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Jeremiah was a bullfrog...Submitted by lmcshane on Sun, 03/14/2010 - 16:43.
Perhaps, my sisters can remember my ultra fine singing rendition of the Hoyt Axton/Three Dog Night classic, Joy to the World:) For the uninitiated--here are the lyrics: Was a good friend of mine I never understood a single word he said But I helped him a-drink his wine And he always had some mighty fine wine Singing Joy to the world All the boys and girls, now Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea Joy to you and me If I were the King of the world Tell you what I'd do I'd throw away the cars and the bars and the wars And make sweet love to you Sing it now Joy to the world All the boys and girls Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea Joy to you and me You know I love the ladies Love to have my fun I'm a high night flier and a rainbow rider And a straight-shooting son of a gun I said a straight-shooting son of a gun Joy to the world All the boys and girls Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea Joy to you and me My audio summary of James Kuntsler's presentation at Cleveland Public Library today:)
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Jeremiah--the long emergency
I would have liked today's session to have been more of a Q&A--the first part of the presentation by James Kunstler described the crisis we live with--post peak oil production and the societal transitions we must address to survive.
I would hazard a guess that most of the audience was familiar and in attendance due to Mr. Kunstler's social theory books--Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency and less for his fiction, which he featured at length.
For the second part, Mr. Kunstler read three chapters from Witch of Hebron, his sequel to World Made by Hand. And, he lost some of the audience on his fictionalized future vision.
For some reason, his presentation made me want to go back and reread Otto of the Silver Hand. Don't ask me why, but the author's own description of his writing style as a "ripping good yarn," makes me think of those boy-books my father loved...Howard Pyle and all.
Jane (Jeremiah) Jacobs
One questioner asked about Kunstler's meeting with Jane Jacobs and his views on her work. In response, Kunstler dismissively related a story about what a lovely woman she was, how polite, well informed, etc. But what he brought away that apparently still stings is that during the entire meeting she failed to let on that she was about to publish (in 2004 right before The Long Emergency was published in 2005) Dark Age Ahead. From his tone, it sounded as if that really pissed him off and still does.
I spoke with him on the phone several weeks back to ask what his topic would be, and he said he was coming to talk about his new book because that is what the library had engaged him to do. I had wanted to inform him about the suburbanlike Opportunity Corridor that is planned for our town. He said that I should be prepared for the thing to go through like so many other stupid ideas that city fathers cannot let go. Despite his determination that suburbia is dead he said that suburbia continues to be ramped up and that sort of planning is still seen as the savior of any decrepit areas of a city. I told him that his applause for new urbanism was in part misguided and he should know what was at Seaside before there was Seaside. I do know. I lived there. He should take a closer look at the history of the St. Joe Company, because they are a bunch of swindling cash suckers destroying Southeastern natural habitats. Ooooh... probably a bit too strong for his comeback - "I know the St. Joe Company."
The graphic swashbuckling reading of three whole chapters from the book lost me a bit, too. One would have been sufficient. I spoke with someone afterward about Kunstler's dire predictions and his disdain for any potential actions we might take. He eschewed the reliability of the internet calling it a time suck ( I agree to an extent), but find it interesting that Kunstler uses it so prodigiously. And the World Made by Hand novels (Witch of Hebron is number two in a series of four) is his way of sucking cash out of the reading public while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.
I do wish that he would have given a bit more information about the hope he recommends we maintain. He'll write more novels and do more book tours and continue to dash the hopes of our student scientists, innovators and urban planners. He won't recommend that we fight to stop opportunity corridors and save high rises. When I told him that Breuer is still standing because we fought the demolition, he said there is no place for high rises in our future (no energy for elevators) and he has been blunt about his disdain for modernism (Pruiit Igoe), but I told him that someone had suggested that I might become Cleveland's Jane Jacobs (a suggestion at which I blushed and stuttered - no freakin' way am I anywhere near her competence or tenacity!). I said, without Jane Jacobs there would be Robert Moses's freeway instead of Soho, the Village and the Lower Eastside in NYC. He agreed, but said in the long run it doesn't matter. Now I get it - his dismissal of Jacobs with the wave of a hand. She pissed him off. That doesn't sit well with some men - a woman beating them to the punch.
From our 2009 correspondence:
Trains
Thank you Susan for your take on the James Kunstler presentation at Cleveland Public Library.
There is definitely a gender bias to his world view and I am a bit worried that he is slipping into male fantasy escapism...but for such a cranky guy, he did offer some hope with his encouragement of the jobs that would be provided by reconfiguring our automotive mentality to a train mentality.
I really wish he would have applied some of his analysis of societal behavior to our local situation as you encouraged him to do...ironically--we need to look back to look forward.
Kuntsler's presentation inspired me to look through the JSTOR archives for material on the Hanna family, which lead to the following citation list. I am working on it, but it seems we are constantly making the same mistakes.
I want to hope for civic revival in Cleveland.
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These records have been provided through JSTOR.
COOPs real and imagined
And, is this the future for most women??...
the New York Times called it the Femivore's Dilemma.
Otto of the Silver Hand
Read it again...and I have to say...I still love the book--can I get a one-eyed, super-human Hans? :)