[I_Like_Plants]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Phebagirl', ' ')
When I related this story to Kunstler he responded with his usual sarcasm. He thought the story was weird.
Kunstler just doesn't get it. He can daydream all he wants about a post apocalyptic nirvana (World Made By Hand), but he doesn't have the first clue about the actual sociology of neighbors helping neighbors.
Kunstler is so filled with contempt for his neighbor that he doesn't have a clue what being a neighbor truly means.

[threadbear]

Plants, I'm sure we all benefit from reading your posts, but you're beginning to hijack threads with your opinions about "the Jews".

[I_Like_Plants]

Well, this thread is about "The Kunstler" so keep awake here.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', 'W')ell, this thread is about "The Kunstler" so keep awake here.

[I_Like_Plants]

Sigh. Read stuff by the Jews for the Jews.

You know, a pig is not all that wrong in concluding that the guy penning him in and making his family go away might just be the pig farmer. That's how the Jews see us, you know - as livestock.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', 'S')igh. Read stuff by the Jews for the Jews.

You know, a pig is not all that wrong in concluding that the guy penning him in and making his family go away might just be the pig farmer. That's how the Jews see us, you know - as livestock.

[Heineken]

Antisemitism is an amazingly persistent disease.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Phebagirl', 'G')ood day from Pheba, from the farm:
I posted a short review of Kunstler's novel on the forum titled;
"World Made By Hand". What a bunch of drivel.
I used to e-mail Kunstler about the farming situation here in the Midwest.
January of 07 our next door neighbor died. He was an amazing, sharing, caring farmer. He would do anything to help a neighbor, and was the kindest man. He was soft spoken, and listened when others talked. He was good to his wife, and kids. His grandkids lived next door, and spent hours at his farm. He had about 20 horses and mules, and he spent a good portion of his time teaching kids to ride. He raised cattle, and hunted coyotes. Just a good all round farmer.
He was putting in a very large pond. His dream was to spend his retirement (he was 72) fishing at the pond with grandkids.
He was on his tractor grading the pond dam, when the earth under the dam collapsed. His tractor rolled over and killed him instantly. His 7 and 9 year old granddaughter found him. His son had to use a crane to lift the tractor off his body.
I commented to Kunstler about the event in an e-mail. The day after the farmer's death I was driving by and saw about 20 pick-up trucks parked at their farm. The neighbors had all pitched in, and they were removing all traces of the accident. They finished the pond dam, put up fence, sowed seed, etc. My neighbor would have been pleased.
There was so much donated food that the neighbor's wife had to turn me down when I asked what I could bring to her.
When I related this story to Kunstler he responded with his usual sarcasm. He thought the story was weird.
Kunstler just doesn't get it. He can daydream all he wants about a post apocalyptic nirvana (World Made By Hand), but he doesn't have the first clue about the actual sociology of neighbors helping neighbors.
Actually, there was little the neighbors could do to help the farmer's widow. By removing the scenes of his tragic death, and finishing his dream pond, they were doing something. It is this desire to help one's neighbor that Kunstler just doesn't get.
He can dream about it, write about it, but the bottom line is that Kunstler is so filled with contempt for his neighbor that he doesn't have a clue what being a neighbor truly means.
Pheba.
In an ironic twist to this story, the small cemetery where my neighbor was buried is next door to their farm. You guessed it. it is exactly next to the new pond. They buried him right up at the fence. facing the pond.

[BigTex]

Kunstler is like one of those comedians who doesn't know how to relate to individual human beings, only a crowd that is paying attention to him.

I am always deeply disappointed when someone I really admire turns out to be a jerk when I actually meet him or her.

At the university I attended there was this English professor who was kind of a local celebrity. She had won all of these teaching awards, had written books that had sold well, had commentaries in the paper occasionally. Just an apparently appealing person. I never had a chance to take one of her classes, but one day I was in the English department looking for one of my professors whose office was next door to hers. I saw her in her office and she seemed to be either arriving or leaving, but not absorbed or busy with anything. I asked her if she had seen the professor I was looking for that day. She looked at me like I was covered in shit and said in the most condascending manner: "Was I supposed to be looking for him?"

What a phony, I thought.

OTOH, when my dad was in the hospital with a terminal illness a few years ago, on a lark I sent an email to Roger Staubach's real estate company and asked if there was any way Roger Staubach could call my dad and just wish him well (don't ask me where I got that idea). The next day the phone in the hospital room rang and it was Roger Staubach and he talked to my dad for a few minutes and was just as nice as he could be.

What a classy guy, I thought.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')I am always deeply disappointed when someone I really admire turns out to be a jerk when I actually meet him or her.

[Homesteader]

The take away: Stop looking up (or down, maybe especially down unless they are running for office. ) to people until you until you meet them and get to know them.

[Heineken]

Interesting comments.

Yes, one needs to separate public images from private personalities.

I have a vignette along these lines of my own to relate, and coincidentally it connects loosely with "Star Trek."

About 10 years ago I had occasion to see a Shakespeare play ("The Tempest," I think it was) at a famous old theater in downtown Washington, DC. I went with a friend who worked at a health club being temporarily attended by Patrick Stewart, who was starring in the play. The two had struck up an acquaintance of sorts, and Stewart gave him two free, front-seat tickets to the play. He also invited my friend and a guest to meet the cast after the play.

We went, all excited. The play was great. Afterwards I was ushered into a special rear chamber where the cast was mingling with invited members of the public, many of them pretty "important" themselves. I was terrified. My friend introduced me to Stewart, and he and I spoke for a minute or two. He seemed to be sizing me up. I made a comment about being impressed by how the stage actually tilted back and forth during the storm. Stewart displayed disgust at this comment and at me for making it, remarking that the tilting of the stage was "no fun at all for the actors who had to put up with it." Instead of being at least superficially friendly and welcoming to little me, he was unsmiling and cold and supercilious. I guess I failed whatever test he was applying to me, since he suddenly cut me off in mid-sentence and moved on without any further comment.

I suppose it could be said that Stewart was a lot like the crabby characters he's portrayed in his acting, so maybe that's a point in his favor. Maybe he was just "being himself."

Nevertheless, I've "hated" Patrick Stewart ever since. Next to the original "Star Trek," his version sucked anyway.

[dinopello]

Ha, I saw Stewart at the Shakespear Theatre in a "Reverse Othello" (Stewart was Othello and all the other actors were black). I agree with you about the Star Treks !

Artists seem to be inclined to mood swings and personality issues. I have a very good friend who makes his entire living being a sculpter and paints a bit. He can be the most generous, caring person one day and then just pissed off at the world, abrupt and rude the next. He wasn't so famous as to have people he didn't even know coming up to him and emailing him but if he did, I can imagine some would get a negative impression.

Homesteader is right. People are complex. I don't know of anyone who is all perfect all the time.

Although, if anyone makes a rude comment to being told of a loved ones death, that is pretty bad. If you can't say something nice... in that type situation.

[BigTex]

Good point pstarr. I try to remind people of that when someone they don't like does good work. Sean Penn is on this list for many right now, I think.

Back to the celebrity encounter thing, one thing that works great is if you happen to meet someone casually and you either don't recognize them or you act like you don't. This is a whole different matter from meeting them when they are either in character or expected to be "on."

Don Henley is a jerk personally, according to most people. However, he used to a live a couple of miles from me in Dallas and I was driving down the street one day and saw him walking along with his daughter and stopped and rolled the window down and just acted like I was lost and needed directions. He gave me directions and was a pleasant guy. No attitude.

So I think time and place have a lot to do with it as well.

[Heineken]

I agree with pstarr.

Kunstler's message is what's important. The rest is trivialities and anecdotes (although I think Pheba's reaction is valid in its own right, too; human emotions do matter, after all).

It is astonishing what damage we have wrought to this beautiful country mostly without criticism. Even as a child, I noticed this and it bothered me, haunted me. I was gape-mouthed at what I called the "endless stream effect" (referring to automobile traffic on heavily traveled roads), and at Kunstler's landscape of "fried-food shacks and muffler shops." My childhood was divided between Austria and various faceless US suburbs, and the contrast between the two made an indelible impression that's guided my thinking and decisions ever since. While living in suburban Washington, DC, in the early 1970s I witnessed the bulldozing of a forest (where I often played) and its replacement by the cookie-cutter crap we plant everywhere. Never forget it. But nobody I talked to about it seemed to mind. "Can't stop progress," they said. To which my answer was, "This is progress?"

[mgibbons19]

Interesting, but I've got to agree with pstarr a little here. I gave up being let down by authors or artists I've met. Whatever they're doing is important enough to turn me on. But I don't expect decent social commentary, good philosophy, or even decent human-ness out of them. I simply take them for what they're good at, and if they're a decent human to boot, then that's a plus.

When I first found Kunstler I read all of his geography books and waited impatiently for his City in Mind to come out. Then I saw him speak at a local university where the question and answer session came off flat. I was personally quite disappointed with the answers to my questions - they were essentially non answers.

Further, his bias against the South and basically anybody that doesn't agree with him personally galls me.

But so what? What he's good at is writing books about suburbanism and public architecture. And I appreciate that enough to keep buying those books. If he turns out to be a one-trick pony, that'll be a shame, but it's still more impact on the world than I've had.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '.')..Good observations about the phenomenon of being "let down" by someone you've looked up to. I bet that happens to nearly all of us at some point.

[Ludi]

I've been fortunate to meet and also to work with some semi-famous people (in their respective fields) and in general, they were nice to me. But that has been my experience throughout life, I seem to have been fortunate to have missed many assholes. I only had one boss who was a real jerk, but I think he had mental or emotional problems.

[MacG]

Many great artists and authors have suffered from deep personal problems, detaching them from "normal" societies of their times. Darn old Socrates was forced to drink poison because he "intoxicated the youth" with heretic thoughts, while many others have ended their lives quite voluntarily.

My opinion: Kunstler's criticism of the architecture and planning of the US landscape is probably relevant. What makes him a bona fide asshole is that he seems to look forward to the destruction and suffering ahead. He was foaming at the mouth over Y2K which he really hoped would bring down society.

Maybe it takes some deep personality problems to look trough the consensus of a society? Some of the prophets in the OT hated humanity even more than Kunstler.

[lateStarter]

Monday is my favorite day of the week.