AMERICA: IS BIG STILL BETTER?

Here's the funny thing about societies and the people in them. Most times they grow outward, starting small and looking to becoming larger. In America's case, it's been the opposite. We started large, but lately have tended to become smaller. Neither way is right; it's just the way it is.

Consider America when it was first discovered by the Old World. With the exception of Russia, the Old World of Europe was a cluster of small countries all squeezed into one little corner of the Euro-Asian continent. In seeking to grow outward, Europeans began colonizing this large new continent they had bumped into in the15th C.

And large it was, with vast sprawling forests and mountains and rivers. The first task for these new Americans was to cut and trim this vastness so it could be "tamed." The great push later into the West would fine even more vastness in its endless spaces and prairies. Government literally gave land away to beg Easterners to come out West and tame all this. This, what many saw as a mythic new Garden of Eden.

Actually, this America of ours has always been so big and roomy that we were one of the first nations in history where everyone in a family could have their very own room! In other parts of the world, even today, families squeeze and share their limited space. Here it's still a mark of pride that every kid has their own private room.

And so America, the-large-and the-mighty, has been busy for generations taming all that it has. Until lately. Lately we've begun to realize all that we have (and presumed endless) is starting to run out. Land, resources, and unlimited tomorrows. When John F. Kennedy spoke of "The New Frontier" he was referring to a frontier which now meant taming what we already had versus simply finding more to have.

While the American psyche and appetite still crave "more" (in everything from GNP to missiles), we've been advised by our best thinkers to think not only expansion. But also conservation.

Turns out some Americans don't like the sound of this. Thinking small is so un-American....! But other Americans are backing into this new fact of life with the idea it's a good time to pull back and save what we have. Let the world and its bloody wars on its own. Not unlike the Brits after WWII gradually relinquished their heavy role as the world's super-power empire.

Think kids crawling under their winter blankets at night; into their snug snow forts during the day. Think lovers huddled under beach umbrellas during the summer; hugged together in front of roaring fireplaces in winter. Think neighbors buying cozy local, leaving the vast shopping malls to others. Think Americ re-thinking who it wants to be here in the 21st C.

PERFECTION AIN'T ALL IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE

In another generation the contrast was between a sweaty, raucous Janis Joplin concert versus a sweety, rambling Lawrence Welk show. Today it's a sweaty, raucous Bruce Springsteen concert versus virtually any musical show you can find on TV. Whereas at one time the contrast was generational in nature, today it seems both young and old alike are attracted to this air-brushed perfection in their performers.

Now wait -- nothing's wrong with a little perfection now and then. But something's going on here that has convinced musical producers to present their audiences with only the neatest and nicest. Talent is good, but tidy is better. As in perfect teeth, flawless complexion, luxuriant hair, and costuming that has, by gosh, never seen a spot or a wrinkle.

Perhaps it's our legion of perfect computers which has intimidated us into approving only perfect performers. PBS is famous for this. Ever watch their Celtic Singers? A grand array of lovely Irish singers whose faces, bodies, choreography, and cued smiles into the camera could out-sugar Welk's old gaggle any night of the week. Or what about those Grand Ol' Opry country-and-western shows, where the country guys and gals are wearing blue jeans as in $1200 a pair. Along with hats not from the country, but from the couturier.

OK, so Bruce wears $1200 jeans too, but he actually sweats. Grunts, growls, and gasps as if he were a real flesh & blood guy from Jersey, instead of a hologram from Hollywood. Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and other musical performers come across raw and real too. Which -- in age of glitzy, Las Vegas lets-pretend -- is not a bad thing. Why even our politicians try the reality gig with their tie-less, coat-less look.

So here's the deal. Computerology has perhaps compelled us humans into greater levels of perfection performances. Where nothing is unrehearsed, nothing is spontaneous, and everything is cued to the light board and camera shots. Only when these performances take place, please call these shows for what they are. And not, God help us, reality...!

AND I'LL BET YOU NEVER EVEN NOTICED...

The name is far too inadequate. "Off-handed" remarks should more likely be called "off-hearted." Because you don't have to be a Freudian or a Jungian to understand these un-rehearsed comments slip out from somewhere deep inside the heart. The heart where we shroud most of our most important feelings.

Politicians utter them -- usually when they go off script or think they're off-mike. Teachers and clergy sometimes simply can't help themselves, permitting a private frustration to deviate from the public lecture or homily. Lovers too engage in these unscripted moments, often with some un-loving consequences.

If you were to tally your day you could total up a dozen or so such off-hearted remarks. Most floating harmlessly out there in the conversational atmosphere. "Hey, it's been awhile...!" "Looking good for yourself...!" "We have to get together...!"

Comments like these are not always meant to be taken literally. Or even seriously. Still, they should be taken into account when you're tallying up your day or sizing up its commentators. Words have roots that trace deep into feelings which trace deeper still into values which in turn are the result of life-experiences too many to identify.

Psychiatrists make a living dissecting such things as off-hearted remarks. The classic joke: One psychiatrist meets another and says "good morning." The second psychiatrist smiles back but thinks "I wonder what he meant by that?" Clearly, too much introspection can lead to morbidity.

Still, off-hearted remarks are part of the landscape to the portraits of our days. And every now and then, one of them will catch us by happy surprise. One all-time favorite stands out: "I've missed you...!" When you hear that one -- and you do whether you've been paying attention or not -- most likely it's one heart saying to your heart something important. And endearing. And well worth taking personally in this otherwise terribly impersonal world.

A MERRY INSTRUCTIVE CHRISTMAS

And so it's Christmas. I go to the supermarket for some last-minute milk and bread. I get into the checkout line.

Now this is where the small epiphany takes place. Usually when we think of places that capture the flash and feel of our country -- it's great good and bad -- we think of places like Manhattan. Or San Francisco. Or the sprawling beauty of our national parks. But we needn't go that far.

It's right here in this line...! Surrounded by the music and festooning which reflect our best selves, these magazine racks reflect our worst selves. Well, actually just our most absurd selves. Like a gauntlet of fire, you're compelled to stand in line engulfed by the grinning, bosomy air-brushed personas of the new Madonnas: Oprah...Nicole...Britney...Lindsay...Rachel...plus a legion of nameless, over-exposed anatomies.

The real Madonna gave birth on this special day. The faux Madonnas at first offend; but then actually serve a purpose. Each is here trying to sell us something. That other Madonna -- well, she was here trying to give us something.

A NEW SORCERY ACROSS THE LAND

We know everything about nothing, and nothing about everything.

Another way of saying we're over-informed about every trivial the media can hard-wire into our brain circuitry; and yet when it comes to the big stuff, seem to have neither the time nor the inclination. Big stuff as in: The planet ...the universe...the cosmic forces at work holding it together...the prospects of a grand design and designer.

Consider the evidence.

Usually we can tell you more about the weather than the climate. More about the score than the game. More about the schools than schooling. More about politicians than politics, passion than love, love than marriage, and sex than the children it produces. What's wrong with us!

Maybe it's as simple as the fact we prefer simplicity to complexity. So we go for the quick headline, the easy explanation, the fast sound-bite. Fortunately for us, most of the people we meet are comparably superficial. And thus the classic dinner conversations among polite society about, well about nothing.

Which brings to mind Scrooge's three spirits. What if we were visited by our own three spirits? Say, that terrific old uncle who was in the War and came back with a barracks-full of bare-knuckled advice for kids like you. Or that special teacher whose literature class introduced you for the first time to the textured worlds of Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Arthur Miller and Thornton Wilder. Or that hospital chaplain who held your sweating hands that long night before surgery.

What would these spirits have to say to you now? Now while you passively stare into your screens, little and large, passively permitting these messages and messengers into your life? I'll tell you what they told me.

I remember your mind. Do you? It's right behind those stupid, staring eyes....!

THE CASE FOR PRO-ACTIVE NOSTALGIA

"Cogito ergo sum" is one of the most memorable lines in Western philosophy. Immediately after, "Make my day." Clint Eastwood uttered the second, Renee Descartes the first. In stating "I think therefore I am," Descartes helped Western philosophy see mind and body (our state of consciousness and our physical brain) as separate.

As you age, you're willing to forget Descartes and use George Eliot instead: "Adventure is not outside men; it is within." Or to put that another way: "I dream therefore I am."

Look, older folks dream a lot, Night dream, day dream, afternoon dream. We reject Oscar Wilde's snippy "Nostalgia is heroin for old people." Younger folks have the bodies that can go almost anywhere; however, older folks have the nostalgia to go absolutely anywhere. And before you knock it, wait till you're old enough to try it.

Oh, but not just nostalgia for nostalgia's sake...

Like Alice slipping down the rabbit hole, nostalgia should be an adventure. A journey with a purpose. Something like Scrooge's three spirits who took him to times and places from which he could learn. When we re-visit our old neighborhood, our class reunion, our honeymoon, don't we find something new each time to carry back with us?

So -- during this nostalgic mistletoey time of year -- take the time to discard Descartes. And waste Wilde. Instead, find the courage to re-visit your best self. Wherever and whenever that may be. You may have something to teach yourself...

ON THE MATTER OF TIME & ETERNITY

The 19th C philosopher-historian Thomas Carlyle put it this way: "Speech is of time; silence is of eternity."

He made great good sense, and yet he and his fellow scholars did nothing but speak. And speak. In books and essays and lectures. Which is, of course, precisely what scholars -- and would-be scholars otherwise known as pundits -- do today. Only today they do it with an infinitely greater number of words, because of our infinitely greater number of talking tools in print and on line.

Harvard psychiatrist Arthur Stone has been talking a lot about old age lately. He and his colleagues have studied the West's aging populations, and have concluded: "Getting older makes most people happier, less stressed, and less worried than their younger counterparts....they also seem more likely to forget or let go of bad memories .... when you ask them if they would like to be 25 again, you don't get a lot of takers."

To be sure there are down-sides to aging. As Hollywood legend Bette Davis crustily warned: "Getting old ain't for sissies!" You begin losing so many things. Your hair, your energy, your body parts, oh and your peers. After 60 there are usually far more wakes than weddings!

Some wakes hurt more than others, although none are easy. What's more, they don't only include the people you knew. They also include the characters you knew. As in your pantheon of heroes and heroines on the screen...on the playing fields...and on the comics page.

Today's generation have more options therefore less interest in the daily comics page. But those who are of an age, will remember growing up with favorite comics characters like Dick Tracy, Mandrake the Magician, Blondie, the Katzenjammer Kids, Terry & the Pirates, Mutt & Jeff, Charlie Brown, Calvin & Hobbes, and scores of others whose little lives curled themselves around our little smiles each new breakfast.

Cue the bells....!

Two more wakes. Little Orphan Anne passed peacefully way June of this year. She was born in 1924 and appeared in hundreds of newspapers throughout all those years. Next, Brenda Starr: Reporter will appear for the final time January 2011, after a starring run which began back in 1940.

Thomas Carlyle didn't say it, but another Brit John Donne did: "Never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."