Leaders Then and Now

For the past couple of months I have been reading the last volume of the Manchester biography of Winston Churchill and Churchill's own History of the English Speaking Peoples simultaneously.   If you have the stamina they should best be read together.    Who else would attempt to explain history in a coherent manner from Roman times to the end of the Victorian age in four volumes but Churchill?   Manchester, in this volume, chronicles Churchill from the beginning of WWII to the end of his life in one big book.

If you want to know how many times Sir Winston burped in 1943 you can probably find it in the Last Lion - the detail is comprehensive.   I did not read the earlier volumes and thus cannot be sure whether this kind of detail was a result of Manchester's writing style or of his ultimate collaborator (the last volume was finished after Manchester died).    But at times the style can be mind-numbingly boring - even for a Churchill fan like me.   I think the book is at its best when he talks about Churchill's work in Parliament and especially of his Fulton Missouri speech.   There are some great quotes (Clement Atlee was described as a "sheep in sheep's clothing.")   What you find is that Churchill could be brilliant and petulant at the same time.  That being said, he had a tremendous capacity for conscientious work and clear thinking.   While he was wrong often he was also right about a lot of things.

The History of the English Speaking Peoples is a survey of great breadth.  It gets some of the history wrong (for example, I think his appreciation for Hamilton is a bit distorted) but on the whole he paints a picture on why even with a very bloody political history staffed by an interesting group of characters, there is something exceptional about our shared history.  In spite of the President's comments about lots of exceptional histories in the world - I think Churchill makes a good case that our history is indeed unique.

What I was struck with most was the comparisons of Churchill (and his descriptions of the great leaders in his history and Manchester's even) with leaders of today.   Clearly, Churchill thought he should be taken seriously and had a sense that what he was doing was important.   But the difference with today's leaders is that he also thought it was a great idea to actually accomplish something.   He could be a bitter partisan but at the same time he figured out how to actually get things done.  He tried to be at the center of things but he also tried to work collaboratively.  Churchill understood the beginnings of polling but he was never driven in his leadership decisions to be guided by polls.    Can you think of any US political leader who is not driven to consult the Ouija board of polling?

Humor Abuse

For about 20 years we lived in a neighborhood in Sacramento called Curtis Park.   About a year after we moved into the neighborhood the local school closed for earthquake safety reasons.   The moron city councilman at the time suggested that they convert the facility into a drug rehab center - and the neighborhood rose up.   He eventually became mayor but the locals stopped his nonsensical idea.

The neighborhood had an odd mix of people - tradespeople like carpenters and plumbers and heavy duty political types.   Ultimately, the school was acquired by a newly formed 501c3 called the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association and was rehabbed with sweat equity.  The people who knew the building trades helped the rest of us paint and plumb the place and when we needed political activity (some idiot opposed a beer and wine license) those of us in the political trades scared the hell out of the thumper who wanted to oppose our request for the license.   At one point a group of us sat down with the pastor who was opposing our liquor license - arrayed against him were the lobbyists for the ACLU, Standard Oil, the independent colleges and the committee consultant for the Governmental Operations Committee - we growled at him and he folded.  Such were the resources in the neighborhood.

But in order to fund all the improvements we did a series of fund raisers.  We got Taj Mahal to come and present a concert in the 200 person school theater.  We also developed something around Halloween called the pumpkin toss where people built catapults to hurl pumpkins.   But the major fund raiser for three years was the Pickle Family Circus.  It was a one ring circus that was started in San Francisco by a guy named Larry Pisoni.   His son, Lorenzo, developed a one person show called Humor Abuse which is a superb retrospective on his experience growing up as a clown.  Lorenzo started with the troupe very young and eventually became a regular performer - ending up at Vassar and then in a career that has been mostly in show business.

The Pickle Family Circus was formed in the mid-1970s and lasted for a while and then became a permanent part of a center in San Francisco on circus skills.   They worked with community groups like Sierra Curtis.  The deal was simple - they got the gate and the neighborhood group got the concessions.  If you got a good crowd - and it was on the group to raise the crowd - you got a lot of people frequenting the concessions and you made dough.   In one year the Sierra Curtis Association made more than $30,000 over a weekend.   Lorenzo started as a clown when he was about 2 and performed actively all across the country and in a few venues outside of the US until he was about high school age.

Humor Abuse is a series of personal reflections but also a set of five or six extended skits - one on how to fall down stairs; one on timing (where he walks through the stage while a group of 30 pound sand sacks drop very close to him); one which is a reprise of his father's opening routine which uses a series of helium balloons; and one of a clown diving from a high ladder into a bucket of water.   Each of the skits uses pantomime with great effect - but the commentary is also very interesting.  The performance was special to us because my wife was one of the coordinators of two of the Pickle Family performances for Sierra Curtis - but Pisoni is such a gifted entertainer that even if you did not know the history - it would be an enjoyable 90 minutes.  We did know the history so it was extra special.

Pisoni is also doing a Kickstarter which has six days to go but has been successfully funded.  The goal is to produce a video of the performance.  At the higher levels you actually get the ability to download a video of the performance.

The performance is being presented at the Mark Taper forum in LA until early November, where we saw it last night.  Pisoni is a gifted clown but an equally talented story teller.  If you are in LA you should try to get tickets; if not you should support the Kickstarter to get a copy of the performance on video.

The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass through the lens of Garrett Hardin

One of the rights of passage for young economists is to read a mostly dystopic essay by Garrett Hardin called the "Tragedy of the Commons."   Hardin argued that if things were not properly gated (or priced) they would be used inappropriately.  Allow people to use an open field to graze sheep (the commons) and they will mostly wreck it.  There is some truth to what Hardin had to say but like most writers of his type there is also something very wrong about his basic idea.   Wired writer Chris Anderson raised the more logical part of the "commons" problem in his book called "Free" - but there is a darker side of the "commons" problem which lead Hardin to project all kinds of environmental disasters.  There I think he was mostly wrong.   If you did not go - or even if you did and missed acts there is a great Webcast Archive of some of the Performances.

Yesterday we went to the 13th edition of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass - which is a music festival originally funded by Warren Hellman and held in Golden Gate Park.   The music is a bit eclectic - although many of my generation would understand the reference - performers ranged from Boz Scaggs to Louden Wainwright III to Allison Krause.   HSB venues are nestled into a half dozen niches in the park.   It is organized pretty well, for what it is.   So what you get is hardly, strictly bluegrass.

 This was the first time I had been to one and I was stuck with several impressions.

#1 - There are two choices for this - follow the performers or follow the venue.   We chose a venue and stayed the day to hear the groups as they moved through.   We chose something called the Rooster Stage - which is in a small area bounded by two hills.   We did not want to sit in the sun and thus sat up in one of the high areas.   The benefit of staying on one venue is you do not have to deal with the crowds much.   The cost is there are a lot of good acts in each of the venues.   As we were walking out to go to dinner Allison Krause showed up on the Banjo Stage and did a nice short set.  And we got to hear her as we walked along. The simple answer seems to have been the venue choice is the better, just for the reduction in hassle; but choose the right venue.

#2 - At least where we were, the crowd was not really there to listen to the music.   Almost immediately we recognized that the crowd, which was overwhelmingly young and white, was there to hang out.   The music was a precipitator but not a motivator.  That was unfortunate, but it seemed to prevail in the venue for the entire afternoon.   There was constant chatter which was loud enough so if you wanted to listen to the musicians you could not.

#3 - There were a set of inconsistent ethics - This may be an odd comment but I think it is correct.   For the most part, unlike many events like this, the crowd was pretty good at picking stuff up.   Fans that either brought or bought food, carried out the wrappers and cans.   That was not true for some beer cans (Coors cans seemed to be the ones most neglected) but most people actually cleaned up after themselves.  But the crowd did not respect space very well.   As we were coming back on Bart an HSB visitor complained that she had staked out a space in one venue very early in the morning to be able to see a particular set of performers but as the day wore on  people came and stood in front of her.  So she was not rewarded for her effort.  The clods seemed to be oblivious to her space.  So in one sense, part of the commons problem (trash removal) was disproven.   At the same time, another part - the chatter and the inability to respect reasonable boundaries - was true.  Hardin, like his original paper, was about half right.


#4 - Impressions of San Francisco -  The HSB has a normal melange of people you expect to see in San Francisco including lots of tattoos (I wonder how those people will ever get hired), piercings (ditto), and Doc Martins with fancy dresses.   Those do not bother me - although they are different.   I think that many of those choices, made in the name of individual expression, when you see such a large group together, are evidence that many are just another form of conformity.

And as you would expect at any large street event there were the usual band of eccentrics.   The picture to the right is of a guy who between acts would sell poetry readings.   He had a patois which was funny (at least the first two times you heard it.)

Riding back on the Muni - there was a good and happy crowd.  (We had to go on the Freeway, to BART, to Muni and then a lot of walking.)  It was, for the most part, a pretty mellow crowd.

#5 - Entrepreneurial spirit lives - In the middle of the afternoon a guy with dread knots came by with a cooler.  The guy had purchased coconuts with the husk off and was carrying a large bottle of rum and a machete.  He was lop the top off (with a bit of panache)  the coconuts and allow the buyer to sip out some of the coconut milk and then he would refill it with rum.  The deal was $10 - which based on other prices was certainly reasonable.   In the space of about an hour working the crowd he sold about 20 of these concoctions.   I was impressed by his enterprise.   He had a mix of showmanship and entrepreneurial talent that was pretty nifty.

The decline and fall of Woody Allen

Woody Allen has produced some memorable movies but his current offering is among the worst movies I have ever seen.   It is the story of a New York Socialite who discovers her crook husband has been fooling around and turns him into the FBI - after that she moves in with her sister - who is a working class woman in San Francisco.   This could be the start of an interesting character study - unfortunately the plot is weak and poorly developed; the dialogue is vapid; the characters are mostly one dimensional.   After about 30 minutes, I began to wonder whether it would get any better, it did not.   I did not find one character in the movie that was appealing or that I really cared about finding out what might happen next.  Like many of his other movies Allen uses jazz to bind the movie together.   In some that helps make the movie even better - in this one his choice of jazz is the best part of the movie.   Had the sound track been any louder we would not have had to listen to the drivel that passed for dialogue.

There are some characters in the supporting cast that could have become interesting - for example the boy friend of the sister - but the movie is so poorly developed that you never get a chance to make a clear judgment.  One professional reviewer called the movie "haunting"- haunted would be a better descriptor.

Allen's early movies were silly and inventive.   He then went through a period of self indulgent psycho babble that is easily forgotten.   The last movie of his that I went to before this one was Midnight in Paris which was an inventive tale about living in the present (and the past).   It was superb.   This movie has none of that appeal.

Silly Twitter Feeds

 When the latest IPCC report came out this week and one commentator produced three tweets which brought both solidarity and ridicule.

One recent posting on Holthaus' Quartz feed says -

The world’s best scientists agree: On our current path, global warming is irreversible—and getting worse (September 27).

I have mixed emotions about this set of twitter feeds.   Holthaus (as far as I can find on the net) went to the Saint Louis University and then to the Columbia University MA in Climate (at Jeffery Sachs Earth Institute) - The Saint Louis program (at least according to some sources is unranked.   The Columbia program is well regarded but is criticized for being ideologically biased.  This is not an area I have worked in so I can't evaluate how well trained this guy actually is.  On his linked in page he has some tie to the University of Arizona which is ranked among the top 30 programs in the county.   At one point he has been a weather reporter for places like the WSJ (he did some of their coverage on the storm Sandy.     He is also on one climate advisory board for the Sierra Club.   All that background says two things.  First, based on experience and education, he has some expertise although, second, a good deal of his experience/expertise is ideologically biased.   He is far from what one could reliably call a climate scientist. The term scientist should be reserved for those few who can start from a position of inquiry - his seems to be based on reinforcing conclusions.  His thesis title at Columbia ("The social justice of weather: hurricane risk management for development in Latin America and the Caribbean") seems a bit odd.  I've always had a problem with putting modifiers on terms like Justice but I wonder how weather and justice can be conflated.

While I admit to chuckling at his twitter feeds on September 27 I am more concerned with the comment in his Quartz feed - is something is irreversible—and getting worse why bother to quit flying?   A lot of the commentary from the right has been that this latest climate report has a hard time explaining the seeming contradiction (that being that for a while - all the perils of Global Warming including temperature change in increased volatility seemingly have been less extant than in earlier times) between the data and the hype.  

I will admit that I have been interested in some of the economics literature about the trend line declines in economic growth (See Tyler Cowen's The Great Stagnation and or Naill Ferguson's The Great Degeneration  - both authors make a powerful case about risks facing society; the US in particular).   But as I read Holthaus' twitter feeds I was reminded about writers from Thomas Malthus to Paul Ehrlich who have for at least the last several hundred years projected apocalyptic results from seeming trends only to be shown as fools by advances in thinking or technology.   It must be very hard, as Julian Simon wrote in several books to think life can only follow one path.   Being burdened with an idea that life's patterns are irreversible—and getting worse must be an awful burden to carry.   

The America's Cup Win

At one point in my life I was an avid sailor.  (Certainly not at the level of the America's Cup racers.)   We sailed something called J-Boats which were about 24 feet (about a third the length of the cup boats).   J-Boats were middling in what is called the PHRF standard (which is somewhat analogous to a handicap in golf).  I have no idea what the equivalent rating for this new and radical design but to give you an idea these boats can actually go a lot faster than the wind under the right conditions.

A few weeks ago, in a post about Larry Ellison, I expressed concern about the new design.   I even suggested that it would not have bothered me to see the American team lose.   In the end, after starting out 4 races behind (because of a penalty) and then having a couple of miserable performances - they ran eight races almost perfectly and won the series 9-8.   It was a truly impressive win - after a tactical adjustment in one of the early races- where they declined to do a second race of the day (for which they were widely criticized).

The technology (which you can see something of in the video below) is amazing,  The sails are actually airfoils not traditional sails.   And the design of the boat is to get as much of the multi-hull out of the water so the boat can ride on a foil.   But I wish that they might go back to a more traditional design or have a non-tech version of the America's cup.   Somehow a boat shooting along the water at close to 50 MPH does not seem right.   And yet the Oracle team published the rules on how to design the boat, and after the initial hiccup was able to come back and win the series.  

The cost of each of these new designs excludes all but the most wealthy.  Another criticism of the current rules is that only one of the team members was actually an American citizen.   And yet both of these objections should be overcome.  When Commodore Vanderbilt was racing the cup - it was limited to very wealthy people.  So not much has changed.  What the Cup has done over time is to improve sailing for lots of less capable sailors.   While the air foil is not likely to replace standard sails on smaller boats, it is likely that a lot of the innovations will find their way into more consumer oriented boats.   As to the gripe about the lack of Americans on the team - what was there was American technology.  So it is a great metaphor for larger economic issues.

I ended up watching a couple of days racing on the ESPN channels but did not go down to a race.  Friends that did go down to the Bay to view the races live said, compared to earlier Cups - these were over so fast it was hardly worth the drive.  What I was left with at the end of this series is what big changes are likely in the next series four years hence?

Running for office and from responsibility

On Monday afternoon, after a horrific spectacle at the Washington Navy Yard, the President took the opportunity to tout his economic record before a bunch of hand picked lapdogs on the South Court of the White House. His remarks were designed to "celebrate" the five year anniversary of the financial meltdown - that "anniversary" could have been held at any time. But this president has no sense of proportion. I have taken eight comments out of the President banal yammerings and added some commentary. What Obama seems to fail to get is that compromise takes two sides working together.  The genius of the American political system is the design - it take a broad consensus to move things forward.   In the world of this President he believes that he preempts anything.  All that within a spectacle over the last several weeks - where his indecision on an international issue has worked to make the situation considerably worse.   But again, this President, does not care.  Commentary described the speech thusly - "After the spectacle of indecision and retreat that was his Syria policy in the last month, and a year in which he proved again that he hasn’t the leadership skills to broker a deal with anyone but his sycophants, all Obama has left for us is anger at his political foes and a reflexive need to blame them for all of the country’s woes and his own failures." That is harsh but accurate.

The President's remarks came just a day before the 228th anniversary of the last day of the Constitutional convention. One of the blogs I read posted remarks from President Coolidge on the importance of the Constitution

"It is axiomatic that our country can not stand still. It would seem to be perfectly plain from recent events that it is determined to go forward. But it wants no pretenses, it wants no vagaries. It is determined to advance in an orderly, sound and common-sense way. It does not propose to abandon the theory of the Declaration that the people have inalienable rights which no majority and no power of government can destroy. It does not propose to abandon the practice of the Constitution that provides for the protection of these rights. It believes that within these limitations, which are imposed not by the fiat of man but by the law of the Creator, self-government is just and wise. It is convinced that it will be impossible for the people to provide their own government unless they continue to own their own property. These are the very foundations of America" -
The President began by a hearty back pat -

"By the time I took the oath of office, the economy was shrinking by an annual rate of more than 8 percent. Our businesses were shedding 800,000 jobs each month. It was a perfect storm that would rob millions of Americans of jobs and homes and savings that they had worked a lifetime to build. And it also laid bare the long erosion of a middle class that, for more than a decade, has had to work harder and harder just to keep up."

From my perspective the President fails to consider what the causes of these horrible situations. A good many of them are attributable to governmental policies and as importantly, many of them remain unimproved.   As Coolidge suggested a good part of the role of government is to understand when its actions can be ineffective.
He went on to give the now obligatory "stories" of real people.
And so those are the stories that guided everything we've done.
President Reagan was one of the first to use this technique and at the time many people said it was a way to show the president actually lived in the real world.   But stories like the ones the president used are not a substitute for sound judgment on policy.

Then he offered himself some more back pats....
And what all this means is we've cleared away the rubble from the financial crisis and we've begun to lay a new foundation for economic growth and prosperity. 
If this is recovery I would hate to see what a slowdown is to him.  This recovery still has substantial unemployment and mediocre economic growth.   Many economists would argue that part of the reason for that performance is the policies he adopted, some of which were continuations of the previous administration.

He then goes on to make his pitch -
We need to grow faster.  We need more good-paying jobs.  We need more broad-based prosperity.  We need more ladders of opportunity for people who are currently poor but want to get into the middle class.
Indeed we do.  But he then indicates (as he did during the last campaign) that government is the engine of growth.
The budget Congress passes will determine whether we can hire more workers to upgrade our transportation and communications networks, or fund the kinds of research and development that have always kept America on the cutting edge.  So what happens here in Washington makes a difference.  What happens up on Capitol Hill is going to help determine not only the pace of our growth, but also the quality of jobs, the quality of opportunity for this generation and future generations. 
The logic he uses here is utter nonsense.   By reducing the influence of government in our economy - growth is likely to recover.  But his sole definition of a sound recovery is one where government is allowed to grow significantly.

Then he goes into his deflective mode (what some have called the Bart Simpson theory of political responsibility) -
Up until now, Republicans have argued that these cuts are necessary in the name of fiscal responsibility.  But our deficits are now falling at the fastest rate since the end of World War II.  I want to repeat that.  Our deficits are going down faster than any time since before I was born.  (Applause.)  By the end of this year, we will have cut our deficits by more than half since I took office.

Now, keep in mind, initially, the whole argument was we’re going to do this because we want to reduce our debt.  That doesn’t seem to be the focus now.  Now the focus is on Obamacare. So let’s put this in perspective.  The Affordable Care Act has been the law for three and a half years now.  It passed both houses of Congress.  The Supreme Court ruled it constitutional.  It was an issue in last year’s election and the candidate who called for repeal lost.  (Applause.)  Republicans in the House have tried to repeal or sabotage it about 40 times.  They’ve failed every time.

There are so many things in these two paragraphs it is almost hard to know where to begin.   Deficits are going down not because of economic growth - which is one way to accomplish that - but because of the sequester and because the Congress has wisely (or politically - and I do not think it makes any difference) understood that spending more does not grow the economy.   The ACA is one of those rare instances in policy where no member of the opposition joined in supporting it.   It is beginning to unravel - or why would the President delay its implementation until after the 2014 elections; why would the AFL (one of the President's most loyal allies) ask that the law be significantly revised.   While the House has voted 40 times to repeal Obamacare (I am not sure that the number is correct but for the moment consider that it is true) the Senate has not passed a budget for a number of years.   They have simply bottled up any serious discussion of any issue.   At this point the President's prized enactment is supported by about 4 Americans in 10.

He then gets to the meat of his argument - 

Meanwhile, the law has already helped millions of Americans -- young people who were able to stay on their parents’ plan up until the age of 26; seniors who are getting additional discounts on their prescription drugs; ordinary families and small businesses that are getting rebates from insurance companies because now insurance companies have to actually spend money on people's care instead of on administrative costs and CEO bonuses.

A lot of the horror stories that were predicted about how this was going to shoot rates way up and there were going to be death panels and all that stuff -- none of that stuff has happened.  And in two weeks, the Affordable Care Act is going to help millions more people.  And there's no serious evidence that the law -- which has helped to keep down the rise in health care costs to their lowest level in 50 years -- is holding back economic growth. 

The claims of the effects of a law, which has not been implemented and which the President himself has arbitrarily moved to not enforce, are not clear.   There may well be some short term effects that may seem to be positive.  At the same time numerous employers are opting to reduce the number of hours for their employees to assure that they are not required to pay for the significant unfunded mandates in the new law. Most commentators suggest that the long term costs of this administrative monstrosity will not be positive for the health care system nor for the economy.

From my perspective there are two takeaways from this speech.   This president, more than any in history, considers his powers to be over the other two branches - he has shown no willingness or even ability to sit down with his opponents on a substantive basis and begin to work the nation out of political gridlock.   Second, with his imperial sense, he does not seem to recognize that on a day when a national tragedy happened within about 20 of blocks of his office that the time for political rhetoric should be delayed.

What is appropriate public behavior?

Yesterday the CEO of Starbucks penned an open letter to the American people which requested, in the spirit of an old Johnny Cash song - to "leave your guns at home."

Schultz says that Starbucks will not ban people, in open carry states, from bringing their weapons to coffee.  He is asking customers in these states to respect the company's wishes.

When I first heard about this I thought "another politically correct CEO" and that may be the case.   But in his public comments Schultz has repeatedly said Starbucks is not a policy organization.  Schultz and some of the news coverage of the story has suggested that gun advocates have used Starbucks to promote their point of view.   And indeed, some gun advocates have had their pictures taken in a store.

I can understand how some people would feel uncomfortable in the presence of a gun toting coffee drinker.

I live in a state where at least a majority of legislators have no appreciation of gun rights - so I have missed scenes like the one at the right.   I am not sure why it is necessary to bring a weapon like the one in the picture into any store. Were I to live in a right to carry state, it is not likely that I would bring a weapon like the one in the picture into any store. (If indeed I owned one.)

I love to fish but would probably not wear my waders into a Starbucks nor would I carry my rod or my net there.   It just does not seem appropriate.

I think Schultz's judgment about whether the store could be successful in establishing an outright ban (which as a private business they should have the right to do) is correct.   But the letter is equally ineffective.  It won't make gun owners happy and because he did not propose an outright ban - it will not make anti-Second Amendment advocates pleased either.  Should Starbucks make a strong statement or establish a strong policy prohibiting  guns in states where there are open carry laws, I would be less likely to patronize their stores. 

As I read the letter, though, I remain concerned that while it is well written, it presents a tremendous opportunity to be misinterpreted.   It just looks to me like he did not think out his options very carefully.

Schultz's Letter is reprinted in full below - 

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Posted by Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman, president and chief executive officer

Dear Fellow Americans,

Few topics in America generate a more polarized and emotional debate than guns. In recent months, Starbucks stores and our partners (employees) who work in our stores have been thrust unwillingly into the middle of this debate. That’s why I am writing today with a respectful request that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas.

From the beginning, our vision at Starbucks has been to create a “third place” between home and work where people can come together to enjoy the peace and pleasure of coffee and community. Our values have always centered on building community rather than dividing people, and our stores exist to give every customer a safe and comfortable respite from the concerns of daily life.

We appreciate that there is a highly sensitive balance of rights and responsibilities surrounding America’s gun laws, and we recognize the deep passion for and against the “open carry” laws adopted by many states. (In the United States, “open carry” is the term used for openly carrying a firearm in public.) For years we have listened carefully to input from our customers, partners, community leaders and voices on both sides of this complicated, highly charged issue.

Our company’s longstanding approach to “open carry” has been to follow local laws: we permit it in states where allowed and we prohibit it in states where these laws don’t exist. We have chosen this approach because we believe our store partners should not be put in the uncomfortable position of requiring customers to disarm or leave our stores. We believe that gun policy should be addressed by government and law enforcement—not by Starbucks and our store partners.

Recently, however, we’ve seen the “open carry” debate become increasingly uncivil and, in some cases, even threatening. Pro-gun activists have used our stores as a political stage for media events misleadingly called “Starbucks Appreciation Days” that disingenuously portray Starbucks as a champion of “open carry.” To be clear: we do not want these events in our stores. Some anti-gun activists have also played a role in ratcheting up the rhetoric and friction, including soliciting and confronting our customers and partners.

For these reasons, today we are respectfully requesting that customers no longer bring firearms into our stores or outdoor seating areas—even in states where “open carry” is permitted—unless they are authorized law enforcement personnel.

I would like to clarify two points. First, this is a request and not an outright ban. Why? Because we want to give responsible gun owners the chance to respect our request—and also because enforcing a ban would potentially require our partners to confront armed customers, and that is not a role I am comfortable asking Starbucks partners to take on. Second, we know we cannot satisfy everyone. For those who oppose “open carry,” we believe the legislative and policy-making process is the proper arena for this debate, not our stores. For those who champion “open carry,” please respect that Starbucks stores are places where everyone should feel relaxed and comfortable. The presence of a weapon in our stores is unsettling and upsetting for many of our customers.

I am proud of our country and our heritage of civil discourse and debate. It is in this spirit that we make today’s request. Whatever your view, I encourage you to be responsible and respectful of each other as citizens and neighbors.

Sincerely,

Howard Schultz

50 Years after "I have a dream"

Over the weekend there was a lot of coverage of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington(which is tomorrow) where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I have a dream speech."  I listened to some of the clips from the speeches and read a lot on the coverage of that much smaller event.

I had four impressions.

#1 - When you re-read the "I have a dream" speech you get a sense that Dr. King was particularly blessed that day.  His rhetoric was soaring.   The main premises were well thought out, but at least according to contemporaries, King extemporized throughout the speech which added substance to an already well done speech.

William Safire at one point did an analysis of the speech and argued that several of the key phrases and some of the cadence can be traced back to earlier speeches by other political figures in our history.  Bill was not making a criticism rather he was making the point that some of the best speeches build off others.  If Bill's analysis was correct, it does not take away from the impact that King produced.

#2 - The rhetoric over the weekend was not soaring but pedestrian.   I am not sure why Al Sharpton is presented as one of the leaders of the African American community.  But he showed himself again as a clumsy buffoon.    An initial premise of Dr. King's speech was that a good deal of the responsibility for civil rights came from self help.  That trend came from earlier leaders in the African American community like Booker T. Washington, Frederic Douglas and even A. Phillip Randolph (who spoke in 1963).   Sharpton tried to make the same point in at least two instances.   In one (trying to make the point that disrespect for personal dignity is not a way to develop) he defamed two of the icons of the civil rights struggle (Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer).   He also made the point that "We need to give  them (young men in the African American community) dreams again, not to worry about sagging pants, but sagging morality"   He never seemed to get the point that many of the things he has supported contribute to that sagging morality.

#3 Eric Holder described the broadening of the concept of civil rights - "Our focus has broadened to include the cause of women, of Latinos, of Asian Americans, of lesbians, of gays, of people with disabilities. And of countless others across this great country who still yearn for equality" - which just about sums up the errors of political correctness.   Most of the people at the rally over the weekend believe that civil rights are created by dividing rather than unifying.   As Al Gore once remarked they believe that "e pluribus unum" means "out of one many" which is exactly the opposite of the meaning of one of the key phrases in our national lexicon.

#4 - Finally, as I reflected on both the 1963 march and the one over the weekend I wondered whether the key issues that Dr. King was trying to addressed have been morphed with 50 years of policies which create more dependence rather than independence.   Sharpton used a particularly powerful analogy that Dr. King used about collecting on the debt of equal protection under the law and turned the phrase to sound like his main goal was to get a lottery payoff.

Clearly, in spite of the rhetoric over the weekend, the country has made significant progress in assuring equal protection under the law.   And just as clearly, the mountaintop which King used as his final metaphor has not been achieved.  But at least some of the restraint from achieving the goals has been created by public policies which inhibit ultimate progress and low bar rhetoric of this generation of "leaders."

Winston Churchill - Hedgehog or Fox?

When my wife and I take a longish car trip we listen to books on tape.  On this trip we are listening to the Churchill biography the Last Lion - which I read when it came out but I am such an admirer of Churchill that I never cease to enjoy hearing more about him.

He was a master of phrases - when the labor party took over he said that "what had started out as utopia is now queue-topia."   Many of his wartime speeches represent economical use of the language that almost no other politician could master - "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

But as you go thorough this very thorough book I began to think about Isiah Berlin's famous essay on Hedgehogs and Foxes.   Berlin divided the world into two types of people - people who attempt to define the world through a single lens (Hedgehogs) and those who extrapolate off a wide variety of experiences (Foxes).  

Churchill was clearly a product of his time who viewed the world through a particular lens or set of lenses.   One can pick out elements in his life from fashion, to speech patterns to even great speeches like the Westminster College Iron Curtain speech - where he seemed to be defining the world that most had not recognized.   That would make him a hedgehog.    And yet, as you look at his life's work, especially his stint as a war time Prime Minister - he often seemed to have figured out how to fit the facts to the situation.   In some cases the perception of a single lens was completely off base.  That makes him look a lot like a fox.

So what do you think?

Manzanar

Today, I went back to Manzanar after about a 20 year absence.   When my daughter was in college my son and I drove by the spot where we interred Japanese Americans for a couple of years during WWII.   At the time I was first there, it was an abandoned spot.   There were some remnants of foundations of some of the buildings, but that was about it.

The climate in that part of Inyo county is hot in the summer and cold in the winter and often windy.   So one would expect that the temporary structures would not have survived.   And yet we should not forget this incident in our history.

Since about 2002 there has been an interpretive center and some reconstructed buildings including the guard tower in the photo to the left.  The exhibits are well done.   This is a place where every American should go.

The interpretive exhibits are actually almost unflinching in their description of what happened after December 7, 1941.   Within a very short period of time, Japanese Americans (many of the Californians were fishermen or farmers) were rounded up - many of those families eventually wound up in one of the relocation centers.  Some were allowed to relocate to other parts of the country - but many were simply put in the camps.   The federal government explicitly violated Constitutional protections yet at the same time they were imbued with the worst kind of bureaucratic speak possible.  The original director of the WRA was Milton Eisenhower.  The project director for the WRA was a person named Ralph Merritt - at one point in 1943 he said the following (it is not recorded whether he understood the irony of his statement) about the process of governance in the camps - Self governing is a process of growth from within, not the imposition of authority from without.   It is a slow process based on bitter experience."

It is hard to imagine the frenzy in the US, especially on the West Coast after Pearl Harbor.   So some supporters of the forced relocation justified it in two ways - they said a) this is not a concentration camp and b) it is being done for their own safety.  A young Warren Magnuson (who was later to be a US Senator from Washington) is quoted as saying "there were not 50 Japanese among the evacuees who are loyal to this country."  There were some Californians who were not taken up in this bigotry including the Presidents of UC Berkeley and Stanford who formed the Pacific Coast Committee on American Principles and Fair Play.   But for the most part Americans supported these actions.  Near the end of WWII the Gallup organization polled people in five Western states (Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho and Arizona) on the following question -

Do you think the Japanese who were moved from the Pacific Coast should be allowed to return to the Pacific Coast when the war is over?

Results for the five States are:

• Would allow all to return: 29%
• Would allow only Japanese who are citizens to return: 24%
• Would allow none to return: 31%
• Undecided at present: 16%

The WRA is a blot upon US history that was only partially rectified when President Reagan signed an act offering partial reparations for the expropriation of all those people's property.

I was particularly struck with the work of the WRA because soon after I moved back to California, a farmer whose family had been relocated  told me his story.   He had offered to support me for a position on a planning board and I was at his property, near my house in the Natomas area (which was just being built), to talk to him about the position.   In his barn was a 1936 Dodge tractor that was in mint condition.  After we had gotten to know each other, I asked him about the tractor.  He said his family had bought the tractor before Pearl Harbor.   His family was forcibly relocated and like many other Japanese Americans who faced this peril, had all of their property expropriated.   When the war ended he and his brother who both served in the 442d in Italy with distinction, found the serial number of the tractor that the family had bought, found it, bought it back and ultimately restored it.   He said, without emotion, "as long as I am alive that tractor will never leave me."   It was a point of pride.

Sinclair Lewis wrote a semi-satirical novel about the rise of Fascism in the US called "It Can't Happen Here."   As one thinks about the WRA, one could have said , "it can't but it did."   We need to be on guard against the potential for wretched excess in government.

On the 44th Anniversary of Woodstock

I realize that the 44th anniversary of Woodstock is a couple of weeks away.   I will also admit that I was not a part of the million plus people who claim they who were among the 100,000 that actually attended the event.   I was getting married in Pasadena that weekend.

But over the last couple of days I had the opportunity to see the re-released movie put out by Warner Brothers.

I admit that I had not seen the movie in a couple of decades.   And some of the impressions that I carried in the back of my head were still there.   Canned Heat and Santana and Joe Cocker were great.   So was Sly and the Family Stone - I am not sure how Sly maintained that level of energy and performance for the sustained period of time - but he did.

There were also some inanities like John Sebastian and Arlo Guthrie who were great musicians if not a bit out of it.   There were several commentators who wanted to seem profound but now look odd.   And I wonder how some of those people in the movie look today.

But there is a sequence that starts with Janice Joplin's performance and then moves into the guy who cleaned out the porta potties and then shifts into Jimi Hendrix's performance.   Hendrix and Joplin died within a month of each other about a year after Woodstock - in September and October of 1970.   There are a couple of things which strike me about the sequence that may be a metaphor for the Woodstock generation.

I am not sure why the editors (Martin Scorsese was one of the original editors of the film) chose to include the part they did for Joplin - but the sequence is horrifying.   Joplin was a superb singer (and there is indeed a YouTube sequence (sound not video) which purports to present her performance of  Piece of My Heart at Woodstock.   But the piece the editors chose show someone who could not get close to holding a tune and rambled through some "lyrics" which were almost incoherent cries of desperation.    She says in the intro "music is for groovin not for putting yourself through bad changes..."  She seems an especially tragic figure.

I am not sure what the point of the sequence on the portapotty guy was.   The interviewer asks some questions and the guy who was working answers them politely - but the undercurrent was pretty negative.   It is almost a metaphor for what many have called the self-referential generation.    There are three undercurrents in the movie - the first is self important - we are changing the world; the second paranoic - I saw the helicopters seeding the clouds to cause rain; the third - mellow.   But in many sequences of the movie all three are bound up.

Then you get to Hendrix - who because of an unfortunate bit of editing seems to be playing to an empty crowd.   The Hendrix sequence is about 15 minutes and he spends most of the time demonstrating why many consider him to be one of the greatest guitarists in history. From my perspective it is well worth the cost of the whole movie.  He uses every inch of the Fender, and all three sets of pick ups and the tremolo bar.   He mixes a series of styles and inventions (for example in banjos you call his use of the left hand pull offs (technical term left hand pizzicatos) or hammer ons - he throws those in effortlessly) and a raft of other inventions to make the guitar sing.   It is almost as if we got to see him practice on stage but then he throws in the Star Spangled Banner and Purple Haze in almost a mosaic where he shows what all that thinking can lead to - it is a truly amazing piece of video.

I expect that as we begin to approach this 44th anniversary we will see several retrospectives on the festival and all the surrounding hoopla - but the sequence from Joplin to Hendrix actually sums up the event and the movement in pretty good fashion.

The Third Metric

Ariana Huffington is not just a ruthless self promoter.   I first came to know about her when a friend was applying to be the campaign manager for her then husband, Michael Huffington.   Michael Huffington was a one term congressman who won a contested primary against a somewhat out of touch incumbent and then promptly expressed interest in running for the US Senate.   He again spent a boatload of money in the primary and made a respectable showing against Diane Feinstein.   My friend described the couple as bizarre and has said subsequently that he was very happy he did not get the job.

Ms. Huffington went on to be a right of center talk show host and then gradually moved to the left.   Her conversion seems to have been somewhat related to the incursion into Serbia but she actually came out (to the left) when she endorsed John Kerry in 2004.   When Gray Davis was being recalled she was all over the map - first a candidate (in a classic dust up between the eventual winner - who in many ways is very much like her) and then an opponent of the recall.   I offer that history because Californians have known about her for at least two decades.   I have never been convinced that she is an especially deep thinker.    She has been very successful in developing and promoting a left wing news alternative called the Huffington Post which has lots of substance but also lots of tabloid elements.  I confess that I read the Huffpost on a daily basis, in part for the substance.

There is one other background on this post - George Easterlin was an economist who came up with something called the Easterlin Paradox in the 1970s which argued that happiness does not increase with increased wealth and therefore pursuing GDP for its own sake is not a good goal.   His original argument (and its offshoots) have been used by many to justify alternative ways to think about the relationship of economic growth to happiness.   The Paradox is troubling on a number of levels - measures of both GDP and happiness are noticeably squishy.   That is true within a country and even more so across countries.   And any first year economics student should understand the math of the utility function which postulates that as utility increases the marginal benefit for each increment decreases.

Two researchers from the University of Michigan have looked again at Easterlin and have found that if you look carefully at his data, the conclusions do not come from his data.   They find a very high correlation between level of GDP and levels of national happiness.  

So along comes Ariana - with this idea called the "Third Metric" which is a jumble of ideas about all those generalized concepts that much of the left uses to redefine "money can't buy happiness" or "there is more to life than money" or the current buzzword "sustainability" as if markets, without this new concept, have no interest in continuing.  Ultimate any market is sustainable or it loses its market function. From my perspective, even thought Huffington has pushed the concept hard this "Third Metric" when you think carefully about it is a bunch of bollix.  It is a classic "vochongo" a word which everyone uses but no one clearly understands.  (See earlier posts on the term here.)

Perhaps beginning with Adam Smith (in the Theory of Moral Sentiments) there has been a lot of writing on the multiple paths to happiness.   Smith consistently does not argue that more material success is a guarantee of happiness.   Yet, in his other book (that everybody quotes and no one actually has read - note I've read both) he discusses the "bull headed brewer" - the mainstay of markets.  

From my perspective much of the "Third Metric" is an imperfect restatement of Galbraith's Affluent Society which many of us had to suffer through in undergraduate work in the 1960s.    Her argument is that if we do not concentrate on economic growth that we will live in a better world.   Anyone with a brain can understand that there is more to life than the almighty dollar - but taking your eyes of GDP growth as an important metric will diminish happiness in society, simply by making all of us a bit less well off.   I am sure Huffington would agree with some of the President's speech today arguing that income inequality has increased in terrible ways in this country for the last several decades.   And yet even with that data, when you include things like transfer payments, the perceived inequalities are reduced.   One economist (James Galbraith - who is the son of JK and has written a lot on income statistics) argues that if you take out just fifteen counties in the US, the reality of a change in income equality has moved almost not at all for the past forty years.

The Third Metric is a diversion which will not help improve the lives of Americans.

Indexing Inspiration

The electronic rolodex, Linked-In, is an example of an internet app becoming dominant very quickly.  Less than two years ago there were a couple of alternative sources for keeping your contacts.   The most prominent was Plaxo.   But there were also some of the cloud services that kept your address book.  For a while I used a couple but soon found that some did a horrible job of keeping contacts updated.

In this stage in life I am not a hardcore user of these services.  I have about a thousand contacts in my computer.    I know some active networkers who have several times that.  A percentage of those contacts are purely personal (family and friends that I do not work with) - but I often need to remember people that I meet and may work with briefly in my new role as a consultant.  Linked In offers a simple way to do all that.

Linked In has begun a couple of projects which have a lot of prospect for increasing stickiness.   They have established groups where conversations can occur.   Some of those, like from one university I am connected with, are downright awful.   But some have some interesting posts.  This morning I got an email to respond on how inspired I am in my work.   There is no definition of how to define inspiration but using the Potter Stewart definition (I'll know it when I see it) I went ahead and responded.

At this point the survey has more than 34,000 responses. (Just in the time I have been writing the post 2000 responses have added.)  My level of inspiration was 78 which is slightly above the average for all responses.   But based on age there seems to be more inspiration as one ages.  (I was right about on the median for my age.)   There also seems to be a correlation on where you are in a job - the higher your position the more likely you are to be inspired.  

Obviously, this is not carefully structured research.  There may be some skewing of data simply based on who participates in Linked In and the subset of who responded to an email.   But I think the results are interesting.   Presented below are the five industries with the most inspired and least inspired workforces.    Again, the results may be skewed based on who responded in the industry.  All in all some provocative results.

Episcopal Re-education Camps

One of the most infamous parts of any totalitarian regime is the provision for "re-education" camps. Those are the places where people who do not have the appropriate language mastered are sent to learn to "right" ways to address issues. They have some common characteristics. First, they are not designed to solve a problem as much as to eliminate dissent. Second, they often use methods which are odd at best and more likely oppressive to alternative points of view.

When we were in church last Sunday we learned that the 2009 convention of the Episcopal Church mandated that “That all dioceses and provinces receive anti-racism training if they have not already done so or renew training that has been previously taken.” The intent of the resolution was that leaders take anti-racism training "periodically" - so evidently understanding race for these leaders of the church is not something one can master.

I had to go back to Wikipedia to understand what racism is - which is usually defined as "views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior, or superior."

One participant in the Episcopal re-education described her participation in one of the "training" (read indoctrination) sessions. We " listened deeply to the stories we had to share about growing up in a society that is racist, as people who are racist."  I think it is not only wrong but wrong headed to describe this nation as racist.

Do not get me wrong, I believe very deeply that America continue to make progress on establishing the standard that Dr. King espoused "a color blind society."   But I am doubtful that anti-racism training will actually accomplish that goal.   The topic became even more important as a result of the verdict in the Zimmerman case.

On July 21st. scholar Shelby Steele, pointed out the hollowness of the the current leadership of the civil rights establishment. He said in part "The purpose of today's civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power for blacks in American life based on the presumption that they are still, in a thousand subtle ways, victimized by white racism. This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a "poetic truth." Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth in order to put forward a larger and more essential truth—one that, of course, serves one's cause. Poetic truths succeed by casting themselves as perfectly obvious: "America is a racist nation"; "the immigration debate is driven by racism"; "Zimmerman racially stereotyped Trayvon." And we say, "Yes, of course," lest we seem to be racist. Poetic truths work by moral intimidation, not reason.

In the Zimmerman/Martin case the civil-rights establishment is fighting for the poetic truth that white animus toward blacks is still such that a black teenager—Skittles and ice tea in hand—can be shot dead simply for walking home. But actually this establishment is fighting to maintain its authority to wield poetic truth—the authority to tell the larger society how it must think about blacks, how it must respond to them, what it owes them and, then, to brook no argument."  He went on to conclude "Today's civil-rights leaders swat at mosquitoes like Zimmerman when they have gorillas on their back. Seventy-three percent of all black children are born without fathers married to their mothers. And you want to bring the nation to a standstill over George Zimmerman?"

The harder work that Steele describes,which is to alter public policies which have created the positions he describes or to reduce the uncertainty between Black Americans and others, takes a lot more than indoctrination, it takes a conscientious commitment to social engagement.   But like the current civil rights establishment it is much easier for the Episcopal leadership  to engage in politically correct nonsense like anti-racism training.

Getting it

I have hesitated to comment on the Zimmerman case verdict for a number of reasons.  First, I think the tragic aspects of the case are immense; I am not sure how to sort those out.    Second, I am bothered by the talking heads on this.   Having Al Sharpton be given a voice on this case is appalling.    Third, we should be concerned about the political involvement in this case at all levels - from both parties.   Ultimately, this is a legal issue that should have been dealt with in the courts.   All that has bothered me almost since the first news about the case came out.

So my wife sent me a YouTube about a Cheerios commercial and kids reacting to the response to the commercial.  I admit I do not watch much TV - I may have seen the commercial or may not have - but I have seen variations of it.   Evidently, this commercial generated some controversy.  So a group of kids was brought together to respond to that controversy.   From my perspective they cut to the quick on the issue.   Art Linkletter once had a show called Kids Say the Darndest Things - in this instance it might be Kids Say the Smartest Things.

The Onion Strikes Again

The Onion has been a mainstay of my mornings for several years.   They parody news issues - recently they have been doing a series of street "interviews" on various topics.    This morning's was on the new laws in Texas restricting abortions.   There are a couple of funny things about the bit - first, they use about six to eight people in the pictures - rotating their occupations and names but using the same picture.   Second, they seem to be designed to mirror what USA Today and some of the other popular news outlets do.

The one above is from today - but you can get it each day through their twitter feed.  I have also included one other to give you an idea about the range of topics - the second one is comments on the Microsoft corporate reorganization and is from a few days ago.   The Onion continues to be a very funny source of the news.

The Lone Ranger (Revised)

I've been waiting to see the Lone Ranger since I first saw the trailers. I was a fan of both the radio and TV shows. I liked Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels in their role and this is clearly not trying to do a Xerox of the original players that those of us who grew up with them would remember.   The Critics have had a hissy fit on the movie.  Kenneth Turan from the LA Times growled "For though it cost the earth (an estimated $250 million) and involved enough men and material to invade a small country, "The Lone Ranger" exists without a convincing sense of jeopardy or, more critically, any place for audiences to emotionally connect. That TV show may have been modesty itself in terms of production values, but we cared about its heroes in a way we do not here." From my perspective I do not quite understand why it is relevant what the movie cost to make.  But Turan spends 14 paragraphs in his review figuring every way to diss the film.

This is one of those movies where you will have to decide for yourself. The fan community seems to have come to a different conclusion. A typical fan review says "Was disappointed to hear that some movie reviewers did not like it. Now having seen it, I wonder how those reviewers keep their jobs at all. Quite a puzzle. Great movie, good character development, reasonable special effects. "

The plot of the movie is definitely revisionist. John Reid, the ranger, is a bit of a green horn and a goof. Turan describes him as an "incompetent tenderfoot" - which shows that he actually did see the movie. Tonto is a bit odd. Turan expected him to be less of a comic figure (Depp plays the character as a counterpoint to the Ranger's goofiness). The camaraderie is very different from the original pair that most of us remember. Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp play well off each other in a way that is in some ways more compelling than the original pair.   The original pair played off each other almost as lord and vassal.   I suspect that this revision is disconcerting to some of the critics.  So be it.

So is the movie perfect?  No.  I think it could have benefitted from a bit of editing, it was a bit long.   Surprisingly I was also not a fan of some of the special effects.  (But you expect those kinds of things in a summer movie.)    The character development between the two main characters and the villains is interesting.   The bad guys are also a bit quirky - but for this, I think it works.

The movie opened against Despicable Me 2 - which has gotten good reviews and much better box office (that movie raked in four times what the Ranger did on its first day).

If you want a carbon copy of the 1950s TV show you will be sorely disappointed.  Clearly many of the "professional" critics wanted the clone.  If you are ready to see a different image of these characters that is fun and different then you will be pleasantly surprised.

The Soumaya in Mexico City

Yesterday a friend and I went to the new Soumaya Museum in Mexico City which was built by Carlos Slim.   It is a very striking building near the edge of the Polanco neighborhood.

Slim is the richest person in Mexico and is of Lebanese origin but he is passionate about Mexico.   The inside is built on the concept of a large marble covered corkscrew.   As you walk up the five levels (you can ride if you want in an elevator) you come to levels which are divided roughly by time - although the first level has a very interesting exhibit on coinage and monetary issuances in Mexico over time.

There is a lot to like about the museum.  First and foremost it is an impressive monument.   The wide spaces are awe inspiring.   The scale of the whole project is impressive.   It is also a free admission and they are quite liberal about allowing photos without flash.   In many other Mexican museums photos are discouraged or prohibited.

As you walk up the levels, you go through a couple of historical periods.   I thought the fourth and fifth levels were the most interesting.  The fourth level contains some of the work by the Mexican muralists.  It is not a large collection but there are some interesting works.   At the same time, I suspect because he was also Lebanese, there are some paintings and original manuscripts from Khalil Gibran the author of the Prophet and a number of other works.

I am not a real fan of Gibran's writing,that almost every reads when they are young, but it was interesting to understand that the writer was also a painter of pretty good skill.
 As you come up to the final floor, and the corkscrew ends, you get into a sculpture garden that has several works from August Rodin as well as a number of other artists.  I was struck by the Head of John the Baptist, which is done in white marble.

I was surprised when I got to the top of the museum that they did not consider extending the natural light to the lower floors.   Natural light would have aided the space below a lot.    That may not have been architecturally possible and too much natural light might affect the paintings - but as I was going up the level, I was struck at how some other museums, for example the Amparo in Puebla, use a combination of artificial and natural light a lot more effectively.

In some ways the Museum is a lot like the Hirshhorn in Washington. Like the Soumaya it is a striking architectural achievement.  Like Slim, Joseph Hirshhorn was a successful business person with a large although not very coherent collection.   Unlike the Hirshhorn - the Soumaya is a project that was funded by the donor.   There are tons of good museums in Mexico and the Soumaya, for my taste, is easily added to that list.  It was well worth the couple of hours to go through it.

Doc Watson - Milestones

This Spring Kickstarter had a project to help produce a set of previously unreleased recordings by Doc Watson - there are a total of 92 songs in the set.  They are a very interesting mix of family recordings and material that had not been on any other albums.   The project also includes a book put together by Doc's daughter, Nancy, which includes a lot of family photographs.   It is a unique history of Watson's career.   You can get it using the Amazon Paypal system for $65.

Doc Watson was a unique performer.   As I think I have covered previously, I saw him many times when I was a more serious amateur bluegrass musician at the Ash Grove in LA, which at the time offered a wide range of country and folk performers.  

I also met him at the UCLA Folk Festival in 1963.  He was having lunch  and I had the chance to sit down and talk with him for some time.   Watson was a versatile guitar player (this set demonstrates the wide range of music that he played) but he was also a great banjo player.   One thing I learned from him was how to get a drop thumb effect without actually being able to do drop thumb.   There are three kinds of basic banjo styles - three finger picking (often called Scruggs picking), double thumbing (a style that uses only thumb and forefinger) and frailing (or up picking) - within frailing there is a style that some old time players use where the thumb drops down from plucking the fifth string to plucking the middle strings.   Below is a short video on how the two styles are different.  



Watson, at one point said he could not get the style (and I could not either) and he suggested an alternative way to get the same effect without doing that style.   He had a very simple cheat which achieved the same effect.

What impressed me most about Doc Watson was his humanity - this set of four disks and the books - shows off that quality very clearly.  If you have heard Doc, this is probably a must.   If you have not click into one of the sites above and then order the set.