From The Weekly Standard: Dear Diary, I Think I'm in Love The confessions of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. by P.J. O'Rourke 12/31/2007 Journals 1952-2000 by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Penguin, 928 pp., $40 This is a bad, vain, dull, repulsive book. Don't read it. I didn't. Oops, have I committed the previous sentence to print? I've just broken the most sacred vow of book reviewers. I've confessed to not reading the book I'm reviewing. Jonathan Yardley will stalk me through the streets armed with his razor-sharp critique. The Library of Congress building will come crashing down upon my head. My career is over. But before I go to my doom, let me try to explain. You see there was this fellow, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died early this year and is on his way to being forgotten but who, unfortunately, isn't quite there yet. Schlesinger spent some of his time being a Harvard historian and all of his time kissing the behinds of rich people, famous people, and people who were powerful in the Democratic party. He accomplished only one thing of note. (If you don't count his unfinished, multivolume history of the FDR administration and his A Thousand Days buncombe about JFK, and you certainly shouldn't.) In 1945, Schlesinger went back in time to retro-behind-kiss Andrew Jackson. He wrote The Age of Jackson, glorifying the ignorant backwoods thug who perpetrated genocide upon the Indians, created the spoils system in Washington, and fathered that bastard political party of rum, rebellion, and Hillary Rodham. The rest of Schlesinger's life was spent engaged in such activities as being a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson and in doing things even less important than that, if you can imagine any. So this Schlesinger fellow kept what you and I would call a diary but what, when Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Harvard professor, special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, and winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize (twice each), does it, is called Journals. He scribbles away from 1952 until 2000, producing some 6,000 pages, which his sons Andrew and Stephen--and bless them for it--have condensed. The resulting tome is no thicker than the average skull on the current generation of Kennedys. And honest, I meant to read it all. I did get through the entire first paragraph. Here's an excerpt from it concerning the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner of March 29, 1952: I borrowed a black tie from Phil Graham. .  .  . Making our way to our table, we became entangled in one of the head table lines. In quick succession came the three nicest men in public life--Wilson Wyatt, Adlai Stevenson, Averell Harriman. Averell suggested that we go out for a drink afterward. Ouch! Ow! Those are big names being dropped. Do not read Journals standing up in your stocking feet. Any given hundred words of Schlesinjournaling loses its grip on enough weighty monikers to break every toe. But I limped on. I made it all the way to page 12 before I was stopped cold by this sentence about Adlai Stevenson: "He is the one man in politics today who strikes an authentically new and fresh note." And that note would be? Ah, the note that was passed to Adlai in every classroom of grade school, high school, and Princeton--the small, crumpled piece of paper upon which was written, "LOSER!!!" Meanwhile, in the preceding 11 pages of type, our boy Artie has been subtly, carefully not quite taking all the credit for getting Adlai Stevenson the 1952 Democratic nomination. This raises several questions. First, Huh? What a load of baloney. Second, Why would anyone want any of the credit for that? And third, why doesn't Schlesinger just lie? It's his personal journal. If you can't fool yourself, who can you fool? Come on, Art, go for it. Say, "Without me Adlai Stevenson would have been nothing but a footnote to the history of wooly-headed liberalism!" It's not as if anybody's going to call you on it. But Schlesinger dare not tell an outright lie. In one respect, Journals is a diary like younger sisters used to keep, with the key to the little lock on its pink vinyl cover conveniently "hidden" so that if big brother happens to read certain passages aloud to a particular handsome athlete .  .  . The handsome athlete (well, sportsman, anyway) that Arthur had a crush on was JFK. Thus we see Kennedy in the middle of the 1960 Democratic primary campaign: "Jack seemed tired, but was obviously in good spirits. His lack of pretense was refreshing; for example, he kept answering ringing phones himself." He answers his own phone! We see Kennedy on his yacht shooting at floating Coke bottles with "Prince Radziwill": "Jack is plainly an excellent shot .  .  . Then we drank Bloody Marys, swam from the boat and finally settled down for an excellent lunch. After lunch, cigars and conversation." He spoke to me! And we see President Kennedy summoning some piece of speechwriting crap that he'd dumped on Arthur: "The next morning the president called to ask about the paragraph. I brought it to his bedroom about 9:30. He was eating his breakfast in bed. He had only his pajama pants on." Ooooooo! Yet Journals is so much more than gush. Its pages also crack open a hellgate to give us a peek at the eternally consuming fires of egotistic solipsism to which the soul of a liberal is forever condemned. Not even the undying love that Arthur Schlesinger felt for Kennedy money, power, and prestige could redeem poor Art from the perdition that awaits the bien pensant. His is the sin of pride, such that produces the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society. It manifests itself in the deeds of the mighty. Or in the case of Arthur Schlesinger, it manifests itself in mighty bad taste. This, this, is his private reaction when his friend, his mentor, his beau ideal is murdered: November 23 I heard the terrible news as I was sipping cocktails with Kay Graham, Ken Galbraith and the editors of Newsweek. Kay and I had flown in from Washington; we were there to discuss the future of the back of Newsweek's book. A man entered in his shirtsleeves and said, a little tentatively .  .  . A man in his shirtsleeves--in the presence of Kay Graham, Ken Galbraith, and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.! Let us skim forward to June 1968, and see if Art is better able to keep his composure when Robert Kennedy is killed: It is beyond belief, but it has happened--it has happened again. On Tuesday, June 4, I went to Chicago for a conference on Vietnam sponsored by the Adlai Stevenson Institute. Saul Bellow and I had met at the airport [blah blah blah] .  .  . He had suggested that I come over to his apartment Tuesday evening [blah blah blah] .  .  . I took Frances FitzGerald over there [blah blah blah] .  .  . Then Dick Wade, who was there, dropped Frankie at the Center for Continuing Education [blah blah blah-blah-blah]. We are fully 140 words into the journal entry before we get to "Kennedy's been shot." And even here, in his brief quotation of a phone call from Dick Wade, Schlesinger manages to drop another name, "Steve Smith too, I guess." Okay, Art, that's two wrong. But you're still eligible for a posthumous consolation prize--free shredding of all remaindered copies of Journals. Just turn to the 1969 chapter and tell us your deep feelings when you learned about the political assassination (albeit self-inflicted) of the third Kennedy brother: The last few days were, of course, shadowed by the distressing news about Ted Kennedy. We heard about it first on the yacht on Sunday afternoon and learned more details when we reached Paris. On Wednesday night in New York, I called Jimmy Wechsler, Joe Rauh, Ken Galbraith and others and found general gloom. On Thursday I sat after lunch with Scotty Reston and Tom Wicker at the Century. They were both sympathetic .  .  . And I feel sorry for you, too, Arthur. Naturally we cannot expect a man with credentials such as Arthur's to be merely a jerk; he's an idiot, too. The quickest riffle through Journals is enough to prove it. Said Arthur, after a 10-day visit to the USSR in 1982: "I fear that those who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse are kidding themselves." It just so happens that I was in the USSR myself for about 10 days in 1982. I was an ignorant, neophyte foreign correspondent on my first overseas assignment. But I did notice that the Soviet Union was on the verge of economic and social collapse. Schlesinger's ability to make people look like cretins is by no means limited to himself. He visits President Truman and emerges from the Oval Office with this unlikely quote from the former haberdasher: "The professional politician, he said, is the straightest-shooting man in the country. [Alert readers note foretokening of JFK on the yacht.] I don't mean the city machine type; but the man who makes a career of elective politics. The biggest crooks in the country are the businessmen." Even Jack Kennedy doesn't escape. JFK visited Dwight D. Eisenhower in California in 1962, and when Kennedy got back he (according to Schlesinger) told Schlesinger, "You know what he said to me? We were talking about Laos. Eisenhower said, 'A State Department man told me--and it was odd coming from him--that Laos is a nation of homosexuals.'" Schlesinger then goes on to say, "The President repeated the phrase I have italicized with a kind of wonder." I have parsed and parsed this passage, and for the life of me I can't figure out who comes off as the biggest idiot. Bigoted Ike? Hopelessly hetero naïf JFK? A certain striped-pants cookie-pusher? Or long-bow-pulling Arthur? Then there is a splendidly stupid entry about a get-together with Mick Jagger that makes one wonder if Schlesinger's whole life wasn't spent on some moron preserve or nincompoop reservation: We .  .  . made our way to the west side for a party at Mick Jagger's. The whole thing was rather mysterious--especially why we were asked. But Jerry Hall .  .  . is an amiable, very pretty, tallish Texan [blah blah blah]. We expected a packed house with a lot of drinking, cocaine, noise, etc. Instead, it was a party of only moderate size and, so far as we could see (we left shortly before 1 A.M.), entirely seemly. Most people were young, except for Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, Jean Stein and Ahmet Ertegun (who could not get over the fact that we were there--actually we met Mick Jagger first at his house). .  .  . [blah blah blah] Mick Jagger appeared from some upstairs retreat and sat down and talked for half an hour or so, mostly about communism, war, the threat of Cap Weinberger and so on. He is alert, funny, intelligent (Alexandra told me later he had attended LSE [the London School of Economics]--can this be so?) .  .  . [blah blah blah] But I still could not understand why we were there. Ditto for reading this book. In fact, ditto for writing this review. I'd like to escape from further comment on Journals. I'm looking for a way out of this article. I consult the notes that I took as I flipped through the opus. "I cannot bear to read it, partly because of the vulgarity of the diction, partly because of the nakedness of the self-exposure, partly because of the frustration over not being able to review it. I cannot recall any political autobiography in American history which has represented quite such an orgy in unconscious self-revelation," I wrote. Except I didn't write that. I figure, as long as I've admitted not reading this book, I might as well go the whole hog and be a plagiarist, too. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote that. He thought he was writing about Six Crises by Richard Nixon. But as usual, Arthur was wrong. P.J. O'Rourke is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

From The Boston Globe:
Frank Schaeffer's roundabout journey to find faith
He was raised in evangelism, then he raised the Right.
Now Frank Schaeffer sees the other side.
By Joel Brown, Globe Correspondent

December 18, 2007

SALISBURY - The front lawn of Frank Schaeffer's 1835 house ends abruptly at a wall of tall reeds marking the edge of the Merrimack River salt marshes. You'd think they'd offer protection, he said, but after a storm he sometimes finds a log floating in the front yard. With the publication of Schaeffer's new memoir, "Crazy for God," all sorts of other things are washing up at his front door: painful memories and funny ones, religious and political controversies. This time he invited them.

"The e-mail and the blogging has been intense," Schaeffer, 55, said on a recent morning. "Surprisingly I'm hearing from a lot of evangelicals taking a second look at what they believe and their place in the culture, but then maybe that's a self-selecting audience."

That "Crazy for God" isn't just another James Frey-style memoir of personal dysfunction becomes clear with the subtitle, "How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (Or Almost All) of It Back." It's an alternately hilarious and excruciating look at Schaeffer's life with his Christian missionary parents and after he left their orbit.

Francis and Edith Schaeffer were noted evangelists who welcomed seekers of all kinds to their Swiss compound, L'Abri, while their Calvinist rigor made them favorites of the likes of Billy Graham. Frank was a deep thinker with a bad temper; Edith enforced day-to-day piety with a steely smile. In "Crazy for God," Schaeffer lays bare his parents' troubled marriage, his own randy adolescent adventures, and his eventual disgust with fundamentalist leaders.

"My daughter says to me, 'I love this book, it's the best thing you've written, and I can't think of one person that I know that I want to have read it,' " Schaeffer said, laugh ing.

He doesn't have to worry about his parents' reactions - his father died in 1984, and his mother is 93, her memory failing - but his sisters are split on the topic. He had already aired much family laundry in his comic novels "Portofino," "Zermatt," and "Saving Grandma," in which a hormone-addled adolescent pointedly named Calvin wrestles with temptation and the darker side of his dysfunctional missionary family life.

"Crazy for God" goes further, as the teenage Schaeffer finds himself coping with the oddities of living in an increasingly popular evangelical enclave that's part "Heidi," part hippie commune, with Billy Graham and Timothy Leary both passing through its alpine chalets.

"We were this fundamentalist little cult-ic group in Switzerland, and yet that's how powerful the 1960s were," he said. "By the time it was all done, we were all sitting there listening to the Beatles and Bob Dylan and having lectures on Fellini and Bergman. . . . You have parents who are telling their kids they are totally against premarital sex and even dating on one hand, and yet in all the fields above the mission, you have couples pairing off by moonlight."

Advances and retreats

One of those teenage couples was Frank and his "hippie princess," Regina Ann "Genie" Walsh. In an interview, she recalled the first time she met Frank. "I thought, what a forward guy!" she said. "He was so extroverted at that point, it took my breath away. He was kind of pushy. Usually people who are that flagrantly friendly make me a little suspicious. But I quickly got over it. He was very charming."

Charming enough that she soon became pregnant with their daughter Jessica. They married, and among fatherhood's profound impacts on young Frank was his immediate adoption of a zealous anti-abortion stance. A documentary series he was making about his father's teachings veered into pro-life tract and became popular with American fundamentalists. Books, speeches, sermons followed. The Schaeffers were a hit.

Even Schaeffer's father said the powerful preachers they hobnobbed with were "not our sort of people." Schaeffer goes further in "Crazy for God": "In public they maintained an image that was usually quite smooth. In private they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. [James] Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement."

Schaeffer worked with them for more than a decade, preaching in their churches and helping them solidify their empires, while growing ever more disenchanted. When his father died, he was offered even more opportunities but walked away instead. Still in his early 30s, Schaeffer lived out a Hollywood dream, directing four secular movies including "Baby on Board" with Judge Reinhold and Carol Kane. In the middle of blowing his chance at Hollywood stardom, Schaeffer decided to write "Portofino." When it was published to solid reviews, he at last found a new calling.

He and Genie had moved their two children to the Salisbury retreat in 1980; their third was born a few months later. Genie said she doesn't mind seeing the intimate details of their life on the page. "Actually it comes as a relief," she said, "because we have gone through so much together that - I'm not sure if this is a result of age or having so many random experiences or what - but it's nice to see it given a shape and a narrative."

The Right and wrongs

In 1999, the Schaeffers' son John joined the Marines, serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. A novel ("Baby Jack") and four nonfiction books arose from Schaeffer's experience as a soldier's father. That experience also added depth to his anguish over helping to build the religious right.

"To put it very mildly, I've been very invested in what's been happening to our country, because my son was getting shot at. Those were the toughest periods in my adult life," Schaeffer said. "And I can tell you I think George Bush is the worst leader this country has had, ever. And that his failure of moral leadership after 9/11 will go down probably as the greatest missed opportunity in American history.

"Alex del Rio, my son's bunkmate from boot camp, is missing two legs and most of one arm because of this president, for no reason . . . and that could have been my son John," he said. "And to the extent the religious right empowered the domination of Republicans in Congress and the White House, there's a direct line between this failed presidency and the war we're in, and the people my dad and I helped empower and stir up in the 1970s and 1980s. . . . So this is a disaster for which I and a lot of other people bear a direct responsibility, and in that sense I'm very sorry."

That sort of talk has made the book a hit with the left, including a long review from novelist and onetime L'Abri tourist Jane Smiley in The Nation. But Schaeffer emphasizes that he was trying to tell his own story, not simply become a culture-war turncoat. And he has not turned away from religion, having joined the Greek Orthodox faith.

"At one point in your life, you think faith is an actual thing in itself that you've made some conclusion about. You say things like 'I believe.' I think what Mother Teresa woke up to maybe at some point and that certainly would describe my own journey too, in terms of faith, is that you can't really say 'I believe.' What you say is, 'I hope' something. 'I hope this is true.' And to me that's what faith is."

Writing for redemption

Charlotte Gordon, a writer from Rockport, met the Schaeffers in the mid-1980s and became their friend. "I think Franky is far more reflective now and far less reactive," said Gordon, who is an assistant professor at Endicott College. "I think that he's very introspective now and very independent, thinking back on the mistakes he's made. And the one thing that's very much on his mind is redemption, and I think he sees writing as a form of redemption, as a form of confession . . . and so the most important thing to him is the truth."

Frank's sister Deborah Middelmann is no longer affiliated with L'Abri but still lives nearby and teaches at a local boarding school. She said she approves of the new book. "I thought Franky did a really wonderful job of being very honest and yet coming across as what I considered very compassionate toward his parents, toward his childhood," Middelmann said by phone from Switzerland. "The one area in which if I had been writing the book I probably would have emphasized things somewhat differently would have been in the area of my father's ideas. My father and I were very, very close."

These days, L'Abri is still going strong, though his parents are no longer there, Schaeffer said.

"It's just a straight evangelical retreat center that would be just horrified if the guests from the late '60s showed up," he said with a laugh. "They'd throw them out in a hot minute."

Sandro Botticelli, The Mystical Nativity

From www.spiked-online.com:
Mankind is more than the janitor of planet Earth
I am avowedly atheist. But listening to the bishops' drab,
eco-pious Christmas sermons,
I couldn’t help thinking: ‘Bring back God!’
Brendan O’Neill

Thursday 27 December 2007

He might be the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus guardian of the Anglican faith. But every time I see Dr Rowan Williams’ smug face or hear his social-worker voice, I feel like breaking at least one of the Ten Commandments (I’ll leave it to readers’ febrile imaginations to guess which one).

They say we get the leaders we deserve. We also get the bishops we deserve. And in an age of petty piety, where relativistic non-judgementalism coexists with new codes of personal morality, giving rise to a Mary Poppins State more than a Nanny State, it’s fitting that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a trendy schoolteacher type who dispenses hectoring ethical advice with a smarmy grin rather than with fire-and-brimstone relish.

In his Christmas sermon, delivered at Canterbury Cathedral, Dr Williams finally completed his journey from old-world Christianity to trendy New Ageism. His sermon was indistinguishable from those delivered (not just at Christmas but for life) by the heads of Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. Williams did not speak about Christian morality; in fact, he didn’t utter the m-word at all. He said little about men’s responsibility to love one another and God, the two Commandments Jesus Christ said we should live by. Instead he talked about our role as janitors on planet Earth, who must stop plundering the ‘warehouse of natural resources’ and ensure that we clean up after ourselves.

Williams has clearly been reading the Good Books – not the Bible, but those Carbon Calculator tomes that are clogging up bookshop shelves around the country, and which instruct people on how to live so meekly that they leave no imprint whatsoever on the planet or human history. He said that Earth does not exist only for ‘humanity’s sake’; it also exists ‘in its own independence and beauty… not as a warehouse of resources to serve humanity’s selfishness’.

Williams warned that our greed – presumably our insatiable lust for warm homes, cars, cookers and other outrageous luxuries – is killing the planet. He welcomed the fact that mankind is ‘growing in awareness of how fragile [the planet] is, how fragile is the balance of species and environments in the world and how easily our greed distorts it’. In 2008, we must take more seriously our ‘guardianship’ of the Earth, he declared (1).

Williams isn’t the only leading Christian who has sold his soul to Gaia and traded in Christian morality for the pieties of environmentalism. The Reverend John Owen, leader of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, said in his Christmas sermon that everyone should remember his or her ‘duty to the planet’. He urged people to recycle leftover food, and ‘redouble [your] efforts to take action and campaign against climate change’ in the coming year (2). Meanwhile, the Vatican is taking steps to become the world’s first carbon-neutral sovereign state by planting trees in a Hungarian national park to offset the CO2 emissions of the Holy See. Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, says that in 2008 there should be the ‘dawn of a new culture, of new attitudes and a new mode of living that makes man aware of his place as caretaker of the earth’ (3).

The reduction of man to an eco-janitor, a being who creates waste and thus must clear it up, is more than a cynical attempt by isolated Christian leaders to connect with the public. Yes, Williams, Owen, the Holy See and Co. no doubt hope and believe (mistakenly, I’m sure) that adopting trendy Greenspeak will entice people to return to the church. But the move from focusing on love for God and one’s neighbour to focusing on ‘respect for the planet’ represents more than a rebranding exercise: it signals a complete abandonment by the Christian churches of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. And in this sense, it is not only God that is being downgraded by the new nature-worshipping priests; so is humanity itself. And that’s enough to make even a committed atheist like me worry about the current direction of the Christian churches.

Christian teaching was once concerned with man, meaning and morality, with questions of free will, inner life and human destiny. As it happens, atheists, at least progressive ones, were concerned with exactly the same things. The chasm-sized difference between atheists and Christians occurred over the question of whether the moral meaning of man came from within or without; whether, as some atheists believed, the purpose of humanity was to be found within humanity itself; or, as Christians believed, humanity achieved meaning only through an external deity, God.

Where Christian morality granted man a diluted form of free will – underpinned by the idea that, yes, we make free choices, but God is the ultimate arbiter of our destiny – progressive atheists emphasised complete free will, arguing that only through full freedom of thought and a human-centred morality could humans remake the world in their own image and according to their own needs and desires.

Christians and atheists may have spent much of the past 200 years at each other’s throats, but they inhabited the same moral plane. Theirs was literally a struggle for the soul of humanity. Today, by contrast, Christian leaders have abandoned questions of morality and free will. They now view people as little more than waste managers, ‘caretakers’, eco-binmen, whose job is to sweep up after themselves and keep the planet in good nick. Instead of remaking the world in anybody’s image – whether it be God’s, man’s, Buddha’s or L Ron Hubbard’s – man must simply adapt to his surroundings like an amoeba; indeed, he must minimise as much as possible his impact on the planet. Old Christians taught us that ‘the Kingdom of God is within you’ (4), which was their flawed way of saying that man is a sovereign being, free and morally responsible. Today Christians say: ‘You are merely guests in the Warehouse of Resources. So be quiet, don’t get any ideas above your station, and please shut the door when you leave.’

The cult of environmentalism embraced by the Christian churches does away with morality altogether. Some sceptics claim that environmentalism is a new form of moralistic hectoring; it is better to see it as amoralistic hectoring. In judging everything by how much CO2 or pollution it creates, environmentalism dispenses with questions of moral worth and judgement. So a flight to visit a newborn nephew in Australia (5.61 tonnes of CO2) is as wicked as taking a flight to Barbados to lounge in the sun; and the transportation of delicious food from Africa to Britain is as unforgivable as the transportation of weapons and drugs from Latin America to Los Angeles: after all, both involve exploiting the ‘warehouse of resources’ and upsetting the ‘fragile balance of species and environments’, as Williams put it (5). When human actions are judged by their levels of pollution alone, the issue of meaning – of why we do things, who we do them for, and how we might do them better – is implicitly downgraded.

This is why in his Christmas sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury quoted extensively, not from the Bible, but from Richard Dawkins, who is considered by many to be the Rottweiler of the New Atheism. What today’s eco-Christians and New Atheists share in common is a view of man as animalistic and degraded, as a ‘mammal’ (as Christopher Hitchens describes us in his book God is Not Great) which ought to take its place alongside other mammals on this mortal coil. On the way in which religion distorts people’s minds, Hitchens writes: ‘What else was to be expected of something that was produced by the close cousins of chimpanzees?’ (6) Where Williams and other eco-Christians see mankind as merely a cog in the planetary wheel, Hitchens and other New Atheists see mankind as only the sum of his genes, still, in essence, a monkey.

If yesterday’s Christians and atheists inhabited the same moral plane, fighting tooth and nail over the purpose of mankind, today’s eco-Christians and New Atheists inhabit the same amoral plane, bickering with each other but also frequently agreeing that man is a bit of a shit.

‘Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve around himself’, said Marx (7). Many of the great atheists of old were concerned with making man the centre of his moral universe; with freeing him up to become the ‘superhuman’ that he aspired to be, but which he could only glimpse in an illusory God (8). Today, by contrast, both eco-Christians and New Atheists want to bring man and God crashing back down to Earth… so that we can set about cleaning it up like the good little earthly janitors we are. At a time of such low horizons, is it any wonder that some people still do cling on to God, and seek transcendence from mundane everyday life through a belief in divinity? There is more humanity in their ‘superhuman’ delusions than there is in the monkeyman realism of eco-Christians and New Atheists.

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked.

From www.southtownstar.com:
Dan Fogelberg said it all for this restless teenager
By Donna Vickroy

December 26, 2007

Music has been an important part of my life, but never more so than when I was a teenager.

Music gives voice to feelings, fears, even rage. Music is the release that so many of us desperately need. That's likely why music fans embrace many kinds of music.

When I was growing up, I was as much a fan of Led Zeppelin as I was of John Denver, as much a follower of Pink Floyd as Dan Fogelberg.

Each artist's work served a different purpose, filled a different void.

Fogelberg died last week of prostate cancer. And as it is whenever an icon of your youth dies, his passing left me sad and feeling old.

Say what you will about the native Illinoisan's celebrity - Lord knows he was not a fan of the media - to a teenage girl and her guitar-playing best friend, his lyrics meant everything.

He spoke to our pain, our self-doubt and our longing to make sense of the crazy, often cold, world around us. I saw him in concert several times.

"Woke up one morning
The wind through the window
Reminded me winter was just 'round the bend
Somehow I just did not see it was coming
It took me by surprise again"

If I am sensitive today as an adult (as I'm often told), I was even more so as a teen.

I circulated petitions among my high school classmates to stop the clubbing of baby seals in the Arctic.

I was an avid reader of poetry.

I was a vegetarian.

And I spent countless hours alone in my room with my music.

No one longs for affirmation more than a restless, angst-ridden teen. Happily, many artists lyrics' seem to provide it. Fogelberg was foremost among them for me.

"Love when you can
Cry when you have to
Be who you must
That's a part of the plan
Await your arrival with simple survival
And one day we'll all understand"

Music often speaks your mind, without you having to say a word.

While Steely Dan, Pink Floyd and Joe Jackson sung the praises of my anger at and ridicule of life as I lived it in homogenous suburbia, Fogelberg offered a more sensitive insight into other deeper emotions: a need to belong and to feel loved. Somehow, he was able to mesh all that emotion with an appreciation for nature - something that has become very trendy of late.

"Once in a vision I came on some woods
And stood at a fork in the road
My choices were clear yet I froze with the fear
Of not knowing which way to go
Oh, one road was simple acceptance of life
The other road offered sweet peace
When I made my decision
My vision became my release"

Fogelberg is perhaps most famous for "Another Auld Lange Syne," a song about revisiting unrequited love at Christmas.

The first "wedding" decision I made after getting engaged was that Fogelberg's "Longer" would be played during our ceremony.

My personal favorite is a song called "Souvenirs." To me, it is the past tugging at the present, asking the kinds of questions one doesn't want to answer, about what might have been, what should have been. That kind of stuff.

"And down in the canyon the smoke starts to rise
It rides on the wind 'til it reaches your eyes
When faced with the past the strongest man cries ... cries
And here is a sunrise to set on your sill
The ghosts of the dawn moving near
They pass through your sorrow and leave you quite still ...
Sitting among souvenirs"

Dan Fogelberg was 56.

Donna Vickroy can be reached at (708) 633-5982 and dvickroy@southtownstar.com.

From www.postindependent.com:
He had a musical gift that touched many
By Bill Kight

Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
December 24, 2007

Sometimes an artist touches us, perhaps arousing a kindred spirit from deep within, sharing a feeling we thought was our own private emotion. And for a brief moment we come full circle to what it is to be human.

Then we go on our way with our lives. Forgetting. That's human, too.

I had forgotten how the music affected me, not hearing it much these days.

Then the song played on the radio while heading home, "Same Old Lang Syne" from the '80s. It was a tribute to Dan Fogelberg who had died at his home in Maine from prostate cancer. He was only 56.

It hit me hard. Instantly the thought came, "That could have been me. Why did he die of prostate cancer? Why am I a survivor from the same cancer?"

Getting out of the car and going into the house, a great burden lay heavy on my heart. Those same feelings from years ago that he had stirred within me while listening to his music were back.

My thoughts raced to a couple of years ago when I was fire information officer on a fire near Pagosa Springs.

My job was to visit people living in the woods and backcountry close to the fire we were managing. I gave handouts to the folks who were home and talked with them if they had any questions.

It's right up my alley. I enjoy meeting people.

While out and about, I stopped at the road to Dan Fogelberg's ranch and turned off the key. It took only a minute to make the decision not to go further.

Someone who knew had told me he was not well, was sick. Not wanting to disturb him, I headed back to the Incident Command Post in my Jeep.

No one told me it was prostate cancer, or I may have decided to visit him and to try and offer encouragement, though his disease was terminal by the time it was discovered.

Chances are he may not have been on his ranch anyway. I've been told that what time he had left was spent at his home in Maine with his family.

It wasn't about being part of the sick cult our nation suffers from, worshiping at the altar of fame. It wasn't about getting an autograph, or being able to tell people I met Dan Fogelberg. It was about respecting the privacy of someone who had reached "me" through his songs.

The legacy of his words is enough. To know someone had felt similar emotions and made those feelings into songs. What a gift.

The album has stopped playing on the turntable as I write in silence, interrupted only by the wood popping in the old stove.

I'm at a loss for words as I read the lyrics of Dan's songs.

"Pecos Mountains in the fading light ... She wraps the foggy night around her like a warming shawl ... His song is in my soul ... "

And best of all ... "I thank you for the music.

From danfogelberg.com:

From Jean

Dear friends, I'm so grateful to all of you who wrote to Dan through The Living Legacy website
with your stories of how his music touched your lives; with your uplifting words of encouragement; with your declarations of admiration and friendship.

Dan was a strong and private man, but even the mountain must tremble, and during the toughest times he gained solace and comfort from reading your letters and learning that his music had been a source of light in your lives.

Greatest of all though, was the feeling you gave him that his time here had served a purpose.

I hope you will find some peace in knowing that the joy and comfort you found in his music
winged it's way back to him through your words, prayers, and good wishes.

Thank you,
Jean Fogelberg

"There is no darkness in this place that we're bound
Love is the only thing that matters" ~ DF

From The Lompoc Record:
Singers' legacy has local roots
By Bo Poertner/Managing Editor

Former Lompoc resident Jean Marie Mayer was playing guitar and singing in a restaurant in Santa Fe, N.M., in the early 1980s when a handsome young man began showing up to watch her perform.

Soon the mellow-voiced singer and the man from a mountaintop ranch in Colorado began dating, and before long it was time for Mayer to tell her parents.

“She said she met this nice guy and he came in a couple times and listened to her sing, and they had been dating. ...,” said Leslie Mayer, from her home in Bowling Green, Ky.

“I was into art, not music. I said, ‘What's his name?' She said, ‘Dan Fogelberg.' I said, ‘Who?' And she told me.”

Fogelberg, of course, was the introspective singer-songwriter who launched a career of soft-toned songs with powerful lyrics in 1972, and cultivated a loyal following. Songs like “Same Auld Lang Syne,” “Leader of the Band” and “The Power of Gold,” were credited with helping define the era of soft-rock.

Fogelberg died Dec. 16 at their home in Maine after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 56.

“They've been fighting this for three years,” said Gene Mayer. “It's been especially hard on Jean Marie. The problem was by the time they detected it, the cancer had already metastasized. You don't get symptoms until it's too late. Dan had a tough time of it.”

Jean Marie Mayer declined to be interviewed.

“It's been a tough three years. She hasn't left his side. She'd drive him to the doctor in Boston and back home again,” Leslie Mayer said.

The Mayers moved to Mission Hills in 1960 just before Jean Marie's fifth birthday. Her father had left the Army and taken a job with a government contractor at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Her mother had lived in Santa Barbara, so they were familiar with the Central Coast.

Leslie Mayer, an artist, helped found the Lompoc Arts Association and taught art for the school district. She sold one of her paintings to buy her daughter a guitar.

She also designed Mission Hills' floats for the Flower Festival parade and painted murals. One of her murals, a history of Lompoc, occupies a hallway in the Lompoc Public Library.

“It was a great place to raise kids,” Gene Mayer said. “It was just wonderful - this almost pastoral place, thousands of acres of flower fields. The kids used to play out in the street.”

The Mayers' three daughters - Jean Marie, Leslie and Andrea - graduated from Cabrillo High School. It was at Cabrillo that Jean Marie befriended a new girl.

“She was kind enough to bring me into her circle of friends. She was kind enough to make sure I was comfortable,” said Wendelin Van Draanen, an author of children's books who lives in Pismo Beach.

The young women shared a love of music and became close friends. Van Draanen attended Jean Marie's wedding to Fogelberg in Santa Fe in 2003.

“He was very personable, very nice. He had this group of friends he had known for a long time.”

Jean Marie, who was Lompoc's 1973 Flower Festival Queen, launched her music career on the Central Coast in the 1970s, playing with various bands, such as A Touch of Glas. By the time she and her parents moved to Santa Fe in 1983, she was performing solo.

Fogelberg's career was well established when he began stopping in to catch her act, coming down from his beloved Colorado ranch, where he wrote many of his songs.

“We saw a couple of his concerts. We saw one in Tulsa and one in Mississippi - Biloxi,” Gene Mayer said. “He's got some very emotional lyrics. He's a very good artist.”

Leslie Mayer recalled the Biloxi concert.

“We had some good times. We had a private suite. An entourage of body guards took us through the catacombs to where he was to perform. You would have thought we were celebrities,” she said.

Fogelberg was disinterested in the celebrity side of the music industry.

“Dan just never wanted to do this whole paparazzi thing,” Gene Mayer said. “He was a very private person.”

Among the private Dan Fogelberg's joys was sailing and cooking.

“He loved to sail - big sailor and he was good,” Mayer said. “We went out with him two or three times on that boat. A lot of fun.

“He liked to cook. He probably cooked as much as Jean Marie did.”

“He told me once that he figured out a long time ago that putting stuff up your nose and drinking a lot - he'd seen his friends do that - wasn't a way to live your life.”

The announcement of Fogelberg's death, posted on his Web site, reflected the privacy he valued, even at the end.

“Dan left us this morning at 6 a.m. He fought a brave battle with cancer and died peacefully at home in Maine with his wife Jean at his side. ...”

Bo Poertner can be reached at 737-1053 or bpoertner@lompoc

From content.times-herald.com:
In the 'Run for the Roses' some things shouldn't change
Sports Column
By Tony Jones

If you've paid attention to this column over the last eight years, then I imagine you are familiar with my passion for thoroughbred horse racing.

If I had a dime for every time I've been asked about the sport, I'd have nearly enough coins to fill up a Wells Fargo truck.

The adoration I gained for the sport initially started with what little I could see on network television, primarily during Triple Crown season. Then a few other things and factors came to my attention and my feelings for the sport ballooned.

ESPN did a respectful job of promoting horse racing in the late 80s and early 90s. Eventually I was old enough to visit different tracks and was blessed with an understanding of the sport.

At an early age I was fortunate enough to possess a peremptory command when it came to handicapping. I knew how to make money at the track.

While Saratoga is my favorite track, I've been to Churchill Downs the most, including four trips for the Kentucky Derby. My first visit, back in 1994, is the one I most fondly recall.

My college friends and I left Churchill Downs with thousands of dollars, enough money that made us look all around the parking lot for thieves as we searched for our vehicle. In reality, it wasn't much money. But to poor college kids, each having about 17 extra Ben Franklins, made us think we were on top of the world. Our eternal thanks to Go For Gin, the 1994 Derby winner.

Quality Derby tickets are not easy to come by, especially for college kids. We had no choice but to watch from the infield.

The infield at Churchill Downs. It's one of the top spots for higher education in all of Kentucky. People think a NASCAR infield is wild. I've never seen such behavior.

Every soul is seemingly intoxicated and all searching for a good time and most importantly, for the winner of the biggest race. The rainy weather on that afternoon made the experience even more memorable.

The rain pelted down and since we had nowhere to hide, we got soaked. That morning and day we were repeatedly serenaded by a song called "Run For The Roses" by the late Dan Fogelberg.

And it's Run for the Roses

As fast as you can

Your fate is delivered

Your moment's at hand

It's the chance of a lifetime

In a lifetime of chance

And it's high time you joined in the dance

It's high time you joined in the dance

From sire to sire

It's born in the blood

The fire of a mare

And the strength of a stud

It's breeding and it's training

And it's something unknown

That drives you and carries you home

I knew little about Fogelberg, except for his hits "Longer" and "Same Old Lang Syne", the latter an extreme favorite of mine this time every year. As a teenager in 1989, the only thing I requested at Christmas was a home stereo with a CD player and double tape deck.

Christmas morning I turned the FM radio on and the first song I ever heard on that stereo was Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne". I've never forgotten that.

I went through a number of changes in more than a decade with that stereo but I still get chills when I hear that song more than 20 years later.

The depth of emotion in "Same Old Lang Syne", written and performed by Fogelberg, has an inherent sadness that speaks to what might have been, but will never be.

Prostate cancer took Fogelberg away from us last Sunday at the age of 56. If Fogelberg had this one song to be remembered, it would be enough, for it qualifies as an absolute classic.

I have a 14 year-old nephew, Taylor, whom I have attempted to groom to appreciate all things ancient. All things but music and black and white movies. He doesn't budge in those departments. But he's got to give a little.

I still have that old stereo, although it hasn't been turned on in years. Taylor wants that stereo and I agreed to let him have it.

On one condition. The first song he must listen to is Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne".

Some things just shouldn't change

From www.theadvertiser.com:
Growing up in a care-free time with Dan Fogelberg
By Jan Risher

My mama was the baby of her family of 11 kids, which is why most of my cousins are older than me. The truth is, some of my cousins are older than my mother. But that's the way it is when families grow beyond the logic of a small house on a small farm in the middle of nowhere. The generations overlap.

And older cousins can teach you things.

Mine certainly did.

I'd credit one cousin or another with introducing me to or teaching me about nearly every major aspect of life - good food, good drink, good music, good conversation and more.

Not necessarily in that order.

Because they were older (or because their parents were more indulgent than my own), my cousins had all the cool stuff like stereo turntables and album collections and lava lamps and almost anything that was too cool for a dorky kid like myself. But I took advantage of my time with my cousins, I tried to brush up on the cool factor they knew so much about.

I turned on (and off) their lava lamps and watched in fascination.

I rifled through their album collections.

I carefully placed the needle on the 33s.

I listened to their music.

And that was how I learned to love Dan Fogelberg long before he hit the big-time with Longer, Same Old Lang Syne and Leader of the Band.

I was either 10 or 11 when I discovered his albums, Souvenirs and Homefree.

In all sincerity, his early music changed my life. Whether that's because the profoundness of his lyrics or my impressionable age, I can't be certain. But a three-chord progression of any of those songs can zoom me back to a different time and place.

For the last six years I lived in my parent's home, Dan Fogelberg was my alarm clock. I woke up to his moody melody of To the Morning, every single day.

Yes, the repetition of his tunes didn't wear nearly as well for the rest of my family. My younger brother still refers to him as Dan Eatabooger.

Even still and though my brother, Robin, won't admit it now, the best time the two of us ever had together was the one time we propped the giant stereo speaker beside the front window of our house and blared the Fogelberg tune, Live in the Country, loud enough until the neighbors complained. But before they did, my brother and I danced like crazy children.

The song spoke to both of us. My brother only wanted to live in the country and though, it certainly wasn't my choice of the albums, I was happy that, even if just for a moment, someone else could share in the joy the music brought me.

To where the sky meets the land

And the living is not planned

And the children can laugh just cause they're living

I spent most of last weekend with my family, including many of the cousins who shaped so much of my youth. On Sunday night, when I got home, I learned that my man, Dan, had passed away after a three-year battle with prostate cancer.

The news took my breath away. I spent the weekend with so many cousins - all so alive and vibrant. Somewhere in my convoluted mind, Dan Fogelberg and his music played a role in the relationships I had with the very people who introduced me to him and listened to him with me. That was the me they knew best.

Moments after I learned of Dan's passing, I shooed my family away and sat and listened to the music of my youth. I cried for a good hour. I was happy the songs weren't totally cheesy. I was happy that I still liked the music and understood why it mattered so much to me.

Love when you can

Cry when you have to

Be who you must

That's a part of the plan

Jan Risher is managing editor of The Times of Acadiana. Her column appears on Sundays. E-mail her at jan. risher@timesofacadiana.com.

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