Never Give Up
NBC Sunday Today had a Sheryl Crow interview and discussed her career and life choices. She went from being a normal midwestern girl raised in a middle class lifestyle and choosing a normal school-teaching career, to being a Michael Jackson protege that launched her first platinum album in 1993. Somewhere along the golden path of Hollywood music success, Crow moved to Nashville and adopted some children so she could get back to a more “normal” life than what was afforded by the traveling music business. She has made an interesting and profound career and artistic choice now. She has decided that after fourteen albums (11 studio and 3 live), she will no longer use the album medium to tell musical stories. During her interview with Willy Geist, she explained that the world has gone to a preference for short and sweet. The tweet versus the novel. She has translated that into a musical interpretation that the world no longer wants to buy albums from artists, but would rather buy single songs…or less. Her basic message when asked if she is quitting music is that she plans to never give up. She will merely adjust her craft to the times as needed to stay relevant.
I have a hard time arguing against her conclusions. I write short stories like this because it is hard work to keep the thread of a story through a whole novel and while I have written one and mostly written a few other novels, I am never really certain that they keep my interest much less that of the reader. Margaret Atwood, the master-author of Handmaid’s Tale, has just come out with her follow-on novel (not sure if its a sequel), entitled The Testaments. I guess some authors have the craftsmanship to keep the thread through a full novel (and more) and I hope that Atwood and Offred help prove the thought that there is still a market for novels, because I feel that we need long-form storytelling as much as ever. We need the escape of good and involved fiction, even when that fiction has become scarily like the reality we are facing in the world. Clearly Atwood is nowhere near giving up, but she is less trying to follow any trends toward cauterizing her stories than she is trying to prove that the novel form is permanent and that no little twitter will alter that. I have watched Atwood’s Master Class and there is nothing giving up about it.
The same Sunday Today show had a piece on Norway’s correctional system. Norway spends $93,000 per year on inmates versus the U.S. average spend of $31,000, conveniently exactly one third as much. It shows in the nice “cells” that Norwegian perpetrators enjoy with private bathrooms and modern shared kitchens. They even have a family and/or conjugal visit house to allow inmates to enjoy weekends with their loved ones. All this “lap of luxury” has many people wondering wazzup? There were two ways to take that discussion. You can take the obvious track that this is just about do-gooder liberalism run amok where one could argue that some people might commit minor crimes to get a nice incarceration vacation. That track would suggest that prison is intended to be a deterrent and that it is intended to be unglamorous and harsh. Then again, since there is a record of only 20% of Norwegian inmates suffering recidivism versus 60% in the U.S. system, the outcome is quite different. If we do the math on that, and assume a 40 year criminal lifecycle with average incarceration of 5 years, the U.S. system will cost 3.3X rather than the previously stated one third. The more important issue may well not be the direct cost of incarceration, but rather the improved productivity to the general economy and national culture. I liked the Norwegian warden’s comment that if you treat prisoners like animals they will act like animals and if you treat them with respect you will engender respect from them towards their jailers and, most importantly, towards the system. Norway banned capital punishment in 1905 ( it made exceptions in WWII) and has made it part of their constitution as of 2014. I think this says never give up on people.
I walk past NYPD cruisers with the slogan CPR on them, signifying Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect. Cultures are defined not by what its followers say, but what they do. If the NYPD could use respect more than it uses choke holds (as killed Eric Garner), maybe their motto would be worth placing on their cars. In this case I choose to never give up on the NYPD.
Norway’s Firearms Weapons Act does allow this country of rugged individualists and outdoorsmen to own weapons for both hunting and sport (think biathlon competition of skiing and shooting). In that way, its a great model for the U.S. and its rampant gun problem. Norway has 31 guns per 100 people versus the U.S. 89 guns per 100. Strict weapons regulation as to use and ownership is part of the Norwegian culture. The results are clear. The U.S. has over 2,000 times the amount of reported gun violence than Norway. It’s impossible to ignore the connections. As for giving up, I think its fair to say that the NRA has dug itself into American political culture and has taken a “no-prisoners” approach to never giving up on its mission to keep guns in as many hands as openly and freely as possible, despite any logic or political outcry to the contrary. After the endless array of mass shootings from the Austin University Tower to Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook to Pulse Night Club to Mandalay Bay Las Vegas to El Paso, those of us on the anti-gun side of this issue must adopt the NRA’s never-give-up approach to this battle.
To get out of my head this morning with all this never giving up stuff, I went on a walk up Whitehall and in a few blocks came to the famous Wall Street Charging Bull statue where Broadway and Whitehall diverge. The statue had been the victim yesterday of a wild and senseless attack by a Texas man wielding a toy metal banjo. Like a Banjo to a Bull sounds like the title of my next novel. He put a big dent and even a rip in the 7,100 pound bronze statue on the right side horn of the beast. Apparently the foundry that maintains the bull will have no problem coming in to fix it, but it does make me wonder about the delicate nature of the bull as symbolic of the general skittishness of the markets these days. Can something so big and brassy really be so easy to wreck with a toy banjo? Is this the triumph of the arts over commerce or just of music over sculpture? Can a drunk Texan put a dent in the symbolism of that which made New York Great? The Texan was heard ranting about Donald Trump as he rode on the neck of the bull. I can’t help but think that Donald Trump is like that little toy banjo, hardly seeming lethal, but able under the duress of the moment to rip the fabric of the charging bull that is America. All I know is that like Sheryl Crow, Margaret Atwood, Norway the NYPD and the anti-gun lobby, the charging bull never gives up.