Category Archives: Culture

A Cell-Free Life by Kent Ballard

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Well, Mr. Mailer is still playing hard to get. You’d think a person in a grave couldn’t really hide, though they sure can remain silent. But I’ll lure him out with threats of interviewing Vidal first. So while I keep banging on his ego, Kent Ballard has kindly agreed to join my pinch-hitters. …Zach

 

Some of my friends call me a Luddite. Some claim I’m a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. Some just think I’m…well…peculiar.

I do not own a cell phone. I never owned one and if I have my way, never will. Many people are genuinely staggered by this. And the younger they are, the more astounding they find it. The majority of the world’s population, even in the poorest countries, now own cell phones. They have access to the Internet, instant worldwide news, the weather on any part of the globe, can communicate with the guy across the street or in Timbuktu, can film asteroids crashing into the earth, check their stocks, send and receive nude photos of each other, and generally have a nifty little piece of genuine Star Trek equipment they lug around with them everywhere.

I’ve had people tell me they would rather leave their homes without clothing than without their cell phone.

And in this one, lone, and remarkable instance, I am right and everyone else is wrong, so far as I’m concerned.

The modern American cellular phone is generally agreed to be Ameritech’s 1G DynaTAch, which took a decade to reach the market and cost one hundred million dollars to develop. It became available in 1983. It was heavy, awkward, took ten hours to charge, and had a talk time of about thirty minutes. They sold them faster than they could produce them. Waiting lists numbered into the thousands.

The cell phone is only about thirty years old, if you skip over bulky car phones, that ridiculous-looking brick with a three foot antenna and a weight approaching two and a half pounds. And you know what? We had a pretty dandy civilization before they came along. Yes, you may find it hard to believe, but before we had cell phones we had lasers, had been to the Moon, were flying operational missions with the Space Shuttle, had discovered the DNA double-helix, and even had electric lights.

One writer about my age (60) said that “we are the last generation on earth who will know what it’s like to be totally alone.” But I don’t see that as a necessarily bad thing. Sometimes I want to be alone and not looking at some YouTube film of a two-headed goat my neighbor sent me or texted nineteen boring cat jokes from Aunt Matilda. True, cell phone films taken by citizens of police abuse have proven valuable court evidence, but sworn testimony by eyewitnesses is still taken as gospel in the courts too. How do you think they handled these matters in, say, 1978?

Another thing I do not want is the NSA, FBI, or some podunk county sheriff “pinging” me to know my location at all times, day or night. I don’t want them to time me between cell towers and gauge the speed I am driving. I usually have a good idea of my location, and it’s none of their damned business. I don’t have enough room in my car to haul around forty government agencies, nor do I want them riding with me.

They say there’s no such thing as privacy now, and that’s often true. If they’re going to put me on a list of potential skateboard hijackers, they’ve already done it thanks to the shredding of the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights and the PRISM program that reads all my email. And yours. But if I want to jump in my car and drive to Winslow, Arizona and wait for a girl in a flat-bed Ford to look at me, there’s no way in hell they’ll know where I am or what I’m doing and I like it like that.

But when wide-eyed people ask me, “What if you need to make an emergency call?” I tell them the truth. I can’t, and pay phones have all but disappeared. But if I’m on the road anywhere, I can reach for my CB radio, call out to just about any trucker, and they’ll place the call for me. I’ve done that before. It works very well, bless the truckers. CB radios, I predict, will make something of a comeback after the news releases about PRISM. The technology is so old they’ve simply overlooked it. And if you know how to do it, you can power them up to reach out hundreds of miles if you wish.

During the Boston Marathon Bombing, in one second the millions of viewers on the scene could have called anyone on the planet. The next, and their 4G iPhones were utterly useless. Sheer dead weight. Whether the cell towers were overloaded or if they simply shut them down isn’t the issue. People who had sure and certain communications with the world lost them, and for many that equaled panic.

But the race’s official communications were all handled by Ham radio operators. They never failed, not one. They set their frequencies to call in police, ambulances, emergency services while at the same time helping runners locate loved ones and maintaining an information flow with the outside world. Cell phones just slowly drained their batteries, silent. Think about that for a moment, and you will realize authorities in any area can simply shut down the cell towers whenever they think they have a reason, leaving you literally speechless, unable to contact a soul. You may wish to develop your own backup plan if the government tinkers much more with our communications in the near future.

Like all technology, cell phones have their good sides and bad sides. For me, the bad outweighs the good. They make very large crowds of people easier to silence, and that ain’t a good thing.

Yes, I’m among the last generation to know what it’s like to be truly alone—when I want to be. I can walk back through my woods, sit down by the little creek, and the only sound I will hear is the babbling of the water and song birds. After a bad day, that is peace few people can find. And I will have no beeping, ringing, squalling, or moon-dancing racket interrupt my solitude and gathering calmness. No nameless “officer” will be able to locate me. No hordes of ad agencies will know my habits and send me eighteen pounds of junk mail for outdoor goods. That’s known as targeted advertising.

And I don’t care to be a target.

DETECTIVE FICTION, AN AMERICAN MYTH

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 “…down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” Raymond Chandler.

This is the detective fiction I’m talking about. Where something deep within the American psyche hungers for the solitary individual who struggles against all odds.

What’s strange about this is the depth of that emotional desire. This, despite the mythology which underlies it. And it really is a myth. Our country was not formed by individual good guys taking on the bad. Our history has never been one against the many—though we’ve always been more than willing to position ourselves as the “white hats.” I mean, we were just helping Native Americans who refused the “American Way” and therefore defined who they were as the “enemy” in order to virtually exterminate them.

And really, we were just making our country the way it was supposed to be when we bought, sold, enslaved, and slaughtered defenseless Black people. Hey, they were only worth three fifths of a white. Good versus less than human, right?

And the more one reads about The Pinkerton Detective Agency, the less one can believe in honorable detectives struggling against “bad guys.” Hell, for the most part they were the bad guys.

Even our war history is one of aggression and usurpation of other peoples’ lands. Just ask Mexico. Plus, during the First and Second World wars we rode the back of the wave while other countries took the major hits. Hardly the brave society leading the way down those mean streets.

(WW1)

 

 

 

World War 2 Total Deaths (Approximate):
Soviet Union 23,954,000
China           15,000,000
Germany       7,728,000
Poland          5,720,000
Japan           2,700,000
India             2,087,000
Yugoslavia    1,027,000
Rumania          833,000
Hungary           580,000
France             567,600
Greece            560,000
Italy                 456,000
Great Britain    449,800
United States   418,500

So really, detective fiction (of the kind I write, and am writing about here) has a whole lot less to do with who we are than a romanticized fantasy of who we would like to be.

So how the hell does a detective fiction writer create a strong, believable reality which, at its heart, is just a fairytale? Obviously a ton has to do with a believable plot that keeps a reader turning pages. But, at least in my thinking, plot, while critical, is only one factor in the creation of something out of nothing. It takes more to fashion a readable authenticity that feels like the honest present, but emerges from a myth.

For me that begins with the major character. In my Matt Jacob series, that’s of course Matt. But for detective fiction to be experienced as real, the other characters have to be recognizable as well. Too many false notes in any of the book’s personalities trash the suspension of belief which is absolutely necessary to maintain interest. Kinda like spotting a fly in the ice cube of your bourbon. Ruins the moment—and the drink.

So we got plot, lead character, other characters. And there’s more.

Relationships. Despite the popular misconception that mysteries (or genre books in general) occupy a lower rung on literature’s ladder, I think writing honestly about relationships is critical for any novel. And especially for those books that are considered “throwaways.” In fact, I sometimes wonder whether the sloppiness about relationships that often exist within many genre novels is the reason people don’t take them seriously. Which is a damn shame. Because great writers in any genre write great books. Including Romance. And there’s more.

A sense of “place.” Not for nothing is the best of the best detective fiction located in an area (usually a city) that is an actual one (with or without accurate street names and neighborhoods), or one that feels absolutely real. If a reader can’t imagine the place in which the book’s characters reside, they just won’t believe anything else about the novel. Why should they? (An aside—Richard Russo, a contemporary author (not a detective fiction or mystery writer) is exquisite when it comes to defining “place.” I urge anyone who wants to learn how to make a town or area sing with a life of its own to read his work. He’s just that good). If someone can’t “see” where the characters live or how they interact with their environment, a major building block of any story is terribly compromised. Nothing that any serious author wants.

When I look at this post everything I’ve written seems pretty elemental and basic. But like everything else, the devil is in the details and it’s the writer’s responsibility to create those human details that allow for the reader to ignore our actual reality and engage and believe in the detective fiction myth. Not too different than “literature” is it?

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable. Raymond Chandler

PRIVACY? PUH-LEASE

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I mean, come on! Did we honestly believe we had any real privacy since J. Edgar first came to power in 1919, led the Palmer Raids and named future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter “the most dangerous man in the United States” for, among other things, founding the ACLU?

Did we honestly believe we had any real privacy after we learned the FBI spied on Dr. King and every other civil rights leader and follower? Infiltrated virtually every Vietnam anti-war organization? Photographed people who attended any other type demonstration? Or, collected personal data on those who protested military and corporate recruitment on college campuses?

Those of us who requested our personal files through the Freedom of Information Act and noticed the multiple redactions certainly knew privacy’s limitations.

It’s never been just Spy vs. Spy; it’s always been spy on all of us.

And even more so after the Internet jumped out to meet us and we climbed right aboard. Where the information superhighway allows data to streak throughout the world and where countries’ boundaries are virtually meaningless. Sure, there were encryptions designed to keep your stuff private, but we all knew they were a joke. Easily broken, even the most sophisticated programs. Still, we sent (and send) emails to each other detailing the most private parts of our lives. We open accounts in banks without walls. We use credit cards to buy shit from stores we’ve never seen and don’t even exist in the “real” world.

Then along came social media and we all announced to our “friends” and anyone else who really wanted to know, what we ate, drank, what music we listened to along with our personal politics, opinions, and attitudes.

And people are getting upset because their calls are being recorded, our privacy invaded? We gave our privacy away decades ago but now we’re shocked? Puh-lease.

Where was all that shock when we allowed the government to pass the Patriot Act? We volunteered to forego our civil liberties in the name of security. Or, the awe when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed—fully equipped with its own secret court?

Secret fucking courts! That’s not what I believe democracy or patriotism is about.

Yes, we’ve been told that these more recent anti-democratic policies begun by President Bush after 9/11 and reauthorized multiple times since have thwarted a number of terrorist plots. Can anyone reading this post name or describe any of these plots? I mean, if they were thwarted, what possible harm would be caused by publicly telling us about them now? Unless of course it’s bullshit.

You all know the list of anti-democratic freedoms we have relinquished in the name of terror since 9/11 and the only reason the shit’s hit the fan now is we’ve discovered the scale to which Big Brother has applied the laws to which we quietly acquiesced.

Did anyone actually believe that Verizon and other telephone and internet carriers would refuse to bend over the chair when the government came calling? This angst and dram is a piss-poor excuse for our refusal to allow these un-American acts to pass and wend their way throughout our society, institutions, and mentality.

So what is going to be done about the fact that we’ve delivered our phone calls (and now the newest travesty, our DNA) into the hands of Big Brother? The ACLU will bring its lawsuits, maybe a few members of Congress will bitch and moan, and the media will express outrage as long as it garners viewers. In other words, nothing.

So let’s make a deal. Collect whatever the fuck you want, whenever you want, but unless the government can prove that any information it has will directly place a person in danger, all their records ought to be available to the public. Completely available. If our government wants to know all about me, then I want to know about each and every part of what they are doing. What’s good for the goose…

I know the naysayers will argue the government would be unable to conduct its business if everybody knew everything. But we did just fine after Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, Woodward and Bernstein exposed Watergate, when Seymour Hersh disclosed the C.I.A.’s massive domestic spying. In fact, many would argue that we did better.

But we learned nothing. Actually, that’s not true. We learned to genuflect to a government (and I mean every administration I’ve lived through) and passively allow them to do it to us all over–again and again. This isn’t what I thought the phrase “what goes around, comes around” meant.

So, let’s demand the release of every government document that does not put a human life in direct danger. And, if it’s found that someone held back information when nobody was in harm’s way, well, then it’s time to open the jail cell doors.

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

AFTERMATH

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I honestly thought that last week’s post would serve as a transition to get me past the Boston bombings. But what has transpired here since the blasts simply can’t be ignored. Or, more precisely, I can’t ignore it.

When Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev was in the hospital after his capture, our mayor was asked how Tsarnaev was doing medically. Mennino waved his hand and said, “Who cares?” Everybody laughed; in fact, his response became a joke around town. At the time I didn’t find it particularly funny, but didn’t think much about it. Two weeks later and I’m thinking about it a lot.

For the past week Boston and cities around Massachusetts have refused to provide space to bury Dzhokhar’s brother Tamerlan who died in a shootout with Boston police, the FBI, and ATF.

When I wrote last week’s column I never expected the story to disappear. Did expect a blame game which is, in fact, happening. Expected congressional hearings, expected the bombings would become, as they have, a political football.

What I didn’t expect was the downright ugly about Tamerlan’s burial.

I understand and appreciate the agony and anger of people about these hideous, tragic events. I learned firsthand how a mass murder affects those connected to it when I spent much of a summer investigating the Murrah Building bombing for a consortium of lawyers. Most of that time was spent with people who had lost loved ones or were injured by the blast. They all were injured by wounds that would never heal.

But when a state and its municipalities refuse to allow a burial of an alleged bomber, it makes me sick to my stomach. We’ve had no trouble scattering ashes or burying convicted assassins and mass murderers before. Timothy McVeigh’s ashes were spread in an undisclosed U.S. location. John Wilkes Booth’s body at Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland. Richard Speck cold-bloodedly slaughtered eight nurses and his ashes were spread in the U.S. “Nanny” Hazel Doss, who confessed to killing her four husbands, her mother, her sister, her grandson, her nephew and others, is buried at Oak Hill Memorial Park, McAlester, Oklahoma. Lee Harvey Oswald at the Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park in Fort Worth, Texas. Andrew Kehoe, who murdered 38 elementary school children, six adults, and injured at least 58 other people, was buried at Mount Rest Cemetery, Clinton County, Michigan.

The list is near endless, but I’ll only mention two more. Father John J. Geoghan molested more than 130 children and is buried at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts and the good old Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, is buried at Puritan Lawn Memorial Park, Peabody, Massachusetts.  If our state can provide hallowed ground for these criminals…

So why does it matter if a state and municipalities refuse to allow a burial?

My friend Bill often tells me that I rush to defend the worst of our people. He’s not far wrong–though I don’t think he recognizes my compassion for victims. I believe the way a society handles the worst of the worst speaks to the moral fiber of that society. I’m vehemently opposed to state-sanctioned murder (disguised under the benign term capital punishment) for the same reason. It reflects a blood lust for vengeance–something that eats at the decency of our culture.

Earlier I used the word “alleged” to describe the dead Tamerlan. Do I doubt that he colluded to set off those horrific bombs? Not really, but frankly it doesn’t matter. What matters is a cornerstone of the best of our social character. Innocent until proven guilty has, yet again, taken a back seat to the worst of our being. Better to eliminate the protection of rights in the name of hatred and security than to hold those rights up as a beacon to who we are and want to be.

Worse, these eliminations are rapidly becoming the nature of our post 9/11 society. Gitmo, anyone? Islamophobia? Executions? Undeclared Martial Law? Hell, undeclared wars. These aren’t isolated actions, but part of a whole which is successfully shredding what’s left of our ethical and legal fiber. And the greed which permeates our economic life is taking care of the rest.

When I worked for a poor peoples’ criminal defense attorney, or served on juries, I was constantly struck by the number of times judges would remind and remind the jury that the defendant was absolutely presumed innocent, no matter the charge(s). And was always shocked (when on a jury) how often those words fell upon deaf ears.

Furthermore, if Tamerlan was guilty and murdered and hurt all those innocent people who will have to live with their injuries long after he rots in his grave, doesn’t he still deserve to have one? Just as the way a society treats its poor, its criminals, how it treats its dead also shines a bright light upon our humanity.

Only as rich as the poorest of the poor,
Only as free as a padlocked prison door… Phil Ochs

WHAT THE HELL ARE WE?

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

but most of the time, it seriously sucks.

A few weeks ago I wrote about experiences that make living enjoyable(http://zacharykleinonline.com/personal-experience/my-cousins-comment/) but the past two weeks have left me a whole lot less enamored with the world I’m living in. Not simply because of the horrible Boston bombings and the incredible abrogation of civil liberties imposed upon our metropolitan area by the state, F.B.I. and myriad other agencies. This “shelter in place” (i.e. “lockdown”) had all the earmarks of martial law without being declared. And it makes no difference to me whether people were okay with it or not. Welcome to the rest of the world. Again.

I understand the need to capture bombers, the need to determine whether there are more explosives, whether there are more accomplices. All important, but important enough to run roughshod over people’s legitimate rights?  I don’t think so, but again, welcome to the rest of the world.

Worse, there were about eight murders during the manhunt totally unrelated to the bombs, but they only deserved a paragraph mention in the newspaper. No manhunt for those killers. No “shelter in place.” No 24/7 news coverage. No media trucks and hoards of reporters (finally, a good thing) surrounding the victims’ houses. Nothing.

Pick a day and just read the headlines of any newspaper, and what do you see? Pick a local news station and watch a compendium of who went psychotic and killed someone flash across the screen followed by a weather report and sports. Just your typical news.

But all the above is minor league shit compared to what we as a species do to each other every single hour of every single day. There are the drones blasting houses, bombs destroying villages, people fighting over whether or not countries ought to have the nuclear capability to destroy the planet.

We’re still negotiating whether it’s okay to have the weapons that can destroy the fucking planet!  Pick a continent, pick a country, pick a religion, pick a sect, pick an ideology, pick a people, and what do we find? Murder, mayhem, shattered lives, limbs, families. This is who we seem to be.

So this is why we sit on top of the food chain? To kill, maim, blow each other up and decide who can and cannot annihilate the world? Not content with simply slaughtering that which is supposedly on a lower rung, we aren’t satisfied unless we’re slaughtering each other. And we call this civilization? Sorry, we’ve left the realm of right or wrong, good or evil. Frankly, it all seems insane. Really, really insane.

And, for what? Sure, every war has its reasons, every religion a purpose to its blood-shedding, every ideology a leg to stand on, every invasion a rationalized reason, every country its enemies (well, maybe not Canada). So fucking what? Ultimately, is it really that important whose dick is bigger?

I haven’t even begun to list the atrocities our species has wreaked.

How a about a small sample of wars:

Index of Warfare

 

  Abyssinian War
Afghan Pakistan War
Algerian War
Alliance Afghanistan War
America Mexico War
America Spain War
Anglo Afghan War, 1st
Anglo Afghan War, 3rd
Anglo Boer War, 2nd
Anglo Dutch Wars, 1st
Anglo Dutch Wars, 2nd
Anglo Dutch Wars, 3rd
Anglo Iraq War
Anglo Spanish War
Argentina Uruguay War
Aztec War
Balkan Wars, 1st
Balkan Wars, 2nd
Balkan Wars, 3rd
Bishops War, 1st
Bishops War, 2nd
Boer War
Bolivian Guerrilla War
Bosnian War
Boxer Rebellion War
Brazil Argentina War
Bulgaria Serbia War
Burmese War, 2nd
Byzantine War
Carlist War
Castille Granada War
China India War
China Manchuria War
China Mongol War
China SE Asia War
China Taiwan War
China Tibet War
Christian Civic League
Congo War, 1st
Croatian War
Cyprus Genoa War
Dalriada Bernicia War
Egypt Crusaders
Egypt Iraq War
Eighty Years War
Ethiopia Somalia War
Falklands War
Flavian Emperors
French Indochina War
Grand Alliance
Gulf War, 1st
Gulf War, 2nd Gulf War, 2nd
Holland Sumatra War
Holy Crusades, The 1st
Holy Crusades, The 3rd
Holy Crusades, The 4th
Holy Crusades, The 7th
Huguenot Wars
Hundred Years War
Hungarian Insurrection
Hungary Byzantine War
Hungary Slovakia War
India Pakistan War
Jacobite Rebellion
Jenkin’s Ear
KANU
Korean War
Kosovo War
Leon Almohades War
Libya Chad War
Libya Chad War
Long War
Long War
Lothian Picts War
Magyar Invasions
Maratha War, The 2nd
Marcomanni War
Mercia Wales War
Mongol Hungary War
Mongol Hungary War
Mongol Khwarezm War
Mongol Korea War
Mongol Persia War
Mongol Punjab War
Mongol Samarkand War
Mongol Tibet War
Mongol Vietnam War
Moorish War
Muslim Rebellion
Mysore Wars, 1st
Mysore Wars, 2nd
Mysore Wars, 4th
Napoleonic Wars
Navarre Moors War		 Nurachi Dynasty
Orange Dynasty
Paraguay Bolivia War
Peace Bureau
Picts Lothian War
Portugal Castille War
Portugal Moors War
Portugal Morocco War
Romania Moldavia War
Sand War
Scotia Bernicia War
Scotia Pict War
Scotland Ireland War
Scotland Scotia
Serbia Albania War
Serbian Uprising, 1st
Seven Years War
Sicilian Vespers
Sikh War, 1st
Sikh War, 2nd
Six Day War
South Africa Angola War
Spain Leon War
Spain Moors War
Spain Naples War
Spain Peru War
Spain Portugal War
Sri Lankan Civil War
Sudan War
Suez War
Suleyman’s West War
Syria Lebanon War
Taiping Rebellion
Ten Years War
Texan Civil War
Thity Years War,
Tripoli WarUganda Tanzania War
Uganda Tanzania War
Uganda Tanzania War
Valentinian
Valois Hapsburg War
Vietnam Kampuchea War
Vietnam War, 1st
Vietnam War, 2nd
Viking Invasions		   Visigoth Greece War
Visigoth Spain War
War Devolution
War Succession
War the Spanish Succession
World War, 1st
World War, 2nd
Yom Kippur War

And if wars don’t float your boat, well take a look at how we now live:

World Poverty Statistics

Total Percentage of World Population that lives on less than $2.50 a day 50%
Total number of people that live on less than $2.50 a day 3 Billion
Total Percentage of People that live on less than $10 a day 80%
Total percent of World Populations that live where are widening 80%
Total Percentage of World Income the richest 20% account for 75%
Total Number of children that die each day due to Poverty 22,000
Total Number of People in Developing Countries with Inadequate Access to Water 1.1 billion
Total Number of School Days lost to Water Related Illness 443 million school days
Child World Poverty Statistics
Number of children in the world 2.2 billion
Number of Children that live in Poverty 1 billion
Total Number of Children that live without adequate shelter 640 million (1 in 3)
Total Number of Children without access to safe water 400 million (1 in 5)
Total Number of Children with no access to Health Services 270 million (1 in 7)
Total Numberof Children who die annually from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation 1.4 million
Year Ratio of People at Poverty to Wealthy Level
1820 3 to 1
1913 11 to 1
1950 35 to 1
1973 44 to 1
1992 72 to 1

http://statisticbrain.com/world-poverty-statistics/

We as a species don’t give much of a shit about anyone or anything but ourselves. I have mine so fuck everyone else, the planet as well, what the hell. And if we can manage it, what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is also mine.

Yes, there were great acts of kindness and caring in Boston after the blasts.There were people who risked their own lives to save others, but we all love our cheap running shoes and cell phones—and don’t really think about their expensive cost to the people who made them. I’m not condemning individuals per se; this is a condemnation of our species’ conception of humanity.

There was a time when I thought the first fish that took a breath of air outside the water was a giant evolutionary step forward. Not so sure any more.

And now let’s return to American Idol.