Running for Your Life: The Power Broker Vol. II

It’s a joke really, there is no Vol. II.

“The Power Broker” by Robert Caro could use one, though.

Few books in my life have impressed me in the way of this one. The life of New York State power broker Robert Moses laid bare.

It’s dense. At 1,162 pages in paperback, I’ve been reading it since the summer.

I’m an avid, even passionate reader, and I didn’t skim any of these pages. Indeed, the richness of the prose, the depth of the reporting, the insight. Fallen out of love with journalism, with journalists? Read “The Power Broker.”

And here’s the best part. As much as you learn about Robert Moses, there is so much more to say. Thus the idea of a second volume.

There are more files to dig through that promise a whole other level of meaning surrounding how and why – and more important, for whose benefit – decisions were arrived at during the decades that Robert Moses shaped the urban environment in New York State, from Niagara to Massena to the Bronx and Staten Island.

Publishers will tell you, of course, that committing to a book the size of The Power Broker (Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, anyone?) is a fool’s errand.

Well, this fool want’s more of it. With material this rich, the mining should go on, and with it, hopefully a restoration of what it means to be a journalist. How noble the calling can be.

Next: Running for Your Life: Urban Forestry is Not An Oxymoron

Running for Your Life: Longing for “Democracy”

Everything seems consumed by the nondemocratic imperative of national security.

Case in point: The failure of the “free” press to be allowed to get to the bottom of how “official” was the Saudi sanction of the “events” of 9/11.

It’s why the impeachment theater will never crack the “national security” hold on evidence that would prove the crimes and misdemeanors case against the president.

Nixon just resigned, if Trump doesn’t do so (there’s a rich one!), they will never get to the heart of the darkness. Like the 9/11 scenario, the info is just too incendiary; there are no models for how this would end so better keep a lid on the inculpatory evidence.  

To think the true source of this blackness will ever by exposed is a child’s dream. If so, like Peter Pan, I never going to grow up.

Next: Running for Your Life: The Power Broker Vol. II

Running for Your Life: Resolutions?

I might not be right about this, but New Year's resolutions seem passe.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that "news" has become so soft that every day is "Resolution" Day.

As in, "list" journalism never tires in turning you on to the next cool thing, the best way to look, the cruelest way to put down your rivals.

Meaning every day is Resolution Day -- we are driven by media channels to make the right choice, have the right opinions, make the right friends.

As a lifelong journalist -- I have worked in newspapers for parts of six decades now, from the 70s to the 20s -- I remember when it seemed that most people weren't always tracking the fads, that folks saw the wisdom in developing opinions based on experience and knowledge, whether that came through friends, a healthy appetite for real news, or close family ties.

So, yeah, make a resolution: to lose weight, to exercise more, read more seriously. It isn't a bad thing; in fact a New Year's Resolution can truly be a game-changer. But it is doing so as part of a passe tradition.

Next: Running for Your Life: Read, Read, Read

Running for Your Life: Moderation Nation

It has been a thrilling holiday period, so far.

This may sound contradictory, but this holiday has been heavy on moderation.

Little bit of this, some of that, dollop of wonder, childlike tastes of food, friends and family.

One gift in the household: a bear ornament for a log cabin tree of countable branches.

Heat from a wood stove and tiny Hanukkah flames.

Dim sum lunch on Christmas Day; creamy Bolognese from Thanksgiving turkey stock on Christmas Night.

On the shores of Great Latkes, savory bean dish.

The piece de resistance, an Eggplant Parmesan, courtesy of our loving Italian “mom”’s family recipe, the cumulative efforts of four loving souls.

Wine, Chinese takeout with vegetarian choices.

Because but for the turkey on Thanksgiving, that fed the Bolognese plan a month later, some slices of smoked turkey (again), we are moderating the meat.

Okay, say the words … animal consciousness. Three days after Christmas, we visited a family farm and saw a spunky pig in a barn. Seventeen lambs blatting for milk, for what seemed like attention but was more nine parts hunger, one part fear. All eighteen in line for holiday slaughter.

Call me a citizen in training in Moderation Nation.

Next: Running for Your Life: Resolutions?

Running for Your Life: “Irrationality” Heard From

Question of the day from the London Review of Books, from critic William Davies, reviewing a philosophy book, “Irrationality,” by Justin Smith,”

“How much, if any, of a pre-internet culture can survive in an age where every intellectual exchange can swiftly be derailed by a joke, a personal attack, a cry of victimhood or a strategic misunderstanding of the other’s argument?”

My pal, KN, responds:

“I think it’s because we collectively have lost the ability to sustain any thought too complex to be conveyed in 128 characters. Which leaves what? Jokes, personal attacks, cries of victimhood and strategic misunderstandings. They all fit the space! Public critique is dying because we can no longer sustain a train of thought, or attend with patience anyone trying to form one. Listening to another’s argument demands humility, and we are in a regular humility drought right now.”

And my response to KN:

“What Davies/Smith argue is that the platform giants – Facebook, Google, Amazon – rob us of humility, by rewarding everything but – Davies ends the piece by saying Smith is like the sober, patient person who attends a wild, drunken party who is loath to give up his effort of speaking truth to hype and boorishness.”

Next: Running for Your Life: Moderation Nation