CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES

I don’t remember when or what it was about but something, someone got my attention with the idea, ‘Choose your battles.’ It didn’t need a lot of explanation. Any time your are at odds with someone the potential for conflict is ripe. It could be a couple of two-year olds, over a cookie crumb or it could be CEO’s over who cheated first. Battles can be over someone’s honor or about a righteous principle and those kinds of conflicts usually end badly, for everyone. Even if you win, it comes at a price. Sun Tzu was a Chinese general turned philosopher around 500 B.C. He was a real kick-ass kind of guy, fought great wars and won, all the time. In his old age he wrote a book about what he had learned. His book, ‘The Art of War’ is required reading in every military school in the world. He made the point about choosing your battles. You pick the time and place, not the other way. If it doesn’t suit you, wait until it does. Don’t fight on other people’s terms. Retreat is preferable to unwinnable battles. Sun Tzu made it clear that a successful war is not about winning, it’s about not losing. Two points in his book that I remember well are; A general’s greatest victory is the battle he never had to fight. Then he said, A well placed spy is more valuable than a legion of warriors. Chose your battles and know your enemy. 

I’ve got one of those ‘Principle’ things that goes back, way back. I’ve always liked if not loved birds. If I can’t be me I’d rather be a humming bird or a tern; none of those hairy mammals for me. So I put food out for my feathered friends, especially in winter. There is a wonderful variety of bird species in my neighborhood who come to my feeder daily. I watch them from my kitchen window and it’s awesome how they take turns, everybody gets fed. But there are tree rats in my neighborhood as well. A few years ago, maybe five or six, there were so many gray squirrels on my bird feeder, the birds were shut out and I didn’t like that. The squirrels took turns; there was one on the feeder every time I looked and we were going through sunflower seeds like a drunk sailor and his money. I wasn’t going take that lying down. We went to war. I don’t think the squirrels understood but I did. I engineered obstacles to keep the squirrels at bay but they always found a way to negotiate my defense and get to the seeds. I got an air/pellet pistol and tried to shoot them from the kitchen window but inaccuracy was a problem and they learned to get behind the feeder when I was at the window. All in all, I was rendered useless by a bunch of squirrels. Me, the human, with a truly miraculous brain made foolish by rodents whose brain is about the size of a walnut half. I knew better before I began but it was a pride thing and I couldn’t help myself. 

Then, for a couple of years there were no squirrels. A virus came through and killed them all. But nature abhors a vacuum and slowly, foreign, resistant squirrels began to arrive, like pilgrims and pioneers of days gone bye. So far there are only two of those hairy devils coming to my back yard. I’ve decided to chose my battles and this is one I’ll let go for now. I have a supposedly, squirrel proof feeder with a spring loaded perch. If a really big bird or squirrel puts weight on the perch it drops and closes access to the food. Still, they figured a way to cling with hind feet to the side of the feeder, put just enough weight on the perch to steady themselves, without completely closing it. If I push the sunflower seeds to the middle of the feeder, the squirrels find it most difficult to reach them and that’s about as good as I can hope for. When our Hunter-Gatherer ancestors were foraging for food, they ranged as far as they could. Feeding in a limited area would have been a fatal mistake. Even if food were plentiful most of the time, food would be scarce others. Humans could survive without food for a while but not so birds and squirrels. Their next meal and drink is their bridge to tomorrow. So birds and even varmints can’t spend too much time at one feeding place. They are required by their nature to move along and keep finding new, different sources of food. 

I made a peanut feeder from wood and heavy, hardware cloth (Screen) that is just right for woodpecker beaks but not a squirrel’s nose. They can get their tongues against the peanut but not their teeth; haven’t seen them on the peanut feeder or the suet cage. I know they will eat suet if it’s easy but the suet cage gives them the same problem as the peanut feeder. All I’ve done is what I can do to make it time and energy expensive for the tree rats. They munch for a while but it’s not an all-you-can-eat buffet. They move on and the birds come back. It’s about all I can do without raising the stakes. So I’ll be satisfied; this is a battle I don’t need to win, neither do I want to lose. But should things change, I have another plan.

MOVIES

Oscar night is coming up. Not that I go to the movies that often but they do spread life out, like butter on toast. It melts so you can’t tell where entertainment stops, where life lessons unfold and it gets personal, validating or challenging your own experience. Sometimes you react, “Unbelievable; that’s not how it works.” It didn’t resonate with your world. Then there are the, “Yeah, oh yeah; that’s right on.” They’ve made a movie about your life, you’re just not in it. The way men react to Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon in Grumpy Old Men, their behavior and ideas, if you’re not already there that’s where you’re headed. Likewise for ladies with Kathy Bates and ‘Bee Charmer’ Jessica Tandy in Fried Green Tomatoes. Good movies don’t just happen. When they get it right it’s about you and you may be required to recalibrate your moral compass. Even though they are vicarious experiences, they can shift our personality, even a tiny fraction, with or without permission. 

‘Dances With Wolves’ moved me but not for the obvious; it was a sad exploitation of Indigenous tradition. Very much a civil rights movie, Indians as victims. The U.S. Army and by inference, Americans in general were ruthless, murderous invaders. But they couldn’t let it go at that; they had to insert a sympathetic, heroic white-man-hero who defends them valiantly and escapes not only with his life but with the Indian princess who isn’t really an Indian after all; talk about white privilege. But the sense of entitlement and brutality did resonate; it has been internalized in out national conscience, so it goes under the radar. My compass moved a little bit. The ‘Back To The Future’ trilogy is a favorite. Humor is good but there are life lessons threaded in the fabric as well. George McFly needs help wooing Lorraine so Marty feeds him the pickup lines. But George fumbles when he is supposed to say, “I am your destiny.” He makes a Freudian slip and says, “I am your density.” At that point, density clearly was his strong suit. I was reminded again what I already believed; you want to make your own mistakes, not someone else's. George gets his act together later with a happy ending and we laughed all the way home. But still, along with many other ‘Faux pas’ templates it left me with, ‘Make your own mistakes.’

Recently I bought the DVD, ‘The Departed.’ I understood when it came out that it was a depressing, murder-mayhem view of people at their worst. That’s why I didn’t pay theatre prices to see it. But the DVD was cheap and 7 or 8 of the best actors in Hollywood were in the cast. If it was too bad I could always fast-forward or pause and read the plot conclusion on Wikipedia. So I hit the play button. It was like crawling through a sewer but the acting was all it was cracked up to be. Jack Nicholson’s character, a mobster boss was indoctrinating Leo DiCaprio, an under cover cop, planted in his organization. After a day of bloody brutality, broken victims and flash backs to murders carried out as casually as leaving a tip on the table, the Nicholson character sits DiCaprio down and tells him, his raspy voice dropped down a couple of measures, “Nobody gives it to you you have to take it.” The plot unwinds with more violence, followed by more violence. I did turn it off and read the ending on Wikipedia. My first suspicion proved true; there were no good guys. But the, “ . . . you have to take it” line stuck. The director set that line up with several minutes of compelling violence. He wanted it to resonate. But it didn’t draw me in deeper; I spun off in another direction. 

I thought about that sense of entitlement, free to do as you please, to the victor go the spoils. It took me to where people of good character and best intentions want an environment with few rules and an unchecked opportunity to prevail. Viewed in one light it sounds like the American Dream but move the light and see where the shadow falls. It sounds like ‘The Departed,’ a virtual pecking order; the strong compete and the vulnerable perish. I have Libertarian friends who would disagree and I wish one of them would explain it for me again, so its dark side doesn’t give me heart burn. In another movie the big dog, Gordon Gekko states what had been the unspeakable, “Greed is good.” Feeling confident and justified in that scheme would be wonderful, sort of like Jesus’ second coming. Proponents would say that the ‘Big Dogs’ will keep each other honest. But we been waiting on Jesus for so long now I don’t believe that either. I saw the Nicholson character as simply an unpretentious, highly motivated Libertarian whose business was extortion and murder. I know the rhetoric. The core necessity is either that, personal gain supersedes fairness, or you redefine fairness; whatever you can get away with. Liberty would be about asserting yourself and poverty would be the booby prize. Equity under the law would be unfair to the privileged and the powerful. Somehow equality has become a sullied principle. I can’t get my head around that. Ultimately we have a collective responsibility for each other’s well being or we do not. I think we do; it’s about family and we’re all related. Jack Nicholson’s convincing performance just strengthened that view but he’s not nominated this year.

PLENTY OF TIME

I was talking philosophy-psychology with a friend the other day about the gap between perception and reality. He challenged me to write it up and post it on my blog. So yesterday I tried to remember the scope and sequence of our conversation, squeezing it onto a couple of pages. I thought, ‘What the heck!’ and I posted it. Last night I went back to look at it again and was reminded of an old Roadhouse Blues, Mickey Gilley song; ‘The Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time.’ What looks good in the dark at closing time may be a big disappointment in the morning. Gender wise, I’m sure it’s even more disturbing for lonely, myopic women who submit to that delusion. But it bears repeating; a seemingly good idea can certainly lose its appeal over time, in better light. So I took my blog post down. The idea was good but cumbersome, maybe too many ideas wrapped up in one package. Trying to recreate on the page what streams seamlessly in conversation is harder than it would seem. 

All the while, I’m challenging myself on why I write at all. There is no shortage of good reading material. There are folks who like to read my stuff; they tell me so and I appreciate that. I’ve mentioned, many times, that I write in self defense, a way to process ideas for my own better understanding so that counts. Then there’s my dad. He was not a good communicator; his idea was, the less said the better. He wrote letters when the occasion required but I can’t remember him ever wanting to share his point of view or listen to my story. He was a storyteller. He never thought of himself as a teller but I think it was a way to reflect on other times and people and those little vignettes pleased him. He’s been gone for over 15 years; would have been 105 this spring. In the days before his funeral it occurred to me that he wouldn’t be available to answer questions anymore. He was a rich source of information but the window of opportunity had closed as he left no record. I interviewed both of my parents in 1979 on audio tape for almost an hour. There is a trove of good story there but that was a performance, not a conversation. 

I never wanted to be like him, quite the contrary. Not until my family was grown, I realized how much like him I am, in ways I never imagined and that pleases me now. But he did things that didn’t serve him well, didn’t serve me or my brothers well and I knew at the time I wasn’t going to be like that. He was a great dad and we were happy, just not on the same page. I would like to ask him about growing up with Forrest Cole as a father figure, or was his sister, Ida Cole, the dominant sibling. Who made the decisions after their dad Sam died? I’d want to know more about why he dropped out of high school just a year from graduating. I know he was a year younger than his classmates, small for his age, feeling the need to prove himself every day. That meant fighting anyone who disrespected him, or his family, or his size, or his friends; he had a low flash point and fighting was his first choice in negotiation. I’d want to know more about his job during World War 2; I’d ask lots of things but then, it’s not an option. 

There is a great lie, the great delusion we embrace with optimism and hope; we live day after day with the assumption that there is plenty of time. Buddha speaks to that but when you get past the clever sound bites, we only see the cute, ivory totem on the shelf. The famous hook-line from a not so famous song goes, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” That was from the musical, ’Threepenny Opera’ in 1928. It has survived as a pessimistic counterpoint to anything hopeful. I think life is a dance, from the first notes until when the band folds up the music and goes home. It makes a difference who you’re with and how you move your feet but when the leader says, “This will be the last dance;” you want it to be special. So I write. 

Never very far removed is the fact that when I could have been in conversation with my folks, there was something more important to do. That’s how it works. So when it doesn't occur to my kids to bend my ear or pick my brain it’s not a judgment about me or my story. It’s about ‘Plenty of time.’ As corny as it sounds, I write in lieu of those unasked questions. I imagine a time when it will occur to them that the old man isn’t available. I’ve taken a lesson from my dad, what not to do. I’ll leave a fairly large body of written work and it will be available. Whether or not it ever gets read doesn’t matter. It will be available. That’s it. ‘Plenty Of Time’ is simply code for, “Something else is more important right now,” and that’s alright. If you live long enough, lucky enough, it sinks in; we are, all of us are trapped in the ‘Right-Now.’ We can not redo the last word across our lips or wake up tomorrow until it becomes the new ‘Now.’ So I’ll revisit this later and see how it reads. As far as I can tell, there is still plenty of time.

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COMIC SANS

If this breaks down into a rant, please forgive if not indulge me. I know why I it irritates me and maybe I’m too thin skinned but then, there you are. I started writing with a typewriter in the 60’s. It was faster than scribbling. With a pen or pencil you need to have in mind exactly what it is that you want to say. You can only write so fast. The typewriter allows me to keep up with the muse after all, I write what comes to me in the moment. Turning it on and off is not an option. If I turn it off, it may go away and not come back. Left adrift in the middle of a paragraph, not knowing when or how it was going to end; it's not much fun when you’re trying to be a writer. Anyway, the advent of computers with spell check was a Godsend. I could edit as I wrote; no strike-overs, no white-out fluid, no correction tape. All it took was a few key strokes.

In the early 90’s my eyesight was keen, my little Mac Classic only had a few fonts to choose from and defaulted automatically to New Times Roman. I was on a roll and it didn’t matter which font I used. I was generating study guides, homework assignments and lab projects for middle and high school students. On the side I was laying down the first works, the beginnings of this journal. The font I chose was Comic Sans, I didn’t know why, I just liked it. Come to find out, it was created for comic books. It was, still is childlike and its popularity somehow offends publishers, authors and font designers who take themselves way too seriously. They didn’t want serious, professional work presented in a comic book font; actually, they didn't like anything in the comic book font. In a low profile but never the less serious pushback, Comic Sans was criticized from all directions. A ‘Ban Comic Sans’ campaign was waged against the childlike font that was so easy to read. 

In 1999 I went to get my driver’s license renewed. What a shock; I nearly failed the eye test. I had reading glasses for a long time but this was unexpected. Poor eye sight turned out to be early onset, macular degeneration. There are two kinds of MD; wet and dry. Dry is bad but Wet is really, really bad. So the good news was that it could have been worse. I could count on diminishing acuity of vision at a moderate to slow rate, depending on how I took care of my eyes and of course, heredity. Better glasses helped for a while but when that trick was spent, there was nowhere to turn. That was 15 + years ago. Since then it has occurred to me that my attraction to Comic Sans is, that it really is easier to read. All fonts are stylized and Comic Sans pattern has a childlike, hand written quality where the curves and radius’ of similar letters differ slightly from each other. It is subtle but it's enough.

I’m sure it has something to do with being an educator, being a reader/writer and having low vision; there is nothing simple about reading, nothing at all. We are proud of our brains but unless you have a very good reason to know, you know very little about how the brain works. As preschoolers we learn the alphabet, singing the a,b,c, song. We put letters together to make words, and words together to make sentences. Parts make up the whole. But when you read above a 4th grade level you don’t pay as much attention to letters; you see and recognize a few but you construct meaning from word shapes and sequence. A visual stream of symbols needs to be translated into ideas and then into story. When you see the picture of a bird you don't have to recognize the beak first, then the head, the wings, tail and feet to know it's a bird. We make sense of a seamless flow, of shapes, tall and short letter combinations, rounded or angular, in combination with other short-tall-rounded-angular combinations. Groups of words appear in context; it’s about a news story or a recipe or a technical report or a letter from your lover but you have a clue and can anticipate what might come next. Most of what we read is accomplished with minimal attention to letters, it’s word shape and sequencing. Now it seems; linear thinking, publishing people like the uniformity of letters that can be, if your eyes aren’t perfect, difficult to stream into familiar shapes and combinations. 

The ‘Ban Comic Sans’ push came from Typographers. I didn’t realize it was a career field but there you go. That outcry comes around, goes around and comes back again if you read and write, you hear about it. They are invested in the sanctity of typography. Their spokesmen believe that the childish sensibility of Comic Sans insults everyone over 12 unless they are reading a comic book. Now it’s my turn to push back. Certainly, each different font creates a subtle message that is supposed to complement the main message, sort of like crown molding in the kitchen. But if the bank or the county court sends me a letter with either good news or bad news, the font will not be an issue unless I find it difficult to read. When your money goes away, you can get more money. But when your eyes or your ears go away, when your legs go away, it’s not that easy. They can patch us up but they can’t make anything like new, or even good as it used to be. Being professional doesn’t have to mean narrow and taking for granted what you don't know. Ignorance is simply, what you don’t know. So, for all of the knit-picky typographers, I’ll try to be as thoughtful as they have been; they can take their sanctified sense of import and file it up in a deep, dark place. I use several fonts now; caved in to that narrow bias. I suppose that’s about something picked up in childhood; wanting to please others. The font 'Trebuchet' is more acceptable but ironically, created by the same guy who gave us Comic Sans. I use Comic Sans whenever I feel like it, just because.

THE LAST WORD

I knew Aleta back in the 70’ and 80’s. We were teachers at the same school; she taught 7th & 8th grade English. I had 9th & 10th graders for Biology. She was a large woman, certainly taller, much heavier than me. She had never married, a feminist from day 1, she loved to intimidate men of any age. I coached wrestling; she called it RASS-ling with a thinly veiled question about boys who RASS-le and their sexual orientation. I think we were friends but that was back when I was under the patriarchal scheme and you wouldn’t want a woman to have the last word. It was a problem for me in that she was the smarter, a quick witted, wordsmith and she would compromise you in front of your peers. 

In the Jimmy Carter and early Reagan years, nobody sued teachers. Teachers could get away with what would now be punishable, outrageous behavior. Aleta kept a towel on the floor beside her desk where boys were required to kneel. When they had questions they had to humble themselves at the kneeling towel before they could get an answer or the hall pass to use the restroom. Sometimes, depending on who it was, boys had to kiss her on the cheek and tell her how wonderful she was. She was a really good teacher, she truly cared about each and every kid and everybody knew it but being a boy in her class gave education an extra dimension. My kids were more likely to be singled out simply because of me, RASS-ling and whatever else she took from our relationship. She would inspect my son’s lunch to see what was coming out of our kitchen; sometimes sample a bit of a sandwich or cookie. She told him, next time his mother made those chocolate chip cookies to put in a couple extra for her which he did, and she did. 

Teachers had a table in the cafeteria but we all ate in the teachers lounge, away from the noise. Aleta would banter with me about whatever was in the kid’s lunch and start some oblique, cross examination as to who made my lunch and why. If I had made it she would query, “Why, what did you do to aggravate your wife?” If she fixed it, it would go something like, “You’re a big boy, why can’t you fix your own lunch?” In either case it was just a segue into a higher level battle of wits. I didn’t want to go there with her. The interest in what came out of our kitchen was always a way of putting me on the spot. Like I said, you can’t always let her have the last word so my only chance was to change the rules. 

I kept my lunch in a brown paper bag in the refrigerator, in the lounge. It usually consisted of two sandwiches, wrapped in waxed paper and something sweet like cookies or a tupperware cup of fruit. One day I had a two pound margarine tub in the sack instead of cookies but I didn’t open it. It went back in the fridge. After a couple of days of the unopened tub protocol, Aleta asked about it. “What did your darling wife fix for you that you’re not eating?” I blew her question off but she wouldn’t let it go. “If you’re not going to eat it, will you share? If it’s as good as her cookies we should all get a bite.” I pushed it across the table. She shook it, sniffed it and said something to the effect, “. . . must be pudding or cobbler.” 

I taught biology. In lieu of a nonexistent budget, we took shortcuts and made do. That meant we caught live frogs in the fall so we could do frog dissections later in the year. They froze well; all we had to do was thaw them out. ‘Rana pippins’, leopard frogs which in late summer were plentiful and just the right size. Kids would catch as many as possible, sell their extras to others who had neither the will nor the stomach to wade for them in local ponds; sometimes you come up with a big bullfrog. I had such a frog. Aleta pulled the top off the tub and stared down. When you know something they don’t, a split second can drag out beautifully. I was loving it. In the cool refrigerator the frog was content to take a nap. With a little jostling and time to warm up, it was ready for something else. ‘Rana catesbeiana’, the bullfrog simply hopped out of the tub onto the table beside her lunch tray. It wasn’t a scream but it was loud. She tried to stand up but her chair was too far under the table and she lurched backward, knees and elbows, over the chair and onto the floor. The aftermath was all I could have hoped for. Before she hit the floor, I’m sure, she was already thinking that she had initiated the action. All I did was bring a frog with my lunch and let her do the rest. I collected the frog and released it that evening; I had been taking it home every night, feeding it crickets and bringing it with my lunch the next day. Aleta and I sparred for years, able to take as well as we gave. It wasn’t often that I got the last word but the frog caper may have been the best. 

We moved in 1985; I left one school for another, new friends, different assignment. All I know about Aleta is that she retired in the early 90’s with health problems. Kidney failure, being on dialysis, she didn’t get around much. Another teacher friend of mine went to visit her often. They played cards and listened to music. She passed a few years later and I never got to tell her, honestly, that I had finally grown up, that she was right all along. The patriarchal model was simply a bullshit distraction to insure male privilege, that women must be superior, at least most times. She had been looking forward to having my daughter in her class, that I had saved the best for last. I wish they had done 7th grade together, something the boys have to remember that would have been cool for a daughter as well. I don’t know why I thought of her this morning, swimming laps but I'm glad, it's a good memory.

OLD ENOUGH

For the past 4 or 5 years I have been treated kindly and allowed to sit with a coffee group that has been meeting in the same coffee shop, 6 mornings a week, for the last 30 years. Only a few of the originals are left but you know how nature hates a vacuum. I don't know whose space I have taken but then nobody keeps score. I don’t go every day needless to say; once a week is par for me, twice does not raise any eyebrows. If everyone who fits the profile came on the same day we would spill outside on the sidewalk. But a typical morning would find 9-10 of us pooling sometime after 9, only to slip away a couple of hours later. Sometimes I get drawn into the conversation but more often I listen, sip down a couple of cups of decaf and watch people come and go. It’s way-cool watching young moms and dads wearing their infants in slings that fit on their chests. Then before you know it the kids are in strollers, then toddling along holding a hand. We watch the crumb snatchers grow up at coffee. One young mom has a little girl who started out in a sling about the time I first came to the group. That little girl now opens the door so her mom can push little brother’s stroller through. She is delightful; always smiles and blushes when we greet her. Her mom tells us about her adventures in drive-by sound-bites. I remember a couple of years ago before little brother came along, she came to coffee in her halloween, ballet tutu, dancing on her tippy-toes. Whatever our conversation may be about, it stops when kids come by. 

We are old enough. Maybe that says it all, we are old enough: old enough that we have all lost a dear someone to illness and disease, old enough that nobody takes health for granted. Nobody wants to dwell on mortality or health issues and we don't go there very often. I’m good at finding someplace else to be if the going goes dark. The kids and dogs give everything a lift regardless. Patrons sit at tables on the sidewalk in warm weather. Dogs get tied up outside regardless. Watching them, the great dane and the corgi on different leashes, trying to sniff out the other’s pedigree. I never, ever wanted to be a dog. I don’t care much for cats but of the two, I’d rather be a cat than the dog. Maybe it’s just I don’t like people that much and to be tail-wagging-devoted to a human would be like torture. I fit the stoic cat profile with litter box and purr if, only if I feel like it. We don’t see cats on a leash at coffee and I don’t have any idea what that would mean if one did show up. Still it’s interesting, watching the dogs and their people.

This is the first time in my life, since the military, that I’ve palled around with people my own age. I was a decade ahead of my peers in college. After that, teaching, I identified with students more than faculty or parents. Retired, I tend to connect with the generation behind me. My kids and their friends in their 40’s are just right. What’s good about my coffee group is they haven’t gone narrow, afraid of change. We’re liberal to moderate, unbelievers for the most part; nothing to argue about. Seems everybody I grew up with leans to the right now; my coffee group must be the exception. But that’s not what makes them so palatable. Whatever else may be going down, I never hear anybody rant or judge based on how things used to be. They are open to change and if i’s uncomfortable, then we are the part that has to change. In the movie, ‘Shawshank Redemption’ Tim Robbins tells Morgan Freeman, both in prison for murder, “It comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” I have fallen in with old hippies and come-lately egalitarians who are more about what’s coming up on the horizon than what's disappearing in the rear view mirror. We know if we live long enough it will get ugly. But we have today, with a little luck, tomorrow; and we know what to do with lemons. 

TELL ME TRUE

       Imagine, if you will, a typical family with children, a dog and a cat. Dad comes home from work to discover the cat in the garage, spray painted Columbia Blue. There is overspray on the work bench and on the floor, the spray can with smeared finger prints is nearby. His wife hasn’t seen the cat yet. Dad calls his son to the garage. The 5yr-old has Columbia Blue paint on his fingers and overspray on his shoes. “Son, it’s important that you tell me the truth. Did you paint the cat?” Before the boy can answer, the man reiterates; “If you tell the truth you won’t be punished. Do you understand how important it is that you tell the truth?” The boy nods. Then Dad repeats; “Did you paint the cat?” Son rolls his eyes, pause and then, “No.” The expression on his face is placid and pure. Another pause; Dad says, “Are you sure?” Boy rolls his eyes again and says, “Yes.” 

       Dad calls 3yr-old Daughter and asked her if she knows anything about the painted cat. She rolls her eyes, looks at her brother and shakes her head; No. Dad is perplexed. “Kids, the truth is more important than the cat. If you tell the truth, you will not be punished. Do you understand?” The kids look at Dad, look at each other, smile and nod in the affirmative. “Then,” said the Dad, “did either one of you paint the cat?” Daughter nods, No. Son smiles and says, “No.”  Dad is beside himself. He times his daughter out, to her room, no toys, computer or television. He knows that she knows something. Then he spanks his son, tells him that his lie was more hurtful to Dad than the spanking was to Son. Timed out just like daughter, the freshly spanked Son goes off to his room, knowing perfectly well that, “. . . this hurts me more than it hurts you.” is a lie. 

       Mom cleans up the cat after all, it’s her cat. Dad has the dog. He likes the dog, it is obedient, affectionate and comes when called. He doesn’t care for the cat. Dad thinks about the cat situation and feels good that he did right. Dad is the moral pillar-post in the family and he can’t tolerate lies from his children. He is God’s agent, to teach what is right, to punish wrong and reward obedience. That’s how they learn. It’s really important that children honor their parents with obedience. Absolutely sinful, thinking he could lie to Dad and get away with it. This is how it is. I’m not making it up. I lived this model for a decade, at least. I’m a slow learner. 

       I know people, men mostly, who thrive in that ‘Male Privilege’ as if it were a divine commission. Women can take on that manly disposition (in this case neither complimentary nor flattering) with it’s authority and punishment but they don’t wear it well. It’s not about the whip you use to motivate the mule, rather the hoe you use to cultivate the soil. They would quickly point out my error and set me back on the righteous path but their learning curve is even flatter than mine. Been there; not going back. If you need rules; if you absolutely need rules than you should have them but they should be of the thumb, not an arbitrary list of commandments. What can we say with confidence about telling the truth; that we tell the truth when it suits us. Everybody lies. It’s hard wired into our neural network. The question is, to what extent and at what expense? Little white ones are necessary and the gray ones that make everyone feel good would be sorely missed. We discover along the way, what you gain and lose by lies, when they stop being cute and hurt someone. The Dad wasn’t in the pursuit of truth, he was about authority and subordination. What if he had asked, “Don’t you think you should help me clean up the cat?” Where might that approach have gone? If Son said, “No” the Dad could have required help, “I need your help.” The message would be the same; painting the cat is not a good idea but cleaning up your mess is. The lie would have been inert, netted nothing. Punishment only strengthens the resolution; don’t get caught. Consequence only strengthens the lesson, fix what you screw up.

       I have clearly drawn a line in the sand between myself and my patriarchal, authoritarian cohorts. In my experience, discovery is by far the preferred vehicle for moving up the learning curve. Being open to discovery while subordinated to authority is a truly steep hill to climb. When life spans were short and few individuals survived long enough to bear viable offspring, we benefitted from a patriarchal, authoritarian package. But times have changed even though we resist that change. Still, if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you keep getting what you’ve got and the human animal needs to occasionally upgrade its operating system. The one, fundamental, basic rule at the core of all religion and greater good is that we treat others the same way we want to be treated. So tell me true, when was the last time you painted the cat, or lied to your Dad because you knew it would hurt you a lot more than him?

NAH-NAH, NAH, NAH

This is the first time I’ve typed in, 2016; wondering how many times I’ll have to erase or mark out the old, 2015 on checks and receipts before I get acclimated. Saturday morning, most of the festivities have been wrung out but my friends are diehards and we’ll get together to hoot and holler a few more times before the reality of winter takes over. We don’t really hoot or holler, just dwell on the 60’s & 70’s when hooting came easy. Happy New Year. It’s the time of month when I have only a few days left on the billing cycle for my internet data service. I usually have plenty of data available so I go to YouTube and catch up on interesting videos or listen to my favorite music. Maybe the best YouTube site is the Kennedy Center Awards. It’s where outstanding, performing artists are honored for what they have done so well, over a lifetime. They do it in early December, but they don’t televise it then. It will be several weeks later before you can catch it on PBS and again the next fund raising drive.

Paul McCartney was among the honored in 2010. There is a featured host for each honoree who greets, shares and introduces a cast of performers who showcase that body of work. At the end, everybody who sang or danced or whatever, they all come out together and perform a long set in concert with each other. The finale, the grand ending for McCartney’s portion of the program began with James Taylor playing and singing, Let It Be. He didn’t wait for applause at the end, quickly announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mavis Staples.” He turned to his right and the camera panned to Mavis, who was approaching from the wings. It was a surprise; she wasn’t on the program. Mavis sang the same song with JT accompanying and it was all new again. JT’s voice is so laid back, I don’t have to describe James Taylor. If you’re not up to speed on his sound then you must have been in a coma the past 45 years. Mavis, on the other hand is straight out of the Gospel tradition, with a voice so big it fills the available space. Her version went from soft and subtle to the other extreme. Before she could wrap it up, Steven Tyler slips in, over her shoulder and they duet for a verse or two. The camera zooms back and you see other performers coming on stage, singing and playing. In the transition you miss the fact that the music has segued into another Beatles-McCartney classic, Hey Jude. Everybody sings; all the people on stage, the audience, everybody at home watching. It goes on for several minutes, over and over; people swaying, smiling, laughing, crying. 

What a treat for me. I watch it several times; a terrific way to slip into the new year. I’ve been away from the guitar and trying to sing through the fall. But in the last week I have picked them up again. I know just enough that I appreciate when the nearly impossible is made to look easy. I can squeeze out a chord progression on the guitar but any sense of rhythm is wishful thinking. My voice is just that and nothing more. My musical consultant, a talented, accomplished guitar/singer guy keeps telling me you don’t need a good voice to sing; all you need is courage. So I be brave and put it out there. Two songs that I’m liking right now are on my music stand. I was surprised to hear myself sounding not too bad. Something about the way melody resonates in the chest and throat, up between the ears. “I see trees of green, red roses too; I watch them bloom, for me and for you.” That’s how I heard myself the other day, the sound rising up out of me; “I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do; what they’re really saying, is I Love You.” There are two subtle little shifts in there that I love playing, then try to follow with the vocal, from D to D7 and then back and forth between Fm and Bm. It's cool. 

I love the Kennedy Center awards shows because you see the best of the best, paying tribute to the people who inspired them along the way. I understand how incredibly difficult it is to master the skill set and how dedicated they must be to sustain that kind of perfection. I know perfectly well that all I do is make noise, but I love doing it. When I was 12 or 13 we had a sand pile behind the garage. I made believe I was America’s long jump champion, competing in the Olympics. I put USA on the front of my T-shirt, did the sports commentary like the newsreel announcer then made my jump. I had two takeoff boards; one I jumped from and one I measured from. Calibrating the takeoff points was crucial. I had to put the jump mark close enough so I would land in the sand and the measure mark far enough that the tape measure stretches out to the 23-24 ft range; Olympic record at the time. I loved doing it. Make believe gets us through the boredom and the anxiety of growing up. I’m not making believe with my music, it’s as real as can be, whatever else it may be. I do it for me. Still the guitar and the singing do help get me through boredom and anxiety that come of growing old.