HUMANITIES 499.1001-- Primary Sources and Codified Language--THE "HAL" SYNDROME

 CH203.1002

Dr S Pasqualina

University of Nevada, Reno Fall 2018

James L’Angelle    12 Dec 2018

HAL

     “Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?” This iconic phrase from Stanley Kubrick’s film  2001, A Space Odyssey ushered in the new millennium way back in 1968. It became a stark warning for the world as it accelerated into yet another technological revolution. Although Earth never made it to Jupiter by the turn of the century, virtually it went far and beyond into another frontier, cyberspace. The question now is, what lies out there? Like the universe itself, are there no boundaries or are there terrifying limits such as black holes and event horizons? This is a great problem not just for the 21st Century, but for civilization itself. Beyond the problem is a greater one, how does man shut technology down when, and if, it comes to that?

Consensus of opinion is in order to write a convincing essay one must first state a thesis, then find evidence to back it up. What if something else surfaces while the search for evidence is underway? For instance, a thesis is stated:

     “What is the problem of the 21st Century, and what do we do about it?” 

Let’s say the problem of the 21st Century is, as in the opening paragraph, “HAL,” the “Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer.” The psychotic computer represents runaway technology of the new millennium and has to be terminated, how to go about it? Given a set of primary sources to first, define the problem and second, define the solution, is the assignment. However, if all the primary sources were written in the wrong “codified language,” which defines the problem as social or philosophical such as racial or political in context, the evidence will not support the thesis. Controls on investigation are limited by the fact that the given primary sources are broken down chronologically into four groups and analysis can only be made by drawing evidence from two to four sources in each group. The objective, therefore,  is to find in the sources evidence contrary to conclusions normally drawn from the text, in other words, the consensus of opinion.

    The following primary source ranges are considered: 

Group 1: Pre-colonial to 1855 (pre-Industrial Revolution); 

Group 2: Antebellum to 1899 (Industrial Revolution);

Group 3: 1900-1939   (post-Industrial Revolution)

Group 4: 1940-present (The Technological Revolution).

 In each group it will be necessary to extract evidence that runs contrary to the accepted value of the context as to what it represents. 

     Beginning with the first group, in the account of A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, published in 1682, Mary refers in the “Eighth Remove” to one of her duties in captivity:

     “During my abode in this place Philip spake to me to make a shirt for his boy...and afterwards I made a cap for his boy...There was a squaw who spake to me to make a shirt for her Sannup...another asked me to knit a pair of stockings.” (Rowlandson, 23)

Common interpretation of the autobiography is that Mary Rowlandson had it tough at the hands of whom she referred to as “savages.” Completely overlooked is what she did, she sewed and knitted, why? Because it would be ninety years before the invention of the spinning-jenny. What has knitting to do with a computer running amok 300 years later? It’s in the anticipation of technology, and the lack of it, written clearly into the text.

     Next, in 1744, the Onondaga chief Canassatego delivered his Speech at the Treaty of Lancaster in which he stated:

     “It is true that above one hundred years ago the Dutch came here in a ship and brought with them several goods, such as awls, knives, hatchets, guns…” (Canassatego, 29)

The conclusion drawn from the speech is that the Indians were treated unfairly, their land stolen through dubious charters and an offer to send the tribes’ children to settlers’ schools rejected in favor of swapping settler kids into tribal culture. What’s missing is the acquisition of technology by the Iroquois Confederacy in the form of awls, knives, hatchets and guns. The foundation for the advance of technology in the New World is clearly visible in the speech by Canassatego.

    The cotton crisis was mentioned in Correspondence Between Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln, dated January 28, 1865 and included in Group 2: Antebellum to 1899. In the early 1800’s the cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney placed unreasonable demands on the South to produce the crop, as noted in the Eric Vanhaute report titled  The European subsistence crisis of 1845-1850: a comparative perspective:  (external document)

     “‘The Commercial Crisis of 1847’, which claims that in Britain in 1847 the downturn in production applied only to cotton, and that this was due to an exogenous factor - the shortage of raw cotton in the U.S. South.” (Vanhaute, 2)

Directly related to pressure on the South was the rise of territories in the immediate west and the desire to expand slavery into the regions for the further development of the cotton crop. Marx was keen to observe the demand for labor and crop in his letter to Lincoln:  

     “The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?” (Marx, 1)

The expansion of the slave market as a result of the cotton gin gave birth to the early days of the Industrial Revolution creating a series of on again, off again monetary crises leading up to the Civil War. Combined with the telegraph and railroads, technology was a runaway freight train that pushed to all corners of the continent, as noted by Simon Pokagon in The Red Man’s Greeting:

     “A crippled gray-haired sire told his tribe that in the visions of the night he was lifted high above the earth, and in great wonder beheld a vast spider-web spread out over the land from the Atlantic Ocean toward the setting sun.”

Once again, there is the anticipation of technology prophecy as seen in Rowlandson, continuing:

     “It’s network was made of rods of iron; along its lines in all directions rushed monstrous spiders, greater in strength, and larger far than any beast of earth. Clad in brass and iron, dragging after them long rows of wigwams…” (Pokagon, 146)

Pokagon compared the old man’s dream to the extensive network of railroads that had sprung up as the nation expanded west toward the Pacific, and 25 years had already passed since he wrote Red Man and the spike was driven that connected the two oceans.

     By the turn of the century, the question of what would become a major concern for America wasn’t what it would be, but how to manage it. Due to the rise of the assembly line, emphasis shifted from process to impact on the work force as presented in The Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor: 

    “Prosperity depends upon so many factors entirely beyond the control of any one set of men, any state, or even any one country, that certain periods will inevitably come when both sides (the worker, the boss) must suffer, more or less.” (Taylor, 377)

Again, as before, the anticipation factor is considered but in terms of globalization, summarized in the phrase “any one country.” Faced with the rise of mass production, Taylor had to rationalize the relationship between worker and boss in order to streamline production. What lie in the immediate future wasn’t localization of production, but globalization of it. The kernel components for the problem of the 21st Century were becoming manifest in the early days of the 20th Century. 

     By the end of World War Two, President Harry Truman found himself thrust headlong into a brave new world highlighted by what came to be known as “The Atomic Age.” He called upon Vannevar Bush of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) to suggest a road to the future and Bush wrote back with Science, the Endless Frontier:

     “The bitter and dangerous battle against the U-boat was a battle of scientific techniques-and our margin of success was dangerously small. The new eyes which radar has supplied can sometimes be blinded by new scientific developments. V-2 was countered  only by capture of the launching sites.” (Bush, 390)

Alluding to sonar, radar and rocketry certainly placed Bush on a firm foundation for the advance of what was eventually to come in the form of computer technology, satellites and space exploration.

     The spinning-jenny was invented in England by James Hargreaves in 1764. (Wikipedia)  Without it Mary Rowlandson was forced to knit caps for King Philip’s tribe; it was a problem of the 17th Century. Today, we are forced to recognize that the problem of the 21st Century is not as simple although we can see precisely how it gets to be defined in uncodified primary source texts.  We have HAL as an example, or perhaps Failsafe (1964), The Andromeda Strain (1971), The China Syndrome (1979), and one that isn’t always mentioned, On the Beach (1959). When the day of reckoning comes Dave had better know exactly what he’s doing.

1. A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Classic American Autobiographies, edited by William L. Andrews,  Signet, 2003  Page 23.

2. The Treaty of Lancaster, Five Hundred Years (FHY), Casper, Davies & deJong, Pearson Learning, 2016, Page 29.

3. The European subsistence crisis of 1845-1850: a comparative perspective: E. Vanhaute, helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers3/Vanhaute.pdf, Page 2.

4. Correspondence Between Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln, The Bee-Hive Newspaper, Nov 7, 1865

5. The Red Man’s Greeting, Simon Pokagon, FHY, Page 146.

6. The Principles of Scientific Management, Frederick Winslow Taylor, FHY, Page 377.

7. Science, The Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush, FHY, Page 390.

8. Spinning Jenny, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_jenny

9. Failsafe (1964), The Andromeda Strain (1971), The China Syndrome (1979), On the Beach (1959). Internet Movie Database

     

ESCAPE FROM TAHOE-- Glacier in the Sky-- DECEMBER 2021

 December 2021

ESCAPE FROM TAHOE-- Glacier in the Sky-- 

     (Zinc, Laguna Beach)-- Plans had already been made to get out while the getting out was good. That happened on the day before Christmas Eve when the first signs of the severity of the record-breaking atmospheric glacier appeared on the horizon to the west. Having survived the bomb cyclone in October, there was no hesitation this time. What had begun just after Pearl Harbor Day and just before Christmas didn't fall into the usual pattern of December storms and that was the first indication of things to come. That early storm dropped enough snow to make work just short of unbearable; the only advantage was that the sun did come out after a few days and just about the same time a request for a week at the San Clemente resort came through. It was booked immediately.

     That post Pearl Harbor Day storm was gnarly enough as the drains on the office building froze immediately requiring a full day of moving a tall ladder after using the snow blower to clear a path below the upper deck to stage it. Icicles were already forming and ice in the drains had to be chopped loose and dropped to the ground before the coils installed on the roof were of any use. Even then, the entire system looks good in ads but is useless otherwise. All of the snow around the firepit and hot tub needed to be removed, amounting to yet another full day on the snow blower. The one thing about snow is that it is never "removed," just put into another place until it melts, hopefully by May. This wasn't the case as it didn't have time. The back decks on the upper two studios on the third floor had about four feet on them and that had to go. By the time all of this was done, starting with using the snowblowers to clear parking, as the plow was a no show at the beginning, the new glacier in the sky was headed for Tahoe. The rain began and lasted for two days even before the glacier began to descend in an unrelenting barrage that included whiteout conditions. That rain offered an opportunity on Wednesday, Christmas Eve Minus Two, to cut into the berm along the boulevard and get it out of the way, not that it would make much of a difference. 

     On Thursday, the warnings were clear and not just from the agencies tasked with keeping travelers off the highway. If getting out was going to happen, it would happen on Christmas Eve Minus One. A text message from the office inquired as to, "helping out with snow," (removal). Not a chance, the reply: "Did not want to risk injury before the drive." Packing was already done, and chains had been installed a few days before and left on the Toyota Yaris; a very dependable compact hatchback that ran like a snowmobile in heavy snow. Departure was about 14:30 PST on 23 December. 

     State Route 267 out of Kings Beach required chains and the old set installed on the front tires lasted until pulling up on Interstate-80 west when the driver's side chain blew a link. That was replaced with another one of the old chains and back on the road and cleared by CalTrans at the checkpoint, that same chain blew out going up Donner Pass, and pulling off at the Donner Lake off ramp to replace it. Using a chain from the new set, that held along with the one on the passenger front tire all the way to where chain controls expired somewhere near Kingvale in the whiteout. That was just the beginning of the drive and it had already taken about two hours. All the way into and past Colfax to Forest Hill for gas and a stop at McDonalds, the road was hammered with rain squalls that reduced visibility to near zero. Those would last all the way through Sacramento and most of the way down Interstate-5 to the Tracy cutoff and rest stop. Nobody was at the rest stop, it was clean. Somewhere south of Santa Nella, the clouds opened up and Orion, the Hunter, the constellation appeared high in the sky to the east. Then the half-moon rose over the Sierra Nevada range to the east, a stunning arrival to the landscape, and it would remain until more squalls settled in somewhere around the Fresno cutoff. The canopy closed once again, and squalls came and went for a hundred miles before a dense fog moved in and hung low on the freeway. There were few trucks and driving was not that difficult. A two-hour break at the next rest stop then back on the road to yet another rest stop before morning and just 100 miles from Grapevine Pass.

     The fog broke up and the sun came out at the Lebec rest stop. 

ENG301.1002--Essay 002: Reflection on Argument Experiments --U OF NEVADA FALL 2020

ENG301.1002 

James L’Angelle 

University of Nevada, Reno

K. Miller , Professor

22 November 2020 

Essay 002: Reflection on Argument Experiments

 
Introduction:
     Rhetoric as a skill dates all the way back to the dawn of if not civilization, at least, civilized man. Since then, any number of methods have been created from traditionalist, to modernist, to revisionist. How and where they can be employed is part and parcel to that very art of discourse, that rhetoric. A skilled orator, a debater, an influencer, can get even the most formidable foe to agree, through logic, charm, even by virtue of outright deception. Some of the methods are cited below in particular circumstances, or for the sake of this essay, as “experiments.” As each is explored, invented, then where it stands in the spectrum of traditionalist, modernist or revisionist, will also be analyzed.

 
Part One: Experiment in Invitational Rhetoric-- In the essay written by Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin and published in the Communications Monograph in 1995, the groundwork for analysis is based on one of the first paragraphs;
     “The traditional conception of rhetoric, in summary, is characterized by efforts to change others and thus to gain control over them.” (Foss, Griffin, 3-4)
     The authors then note this traditionalist approach is “a rhetoric of patriarchy.” They introduce the non-patriarchal, or feminist, position on rhetoric as “equality, immanent value and self-determination.” Whether this new stance is modernist or revisionist can ultimately be applied to the example in which it is found. In the experiment for Part One, it will be noted that the requirement, according to the rubric, is “explore these and related concerns by trying out IR strategies with family members, friends, co-workers, and/or strangers.” Access to the first three was limited for the experiment, the method chosen was to interact with “strangers.”
     The Foss, Griffin proposal was written 25 years ago, the internet in its kernel stages of development. Today it is an ideal platform to engage an audience and invite it to participate in the discussion. One innovative method is to write a post on a blog and link it to a social media page with high traffic where reader response can be found in comments. This was the basic format of the experiment. The blog chosen is a personal one titled Eyeless on Campus at Google. the blog posts there were copied and pasted to the Facebook page of the same title and boosted with a number of variables in order to draw the right crowd for review. It can also be tailored to fit any audience, which comes into a special ad category requiring a complicated process of self-identity before the ad can be approved. For instance, a blog post with the topoi of employment, housing, credit, politics and elections all fall into the special ad category and require an extensive self-identification process. Others do not, such as a review of a favorite film or suggestions for a getaway summer vacation. In order to get a good response sampling, two such posts in the special ad category were chosen for analysis with respect to invitational rhetoric.
     There was mention in the lecture of the usefulness of comments in rhetorical discourse. Some responded that they lacked substance, others suggested the comment sections and like buttons on social media pages show very little of the true position of the respondent. The statements were made with little or no evidence to substantiate them. This experiment challenges that position. Two blog posts that were linked to the Facebook page and boosted showed strong reader response through comments.
     The first was published on September 1, 2020 titled, #KENOSHA 53143-- Suspending Disbelief &--MYTH OF “FAR-LEFT” and drew 467 blog post visits. The second, published 3 days later, was titled, #SOLDIERS-- "Suckers," "Losers," "Misfits" & -- SUICIDAL DRUNKS and drew 169 website visits. Note that these are just the visits tabulated at Google analytics, there may have been many more as the audience tends to visit on mobile phones in stealth mode. Note also that the ad didn’t run the full course of the approved duration due to responses and new material being subject to approval. Blog posting and advertising is fluid and needs to keep up with the news to remain relevant for the sake of responses. #KENOSHA 53143 drew 216 likes, 169 comments and 20 shares. #SOLDIERS drew 117 likes, 42 comments and 2 shares. Content of the first blog post, #KENOSHA 53143, related to unrest following deaths of protesters but was in fact, a criticism that there wasn’t much difference between the “far left” and the “far right,” noting a 1985 article published in the British Journal of Political Science by Herbert McCloskey and Dennis Chong. The blog post included the famous Che Guevara poster that has been an iconic symbol of the Left since the Cuban Revolution of the mid-20th century.
     Vaughn Trapp commented;
     “Trump 2020....The One World Order is NOT your friend.”
     Frank Chase commented;
     “The prospect of four more years of President Trump is a lot scarier than an old poster of Che Guevara.” One commenter included a Trump-Pence 2020 banner in the response;
     Mike Hastings responded;
“I'm so glad that I learned to recognize and resist this attempt to indoctrinated us during SERE training at USAF Survival School!! This is one of the lamest I've seen!!”
     The “Reach” of the post, which was distributed in the special ad category in the United States only, showed 6,076 with 662 post engagements. By age-gender, it was predominately male (probably white) above 50 years old. California, Texas, Florida and New York were the leading “Locations” of the post. There is no tab that shows whether the particular demographic group of age-gender was deliberately targeted or whether women were left out of the Reach. 

     The reaction was particularly patriarchal, traditionalist, non-invitational by the Foss, Griffin standards, that is if the reach distribution was skewed in favor of the dominant patriarchal market. Translated, a poor, misleading example of invitational rhetoric that cannot be verified by the limited statistics available at Facebook.
     #SOLDIERS included an image of Sylvester Stallone in his role of Rambo, wearing his signature field jacket with the US flag logo on it.
     Dave Sweed commented;
     “I'm a deplorable , misfit , suicidal drunk who clings to my God and Guns and if Trump went on national TV to night and called me that I would still vote for him over the Socialist. As a young kid I remember a man with numbers Tattooed on his forearm when I ask what it was he just smiled and said it was a gift from der Sozialistiche, in German Sozialistiche means Socialist .”
     The Reach was 1,837 with 252 post engagements. The largest group was 30 percent male over the age of 65. Of the four in the previous post, Location was predominately Texas. Mike Byrd commented;
     “Sounds like what Democrats called soldiers returning from Vietnam as they spit on them.”
     Clearly, the forum was no place to test Foss, Griffin’s invitational rhetoric theory. It calls into question on a larger theoretical scale across the board the actual acceptance of modernist-revisionist rhetoric. True, audience response was good, if not a grand display of ethos and personality. Had the ads run longer, male-dominated, patriarchal, related to age would be the components that holds the traditionalist view together.           Had the rhetor anticipated this type of response? Had the rhetor crafted the post in order to trigger this ageist, patriarchal reaction? Examination of posts by female responses showed a non-invitational rhetoric response as well, a pro-patriarchal tone. Perhaps it isn’t the best method of experimentation after all.

 
Part Two: Listening for Cultural Logics-- This rubric requires, “engage, an opposing viewpoint on an issue important to you. Use one or more of the 4 moves in Ratcliffe's rhetorical listening method. You’ll need to log your reactions and any shifts in thinking during this period.” 

     In the first week of November, 2020, the regime in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia accused the breakaway state Tigray of a deliberate assault on a military base within its region. Tigray is just south of Eritrea and is still considered a part of the sovereignty of Ethiopia, the second most populous nation in Africa. The separatist government in Mekele denied the attack allegations but it didn’t stop the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, from sending in his defense forces to neutralize the opposition in his northern command sector. The result is the ongoing civil war with an invasion, a refugee crisis, demands by foreign entities to cease hostilities and, of course, atrocities. 

     Again, from a revisionist point of view, where content appears to be subject to intent, the Rhetorical Listening theory of Krista Ratcliffe tends to place the rhetor at the mercy of the audience;
     “employed in this study, understanding means more than simply listening for a speaker/writer's intent. It also means more than simply listening for our own self-interested readerly intent, which may range from appropriation (employing a text for one's own ends), to Burkean identification (smoothing over differences to achieve common ground), to agreement (affirming only one's own view of reality).” (Ratcliffe, K., 28)
     Prime Minister Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace prize in 2018 for his deal with Eritrea to end hostilities, has shown his two-sided method of ruling the nation. Ratcliffe calls for accountability; “we are indeed all members of the same village, and if for no other reason than that (and there are other reasons), all people necessarily have a stake in each other’s quality of life.” (31)
     The telephone lines have been cut, the internet is down, no foreign news media is allowed on the battlefield, the Prime Minister has flatly rejected mediation. Ahmed has broken just about every rule of cultural logics over something that might have been solved at the negotiating table had he let neutral observers an opportunity to sort out the initial transgression and bring to justice those responsible.
Modernist-revisionist rhetoric is only possible where civilized society allows it, otherwise traditional methods of justification reign supreme.

Part Three: Demagoguery Examples--
     Case One: The “Accidental” Demagogue. David Halberstam, in his memoir The Fifties, notes in Chapter Three the rise of one of most famous carnival barkers of the 20th century; “Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican senator from Wisconsin, stepped forward on Thursday, February 9, 1950, to lend his name to a phenomenon that, in fact, already existed. He was the accidental demagogue. On that day he gave a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, as part of the Lincoln Day weekend celebration. “ (Halberstam, 83)
     It was McCarthy’s “...I have here in my hand a list of 205…” Communists in the State Department. According to Patricia Roberts-Miller, the traditional method of one becoming a demagogue was following a certain pattern. She proposed another with yet another set of variables. Whether revisionist or modernist, none seem to fit the method employed by Senator McCarthy. Later on, in Chapter Seventeen of The Fifties, Halberstam noted the story of Rosser Reeves, the advertising man who changed the face of election campaigns when he went to work for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952;
     “In September, as he sat in the St. Regis Hotel, reading Ike’s clips from newspapers across the country, he concluded Ike was as bad as MacArthur. He was doing a terrible job of packaging and selling himself. He had the advantage of a popular, recognizable name, but he was letting it all slip away, talking in all kinds of directions about too many different things,” (396)
     Thus was born the spot ad that would revolutionize political persuasion on television, and give the demagogue a powerful new tool in the quest for power. Ike won the election in ‘52 and broke the stranglehold the Democrats had on the White House since the Depression. Somewhere between the carnival style barking of Joe McCarthy and the 15 second Alka Seltzer blurb was the key to the rise of the modern version of demagoguery that Patricia Roberts-Miller discovered. Was there any difference in McCarthy and Eisenhower? Enough to send one into ruin and the other into the Oval Office. The first acted alone, the second was joined by his Vice-President, Richard M. Nixon of California.
     Case Two: The “Intentional” Demagogue. “ In early May, 1952,” Halberstam wrote in The Fifties, “Nixon was invited to speak at the annual fundraiser in New York.” (367) Halberstam noted in the earlier chapters how Nixon was a powerful anti-Communist advocate responsible for squeezing a guilty verdict out of the elusive Alger Hiss, a rather “accidental” spy, convicted on perjury more than his actual espionage activities. Up through the ranks gradually until he was selected to become Ike’s running mate, Nixon was the epitome of the likeable demagogue, a fierce debater and eventually cutting his teeth from setbacks during the ‘52 campaign. Faced with some illegal slush fund activities, Nixon learned how to be hard, to be deceptive, to use television in his rise to power. Just before the election, the candidate went national to clear his name;
     “He knew exactly how he wanted to portray himself: as the ordinary American, like so many other veterans back from World War Two, just starting out in life, more than a little modest about his service to his country.” (417)
     According to Halberstam, Nixon’s wife went on the air with him, “She was his only prop.” The thirty minute speech cleared him and Nixon stayed on the ticket all the way to victory. But some suggested that;
     “There was something more than a little unsavory about the entire episode: the self pity, the willingness to use wife, children, and dog.” (420)
     Senator McCarthy never could be found guilty of those kinds of charges. He was a drinker, an alcoholic, certainly not a Quaker. He didn’t have to tell the truth, he had a persona that made everyone believe everything he said about the Communists whether it was true or not. Nixon had to painstakingly call out Hiss on his Party connections; McCarthy had only to produce a laundry ticket out of his coat pocket to persuade the audience, the difference between the “intentional” and “accidental” demagogue.
Patricia Roberts-Miller, in her book, Demagoguery and Democracy, notes some of the basic premises of traditional identification of the political despot, in particular playing the partisan card, inclusion, fairness, polarity, to name a few. That never bothered Senator McCarthy, his persona carried him throughout his career right up until the end. In Chapter Two, Roberts-Miller defines the traditional definition of the demagogue;
     “Is what the person saying obviously false? Is the person bad? Is the person appealing to populist notions? Is the person being manipulative?” (Roberts-Miller, epub, 21) McCarthy was guilty on all four counts but it didn’t seem to bother him or his audience. Not any more than a carnie barker would talk a customer into getting on the rickety roller coaster that just flew off the tracks yesterday. Nixon was more careful, a skilled debater and a polished congressman who had won legitimate trophies as a senator. His style was worlds apart from McCarthy’s. It is inconclusive following a close reading if Roberts-Miller mentions either McCarthy or Nixon in Demagoguery and Democracy. Perhaps because it is easier to define her revisionist method using extreme cases instead of shades, of variations, of degrees, as in the case of the two politicians McCarthy and Nixon.
     In Chapter Three, Roberts-Miller introduces her own dynamics of the demagogue; “polarizes a complicated political situation into us...and them; those who are with us and those who are against us; situation of the in-group; Truth is easy to perceive and convey; fallacy; not necessarily emotional or vehement.” (epub, 35)
     Roberts-Miller does in fact refer to the role of tradition in demagoguery;
     “Equating ‘what I think of as traditional’ with ‘what has a long history’ is one of the ways that demagoguery often relies on a ‘universalized nostalgia’.” (epub, 47) Roberts-Miller cites Max Weber’s leadership powers of “traditional, legal and charismatic.” (epub, 59) Roberts-Miller’s proposals in Chapter Eight on how to prevent or stop demagoguery does not completely address the complicated variations and nature of the rhetorical aberration. With respect to her proposal of “shaming media outlets,” in both cases of McCarthy and Nixon, the news followed the senators around, inventing and reinventing their persona, elevating them to the superhuman leaders she mentions in Chapter Four. (epub, 59) Even then, the media was by traditional standards of demagoguery just following the rules, especially the one of populist notions.      There appears a clash of ideals between traditional and modernist-revisionist of “obviously false” and “truth is easy to perceive.” The threat of Communism was indeed real in The Fifties, according to David Halberstam, even if McCarthy invented lies to condemn it. Nixon didn’t have to prove Hiss was a spy, only that he was lying to Congress.Those were traditional methods that worked for the demagogue. Roberts-Miller insists “these are entirely the wrong questions to ask.”

Part Four: Reflection--- Faced today with ever increasing and even more subtle means to persuade the individual that there is only one right way to do things, the role of rhetoric should be even more important in everyday life. From misinformation on the internet to shaming groups because of their lifestyles or ethnic backgrounds, the word “commonplace” is becoming less and less common in discourse. Having explored the various techniques that can be employed through situational experiments, there doesn’t appear to be any solid evidence that rhetoric, no matter what shape or form it takes, offers a safe haven for agreement.
     The Foss, Griffin method, though idealistic and certainly feasible, will only work if those engaged are willing to treat others with civility and equality. Certainly it might work in a given situation, but to assume from that success that it can be used across the board is a quantum leap that only someone familiar with the difference between special and general relativity can make. Many of the other methods are equally precariously balanced on an accelerated frame of reference. Is it an absolute, then, to be constantly doppler shifting the premises of the rhetorical situation to allow for all of the unknowns in the equation? Such is the convoluted nature of the method. It falls into the category of circular reasoning where tautology ultimately rescues the rhetor from redundancy. 

     Rhetoric as an algorithm that if repeated enough, adjusted, modernized, revised and theorized, falls victim to its own fallacy of repetition. Even with these inconsistencies and shortcomings, rhetoric is still the most valuable tool in the language toolbox to get to the truth.
     Without making all the adjustments for time and space, for kairos to decide if it's worth talking about at all, to be willing to even listen to the other side at all, as proposed from Rogerian to Foss, Griffin logic, is the first most difficult step to take. For the demagogue McCarthy, he stubbornly refused to listen which made it easy for his in-group to follow its superhuman leader blindly. Certainly the threat of Communism in The Fifties was real; the Russians, through the help of spies like Hiss were able to get secrets to the bomb. Nixon rose to the rank of vice-president because of his ability to overlook the evidence in favor of the credibility of the accused. Hiss refused to take a lie-detector test; Nixon used that, not evidence, to exact his guilty verdict. (Halberstam, 21) 

     Nixon was a demagogue for all of the wrong reasons set forth by Roberts-Miller, he was a demagogue nonetheless. On the ground in the Horn of Africa today, the Ethiopian army grinds its way toward the breakaway state capital, burning villages in its path, sending tens of thousands of refugees with only the clothes on their backs streaming into overcrowded Sudanese camps. Dialogue between the two warring factions is futile. The Ethiopian defense minister calls it an “internal” affair even though Sudan is now hosting upwards of 100,0000 “ internally displaced persons,” now displaced externally. Neighboring Eritrea has offered the Addis Ababa regime support to crush the common enemy in violation of United Nations mandates involving the use of external forces in an internal dispute. Any number of Chua’s tribalism concepts can be cited in this conflict; “Especially in societies where people fear for their safety or some struggle just to survive, idealistic principles will often ring hollow-and in any case have a hard time competing with appeals to more primordial group passions. Universal brotherhood is incompatible with gross inequality. “ (Chua, 8)
     The refugees in many of the African nations, the people themselves, have been struggling to survive their entire lives. There is a gaping chasm of credibility that on the one hand, explores rhetorical situations in an antiseptic democratic environment of how things should be; on the other hand, the brutal reality of demagoguery and despotism that crushes the individual under the tread of a tank. Only the loser seeks out mediation.
     Halberstam candidly pointed out the success of Mickey Spillane and his private-detective hero Mike Hammer. Bombarded by critics who criticized Spillane’s tough guy paperback fiction, calling the author “dangerous, paranoid and masochist,” Spilane replied, referring to the literary world and second-rate writers as Losers;
     “The guys who didn’t make it, the guys that nobody ever heard of...these articles are usually written by Losers--frustrated writers. And these writers resent success. So naturally they never have anything to say about the Winners.” When asked if it was hard to be a winner, Spillane replied;
     “Anybody can be a Winner--all you have to do is make sure you’re not a Loser.” (105) The internet was nothing more than a few Compuserve discussion boards when Foss, Griffin introduced Invitational Rhetoric to the world. 

     A few years prior to that, in 1991, I had hooked up a phone line to a printer and called the Wall Street Journal to subscribe to a newswire they offered at an unreasonable price. It was wired in a Reno garage stuffed full of every known artifact and provided access to by a friend who employed me at his Tahoe resort. The printer had continuous teletype feed paper on it so when a story broke, it automatically typed out the incoming press releases. 

     Two friends of mine arrived from Berkeley one night, one of them who had graduated with a degree in rhetoric and went on to get his Cal Bar license. We were standing there talking when the phone line rang and the teletype started sending out a string of reports. It was January 17, Operation Desert Shield was replaced by Operation Desert Storm. The teletype reported that Iraq’s air force had been destroyed on the ground by coalition forces. My friends were absolutely dumbfounded, not from the failed negotiations to get Hussein out of Kuwait. They were amazed at the teletype system I had set up with a thrift shop printer in a garage full of dust, cobwebs and a vintage Mercedes Benz under a tarp. 

     Rhetoric had failed in Iraq, but my printer succeeded.

References 

 Foss, S., Griffin, C., “Beyond Persuasion, A Proposal for an Invitational Rhetoric,” Communications Monographs, Volume 62, March 1995.
Blog Posts: #KENOSHA 53143-- Suspending Disbelief &--MYTH OF “FAR-LEFT”,
Eyeless on Campus: #KENOSHA 53143-- Suspending Disbelief &--MYTH OF "FAR-LEFT"--- #SOLDIERS-- "Suckers," "Losers," "Misfits" & -- SUICIDAL DRUNKS
Eyeless on Campus: #SOLDIERS-- "Suckers," "Losers," "Misfits" & -- SUICIDAL DRUNKS
Ratcliffe, K., Rhetorical Listening, 2005, So, Illinois U Press, Web Campus
Reuters Staff, “Ethiopia rejects African mediation, pushes toward rebel-held Tigray capital,” Ethiopia rejects African mediation, pushes toward rebel-held Tigray capital | Reuters
Roberts-Miller, P., Demagoguery and Democracy, The Experiment, 2017, New York. Halberstam, D., The Fifties, Random House, 1993, New York
Chua, A., Political Tribes, (Readings, Web Campus)

ENG497B--The Women of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer--U OF NEVADA SPRING 2020

ENG497B.1001
James L’Angelle
University of Nevada, Reno
Dr. G. Escobar
11 May 2020

The Women of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer

     Sophia occupies the mind of Hiram throughout the novel. He just can't seem to escape the spell she has over him. Even with his new life as a freedman, an agent for the Underground Railroad and the use of his special power known as "conduction," Sophia is still Hiram's obsession. But there are other women who influence this runaway slave, several of whom, although they are not romantically woven into the fabric of the story, nonetheless, play an integral part in Hiram's life.
     Having lost his mother Rose in a trade early on when she was spirited off to Natchez, bound by slave merchants, she is transfixed in his mind and is central to the power of conduction, which only really works when he conjures up those strong memories of her. Hiram is raised by Thena;
     "She was not a warm woman, Thena, this other mother of mine. There was a general belief that if she wasn’t cursing you or shooing you off, she might, at least, have a good feeling for you." (Coates, 70)
     Persuaded by Sophia to fulfill his desire to escape the Virginia plantation where he is the illegitimate son of the owner, Hiram is captured along with her and separated. His longing for Sophia is soon to be placed on hold when, following another escape, he becomes the primary subject under the tutelage of the white radical abolitionist Corrine Quinn. As time passes, Hiram’s attitude toward Corrine hardens into a suspicion of her motives;
     “Corrine Quinn was among the most fanatical agents I ever encountered on the Underground. All of these fanatics were white. They took slavery as a personal insult or affront, a stain upon their name...Slavery humiliated them, because it offended a basic sense of goodness that they believed themselves to possess... They scorned their barbaric brethren, but they were brethren all the same. So their opposition was a kind of vanity, a hatred of slavery that far outranked any love of the slave.” (370-371) Not all of the abolitionists had that double consciousness toward slavery and the slave, as Hiram discovers when he is shanghaied out of Philadelphia by slave catchers and rescued by his double-agent mentor Micajah Bland, a.k.a. “Mr. Fields.”      He is introduced to a mythical conductress;
     “...she had become so beloved and famed for fantastic exploits that the coloreds of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York had given her the name Moses.” (170)
     Later on, her real name, Harriet, is revealed along with many of her traits, a singular one being, as a freed slave herself, she didn’t take orders from the abolitionist hierarchy. Throughout his journey from the plantation to Philadelphia and his return as an agent for the underground, Hiram cannot escape his desire for Sophia. Following his initial capture, he even suspects her as part of the plot for his betrayal;
“Maybe Sophia was in on it. Perhaps Thena had warned them. Maybe they were all sitting up somewhere, laughing with Corrine Quinn, laughing with my father even, at my foolish dreams of freedom.” (128)
     Hiram wasn’t outed by Sophia, nor by Thena and certainly not by the legendary Moses. As for Corrine, her motives were quite noble, even with her double standard of anti-slavery that may not have had much concern for the individual slave. Her rather shameful hypocrisy can be seen in her criticism of Hiram’s desire to free Thena;
     “Thena was of such an age that the Virginia Underground would likely oppose her rescue, for it was felt that a life of freedom should first be given to those able to make the most use of it.” (311)
Freedom for the slave in Corrine’s mind only applied to those who were young and could benefit by a long life following their escape from the “coffin.” For her, the underground railroad began with liberation but ended with ageism. It was no wonder that Hiram, the conductor, didn’t completely submit to the organization and eventually returned to his master’s plantation in search of his ultimate desire, Sophia. By then, however, even she had tasted water from the vase of freedom and wasn’t interested in Hiram as her next master.
     There were other women in The Water Dancer, none with the immediate hold of Sophia over Hiram. Surely his mother was a strong influence, but only in memory and related to his unique power. Reference to Santi Bess, Hiram’s grandmother, also had the power of conduction but is yet another distant memory. In the end it is Hiram who has to fulfill his destiny alone.

Source 

Coates, T-N, The Water Dancer, One World, NY, 2019

SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES-- Upload & More Upload--

 

28 July 2023--  

USPTO--1330PDT:

     The process for filing a trademark extension was straightforward and manageable. The most convenient part of the sequence of pages was not to change anything if not necessary, which many times in a long application can create errors that cannot be corrected. Just a matter of hitting the continue button unless flagged, which did not happen. Beyond the submission and payment, the pdf download is very useful to keep track of where the extension is going for the next required steps. Thank you for making the extension process understood without having to take additional measures. 

LAKE SWIM--0730PDT:

     As for the incredibly complicated process to get a 1 minute--involving just about ever editing item available: 3D Paint, Paint, Drive to download files, MS Video Editor, MS Clipchamp and was using Audacity to convert the MP3 recordings to .WAV, but that's now over with as going through the 3rd-part scammers is history, extinct.Originally, the project was to use cover songs through distributors to pay-per-stream/download but not only not cot effective, but unrealistic. A decision had to be made whether to sell at those sites and make $5 a year or just go ahead and upload for access by the public, the latter is the best approach. The reason is simple: all the other approaches eventually lead to a jinxed system, crashing, unavailable, and the opportunity to break the internet. Forget thousands of views, it's the system that needs develped more, and that's the strategy now. Theinternety has turned to the method of choice for swindlers and crooks, making promises that amount to nothing at best, legal troubles at worst, neither is acceptable. Aimed to extort money from socially immoble obscure artists, seeking to earn a place in the talent hierarchy that's loaded against them, the process turnms to perfecting the best approach, and not necessarily the content itself.

     Since thee is already availability of MP3 files, most of which are 2-3 minutes in length, the first part of the new system is to edit them down to one minute. For that matter, the old MP4 files that took forever to develop, can also be used by separating the audio from the video. A number of various programs, online, are available to edit the files down, but MS Clipchamp provides many of the poor-man functions that are available through yet another exorbitant, scammer promising to do all of that for a cost, monthly, with a contract that has to be paid in full if the decision is made to back out of the deal. Limits may be set on the free programs, as is the case for the number of Youtube uploads allowed in a 24-hour period.

27 July 2023  

UPLOAD & MORE UPLOAD--

     Back to Youtube, all the other venues, distributors are scams--pay $30K for 250K streams-downloads, and at a penny return for most of the swinefurt distributor sites, after going through the 3rd-party fee of $100, is $1000. Just places to send the money with aphony agenda. What's revealng about the cover son scam biz is that uploading the same cover song to Youtube, there's a check to see if there's a copyright infringement. In most cases, there isn't; so where's the so-called royalty fees going? Into the pockets of the third-party scammers.

     A visit to the Barnes & Noble self-publishing site resulted in the deletion of all those old stories, sripts that never sold one download. Jinxed. New material needs to be constantly added and the price see a radical drop from $10 a download, to $1. That will happen in due time. 

     The initial uploads to Youtube was with the basic system of two files to Tunes to Tube, which leaves a watermark, but converts a single cover image and an audio file to an MP4; which is then uploade to the channel. That method was soon abandoned as it did not take into the aspect ratio of the innovative method that now exists on the video platform, of "shorts." These are under 1 minute in length and, at first there appeared to be a megabyte limit on the upload, but recently, greater MBs have been uploaded to shorts with success.

     Continue with content: Youtube, writing, nook e-pub, and online store reopened Shopify, but not necessarilyt o sell, since all of this is in  development, to see what works and what doesn't. 

SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES-- Phantoms of Tsiolkovsky

 

         The exact date of the beginning of the story is unknown, along with its location. A great deal of the story takes place in Santa Cruz with the telescope at Mount Hamilton playing a considerable role.

SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES-- The Sawdust Festival-- LAGUNA BEACH, 1970

  Somewhere in the early 80s, before the floods of '83, ceramics innovator James Kouretas, had moved back from Laguna Beach after graduating from Cal State Fullerton. He rented a run-down quonset type tin-roofed shed on east side of Sacramento in North Highlands on Madison Avenue and set up shop to manufacture pottery. Along with a fellow ceramicist, Phil Schuster, they built kilns out of brick and sealed them with clay, using wood and gas to fire them to temperatures that would reach a desired temperature according to cones inside. They had access to walk-in types at Sacramento State and those were employed for large vases that James and Phil would eventually begin to create. For the most part, the handmade kilns were used solely for firing small plates, dishes and goblets. I had been with James from the beginning, from the days of the early Sawdust Festivals in late 1960-early 1970 in Laguna Beach.

The Sawdust Festival was originally billed for those who couldn't qualify for the Festival of Arts Pageant across the street at the entrance to Laguna Canyon just on the outskirts of the town. Most of the products featured at the festival were smaller tourist type starving-artist items, such as paintings, jewelry and pottery in the style of Kouretas. In the late 60s, James confined himself to small cups and goblets, not so perfectly designed as on a potter's wheel, but more handcrafted, with glazes that were offbeat, mismatched and often gaudy and ornate. They were innovative at best, unique at worst. He may have had a booth at the Sawdust in 1969, but he certainly had one in 1970; I built it out of driftwood, old sticks and junk that had washed up on the beach. James had taken off for points unknown for a matter of business and left me to run the booth.

  There wasn't much to running the booth, do a lot of nothing but play guitar and wait for prospective customers to buy; hardly anything was sold that summer, but it was a place to be and drew as many visitors as the big deal across the canyon boulevard. The festival got its name from the sawdust that was scattered on the ground and there were few elaborate booths in those early days, not like the ones that followed when it was discovered by the local rich crowd that pushed out the starving artists and sold upscale beads and similar overpriced junk. By then, booth space had also become too costly for the pioneers of the enterprise, that included Kouretas.

SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES--Bluma Zeigarnik--06/26/23/0930PDT

 barista baby, talks, shows a great deal of interest, until the order is filled; then walks away, says nothing more-ref to Bluma Zeigarnik.

the unresolved v. the resolved-her connect with serving the drink was resolved, thus no more contact necessary.

the field operator when the antenna on the hill, in heavy rain, fell over-went up the hill and reset it, got lost on the way back down and found the creek where the camp was set up. Followed it back into the camp site-that was sometime in 1967, location totally unknown, date unknown, field operation totally unknown. It came into memory yesterday or today.

SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES--The Summer Class Schedule--06/22/23/1010PDT

 22 June 2023--

     Market-French roll, toasted and coffee--

     Theme for StoLA, nothing in particular. Make it for whatever happens.

     The Summer 2023 schedule at UNR was at best passable, at worst intolerable. Up until the first day of class for Planetary Astronomy, there was still no syllabus, or class outline, posted on web campus. That class, a Monday through Thursday morning affair, was dropped in favor of the forensic anthropology class featuring the teaching assistant from spring semester linguistic anthropology. Enrollment there is low.

     Next, Professor Paromita Pain, an outstanding far eastern journalist instructor, offered a cybersecurity class. The hangup there was that crackpot who just won't go away wanting students to do police surveillance. The advantage, a web class; the disadvantage, the crackpot. That class was also dropped.  Looking at the journalism minor requirements, the class would have filled one of the 400 level classes. However, Dr. Pain has another class in the Fall 2023 semester which will do the same. 

JOURNEY TO A FARAWAY BEATVILLE-- North Beach, SF 2012

 

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08/13/2012/1024PDT

JOURNEY TO A FARAWAY BEATVILLE:

World-weariness may well mean tired of life and bored with living as a pure definition this is acceptable. As a mindset and possible marketable product, it may well serve to motivate even the most cynical and pessimistic person convinced that life has nothing else to offer; even as a teenager or washed-up war veteran.

So skipping beyond the everyday name tags placed on words, a thorough examination of "world-weariness" as the makings of a new cheap t-shirt logo campaign was replaced only by the logistics of where and when, and how, the campaign could be launched.

This came in the form of a wedding invitation to San Francisco, home of the original world-weary poets, professors, authors and in general, all the riff-raff, hangers-on and entourage that accompanied them. The epicenter of this movement was North Beach, where in the late Fifties, there was plenty of pessimism to go around for everybody.

Skipping all the background intros and noise necessary to paint the landscape for present day North Beach, and with a wedding invite in hand, I could now pay a visit, officially, to the faraway land known as Beatville, and decide for myself if launching a new cheap t-shirt logo campaign could indeed offset the "I Heart San Francisco" and "Alcatraz" t-shirts currently flooding the market in Chinatown. 

JAMES C. L'ANGELLE

https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T10:24:52.756-07:00 

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08/13/2012/1104PDT

ZERO DARK THIRTY Before the launch defenestration to Beatville, the logistics required would have to be suitable so that the only thing in mind wasn't getting there, it was getting out of there. The journey would begin from North Beach, Lake Tahoe and with the destination in mind of North Beach, San Francisco.

Certainly, the driving option would be the easiest to consider. Go down to the Truckee airport, rent a car from Hertz, drive over to the city...too easy, too expensive and ultimately having the car stolen, stripped or set on fire by Occupy Bay Area anarchists. The Hertz rental was ruled out. Not that multiple reservations, bookings and inquiries by phone weren't initially explored; to the point that it appeared the Hertz rental website may well have blocked my IP address from further accessing the page.

There was Greyhound, and there was AMTRAK, the latter proved to be the most practical. In the end, the schedule required getting on a Thruway bus at Truckee before 9AM on day of departure, to Sacramento, where a Capitol Corridor train would take me to Emeryville and from there, another Thruway bus to the Ferry Building.  However, in order to make the first bus at the Truckee train depot, it meant getting on the TART bus on the Tahoe north shore by 7AM in order to make the AMTRAK bus by 8:40AM. Still, the window of connection was very narrow so it meant getting on the 6AM TART bus into Truckee, which meant getting up at 5AM, or "zero dark thirty." 

JAMES C. L'ANGELLE

https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T11:04:20.892-07:00 

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08/13/2012/1218PDT

SOMETHING VERY ASIAN ABOUT CHINATOWN

SAN FRANCISCO--Following all the logistical arrangements, the bus-train connections proved  a cinch and arrival in San Francisco on Friday afternoon, August 10, at the Ferry Building, went according to schedule. The one thing I noticed was the reluctance of passengers to sit next to the gorgeous babes on the trains and buses, that didn't stop me.  From the way they responded, and the fact that there are far more of them taking public transportation, it is now an added incentive to travel by bus and train.

Checking into the Hotel North Beach went without a hitch as well, and after cleaning up in one of the shared bathrooms on the first floor, I was out the door and soon landed in Kerouac Alley. From there, a quick hike across Columbus to the Beat Museum where I paid the $8 cover and toured the museum. It is loaded with artifacts from the days of the Beat generation and I spent a great deal of time recording video on my computer, the files of which became very large so the process had to be shut down.

Next stop was the Cafe Trieste, which turned out to be a big tourist trap and a few hard corps old timers; didn't stay there long and the big redeeming value there is that it's not far from a Bank of the West branch, which was very convenient for funds withdrawal to continue the North Beach exploit.

Inevitably, the road led over to Chinatown via, and onto Grant Avenue, where the real action was. Hundreds upon hundreds shuffled up and down the crowded streets, the markets were jammed with people, the outdoor produce racks stuffed with vegetables, dead, skinned chickens hanging everywhere. And everywhere as well, the Chinese inhabitants, and the stone-faced Asian ladies, all of them inviting and seductive.

It was getting dark and I found myself without a viable link to wi-fi, or any form of internet connection outside the hotel, that is until I came across the Happy Donut next door to the hotel. The wi-fi signal from the hotel worked at the Happy Donut and I found myself drinking quarts of coffee, getting caught up on the details of the wedding coming up on Saturday; and watching in amazement as tourists and locals tried to figure out how I managed to access the web from the Happy Donut. It was simple, I was staying at the Hotel North Beach and I had the access key to the wi-fi.

JAMES C. L'ANGELLE

https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T12:18:11.516-07:00

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 08/13/2012/2157PDT

SF: NORTH BEACH--"THE HAPPY DONUT"

SAN FRANCISCO --Having paid visit to all the tourist trap North Beach coffee bistros; and looking for the web aficionado's ideal wifi spot, it turned out to be the Happy Donut, next door to the Hotel North Beach.

Hipsters crowding into the place, overrun by tourists? Negative, nobody but a few locals and asians, plenty of room and wifi from the hotel, which requires a key.

Excellent coffee and certainly lives up to its name as the "Happy Donut" with a long glass counter full of all kinds of treats, plus breakfast, on Kearny.

 JAMES C. L'ANGELLE

https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T09:57:43.885-07:00 

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THE SEARCH FOR A SHIPPER IN SF OBJECTIVE: (Exactly where this fit into the narrative is unclear, so it is included here)

To cut my travel load in half since, with a clean suit, some of the clothes, extra tapes and other items were no longer necessary. This was begun in Chinatown which was just around the corner from the Hotel North Beach on Kearny, even as the crowd began to pour out onto the streets on Saturday morning.

This was in concert with the ongoing effort to find a wedding present other than the usual gift-card, like Starbucks, which seemed a bit impersonal and I thought I could go one step beyond. The original plan, since the newlyweds planned to travel after the ceremony, was to find something useful, such as a compass. Little did I know that in a city famous for sailing and ships, a compass may be the last item found.

In Chinatown, however, amid all the hanging dead chickens and noodles in the food shops; the cheap t-shirts with "I heart San Francisco" and "Alcatraz" on them, along with thousands of uncategorized and uncatalogued trinkets, a compass was the last thing tourists needed. As one shopkeeper put it, "We have GPS." Right, I replied, until the satellite goes haywire.

No need to explain that while Marine officers were lost in St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy and looking over a map; I walked by with a compass I'd bought on Catalina Island in Southern California and headed for the main bridge over the big canal without even saluting them as I passed. So much for the Chinaman's world travel experience, he was born and raised on Grant Ave.

Instead of a compass, I settled for a pair of field glasses in a camera shop, since time was running out and the wedding hour fast approaching. It was a small Vivitar that the clerk cut the price in half and then tried to get me to buy a bigger ticket item. I declined, bought the field glasses, (he didn't know what I was talkng about until I called them "binoculars").

Next, it was a matter of gift-wrapping the present. I did manage to locate a small compass on a keychain at the Chinese GPS guy's trinket shop and included that in the gifts for the newlyweds.

In another trinket joint, a Chinese gal found a small red box that had yellow silk lining and the presents fit into the box. She included a Chinese wedding card, so that task was complete and the exit from Chinatown was down some steep street past hundreds of tourists with cheap cameras and cheap t-shirts.

The search for the shipper was on in earnest and forget some Far East Trading Company with impressive credentials dare to lower themselves to packing up some extras and shipping them to Lake Tahoe. They were too busy running guns and drugs to be bothered.

Up and down the streets near the Financial District proved useless. Stopping a weekend UPS delivery man near an Oriental bank, he hadn't a clue where a shipper was. Finally, nearing giving up and deciding to toss the items into the trash, I headed back up Kearny toward the hotel. It was there I found a small shipper with all the right labels on his shop window; UPS, FedEx, etc. However, it was only ten thirty and his shop didn't open until eleven.  Forget that one.. Then across from the Rainbow Cleaners in little Vietnam, in the biggest building on the street, was the main downtown headquarters for FedEx, and the store was open.

Who knows how many times I'd walked past it without looking to see if it was open on the weekend, and it was.

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