Tricycling Brownsville

So Jeff now daily rides his bicycle to the federal courthouse and parks under the awning while he presides for the Brownsville division over the defense of the huddled masses yearning to breath free. Anyway, with the usual dollop of mimetic desire, I too wanted to ride a bicycle to the courthouse.

Kathy, though, insisted that I could not walk without falling so the risk of a bicycle was too great for the meager amount of life insurance I had purchased. Because I suspected I was unable to qualify for more life insurance, we compromised on the adult tricycle. As it happens, Jeff had purchased the tricycle for his suegro who it seems is even more feeble than I am and he had only been able to ride it once.

Kathy and I headed for the island in Sara's truck, fighting all the way. My daughters thought it was fine if I rode a tricycle, but only if I wore a disguise, so no one would recognize me as their father--Groucho nose, glasses and mustache.

On the way back, somewhere along the way, the flag, you know, orange on a tall fiberglass pole, blew away.

Back on the ground in Brownsville, I raised the seat and tightened things up. Kathy insisted I ride around in the parking lot behind the house some before I ventured out. I also dug up an old bicycle cable with a lock on in that belongs to some long since stolen bicycle. I did fine in the parking lot so I ventured out into the larger world, humming the tune from Indiana Jones.

The first problem is car driving in downtown Brownsville is a blood sport and there are extra points for bicyclists. There was no way I could go on the busy streets. The next problem is that tricycles are wider than bicycles and it takes some calculation to make sure I didn't get stuck on a curb.

I soon discovered 8th Street, low traffic and a nice parking area halfway between the state and federal courthouses: a light pole perfect for locking up an adult tricycle. There wasn't a lot of other traffic.

This particular adult tricycle has a basket of a perfect size for my old beat-up leather briefcase.

However, there is the problem of sunburning the top of my bald pate. My usual straw fedora won't stay on with the blazing speed of an adult tricycle. I dug a gimme cap out of the closet that says "Relax" on the front and it seems to work.

The neighborhood kids are also out on their bikes and when I drive by they come out and join me for a couple of blocks. A half a dozen kids on bikes, one pulling another in a sort of bike trailer filled with yet another kid, cruising the wrong way down 8th street. It may appear to be an odd gathering, but outside of inmates, it has become the larger part of my contact with the world.

Jeff tells me this is a good green thing to do, but then he is much more hopeful about life. I just keep thinking how much money I could save if I could raise enough money to be able to afford to sell the car.

Pascal's First Three Provincial Letters

"Go West Young Man," is the phrase Horace Greeley famously stole from another editorial. "Read Pascal, Old Man" is what my kid suggests. So I have been trying.

I dutifully hopped on the adult tricycle loaned to me by Jeff (the retired syphilis hunter) and peddled over to the Brownsville Public Library. There, the only Pascal available was volume 30 out of the Great Books publication. So I check it out and I also picked up both volumes of the Syntopicon for browsing.

For the last several days, I have been reading The Provincial Letters.  It seemed reasonable to start at the beginning of the book, because I don't know enough about the writings to skip to the good parts.  Also, the last third is filled with science and math and equations that I will probably never be able to read.  Unfortunately several days of reading and re-reading has taken me only through the first three letters.

Austin sneers at the reading of interpretations, histories, biographies, etc. from the classic writers, but with hard guys, I tend to read around them a while before I can get up the courage to actually read the book. Sometimes I only read around them and never get to the book.

In the case of Pascal, except for the two page "Biographical Note" at the beginning of the Volume 30, I haven't read anything.  Usually, trying to get ready to read something this intimidating, I would first read a biography of Pascal, then I would read a history of 17th Century France, then I would read a history of mathematicians and then I would pick up a "the Best of" type of collection that has summaries and explanations surrounding snippets of original work.  The down side to this approach is that I may never actually read anything by the author I am reading about so I don't get a chance to see if I agree with any of the critiques.  For instance, I once read a good biography of James Joyce.  I still have both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake knocking around in the house, unread.

For what very little it may be worth, this is what I have gleaned from the first three Provincial Letters:  Pascal was attracted to a form of French Catholicism called Jansenism.  A theologian for the Jansenists named M. Arnauld was "brought before the Sorbonne" which seems to mean was tried in a court that decided correct theology.  The Sorbonne must have been large because 71 doctors tried to defend him and "on the other side" eighty secular doctors and some forty mendicant friars condemned him.

Pascal came to the rescue with these Provincial letters.  The orthodox view was promoted by the Jesuits and this was that every person had "sufficient grace" given to him by God to obey the divine commandments.  The Jansenists said, maybe so, every person has sufficient grace, but not every person was given by God the "efficacious grace," so they couldn't actually obey the divine commandments by putting this sufficient grace into action.

The Jesuits accused the Jansenists of believing like Protestants and in particular, Calvinists, that God had given this efficacious grace only to a chosen few.  Then there were fence straddlers who agreed with the Jansenists, but wanted to stay on the right side of the argument politically who said, "Sufficient grace is given to all, but not every one has the type of grace that will suffice."

Pascal notes that the choices given are being censured as a Jansenist, being a heretic or being a blockhead and offending against reason.

Pascal has one of his characters argue that silence is the safest position.  If you cannot remain silent, the next safest position is being a blockhead.

I'm sure there is a moral to this story, a punch-line to this joke, a crisis to be weathered, a lesson to be learned.  If I get to the end and figure it out, I'll let you know.  

Easter Musings

Was Jesus Born of a Virgin Pure
With narrow Soul & Looks demure?
If he intended to take on Sin
The Mother should an Harlot been...

Let us now praise Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, Ranters, and the Muggletonians. William Blake, poet and engraver, lived 69 long years around the turn of the 19th Century. He was thought insane by many then and by others now.

I like him for many reasons, but among them, because he rejects the Law--yes, again, this word "antinomian." One scholar calls him "The Last Antinomian and the First Prophet of the Modern World."

Now let's move from Blake to that great 21st Century philosopher, Dwight Yoakum:

You don't know me but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

Thank you, Dwight, we will get back to you.

So why would Blake think it more appropriate for Mary, Mother of Jesus, to be a harlot than a virgin?

If He were well-born, He would have no basis for knowing the suffering of the sinner.

Robert Graves, for instance, wrote a fictionalized biography of Jesus. Graves posits (as I recall, because I won't read the book again to make sure) that Jesus was secretly the son of some type of royalty. That way we don't have to admit that low-born people might be equal or better than the high born (such as Graves).

John Dominic Crossman in Jesus, a Revolutionary Biography, has, for me, a more satisfying portrait. Jesus was illiterate and illegitimate. He was never buried, but the dogs ate His body off the cross, because that is what happened to people of His status and power who challenged the Empire. The other stories were invented later to comfort the well-born.

How could Graves' royal Jesus with a secret, worldly and human Santa Clause-like father to care for him be the savior of the unwashed masses. Crossman's Jesus could be the Savior, because He had walked the streets of Bakersfield.

Many of our brothers and sisters do have mothers who were, in fact, whores. Prostitutes are guaranteed in this Man's America (and Mexico, etc., etc.) When women can't get educations or jobs and men can't make enough to support families, there will be prostitutes and children of prostitutes. We are not talking about the Happy Hooker. We are talking about grinding poverty and hungry children and a mother who is trying to get by.

My friend Jeff used to be a syphilis hunter for a living. He would wander first Chicago and then Houston talking to the hookers to find out who had syphilis so he could refer them to treatment.

I have represented many prostitutes, usually when they were charged with drugs, or assault or theft or coming into the country illegally, or in one case a 14-year old child who was being held as a material witness in a pornography case.

Jeff and I have discussed this and concur we both have high regard for the women in this world. (I mention Jeff, because he is obviously an expert in the subject and supports my more limited impression). And many were mothers and good. Madonnas, even.

Many of my clients have mothers who were prostitutes and do not know their Dads. This is not something I usually ask in the initial interview, but the pieces fall together. Many children of prostitutes, boys and girls, become prostitutes themselves.

So, Blake asks, with a world full of children of prostitutes, how can you take on sin if you are not one of them? Blake was historically square in the middle of the "Enclosures" that drove subsistence farmers off their land to make room for cash crops to make room for capital to make room for the industrial revolution. Hence the uprising of Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, Ranters, and the Muggletonians. Hence the antinomians. Hence the prostitutes and the children of prostitutes.

Happy Easter, Mr. Blake. Happy Easter, Mr. Yoakum. Happy Easter, Jeff. Happy Easter to the prostitutes, past and present. Happy Easter to the children of prostitutes. And happy Easter to you, as well.