Thanks to kismet or God, my iPod pulled up an episode of Fresh Air that featured scholar Karen Armstrong, who I now have to read every book by. Go listen to the interview or read the transcript, but near the end, Terry asks her about this push Armstrong is making to establish a “Charter for Compassion.” In explaining it, she gets to what I want to emphasize:

when we hear about religion, when it hits the headlines, it’s either something like that anti-Christ poll, or else we hear the voices of hatred or extremism, or we hear our church leaders condemning things, like condemning homosexuality, or enforcing rigid beliefs. And this is not what religion is about. Religion – all the world faiths have developed their own version of what’s been called the Golden Rule: Don’t do to others what you would not like them to do to you. And they’ve said, all of them, that that is the essence of faith.

That it is that, not our beliefs and – that bring us into relationship with what we call God or Brahman or Tao, and it’s that that gives meaning to our lives. And so I want to restore compassion to that and so that we have instead of religious antagonism, religious aggression, we have a voice that speaks continually of compassion; that endlessly tries to put us, make us put ourselves in the position of the other. Because I’m worried that if we don’t manage to implement the Golden Rule globally, so that we treat all peoples, wherever they are, as though they were as important as ourselves, that we – I don’t think we’ll have, if we don’t do that, a viable world to hand on to the next generation.

In her efforts then, she has created a Charter for Compassion that, I would assume, most could sign onto (I haven’t done it yet because, well, I’m both lazy and leery. More study required). And I have bought her book to do some reading on this score.

Anyway, I bring this up because during our last confab, Dave was aghast at my lack of interest in the God question. I don’t know what I think about God — certainly there could exist a God, and with this God, all of the attendant moral issues that come with that being’s existence. However, I think what Dave was most upset by was my lack of interest in the very question: I just don’t think about it much. And, I think my position closely aligns with what Armstrong says above: my belief in the Golden Rule gives meaning to my life. For some, that belief also means that there is an attendant relationship with a higher being. For me, though, I don’t know that I need that part of it. Perhaps I do. However, what frustrates me is my inability to ever know. Thus, it seems that my faith is limited to my faith in human beings (which, as you may know, isn’t all that deep to begin with): it appears that I cannot extend that faith to the utterly unknowable.

I like to think that I’m Ainsley Hayes; that I can see the good in those with whom I may even disagree with:

The people I have met have been extraordinarily qualified. Their intent is good. Their commitment is true. They are righteous, and they are patriots.

And, I of course aspire to be Albert Rosenfield:

While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a nay-sayer and hatchet man in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I’ll gladly take another, because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Of course, really what I need to is go back to Dr. Johnson and re-read his thoughts because he will of course tell me what I should think and he will be right. Johnson no doubt thinks me stupid, as he told Seward: “there must be either a natural or moral stupidity, if one lives in a total neglect of so very important a concern.” However, in responding to Seward wondering that there should be people without religion, Johnson flatly states, “you need not wonder at this, when you consider how large a proportion of almost every man’s life is passed without thinking of it.” So, I’m stupid, but also Johnson understands why I am stupid, I suppose. I’ll have to dig deeper, and I’ll relate my findings.

Now it’s the Billboard top One-Hit Wonders of the Aughts, and I have to say I’m flummoxed. First, I’m going to say that Gnarls Barkley should not be considered with these other no-talent hacks, because their second CD was great (but then I suppose someone could argue the same thing about any of the others, so I guess I will shut up. Second, this list is at least as much a testimony to bad songs as it is to my apparent inattention to pop radio for the last decade, because I only recognize maybe one-fifth of the songs on this list. I don’t necessarily feel bad about ignorance, though it definitely pokes some holes in my theory that I am some sort of pop culture maven.

Oh, puns.

The Onion AV Club has posted their top 50 movies of the Aughts, and, as I love lists, I was enthralled. First, I had sort of forgotten that we’re at decade’s end; it seems like just yesterday when everyone was hoarding canned goods and convinced their PCs would explode. Good times.

Anywho, go read the whole thing.

Movies I have seen: Moulin Rouge! (47, natch; loved it), Adaptation (46; liked it), Brokeback Mountain (43; loved it), The Dark Knight (41; liked it), Punch-Drunk Love (33; loved it), WALL-E (30; loved it); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (29; loved it), The Incredibles (26; loved it), United 93 (22; liked it), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (19; OK), Mulholland Dr. (18; loved it), The Royal Tenenbaums (17; loved it), Almost Famous (16; liked it), Y Tu Mama Tambien (15; loved it), Talk to Her (14; loved it), Children of Men (10; loved it), Capturing the Friedmans (8; liked it), Kill Bill Vol. I (7; loved it), Memento (5; loved it), There Will Be Blood (3; loved it), Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (1; loved it)

Movies I want to see: Gerry (49), City of God (40), A History of Violence (37), Pan’s Labyrinth (36), Waking Life (35), American Psycho (34), Morvern Callar (28; has anyone even heard of this movie? It’s the second time I’ve seen it on a top of the decade list), Zodiac (21), The Squid and the Whale (20; and I can’t believe I haven’t seen this movie), No Country for Old Men (4; and how haven’t I seen this?), The 25th Hour (2; again, this pops up for the second time on a decade list)

So, here’s my list starting with ones from above:

Moulin Rouge!, Brokeback Mountain, Punch-Drunk Love, Mulholland Dr., Children of Men, Memento, There Will Be Blood

If you haven’t seen them all, it’s a crime: tragic love and music!, tragic love, strange love, strange mind messing, dystopic perfection, strange mind messing, and sort of all of the rest put together.

To that, I would add:

Rachel Getting Married, 28 Days Later, V for Vendetta

Family drama, dystopic perfection, dystopic perfection.

I sense some themes.

Some close ones: Kill Bill, The Royal Tenenbaums, Casino Royale and The Bourne Ultimatum

What are yours?

Yeah, so hi.

Anyway. We bought a new welcome mat this weekend; the old one had gotten worn to the nubbins.

Not the point of this post actually. Metaphors ahead.

We had the good fortune to spend Thanksgiving in Arizona at the manse of my Uncle Jack. His lovely home (casita! pool! fountains!) is located in Sun Lakes, a relatively old Phoenix suburb that caters to the 55+ crowd; indeed, one must be of a certain age to live there. Aunt Judy has lived there for quite a while, so I was relatively familiar with it, but Uncle Jack lives in a newer section called Oakwood.

As we drove around the area over the next few days, I realized just how messed up the design of this community is. At least to me. First, it is a maze of streets that circle around each other as they devour (ok, surround) the golf courses they contain. Here’s the map, with Oakwood on top and Judy’s section below it across Riggs. Certainly there aren’t as many of the cul-de-sacs that dominate suburbs, but the streets are almost comically anti-grid. Someone joked that this was so the old people wouldn’t get lost — eventually they would find their way home since it was just one big circle. Mean, but perhaps true. However, these developments are also profoundly residential: to get to any service or business, one must leave the gated community and travel on a busy road, but I’ll get to that below.

More shocking to me though was the resolute refusal to interact with the street. As New Urbanists will argue, the life of a neighborhood depends on relatively close quarters, with homes interacting not so much with each other, but with the public space — the street. Thus, let’s not have broad thoroughfares running through neighborhoods; let’s have small streets where cars cannot go fast and homes that face each other aren’t separated by a concrete chasm. And, let’s have sidewalks. Not in Oakwood: there aren’t sidewalks. Oh, actually, there are places to walk, but the paths run between homes, far away from the street. I can see the safety concern here, but on a practical level, it means that people don’t walk in front of their neighbors’ homes; they are hidden away, preventing them from interacting with anyone.

Even if there were sidewalks, they probably wouldn’t be able to interact anyway because the houses are almost angrily inward facing. Garages are the closest parts of homes to the street; any human parts of the homes are hidden behind fences or gates. Any human interactions must be planned. Not that I’m a big neighbor person, but there is almost no way a person living here could say hello to their neighbor in a random interaction.

I will acknowledge that much of this may make sense: it is not like seniors will be cavorting outside in 125-degree weather; people like privacy; desert landscaping is not exactly inviting in the first place. However, I do think that the ideals of New Urbanism could ideally fit senior living. I know that my gregarious grandmother added years to her life by escaping from a similar community where she was isolated from everyone else; seniors who may have mobility issues would surely benefit from a community which allowed for even encouraged interaction between humans, not just cars. Further, what sense does it make to force these same people to get into their cars to do anything? Why not make the community slightly more dense and integrate businesses, services, and homes? Indeed, this would even serve our planet, with everyone zooming a half-mile in their golf cart to the quickie mart instead of getting into their car to go to the grocery store.

I liked Jack’s house a lot, but I do think that the kind of design that is available for people who have retired is counter-intuitive, potentially dangerous, and certainly unfriendly: if no one can see your welcome mat from the street, does it even exist?

This recent post by Andrew Sullivan articulated what I guess has frustrated me of late. It seems like the Republican party has re-fashioned itself into an opposition party whose sole principle is opposition. Perhaps this will just take a bit of time to adjust being in the minority in the government, but as far as I can tell, the most important issues for the Right are the President’s birth certificate and how many czars he has. Now, I’m conflating “the Right” and “Republicans,” which is likely not fair nor accurate, but I also don’t see elected Republican representatives telling me anything different: telling me that they have a different vision for health care reform (which, I’d assume, everyone agrees we need to have) or for international relations (outside of abolishing the UN, or, as Mike Huckabee suggested, cutting it loose from New York City), outside of just hating the vision that the President or Democrats have. It seems very short-sighted, awfully counter-productive, and ultimately detrimental to not only their party but to the health of our democracy. This kind of politics where the opposition merely opposes without offering a positive agenda of their own coupled with a media that only reports on the back and forth instead of the actually issues truly results in a negative outlook for our democracy.

Basically, you need to go to this page, which has the two audio files in question.

The gist? Mike Blowers, color analyst for the Mariners and actually a good one, and slightly entertaining, predicts in the pre-game show that Matt Tuiasosopo would get his first major league home run during the game about to start, down to which at-bat, what the count would be, and in which deck it would land.

Then came the 5th inning, and the legendary Dave Niehaus has the call and Blowers’s hilarious reaction to his amazing clairvoyance.

I read on one of my Vegas messageboards (don’t judge) that Southwest is instituting a new “EarlyBird” policy: basically, you can pay $10 to check in and get your boarding number 36 hours before your flight leaves, and hus before the huddled masses check in 24 hours before the flight leaves.

I have mixed feelings. First, Southwest has made public statements indicating that they are likely not going to go down the path to hell that other airlines have and charge people for checking bags (Aside: I cannot tell you what hell traveling on US Airways was with everyone trying to cram 18 carry-ons in the overheads). So, they need another revenue stream, and this seems like a fairly benign way of doing it.

$10 is a tempting price for many people. It’s really not that much, but is it too much that you wouldn’t be willing to “risk it” to just check in with everyone else? For me, it’s likely a yes: unless everyone and their brother pays for it, I’m still going to get an A-level boarding number, which means I will still be able to get an aisle seat, though it might be a little further back than I am used to. Another option when not traveling solo is to have one person buy the EarlyBird, and have them save seats. It’s a little evil, but it’d work.

We’ll see what happens with this: if there are reports that when people check in at the 24-hour mark and start getting B boarding passes, then there might be a flurry of people ponying up the $10. I don’t think that will happen though: too many people who fly Southwest are incredibly cheap and, to put it kindly, not very travel-savvy, so I don’t think they’ll even know what the EarlyBird option is.

So, we had a Southwest credit to blow through, so we needed a SW destination that we wanted to actually go to and spend a long weekend. We’ve been to Chicago before, but either for not very long or during the winter. So, it was decided.

We found a good rate at the Intercontinental right on Michigan Ave, and it was a good hotel with nice rooms and a good staff. And, you couldn’t beat the location. We arrived in the morning and took the orange line from Midway to the hotel. We ended up buying a $14 3-day pass that was so convenient, in part because the CTA system is incredibly easy to use and largely convenient.

We got a room and just sort of puttered about, visiting Navy Pier and the Museum of Contemporary Art, which had a really cool exhibit from Olafur Eliasson, the guy who did those waterfalls under the NYC bridges. One piece, Beauty, was really captivating. Soon it was time for our tour of Wrigley, which was awesome: so much history, and just so cool to be right there in the dugout, press box, and locker room (see pictures of this and our visit to US Cellular at Stonesthrow). We then walked through Boystown and then on to a dinner of deep dish pizza at Giordano’s (I’ll be spooling out reviews of our eats at my review site, Chicken-Fried Caviar, starting with…).

Frontera Grill started us off right on Saturday, and then it was off on our architecture river cruise, which was a great way to see the city and relax (pics from this and our visit to Oak Park are also at Stonesthrow). We toddled a bit more and then it was time to train to US Cellular to see the O’s vanquish the White Sox and their fascism for not letting us upper-deckers see the lower deck AT ALL. Evil. And you have a meh stadium to begin with, so there.

Sunday morn, we headed out to Oak Park to soak up all of the wonderful Frank Lloyd Wright-ness of it all. Truly great, and a lovely little neighborhood. We then went back downtown to take in more of Millenium Park and its wackiness. We also partook of some urban putt-putt at the devilish greens at Grant Park, and also partook of some nice sangria while doing so. It was then time to prepare for our fabulous dinner at mk (review forthcoming) and then a stroll along Michigan Ave. one last time.

The next morning we rented a car and headed north to Six Flags, where we road some decent enough coasters, but were more impressed by the cleanliness and nice theming in the park. We then headed to the airport for our trip home (well, Rick went on to Denver for work).

Chicago really impressed me. I’d love to go back and hit the myriad things we didn’t do (Art Institute, Field Museum, an actual Cubs game, Robie House, among others), and get another taste of some fine Chicago vittles. Definitely on the return to list.

Not to dwell on the recent passing of my Grandma, but I wanted to add one more thing: in addition to composing the obituary, I was tasked with choosing the music for the service. I write about it here  just because it’s something that I really never thought of, but thought that I should probably think about what I’d want, especially since music is so important to me. That post will have to wait. Instead, I’ll write about what I did for my Grandma.

My Grandma was not a music lover — in fact, I can’t think of a single recording she owned. So, I spent about a day rummaging through my iPod for inspiration. While listening, I realized that she had told me on several occasions how she loved a version of the 23rd Psalm I sang with the Pomona College Glee Club. It’s actually Bobby McFerrin’s version, wherein he replaces all of the masculine pronouns with feminine ones; in reviewing it, I discovered he actually wrote it for his mother, so I thought it was doubly appropriate.

Back to the iPod then. I thought about Rutter’s Requiem, which I also had sung in college. My favorite part of that piece is the Agnus Dei, which would have been way too morbid (but which might be played at my service, just to piss everyone off):

I had also thought of the Pie Jesu or the Lux Aeterna, but they were all a bit too classical.

So, I returned to some other songs I had sort of sung, and landed on “Sing Me to Heaven”: PGMC’s Brotherly Love had actually sung this (at least I don’t think I had sung it), and though it’s a bit cheesy, I still was moved by it, so I went with that as number two:

Finally, I couldn’t really avoid Neil Finn, could I? When I scrolled through and saw “Lullaby Requiem,” I knew I had found the closing song, especially with this line:

And the building blocks
Sometimes have to crash
Not meant to last like a mother’s love

I think they were appropriate — only moderately religious, like Grandma, but emphasizing her restfulness and her motherliness. Anyway, I thought it was good.

The Yankee Stadium I visited a few times was, frankly, underwhelming. It may have been storied at one point, but it certainly had none of the amenities of the newer parks, nor did it have the feel of the next oldest parks I have been to — Fenway and Dodger Stadium. I didn’t see all the fuss.

With the new Yankee Stadium, I was looking forward to something more: adding all of the great amenities and perhaps adding in some charm. Frankly, they did neither. It’s a waste of an opportunity.

The exterior is mammoth, as befits the egos of the Yankees and many of their fans:

I’m actually fine with the gargantuan proportions. I find the enormous signs for the gates (look through the trees) out of scale and unnecessary, and the gilt lettering of the stadium is both tacky and oddly formal. I know they want it to be temple, but really.

You enter into the “Great Hall”:

Like some Venturi-esque atrium (see the Seattle Art Museum or Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery), the Great Hall has potential, but there almost nothing there: it is just an elevator lobby and nothing more. Citizens Bank Park doesn’t have all that great an entrance, really, but at least you walk in and see home plate. Safeco of course has art a-plenty (including the whimsical “Tempest” at its entrance), which Yankee Stadium eschews.

We wanted to take advantage of the ability to walk around and still see the ballfield, an ability which they thankfully incorporated in the new design. So, we hiked up to the proper level and walked around. Concessions were more diverse and plentiful, so that was a definite improvement. However, once we were done with our walkabout, it was next to impossible to get to our seats in the upper level. We had to walk down a ramp (no stairs or elevator were available) to the Great Hall, and then take an elevator back up. Seriously. It was the most convoluted set-up I have ever seen. It was as if they wanted people to get to that main level, but then forgot that people had to actually sit somewhere. Incredibly stupid.

Our seats were high up, but the views of the field weren’t all that bad. However, the views of the stadium were as good as they can be when you have every available square foot devoted to advertising. I’m not some purist here, but there is a way that you can do it, and this isn’t it.

I also understand that there isn’t all that much to look at, unlike Citizens Bank Park or Safeco. However, there is a uniquely New York feature that they could have incorporated: the subway. They could have raised the scoreboard ten feet, and the fans could have seen the subway go back and forth. OK, it’s not that exciting, but it is something.

Overall, it’s just incredibly disappointing, and the new Yankee Stadium might rank as one of the worst major league parks I’ve been to, if only because they had such an opportunity (even with the site and “historical” constraints) to do something truly special and interesting.

Soon, I’ll be seeing a game at my sixteenth major league park (US Cellular Field) and taking a tour of another (Wrigley). Just in case you’re curious, here’s my complete list:

AL East: Fenway, both Yankee Stadiums, Oriole Park at Camden Yards

AL Central: Comerica Park, Metrodome

AL West: Safeco, Kingdome, Angels Stadium, Oakland/Alameda Coliseum

NL East: Citizens Bank Park, the Vet (I really do need to see the Nats’ stadium at least)

NL Central: PNC Park, Great American

NL West: Dodger Stadium

Top 5: Safeco, Citizens Bank Park, PNC, Fenway, Camden Yards

Top ones yet to visit: AT&T, Petco, and Kauffman, because I love me some waterfalls