DRINKS BEFORE DINNER

WHEN BEING RIGHT IS NOT RIGHT ENOUGH

2010-08-19T17:25:00.006-04:00

--Uh oh, you printed something off the Internet. Never a good sign.
--Just a little confessional. An interlude to share during drinks.
--Who’s the confessor?
--Our good friend Congressman Bob Inglis, Republican from South Carolina. But only for a few more weeks.
--Whoa, South Carolina. That requires wine, I’ll be right back.

--OK, what’s the latest from Bubba Bob Inglis?
--He’s had it, he’s kaput, out of a job. He lost the primary to a Tea Party type.
--What happened?
--He told his constituents to turn off Glenn Beck, and he failed to use the S word about Obama.
--The S word would be Socialist?
--Correct. When pushed to describe Obama as a socialist, Inglis waffled. All he’d say was that Obama, quote, “wants a very large government that I don’t think will work and that spends too much and it’s inefficient and it compromises freedom and it’s not the way we want to go.” It says his audiences paid no attention because they were just listening for the S word. When he didn’t use it, they looked disappointed.
--Wasn’t Inglis one of the super-Christians who tried to impeach Clinton?
--The same. One of the meanest of the mean. But now he feels contrite. Looking back as he cleans out his desk, he’s sorry.
--Really? He got religion?
--Yes, and he got it from Clinton, no less. Inglis says he heard Clinton say at some prayer breakfast that “the most violated commandment in Washington is ‘Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’”
--Which is why he wouldn’t call Obama a socialist.
--Exactly.
--I don’t believe it.
--I do. He’s not going back to Congress. That means he’s free to be honest.
--I’m sorry, honey, I thought you knew this. Politicians from South Carolina are all vetted before running. The process is rigorous and wide-ranging. If the person wishing to run for office reveals a capacity for higher-order cognitive functions, he’s “de-selected.” That’s the term when you get dropped by the party. For obvious reasons, the vetting is done by people from out-of-state.
--OK, that makes sense. Because it says here Inglis knew an ill wind was blowing his way back in ’09. That means cognition was operating. It says he saw the ill wind at a GOP retreat. He made a presentation to the group, explaining how a poll had asked Americans to rate themselves in terms of conservatism. The scale was one to ten, one being Mao, ten being somewhere to the right of Louis Quatorz. The average was 5.6. Those polled thought House Republicans were about 6.5, and Democrats 4.3. This is good news, Inglis said. It means Republican House members are closer to the general public’s position than Democrats are. He told his audience it meant Republicans could keep to the right, “without driving off the road.” His audience greeted this with “stony faces.”
--Why?
--I guess they resented the implication that it was possible to drive your pickup too far to the right. He says the crowd made him think of the crowd getting ready to stone the sacrificial victim in Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Lottery.” The speaker who followed Inglis at the retreat said—let me find it—“On Bob’s ideological spectrum, I’m a 10.” For this the crowd went wild.
--And now Inglis feels bad about hounding Clinton.
--Yeah. I suppose it’s more of that bad-for-reelection brain activity and moral reflection. You know, the thing about bearing false witness. Inglis now regrets all the lies his Lottery crowd told about Whitewater. You remember Whitewater. And about all the innuendo regarding Vince Foster’s death. You remember Vince, I’m sure.
--Since his place at the public trough is now being filled with teabags, what do you think Inglis will do?
--Good question. My guess is, with all that cognition, there’s a think-tank in his future.

I SPY

2010-07-16T16:10:00.002-04:00

As in spyware, malware, mal a la teteware.
The recent sweep that netted a posse of Soviet-era spies seems to have come up one short. That would be the viral mole who's holed up in my computer. When he is found and traded for a good hitter to fill a slot at the end of the Detroit Tigers batting order, Drinks Before Dinner will be back in business.

RECIPROCITY

2010-07-08T11:11:00.012-04:00

Barbara has the week off. If she didn't, she might caution against writing on something about which I know so little. But since that admonishment applies to almost everything in Drinks Before Dinner, onward and upward

Glenn Beck:
“When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I’m just like, ‘Oh shut up.’ I’m so sick of them because they’re always complaining.”

“The only [Katrina victims] we’re seeing on television are the scumbags.”

Michele Bachmann:
“I don’t know where we’re going to get all this money because we’re running out of rich people in this country.”

Rush Limbaugh:
“We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. Income Tax.”

Ann Coulter:
“I don’t really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating [Dr. George] Tiller in the 203rd trimester…. I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don’t want to impose my moral values on others.”

“There are a lot of bad Republicans. There are no good Democrats.”

Rand Paul:
(on BP) “Sometimes, accidents just happen.”

No to health care reform. No to financial reform. No to environmental legislation. No to temporarily suspending further drilling in the Gulf. No to extending unemployment benefits.

The quotes above from high-profile voices in the Republican Party, along with that party’s unwavering “no” votes in Congress during the last eighteen months cannot be faulted for inconsistency or uncertainty. The party and those voicing its point of view present a unified summary judgment on what makes human beings tick.

Whether it’s the professorial postures struck by Newt Gingrich, the philosophical cheerleading of Ayn Rand’s supporters, or the junkyard-dog approach to conducting the nation’s business perfected by a Mitch McConnell or Richard Shelby, Republicans see human nature in clear terms.

According to the right, human beings thrive when allowed to pursue their self-interest. Logically (goes the argument), entities created by human beings represent extensions of themselves. That is, corporations and profit-driven institutions equal manifestations of human will. Efforts—especially government efforts-- to regulate or control these acts of human will are at best the product of ignorance, at worst a perverse attempt to thwart the innate drive for self-expression and perfection. The quintessential act of this self-expression, and the most human of all focused activity is the business of making money.

Generally, this view takes its cue from Adam Smith's "invisible hand," matched with a nineteenth-century reading of Darwin. Proponents of Social Darwinism assert that natural selection applies not just to individuals, but to races, societies and nations. Remove all impediments to human will, and “successful” people will thrive, while others go to the wall, which is where nature intends for them to go. In concert with “the white man’s burden,” Social Darwinism served Colonialism well.

Such a view applies an early reading of Darwin to the human organism. It sees our species in terms of club-wielding Flintstones in competition for food and females, but this reading has since been rejected by rational people. Even without later refinements made to evolutionary theory, technology alone has rendered it obsolete: it ignores the functional equality of a small woman’s index finger compared to that of a sumo wrestler when pushing a button in, say, a nuclear missile silo.

In the Sixties, British biologist William Hamilton founded studies in animal behavior that later became widely known through E.O. Wilson’s book Sociobiology. In 1964, Hamilton put forth a hypothesis that came to be known as Hamilton’s rule. In the simplest terms, the rule says that we practice altruism (the devil itself to Ayn Rand’s disciples, and to most right wingers) to those whose survival is needed as insurance that our own genes will survive.

In short, you look after kinfolk who carry your genetic code, and you do it for reasons of self-interest. Are you your brother’s keeper? Should you lay down your life for your brother? In genetic terms, the answer is yes, but only for two brothers, or for four cousins, because they will carry forward your genes.

This “rule” has opened the door for further study that seeks to explain acts of generosity and kindness (and ultimately the origins of morality) in terms of evolution.

If all this means anything to you, you can see why any success in locating an evolutionary basis for things like social justice and generosity would cause most conservatives to go ballistic. Provide a verifiable, science-based justification for “doing good” in liberal terms, and the “up yours, Jack, I’ve got mine” philosophy has the rug pulled out from under it.

The champion of this effort is Robert Trivers, an eccentric genius whose early career included advanced study (and self-taught mastery) of multiple disciplines, dangerous breakdowns resulting from bi-polar disorder, radical politics, and much else. Out of this hodgepodge, Trivers finally focused on the knotty question of why it is that animals often come to the aid of others to whom they are not related, sometimes even to members of other species. He refers to it as “the evolution of reciprocal altruism.”

It’s one thing to save your brother from drowning, and thereby, “rescue” copies of your own genes for the future, but why jump in to save a stranger?

Trivers’ studies include not just math (he taught himself calculus at fourteen), biology and psychology, but also history and anthropology. From a growing body of data, what he has come to believe is that, in the primordial past, human evolution rewarded those who practiced kindness in tribal society by establishing a debt of gratitude. If I save you and yours, you are more likely, should the need arise, to save me and mine.

No doubt an Ayn Rander or a latter-day Newt Gingrich or a trickle-down economist like Arthur Laffer will dream up some way to finesse or dismiss this new perspective. Being generous and looking out for others besides those in one’s tiny corner of the gene pool is not compatible with their world view. But if Trivers’ ideas ever capture the popular imagination, “enlightened selfishness” is going to sound more like its true self: a hollow falsehood not even applicable in terms of self-interest.

SPIES AND WHALES

2010-07-01T16:04:00.004-04:00

--It’s a beautiful evening. Want to sit on the patio?
--You go ahead.
--What’s wrong?
--No, go on ahead, I’m fine. I just want to sit here.
--Come on, fess up. What’s wrong?
--“Fess up.” That’s an apt phrase. Eleven Russians were arrested for spying this week. The cold war ended twenty years ago, but they were ordered to maintain their deep-cover mole status anyway.
--I read about it. They were all posing as suburbanites.
--The FBI’s been tracking them for seven years. Seven years, Barbara.
--So what? You thought the Russkies just Fed-Xed all their spycams and shotgun mics back to Moscow? Their wigs and fake beards?
--Apparently, they never learned anything to pass along.
--Well, isn’t that a good thing?
--One of them tried to buy a cell phone. She gave her address as Fake Street. That’s how the crack FBI operatives nabbed her. The only reason the Bureau sprang into action is because one of the others bought a one-way ticket to Cyprus. You can’t invest seven years of taxpayers’ money on monitoring spies who haven’t done any actual spying without making an arrest.
--And this is why you won’t come outside to enjoy a nice summer evening in Michigan? What do I have to do, sweep the patio for bugs and cameras?
--What’s depressing is that “experts” think the spies were kept in place to the tune of millions of rubles just to uphold tradition.
--The spy tradition.
--Yes. Instead of change, tradition. And of course the logical extension is to conclude our own tradition also had to be maintained. Seven years of watching suburbanite spies who never gathered any info worth sending back. And the finance reform legislation has no teeth. Nothing will change in any significant way, so the tradition of Wall Street scams will continue. Just like the drill-baby-drill tradition in the Gulf.
--You really should come outside.
--I will. And after reading about spies, I made the mistake of turning on the TV. Just in time to see footage taken from a plane off the coast of Texas. The footage showed a pod of dolphins. Dead together in the dead sea. Their brains are as big as ours. They can recognize themselves in a mirror. They grasp abstractions. I couldn’t watch and turned it off.
--Then you came in here to be with your thoughts.
--Do you ever have a sense of an ending? Of things getting ready to be over?
--When I do, I go outside to watch evening light in the trees. I recommend it.
--You go on. I’ll be there soon.

THE SPARTAN AND THE PRESIDENT: SECOND THOUGHTS

2010-06-24T09:46:00.005-04:00

--Sweetheart, you’re talking to yourself again.
--I was dressing myself down. I was taking myself out to the woodshed.
--Please don’t tell me you forgot to turn off the coffee maker again. We don’t need any more caffeinated tar.
--Nope, on top of the coffee maker.
--But you needed dressing down. Discipline.
--That’s it, I lack discipline. Toughness and grit. Those are the qualities in short supply with me. But not with General Stanley McChrystal. I just read his discipline level allows him only one meal a day.
--Well, he’ll have lots more time for the gym now. Maybe he can add a snack.
--He will, that’s true. Although they run a pretty tight ship at these cable networks. I imagine he’ll be spending lots of time there soon.
--You see him doing color commentary on the war in Afghanistan?
--Almost certainly. After all, TV has welcomed back Elliot Spitzer. Notice how they’ve been rehabilitating him lately? He has his own show now. I see the same thing figuring for McChrystal.
--Ah well. Life goes on. But I don’t see how this calls for you to dress yourself down.
--I commented on a blogger’s posting yesterday. Mature Landscaping, very astute, very capable. She’d read the article in Rolling Stone that got the general fired. She thought the journalist Michael Hastings had no business publishing such a piece in wartime. And she thought McChrystal was wrong to talk to the guy.
--I can’t agree about not publishing. How about [Mayor Kwame] Kilpatrick? If the Free Press hadn’t published those text messages to his lover, he’d still be in office instead of prison.
--True. I was going to say that’s different because Kilpatrick’s a civilian, but it’s not. McChrystal’s most certainly a politician, too. That’s why I’ve been beating up on myself.
--I see there’s more. Let me get my coffee.

--OK. You needed to give yourself a good talking-to because you failed to realize McChrystal’s a politician.
--Exactly. In my comment to Mature Landscaping, I lamented the level of stupidity being demonstrated by our leaders. By Bush getting us into a pointless war in Iraq. By Governor Sanford from the great state of South Carolina imagining he could conceal a visit to his South American mistress by claiming he was going camping. By the CEO of BP making every possible public-relations mistake possible—and now by McChrystal being stupid enough to talk to a Rolling Stone journalist.
--You think he did it on purpose? To get himself cashiered?
--Thanks to Brian Dickerson’s column in today’s Free Press, yes I do. He set me straight. Whereas I thought it depressing as hell to see a four-star general being stupid, Dickerson sees a four-star general as someone who can’t get where he is without being night-and-day vigilant regarding the chain of command. This has to be true, don’t you think? Unless Old Boy ties and nepotism are rampant in the military, I think you have to assume people don’t achieve that level of professional success without being fine-tuned in political terms. Without always knowing who’s boss, and what needs to be said or left unsaid.
--My experience at the UAW pretty much fits with what you say.
--Mine as a professor as well. No one gets a promotion simply on the basis of scholarship, or good teaching. You can serve on all committees you like, but it's always important to keep happy those who make such decisions. Department chairs, deans, the provost. In other words, the chain of command.
--If I understand this, you now think McChrystal gamed the system. You think he played the journalist, and organized his inner circle to do the same. It was orchestrated.
--Thanks to Brian Dickerson, yes I do. “McChrystal spent five years as chief of the Pentagon’s elite secret operations unit.” And this guy spills his guts to a journalist from Rolling Stone inadvertently? In a moment of inattention? After dinner, I’ll be down in the basement with my flagellum, pounding some sense into me.
--Fine, but don’t forget tomorrow’s junk day, don’t hurt yourself. You need to get those barrels out for pickup.
--I’ll remember. Jokes aside, I am ashamed of myself for being so naïve.
--You know? In a way, it means you still have some little piece of idealism left. It didn’t automatically occur to you that deviousness and skullduggery was at work with the general.
--That’s true, but it’s no comfort. McChrystal is the one who designed the current counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. He seems to have arranged a leak last year that would make it much more difficult for Obama & Co to not raise troop levels and expand the war. Now, McChrystal must see his plan isn’t going to work. Time to bail. Time to offer ramrod-stiff “analysis” between commercials. And explain why someone else has failed in Afghanistan.

A DAY AT THE RACES

2010-06-20T12:14:00.008-04:00

In recent days, BP CEO Tony Hayward has taken what few rational Americans would begrudge him—a break back in England from the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Except Mr. Hayward has a gift for getting it wrong. He took his break in a way guaranteed to dig his Stateside public relations hole even deeper: racing his 52-foot yacht Bob. From the position of average Americans, the most telling feature of this latest gaffe, and others by BP’s Swedish board chairman, is simply this: it underscores that in the new millenium, class distinctions in the Old World remain firmly rooted. So much so as to blind corporate plutocrats to any idea of how their words and deeds are perceived by those who don't belong to their "set." If any of us thinks European society no longer maintains sharp divisions based on privilege, the toffs at BP have set us straight.

--Tony! My God, what a surprise.
--Trevor! When was it last, Ascot? Boxing Day? I hope not, I was rather in my cups, I should think.
--No, actually, it was the day you sacked me. Last year. We were reviewing those Deepwater Horizon schematics, remember?
--Ah. Well, given what’s happened lately, I suppose you feel vindicated. Even though, as you well know, I was never in the same room with those diagrams.
--No, of course not. And, yes, I confess there was a schadenfreude moment or two in the last couple months. Golden parachute or not, no one likes getting sacked. Makes for awkwrd moments at one’s club. But then I got to thinking of you over there on the other side of the pond, having to muck about that way—
--Hold on… Damned binoculars… Yes, that’s my boat. Bob seems to be doing rather well, don’t you think? Look at that. Carry on, Bob!
--Pretty audacious, coming home this way. But given what you’ve been through, I should think you’d be at the helm yourself, not watching from shore.
--Would it were possible, Trev. Home for just these few precious days to see my boy. Certainly we should be out there together.
--New spinnaker?
--Could be. One of the crew takes care of all that. God, it’s great being here, breathing English air.
--Still, old salt, it does seem a bit odd. Flying back just to watch your boat.
--It’s the digital age, isn’t it, Trev? Phones that takes pictures and all. Telecommunications satellites. A bit ironic, that. Chairman Svanberg was CEO of phone maker Ericsson before giving us the nod. No, let them take all the pictures they like. Let them make something out of my just standing here. Not even wearing a blazer, or holding a proper drink. Being at the helm, though, that would get them pulling out their Photoshop manuals, I can tell you. They’d have me and Junior sailing over a glossy sea of BP oil. Lighting cigars from a burnoff. Plastering JPMorgan Asset Management all over my new spinnaker. They hate investment banks, too, you know. It would be great fun for them to make something out of the race’s sponsor. Oh, they’d do a smashing job with that.
--I see what you mean. Even so, old man, a little respite. Some shore leave, if you will. The stench must be something awful.
--The oil, you mean. Only on outings with the press. But that aside, yes, it is a nasty business. Rotting vegetation and oil-covered shore birds. Creepy crawlies everywhere you turn. Absolutely permeates your clothes. I’ve thrown out four pair of new wellies just this past week.
--Yes, well, I’m sure it must be horrific. Actually, though, I was thinking more in shall we say human terms.
--Ahh.
--No, Tony. Thinking of you over there these past weeks, day after day having to look as though you’re taking such people seriously. Whatever resentment I might have felt when you sacked me for bringing up those safety issues—
--I hope you know I had no choice.
--Of course I do, it’s how the game is played. That’s why I lost all sense of resentment several weeks ago. Knowing what hell you must be going through. And then the way they savaged Chairman Svanberg for calling them just what they are, small people. My God, bait-shop owners and shrimp fishermen. If they aren’t small, what else do you call them? Mr. and Mrs. Everyman, I suppose.
--Yes, nothing but tabloid press over there. They are quite clever at turning one into the upper-class toad for speaking what’s obviously true. I give them that.
--Worse than wogs, I would think.
--Wogs, frogs. Worse than the whole lot. Wait, she’s at the turn… Spot on, my beautiful Bob! Good show.

LEARN AND EARN + DENIABLE CREDIBILITY

2010-06-18T10:28:00.008-04:00

--What are you reading?
--A Free Press story about Samantha Ivory, fifteen, of Detroit.
--Let me see. Nice picture. Samantha is hard at work at her computer.
--She’s going to Cass Tech.
--I know Cass, my dad went there. What’s this? The Freep for May 25. Today is June 18.
--So?
--Well, honey, we’ve talked about your memory “issue.” I don’t actually think there’s a problem, but seeing you reading a three-week-old paper…
--Leads you to conclude my issue has finally set sail for real.
--Not necessarily. I’m sure you have your reasons. The Freep’s not much of a paper anymore, and June 25 might have been a good issue. You could be saving good ones to reread on rainy days.
--Nice catch. If it will ease concerns about needing to tether me before letting me outside, please understand I set this aside to look at later. Intentionally, on purpose. I promise I am not reading a three-week-old paper for the second or third first time.
--Good. And what’s Samantha’s claim to fame… “Searching for a fix: should we pay kids to excel in school?” Oh boy. I bet that one pushed Professor Knister’s button.
--Only at first, when my blood pressure blew off the cuff. But then I became reflective. I thought about the world Republicans want us to live in. Government small enough to drown in a bathtub, pay-as-you-go budgets, Ayn Rand and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as role models for our young people. You know, an “I’ll keep my guns, money and freedom, you keep the change” type world.
--And paying Samantha to do well in school will help bring us that world?
--Hard to say. But think about it. Quarters in our day, I suppose C-notes now, under the pillow for each tooth a child loses. Payment for something falling out of the mouth. Then money to cut the grass, cash on the barrelhead for each A grade, making the honor role, making first string at tackle. Getting accepted to State, being paroled.
--But this is different, don’t you think?
--That’s the question. Is it wrong for institutions to do what parents do when they reward their kids with money for succeeding? Samantha here says paying her would make her not only work harder, but want to go to school more often.
--More often. I would draw the line at paying someone to go to school.
--Still, you could call it the first condition of employment. Woody Allen says ninety percent of success is showing up. My university is about to make it a condition of employment for faculty to offer online courses.
--I don’t see the connection.
--It will mean showing up is no longer required. Students will be able to spend months at a time in their pajamas, just like Hugh Hefner. That will mean thousands of square feet of classroom space will be freed up for conversion to administrative offices.
--If that happens in high schools, I suppose we’ll pay students to log on.
--Sure, whenever they feel like it, or come to.
--The accounting might be tricky.
--Oh I don’t know. Somewhere, there’s a record of everything I ever did or failed to do on computers. But you’re right. The more clever students will find a way to automatically log on when they’re at the bar, or playing Wii. They’ll set it up so boilerplate responses to, say, Moby Dick will be sent to online chat sessions the prof is running.
--You have grown very cynical. I know you stayed up to watch C-span last night.
--I wanted to see whether our politicians would come up with any good material when questioning Tony Hayward.
--The BP guy.
--The one who wants his life back. The one whose board chairman promised to take care of all the small people.
--And?
--Nothing. Every politician played the sober Joe. Not a trace of wit in the room, just more boilerplate outrage and finger wagging.
--Well, what did you expect in the middle of the worst man-made ecological disaster ever in this country? No politician is going to make jokes about it.
--I know, but after two months, I expected more. I expected someone to make Tony squirm. Which after all this time would require blind-siding Tony. None of them did.
--I bet you wish Alan Grayson was on the panel.
--Oh yes. Would to God Congressman Grayson had been there. He’s my hero.
--So Hayward never lost his cool.
--Since nothing unexpected came his way, no. He lawyered up long ago, and with a Valium or two he was ready to go. According to ruddy-cheeked Tony, he is not a cement engineer or an oil rig engineer, nor does he have any other kind of technical expertise. He was never a party to any discussion or sign-off process involved in construction of the rig that blew up, about which he’s devastated, even though he was in the men’s room the whole time.
--How fortunate for him.
--I think so. Because, since he wasn't in on any discussion or “decision-making process,” he’s not culpable or even responsible. It means he has credible deniability on this or any other disaster that may occur on any of BP’s many oil rigs.
--That’s nice. I would think it won’t be long before old Tony gets his life back.
--Yes, and to help him enjoy it, how about a complimentary silk robe and PJs from Hef?

RETHINKING THE BABY SUBSTITUTE

2010-06-11T15:26:00.005-04:00

Today’s post focuses on dog fanciers and their object of interest. Or, from the FBI and the dog’s point of view, person of interest.

Often, dogs and cats are thought of as baby substitutes. Those of us suffering from one or more of the diagnosed disorders related to dog obsession would be more comfortable with children classed as puppy substitutes, but it’s best not to go there. Not if the writer wants to avoid harsh email from parents and grandparents.

What might serve everyone better is to dump the substitute idea and replace it with marriage. Or, in the case of those actually hitched, with extra-marital relations. If you own a dog or cat, you can ponder this idea in terms to your own experience. If not, please consider the writer a fairly reliable source.

Honest people know that the concept of 50/50 marriage is nonsense. It’s the sort of thing dreamed up by counselors, encouraging couples to believe that a few dozen more sessions will ultimately lead to a finely tuned, symmetrical equality. We know better. However, for those without human mates, dogs can serve very well in this regard. If you are a passive person, a carefully chosen dog will provide the sort of leadership and authority your style of neurosis calls for; if you are a take-charge type, the dog—properly trained—will serve in the role of docile, appreciative spouse, the kind traditionalists grow wistful thinking about. And none of this 50/50 business, either.

If you are already married, the Platonic ideal of equality has long ago been dismissed as so much hokum. The various grievances large and small that so often lead to waywardness, and ultimately to bitter sessions in a law office are known to you. If they aren’t, and if you are not among the handful of couples blessed by the gods, then you probably live a life of quiet desperation, keeping the lid on to avoid alimony and child support. Even so, you almost certainly hold out hope for some magic elixir, some incantation that will make the road smoother.

You hope, in fact, for a dog mistress/lover.

And here’s another plus: with dogs, there’s no need to sort out all the knotty “gender issues” that so often come into play these days regarding marriage. The life companion can be your sex or not, and there’s never any need to anguish over lifestyle options. Whether you are a hard-charging leader or fawning helpmeet, a dog can work either way.

So, employing the marriage/extra-marital concept, what can we say about the two couples pictured above? What’s your response to them? I am a dog person, and would be interested in what other dog nuts think. But people like us are pretty predictable in the unconditional nature of our love, so I am actually more interested in what less crazy persons have to offer.

To get the ball rolling, though, in my view the couple on the right appear pretty much to have agreed on an open marriage of equals. They are together but free to pursue separate interests outside their marriage. The young man is texting, or picking lint out of his navel, maybe even meditating. Possibly, something has made him remember his 401k, or the size of the monthly interest nut he carries on his credit card. Understandably, this has made him oblivious to all else, including his companion.

The dog? As with his spouse we can’t be sure, but it’s evident he is nicely composed, even though interested in something off to his right. Almost certainly it’s another dog, since this picture was taken at a Bark in the Park sponsored by the Humane Society of Naples, Florida. I like the casual naturalness of the dog’s shoulders better than I do the more defeated quality of the man’s. It suggests a tolerant, patient kind of companion, the sort that gives you your space, isn’t too needy, isn’t always dropping balls or food bowls at your feet, demanding to be let in the bathroom while you’re taking a shower, etc.

In the photo on the left, a woman is interacting with her companion in a very different way. Again the concept of marriage, a contract between two people who choose to be connected in legal and other ways should be applied. It isn’t true, of course: the dog is not allowed to agree to or cancel the deal, so think instead of the arranged marriages that are customary in much of the non-Western world.

The dog, a Yorkshire terrier, is not a male, so this too is a same-sex union, a common-law marriage involving a license, but fewer of the cumbersome legal issues that figure in human-to-human marriages.

However, this second duo cannot be called a union of equals. The dog is asserting her right to be “in your face” with her mistress (“mistress” in this instance being an obvious misnomer). Even so, the master/slave connection, usually thought of in terms of abusive men and denounced by feminists, is here being played out femo a femo. In her human marriage, the woman is in fact a strong, assertive person. With her dog lover, though, we see her happy to drop the burdens of command, free now to give herself over to the pleasures of being ruled.

I have more to say, but a person of interest has just entered my study. Seating herself before my desk, she begins working the magic of her one good eye. It’s noon, the eye says. Someone has to wear the watch in this family. Patiently she remains seated, displaying the quiet confidence of one who knows who will win, the one who always does, knowing it’s just a matter of seconds before this particular staff member gets up and follows her out the door.

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

2010-06-05T15:40:00.012-04:00

Anyone not on life support will by now know what happened last Wednesday night at Comerica Park in Detroit. Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was denied a perfect game when veteran umpire Jim Joyce mistakenly called the twenty-seventh batter safe at first.

Understandably surprised, Galarraga did not need to be restrained by his teammates as we have come to expect in such moments, struggling with vein-popping rage to get his hands on the ump. Instead, the pitcher reacted with a bemused half smile as the crowd went crazy. After seeing the instant replay umpire Joyce, obviously tormented by his mistake, apologized to the pitcher. Later, Tigers manager Jim Leyland said simply, “I make mistakes, players make mistakes, umpires make mistakes.”

This would be a big enough story in any case, but it has gone viral or nova or whatever current jargon applies. It has captured people’s imaginations. The reason I think must be understood in terms of those pictured above, people who represent so many others, and institutions, with names like Madoff, Enron, Worldcom.

The story has quickly captured public interest because of something like a moral or spiritual thirst for subjects worthy of admiration. When the mayor of an on-the-ropes city like Detroit goes to prison for thumbing his nose at the law (Kwame Kilpatrick); when the company responsible for what may well prove to be the worst ecological disaster since Chernobyl has a CEO who can be trusted to be untrustworthy; when the last president and his principal political guide are now known to have betrayed the public trust in numerous ways, and when sports “heroes” turn out to have trashed their families, and the record books through doping, the effect on the collective consciousness of a people can’t be quantified, but is probably hard to exaggerate.

It’s a kind of old fighter’s punch-drunk daze, a society belted around by bad news, lies, deception and greed for so many months stretching into so many years that its members have almost forgotten what “class act” means. And then it happens in all its mythic glory on a Wednesday night in Detroit, when every principal to the story does what he should, immediately, and does it without lawyers or press agents or flack catchers at his elbow.

Armando Galarraga may ultimately come to thank his lucky stars for Jim Joyce’s blunder. As Jeff Kuehn writing in the Oakland (Michigan) Press says, “Galarraga has a place in history for as long as the game is played. No other pitcher will throw a 28-out perfect game. Dads will use this to tell their sons and daughters how to respond when things don’t go your way.”

So cup your hands around this little pilot light of things gone right, and hope it stays lit.

RETHINKING THE BABY SUBSTITUTE

2010-06-02T14:42:00.013-04:00

Today’s post focuses on dog fanciers and their object of interest. Or, from the FBI and the dog’s point of view, person of interest.

Often, dogs and cats are thought of as baby substitutes. Those of us suffering from one or more of the diagnosed disorders related to dog obsession would be more comfortable with children classed as puppy substitutes, but it’s best not to go there. Not if the writer wants to avoid harsh email from parents and grandparents.

What might serve everyone better is to dump the substitute idea and replace it with marriage. Or, in the case of those actually hitched, with extra-marital relations. If you own a dog or cat, you can ponder this idea in terms to your own experience. If not, please consider the writer a fairly reliable source.

Honest people know that the concept of 50/50 marriage is nonsense. It’s the sort of thing dreamed up by counselors, encouraging couples to believe that enough sessions will ultimately lead to a finely tuned, symmetrical equality. We know better. However, for those without human mates, dogs can serve very well in this regard. If you are essentially a passive person, a carefully chosen dog will provide the sort of leadership and authority your style of neurosis calls for; if you are a take-charge type, the dog—properly trained—can effectively serve in the role of a docile, appreciative spouse of the kind traditionalists grow wistful thinking about. And none of this 50/50 business, either.

If you are currently married, the Platonic ideal of equality has already been dismissed as so much hokum. The various grievances large and small that so often lead to waywardness, and ultimately to bitter sessions in a law office are known to you. If they aren’t, and if you are not among the handful of couples blessed by the gods, then you probably live a life of quiet desperation, keeping the lid on to avoid alimony and child support. Even so, you no doubt hold out hope for some magic elixir, some incantation that will make the road smoother.

You hope, in fact, for a dog mistress/lover.

And here’s another plus: with dogs, there’s no need to sort out all the knotty “gender issues” that so often come into play these days regarding marriage. The life companion can be your sex or not, and there’s never a need to anguish over lifestyle options. Take-charge prison guard or fawning helpmeet, a dog can work either way.

So, employing the marriage/extra-marital concept, what can we say about the two couples pictured above? What’s your response to them? I am a "dog person," and would be interested in what other dog nuts have to say. But people like us are pretty predictable in the unconditional nature of our love, so I am actually more interested in what less crazy persons have to say.

To get the ball rolling, though, in my view the couple on the left appear pretty much to have agreed on an open marriage of equals. They are together but free to pursue separate interests outside their marriage. The young man is texting, or picking lint out of his navel, maybe even meditating. Possibly something has made him remember his 401k, or the size of the monthly interest nut he carries on his credit card bill. Understandably, this has made him for the moment oblivious to all else, including his companion.

The dog? As with his spouse we can’t be sure, but it’s evident he is nicely composed, even though interested in something off to his right. Almost certainly it’s another dog, since this picture was taken at a Bark in the Park sponsored by the Humane Society of Naples, Florida. I like the casual naturalness of the dog’s shoulders better than I do the more defeated quality of the man’s. It suggests a tolerant, patient kind of companion, the sort that gives you your space, isn’t too needy, isn’t always dropping balls or food bowls at your feet, demanding to be let in the bathroom while you’re taking a shower, etc.

In the lower photo, a woman is interacting with her companion in a very different way. Again the concept of marriage, a contract between two people who choose to be connected in legal and other ways should be applied. It isn’t true, of course: the dog is not allowed to agree to or cancel the deal, so think instead of the arranged marriages that are customary in much of the non-Western world.

The dog, a Yorkshire terrier, is not a male, so this too is a same-sex union, a common-law marriage involving a license, but fewer of the cumbersome legal issues that figure in human-to-human marriages. And no need to travel out-of-state, either.

However, this second duo cannot be called a union of equals. The dog is asserting her right to be “in your face” with her mistress (“mistress” here obviously being a misnomer). Even so, the master/slave connection, usually thought of in terms of abusive men and denounced by feminists, is here being played out femo a femo. In fact, the woman is a strong, assertive person in her human marriage. Here, though, we see her happy to drop the burdens of maintaining domestic order, free now to give herself over to the pleasures of being ruled.

I have more to say on this, but a person of interest has just entered the room. Patiently seating herself before my desk as I type, she begins working the magic of her one good eye. Her calm demeanor comes from knowledge of who will win, the same one who always does, confident that it’s only a matter of seconds before this particular staff member will get up and follow her out the door.

THE MAID AND THE PIT BULL

2010-05-31T15:52:00.007-04:00

"From Napoleon to the present, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory” (Wikipedia).

The quote refers to Joan of Arc. Here, though, the image invoking her memory is not that of the Maid of Orleans, but of the Pit Bull of capitalism, Ayn Rand. Yes, that’s the same Rand Texas Congressman Ron Paul chose as the namesake for his son, the Kentucky ophthalmologist running for the U.S. Senate.

Since repeatedly confusing his area of medicine with podiatry by fitting his foot in his mouth (the better to say what he really thinks), Rand has taken to appearing in scrubs. Presumably, this authenticates his status as a healer, a man anxious to treat the nation’s ills.

So it makes sense to reflect on his namesake Ayn Rand, suited up in full armor on a poster at a Tea Party rally last month in Naples, Florida. Mounted on horseback as military leaders always are, Saint Ayn is carrying the colors into battle. This time, it’s not the Siege of Orleans in the fifteenth century, but the Thermopylae of twenty-first century America, the pitched battle between her loyal troops—the Pauls for instance-- and the dark forces who support laws protecting civil rights, oversight of business, programs like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, the Interstate highway system, the Tennessee Valley Authority—or anything else that compromises the religion of laissez faire capitalism.

Whereas Saint Joan “asserted that she had visions from God that told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years’ War” (Wikipedia again), Saint Ayn had Big Ideas. If not heaven-sent, they certainly summoned her to recruit followers for the purpose of recovering her adopted homeland from liberalism. Even though Rand was a lifelong atheist, she and all those in her camp lay claim to what can only be thought of as divine guidance. How else is it possible to make sense of such certainty in the need to protect the sanctity of the profit motive against oversight and regulation? How else is it possible to believe BP needs a champion?

Make no mistake: seeing economics in terms of laws as immutable as those governing nature is nothing more or less than religion. And the way to be true to the faith is to believe (if not to say) that God has blessed laissez faire capitalism, and that He insists on an ideological purity not seen since Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

That’s just about how far you have to go in order to fully grasp how people in our own time—not at the end of the Middle Ages—have turned themselves over to “visions” of the sort that lead to Rand Paul. In or out of scrubs, he needs to be understood not in terms of secular principles, but in those of medieval scholastic theology. That is, with notions having little to do with life here on twenty-first century Planet Earth.

SCHADENFREUDE

2010-05-22T12:20:00.000-04:00

I am grateful to the German language for a word—schadenfreude. It refers to the warm glow that honest people can’t deny feeling when someone they don’t like suffers in some way. It’s nothing to be proud of, this feeling, but it’s definitely there.

--Are you happy to be back in Michigan?
--Very.
--Happy to be teaching again this summer?
--Almost very.
--Anyway, you look pleased with yourself. What are you so jovial about?
--A mental image. I see Ayn Rand’s namesake down in Kentucky.
--Really? Seeing Rand Paul should produce something very different in you. Say, a Tourette moment.
--Oh, I’m sure a Tourette moment can’t be far away, but just now I’m enjoying the mental picture.
--Do you know who Paul looks like to me? Bill Hailey, of Bill Hailey and the Comets. Remember him? Rand Paul has the same hilarious hairstyle.
--I’m trying to avoid ad hominem arguments. You have your Rand Paul, I have mine. I see him wearing one of those headlamp reflector things. Ophthalmologists used to wear them. He’s an eye doctor, you know. I remember an old guy fitting me for glasses when I was a boy. He wore one of those.
--But that’s not all you’re seeing.
--No. Dr. Rand Paul has the reflector thing on so he can provide free eye exams on the campaign trail. As his spiritual guide Ayn Rand teaches us--that font of all intellectual wisdom regarding human nature--there can be no institutional, tax-supported charity. It corrupts society and prevents the best people from realizing their full potential.
--Uh huh. Which you don’t want in an A-plus, quality-type country, right?
--Right as rain, Barbara. That’s exactly what you don’t want. Because, then everything just goes to hell in a hand basket. No Medicaid or Medicare allowed, either. No welfare or unemployment benefits. Only private, freely chosen acts of generosity are acceptable.
--So that’s why Dr. Paul is giving eye exams gratis.
--Exactly. That’s just what Dr. Paul is doing with his reflector, stopping here and there along the campaign trail to examine voters’ eyes. For free. It’s a freely chosen, completely generous act on his part.
--No quid pro quo? No pledge promising to vote for him? Because if there is, Dr. Paul’s not so generous.
--I don’t know about any pledge. In my mind’s eye, I don’t see anyone signing anything. No insurance forms, or co-pay agreements.
--OK then, it’s free.
--But even if they sign a pledge, it’s still a completely legitimate transaction between buyer and seller. No government meddling figures.
--Good, I’m glad. We have enough of that.
--Enough? Barbara, you haven’t been listening to Dr. Rand, or his dad Ron. It’s not that we have enough government. We have way, way too much. The only thing you need government for is to build missile silos in the Dakotas, and run army training camps. Although it’s probably better to outsource the training camps to Blackwater. That would make for more freedom.
--In your mind’s eye, is Dr. Rand wearing a white lab coat so everyone knows he’s a healer?
--He is. But there’s a small problem with the coat. It’s too long. Walking and talking as he goes, he’s kicking the hem, telling people along the street about how wrong the Civil Rights Act is. How it prevents employers from flipping the bird at minorities. Which is every employers’ right, or should be. And would be, if Dr. Rand were running things. Which he hopes to do. So he’s in his too-long lab coat, walking and telling folks this crazy Civil Rights thing isn’t something he can really accept, stopping to check another pair of eyes before moving on.
--He trips and falls, screwing up his Bill Hailey haircut.
--No, but Dr. Paul does keep forgetting to watch where he’s stepping. And a nasty thing keeps happening each time he moves on, still talking before reaching the next voter patient.
--I think I know the nasty thing. But I have a question. If Dr. Paul performs eye surgery, doesn’t he have to do it in a hospital? Aren’t hospitals dependent on government money? Don’t some of his patients get Medicare or Medicaid? Or does he insist they all pay him in millet or lamb chops?
-- Not a problem. Just shove the gurney under a freeway underpass, clear out the homeless living there, and start cutting. Oh, and now Dr. Paul is voicing support for British Petroleum’s right to not be controlled or restricted in its efforts to find a cork big enough to stop that thing in the Gulf. Because when you get down to it, it’s not really anyone’s fault, is it? Sometimes plain old nasty accidents just happen. Know what I mean?
--Is a Tourette moment in the works? Let me know, I’ll go do some gardening.
--Not yet, the mental image is still working for me. See, Dr. Rand is still at it, walking, and talking about something else government should never meddle with. Uh oh, there he’s gone and done it again—stepped in another large mound of dog poo. He’s kicking it all over his overlong lab coat, fouling his nice oxfords. Shoes suited to a man in business for himself, like Dr. Paul. And I have to assume he learned medicine on his own, because a man with his principles would never attend a medical school supported by federal and state tax money.
--It couldn’t be easy, home-schooling someone in ophthalmology.
--No, it wasn’t. But how else could his family remain true to their libertarian ideals? And I mean Dr. Rand’s shoes would be right for a doctor, if they weren’t now covered with crap. Those dogs had to be Dalmatians or bigger.
--I thought it was going to be horse dung.
--That would make sense in Kentucky, but it's dogs. And it’s odd. Even with free eye exams, most of the people along the campaign trail still don’t seem to be noticing the crap on Rand’s lab coat. Or his shoes. They’re too busy hanging on his every word.

PREPARE FOR LIFT-OFF

2010-04-30T09:41:00.000-04:00

It’s time to go, time for the dark side of the moon. That would be the days spent in our van, on the Interstate between Florida and Michigan. Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio—here we come.

Please understand: “dark side of the moon” is not meant to suggest some unflattering opinion of these states. It just indicates that, like astronauts facing the dark side in actual terms, we will be cut off, a human caesura in the space-time continuum, floating in relative silence as we watch what lies outside our porthole. With the added bonus of not needing to read or write anything.

But first, some house-cleaning.

--I almost peed in my pants.
--Sorry.
--No, it’s all right. But when it happens, there’s no preparation, no intro for what’s about to happen. All at once comes this chesty, Robert Goulet-John Raitt broadway voice belting out something. I dropped my toothbrush.
--I’m sorry. I knew what was happening when I heard the choking sounds. You really do get hysterical, you collapse.
--What can I say? I’m brushing my teeth, I hear something, stop. You do it all the time, say something to me while I’m shaving or taking a leak. The noise makes it impossible to hear.
--That’s only when I don’t know you’re in there.
--Yes, well, given the state of my prostate you pretty much know where to find me.
--It’s the way this house is shaped. I can’t hear anything happening in front.
--Brushing my teeth, then I hear Robert Goulet and in the next second understand what’s going on.
--You should be used to it by now.
--No, Barbara. Being married to someone who mimics perfectly the instruments and singing voices of famous performers is not something a person gets used to. All at once Michael Crawford is belting out show stoppers from Phantom. In my own house. I’m facing the mirror, brushing my teeth, listening and looking at a case of rabies.
--I was Swiffering.
--You have to tell me what the song was.
--Oh, just something about “Here I am, Swiffering dog hair, life’s a gift, life’s a barrel o’ monkeys.” Something like that.
--You just make it up? I thought they were actual songs.
--They can be. But certain domestic tasks demand their own lyrics.
--The last time it happened, I almost fell in the tub. You were doing a trombone solo, “Strike up the Band.” Tommy Dorsey, Kay Winding, I… well, never mind. I should keep an expectorant bowl handy.
--You said the soup tureen I bought at the thrift shop was actually a chamber pot. You could use that.
--I’ll keep it under the towel rack.

"HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE" (THANK YOU JEAN PAUL SARTRE)

2010-04-28T07:56:00.000-04:00

If something like this never happened to you, good.

Barbara calls our cul de sac in Naples The Dead Zone. That’s because, with two notable exceptions our neighbors are either out of town most of the time, or families have inherited the property and are trying to sell it, or the residents are in town, but only so to speak. Or, they have finally succumbed to the facts of life, and are set up for the last lap of their run in the very posh assisted-living operation waiting patiently at one end of our development.

Such an atmosphere can be depressing, but for us it also has an important upside. We like our privacy, our peace and quiet, and we have had both since moving in. Then the villa two doors away sold. I introduced myself to the wife one afternoon. With flame-red hair and blazing porcelain caps, she came off as bouncy and appealing. New blood, I thought. Much needed here in The Dead Zone.

And then the New Blood spread its wings. Or so I thought.

--The new people.
--Which ones?
--On the other side of the Duffys. I just don’t get it. They’re all of them sitting together on the same pool deck. They can’t be more than a few feet apart, but they’re screaming. Barking at each other. Howling.
--Oh, come on. You always exaggerate.
--Please come outside, just for a minute. I need you to hear it.

--God.
--I’m exaggerating?
--Listen to them.
--There are two privacy walls between us and them. I count two men, two women.
--It’s like… Is it cultural? Maybe they’re all deaf.
--No, I think you were right the first time. They’re from New Jersey. Italians. Are all of us, from wherever we hail from, complete stereotypes? Am I George Babbitt or Don Knotts, whoever represents the slow-witted bumblers from the prairie? Are you and I the whitebread, plain vanilla Smiths from Plainville? I can’t believe it, but maybe so. Maybe everyone from California is fruit-and-nuts crazy, looking shellacked from cosmetic surgery, mainlining bean curd and herbal tea like the -----s. Or southerners being southern, the west Texans in their hats and boots, all sucking on longnecks. The barber next to the guy who strings tennis racquets, he’s from Texas. All day, he’s standing up cutting hair in snakeskin cowboy boots. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that must be? No matter. He may be reduced to cutting hair here in Naples, but he’s a Texan. All day, cutting in his boots. And he never takes his cowboy hat off.
--Listen—My God, that’s really awful. It’s like they’re on something.
--Gin would be my guess. I confess it can make even Whitebread Barry pretty jovial.
--But not a banshee, not a crazy person. Listen… Both the men and the women. Is it some kind of competition? It really sounds to me as though they’re seeing who can shout the loudest… No, I’m sorry, nothing in this life can be that funny.
--Thank you for coming out to hear it.
--What can we do?
--Not much. People that oblivious to their new neighbors are obviously not going to know what you’re talking about if you speak to them. They’d just be insulted. Besides, what are you going to say? “Excuse me, I know you’re Italian, and from New Jersey, and I’m sure it’s sometimes necessary to speak up if you’re going to be heard in a large family, but you’re making me and my wife crazy.” No, there’s no point in talking to them.
--You’re right, of course. You can’t tell adults… Jesus, listen to that—you can’t tell senior citizens they sound worse than a pool full of grandchildren.
--We’ll have to do research. We’ll log their comings and goings, keep track of when they’re on the lanai.
--What if they live on theirs the way we do?
--Don’t say that.
--Weather permitting, we’re out here every night. We have happy hour, we eat here, read in the evening. God.
--Yes, it’s possible the quality of life just took a serious hit. We’ll have to wait and see before calling our own Jersey boys.
--You mean Tony, Christopher, Paulie Walnuts and so forth.
--Damn. What was one thing just an hour ago now appears to be something altogether different. And far worse. And do you know what? They’ll probably turn out to likable, friendly. Even neighborly. But who cares? An affable hyena is still a hyena.

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, we went to Threat Level Red pretty fast, and not without reason. But it turned out I was wrong about the new neighbor from Jersey, and Barbara right about deafness. Hugely relieved, we realized the following day that the banshee effect had come from guests visiting at a different house. One occupied by a man so deaf he can’t hear himself. Or can, but only after listening to what he’s saying three or more times.

"FIRST, LET'S HANG ALL THE TEACHERS"

2010-04-26T12:14:00.000-04:00

Ever since the debacle that was the 2000 election—you know, the one that saw Al Gore defeated by hanging chads and five members of the Supreme Court--Florida has been an especially newsworthy state. Tea Partiers are much in evidence, and have had a lot to do with forcing Republican governor Charlie Crist to consider running for the Senate as a Moderate. That’s because he’s not “pure” enough for conservatives.

The strongest evidence that Crist is not fit came last week when he vetoed a bill to eliminate teacher tenure, and tie teacher pay to student test scores. Right wingers love this sort of thing: it’s driven by their favorite Platonic ideal--free markets. I had to write about it. NOTE: Golden Apples are awarded in Naples, Florida to top-rated teachers.

------------------------------------------------------------

In chapter four of The Dilbert Principle, “Great Lies of Management,” author/cartoonist Scott Adams examines the thirteen bogus assertions relied on most often by managers. Number one is “Employees are our most valuable asset.” Number two is “I have an open-door policy,” and three is “You could earn more money under the new plan.”

The cartoon sequence to illustrate Number 3 presents the Dilbert regulars being informed about the new plan by their pointy-haired boss: “From now on,” he says, “twenty percent of your pay will depend on the company meeting its sales targets. In effect, we’ll cut your pay and tell you it’s your own darn fault.” Dilbert has a question: “Will the sales target be based on a complex formula and involve numbers that can’t be accurately measured?” The pointy-haired boss yells, “You broke the code!”

If all this suggests the current assault on teachers and public education in Florida, that’s what is intended. Conservatives bent on pursuing an ideological mission—“market capitalism everywhere, all the time!”—claim they need to punish teachers as a group in order to rid the system of those who are incompetent. But the underlying goal is actually something else.

The conservative vision calls for implementation of a pure business model, in which students are customers, schools are businesses, and teachers are employees subject to a variation on the pointy-haired boss’s “new plan.” That plan calls for the elimination of teacher tenure (“No business gives anyone guarantees”), and the linkage of pay to student test scores (Dilbert’s “complex formula” involving hard-to-measure quantitative data). In other words, there is to be no job security, and no pay raises based on either seniority or academic credentials.

If you don’t know what’s wrong with this new “plan,” here it is: given the low opinion our society has of teachers, what on earth is going to provide the motive for any sane young man or woman to pursue a career in primary or secondary education without these inducements? In a time of social dissonance and change, multi-cultural complexity and violence, again, why would anyone freely choose to teach?

Whether you like it or not, Norman Rockwell’s America cannot figure any longer, not even as the cozy myth of a happy past that never was. The reality in schools is much more demanding. And here’s another simple truth: our society pays lip service, and lip service only to primary and secondary education as a profession. Yes, it is viewed as a decent job, with good benefits and a retirement package, but it is not respected as a career on a par with law, accounting, medicine, etc. If this weren’t so, the current attacks would not be taking place.

Nor does the field of teaching operate in a way likely to induce bright young people to be interested. Contrary to the broken-record critiques of those attacking public education, these operational problems are not principally the fault of unions or tenure or the small percentage of ineffectual teachers the system protects along with everyone else. It has to do with the College of Education in every large state university in the country. Here is where social change is leading to more and more hours of instruction being devoted to diversity training, learning technology and other areas unrelated to academics. Here is where you find departments made up of faculty whose discipline is how to teach, not what to teach.

It is easy to criticize colleges of education, but hard to offer meaningful suggestions for change. One thing is certain: the many hours devoted to “instruction on instruction” make the process of educating future teachers much less effective.

What can be done? One thing is to concentrate on identifying those people who, in the face of all impediments, still demonstrate a true gift for teaching. Once those with the special attributes that lead to actual learning are known, a better way becomes possible.

What is it? Instead of leaving great teachers no other path to advancement but to once again enact the Peter Principle by becoming school administrators, these best-of-breed in the classroom should be lavished with serious money and perks to STAY teachers. They should be rewarded for continuing to serve as examples of how it’s done for everyone else, and they should be used accordingly in their schools. Over time, they are the ones who can provide a true resource for their colleagues.

Again: “teacher education” needs to give more emphasis to academic disciplines—math, chem, literature, history. In other words, it should probably take as long and be as tough to become a teacher as it is to become a lawyer—but only if we’re willing to make it worth the hard work. Do you know how many hours in an academic discipline are actually required of future teachers? Have you ever heard stories of teachers who teach the textbook, and are just one chapter ahead of their students? The reason is the high number of contact hours in their programs that must be devoted to Education courses.

If you don’t know what teachers are taught, or how the good ones habitually leave what they do well to become administrators, and if you’re among those beating the drum to end tenure and tie teacher pay to easily manipulated tests--shame on you. Find out a thing or two about what is expected of young people who major in Education instead of math, English, history, etc.

And after you find this out, ask yourself the following: in a community that masks an underlying disregard for teachers with Golden Apple awards, then reveals its true feelings with hostility and ideologically charged politics, why would anyone in his or her right mind still want to be a teacher? You might safely argue that under such conditions, choosing to apply to Ed school is in itself reason enough for being rejected.

BOTTOM FEEDERS

2010-04-23T07:31:00.000-04:00

Blogging affords excellent opportunities for garrulous senior citizens to hone their typing skills. As a newly retired person, I honed mine in pre-blogging days by writing letters to the editor of the Naples (Florida) Daily News. Reading the feverish rants of right-wingers did it to me. People for instance who denounced talk of global warming, then pointed to heavy snow in northern states to support their position. Reading such “thoughts” day after day, I lost patience and sent off responses.

But I came to see the futility in this: the mad hatters on the right were impervious to factual arguments (it snows when the temperature rises, you dunce you). So, I turned to other topics. Most recently, The Daily News published a letter of mine calling for a more dog-friendly policy in Naples. I argued that since the real work of dogs in our time is to serve as companions—mental-health care givers—it made sense for dog owners to be allowed to share public places with their leashed pets.

Like other papers, the Daily News provides an outlet, through a website, for its more disturbed readers. Those whose inflamed rhetoric is unsuitable for a family paper are free to post their fulminations online. My lobbying for a more lenient attitude toward dogs led to a blizzard of lectures on the staggering effects of such a proposed change in policy. The world would be brought screaming and gagging to its collective knees, children’s bodies would be stacked up like cordwood by helpless public health employees, a dark cloud of disease and pestilence would descend, etc.

My wife Barbara is too level-headed to read such things, so that evening I told her about the hour I’d spent that morning in the cyberspace black hole of the Comment section.

--After all this time, after all the composting I’ve seen going on in the paper’s op/ed page, I still couldn’t believe it.
--The comments.
--It’s still troubling to think about. There are people, Barbara--people who walk among us—who write separate comments on all or most of the published letters. Daily.
--As John McEnroe might say, “You cannot be serious.”
--I am serious. Comment after comment, by the same persons, using their anonymous “handles.” Think about it. The paper arrives, say, at five or five-thirty in the morning. It has to be that early, it’s always on the driveway when I take Chelsea for her walk. That means the bottom feeders are up even earlier.
--Why?
--There’s no other way to explain how quickly they get to work. They have to have the paper in order to read the published letters. Then they start pumping out comments.
--What on earth possessed you to look at them?
--Guilty as charged. “Possessed” is the operative word. I never do it unless one of my letters is published. I knew there’d be some kind of reaction. You can’t advocate in favor of liberalizing anything in this town without blowback.
--It’s sad.
--Sad, or mad?
--Both, but mostly sad. I can see them getting up and dressing, brushing their teeth, drinking coffee. Turning on the computer and limbering up their fingers, then going out for the paper. Coming back, closing the door and plopping down, throwing aside every section except the op/ed pages.
--Yes, I think that’s how it must be.
--You know, I bet ________ spends hours doing that.
--No. Surely not.
--I bet he does. Every morning. With the TV on the whole time.
--Soap operas, you mean.
--He says they’re just white noise, he’s only half aware of what’s on. As you say, he’s too busy getting the work out.
--I hope not. I hope you’re wrong.
--Except I’m sure his comments are readable and informative.
--Still, I hate to think of it. I’ve been there. In the belly of the beast. A chilling experience. Compulsion is not a pretty thing to see.
--When they were getting ready to move, I remember ______ insisting their next house had to have wings. To isolate him. He’s a little deaf and plays his soaps loud. It was making her crazy.
--My uncle was career Army. A colonel. One of his later postings was to Governor’s Island in New York. I remember my aunt telling me he used to drive home for lunch, in order to watch either “The Guiding Light” or “All My Children.” He’d watched this particular soap for over twenty years. When he was later posted to Korea, he went alone. He made my aunt back in the States send him plot summaries every week. Summaries of all the cases of amnesia, infidelity, concealed births.
--But you liked him.
--Very much. He was an odd duck, but I did like him. In the end, it’s the eccentrics who make life interesting. He and my aunt picnicked with friends on Siesta Key. Every week, or every other. He took black-and-white photos of these gatherings. He made his own photo albums, using stiff, gray cardboard. After he died, I went down to see my aunt. I remember leafing through some of the albums. There were the photos of the picnic group. Over and over, posed the same way each week, it seemed. You won’t believe it, but I’m sure I saw footprints in one shot, in the sand. When I looked at the snapshot for the next picnic, the prints were still there. There was something pure about his obsession, his craving for order and control. I’m pretty sure he also kept quantitative records of what his grapefruit and orange trees produced.
--Well, they were certainly good to us when we went to see them.
--They were. Generous and welcoming to a fault. We all have our little nooks and crannies, don’t we?
--Very true. Hardly open to question with us.

POSTSCRIPT: Wrong again. The Naples Daily News posts letters online the night before they appear in the paper’s print addition. That way, Those Who Walk Among Us are able to work all night. Shudder.

MORE MUSIC: JOHNNY, WE HARDLY KNEW YE

2010-04-21T17:59:00.000-04:00

More and more often, the hectoring, demanding voices that deliver the evening news turn us off. Wolf Blitzer was once a fairly responsible on-air journalist. Now he’s a ringmaster, a carnival barker. The same holds true for the crew on MSNBC. Chris, Keith and Rachel—there’s plenty of talent to go around, but deploying it night after night in a ceaseless news cycle turns everything into white noise. As for Fox, the only reason to watch Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly is to prep yourself for a colonoscopy.

So, before and during dinner Barbara and I often put on some music. One night, we were listening to tunes Johnny Mathis had recorded over fifty years ago. The quality of his voice and the orchestrations were remarkable to us, a comfort that brought solace. We needed some, after news of a horrible natural disaster (the earthquake in Haiti), and two that were man-made: a male pinup elected to the U.S. Senate, and a stake driven by the five conservative members of the Supreme Court through the heart of honest elections, when they turned the election process into a strictly retail transaction.

--Listen to him. So beautiful. I bet you hate it.
--I don’t. Mathis is pitch-perfect. A great pop singer. He started out wanting to be a jazz singer, but came to see there was no money in it.
--As a girl, I just loved him.
--Did you have a poodle skirt?
--A poodle skirt, circle pins. Penny loafers.
--Just like Olivia Newton John in “Grease.” Before she undergoes her transformation.
--We all loved Johnny Mathis. My friends and I listened to early rock. We thought of Johnny’s music as older, more sophisticated. By the end of high school we were all addicted.
--If you think about it, it’s a sad story.
--How so?
--I mean Johnny Mathis and private life. Everybody these days knows he’s gay. And plays a lot of golf. I read somewhere he’s a scratch player, or better. He’s gay, and a great golfer. These days, those two details are about equally weighted for most people. Back in the Fifties and Sixties, you stayed in the closet if you wanted a career in show business.
--That’s true. Remember Rock Hudson? Here was this masculine icon, still trying at the very end of his life to convince people the illness he was dying of wasn’t AIDS.
--Exactly. Mathis singing all those love songs to teenage girls, and also being listened to by a coterie of male friends, waiting for the next double entendre.
--On the other hand, it might be a kind of payback for his gay friends. Knowing “Chances are” is really about Johnny and his boyfriend.
--Could be. But I think it must have been mostly humiliating for him. Always perceived by his adoring fans as something he wasn’t. Maybe channeling the anger explains how he became a golfer good enough to play with the pros.
--I see what you mean. He could never have come out back then. After he did, how could he go on stage in his tux, in front of thousands of girls in poodle skirts and penny loafers?
--It’s a day for finding something to feel good about, don’t you think? Well, we have an African American president, and almost had a woman.
--And the next Johnny Mathis won’t have to live a lie.
--No he won't. At least not that one.

POP CULTURE: THE LIMITS OF GREATNESS

2010-04-19T07:47:00.000-04:00

Barbara enjoys popular music more than I do (I prefer keyboard jazz), but we have both remained fans of the great names from our younger days--The Beatles, Stones, Carly Simon and others. Especially we share a love of Ray Charles. How is it possible to listen to, say, “Georgia” or “Hit the Road, Jack,” and not be moved or made to smile?

Getting old with music and musicians makes these associations all the more affecting. Over drinks, we recently listened to a CD of duets Charles recorded before his death, “Genius Loves Company,” released in 2004. As always, the music touched us. But whereas some artists’ voices age wonderfully, taking on rich, new qualities, others don't. It can be painful when favorite singers at the end of their careers test your loyalty. And make you think about your own future.

--It’s really a great album, don’t you think?
--Yes, I do. Very good. Now this is who?
--Diana Krall
--They must’ve been fighting each other to be paired up with him. I mean their agents.
--They had to know he didn’t have much longer. Who in the business wouldn’t want to sing a duet with Ray Charles?
--I’d sure like to.
--That’s right, I forgot. As a movie extra you’re part of the show business community.
--When Jamie Fox played him, I bet he would’ve wanted me in a crowd scene.
--Well, honey, I don’t think there were all that many parts for your character type. What did you call it?
--Grandma geezer roles.
--I don’t think there were so many of those. Twenty, even ten years ago, with some makeup you could’ve been in long shots of white bobby soxers going nuts in the early part of Ray’s career. Otherwise, mostly the female roles went to black actresses playing women Ray banged on the road.
--I guess.
--Now that’s just awful. Listen to that… I know he has tax problems, but all the same.
--Yes, it’s awful. It does not sound like “a very good year.”
--Even with swelling strings and heavy use of timpani.
--God, such a long career. You’d think his pride wouldn’t let him do it.
--Well, the tax man came to Willie, and the tax man said, “Mister Nelson, to stay out of the slam you need to make several more million than you’re making now.”
--So he got the Genius Loves Company gig.
--God, “When I was seventeen”-- When he was seventeen, that’s when Willie started growing his outlaw braids.
--He got his first pirate bandana back then, too.
--“When I was twenty-one”—here’s Ray. Oh God, no, Ray, don’t… He’s still great on the higher registers, but on this...
--I love him forever, but that’s not good. God, he sounds like it’s time for his meds and the lunch tray.
--OK, here’s Willie again… Yes, blue-blooded girls of independent means. Judging from his voice, I think Willie these days would mostly like the girls of independent means to give him a pint or two of blood, not a nooner. “Here, darlin’, as long as you’re up, wyan’t you take an’ empty this here drool cup for me?”
--That’s not funny.
--I’m sorry. I just think the recording tarnishes his reputation.
--Don’t ferget them revanooers.
--I know. But Willie should’ve done the time instead.

HEROES IN WORD AND DEED

2010-04-16T07:33:00.000-04:00

The Masters is over, but the most recent controversy surrounding Tiger Woods is not. This one has to do with a stark black-and-white Nike ad, in which the voice of Woods’ deceased father Earl demands to know of his son whether he’s learned anything lately. The commercial ends with Woods, somber-faced and saying nothing, still squarely centered on the viewer’s TV screen.

Although the ad’s been called weird and creepy, it’s also been described as one more from Nike that does what good ads should, gain attention and create a buzz. Either way, it provokes questions.

The first has to do with exploiting a dead father’s voice to help shore up a son’s shaken reputation and lucrative contract with Nike. Is this OK? On one hand, nobody made a fuss when Natalie Cole sang duets with her long-gone father. That, too, had to do with a child’s career being enhanced or promoted by using a dead parent’s voice. On the other hand something tells us a mute Tiger being admonished by his recently deceased dad in a TV ad just isn’t the same thing.

Now listen to this:

“I’m the prettiest thing that ever lived.”

“Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can’t talk. The man can’t fight. The man needs talking lesson. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he’s gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.”

Now Clay swings with a right
What a beautiful swing
And the punch raises the bear
Clear out of the ring
Liston’s still rising
And the ref wears a frown
For he can’t start counting
Till Sonny comes down”

“Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn’t choose it, and I don’t want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name, and I insist people use it when they speak to me and of me.”

Not since Muhammad Ali has an American athlete been a world figure instead of just one more national celebrity. Until Tiger Woods. That’s why it makes sense to think about them together. Both are physically beautiful, both “black,” although not very in terms of graphic reality; and both are astonishing athletes. One comes from nowhere onto the world stage. The other comes from the middle class, and, until he drops out, Stanford University.

It takes courage to say what’s on your mind. Can anyone remember anything Tiger Woods has ever said? What’s far more likely is that we’ll remember his father—his master’s voice—addressing from the grave a mute, managed, handled, coached and prompted son.

The politicians, actors and athletes we not only admire but come to love are the ones whose impact extends beyond technical mastery. This has applied all along, from Odysseus to Martin Luther King up to the present day. We are grateful to such people, love them and make them into heroes because they give us something to take away besides instant replays.

But unlike Muhammad Ali or Yogi Berra to name just two, it doesn’t seem likely we’ll ever get from Woods what all true heroes give us: both the genius of the body, and striking, ultimately unforgettable words that live well beyond careers or lives. He might have been able to do it, but probably won’t. Tiger Woods is just too valuable a “brand,” a commodity. And he doesn’t seem to have the courage to speak for himself.

BREAKING NEWS: GROWING OLD WITH JESSE

2010-04-14T08:01:00.000-04:00

--How do they do it?
--Do what?
--Get Jesse Jackson so fast.
--You mean this thing with the governor of Virginia.
--The governor, the tea partiers smearing Obama. Any race-related breaking news story. Within hours--no, within seconds Jesse’s in a network or cable news studio.
--Providing grave-faced observations.
--For years. Decades. I’ve grown old with Jesse.
--We all have. First the Civil Rights Movement, then globe-trotting to trouble spots. Running for president
--That’s our Jesse.
--He’s no fool, though.
--He most certainly isn’t. I haven’t really heard much of what he says for the last ten or fifteen years. Because he’s a rerun for me now, and I tune out. But the very fact he’s still in there punching, still on every TV news operation’s Rolodex is a testament to longevity.
--It’s really true. You have to be built to last to be on after all these years. Even after you’re overheard saying you’d like to cut off the future president’s balls. Even after that, they’re still setting a place at the table for old Jesse.
--And his son’s in office now, isn’t he? In Congress?
--That he is. Illinois’ second congressional district. Think how ready he must be for the cameras. How groomed for office and TV as Jesse’s son.
--There’s also the Reverend Al Sharpton.
--Yep, Al and Jesse often figure together. They’re a tag team, taking on the softball questions served up by the talking heads.
--Do you think they’re given a free pass?
--Long ago, maybe, not any more. And Sharpton’s gotten much better over time. Certainly since he cut his hair. But he’s no fool, either. I actually listen to Sharpton sometimes. He’s unflappable, never gets blustery.
--I have a theory. About how they get to them so fast. Remember the maps they used to have in schools? The roll-down kind?
--You mean before Mapquest and global positioning.
--No, in school, in the classroom.
--Oh, those. Sure. “Here’s Borneo, boys and girls, and right over here is Chile.”
--They were like oversized window blinds. So what I think is, Jesse never really has to leave home. They give him roll-down blowups of all the network and cable news studios. When a call comes through, he just pulls down the appropriate background, stands or sits in front of it, gets his wife to work the camera, and starts talking. How cool is that?
--It makes a great deal of sense. This business of breaking stories and 24/7 news cycles, how else are you going to manage?
--Way back when, I remember there were crazies who insisted something similar was really behind the moon landings.
--Ah yes. I think there was supposed to be a moon studio somewhere in Philadelphia. The whole moon business was actually a hoax. I used to wonder if Nixon and Kissinger really existed. They seemed so improbable to me, I wondered if they weren’t fictional.
--Today, it could happen. A computer-generated Commander-in-Chief.
--You know, it would probably make sense. Especially in terms of terrorist threats. You could still have an actual president somewhere, but the one we’d see most of the time would be a hologram.
--I think perhaps we’ve taken this line of thinking far enough.
--OK. Besides, it’s time for Wolf.

WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM FOR CONFEDERATE HISTORY MONTH

2010-04-12T08:20:00.000-04:00

There’s no point in repeating what’s been said about how half the population of his state—that is, the 500,000 slaves who lived in Virginia at the time of the Civil War--somehow slipped Governor Bob McDonnell’s mind when he proclaimed April Confederate History Month.

And it shouldn’t need to be said that informing people about Confederate history is a good thing, or that using a state’s history to promote tourism is a legitimate role for a governor.

But something does need to be added: no politician of high rank, certainly not the governor of one of the fifty states, is ever solely or even principally responsible for what he does or says. What this means is that we must assume the 500,000 slaves either slipped the minds of all those who make up McDonnell’s circle of advisors and handlers, or it registered with them, but got shelved. Those are the only two ways their boss could have been allowed to blunder the way he did.

Think about it: think about all the meetings and chalk talks, all the brain-storming sessions that must have followed the first Eureka! moment when someone decided it would be great to have a month set aside to remember and examine what took place in Virginia during the nation’s most tempestuous period. How many people were involved in arranging for photo ops, interviews, publications, reenactments and videos for this initiative? Imagine the clever, ambitious men and women hastening through the State Capitol and the Governor’s mansion, earning their keep by focusing on some aspect of this major, month-long project.

In other words, McDonnell’s “oversight” means something more than just another instance of a politician fitting his well-heeled foot into his mouth and, days later when the outcry has grown deafening, deciding to take it out so he can eat humble pie and apologize.

It means those responsible for the machinery of Republican politics in Virginia—at least those who answer to or for the governor—are unwilling or unable to incorporate the central fact in the greatest of our national disasters into their thinking and planning. Either those 500,000 slaves came up in meetings and were judged to be an avoidable embarrassment, or they never appeared on anyone’s radar.

It’s hard to take in. But when Virginia journalist Steve Tuttle tells us that when he was a schoolboy, schools were still teaching students to refer to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression, it all becomes easier to understand. What Tuttle calls “the fetishization of the old Confederacy and all its supposed glory” for school children makes it more possible to see how keeping the fetishists happy is the politically sensitive issue for the governor and those around him, not the matter of slavery.

That is, until everyone who isn’t still obsessed with the glory days of the Old South realizes what’s missing from the gov’s proclamation.

OF BIRTHDAY CAKES AND PEEPS: ANOTHER ADDRESS TO CROSS OFF YOUR LIST

2010-04-09T09:02:00.000-04:00

In a few weeks, Barbara and I will leave Florida and return to Michigan. There, a really daunting task awaits us: trying to sell a tatty old four-bedroom colonial full of charm but with few other inducements. That is, inducements to buy, which assumes there are people still alive who can qualify for a mortgage. If the whole country is punch drunk from the collapse in real estate, the Detroit area is down for the count.

Perhaps as a way of persuading ourselves there's hope, late last fall we started looking at apartments. If nothing else, we thought this process would get us started imagining ourselves in different digs, digs demanding a huge, sudden leap in the level of rigor and self-discipline we bring—OK, fail to bring--to the world of stuff.

--Thanks for baking me a cake.
--Well, it’s your birthday.
--Thank you for making me a real homemade cake.
--So to speak. A real mix made at home, anyway.
--You know, you’ve never said a word about those apartments we looked at.
--Which ones? The ones in Bloomfield?
--Not a word, nary a peep.
--I never told you whether or not I want to live at the end of the world?
--Not a peep.
--You like that word, don’t you? Well, my silence should be peep enough. Except you always complain about my not peeping. That I’m too quiet.
--Not always. But it’s true you hold your peep most of the time. Think of all the things you don’t talk about. Bungee jumping is one. Parasailing. I don’t think you ever peeped about those.
--Here, then, is my official peep or tweet on those apartments. They’re too far off the map. It’s nowhere near all the things we like. Plus, I didn’t like that talk about occasionally, possibly having a water problem in the basement. That’s where we’d store all our junk, in those big closets. “People usually put down pallets,” she said. Imagine all our stuff down there getting moldy.
--Come on. You make it sound like a swamp. I didn’t see any water damage.
--Uh huh. I’m sure that’s what you were looking for.
--It didn’t smell musty, did it?
--How would you know?
--I have a sinus problem, a handicap. You shouldn’t be critical.
--Trust me, it smelled musty. So “no” is the last word and final peep from me on living over a swamp.
--They were huge apartments, though.
--Of course they were huge. There’s nothing to see or do outside, so they have to give you lots of space to wander around in. Where you can rest up when you aren’t bailing out the basement.

THE NEXT GENERATION

2010-04-07T07:45:00.000-04:00

For what seems all too few spring breaks, we have enjoyed the company of two of our grandchildren here in Florida. But time is the evil genius that brings adolescence, and we have reluctantly waved goodbye for a few years, as they extend their range to places like New York City.

But we’re resourceful. For four days, we had company, friends from Florida’s Panhandle. Like us, they have grandchildren, and we arranged for them to bring theirs, so we could have our own spring break from ourselves.

There were three, all different, all high energy. It was great fun, not only having them under but also raising our roof. When at last our revels ended, they didn’t want to leave. When you’re old, that’s one of the better compliments you can be paid: a little girl you met three days ago plops down next to you and asks if she can stay.

--The peace that passeth all understanding.
--I feel stunned. Do you feel stunned?
--I feel exhausted.
--The house seems so big to me. Empty. No one’s here now, not even us. All that’s left is appliances turning on and off.
--Ray Bradbury wrote a story about it, I forget the name. Sprinkler heads popping up and shutting down, little mechanical “mice” scurrying around, cleaning and dusting the house. All the people had died in some disastrous way never explained.
--One minute you’re hoping for it to be over, the next you feel bereft. Abandoned.
--One thing’s certain. I now have the most thorough understanding possible of what the term “sensory overload” means.
--It used to be that way with our own. Remember?
--I remember nothing. Just now, I’m an empty vessel.
--At some point, you said we should create a new natural law, the Rule of Seventy-two.
--You mean with Rose and Wagner.
--You said anything over seventy-two hours was pushing the cardiovascular envelope in a dangerous way.
--This was ninety-six hours. I’ve been pleasantly catatonic for about the last eighteen.
--You were great yesterday in the swimming pool.
--Going for broke, I know. When you’re pushing seventy, it’s really good for morale to be able to throw somebody around. It makes you feel powerful. All you have to do is be sure the person is four or five.
--You loved it, I could tell.
--It’s the animal high spirits. The inventions. They really were great at making up games. Give them something as simple as an empty plastic nut jar from Costco, and they turned it into a physics experiment. How much water can the jar hold and still float?
--And those bubble wands they waved around. I couldn’t stop watching_______. Four years old and already absolutely a person. An individual. Did you see her face when bubbles landed on the pool and floated?
--I told her they were riding the waves. She liked the idea. She got down and slapped the water, watching them “widing the waves.” A little sponge for words and games.
--She liked a lot of things. But she really let you know when she didn’t. She knew how to get her way. If her grandma didn’t cooperate, that little girl knew how to use her voice.
--Those postcards I had made up with the cover of my book. She came in the study, sat on the couch behind me. I was typing, she didn’t say anything. Then she spotted a stack of the cards on the bookcase. “Can I have this, Uncle Baywy?” When I turned she was holding one up. I told her of course she could have it. After a minute she asked if she could have another. I said yes, still typing e-mail or something. “Uncle Baywy, can I have another?” It was a big stack of cards and I saw this was likely to go on indefinitely. So I told her no, she had one for each hand, which was the right number. This seemed to make sense to her, and I went back to typing. “Hey, look--” When I looked, she held up the cards. “See? I can hold both in one hand. So can I have another?”
--Yes, one smart little girl.
--And as you say, now it’s too quiet.
--Don’t get carried away. Yesterday, I saw a tick developing at the corner of your eye.
--And that’s true too.

EASTER TEA PARTY PROMO

2010-04-05T09:31:00.000-04:00

“Addiction” refers to a battle between reason and dependency, in which dependency wins. Regrettably, the term applies to me: reason tells me it’s a waste of my evermore precious time to read the letters-to-the-editor page of the Naples Daily News (or to contribute to it, for that matter). But I am addicted.

Lately, in addition to the letters, the paper has taken to fleshing out its pages with numerous “guest commentary” pieces. Like the letters, these articles often give voice to right-wing positions and enthusiasms. One of them, the Tea Party movement was taken up by a man who, like many in Naples, is retired but once ran Something Big.
Knowing better, I read his rant, then went through withdrawal.

--Were you saying something in here?
--Yes, but not to you.
--Oh. Just thinking out loud?
--So to speak.
--Uh oh, the paper.
--I was reacting to news that “unbridled progressive demagogues” have been inflating the size of government and creating endless new entitlements through health care reform. Worst of all, these same un-tethered progressives have been “either ignoring or arrogantly mocking the tea partiers.”
--I thought you weren’t—
--I know I wasn’t. Newsprint instead of needle tracks. What can I say?
--It’s not good for you.
--No. But on the bright side, it’s not smack or coke. The writer says the mainstream media is demonizing the tea party movement.
--What exactly is the mainstream media?
--Any information delivery system that either ignores or arrogantly mocks the tea partiers.
--All I know are the signs and costumes I see when I drive past one of the rallies. Or what they say when interviewed. They all seem to think we never had an election. “No taxation without representation.” They say Obama’s not an American.
--See? That’s the mainstream media for you. Planting actors among “good, hard-working, nonviolent, nonpartisan taxpayers.”
--Does it say that?
--No, but that’s what we’re supposed to think. Or, that the people with Obama signs depicting him as the lipstick-smeared Joker, or as Hitler are just a few cutups in what is otherwise a solid group of hard-working taxpayers.
--Ah, yes, taxpayers. Let me guess. This one’s about Small is Beautiful government and free enterprise. About core values.
--So you read it.
--No. One of us has to stay clean.
--True. But as you suspect, it’s another rant against big government, in favor of all the core values on which?
--Our nation was founded.
--Very good. And they’re incensed by—give me a synonym for communist.
--Pinko?
--Another.
--Collective-something.
--Good, collectivist. Another.
--Nazi? They seem to think Nazis and communists are the same.
--No, not Nazi. Wealth redistribution. That’s the real horror for this writer. He doesn’t go on about it, but that’s the core evil threatening our core values for him. I’m sure he thinks it’s outrageous to suggest there might be something wrong with CEOs making three or four hundred times what someone in a plant makes. Actually, it would be much more than that. Because most of our free enterprise now rests on the small but capable shoulders of people in China.
--It’s Easter, not Bill Buckley’s birthday. Why aren’t they printing something about charity and good will?
--Don’t worry, the pope’s in here. Except it’s not such a good time for his cred. Besides, if you’re a solid, core-values person, the whole piece is about charity and good will. Charity and good will for the one quarter of one percent of the population with estates in excess of seven million dollars.
--He gets all that into his article?
--I confess I am expanding a bit. Extrapolating from what’s here. The thing that sets me off isn’t so much the point of view. It’s the absolute dependence on cliché. With few exceptions, the whole thing is composed of catch phrases.
--Isn’t “catch phrase” a catch phrase?
--Uh oh. A tea-party wit, right here in my own sovereign home. In one of America’s “50 sovereign, independent states, each ruled by ‘we the people.’”
--Is there anything about health care being shoved or forced down our throats? That’s a favorite.
--No. “Rammed” takes the place of shoved down our throats. The Democrats are planning to “ram through amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap-and-trade, and union card-check legislation.”
--No, we certainly don’t want anyone being invited to join a union.
--Not unless we favor “America’s slide toward socialism.”
--I sure don’t.
--Good, neither do I. You can go to work on the signs. I’ll get started fixing up our hats.

MERCANTILE AMERICA CONCLUDED: A FRANCHISE IS BORN

2010-04-02T09:14:00.001-04:00

--Thanks for cooking again tonight. It’s really my turn.
--Happy to.
--There’s something about a man in an apron.
--You always said it turned you on to see a man on his knees with a bucket and rag.
--What’s that on your chest?
--I’m sorry, it’s drool. I was testing the sauce.
--That’s OK, I don’t mind.
--Motherhood gets you ready for almost anything, doesn’t it? Even drooling men in aprons. It’s not such a big thing, is it?
--Of course not.
--Think of Pavarotti, think of Satchmo. Both of them were big droolers, always with a handkerchief.
--Exactly. When I start my reality show about being a movie extra, you can open a boutique. Drool Hankies. It would be a small shop, like those Tie Tack stores they used to have in malls. Or the Sunglass Shack. You could be in all the shopping centers, it might catch on with rappers and hip hop culture.
--Very enterprising, I like it. Bling-related handkerchiefs. I would market Drool Hankies as a high-end fashion statement. I could have P Diddy or Fifty Cent hold a drool rag to his groin and shag-walk toward the camera, doing his rapper thang. We’ll pursue this after I boil the pasta. It’s breathed long enough, pour us some Rosso di Montalcino.
--Is this the last bottle?
--Afraid so, the last baby Brunello. But we need to drink what’s left before leaving. Besides, it’s Friday. Excuse me, it be Friday. Joey next door corrected me once. He told me I was wrong, it wasn’t Fifty Cent, it was Fitty Cent. I was grateful for the insider information.

MERCANTILE AMERICA CONTINUED: DESERT MUSINGS AND THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

2010-03-31T08:26:00.000-04:00

Do you travel as much as you used to? If not, you’re like us. Aside from our snowbird movements between Michigan and Florida, we don’t do much of it these days. That may account for why, during DBD we find ourselves reminiscing more about trips taken when we were younger.

--I was just thinking about your work as an extra.
--What about it? I bet you think it’s dumb.
--No, I don’t, that’s not true. It’s important work, as you point out every time we watch a movie. “See right there? Those are extras.” But I was thinking, by now, they should be running out of ideas for reality shows. “Real Housewives of Bayonne, New Jersey” must be in the pipeline. “So You Think You Can Mud Wrestle.”
--“So You Think You Can Tuckpoint.”
--Exactly. Remember when we were in Palm Springs?
--It was too far to fly for just five days.
--I know, but do you remember the tour we took?
--Mostly, I remember the dumb tapestries we bought at a consignment store in Rancho Mirage. But yes, I remember. I remember because we were the youngest people on the tour. Except for the driver. We were in a minibus with a driver who thought of himself as being in show business. He drove us past all the closed-up houses, giving us juicy tidbits.
--Except almost all the stars were dead. A bygone era, but he talked about them in the present tense. Big stars don’t live there any more. Unless you stick with the Charleston, it’s no good for clubbing. The stars who lived there are either in Forest Lawn, or some nursing home for actors. God, what must it be like in the day room?
--It was sad. The houses and landscaping were still being maintained, but everything looked bleached. Faded.
--Well, it’s a desert.
--I know. Bob Hope’s house was up on a mountain, wasn’t it?
--Yes. He was still alive back then. I remember wondering if he was up there in his wheelchair, looking down through a gun scope. He must have had one, after all those trips to entertain the troops.
--It was so dry.
--Yes. That was the first time I ever saw vapor being used at an outside cafe.
--Little jets of cool steam, that’s right. To add some humidity.
--Back to your film career. I was thinking, back in Detroit, we could put the third row in the van. You could offer visits to all the sites where you’ve been an extra.
--I see. Another tour bus.
--Why not? The whole thrust of TV now is someone’s take on reality, correct? You’re personable, well-spoken. You could wear what they asked you to put on for this movie or that. Your gawker costume, your airport waiting lounge ensemble. I see it catching on. Never mind stars dancing, or twenty-somethings whining about the bugs on some island. Give people down-and-dirty reality.
--That’s already been taken. There’s “Dirty Jobs,” there’s “Hoarders.”
--Too exotic. I’m talking the hard-scrabble, inside scoop on life as a movie extra in Motown.
--I could tell them about Sigourney Weaver, how real she is in life. How nice she was to the girl extra who asked for her autograph during a scene.
--Exactly. Or about Ron Perlman, who isn’t one bit like the heavies he portrays. Promise you’ll take notes from now on.
--I don’t know.
--Just think about it. Frankly, I don’t see why this couldn’t be syndicated wherever impoverished states like Michigan give the film industry huge tax incentives. Tapes of your show could be training films. See what I mean?
--Yes, well, I’ll consider it for consignment.

MERCANTILE AMERICA: COSTCO

2010-03-29T09:39:00.000-04:00

Readers of DBD know that I am often irritable (and no doubt irritating), whereas Barbara is almost never guilty in this regard. With me, the quality is probably just one more effect of growing old, the grumpy-old-man syndrome. Perhaps that’s why I am put off by certain behaviors of others in my age “group.” A better person would be more generous and less tetchy, less inclined to project personal frustrations over aging in the form of criticism. That said, I would be very interested to learn your impressions of older people. Many blogs and websites trumpet our spunk and creativity, or express sympathy when scammers take us to the cleaners. What are your views and stories?

--Was it crowded?
--Very. After shopping I got in line for gas. I almost gave up. I ended up in a line with two SUVs ahead of me. Both the size of Nimitz-class carriers. It took a good ten minutes for them to fill up.
--Did you snack?
--You always ask that. You always interrogate me about snacking. I do not snack at Costco. I think it’s disgusting. It’s the sort of thing that makes people hate retirees.
--Do you think we’re hated?
--Clanking around on titanium joints, pumped full of Lipitor to live to a hundred. Blabbing away with the bank teller minutes after the transaction’s over. Of course we’re hated.
--I don’t feel hated.
--Well, that’s good. I’m glad. Besides, no one could hate you. Not even young people.
--I don’t think young people see me at all. I’m not important enough to be hated.
--Next Christmas, I’m getting you one of those self-esteem kits they sell for kids. After you use the kit, you too will be able to feel hated. No, the snacking--my God. It can’t be much different from a petting zoo at feeding time. All these retirees lowing and rocking in front of the snack stations. The men all wear sports paraphernalia and the women dress in sweatshirts with clever sayings. Assertions of pride about being geriatric. Crackers, seafood spread, pigs-in-a-blanket, fruit juice laced with glucosamine. Bunt cake. I’m telling you, the bunt cakes at Costco are only slightly smaller than a tire. People pushing big hand carts, not regular shopping carts. People buying pallets of frozen burritos. They sell a chicken pot pie that serves twelve. What am I supposed to do with something like that?
--You’re supposed to have people to dinner.
--To eat a chicken pot pie? You who won’t let me unseal the airlock until you steam-clean the whole house? I don’t see it happening.
--OK, but I bet you wanted a nibble here and there. You’re disciplined, true, but I bet you wanted a sample or two
--No, I didn’t. You know me, but you don’t. I know it’s small-minded, but it annoys me. That sense of entitlement. “I’m old, dammit. I’m retired, for Christ’s sake. If me and the missus want to plan our week around visits to Costco, so we can join the herds in front of the sample food counters to eat lunch for free, who the hell’s going to stop me? And don’t forget, I’m a veteran!”
--Keep it up, and you’re going to need a hit of Lipitor yourself.
--Sorry. No, all I need is a rob roy. It was the Nimitz-class SUVs at the gas pump. That’s when the fog of war set in.

THE KNISTER WAY, CONCLUDED: BACK IN THE ONLINE SADDLE AGAIN

2010-03-26T07:00:00.001-04:00

Barbara's brand new laptop, the one that had worked perfectly in Michigan, would not work in Florida. We thought it had something to do with the Civil War, but were wrong.

--He’s nice, I like him.
--And right on time, too. That in itself is a huge plus. I can’t count the number—
--Please don’t, Barry. I was here every one of those times. I lived it, too, remember?
--I know what it’s like down here. I accept it. I know about how all the traffic lights are timed by sadists, and about the hundreds of deranged, criminally insane people the state of Florida’s Department of Motor Vehicles issues drivers licenses to.
--Please don’t—
--I’m sorry, it’s like exorcism. If I say this speech, it helps me to live. It prepares me for the next time I make an appointment with a tradesman or a vendor who never shows up.
--I don’t think it helps you. I think it makes you more nuts.
--No, it helps. It reconfirms for me the deeply flawed nature of human interactions. It reestablishes for me that this is the norm, not an aberration. It refreshes my memory, it equips me—
--No, honey, it doesn’t. It makes you go on the way you are right now.
--OK, I’m almost done, then I’ll shut up. I know all about the short-circuited nature of things here in sunny Florida. Which is not all that different from the short-circuited nature of things in Michigan. Except in a heightened way, but with fewer homicides. At least on the Gulf Coast. But: I cannot come to terms with service people who can’t even do me the simple courtesy of calling me with a lie to explain why they’re three hours late, or why they won’t be able to come today, or come any day, ever. Is that too much to ask? A simple call on your cell phone as you’re driving around? A little lie? Just a courtesy, a simple, little thing, instead of stiffing the poor sap whose toilet or roof or pool you said you’d fix between one and four, but no, not today, not tomorrow, not, I’m sorry to say, ever.
--Better now?
--Yes.
--Good. He was nice, and he came on time. And fixed my laptop problem. Be grateful.
--I am. He stopped on his way to his shop, and didn’t charge us for another service call. I gave him a twenty anyway, to secure his good will for the next cyber failure.
--It surprised him, our problem. You said that when you described the “symptoms” over the phone, he told you he was stumped. He said he’d “never heard that one” before.
--Actually, I think that’s why he came so fast. It intrigued him. It’s just like Dr. House, he’s only engaged by weird illnesses. Why would a new laptop computer refuse to connect to the Internet, when it’s resting right next to both the cable modem and the wireless router? Why would this same laptop work perfectly thirty-five or forty feet away in the same house? Answer: Because it’s resting right next to the wireless router, etcetera.
--Being able to use it wherever I want is like being released. Paroled.
--Just like the thing with my Volkswagen. Or was that before we got married?
--Honey, you told me about it yesterday.
--Of course I did, exactly. I’m topping up mine. You?
--I’m fine. I’ll just sip my wine with happy thoughts of my new laptop.

THE KNISTER WAY, CONTINUED: SHERMAN ENCHINEERING

2010-03-24T08:12:00.000-04:00

Held hostage when a problem developed with Barbara's new laptop (not in a basement in Beirut, just in our house, waiting for the tech expert to show up), I remembered a story.

--I loved that car but, really, it caused me a lot of grief.
--Not as much as mine.
--No, I can’t compete with the grief you had with your Volkswagen. From what you told me, it never recovered after getting whacked by that Cadillac in a mall parking lot. A Volkswagen Rabbit and a Coupe de Ville. Not a fair matchup.
--Before the accident or after, it was a mess. A lemon.
--Mine wasn’t that bad, but it was in the shop a lot. I took it to Germans, of course. They loved to talk about the good old days, before Volkswagen cheapened zuh product. Back ven it vas beautiful, but now not zo good. I remember standing around listening to them talking German, wondering which camp they'd served in during zuh var. But that’s probably not fair. They were good enough guys. I think.
--Were they good repairmen?
--Dieter and Hans. Yes, I think they were good. But who knows? It didn’t seem to matter. Eventually, I started taking the car to a different shop, on the east side. I guess because I was going out there more often, when my mother got sick. That’s where something like what’s happening with your computer happened to me. I remember the car had to be towed. I went out one morning, and it wouldn’t start. Usually, that’s the alternator. I rode in the tow truck, and we took the car to the new shop. My mother met me and drove me to her house. I stayed there all day.
--Doing chores, I’m sure. Fixing things, making much needed repairs around your mother’s house.
--Don’t be mean. Probably, I was grading blue books. All day I waited, then they called. “You’re good to go,” they said. “All set.” Mother drove me back to the shop, and left. I went inside and wrote the check. I was effusively grateful and all the rest of it. Out I go to my restored VW. I get in, turn the ignition. Nothing. I try again. Nothing. I check to be sure they’ve given me the right set of keys. Yes, they’re my keys. I go back inside to the service desk. “I can’t start my car.” Can you see the weary look on the cashier’s face, Barbara?
--I believe I can, yes. Was it another German?
--No. I think they were Irish mechanics. But the cashier was a woman. When I say I can’t start my car, a world-weary, I’ve-seen-it-all kind of woman behind a desk is looking up at me. I remember she took a drag on her cigarette—everyone in the car business smoked back then. She put her smoke back in the ashtray, then picked up a phone. “Bert, the black VW.” I could hear her voice echoing out in the shop. I remember being extremely grateful she didn’t say, “Bert, the guy with the black VW doesn’t know how to start his car.”
--Oh, honey, this is bad, this is—
--Stay tuned, it gets worse. I can’t believe I never told you this before. I think of it as a pivotal moment in the later phases of my psychic development. Or decline.
--Really, I feel for you already.
--Yes, well, Bert comes out the back, wiping his hands, smiling. I remember how this contrasted with the world-weary woman’s look. Bert seemed happy. I’m sure having another customer too dumb to start his own car reconfirmed for him the truth of human existence. Think how often something similar must happen.
--Eventually, it would make you cynical.
--Eventually, it would make you decide to steal from such dumb customers. But anyway, Bert’s smiling, wiping his hands. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go see what gives.” Out we go. It was summer—I forgot to mention that, it’s important. The window on the driver’s side was rolled down. When we get to the car, Bert reaches in through the open window, turns the key. The engine starts right up. “Maybe it stuck for you the first time,” he says, or something like that. Still smiling, he walks away, leaving me next to the quiet purring of my restored VW.
--I’m sorry, that had to be—
--Hold on. I get in. I sit there in my sunny car, listening to the motor. Bert by now is back inside fixing some other booby’s car. I just couldn’t accept what had happened, so I turn off the ignition. After a few seconds, I try the key. Nothing. I try again. Nothing.
--Uh oh.
--No, it was a good moment. It really was. It revealed to me one of two things was in charge of me and my car. Either all my years of scoffing at paranormal phenomena were being proved wrong, the arrogant hubris of one more godless secular humanist—
--I thought you believed in God.
--Not the way you’re supposed to. Either I was wrong about ghosts and poltergeist and all the rest of it—or, something obscure but still within the laws of physics was at work. I mean, not at work. I’m very proud of what happens next.
--Good, honey, I’m glad. It doesn’t seem promising.
--I carefully reviewed all that had happened in the last two minutes. I ruled out the car being possessed. I dismissed the possibility that Bert and his fellow mechanics were inside at a small window peeing in their pants, watching me. I removed the key from the ignition and got out. Standing exactly as Bert had stood next to the open window to replicate Bert’s actions, I reached in, inserted the key, and started the engine. Know what it was?
--Not a clue.
--Sitting. Some little shit of a sensor located under the driver’s seat was shorting out every time I sat in the car. See? Another computer story. I went back inside. Bert was no longer smiling, he just wanted to get rid of me. I made him come back out, I made him open the door and sit in the car. I made him try the ignition. He failed. I motioned for him to get out. I put my hand out for the keys and he handed them to me. I reached in, and in the next second restored my manhood, my majority, my birthright. After he fixed the sensor, I drove away. Made whole. Resolved, hardened, tested.
--I think we should open a good wine. We should celebrate.
--One of the things I love most about you is your unfailing sense of occasion.

THE KNISTER WAY: WIRELESSLY WAITING FOR GODOT

2010-03-22T07:59:00.000-04:00

Are you tech-savvy? Well, good for you, and all your new-wave, new-age, newest new thing friends. We're plain hunter-gatherers, sitting around the campfire singing our ageless melodies full of folk wisdom, etc. In other words, animism takes over when computer "issues" develop. To better understand what this means, imagine Early Man out hunting, seeing something on the ground, and picking up a GPS gismo.

--I heard your little jingle this morning.
--Did it surprise you?
--Yes, I guess it did. Chelsea and I were back from our walk. I was sitting in the study, having coffee, reading the paper. She was already snoring quietly on her bed, then the peace was slightly disturbed by a casino noise.
--I woke up and hit the button, to see if anyone had sent me a message.
--So you like your new wireless freedom.
--It’s nice. Snug as a bug in my bed. But of course no one had written.
--Did you give the laptop the finger?
--I did. “Take that,” I said to all the indifferent, uncommunicative people ranging in age from nine on up who haven’t written lately.
--It’s true. You can be as mobile and wireless as you want. If the little people who live inside the CPU don’t write, so what?
--All you can do is give your laptop the finger and go back to sleep.
--Our techie is due back at nine-thirty.
--It’s so maddening, being dependent this way.
--I hate it, too. You know you’re just one keystroke away, except one command stands between you and what you want to do. But you don’t know what it is.
--Ninety-nine dollars just to walk through the door.
--Don’t talk about it, it makes me crazy.
--And then, check in hand, he walks out and drives off. I log on—and can’t get the thing to load anywhere but in the kitchen.
--But you quickly brought the Knister Way to bear on the problem. You went into a different room and carried on.
--Except, if I stick with the Knister Way, I have to move the printer into the kitchen.
--I’ll see what I can do. I’ll bring all my wonderful people skills into play. I’ll get him back here, I’ll make it a matter of professional pride. “Please, young man, my poor wife, look how desperate she is, there in the kitchen. How pitiful, hunched over like that at the butcher-block table, unable to rest her poor old elbows because it’s too high. Unable to print. Is there nothing you can do for her? Doesn’t she remind you of your mother?”
--Skip the part about the mother.
--Why? It’s meant to make him feel responsible. Like we’re family
--Trust me, it will just lead to a comparison that makes us look even dumber.
--Damn it, we’re not dumb. This is not because of ignorance or stupidity.
--Of course it is. Why else do you need to “bring to bear all my wonderful people skills”?
--Come on. That’s like saying you go to a surgeon because you’re too dumb to do your own angioplasty.
--Besides, it’s still the Knister Way.
--Well, there, you’ve got me.
--The Knister Way. Along with adapting in weird ways when things go wrong, it also calls for schmoozing friends and relatives who know something. If Mark were here, that’s who we’d be calling.
--Well, Jesus, of course, Barbara. What the hell are sons-in-law for?

DISORDERLY EATING DISORDER

2010-03-19T18:43:00.000-04:00

Save the children, shut the door

--You eat too fast.
--I know.
--It’s not good for you.
--I know, and it’s unseemly.
--It’s like you have no confidence about where your next meal’s coming from.
--I’m sorry, it’s a habit. Something happens before lunch. When I was teaching, by mid-morning I was ravenous. But I disciplined myself. No snacks, I told myself. No trail mix, no power granola bar. When I finished my eleven o’clock I dog-trotted back to my office. I closed the door and ate…. Well, never mind.
--I know. I see it most days.
--It’s one of the negatives in retirement, isn’t it? Seeing how your spouse eats his lunch. Knowing now how all those years, he was away at noon, eating like that. I’m sorry.
--No, honey, it’s all right. You aren’t gross or anything. Not often.
--But you make sure to keep your hands out of range, don’t you?
--It’s just a little unsettling, that’s all.
--I always closed the door so students couldn’t see. I was aware of being out of control, chewing my sandwich, almost desperate. I never understood why this was so.
--Did you try relating it to your past?
--You mean was I weaned too soon, that sort of thing? I’m pretty sure I was a demand-feeding baby.
--I can certainly believe that.
--No, I don’t think of myself as an oral type, although the signs are all there. Talking for a living. Drinking, smoking. I suppose that could have something to do with it.
--So, you would close the door. You knew if they watched you eating it would strike your students the wrong way.
--I remember inhaling sandwiches, demolishing bags of potato chips, eating an apple the way a chipper chows down tree limbs. I remember thinking, “It would alarm them. If they saw me this way, they’d go to the registrar and drop the course.”
--Poor baby.
--I don’t think my cover was ever broken. After savaging my food, I’d open the door. For all the world, there was Professor Knister, the embodiment of equanimity and self-control, ready for business.

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

2010-03-17T07:54:00.000-04:00

The Secretary of State’s office. On a clear day you can see the head of the line.

--How’d it go?
--Better than I thought it would. On the way there, I gave myself a pep talk. “Be calm, think positively. Remember the Tao. Think in terms of complementary opposites, not of good and bad.”
--And this worked? For you? At a Secretary of State’s office?
--I might have hidden reserves you know nothing about. Secret disciplines.
--Hidden reserves, maybe, honey, not patience. I expected you to look frazzled. No, I expected someone in uniform to come to the house.
--Actually, I was impressed with things there. It didn’t start well, though. Not at all.
--How so?
--Before getting in the service line, you first had to stand in a different line just to get a number.
--No, you aren’t good in lines. But none of it had to happen. You just lost the mail-in application form. You have to develop a system, honey. You lose things.
--Nothing is ever actually lost or destroyed, it’s physics. And I have a system. I have a triage system that utilizes the latest pile technology.
--Yes, and in your system, a throw pillow covering a pile of mail on a couch means you end up going to the Secretary of State’s office.
--Drink your wine. Really, this time I was the picture of patience. I was ready. So, I’m in line, behind a huge man dragging his leg, lurching forward. I looked around. It was like an epidemic. Like the quiet following the climax in a disaster movie. All these dazed, walking wounded. People with heavy foot-surgery boots, people using walkers and canes. Ancient fathers and mothers being led about by their middle-aged children. One guy must’ve said ‘What?’ a dozen times. Plus people who couldn’t speak the language. They bring someone with them, to interpret. Three Asian kids were there, none of them over eighteen. Two to interpret for the applicant. I wonder if these same two interpreters will ride with the new driver, to read him the street signs. It’s not right. I’m all for pluralism, I’m all for “bring us your tired, your poor,” etcetera. But you shouldn’t be issued a license to drive a car if you can’t read.
--I remember your telling me the Americans with Disabilities Act forbids just that sort of thing in universities. You said it’s illegal to reject dyslexic applicants just because they can’t read.
--Just because they can’t read or write.
--But go ahead, that’s for another day. You said you were impressed.
--I was. I’m in line, getting ready, talking to myself, calming myself as the line chugs along. Ahead, I see the employees behind the counter. Their feet were concealed, but I’m sure they all had foot-surgery shoes. Three of them in a row. Combined, they easily weighed eight hundred pounds on the hoof.
--It’s all the sitting.
--If you say so. But they were tending to business, so I was heartened. When it came my turn, my person told me I could do the whole registration thing at a machine. They use scanners now, just the way they’re used at airports to issue boarding passes. Put the old registration under the scanner, out pops the new one. It was slick.
--Here’s to the scanner.
--To Terri Lyn Land, Secretary of State. A forward-looking person in command of cutting-edge technology.

BO BOs IN PARADISE

2010-03-15T08:13:00.000-04:00

Nine years ago Barbara and I bought our place in Naples, but only in the last four years have we spent much time here. As snowbirds, and lifetime liberals, we now realize what sheltered lives we live when in Michigan. Before retiring, Barbara worked for a labor union, I taught college undergraduates.

We’ve come to see ourselves as strangers in a strange land. Although our Naples neighbors are cordial and respectful of our privacy, they are all of them chest-thumping conservatives. Whenever politics comes up, they take it for granted we share their views. New kids on the block and greatly outnumbered, we bite our tongues and keep our commie-liberal-socialist opinions to ourselves.

With no real religious motive, at some point we started attending Unitarian Universalist services. Unitarians have always been firmly located in the liberal camp, and at last we found ourselves in the company of like-minded people. My catch phrase is that the UU church of Naples should be thought of as a sleeper cell of subversive progressive thinking.

It felt good both in emotional and intellectual terms to hear people affirm the importance of reason, and to practice it without first channeling ideas through a litmus test of some kind. In fact, the only thing the church called on members to subscribe to was a commitment to reason, along with an attitude of tolerance toward everything except intolerance.

But there is a fly in the shoo-fly pie of paradise: Barbara was raised Catholic. Although the Church’s intolerant attitude toward divorce led her to leave, a residual strain of Christian faith still runs deep in her. With me, it is more a rill or trickle, swelling at times, but soon slipping back to negligible proportions.

Even so, I have continued to attend services alone. I am grateful to the minister, Kathleen Damewood Korb, and to the members who have generously welcomed me without pressure to officially join. In what is fully consistent with UU emphasis on critical thinking, Barbara remains skeptical.

--How was it?
--Good. Very thought-provoking.
--What thoughts were provoked?
--Well, Katy talked about many things. She presented a funny list of UU attributes. She said UUs were Bo Bos. Bourgeois bohemians. They all went to college, drive environmentally correct cars, eat free-range chicken, drink Fair Trade coffee and listen to NPR. Then she talked about how difficult but necessary it is to get the UU message out. She said we are often too quiet and insular in our beliefs. Too pleased with ourselves, and given to condescension.
--Being too quiet about UU beliefs. I’m not so sure I know how much noise you can make about them.
--I think I sense some irony headed my way.
--Not at all. You know I’m sympathetic. I just find it tepid, that’s all.
--You mean the emphasis on reason and skepticism as opposed to faith.
--Well, yes, that is what I mean. I’m just wondering how you can spread the Good News when you think a belief in the existence of God is a matter of opinion.
--You know that’s not really stating the issue.
--No? How is that not stating the issue? Does anyone attending a UU service have to believe in God?
--Reasonable, compassionate people don’t necessarily believe,so no one is forced to—
--But if you do happen to believe in God, that’s OK, you’re welcome.
--What you believe as a Unitarian is your private business. Just as it’s your personal responsibility to live according to those beliefs.
--You mean the ones that are your business, that you and you alone are responsible for.
--Correct.
--In other words, belief in the existence of God is a matter of opinion.
--I sense this is not an area likely to bear conversational fruit. You aren’t wrong, but neither are you exactly right. I suspect most UU members believe in keeping an open mind.
--About the existence of God.
--Yes.
--Heads He is, tails He ain’t.
--Now now.
--OK. So what else happened?
--They always invite people to voice their joys or concerns.
--I suppose “concerns” would be things like death and losing your mind, that kind of thing.
--Terminal illness and surgeries do play big roles, so yes, that’s true.
--I’m sorry, but calling death or dementia a “concern” is too UU for words.
--Anyway, today the emphasis was on joys, not concerns. A young couple was there with their new baby. Of course UUs don’t baptize children, but they do have a naming ceremony. I think it was Walter.
--I see. I bet UUs also have a “ceremony” for voter registration.
--Very funny. And someone had died and left a bequest to the church. To be used for building a children’s garden. The man who told us about it was very witty. He said there were already plans to offer the garden as a venue for wedding ceremonies. He added it would also be a great place for couples to sign pre-nuptial agreements. For a fee.
--Yes, that’s good.
--I don’t see such a joke resonating with the Baptists down the street.
--No, not likely.
--Reason enough to attend, don’t you think?
--Maybe. But as with the existence of God, I would have to say the jury’s still out.

TERROR THREAT LEVEL: CREEPING YOU-KNOW-WHAT

2010-03-12T11:35:00.000-05:00

Naples, Florida is deservedly well known for its weather, beaches, restaurants, shopping and, because it's usually so good, its weather one more time. Except for this winter, when it was lousy. But Naples is also notable for being a solid bastion of conservative politics. Throw a stick, hit a conspiracy theorist, as we say.

This fact led us to compose the following letter to the editor of the Naples Daily News. It's one we may actually send, unless a real right-winger beats us to it. No, you don't believe it could happen, but that's only because you don't live here.

To the editor:

The pointy-headed liberals on MSNBC will be the first to deny it, but a new terrorist threat we can thank Barack Hussein Obama for (and his Party of Yes-to-Creeping Socialism) is slithering its way into paradise.

This time, it’s not people with bombs in their underwear or shoes, but eco-terrorists. Needless to say—except of course for liberals who are deaf to any warnings that might protect our country—I am talking about the sudden influx, in the last year, of massive numbers of Burmese pythons writhing their way up from the Everglades.

Most recently, this creature-based sleeper cell meant to frighten our people has attacked lawns, and the airport runway on Marco Island. Although he alluded to it in one of his recent chalk talks, it doesn’t take Fox News’ Glenn Beck to see what’s happened. It just takes an average patriot willing to connect the dots.

Those dots indicate the following: On President George W. Bush’s watch, no threat of Burmese python-based terrorism figured here in southwest Florida. But one year after Obama’s inauguration we see the chickens, in this case the serpents, coming home to roost. Or spawn, or whatever it is they’re doing in the Everglades,in order to breed fear in our malls, country clubs, yacht basins, supper clubs and tennis courts.

Does anyone doubt that creeping socialism is perfectly reflected in both the habits,diet, and manner of movement in this latest attack on our liberties? Enough said—and remember: keep that lanai door closed!

SHY WOLVES

2010-03-10T07:26:00.000-05:00

Neither Barbara nor I is a joiner. We don’t play golf or cards, or have much impulse to entertain. Living on a golf course, we consequently sometimes feel cut off. So, we are on the lookout for things to do. One Tuesday, Barbara had attended a lecture on wolves. She came home very enthusiastic, and that Friday we went with others to the Shy Wolf Sanctuary in the Golden Gate Estates section of East Naples.

--The noble heads. The eyes.
--Yes, they got to me.
--All of them different.
--So true. And the director knew them all as individuals.
--I was impressed. The way she started to approach one, then said, “All right, you talked to me and I heard. Not today.”
--I hadn’t seen anything, but he signaled to her she shouldn’t approach, and she read the message.
--She’s been running the sanctuary ten years now. That means she’s very good at reading them.
--True, very important with wolves. Miss a signal, and you’re out of the sanctuary business. Or any other business.
--They’re much bigger than I thought. Much taller.
--That’s because we always think of Chelsea as our junior-grade wolf.
--She certainly looks like one. Sort of. They say all dogs are descended from wolves. Some of them don’t look that way at all, but Chelsea does.
--An eleven- or twelve-year-old miniature rescue wolf with one blind eye, the other with a cataract, and half a tail.
--And a dislike for almost all other dogs.
--Plus a deep distrust of all humans she hasn’t lived with for the last five years.
--The foxes were something, weren’t they? Especially the arctic fox. The way he just climbed up on people’s shoulders. So cute.
--That’s the problem, the cuteness factor. People are so dumb. “Oh, they’re so adorable, let’s get an arctic fox instead of a beagle.”
--Not a red fox, though. The one they had smelled worse than a skunk.
--Not any fox, if you have half a brain. It’s all wrong, exotic pets. Look at the Everglades now, chock-a-block with Burmese pythons. All those foxes, all the wolves and wolf dogs, even the panthers. Every one of them was raised in captivity.
--The stories about the conditions they were in when rescued. It makes you want to spit on the owners.
--It makes me want to visit Old Testament justice on them. An eye for an eye. Or, in this case, a chain of the kind used to pull trailers fastened around the owners’ necks, the other end to a tree. Then you bring in the local kiddies to throw rocks at them. That way, trying to escape, they tear all the skin off their necks. I would love to see that kind of straight-talk, no-spin justice brought to bear.
--You would not be good in a position of authority.
--Of course I would. I’d make posters of what was done to the family wolf, I’d post the photos on the Internet. Then enact the same treatment on the owner. I doubt most people would find this excessive.
--What about the man’s children?
--Send them to boot camp. With parenting like that, where else do you want them?
--You said on the way home you were pretty sure what kinds of people own wolves.
--OK, that was perhaps a little speculative. Except I believe it. “Own” is the key word. No one should want to own something that belongs in nature. But controlling a powerful, potentially dangerous animal, how cool is that? Five will get you ten ninety percent of the people who decide it would be cool to have a wolf or panther for a pet drive Harleys or pickup trucks. They think of themselves as rebels. Pirates. Outsiders defending their tough-guy, uniquely all-American second-amendment individuality. They do this by looking and acting like every other uniquely American, no-neck tough guy. Owning a wolf is almost de rigueur.
--I think the rob roy may be talking now.
--Probably. And you’re right. It’s best not to make me sheriff. I would end up the Bull Connor of exotic-pet-owner profiling and summary justice.

GRUMPY MONDAY: SIGNAGE AND SELF-ESTEEM

2010-03-08T09:20:00.000-05:00

--I saw a “Baby On Board” sign today.
--What was notable about that?
--I don’t know. Nothing, really. I used to see them all the time, but not lately.
--Well, no, that’s true. I haven’t seen them, either.
--Maybe people are revisiting the baby-on-board mystique.
--Is that what it is?
--You tell me, you’re the mom. I assume way back when you had your own babies on board. Before I came on board.
--I most certainly did, but signs didn’t figure.
--Old signs could be a green thing. An effect of the recycling movement. It’s strange, don’t you think? This need to declare every allegiance? Every loyalty? I mean, who the hell doesn’t support Our Troops? It’s a challenge, isn’t it? “I demand you put a ribbon decal on your car, because if you don’t, that means you don’t support Our Troops.”
--I suppose it’s harmless.
--What that did was leverage people who hated George Bush and opposed his war to support them both.
--By creating social pressure to put a yellow ribbon on their cars.
--Cars, boats. Golf carts, shopping carts.
-- I thought of getting a pink ribbon, for breast cancer.
--Whatever you want, but please, no bumper sticker that says “I love my dog.”
--Why not? I do love my dog.
--I love my dog, I love my truck. All the messages say the same thing. “I’m not really confident about my identity, but I know I admire wolves.” Am I supposed to slow down, knowing the car ahead of me includes a baby?
--I don’t think that’s it.
--Cancel my plan to rear-end someone’s Buick?
--People are proud of their babies, that’s all. The way they’re proud of their student-of-the-month at Blodgett Middle School.
--These are the same people who want total strangers to know they dream in chocolate and brake for unicorns.
--Come on, honey, lighten up.
--It all has to do with the self-esteem movement.
--Here we go. How so?
--Reproduction is a serious claim to fame for most people.
--Ahh. I think I see where this is going. “I just want you to know I have a baby in the car with me, my own actual infant, not some rent-a-baby, so there!”
--Exactly.
--Do you remember the certificates given out at the grandkids’school? You called it the No Child Left Behind at The Academy Awards Ceremony.
--He didn’t get a trophy, but I remember ______’s citation was printed in Old English lettering. It acknowledged him for being cheerful.
--It’s no longer acceptable to hand out prizes to only the best students.
--That’s because we’re all unique and special.
--There’s nothing wrong with it, is there? Cheerfulness matters.
--I didn’t say it didn’t.
--No, but you’re being sarcastic.
--I’m sorry. Forty-one percent of U.S. college grads test as “proficient” in the use of their native tongue. Do you know what you need to be able to do in order to test as proficient? You need to be able to understand a newspaper editorial, or read the labels on prescription drugs.
--These are college seniors, not high school grads?
--Forty-one percent.
--Not good.
--Don’t worry, it’s OK. Every one of them feels good about himself. Or herself.

WE GET LETTERS: FUNDAMORALLY MENTAL

2010-03-05T08:34:00.000-05:00

--Are you ready?
--As ready as I’ll ever be. Got my wine, got my seatbelt on.
--I won’t read the whole thing, just the salient points.
--That would be best.
--This is from someone named Don Richmond. He takes another letter writer to task for failing to appreciate the “only moral economic system.”
--Do you think these people ever meet up on the street? What would happen?
--You see quite a few men using putters as canes. That could be trouble. But we have to stay on message. Do you know what “the only moral economic system” is, Barbara?
--Well, Barry, let me think. Yes, I believe I do. That would be capitalism, right?
--Yes, and no. You have your plain, old garden-variety capitalism, but that’s not what Don’s talking about. He’s talking about the red-meat version touted by Ayn Rand.
--I have to say I’ve never read any of her books.
--Don’t feel bad. Don has read them for us. In his letter, he offers proof that Rand’s system of capitalism is especially moral.
--That’s good. If her capitalism isn’t moral, I don’t want anything to do with it. I want it out of my house.
--Not only is it moral, it’s hugely important. In fact, Don tells us that Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged is, quote, “second in influence only to the Bible.”
--Wow. That’s the proof?
--It’s right here in The Naples Daily News, it must be proof. Which can be confusing, because Rand was a lifelong atheist.
--Yes. I, too, am now confused. The writings of Ayn Rand, an atheist, are second only in moral importance to the Bible. How exactly does Don get from A to B? I mean from B to R?
--I think you have to assume his criteria for establishing moral importance are based on sales figures. After all, we’re talking red-meat capitalism.
--People are still buying the Bible, aren’t they?
--They are, but some of them must also be buying multiple copies of Atlas Shrugged. You know, as moral gifts. Stocking stuffers. Although given the size of the book, you would want to use Support Hose.
--I’m shocked. If this Don person and his friends caused the Bible to slip to second place, none of them is welcome in my home.
--Yes, it’s troubling. What would actually make more sense is for Don to match up Ayn Rand with L. Ron Hubbard.
--I haven’t read him, either.
--Well, it’s too late to start. All his books are huge, like Atlas Shrugged. Only people with a family history of extreme longevity should start a Hubbard book. All you need to know is, his novels led to the pseudo-science of Dianetics. Which then morphed into the pseudo-religion of Scientology.
--Isn’t that Tom Cruise’s thing? Scientology?
--I believe it is. Also John Travolta’s thing.
--So it’s a cult. Think about it. John Travolta flies his own 727 or something. A movie star cult member is at the controls.
--On auto pilot, so he can read the works of L. Ron Hubbard. Oh, good, here’s another morality story. It’s an article about Muslim fundamentalists. Did you see it?
--Honey, I didn’t read the paper today. That’s why you’re filling me in.
--Sorry, forgot. It says hardliner Saudi clerics are insisting that, quote, “no Saudi women should appear on TV. Nor should any images of women appear in Saudi newspapers and magazines.”
--That’s just nuts. How are they going to sell anything? Don’t Saudis do laundry? Don’t the men want their women to wash their hair? I want to see the sales figures for shampoo in Saudi Arabia. I want to know how much shampoo they sell, with Saudi men doing the selling.
--I'm sure it's state-run, without ads. Except for worry beads, and solid gold bathroom fixtures.
--Or border collies. Advertising always makes use of dogs, especially smart ones like border collies.
--You’re right, that’s true. You can’t move much product without dogs.
--Didn’t somebody throw shoes at Bush?
--That was in Baghdad. The Saudis and the Bushes are joined at the hip.
--Maybe they have Johnston & Murphy or Nike ads. Men in long robes throwing wingtips.
--This issue of the paper would be complete if Hayes Wicker were making another appearance. In hockey terms, that would give us a moral hat trick.
--The name is vaguely familiar.
--Wicker is a Baptist minister. He has a huge flock here. The church is so big it makes me think of the assembly building at Cape Canaveral. Don’t you remember? I think it was last year he wrote a letter. He said the threat of gay marriage represented a disaster greater than either the Holocaust, or slavery.
--Yes, now I do. I remember being disappointed a moral lightning bolt didn’t take him out.
--Fundamentalists everywhere you turn. Political, religious. God help us.
--Amen to that.

WE GET LETTERS

2010-03-03T08:33:00.000-05:00

Only through use of the oxymoron is it possible to capture the impression made by reading certain sections of the Naples (Florida) Daily News. Horrified hilarity? Dithering directness? Random rationality?

The Daily News is essentially a solid, worthy product of the E.W.Scripps Company, but as with all media, tabloid influences figure. These are predictably evident on the Police Report page, made up mostly of DUIs. By naming names, the brief descriptions are intended to shame those whose approach to Happy Hour runs deep into dinner time, and beyond. Sometimes, the drivers hurt others, and sometimes they are found fast asleep in cars parked at odd angles on the median.

The Police Report page also offers up nasty stories of domestic abuse, with both male and female victims, as well as stories about “grow houses.” These include architectural descriptions of mini-mansions whose interiors, devoid of furniture, have been given over to cannabis agri-business. And of course there are also stark true-crime horror stories involving shotguns and chain saws, gasoline, tongs, duct tape, impalement, etc. These stories you read between the fingers of the hand held over your eyes.

But oxymora are most often needed to capture the essence of the letters to the editor. Naples is a community with lots of retirees, people with ample time to write if not to proofread. Unlike us, many Neapolitans are wealthy, and—again, unlike us—they are almost all Republicans.

Barbara and I sometimes speculate on what causes such people to be so angry. They are well off, have great health care and beautiful golf courses, not to mention ideal weather, along with some of the best deals on wine to be found in the country. Modern medicine aside, we will all die soon enough, so why all the ranting?

True, like salmon battling their way upstream to spawn, a few thoughtfully reasoned or upbeat letters slip through the torrent of anger to make it into print. But by and large, those writing to the editor are venting frustration:

At Democrats in general, and the President in particular (pure, concentrated NazicommieMuslim evil), at intersections where photos are taken of people not stopping for red lights (Big Brother Is Watching You), at dog and cat owners (spreading filth and disease), at people who water their lawns too often or not often enough (risking mold, or causing unsightly brown patches that reflect poorly on the neighborhood), at the color puce (a disgusting choice for use in public lavatories), at the annual infestation of snowbirds who make it hard to secure dinner reservations (seasonal vermin), at snowbirds again, for causing traffic congestion (making me late for my hair appointment), at Global Warming (corrupt science used by liberals for the sole purpose of hurting business), at the woman who spoke rudely to my husband last Tuesday when he was talking in line at the post office on his cell phone to his mother about his sick father who is on dialysis (we know our rights)—and so much more.

From time to time, DBD will do what it can to shed light on this black hole. We will do it because we know our rights, we're tired of being pushed around, we know our rights and we... we... should not have to settle for over-cooked end pieces of prime rib, just because some really awful person left a golf cart in the last parking space on karaoke night!

MORE RIGORS OF MOVIE-MAKING: METHOD IN THE MADNESS

2010-03-01T08:50:00.000-05:00

NOTE: Barbara's unfailing response to bad movies or TV shows figured in this DBD exchange. She was still working as an extra in films being made in Detroit.

--Hi. You’re late.
--I told you I would be.
--Now, this one’s called Vanishing or something.
--Vanishing on Seventh Street.It’s a thriller-slash-horror movie.
--How did it go?
--Lots of dithering. They didn’t seem as well organized as the people making Crave.They had this huge tent set up next to a multiplex theater. The theater was one of the sets. We were just milling around, not knowing anything.
--You said they were filming in the mall.
--But first in the multiplex.
--I can see you typecast for a role in a movie theatre.
--OK, now—
--One take is all they’d need. All they have to do is give you about five minutes. It’s the perfect role for you as an extra.
--They’d call it a sleeping role.
--See? It could be big for you. Huge. The phone would be ringing off the hook. "We need you for a sleeping role at a barbecue. Then we need you to sleep with your mouth open in a church. It’s a wedding scene, we can’t do it without you. Please, Barb, you won’t be sorry, we won’t forget this.”
--I’ll tell them I’ll agree to do it, but only if the director calls. I’m not sleeping in a movie, just because some flunky asks me to.
--Of course, you have standards, this is serious. Scorsese, De Palma. I think De Palma does this film. You sleep through a mob wedding, where the whole wedding party is hosed by assassins. But you never wake up. It will be powerful, I can tell you that.
--And the baby carriage scene in the train station, from The Untouchables. That’s a De Palma film. It should be in there.
--It will be. Directors quote from their own work all the time.
--I see…. I see the baby carriage, but this time it’s being pushed by the mom in front of the church where the mob wedding is taking place.
--Not rolling down the steps?
--No no. This time, the mom is just passing with the carriage when the assassins pull up.
--OK.
--One of the assassins looks in at the baby and smiles. He gives the mom a twenty and asks if she’ll wait in front of the church for just a couple minutes.
--She’s poor, she needs the money for formula.
--For formula, and disposable diapers. So she says yes, and the assassin pats the baby’s blanket. This is a very effective moment, a killer smiling down at a newborn.
--I like it. And you’re already asleep inside the church, surrounded by wedding guests.
--I am. There’s already been a couple shots of me. My head is back, mouth open.
--This could be huge for you, Barb.
--Head back and sleeping when they come in and brandish their weapons. But the lead killer, the one who gave the mom a twenty, he sees me sleeping. And before anyone can say anything or scream, this killer points to me sleeping. He puts a gloved finger to his lips so everyone knows to keep silent.
--Perfect.
--Then he walks up the aisle. The wedding couple have their backs to him.
--Of course. Did they write their own vows?
--Certainly not, this isn’t some New Age wedding. This is Italian mafia.
--My mistake.
--And I was wrong the first time. The assassin doesn’t hose everyone in the wedding party. And the priest has real thick Coke bottle glasses. De Palma’s done an establishing shot with him, too. Showing him having trouble reading the marriage ceremony or something, because of the glasses.
--Which is why he can’t see the assassin coming up the aisle.
--He can’t, he’s blind to everything farther away than three feet. He’s the brother or something, of either the bride or groom.
--Is the bride killed, too?
--Not in this film. She lives to take over the business. She’s tough. A survivor like Michael Corleone.
--Aah. So the killer shoots the groom.
--Shoots the groom, hit-man style behind the ear. Using a silencer, with everyone silent including the mother of the groom. De Palma has her faint so she won’t break the silence and wake me in my sleeping role.
--Perfect. Brilliant.
--And when the assassins leave and hurry down the cathedral stairs, the woman with the baby carriage is still there.
--She hasn’t heard a thing.
--There was nothing to hear. As the assassin hurries down, he gets out another twenty, and a piece of paper. There’s a phone number written on the paper. When he reaches the woman, he gives her the second twenty and the paper, and asks her to call the number.
--To establish suspense for later scenes, wonderful. What’s he tell her to say?
--How would I know? I’m still asleep inside the church.
--Got it, the camera’s back on you. With your mouth still open.
--No, it isn’t. Now, my mouth is closed. I’m still asleep, but my head is bowed and I’m frowning. Something has troubled my unconscious mind. This gives more weight to the scene, don’t you think?
--I don’t know what to say. This could be bigger for you than your role as a gawker. You could become the go-to person for any scene involving a sleeper. It’s a whole new genre, don’t you see? The sleeping presence, the human conscience that remains unconscious in moments of disaster.
--Well—
--No, honey, you have a gift. It’s spooky.

WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM

2010-02-26T07:01:00.000-05:00

As with the terrible verbal crime committed recently by Rahm Emanuel against Mrs. Palin and her son (Google “retarded”), breaking news requires that DBD set aside its regularly scheduled post. Tiger Woods has at last emerged from his long night of the soul. Finally he has shared with a rapt world his guilt, his acceptance of his guilt, and more of his guilt. It would be wrong just to continue on our frivolous way, as though nothing had happened. We trust you understand.

Anyone on the planet who has not watched Tiger in this important moment in his life and in the life of golf and in the lives of twelve or fifteen of his sex partners, and his wife and mom, and his endorsement sponsors is either conducting research deep below the earth’s crust, or is suffering from a terminal illness, and has elected in favor of cryogenic suspension.

Commentators are divided in their reactions. One school of thought points to Tiger’s lack of emotion while delivering his remarks, presenting himself in the stoic pose of someone unaccustomed to waiting in lines, but resigned to the indignity. These analysts see Tiger as a narcissist displaying the self-absorption typical of such people. So viewed, he is devoid of any actual concern for his wife, children, or the team of sexual athletes whose studio glossies (we must assume his choices are confined to women in show business) figured relentlessly during the color commentary.

The other school or view (I was going to say position, but that would almost certainly be seized on by cynics and the prurient in unintended ways) sees Tiger as having made the first, painful step on a long journey--on foot, not in a Buick--down the cart path leading eventually to redemption.

These folks see in Tiger’s performance a young man whose jacket was suitably dark, the somber effect offset by a tasteful dress shirt open at the collar. They are satisfied he thus established an image both serious and informal, as befits the world’s most successful—for now—philanderer. They believe what they heard, and were moved by the embrace he gave his mother after proving to her he wasn’t just about golf, but could also read. Presumably, they also thought it made perfect sense for him to work from a script, never deviate from it, and refuse to take questions.

These people almost certainly enjoyed President Bush’s press conferences, conducted in the same manner, and occurring with about the same frequency as Woods’ apologies.

My own view favors the narcissism theory, but with modifications. First, narcissism is a great word. Seeing a public figure described as a narcissist appeals to me, because I am a narcissist. Especially when I am on the treadmill, looking at myself in the mirror in front of me. But I am not a narcissist when I glance to my right and see myself mirrored in profile.

But aside from being a great word, using “narcissism” to describe Tiger Woods lends to this whole issue a medical or diagnostic aspect. Like “sex addiction,” it contributes to the story what might be called “gravitas.” That is, high seriousness. I want the news to communicate matters of importance, so I think it’s better if coverage of Tiger Woods is treated this way.

But I must add that I think the really gravitas issue is being neglected: if Tiger Woods hadn’t been caught, either by his wife or by all the people making a living off the story, what would any of it matter?

I happen to believe Tiger thinks this as well. At last alone in his massive walk-in closet—his favorite place--hanging up his dark sport coat and then changing into a polo shirt bearing the logo of whatever company he still has a contract with, I see him looking narcissistically into his mirror and asking, “What’s the problem? How am I supposed to feel anything? I know golf really well, that’s all. I’m the best, but anyone watching knows I hate the game. The crowds--disgusting. Ever see me smile on the course? How about the fist jabs at the sky when I sink a put, or win—do I look like a happy camper to you? As far as the rest of it goes, I don’t know shit from Shinola about all this moral crap, all this role-model BS. From the age of six, dad was on my case about one thing. Golf. And that’s what I know now, so give me a break.”

Afterthought: You have to wonder how much story this would be, were we talking about Eldrick instead of Tiger. That’s Woods’ given name. “Today, Eldrick Woods broke his silence” just doesn’t have the same newsworthiness, does it? It’s a little like what happens when you drop the catchy nickname used by the former governor of Massachusetts in favor of his real name, Willard.

Eldrick Tont Woods and Willard Mitt Romney—now there’s a dream ticket for you.

STANISLAVSKY TWO: DEEPER STILL INTO GAWKER PATHOLOGY

2010-02-24T07:57:00.000-05:00

Barbara’s temp job as a movie extra led to good times for DBD. Among them were stories related to a crime film being made at one of the many defunked plants in the Detroit area.

--The set was fantastic, just amazing. Urban sinister at its best.
--We do that well here.
--Across from where we parked, there was this long, sort of outdoor corridor between huge warehouses. Like an alley, but wide. Looming. Then, inside, these wide, dingy halls. But it was a hard day.
--How so?
--I’m just glad I went to the bathroom before I joined the others. Five hours, and not one break.
--Why not?
--I don’t know. Maybe because it’s an indie film and they don’t have any money.
--You need to budget for pee breaks? Porta-potties can’t cost much to rent.
--You asked, I don’t know. But the crew worked very hard, I can tell you that. They were all very focused.
--And no catering? Nothing to eat? In the credits, they always mention the caterer.
--Nothing. But I went to the bathroom first, so that was good. The ladies room in one of the warehouses fit perfectly. It had an ancient granite floor, old-style wooden stalls. The kind people put graffiti on so they have to be painted over and over.
--Then what?
--Then I went in to register. You have to show them ID to prove you’re a Michigan resident. I think for income tax purposes. Then we went to “holding.”
--That’s what they called it?
--Holding, yes. A room with folding chairs, very sparse. Dirty, grungy. I added my suitcase to the others. In the end, what I had on was fine, I never put on anything else. And it was so cold.
--Inside it was cold.
--No no, the shoot was outside. In that long, looming space between the warehouses. It wasn’t a real windy day, but this space worked just like a wind tunnel.
--What took so long?
--I don’t know. It’s very complicated, setting up for a scene. But I think I’ll end up being in the final version of this one. I was part of a group of four.
--You mean a group of coordinated gawkers.
--That’s right. Plus lots of police, detectives, CSI people. I think some of them might have been real police.
--How so?
--They had three actual squad cars with lights flashing. And some of the guys really looked like cops. I bet they do that, don’t you think? Lease cop cars from the local police, and hire some of the cops for the movie?
--In all, how many gawkers were there?
--I’d say about sixty. But our four were used to represent the gawkers as a whole.
--You said Ron Perlman’s the star.
--Right. You know who he is?
--I remember him from the last of the Alien movies. Alien Resurrection. He was in it with your hero, Sigourney Weaver. And Wynona Rider.
--I remember, she played an ingénue robot. She’s that actress who was caught shoplifting, isn’t she? I wonder what happened to her. I bet she’s one of those people in show business who came from a dysfunctional hippie family. A family that lived in a van or bus.
--You mean a hippy shoplifting family.
--You know what I mean. She’s not ambitious. I bet she just dropped out.
--Hippies are ambitious, just not in the usual way.
--How are they ambitious?
--Well, you know. To get high and own land in the remoter sections of New Mexico or Oregon. But tell me about Ron Perlman. I think he’s in some cable show about bikers.
--That fits, he really does look tough. I would be terrified of him in life.
--As opposed to art.
--As opposed to freezing next to him for hours. Watching him doing nothing but being Ron Perlman freezing. He seemed nice enough. Just like Sigourney Weaver.
--You mean the way someone asked her for an autograph and she was nice about it.
--You could just tell he was nice in a similar way. That young girl who asked Sigourney for an autograph, she was just star-struck. “Not now, dear, maybe later. I’m working.” That was just so appealing of her, so classy, don’t you think?
--It was a good way to handle it.
--Except I don’t see a star-struck person asking Ron for an autograph. I see someone with serious problems. “Hi, Mister Perlman, I was wondering if you could beat me up.”
--“Not now, miss, maybe later.” So, your gang of four had the key gawker assignment.
--I was the oldest, I had the grandmother part.
--OK, that’s, good, that’s fine. This could be big for you. Your breakthrough. Crave could be the featured indie movie at the Sundance Film Festival.
--It could be, that’s true. Robert Redford sees the movie. He starts pointing…. “I want… No, not that one… No… There, freeze frame it right there, the grandmother who dropped the bag of groceries. I want her for my next film.”
--In no time, you’ll start calling him Bob.
--Right, and he’ll call me… GiGi. Instead of Grandma Geezer. Oh, Chelsea, I forgot about you, sweetie—
--Forgive her, Chelsea. It’s an old story in show business, the total self-absorption. They lose track of friends, family, even their dogs. It’s just the price of art, it goes with the territory.

STANISLAVSKY REMEMBERED: DIVING DEEP INTO CHARACTER

2010-02-22T08:06:00.000-05:00

Because of cheap coolie labor now available all over the world, added to which are the huge tax breaks offered to foreign car makers by southern states conveniently hostile to unions, the former car capital of the world—Michigan--has had to take drastic steps. Among them are tax breaks, offered not to foreign companies, but to our domestic film industry. The result has been a blizzard of movies being made in the state. Before we left for Florida, Barbara worked in several.

--Are you excited about tomorrow?
--I guess I am. Yes, I am. I’m looking forward to it.
--And the title again?
--Crave. It’s a crime story. I appear in a murder scene.
--One of several, or just the one?
--One what?
--Murder scenes. I see you have your little costume bag all packed.
--I don’t know how many murders take place. They said to bring four or five different outfits. So they can choose.
--Maybe one for each homicide. And you’re cast in the role of a gawker.
--Watch the mockery, please. Extras aren’t “cast” and you know it.
--What else is it, then? You’re a member of the cast of Crave. You’re supposed to be a gawker at a crime scene. Your director has cast you and your fellow extras as gawkers. But that raises a question.
--No doubt.
--Think of this in terms of practicing for the interviews you’ll have to grant following the release of Crave. “When you were choosing your costumes, how did you go about deciding what gawker clothes would be? What a gawker would wear at a crime scene? Did you interview known gawkers? Is there a gawker hotline or support network?”
--Well, Oprah, as I believe you know, a gawker can’t dress for the occasion. Gawking just happens.
--You mean events suddenly intervene. So gawking occurs in medias res.
--Whatever, professor. You’re just on your way somewhere. I chose outfits in terms of what I’d wear to go to the market. I see myself as trapped in the moment while on my way to go grocery shopping.
--OK, that makes sense. But probably it’s best to be on your way there. Otherwise, you have to buy groceries before you reach the set. Or would the prop people give you those? No, you don’t want groceries. Sometimes they make you wait around for hours. Groceries could be a hassle.
--I can’t have groceries because you can’t emote as a gawker if you’re holding a sack of food. You need your arms free to gesture. To express horror and outrage.
--True enough, my mistake. I see your hands flying to your face, eyes wide. But a carton falling out of the shopping bag, followed by a tight shot of broken eggs, that could be good. Is there crime-scene tape?
--Yellow crime scene tape, that’s it. When I see the tape and what’s happening, I gawk.
--And next Monday?
--Monday’s shoot is for something called Vanished on Seventh. It’s a horror film.
--I love just thinking about you honing your skills. Your craft. Last year, that two seconds of you in Prayers for Bobby, I can’t get them out of my mind.

TERRA FIRMA BIOFEEDBACK

2010-02-19T07:20:00.000-05:00

Before leaving Michigan, we learned something new about our community

--Did you know we had a sweat lodge right here in our own backyard?
--Not before I saw the article.
--Do you know what they are?
--The name pretty much says it, don’t you think?
--You do what? Just get under some tarps and sweat?
--Well, there has to be a little more to it, I suppose. Etiquette to be observed. Special clothes, hand signals, bowing. You have to have people trained to prepare the rocks. Sometimes, everything’s done in silence.
--Silent sweating. That shouldn’t be too challenging.
--You know what I mean. The spiritual experience. In some places, it’s supposed to be silent, in others they chant or drum.
--What are the rocks for?
--I thought you read the article.
--It said nothing about rocks.
--The lodge is like a sauna. Rocks are heated in advance until they’re red hot. Then they bring them inside to promote the sweat-lodge experience.
--I loved the names of the leaders. Please hand me the paper.
--I assume they’re translations from a Native American language.
--Here it is. Outside the lodge, they’re Debbie and Donald.
--“Hi, we’re Deb and Don. Welcome to our sweat lodge. Did you bring a towel?”
--But inside the lodge, their names are Tim Fools Bear and Crystal Dream Woman. It says the ceremonies are for “earth-based spirituality and personal transformation.”
--Hm. Earth-based spirituality, that’s ambiguous. Does it mean spirituality with no god connection, just the earth? Or does it mean this particular lodge has no extra-terrestrial affiliations in other galaxies?
--They weren’t hurting anyone. Sweating isn’t a crime. What about all the nutty joggers sweating up and down the street at six in the morning when I walk Chelsea?
--It wasn’t the sweating, it was too many parked cars in the street. People complained.
--I’m not convinced. Between the families on either side of us, our neighbors have a total of nine cars. It’s like running the gauntlet to get in the driveway.
--I’m sure they shut it down because of what happened in Arizona. People died early this month out there in a sweat lodge.
--Of course you’re right. It says Tim Fools Bear and Crystal Dream Woman have been running their lodge for twelve years. Nobody made waves until the Arizona business.
--Yeah, the city manager reads about it. The mayor. They begin wondering what kind of litigation might follow if someone’s brother or father sweats himself to death.
--No doubt.
--It’s a very litigious society.
--Well, yes. And it’s easy to imagine someone who thought he approved of earth-based spirituality and transformation deciding that the transformation that just took place in the person next to him far exceeded anyone’s expectations. One minute he’s sweating, the next he’s as earth-based as they come.
--I still think it’s too bad. It was harmless. Innocent.
--I suppose. Bernie Madoff might have been a better man if he’d done that sort of thing.
--Maybe. I certainly hope he’s sweating now.
--Here’s to Bernie in his modestly appointed, state-run sweat lodge.

HSE 4 SALE

2010-02-17T08:24:00.000-05:00

THESPIANS & GROWTH-HORMONE PATIENTS WELCOME

Last fall, it became all too clear that we would need to sell our Michigan house. But before we listed it, a realtor "made contact," wondering if we were interested in showing the place to an out-of-town client. We agree to let her see it

--Are you pleased with your efforts?
--Pleased isn’t the word. I did my job, that’s all. I was cordial and chatty.
--Did this Jane person fall in love with the old place?
--You coward. Leaving me here alone like that. Taking off with the dog.
--I told you over and over I was going to. Didn’t you believe me?
--I thought you said it for emphasis. To express how little you liked the idea of selling the house.
--That’s exactly true. I hate the idea. It’s why I left.
--Where’d you go?
--To the park on Martin Road. Chelsea wasn’t much interested. So, give me some details. You say she was theatrical.
--Dramatic, but not over-the-top. She said she played the woman teacher in The History Boys. She did a very commendable British accent. She said she loved the part because it allowed her to use the word twat on stage.
--She said that to you? A stranger she meets for the first time?
--Maybe it was all the books. I think it established a bond. When she came in and saw the books, she went right into character. “I love seeing so many books!” she said. “Why is it I go in so many houses and see no books?”
--What’d you say?
--I said I thought realtors probably tell sellers to get rid of bookcases so the house will look bigger. “How I love them,” she said. “If I buy your house, you can just leave the books, although I already have many of them.” Then she swept her eyes around and said, “I love your house.”
--Yes, definitely an actress. Did she have a feather boa?
--Now now.
--Did she have that show-stopper Ethel Merman quality?
--She won’t buy.
--How long were they here?
--Twenty, twenty-five minutes. I told them to just nose around, I’d leave them to it. It was funny. She didn’t give a rap about the new roof, or all the painting we had done. I told her today was an anniversary of sorts, that the new high-tech furnace had been installed a week ago. None of it seemed to register. But she won’t buy. She was too tall.
--What? How’s that work? The actress won’t buy the house because she’s too tall?
--Tall people are sure to feel confined in the upstairs hall.
--Nonsense.
--It’s true, that hall is very narrow. We’re not big so we don’t notice.
--Barry, what are you saying? We can only sell to the Little People?
--That would limit things, true.
--How do we advertise? “Attenion Little People! Attention all circus and carnival alumni!”
--I followed them when they went upstairs. When she started up again about books in every room, I told her I’d gotten rid of eight hundred in the last year. She crushed her hands to her bosom. “How could you?” When she opened the door to the attic, I told her she could go up, but only if she signed a safety waiver. She laughed.
--Was it a hearty laugh? Girlish? Raucous? Do you remember—
--I know what you’re going to say. You’re thinking of The Church restaurant in Stratford.
--It was wonderful. A whole table of actors, six I think. I never heard such canned laughter on any sitcom. “Mwuhuhuhhhh!” It was my second most favorite meal in Stratford. You know my first.
--Yes. He dies with Cordelia in his arms to huge applause. We leave and hustle to the restaurant, we have to be back at eight for the next play. We sit down, and there on your left, already well into the first of his double martinis is King Lear.
--I thought we were very good about not looking at him during dinner.
--The actress woman is also a dog person. I told her I’d taken away Chelsea’s bed, not knowing what her take on dogs would be. I gave her a copy of Just Bill.
--Oh, well, that should seal the deal.
--She said everyone in her family has two dogs. She said family dinners always involve four to six dogs under the dining table. I pointed out our dining table doesn’t have pedestal legs, which means lots of room for dogs.
--You wag, you.

COMPLEXITIES OF THE PEIGNOIR

2010-02-15T11:25:00.000-05:00

Is learning what lies beneath the surface always advisable?

--I had to shake you. “Honey? Honey?”
--Well, I was having a nightmare.
--I was up early, reading my mail in the study. I went in the bedroom, I thought you were having a stroke. You made this gargling sound, then you were denouncing someone. You used to do that just after we got married. I’d wake up to this muttering, guttural rage. I thought you were dreaming what you really wanted to say to me. You don’t do it now.
--No, it was just a nightmare.
--Tell me.
--A dog and a bobcat were fighting. I was trying to protect the dog.
--Our dog?
--No, a different one. Dark reddish brown, like an Irish setter.
--Huh.
--But it wasn’t an Irish setter, it was bigger. Heavier. Like a lab, but taller.
--One of the new hybrids. And you were protecting the dog.
--Trying to.
--I’m curious. How did you know the other animal was a bobcat? Have you ever seen a bobcat? I haven’t.
--No, I just knew that’s what it was.
--Maybe someone named Bob is on your mind these days.
--Robert Bobb is in the news a lot.
--The guy they hired to fix the Detroit school mess. That’s a possibility. He has a beard like me, but he’s younger. And better looking. Probably smarter.
--Or, maybe I have a guilty conscience about money. The paper says Bobb is finding all kinds of graft and cronyism in the system.
--You hit me up for twenty bucks on Monday. There’s your graft and your cronyism. Was the dream’s setting here? Locally?
--No, it was in the desert. Somewhere outside Las Vegas. In the distance I could see all the lights from the casinos. It was night, very chilly. I was wearing one of those jumpsuits you see on prisoners. The bobcat had a diamond stud earring, and the dog had Nikes on his paws. That’s why he couldn’t defend himself. Where are you going?
--For obvious reasons, I need a refill.

CONVERSATON PIECE

2010-02-12T08:22:00.000-05:00

Yes, it does look like that, but don’t say it.

--Is there anything I can do?
--No, sweetheart, thanks anyway. Dinner in about twenty minutes.
--What’s this?
--That’s the pesto. Right out of our garden.
--I see.
--What’s it look like to you?
--Well…
--It looks like a little token from a Canadian goose.
--Jesus, Barbara. You have a way of setting the table.
--Be honest, that’s what you were thinking. I could tell from your expression.
--I was going to say it looks like finely chopped spinach.
--Don’t worry. I promise it will look better when it comes out on the plate.
--When the token from the Canadian goose comes out on the plate. Please go to commercial.
--Let’s see… OK. “I just finished a magical, luminous, hauntingly beautiful work of fiction by Barry Knister.” How am I doing?
--Very well, almost perfect. Clearly, you’re paying attention to your dust jackets. Magical, luminous and hauntingly beautiful provide just the right breathless tone, both lilting and meaningless. Please continue.
--“It’s called Just Bill, and it’s about a wonderful dog, a little girl who will break your heart, and a young widow unfairly shunned by her neighbors.”
--Hm. “Wonderful dog” works, a shunned young widow works. I’m less sure about the little girl who will break hearts. That can be a turn-off for people on certain meds.
--“And the shocking injustice done to Bill, but not so bad that he dies.” That’s what you have to have in a dog book, right? The dog has to still be alive at the end?
--So I’ve been told. Over and over. But it needs work. I’m not good with the segue from goose turds to my hauntingly beautiful book.
--Make yourself a rob roy. And make it last twenty minutes.
--Is there anything to snack on?
--Bottom shelf, left-hand side. See it?
--This? Aren’t there any crackers or Sesame Snacks?
--Sorry, just rabbit turd trail mix.
--I see the evening has a theme. OK, trail mix it is. I’ll just garnish with a rabbit turd instead of a cherry.

COMING OF AGE

2010-02-10T07:39:00.000-05:00

Ah, summers, and drinks before dinner on the patio. Except if it isn’t someone using a leaf blower, or a weed whacker, or a lawn mower, or roofers with staple guns, or someone riding up and down the block on his male-menopause straight-pipe Harley, or using the time before dinner to cut some pavers with a diamond-blade saw, it’s dribbling.

--Hear that?
--Do I look deaf?
--Honey, deaf people don’t look deaf.
--Of course I hear it. Dribbling, shouting. He’s out there alone, but still practicing his court shout. Having just girls was not all bad.
--Which is it, do you think? When an adolescent boy’s voice changes, is that when he gets his first basketball, or is he given the basketball with the onset of puberty? To bring about the change of voice? You know, like forcing blooms in a hothouse.
--They’re loud, no question. I remember practicing my backhand against the garage door. I’m sure that had something to do with dad’s first coronary. And our neighbor ending up in detox.
--It’s been so nice out here this summer. I guess we shouldn’t complain.
--I remember going to visit him—my dad. They had him in what was called an oxygen tent. A clear plastic pup tent over his upper body. He wasn’t allowed to do anything, and I shaved him. In retrospect, I think it was a kind of coming-of-age experience.
--That’s very touching. I wish I could have watched you shave your father.
--This must be payback for Harvey, the neighbor. I heard him making jokes last weekend about Michigan losing the game. The kid’s parents are both U of M grads.
--So, now, the parents will pay their son to practice basketball after dark and before sunrise. Any time Harvey’s on his patio, the parents will bribe the kid to stop playing video games and go outside with the basketball
--It could get ugly.

RUN SILENT, RUN CHEAP

2010-02-08T11:04:00.000-05:00

To take advantage of the tax credit last fall, we had a new furnace installed.

--Thank God that’s over. I thought the plaster would fall off the walls.
--It took all day. Yes, the drilling was loud. Poor Chelsea had her resigned look.
--She has many resigned looks.
--I mean the one of reproachful resignation. The one that says, “I’m a helpless beast obliged to live with people who have lost their minds.”
--It was just the one guy, essentially. Tom. Working all day. He had help this morning for about forty-five minutes, that’s all.
--You have to admire him.
--I do. Of course I admire him. Anyone who has trouble operating a hose caddy is bound to admire such people.
--What do you think he was, Rumanian? Greek?
--Albanian. He had Albanian eyebrows.
--All that work. He couldn’t have been over five-five.
--If that. I went down after lunch. You should’ve seen all the tools. He must have had twenty different things spread out on the floor.
--Anyway, here’s to our new furnace.
--To our new high efficiency, top-of-the-line Lennox furnace.
--And to the tax credit.
--And the rebates from the utilities.
--Is it on? It’s so quiet it’s spooky.
--A stealth furnace. Maybe that’s where the energy savings come in, from noise abatement.
--Or it just seems that way, from the drill stopping all at once.
--No, I think it really is much quieter.
--Do you feel anything for the old furnace? It did well by us all those years.
--We’ll see. I may feel a great deal for it when we’re freezing this winter. When we’re learning the after-market reality behind the meaning of “energy efficient.”
--We should have had a little ceremony. A proper goodbye.
--I see what you mean.
--I’m serious. The thing chugged away down there for twenty-five years.
--That’s just us. Who knows how long it was there before we came?
--It never asked for anything. Never complained or broke down.
--Never flooded the lavatory.
--That’s exactly what I mean. A loyal family retainer, a loyal servant.
--It’s true. Aside from changing the filter and having it cleaned, we did nothing. Our old furnace never caused us one bit of trouble.
--What have we done?
--Try not to think about it.
--We threw it out as though it were nothing. Like garbage. We just threw that nice old furnace on the ash heap of technology, and for what?
--A tax credit.
--So shabby.
--Drink your wine. Try to imagine all the old furnaces being melted down and turned into new furnaces.
--Like the Phoenix.
--Like Ripley in the Alien franchise. Here’s to furnace resurrection.

RETARDATION NATION

2010-02-05T07:27:00.000-05:00

DBD generally presents dialogues based on earlier conversations. Today, though, the issue before us is so urgent that other business must wait. The matter is fraught with such highly charged emotion that my wife Barbara had to lie down with a cold compress over her eyes. She asked me to assume responsibility for our response to the crisis.

If it needs to be said—and it’s hard to imagine anyone not caught up in the furor—the ugly story has to do with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel attacking the mentally challenged.

(You can be confident I’m up to taking on this grave subject because I just used “challenged,” not “handicapped.” Use of the latter is always a dead giveaway you are dealing with a really bad person. Someone like Rahm Emanual.)

Here’s the story. In a closed meeting, Emanuel let loose with a tart comment on liberal Democrats who have been complaining that Obama has thrown health-care reform under the bus. Which now that I think of it is a pretty darned insensitive figure of speech. Who knows how many actual people have lost loved ones, or themselves been seriously injured, maybe even suffered brain damage as a consequence of bus-related activity? I apologize.

Word got out that in this closed meeting, Emanuel said the liberal Democrats criticizing the president were “f---ing retarded.”

It’s hard to continue, but I have an obligation (you need to look this sort of thing straight in the eye). That’s what he said. He must have, because later he apologized. But not in time, because Sarah Palin learned of what he’d said. Immediately she appeared before cameras with the latest issue from her sacred womb (all wombs are sacred), baby Trig on her hip. The two were perfectly posed in accordance with medieval sculptures and paintings of Mary with her own newborn, Jesus. If you’re familiar with art of the period, you know mother and child form a classic S configuration. Mrs. Palin even underscored this allusion to the Middle Ages by wearing a hoody sweatshirt.

Understandably, both as a mom and as a soon-to-be-Fox News analyst, she voiced strong objection to Emanuel’s casual use of “retarded.” Mostly, she was defending her future colleagues at Fox, but as everyone besides Rahm Emanuel knows, Mrs. Palin’s baby was born with “cognitive and developmental disabilities.” Bouncing Trig and fighting back tears, she said hearing the word retarded was personally “heartbreaking.”

Mrs. Palin also noted that the heartbreak she felt was not just for challenged children, but for “those who love them.” In doing so, she subtly and meaningfully included herself. True, it’s her baby who suffers most obviously from cognitive and developmental disabilities. Even so, those trying to keep track of Trig’s mom’s career will also hear in her comments an inescapable reference by Mrs. Palin to herself.

Many other knotty problems are likely to be raised by this incident.

Like for instance the land mines waiting to be stepped on by people much more sensitive than Rahm Emanual. For starters, what about the names of Palin family members? Once Mrs. Palin joins Fox, will anyone ever again be safe referring to Bristol, England? Or to “staying on track,” or even to track lighting? The name Todd is so evocative of the German “tod,” or dead. What about Piper? Imagine the firestorm sure to follow any all-at-once smutty double entendre like “paying the piper,” or a drug-related slur like “It’s a pipe dream.” Not to mention smirking references to the racier parts Piper Laurie played in her day.

How about Willow Palin? Once her mother is sworn in at Fox, describe anyone as “willowy,” and see what happens. Any fool trying that will get his foot blown off, and face a few well-deserved “challenges” of his own. Excuse me—of his or her own.
Now I have to go check on Barbara’s compress.

LEGACY COSTS

2010-02-03T10:35:00.000-05:00

Once we got to Florida, I thought I was supposed to talk to a book club about my latest novel, but I was cancelled.

--What did he say?
--That the woman who chairs the club’s selection committee chose a bodice ripper instead.
--I’m sorry, honey. I thought Just Bill was a sure thing.
--So did I, and I’m sure ____ is embarrassed. He thought it was just a formality, the selection process. He was very apologetic. I told him the woman’s bad taste wasn’t his fault.
--There really is no accounting for it, is there? Taste. How anyone could choose another romance story over your novel—I just don’t get it.
--No, you can account for it very easily. Like stupid political opinions, bad taste in literature can almost always be explained.
--Oh I know there are reasons. But they so often don’t make sense to me.
--Dumb opinions are embraced by people unwilling or unable—which is really the same thing—to even hear an idea or point of information at odds with inherited opinions. With conventional wisdom. If you know a good bodice ripper when you see one, that’s what you look for. The same thing’s true of nutter liberals as well as nutter conservatives. But the word “conservative” points the way to explaining the problem with right wingers.
--I take it we’re no longer talking about your novel.
--We’re talking about people who can’t expand their horizons. Can’t move outside their comfort zone in terms of books or anything else. In politics, conservatives stay alert in order to conserve the opinions they hold. To keep themselves safe from views that might hint at their own opinions being flawed in some way. If someone else’s views aren’t legacy opinions inherited from the same font of wisdom, they can be dismissed automatically as wrong. Back in my Wayne State salad days, I often ate lunch in the Kresge Court [at the Detroit Institute of Arts]. Sometimes I sat with the campus Marxists. The old-timers knew chapter and verse the key works of Marxist theology. They could range freely among the texts, explain away any flaw or obvious evidence that something was out of whack with their system. Their young disciples at the table knew little or nothing, except the thin veneer of opinion at the top of the Marxist mountain.
--I’m sorry, honey. About your book. But you lost me way back there, with “legacy opinions.” I thought we were talking about some dunce of a woman not choosing Just Bill for her club’s reading list.
--Sorry.
--That’s OK.
--College admissions departments refer to children of the school’s graduates as legacy students. Students inherited from a previous generation. Often, these applicants are given a break.
--How so?
--Oh, lots of reasons. The most important goes like this. Say, the applicant drags his knuckles when he walks, but has no talent for football. Say, he or she has made an X where the signature goes on the application, but the enclosed essay reads like Lincoln’s second inaugural address. Or, the daughter has a poor discipline record, owing to a habit of servicing both the first and second string members of her high school’s football team before and after games.
--I’m waiting for that second shoe.
--Here it is. Say the son or daughter’s father owns The Bible Is the Word of God U.S. Plastics Unlimited Company. This dad knows from long experience in business what it takes “to get the job done.” In this case, the job is getting Miss Hotpants or Dimwit Junior into college.
--Let me guess. The job involves construction.
--Very good. The university has long sought a benefactor to bankroll a roller-derby arena. It will be the only one on an American college campus, and a great recruiting tool.
--Groundbreaking to start in the fall of the student’s freshman year.
--Or a new daycare and sex-counseling center for unwed coed moms.
--No, I was wrong. Construction doesn’t begin in the student’s freshman year. This dad is no fool. Groundbreaking will have to wait until after graduation.
--Go to the head of the class.
--Well, Just Bill is a beautiful story, and it’s full of good things. That’s my legacy opinion, and it’s right on.
--You would make an excellent Republican. You have the two crucial attributes: unwavering loyalty, and a willingness to maintain the party line at all costs.

SNOWBIRDING CONCLUDED: YANKEE AGGRESSION

2010-02-01T08:30:00.000-05:00

--There it is.
--It’s a key road marker for us, isn’t it? When I see it I always feel I can smell the barn just below the state line.
--“CATFISH DINNERS ALL YOU CAN EAT JESUS IS LORD.” I love the absence of punctuation. I would stop sometime, but I don’t feel comfortable in southern Georgia. I’m talking about anywhere fifteen or twenty miles south of Atlanta.
--Do you really mean that?
--I don’t know. Sort of. I know it’s not fair to the New South and all that, but something happens, I also know that. All at once, the gas station toilets are really grungy. People look sullen to me.
--You can’t be right, but it seems like that to me, too. At least along the Interstate. I’ve been in restrooms that didn’t look to have been cleaned in a month.
--I think of the Jesus-is-Lord-catfish sign as a bookend match-up with the one in Ohio. You know, that long shed of a factory building. On one half it says something about The Bible is the Word of God, which flows directly into U.S. Plastics Unlimited. I have a strong wish to know if it’s all one company name.
--The place where I don’t feel comfortable is South Carolina.
--Yes, once you’re outside Charleston. I remember we went into a Waffle House. Every head in the place turned. I am not always a reliable judge, but the mood seemed to change, and it was not jolly.
--The War of Northern Aggression. That’s what our guide in Savannah called the Civil War.
--How they still hate Sherman.
--A beautiful town, though. All those squares. The Cotton Exchange, the waterfront.
--He could have leveled the place, but didn’t. Still, they hate him. The war goes on.
--And Charleston, so beautiful. The houses, the gardens. I walked into this antique consignment store. You weren’t with me. Immediately, I knew I didn’t belong. I’ll never forget these two men. One was talking about furniture brought in on consignment. “Those chayuhs wuh filthy--” then he turned to me in the doorway. The look said, “Oh no, a Nawthunuh. Worse than those chayuhs evuh were.”
--“Oh no, moah Godless liberal Yankee white trash.”
--That was before Chelsea.
--Yes. Because of Chelsea, we no longer take side trips. We can’t leave her alone in the van. She might become depressed.
--You’re making fun of me, but you’re no better about her.
--I’m making fun of us both. We’re both overdue for a pet-rescue intervention.

SNOWBIRDING #6: CROSSES, ENDOMORPHS,ETC

2010-01-29T11:09:00.000-05:00

--There it is, gleaming in the sun.
--Rio has Surgarloaf Mountain and a huge statue of Christ. We have the World’s Biggest Stainless Steel Cross.
--It sort of goes with the World’s Biggest Bust of Jesus.
--The bust is for the northern part of our trip, this is for the southern part.
--To beat the devil at both ends.
--This isn’t the only place you see them. I’m sure I’ve seen others.
--Yes,but I think they’re on I-95.
--First comes the huge cross, then right next door a We Bare All strip club.
--In Dante’s Inferno, among the damned are the souls of people still walking around on earth. Even though they aren’t dead yet, they’ve committed sins so terrible that their souls are already in hell. I like the concept. I think you have to assume the souls of people in a We Bare All club overshadowed by a one-hundred-foot-high metal cross are already among the damned.
--I prefer the cedars on the embankments in Tennessee.
--We agree on that. Tennessee is beautiful. I never knew it before we started making this trip. Kentucky, too. Kentucky is so appealing, I can almost forgive it for electing two really disgusting senators. Almost certainly, Jim Bunning’s and Mitch McConnell’s souls have already been cast down into hell.
--The hills, the ground fog in the valleys, the ledge rock. So beautiful.
--Plus, they must constantly be getting the trusties out to pick up the litter. At least along 75. Everything is pristine. Tidy.
--Or it just seems that way because of where we’re from.
--Please don’t start. It‘s too easy to criticize where we’re from.
--OK.
--If you want to trash something, trash Mitch McConnell. Or Richard Shelby, from the great state of Alabama. There’s another piece of work. How he wanted the American auto firms to fail. He kept going on last year about free markets, the evils of bailouts. All this from someone whose state has awarded hundreds of millions in tax breaks to Japanese and German automakers. I really hate Shelby.
--Watch your speed.
--All right. Without a doubt, Shelby’s down below, too. With old Mitch. Ever notice how many of the really disgusting major figures in the Republican party are endomorphs?
--There you go with another word I don’t know.
--An endomorph is someone whose adult body retains features of infancy. Specifically, baby fat. Fleshy, blubbery bodies, double chins. Bloated cheeks. McConnell is a perfect example. So is Karl Rove, even the new slimmed-down version. Once a Rove, always a Rove. He’s still got that baby face.
--And you think this reveals something about what’s inside? That fat people are evil?
--No, of course not. Not fat people per se. Barney Frank is fat, and I like him. Teddy Kennedy was always stout. With Republicans, though, I think there’s some connection.
--Now you’re talking funny.
--No, I really do. It says something about their characters. Well, not exactly. What the fleshy, oversized baby body in a McConnell or a Rove may explain is why they love dirty, sucker-punch political fighting. They could never compete in sports, never do anything requiring athletic ability. So,now,they like throwing their weight around in politics.
--That’s a very elaborate theory.
--Yes, and a totally unfair, ad hominem argument. But I like it. The fat boy enviously watches football or baseball being played all through his school years. Always from the sidelines. When he grows up he goes into politics and becomes a bully in the House or Senate. Makes perfect sense. At least to me.

SNOWBIRDING #5: BEAN CURD VS BOLOGNA

2010-01-27T10:34:00.000-05:00

In the last DBD, Barbara and I were reminiscing about eating steak in a motel room that had been adapted for the handicapped. It conjured up thoughts of adaptations now needed during the holiday season in our own household.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Meat has always played a big role in my life, and I am the first to admit that “meat withdrawal” can’t be a pretty thing to see. Not if seeing it is anything like living it, which is what I am faced with during the holidays.

The condition, or symptom as some would have it starts with the restlessness seen in heroin addicts. At least those depicted in movies. I haven’t personally known any heroin addicts, although it’s quite possible that at faculty parties I unknowingly met several users who weren’t just then in the throes of withdrawal.

As with drug addicts, the growing need for meat is manifested in me when a roaming, aimless foraging takes over. Christmas cookies, crackers and cheese, Sesame Snacks, even wedges of the much maligned fruitcake are sought out in an increasingly desperate effort to assuage the craving for animal protein.

Because my wife and I are both lifetime fans of meat, I go through the withdrawal process only during family gatherings. At these times, our house is overrun by lively children tumbling over torpid adults, sullen adolescents slumped in states of isolated communion with this or that piece of technology, fifth-wheel boyfriends waiting for it all to be over, and so forth.

How and why these people turned on or away from meat I don’t know. I tend to think of it in terms of communicable disease, something picked up by my older stepdaughter during her exploratory years on the west coast. When she returned, she was clean. Meat-free. So was the father of her children, and her little ones. “Just Say No to Cow” I seem to remember printed on someone’s tee shirt.

Because I don’t know how else to explain the transfer of this no-meat orientation to my younger stepdaughter, I see it as viral. True, she is not strictly committed to the all-organic, meatless religion as is her older sibling, but I see ominous trends. For one, her youngest child is now insisting she is a vegan, a variant of the veggie religion requiring even more discipline and self-denial. Where this would come from if not from the child’s aunt I don’t know (although it is true that “vegan,” "Vulcan" and “Klingon” are all close, and it is not impossible that the child is now watching Star Trek reruns on her phone).

But during these vegetarian forced marches, Barbara always sees to it that rogue helpings of lunchmeat are stashed at the back of the refrigerator. Tightly wrapped to avoid detection, these packets are concealed behind ancient jars and bottles of long-forgotten condiments.

They’re my version of methadone or insulin, chilled and waiting for the next injection. I mainline them at odd moments when a lull occurs in our Christmas hijinks. I make a point of shoving in extra helpings of honey maple turkey or Polish ham in advance of one of the soy or tofu-oriented meals my wife lovingly prepares for our guests.

Two years ago, she actually molded tofu into a turkey, a joke that went over big with me. When she set it down, I took my cue from Bill O’Reilly and declared our house a No-meat Zone. I had stuffed myself in advance with bootleg lunchmeat, and now took my chair at the head of the table. Fortified by a last, quick hit of pepper loaf, I was now able to eat everything on offer, my plate arranged with portions the size of small coins. Thus, I maintained the image of dietary inclusiveness and tolerance.

Aided as well of course by courage, courtesy of Scotland. As every senior-citizen host of family gatherings knows, these occasions form the historical basis for the development of what in our time is called adult beverages. Your rob roy, your martini and manhattan all got their start this way.

So the next time you find yourself confronted by health food, use the occasion to say thank you and happy holidays to the owner/operator of your neighborhood party store. If he is like mine, he will return the greeting with a smile, even though his own time of testing must wait for Ramadan.

SNOWBIRDING #4: RED ROOF REMINISCENCE

2010-01-25T08:01:00.000-05:00

When we stop on our trips to and from Florida, we always try to stay at a Red Roof Inn. We have our dog Chelsea with us, and the Red Roof franchise is pet-friendly. Only once were we disappointed, but that had nothing to do with the motel. It had to do with the couple in the room next to us. The ones traveling in an oversized van with two Great Danes, and something small that never stopped barking. But this isn’t about that.

--Are you going to trust me to carry in the document box?
--Well…
--Come on. It’s been nine years. I safely drove us hundreds of miles today.
--I drove, too.
--Yes, I know. I just mean I can be trusted to drive hundreds of miles without incident. It should mean I can be trusted to carry in the document box.
--And please also bring in my black bag, and the laptops.

--This is pretty good, don’t you think? I always appreciate the absence of art in a Red Roof.
--Yes, but this one has no table.
--We’ll just sit side by side on the bed and eat off the dresser. It’ll be cozy.
--Remember the Red Roof… I think it was Cincinnati? The handicapper room.
--That I’m pretty sure was north of Atlanta.
--Everything was so low.
--I remember we’d had a fight. We were in this Red Roof Inn, everything in it like furniture in a Montessori classroom. We weren’t speaking—
--You always tell me I don’t speak anyway.
--We weren’t speaking on purpose, is what I mean. I went across to a Ruby Tuesday’s and brought back steak dinners.
--I remember.
--I’d forgotten to bring a cork screw. It was back in Michigan, spending the winter with so much else. They didn’t have corkscrews in the gas station next to Ruby Tuesday's, so I bought a quart of beer. There we were, you crouched over your child’s nightstand eating steak, me with my back to you eating mine. I really did have a sense of ending up. “This is how it will be in our assisted-living apartment,” I thought. “Eating this way, surrounded by grab-bars.
--And Chelsea wouldn’t eat. She was waiting for it all to be over.
--She always knows when something’s wrong.
--That’s true. But I mean she wanted the traveling to be over.
--But she’s very good on the road.
--The best, an angel. Aren’t you, Chelsea? You sweet girl, you.
--She loves being on the road, but doesn’t like the motel rooms.
--She’s much better, though. Remember that first year we brought her down?
--It was pathetic. I felt like an axe murderer.
--We’d gotten her that October, our little special-needs border collie. Then we drove down with her, just after Christmas. You were still working.
--She looked so forlorn. My God, we were doing everything we could think of to cheer her up. Nothing doing. Every time we stopped to walk her—gas stations, rest areas—she tracked the ground, looking for a familiar smell.
--That first night, remember what happened?
--I got up early to walk her, the way I always do. To keep things consistent.
--But she wasn’t on the floor.
--I panicked. I thought, “You locked up for the night, and left her outside. She’s blind in one eye, she’s lost, she’s been killed on the Expressway.” God, it was an awful few seconds. Then I saw her tail sticking out from under the bed.
--It broke my heart. It was almost impossible for her to pull herself out. That’s how low the bed was.
--But not low enough to keep her from pulling herself under.
--Think how scared she must have been.
--Well, you stay here and guard the documents while I forage for something to eat. I saw signs. It will probably be pasta or pizza.
--Try to get something she’ll like.
--A rotisserie chicken? That’s always a crowd pleaser.

SNOWBIRDING #3: GONE MISSING

2010-01-22T07:29:00.000-05:00

At some point on our way south, one of us always remembers something important left behind in Michigan. This year, it wasn’t the favorite slotted spoon, or the backup memory card for the camera.

--I miss _____.
--Is that what you’ve been thinking about all these miles?
--No, but I think about her. Do you want me to drive?
--I’m fine. I think about her, too. Mostly in terms of disappointment.
--I just miss her, that’s all.
--Yes, that’s the word. She’s gone missing. Our oldest granddaughter is now somewhere else. In her place is a beautiful, fifteen-year-old lanky redhead who looks just like her. The one who comes to visit now is no more present than the one who’s gone missing. All I see of her for the most part is the part down the center of her hair. Always bowed over some piece of technology, fingers flying. She doesn't have to be with us at all, now. Or any adults. She can e-mail or text-message her likewise held-hostage buddies wherever they they may be.
--Remember how she’d come down in her sleeper? Trailing a blanket? She’d curl up next to me on the couch with it. Cuddle close, then bring her hand out from under the blanket and hand me Doctor Seuss. It would be concealed until that moment. She’d be fighting to stay awake, to hear me read to her.
--It’s one of my favorite photos.
--The one in the dining room.
--She has her chin propped on her hand, looking at the book as you read. Hardly able to keep her eyes open. You are beautiful in that shot.
--Something else that’s gone missing.
--Please don’t.
--Her brother’s still the way he was.
--For now. You watch, he’ll turn on us, too.
--Always the early bird. Down every day first thing when they visit.
--My grandson is hard-wired for dosings of toaster waffles on waking. Down he comes, very quietly.
--But he never makes demands, he’s never crabby. Long before now, ______ was always gvetchy when she came down. Groaning and moaning. Not her brother. He just pads down the creaky stairs and starts his morning routine in the big chair.
--Game Boy in hand.
--Or a book.
--It’s true, he’s become such a reader. I love seeing it.
--Is he imitating his sister?
--No idea, and I don’t care. If he’s a reader, that’s all that matters. Dragons, extra-terrestrial dustups between weird tribes of mutants—no matter. He’s reading, that’s what counts.
--I feel so old.
--Travel on the Interstate will do that.
--I wish I had a Starbucks. I wish I had ______.

SNOWBIRDING #2: LOST IN THE FLEA MARKET

2010-01-20T07:09:00.000-05:00

Generally, Drinks before Dinner is true to its name: it recounts conversations that take place at the end of the day. But when Barbara and I are on the road, these confabs are what keep us going. After driving for nine or ten hours, we are out of words and ready for sleep. That is, until the lively couple next door start throwing each other against the wall, or the quaint heating/cooling system resumes operation. If anyone knows, please tell us how so many of these units have survived since the beginning of the twentieth century.

-------------------------------------------

--Did we pass it yet?
--No. It’s closer to the state line.
--Mustn’t miss the world’s biggest Jesus.
--Well, anyway, the world’s biggest bust of Jesus.
--It’s big all right. How tall would you say?
--Maybe twenty-five or thirty feet. At least that, if you include the beseeching arms.
--You have to include the arms, that’s the main thing. Is it blessing or beseeching?
--The Solid Rock Church. Well named, considering how much concrete had to go into it. I wonder if the good reverend’s cousin is in the aggregate business. What I like is how, one second after you pass the bust you see the sign for the World Biggest Flea Market.
--I don't think it actually says that, does it?
--Something close. If it isn’t the world’s biggest, it has to be competitive. They have sheds and truck bays and parking on both sides of the Interstate. Think of that. A site for vendors selling junk that spills out over who knows how many acres of Ohio farmland. In the middle of nowhere. On both sides of the Interstate. With Jesus’ eternal blessing.
--We should stop some time.
--Is the bust beseeching God, or blessing the Ohio landscape? To answer that, we would need to know if the flea market antedates the bust. If the flea market came first, I’d have to go with the bust performing a blessing on the vendors and customers. Well, no, not necessarily. The bust could be beseeching God to bring more suckers to the junk peddlers.
--We should stop one of these times.
--Why?
--I don’t know. It’s there is all. We’ve been passing it now for—nine years? I can’t believe we’ve been doing this that long.
--You’ll have to wait for your next husband. I’m not interested.
--You lack the spirit of adventure.
--“Lost in the Flea Market.” Does that sound like a reality show, or what? See the ragged troupe of abandoned shoppers, accidentally locked up in the cavernous shed until next weekend. See them set upon by herds of crazed dairy cattle. Watch as they huddle under mounds of antique clothing and defunked minor appliances.
--That’s pretty much what “The Antiques Road Show” is. A reality show.
--True. A high-end junk show. Everyone dragging crap out of their attics, hoping it’s worth a fortune. I like it when the appraiser tells someone her Betty Boop lamp is worth three and a half dollars.
--You like the crestfallen looks.
--I confess it. I always prefer the agony of defeat.
--No, you’re right. We’d just see something and buy it.
--Like the Orbitz sale.
--Which makes no sense for people with a van full of stuff, on their way to Florida.
--I think of us as latter-day Okies. Here that? “All you need is love”—right, Chelsea?

SNOWBIRDING--THE JOURNEY SOUTH ON I-75

2010-01-18T07:50:00.000-05:00

Following Christmas, Barbara and I load the van in preparation for our annual trip to Florida. We’re snowbirds, and spend four months there. The process of leave-taking—packing, loading, unloading and reloading, attempting to remember what was left behind last year—involves many animated discussions. Largely because my memory is no longer fully reliable, these exchanges can sometimes get heated. Our solution is to go on packing in silence, knowing there will be ample time in the days and weeks to come for payback related to that favorite slotted spoon or extra camera memory card now spending the winter back in Michigan.

But many hours later than planned, we at last coax our dog Chelsea to hop in, slide shut the van's panel door, and take off. We’ve made this trip once or more times a year since 2001. As we move south, we watch for signs of milder weather. We eat junk food (Chelsea prefers McDonald’s), stay in pet-friendly motels, and drink lots of coffee and little shot bottles full of B vitamins.

By now, the journey is marked by familiar points of interest. The next several posts take their inspiration—if that’s the word for it—from our time on the road. Collectively, they make up a kind of scrapbook of Americana, at least that part of it exposed on I-75.

--I Dozed off.
--You did, that’s good. That’s the point of reclining seats.
--God, I fell so soundly asleep. I was back in the union. We were getting a mailing out for the next election.
--You loved the place.
--Yes, but please don’t start in about how I no longer have a sense of purpose.
--OK.
--It was a mistake. I should never have retired.
--Honey, you stayed too long as it was. If it hadn’t been for the penalty for leaving before thirty-and-out, I would have pressured you to quit earlier. I should have anyway, but we needed the money.
--I should’ve stayed on.
--Barbara, please—
--I just couldn’t take the commute anymore.
--Maybe that’s why you dozed off just now. Here you are, back on I-75. The same road you had to take every morning. In the last couple years you hated it. The lunatic morning drivers, everyone blabbing on phones while doing their makeup. “See? I can drive with no hands.” Men shaving. Hot numbers dancing in their seats at seventy miles an hour at seven-thirty in the morning.
--It did get to me, I have to say.
--At the end, sometimes I had to drive you, remember?
--Not often.
--No, but I knew from those times how awful it must be. The pressure.
--You never knew, you couldn’t know. You drove three miles each way on your commute. Never in rush hour.
--And always on surface roads, not the expressway.
--Exactly. So please don’t say you “know” what it was like for me.
--All right. But I know you resented how easy I had it.
--No, not really. But I couldn’t help knowing it. Please, honey, don’t follow so close. Do we have to be in the left lane all the time?
--Any lane you want. I just don’t like traveling behind tankers.
--Tell me about it.

THE LOST TRIBE: MORE TAXING MATTERS

2010-01-15T07:07:00.000-05:00

More taxing matters (we got a little carried away)

--Do you think our new tax preparer is Jewish?
--With a name like Zimmer? Of course.
--She didn’t look Jewish.
--Be politically correct. You mean Semitic.
--OK, she didn’t look Semitic. But she was smart and funny.
--There you go, Jewish.
--I was always flattered in college to be taken for Jewish.
--That happened to me a couple times at the union. Norman Schwartz in the elevator once asked me, “Kosnic. Is that a Jewish name?” I told him it was Polish Catholic.
--How’d he react?
--What do you mean? We were in the elevator, going to work. Kosnic sounded like a Jewish name to a Jew, that’s all.
--Kosnicastan. That could be where your ancestors came from.
--You mean that’s my family’s mother country?
--The Old Sod, The Homeland.
--Kosnicastan.
--Yes. Lost in the shuffle of the other ‘stans’--Tadzhikistan, Uzbekistan. This tiny little wedge of real estate is in there.
--Full of Kosnicastanis.
--In need of assistance.
--Kosnicastan, I like it. That could be where the dictators in the other ‘stans’ have their summer homes.
--Their dachas and hunting lodges.
--Did you say all the Kosnicastanis are Jewish? It can’t be easy for them in that region.
--Especially sitting on all the world’s remaining gabardine reserves. Every passport holder in Kosnicastan is Jewish. But they don’t know what this means. Only the national records and passport lady has been to Israel. See, Kosnicastan is the home of the actual Lost Tribe. I should’ve said they would be Jewish if they had any religion.
--That’s sort of sad. A whole country, and all of them related.
--You could go back as a goodwill ambassador. You could say Nancy Reagan sent you.
--Let me think about this.
--You think about it while I get us a refill.

--There you go, Grebus. That’s your name when you go back to your native village.
--Thank you. I thought you said everyone’s related in my motherland.
--I did, Grebus, they are.
--But you say they have villages.
--Well, yes. People don’t all live in the capital city of Plotzick. But these villages aren’t divided by tribe, or language subset. They’re divided by herd animal. Goat villages, camel villages. So, you fly in and land on the salt flats. That’s what they use for the airfield. You deplane. You’re greeted by diplomats. There’s a military honor guard and a band, flower girls in quaint peasant costumes. They have this ululation type of cheer everyone’s doing, both the men and women. When they quiet down, you tell them you’ve been sent by former First Lady Nancy Reagan as a goodwill ambassador.
--Am I nervous?
--Of course you’re nervous. You’re the first American of any prominence to visit Kosnicastan since Teddy Roosevelt. When he went there for quail hunting.
--No, I’m nervous because I’ve been sent by Nancy Reagan. On a mission to my motherland. Which is mother to a nation of people who are all Jewish and don’t know it. And they all belong to the same family. And not just the Family of Man.
--I’d be nervous, too.
--Not like me. I’m a woman, and Nancy Reagan sent me with a single message for Kosnicastan. Do you want to know the message?
--“Just Say No to Drugs and Sex.” It’s a good message, but they don’t have a drug or AIDS problem in your native land.
--“Just Say No to Inbreeding.”
--Ah. I see. It will be controversial. Better prepare for some blow-back. If they had a press corps or any media, this would be big.
--When a first lady calls, you can’t just say no.

OPEN INVITATION

2010-01-04T09:04:00.000-05:00

Why do so many blogs concern themselves only with information—with things and services, and giving advice? Does anyone really think all the hot tips for investing, and choosing the best buy in technology, and making sure to move to one of the Ten Best Cities actually means much?

Isn’t it perfectly possible the CEO at the company whose stock you are urged to buy will turn out to be Bernie Madoff’s twin? Won’t your brand new laptop still become obsolete on the seat next to you when you drive home with it? After moving to one of those Top Ten Cities, are you sure the neighbors on either side won’t turn out to be barking mad?

Most bloggers are well intentioned, and people do need information. But at the end of most days, it’s little things that make the difference. No matter how discouraging or humiliating or annoying it’s been, if you somehow managed to connect or be amused in some way, your day hasn’t been a total bust.

This is the place Drinks before Dinner proposes to go. More often than not, the best time for my wife Barbara and me comes when we de-brief each other before dinner. In our heavily mortgaged living room, we have a drink and locate some point of interest from the day. Sometimes we’re serious, but mostly we’re whimsical, even silly. Is it the drink? Maybe. But however it goes, our goal is to find something from the day that takes us out of ourselves.

That’s what Drinks before Dinner will be: short dialogues and recollections from Barry and Barbara Knister’s Book of Days. For an hour, we are free to be as daffy, outrageous or politically disreputable as we like. Seeing us in action, many might shake their heads. Grow up, they might say. Move on, get a grip, etc.

But the truth is we did grow up. We got ourselves educated, held responsible jobs and were good at them. Raised a family, paid taxes, didn’t drink and drive, and quit smoking.

In other words, we stuck to our knitting for decades. Now, come six o’clock we sit down, have a drink and walk what’s left of our wits. And we invite you to join us. After all, what’s your hurry? Pull up a chair and tell us what your poison is. Those pretzels by the way are very good!

PEACE OF MIND

2009-12-22T10:50:00.000-05:00

Do you find yourself holding on with both hands lately? From time to time, do you ask, “Why me?” Have you worked hard for years and “played by the rules,” but now can’t help wondering whether this just means you allowed yourself to be played by the system, turned into some kind of sucker?

If so, maybe you’re something like my wife Barbara and me. In contending with the pressures of aging and a failed economy like millions of others, we have come to think of laughter as the only coping mechanism left.

Clobbered 401(Ks), health “issues,” relentlessly morphing technology—but understand, we aren’t complaining. Not exactly. We know the current reality is made up of facts to be faced, and no one’s to blame. At least no one we can sue. Many others are much worse off, and not just folks in far-away places where trouble is always commonplace.

But when you’ve swayed for decades along the tracks of ordinary days, holding to your strap, reading the signs and graffiti and looking out the window when your train surfaces, curious about houses and lives other than your own, then all at once feel the wheels leave the rails, suddenly being jostled and bounced, forced to hold on with both hands—

What can you? Not much. But if they ask you to cut up your American Express card, make sure to keep your sense of humor. Absolutely don’t leave home without it.

Our tax preparer made a mistake, and this led to a typical DBD moment.

--She made a mess of our return last year.
--True, but we bought the “peace of mind” option, and they had to make it good.
--So, what now?
--Meaning, who should do our taxes this time?
--Correct. Not that there’s much to tax
--Well, H&R Block had to pay for her mistake, so maybe the odds are good she won’t screw up again.
--I see. You could be right. And going back to her would also be in keeping with the Knister Way.
--OK, now—
--The Knister Way. That’s where people burned by a vendor or service person go back to that same person.
--We have done that before, it’s true.
--Like the plumber with the leg brace.
--The guy who flooded the downstairs. He said it was the brace. It made it hard for him to reach under the sink.
--Except I wonder if the tax lady would want to see us again. She’s embarrassed, she blundered. --I know she didn’t want to see me when I went in. The whole time she averted her eyes while I talked to someone else. No, I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to be talking to someone else in the next cubicle, knowing she’s listening.
--We could go to the office next to Orbitz. On Woodward.
--Orbitz?
--Orvis. You know what I mean.
--I did not. I’m trying to figure it out, “Orbitz, the online travel outfit. I didn’t know they had offices…”
--You knew what I meant.
--I swear. By the way, they’re having a sale. That’s Orvis, not Orbitz. Sixty percent off. I was tempted, but knew if I went in I’d buy something.
--It is beautiful stuff. If I went in I’d being saying oh, I want that, I want that. But I don’t really need a new ensemble for grouse hunting.
--You don’t, that’s true. The one you have is perfect. And I don’t see us fly fishing on the Snake River any time soon.
--Not when we have just enough money to hunt pigeons in Flint.
--Or quail hunting. Imagine you and me and Dick Cheney, out hunting in our outfits.
--Jackets with all those pockets.
--Yes, all kinds of Velcro, and zippers. The caps, the boots. But none of it would matter. We could disguise ourselves all we wanted, he’d still smell our liberal stench.
--He’d blow our heads off.
--We hate him and he’d know it.
--Because we didn’t go to the Orvis sale, and went hunting in our regular clothes.
--Sweatpants and Bud Lite caps.
--And tee shirts with Shit Happens.
--I’d wear a Monster Truck muscle shirt. He wouldn’t like it.
--You don’t have any muscle shirts.
--I’d buy one for the occasion.
--We’d be dead for sure, not just shot in the face.
--Remember Cambridge?
--Oh God. Cambridge. Days gone by--how I miss them.