Forecasting the Weather

I used to check the weather forecast, TV or online, for information, to get some idea of what I should expect as I ventured forth for the day, or the next few days if I were taking a trip. I still check the weather forecast regularly, but now not so much for information as for entertainment. It’s humorous to follow the changing forecast, day to day, sometimes hour to hour, seeing it change regularly, yet still presented with the assurance of meteorological science, as if meteorology were a science. Truth is, you might as well scatter chicken bones on the ground, or dance around a burnt cedar stump, dressed in diapers, chanting some Mayan supplication. Or just be ready for anything.

First Sign of Spring

A few days ago, on my morning walk, I saw my first robin of spring. A few minutes later I saw my second. And a few minutes after that I saw my next dozen, a crowd of them flitting on the still-brown grass. And every day since, I see them everywhere, the prevailing harbinger of spring, returned from their winter in the woods. Robins don’t migrate south, but rather to the nearest forest where they had lived for millennia before humans migrated to the continent, built cities and then expanses of lawns that provided the robin with a convenient buffet of worms and insects in the manicured grass and grass roots. But when the snow falls and the ground freezes, the buffet closes, and the robins return to the forest and feeding on the insects in the bark of trees. So when the snow melts and the ground thaws, the robin is well-positioned to emerge and become the proverbial first sign of spring.

In the next week or so, though, we’ll no longer notice the muted robin as it recedes to the background in its gray and rust coloring, replaced by first the flowering hyacinth, crocus, daffodil, and then the more vivid yellow goldfinch, bright blue jay, sleek cedar waxwing. The grass will grow green, the trees will bud, leaf out, and bloom white, pink, purple, red. The robin will still be there. Just not as prominent as it is today.

"The Only Living Boy In New York"

One of my favorite Paul Simon songs is “The Only Living Boy in New York,” the eighth track from my favorite Simon and Garfunkel album, Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970). Simon wrote it after Art Garfunkel had gone to Mexico to be in the film Catch-22.

Tom, get your plane right on time.
I know your part’ll go fine.
Fly down to Mexico.
Da-n-da-da-n-da-n-da-da and here I am,
The only living boy in New York.

“Tom” was the Tom in the early 1960s’ Tom (Garfunkel) and Jerry (Simon) folk duo.

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
And we don’t know where.

The background vocals were recorded multi-tracked in an echo chamber. The simple, sparse lyrics and the resonate sound evoke abandonment and loneliness, a longing for something that had passed by, a foreboding of the breakup that was soon to follow (Bridge Over Troubled Water would be the last studio album for Simon and Garfunkel).

There are currently two Honda Accord ads playing on TV that use the song – or at least the echoed background – to evoke . . . something:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSxz7XRAwtA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iicf3G4nfiE

The ads are devoid of people (even drivers for the cars) and are both set in the desert, so I guess they’re using the background vocal to suggest perhaps uniqueness, or individuality (the only lyric, vaguely rendered, is “Here I am,” the final phrase from the song). I doubt they intend to signify abandonment or loneliness.

And that’s what pisses me off. Stop pilfering the songs that I grew up with. Especially when they’re distorted into some sort of corporate message contrary to the message of the song. There’s a music list that plays always in my mind, memory and understanding, and I don’t want those memories and that understanding corrupted by commercial shill (replace the “ll” with “t” if you like).

But I understand well that I rail against windmills. There is no battle, let alone war, to be won. Here I am. The only living boy.

New York Times Digital Goes Retro

I’ve been reading The New York Times online for the past 15 years, but after the publication’s announcement yesterday that it will begin charging a subscription fee beginning March 28, I have no intent to pay up. Here’s why:

1. I don’t understand the seemingly arbitrary logic of the pay structure. The site says one place that there are three options: “computer, smartphone, tablet.” But elsewhere they describe the three tiers as “NYTimes.com + Smartphone” ($15/month); “NYTimes.com + Tablet App” ($20/month); and “All Digital Access” ($35/month). There’s no option for just a computer (NYTimes – Smartphone and Tablet App)? The assumption is that everyone has a smartphone and/or tablet as well as a computer. So what would be the base price if one wanted just access on their computer? ––$5? $10? There is none. You pay for smartphone and/or tablet access whether you want to or not.

2. It’s expensive. I figure I access an average of about 100 articles, columns, etc. each month on NYTimes.com. At the lowest rate ($15/month) that comes out to 15¢/content, which at first might seem not all that bad. But of the 100 or so articles I access each month, probably one-fourth of those (at least) are done so casually, so if I factor in actual interest, I’d probably access about 75 articles a month, or 20¢/content. But the Times will offer 20 articles a month for free to anyone registered. So that means my average use would be more like 55-60 articles a month, or let’s say 25¢/content. I don’t know that a particular film review or Paul Krugman column or pecan encrusted salmon recipe is worth that. They would have to get much more precise at writing their headlines and sub-heads to indicate content; at 25¢/view, I wouldn’t want to click on a link only to find it something other than what I thought it might be.

3. If you access a NYTimes.com article from a link on Facebook, Twitter, blog, or other social network or search engine, it will count to your free 20 articles a month until you’ve reached 20, but after that “you will still be able to view it even if you've already read your 20 free articles.” That route will be somewhat clunky to navigate, to be sure, but you can bet your $15 (or $20 or $35)/month that there will be websites that appear in the next couple of weeks that can link you to whatever content you might want to access on NYTimes.com.

Which brings us to the most important reason not to subscribe to NYTimes.com:

4. It is wholly antithetical to the history and promise of the internet. The idea, as I understood and hoped (perhaps falsely) over the past 20 or so years, is that the internet would be a digital means of connecting anyone who has access (eventually everyone) with whatever information they might want or need. Accessibility for all, very democratic. Not that there can’t be profit somewhere in the model. But the model has to be different than the model of print media, which is what the The New York Times has laid out. I don’t know what that new model might be – that’s not my job (and if it was, and I knew it, I would be as rich as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs). But I do know that limiting access to online publications through the print model (subscription) limits my access, just as I’m currently limited in accessing the print version of The New York Times (or Washington Post or Chicago Tribune or Boston Globe).

Perhaps the internet will be the death of print media after all, or at least their relegation to the status of antiques or ballet or opera. But I suspect that over the next few years and decades, as new technologies and appliances appear, the antiquated subscription model of publication will be replaced by something no one right now has even thought of. Certainly not The New York Times.

Mom Sues Nursery School

Here’s a story that should shock and disgust but that strikes me as being perfectly in line with where education in this country has been headed for at least the past 30-40 years: A mother of a four-year-old in New York City is suing her daughter’s preschool because she does not feel the school is adequately preparing the four-year-old for admission into an Ivy League college. More immediately, the lawsuit claims that in three weeks of attending the $19,000-a-year preschool, her daughter was not being prepared to take “an exam required for admission into nearly all the elite private elementary schools” in NYC. Rather, the preschool dumped the four-year-old in with groups of younger children (immature two- and three-year-olds) and, according to the lawsuit, “still teaching the plaintiff’s daughter about shapes and colors,” rather than prep tests for elite elementary schools. And importantly, for the child’s future education, the suit continues, "getting a child into the Ivy League starts in nursery school." I guess that explains why I couldn’t get into Harvard (beyond my not applying). I never even attended nursery school, let alone one that prepared me for the tests required to get into the elite private elementary schools that apparently are the initial sine qua non (I do know some Latin) on the yellow brick road to an Ivy League education and ultimate financial success. As the suit notes (without citation): "Studies have shown entry into a good nursery school guarantees more income than entry into an average school."

I probably don’t need to state the point of this sad story, but I will anyway: When the primary (or sole) purpose of education – nursery school through graduate school, cradle to grave – is career or financial success, and that that linear connection can be bought and assumed, then we should just scrap the whole education system and simply pay businesses and corporations directly to train (apprentice-like) our children more efficiently for whatever niches should need to be filled at any given time. (There’s also a point about the purpose of schools – nursery schools?! –being test preparation, but I’ll save that for another rant. And then there’s the point about $19,000/year preschools . . . and parents living vicariously through their children . . . and frivolous lawsuits . . . So many points, so little time.)