Michael Letts' Closer to the Wild at the Duluth Art Institute

And now for something completely different. I'm referring here to the technique artist Michael Letts uses to produce his work.Details about these pieces are taken from the DAI description of this exhibit which has been on display in the Corridor Gallery since October and ended January 31... shared here in case you missed it.

About Closer to the Wild
Michael Letts fosters connections to people in rural diners, bars, and northern Midwest crannies. Here, he finds beauty in the workers, hunters, and denizens of the backcountry and examines the mythology of American individualism. Known for independence and self-reliance, Americans now face the impact of an increasingly interconnected reality. Letts reflects on how technology propels society to “live more and more on a screen, through glass, literally flattened.” Mirroring this effect in his monoprint painting technique, Letts layers paint on glass plates before transferring the work onto canvas. Pairing this medium with subjects that combine traditional still life and portraiture, the viewer experiences a two-dimensional life closer to the wild.

Description courtesy DAI

Of Hedgehogs and Foxes, with Applications to Current Events

An op-ed by Lance Morrow in today's Wall Street Journal used an Aesop's fable-style metaphor as a means of illuminating the problem with Critical Race Theory. He begins by citing an observation by political philosopher Isaiah Berlin regarding a statement by the Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

Berlin's essay, published in 1953, suggests that the world is divided between hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs like to explain things by fitting it all into one big, comprehensive super-explanation. Foxes take the approach that things don't work that way and that in fact many things are contradictory or have no explanation at all, or are at best incoherent. 

So begins Morrow's "The Hedgehogs of Critical Race Theory." The subtitle is, "They start with important truths--slavery was wicked--and get carried away into monomania."

MY PURPOSE HERE is not to discuss the pros and cons of CRT, but rather to note that this hedgehog approach to many issues has generally done more harm than good. Here are just a few examples off the top of my head.

McCarthyism
I think it's safe to say that the overzealous excesses of Senator McCarthy were driven by a monomaniacal Hedgehog worldview.

Cold War
By the end of the 20th century's two world wars, most of Western Europe had relinquished control of its colonies. On one level this was a victory for freedom as many parts of the world experienced self-rule for the first time in ages. On the other hand, this resulted in power struggles in many parts of the world. U.S. leaders took a Hedgehog view and interpreted all of these conflicts as a fight against the tentacles of Global Communism.

Marxism
Morrow points to Karl Marx as another example of Hedgehog thinking as Marx attempted to fit every problem in the world into a worker's struggle. (Saul Alinsky, in his Rules for Radicals, extended this same viewpoint into a Haves vs. Have Nots or Have Nots vs. the Status Quo.)

In fact, whether it be Global Warming/Climate Change, Critical Race Theory, Democracy, Environmentalism, Public Education or even Housing (e.g. The Housing Theory of Everything), there are hedgehogs who have distilled that issue into being the backdrop or foundation of all other problems in the world.

The WSJ editorial ends with this summation: "The hedgehog’s most profound character defects are moral vanity and self-righteousness—his fatal, paradoxical intolerance." Beware of dogmatists.

The biggest problem that I see with hedgehog thinking is what it does to dialogue. When hedgehog thinking makes everything else a threat, it kills communication, the primary way we develop solutions to complicated issues. What's needed is the Miracle of Dialogue.

* * *  

I believe the WSJ charges a small fee to read its content. If you're able, the full story can be found here:
The Hedgehogs of Critical Race Theory.

Fox photo by Linnea Sandbakk on Unsplash

The Tillman Story, A Cover-Up Revisited

I remember well when NFL football hero Pat Tillman was killed while serving as a Ranger overseas. The reason I remember is because the night before the story broke, I was working late and had a problem occur on my laptop that I tried to resolve without calling a technical expert. Instead I tried to play tech medic and accidentally wiped clean my hard drive. I was devastated and in a state of shock.

The very next day the news broke regarding the death of Pat Tillman, killed during a sniper attack in a remote ravine in Afghanistan. The news of his death put my own loss in perspective. I hadn't lost a son like his parents had. 

The event made an impression though and years later I wrote about it here. I also remember that several weeks later news broke that he had been killed by "friendly fire." In other words, he died at the hands of a fellow soldier. This seemed doubly painful.

* * * 

This week while looking through documentaries at the library I came across The Tillman Story. Because of my experience I felt I had a special connection to this unfortunate event and was interested in seeing why someone had gone through the trouble of doing a full-length documentary on it. It quickly became apparent that this was a disturbing story that needed to be told. Here's a re-cap.

What interests me most, and why I share it here, is how it dovetails with a recurring theme that I've observed and sometimes written about: the lengths people in power go to control a narrative. It's nearly always about spin. This is why many people are suspicious of nearly everything told by those in power.

The Tillman Narrative vs. the Reality

What's agreed upon is that Pat Tillman was a professional NFL football player who was making a name for himself with the Arizona Cardinals. After 9/11, he and his brother Kevin were moved to make a decision to enlist in the armed forces. They first served in the Iraqi Freedom conflict after which they returned to the U.S. and completed Ranger training. They were re-deployed in Afghanistan where Tillman was ultimately shot and killed. 

First Narrative. Pat Tillman, a poster boy for serving his country in the army, was a hero who led his men to take out Taliban snipers. He was shot and killed by the enemy.

That is the "official story" that the Pentagon fed the media initially. For this he was awarded a Silver Star for heroism. The government attempted to have him buried at Arlington Cemetery with full military honors, but his family objected because this was not what Pat Tillman would have wanted. Pat, in advance, had signed papers saying he did not want that, did not want to be used for PR purposes. 

Second Narrative. There were problems with that first narrative because there were people there who saw it and it didn't correspond to the truth. Five or so weeks later, a new story was released that Pat was "killed by an errant U.S. bullet during a chaotic ambush." That is, it was an unfortunate accident.

There were a number of things that didn't add up. For example, why did the military give him a Silver Star if there had been no encounter with the Taliban?

Pat's widow Marie: "It felt like the world had stopped, yet everything goes on like normal." She also described the indignities one is subjected to in these situations. "The day after he was killed there were cameras on my front lawn, which was bizarre."

The documentary went into a little of how Pat and his brothers were raised. They did not watch television. His father was an attorney. They boys were quite active and he became a star football player despite his size. (He was not as large as you'd expect for someone who tackled so hard and was so fast and strong.) 

While in Iraq Tillman had seen things that disturbed him. One of these was the rescue of Jessica Lynch.* Lynch was in a convoy that had been ambushed during the Battle of Nasiriyah in Iraq. Tillman was part of a special unit call on to perform a rescue mission. Supposedly Lynch had fired her weapon until it was out of ammo, was captured and now being tortured. 

Just as Tillman and company prepared to go in, the mission was inexplicably delayed. When it resumed, Tillman saw that the delay was for the purpose of getting a camera crew present for the media sound bytes. As it turns out she never fired her weapon nor was she tortured. The whole thing was a film production. It seemed to him that the army had a narrative to project and the media was complicit. "Everything gets turned into a morality play."

When Pat and Kevin came back from Iraq they said, "This is just 100% bulls%@t." It was a war they no longer believed in.

The Tillman brothers did a lot of thinking and comparing notes while in the States. They completed Ranger training and began a 2nd tour of duty in April 2004 when they were sent to Afghanistan.

April 22 his unit was out on patrol in some narrow passes with high rock walls. One of the HumVees broke down and a decision was made to split the platoon, which some thought was quite unusual. Because of steep canyon walls, the two groups lost contact with one another. Tillman was in the lead group, Serial 1.

The Army later reported that the Rangers were attacked by 20 enemy Taliban. No one who was there actually saw any people attacking them. Nor were there any bullet holes in any equipment.

Some kind of explosion was heard by the second group, Serial 2, and they fully discharged their firepower in the direction of the noise. (Trivia: A 50 caliber gun can shoot 900 rounds a minute.)

The story they told was that Pat was shot from 200-300 yards away, that the second unit was just firing wildly while they were driving.

The reality is that they were much closer, 30 to 40 yards away, the distance of a medium-length pass by Aaron Rodgers. 

Pat Tillman was looking at them as they approached. They were not driving, they were stopped. They took aim and blew his head away.

His brother Kevin arrived on the scene 10 minutes later. The rest of the team was ordered not to tell Kevin what happened.

* * * 

After Pat's death, his mother Dannie was initially moved at how they military came and comforted them. Then, as she learned how much they lied to promote the war, and concealed the facts of his shooting, she felt a need to know what really went on.

The five soldiers who fired at Pat never gave an explanation for their actions. When the facts emerged, it became apparent that the deception went much higher than the soldiers on the ground. 

The army destroyed Pat's clothes, his body armor, his diary.... every piece of evidence that could be used to explain what happened. 

Pat Sr. wrote a very direct letter to the military expressing what he felt. Because he was an attorney, the army considered the wording of his letter to be "a formal accusation of criminal misconduct." This led to another investigation by the inspector general. 

In a press conference, the retired General Kensinger was blamed for what happened and stripped of his third star. The Army believed this would settle the matter and ought to satisfy the family. It was as if this general had ordered the cover up of the fratricide on his own.

Well, two days later, a secret memo was forwarded to the Associated Press that showed how high up the chain of command this really went. With the identity redacted, the memo stated that the president should be aware of what happened in case the circumstances of Pat's death become public. While the public was being told about Pat Tillman's valor, this memo showed that the entire chain of command was aware of its falsehood, and its implications.

As a result of this new information a 2007 Congressional hearing was conducted. The first witness was Pat's brother Kevin. The defense team then had a long list of generals give their stories. Though but a blip in time, The Tillman Story has been assembled to ensure that its lessons not be forgotten. 

*Initial official reports on Lynch's capture and rescue in Iraq were incorrect. On April 24, 2007, she testified in front of Congress that she had never fired her weapon (her M16 rifle having jammed), and that she had been knocked unconscious when her vehicle crashed. Lynch has been outspoken in her criticism of the original stories reported regarding her combat experience. When asked about her heroine status, she stated "That wasn't me. I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do ... I'm just a survivor." --Wikipedia, Jessica Lynch

* * *

Related Links
Pat Tillman Foundation
Veteran Recalls Death By Friendly Fire
Recovering from a System Crash on Your Mac Laptop

Minnesota Point: Magnificent Desolation

Postcard featuring Minnesota Point before the Canal.

While there were no church buildings or official churches chartered in Duluth in the 1860s, it is certain that there were Christians who gathered in some of the homes in this area. One such house gathering took place in the home of Luke Marvin, who arrived in Duluth in 1861, appointed by the newly elected President Lincoln to serve as registrar in the U.S. Land Office. 

Mrs. Marvin's sewing machine, which may have been the first sewing machine here, served as the pulpit for Reverend William R. Higgins, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Superior across the bay. In the summer he would row across the bay each Sunday afternoon, and in winter would walk across on the ice.

The two cities eventually became nicknamed the Twin Ports, but their rivalry hasn't always been friendly. The locks at Sioux St. Marie were completed in 1855, thereby opening the seven seas to to Lake Superior exporters and importers. Because Minnesota Point jutted out seven miles from the Minnesota side, Superior had the early advantage, creating a safe harbor within the region of the point's tip. This is where the City of Superior initially began to develop. 

Their rivals, however, conceived a way to divert incoming ships to the Minnesota ports. They would dig a channel that ships could pass through without having to go all the way around. Once the plan was conceived, leaders on the Wisconsin side recognized the financial impact this would have if successful. They commissioned a group to travel the south to acquire armaments that they might dissuade the Duluths from their intentions. In response, nearly every able bodied Duluth worked 24 hours a day to complete the channel before these armed adversaries returned.

OK, I don't know what is fact and what is tall tale, but I do know that the visionaries who believed it would have a positive economic impact for Duluth were proven correct.

The photos here on this page (except the post card of Minnesota Point before the canal was dug) show the effects of wind, weather, water and waves and temperatures below zero. I'm guessing that for Rev. Higgins some of those blustery Sunday afternoon trips to Duluth presented quite a formidable challenge. 

Photos courtesy Michael Anderson

Related Links

Minnesota Point (Wikipedia)

A Visit with Michael Anderson: Unassuming Gift to the Community

Niall Ferguson on the Breakdown of the Rule of Law

Lady Justice: Blindfold, Scales
and Sword*

The other day I shared the values and principles that transformed Western Civilization from a network of regional peoples to a global force. These four forces that came together in Europe (and were exported to North America) were Democracy, Capitalism, the Rule of Law, and Civil Society. 

In my second reading it became apparent that the historian Niall Ferguson's aim here was to draw attention not only to what made Western Civilization strong but to the dangers facing us as these very qualities deteriorate. 

Here are some of my notes and quotes from a section in which historian Niall Ferguson discusses the breakdown of the Rule of Law, opening with this question:

"How effective is the rule of law in the West in general and specifically in the English speaking world today?"

The Rule of Law's Enemies

Ferguson sees four threats to the Rule of Law.

1. How far have our civil liberties been eroded by the National Security state? At the outbreak of WWI Britain enacted the Defense of the Realm Act. The post-9/11 protracted detention of terrorist suspects veiled a similar overreach. And then there's the issue of surveillance on citizens in the name of National Security.

2. The intrusion of European Law with its Civil Law character is a second threat. Specifically, the 1953 European Convention on Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Ferguson calls it Napoleon's Revenge, a creeping Frenchification of the Common Law. 

3. The third threat is the growing complexity and sloppiness of Statute Law which has become a "mania for elaborate regulations." We need a legal "spring cleaning" of obsolete legislation and the addition of sunset dates for new laws. 

4. The mounting cost of the law. He's not referring to the $95 billion a year the U.S. spends on law making, law interpretation and law enforcement. Nor does he mean the spiraling cost of lobbyists seeking to protect themselves or hurt their competitors by skewing legislation in their favor.  Though companies and cities spend only 3.3 billion dollars on lobbying, the real cost is found in the consequences of their work. How much? According to the U.S. Small Business Association this amounts to 1.75 trillion dollars a year.  And this doesn't include the costs extracted via tort law. Bottom line: It costs way more money to set up a business in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world due to all the legal red tape and the cost of lawyers.

Ferguson points us to a book by Joseph Steiglitz and David Kennedy who cite three egregious failings of the rule of law in the U.S. today. 

First: New bankruptcy laws and predatory lending by banking firms have created a new class of partially indentured servants. There are people so in debt that they have to give as much as 25% of their earnings to the banks for the rest of their lives.

Second: Intellectual property law has become absurdly and excessively restrictive. 

Third: With regard to laws concerning toxic waste, litigation costs represent more than a quarter of the amount spent on cleanup. 

Bottom line is that the game is rigged. The unnecessary costs and inefficiency of our legal system are apparent to all, but what is being done about it? 

"Experts on economic competitiveness (interviewed by) Michael Porter of Harvard Business School (HBS) define the term to include the ability of the government to pass effective laws, the protection of physical and intellectual property rights and lack of corruption, the efficiency of the legal framework including modest costs and swift adjudication, the ease of setting up new businesses, and effective and predictable regulations. It is startling how poorly the United States fares when judged by these criteria." 

When 600+ HBS alumni were queried by Porter as to whether or not to off-shore their operations, only 16% said they would choose the U.S. as a place to set up their business. Here are the Top Five reasons the other 84% would NOT. 

1. The effectiveness of the political system (lack of)

2. The complexity of the tax code

3. Regulation (Red Tape)

4. The efficiency of the legal framework (extremely inefficient)

5. Flexibility in hiring and firing (lack of)

By nearly every measure, our reputation "is shockingly bad," says Ferguson.

According to the Heritage Foundation's "Freedom Index" the U.S. ranks 21st in the world in terms of freedom from corruption, way behind Hong Kong and Singapore.

Ferguson goes on to list a dozen more ways that the U.S. has fallen behind when it comes to the Rule of Law, not just in the business realm but in both the personal and political spheres.

* * * 

My Two Cents

In many ways I believe people fail to observe what is happening today because they have a mental image of what it used to be. For example, it has been nearly 100 years since the Pittsburgh skyline was an abundance of steel factories belching black smoke. There has been immense progress in this realm of business pollution. They no longer need a fire department to put out fires on the Cuyahoga River that flow through Cleveland.

In the same way, many of us have a false image of our superiority as a nation compared to other countries when it comes to justice and freedom. Some make a case that there's never been a level playing field in this country, and that's certainly been true for many. Today, however, the cracks are increasingly visible, and an honest observer has to ask how or when--if ever--these things will be fixed. 

The Radical solution is to bulldoze the entirety into the sea. Saul Alinsky, in his Rules for Radicals, states that Machiavelli wrote his opus as a guide for the Haves to preserve power and what they have. Alinsky claims his book is a guide for the Have Nots. The path he outlines makes me cringe, but so does the path we're on. 

Is there a third way? Ultimately I find comfort in the notion that "this world is not my home." And yet....

*Photo courtesy ChvhLR10, Creative Commons.

Hey Friends, It's Groundhog Day... Again

"Hear Ye Hear Ye
On Gobbler's Knob this glorious Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 2009,
Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators..." 

OFFICIAL VERDICT: Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, which mean six more weeks of winter. 

* * * 

The film Groundhog Day is definitely one of my top ten favorite films of all time. Here's a 2009 blog post about the Bill Murray classic. 

* * * 

Here's something I never knew before. Milltown, NJ also celebrates Groundhog Day with its own celebrity groundhog, Milltown Mel. Last night, and I'm not making this up, Milltown Mel died. Yes, he did... Was it foul play by folk from Punxsutawney? Is there a meaning to be found in this tragedy? What if it means... and I dread saying it, six more years of Covid?

* * * 

For more fun about the importance of this day, do a search for Groundhog Day on your Twitter feed.

You can also read my very brief 2021 post from this day and pretend it's deva vu all over again.

A self-centered Pittsburgh weatherman finds himself 
inexplicably trapped in a small town
as he lives the same day over and over again.

No one does it like Bill Murray, but he didn't do it alone. 
The film had a great supporting cast with Andie McDowell,
Chris Elliot and a host of extras.

A Few Notes from Michael Shellenberger's San Fransicko

This past six months or so I have been researching the topic of homelessness ever since I read about the 2007 St. Louis County initiative called End Homelessness In Ten (EHIT). The EHIT story caught my attention mostly because by 2020 homelessness in the region not only continues but seems to have doubled.

It would be easy to make a barbed remark here about politicians creating slogans for programs. MAGA and Build Back Better aren't the first such declarations. In Duluth the population has been in the 86,000-87,000 range for the 35 years I have lived here, but because of the the need to expand our tax base the former mayor Don Ness initiated a 90/20 goal. That would be a population of 90,000 by 2020. 

It was a worthy objective, and hopefully the effort produced a few insights as to where the obstacles lay.

* * * 

In order to gain a better understanding of homelessness I created a Google Alert on the topic which delivers a daily feed of news stories about this issue. This is how I became aware of Michael Shellenberger's San Fran-sicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities. 

Shellenberger is not immune to controversy. His book Apocalypse Never created something of an upheaval because he had been for two decades a super-advocate for environmental action. When he began running into young people who were planning to not have families because of their belief in an environmental apocalypse, he realized that environmentalists had been striing the "end of the world chord" a little too hard. At first, they felt they needed to make enough noise to create awareness. Instead, they created a fear vibe that permeated a generation. Panic is not rational and difficult to reason with. 

That was his last book. His latest is about California. Here are a few notes.

Between 2008 and 2019, 18,000 companies including Toyota, Charles Schwab, and Hewlett Packard, fled California due to a constellation of problems sometimes summarized as “poor business climate." California has the highest income tax, highest gasoline tax, and higher sales tax in United States, spends significantly more than other states on homelessness, and yet has worse outcomes.

California has had its share of troubles for decades, he notes, but things have grown exponentially worse in the past ten years.

I was confused. So I have been a progressive in this Democrat all of my adult life, I find myself asking a question that sounded rather conservative. What were we getting for our big high taxes? And why after 20 years of voting for ballot initiatives promising to address drug addiction, mental illness, and homelessness, had all three gotten worse? Why had progressive Democratic elected officials stopped enforcing many laws against certain groups of people, from people suffering mental illness and drug addiction in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, to heavily armed and mostly white anarchists in Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis?

Shellenberger says he wrote San Fransicko because he didn’t have the answers to those questions and he felt he needed them. I identified with that feeling because it's what drove me to read hundreds of pages of think tank reports on this issue so as to organize my own thinking. My aim is to apply what I learn to our community, just as Shellenberger's intent is to get clarity about his city.

From 2005 to 2020, San Francisco experienced an astonishing 95% increase in unsheltered homelessness has the number of permanent supportive housing units offered by the city rose from 6487 to 10,051.

Today San Francisco has the greatest quantity of permanent supportive housing units per capita of any major city in the United States. It has 11 permanent supportive housing units per thousand people which is nearly 3 times as much as New York City and Chicago and over six times as much as Miami-Dade County. All of that and yet the sheltered homeless population of New York City, Chicago and Miami fell 11, 10 and 50% respectively between 2005 and 2020 whereas San Francisco’s rose 95%. Why was that?

* * *

Correcting Another Narrative

One of the canards that people have repeated so often that it's accepted as truth is that Ronald Reagan was responsible for the closing of mental institutions. Shellenberger, leaving no stone unturned, digs into this a little further unearth's this.

While it's true that as California’s governor Reagan oversaw the closure of mental hospitals, he didn’t start the de-institutionalization. It began nationally in the 1930s, mostly to save money. The closure of California’s mental hospitals began in earnest in the 1950s, more than a decade before Reagan became governor. The emptying of state mental hospitals continued at the same rate between 1959 and 1969. By the time Reagan took office in 1967 nearly half the patients in California state mental hospitals had already been released.

As for the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, it was a creation of civil libertarians, mental health professionals, and anti-psychiatry activists. Sponsored by two Democrats, it passed by a 77-1 vote. It would’ve passed even had Reagan vetoed it. And while Reagan, as president, cut over 300,000 workers from Social Security insurance and Social Security disability insurance, he reversed course a year and a half later. By the end of his presidency nearly 200,000 won back their benefits.  

In reality it was a Democrat who got the de-institutionalization of psychiatric hospitals rolling. President John F Kennedy proposed successfully proposed and successfully advocated a crucial 1963 reform that required the federal government to fund community mental health centers but leave it to the states to fund these mental hospitals. 

In 1963, JFK argued that medical advances would enable "most of the mentally ill to be successfully and quickly treated in their own communities and return to a usual place in society." 

Optimism may be good at the beginning, but when the problems worsen, it seems new approaches need to be considered. 

Shellenberger has an issue with the abundance of human poop on the sidewalks and the acceptance of open air addiction communities. Most of us have images in our heads of Amsterdam's Needle Park. Shellenberger flew there to see it for himself and discovered that it has all been cleaned up. The outcomes were troublesome and unhealthy. Amsterdam solved their problem by having the police and social workers working together to help individuals get off the junk and on to a new kind of life. 

This is not what's been happening in California. 

More can be said, but our research has only just begun. 

Related Link

The Mismanagement of Man (Review of San Fransicko)