Pets

May 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Pets, yeah, we don’t have any except for the arachnids and voles that come to visit us this time of year. We evict them eventually. Who better to write about pets than someone who doesn’t have one?

We have lots of friends who have pets. One neighbor has three cats and a collie. I like the collie since he lives at their house, so I give him a dog biscuit every time I see him. He comes to our back door the first thing in the morning, looking expectantly through the glass and wagging his tail. He has not yet learned that he only gets one treat per day. He thinks he’s training me for a treat every time he sees me, but I’m a slow learner. Our neighbor loves her pets, but she usually shows that by saying things like, “They’re more trouble than kids. I have to clean so much.” I think she should trade the cats in for fish. There’s less cleaning involved. They eat less. You don’t have to take them out for a walk. They don’t scratch or make noise. I will admit that cats are smarter than fish. Our neighbor tells me when it’s time for one to go to the vet, that cat somehow knows it and hides. The only way she can find it is to bribe one of the other cats with a treat to divulge the whereabouts of the vet’s next patient.

Last week, even though it was cold, I went camping with a friend who brought his Black Lab puppy. I didn’t think a puppy could weigh 70 pounds, but apparently Black Labs stay puppies for a long time, and that time is unrelated to size or age. This very smart Black Lab had self-taught himself a trick – the ability to snatch gloves right off my hands. He did not know how to follow the command to “sit,” “heel,” or “stop,” but had mastered a much more difficult trick of taking people’s gloves off and then running away to bury them. My friend said he did the same thing with other treasures at home: shoes, women’s undergarments (which is probably why his wife insisted the dog went along on the camping trip), and hats. This amazing puppy had trained his owners to be sure all closet doors were closed; nothing was ever left on the floor, and laundry was immediately put away. I think if a wife wants to train her husband to be civilized about things like socks and underwear, she need not nag, just get a Black Labrador puppy, and that husband will be trained within a week. My friend admitted that the dog had its own room, the result of his granddaughter moving back with her parents after spring break. “It has its own room?” I said, incredulously. “Of course,” my friend said, rolling his eyes. “You don’t want a puppy to tear up the whole house.” The way he said it implied there was something seriously wrong with me. I got to roll my own eyes the first time I noticed this puppy practicing its own version of fecal implantation. That behavior explained why dogs sniff each others’ nether areas and don’t kiss.

Another friend has dog of indeterminate breed whose favorite trick is to take her husband’s socks (apparently only the recently worn, smelly ones) hide them until it is allowed outside then take them out and bury them. I think this may be reverse training which the husband devised, because I learned that this pet digs so much, the wife could only keep the house clean and relatively unscented by buying a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner and putting it in a closed room to run for a few hours every day. She had some kind of rotation system so the dog never claimed a portion of the house as its domain. As a man, I admire this husband’s strategic flexibility. He gets new socks on a regular basis and his wife is trained without a word said about housekeeping. (I know something is wrong here with husbands and wives, but I’m beginning to think that a pet is a wonderful thing. Hm.)

This brings to mind an episode of Click and Clack, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the Tappet Brothers on NPR from several years ago, when a caller to their very funny Car Talk show told them he’d helped a friend move over the weekend, and somewhere in transit, the friend’s pet snake had gotten out of its glass cage. What should he do? Not even waiting for a downbeat, both brothers shouted in unison, “Sell the car!”

Whenever it rains in the morning I see various neighbors outside being walked by their dogs because that’s when the walk is scheduled, rain or shine, and they’ve trained their humans to carry those spring-loaded leashes that stretch about 50 yards to allow the slower human time to catch up when a dog finds something interesting. They’ve also trained their humans to carry little plastic doggy bags. It’s amazing what tricks humans can be taught to do.

My main problem with owning a pet is that I don’t think I would like living in a house where there would be three of us and I would be the dumbest of the three. I’m already toilet seat trained and have learned about the importance of cold water and any red or shrinkable laundry. I’ve learned that a vacuum cleaner is nothing more than an indoors lawn mower. I think I’ve reached my capacity.

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Peace

April 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment

April 23, is generally regarded as Shakespeare’s most likely birthday, so it would be appropriate to begin with one of his quotations.

“Expectation is the root of all heartache.”

Some think he never said that, since scholars can’t find it in his plays, but that doesn’t matter if the plays were all written by Edward de Vere anyway. Who knows?

The complement to this is the title of the Dickens novel, Great Expectations. As I’ve written before, if something is true, I believe its complement is also true. I love paradoxes. As a retired teacher, I know the power of expectations in a classroom, where behavior and learning are so certainly a function of expectations. A teacher who expects little from his students will most certainly get it. It seems to me that in professional relationships, like those in teaching, which over time become personal, great expectations matter. That may be largely due to an unspoken statement akin to, “I have great confidence in you. You can do this difficult thing.”

Great expectations on a personal level, however, may be sure to bring disappointment. Wives and husbands could keep counselors employed for generations on this source of difficulty, never mind issues of debt, affairs, or addictions. I wonder how many times such sessions began with “I thought he was…” or “She should ….”, “Why doesn’t he …” or “If only she would ….” This doesn’t mean married people should have no expectations of each other. Common courtesy, loyalty, a willingness to help, a willingness to listen, a place of emotional safety, and shared long-term goals are things that matter. No marriage should be in trouble, though, because of the replacement of toilet paper, the position of a toilet seat, or a woman’s underthings drying on any available horizontal pole or doorknob. (I’m not saying my wife does this, mind you.)

Expectations are an intensity multiplier. Take the Super Bowl, for example. It’s still fun for me to watch a championship game played at the highest level, even if I’m not a fan of either team. I will always favor one side a little, but if my team loses, I’m not going to go out into the streets to overturn cars, set trash cans on fire, or break windows. If my team wins, I’m not going to go out into the streets to overturn cars, etc. If I really am a fan (short for “fanatic”) of a team, I may experience highs and lows that come from each individual play and range from extreme anger (that ref called WHAT?) to extreme elation, (Take THAT, in your face, you jerk!) Such extremes may be tolerable, perhaps even preferable for those who enjoy a sport, one of our substitutes for outright war, but I don’t recommend it as a way to live one’s life.

In the 60’s we youth (yes, there was such a time) used to tell each other, “Peace and love,” which kids of the 80’s turned into “Peace out.” It was the primary way many of us fought the Viet Nam war. There is something to be said for that attitude. Emotional highs and lows are not nearly as healthy as a whole series of little highs. If you don’t expect your wife to fill up the car with gas, but she does, what a nice present that is. If a husband isn’t expected to clean the bathroom, but he does, what a nice present that is. The point is that expectations always carry judgment, and it’s so much healthier to simply observe what is, rather than judge what ought to be but is not.

This is one of the primary ways in which a person lives a life in peace. Because I cannot control other people, games, the weather (ah yes, the weather lately), the timeliness of other people’s arrival, traffic, the news, politics, where birds deposit excretions, which direction the wind is blowing, or what someone just said to me, the solution is not rage, disappointment in expectations, or depression. To misquote Shakespeare or Edward de Vere, “All the world’s a TV show.” If you don’t like what you see, don’t throw the candy dish at the screen or yell at your kids, change the channel. Observe with interest, and if you don’t like what you see, look at something else. You have the TV clicker for your life. It’s in your pocket right now. Peace out, everyone.

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In Praise of Old Things

February 25, 2013 by 3 Comments

I’m not old yet. There is something to be said for old things, though. I’m not just talking about twelve-year aged single malt scotch, although that smoky, thick taste has its appeal to some. Twinkies aside, not everything old is good: not ice cream that has acquired its own layer of permafrost, not sidewalks whose cracks, puddles and tectonic shifts are mere trips for anyone on wheels or twelve-year old scotch, not even old televisions with predictable channels and a familiar clicker with a volume button that sticks and the numeral 7 that doesn’t work at all. Old laptops, not good. Old cellphones with a battery life of half a phone call, not good. Old glasses, not good. Old textbooks, old maps, and old towels – not worth saving unless they begin a second life as a prop, background for a paper collage or a rag for washing cars.

There is something to be said for old things, though, almost anything that is cared for, sharpened, painted, oiled, or cleaned. Quite a list could be compiled: guitars, violins and pianos; jeans and boots, watches and jewelry, classic novels, and an occasional lawnmower. I am currently the proud owner of a 1940 Sears push mower inherited from Ann’s grandfather. It is easy to push, quiet, safer than my old runaway Toro, and perfect for the small yard we now have. It works, and as long as I keep it oiled and sharpened it hasn’t worn out its useful life. I especially appreciate the fact that it never kicks gravel and nut husks out a side vent at a hundred miles an hour toward one’s car. It will measure up any day to the previous four power mowers I’ve owned and used until they self-destructed in their teens.

A few old things deserve special attention, I believe.

My car, which I have dutifully serviced according to the schedule, now has 120,000 miles on it and runs like it was new. I need to fix a scratch in one door where a stump slid into me when I was out in the woods of the Upper Peninsula, but other than that, its four-wheel drive, four cylinder engine, sweet air conditioning, and purr when idling tell me there is no reason to replace it. Besides, it holds a lot of camping gear, fishing rods, and even a canoe on its rack with perfect ease. When I’m out on the streams, I distrust a fisherman who comes by in the latest Land Rover or Crossover. Until they’re broken in or earn some respect with a few dings, those cars are not suitable as fish-mobiles.

Our old house, a solid brick fortress build in 1925, has earned my respect. It was generally well cared for by its previous two owners who did a few curious things to it but kept as much original as possible. The hardwood floors are still smooth, well-grained, and mostly unscratched. After a cleaning, the fireplace works. The three-season porch is wonderful in the summer. The towering ash out front and the nearly as old pin oak out back are exactly the right height. (Please permit me a small joke.) Somehow our house came with the most wonderful neighbors who are already old friends, and we’ve only been in Madison two years. By comparison, our other houses, much newer and more modern, had basic flaws: cold downstairs, hot upstairs, a noisy furnace just below a master bedroom, air conditioning that could never be regulated well, and worst of all, they were in a neighboorhood where riding a bike was a death race; highway and air traffic from O’Hare fifteen miles away sounded like flame throwers had suddenly gone on sale. We could walk to Mosquito Park at the end of the block, and that was it. There were bike paths in Schaumburg, but you had to mount your bike on the back of your car and drive to them. Once you were on the forest preserve path you regularly received dirty looks when your passing interrupted drug deals. Our new old house is so much better. Yes, we replaced the wiring and kitchen and bathroom, and put in some air conditioning, but we had to do that in our newer old houses as well. An old house is like a favorite uncle. It has character and a happy story.

Old friends. Yes, they deserve special attention as well. There is something to be said for a group of people surviving twelve years with the same Catholic nuns as teachers, some of whom were the most inspirational masters possible, and others should have been tinsmiths or road graders. The latter were very good at cutting things up and bulldozing anything not perfectly flat. The former brought out what was good in us. That good survives. One of the interesting things about Facebook is that its re-connections remind us of who we are, and that hasn’t changed much. The brilliant ones are still brilliant. The kind ones are still kind. The smart alecks have softened a little but still follow the trajectory of kindergarten.

The actual number of years required for someone to become an old friend is variable, probably the same way time is flexible. Some friends you’ve known all your life, even though you just met them two years ago. When you reconnect with an old friend you haven’t seen in years, the time in between doesn’t matter, sometimes as if it never passed at all. Anyone who has gone through a divorce knows that relationships never end, not even when we want them to.

Old things remind us that we belong somewhere. The light switch you can find in the dark, the third fret on your guitar, middle C on your piano, the junk drawer in the kitchen where you know there will be the screwdriver or a rubber band you need – these are important old things. They also tell us something important about ourselves. In themselves, they mean nothing. A screwdriver is a screwdriver; a coffee mug is a coffee mug, but the tool or the coffee mug handed down from your father means something. We put that meaning into it. The mug is about us, I and my father, not about the coffee or the color or heft. As Shakespeare (or perhaps the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere?) wrote, it is thinking that makes a thing so. That is true of us, as well. We are what we think we are or, sadly for the weak among us, what we allow others to tell us we are.

I look forward to the day when I become an old thing in spite of the aches, health issues, and inevitable feeling that I have been left behind. I look forward to it because for someone else I will be the light switch she can reach in the dark, the coffee mug with just the right sized handle, the engine with 120,000 miles that still purrs, and the book of stories that are funny, interesting, sometimes sad and always readable. That book will be underlined throughout and annotated in the margins. It will have a happy ending.

Before that happens, I plan to visit the old things to remind them I’m still here: the pond at Konarcik Park outside Waterloo, the spring run at Montauk State Park with its gravel and watercress, Wrigley Field, Busch Stadium, Hubbard Street Diner with its chocolate-topped cheesecake, Disneyworld with grandchildren, Agate Falls in the Upper Peninsula. The list is too long and too personal. I think it should include trespassing at Camp Vandevanter west of Waterloo where we planted a whole hillside with pine seedlings when we were Boy Scouts. I’d like to see those trees, now that they are 50.

Even more fun will be to see the old things I haven’t met yet: Bleak House by Charles Dickens, some Agatha Christie I’ve missed, another season of Downton Abbey (yes the end of the last season was tragic, but no one loves only once), next year’s snows, another season of football at Camp Randall stadium with its raucous student section who always sing “Sweet Caroline” loud and a capella after the music stops and jump around after the third quarter. I can’t wait for the next Mumford and Sons album, their banjo, acoustic guitar, and base drum stomp reminding me that old-style music is still kicking. This is how it is, or as Ann says, whenever anyone asks her how’s she’s doing, “Good, mostly.” Old is good – mostly.

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Two Birds with One Stone

January 28, 2013 by 2 Comments

I have a brother-in-law who’s a really smart guy, a PhD in chemical engineering, a guy who thought our boat house and its porch up in the Northwoods ought to have refrigeration, ceiling fans, recharging outlets and lights, so he built his own solar panels and wired the boathouse for all of the above. Yeah, one of those guys. Anyway, one of his best sayings is, “The trick is to make your dysfunction function for you.” I see evidence of this all around. Look at almost any Olympic athlete. These are crazy people, the physical outliers who have small torsos but long legs, so they can swim like mer-people. Then there are the obsessed children who can flex like slinkies so they become gymnasts until their careers are over at seventeen years old. Yeah, those people.

I think people can use their dysfunctions (special talents, obsessions, physical traits, or just weird quirks) to much greater advantage. For example, what if a person has some tendency for things I just don’t understand; let’s say he likes to do math stuff like adding numbers all day. He could work happily to catch the cheaters in Las Vegas or work in a toll booth. Think of the fun with odds, numbers, license plates, and states. And all he would have to say is number words all day. That would be hell for me, but for a person who can actually add and subtract in his head – wow, what an opportunity.

My kind of dysfunction would tend to other areas. I think writers ought to be the guys who work the night desk at hotels. They should have laptops next to the hotel registry from midnight till dawn (perfect for dysfunctional insomniacs) and work on great American novels. Any weird people who check in after midnight could become another Gatsby or Silas Marner.

Artists should take over for window cleaners and instead of cleaning windows that are dirty by the time they finish, they should paint murals on them, and then hose them off and re-paint them a couple of times a year. They could do tunnels to heaven and other perspective drawings like those guys who do the sidewalk chalk art that shows up on the internet twice a year.

Musicians, most of whom need a day job to survive anyway, should be nannies and baby-sitters, as should those who are bilingual. Think of the possibilities. Babysitters shouldn’t be plunking kids in front of a TV or pushing strollers to the park. They should be talking to little kids in Spanish or Polish and playing music to them.

People who are overweight should be personal trainers. All day long they could be telling clients, “No, do your arm curls slowly – here, let me show you. Joey, that’s not how you do a squat-thrust. Do it like this.” Then when they get too conditioned and toned up to be personal trainers, they could become waiters and waitresses where they eat enough to qualify as personal trainers again. In some cases they might eat themselves silly for a while and then get sick of that restaurant’s food like the kids who work in ice cream shops, and then they could become cooks.

Here’s one of my favorite dysfunctions. You know those people who post all that intense political stuff on the internet and never factcheck anything and think Snopes is a family in a William Faukner novel – those people should work for the IRS.

Here are two real cases. I know of an oral surgeon who also ties fishing flies, and his bug creations are so realistic that they scare people. His nickname is “Doc,” as it should be. If I needed an oral surgeon, he’d be the one I wanted. When I found out I needed cataract surgery I had a recommendation on an eye doctor from my father-in-law, but I was still worried since I’d never been in a hospital except to see babies. In the pre-op interview he asked all kinds of questions about my eyes to see what kind of lens he should put in. When I said, “I read a lot and tie flies,” his eyes lit up. “You’re a fly fisherman?” “Yes.” “That’s great. That means if you tie flies, you need a focal point of 14 inches, so I know what lens to put in.” “You tie flies?” I asked him. “Yes.” That’s all I needed to quit worrying about the surgery. If you ever need cataract surgery, get a doctor who can tie a tiny midge on a size 22 hook. No problem.

Golf courses are a dysfunctional use of land. You can’t farm on them, park cars on them or even picnic on them unless you can dodge little dangerous flying objects. I think we should make the dysfunction work for us by combining golf courses and cemeteries. Instead of a tombstone for a person who moved on, we could put in a little name stone angled toward the green, and then if a ball hit it, the ball would bounce perfectly toward the hole just like the advantage of hitting a golf cart path and getting a kicker. You could call it a “Namestone shot,” a lucky thing and as you pass, you could say a blessing on “John Schlemiel, 1927 to 2011.” If I were a golfer, I think I would like that. It would be killing two birdies…. okay, that was uncalled for, I know.

Think of some of the other possibilities. If you’re a high school kid who is failing math, you should be paired up with a fifth grader to teach that fifth grader easier math and then move along with him through sixth grade and so on until you both graduate – and can do math. If you’re afraid of flying, you’d be the best, the most reassuring pilot in the world. No one could be a better janitor than someone who is obsessive/compulsive. Wow, what a clean school you have here, Mr. Tenbroomholder! The possibilities are endless.

If you’re obsessed with movies, you could work for Nielson.
If you’re a gambler….
If you’re a clutterbug….
If you’re a birdwatcher….
If you can’t help blogging, you could, um, blog. Okay, that was uncalled for, I know.

Dysfunction is such a wonderful thing. Heck, I could have been five or six successful things.

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It Is All Good

January 7, 2013 by 2 Comments

Today’s inspiration started with music. One of the first inspirations for me, something fifty years ago, was the Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand. I remember taping and playing that song over and over again, not so much to listen to it, but to feel it. Eventually, I overplayed it, and the feeling passed. It was followed by the Rolling Stones’ Honky Tonk Woman, The Animals’ House of the Rising Sun, and dozens of others, Springsteen’s Born to Be Wild, Knopfler’s Sultans of Swing, and much later on, Keith Urban’s You’ll Think of Me. More recently, I’ve greatly overplayed the Decembrists’ Down by the River, Adele’s Someone Like You, especially the YouTube version by Charlie Puth and Emily Luther, and this month, Mumford and Sons’ I Will Wait. I’ll admit that some of this repetition is due to the corporate radio’s tendency to promote anything that looks like a winner, but I think something else is going on. I’m feeding an innermost part of my brain, the same way a drug addict does, the same way a runner pushes past the wall to get that stream of endorphins, and the same way lovers love. The songs help me to feel something I like, even if sometimes that feeling is vicarious pain. Each song stimulated a different feeling, but they were all good in their way.

I believe three physical laws are operative here. The first is our need to feel something, sometimes anything. The second is the vicarious law of literature, video, and music. We are attracted to the sharing of other’s stories, their triumphs, and even their pain, as long as we don’t have to feel the real pain ourselves. I want to watch Abraham Lincoln and feel some of his ups and downs; I do not want to be him. The third law is that of diminishing returns. It is a wonderful blessing both to our families and ourselves that the repetitive playing of Mumford and Sons eventually bores us and we must wait for another such masterpiece or not play the song for a year.

Ann and I are currently taking a wonderful course based on Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication, which I’ve recommended before. Mary Kay Reinemann, our inspiring teacher, tells us regularly to watch for feelings. They are messengers. Anger is a messenger shouting a need. Every feeling is a please (help me) or a thank you. Hatred is please help me; I am overcome by fear. It is shouted out through a Marshall double stack amplifier with the volume on max. It is written in giant, red, bloody letters. Kindness is a thank you. Communication is more complicated than that, but you get the idea. You can also see why we’re taking this course for the second time, just so we can practice with others. The point is that feeling, even unpleasant feeling, is life, and numbness is death. To feel nothing is to be nothing. It is true that we also think, but even thinking can be dominated by feelings, and I never listened to I Want to Hold Your Hand because it gave me a thoughtful, philosophical position in life.

The second law, the law of vicarious living, is also a gift in disguise. We all must work for a living, and that work takes up so much time and energy that we do not usually have the space to be Humphrey Bogart, Harry Potter, or Lady Mary Crawley finally married to her Matthew. We can choose to live such lives, to feel what they feel, and not actually have to say goodbye to Ilsa, be orphaned by another wizard, or feel the anguish of ruin, scandal, or loss. We may live many lives in one. Their reality, even if we don’t participate as deeply as Walter Mitty in his secret life where he pilots a submarine or saves a life with a pen is real enough. We feel a measure of what they feel. We become them to a degree, and that degree is just enough. That degree can be geometrically multiplied. We may be Lady Mary and Matthew, and Lord Grantham, and any number of maids, footmen, and butlers. We may even be scoundrels if we choose. To feel them is to live them, and it is a blessing.

The third law, that of diminishing returns, is also a blessing. When we choose to love and marry, we feel intensely and wonderfully, but also, we cannot feel that same intensity forever. This is providential because one’s spouse is bound to change, as are we all. A marriage based only on what a partner was like at 22 is a marriage in trouble. I believe the best marriage is one that assumes a trajectory. My wife is not the woman she was at 24; she is better, wiser, more alive, and I had a pretty good idea that was going to happen. The law of diminishing returns also forces us to grow, to change. Stasis is death. The law of diminishing returns forces the creation of a fifth symphony after we have tired of the other four. It forces the creation of What About Bill after we have tired of Groundhog Day, and a third season of Downton Abbey after the late night kiss in the snow that ended the last season.

The law that rules this world, including our own brains, is providential, blessed, and necessary because it nudges us to live. It is all good.

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On Little Things and God

December 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The devil is not in the details; God is. One of the advantages of being over 60 is that age affords perspective, and all the teenage angst over am-I-good-enough, will-she-like-me, oh-no-the-test-is-TODAY is long over. This perspective tells me two things of which I am absolutely convinced. One is that little things are important. The other is that the most important thing we have is time. I just finished reading The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle, whose long-term study shows that having a whole lot of money to invest means a lot less than investing over a long time and doing it sensibly and without the excess of greed. A smaller return by owning shares of ALL stocks to minimize risk, avoiding investment costs, and holding everything for a long time beats all other strategies. Once you don’t care about making a million by day trading, searching for the next killer pick for this month, or giving all your money to someone who charges you to invest your money, you can make a million or more.

Enough about money… I said God is in the details, and that deserves some explanation. It’s not just that Jesus was born in a manger, the smallest, least important place ever, he never led an army or held an office, and was not even comfortable with the title “Messiah,” because of political connotations, preferring “Ben Adam,” or “Son of Man.” Nor is it just William Blake’s exhortation to “see the world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower,” or Tennyson’s study of the flower in the crannied wall. By Divine Design, I see that good little things done over a long time amount to great consequences. It’s all in understanding the details.

Read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, which shows that ordinary people (and the Beatles were ordinary people) who practice for 10,000 hours (their time spent in German cabarets) will become remarkable musicians. Even Mozart was an ordinary composer until he put in his 10,000 hours. I’ve written about this before, but good things sometimes bear repeating.

Log on to TED Talks and watch the short video by Amy Cuddy on how little things like posture, power poses and self-talk can change not only the testosterone and cortisol ratio in your body that makes you strong or stressed, it also results in a better, more successful YOU. It doesn’t really hit home until Amy tells her own remarkable story two-thirds of the way through the video. If you watch nothing else all week, watch this. (Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are) Our bodies were simply designed this way. Fake strength until you make it; make it until you become it.

Exercise? I’m finding that I don’t need to be a marathoner, and my knees probably wouldn’t take that stress anyway. It is still remarkable after a month of slacking off because of eye surgery, that if I just go back to thirty minutes of stretching, breathing and weights in the morning, followed by thirty minutes on a treadmill watching TED talks, I not only feel better and have great energy, I am alert rather than tired, kinder (or at least less crabby), and more able to write. I will never look like a football player, have six-pack abs, or be able to dunk a basketball, but stretching, breathing, and walking for thirty years has made me feel well and kept me from getting soft and fat. That is enough. It’s actually a big thing when I look around me at those who struggle to get through the day or go up a flight of stairs. I’m not bragging since I have so many other weaknesses; I’m observing. Little things done over an extended period of time make a big difference.

About two weeks ago I saw Warren Buffet on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and I was amazed at his attitude and answers to Stewart’s most challenging economic questions. In short, the wise, smiling man, perhaps the best investor of all time, delivered a truly optimistic message: Of course there are bubbles and even recessions, but that’s just an opportunity. That’s the time to BUY. The point is that the general trend is upward. It is all done little by little over many years.

That’s how we do everything. It’s the message of Anne Lamott’s great book on writing, Bird by Bird, which I’ve recommended before. What is new for me is that I see this “Little Things Are Great – in the long run” is by design. If you write, it takes at least a couple of years to turn out a good novel. If you pray for something good for someone else, it may take a couple of years for the miracle to appear (unless you are Jesus and I am not). If you want to be a great musician/composer/free throw shooter/landscape painter/teacher/parent…ANYTHING – it will probably take ten thousand hours. If you repeat affirmations, it will still take a couple of years for that little change to take effect. My only suggestion would be to make sure you choose something you love to do, because 10,000 hours doing something you hate is no fun and not good for your psyche. The testosterone/cortisol ratio will not be in your favor.

How amazing this world design is. Because of this design, great things are available to all of us by doing little things for a long time. Everyone is familiar with the adage, “The devil is in the details,” meaning it may be the little, unnoticed thing that causes a problem, but most people probably do not know that the original saying was most likely by Gustave Flaubert, “Le bon Dieu est dans le détail.” It’s not the devil in the detail; it’s the good God.

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Advice to Women on Sports and Men

December 1, 2012 by 1 Comment

I suppose this fits under the heading “Men are from Mars.” While most husbands/boyfriends and their eyes are laser-pointed at a flatscreen during any football/basketball/baseball game, the look on a typical wife/girlfriend is that of one who has just opened the hood of her new car. It is a look of XUG, which is one click beyond another acronym. Here’s what a caring woman needs to know.

First, a short cut. One of my favorite true stories is of a good friend/lawyer/banker, a brilliant woman who was forced to go to Soldier Field by her boss to entertain clients, and she knew-nothing-and-could-not-care-less about the violent game of football. Her partner, a very wise man, told her not to worry because she only needed to say four things, and she could say them over and over again. After anyone kicks the ball, always say, “Special teams always make the biggest difference.” After either team scores, always say, “Defense wins games. No defense – no win.” Any time there is a time out, even at the end of the half, always say, “Well, let’s see if they make adjustments.” Any time there is a yellow flag on the field, just mutter, “Are you kidding me?” I know you women are thinking, “Are you kidding me?” but honestly, I’m not. These four things work every time.

I don’t know if she won over her clients, but she has been working at the same bank for twenty years, so I assume the men were duly impressed.

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Football isn’t really a game, not any more than a soap opera is a TV show. It is a substitute for war, a campaign with territory won, players described as offensive weapons, passes that are bombs, defensive plays that are blitzes, quarterbacks who have rifle arms, defensive players who have nicknames like Samurai Mike, and a battle that is won or lost in the trenches. Women who care about men should first appreciate that these men are not actually killing each other. The other thing to remember is that a football game is the one occasion in which an otherwise uncommunicative man can show an emotion. A smart woman would capitalize on that. If you’ve been invited to a Saturday morning bike ride in Wisconsin, show up in a green Aaron Rodgers jersey and see what happens. If you’re in Chicago, you can choose from Urlacher, Tillman, or Marshall. You could wear a Cutler jersey, but this year, that is somewhat risky. If the local team loses, look sad, or better yet, look angry. It’s amazing how a furled brow and grimace can make a guy think you are Athena, or better yet, Venus.

If you’ve already attracted a guy with your football jersey but you’re not sure how to start a conversation, simply ask, “Hey, what time is the game?” Be sure you say, “THE game.” Even if it’s the middle of the season, it’s still “the game” to a guy.

After the football season is over, men focus on basketball. The easiest thing to remember about basketball is that the refs are always wrong. Even if they call a foul that benefits the home team, a typical guy thinks the foul should have been a technical foul, which is a really bad thing, kind of like telling a woman her jeans make her look, well, um, like a heifer. A technical foul, you see, is a really bad thing.

I’m not sure why, but women don’t usually look good in basketball jerseys, so don’t buy one. Just wear the local team’s colors. Basketball is only slightly different from football. It’s not an all-out war; basketball is more like a series of skirmishes. There are fast breaks, screens, setting a “pick,” running the floor (after all, where else could the players run?), and steals. Besides complaining about the refs after every call, there are a few things a woman can say during a basketball game. Whenever you see two players moving at the same time, just yell, “Pick and roll! Pick and roll!” It doesn’t matter whether your team has control of the ball or not. It doesn’t matter if a woman even knows what a pick-and-roll is. It still works if you yell it out.

Another thing a woman needs to know about basketball is that it is more like gambling than war. Statistics like shooting percentages, the current number of fouls, how many time outs are left, and who is “hot” – those things mean a lot in basketball. The best thing a team can do, as in gambling, is go on “a run.” That means one team has outscored the other team by, say 10 points to 2. A final thing a woman can do any time the game is going, no matter whether the home team has the ball or not, is yell, “Back door! Back door!” I’m not sure why, but in basketball, it’s more effective if you yell out something twice in a row.

I’m going to add a text note here. Some men will argue that after football season comes hockey season, especially in places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Canada. The problem is that – unless you are a woman who likes cold climes, you may not want to impress a man with your knowledge of hockey. Besides, it’s a very fast, very violent game, in which there are a lot of official rules and a lot of unofficial rules, and the rules are usually only applied after a referee notices blood on the ice. When a hockey referee gets bored or is tired and wants to slow the game down, he calls “icing,” which is sort of like a delay of game, and it’s supposed to follow a rule, but usually a referee calls it whenever he feels like it.

Another problem is that hockey is four games in one, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, unless you understand J.K. Rowling’s Quidditch. Much of hockey is like speed skating to see who can get to a puck first. Then it becomes soccer with passing, blocking and trying to score a goal. If the puck gets close to the net, it becomes a wrestling match, and after that, it degenerates into one-handed boxing where you hold the opponent’s jersey with your left hand and flail away at him with your right. If you actually hit him and you’re both on skates, he’d slide away from you, and a boxing match with only one punch isn’t very sporting, so you have to hold on to his jersey. I don’t mean to insult hockey fans, but I wonder about a game where fighting puts a player in time out for 45 seconds, and most players have lost their front teeth years ago. I think hockey was invented by bored dentists in very cold places.

After basketball and hockey, it’s time for baseball which lasts through the spring and summer. Women look cute in baseball jerseys, especially pinstripes or flannels that button down the front. Even cuter is a woman who wears a baseball cap and puts her ponytail through the little gap above the sizing tab in the back. Baseball is a slower game than football or basketball, so a woman might actually have a conversation with her date at a baseball game. Baseball has a lot of strategy, though, so some guys don’t talk all that much. In the old days, a baseball game was a bad date because the slowness of the game meant a lot of beer drinking, but today, beer in a baseball stadium is so outrageously expensive that drinking it has become an economic issue that favors conversation and cracking open peanuts.

Here’s what a woman can say during a baseball game. First of all, whenever a player is out, just say, “Good pitching always beats good batting.” It doesn’t matter who has just batted. Fans used to imitate Little League players by repeating a senseless litany that went like this: “Hum, baby, hum, baby, humma humma, swing batter!” That is outdated now, so a woman is safest shouting out after any pitch, “You call that a slider?” Pitchers have lots of other pitches – fastballs, curves, and change ups, but in today’s modern stadiums and the current price of tickets, to most fans all pitches look like sliders, which could be a fast curve or a curving fastball. Do not confuse a baseball slider with a White Castle hamburger. If you do, it will be your last date with that guy. If you want to get rid of him, misusing the “slider” word will do it.

Another thing a woman can do during a baseball game is read the scoreboard. It usually has so much information on it, even scores from other games, that a woman can narrate any piece of it during a slow game, and a guy will appreciate her knowledgable contributions. Also, if you really like the guy you are with at a baseball game, you can attract him by saying, “You know, Tom (or Joe or Mike or whatever), I really appreciate a guy who’s not juiced.” Most guys don’t take steroids, so he’ll appreciate that.

In some cities is easier to be a fan than in others. If you live in Chicago and go to a Cubs game, after the game is over, you can always say, “Just wait till next year.” It’s also good to have a list of names to say out loud. You don’t have to use a verb or put the name in a sentence. Just say the name and he’ll fill in the rest of the information. You can say the names any time during the game, and it will be appropriate. The Babe. Ted Williams. Joe Dimaggio. Stan the Man. Ernie Banks.

If you’re sitting next to two guys and you want to see them fight to ease your boredom, just say, “Pete Rose.” They’ll argue for the rest of the game.

In baseball, there is also a trump card you can play any time. You can say anything you want, even something silly like, “Was that strike four?” and if the guy looks at you with that XUG look on his face, one click beyond the usual acronym, just say, “Yogi-ism.” Yogi Berra said the most inane things and fans loved him for it, so you can too, and then repeat them as often as you like. It’s deja vu all over again.

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Holidays

November 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Yes, ’tis the season, and what so many complain about is all the periphery: Black Friday, football Thanksgiving, decorations up right after Halloween, Cyber-Monday, Santa Claus, and so on. I recently saw a headline that read: The War on Christmas Has Started Early this Year. Okay. I have a different “take” on all of the hype.

People, especially pundits, who are scandalized by all of the holiday sub-plots (since I’m a writer, I thought that term ought to have acceptable use) misunderstand or misinterpret the signs they see. I’m not denying the signs, the “holiday trees” (and what is a “holiday” but an elision for “holy day?”) the gift buying, the car commercials (with Santa driving a red Mercedes behind eight silver ones), or even the jewelry commercials which blend Christmas lights, romantic love, and some perfect diamond. As this paragraph shows; it’s all parentheses.

The point is that for anyone who is Christian, Jewish, Zulu, or any other culture that celebrates this season, all of the things I would put in parentheses, including the Mercedes, the perfect diamond, and even the newest iPad, are merely additional layers that make the holiday more fun, but do not replace it. Someone who is a pagan and doesn’t believe in the original meaning of Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, at least participates in some way, and for the rest of us, it’s more icing on the original cake.

Keep in mind, the original holidays were made up by us anyway. Anyone who has studied some theology has probably learned that Christmas is celebrated on the wrong day because early Christians adopted a pagan holiday, and they probably also had the year wrong. At least that’s what the Pope says in his Christmas book just out. That doesn’t bother me. We all decide on what anything means, and it doesn’t have to be a collective decision. I decide (and so do you).

The Christmas of Charles Dickens is not the same as the Christmas of Charlie Brown, or the Christmas of White Christmas (such a wonderful song writen by Jewish Irving Berlin while living in California and sung by Bing Crosby, a Catholic), or the Christmas of It’s a Wonderful Life, and yet, I believe each version enriches our celebration. The Christmas of Luke isn’t even the same as the Christmas of Matthew in the New Testament.

Of course there are people who go crazy; some who light up their house with computer-driven sequenced eruptions; some who knock others down at Toys R Us sales while trying to get the latest “hot” toy to celebrate the holiday of peace and love; some who celebrate by going to Disneyworld. These are outliers, though, not the majority, and that’s why they are newsworthy. Even then, they cannot escape the continuous re-runs of It’s a Wonderful Life, the manger scenes on lawns and in front of churches, the stars, angels and other subliminals on top of Christmas trees, or the menorahs. These are good things. No action, no celebration, no tradition, will ever be celebrated by one-hundred percent of the people in perfect “kosher” style. That’s okay. Their laxity does not affect my celebration and its meaning to me unless I let it.

I greatly admire and believe in the Jewish principle of zikharon, memory or remembrance, a practice once explained to me by a Bible scholar lecturing on Passover. The belief is that time is merely a construction by us, that eternity is “all at once” to God, and therefore, for a family celebrating Pesach, reading the prayers and being part of the ritual, they participate in the actual event as if they were there. That’s my Christmas, and as a Christian, I celebrate the birth of Christ the Lord. You may celebrate however you wish and it won’t affect me.

I don’t need the Mercedes to celebrate or Disneyworld or a new giant flat-screen TV. Smaller things, some egg nog with German chocolate cake or chocolate anything, a hug and kiss from a family member, a card or two, some beautiful carols, a tree, a Cabela’s gift certificate, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, and a few battery-powered candles in the windows – those are just extra layers in a wonderful celebration, icing and candles on the cake.

Happy holy-days, everyone, however you celebrate, and may there soon be peace on Earth.

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Busts, Death, Toilet Seats, Life, Irony, Apples, Stones, and Eden

October 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

So I’m sitting in the Arcadia Bookstore in Spring Green, Wisconsin, with my daughter, our keyboards clicking like self-running machines, and then I can’t write anymore. How do you write in a bookstore/lunchroom with a bust of Shakespeare on the top of a bookshelf staring down at you? I could quote him, I suppose, to get him off my back, but then he would just frown and say, “Plagiarism is not writing,” and I would answer, “You plagiarized everyone, including your friend Marlowe,” and he would answer, “Yes, but I did it so well, so much better than the original.”

As if I or anyone today could do that, even with the modern aid of high octane caffeine streaming through my veins like a torrent of contradictions from “To be or not to be…”

I don’t believe we can write if we’re trying to outdo someone, even if we’re only trying to outdo ourselves. Since I’m currently writing to entertain rather than inspire, I see that it’s time for a joke, or at least a modicum of irony. So I just went to the men’s room after a nut brown ale, some chili and a cup of coffee and found the ultimate women’s revenge, here in this bookstore/lunchroom run by women. It was a spotlessly clean men’s room, with a toilet lid that would not stay up. It’s one thing for them to complain about putting the seat down, but to go this far, to install a seat that will not stay up – that’s just too strategic, especially in a room women will not use. It seems like one of the women had a slightly too-large smile for me when I walked past the counter. The bust of Shakespeare is not amused.

Now I look past my dauighter and I see an ironic metaphor for our country – stacks of books with No Easy Day, the Navy SEAL’s account of the killing of Bin Laden, next to another volume entitled, The New Deal, a study of FDR’s plan to save the country. Death or life, which will you read?

Writing is “righting,” an attempt to make life better, or at least to shine a light on something wormy and so to make it shrivel and die. Writing is building something with words, a city or a life. The words are humble things, like the stones that become a cathedral. All life is metaphoric if one looks at it closely enough. It is so much more than the thing itself. An apple is more than an apple; it is a logo, a variable of gravity, a temptation that boots our parents out of Eden. An apple is more because our thinking makes it so. The apple does not matter. It could have been a walnut, a potato, or a plum. What matters is not the color, shape or taste, but rather, the fact that it fell and someone noticed it and saw there was meaning there.

Writing is that meaning, the moment someone picks up a stone, an apple, or a plum, studies it for a moment, and then smiles. “What?” says a friend, who is not a writer and does not hold the apple like truth-in-hand.

Will Shakespeare, you need not smile at me like that. I have held an apple in my hand and smiled at it when I saw that it was alive, teeming in its redness, redolent with sweet juice, firm as flesh, and holding in secret a truth we can hardly imagine. What is that secret? All things fall, and the falling is a beautiful thing to those who understand it. The falling makes an apple so much more than an apple. A fallen apple is one of us.

I am a writer. When you fall, I will bear witness. When I fall, someone else will witness. It is a beautiful thing.

Just for the record, I do not recommend taking too much caffeine in very good coffee after a bowl of white bean chili and a nut brown ale, even if Shakespeare smiles down upon it. It means that you will write about busts, toilet seats, life, death, apples, irony, stones and Eden. Yes, Will is definitely smiling at me.

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Nicknames

September 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’ve come to the conclusion that nicknames are more important than actual names, with the obvious exception of an attempt to get a ballot in November. Nicknames are descriptive, metaphoric, and often assigned to you by people who know you best. This is not true of parents who give you a birth name based on some distant aunt, family tradition, or hand-me-down to which they attach the indignity of a number or “junior.” This does not mean that every nickname is one that you like or is free from mild insult, nor that it is completely appropriate. A favorite uncle, for example, who lived in Columbia, Illinois, was a very large man, especially in terms of girth. His nickname was “Tiny.” I don’t even know what his real name was, and I suspect most of my family doesn’t either.

This brings to mind a very funny Youtube series called Marcel the Shell. If you have not seen any segments, I highly recommend them. In one of my favorites, Marcel, in her best toddling, almost Charlie Brown voice asks, “Do you know what I want that I will never ask for? A nickname. I mean, you can’t just tell people to call you ‘The General’.” She is so right. You don’t really get to pick. After my detached retina surgery, when I wore a patch for several months while the gas bubble that kept my retina pushed up against the back of my eyeball, I tried calling myself “Pirate,” thinking that it had a kind of swashbuckling romanticism to it in the vein of Johnny Depp, but it didn’t stick. My fishing buddies settled on “Popeye,” instead. I have nothing against Popeye or spinach, but “Pirate” would have been so much cooler. In truth, I’ve reached the age in which being cool is not really an option for me anyway. Even when my daughter gave me a really cool red baseball cap with the numbers 608 emblazoned on the crown, and everywhere I went in Madison people commented on how cool my hat was, I had to confess that I didn’t see why until my daughter explained, “Dad, that’s your new phone area code for Madison. It’s cool. Duh.” The “duh” means I am not cool even in a cool hat.

Not being cool is not as bad as dealing with other nicknames. In grade school, I was “Little Harps,” to the older kids because I had an uncle well known for being a troublemaker but a good athlete, who was called “Harps.” The “Little” was not so bad. My son, however, was called “Little Jim” by his skateboarding buddies because of an older and bigger friend, who was “Big Jim.” In his skateboarding circle, he is still “Little Jim,” even though he is now just under 6’3″ and bigger than “Big Jim.” It could be far worse. Back when I taught freshmen, I had several classes who thought the proper way to get my attention was to call out, “Mr. Hairball.” It usually took a few days to settle on a compromise of “Mr. H.”

In high school, as a member of the almost famous band Mogen David and the Grapes of Wrath (was that a great name or what!), since I wasn’t Mogen David, I was a Grape. It wasn’t so bad being a Grape. I think it was better than being a Trogg, which I assume was short for “troglodyte.”

Because the current political climate is so toxic, I’m not going to get into any discussion of Mitt vs Barry. That’s too bad. I could have written a decent paragraph about those two nicknames, not to mention Big Dog and Turdblossom.

City nicknames also are fun. What else could New York be, except the Big Apple? Many people misunderstand the Second City as a reference to population, which is not true; it is a reference to the second city on the site where the first one burned down. Atlanta is much more appropriately, Hot-lanta. Los Angeles, where I doubt there are many angels left, is more appropriately LA, or even better LA-LA Land. Beantown, St. Louie, Big D, Mad-town, (which a former governer described as 92 square miles surrounded by reality), Motown, which really used to be Motortown, and The Big Easy – you’ve gotta’ love nicknames.

Next month I’m going in for my second cataract surgery. After that, I’m going to try for “Pirate” again. I still think it would be cool, as cool as someone over 60 could be. Do you know what I want, but I’m not going to ask for? A cooler nickname.

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