazine capacity will solve the problem, what's to prevent the next crazed shooter from carrying twice as many five-round magazines?)

Tepid is a weak-ass word

Nick Wingfield has an article in The New York Times about Microsoft:

It used to be that a new version of the Windows operating system was enough to get people excited about buying a new computer, giving sales a nice pop.Not this time. Windows 8, the latest edition of Microsoft’s software, failed to pack shoppers into a Microsoft store in a mall in Bellevue, Washington (the home of Microsoft) last week, at a time when parking lots in the area were overflowing. The trickle of shopping bags leaving the store with merchandise was nothing like the steady stream at a bustling Apple store upstairs.
Claude Ballard was among the customers at the Microsoft store who tried out Surface, a new Microsoft designed Windows tablet. Ballard, who described himself as a “semiretired” computer systems manager for a real estate firm, said he was intrigued by the eye-catching design of Windows 8— but not enough to scrimp to buy a new computer this year. “It’s economics, really,” he said. “It’s going to be a better year for my mechanic than it is for me.”
Weak PC sales this holiday season suggest that the struggles of Microsoft and other companies that depend heavily on the computer business will not abate soon. Plenty of consumers already own PCs and seem content to make do with what they have, especially in a shaky economy in which less expensive mobile devices are bidding for a share of their wallets.
While there are also many tablets running Microsoft's new, touch-friendly Windows, they have so far failed to emerge from the shadow of competing products from Apple and Amazon, and other devices that are being snapped up by holiday shoppers.
Emmanuel Fromont, president of the Americas division of Acer, the world’s number four PC maker, said sales of the company’s Windows 8 PCs had been lower than expected. He said one factor was the system’s unfamiliar design, which appeared to be making consumers cautious. “There was not a huge spark in the market,” Fromont said. “It’s a slow start, there’s no question.”
The clearest evidence of Windows 8’s disappointing introduction comes from the research firm NPD, which estimates that sales of Windows machines have actually dropped from a year ago. According to NPD, stores in the United States sold thirteen percent fewer Windows devices from late October, when Windows 8 made its debut, through the first week in December, than in the same period last year.
Those figures do not include sales in Microsoft's own stores, which were the only place to buy a Surface tablet during that period, but, because the stores are scarce, analysts believe it is unlikely they made a big difference. “I think everybody would have hoped for a better start,” said Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD. “The thing is, this market is not the same market that Windows 7 or Vista or even XP launched into.”
Those earlier versions of Windows all came out during periods when the PC’s status as the center of computing seemed far more secure. In the intervening years, smartphones and tablets have become much more serious rivals for a share of consumer spending on technology. Sales of PCs have been declining for much of the year.
While most people are not getting rid of their PCs altogether, in favor of mobile devices, analysts believe they are postponing purchases of new ones. “What you’re seeing is not a retirement of PCs, but a push-out in the replacement cycle,” said A.M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “If people used to buy PCs every four years and are now buying them every five years, that could lower PC sales by twenty percent over time. That’s substantial.” Sacconaghi predicted that global PC shipments would be down three percent in 2012.
The shift in spending to tablets is one reason that Windows 8 is so critical for Microsoft’s future. The company overhauled its operating system with a radically different, tile-based interface that is easier to navigate on touch-screen devices. Microsoft intends the software to be flexible enough that it can still be used on conventional laptops and desktops, including newer models with touch screens.
But the changes have disappointed a lot of reviewers and interface design experts, who have focused in particular on the potentially confusing coexistence of the new tile interface alongside the old desktop one. Fromont of Acer said he thought there would be more excitement around PCs when more of the devices on store shelves had touch screens. Only fifteen percent of Acer’s current Windows 8 products in North America have touch screens, he said.
Mark Martin, a spokesman for Microsoft  declined to comment, referring to past statements by Microsoft executives arguing that, because Windows 8 is such a big shift, its rollout cannot be fairly judged over one shopping season. The company says it sold forty million copies of Windows 8 during its first month on the market, a figure that includes upgrade discs sold to consumers and copies installed on new machines by PC makers.
Apart from Acer, PC manufacturers showed little interest in discussing holiday sales of their products. Representatives for other big PC makers, including Lenovo, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, and Toshiba, either declined to comment on sales or did not respond to requests for comment.
Bill Calder, a spokesman for Intel, which provides the microprocessors at the heart of most PCs, did not dispute that PC sales had been slower than hoped for this holiday season, but he predicted that new Windows 8 devices coming out next year would change that. “We’re excited about the prospects,” Calder said.
Big retailers of PCs were also mostly silent on their holiday sales. Jeff Haydock, a spokesman for Best Buy, said Windows 8’s effect on PC sales had “met our expectations”. Abt Electronics, a Chicago-based retailer, painted a more positive picture, estimating that unit sales of computers were up thirteen percent so far this year.
Amazon’s list of its hundred best-selling electronics products offers a telling overview of the must-have devices for this holiday season: tablets like Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Apple’s iPad. On Friday afternoon there were just five computers on the list, all laptops, including two from Apple that cost more than a thousand dollars. Only one laptop on the list came with Windows 8 as an option, while another ran Windows 7.
Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, said tablets were sapping the growth of laptops, which represent the biggest chunk of computer sales. “Tablets are doing to the laptop market what laptops did to the desktop market,” he said. “They’re not going away.”
At a cavernous Best Buy store in Tukwila, Washington last week, displays of mobile devices like the Kindle Fire HD and the iPad were much more crowded than the displays of Windows 8 devices arrayed around a much bigger section of the store. Hunched over a Windows 8 laptop was Jeff Lindstrom, a resource specialist at a YMCA in Seattle, who said he needed to buy a computer that day for a youth program. He didn’t care for the design of Windows 8 himself, though, and said he had no plans to replace his own six-year-old laptop. “I’m not impressed,” Lindstrom said. “It’s such a different direction than what I’m used to.”

Rico says he can, in good taste, only say "tee hee"... (Though he will admit, reluctantly, that the television ads for the Surface are cool, but he still wouldn't take one if you gave it to him, except to sell it to some unsuspecting Windows user.)

The Stedelijk

Michael Kimmelman has an article in The New York Times about a new museum:

Offhand I can’t recall seeing a more ridiculous looking building than the new Stedelijk Museum, which recently opened in Amsterdam. Shaped like a bathtub, of all things, it arrives years behind schedule at the tail end of the money-fueled, headline-hungry, erratically ingenious era of indulgent museum design that began to peter out with the global economy. Compared with no-frills, cost-effective, almost penitential, post-meltdown designs like Herzog & de Meuron’s stylish Parrish Art Museum in the Hamptons, it’s a throwback.
The bathtub is above the ground floor of the new Stedelijk Museum. The lead architect says the tub is a technological novelty that gives a nod to the old Stedelijk’s white rooms.On a crowded weekend the narrow, cluttered, glassed-in lobby, roughly where the tub’s drain would be, was badly clogged. The galleries beyond flowed seamlessly into the museum’s old building. The collection looked great.
But entering an oversize plumbing fixture to commune with classic modern art is like hearing Bach played by a man wearing a clown suit.
Why a tub? That’s the $170 million (well over budget) question. Benthem Crouwel, the Amsterdam firm that designed it, hasn’t explained. At 130,000 square feet, the new Stedelijk (pronounced STEH-duh-lick) gloms onto the rear of the old one, a beloved red-and-white-striped, late-nineteenth-century Neo-Renaissance brick pile by Adriaan Willem Weissman. The new building flips the museum entrance, so that it now faces Museum Plaza, a scruffy greensward around which the Concertgebouw, the Rijksmuseum, and the Van Gogh Museum are scattered.
The ambition: update the old building and add exhibition space along with a restaurant and store on the ground floor facing the plaza. There the new Stedelijk, its jutting roof acting as an enormous canopy, is intended to activate the plaza’s northwest corner. All logical-sounding enough. But what transpired seems another case of civic icon-envy.
The old Stedelijk pioneered the collecting of modern art and design in postwar Europe. Its white-box interior was widely imitated. The place became a people’s palace for contemporary culture. A wing was added during the 1950s to promote local and experimental art, and to be a host for happenings and cultural protests. It was a very Dutch sort of democratic gesture.
I loved the old Stedelijk when I started visiting it, twenty-odd years ago. Its grand staircase, creaky herringbone floors, laid-back vibe and modish art mixed quaint and cool. But by then museums like the Pompidou in Paris were already overshadowing it. To get its mojo back the Stedelijk enlisted Robert Venturi, then Álvaro Siza; both of their plans proved unworkable. The project stalled. The Guggenheim opened in Bilbao, Spain, and the Tate Modern in London.
Benthem Crouwel’s gonzo design suggests a kind of desperation in Amsterdam’s reaction to Bilbao. That said, this city has been suffering through a decade or more of disruptive and costly infrastructural and other construction, much of it unfinished and shortsighted. People here have been angry and frustrated. So the completion of the new Stedelijk, not long after the arrival of a spectacular new film institute, the Eye, designed by the Austrian architects Delugan Meissl, was greeted generously. The feeling was relief, a reaction notable for a capital previously unaccustomed to new architecture that declines to blend in.
This is fine, even admirable, but it doesn’t mean the bathtub is too. Mels Crouwel, the lead architect for the Stedelijk, was a government architect for years. His firm is normally reliable, with an industrial bent. He promoted the tub as a technological novelty, its aerodynamic exterior made of a reinforced synthetic fiber coated in white airplane paint to give the museum a shiny, enameled finish and to nod to the old Stedelijk’s white rooms, which still fails to explain the plumbing metaphor.
The bathtub floats above the glassed-in ground floor. A few sealed porthole windows, stylish but stingy and soon to look dated, provide glimpses from inside the tub onto the lobby and street. A double-height escalator threads via an enclosed tube from tub to basement, a curious locale for galleries considering the cost and trouble of building below ground in the Netherlands, never mind the feng shui of bunkers for art.
That the new ground-floor and upstairs galleries flow imperceptibly into the old Stedelijk’s rooms goes a long way toward making up for any lapses. So, of course, does the century-spanning collection of art and design, although I’m sorry the grand old staircase now feels like a dead end when you descend it; and ditching the herringbone parquet for generic pale planks— to cede the floor to the art, I would imagine— is a scandal.
Museum Plaza isn’t the Washington Mall or Museum Island in Berlin. It has long been a public afterthought, a monument to bad planning. The city’s main park is only three blocks away. That’s where everybody hangs out. Protesters rallied at Museum Plaza against cruise missiles during the Reagan presidency. At one time a highway was run through the middle of it. A parking garage and supermarket have been carved out of it.
A horrific addition to the Van Gogh Museum by Kisho Kurokawa, a Japanese architect, forced on Amsterdam by Japanese patrons of the museum, added a major eyesore and wreaked havoc on that part of the plaza. Sven-Ingvar Andersson, a landscape architect, tried to clean the site up some years ago, but with prissy benches, an out-of-scale fountain, and a graceless grassy lip or “dog ear”— “donkey’s ear” is the Dutch phrase— to shelter the supermarket.
Now the new Stedelijk faces the blank wall of the lip. Even if the city someday comes to its senses, moves the idiotic supermarket, and undoes the donkey’s ear, the damage will be hard to fix. Benthem Crouwel, presumably to preserve the tub’s sleek profile, has shunted the museum’s mechanicals into a hulking black tower beside the lip, in effect cutting the museum off from the plaza and making the new Stedelijk’s forecourt with its cantilevered roof look, as Tracy Metz, the architecture critic here put it to me the other day, like the loading dock for the supermarket.
The truth is, the Bilbao effect is largely a myth. Frank Gehry’s museum alone didn’t turn around that city. It capped decades of civic renewal. Flashy, even brilliant buildings rarely rejuvenate neighborhoods or guarantee crowds and cash just by virtue of their design, any more than restoring disused rail tracks guarantees the High Line.
Sadly, museums, like cities, have squandered fortunes praying to this false idol. They still do.

Rico says he may see it when he and his father visit his friend Rob in the fall.

Fire 'em all

Connie Cass has an Associated Press article about the 'cliff':

Efforts to save the nation from going over a year-end "fiscal cliff" were in disarray as lawmakers fled the Capitol for their Christmas break. "God only knows" how a deal can be reached now, House Speaker John Boehner declared.
President Barack Obama, on his way out of town himself, insisted a bargain could still be struck before Dec. 31. "Call me a hopeless optimist," he said.
A look at why it's so hard for Republicans and Democrats to compromise on urgent matters of taxes and spending, and what happens if they fail to meet their deadline:
Partly by fate, partly by design, some scary fiscal forces come together at the start of 2013 unless Congress and Obama act to stop them. They include:
- Some $536 billion in tax increases, touching nearly all Americans, because various federal tax cuts and breaks expire at year's end.
- About $110 billion in spending cuts divided equally between the military and most other federal departments. That's about 8 percent of their annual budgets, 9 percent for the Pentagon.
Hitting the national economy with that double whammy of tax increases and spending cuts is what's called going over the "fiscal cliff." If allowed to unfold over 2013, it would lead to recession, a big jump in unemployment and financial market turmoil, economists predict.
If New Year's Day arrives without a deal, the nation shouldn't plunge onto the shoals of recession immediately. There still might be time to engineer a soft landing.
So long as lawmakers and the president appear to be working toward agreement, the tax hikes and spending cuts could mostly be held at bay for a few weeks. Then they could be retroactively repealed once a deal was reached.
The big wild card is the stock market and the nation's financial confidence: Would traders start to panic if Washington appeared unable to reach accord? Would worried consumers and businesses sharply reduce their spending? In what could be a preview, stock prices around the world dropped Friday after House Republican leaders' plan for addressing the fiscal cliff collapsed.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned lawmakers that the economy is already suffering from the uncertainty and they shouldn't risk making it worse by blowing past their deadline.
If negotiations between Obama and Congress collapse completely, 2013 looks like a rocky year. Taxes would jump $2,400 on average for families with incomes of $50,000 to $75,000, according to a study by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. Because consumers would get less of their paychecks to spend, businesses and jobs would suffer.
At the same time, Americans would feel cuts in government services; some federal workers would be furloughed or laid off, and companies would lose government business. The nation would lose up to 3.4 million jobs, the Congressional Budget Office predicts.
"The consequences of that would be felt by everybody," Bernanke says.
Much of the disagreement surrounds the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts, and whether those rates should be allowed to rise for the nation's wealthiest taxpayers. Both political parties say they want to protect the middle-class from tax increases.
Several tax breaks begun in 2009 to stimulate the economy by aiding low- and middle-income families are also set to expire Jan. 1. The alternative minimum tax would expand to catch 28 million more taxpayers, with an average increase of $3,700 a year. Taxes on investments would rise, too. More deaths would be covered by the federal estate tax, and the rate climbs from 35 percent to 55 percent. Some corporate tax breaks would end.
The temporary Social Security payroll tax cut also is due to expire. That tax break for most Americans seems likely to end even if a fiscal cliff deal is reached, now that Obama has backed down from his call to prolong it as an economic stimulus.
If the nation goes over the fiscal cliff, budget cuts of 8 or 9 percent would hit most of the federal government, touching all sorts of things from agriculture to law enforcement and the military to weather forecasting. A few areas, such as Social Security benefits, Veterans Affairs and some programs for the poor, are exempt.
All sorts of stuff could get wrapped up in the fiscal cliff deal-making. A sampling:
- Some 2 million jobless Americans may lose their federal unemployment aid. Obama wants to continue the benefits extension as part of the deal; Republicans say it's too costly.
- Social Security recipients might see their checks grow more slowly. As part of a possible deal, Obama and Republican leaders want to change the way cost-of-living adjustments are calculated, which would mean smaller checks over the years for retirees who get Social Security, veterans' benefits or government pensions.
- The price of milk could double. If Congress doesn't provide a fix for expiring dairy price supports before Jan. 1, milk-drinking families could feel the pinch. One scenario is to attach a farm bill extension to the fiscal cliff legislation , if a compromise is reached in time.
- Millions of taxpayers who want to file their 2012 returns before mid-March will be held up while they wait to see if Congress comes through with a deal to stop the alternative minimum tax from hitting more people.
In theory, Congress and Obama could just say no to the fiscal cliff, by extending all the tax cuts and overturning the automatic spending reductions in current law. But both Republicans and Democrats agree it's time to take steps to put the nation on a path away from a future of crippling debt.
Indeed, the automatic spending cuts set for January were created as a last-ditch effort to force Congress to deal with the debt problem.
If Washington bypassed the fiscal cliff, the next crisis would be just around the corner, in late February or early March, when the government reaches a $16.4 trillion ceiling on the amount of money it can borrow.
Boehner says Republicans won't go along with raising the limit on government borrowing unless the increase is matched by spending cuts to help attack the long-term debt problem. Failing to raise the debt ceiling could lead to a first-ever U.S. default that would roil the financial markets and shake worldwide confidence in the United States.
To avoid that scenario, Obama and Boehner are trying to wrap a debt limit agreement into the fiscal cliff negotiations.
They're at loggerheads over some big questions.
Obama says any deal must include higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Many House Republicans oppose raising anyone's tax rates. Boehner tried to get the House to vote for higher taxes only on incomes above $1 million but dropped the effort when it became clear he didn't have the votes.
Republicans also insist on deeper spending cuts than Democrats want to make. And they want to bring the nation's long-term debt under control by significantly curtailing the growth of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security , changes that many Democrats oppose.
Obama, meanwhile, wants more temporary economic "stimulus" spending to help speed up a sluggish recovery. Republicans say the nation can't afford it.
Seems like they could just make nice, shake hands and split their differences, right?
But there's a reason neither side wants to give ground. The two parties represent a divided and inconsistent America. True, Obama just won re-election. But voters also chose a Republican majority in the House.
Republican and Democrats alike say they are doing what the voters back home want.
Neither side has a clear advantage in public opinion. In an Associated Press-GfK poll, 43 percent said they trust the Democrats more to manage the federal budget deficit and 40 percent preferred the Republicans. There's a similar split on who's more trusted with taxes.
About half of Americans support higher taxes for the wealthy, the poll says, and about 10 percent want tax increases all around. Still, almost half say cutting government services, not raising taxes, should be the main focus of lawmakers as they try to balance the budget.
When asked about specific budget cuts being discussed in Washington, few Americans express support for them.
Time for deal-making is short, thanks to the holiday and congressional calendars. Some key dates for averting the fiscal cliff:
- Lawmakers aren't expected to return to the Capitol until after Christmas, leaving less than a week to vote on a compromise before year's end.
- Obama and his family also were leaving town for a Christmas vacation in Hawaii. The president said because the fiscal cliff was still unresolved, he would return to Washington next week.
- If lawmakers reach Dec. 31 without a deal, some economists worry that the financial markets might swoon.
- The current Congress is in session only through noon Eastern time on Jan. 3. After that, a newly elected Congress with 13 new senators and 82 new House members would inherit the problem.

Rico says we should vote out everyone in Congress in the next election...

Ah, jump already...

The Associated Press has the story:

The Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission says it will immediately step up bridge patrols and take other steps to help prevent suicide attempts during the winter holiday period. The move comes after two people apparently jumped to their deaths from the New Hope-Lambertville (Route 202) Toll Bridge in recent weeks.
Arnold Conoline Jr., the commission's acting executive director, said the increased security will remain in effect through at least New Year's Day. The agency also is considering some long-term measures that might help prevent suicides, Conoline said, but more time and evaluation are needed before such decisions can be made.
The commission has asked state police from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and local law enforcement agencies to immediately step up their patrols on its bridges. The commission contracts with the two state agencies to provide security and respond to incidents at its crossing and transportation facilities.
Commission workers will be on heightened alert for pedestrians who appear to be acting strangely. And officials will use variable-message signs on the two approaches to the New Hope-Lambertville Toll Bridge to provide phone numbers for crisis intervention service hotlines in Bucks County and Hunterdon County in New Jersey.
The New Hope-based bridge commission operates seven toll bridges and thirteen free bridges, two of which are pedestrian-only spans.

Rico says if someone wants to kill themselves bad enough, they'll figure out a way...

Maple syrup theft

Josh Sanburn has a Time article that asks the cogent question: why does Canada have a maple syrup cartel?

Over a one-year period during 2011 and 2012, some six million gallons of maple syrup— about eighteen million dollars worth— were stolen from the “strategic maple syrup reserve” controlled by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (FPAQ). The cartel’s syrup was taken from a St.-Louis-de-Blandford warehouse, which some clever thieves had access to because they just so happened to be renting another section of the same storage facility. Last week, three men were arrested in connection with the heist.
It may seem bizarre that Canada has a maple-syrup cartel at all. But think of it this way: Quebec, which produces about 77% of the world’s maple syrup, is the Saudi Arabia of the sweet, sticky stuff, and the FPAQ is its OPEC. The stated goal of the cartel, in this case, is keeping prices relatively stable.
The problem with maple syrup is that the natural supply of it varies dramatically from year to year. “It’s highly dependent on the weather,” explains Pascal Thériault, an agricultural economist at McGill University in Montreal.
“The maple trees need optimal climate conditions— cold nights, temperate days— to produce the right sap,” explained a recent article in the Washington Post. “That doesn’t always happen, and production varies sharply each spring.” Demand is also irregular, added the Post: “During recessions, many families cut way back on syrup purchases, since it’s not exactly essential.”
So, since 1989, the FPAQ has modulated supply to keep prices stable, setting aside maple syrup in good years and releasing it in bad ones. Thériault says relatively little maple syrup was produced from 2005 through 2008. But from 2009 through 2012, the syrup flowed fast and sweet, filling warehouse with reserves and setting the stage for the maple-syrup heist.
Does the maple-syrup reserve keep prices artificially high? In good years, yes. A supply-management system like the one in Quebec will keep prices stable no matter what supply is like. But when Canada isn’t producing as much maple syrup, the cartel kept prices lower than would otherwise be the case.
The system seems to have helped producers, who would no doubt be the ones most heavily affected without the reserve, says Thériault. It’s a different story for consumers, who don’t get to take advantage of years of syrup surplus. Considering the stranglehold Quebec has on the global market, that’s not likely to change anytime soon.

Rico says he'll buy domestic syrup, thank you very much, and fuck the Canucks...

In the Land of Guns

Rico says he's an equal-opportunity curmudgeon, and his sainted mother likes Michael Moore's politics, even if Rico doesn't: 

Friends, After watching the deranged, delusional National Rifle Association press conference recently, it was clear that the Mayan prophecy had come true. Except the only world that was ending was the NRA's. Their bullying power to set gun policy in this country is over. The nation is repulsed by the massacre in Connecticut, and the signs are everywhere: a basketball coach at a post-game press conference; the Republican Joe Scarborough; a pawn shop owner in Florida; a gun buy-back program in New Jersey; a singing contest show on television, and the conservative gun-owning judge who sentenced Jared Loughner. So here's my little bit of holiday cheer for you: these gun massacres are not going to end any time soon. I'm sorry to say this. But deep down we both know it's true. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep pushing forward; after all, the momentum is on our side. I know all of us– including me– would love to see the President and Congress enact stronger gun laws. We need a ban on automatic and semiautomatic weapons and magazine clips that hold more than seven bullets. We need better background checks and more mental health services. We need to regulate the ammo, too. But, friends, I would like to propose that while all of the above will certainly reduce gun deaths (ask Mayor Bloomberg; it is virtually impossible to buy a handgun in New York City and the result is the number of murders per year has gone from twenty-two hundred to under four hundred), it won't really bring about an end to these mass slayings and it will not address the core problem we have. Connecticut had one of the strongest gun laws in the country. That did nothing to prevent the murders of twenty small children on 14 December. In fact, let's be clear about Newtown: the killer had no criminal record so he would never have shown up on a background check. All of the guns he used were legally purchased. None fit the legal description of an "assault" weapon. The killer seemed to have mental problems and his mother had him seek help, but that was worthless. As for security measures, the Sandy Hook school was locked down and buttoned up before the killer showed up that morning. Drills had been held for just such an incident. A lot of good that did. And here's the dirty little fact none of us liberals want to discuss: the killer only ceased his slaughter when he saw that cops were swarming onto the school grounds– i.e, the men with the guns. When he saw the guns a-coming, he stopped the bloodshed and killed himself. Guns on police officers prevented another twenty or forty or a hundred deaths from happening. Guns sometimes work. (Then again, there was an armed deputy sheriff at Columbine High School the day of that massacre and he couldn't/didn't stop it.) I am sorry to offer this reality check on our much-needed march toward a bunch of well-intended, necessary– but ultimately, mostly cosmetic– changes to our gun laws. The sad facts are these: other countries that have guns (like Canada, which has seven million guns– mostly hunting guns– in their twelve million households) have a low murder rate. Kids in Japan watch the same violent movies and kids in Australia play the same violent video games (Grand Theft Auto was created by a British company; the UK had 58 gun murders last year in a nation of 63 million people). They simply don't kill each other at the rate that we do. Why is that? That is the question we should be exploring while we are banning and restricting guns: Who are we? I'd like to try to answer that question. We are a country whose leaders officially sanction and carry out acts of violence as a means to often an immoral end. We invade countries who didn't attack us. We're currently using drones in a half-dozen countries, often killing civilians. This probably shouldn't come as a surprise to us, as we are a nation founded on genocide and built on the backs of slaves. We slaughtered six hundred thousand of each other in a civil war. We "tamed the Wild West with a six-shooter", and we rape and beat and kill our women without mercy and at a staggering rate: every three hours a women is murdered in the US (half the time by an ex or a current); every three minutes a woman is raped in the US; and every fifteen seconds a woman is beaten in the US. We belong to an illustrious group of nations that still have the death penalty: North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China, and Iran. We think nothing of letting tens of thousands of our own citizens die each year because they are uninsured and thus don't see a doctor until it's too late. Why do we do this? One theory is simply "because we can". There is a level of arrogance in the otherwise-friendly American spirit, conning ourselves into believing there's something exceptional about us that separates us from all those "other" countries (there are indeed many good things about us; the same could also be said of Belgium, New Zealand, France, Germany, etc.). We think we're number one in everything, when the truth is our students are seventeenth in science and twenty-fifth in math, and we're thirty-fifth in life expectancy. We believe we have the greatest democracy but we have the lowest voting turnout of any western democracy. We're biggest and the bestest at everything and we demand and take what we want. And sometimes we have to be violent motherfuckers to get it. But if one of us goes off-message and shows the utterly psychotic nature and brutal results of violence in a Newtown or an Aurora or a Virginia Tech, then we get all "sad" and "our hearts go out to the families" and presidents promise to take "meaningful action". Well, maybe this President means it this time. He'd better. An angry mob of millions is not going to let this drop. While we are discussing and demanding what to do, may I respectfully ask that we stop and take a look at what I believe are the three extenuating factors that may answer the question of why we Americans have more violence than most anyone else: 1. Poverty. If there's one thing that separates us from the rest of the developed world, it's this. Fifty million of our people live in poverty. One in five Americans goes hungry at some point during the year. The majority of those who aren't poor are living from paycheck to paycheck. There's no doubt this creates more crime. Middle class jobs prevent crime and violence. (If you don't believe that, ask yourself this: if your neighbor has a job and is making fifty thousand dollars a year, what are the chances he's going to break into your home, shoot you and take your television? Nil.) 2. Fear and racism. We're an awfully fearful country considering that, unlike most nations, we've never been invaded. (No, the War of 1812 wasn't an invasion. We started it.) Why on earth would we need three hundred million guns in our homes? I get why the Russians might be a little spooked (over twenty million of them died in World War Two). But what's our excuse? Worried that the Indians from the casino may go on the warpath? Concerned that the Canadians seem to be amassing too many Tim Horton's donut shops on both sides of the border? No. It's because too many white people are afraid of black people. Period. The vast majority of the guns in the US are sold to white people who live in the suburbs or the country. When we fantasize about being mugged or home invaded, what's the image of the perpetrator in our heads? Is it the freckled-face kid from down the street, or is it someone who, if not black, is at least poor? I think it would be worth it to a) do our best to eradicate poverty and re-create the middle class we used to have, and b) stop promoting the image of the black man as the boogeyman out to hurt you. Calm down, white people, and put away your guns. 3. The 'Me' Society. I think it's the every-man-for-himself ethos of this country that has put us in this mess and I believe it's been our undoing. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! You're not my problem! This is mine! Clearly, we are no longer our brother's and sister's keeper. You get sick and can't afford the operation? Not my problem. The bank has foreclosed on your home? Not my problem. Can't afford to go to college? Not my problem. And yet, it all sooner or later becomes our problem, doesn't it? Take away too many safety nets and everyone starts to feel the impact. Do you want to live in that kind of society, one where you will then have a legitimate reason to be in fear? I don't. I'm not saying it's perfect anywhere else, but I have noticed in my travels that other civilized countries see a national benefit to taking care of each other. Free medical care, free or low-cost college, mental health help. And, I wonder, why can't we do that? I think it's because, in many other countries, people see each other not as separate and alone but rather together, on the path of life, with each person existing as an integral part of the whole. And you help them when they're in need, not punish them because they've had some misfortune or bad break. I have to believe one of the reasons gun murders in other countries are so rare is because there's less of the lone-wolf mentality amongst their citizens. Most are raised with a sense of connection, if not outright solidarity. And that makes it harder to kill one another. Well, there's some food for thought as we head home for the holidays. Don't forget to say hi to your conservative brother-in-law for me. Even he will tell you that, if you can't nail a deer in three shots– and claim you need a clip of thirty rounds– you're not a hunter my friend, and you have no business owning a gun.

History for the day

On 24 December 1992, President Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Sodom and Gomorrah, sort-of

Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas, by R. A. Lafferty

Manuel should not have been employed as a census taker. He wasn't qualified. He couldn't read a map. He didn't know what a map was. He only grinned when they told him that North was at the top. He knew better. But he did write a nice round hand, like a boy's hand. He knew Spanish, and enough English. For the sector that was assigned to him he would not need a map. He knew it better than anyone else, certainly better than any mapmaker. Besides, he was poor and needed the money.
They instructed him and sent him out. Or they thought that they had instructed him. They couldn't be sure.
"Count everyone? All right. Fill in everyone? I need more papers."
"We will give you more if you need more. But there aren't so many in your sector."
"Lots of them. Lobos, tejones, zorros, even people."
"Only the people, Manuel! Do not take the animals. How would you write up the animals They have no names."
"Oh, yes. All have names. Might as well take them all."
"Only people, Manuel."
"Mulos?"
"No."
"Conejos?"
"No, Manuel, no. Only the people."
"No trouble. Might as well take them all."
"Only people (God give me strength!) only people, Manuel."
"How about little people?"
"Children, yes. That has been explained to you."
"Little people. Not children, little people."
"If they are people, take them."
"How big they have to be?"
"It doesn't make any difference how big they are. If they are people, take them." That is where the damage was done. The official had given a snap judgement, and it led to disaster. It was not his fault. The instructions are not clear. Nowhere in all the verbiage does it say how big they have to be to be counted as people.
Manuel took Mula and went to work. His sector was the Santa Magdalena, a scrap of bald-headed and desolate mountains, steep but not high, and so torrid in the afternoons that it was said that the old lava sometimes began to writhe and flow again from the sun's heat alone.
In the center valley there were five thousand acres of slag and vitrified rock from some forgotten old blast that had melted the hills and destroyed their mantle, reducing all to a terrible flatness. This was called Sodom. It was strewn with low-lying ghosts as of people and objects, formed when the granite bubbled like water.
Away from the dead center the ravines were body-deep in chaparral, and the hillsides stood gray-green with old cactus. The stunted trees were lower than the giant bushes and yucca.
Manuel went with Mula, a round easy man and a sparse gaunt mule. Mula was a mule, but there were other inhabitants of the Santa Magdalena of a genus less certain.
Yet even about Mula there was an oddity in her ancestry. Her paternal grandfather had been a goat. Manuel once told Mr. Marshal about this, but Mr. Marshal had not accepted it. "She is a mule. Therefore, her father was a jack. Therefore his father was also a jack, a donkey. It could not be any other way."
Manuel often wondered about that, for he had raised the whole strain of animals, and he remembered who had been with whom. "A donkey! A jack! Two feet tall and with a beard and horns. I always thought that he was a goat."
Manuel and Mula stopped at noon on Lost Soul Creek. There would be no travel in the hot afternoon. But Manuel had a job to do, and he did it. He took the forms from one of the packs that he had unslung from Mula, and counted out nine of them. He wrote down all the data on nine people. He knew all there was to know about them, their nativities and their antecedents. He knew that there were only nine regular people in the nine hundred square miles of the Santa Magdalena.
But he was systematic, so he checked the list over again and again. There seemed to be somebody missing. Oh, yes, himself. He got another form and filled out all the data on himself.
Now, in one way of looking at it, his part in the census was finished. If only he had looked at it that way, he would have saved worry and trouble for everyone, and also ten thousand lives. But the instructions they had given him were ambiguous, for all that they had tried to make them clear.
So very early the next morning he rose and cooked beans, and said, "Might as well take them all."
He called Mula from the thorn patch where she was grazing, gave her salt, and loaded her again. Then they went to take the rest of the census, but in fear. There was a clear duty to get the job done, but there was also a dread of it that his superiors did not understand. There was reason also why Mula was loaded so she could hardly walk with packs of census forms.
Manuel prayed out loud as they climbed the purgatorial scarp above Lost Souls Creek: "ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora" the very gulches stood angry and stark in the early morning "y en la hora de neustra muerte"
Three days later an incredible dwarf staggered into the outskirts of High Plains, Texas, followed by a dying wolf-sized animal that did not look like a wolf. A lady called the police to save the pair from rock-throwing kids who might have killed them, and the two as yet unclassified things were taken to the station house.
The dwarf was three feet high, a skeleton stretched over with brown-burnt leather. The other was an un-canine looking dog-sized beast, so full of burrs and thorns that it might have been a porcupine. It was a nightmare replica of a shrunken mule. The midget was mad. The animal had more presence of mind: she lay down quietly and died, which was the best she could do, considering the state that she was in.
"Who is census chief now?" asked the mad midget. "Is Mr. Marshal's boy the census chief?"
"Mr. Marshal is, yes. Who are you? How do you know Marshal? And what is that which you are pulling out of your pants, if they are pants?"
"Census list. Names of everybody in the Santa Magdalena. I had to steal it."
"It looks like microfilm, the writing is so small. And the roll goes on and on. There must be a million names here."
"Little bit more, little bit more. I get two bits a name."
They got Marshal there. He was very busy, but he came. He had been given a deadline by the mayor and the citizen's group. He had to produce a population of ten thousand people for High Plains, Texas; and this was difficult, for there weren't that many people in the town. He had been working hard on it, though; but he came when the police called him.
"You Marshal's little boy? You look just like your father," said the midget.
"That voice, I should know that voice even if it's cracked to pieces. That has to be Manuel's voice."
"Sure, I'm Manuel. Just like I left, thirty-five years ago."
"You can't be Manuel, shrunk three feet and two hundred pounds, and aged a million."
"You look here at my census slip. It says I'm Manuel. And here are nine more of the regular people, and one million of the little people. I couldn't get them on the right forms, though. I had to steal their list."
"You can't be Manuel," said Marshal.
"He can't be Manuel," said the big policemen and the little policeman.
"Maybe not, then," the dwarf conceded. "I thought I was, but I wasn't sure. Who am I then? Let's look at the other papers and see which one I am."
"No, you can't be any of them either, Manuel. And you surely can't be Manuel."
"Give him a name anyhow and get him counted. We got to get to that ten thousand mark."
"Tell us what happened, Manuel, if you are, which you aren't. But tell us."
"After I counted the regular people I went to count the little people. I took a spade and spaded off the top of their town to get in. But they put an encanto on me, and made me and Mula run treadmill for thirty-five years."
"Where was this?"
"At the little people town. Nuevo Danae. But after thirty-five years the encanto wore off and Mula and I stole the list of names and ran away."
"But where did you really get this list of so many names written so small?"
"Suffering saddle sores, Marshal, don't ask the little bug so many questions. You got a million names in your hand. Certify them! Send them in! There's enough of us here right now. We declare that place annexed forthwith. This will make High Plains the biggest town in the whole state of Texas."
So Marshal certified them and sent them into Washington. This gave High Plains the largest percentage increase of any city in the nation, but it was challenged. There were some soreheads in Houston who said that it wasn't possible. They said High Plains had nowhere near that many people and there must have been a miscount.
And in the days that the argument was going on, they cleaned up and fed Manuel, if it were he, and tried to get from him a cogent story.
"How do you know it was thirty-five years you were on the treadmill, Manuel?"
"Well, it seemed like thirty-five years."
"It could have only been about three days."
"Then how come I'm so old?"
"We don't know that, Manuel, we sure don't know that. How big were these people?"
"Who knows? A finger long, maybe two?"
"And what is their town?"
"It is an old prairie-dog town that they fixed up. You have to dig down with a spade to get to the streets."
"Maybe they were really all prairie dogs, Manuel. Maybe the heat got you and you only dreamed that they were little people."
"Prairie dogs can't write as good as on that list. Prairie dogs can't write hardly at all."
"That's true. The list is hard to explain. And such odd names on it too."
"Where is Mula? I don't see Mula since I came back."
"Mula just lay down and died, Manuel."
"Gave me the slip. Why didn't I think of that? Well, I'll do it too. I'm too worn out for anything else."
"Before you do, Manuel, just a couple of last questions."
"Make them real fast then. I'm on my way."
"Did you know these little people were there before?"
"Oh, sure. There a long time."
"Did anybody else ever see them?"
"Oh, sure. Everybody in the Santa Magdalena see them. Eight, nine people see them."
"And Manuel, how do we get to the place? Can you show us on a map?"
Manuel made a grimace, and died as quietly as Mula had done. He didn't understand those maps at all, and took the easy way out.
They buried him, not knowing for sure whether he was Manuel come back, or what he was. There wasn't much of him to bury.
It was the same night, very late and after he had been asleep, that Marshal was awakened by the ring of an authoritative voice. He was being harangued by a four-inch tall man on his bedside table, a man of dominating presence and acid voice: "Come out of that cot, you clown! Give me your name and station!"
"I'm Marshal, and I suspect that you are a late pig sandwich, or caused by one. I shouldn't eat so late."
"Say 'sir' when you reply to me. I am no pig sandwich and I do not commonly call on fools. Get on your feet, you clod."
And, wonderingly, Marshal did.
"I want the list that was stolen. Don't gape! Get it!"
"What list?"
"Don't stall, don't stutter. Get me our tax list that was stolen. It isn't words that I want from you."
"Listen, you cicada, I'll take you and..."
"You will not. You will notice that you are paralyzed from the neck down. I suspect that you were always so from there up. Where is the list?"
"Sent it to Washington."
"You bug-eyed behemoth! Do you realize what a trip that will be? You grandfather of inanities, it will be a pleasure to destroy you!"
"I don't know what you are, or if you are really. I don't believe that you even belong on the world."
"Not belong on the world! We own the world. We can show written title to the world. Can you?"
"I doubt it. Where did you get the title?"
"None of your business. I'd rather not say. Oh, well, we got it from a promoter of sorts. A con man, really. I'll have to admit that we were taken, but we were in a spot and needed a world. He said that the larger bifurcates were too stupid to be a nuisance. We should have known that the stupider a creature, the more of a nuisance it is."
"I had about decided the same thing about the smaller a creature. We may have to fumigate that old mountain mess."
"Oh, you can't harm us. We're too powerful. But we can obliterate you in an instant."
"Hah!"
"Say 'Hah, sir' when you address me. Do you know the place in the mountain that is called Sodom?"
"I know the place. It was caused by a large meteor."
"It was caused by one of these."
What he held up was the size of a grain of sand. Marshal could not see it in detail.
"There was another city of you bug-eyed beasts there," said the small martinet. "You wouldn't know about it. It's been been a few hundred years. We decided it was too close. Now I have decided you are too close."
"A thing that size couldn't crack a walnut."
"You floundering fop, it will blast this town flat!"
"What will happen to you?"
"Nothing. I don't even blink for things like that."
"How do you trigger it off."
"You gaping goof, I don't have time to explain that to you. I have to get to Washington."
It may be that Marshal did not believe himself quite awake. He certainly did not take the threat seriously enough. For the little man did trigger it off.
When the final count was in, High Plains did not have the highest percentage gain in population in the nation. Actually it showed the sharpest decline, from 7313 to nothing.
They were going to make a forest preserve out of the place, except that it has no trees worthy of the name. Now it is proposed to make it the Sodom and Gomorrah State Park from the two mysterious scenes of desolation there, just seven miles apart.
It is an interesting place, as wild a region as you will ever find, and is recommended for the man who has seen everything.