Three Weeks To 30

Apparently, turning 30 means something, or so they say. Although, technically, I am just finishing up my 30th year, so my 30th birthday will actually mark the beginning of my 31st year, which sounds much less symbolic and profound, doesn't it?

I've been waiting all week for it to start snowing; last night after dinner, a light snowfall began, and it has continued through the night, leaving a thin layer on the ground and on the cars and the trees today. This, naturally, puts me in introspective mood while sitting before the fire, drinking coffee with my parents and reading a P.G. Wodehouse novel. The looming presence of my birthday presents an easy subject (and I didn't plan those puns; they came naturally. What can I say? It's a gift).

What does it mean to turn 30? A part of me can't help but feel that I am supposed to have everything figured out by now. But the truth is that while I am quite happy with my life, which is rich in experiences and family and friends, I'm not quite sure where I'm going. It's hard to see into the future, kind of like looking across the valley last night, trying to make out the silhouettes of the Sapphire Mountains through the snow and fog and darkness. It is not an unpleasant sensation, not really. A sensation of restlessness occasionally crops up, but in general, I remain patient. Haruki Murakami was 32 or 33 when he decided he could write a novel, so I still have time to sort everything out.

Fundamentally, turning 30 means that I have managed to continue my existence for 30 years, so I will take that as a marker of success. But, for the sake of seeming more profound, I will adopt a pensive-yet-wistful gaze to some unseen horizon, with a fedora perched jauntily--or maybe even rakishly--on my head. I think that will cover my obligations in this matter.

The Problems With Free Speech

The Supreme Court reversed restrictions on corporate campaign finance reform, ignoring judicial precedent, striking down federal statute, one that had been based on honest-to-goodness bipartisanship, the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act. Corporations can now spend as much as they want to influence elections. So much for conservatives' disdain for 'judicial activism.' The five justices in the majority--who ostensibly are strict constructionists--were Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy. I expected better of Kennedy, for no particular reason other than I generally have positive feelings about the name Kennedy. The other four, obviously, were no surprise.

As if elections and campaigns weren't already too much about glamour and sound bites and money, rather than substance.

So, yes, that whole pesky Freedom of Speech question: how much does it apply to corporations? I guess, fundamentally, that is a tricky question, and I don't have enough knowledge of constitutional law to discuss adequately. Sounds like a good homework assignment, doesn't it? In the meantime, I can only go on my personal experiences with corporations. I worked for several years for a corporation. To be fair, they were very generous in compensating employees, and they donated money to all the right causes. But they have also been linked with companies and politicians engaged in environmentally-destructive mining practices out east, and more fundamentally, the core of what we were told to do was to create a perception in the customer's mind that they needed all kinds of accessories and data items (see "ringback tones", and yes, I am guilty of having ringback tones on my phone) that, realistically, they usually really didn't--I think this is why I have never been interested in an iPhone or the Droid--I got burned out on Smartphone Worship. Not that this practice is necessarily to be condemned, but it certainly does not make me trust a corporation's interest in any given election to closely parallel the public interest.

But corporations are not going to go away, and now they have even more clout and resources when it comes to campaigning, something that unions, for instance, generally won't be able to match. It's not as if we will be able to censor them, regardless of the validity of the claim of corporate free speech.

And perhaps we shouldn't try. Perhaps, if we are going to err, we should err on the side of more free speech, keeping in mind that corporate advertising is by nature going to involve illusions, lies, and misdirections.

It is easy to say, for instance, that a corporation like Fox "News" should be obliterated. With the abhorrent rhetoric coming from them, whether it is Britt Hume's patronizing "journalistic" statement that Tiger Woods should become a Christian, Rush Limbaugh's provocative statements regarding President Obama and Haiti, or Glenn Beck saying the President is racist, it is easy to despise them and--as The Daily Show demonstrates--it is easy to repudiate their claim of being fair and balanced, or even of being a news organization. That's the real problem with Fox: they have no intention of objectively reporting the news; they intend to make money, which is done by being provocative and entertaining. It may be unethical, but they have the right to broadcast the messages they want to broadcast, however repugnant those messages are.

So, then, what are we to do?

I think the healthiest path is to simply work to keep our perspectives out there, not let them be drowned out by corporate money-storms, and hopefully train people to think critically about where campaign ads are coming from and what special interests might be involved. It would not be an easy task, but perhaps it would be more useful and at least marginally less of a Sisyphean task than drowning out corporate influence all together.

Ghosts

I woke up slowly this morning, hearing the stirrings from downstairs where Dad was building a fire. It was foggy outside the window--Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley had a fog advisory in place until 10 a.m., with the possibility of icy roads. I turned on the radio to Montana Public Radio for a dose of Morning Edition.

"An earthquake struck Haiti today--yes, we said today."

Another one, a 6.1 'aftershock.'

How much can one country take, really? This is a rhetorical question, because it isn't like they can refuse to accept and deal with whatever happens. But this, it is just so harsh. And it brings out the best and the worst of humanity.

It is up to us to help shore up the infrastructure of impoverished countries, Pat Robertson or no Pat Robertson--preferably none. Here's another good site for helping third world countries, one I've mentioned before.

But for all the pain that arises from thinking and reading about Haiti, it is a beautiful morning, snow and pine trees covering the mountains, and carved by the process of geological forces into the side of Blodgett Peak, I can see an Old Man of the Mountains, face tilted towards the sky. A herd of white-tail deer have been grazing idly at the frost-rimed grasses surrounding the house. When I walked to the end of the driveway to fetch the paper this morning, they idly watched me both coming and going, no sense of panic, as they have seen us every day.

To sit in a sunny living room, reading the paper and Neal Stephenson's Zodiac, listening to Morning Classics on public radio, is to forget for a time the stress of the world, a world of earthquakes and Tea Parties thrown by protesters who I don't remember protesting when the Bush Administration turned a budget surplus into a deficit.

Montana is full of pain and beauty. The Bitterroot Valley is the path Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce took in attempting to flee the army, trying to escape to Canada to be free. The first thing I saw while descending into Missoula, the first thing that made me feel I was home, was the hulking cluster of metal silos and buildings of Smurfit-Stone, the mill in Frenchtown. It was a day or so later that I realized this was the mill that had closed down, putting 400 people out of work. This was the same mill in whose shadow my first girlfriend and I spent one of our last weekends before breaking up; I haven't spoken to her in years, and I doubt I will anytime soon.

Montana is the home of old men with hearts of gold who nevertheless joke about never drinking black coffee on Martin Luther King Day, because they 'don't like that guy.' The home of men who will chop firewood for injured acquaintances, but whose church states that women must have men to vouch for them to get into heaven. Montana is mountain lakes so clear and cold that they catch the sun and hold the light for years in the memory of a child.

I can't tell whether or not this still feels like home.

Montana Silence

I left San Francisco at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning, the plane breaking through tendrils of fog. As we climbed, I could see out the window the fog flowing through the valleys and streets of the city, and the entire city meeting the bay in the early morning light. As we broke through the clouds, the sun from the east turned the clouds salmon-pink. And thankfully, the two year old in the seat next to me wore himself out with his exuberant monologue of nonsense words and fell asleep in the lap of his mother with the chocolate-brown eyes.

We landed in Seattle, descending through dense fog that contrasted against the brilliant white peaks of the mountains, icy and cold and pure. Later, flying over mountains from Seattle to Missoula, the clouds parted enough to reveal snowy peaks above forested hillsides, distant rivers appearing like streams wending through canyons, bordered by ice. Also, I had an entire row on the plane to myself. True, it was a row of two seats, but we take what pleasure we can when it comes to flying.

Missoula looked just the same as it always did, frost-rimed hills rising above the brown of winter fields. It felt as if I never left, the same feeling I've always had on returning to Montana. But things are different. The Frenchtown Mill has closed, which eliminates the pulpy smell of winter mornings, yes, but which eliminated 400 direct jobs, and more that were corollaries. Montana is being hit hard by an economy in which the massive banks that got bailout money are now recording profits, while small-town economies are struggling.

And yet, I am always happy to come back home. This morning, I walked to the end of the driveway to get the paper, noticed the sun and the shadows dappling the snowy surfaces of Blodgett Peak, the crisp blue sky of 9 a.m. The fields of our property are brown and grey, lots of dead pine trees that were ringed by porcupines; nonetheless, it makes me content to feel this silence.

Last night, I sat with my family in front of a fire, drinking brandy and reading a Terry Pratchett novel, thinking about the past and things that have changed and are changing. Today I am reading Murakami's Norwegian Wood for the first time, and I intend to finish it, because this is what I do in Montana: drink and read novels in a day.

The world is a harsh place, and this refuge will not always be here. But for now, it is enough to read and to write in contentment, not to worry about writing about tragedies and angst, but to enjoy just being here. The world needs more enjoyment of the present moment. But there's not much money to be made with that, is there?

There should be.