Unworthy Contenders

Tell what you know

Do not tell more than you know

Do not tell less than you know

Tell what you know 

This was Gertrude Stein’s advice to aspiring writers, which I have always thought was exquisitely elegant in its simplicity, as well as appropriate for those in other walks of life -- take for example those aspiring to be President of the United States.

Michele Bachmann told us that the shot heard ‘round the world was fired in Concord, New Hampshire, and that the Founding Fathers fought tirelessly to end slavery. Rick Perry told us that the voting age is twenty-one, and that there are eight justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Herman Cain told us that the Taliban would be involved in any newly formed government of Libya. They all repeatedly told us more than they knew. Of course they had to. What they actually did know was not enough to be a serious applicants for the job.

Though we often doubt the intelligence of our friends and neighbors, we are, as a whole, a reasonably intelligent electorate. We have what city people have always referred to as street smarts. As we grow-up (early for some and later for others), we learn to develop our factory installed B.S. detector. To paraphrase the single greatest leader America ever produced, all of us can be fooled some of the time and some of us can be fooled all of the time, but all of us cannot be fooled all of the time.

So, I ask you Mr. Romney, Do you believe in Gertrude Stein’s platinum rule? 

When your lightweight opponents continued to tell us more than they knew, we were more than happy to be amused, though we were more than a little disturbed by them having a seat at the game table in such a high stakes game. They came to remind us of the blowhard at the cocktail party. When we cannot listen to one more word of his nonsense, we slip from his sight and escape to the kitchen to make fun of him. 

Newt still assures us repeatedly that he knows more than most other mortals, including you. He of course knew more than any of the other contenders, though he was careful to explain that you and all of them knew more than the man we foolishly elected to lead us.  Then Newt presented you with the right to laughingly characterize him as “Lucy in the chocolate factory,” when he learned that he failed to get on the ballot in his home state of Virginia. He then called for a write-in vote, but Virginia forbids write-in votes in its primaries. He did not know what he did not know.

And so he promised to give us $2.50-a-gallon gasoline, if we would just give him what was rightfully his – the coveted seat in the Oval Office. He told us he knew how to do it. One problem: we did not believe him, because we no longer believed that he knew what he told us he knew.

And then only one – the holy warrior from Pennsylvania – stood in your way. He must have thrown quite a scare into you, though of course you cannot admit it. He was on your heels all the way, poised to overtake you. Fortunately, he got a little carried away with himself.  He should have beaten you in Michigan. What a blow that would have been – upsetting you in your “home state,” where you were so happy to be back where “the trees are just the right height.”

Yes, he got a little carried away. He is a man who likes to lecture. So lecture, he did. He lectured women on some very personal matters.  Did you believe your good fortune?  He heard the rumblings from the offended gender, but he dug in. After all, God was on his side.  But women were not.  In droves, they deserted him for you. Could you have ever delivered the kind of blow that he landed to his very own chin? You know the answer to that question. If you pack that kind of a wallop, you have not yet shown it. But, we cannot fault your strategy.

You chose to remain silent. You, the victor of bloody corporate battles, understand and appreciate the famous axiom: When your enemy is destroying himself, stay out of his way.

And your enemy was not quite finished destroying himself. He had one more blockbuster punch to land.  He stepped to the center of the ring and took on the memory of JFK. The issue was separation of church and state, but the issue hardly mattered. He threw the clumsiest big time punch we had ever seen, which prompted television news programs to run clips from 1960 of the young contender from Boston addressing Protestant ministers in Houston, displaying his eloquence, intellect, and humility. 

In reality, he was speaking to a much wider audience. He was an American who happened to be Catholic, speaking to Americans who happened to be Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Quaker, Baptist, Unitarian, or none of the above. He spoke to our better selves. 

And then we watched the holy warrior from Pennsylvania say, “You bet it makes me want to throw up.”  It was a stunning boomerang-punch that knocked him senseless. He stumbled around and stumbled around and then weakly climbed out of the ring.

So here you are – preparing for the main event.

The Champ is unlike any opponent you have ever faced. He will not give you the gift of knocking himself out. You will not be able to out-spend him, or out-organize him. He will not make the mistakes of an amateur. He knows your weaknesses and will skillfully exploit them. There will be defining debates, where you will face him on camera, mano-a-mano, and eyeball to eyeball.

You have survived a game of elimination. That is all you have done, and it was enough.  You stayed in a crouch, with your hands protecting your chin. At every opportunity, you told us less than you know. So, what now, Governor?  Are you willing to get hit in order to land some blows?  That is what we need to see. Not to take pleasure in seeing you with a split lip, and a broken nose, and purple, swollen eye lids, but to see if you are willing to fight through pain that you have never before felt and exhaustion that you have never before experienced in order to win the right to lead all of the people.

The moment of truth is near. You will finally have to tell us what you know. Your ideas

– which I hope will be brilliant ideas - will be mercilessly attacked and ridiculed, but may very well win the day. 

Be worthy. Be worthy!

  

Word Game

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

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

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

“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

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!

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.