Rebane's Ruminations

‘Estonia, the little country that could’

George Rebane

A friend and RR reader emailed me the link to a Washington Times article by Richard Rahn that summarizes the economic history of Estonia.  Readers may recall my posts from our 15-29jun08 visit back to the old sod (see posts under ‘My Story’, right column).  Misplaced modesty prohibits my adding anything to the Rahn article.  I only draw your attention to it as a part of the larger apologetics that may be seen to underpin my socio-economic biases expressed in these pages.  As such, the source may all be in my double-helix, or perhaps in the water I drank as a young child.  Hard to tell.

Remembering and Providing for Sacrifice

George Rebane

Today we remember and honor the military service men and women who died for us, and those who have yet to come home.  We sent them into harm’s way to keep harm away from us and our loved ones.  They went willingly again and again to do the work of war with the belief, and sometimes only hope, that their country was behind them.

 

Since the days of muzzle loading rifles and the Constitution class of frigates, one way Americans heading for battle knew their country supported them fully was in the quality and supply of weapons and stores they were provided.  In the main, these were always the best that was available for warcraft.  And with innovative entrepreneurs free to invent, make, and sell, America soon set the standard for getting there firstest with the bestest and mostest – once our politicians had things sorted out.

Deconstructing Obama and Journalism

George Rebane

The 2apr11 post – ‘Simon & Schuster’s Revenge’ - on American Thinker by Douglas Hackleman is a review of the recently published book Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America's First Postmodern President by Jack Cashill.   The review is a worthy read and will serve for many of us as a compelling preamble to the book itself.

Besides the many items about Barack (Barry) Obama that Cashill excavates and assembles for us, the author’s product is another massive indictment of the state of American journalism, a profession populated and defended primarily by the left.  Hackleman’s conclusion contains this –

“Most unfortunately, the deconstruction of congenial myths is often received with the same enthusiasm as a stool specimen in the baptistery. While Jesus of the gospels said that the truth will set you free, one of his most poetically ardent defenders recognized that "nations grown corrupt" would rather take "bondage with ease than strenuous liberty." This fact is made obvious by the struthious apologetics that day by day through the popular media continue to anchor the myths of Dreams and Audacity.”

Would that in 2008 more of us had known only a fraction of this.  (H/T to RR reader.)

Ruminations - 22feb2011

George Rebane

The role of public employee unions in the sacking of America has long been denied by the socialists.  This is the political crowd that is regularly elected to office through the support of these same labor organizations.  They are the closest thing the left has to a franchised criminal class in our society.   Their extortions and fraudulent practices over the decades have become legend.  My own position on such organizations is well known to RR readers (latest here).

Now, thanks to a mid-western governor attempting to save his state from fiscal ruin, the entire question of how the public unions have bilked the populace may get a proper hearing.  My hope is that the union bosses and their political lapdogs will spread their demonstrations across the land.  Then all will be able to see what has been festering under their local state house or county administration center.  For more see Steven Malaga’s ‘The Showdown Over Public Union Power’.

If Second Amendment rights were not such a serious matter, the latest leftwing hypocrisy on gun control would draw a bit of chuckle, and we would leave it at that.  It seems that rabid gun control advocate and North Carolina state senator R.C. Soles shot one of the two intruders that recently entered his home.  As part of the ruling class, the good senator does not have to worry about his gun rights, but he and his kind worry very much about our gun rights.

It is an old story in the annals of collective governance.  Their greatest fear is the armed law-abiding citizen.  It is not the criminal that worries the left wing; hell, the higher the crime rate, the higher taxes and more government spending they can justify.  But it is the armed citizen who strikes fear into the heart of all insipient autocrats, for that citizen will be pushed only so far before he bands with his fellows to resist tyranny.  And if they have the tools at hand to put up a fight – well, you know the rest.  To counter that, all of us must be disarmed by whatever subterfuge our would-be masters can muster.  But the picture of the 74-year-old senator, shootin’ iron in hand, blasting away while defending his home, does bring up a chuckle or two.  You think the incident has changed his mind any?  Me neither.

Meanwhile, a happier piece about guns is the role that a particular air rifle had in implementing our ‘manifest destiny’.  Take a look at the above video (H/T to RR reader) to get the full story.  But Lewis & Clark in 1803 made it clear across the American west and back to St Louis by not trading shots with the Indians, but by showing them the power and glory of one particular firearm, and an air rifle at that.  Historian Stephen Ambrose mentioned that weapon in his Undaunted Courage, but the full story of this unique weapon was not known to me until I saw the video.

The Loss of Form

George Rebane

Back in the stone age when we were young, a lot of emphasis was put on teaching children how to behave in various social situations.  And we were taught that there existed different kinds of social settings in which this behavior was OK, that behavior was required, and those behaviors were definitely ‘out of place’.  Our lives then had different kinds of places.

As a boy, I was taught that I was different from a girl, and that it was my responsibility always to show certain deferences to the opposite sex.  Girls were equally instructed about boys.  We had definite roles to play which would grow and change as we grew.  All of those roles might be called formalisms, and could be gathered under the canopy of a culture – our culture.

So instructed, one of the many benefits we kids had was that we knew how to ‘be’ in literally any situation in which we found ourselves.  I looked forward to being taken to various observances, celebrations, meetings, and other purposive gatherings.  I knew how to greet people, what to say and do.  I knew my place, and everyone else there also knew my place and respected me when I maintained it properly.  From my secure place it was a blast to see the adults do their thing with each other, most trying to maintain their places, some trying to achieve a better place, and a few even falling out of place.  I was learning all about places that people had in my culture, and also what it took to get from one place to another.  Adult watching was a lot of fun, and profitable as I entered the job market – first as a paperboy, then as a farm hand, and on into a machine shop as the only kid at a work station.  We kids knew what to do when.

The Shrunken Presidency

George Rebane

Syndicated columnist and scholar Victor Davis Hanson is a keen observer of humanity’s foibles and the progressives’ programs now playing on our national stage.  He recently wrote a mid-term assessment of Barack Obama, the man and the President, in a piece titled ‘Our “Pay No attention to that Man Behind the Curtain” Moment’ that could be sub-titled ‘Look Ma how We Shrunk the President!’

The piece begins –

At some point in late 2010 once optimistic independent voters, moderate Republicans, and centrist Democrats stopped listening. They abruptly concluded that their 2008 Barack Obama proved not to be the great uniter, the great communicator, and the greater humanist who was to bring the country together around “centrist” values.

At about the same time, a once ecstatic liberal base began to worry that President Obama was not the brilliant postracial social organizer, the brilliant progressive explicator, and the brilliant big government architect who would take a center-right country with him hard to the left.

RR readers know that I have not been a fan of Obama’s ideology, nor his background, experience, character, and approach to governance.  As President he has been a good-looking guy who knows how to deliver a speech; otherwise, an empty suit.  Hanson’s detailing of the sorry record of his first two years is a must read.  I urge you to invest the time.

And they still don’t know jack –

George Rebane

My career as a markets watcher and investor goes back to 1970 when I started tracking stocks and mutual funds along with my aerospace company engineering peers.  We heard the pundits, analysts, and economists make their sage assessments and predictions, and pooled our resources to subscribe to some pricey financial and investment newsletters.  What we also studied very closely were the prognostications that these gentlemen issued to earn their daily bread and public adulation.

Being of a quantitative and analytical bent, we started paying attention to the high priced predictions we received through the mail, in newspapers, and on TV.  A little research quickly showed that these guys didn’t have a clue about what they were talking.  It was all blather.  Yet, then as now, the media audiences kept lapping it up, and the government agencies kept quoting their wisdom in support of whatever policies and/or regulations they were trying to foist.  The bottom line we discovered was that it was bad for your bottom line if you acted on what the stuffed shirts spouted.

 

But what galled us most was that they got to keep their jobs with whatever university, agency, or bureau they were with after constantly making such horrendous errors in their work product.  As engineers, any of us screwing up just once and half as badly would have been shown the door.  And back in those days such mistakes would have followed you to your next job interview.  As a result many unfortunate engineers gave up engineering, got their teaching credential, and became classroom teachers.

RR joins Sacramento Connect

George Rebane

Last week I received a kind invitation from Sacramento Connect (logo nearby) to have Ruminations join Sacramento Bee’s network of northern California blogs.  After making sure I understood the agreement that goes with such a relationship, I accepted and got busy doing all the ‘paperwork’ and installing the little pop-up toolbar that the member blogs feature when you visit them.  Thanks to my blog server TypePad, that little piece of homework is yet pending – you can see what it looks like on Russ Steele’s NCMW.

I’m not sure what all the means and methods SacConnect has to drive more visitors to RR, but I’m told that they will be forthcoming.  We’ll see.  In any event, I would like to extend a warm welcome to any such new readers.  Take a look around the various categories to see what kinds of stuff I write about.  On the socio-political posts most of the comment threads settle into some very helpful exchanges and expansions once the right-left pyrotechnics die down.  Lately such fireworks are almost all gone, and the loyal and loud opposition now exuberantly doubts my cognitive skills instead of my parentage, hygene, and morals – a much better state of affairs.

Here in Nevada County I also write a regular column for The Union newspaper, do a regular commentary for KVMR-FM 89.5, and irregular series for community television at NCTV.  The Union columns and KVMR transcripts also appear here immediately after they are published and aired.

If you are interested in what kind of a person writes these screeds, please see the About link for a short biography.  My beliefs, values, and outlook are marbled and expanded throughout.  A good stake in the ground for this can be found here.  Again, welcome to RR.

What is Art?

George Rebane

[For a change of pace from the heated discussions of our country's future and the fate of Man, I ran into this little vignette from a past correspondence, and thought that I would share it to see what kind of a response it would draw from the eclectic intellects I am grateful to count as RR readers.  Jo Ann's late Uncle Jerry was a chemist, artist, and a well-read intellect himself.  This piece is from the 6apr07 entry in my journal.]

Some time ago Uncle Jerry and I went around on the question ‘what is art?’ Or longer, can a person tell if something he is experiencing is art?  After some back and forth Jerry came to the conclusion that art can not be defined, only experienced and assessed on an ad hoc basis.  He also implied that being able to arrive at a precise definition of art would somehow cheapen or detract from the entire notion of art in the human experience.  I, as a technician, value the utility of precise operational definitions and believe that their abundance in any culture only serves to improve the human condition.  By ‘operational’ I mean formal or algorithmic to the point that ultimately it can either be programmed on or learned by a non-human (e.g. machine or alien intelligence).

With this preamble I will now ramble on and reconstruct the definition of art that became my contribution to that lost exchange. …

Art is an intentionally created stimulus the purpose of which is to give pleasure to its Beholder by first and foremost removing him from the time and place of its experience, and in the process evoking either a new idea or notion that expands/extends the Beholder’s understanding of ‘what is’, and/or ‘what was’ for an experience the Beholder remembers.  Second, art invites extension and repetition of its being experienced.  And the more powerful the art is for the Beholder, the more that art will create a longing or yearning for experiencing it again.

Finally, art has the ability to extend and/or augment the Beholder in his very being.  From that first experience the Beholder will now look at himself and the world in a manner changed.  This in the sense that the art now joins or is integrated into his overall measure of how he henceforth beholds and experiences life.  The relative power of art to the Beholder is itself measured in terms of the intensity and duration of each such effect on the Beholder.

The intentionally created stimulus called art can take the form of a static thing or a time extended experience – i.e. a painting, sculpture, …, or a song, symphony, movie, … .  For concreteness we restrict the purposeful creator to be a human.  Else the Grand Canyon can be included in the definition of art, with the putative artist being God.  In this case the purposive link becomes a matter of debate which operational definitions seek to avoid.

The above definition has so far been personal and subjective to the extent that it is a one-to-one communication between the artist and the Beholder through the mediating art.  Art in the cultural context is the extension of the above definition to a significant fraction of the members of a specific culture.  In that sense, art requires a statistic to be added – e.g. more than 50% of the Moravians consider ‘this’ to be art.  One American or twenty Americans cannot by fiat define ‘American art’ or art from America.  For such a broadly accepted notion, more like-minded Americans need to be involved.

However, twenty people, perhaps, can designate something as art specifically for the members of the Nevada County Brass Musicians Marching Society or people visiting the Getty Museum.  Their definition will be accepted to the extent that the one-to-one communications between Artist and Beholders is successful.

Finally, an Artist is a person who can create art on a volitional basis, and in so doing finds fulfillment.

Surviving Augsburg Once More – 1945

George Rebane

[This is autobiographical sketch recounts the Rebane family’s entrance into the post-war world of displaced persons just after the war ended in Germany, and before the ‘final disposition’ of the east European refugees would stabilize.  We and thousands like us were still in mortal danger of being forcefully ‘repatriated’.  This was to be our second escape from Augsburg.

The chronological order of these sketches and their links are listed below.  They and other related travels are assembled in the My Story section of RR.  Background on Estonia and stories from my earlier years during the war are marbled into the series 'Road Ruminations' written during our June 2008 return trip to Estonia.] 

‘Christmas in Stettin – 1944’ , ‘The Last Train from Stettin’ , ‘1945 – The year Easter was cancelled’ , ‘The War Ends in Liederberg’ , ‘Sixty years ago today – 4 May 1949’

This piece follows the events described in ‘The War Ends in Liederberg’.  The upcoming story of the Geislingen Displaced Persons Camp years will conclude the pre-America phase of my life.]

 

Our ride south from Liederberg in the back of the Army ¾ ton truck ended in Augsburg, the war devastated city where in 1518 Martin Luther was examined for heresy and escaped northward in the dead of night.  Within two weeks of the war’s end on 8 May 1945, the western allies established a series of collection points – it was too early yet to call them actual camps – for the hundreds of thousands of east Europeans who were lucky enough to find themselves west of the Red Army when the bullets stopped flying.  Vello, Ellen, and their son Jüri Rebane were among the very fortunate – or were they?