Coltin1948

Word Game

2011-10-10T11:38:00.000-04:00

Sir, I am sorry for laughing. I know that this is no laughing matter. It’s just that, well, are you aware that you are the absolute master of understatement? No, I am not exaggerating. You are for sure the best that we have ever seen.

The people have taken to the streets. There are signs that their numbers will continue to swell. Have you really asked yourself why in the world they would leave their homes and sleep on concrete? To be sure, some are enjoying the theater of it all. That goes without saying. And of course there is that old arm-in-arm camaraderie, shared by those marching for a cause. But at the heart of it all, there is something much more serious and worrisome and real.

How does the saying go, misery loves company? Well, if they are just the tip of the old iceberg (which many of us suspect is the case), then there are quite a few miserable folks out there in the kingdom, wouldn’t you say?

Misery is an awfully good word. You should think seriously about using it. True, some of your enemies might accuse you of hyperbole. You are afraid of that, aren’t you? Were you to utter that word, some of your enemies might stick you with it. Remember when that happened with malaise? That was a bit before your time, but you are a student of history.

Some would blame you for causing the misery, and others for at least failing to cure it. That’s what enemies do. And your enemies will do that in spades. Your enemies want you gone. Your enemies want you humbled, discredited, even humiliated. Your enemies are eager to gloat.

And, that is where the no-small-matter of courage comes into play.

Sir, it was most disingenuous of you to characterize these people, in the streets – your people – as being frustrated. Frustrated?

I am frustrated when a pull-top breaks off and I can’t open the cat food can. I am frustrated when I can’t keep the squirrels off of my bird feeder. I am frustrated when I can’t get a signal on my cell phone. I am frustrated…well, you get the picture.

Frustration? Sir, you can and must do better than that. Frustration is so 2009!

Let’s stop and count the homes that have been lost, the careers that have evaporated, and the futures that have been derailed. Let’s, for a moment, consider the mountains upon mountains of misery. Would it be so terribly out of character for you to use real words? Words like anger, or even rage. Words like despair and fear, or phrases like scared to death?

Because, that’s the stuff that is filling the streets. You know that, don’t you?

You know damn well that the game they were playing – the game that always was more or less honest – somehow became rigged. It was stolen by people high up in those buildings, standing in the windows, and laughing like hell at all of us, including you.

Back when the game was more or less honest, and the rules were more or less fair, there were lots of winners. Hard work and sacrifices usually paid off. Combinations of risk and creativity and resourcefulness just might hit the jackpot.

You don’t owe anyone a home, or a job, or a business, or a jackpot, but you do owe them a seat at a table with a clean deck of cards. No, we are not naïve. We know that you cannot just wave your hand and make that happen. But you can shake a fist in front of the faces – those well tanned, over-fed, contemptuous faces -- of those in the bonus-no-matter-what club who mock us and mock you.

And you can call them by their name – their real name. You can call them thieves. You can say loudly and clearly that the ring of con men who so cleverly sold us blue smoke blown into so many tiny, unnoticeable, tightly sealed boxes were quite simply gangsters without guns.

Why not say it? Who or what is holding you back?

Is it the loyal opposition? The other side, who so underestimated you (God, we hope they did) that they marshaled their forces in the most insulting manner. They sent in the clowns. They sent in imbeciles who do not read and did not bother to learn history. They sent in a slick salesman who knows how to sell what the market demands, and who will quickly and smoothly switch his product-offering the very moment the market demands something else.

Where do you think that leaves us?

Sir, it leaves us with you, and your words which, I was about to say, are disappointing.

But disappointment is so 2010.

The Man Who Knew Godzilla

2011-04-02T12:14:00.000-04:00

He was away on a business trip, and after three long months, he was happy to be finally going home. To be with his wife and his six month old baby. To sleep in his own bed. To eat home cooking. To be back in his office.

He, and two of his co-workers, set out for the train station, but then he remembered that he had left something behind, so he turned and headed back to the shipyard, where he had been working as a draftsman, designing oil tankers.

It was 8:15 a.m. on a clear August morning, and he later would remember being in good spirits when he heard the sound of a plane. He looked up, saw a blinding flash in the sky, followed by a deafening boom, and then he was blown over and knocked unconscious. When Tsutomu Yamaguchi woke up, 70,000 people were dead, another 70,000 lay dying, and 60,000 buildings had been turned into rubble.

The sky was black, “except,” said Yamaguchi, “for a huge mushroom-shaped pillar of fire rising high in the sky. It was like a tornado, although it did not move, but it rose and spread out horizontally at the top. There was a prismatic light, which was changing in a complicated rhythm, like the patterns of a kaleidoscope.”

Because the sky had been clear, providing perfect visibility, a specially modified B-29, affectionately named the Enola Gay, after the pilot’s mother, was able to drop a single bomb, ironically nicknamed Little Boy, on the city of Hiroshima. The bomb, which contained the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT, took 43 seconds to fall to the point of detonation.

The mushroom cloud was estimated to have reached a height of 40,000 feet. Two other bombers, carrying cameras and measuring devices recorded the damage and gathered data. While Allied planes had systematically bombed 67 Japanese cities, Hiroshima had been intentionally left untouched, making it not just a strategic target, but a perfect laboratory for this hellish experiment.

Yamaguchi picked himself up off the ground and made his way through a devastation he could not comprehend to a bomb shelter where he spent the night. He had lost some of his hearing and he had some bad burns on one side of his body, but he was remarkably intact. The next day, he made his way back to the shipyard, found his two co-workers, and the three men boarded a train for home.

After the war, Yamaguchi worked as a translator for U.S. occupation forces. He never believed that Japan should have attacked Pearl Harbor. He never expressed anti-American sentiments. Perhaps he believed, as many did, that in bringing an immediate end to the war, the atomic bomb had actually saved more lives than it stole.

Later he went back to work for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, trying to pick up where his life had left off. He lived quietly and anonymously for decades, until his son died of stomach cancer at the age of 59, most likely caused by radiation exposure. Then, Yamaguchi became an outspoken critic of nuclear weapons.

Remarkably, Tsutomu Yamaguchi died at the ripe old age of 93.

Remarkable indeed, because, that day when Tsutomu Yamaguchi took the train out of Hiroshima, he was headed home to the city of Nagasaki.

On August 9th, three days after the attack on Hiroshima, a heavily bandaged Yamaguchi reported to work. The news of Hiroshima had not arrived ahead of him. The bomb had taken out virtually all communications networks, so at least temporarily, what had happened to Hiroshima had stayed in Hiroshima.

He told his boss what had happened and his boss did not believe him. A single bomb could not possibly have destroyed a city the size of Hiroshima. He looked at the injured Yamaguchi and accused him of speaking nonsense.

Yamaguchi was stubbornly sticking to his story, when in the sky above them, at 11:03 a.m., the B-29, named Bockscar dropped the bomb, nicknamed Fat Man. Once again, the blinding flash, the deafening boom, and Yamaguchi was knocked to the ground. The explosion generated heat of 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit and winds of 624 miles per hour.

By the time he came to his senses and got to his feet, the black sky, the prismatic mushroom cloud, and the rest of his atomic nightmare had found him again. He rushed home and found his wife and child miraculously unhurt.

In 1954, Japanese film director Ishiro Honda created a monster, named Godzilla. He had the head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, crocodile-like skin, and stood erect. He was taller than most skyscrapers and he breathed fire -- atomic fire. He could live under water, as easily as on land, and when he decided to climb out of the ocean and stomp on Tokyo, there was no escaping him. His enormous feet crushed people like they were ants and cars and buildings like they were toys. Those who managed to get out of range would be incinerated by his flames.

Godzilla was born from the radiation spread by Little Boy and Fat Man, and the monster became their metaphor. To most Japanese, the death and destruction caused by two bombs was incomprehensible. They badly needed a monster they could actually see.

About 165 people are known to have survived both bombs. They needed no metaphor. At age 89, the death of his 59-year old son prompted Yamaguchi to finally tell his story. Why was he spared, when so many others were not? “Having been granted a miracle,” he said, “it is my responsibility to pass on the truth to the people of the world.” So, he lobbied the Japanese government for official recognition of being a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He had to battle the bureaucracy to get it, but he eventually prevailed. Being the only officially recognized double survivor gave him a platform from which to make his plea for nuclear disarmament.

On March 11, 2011, the newest Godzilla climbed out the ocean and began stomping on Japan. It is gone now, but its devastation and its atomic breath remain.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi died on January 4, 2010.

I am glad he missed it. I think he had seen quite enough.

.....................................................................

The Toxic Marshmallow

2011-01-28T11:37:00.000-05:00

Imagine that you are 4-years old, and that your parents have volunteered you for a research study that will cause you to experience a most excruciating kind of pain. A researcher leads you into a room and sits you at a table. A marshmallow is placed in front of you. The researcher explains that you will be left alone with the marshmallow, and if you decide you want to eat it, you need only to ring the bell. If you do, the researcher will return. You will eat the marshmallow and your trial will be over. However, if you choose not to ring the bell, and to hold off on eating the marshmallow, the researcher will return and give you a second marshmallow.

There you sit, with the sticky sweet marshmallow on the table, under your nose. You can see it, smell it, and practically taste it. Of course you want two of them. You are 4-years old. You need two of them. The question is how will you survive 15 minutes of child-torture to claim the jackpot?

I watch you through the one-way window. I see you sizing up the marshmallow. I see you fidgeting in your chair. You are desperately trying to wait. I want you to wait. I am rooting for you.

I would like to tell you about the little boy before you. He didn’t just look at the marshmallow; he focused on it. Was he stoically testing his will power? Did he think that his desire would wane?

A little girl, before him, seemed to know the power of the marshmallow. From the very beginning, she knew that she was no match for its power. She got out of her chair and crawled under the table. Then she sang songs from Sesame Street.

15 minutes passed quickly for her. The researcher returned to the room and awarded her the second marshmallow. Not so for the little boy. The seconds crawled by, and after 30 of them, he rang the bell.

I have given you the clues to solve the problem. Now you will need a strategy. If you choose a strategy that keeps the marshmallow on your mind, you will most likely fail. If you choose a strategy that distracts you from thinking about the marshmallow, you will probably succeed.

But, what does it matter? One marshmallow or two. What is the big deal?

Psychology professor, Walter Mischel first conducted his famous marshmallow experiments on 4-year olds in the 1960s. When he later followed up on his subjects, as teenagers, he found that the high-delayers -- those who could wait 15 minutes -- had S.A.T. scores that were, on average, more than 200 points higher than those who could wait only 30 seconds.

By knowing how to delay gratification, the high-delayers studied harder, and avoided getting into trouble. They got into better schools and they went on to get better jobs. They also had better personal relationships.

The low-delayers -- the kids who were not able to delay gratification for 15 minutes -- were more likely to grow up making life-damaging choices like dropping out of school, abusing drugs or alcohol, and even committing crimes.

Imagine that you are a teenager sitting at home, after school, staring at a boring textbook and struggling to get through the chapters that need to be read and digested by the next school day, and the phone rings. Your friends are getting together right now. You hear the fun and laughter in their voices. You want to be with them. You can be with them. It’s as easy as ringing a bell.

The good news is that Mischel and his researchers found that they could teach kids how to ignore the marshmallow. One way is to pretend that the marshmallow isn’t real, but is actually just a picture of a marshmallow. You look at it and imagine a picture frame around it. You can make the marshmallow lose its power over you. There are plenty of effective strategies, but for most kids, such strategies have to be learned, developed, and practiced.

The bad news is that only about 30 percent of Mischel’s marshmallow kids found a way to last the 15 minutes.

I had never heard of Walter Mischel or his classic marshmallow experiments until I read an article in 2006 by New York Times columnist, David Brooks, titled: Marshmallows and Public Policy.

In it, he suggests that policy makers miss the mark when they try to improve education exclusively “with structural remedies,” such as reducing class sizes, creating more charter schools, and increasing teacher pay, instead of asking the core questions, “such as how do we get people to master the sort of self-control that leads to success?”

Wanting to know more on this subject, I found an article written by Jonah Lehrer, in 2009, in The New Yorker, titled, Don’t! Lehrer tells us a lot more about Walter Mischel and the original marshmallow experiments, and takes a closer look at more recent versions of those experiments, conducted by Mischel and by other researchers.

Lehrer also takes a look at one highly successful program -- the KIPP network of charter schools -- that delivers the “structural remedies,” such as excellent teachers, enlightened administrators, and long, rigorous school days, while also addressing the “core questions” by teaching the benefits of self-control. KIPP has grown to 99 schools across the U.S., all located in inner city neighborhoods, where kids who are left on their own, are more likely to become gang members or be killed by stray bullets than to go to college.

So, when I asked you to imagine that you were 4-years old, and to put yourself in the room with the marshmallow and the bell, how did you do? I will confess to you right now that I do not know if I would have lasted the 15 minutes.

But I do know this: we are all marshmallow-tested throughout our lives. Why should we wait, when we can have it now? Why save up for a new car, when we (as a television commercial tells us) can drive it out of the showroom for just our signature?

We can certainly own that new car, or new boat, or even a new home, without actually being able to afford it. It’s easy. We just borrow the money. Actually, as far as the home is concerned, we can’t borrow that money nearly as easily as we might have just a few short years ago, you know, before the economy fell off the cliff.

But, back in the good old low-interest-rate days of 2002 to 2005, all we needed to unlock the magic gate to the Good Life was to be a homeowner. By owning our own home, we had a lot more than just a roof over our head; we had that special something called equity. That nest egg, that pot of gold, had increased in value like clockwork, year-in and year-out. And betting that it would continue to increase like clockwork was the safest bet we could ever make.

Really, how can you lose owning real estate? After all, everyone needs a place to live. The population is growing, not shrinking, so demand always exceeds supply. It’s practically a law of nature.

But there is a huge problem with sitting on that kind of pot of gold. You can’t see it, or touch it, or hear it, or smell it, and most importantly, you can‘t spend it. So it’s entirely possible, in these good old days of 2004 and 2005 to feel that you are slogging through life, stuck in the mud of being house rich and cash poor.

So for god’s sake, listen to your friends and neighbors, and bankers. Actually, you can’t help hearing them. Their voices are loud and constant. Stop being a chump! Life is short. Opening the gate to the Good Life has never been easier.

You deserve that Caribbean cruise that has for years been at the top of your wish list. Smell that salt air! Taste that champagne! You will return refreshed and restored.

Your kitchen is an absolute embarrassment. How many years have you been talking about the new granite countertops, which will not only be breathtakingly beautiful, but will increase the resale value of your home?

You dream of that winter condo on a golf course in Arizona. Practically speaking, you can’t afford not to buy it. It’s an investment. While you’re walking the fairways, the equity will be piling up.

Go ahead and take the money. It belongs to you. Stop fidgeting in your chair. You had better sign the paper, before the rate goes up. If you snooze, you lose.

Why are you hesitating? Do you think that tomorrow the sun won’t come up? Do you think that by 2007, the housing bubble will burst, buyers will disappear, prices will plummet, and one-third of your pot of gold will vanish, as though it never existed?

And then what? Your adjustable rate mortgage will reset to a higher interest rate, and you won’t be able to make the payments on both the condo and your home, so you put the condo up for sale, but now there aren’t any buyers, so you have to let the bank take the condo?

And are you worried that by 2008, a Great Recession, caused by colossal greed, recklessness, and stupidity will come along and cost you your job, and you will no longer be able to make the payments on your home, which by now, is worth less than you owe on it, so, in desperation, you and your family move-in with your parents, who have just downsized into a smaller home, where they were about to begin enjoying the retirement for which they had so carefully and patiently planned?

Is this what’s worrying you? Do you honestly think you could lose everything?

So, do you not grab your easy terms, pre-approved ticket to the Good Life?

How do you resist? How do you distract yourself from thinking about the rich granite, the balmy salt air, and the tantalizing view of the 18th green?

It is now 2006, and the housing market has slowed down -- way down. Home buyers are disappearing, prices have stopped rising, and in some areas, they‘ve actually begun falling. But that sticky-sweet loan application is still on the table. There is still time to pull the trigger, to grab the money, to ring the bell.

If you had been one of those, sitting at that table, I hope you did not do it. I hope that you did not borrow in order to buy what you could not afford. I hope you waited.

And I wish others had too.

At the KIPP school in Philadelphia, students were given tee-shirts, bearing a slogan: Don’t Eat The Marshmallow. KIPP kids became walking billboards, imprinting the minds of each other with a message that could possibly save their lives.

Even now, in 2011, it is too soon to know exactly how many lives were lost in the greatest economic unraveling since the Great Depression, and we will never know how many of those lives could have been spared, if only they had gotten the right message.

Just Enough Death on the Serengeti

2010-11-14T07:45:00.015-05:00

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”

-- Arthur Schopenhauer

We decided it was time to expand our fields of vision, Elodia and I. So we went to Africa. To Tanzania. To witness a few moments of the Great Migration and to stand on the same ground where the human race was born.

Each year nearly two million wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle migrate through Kenya and Tanzania in a clockwise roundtrip that covers close to two thousand miles. Along the way, hundreds of thousands die from exhaustion and disease, and more are lost to predators: lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, and crocodiles.

As we view the Serengeti from the back of the Land Rover, I am struck by the number of skulls that sit on the ground. They are all gleaming white, picked clean by jackals, vultures, and then insects. We see no rotting carcasses. Nothing on the Serengeti is wasted.

It is hot, dry, and dusty, and the roads are an endless series of bumps and ruts. Our guide, Harrison, is driving one of Thomson Safari’s customized Land Rovers, which allows us to stand up and view the scenery and the wildlife, through the open roof.

I like to stand up while we are moving. Maybe I will be the first to spot a cheetah. But I have to tightly grip a crossbar or part of the open hatch to avoid being thrown into a fellow passenger, and after while, it’s like holding on to a runaway jackhammer, and I have to sit back down.

Elodia and I are seated in the back and three others on our safari are seated in front of us, looking through binoculars and taking picture after picture. Harrison is on his radio, speaking Swahili to Robert and Kumbi, our two other guides, who are driving the other nine members of our group. The three guides are constantly trading information on clues and sightings that may lead us to a big cat or to a herd of elephants.

We approach a river. It is the Banagi River, and we will cross it where it is narrow and where there is a bridge. Harrison pulls up onto the bridge, which is little more than a platform, and is just slightly wider and longer than the Land Rover, then stops and turns off the ignition.

We are parked just above the river. The sight and sound of the water rushing over and around the rocks is both calming and cooling. We feel enveloped by it. We welcome this break from the heat, the dust, the occasional diesel fumes blown in from our exhaust pipe, and the constant bouncing.

I have come to use the phrase Harrison’s hunches, and I will tell you why.

One morning, while driving the Serengeti, he spots a vehicle from another safari company, parked next to a massive formation of rocks, called a kopje (pronounced: ko-pee).

He pulls up next to them and kills the engine. The guide and passengers, in the other vehicle, have their binoculars and cameras trained on a crevice between the large rocks. And in that crevice, shielded from the sun by a curtain of small trees and bushes, is the grand prize -- a large male leopard.

Harrison radios Robert and Kumbi, who quickly arrive in their Land Rovers. The leopard is fast asleep, with his head curled into his body. We watch and hope that he will get up so that we can see him move. But, when he does, he moves back into the rocks, and completely out of our sight.

Each of the vehicles start up and race to the other side of the rocks, hoping that he has moved in that direction. We wait, with binoculars and cameras, but he has settled on a spot where we cannot see him. We wait and watch, and then reluctantly, we move on.

We see a lot that day. There are giraffes so close to the road that if they choose to bend their long necks in our direction, we would almost be able to touch their heads. We see enormous herds of wildebeest, mixed with zebra, impala, and gazelle - especially the variety known as Thomson’s gazelle.

Tommies, as they are called, are small, elegant, and wear a distinctive black stripe that runs from shoulder to flank, and serves as more than just decoration. They rely on visual awareness of each other, and the stripes help them do that. They also have highly keen senses of hearing and smell that helps protect them from predators.

After a full day, we begin heading back to camp. Harrison is driving fast on our Serengeti road, when suddenly he veers off and heads toward a large kopje. It turns out to be the same kopje where that morning we watched the leopard.

He drives up and in between rocks, until the spaces become too narrow for the Land Rover to fit through, then he backs down, and turns into another passage until that one also becomes too narrow. The Land Rover pitches upward, downward, and from side to side. He is in hot pursuit of this morning’s leopard. He is a man possessed.

Suddenly, high up in the rocks, there he is. I rarely use the word magnificent. It is one of those wonderful words that has become sadly cheapened from overuse. But this leopard is just plain magnificent, and he seems to know it.

These rocks are home to other animals, including Agama lizards (dominant males can turn their bodies blue and their heads red or yellow, just to show off), rock hyraxes, which look like cute guinea pigs, and klipspringers, which are tiny antelopes that stand watching us from the very top of the rocks. But these rocks are ruled by a single prince, and we have met him.

That this leopard would still be there, hours after we first discovered him was one of Harrison’s best hunches.

But today, at this moment, we are parked on that little bridge, just above the rushing water of the Banagi River, enjoying the sight, and the sound, and the serenity.

On our right, a herd of Thomson gazelles suddenly arrives. They begin gathering at the river’s edge. We have passed so many dry watering holes and river beds. The gazelles must be here to drink. Watching them will be the crowning touch, before we continue on our way.

But, no. They have not come to drink. They have come to cross the river, here, where it’s narrowness and shallowness make it too good an opportunity to pass up. They begin crossing in single file.

Then Harrison, looking through binoculars, says in a soft, matter-of-fact voice, “a crocodile.” One of us asks, “where?” Then, I see it. Close to the river’s edge, moving toward us, and toward the line of gazelles.

Harrison, again in that soft, matter-of-fact voice, says, “He may get a gazelle.” He makes it seem only possible, not probable, not certain. And then, we see how fast and how torpedo-like the croc is honing in.

In seconds the hind leg of a gazelle is clamped between his huge jaws and thrust up and at us so that we cannot miss seeing the helplessness in the gazelle’s eyes, before it is taken under to be drowned and eaten.

No one in our group gets the picture. All of us are frozen in our moment of absolute awe.

We fix our eyes on the water, looking for one last glimpse of the two principal characters. But that spectacle is over. There are four more gazelles that were next in line, in the process of crossing. They are now panicked. They break formation. They are stomping their feet. And they are making desperate attempts to finish crossing the river, trying to choose a path. After a minute or two, they give up and dart back to where they had entered.

They will not be joining their herd. At least, not right now.

We sit rather quietly. The scene has returned to its original state. The sound of the rushing water has been turned back on. Harrison starts the engine and we leave the river exactly as it was, with the knowledge that we will not be exactly as we were.

We have seen enough for one day, but the day has something else in store for us. As we pass by some zebras walking through the high yellow grass, Harrison stops the Land Rover. They are three adults and one foal. We wonder why he has stopped. We have seen plenty of zebra and they were a lot closer to us than these four.

While peering through his binoculars, Harrison utters the word, “lion.” We look, but we see no lion. We tell him so. “Yes,” he says. “He is lying in the grass.“ We continue to scan the high grass. “Where?” we ask. “Straight ahead.” he says. “You can see the tips of his ears.”

And yes. There is the slightest bit of movement, as the lion’s head begins to rise out of the grass, with his eyes trained on the zebras, which are now walking in single file, with the foal at the end. The lion is between us and them. We watch as the line comes to a halt.

Do they sense the lion?

We think they might turn around and go back. But they do not.

The lead zebra continues, while the others wait. We watch him get closer and closer until he crosses the lion’s path. The lion does not strike. Then come the other three, in close formation. We think the lion will wait until they are closer and then strike the foal. We watch this drama play out, one heart beat at a time, until they all are safely out of range.

Then, we see our lion’s head drop back down into the tall grass. He has chosen to sleep rather than hunt.

We head back to camp, with a lot to process, to replay in our heads, and to describe to the others.

But I am sure of one thing -- that this day, in its Serengeti way, held a kind of perfection that we do not see in our normal field of vision.

Like A Burglar

2010-10-10T14:45:00.005-04:00

Hi.

Yes, I know. It has been a while.

What can I say? Life sometimes gets in the way. You know how it is.

I am not going to bother telling you that I have been busy. We are all busy with something, and no, I have not lost my desire to write. Nor am I tired of this blogging thing. Not at all.

What I want to tell you is that my absence has given me some perspective. I have thought about what writing is and what blogging is. I suspect you’ve done this yourself. You’ve examined the thinking behind your prose, your poetry, your reporting on the events that shed light on your existence.

Here is something I have learned. Actually, I learned this early in my relatively brief blogging career, but I have recently confirmed it as personal gospel. I have learned that it was foolish to think that I could pick my audience.

I started out with the notion that because I was born and grew up during a certain eventful and often tumultuous time, and witnessed society-changing events as part of an enormous generation, that this generation of mine was obviously my audience-in-waiting.

My first post, in April 2009, carried this rather long title:

Wondering How It Happened That Your Future is Suddenly Going Up In Smoke? In The Words of The Poet, The Answer is Blowin’ in The Wind.

Greed run amok had robbed individuals, families, businesses and entire nations of their financial well being. That robbery was a crime story without an ending, which continues to this day to steal jobs, homes, businesses, and futures. Had all our youthful 60s idealism slowly evaporated, to the point where we lost our capacity for moral outrage? Where were we? I asked. Where were we who once preached or followed a different sort of gospel?

I intended to use this blog to speak to that once famous idealism, using the language we collectively invented, and of course they would hear me. But, as I said, I now know that one does not get to pick one’s audience.

You think I should have known that, and you are right. And I hope you do not think that I am simply rationalizing when I tell you that I am happy with my miscalculation. I am thrilled with the motley nature of those who bother to read what I write.

I discovered that, through no conscious effort of my own, I had acquired my own unique little community, and that almost every member of it has his or her own unique community. So, what I have is an audience of writers, which is exactly what I should have wished for in the first place.

I thought back on the first of those other communities that I decided to join. His writing was a little dark. But he was on a brave journey, and he invited others to join him on it. I was intrigued enough to walk along with him. His always honest writing grew darker -- too dark, I think, for some of his tour group, who jumped on the next tram to more colorful amusements. I chose to continue walking along with him. Fresh faces are now joining the tour.

But enough about him.

Some of us have become friends. Believe me, I don’t use that word loosely. You know someone differently when you know them through their writing. You know how they think and feel in a way that even family and friends, who do not read them, might not.

You know how that is.

Some of my friends have had a difficult year. One lost her father, another lost her mother. When they told us (members of their communities), they were looking for neither attention, nor sympathy. They were writing it to us, through their pain, because they had to.

Others whom I often visit, over coffee or a glass of wine, have suffered through illnesses, marriage break-ups, and job loss. In some cases, it stopped them from writing. I left them comments, urging them to continue putting pen to paper, because they are writers, and that’s what they should do, no matter how difficult. I was trying, in my own way, to be a friend.

There was one who I wasn’t going to like, but he revealed himself in a life-defining story about a near death experience -- a story that is now lodged in my brain forever. He seems to have left his blog for other platforms. I never thought I would miss him, but I do.

Well, enough about them.

I began to hear that I was a storyteller. I did not immediately welcome this designation. Maybe I did not want to be so pigeonholed. Maybe I did not want to be defined by others.

But I came to accept the label. I decided it wasn’t so bad to be a storyteller, and I decided that I would make the best out of being a storyteller, at least until my writing took me somewhere else.

I learned that I had a problem in telling stories. A simple, straight ahead telling of the story did not scratch my writer’s itch. Each time I would begin stringing together the information about Jack Johnson, La Mama’s Ellen Stewart, Aaron Feuerstein of Malden Mills, Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, my friend, Gus, or bullying victim, Phoebe Prince, I would find the story stuck in the mud, unable to push it forward.

The story would remain stuck, because I hadn’t found the key. I hadn’t found my way into the story.

For me, getting into the thought process became like entering a house. Walking in the front door, and looking into the rooms would show me a story, but it wouldn’t show me my story. I found that I preferred to enter the house like a burglar, in the dark, through a basement window, shining a flashlight on this or that wall and on this or that object.

In September of 2009, I began writing a post on racial hatred, which I sensed was unmistakably in the air. I focused on two towering black figures: Jack Johnson and Jackie Robinson. I had a very good story to tell, but it was anybody’s story. Not truly mine.

Then, I ran across a quote from Charlie Chaplin: “Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form a headless monster, a great brutish idiot that goes where prodded.”

Instantly I had my title, The Brutish Idiot, and I had my very own thematic image: a headless monster.

The story had become mine, but it still wasn’t complete.

So, I returned to the house, entered again through that basement window, and while rummaging around, I noticed a large, curious object standing in a corner, covered by a sheet. I lifted the sheet and found a treasure.

There was a famously ugly, but largely forgotten, incident before a baseball game in Cincinnati. The ugly incident amazingly ended with one man’s elegant gesture toward another. I had no idea that there existed a statue commemorating that gesture. That statue gave me my ending.

Before starting my blog, I read two books and several articles on blogging. I came away with three cardinal rules for having a successful blog: Publish often, keep posts brief, and always respond to comments.

I learned that I am incapable of adhering to the first two. As for the third, I love the comments for what they are. In many cases they have added to, or to my mind, even completed the post. And after writing my brains out, there was nothing I could add by responding to the comments. They were better left standing on their own.

But, I really did want to thank the commenters. So, I am doing that now.

Recently, my wife, Elodia asked me, “When you die, do you want me to throw a party for those who want to come and celebrate your life?” “No,” I said. “I would like you to write my final post, and say goodbye.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

Stop Doing That!

2010-05-02T14:11:00.008-04:00

Should you ever get that uncontrollable urge to commit a senseless act of vandalism, and if you would prefer not getting caught in the act, you might want to select a crime-safe neighborhood -- not one that’s safe from crime, but safe for crime.

Suppose, for example, you would like to throw a rock through a window, for no other reason than to enjoy the sound of the breaking glass. Here’s a helpful tip: Find a building that already has a few broken windows. The chances are pretty good that nobody cares very much about that building, because if someone did, the windows would have been fixed.

You probably have a good idea where to find that building -- that perfect target. You drive or walk through the neighborhood, passing by littered sidewalks and graffiti covered buildings, until you get to your building. You scan the remaining intact windows, until you settle on your window. You nervously pick up a rock, aim it, and smash! You’ve done it.

You have the urge to run as fast as you can and flee the scene of the crime, but something tells you to relax. It’s as though the neighborhood is trying to speak to you, trying to send you a signal. Go ahead and break another window. Take your time. It doesn’t matter if anyone sees you.

Relax. Nobody cares.

Nobody will chase you away. Nobody will call the cops. This is a safe neighborhood. As you get to know it better, you realize that this is a good place for fulfilling other desires. Would you like to buy drugs or a stolen gun, or find a prostitute? Or, perhaps you would like to do something much worse.

The Broken Windows theory was first presented in a 1982 article in the Atlantic Monthly, written by criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, and it was made famous by Malcolm Gladwell, in his best seller, The Tipping Point, subtitled: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

Gladwell’s The Tipping Point tells us that trends in crime, like trends in business, politics, and fashion happen because “ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.” Bad behavior can be contagious. One broken window, left unrepaired, will invite another. A broken neighborhood beckons those who thrive on disorder.

By 1992, crime in New York City had become an “epidemic.” There were 2,154 murders and 626,182 violent crimes. There were neighborhoods where residents dared not go out after dark.

But contained within this Broken Windows theory, there is ample room for optimism. With the right medicines, an epidemic can be fought and stopped in its tracks, and that’s what happened in New York City. By 1997, murders dropped 64 percent and crimes were cut in half. Life after dark returned to some of the sickest neighborhoods.

What caused this rather amazing turn about? Well for one thing, Broken Windows criminologist, George Kelling went to New York, where he was allowed to test his theory. And so began a story of how stopping small bad things made a very big difference.

He was first hired as a consultant to the New York City Transit Authority, where the subways of New York became his laboratory. He would have no trouble finding bad guys to use as lab rats. The mammoth, decaying subway system was infested with them. David Gunn, the new Transit Authority director was a fan of Kelling’s theory.

With so many serious crimes being committed, where would Kelling and Gunn begin? Would they logically start by targeting the system’s most dangerous predators -- murderers, rapists, and armed robbers? No, they would not.

They would begin by cleaning up the “neighborhood.” Mission number one: graffiti. In the 1970s and 1980s, graffiti-covered subway cars were part of the scenery for millions of daily riders.

Graffiti never killed, injured or robbed anyone, but it did send an ugly and intimidating message: We own these cars and you are powerless to stop us.

Since transit cops could not even begin to guard the fleet of over 6,000 cars, graffiti vandals knew when and where to strike. Some would spend days spray painting their elaborate coded messages on the side of a car. One prominent “artist” was known for covering entire trains.

Finding a prevention for the graffiti virus seemed unlikely, so instead Kelling and Gunn came up with a possible cure -- taking the reward out of the art making. They ordered the cleaning up or painting over of all the graffiti-covered cars. They instituted a strict policy that any car stained with graffiti would be taken off line and not returned to service until it had been cleaned.

It worked.

Deprived of the enjoyment of seeing their work, as well as the enjoyment of seeing its effect on their enormous captive audience of subway riders, the spray paint artists began moving on to other hobbies and careers.

Mission number two: fare-beaters. The Transit Authority hired William Bratton to be its new chief of police. Like Gunn, Bratton was a disciple of George Kelling and a true believer of his Broken Windows theory.

Upon entering the subway, riders were required to insert a token in order to move through a turnstile.

Bratton observed an alarming number of scofflaws who simply jumped over the turnstiles or forced their way through them. It didn’t make sense for cops to arrest them. Arrests resulted in too many lost hours transporting the offenders to the police station, and too much time processing their paperwork -- all for a $1.25 crime.

But the fare-beating was contagious. Some people who witnessed it began doing it themselves. And, it sent another one of those bad messages about who had their way with the system, and who was powerless to stop them.

So Bratton ordered the arrest of all fare-beaters. Once over the turnstile, they’d be grabbed, brought to a holding area, in full public view, where they would be handcuffed to each other, in a “daisy chain,” and held there until the cops had a full catch.

Soon, the experiment began yielding breakthrough findings. Some of the lab rats carried concealed weapons. What exactly would they be used for? Some of the lab rats had outstanding warrants, and/or lengthy criminal records. What might they be planning on the day of their arrest?

You can guess the end result of this experiment. Incidents of fare-beating sharply declined, and so did the subway crime rate.

The new mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani appointed William Bratton police commissioner of New York City, and Bratton immediately began applying Broken Windows remedies to the city’s crime epidemic.

Broken windows were repaired. Littered sidewalks, streets, and vacant lots were cleaned up. Perpetrators of small crimes, like public drunkenness, urinating in public, and aggressive panhandling were arrested. A new signal was being sent. If you break a window here, someone who sees you will call the cops, and the cops will respond.

When the epidemic ended, Rudolph Giuliani graciously accepted the credit and easily won re-election as mayor.

The Broken Windows theory is not universally accepted. There are those who say that we can’t be certain that New York’s crime epidemic would not have ended on its own, as a natural result of an aging population (fewer trouble-making teenagers), and a sharp decline in the use of crack cocaine.

There are some very big theories for which truth is in the eye of the beholder. You will never convince a hardcore Creationist that Darwinism is provable, and you will never convince certain criminologists that Broken Windowism is gospel. But to those of us who draw upon our own observations and experiences, within our own neighborhoods, as well as the many neighborhoods we have passed through, there is not the slightest doubt. Gospel it is.

So when I hear about a specific crime -- one so disturbing that it gets under my skin -- I first look at the neighborhood where that crime took place. A neighborhood can be as big as the New York subway system, or as small as a small town high school.

South Hadley, Massachusetts is less than two hours from where I live. I don’t need to go there, nor do I need to see the building. I’m sure it looks like any other high school. I assume the grounds are well maintained, the hallway and classroom floors are kept polished, and the windows sparkle.

And I know that as neighborhoods go, this one was rotten. How else would you describe a neighborhood that allowed so many little, but nasty crimes to be committed against one of its most defenseless residents?

The new girl in town was attractive, vivacious, and from another country. She got involved with the captain of the football team. His old girlfriend took offense. She got involved with another one of the “popular” boys. His old girlfriend took offense. These girls ran in a pack and the pack decided to teach the new girl about the hierarchy.

Their initial lessons were rather mild. She was warned to “stay away from people’s men.” By then, her brief relationships with “those men” were over and those boys obediently took their places in the pack. The she-wolves dominated and the gang took on a personality of its own.

The attacks on the younger outsider took place over a period of several months.

One of girls entered a classroom and called her a slut for all to hear, including a teacher. On a day when she sought refuge in the school library, one of them scribbled vicious graffiti next to her name on the sign-in sheet. She was accosted in the hallways, and sometimes hid in the girls bathroom toilet stalls. She was threatened with being beaten up after school, and in vain pleaded with a teacher to be allowed to go home early.

The gang seemed to be able to attack at will. January 14th -- the final day -- was worse than all the others, and the closing bell brought no relief. One of them drove by her as she walked home from school, and hurled a drink can at her. By this time, the gang had to have thought: We can do anything and they are powerless to stop us. How intoxicating that realization must have been!

And when it was learned that on that final day, that she had gone into her home and hanged herself, we can only imagine the high-five celebration of a job well done. One of them said it perfectly on the dead girl’s Facebook page, with one simple word: “Accomplished.”

Maybe that word, more than any other scrap of evidence prompted the district attorney to bring charges against the individuals who so successfully tormented the girl to death. The names of the tormenters -- at least the most prominent -- are now known to all of us. They presumably have numerous court dates ahead of them. Their futures are, thankfully, not rosy.

But while most of the mean-teens have, in essence, been handcuffed together in a daisy chain, and displayed on a very public stage, other players are conspicuously absent.

Where are the adults?

Schoolmates described the organized attacks on the new girl as being “common knowledge,” yet when the crime first caught the attention of investigating reporters, no members of the school administration or faculty were aware of what had been blatantly going on, under their noses. Really?

The district attorney found this to be a lie, but concluded that nothing the adults-in-charge did rose to the level of criminal behavior, and that no case against them would hold water. The girl’s mother had gone to the school and appealed for help. It’s there on the record. More is being added to that record. Teachers and administrators are being called out.

The community now asks the famous twin questions:

What did they know?

And…

When did they know it?

I don’t need to ask Mr. Kelling, Mr. Gladwell, Mr. Gunn, and Mr. Bratton what they think about this. Windows broke. People, responsible for fixing them, allowed them to stay broken. Message to the gang: Relax. Go ahead and do it again. Nobody will stop you.

Here, you are safe.

The Fire And The Freshness

2010-02-04T14:29:00.023-05:00

“I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in the ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better.”

-- Ernest Hemingway

One day in April of 1925, Ernest Hemingway, living in Paris, was sitting in the Dingo Bar on rue Delambre in the Montparnasse Quarter. He was a 25-years old journalist, and he had published a few small pieces of fiction in some minor publications. Outside of a small though prominent circle, he was largely unknown.

What happened that day in 1925 would change his life, though he would be the last to admit it. He would have told you that he was already Ernest Hemingway and would go on to be Ernest Hemingway no matter what.

He would have told you, I think, that meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Dingo Bar that day in April may have somewhat hastened the elevation of his career, but it was certainly not responsible for it. Exercising control of one's destiny was at the core of his personal religion.

Fitzgerald himself was only 28-years old but was far from a budding writer. He had written This Side of Paradise, which made him famous at the age of twenty-four, followed by The Beautiful and The Damned, and two months before walking into the Dingo, had published his signature work -- The Great Gatsby.

Even before they met, Fitzgerald was greatly impressed by Hemingway, glimpsing in his prose, what perhaps only a writer of equal talent could recognize. And, even after they met, Hemingway was, or claimed to be, unimpressed by Fitzgerald…that is, until he read Gatsby.

It became Fitzgerald’s self-chosen mission to ensure the younger writer’s success. So, on the strength of his recommendation, and his persistent reminders, the prestigious publishing house, Scribners and their dynamic young editor, Maxwell Perkins wooed a writer they knew almost nothing about.

Hemingway based his religion on simple principles. A man controlled his life and when he couldn’t, he handled it stoically. And, a man always controlled his women. Scott Fitzgerald was not such a man. He was frequently drunk and out of control. In spite of his success, he usually saw himself as a failure. And his wife, Zelda, who would be in and out of mental hospitals for most of her adult life was usually out of control -- especially her husband‘s.

But after reading The Great Gatsby, Hemingway gave Scott a pass. A man who could write something that wonderful deserved his friendship. And that friendship is undeniable, because we can see it for ourselves in their letters.

Each wrote dozens of letters to the other. I read them years ago in Matthew J. Bruccoli’s Fitzgerald and Hemingway, subtitled, A Dangerous Friendship, and I just read them all again. Scott’s letters were a bit formal. Hemingway’s were more stream of conscious. He scribbled all over the page. Neither man could spell. It is not the mutual admiration, but the mutual affection in those letters that gets to you.

Their friendship was still brand new when Scott did a very dangerous thing. Hemingway had finished his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises, and would not let Scott view the typed draft, but finally did allow him to read the galley proof. So Scott read it and sent him a very detailed ten-page critique.

I bet there were many fine writers at that time who would have welcomed, even cherished, a thoughtful and detailed critique from F. Scott Fitzgerald. I don’t think Ernest Hemingway was one of them. One can only guess his initial reaction to the bold recommendation that he completely eliminate the first two chapters.

Hemingway did not take kindly to those who questioned his creative decisions, but he came to the conclusion that Scott was right. The first two chapters, and all of the fine writing they surely contained, were unnecessary. So he wrote to his editor, Max Perkins that he had decided to cut them, and that Scott agreed with his decision.

I first read The Sun Also Rises in high school. Truthfully, I liked the movie better. Then, in my twenties, I found a copy on my bookshelf, began skimming through it, and ended up rereading it.

I came to the part, where Jake Barnes, the narrator and central character, introduces us to Brett Ashley. It is this relationship that is at the heart of the story. Their relationship is complicated and it is heartbreaking.

Another writer might have felt compelled to provide us with several paragraphs of background and explanation. Another writer might have found a near perfect simile or metaphor, and several wonderful adjectives to describe what went through the mind and heart of Jake Barnes.

But Hemingway handled it differently. Jake, finding himself in a dance club, describes a group of people entering the room, then tells us: “And with them was Brett.”

In high school, that line meant very little to me. I would have been fine with something more elaborate and more descriptive. “And with them was Brett” was so simple, hell, I could have written it. But of course I would not have. I would have written “And Brett was with them.”

Rereading it in my twenties, when I had read more and lived more, I saw that sentence for what it was -- poetry. How else could the purposeful arrangement (or rearrangement) of five small words say so much?

There are times, still, when I will pick up a copy of the book and read until I reach that line. Never do I not hear those perfect notes. Never do they fail to move me. “And with them was Brett” forever changed the way I looked at the art of writing.

In college, I had a French Lit professor, who was truly a brilliant man. One day, it became apparent that he was deep into his mid-life crisis. He was wildly in love. Not with a woman. He had recklessly found his way into Hemingway’s novels and then took a spill into the Hemingway legend.

One day he walked into class and asked if any of us wished to box with him. Boxing with my professor did not seem like a wise strategy to me, so I respectfully declined. I’m pretty sure he thought less of me for it. Real men boxed. Hemingway boxed.

Oscar Wilde famously said, “I have put all my genius into my life; I have only put my talent into my works.” I have little doubt that Hemingway intended for his life to be his masterpiece.

Boxing was a big part of his life. You could have asked anyone who knew him. They all had heard stories of him sparring with professionals, jumping into the ring on a moments notice to knock out a fighter. My French Lit teacher knew most of those stories, and was eager to share them. Unfortunately, many of those stories appear to be fiction.

But then, Hemingway never believed that a good story should be held hostage by the facts, though there was one Hemingway boxing story that he desperately wished had been held hostage to those pesky little facts, that is, if had to be told at all.

In June of 1929, the Canadian novelist and short story writer, Morley Callaghan was living in Paris. He and Hemingway had once both worked for The Toronto Star. They were friends and they got together periodically to go a few friendly rounds, as a way to stay in shape.

On one of those days, Fitzgerald came along to watch. On the way over to the gym, Hemingway suggested that he be the timekeeper, and showed him how to use his stop watch to call the end of each round after three minutes. The sparring began, and for a few rounds it all went well, then Callaghan caught Hemingway with a punch that bloodied his mouth. Callaghan believed that it would not have been a big deal had Fitzgerald not been there to witness it.

The angry and embarrassed Hemingway grew wild, throwing big punches at the smaller man. The quicker Callaghan, now fighting to protect himself against being knocked out, hit Hemingway with a well-timed punch that landed him on his back.

Fitzgerald, transfixed by what he had just witnessed, stood silently, until he realized that he had forgotten to call time at the end of the three minute round. Hemingway got nailed when the round should have been over. When he blurted out his error, Hemingway shot back: “Christ! All right Scott, if you want to see me getting the shit knocked out of me, just say so. Only don’t say you made a mistake!”

Since there seem to have been no other witnesses to the event, we don’t know how the rumors started to spread about Callaghan knocking Hemingway out cold, in front of a large audience. But spread they did, until they found their way into newspaper gossip columns in Europe and the U.S. For Hemingway, the true story was quite un-legend like, and the false stories were so much worse.

Letters, cables, and telegrams were fired back and forth between Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Callaghan, and Max Perkins. Hemingway furiously demanded that Callaghan set the record straight. Callaghan sent letters to the offending publications, explaining the facts and demanding a correction. He did not want to be on Hemingway’s bad side.

No matter how hard he tried to appeal to reason, he ended up alienating both Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who both blamed him for the outbreak of false stories, which quickly took on lives their own, and continued for years.

It was Scott’s infatuation with the Hemingway legend-in-progress that brought him to the gym in the first place, and it was astonishment at seeing the legend lying on the canvas that distracted him from his timekeeping responsibilities. He had become Hemingway’s number one fan, and now he had witnessed what he should not have.

In a letter, Hemingway tells Scott that all is forgiven. But I don’t think that Scott believed him, anymore than I did.

It’s too bad, because Scott needed a friend more than ever. Life after Gatsby became a sad saga of his constant drunkenness, Zelda’s insanity, his struggle to support an extravagant lifestyle by churning out stories for The Saturday Evening Post, and later by being a well paid but unproductive Hollywood scriptwriter.

He struggled for years to muster the discipline to write and finish Tender Is The Night, while constantly assuring Hemingway that the novel really was being written and really would be finished. He needed his “friend” to know that he was still a serious writer, even as others were regarding him as pitifully unserious.

All the while, Hemingway, who had followed The Sun Also Rises, with the publication of A Farewell To Arms, three years later and, in that same time period, two celebrated collections of short stories: In Our Time and Men Without Women, enjoyed a reputation for being the epitome of the serious writer.

In the early 1930s, the Hemingway persona, full of big-game hunting and deep sea fishing began taking center stage. Fitzgerald described this as Hemingway’s “personality shift” when “he came to believe his [own] legends.”

The early 1930s also began a period when Hemingway the writer appeared to be running out of gas. He wrote some things most of us don’t remember. But he was far from ready to retire from the ring. He wrote to Max Perkins about being ten years away from taking on Tolstoy. He advised William Faulkner that it was all about taking on the dead writers.

But I think there was also one live contender that needed to be beaten convincingly. When Esquire Magazine hired Hemingway to be a regular contributor, and then hired Fitzgerald to do the same, I believe, the fight was on.

Between 1934 and 1936, they were featured in the same issues eleven times. Hemingway wrote about his outdoorsman adventures and contributed a couple of stories, including one that landed a very solid punch, The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

Fitzgerald’s writings reflected his sad physical and mental state. A series called The Crack-Up hung it all out all out there for people to see. They were described as “confessionals.“ Max Perkins advised him to stop it before he ruined his reputation. Hemingway saw it as conclusive proof of Fitzgerald’s shameful “love of failure,” attributing it to his Irish Catholic romanticism.

In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, a character refers to “poor Scott Fitzgerald” and his “romantic awe of the rich.” Fitzgerald was deeply offended by this belittling remark and wrote to Hemingway and Perkins, imploring them to remove his name before publishing the story in book form. Hemingway eventually complied, but damage had been done.

Just what on earth did Hemingway have to gain from beating-up a man who so skillfully and eagerly knocked himself to the canvas, every chance he got?

I think it was all about The Great Gatsby.

I think he knew that Gatsby might prove to be a big punch that would one day come out of nowhere to put him on the canvas, and steal the championship he so coveted.

There is a scene in Chapter Five. All you need to know is this:

After going to extraordinary lengths to arrange it, Jay Gatsby is now in the same room with Daisy Buchanan. It has been five years since he has seen her, and his only dream has been of this moment.

The narrator, Nick Carraway tells us: “There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way.”

The next line is one that has remained in my memory since I first read the book over thirty years ago.

“No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

Then Fitzgerald/Carraway, at his lyrical best, finishes it off:

“As I watched him, he adjusted himself a little, visibly. His hand took hold of hers, and as she said something low, in his ear, he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed -- that voice was a deathless song.”

America seems never to have been quite sure what to do with The Great Gatsby. When it was first published, it found some critical acclaim, but it sold a mere 25,000 copies. After his death in 1940, it was discovered by a wider audience, which continued to grow until early in the 1960s, when it became regarded as an American classic and was required reading in college literature courses. Eventually it became a relic -- a museum piece.

Hemingway outlived Fitzgerald by twenty-one years. In his late rounds, he gave us a gem: The Old Man and The Sea, and he won the Nobel Prize. When he began battling debilitating illnesses, and could no longer control his life, he ended his story with a shotgun blast to the head.

My French Lit teacher saw the nobility of this final act, and had he lived to see it, Fitzgerald might have too.

Recently, a play called Gatz (Jay Gatsby’s given name), has been touring European and American cities, playing to packed theaters. In the play, an office worker who cannot boot up his computer, picks up a tattered copy of The Great Gatsby and begins reading aloud. His co-workers begin by ignoring him and then turn into characters in the novel, acting out the scenes.

The main character in the play assumes the role of the narrator, Nick Carraway and reads the entire book, minus the lines of dialogue spoken by the other characters.

Elodia and I saw the play and we were riveted, as were those around us, for the six and a half hours that it took to read the novel aloud. The play itself was at times awkward and a little clumsy, but the lushness of Fitzgerald’s prose came through loud and clear. It’s too soon to know for sure, but it looks to me like The Great Gatsby might truly be a deathless song.

It’s funny, in a way, how a tattered book, from a very different time, found in a drawer, can talk to us about ourselves as though it had been written yesterday, and that we are so freely mesmerized by it.

Hemingway believed that it was the job of living writers to move up in rank by challenging the dead ones. I think he also believed that, in death, the great ones continue to challenge each other.

If so, then it’s not over.

Mr. Hemingway may yet respond.

The Mad Man of Malden Mills

2009-12-12T12:09:00.015-05:00

He was having dinner at a Boston restaurant, celebrating his 70th birthday, when word reached him of the fire. It was December 11, 1995.

Had he been celebrating his 40th birthday, or his 50th, or perhaps even his 60th, there may have been more logic to the strange plan he would soon concoct, but at an age when most business owners are already well into retirement, there really was no excuse.

While the blaze had effectively destroyed his factory, it was quickly determined that nobody had died, and with an insurance payout of $300 million headed his way, this 70-year old, who had survived decades of severe business downturns, including one bankruptcy, might have decided that his ride was finally over.

He could have continued his already generous giving, while living out the rest of his days without the headaches of running a manufacturing company where “Made in America“ was fast becoming the stuff of nostalgia.

No one could have blamed him for gratefully accepting his God-given retirement.

But this man was not what you would call good retirement material. He felt no attraction to the golf course or the yacht club. In fact it might explain quite a bit to know that in his 60s, he routinely awoke at 5:30 each morning and practiced memorization as a means to keep his mind sharp, and you should also know that the objects of his memorization were the Old Testament and the works of Shakespeare.

One could make a case that at his age, managing the nuts and bolts operations of an old line manufacturing company, vulnerable to global, low-wage-paying competitors, that he might have chosen, let us say, more practical texts for his mental exercises.

In fact, questions of what is and what isn’t practical, would come up again and again once he left that Boston restaurant and arrived at the site of his blackened factory, 25 miles north, in the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border.

Lawrence, is what we often call an old mill town. It would be more accurately called a former mill town. To be sure, the mammoth brick mill buildings, up and down the Merrimack River, many built in the 1800s, still dominate the landscape, but not much milling takes place in those buildings, anymore.

The milling, which was mainly textiles, and the milling jobs began leaving town a long time ago. Some just disappeared, shuttered by foreign competition. Others went to Southern, non-union states, or to Mexico and Latin America, then to China and the Far East.

For as long as I can remember, Lawrence has been the New England version of a hard luck town.

In the 1950s and 60s it "benefited" from federal money, arriving in the name of “Urban Renewal,” but that money was tragically misused to tear down old architectural gems and replace them with flat, faceless brick buildings devoid of character. You may never appreciate how much of your town’s identity is stored in the stone walls, the grand front steps, and the pillars of its post office, city hall, library, and court houses, until they are replaced by, what my wife, Elodia refers to as cigar boxes.

For a while there was some hope for revitalization. Lawrence had all of those great brick mill buildings, with high ceilings, huge windows, many with views of the river. Some were converted into offices. They waited for new white-collared tenants -- designers and sellers of the new economy.

In the 1970s and part of the 1980s, Massachusetts was a center for high technology. High Tech companies that surrounded the Boston area were multiplying fast, and spreading further to the west, south, and north. They would surely find their way to Lawrence’s affordable, abundant, and unique office space, spun from abandoned mills.

But that didn’t happen. Our High Tech was supplanted by the newer micro technology, that had taken root in California’s Silicon Valley and in the Pacific Northwest.

I worked in Lawrence in the mid 1980s, in one of those huge, renovated mill buildings. A dilapidated mill building behind ours was about to be reborn as a Marriot Hotel. This was at the pinnacle of a new found hope.

This hope sprung from an agreement that would move Emerson College from Boston to Lawrence. Land would be provided for a magnificent campus. The college would have room and resources to grow to its heart’s content. The city would flourish with the influx of students, faculty, visiting parents, and ancillary businesses.

Emerson College, considered one of the premier colleges in the U.S. for the study of communication and the arts, would lead the way to Lawrence’s renaissance -- one that would shine a light on its historic industrial past, while powering it into its future.

But time dragged on without a closing of the deal.

Landowners fought in court the eminent domain that would take what was theirs and turn it over to the Emerson outsiders. The trailblazers on both sides of the deal eventually moved on in life, and were replaced by those who were not part of the audacious plan. And the economics changed, making Boston property more affordable for Emerson to expand without sacrificing the advantages and amenities of being in “The Hub.”

Marriott did not move in. There would be no renaissance. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

So now, you have two principal characters in this drama. The protagonist is Mr. Aaron Feuerstein, owner of the company founded by his grandfather, a textile manufacturing company known as Malden Mills. And you have a second character, a sad, tired face that remains on stage from lights up to closing curtain -- the people of Lawrence -- the character called: The Town.

And there is a third.

For years, Malden Mills struggled to find a magical product -- one that would bring in enough money to justify its existence, and to keep it in a state where high labor costs and tough environmental regulations had defeated or chased away its industrial neighbors. For a while they had it in fake fur. But the popularity of fake fur crashed when real fur was brought low by those who publicly targeted well adorned fur wearers by hurling insults and splashing them with ink.

In 1982, Malden Mills entered Chapter 11...

…And emerged one-year later victoriously clutching a truly magical product. Longtime employees had discovered a way to weave synthetics, made up of 80% recycled materials, into a fabric that was warm, light weight, and could remove moisture from the body. A big, important customer, Patagonia was waiting for them to perfect it. Perfect it they did, and Polarfleece, was born.

Polarfleece, marketed as Polartec met an exploding demand for warm, light weight outerwear by hikers, climbers, runners, and the U.S. Military. Chances are you or someone you know has worn a Polartec jacket or sweat pants or slept under a Polartec blanket. You might have gotten yours at L.L. Bean or Eddie Bauer, or at some other major retailer and never noticed the “Made by Malden Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts” label.

Imitators quickly emerged, so the Malden Mills workers had to continually improve and refine their processes. The Workers found ways to provide greater varieties of color and fabric weight. Even with everyday manufacturing, machinery could take it only so far. Human hands, eyes, and creativity were critical.

Reporter, Louis Uchitelle, writing an article in the New York Times, was looking on as Adelina Santiago operating a computerized machine, rolling out dark cloth at 50 yards a minute, noticed “the vaguest white line, invisible to an untrained eye” and quickly stopped the machine. “I give to catching imperfections the same importance that I would give if this were my own business,” said the $11 per hour employee.

Following the fire on December 11, 1995, when the drama began, the two words most often spoken were: the workers. And that character, The Workers, never, for even a moment, leaves the stage.

If this were a play, we might raise the opening curtain right here.

A gaunt, white haired Aaron Feuerstein stands against the backdrop of his blackened mill buildings. Reporters await his announcement. Will he say goodbye or will he rebuild? Of course he will lament the fact that his 3200 employees will be facing a very bleak Christmas. That’s a given.

The story in tomorrow’s papers will be about the fire. How did it start? How many were injured? With no crime of arson, it will be a short story, one without legs, as they say in the news business.

But standing before the cameras is a man who has just turned 70-years old, whose company was started at the very beginning of the century by his grandfather. This man before the cameras had carried this sacred trust through good times and bad, through three generations.

The reporters wait for their quote. The Workers, in shock, brace themselves for what might be the painful goodbye. The Town, watching from modest living rooms and seedy taverns has seen all of this before. You can fear bad luck’s arrival only so many times. When it becomes a regular visitor, you casually greet it, maybe even with a knowing “Oh, it’s you again!“ nod of the head.

But this time was different.

The mill owner was emphatic. He will rebuild. He will do it quickly. There was relief. Then he went on. He would keep all 3200 employees on the payroll while he rebuilt. He would maintain their health insurance coverage while he rebuilt. Christmas would be just fine. There must have been some momentary disbelief. Did they hear him right? While nothing was being made and nothing was being sold, everyone would be paid their full salaries?

Out of this man’s pocket?

At one of those seedy taverns, a man at the bar, hunched over his drink, mindlessly watching the local news broadcast must have sprung upright and shouted to the bartender, “Tommy, turn this up!” In living rooms, normal conversation must have suddenly stopped with the realization that something never before seen or heard was taking place.

60 Minutes ran a story. Morley Safer interviewed the newly famous CEO. Big companies were laying off in droves, providing little to their departing employees. They were of course doing what they had to do in the best interests of the stockholders, the corporation, or the brand.

Feuerstein loudly called out those corporations and those CEOs. He said that a new model must emerge. He said that companies and their workers and their communities had shared interests and shared responsibilities. He could not dump 3200 unemployed workers on an already suffering region. That, he later told Parade Magazine, “would have been unconscionable.” And, for this Orthodox Jew, it would have been a clear violation of Jewish law.

He was not quite finished. He would not just rebuild the factories, he would restore the turn-of-the-century architectural detail that his grandfather’s generation had taken such pains to craft into their historic structures. And, he would purchase state-of-the art machinery that would increase productivity, while being environmentally friendly.

And that’s how a sad-town mill owner became a hero to millions of people.

But as weeks passed, some began to wonder if this hero had promised too much? Not at all, so long as everything goes perfectly. But, of course, this is not a perfect world. Some things are bound to go wrong. The only question is: How many things will go wrong and how wrong will they go?

Perhaps a saner man would have paused.

A saner man might have calculated into his equation problems collecting all of the expected insurance money.

A saner man might have scaled back salaries paid to idle workers and even stopped payments to those with the least value or the least longevity with the company.

A saner man might have expected having to settle a law suit from some of the employees injured in the fire.

A saner man might have expected that the interruption in manufacturing would result in business lost to his competitors.

We might forgive him for not anticipating three consecutive warm winters, dampening demand for Polarfleece.

But then, why would we be surprised by the madness of this man who alone carried the sacred trust of his grandfather and his father, whose employees had lifted him from bankruptcy, and who worked for him as though they were working for themselves, and whose head was filled with the likes of Moses and Macbeth?

He was fast running out of money, but there was still time to make the necessary adjustments. He had only to go before the cameras and before The Town, The Workers, and now The World, and say: “I will continue to stand by my principles to the best of my ability, but I now have to make some difficult and painful decisions.”

But, of course he did not do that. Instead, he borrowed a lot of money. From banks.

Here, I must introduce you to the fourth and final character. Until now, our little drama has gone without an antagonist. And I must caution you, that you may be inclined to see this antagonist as a simple villain, one deserving of loud jeers.

I ask you to please not rush to judgment.

Six years after the famous fire, mired in debt, Malden Mills once again filed for bankruptcy. This was more than just the bankruptcy of a company, it was a body blow to the newly hopeful City of Lawrence. People hearing the news sent in donations of $5, $10, $100 dollars. Saving Malden Mills, and its ideals, became their cause. They spoke loudly. They said, “We are in this together.”

But a new voice was about to be heard. Not that any of us actually heard the voice, any of us outside of the boardroom, that is, or not privy to the behind closed doors executive meetings. GE Capital had become Malden Mill’s largest creditor, and now they and the group they headed had the final word.

Together this group takes center stage as our final character, which we can conveniently call, The Banks.

Though no one in their living rooms or in the seedy taverns, or in the press, for that matter, actually heard The Banks’ last word, their intent was clear. It was to bring sanity back to the situation. It was to remove the drama and replace it with a strategic plan.

The first step in this plan was to relieve Aaron Feuerstein of all operational control. His role in his company would become only symbolic. Other steps would include rational solutions appropriate for a company so heavily in debt, mainly reduction of the workforce, including moving some manufacturing to Asia.

In 2004, 78-year old Feuerstein moved to buy back his company. He used the prestige he had gained from his national spotlight to raise almost $90 million in financing, guarantees, and tax incentives to put together an offer that would keep 1,000 jobs in the area and provide low cost housing for residents. The plan was creative, unorthodox, and sound.

The board of directors, led by The Banks turned down his offer without providing an explanation.

Who could blame them?

They were not going to get into a public debate with a beloved crazy man who heard moral commands to do good, and who could inspire others to play Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote. This was business.

Today, the company, once known as Malden Mills is under new ownership and is called, Polartec.

On Mother’s Day 2006, Polartec’s buildings were damaged by flood water, halting manufacturing, and requiring major clean up and restoration.

The company continued to struggle financially.

This past September, Polartec honored 154 longtime employees. As reported by Bill Kirk in the local newspaper, the Eagle Tribune, Joyce Cegelis joined the company as a clerk, “just shy of her 18th birthday.” Now, she is 68 years old, and is head of the payroll department.

She arrives at 6 a.m. and works 10 to 12 hour days. “They need me,“ she says. “I make the coffee.”

“We’ve seen floods, fires and bankruptcies,” said Loretta Riordan, a 42-year old employee whose son, Dan has worked there for 24 years. “We’re just waiting for the locusts,” she joked.

I, for one, will not be surprised if the locusts do come. I just wonder who will be there to turn them away. Of course, that someone would have to be somewhat mad to think they could defeat The Locusts.

Don't you think?

Please note: I was not able to link to Louis Uchitelle's wonderful article, published in the New York Times, July 4, 1996, to which I am greatly indebted.

Toys R Gus?

2009-10-29T09:04:00.007-04:00

My friend Gus is nine-years old. He’s a smart kid, and I’m not just saying that because he’s a friend or because he’s a kid. I’ve known nine-year olds who weren’t exceptionally bright, but this isn’t about them. It’s about Gus, sort of.

Gus is an only child. That coupled with the fact that he has his share of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and adult friends who, from the very beginning, unwittingly conspired to teach The Guster (my name for him) that he was in fact the very center of the universe, has made my child friend the beneficiary of two fabulous treasures, each accompanied by a known and dreaded curse.

Attention is of course a wonderful gift, but one to which a little prince can become easily addicted. When little princes summon the attention that rightfully belongs to them, and that attention is slow to arrive, or worse yet, shared among others, little princes lose their patience. Sometimes real bad.

Toys can also be a wonderful gift. Toys engage a child in play. And playing, when it goes well, is happy learning. Ever since Gus could walk, a common event at our house was seeing Gus show up with a new toy – usually some foot-tall action figure that could light up or make sounds or launch small rockets from its hand.

Gus had “always” wanted that toy. He was excited to get it. He loved doing the show-and-tell, but we rarely saw him with the same toy more than twice. Well, once you see Action Figure #8 do the one cool thing that Action Figure #7 couldn’t do, you’re pretty much done with him.

Fortunately, this is not a problem. Action figure #9 will soon appear on Gus’s TV screen, saving the day by firing rockets from his boots or his helmet or from a special rocket vest, or well, you get the picture.

The toy designers are not at all alarmed by the age-old “novelty wearing off” factor. In fact, they keep their jobs because of it. And make no mistake; Gus will want their next plastic hero. He’s a smart kid, but he’s nine. He has no idea that a major corporation with a big budget is right now using little prince focus groups to test their ideas for Action Figure #17.

That’s right. They actually have other little princes on their payroll. The bastards!

When Gus was around five, his parents generously invited us to baby-sit Prince Gus while they would be out cavorting. This posed a problem. On the night of this opportunity, there would be a televised political debate that my wife, Elodia and I were anxious to see. To watch and listen to the debate would mean not just dividing attention rightfully belonging to Gus, but actually denying that attention.

We needed a strategy. Without one, the evening would end in disaster. So I did what I needed to do. I took a trip back to my childhood to see if I could find a solution. It didn’t take long. It was right in front of me. Maybe. Just maybe.

Days later, the moment of truth was upon us. Gus showed up at our door with toys in hand and his parents behind him. We told them to have a good time and not to worry. Everything would be fine. We were of course lying. Everything would probably not be fine. We simply meant that no one would die.

They’re not stupid people. They smiled and left quickly.

Oh, about revisiting my childhood. I was not an only child. I got some toys that had cool bells and whistles, but for reasons we all know, they didn’t last long. And, when they were quickly abandoned or junked, they were never replaced with something newer and better. In fact, they were never replaced by anything.

Actually, I didn’t need them to be replaced, because I had something that meant an awful lot to me, and that consumed almost all of my toy-playing time. I had toy soldiers. Hundreds of them. It started at a local Woolworth’s.

If you’re old enough to remember "five and dime" stores, that image of your own Woolworth’s, Ben Franklin, McCrory’s, W.T. Grant, or J.J. Newberry’s just popped into your mind from nowhere. You can see that store. You can smell that store. I know you can.

Strolling the aisles with my mother, who was probably shopping for sewing supplies, I discovered an aisle that had been put there just for me. It contained bins of toy soldiers.

No fancy packaging, in fact, no packaging at all. Little 4-inch figures piled high like french fries. There was a bin of Civil War soldiers, another of mounted Calvary soldiers and Indians, and the best one of all piled with World War II Army guys. Most of the soldiers were plastic, but these Army guys were heavy cast iron. After rummaging through the bin, I found that there were about a dozen different Army guys, each holding a different weapon, or striking a different pose.

I got to take home one of each. I had a collection!

Trips to Woolworth’s became a welcome experience, especially since (and you’re not going to believe this) that bin of soldiers started including newer varieties of Army guys that I didn’t already have. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

After learning a little about the Civil War, I realized that I needed those guys too. And, after hearing the story of George Armstrong Custer, I really did need to have my own Little Big Horn. So, it quickly grew into a large and motley collection. I would set them all up on my bedroom floor, until I had the scene that I wanted. It was historically confused, but it made perfect sense to me, and that was all that mattered. Sometimes I tinkered with the scene and other times I just sat and admired it.

One day I returned home from school and they were gone. My heart stopped. Turned out that the room had been cleaned and the soldiers were in a box in my closet. Whew! Well, I knew the job ahead of me.

Now, back to The Night of The Guster.

When I got home from work, Elodia was setting the table for dinner. I held up the plastic shopping bags and flashed a cocky smile. She looked in. Individual packages of plastic toy soldiers, displayed in a clear plastic bubble, secured to a cardboard backing.

“For Gus?” She asked.

“Nope. They’re mine. Gus can borrow them whenever he wants.”

Was she pretty damned intrigued by her husband’s master plan for the psychological warfare that would soon be unleashed on our unsuspecting five-year old? Oh yes.

Dinner went as expected. At this stage, Gus was not just a picky eater, he was more of a non-eater. We gave him his favorite dinner of plain pasta noodles. He ate about three of them and played with the rest. He was growing antsy for some kind of after dinner amusement. He had no clue.

Elodia slowly reached behind her and grabbed one of the plastic shopping bags. Gus’s eyes followed her. She removed one of the packages. Gus’s eyes found the first of the soldiers. And, he knew there had to be more. He jumped up and found the other bags. There they were. A treasure trove of toy soldiers, each begging to be maniacally separated from the plastic and cardboard.

“FOR ME?” Actually more of an exclamation than a question.

“No.” I said. “They’re mine. But you can borrow them, anytime.”

He paused and processed. He would need time to digest this rather peculiar information, but while doing so, his hands would need to get to work. Immediately.

We cleared off the table and the three of us began ripping apart the packaging. This was fun, and it ate up lots of “So, where’s my attention?” time, because each package contained some tiny accessories, like guns, knives and backpacks that needed to be carefully removed and attached to that soldier.

Now, with all soldiers free of their packaging, it was time to stand them up. Not as easy as you might think. These were not the solid cast iron soldiers that I grew up with. These were modern day, made in China, highly disposable toys that were made with feet too small to easily support the body of the soldier. You had to carefully place them where you wanted them to stand.

At five years old, Gus lacked the patience needed to perform this task. So I carefully stood them up, while he watched and advised, and then he did what came naturally. He knocked them all over and cheered like he had just scored the game winning hockey goal.

The awaited debate began. Gus continued making friends with the soldiers. We got through the night. Then Elodia took him home and put him to bed.

The next day he brought his father over to see “Bruce’s soldiers.” Apparently, he had been talking about nothing else. A few days later he came over and asked if he could play with them. We had started something, though truthfully, I had no idea how long this something would last.

A few days later he was employing some never before seen patience struggling to set up the soldiers on our table when I asked him, which were the good guys and which were the bad? Without looking up, he answered that they “were all good guys.” “Which one is the boss,” I asked. Without hesitation, he replied, “I’m the boss.”

Later, he decided that the soldiers needed to be taken outdoors. “As long as you bring them all back and put them away,” instructed Elodia, keeper of the rules. Gus discovered that the soldiers needed to be placed in trees, around our fish pool, and sometimes hidden behind rocks and bushes. Gus worked purposefully. He knew which soldier belonged where.

He casually mentioned one day that “Bruce really needs more soldiers.” So, I bought more. And, I bought a large plastic container to hold them, which I kept upstairs, behind a door in my home office.

One day, Gus showed up with a friend. “Can we play with Bruce’s soldiers?” “Sure Gus. You know where they are. Just remember to put them away when you’re finished.” Gus hesitated. We have a number of neighborhood kids who drop by and hangout in our house. They make themselves at home, but they are not allowed upstairs.

Gus quickly grasped the fact that he was being given a special pass. He could go into the restricted zone for the sole purpose of fetching Bruce’s soldiers. And, any friend of Gus had an automatic guest pass. No need to show I.D. or answer any questions. If you’re with Gus, you’re in.

They climbed the stairs to my room, then came down with the container of soldiers and headed for the backyard.

I went outside and watched them at work. I asked Gus, which were the good guys and which were the bad. He pointed out the best of the good guys and the worst of the bad. I asked him how he knew. He said he could tell by their faces. I asked him who was the boss. He pointed to one of the soldiers. “Him. He’s the boss.”

One day Gus did not put the soldiers away as he had agreed. When Elodia, keeper of the rules, brought this to his attention, he explained that it was his friend, Zach’s fault. “No, Gus, you know that you are in charge of the soldiers. No matter who you let play with them, putting them away is your responsibility, because you’re in charge.” He nodded.

After a couple of years, Gus suddenly stopped coming for the soldiers. I told Elodia that the experience had ended. He had outgrown them. Then, one day, he showed up with a new friend, Charlie. After asking permission, they made the march to my room, and then to the backyard, where I heard Gus explaining to Charlie that he was making mistakes. You don’t just stick any soldier in a tree. Some belonged in trees, and some didn’t.

I think that for Gus, the soldiers had become part of his new-friend ritual.

I’m sure there are those who are horrified that I taught a child to make a game out of symbols of war. Let them be horrified. I will never catch Gus hiding behind a tree, reading the latest issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine. I did teach him something about the power of imagination. And I’ve been rewarded by seeing him teach others. And I’ve discovered that I’m not too old to learn from a nine-year old.

Many years ago, I was making breakfast and half listening to one of the morning news programs. It was before Christmas and a child psychologist was talking about toys. He reported on a study where toddlers were placed in a room full of toys and observed from the other side of a one-way window. There were toys that lit up, made loud noises, and moved across the room. I don’t know if back then, they could fire darts. Who knows?

The little lab rats went to those toys first, then soon got tired of them. Time after time, the two toys that toddlers played with over and over again were a ping-pong ball and a beach ball. They were fascinated by the tiny white ball that would make such a loud noise when hitting the floor and by the huge colorful ball could so easily be made to bounce high in the air.

It has now been more than a year since the U.S economy started to fall off a cliff, taking the rest of the world with it. Lives have been changed forever. We know lots of the statistics but only a fraction of the stories.

One of the statistics will be the total number of U.S. retail stores that will have closed their doors in 2009. I have heard predictions that they will number in the hundreds of thousands. So many people losing their jobs and businesses is a national tragedy.

But I have to wonder if we ever really needed all of those stores. Are we, after all, hard-wired to be fascinated by the ping pong ball, the beach ball, and the toy soldier that does absolutely nothing, other than what a mind can make it do?

In the summer, we go to the beach a lot. We see children who have been taught to cry, whine, and scream for adult attention. Fortunately their voices are often drowned out by the sound of the waves.

And we watch other children who arrive with shovels and pails and dig for hours. They pile up sand into mounds and they fetch ocean water to fill holes that need to be filled. From adults, they may seek approval, but never involvement. They seem to know their jobs. Should they encounter problems with the project, a pint-sized supervisor usually emerges to give the necessary directives. By the end of the day, it has all worked out.

And something was built that could possibly last forever.

The Brutish Idiot

2009-09-24T12:10:00.025-04:00

"Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great brutish idiot that goes where prodded."

-- Charlie Chaplin

When I was about five, we lived in a first floor apartment, and my bedroom was close to the street. At night, I would wake up frightened by ghosts on my ceiling. When I told my father about them, he explained that I was seeing shadows cast by the headlights of cars, coming in through and around the window shades.

I didn’t believe him. He probably knew that the ghosts were harmless, and thought it best to deny their existence. They danced on the ceiling and had strangely contorted faces. They sometimes seemed to be smiling and laughing. Perhaps they had always lived in our building, and at night gathered in my room. They were probably smiling and laughing at the fear they could see in my face.

My only defense was to hide under the covers until they decided to move on.

A few years ago, my wife and I went to a nearby art museum. Usually visits to museums and art exhibits are at her suggestion, but this one was mine. I read a review of a show called: Monsters. I thought it would be fun to walk through an adult house of horror, and gaze at images so frightening that I would feel an ice cold shiver run through me.

Sadly, the show was a big disappointment. We saw paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs of monsters. But these were someone else’s monsters. Some were repulsive, some bizarre, others pitiable, but none even slightly terrifying.

I thought about it later. I wondered about that failure to frighten.

The scariest monsters don’t usually look like monsters. They look ordinary. They look like us, that is, until in a flash, they become something very different. If your daughter had come home with her new boy friend, and said, “Mom and Dad, I’d like you to meet Ted Bundy,” you might have felt pleased that her new guy had such a charming personality, not to mention the face of a young T.V. anchorman. I am positive that his victims glimpsed a very different face.

When I was around ten, I became a boxing fan, and the great boxers became my heroes. The best gift ever was a subscription to Ring Magazine, the bible of boxing. I used my allowance to buy every other boxing magazine that I could find on newsstands.

I especially enjoyed reading about boxers from the past, mainly the heavyweight champions. I read each of their stories in detail, often more than once, and I cut out their pictures and made a big collage. They were colorful men, from the first ever to hold the title, John L. Sullivan, the Boston Strong Man, to Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, to Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler, to Rocky Marciano, the Brockton Blockbuster.

At ten, my imagination was limitless. It put me ringside at the greatest fights of all time. It made the champions my friends. It promised to one day make me one of them. But a limitless imagination is not always a joy.

One magazine told the story of Jack Johnson, the first black man to become Heavyweight Champion of the World. The year was 1908. A picture showed Johnson battering the champion, Tommy Burns. And it showed a section of the crowd.

These men were dressed, as was the custom of the day, in jackets, ties, and the brimmed hats that were fashionable in the early 1900s. These were gentlemen. They were probably druggists, shop owners, school teachers, trolley drivers, maybe some doctors and lawyers. Some of them would have been your neighbors. If you were a child in 1908, they would know you by name.

And these men were on their feet, yelling: “Kill the nigger!”

I must have felt a cold shiver go through me. I was stunned. I carefully cut out the picture of Jack Johnson, along the outline of his body, and threw away the faces in the crowd. But those faces never left me. I had never seen hatred worn so proudly.

At the age of ten, you are too old to hide under the covers and too small to stand up to the monsters that invade your mind. So here’s what you do: You find a way to lure them into a cage, then you slam the door shut, and you lock it. Then you build a wall around the cage so that they won’t see you and you won’t have to see them. You will deal with them later, when you are a lot bigger and a lot stronger.

As Heavyweight Champion of the World, Johnson was loathed by those who believed that he had upset the natural order. Sportswriters openly compared him to an ape. An animal now held the most coveted title in sports – an ungodly mockery. The cry went out for a Great White Hope.

The cry was especially desperate because Jack Johnson’s behavior was never less than outrageous. In his match with Tommy Burns, he was called a nigger by his opponent, by his opponent’s cornermen, and by those faces in the crowd. He answered their taunts by propping up his weak opponent to inflict greater damage, not just to Burns, but to those snarling white men who were quickly losing hope. While they fought, he joked with onlookers to show how easily he was handling their champion.

Negroes were considered to be subhuman and fit only to be servants, but the champ wore handmade suits, drove expensive cars, bought a house in an upscale white neighborhood in Bakersfield, California, and he consorted with white women. He simply did whatever he felt like doing. He seemed to be living his life to taunt his “white masters” the way he toyed with Tommy Burns.

The urgent cry for a Great White Hope grew deafening. But, as a fighter, Johnson was far superior to any possible contender. Each white hope fell with embarrassing ease, until only one remained.

Finally, finally, finally. James J. Jefferies, the former champ, who had retired undefeated and had returned to his life as a farmer, answered their prayers and agreed to return to the ring one last time, saying, “I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a negro.”

On July 4, 1910, in Reno, Nevada the fight took place that was billed as “The Hope of the White Race vs. The Deliverer of the Negroes.” Johnson won by a knockout in the fifteenth round. In cities all across the U.S., blacks took to the streets to celebrate the unimaginable. Whites answered them with rage, and lives were lost in the violence.

The pillars of society could not permit this perversion of nature to triumph. If you’ve seen the movie, The Great White Hope, or the Ken Burns documentary, Unforgivable Blackness, you know the rest of the story.

Jack Johnson fled the country to avoid imprisonment for a trumped up conviction on violating the Mann Act --transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. He lived in exile, in Europe and South America. In 1915, he lost his title to a mediocre fighter, named Jess Willard. Some say he threw the fight. Others believe he was just out of shape and tired of battling. He returned to the U.S. and served his prison sentence of a year and a day.

The natural order had at last been restored.

The aging Jack Johnson finished his boxing career in a lackluster fashion, losing most of his fights. He became old news. With a little time, what he had accomplished would be forgotten. One day he stormed out of a North Carolina restaurant after being refused service because of his race, and died in a car crash. The year was 1946.

He should had lived one more year.

In 1947, America’s sport was baseball. And that sport was about to assume an important place in American history.

Another black man named Jack began doing what no black man had been allowed to do. He began playing major league baseball. The story of Jackie Robinson bears few similarities to that of Jack Johnson.

Robinson was a highly disciplined man with enormous inner-strength who endured the animosity of many of his teammates, the racial slurs and the well aimed spikes and inside fastballs of opposing players, and, of course, the jeers and verbal attacks of angry fans – and, for his first two years, endured it all silently and without retaliation.

His job was to break major league baseball’s color barrier, and he did it by maintaining a standard of behaviour so impeccable that critics would have nothing to challenge. The story of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers has been chronicled numerous times, and I can offer nothing new.

But to me, one day in his ten-year career stands out from all the rest. In 1947, the Dodgers were at Crosley field in Cincinnati warming up before the game. The crowd was the ugliest that Robinson had ever seen, and ever would see. They jeered him relentlessly, shouting “Nigger, go home!” And, they hurled bottles onto the field. It would be too dangerous to play the game.

Then, an amazing thing happened. The captain of the Dodgers, a Southerner from Kentucky, Pee Wee Reese, walked over to Robinson and put his hand on the black man’s shoulder. And then, another amazing thing happened. The jeering and the bottle throwing suddenly stopped.

Over the years, Jackie Robinson would have to endure many more acts of hatred, but he would not be doing it alone.

Before the start of the 1947 season, Dodger players, led by those from the South, circulated a petition, stating that they would refuse to play unless the black man was removed from the team. Pee Wee refused to sign it. He said that it had nothing to do with racial decency. It was all about making a living for his family, after having just returned from the war. It was a practical matter.

Some of those close to him weren’t so sure. They recalled Pee Wee telling a story about when he was ten-years old. His father took him along on a trip to Brandenburg, Kentucky. On that trip, he pointed out a tall tree, with a large branch that extended almost horizontally. The elder Reese told his son that it was called the Hanging Tree, because that’s where negroes were hanged.

As an adult, Pee Wee recalled the story to friends and family members. Clearly, it had made an impression. I think you know where I’m going with this. At ten-years old, and with an uncontainable imagination, he envisioned the faces of those men in the lynch mobs. The faces of ordinary men who turned into Freddy Kruegers.

So he did what a terrified ten-year old does. He lured them into a cage, slammed the door shut, and quickly locked it. Then he built a wall around the cage so that he wouldn’t have to see their faces.

And that day in Cincinnati, he was more than big enough and more than strong enough to face them. And they knew it.

On Coney Island, in Brooklyn, stands a statue by sculptor, William Behrends. It depicts two men, wearing the uniforms of summer. One man has his arm on the other’s shoulder. You know exactly who they are.

I’ve never seen the statue. If you decide to plan a trip to Coney Island, let me know. Maybe I can arrange to meet you there.

A Ted For All Seasons

2009-08-31T16:22:00.007-04:00

The year was 1969. I was driving down Route 2, in eastern Massachusetts, heading west from Cambridge to Arlington. This was, and still is, a nicely kept road, bordered by trees, lawns, and attractive New England neighborhoods. So, it was a bit jarring when I noticed a giant two-word message spray painted on a retaining wall. It said, “Ted Stay.”

It must have been July 20 or 21 that I saw that crude, but effective billboard, a picture of which appeared the following day in the Boston Globe. I’m able to narrow down the time frame because the message was meant for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, in response to calls for his resignation.

On the evening of July 18, Ted attended a party on Martha’s Vineyard’s Chappaquiddick Island. He left with a 28-year old campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne. There is much speculation as to where they were headed, but we will never know for sure. We do know that his car went off the Dike Bridge into Poucha Pond. We know that she drowned, he survived, and the police weren’t notified until the next day.

This is too clean and simple to be totally accurate, but to me, the citizenry of Massachusetts fall neatly into three different groups. There are those who adored him, including the the Route 2 spray painter, the 62 percent of our voters who returned him to office in the next election, and the tens of thousands who lined up to view his casket or wave solemnly at his passing hearse.

Then, there is a loud, vitriolic minority who rule the talk radio airwaves, some of whom still call him a murderer, and all of whom believe that his liberal policies have contributed heavily to the decline of this once great nation.

And finally, there is a tiny (or so it often seems) third group, comprised of those of us, who view him as neither hero nor villain. For us, he was the third brother – not Jack, not Bobby. We like him a little or we dislike him a little, and the same for his policies.

Those who do not adore him believe that his family handed him a Senate seat which he did not earn. “If your name were Edward Moore, instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke,” said his opponent for the nomination, Ed McCormack.

And of course, he was right. It wasn’t that Ted had a lousy resume; he had no resume at all. But McCormack sounded like a bully and the voters didn’t like that. So Ted was elected. He became part of our political furniture. Certainly not a mover and shaker. He was just there. Until that night.

This past weekend, I watched nearly every minute of the services and listened to all of the eulogies. And I was moved. They described a wonderful man, with a huge heart, who treated ordinary people with the same focused attention he gave to the powerful. They described a man who had worked tirelessly, brilliantly, and selflessly, and who had become the biggest mover and shaker in Washington.

But I felt with complete certainty that, at the JFK Library and later at the Mission Hill church, Chappaquiddick silently hovered over the room. It didn’t get mentioned by name, nor should it have been.

But when Teddy Jr., delivering his eloquent and touching eulogy, mentioned redemption and referred to his father “righting wrongs of his own failings,”and when President Obama mentioned “experiencing personal failings and set-backs in the most public way possible,” we knew that they were respectfully acknowledging the invisible witness.

Ted clearly panicked that day in 1969. His actions appeared selfish and cowardly. And because he was a good and decent man, he felt unbearable shame and guilt, as any good and decent person would.

They say he lost his presidential bid in 1980 because he was unable to answer the question: “Why do you want to be president?” I think he heard a different question in his mind: “Why do you deserve to be president?” And the demons would not let him answer.

There was the period in his life of notoriously bad behavior. The public drunkenness and the womanizing. I remember, back then, hearing Orrin Hatch tell us what he had told Ted privately: that his lifestyle was getting in the way of the good work that they were doing together and should go on doing together.

The eulogizers didn’t speak about the period of self-destruction, or at least not directly. We heard over and over that Vicki had saved him. Yes, here was a man who badly needed saving. Somehow she convinced him to forgive himself, or perhaps she helped him broker a deal with his demons.

Ted never had to worry about being re-elected. Except once. In his 1994 race against Republican newcomer, Mitt Romney, the polls showed the challenger remarkably close. I voted for Romney, thinking that it would be a refreshing change to replace our senator-for-life with a younger, pro-business, fresh thinking Republican.

But Ted’s faithful were not going to turn him out. He won with 58 percent of the vote -- a squeaker for him, but convincing enough to discourage future would-be challengers from being foolish enough to enter Kennedy Country.

Mitt later saw an opportunity to win the Massachusetts governorship. Again, I voted for him. He got off to a promising start, showing us his tough, pragmatic CEO brand of leadership. Then, when we needed him most, he was missing in action.

Though he denied the rumors, Mitt was quietly gearing up for his presidential bid, using Massachusetts as a stepping-stone, and he was busy with the very time-consuming work of changing his stance on social issues to make himself acceptable to the GOP’s conservative base. To win the nomination, he would need an extreme makeover.

For all the years that liberal was a dirty word, and when successfully labeling your opponent a liberal was all you needed to win an election, Ted Kennedy proudly remained liberal-in-chief. You knew where he stood, and you knew he would remain there, no matter what.

“It was his character – his courage, his kindness, his persistence, his honesty, and his almost heroic patience in the face of setbacks – that was the most important element of his success.”

The above quote comes from an editorial comment on the inside flap of Peggy Noonan’s book, When Character Was King, a loving portrait of her boss, Ronald Reagan. Can that same character label be suitably applied to Ted Kennedy?

Well, there are those three groups. Those who adore him would smile with approval. Those who despise him would be infuriated by the praise. And some of us, in the third group, might finally let go of our indifference.

The Superior Scribbler Award

2009-08-17T06:48:00.015-04:00

Several weeks ago, Rae at Weather Vane presented me with the Superior Scribbler Award. I'm late in responding, but I do have excuses. To begin with, I'm lousy at following assignments. I'll spare you the self-analysis. Just take my word for it.

Also, my last post went off in a direction of its own. It became a two-parter and then a three-parter. That wasn't my plan. When you let your writing breathe, it can turn into a beast.

Rae, are you buying any of this?

You can read the story behind this award by clicking on the link below.

The award comes with a list of rules, and here they are:

1. Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to five deserving bloggers.

2. Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author and the name of the blog from whom he or she as received The Award.

3. Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on their own blog, and link to This Post, which explains the award.

4. Each Blogger who wins the Superior Scribbler Award must visit This Post and add their name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives this prestigious honor.

5. Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on their blog.

So, which five lucky bloggers will be getting the news that I have designated them Superior Scribblers?

Sorry, you'll have to wait, and so will they. I'm often late on my assignments, but I do take them seriously.

Truthfully, I don't yet know how I will determine my fabulous five.

There are some new bloggers out there who would love to have this award. Maybe I'll run a contest.

The Baltimore Colt & Mr Broadway-Part III

2009-08-09T15:00:00.024-04:00

In January of 1969, I was away at college. One day, while sitting around my apartment, I answered the phone, and heard my father’s voice say:

So, would you like to go to the Super Bowl? He was headed for Miami with some of his buddies, and he had an extra ticket.

The Super Bowl? Truthfully, I was on the verge of saying, “Thanks Dad, but I’m kind of busy.” Did I really need to be in the stands, watching the NFL Champion Baltimore Colts, generally considered to be the best football team in history -–better even than the vintage Vince Lombardi Green Bay Packers-- annihilate the flashy, fun to watch, and weakest AFL Champion to date, New York Jets?

He broke the brief silence. “It will be fun. I’ll see you in Miami.” Then, he hung up.

I met him at the hotel, where we and most of his friends had to sleep in the lobby, because the rooms had been oversold. That was my father. He didn’t sweat the details. Rooms? Who needs rooms? In fact, he didn’t quite have tickets either, but he scrounged some up.

You’re probably thinking, “What a great dad, taking his kid to The Super Bowl.” True enough, but I need to provide a touch of perspective. Once I arrived in Miami, I quickly figured out what was what.

Dad wanted a week of deep-sea fishing and pool-side-vodka-and-tonic card playing with his cronies, with a splash Super Bowl thrown in. So he used the I think I’ll take our kid to The Super Bowl ploy to get a free pass from my mother, who probably thought, “Well this will be a nice father and son experience. How could I possible object? ”

Sunday, January 12, 1969, Miami, FL, The Orange Bowl
SUPER BOWL III.

I don’t know about you, but when I arrive early at a stadium or arena to watch an event, I pay close attention to those who begin filling the seats around me, and I decide, based on very little information, what kind of people they are and whether or not I’m going to like them, or at least be able to tolerate them.

Hey, if I’m going to spend several hours in this temporary, human zoo of a neighborhood, I want to have some idea of who I’m going to like and who I will eventually want to kill. I don’t think that’s just me. I think its human nature. I’m pretty sure you do it too.

We arrived quite early. My seat was one row back from Dad and his gang, so we were kind of together, but not really. They would periodically look back and talk to me so that I would feel included. Then the seats around me began filling in, creating my very own soon-to-be community of friends, neighbors, and blood enemies.

The Colts, that season, had beaten every team they played. They lost one game to the Cleveland Browns, then came back and trounced them the next time they met. This team had zero weaknesses.

No question about it. This would not be the year for severely disrespected AFLers to show the world that our brand of football was every bit as first-class as that stodgy, stale, NFL brand that owned the majority of football hearts and minds.

To my left, a gang of eight middle-aged guys were climbing the steps and heading toward my row. They were loud NFL diehards. The odds were good they would not be sitting anywhere near me. They eventually reached my row, checked their tickets and filed in. Fabulous. These were my next-door neighbors.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly introduced themselves. Six of them were the kind of NFL meatheads who believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the AFL champions could be beaten by Notre Dame. My guess was that they had all been drinking since breakfast, but one of them (The Ugly) stood out from the others: louder, drunker, and proudly annoying.

Two of the eight were AFL fans (The Good), who after some quick declarations of who we all were, switched seats to sit near me. They handed me an extra beer, and started calling me: “Boston.” I called my neighbor, in the next seat, “Houston.”

We shared stories of my Patriots and his Oilers. When he especially liked one of mine, he would laugh and jab me in the shoulder. My father glanced back, took in the scene, and clearly thought it was hilarious.

Throughout the afternoon, I would hear: “Hey, pass this one down to Boston.” And, I’d be handed a beer, accompanied by a friendly punch in the shoulder.

Prior to the arrival of my new best friends, I was thinking that this would be like watching a bullfight. A young, attractive, and inexperienced matador had drawn the biggest, meanest bull on the planet, and I would be rooting for the matador not to get gored.

The five Bad Guys, to my left, would be rooting for the matador to get gored, stomped on, tossed against the wall, and get gored again. The Ugly sixth would have been severely disappointed by that outcome.

But all in all, these guys were my favorite neighbors. The group to my right included a surprising number of women and teenage girls who were obviously recycling the hats and dresses they must have worn to the Kentucky Derby. They would have little idea of what was going on down on the field. They were a football audience I had never seen before.

To drum up interest for this absurd mismatch, league execs abandoned the bland title of AFL-NFL Championship Game, and officially renamed the contest: The Super Bowl. And guess what? It actually did create a lot of good buzz, but most of that buzz was due to the fact that for the very first time, this battle between the league champions had a genuine rock star:

Joe Namath.

And like any true rock star, Joe Willie had fans – lots of them. Many were brand new to football. And many of these brand new fans were women and teenage girls. They may not have known Joe’s stats, but they knew he was sexy, and they headed for Miami or to their television sets in record numbers. This would change professional football forever.

“This will be Namath’s first professional game,” said ex-NFL quarterback and coach, Norm Van Brocklin. That insult, and others like it, were felt deep in the gut of every AFL player and fan.

Joe was not the silent type. His angry response to one public insult was: “We’ll win the game. I guarantee you.” The quote became a front-page headline in most newspapers. So, more times than I could count, the Ugly would yell out, at the top of his lungs, “This will be Namath’s first professional game.” And more times than I could count, Houston would yell back, “We’ll win the game. I guarantee you.”

And the Derby chicks to my right would look over, shake their heads, and make faces.

The game got underway.

On their first possession, the Colts marched down field, headed for a touchdown. They did not get it. Stopped on the Jets’ 27-yard line, they had to settle for a field goal. But they missed it. Houston was elated. He, of course, punched me in the shoulder.

We watched a first half of football that nobody expected to see. The Colts missed another field goal. The Jets scored a touchdown. The half ended with the Jets on top, 7-0. I was not relieved. My Bad Guy neighbors were a little quiet, but as one of them put it, “Hey for the Colts, being down 7-points at the half is the same as being up 14-points.”

He was probably right. The Colts would make the necessary adjustments, as had the Packers in Super Bowl I. The Jets had most likely played their hearts out and had little left in the tank, just like the Chiefs, in Super Bowl I.

We all figured the Colts would come out roaring in the second half.

They did not.

It was like they had some kind of collective nervous breakdown.

The Jets controlled the ball for most of the third period. When the Colts did have the ball, they fumbled, got intercepted, and blew big plays.

Houston was jubilant. His buddies were slumped in their seats. The Derby Chicks were having a ball. Namath was actually going to deliver on his guarantee. The mighty Colts were powerless to stop him. It was a little too soon to start celebrating, but we were pretty darn sure that Vindication Day had arrived for 20 million AFL fans.

Then, something happened to change the game. Well, it changed the game for me. The quarterback, Earl Morrall was pulled from the game. Morrall, who had a great season, had been the beneficiary of an injury to the Colt’s real quarterback, Johnny Unitas.

There are those who say that Unitas’ injured elbow was completely healed and there are others who doubt that it was. But with four minutes left in the third quarter, Number 19 was standing behind his center. Johnny Unitas, the quarterback who had thrown touchdown passes in 47 consecutive games, and who ran an offense better than any quarterback in history was now on the field.

Suddenly, I became unaware of what was happening in the seats around me. All of that faded to black. With the sudden twist of plot, I was into this drama, totally. If you read my Part I, you know why. At 10 years old, the greatness of Johnny U. was permanently wired to my soul.
Johnny U. played well, but not well enough to win. It may have been the sore arm, or the rust from spending the entire season on the bench, or it may have been his teammates who couldn’t shake off the bewilderment of what was happening to them.

Final score: Jets 16, Colts 7.

Namath’s teammates carried him off the field, on their shoulders. His finger, pointed high in the air, said it all, “We’re number one.” The Colt players were stunned and no doubt embarrassed. I didn’t see much sportsman-like congratulating going on. Some Colts just turned and made their way to the locker room.

But I saw Unitas shaking hands with some of the Jets. Of course.

The next day, on the plane back to college, I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes and replayed the game. When I got to four minutes left in the third period, I stopped and realized that if Unitas had turned the game around and won it, that would have been just fine with me. I could have waited another year for the vindication that I so badly wanted.

A sportswriter wrote that if those same Colts played those same Jets nine more times, the Colts would win all nine contests. I would not have challenged that claim. But on the day it mattered, an unlikely messiah made good on an outrageous boast, delivering exactly what he had guaranteed.

The next year, the merger between the NFL and the AFL would be finalized. The AFL name would disappear. It would all be one big NFL, with an American Football Conference and a National Football Conference.

Three old NFL teams: The Steelers, the Browns, and the Colts would move over to the AFC, blending the two leagues into one.

That decision ended the greatest sports rivalry of my life.

THE END

The Baltimore Colt & Mr. Broadway-Part II

2009-07-31T10:06:00.008-04:00

The famous, and often irritating, sports announcer and commentator, Howard Cosell cautioned us not to take our sports too seriously, “because lets face it, sports is the toy department of life.” I agree completely. But there are times when many of us, the highly rational included, find ourselves living in a recurring dream where no matter how hard we try to find our way out of the department store, we end up back in that damn toy department.

It’s not rational to mourn the loss of a game, as you would the loss of a person, or even a beloved pet. We know that. We know that moping around the day after our team goes down in defeat, instead of moping around about war, starvation, and melting glaciers is juvenile at best. When our team walks away losers, we of course remind ourselves that it is, after all, only a game, though it may take a lot of those reminders to ease our suffering.

I don’t know the psychology behind fan-dementia. I’ve heard the sports-as-emotional-safety valve theory. Maybe that explains it. You scream at players and referees instead of killing your spouse or children.

Then again, maybe it’s some kind of evolutionary hard wiring. Two cavemen would start pounding each other with clubs to determine who would have first crack at the dinosaur meat. A crowd would gather. Some would root for the tall, handsome caveman and others for the pudgy, endearing caveman. This may have given birth to caveman clubbing championships. Some, like me, would root for his favorite. Others, like my father, would place a bet.

January 15, 1967.

Contrary to what you may think, the game was not called Super Bowl I, nor was it called The Super Bowl. And that was just fine, because there was nothing super about it. The first ever AFL–NFL Championship Game, which pitted the champions of the upstart American Football League against the iron of the National Football League did not have to live up to the hype, because there wasn’t any, at least not by today’s standards.

This landmark game, which, years later, would retroactively be named Super Bowl I, took place at the Los Angeles Coliseum.. The merger between the leagues that formed today’s National Football League, was newly in the works, and I suppose the brass believed that the heated rivalry (more like mutual hatred) would make the game a really big deal. It did not.

Hardcore NFLers believed that the season was over with the Packers winning the NFL Championship. This was after all a great Packers team, coached by none other than the great Vince Lombardi. To hardcore and even softcore NFLers, the AFL Champion Kansas City Chiefs were little more than a glorified college team, composed of NFL rejects and wannabes. To them, this game was just a business scheme. To them, the game was a joke.

And because The Game That Was Not Called Super Bowl I was considered a a laughable contest, it did not have what we’ve now come to expect as givens in our over-the-top-hyped-to-the-max unofficial national holiday known as Super Bowl Sunday. It did not have a sell-out crowd. With an attendance of 60,000, the Coliseum was about one-third empty.

It did not have ticket prices, unaffordable to most of us. The average ticket price was $12.00, and you could have gotten a seat for 6 bucks. A 30-second television commercial did not go for $3 million. It went for $80,000.

There was however a segment of the population for whom the game did mean something – the diehard fans of the American Football League. To most of us, this game was the most important professional football game of our lives.

The Chiefs had a great season. There was no doubt in our minds that they belonged in the championship game. They didn’t get there by some fluke. They were the best in the AFL, and now they were our team.

According to Ange Coniglio who runs the site: Remember the AFL, the number of fans who attended AFL football games from 1960 to 1970 totaled 17 million. It’s impossible to know how many others watched the games on television, but I think we can safely say that there were about 20 million of us out there, emotionally involved with the Patriots, Bills, Jets, Chargers, Raiders, Oilers, Dolphins, Broncos, and Chiefs.

And at the end of the 1966 season, all of us became Kansas City Chiefs. Nick Buoniconti, the great linebacker for the Dolphins, who started his career with the Patriots (and would likely have remained a Patriot, had the team not needed to free itself of his exorbitant $38,000 salary), said that he had never rooted so hard for a team in his life.

At stake, was nothing less than vindication –-for the fans and players of the AFL.

I was away at college. There was one television set in the entire dorm, and it was located in a big room off the lobby – open to everyone who showed up.

So fifteen AFLers watched the game with fifty NFLers. It may have been my own paranoia, but within those groups there were no shades of gray. There were the arrogant Packers-This-Game-Is-A-Joke group and the confident Chiefs-Will-Surprise-The-World group. There was also a small group of those who really didn’t give a shit. Most them were girls who thought we were all morons.

The first half was a good football game. The Chiefs played the Packers to a near tie. The half ended with the Packers on top, 14-10. If not for a missed field goal, it would have been 14-13. So far, the game was anything but a joke. It was good, competitive football. The Packers players were surprised. NFL fans were pleasantly quiet. AFL fans were ready to celebrate.

You see the Chiefs really didn’t need to actually beat the Packers; they just needed to be contenders. They could be Rocky Balboa losing to Apollo Creed.

Apollo was the official winner; he won the match. Rocky was the real winner; he won the fans.

Hell, in the regular season, the Packers had beaten the San Francisco 49ers 20-7; the Detroit Lions 31-7; the Chicago Bears 17-0, and they had destroyed the Atlanta Falcons 56-3.

Losing by a touchdown or even by a touchdown and a field goal, and suddenly, we’re more than just officially in the same league – we are really in the same league.

Tragically, we would be denied both the official win and the real win. Lombardi and his Packers went into the locker room at half-time and made the necessary adjustments. The second half was the game we were dreading. The Packers won decisively. Final score: 35-10. They carried Lombardi off the field on their shoulders. His grin said it all. He had defended Rome from the barbarians.

Those of us, lingering by the television set, took the verbal blows.

We would be the junior league for another year. In fact, for another two years. The second AFL-NFL Championship Game, which was not called Super Bowl II, was nearly a carbon copy. We had great hopes for that one too. It was an upset in the making. Again it was the Green Bay Packers, but a weaker edition than the 1967 champs, against the Oakland Raiders, our toughest team. Final score: Packers win, 33-14. Oh the Agony!

And with that defeat, I started to lose hope. “Every dog has his day,” my father always said, but I really had to wonder how many long years of snickering we would have to endure before we would have ours. It’s just a game. It’s just a game. It’s just…

Twenty-six years later, I was in Miami on a business trip. I would be meeting a new business associate from Chicago for lunch, and then the two of us would spend an afternoon making sales calls together. Driving to the restaurant, I realized that I had allowed way too much time for lunch. Our first appointment was only ten minutes away. What on earth would we talk about for an hour and a half?

I asked him if he was originally from Chicago. No, he said, he was from San Diego. “Oh,” I said. “So those ’64 -’65 Chargers, do you think they could have beaten the best of the NFL, had there been a championship game?” His eyes lit up. We ordered drinks. We went over the roster, player by player. Damn, we were running out of time. We ordered another round.

I don’t remember which of us brought up The Game That Was Not Called Super Bowl I. But we felt the same way about it. He had rooted for the Chiefs harder than he had ever rooted for his own Chargers, and he took the loss as hard as I did. This was first-degree commiserating.

And then I said something.

I don’t know where it came from. Truthfully, I don’t. I said. “Look, deep down, whether we were aware of it or not, we were all afraid that the Chiefs were going to go out onto that field and be humiliated…that the game would be 60-minutes of our guys fumbling, dropping passes, getting flattened on the line, and generally, curling up in the fetal position.”

That didn’t happen.

No, we were beaten by a better team, but we were not humiliated.

But, you were afraid we would be, weren’t you?

I guess we all were. Whether we admitted it or not, we had to be.

Actually, we came out of it pretty well. We lost, but we did not look like the amateurs they took us for.

We left the restaurant feeling pretty good. We kept talking football – AFL football. We missed the exit for our first appointment, and arrived ten minutes late. No matter, the person we were meeting was twenty minutes late. We sat in the lobby, relishing the old, forgotten victory that we had just dug out of the dirt.

Call it rationalizing, and maybe it was, but I decided to hold on to it anyway. I had walked away from the television set, twenty-six years earlier, with a sense of relief, and that was a kind of victory, one that had been lost in the immediate swirl of loud, gloating voices.

And I came to discover that lots of us, deep down, felt that same sense of victory that we failed to recognize when it would have provided some welcome consolation. Thoughts and emotions can get awfully tangled up, even in the toy department.

Of course the consolation prize that I discovered in that Miami restaurant couldn’t undo the feeling of gloom I felt way back then, following that championship game. No, it would take almost a miracle to do that.

And, there was another game on the horizon –

The Game That Was Called Super Bowl III.

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Baltimore Colt & Mr. Broadway - Part I

2009-07-21T07:44:00.011-04:00

When you’re a kid, things get poured into your brain that never leave. That’s how most of us become sports fans. We get infected before we’re able to build our natural defenses.

What I remember most about 1959 was watching professional football, on Sunday afternoons, in my living room, with my father. Being an especially astute 10-year old, I noticed a big difference in the way Dad watched baseball and the way he watched football.

When we watched Red Sox games, he would glance at the newspaper, leave the room or talk on the phone, then returning his attention to the game, he would ask: “What did I miss? But when he watched football, he watched every play. If the phone rang, he would hold it to his ear and talk, but his eyes would be focused on the screen. He had an on-off switch in his head, so that if I spoke during a play, he heard my voice, with all of the words filtered out. It converted my chatter into white noise.

In Boston, in the 1950’s, we did not have a professional football team of our own. We watched the New York Giants. We rooted for the Giants, but we knew that they were not really ours. It was like we were borrowing them.

I’m going to have to correct a previous statement. I rooted for the Giants. Dad rooted for a different team every week. When I asked him why, he explained that when he bet on a game, it only made sense to root for the team that his money was riding on. He added, instructively, that I should never, ever make a sentimental bet.

Some fathers preach safe sex, mine preached safe gambling. I suppose all vices can get you into trouble, so you need to watch the ones that you think are most likely to entrap your kid.

One Sunday afternoon, the Giants were about to play the Baltimore Colts. When quarterback, Johnny Unitas took the field, my father said, without taking his eyes off the set, “He’s the best there ever was.” Dad was not one for superlatives. With all the games, in all the sports that we watched before and after this one, he only said that about one other player, running back, Jim Brown.

For me, this was one outstanding piece of information. I knew that I would walk into school the next day and let my friends know how smart I was. The method chosen for this sort of announcement would be critical. If I stood up and blurted it out, it would be obvious that I was simply passing on information that I just received from someone else. So I knew that I would have do it with a kind of casual thinking-out-loud delivery:

Hey, did you guys watch the Colts game yesterday? Man, Unitas has to be the best there ever was.

It has been said about Unitas, that for most of any game, he was great, but there were other quarterbacks who were his equal, that is, until the final two minutes. Back in those days, quarterbacks called their own plays. Unitas was completely in charge, and he was a master. For him, being down by a touchdown, with two minutes to play was like playing with the game tied.

Johnny U. (as he was called) completed a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games. A feat, often compared to Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak. The 1959 season ended with the Colts beating the Giants in the championship game, which is still often referred to as the greatest game ever played. For most fans, it solidified Unitas’ position as football’s number one QB.

Finally, in 1960, we got our own team, the Boston Patriots. They were the last franchise awarded in the upstart American Football League. Mainstream pundits everywhere said the league wouldn’t last. Earlier attempts to challenge the NFL had failed, and surely this one would be no different.

That old AFL were a fun gang to watch. With wide-open offenses, they scored a lot of points. The uniforms were colorful and so were the players – like Abner Haynes, Clem Daniels, Elbert “Golden Wheels” Dubenion, Cookie Gilchrist, Gino Cappelletti,Wahoo McDaniel, Big Daddy Lipscomb and Lance Alworth.

But it was not always easy being a fan. For one thing, the Patriots had no home of their own. They borrowed playing time at Harvard Stadium, Boston University Field, Boston College’s Alumni Field, and Fenway Park. Following the Patriots, literally meant following them around.

Worse than that –much worse than that– was the putdown factor.

NFL fans, players, and most sportswriters looked down upon the AFL as a junior league. I heard this a lot: Any AFL team could be beaten by a good college team. AFL teams can’t play defense. Their biggest stars wouldn’t even be starters in the NFL. No matter how much success the league began to enjoy, the insults never let up.

You’d be sitting at a bar, watching the Chargers and the Chiefs, or the Pats and the Raiders, and someone would yell to the bartender to switch channels to the real game, meaning the NFL game, regardless of how dull it might be. You might protest, but you would usually be shouted down.

The AFL wasn’t going to go away. AFL teams were attracting more talented players, which included opening the doors to more and more black players, never an NFL priority. We AFLers were extremely loyal fans. Our days of borrowing an NFL team were over for good. We were not going to let this league die.

Seeing the writing on the wall, the NFL made a big strategic move. They would merge with the AFL. Well, imagine that!

The merger would not be fully completed until 1970, but in 1967 they would begin their new relationship with a slate of inter-league exhibition games. On August 13, the NFL Baltimore Colts played the AFL Boston Patriots at Harvard Stadium.

That morning, my father put down the newspaper, and said, “We should go to the game.” I probably told him I was busy. After all, I was now a semi-rebellious 18-year old, living THE Sixties.

He probably told me to stop thinking I was so cool. We drove to the stadium, bought tickets and ended up in about the fifth or sixth row. The announcer began calling the names of the Colt’s starting offense. With their helmets tucked under their arms, Each player trotted onto the field, right up to the section of stands where we were seated.

We all gave each Colt a warm welcoming applause. And, then, the announcer’s voice said, “at quarterback, Johnny Unitas.”

And, instantly, I was 10 years old.

He trotted toward us and stopped, as had each of his teammates. But this time, the crowd rose to its feet, clapped – louder than any clapping I had ever heard – and cheered, and didn’t stop. The slender man wearing the white uniform, the crew cut, and the boyish smile seemed genuinely touched. He nodded a thank you. Near me a man with a small boy had tears in his eyes. And so did another. And another.

Mind you, this was years before men got together for the specific purpose of group crying. Public tears, in the men’s department of life, were not yet fashionable.

My father looked at me with a grin. The grin said, well you hot shot, smart-ass, think you know everything little punk, you will never forget this moment as long as you live.

And he was right about that. Actually, he was right about all of it, but that’s another story.

The Colts beat the Pats 33 to 3. I didn’t remember the score; I had to look it up. The score really didn’t matter. It was just a meaningless exhibition game. But for the fans of the Boston Patriots, of the American Football League, who happened to be in the stands that afternoon, this was Validation Day.

If you happen to be an old AFL fan, I do not need to explain what we felt on that August afternoon, watching our guys, the new guys, the cast-offs, the disrespected, playing on the same field with the Baltimore Colts.

Or, how it felt having The Greatest There Ever Was as a guest in our home.

My father has been gone for nearly two decades. Often, when I think of him, I think of that day.

But there is more to this story.

In fact, this is really just background information, intended to put the real story more squarely in perspective.

TO BE CONTINUED…

FLIP THAT LOUSE!

2009-06-30T16:19:00.011-04:00

Jenny Sanford is the first lady of South Carolina, and might have been in the running for next first lady of the United States. That is, until that wild and wacky hiker of a husband of hers confessed to spending Fathers Day down in Argentina, doing the dirty tango, thus putting a rather abrupt end to his political future and probably his marriage.

Please shout: Olé!

Jenny seems like a nice woman. So I thought I would send her some words of advice. Sure, she’s probably getting plenty of that already, but mine is different, because I’m putting my advice in a song.

To get the most out of this, you will need to sing it as you read it. I’m not kidding. This is the only way it’s going work.

But first, I will need you to go grab some of your favorite gangsta rap music and play it until you are immersed -- mind, body and soul. Select that tender tune you first heard blasting out of car, in line at the drive-thru, or stopped next to you at an interminable red light, to which you responded by racing to the mall in breathless pursuit of your very own CD, which you’ve been saving, like a chilled bottle of champagne, for the right occasion, which just happens to be right now.

So pop it in, and by all means, crank up the volume.

Please no cheating. I shouldn’t have to say this, but you will not get the same effect from Rod Stewart’s Greatest Hits or anything from Norah Jones. That stuff will not help you with the proper interpretation of my song. In fact anything like that will kill the message, not to mention the rhythm.

O.K. I’m assuming you’ve done as I asked, and your mind and body are now on the same wavelength with mine. But first let’s do a short warm-up exercise to help open your lungs and close your mind. Ready? All together now, one…two…three…sing…

FLIP THAT LOUSE!
KEEP THE HOUSE!
DON’T BE A MOUSE!
DUMP YOUR SPOUSE!

Again. This time, Louder.

FLIP THAT LOUSE!
KEEP THE HOUSE!
DON’T BE A MOUSE!
DUMP YOUR SPOUSE!

I can’t hear you! Jenny can’t hear you!

FLIP THAT LOUSE!
KEEP THE HOUSE!
DON’T BE A MOUSE!
DUMP YOUR SPOUSE!

Great. Now please take a moment to catch your breath.

Now visualize yourself staring straight into the MTV camera.

You should try to come up with a threatening facial expression. Think gangsta. And, for the best possible delivery, keep pointing your index finger as though you’re jabbing it into someone’s chest.

Oh, one more thing: there’s no profanity in my lyrics. If you really dig your gangsta rap, feel free to drop-in the F-word, wherever you think it’s needed.

Ready? All together now, one, two, three…

HE WENT TO ARGENTINA TO PLAY WITH HIS CHIQUITA
DON’T CRY FOR HER LIKE YOU DID FOR EVITA
THANKS TO HER HE’LL NEVER BE PREZZ
BUT HE’S THE ONE TO BLAME LIKE JUST YOUR GUT SAYS.
HE’LL APOLOGIZE WITH NOTHING BUT LIES, SO JUST…

FLIP THAT LOUSE!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!

HE WENT BEFORE THE CAMERAS TO TELL HIS STORY
HE LOOKED SO STUPID, HE’LL NEVER HAVE THE GLORY.
JEN, YOU DID THE RIGHT THING BY NOT JOININ’ IN
THAT MISSUZ SPITZER THING CAUSES CRAWLIN’ OF MY SKIN.
LET HIM TWIST ALONE, TOTALLY ALONE, AND…

FLIP THAT LOUSE!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!

HIS AIDS COME TO YOU. THEY BEG AND CAJOLE
TO SAVE HIS FUTURE IS GOOD FOR THE PARTY
BUT HER TAN LINES TRUMPED ALL THAT FISCAL CONTROL
THOSE PLEAS FOR FORGIVENESS ARE PRETTY DAMN TARDY.
STAND IN HIS WAY? STAND IN HIS WAY? YOU’LL…

TRIP THAT LOUSE!
TRIP THAT LOUSE!

HOLIDAYS ARE COMIN’ AND THIS GETS STICKY
HAVIN’ HIM AT THE TABLE SHOULD MAKE YOU SICKLY
THIS TURKEY-GUY PLEASE KEEP OFF YOUR LIST
HE CAN GO SALSA WITH HIS ARGENTINE MISS.
LEAVE HIS CHAIR EMPTY, JUST…

SKIP THAT LOUSE!
SKIP THAT LOUSE!

HE’S PROBABLY TELLIN’ YOU HE’S FILLED WITH REMORSE
HE WANTS TO BE PUNISHED, BEATEN WITH FORCE
DON’T HESITATE. THIS WILL MAKE YOU FEEL GOOOOD
GRAB SOMETHING ROUGH, HIDE HIS FACE WITH A HOOD
AND WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT…

WHIP THAT LOUSE!
WHIP THAT LOUSE!

AS HE CRUMBLES, TEARS OF PITY YOU MAY SHED
YOU MAY EVEN WEAKEN AND LET HIM INTO YOUR BED
HE MAY HAVE HIS WAY, THEN FALL OFF TO SLEEP
WHILE HE’S LYIN’ PEACEFUL, REMEMBER HE’S A CREEP.
GO GET YOUR SCISSORS AND…

SNIP THAT LOUSE!
SNIP THAT LOUSE!

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN YOU’RE READY FOR SOME FUN
TRY SAN DIEGO FOR ITS SURF AND ITS SUN
FIND A BLOND SURFER FOR YOUR OWN BOY HOTTIE.
WHEN THE GOV ASKS WHY? IT’S THAT TWENNY-SOMETHIN’ BODY.
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN TO…

FLIP THAT LOUSE!
FLIP THAT LOUSE!

A very special thanks to those of you who actively participated. If Jenny will sing this number with the same sneering, finger pointing, take-no-poop attitude, she’ll be just fine. Trust me. Music works miracles.

The Mama and The Papa

2009-06-25T14:05:00.015-04:00

Her nickname was Mama, pronounced Ma-maah. She was a black woman from Louisiana, who came to New York to begin a career that she would not be allowed to pursue in almost any other U.S. city. In 1961 she rented the basement of a building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and started an experimental theater, which she named Café La Mama.

She started her theater to help two of her friends who wanted to be playwrights. Even back then, Broadway was ruled by box office mainstreamism, and Off-Broadway -- once a freer alternative -- was fast becoming a near clone. The fresh artistic voices that were often angry, irreverent, even revolutionary, found homes in the random collection of New York churches, cafes and basements that became collectively known as Off-Off-Broadway.

La Mama began with tiny audiences. Mama would walk on stage before each performance and ring a cowbell to get all five or ten, in attendance, to stop talking. To sustain the theater and the playwrights and actors who slept on her floor and ate her food, Mama kept her day job.

They did daring, ground-breaking work in that basement at 321 Ninth Street, work that got them noticed, but they were forced to move, several times – pushed out by complaining neighbors, racism, phony charges of prostitution, zoning regulations, and license requirements aimed at cleaning up the riff-raff.

New York was not hospitable, but Mama dealt with it all, attracting, protecting, and nurturing new artists, allowing them to push the artistic envelope, while she battled city hall.

Mama’s real name was Ellen Stewart. You can be an avid theatergoer and not recognize the name. She was a tireless promoter, but never a self-promoter, which might explain why the names of some that she nurtured: Sam Shepard, Terence McNally, Nick Nolte, Bette Midler, Harvey Keitel, Danny DeVito, James Coco, and Al Pacino are more recognizable. Ellen introduced Harold Pinter to American audiences.

In 1965 Ellen took her show on the road. Her troupe performed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Denmark, and eventually in more than 70 countries. Ellen spread the gospel of experimental theater all over the world, and brought the world’s artists back to La Mama.

In the late 1960s, La Mama, the anti-Broadway, harnessed the energy, creativity, and social upheaval of the times in ways that sometimes pushed their productions onto Broadway stages, Hair, Godspell, and Jesus Christ Superstar started at La Mama before going neon.

Even with success, La Mama lacked a permanent home, that is, until 1970 when Ellen’s tenacious fundraising, having won grant money from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Kaplan foundations, enabled La Mama to buy its own building, from which it could not be evicted.

That is, until 1992, when the theater was threatened with foreclosure and needed to be saved.

Friends, made along the way, helped rescue La Mama. Friends like Robert DeNiro, Estelle Getty, Sally Kirkland, F. Murray Abraham, and Billy Crystal. Mama was never about getting rich, and maybe that had a little something to do with earning the respect and admiration of those who mattered most.

For nearly 50 years, Ellen Stewart has provided a stage for the new, the original, and the provocative.

Still, her work is not done. Asclepius is now running at La Mama. Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine and healing. Some think the play is Ellen’s poetic commentary on our present health care system. Asclepius was conceived, written, and directed by Ellen Stewart. She is believed to be 91 years old, and has been in ill health for the majority of those years.

The story of Ellen Stewart and La Mama -- from a dingy dirt floor basement to one of the most influential forces in American theater -- really is quite a story.

But it is not the story I came here to tell.

You see, in 1950, when Ellen first arrived in the Big Apple, with sixty dollars to her name, it was to pursue her dream of becoming…

…a fashion designer.

Alone and broke, she walked into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, lit some candles, and prayed for a break. On the way out, she noticed the sign across the street for Saks Fifth Avenue. She had never heard of Saks Fifth Avenue, but she walked in, found the personnel department and asked for a job. While sitting there, designer, Edith Lances walked in, looking for someone to snip threads from brassieres. Instantly, Ellen had a job.

If you don’t have religion, that might make you reconsider.

Black women who worked at Saks were required to wear blue smocks. I’m sure all blue smocked black women looked pretty much alike to everyone else. Maybe that was the point: to conceal their individuality. But, customers began to notice the colorful handmade clothing that Ellen wore under her blue smock. They wanted to know what department they could visit to buy something like it for themselves.

Three months after starting at Saks, snipping threads from bras, Ellen became executive designer of sportswear. Her designs were a sensation. She became the only American to have two gowns at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. The career of her dreams was now reality.

And she lived that reality, until her health made her quit. She had a heart condition and more. Ellen does not shed much light on the details of her life. Those who love her story are left to connect the dots themselves. But she ended up resigning from Saks and doing freelance designs for Bergdorf Goodman, Lord & Taylor, and Henri Bendel.

Then, she had a nervous breakdown. She went to Morocco for a change of scenery and a change of life. She rested and reflected. Then, she returned to New York, rented a basement and opened her theater.

And now, as commentator, Paul Harvey used to say, you know the rest of the story.

Well, not quite. There’s still a piece missing.

And here it is.

When she first arrived in New York, in 1950, she explored the neighborhoods. On the Lower East Side, she happened onto Orchard and Delancy Streets, where the sidewalks were crammed with tables and pushcarts, piled high with fabric.

There she met Abraham Diamond. The elderly Jewish merchant and the black woman from Louisiana became friends. When she’d visit, he would hand her a packet of fabric with a request to make something special. She would come back, wearing what she had made, and he would parade her around, showing off her creations -- the creations that, at Saks, would be seen and admired, sticking out, irrepressibly, from under her blue smock.

The fabric, of course, was a wonderful gift, but perhaps not as precious as the accompanying words of advice, that to find fulfillment, she should have a pushcart, and that she should push it for others.

Ellen later said that, while recovering in Morocco many years later, the words of the man she called, Papa Diamond came back to her.

The basement she rented at 321 Ninth Street was supposed to be a studio, for displaying her designs. Instead it became Café La Mama, with a pushcart wheel hung over the entrance.

Find fulfillment by pushing the cart for others. Interesting concept.

------------------------------------------------------------

Postscript: It is not easy to obtain the facts of Ellen Stewart’s life. Do the research and you will find contradictory information on her age, place of birth, the exact nature of her health problems, and other details that would normally be easily accessible. But, on personal matters, Ellen has not been one to set the record straight. One day there will be a definitive biography, written by a privileged member of her inner circle. Until then, she will live in the kind of mystery that surrounds an avant-garde stage character. And, she probably prefers it that way.

Dear Ford Motor Company, I Have An Idea...

2009-06-11T11:20:00.003-04:00

That’s right FMC, I have an idea, and I think you’re going to like it.

But first, let me just say congratulations! You won. You played it perfectly by not taking the bailout money. GM took piles of it and then went back and begged for more, and now they’re in Chapter 11 anyway. It couldn’t have worked out any better if your own writers had written the script.

And by the way, did they? Just thought I’d ask.

Didn’t you just love (privately, of course) that little business of closing all of those dealerships with almost no notice? What mischievous Tokyo consulting firm suggested that PR triumph?

Story after story of family-run dealerships, doing business in their communities for generations, sponsoring little league teams, supporting the local theater company, remaining loyal to GM and Chrysler through good times and bad, suddenly and callously forced to sell the their cars at huge losses – cars they had bought in good faith, cars they were often pressured to buy – putting their employees out of work and driving the owners into financial ruin. Nice.

And won’t that be the gift that keeps on giving, as we get to drive by all the prominently located shuttered dealerships, in buildings that will likely sit depressingly empty for a very long time, serving as monuments to incompetence. Catchy phrase, don’t you think?

So, while GM continues to implode (and Chrysler, well, I think we can safely forget about them. Can’t we?), Ford is fast on the way to becoming America’s Car Company.

And, your brilliant strategy is starting to show.

Your cars have been getting some very impressive reviews. I rented a Fusion recently. Not a bad car at all. And, I can see myself driving a Mustang, or maybe an Escape, but I’ll get to that later.

In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed at least three taxicabs that were Escape hybrids.Yup, the next time the price of gas goes out of sight, those guys will be shuttling passengers without losing profits. Smart. Very smart. It’s great street-level, sticky advertising, and it won’t cost you a dime.

And, speaking of great street-level, sticky advertising, here’s my idea.

This has been a bitch of a year for all of us. You’re probably stuck with some cars that, sadly, will never get sold. I’ve heard that some of those cars will eventually be worth less than the ground they sit on and will be sent to the crusher to be turned into metal splinters.

I would like you to save one of those for me. My Subaru Forester is on its last legs. I’ve been driving foreign cars my whole adult life. It’s time for me to get with the program – The Ford Program.

Here’s my deal. Give me one of those cars. Like a lot of people, I happen to be a victim of this very dismal economy. But, please do not think that I’m asking for a gift. Far from it. I want you to turn the car into a mobile billboard. You could paint a powerful message on both sides like: Ford Escape Hybrid – 34-MPG City, or Most Fuel-Efficient SUV On The Road Today – something like that.

Your job is to figure out the message and my job will be to get out there and spread that message. And I just happen to have a few strategies for doing this.

STRATEGY #1:

I call this my CAN’T MISS ME IF THEY TRY STRATEGY.

I would intentionally get caught in traffic jams, where I’m on a highway, heading in the jammed up direction. Where heading south is bumper to bumper, I would be heading south.

I would be sure to be in the left hand lane, so that free flowing traffic, heading north would have to see your mobile billboard, and I would smile and wave as those cars pass by. They would plainly see how much I was enjoying the traffic jam in my comfy, fuel stingy Ford.

I would commit to doing this at least three days per week, for at least an hour per day. We’ll put that in my contract.

STRATEGY #2:

I call this my HOW MANY CASES OF TOILET PAPER WILL FIT? STRATEGY.

I will make weekly trips to Costco, where I will buy cases of as much bulky product as could be neatly packed into the car.

First, I would be centrally parked so that shoppers going to or from the store could watch me cheerfully loading cases of toilet paper, paper towels, humongous bottles of salad dressing and tomato sauce, into the cargo space. While loading my mobile billboard, I would loudly remark, “I can’t believe how much this car can hold. It’s practically impossible to fill this baby up.”

STRATEGY #3:

This little gem is called the HERE COME THE ELEPHANTS STRATEGY.

For exposure to pedestrian traffic, there is nothing better than being downtown when families are walking from the parking garages to the civic center or arena to go see the circus. The trick here is to be stuck at a crosswalk where the pedestrian traffic never lets up. If you don’t hit it just right, you circle around until you do.

It’s not just circuses. This strategy works great for sporting events, home or garden shows – any event where pedestrians cheerfully exercise their right to ignore green lights and saunter across busy streets, sticking it to people behind the wheel. I confess, I don’t understand the mentality, since most of those pedestrians had just, themselves, been behind the wheel. But, no matter, it works every time.

Well FMC, are you with me so far? Admit it, you like this, don’t you? Now, let me give you the big picture, which is not just me out there spreading the good word about America’s Car Company, its lots of us. It’s an army of highly trained, super motivated, unemployed foot soldiers (make that: car soldiers) positioned strategically across the country, on a mission.

Are you seeing the heartwarming PR in this fabulous campaign?

Well, Ford guys, that’s just a taste. I have other ideas. Lots of them. But, I don’t want to give them away all at once. If you like this deal, I’ll be happy to send you a proposal with lots of detail. I don’t want to be negative, but I did see that movie about the guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper, who brought his idea straight to you and you stole it, basically ruining his life.

Look, we’ve all done things we’re not proud of. And, besides, that was the old Ford Motor Company.

The new Ford Motor Company has found its Focus, created its Fusion, made its Escape, and gained its Edge. Pretty good, hah? And, there’s a lot more where that came from.

I’ll be waiting for your call. Oh…and, red, if possible.

Out of Work, Luck, Sight, and Mind

2009-05-28T10:35:00.030-04:00

September, 2008 - 321,000

October, 2008 - 380,000

November, 2008 - 597,000

December, 2008 - 681,000

January, 2009 - 655,000

February, 2009 - 651,000

March, 2009 - 699,000

April, 2009 - 539,000

These are the official figures of non-farm job losses, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And what a story they tell. The economy hadn't been a good story for sometime, but in October, it went over the cliff, and by November...well, the numbers tell the story. Come to think of it, there are many more stories that the figures don’t tell – several million stories.

You often hear it said that the economy is shedding jobs. Shedding jobs? If you’re a few pounds overweight, you might want to shed a few pounds. You may get mad at your cat, when she sheds all over the furniture. Let’s agree to drop the word shed and replace it with hemorrhage – as in blood. Much more appropriate, don’t you think?

To listen to some, we should have taken to the streets and celebrated those April job loss numbers. They were “surprisingly good.” The markets reacted well. There’s cause for optimism. The May numbers will be out on June 5th. Who knows? We may fall below the 500,000 mark. That will certainly be cause for celebration. Won’t it?

Imagine only 500,000 new souls being added to the ranks of the unemployed. As if that spectacular news isn’t enough, we are hearing reports that the housing market may finally be bottoming out. It probably hasn’t quite hit bottom yet, but let’s try not to be the skunk at the picnic.

Make no mistake about it. Good news will soon be upon us and we’re going to greet it with open arms. We’ve been waiting anxiously for it and we’re ready to start cheering, no matter what.

But about those millions of stories that don’t get told. The human stories behind the staggering numbers that are mostly confined to charts and graphs. Unless, their story just happens to strike a certain human-interest cord, which gets them singled out by 60 Minutes or featured in your local newspaper, you will not know them. And they will not know each other.

Today, dignity is protected, at all costs. No more standing in line to get your public assistance check. Our sensitive society spares you the humiliation. You go online. You get it in the mail, or by direct deposit. They give you classy looking debit cards, rather than ugly, demeaning food stamps. You are protected from prying eyes. From busybodies who want to know your business. You are practically invisible.

I did not live through the Great Depression. I know those sad times only through books, movies and black and white photographs. Those pictures of men standing in the bread lines or swinging pick axes by the side of a road made an indelible impression.

For those men there was no anonymity. They were out in the open. But, they were with each other. There were lots of others standing in the same lines, who were just as down and out and just as visible – real faces, not just statistics.

Today, how awfully alone some people must feel in the dignified privacy of their own homes. Not seeing the faces of neighbors and strangers as burdened as themselves. And how much worse it will seem to them when confronted with headlines and news stories announcing: The End of The Recession, and reports on a Return to Normalcy.

Get ready to hear about how well so many of us are doing. Stimulus money creating new businesses and revitalizing existing ones. New opportunities creating new fortunes. Consumer confidence back at last. Mall shoppers once again piling onto the escalators.

But don’t look for good job numbers quite so soon.

Jobs come back slowly – painfully slowly. Businesses get good at running lean. They will see the economy getting healthy, but they will not yet trust it to stay healthy. They will wait to hire. And the employment numbers will stay bad, though experts will tell us that they are not as bad as they could be – not nearly as bad as they could be.

But what about all of the individual downward spirals that have been set in motion – taking families and futures slowly down the drain? For so many, a job loss is just the first loss, followed by losses of incalculable value: marriage, home, health, life-savings, education. For some strong or fortunate souls, the spiral will slow or maybe stop, providing breathing room, allowing them to recover.

For others, it will not.

I have no idea how many will fall into the recover category and how many will continue whirling downward. I just know that there will be a lot of each. For the recoverers, let’s be grateful – not just for them, but also for ourselves. We’ll remain stronger.

For the down-the-drainers, I guess it’s better not to see them. Seeing them up close could cost us our optimism.

Remember, you heard it here. The good news is coming.

Boxing Lessons From Nana

2009-05-19T06:58:00.013-04:00

When I was in the fourth and fifth grades, my parents regularly went out on Friday nights, leaving my grandmother with the job of keeping an eye on my sister and me. I don’t remember what my sister did on those nights, but I remember quite vividly what my grandmother and I did. We were glued to our twenty-one inch Zenith, watching The Gillette Friday Night Fights.

The fights, as Nana referred to all boxing matches, were a visit into a very different world. We watched as some guys took awfully bad beatings, which didn’t seem to bother my grandmother, who grew up in a much rougher environment than her suburban grandkid. We watched Carmen Basilio win, while covered in his own blood. “Don’t worry,” she told me. “He’s a bleeder. He’s not really hurt.”

At that age, all of the fights, including the bad ones, were interesting. All of them had lessons to be learned. Lesson #1: You sometimes get beaten up while you’re trying to win, or maybe trying, with everything you’ve got, not to lose.

Not all fights were clean, crisp exchanges of jabs, crosses, and uppercuts. Some featured round after round of one fighter draped around the other like in a scene from They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Lesson #2: Fighting while exhausted comes with being a pro.

One of those Friday nights held special significance for all of us at school who hung around with Anthony Vasquez. When Anthony first told us that the up and coming fighter, Joe DeNucci, who was about to fight the tough ring veteran, Ralph “Tiger” Jones, was his cousin, we naturally thought he was making it up.

Then, one day, our teachers ushered us all into the school auditorium, where, sitting up on the stage was – Holy Cow! – Joe DeNucci, and running up onto the stage to introduce him was – Double Holy Cow! – Anthony Vasquez. Did that shut us all up? Yes. That shut us up good.

I don’t remember a word of what Joe said to us that day, but, I remember that, thanks to my grandmother, The Friday Night Fights had introduced me to my first real gladiators, and that day in the auditorium at Bowen School, brought to us by Anthony Vasquez, put one of those gladiators very up close and personal. In my memory, he had a small band-aid above one of his eyes. That mental snapshot is still with me.

Soon after that big day, Joe lost his fight with Tiger Jones. “The kid just needs a little more seasoning,” said my dad, reassuringly, and added: “The kid put up a pretty good fight.” It didn’t matter so much that he lost. He fought bravely. But he must have learned that he would never get the best of a Tiger Jones, so he went on to carve out a future in Massachusetts state politics. When he’s on television, I always see the fighter, not the state auditor.

Years ago, I started hearing and reading alarming stories about parents and teachers who used their influence to have scorekeeping removed from their kids’ baseball games. Apparently, losing contributes to a loss of self-esteem. So your team hits lots of home runs, while the other team hits nothing but air, and both teams get to go home and celebrate. Call me crazy, but I think a kid should be armed with more than self-esteem when it comes to dealing with the real world.

The desire to win is in our bones. Winning is how we measure ourselves against our rivals, and it is the way we are judged by our spectators. Once upon a time, an early caveman was the first to club a rival caveman over the head in order to be in the perfect position to club to death a four legged dinner prize. (I guess that would have been a double win.) And, a Stone Age grandmother just might have been on hand, to enjoy the contest.

The great Lombardi, famously uttered: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” Trying to take that sentence literally always gives me a headache, but we know what the great coach was saying.

You’ve heard the overused line about ties: A tie is “like kissing your sister.” We demand clear winners and losers, especially when we invest our time and passion, and scream ourselves hoarse.

Seldom have I ever rooted for a draw. The first Ali-Frazier fight was one of those times. I loved Ali – most of us college, white, liberal, Nixon-hating fight fans did – but I also admired like hell Frazier’s toughness. They both deserved to win. Only one of them could. It was Frazier’s leaping left hook, which perfectly exploited a weakness in Ali’s otherwise perfect defense.

Find your opponent’s biggest weakness, exploit it, and victory shall be yours – usually. You know that from playing tennis with your work buddy. You may pretend that it doesn’t matter that much to you when you find his or her weakness and exploit it, but then, of course, you’re lying.

Ali and Frazier were each other’s nemesis. Each had the other figured out, so much so that they nearly killed each other in their final contest – that famous Thrilla in Manila, which should have ended in a draw. The only clear winner was us. In your whole life, you don’t see many contests like that one. Without each other, their claims to greatness would always have been in dispute. It took one to validate the other.

Most of us are not win-at-all-cost people. We want contests to be fair. Of course, fairness doesn’t always happen. Refs make lousy calls that take wins away from the deserving. But that’s part of life. The human element can change the outcome – like when players cheat.

Drugs are also part of life. No question about it, the era of performance enhancement drugs has badly tarnished some of our sacred sports – especially baseball. The records we grew up with, as kids, are the measurements we still hold dear. McGwire’s amazing record has been rendered meaningless, and has only served to shine the light more brightly on Roger Maris. Bonds could have gone on to hit 2,000 big ones, and it wouldn’t have mattered. We care about our winners so much that we demand purity in their performance.

Then there’s Manny.

Manny Ramirez plays baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He used to play for the Boston Red Sox. I was at the Fenway opener, his first season. First time at bat, first pitch, a blast out of the park. Oh man, we were going to love him. And we did, for a while. What was he really like? He was described by one of his teammates as a “big teddy bear.”

What’s not to love about a big teddy bear who hits the ball out of the park when the game is on the line? Well, as we got to know him, we found that Manny didn’t always try very hard. Didn’t run out his slow grounders. Didn’t attack the ball in the field. Took time off with phony injuries, when the team really needed him. Finally, we were happy to say goodbye to the childish athlete with the bloated paycheck.

Still, there was something nice about a guy that didn’t do what too many superstars got caught doing – the drug thing. Alex Rodriguez – no surprise – A-Rod’s a jerk. Roger Clemens – too old to still be throwing that kind of heat – well, the Rocket’s also a jerk. But Manny, in spite of his faults, did it naturally. We had to respect that. Until now.

He got caught with one of those bad prescriptions, and he’s out for 50 games. That little weakness of not caring if he let his team down a little bit here and a little bit there becomes a possible season killer for the Dodgers. The other day, at the command of the owner, he apologized to his team.

Now he needs to apologize to the kids who are wearing his jersey. Kids who have a whole memory full of stats and measurements that they might as well throw away.

Kids who are keeping score.

Astonishing Signs of Normalcy

2009-05-12T09:30:00.004-04:00

I’ve said this before, and I really need to say it again: I’ve seen too many movies. You might not think a movie problem is a big deal, but trust me, it really can hurt you when it comes to the reality thing.

Take, for example, Iraq. This war has been going on for as long as I can remember, and you might be a little foggy on some of its history. If you think back, you’ll remember turning on the news and seeing some of the locals toppling that big Saddam statue. That scene was pretty darn dramatic; wouldn’t you agree? It was so dramatic, I figured there wasn’t much that could top it. There would be some more action. Then, the movie would end with dancing in the streets – kind of Bollywood.

Then, they caught Saddam. There he was, right there on our television screens, looking like some crazed, off-his-meds street person. Time to roll the credits? Not so fast. OK, here it comes: The grand finale – MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Remember that? Well, that was a very long time ago -- measured in cinematic time, that is.

I grew up with little screen and big screen cowboys. The good guys weren’t always that good, but (sometimes with a little prodding from the townspeople and the pretty school teacher or sultry saloon gal) they eventually did what they had to do. They walked into the saloon, called out the bad guys, killed the worst of them and either jailed the rest or ran them out of town.

It was a damn good formula. Even a very modern Western, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven stuck to the same basic script. The hero walks into the saloon and kills the villain. Clint’s own formula, which brews up a not-so-virtuous hero and a not-so-evil villain, is more morally murky than the westerns of old, but the plot keeps the tradition alive.

Back to Iraq:

In the midst of being stuck in that awful quagmire, an odd thing happened that almost went unnoticed. Wyatt Earp rode into Tombstone, told the frightened townspeople to go home, and that he, Morgan, Virgil, and Doc Holliday would take care of the bad guys. That’s pretty much what happened when General Petraeus announced his plan for “the surge.” Of course, everyone, including me, was sure the quiet cowboy was just trying to buy some time for his boss to sneak out of Dodge, unmolested. A surge? Give me a break.

The Iraq movie had gone all reality on us, ages ago. Every time a cattle rustler got killed, more would pop up. That pudgy, pompous little cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr was continually sticking his thumb in our eye. No, there would be no Hollywood ending.

But, hold-on a minute.

There was a Hollywood ending. The General and his gang cleaned up Baghdad. The pudgy, pompous cleric was told to behave himself. And he did. The General reported: “astonishing signs of normalcy.” Of course it wouldn’t last. But it did. Sure, there’s still work to be done. People are still getting blown up, and Baghdad isn’t on anyone’s top ten vacation destinations, quite yet, but even Tombstone still had outlaws, after the Clantons were removed.

So where was the celebration, marking this incredible accomplishment? There should have been a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, but the Committee in Charge of National Celebrations had ruled: No more Mission Accomplished celebrations until May 2, 2103 -- one hundred years from the date of that unfortunate scene on the USS Abraham Lincoln, where a cowboy president flew noisily into the spotlight and took that famously undeserved bow.

Americans expect heroes to emerge and handle every major crisis. We shouldn’t. We had our Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Patton, Schwarzkopf, and lots of others, including I think, Petraeus. (This is no place to argue good wars vs. bad wars. Let’s do that another time.) It would be good for us to start losing that unrealistic expectation. Maybe it was a good thing not to celebrate the General’s achievement -- letting it slowly slip from our consciousness, making it easier for us to stop expecting the arrival of movie heroes and movie endings. Sure it takes away some of the joy of victory, but we’re better off in the long run.

Now, on to the next movie:

The gangs had looted the banks. Wait, that’s not quite accurate. The bankers were in the gangs that had looted the banks. That may not be it either. It’s confusing. The point is that everyone went broke except the gang leaders who got paid millions and billions for stealing our money. “Don’t panic!” said the new President. “A new marshal will be riding into your town. Go on with your lives, and leave the bad guys to him.”

Then, one day, we met him.

We waited anxiously for him to tell us that everything would be fine, now that he was in town. We listened. He finished. Then, the markets and our hopes dropped like a rock. Some said it was because he was too close to the gangs, maybe even a gang member himself. Yes, that was the problem. Or, part of the problem. He was too much one of them, but he was also too much one of us. Too little. Too nervous. Too flimsy. He was dwarfed by the small screen. Forget the big screen. This movie was not going Hollywood.

And so it continues. Every day, we search for astonishing signs of normalcy – in the job market, the housing market, the stock market, the shopping malls.

I’m writing a screenplay.

I call it a Surrealistic Monster Movie Western. In it, The General is seated at his old roll top desk in the frontier jailhouse, with his shotgun across his lap. (I am really, really mixing metaphors here. It's that damn movie problem.) He is keeping a close eye on Monsterstan (that would be the Afghanistan-Pakistan monster, in case it wasn’t obvious to you), when his mail arrives. In it, he finds a foreclosure notice for the jailhouse, along with notification that his pay is being rolled back and his 401k match has been eliminated.

On the streets of Tombstone, the similarly plagued citizens are looking for someone to hang. He calls for his deputies. Together they round up the bad guys – you know, bad bankers, bad brokers, bad regulators – and march them to the O.K. Corral.

And shoot them.

You think that’s going too far? Relax. It’s just a movie.

You Have to Keep the Fights Clean and the Sex Dirty

2009-04-28T06:33:00.030-04:00

-- Kevin Bacon’s advice on how to have a long and successful marriage.

I admit it. I like a good argument.

For as long as I can remember, people have told me not to argue. When I was a little kid, I was sitting on a sidewalk, yelling at the top of my lungs that Mantle was better than Mays and my friend, Billy was yelling at the top of his lungs that I was wrong. He then fell over onto his back and started laughing. It wasn’t fun-laughing; it was put down laughing -- the kind that said that I had no idea what I was talking about. That made me mad and I called him a jerk. He called me a stupid jerk. An adult walked up to us and told us we could have a nice discussion, without having to argue. So we stopped, which worked out for me because, at that time, I could not have come up with anything harsher than stupid jerk without sounding silly.

Had I been older than my years, I would have explained to Mrs. Busybody that Billy and I were learning the fine art of argumentation and were having a hell of a good time in the process. I remember a lot of childhood playground arguing, where a good time was not had by all. Feelings often got hurt. That’s how you get the thick skin needed to survive. And, when facing possible ridicule, arguments got better. The next time the Mantle vs. Mays discussion came up, I was armed with statistics. Once I had compiled and memorized enough statistics, I definitely moved up a weight class.

It was a sweltering Saturday afternoon. There were eight or nine of us, sitting around the baseball diamond after a little league game. We got into Mantle vs. Mays vs. Aaron vs. Williams vs. Ruth, etc., etc., etc. For me, it was an eye opener. Statistics got trumped by other statistics (some of which seemed made up). Shouting, snickering, and exaggerated, falling-on-your-back laughter won some kids over and silenced others. Two of my friends got up and stomped off. It was a verbal brawl.

I remember walking home, trying to sort out what had happened.

Some really good arguments took place in my college dorm room in 1967 and 1968. They were unplanned and they usually happened late at night. They would suddenly erupt, with five, six or seven of us, rotating in and out, some carrying the book they were trying to cram into their brain for tomorrow’s exam, with topics shifting and energy fluctuating. It was always about politics and life: Vietnam, unfair teachers, frustrating girlfriends, the meaning of life, parents who were stuck in their ruts and just didn’t get it, Mantle vs. Mays, how we would change society. There was often music playing in the background. Jefferson Airplane was one of the steady choices. Don’t you want somebody to love…Don’t you need somebody to love…until the energy ran out, at maybe 2 or 3 in the morning.

I confess. I miss those dorm room-late night-late 60’s freewheeling bull sessions.

Arguing makes us sharper. We get to actually hear our ideas once they leave our mouth, and we get to see how others react to them. We know when we hit a bull’s-eye and when we missed the target completely. If the argument is important to us, we take it and hone it. Maybe we search for statistical back up or expert testimony. Argument, (unlike its benign cousin, discussion), is a contact sport. It establishes our intellectual and verbal superiority (temporary though it may be) over others or shows us where we need improve in order to hold our own. It burns brain fat and replaces it with muscle.

Shannon O’Brien ran for governor of Massachusetts. There were several debates where she faced her Republican rival, Mitt Romney. I knew right away that I would never vote for her, because I didn’t like the way she argued. She was extremely condescending toward Mitt. I couldn’t get passed that. I wasn’t crazy about Mitt, but he argued in an intelligent, respectful manner. He went on to become a disappointing Governor, who used the office as a stepping-stone to run for president, which occasionally made me wonder about the wisdom of my vote, but thinking back to her irritating, cheap trick, winking at the audience, I knew I was incapable of voting the other way.

I grew up with the television show, Firing Line, where William F. Buckley Jr. took on all comers. I never saw anyone lay a glove on him. I often hear people being called eloquent, when they are really just articulate. Buckley was eloquent.

In my last year of college, I sat in a packed auditorium listening to him speak. He spoke at length and then took questions. One after another, students and faculty rose, went to an aisle microphone and asked their questions. I don’t think most of them were really interested in Buckley's answer. Lots of the questions were not really questions, but thinly disguised arguments. Each questioner wanted to go one round with the champ. Each wanted to show he belonged in the ring with him. It was very hot in the room that night. The champ took off his jacket, loosened his tie, unbuttoned the top button of his white shirt and continued doing his thing. When the time was up, he invited those who did not get their turn at the mic, and those spectators who hadn't gotten their fill, to join him in a smaller room for more verbal jousting. I couldn’t go, so I don’t know when it ended. My guess: 2 or 3 in the morning.

My favorite television arguers, whether on the left or the right, are highly intelligent, considerate types who don’t interrupt even the rudest diatribes. In my book, Pat Buchanan, George Will, David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, E.J. Dionne, Arianna Huffington, and Frank Rich are among the best of the best. I especially enjoy watching George Will as the blood vessels in his forehead seem about to explode while waiting politely for Katrina vanden Heuvel to complete her argument.

But as enjoyable as it is to be a spectator to world class arguing, it doesn’t provide the joy and exhilaration of being a participant. I wish my 60’s dorm room was a movable feast. Maybe it is. Maybe I just haven’t figured out how to move it.

I think if more of us argued openly, often, and well, we’d have fewer problems. When you think about it, the anti-war movement in the 60’s conducted one big boiling argument, taking place around family dinner tables, in the streets, around the world, and showing up on the 6 o'clock news. And, in the end, it was that argument that ended the war. Too simplistic? Not to me.

And by the way, Mantle was better – arguably.

P.S. Sorry if you were mislead by the title. This was all about clean fighting and had nothing to do with dirty sex. Maybe later.

The Wisdom of Don Corleone

2009-04-21T09:00:00.004-04:00

If you happen to be around my age – that would be 60, at the moment – it’s entirely possible that you’ve seen too many movies, and that some of them have clouded your perception of real life. Movies often simplify what life usually complicates. For me, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is one of those movies.

Here’s the set-up.

The Corleone “family” is at war. The Godfather, Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) has been gunned down by members of a rival family. He survives. His son, Michael (Al Pacino), avenges the assassination attempt and is sent to Sicily to hide out. Santino (James Caan), the oldest son, is ambushed and killed.

Seeking peace, the recovering, but ailing Don Corleone calls a meeting of the bosses of the five major families where he announces that Michael will be returning to the U.S. and if anything should happen to him, he will “blame people in this room.”

(I’ve left out some details, but you’ve seen the movie, so you’re with me so far. If you haven’t seen it, you’re probably in the wrong blog.)

The Corleones believed that it was Don Tattaglia (Victor Rendina), who initiated the war. He is present at the meeting, and so is Don Barzini (Richard Conte), who calls for mutual trust. Compromises are made and an understanding is reached. Or so it seems.

As a result of the meeting, Don Corleone now knows that it was not Don Tattaglia who led the strike against him.

“Tattaglia’s a pimp. He never’a could’ve outfought Santino. But I didn’t know until this day…it was Barzini, all along.”

I’ve seen the movie several times, and I’ve studied that scene for clues. What was it that Barzini said that gave him away? Damned if I can tell. It must have been something in Barzini’s voice or demeanor. But as subtle as it was, the old Don read it like a message on a billboard. Can we call that wisdom?

I do.

Imagine that decades ago, when the game was still winnable, that a semi-retired corporate Don stays behind at the end of a board meeting, walks up to the CEO of GM and, with his hand on the executive’s shoulder, says: “Roger, it’s not Ford; they can’t beat us at this game. It’s the Japanese.”

In a later scene, Vito Corleone is advising Michael, the new Don Corleone, when he says this:

“So…Barzini will move against you first. He’ll set up a meeting with someone you absolutely trust…guaranteeing your safety and at the meeting, you’ll be assassinated.”

That’s what I would call valuable information. And, just to be a little more specific:

“Now listen…whoever comes to you with this Barzini meeting…he’s the traitor. Don’t forget that.”

Michael had damn well better not forget that, because the old Don will die soon – in fact, in the very next scene. They didn’t have executive coaches back then, so Michael will be totally on his own, and one mistake away from not making it out of his rookie season.

Later in the film, we are not surprised when a trusted soldier (a captain, actually), Salvatore Tessio (Abe Vigoda) approaches Michael, and says:

“Mike could I have a minute? Barzini wants to arrange a meeting. He says we can straighten any of our problems out…”

Too bad for Tessio. Michael has been waiting. Tessio, not Michael, will soon sleep with the fishes.

Imagine that a year or eighteen months ago, wise old Dons at AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, the U.S.Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the country of Iceland (to name a few) had stepped from the shadows and said, "We’ll be in BIG TROUBLE unless we make THESE CHANGES right now.”

And that’s what movies have done to me. There clearly are not enough Don Corleones to go around. There were individuals wise enough to see trouble ahead and individuals powerful enough to effect change, but were there none with both the wisdom and the power?

How exactly did the real smart guys at the real big companies and the real important government agencies manage to screw up every economy in the civilized world? There are real brilliant analysts who are right now figuring all of this out. No, they haven’t quite done it yet. It’s all tangled up. There are all those nasty little knots that have to be pulled undone with fingernails and teeth, before all the strings can be neatly laid out on the table.

As I see it, too many of those too-big-to-fail companies were intelligence-heavy and wisdom-lite. They needed fewer smart guys and more wise guys. You don’t get wisdom with your MBA.

Yes, I know. Murder and extortion are bad. Real bad.

It’s just a movie. Movie makers can serve up a character that is more bad than good, flesh it out with the likes of a Brando, and make us like him. Real life mobsters kill for convenience and will take your business, if they want it. Movies, like The Godfather, attempt to take us for a ride. Not everyone will go for the ride. They will refuse to be manipulated.

Not me. I enjoy being taken for a ride. Providing… I get back in one piece.

Would You Have Fired Rick Wagoner? Not Me. I Would Have Sent Him On a Roadtrip.

2009-04-14T09:00:00.007-04:00

It was a Mercury. Year, model, and color: unknown.

It was 1957 and I was in fifth grade, when I really became aware of our family car. My father dropped me off at school, and a kid on the front steps remarked, “Hey, you have a Mercury. That’s a fast car.” I had a Mercury? I thought about it during the day. I had a Mercury. That’s a neat name for a car, I thought. My Mercury. A fast car, with a neat name.

A couple of years later, Dad pulled into our driveway in a new car. It was a Chevy Impala. I liked its look, and I liked the name, Impala. It wasn’t the one with the big fins. It was the newer model. A friend later asked me how I liked my new car. I told him it was a great car. “No,” he said, “Don’t you know anything? Chevys aren’t great. They’re average.” But, it’s an Impala,” I protested. “Doesn’t matter. Chevys are average.”

Well, so what? I liked it anyway.

I’m thinking this car was female.

The next car that meant anything to me was also a Chevy, but this was not your average Chevy. Lord no. My favorite TV show was Route 66. The two main characters, Buz (with one z) and Tod (with one d), drove around the country doing good things for complete strangers and getting into fistfights. They got from place to place in Tod’s 1960 (or ’61 or ’62, the car changed each season) Corvette. I was not a car nut, and I never became one, but that car was absolutely gorgeous. No, gorgeous is not too strong. Click on this link (Corvette) and check out the curves. Then, picture yourself behind the wheel, top down (of course), headed for America.

One day, my eighth grade teacher, Mr. Sullivan confided in our class that his idol was Buz Murdoch. If he were younger, that’s who he wanted to be. My first-ever male teacher, a strict disciplinarian and a manly role model, fantasized about being a younger fictional character. I was pretty certain that the car had something to do with it. In fact, I know she did.

I looked really good behind the wheel.

At sixteen, I took my drivers test in our Olds 98. It was a long, sleek convertible, and on the highway, my father kept the top down as much as possible, requiring backseat passengers (like me) to drop down onto the floor to avoid letting the 75 mph wind blow our heads off. One day, a guy who worked for my father said, “Your dad will probably be buying a new car pretty soon. He’ll probably be giving the Olds to you.” I had never considered that possibility. This was exciting. I prepared myself for the announcement. Probably at the dinner table, sometime soon. I envisioned friends saying, “Here comes Coltin (meaning me) in his ’98”. One day Dad pulled into the driveway in a new Lincoln Continental. “How do you like it?” he asked, with a proud smile. “It’s nice. What happened to the Olds?” “I traded it in.” Oh.

As a college student, George Bush did worse things. As president, well, never mind.

But, I got a lot of use out of that Lincoln. In the summer of 1969, I drove it to the Newport Jazz Festival. I pulled into Newport and met up with two groups of college friends. We had tickets to some of the concerts, and for other concerts, we staked out a spot at the top of a hill, overlooking the concert area. It was pretty far from the stage, but we could hear perfectly. Unfortunately, the festival ended in a riot. “Too many rock fans,” was the prevailing theory. Jazz fans don’t riot.

It was nighttime. Dionne Warwick was singing What the world needs now is love sweet love... (Ironic, don’t you think?) I was up in the woods, lying on my back, enjoying the night. Then, the music stopped. There were loud noises and a lot of confusion. I jumped into the Lincoln, locked the doors and fell asleep on the front seat, which was like a small sofa. Then, I felt the car shake. I jumped up. My friend, Al, was rubbing his eyes and pounding frantically on the window. I unlocked the doors. “Tear gas,” he said. He climbed in and fell asleep on the back seat.

The next day, we all went looking for food. We stopped at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. The place was packed. The chicken was barely cooked. We ate it anyway. In the parking lot, there was a large cardboard cutout of Colonel Sanders. One of the guys picked it up and put it on my back seat. Later I drove home. As I pulled into the driveway, I was surprised to see my mother and father, dressed up, standing on our back steps, like they were going to a party. Actually, they were going to a funeral and were waiting for me to arrive with their car. After hastily removing the empty beer cans, chicken bones, and of course, the Colonel, I handed Dad the keys. I will never forget the look he gave me.

My father lived his entire life without ever owning a foreign car. My wife and I have been together almost 30 years, and we’ve never owned an American car. I used to suggest that we take a look at the new Ford Something or Chevy Whatever. “No,” she would say, “American cars haven’t caught up yet.” Over the years, I’ve heard that same line dozens of times from different people. Their interiors haven’t caught up yet. Their performance hasn’t caught up yet. Their designs haven’t caught up yet.

In Detroit, Elvis has left the building. And, he won’t be coming back.

Do you remember what came to be known as Elvis’ ’68 Comeback Concert? With his career on the floor, and having not performed live in seven years, he did an NBC Christmas Special that turned out to be really special, but with little connection to Christmas. It was vintage Elvis. Lean and handsome. Dressed in black leather. The British Invasion was sweeping America and bands owned almost every bit of the stage, until that night in June when Elvis came back.

(Those who missed it got to see part of it -- the best part -- again, nineteen years later, when one of his now legendary “sit-down sessions” aired uncut. It was like getting a second comeback.)

The newer rock and roll, of course, continued to thrive, but now, in 1968, after seven years without performing live, Elvis’ stage was about to grow bigger than ever. There he was (Did I mention the black leather?), sweat dripping from his forehead, bantering with his musicians, owning his audience.

There was no deafening volume; no gymnastics; he did not end by smashing his guitar into smithereens. He combined power and elegance, Ali-like. Yes, the bands owned the era. But it was clear that he was not there to simply catch up. He was there to gently put them in their place – a very large and growing place, to be sure – with a reminder that what they were doing, they did not invent. He said, with that cocksure smile of his: “Rock and Roll is basically gospel, or rhythm and blues. It sprang from that and people have been adding to it.” And so the King set the record straight.

And he was not going to be museumized. Not yet.

It was one of the greatest comebacks in the history of comebacks. In later years, he would make some small comebacks, but that could not and did not go on indefinitely. Elvis, as we know, ended badly. For all the great ones, the comebacks finally run out -- Sinatra, Elvis, Ali, and others – and finally, the stars are eclipsed by their own legacies.

We really wanted Detroit to have its day, again. We wanted Detroit to take the stage confidently, powerfully, elegantly, and gently remind Japan of where it all started, acknowledge their contributions, and announce the design and technology breakthroughs that would put the foreign upstarts in their place.

The King’s comeback, which may have seemed so unlikely, was actually a sure thing. Elvis climbed his comeback stage, devoid of bitterness, arrogance, or condescension. If you were in his audience, he was having a special conversation with you, or with the person next to you, or with someone you knew. Are you lonesome tonight? One night with you is all I long for... Love me tender, love me true…

Look kid, what do you expect us to do with this piece of junk?

About that Lincoln. A couple of years after Newport, my father asked me to take the car to the dealership, where he bought it, for a service estimate, and while there, see what they would give him on a trade-in. After looking at the car, the sales manager brought me into his office, and with a kind of snotty grin, said: “To be honest with you, the car is worthless. If we were to buy it, we would break it up and use it for parts. I suggest you give it away.” When I reported this conversation to my father, I had expected him to be pissed, or at least very annoyed. After all, this wasn’t just a car, it was a Lincoln. Dad’s response: “Don’t worry about it. It has fifty thousand miles on it. When a car gets there, it’s pretty much used up.”

My 2001 Suburu: 165,308 miles.
My wife’s 1998 Audi: 80,816 miles.

Wondering How It Happened That Your Future Is Suddenly Going Up In Smoke? In The Words of The Poet, "The Answer Is Blowin' In The Wind."

2009-04-07T09:00:00.007-04:00

After all was said and done, weren’t the Beatles just a band?

It was the late seventies. I was in my late twenties. I was interviewing for a job and the boss said: “How about starting on Monday?” It was a straight commission sales job – no reason to jump too quickly. “I would like to think about it and get back to you on Monday,” I said. “But, it’s a perfect fit,” he said. “Maybe, but I’d really like to sleep on it.” Then, in a tone of exaggerated frustration, he said, “Look, we really shouldn’t be having this kind of communication problem. I mean, we both grew up with the Beatles.”

I had never been much of a Beatles fan (I liked them, but I didn’t love them. You know how it goes.), and until that moment, I had never thought of myself as having grown up with them. Now, I hear that, because of them, I have a generational connection that is supposed to ensure a special kind of communication and understanding. It was an obvious negotiation ploy.

Years later, I was at home, with a bunch of neighbors – all roughly my age, except for one who was a few years younger. At one point, David interrupted and sounding annoyed, said, “You all speak in a kind of code.” An interesting comment. But remembering it weeks later, hard as I tried, I could not come up with a single part of the conversation that might have sounded like code. Did we mention Janis, without using her last name? I should have stopped him on the spot and asked him for a list of words he needed decoded, but I didn’t think of it.

Oh, about that sales job, I took it and started on Monday. I had known him for less than an hour, but his vintage was so very familiar. If I couldn’t trust a guy who grew up with the Beatles, who could I trust?

You didn’t see Bernie Madoff dancing at Woodstock…or did you?

Bernie Madoff, born in 1938, would have been too old to go to Woodstock (unless he was there just to sell drugs – probably phony ones). John Thain, born in 1955, would have been too young to know or care about Woodstock. I was born in 1948, and I didn’t go to Woodstock either, but like a lot of us, there were moments when I could have been convinced that I did.

Here’s my question: Would real Woodstockers (defined as those who attended and those who sort of attended) ever have gone on to become members of today’s avaricious sociopathic business elite (the venerable ASBE)? Look, most of us eventually sold-out (that’s what we called it when one of us got a job that required wearing a tie), except for Ben & Jerry types who managed to whip their Chunky Monkey sixties values into a sweeter kind of capitalism, and never had to go clean shaven to do it. Of course selling-out doesn’t mean selling your soul. To do that, you have to go the extra $1400 wastebasket mile.

Where have you gone Lee Iacocca
A nation turns its doubting eyes to you
Woo, woo, woo…

Before there was all that sex, drugs, and rock & roll, there was The Great Sadness.

In fact, for those of us who were thirteen or eighteen, or somewhere in between (I had been fifteen for one day) it was indeed The Great Sadness, which went on to become The Great Betrayal, and led to The Great Anger, and finally -- The Great Cynicism. Not everyone in my tenth grade class was saddened by the news from Dallas. Strangely, some really didn’t care. It didn’t stop them in their tracks. It didn’t break their heart. I‘m sure some of them loved the Beatles, and I bet a couple of them went on to manage hedge funds.

But for the rest of us, who had just experienced our first real life Greek tragedy, the future turned kind of scary. We fell asleep staring at a portrait of JFK and woke up seeing the face of LBJ painted over it. Cruel. Very cruel. Couldn’t they have given us a transitional face? And while they were at it, a transitional mind, heart, and soul?

Please forgive the speaking in code, but if you are not of that age and if your eyes didn’t fill with tears, as did Cronkite’s…then it’s hard to explain. All I can tell you is that this was the real day the music died.

Wherever you are now, you passed through Dealy Plaza on the way there.

Oh, before I forget, I find this interesting, and hope that you might too. It was only recently – just a year or so ago – that I stopped being a grassy knollist. How about you? I watched a television documentary that demonstrated that a lone gunman could actually have done it. Maybe. Maybe not, but possibly. And with that possibility, my lifelong, rock-solid grassy knoll-Warren Commission whitewash-Mark Lane-Jim Garrison-CIA cover-up worldview -- begun on the first day of my sixteenth year – cracked! Yes,cracked…then dissolved sometime in my sixtieth year. You know, it felt good to be relieved of all that self-protective, but debilitating cynicism. Now, where do I go to get it back?

When you finally broke down and joined the country club, did you remember to bring your inner Dylan with you?

When Yippies became stockbrokers, did they only sell stocks in good, clean, socially responsible companies? I doubt it. For one thing, there weren’t enough Ben & Jerry’s to go around. And for another, middle class comfort was back in style. We all did what we needed to do to get our piece of the pie. But thanks to us, it would become a much more idealistic pie. I’d like mine with a half scoop of Chunky Monkey, please.

Well, enough reminiscing. I have three questions: Where are we now? Who are we now? And, does it even matter?

Oh, and one more question:

Still crazy after all these years?