Auto execs take the train (and love it)

So, it's been a bad week (month? year? decade? two decades?) for GM, Ford and Chrysler. Depending on the time span in question, they are failing financially and politically, not to mention competitively. Should we add environmentally, morally and millenially? As it turns out, with health care, pensions, housing and employment growing ever more problematic for millions of us, there is still some truth to the notion that as GM goes, so go we all.

This past week, the CEOs of the Shrinking Three got spanked in Washington, but still couldn't get paid. Rebuked for flying their separate corporate jets to town at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, the sound of slamming doors had barely stopped ringing in their ears when the door opened one more time so that the House Democratic majority could kick Rep. John Dingell (D-GM) to the curb. The Dear John message was obvious as the Dems replaced Dingell with Henry Waxman (D-CA) as chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

In a separate press conference, congressional leaders suggested that the auto companies shouldn't bother to return to Washington without a plan we could believe in. A commentator on CNN suggested that the CEOs might have gotten a better response if they'd rode a bus to D.C.

But it's time for a compromise here. How about if they'd taken the train together from Detroit? Would that be better? Imagine all that time together--the ability to both relax and focus, to plan, even.

Cynicism aside, the execs (Richard Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler) are smart and experienced people who lead huge organizations with lots of resources and, even, creativity. Surely, they saw major parts of this crisis coming. And they have groupings within their organizations who have developed and promoted programs and projects that could be part of a creative plan to save the core of the domestic auto industry.

Sixteen hours on a train together discussing the obstacles and challenges might have resulted in the three arriving at Washington's Union Station as something other than puppies due for a whipping. There might have been more "you know, we've been talking," more "we can fix some of this," more "here's an idea I love," more "this is going to be painful, but here's the beginning of a plan for a greener transportation system in the United States and for Detroit manufacturing's role in that system."

Imagine Wagoner, Mulally and Nardelli running off the train yelling excitedly at each other. "You call, Pelosi. Tell her we'll be late, but we'll be there. We gotta find a Kinko's, make 500 copies of this proposal."

"I'll do it," shouts Wagoner. "But make it 1,000 copies. The press will want their own copy."

But the opportunity has passed them by. They came. They saw. They failed. And, anyway, you can't relax on Amtrak. It almost never runs on time or on decent track. Is there even rail service from Detroit to D.C.?

Still, there's always hope. And if they do come up with a plan that Washington can believe in, maybe they'll think to put a better rail system in it.

Blaming the sub-prime mortgagees for the sins of bankers

I keep trying to explain the current financial crisis to myself for two reasons. One, I believe there must be simpler explanations than the ones that seem to prevail in media reports and on op-ed pages. And two, I'm discovering that far too many people believe that one of the major causes of our current problems lays with homeowners who took mortgages that they couldn't afford.

There is of course, still a class of pundits who believe that too much regulation is a significant cause of the collapse of the financial markets, the freezing of credit, and the abysmal performance of American auto companies. We are going to have to agree to leave such people out of the conversation--they are market fundamentalists whose cultish practices are no doubt constitutionally protected however much they might frighten children and the simple-minded.

But to apply, at least minimally, the notion that it is markets that decide (rationally or otherwise) who gets what, when, where and why, it seems both wrong-headed and unkind to blame individual homeowners who have fallen behind or defaulted on their mortgages for our current financial difficulties. These homeowners must live with the decisions of markets. They are not the deciders, as our soon to be ex-president might say.

After all, a good many people who received sub-prime mortgages actually qualified for conventional mortgages at more favorable rates. They were channelled into the sub-prime market, which created huge difficulties for them when affordable adjustable rate mortgages suddenly climbed to much higher rates after the housing bubble popped. It is shoeing the wrong horse to ask such people to predict the end of the bubble when bankers themselves believed (or pretended to believe) that we were all going to profit from an endlessly inflating housing market.

Mortgage applicants are consumers, not financial experts. They rely, mistakenly as it happens, on the expertise of others.

It is arguable, of course, that it is the buyer who ought to beware. But historically, it is banks and mortgage companies who have decided who is eligible for their services and who is not. If we are to take reasonable steps toward resurrecting the housing market, it makes far more sense to examine the practices of bankers, mortgage brokers and the buyers and sellers of bundled mortgages than it does to swing away at people who are losing their homes.

Bailout and regulate

Not that Charles Krauthammer needs to acknowledge my existence, but I feel like he's here to nullify mine. I only wish I could swing enough weight to nullify him back. I would regard the fact of his nullification, second only to the existence of my children, as my greatest contribution to life and culture to come.

In "A Lemon of A Bailout," Washington Post, Nov. 14, Krauthammer claims that some sort of rescue of the banking industry makes sense because "...finance is a utility," like "...the electric companies." This observation comes on the way to his larger point that extending the federal bailout to include the auto companies is arbitrary and inefficient. After all, Krauthammer might claim, capitalism can't exist without a financial sector, but we could all muddle through with a shrunken and bankrupt auto industry.

If that were actually true, then exactly what would be the point of having a capitalist system? I mean, if capitalism offers nothing to the many, if jobs and products aren't the principal parts of that commitment, then 90 percent of us (at least) have no use for it, at all. Who agreed to this deal?

And, if Krauthammer's assertion that finance is integral to capitalism, but auto as a dominant industrial presence (at this point in time) is not necessary to capitalism, is not true, then it follows that not only should we rescue, but we should regulate with an eye to maximizing employment and making autos and jobs as people-friendly and earth-friendly as possible.

jde

All I'm Saying Is

-------------------

Brendan said
There’s too much bread
in the butt
And I was like
what
Too much bread in the butt
And I was like
oh
And Marrianne said something
But I was feeling the hurt
And didn’t hear
So I was like
what
And she was like
repeating
The crusts are very thick
The crusts are very thick
And then I was like
oh
That’s why Brendan’s trading
the heel of the bread loaf
to me
for a slice from the center
And I was like
cool
I like a lotta bread
in the butt

Letters to the Washington Post, #13 & 14

Two more letters to the Post that never had a fleeting moment of celebrity.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to me that, if I wait a while to actually post the letters myself, I have difficulty remembering why I thought what I was writing about mattered. But it does surprise me.


#13, The Nukes of India, 10/04/08

On balance, Senate approval of the Bush administration's nuclear trade agreement with India is probably a good deal. The Post's story("Senate Backs Far-Reaching Nuclear Trade Deal With India," Oct. 2) provides a decent summary of the details, but fails to follow the big financial interests presumably involved in getting to yes.

As the story notes, India will spend $14 billion next year to buy reactors, equipment and fuel. Total Indian purchases could total hundreds of billions over the next 20 years. Large business interests such as General Electric and Westinghouse, which stand to capture a portion of the sales to India, undoubtedly played a role in passing the bill.

No attentive reader could reach a final conclusion about the agreement without also knowing what such private interests did and how much they spent to secure approval of the trade agreement.

Jeff Epton
Brookland, WDC
202 506-7470



#14, Time-tested Surge?, 10/24/08

The assumption of the success of the surge in Iraq, celebrated everywhere, including the pages of the Post (e.g. Michael Gerson, “Casualty of the Surge” and Charles Krauthammer, “McCain for President,” both Oct. 24), may not stand the test of time. The increased stability of the Iraqi state, if it actually exists, may turn out to be a fleeting thing.

Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan thought he was on a roll, too. But his celebrity bubble burst with the collapse of home values, banks and Wall Street firms.

In Iraq, we are making regular multi-million dollar payments to tribal leaders and their militias to get them on our side, or, at least, to cease fire. When those payments stop, as they will, the surge likely fails. Of course, we could stay in Iraq for 100 years or so, but that’s another story.

Working on a poem

I originally posted this poem under the title, Fleeing Before Me. I liked the poem alot, but it needed more work. I took it down and reposted it under the title, Survivor. That title probably isn't permanent, either. And it still needs work. The version below is a rewrite, still known to me as Survivor.

The poem is all metaphor. I love its mood, but I know how difficult it is to hunt for its basic meaning. I am not going to let it go until it is much better than it is now. Still, I'm posting this third version because it provokes me, like a weird but completely lovable child. For me, coping with this poem, raising it up, will be like having multiple embarassing moments in the supermarket with a toddler.


Survivor

Here am I,
both minimal and me,
in this unbounded place,
a point in passing;
a bridge between times,
through darkness, across voids,
around the great signal fires.

It takes an effort of will
to see what I’d missed;
to see god in that space
was god,
was god beside me,
beside our own fire,
inside the intimate infernal dark.

Later, hearing small birds with
perfect pitch and
immaculate messages.
A bumblebee so close god's eyes
cross with wonder and
neglect for appearances.

Separation came at dawn.
The bee has gone this way,
into the future,
precisely the path I follow now
with music by birdsong and
lit by brilliant flowers.

Reflecting,
I stop at this old firepit.
Step carefully around the scattered
bones. Toeing, then picking at them,
the old bones nearby. What beasts were these?
Something immense, I’m sure.
Something fierce, I wonder.
How did this place become
so empty?

What has been driven before me?
Who also wanders here?
Midst birdsong and flowers,
Who will find whom?
This wondering almost consumes me.

I gather a bouquet of thoughts,
consider fragrance, balance of color,
count petals, sing at the silence.
In a fresh effort,
I again hear the small birds
possessing perfect pitch,
singing immaculate messages.

Leaving reason behind,
god, last seen, seemed adrift, remote,
flickered out in the distance,
just before the horizon line.

The bee has gone this way,
into the future and
I have followed.
backed with music by birdsong,
night lit by the scattered
combustible bushes.

Tiring, I stop at the next firepit.
Step carefully around the scattered
bones. Toeing, then picking at them—
the old bones nearby. What beasts were these?
Something immense, I’m sure.
And very old, I imagine.
Hungry, I go.
How will this place become
full of life again?

I pick through the gathering thoughts.
What has fled before me?
Who wanders just ahead?
With what purpose?
With eyes failing like mine?
With strain in the effort
of looking?

Who will find whom
around birdsong and flowers
and scattered bones of long-gone beasts?
What happens then?
This hunt defines me now.
The next thought consumes me.

Ready

bobbing
weaving
up down staircase like tiny boxer
boy bursts daytime like sunrise
gifts spill skyward like soaring balloons

come on the day
come on glory
come on

Saving the World, One Writer’s Workshop At A Time

I wish I was prettier, a little younger, a tad smarter,
a bit more charming, the old dude said. But it’s not to be.
So, absent the fairy who gives such gifts,
I’ll earn my weekly bread
with a bit of advice.

Not much is expected of a writer, he said, very little is required.
But if as a writer it comes to writing, you may need a plan.
And, in the passage of time, you might execute your plan.
That’s it. Leave your spare change at the door on your
way out. But there were objections and muttering,

which didn’t seem to bother the old dude much. I paid
for this, grumbled some. I don’t get paid enough,
he said, to listen to you whine. But it pays
the bills, so here’s more. Write to
exercise your demons.

They need the work. Write to recycle your trash.
Write to stir a few inches of soil. Write to
aerate the ground in which you propose
growing roots. Write to flower
for the honeybees around.

Writing is not driving, is not clear-cutting forests, is not beating
dogs or neglecting children. Writing is not gorging on fiberless
snacks. Writing is not salinating the land, is not acidifying
mountain lakes. As a rule, writing is not rudeness.
Writing is not sleeping through armaggedon.

When one writes, one does not go to war, does not arrest potheads,
does not commit hate crimes, does not tap phone lines. Writing is
celebration, is mining deep, is throwing one’s voice, is wandering
far, is back to Africa, is apologies to tribes, is bottomless pools.
While they write, while accepting gifts, writers do not borrow

money. Writing is now. Like all habits, it takes a few months to acquire.
It is almost entirely non-polluting and potentially harmless to all
but the most powerful. That’s it. No questions, please. And, as
I mentioned earlier, leave your change at the door as you
go.

Kill, Kill, Kill the Boeing Tanker Project

Letter to the Washington Post, #12


My first letter to the Post in almost three months. Do you think it’ll see print?

Your story, “Pentagon Reopens Tanker Bidding (July 10)” was incomplete. It should have referred to the re-reopening of the bidding for aerial refueling tankers. After all, the first $100 billion award--to Boeing--was cancelled when collusion between a Pentagon purchasing officer and Boeing was exposed. People went to prison for corrupt practices committed during that first bidding process.

The second contract, awarded to a Northrop Grumman/Airbus consortium, was cancelled after a political uproar during which the consortium and Boeing spent millions on dueling ad campaigns, and various elected officials and the General Accounting Office entered the fray.

Now, after hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on engineering, planning, advertising, bidding, administering, collaborating, corrupting, investigating, prosecuting and incarcerating, we’re going to do it all again. And do it for a Pentagon project that is a relic of a Cold War strategy.

We no longer need a whole fleet of aerial refueling tankers because, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we no longer need to keep bombers and fighters airborne 24/7 in order to assure a counter-strike capacity against a massive nuclear first strike.

It therefore seems obvious that ordinary Americans should not be reassured by the notion that the Pentagon will get it right this time. Getting it right would mean not issuing the contract in the first place. $100 billion and change could then be spent on health care, education and mass transit. How much more reassuring would that be?

Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017

202 506-7470

Note to Myself: Postless and Bereft

My gosh, it's been more than a month since I posted last and I miss it. I've been traveling, mostly, and managing Brendan's multiple schedule changes, including his traveling, as the school year ended. I was in Dayton, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Chicago, San Juan and, I think, somewhere else that slips my mind. Marrianne has been in even more places. This is fun, I guess, but it also provokes anxieties and a desire to avoid confrontations with oneself, making it more comfortable to displace such confrontations onto others.

I also had a week with actual real live vertigo. Talk about feeling elderly and disabled, I was there. But that, too, has passed.
And I've written some and thought some--no kidding--and should be ready to write, or try, with greater frequency after our family trips (which will include Julie, however briefly, and Nate, unfortunately, not at all) are over and Brendan starts back to school in early, early August.

Obama Beats McCain

As the media has helpfully told us, ‘Hillary won West Virginia!’ (The exclamation mark is mine.) And as Clinton herself has helpfully told us “America is worth fighting for!” (The exclamation mark is hers.)

Both these points are worth making, though they barely qualify as news—more as reminders that the media must report many things, newsworthy or otherwise, every day and Hillary must end her speeches on a loud, if not entirely salient, point. Here’s a prediction I will make, complete with another largely irrelevant exclamation point: ‘Obama beats McCain!’

I read somewhere that a really good writer uses one, maybe two, exclamation points in a lifetime. I don’t remember who said that, perhaps George Will or William Safire making the argument that emphasis ought to derive from the use of language, logic and rhetoric in proper context. It is the reader, one or the other might argue, who should suddenly say to her or himself, “My god, George (or Bill) is right!”

In any case, in less than 200 words, I’ve managed to insert four exclamation points. It wouldn’t surprise me if at this stage a George Will or Bill Safire (or, even, crucial portions of my already vanishingly small audience) might say to themselves,
“Four exclamation points! I have had my fill of this writer! I’m done with him!”

So be it, writing is that odd human activity that both requires an audience and can hardly be engaged in public. So I’ll go the rest of this way myself.

Jeff (I tell myself), Barack Obama will beat John McCain in November because Barack will be the Democratic candidate for president, and this year a Democrat is going to beat McCain. It won’t even take a good Democratic candidate, although Obama will be one.

Let me list a few of the reasons why McCain will go down regardless of who the Democratic candidate is.

1. Even if McCain comes up with something better than staying in Iraq for 100 years, it’s too late for him to be a peace candidate in regard to a war that is the most unpopular in American history.
2. Whatever McCain might say in regard to the economy—he will face voters in November saddled with the “Bush economy,” which will almost certainly be worse than it is now.
3. McCain has already proposed measures that will virtually eliminate employer-provided health care. It would give insurance companies an even larger role and freer hand in providing health care and charging for it. The Democratic campaign against him, and the media, will savage McCain and his proposal. After that he will be lucky to get the vote of even a quarter of the elderly and the chronically ill.
4. McCain, i.e., “The Straight Talk Express,” will be exposed again in the fall, when a larger audience is paying attention, for pandering. He will have to defend tax cuts he voted against, nuance his position against torture, and fruitlessly explain how cutting gas taxes will solve energy and transportation problems in the United States.
5. So far this year, Republicans have lost three special Congressional elections filling vacant House seats in districts that have voted Republican for decades. One of the seats belonged to former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. The other two were in Louisiana and Mississippi. McCain has bigger problems than worrying about winning Ohio. With an under funded campaign, he will have to worry about winning states like Virginia, Indiana and New Hampshire.
6. McCain is the presidential candidate Republicans never wanted for a presidential campaign they know they cannot win.

That’s six. I leave it to “Tonstant Weader” (as Gertrude Stein might say), if there is one out there, to add to the list. And notice not one of the six even mentions Barack Obama. Or Hillary Clinton, for that matter. Either one should defeat McCain handily.

But it is Barack who will make the better Democratic candidate in the fall, notwithstanding Hillary’s imitation of the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Obama, after all, has opposed the Iraq War, with minimal waffling, from the start. He also gave no support to Bush’s saber rattling toward Iran. And he also articulated a no-conditions approach to diplomatic contacts with any and all significant international figures and movements, including the likes of Hamas, North Korea and Iran.

It has been decades since an American president has refrained from demonizing enemies. In response, Clinton has been forced to modify her own pose of toughness, increasing the possibility that diplomacy might once again precede threat and intervention in U.S. international conduct.

Similarly, Obama’s stance on trade agreements suggests that labor conditions and protection for the environment will become more important features of future treaties. In this instance, as well, Barack’s leadership has forced Hillary to reframe her own positions. McCain has almost nothing to offer voters that would inspire confidence in his ability to recast international relations in pursuit of peace, or for the protection of labor rights and the environment.

In the general election campaign that will begin shortly after the Democratic nominating process finally concludes, these issues will become pivotal. At that point, Democrats will be reminded that political unity has the potential to bring enormous benefits, including a possible filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. (Imagine the impact the next president’s appointments might have on the judicial branch and on regulatory agencies.) And it is very likely the awareness of those dramatic opportunities to make change that has motivated Clinton to adopt her never-say-die approach to the primary.

The person who gets to be president in 2009 will have eight years to change how the government of the United States functions. Arguably, Ronald Reagan was the last president to take advantage of that opportunity. But Reagan, counter to his ideology, presided over a vast expansion of government. And that expansion came at the direct expense of working families in the United States. Obama can be the first president since FDR to remake government in a manner consistent with his political values.

By November, many more voters will see the transformative possibilities. In November, Obama beats McCain. Big!

Ol’ Satch Sez

Satchel Paige said
“Don’t look back. Something
may be gaining on you.”
You could look it up.

You should.
But whatever was gaining
on me, caught me,
decades ago.

It’s in me. It’s in questions
I can’t answer. It’s in friends
casually betrayed,
in lovers never loved.

But absorbed, guilty, pleasantly
obsessed belongs to me,
and none to them. And unknown to them
My selfish dread

like cancer clanging in my bones,
like frozen joints
impatiently damning my name,
like anvils I’ve been toting.

Aging, I hallucinate.
Fine, I can imagine
better than I can see.
Grateful, I choose this vision

anvils dropped or left behind,
single moms catch a break,
wars easily averted, and reclaiming us,
making vibrant wishes of ourselves.

Prologue

We were possibility.
We were drifting motes
taking shape,
taking new shape,
made whispers and shouts,
made flesh.

We were repetitions of common dreams,
repetitions of common dreams.
First breath following
generations of fruitful labor,
tiring labor and plenty of pain.

No one born to certainties,
but smiled on. And though it now
may feel otherwise,
the smiles never diminish, are
never unsmiled, never frowned away
or cried away. Yes, the laughter of smiles
fades; the imprint endures.

Some plod onward,
some skip lightly,
but we are always loved.
Out of that,
certainty,
or ought to be.
Begin, then,
writing our stories today.

Letter to the Washington Post, #3

This one was sent to the Post in February of this year:

So, property owners in New York City are selling land to developers who are demolishing existing supermarkets and building condos (Feb. 19, “Groceries Grow Elusive…”). The losers in such deals are neighborhood residents and users of public transportation who must go further and ride longer to shop for dietary essentials and may not even be able to obtain fresh fruits and vegetables.

This is not only a New York City story, but a story of 21st century urban gentrification everywhere. And omitted in the telling is the way the story fits in the context of the widening wealth gap in this country.

The upper-income residents of the new condos will need groceries, too. But upscale and internet grocers will deliver, and the smaller families of the new residents will shop for food less and eat out more, enjoying the variety of restaurant opportunities that will develop in the new storefronts adjacent.

Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017
202 506-7470

Letter to the Washington Post, #2

This one was sent to the Post on 12/24/07

Editor,

Your article, “Jury Convicts Black Man in Shooting Death of White Teen (12/24),” raises numerous difficult questions about race and the role it plays in our culture and history. Reading it, I couldn’t help wondering how differently the story of the incident and trial would have played out if the shooter had been white and the victim had been an aggressive black youth.

The prosecutor’s quoted comments diminished the significance that race played in the incident and minimized the importance of a Ku Klux Klan attack on the shooter’s grandfather that occurred 85 years ago. The last word in the article went to the slain teen’s father, who claimed that the conviction clears his “son’s name [of all accusations of] racism.”

But the story (and the trial’s conclusion) does not settle such questions, only adds to the backlog that we, as a society, have long buried or brushed aside. Race and racism are perhaps the longest running unresolved issue facing the United States. The real, threatened and imagined violence (and sexuality and class questions) that have been entangled with race and racism since the first Europeans arrived on this continent manifest themselves differently in each of our lives and are rarely honestly confronted.

Of course a Klan attack 85 years ago matters today, as do slavery and Jim Crow, just as surely as do the American Revolution and the genocide of Native Americans and the U.S. Constitution and the WWII-era internment of the Japanese and the first Thanksgiving matter. History does not end, but is relived in our individual and social conclusions about its meaning.

Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017
202 506-7470

Letter to the Washington Post, #1

This one was sent to the Post on 10/29/07:

I read Sebastian Mallaby’s story, “Foreign Policy Grown-Up,” Oct. 29, with interest. Mallaby’s position that sanctions are preferable to war is inarguable, I believe. But everything else Malaby says seems eminently debatable.

Hilary Clinton is an apparent grown-up because she supports sanctions against Iran, says Mallaby. “Bush hatred,” has driven John Edwards to the point that he sees sanctions as a first-stage war tactic rather than a peaceful alternative. Barack Obama’s critiques of Clinton’s support for sanctions are similarly driven by Bush hatred, Mallaby writes. Further, Clinton was correct in supporting military action against Saddam Hussein because sanctions weren’t working, Saddam was out of “his box” and “it was worth taking the risk of unseating him by force.”

Had Mallaby based his support for Clinton and criticism of Obama and Edwards on a set of uncontested historical facts, perhaps I could agree. But there is ample evidence (including from Iraq) that sanctions can be murderous and affect the innocent most severely, substantial debate about whether Saddam was out of his box or otherwise, and skepticism about virtually all the claims of the Bush administration about the danger presented by pre-war Iraq.

As an Obama supporter, I am disappointed with Barack, too. I want to hear more substantial policy positions. In particular, I want to hear Barack say that no nation, including the United States, can be trusted to unilaterally decide what actions will be in the best interests of all countries. I want to hear that the Iraq War and its consequences are a perfect example of the failures of unilateral policy making and action and that an Obama foreign policy would proceed on the principle that action with global consequences will be based on decision-making that occurs in the most democratic and global forums available. And I want to hear Barack say that his administration will do everything possible to create and strengthen such forums.

Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
WDC 20017
202-506-7470

Survivor

(The more I revisit this poem, the more I realize that it still needs substantial revision. I am trying to capture a sense of a post-apocylaptic place here, but I don't feel entirely succesfual at that. Worse the poem doesn't flow very well. Still, I'm not going to take it down--just work on it again. 9/13/08)



Here am I
in this unbounded place,
a point in passing;
a bridge between times,
through darkness, across voids,
around the great signal fires.

It takes an effort of will
to see what I’d missed,
to see god in that space
was god,
to hear small birds with
perfect pitch and
immaculate messages
a bumblebee so close god's eyes
cross with wonder and
neglect for appearances.

This path goes far beyond the end,
beyond the end of here and now,
beyond the end of innocence
dividing in the next space.
The bee has gone this way,
into the future,
precisely the path I follow now
with music by birdsong and
lit by brilliant flowers.

Reflecting,
I stop at the old firepit.
Step carefully around the scattered
bones. Toeing, then picking at them,
the old bones nearby. What beasts were these?
Something immense, I’m sure.
Something fierce, I wonder.
How did this place become
so empty?

What has been driven before me?
A sudden thought;
what lurks behind?
Who also wanders here?
Midst birdsong and flowers,
Who will find whom?
This wondering almost consumes me.

I gather a bouquet of thoughts,
consider fragrance, balance of color,
count petals, sing at the silence.
In a fresh effort,
I again hear the small birds
possessing perfect pitch,
singing immaculate messages.

Leaving reason behind,
god, last seen, seemed adrift, remote,
flickered out in the distance,
just before the horizon line.

The bee has gone this way,
into the future and
I have followed.
backed with music by birdsong,
night lit by the scattered
combustible bushes.

Tiring, I stop at the next firepit.
Step carefully around the scattered
bones. Toeing, then picking at them—
the old bones nearby. What beasts were these?
Something immense, I’m sure.
And very old, I imagine.
Hungry, I go.
How will this place become
full of life again?

I pick through the gathering thoughts.
What has fled before me?
Who wanders just ahead?
With what purpose?
With eyes failing like mine?
With strain in the effort
of looking?

Who will find whom
around birdsong and flowers
and scattered bones of long-gone beasts?
What happens then?
This hunt defines me now.
The next thought consumes me.

Wild Once and Captured

(Please go here to read a revised version of this poem)

A prairie full of flowers,
a concert full of rhythms,
a mirror full of faces,
each one a rarity
she picked from public, secret places.

She calls many messages.
Marks many paths
where dancing is a language
and touching is an art
and longing is a rhythm
and searching leads us one by one
to stories all our own,
and stories told in common.

Here the gathering of spells in handfuls,
flowering rich and ripe with scents and fruit
and peace. There the drums yammering in
clearings and jamming with justice
wild once and captured
and broken out again.

The Coming Change We Can Believe In?

The most exciting thing about the '60s, to me, is that it was a time when people could believe, regardless of the immediate reality, that at any moment the world could morph into something different. And when it did, what it became might turn out to be what you had willed it to be.

People who felt such a thing to be true weren't alone. They had friends who felt the same thing; who felt that sudden, almost spontaneous, morphing was possible. And those friends would never dispute the notion that it might be your vision that ignited the process of change. Every friend stood ready to be one of those who would be required to set their vision aside so that another's vision might become reality. Such solidarity. Such shared energy.

Between then and now there has been a counter-revolution of astonishing proportions and agonizing durability. The Nixon-era reaction, became the Reagan-era reaction and continued through the disappointing '90s to the Bush assault on government, democracy and decency. Since that time, we have been agents only of small changes, hardly believing that more--more justice, more peace, more freedom, more unassisted flight--was, or is, possible.

Can Barack Obama make a difference now after so many years of counterattack? Is it Barack who will bring us "Change we can believe in?" After all these years will it turn out that we were just waiting for a savior, kind of like Nicholas Cage's Cameron Poe character in Con Air?

Or will the feeling of change that almost daily seemed so imminent during the late '60s return because we have found new heart? Found that once again we can imagine big change? If so, we need first of all what we can do for ourselves, and second, perhaps, what a president, in a midwife's role, can do to help us. Barack as midwife we might believe in. I can go there. But Hillary as midwife? John McCain as nanny? Beyond my meager powers of imagination.

Just Say Yes

And
out there,
Campaigns to make us think
varieties of mind are bad for us.

But what I think,
you want to know?
I mean,
about varieties of mind?

Are good for us.
Anything that can lengthen
a life lengthened like mine
with waking dreams,

with crescendos of sudden and large
silence,
with the sweet kiss of lips and love,
with a longing, lingering note

or, music
with the wild moment dancing
I just recently survived
must

be good for
me.

As was the sudden and large
and fleeting moment I realized
I’m going to live

Forever.

A Mix of Dreams

And what if art is life, but far from risk?
And what if art is less than jealous and
a step beyond the pain of history?
And what if art is in us all?

Then deal me a hand. I have sat out
far too long and I wish, finally, to play.
I’ll not bluff—I’ve still the old,
unseemly caution to shed or scrape away.

Neither will I long and lunge, nor hurry to conclude.
I do not wish to win, only linger and sit with those
who have all along mixed dreams with dignity,
and shouldered their burden with grace.

Letter to the Washington Post, #11

Sebastian Mallaby’s April 21st column, “Housing Sense in Congress?” seems to be implying that it is homeowners who are to blame for the subprime meltdown. “Homeowners,” he writes, “have no moral claim to government assistance.”

Instead, Mallaby says that Congress ought to find ways to provide partial protection to the lenders who issued millions of sub-prime mortgages, then bundled and sold them to investors. In order to stabilize housing prices, the Federal Housing Administration ought to protect lenders from further losses, “if they agree to forgive part of a loan rather than kicking a family onto the street,” he writes.

In such a case, Mallaby notes, “homeowners would get a break, which is unfortunate.”

Such a break. The homeowners in question, who may have applied for and received one loan in their lives, will lose all their equity anyway. In most cases, these homeowners had little insight into what might go wrong and no idea that they were the recipients of unusual “subprime” loans.

But the lenders knew. And the lenders knew that such profitable loans were also risky. Now, Mallaby apparently believes that the lenders who profited greatly during the rise in housing prices are the ones with a “moral claim” on government action.

If Congress wishes to slow the freefall in market prices, a better option would be Own-to-Rent (OTR), a proposal first advanced by Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

OTR would require lenders to offer homeowners the opportunity to rent their home at fair market prices before beginning foreclosure proceedings. This would allow people to stay in their homes, stabilizing neighborhoods and forcing lenders and investors, who profited from the increase in housing prices, to bear the market consequences of the collapse in prices.

Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017

202 506-7470

Geology of Life

Such forces at work
In these spaces, our
Nearly continental drift
The lingering memory
of our birth moment
Longer in retrospect
Longer in reflection
Longer in neglect
Longer in denial
Longer in flight
Longer still
Triggers the forces
Driving our accidental growth.

In a moment of comprehension
In a moment of understanding
In a moment of insight
In an ecstatic moment
I am a cloud of rare
Particles dancing
In vast places
Toward the end of longing
Where I will be
Dust in the wind.

Letter to the Washington Post, #10

So, it's just barely possible that the Post could still publish letter #9, but if it doesn't, and if it doesn't publish this one, I will have a string of 10 straight letters to the Post that they decided they couldn't use. Obviously, initiating a communication is easy, completing one is much trickier. Letter #10 is below.


In “The Holocaust Declaration (April 11)” Charles Krauthammer says the next president, as a warning to Iran, should declare, “The United States will not permit a second Holocaust to be perpetrated upon the Jewish people.”

Is Krauthammer’s implication that other Holocausts will be permitted? How about a second Nakhba (Arabic for catastrophe), as Palestinians call their dispossession by Israel and the decades of Israeli occupation that followed?

Iran may be a threat to regional peace, but the inability of the United States to even imagine the injustices perpetrated by a Jewish theocratic state and to force Israel to end occupation is a more enduring threat to Middle East peace. Krauthammer’s proposed declaration would do little to deter Iran and nothing to redeem the West’s original sin of establishing imperial outposts in other people’s lands.

Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017

202 506-7470

Long March

On a long march homeward,
ambling, pacing, striding,
stirring memory.
Past the old Hilton, in 1968, a fortress.

We lined the avenue, and police,
one moment calm as sea at sunset,
next storming in defense of old orders—
disturbing peace and the peaceful,
betraying care and the careless,
invading dreams and the dreamers,
waking night and the nightmares.

As incongruous as that,
ignoring the almost palpable,
insensible to hovering wraiths and phantoms,
with the stunted decorum of her inherited order,
she walked by with her fuzzy dog,
smiled with the strain of strangers
greeting in the dark.

Embarrassed by her fear,
I am, 40 years later, an unknown,
but somehow detectable phantasm.
I first hallowed her, and then
hallowed others, all too careful of me,

Then silently railed at those
I had just blessed.
You:
Full of ownership and pride, rich with fables,
entering this space, brushing aside
lingering past like cobwebs.
Listen:
I insist; to wish to be here
requires that you learn the slope and diameter
of here the way memory left it.

Your way, edge and shuffle,
strut like fearless,
walking your dog, curbing our dreams,
shrinking from the crazy people.

My way the ghosts manifest,
restored to vitality—
sensual, different, here before us,
here after, here with joy, here with pathos,
here with loss, here bright and precious—
handed off to you, Could you be more free to act?
And I a wisp, drifting by.

Wouldn’t that be better?
A place, all places, rich with
something like ownership, but grand,
sexy, communal and to be determined?
This way surrendering to
the thrust and leap of movements and moments,
bounding toward a shout:
Presente (finally)!

The borders between then and now and next
falling; our blood, leaking and spotting this moment,
consecrating it with our essence, abiding,
awaiting fresh runners,
inevitably passing by.
Amen, I say, and continue on my way.

Letter to the Washington Post, #9

Here's another letter to the Post. They won't publish this one, either.

Kissinger Is Back

Henry Kissinger’s recent appearance in the Post (“The Three Revolutions, Apr. 7”) put me in mind of the cult film “Night of the Living Dead,” in which one character says to another, “kill the brain and kill the ghoul.”

You, see, it’s a question whether or not we as a nation will ever be able to hold a discussion of any foreign policy without the nightmare possibility that Kissinger will show up to be included. His disastrous policy decisions when in power should make his every future contribution entirely suspect.

One example from “Three Revolutions:” Islam, Kissinger says, has “little room for Western notions of negotiation,” this may be true, but is vulnerable to a difference over definitions. If by “negotiation,” Kissinger means invading Iraq rather than letting UN nuclear weapons inspectors hunt for WMD’s with Saddam’s permission, then Islam’s alleged reluctance to embrace Western-style negotiation makes sense.

Kissinger also criticizes the willingness of European countries to consider public opinion in limiting “the number of troops provided and to constrict the [NATO] missions for which lives could be risked.” Only the policy genius who conceived of the secret bombing of Cambodia could see the downside in the reluctance of democracies to readily engage in war.

Kissinger advocates a “national debate on national security policy.” I can go there, but can we do this without the old ghoul?


Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017

202 506-7470

Jesus Saves: An Unlikely Story

Incoherence rescues triviality, I say
Too bad it does not work both ways
Incoherence rescues triviality, I say
Again

Sadly, all rescues are incomplete
This way, none among us are saved
Still seeking salvation?
Persist, maybe, in some other poem

Going Postal

Going Postal

I bought stamps the other day. Walked up to the bulletproof barrier and said, “I want 100 first class stamps, please.”

The postal worker held up strips of Liberty Bell stamps.

“No liberty bells, please,” I said and she asked if I wanted American Flag stamps.

“No flags please,” I said. “And no liberty bells.”

Her eyelids drooped and she nodded toward a sheet of Disney stamps lying on the counter.

“Disney?” I might have sounded a little irritated. “Don’t you have any people stamps?”

She shook her head and then, apparently reconsidering, she asked if I wanted Charles Chesnutt stamps. Widely regarded as the first true African-American novelist, Chesnutt would look good on my mail, I thought. I was enthusiastic.

“A person? You bet!”

My postal worker nodded and walked away. The worker at the counter next to her looked over at me and smiled. While I stood there waiting, another post office employee looked around the corner, almost peeking at me, it seemed. We made eye contact and he nodded. I nodded back, constituting at least the fourth nod between two people in that office on that morning that I was aware of.

Then my postal worker came back with 100 41-cent stamps. I had other stamp denominations I wanted to buy and I wished I’d mentioned them before she walked away the first time. I was afraid she would lose patience with me.

“Oh, yeah. I also wanted 20 post card stamps and 20 next-ounce stamps.”

She looked at me.

“Sorry,” I said and she said it was okay and walked away again. When she came back, I had more stamps, 20 26-cent stamps and 20 17-cent stamps, or 20 cougars and 20 mountain goats (a big-horned, big-headed fellow) to go with my 100 Charles Chesnutts.

I paid my bill and thanked her.

“That was fun,” I said. “I should write more letters.”

“Thank you,” she said with a big smile on her face, but I swear I thought she was going to go postal on me. Maybe leap through that bulletproof shield and grab me and throw all kinds of hugs and sloppy kisses my way.

That would have been okay with me. In fact, I’m planning to write more letters.

Answer This

Watched “Swing Kids” last night.
Germany, 1930s, nervy kids with their
“Swing, heil!”
And loving the Count,
Count Basie, swinging, free, black—
not goose-stepping, angry, compliant and Adolph.

Brendan asked so many questions.
Why did Arvin kill himself?
Why did Peter let himself be taken?
Why did Thomas stop choking Peter?
Why did Thomas shout “swing, heil,”
When the Nazis took Peter away?
Why? Why? Why?

And Peter’s little brother, Brendan’s age,
Why did he shout, “swing, heil,” also,
When the truck disappeared with Peter?
So many questions.
What does resistance mean? Was Peter’s father a Jew?
Why? Why? Why?
We answered, we soothed, we slept.

This morning there are more answers to
How to deal with fateful choices,
With the moment when choices unfold.
How many moments for each one of us?
How many wrong answers? How many answer wrong?
Rest easy about this:

Right or wrong the moment returns. Always returns.
Always returns. Each of us gets to answer twice,
three times, an infinity of challenges in a lifetime.
No matter that we pretend that we did not hear the question,
that the moment has not come, that there is no choice, no
option, that we have not the power to do right.

We have only to ask if we have stood
with the least exalted aming us.
Do they know us for a friend?
Answer me that.

Letter to the Washington Post, #8

I can guarantee with near-absolute certainty that the Post will not publish this letter. So, at the same time I send it in to the paper, I'm going to put it up here.


The Post’s carefully worded editorial, “Home Truths (March 28),” managed to balance every nuanced point with its opposite. The result is fairly routine for the Post—an editorial worth less than the paper it’s printed on.

Here’s the question for the editorial board: Do you support targeted assistance for homeowners with mortgage problems, or not? If not, please say so more clearly.

If you do, consider supporting a strategy that includes the ingenious, and ingeniously named, “Own-to-Rent” proposal advanced by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

Own-to-Rent would require mortgage-holders to offer to rent a property to its occupants at fair market rates before foreclosing. What would this accomplish?

First, it would force banks and other mortgage-holders who don’t want to become landlords to consider renegotiating loans to monthly payment levels that would be closer to market rents and more affordable to homeowners facing foreclosure.

Second, legislation could be written that would force mortgage-holders to absorb most or all of the loss connected to the deflated value of the home. Banks would not be forced by law to renegotiate, but they would be permitted to do so under the terms outlined in the law.

In successful renegotiations between mortgagees and lenders, occupants would have a chance to remain in their homes, lenders that profited greatly during bubble times would take the lead in stabilizing market values, and there would be no government-sponsored bailout.

Check out Own-to-Rent at the website for CEPR: www.cepr.net.

Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017

202 506-7470