Glaucoma

Citizen Of The World

Peter Kirsanow at The Corner:

Judging from the local drive time radio shows, we bitter, religious pistol-packers here in flyover country remembered only two things from Obama's Berlin visit: the phrase "citizen of the world" and Obama's failure to visit wounded troops at Landstuhl and Ramstein.

This morning the radio fairly crackled with callers incensed at what they perceive as Obama's snub of American warriors while ingratiating himself with people who refuse to send any combat troops to Afghanistan. This was not conservative radio but your typical morning traffic and weather blowtorch. And it was in the bluest part of the state (although callers come from much of northern Ohio).

Last evening on a different station, people were put off by Obama proclaiming himself to be a citizen of the world when — according to several callers — he regularly gives indications he's not particularly enthused about being a citizen of the United States. The litany was recited: Obama's making a show of not wearing the American flag lapel pin; his wife's claim that America is a "downright mean" country; Obama's association with Bill Ayers, photographed stomping on the American flag; Rev. Wright damning America; Obama's embarrassment that Americans can't speak German and French; his wife's being proud of America for the first time only because of her husband's candidacy; his condescension toward the purportedly bitter folks clinging to religion; Obama's delegation to the U.N. of the right to tell Americans how much we can eat and how far we can drive, etc — all the greatest hits.

Obviously, a series of anecdotes isn't data. Surely, folks in other parts of the country were charmed by the sight of thousands of foreigners cheering Obama. Just an observation that here in Kucinichland not everyone swooned at Obama's performance, fwiw.

What Bush And Batman Have In Common

From Andrew Klavan at The Wall Street Journal:

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W."

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror -- films like "In The Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Redacted" -- which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?

The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?

The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of "The Dark Knight" itself: Doing what's right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.

Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don't always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.

The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.

When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve. As Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon says of the hated and hunted Batman, "He has to run away -- because we have to chase him."

That's real moral complexity. And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.

Perhaps that's when Hollywood conservatives will be able to take off their masks and speak plainly in the light of day.

The 2008 Euro-Paean Tour

And The Great Multitudes Of The Unwashed Heard, But Did Not Listen, And They Believed!

Gerard Baker at The Times is having way too much fun:

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child's wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child's journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.

Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.

And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.

Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.

But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.

And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.

Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.

On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.

And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

Concert Review

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Cleveland, 07.15.08 from John Soeder on Vimeo.

SET LIST: "Rich Woman," "Leave My Woman Alone," "Black Dog," "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us," "Through the Morning, Through the Night," "It's Goodbye and So Long to You," "Fortune Teller," "In the Mood," "Black Country Woman," "Bon Temps Rouler," "Trampled Rose," "Green Pastures," "Down to the River to Pray," "Nothin'," "The Battle of Evermore," "Please Read the Letter," "Gone Gone Gone"(encore) "Stick with Me, Baby," "You Don't Knock," "One Woman Man," "Your Long Journey"

Last Tuesday, M'Lady, our young miss, her young man and I went to see Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. This unlikely collaboration has grown on me since I first heard "Raising Sand" last year. Some of the songs, most notably "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" have improved considerably since they were recorded. The wonderfully re-worked "Black Dog", a note perfect version of "The Battle of Evermore", an interesting take on "In the Mood" and "Gone, Gone, Gone" were all show highlights.

The average age of the crowd was around 45 which made for some interesting people watching. And while I imagine that Robert Plant was the main draw for the audience, they were very respectful of Alison Krauss when she took center stage on her own. Krauss has a wonderful voice which she can wield like a sword when she chooses to. She cut loose a number of times during the concert and proved she can be a much more assertive singer than her bluegrass recordings would suggest. I am sure she made a number of converts by the end of the show.

But the most interesting part of the concert for me was the "stage presence" on display. When T Bone Burnett played "Bon Temps Rouler" with the band, I almost felt sorry for him; the charisma vacuum was almost palpable. When Alison Krauss performed by herself you could tell she was used to being in the spotlight and commanding a crowds attention. However, Plant was on a whole other level. His Led Zeppelin days taught him how to handle audiences up to 100,000 and keep them in the palm of his hand. Not to mention that he is a bona fide rock star who just can't help the occasional hair flip or mike stand twirl. Even when Plant took a back-up role to Krauss, trying diligently not to be the "rock star", it would leak out anyway.

Overall, a good, solid show which ended up taking both Plant and Krauss into new musical territory. Not to mention that the entire band seemed to be having a ball. And after everyone had taken their bows and said their "Good nights" the last thing Plant said to the audience was "Freedom".

Shuffle Mode

While this secret from PostSecret doesn't apply to me; I find that the shuffle mode on my iPod quite often provides the most mind-bending juxtapositions of music imaginable. They are also frequently, laugh-out-loud amusing.

This Is What Victory Looks Like

From Armed and Curious:

"This is a different Iraq then the one I left two years ago in so many ways. I am constantly surprised this trip when something subtle points to such an obvious change. It is often only much later that you recognize the measure of what you have witnessed and often it’s the absence of things such as explosions and small arms fire in the distance that point to the progress having been made.

Then there are times when the change hits you across the forehead like a 2x4. Yesterday I found inspiration in the tears of joy on hundreds of faces at the graduation for the Iraqi Military Academy at Rustimiyah as 252 young men graduated from the one year course of instruction and were commissioned as 2nd Lieutenants in the Iraqi Army and Air Force.

From the moment we arrived with a herd of media to assist the Iraqi’s in handling the event you could feel an electric air of anticipation in the atmosphere of the gymnasium. The cadets patiently stood in formation while subtly itching and squirming to get it over with. The stands were overflowing with their families and friends frantically waving as they spotted their sons, brothers and friends in the formation.

No one complained as the gym heated up in the desert afternoon as we awaited the arrival of the Minister of Defense and General Petraeus. Their helicopters hit the helipad and the ceremony kicked off with a bang as the entire corps of cadets sang the Iraqi national anthem, which on its own is a powerful song, but when sung by almost a thousand young soldiers at the tops of their lungs with joy and pride you can’t help but feel a chill along the back of your neck without needing to understanding a single word.

As soon as the formation marched forward to the graduation line the candy started raining down. It is an Arabic tradition to give sweets at joyous occasions and at the military academy graduations this has taken the form of handfuls of candy being flung from the stands by women at the cadets and all of us gathered on the floor. I have never seen such huge smiles on Iraqi faces in my five years here. One wonderful older woman had a huge purse which she emptied at all of us on the floor before giving me a wink and transitioning to a basket at her side with another barrage.

Everyone waited patiently through the speeches where Minister of Defense Abdul Qadir told the young men that the most important medal they will ever wear on their chests was the trust of all of the Iraqi people and General Petraeus exhorted them to lead the new democratic Iraq with their proud example.But with the last note of the second playing of the national anthem absolute mayhem broke out. The crowd poured out of the stands as my team and I desperately tried to extract the media from the crush. Everywhere around us men and women alike were crying and grabbing their sons before pulling their cadet epaulets off their shoulders to put the single star of an Iraqi Army or Air Force 2nd Lieutenant in its place.

The Iraqi Army band played a series of songs which were often no more than a pounding of drums while families danced in circles around their boys or the graduates hoisted their buddies on their shoulders to bounce and cheer in unison. I watched a poor little four year old boy in the tiniest suit being held aloft as at least 20 new officers danced and cheered “Victory for Baghdad” over and over and handed him from one to another wet faced man.

We all just sort of stood there and soaked up the energy and passion. This is where Iraq is today. These families, rich and poor, Sunni and Shia, young and old were overcome with pride for their sons becoming officers of the new Iraq.

It wasn’t because they would be getting a regular pay check. Not because there is nothing else to do. These men have committed themselves to building a new democratic Iraq and the sheer joy and pride of their families tells even the most jaded observer, including a couple of veteran western journalists in my group, that something has shifted here that can’t be ignored.

You could not stand on that hot gymnasium floor covered with crushed candy and dancing Iraqis and not be inspired.

I haven’t shaken the chill up my spine even today."

CWCID: InstaPundit

I Love Libertarian Farmers

Over at Maggie's Farm the Dylanoligist writes about the overlap of Left and Right when it comes to food issues:

"Take Michael Pollan's recent book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, where the left-wing New Yorker, anti-corporate and anti-factory-farm Pollan finds his utopia not in some Berkeley commune or fetishized indigenous village, but on a Virginia farm - not too far from Monticello, incidentally - run by a right-wing Christian fellow. The anti-corporate and pro-animal welfare concerns of the left and the anti-government, pro-traditionalist views of the right approach each other and, for an instant, cross paths. In its hurried dash away from big agriculture, the Left does not run into Karl Marx, but into Thomas Jefferson and the image of the virtuous republican farmer, tending to his fields and animals without help from nitrogen fertilizer, tomatoes from Monsanto, or growth-promoting antibiotics."

The right-wing Christian fellow mentioned above is Joel Salatin who, in addition to being a farmer, is also a writer. Here is an excerpt from Salatin's essay "Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal":

"I don’t ask for a dime of government money. I don’t ask for government accreditation. I don’t want to register my animals with a global positioning tattoo. I don’t want to tell officials the names of my constituents. And I sure as the dickens don’t intend to hand over my firearms. I can’t even use the “U” word. On every side, our paternalistic culture is tightening the noose around those of us who just want to opt out of the system — and it is the freedom to opt out that differentiates tyrannical and free societies.

How a culture deals with its misfits reveals its strength. The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers. When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, then silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol."

Wow. Sounds as if Salatin and Gene Logsdon would make quite the pair.

The Arts And Croissants Crowd

From Russ Vaughn at The American Thinker:

We're Oh So... (a poem)

We’re hip, we’re cool and oh so arty;
We’re Democrats, the smarter party.
We’re sophisticated unlike you;
We understand merci beaucoup.
We’re urbane while you’re provincial;
We’re worldly-wise, so existential.
We’re cultured, complex, so refined;
We’ve left you ignorant serfs behind.
We’re witty authors of clever puns,
While you clods cling to God and guns.
Were you not so closed and clannish,
We’d have you peons speaking Spanish.
We say all this with knowing smirks;
We’re Democrats, you red-state jerks.

Quote Of The Day

"The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine."
- Ancient Greek Proverb

Late-Period Limbaugh

The New York Times Magazine has an in-depth article on Rush Limbaugh which you can read here. I didn't think it was that bad, considering the source, and it even contains a little begrudging admiration.

It seems Rush will be on the radio through 2016 since he just signed a $400,000,000.00 contract complete with a nine figure signing bonus. August 1st will mark the 20th anniversary of "The Rush Limbaugh Show".

The Making Of "A Day In The Life"

The American Argument

An excerpt from the latest at American Digest:

"As is often the case in the envious world today, we encounter -- in the commenter's plaint and elsewhere at home and abroad -- a mindset in which "the perfect is the enemy of the good." This is a mindset that views anything less than some imagined perfect state as somehow failing and worthy of excoriation. It is a mindset in which, if the real world falls short of the imagined perfection, it is the real world that is ill rather than the mind of the imaginer. It is a mindset which finds nothing is impossible as long as others do the work and pay the price. It is a mindset forever doomed to disappointment; a doom in which it takes a strange, almost masochistic, pleasure."

"The reality is that the American experiment continues its pursuit of the good and its flirtation with perfection. And through this ceaseless pursuit of happiness the American experiment continues to demonstrate to the world what a real egalitarian and free society actually looks like. America does not deal in what such a society could be, but what one actually is here, now, today. Here the concept of freedom is proved and renewed daily. And we prove it by our constant political argument about "the perfect" vs. "the good;" a utopia now via government intervention in all aspects of life vs. individual liberty and the best "possible" world now. It is an argument that seeks balance rather than predominance."

"There are many ways of stating the America's argument with itself -- indeed, it is many arguments -- but one of the most straightforward is

"How shall men be free and how shall a society of free men then be structured?"

From time to time the passions that animate the American Argument run to blood, such as the era that led to the Civil War and, to a much lesser extent, our current era. At other times, the American Argument is pitched at a much lower level of intensity. But the Argument is ever present, never resolved, and any number can play. If you can get here and become a citizen you can participate as well. Hell, we'll let you participate even if you are here and not a citizen. We might even allow millions of you to become citizens overnight in order to join the Argument. You don't even have to learn English any longer. Just press 2 to continue in Spanish."

We just had a big argument over that last concept and, even though it's over for now, it's not over yet. Indeed, the great thing about the American Argument is that it is never over. The Argument will go on and on prompting every generation to add to it and shape it as that generation wills -- for good or ill -- and that it will self-correct over time as the Argument endures."

"At the same time I would not deny that we are by default an example to the world -- if not the perfect example so many would prefer. Instead we are simply, warts and all, the best society in all its multifoliate aspects that currently exists -- or has ever existed -- upon the Earth. In this it is well that "The eyes of all people are upon us."

Mind-Body Surfing On A Psychic Tsunami

M'Lady and I met Adam Purple and visited the Garden of Eden in the early 1980's. I always admired his urban pioneer spirit as well as his ability to bring beauty and order out chaos and destruction. You can see more pictures of the garden and Adam here.

He was an original and a character of the first order.

February 22, 1998
Adam Purple's Last Stand

By JESSE MCKINLEY

IT'S a bright Sunday morning and the sole resident of 184 Forsyth Street, a small, spry man with a long gray beard, is in his backyard performing his most cherished ritual.
''This ground is all handmade,'' he says, crouching over a shallow pit and slowly tipping several cans of ash, sawdust, food scraps and his night soil into the earth. He replaces the bricks that cover his pit, then scoffs at the city officials whose plans may well put an end to his special means of making compost.

''They're going to come destroy this?'' he says. ''By what right?''

His name, at least most of the time, is Adam Purple, and since 1981 he has lived on the ground floor of No. 184, an abandoned city-owned building on the Lower East Side, without electricity, without heat, without indoor plumbing.

His endurance is impressive when you consider Mr. Purple's age -- 67 -- and the other elements of his ascetic regimen. He is a strict vegetarian, fueling himself with a tofu-based stew he makes once a week over his wood-burning stove. He collects his water from fountains and open hydrants and then stores it in jugs in his ever-cool basement. He eschews petroleum products and the machines that consume them, from oil lamps to city buses.

He scavenges most everything he needs on the streets, he says, from his gray tennis shoes to wood for his stove to batteries for the flashlights he uses after dark. And the cans and bottles he collects and recycles earn him about $2,000 a year, money he uses for two extravagances: a phone and a daily cup of coffee.

What's driving him?

''One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist or a doomsayer to recognize that there may be something happening to the atmospheric systems on the planet Earth,'' Mr. Purple said. ''That's why I renounce the flush toilet, renounce the internal combustion engine. As a political statement. I can live without.''

This ecological ethos led to Mr. Purple's most noted accomplishment -- and his animus toward all things bureaucratic. In the mid-1980's, Mr. Purple was at the center of a bitter fight over his Garden of Eden, an elaborate and widely praised community garden he cultivated on five vacant city-owned lots behind his building.

The city wanted to build low- and moderate-income housing there. The battle drew international attention and the scrutiny of the Federal courts. In January 1986, the city finally bulldozed the garden; several low-rise apartment buildings were put up on the site.

Now, Mr. Purple is fighting the city again, this time over a plan to demolish 184 Forsyth, a decaying six-story tenement, and replace it with a 21-unit federally funded housing project sponsored by the New York Society for the Deaf. Mr. Purple thinks the building should be renovated, preferably with an apartment for him.

Community Board 3 is to vote Tuesday on the demolition plan. But the final decision lies with the City Council, and there, Mr. Purple's prospects seem slim. ''No one wants to displace people,'' said Councilwoman Kathryn E. Freed. ''But you can hardly quarrel with the need of housing in his city.''

Even Mr. Purple's supporters say his blocking the project is a long shot. But his latest campaign has codified his reputation as an ornery gadfly, a man whose quixotic struggles seem focused not only on defending his turf but also on maintaining a life style and ideals that, for many, went out of style with the Nixon Administration.

''He is the purest example of a hippie ever seen in this city,'' said Mary Cantwell, the author of ''Manhattan, When I Young,'' who met Mr. Purple in 1985. ''He is an artifact of that era, living in a very unlikely time and place, namely present-day New York City.''

Mr. Purple has been something of a fringe fixture ever since he moved to the city 30 years ago. His appearance and his moniker were striking even in a city known for its eclectic characters and wild sartorial tastes. During much of the 70's and early 80's, he dressed almost entirely in the royal hue: purple shirts, purple sweaters, purple pants. With his beard, gray hair, floppy green stocking cap, sunglasses and twinkling blue eyes, he looks like Santa Claus if Santa hit the skids and lost the belly.

He moved into 184 Forsyth in 1972 as a month-to-month tenant. In 1976, the building was abandoned by its landlord and later transferred to the city. Its last tenants -- all but Mr. Purple -- left after Consolidated Edison turned off the electricity in 1981 because the city had not paid the bill.

Mr. Purple says he hasn't paid rent since the landlord left and services ceased, and city records show he owes some $350,000 in back rent, unlikely to be paid anytime soon. ''Those pinheads,'' Mr. Purple said recently in typical fashion. ''Don't they know who they're dealing with?''

Mr. Purple has staved off at least four attempts to evict him, said his lawyer, Colleen McGuire. Three eviction proceedings were dismissed on technicalities; the fourth has been pending for nearly a decade, effectively killing the case, Ms. McGuire said.

The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development released two statements this month supporting the deaf project and saying they would try to to settle with Mr. Purple. But a spokesman, Rick Lepkowski, declined to discuss specifics.

Mr. Purple, meanwhile, says he works hard to keep up the building, putting makeshift caps on several chimneys and spending $3,500 for a new roof. ''The issue is not Adam Purple, the issue is this building,'' he said, pointing at its ragged exterior and shattered windows. ''The issue is malicious neglect, and this is the evidence.''

For some observers, there is more at stake than where Mr. Purple lives. It is what he represents: a kind of radical individualism that thrived on the Lower East Side long before the musical ''Rent!'' made squatters fashionable and trendy clubs began sprouting on gritty side streets.

''It seems what he's trying to preserve is really himself, and that's a cause that deserves some support,'' said James Stewart Polshek, the former dean of the School of Architecture at Columbia University, who called the destruction of the Garden of Eden ''an urban crime.'' ''He's more important than the bricks and mortar.''

While his place in the pantheon of the city's eccentrics is secure, Mr. Purple remains an elusive public figure. Nobody seems sure of his real name. Over the years he has assumed pseudonyms ranging from the clever (the Rev. Les Ego) to the historical (John Peter Zenger 2d) to the just plain odd (General Zen of the Headquarters Intergalactic of Psychic Police of Uranus). A database search of the Social Security number listed for Mr. Purple on a 1982 city document found it registered to a man born in North Carolina in 1978.

What Mr. Purple reveals of his history suggests a life colored by both a traditional American upbringing and a countercultural awakening. He was born and raised in Independence, Mo., one of seven children. His father, Richard, was a machinist; his mother, Juanita, a seamstress.
Two jarring episodes marked his early life. When he was 9, he said, his 11-year-old brother died of appendicitis because ''the doctors wouldn't operate on him until my father got there with money.''

Three years later, his father was accidentally electrocuted fighting a fire at the machine shop while his son Adam looked on. ''That's another reason I don't need electricity,'' Mr. Purple said.
He says he attended a small college in Kansas and served two years stateside in the United States Army before returning to school for a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. After several years teaching at high schools and junior colleges in California and South Dakota, Mr. Purple said, he made his way East, working briefly for a political action group run by Paul Krassner, the satirist, and then landing a job as a reporter for The York Gazette and Daily in York, Pa.

It was there, working the police beat, Mr. Purple says, that he began to feel distanced from the mainstream. ''It taught me to be wary of the police,'' he said. ''They had dogs and they used them on people.''

He left Pennsylvania. During the mid-1960's, he traveled, he said, finding kindred spirits in hippie havens like Berkeley and Big Sur, in California, and Dixon, N.M., experimenting with drugs and writing.

In 1968, he landed in New York, hoping to get a book contract for the volume of meditation games he called ''Zentences!'' While he never found a publisher, Mr. Purple says, he made some 600 copies of the book between 1967 and 1973. One copy, measuring one inch by one inch, is currently safeguarded as a historical artifact in the New York Public Library's rare book collection.

The Village Voice was the first publication to notice Mr. Purple, with a report in June 1969 of ''a bearded bon vivant'' who hung out in Central Park, called himself Les Ego and put ''people on his back to 'blow their minds and straighten their spines.' ''

Though Mr. Purple sometimes calls himself ''an old reporter'' and keeps careful records of all the articles ever published about him, he remains extremely skeptical of the press. In 1990, a reporter from New York magazine requested an interview for a ''Where Are They Now?'' article. Mr. Purple sent back a copy of the reporter's letter with its grammar corrected.

''Please allow me to respond to your somewhat inept note,'' he wrote, under the Les Ego pseudonym. ''Because New York has published nothing zenlightening about the Garden since 27 August 1979, I see no reason to trust your magazine.''

Reporters who do manage to interview Mr. Purple typically have their published work mailed back to them with corrections, factual and interpretive, penned in the margins. Photographers are told how, where and sometimes even with what lens to shoot.

He reads voraciously, spending much of each day perusing journals like the World Press Review and Foreign Affairs, or digging into the 3,000 books he stores throughout the building. A recent visitor noticed copies of The New York Observer, Time Out magazine and Vanity Fair lying inside the front door, some addressed to fictional characters of Mr. Purple's invention.

On the third floor are his archives, a collection of press clips and personal writings stored on long hand-made tables and covered with old newspapers to protect them from the occasionally leaky roof.

Anyone looking for a simple answer or a sound bite from Mr. Purple is likely to be frustrated. Conversations with him travel in immensely wide, long arcs. He quotes freely -- and accurately -- from Socrates, Shakespeare and Bob Dylan, and finds connective tissue between such topics as the ozone layer, the irrationality of pi and the relation between his garden and the black monolith from the movie ''2001: A Space Odyssey.''

''What makes him interesting is that he's not a nut,'' Mr. Polshek said. ''He likes to pretend he is, but he's one smart cookie.''

Also, it quickly becomes apparent, his mind runs in circular currents, and the destruction of the Garden of Eden is an eddy that often traps his thoughts. ''It was my pursuit of happiness,'' he said. The current threat to his building only increases its pull.

The Garden began in the spring of 1975. Forsyth Street, like much of the Lower East Side, had fallen into a spiral of urban decay, with prostitution, drug use and trash-strewn lots marring a strip once known for vibrant storefronts and sturdy old tenements. With the city suffering a financial crisis, vacant buildings in the area were often demolished to prevent arson and other crimes.

One building torn down was directly behind the back windows of the apartment of Mr. Purple and his companion at the time, a young woman who went by the name of Eve. They decided to plant something, said Mr. Purple, in part to attract crickets, which he said would warn them if someone was approaching their back window. ''You can't get within three feet of a cricket without it stopping its chirping,'' he said. ''It's silence as a security system.''

He began biking to Central Park to collect horse manure, which he then mixed with ash, his own waste, and with rubble in the lot to create batches of fertile topsoil. That process alone attracted attention.

''He'd pull up every so often on his way back from the park, with a full load,'' said Seymour Hacker, a rare books dealer on West 57th Street and Mr. Purple's friend. ''It was quite a vision for my customers.''

Planted in perfect concentric circles around a yin-yang symbol, the garden slowly grew outward into neighboring lots, becoming a majestic 15,000-square-foot array of raspberries, roses, lilies, fruit trees and other flora, all diligently tended by Mr. Purple and his supporters.

The garden drew local admirers and global press. National Geographic did a photo spread, as did several foreign publications. Mr. Purple's work drew comparisons to the earth sculpture of artists like Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria.

''It was an absolutely astonishing creation,'' said Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, an expert on street life and a former head of New York University's Department of Performance Studies. Besides its natural beauty, Ms. Kirshenblatt-Gimblet said, the garden had an inherently political message.

''He made a garden out of a ruin,'' she said. ''So symbolically it was an especially strong indictment of the failure of the city to do the same.''

But by the early 1980's, city officials were looking for places to build housing for some half-million people. One site they had in mind was that of the garden.

As the demolition date approached, opposition grew. Neighborhood activists and supporters swarmed into community board meetings and the garden's brick paths. Painted purple footprints began appearing on sidewalks, wending their way to the garden. A group of architects, academics and environmentalists went to court to block construction.

In 1985, Judge Vincent L. Broderick of Federal District Court, who had previously barred the garden's demolition, ruled that ''irreparable harm would be incurred only by Purple were the garden to be destroyed since few others derive benefit from it.''

On Jan. 8, 1986, as Adam Purple watched from his windows, bulldozers uprooted the Garden of Eden. ''I gave this city two works of art,'' said Mr. Purple, referring to the garden and his book. ''They ignore one and trash the other.''

He added, with a pinch in his voice: ''Give me a break. When do I get respect?''
In response to questions about the current conflict, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development issued a statement saying that it and the Society for the Deaf were willing to help Mr. Purple find another apartment. ''But he has not been amenable,'' the statement said.
Considering Mr. Purple's cantankerous nature, that may be an understatement. He is certain that those who demolished his garden -- or who destroy 184 Forsyth -- will have a cosmic comeuppance.

''The mills of the gods grind slowly,'' he said with a sly smile, paraphrasing a quotation whose author he has forgotten. ''But they grind exceedingly fine.''

In the meantime, Mr. Purple sticks to a regular routine, waking at dawn, redeeming his cans, meditating or reading in the afternoon. His building is chilly and damp inside. In the front hallway, amid dozens of scavenged umbrellas, the plaster has begun to slip from the ceiling. At the end of the hall is what Mr. Purple calls his ''inner sanctum,'' two rooms adorned with his wood stove, a typewriter, a mattress on the floor, and a pair of enamel kettles he uses as chamber pots. On cold days, he is a slave to his fire, stoking its embers early in the morning and feeding it scavenged wood all day long.

At night, he stows away his reading and turns on a small radio to listen to the news and opinion on WBAI-FM, a longtime bastion of liberal die-hards. Depending on the cold, he might wear a scarf or gloves to bed.

All that remains of the garden is a single Chinese empress tree, a few transplanted black raspberry bushes and, in his kitchen, some dried basil he uses to season his stew.

Mr. Purple wears little purple nowadays, except the ball cap under his stocking cap. He put the color away, he said, after the garden was destroyed.

''Purple went out with the garden,'' he said. ''Adam Purple doesn't exist.''

He said he might consider taking an apartment if the city offered it, but only if he could continue his ritual of turning waste into soil. And, of course, he'd have a few questions. ''How come I'm being given preference?'' he said. ''How can I be put at the top of the list?''

Why wouldn't he leave the city, he is asked, go someplace where the climate --
both human and celestial -- is more in tune with his horticultural urges?
Mr. Purple harrumphs. ''I'm teaching lessons about how to survive, an experiment on making earth,'' he says. ''Of course you could do it outside the city, but the challenge is here.''

He pauses for a second, and then, as is his way, reconsiders. ''It's the Athenian oath,'' he said. ''The Athenian oath. The duty or responsibility of every citizen to leave the scene a little better than when they got there, to improve things.''

A Rare, Classic Volume, All One Square Inch of It

Deep within the New York Public Library's rare book collection, there is an old wood cabinet where the some of the world's tiniest works of literature sit under lock and key.

The collection includes a 1660 edition of a shorthand Bible (2 1/2 inches tall) and a 19th-century copy of a letter by Galileo that measures a whopping 1/2 inch by 3/4 inch. Then there is a more recent addition: ''Zentences!'' by Les Ego, also known as Adam Purple.

The book, donated by Mr. Purple in 1972, has been preserved because of its quality and because of its author's historical significance, John Rathe, a librarian, said. It measures one inch by one inch. Besides its size, the structure and content of ''Zentences!'' are also curious. Each tiny page is split in two. On the top are nouns like ''Love'' or ''The Tao.'' On the bottom are verb phrases, for example, ''needs a vacation in Oz'' and ''is a chaste shadow.''

The idea, Mr. Purple said, was that a reader could flip through the book and pair the nouns with the verbs to create koan-like sentences for meditation. Hence the title.

Its trippy concept notwithstanding, ''Zentences!'' is precisely crafted, with a cloth cover, dyed page edges, headbands on the binding and an inscription page. ''This is not an art object pretending to be a book,'' Mr. Rathe said. ''It is, in fact, a book made in classic fashion.''
Mr. Purple says that he hand-made some 600 copies, each with different words but that probably fewer than 100 existed today.

''People left them in their pants and they got washed away,'' he says. ''But the ones that are still around are going to be worth a lot someday.'' JESSE McKINLEY

Happy Independence Day!

"Whenever I get to fretting about my own personal situation, I compare myself to the rest of humanity. Is there a luckier time or place in all of history to have been born than in the United States in the second half of 20th century? The answer is so obviously "no" that it cheers me right up! Not just born on third base, but born knowing what the heck third base is. Does it get better than that?

I submit that it cannot.The Fourth of July is our real day of thanksgiving."

TigerHawk

Don't Call Me Shirley

Darleen Click over at protein wisdom:

“Surely we can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism.”

Surely, I can disagree.

Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy that has as its core value some variation of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is antithetical to American values and, therefore, unpatriotic.

Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy makes the “world’s” feelings a priority over American interests or sovereignty is antithetical to American values or survival and, therefore, unpatriotic.