These posts are either "jump pages" for my weblog or posts-in-process that will eventually appear there. For what it's worth, here's an archive of these random bits. The picture to the left is by a famous comic book artist.
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Architects Unveil Revised Freedom Tower Design
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Officials presented today the final design of the building to be constructed on the World Trade Center site, revealing a slender curving tower that will rise 1,776 feet above downtown New York City, a height symbolic of the year of America's independence.
The model of the Freedom Tower, as it is called, was presented by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Gov. George E. Pataki at Federal Hall National Memorial on Wall Street.
"This is a wonderful day not just for New York but for America," Mr. Bloomberg said. He said construction of the tower would represent a dramatic reclaiming of a part of the New York City skyline that was lost on Sept. 11, 2001, and that it formed an important milestone in the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan.
Mr. Pataki, in a speech before a white curtain was drawn back to reveal the design model in its first official presentation, said the tower was intended to serve as a memorial to those who died in the terror attacks and to show that "freedom will always triumph over terror."
The 70 occupied stories will rise 1,000 to 1,100 feet, more than 200 feet shorter than the twin towers. They will be capped by a mesh-like network of open levels intended to capture the wind flowing off the Hudson River that will feed a nest of wind turbines to produce energy for the building.
The tower area is 2.6 million square feet; at the crown there will be an observation deck and public place. While the structure would reach 1,776 feet, with the antenna perhaps soaring to 2,000 feet.
Its spire is intended to be evocative of the Statue of Liberty's upraised arm, David M. Childs, the architect, said.
"It must be iconic," Mr. Childs said. "Simple and pure in its form. That would proclaim the resiliency and spirit of our democracy."
"This is a momentous day," said Daniel Libeskind, the master planner of the site. He said the site must symbolize a memorial for the heroes who died there and it was also pertinent to the resurgence of Lower Manhattan.
The final design evolved after a compromise was reached and several design impasses were cleared.
Officials said that it would be the tallest structure in the world when it is completed in 2008 or 2009. The cornerstone will be laid by the third anniversary of the attacks next year.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had called the design an "idea" by Mr. Libeskind that was "given form" by Mr. Childs, a partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
The east and west facades of the occupied parts of the tower will curve gently to create a torqued effect. They will be topped by the enormous open-air structure supported on twin concrete cores studded with the electricity-generating windmills and surrounded by a network of cables.
The windmills may generate 20 percent of the electrical power needed by the building.
Mr. Childs and Mr. Libeskind had disagreed about aesthetics, engineering and their own respective roles. They are also working for different clients whose interests sometimes conflict sharply.
As described by the development corporation, the tower will bear Mr. Libeskind's influence in its height.
Mr. Childs's contributions include the open-air structure at the top of the building, framed in cables reminiscent of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Bush on Phantom WMD: "What's The Difference?"
(from Liberal Oasis--posted Dec. 17 1 AM ET)
Last night, ABC News aired an hour-long interview of Dubya by Diane Sawyer.
A fair amount of it was the typical softball questions we have come to expect.
But for about five minutes, Sawyer pressed Dubya on the question of the Phantom WMD harder than anyone has, perhaps harder than anyone has pressed him on anything since 9/11.
And in response, Dubya was defensive and evasive, clinging tightly to his talking points.
Judging from the wire reports of the interview, it doesn’t look like anyone in the mainstream media is going to pick up on the fact that when faced with such questions, Bush has no good direct response.
The wires focused on Bush’s call for the death penalty for Saddam, and his remarks on gay marriage, which had varying interpretations.
That's not surprising. In both those cases, Bush said something new, hence it is “news” by traditional standards.
Evading questions with old talking points doesn’t meet that standard.
(UPDATE Dec. 17 2 PM ET -- A late night AP writeup, that was mostly about the death penalty remark, did also touch upon Dubya's WMD remarks.)
Since the full transcript of the interview does not seem to be available on the internet anywhere, below is an extended excerpt (with a few helpful observations in parentheses) of the WMD portion of the interview.
(UPDATE Dec. 17 11:45 AM ET -- ABC's site now has a more complete transcript posted, in three parts.)
This is the transcript of what the ABC audience saw. The interview appeared to be edited, and video clips and graphics were interspersed throughout.
It’s long, but worth reading. And more commentary to follow.
SAWYER: 50 percent of the American people have said that they think the Administration exaggerated the evidence going into the war with Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction, connection to terrorism.
Are the American people wrong? Misguided?
BUSH: No, the intelligence I operated on was good sound intelligence, the same intelligence that my predecessor operated on.
The – there is no doubt, uh, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. Uh, the – otherwise, the United Nations, by the way, wouldn’t have passed, y’know, resolution after resolution after resolution demanding that he disarm.
I first went to the United Nations, September the 12th 2002, and said:
“You’ve given this man resolution after resolution after resolution. He’s ignoring them. You step up, and see that he honor those resolutions. Otherwise you become a feckless debating society.”
And so for the sake of peace, and for the sake of freedom of the Iraqi people, and for the sake of security of the country, and for the sake of the credibility of international institutions, a group of us moved.
And the world is better for it.
(Bush shows look of self-satisfaction)
SAWYER: When you take a look back --
(Video clip of Dick Cheney saying, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons -- ”)
SAWYER: -- Vice President Cheney said there is no doubt Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. Not programs, not intent.
(Shot of Bush shifting in chair, looking a bit annoyed.)
SAWYER: There is no doubt he has weapons of mass destruction.
Secretary Powell --
(Video clip of Powell at UN saying, “Iraq today has a stockpile -- ”)
SAWYER: -- said a hundred to five hundred tons of chemical weapons.
And now the inspectors say that there’s no evidence of these weapons existing right now.
(Video clip of Bush at the State of the Union address saying, “significant quantities of uranium --”)
SAWYER: The yellowcake in Niger. George Tenet has said that shouldn’t have been in your speech.
(Graphic of Tenet and the quote “This was a mistake.” Cut to Bush cocking his head, still annoyed.)
SAWYER: Secretary Powell talked about mobile labs, again the intelligence, the inspectors have said they can’t confirm this, they can’t corroborate.
(Video of Bush at the SOTU again, saying, “suitable for nuclear weapons production -- ”)
SAWYER: “Nuclear” suggested that he was on the way on an active nuclear program.
(Bush’s right leg starts to bounce anxiously)
SAWYER: David Kay: “We have not discovered significant evidence of an active -- ”
BUSH: Yet. Yet.
SAWYER: Is it, “yet?”
BUSH: But what David Kay did discover was he had a weapons program. And had that knowledge --
SAWYER: Missiles.
BUSH: Let me finish for a second. No, it was more extensive than missiles.
Had that knowledge been, uh, examined by the United Nations, in other words, had David Kay’s report been placed in front of the United Nations, he, Saddam Hussein, would have been in breach of 1441, which meant it was a casus belli.
And, uh, look --
(Bush’s voice begins to rise)
BUSH: -- There’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous person. And there’s no doubt we had a body of evidence proving that.
And there is no doubt that the president must act, after 9/11, to make America a more secure country.
(Look of self-satisfaction returns.)
SAWYER: Um, again I’m just trying to ask -- and these are supporters, people who believed in the war --
BUSH: Heh-heh-heh.
SAWYER: -- who have asked the question.
BUSH: Well you can keep asking the question, and my answer is going to be the same. Saddam was a danger, and the world is better off because we got rid of him.
(Raised voice cracks a bit on “rid.” A pause, then Bush shoots Sawyer an exasperated look as if to say “Get it?”, though with a bit of a smile.)
SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still --
BUSH: So what’s the difference?
(Smile's gone.)
SAWYER: Well --
BUSH: The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were acquire weapons [sic], he would be the danger. That’s the -- that’s what I’m trying to explain to you.
A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with.
And it was done after 12 long years of the world saying, “the man’s a danger.” And so, we got rid of him.
And there’s no doubt the world is a safer, freer place as a result of Saddam being gone.
SAWYER: But, but again some, some of the critics have said this, combined with the failure to establish proof of elaborate terrorism contacts, has indicated that there’s just not precision, at best, and misleading, at worst. [sic]
BUSH: Y’know, uh, look (shakes head). What (chuckle) what we based our evidence on was a very sound National Intelligence Estimate.
SAWYER: Nothing should have been more precise?
BUSH: I – I – I – I made my decision based upon enough intelligence to tell me that the country was threatened with Saddam Hussein in power.
SAWYER: What would it take to convince you he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction?
BUSH: Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.
(Pause, as both smile.)
SAWYER: And if he doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction --
BUSH: You can keep asking the question. I’m telling ya, I made the right decision for America.
Because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait.
But the fact that he is not there, is uh, means America is a more secure country.
So what can we take away from this, practically speaking?
That Bush doesn’t have good enough talking points to withstand serious questioning on this issue.
Now, Karl Rove may be compelled to tinker with them as a result. But until there’s evidence of that, the issue should be treated as a vulnerability.
Granted, this issue isn’t going to be put to Bush directly very often in the near future, as he already exposes himself very little to serious questioning.
And he signaled to Sawyer he has a bit of a Rose Garden strategy in mind for the campaign:
…early in the process there’ll be all kinds of pressures to respond to this, or respond to that…
…and I just want to warn you, I’m going to do my job. I got a lot to do. As we say, the dance card is quite full these days.
But if the eventual nominee starts to push the issue -- say, in springtime advertisements -- Bush may yet find himself under uncomfortable pressure.
Surely, there are downsides in flogging issues of “the past”, as pundits will complain you’re not talking about Iraq’s future.
But getting under your opponent’s skin has its benefits, taking off some of that commander-in-chief sheen.
And if Diane Sawyer can do that, think of the possibilities.
John D. MacDonald's Lush Landscape of Crime
By Jonathan Yardley
Tuesday, November 11, 2003; Page C01
An occasional series in which The Post's book critic reconsiders notable and/or neglected books from the past.
For my money, John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee is one of the great characters in contemporary American fiction -- not crime fiction; fiction, period -- and millions of readers surely agree. There are, as is announced across the top of each Fawcett Crest paperback volume in the series, "32 Million Travis McGee Books in Print!" Most of the other crime novels that MacDonald wrote over his long and astonishingly prolific career have been consigned to out-of-print oblivion -- in many cases most undeservedly so -- but Travis rolls along, keeping MacDonald's memory alive and reminding us that he was a far more accomplished and important novelist than is generally recognized.
McGee was born in the early 1960s. MacDonald, then in his mid-forties, had built a substantial following for the crime novels he published in paperback originals and the short stories he published in pulp magazines, but that following was limited largely to readers of genre fiction. Then, in 1962, he somewhat reluctantly agreed to start work on a series built around a single character. The first, "The Deep Blue Goodbye," appeared in 1964. It was followed by 20 others, the last of which, "The Lonely Silver Rain," was published in 1985, a year before MacDonald's death.
McGee is owner of the "Busted Flush, 52-foot barge-type houseboat, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar, Lauderdale." He's a World War II veteran, 6 feet 4 inches tall, solidly built. He isn't "exactly a clerical type," in the words of one of the many woman for whom he does important favors: "You are huge and it is obvious you have been whacked upon, and you look as though you damn well enjoyed returning the favor." He's catnip for the ladies, but he is by his own admission "an incurable romantic who thinks the man-woman thing shouldn't be a contest," who believes "the biggest and most important reason in the world [for lovemaking] is to be together with someone in a way that makes life a little less bleak and solitary and lonesome."
The subject of this Second Reading could be any of the McGee novels, but I've chosen "The Dreadful Lemon Sky" because it was the first that I read. In 1976 I was the book editor of the Miami Herald, across Florida from MacDonald's home on Siesta Key. He was about to publish "Condominium," his first hardcover, non-genre novel, which had been chosen as a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and I had been commissioned by the club to write a brief piece about him for its newsletter.
This entailed a hurry-up course in MacDonald's fiction, which I'd never read. I mainlined a couple dozen of his novels, from early mysteries to McGees to "Condominium" itself. I was bowled over. This man whom I'd snobbishly dismissed as a paperback writer turned out to be a novelist of the highest professionalism and a social critic armed with vigorous opinions stingingly expressed. His prose had energy, wit and bite, his plots were humdingers, his characters talked like real people, and his knowledge of the contemporary world was -- no other word will do -- breathtaking.
MacDonald himself turned out, when I interviewed him in his comfortable, unpretentious house, to be a large, calm, genial, quiet yet talkative man: a gentleman. By then he had established himself, as I wrote in a profile of him for the Herald's Sunday magazine, as "the pre-eminent 'Florida novelist,' " a distinction earned by remarkably close observation of the state: its grifters and operators and big-bucks crooks, its decent ordinary people, its overdeveloped land and polluted water. He had harsh things to say about Florida in "Condominium" and many of his other books. When I asked him about this he said: "I've always recognized that Florida is a slightly tacky state," and added, "You love it in spite of itself."
Close questioning revealed not merely that he had a complex love-hate relationship with his adopted state (he was born, in 1916, in Pennsylvania) but that he was a constant reader with high standards. He thought some genre novelists were taken too seriously, just as Thomas Pynchon was ("One is overvalued because the critic finds some elements of literacy in it, the other because he can't understand it"), and he was a tough critic who expected others' prose to have "felicity, an element of aptness." One passage from my tapes deserves full quotation:
"I just cannot read people like Leon Uris and James Michener. When you've covered one line, you can guess the next one. I like people who know the nuances of words, who know how to stick the right one in the right place. Sometimes you can laugh out loud at an exceptionally good phrase. I find it harder and harder to find fiction to read, because I either read it with dismay at how good it is or disgust at how bad it is. I do like the guys like John Cheever that have a sense of story, because, goddammit, you want to know what happens to somebody. You don't want a lot of self-conscious little logjams thrown in your way."
So, you quite properly ask, how well did MacDonald meet the standards he set for others? Very well indeed. "The Dreadful Lemon Sky" proves the point. McGee has been taking his ease in the Busted Flush when a woman steps aboard the boat at 4 in the morning. He had a one-night stand with her a few years ago, now sees that the "years had aged her more than she could reasonably expect and had tested and toughened her." She presses a package upon him and asks him to safeguard it; inside is nearly $95,000. Two weeks later she is killed by a truck outside a town up the Atlantic coast. "Knight-errant" that he is, McGee goes there to have a look:
"It was easy to see the shape and history of Bayside, Florida. There had been a little town on the bay shore, a few hundred people, a sleepy downtown with live oaks and Spanish moss. Then International Amalgamated Development had moved in, bought a couple of thousand acres, and put in shopping centers, town houses, condominiums, and rental apartments, just south of town. Next had arrived Consolidated Construction Enterprises and done the same thing north of town. Smaller operators had done the same things on a smaller scale west of town. When downtown decayed, the town fathers widened the streets and cut down the shade trees in an attempt to look just like a shopping center. It didn't work. It never does. This was instant Florida, tacky and stifling and full of ugly and spurious energies. They had every chain food-service outfit known to man, interspersed with used-car lots and furniture stores."
There you have it: sharp, seamless prose, bull's-eye aim, romanticism and cynicism playing subtly off each other. The writer is MacDonald but the speaker is McGee, who is the narrator of all the novels in the series. The relationship between McGee and his creator is intimate, fascinating and a bit difficult to unravel. MacDonald doesn't seem to be projecting when he makes McGee a tender, accomplished Casanova, or when he gets McGee out of big trouble with astonishing feats of physical strength and resourcefulness; MacDonald himself seems to have been a one-woman man, happily married for nearly a half-century, and much of the violence in his novels is depicted with tongue in cheek, stylized and exaggerated.
There can be no doubt, though, that McGee speaks for MacDonald. That was made plain right off the bat in "The Deep Blue Goodbye," when McGee introduced himself by ticking off his aversions: "credit cards, payroll deductions, insurance programs, retirement benefits, savings accounts, Green Stamps, time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons, miracle fabrics, deodorants, check lists, time payments, political parties, lending libraries, television, actresses, junior chambers of commerce, pageants, progress and manifest destiny." As enemies lists go, that one is fine. But just to make things interesting, MacDonald has another voice in the McGee novels: McGee's friend and occasional sidekick Meyer, "a semiretired economist . . . the listening ear of a total understanding and forgiveness, a humble wisdom." Humble, yes, but tart as well. Here -- yes, one more long, juicy quote -- he reports to McGee after reconnoitering a singles' apartment complex in Bayside:
"There's a kind of . . . watchful anxiety about those people. It's as if they're all in spring training, trying out for the team, all trying to hit the long ball, trying to be a star. . . . Pools and saunas and a gym. Four-channel sound systems. Health fads. Copper bracelets. 'The Joy of Sex' on each and every coffee table, I would guess. Water beds, biofeedback machines. There doesn't seem to be any kind of murky kinky flavor about them. No group perversion scenes. Just a terrible urgency about finding and maintaining an orgasm batting average acceptable to the peer group."
Bingo. As one who quite inadvertently spent a good deal of time in a couple of those places in Miami in the mid-'70s, I can testify that Meyer/MacDonald has hit the game-winner. Every detail and every nuance in that passage is exactly right. But MacDonald always got it right. He was endlessly curious, and it didn't hurt that he'd been to Harvard Business School. Unlike most American novelists, he knew about the real world and viewed it with interest, with dismay perhaps, but only rarely with contempt. He had an eye that saw everything and a memory that soaked it all up. To flesh out "The Dreadful Lemon Sky" he had to familiarize himself with marina management, planetary movement, the marijuana trade, the specs of a Beechcraft Baron airplane, biofeedback and strategy for lane changes in traffic -- to mention only a few.
The abundance of keenly observed detail gives the McGee series its texture, but McGee himself is the rock at its center. He does what he calls "salvage work," described in "The Deep Blue Goodbye" by one of his lady friends: ". . . if X has something valuable and Y comes along and takes it away from him, and there is absolutely no way in the world X can ever get it back, then you come in and make a deal with X to get it back, and keep half. Then you just . . . live on that until it starts to run out." As McGee says in "The Dreadful Lemon Sky," he believes that "retirement comes when you are too old to enjoy it, so I take some of mine whenever I can," living at ease on the take from one piece of "salvage" until his funds run low and it's time to go back to work.
MacDonald concluded, after collecting a baker's dozen of his early stories ("The Good Old Stuff," 1982) that "a precursor of Travis McGee" is to be found in Park Falkner, the protagonist of a couple he published in 1950. Perhaps so. But MacDonald refined and deepened the character; indeed about the only resemblance between the two is that each fancies himself a force for justice in a world where there's far too little of it. There's a whiff of meanness in Falkner that is nowhere to be found in McGee, who is out to do good, in his own quixotic fashion, and he does a bunch of it.
The second time around for "The Dreadful Lemon Sky"? Pure joy. Justice is done, blunt opinions are expressed, a lady or two is made happy, and the Busted Flush still floats. If you're new to McGee and wonder where to begin, any place will do, but there's a lot to be said for starting with "The Deep Blue Goodbye" and reading the books in order of publication. That way you can watch as they get better and better. You might like to know, too, that the titles are color-coded to help you tell them apart: turquoise, lavender, orange, tan, crimson, pink, purple, gold, etc. Florida colors, for the best "Florida novels" you'll ever read.