Worth Noting Pages 36-40

Does the American Economy Serve Democratic Values? Cont’d

·         Should also remember that Labor [the Left] brought us the weekend and has been sole voice looking after our air and water.    

·         One problem with today’s economy is the illusion of health from low unemployment rates:

      “The country’s very good at generating jobs -- just not jobs people can live on.”

·         One view is to democratize corporate systems and structure as a way to reform the “baronies” we now call corporations -- rather than scrap the current system -- have actual workers and representatives of the community affected by the corporation sit on the board of directors.

·         One panelist sees this problem with the Left today:

·         If you have a problem with the economy you better have a better alternative -- and it better be substantive -- otherwise change can’t happen.  The Democratic Party had a plan 30 years ago and it failed miserably [welfare].  Today, they have no plan.

·         Must be a comparative issue.  Those on the Left have no idea how to organize an economy around democratic ideals

·         That changing government and institutions will change and reform human vices (like greed, selfishness etc.) is an old illusion that has led to miserable results in the past

·         There never has been a model economy for Democratic Leftists -- not socialists nor fascists -- the bit of good news is there’s only been 200 years of “modern” history to look to

·         If there is no ideal Democrats can hold high in example -- those on the Right can’t be dragged into argument of a utopia versus a real economy -- the present economy and programs may have problems but the Democrats have no real alternatives

·         Issue is Practical Steps vs. Utopian Vision

·         West:  American Democracy is real and it stands for populism, pluralism, antiracism and antidiscrimination.  The Left is what made America great 100 years ago

·         Rainbow Room Cocktail Recipes

      Bronx Cocktail:  Dry Vermouth, Sweet Vermouth, bitters, OJ, Gin, strain over ice

     Rainbow Room Fizz:   1 oz of B & B, dash of bitters, orange juice, champagne, strain over ice, flaming orange twist

·         Puglianese Appetizer --Beets with fresh mint:  2 lbs fresh beets, olive oil, 2 tbls red wine vinegar, course salt, black pepper, fresh mint.  Wine recos:  Riesling (Halbstrachen , a little dry); Taurina Salice Salentino.  Separate reco:  Argentinian vineyard Bodegas Weinert Merlot or Cabernet

·         Campaign Idea from Rolling Rock -- Latrobe Locations:  TV spot shot at Latrobe bridge.  Spokesman sits on bridge as he explains unique, local character that makes Rolling Rock a great beer.  Brings a nationally distributed product back to a place while providing a relevant, brand-centered backdrop to copy and claims.  This campaign could help Ore-Ida and Saratoga to understand their brands’ geographic source of strength.

·         An Irishman, upon seeing the immensity of the Rocky Mountains for the first time, writes

       home to his brother:

            Patty, you better get here quick; they have so much land, they’re stacking it!

·         Argument Strategy -- A Case For Balance (1/19/98 USN, John Leo No Takeovers Please)

·         Feminists claim Vision 2000 is a plea for equal opportunity and fairness on campus -- balanced representation vis-a-vis males. 

·         Vision calls for female knowledge -- which seems to depend heavily on personal experience, feelings, and cooperation rather than competition or striving for excellence -- new knowledge created by women and minorities will depose and replace “white male” knowledge.

·         What’s the response to what Daphne Patai, U. Mass Professor of Literature, calls “an attempted coup, a stunningly imperialistic move to put in place a questionable feminist agenda, thinly disguised as a plea for equal opportunity and fairness”?

·         I would call for greater balance in agenda and motives represented by Vision 2000 -- obviously does not reflect the sentiments of the general female population -- minorities -- and white males who would agree in principal, but not agree to tactics 

Observation: Almost any position can be defended or assailed by “Making a Case for Balance”

·         On the Plebacy of Large Organizations

            If you’re not the lead dog, the view doesn’t change.

·         Grammy Trivia:  First Record of the Year Award:   “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare) by Domenico Modugno, 1958

·         Art Shipping Service -- BoxArt NY

·         Book Reco: David Dorsey, The Cost of Living, Viking 1997

·         Lucian Freud commenting on his choice of twenty-nine paintings for “The Artist’s Eye’ show at the National Gallery, wrote:

            ‘One quality these paintings share is that they all make me want to go back to work.’

·         From Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

       Clarkson Potter 1989

·         On the floor lay a painting that Jackson had been working on recently, a network of delicate circles painted with a light, tentative brush -- unlike anything he had done before. Seeing it, poet Tony Smith thought of something George Grosz had told him once:     ‘When a painter works in circles ... he is near madness.  Look at Van Gogh’, he said. 

·         Pollock:  Abstract painting is abstract.  It confronts you.

·         On Pollock’s originality: 

Compared to Pollock, marveled one critic, Picasso becomes a quiet conformist, a painter of the past.

·         Jackson’s art reached always for new outrages, new tests, all of them built on the original outrage of which Jackson was always preciously aware: that he was an artist who could not draw -- at least not in the way artists were supposed to draw.  He would eventually force the world to give him the attention he craved: to suffer forgiveness for his outrages; not just to tolerate him, but to love him, or at least his art; to accept him, and finally to concede that he was a great artist.

·         Interesting fact, Chapt. One -- Strong-minded Women: Men whose wives died on the trek west were notoriously disconsolate and “lost” for years; some never recovered. Women whose husbands died, on the other hand, would routinely repair to the nearest town or relative, remarry, and press on.           

·         No one’s eye was more sensitive than Jackson’s.  “He looked at things psychedelically,” says Nick Carone, a close friend at the end of Pollock’s life.  “He didn’t see them with the retina, he saw them with his mind.  He would look at an ashtray like he was trying to get at its molecular structure.  And then he would touch it, move a butt or a matchstick with his fingertips.  He was organizing that phenomena, putting it right.  He was going to make it his.” 

·         On sensitivity and motivation:  Even as a child, according to his brother Sande, Jackson was, like his father, sensitive “to an unnatural degree.”  Barefoot , dressed in bib overalls, his blond hair shining in the Arizona sun, Jackson explored his little universe: both the outer landscape of adobe houses and dusty yards, and the inner landscape of sibling rivalries and unreturned love.  Then, detail by detail, he took that universe and “put it right.”  Through fantasy, he created his own landscape, a private world of images that, for the rest of his life, would haunt his dreams and preoccupy his art.

·         Editorial brochure deriding obsession with athletics at Manual Arts H.S.  --  that led to Pollack’s expulsion from high school (probably written by Goldstein and Tolegian)

            STUDENTS OF MANUAL ARTS:

We present for your consideration the serious problem of good judgment in relative values in this high school.  We deplore most heartily the unreasonable elevation of athletic ability and the consequent degradation of scholarship.  Instead of yelling “hit that line,” we should cry “make that grade.”  Give those letters to our scholars, our artists, and our musicians instead of animated examples of physical prowess.  Give our offices to executives instead of varsity men.  Our last president was a living example of the system we advocate.  There have been such men elected but they have been few and far between.  It will mean a great change in our present policies.  If the change is not made, Manual, the school we know and love is doomed.  It is all very good to win victories but what good are they if we have nothing behind them?  School success depends first upon administrative reputation.  Interscholastic victories are matters of secondary importance. We must have victory at home before we are worthy of victory abroad.  Too much emphasis has been placed on the physical end of school life; too little on the mental.  We have before us a difficult task.  Let us face it bravely.  STUDENTS, MANUAL NEEDS REFORM.  ARE YOU MEN ENOUGH TO GIVE IT?        

·         His father Roy’s response:  “I do not think a young fellow should be too serious.  It is no use to worry about what you can’t help, or what you can help, moral ‘Don’t worry.’ (It was the credo of a man who, unlike Jackson, had come to terms with himself, however unfavorable those terms might have been.)  Perhaps Jackson’s indecisiveness seemed to Roy too much like indifference.  “The secret of success is concentrated interest.”

·         Faye Dunaway on Youthful Good Looks

            When you’re 20 and pretty, then you’re rather like Switzerland -- beautiful but dull.

·         New Magazine Title:  Essay -- publication dedicated to advancing the ideas and attracting a larger audience to the leading essayists and their works -- inspired by John Leo columns, also a potential editorial repositioning for The Atlantic Monthly.

·         On having more than you need: 

You have a full belly, you must serve others.     unknown

·                     Gender Police: ‘Pull Over!’  From On Society by John Leo -- 3/23/98 USN

·         Bill Gates on the Justice Dept.’s wanting Microsoft to include rival Netscape’s Web browser in Windows 98

            It’s a little like asking us to include three cans of Pepsi with every six-pack of Coke.

·         King Vidor on movie direction:

 In America you light the star in Europe you light the set.

·         Van Gogh quotes:

Exaggerate the essentials and leave the obvious vague.

What Dickens says in words, I say in paint.

·         Joseph Campanella (WPA artist): 

WPA artists were free to share the experiences, labors and poverty of the working class.  Free to be a human being and free to have his fellow human beings as subjects.  That’s freedom.

·         On Excellence (USN 11/23/98 article about Linux free software creators & hackers):

            They do it for love, and people who work for love make better things.

                                                                        - Kevin Kelly, author of a New World Economy

·        Quote on Nature by Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Chief

       We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams ... as wild.  Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness.

·         On creative control by Stanley Kubrick: 

One man writes a novel.  One man writes a symphony.  It is essential for one man to make a film.

·         On Sketching by Eugene Delacroix: 

Perhaps the sketch of the work is so pleasing because everyone can finish it as he chooses.  The artist does not spoil the picture by finishing it; for in abandoning the vagueness of the sketch, he shows more of his personality by revealing the range but also the limitations of his talent.