Author Archives: Greg Wees

She Who is Loved

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I suppose it’s inevitable, this intense admiration for one’s own and only child. Still, I’m amazed at how often I think about her. I am unable to find fault with her; even her transgressions are endearing. Any hint of meanness or selfishness I chalk up to the influence of her peers. Stubbornness or laziness I assign to heredity. Her words are profound, her art inspired, her singing–well, I do love her.

To each devoted parent this must occur. I remember one day, picking her up from her elementary school, standing self-consciously by the little benches on the sidewalk, as a sea of children emerged to find their way home. They all looked alike, a school of fish with backpacks, until this bright face emerged from the shoal–I spotted her the instant she came through the door. I heard her excited voice, “There’s my daddy,” yelled at her crouching teacher as she ran through the little crowd, a starlet in sharp focus shouldering through the extras, the “other children.”

She is a diamond in a wall of coal, Venus at the fall of night. She brightens the world as she walks through it; she defines the world as she discovers it. She peoples the world with smiling creatures who want harmony, safe adventures, and limitless love.

I’ve lived in two worlds now: the one before her, and the one after. The first moment I held her, I felt the world change. I saw everything in it take on a new bright aspect. The new world was in her bewildered face. The sun rose on it and spread its light on it and then I could see.

And it just happens that at the moment I’m reading George Eliot’s Silas Marner. In a passage I read today the miser Silas comes to recognize his gift. His hoarded gold has been stolen, and in its place an orphan child has wandered into his cabin, and he has claimed the child.

“The gold had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeated circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object compacted of changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onward, and carried them far away from their old eager pacing towards the same blank limit — carried them away to the new things that would come with the coming years, when Eppie would have learned to understand how her father Silas cared for her; and made him look for images of that time in the ties and charities that bound together the families of his neighbours. The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and blinded more and more to all things except the monotony of his loom and the repetition of his web; but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, re-awakening his senses with her fresh life, even to the old winter-flies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because she had joy.”

And so it is with me.

Interlude with Clouds

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Out here on the Plains the big blue sky can take on the air of a deity. Lately the cloud god has been angry betimes. Last night we walked again on the wet streets after a brief rain. It was one of those when it might be raining in the front yard but sunny in the back. The sun threw a stark bright line dividing a wet tree into shadow and unreal, oversaturated color, the clouds bunched and rolled and came and went. We spent a lot of time looking up, until the dog pulled toward a jaded lawn rabbit.

Today the god’s black face rolled in just after lunch, killed the shadows, and rained big drops on us for a little while. E-mails flew back and forth to assure that loved ones were aware of the tornado warnings. As is the habit of the office worker, a number of us obeyed the irresistible urge to step out on the patio and watch the heavens roil. Then, just as quickly, the darkness was gone, and the big blue bowl of cotton balls returned, and the sunlight glistened on the long wet grass.

Our god is a schizophrenic god.

The Plainsman with a bent for the written word will often take up his pen and try to decipher the sky in descriptive phrases. We get such a variety up there that we don’t get below.

Walking in the urban landscape sparks its own interest, providing  an ever-changing perspective on a three-dimensional, accidental design. You feel yourself walking through it, as through a canyon or a forest.

But out here the art is on canvas, bowed but still flat to the earth-bound eye, a wash of blue or gray or white either brilliant light or dull shadow, or both at once. The dimensions are shaped by the clouds, if there are any. They might tower up a thousand feet like great mounds of soft serve ice cream, or streak across the sky flat and high like a staccato of white charcoal on steel gray, or mar an otherwise clean slate with mere smudges of a darker gray. They might wander lonely or in little bunches seemingly just out of arm’s reach, buzzing the city like fluffy barnstormers. Or they might form a huge herd, shoulder to shoulder, stampeding across the sky toward the horizon and some new grazing ground, brawny, edged with black and blown on strong high winds.

Such does Nature muse on these lonely Plains.

Got Justice?

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President Bush pledged today that those responsible for suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia that left dozens dead would “learn the meaning of American justice.”

Let’s explore that for a moment.

What I know of American justice can be boiled down into a few basic precepts. This is strictly off the cuff, you understand, but see if it doesn’t ring true.

If you want a big trial with all the trimmings, you have to think big

This observation comes from a number of recent “spectacular” crimes that have resulted in big-budget defense teams or unheard-of indulgence from the court for the accused. For whatever reason, it seems the amount spent on the trial is in direct proportion to the amount of damage you do. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was provided a crack defense team and a trial that dragged on for months. Several million dollars later, he was convicted and executed, to no one’s surprise. The trial of the D.C. snipers promises more of the same. Accused 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui has enjoyed every amenity in his never-ending trial, including numerous breaks and advice from the court in spite of his regular digressions into delusional nonsense and anti-American screeds, coupled with his complete lack of expertise regarding court procedures. His lawyer (himself) may have a fool for a client, but the joke is on the taxpayers who are funding this big-budget fiasco.

Contrast this to the regular Joe who guns down his wife or co-workers. He gets a sleepy public defender and the thing is wrapped up in two weeks.

If you’re famous, you can’t be jailed for drugs unless you really want to

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard of entertainment types being dragged into court for serious drug crimes, only to be sentenced to ‘”community service” and fines that are meaningless to millionaires. Eventually, after their fifth or sixth arrest, the judge gets mad and “threatens” actual jail time. But it rarely comes to pass. (Exception: Robert Downey Jr..)

But don’t try this at home. Non-famous people are regularly thrown in the pokey for simple possession.

Murderers are more important than their victims

Some ancient–and modern– justice systems, when dealing with murderers, prescribed restitution as a first remedy. Sometimes the killer was allowed to work in order to pay the family for the loss. The entire tribunal revolved around the wrong done to the victim’s family (acknowledging that the actual victim was beyond such concerns). The family was often consulted for their judgment on what should be done with the guilty party, and their wishes carried out.

Now, the victims’ kin are allowed to sit in the courtroom and watch, but that’s about it. Murderers no longer commit crimes against people – they commit them against “the state.” And the trial is centered around the accused, who is the subject of all aspects of the trial and the main focus of the state’s efforts.

After the trial and sentencing, the killer becomes of even more concern to the state. They house, feed and clothe him. They monitor his behavior. They provide endless appeals. They stage elaborate parole hearings that concentrate on the killer’s progress, the killer’s behavior, the killer’s future. When he’s finally released, they have other folks check in on him, monitor his progress, help him “assimilate.”

The family of the victim gets a letter once in a while.

Some murderers get famous for their inventive crimes. They get clever nicknames like “Son of Sam” and “The Preppy Killer.” Books, movies, cults sometimes follow. I recall that Ted Bundy, who may have killed dozens of young women, supposedly received a bulging bag of love letters and marriage proposals every day in prison. Over time, a killer’s “evilness” can be all but washed away and replaced by a kind of pop culture icon status (as with Charles Manson).  But I can’t recall any victims ever being immortalized or lionized, I guess because being killed doesn’t make you interesting. Just dead.

If you’re a lucky killer, Norman Mailer will find you “intriguing,” and he’ll write a book about you. Then they’ll let you go and you can kill again. Yeah, it happened.

Meanwhile…

Actual innocence of the condemned is not sufficient reason to stop an execution

This was one of the Supreme Court’s shining moments. Back when I did research for a living, I came across  this nugget, which involved a man in Texas who was convicted of murder in your standard non-famous-person trial (see above). The appeals process was exhausted, but new evidence came to light that appeared to exonerate the man. The prosecution, on seeing the new evidence, agreed. So there was really no one in Texas who wanted to carry out the execution anymore. But the “process” took over, the governor refused a stay, and the Supreme Court, answering a final emergency appeal, refused to halt the execution  because “actual innocence is not sufficient reason for this court to delay the timely carrying out of the sentence,” or words to that effect.

So they executed him.

What to do…what to do

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This is the first day. This is today. I’ve been sitting on this site for a while, not willing to start. I’m not sure why, but today is the day.

So here I am — I’m at work, on my lunch hour, sitting in front of my Dell. I’m 40. I’m reasonably happy. My wife is a poet and an English professor, and my 5-year-old is a prop comic. My dog is a German Shorthair of immense loyalty and an iconoclastic nature. It’s been raining. I just remodeled my basement by myself. I enjoy a beer in the evening. My heroes at the moment and in no particular order are George Orwell, Johnny Cash, George Eliot, Matt Groening, John Lennon, Billy Wilder, Shakespeare, Graham Greene, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Jane Austen, Vladimir Nabokov, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Eames and Stanley Kubrick.

Yes, Jane Austen.

Like my dog, I have no fear of being labeled.

The daunting part here is deciding where to begin. The dimensions of hyperspace are such that I could, as some do, try to put my whole life out here. Transfer my personality onto the network, as it were. But that does seem like just a bit too much work.

The accepted idea is to offer something of value, thus generating traffic to my humble spot on the web and a measure of fame for the Iconoclastic Dog. I’ve enjoyed personal sites devoted to mullet spotting, 70s design nightmares and the fascinating world of mesh caps. They get themselves on Yahoo Picks, generate real traffic, then of course try to sell ad space. But that  approach seems a bit too mercantile for me. To be honest, I don’t really care if anyone visits the site.  And to be brutally honest, I don’t really have an abiding interest in anything in particular, unless you count living.

That would seem to be a real stumbling block to a web spinner, this lack of interest in all things temporal and physical. But it’s true, and maybe it should guide my approach. I am a huge fan of books, music and art of all kinds, as the buttons up there should attest. But that’s not a “niche,” is it? That’s not something unique for the Internet consumer to consume. I’ll bet you like books, music and art too.

Maybe I’ll just do a topic for the day. This day, of course, is the fist day, so it doesn’t count. Just getting comfortable.

So I’ll think about it. I have a lot to build here. I’m going to log it all — the hopes, the dreams, the laughter and yes, the tears — but also I want to build the Books and Music sites just for me. This will be nothing grander than a catalogue of what I like. But I just think it will be fun to get it all together. There it will be, all in one place, a museum of greatness according to my taste.

And no one to tell me how it should be done.