JON KATZ'S PERSONAL PAGE
RANDOM THOUGHTS
By Jon Katz
NOTE- Here are some random thoughts that don't seem to fit elsewhere on my personal page.
FROM RANDOM THOUGHTS TO UNDERDOG BLOG.
Several years after starting this Random Thoughts page, I launched the Underdog Blog in 2006. Underdog covers many of my random thoughts that relate to my work as a lawyer, but is insufficient for covering my remaining random thoughts, so I continue posting them here, including:
- Joe's Journey from karmatube, about a family's recovery from the father's near-fatal car collision.
- Retired military leaders speaking out against torture.
- Is there anything to The Secret beyond new age without substance? I have not learned much about it beyond a review of the website and YouTube clip.
- Chi cloning. But a notion?
ON THE WAR IN IRAQ AND ALL WARS
A fictitious administration is making fictitious claims to be pursuing a just war. [Credit goes to Michael Moore]. See also here. March 26, 2003.
ON JUSTICE
Respecting the poor. While awaiting a train at Washington's Union Station, I see a gentleman, John, limping as he walks. He appears to be seeking donations, and I approach him to oblige. Almost simultaneously, a private uniformed security guard comes up, saying John "has been seen" approaching people all morning. I tell the guard that it is I who approached John, and that "I need to speak with this man." John tells me of the stroke he survived, and about wanting something to eat. I give John a few dollars, and give him two business card, one which is blank, and the other telling security that John is entitled to be there, and to call my cellphone if they disagree. Union Station seems in competition with New York Penn Station's efforts to eject homeless people. Let's put a stop to it.
Applying the lessons of Passover. It is the Passover 2005 seder, and as we reflect on the meaning of Passover, I urge that Passover's lessons of liberation must be applied fully today - liberation from everyone's suffering, from human rights violations, and from animal rights violations, lest we be hypocrites. I point out that the lamb shankbone and egg on the seder plate and the meat that is about to be served, all come from animal suffering. I talk about the absence of critical conversation in my Jewish religious school about a deity that would slaughter innocent firstborn non-Jewish boys as the final plague, and that would slaughter all humans except for Noah and his family (and all animals except for the male and female of each species). When we uncover injustices, it is like peeling away layers of an onion, to find more injustices, sometimes more subtle and harder to recognize,
ON MUSIC
An entire generation has grown up on MTV.
LP albums are alien to an entire generation. Alien to even more people are 8-Track tapes and reel to reel audiotapes. Then, we have (or had) 78 rpm disks.
How long to practice? In the words of a talented amateur jazz pianist: "What kind of question is it to ask a music great how many hours the musician practices daily? You practice til you're f'in great... Then you have a cup of coffee... Then you practice some more." And some more.
Jukebox sabotage: Jukeboxes invite bar and restaurant patrons to wreak all sorts of havoc on our musical sensibilities. Consider this: On your way out of a jukebox establishment, play a song that will annoy the most people: Neil Sedaka for rock music fans, or Ozzy Osbourne for the Ozzie and Harriet set.
Support your favorite artists and musicians, especially the ones struggling the most to earn a living through their creativity: They can't live on love alone, and make no income when "fans" bootleg.
ON LITERATURE
How many people thirst so much to better understand a particular author's meaning and essence, that they toil for years to learn the original language and culture in which the author wrote, even if the language is by now obscure and little-used, and even if excellent translations of the author's work already exist?
This concept came the most to my forefront while trying to read Walter Kaufmann's translation of Martin Buber's I and Though, In the introduction to his translation of I and Thou, Mr. Kaufman exlaims: "Buber endowed his own text with authority and implied that he himself could not tell its full meaning. Any attempt to clarify dark passages might eliminate pertinent associations. It should be clear where that leaves the translator!"
Before I go learning German to understand Buber better, I prefer to polish my French (which is my second language) so that I might better understand Camus, Sartre, and Beckett, who wrote much of his work in French.
Nevertheless, if you know of people who studied a particular language with the goal of better understanding one or a handful of authors, please let me know. In that regard, I understand that many people will study a language to understand the key texts of their religion,
ON THE INTERNET
The overpowering beauty of the Internet is its anarchic chaos that somehow usually finds a method to its madness.
ON LIFE
How many people, when asked "What were you doing during [some major historical event]?" can only shrug their shoulders to say they missed it all, during the daily grind of work, the commercial monster, commuting, eating, sleeping, and beer?
On reality: It can strike me like a whip.
On death: What makes people so self-centered as to obsess so over their own inevitable death and expensive health maintenance, to the point where they lose focus on working for social justice, environmental survival, and quality of life for everyone?
Woody Allen on death: "I keep wondering if there is an afterlife, and if there is, will they be able to break a twenty?"
On dealing with solicitors: You can pretend not to understand their language. I did that once to a proselytizer, but she caught me because I was at the time reading the New York Times.
On the daily grind - Walking back to work on a busy day in 1990, an old Cadillac approaches with a large gray-longhaired hippy. The California license plate counsels AMOMENT. The driver is my messenger, whose name and whereabouts I do not know. The message returns when I experience Ram Dass and Be Here Now, and with Bhagavan Das and It's Here Now (Are You?). AMOMENT.
On expression that would not be controversial in Singapore. When I went to Singapore, it did not seem as eerily and shockingly antiseptic and tyrannical as I had expected. However, I didn't try to see what would happen in Singapore if I tried importing some chewing gum, urinating in an elevator, or wearing a t-shirt advocating the democratic replacement of the government. Nor did I visit the government's detention and interrogation centers for those who would express the least bit of dissent from the government.
Singapore is a bizarre place, particularly when juxtaposed against the very normalcy the government tries to present to visitors starting with the very efficient and modern airport. Many times I expected Rod Serling to come peering out of the corner, including the evening when a would-be-preppie flashed his police ID to an apparently ethnically Malay younger man on the bus from the Malaysian border, seeking his proof of authorization to be in Singapore (mind you, not a word had even been spoken in this exchange. The next day, a friend's brother took us to a Chinese vegetarian restaurant -- a tip of the hat to my vegetarianism -- only for him to tell me that a bunch of ruling party members were at a nearby table. So I snapped their picture, under the guise of taking a photo of our host.
Now with a son, I sometimes think how many of the issues so important to his growth, happiness, and development would be completely non-controversial if I discussed them in Singapore. I take comfort, though, that many of my writings would set the hairs on end of many a Singaporean government official and censor.
ON UNSCRUPULOUS AUTO SERVICE SHOPS
It's bad enough that multiple Jiffy Lube locations encouraged and billed for work that it never did. It's even worse that nothing on Jiffy Lube's website says anything of the matter. How, then, is the company to be trusted?
ON MY BACKYARD
At a 1996 holiday party of the Cosmos Club -- to which I was invited by my close friend Trudy Morse, who did not share my discomfort level at the club's failure to accept women as full members until the 1990's -- I thought I saw the one and only Betty Friedan, but was uncertain whether this famous feminist would be willing to come to a party at this place that had so recently discriminated against women. So, I said with excitement, "Betty Friedan! Or at least you look like Betty Friedan." Without missing a beat or looking my way, she continued walking, observing "It must be the champagne." I then bumped into her a couple of times at subsequent local ACLU annual fundraising dinners.
Baltimore and Washington are just forty miles apart, but are like A Tale of Two Cities. Both places seem to have evolved without reference to the other. Where else but Baltimore would have a Bromo Seltzer Tower, advertising a belch producing product on its classic clocktower face? What other place would host such bizarre residents as John Waters, Frank Zappa, and Edgar Allen Poe? It's home to the snowball.
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This entire website is copyrighted by Jon Katz. 2000-2003.