AN IDYLL

December 16, 2013 //

AN IDYLL

I find myself waiting around the stables of a ranch in semi-arid Guanacaste, Costa Rica while my wife and daughter take a two-hour horseback tour. The ranch is located just beyond the village of Porte Golpe, which is between Belen and Flamingo. If that clarification does not entirely enlighten the reader, geographically speaking, I apologize. But I’m not really sure where we are, either.
My most recent equestrian experience was on a pony at a birthday party during the Kennedy administration. Until Google invents one that drives automatically, I am not riding. As to today’s tour, I insisted to the girls that I’d be content to sit it out, as they say, and neither objected with enthusiasm.
I’m under a wooden picnic-pavilion sort of structure with the owner’s black pit bull sitting beside me. He is fearsome in appearance, basically a seventy-pound muscle. He sniffs at my hand and allows me to rub his forehead, his soft brown eyes appearing thankful for the attention. I’d always approached pit bulls with caution, aware of their popularity with drug dealers and the like. This dog, however, has absorbed the Costa Rican vacation vibe. He appears as relaxed as a yogi at a Yanni concert.
A continuous breeze keeps us relatively cool in the tropical heat while I look around at white, stucco-sided buildings that contain miscellaneous horse and cow-related equipment. I imagine John Wayne walking through the door, jodhpurs and holster jangling, and I feel transported in time. From here, my canine companion and I observe the ranch’s wranglers as they manipulate and jostle the cows, among several pens, perhaps with the purpose of grooming them or washing them or exercising them. I hope some good comes of it, given how many hits and slaps and kicks the men are delivering.
Why do the men appear so mean, their aggression jarring in the midst of an otherwise lovely tableau of nature? Are they bored with their jobs and prospects? Do they think the owner values the livestock more than them? Can they support their families on the menial pay they receive? All of these are possible explanations, but are they excuses? Offering the benefit of the doubt, I wonder if brute force is the only way to manage the animals.
The cattle appear stunningly powerful up-close, yet they display no aggression, even when their necks are jerked with ropes and their haunches slapped with twitches. Ah, yes, two men have wrestled one of the biggest cows under a hose across the dirt parking area from me, perhaps fifty feet away, where they tie her to a fence-post and deliver a less-than luxurious sponge bath. I think there are only cows here, not bulls, but I still wonder if it was shortsighted to have worn a bright red tee shirt. When they finish, one of the men caresses the cow gently on its side and speaks to it softly. People are so confusing.
My picnic table has some bugs walking around which are unfamiliar to me, but they appear harmless enough, without bright colors or threatening shapes. I wish I’d sprayed some of that bug repellant. I scoff at it as a placebo, but I wouldn’t turn it down right now if somebody offered.
Occasionally, the cows moo and the cocks crow. Birds chatter incessantly with a variety of calls, complaints, entreaties, threats, songs, etc. A horse periodically whinnies or snorts to complete the symphony and a troupe of howler monkeys just arrived to colonize a massive tree. Eight or nine jet-black athletes swing into place on individual limbs and look languidly down. Two males attempt to out-do each other with their deeply resonant “oo-oo-oo’s.” How does such a massive sound emanate from such a relatively small animal?
The cow that was being washed appears content now, cooling down, as steam rises from her body. She stares dully, still tethered by a rope to the rough wooden fencing. I wonder what she is thinking, if anything.
The men take refuge from the sun beneath a massive strangler fig tree and lay down to rest. I fear I have displaced them from their usual siesta location. A white and yellow cat saunters over to join the dog and me. She brushes affectionately against the pit-bull, who appears to be napping, though one of his eyes is half-open. She lays down a few feet in front of us; basically, we are three apparently purposeless participants in the animal ballet all around us. A resplendent black and orange rooster emerges from a doorway to strut towards us. Will he complete our varied menagerie under the pavilion? No, he turns back towards his harem of clucking chickens, barely contained in a loosely fenced pen.
The cat regards me unhurriedly, and decides I might be useful. She leaps upon the table. I offer some high-quality scratching behind the ears and she purrs. After several minutes, just as I fear she will never allow me to stop, she sprawls and commences grooming herself. The dog is completely asleep now, occasionally twitching with what might be dreams. The monkeys have subsided, too, settled throughout several trees, spread-eagled across the limbs. I notice a baby clinging adorably to its mother’s back. All seems right in the world.
I hear the clip-clop of the girls returning. Somehow, two hours have passed. Hearing the sound, the pit bull lifts his massive head and sniffs. He regards me for a moment and settles back down to sleep. I am not certain, but I doubt the pit bull will remember me. I’m just a taller- and paler-than-average human who hung out in his domain, and occasionally spoke to him in an unusual language. But I expect I will always remember him, and the couple of hours we shared.

Tags animal thought processes, cattle ranch, Costa Rica travel, horse tour

Categories Costa Rica horse tour, Pets, Reflections

A LAMENTATION FOR ROCKY

December 10, 2013 //

A LAMENTATION FOR ROCKY

I awoke to a riot of squawking birds outside my vacation condo in Costa Rica. The morning sun was barely peaking above the trees and into my window and I wondered who was making such a racket. Groggily, I climbed out of bed, slid the screen door aside and walked onto the patio. I squinted up at a massive fig tree that was the source of the chatter and beheld a roiling mass of green, blue and yellow. A flock of parrots was working themselves into a frenzy, like a football team psyching up before a game.
Suddenly, as though a starting gun had been fired, one bird leapt from the leaves and the others soared behind; the flock swept to and fro, and continued to squawk and swoop and fill the air with sights and sounds and finally, after one last pass directly above my head, turned towards the ocean and gradually disappeared, their calls becoming fainter until the morning was again overtaken by silence.
I recalled an earlier experience with colorful birds in a setting considerably less exotic. When I was six or seven, in a period after our last family dog died, before we embarked upon a series of family cats, we had a parakeet. My mother bought the green and yellow bird for me in a moment of weakness, I imagine, after my pleading at a local Woolworth’s proved effective. The pet only cost about a dollar; the store made money selling the cage, toys and bird food.
“I’ll teach him to talk,” I said, full of enthusiasm.
We installed the still unnamed bird in a standard wire cage placed upon a broad windowsill in our breakfast room. Each morning, I dutifully stared into the cage and suggested such original statements as “Polly want a cracker?” and “Hello, I am a parrot.” The bird completely ignored me and focused on eating seeds and pecking at a tiny mirror hung in the cage. When I despaired of teaching the bird to talk, I tried to convince it to step onto my out-stretched index finger. But each time I placed my hand into the cage, the parakeet pecked at it as though I were an enemy. It had clearly never heard the expression: “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
“He has a chippy personality,” my mother noted. Thus was the bird named.
“Why won’t Chippy talk?” I asked repeatedly during the ensuing weeks, like the frustrated seven-year-old I was.
“We’ll stop at Woolworth’s,” said my mother. “Maybe the salesman will have some suggestions.”
When we arrived and explained the problem, the clerk was happy to share his knowledge. “Does your parakeet look like those?” he asked, pointing at a cage filled with green and yellow specimens.
“Yes, exactly,” said my mother.
“Those are all females,” he said. “Only the males can learn to talk.”
“I thought Chippy was a boy,” I said. “How can you tell the difference?”
“On a male, the area at the top of the beak is blue,” said the man.
I must have looked crestfallen since my next memory is arriving at home with a large, blue parakeet with a brilliant blue crest above its beak. He was a substantial bird, with a square jaw-line. Decades before the movies made the name synonomous with fearless strength, we named our new parakeet Rocky. How could Chippy fail to be impressed? Rocky was so handsome I was sure we were about to embark on a journey worthy of a television nature show.
“Chippy and Rocky can have babies!” I said. “And I’ll teach him to talk, for sure!”
Each morning, when I came down for breakfast, I looked for signs of affection between Chippy and Rocky, and each day I became more discouraged. Not only did Chippy show no romantic interest in Rocky, she was as mean to him as she was to me. Whenever he moved close, she pecked at him. Sometimes, when he was eating from the trough in the corner of the cage, she swooped from her perch and attacked him. Rocky cowered defenselessly in the corner, a blue feather occasionally detaching from his plumage and drifting down to the floor of the cage, like a paper airplane making its last, futile landing.
Rocky also failed to learn to speak, in spite of our high-tech efforts. Not only did I tutor him, but my mother bought a record of bird expressions and played it for him on a small turntable. “Pretty bird, pretty bird,” repeated a solemn male voice somehow deemed scientifically effective in the world of parakeet learning.
After several months of this routine, it became apparent that Rocky was not going to learn to speak. And his romantic prospects with Chippy appeared even worse.
“We will have to get him his own cage,” said my mother, one day, after observing Chippy attack.
“Yes,” I agreed, deciding finally that I would just have to appreciate Rocky for his beauty and placid personality. It appeared he was only large and handsome, not brilliant or virile.
When we brought home the second cage, I was determined to affect Rocky’s transfer. Following the suggestion of the man at Woolworth’s, I wrapped my hand in a soft cloth and entered it into the enclosure. Chippy attacked with characteristic ferocity.
“Haha,” I said. “I can’t even feel you through this towel, you stinker.” For a moment, I wondered why we had a pet so unloving, so unsatisfying. But then I re-focused on my mission, to gently capture the more sympathetic Rocky, for his own good. I was able to gather him and bring him out the door without much difficulty. I recall being shocked at how weightless he was, even while he appeared so relatively large. I was scared to squeeze too hard and, due to my extreme delicacy, he escaped my hand with a surprising flutter of the wings.
“Oh, no!” I shouted, alarmed. “Rocky!”
My mother, who had been watching, also looked upset. At first, Rocky fell towards the floor, but then he gathered his balance and soared towards the ceiling. He landed on a curtain rod. He appeared to survey the room calmly, then swept into the air as though he were a hawk soaring in the high heavens. Back and forth across the room he flew.
“Look at him go!” I said, in wonderment.
“He’s incredible,” said my mother, also surprised.

I was so proud I couldn’t stop grinning. My bird appeared to be an expert flyer. I’d never felt such satisfaction, such exhilaration, from watching a pet.
“This is great,” I said, glancing at Chippy in her cage, hoping she was impressed, and jealous, too.
“We have to capture him,” said my mother.
“Just a few more minutes,” I said, thrilled with the show.
Rocky landed on a windowsill. It was probably my imagination, but I thought he had a happy expression on his face. He deposited a pile of poop there, as though he were the master of the house and then swept back into the air. With a flutter and a whoosh, he picked up speed again and, before we realized what might happen, he smashed full-speed into a wall and fell to the floor with a thud.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“Maybe he’s just stunned,” said my mother.
I approached the unmoving body. My mother touched his head. She stroked his chest. There was no heartbeat, no response. Rocky was dead. We placed Rocky’s beautiful, blue-clad body into a shoebox and surrounded it with a shroud of tissue. Solemnly, we carried Rocky to the garden behind the garage where I dug a shallow hole. I placed Rocky’s casket gently into its grave.
“I guess I should say something,” I said.
“That would be nice,” agreed my mother.
I thought about Rocky’s life for a moment, his slim list of accomplishments, his failures. Finally, I intoned, as adult-sounding as I could:
Rocky,
He failed at fatherhood,
He couldn’t talk at all,
But he sure could fly,
Until he hit that wall.

Tags Costa Rican parrots, Death of a Pet, talking parrots

Categories Coming of Age, parakeets, Pets

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN YOU HEARD?

November 25, 2013 //

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN YOU HEARD?

The fiftieth anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination has revived the question that has meant only one thing to most Americans over the age of fifty. More recently, 9/11 has taken on the horrific role for a younger generation. Still others, with their focus on other aspects of the American experience, may apply the question to the OJ Simpson verdict, the Space Shuttle explosion or Magic Johnson’s first retirement from the NBA.
I heard about President Kennedy’s shooting during morning recess from second grade on the playground at Gompers Elementary School in West Philadelphia. A first grader interrupted my idle pondering of a frozen puddle with my friend Bruce Levin to announce “the president got shot.”
“Did not,” said Bruce, who was inclined to disagree with anyone’s pronouncements, especially those of a lowly first grader. If the kid had told him three plus three was six, he’d likely have responded: “Is not.”
When we returned minutes later to the classroom, however, we instantly knew the report was correct. Our teacher, Mrs. Stein, who we thought was about eighty, but was probably forty-five, appeared ashen before us.
“Something terrible has happened,” she said, daubing a handkerchief to her eyes.
I don’t remember what else she said, exactly, but I do remember Eileen Johnson, a tall dark-skinned girl with two stunningly long pig-tails on either side of her head, collapsing with hysterical grief. It was as though the President were her father. I have a vague recollection of school closing early, and my mother retrieving me that day, just as I was to retrieve my fifth and sixth graders thirty-eight years later when violence again rained from above to sear our collective sense of security. I knew the assassination of John Kennedy was a bad thing but I could not comprehend how it affected my immediate life.
The 1962-1964 years were not bad from the perspective of my youthful self. I knew there was a “Cold War” going on and the opposition was vaguely called Communists. I recall huddling in the hallway at Gompers during drills attached to the threat of their attack. But I didn’t know what a Communist was, exactly, and I couldn’t comprehend how the scary photographs of Hiroshima I’d seen could possibly have application to leafy West Philadelphia. My father listened to news radio each morning and I detected tension, especially when the talk was about Cuba, where I knew my parents had traveled for their honeymoon. But I was more interested in the dire performance of the Phillies; what could be worse than rooting for them?
We occasionally assembled in the “audio-visual room” at school to watch films of nuclear testing taking place out west, somewhere. These newsreels seemed to involve a lot of our soldiers hunkering down in ditches wearing sunglasses, watching a mushroom cloud and the resultant windstorm sweeping over them. More often than not, the film broke or the projector malfunctioned, and we were returned to our regular routine of arithmetic and reading.
Bruce was my best friend at school, but he did not live within walking distance of my home and my mother did not yet drive. At home, the ONLY kids near my age in the neighborhood were Danny and Stevie O’Malley. They were my exclusive playmates after school, on weekends and during the summer. They were one year older and one year younger than I, respectively. In appearance, picture Dennis the Menace and Timmy from the Lassie show, both bountiful in blondness and freckles. My neighborhood and Gompers Elementary School were populated almost entirely by Jewish people and black people, but the O’Malley family was Irish Catholic. As such, Danny and Stevie did not attend public school but instead went to a school called St. Mathias. It was located on the other side of City Line Avenue, “in the suburbs,” and may as well have been across the ocean.
Danny and Stevie’s house had pictures of the Pope and President Kennedy in every room, along with a cross that I knew had something to do with their religion. My parents were both upset when President Kennedy was killed; I observed my mother wipe her eyes and saw my father’s grim and sad expression, but I was warned that the O’Malley’s felt grief beyond the ordinary.
“Be sure to behave quietly at the O’Malley’s today,” my mother told me shortly after the assassination. “The President was very important to them.”
“Wasn’t he important to us?” I asked.
“Yes, very, but he was like a…” she hesitated, and continued, “…a special family member to them.”
Their stone-clad house was larger and older than ours, and it held several major, intriguing attractions. A huge swing set dominated their large, grassy yard, and we could fly “to the moon” and “over the mountain” to our hearts’ content. Even better, they had an old, detached garage containing an abandoned coal pit along with several rooms that were grist for our imaginative mills. We could be cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians. In the pit, we could dig towards China. We did not have a plan for what we would do when we arrived on the other side of the earth, but we dug deep enough that Mrs. O’Malley eventually made us cease, lest the foundation of the structure be undermined.
“What do you boys think you’re doing?” she asked. “You could bring down the entire building. Don’t make me have to tell your father about this.”
We obeyed her thankfully; I rarely saw Danny and Stevie’s father. When I did, he was a non-speaking, gruff-appearing presence behind a newspaper and a pipe. I recall thinking I would not like to see him angry. Their mother was nice, though. She made grilled-cheese sandwiches just the way I liked them and sometimes included a slice of Taylor ham I would never have been served at home. The boys and I never discussed religion, but I knew mine was different, and food had something to do with it.
In the basement of the O’Malley home was a huge bar, carved to resemble a ship’s prow. We spent hours and hours fighting pirates there. A shadowy water stain on the ceiling brought to mind ghosts and goblins and further inflamed our fecund minds. If we chose to watch television, my house had a rabbit-eared set in the basement where we enjoyed the Three Stooges and cartoons like Mighty Mouse and Underdog. I was not a fan of Felix the Cat, but Danny and Stevie were, and this difference provided one of our only bases for dispute.
The most tangible evidence of the Cold War for me was that at some point in 1962 or 1963, the O’Malley family constructed a bomb shelter in their backyard. That was the coolest thing ever! A green, square metal hatch, adjacent to a ventilation pipe, signaled its location. For several months, after the shelter was finished, the garage and swings and ship-bar were nearly forgotten in favor of this play-space from heaven. Danny, Stevie and I used our combined muscle to pull open the hatch and climb down twelve feet or so (it seemed like thirty) on a metal ladder to the concrete floor below. There, constructed in the same stark, green metal as the entrance door, were six bunk beds screwed into the walls and shelves holding cans of food.
I am not certain we were “allowed” to play in the shelter. But we were not expressly forbidden, either, as far as I knew. In that space, we could be space travelers, or soldiers, or explorers, or the meanest prisoners in Alcatraz. We could survive for years on the cans of food that surrounded us, we imagined, while we beat back the Communists or space aliens, or whoever it was that might attack us. I don’t recall there being a specific plan for HOW we were going to fight back from our subterranean position, but the seven-year-old mind need not necessarily work out all the details.
Perhaps, it was the innocence of the times, or the lack of complication from such a small trio of friends, but Danny, Stevie and I were self-sufficient in our play. Parental involvement was non-existent, in stark contrast to modern-day parenting, where the parent/chauffeur/coach is integral. It was only when we decided to take off the wrappers from the canned food that we got in trouble. Mrs. O’Malley was not pleased when she happened to come down and notice it was now impossible to tell canned corn from baked beans. Even after we explained that we were trying to find a secret code that spies might have written on the cans, she was not satisfied.
“I won’t tell your father about this,” she warned the boys. “He would be EXTREMELY angry. But you can’t play in the shelter anymore, or he will hear about it.”
“Please don’t tell dad,” said Danny and Stevie. “We won’t go down here again.” I noted how fearful they were of their father’s wrath. Duly chastened, we returned to above-ground activities. One hot day in the summer of 1964, Mrs. O’Malley set up a sprinkler on the lawn for us to play in. After she went inside the house, we found some metal supports from an old badminton net underneath a bush. We wielded them ecstatically from opposite sides of the stream, slashing through the water as though each drop of water were a fly to be swatted.
“I hit one to the street,” I yelled.
“I hit one even further,” shouted Stevie.
“Whoa, I clobbered that one,” said Danny.
Our shouting and laughing reached a crescendo when I swung as hard as I could through the sun-splashed stream and connected with a solid object that felt like a watermelon; Stevie and I stood in stunned silence when Danny collapsed to the ground clutching his head. He began to moan as Stevie dropped his stick and ran towards the house. “Mom, mom,” he shouted. “Stuart hit Danny with a stick.”
I dropped my stick, too, and ran towards my house in the opposite direction, experiencing my introduction to the effects of the adrenal gland. No one was home when I arrived, my heart pounding. I went upstairs to my room and shut the door.
“I’ve killed Danny,” I thought to myself. “I’m going to jail. I’m going to be punished by Mr. O’Malley.” I wasn’t sure which fate was worse.
My mother came home shortly thereafter. I said “hello” but didn’t tell her what had happened. I thought a police car would show up at any time. I stayed in my room picturing terrifying scenarios, with Danny dead, his father chasing me around the block. I tried to concentrate on studying baseball cards, but I was trembling with fear. Once, the telephone rang, and my heart pounded anew, but I heard my mother engaged in normal conversation with my aunt. An hour or two later, my father came home from work, and I was called down to dinner.
“Is everything alright?” my mother asked me, apparently noticing my discomfort.
“Yes,” I said, trying to appear nonchalant.
“Did you play at Danny and Stevie’s this afternoon?” she asked.
“Un-hunh,” I said.
The conversation turned to my father’s day at the store. Now, I was starting to wonder if we would ever hear from the O’Malley’s or the police. Not hearing was almost becoming worse than hearing. Finally, after dinner, while I was upstairs trying not to think about Danny’s demise and my new role as a murderer, I heard the doorbell ring downstairs. I heard my mother open the door and exchange greetings with a man.
“Oh, no,” I thought. Either a policeman or Mr. O’Malley had come for me.
The adults spoke for several moments until my mother’s voice sounded from the bottom of the staircase.
“Come down here, Stuart,” she said. “Someone is here to speak with you.”
I exited my room and approached the stairs like a prisoner going to the gallows. At the bottom, looking up, were my mother and Mr. O’Malley. He was dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, with black glasses and a blond crew-cut that matched the severity of his expression.
“Did you happen to hit Danny with a pole this afternoon?” he asked, his tone neutral, when I reached the third step from the bottom, and met his gaze.
“Yes, I did,” I said. It occurred to me that he did not look grief-stricken, just angry, but I didn’t know him well enough to be sure. Perhaps, Danny was still alive. “I didn’t mean to,” I added.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” said Mr. O’Malley. “You must have been scared when it happened.”
“I am, uh, was, uh, am, uh, scared,” I stuttered.
“He has quite a bump on his forehead,” said Mr. O’Malley.
“He’s alive?” I said, feeling a huge boulder of worry lifting off my head.
Mr. O’Malley’s face dissolved into laughter.
“Did you think you’d killed him?” asked my mother.
“I wasn’t sure,” I said.
“His head is harder than you’d think,” said Mr. O’Malley, smiling. “How ‘bout if you come over and tell him you’re sorry. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”
“That’s a good idea,” said my mother sternly, clearly unhappy I had not told her what had happened.
I followed Mr. O’Malley through several yards to his house, taking the short-cut that Danny, Stevie and I usually used. We didn’t exchange any more words. When we arrived, he ushered me into the living room, where Danny was laying on a couch as though he were a knight on a casket in Westminster Abbey. A bag of ice clung to the side of his head. I noticed that Mrs. O’Malley and Stevie were on another couch watching television. The Pope and President Kennedy gazed down upon us from their photographs on the wall. Stevie gave me a small wave.
“Sorry I hit you,” I said to Danny.
“It really hurts,” he said, grimacing.
He pulled down his ice-pack to reveal an ugly knot just below the hairline.
“I was afraid you were dead,” I said, my nervousness making me begin to giggle.
“I thought so, too,” interjected Stevie, laughing.
“It’s not funny,” protested Danny, fighting hard to sound angry, before he started laughing, too.
“Oh,that hurts,” Danny added, catching himself.
The incident of the hit-in-the-head is the last I remember from my relationship with Danny and Stevie. They moved to the suburbs shortly thereafter. I’m sure it wasn’t because I hit Danny in the head, though it probably didn’t help, either. My mother arranged for me to play with them two or three times after they moved, but we were in different orbits. They had tons of new friends and I felt awkward. Life changes a lot in just a few months when you are seven.
The former O’Malley home fell into disrepair over the years. The shrubbery around the property grew out of control, and the yard was not even visible for a period of decades. But in my last visit to Philadelphia, I saw that a new owner had recently renovated the house and brought the landscaping under control. I stopped my car adjacent to the side yard and gazed in. The swings were gone, of course, and the garage was rebuilt nicer than it had ever been, to match the main home, like a formal carriage house. But poking up in the middle of the yard was the green ventilation pipe from the bomb shelter, the last vestige of a time gone by. It summoned memories of a dangerous time for our country, of a world scary and on edge. I pondered the hugely important incidents which took place, largely beyond my comprehension, and I recalled a less earth-shattering, but seriously scary incident for me, too.

Tags bomb shelters, childhood playmates, Cold War, Kennedy assassination

Categories Coming of Age, family relationships, Parenting

CLIMATE OF DISBELIEF

November 18, 2013 //

CLIMATE OF DISBELIEF

I have a dear friend who I know is more politically conservative than I. However, I respect his intelligence and have always been impressed by his sharp humor, his professional success and his love of family. In short, he is a “mensch” and, accordingly, I try not to allow honest disagreements over things like tax policy and foreign affairs to interfere with our friendship.
My friend often forwards e-mail attachments containing jokes or links to interesting or touching stories. Rarely does he venture into politics and, when he does, the subjects are largely non-controversial. In face-to-face discussions, we have found common ground on such subjects as crime, American intervention in foreign wars and baseball (both our preferred teams stink). I was surprised, therefore, when he recently sent me a link to a purported “finding” that global warming is a hoax.
Several earlier posts touting solar power reveal my lack of objectivity on this subject. I am a believer that there is no more important issue in the world than the environment. Polls show me to be among only 2% of respondents who feel that way. I understand that most of the other 98% feel there are other priorities, but I’d never thought I would encounter a person in my milieu, who is an actual “denier.” Those people are lumped in my mind with the lunatic fringe, along with folks who deny the Holocaust, evolution, the dangers of smoking, and who agree with Sarah Palin on any subject.
“You’re kidding, right?” I wrote back.
“No, I’m really interested to see how you would debate this,” he responded.
“I won’t waste my time ‘debating’ something that is beyond debate,” I wrote. “This is settled science.”
I hoped the subject was forgotten when another e-mail arrived the next day attaching an alleged study conducted by three PhD’s. “You’ve gotta admit it’s just possible you’re wrong.” he tweaked. “This paper is convincing. The planet is actually cooling.”
Unhappily, I spent an hour wading through the turgid prose of the three professors. Most of their arguments consisted of picking apart the methodology of various climate studies, the format of their statistics, and offering alternative interpretations of data. For instance, if one examines several particular five year periods in the last century, one can find what appears to be a cooling trend. Most of what I felt, however, was confusion. It was as though a shotgun of arguments was being indiscriminately fired at the solid wall of climate research in the expectation that several pellets would find an opening. As intended by the authors, I imagined, when I finished reading, I felt confused.
“If real PhD’s see so many holes in the argument,” I thought to myself, “perhaps it has been a little hyped. Heaven knows, Al Gore is not above self-promotion.”
I decided to check out the three professors on the internet. The first turned out to be a marketing professor at a college in Australia. Her research was funded by the mining industry. The second was a business professor in Pennsylvania. He was a paid spokesperson for the coal industry and supplemented his income by lobbying in favor of the construction of coal-powered electricity plants. The third author was a medical doctor, also unrelated in any way to climate science, who has been reliant upon Exxon and/or the Petroleum Institute since at least 1994. Whenever there was a conference or debate regarding climate science, he was paid to appear on behalf of industry and present their talking points.
“The authors are charlatans,” I wrote to my friend. “You should check their credentials before sending me this garbage. They are not even remotely scientists. One must ‘consider the source’ when viewing papers that happen to support the interests of rich and powerful industries.”
I was certain my friend would regret having misled me. I expected him to thank me for setting him straight, for introducing to him a minimal level of skepticism. I could not imagine he would lend credence to Donald Trump with regards to someone’s birthplace, for instance.
“Okay,” he responded. “Check out this one.”
A link was attached to a 2009 study indicating that thousands of scientists have been organized to oppose the ‘consensus’ on global warming by a “noted physicist, Frederick Seitz, a recipient of the National Science Award.”
With no small degree of trepidation, I researched Dr. Seitz. On the face of it, he was a significant thinker. For forty years, starting in 1939, Dr. Seitz was a brilliant innovator and academician. Late in his career as a physicist, however, he became aligned with cigarette manufacturers and used his status as a noted “scientist” for their benefit. It is not clear what, but something happened in his life that made him go over to “the dark side.” Some have speculated he needed money. Others suggest he felt marginalized in mainstream science by the 1970’s and was looking for a way to “fight back.”
Dr. Seitz was not merely a skeptic that nicotine was addictive and harmful; he was the leader of the pack. He organized a campaign that churned out a blizzard of “pseudo-scientific” doubt about nicotine addiction. He reaped massive monetary rewards for his efforts. Partially as a result, it took over twenty years from the time of the Surgeon General’s 1964 report on its dangers for meaningful efforts to curb smoking to be implemented. In the meantime, how many additional millions of people suffered the effects of addiction? How many billions of dollars were earned by the cigarette industry?
As older readers may recall, and younger readers may be surprised to learn, Richard Nixon was the president who established the EPA and signed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of 1969. Protection of the environment was a bipartisan concern. After all, Democrats and Republicans breathe the same air and drink the same water. How did Fred Seitz come to be connected to the climate issue? To make a story that is the subject of entire books extremely short, (See “Merchants of Doubt” by Oreskes and Conway, 2010, if you want the LONG version) it happened like this:
Led by Exxon, the oil industry perceived their long-term profitability could be threatened if carbon-based industries were limited. In the early 1980’s, they turned to the same “scientists” who obfuscated the tobacco issue for so long – not just FIGURATIVELY the same, but LITERALLY. Fred Seitz had done so well on behalf of cigarette manufacturers he was enlisted to plant seeds of doubt regarding climate change, to contest the uncontestable, to poison the well, so to speak. He reassembled his “dream team” of obfuscators, once again, to run roughshod over consensus scientific conclusions and plant their writings in sympathetic journals. In a stroke of evil genius, he recognized that the issue could be couched as part of “The Liberal Agenda.” Thus, news outlets (everyone knows which ones) that reflexively make light of issues supported by progressives became free, twenty-four hour-a-day doubt-sowing machines. The urgency to combat the problem of carbon-fuels addiction has been effectively muted by the resistance of half our political representatives in the thrall of industry contributions.
“How could I make my friend see the light?” I wondered. He seems disinclined to read even the simplest background material on the authors he recommends. He would dismiss such information, apparently, as products of the “lame-stream media.” I was feeling despair when I recalled something about my friend: one of the coolest things about him, and one of the things that made me admire him originally, was that the chain of pharmacies he owned did not sell cigarettes. He sacrificed profit for principle.
“I’ll remind him,” I thought, and dutifully asked him if he recalled taking such a position. For good measure, I mentioned once again Dr. Seitz’s more-than-coincidental connection to both tobacco and climate change, thinking my friend’s having pierced one veil of denial would lead to his piercing of another.
He wrote back almost immediately: “My idea was very simple, how could we sell cigs in the front of the store and meds in the back? Seemed very hypocritical to me. Nothing to do with the environment or green movement.”
I was dumbstruck. Again. Where I see clarity, rationality and obvious connection, this man, whose IQ I know to be significantly higher than average, (not only is he great at business, he’s a tough out in Words with Friends) sees only a left-wing conspiracy. My only hope is his revulsion at hypocrisy. I’m sure I could point out instances of hypocrisy on his side of the argument but, realistically, he’ll just tout the glacier in Norway that’s gotten bigger or the ninety-five-year-old smoker who didn’t get cancer. There’s an anecdote for everything!
Life is too short. When I perceive a “man of science” to have blind faith in the gospel according to Palin and Trump, I’m afraid he is irretrievable. The famous motto of the United Negro College Fund seems apt: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” I lack the energy to continue fighting this battle; maybe I’ll look for a good cartoon to send him, or a kitten video.

Tags climate change denial, denial, Fred Seitz, obfuscation

Categories Ignorance, Modern Society

LET ‘EM EAT ICE CREAM CAKE

November 11, 2013 //

ICE CREAM

Among the major food groups in my diet is ice cream. I have come by this naturally, having been raised in a family that considered a trip for ice cream the “go-to” activity for those occasional Sunday afternoons when my father was willing to indulge. In his seven-day-a-week work schedule, Sunday afternoon was his leisure time.
The childhood ice cream routine, circa 1963, doubtless shaped my later ability to negotiate as a lawyer, parent and husband. My mother was co-conspirator in prevailing upon my father, and she taught me to over-ask initially, while being prepared to accept an inevitable counter-offer. For instance, if she suggested we go to the Guernsey Cow, a massive ice cream and confectionary emporium an hour away, my father would typically offer to drive to Miller’s, a less-august shop thirty minutes away. If she suggested Miller’s, we would be prepared to accept a visit to Leof’s, a drug-store with an ice cream counter just three minutes away by car, or a ten-minute walk.
If my father were resistant even to Leof’s, my mother and I would resort to the freezer where there was a likely a half-gallon of Breyer’s ice cream. In those days a half-gallon was really a half-gallon, before manufacturers figured out they could make sleek packaging that SEEMS to be a half-gallon but is tapered to actually contain significantly less.
There was also a Baskin-Robbins shop near our home, but it never entered the negotiations. B-R was our ice cream target of opportunity, when passing by. Such a treat could occur on any day of the week and did not usually involve my father. The essential flavor at Baskin-Robbins, though thirty-one were touted, was mint chocolate chip. Some of the other flavors were doubtless delicious but, as far as my mother and I were concerned, there was only one flavor.
When my father occasionally surprised us by agreeing to go to the Guernsey Cow, it was actually a Pyrrhic victory for me. Truthfully, I did not particularly like their ice cream. There was no compelling flavor and, in order to make the long ride worthwhile, we usually ordered banana splits. Now, I realize there are people who love banana splits, just as there are people who love jelly in cookies or chocolate, but I have never enjoyed fruit with my ice cream or jelly with my cookies or chocolate.
The other specialty at the Guernsey Cow was homemade butterscotch taffy. Though I have a weakness for most sweets, I was not a fan. I feared that taffy, like Sugar Daddies, Tootsie-Rolls, and their ilk, would pull out my fillings. I do not recall this calamity actually occurring, but my fear of dentists was enough to sour me on taffy. Alas, my fear was apparently not compelling enough to make me brush my teeth thoroughly and consistently enough to avoid having fillings in the first place.
Later in life, my own family lived in Ramsey, NJ, a community where Baskin-Robbins franchises grew like trees. Stopping for ice cream was a staple of the post-soccer practice routine for all three of my children, but particularly for my daughter, Sarah. The health benefits of the soccer may have been outweighed by the diet shortfalls of the ice cream, but the psychological benefits to both of us made the trade-off worthwhile; anyone familiar with adolescents knows that a cheerful and cooperative 11-14-year-old daughter is priceless.
Scientific tests have not been undertaken, to my knowledge, but I believe preferences in ice cream flavor are inherited. From birth, Sarah never deviated from mint chocolate chip as her flavor. And it had to be from Baskin-Robbins. Imitations by other manufacturers, often labeled “chocolate mint chip” were specifically NOT acceptable. Along with subtle taste distinctions in the mint ice cream, the key to B-R MCC (as it was sometimes called in our efficiency-minded household) was, and continues to be, its tiny, melt-in-the-mouth dark chocolate flakes. Other brands, with their white ice cream and/or large chunks of chocolate, or imitation chocolate, were simply unacceptable.
I take pride in my daughter’s perhaps-excessive devotion to B-R mint chocolate chip. While I may have fallen for the occasional pralines and cream, vanilla or chocolate, Sarah’s devotion is PURE. When she went to college, I mailed her coupons for Baskin-Robbins. Among the advantages of the off-campus apartment where she lived in Wilmington, NC, was its proximity to a Baskin-Robbins.
So it was not entirely a surprise, last week, when Sarah, who moved last spring to nearby Raleigh, had a specific request for her birthday which falls on Halloween.
“I want a Baskin-Robbins mint chocolate chip ice cream cake,” she said on the phone, a few days ahead of the event.
My initial response was flat-footed: “There isn’t a Baskin-Robbins in Chapel Hill. Would Ben & Jerry’s or Cold Stone Creamery be acceptable?”
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening. It occurred to me I should appreciate how amazing it was for me and my wife, Katie, to have the exclusive opportunity to share her twenty-fourth birthday. As a Halloween baby, Sarah’s youthful celebrations were always dominated by the hubbub of trick-or-treating and parties. Now that she is a young adult, and given her tendency to be involved with a boyfriend, her unattached status this year may prove to be a one-time event.
“I’ll find a Baskin-Robbins,” I recovered to say.
“Good,” she said, fully aware of her advantage over her defenseless father.
After I hung up, Katie said, “We drive past Ben & Jerry’s every other day, but I don’t know of any Baskin-Robbins around here.”
“There has to be one,” I said, confidently, though I was aware that the concentration in North Carolina does not nearly match that of New Jersey.
I Googled Baskin-Robbins locations and, sure enough, there was a shop in Durham, only thirty-five minutes away.
“That was easy,” I declared, recalling the busy shops in Ramsey with their freezers full of ice cream cakes from floor-to-ceiling. “I’ll go pick up a mint chocolate chip cake.”
“You’d better call first,” said Katie, wiser than I in the ways of local businesses. After all, she’s dealt with the “authorized appliance repairmen” who consult the manual, and the plumbers who put spigots in backwards.
“You don’t think they’ll have a mint chocolate chip cake available?” I asked.
Sure enough, they did not.
“We can order one,” said the girl on the phone. “It’ll take a week, though.”
“Her birthday is in two days,” I said.
“Sorry,” said the Durham Baskin-Robbins.
I located one other shop in the semi-vicinity, in Apex, a fifty-minute drive, and called.
“Do you have a mint chocolate chip cake available, for Halloween?” I asked, with trepidation.
“We don’t,” said the girl on the telephone, “but let me see if we can get one.”
I waited in suspense. A different voice came on the line.
“Hi, I’m the manager. We can custom-make a cake for you,” she said. “You can pick it up on Halloween after one o’clock.”
“Thank you,” I said, with relief. “Do you want the details?”
“No, we’ll have the designer call you for those,” said the manager.
“Designer?” I said.
“Yes sir,” she said, with pride. “We have an off-site specialist come in to make our cakes.”
“Wow,” I said.
After I hung up, I related the discussion to Katie. I concluded, with amazement: “It’ll be a small cake. There’re only three of us. What kind of training is involved to become an ice cream cake specialist?”
The next day the phone rang.
“Hi,” said a pleasant voice with a soft, southern accent. “I’m Carly, the cake designer for the Apex store. Tell me what you have in mind.”
I explained the relatively small size of the cake, Sarah’s devotion to mint chocolate chip, and her preference for chocolate crust over graham.
“Okay Mr. Sanders,” said Carly. “Tell me more about your daughter. What does she love? What are her passions?”
“You mean besides mint chocolate chip ice cream?” I asked.
“Yes, I want to know about her as a person,” said Carly.
I took a moment to contemplate how this discussion could be taking place with a stranger in regard to an ice cream cake. I wondered for a moment if I were the butt of a practical joke. I wondered what this cake was going to cost. But I couldn’t cheap out on this; I’d already come too far.
“Um, Sarah loves her dog,” I said. “That’s probably her main passion right now.”
“What kind of dog?” asked Carly.
“A cocker spaniel,” I said. “Her name is Stella, and she’s brown, with caramel-colored eyebrows,” I added, trying to anticipate her next questions.
“Great,” said Carly. “I’ll start working on it.”
“By the way, not that it matters,” I started to say, also anticipating Katie’s next question. “How much….”
Carly had already hung up.
After lunch, on Halloween, we drove to Apex. When we arrived at the store, in the corner of a small shopping center, we noted that the property looked new. The shop was bustling with three young women behind the counter.
“I’m here to pick up an ice cream cake for Sanders,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” said the manager, a tiny Chinese woman, smiling. “Carly made a very special cake for you.”
She reached up to the top shelf of the freezer behind the counter and brought down a box, twice as high as it was wide, perhaps eight inches across.
“Look,” she said, pointing through the cellophane top.
I peered into the package and beheld a work of art, a square cake topped with brown icing and orange trim, including a doghouse and a dog that looked remarkably like Stella, floppy icing ears and all, holding a banner from her mouth that read “Happy Birthday, Sarah.” I was truly impressed.
“It’s perfect,” I said, brandishing my credit card.
“Carly will be so pleased,” said the manager. “She takes great pride in her work.”
“That’s clear,” I said.
The manager accepted my card. “Fifteen dollars,” she said.
I couldn’t believe it. “This was a custom-made cake,” I said. “How can it only be fifteen dollars?”
“That’s what it is,” said the manager.
I felt a strange sensation, that of enjoying a job extraordinarily well-done, for significantly less than expected. I felt embarrassed to be paying such a small sum with a credit card. I grabbed two additional pre-packed quarts of mint chocolate chip from the freezer to bump up the total.
“Can I leave a tip for Carly?” I asked.
“No,” said the manager, “but you can fill out the on-line survey and say something nice about her.”
“Absolutely,” I said. We completed a tribute to Carly as soon as we returned to the car.
If he were alive, my father would probably not find much that is familiar in modern-day North Carolina. However, he would certainly relate to the 1963-like price of an ice cream cake from the Apex Baskin-Robbins. In fact, there is a small, delicious piece of cake in the freezer that Sarah accidentally left behind. I think it has my name on it.

Tags Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake, family outings, mint chocolate chip ice cream

Categories Coming of Age, Modern Society, Parenting

FOOL ME ONCE…

November 3, 2013 //

FOOL ME ONCE…
“You’ll deal with issues like where the playground swings should be and what kind of trees should be planted in the common areas.”
The disembodied voice of Fred Karner, the developer of our vacation community, crackled through the long-distance connection from Costa Rica. Fred was over seventy, but had the hearty confidence of a lion of the business world. He was physically robust and bragged in our first meeting of having cleared part of the land with his own machete.
“But we won’t be down there often enough,” I said. “I’d miss most meetings. I won’t know what’s going on.”
“That’s okay,” soothed Fred. “We’ll conduct them by teleconference, if necessary. And I’ll be on-site almost every day. We really could use someone with your expertise. Everyone will appreciate your efforts and you will hardly have to do anything.”
Fred was pressing me to join him and one other landowner as a member of the Board of Directors at our vacation community in Playa Hermosa. He knew I was a real estate lawyer and seemed to assume I had broad expertise in the field. In fact, my expertise was in explaining mortgages, attempting to calm anxious clients over the telephone, and facilitating the particular and peculiar home-buying process in New Jersey; my knowledge of “association law” and “board of directors’ responsibility” was minimal.
“There won’t be any thorny issues?” I asked.
“Trust me,” said Fred.
“Uh-oh,” I thought to myself.
My reluctance to serve stemmed from a natural aversion to meetings. For better or worse, my “law firm” consisted of me, one associate and a secretary. I did not have meetings. I did not “consult.” Not to align myself with George W. Bush, but I was the “decider.” Over the years, I had refused various opportunities to work with partners or to invest with others in title companies and lenders. In almost every case, I was relieved months or years later when I heard about the failures of these enterprises, and the unhappy endings of friendships smashed on the shoals of recriminations. When it came to business relations, my default position was to remain simple, safe and uninvolved.
Yet, owning property in a distant country was an exciting departure from my routine. When I visited Costa Rica, I was willing to do things I would never do in New Jersey: I leapt off cliffs into rushing water; I fished in the ocean without a life preserver; and, I propelled myself over gorges on zip-lines only tenuously strapped-in by fifteen-year-old attendants. Just writing this, ten years later, makes me nauseous.
So it was not too much of a leap for me to take a deep breath, suppress my better judgment one more time, and say to Fred: “Okay, I’ll do it.” After all, I reasoned, it will be good to know what’s going on in the community. Plus, how unpleasant can the placement of playground equipment be? Also, there was already a project I wanted to influence; the fence around the community tennis court was facing the wrong direction – the support poles were on the inside – as a Director, I was sure I could influence the situation.
The first meeting of the Board and homeowners was scheduled in Fred’s living room during my next visit. I was so certain the meeting would be short and enjoyable that I brought along my twelve-year-old son, Sam. We were the first to arrive and reveled in Fred’s breathtaking view over the tropical forest to the Pacific Ocean. After saying hello, Sam went out in the yard to explore the gardens and pond.
In a few minutes, a dozen or so property owners arrived, introduced themselves, and chit-chatted amicably over wine and cheese. I felt increasingly joyous for the opportunity to be a leader in a community of such accomplished and interesting people. I learned that one homeowner studied rain forests on behalf of a European university; another was an international art dealer based in the Netherlands; there were entrepreneurs in scuba-diving and off-road adventures; and, Fred had started several companies in Canada and had eventually taken them public. As a small-town lawyer, I felt naive in terms of world-wide business experience. Perhaps, I deduced, my humdrum situation made Fred think of me as the appropriate person for dealing with the minor, low-key issues such a Board would confront.
Immersed in such thoughts, I was smiling contentedly when Fred called the meeting to order. “Our first issue today is to create a by-law banning the sub-division of any lots.”
A young man sitting next to me jumped up and asked, with an edge: “Why does lot 27 have an ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C?’”
“Because, as I’ve told you before,” said Fred, no longer sounding amiable, “that lot has already been sub-divided. It’s grandfathered.”
“That’s bull!” stated a woman sitting across from me.
“You’re a crook!” shouted the previously sedate art dealer.
“Who approved the sub-division in the first place?” asked the professor.
“The Board did,” said Fred.
“What?” I wondered to myself, startled. “The Board did what?”
“Who owns lot 27?” asked a woman.
“Who do you think? Fred owns it,” said the young man next to me, with venom.
I realized, unfortunately, I was not dreaming. This really WAS happening. My tropical community was turning out to be more like a snake’s den than a paradise.
Turning to me, the Dutchman said: “You’re on the Board. What do you say about this?”
I wanted to respond cogently but I was too stunned by the sudden turn-of-events to formulate my thoughts. For a moment, I focused on how enraged the man’s face was and how this manifested itself in his bulbous, alcoholic nose. Previously, I’d just thought of him as jolly.
“I’m new on the Board,” I finally offered. “I didn’t realize there were issues of this sort.”
I looked pointedly at Fred who immediately averted his eyes.
“Listen, everyone,” said Fred. “I have invested a lot of money in this community and put in a lot of work….”
“So what?” the forest scientist interrupted. “That doesn’t mean you can cheat.”
“That’s right, you’re committing fraud,” interjected others. The discussion devolved into an incomprehensible scrum.
Fred gestured towards the door. “I’m going to have to ask you all to leave my home. We can meet again when you can be civil.”
As my angry neighbors stormed out the front door and Fred disappeared into his bedroom, Sam squeezed his way in flushed with excitement.
“I saw a tree full of monkeys!” he said. “They were getting chased by like a hundred parrots!”
“Ah, yes,” I thought, “the wonders of nature in Costa Rica. If only we didn’t have to deal with humans.”
I tried to embrace Sam’s enthusiasm but was still preoccupied with the meeting, and wondering how I’d been duped. “That’s great,” I mustered. “You can tell me about it in the car.”
“Don’t you want to see them now?” asked Sam.
“Um, I think we have to go,” I said. There was no sign of Fred.
Over the next several months, I formed a telephone friendship with the third Director, a home owner who lived in Chicago named Bob. He’d also been bamboozled by Fred. He explained that Fred had used him to cudgel two homeowners into paying their full water bills even though they were excessive by thousands of dollars due to water main leakage that was arguably the developer’s, thus Fred’s, responsibility.
“If that happened to my water bill,” Bob had told Fred, “I would be pissed as hell, too.”
“That won’t happen to your bill,” said Fred. “I check the meter every day at your place. That’s a benefit of your being on the Board of Directors.”
“I still don’t think that’s right,” said Bob.
Sure enough, the following month, Bob’s water bill was $6,000, thirty times the usual amount. Fred told Bob he had to pay the bill or service would be shut off.
“I’m going to fight this,” said Bob.
“I know all the officials here,” said Fred. “You folks who live in the States except for a couple weeks a year won’t stand a chance.”
Fred became the face of evil for me. Playground equipment was never mentioned during subsequent conference calls that dealt with nasty disputes, boundary discrepancies, and subdivision complaints. Fred never failed to point out his advantage over the second home owners who were rarely on site. The thrill of owning a vacation home overlooking the ocean was swiftly eroding due to the stress of participating on the Board of Directors.
“Why don’t you quit?” asked everyone who heard about Fred.
My initial response was “I’d rather know what Fred is up to than have it come as a surprise.” Quickly, however, my viewpoint shifted to “ignorance is bliss.” Finally, I resigned from the Board and put the house up for sale. There were certainly non-Fred-related issues, such as poor property management, balky electricity, and leaky plumbing, but Fred played a huge role in sapping the foreign adventure of its joy.
In the subsequent decade, I turned down several opportunities to serve on boards. When we moved to a community in North Carolina, everyone who found out I had been an attorney suggested I join one committee or another. Most recently, a project to verify the title status of the nine hundred lots was launched. The Board wanted to alter the by-laws to prevent something or other from happening. The phone rang one evening, the caller identification indicating an acquaintance I knew to be a member of the Board of Directors.
“Stu, we have a project that’s right up your alley,” he said.
“I really don’t think I want to participate,” I said.
“But you did closings up in Jersey. You must be an expert on title searches,” he said.
“Not really,” I said, “that’s what we used title companies for. I explained mortgages.”
“Well, this job really will not be complex. We’re just making sure everyone’s ownership is in proper order,” he said.
“And if they aren’t?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m sure it can be resolved amicably,” he said. “Trust me.”
“Oops,” I said. “Someone’s at the door. Gotta go….”
I hung up. And I resolved not to call back.

Tags Board of Directors participation, Costa Rican development, Crooked developers, misapprehension

Categories Uncategorized

WRITING GROUP

October 24, 2013 //

WRITING GROUP

I did not join a writing group to write about the writing group, but the collection of people in one of the eight-week sessions I’ve attended over the last two years proved irresistible.
In addition to our “leader,” Elena, who organized the meetings and provided the prompts, there was Velva, a sweet wheelchair-bound woman whose house we used since she cannot travel; Tracy, a wildly curled redhead just graduated from college, who wore cowboy boots and wrote about drunken bacchanals she had attended; Greg, a psychiatrist, and Marybeth and Debra, two admitted depressives who’d never met before, but whose macabre tales of woe and suicidal thoughts appeared to have been written by the same person. If Greg had hoped the writing group would provide a break from his work-a-day world dealing with psychological crises, he was sadly mistaken.
The sessions were split into two parts. In each, Elena provided a verbal, visual or tactile prompt. We wrote for thirty minutes in longhand or on computers, then each person read their piece aloud, and everyone said something admiring about the piece, no matter what they may have really thought. When I first encountered this requirement, it struck me as impossibly disingenuous. However, I soon recognized the necessity of encouragement in this context. Also, one glows with goodness from lavishing praise, like telling a dinner host “everything is delicious” while contemplating which cereal to have immediately upon arriving home. Between the two writings, we spent fifteen minutes sharing snacks and herbal tea. All-in-all, the format presented a pleasant, nurturing way to practice speed-writing technique.
Several problems seemed to arise more acutely with this group than with other writing groups I have attended. First, not everyone was able to produce cogent writing in thirty minutes. Obviously, some are better at doing so than others, and everyone is flummoxed sometimes. For those occasions when a participant was completely blocked, or when they deemed their product to be total gibberish, they could opt out of reading aloud. In this group, participants chose not to read nearly half the time rather than a typical tally of, perhaps, ten percent. And, in retrospect, considering the head-shaking quality of what was written, we might have been better off with even less reading.
After all, what does one say when a piece is terrible or incomprehensible? How far can one stretch such adjectives as “interesting,” “intriguing,” or “unique” to suggest only positive connotations? Sometimes, after listening to Debra or Marybeth describe pondering submersion in a bathtub and “crossing the River Styx” not for the first time, I expended more effort and anxiety formulating a positive comment than I had contributed to my writing.
Greg’s solution was to comment exclusively in verse, which somehow deflected the tension. It was like having Doctors Seuss and Freud in the room together, formulating cryptic couplets. For example, when Marybeth wrote about her lack of friends, Greg said, with sympathy: “There are good ships, there are bad ships, but the best ships are friendships.”
When Debra wrote about finding her grandfather’s dead body, with emphasis on the word “putrefaction,” Greg nodded admiringly at her vocabulary, and said: “There’s a good deal of action, in putrefaction.” I tried to picture Greg offering therapy. He insists he does not resort to poetry with patients, but did admit to having said to one: “You snooze, you lose.”
On a weekly basis, Tracy described behaviors resulting from chugging beer that made me believe the kegs had LSD instead of alcohol. And she went to a fundamentalist, all-girls’ college! After she described one debauchery courtesy of some visiting males, Greg broke the stunned silence thusly: “One thing for sure, suffice it to say, I’ll never view a pool table, in the same way.”
Velva read from her wheelchair, with a smile, about relatives maimed in car crashes, marriages ravaged by adultery and disease, and crimes carried out with savagery. “It was really creative that you could get to cholera from the prompt ‘shirt collar,’” I once enthused.
My ego was boosted from participating in this particular writing group. In comparison to my co-participants, at least, I was adept at producing a page or two with a beginning, middle and end within the time limits. The bar may have been set low, but I usually attained it. In contrast, Elena rarely produced more than four or five sentences in a thirty minute period, and she knew the prompts ahead of time.
“It’s just overwhelming,” she said, speaking of running her household, holding a part-time job, taking a correspondence course, and mothering a four-year-old. “I can’t think straight.” Her admission was a revelation to me; it helped me feel greater empathy for her and the other participants. My life, at this stage, is comparatively uncluttered. After I attended several of her subsequent eight-week sessions, filled with writers I deemed more mainstream in their personal lives and subject-matter, Elena announced she was taking a break.
The hiatus has provided the opportunity, and necessity, to write on my own. This has been a useful development. Yet, I miss the ferment of the writing groups and the interesting collections of people who came together; while most sessions have melded in my memory, the group described above stands out. As the ever-gracious Greg concluded at the end of one bizarre evening:
Those images were horrible,
But don’t take this wrong.
I really enjoyed them,
Gross, pungent and strong.

Tags positive feedback, speed-writing, writing groups

Categories Adult Education

MAURA

October 14, 2013 //

MAURA
During my first year at Dickinson College in South-Central Pennsylvania, I spent most non-studying and non-soccer-playing time with a collection of socially naive males. We named ourselves Kappa Wu, to mock the Greek system we all despised with every disdainful and intellectually superior bone in our bodies. Kappa Wu comprised about twelve members who had virtually no contact with the opposite sex outside of classrooms. For a variety of reasons, we were inexperienced and awkward, and found it easier to hang out together than to branch out.
This is not to say I had no female friends. I had one. The closest thing our soccer team had to a groupie was a sophomore named Liz. She staked out our preseason practices and commenced dating our best player before the season even began. When they broke up, Liz dated several other players, one-at-a-time. Somehow, she managed to remain friendly with all of them. She never reached as far down the roster as me, however, the shy freshman goalie, but she did once bring her roommate, Maura, to a game.
Maura recognized me from Music 101 and, during warm-ups, in front of my teammates asked if I would help her study. Supremely self-conscious, I feared being razzed by the guys with insensitive male insinuations. But Maura apparently appeared too weird to attract and hold their attention, so I was spared.
In its two hundred year history, Dickinson’s probably never had another student from New Mexico. Maura was a slight brunette of medium height, and if one could get a clear look at her, she would probably have been considered attractive. However, in a milieu that favored conventional styles, Maura was an outlier. She covered herself in beat-up overalls and a changing selection of oversized, bright-colored plastic glasses that dominated her face. She frequently wore a cowboy hat and boots, too, basically the western grunge version of Diane Keaton.
Maura’s sideline approach to me could have represented a landmark in my social history; a girl had publicly expressed interest in spending time with me. But I also felt her overpowering “otherness,” which left me no expectation we could be more than friends. After just one or two additional encounters, it was clear I would be the big brother in all matters of classical music, and Maura would be the big sister in every other way.

*****

I learned that Maura seemed to be nineteen going on thirty. She had traveled all over the country. She’d ridden motorcycles and horses and real bucking broncos (outside, not in a bar). Unlike Liz, she was not the least attracted by the soccer team; “college boys are so immature,” she declared. Even the local law students, some of whom approached twenty-five, were beneath her level of interest. “I like real men,” said Maura to me, her local, musically advanced little brother (if the music was written before 1850).
Music 101 was a survey course of Renaissance and Baroque music; having studied music history and theory in high school, as well as having had a lifetime of exposure to classical music, I found the course simple. To Maura, as to many who thought “Baroque” meant something had to be fixed, Music 101 was a quagmire. Discerning the difference between major and minor keys was difficult for her. Recognizing stylistic differences between a seventeenth century Italian and an eighteenth century German composer was impossible.
“It’s Bach,” I would say. “Listen to the polyphony, the fugal elements.”
“What does fugal mean again?” Maura would ask.
And so it went. Still, in spite of such challenges, I enjoyed spending time with Maura. She was interesting and obviously different from my other friends. Sometimes, we shared a meal at the cafeteria or took a walk together. Using a skill that placed me in the forefront of technology in 1975, I typed several of her papers. “Would you mind if I did some editing, while I’m at it?” I asked.
“Be my guest,” she said.

*****

I didn’t feel Maura took advantage of me. Her requests were infrequent, and I had plenty of time, particularly after the soccer season ended. In the spring, she sat beside me in Music 102 and we walked together to the local ice cream shop several times. I don’t recall discussing anything consequential, so I was surprised when Maura told me, at the end of the year, she would be moving back to New Mexico. It had never occurred to me I might be one of her only friends and she must have been lonely, so far from home and so far from the mainstream, stylistically.
How blind I was! How oblivious! Of course she was transferring home! In a whole year of discussions, I never learned why she had chosen to come across the country to attend college in Pennsylvania. I should have asked. I should have tried to understand her situation, or tried to help. I should have invited her home for Thanksgiving. I learned later she had stayed in the dorm, herself, over the holiday.

*****

I thought I had seen the last of Maura when the school year ended. So I was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter inviting me to visit her in Albuquerque.
“That’s nice,” said my mother. “You never mentioned having a girlfriend.”
Doubtless blushing, I said: “She’s really just someone I know.”
Initially, I declared I wouldn’t go. But I had a terrible summer job and the idea of leaving it for a week appealed. My mother encouraged me to visit my older brother in Los Angeles, and stop to see Maura for several days on the way back. The idea gelled. There is cachet, after all, in saying: “I’m visiting a girl in Albuquerque,” and I definitely needed some cachet.
During the weeks leading up to the visit, Maura and I exchanged several letters. They were chattier and more familiar than our spoken exchanges. She was apparently not the last to find me wittier and more expressive in writing than in person. “I just broke up with a rodeo rider,” she wrote. “He moved back in with his wife and kid.”
“I’ll do what I can to cheer you up,” I wrote back, jauntily.
“It’ll be nice to have a friendly shoulder to lean on,” she wrote.
“Anything you need,” I wrote back, feeling like a knight in shining armor.
The following week, she wrote: “You’ve become such a special friend to me. I can’t wait to see you and give you a squeeze.”
“I’ll do some extra push-ups,” I wrote back, like a dork. “Don’t want to disappoint.”
Having managed to complete high school and the first year of college without ever going on a date, I did not envision myself as Maura’s “boyfriend.” I would not have known exactly what that entailed, if I tried. Yet, I was beginning to think of her as more than just an acquaintance. I chose a pretty scarf as a gift for her instead of the Phillies tee-shirt, or something similar, I might have chosen a few weeks earlier.
By the time I walked off the plane I had butterflies in my stomach. Though I couldn’t recall ever touching Maura, even on the fingertips, I’d had weeks to picture a first hug, the promised squeeze, and who knows what else? (I certainly didn’t) It was hot in Albuquerque in August, I deduced. Perhaps, I hoped, she will be wearing something less oppressive than those hideous overalls. On the cusp of my twentieth birthday, I wondered if this visit would mark my evolution from awkward teen to young adult in some important way.
Maura indeed looked terrific approaching me in the small terminal, just as I’d hoped. Not only was she dressed in trim khakis and a pink blouse, she was even wearing contacts. I barely recognized her. I felt an unfamiliar surge of adrenaline and my heart pounded. My habitual inhibitions barely kept me from running the last fifty feet, like in a movie, to claim my hug. Good thing. Maura greeted me with a smile, but that was all. She motioned to a nearby man in a cowboy hat, Wrangler jeans, boots and a mustache.
“That’s Jack,” she said, fawning. “We got back together last night. My mom and brother are home; they can’t wait to meet you.”
Jack looked about forty to me, though I now realize he may have only been twenty-seven. I had the sense of meeting the Marlboro Man in the flesh. His crushing handshake nearly ended my goaltending career. We squeezed into the front of his pick-up truck, Jack, Maura essentially on his lap and me against the passenger door, more superfluous than an appendix.
At home, after introducing me to her mother and eleven-year-old brother, Billy, Maura looked ill-at-ease. “I feel awful about this,” she said, “but would you really mind if Jack and I go out. Billy would love to play some basketball with you.”
She did not look like she felt awful at all, just excited to be free. It seemed my entry to young adulthood was still on hold, while I experienced the familiar lifestyle of an eleven-year-old. Billy and I shot baskets in the driveway until my hands calloused, then watched sports on television. In the evening, Maura’s mom made chili and took me on a drive around the University of New Mexico.
I think Maura returned home that night, but I’m not certain, since I didn’t see her at breakfast the next morning. Her mom took me and Billy to the top of a mountain where the view was spectacular, and I recall a tram-ride down. That evening, she took us out for a steak dinner. I had the impression she found me, a literature major from Philadelphia, who did not even own a pair of jeans, as exotic as Maura was at Dickinson.
The next day, Billy was busy with friends, so Maura’s mother drove me to Santa Fe. On the way, I saw canyons and buttes and washes, and spectacular cloud formations. It was like living inside a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. I recall enjoying the day immensely; there was certainly an element of relief to spend the day sightseeing with a kind, middle-aged tour guide instead of trying to comprehend my diminished standing with Maura.
That evening, while I was playing basketball with Billy, I overheard snatches of a phone conversation inside the adjacent kitchen:
“He is your guest…. Maura…. This isn’t right. Today was fine, but…. Listen to me…. Yes, you should. Okay, ‘bye.”
Maura’s mom opened the front door, and said to me:
“Maura and Jack will be by in a few minutes. They’re going to take you to the movies with them.”
“Can I go, too?” asked Billy. “Can I?”
She looked at me.
“I don’t mind,” I said. I felt loyal to Billy.
When the pick-up arrived we all squeezed into the front seat, and proceeded to the local theater to see “Murder by Death.” My companion, essentially, was Billy, while Maura and Jack canoodled in the dark. Afterwards, they dropped Billy and me off at home before heading out to a bar. It was a relief to be returned to the airport by Maura’s mother the next day. I thanked her for her hospitality and asked her to say “good-bye” to Maura for me.
On reflection, I don’t miss the awkwardness of that period of life at all. In the days before Facebook, it was possible to say good-bye, and never hear from, or of, a person again. And, sometimes, that is perfectly okay.

Tags eleven-year-old living, Naivete, overalls

Categories Coming of Age, perspective

KAREN’S STORY

October 7, 2013 //

The story below is true in most major ways, as related to me by a friend.
KAREN’S STORY
All her life she had wanted to become a teacher and now the final stages of the journey were to begin. Fall, 1975 Class registration at Stony Brook, however, delivered a shock. There was not to be an education “major” anymore. “How can this be?” said Karen, with despair.
She went home and entered the foyer feeling frustrated.
“How did it go?” asked her mother
“Terribly,” said Karen. “They’ve dropped education as a major. I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s a shame,” said her mother. “Is that permanent?”
“The lady at registration said they will try to reinstate it, but for now, who knows?”
“I’m sure they will,” said her mother. “Meanwhile, get started with your freshman classes. I’m sure something will work out. And when the department is reinvigorated, you’ll be the first in line.”
Karen was not so sure, but she was anxious to begin college. “In the meantime,” her mother continued, “you can make friends and try out college life.
Karen agreed and bustled off to her classes with enthusiasm and new notebooks. One day, near the end of her first week, she saw a flyer on the Union notice-board touting a meeting of the Red Balloon Society: “If you are unhappy, and want to fix the situation, join us,” it said. This, she surmised, was an organization dedicated to education issues, to speeding the resumption of the education major. Karen jotted down the time and place of the meeting. Typical of her, she decided to bake some cookies to take with her.
When she arrived at the meeting, in a small classroom off the main lobby, Karen was surprised to find herself the least hairy person in the room, though the room filled mostly with men.
“Welcome,” said one, a scraggly beard halfway down his chest. He looked at Karen from head-to-toe, taking in her Dorothy Hamell hairdo, the loafers on her feet, and her favorite dress, the one with all the flowers.
“Hi,” said Karen. “Is this the meeting about the education situation?”
“Definitely,” he said. “Not only education, but workers’ rights, the environment, inequality, everything.”
“That’s great,” said Karen. She offered her cookies.
“Cool,” said several of the guys, descending to the plate like locusts. “Any hash in these?” asked a girl dressed in battered jeans and a shawl.
“Oh, no,” said Karen. “That’s funny.”
The girl shrugged, unamused.
“Okay, everyone,” announced another student, a man with a ponytail and earrings in both ears. “Listen up. We have several events coming up and we need to be organized. Who’s in for demonstrating at the dean’s office Tuesday?”
“I’ll do it,” said one.
“I can’t,” said a girl. “I’ve got a pottery class.”
“Maybe I can,” said another.
“Hey, everyone,” said Karen, perking up. “Why don’t we write down who can come and who can’t. Maybe we can have sign-up sheets for each event.”
“Yeah,” said the first man who’d spoken. “The chick is right. Let’s have a sign up.”
So it went, eight or nine attendees gathered around Karen, signing up for activities and munching cookies. That evening, Karen was excited to tell her mother about the meeting.
“You won’t believe this,” she said, “but they couldn’t stop complimenting me for my leadership abilities and organizational skills.”
“Your leadership?” said her mother, eyebrow raised.
“Yes, they appointed me vice-chairman,” said Karen.
“Don’t they vote for that sort of thing?” asked her mother.
“They don’t really believe in votes,” said Karen. “Jimmy, the Commissioner, he’s in charge, and he appointed me.”
“A commissioner?” said her mother. “I never heard of that.”
“It was something like that,” said Karen. “Anyway, I think I’ll make a red velvet cake for next week’s meeting. They all really like the color red.”
“What did they say about the education department?” asked her mother.
“Oh,” said Karen. “We didn’t get around to it. We were really busy with introductions and the sign-ups and all. They talked a lot about marching and demonstrating, though. They’re really dedicated.”
“That’s good,” said her mother, “I guess.”
The second and third meetings proceeded similarly. There was chaos, then Jimmy called everyone to order, and Karen signed people up to activities that Jimmy listed on a blackboard.
“Did you hear about Peter?” asked a girl at the third meeting.
“He’s suspended,” said Jimmy. “He got caught pissing in the dean’s mail-box.”
“Right on,” said a black guy in the back.
“That’s awful,” said Karen, looking stunned. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“’Cause that dean’s a tool of the system. He’s the man.”
“I don’t get it,” said Karen. “I know he’s a man, but urinating in his mail-box is not nice.”
“He’s not a man. He’s the man.”
“Yeah,” said several of the others.
Karen was confused. Each week they seemed to enjoy whatever food Karen brought, and they seemed to appreciate how Karen kept them organized, but all they talked about were demonstrations and other nasty things; they never discussed the education department. Also, Karen did not feel welcome to attend their activities outside of the meetings, and she was never invited to socialize by anyone.
“How about if I come to the “Books not Bombs” march at the physics lab on Saturday,” said Karen. “Finally, we’re doing something concerning education.”
“Um, we really don’t think that would be a good idea,” said Jimmy. “It could get violent.”
That evening, at home, Karen expressed her unhappiness to her mother. She could not make sense of the meetings.
“I’m not sure they even like me,” she said.
“Sure they do, honey,” said her mother. “It’s just that they sound very serious about the issues and, you’ll forgive me for saying, you’ve never really been much of an issues person.”
“I know,” said Karen. “I feel really bad about it, but I think I’m going to quit.”
“At least take a break,” said her mother. “Maybe you can help at the library or something, and meet some nice kids.”
Karen turned her attention to her classwork and found some friends to share meals. At the end of the term, she was delighted to hear that the education major was reinstated. Karen signed up for courses with enthusiasm and became a successful student of educational theories, learning strategies and curriculum development. Her time in the Red Balloon Society was nearly forgotten, until….
FOUR YEARS LATER:
“What do you mean, you can’t hire me?” said Karen. “I have a 3.4 GPA and almost all A’s in education.”
“It’s your associations,” said the principal. “Believe me,” she added, looking at Karen’s anguished expression, “no one is more surprised to find out than I.”
“What associations? Surprised about what?” asked Karen.
“Well, you must have known this would come up. The background check disclosed you were the vice-commissar of the communist club in college,” said the principal.
“Hunh?” said Karen.
“The undercover agent at the Red Balloon Society at the time said no one would have come to the meetings if it weren’t for you. Here’s a quote from the file. ‘Jimmy Steinberg, the Commissar, said of Karen: that chick is really cooking good stuff.’”
“The Red Balloon Society was communist?” said Karen.
“Here’s another quote, from a guy named Peter, a suspected bomb-maker: ‘That Karen girl, she’s got all the recipes.’”
“He’s talking about brownies,” said Karen, reddening.
“Brownies?” said the principal. “Not bombs?”
“Of course not,” said Karen.
“Weren’t you a communist?” asked the principal.
“No, I’m a democrat,” said Karen. “There must be a misunderstanding.”
“I’ll say,” said the principal.
EPILOGUE: Karen’s days as an accidental campus radical were eventually explained. She obtained a position in the Long Island schools, where she taught for thirty years, widely praised for excellence in teaching as well as baking. Co-workers knew her brownies as “to die for,” but only in the best, non-violent sense of the phrase.

Tags Cold War intrigue, education, informants on college campuses

Categories Coming of Age

SCRABBLE, ANYONE?

September 23, 2013 //

SCRABBLE, ANYONE?

This story is about a ninety-six-year-old woman. I promise, however, it is not one of those heart-warming, tear-inducing tales of sweetness and light, of life gone by and now only the basis for retrospective adulation. No, this nonagenarian is still tough-minded and forceful, and can only be overcome by her opponents with intelligence, patience and what she would doubtless declare to be a lot of luck.
Rose Galfand is a Scrabble fanatic. She has rendered opponents miserable over a period longer than most people live. This woman, who never attended college, and studied shorthand as the high-point of her academic career, knows every letter of the Greek, Egyptian and Hebrew alphabets. She knows the monetary units of Latvia and Cambodia, and the spelling of every word that starts with “Q” and does not contain a “U.”
“Qat,” she explains, when questioned, “is the mild narcotic chewed by the male inhabitants of Yemen.”
Rose was not expected to live into the twenty-first century. In fact, persistent tuberculosis kept her bedridden for years in her late teens and provided an anxious drumbeat for her family throughout the 1930’s, when additional depressing circumstances were neither needed nor deserved.
While she was ill, an aspiring librarian named Sidney visited nearly every day. Rose initially referred to him as “The Nebish,” a word that hardly requires translation – it is not a compliment. He came to sit by her bed.
“Go away,” she said.
“No, honey-bun,” he replied.
“You’re bothering me,” she said.
“But I adore you, dearest,” he said, not the least bit discouraged.
He reached for her hand. She pulled it away.
“Please leave me alone,” she said.
Over many months, Sidney’s sheer persistence wore away her defenses. When they were married, the ceremony took place in the bedroom. Rose’s mother cried throughout the ceremony, perhaps for joy, but perhaps also for concern that her daughter would not survive. Sidney’s parents were livid, certain that their son was foolishly falling into a hopeless situation.
Defying the predictions of her doctors, Rose survived; she emerged from bed several months after the wedding. She found work as a secretary and, eventually, raised two daughters. She ran her household while Sidney rose up in the hierarchy of Philadelphia’s library system. Since money was never abundant, Rose decorated their home with art and crafts she had made herself. With Sidney’s dutiful help, she created beautiful gardens filled, appropriately, with rose bushes. As they progressed through life together, Rose came to appreciate the gift of Sidney’s love; yet, she never failed to roll her eyes at Sidney’s endearments, even while she luxuriated in them.
“Sweetheart,” he said, “let me rub your back.”
“If you want to,” she said, moving closer.
“Darling, can I make you some tea?” he asked.
“If it’s not too much trouble,” she said.
Decades before the evolution of “the sensitive male,” Sidney set an insurmountable standard for husbands. He died after sixty years of marriage. Rose mourned for her husband and it would have been understandable if she had faltered. But Rose carries on, full of “piss and vinegar,” to quote one of her favorite phrases. Though she has other interests, she has made a virtual religion of conservative, defensive-minded Scrabble. Accordingly, she pronounces principles that may as well be set on a tablet and carried down from a mountaintop.
“Never get stuck with a V or a C,” she instructs. “Always block the triple word spaces. Don’t squander an H or an F.”
When you play against Rose, she gums up the board with so many little words that it is nearly impossible to attach anything. If you take more than a moment to think, she is apt to drum her fingers and declare, forlornly: “You’re wearing me out.”
Rose is gracious in victory, not so much in defeat. “You had all the good letters,” she will note. “You really know how to pick.”
Rose is not apt to dwell on her longevity or to seek profound answers to the mystery of the meaning of life. “Life is like a Scrabble game,” she maintains. “You either get good letters or you don’t. Either way, you have to play them intelligently. And, if you happen to pick up an S, which I hardly ever do, don’t waste it.”

Tags aging with dignity, persistence, Scrabble hotshot

Categories aging with dignity, family relationships, Uncategorized