I take note this week of our annual trek to Kilmarnock in the Northern Neck where there's a store which sells customized t-shirts, sweaters and jackets displayed on irresistable $5 racks.
It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, today I'm garbed in a Mr. Rogers-style cardigan which identifies the wearer as an employee of the White Stone Family Practice.
What may be unexpected is that the elderly cashier who rang up the sweater said she'd only been to Fredericksburg once in her life.
So, here I am, constantly regaling you with tales of our small town life only to find out, in relation to a really, really small town, we are a big city after all.
It certainly ties in with the Sinclair Lewis Main Street novel I've been reading this week - where the new Mrs. Dr. Kennicott attempts desperately to fit into her newlywed husband's hometown of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.
A few months ago I'd disptached a resume via email to the Cal Ripken foundation. I was thrilled to see a response within an hour. Upon reading it, however, and finding the resume had been forwarded to the local Executive Director, I knew I'd never hear anything about it again.
While Carol Kennicott longs for the anonymous freedom she knew in St. Paul, the townspeople of Gopher Prairie boast, at the same time, of a friendliness not extended to her or any outsider. My offer to the baseball people of the city of Baltimore was doomed as soon as it was allowed to run aground upon the shoals of a small town clique (and children's sports cliques are the worst of all).
Our old sounding board, editorialist Rod Dreher, recently penned a paeon to Wendell Berry, noting, "who, as a young man, left a promising East Coast academic career to return to ancestral land to farm, write, and raise a family."
Dreher informs us, "most Republicans don't care for him because he is a harsh critic of industrialism, consumerism, and the unfettered free market as a destroyer of land, community, and healthy traditions," while, "most Democrats regard him as out of touch because he is a religious man who holds autonomous individualism, especially the freedom it licenses, to be similarly destructive of families, communities, and the sacredness of love."
--which leaves this Spotsyltuckian even more out of touch, if that's possible, as one who dwells in an undestroyed land of corn and soy farms no more than a dozen miles away from a wealth of welcome, much frequented, consumerism; and as a religious person, and member of a like-minded community, of autonomous individuals, who aren't suspected of destroying, or spreading license, but, instead are gathered together within an encompassing diversity which, through its inclusionary nature, strengthens our congregational family and its sacredness of love.
Having gone this far, we're taking it to the limit.
We're moving on to a place which'll make Berry's head explode.
-- Malltown, USA!
A wondrous place 15.5 acre plot in Glendale, California, in which to live and shop in faux locales as varied as Rodeo Drive, Rush Street, Vegas, Boston or New Orleans.
Developer Rick Caruso, in the NY Times, explains "the whole idea isn't just to shop or eat or go to a movie, it has more to do with recovering that which is lost in Southern California's car culture -- the sense of community that comes through street life."
Ah, there's the vaunted theme 'community' again.
While Dreher/Berry believe they've captured the essence of community with their value-laden, unrealistic-for-most-of-us, back to the farm schitk, Caruso offers something much more reachable within our grasp.
Fifty years ago my dad and I walked under the El tracks in Brighton Beach to a bakery which smelled like heaven if heaven smells like warm fresh bagels and biolis. If Caruso constructs the same quaint old New York scene in L.A. could it not jog genuine memories of those who've experienced, and still desire, the real thing, and, what's more, is available to millions more, creating a new/old world which no longer exists for anyone except in this mode if not at all?
It's the privilege of age to no longer pretend to ideals you don't hold even if it's self-serving to grandstand them for others.
I can actually admire farmer cum rugged individualist Wendell Berry from a distance without copying him just as I've admired Dorothy Day all my life for her ministry to the poor and voluntary poverty without ever aspiring to the latter.
I'm glad someone does it as long as it's not me.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
The Future of Aging
As a person who put the "I" into ISFJ it takes persistent encouragement to draw this introvert out. So it was last week at Senior Camp as told in last week's tale, Seven Miles to the Horizon.
Even those senior saints were only partially successful. The ninety-two year old who befriended me desired I party until the wee hours of 10 p.m. When I slunk away per usual, at 8:30, she bid her companions undertake unsuccessful extraction missions.
On travel in Greensboro for the company this week, I read in the complimentary hotel USA Today how Billy Graham is marking his 90th birthday. This time it's personal - he's pictured at his Montreat, NC, mountain-top home, rocking on a porch built by a relative (may he RIP).
The article dangled a too-tempting-to-resist 1960's Woody Allen interview captured on You-Tube. It's worth watching for the good-naturedness alone beyond any notion of the odd pairing.
The interview led to something unexpected. Alongside the clip was another of a Larry King interview I quote frequently in Sunday School where Graham was asked if he thought he'd go to heaven, to which he responded, "I hope so but don't deserve it."
It wasn't this gracious response, but another, which led to something of which I was totally unaware. When Graham responded to King it wasn't for him to judge whether followers of other faiths went to heaven, it apparently unleashed a torrent of condemnation, as cited briefly in the USA article, but not with the intense vigor found on the net, and which subsequently spawned a full-fledged anti-Graham industry.
It shouldn't be suprising to Spotsyltuckian readers that the Greensboro Borders is a familiar and required destination for all my corporate companions prior to dinner. Surveying the magazine rack, I was drawn to purchase the Christian Research Journal containing the article, "Navigating the Emerging Church Highway," the same topic Phyllis Tickle presented at senior camp the preceding week.
Mark Driscoll defines the emerging church 'highway' as consisting of four lanes: Emerging Evangelicals; House Church Evangelicals; Emerging Reformers; and Emergent Liberals. The first three are delineated acceptably orthodox in one way or another; the fourth is described as having "drifted away from a discussion about how to contextualize timeless Christian truths in timely cultural ways and has instead come to focus on creating a new Christianity," i.e. as heretical and apostate.
While Driscoll annoints the sacred trio as cleverly packaged for younger generations, the fourth is condemened, as is the ecumenical Graham, for "discussing the need for unity between all religions."
After a Presidential election which promises the vision of a broader American landscape (absent the disappointing passage of Proposition 8), George Will pictures the South, as "beginning to look less like the firm foundation of national party than the embattled redoubt of a regional one."
Akin to the U.S. Pacific strategy in World War II where only islands suitable for airstrips were invaded (with the exception of the Phillipines as a sop to MacArthur's ego) leaving others to wither on the vine, this is ever the fate of fortresses, orthodox or territorial, where history passes by untouched.
Clive James' Cultural Amnesia profiles Heinrich Heine, a 19th century German journalist, essayist and poet. Wikipedia states Heine was 'born into a family of assimilated Jews, who were subject to severe restrictions, forbidden from entering certain professions, including an academic career in the universities.' Heine justified his Lutheran conversion by describing it as "the ticket of admission into European culture," something I also claim in relation to Virginia. Would it have been otherwise for both of us!
The AP reports conversely on an American woman, who "sought to make a new life for herself as a Jew in Israel." She studied intensively for a year, took a Hebrew name and adopted Orthodox custom and wardrobe. Five years later, Israel's Rabbincal High Court annulled her conversion over the question whether anyone can be Jewish if not born of a Jewish mother.
I note in the same USA Today which jump-started this week's reflections where a sketch, Tiggers Don't Like Honey, from The House at Pooh Corner, sold at auction for $49,770. The value accorded to this drawing implies something about how we cherish the image of simple hospitality.
Whether in relation to family, a circle of friends, the workplace, a parish, community or nation, my faith stands or fails in the existence of real or imagined places like The House at Pooh Corner. Houses, where people who are nicer than I, gently serve, instead of barricading the door shouting all the reasons I can't come in.
As long as there are people in my life who persist in such gentle hospitality, some of their kindness may yet succeed in drawing this old ISFJ out.
Even those senior saints were only partially successful. The ninety-two year old who befriended me desired I party until the wee hours of 10 p.m. When I slunk away per usual, at 8:30, she bid her companions undertake unsuccessful extraction missions.
On travel in Greensboro for the company this week, I read in the complimentary hotel USA Today how Billy Graham is marking his 90th birthday. This time it's personal - he's pictured at his Montreat, NC, mountain-top home, rocking on a porch built by a relative (may he RIP).
The article dangled a too-tempting-to-resist 1960's Woody Allen interview captured on You-Tube. It's worth watching for the good-naturedness alone beyond any notion of the odd pairing.
The interview led to something unexpected. Alongside the clip was another of a Larry King interview I quote frequently in Sunday School where Graham was asked if he thought he'd go to heaven, to which he responded, "I hope so but don't deserve it."
It wasn't this gracious response, but another, which led to something of which I was totally unaware. When Graham responded to King it wasn't for him to judge whether followers of other faiths went to heaven, it apparently unleashed a torrent of condemnation, as cited briefly in the USA article, but not with the intense vigor found on the net, and which subsequently spawned a full-fledged anti-Graham industry.
It shouldn't be suprising to Spotsyltuckian readers that the Greensboro Borders is a familiar and required destination for all my corporate companions prior to dinner. Surveying the magazine rack, I was drawn to purchase the Christian Research Journal containing the article, "Navigating the Emerging Church Highway," the same topic Phyllis Tickle presented at senior camp the preceding week.
Mark Driscoll defines the emerging church 'highway' as consisting of four lanes: Emerging Evangelicals; House Church Evangelicals; Emerging Reformers; and Emergent Liberals. The first three are delineated acceptably orthodox in one way or another; the fourth is described as having "drifted away from a discussion about how to contextualize timeless Christian truths in timely cultural ways and has instead come to focus on creating a new Christianity," i.e. as heretical and apostate.
While Driscoll annoints the sacred trio as cleverly packaged for younger generations, the fourth is condemened, as is the ecumenical Graham, for "discussing the need for unity between all religions."
After a Presidential election which promises the vision of a broader American landscape (absent the disappointing passage of Proposition 8), George Will pictures the South, as "beginning to look less like the firm foundation of national party than the embattled redoubt of a regional one."
Akin to the U.S. Pacific strategy in World War II where only islands suitable for airstrips were invaded (with the exception of the Phillipines as a sop to MacArthur's ego) leaving others to wither on the vine, this is ever the fate of fortresses, orthodox or territorial, where history passes by untouched.
Clive James' Cultural Amnesia profiles Heinrich Heine, a 19th century German journalist, essayist and poet. Wikipedia states Heine was 'born into a family of assimilated Jews, who were subject to severe restrictions, forbidden from entering certain professions, including an academic career in the universities.' Heine justified his Lutheran conversion by describing it as "the ticket of admission into European culture," something I also claim in relation to Virginia. Would it have been otherwise for both of us!
The AP reports conversely on an American woman, who "sought to make a new life for herself as a Jew in Israel." She studied intensively for a year, took a Hebrew name and adopted Orthodox custom and wardrobe. Five years later, Israel's Rabbincal High Court annulled her conversion over the question whether anyone can be Jewish if not born of a Jewish mother.
I note in the same USA Today which jump-started this week's reflections where a sketch, Tiggers Don't Like Honey, from The House at Pooh Corner, sold at auction for $49,770. The value accorded to this drawing implies something about how we cherish the image of simple hospitality.
Whether in relation to family, a circle of friends, the workplace, a parish, community or nation, my faith stands or fails in the existence of real or imagined places like The House at Pooh Corner. Houses, where people who are nicer than I, gently serve, instead of barricading the door shouting all the reasons I can't come in.
As long as there are people in my life who persist in such gentle hospitality, some of their kindness may yet succeed in drawing this old ISFJ out.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Seven Miles to the Horizon
I note this week even Hitler saw the sunny side of the Munich agreement.
Most historians agree the pact tied the angry dictator's hands at the same time he was intent on war. At first blush they are right. Upon further reflection, the Fuhrer realized the very generals who opposed agression against the Czechs would be retired when actual hostilties commenced, and was, for a time, content to wait them out.
This would not have been the case had Herr Schickelgruber taken his tea alongside the old timers I was with the past few days for they've never retired.
One, serendipitously, is the daughter of a General who had a hand in winning the war Hitler started after his recalcitrant generals took their pensions - her father, a cavalry officer, played polo with Patton at Ft. Riley when old Blood & Guts was inventing American armored tactics, and before both men riding Sherman tanks swept across the deserts of Africa and the French plains.
Another, at age 97, plays gospel hymns on the piano at nursing homes in Richmond. She led us, holding hands in a circle, singing love given away always comes back like a penny well spent.
Come Wednesday morning in senior camp at the Shrinemont Episcopal Retreat Center, atop Mt. Jackson, the agenda listed conflicting workshops. One featured a new Bishop who'll replace the old bishop upon his retirement; the other called Stories to Pass On.
Choosing Stories, implying nothing untowards the new Bishop, who seems an earnest young man, follows a personal pattern of avoiding situations where any whiff of ambition is present. I've never understood why I resent ambition. It might have something to do with a lack of the quality in myself instead of the person to whom the resentment is mis-directed - yet, when you sail farther from shore, closer to the horizon, even small ambitions, never realized, drop away, freeing the personality to pursue nobler things, or nothing at all, if you so choose.
When asked to tell stories they wish to pass on, an elegantly dressed woman revealed, living as a child, on Park Avenue, at 92nd street, she saw a stoller begin to slide down a hilly sidewalk, only to be rescued by the family dog who grabbed the handle by his teeth.
A 100-year old woman described her life purely in economic terms, recalling a 60 cent water bill in 1946, $7 rent, $5 a week for wages, and 2 cents a quart more, by picking strawberries, butter beans and blackeyed peas (and happy to get it!).
The aforementioned piano player told of Mennonite gatherings at harvest time and attending Princeton when Einstein was in residence. She advised us to always sing the meaning of hymns.
When travelling by car, rather than plane, I carry a multitude of books which I arrange in stacks around the unfamiliar room, so upon awakening, I may spend time, as I do at home, in the shifting worlds I'm currently investigating. It's not surprising to any Spotsyltuckian reader that the idea of the American small town is a subject to which we frequently return.
Two books in one stack on the bedside table, Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, and Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson, contrast ambition and reflection as did the selection of workshops. The former tells the story of a young woman determined to beautify a Midwestern town; the latter contains meandering tales of what Anderson originally called grotesques which carry no ambition but to draw only upon episodic emotion.
A third, on a second stack, Lipton on Lipton, also ventures here, describing the split of method acting schools, one following Action-Objective and the other pursuing Emotional Memory; the first relies upon action to induce emotion, the second, drawing upon emotion to instigate action.
Shrinemont itself for Virginia Episcopalians is a small town where action invests motion, and then all emotions, henceforward, are informed through action. The circumstances of individual visits blur while the emotions of tradition linger to open a heart so that even a foolish love song offered by a 97-year old saint carries effortlessly the quaint wisdom of gentility.
There's a reknown soft-serve ice-cream stand in our fair town. If I park around back, an elderly gentleman inevitably appears to warn my pick-up projects too far out in the passing lane. He was similarly advising another patron a few weeks ago when a man with a gun ordered him to sit on the ground. When he refused, the robber fled, only to return and demand his wallet, also, to no avail.
The intrusion of violence belongs not to this story. When the circle of ancient Episcopalians concluded their stories, I told them how I worry, approaching retirement, that the structure gluing my life together may not hold, and I'll be lost, as if an assailant disrupted the night.
After basking otherwise in the light of this honorable company of women, I now imagine sailing the last seven miles to the far horizon trailing only a gentle wake marking courageous passage.
Most historians agree the pact tied the angry dictator's hands at the same time he was intent on war. At first blush they are right. Upon further reflection, the Fuhrer realized the very generals who opposed agression against the Czechs would be retired when actual hostilties commenced, and was, for a time, content to wait them out.
This would not have been the case had Herr Schickelgruber taken his tea alongside the old timers I was with the past few days for they've never retired.
One, serendipitously, is the daughter of a General who had a hand in winning the war Hitler started after his recalcitrant generals took their pensions - her father, a cavalry officer, played polo with Patton at Ft. Riley when old Blood & Guts was inventing American armored tactics, and before both men riding Sherman tanks swept across the deserts of Africa and the French plains.
Another, at age 97, plays gospel hymns on the piano at nursing homes in Richmond. She led us, holding hands in a circle, singing love given away always comes back like a penny well spent.
Come Wednesday morning in senior camp at the Shrinemont Episcopal Retreat Center, atop Mt. Jackson, the agenda listed conflicting workshops. One featured a new Bishop who'll replace the old bishop upon his retirement; the other called Stories to Pass On.
Choosing Stories, implying nothing untowards the new Bishop, who seems an earnest young man, follows a personal pattern of avoiding situations where any whiff of ambition is present. I've never understood why I resent ambition. It might have something to do with a lack of the quality in myself instead of the person to whom the resentment is mis-directed - yet, when you sail farther from shore, closer to the horizon, even small ambitions, never realized, drop away, freeing the personality to pursue nobler things, or nothing at all, if you so choose.
When asked to tell stories they wish to pass on, an elegantly dressed woman revealed, living as a child, on Park Avenue, at 92nd street, she saw a stoller begin to slide down a hilly sidewalk, only to be rescued by the family dog who grabbed the handle by his teeth.
A 100-year old woman described her life purely in economic terms, recalling a 60 cent water bill in 1946, $7 rent, $5 a week for wages, and 2 cents a quart more, by picking strawberries, butter beans and blackeyed peas (and happy to get it!).
The aforementioned piano player told of Mennonite gatherings at harvest time and attending Princeton when Einstein was in residence. She advised us to always sing the meaning of hymns.
When travelling by car, rather than plane, I carry a multitude of books which I arrange in stacks around the unfamiliar room, so upon awakening, I may spend time, as I do at home, in the shifting worlds I'm currently investigating. It's not surprising to any Spotsyltuckian reader that the idea of the American small town is a subject to which we frequently return.
Two books in one stack on the bedside table, Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, and Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson, contrast ambition and reflection as did the selection of workshops. The former tells the story of a young woman determined to beautify a Midwestern town; the latter contains meandering tales of what Anderson originally called grotesques which carry no ambition but to draw only upon episodic emotion.
A third, on a second stack, Lipton on Lipton, also ventures here, describing the split of method acting schools, one following Action-Objective and the other pursuing Emotional Memory; the first relies upon action to induce emotion, the second, drawing upon emotion to instigate action.
Shrinemont itself for Virginia Episcopalians is a small town where action invests motion, and then all emotions, henceforward, are informed through action. The circumstances of individual visits blur while the emotions of tradition linger to open a heart so that even a foolish love song offered by a 97-year old saint carries effortlessly the quaint wisdom of gentility.
There's a reknown soft-serve ice-cream stand in our fair town. If I park around back, an elderly gentleman inevitably appears to warn my pick-up projects too far out in the passing lane. He was similarly advising another patron a few weeks ago when a man with a gun ordered him to sit on the ground. When he refused, the robber fled, only to return and demand his wallet, also, to no avail.
The intrusion of violence belongs not to this story. When the circle of ancient Episcopalians concluded their stories, I told them how I worry, approaching retirement, that the structure gluing my life together may not hold, and I'll be lost, as if an assailant disrupted the night.
After basking otherwise in the light of this honorable company of women, I now imagine sailing the last seven miles to the far horizon trailing only a gentle wake marking courageous passage.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Say it Aint So, Moe
I note this week amazing changes in the offing.
Have you heard of the A-11 offense? This is where High School coaches play two quarterbacks and nine receivers since its believed offensive lines can't stop linebackers who've evolved too fast to block.
Progress like this isn't always physically possible. Scientists say there's a foreign language gene, for example, which turns itself off after adolesence. I don't doubt it judging by the way the genes in my body controlling brazil nut allergy and lactose intolerance flick on and off like light switches.
Apparently age is key: Joseph Horowitz' new Artists in Exile tracks careers of younger Europeans who flourished in America, older ones who couldn't adjust, and some, like Garbo, who achieved a certain stasis, not returning home, yet keeping their distance.
Its not just about space, though, it's time too.
A recent concert at Lisner Auditorium featured Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester playing German hits from the 1920's. According to the Post, "Introducing the hit "Mein kleiner gruner Kaktus, Max briefly outlined the plot - cactus falls from a balcony onto a neighbor's head - adding, this song is still very popular in Germany because we still think this situation is funny."
Speaking of relevant comedy, turning onto TCM last Saturday morning, waiting for sister Jill to arrive, I watched The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze - another situation you still think is funny or you never did.
I opt for the former. Look, all the classic elements are present in this film - even the ancient Niagria Falls Slowly I Turn gag, not initiated here by the usual Curlian, "Moe, Larry, the Cheese," triple-chant, but by Larry playing Three Blind Mice on a snake charmer's pipe.
Even so, when this film was produced in '63, the times they were a'changin: an attempted double-eye poke is retrieved by a chagrined Moe, who says, "We don't do that anymore," referring to the PTA's dubious campaign of the day to rein in the faux violence.
I couldn't help wondering if they were around today, might the Stooges visit Dr. 90120? Could botox, a facelift, and a reality show where the three boys lived together as off-kilter roommates, revitalize this beloved trio for contemporary audiences?
I gotta tell ya - as I was flipping channels before landing on TCM (the Today Show on 4, the Early Show on 9, 'The Suite Life of Zack & Cody on Fox), nothing was remotely competitive. The actors playing Zack & Cody appear to be the same cookie-cutter 'stars' I never recognize on the Red Carpet runway shows prior to the Emmys.
Wasn't there a time you knew everybody? I had a paperback once with short bio's of every Major Leaguer including five rotating Cubs managers. The Eye Magazine Rock Pile poster on my bedroom wall displayed members of every rock band who counted. It was all so manageable.
Speaking to friend Larry this week I previewed an upcoming Spotsyltuckian piece on how Harvard, for God's sake, is growing unstereotypically competitive -- I thought Ivy League schools still played walk-on's - you know, where someone in the quad on Thursday with a megaphone shouts, "hey, who wants to play on Saturday?"
"C'mon Spotsy," Larry responded, "do you live in a Marx Brothers movie?"
Turning down hometown Caroline Street, espying Jack Elam leaning hard against the wall of Hunan Gardens flipping a coin, I know who and what to fear. Stopping off at the fire station to pet Sammy the Dalmation, spotting Burt Mustin asleep in his chair, I recognize how to grow old usefully by grace. Barry Fitzgerald, sweeping the steps of St. Georges, exemplifies a natural practice of faith. Drinking a milkshake at Goolricks, next to William Schallert, kindly scion to the Patty Duke family, and countless others, teaches all I need know regarding the dispensation of fatherly wisdom.
A scurrilous rumor going round says if Moe hadn't died in 1975, the Stooges intended to team up with the Ritz Brothers to make an R rated movie.
Say it aint so, Moe.
Have you heard of the A-11 offense? This is where High School coaches play two quarterbacks and nine receivers since its believed offensive lines can't stop linebackers who've evolved too fast to block.
Progress like this isn't always physically possible. Scientists say there's a foreign language gene, for example, which turns itself off after adolesence. I don't doubt it judging by the way the genes in my body controlling brazil nut allergy and lactose intolerance flick on and off like light switches.
Apparently age is key: Joseph Horowitz' new Artists in Exile tracks careers of younger Europeans who flourished in America, older ones who couldn't adjust, and some, like Garbo, who achieved a certain stasis, not returning home, yet keeping their distance.
Its not just about space, though, it's time too.
A recent concert at Lisner Auditorium featured Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester playing German hits from the 1920's. According to the Post, "Introducing the hit "Mein kleiner gruner Kaktus, Max briefly outlined the plot - cactus falls from a balcony onto a neighbor's head - adding, this song is still very popular in Germany because we still think this situation is funny."
Speaking of relevant comedy, turning onto TCM last Saturday morning, waiting for sister Jill to arrive, I watched The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze - another situation you still think is funny or you never did.
I opt for the former. Look, all the classic elements are present in this film - even the ancient Niagria Falls Slowly I Turn gag, not initiated here by the usual Curlian, "Moe, Larry, the Cheese," triple-chant, but by Larry playing Three Blind Mice on a snake charmer's pipe.
Even so, when this film was produced in '63, the times they were a'changin: an attempted double-eye poke is retrieved by a chagrined Moe, who says, "We don't do that anymore," referring to the PTA's dubious campaign of the day to rein in the faux violence.
I couldn't help wondering if they were around today, might the Stooges visit Dr. 90120? Could botox, a facelift, and a reality show where the three boys lived together as off-kilter roommates, revitalize this beloved trio for contemporary audiences?
I gotta tell ya - as I was flipping channels before landing on TCM (the Today Show on 4, the Early Show on 9, 'The Suite Life of Zack & Cody on Fox), nothing was remotely competitive. The actors playing Zack & Cody appear to be the same cookie-cutter 'stars' I never recognize on the Red Carpet runway shows prior to the Emmys.
Wasn't there a time you knew everybody? I had a paperback once with short bio's of every Major Leaguer including five rotating Cubs managers. The Eye Magazine Rock Pile poster on my bedroom wall displayed members of every rock band who counted. It was all so manageable.
Speaking to friend Larry this week I previewed an upcoming Spotsyltuckian piece on how Harvard, for God's sake, is growing unstereotypically competitive -- I thought Ivy League schools still played walk-on's - you know, where someone in the quad on Thursday with a megaphone shouts, "hey, who wants to play on Saturday?"
"C'mon Spotsy," Larry responded, "do you live in a Marx Brothers movie?"
Turning down hometown Caroline Street, espying Jack Elam leaning hard against the wall of Hunan Gardens flipping a coin, I know who and what to fear. Stopping off at the fire station to pet Sammy the Dalmation, spotting Burt Mustin asleep in his chair, I recognize how to grow old usefully by grace. Barry Fitzgerald, sweeping the steps of St. Georges, exemplifies a natural practice of faith. Drinking a milkshake at Goolricks, next to William Schallert, kindly scion to the Patty Duke family, and countless others, teaches all I need know regarding the dispensation of fatherly wisdom.
A scurrilous rumor going round says if Moe hadn't died in 1975, the Stooges intended to team up with the Ritz Brothers to make an R rated movie.
Say it aint so, Moe.
Friday, October 17, 2008
The Remains of Rummikub
I note this week the extent I've married into a competitive family.
There is no Sunday dinner unaccompanied by a rousing board or card game.
Just as it was playing Invisible Ed years ago in hearts, the trouble is I play the hand in front of me as if there was no past or future.
When you consider the overwhelming options facing you on one turn in Rummikub, it uncomfortably numbs.
How decisions are sorted through fashions the narrative of Fateful Choices, the latest by prolific historian, Ian Kershaw, who possesses the knack (marred by a professorial habit of repeating himself) for delving into the very areas for which you've always longed to obtain extensive clarification.
Such is the case for May 1940, when the French were losing to the Germans, and Britain faced the choice to negotiate or fight on. It came down, as it so often does, to two duelling protagonists, here Churchill and Halifax, persuading three other members in the War Cabinet toward their conviction.
This past week I was embroiled similarly - not that the fate of a nation hung in the balance, but, instead, the outcome of a multi-million dollar project.
In both, mistakes were made by others leading to the crisis point. Winston had warned of the dangers of appeasement for a decade. I faced project leaders who failed to test new machinery adequately so that it failed upon attempting to go live.
Where Churchill was already familiar with the limited composition of a wieldly 5-member War Cabinet, I had to fashion both an ad hoc crisis advisory group of trusted loyal experts reporting only to me, and assess the composition of the body of decision-makers I had to convince. It was also necessary to restrict lines of communications to control events and eliminate the go-arounds which might harm the unified credibility of the arguments I would make.
Like Winston, it was necessary, or at least to be perceived, as keeping alternatives open while events took their course. Much time was spent by the War Cabinet deciding whether to approach Mussolini, at the request of France, as an intermediary to Hitler, and to prevent Italy from entering the war, while France was not yet beaten before it became a moot point -- I likewise bought the time needed for the manufacturer of the peripheral but critical product for which I'm responsible to retool their processes in compensation for the inadequate machine testing.
Terms of any debate must be pre-established. Churchill took time prior to the arguments to consult the wider institutional Cabinet, not only to guage their thoughts in terms of future support for the outcome he desired, but to gain the lift of shoring up his confidence.
Whereas Churchill was the prime decision-maker, even though he needed the unified consent of the War Cabinet for public consumption, I am not, so a crucial component of any strategy in this regard is to pre-brief the highest official involved to assess their perspective and to set terms of a civil debate where logic gains the opportunity to overcome emotions of those adhereing to illogical positions out of pride.
Although sniping continues and guarding the flanks is still the order of the day, I remain in control of the field so that 'fateful choices' may be made to overcome the crisis.
Last week in Sunday School we serendipitously considered whether there is anywhere in the world where such manipulation as described above isn't necessary.
I had once thought it was our parish.
Then, one after the other, we fought: over whether the Priest or featured praise band controlled the contemporary service; along the lines of a generational multi-family squabble which drew boundary lines among old friends; about whether the church should move from a former blue-collar neighborhood now turned Latino; to a congregational divorce after the consecration of Bishop Robinson.
What remains after the rummikub universe of choices was exhausted is a faithful Episcopalian congregation not geared toward inherent manipulation since there are no battlements to defend.
Openness and hospitality are the core values of present parish existence. Suzanne questioned, in Sunday School, whether non-manipulation is possible continually as the newly constituted parish consolidates around people and side issues. Eric says he doesn't think any group can exist for long without some sort of manipulation. I respond, maybe so, but what's left of the original St. Margaret's Episcopal Church remains the least manipulative environment of which I have direct experience.
When core values truly lived-out are positive by nature, participants need not sow seeds of new dystunctional maladies.
There is no Sunday dinner unaccompanied by a rousing board or card game.
Just as it was playing Invisible Ed years ago in hearts, the trouble is I play the hand in front of me as if there was no past or future.
When you consider the overwhelming options facing you on one turn in Rummikub, it uncomfortably numbs.
How decisions are sorted through fashions the narrative of Fateful Choices, the latest by prolific historian, Ian Kershaw, who possesses the knack (marred by a professorial habit of repeating himself) for delving into the very areas for which you've always longed to obtain extensive clarification.
Such is the case for May 1940, when the French were losing to the Germans, and Britain faced the choice to negotiate or fight on. It came down, as it so often does, to two duelling protagonists, here Churchill and Halifax, persuading three other members in the War Cabinet toward their conviction.
This past week I was embroiled similarly - not that the fate of a nation hung in the balance, but, instead, the outcome of a multi-million dollar project.
In both, mistakes were made by others leading to the crisis point. Winston had warned of the dangers of appeasement for a decade. I faced project leaders who failed to test new machinery adequately so that it failed upon attempting to go live.
Where Churchill was already familiar with the limited composition of a wieldly 5-member War Cabinet, I had to fashion both an ad hoc crisis advisory group of trusted loyal experts reporting only to me, and assess the composition of the body of decision-makers I had to convince. It was also necessary to restrict lines of communications to control events and eliminate the go-arounds which might harm the unified credibility of the arguments I would make.
Like Winston, it was necessary, or at least to be perceived, as keeping alternatives open while events took their course. Much time was spent by the War Cabinet deciding whether to approach Mussolini, at the request of France, as an intermediary to Hitler, and to prevent Italy from entering the war, while France was not yet beaten before it became a moot point -- I likewise bought the time needed for the manufacturer of the peripheral but critical product for which I'm responsible to retool their processes in compensation for the inadequate machine testing.
Terms of any debate must be pre-established. Churchill took time prior to the arguments to consult the wider institutional Cabinet, not only to guage their thoughts in terms of future support for the outcome he desired, but to gain the lift of shoring up his confidence.
Whereas Churchill was the prime decision-maker, even though he needed the unified consent of the War Cabinet for public consumption, I am not, so a crucial component of any strategy in this regard is to pre-brief the highest official involved to assess their perspective and to set terms of a civil debate where logic gains the opportunity to overcome emotions of those adhereing to illogical positions out of pride.
Although sniping continues and guarding the flanks is still the order of the day, I remain in control of the field so that 'fateful choices' may be made to overcome the crisis.
Last week in Sunday School we serendipitously considered whether there is anywhere in the world where such manipulation as described above isn't necessary.
I had once thought it was our parish.
Then, one after the other, we fought: over whether the Priest or featured praise band controlled the contemporary service; along the lines of a generational multi-family squabble which drew boundary lines among old friends; about whether the church should move from a former blue-collar neighborhood now turned Latino; to a congregational divorce after the consecration of Bishop Robinson.
What remains after the rummikub universe of choices was exhausted is a faithful Episcopalian congregation not geared toward inherent manipulation since there are no battlements to defend.
Openness and hospitality are the core values of present parish existence. Suzanne questioned, in Sunday School, whether non-manipulation is possible continually as the newly constituted parish consolidates around people and side issues. Eric says he doesn't think any group can exist for long without some sort of manipulation. I respond, maybe so, but what's left of the original St. Margaret's Episcopal Church remains the least manipulative environment of which I have direct experience.
When core values truly lived-out are positive by nature, participants need not sow seeds of new dystunctional maladies.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Long Memory
I note this week a certain nostalgia for the Cold War.
It arrived noticeably as I watched Torn Curtain on TCM. Paul Newman portrayed a double-agent defector tricking an East German egghead into revealing a missing mathematical equation needed to finish an ABM system which will end nuclear war.
Right.
Unlike the cardboard version, and more like thousands of the 'Greatest Generation' who are passing each day, a real espionage player, Wolfgang Vogel, the lawyer at the heart of the most famous Cold War spy swap, Gary Powers for Rudolph Abel, has died at age 82. Abel was the first modern 'James Bond' I read about in the Classic Comics Illustrated Story of Espionage which began with Joshua at Jericho and ran straight through the Pinkertons and Mata Hari to the contemporary times of my childhood.
In aid of manning the last vestigal Cold War ramparts, I worked, upon coming to Washington in the late 1970's, alongside folks who drew concentric circles around major U.S. cities to estimate survivable fall out should the Russkies drop the Bomb. I'd been prepped for this sort of employment at UCF where we'd studied Herman Kahn's 'On Thermonuclear War,' and 'On Escalation,' discovering among other quaint theories, it would be alright for the elderly to consume radioactive food since they'd die naturally of old age anyway before the inevitable cancers ate them alive.
There's a nostalgia afoot in Russia too these days which pre-dates the Cold War.
We've just learned their Supreme Court has recognized Czar Nicholas II and his family as victims of the Revolution and consequently rehabilitated the Romanovs ninety years after their execution in a Siberian basement.
Why now?
After KGB archives released in the 1980's revealed the full extent of Stalin's crimes and the sham of constructed Soviet history around them, the nation required a new national mythos to justify its legitimate accomplishments in the 20th century and its status today as a great nation which it has seemingly always needed to confirm since Peter of Great insisted on it. What's emerging thematically now is the same pre-1917 patriotic and Orthodox panorama Stalin himself employed to rally the country in World War II and the same supposed golden age touched upon in the last book by Solzhenitsyn.
Upon Solzy's passing, Rod Dreher, the Dallas Morning Herald editorialist, condemned liberals for turning against him after the famed Harvard speech. What Dreher has failed to internalize, as a non-minority American, is a revitalized Imperial Russia, even under a sort of freely elected Putin, or a puppet, is impossible in lieu of welcoming home the vicious ancient running dogs of chauvinism and anti-semitism.
The Bolsheviks weren't all wrong in sweeping away despotic royalty - they just replaced it with something worse, and its return doesn't bode well for anyone.
Or, more plainly, its return means settling obscure European scores like ones represented by the beautiful silk topographical map I possess once used by the Kaiser's General Staff to plan for war in remote Salonica.
In the 18th century, Catherine the Great, in another example, invited Germans, and their technical modernizing influences, to settle on the Volga. Alongside other ethnic minorities, like the Chechens, Stalin eventually deported them all to Siberia. After his death, a small number returned, but as time moves on, unless more Germans emigrate to bolster the region's identity, this cultural enclave will disappear. As long as an agressive Russian nationalism constitutes the basis for foreign policy such emigration is unlikely.
After the hard-line coup attempt, and genuinely democratic reformer Boris Yeltsin on the cusp of power in 1994, the obvious question was 'will democracy hold?' Tragically, it wasn't to be, since Yeltsin's authority ended similarly to DC's own Marion Barry -- addicts who became footnotes and punchlines. Putin, in contrast, photographed this week in martial arts togs in that wierd Red style (Mao swimming the Yangtse) bridging past and future: a steely-eyed KGB-cum-Czar black belt.
Last week I noted I was reading Figes' The Whisperers about the nature of private life in the Soviet Union. As a third-generation American of paternal Polish Shetl descent, I embody an old country Eastern Slav soul as much as the maternal English half which most often fails to balance things out.
Rather than The Whisperers, the book of my life yet to be written is called The Brooderers.
This biography floats impossibilities of political idealism minus fatalism - in America where flexibly bends left or right according to the times, fatalism is positively negated and culturally approrpriated. In a country otherwise lacking checks and balances, and a marketplace insufficiently vast to subsume all in its wake, it's far easier to express existential doubt and grief through aggresive internal and external policies while looking contemptuously upon those who struggle through the confusions of choice and freedom.
While witnessing first-hand the critical contempt in the sad doe eyes of Eastern emigre summer vacation waitresses on the Outer Banks, I asked a friend just back from Russia if she thought youth there were moving beyond politics to American-style consumerism. She confirmed fashion and traffic in Moscow were decidedly Western. Most folks crinkle their noses at American pop culture; I'd rather see people shopping than committing genocide.
Why would any foreign policy today want to play to the worst fears of the Russian psyche by encircling the Motherland with missile systems and antagonistic neighbors? How better to supply a rationale for a super-nationalist patriotism needed to overcome an eternal national inferiority complex?
--For dwindling world-wide gas and oil resources, of course, and to indefinitely feed an industrial-military complex which not only must fight active guerilla wars but can only sustain itself, long-run, through promoting the idea that conventional wars amongst major powers over seemingly obscure issues like the rights of Volga Germans are still a nostalgic desirability and in the national interest.
And so the forces of capitalism ever ignite the dialectic fires of fascist totalitarianism, no longer Communist, but attired in the royal finery of Czars.
It arrived noticeably as I watched Torn Curtain on TCM. Paul Newman portrayed a double-agent defector tricking an East German egghead into revealing a missing mathematical equation needed to finish an ABM system which will end nuclear war.
Right.
Unlike the cardboard version, and more like thousands of the 'Greatest Generation' who are passing each day, a real espionage player, Wolfgang Vogel, the lawyer at the heart of the most famous Cold War spy swap, Gary Powers for Rudolph Abel, has died at age 82. Abel was the first modern 'James Bond' I read about in the Classic Comics Illustrated Story of Espionage which began with Joshua at Jericho and ran straight through the Pinkertons and Mata Hari to the contemporary times of my childhood.
In aid of manning the last vestigal Cold War ramparts, I worked, upon coming to Washington in the late 1970's, alongside folks who drew concentric circles around major U.S. cities to estimate survivable fall out should the Russkies drop the Bomb. I'd been prepped for this sort of employment at UCF where we'd studied Herman Kahn's 'On Thermonuclear War,' and 'On Escalation,' discovering among other quaint theories, it would be alright for the elderly to consume radioactive food since they'd die naturally of old age anyway before the inevitable cancers ate them alive.
There's a nostalgia afoot in Russia too these days which pre-dates the Cold War.
We've just learned their Supreme Court has recognized Czar Nicholas II and his family as victims of the Revolution and consequently rehabilitated the Romanovs ninety years after their execution in a Siberian basement.
Why now?
After KGB archives released in the 1980's revealed the full extent of Stalin's crimes and the sham of constructed Soviet history around them, the nation required a new national mythos to justify its legitimate accomplishments in the 20th century and its status today as a great nation which it has seemingly always needed to confirm since Peter of Great insisted on it. What's emerging thematically now is the same pre-1917 patriotic and Orthodox panorama Stalin himself employed to rally the country in World War II and the same supposed golden age touched upon in the last book by Solzhenitsyn.
Upon Solzy's passing, Rod Dreher, the Dallas Morning Herald editorialist, condemned liberals for turning against him after the famed Harvard speech. What Dreher has failed to internalize, as a non-minority American, is a revitalized Imperial Russia, even under a sort of freely elected Putin, or a puppet, is impossible in lieu of welcoming home the vicious ancient running dogs of chauvinism and anti-semitism.
The Bolsheviks weren't all wrong in sweeping away despotic royalty - they just replaced it with something worse, and its return doesn't bode well for anyone.
Or, more plainly, its return means settling obscure European scores like ones represented by the beautiful silk topographical map I possess once used by the Kaiser's General Staff to plan for war in remote Salonica.
In the 18th century, Catherine the Great, in another example, invited Germans, and their technical modernizing influences, to settle on the Volga. Alongside other ethnic minorities, like the Chechens, Stalin eventually deported them all to Siberia. After his death, a small number returned, but as time moves on, unless more Germans emigrate to bolster the region's identity, this cultural enclave will disappear. As long as an agressive Russian nationalism constitutes the basis for foreign policy such emigration is unlikely.
After the hard-line coup attempt, and genuinely democratic reformer Boris Yeltsin on the cusp of power in 1994, the obvious question was 'will democracy hold?' Tragically, it wasn't to be, since Yeltsin's authority ended similarly to DC's own Marion Barry -- addicts who became footnotes and punchlines. Putin, in contrast, photographed this week in martial arts togs in that wierd Red style (Mao swimming the Yangtse) bridging past and future: a steely-eyed KGB-cum-Czar black belt.
Last week I noted I was reading Figes' The Whisperers about the nature of private life in the Soviet Union. As a third-generation American of paternal Polish Shetl descent, I embody an old country Eastern Slav soul as much as the maternal English half which most often fails to balance things out.
Rather than The Whisperers, the book of my life yet to be written is called The Brooderers.
This biography floats impossibilities of political idealism minus fatalism - in America where flexibly bends left or right according to the times, fatalism is positively negated and culturally approrpriated. In a country otherwise lacking checks and balances, and a marketplace insufficiently vast to subsume all in its wake, it's far easier to express existential doubt and grief through aggresive internal and external policies while looking contemptuously upon those who struggle through the confusions of choice and freedom.
While witnessing first-hand the critical contempt in the sad doe eyes of Eastern emigre summer vacation waitresses on the Outer Banks, I asked a friend just back from Russia if she thought youth there were moving beyond politics to American-style consumerism. She confirmed fashion and traffic in Moscow were decidedly Western. Most folks crinkle their noses at American pop culture; I'd rather see people shopping than committing genocide.
Why would any foreign policy today want to play to the worst fears of the Russian psyche by encircling the Motherland with missile systems and antagonistic neighbors? How better to supply a rationale for a super-nationalist patriotism needed to overcome an eternal national inferiority complex?
--For dwindling world-wide gas and oil resources, of course, and to indefinitely feed an industrial-military complex which not only must fight active guerilla wars but can only sustain itself, long-run, through promoting the idea that conventional wars amongst major powers over seemingly obscure issues like the rights of Volga Germans are still a nostalgic desirability and in the national interest.
And so the forces of capitalism ever ignite the dialectic fires of fascist totalitarianism, no longer Communist, but attired in the royal finery of Czars.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Sic Hefner Tyrannus?
I note this week a meeting at St. Margaret's on how to launch a children's program called Godly Play.
Since Christmas is just around the corner, the suggestion was made that we hold a pageant to stir enthusiasm.
There was a gasp.
"No pageants!"
"Why not, for heaven's sake," I gasped back.
An extended inquiry later revealed the underlying Montessori-like ciricculum of Godly Play is founded upon a 'theology of playful orthodoxy.'
In his book, The Whisperers, Orlando Figes describes another sort of educational game called Search & Requisition. Boys played Red Army Requisitioners who menaced girls playing bourgeois speculators hiding grain.
Sounds like fun.
Figes continues, there were schools where children were encouraged to organize their own police; invited to write denunciations; and to hold classroom trials.
One young lad, encouraged by this mother, established The Central Bureau of the Russian Committee of the Association of Children of the World. As they marched through the streets carrying home-made banners and singing revolutionary songs, crying out, "window-watcher, shame on you," to observers fortunate enough to be watching the parade from home.
The point of it all, according to Figes, was to create absolutists who'd broken free of convention by supplanting love of family with party loyalty.
Speaking of female encouragement, or not, every time I'm caught watching The Girls Next Door, I change channels immediately lest my absolutist wife tut-tut every five seconds. Where I envision a new kind of, albeit highly attractive family, free of old conventions, the Mrs sees Bimbos.
Could Hef be the ultimate catalyst for the fulfillment of Leninism?
Twenty years after the clubs closed in Chicago former Bunnies held a reunion. Their ranks included writers, feminists, real estate executives, an accupunturist, even a retired homicide detective.
When they worked for Playboy, they were well paid for that time; there was equal opportunity for women of color; and there were strict no-paw rules for patrons. According to one, "Believe it or not, Hef was ahead of his time when it came to issues of sexual harrassment."
I note last week the funeral of Russian journalist Magomed Mutsolgov who officials say was shot trying to take away an officer's gun but whose lawyer says was shot in the head point-blank.
We sometimes wonder why Russians desire strong leaders. It's not hard to see how, building upon existing Czarist repression, the education of Soviet children conditioned them to accept Stalinist show trials where millions were exiled and shot.
The Whisperers asks if it's possible to retain any sense of morality when private life goes public.
In The Girls Next Door private life also turns public.
According to sociologist Max Weber, "in an individual society, religion became a private matter, so the USSR abolished individuality and privacy, with the Party taking its puritanical place."
Puritanical ideology inevitably turns lethal; libertine culture may eventually empower or denigrate women.
Murderour dictatorship or anything-goes
There's a lot at stake here.
Best to hold a Christmas pageant, don't you think, just to be safe?
Since Christmas is just around the corner, the suggestion was made that we hold a pageant to stir enthusiasm.
There was a gasp.
"No pageants!"
"Why not, for heaven's sake," I gasped back.
An extended inquiry later revealed the underlying Montessori-like ciricculum of Godly Play is founded upon a 'theology of playful orthodoxy.'
In his book, The Whisperers, Orlando Figes describes another sort of educational game called Search & Requisition. Boys played Red Army Requisitioners who menaced girls playing bourgeois speculators hiding grain.
Sounds like fun.
Figes continues, there were schools where children were encouraged to organize their own police; invited to write denunciations; and to hold classroom trials.
One young lad, encouraged by this mother, established The Central Bureau of the Russian Committee of the Association of Children of the World. As they marched through the streets carrying home-made banners and singing revolutionary songs, crying out, "window-watcher, shame on you," to observers fortunate enough to be watching the parade from home.
The point of it all, according to Figes, was to create absolutists who'd broken free of convention by supplanting love of family with party loyalty.
Speaking of female encouragement, or not, every time I'm caught watching The Girls Next Door, I change channels immediately lest my absolutist wife tut-tut every five seconds. Where I envision a new kind of, albeit highly attractive family, free of old conventions, the Mrs sees Bimbos.
Could Hef be the ultimate catalyst for the fulfillment of Leninism?
Twenty years after the clubs closed in Chicago former Bunnies held a reunion. Their ranks included writers, feminists, real estate executives, an accupunturist, even a retired homicide detective.
When they worked for Playboy, they were well paid for that time; there was equal opportunity for women of color; and there were strict no-paw rules for patrons. According to one, "Believe it or not, Hef was ahead of his time when it came to issues of sexual harrassment."
I note last week the funeral of Russian journalist Magomed Mutsolgov who officials say was shot trying to take away an officer's gun but whose lawyer says was shot in the head point-blank.
We sometimes wonder why Russians desire strong leaders. It's not hard to see how, building upon existing Czarist repression, the education of Soviet children conditioned them to accept Stalinist show trials where millions were exiled and shot.
The Whisperers asks if it's possible to retain any sense of morality when private life goes public.
In The Girls Next Door private life also turns public.
According to sociologist Max Weber, "in an individual society, religion became a private matter, so the USSR abolished individuality and privacy, with the Party taking its puritanical place."
Puritanical ideology inevitably turns lethal; libertine culture may eventually empower or denigrate women.
Murderour dictatorship or anything-goes
There's a lot at stake here.
Best to hold a Christmas pageant, don't you think, just to be safe?
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