We all know about the varying frequencies in the sound spectrum. There are frequencies only animals like dogs can hear...those only a transmitter can hear....most complex of all, the sounds and feelings emanating only from certain segments of the population. To fully hear these, it calls for fully listening, not simply hearing.
I have in mind those one-of-a-kind sounds and feelings of children at play. You and I once made them, but have probably lost the frequency long ago. Generally it's a high-pitched, raucous frequency of happy emotions from games and races, laughter and silliness. Remember...?
But that was then, this is now. We're no longer children. Such sweet silliness across lawns and on schoolyards has no place in our serious adult days. Still, I find myself pausing every time. I can't help resonating with those sounds and feelings emanating from that once-in-a-lifetime time.
Very likely this is because of the splendid simplicity of that time. When reality was what you could see and touch; truth was what your wise elders offered; when doubts were scarce, for there were so few doubting voices. Unlike now's so seriously adult world, bristling with so many different burning bushes commanding your attentions. And your beliefs,
As an adult I have come to know that every ideology, every faith, every medication, every new war and new discovery comes with a dozen contradictory certifications. You shake your head and blink your eyes. Too much. You can't help recalling the comfort of certitude that came with youth. And while more information has made me more informed, I cannot say it has made me more secure.
So.
Listening to those giggling youngsters out there.... I'm trying to remain the adult who I am, while at the same time trying to reclaim some of the joy that I was. How perfectly grand it would be to be both.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
ANOTHER ELECTION, ANOTHER FINE MESS
Like everyone reading this, I took Social Studies in school. Ever since then, each corrupted election year I hear the same grumbling. In barber shops, beauty salons, and corner taverns. "Democracy is too messy to get anything done!"
When you look at today's blatant manipulation by big money, big media, and now big PACs, it's pretty easy to throw up your hands. Democracy was a great idea, but it simply doesn't work.
In my case, I ended up later teaching Social Studies. As I remember, I tried to explain democracy was actually MEANT to be messy. There's no messiness with kings or dictators. No mobs, no protests, and god-save-us no 24/7 screaming on cable television. It's one-man-rule. Simple! neat! no arguments because there's nothing you're allowed to argue about.
Think juries.
Here's a messy example of democracy at work. Squeeze a dozen very different people inside a room and tell them not to come out until they've got a verdict. You can bloody well be sure of some messy arguments. Arguments that may even spill over into pushing, shoving, downright fury. However, at the end of the day, virtually all juries do come out of that room. And they do reach a decision. More times than not, a far fairer one than the whim of any one ruler.
So maybe we shouldn't bicker this year about whether democracy is working. Oh, it's working all right. Just like the Founding Fathers intended. Everyone messily pushing, shoving, and brawling to be heard. The real question is: who's in control of the brawling?
A good old free-for-all-brawl, with everyone's best interests on the agenda, is very much the mess that was intended. What was not intended is that outsized money and media OWN the brawl. I'm sure I said this in class...but then who remembers what they heard once they pass!
When you look at today's blatant manipulation by big money, big media, and now big PACs, it's pretty easy to throw up your hands. Democracy was a great idea, but it simply doesn't work.
In my case, I ended up later teaching Social Studies. As I remember, I tried to explain democracy was actually MEANT to be messy. There's no messiness with kings or dictators. No mobs, no protests, and god-save-us no 24/7 screaming on cable television. It's one-man-rule. Simple! neat! no arguments because there's nothing you're allowed to argue about.
Think juries.
Here's a messy example of democracy at work. Squeeze a dozen very different people inside a room and tell them not to come out until they've got a verdict. You can bloody well be sure of some messy arguments. Arguments that may even spill over into pushing, shoving, downright fury. However, at the end of the day, virtually all juries do come out of that room. And they do reach a decision. More times than not, a far fairer one than the whim of any one ruler.
So maybe we shouldn't bicker this year about whether democracy is working. Oh, it's working all right. Just like the Founding Fathers intended. Everyone messily pushing, shoving, and brawling to be heard. The real question is: who's in control of the brawling?
A good old free-for-all-brawl, with everyone's best interests on the agenda, is very much the mess that was intended. What was not intended is that outsized money and media OWN the brawl. I'm sure I said this in class...but then who remembers what they heard once they pass!
VINCE LOMBARDI'S NOW FORGOTTEN LESSON
Several years before his death, the celebrated Green Bay Packers coach made a documentary film titled "Second Effort." I worked on the project, carrying away a lesson that once spoke not only to the NFL, but to the entire American culture. Not so much anymore....!
Lombardi preached the unbreakable beliefs that once dominated our society: Commitment, tenacity, a willingness to always follow through on whatever you start. Besides running a football, what else? Pretty much anything you can think of. Unbreakable loyalty to family, community, church, marriage and career. It was still the age of the 50th anniversary parties at the same job, with the same spouse, with the same classmates, in the same place. It was also an age when football and baseball players started and ended their careers with the same team.
Most of that's gone now. Gone with the winds of progress, speed, and mobility. With a flurry of choices comes a feeling of freedom. Freedom to change, leave behind, find alternatives, and at all costs follow your own star. For instance, today's players needn't find their glory by a second-effort with the same team; simply reach for a new-effort with another team.
Men love to talk about "life is like a football game." But today's men would probably find it hard to work for a Lombardi. Or a Mike Ditka, Buddy Ryan, Knute Rockne. Their lessons were unbreakable commitment to staying the course. In the light of so many options today, commitment can seem neolithic.
And yet, without some serious second effort, a polio-stricken FDR would never have become president...Helen Keller would never have become a great literary voice...Jackie Robinson would never have stuck it out in baseball....Fred Astaire would never have gotten that MGM contract... Judy Garland would never have had "Over the Rainbow" to sing in that film. The list is long!
I learned Lombardi was the kind of sonofabitch who would snarl at today's generation of Americans as spoiled and impatient. But you know what? I suspect today's generation would find his lessons hard to ignore. America might even get used to them all over again.
Lombardi preached the unbreakable beliefs that once dominated our society: Commitment, tenacity, a willingness to always follow through on whatever you start. Besides running a football, what else? Pretty much anything you can think of. Unbreakable loyalty to family, community, church, marriage and career. It was still the age of the 50th anniversary parties at the same job, with the same spouse, with the same classmates, in the same place. It was also an age when football and baseball players started and ended their careers with the same team.
Most of that's gone now. Gone with the winds of progress, speed, and mobility. With a flurry of choices comes a feeling of freedom. Freedom to change, leave behind, find alternatives, and at all costs follow your own star. For instance, today's players needn't find their glory by a second-effort with the same team; simply reach for a new-effort with another team.
Men love to talk about "life is like a football game." But today's men would probably find it hard to work for a Lombardi. Or a Mike Ditka, Buddy Ryan, Knute Rockne. Their lessons were unbreakable commitment to staying the course. In the light of so many options today, commitment can seem neolithic.
And yet, without some serious second effort, a polio-stricken FDR would never have become president...Helen Keller would never have become a great literary voice...Jackie Robinson would never have stuck it out in baseball....Fred Astaire would never have gotten that MGM contract... Judy Garland would never have had "Over the Rainbow" to sing in that film. The list is long!
I learned Lombardi was the kind of sonofabitch who would snarl at today's generation of Americans as spoiled and impatient. But you know what? I suspect today's generation would find his lessons hard to ignore. America might even get used to them all over again.
Monday, February 27, 2012
WOODY, KATE AND I LEARN A BIG LESSON
Two American classics -- Woody Allen and Katherine Hepburn -- help bracket my life for me. Referring to one's early years, Woody hit the nail on the head: "Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem." Alluding to one's later years, Hepburn pounded the nail in: "If you survive long enough, you are revered; rather like an old building."
Lately there are many more old buildings staying around. Centenarians are our fastest growing age group. Then, in their eighties and nineties, we also have Betty White, Tony Bennett, Kirk Douglas, Andy Griffith, Yogi Berra, Christopher Plummer, Harper Lee, Gore Vidal, Henry Kissinger, Nelson Mandela and the Justin Bieber of old age Hugh Hefner.
Not only are Americans living longer, we are celebrating them more. Unlike the days of the crazy-old-aunt-living-in-the-attic, age has come into fashion. I myself can testify to this fact every time old people open doors and give up their seats to me. Me who is himself no more than...oh wait! At 80 I rather look like 90, so I can see what they were thinking
The pop media love to dig up wrinkled survivors for the obligatory "what's your secret" interviews. Which is perfectly lovely, When and if my opportunity comes, I have a theoretical answer (theoretical as in I-believe-it-but-just-don't-much-practice-it): Patience.
With age comes patience, because by now you've learned there is actually no other option that works. Take the report about the impatient San Francisco driver last month who decided to swerve around a lane of cars that had come to a standstill. In a fury, he drove his Porsche 911 into the next lane which he discovered was freshly poured cement. His car sank a foot, got stuck, and watched the next 300 cars pass him by!
Now you see, at my age I would have known better. Being too life-tested for such nonsense, I would made sure I was driving a domestic....
Lately there are many more old buildings staying around. Centenarians are our fastest growing age group. Then, in their eighties and nineties, we also have Betty White, Tony Bennett, Kirk Douglas, Andy Griffith, Yogi Berra, Christopher Plummer, Harper Lee, Gore Vidal, Henry Kissinger, Nelson Mandela and the Justin Bieber of old age Hugh Hefner.
Not only are Americans living longer, we are celebrating them more. Unlike the days of the crazy-old-aunt-living-in-the-attic, age has come into fashion. I myself can testify to this fact every time old people open doors and give up their seats to me. Me who is himself no more than...oh wait! At 80 I rather look like 90, so I can see what they were thinking
The pop media love to dig up wrinkled survivors for the obligatory "what's your secret" interviews. Which is perfectly lovely, When and if my opportunity comes, I have a theoretical answer (theoretical as in I-believe-it-but-just-don't-much-practice-it): Patience.
With age comes patience, because by now you've learned there is actually no other option that works. Take the report about the impatient San Francisco driver last month who decided to swerve around a lane of cars that had come to a standstill. In a fury, he drove his Porsche 911 into the next lane which he discovered was freshly poured cement. His car sank a foot, got stuck, and watched the next 300 cars pass him by!
Now you see, at my age I would have known better. Being too life-tested for such nonsense, I would made sure I was driving a domestic....
Sunday, February 26, 2012
WHERE'S DAN BROWN WHEN YOU NEED HIM
The best selling author of "The DaVinci Code" has a fantastic doomsday scenario right before his eyes. The Arab Spring. It began like a Hallelujah Chorus, went off key In Egypt, and is now becoming a bloody dirge in Syria. You know, the very corner of the world where, the same Bible Dan used, apocalyptically predicted long ago the world would come to a fiery end in the battle of Armageddon.
Unlike Egypt and Libya, Syria lies right smack in the middle of the world's geographic, religious, and big-power confrontations. Dare we say it is reminiscent of Europe in June 1914 when one spark in a Sarajevo assassination lit the flames of World War I. Today -- 100 million deaths later -- everyone from power players like Henry Kissinger to Evangelicals like Billy Graham warn about World War III.
But Dan...? You have not stepped up and written about what YOU think...! Maybe you're holding back to see if competing doomsday scenarios make a better plot. Say like the Mayan prediction for December 21, 2012 or our own home-grown Rapture and Survivalist communities. Your plot pickings are numerous, although this time you have to wonder how many of us will be left to buy your book.
Even if not a certified professional in the prediction game, may I advance one modest prediction? When CNN covers these revolutions and their terrible cost in human life, their cameras are always on the suffering individuals. You know, like our 10 PM newscasts love to focus on the terrified victims, the broken bodies, the wailing mothers holding sons in their arms. To be sure, we are always drawn to the intensely personal sides to these shattering events.
But here's another prediction. Not one in a hundred presidents, prime ministers, or generals will give a tinker's damn about the personal side to what's coming. It's the profits, Dan, it's the profits that are at stake. So when you start writing, baby, follow the money....!
Unlike Egypt and Libya, Syria lies right smack in the middle of the world's geographic, religious, and big-power confrontations. Dare we say it is reminiscent of Europe in June 1914 when one spark in a Sarajevo assassination lit the flames of World War I. Today -- 100 million deaths later -- everyone from power players like Henry Kissinger to Evangelicals like Billy Graham warn about World War III.
But Dan...? You have not stepped up and written about what YOU think...! Maybe you're holding back to see if competing doomsday scenarios make a better plot. Say like the Mayan prediction for December 21, 2012 or our own home-grown Rapture and Survivalist communities. Your plot pickings are numerous, although this time you have to wonder how many of us will be left to buy your book.
Even if not a certified professional in the prediction game, may I advance one modest prediction? When CNN covers these revolutions and their terrible cost in human life, their cameras are always on the suffering individuals. You know, like our 10 PM newscasts love to focus on the terrified victims, the broken bodies, the wailing mothers holding sons in their arms. To be sure, we are always drawn to the intensely personal sides to these shattering events.
But here's another prediction. Not one in a hundred presidents, prime ministers, or generals will give a tinker's damn about the personal side to what's coming. It's the profits, Dan, it's the profits that are at stake. So when you start writing, baby, follow the money....!
Saturday, February 25, 2012
AMERICA'S THREE BIGGEST DISAPPEARING ACTS
Twenty-first-century America is the land of the free and home of the limelight. Here everyone dreams of their 15-minutes bathed in its glorious glow. And why not? Here, both heroes and hucksters, talent and trash can make it.
However, anyone who's studied limelights understands they burn brightly, but they also burn out. What makes a paparazzi flash-in-the-pan really emerge as an icon depends on an elusive combination of sizzle and serendipity. Take three familiar groups:
* The first group appear night after night on our television screens. That vast legion of Invisibles that include the stunt people who pull off those 100 mph car chases, leap rooftops, and tumble off buildings so the star can walk away with a jaunty "take that." Also the inevitable gun-toting masked SWAT teams who are ever at the ready in every capture. My personal favorites are the actors required to play the corpses. You never hear them, never see their face. Their talent is not breathing. Then at the end of every season they mostly disappear somewhere in Los Angeles until their agent gets them another cadaver gig
* The second group of Invisibles are today's many behind-the-scene handlers. In show business: directors, cinematographers, sound teams, and publicity hotshots. In politics: by golly, pretty much the same. These professional Invisibles work furiously whenever on assignment; then at the end they too disappear until someone next hires them
* The third groups of Invisibles appear at first to be very visible: Candidates. And yet they're not really. They travel and speak and kiss babies everywhere; but are rarely visible anywhere. All we see is the carefully primed and prepped image they and their handlers want to project. What's worse they soon become whatever the media decide to project [flipflopper, erratic, out the 17th century, Muslim]
Three legions of American invisibility, few of whom are ever seen in public as they actually are. And, even more troubling, as they actually think. As usual, the Bard on Avon knew how best to define them: "The stuff as dreams are made on..."
However, anyone who's studied limelights understands they burn brightly, but they also burn out. What makes a paparazzi flash-in-the-pan really emerge as an icon depends on an elusive combination of sizzle and serendipity. Take three familiar groups:
* The first group appear night after night on our television screens. That vast legion of Invisibles that include the stunt people who pull off those 100 mph car chases, leap rooftops, and tumble off buildings so the star can walk away with a jaunty "take that." Also the inevitable gun-toting masked SWAT teams who are ever at the ready in every capture. My personal favorites are the actors required to play the corpses. You never hear them, never see their face. Their talent is not breathing. Then at the end of every season they mostly disappear somewhere in Los Angeles until their agent gets them another cadaver gig
* The second group of Invisibles are today's many behind-the-scene handlers. In show business: directors, cinematographers, sound teams, and publicity hotshots. In politics: by golly, pretty much the same. These professional Invisibles work furiously whenever on assignment; then at the end they too disappear until someone next hires them
* The third groups of Invisibles appear at first to be very visible: Candidates. And yet they're not really. They travel and speak and kiss babies everywhere; but are rarely visible anywhere. All we see is the carefully primed and prepped image they and their handlers want to project. What's worse they soon become whatever the media decide to project [flipflopper, erratic, out the 17th century, Muslim]
Three legions of American invisibility, few of whom are ever seen in public as they actually are. And, even more troubling, as they actually think. As usual, the Bard on Avon knew how best to define them: "The stuff as dreams are made on..."
Friday, February 24, 2012
ONLY ONCE IN A LIFETIME, IN EVERY LIFETIME
Right now it's snowing in Chicago, but as it starts to melt there will soon be a green nougat of spring hiding beneath. When old men think spring, we think first loves. Don't deny it, because somewhere in your own cobwebby memory banks there also resides a Bonnie. Okay, so it may be a Mary or an Eileen, but as the snow melts, let your heart do the same. Let it remember her along with me.
As I remember that late spring, the universe was perfectly in pitch for this extraordinary moment. Bonnie was sweet 16, I was a ripening 17, President Truman was 3 years into his term predictably despised by more than 70% of our country's permanently despising voters. Exactly how all these disconnected facts exquisitely explain this event is hard for me to prove; but easy for me to believe.
Old men like us will always find such things easy to believe.
The Chicago Theater downtown was featuring a Bing Crosby movie plus the usual live stage shows that came with movies in those pre-television years. Can't remember the movie, the stage show, or the buzzing crowd in that golden Baroque setting. However, you must understand that all these were simply well coordinated steps leading up my planned denouement at nearby North Avenue Beach.
It's only a short cab ride from the theater to the beach. Besides, I'd seen Cary Grant do this with Katherine Hepburn, and it worked splendidly. [For any financial skeptics, recall cab fares in the Forties started at 25cents for the first quarter mile plus an honest-to-god smile from the driver!]. As we pulled up, a creamy half-moon lingered over Lake Michigan. Its beachline stretched out north and south in luxuriously sweeping curves. And -- exactly as planned -- not a body or a soul in sight.
My 17-year-old mind had fevered with the anticipated scenario and dialog tat would follow. There was Bonnie, five-foot-two portrait of unblemished Celtic beauty. Here was Jack, 6-foot specimen from a recent Charles Alas building-a-better-body-course-by-mail. And there...wait just a damn minute. There was this unexpectedly arrogant sign: "Beach Closed Till April 1." Talk about too much government.
Oh what the hell! Cary never had to negotiate with such absurdities. Nor should I. I was about to leap that insolent fence when...when I remembered my Charles Atlas course had provided no fence-leaping-lessons. Wiser not to risk in front of one's true love. I settled for buying Bonnie a hot dog...
...out there with a damn-sight-more strolling Chicagoans than my exquisite plot had planned for.
As I remember that late spring, the universe was perfectly in pitch for this extraordinary moment. Bonnie was sweet 16, I was a ripening 17, President Truman was 3 years into his term predictably despised by more than 70% of our country's permanently despising voters. Exactly how all these disconnected facts exquisitely explain this event is hard for me to prove; but easy for me to believe.
Old men like us will always find such things easy to believe.
The Chicago Theater downtown was featuring a Bing Crosby movie plus the usual live stage shows that came with movies in those pre-television years. Can't remember the movie, the stage show, or the buzzing crowd in that golden Baroque setting. However, you must understand that all these were simply well coordinated steps leading up my planned denouement at nearby North Avenue Beach.
It's only a short cab ride from the theater to the beach. Besides, I'd seen Cary Grant do this with Katherine Hepburn, and it worked splendidly. [For any financial skeptics, recall cab fares in the Forties started at 25cents for the first quarter mile plus an honest-to-god smile from the driver!]. As we pulled up, a creamy half-moon lingered over Lake Michigan. Its beachline stretched out north and south in luxuriously sweeping curves. And -- exactly as planned -- not a body or a soul in sight.
My 17-year-old mind had fevered with the anticipated scenario and dialog tat would follow. There was Bonnie, five-foot-two portrait of unblemished Celtic beauty. Here was Jack, 6-foot specimen from a recent Charles Alas building-a-better-body-course-by-mail. And there...wait just a damn minute. There was this unexpectedly arrogant sign: "Beach Closed Till April 1." Talk about too much government.
Oh what the hell! Cary never had to negotiate with such absurdities. Nor should I. I was about to leap that insolent fence when...when I remembered my Charles Atlas course had provided no fence-leaping-lessons. Wiser not to risk in front of one's true love. I settled for buying Bonnie a hot dog...
...out there with a damn-sight-more strolling Chicagoans than my exquisite plot had planned for.
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