Eclectic Week

 It’s been quite a week of events, and I am grappling with a way to tie them all together.  Perhaps it is nothing more than a desire to divert my attention from this hideous election season and cage fights that call themselves debates—in which neither candidate made a case for free markets.   Within the span of one week, I attended a presentation by a transgendered economist (Deirdre McCloskey) , a world  renown theologian and journalist (Martin Marty and Kenneth Woodward) , and an aging rock star (Alice Cooper).  Together, they were a welcome distraction from an economy stuck in neutral, a world in flames, and a country divided and faced with two distasteful choices and a third (Gary Johnson) that gets lost on the way to the men’s room.

Woodward’s and Marty’s presentation was put on by the Lumen Christi Institute at the University of Chicago.  Woodward’s book, Getting Religion:  Faith, Culture & Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama spans the role and evolution of religion in American life over Woodward’s lifespan.  He puts it forward as a first hand, ringside view of religiosity over the post war period.  And while the role religion has diminished somewhat in America, a large proportion of Americans still count themselves as believers and religion remains an important part of our culture.  Woodward’s book is a “lived history” and covers growth of religion (more churches built in the 1950’s than any other time and in 1960 60% of children were in parochial schools) to the Billy Graham era to the present.   Best line of the evening was Martin Marty, “Methodists take responsibility for all of society because they know what’s good for you.”  Second best line of the evening, “If you don’t believe in God, you believe in everything.”

A few days earlier, I attended a lecture by Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Don), who discussed her new book Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, not Capital or Institutions Made Us Rich.  McCloskey is a University of Chicago trained economic historian who was THE professor to take as an undergrad at Chicago. She is a most out-of-the mainstream advocate for the free market—a transgendered woman that suffers from occasional stuttering, “I began as a Joan Baez Marxist,” she proclaimed.   I was too insecure about my math background to do so and now regret it.  She is witty, sharp, charming and insightful with a wonderful sense of humor that is simultaneously self- promoting and self-deprecating. Her thesis is that the notion that capital accumulation and natural resources lead to wealth is wrong.  “If it were natural resources, Russia and the Congo would be rich.”  McCloskey believes that it is equality under the law that makes a wealthy society, “We are rich because we are free.  The essence of society is new ideas.  Equality under the law permits ordinary people to become creative.”  McCloskey was captivating, persuasive, and inspiring.  She is a most respected economic scholar, writer and lecturer, despite having to overcome her stuttering and gender identity issues.

Finally, I attended an Alice Cooper concert.  Alice Cooper is nearing 70 and was known in the early 70’s as an outrageous performer (although relatively tame by today’s standards) and boundary stretcher.  played the usual fare—“No More Mister Nice Guy,” “Billion Dollar Babies,” and his signature hit, “School’s Out,” which has been an anthem for school kids in June for two generations.  Alice Cooper has always intrigued me because in addition to his musical and showman talents, he is a scratch golfer and is still touring and playing golf at a high level at an age when many are retired.  Still, crowd was largely geriatric and I am guessing that many tickets were paid for with social security checks.  I actually saw people with walkers and canes and I assumed that any pot smokers had a medical exemption.   The music was a bit loud but most likely that was to accommodate concert goers that had forgotten their hearing aids.

It certainly was an eclectic week, with out-of-the-mainstream but superb talents in three different areas-musical, economic and spiritual, and all three still productive in their later years.  Marvelous.