The latest issue of The New York Review of Books has a rather snarky article on the popularity of the tv series Mad Men. The writer is definitely seeing something different than I am in the same material, although there’s a Venn diagram of sorts. After my experience with the world of The Lord of the Rings I thought I was immune to fandom of any sort, but I’m hooked on Mad Men (relatively speaking, at any rate—I DO have a life).

The NYRB piece essentially trashes the show as little more than a heavily stylized soap opera. Therein, I think, the writer displays his bias, because he cites the shallowness of certain scenes and episodes where, from my vantage point, he seems to have missed subtlety and nuance on a wholesale basis. Some of it is due to the great gender divide, but that’s not all of it. He does get it right at the end, in saying that the show’s greatest appeal is with people who are of an age with the children in the show and so have a child’s eye view of the events of that historical time period. That hits the nail on the head for me. I calculated at one point that I’m a year older than the little girl in the show, Sally Draper, the daughter of the protagonist. So much of the show rings true with me—the authentic flavor of the time period, the seemingly inexplicable world of the adults, the frightening intrusion of larger world political events into the supposed safety of home and family.

I didn’t start watching until the third season had ended, so I caught up with a crash course of DVDs last year. One of my earliest reactions was “No wonder our mothers were crazy!” But I think the deeper level to the show’s depiction of early ‘60s sexism, racism, etc. is a knowledge of what lies in store. I came of age during the late ‘60s, when all hell was breaking loose, and I have just the vaguest memories of the time period depicted in Mad Men. The show works as just a stylish, entertaining soap opera, for sure, but it’s well enough done that it provides an opportunity to revisit a pivotal era in American history. That, in turn, sheds light on what came after.

Educational and wildly entertaining at the same time—my favorite bill of fare!

One of the more interesting things going on these days is that ideas that were in vogue 40 years ago are back with a vengeance. The Tea Party activists who are busy tearing apart the Republican Party represent little more than a farcical revival of the substantive critique of American politics and society that was laid down by the more responsible elements of the Left back in the ‘60s. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. This time around, we have a real shot at making a conservationist ethic stick. It could get interesting.

I took the dogs down to the site of the old explosives factory for a hike this morning. It was quite windy (it IS the middle of winter, after all), but with a sunny day and a digital camera, I was surrounded by riches.

At a glance, the vestiges of an old bowling alley from the long vanished town that once stood on the site resemble the remains of the Temple of Mithras in the middle of London’s Financial District.

A herd of goats has been moving around the park munching on the fields for the past few months, with the result that they’re neatly cropped and ready for a burst of spring growth.

A black powder press is on display out in the eucalyptus forest. The trees were planted to serve as a buffer against accidental explosions, but they’re actually highly flammable. The whole area is practically right on top of the Hayward Fault. Nineteenth century science had less information to work from than we do today.

The wind whipped up unusual breakers rolling in from the usually placid waters of the bay.

I thought I saw an Entwife lounging on the forest floor. Nothing would surprise me, these days.

umbering, tillage of the soil, and ownership of the spacious harbor of San Francisco had been the main objects proposed by the annexation of California to the United States. But another advantage, which threw all these into the shade, was revealed at almost the moment of its formal transfer. It was a land of treasure-trove. Gold, mineral wealth of inestimable worth, lay ready to tempt cupidity, in rock, in crevices, in river beds, the moment these possessions became ours. A century earlier, so runs the story, Jesuits found gold in this region and were expelled in consequence. Minister Thompson’s book gave gold and silver a passing mention, while describing the resources of California. Mines nearer the heart of Mexico, which had been lately pledged for the security of British loans, once yielded a handsome return, but forty years of civil disorder left them unproductive. Indeed, since 1810, products of the precious ore in both hemispheres had fallen off greatly, though the yield in the New World far excelled that of the Old. Hitherto, however, bowels of gold and silver had belonged to the sicklier races; we, like our hardy English progenitors, had boasted rather of our coal and iron, products for common use. The gold region of the United States, as hitherto defined, lay along the mountains which bordered Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia; and science, capital, and skill, while slavery infected that region, had all been wanting to develop or so much as locate these resources. But now this republic was on the verge of a discovery which would impart a new influence in the civilized world, and give new values and a new impulse to finance and the industrial activities. Had not God guided us? Was not the Union working out some sublime mission of manifest destiny?

– James Schouler, from The World’s Great Events: A History of the World from Ancient to Modern Times, B.C. 4004 to A.D. 1903 (in five volumes) by Esther Singleton, published in 1903 by P.F. Collier & Son, New York

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.

My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mîr Camar Uddîn Mast, “Being seated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines.” I kept Homer’s Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that I lived.

–Excerpt from Walden, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

There was some interesting chatter out on the more intelligent fringes of the Information Superhighway last week about the underlying symbolism and subtext of the White House’s hosting of Chinese President Hu Jintao last week. Apparently, Obama might have been perceived as overly deferential on his official state visit to China last year, and this occasion presented an opportunity to set the record straight about American robustness, circa 2011. Every detail of the State Dinner, down to Michelle Obama’s sassy, dragon red dress and the kick-ass jazz concert was choreographed to the nth degree. Fascinating, especially given the history of American stereotyping of anybody and everything other than plain old meat and potatoes, mainstream white culture. ‘The times, they are a-changin’ indeed, as Bob Dylan sang last year at another White House event.

Last night, as I watched the ugly mug of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blather on in a news clip about how Republicans wouldn’t tolerate any more deficit spending, the thought “When did the truth become completely irrelevant?” occurred to me. The man is either cynical to the bone or an idiot (or both). Ronald Reagan launched the era of “Live Out Your Fantasies Through Deficit Spending” in politics, an idea George W. Bush picked up and ran with, big time. Now that the reality check has arrived, we’re going to be paying for it for a long time to come.  I’m no apologist for the idiocy that abounds on the Democratic side of the aisle, but give me a break. The Republican Party has lost all credibility as bearers of the standard of fiscal prudence.

I take heart in a realization I had during the darkest days of the Bush administration, back when Dick Cheney was in full-bore Dark Lord mode, the likes of Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay were riding high, and Karl Rove was gleefully spreading his poison over everything he touched. I simply refused to believe they would get away with their concerted effort to overthrow our constitutional form of government. A motivated hustler can get far in American society, but, once the sleeping giant of populist anger gets roused, look out. I know Sarah Palin makes Europeans extremely nervous, because they have a living memory of how much damage a populist demagogue who seems like too much of a jerk for people to take seriously can do. But we Americans have different strengths and failings to our system of government. The roots of our problems run considerably deeper than anything to do with the current gallery of losers obsessed with hogging the spotlight, and so do the solutions. I believe a long overdue reckoning has arrived.

My bet for next year’s election is that the seriously reality-challenged folk will want to go out for another round with Sarah, which will leave the Republicans sufficiently weakened that Obama will be able to mop up and handily win re-election. Our problems won’t be over then, not by a long shot. But, as with the process Jerry Brown is getting underway here in California, at least we’ll be on a road heading back into the light of day, where things like honesty, integrity, and fact-based historical context actually matter.

In developing a sense of rootedness in place, I’ve found that the logical place to start is with the natural, social and literary history of a geographical area. Merely scratching the surface yields up so much information that from there you can just follow trails of crumbs into the forest and see where they lead. I could get very far on just the fact that John Muir lived out his life in the neighboring city of Martinez when his friends finally succeeded in pressuring him to come down out of the mountains and settle into a civilized life. Some of the hills and forests where I wander with my dogs are on terrain that he roamed.

Stephen Vincent Benét, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his magnificent epic poem on the Civil War, John Brown’s Body, also lived nearby during his early childhood years. His poem “American Names,” the source of the famous line “Bury my heart at Wounded Knee,” mentions the Carquinez Straits, just a hop, skip and a jump from here.

That snippet of history alone makes local lore come alive. I took the dogs out this afternoon to Wildcat Canyon, a magnificent name for a decent-sized park plunked down in the midst of an urban area. The trail we go on is not one of the more spectacular hikes in the regional park system, but it has a subtle beauty that grows on me each time I go there. The wildest thing we came across today was cows grazing up on a hillside, including a few nursing moms. The dogs behaved themselves, and didn’t pull any magical tricks such as crossing the barbed wire fence that separated the trail from the cow pasture.

Many moons ago, when I was homeschooling my son, I became enchanted with the manner in which the impressionist artist Claude Monet lived and worked in his magical garden in a small village outside Paris. In the early 1880s, Monet settled with his large family on a sprawling country estate and set to work transforming the grounds into a wonderland of color, mood, and culinary bounty. Adjacent to the house was a barn that became the studio where he painted his famous canvases. The Japanese Bridge and the lake filled with water lilies were only footsteps away. Fruits, vegetables and herbs from the garden went into the kitchen, where they were transformed into everything from ordinary mealtime fare to exotic wines and liqueurs.

I was swept away by the idea of a garden, kitchen and workspace forming an integrated cauldron for nurturing the creative pursuits of the occupants of a household. The possibilities for realizing such a space are infinite. In 2001 I had the good fortune to visit Monet’s home and garden at Giverny, and I found it every bit as magical as I had imagined. I instantly saw how one could never grow tired of studying the endless play of light, color and shadow in one beautiful patch of land and shaping its growth and produce. Given how busy modern, urban life is, I’ve found over the years that it’s easier said than done to create a lifestyle that pulls together all these elements. But I find the dream no less inspiring today than I did when it first came to me.

In the past few months I’ve started exploring the towns that run along the Delta, which is just a hop, skip and a jump from here. It’s a naturally beautiful area with a rich history that so far has managed to escape the taint of upscale consumer culture. This means there’s a thriving artists’ community and the environment to go along with it. Martinez, the county seat, has a cluster of antique shops downtown that are a veritable treasure hunt. I’ve already noticed a wide range in the values shop owners place on their merchandise, which means that bargains abound. I thought collectors and entrepreneurs had long since snapped up all the old popular sheet music out there and either stashed it away or jacked up the prices to extortionist rates. But there are still real finds out there. My current craving is for old news magazines, and I’ve only scratched the surface. Sure, tons of content is available online and it’s wonderful, but there’s nothing like the look and feel of an actual magazine that reported on a historical event at the time it occurred. I’m a total sucker for primary sources.

Exhibit A: These opening paragraphs from a Life magazine editorial in the December 13, 1963 issue, which has a cover showing Lyndon Johnson looking reassuringly presidential in the Oval Office:

The energetic and decisive way President Johnson has taken charge of his office imparts his own self-confidence to the country. But one of the great hopes invested in him may, we fear, be disappointed through no fault of his own. This is the hope that he can exert more influence over Congress than did Kennedy, whose 1963 legislative proposals were all but hopelessly stalled. Can Johnson, who was once the virtual boss of Congress, get action from it? If not, why not?

The thing to remember is that the 88^th Congress, before the assassination, had sat longer than any peacetime Congress in memory while accomplishing practically nothing. It was feebly led, wedded to its own lethargy and impervious to criticism. It could not even pass routine appropriations bills. It was a scandal of drift and inefficiency.

I knew we were going to be okay when the memorial for the victims of the Tucson massacre opened with a Native American Blessingway. There could hardly have been a clearer sign that this wasn’t going to be about business as usual. Further, the leader of the traditional prayer wasn’t a Hollywood-style medicine man—he was a University of Arizona faculty member who confessed right up front, to laughter and applause, that he’d never before done the ceremony with so many people. It set a personal, celebratory tone to all that followed.

Years ago, when I first read the work of South African writer Nadine Gordimer, I was struck by the parallels between her description of life among privileged South African whites and the in-your-face conspicuous consumption lifestyles of many upper-crust Americans. It was fascinating to read about people and situations that were both familiar and alien at the same time. The perennial human dilemma is Who does the dirty work? What forces conspire to keep them in their “place?” What forms do the reactions against those forces take? Gordimer’s stories made me realize that the American counterparts to South African blacks were the Indians/Native Americans rather than the black population. White-black relations are one of the central dramas of present day American life, along with tensions between so-called mainstream culture and a whole host of sub-cultural tribal identities and affiliations. But one usually has to go in search of the Native Americans to find out what they’re up to and how they relate to the whole multicultural brew. My “aha!” moment, courtesy of Nadine Gordimer, came with the realization that that’s probably because the settlers of the American continent were more brutal up front about exterminating the native population than their European counterparts in South Africa.

This was about twenty years ago, and even then I was no stranger to the knowledge that our much-vaunted freedoms have been obtained at the price of a staggering amount of violence and bloodshed. The modern-day challenge is to build on the strength of our democratic system while evolving beyond a reliance on violence as an early response to conflict. We need to do that for moral reasons, let alone the fact that we live in the age of nuclear weapons. The Tucson Blessingway showed me that Americans have the ability to pull together in the public commons to nourish and heal our battered spirits, no matter how deep and bitter our individual wounds and grievances may run. That’s profoundly important.