You have to be careful what you laugh it, for in the long run you usually become what you were laughing at. For instance, old....!
The Census Bureau reminds us that next year the first of the Boomer Generation turn 65. The unofficial entrance into the world of gray hairs, brittle bones, squinty eyes and regretted memories. But while the government jousts with the budgetary dragon of money, the newly-arrived old must take up the lance to joust with the barbarous dragon of meaning. You know, the ancient but often deferred questions that accompanied Adam and Eve out of the Garden: why am I here? where am I going? what's it all about?
In the years just after they lost their lease, their descendants huddled around tribal campfires to hear the wise ones (AKA, old guys) speak of the great answers to the great questions. In due time, tribes found among themselves medicine men and temple priests who could address the questions more formally. In later time, societies found among themselves medical scientists who sought to wrestle with the questions in their laboratories.
Today, the graduating boomers have all three sources at their disposal as they relax between the front and back nine. Over a tall cool one there shaded beneath the fairway greens, the young elders have time to reflect on their earlier and glibber answers. Like when they were consumed with raising their children in the happy hope of felicitous retirements....or when they looked at their own aging parents and vowed never to let age do this to them....or when they locked in those portfolios sure to hoist them throughout their own declining years.
Grasses are forever greener just over the next generational fence. However, now the old boomers find themselves in a slow-motion kabuki dance with the Grim Reaper. How in the hell did this happen! How did this come to be so soon! And why without any warning!
Well, here's the funny thing. All of us -- elderly, boomer, and boomer-to-be -- have been witness to this process from the first time we could pluck a flower. Spring...! One day it's not here, then suddenly one day it is here. In all its blooming green wonder. The little signs and signals were nudging and popping for weeks, only we forgot to notice.
Likewise the sudden burst of old age is never all that sudden. It is we not it that is surprised. But now that the boomers sipping tall cool ones are no longer able to defer the conversation, one particular dragon-of-a-question challenges us to subdue it: Is the answer medical science offers us about aging, the best answer to live with? put another way, is warehousing us the best solution? or is it more like the final solution?
This is surely not to say the old ways (ie. sharing a back room in the home of your kids) are better than the new ways (ie. sharing a room in the institution your kids are paying for). As usual, the best answer probably lies somewhere between. Between familial compassion and superior care. Something for each family to locate for itself.
It's just that the aging boomers never had to joust with it so seriously. Nor was it ever topic one on the fairways before.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
LIVING IN A NICHE & OTHER WAYS OF SURVIVING MODERNITY
The last time I saw Paris -- I like writing that, it sounds so cosmopolitan -- I spent a few cafe coffees sitting with a writer who must by now be dead. But his musings about niche marketing live on with me here back in the home of shaken but still still shimmering American capitalism....!
His thought was that while entrepreneurs aim their goods and services at specific niches of their market, consumers choose to live in specific niches of their life. There may be niche marketing, but still more relevant there is niche living. And could there be any better time to indulge in this prescription than today's daily avalanche of words and images, facts and statistics, theories and conspiracies?
You may have witnessed the same scenes -- bartenders turning off the newscast at the request of upset customers, mothers easing children away from the nightly news, jobless men fighting back despair at the latest unemployment reports. While we no longer go to our beds at night with long-rifles in the event of Indian raids, we do climb into them trailed by nightmares of the impending Armageddons faithfully but breathlessly reported by our 24/7 media.
One of the questions the media often poses is do we have more information than we can process? more knowledge than wisdom? The questions are of course sandwiched in between another breaking-news dispatch that slams into your life like another missile.
And so as Jacques pointed out lo these many newscasts ago, "You can't stop the missiles, but you can step out of their range." What he had in Gallic mind was a practice perfected by certain souls travelling this same ship of fools with us.Those who, for a variety of reasons, have reasoned that we live in herds, but can still graze in private. And so these escapees travel in their minds to other lands for brief respites.
The artists among us do so as they sabotage their way behind the line of daily fire into the bloodless fields where live music and literature and poetry. The philosophers among us do so as they tease out of the everyday hair-fright strands of thought which transcend the mud of the moment for the message of the eternal. Nostalgics too do this as they escape -- yes, they have no shame about the word! -- into remembrances of things past, people loved, and times savored.
.
My Parisian friend wouldn't shape the words this commonly, but what he was saying and what I was approving is: Different strokes for different folks! And while today's helter-skelter age brims with rhapsodic new opportunities, it bubbles with discordant new disasters. Sipping coffee in that Paris cafe and slipping into bed this night, I carry a feeling next to my heart which whispers: Yes, seize the day, but only in the pieces and parts you can actually hold.
After all, the world is a very big pot of coffee, and you are only a very small cup.
His thought was that while entrepreneurs aim their goods and services at specific niches of their market, consumers choose to live in specific niches of their life. There may be niche marketing, but still more relevant there is niche living. And could there be any better time to indulge in this prescription than today's daily avalanche of words and images, facts and statistics, theories and conspiracies?
You may have witnessed the same scenes -- bartenders turning off the newscast at the request of upset customers, mothers easing children away from the nightly news, jobless men fighting back despair at the latest unemployment reports. While we no longer go to our beds at night with long-rifles in the event of Indian raids, we do climb into them trailed by nightmares of the impending Armageddons faithfully but breathlessly reported by our 24/7 media.
One of the questions the media often poses is do we have more information than we can process? more knowledge than wisdom? The questions are of course sandwiched in between another breaking-news dispatch that slams into your life like another missile.
And so as Jacques pointed out lo these many newscasts ago, "You can't stop the missiles, but you can step out of their range." What he had in Gallic mind was a practice perfected by certain souls travelling this same ship of fools with us.Those who, for a variety of reasons, have reasoned that we live in herds, but can still graze in private. And so these escapees travel in their minds to other lands for brief respites.
The artists among us do so as they sabotage their way behind the line of daily fire into the bloodless fields where live music and literature and poetry. The philosophers among us do so as they tease out of the everyday hair-fright strands of thought which transcend the mud of the moment for the message of the eternal. Nostalgics too do this as they escape -- yes, they have no shame about the word! -- into remembrances of things past, people loved, and times savored.
.
My Parisian friend wouldn't shape the words this commonly, but what he was saying and what I was approving is: Different strokes for different folks! And while today's helter-skelter age brims with rhapsodic new opportunities, it bubbles with discordant new disasters. Sipping coffee in that Paris cafe and slipping into bed this night, I carry a feeling next to my heart which whispers: Yes, seize the day, but only in the pieces and parts you can actually hold.
After all, the world is a very big pot of coffee, and you are only a very small cup.
Monday, May 25, 2009
WHY WE BUILD MORE PARKING LOTS THAN MUSEUMS
Fundamental to the difference between the United States and the Eurasian half of the world is the way we look at time. In the thousands-of-years old civilizations of Asia and later Europe, your past is what you build on and memorialize. Here, all too often the past is what you forget and instead of memorializing its remains, you clear them away for new parking lots....!
You doubt it? Walk the streets of Jerusalem, Athens or Rome. Around any corner you're likely to encounter an ancient wall, temple or aqueduct with people taking its picture. In downtown Chicago, maybe a tiny unnoticed memorial plate in the sidewalk right next to a spanking new parking lot. If nothing, we are a practical people.
Historical and preservationist societies work hard to save our past, but compare their clot with downtown entrepreneurs and -- well, another parking lot!
Walking the streets of other ancient cities -- Cairo, Istanbul, Venice and Paris -- there's no reason to feel outdated. Unlike Hollywood's B-movie versions of turbaned beggars and singing pizza peddlers, these are glistening metropolitan centers housing easily as much talent and income as ours. Somehow, though, glorifying their past greatness is as important to them as erecting new greatness. It's usually not an either/or choice for them. It's largely a matter of understanding that the seeds of their future lie buried in their past.
One great irony to this small wisdom is our American railroads. Perhaps the only technology we have allowed to regress rather than progress. In the golden age of railroading, great silver trains sped from city to city at 100 mph while serving fine dinners and wines on white tablecloths. Today, the old four-hour trip from Chicago to Minneapolis is eight. And that's only on the days there aren't any hour-long delays because of slow-chugging freights. Other trips to other cities are not even on the schedule anymore. And fine menus are now boxed lunches.
If air travel were replacing rail travel with bold new speeds and services, fine. But have you been stuck on a tarmac lately munching bags of peanuts you had to pay for...?
As Congress wrangles with another annual budget simply to keep old rickety Amtrak alive, they can watch 200 mph trains flashing through Europe. To city after city, on-schedule after on-schedule. The issue here of course is more than money (another mistake young kids and nations often make). The issue is to once more look over our shoulders to where and why we have come from, before deciding where and why we intend to be.
I have nothing against cars and parking lots in reasonable numbers at reasonable prices. But I do have a lot against time-locked thinking which finds discarding our past the cheapest way of reaching our future. We're too great a society to be caught with our past down...!
You doubt it? Walk the streets of Jerusalem, Athens or Rome. Around any corner you're likely to encounter an ancient wall, temple or aqueduct with people taking its picture. In downtown Chicago, maybe a tiny unnoticed memorial plate in the sidewalk right next to a spanking new parking lot. If nothing, we are a practical people.
Historical and preservationist societies work hard to save our past, but compare their clot with downtown entrepreneurs and -- well, another parking lot!
Walking the streets of other ancient cities -- Cairo, Istanbul, Venice and Paris -- there's no reason to feel outdated. Unlike Hollywood's B-movie versions of turbaned beggars and singing pizza peddlers, these are glistening metropolitan centers housing easily as much talent and income as ours. Somehow, though, glorifying their past greatness is as important to them as erecting new greatness. It's usually not an either/or choice for them. It's largely a matter of understanding that the seeds of their future lie buried in their past.
One great irony to this small wisdom is our American railroads. Perhaps the only technology we have allowed to regress rather than progress. In the golden age of railroading, great silver trains sped from city to city at 100 mph while serving fine dinners and wines on white tablecloths. Today, the old four-hour trip from Chicago to Minneapolis is eight. And that's only on the days there aren't any hour-long delays because of slow-chugging freights. Other trips to other cities are not even on the schedule anymore. And fine menus are now boxed lunches.
If air travel were replacing rail travel with bold new speeds and services, fine. But have you been stuck on a tarmac lately munching bags of peanuts you had to pay for...?
As Congress wrangles with another annual budget simply to keep old rickety Amtrak alive, they can watch 200 mph trains flashing through Europe. To city after city, on-schedule after on-schedule. The issue here of course is more than money (another mistake young kids and nations often make). The issue is to once more look over our shoulders to where and why we have come from, before deciding where and why we intend to be.
I have nothing against cars and parking lots in reasonable numbers at reasonable prices. But I do have a lot against time-locked thinking which finds discarding our past the cheapest way of reaching our future. We're too great a society to be caught with our past down...!
Sunday, May 24, 2009
NOW WE KNOW-HITLER DIDN'T DIE IN THE BUNKER
Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it himself...!
This is most true in the case of the person who condemns prejudice. It's the universally approved theme in conversations from barbershops to literati in which we proudly damn this practice in the case of races, religions, classes and genders. And yet, few of us can offer many examples of where we're personally engaged in the cause.
There is perhaps no cause more convenient than echoing the post-World War II call "Never again." In so doing, everyone continues to condemn Adolf Hitler as the most hated man of the 20th century. The Nazi Fuhrer has become the worldwide tuning fork by which to test the sound of evil in our midst. By which to measure leaders like Saddam Hussein, Omar Qaddafi and Osama Ben Ladin.
Time out for a reality check.
Hitler is dead and Nazism is a forbidden label in most nations. Still, both live on in the hearts and homelands of many. By other names and other flags, to be sure, but live they do. Because both are congenital to a human nature which has throbbed ever since Eden with a pride in self and a disdain for anyone not part of this self. Pick a name, any name! Racism...nationalism...messiahism...elitism. They will all do, for they are all itching just beneath our surface when scratched in just the right way.
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see this. The evidence screams out from every hate crime, every terrorist act, every blogged call for racial purity, and even every secret basement handshake. Our human nature -- so fragile a thing -- falls easy prey to the seduction of sudden superiority. What easier way to compensate for one's failures in life?
Right now in the heartland of the fatherland there is another variation of the disease spreading quickly. In Hitler's birth country of Austria, Nazism has persisted in coffee shops, university campuses, even the parliament itself where the same old venom has seeped out but with new names and flavors. Prejudice of course always needs a target, so now in place of the Jew there is the Muslim. Demographic reports about the Islamization of Europe are breeding as fast as is the Muslim populations in Austria and throughout Europe. Each soiled by a familiar fear: They are polluting the race!
And so the slogan "Never again" remains in constant danger of being re-written: "Over and over again."
This is most true in the case of the person who condemns prejudice. It's the universally approved theme in conversations from barbershops to literati in which we proudly damn this practice in the case of races, religions, classes and genders. And yet, few of us can offer many examples of where we're personally engaged in the cause.
There is perhaps no cause more convenient than echoing the post-World War II call "Never again." In so doing, everyone continues to condemn Adolf Hitler as the most hated man of the 20th century. The Nazi Fuhrer has become the worldwide tuning fork by which to test the sound of evil in our midst. By which to measure leaders like Saddam Hussein, Omar Qaddafi and Osama Ben Ladin.
Time out for a reality check.
Hitler is dead and Nazism is a forbidden label in most nations. Still, both live on in the hearts and homelands of many. By other names and other flags, to be sure, but live they do. Because both are congenital to a human nature which has throbbed ever since Eden with a pride in self and a disdain for anyone not part of this self. Pick a name, any name! Racism...nationalism...messiahism...elitism. They will all do, for they are all itching just beneath our surface when scratched in just the right way.
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see this. The evidence screams out from every hate crime, every terrorist act, every blogged call for racial purity, and even every secret basement handshake. Our human nature -- so fragile a thing -- falls easy prey to the seduction of sudden superiority. What easier way to compensate for one's failures in life?
Right now in the heartland of the fatherland there is another variation of the disease spreading quickly. In Hitler's birth country of Austria, Nazism has persisted in coffee shops, university campuses, even the parliament itself where the same old venom has seeped out but with new names and flavors. Prejudice of course always needs a target, so now in place of the Jew there is the Muslim. Demographic reports about the Islamization of Europe are breeding as fast as is the Muslim populations in Austria and throughout Europe. Each soiled by a familiar fear: They are polluting the race!
And so the slogan "Never again" remains in constant danger of being re-written: "Over and over again."
Saturday, May 23, 2009
CRIME & NO PUNISHMENT
A few weeks ago a great crime was committed in our American secondary schools. Millions of students took the required US Constitution Test, and an estimated 96% passed...!
The crime is surely not in the test, but in the easy way almost everyone passes it. I speak here as a retired teacher and co-compliciter. In retrospect, it makes you think of H.G. Wells when he warned: "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
Here's the heart of the matter, Mr. Duncan. While it's appropriate that youngsters learn the principles of their Constitution, the test never really addresses the practice. New immigrants are required to pass an adult exam, but once we graduate our 18-year-olds, that's it. Slam, bam, end of civics education! Down-right crazy in a democracy which depends upon the wisdom of its citizenry.
Isn't it something like giving the keys of a BMW to a kid who never finished driver's ed? The answer that's offered is: (1) if they're old enough to die for their country, they're old enough to vote (2) besides, it's their inherent right under the Constitution. But while both answers carry weight, not enough when we consider something like the current Gitmo dispute.
The administration you work for offered a nuanced plan to close a camp that violates human rights and further inflames the recruitment of terrorists around the globe. Those who dissent -- some Democrats, virtually all Republicans, and the great volcano god Limbaugh -- surely have the right to dissent, but do they have the right to use their right so irresponsibly? Maybe if more of the students you and I helped graduate were on the top of their game, the irresponsible battle-cries would have failed in their tracks.
As with all irresponsible dissenters, they gotta have a gimmick. A hot bumper-sticker message. This one does: "Not in my neighborhood." I'm wondering right now how many of our former students -- a grand collage of young humanity -- can see through such a bogus case? Such utter nonsense? In other words, such a lie? The facts, as re-stated by your colleague Defense Secretary Gates, are that "our neighborhoods" already house terrorists and mass murderers in safe maximum-security prisons. (Along with, by the way, atomic waste deposits). For decades, and not one has ever escaped. Including those imprisoned within only a few hours drive of our own Chicago.
And so, Mr Secretary, if I had the chance to meet our former students today, I would pray to Thomas Jefferson that a show of hands would show they understand their Constitution and their country wisely enough to know demagogy when they smell it. And then choose to help get on with the truly legitimate crises on our national plate.
To my way of thinking, that would deserve an A. Don't you agree...?
The crime is surely not in the test, but in the easy way almost everyone passes it. I speak here as a retired teacher and co-compliciter. In retrospect, it makes you think of H.G. Wells when he warned: "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
Here's the heart of the matter, Mr. Duncan. While it's appropriate that youngsters learn the principles of their Constitution, the test never really addresses the practice. New immigrants are required to pass an adult exam, but once we graduate our 18-year-olds, that's it. Slam, bam, end of civics education! Down-right crazy in a democracy which depends upon the wisdom of its citizenry.
Isn't it something like giving the keys of a BMW to a kid who never finished driver's ed? The answer that's offered is: (1) if they're old enough to die for their country, they're old enough to vote (2) besides, it's their inherent right under the Constitution. But while both answers carry weight, not enough when we consider something like the current Gitmo dispute.
The administration you work for offered a nuanced plan to close a camp that violates human rights and further inflames the recruitment of terrorists around the globe. Those who dissent -- some Democrats, virtually all Republicans, and the great volcano god Limbaugh -- surely have the right to dissent, but do they have the right to use their right so irresponsibly? Maybe if more of the students you and I helped graduate were on the top of their game, the irresponsible battle-cries would have failed in their tracks.
As with all irresponsible dissenters, they gotta have a gimmick. A hot bumper-sticker message. This one does: "Not in my neighborhood." I'm wondering right now how many of our former students -- a grand collage of young humanity -- can see through such a bogus case? Such utter nonsense? In other words, such a lie? The facts, as re-stated by your colleague Defense Secretary Gates, are that "our neighborhoods" already house terrorists and mass murderers in safe maximum-security prisons. (Along with, by the way, atomic waste deposits). For decades, and not one has ever escaped. Including those imprisoned within only a few hours drive of our own Chicago.
And so, Mr Secretary, if I had the chance to meet our former students today, I would pray to Thomas Jefferson that a show of hands would show they understand their Constitution and their country wisely enough to know demagogy when they smell it. And then choose to help get on with the truly legitimate crises on our national plate.
To my way of thinking, that would deserve an A. Don't you agree...?
Friday, May 22, 2009
SORRY, GOD, I HATE YOUR MOSQUITOES
And so begins the official season of the great American picnic. Only please count me out....!
I admit this is completely counter-culture, but I wonder if the culture is all that right in the first place? Just because outdoor grill and hot dog sales depend on this time of year, who is to say picnicking is actually what Chicagoans were meant to do between Memorial Day and Labor Day? I mean, where in the great cosmic code is it written that people should leave the comforts of air-conditioning for the risks of nature?
People like me grant that the sight of a happy family picnicking along the great green lakefront has its charms. But remember, people like me are looking at them from an insect-free, air-conditioned car on its way to a nice insect-free, air-conditioned restaurant. You see the point...?
Now I've researched this thing, so I come to it with facts not only feelings:
* Fact -- It has taken our species millions of years to evolve from out of caves and into homes with electronic kitchens that can do whatever we command. How logical is it, then, to turn my back on such marvels for the quirky whims of an outdoor fire that I had trouble making as far back as to my failed career as a Boy Scout?
* Fact -- Talking about fire, when Prometheus first stole fire from the Greek Gods, is it really reasonable to presume this epic theft was for such purposes as grilling wieners in Lincoln and Jackson Park? I think not!
* Fact -- When God said in Genesis what He had created was "good," I still have this heretical question: Did that mean mosquitoes too? Now wait, this is no trifling matter. Actually it's all part of the eternal how-can-a-good-god-permit-evil question. I for one have decided bugs were not the best part of the divine plan. And so no picnics for this heretic!
* Fact -- Lately we have been advised by science that our environment is in danger. Most of the time these experts point to ozone layers far into the atmosphere or giant glaciers far to the Arctic and Antarctic. I've been duly impressed and am duly concerned. At the same time, I ask myself why should I contribute to environmental problems by littering and messing up perfectly pristine landscapes? In deference to Al Gore, I refuse to further pollute our world. What's more, now that the children are gone, I no longer have to pretend picnics are fun!
And so I, one lonely mosquito-hating Chicagoan, stands before the jury of history and says: I have but one life to give to my Park District. I intend it shall be in the form of my grateful pride not my grubby picnics
I admit this is completely counter-culture, but I wonder if the culture is all that right in the first place? Just because outdoor grill and hot dog sales depend on this time of year, who is to say picnicking is actually what Chicagoans were meant to do between Memorial Day and Labor Day? I mean, where in the great cosmic code is it written that people should leave the comforts of air-conditioning for the risks of nature?
People like me grant that the sight of a happy family picnicking along the great green lakefront has its charms. But remember, people like me are looking at them from an insect-free, air-conditioned car on its way to a nice insect-free, air-conditioned restaurant. You see the point...?
Now I've researched this thing, so I come to it with facts not only feelings:
* Fact -- It has taken our species millions of years to evolve from out of caves and into homes with electronic kitchens that can do whatever we command. How logical is it, then, to turn my back on such marvels for the quirky whims of an outdoor fire that I had trouble making as far back as to my failed career as a Boy Scout?
* Fact -- Talking about fire, when Prometheus first stole fire from the Greek Gods, is it really reasonable to presume this epic theft was for such purposes as grilling wieners in Lincoln and Jackson Park? I think not!
* Fact -- When God said in Genesis what He had created was "good," I still have this heretical question: Did that mean mosquitoes too? Now wait, this is no trifling matter. Actually it's all part of the eternal how-can-a-good-god-permit-evil question. I for one have decided bugs were not the best part of the divine plan. And so no picnics for this heretic!
* Fact -- Lately we have been advised by science that our environment is in danger. Most of the time these experts point to ozone layers far into the atmosphere or giant glaciers far to the Arctic and Antarctic. I've been duly impressed and am duly concerned. At the same time, I ask myself why should I contribute to environmental problems by littering and messing up perfectly pristine landscapes? In deference to Al Gore, I refuse to further pollute our world. What's more, now that the children are gone, I no longer have to pretend picnics are fun!
And so I, one lonely mosquito-hating Chicagoan, stands before the jury of history and says: I have but one life to give to my Park District. I intend it shall be in the form of my grateful pride not my grubby picnics
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