February 2011 Archives

In 2008 I was visiting friends in Orlando, FL, and the local art museum had an exhibit on the art of Norman Rockwell.  Now I always associated Rockwell with 'Americana' art, but I was ignorant of the vast body of his work that included many illustrations associated with the Civil Rights movement.

I've not looked up his politics since the exhibit, but the amazing power of the art really speaks for itself, I think.

The little girl walking to school escorted by US Marshalls is "The Problem We All Live With".

This is "Murder in Mississippi (Southern Justice)", which shows the murder of three civil rights workers,  Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney. I just was reminded of this by another graphic I saw, and I really suggest that people who don't know about Rockwell would really enjoy his 'political' works as well as his 'family' or 'Americana' ones as well.

The Norman Rockwell Museum is in Stockbridge, MA, and online here

As many people have pointed out to me over my life, I can be a bad listener - too consumed with telling the next anecdote or making some point or another.   I know it's a flaw, and yet I've really never been able control it as much as I'd like to.   I know I'm better than I was as a callow youth of say, 25 or 30, but still, I could do so much better.   I think it may be helpful if I frame the problem properly.

Really, being a bad listener boils down to a lack of respect for other people, I think.   Ego, pride, laziness, caffeine overdose, ADD, whatever, it's a lack of empathy for how the other person experiences the 'conversation'  (or 'monologue' in my case sometimes).   And if you can manage to remind yourself that this is a Bad Thing, maybe you can re-inforce some more positive habits - thus this post.

This has been brought to my attention by two different friends in the last day or so pointing out that I had completely not listened to them.   In both cases, we'd been talking, and in once case my friend said 'did you not notice that I mentioned that three times in the last 5 minutes?' and really, I'd been so wrapped up in telling a story that it simply hadn't registered.   The other said something to me that meant one thing, but I had wilfully interpreted it in a way that I liked more, which caused confusion and awkwardness when I then acted as if they had meant it the way I thought.

In both cases, that's disrespectful, and violates the duty to treat others as persons, not mere sounding boards or echo chambers - either the Golden Rule of doing unto others, or the Kantian 'treat others as ends not means', as you like.   And that's failing to be a friend, because someone may be looking for help, to talk, to calm down, to kill time or whatever - and to treat them as if they only existed to listen to YOU is a denial of friendship, it's a denial of their essential importance, and it's shameful to do that to anyone, least of all a friend.   Everyone deserves respect, and being a bad listener fails that.

So maybe this little self-rant will remind me to be a better listener - to allow others to say their piece and to try to *hear* what they're saying and not what I want to hear, or to ignore them totally and impose my monologue on them.

Here's to being a better listener in 2011 and a better person for it.

(with apologies to Pliny the Elder)

I should have re-commenced blogging a couple weeks ago about Egypt.   I participate in a number of informal discussion groups here and there, and when Tunisia started going bonkers a few weeks ago, only a few of us seemed to notice or care - 'the most important event of the year you won't hear about' was more or less how it was headlined.    Then it ... blossomed.   And the next thing you knew, it spread.

Egypt was amazing to watch.   The dynamic of the police-as-badguy/army-as-angels gave me some serious hope as it started that the crowds would be able to face down the riot police without ending up as a massacre.   Once the police simply vanished, it was really just a matter of time as long as the army didn't step in.   The disruption to normal life would engage more and more people, and the spread of protests (reports from Sinai that Bedouin had fired RPGs at a police station!) showed this wasn't a middle-class urban phenomenon centralized in Cairo, but an Egypt-wide happening.

I don't have a link to it but I do have to credit one post I read that basically predicted how things would unroll.   Given the desire of the elites to control the process, they were trying to normalize the process and keep Mubarak in place or at least put in some form of continuity.   I don't think the armed forces were agreeable however, and the story that Mubarak ordered the 3rd Division of the army to clear the protestors - and was allegedly ignored - spelled it was a matter of time for him.

The poster argued Mubarak couldn't resign immediately, and that certain steps would occur before a change was made at the top.   Some powers of the Egyptian president do not transfer when he resigns - including amending the constitution, etc.  so the poster argued that Mubarak would appoint a VP, transfer powers to him, propose changes to the constitution to placate the protestors (mostly about who can run for President and the conduct of elections and who can form a party), then resign.  But the poster argued if he resigned, it was not legal to amend the constitution or dissolve parliament so Mubarak would have to be left in place a bit.

That, to me, seems to be how it played out - VP appointed, changes proposed, then Mubarak stepped aside as a figurehead - but that wasn't enough, so he stepped down.  The concern over the elections being run under the existing power structures seem to have pushed the military council to step in and topple the remaining civilian structures, however.

Now we get a rather apolitical council of elders to draft a new constitution and a referendum on it coming up, as well as a new parliament and president.

I do commend the original poster on seeming prescience.   Most people project their aspirations into 'this and this will happen' but the poster really nailed most of it on the basis of 'how the rules work in order for this to be orderly and legal'.  Kudos.