He's Back!

In the 1970s when the first big oil crisis hit, I guess we all thought we had at last learned the hard lesson that we couldn't live indefinitely on subsidized energy.

Sure, we all blames the Arab oil boycott, saying OPEC was gouging we poor Americans.

But we also knew there was something a little shaky about claiming that the oil we need and can't produce on our own, is owed to us by those who have it at whatever price we think fair.

Today Thomas Friedman has an op-ed piece in the NY Times in which he fantasizes that some presidential candidate actually tells us the truth about the future of oil and our future.

Though it might take an act of courage - certainly an act of personal independence from the handlers who take charge of a candidate's every breath once the candidate looks like a serious possibility - I no longer think it is naive to believe we Americans would breathe a sigh of relief that someone had named the elephant that has been smelling up our living room for decades.

Not everyone, God knows.

And maybe it isn't as sexy as calling for a marshaling of the nation's best brains and resources to put a man on the moon as John Kennedy did.

But it is of the same order.

We all believed then - after the Soviets put Sputnik into orbit, and our rockets kept exploding on the launching pad - that we were in a contest with them that might be life and death for our nation.

Surely - $4 a gallon seems to have been that long wondered about tipping point - we now understand even more viscerally than we did then, that we must figure out a way through this or face consequences none of us knows nor wants to know.

And, it seems to me, that is enough to give a candidate the impetus to stand before the nation and call for sacrifice.

Friedman suggests pegging gasoline at a floor price of $4 a gallon. If the price of oil dropped enough so it could be sold cheaper, the difference between market price and $4 would become tax money dedicated to finding alternative ways to produce energy. Those under a certain income - Friedman suggests $80,000 - would get tax breaks and/or subsidies of various sorts.

I bought a GMC Sierra last year. Although it gets a surprising 20 miles to the gallon, it is big and represents one of the problems we must resolve. Do I need a truck that big? Likely no. I was drawn to it because I had crashed my smaller pickup into a tree and was lucky the tree smushed in the passenger side and I was alone. I love the truck. This afternoon I will fill it up even though it is only half empty. I can't bring myself to let it go down further because I can't bear the sight of the numbers on the pump whizzing up towards $100.

I wonder how we might persuade a President Obama to - either in his inaugural address or in a major speech to a joint session of Congress during the first days of his term - to call for the nation to turn its best efforts to this task of national survival and to prepare to make sacrifices on behalf of our future that will alter our present?

Just a Place
Notes From Zone 4
Occasional Writing From Blayney Colmore
May 26, 2008

And I can tell you this, you utterly contemptible little shit. On every morning that you wake up for the rest of your life you will be ashamed of what you did last night.

Capt. David Margesson to John Profumo in 1939 on the floor of the British parliament after Profumo, a new 25 year old member, defied party discipline to vote against Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement. [you can see the elegant restraint in the politics of our mother country as opposed to our nation’s cowboy rough and tumble political life]
*******
You descend several steps below street level to enter Mocha Joe’s in Brattleboro. Perhaps it is the feeling of being embraced by the muted, shabby comfort of the place that makes you happy to see whomever is there, however pierced or unkempt. Often the surprisingly elegant schizophrenic woman is sitting at the table across the room engaged in an erudite exchange with someone you can’t see.

Mocha Joe’s is the coffee shop Starbucks has been trying so hard to be. But Brattleboro isn’t Seattle or even Des Moines, and the only way to duplicate Mocha Joes would be to duplicate Brattleboro, the town the 60s never left.

Saturday a pretty 51 year old mother – in a costume MGM wardrobe would have designed for her to wear there, long print skirt, sandals, peasant blouse, backpack, frizzy hair halfway down her back, cherry cheeks, straight back, hand woven pashmina, the picture of a woman who has chosen her own path – came in with her college age daughter.

The daughter was an exact updated copy of her mother.

My family has an aversion to my voyeurism, so I was glad Lacey left for the co-op for some exotic elixir we couldn’t find even at the Farmer’s Market where the young, local subsistence farmers proffer every imaginable herb, and a few it would never have occurred to me to eat.

The mother introduced the daughter to a friend and the daughter described her year off from Beloit, spent mostly in China with some side trips throughout Asia. Then – to my good fortune – they brought their chai tea to the table right behind where I was seated and where I pretended to be absorbed in the Brattleboro Reformer.

I couldn’t make out just what new job the mother was considering, but her daughter expressed concern that – at her age – she would hardly have time to get established before it was time to retire.

But Sweetheart, I plan to work until I’m 67, the mother explained.

67? That’s way too old to be working, Mom. I mean, how old is Grandpa?

Nearly 80. Long silence which I mentally filled many times over before the conversation took a new turn.

Dad is considering changing careers, too, and we’re going to sell the house. Get someplace smaller, easier to maintain, less expensive to heat. Now that you kids are gone.

Sell the house? Kids gone? How can you sell the house? It’s where I grew up.

It’s just a place, Sweetheart.

The daughter didn’t cry. She grew insistent. It’s not just a place; it’s my home.

Not any more, Darling. You and your brother spend only a few nights a year there now. There will always be a place for you when you come to visit. But it makes no sense for us to burden ourselves with this much house now. Do you have any idea what our oil bill was this winter?

No. She didn’t wait to hear the number. If you move to some new place, then it is just a place, not our home. It’ll have no memories, nothing of us in it. You won’t be able to look into the living room as you walk through the front hall and remember that time Dad and I stood toe to toe in there when he was so pissed about my new boyfriend and me smoking dope.

Yesterday we followed the aging veterans and the high school band up into the burial ground across from our house, past Kayla’s grave decorated with flowers and windmills, her beguiling photo fixed to the stone and still vibrant three years after she was killed in the car wreck. And Frank’s – the marker just delivered, still on the wood platform, that amazing photographic process, photo of a stand of maples with sap buckets, Frank’s turf, cast onto the dark stone, – who was taken down by the tree he was felling last month.

We must have done this a dozen times over the years. Hard to explain what it is in us that gets stirred every time. The John Philip Souza music, flags, old guys firing their salutes not quite in unison, taps, with a shaky echo from the nearby woods. Knowing how this yearning has been exploited should make us cautious.

The plots Lacey and I gave each other for Christmas several years ago – which our children found, accurately, morbid - is just a few steps from where Kayla is buried.

No need to get all worked up about it, we reassured our kids.

It’s just place.

So all of a sudden this week my mail system decided to take on a mind of its own, sending and receiving what it pleased, seemingly more or less at random.

I won't bore you with the details; if you are reading this you have had plenty of your own.

But I will tell you that, having become attached at the hip to the cyber world, I am now as bereft as if my Siamese twin had developed a serious illness.

So, if I disappear for a while, or seem unduly petulant in this forum, perhaps you will understand.

Need


A 19-year-old college freshman was elected mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma. "Right now I'm between girlfriends," said John Tyler Hammons, who is
president of both the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats at his university. "I'm looking to fill that position."
Harper’s Weekly

“I have entered the orbit of mortality and will never leave it.”
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (From Journals 1952 – 2000) in 1983 after his younger brother suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and his long-time secretary was diagnosed with liver cancer.

He was to live another 17 years.
********

I will always feel a little embarrassed when I flee
Vermont
in November for the coast of S. California, but not embarrassed
enough
to stay this year we came a week early so I could go to my
high school 50th reunion

50!
an austere boy’s boarding school in a remote corner of northwestern Connecticut
has become a glittery co-ed collegy campus in the chic exurban town
Henry Kissinger lives in

winter wasn’t quite done with New England, nor existence with the few of us who remember the 50th anniversary of the school that celebrated its 100th
a couple of years ago.
alumni crisis decades ago the school began taking girls
not that we alumni don’t like girls though some
may not
but because we endured English schoolboy monastic repression so why shouldn’t they?
leaving the auditorium after the final event I detoured around a
young couple
in the foyer clinched in an embrace you would have sat through the
entire boring movie just to see
clinching forever the pro side of the debate about the merits of
co-education

Our Vermont neighbors’ 8 year old daughter, only child, killed in a
truck crash
3 years ago, the mother a partial hysterectomy, the father’s
tubes tied
we see Kayla’s grave from our bedroom, loved her she once brought
Lacey a live snake for Lacey’s birthday

her grieving parents took a flyer at a Boston fertility clinic somehow
extracted feral fuel from her and him sex in a Petrie dish implanted in
her sister
who carried twin boys to term 7lbs 11oz & 7lbs 13 oz to whom we introduced ourselves last week
we hover now around the time they pass by on their walk cold, rain
be damned
not to miss a meeting with a freaking phenomenon

you wanted to know about Tracey, dairy farmer, spent three years building
his log cabin
looked ready for Architectural Digest photo shoot
until he discovered he hadn’t treated the logs just right, so he
took them down just about the time
the assessors
said this cabin no road no electricity running water or heat
would change the listing from agricultural to residential
raising taxes but not the price of milk

we all pushed Tracey to appeal cabin’s only some logs nope, not
Tracey
still may get it up before his 91 year old father who helped put it up
the first time dies might not Dad understands Tracey says he had
50 cows
in his small barn this winter must have been crowded I think I counted
30 stanchions Tracey told our kids visiting from Banda Aceh he loves
dairy farming more every year cabin and taxes are nonessentials

Heard a story about Frank, handy man town favorite I wrote about a few weeks ago
who got killed last month felling a tree across from his mother’s house
few years ago Frank bought a ticket for a charity lottery
won $15,000
gave back $10,000 because he said he really only
needed $5,000

interesting concept need

So, just back from a 50th high school reunion.

A small boy's boarding school in rural northeastern Connecticut, where I was sent as a 13 year old to escape the temptations the Philippines offered to an adolescent American boy, has morphed into a very sophisticated coeducational boarding school to which people from all over the world come to prepare for college.

My friend from Manila were exotics. But we wouldn't be today. A student from Taiwan showed me around the campus. When we went into the medieval Norman chapel - it is an Episcopal School, founded by a monk - I asked him what it is like for him, a Buddhist, to go to the three required chapels a week.

I love it in here," he answered. Life at this school is insanely busy and noisy and over-stimulating. I come in here and it is quiet and dark and I relax for the first time in the day and say my Buddhist prayers.

His description of the place of the chapel - which was a foreboding extension of the cold monastic life of the place when I was there - and happening on a a couple of the students - a boy and a girl - in a passionate clinch, right out there in the open, made me know the school is a great place to spend a few adolescent years.

I don't really believe in human progress.. Change, yes, but progress is an illusion.

But listening to that Taiwanese boy and seeing that young couple, tempted me to think the school has progressed in the past half century.

Dinosaurs

The louder he talks of honour, the faster we count our spoons. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

When I turned on the water under the barn a hard spray soaked the outdoor furniture we store there in winter. We shut off the outside water before we flee west and leave the faucets open, assuming they’ll drain. Guess there wasn’t quite enough slope for gravity to carry it all out.

The copper pipe has a neat surgical slice through a subtle bulge that a perfectly milled pipe wouldn’t have, had not water frozen in there.

Last fall heating oil bought and paid for in advance went for $3.39. We used to leave the thermostats at 48º, but a few years ago the mud room heating pipe burst, spraying hot water into the room where our coats and boots are hung, creating an ice sculpture that might have fascinated the savants at the contemporary art museum who provide me with a writing space in California in winter.

To us it looked like a cancelled homeowner’s policy. And a message to jack the thermostats up a few degrees. We have two outside lights wired to thermostats in the house. If the inside temperature drops below 50º the lights go out. Bummy, who has been our protector against disaster for more than two decades, lives just up the road and he drives by several times a day, checking to see the lights are lit.

We live in a hollow by the pond, where a 20 mph blow is considered a breeze. I remember a day one November when the wind picked up, blew gusts of 50mph, and dropped the temperature 30º in an hour. Pipes can freeze fast. And you often don’t know, because the water in the pipe first turns to slush, then ice, and just when you think you’ve dodged this one, it thaws and then begins to spray.

Yesterday my neighbor said she had asked our oil delivery people what they are charging for oil they deliver today.

$4.49.

There has been a lot of talk about speculation in oil futures creating a price bubble like the tech bubble that sprung a serious leak in 2000 and burst its seams after the terrorist attacks of 2001.

But seems to me this is a little different. Maybe a lot different. No one knows how much fossil fuel is left in the earth. But everyone knows it’s not unlimited. For years we have acknowledged, casually until recently, that we have been enjoying artificially cheap energy. Seems hosting the Olympics is not the only way China looks to step up to the next tier.

We hang out our laundry (which, this morning has blown all over the ground). Our thermostats are never set above 60º. We’ve got those curly cue light bulbs and we never shower more than once a day.

But before we turn on a light or cook breakfast, we use our fuel allotment just flying across the continent a few times a year.

I’m too old to do a Chicken Little number about all this. Even though our sensibilities have changed, it may be that I will be compost before it becomes clear how it’s going to play out. We tell ourselves that because we live mostly in an 1830 farmhouse in rural Vermont – for which we paid less than my California friends paid for their cars – and spend the winter in a small, modest apartment in California, that we are living simply.

Our grandchildren may remember us the way I remember the robber barons who built those mansions along Cliff Walk in Newport. (That would be Newport, Rhode Island).

Last fall when I checked to see what bulk home heating oil was going to cost for the winter, I nearly decompensated when the company I have been buying oil from for over 20 years said it would be $3.39 a gallon. And unlike previous years, they would no longer promise to drop my price if the price of oil dropped.

Not that there was any chance of that.

I swallowed hard and signed on. Because that price was significantly lower than the price of having them show up when i am running low and fill the tank.

This morning a neighbor told me she had her tank topped off with what was left in her bulk purchase. She asked what price they are quoting today.

$4.49 a gallon.

Not that we have any choice. We have an old farmhouse with an oil burning furnace that circulates hot water through radiators, baseboards and a couple of old cast iron heaters.

But what about most of the people in this very poor rural area in southern Vermont where most people work several odd jobs just to have food and rent, with maybe a little for heating? There is a fuel assistance program in this valley (Vermont is pretty good about assistance for people in genuine need) but it depends on the largesse of the handful of flatlanders, like me. And while I assume most of them have more money than I do, I wonder if they aren't also feeling squeezed in new ways.

Paul Krugman has a column in today's paper in which he suggests that all the talk about speculators driving up the price of oil artificially is wishful nonsense. It ignores the reality that oil is a finite commodity in increasing demand from huge countries like China and India that are emerging from poverty.

Which means a big change in the relative position of our country to the rest of the world.

I am going to have a conversation with the local plumber about just what would be involved in shutting down our house and draining it when we flee winter for southern California. I doubt we can do it.

I don't expect you to feel sorry for me; I don't feel sorry for myself. But we are closing in on a point I really didn't expect to see in my lifetime. And, by the world's measure, I am a very rich man.

How long have we been clucking about living on unsustainable low energy prices while we continued to finance our lavish life with money borrowed from the rest of the world?

Is this the tipping point?

Likely not. But it gives us a glimpse of what that is going to look like.

So - in a move too amazing for my aging mind to take in - we did our semi-annual migration on Thursday.

Taking off out over the Pacific in the morning (even though you are traveling east, the takeoff is over the ocean to the west and then they swing around), we spent an hour or so in Dallas, remounted and, nearly reaching to the eastern edge of the continent, put down in Hartford several hours before dark, enjoyed dinner at a favorite restaurant along the way on the drive up to Vermont, and arrived home.

All in a day.

And our stalwart dog and cat, in their Sherpa bags for more than 12 hours, shook off the effects as they entered the house, ate a good meal and settled down as if the six months had been a few hours.

So we do this, and we have done it countless times. But never will I get used to being able to.

And, with oil over $240 a barrel, you have to wonder how long, oh how long before life returns to something more like what I remember, when traveling was for necessity and for the very rich.

For the past many months I have been telling myself to keep a Zen attitude toward the race for the Democratic nomination and the ensuing campaign in the fall.

Last night I had a vivid dream that makes clear my passionate bias.

And anxieties.

In the dream I must have ben at the Democratic Convention and the race for the nomination must still have been unsettled. The chaos was palpable.

I was in a room (once would have been smoke-filled) where the behind the scenes horse trading was in full swing. I remember nothing of what was said, or by whom (I think maybe the dream was all about emotion and affect, and language and reason my not have figured in it). There came a moment in which I understood some resolution had been reached.

And my feelings told me that, while there was apparent agreement, a lot of people were unhappy with it. And I was among them.

The scene shifts to the floor of the convention. Bill Clinton is on the podium entertaining the restless troops as only Bill Clinton can. He seems not to have been privy to whatever was taking place in that back room. Perhaps he knows someone is eventually going to emerge with a decision and the nomination.

The back door of the hall opens and in walks Al Gore, hand in hand with a young woman whom I did not knew, but somehow was aware was a minor national political figure, perhaps a member of congress.

My sinking feelings and the sardonic expression on Bill Clinton's face as Gore and the woman came closer to the podium, made me understand Gore would be the nominee and the young woman would be his running mate.

The former president' face assumed an expression I have seen before, a half smile that said, "I'm not happy about this, but I know you've got me."

He then stepped aside and, with a hand gesture that meant, "The platform is now yours," stepped aside and Gore took the microphone.

I admire Gore. I'd like to see him our UN Ambassador or perhaps Secretary of Energy.

But I think he is a weak candidate and likely would lose to McCain.

My Zen posture has evaporated.

Go Obama!

Recently I got into conflict with a close friend, someone with whom I have battled before and whose friendship matters enough to me so I am willing to do this.

And I learned - again - the two most significant realities about differences.

The first is that the world can look as different to two people as if they were looking through glasses that not only tinted things a different color, but refracted the image looked at in such different ways that they are seeing different things.

Do I mean this literally? If one were able to snap a photo through each of the lenses would the photograph be of two different images? I honestly don't know (this is the old question about whether, when you describe the tree across the street and I look up, are we seeing the same thing? I guess, until some very sophisticated new technology comes up, the question will remain moot.)

But it is effectively as if that is so. And if one wishes to get beyond the frustration of assuming the other person is obfuscating, deliberately distorting the description of what he is seeing, he's best just accept it. Believe it.

The second thing is that I am often blinded to my own prejudices. Not speaking here simply of what I dislike or fear or am drawn to, but the assumptions both learned and innate that shape what I see.

We have learned how unreliable - or different - eye witness accounts of an incident can be. But why?

Because each of us wears a set of glasses of which we are unaware.

At the other end of the conflict with my friend - and this was what finally brought the conflict to its resolution - I had a blik, a moment of recognition in which I saw the power of my friend's perspective.

Writing it that way, in those words, make it seem as if it is an intellectual, or at least a mental, matter.

But it's more like a hormonal shift. A transformation.

To an outside observer it might well look as though mr friend won the argument. And while I won't try to dispute that, I will tell you that it felt like an offering from the gods.

Because I had been freed from my wish to be right, to prevail.

And, while my friend may have won the dispute, I won a new lease on life.