We have always had river otters in the pond fronting our lanai.  We have seldom seen them, mostly I think because they are most active at night.  For some reason we are seeing more of them this spring, although mostly in the early morning and evenings.  I assume that they migrate from one pond to another through an intricate system of connecting culverts.

These otters are smallish mammals, about 21-31 inches in length, plus a powerful tail that is a major factor in their aquatic prowess.  They are said to be able to hold their breaths underwater for up to 8 minutes, and are able to dive to a depth of some 60 feet, a capacity they don't need for our shallow pond.

All of this is on my mind because one of them spent some time on the margin of the pond, just under our lanai, consuming a sizable fish it had caught late in the afternoon.

At this time of year, one is conditioned to think about self-improvement schemes, about the great "oughts": what one ought to do, how one ought to live, what one ought to read, what one ought to look like, etc.  Should I go to the gym?  Should I start a diet?  Should I start going to church, or do something else to revivify my spiritual life?

When one is earning one's daily bread, these concerns arise in a certain context.  That context is a more-or-less, but mostly more, structured, in which one is reacting to (and to some extent, often a very large extent shaped by) the needs and demands of outside circumstances, by other people (clients, bosses, co-workers, and various other constituencies).  It is seldom that these larger questions about the significance of one's actions, of one's life, seldom come into sharp focus.  When they do, it is usually the result of some crisis, some turning point.  But even then, the focus is usually towards finding a new work environment in which one is again responding to external circumstances and other people.

I have found that in "retirement" (I'm completing my eighth year in that status) these questions and concerns arise much more frequently and much more poignantly.  Because there are fewer outside people structuring your environment.  Because the external circumstances have taken on a different character: you are old(er); you are more frail, or if not exactly frail at least less robust.  Because you are more responsible for your own life and your own station in life and for your own reactions to all of that.  These are everyday concerns not just the annual review.

That is certainly a challenging position to be in but it has its own compensations.  You are to a larger degree than before writing your own script.  You have an increased ability of "no."  There are more things you don't have to do if you don't want to.  You also have an increased power of "yes" because, as one friend has put it, "your future has been freed up."

This post leaves a lot of loose ends, I know, but for now I will just leave them dangling.  In retirement, one doesn't need to round off every corner, to explore more fully every thought. 

I just finished British historian C. V. Wedgwood's classic history of the Thirty Years War.  The war was fought from 1618 to 1648.  the book was published in 1938, in a Europe that was heading for war.  It is not too much, I think, to claim that he book is a classic of the narrative historian's art.  Dame Veronica (she went by her middle name) was a great-great-great-granddaughter of the famous potter.  Although she was very successful academically at Oxford, she eschewed the donnish life to be a writer of narrative history and what at the time was thought to be popular history.  This is so because it is written in a lively style and is actually both comprehensible and interesting to the average, educated reader.  Her book was also the result of significant research in three languages, and after over 70 years is still regarded as the standard work in its field.

Her book begins (p. 8) with this pithy observation about the men in charge in the part of early 17th century Europe that is now Germany:

“The dismal course of the conflict, dragging on from one decade to the next and from one deadlock to the next, seems to me an object lesson on the dangers and disasters which can arise when men of narrow hearts and little minds are in high places.”

She concludes (p. 506) with this sad summation:

“After the expenditure of so much human life to so little purpose, men might have grasped the essential futility of putting the beliefs of the mind to the judgment of the sword.  Instead, they rejected religion as an object to fight for and found others ... . 

“The war solved no problem.  Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous.  Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict ... .

"They wanted peace and they fought for thirty years to be sure of it.  They did not learn then, and have not since, that war breeds only war.”

Here is the obituary from the NYTimes. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/11/arts/c-v-wedgwood-86-storyteller-of-history.html

Here is a photo of Dame Veronica

The Indian musician Ravi Shankar died a day or two ago.  Like Dave Brubeck (see previous post) he was born in 1920.  He is widely credited with popularizing Indian music in the West in the 1950s.  This trend was accelerated when George harrison became fascinated with the sitar and studied with Shankar in the mid-60s.

I had already developed a small familiarity with Shankar through a guy a served with in the Army.  The guy's name was Stu Jenns (sp?) and he said he was from Cincinnati.  He was a very off-beat guy, sort of a pre-hippie, very laid back, very unsoldierly, seemingly mellowed out on weed much of the time: his most distinguishing feature was a well-waxed handlebar mustache.  Stu and I shared a four bunk cubicle in a quonset hut with two other guys, each an off-beat genius in his own right, but that will have to await another time.

Stu was a jazz drummer and he kept a set of bongo drums in his equipment chest.  He also had a considerable record collection: blues, avant garde jazz, and off course Ravi Shankar.

It is reasonably well known that Shankar had a complicated domestic life.  Two of his offspring have become well-known musicians: Norah Jones, by a long-term relationship with the singer Sue Jones; and Anoushka Shankar, the daughter of his last (Indian) wife.  Norah Jones, who plays and records mainstream jazz/pop, was a very hot item in the early part of the 2000s.  Marg and I saw her perform in Pittsburgh in 2004.  Anoushka, who is less well-known, and who now spends much of her time in L. A., plays traditional Indian raga-based music and travels with a group who perform that music.  I saw her in Pittsburgh, in a smaller venue, a few years later.

I own one disc of Anoushka's (Rise) and "inherited" from marg several Nora Jones albums.

I felt impelled to post, not so much out of admiration for Ravi Shankar as for fond memories of the the wacky Stuart Jenns.  I tried googling him a few minutes ago but came up dry.  I hope that he is still alive and smiling somewhere.

Here is a link to the Shankar obit in the Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/arts/music/ravi-shankar-indian-sitarist-dies-at-92.html?ref=obituaries

Here is a photo, also from the Times, of Shankar with Harrison

The jazz pianist Dave Brubeck dies last week, just a few days before his 92nd birthday.  Here is a link to his obituary in the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/arts/music/dave-brubeck-jazz-musician-dies-at-91.html?pagewanted=3&ref=obituaries&adxnnlx=1355258649-Cf66wODABMsxjCnzFPimOA.

Brubeck was the second jazz musician (Louis Armstrong was the first) to appear on the cover of Time magazine, in 1954.  (For those too young to remember, the cover of Time was a form of high recognition during the middle part of the 20th Century.)

I remember the first time I heard his masterpiece album "Time Out," while I was at the Army Language School in Monterrey in 1962.  The album has been an active part of my music collection more or less continuously since then.  It was highbrow jazz made accessible to the masses.  He was very experimental with time signatures and yet his compositions were recognizable and tuneful.  The Dave Brubeck Quartet included the great Paul Desmond (alto sax), Joe Morello (drums), and Eugene Wright (bass).  Here is a photo of Brubeck.



I now recall that when I was in high school in the late Fifties, my Uncle Frank, then at Michigan State, had played a few tracks from "Jazz Goes to Oberlin," recorded earlier in the Fifties when Brubeck band's bread and butter was touring colleges.  It didn't "take" with me then but perhaps it set the stage for my appreciation of brubeck five years later.

When the implications of the 2010 midterm elections, in terms of a stonewalling Republican Congress, became apparent to me in April 2011, I began a monthly contribution to the Obama campaign, which I continued, with the occasional additional ad hoc donation, right up to the day before election day.  Notwithstanding my every-month donation, I was solicited hard -- and daily, in fact many times most days -- for additional contributions.  In 2012, I don't think there was more than two or three days when I was not solicited at least once.  The emails were unrelenting.  And, they were "from" a variety of Democrats: Barack himself, of course; and Michelle; and Joe Biden; and Jim Messina and David Axelrod; fewer from David Plouffe; and, moving down the campaign staff food chain, from Julianna Smoot and Jeremy Bird; occasionally from John Kerry and Caroline Kennedy.  Making an ad hoc contribution did not insulate me from further badgering, within hours: the barbarians were at the gate; the campaign would go down the tubes if it didn't have more money to respond to the most recent Republican smear, etc., and I wouldn't want that to happen, would I.  There was never a campaign "udate" that didn't ask for money.  And none of this takes into account the barrage of emails from local Obama campaign staff here in Florida.

So, it was a big pain in the ass, to be sure.  but, I hasten to say, not as big a pain in whole body politic were Romney/Ryan to have won.  In the final analysis, it was well worth it and I was gratified to be a small cog in the Obama machine.  But, on November 7th, I knew what was coming next.  Would I be willing to continue my monthly contribution, only addressing it to Obama for America rather than for the election campaign.  After all, the election campaign was merely a prelude to the next four years, which would of necessity involve unremitting efforts to enact the Obama legislative agenda (which, by the way, I largely endorse, especially when one considers the alternative).

It was at that point, that I unsubscribed from the Obama emails.  I recognizing that the wave of the future in our politics is the endless campaign, and the constant scrounging for the dollars to get things done.  Big money Republicans already do this.  As do labor organizations, to a lesser degree, given their lesser resources.  Perhaps I'm too old to adjust or maybe that I am unwilling to be on the edge of my seat for 24/7/365 times four years.

And there are financial consideration.  The "politics" money I have been dispensing so readily, although not a huge amount, is money that can be devoted to family and other needs.  Let it be so.

Another recent death I need to remark is that of Russell Means, the Oglala Sioux activist who dies at the age of 72.  He played a major role in the 1970s in bringing our treatment of native peoples to national attention.  He is probably best known for his leadership in the 1973 standoff between angry Native-Americans and federal law enforcement at Wounded Knee, S. D., the site of a 1890 massacre of some 350 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children by U. S. Army forces in the last major battle of the Indian Wars.  Here is a link to the NYTimes obit. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/us/russell-means-american-indian-activist-dies-at-72.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Means was shor several times and seriously stabbed at least once.  He spent a year in prison.  There are no politics quite like tribal politics, and there were many Native-American leaders who despised Means.  Means was a proud man.  He was also charismatic in the extreme.  He was a large man, graceful in his movements, and I daresay very aware of it.  I never met him but I did see him dance once sometime during the 90s, at the Red Earth Festival in Oklahoma City.  There were hundres of dancers on the arena floor but every eye was drawn to Russell Means.  He was a "mixed bag" in many respects but of his force of personality there could be no doubt.

Here is an old photo of Means.

I should not let the passing, a few days ago, of George McGovern, remembered chiefly as the losing candidate in the presidential contest in 1972.  And, just not losing but losing, by epic proportions, to the otherwise despised Richard Nixon.  McGovern has also been vilified -- scapegoated, one might say -- for somehow discrediting the liberal vision for a better America.  His defeat has also been attributed, in part, to the disastrous outcome of his selection of Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate.  (Shortly after his selection, the news broke that Eagleton had received psychiatric treatment including electroshock therapy.)

Anyway, the point is not to rehash the history.  It is simply to say that I encountered few people over the past 40 years who would admit to having voted for McGovern.  I voted for McGovern and never regretted it.  I think what did him in was that he refused to mouth the mindless slogans of American Exceptionalism, and one cannot be elected to high office in this country without paying homage to the image of an error-free America.  And this, even though McGovern had a distinguished service record in WW II.  But that is not enough to insulate candidates from attack for not being American enough.  See also, e.g., the public service careers of John Kerry and Max Cleland.

McGovern was a man of humane values, one of which was his concern for hunger and nutrition in America, a cause that has been important for me, especially over the past several years.  He was a decent man, deserving of our respect.  RIP.