Vic Socotra

11 August 2009

The New Caduceus

I don’t know how Heckle and Jeckle bear it. They are the feral black cats with white socks that I work for down at The Farm. They peered at me with minor irritation as I struggled to open a new bag of cat chow.

I was in seersucker and still the sweat rolled down as I drove the Bluesmobile down Virginia Blue Highway 29 in the direction of Charlottesville. The drive in in America, with mountains, rather than the molehills we raise in the Imperial City, and there was business to attend to, and seventy resumes to race through. We hoped to find a slate of people the Government might find entertaining, and which would permit my continued employment.

It was the third day of the first real hot spell of a cool wet summer. I suspect Heckel and Jeckle were taking it harder than I did, being unable to shed their little fur coats to fend off the relentless moist heat. But they still seemed cool and aloof, like the President, which is a characteristic I would like to cultivate.

I had a bit of business with a local contractor at Refuge Farm, and fed the boys and ensured they had water. I hope the weather will break and permit them good, if alert, sleeping.

I eventually dragged into Big Pink before sun-down, wind-burned from the air conditioner on the police cruiser. I managed to get in the pool while Jiggs was still there. There was dramatic good news. The Recession is over, and he is taking delivery on a new 2010 Mustang convertible today. So the rest of you, get your shit together. Let’s move on.

Everything is swell in Washington, so I predict that waves of prosperity will spread out from the Beltway in concentric rings. I think I saw it happening in the hulks of the crushed victims of the Cash for Clunkers program prominently displayed at the car dealerships along Route 29.

It was sad, in a way, like the agricultural programs that pay farmers to grow nothing: providing taxpayer cash to destroy perfectly good automobiles. Everyone likes it, since no one appears to be paying for it, so it is almost a perfect government program.

It is August, though, so I don’t expect you to get right on fixing your part of the economy. Maybe after the kids are back in school, and before we all get the swine flu.

This is likely to be a sultry week, so why don’t we take it slow?

I was going to get right on the Saul Alinsky thing today, and take a stroll through the fascinating life that produced the intellectual framework for the Clintons , President Obama, Lee Atwater and Carl Rove. But we will have to get to that in due time, and I don’t want to break too much of a sweat before I go to the office.

But as to the New Caduceus: the symbol at the bottom of this note has everything that Saul would have liked. It has instant identification, droll humor, and the capability to immediately create emotion. It is a powerful image, don’t you think?

It trumped the nice note I got from the White House, which started out:

“Dear Friend,

Anyone that's watched the news in the past few days knows that health insurance reform is a hot topic — and that rumors and scare tactics have only increased as more people engage with the issue. Given a lot of the outrageous claims floating around, it’s time to make sure everyone knows the facts about the security and stability you get with health insurance reform…”

It is pretty cool, getting regular notes from the Executive Office of the President. Best I ever did before was a Christmas Card from George and Laura Bush, in life-like color. I never got a thing from the Clintons, though considering what you might have picked up from Bill, that is probably a good thing.

Now that no one has to worry about postage, enables community organizers and the power structure to reach out in something like real time. I am sure would have interested Mr. Alinsky.

Anyway, more about the Chicago Radical who shaped all of our leaders, and their style tomorrow. And more about the New Caduceus, too.

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