Random thoughts…

 “Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.”

--Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

§  The Sergeant Major and I have enjoyed the British television series “Downton Abbey”.  We were late to the party so we watched Season 1 via streaming Netflix.  We await the arrival of the CD’s of Season 2, although we were able to catch Episode 1 on Amazon Prime.  We’ve closed our eyes to Season 3 so far.

A number of pundits and critics have agonized over why this series has become so popular.  I think part of the reason is what I call the “Back in the Box” syndrome.  We’ve been exhorted to “Think Outside the Box” for so long we’re weary of it.  All it seems to have produced is economic hardship, barbaric behavior—tattoos and piercings run amok, bipolarization of our society, and this feeling of apprehension about what disaster lies in wait.  We just want to get “back in the box” of order, civility, manners.  No, the world of Downton Abbey is not a perfect world—war, betrayal, blackmail, social unrest—all exist.  But people don’t seem to use it as an excuse to abandon all the rules at once, and start running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  Decorum still counts.

 §  Speaking of rules, we now know for certain that Lance Armstrong broke them.  And lied about it.  That’s what bothers me the most I think.  Perhaps it’s time to look at the rules.  Is blood doping in order to enhance physical performance any worse than the improvements nutrition, diet, and vitamin and mineral supplements have brought us?  Maybe if we didn’t have the obsession of comparing today’s performances with those of the past we wouldn’t be quite so righteous.  I don’t think it’s fair to compare today’s hitters to Babe Ruth.  Did he have the benefit of Nutrition and Strength coaches paid for by the team?  Perhaps he did.  Sorry.  I’m thinking outside the box already. 

§  Monday was a holiday for me so I got to spend some time on my new hobby—cooking.  My five-year old grandson took his nap on the couch while I went to the kitchen.  When he awoke his Mom was home and they began to chat.  I was only half listening until I heard this:

Grandson:           “Where’s Grandpa?”

Daughter:            “He’s in the kitchen cooking supper.”

SILENCE

Daughter (laughing):  “What do you think?  Should we be worried?”

Grandson:           “No…let’s just be confused.”

Good advice.  No more worries for me either.  Better to just stay confused.  Healthier anyway.

 §  Today’s news story about a middle school teacher facing termination in Ohio has me both worried and confused.  Apparently she gave one of her students some duct tape to fix her binder.  The student then shared the duct tape with several other students who each put a strip across their mouths and asked the teacher to take a picture.  She did so, and later posted it as a joke on Facebook.  (Yes, I know, no social media allowed).  This upset the Board of Education badly.  But the best line in the article was the Board President asking the questions:  “Why was there duct tape in the classroom?  How did they [the students] come to have access to it?”

I have several grandchildren in school and this raises lots of questions:  Are my grandchildren really safe from duct tape?  How do I talk to them about duct tape?  What if another child’s parents allow him access to duct tape?  How can I stop them from sharing?  What if a stranger offers them duct tape?  What should they do if they are accidentally exposed to duct tape?  I could go on but I won’t.  I could say it’s because of the idiots who run the schools these days, but that’s not entirely fair.  Truth be told, I thought the folks who ran things when I was in school were idiots too.

 §  Back to cooking.  I really am enjoying it.  It has helped me focus.  I’ve been a little bit better in other facets of my life, including cleaning the kitchen.  You want to say, “I wish I’d done this before”, but that’s a waste of time.  If I should have done it before, I would have done it before.  As the Zen saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher will come”.  You have to be ready, or it won’t make sense.

 §  Speaking of ready.  I’ve reached that magic age where I’ve begun to think about all the things that went into arriving at this point, and all the things I want to do before I hear the final whistle.  Much of what I want to do yet is what I loved to do when my world was young.  Reading, writing, studying something new.  Theaters, museums, libraries.  Music, Art, Dance, Literature.  These were my first loves, and I want them with me at the end.  I’m content with the things I’ve done in between—farmer, soldier, businessman.  But now I’m of a mind to go back to the beginning.

 “Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you.  And all you can do is to go where they can find you.” 
--Winnie the Pooh

**We’ve all heard that old saying, “There is no such thing as a dumb question”.

I don’t buy it. Truth be told, I haven’t bought it since I was a kid. There really are dumb questions. The first time this realization hit me was when my father was scolding me for some infraction or other. I gave him an exquisitely beautiful explanation of why I had done what I had done, and he just looked at me and said: “Do I have STUPID written across my forehead?” I immediately realized, “dumb question”. On the one hand, if I’d thought he wouldn’t buy my wonderful story, I wouldn’t have told it. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to say, “Well, yes. It’s right there just above your eyebrows, and oh, by the way, why do you have that one long eyebrow hair that wants to grow the wrong direction?”

Over the years, I’ve fielded a variety of dumb questions, mostly with a dignity which they did not deserve. One of my favorites was when I used to work in a retail store. People would come up to me frequently and ask, “Excuse me. Do you know where the bathroom is?” And I’d always tell them. What I really wanted to say was, “No. I’ve been holding it in for a year now. If you find it, please let me know.” Or better yet, “No. I just go out in the alley behind the dumpster”.

And of course, there are the cops. Cops have some of the best dumb questions. I was involved in an accident a couple of years ago when a lady ran a stop sign and broadsided me. So I’m sitting there in my truck, which is still in its proper lane, only facing the wrong direction, and the cop comes up:

Cop: “What happened here?”

Me: “I don’t know officer. I just got here myself, but it seems to me that this lady’s Buick tried to mate with my Ford, and things just got a little out of hand. You know how young cars are these days…”

What happened? Seriously? It’s not just a little bit obvious than an accident has occurred? I’d much rather him ask what he’s really thinking, “Just how the hell did you guys manage to do this?”

Or you’ve just been pulled over for speeding. What’s the first dumb question out of his mouth? “Do you know how fast you were going?” If you answered, “Well officer, I’m not sure, but since you managed to stop me, obviously it wasn’t fast enough”, go to the head of the class.

While cop questions can be dangerous, the one I fear most is from my spouse. Guys, you know THE ONE. “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?” Whoa. Dumb question. “Well Lord yes. Where did you get it, Omar the Tentmaker?” NOT. So, depending on the situation, you may or may not lie. She knows that. She knew it before she asked the question. SHE ALREADY KNOWS THE ANSWER. So why does she ask the question? I’ve been married 34 years and haven’t a clue.

But you know trouble is headed your way when someone comes up to you and says, “This may be a dumb question, but…”. Duck. Run. Seek shelter immediately! There are only two reasons people preface their question with this statement, and both of them are bad news for you. The first reason a person prefaces their question with this statement is that they ALREADY THINK THEY KNOW THE ANSWER AND YOU DON’T! They feel certain that you will just be astounded at their insight. “This may be a dumb question, but has anyone thought about charging money for the work we do?” Why no. That’s brilliant. Wherever do you come up with this stuff? Why come on in here right now, and let me put you in charge.

The second, and related, reason they preface their questions with this statement, is that they believe their brain operates on a much higher plane than yours, and if they don’t share their insights you will have no opportunity to glimpse into the higher cosmos. “This may be a dumb question, but have you ever thought what would happen if you won the lottery and the next day space invaders attacked the Earth?” You know what? They are right. My brain doesn’t operate on that level. I can honestly say, “Why no. I never thought of that”. In my case, my brain is so limited it can only grasp the first part of the question, “What would happen if you won the lottery…?” It gets bogged down for hours trying to figure out that one little thing, and just never seems to make the leap to aliens attacking the Earth. I guess it’s just a curse I’ll have to carry.

Seriously though, questions are how we learn. I don’t want you to stop asking them. Albert Einstein once said: “The important thing is not to stop questioning…Never lose a holy curiosity”. But you might want to put a little thought into it as well, and remember to keep in mind what Publius Syrus said around 100 BC, “It is not every question that deserves an answer”.

Anyway, I was thinking, and this may be a dumb question, but…OK. Never mind.

“At the end of the day you’re another day older…”

Christmas arrived at last.  For the Sergeant Major and me it began with new high tech gadgets, and ended with more satisfying content and substance from 150 years ago.  We found that we both like it that way.

For her, it was the Kindle Fire HD 8.9” tablet from Amazon.  For me it was the Samsung Chromebook.  Two different devices for two different styles.  We like it that way too.  She can sit and read quietly, or play a game, or hold our Grandson in her lap and share a game with him.

I can sit in my chair and read too, but there is a keyboard readily at hand for when I want to talk back.  And I always want to talk back. 

At any rate, the big buzz in the world at large, was the opening on Christmas Day of the movie “Les Miserables”.  Big Budget.  Big Stars.  Big Advertising.  This was the first time someone had really taken on bringing the wildly successful stage musical to the big screen.  Not something I could do, but I really wanted to see how they did it.

So I bestirred myself to drive all the way to town with the Sergeant Major to take in a movie.  At a big complex.  On a big screen.  Neither of us was able to remember how long it had been since we’d done that. We just knew it was back in the old days before Netflix.

I’ll admit that I was hoping it would knock my socks off.  I wanted it to knock my socks off.  And I am delighted to say that it really did knock my socks off. 

Oh, we can quibble about this scene here, or that scene there, but it’s all just nibbling around the edges.  They got it right.  They did nothing to destroy the beauty of the musical play that 60 million of us love so much, and yet they used the power of film to do things you just can’t do on a stage.

Now, some of the “professional critics” are going wild.   I know that.  I’ve read a couple of reviews where the reviewers seemed totally unable to control their emotions.  One of them, after brilliantly, in his mind, explaining to us unenlightened just why the film was no good, suddenly and derisively blurted out, “But the audiences will love it”.  How true.  We “bitter clingers” out here in the wastelands, still clinging to our guns, our religion, and our beloved “Les Mis”.  He actually got that part right.

So why is it that we love “Les Mis” so much?   For me there are two very clear reasons:  The Music, and the Story.  Surprised huh?  I bet you thought there’d be a deeper answer.  Nope.  It’s all in the fundamentals.  Music-Story. 

First, Composer Claude-Michel Schonberg has written a series of beautiful and sometimes painfully haunting songs.  But more importantly he has crafted a melodic theme for each character, and then has carefully woven that character’s theme into the relationship with the other characters.  Sometimes he uses these recurring melodies to build to an intense level of emotion, and sometimes he uses them quietly, to calm us back down, and get us centered again.

Second, is the classic story from Victor Hugo.  Pain and suffering, love and loss, vengeance and forgiveness.  All centered around one man who, in the end, perseveres to the finish and is redeemed. 

So, sockless and all, it seemed right to me to be sitting in a big movie house on a Christmas afternoon, in the company of my beloved Sergeant Major, watching and listening to a story of Redemption.  Understanding in this lesson from 150 years ago that people haven’t really changed much.  For all our preoccupation with the “modern”, and the high tech gadgets and gizmos of our lives, we are still very much human.  We all need to live.  We all need to love and be loved.  And we all need to be forgiven.  Then it becomes our duty to take that forgiveness and let it mold us and fashion us and encourage us to persevere until one day we too, like Jean Valjean, can join those who have been redeemed. 

“Do you hear the people sing, lost in the valley of the night?

It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the Earth there is a flame that never dies.

Even the darkest night will end and the Sun will rise. “

“Hey Joe, where you going

With that gun in your hand?
Goin’ down to shoot my old lady,
You know I caught her messin’ ‘round with another man…”

Our grieving over the bewildering murder of twenty children and six adults has barely begun, and already the political cacophony is building.  Soon it will reach a crescendo that will wash over us and leave us emotionally and mentally exhausted.   

I’m not going to talk about that today.  There will be a time for that.  Like most intractable problems it is complex, with people on all sides of the argument possessing at least a little bit of the “right”. 

Where I think we’re missing the boat is simpler.   I’ve referred to it for several years now as “My Theory of Increasing Incompetence”.   It basically states that one reaches a degree of competence and assumes that everyone else has also reached that level of competence.  So we quit teaching.  We quit passing on what we know.  After all, “everybody knows that”.  The trouble is…they don’t. 

Case in point:  The United States Army circa 1978, the year I began serving as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry.  This was not yet the “Be All You Can Be” Army.  It was the Army that “Wants to Join You”.  Or me, in my case.  Only it didn’t really want to join me at all as I soon discovered, but I digress. 

This was the post-Viet Nam Army.  Its senior officers and non-commissioned officers were Viet Nam veterans.  They had seen combat.  They knew how to camouflage themselves; how to walk point without tripping a booby trap; how to set up a night defensive perimeter.  The world their Army was joining though, knew none of that.  We were young kids from Detroit, and Chicago.  Kids from the hills of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.  Fresh college grads from Texas and Oklahoma.  We hadn’t been there or done any of that.  We “didn’t know s**t from Shinola” as Major Helmick loved to tell us.

The consequence was that when we’d go through our annual testing—they called it ARTEP (Army Training and Evaluation Program) in those days—we would fail.  Usually miserably.  Why?  We couldn’t perform basic tasks so it was just not possible that we would have any chance of performing the more complex tasks they were asking of us. 

The senior Generals understood that this was not acceptable and they began a program to train soldiers like me at a very basic level.  This is a Rifle.  You can use it to shoot at the enemy.  This is a Map.  It will tell you where you are on the ground.  This is a Compass.  Along with your Map it will tell you how to move from Point A to Point B without ending up in Russia.  This is a Radio.  You can talk to other soldiers on it.  And so forth. 

They broke the program into two sections, Common Task Training, those things every single soldier needed to know, and Skills Qualification Testing, for those skills specific to your job as an infantryman, tanker, truck driver, cook, or whatever. 

Bottom line is that it worked.  And the Army it trained would prove itself capable and ready when the first Desert Storm came in 1991. 

I’ve never forgotten that lesson, but I have at times forgotten that I need to actually implement it, not just know it. 

Which brings me to my point:  This is one of those times.  Our society has got to gather itself together and go back to teaching the basics.  This time last week I would have told you that “everybody knows you don’t go into an elementary school and start shooting”.  Today, sadly, that is obviously not true.  At least one of those among us apparently did not “know” that. 

And the first point I’d teach is that “actions have consequences”—not just here in this world, but in the Universe as well.  Most societies have developed some idea of being held accountable for our actions here on Earth and in the Cosmos, but lately we’ve gotten away from teaching that. 

So today, and in the coming days, as we grieve, and give our kids and grandkids that extra hug, let’s take a little time and teach them about good and evil, right and wrong, and that actions have consequences, not only for now, but for eternity.

Yes, for me with my Judeo-Christian background, I’ll talk about Heaven and Hell, and the final Judgment Day.  But if you prefer to talk about Karma, do that.  If you prefer to explain that you must not disgrace your Ancestors, do that.  How you do it is far less important than that you do it. 

The alternative is to “gun up”, because unless we start teaching our children the stories of values—of how humans throughout recorded history have groped for ways to peacefully co-exist—these terrible things will continue to happen. 

 

Christmas season is upon us...

“Chipmunks roasting on an open fire,

Frostbite chewing on your nose,

Yuletide carolers being thrown on a fire,

And folks dressed up like buffaloes…”

 

Ahh…the traditional sounds of Christmas.  Thanksgiving is over, and we’re well into the Christmas, excuse me, “Holiday” season.  Actually I prefer the Thanksgiving holiday myself, but it seems like it’s getting pushed aside more and more every year for that other great holiday tradition—“retail sales”.  This is the time of year where you can be sure that every Monday morning, no matter what else happened in the world—earthquake, plane crash, war in the Middle East—the very first news story of the week will be a stimulating report on that weekend’s retail sales figures.  It’s heartwarming.  Really, it is. 

Christmas at my house doesn’t begin until the day AFTER Thanksgiving.  In spite of severe pressure from the media, and others, I have managed to hold on to this cherished tradition.  It begins, as I said, the day after Thanksgiving, when I go to the garage, no, check that.  The Sergeant Major sends me to the garage to recon, identify, and recover her “Christmas decorations”.  The stuff I lovingly refer to as “all that crap in the corner”.  We’re not talking a tree stand and a couple of wreaths here.  She has 12 heavy Tupperware tubs, a large trash can, and several “Hefty” trash bags filled with Holiday treasures.  Our garage is not attached to the house so I get out the wheelbarrow and begin to make the multiple journeys between the two buildings, all the while singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.  (You do believe that, right?)

Meanwhile, inside the house the Sergeant Major is busy taking all the normal décor off the walls, and the shelves, and is merrily stacking it in the middle of the floor.  I’ll spend the next few days dodging the pile until she can empty the Christmas stuff, and pack the regular stuff in the tubs, can, and bags, so I can get out the wheelbarrow again, and equally joyfully, make the trips to the garage in reverse. 

In the midst of all these journeys, I (cheerfully of course) remarked, “What am I?  Your pack mule?” to which the Sergeant Major lovingly replied, “Either that, or my jackass!”  Such love.  After all, that is what Christmas is all about, isn’t it?

Eventually, the decorations do get put into their proper places, the tree is up and lit up like a…well, like a Christmas tree, and I am surrounded by the sights and sounds of another Christmas season—the tree, poinsettias, ornaments, wreaths, nutcrackers, a miniature village covered in snow, and of course, Santa.  Dozens of Santas in fact.  Apparently the Sergeant Major never had a visit from Santa as a child, so she keeps him close—on the shelves, on the bookcase, on the window sills, on the end tables.  (Last year I swear I caught the one on the end table drinking out of my beer.  He apparently waited until I’d had several hoping I wouldn’t notice). 

To say the house now radiates Christmas would be an understatement.  It glows.  Literally.  Between the extra extension cords criss-crossing the floor, to the candles glowing brightly in their stands, this place is a pyromaniac’s dream.  So I have adopted the practice of giving a gift for each of the twelve days of Christmas.  I don’t go the partridge in the pear tree route, and most definitely not the twelve drummers drumming (although I confess the eight maids a milking sounds tempting).  No, I just stick to fire extinguishers and smoke alarms.  The bright red fire extinguishers really do lend a festive note, and they’re really not that obnoxious if placed carefully next to the poinsettias. 

And it’s not like everybody in the world is going to see all of this.  It’s not even like ANYBODY is going to see all of this.  Those of you who know me will not be surprised to learn that I have few friends, and we live several miles beyond “the sticks” so it’s not likely anybody is going to drop by.  (Really.  The nearest town, population 750, is six miles away, although the modern world is starting to reach us.  In addition to the bank, and the general store, we now have our very own Indian gaming casino.)

But I think the crowning glory was the Sergeant Major’s decision last year to “modernize”.  Now, for years, our “stockings were hung by the chimney with care”.  But for some reason, she decided that was no longer good enough, and replaced the traditional “stockings” with (I am not making this up) “boxer shorts”.  Yes.  What says “Christmas” better than a pair of boxers?  Oh, they’re in the proper Christmas color—plaid—but really, boxers?  I had a hard enough time thinking about Santa sneaking around the house putting stuff in my socks.  The image of him reaching into my boxers…no, I just can’t go there.

Anyway, it makes the Sergeant Major happy, and as everyone knows when the Sergeant Major’s happy, the troops are happy.  She’s at peace with the world now, so I have time to crack open another “barley pop” and listen to that wonderful Christmas music…

                       ”Grandma got run over by a reindeer…”