In A Perfect World

Mitt Romney's Childhood Home: Victim of Economic Decline

Goodness knows, Mitt Romney is not asking me for campaign advice. But you have to wonder why he hasn't taken the opportunity to connect with Americans who've lost their homes by talking about his childood home in Detroit. The 5,500-square-foot structure in the long-exclusive Palmer Woods was demolished two years ago, an artifact of the blight that has ravaged so much of the Motor City.

Romney's family lived there for twelve years until 1953, before his father went on to become head of American Motors Corp., Governor of Michigan, and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. As recently as 2002, the house sold for $645,000, then suffered foreclosure, abandonment and disrepair before finally being torn down in 2010.

Iowa: Is this the Start of the 2012 GOP Implosion?

It's finally happening. Tonight we get the first insight into whether GOP voters are determined to pick a candidate that matches their ideological demands yet cannot attract more centrist Democrats and Independents. Think Santorum. Think Paul. Think Gingrich. If so, they will have a tough time against Obama in the fall, no matter how tough the economy. Thinking ahead to 2016, crash and burn may be just what the GOP needs if it's going to become a legitimate counterpoint to the Democrats that's capable of offering a home for more moderate voters.

Then again, GOP voters may just hold their nose and vote for Mitt. That will be a clear sign they really want to win this year, even if Romney doesn't pass any version of the True Conservative test.

Adrift: Picking a Book Title

 
Several years ago when my co-author Bill Harris and I decided on Adrift as the title for our book, I wondered whether it would be still timely. Would it still capture the mindset and the direction of the country by the time it was published? Perhaps the new President would change the dynamic. Perhaps the country would grasp the urgency of our declining status and commit to work together to turn things around. 

Oh, to be young again.

Now we witness new dueling plans/dueling speeches flogged on national TV by Obama and Boehner, just days away from the August 2 debt ceiling deadline. This nearly eight months after a strong bipartisan plan for cutting the deficit and the debt was shaped by the President's own fiscal commission. It's as if our political leaders are determined to drive us over a cliff. 

We can only hope that Americans will recognize that hyper-partisan, crisis-driven decision-making is not in the best interests of the country, whatever the course taken. And that means demanding more from our leadership--and more from ourselves.

Remembering the GI Bill

On Memorial Day, when we honor Americans of every political persuasion who gave their lives for their country, it's worth recalling that there are times in our history when America's political leaders worked together for the country's good. In 1944, the GI Bill was passed by both houses of Congress by unanimous votes, making it possible for millions of veterans returning from the war to go to school and own a home.

How the Ryan Budget Plan is Creating Unlikely Allies

Former Reagan budget director David Stockman and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs may not seem like obvious allies, but when it comes to the failings of Paul Ryan's budget plan, they clearly see eye-to-eye. Stockman said it "whiffs entirely," while Sachs called it "absurd."

Among their issues: How about a plan that actually generates revenue? In other words, why shouldn't the richest Americans pay more taxes? Both men supported the repeal of the Bush tax cuts, a move that would have increased revenues by at least a trillion dollars. And while they disagreed about Ryan's drastic cuts of social programs, both Stockman and Sachs questioned the Ryan plan's failure to look at cuts in defense. In fact, the plan increases military spending. Check out the excellent discussion here, moderated by Fareed Zakaria on CNN.  

A Whack of Honesty

Here's how it usually goes when you interview high-ranking officials of a national commission. You ask what results they anticipate, they proffer platitudes and promises, even when they're not sure.

That didn't happen with Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of the President's National Commmission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform created to deal with the deficit and debt. To my surprise, they admitted that they could end up with nothing -- they may fail to reach sufficient agreement among the commission's bipartisan membership. This followed their disquieting depiction of the serious economic crisis the country is facing.  

Why would they confess the possibility of failure? Was it just self-protection? Or was it more an honest expression of how broken the body politic is? For the good of the country, let's hope they succeed.

You can read my Q&A with Bowles and Simpson published in the Intelligence Report of PARADE Magazine.

Expanding the Boundaries of Art

Here's the online version of "By Design," a just-published magazine story of mine about three of my favorite things: art, architecture, and writing about art and architecture. Working on the piece reminded me why I like architects so much. The best ones are imaginative thinkers, capable of transforming highly conceptual ideas into functional forms -- and typically they are amazingly articulate about their visions. The story focuses on the newly expanded Virigina Museum of Art in Richmond, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Michelle Wie Opens Her Mind

Silence your inner critic. Get out of your comfort zone. Experiment. Who knows what you might discover?

In the case of Michelle Wie, doing artwork might just be making her a better golfer. Or at least a happier one.

That's the suggestion of an interesting New York Times story this week. "When I'm drawing, the rest of the world disappears," Wie explains. "I think it just makes me really happy."

Wie, who's in her second year on the LPGA tour, is drawing and creating pieces with spray paint and watercolor. She's also extended her newfound creativity to making her own clothes and even baking vegan cookies from her own recipes.  

“Basically, I started to love trying things,” Wie said, “instead of before, I was scared of trying new things.”

Is Michelle Wie producing great art? Honestly, I think that's the wrong question. Is her creative risk-taking helping her to open her mind, prosper in her chosen profession and develop as a person? That's priceless.

Go, Betty White, Go!

 

Add me to the list of people amused and excited by the idea of Betty White as the host of Saturday Night Live. We've seen more than enough young and fresh hosts one shy of an acting lesson: Why not a cheerfully spunky 88-year-old who just last month got a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild (handed out by Sandra Bullock), has collected a gaggle of Emmies and became a TV Hall of Famer 15 years ago? 

She's best known for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Golden Girls,beloved if not exactly hipster classics from the '70s and '80s. But with each passing year, there's something increasingly compelling about the ever-wholesome Betty White. The lady's got verve. 

I mean, how many other thespians, two years shy of 90, are gaining in street cred? No wonder advertisers at BBDO gave her a starring role (and a seriously funny butt-kicking) in their Snickers Super Bowl ad -- and more than 225,000 people have already signed the "Betty White to Host SNL (please)!" petition on Facebook. 

Now it's SNL producer Lorne Michaels' turn. 

What Would You Sacrifice for a Major Breakthrough?

 
What would you sacrifice to solve a problem that has stumped mathematicians for more than a century? What if, at the conclusion of your creative breakthrough, you would be deluged with generous offers from top American universities? What if you could expect a million-dollar prize for solving that problem?

Russian mathematician and genius Grigory Perelman solved the Poincare Conjecture, a complex topological problem involving how to characterize three-dimensional spheres. With an unbending focus on mathematics since childhood and a mind possessed with nearly superhuman computing power, Perelman did what no man or woman could do before. But to do it required sacrificing nearly every vestige of a normal life. Now 43, this internationally acclaimed mathematician lives with his mother. 

Masha Gessen, author of the recently published and powerfully told Perfect Rigor: A Genius + The Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century, believes that Perelman has Asperger's Syndrome, an autistic condition that has enabled his singular focus and rigorous commitment to rules. But it also has made him unable to cope with the messy reality of everyday life and the social pressures that swirled around him and his extraordinary achievement.

In fact, Gessen describes how offended and hurt Perelman was by the outpouring of offers from schools such as Princeton, Columbia and MIT that followed his celebrated triumph. Rather than enjoying the flattery, he saw this behavior as signs of the crass commercialization of math, a lack of ethics, vulgar attempts to buy him off for all his hard work.

So what did he do? He dropped out. He is said to have stated that he was quitting mathematics forever.

Whatever level of eccentricity or madness (Gessen's word) Perelman suffers, I have to say that I admire his fearless stand enormously. He's forsaken most everything for what he believes is right.

Yes, it may be a loss for mathematics and for the universities and students who could learn from him, but he's offered an enduring principle: What matters most is not the fame or the fortune. It's the work itself. 

Wrestle with Contrary Ideas for a Vital Brain

See the New York Times story about the aging brain? Remember any of the details? No? Then, it's probably a good idea to check it out. There's both good news and useful advice for keeping your mind sharp.

First, the good news: A middle-aged person, while more easily distracted and more likely to forget details, has mental gifts that younger people don't usually have. "The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture," writes Barbara Strauch. "If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can."

And while researchers have long believed that the aging brain suffers significant brain cell loss, Strauch says that scientists in recent years are doubting this: "What is stuffed into your head may not have vanished but has simply been squirreled away in the folds of your neurons."

So what will it take to nourish and reawaken your brain? Get out of your comfort zone, confront contrary ideas and shake those synapses. Here's what Dr. Kathleen Taylor, a professor of St. Mary's College of California and a student of the brain, says: "As adults we have these well-trodden paths in our synapses. We have to crack the cognitive egg and scramble it up."

And this: “There’s a place for information. We need to know stuff. But we need to move beyond that and challenge our perception of the world. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections.”

That's good advice -- for brains of every age.

Shedding Light on The Art of The Idea

Often the strongest ideas are the simplest ones. John Hunt, author of an insightful new book called The Art of The Idea, describes two categories of people: sunrisers and sunsetters. "A sunriser gives out energy, a sunsetter sucks it away," he writes. "A sunriser goes through life open to the idea that the best may still be coming. A sunset person is heavy in the knowledge that the best is past."

Guess which kind of person suffocates creativity and which is best in a brainstorm session determined to spur fresh ideas and creative breakthroughs.

Hunt, a South African and worldwide creative director of the advertising agency TBWA, says that age has nothing to do with which category anyone falls into. In fact, Hunt, who was intimately involved in Nelson Mandela's election campaign in 1993, describes South Africa's extraordinary leader as "the most sunrise person I've ever met...Often in meetings, he'd listen to people angry about the past. When they were finished, he's agree with them. They were right, he'd say. Then he'd ask that their anger at the past not contaminate the future...Mandela knew that if he based his ideas on the evils of the past, he'd soon have a sunset country."

Hunt's short book -- filled with pithy, well-written observations and charming artwork from South African artist Sam Nhlengethwa -- aims to give room  for ideas to breathe, be it in a jam-packed meeting or alone on an airplane. It's based on his experience that original thinking really can happen in a group and that the power of an idea is not based on who owns it but how it's shared.

That's a view worth exploring. You can see an interview with Hunt on an interesting blog -- mad-blog.com-- created by TBWA to "celebrate media arts and disruption."

The Last Station: Jay Parini wrote the book

  
Jay Parini is one of the lucky ones. A couple of years ago, I interviewed him for a piece I was writing about Russia and Leo Tolstoy's Moscow house, now a charming museum on the city's outskirts. Parini, who teaches literature at Middlebury College in Vermont, had written a good and substantial historical novel called The Last Station about the last year of Tolstoy's life and the battle for his soul. He already expected then that a movie based on his book was going to get made.

At the time, he thought Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep would be playing the roles of the great author and his wife Sofya -- roles ultimately taken by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren. Not so shabby. The cast also includes two of my other favorites, James McAvoy and Paul Giamatti.

The film, in limited release until January, has already landed two Golden Globe nominations (Plummer and Mirren) and five Independent Spirit awards, and it seems poised to garner some Oscar noms as well. As any filmmaker knows, getting any film made is a small miracle. Getting a good film made is a major one. The same theory surely applies to novelists imagining a film based on their novels.

Yet, nearly every time I read a review about the new movie, there's a part of me that feels badly for Parini. Why? More often than not, the talk is all about Michael Hoffman's The Last Station, the film that he directed and wrote. Well, they might mention that it's based on Parini's novel, but more typically the reader is led to believe that the film simply sprang forth from Hoffman.

Shed no tears for Parini. He's got a major motion picture based on his novel coming to a theater near you. More than that, a good director took his work seriously enough to create a sensual human drama, not merely a stiff Masterpiece Theater job. That's damned lucky.

But let's hope as the award season rolls on that more people remember that good movies usually originate from hard-working writers like Parini, compelled to create even if the movies don't come calling. 

Digital Facts of Life for Book Lovers

I almost fell out of my chair when I read Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' interview with Deborah Solomon in The New York Times Magazine about the Kindle and digital book sales. Think there's any going back to the glorious preeminence of the printed word? 

Forget it. Game over.

Here's what Bezos said: "For every 100 copies of a physical book we sell, where we have the Kindle edition, we will sell 48 copies of the Kindle edition. It won’t be too long before we’re selling more electronic books than we are physical books. It’s astonishing."

Yes, it is. No wonder there are a lot of frightened veterans in the book business.

But even as reluctant writers must embrace the pixelated world for connecting with readers -- and must be energetic and creative in how they do it -- they can take solace in one reality that will never change: Compelling stories, engagingly told, will always matter.

And one more thing: If not long ago scoring a deal with a top book publisher was the only road to victory, today there are many paths to success. That's good news.

Moby-Dick is on my iPhone

I am a writer. I believe in the printed word. But I've been trying to wrap my head around the idea that there's no intrinsic reason that words are better appreciated on paper. Call it my survival instinct. 

So in a nod to the earth shifting under our feet, I've been exploring various hand-held electronic devices for viewing books. And, to my surprise, I have come to praise the iPhone for reading a book. I'm not saying that I prefer it in every case -- because I don't -- but consider this:

I am having the best time reading Moby-Dick on my phone. 

On paper, it's more than 800 pages and weighs in at nearly two pounds. That's daunting. But in the bite-sized chunks on my phone, it feels less overwhelming ... and fun.

Stanza, the program that I used to get Herman Melville's classic, tells me exactly how much I've read. Page two of chapter 8? That's 6.4 percent. I can change the background, the color, the size of the font. 

And while standing in line waiting with my daughter to get her the H1N1 vaccine, I pulled out my phone and read Moby-Dick for an hour. Time well-spent that didn't require me to drag the massive tome with me, let alone plan to drag it.

One extra plus: The phone has back-lighting. So on a pleasant evening, I can sit outside and read a book in the dark or lay in bed and read with the lights out.

I won't stop buying "real" books, but I will no longer trash the idea of reading a book electronically. And as Nicholson Baker pointed out in a recent New Yorker piece, when the writing pulls you in, questions about format drift away. That's when the magic takes over and you enter the world of the story. 

Mickey Mouse: Welcome to the Dark Side

Get ready for Mickey's dark side. Mickey Mouse, the nicest mouse on the planet, is about to get real. Turns out the Disney folks have finally recognized that their too-tight cling to their super-clean icon has been killing the little fella. They're planning to awaken his less savory qualities, allow him to be cantankerous and edgy now and then, maybe even make us care about him again.

That's brave for a brand that generates billions in merchandise sales. And smart, because this world-famous icon has become an increasingly irrelevant pop culture figure. Once it's all about nostalgia, it's game over.

According to The New York Times, it's starting with a new video game called Disney Epic Mickey in which Mickey "traverses a forbidden wasteland." And that's only the first step in Disney's "re-engineering" of Mickey -- the way he walks, talks, appears on the Disney Channel and interacts online. 

The game, to be released in 2010 for the Wii, has been created by developer Warren Spector and his team at Junction Point. I rarely like video games, but this one looks different. Spector, in an excellent interview with Time, describes it as a visual marriage between Tim Burton and Walt Disney. That's compelling terrain.

And Spector, a hard-core game nerd and self-described Disney freak, has pulled from the early days of Mickey Mouse, way back to 1928 and Steamboat Willie, when Mickey Mouse was a genuine troublemaker, before he was buffed up to please the widest possible audience.

"The first thing I wanted to do was put Mickey in a world where he's out of place, where he's uncomfortable and has real problems," Spector says. "We've taken him to a strange place where it's a world of forgotten and rejected Disney creativity. There's 80 years of Disney creativity that exists in the archives and we've taken all the stuff that people have forgotten about."

Mickey, Spector reminds, was modeled after the heroic adventurer figure of Douglas Fairbanks and the comic figure of Charlie Chaplin.  Back in the beginning, Mickey could be seen smoking, drinking, even abusing animals. I'm guessing Mickey as smoker, drinker and abuser won't be Disney's ticket to the future.

But as a non-gamer, I'm pretty excited to see the new world in which the reimagined Mickey travels. It sounds like it's a world that extends beyond the five-and-under set. And if Epic Mickey is just the first milestone in Mickey's rebranding, the folks at Disney may be entering a new golden era where what they create matters again. 

Government spending is evil? Really?

The anti-government fanatics would have us believe that taxes are an abomination and the public should always oppose spending increases. Given our troubled economy and this incessant libertarian/Republican refrain, you might expect that voters would reject any initiatives that could raise their taxes.

But you would be wrong.

By a two-thirds majority, voters yesterday in Scottsdale, Ariz., (where I live) supported a budget override that allows the school district to increase its operating budget up to 10 percent a year to protect 179 teaching positions and support elementary school music programs, gifted services and after-school programs. The funds -- nearly $70 million over seven years -- would also help pay for library and other instructional materials, playground improvements, classroom technology, even fine arts materials. 

That's good for the kids and the schools, good for the community, good for jobs, good for business and economic development. It demonstrates that people are willing to pay for initiatives that improve or, in the face of brutal budget cuts, sustain the quality of life.

And this didn't just happen in the relatively affluent Scottsdale. Throughout the Phoenix area yesterday, voters passed more than 20 of these budget overrides and bond proposals to spend more money -- saving jobs, retaining or rehiring teachers, and helping keep class sizes down.

That's money well-spent. And that's not just my opinion. The voters have spoken -- and they agree.

Lee Daniels and Precious: It Takes Guts

 

The usual joke about film producers is that nobody knows what they do. In the case of Lee Daniels, producer and director of the upcoming film Precious, the question is what doesn't he do. 

The New York Times Magazine published a finely written and deeply reported cover feature about Daniels and his film by Lynn Hirschberg.  I came away with a fresh appreciation for the bravery that can be required to get a story told -- not only in cobbling together his projects' financing, making unlikely casting calls and convincing stars to take a gamble, but in the choice of story. 

Just like Daniels' previous films, Precious was and is a hard sell. It's the painful account of a 350-pound illiterate 16-year-old who is pregnant for the second time by her father, horribly abused by her mother and H.I.V. positive. Even though it is based on a published novel, you can be sure Daniels struggled to find backers.  It helps, of course, that he's tackled tough subjects before: He produced Monster's Ball,about bigotry and interracial love in the South, and The Woodsman, about a convicted pedophile played by Kevin Bacon. It help that Halle Berry won an Oscar for Monster's Ball.

But I know that whatever credibility his previous successes gave him, it doesn't get any easier. What may matter most is that he's an outsider -- a real one, not a fake Hollywood one like Brad Pitt, as Helen Mirren tells Hirschberg -- and he knows what the bottom looks like.  (Daniels, who grew up in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood, is gay, African-American, the son of a policeman and a victim of his abuse.)

That means that Daniels is willing to go places that most other filmmakers won't. That takes life experience and self-confidence, but most of all it takes guts.

I don't know if the audiences will follow when it opens Nov. 6, but I consider myself well-advised by Daniels' lead: Be brave.

The Victory of Spike Jonze and His Wild Things

Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze's adaptation of the Maurice Sendak classic, is a victory for filmmakers. I'm not saying I loved it -- the tale offers little relief from sadness and disappointment, conflicted relationships, lonely nights and grunge atmosphere -- but I admired the way Jonze stayed true to the young boy's point of view.

This was poignant storytelling from the inside out, unbroken by the pressure to load up with colorfully gaudy, kid-friendly excitements. That latter approach may have been more fun for the kids in the audience raised on easy entertainment (including my little girl), but not more authentic.

So chalk one up for Spike, even if the kids are not mad for Wild Things. With a reported budget of $80 million and years of struggle, it's a massive achievement to convince studio bosses to give him the space to create an art film. That takes enormous nerve, self-confidence, political skill -- and artistry.

Obama Pauses to Praise an Opponent

I can't be the only one increasingly exhausted by the hostile partisanship that dominates politics. All this does is deepen the divide between opposing sides and increase our inability to communicate. That is not the way forward.

So I was uplifted by President Obama's action today at the University of New Orleans. When his mention of Republican governer Bobby Jindal provoked a chorus of boos, he paused to praise him.

"Bobby, first of all, if it makes you feel any better, I get that all the time," Obama said after the audience quieted down. "And the second point is, you know, even though we have our differences politically, one thing I will say is, this person's working hard on behalf of the state and you have to give people credit for working hard."

Obama didn't have to defend him, but he did. You can check out the video on Politico's site.