I note this week the reaction I have every time I stay at a casino hotel in Kansas City: it looks like it was built by someone who has an idea of what Las Vegas must be like, but never's been there.
A feeling something's out of place is one I've never had about the suburbs. According to Paul Akers, the Opinion Page Editor of our local rag, that may be about to change. He reports the existence of suburban foundations, based on 'excessive square footage, short home life cycles and cheap transportation,' in times of economic scarcity, may lead to 'a new appreciation of city-centric life which is more compact and manageable.'
I don't know about that but I do know one thing that drives folks out of suburbs: overbearing Home Owners Associations. According to the Boston Globe, HOA's across New England now ban clothelines "to prevent flapping laundry from dragging down property values." Once in the land where the cry rang out, 'No taxation without representation,' there rings out, today, far and wide, a new cry: The Right to Dry.
I sat down yesterday and counted 155 business days left in the office. I've long dreamed, upon retirement, of hanging clothes on a wash line. In impatient anticipation, I bought a candle a few weeks ago called 'clean white cotton sheets swaying in the breeze.' In these annoying times, will that now unprofitable scent survive as the only closest experience to the real thing?
If I can't hang wet clothes out to dry, what shall I do? The Norfolk Virginian Pilot reports on a fella who "after retiring from a 20-year career with the FBI is going full circle, back to his first job as a street cop." I started as a typist. I don't reckon there's much future in returning to that profession.
In search of vocation, I return, inevitably, to obituaries, seeking out evidence of other lives well lived. A woman is described in a Kansas City Star obit as a mom, seamstress, executive secretary, a liquor store owner, a china painter, a dollmaker, and a cook whose homemade noodles were perfect.
What real skills has a career paper pusher like myself?
The Dallas Morning News reports on a fella who "armed with high-tech cameras and computers, travels around the world to photograph New Testament manuscripts that are many centuries old - his goal is to photograph 1.3 million pages of Greek manuscripts - a project he expects will take until 2020."
I've just completed a study on where professional baseball teams of Richmond took Spring training. I'd venture to say there are less people interested in that than in reading millions of pages of manuscript of Greek New Testament manuscript, but what if no ones interested in either?
Clive Davis writes of a German scholar, Ernst Robert Curtius, who initially warned his countrymen about the rise of the Nazi's, but later wrote, "when the catastrophe came, I decided to serve the idea of a medievalistic humanism by studying the Latin literature of the Middle Ages."
Here now arises the same qualm I felt when I searched for what the great German theologian, Karl Barth, might have written in the 1950's about the Holocaust. There is nothing. Its absence invalidates his brilliance.
I'm likewise content to study what nobody's interested in most of the time. Friend Mark and I have discussed many times, though, how I can't resist temporarily interupting those fond pursuits to write letters to editors, where, for example, the original author's spin is so outrageous, it insists upon rebuttal. The latest involves a bishop who claims an ethos of radical inclusion for a movement founded upon homophobia. If I don't, no one will, therefore, I must.
Upon publication, the response certainly will generate, as usual, scorching on-line posts from the usual suspects. Is there not a choice to be made of pursuing the seeming futility of 'wrestling with pigs in mud,' according to Mark, or acting, regardless, especially, since at least one well known Episcopal on-line scribe says the responses are noted by at least a few other interested parties, or even if they weren't noticed by anyone at all?
Colleagues of an Oxford professor who died recently agreed to sell the beloved books in his renowned personal library for charity. All was well until those same dealers who mar our local otherwise cozy Friends of the Library used book sale, marched in, greedily tossing any books they grasped into cavernously large boxes; the same malevolent forces at work which transform the environmentally beneficial bucolic wholesomeness of clothes drying on a backyard wash line into an assault on property values.
The achievement of perfect homemade noodles (an ideal the chefs of my family relentlessly pursue) for Christmas dinners, now otherwise individually long forgotten, is indeed apparently a great accomplishment in itself. What counts much more is that Edna Harper of Kansas City will be remembered forever as 'an all-around beautiful lady whom everyone just loved.'
As Jackson Browe sings, "nothing survives but the way we live our lives."
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Time and Place
I note this week in the New Yorker an extraordinary photograph from an ordinary photo album. A picture all of us might have lying around: the gang, relaxing casually, at the office picnic. A man plays an accordian. One person in the front row, smiling, looks familiar. It is the Angel of Death: Joseph Mengele. This is a retreat for the staff of Auschwitz.
I don't recall the exact phrase but remember the idea put forth by William Shawcross, where, an event occurs, such as the Holocaust, while in another place, at the same time, a family attends a Fourth of July parade in Idaho. It's only incomprehensible to us in this time and place that the breadwinner of a household at such a parade might earn a paycheck by gassing children.
On the fortieth anniversary of the My Lai massacre, Seymour Hersh makes a similar point, in reverse. He writes, "it's stunning how much impact My Lai had and how little impact Abu Ghraib had - we'll have to leave it to historians to figure out why."
An article last week in the local rag describes a third grade class who admirably pooled their pennies to send care packages to a hometown unit stationed in Iraq. When the Marine Colonel, on leave, visits the class, the school girls squeal as if at a Hannah Montana concert.
Amongst the scraps, now lost, I'd kept for years, was a letter to my third grade class from another Marine Colonel, John Glenn, after he'd circled the globe three times. I know we were thrilled.
I wonder if any third grade class ever hosts a poet whose presence creates hysteria?
Can you imagine a place and time when schoolchildren were required to memorize poetry, so much so, as Clive James reports in Cultural amnesia, you held a poem in your head all your life 'as an infinite source of ready reference?' Sadly, poems, in the time and place of my life, are like David Halberstam books. I know I should like them; I try; but never finish a one.
A fella from South Carolina led a "Resolve to Win,' march through our town last week. He said he was generally pleased with the turnout though there should have been more flags strewn along his path. Well, maybe so, when they are troops in the field, in harm's way. Yet I also feel akin to the sentiments in another article in the same New Yorker, a 'Life and Letters' sketch piece on author Pat Barker, who "resists any sort of glorification of war by those at home or on the sidelines. War, she says, is a single bullying voice shouting all the other voices down."
The national Boy Scout jamorbee is held down our country road every few years in a campground on an Army base. Recruiters conducting business freely mingle amongst the boys. This attracts no attention, no concern. It wouldn't have been so forty years ago when ROTC programs were being driven from campuses. In a review of the current play Chicago 10, "At a moment when a youth movement has gathered behind a candidate capable of seizing power the old-fashioned way, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin's nonsense about revolution just looks lame."
What's normal, at this time and place, up North, is an anti-war rally with David Byrne, Norah Jones and Lou Reed, proceeds going to 'United for Peace and Justice,' and Veterans Against the War. What's normal, at this time in place, in my Southern town, is a 'Resolve to Win,' march - neither event, in its own time and place, creates dissension, or for that matter, great support, yet hold the same event, at the same time, switching places, New York for Virginia, and all hell is sure to break loose.
In Washington's time and place, through Viet Nam, the ideal American was a more humble civillian. He was there when his country needed him, returning home when crisis was past and war was won. Professional soliders are a rare breed throughout history; draftees are far more the norm, as Minute Men, and GI Joe dog faces, univerally bemoaning, enduring, a decidely unglamorous fate. No school girl hysetria in store for them.
Perhaps if you merely live long enough, like Pete Seeger, blacklisted 1950; Kennedy Center medal recipient 2007, or Muhammed Ali, reviled draft resister 1968; universal hero 2008, you may also transform, if necessary, in the same place, different time.
Invite a poet to school. What's the worst that could happen?
I don't recall the exact phrase but remember the idea put forth by William Shawcross, where, an event occurs, such as the Holocaust, while in another place, at the same time, a family attends a Fourth of July parade in Idaho. It's only incomprehensible to us in this time and place that the breadwinner of a household at such a parade might earn a paycheck by gassing children.
On the fortieth anniversary of the My Lai massacre, Seymour Hersh makes a similar point, in reverse. He writes, "it's stunning how much impact My Lai had and how little impact Abu Ghraib had - we'll have to leave it to historians to figure out why."
An article last week in the local rag describes a third grade class who admirably pooled their pennies to send care packages to a hometown unit stationed in Iraq. When the Marine Colonel, on leave, visits the class, the school girls squeal as if at a Hannah Montana concert.
Amongst the scraps, now lost, I'd kept for years, was a letter to my third grade class from another Marine Colonel, John Glenn, after he'd circled the globe three times. I know we were thrilled.
I wonder if any third grade class ever hosts a poet whose presence creates hysteria?
Can you imagine a place and time when schoolchildren were required to memorize poetry, so much so, as Clive James reports in Cultural amnesia, you held a poem in your head all your life 'as an infinite source of ready reference?' Sadly, poems, in the time and place of my life, are like David Halberstam books. I know I should like them; I try; but never finish a one.
A fella from South Carolina led a "Resolve to Win,' march through our town last week. He said he was generally pleased with the turnout though there should have been more flags strewn along his path. Well, maybe so, when they are troops in the field, in harm's way. Yet I also feel akin to the sentiments in another article in the same New Yorker, a 'Life and Letters' sketch piece on author Pat Barker, who "resists any sort of glorification of war by those at home or on the sidelines. War, she says, is a single bullying voice shouting all the other voices down."
The national Boy Scout jamorbee is held down our country road every few years in a campground on an Army base. Recruiters conducting business freely mingle amongst the boys. This attracts no attention, no concern. It wouldn't have been so forty years ago when ROTC programs were being driven from campuses. In a review of the current play Chicago 10, "At a moment when a youth movement has gathered behind a candidate capable of seizing power the old-fashioned way, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin's nonsense about revolution just looks lame."
What's normal, at this time and place, up North, is an anti-war rally with David Byrne, Norah Jones and Lou Reed, proceeds going to 'United for Peace and Justice,' and Veterans Against the War. What's normal, at this time in place, in my Southern town, is a 'Resolve to Win,' march - neither event, in its own time and place, creates dissension, or for that matter, great support, yet hold the same event, at the same time, switching places, New York for Virginia, and all hell is sure to break loose.
In Washington's time and place, through Viet Nam, the ideal American was a more humble civillian. He was there when his country needed him, returning home when crisis was past and war was won. Professional soliders are a rare breed throughout history; draftees are far more the norm, as Minute Men, and GI Joe dog faces, univerally bemoaning, enduring, a decidely unglamorous fate. No school girl hysetria in store for them.
Perhaps if you merely live long enough, like Pete Seeger, blacklisted 1950; Kennedy Center medal recipient 2007, or Muhammed Ali, reviled draft resister 1968; universal hero 2008, you may also transform, if necessary, in the same place, different time.
Invite a poet to school. What's the worst that could happen?
Friday, March 14, 2008
Recognizable Background
I note this week a letter in the Times from a Ms. Carlisle taking exception to Ms. Seltzer, who "by pretending to have led a life she has not, and by passing off that lie as a memoir, has betrayed those of us who have stories to tell and who attempt to write them honestly and faithfully."
I'm taking exception to the exception.
An alarming letter in the local rag a few weeks ago complained our town has "gone downhill this past year because of a chronic problem with intoxicated individuals, unruly gangs wandering in the streets, and drifters who lurk on the Parkway." Intrigued by 'lurk,' I looked it up. There was lie-in-ambush, sneak, conceal - hardly words which come to mind looking at the poor souls who sit forlornly on a guardrail in plain view holding an "I'm hungry," sign. This letter writer, who's clearly annoyed just by the sight of their passing presence through a windshield, employs lurk instead of sit to tell a better story.
Another writer this past week takes exception to a prior letter writer taking exception at those not wishing to help African refugees who settle in our small town in lieu of assisting the lurkers described above. She contends no one should worry Africans take jobs intended for the native-born since our own lurking homeless 'wouldn't hit a lick at a snake.' I don't know what that means, exactly, but I think I get the point.
AP writer Douglas Birch warns, though "Tomorrow's presidential election (in Russia) marks a symbolic end to a tortured post-Soviet odyssey from poverty to economic might, the country has embraced a rigid political orthodoxy - call it Putinism - that the Kremlin has used to crush the independence of political parties, civil society and the media."
First off, putin, which sounds something my two-year old godson is more wont to do than a world leader, is an invitingly funny word, like pickle, or, coincidentally, seltzer. Another AP writer, Mansur Mirovalev, informs us, 'anekdoty,' indeed, "have long been a litmus test of public opinion and individual liberties in a country where in the past, people faced exile, prison, or worse for expressing their opinions directly."
Putin, barred by law from another term, ran Medvedev for president, to appoint himself Prime Minister, to still exercise power behind the scenes. What follows is an example of Russian anekdoty: "Putin and Medvedev wake up with hangovers. Putin says, "which of us is president and which of us is prime minister today? Medvedev says, "I don't remember." Putin says, "then go fetch some beer."
I have to say as someone who tries from time to time to write with some small degree of wit, if 'attempted joke' was a felony offense in the U.S, and I could be shot or exiled to Alaska, the joke has to be funny, if not, downright hysterical. I'm not saying I wouldn't still try, but to take that risk, the punchline needs to be more humorous than 'fetch a beer.'
A theme in this blog since it began is to convey what it means to be Southern. In times when it seems reality itself is more bizarre than fiction, it's not surprising memoirs are king, since the public demands a truth that leaves little room for a good-natured exaggeration which always formed the foundation of the best stories.
Speaking of South, could anyone ever surpass F. Scott, who fashioned the following speech for a Southern woman out of place in New York City:
"These were just men, unimportant evidently or they wouldn't have been unknown; but they died for the most beautiful thing in the world - the dead South. You see, she continued, her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears, people have these dreams they fasten onto things, and I've always grown up with that dream. It was so easy because it was all dead and there weren't any disillusions comin' to me. I've tried in a way to live up to those past standards of noblesse oblige - there's just the last remnants of if, you know, like the roses of an old garden lying all around us."
Truth, sublime, submerged, the hallmark of genius, the envy of hacks. Perhaps, though, in order for honesty to hit home, there must first be recognizable background. I instinctively understand Fitzgerald, because I live and speak Southern.
Farther afield, desiring to enjoy Shakespeare, lacking ability to translate its foreign language, I discovered the key - buying the essential DK Shakespeare Handbook. Just to solitarily read its plot summaries and character descriptions drives the life out of the drama - but if you read first, then attend a play, you've got it - you need not struggle to catch the drift; you enjoy the experience, no longer a challenge, still not necessarily grasping all, mind you, but enough to make the difference.
The recognizable background of two letters hit my desk, these past few weeks, that promise stories far beyond the surface of the paper upon which they were written.
The first was from a police department in California. On Christmas eve, someone left a check in a manger on a church altar. With no leads towards its rightful owner, it was returned to sender. What gripping story lays beyond the facts of the case? Enough, certainly, for a gripping movie of the week, no doubt, starring Valerie Bertinelli and Tom Bosley.
The second was simple enough in itself. In an old bureau, a fella found a World War I savings certificate, purchased by his great grandfather, and wanted to know if it was redeemable, and of course, with the interest due. The grander story involves the building in which I work that was constructed in 1919 to process correspondence such as this relative to the issuance of World War I bonds. What epic journey must have transpired for this letter to find its way home?
Whether stories are real, or not, matters less than the imagination they stir which beckons us from the margins to enjoin the page.
I'm taking exception to the exception.
An alarming letter in the local rag a few weeks ago complained our town has "gone downhill this past year because of a chronic problem with intoxicated individuals, unruly gangs wandering in the streets, and drifters who lurk on the Parkway." Intrigued by 'lurk,' I looked it up. There was lie-in-ambush, sneak, conceal - hardly words which come to mind looking at the poor souls who sit forlornly on a guardrail in plain view holding an "I'm hungry," sign. This letter writer, who's clearly annoyed just by the sight of their passing presence through a windshield, employs lurk instead of sit to tell a better story.
Another writer this past week takes exception to a prior letter writer taking exception at those not wishing to help African refugees who settle in our small town in lieu of assisting the lurkers described above. She contends no one should worry Africans take jobs intended for the native-born since our own lurking homeless 'wouldn't hit a lick at a snake.' I don't know what that means, exactly, but I think I get the point.
AP writer Douglas Birch warns, though "Tomorrow's presidential election (in Russia) marks a symbolic end to a tortured post-Soviet odyssey from poverty to economic might, the country has embraced a rigid political orthodoxy - call it Putinism - that the Kremlin has used to crush the independence of political parties, civil society and the media."
First off, putin, which sounds something my two-year old godson is more wont to do than a world leader, is an invitingly funny word, like pickle, or, coincidentally, seltzer. Another AP writer, Mansur Mirovalev, informs us, 'anekdoty,' indeed, "have long been a litmus test of public opinion and individual liberties in a country where in the past, people faced exile, prison, or worse for expressing their opinions directly."
Putin, barred by law from another term, ran Medvedev for president, to appoint himself Prime Minister, to still exercise power behind the scenes. What follows is an example of Russian anekdoty: "Putin and Medvedev wake up with hangovers. Putin says, "which of us is president and which of us is prime minister today? Medvedev says, "I don't remember." Putin says, "then go fetch some beer."
I have to say as someone who tries from time to time to write with some small degree of wit, if 'attempted joke' was a felony offense in the U.S, and I could be shot or exiled to Alaska, the joke has to be funny, if not, downright hysterical. I'm not saying I wouldn't still try, but to take that risk, the punchline needs to be more humorous than 'fetch a beer.'
A theme in this blog since it began is to convey what it means to be Southern. In times when it seems reality itself is more bizarre than fiction, it's not surprising memoirs are king, since the public demands a truth that leaves little room for a good-natured exaggeration which always formed the foundation of the best stories.
Speaking of South, could anyone ever surpass F. Scott, who fashioned the following speech for a Southern woman out of place in New York City:
"These were just men, unimportant evidently or they wouldn't have been unknown; but they died for the most beautiful thing in the world - the dead South. You see, she continued, her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears, people have these dreams they fasten onto things, and I've always grown up with that dream. It was so easy because it was all dead and there weren't any disillusions comin' to me. I've tried in a way to live up to those past standards of noblesse oblige - there's just the last remnants of if, you know, like the roses of an old garden lying all around us."
Truth, sublime, submerged, the hallmark of genius, the envy of hacks. Perhaps, though, in order for honesty to hit home, there must first be recognizable background. I instinctively understand Fitzgerald, because I live and speak Southern.
Farther afield, desiring to enjoy Shakespeare, lacking ability to translate its foreign language, I discovered the key - buying the essential DK Shakespeare Handbook. Just to solitarily read its plot summaries and character descriptions drives the life out of the drama - but if you read first, then attend a play, you've got it - you need not struggle to catch the drift; you enjoy the experience, no longer a challenge, still not necessarily grasping all, mind you, but enough to make the difference.
The recognizable background of two letters hit my desk, these past few weeks, that promise stories far beyond the surface of the paper upon which they were written.
The first was from a police department in California. On Christmas eve, someone left a check in a manger on a church altar. With no leads towards its rightful owner, it was returned to sender. What gripping story lays beyond the facts of the case? Enough, certainly, for a gripping movie of the week, no doubt, starring Valerie Bertinelli and Tom Bosley.
The second was simple enough in itself. In an old bureau, a fella found a World War I savings certificate, purchased by his great grandfather, and wanted to know if it was redeemable, and of course, with the interest due. The grander story involves the building in which I work that was constructed in 1919 to process correspondence such as this relative to the issuance of World War I bonds. What epic journey must have transpired for this letter to find its way home?
Whether stories are real, or not, matters less than the imagination they stir which beckons us from the margins to enjoin the page.
Friday, March 7, 2008
The DNA of Original Sin
I note this week a new weather phenomenon unfamiliar to most of us around these parts - a 90 mph 'straight wind.' Roofs on 18th century farm houses, torn off; empty silos blown to the ground. Frankly, I slept through it. There would have been no impact at all in our household except for lost power, which brought us through the night, unhindered as we slept, to dawn, when I could neither shave, shower, or go to work.
That's when the trouble started.
Acting last summer upon a mother-in-law suggestion, I'd hammered a three foot tall piece of sheet metal around the trunk of a tree to frustrate the squirrels who plundered the bird feeder above. It didn't work, leaving a beautiful maple wearing an ugly metallic girdle for no good reason. Determined to restore nature to its primeval state, I tackled the chore with optimism, forgetting about the chain saw chain embedded in the similar soft wood of a downed maple, from last year, which still rests on the lower forty today.
The nails held fast. I banged, thumped, cursed and yanked, accomplishing nothing but a deep gash in my thumb. I must confess, as we stood at the sink to dress the wound, blood pooling in the palm of my hand, to feeling so woozy I had to sit down. Why must a minor disfigurement produce such an arresting reaction?
The Chicago Trib's William Mullen says blame may be deflected for this unmanly behavior onto my inner fish. According to Mullen, and Chicago scientist Neil Shubin, "even before they are born, all people carry genetic baggage, genes that were useful to distant, nonhuman ancestors but are hopelessly outdated, even harmful, to humans as they live today." Just as Shubin says we hiccup due to a breathing malfunction passed down to us from tadpoles, I reckon a man faints at the sink, after a steel girdle mishap, because it was useful for his ancestors to play dead while a sabre-tooth tiger gnawed off his hand.
One more scientist in the news this past week, Judy DeLoache, of the University of Virginia, says she has a snake phobia "because snakes would have posed a significant threat to our ancestors, so a fear of snakes remains hardwired into human beings today." This explains, in the case of married men, a fear of the mother-in-law.
I can't quell queasy reactions to public events any better than revulsion over a slightly dismembered thumb. Still banking on the harbingers of Spring to raise spirits above winter doldrums, I watched a series of ESPN classic baseball programs whose theme is 'Five Reasons' to either keep believing a controversy was settled fairly, or not. When it comes to Pete Rose's chances of getting into the Hall of Fame after denying for 15 years he didn't bet on baseball, before admitting it, Jim Palmer, an HoF voter, summed it up nicely, saying, if he ever believes Pete is thinking more of the game, than himself, he might consider it. The sought after change of heart wasn't much in evidence during the show as Pete assessed the importance of baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti's tragic death by heart attack only in terms of how it damaged his Hall of Fame prospects.
The science of economics oft merges with the personal in ways to make them indistinguishable. The NY Times reports "only 37 percent of eligible high school students citywide in San Francisco take advantage of subsidized meal programs because of the stigma of accepting a government lunch while others are paying for food." One student said, "lunchtime is the best time to impress your peers; being seen with a subsidized meal lowers your status." It's not hard to calculate how the short evolutionary odds of any man around a prehistoric campfire who couldn't slay his own dinner are hardwired within our survival instincts today.
After tens of thousands of years, it's broadcast by imnumerable tragedy, like the case of the 15-year old Oxnard, California, middle school student, who shortly after coming out last month, was murdered by a 14-year old member of a pack of classmates who'd harrassed what they'd perceived as an external threat to their tribal identity of adolesent masculinity.
It's one thing to know these deadly instincts linger; how they comprise the dna of our original sin. Does anything suggest they can be overcome?
Just as I search for small signs of Spring to restore a winter-ravaged mind and body, there are ever present small omens, drawing upon finer instincts, balancing darker aspects of our personalities. The local rag recently carried an obit, "it is with broken heart I announce the passing of my lover and best friend, aged 63 -survivors include his companion of 24 years." Here are lives well lived, two joined as one, despite a small town non-comformity, where it was possible none the less, to surmount the instincts which surfaced in Oxnard with deadly effect.
Editorialst, Michael Gerson, reports he's 'seen the future of evangelical Christianity,' as displayed at a college convention where "there were booths promoting causes from women's rights to the fight against modern slavery to environmental protection." Gerson says, "judging from the questions I was pounded with, the students are generally pro-life - but also concerned about poverty and deeply opposed to capital punishment and torture."
I cotton to 'generally,' which leaves little room for other words like zealously or fanatically. I'm generally pro-choice but respectful of a youthful idealism that concerns itself to run the other way. 'Generally' overcomes the dna of original sin.
Our General Store in the center town is where we meet to take cover from straight-winds, around the hospitality of a worn pot-bellied stove, instead of huddling furtively around the glow of an ancient flickering campfire to ward off the terrors that fly by unceasing night.
That's when the trouble started.
Acting last summer upon a mother-in-law suggestion, I'd hammered a three foot tall piece of sheet metal around the trunk of a tree to frustrate the squirrels who plundered the bird feeder above. It didn't work, leaving a beautiful maple wearing an ugly metallic girdle for no good reason. Determined to restore nature to its primeval state, I tackled the chore with optimism, forgetting about the chain saw chain embedded in the similar soft wood of a downed maple, from last year, which still rests on the lower forty today.
The nails held fast. I banged, thumped, cursed and yanked, accomplishing nothing but a deep gash in my thumb. I must confess, as we stood at the sink to dress the wound, blood pooling in the palm of my hand, to feeling so woozy I had to sit down. Why must a minor disfigurement produce such an arresting reaction?
The Chicago Trib's William Mullen says blame may be deflected for this unmanly behavior onto my inner fish. According to Mullen, and Chicago scientist Neil Shubin, "even before they are born, all people carry genetic baggage, genes that were useful to distant, nonhuman ancestors but are hopelessly outdated, even harmful, to humans as they live today." Just as Shubin says we hiccup due to a breathing malfunction passed down to us from tadpoles, I reckon a man faints at the sink, after a steel girdle mishap, because it was useful for his ancestors to play dead while a sabre-tooth tiger gnawed off his hand.
One more scientist in the news this past week, Judy DeLoache, of the University of Virginia, says she has a snake phobia "because snakes would have posed a significant threat to our ancestors, so a fear of snakes remains hardwired into human beings today." This explains, in the case of married men, a fear of the mother-in-law.
I can't quell queasy reactions to public events any better than revulsion over a slightly dismembered thumb. Still banking on the harbingers of Spring to raise spirits above winter doldrums, I watched a series of ESPN classic baseball programs whose theme is 'Five Reasons' to either keep believing a controversy was settled fairly, or not. When it comes to Pete Rose's chances of getting into the Hall of Fame after denying for 15 years he didn't bet on baseball, before admitting it, Jim Palmer, an HoF voter, summed it up nicely, saying, if he ever believes Pete is thinking more of the game, than himself, he might consider it. The sought after change of heart wasn't much in evidence during the show as Pete assessed the importance of baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti's tragic death by heart attack only in terms of how it damaged his Hall of Fame prospects.
The science of economics oft merges with the personal in ways to make them indistinguishable. The NY Times reports "only 37 percent of eligible high school students citywide in San Francisco take advantage of subsidized meal programs because of the stigma of accepting a government lunch while others are paying for food." One student said, "lunchtime is the best time to impress your peers; being seen with a subsidized meal lowers your status." It's not hard to calculate how the short evolutionary odds of any man around a prehistoric campfire who couldn't slay his own dinner are hardwired within our survival instincts today.
After tens of thousands of years, it's broadcast by imnumerable tragedy, like the case of the 15-year old Oxnard, California, middle school student, who shortly after coming out last month, was murdered by a 14-year old member of a pack of classmates who'd harrassed what they'd perceived as an external threat to their tribal identity of adolesent masculinity.
It's one thing to know these deadly instincts linger; how they comprise the dna of our original sin. Does anything suggest they can be overcome?
Just as I search for small signs of Spring to restore a winter-ravaged mind and body, there are ever present small omens, drawing upon finer instincts, balancing darker aspects of our personalities. The local rag recently carried an obit, "it is with broken heart I announce the passing of my lover and best friend, aged 63 -survivors include his companion of 24 years." Here are lives well lived, two joined as one, despite a small town non-comformity, where it was possible none the less, to surmount the instincts which surfaced in Oxnard with deadly effect.
Editorialst, Michael Gerson, reports he's 'seen the future of evangelical Christianity,' as displayed at a college convention where "there were booths promoting causes from women's rights to the fight against modern slavery to environmental protection." Gerson says, "judging from the questions I was pounded with, the students are generally pro-life - but also concerned about poverty and deeply opposed to capital punishment and torture."
I cotton to 'generally,' which leaves little room for other words like zealously or fanatically. I'm generally pro-choice but respectful of a youthful idealism that concerns itself to run the other way. 'Generally' overcomes the dna of original sin.
Our General Store in the center town is where we meet to take cover from straight-winds, around the hospitality of a worn pot-bellied stove, instead of huddling furtively around the glow of an ancient flickering campfire to ward off the terrors that fly by unceasing night.
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