Have knee will travel

After spending the summer with a blown out knee and part of the fall with one recovering from surgery, it is so nice to have a leg back. I can kick again, although I'm still not at 100 percent in that department.

The best part is the ability to run again. But first let's clarify the meaning of that word as there seems to be some confusion there. Often people have told me that they've seen me out there walking. I try to explain that what looks like walking to them is running to me. I maintain that running is subjective: if you think you're running and it feels like you're running, then you are regardless of speed.

I'm hoping now to build up speed to the point where I can hold and maintain a respectable pace for several miles. Yesterday I met a pace goal at a 5K. I hope to keep that pace at a 5 miler in January and then a 10K in February, although that will mean a lot of interval training between then and now. If that happens, who knows? Maybe a half marathon or the Charleston 15 mile distance run in the summer.

It's not that I enjoy such events at the time. I hate them. But it feels pretty good to have just finished one.

THE D-WORD discussed here.

RATS have empathy; why doesn't the 1 percent?

MORE ON THE UPPER BIG BRANCH DEAL here.

BANKING ON COAL. Here's a connection between Wall Street and a warming planet.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Am I missing something?

As I mentioned yesterday, I have a long standing love of philosophy--some of it anyway. Some varieties, however, like logical positivism and so-called analytical philosophy get on my last nerve.

Recently, however, someone lent me a copy of Ludwig Wittgenstein's magnum opus Philosophical Investigations, which was one of the most influential philosophy books of the 20th century.

(That should be another reminder that the 20th century wasn't anything to write home about.)

In that book, Wittgenstein broke from his earlier work, which tried to limit meaningful statements to those that could be logically or empirically demonstrated and developed a more flexible approach to language.

After finally finishing the book, all I got from it was the point that language is flexible and has different meanings and uses depending on the context or language game--which is something I already knew.

There were a few decent lines in it, like these:

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

...philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.

...the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

The question "What is a word really?" is analogous to "What is a piece in chess?"

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

On the whole, however, I don't get what the shouting is about. So again, am I missing something here?

HEALTH CARE. It looks like the US House will pursue some changes to the Senate health care reform bill.

A DOWNER. Many Americans with major depression don't receive treatment. This is especially true of African Americans and Hispanics.

LOST WAGES from the recession cost more than health care reform.

THE FUTURE is unknowable. Here's a recent op-ed on this topic from the Charleston Gazette.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"One sorrow for today, another for tomorrow"

The reunion of Orestes and Electra. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

"What human soul can pass through life
untouched by suffering to the end?
Oh, no, there's none.
One sorrow for today, another for tomorrow, comes."

Goat Rope's series on Greek tragedy continues. You'll also find links and comments about current events below. At this point, we're on The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, the second part of the only surviving tragic trilogy. the theme of the trilogy is the emergence of democracy and the rule of law after a long series of violent events.

The first part of the trilogy, the Agamemnon, was discussed last week. In it, the title character who led Greek forces in the Trojan war is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus on his return. This is an act of vengeance for Agamemnon's sacrificing of his daughter Iphigenia ten years earlier at the command of Artemis to gain winds for the Trojan expedition. The couple then establish a tyranny in Argos.

The Libation Bearers is the next chapter in a long series of acts of violence. In it, Orestes, son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, returns in secret after years of exile. He has come with his friend Plyades at the command of the god Apollo, who has ordered him to kill Agamemnon's murderers or face terrible punishments himself.

He places a lock of his hair on the grave of Agamemnon then hides as a group of women approaches. They are led by his sister Electra, who was ordered by her mother to offer libations at the grave placate the spirit of Agamemnon. Clytemnestra has been suffering from bad dreams and an uneasy conscience since the murder.

Electra, who has suffered mistreatment at the hands of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, is reunited with Orestes at the graveside. Together they plot revenge, with the eager support of the chorus. He pretends to be a pilgrim coming with news of his own death and knocks at the door of the palace.

Orestes asks to see Aegisthus to bring the news and quickly kills him. The climax of the play is the confrontation of Orestes and Clytemnestra, who has dreamed of giving birth to a serpent who kills her. The serpent was Orestes.

As soon as the deed is done, Orestes is haunted and driven to madness by the Furies, dark underworld goddesses who punish blood guilt. As the play closes, there seems to be no end in sight for the curse upon this family. The last words of the chorus are:

Oh, when shall it finish, when shall it sate--
lie down to sleep--this fury bound hate?

KEEP IT UP. Voices are already calling for the Obama administration to cease recovery efforts. Paul Krugman thinks that would be a very bad idea.

THEN AND NOW. Here's an op-ed/book review by yours truly from yesterday's Sunday Gazette-Mail.

HEALTH CARE. Here's why we need a public option.

GREEN JOBS. Here's Ken Ward in Coal Tattoo discussing green jobs for the coalfields.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

This and that

According to Buddhist teachings, all things are impermanent (anicca) and insubstantial (anata) and come into being or pass away according to conditions.

The impermanence thing is probably easier to see for any thoughtful observer (although it's also easy to forget). The insubstantial thing may seem a little strange at first. The Buddha taught that all things--including us--are without self, i.e. that they are dependent on conditions and come into being and pass away as conditions change.

As the Buddha was reported to have said,

If this is, that comes to be;
From the arising of this, that arises;
If this is not, that does not come to be;
From the stopping of this, that is stopped.

That can be a good thing to keep in mind when confronted with problems or even with a sudden turn of good fortune. Whatever it is, it won't last forever and only exists now due to an temporary constellation of factors.

It can also be a useful insight to those interested in either changing things that need to be changed or preserving things that need to be preserved. What is possible at any given times depends on external conditions and how we respond to them. And the conditions change from moment to moment.

DEPRESSION? Maybe not (but maybe).

SPEAKING OF DEPRESSION, lots of Americans are dealing with their own.

SPEAKING OF BOTH KINDS OF DEPRESSION, here's one that brings up some old school sociology.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The blind seer, and an action alert, and more

The shade of Tiresias appears to Odysseus after the latter offers a sacrifice.

The theme here lately is the Odyssey of Homer, along with links and comments about current events. If this is your fist visit, please click on earlier posts. Right now were on his voyage to the land of the dead.

To recap, the goddess Circe tells Odysseus that if he wants to make it home after years of fighting at Troy and wandering the seas, he has to visit the underworld to consults with the shade of the seer Tiresias, who is one of the most fascinating figures of Greek mythology.

A prophet of the city of Thebes, he had the distinction of spending several years as a woman as punishment from Hera for whacking a pair of copulating snakes with a stick. Note: while El Cabrero is opposed to whacking snakes, let it be noted that it didn't take much to tick Hera off.

After changing back into a man, he was called upon by Zeus and Hera to settle an argument over whether males or females enjoyed sex the most. (Zeus said women did and Hera vice versa.) When he basically answered that women get 9/10s of the pleasure, Hera struck him blind as punishment. Zeus couldn't do anything about that but did give him foresight.

(Important safety tip: if you are ever called upon to resolve a dispute between Olympian gods, decline the honor.)

In the myth of Oedipus, Tiresias is summoned by that tyrant to explain the source of a mysterious plague ravaging Thebes, which was actually caused by the Oedipus himself who inadvertently killed his father and married his mother.

The confrontation between the two is the focal point of Sophocles' great tragedy Oedipus Tyrannus. The parallelism between the two is striking: Tiresias is blind but sees what is happening. Oedipus can see but is blind to what he did--and when he sees it he blinds himself.

At this point in the Odyssey, Tiresias will tell its hero what lies ahead and what he must do if he is to make it home. The news isn't good:

A sweet smooth journey home, renowned Odysseus,
that is what you seek,
but a god will make it hard for you--I know--
you will never escape the one who shakes the earth,
quaking with anger at you still, still enraged
because you blinded the Cyclops, his dear son...

Still they have a slim chance, provided that when they land on the island of Thrinacia he and his men don't eat the cattle of the sun god Helios. If they do that, his men will die

And even if you escape, you'll come home late
and come a broken man--all shipmates lost,
alone in a stranger's ship--
and you will find a world of pain at home,
crude, arrogant men devouring all your goods...

And even if he deals with that, he must make one more journey to appease Poseidon, by carrying his oar so far inland that people mistake it for a winnowing fan and there make appropriate sacrifices.

If, and it's a big if, he does all that, he can expect to die peacefully in old age in his home with his family.

We'll see how that works out.

ACTION ALERT. The American Friends Service Committee and allied groups are urging people to call their senators and representatives today toll free at 1-888-245-0215 to urge the passage of a second economic stimulus package targeted at those who need it most before Congress goes home.

The package should include extended unemployment benefits, an increase to food stamps and home heating assistance, aid to states for Medicaid, job creation through investments in infrastructure and youth employment programs. Obviously the $720 million we are spending each day in Iraq isn't helping either...

SUNDOWN ON THE GOLDEN CALF of market fundamentalism? Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz thinks so.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here are two reports aimed at driving some nails in the coffin of supply side economics and related but contradictory bogus dogmas on tax cuts as the cure for all things.

DEPRESSION OR SADNESS? The tendency to medicalize emotions makes it hard to distinguish between the two.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

AMONTILLADO?

Caption: This is Poe's black cat or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Pretty scary, huh?

Welcome to the last day of Edgar Allan Poe Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier posts. You will also find links and comments about current events.

El Cabrero can't think of a better way to wrap up the week than with his selection of Greatest Hits from Poe's short stories.

Here goes:

*Cask of Amontillado. This tale of revenge by burial alive is a hoot. It's probably Poe at his most darkly humorous. I love the first paragraph:

THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

Aside from beautiful dead women, Poe had a major fixation about live burial. It was even better for him when a not quite dead beautiful woman was buried alive. Something like that happened in The Fall of The House of Usher.

*The Masque of the Red Death. A little justice is done by Death in this story, which shows that even rich folks have to pay the piper. Here are some first lines:

THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death."

But the Red Death had the last word. I love the last line:

And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

*The Pit and the Pendulum. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, much less the hapless narrator of this tale.

*The Telltale Heart. Although El Cabrero's taste for the theme of heats has diminished in the wake of his own cardio problems, this one is still a keeper. Again, some great first lines:

TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story.

I didn't include The Black Cat as I am a friend to the feline.

Did I miss any of your favorites?

CALLING IT A WIN. The United Mine Workers is declaring victory after an NLRB judge ruled in their favor in a dispute with Massey Energy at the Mammoth mine in Kanawha County, WV. Here's hoping it's over. Massey will appeal.

GASSING DOWN. A new study suggests the US could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent with relatively little costs.

SHINY UNHAPPY PEOPLE. El Cabrero's beloved state of WV comes within a hair of leading the nation in depression and suicide. Basic economic justice issues seem to be a major factor:

People who are college educated and have health insurance are less likely to be depressed or suicidal, the study concluded. About 245,000 of 1.8 million West Virginians are without health insurance, and roughly 16 percent have college degrees.

West Virginia also has a relatively low number of mental health professionals compared to other states. West Virginia has about eight psychiatrists and 10 psychologists per 100,000 people, compared with 22 and 83, respectively, in neighboring Maryland, one of the healthiest states in the country.

In addition, more than 17 percent of West Virginians report being unable to afford health care, about double the rate of South Dakota, which had the lowest depression rate.

CALAMITY JANE. This one from alternet suggests we move beyond the Jane Austen vogue. El Cabrero, however, is a big fan.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FIGHTING MONSTERS AND GAZING INTO ABYSSES

Caption: Don't look into this one very long.

El Cabrero has been hanging out with Nietzsche again. This time, it's his 1886 work, Beyond Good and Evil.

It's been a while since I've cracked that one open and this time around it kinda seems all over the place. If I was forced to say what it was about at gunpoint, I'd have to say it had something to do with morality, knowledge and psychology.

The great thing about reading Nietzsche, however disturbed and disturbing he was, is that he has some awesome one liners. I'll be serving up a few on this week's Goat Rope.

One of my all time favorites from that book has been widely quoted but should be known more widely still. Here goes:

He who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

That one (especially the first part) should be posted pretty much everywhere to remind us of the danger of becoming like what we hate. It happens over and over in so many different ways.

In the post 9/11 U.S., some defenders of "freedom" led the country into a prolonged flirtation with authoritarianism. Many an anti-war activist develops a stridency and militarism of spirit. Many social movements that began with a desire for justice have committed horrible injustices. Opponents of bigotry can become intolerant, just as opponents of despotism can become despotic.

I'm not sure what the antidote is other than awareness of that danger.

CRACKPOT ECONOMICS. Here's a good review of Jonathan Chait's The Big Con by Tom White that appeared in the Sunday Gazette-Mail

JOBS AND DEPRESSION. Some jobs carry greater risks of depression for workers than others, according to this AP article.

Here's some excerpts:

People who tend to the elderly, change diapers and serve up food and drinks have the highest rates of depression among U.S. workers.

Overall, 7 percent of full-time workers battled depression in the past year, according to a government report available Saturday.

Women were more likely than men to have had a major bout of depression, and younger workers had higher rates of depression than their older colleagues.

Specifically around 11 percent of personal care workers "which includes child care and helping the elderly and severely disabled with their daily needs" had bouts of depression lasting two weeks or longer. Next came at 10.3 percent came people who prepare and serve food. Social workers and health care workers tied for third at 9.6 percent.

Interestingly, engineers, architects and surveyors had the least depression, with a rate of 4.3 percent. Have you taken your trigonometry pill today?

I notice they didn't bother to survey goatherds...

NEW WV PEACE RESOURCE. The West Virginia Peace News Net just launched on the web and is worth checking out with lots of news, information and links. On the masthead is a quote by Gandhi:

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

ABORTION is a controversial issue which has often been cynically exploited for political gain. According to the AP, a new international study found that

Women are just as likely to get an abortion in countries where it is outlawed as they are in countries where it is legal, according to research published Friday.

It's another reminder that there's a big difference between making something illegal and making it go away.

IRAQ. Here's an interesting article from the NY Times about current debates and soul searching on the Iraq war among U.S. officers. And I couldn't pass up this article on the effect of the war on the native cat population--a group occupying the land where cats first domesticated people.

Y'all be careful out there today.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED