Discussion of rock and roll inevitably involves discussion of adolescence, the time in which one’s deepest connections to music and art are made. The youthful search for identity explodes with posters and t-shirts, stickers and buttons and graffiti. Bands are formed, lines are drawn. Tribes coalesce, carefully chosen sub-genres of rock and roll their sacred totems. Intra-clique animus develops; the tribes regard each other’s motives of dress and taste suspiciously. Tribal differences provide fodder for debate.
I’ve been listening to Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran during my commutes to and from work. I didn’t expect a passage from it to remind me of a fragment of one such debate I had as a teenager. Forgive the punctuation, spelling and paragraph breaks—I’m typing as I listen:
A few weeks ago, while driving down the George Washington Memorial Parkway, my children and I were reminiscing about Iran. I noticed, with a sudden misgiving, the alien tone they had adopted when talking about their own country. They kept repeating “they, they, over there.”
“Over where? Where you buried your dead canary, by a rose bush with your grandfather? Where your grandmother brought you chocolates we had forbidden you to eat?”
They didn’t remember many things. Some memories made them sad and nostalgic. Others, they dismissed. The names of my parents, Bijan’s aunt and uncle, our close friends, they evoked like magic mantras, joyfully taking shape and disappearing with each utterance.
What triggered our reminiscences? Was it the Doors CD that my children were so accustomed to hearing in Iran? They had bought it for me for Mother’s Day, and we were listening to it in the car. Jim Morrison’s seductively nonchalant voice purred from the stereo. I’d like to have another kiss. His voice stretched and curved and twisted while we talked and laughed. She’s a twentieth-century fox, he intoned.
Some memories bore them, some excite them, like when they make fun of their mother dancing all over the place, from the hall to the living room singing Come on baby, light my fire.
They tell me they have already forgotten so much. So many faces have become dim. When I ask them “Do you remember this, or that?” most often, they don’t. Now, Jim Morrison has moved to a song by Brecht. Oh show me the way to the next whiskey bar, he sings, and we accompany him on the next line. Oh, don’t ask why.
My dislike of Jim Morrison and the Doors is a teenage relic. I was revulsed by Morrison’s leathered brutishness and lame poetry. He seemed to have no interest in the mythic, the heroic, themes I was sure guided the efforts of my beloved Led Zeppelin. The Doors’ music seemed banal to me then, as it does now, as most of rock and roll does.
Nafisi’s mention of them brought me back to a flickering memory of a debate with a friend. His mother saw the Doors in abridged form at the height of their powers. The concert was cut short because of Morrison’s drunkenness and lewd gesticulations. I believe we were, in an awkward adolescent way, trying to suss out whether Morrison was or was not a sincere artist. What kind of artist would abuse their audience in such a way? What was his aim? How could he have shortchanged them so? Our innocence was only scraping the tip of the nihilistic iceberg of art and music. Neither of us had yet to fully experience the ennui of bourgeois life, though our rock and roll identities were preparing us for that.
Morrison’s behavior became an entrenched necessity of the rock idiom, the pinnacle of expression worthy of emulation. Rock’s blatant appeal to youthful sexuality chafed against social restraint. Tantrums ensued, on stage and in school. Bloom understood this evolution of spoiled petulance into virtue: “Selfishness thus becomes indignation and then transforms itself into morality.” This is what we have dwelt on in America for decades now—anger at thwarted desire elevated to an art form.
I don’t mean to impugn Nafisi’s and her daughters’ preference for the Doors. Though only a prelude to a much darker reminiscence (they then recall a disturbing event in which officers of the Revolutionary Committee pursue a pistol-wielding neighbor into their garden) I find the passage extraordinarily poignant . Morrison wielded his desire like a bludgeon at American middle class mores, values that created him and standards to which Nafisi and her family may have aspired. The Nafisi women treasured the Doors CD because it represented a freedom they could not publicly aspire to in Tehran. Rock and roll is held in such high regard by American youth because it helps them to renounce what they are, and pretend to be what they are not: rebels, murderers, addicts, revolutionaries.
Nafisi and her daughters used rock and roll as a modest life line linking them to a free culture far removed from the one that daily oppressed them. At the same time, in the middle of that free culture, rock and roll was consumed, vomited up and consumed again. A vast and vibrant ego culture paraded itself in front of the mirror, oblivious to those people across the globe putting its image to better use.
Western pop-cultural affinity for overseas revolution makes more sense if thought about this way. Impulses to destruction and copulation denied, American youth turn their gaze towards historical figures whose impulses were sated to great and tragic effect—Castro and Guevara and Lenin. Capitalism’s creative destruction comes at a pace too slow to satisfy the modern mind, but the supposedly creative destruction of the revolutionary is nearly instantaneous; the crowds gather and rage, explosions occur and hostages are taken with a speed suiting the digital age.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
David Foster Wallace, RIP
David Foster Wallace hung himself on Friday. His wife found his body. He was 46. A terrible loss.
I was never interested in his writing until reading his 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College this spring. It is as good a defense of faith in the face of modern boredom and frustration as any I have yet to find. Reading it buoyed my spirits. It shamed me too, because up until then I considered him supericial, a literary version of a videogame. I was put off by the small passages of Infinite Jest I had read. It was too much for me to take in. Perhaps it still is. After reading the commencement address I read this, a moving portrait of a young couple struggling with the decision to have an abortion.
After reading the commencement address, I sent an email to my father. I'd like to include it in this post because I would like to think that Wallace played a part in opening my closed mind.
Because I wrote it with more than a little emotion, some of the points I try to make may not be so clear. Rereading it, there are a few things I'd like to change (not because of Wallace's death but because I didn't think things through well enough). Here it is:
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
Dad,
I'd like to share with you what I consider wonderful proof that Christian spirituality and real conservatism are alive and well amongst younger intellectuals. I found this proof where I least expected it: I was searching the internet for information on a writer--David Foster Wallace--whom I am not very interested in and whose writing I've found tedious and exemplary of the diffused and over-stimulated mental state of my generation (he employs meandering and exhaustive footnotes in his works of fiction). His debut novel was 1100 pages long, and he seemed to me overly blessed with that blend of precocity, arrogance and self-reverence so many middle-class, middle American people born between 1960 and 1980 exhibit (myself included).
The attached piece is a transcript of a commencement address given by Wallace to Kenyon College's 2005 graduating class. I underlined and highlighted what I consider the most stunning and revelatory passages not only because of their veracity, but because of their source; Wallace is successful at weaving these plain truths into an address aimed at those as precocious and self-absorbed as he once was.
I should add here an important fact about myself, something that has had an enormous impact on my life, and something I never thought I would do or even admit to doing: for the last eight months I have been reciting the Lord's prayer when I wake up each morning. (I try to do this at the end of the day as well, when perhaps the prayer would do the most good; so far that is a touch and go affair, but I am getting there). I don't feel capable of conveying the sense of peace and optimism that descends upon me when I do this; perhaps I will never be able to do so. Right now it is enough to know that doing so has helped me try to be a better person, and to perceive with more clarity the presence and value of the truths to which Wallace refers. Wallace's speech reminded me of three quotes, the first two from Bob Genetski's piece and the last a quote from St Augustine by a Catholic columnist in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
“My grace is all you need, for my power is greatest when you are weak.”
For when I am weak, then I am strong. –2 Corinthians 12
"You have created us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."
Wallace entreats the graduates before him to expand their cast of mind to include sympathy for and understanding of other people and their daily trials; essentially reminding them in coded, 21st century terms that God's presence will be strongest in them during tedious and frustrating moments, and that fulfilling what God asks of us, "to forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" just might be the highest aim of a true liberal arts education.
I am not sure whether or not Wallace understands how close his exhortations come to preaching the Gospel; something tells me he does because he feels it necessary to remind his audience that "I'm [not] getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues," even though he is clearly doing so, for what is a call to exercise compassion and forgiveness, especially since these acts are not a regular part of our daily lives? He may have considered it necessary to disassociate his advice from scripture so that his audience might not dismiss it outright. Nevertheless, by the end of the speech, Wallace has emboldened himself enough to admit that "in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping"
This is a considerable admission by a member of "Generation X" and Wallace goes on to expound upon what is the essential point of the St Augustine quote: until we rest within God, until we seek the peace of living within Him and following His advice, our hearts remain restless; attached to material possessions and pride, we devour ourselves by seeking what is not really there.
It is not for me to say whether or not Wallace is a closet conservative; I am sure he would howl if accused of being one. Reading his speech, I was compelled to ask the following questions: What is someone who doesn't demand the absolute upheaval and destruction of the status quo? What is the person who prefers to pause and think before issuing blanket condemnations of his fellow men? He is a conservative. Not necessarily of politics or causes, but of social relationships. He wishes to conserve the current system we operate within because he realizes, precisely because of his humanity, that he has no right to demand that that system be radically altered to suit his selfish point of view.
I felt compelled to share this with you because you have always urged me to do the right thing throughout my life, to believe in my gifts and talents and to have compassion and respect for others. I share it with you not as a reminder but as proof that your influence on me has enabled me to perceive these things and to desire a complete life of responsibility and compassion.
Thank you Dad,
Eric
God Bless you, David Foster Wallace!
I was never interested in his writing until reading his 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College this spring. It is as good a defense of faith in the face of modern boredom and frustration as any I have yet to find. Reading it buoyed my spirits. It shamed me too, because up until then I considered him supericial, a literary version of a videogame. I was put off by the small passages of Infinite Jest I had read. It was too much for me to take in. Perhaps it still is. After reading the commencement address I read this, a moving portrait of a young couple struggling with the decision to have an abortion.
After reading the commencement address, I sent an email to my father. I'd like to include it in this post because I would like to think that Wallace played a part in opening my closed mind.
Because I wrote it with more than a little emotion, some of the points I try to make may not be so clear. Rereading it, there are a few things I'd like to change (not because of Wallace's death but because I didn't think things through well enough). Here it is:
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
Dad,
I'd like to share with you what I consider wonderful proof that Christian spirituality and real conservatism are alive and well amongst younger intellectuals. I found this proof where I least expected it: I was searching the internet for information on a writer--David Foster Wallace--whom I am not very interested in and whose writing I've found tedious and exemplary of the diffused and over-stimulated mental state of my generation (he employs meandering and exhaustive footnotes in his works of fiction). His debut novel was 1100 pages long, and he seemed to me overly blessed with that blend of precocity, arrogance and self-reverence so many middle-class, middle American people born between 1960 and 1980 exhibit (myself included).
The attached piece is a transcript of a commencement address given by Wallace to Kenyon College's 2005 graduating class. I underlined and highlighted what I consider the most stunning and revelatory passages not only because of their veracity, but because of their source; Wallace is successful at weaving these plain truths into an address aimed at those as precocious and self-absorbed as he once was.
I should add here an important fact about myself, something that has had an enormous impact on my life, and something I never thought I would do or even admit to doing: for the last eight months I have been reciting the Lord's prayer when I wake up each morning. (I try to do this at the end of the day as well, when perhaps the prayer would do the most good; so far that is a touch and go affair, but I am getting there). I don't feel capable of conveying the sense of peace and optimism that descends upon me when I do this; perhaps I will never be able to do so. Right now it is enough to know that doing so has helped me try to be a better person, and to perceive with more clarity the presence and value of the truths to which Wallace refers. Wallace's speech reminded me of three quotes, the first two from Bob Genetski's piece and the last a quote from St Augustine by a Catholic columnist in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
“My grace is all you need, for my power is greatest when you are weak.”
For when I am weak, then I am strong. –2 Corinthians 12
"You have created us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."
Wallace entreats the graduates before him to expand their cast of mind to include sympathy for and understanding of other people and their daily trials; essentially reminding them in coded, 21st century terms that God's presence will be strongest in them during tedious and frustrating moments, and that fulfilling what God asks of us, "to forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" just might be the highest aim of a true liberal arts education.
I am not sure whether or not Wallace understands how close his exhortations come to preaching the Gospel; something tells me he does because he feels it necessary to remind his audience that "I'm [not] getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues," even though he is clearly doing so, for what is a call to exercise compassion and forgiveness, especially since these acts are not a regular part of our daily lives? He may have considered it necessary to disassociate his advice from scripture so that his audience might not dismiss it outright. Nevertheless, by the end of the speech, Wallace has emboldened himself enough to admit that "in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping"
This is a considerable admission by a member of "Generation X" and Wallace goes on to expound upon what is the essential point of the St Augustine quote: until we rest within God, until we seek the peace of living within Him and following His advice, our hearts remain restless; attached to material possessions and pride, we devour ourselves by seeking what is not really there.
It is not for me to say whether or not Wallace is a closet conservative; I am sure he would howl if accused of being one. Reading his speech, I was compelled to ask the following questions: What is someone who doesn't demand the absolute upheaval and destruction of the status quo? What is the person who prefers to pause and think before issuing blanket condemnations of his fellow men? He is a conservative. Not necessarily of politics or causes, but of social relationships. He wishes to conserve the current system we operate within because he realizes, precisely because of his humanity, that he has no right to demand that that system be radically altered to suit his selfish point of view.
I felt compelled to share this with you because you have always urged me to do the right thing throughout my life, to believe in my gifts and talents and to have compassion and respect for others. I share it with you not as a reminder but as proof that your influence on me has enabled me to perceive these things and to desire a complete life of responsibility and compassion.
Thank you Dad,
Eric
God Bless you, David Foster Wallace!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Music, Emotion and Modern Life
I begin my lonely journey by asking indulgence in my choice to address The Closing of the American Mind out of sequence. I will first write about Bloom’s chapter on music. I do this mainly out of sentimentality; my relationships to music as a child and student bear a startling resemblance to the relationships he describes in that chapter. While persuaded by the force of his arguments in the preceding sections, it was not until reading his take on music that I realized I was merely one victim in the tragedy of thousands Bloom describes. Though possessing an abundance of tragic flaws, I was not the hero of my own story as I had previously believed. Indeed, Bloom clearly identifies the forces within music, popular culture and education that willfully abet such self-regard.
Before any who read this begin picking me (unfairly) and Bloom (unwisely) apart with the jagged tools of rock-criticism, let me be perfectly clear: I am not going to present a taxonomy of bands and genres; I am not going to describe bands or songs in terms of the aesthetics they promote or emotions they evoke. My desire is not to discuss the bric-a-brac of rock music; I have absolutely no interest in picking apart rock minutiae or debating the merits of Dinosaur Jr. versus fIREHOSE. As one who blasted his ear drums out of his own skull with headphones, at live concerts and in amateur bands, I know full well that rock neither demands nor deserves a point-by-point refutation of its positive characteristics. The essence of rock music is its appeal to emotion. This appeal comes first from the mystery of the record collection of an older sibling, parent or friend. It is superficial and partially hidden, as an exotic revolutionary might be hidden within the crowded public square. However, the revolutionary’s specialty is not in the subtle exposition of ideas, nor in carefully considered dialectic. His specialty is guerilla assault. I experienced this emotional assault first hand, much as a kidnap victim experiences a burlap sack over the head before being beaten and thrown into a speeding van. Modern culture, as Bloom notes, does not prepare the victim for assault; children do not carry with them coded instructions for escape. Parents and teachers are powerless in negotiating release; in most cases they believe such negotiation a potentially damaging challenge to the child’s self-esteem, and do nothing. The child becomes an adult in captivity. The kidnap victim works through the stages of the Stockholm syndrome with his abductors, until he joins their ranks and joyfully helps take new abductees.
I take this approach because I see the net effect of pop-culture on my life as negative. Rock and roll may help one to cope with modern life, but it cannot tell one how to live it. And that is where I found myself before picking up The Closing: I fashioned a grab-bag philosophy based on the spectrum of emotions evoked by rock and roll. I mistook this for real understanding, when it was simply coping. Dealing with spikes of anger or troughs of sadness through rock music is cathartic, but it promotes a type of introspection incapable of finding answers to the whys of anger or sadness. Catharsis is beneficial in alleviating immediate emotional pain but it has nothing to offer once the pain is gone.
Before any who read this begin picking me (unfairly) and Bloom (unwisely) apart with the jagged tools of rock-criticism, let me be perfectly clear: I am not going to present a taxonomy of bands and genres; I am not going to describe bands or songs in terms of the aesthetics they promote or emotions they evoke. My desire is not to discuss the bric-a-brac of rock music; I have absolutely no interest in picking apart rock minutiae or debating the merits of Dinosaur Jr. versus fIREHOSE. As one who blasted his ear drums out of his own skull with headphones, at live concerts and in amateur bands, I know full well that rock neither demands nor deserves a point-by-point refutation of its positive characteristics. The essence of rock music is its appeal to emotion. This appeal comes first from the mystery of the record collection of an older sibling, parent or friend. It is superficial and partially hidden, as an exotic revolutionary might be hidden within the crowded public square. However, the revolutionary’s specialty is not in the subtle exposition of ideas, nor in carefully considered dialectic. His specialty is guerilla assault. I experienced this emotional assault first hand, much as a kidnap victim experiences a burlap sack over the head before being beaten and thrown into a speeding van. Modern culture, as Bloom notes, does not prepare the victim for assault; children do not carry with them coded instructions for escape. Parents and teachers are powerless in negotiating release; in most cases they believe such negotiation a potentially damaging challenge to the child’s self-esteem, and do nothing. The child becomes an adult in captivity. The kidnap victim works through the stages of the Stockholm syndrome with his abductors, until he joins their ranks and joyfully helps take new abductees.
I take this approach because I see the net effect of pop-culture on my life as negative. Rock and roll may help one to cope with modern life, but it cannot tell one how to live it. And that is where I found myself before picking up The Closing: I fashioned a grab-bag philosophy based on the spectrum of emotions evoked by rock and roll. I mistook this for real understanding, when it was simply coping. Dealing with spikes of anger or troughs of sadness through rock music is cathartic, but it promotes a type of introspection incapable of finding answers to the whys of anger or sadness. Catharsis is beneficial in alleviating immediate emotional pain but it has nothing to offer once the pain is gone.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Statement of Purpose
Before I get started, a few things about my blog's title and why I chose it:
The title "Closed for Business" was inspired by Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. I read the book two years ago and its impact was profound. It cracked open the papier-mache crust of pop-culture sentiment and rock music aesthetics that insulated my mind, and dissolved the watery mastic of relativism holding those layers together. A criticism of modern higher education, and thus a criticism of most of modern life, The Closing of the American Mind revealed to me how much I didn't know about learning and philosophy, and how much I would never understand if I didn't alter my intellectual trajectory. Reading the book, I knew I wasn't a member of its intended audience, but rather a member of the herd Bloom so deftly criticized, those whose entrenched position in popular culture made the study of Plato, Aristotle and Rousseau seem so foreign and useless.
Having spent more than a decade fashioning a liberal-libertarian persona for myself, Bloom and thinkers like him were completely off my radar. I, like many of my age cohort, cast illusory spells of freedom for myself by chanting "Who am I to judge?" in every possible context. Bloom, and as I found out later, writers like Saul Bellow, asked the far scarier question: "Who are you not to?"
Like most ideas (good or otherwise) I thought of the title while taking a shower. I realized that I had something to say about being a closed American mind, and that attempting to broaden my intellectual life in the directions suggested by Bloom would produce thoughts and experiences worth sharing. I saw that my closed mind was giving me the chance to learn and share with others, putting me "in business" as it were. Thus "Closed for Business." Striking, I know. No need to applaud...
The subtitle comes from the fact that my conversion, while willing, isn't entirely enthusiastic. As I mentioned above, the question "Who are you not to judge?" is intimidating. Who really wants it asked of them? It is much easier and rhetorically gratifying to abdicate judgment of behaviors, decisions and pronouncements, and it saves face. But those who abdicate unwittingly condemn dusty old farts like Aristotle to remain in their graves (or tombs--or did they do those spooky funeral pyres back then?). How is that not passing judgment? Abdication also means avoiding arguments by creating artificial agreement: You see--neither of us really knows anything--who are we to say anything about the matter? Such awkward sleight-of-hand isn't consensus, nor is it even "agreeing to disagree." Whatever it is (and I have come to see it in myself as a manifestation of social cowardice) it confuses and detracts from the level of discourse. It doesn't help people to understand each other, and it mutes their discussion of important issues.
Taking a stand of any kind isn't fun. It's not something one does expecting pats on the back or letters of congratulation. Taking a conservative stand usually gets you the exact opposite of those things. Conservatives are mocked routinely for supposed stodginess and ignorance; they're the guys that form harrumphing choirs like those surrounding the Honorable William J. Le Petomane in Blazing Saddles. So, yeah, I'm not totally enthused about being pigeonholed and ridiculed. But what do you get if you make decisions for yourself using such criteria, anyway?
My intention (audacious? foolhardy?) here is to re-read Bloom and offer a gloss on his assessment of American minds from the standpoint of one that was most definitely closed in the manner he suggests. I operate under no illusions; my interest isn't in changing the world or the mind of anyone who may read what I post. Rather, my goal is to work through a dense tract of philosophy and leave a few crumbs along the trail for anyone else interested in taking it. Once the propeller on my thinking cap burns off, I'll write about other subjects as I read or encounter them.
So welcome! and wish me luck!
The title "Closed for Business" was inspired by Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind. I read the book two years ago and its impact was profound. It cracked open the papier-mache crust of pop-culture sentiment and rock music aesthetics that insulated my mind, and dissolved the watery mastic of relativism holding those layers together. A criticism of modern higher education, and thus a criticism of most of modern life, The Closing of the American Mind revealed to me how much I didn't know about learning and philosophy, and how much I would never understand if I didn't alter my intellectual trajectory. Reading the book, I knew I wasn't a member of its intended audience, but rather a member of the herd Bloom so deftly criticized, those whose entrenched position in popular culture made the study of Plato, Aristotle and Rousseau seem so foreign and useless.
Having spent more than a decade fashioning a liberal-libertarian persona for myself, Bloom and thinkers like him were completely off my radar. I, like many of my age cohort, cast illusory spells of freedom for myself by chanting "Who am I to judge?" in every possible context. Bloom, and as I found out later, writers like Saul Bellow, asked the far scarier question: "Who are you not to?"
Like most ideas (good or otherwise) I thought of the title while taking a shower. I realized that I had something to say about being a closed American mind, and that attempting to broaden my intellectual life in the directions suggested by Bloom would produce thoughts and experiences worth sharing. I saw that my closed mind was giving me the chance to learn and share with others, putting me "in business" as it were. Thus "Closed for Business." Striking, I know. No need to applaud...
The subtitle comes from the fact that my conversion, while willing, isn't entirely enthusiastic. As I mentioned above, the question "Who are you not to judge?" is intimidating. Who really wants it asked of them? It is much easier and rhetorically gratifying to abdicate judgment of behaviors, decisions and pronouncements, and it saves face. But those who abdicate unwittingly condemn dusty old farts like Aristotle to remain in their graves (or tombs--or did they do those spooky funeral pyres back then?). How is that not passing judgment? Abdication also means avoiding arguments by creating artificial agreement: You see--neither of us really knows anything--who are we to say anything about the matter? Such awkward sleight-of-hand isn't consensus, nor is it even "agreeing to disagree." Whatever it is (and I have come to see it in myself as a manifestation of social cowardice) it confuses and detracts from the level of discourse. It doesn't help people to understand each other, and it mutes their discussion of important issues.
Taking a stand of any kind isn't fun. It's not something one does expecting pats on the back or letters of congratulation. Taking a conservative stand usually gets you the exact opposite of those things. Conservatives are mocked routinely for supposed stodginess and ignorance; they're the guys that form harrumphing choirs like those surrounding the Honorable William J. Le Petomane in Blazing Saddles. So, yeah, I'm not totally enthused about being pigeonholed and ridiculed. But what do you get if you make decisions for yourself using such criteria, anyway?
My intention (audacious? foolhardy?) here is to re-read Bloom and offer a gloss on his assessment of American minds from the standpoint of one that was most definitely closed in the manner he suggests. I operate under no illusions; my interest isn't in changing the world or the mind of anyone who may read what I post. Rather, my goal is to work through a dense tract of philosophy and leave a few crumbs along the trail for anyone else interested in taking it. Once the propeller on my thinking cap burns off, I'll write about other subjects as I read or encounter them.
So welcome! and wish me luck!
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