Many distinctions have been drawn between human beings and all other animals.
Human beings are the only animals who can use tools--nope.
Human beings are the only animals who cooperate to attain a goal--nope: chimps in a zoo in Belgium were filmed working as a team to lug a log, place it against the fence of their cage and then they scamper up and over the log and into the McDonald's next door.
But one thing which is close to mystical, that no other animal can do: Reading.
That little marks on a paper or screen can get into the minds of other human beings and a picture or a more ephemeral idea, math, engineering is one of the true wonders of the universe.
Mad Dog did not like reading in his pre reading days--reading was what seemed to put his parents into an opium den coma on weekends when Mad Dog, as a child wanted to be out exploring, running, playing ball. All his parents did was lie around or sit inertly in chairs with books.
But once Mad Dog learned to read, he, too, fell into that opium den coma--only after he had run himself around sufficiently to collapse into a chair-- and he, too, read.
And then he drifted off with Huckleberry Finn, Great Expectations and Little Women.
And now, still, reading turns out to be something transcendent.
But not all reading is equally valuable. Reading Donald Trump's Tweets is not the same experience as reading Steinbeck or the New Yorker.
Reading The New Yorker in his Hobbit home in small town New Hamsphire opens a world for Mad Dog. Without leaving his chair, he can travel around the country and around the globe.
This week's New Yorker (August 17) has two articles which Mad Dog finds magical:
Peter Hessler's account from China, where he was teaching at a Chinese university when the COVID pandemic prompted their shutdown. Then there is Dan Kaufman's "The Fall of Wisconsin" which seems in some ways even more exotic and distant than the tale from China.
The best thing about the China tale is the trove of vignettes of the students Hessler provides. From these, one can only appreciate the humanity of these people, who struggle to build their lives in a world which at once holds out promise, beauty, reward at the same time it clamps down on interaction between people, the free expression of discontent, individual yearning and hope.
Hessler teaches a class which might be described as journalism and he limits the enrollment, but one young woman manages to convince him to allow her in, which he finally agrees to do, and he discovers she is one of his best students who manages to get stories nobody else can gain access to, because she is so ostensibly harmless and unassertive. But Hessler forgets to fill out her forms, so she cannot get credit for the course. She shrugs this off and says she will finish the course and then take the course again the next semester for credit and Hessler remarks how very Chinese this is: she never recriminates him, but continues react to him as a respected and valuable superior, even when he has acted "like a moron."
Kaufman, on the other hand, tells a story which geographically is closer to home, in rural Wisconsin. In some ways, it is easier for a college educated person like Mad Dog, to relate to the students in China, who struggle to work their way through the requirements, to please professors and do assignments, on faith this will somehow, some day, help them find a place in the world and to advance.
Because Mad Dog spent so many years in school, it is easy to understand the students' mind set than it is to grasp the world view of the farmers in Wisconsin, who get up at 3 AM every morning to milk cows, who milk cows three times daily, whose fathers find the fates of their farms and families are controlled by forces in Washington, DC, where the size of herds, the price of milk, of soybeans and corn are determined.
The bleakness of lives when deep debt turns bad leads to understandable desperation and ultimately, for some, to suicide, as economic ruin turns to personal recrimination. You cannot run a farm with the expensive equipment, expensive animals and infrastructure without acquiring debt and when a man like Earl Butz comes out to Wisconsin and tells farmers, "Get big or get out," i.e., go into debt, get big herds and expensive machinery to milk those cows or sell your farm, you can understand the resentment.
Then you have federal government big shots telling farmers to plant fence post to fence post so America can sell soybeans and wheat to China and Europe, only to have those markets collapse in a trade war.
One would think you'd have a revolt.
But, strangely enough, some farmers shrug this off, and one says of Trump, "I don't agree with everything he says but he's the only President who has ever tackled the trade issue."
Another tells of being invited to a Trump rally, "I was sitting in the second row behind the President. It was unreal. I felt more inspired than I ever have in my life. I'm not a big patriotic, flag waving person, but I felt very patriotic going to that. My son, too. He's twenty, and he kept saying, 'Oh, my God, Dad. Oh, my God.'"
Kaufman describes how voting in several key counties in Wisconsin swing the state and you realize, if you are sitting in New Hampshire, that things happening far away may swing the election no matter what you do.
It is essential for rod to have a reel and line and a steady hand on those parts, to provide a base, but little movements in the tip of the rod, in the line as it flies out across the water make the difference about whether or not that fish gets caught, in the end.
Human beings are the only animals who can use tools--nope.
Human beings are the only animals who cooperate to attain a goal--nope: chimps in a zoo in Belgium were filmed working as a team to lug a log, place it against the fence of their cage and then they scamper up and over the log and into the McDonald's next door.
But one thing which is close to mystical, that no other animal can do: Reading.
That little marks on a paper or screen can get into the minds of other human beings and a picture or a more ephemeral idea, math, engineering is one of the true wonders of the universe.
Mad Dog did not like reading in his pre reading days--reading was what seemed to put his parents into an opium den coma on weekends when Mad Dog, as a child wanted to be out exploring, running, playing ball. All his parents did was lie around or sit inertly in chairs with books.
But once Mad Dog learned to read, he, too, fell into that opium den coma--only after he had run himself around sufficiently to collapse into a chair-- and he, too, read.
And then he drifted off with Huckleberry Finn, Great Expectations and Little Women.
And now, still, reading turns out to be something transcendent.
But not all reading is equally valuable. Reading Donald Trump's Tweets is not the same experience as reading Steinbeck or the New Yorker.
Reading The New Yorker in his Hobbit home in small town New Hamsphire opens a world for Mad Dog. Without leaving his chair, he can travel around the country and around the globe.
This week's New Yorker (August 17) has two articles which Mad Dog finds magical:
Peter Hessler's account from China, where he was teaching at a Chinese university when the COVID pandemic prompted their shutdown. Then there is Dan Kaufman's "The Fall of Wisconsin" which seems in some ways even more exotic and distant than the tale from China.
The best thing about the China tale is the trove of vignettes of the students Hessler provides. From these, one can only appreciate the humanity of these people, who struggle to build their lives in a world which at once holds out promise, beauty, reward at the same time it clamps down on interaction between people, the free expression of discontent, individual yearning and hope.
Hessler teaches a class which might be described as journalism and he limits the enrollment, but one young woman manages to convince him to allow her in, which he finally agrees to do, and he discovers she is one of his best students who manages to get stories nobody else can gain access to, because she is so ostensibly harmless and unassertive. But Hessler forgets to fill out her forms, so she cannot get credit for the course. She shrugs this off and says she will finish the course and then take the course again the next semester for credit and Hessler remarks how very Chinese this is: she never recriminates him, but continues react to him as a respected and valuable superior, even when he has acted "like a moron."
Kaufman, on the other hand, tells a story which geographically is closer to home, in rural Wisconsin. In some ways, it is easier for a college educated person like Mad Dog, to relate to the students in China, who struggle to work their way through the requirements, to please professors and do assignments, on faith this will somehow, some day, help them find a place in the world and to advance.
Because Mad Dog spent so many years in school, it is easy to understand the students' mind set than it is to grasp the world view of the farmers in Wisconsin, who get up at 3 AM every morning to milk cows, who milk cows three times daily, whose fathers find the fates of their farms and families are controlled by forces in Washington, DC, where the size of herds, the price of milk, of soybeans and corn are determined.
The bleakness of lives when deep debt turns bad leads to understandable desperation and ultimately, for some, to suicide, as economic ruin turns to personal recrimination. You cannot run a farm with the expensive equipment, expensive animals and infrastructure without acquiring debt and when a man like Earl Butz comes out to Wisconsin and tells farmers, "Get big or get out," i.e., go into debt, get big herds and expensive machinery to milk those cows or sell your farm, you can understand the resentment.
Then you have federal government big shots telling farmers to plant fence post to fence post so America can sell soybeans and wheat to China and Europe, only to have those markets collapse in a trade war.
One would think you'd have a revolt.
But, strangely enough, some farmers shrug this off, and one says of Trump, "I don't agree with everything he says but he's the only President who has ever tackled the trade issue."
Another tells of being invited to a Trump rally, "I was sitting in the second row behind the President. It was unreal. I felt more inspired than I ever have in my life. I'm not a big patriotic, flag waving person, but I felt very patriotic going to that. My son, too. He's twenty, and he kept saying, 'Oh, my God, Dad. Oh, my God.'"
Kaufman describes how voting in several key counties in Wisconsin swing the state and you realize, if you are sitting in New Hampshire, that things happening far away may swing the election no matter what you do.
It is essential for rod to have a reel and line and a steady hand on those parts, to provide a base, but little movements in the tip of the rod, in the line as it flies out across the water make the difference about whether or not that fish gets caught, in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment