The election; also, who is America?

Well, several victories and several defeats. Obama won, which is a victory for all the world (even those who don't know it yet), T. Walton won the sheriff's race here in Harvey County, and some great projects were funded by taxes and bonds in Lawrence and Wichita. But Proposition 8 was passed in California, and some even worse propositions were passed in other states, including a ban on adoptions by gay couples in Arkansas (but not gay individuals), which surprised me much more than it should have. The only good news is that there is a very real state law issue that can overturn Proposition 8, so our hope doesn't lie only in the Supreme Court, which will remain anti-gay until a conservative justice kicks the bucket. (It can't even be overturned by the rationale in the Amendment 2 case, if I understand it correctly.)

But with all the celebration and the talk of getting the country back, I'm wondering who is America. When Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, and the disputed Electoral College results were so close, I heard a lot of people talking about the will of the people being thwarted. And I understand that the winner should win, but the argument always seemed to imply that America had spoken, and nobody important wanted Bush to win. And when Obama gets 52 or 53 percent of the popular vote, it's a mandate, but when Bush gets 51 percent of the vote, it's some kind of fluke, since everybody knows we all wanted Kerry to win.

Despite how strongly I disagree with those who supported McCain, I can't bring myself to think of them as unworthy voters, the way some folks seem to. But maybe I'm wrong. A friend of mine mentioned yesterday something about how the celebrations when Obama won were nothing like what would have happened if McCain won. There would have been no tears of joy from McCain supporters, only tears of sadness and anger from Obama supporters. Why do Obama supporters show so much emotion -- such irrepressible joy, when McCain supporters would probably have just gone to bed and then gotten up the next morning and taunted Obama supporters with smugness?

Who is America? Is it the people who danced in the streets Tuesday night? Or is it the people who now say the country is going to be ruined by Obama and Congress? I used to think it was both, but now I'm beginning to think it's the former.

An analogy: Who was America in the 1770s? Was it the minority who wanted a new country, or was it the majority who wanted to leave well enough alone? Historical perspective shows us that it was the minority. But what was the difference? Is it that the minority won? Is it that they wanted change for the better while the majority wanted to keep the old ways? Was it simply because they were right?

Another analogy: Isaac Asimov came up with an elegant argument against those creationists and other pseudoscientists who claim that science has been wrong in the past and mistakes in science have been generally accepted before being disproven. His argument is that science improves, and there are degrees of wrong. In other words, "the earth is a sphere" is wrong, but it isn't nearly as wrong as previous ideas, such as "the earth is flat." Both are wrong, but they are wrong to different degrees (and the latter isn't as wrong as you'd think -- you can measure a mile of earth and barely find any curve at all -- it's basically flat). And then scientists started saying that the earth is an oblate spheroid, which is much less wrong than either of the earlier propositions, but is still not quite right.

So the founding fathers, while sexist and racist, were less wrong than those who believed in freedom only for royalty. And maybe McCain supporters are like creationists -- they're crying out that Obama's policies are wrong, and perhaps they aren't perfect, but at least they are progressing, whereas the McCain supporters want to regress to a time when we were even less enlightened than we are today. (Okay, now I realize that that analogy isn't very good.)

Back to the first analogy. Does Obama speak for America because he got a majority of the vote? If so, did Bush speak for America in 2004 because he got the majority of the vote, and were the founding fathers not American because they were in the minority?

Or does Obama speak for America because he's right? If so, who are we to say he's right?

Or is it that he wants to progress while McCain wants to keep the old ways? Is it more American to want to grow and improve all the time? That may be my favorite argument in favor of Obama supporters (and Gore and Kerry supporters) speaking for the country -- they fit the basic principle that America is about looking forward and always improving.

Or is it only possible to know from a historical perspective? The founding fathers won -- America is sovereign. Marshall won -- the Supreme Court is supreme. Lincoln won -- the Union is still together, and slavery is no more. FDR won -- despite some regression, America today looks more like his America than it does America prior to him. It's too soon to tell, but it's starting to look like perhaps Reagan lost. And it's way too soon to tell (especially after 8 years of Bush), but it looks like Clinton won. If Obama's vision for America is in place 50 years from now, he will have defined America at this moment.

But I won't be around then. What's important to me right now is knowing whether I should feel okay thinking that the opinions of the millions who voted for Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama are more important than those who voted for G.H.W. Bush, Dole, G.W. Bush, and McCain. It sounds pretty arrogant when put that way, but I think it's implied by a lot of people when they talk about the last few elections. And I'm starting to believe it myself.

By the way, for those of you who have known the evolution of my political views over the past few years, it's safe to say that I am now a Democrat and what Americans who call themselves "conservative" call "liberal" (that word is so hard to define, but the definition that Rush Limbaugh invented for it seems to have stuck in America, even though no one in the rest of the world recognizes it). That doesn't mean that the World's Smallest Political Quiz would say that I'm a leftist, or that I can stand Michael Moore, or even that I don't wince at a few of the things that Obama says, but I've come to agree with Democrat Party platforms and policies much more than I did even several months ago.

A couple of other things: The polls were right. There was no racial Bradley effect. I predicted a 364-174 Obama win, based on the polls, and the polls were right everywhere except Missouri and Indiana, which swapped their 11 electoral votes. The final total looks like it will be 365-173, barring a surprise in Missouri, but that doesn't mean the polls were wrong in that 365th vote -- the few polls in Nebraska's District 2 showed Obama ahead there, but I ignored those when I made my prediction.

And one other thing, from America's Finest News Source: Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job and Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress.

As you may have guessed, this post rambles because I was using it to think through these issues. Given some time for reflection, I may end up rejecting what I've said here. But who knows. The mind of Ben works in mysterious ways.

Pollster electoral college map

Election predictions

My predictions with 4½ weeks to go:

Electoral College
Obama 374
McCain 174

Popular vote
Obama 53%
McCain 44%
Other 3%

You heard it here first.

Putin rearing his head

Sarah Palin talked about Putin rearing his head in the airspace over Alaska. She was right: recently, U.S. spy satellites took this picture of Alaska.

Presidential race

A letter to the editor from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

How racism works

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class? What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said “I do” to? What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization? What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of the Keating 5? What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

— Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

The Bechdel Rule

Twenty-five years ago, in the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel came up with a simple, insightful test for misogyny in film:



She called it "the rule," and credited it to her friend Liz Wallace. Lately, it has resurfaced in a big way, and it has been called "Bechdel's Rule" or "the Bechdel Test," although Bechdel recently told NPR that she thought it should be called "Ripley's Rule," after Sigorney Weaver's character in Alien, the movie mentioned in the original strip.

Fans of the rule have expanded it a bit, to include written fiction and to prevent certain categories of sexism from falling through the cracks:

Are there two or more female characters
who talk to each other
about something other than men, marriage, or babies?

A quick Google search brings up lots of interesting commentary on the rule, and I highly recommend reading some of it. Like this: "Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test."

Unfortunately, I don't have the kind of memory that will allow me to apply this to movies and books I've seen in the past. But I will certainly be on the lookout for it in the future.

Palin for President!

Excellent!

If you're coming here to see an excellent blog, today is the day you will not be disappointed, if you'll just click here.

America tomorrow

Based on the words of Martin Niemöller.

When the government came for the Communists,
     I did not speak out;
     I was not a Communist.

When they came for the gay community,
     I did not speak out;
     I was not gay.

When they came for the Muslims,
     I did not speak out;
     I was not a Muslim.

When they came for me,
     there was no one left
     to speak out.

Ben update, part three: Conklin Cars

After I quit the After School Program, I went to work in sales at Conklin Cars. I lasted several weeks. I think I sold nine cars before being fired for being terrible at it. Now I'm looking for a job again.

My favorite car I sold was this one.

President Hillary Clinton

I know next to nothing about politics, and I don't want to learn. I know that makes me an irresponsible citizen, but the problem is that there are no major voices in politics who share my views. I agree with Republicans on a few things, and I agree with Democrats on a few things. But I agree even less with those in the middle. So many of the average "moderate" Americans seem to hold the worst beliefs of both sides -- they seem to wish we lived in a dictatorship. (And don't think I'm a libertarian, either -- those people are as crazy as each of the above.)

Disclaimers aside, I heard some very interesting news yesterday. There is apparently a very strong movement within the Democratic Party to nominate Clinton instead of Obama. I don't understand how it all works, but the people saying it said it's a distinct possibility, given how the balloting system works at the convention.

That got me thinking -- what about a Clinton-Obama ticket with Clinton at the top? That's something everyone was talking about several months ago, but not lately. Wouldn't that almost guarantee 16 years of a Democrat in the White House? And as much as I disagree with Democrats, they are exactly what we need right now: They are currently the party for civil rights, peace, conservation, and liberty.

Unless I'm sorely mistaken about who they are, Clinton and Obama would help secure peace around the world while improving our position internationally. They would ensure proper criminal procedures in any case the U.S. is involved with (imagine basic human rights for "enemy combatants"). They would appoint judges who would uphold the rights of gay Americans as equal citizens. They would stop the official discrimination against gay military personnel. They would reduce carbon emissions while protecting our national parks.

(And if you doubt my contention that moderate Americans are bad, think of how many of them would not support the above: a big chunk of moderate Americans are homophobic, support war, don't care how we treat "bad guys," and doubt anthropomorphic climate change. But maybe I'm just pessimistic.)

I doubt Obama would be as good as Clinton at all of that right now. But he would be excellent at it after 8 years as vice-president.

Now if only the Republicans could win the legislature -- since I have so much disagreement with each party, I'm also a fan of gridlock. But the Democrats are going to have huge majorities in Congress -- perhaps even filibuster-proof. But I know enough about how Americans vote to know that, if a Democrat is in the White House, the 2010 congressional election will be a landslide for Republicans.

Anyway, that's far more than I meant to say about politics, so now we're back to your regularly-scheduled blog.

Ben update, part two: Wu

Wu has had a rough few months. We competed at the convention I mentioned in my previous post. I fully expected us to finish fourth or fifth out of seventeen quartets, but then two of the best quartets couldn’t make it. So I thought we would finish second or third out of fifteen.

We were going to be the final quartet to sing in the first round. Each quartet sings two songs in the first round on Friday night, then the top ten from the first round sing two more on Saturday night, and the final ranking for the top ten quartets is determined by their total score for the two rounds.

Since we were the final quartet, we watched the first few quartets before leaving to warmup. A few of them were really terrible, and I felt sorry for them and for the audience.

When we sang, I thought we did extremely well. The other guys weren’t so sure, and when we returned to our seats, our friends didn’t want to say how they thought we did. I was pumped up, though, and I fully expected us to take second place.

They don’t release the scores of the top ten after the first round -- they just announce them in random order (on Saturday night, they perform in the random order they were announced in). It’s a nerve-racking experience if you aren’t one of the first five or six announced. I wasn’t really worried, even when they had announced nine of the quartets, because I was sure we were head and shoulders above the competition.

Then our name wasn’t called. My first reaction was that either there had been a mistake, or we had broken some contest rule and been penalized or disqualified. I ran down to the Contest Administrator to get our score sheet. We were fourteenth place. I thought we must have been severely penalized for something.

Penalties are usually assessed in only one category -- the Music category if you break a technical music-theory related rule or Presentation if you do something unbecoming of a family show or have an extra person on stage or something (I don’t think there are any Singing penalties, unless you do something so bad in the Music category that the Singing judge can’t judge it by normal barbershop standards -- like playing an instrument or singing music that isn’t barbershop at all). So you can tell if you’ve been assessed a penalty by looking at your scores and seeing whether one category is far below the others (the categories have so much overlap that the scores are usually very similar).

But they were even across the board -- we averaged in the mid-60s (on a 100-point scale). At our previous competition, we had averaged in the mid-70s. A drop like that is almost impossible to understand -- with our scores the previous year, we would have been second or third, and we thought we had improved. Instead, almost every quartet, including some that sounded terrible, leapfrogged us. If you look across all the quartets that competed in the whole country, instead of just the fifteen who competed that weekend in Iowa, we went from 70th out of 225 last year to 142nd out of 219 this year.

So we were disappointed. And then we had our evaluation sessions with some of the judges. They were different judges than the year before, so they didn’t know our potential. They didn’t tell us what had changed. They just told us a few little things that would have improved our score slightly -- might have made us 10th or 11th place instead of 14th.

Worst of all, when we got a DVD of the performance later that night and watched it, I still couldn’t tell what was wrong. We sounded good to me, and we looked okay. I started to think that maybe I had lost my ability to hear what we should sound like. I got very upset and thought that I might never be able to sing again -- if I had gone from being a good singer who was very critical of himself and others to a mediocre singer who thought he was doing pretty good in less than a year, then my musical ear must have deteriorated very quickly, and would soon be so bad that I wouldn’t be able to hear well enough to sing at all.

After I went home, I pulled out my piano books. It had been a few years since I had studied piano seriously, and I thought some simple sonatinas or some of the easier Bach might bring my ear around.

Then I found my recording of Wu from the previous year’s contest. One of the two songs we sang this year we also sang last year. So I listened to the two recordings, and it was immediately clear what was wrong. Last year, we sounded like an ensemble -- four guys making one sound, while this year, we just sounded like four guys singing the same song at the same time. We had no barbershop sound at all. It’s very difficult to describe in words, but if you heard the two recordings, you’d know what I mean.

One week after contest, we had a big show that we were getting paid a lot of money for. If we had tried to change anything, we would have done even worse, so they basically got the same level of sound that we gave at contest. It was a little better, because we could hear ourselves better and the audience response was great and we knew that we needed to try to sing together better than we had the week before. Also, we got to sing some of our non-contestable music, and some of it has some pretty fun elements that our contest music doesn’t have. And we had some pretty good jokes, and they went over pretty well. So the audience and the people who hired us thought they got their money’s worth, even though I thought they didn’t.

After the show, I really wanted to either switch parts with Matt or Chuck, or quit singing with Wu. I was convinced that I couldn’t sing lead anymore and needed to switch to baritone or tenor. Matt talked me out of it.

Matt and I talk about barbershop almost every day. He calls me several times a week to talk about barbershop, and I call him sometimes, too. We started thinking about what we would do if we were trying to help a quartet like Wu -- if we were barbershop quartet coaches. The first thing I would do would be to have the quartet learn a few very easy, very barbershoppy songs. That way, the group could learn how to develop a very strong barbershop sound that they could then apply to their harder songs.

I also realized that I would tell a quartet like us that all of their problems could be solved by relaxing the voices and singing as naturally as possible. Strangely enough, when four guys try to sound like each other, they have less of an ensemble sound than if each tries to sound just like himself. Since I have kind of a thin, harsh voice, the other guys have to pinch their voices to sound like me.

And we like learning new music, so Matt and I found a bunch of easy songs that are also entertaining that we could try learning.

The first time we rehearsed this easy music at Nick’s house, we had many moments of a world-class barbershop sound. It was extremely inconsistent, but while we had been lacking an ensemble ring on almost every chord before, we started getting that ring regularly. And I started noticing that each time one of us would push our voice a little too much, the rest of us would start to sound bad. It was very strange -- if I pushed my voice, Matt would go out of tune. If Matt pushed his voice, Chuck would go out of tune. When we each sang with a completely free voice, we locked up each chord like crazy.

But then we had a performance at the WSU art museum that didn’t sound nearly as good as our rehearsals. But, instead of getting discouraged, I just stepped back and thought of what I would say if I were a quartet coach. I would say that we sounded much better than we did at contest, and that we needed to keep practicing sounding great, and that we shouldn’t expect every performance (or perhaps any performance) to be as easy as singing in Nick’s living room. And we hadn’t really practiced that music in several weeks! We’ve been having fun singing only new music! So we haven’t had much chance yet to apply the things we’ve learned to our new repertoire.

And then we were not able to have a rehearsal for a few weeks, because Nick was on his honeymoon, and Chuck was in Africa. But now we are back to rehearsing, and we are focusing on music for our next contest (in Cedar Rapids in October), and it sounds great! It is really hard to believe we have come so far in just a few weeks.

And here is a little video from the art museum performance:

Ben update, part one: leaving St. James

I apologize for neglecting this blog for the past several months. Here’s an overview of the past several months:

I had two part-time jobs from August through December -- half of the time, I was the Communications Manager for St. James Episcopal Church in Wichita, and the other half of the time, I was the Music Director of the St. James After School Program (I used the same office for both). Ten days before the end of December, I was told that the church couldn’t afford to pay me anymore, so I was terminated as of December 31.

So my salary and hours were cut in half. I should have found another part-time job right away, but I’m quite slow and lazy about that sort of thing. By the time I started seriously looking for a job, things looked bad at the After School Program. I was told several times that I was going to be fired because I wasn’t doing my job (I did fine as the Music Director, but they also wanted me to write grants, which I didn’t really do). So I started considering a full-time job, but I wanted to finish out the school year, if they would let me, because I didn’t want to let the kids down.

At the same time, Erin and I were running out of money -- I really needed to be working full-time, preferably before the end of the school year. And then, I was told that I would be let go after the school year ended because the program had run out of money. Unlike the church, which gave me ten days’ notice, the program gave me about six weeks’ notice. So I started seriously looking for a job.

I decided to apply for a job as a car salesman at Conklin Cars in Newton. I was given an interview and hired, but my starting date was unknown, because they had to hire enough people to make a sales training course worth their while. This was about five weeks before the end of the school year, so I hoped I could make it to the end.

After a couple of weeks, I figured I’d be safe, because they’d probably give me two weeks to put in notice. But then, on a Thursday, I got a call from Conklin -- I was to report to work Monday at 9 a.m. I would have said goodbye to the kids on Thursday and Friday, and the program director and I could have discussed whether it would be better to quit the program early (we had already considered doing that so we could save some money and pay her a little longer so she could work to raise enough funds for the next year). But the kids were out of school that Thursday and Friday, and the program director didn’t come in to work. And I’m a coward.

At the time, I was in the St. James Choir. I was in it last year, but then I didn’t rejoin in the fall for two reasons: I didn’t want to have to be at the church 6 days a week, and I didn’t want to go to any church services period. But then one of the greatest choral directors I’ve ever known became the director of the St. James Choir, and I had to join. I love him so much that I also joined his community ensemble at the same time, so I got to see him at least three times a week from January through April.

So I didn’t tell anyone at St. James that I was planning to leave. The choir really needed me that Sunday -- in fact, they were singing a piece that they had specifically put off for a week because I had to miss a week of church for a barbershop convention. So I went to church on Sunday, then, once everyone had left the building, I started to pack up my office.

I had a ton of shit in there. It took me a few hours to put it all in my car, and it barely fit. Once my office was empty, I walked through that beautiful building one last time. Then I took my name off of the mailbox in the office, and off of the slot where we kept our hymnals and choir music. I went up to my office and deleted all my personal files off of the computer. Then I e-mailed the program director. Then I e-mailed the choir director and organist. Then I went to the church’s e-mail system (I used to be the computer guy for the church, too) and deleted my e-mail address, since I wouldn’t be able to get my e-mail.

That’s right, I told my supervisor that I was quitting by e-mail, from an e-mail address that she couldn’t respond to because I deleted it right after I sent the e-mail.

Then I left my church keys on the deacon’s desk and left.

I never heard from the program director. I did hear from the choir director, who told me to be sure to feel welcome at the choir party that was to take place that week. I didn’t want to see any of them again -- I was too ashamed, and I’m too much of a coward -- and I was lucky enough to have an excuse: my quartet had a performance scheduled at the same time as the party. I could have come to part of the party, but I didn’t tell him that.

He later contacted me again to ask whether I could come to the final three Sunday mornings of the choir season. Even if I had to skip Wednesday night rehearsals for work, he wanted me for the services. I told him I couldn’t, and that was that.

I’ve been back to the church only once since then -- a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from the organist, reminding me that he had a music book of mine. We decided that I could get it by coming to the church on a Wednesday night when the church would be open and he would leave it sitting on the piano for me. I went and picked it up and didn’t run into anyone. I saw that they had made a lot of progress on the construction, and I wanted to look at that and look at my office and the After School Program office to see if there were any clues as to what had happened to the program (I’ve never heard), but I was too afraid that I would run into Mother Kate, so I just left.

I saw some people from the church at a movie theater last week, but luckily they didn’t see me.

Political blog post

Hearing people talk about politics gets old really fast, so I'll keep this brief: I want Kathleen Sebelius to be the next Vice President.

Jack Sheldon

The Atheist Apocalypse

According to Subnormality by Winston Rowntree.

Sparkle!

The Best of the Best

Every quartet here today
would hesitate to say
the greatest song that they had sung together;
Would it be “Sweet Adeline,”
or “Calling Caroline,”
or “Love That's True Through Fair or Stormy Weather?”

But does it matter ’bout the song,
whether it be weak or strong,
and must we strive to sing with such perfection?
Is not the most important part
that it come straight from the heart,
and be sung with understanding and affection?

So let us sing our songs together,
and make that sound divine;
Let’s keep the memories golden
for the sake of auld lang syne.

I wonder what has happened
to that old quartet of mine;
I hope and pray we’ll meet again,
somewhere, someday, sometime,
If only to remind them
how dear they are to me,
and just how much I miss the touch
of four-part harmony.

I wonder if they still recall
the tears that filled our eyes
The night the crowd applauded
when we won our first big prize.

All that I possess I would forsake,
if just once more I could partake--
Singing one more song, just one more time,
with that old quartet of mine.

And if someday we ever meet again,
I will smile and stand in line
Just to sing one song, just one more time,
with that old quartet of mine.

The Mysterious Ticking Noise

Cosby, Sills, Cash, and Jung