We were teaching our Thanksgiving lesson today, which included a short video on the history of Thanksgiving. The narration:

“The pilgrims had no food. It was very cold. The Indians had lived there a long time. They were very smart and nice. They helped the pilgrims. They were friends. The pilgrims gave them food. The Thanksgiving tradition began.”

And my co-teacher, I think half-jokingly, turned to me and said, “Tradition? Do you give food to Indians every year?” And I, half-jokingly, said, “No, there are no more Indians. We killed them all.” And we all had a good laugh.

I’m reading Okla Hannali by R.A. Lafferty. I first heard of this author when reading Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things (named on the AV Club’s list of top short story collections of this decade, you know); the best story in the collection, “Sunbird,” (not the overwrought “The Problem with Susan” as the AV Club says) was a light, hilarious, mysterious, beautiful gem. In the author’s notes, he said:

“There was a writer from Tulsa, Oklahoma (he died in 2002), who was, for a little while in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the best short story writer in the world. His name was R. A. Lafferty, and his stories were unclassifiable and odd and inimitable — you knew you were reading a Lafferty story within a sentence. When I was young I wrote to him, and he wrote back.

“Sunbird” was my attempt to write a Lafferty story, and it taught me a number of things, mostly how much harder they are than they look…”

If that was the case, I wanted to read some more of this Lafferty as soon as possible! He wrote mostly science fiction and folkloric fantasy, but also a good deal of (as wikipedia says) “can roughly be described as historical fiction.” The only book of his in all of Arlington’s book stores was an old 1970s paperback of Okla Hannali, complete with a glossy yet faded full-color cigarette ad in the middle of the book. Classy.

The title character is a big Choctaw Indian, wise, clever, bold, full of life. From the back cover copy, I had the impression that it would be a 19th century picaresque, but it is something very different. Lafferty, first of all, writes like a funnier John Steinbeck. He puts bits of tall tales and legend into his prose, creating a beautiful, surreal yet superreal world. Gaiman’s description is apt; no one writes like him.

(On a side note, I despair that someone with Lafferty’s obvious mastery could have written so many novels, and now, a scant seven years after his death, be almost forgotten. His books were absent from almost every shelf in Arlington; I’d never heard of him until I read that Gaiman book. Have you heard of him? Probably not. But he made a living and was happy - I can tell from the book.)

The Choctaws were one of the tribes uprooted by Andrew Jackson (”The Devil of the Indians) in the 1830s and forced along the Trail of Tears into Oklahoma. Lafferty lays it out plainly - the Indians (and I use that appellation because he does) had cultivated the south, the areas now Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia. At that time, they were better and more successful farmers than the white men. There was plenty of uncultivated land that the white settlers might have taken, but they didn’t want the uncultivated land. So Jackson gave it to the settlers, and he did not give it to the poor yet honest and hardworking men that we like to think built America. He gave it to the rich plantation owners, who worked it with slaves, displacing the poor yet honest and hardworking men, thereby creating the castes of poor whites and poor blacks that continue to fuck up the South to this day.

The Choctaws and Cherokees and Creeks arrived in Oklahoma and discovered that their new land was no damn good. It wouldn’t grow corn. Not only that, but it was actually only one-third the size of the original land that they had “traded” for the Oklahoma land. But they made it prosperous, until the Civil War.

When the Union split, both sides were after the Territory Indians to choose sides; most wanted to remain neutral. As happened, though, the Confederacy absorbed the Territory, and Albert Pike, now the only Confederate soldier to be honored with an outdoor statue in Washington, D.C., began a careful, ingenious campaign to sew little civil wars between the Indian tribes. He signed humiliating treaties with junior chiefs that bound the senior chiefs and infuriated the one against the other. He made peace with one faction of a tribe and then claimed that it bound the rest of the tribe. It did not matter that the treaties were unenforceable. He only wanted to get them killing each other. It worked. The prosperity of the Territory Indians was shattered, and the numbers of the tribes reduced by half during the Civil War. Pike was punished for this mass murder by moving to Washington, D.C., rising through the ranks of the Freemasons, and embarking on a successful poetry career. He died thirty years later, at home, at the age of 81.

Pike was a monster and the history of the American West is filled with such monsters, yes, on both sides of the conflict. Many of the Apache and Comanche were brutal, bloodthirsty savages; Texas’s Karankawa, extinct by 1860, were cannibals. But the American campaign of the 19th century is filled with forced relocations, open warfare, germ warfare, engineered famines, rapes, murders, broken treaties; it is, in short, an appalling genocide. History is catastrophe.

The outrage, and Lafferty felt this outrage, is the utter lack of apology or reparation for these crimes. Today, Native Americans number just over 2.7 million, down from as many as 18 million before Columbus. They struggle with disproportionate alcoholism, heart disease, diabetes, mental illness, and suicide rates. The poverty of reservations is startling; they have been called third world nations within our borders. The consolation for all this is a college scholarship, though usually only those from a culture that values formal education pursue further education; many don’t understand that education is the key to - escape? To be successful, they must leave the reservation, join the working world, surrender their culture and heritage, in effect, become white.

These problems are very real and very relevant. It may not seem so, depending on where you live. Take a drive through northwestern New Mexico, anywhere in Oklahoma, anywhere in rural Arizona, soak up the poverty. It’s still there, and it’s still breeding misery.

The response from the government is underwhelming. Native Americans, after all, are a tiny slice of our population, and acknowledging their plight would mean acknowledging, not our complicity in the crimes perpetrated against their ancestors, because “sins of the father” is bullshit, but our failure to rectify the situation to the best of our ability; not from guilt, but from basic humanity. No one talks about this problem, and one gets the impression that if we wait long enough, alcoholism, tuberculosis, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide will make it go away.

History is catastrophic, filled with war, bloodshed, and incredible bigotry, ignorance, and needless suffering. We can’t change history, but we can hope to alter its course. First step is consciousness-raising; go read Okla Hannali. Get impassioned, then forget it and do something else. There are too many video games and American Idols and So You Think You Can Dances and Jon and Kate Plus Eights to worry about this kind of thing. Plus, with the economy…

Posted in History, Reading | 5 Comments »

It took me three tries to get into this little gem. The first time, I was on the plane ride home last winter, in my thirtieth hour without sleep, and taking a break from Etrian Odyssey. The pounding J-pop soundtrack, together with the 777’s engine roar, was too much for my fuzzy head, and I went back to EO’s quiet explorations.

I tried again some months later, and got a few hours into the game; that’s the point where you have enough “pins” that your attacks become really diverse, but before you are aware of the nuances that differ one from another. I perceived the combat as a chaotic tap-fest, and quit.

But, midsummer this year, as I was going to Tokyo again, I became once more intrigued by the title, and after finishing Luminous Arc (which had its charms but ultimately did not deserve 20 hours of my life), I gave it another shot. The characters and story had their hooks in me, and the Shibuya setting began to come alive; I found myself humming the soundtrack, too. Soon I was wondering why liking the game had ever felt like a challenge.

Probably the spiky-haired protagonist and the ridiculously dressed sidekick, Shiki, or the “urban” characters named “Beat” and “Rhyme”. But after sticking with the game for a few more hours, the depth of the characters became apparent. After finishing the game, I would say that they are more deeply and wholly written than many other RPG characters, certainly more than any JRPG characters; they are developed to the depth of companions in a Bioware game (if not the subtlety).

The combat grew less chaotic as my character became more powerful, which makes sense, and the beauty and aptness of the fashion mechanics also became apparent. Your character gets bonuses if he dresses according to the trends of Shibuya’s neighborhoods; if his bravery stat is high enough, he can wear something really outré and then set the trends. It’s a great metaphor for the character’s personal growth throughout the game.

And the story! The game spends the first week (it’s divided into three weeks) carefully establishing the rules of its peculiar world, and then the next two, it warps, distorts, and finally breaks those rules completely, creating a real sense of the chaos and danger of this shadow-Shibuya. Characters undergo profound changes of personality due to events in the game, beloved characters are ripped from your side, leaving you alone and vulnerable. The plot keeps you guessing and pressing through to see what’s next.

The real victory of TWEwY, though, is its perfect marriage of gameplay and plot. The attacks aren’t just attacks; they’re outgrowths of Neku’s developing personality. The gear isn’t just gear; it’s a statement of self. The battles aren’t for loot or XP, they’re for one’s right to exist. The characters are battling to change themselves by changing the world. It gives every little random encounter emotional significance.

Blammo! Best game of 2008! (That I played in 2009.)

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This is not a subjective opinion. It is objective fact, which I dispense like lightning bolts. You are welcome.

2009 was a slow year for music that I paid attention to, but there were still a few good releases. I spent another year wondering if Gillian Welch and Sufjan Stevens have given up on music altogether. No word on that. A new Sufjan song surfaced, and it was weird.

Since the greatest joy of criticism is negativity, let’s consider the most disappointing new album of the year.

When the Decemberists signed to Capitol Records, we all panicked that our favorite indie pop band had sold out. This record proves that they definitely, definitely have not. The sound is denser, the lyrics darker, everything about the album is unwelcoming. The trees on the album art need more thorns. A glance at the ratings on the album’s wiki shows that media had no idea what to make of this crazy record; they’re all over the place, from superlative to abysmal. The record swerves from insane to horrific to treacly over its fifty-eight minutes, always remaining interesting, but never really becoming fun or very pleasant. It’s music you have to work at to enjoy. It’s difficult and demanding; sometimes the difficulty holds real richness, and sometimes it’s just a mask over an empty shell. It was a good record to listen to two or three times, particularly for the crunchy metal riffs and Shara Worden’s valkyrie wails, but it is not the classic that the band was primed to produce at this point in their career. Can we judge it against our expectations? Of course we can. That’s the whole definition of “disappointing”. On its own merits, it may be “interesting” or “curious”, but against our expectations, it is “disappointing.”

Runner-up: The Dodos’ “Time to Die”. The last thing this band needed was a vibraphonist. They traded grit for gloss and lost much of what made them so unique.

Runner-runner-up: Devendra Banhart’s “What Will We Be”. Since “Cripple Crow”, he’s gone into weirder and weirder diversions - who can forget the Yiddish-pop of “Shabop Shalom”? Everyone can, actually. I did until just now. While “What Will We Be” yields a few excellent tunes, like the opener and the single “Baby”, much of it is consumed by mushy tropicalia. What we want is “Cripple Crow II: The Crippling”.

Produced in previous years, and therefore ineligible for the prize of 2009’s best album, a few records that I’ve discovered this year make frequent appearances in my playlist. They bring me joy, and are worthy of mention.

• The aforementioned Dodos’ debut Visiter, recommended by Joel. Long songs with complex arrangements and, as Tom Waits once said about Bob Dylan bootlegs, “with the seeds and pulp left in.” String buzz, random studio sounds, hoots and hollers; you can feel the roots of these songs even as they spin into wild and complex crescendos. See “Joe’s Waltz” and “Jodi”.
• Basia Bulat’s Oh, My Darling is sometimes so romantic that it’s obnoxious (”It was the first time I fell in love/ the first time I felt my heart/ the first time I sang out loud all through the night” - VOMIT), but the well crafted folk-pop and the singer’s voice, which can be described as a variety of cloths or foods - velvety, silky, honeyed - keep the record a quick, pleasant listen, one I find myself returning to time and again. (Joel recommended this one as well.
• My friend and bandmate Nick Kleeman recommended Devotchka, because I recommended Basia Bulat to him, and he said that he’d seen her, opening for Devotchka. Wiki describes them as gypsy-mariachi punk, which is a sound I need to know about. Their back catalogue is less approachable (so I haven’t approached it), but their 2008 A Mad & Faithful Telling is a beautiful, mad record that evokes nostalgia for I’m not quite sure what. My days in the Saint Petersburg trapeze troupe, I guess.
• Captain Beefheart’s Safe as Milk and Trout Mask Replica. I’ve been investigating this thing known as “the past”, and some interesting work was done there. Without Beefheart, we would not have had Tom Waits, for which we owe his sanity-smashing work a debt of gratitude. Whenever I feel insufficiently deranged, a listen of “Electricity” scrambles me properly.

Despite this year’s general downturn in quality music specifically manufactured to please Jens Rushing, which coincides with the general downturn in the quality of everything else on this miserable planet, a few albums pierced my dense mental barriers, erected to protect against disappointment in our failing petroindustrial society.

The second greatest album of the year is:

A.C. Newman’s Get Guilty. You may know Newman as the red-headed frontman of the New Pornographers, the pop genius who gets all those talented people to work together and who owns the same copy of Jorge Luis Borges’s Complete Fictions as me, but he’s also got a pair (a “brace”, as we say in Korea) of solo albums to his credit. The first, 2004’s The Slow Wonder, was pretty good! Get Guilty is the evolution of that.

I don’t know how this guy writes songs. They have structures that are discernible but not really recognizable. They have riffs that are sucked back into the song’s greater purpose. They have lyrics that make no sense at all but seem full of meaning. Newman’s versatile voice ties it all together.

And the best album of the year is…

That picture shows nothing less than a beautiful, talented woman wielding a sword while riding on the hood of a muscle car. I feel like I don’t even need to talk about the album now.
If you listened to her 2006 Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (and if not, your life has been a miserable waste), then you know the kind of songs she writes: baroque, ornate, subversive, rooted in Americana but often darting into unexplored dark alleys. You also know that she’s been maturing ever since her honky-tonk debut The Virginian; each album has been more complex, more sophisticated, and (happily) less countrified than the last. The Virginian is hardly recognizable from Middle Cyclone. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good album, but her growth as a songwriter and arranger has been exponential.
In Cyclone, we get a song about a tornado that loves a person, a song about killer whales and killer elephants, songs about prison girls, pharaohs, and mollusks. It’s weird, dark, and beautiful. Case recorded it in a barn, and at points you can hear the swallows nesting in the rafters, the wind gusting through the doors, and thirty uninterrupted minutes of frog song. It’s the best album of the year, filled with all the poise and confidence of a beautiful woman who once appeared semi-nude in some photo shoot years ago and who rides on the hood of a car while wielding a freaking longsword.

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No, I mean the controversial kind! Who cares about fetuses? Not me, that’s for sure! Hahaha! I’m talking about my book, Piccolet, what would have been my third novel if I hadn’t decided to pull the plug on it yesterday.
I’d been struggling with the book for some weeks; whenever you write anything, there’s always a healthy amount of doubt and second-guessing (and it’s necessary, or else you’d never self-edit and would just turn out brain-garbage), but with Piccolet, the doubt of my own work had turned to loathing, and the happy anticipation with which I normally regard a day’s writing had turned to dread. I found that at the end of each chapter, I was thinking, “I’d better delete that chapter and rewrite it entirely next time through.” I started without a plan, and I was floundering. Floundering in writing is not like floundering while swimming, which everyone forgets as soon as the swimmer sinks and the ripples fade; in writing, you work through your flounders with words. Ideally, you tune up those words later, but I’ve always had trouble with revision. Once my ideas crystallize in written form, I find it hard to change them materially.

I thought I could get through this novel without a plan, because that’s pretty much how I wrote Papillon and Khatima. But each of those had such a solid central idea that everything fell into place. There are the stories where that happens, conveniently, and there are the stories at which you must work. With a little adjustment, the latter can sometimes flip into the former, but Piccolet wasn’t flipping.

I began this novel without sufficient research, and, I think, without sufficient development as a writer. I want this book to be bigger than I currently have the power to make it. My work environment has become more hostile to writing, and my library is sadly limited. I just sent most of my medieval books home in August. I also need to revise my first two novels, because elements of them will feature heavily in Piccolet. I want Piccolet to be the grand closing chapter of my writings in the medieval world, but I haven’t yet gained enough distance from those writings. This novel will still happen, but at some point in the future. That’s okay - its reliance on the plot of the other two novels means that it couldn’t be published first. If I ever sell any novels, I think Khatima will be picked up first. It’s most easily summed up in a paragraph, it has the most unique premise, it’s the shortest, and, hey! It’s the best. A mon avis.

I’ve got plans for at least two future novels. One will be a space… western… I hate to use that genre title, because few publishers seem interested in ‘em, so I’ll just describe it as a scifi adventure. It’d have elements from my Red Coyote world, where I set 1.5 previous stories, but be expanded with my now greater understanding of science and science fiction. And then I’ll be writing a novel in collaboration with the talented Alex Burns sometime next year. We thought about steampunk, but then we both read China Mieville’s Iron Council, which is so good that it had a paralyzing effect on me. Like listening to Led Zeppelin II for the first time an hour before your band heads into the studio.
In the meantime, I’ve got some ideas for short stories. It’s been over a year since I’ve completed anything between flash fiction and novel length, so I may give a novella a try; I’ve been wanting to write The Vicissitudes of Monster Island for some time.

Posted in Piccolet, Writing | 4 Comments »

Talented Friend Joel Constantine has gussied up his webpage and acquired a spiffy new URL. Update your bookmarks accordingly!

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… is up.

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From time to time, I like to dip into the mailbag and answer my reader’s most pressing questions. Let’s see what we’ve got!

Q: Dear Jens,

Why don’t you support the gold standard?

A:

Hmm. That’s a tough one! Let’s see…

I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were but a measuring of ability; but this is not a contest among persons. The humblest citizen in all the land when clad in the armor of a righteous cause is stronger than all the whole hosts of error that they can bring. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity. When this debate is concluded, a motion will be made to lay upon the table the resolution offered in commendation of the administration and also the resolution in condemnation of the administration. I shall object to bringing this question down to a level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest of principle.

Never before in the history of this country has there been witnessed such a contest as that through which we have passed. Never before in the history of American politics has a great issue been fought out as this issue has been by the voters themselves.

On the 4th of March, 1895, a few Democrats, most of them members of Congress, issued an address to the Democrats of the nation asserting that the money question was the paramount issue of the hour; asserting also the right of a majority of the Democratic Party to control the position of the party on this paramount issue; concluding with the request that all believers in free coinage of silver in the Democratic Party should organize and take charge of and control the policy of the Democratic Party. Three months later, at Memphis, an organization was perfected, and the silver Democrats went forth openly and boldly and courageously proclaiming their belief and declaring that if successful they would crystallize in a platform the declaration which they had made; and then began the conflict with a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit. Our silver Democrats went forth from victory unto victory, until they are assembled now, not to discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment rendered by the plain people of this country.

But in this contest, brother has been arrayed against brother, and father against son. The warmest ties of love and acquaintance and association have been disregarded. Old leaders have been cast aside when they refused to give expression to the sentiments of those whom they would lead, and new leaders have sprung up to give direction to this cause of freedom. Thus has the contest been waged, and we have assembled here under as binding and solemn instructions as were ever fastened upon the representatives of a people.

We do not come as individuals. Why, as individuals we might have been glad to compliment the gentleman from New York [Senator Hill], but we knew that the people for whom we speak would never be willing to put him in a position where he could thwart the will of the Democratic Party. I say it was not a question of persons; it was a question of principle; and it is not with gladness, my friends, that we find ourselves brought into conflict with those who are now arrayed on the other side. The gentleman who just preceded me [Governor Russell] spoke of the old state of Massachusetts. Let me assure him that not one person in all this convention entertains the least hostility to the people of the state of Massachusetts.

But we stand here representing people who are the equals before the law of the largest cities in the state of Massachusetts. When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your action. We say to you that you have made too limited in its application the definition of a businessman. The man who is employed for wages is as much a businessman as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a businessman as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the crossroads store is as much a businessman as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, begins in the spring and toils all summer, and by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country creates wealth, is as much a businessman as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. The miners who go 1,000 feet into the earth or climb 2,000 feet upon the cliffs and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured in the channels of trade are as much businessmen as the few financial magnates who in a backroom corner the money of the world.

We come to speak for this broader class of businessmen. Ah. my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast; but those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead—are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country.

It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!

The gentleman from Wisconsin has said he fears a Robespierre. My friend, in this land of the free you need fear no tyrant who will spring up from among the people. What we need is an Andrew Jackson to stand as Jackson stood, against the encroachments of aggregated wealth.

They tell us that this platform was made to catch votes. We reply to them that changing conditions make new issues; that the principles upon which rest Democracy are as everlasting as the hills; but that they must be applied to new conditions as they arise. Conditions have arisen and we are attempting to meet those conditions. They tell us that the income tax ought not to be brought in here; that is not a new idea. They criticize us for our criticism of the Supreme Court of the United States. My friends, we have made no criticism. We have simply called attention to what you know. If you want criticisms, read the dissenting opinions of the Court. That will give you criticisms.

They say we passed an unconstitutional law. I deny it. The income tax was not unconstitutional when it was passed. It was not unconstitutional when it went before the Supreme Court for the first time. It did not become unconstitutional until one judge changed his mind; and we cannot be expected to know when a judge will change his mind.

The income tax is a just law. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people. I am in favor of an income tax. When I find a man who is not willing to pay his share of the burden of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.

He says that we are opposing the national bank currency. It is true. If you will read what Thomas Benton said, you will find that he said that in searching history he could find but one parallel to Andrew Jackson. That was Cicero, who destroyed the conspiracies of Cataline and saved Rome. He did for Rome what Jackson did when he destroyed the bank conspiracy and saved America.

We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. We believe it. We believe it is a part of sovereignty and can no more with safety be delegated to private individuals than can the power to make penal statutes or levy laws for taxation.

Mr. Jefferson, who was once regarded as good Democratic authority, seems to have a different opinion from the gentleman who has addressed us on the part of the minority. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business.

They complain about the plank which declares against the life tenure in office. They have tried to strain it to mean that which it does not mean. What we oppose in that plank is the life tenure that is being built up in Washington which establishes an office-holding class and excludes from participation in the benefits the humbler members of our society. . . .

Let me call attention to two or three great things. The gentleman from New York says that he will propose an amendment providing that this change in our law shall not affect contracts which, according to the present laws, are made payable in gold. But if he means to say that we cannot change our monetary system without protecting those who have loaned money before the change was made, I want to ask him where, in law or in morals, he can find authority for not protecting the debtors when the act of 1873 was passed when he now insists that we must protect the creditor. He says he also wants to amend this platform so as to provide that if we fail to maintain the parity within a year that we will then suspend the coinage of silver. We reply that when we advocate a thing which we believe will be successful we are not compelled to raise a doubt as to our own sincerity by trying to show what we will do if we are wrong.

I ask him, if he will apply his logic to us, why he does not apply it to himself. He says that he wants this country to try to secure an international agreement. Why doesn’t he tell us what he is going to do if they fail to secure an international agreement. There is more reason for him to do that than for us to expect to fail to maintain the parity. They have tried for thirty years—thirty years—to secure an international agreement, and those are waiting for it most patiently who don’t want it at all.

Now, my friends, let me come to the great paramount issue. If they ask us here why it is we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that if protection has slain its thousands the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we did not embody all these things in our platform which we believe, we reply to them that when we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and that until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.

Why is it that within three months such a change has come over the sentiments of the country? Three months ago, when it was confidently asserted that those who believed in the gold standard would frame our platforms and nominate our candidates, even the advocates of the gold standard did not think that we could elect a President; but they had good reasons for the suspicion, because there is scarcely a state here today asking for the gold standard that is not within the absolute control of the Republican Party.

But note the change. Mr. McKinley was nominated at St. Louis upon a platform that declared for the maintenance of the gold standard until it should be changed into bimetallism by an international agreement. Mr. McKinley was the most popular man among the Republicans ; and everybody three months ago in the Republican Party prophesied his election. How is it today? Why, that man who used to boast that he looked like Napoleon, that man shudders today when he thinks that he was nominated on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Not only that, but as he listens he can hear with ever increasing distinctness the sound of the waves as they beat upon the lonely shores of St. Helena.

Why this change? Ah, my friends. is not the change evident to anyone who will look at the matter? It is because no private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people the man who will either declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this people, or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place legislative control in the hands of foreign potentates and powers. . . .

We go forth confident that we shall win. Why? Because upon the paramount issue in this campaign there is not a spot of ground upon which the enemy will dare to challenge battle. Why, if they tell us that the gold standard is a good thing, we point to their platform and tell them that their platform pledges the party to get rid of a gold standard and substitute bimetallism. If the gold standard is a good thing, why try to get rid of it? If the gold standard, and I might call your attention to the fact that some of the very people who are in this convention today and who tell you that we ought to declare in favor of international bimetallism and thereby declare that the gold standard is wrong and that the principles of bimetallism are better—these very people four months ago were open and avowed advocates of the gold standard and telling us that we could not legislate two metals together even with all the world.

I want to suggest this truth, that if the gold standard is a good thing we ought to declare in favor of its retention and not in favor of abandoning it; and if the gold standard is a bad thing, why should we wait until some other nations are willing to help us to let it go?

Here is the line of battle. We care not upon which issue they force the fight. We are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard, and both the parties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my friends, should we not have it? So if they come to meet us on that, we can present the history of our nation. More than that, we can tell them this, that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance in which the common people of any land ever declared themselves in favor of a gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have.

Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country; and my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer first; and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.

You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

My friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth, and upon that issue we expect to carry every single state in the Union.

I shall not slander the fair state of Massachusetts nor the state of New York by saying that when citizens are confronted with the proposition, “Is this nation able to attend to its own business?”—I will not slander either one by saying that the people of those states will declare our helpless impotency as a nation to attend to our own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but 3 million, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation upon earth. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to 70 million, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, it will never be the judgment of this people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good but we cannot have it till some nation helps us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we shall restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States have.

If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

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Yes, I’m talking about my novel. You wouldn’t come here if you weren’t curious about it, would you?

It’s a little over 35,000 words right now, or about a third of the way through. Unfortunately, I think I’m at least at the halfway point in plot. The first two chapters are going to require a drastic rewrite - I may delete them entirely and rewrite them from memory when I’m done. I began the book with insufficient prewriting, and it shows, as the early chapters struggle in tone, theme, and character. I routinely failed to make my quota, too, and am currently 8500 words behind, which means I’d need to write 10,000 words in one day to regain my schedule.

But lately I have recovered from my lackadaisicality and made my quota easily. I have DRAGON AGE to thank for this. Yes, as weird as it seems, a video game has actually increased my productivity. Previously, when I had no DRAGON AGE to look forward to, I would dawdle through my writing, taking time off to check Facebook and Gmail and whathaveyou, lose focus, have difficulty reaching my quota, and what I did write sucked as a result of that drifting focus. But with DRAGON AGE waiting for me, I work hard, I work quickly, and my book has become much better. It began as another picaresque, but has become a science vs. faith discussion that I think is not too preachy.

The book also has a bit of scifi in it, too, as my heroes stumble through space and time. They’ve already visited a distant world, populated by stone angels sitting at the “axis of spacetime”, and met a mysterious figure who tells them about magnetospheres and probability matrices. It’s fun.

Talented Friend Alex Burns is the EDF of the day. Great title. Story’s not bad, either.

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My retrospective of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is now live on Gamespite. I’m particularly proud of this passage:

“This question of development is apotheosized in the victory condition of “Transcendence,” where we finally escape our disgusting, disease-ridden meat shells and live as pure, clean energy-based beings in happiness forever. And how wonderful that will be. Would be.”

Amen.

Hmm, now I want to write a story about Alpha Centauri - the star, not the game. “Alpha Centauri: A Day in the Life.”

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My review of the latest Monkey Island episode is up.

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Talented Friend Stephanie Scarborough has a story up at EDF. It has “8 Bit” in the title, so you know you must read it, you twenty-somethings!

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