worldwide pablo

Monday affairs

Worldwide Pablo will be waaay too busy this week to keep up the the normal flow of blogging, so regular readers will notice a slight decrease in the output. Two coinciding deadlines, both involving a great deal of writing, occur more or less simultaneously in the next several days ... so please bear with him. It's temporary, WWP promises.

Meanwhile, some web-nuggets:

Love letters: What was county chair Diane Linn smoking when she approved a mush-mouthed tax form, put her photograph on it, and then mailed it to every resident in Multnomah County? Jack Bog's Blog, as usual, has it down. [Thank God, WWP's employer has this mess figured out for him already.]

On second thought: Last week, WWP opined that the California gubernatorial recall election looked like it would be a tight race (therefore setting the state for a Florida 2000-style recount fiasco). Well, not so fast. Looks like the Terminator has a pretty good chance on becoming the Governator.

Card crazy: WWP just cannot resist those playing cards with faces of political leaders emblazoned on them. Both Russia and France are in the game now. [And speaking of jokers ...]

Cirque du Risque: WWP wonders when this new Cirque du Soleil program will hit Portland. "Sun screen" will be the order of the day.

Tribute to Oneonta Falls: Don't miss reporter Roy Gault's wonderful article in the Salem Statesman-Journal, a loving tribute to one of Oregon's most sublime destinations.

Why writers write

George Plimpton -- author, journalist, publisher, raconteur and above all, writer -- died yesterday at the age of 76. Far be it for Worldwide Pablo to add much to the already mounting multitude of tributes to the self-deprecating, yet strangely patrician, Plimpton. Yet let it be noted that Plimpton's new-journalism style of writing caught the attention of a certain 12-year-old from Bellevue, WA, who, a few short years after it was published in 1963, discovered Paper Lion, and doted on every word, idea and stylistic turn.

For a writer, there are fewer tributes higher than being featured or interviewed in Plimpton's Paris Review. But as a reader, the ultimate compliment was knowing that somehow Plimpton already knew you ... and vice versa.

Paired with the death of Robert Palmer today, it's been a really lousy day. Say your prayers.

Bad hair day

This could happen only in East County ...

[Disclosure: ... a few blocks from Chez WWP.]

Headline of the day

What next? Liverwurst? [Maybe she should be taking them to Utah instead.]

Bush v. Gore, II

Yes, WWP told you this could happen: Experts are already beginning to warn that the impending electoral disaster in California (aka, the gubernatorial recall election on October 7) has the potential to make Election 2000 look like a Methodist women's tea party. You will remember that the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount (the infamous Bush v. Gore decision) because the state of Florida lacked standardized procedures for recounting the votes. Experts now warn that the very same thing can be said about the way California counts the votes in the first place.

Here's why:

Let’s pretend the Golden State has 1,000 voters: 400 of them vote by punch-cards, 600 vote by other, more modern electronic methods. Now, if the error rate in punch-card voting machines is, say, 2 percent (low by some estimates), that means 8 votes will be thrown out (so-called undervotes, overvotes or outright error). But in the larger group, the 600 using electronic voting machines, the error rate is said to be 0.5 percent (one-half of 1 percent), meaning just 3 votes will be not counted. In other words, because of the varying error rates of the machines used to count votes, it is possible that voters using punch-card machines, though they comprise less than half the electorate, will have about three times as many uncounted votes.

Big deal, you say? Now pretend that the election is close, let’s say within one half of 1 percent, which in the case of our pretend state, is a difference of 5 votes. That, if you didn’t notice already, is the difference between the two error rates mentioned above. Does this seem like “equal protection under the law”?

This is the very point the ACLU was attempting to make to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the equal protection argument this week. No doubt, should the gubernatorial circus devolve into a "hanging chad" debacle (and this seems very likely should the recall election be close, and all indications today are that it will be), the equal protection argument is likely to arise again.

It will be interesting, and telling, to see whether the GOP rallies around the principles of Bush v. Gore in California as strongly as it did three years ago in Florida. WWP is not holding his breath.

The GOP's Nader problem

California gubernatorial candidate Tom McClintock swears he's not a spoiler in the upcoming recall election on October 7. But WWP thinks his refusal to consider leaving the race so that The Terminator might prevail reminds us of the hopeless (some would say shameless) vanity of a certain 2000 presidential minor party candidate. The national Dems must be secretly praying that McClintock will go national in the 2004 presidential race.

Or maybe McClintock has another office in mind?

Sacre bleu!

The Champs d'Elysees is getting some new neighbors. Mon dieu!

A trio to remember

Three notable passings occurred this week:

The inimitable Garner Ted Armstrong died Monday of complications from pneumonia. For the flamboyant Armstrong, his religious beliefs always seemed to come in second place, overshadowed by the evangelistic efforts of his equally famous father, to say nothing of the younger Armstrong's innumerable personal shortcomings, shady business deals and failed denominations. Over the years, in the pulpit of his various "universal" churches, Garner Ted Armstrong held sway over evangelicals in a way that makes today's blow-dried televangelists seem, well, bland. WWP can recall watching the young Armstrong with his grandparents, who though they were Methodists, hung on every word from the golden-tongued tele-preacher. [But then, these were the same grandparents that took their daughter, WWP's mother, to hear Aimee Semple McPherson at the famed Foursquare Gospel Tabernacle in Los Angeles during McPherson's heyday in the 1930s.] Say what you will about his religion and his methods: Garner Ted Armstrong was an original. The airwaves will seem a bit dull without him. [Another colorful account of Armstrong appears here.]

Also passing this week, the estimable Catharine Crozier, a world-class organist who made Portland her home during the final years of her life. She blazed all kinds of trails: for organists in general, and women organists (and musicians) specifically. Along with her late husband, Harold Gleason, she literally "wrote the book" on learning organ playing and technique. Crozier also popularized modern sacred music, bringing attention to emerging artists (and sometimes alienating other classical musicians along the way with a zeal that bordered on imperiousness). Her concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, Washington's National Cathedral and locally are the stuff of legend. With her passing, it marks the loss of two great masters of the organ: Just 17 months ago, another organ giant, Allan Van Zoeren, who also made Portland his home, died at age 90. The choirs of heaven must be rejoicing right about now. [A memorial service for Crozier will be held early next year at Trinity Episcopal Church, where she was "artist in residence." Many other world-renown organists are expected to pay tribute to her life and music. For sacred music junkies, it will be a "must-hear" event.]

And then, finally, a really big death. Global warming? What global warming?

The show must go on

Let's see if Worldwide Pablo is getting this straight:

Yesterday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals restored California's October 7 gubernatorial recall election, on the grounds that "the status quo" could not be restored, meanwhile ignoring the Florida-style shipwreck that is sure to ensue on election day when voters in nearly half the state realize their votes were not counted with the same care and accuracy of others.

Meanwhile, Jay Leno hosted former child actor Gary Coleman, porn star Mary Carey and 90 other fringe candidates on his late-night talk show.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante loses access to $3.8 million in campaign donations and calls it "vindication."

Actor-candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger is "going negative."

The man who started and bankrolled it all is now urging Republicans to vote against the recall if they cannot agree on a single candidate.

And a media crush turns the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals into something not seen since the O.J. Simpson trials.

Cue the carnival music!

It's the time, of the season

A perfect summer night, last night was, and what an appropriate way to end the summer. Visible in the skies above Portland yesterday evening were, among other things, the Big Dipper (Ursa Major), the North Star (Polaris), the still red-hot Mars -- even the dual heaven-bound beacon lights of the convention center just west of Chez WWP. [WWP politely differs from blog-colleague Jack Bogdanski in this regard; Jack frowns on the sentiment and expense of the emotionally disconnected West Coast tribute. Fair enough. WWP finds it sentimental, but fitting, moving and beautiful nevertheless. However, as Jack says, the twin bores at city hall are appropriate metaphors for waste and lost opportunity. But we digress...]

Yes, today autumn is fully upon us. A strange beauty, autumn is. Contrasts and contradictions abound. She is an awesome beauty made possible by the natural cycle of flora's death and decay, a brilliance and quality of light evident even only as it disappears and is made short in day -- all this with an an eye pointed toward the expected wintertime festivities of joy as our afternoons and mornings shorten to familiar but unwelcome length. For WWP, autumn is always a challenge for introspection, a time for simplifying life and "resetting the clock," as it were. Autumn is the time that startles the creative juices back into flow after a summer of hedonistic on-the-go travel, family reunions, and general self-centeredness. Autumn urges us to let go of these impulses, to re-engage and stir again the potion of community, service, awareness, family and more. And yes, creativity, too.

WWP recalls Lewis Carroll's refrain about autumn:

In autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.

Write it down? Thank goodness: WWP has a web log.