Art

“It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”

–Steve Jobs, in introducing the iPad 2 in 2011

Historically, the arts have been a major custodian of culture.  That assumption may reflect my prejudice, but I stand by it even though language, religion, economic systems, cuisine, social rituals, and so on encompass large shares of what constitutes culture.  But, surely, art with a capital ‘A’ tops the list when most of us think about a defining element that showcases a civilization's culture.  Because of my old school education, the first thoughts that come to mind when considering ancient Greece’s culture, for instance, are The Iliadand the Odyssey, scenes painted on vases and terracotta sculptures, and the Parthenon of Athens.  We think of the things that they made, artful things, which become the touchstones of much of what we know about a culture in question.

So, what do we think about when we reflect on America’s ethos?  After considering all the moving parts of our malleable culture, for better or worse, technology takes its place at the head of the parade.  What else?  It is complicated.  Not long ago, I would have said much of America is expressed by cars and Hollywood and NFL football and fast food joints that line the highways and byways of America: those core definers of American culture.  I would have said that we are a “melting pot” of sub-cultures all mixed and comingled into an unlikely conflation.  But let’s admit it, lowbrow mass media have saturated our screens.  We are watchers and clickers and tweeters. We google more than we look others in the eye.  Many of our places of worship employ high-definition monitors above altars and daises.  In our colleges and universities, course offerings in literature, visual arts, and music that cover periods before, say, 1800 are disappearing from catalogues.  Brick and mortar classrooms are being replaced with online classrooms held in the ether and recorded in the Cloud.  Even Shakespeare courses (and other backbone offerings that once served as core courses) are being taken off the books in many institutions of higher learning.  Let’s face it, artistic expression, the sort we once studied in college humanities classes, has yielded to movies, television, computer platforms, other forms of mass media with cookie-cutter corporate imprimatur.

Literature, painting, sculpture, music, dance, cuisine, and other arts once defined the better part of our culture.  We could understand in context a certain historical period by the artistic expressions left for us to examine.  These arts conveyed experience, allowing us to feel alive within the historical moment taking us beyond wooden descriptions and dates, permitting us a visceral understanding of another time and culture.Alas, lofty art lost its place at the head of the culture queue.  It no longer serves as a trophy that the elite, the clergy, the aristocrats, the educated, and privileged enjoyed.  It became, one may argue, increasingly hollow.  “Art is what you can get away with,” said Andy Warhol, and in no time, we witnessed manufactured art: tee-shirts, bulk produced so-so art, if art is even the word for it, which certainly is disputable.

As ideas, images, audio clips, and words were mass produced, high art lost its matchlessness.  Once a potent prescription for society, art was diluted, attenuated, spread to everyone (Extra!  Extra! Read all about it!).  The middle class, the working class, even the classless had access to the full treatment of what now passes for our culture.  And it is our culture, like it or not.  We have become the billboard, the sound track, the thirty-second Coke spot, the laugh-track culture.  Our “headpiece(s) filled with straw,” if that.  Duh.

Measure how quickly we progressed from quill to printing press to digital communication to all of us awash in information and sensory overload.  As a result, the sui generisof high art, art with a capital A—once housed in the Louvre (or some other such cathedral of Art) is now found on placemats, in gift shops, on t-shirts, on coffee mugs, on every surface the commercial forces can think to leave their mass-produced litter.

Religion once was the sun around which art orbited. Now with meta-information (film, television, computers, streaming devices, mobile phones) screens have become the center of our attention.  Artistic expression, then, has become either less identifiable, or more so.  Widely duplicated (like pressing a finger on one letter on a computer’s keyboard as the image scrolls down the page), art has become the opposite of iconoclasm, an outcome as welcome as a stuttering opera singer.

Okay, we should not be worried that art will somehow become irrelevant.  It will, as always, express the spirit and passion of the human experience.  But, like Waldo, it will be harder to recognize in a crowded field.

Get Off My Lawn

How did it happen so quickly?  Not long ago I was the youngest person on the playground.  Now when I scan the faces around me, I calculate that I am the oldest one sitting here on the bleachers.  Time seems to accelerate, doesn’t it?  At first, the landscape passed me as if I were riding atop a slow-moving freight, but then, without warning, I found myself riding in style on a high-speed bullet train.  The fields and faces began to blend into a blur as I hurtled toward my destination: the last depot, end of the line.

The realization that the ride ends sooner rather than later can work on a traveler’s emotional well-being.  I have long resented the privilege and impudence of old guys: those self-possessed, opinionated, grumpy, and overbearing way-past-their-prime men we often see frowning at youth’s swagger and inked-up bodies.  My view has always been that old folks are jealous of young folks because, well, young people have potential, while old people have all those track miles behind them.  But, Holy Moly, now I am becoming all that I loathe about grumpy old guys.

I should make clear that my changes in temperament and tone have come partly from a bad parathyroid.  Apparently when one or more of those little glands goes sour, the person hosting the dysfunctional gland pumps out way too much calcium for his or her own good.  Imagine that!  Among the liabilities of this condition is a downturn in the patient’s mood and general disposition.  It’s true, a person’s behavior can be commandeered by the slightest change in blood chemistry.  If you doubt that conclusion, try drinking six shots of vodka an hour before you meet your boss for a job performance review.

In short, I am quantifiably a bad-tempered old man.  And I resent myself for being such a one.  I stand before the bathroom mirror and “Boo!” myself.  But until that bad gland is removed, I must get used to the little flares of temper and self-righteous behavior that punctuate each day.  If I were to spill a few drops of wine on my wife beater T-shirt while eating dinner, I will get an instant fury flare-up that spreads to the immediate family, if not to the entire neighborhood.  Look out world!  How could this happen?  I have become a cliché.

I have not yet stood on the front porch and screamed at the local children, “Get off my lawn!”  But if a few children were to set up croquet wickets next door and start walloping a wooden ball toward my grass, I probably would.  No, I definitely would.  A little age and a lot of extra calcium will turn this old guy, usually a mild-mannered man, into the curmudgeon he has feared he might become.

In addition to the bad parathyroid (scheduled to come out soon), I have bad hearing, a bad back, kidney stones, a spot on my liver, another on my lung, and some plaque buildup on an artery or two, not to mention a host of other internal issues to monitor—all this a result of 70 years’ wear and some stretches of profligate living.  Added up, these defects cause cantankerousness no matter what the calcium level in one’s blood might be.  You get the picture.  Best to stay the hell away from me if you chew with your mouth open.

Nevertheless, the triumph of mind over matter remains a dependable principle to which I subscribe.  As one grows older, however, it becomes more difficult to endure the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” while remaining hopeful and positive.  But to resign oneself to moans and groans is the same as yielding to a daily whipping, which I refuse to do.

I have found that exercise helps beat down flare-ups of anger. What’s more, counting to ten soon after I trip over the dog and knock over the floor lamp on my way to the hardwood also allays some of the steam from emotional outbursts.  Also, reading serves as a mild deviation from present pangs of discomfort; one can easily get lost in a good book for hours before realizing that one should take several of those pills that the doctor prescribed for the general malaise of old people with high calcium issues.  But exercising, counting, and reading are all mere deflections from core health deficits.

Maladies and blood chemistry aside, one must endure.  See!  I can smile no matter how out-of-sorts I am.

Hey, I’m talking to you!

Now leave me alone and stay the hell off my lawn.

P.S. I wrote the above article months ago.  Since then, I had successful surgery.  I am no longer grumpy.  Just old.

THe Final Whistle

I was just a kid in March of 1962 when the Bennie “Kid” Paret and Emile Griffith squared off in a welterweight championship bout, a moment that I still think about all these years later.  Griffith killed Paret in the ring, in part because a referee failed to stop the fight when Paret became powerless as he sagged against the ropes.  Until that fight, I had enjoyed watching boxing bouts on television.  But after the “Kid” died right in front of the nation’s television viewing eyes, I soured on the sport.  I just did not have an appetite for such violence.  Just recently, I soured on pro football.  Any sporting event that brutalizes its participants is now on my list of games to avoid.  Sure, I know, lots of athletic competitions may lead to hospital visits (or worse), but some competitions such as MMA, boxing, and NFL football are unambiguously injurious to combatants.  If you choose to get involved in one of these sports, you will be hurt.  Period.

Over the last few years, pro football has been flagged for unnecessary roughness because, as Bob Costas asserts, “this game destroys people’s brains.”  An honest view of NFL football depicts freakishly big and muscular men smashing into one another, creating spectacles of violence for the pleasure of American fandom.  Whether or not that pleasure falls into the sadistic classification, you decide.  With some ambivalent feelings, I have decided that the game has become more blood sport than straight-up athletic competition.  The bigger the hit, the louder the applause.  A common sight in most every NFL game is a player down and being attended by trainers and medical people while a group of competitors from both teams take a knee as a show of sympathy, if not a suggestion of prayer, for the fallen player.  No surprise because each player knows that one bone-crushing play can end a career and leave a body crippled.  Or dead.  More, ask any aging footballer how the knees, shoulders, and hips feel on an icy winter morning, and you’ll discover that no one graduates from the game without a long list of physical deficits.  No one!  Simply put, the game hurts people unlike any other American sport.  Because football is so imbedded in American culture, it is difficult to turn away from it even when most of us know its harmful physical effects.  But beyond damaging a player’s bones, brain, muscles, and soft tissues, other toxic results remain.

Steve Arnold, author of Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto, makes a case against the morality of the game, at least at the professional and collegiate levels.

“Football is a remarkably exciting game, but it also reinforces a lot of basic American pathologies around race, violence, greed, sexuality, sexual orientation, and we give a free pass,” he says. “We don’t even think of it as something that deserves moral scrutiny, when it’s the biggest thing in America. And that’s nuts.”

                  Steve Almond The moral case against football (Jeltson, 2014)

Lately, we have witnessed the flap over NFL players not standing for our national anthem, a restrained demonstration against the upsurge of killings of black men by policing agencies.  As expected, many of the white owners of NFL teams saw these remonstrations as disrespectful to our flag, our military, and our nation, not to mention to the boss class of which those owners are a noteworthy part.  Just take a look at the power structure of football, and the angle on racism becomes evident.  Nearly 70 percent of the players in pro football are black.  Guess how many owners are white?  Take a look at how many quarterbacks are white.  Now count the number of black quarterbacks.  Hmmm—Those numbers sound about right to you?

On the topic of violence, the obvious presents itself.  Do you think the game would have a large viewership if tackling were outlawed?  How about some spirited flag football?  Perhaps some two-hand touch?  How many television commercials could the league sell if violent contact no longer was permitted?  The peanut-munching crowd wants bloody heads and cracked bones.  It’s just human nature, I guess.  Shame on me.  Shame on all of us.

Football has no place for wusses, you will agree.  Ever since the Richie Incognito bullying incident a few years back, the notion of sexuality tolerance has been a stain of NFL football.  Big boy football is a team game driven by floods of testosterone.  The idea is to push people around.  And, I’m sure it will take a while for the football culture to adapt to progressive changes in the larger society.  But for now, football is measured in capacities of testosterone, the heterosexual paradigm of manliness, the pick-up driving, unrepentant thick-necked, smash-you-in-the-face-if-you-piss-me-off lowbrow tough guy.  I know it is not fair to suggest that all footballers fit into this stereotypical description (they don’t), but for the sake of a workable snapshot, there you have it.

When Almond refers to “American pathologies” embedded in our favorite sport, he points to obvious disorders reflected in our larger society.  Sure.  We are sick and neurotic!  Perhaps, then, if we change our culture we will by default change the way we play games or change the games themselves.  Don’t hold your breath.

That is, one way to change who we are is to change the way we play games.  Is that even possible?  Should we accept that we are violent creatures and concede that our games are correspondingly violent?  Really?  Or should we take a greater interest in baseball, racket sports, golf, track and field, and so on?  These less violent games, however, may simply be what methadone is to heroin, a substitute that masks the real addiction.

Really, how does one distinguish the dance from the dancer?  And how do we change culture?  Isn’t it more likely that the subsuming force of culture will change us rather than the other way around?  Should we accept the notion that people are by nature violent and are thus condemned to blood sport games or contests that can be reduced to territorial struggles (hockey, football, soccer, basketball), i.e., games that simulate war?  Can’t we simulate war in non-violent games?  Chess, for instance, or, gosh, I don’t know, how about a board game such as Risk?

For all my liberal high-mindedness, I recall an incident from my sport-viewing youth.  I was at a hockey game blabbing to my companion that hockey did not appeal to me because it was fiercely brutal.  But there I sat—can’t remember why—in spite of my shallowly held beliefs.  As I was demonstrating how morally worthy I had become, a fight started on the ice.  An enforcer named Connie Madigan was playing for Portland, and he started swinging at one of our Seattle players.  I broke off my sermon on non-violence as the fight got larger, the ice littered with sticks and gloves.  Then I was on my feet.  I have forgotten what I screamed, but I know that I encouraged our Totems to punch, kick, bite, and strangle those Portland stinkers.  I am ashamed to admit how much of a hypocrite I was and continue to be.  That confessed, I continue to believe that we can rise above our savage nature and play nicely.

In The African Queen, the besotted and intemperate captain of the boat played by Humphrey Bogart, says to Rose Sayer, the character played by Katherine Hepburn, “A man takes a drop too much once in a while, it's only human nature.”

Rose replies, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

I keep trying.

(Jeltson, 2014, p. Huffpost)

There's Nowt So Queer as Folk

       I’m here on the park bench.  It is a bright fall day, and I am unaccountably smiling at ducks, geese, squirrels, walkers, and in-line skaters.  Funny how a little sunshine and a moment of ease can turn one’s emotions upside down and inside out.  For the last 30 minutes, I have been considering the quality of humankind as it moves past my vantage point.  It is an assessment, aided by associational thinking, that I often make when a procession of my peers passes my judging station.  One thought leads to another because, alas, I ponder Hamlet’s conclusion: “What a piece of work is a man!  How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!  In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!  The beauty of the world.  The paragon of animals.  And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”

         Hmm—seems that the prince is conflicted?  He confesses to an excessive admiration of people in general and then reverses his view of the “paragon of animals,” arriving at a conclusion that casts humankind into the trashcan.  At the least, he kicks the human race to the curb for the time being.  I understand.  People are wonderful; people are horrible.  People are clever; people are stupid.  People are graceful; people are klutzy.  People are kind; people are cruel.  People have godlike attributes; people are full of the devil.  You get the picture.  The duality of our nature makes us a living paradox.  So be it.

Hamlet did not think too much (what a thought!).  He simply made an honest assessment that may have been different had he not been in such a cheerless spot.  Consider his burdens: his father had recently died (murdered he soon discovers), his mother was shamelessly carrying on an incestuous relationship with his uncle, and he (Hamlet) had been displaced for promotion to the throne.  More, except for Horatio, he had no one, not even Ophelia, with whom he could confide.  Not a lot of sugar in that recipe.  At the time of his pronouncement, Hamlet was having one of his bad days, which is understandable.  Makes sense, does it not, to conclude that heaven is inextricably connected to hell just as hell depends upon the contrast to heaven.  We have William Blake to thank for the marriage of heaven and hell, and I suppose Hamlet sees the link all too vividly.

         But what strikes me from my view on this bench is something related but indeed dissimilar: the deep-down grotesqueness of each of us, something hideous and secret in all of us, that part of us that links us disgracefully to hell.  My concentration shifts away from what is godlike in humanity to the dark side, the repugnant part that apparently is as much a part of us as is our spines, that snakelike construction that is the core of our physical selves.  Look at these people.  My God!  What pieces of work, and I do not mean that in a worthy way.  Hard to find delight in these specimens as they pass.  One is dressed as the Mad Hatter—at least he has the ridiculous hat and the powdered face.  Another passerby, a woman of prodigious girth, wears bib overalls and has a tattoo of a serpent wrapped around her neck.  She is followed by a dog pulling a skateboard on which a naked man rides (actually he wears a G-string).  These people are either grotesque or are showing off in such a manner that makes them grotesque.  Now here comes a swell piece of work, a mid-thirties woman wearing yoga pants and clutching hand weights, an attractive woman except for one glaring flaw: she has more facial studs adorning her nose, lips, earlobes, and eyebrows than the Queen Elizabeth has jewels on her crown.  It hurts just looking at her.

Sherwood Anderson underscores the grotesque theme in his portrayal of the citizens in a small town in middle America, a fictitious but nevertheless real place named Winesburg, Ohio, the eponymous title of the book.  With the exception of the narrator, George Willard, each character depicts some inner abnormality or distressed emotion: loneliness, horror, isolation, or existential dread.  The first story (the book is a series of short stories) is called “The Book of the Grotesques.”

Once we see through the “sweetness and light of people” we must confront the bitterness and darkness that also inhabits each human being.  The poem “Richard Cory” comes to mind, as well as most of what Kafka and Flannery O’Conner offer in their fiction.  Others (Shakespeare, Poe, Conrad, as well as many more) also find the funny and frightening element of grotesquerie central to their works.

Literature aside, the subjective view from this park bench shows the odd twists rooted in most people.  I say most because here comes a guy out for a stroll who appears unremarkable in every way.  He wears khakis, a polo shirt, clean sneakers, and has a standard-looking dog (cocker spaniel, I think) on a retractable leash.  Average height, average weight, fortyish, symmetrical features, no distinguishable abnormalities, a man we might call a regular, average fella.  I narrow one eye as I follow this man’s movement on the footpath and determine his grotesqueness is too well hidden for me speculate at the moment.  But it is there.  It must be.

I wonder.  Does he have a duffel bag full of women’s underwear that he tries on?  Perhaps he enjoys poisoning the neighborhood cats?  I am sure there is something twisted about this guy.  Then it occurs to me that for no reason beyond what I speculate, I am grotesque in that I gather such wild imaginings.

Ah, look at what comes here: a man wearing leather leggings and holding a dog leash to which is attached another man wearing leather chaps and little else.

It is a bright fall day, and I am unaccountably smiling.

Old White Guys

Isn’t it about time that old white guys quit calling all the shots?  They have had a long run with mixed reviews, but, I mean, really, let’s try a new strategy, shake things up a bit.  While John F. Kennedy and Teddy Roosevelt were relatively young when they became presidents, all the other U.S. presidents (save Barack Obama) would be classified as old white guys.  And with Trump’s ascent to the seat of power, we have affirmed that the richer and older and whiter and penis-bearing a person is, the greater the likelihood that he will snatch the keys to the front door of the White House.  Enough!  This trend must come to an end.  Fellas such as Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein have done little to recommend themselves as anything other than leaders of a sexual offenders’ support group.  Trump could hold forth on the strategies of effective pussy grabbing, followed by Weinstein’s timeless demonstration of masturbation in front of shocked and disgusted young women.  Moreover, each day lately, another privileged, old, white guy is implicated in a sexual exploitation scandal.  Could it be that just about all men who fall into the powerful, white, and old category are in fact sexual manipulators, sick men who need to prove their dominance in a carnal manner?  How could that be?

At least in the cases of Donald and Harvey, these exhibits for the prosecution have money, power, influence, and centuries of patriarchal hegemony—all of which condition us because that’s the way it has been for, oh, as long as anyone can recall.  Give the car keys to the old white guy.  Let him drive.  It’s okay.  Old guys have been taking us for a ride since the invention of the wheel.  Fair disclosure: I am an old white guy, though lacking the wealth and influence (and, I would hope, the moral failing) that would allow me to take you all for an audacious ride.

But wait!  Considering recent political and social developments, perhaps it is time to change the pattern.  It is not simply two guys representing a whole privileged generation—two dreadful people, by the way—that lead me to this conclusion.  Look at America’s board rooms, at the corporate HQs, at the powerful committees in Washington D.C., at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and at the top earners in about every quarter of our work world.  What you find is a preponderance of old white guys.  Power guys.  Rotary Club members.  Golfers.  Tailored suit people.  Bully boys.  Lexus drivers.  Tax haters.  Movers and shakers.  They sit in the halls of power and influence damn near everything.  And by the way, these votaries bound to influence and wealth will not yield their positions willingly.  Why should they?  Surrendering power is more difficult that acquiring it.

Excuse the cliché, but here is my unwanted and unasked-for suggestion: let’s take out the trash and do some deep-cleaning.  Time to take the harnesses off the old guys and put them out to pasture.  Time for youth and women and ethnic minorities to take their places as caretakers of the American experiment.  Time for our leaders to reflect the racial and cultural diversity of who we are.  We no longer have a monotype society, a father-knows-best society; rather our country has grown complex in its structure and composition.  So, it follows, doesn’t it, that change is necessary for healthful vital signs of our republic?

That change is already happening, in case you have not noticed.  Each week, each month, more and more people conclude that our leadership model is broken.  The old power structure, represented by Trump and all those like him, are, of course, fighting back.  Inevitably they will yield to all the formidable societal forces demanding a new template, a new social order.  It must be.  No stopping it.  For now, our country will suffer from the malaise and fever that comes from systematic corruption.

The fever will break.

We will make America well again.

Patriotism, Flags, and Scoundrels

“When tyranny comes to the United States, she will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible.”                    --Gore Vidal

       In a Tacoma cemetery this past Memorial Day, thousands of little flags marked the headstones of those who served in the military.  Along with millions of Americans, I felt a swelling emotion, pride mingled with commiseration, for those men and women who gave years of their lives to defend our freedoms and way of life.  Regardless of one’s political leaning, a visit to the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. will bring about a visceral definition of patriotism.  For obvious reasons, stomping around graveyards and hallowed memorials stimulates us to appreciate our country, its values, its culture, and its place in the world.

A few summers ago, our travelling party strolled along the paths of The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, and found the experience moving as we pondered the magnitude of the historical battles fought offshore, on nearby beaches, and atop high bluffs along the coast.  Here again, moved by the capacities of our countrymen and countrywomen to defend our way of life, we felt great appreciation for those guardians who died or were injured standing up for all of us.  Even so, why, one wonders, does it take a war to strike up patriotic music and get us all marching in a common cause?

       Group devotion and allegiance for our republic, its culture, its people, its customs and values defines patriotism, and it is most evident during times when our way of life needs defending.

       You may remember, after 9/11 an electric jolt of patriotism surged through the veins of our citizens.  In my small community, people wore Old Glory lapel pins, flags flew from porches up and down the streets, and dozens of young men and women suspended their career plans and headed for military recruitment centers.  We were attacked on our own soil, which gave us a common purpose and a sense of victimhood.  Nothing provokes a nation’s sense of unity more than a violent incursion from a sworn enemy.

As we all know, flights around the world were cancelled shortly after the attack, and heroic acts of bravery and kindness followed the toppling of the Twin Towers.  Thirty-eight wide-body transatlantic flights landed in Gander, Newfoundland.  Over 7000 passengers received food, shelter, and caring touches from the people of that small Canadian town, its population slightly more than the number of stranded passengers.  Disasters often bring out the best in people, and our Canadian cousins displayed uncommon kindness during our time of need, a like-minded patriotism of sorts.

Disasters, though, may breed overreactions, folks allowing their sense of patriotism to goad others into lockstep marching.  In some ways, patriotism, as a reaction to the last war, is the cause of the next war.  Here in our quiet community one old soldier insinuated himself into the local high school assembly a few days after 9/11.  Moved by the atmosphere of crisis and tragedy, the principal agreed to turn over the program to the old soldier who made every student stand and sing “God Bless America.”  Okay, a nice gesture, right?  But the retired military man kept coming back insisting that children salute the flag, pledge allegiance, and sing vainglorious hymns extolling the virtues of our country.  Soon the principal and all his staff became fed up with the xenophobic overreach of our ultra-patriot and cut him off before he could arrange whatever he had in mind next, probably a book burning of all Muslim writings, complete with a heart-warming ceremonial bonfire at halftime on the fifty yards line during the homecoming game.  Conclusion: if one wants to watch a patriotic parade, fine.  But one should not be induced to join lockstep marching.

Too much!  Lately, the struggle to define patriotism has rendered exclusionary results.  Ultra-progressives and ultra-conservatives see different versions of what it means to be a patriot.  But, really, no one has exclusive ownership of patriotism.

It is simple to appreciate.  It is an unshakeable commitment to one’s country.  No one political ideology has a monopoly on it.  Dissent can be patriotic.  Going to jail can be patriotic.

But some gestures of patriotism are staged theatrical displays, folks just showing off and behaving badly in the process.  They include:

     Flying an oversized American flag from the bed of a pickup truck.  Or, for all that, burning the flag in the town square.

     Screaming “USA USA USA” at international sporting events.

     Selling cars, mattresses, hot tubs, and anything else by using our national holidays (Memorial Day, Veterans Day, the 4th of July) to headline big blowout sales.

     Claiming every person who wears a uniform is a hero regardless of circumstance, even those who hold ambivalent views on allegiance to our country.

The Patriot Act seen from a slightly different angle might be called the Unpatriotic Act.  More, most of us excoriate and judge harshly those who promote radical political viewpoints, which goes a long way toward discouraging a free and open society.  Can we accept that we are not a one size fits all society?

A few years ago, my wife and I spent the better part of a year in Canada, and on Remembrance Day that year we were astounded to witness patriotism Canadian style.  The shops closed as people gathered to honor flag and country.  Even though our neighbors had sharp differences over politics, they demonstrated an amazing unity for shared values.

Would that we did the same here in America.  All in all, we have plenty to rally round, but like contentious children, we insist on bad behavior and I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong deportment.

Think of patriotism this way: we are one big dysfunctional family here in America, but family we are regardless.  We quibble, argue, curse one another, and harm one another without shame.  But finally, we are one family sharing more than we wish to admit.  Hey, we need to talk.  Screwed up families are like that!

NOISE POLLUTION

 

       Various categories of pollution—air, light, soil, water, visual, radioactive, and thermal—have degraded the habitat of the human family regardless of where we wander on earth.  Add one more to the growing list of pollutants that foul the home in which we live: noise.

       Think of it this way.  Step right over here.  Open the door.  Come through.  I’ll show you around our home.

       Straightaway you notice blue clouds of cigar smoke so thick in the parlor that you are forced to duck down the hallway, gagging as you cover your mouth with your hand.  You walk into the kitchen and decide that a drink of water would clear your throat.  Yuck!  Water from the tap is brownish, brackish, and tastes vile.  What’s more, it comes out in a trickle.  Oh well, perhaps a bite to eat will settle your growing anxiety.  So you go to the pantry only to find post-it notes stuck on most of the canned food.  “Warning!  Contents may be contaminated with pesticides and/or unnecessary hormones.”  Now what?  What more could possibly foul the comforts of home?  Feeling hemmed in, you climb to the widow’s watch to view the night sky.  Seeing stars should deliver a spiritual sense of well-being as it has since you were a child.  Soon you realize that you cannot see even one fucking star because lights from the mall, the city, the ballpark, and the industrial complex overwhelm the heavens with a magnesium glare.  Forced to retreat, you wind up in the cellar.  There you find a Geiger counter on a workbench.  Yikes!  You turn it on just for kicks, and the gizmo goes crazy firing clacks like Gatling gun.

       Holy Moly!  Nowhere in this house is contusive to a healthful life.  Nowhere!

       Perhaps a good night’s sleep will ease your mind.  Feeling your way back through the funky cigar smoke, you find a bedroom down another dark hallway.  Ah, restorative slumber, yes, and tomorrow you will face the chores of making the house habitable.  But wait!  What the…what is that noise?  Beeping from a truck as it backs up, a pile-driver pounding the earth down by the railroad tracks, a car alarm nearby, a low-flying jet plane directly over the roof, and a car stereo full blasting through the intersection.  Good God!  Is it possible for this place to get any more disquieting?  As soon as you ask the question, artillery practice gets underway at Joint Base Fort Lewis and McChord.  Thump!  Thump!  Thump!

       Not to overstate the analogy, but shall we simply admit that we are not good stewards of our larger home—this good earth?  The more we foul the tender balances of where we live, the closer we edge toward collapse.  At some point, repairing the results of our abuses will fail; remedial solutions will have no redeeming effect.

       Of all the ways we despoil our estate, noise pollution gets less attention than the numerous other ways we lay waste to our environment.  Each decade we turn up the volume on the racket we create.  Our machines and transportation systems insinuate clamor into our lives.  More people, more machines, more need for earplugs and white noise.  The constant auditory assault infects our health and well-being in ways that we are just now beginning to understand.  Weed eaters, leaf-blowers, lawnmower engines, rackety compressors, chain saws, and motorcycles without mufflers have forced municipalities to impose noise ordinances all over America.  Even so, noise grows louder as more people buy hootenannies and snowmobiles and Briggs and Stratton engines for everything from pressure washers to racing machines.  There seems no end to the noisemakers we employ.

       Noise creates human stress, not to mention the disruptions visited on animals, birds, aquatic creatures when they suffer from the tortuous din we spread over the surface of our world and beneath the surface of the sea.  Simply put, noise damages us and all the creatures with whom we share space.

       A few years back, my wife and I took a sabbatical to a small outport in Newfoundland.  I assumed that winter there would bring the peace and quiet found in remote northern places.  Far from cities and traffic, far from airports and sirens, Newfoundland would, I thought, be a sanctuary from the clanging, noxious urban areas in which I had always lived.  As we watched the snow pile to the tops of our windows and icebergs float into our bight, we heard the real sounds of winter: snowmobiles pouring over the snowbanks, young riders revving their engines and whooping it up.  I had not heard such racket since as a child I attended hydroplane races on Lake Washington during Seafair in Seattle (roaring engines one could hear 20 miles away, plus Blue Angels and other jet planes zooming over the lake in a celebration of deafening noise).  So much for my idealized boreal winter sanctuary far from the madding crowd.

       Perhaps I have misophonia, which entails an insensitivity to sound usually associated with OCD.  But it is not just me.  We keep turning up the volume.  Noise pollutes our world, and it is pernicious.  Smoking cigarettes, over time, will kill you; just as the bombardment of noise, nuanced though it may be, will also kill you.

Beggars

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

You must have noticed that we have turned into a nation of beggars.  Every way one turns, someone has a hand out with an entreaty that you cover it with a folding money.  Charities, scams, political groups, religious organizations, colleges, and thousands of gimmie-gimmie organizations stare unrequitedly at your wallet.

It may seem ungracious and parsimonious of me to turn away from the blitzkrieg of beggars, but I am blocking their calls, saying no to most, if not all, of their face-to-face requests, and feeling righteous and emboldened to say “No.”  No, no, no.

No, I am not a skinflint.  Over the years, I have contributed to many good causes, and that pattern will continue as long as I remain rational, but the pushy foot-in-the-door approach to fundraising has soured me and, sad to say, given me a distinctly Scrooge-like attitude toward those whose job it is to extract money from the public.  Dozens of requests for donations flow into my email box each week.  The phone brings more beggars.  The radio voice hectors me with solicitations to donate my car, my boat, even my house for a good cause.  There is no escape.  Which brings to mind Herman Melville’s last novel, The Confidence Man, an allegorical story that puts the question to the reader: Should anyone be trusted?  Hustlers present themselves whichever way one turns.

Just this morning a call came through, a man wanting donations for a law enforcement fund of some sort.  Was it a scam?  Who knows?  Perhaps some of the money raised actually goes to law enforcement needs, but how can we know?  Later, I went to a website that grades charities for honesty and percentage of funds put to good use.  Whoa!  Before I could find out about that police fund, an appeal blocked my screen asking for a donation for the very website that rates charities.  By the way, that law enforcement charity distributes a mere 6% of the funds they receive to aid police departments.  After operating costs, about 92% goes to fill the wallets of the swindlers who prey on an ignorant but well-meaning public.  If I were a cop I would want to throw those crooks into the hooscow.

Certainly, all beggars are not frauds.  Most of the highly trafficked corners near the off-ramps of I-5 here in Washington state feature a drifter with a sign asking for money, usually ending with an invocation to higher powers, something such as, “God Bless.”  If honesty were in play, many of these signs would read, “I’m addicted to drugs and/or alcohol and need your money to get high before nightfall—God Bless.”  So the ethical dilemma comes to this: do I help someone who is in need, or do I help to kill someone who is a martyr to addictions?  Giving a few bucks to the one holding the sign may be lifesaving.  On the other hand, I could be aiding a person’s suicide.  To further complicate matters, on rare occasions I make prejudicial visual assessments (well, that guy certainly does not look like a tweaker) before handing over a few dollars.  Should I trust my impromptu judgements?

As I do weekly, I drive into the Fred Meyer parking lot.  A woman pulls alongside of me as I walk toward the grocery store.  Her window rolls down.  “Pardon me, sir,” she says.  “I just came from the airport to drop off my brother, and I spent my last dollar on a gift for him.  Now I am nearly out of gas and fifty miles from home.  I wonder….”  You know the rest.

After filling my basket with eggs and veggies, I swipe my credit card through the digital reader.  While I wait for the transaction to post, the checker asks if I would like to contribute to the Children’s Hospital Fund.  “No!” I say emphatically.  Perhaps because I all but shout “No” I want to explain my refusal, but it would take some time and probably sound disingenuous to the indifferent checker.  To cover my overreaction, I merely say, “Another time.”

A simple explanation to a long disputation: if I choose to donate, it will be my initiative, not by someone forcing the moment with shame or awkward insistence.  Some aggressive begging strategies come close to extortion.  Each year a “Fill the Boot” campaign to support the Muscular Dystrophy Association finds dozens of firefighters in the streets to raise money for an unarguably good cause.  They walk between the two lines of traffic waiting at the red lights.  No way to avoid them because they knock on your car window as they shake the rubber boot presumably loaded with spare change and dollar bills.  This practice is not only dangerous but qualifies under any definition as aggressive begging, which many municipalities prohibit.  Wipe away smiles and friendly demeanor; the motivation coming from the solicitors is “Give me your money.”

Because of all the requests, I now use the advice of Charity Watch or Charity Navigator, two online sites that do enough research to direct one to worthy charities, ones that do not fleece the unsuspecting donor.  These watchdog organizations vet charities and provide transparency by breaking down the percentage of money that goes to soliciting funds, the number of dollars paid to those who manage the charity, and finally the actually number of dollars invested in the non-profit cause itself.  You will find that an alarming number of organizations prey on people’s munificence by paying executive management as much as 96  of the take.  Some charities funnel money to special undisclosed causes (Kars4Kids), so the kind giver is bamboozled into thinking his or her money is going to do one thing but will actually do something quite other.  In short, too many of these switcheroo campaigns are not what they seem.  Deception and dissembling effectively detour the good intentions of generous people into the wallets of deceitful predators.

Anyway, after I left Fred Meyer I turned on the radio and landed smack dab in the middle of the fund drive for our local PBS station.  How many ways can beggars make the point that public radio is a good cause?  Yes, it sure is, but, oh, they do go on about it.  All of a sudden commercial-free radio hosts the longest most annoying commercial ever imagined.  Come to find out they fail to mention that their reserves are incredibly loaded, $10,000,000.00 to the good.  But they want more, much more.  They even suggest—rudely, if you ask me—that before I die I should include them in my will.  Maybe I have a car I don’t drive.  Sure, they’ll take it.  As part of the listener’s motivation to contribute on this particular fund drive (“As soon as we reach our goal we will stop this fund drive.”) was to end the fund drive.  That is a cause I can get behind.

All sorts of organizations raise money to aid people or improve research.  Yes, I want to fight cancer.  Yes, I care about veterans.  Of course, I want to feed millions of starving people.  Thousands of good causes and worthy organizations try to meet the needs of a sick and unjust world.  But be aware of the amount of money that actually squeezes through the administrative strainer.  In some cases, few if any dollars go to the target cause.  If you contribute to a phony charity scheme, you’d do as well to send Bernie Madoff a check for his defense fund.

A few Christmases ago, I bought a goat as a gift.  I have forgotten how much I paid for the goat, but it wasn’t much.  The animal I donated through Oxfam went to sustain an impoverished family somewhere in what used to be known as the third world.

It is fitting for one to seek good causes that are meaningful to the gift-giver, so I am cutting off the noise from all beggars who hector us, even if some of them represent praiseworthy charities.  I know that may sound unkind, but I subscribe to Hamlet’s declaration: “I must be cruel only to be kind.  Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.”

Free Speech

Well, it isn’t, free I mean.  Like lunch and love, there is always a cost.  You must have noticed that billionaires and mega-millionaires, especially the celebrity types, have great influence on public policy.  We see them on television news, in the newspapers, and hear them on the radio.  No secret that money buys influence.

Luminaries may have no other qualifications beyond a fat bank account and name familiarity, yet those ingredients alone will buy a bully pulpit, a public relations staff, lawyers, and strategists to engineer some sort of advocacy. 

Some recent examples: what does a slum lord, thirty-something, wheeler and dealer (Kushner) know about international diplomatic negotiations?  What qualifies a NBA basketball owner (Cuban) to suggest that he would make a good running mate for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election?  More, what gives Bill Gates the wisdom to shape and recommend changes in our educational system?  Does The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) believe his CV, which includes pro wrestling and acting in godawful movies, think he can muscle his way to stations of national primacy simply because he is a tough guy with an oiled body and lots of tattoos?  Sorry, I do not mean to blow an air horn in a sacred place.  But what qualifies Trump, the village idiot, to any lofty position?  Added up, the voices we hear most often offer not much more than barking dogs do.  Amazingly, we, the hoi polloi, must listen to these familiars because they dominate the media.  They crowd the speakers’ platforms, and they demand our attention in the same way that the bearded lady catches our interest at a sideshow.

I am a fan of the 1st Amendment in theory, but in the arena of politics and influence in our culture I realize that speech and authority go to the rich and bloated.  In other words, money talks and celebrated status opens locked doors posted “keep out” for the rest of us.  Regular folks, listen.  The owner of the kitchen gets to bake while we wait around for the crumbs.

Sure, I speak my mind at the wine bar or in a letter to the editor, but my influence, if I have any, does little more than amuse my neighbors.  Perhaps I have nothing much to offer, but if I did it would make little difference because I don’t have the chops (as a musician might say).

If I had a few extra thousand dollars, I might rent a billboard and declare almost anything at all within reason.  Without that money or inside pull, I can stand beneath the billboard and shout my lungs out.  Which communication strategy do you think most effective?  Point is, free speech is, as we witness every day, most effective to those who shoulder their way to the front of the audience.

Perhaps this has been the way of civilization for centuries, no matter the political system or culture.  The rich and powerful purchase the word.  They control the conversation.  If you stand up at the back of the auditorium and disagree with the speaker, hired security will remove you from the premises, maybe even arrest you for interfering with free speech.

Free speech—we know—is not free.

Dystopia

Evidence mounts each decade that suggests we in the early part of the 21st century face a global death spiral.  Well, perhaps not so much a death spiral but rather something that resembles an attempted suicide, like taking one’s chances on downing a cupful of Jonestown punch.  In some academic quarters, experts conclude that we are already on life support with little hope for recovery.  Truth is, though, we cannot be certain, no matter what the medical chart reads, whether we will survive into the 22nd century.

Without sounding overly pessimistic, I admit the long arch of human history has often presented us with end-of-days menaces—Biblical plagues, bubonic plagues, global weather threats, world wars, and so on.  But as resilient as life on earth has proven to be, the dangers have grown as well as the odds that we will not survive much longer.  Perhaps this beautiful world and its contents may last a couple of hundred years, maybe a thousand, but the odds do not look good for a healthy world over the long run.  Minds far more insightful than mine have weighed the likelihoods of just how much longer our planet will sustain life, as we know it.

One such predictor, The Doomsday Clock, suggests that we are close, just a couple of figurative minutes before midnight when we all turn into dust, when we destroy our civilization with dangerous technologies, chiefly nuclear weapons.  Threats are numerous and put to us clearly: climate change, paucity of water and resources to support a burgeoning worldwide population, endless wars fought with catastrophic weapons of mass destruction, evolving pathogens for which medical science has no antidote, an astronomical event for which there is no defense.

The full list of “risks that threaten human civilization,” according to Global Challenges Foundation:

Extreme climate change

Nuclear war

Global pandemic

Ecological catastrophe

Global system collapse

Major asteroid impact

Super-volcano

Synthetic biology

Nanotechnology

Artificial intelligence

Unknown consequences

Future bad global governance

Steven Hawking said: "Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years," he [Hawking] told the BBC. "By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race."

It is hard to envision a real-life Star Trek exodus from this neat solar system to some distant and future home/world for humankind.  And since an ark will not play into the narrative this time, what will we do for a supporting cast: dogs, trees, fish, insects, birds, all those important environmental co-inhabitants that make living here on earth so magical?  The landscape, seascape, heavenscape, all settings will be altered.

These wild speculations are not fanciful if we consider all the damage life on earth has suffered (five extinctions over the history of our blue globe).  But we should face the conclusion that another endgame, possibly engineered by humans, is as inevitable as fire feeding on fuel.

Doublespeak

After airport cops dragged Doctor David Dao off a United Airlines flight recently, the first public comment from United’s CEO was to apologize for having to “re-accommodate” the passenger.  That doublespeak expression, “re-accommodate,” is less objectionable than saying, “We threatened the passenger, physically abused him, and then hauled his ass off the plane.”  Language works that way—if truth needs a makeover to mask a flaw, doublespeak, euphemisms or jargon can provide a distracting cover.

You have probably received a robo call that began, “This is not a solicitation….”  That lie preceded a solicitation.  Shameless lies work as well as doublespeak because a gullible public just does not often think critically.  Um, have we ever?  We become accustomed to the doubletalk and simply shrug our shoulders in acceptance of language that on close inspection is dishonest, misleading, and blurry.

For the purpose of confusion, it is much better to acknowledge “collateral damage” than to admit, “Regretfully, we killed a multitude of innocent civilians.”  Along those same lines, among the espionage people there is an expression “wet work,” which indicates an assassination is on someone’s job description.  “Wet work,” really?  Naturally, it is much better to die from “friendly fire” than from enemy bullets.  Oh, you know how this works.  Wrap a bitter pill in a square of cheese to get it down your dog’s throat.  Language is flexible and can be twisted into grotesque shapes to mislead one and sundry.

George Orwell’s observation: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”  If a politician does not want to vote for a tax increase, he may frame his vote as a user fee.  If a CEO needs to boost profits for his or her shareholders, the term downsizing replaces less attractive word choices such as layoffs or firings.

In many ways, we are all susceptible to propaganda.  The doublespeak method comes from various high pulpits—media, government, public relation firms, academicians, CEOs, and commercial advertisers.  If we were to count the doublespeak lies and deceptions inflicted upon us each week, we would see the pattern of damage to our sense of honesty.

Sometimes the nakedness of telling truth is unnerving, I know, but it is much better than coming up with a phrase such as “servicing the target,” a military expression for bombing an enemy outpost.

In the spirit of truth, I have always had a fondness for one firebrand character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I, a man named Hotspur.  He insisted on cutting through the verbiage and posturing of those around him.  He wanted plain-speaking dialogue and people who led principled lives.  He said, “O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!”  Certainly, Hotspur cares more about honor and honesty than he does about patience, impetuous as he is, but I like him for his honest speech and lack of guile.

“How much do you usually charge for a gift?” I asked after an offer of a free gift if I purchased a subscription for a certain local publication.  Really, sloppiness and deception is everywhere in our language.

It is a daily challenge for all of us when someone asks, “Are you pro-life or pro-choice?”  Simply reply, “Both.”  You do not need to decode foolish doublespeak.

Trump

Trump’s flaws are obvious as a bleeding carbuncle on the end of the king’s nose.

Iran’s Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, recently said Trump is the true face of America.  Sad to say, the Ayatollah is correct in that assessment.  Because we elected a deeply flawed person (we knew who he was when we elected him), we now reflect the image of a braggart and con man, an immature poseur with a limited vocabulary and an unlimited capacity for vengeance against all those whom he perceives to resist his magnificence.  That is what the rest of the world sees: an enfant terrible, a petulant child, a new-money misogynist, an empty suit full of greed—in short, an indisputable shit-heel.

Look at the company that he keeps, privileged dismantlers of all the progressive construction that this country had accomplished over the last few decades.

Pussy-grabber, pettifogger, arrested development goon, low-skilled literacy dumbbell, and insecure over his manhood, even his wife knows him to be inadequate.  We all know, Donald, who you are.  We know.

In the June 2016 issue of The Atlantic, Dan McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, deconstructs what he knows of Trump’s personality, concluding that he is disagreeable, grandiose, and narcissistic. (McAdams)[i]   Professor McAdams gets under Trump’s skin and shows us just what a soulless person we have as president.

Accordingly, McAdams offers an introspective look into America’s leading con artist: 

Trump’s tendencies toward social ambition and aggressiveness were evident very early in his life... (By his own account, he once punched his second-grade music teacher, giving him a black eye.) According to Barbara Res, who in the early 1980s served as vice president in charge of construction of Trump Tower in Manhattan, the emotional core around which Donald Trump’s personality constellates is anger: “As far as the anger is concerned, that’s real for sure. He’s not faking it,” she told The Daily Beast in February.  “The fact that he gets mad, that’s his personality.” Indeed, anger may be the operative emotion behind Trump’s high extroversion as well as his low agreeableness. Anger can fuel malice, but it can also motivate social dominance, stoking a desire to win the adoration of others. Combined with a considerable gift for humor (which may also be aggressive), anger lies at the heart of Trump’s charisma. And anger permeates his political rhetoric. (McAdams)[ii]

Okay, so we have an angry shit-heel as president, a dramatically defective personality who rose to the electorate’s attention via reality television, a b-list celebrity with shine and brassy mannerisms.  Get ready for more: Oprah may run next cycle, as well as some rap artist (I have purposely forgotten his name), and a rich guy who owns an NBA basketball team.  Add a dash of Kardashians to the presidential race and we have an America that no longer deserves respect from anyone.

Seriously, the American dynasty is broken, as it deserves.  We have been wasting our precious blessings for too long.  America was indeed a grand experiment that proved worthy and inspiring for two centuries, but we got spoiled, lazy, and fatuous.  Though we are relatively a young nation, we have not matured beyond our indulged teenage years of development.  And what lies ahead—we all remember those growing years—are painful lessons that come in the process of becoming adult.

[ii] McAdams, Dan. "The Atlantic." The Mind of Donald Trump June 2016. Magazine.

Readers versus Non-Readers

Readers versus Non-Readers

As an educator for over forty years, I found one significant shortcoming among my students: in the main, they did not invest much effort in reading.  Books, I mean.  Sure, they read enough to keep up with the class, bits of our texts and a flip-through of Cliffs Notes, perhaps.  Yes, and they scrolled through screens of social media on their digital devices, maybe scanned the sport’s page left on a cafeteria table, or wetted a thumb and forefinger over a magazine, but read a whole book listed on the syllabus, either fiction or non-fiction, no way.  Mind you, I did not assign Moby Dick or Ulysses, or some other lengthy tome.  I knew not many would slug through those worthy classics.  So I settled for The Great Gatsby or a series of short stories that students might read in a sitting.  When more than one student complained about the length of “Bartleby the Scrivener,” a longish short story, I knew that I had somehow failed in introducing my charges to the transformational pleasures of great literature.  That conclusion, confirmed by responses on essay examinations, proved correct when I read the bluebook answers that demonstrated little more than a surface understanding, if that, of assigned primary texts.

The proliferation of non-readers is troublesome because this recent crop of learners, the Millennials and the latter end of the X-generation, care more about getting information quickly (snap-snap) than about using critical thinking skills.  The notion of reading a novel, say three hundred pages or so, leaves the quick-fixers stunned.  No stories, please, nor critical ideas, nor history, no, none of that.

To the point, however, non-readers added together mark a dangerous trend in the cultural and intellectual health of our society.  How dangerous?  I believe non-readers elected the un-presidential Trump; not many avid readers voted for him, I am sure (no proof for that conclusion, but in the spirit of Trump, we no longer needs to support any conclusion whatsoever).  Part of an education has to do with knowing when a person is talking rot or not.  Trump is pure rotter.  Trump himself is not a reader though he claims that he “is a big fan of reading.”  Numerous sources have pointed to indicators that Trump has low-level literacy skills.  If true, it is more than worrisome for the President of the United States to struggle reading texts.  Such a deficiency carries with it hazards of faulty cognitive abilities, not to mention insecure behavior in order to cover up literacy deficiencies.

Non-readers voted for him in large numbers because, well, they do not read, do not know how to evaluate sources that they reject in the first place.  I know how this argument sounds—shame on me for thinking critically in a society that values flock behavior, either sheep or starlings.  But, like Trump, I will not apologize for making a brash statement: non-readers beat the readers during the 2016 election cycle.  In short, the bad students snatched a political victory from the good students.  Further, having much in common with Trump, non-readers could easily spot a comrade with whom they could share the dunce chair.

“Trump’s approach to the campaign—relying on emotional appeals while glossing over policy details—may have resonated more among people with lower education levels as compared with Clinton’s wonkier and more cerebral approach.

“So data like this is really just a starting point for further research into the campaign. Nonetheless, the education gap is carving up the American electorate and toppling political coalitions that had been in place for many years.” (Silver)

 Further, Nate Silver juggles conclusions that portend new divisions within the American electorate.

“Education levels may be a proxy for cultural hegemony. Academia, the news media and the arts and entertainment sectors are increasingly dominated by people with a liberal, multicultural worldview, and jobs in these sectors also almost always require college degrees. Trump’s campaign may have represented a backlash against these cultural elites.

“Educational attainment may be a better indicator of long-term economic well-being than household incomes. Unionized jobs in the auto industry often pay reasonably well even if they don’t require college degrees, for instance, but they’re also potentially at risk of being shipped overseas or automated.

“Education levels probably have some relationship with racial resentment, although the causality isn’t clear. The act of having attended college itself may be important, insofar as colleges and universities are often more diverse places than students’ hometowns. There’s more research to be done on how exposure to racial minorities affected white voters. For instance, did white voters who live in counties with large Hispanic populations shift toward Clinton or toward Trump?

“Education levels have strong relationships with media-consumption habits, which may have been instrumental in deciding people’s votes, especially given the overall decline in trust in the news media.” (Silver)

Silver. "Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote For Trump." 22 November 2016. FiveThirtyEight. online. 26 March 2017.

Classless

While I wait to board, the gatekeepers announce priorities for seating: “We welcome our privileged Platinum class to board now.”  Later, “We now accept our Gold class passengers to board.”  After running down a long list of precious metal classes, I, along with the remaining schmucks jostle for position and scramble to find an overhead space for our tattered luggage so the plane may take-off.  In the process of finding our seats, we must walk passed the well-fed first class passengers already sipping cocktails and reading their Wall Street Journals.

Every time I board a plane, I think about class strata, all those socioeconomic factors that separate us.  Too, a similar thought strikes me when I attend a baseball game and look to the luxury sky boxes where privileged people sip microbrews behind tinted glass.  Then, on the way home, I poke along in traffic while luxury cars zip past in Lexus Lanes (toll lanes that relieve congestion for a metered price).

Certainly, money tops the list of who comes first and who gets the best treatment, but wealth is just one of several defining factors that separate people according to status.  Military, clergy, academicians, and most organizations have a pecking order.  Like ant colonies, society assigns stratification to its members.  Even among ascetic religious orders, a hierarchy exists.  Heck, I imagine even homeless people have a hierarchy, one that assigns who gets the most comfortable spot under the bridge.

Hereditary rank, according to our founding fathers, should not exist, but, of course, it does in recognizable degrees.  Should we be able to look anyone in the eye and conclude, “We are all equal”?  Our experiment in democracy starts with the premise that one person is as good as another vis-à-vis rights, free speech, and legal pursuits.  But we know, yes, we all know, that education, money, power, gender, and race are factors in who gets to sit in the front row.

This brings to mind a British academic I met in London years ago.  She lectured in one of the classes I taught there for rich college kids from America.  After her brilliant lecture on the timeline of kings and queens (all done in a ninety-minute fast-talking recap), she and I retired for ale at the corner pub.  She was in a quarrelsome mood because one of the students had asked her if a Roman Catholic could ever become the titular monarch of the realm.  Her reply was fiery, her face flaming at the thought of a papist wearing the crown.  She had said in an emphatic whisper that sounded like a shout, “NEVER!”  So at the pub she chided me for not preparing my students with the necessary background of England and for not explaining the time-honored system of royal succession.  Then she carped about what was really bugging her about Americans in general.

“The trouble with you Yanks is that you think you can be whatever you choose to be,” she began, “and of course you cannot.”

“Well,” I said.

“In this country we know our place in society, and we are happy to avoid the struggle to be something that we are not.  We accept the station in which we find ourselves.”

“Well—”

“Moreover, you Yanks apparently think that you can elbow your way to the front of the line just by cheating and killing those in front of you.”  She was getting hot.  “To be boorish, gluttonous bullies, that is what your social system teaches.  You talk too loudly and act as if you figured something out that we in this culture rejected centuries ago.”

In defense of the American way, I think I pointed out that England was a sexist, bigoted society beyond imagination, and that its colonial past and hegemonic behavior enslaved millions of people.  I went on the say that America learned how to play the bully part from the nose-in-the-air British.  While coursing across the village green, I think I said, the blue bloods took better care of their dogs than they did of the peasants cast into the poorhouses.  I probably said much more, but I have forgotten how we came to a truce and ordered another round of drinks.

So how far have we come in levelling those disparities that divide the peoples of the world?  Language, diet, customs, religion, money, race, and gender (not to mention dozens of other factors) all score demarcation lines among us.  We may be able to ameliorate the inequalities for many of those divisive factors, say race and gender for instance.  But wealth and power influences may be too much for civilization (is civilization is the proper term?) to bear.  Consider this disturbing conclusion from the Huffington Post:

Using research from Credit Suisse and Forbes' annual billionaires list, the anti-poverty charity was able to determine that the richest 1 percent of the world's population currently controls 48 percent of the world's total wealth.

If trends continue, Oxfam predicts that the most affluent will possess more wealth than the remaining 99 percent by 2016, The New York Times reported. (Walker)

Because selfishness begets poverty, and because too many of us are downright selfish, economic classes appear to be those that will always divide people.  No matter what.

How much unbalanced weight can this weary world tolerate?  That is not a rhetorical question.  Place 100 starving dogs in a fenced yard and give all the kibbles to one pampered pup.  What do you think will happen?  Now there is a rhetorical question.

Walker, Jade. Huffington POst. 19 January 2015. Online. 5 Novemeber 2015.

Lab Rats

 The astronomer Kepler wrote, “I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.”

Trends occur in all segments of culture.  Dance (funky monkey), music (big band swing), fashion (spats), visual art (Neoclassicism), technology (the big thing last year), family structure (man and woman and children), and language (Esperanto)—all these elements of culture shift inconstantly as current tastes shuffle and re-deal.  In the spirit of Hegel’s dialectic, we recognize the faults of the prevailing thesis (whip a child for not doing homework, for instance), counter it with an antithesis (withhold the whip but soundly scold the child), and arrive at a synthesis (whip the child briefly and then administer a mild scolding), which then becomes the new thesis.  And so on.  What is de rigueur will soon go the way of the buggy whip and venesection.  But while we no longer burn witches, we continue to apply witchcraft and wild guesswork in the classroom.  That is where the “thoughtless approval of the masses marches forward. 

Ever since 1640 when Henry Dunster, a puritan clergyman, became the first president of Harvard (and taught all its classes, every subject offered), educational theory in America has drawn a loopy experimental design.  As if students were lab rats, the theoreticians have run experiments on each generation of children who subsequently had to suffer the consequences.  We have tried teacher-centered education, new math, flipped classrooms, open classrooms, phonics, normative education, Bloom’s taxonomy, constructivism, brain-based learning theory, control theory of motivation, behavioral objectives, Piaget strategies, social learning theory, cultural learning theory, and countless other trends to groom our students toward something better than what we had tried previously.

All of these tactics work to some degree, I suppose, but as in other theoretical domains, they all have flaws when used as capstone strategies.  After nearly forty years in higher education, I have slogged through stacks of throwaway paperwork; all to satisfy the leaders of my college that I was all-in with the plat du jour educational plan.  I, along with most of my colleagues, have sharp skepticism over the latest fashion in pedagogy, and for good reason.  Because when sucking all the juice from the latest and greatest de facto educational policy, we find just the rind before moving on to something new that we are to garnish upon ourselves and our students.

The captains of education want course objectives and desired outcomes.  They want to rewrite the mission statement.  They want verbose reports (written in educationese) that assess every aspect of what goes on in the classroom!  They want evidence-based assessments.  Accreditation reports have become almost a full-time job for faculty at many institutions.  They want maps, not the countryside itself.  During office hours, I must tell my students that I cannot spend more than a few minutes with them because I have educational flapdoodle to grind.  Of course, I say that with a smile and hope that the irony is not lost on them.

Truly, how much have we improved in the classroom since Hard Times in which schoolteacher Gradgrid demanded simply “facts, facts, facts…”?  To that misguided teacher all education amounted to facts, merely that, nothing more.  And since facts are slippery and change every generation, his dictum is now nothing more than an anachronism.  Even admitting that, education theorists continue to bang the drum of utilitarianism.  They want empirical validation.  They want measurements, and those data become more important to them than the ones measured.  They should know better.

William Hazlitt got it right in his essay “On the Ignorance of the Learned,” from Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners (1822).  His argument disparages the minds removed from actual experience, those who claim “reason over humanity.”  He claims:

Such is the use which has been made of human learning. The labourers in this vineyard seem as if it was their object to confound all common sense, and the distinctions of good and evil, by means of traditional maxims and preconceived notions taken upon trust, and increasing in absurdity with increase of age. They pile hypotheses on hypotheses, mountain high, till it is impossible to come to the plain truth on any question. They see things, not as they are, but as they find them in books, and 'wink and shut their apprehension up', in order that they may discover nothing to interfere with their prejudices or convince them of their absurdity. It might be supposed that the height of human wisdom consisted in maintaining contradictions and rendering nonsense sacred. There is no dogma, however fierce or foolish, to which these persons have not set their seals, and tried to impose on the understandings of their followers, as the will of Heaven, clothed with all the terrors and sanctions of religion. How little has the human understanding been directed to find out the true and useful! How much ingenuity has been thrown away in defense of creeds and systems!

It may sound foolish to ignore the doctrinaire advice coming from higher schools of education, but all but a few practitioners overlook the magic ingredients in successful teaching techniques: love and understanding.  Give me a teacher who loves his or her subject and students, and all theory turns to balderdash.  Give me a teacher who has passion and involves his or her students in the excitement of learning, and eschew the Doctor of Education degree.  A good teacher is nothing more than a person who points the way so that students can learn by their own devices.  And they will learn if administrators and teachers stay the hell out of the way once the excitement begins.  Stir a student’s imagination and curiosity, and nothing will stop learning.  The trick is to open the gate to learning, not to herd the pack into a fenced field.

Currently, of course, digital learning is the rage.  School leaders want completion rates to soar, and online classes provide great efficiency.  Digital classrooms allow students the privilege of attending class in an ether cloud without ever having to meet a professor, a classmate, or a book.  Instructional administrators want to push credits (like cheese samples at Costco) to students.  While collecting tuition and designing curricula, the CEOs of education promote a new generation of mentors and robots, not qualified professors, to oversee coursework.  Having taught online courses, I know how flawed such credit generators are.  For all that, I could never be certain if the completed essays and tests that I pulled from the course drop-box were written by my student or by a paid consultant.  Moreover, I found no evidence that online students learned even half as much as those in brick and mortar classrooms did.  Put simply, newfangled technology, like the drawbacks of the industrial revolution, has yet to consider the humanity it serves—production is grand, money streams flow, but people (FTEs) suffer from the consequences.  How do they suffer?  They get credits but learn little.

This brings me to Common Core, the latest self-imposed education dictum foisted upon K-12 systems.  Business and political interests want to share this enlightenment by placing our precollege organizations into this straightjacket.  Make kids prove they learn.  Set a hurdle over which each child must leap.  Tough love.  And if the results do not arrive, somebody must pay.  Never mind that the plan enjoys no credible proof to show increased student achievement.  Tests are difficult, often defeating.  The whole fiasco (CC) is the next iteration from the self-assigned experts who think their plan will properly educate our youth.  It won’t.  If anything, CC will discourage more than help.  And our school systems need help.  Instead of throwing our floundering youth a lifejacket, we flip them a barbell and a reprimand for not keeping their heads above water.  “The floggings will continue until morale improves,” a favorite saying from the military culture, applies here.  Perhaps it is counterintuitive to suggest that we must remove the systems in order to fix the structure of education, but that is just what needs to happen.

Among other sensible objections, the following excerpt from a white paper states the misdirection of Common Core’s emphasis on skill training.

Skills training alone doesn’t prepare students for college-level work. They need a fund of content knowledge. But Common Core’s ELA standards (as well as its literacy standards for other subjects) do not specify the literary/historical knowledge students need. They provide no list of recommended authors or works, just examples of levels of “complexity.” They require no British literature aside from Shakespeare. They require no authors from the ancient world or selected pieces from the Bible as literature so that students can learn about their influence on English and American literature. They do not require study of the history of the English language. Without requirements in these areas, students are not prepared for college coursework. (Stotsky)

It may be obvious, but I have long thought that a good teacher attacks his or her career with passion and humility, not with schemes.  Moreover, a good educational theorist would do well to pack up the surveys and clipboards and spend some time in an early education environment where learning flourishes with little more than proper supervision.

Stotsky, Bauerlein and. How Common Core's ELA Standards Place College Readiness at Risk. September 2012. Document. 9 September 2015.

Lies, Lies, and More Lies

Lying is slathered onto the American culture like honey on toast.  Truly, our societal values support, even encourage, lying.  It typically starts when we turn on the radio while getting ready for work.  First thing in the morning, we hear an eager shill say something such as, “Come on down and get the deal of the century on a brand new Ford pickup truck.”  Or, “See my good friends at Zeno’s Sleep Emporium for an American Revolution in mattress design.”

Okay, reasonable people, we realize that Ford truly does not offer a deal of the century.  And, yes, Zeno’s Sleep Emporium sells praiseworthy mattresses but nothing better or different from any other company that hawks the same brands ad infinitum.  We are used to the spiels, the downright lies, and the flapdoodle that spatters rubbish into our consciousness without cessation.  After all, advertising is mother’s milk for a society built on no money down and twelve easy payments, a society in which Thanksgiving has become a warm-up holiday in preparation for Black Friday.  Adverts now squeeze between paragraphs when we read online news articles.  With every Google search, popups disrupt our curiosity like the rearing head of the Loch Ness monster.  While we lounge at the beach, aerial banners drag behind small planes.  Billboards, radio, television, posters, even inserted into the flow of a baseball game call (“the next pitch is brought to you by Brown Cow Cheese” and “there’s a double play, and if you want to double your pleasure, try a double burger at Cleo’s Burger Grill”)—unless you shut down all devices and go blind and deaf, there is no escape.

The American way of teaching us to tolerate these lies, which we call advertising, must have a lasting effect on the moral well-being of all its citizens.  Seriously, we begin to respect big liars, the ones who have lied their way into billionaire status.  When the object becomes moneymaking, our moral Geiger counter goes haywire.  Apparently, it is okay to dish up a con and call it fair play because that is the way of the fast-talkers, the get-rich-quick barkers.  That is the American way.

When my son attended high school, every school day he had to endure a good-morning broadcast called Channel One, a brief marketing tool meant to deliver the morning news to schoolchildren.  Before classes began, youngsters had to watch television (as if they did not get enough of that at home).  If the school district allowed the company delivering the news into their classrooms, then the Channel One distributors would provide free television sets to those schools that permitted the news into their classrooms.  But there was a catch.  Nothing is free, right?  In accepting the dubious gifts of television sets and morning news, the school district had to agree to allow a daily menu of adverts embedded in the broadcast for consumption, all those malleable minds soaking up the virtues of whatever products the ad agencies hawked.  The children did not seem to object.  They should have.  They were targets in a scheme to capture the next generation in the paralyzing clutches of Madison Avenue.  I do not remember if the ads were for soft drinks, breakfast cereal, or cool clothes, but it does not matter.  The marketers had purchased an opportunity to bombard impressionable children to buy stuff.  Channel One still exists, but after ownership changes, schools may now opt for ad-free broadcasts for a fee.

Ever since Elliott’s Asthma Cigarette Company told us to smoke their product in order to have better health, we have been sucking up dishonesty.

The ethics of the big sell has always been dicey.  Truthful advertising works, I know, but all too often the gimmick, the lie, the false claim gets the suckers to line up cattle heading down the chute.  Truth-in-advertising laws supported by the Federal Trading Commission, however, have derailed some of the liars.  But not many.

Accordingly, “When the FTC finds a case of fraud perpetrated on consumers, the agency files actions in federal district court for immediate and permanent orders to stop scams; prevent fraudsters from perpetrating scams in the future; freeze their assets; and get compensation for victims.” 

Although it appears useful to have a watchdog guarding our interests, the FTC can hardly keep up against all the false claims and sleight of hand tricks employed by those seeking unfair advantages.

After hanging up on the fifth robocall of the day, I realized that no one looks after our interests (even the Federal Trading Commission) in the same manner as we, the consumers, do.  In an effort to staunch the enfeebling attacks on my well-being, I do what so many other Americans have found necessary.  I mute the commercials on the television, I delete immediately all trash from the in-box email, I refuse to open the door when a slick-looking stranger knocks, and I turn down the radio at every commercial.  I resist by making myself a quick-moving target.  It is pathetic of me to play dodge-ball with the purveyors of commerce, I know, but how else to avoid manipulation?

I understand why Jesus drove the moneylenders from the temple.  All these centuries later, the money-grubbing stinkers continue to insinuate themselves into every precinct of our lives.

Since Brevity is the Soul of Wit

 
You have 140 characters—no more.

You may have noticed that Twitter is similar to profanity: quick emotional reactions coming impulsively and lacking dimension.  Whoa, would you like to see the waffle I ate for breakfast?  Hey now, who wants to see my dog Dewi begging for a Milk Bone?  I guess you would like to see my latest DIY birdhouse that I made using Legos and chopsticks.  Maybe you would like to know how many steps I recorded on my Fitbit.  I can go off like a popcorn machine with these puffy kernels of triviality.  No need to analyze, to think deeply, or to develop an idea.  React—take a reflex hammer just below the patella and invoke a knee-jerk reaction.  There you go.

This is the age of road rage, of internet highway impatience (darn four-second wait times), and of, as the Nike’s motto suggests, the era when we should “Just Do It.”  The Millennium and Gen-X multitudes know their right-click from their left click.  Their necks stoop over smart phones four-five hours a day, which will likely result in a bunch of hunchbacks 40 years from now.  “With smartphone users now spending an average of two to four hours a day with their heads dropped down, this results in 700 to 1,400 hours a year of excess stresses seen about the cervical spine”, according to the research. (Khaleeli)

Neck-benders, you have 140 characters to say it all—no more.

Allow me.  Here goes.

But wait.  Before I do that, help me understand why the dot commandeered the period, why the number symbol became the hashtag?  Is there no end to the perversion of standard symbols?  The guillemets and brackets have morphed into tools for making little faces at the end of text messages and emails.  Emoticons litter correspondence, most of which add nothing but puzzlement to me.

Enough.  Here, then, is my Twitter message, which I reserve for this space because I do not have an account and never will.

Have a nice day. It is what it is. Don’t take any wooden nickels. At the end of the day--:D<3.  And this: (:-(.  Not to mention this: >;->.

Counting spaces, I got everything down in fewer than 140 characters.  Of course, I did not need that many spaces because, bereft of concentrated thought, I find myself like a sparrow on the wire tweeting to the ether, hoping that some other bird will tweet back and let me know that I am not alone.

My conclusion: social media are #.dumb.

A number sign followed by a period followed by the word dumb.

Khaleeli. The Guardian. 24 November 2014. 6 June 2015.

Foregiveness

--“Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”  Oscar Wilde

Off the top of my head, my sins include assault and battery, petty theft, animal cruelty, and defamation of character.

I confess.

On my elementary school playground, I once kicked a kid on as hard as I could. I pretended that I was going for the soccer ball, but my aim went directly at a rival’s shinbone.  To my credit, I did feel a pang of guilt as my adversary hopped on one foot for a while.

Another time, I stole some dimes and quarters from the “Poor Box” my father placed on top of the black-and-white television set.  Dad instructed the family to leave spare change there so we might help those who had even less than we did.  Dad was like that: caring for others even at the expense of his own family. I liked the let’s-help-the-poor idea, but I may have wanted some new baseball cards.  Besides, my rationalization considered our family as poor as any other I knew.

Yet another time, I spanked our dog because he was a bad dog and messed on the floor.  The thought of that cowering pooch never left me and never will.  He could not know the reason for such punishment, for he was a gentle, innocent creature, whose loyalty knew no limits.  I wish that his sweet soul would forgive me even now.

On many occasions during my criminal youth, I told lies.  I slandered, gossiped, and inflated all truth beyond recognition.  Iago could not surpass me in a dissembler contest.  Had I not stopped such deplorable behavior, I would have risen beyond the rank of pathological liar and found an enriching job among the captains of commerce, maybe even a seat in the United States Congress.

In fact, I can now safely put a check mark next to each of the Seven Deadly Sins, pride leading the way.  I cannot be proud of my pride because it wants to strut and bellow over humility’s bowed head.  It is a bad winner and an even worse loser.

If I were to make a list of all the rotten things I have done (and still do), I might fill a volume as lengthy as the manual on how to build a Boeing 747.  Okay, I am a stinker.  I accept that shameful role.  But this old coot yearns for forgiveness.  "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us…”  Hard cheese, isn’t it?

However, even though I have grown out of my delinquent youth, I retain those traits that once coaxed me to make prank phone calls and call people vile names.

This poser always brings me to forgiveness, the all-purpose cleanser of sin and hatred.  “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you,” wrote Lewis Smedes.  Thank you for the thought, Lewis, but I am having a tough time breaking out of prison.  For a full explanation of this human circumstance read John Donne’s Holy Sonnet “Batter my Heart.”  Here, I will spoon-feed it to you:

 

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Some paradox, that!

But this much is certain: forgiveness is a powerful attribute that transcends human instincts.  It is easier to plant a fist in someone’s face than to kneel and bow one’s head.

So the other day a portly guy who looked like Santa Claus without the red and white suit started yelling at another shopper in the Fred Meyer parking lot.  Apparently, a young woman parked too close to the big man’s car, and he was barking at her.  I put in my view on the matter of parking etiquette, saying, “Leave her alone—you’re no expert on proper parking.”  Oops!  I should have stayed out of the kerfuffle because the big guy got right in my face and announced he was going to kick my f*cking a**.  Why did I insinuate myself into the squabble?  I was not trying to defend an innocent person.  I responded to a territorial struggle.  Yes, I asserted myself because someone growled louder I.  My pride (unnecessarily), got in the way of reason, and it almost got me a bloody nose.  Or worse.  Forgive me, Santa.  I have been naughty.  And I forgive you, too, for being a loudmouth jerk.

Batter my heart.

Costco Shoppers

The other day as I pushed my outsized cart through the aisles of Costco, I came to a startling realization.  Nearly every shopper I encountered was about my age and, like me, had likely self-assigned some retail therapy—out shopping and killing both time and money.  After finishing the morning paper and taking the dogs for a walk, I frequently escape to Costco (or some other fetching marketplace) for no reason of need.  That way I can avoid my desk where all those projects await my industry.

Recently retired from the hallways and conference rooms of academe, I now find a measure of pleasure in visiting big box stores about twice a month.  I take these shopping excursions as much for the desire to restock the freezer and pantry as to find a serendipitous item, to make an impulse purchase (a cutlery set, fish oil, a red velvet cake, and so on).  Just to heighten the notion that life is brief, I will purchase a three-pack of briefs at Costco so I can wear clean underwear while I whistle through the churchyard.
Such unnecessary shopping excursions are, I suppose, a way of deflecting inescapable realities of mortality.  One cannot take stuff with one on the trip to the other side, but while on this sunny side of the river, one ought to have a nice bottle of Brunello di Montalcino and some cheese nibbles while the sun sets.  Of course, I do not need more stuff.  I have enough provisions to support the needs of four or five families.  Truly, I should be hauling things I have not touched in years to the Goodwill rather than adding to the pile.  Occasionally, I will buy a shirt at Costco and hang it next to the 20 other shirts I have not worn since the Nixon administration.  And socks!  I love to buy a bag of socks even though my sock drawer is chockfull of socks.  I feel good about returning from Costco with a load of goodies.  But once I pull into the driveway, I must unload all that cargo and face the problem of finding space for eighteen rolls of paper towels, a pallet of Presto Logs, and a case of diet soda.

Space and time—I struggle against those elements whenever I complete those inessential trips to Costco.
This brings me to all those other shoppers who mosey down the aisles of Costco as I do.  Are their motivations similar to mine?  Are they beating back time with a new set of golf clubs?  Are they filling their garages with 200 rolls of toilet paper?
People of a certain age and status frequent big box stores.  I came across an article in Time that helps explain my observation.

It’s understandable that Costco’s customer base skews older. A car is all but a necessity for the typical “stock up” visit to Costco, and compared to older generations, millennials tend to not own cars and don’t seem to want to own cars. Most Costco stores are in suburban locations, while millennials tend to prefer urban living, and even if they are among the relatively few of their peers who could afford to buy a home, home ownership is less important to them than it was to their parents and grandparents as young adults. So … if you don’t have a car, and you don’t have the money or interest to stock up on two years’ worth of paper towels or mustard, and you wouldn’t have the space in your apartment to store this kind of stuff even if you wanted to, then there’s not much sense in shopping at Costco.  

When one is young, the need for an extra pair of binoculars (or a car or a house) seems redundant.  When one has the disposable income and a membership in AARP, these things become a necessity.
 
Tuttle, Brad. Time. 10 March 2014. Document. 20 February 2015.

Noise Pollution

 

What is the problem people have with manners, nowadays?  The other morning I boarded a Metro bus and lit up a fat stogie (a nice Cuban smuggled in from Canada), and you should have heard all the rude comments I received.  You would think civility had gone out of style.

Not only that, but when my dog buddy relieved himself on my neighbor’s property, that impertinent busybody neighbor, whom I once considered a friend, complained and made me remove the dog doo from among her azaleas.  Hey, crap happens.  She did not have to go off the charts hysterical, so I guess she never had schooling in good citizenship.

People, what da ya going to do?  You would think they would have something more constructive to go on about than to tell me to pick up the garbage that I threw out my car window as I pulled away from the curb the other day.  You know how clutter piles up in a glove box.  Later, on that same madcap errand run, I dumped a bunch of junk on a vacant lot because I do not want to pay the high prices at the landfill.  I mean, one place is as good as the next.  Am I right or what?

Then there was the time a few weeks ago when I vacuumed my car at the local Brown Bear car wash place.  Must keep up appearances, you know.  Because the vacuum system had such a deafening sound, I had to blast my ultra-cool audio system to its limits so I could hear my tunes—made the earth rock, I did.  Can you believe it, some buttinsky tapped me on the shoulder and told me to turn the beats down or he would beat me down.  How rude!  It takes all kinds.

If rudeness were a virtue, most of us would be saints.  Pardon the disingenuous rhetorical strategy, but all of the above examples I witnessed without taking an active role as either the offender or the complainant.  Regardless, it seems evident that too many of our fellow citizens ignore the manners they learned, if, in fact, they learned manners as part of their upbringing.

Silence is indeed golden, but it is hard to find.  Recently, I read that the Hoh Valley on the Olympic Peninsula rates as one of the quietest places on earth. (Waldeck)  Good news for people like me who just cannot tolerate the thump bump chukka pow pop and ka-boom sounds that we have purposefully design to foul our environment.  My point is simple enough: if it is wrong to throw our trash onto the street, to light up on an airplane (why do they need “No Smoking” signs anyway?), to allow our dog friends to shit on the footpath, or to pour dirty motor oil into the lake, then it is equally wrong to make noise that is harmful to health.

Former U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart said in 1978, “Calling noise a nuisance is like calling smog an inconvenience.  Noise must be considered a hazard to the health of people everywhere.”

Much of the literature on the subject underscores the idea that too much noise in our daily lives carries with it hypertension, anxiety, and cognitive shortages. (Matheson)  Inordinate noise levels are harmful to health.  Hearing loss, increased anxiety and stress, and physical health deficits all result from the almost daily bombardment of unwanted and unnecessary racket.  Why do you think those leaf blower insurgents wear earplugs?  Just how much damage noise causes is in dispute but not the conclusion that noise is bad for our physical and psychological health.

Last year our town finished a construction job along the street on which I live.  New sewer, water, and electrical conduits wormed under the roadway, sidewalks installed, and the pavement scraped clear before adding a new state-of-the-art street surface.  A useful project it seemed to all our neighbors until that the beep-beep-beep of the monster machines filled the air for over a year.  Jackhammers, compressors, shouts over the din, earthmovers rattling the windows and shaking the house foundations, huge motors revving to the task—all this and more drove me from the serene quiet that I normally expect when working from home.  Even though the noise from the espresso machine at Starbucks drove me to the other side, I found the coffee shop a place where I could retreat from the maddening clamor of city life.  And I do not even live in the city.  I guess I have a hypersensitivity to sound.  I am not alone.  Some people cannot eat peanuts or they will die.  We insist on burn bans when atmospheric inversions cause people to darn near choke to death.  And, for the safety of the public, we post speed limits on our highways and byways.  We need to look out for each other, so why do we allow all that deleterious noise to insinuate itself into our lives?

One winter not long ago, I took a sabbatical, traveling to Newfoundland for a retreat from the hubbub.  It seemed like a grand idea at the time.  Port Rexton, the small outport where wife Kathrina, my dog Toby, and I found refuge on the edge of the map seemed clear of traffic noise, airline flyovers, and all the other confounding uproar that comes from people and their machines.  We could find the peace of the Lord there among the moose and bunchberries.  But once the snow covered the stunted trees and tracks near our remote cottage, the snowmobiles started going lickety-split.  I sat in our upstairs bedroom that I had fashioned into a study.  I watched the snow pile up along the gray Atlantic.  Ah, I thought, this is a haven of tranquility.  Smoke curled from a chimney a half mile away, the only other residence within viewing range.  Then I saw them.  I heard them.  They descended like rolling thunder on the deep snow that surrounded our retreat—a half-dozen riders circling the house, kicking up scarves of snow, yahooing and goosing two-stroke engines.

Except for the Hoh Valley and a scant few other places on our big blue marble, there are not many places left in which one can escape noise.  According to a white paper published by the United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs: 

It’s estimated that the annual social cost of urban road noise in England is £7 to 10 billion. This places it at a similar magnitude to road accidents (£9 billion) and significantly greater than the impact on climate change (£1 to 4 billion). A report published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in March 2011 identified environmental noise as the second largest environmental health risk in Western Europe.” (Government)

Degradation of sea, plant, and animal life occurs because our too noisy world shakes, rattles, and rolls.  Even inanimate objects suffer from waves of sound: think of an opera singer hitting a high note and shattering a glass, or a clap of thunder setting off sensitive car alarms.  Sound frequencies cause energy waves that assault whatever is in their way.  Over time, the battering ram of sound can peel the paint off a cathedral ceiling.  And it gets worse with each passing decade because we are the noisiest critters on earth and more and more of us populate our delicate planet. 

And as we multiply, we make more noisy tools and machines.  One of the worst offenders in the war against pollution is the gas-powered leaf blower, ditto for its cousin the gas-powered weed eater.  According to Brian Palmer, those gizmos pollute the air in two ways: they make unspeakable noise pollution while fouling the air like a million cows passing gas. (Palmer)  Many communities have bans or are in the process of banning the use of those machines, but progress comes slowly.

Imagine living under a flight path near Sea-Tac airport.  You gussy up the driveway with your dust blower, you take a spin on your earthquake inducing Harley, you play who-can-bark-the-loudest with your dogs in the front yard, and you then test your car alarm just to be sure it is working properly.  But enough of that.  You have Seahawks tickets for later in the day.  You, along with 67,000 other fans, will scream your head off for the pleasure of making deafening noise.

Really, you might as well take a long hatpin and stick it through your eyeball and into your brain.

Government, UK. Noise pollution: economic analysis. December 2014. 5 February 2015.

Harmon, Katherine. 27 August 2012. livescience. Documant. 27 January 2015.

Matheson, Stephen A Stansfeld and Mark P. British Medical Bulletin. 2003. Document. 1 February 2015.

Palmer, Brian. Washington Post. 16 September 2013. 5 February 2015.

Waldeck, Katie. February 2013. Care2. 27 January 2015.