 
On May 5, from 7:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M., the opening of photographs by Nevan Forster will take place at Boulder Coffee in Rochester at the corner of Alexander Street and South Clinton Avenue. Nevan is one of my students and I am plugging his show today. The exhibition runs through May 31. Below is one of Nevan’s photographs, which was used on the invitation.
Oil politics are only as difficult as we make them. Yes, I understand that we have to make them difficult. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose, that is the nature of the universe. It seems we could make it easier on ourselves though. I sure am glad the Bush administration has a plan to handle the recent rise in gas prices. I mean he’s only been office for six years, right. To be honest, if invading Iraq had been a way to protect western oil reserves, I would have been in favor of it. When Americans can’t drive their fat asses (mine included) to McDonald’s for a goddamn happy meal, they get pissed. When Americans get pissed, they lash out like any two-year-old worth his salt. You want to make things easier for the poor in Africa and Asia, make sure Americans can get enough saturated fats and methamphetamines. It isn’t a great situation, but it is the situation we have. At least until the Chinese and Japanese pull out our Bumble teeth by calling in our loans.
OK. Enough with the anger. You want prices to fall? Cut the demand. You know all those bogus e-mails about people not buying gas next Tuesday? They may be hoaxes, but they’d work if they happened. Price follows demand. Oil profits are up? So what? That’s what happens when someone has a supply that is in demand. Nobody puts a gun to our collective heads. You think Iran is behind it? Who could blame them? The Islamic Revolution freed that country from a U. S. supported regime that made Saddam Hussein look almost sane. We vilified that revolution, even when it began to produce an underground democratic movement. You don’t like their current president? I wish he’d run for office here! The guy has U. S. troops massed on both borders and understands that he has something we want. He knows our military is stretched too thin to do anything serious. His country has been listed on the “Axis of Evil” list! He has learned from the west. Nuclear weapons make Iran a player, whether our president can pronounce it or not.
In four years, the Bush Administration has destabilized the Middle East and followed that up by alienating the players needed to put it back together. Destabilization in itself is not a bad thing, if it is part of a larger strategy, but the Bush administration (remember, the Republicans are the party of ideas) has shown time and again that it reacts to, rather than trying to influence (not control, control is an illusion) world events.
Finally, let me leave you with a little piece of wisdom picked up in Mike Barnhart‘s history classes. The foreign policy of any country is influenced by domestic politics much more than it is international politics. The President of the United States gets no votes in France or South Africa. His only interest in Iran or Iraq is the oil that the American people want, not the good fortune of the Iraqi or Iranian people.Â
Unfortunately, the American president must be able to move the international community to suite the needs of the American people. George Bush has proved himself unable. He has used a hammer when a firm word was needed, and when the time comes that a hammer is needed, America will find that it is no longer available.
I am going to have to think about this one. I fully understand, and even agree with the logic of this idea, but it still disturbs me greatly. I am a fan of the graphic novel. There are wonderful examples of serious graphic novels dealing deftly with difficult and complex subjects.Â
However, I also see the scene from the movie Major League. There are several baseball players sitting on a bus, passing around several Illustrated Classics because one of them has to read Moby Dick to impress a girl.
Perhaps this one has been commissioned by the President so he can get to the bottom of this whole Irag-Al-Quaida business.
Nicholas Cage not withstanding, John James Audubon has another biography bearing his name. Audubon is one of those figures that is separated from the other major personalities in an esoteric field because he is the only one known to the general public. (Quick, how many bird experts can you name? If you know Alexander Wilson, you are disqualified for being a bird geek.) Since any list of the average Peorian’s top ten favorite bird guys will have Audubon’s name listed nine times followed by Big Bird’s, he gets a lot of air play. There are biographies, collected writings, children’s books, and a host of other works. Just do a quick search on Amazon to see what I mean.
The reason I am writing about this latest Audubon book, is not because it deals with America’s premier feather freak, but because it is written by historian Richard Rhodes. Rhodes has been a favorite of mine since I was made to read him during my days as a sub-mediocre undergraduate in the SUNY Stony Brook History Department. I would encounter his books again as a social studies teacher in the much better than mediocre World War II collection of the Wellsville Middle School Library. If you are not familiar with Rhodes, just take a quick glance at the titles above and play a quick game of “One of these things is not like the other.” Atomic bombs, Nazi death squads, homicidal maniacs and John James Audubon? The October, 2004 Knopf release marks a bit of a departure in subject matter for Rhodes, but before you write it off, you should know this guy has some game. He won a Pulitzer in 1988 for The Making of the Atomic Bomb and was a finalist in 1996. Making also won him a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award. And though many of his books deal with somewhat dark historical subjects, many if not all have a scientific slant. He seems to have sold the critics:
“His life makes an engaging story, and Pulitzer Prize winner Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb) chronicles every aspect of it, the commonplace as well as the audacious, in this thoroughly researched biography. Rhodes’s prose style is subtle, enlivened by passages from Audubon’s own letters and journals, and he presents an agreeable picture of a man who charmed almost everyone he met, remained devoted to his wife even though he abandoned her for years at a time and was not above lying about his birth and other details of his life. Perhaps most important, Rhodes succeeds in shedding light on how Audubon perfected his ability to capture in his depictions of birds so much life and emotion that they transcend traditional wildlife painting.” -from Publisher’s Weekly
“Richard Rhodes has given us an indispensable portrait of a true American icon.” - from the Inside Flap
“Rhodes has managed to do for Audubon what Audubon did for birds. And like Audubon, who insisted on life-size paintings and prints, and who saw his Birds of America as a kind of grand rendering of the entire country, in this splendid biography Rhodes has produced nothing less than a portrait of the United States in its formative years.” – The New York Times
“Audubon’s colorful life story has been told from many perspectives, but Richard Rhodes, a skilled researcher and historian, proves there is still fresh ground to be worked. He illuminates the American frontier of the early 1800s with a deft use of precise details. Literally hundreds of quotes, short and long, bring to life the voice of that era. Rhodes has given us the most three-dimensional portrait yet of Audubon the man.” -The Washington Post
I just placed a hold on it at my local library.
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