Air Conditioning and Breathing

I grew up from infancy to nearly eighteen without enjoying the luxury of air conditioning in my home. This is notable, especially since my home was in hot, sunny South Florida! And the first three years of my elementary school education were spent in classrooms with windows that were usually wide open to the outside. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until I was almost nine that I ever spent any appreciable amount of time in air conditioning. But this deprivation didn’t seem to have any detrimental effect on me. Since then, though, I’ve developed some allergies, and I wonder if this doesn’t correlate to an extent with the fact that I spend a great percentage of my life in air-conditioned buildings. Breathing the outside air is different from breathing recycled, closed-in air with its mold and fungal spores. Cumulatively, this has to have an effect on people. I’ve known people who, later in their lives, have developed respiratory problems such as allergies and asthma. Part of their coping strategies usually involved confining themselves to an air-conditioned environment, away from what they would consider to be harmful airborne substances. But could it possibly be that, in continually breathing old moldy air that this may be one of the contributing factors in their afflictions?

Being interested in this, I did a little research on the Internet and only found articles pointing to air conditioning as a positive environment for those already suffering from respiratory afflictions. Of course, the systems had to be kept clean to avoid fungal buildup. But I still wonder whether prolonged exposure to this artificial environment somehow weakens the body to the point where it cannot handle the natural outside air anymore, but must instead exist in a more controlled respiratory environment.

I remember reading a long time ago a short science fiction story from 1953 titled Crucifixus Etiam by Walter M. Miller, Jr. It was written long before we really knew anything about the Martian atmosphere. The story centered on the hard physical labor that workers (in the future, of course) performed on Mars, with its imagined thin, difficult-to-breathe atmosphere. The problem of breathing had been dealt with by supplying the workers with special machines that they could put on that sent the needed oxygen directly into their system without them have use their lungs. They could then work in comfort, but their bodies became so accustomed to not actively breathing that their lungs atrophied from disuse to the point where they would be forced to use these machines for the rest of their lives. Although this is not an exact analogy, this story does express a concern I have.

If we, as a people, keep insisting on controlling our environment to shut out all the “bad” things (such as pollutants and pollen) out there, then instead of these things causing some minor discomfort when breathed, the body will, over time, become unable to withstand them and eventually, exposure to them can precipitate a crisis, such as an asthmatic attack or an allergic reaction. In other words, someone may create their own ideal environment, only to eventually discover that they have created their own prison.

I can’t really say, in individual cases of people who developed respiratory trouble, that this applies to them. There are many other factors that determine these sorts of ailments, such as genetic and developmental factors, as well as exposure to poisons found in substances such as tobacco products, asbestos, or coal. But I can look at my own life and reflect upon the fact that my allergies seem to correlate well with my increased exposure to air conditioning and concomitant decreased exposure to outdoor air.

With Friends Like These

Little Big Man (1970), starring Dustin Hoffman, is one of my all-time favorite movies. It is a western set in the American Great Plains during the decades immediately following the U.S. Civil War. In it, a family of white settlers is ambushed and massacred by rogue Indians, leaving a surviving young boy and his elder sister orphaned and abandoned on the open plain. A little while later, a Cheyenne warrior happens upon the carnage, finds the two, and brings them to his camp. They are treated well, but the big sister escapes in the night, leaving little Jack Crabtree alone with his hosts. The Cheyenne adopt him as one of their own, training him as a fellow Cheyenne. Jack’s identity becomes one with them, but they find themselves sucked into warfare with the U.S. Army, which is attempting to push the Indians into reservations in order to clear more land for white settlement. In this context, Jack and a fellow Cheyenne youth are out in the woods one day when they are attacked by an Indian from a tribe that has allied itself against the Cheyenne and with the whites. This Indian is about to kill Jack when he notices that, underneath the makeup, Jack is white. Suddenly, the attacker is very obsequious and friendly to Jack. He runs over to Jack’s groggy comrade, raises his knife, and tells Jack that he will kill that bad Indian (because he wants to be a friend of the white man). Jack then proceeds to shoot an arrow through him, killing him and saving his true friend. Jack henceforth is given the name “Little Big Man”, and the story goes on from there.

That segment from Little Big Man is one example of people who represent themselves as friends doing harm, either intentionally or unintentionally, in the name of that friendship. Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, which I’ve just finished reading recently, contains another example of the adage, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” A physician who has just moved to a new house with his family makes friends with an elderly man from across the street. There is no confusion that their friendship is real; nevertheless, that neighbor drags (unintentionally) the good doctor into a troublesome mess (I don’t want to give away the story).

In the political world, sometimes a politician may get support from an unwelcome source. I remember when Ronald Reagan, just before his election to the Presidency, received the Ku Klux Klan’s endorsement (which he immediately rejected). On the international level, the U.S. keeps touting its friendship with countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, although they are the sources of a great percentage of the Al-Qaeda membership. And I don’t believe that the U.S. has been a very good friend in the past toward some of its Latin American neighbors, having supported military coups against democratically elected leaders as well as, in my opinion, hurting countries like Colombia and Bolivia with our “war on drugs”.

On a more personal level, it’s always good to have friends! But, still, we should be able to place certain boundaries around ourselves that we feel we have the right to expect others to respect. One such violator of this principle is someone who takes some offhand comment I make (or simply discerns my apparent feeling about something) and then goes around behind my back (without my knowledge) and tries to “fix things” with others. Some friend, right? People who go around like this behind my back may think they have “my back”, but I just want them to “back off”. Let me be responsible for my own problems, and if I need help, then I am competent enough to reach out to the appropriate parties myself! Another example of a “friend” who oversteps boundaries is one who applies their own standards in some area to me and then chastises me for not living up to them. What is it that Michael Stipe sang in that classic REM song? “Oh, life is bigger, it’s bigger than you, and you are not me…” An extension of this is the person who thinks in terms of hierarchy and that we all need to “move up” to the highest level we can reach. So someone like this who is “up there” in an organization or maybe in a more prestigious (to them) profession may berate me (as a friend, of course), for not being as good as them (since their sense of personal worth is tied up with their perceived status and position). I don’t need friends like these.

Having said this, I recognize that nobody’s perfect and we all stumble a bit trying to be each other’s friends. It’s important to maintain a feeling of good will with others, at least up to a point. As Max Ehrmann’s poem Desiderata says, “As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.” But all in all, I think that if people showed a little more respect toward each other and a little less condescension, then the friendships between them would carry more substance.

Favorite Song #3

Flaming by Pink Floyd (from Piper at the Gates of Dawn, 1967)
Back during the mid-1990s, I went on a tear, collecting old albums of various artists whose works I knew and liked from the radio play of their bigger hits. I thought that there may be some hidden treasures in these albums. And there were! Among the artists I did this with was Pink Floyd. When they first hit the big time, they had put out some hit singles (in Britain) like See Emily Play and Arnold Layne. Their singer and main creative force was Syd Barrett, who would suffer a severe mental breakdown (and never fully recover until his recent death) following the release of their first studio album (and their best, in my opinion) Piper at the Gates of Dawn. If you’re accustomed to the later Roger Waters tunes with Dave Gilmour’s rough voice and virtuoso guitar work on Pink Floyd’s 1970s albums, then you may find that Syd Barrett’s version of the band was quite different. There was a very strong psychedelic bent to the songs he was involved with, but also they purveyed a feeling of simple joy and innocent wonder at the world, much the way a happy, wide-eyed giggling little child may see things. And Flaming, the third track on the album, is just such a song. It’s a typical case of Barrett letting his imagination run wild while putting out one vivid, bizarre image after another. To me, Flaming is just a strange, happy, pretty song that celebrates the imagination. And I didn’t hear it for the first time until almost thirty years after it came out!

After Syd Barrett left Pink Floyd, Dave Gilmour replaced him (in a manner of speaking, no one could replace Syd) and bassist Roger Waters gradually assumed more of the band’s creative direction, coming out with progressively more cynical and autobiographical material. Ironically, my second favorite Pink Floyd album, Wish You Were Here (1975), was their tribute to their friend and former bandmate, Syd Barrett himself. Every track from that album is a favorite of mine. Other Pink Floyd songs that I like are Remember a Day, Fearless, Pigs (Three Different Kinds), Goodbye Blue Sky, and Run Like Hell.

Next: favorite song #2

Framing

A few weeks ago, I was listening to my local public radio station (89.1-WUFT) early in the evening. The weekly program Alternative Radio was on. This show presented speakers and topics from a generally leftist perspective, so whether I agreed with what was said or not, it was still interesting. That evening, they rebroadcast speaker George Lakoff’s presentation of his thesis that conservatives have been winning the political and public relations battles with liberals because they learned how to frame issues in a way that predisposed people to agree with their positions. And framing is very important. Here are some examples:

--The Bush administration has always framed the Iraq War as part of the War on Terror. Opponents of the President’s policy hold that Saddam Hussein’s role as abettor to Al-Qaeda was negligible, especially contrasted to that played by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan (our “allies”).

--In the abortion debate, pro-lifers frame the issue around the fetus and its right to live as a human being, while the pro-choice advocates emphasize the fact that the woman is carrying the fetus in her own body, and that because of this she should be in a position to make her own reproductive decisions.

--The issue of gay marriage has been framed by its opponents as “saving the institution of marriage”. Proponents say that it is an issue of civil rights and accuse opponents of bigotry against gays.

--In political campaign seasons, the winning party has usually framed the election issues more to their advantage. For example in 1992, the country bought the Democrats’ “it’s the economy, stupid” line, blamed George H.W. Bush for the recession, and brought in Bill Clinton as President. Only two years later, in 1994 the Republicans took over both the House and the Senate largely because future House Speaker Newt Gingrich promoted a “contract with America” that resonated with the public and defined the campaign. More recently, in 2004, the Republicans retained the Presidency and Congress by successfully equating the War in Iraq with the War on Terror and by making the election a referendum on cultural issues, especially that of gay marriage (which had special referendum votes placed in several states, including the crucial “swing “ state of Ohio). And last year, the Democrats regained Congress largely by framing the election as a referendum on Republican corruption and inaction. Whoever more successfully frames the issues in 2008 in a politically palatable form will more likely than not win that election.

--A sports coach or manager may, once a season begins to go sour with too many losses and too few wins, attempt to reframe that season as being one of rebuilding, and how much the fans should encourage and appreciate the team’s efforts.

--A talk show host may frame himself or herself as being “for the people” by deliberately picking easy news stories to rant indignantly about. Prime example: Bill O’Reilly with his diatribes against the “war on Christmas”, profane and demeaning rap lyrics, and judges he perceives as too lenient toward sex offenders. Not only is Bill looking out for you, but he also can avoid addressing more divisive issues that have a lot of gray areas and subtlety to them. Other hosts use this tactic of self-framing, too, but O’Reilly is utterly shameless about it.

--Although I think that global warming is a real phenomenon, I am tired of politicians and other public figures framing it around punctuated events such as heat waves, forest fires, and hurricanes. In 2004, Al Gore tried to blame global warming (and Bush because he didn’t sign the Kyoto Protocols) for the unusual number of hurricanes that hit Florida that year. Earlier this year, I heard Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blame the Western forest fires on global warming while he was speaking on the Senate floor.

--For many decades, political struggles in Third World countries were framed according to the ongoing Cold War between the West with its leader the United States and the East with its leader the Soviet Union. It was only after the USSR’s collapse in 1991 when internal struggles within these nations began to be interpreted as internal matters of the nations themselves. Now, though, with the struggle between the West and extremist movements within the Islamic nations, those types of struggles are once again beginning to be framed in terms of which elements are more pro- or anti- West.

Framing is important because it determines how an issue is going to be presented and discussed. And this is where bias in different self-proclaimed unbiased or “balanced” media organizations most insidiously rears its ugly head. Also, an issue is usually framed very differently, depending on which side of it one is viewing it from. Just watch Congress in session on either C-Span 1 or 2 when they are debating a bill. Sometimes, from hearing the speakers from both sides of the aisle, you get the feeling that they are talking about two completely different issues. That is usually due to the fact that each side has framed the issue in their own way that serves their own interests. Framing is always going to be here, so it’s a good idea for people to learn to discern how and why issues are framed in certain ways, who is responsible for it, and what’s in it for them. Only then, I believe, can we slog on through the bias in our media and then begin to put together a more objective picture of what’s really going on in the world and our country.

SpongeBob SquarePants

I am a big SpongeBob SquarePants fan. In the beginning, one of my children would have the TV tuned in to the Nickelodeon Channel and there, out of the corner of my eye, I’d see this gross looking cartoon of a walking, talking, dressed yellow kitchen sponge and his pals on the sea bottom. Peripheral glances don’t always reveal to one the true picture, though, and one day I actually sat down with my kids and watched an episode. It didn’t take me very long to see that this cartoon series was special! By that time, three seasons of the series had already come out, and I spent a bit of time trying to catch up with the rest of the “Spongeheads” out there! It’s hard to decide which parts of the show I like most. The setting is a town called “Bikini Bottom” (ha-ha). There’s the home neighborhood, where gregarious, irritating, squeaky-voiced SpongeBob and dumb, big pink starfish Patrick (who sounds a lot like Ed Norton of the Honeymooners) live on each side of the ultimate comic fall guy: Squidward, a vain, cynical, and selfish octopus/squid who cannot stand his next door neighbors’ loud and innocent exuberance. Another setting is the Krusty Krab restaurant, owned by skinflint Mr. Krab and staffed by Squidward at the register and SpongeBob at the grill. Then there’s the beach (with lifeguards), where fish have to be careful not to get in the water (?) too deep and surfing contests are commonplace (yes, at the bottom of the ocean). And I can’t leave out Jellyfish Fields, where SpongeBob and Patrick take out their little nets to try to catch horrible, stinging jellyfish (who horribly sting them). SpongeBob is also a perennial boating student who never can pass his boating exam and keeps attending Mrs. Puff’s (a puffer fish) boating school, to her unrelenting anxiety. Other characters like Sandy Cheeks (ha-ha), a squirrel (who lives in a clear, solid domed bubble), arch-villain Plankton (who is always trying to steal the Krabby Patty formula), and SpongeBob’s pet snail Gary (who meows like a cat) round out the main lineup.

The characters in this series are very well defined by their personalities. In an earlier entry, I wrote about the four personality types and how people’s personalities could be classified in different ways. One way is to take a good series like SpongeBob SquarePants and classify people by which character their personality most resembles.

Aside from the astute characterizations, SpongeBob SquarePants is a great example of farce in comedy. And if anything, then I am a sucker for that genre (Marx Brothers, Three Stooges, Monty Python, Airplane!, I Love Lucy, you get the picture). It doesn’t look like they’re going to stop making new SpongeBob episodes anytime soon, and it doesn’t look like I’ll stop watching them either!

Luring the Enemy

I grew up while the War in Vietnam was continuously going on (at least as far as direct American combat was concerned) from when I was eight years old until I was sixteen. The picture that I had of war then was one based on the conventional model of gaining geographical territory and pushing the enemy back into a smaller and less defensible position. I believed that in Vietnam, our armed forces were doing just this: gradually pushing the enemy back into North Vietnam. And I think that the people across the U.S. believed pretty much the same thing. We just had to be patient, and supporting the troops meant supporting the war. This is why the Tet Offensive in early 1968 had such a stunning effect on people’s attitudes about the war: the enemy was in our midst (in South Vietnam, that is) everywhere, especially in “territory” that was supposedly liberated from them. It wasn’t until after the war that I became more aware of its reality and our strategies. For example, I saw a map of South Vietnam that showed, according to our military’s own assessment of which side controlled the territory there as of late 1967, after U.S. forces had been fighting for more than two years. It showed almost the entire territory controlled by the Viet Cong/North Vietnamese, while only cities and their immediate surrounding were under South Vietnamese authority. But the most interesting thing I learned was how American foot soldiers would be transported deep into known enemy-held land by helicopter, deliberately to expose them to the enemy, draw their fire, and reveal their locations for air assaults. It’s no wonder that surviving Vietnam veterans had such problems with flashbacks and coping with civilian life after the war. The movie Platoon showed this (in my opinion) horrible and cynical tactic that the military leadership used to deliberately put our fine young soldiers in harm’s way. Apparently, our strategy was to win the war by killing all of the enemy. What other purpose would this have served?

But the strategy of drawing the enemy’s fire is not limited to warfare. I believe that there are situations in our civilian lives where this occurs as well. For example, there may be an executive in a corporation who fears that there are some ambitious underlings who may be try someday to replace or jump over him in the company’s hierarchy. It may well be in his interest to send a “dummy” policy change down the authority chain, just to track which employees take it up with fanatical, ambitious zeal. And once those overaggressive subordinates are identified, they can be dealt with one by one. I saw a perverted version of this tactic in the movie The Killing Fields (about the Cambodian holocaust of the 1970s) when a Khmer Rouge reeducation camp leader suddenly announced to the assembly that the nation was in need of trained doctors and professionals. A couple of people in the crowd decided that their time had come for “advancement” and rose up to identify themselves. They were guided away to applause. Later, they were ignominiously executed as enemies of the people (which was the whole idea behind the announcement in the first place). The game of chess is another example of “drawing fire”, when one player appears to leave one of his pieces exposed, but actually is luring the other player to move a piece in order to clear the way for a major attack.

Drawing the enemy’s fire is an example of misdirection. The enemy forces in Vietnam, when they acted according to the U.S. strategy, mistook the American ground actions as the main thrust, thus revealing their positions. The same type of thing applies in the corporate, Cambodian, and chess examples. Subterfuge and intrigue often run rampant in large organizations and situations where power is the big prize. It’s tough to go through life with the feeling that we are just pawns in someone else’s power struggle. But if we can identify what’s going on, then we can least be empowered not to fall into traps such as “luring the enemy”.

Al Franken and Norm Coleman

I never did think that Al Franken was very funny when he appeared many years ago on Saturday Night Live. And, a few years later, I was taken aback at his bad taste in titling one of his books Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. So the guy already had two strikes against him, as far as I was concerned. But about four years ago, I was getting so sick of hearing only one side (the conservative side) of the issues on my radio that one day, while browsing through my local Books-a-Million (sipping on my flavored coffee), I actually picked up his (then) new book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them and began to thumb through it. A few minutes later it was mine, in the car with me on the way to my workplace, where I proceeded to read it from cover to cover on my breaks. It radically altered my opinion of Mr. Franken.

I still believe that Al Franken has a mean streak embedded within him, and he’s not beyond tweaking the facts to emphasize a point. For example, he criticized right-wing extremist Ann Coulter because she once incorrectly referred to a journalist (with last name Thomas) as Socialist Norman Thomas’s son. But he failed to mention that the journalist was actually his grandson, which would have showed her slip to be minor. Instead, he implied that the two were unrelated (slyly, without coming out and saying it). Because of this sort of thing, I don’t entirely trust Franken at his word. But when he defends the actions of those whom he supports (such as liberal politicians and others), his words resonate with more meaning. He has eloquently defended the Clinton Administration’s policies concerning the military and terrorism, showing that the former President placed both at a high place of importance in his priorities. Franken was also a friend and ardent supporter of Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone and his 2002 bid for reelection to another term.

During that campaign, Wellstone was running neck-and-neck with Republican (former Democratic Minneapolis mayor) Norm Coleman. The campaign was winding down to the last few days. Then, Wellstone was killed in a plane crash while campaigning. Former Senator and Vice President Walter Mondale was picked to replace him on the ballot. Wellstone’s memorial service was very emotional, and some of his supporters got a little carried away when they got before the microphone. The right-wing media turned the memorial into a last-minute election issue against the Democrats. Coleman defeated Mondale in the election while the Republicans narrowly regained control of the Senate. In Lies, Franken correctly defended the Wellstone memorial service but incorrectly criticized Coleman (whom he derisively referred to as a “suit”) for resuming the campaign after Mondale was selected as Wellstone’s replacement. Of course, Coleman had to campaign!

Now, after another book (The Truth) and a stint on Air America as early afternoon host, Al Franken has apparently decided that he is going to run against Norm Coleman in 2008 for that Senate seat. I don’t know how he stands within the Democratic Party (or whatever goofy name they call it there) in Minnesota. He may have some opposition there. But if he does get the nomination, it should make for a very interesting campaign. Franken is very witty at times, but he’s going to have to watch his language and also tone down the rhetoric if he wants to be taken seriously. His strength, as I see it, lies with his passionate promotion of liberal values, while his weakness shows when attacking his opponents on a personal level. As for Coleman, he always sounds like a Bostonian who took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in Minnesota. He is a very good speaker and, although (in my opinion) he tends to tow the Republican and Bush Administration line on too many issues, I believe that he is a decent, hardworking public servant who has made a good case for reelection. I was impressed a few years ago how he went after the United Nations in the so-called “Oil-for-Food Scandal”. In any case, I think that Al Franken is going to find out that Norm Coleman is much more than a “suit”. It’s too bad that they’re running for the same seat; I’d like to see them both in the Senate!

Coffee Shops

I am one of those folks who hang out different places drinking coffee, and I've been doing it since I was about two years old (yes, you read it correctly). Back then, when my mother would take me with her to the apartment section down and across from ours to daily visit her friend Betty, we’d all sit together in Betty's kitchen and have a cup of coffee. Only then I called it my “cossee”, which my mother later told me was mostly milk and sugar with a little “cossee” thrown in. But back then I thought I was hobnobbing with the big shots on their level! And as the years passed, I retained my affection for coffee, which I mainly drank at home in the form of a heaping teaspoon of instant coffee dumped in a cup of hot boiling water with a little sugar and milk thrown in for good measure. It’s amazing to me, even now, how cheap coffee is to make and drink at home, while people will go out and dump a wad of dough to drink essentially the same product at a place like Starbucks. The only problem with that amazement is that I’m one of the fools who do that! Why?

I can’t speak for other people as to why they go out and spend a lot of money to drink in a coffee shop, other than it’s obviously a good, informal setting for friends or associates to get together in public. I mainly go out to coffee shops by myself (although sometimes I’ll take my wife and/or children as well). My reasons are personal: I am by nature a reclusive soul who has no problem with solitude and a great problem with the public. Not that I dislike the public per se: I usually just dislike being IN it. And because of that, I discovered many, many years ago that if I sat out in a public place (such as a coffee shop) to read, study, or just think, than I could much more easily rivet my thoughts on the task at hand (and away from the annoying surrounding environment). Fortunately, though, I’ve been able in recent years (with conscious effort) to transfer some that mental focus to when I’m at home (like right now!). But I habitually still like to go out (sounds a bit paradoxical, doesn’t it?). And nowadays I have many more choices than ever of places to go.

Starbucks is the biggest coffee shop company around in Gainesville, with several places to go, spread all over town. I generally go there, not because their coffee is the best (in my opinion, it isn’t), but because this corporation understands that its customers count and that it’s important not to keep them waiting endlessly in line for their orders. If someone ahead of me in line has a large order, then while that’s being taken care of, someone else will get my order going. In other places, like Books-a-Million or one of those mom-and-pop locally owned shops, one customer could hold up the line for several minutes with one person behind the counter who has to see each order from beginning to completion before going on to the next one. That’s why I switched to Starbucks. I still go to the other places sometimes, because I like their flavored coffees (especially Books-a-Million’s Streusel Cake coffee and the many different delicious flavors at Corner Cup, a locally-owned Gainesville coffee shop). Border’s bookstore has a good coffee café section, with usually at least two people working behind the counter (and good coffee, too), but it’s inconveniently located for me. Other places I usually avoid because of the “one person behind the counter” policy that they have. I’ll probably never stop going out for coffee, but I have become more comfortable at home with my “thinking”, so who knows, I may someday even start boiling water again and make instant “cossee”!

Dave Allen At Large

Back in the early 1980s, my local Gainesville Public Television station, WUFT-Channel Five, carried several British comedy shows. Some were farcical like Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Not the Nine O’Clock News, and Benny Hill. Others were sitcoms like Fawlty Towers and Butterflies. They showed the original British mini-series version of Douglas Adams’s classic A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (done so well that I don’t have any inclination to see the recently made big-screen version). And there were several other good British shows as well. At the time, indeed, Gainesville Public TV was so much better than anything else that, for a while, I had my cable TV service removed and just watched local stations. The best of WUFT’s offerings in this regard was Dave Allen At Large, featuring, of course, Irish comedian Dave Allen. Dave was a master joke/storyteller, and he would intersperse hilarious skits that poked fun at everything, especially organized religion, life in Ireland, and British politics (Margaret Thatcher era), with segments when he’d just sit in a chair (holding a drink or a cigarette), and spin the funniest jokes that he, with his talented delivery, turned into side-splitters. His demeanor and comedic style reminded me a bit of Johnny Carson (another comedic genius who could have me rolling on the floor with uncontrollable laughter). Dave Allen died a few years ago. I’ve looked around unsuccessfully in local stores for a DVD collection of some of his old shows, but I did find an Internet site that sold them. YouTube carries clips of some of his funnier monologues and skits, but it’s best to just sit back and take in one entire show at a time (if your sides can stand it!). But I’m still holding out some hope that one of those many TV channels out there devoted to old series will dig up his fantastic series and put it back on (TV Land, for one, could stand a radical revamping of its program line-up!).

Favorite Song #4

Landslide by Fleetwood Mac (from Fleetwood Mac, 1975)

Although the band Fleetwood Mac gets the official credit for this beautiful song, I always think of it purely as a Stevie Nicks tune. Whatever her personal reasons were for writing it the way she did, I have my own personal reasons for loving it as I do. Landslide is a song about growing older and reassessing relationships. To me, it hits the hardest when I remember myself growing up through adolescence and into adulthood, seeing my own children go though the same process, experiencing the aging of my parents and those of my wife, the death of my mother 4½ years ago and of my mother-in-law this past March, and finally my own aging. In this, I see it much like the Cat Steven song Father and Son (#6 in my countdown), but with an entirely different feeling about it. Landslide is a very introspective song that also emphasizes that just getting out somewhere away from it all for a little while can break the limiting patterns and ruts in one’s life, enabling one to refocus on the more important, truly valuable things. Stevie Nicks has always been one of my favorite singers, and some of her songs, like Rhiannon, Gold Dust Woman, Sara, Gypsy, Seven Wonders, Stand Back, Long Way to Go, and Silver Springs are favorites of mine. Fleetwood Mac as a group also came out with a few good ones such as World Turning, Never Going Back Again, Don’t Stop, Big Love, and Peacekeeper. They got together for a reunion concert in 1997 and recorded it as their CD The Dance. The version of Landslide that they did then became a radio hit, but I prefer the original studio version. Other artists, such as Smashing Pumpkins and the Dixie Chicks, came out with their covers of Landslide, but I’ll always value the special touch that Stevie Nicks gave to it back in 1975. Fleetwood Mac owes much to Stevie Nicks and her former “partner” Lindsey Buckingham for transforming this moderately successful British blues-rock band into an international pop-rock icon. I always thought Christie McVie was pretty cool, too!

Next favorite song: #3

Running on the Eights

One of my favorite TV channels (especially in the thick of the hurricane season) is the Weather Channel. That is, when they’re not obsessing on the weather in places like southeastern Montana or east-central New Mexico. On the other hand, I imagine that folks watching from other parts of the country wonder why they make such a big deal whenever a dinky tropical storm threatens the Florida coast (actually, I do, too). After all, a 50 mph tropical storm isn’t really all that much. I remember in 1984 when tropical storm Isidore passed directly over Gainesville in the middle of the day without anyone in town paying it the slightest attention. But that aside, what I like the most about the Weather Channel is their feature titled “Local on the Eights”, meaning that at :08, :18, :28, :38, :48, and :58 each hour they give the local forecast and radar. So despite what’s going on in other places, the viewer can be assured of some local attention.

I think this idea has pretty good carryover value to my life. There are various projects that I’ve begun recently, and it’s a good idea to update my progress in them from time to time. And doing so at eight-week intervals seems to be a reasonable span between reports. So, here’s my first report of this kind, this time about my adventures in the exciting and sometimes painful world of running.

Since May 14, I’ve gradually built up my distance and speed, running almost exclusively on treadmills at my nearby YMCA. It’s only been recently that I’ve begun to run on a regular surface, and that has presented a few problems. One, it’s usually pretty hot down here in north-central Florida at this time of the year, with temperatures usually creeping into the 90’s with high humidity. Two, the treadmill sets my pace and thus relieves my mind of that burden. Three, I feel that the very act of running on ground or track is slightly different than treadmill running, emphasizing some muscles over others. So, recently, I’ve begun to mix my workouts between treadmill and track, with me still searching for a good cross-country type course to practice on. Also, I’ve made a point of giving myself one or two days of rest between runs at this stage. I plan to begin using the YMCA’s cross-trainer on days I’m not running, at some future point. My running records so far are pretty modest, and they probably will be for a while. Well, here’s my training record so far:

DATE DAY MILES TIME SURFACE
5-14-- mo-- 0.25 --3:43-- treadmill
5-17-- th--- 0.25-- 2:57----- “
5-19-- sa--- 0.25-- 2:32----- “
5-22-- tu--- 0.25-- 2:23----- “
5-25-- fr--- 0.25-- 2:19------ “
5-27-- su--- 0.25-- 2:09------“
5-30-- we-- 0.35-- 3:44----- “
6-01-- fr----0.50-- 4:40----- “
6-03-- su-- 0.50-- 4:33------ “
6-06-- we-- 0.50-- 4:14----- “
6-08-- fr--- 1.00-- 9:28----- “
6-11-- mo-- 1.00-- 9:07----- “
6-13-- we-- 1.50- 14:38----- “
6-15-- fr--- 0.50-- 4:05----- “
6-19-- tu-- -2.00 -19:35----- “
6-21-- th----3.11- 30:00----- “
6-24-- su--- 3.11- 28:38------ “
6-27-- we--- 3.11- 28:15------ “
6-29-- fr---- 0.25-- 2:30-- asphalt
7-01-- su--- 3.11- 28:09---treadmill
7-05-- th--- 0.25-- 2:07--- asphalt
7-05-- th--- 0.25-- 1:52------- “
7-08-- su--- 3.11- 27:19---treadmill

Geography and Maps

Ever since I can remember (long before I could read), I had a strong sense of geography. For some reason, it always seemed to be an important matter to know exactly where I was. And when I knew where I was in a lot of different places, I built up a large storehouse of geographical points in my head and made up an internal map, with the cardinal directions (north-south-east-west) all pointing in the conventional directions. Even when I was two or three years old, I would follow attentively whichever route we took to get anywhere. Around my home town of Opa-Locka, Florida, I was then attuned to the location of places like the library, my sister’s elementary school, the house where some elderly friends of my parents lived, a little store that my sister and I would walk to (past a ferocious dog), the giant billboard with a giant on it on NW 27th Avenue, and an airport lying west of our home, which was at one end of a string of small apartments. Whenever we went to the beach (usually Haulover Beach, almost directly east of Opa-Locka), I would watch the landmarks out of the rear car window, carefully holding on to a small looped strap hanging down in front of me (to be safe in case of an accident!) with no seat belts, of course, in our ’55 Chevy family car. Once we took a long road trip to Albany, Georgia, where many of our relatives lived (I was three then). Although it was hard staying awake for long stretches, I was very much interested in seeing the Suwannee River when we crossed it.

This extensive orientation toward geography made me a natural at reading maps. One thing I liked to do as a little kid was to get the family U.S. road atlas and follow a particular numbered highway route from one end to another. It was no big jump to go on to the world atlas, so at a very early age, I was intimately acquainted with the names of the states, capitals, and world nations and territories. There was only one problem. The world atlas we had then reflected the world at the end of World War II, with large sections of Africa and Asia colored off as colonies of European countries (mainly Great Britain, France, and Portugal). So when Lyndon Johnson announced the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 (in almost Pearl Harbor-like tones of outrage), I was concerned, even at seven years old. But what was this “North Vietnam” that our President was referring to as the bad guys? The only maps I had showed a place called “French Indochina”. But that was the way it was with many places. After World War II, Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, and (later) Portugal granted independence to an overwhelming majority of their old colonies and more recent trusteeships, causing much turmoil in some regions (especially Indochina, India/Pakistan, Congo, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine). A plethora of new, independent nations popped into existence over a span of the subsequent few decades, necessitating that I radically update my picture of the world.

In 1970, when I was in the eighth grade, my picture of the world was radically changed again when I checked out a book titled Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings by Charles Hapgood. In it was revealed the astonishing record of very old, accurate maps that often showed areas in the world before they were discovered! Many of these maps were based on portalanos, which were maps used by seafarers and which often were much more accurate than the maps seen often in academia. There were two old maps which showed Antarctica, the earliest being from 1512 (Antarctica wasn’t officially discovered until the nineteenth century!). And there was another old map that appeared to record a glacial advance into northern Europe, something that would go back thousands of years ago! Now the author theorized that features like this were probably copied from previous maps without the copier actually knowing what they signified. Hapgood believed that in ancient times, there was a great seagoing culture, typified by the Phoenicians, that explored and documented much of the world that we currently believe was only discovered during the last six centuries or so. That certainly seems to me to be more plausible than talking about lost continents or ancient astronauts to account for perceived historical discrepancies (although Hapgood was interested in Atlantis and Mu, as well as the notion that shifts in the Earth’s axis caused cataclysmic changes in the past).

My proclivity toward maps also made learning about the constellations and how to use celestial maps to find them relatively easy. I also heard a few years ago that there was a planetarium (I believe it was in Atlanta) that could show the night sky from the point of view of other known stars. I must have been mistaken about this, though, because the factors of the speed of light with the associated enormous distances, along with fainter stars closer and visible to the “target” star that are invisible to us (and which therefore could not be included), would seemingly have made this an incredibly complicated task. Actually, the idea of having a viable “three-dimensional” map of space, encompassing stars up to a galactic level, is something that the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov had already revealed in his wonderful Foundation series about humankind’s “future” history on a galactic level. But it showed all of the stars with a “simultaneous” point of reference that disregarded the speed of light, faster-than-light travel having been made possible in Asimov’s fictional realm.

Finally, a discussion of maps would be incomplete without reference to the great advances in map access and quality we have through the Internet. I use MapMyRun.com to look for and measure, at my computer, running courses. My Works program has a map section as well. But it’s GoogleEarth that is totally amazing! I love to check out different spots in Florida, the U.S., and the world that interest me. Looking down on where I live from space, I can actually make out the two doghouses that are in my back yard! Some places, mainly the rural ones, don’t have very good resolution, but GoogleEarth is an ongoing work in progress. As is Google’s similar project to map the Moon in pictures!

Stung by the Devil Rays

Last Thursday night, I was listening on my local 99.5-WBXY talk station to the Greg Knapp show when, suddenly, it was time for Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball! I said to myself, why not just check out this team (which I’ve never followed before) and see what they’ve got going on this season. So, I stayed tuned in.

Aside from the announcement of that night’s game in Boston against the Red Sox, the main issue being discussed during the pre-game segment was the fact that the Devil Rays had lost ten games in a row. Their manager, Joe Maddon, was on the show and talked about it, saying that he was encouraging his team to go out there and act as if they’d won ten games in a row. I can just see somebody like Tony LaRussa with that kind of attitude toward his players’ substandard performances. But just the same, I realized beforehand that Tampa Bay historically has had losing baseball teams and that it might be healthy for me, after the recent dazzling successes of my Florida Gator football and basketball teams, to follow a team with a more humble record and outlook.

So, I attentively listened to the play-by-play at the beginning of the game. The top of the first inning saw the top of the order in the Devil Ray batting lineup. The first batter struck out. The second batter struck out. The third batter struck out. Then it was the bottom of the first inning and the Red Sox were at bat. They proceeded to score six runs in that inning and I switched stations, swearing off the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as a team that even remotely merited my following. Later I checked the final score and they lost that game, their eleventh in a row, 15-4. I guess the Rays went into their game last night pretending to be riding an eleven game winning streak! But they did win, 6-5, against the lowly Kansas City Royals. I have a proposal: they should only broadcast games that the Devil Rays play against lower division teams!

Presuming Innocence

I think that one of the biggest “social” mistakes that I habitually make is when I am in the situation where I feel victimized by some transgressor and automatically bestow properties of malice, negligence, greed, or just plain meanness to the party in question. And there are people who fit these descriptions (and worse) in some of the things they’ve done, to be sure. But it does neither me nor anyone else any good to make a premature judgment about another, just because they are a party to a situation that has an unfavorable outcome for me (and sometimes I’m also in error in interpreting the outcome as being unfavorable).

There is a problem that can arise when different sources of distraction, none directly related to each other, come at me around the same time, creating a state of anxiety disproportionately higher than called for by its causes. The (wrong) tendency is for me to overemphasize then any negative reactions I have from any of the parties that I believe are imposing on me, instead of treating them in a more even-handed manner.

There are many types of scenarios in traffic in which suspending judgment, at least for a while, can save a driver a lot of anguish. There are many reasons people may drive too slow, too fast, in the wrong lane, or not move at all. And some of these reasons are legitimate (most of which I’ll never know), while virtually all of them really have nothing to do with me personally. Even when I discern that a driver is misbehaving on the road, it is pointless for me to get into a stew over it. All that would accomplish is impair my own driving!

An especially common and insidiously evil form of rushing to judgment instead of initially presuming innocence is that of prejudice (from “pre”, “judgment”), or bigotry. It’s very important that we avoid tainting our estimation of the degree of guilt of a suspected offending person on the basic of his or her demographic classification. Unfortunately, this appears to still be a pervasive problem that may be a remnant of the ancient times when people would band together in small tribes or other groups and regard everyone else as outsiders, and not worthy of the same rights and privileges as their members (including the right of due process, which includes the presumption of innocence, of course).

In any situation where there is a hierarchy of authority, the one who is “above” may not have everyone’s best interests under consideration when making decisions. Often, just talking with that person about it instead of expressing criticism (or condemnation) can diffuse a potentially bad outcome. The working relationship between the two parties can strengthen because of this, for even if the one in authority sticks with the unfavorable decision, mitigating reasons can be shared and a greater understanding achieved.

The bottom line is that there are many more great things that I can occupy my mind with than dwelling on who’s guilty of what. Projecting guilt on others as an act of habit only serves to bog down one’s thoughts. Getting over offenses releases oneself to be able to focus on what’s really important in life.

Sudoku and Grand Masters

I love Sudoku! And not the easy, medium, or even hard varieties of this fun puzzle. Only Sudoku labeled as diabolical, evil or fiendish will do for me. Almost always, wherever I go I carry in my pocket a few puzzles to work on during idle moments. I am rarely ever stumped on a puzzle, even with the more difficult levels. My main problem is in carelessly filling them out and making stupid mistakes because I was going so fast that I didn’t see a certain number in a square.
When I started out, I used a website titled Websudoku.com, which has all levels and even times you and lets you know if you made a mistake (if you want to know that). But I found it more convenient to just go out and buy one of the many good Sudoku puzzle books out there. My all-time favorite so far is the New York Post book of Fiendish Sudoku, by Sudoku “Grand Master” Wayne Gould.
So, you may already be asking, “What in the world is a Grand Master in Sudoku?” Well, if you’re asking me, you’re asking the wrong guy. I know there are Soduku competitions and there’s also some guy on the Web who calls himself the world’s only Sudoku Grand Master. As for me, who cares? Either you enjoy doing Sudoku or you don’t. The whole concept of “Grand Master” is a bit of a puzzle to me in itself, so I decided to investigate its usage. First let me say that I am the most familiar with the term from its application to young chess Grandmaster Gabriel Schwartzmann, who a few years ago chose to live here in Gainesville and had the opportunity to write a compelling and informative weekly column about chess in my local newspaper, the Gainesville Sun. But I figured that Gabriel achieved his status most likely by racking up enough points in sanctioned matches and tournaments to give him the needed rating. But how do you do it in Sudoku? I sure don’t know of any Sudoku tournaments where I live, and I don’t see any Sudoku on ESPN (to me, it seems just as valid a sport as poker). So where does the title come from?

Apparently, the term “Grand Master” originates with the designation applied to leaders of guilds, most notably the Masonic Lodge (Wikipedia, “Grand Master”). Other than that, it denotes the highest achievement in some sports (and chess, of course). But to come out and say you’re a Grand Master in Sudoku? O.K., if you say so…

Although I love Sudoku, I think that when I finish Wayne Gould’s “fiendish” book (I have about ninety more puzzles left to do in it), I’m going to switch over to try my hand at Kakuro puzzles, which appear to be a bit more challenging. Who knows, maybe I’ll become a Kakuro Grand Master … NOT!!

I Hate Buses

My feeling of abject antipathy for buses has very deep roots. They go back to my fourth grade, when I had to ride a bus to get back and forth from my new elementary school. Actually, though, at the very beginning it was a kind of cool novelty, and I felt a bit of camaraderie with the kids I rode with. But as years ground on, riding buses, too often overcrowded with three students per seat, became a grueling exercise in discomfort and humiliation that neither prepared me well for the coming school day nor relaxed me for coming home afterwards. Let me list some more gripes I have about buses.

--If you’re behind one (or just standing there when one passes by), the exhaust coming out of the back is overwhelming (and I live in the 21st century, having to breathe this black smoke!).

--Buses are mostly bone-jarring, loud-rattling contraptions that have an uncanny ability to transmit any change in the road level to the passenger, at times giving the effect of being on a wooden roller coaster (without any of the fun).

--Buses have enormous blind spots. Quite often there will be a report about someone, usually a child, which is run over or hit by a bus because the driver wasn’t in a position to see (and never can be completely). Once when I was in school, a school bus nearly hit a younger co-student who was pushed in front of the bus just as it was moving forward.

--There are no seat belts on school or city buses (at least in Gainesville). Yet the bus often comes to screeching, sudden stops that can lurch the passengers forward. Once, again in school, the bus did this and I hit my head on a metal bar in front of me, narrowly avoiding serious injury.

--I mentioned school bus overcrowding, but it is often worse on city buses, which at busy times are often full of people standing. If you’re lucky, though, I guess that’s better than the bus just passing your stop by because it is already filled to capacity.

--I have waited on many different occasions for the city bus, having gotten to the bus stop on time, and it would never show up, at least not until the next bus came 30 minutes to an hour later.

--When I went to school, the bus, along with the bus stop, was the favorite hunting place for the school bullies, who made life miserable for others. Many fights took place at bus stops.

--If you’re driving behind a bus, you often have to stop every few hundred feet when it stops.

--Sometimes, a bus will only pull off the road partially, clogging up that lane and leaving it useless.

--I’ve ridden Greyhound some, and they haven’t exactly been joy rides, either. One time I took a Greyhound down to South Florida. I was supposed to be let out at about 7 AM, but the driver, apparently anxious to get finished with his run, tore down the road and dumped me and my co-passengers out a little after 5 AM, in the middle of pitch darkness, with my ride not expecting to pick me up until 7! Another time, I was sitting in the local Gainesville Krispy Kreme donut store (open 24 hours) at 2 AM (another story) when a Greyhound bus, loaded with passengers, pulled into the parking lot. The driver got out and came in the store. Several passengers got off the bus as well, many going around the corner to use the restrooms. After getting his coffee, the bus driver then proceeded to get back on the bus and drive off! I saw people coming back around the corner, tearing off in panic after the bus, yelling at it! Eventually they all got back on the bus a while later after the driver was notified by radio that he had left a large contingent of his passengers stranded in doughnut land!

So, I don’t, as you can see, care too much for buses. But I realize that many people depend on them for their transportation and that overall they perform an important function in society. As for the drivers, it’s hard to fathom how they can maneuver around in traffic like that with such large vehicles and stick to rather precise schedules (that one speeding Greyhound driver notwithstanding). That job must require a lot of skill and poise under pressure. I was able to use the Gainesville bus system to take me to classes at the University of Florida, although one time I tested how long I took by riding my extremely cheap bicycle there. I live five miles from campus, and I beat the bus there on the bike! I think my main problem with buses is that I spent way too much time in my youth riding them back and forth from school, and also spent way too much time waiting for them in the morning at my bus stop and way too much time sitting in them at school in the afternoon waiting for them to leave.

Favorite Song #5

Novocaine for the Soul by the Eels (from Beautiful Freak, 1996)

Catharsis is a term with several definitions. The ones I will use are from the American Heritage Dictionary:

1) A purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, especially pity and fear, described by Aristotle as an effect of tragic drama on its audience.
2) A release of emotional tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit.

Catharsis, used this way, applies to music as well as tragic drama. There are songs that, for want of a better term, are simply disturbing. Whether you want to call it angst, despair, or simply a wailing and gnashing of teeth, they convey a mood similar to the tragic side of Greek drama. And listening to them can provide the cathartic relief that Aristotle alluded to. Novocaine for the Soul is one such song. Although it is sung in a plain, understated manner, the words have an intense effect of a person crying out in anguish over his difficulty in assimilating life. The singer is sarcastic, brutally blunt, and chillingly calm. bringing about an effect much stronger than if he had screamed the words out loudly with a vicious metal guitar thrashing about violently in the background. There is also a strange, sudden three-second moment of total silence stuck in the middle of this song that seems to make the whole world stop! Novocaine for the Soul is a short song, and one that does not define my own world outlook. But we all feel a little down in the dumps sometimes when maybe just listening to “happy” music isn’t really going to do us much good. The feeling that there is a “rock bottom” within ourselves that we can go to (without sinking further) and then come back from, is important. And down there in that area dwells songs like this one. Maybe it’s a variation of the old saying “Misery loves company”. Whatever it is, it works for me! And now, I’ve added my own ridiculous verse to it:

Life is good,
And so’s this song
Just four more songs to go,
It won’t be long …

Next favorite song: #4

2012: A Mayan Odyssey

During the last few years, I have heard from time to time, mostly on the nationwide late-night radio show Coast-to-Coast AM, that there is supposedly an old Mayan calendar that is said to “end” some time in the year 2012. So what, you might say. And so what, I say as well! But apparently, there are some who say that this portends momentous changes in the Earth and for humanity as well. All kinds of cataclysmic events may end up running amuck around (and within) us because some ancient Central Americans got tired of counting the years. To me, if anything, they overshot “the end” quite a bit, since one day their civilization suddenly and mysteriously went “poof!” and reverted to the surrounding jungle (although the people still remained, but in a decentralized mode of existence). But nowadays, there are some people who are willing to sacrifice themselves as talk show guests in a supremely altruistic effort (and they have books and seminars you can buy from them to help spread the important word) to rescue our collective humanity from this fate. And what is the fate? It could be anything from a massive solar coronal ejection hitting the Earth to our poles reversing themselves to other planes of dimensional reality dipping into ours (although I’m not really sure what that’s supposed to mean). The problem that I’ve been wondering about all this is: what’s going to happen to these people and their great predictions when 2012 comes and goes with nothing of consequence occurring?

Certainly those setting a firm date for something to happen are putting their own reputations, as well as their economic futures, on the line. Most likely nothing will happen, right? So, imagine my delight when I happened to be tuned in on my radio to Coast-to-Coast AM one night recently when George Noory was hosting. He had as guest a David Wilcock, who apparently studies and makes money selling books about “higher consciousness” types of things such as chakras, energy fields, multiple dimensions, and galactic consciousness. During the segment I listened to, Noory brought up 2012. Wilcock said something to the effect that those attuned to a higher level of consciousness will then experience all sorts of phenomena, such as telekinesis, levitation, telepathy, and time travel. But what of the average Joe in the street? Well, according to guru Wilcock, it’ll be something like in the movie Matrix, when people just went about their own business, thinking that they operated in reality but actually lived in a manufactured illusory reality. Only with 2012, according to Wilcock (who obviously is planning on having all the “expected” cool mind-expanding experiences associated with 2012), those who are out-of-tune will simply invent their own realities and go on living as if nothing happened. Only Mr. Wilcock and his ilk will be there to assist those (for a reasonable price, no doubt) who want to join them in this great consciousness-raising opportunity. So in 2013, when skeptics like Michael Shermer or James Randi (or me) say, “A-ha, you’re wrong, nothing happened, now admit it!”, they can just reply, “You poor pitiful little creatures, it is you who are living in a false reality of your own making!” So, this 2012 “story” will by no means end in 2013. As a matter of fact, it will only have just begun!

I will admit that David Wilcock was one of Coast-to-Coast’s more interesting and entertaining guests, in spite of everything I’ve just said. Some of his far-out claims seem, at least to me, to resonate with Native American Red Elk (a frequent guest in the past on the same show) and his stated views. His attempt to justify spiritualism in scientific terms, though, rings hollow with me. And host George Noory just sits there gobbling up anything he says uncritically, no matter how preposterous it sounds. But I forget: this is entertainment!

The Sinbad Syndrome

Back in those glorious old days of my super-duper overhyped elementary school, yes, back when I’d cut classes unnoticed by my teachers and wander around, often I’d end up in the library (who knows, maybe this was all part of the master plan). I managed to do a lot of reading this way. One of the books that I read described the many voyages and adventures of the fictional hero Sinbad the Sailor. Sinbad, it seemed, was a prosperous man living in Baghdad, at the time (many centuries ago) considered (at least in the Muslim world) to be the center of civilization. He would make a lot of money, enjoy his family life, and eventually become bored and restless with his relatively sedate life. And then he would sail off on a dangerous quest somewhere. In the midst of his adventure, inevitably, Sinbad would reach a dangerous crisis point when he regretted having left his comfortable life for such dire peril, but since he was committed to defeating the dangers surrounding him (death was usually the only alternative), he saw his quest through and returned to Baghdad. Then he would go back to his comfort, wealth, and eventual dissatisfaction. This happened time and time again (that’s why there were several voyages of Sinbad).

We obviously can’t all be Sinbad with his glorious, exciting adventures (I for one wouldn’t want to be), but we do have our own private quests that we feel the need to embark on. At the beginning, there is often much enthusiasm, optimism, and excitement. But all too often, in the midst of our efforts to accomplish something enduring and important in our lives, we experience a crisis of confidence that tests our resolve to follow through with our efforts. How well we do depends in part, as with Sinbad, on how well-committed we are to succeeding. It is not enough to remind ourselves of the original rationale behind the quest; a crisis will create its own reasoning, going in the opposite direction. Averting potential crises is crucial, but once we’re in the middle of one the important thing is to recognize it for what it is, treat it as something with an ending, and focus on the small steps needed to get through it. At this point, the big picture is not as important as maneuvering through the difficulties. If we make our quest public, or with at least someone we feel accountable to, this will strengthen our commitment and give an incentive to endure through hard times. Once past, the momentum for positive change can resume stronger than ever!

Shows and Kids

I remember as a kid watching the Our Gang comedies, also known as the Little Rascals, over and over again. They had very funny episodes, especially the earlier ones. The later ones weren’t very funny at all to me. Why was this so? The early Little Rascals, going from Jackie Cooper though Alfalfa and most of Spanky’s tenure with the series, depicted life as kids would normally experience it: going out with friends fishing, playing hooky from school (and suffering the consequences), having a crush on the pretty young teacher, and building a long, ramshackle cart to race against a rich kid’s store-bought “car” (to impress a girl) were examples of what these early shows were about. Not only could children relate to them, but so could adults, at least those who could remember being kids at one time. From time to time, the gang would put on a show, which they dubbed “Our Gang Follies”. The first “Follies” reflected the idea of kids just coming together to put on a simple show, without any pretenses. Each of the following “Our Gang’s” follies-type shows became slicker and more professional-looking than the previous. The last of this type that I saw, titled “Ye Olde Minstrels” was almost unrecognizable to me as an Our Gang comedy.

I have a theory as to why this happened. The first Our Gang comedies were silent 1920s productions. When the talkies began, the country had gone into the Great Depression. The original idea was to let the children in the series be natural. Adult characters were often inserted into the stories to serve as comical foils to the gang’s antics. But once the political push to show that the U.S. had recovered from this troubled economic period took hold in the late 1930s, then it was considered more important to put on slicker productions instead of highlighting the kids as before just being themselves, living often under near-poverty conditions. Also, there apparently was pressure exerted to portray adults as more respectable in the later flicks, while the children displayed the expected deference to them. So it was a social agenda, I believe, that made the series less about the humor and joy involved with being a kid and made it more of kids acting like model citizens, which is actually unrealistic, and to be truthful, pretty boring to watch as well. So, what, if anything, does this have to do with today?

I could be totally off base with this, but in my opinion, putting children on stage in big productions is a phenomenon in schools and churches that’s getting a little out of hand. I recognize that participating in a performance here and there has always been a legitimate part of a child’s education and social training. It’s important to learn how to handle oneself in a poised manner in front of an audience. But it just seems to me that sometimes these shows are given more significance than they really merit. The pressure, be it real or imaginary, felt by teachers, parents, and volunteers to put on professional-caliber shows starring the children who are in their care, is apparently very strong. Instead, at least the way I see it, there should be more of a balance between excellence and participation. The idea that putting on a flawless production with near-professional acting and singing is supposed to promote the agenda of the organization putting it on doesn’t cut it with me. The performance, along with the preparation that goes into it, should be about the children, not the other way around. And anyway, life’s got to be more than just putting on one show after another. But that’s sometimes what it seems like, though. I do appreciate the efforts of all involved in putting on these shows nonetheless.

Tariffs and British Music

I am an unapologetic fan of the British musical invasion of the 1960s. From early 1964 through much of 1967, British music dominated the American pop music charts. Leading the way was the legendary band the Beatles, but there were many other artists that made the oceanic jump with varying degrees of success. Artists like Petula Clark, the Animals, the Dave Clark Five, the Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield, Herman’s Hermits, Peter and Gordon, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Chad and Jeremy all had multiple hits over here that owed, at least a small part, to appearances on TV variety shows, most important among them the Ed Sullivan Show. But then something strange happened around in 1967. British acts as a wholesale phenomenon began to not do so well. Other than the superartists, radio played fewer and fewer British songs. It wouldn’t be until the early 1980s when British music would reinvade American airwaves. What happened?

In the 1970s, my parents told me that it was the U.S. recording industry that manipulated British music off the American scene in the late 1960s by pressuring Congress to impose stiffer tariffs on British music imports. It wasn’t just idle speculation on my parents’ part: they had actually seen a news story on TV explaining that. And it figures this way: I have a book that goes back to that 1960s period. Month-by-month, it lists the top-ranked songs for each the United States and Britain, on facing pages. And around 1967, a curious thing happened. Groups like Herman’s Hermits and the Hollies, who had been doing equally well on both sides of the Atlantic, suddenly were only charting high in Britain, and in the U.S. they charted low if at all. And groups like the Who and Pink Floyd, who were really coming in on their own at this time, had great difficulty getting their singles played and charted. Did American listeners’ tastes suddenly change like this? I seriously doubt it. But I’ve tried to research this tariff idea and so far I’ve come up with nothing. But I know that there is at least a kernel of truth somewhere. So I’m floating it out there in the blogosphere: do you know anything about this? Even as a kid back then, I could sense that something had changed, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until a few years later.

Going the Extra Mile

The idea of going the extra mile is entrenched within our culture, the actual reference being from an exhortation by Jesus related in the New Testament. Some dismiss the wisdom of doing more than asked by another in authority. The reasoning is two-fold: one, it would only legitimize the hierarchy of authority that imposed open the “doer” in the first place. Two, if the authority making the demand (or “request”) is treated with a better-than-asked-for result, that may just become the new minimum standard when a new demand is levied. And this could be imposed on everyone, bringing up peer resentment against the overachiever. It would seem to be a wiser option, in the minds of these people, to do a mediocre job of technically fulfilling the chore so that the “boss” figure will have second thoughts about asking again. And to be perfectly honest, I see some truth in this argument! I think that some people will deliberately go “above and beyond” on assigned tasks in order to: one, give themselves a sense of freedom or self-determination and, two, encourage the authority figure to let them work more independently. To me, the first reason rings true, but anyone who thinks that someone who has scraped and clawed their way to a position of authority is going to simply turn a blind eye to a subordinate because they overachieve is a bit deluded. If anything, this would in reality send out an alarm that the hard-working subordinate is an ambitious person who at some future time may challenge or even replace the person in charge. So, at least how I see it, the best thing to do would be to honorably fulfill the assigned job, but to be careful not to overstep oneself in such a way as to ostentatiously attract the authority's attention. But I think it also is important that in fulfilling assignments, one does them with an attitude of respect and cooperation toward those in charge.

The idea of going the extra mile has a broader application than this, though. In school, for example, it behooves a student to consciously exceed the homework assigned, at least marginally, by answering a few more questions and reading a little more material. Putting a foot ahead into the not-yet-assigned material that is to be covered in the immediate future is another way of marginally exceeding expectations. As a principle of habit, it’s a good idea to overshoot (a little) whatever is on our plates at the time. This gives us the healthy perspective that we are a more active force in our own lives and less prone to seeing ourselves as passive, helpless victims of our circumstances, something that helps no one.

My Blog in Its Third Month

It’s been just a little over two and a half months since I’ve begun this blog. There has been no shortage of things to write about, and doubtless that will always be the case. Doing this has been, for me, more of a joyful exercise than I ever would have imagined. Not only has it helped with my writing, but the act of sitting down and sorting my thoughts out to where they make sense on a blog entry has helped me to be prioritize areas of my life better, as well as to look different sides of issues before I render opinions. And even with opinions that I disagree with, I’ve found that there is value to those as well.

I deeply appreciate the enormous variety of blogs out there and the people who make the effort necessary to maintain them. Some blogs, which share the same ideologies, seem to band together in their own circles, promoting and feeding off each other. There are things in the blogosphere called “carnivals”, whereby some parties review blog articles from approved sources that support a particular ideology, select the ones that most meet with their approval and interest (keeping within that ideology’s parameters, of course), and publish them as a separate blogging event, tailor-made for the ideology-in-question. Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing at all inappropriate for people to link to (and be linked by) others who have the same point of view. But the problem is that I don’t think any of us really have the exact same positions on issues and priorities, and some of us, as bloggers, may feel compelled to an extent to customize our expressed opinions so that whoever it is judging our works for acceptance into a particular ideology’s carnivals or family of blogs won’t think that we’re too “impure” in our opinions. Speaking from my own experience, I would probably be excluded from just about all of these types of “blog-conglomeration societies” because I have varying views on different issues that don’t fit neatly into someone else’s shoebox. Besides, my blog is deliberately eclectic in nature. And frankly, I don’t know why anyone would just want to read stuff that parrots his or her own beliefs, anyway. When I surf around blogs, I like to read about all sorts of different takes on things. To borrow Rush Limbaugh’s terminology, I don’t need to be a blog “ditto-head”! Now many “carnivals” out there (such as the History Carnival or Mathematics Carnival) are oriented to certain interests rather than ideologies. And likewise, I have certain interests and show them on my featured blog links. But I also know that my pages will never pass an ideological litmus test for inclusion in someone else’s club, which means that it probably will be read by fewer people. That’s too bad, since I have something to say, too. And the consolidation of blogs on the basis of ideology gives a false sense that if a large bloc of blogs conveys a particular outlook, then that outlook is somehow more real or true. The counterargument could be made, though, that putting blogs together that share an ideology performs the useful function of making that ideology easier for anyone, regardless of their viewpoint, to explore.

So, I don’t have any particular ideological agenda with this blog, specific issues and opinions I express from time to time notwithstanding. But if you, my reader, enjoy reading it, whether you agree or disagree, then that’s good enough for me!

Favorite Song #6

#6 Father and Son by Cat Stevens (from Tea for the Tillerman, 1970)

I didn’t hear Father and Son for the first time until late 1972, when someone played it (for reasons I don’t remember now) in my eleventh-grade English class. It became another example of the legacy of my secondary school education: the most enduring impressions that I came away with were not from any of the paid faculty, but rather from media events like films or songs or from books that I read, some within and some outside of the prescribed curricula. Later, I would hear it many times on the radio, played on the album-rock stations in South Florida. Father and Son, like my #7 song Dialogue, is itself a dialogue, this time between a father and his son. But only one singer, Cat Stevens, sings both roles, singing in low and high pitches to signify the father and son, respectively. The father in the song sees the son as an extension of himself who should follow his example and advice, while the son cries out for respect and support for his own independent decisions.

Father and Son also illustrated for me the crunch of pressure and anxiety that a young person can experience as he or she enters adulthood. It seems that almost any direction taken carries with it some dire consequence, with some loved one there who is only too willing to point out the folly in taking the “wrong” path. Why is it that we as a society put this incredible burden on our young, when in truth life can be a vast stretch of time within which one can change directions many times? It’s no surprise to me that so many young adults suffer mental breakdowns, with all of the conflicting expectations, imposed both from without and within, that they must deal with in some way. To be sure, there are certain specific pitfalls that can befall them about which parents would be unloving if they did not act or speak out to warn or protect them. But in a broader sense, everyone needs to be treated in a dignified way as individuals who need to make, as adults, significant life choices for themselves.

This subject has never been more compellingly illustrated than by this poignant but sad song. There are other songs of this genre, most notably Neil Young’s Old Man and Conway Twitty’s sweet tear-jerker, That’s My Job (one of my all-time favorite country songs). Cat Stevens produced some other songs I liked, such as Sitting, Crab Dance, and Oh Very Young. He later converted to Islam, abandoned his pop music recording career, but later came back. He has now apparently reconciled his faith with his music to the point where he is recording and performing again.

Next favorite song: #5

Affirmation: I Am

One of the principles that author Steven Covey laid out in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was to “begin with the end in mind”. In other words, look back on your life from an imagined point near its end (or even beyond) and get the perspective on what you really should be doing with it now. How do you want to be remembered? A lot of that has to do with the roles a person plays with which they identify themselves. For example, Michael Jordan will always be known as a basketball player. Steven Hawking has his identity as a physicist. Donald Trump is known to be an entrepreneur. At what point did these people (and others) assume their identities? Only when they achieved their fame and material reward? If not, how far back would you have to go to see the beginning point, say, when Jordan thought of himself as a “basketball player”? I submit that it was the moment that Michael, in his early youth, decided for himself that he was. Did he play well? Not at first. Did he have a lot to learn? Of course! But he identified himself with the sport, and that’s what he became, long before he achieved any appreciable recognition for his accomplishments. And so it goes for the rest of them.

I say this because I see myself as being certain “identities” as well, even though I may be in the “infant” stage of growing in them. I recently began piano lessons and feel awkward at the keyboard. The inclination is for me to say that I don’t yet play the piano since I’m just a beginning student. Nevertheless, I am a piano player (read piano teacher Dan Starr’s excellent take on this). I am a runner, although I probably won’t run in (much less finish high in) any races in the near future, just having resumed the activity recently after a long hiatus. And I am a writer. I write this blog, and at this stage of writing, it suits my purposes. As a writer, I’m bound to expand into frontiers that I would like to explore, and at a point in the future this may involve professional writing. Whatever happens, though, one thing is certain: I am a writer. Also, from now on if someone asks me whether I speak any foreign languages, I’m going to answer yes: I’m a speaker of Spanish, French, German, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese. No longer am I going to hem and haw about not being fluent in them. Fluency will come more easily with the deep feeling of identification within me of speaking them already.

I think the key with regard to affirming one’s identity this way is to do it in relatively generic terms, not being too specific. Thus, I don’t call myself a concert pianist, Olympic runner, best-selling author, or United Nations interpreter. That would be delusional. But saying that I’m a pianist, runner, writer, and speaker of foreign languages is the absolute truth!

This affirming of one’s identity, even at the beginning of a possibly long-term effort to achieve competency (and ultimately excellence) in an area cannot be underestimated in its importance. When one identifies closely with a dream, this internalizes it, giving it a better chance to grow to fulfillment. And that fulfillment of a dream can be anything from a humble showing of success or proficiency all the way to outstanding achievements and recognition!

Conservative Talk Radio

When I’m at work, sometimes I have access to the radio. And there are a couple of talk stations that, of course, are saturated with opinion shows from a right-wing, conservative perspective. Now there’s nothing wrong about this, as far as I’m concerned. I like hearing different takes on the issues of the day. I’d just like to hear a more liberal take on them every now and then, that’s all. But even conceding that I’m only going to hear the conservative shows on my radio, I would at least expect the shows to show some reasonable variation as far as the actual subject matter for discussion is concerned.

And, to be fair, there are some differences between shows. Neal Boortz is a confirmed libertarian (except when the military is concerned) who lashes out from time to time against organized religion and what he sees as attempts by them to influence public policy. Michael Savage is hung up on his own continual rant about “borders-language-culture” and sometimes goes off on autobiographical tangents (which I often find to be touching). When he pitches an occasional angry fit on the air (like he did recently against Mississippi Senator Trent Lott), he reminds me of that insane newscaster in the movie Network who said, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” It really cracks me up when Savage explodes like this. Both Boortz and Savage express unremitting contempt for fellow talk show host Bill O’Reilly, whom Savage sarcastically dubs “The Leprechaun”. In spite of the fact that I personally dislike and usually politically disagree with these two, I find myself respecting and listening to them more than other hosts like O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Mark Davis, Jerry Doyle, Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity, all of whom sound disingenuous and phony to me. Also, I like the way Boortz and Savage talk about their home towns on the air (Boortz in Atlanta and Savage in San Francisco).

But there is one conservative talk show host who is, in my opinion, leaps and bounds above the others: Gregg Knapp. I first began to listen to him in 2000, when he was the local Gainesville, Florida, weekday-morning talk show host on 97.3 WSKY. Later, he left to join a station in Texas. But now he’s come back with his own nationwide syndicated show, and is on a different Gainesville station (99.5 WBXY) early on weekday evenings. Knapp can be counted on to parrot most of the conservative talking points you’d hear on the other shows, but he works hard to win you over to his side with detailed facts and reasoned arguing. One of his most compelling tactics is to take an issue and progress through the pro and con arguments from each side’s point of view, usually at a breakneck pace. Sure, he makes fun of people whom I generally support, but that’s part of the game. I personally like and respect Gregg. He’s the “real McCoy”! Neil Boortz and Michael Savage are entertaining, but I have my guard up against them. But Greg Knapp is a different kind of host: he persuades by appealing to the listeners’’ common sense, without drowning them in a sea of insults, fear-mongering, ideological mumbo-jumbo, and phony patriotism the way too many of the others carry out their craft. His style should be the imitated standard that other talk show hosts try to live up to, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they may speak from. He’s still got a ways to go in his career, but he’s going in the “right” direction. I wish Gregg Knapp the best!

The Block and the Search

A long, long time ago, back in the mid-1970s, I used to run regularly. The course I usually ran on was around a 2.9 mile block in Davie, Florida that encompassed Broward Community College and some public schools. The terrain varied greatly from place to place. Sometimes I’d run on asphalt, while other times I’d run over different types of grass and dirt. There was a stretch along the northwest corner of the course that was rocky and riddled with holes. The two main characteristics of my course were wide-open spaces and the surrounding schools. The fact that I wasn’t running through residential neighborhoods was a big plus, since at that time runners were generally jeered at by people and chased after and bitten by the nice dogs running around loose (at least in my fine neighborhood). The culture of “Runner’s World” had not yet descended on our society, and people who were running out in public were seen, at worst, as suspicious and at best, as ridiculous. So I always sought out places to run that were more out in the open country, so to speak. This did not prevent people from cursing me, honking at me, yelling at me, and/or throwing garbage at me from their cars as they passed by. But those events were the exceptions and not the rule. Usually, people around there went about their business and I went about mine. At the beginning of each run, I often felt uncomfortable and even stiff, but once I put in a mile or so, I was “sailing”! I experienced a kind of detached, peaceful feeling while running out there, something that I haven’t been able to recapture to any significant degree since I moved to Gainesville.

But now I am on the search for a similar place in my current hometown. Around my neighborhood is a stretch called “Mile Run” that many people use to run, walk, ride bicycles, or walk dogs. But it seems a bit too “urban” to me. My residential neighborhood is okay, as far as worrying about dogs or unfriendly people is concerned. But I’d be pretty much limited to running on asphalt here, and, once again, it doesn’t have an “out in the country” feel to it. And besides, there are asphalt tracks that I can use if I want to run on this kind of surface. I’ve thought about the University of Florida campus as a possibility, but the traffic there is horrendously high, even out in the more rural areas. There are some places further out west from Gainesville that seem more promising. Thanks to an Internet site called MapMyRun.com that I picked up off a running blogsite, I can now design my own course using any combination of roads I want and measure out its distance on my computer. Up to now, I confined my runs to a treadmill until I built my distance up. But now I’m covering three miles per run and would like a more interesting experience than that treadmill, although I’m grateful to be able to use it when it’s an unbearable 95˚F outside (or raining cats amd dogs)! The search is on, though. I know that somewhere out there is a running course with my name on it, waiting to be discovered!

Civil War and Religion in China

Being an American, I have grown up being taught about the different crises that my country has gone through in its long history. The most severe one has to be our Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and cost more than 600,000 lives, mostly due to disease. Since antibiotics had not yet been introduced, soldiers wounded in battle often had their injured limb(s) amputated as a preventative measure to prevent gangrene from fatally infecting them. I remember seeing a photograph once of the surgeon’s area in one of these outdoor army “hospitals” following a battle that show a large pile of sawed off arms and legs. For decades after the war, the whole country had a very large number of men coping with the burden of living out the rest of their lives without arms and/or legs. And the southern part of the country (along with border states loyal to the Union like Kentucky and Missouri) was devastated and took many decades to recover. As severe as the scale of carnage and damage was to us in this country during the U.S. Civil War, though, it was insignificant in comparison to what occurred in China during the same general period.

In south central China, during the mid-nineteenth century, an ostensibly Christian movement rose up, proclaiming the arrival of a self-proclaimed Christ-Messiah figure in the carnation of a Chinese man, Hong Xiuquan. Together with his associate, Yang Xiuqing, they began a campaign of religious and class warfare that swept through central and south China, destroying anything and anybody in its path that could be remotely construed as straying from the Taiping movement’s doctrine. They were enormously successful for the first few years and took over many large cities, including Nanjing. They, seeing themselves as Christians, invited the Western nations to support them in the rebellion. But the West instead uniformly aided the Qing government to hold them off, and ultimately the rebels were defeated, both by outside attacks and by inside weakness and corruption. The leaders of the rebellion died. The Taiping Rebellion lasted from 1851 to 1864. The most conservative estimates put the dead from this conflict at twenty million, giving it the second highest death toll ever in a war (after World War II)! Some of the tactics used by the Taipings, including show trials of landowners and communal sharing of property looked like forerunners of the Communists in the following century. But this movement also rightly put the fear of spontaneous grass-roots religious movements in the hearts of the Chinese leadership, a fear that explains to a great degree why the government only tolerates some long-established religious denominations (or, better yet, state-controlled denominations) and persecutes a group like Falun Gong, especially after they showed their ability to quickly mobilize a protest demonstration a few years ago.

Although it would be tempting to judge the actions of the current Chinese regime regarding banned religious activity from our perspective as members of Western society with its long-established respect for the principles of religious freedom, it is very important to understand the traumatic historical experience of China with regard to a religious movement that grew out of control and spread like a cancer across this great nation. Certainly the China back then is much different than the China today, and there may be some “victim as aggressor” in play as they hold down growing religious movements that are out of the state’s control. But traumatic experiences in history do play a big role in a country’s take on later events. Just look at how the American Civil War and our more recent experiences with Vietnam and 9/11 have painted our outlook on society and history in this country.