This is not a good idea.

Whether or not the owners or customers agree with the right wing viewpoint, no one can dispute the fact that every news network — and particularly this one — has a negative outlook.

When people are shopping, mood is important.

Very important.

Slamming Obama, and the economy, 24/7, may feed those who are frustrated.  Many customers may agree with every word.  But it does not lift one’s mood.  It does not make for a happy consumer.  It won’t make people feel like buying.

The big grocery stores know this. They always play snappy music.

Watching Fox News all day (or any news channel) will put everybody in a funk — and, in an economy that’s already tough, will certainly not help a business survive.

It was just uploaded to YouTube a few hours ago.  I clicked “Like,” along with 41 other people.  Four people gave it a thumbs down.  However, the comments are overwhelmingly negative.  People calling him “an idiot” and “a commie.”  People assigning labels, in a negative context, of “collectivism” and “a new world order.”

That’s not what I was hearing at all.

This tells me that positive ideas offend some people mightily — and those offended people tend to express themselves rather loudly (if not coherently).

The question is, am I now joining the cynical club, negating the quality of this message by bringing attention to the crackpot responses?

the heat
takes a minute
comes inside
crawls in the gut

a hunger
for something out there
something that’s missing

a thirst
between summer sky
and dry dirt
on which
I barely can walk

For the first time in four and a half years, I don’t have to print 10,000 copies of Coffee News — tonight, and tomorrow, and tomorrow night…

My printing equipment, after 4.3 million copies, has bit the dust.  Rather than buy a new machine or continue calling — more and more frequently — for repairs, we’ve contracted with printer to do it.

It costs a little more, but there are several wonderful advantages to this:

• I have a weekend — for the first time in four and a half years
• I won’t have ink on my hands all the time (and sometimes in my eyes), a major source of aggravation
• The paper looks a lot better, which will probably result in more ad sales, which will pay for the extra cost
• I’ll have more time, which I’ll use to blog, and write other things (I thought I would mow the lawn, but am backing down on that one)
• I have a weekend…

In the column, she reprints a letter, written by a school principal about his son’s first day of school.

Mom quoted this letter each year, and Beffie is quoting Mom quoting the letter. It’s such a beautiful passage that it always chokes me up — as it does so many…

She also quotes one of my blog posts.  Thanks, Beffie.

As bad as the economy is, the GOP would benefit politically from it getting worse, not better.  If it isn’t actually getting worse, they can at least say it’s getting worse — or fear it’s getting worse.  Even if it’s gradually getting better — they can still say it’s worse.

There’s nothing new about that.

According to Republican politicians, we’re supposed to fear many things:  including every minority group (and there are a lot of those).

Of course we should also fear the budget deficit.

There’s nothing new about that either.

They’ve been singing this song since the 70′s — despite the fact that Republicans contribute to deficit spending as much as Democrats.

Economists say that government spending is needed now, more than ever, in order to stimulate the economy.  Economists say the time to reduce the deficit is later, when we have peace, prosperity, and growth.  Economists say that reducing the deficit now would make things much worse.

Republican politicians ignore this.  They know that fear works better in elections.

It’s hard to fear abstract things like federal budget deficits.  So we hear things like passing on debt to our children, or even losing our freedom, and our cherished constitution (I don’t really see the connection, but I’ve heard a lot of people try to make it).

To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger, all this talk from ‘economic girly men’ is working (along with the real facts about economic hard times).

Consider this:

U.S. Birth Rate Hits Record Low, Experts Say Recession To Blame

I try to be an optimist — so I recommend young families to do what Republicans would probably warn against:  have babies!

There’s a good chance they will, as adults, become members of a birth trough generation, and benefit from being one of the lucky few.

Sure, they may struggle, and the children may not live luxurious childhoods, but think of the opportunity.

Malcolm Gladwell offers a fascinating discussion of birth troughs in Outliers.

He talks about people who were born in the depths of The Great Depression.  They had rough childhoods and many spent time overseas, fighting a World War.  But the ones who survived prospered in the long run.  They had smaller class sizes, got lots of attention, and had less competition for good jobs.

That may be the case now.

Facebook is phenomenally popular for many reasons.

But I think the voting system — specifically the “like” button — is key.  It makes the site inherently positive.  That’s the core principle at work.

On Facebook, it’s easy to like things.  It requires a simple click.

There’s no elegant way to dislike something.

People try.  There are groups that petition the company to add a dislike button.

There are scams — virus installers that offer to add a dislike button.

Frequently, people post negative material and receive sympathetic comments.  After all, it’s a place for friends.  But negative thoughts are not the standard fare.  They don’t get a lot of traction on Facebook.

A friend of mine once posted that his truck caught fire, and another friend clicked that he “liked” it.  That struck me as pretty funny (knowing both guys).  So I liked it too.

But it wasn’t very nice.  Certainly not positive.

The normal activity is to share what’s good about life.  Certainly the act of sharing what’s good entices people to seek more experiences of the good.

My theory is that this increases real life appreciation of what feels good, which, in turn, actually makes people feel better.

It’s different from YouTube or Amazon‘s rating system, which invites people to evaluate and rank material.  On Facebook, it’s all good.

The evening news programs are sponsored by drug companies, many of them advertising antidepressants.  These companies also advertise with Google.  I’ve never seen antidepressants advertised on Facebook.

Facebook is an ingenious company and well-made site.  Some say it is trying to take over the internet, or even be the internet.  I say the the heart of the matter is the ubiquitous “like” button, the ease of clicking it, the support it offers, and the constant mindset it creates, inviting people to share what can only be liked (or ignored).  It is this that makes Facebook more than social networking.  It’s an interactive engine for positive thinking about our lives.

In a vast internet sea of free thought and information that runs the gamut from hilarious to horrible, Facebook simply encourages people to think, be, and do positive.

And people like that.

what is art?

Norman Mailer said that “once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever.”

Which is where we are now.  The Clyde Overcash/Anne Caldwell Cave/What is Art? conflict is basically over.  The rest is art.

I just finished reading several articles in today’s Salisbury Post that further advance and illuminate the story.

Emily Ford column

Sarah Hall Column

Emily Ford story

A story about the history of underwear art in Salisbury

My favorite line was the last of Sarah Hall’s:  “In this case, the finest art may be the art of forgiveness.”

This event comes just after a local production of Yasmina Reza’s play, Art, which is no accident.  This is a small town where the power of suggestion prevails like anywhere else.

Like the play, this incident has nothing to do with art.  It’s about, as Sarah says, the problem we human beings have with forgiveness — a simple act that looks so simple and feels so difficult.

In Reza’s play, a guy buys a work of art and gets into an argument.  The play is about the argument, not the art.

In Salisbury, a guy hangs out a pair of underwear and calls it art.  Somebody steals it.  The rest is about the dispute, not the art.

But Art gives the story a little glamor.  A bit of pizazz.

If forgiveness were as simple as it looks and sounds, then we would have no play.  And we would have no news story.  We would certainly not have a juicy trial to look forward to.

And we would have little if any art.

Whether it’s on the surface, or in some place too deep for words, conflict is the stuff of art.  We need it.  It stimulates our thinking and our emotions.  Otherwise — what have we got?  People going to work and being productive and getting along?  All hugs and kisses.  No slings and arrows?  Pleasantville?

Where’s the fun in that?

One could argue that we need art in order to examine our conflicts and be civilized beings.  It’s better than the real life alternative — acting on them.

Years ago, when somebody stole my bike, it wasn’t much of a story.

But stealing a pair of underwear art is just too rich.

One of our neighbors came ’round with a petition the other day.

There are plans to build a cell phone tower on the Catawba campus, near our house.  The petition was asking the planning board to postpone a decision until the neighborhood has time to study “the situation.”

The board met last week, and I haven’t heard from anybody who knows what happened.

We’ve had a few battles in the past over zoning.  If they want to build a dorm or parking lot across the street from my house, I want to register my voice against it.

But I’m not that unhappy about a cell phone tower that’s on the other side of the campus.

In fact, it would be kind of nice to get a better signal at home.

A few years ago, we did away with the home phone.  We noticed that we never used it and it cost a lot.

At that time, we seemed to enjoy a better signal on cell phones than we have recently.  I think the AT&T signal has degraded a bit because of the iPhone’s popularity.

But if it weren’t the iPhone, it would be something else.  These devices are a fact of life.

I’m not sure if we’ll be able to see the tower from our house or not.  I doubt it.

I’m pretty sure I’m not nearly as hypocritical as some of the politicians I see on TV.  Consider the adulterers leading the battle to impeach a President for adultery.  The deficit hawks leading the battle for massive tax cuts for the super wealthy.  Or even those who have had government health care since the day they were born railing against the adequacy of government health care.

But I also know that I’m not Gandhi or Henry David Thoreau.  I’m a normal human being, limited in knowledge and point of view, capable of arranging my thoughts to justify what I do — and probably equally as hypocritical as the next guy or gal.

Wouldn’t protesting a cell phone tower, while making daily use of a cell phone, make the hypocrisy a little blatant?

So I see no need to fight this one.  If Catawba College can lease a bit of property and make a few dollars for higher education — and enhance the quality of our phone calls — I’m okay with that.

Of course, I’m about three blocks away from the site.  I’m sure I’d feel different if I lived right next door.