Wow. Really...

Dear You,

"Wow!" said my grandson, after raising himself from the electronic game console to look out the car window at the river. Gabriel and I were on a 210 mile journey to return him to his mother after his three-day visit with us this weekend. I-86 is a beautiful roadway in any season, and now in deep Summer it features mountainsides and streambeds and little villages glimpsed now and then. As I drove, I was conscious of the bleeps and clicks and annoying scraps of "music" that accompanied his GameBoy version of Spongebob Squarepants. He is an addict.

Trying to lure him toward the beauties of the natural world, I interrupted his play now and then by suggesting he observe what to my eye was especially beautiful outside the car, and he dutifully obeyed, returning quickly to the toy. On this occasion, I was struck by the false sincerity in his voice. "Wow!" But not really. "You're so square," he might have said had he been a child in my time of growing up. He is seven.

Someone said of being an actor that you know you're good if you can fake sincerity. How easily and early some children learn this! With this final attempt to wean him away from the artificial to the real, I left him to his imaginary world and watched the scenery pass by. "Wow!" I thought . . . quite sincerely.

Bleak House

Dear You,

Why do you suppose that fictional representations of the future are so often bleak? As I continue my current read -- one of my "beach books," my term for light reading -- I keep thinking of other novels. This one is a thriller set a half-century hence, the murder victims getting their comeuppance because of their Frankenstein-like efforts to create beautiful and intelligent young women.

Why do so many writers imagine an Orwellian future in telling their stories? Were they influenced by Huxley's "Brave New World" of over-population and genetics experiments? Orwell's "1984" of perpetual war and Big Brother surveillance? The list is much longer than I want to note here, and that's not even touching recent as well as classic movies. Like millions of others recently, I got the seventh and last Harry Potter book, and I notice in the early chapters how different are the tone and characters and plot compared with those first installments. Harry has "grown up" and his future is grimmer than his past. So goes the world, apparently!

My only reference here comes from comparing my life with that of my father's -- child of the Great Depression and wounded veteran of World War II, struggling for so many years to achieve the American Dream . . . which I inherited and too often take for granted. I imagine the future to be better and better. Even so, it certainly is entertaining to visit a much darker world in my reading.

Black and White

Dear You,

When I was much younger, I prided myself on my liberal outlook -- my tolerance of others and their differences. Yes, I grew up in a monoculture: small-town Ohio. And goodness knows my father had no use for "others" -- and that list was pretty long. I had absorbed my share of sexist and racist jokes.

But I had outgrown all that. I had gone to a university, and I lived in the "inner city" of Rochester, NY, where my neighborhood only years before had been the scene of race riots. I talked a very good game. Why, "some of my best friends were black"!

Pride goeth before a fall, it is said. And there came that evening when I was returning home with my then-wife M. We pulled to the curb (we had no off-street parking there) and as I was about to get out I saw three young, black men walking toward us. They were in the middle of the lamp-lit street, and I calculated instantly -- three young black men vs. an adult male and female, and at that hour no one to see. "Let's stay in the car for a minute," I said as I pushed down my doorlock.

Moments later the three youths were passing by our car. One of them turned toward us, hooked his thumbs into both sides of his mouth, stuck out his tongue and waggled his fingers in that same way I once did to make fun of my friends in Ohio. All three laughed and continued on their way. I burned with shame. Years later, as I write this, I still feel mortified.

In a book called "In Black and White" a writer with the NY Times (I have forgotten his name) tells of similar experiences he had when a college student in Chicago. At night he would hear car door locks thunking down and see frightened faces as he passed by. In a short while his shame turned to anger, and he began to adopt threatening poses when he could. He became what his racist neighbors assumed he was: a menace.

And I wonder -- looking back a quarter-century, now -- what did I do to add to our national climate of racism? And have I atoned for it since?

Tubs

Dear You,

It has been disconcerting this summer to be in companionship with so many people -- friends and acquaintances -- who have shown an aversion to "serious talk." By that I mean just about anything relating to events on a larger stage than the little area around us. I have thought of Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River," where one of the characters, a cooper, or barrel maker, scoffs at his fellows, saying they think they see Life, but all they see is the "rim of their tub."

Because we are confined to our bodies and to just a few years of history, our experiences in life are narrow. It takes an effort to leave our comfortable surroundings and see what Life -- in a wider sense -- is like, and even then we will never fully know. As a man, I would like to understand the lives of women. As someone born in the mid-twentieth century, I am curious about the ancestors . . . how is my perception different from someone younger? What about those reared in different cultures?

While I remain forever walled in my own Self, I have long sought windows -- I read newspapers and news magazines, I listen to National Public Radio, and (of course!) I read Serious Books. What I believe is that one cannot otherwise be much of a citizen. But what I have experienced in too many recent encounters are fear, anger, distrust, and suspicion, along with an unwillingness to explore whether those feelings are warranted. And I confess, it makes me feel a bit lonely.

Booked Solid

Dear You,

By my rough calculation my brothers and I collectively have been reading books for over a century and a half. We read voraciously -- have done so since we learned how. I noticed that habit again on my recent visit with them. When nothing else beckons, we reach for a book, and a book is always within reach. We have devoured them by the hundreds.

My current book concerns the 1854 cholera outbreak in London -- The Ghost Map. A friend lent me her copy, and I expect quite a few others will read that copy . . . and its clones . . . before it joins other titles down the River Styxx of memory. I love the way my friends and acquaintences think of me when they finish reading something they have enjoyed. I love the way a library card opens the door to a myriad of books wherever I go. I love BookCrossing (it's online!) to see what others are reading, so that when I paw through the remainders tables at Borders or B&N I can do more than "judge a book by its cover" that I've spotted for $3.95 And of course I love yard sales, where I've purchased an entire box of books for a couple of bucks.

So there we were in northern Michigan, my brothers and I, talking about books along with all the other things we have in common. If "reading maketh a whole man," then we were certainly being wholly ourselves.

Second-hand Emotions

Dear You,

I attended the wedding, even though I wasn't invited, and found myself at the reception (after the invited guests had finished their meals, of course) drinking a glass of water and eating cake. My wife's sister's daughter was the Maid of Honor . . . long story. Anyway, it was a hand-me-down invitation, I guess, so I didn't feel guilty about the cake.

The dancing had started only a little while earlier. The deejay paused his sound system to announce that the Father of the Bride had a few words . . .

"When your only child says she's getting married, I suppose everyone has many thoughts." So far, so good. "So, I went on the Internet . . ." Huh? What about the thoughts that 'everyone' might have . . . in this case, his? After that brief (original?) introduction, he took a paper from his pocket and began, "I wish for you this so you might know that / I hope you this so you might then that . . . blah-blah-blah." (You can, obviously, find the accurate full-text on the Internet.) By the time he was finishing with the dozen or so items on the print-out, he was choking back his tears.

Why is it that we depend on things outside ourselves in order to find words for our emotions? How did Hallmark cards become the ubiquitous deliverer of our joy at a birth, our sympathy for death, and everything in between? I notice the same lines spoken at wakes in my local funeral home as those spoken in the movies -- have we nothing original left to say?

The Gun

Dear You,

My father was dying, and he was giving things away. So he came out of his bedroom that afternoon with the medals he'd earned in World War II, and a little pistol. It was, he explained, the .25 caliber gun he had taken from a Nazi officer -- his "pocket pistol," to distinguish it from the larger revolver the man had on his belt. I took it home and found his note that the Nazi was General Wolff, and the newspaper clipping that was with the gun explained he was SS, second to Himmler.

I took the gun home, learned to disassemble and clean it, ensured the clip and chamber had no bullets, and put it in a drawer. Today it is in my luggage, because I'm taking it to Michigan to give to my youngest brother for his birthday.

Some gift, you will say. You may look at this gun, think of its first owner, and speculate about the destruction it probably caused in that terrible period, when General Wolff was responsible for shipping so many human beings to their deaths. Should not a device, like its owner, be consigned to the rubbish heap of history?

The gun lobby often says that "guns don't kill people; people kill people," and I have no doubt that my brother will use this pistol as he does his other guns -- for sport, for recreation, for the same kind of pleasure he and I will derive from the fireworks I bought while passing through Pennsylvania . . . also intended to celebrate his birthday.

And perhaps someday, that gun will be another way for people to preserve the memory of the terrible past . . . another way to help us prevent a future holocaust.

Fear

Dear You,

In a recent issue of the Atlantic, I read about the growing problem of online predators. The story began with an anecdote -- a girl standing at a bus stop with her luggage nearby was engaged by a stranger who seemed to know a lot about her. Turns out, he had read her luggage tag, so was able to seem like someone who knew her parents. The article went on to inform us that anyone can deduce an astonishing amount of information from what kids put on places like MySpace and blogs they create.

Fearmongering has some merit -- we must teach children to be wary in today's world. But my worry is that we are sapping the present generation of their courage in an effort to keep them safe. It does not escape my notice that the current occupant of the White House could never have been re-elected had he not campaigned on a platform of 9/11 and the "War on Terror." Someone (was it Benjamin Franklin?) once said that anyone who wants to be both safe and free can be neither.

So it was a delight the other morning when, on my morning walk, I witnessed two little girls zipping by me on a tiny motorized bike. They were blissfully happy and laughing, and -- amazingly -- did not have pounds of plastic padding and helmets between them and the out-of-doors they were inhabiting at the moment. They waved as they passed . . . innocent of the dangers their parents -- all of us these days! -- seem eager to protect them from. I hope they never lose their courage, their independence, their joy in pushing against the limits of their lives.

Reading

Dear You,

It is not possible for me to remember not being able to read, nor was there ever a time since I began when reading was not a deep pleasure. For many years I have said that if Heaven is the place with no books, I would seriously consider spending eternity elsewhere -- anywhere there might be the written word. I am compulsive about print. I read the cereal box even if it is the same material I read the day before.

My morning begins, though, not with cereal but with coffee and the newspaper, and I am distressed by the possibility that I will outlive newsprint -- I read that papers are folding everywhere in the world in favor of other media people are using to get their information. I linger over the newspaper, even though the one here in Rochester, New York is not much of a paper -- not compared to, say, the St. Petersburg Times, which I have access to in the winter months.

While I scan every headline and read most of the paper, I don't read every story. For instance, on page 2C today, under "My Pet World" I saw the headline, "Blot out cat urine before neutralizing the odor." Even then I registered the first sentence (Q: You once wrote about cleaning up cat urine.) before tearing my eyes downward in search of something . . . well . . . something a tad more interesting to me.

Still, reading remains always at least potentially valuable. Should I ever find myself with an incontinent cat, I will know to search the archives for this bit of information. But not today.

Collisions

Dear You,

This morning I read a newpaper account that began, "After a night of bar-hopping with friends, a law school student was at the controls of a motorboat when it broadsided...another boat on Skaneateles Lake, killing a Virginia police officer and his girlfriend..." The facts: 2:40 a.m.; 32-year-old U of AZ student; two friends in boat were ejected, after which he stopped to pick them up before leaving for his family's camp, four miles across the lake . . . without aiding the people he'd hit. Later, his (sober?) 25-yr. old brother, in an attempt toprotect the older one, told investigators that he had been driving the boat. The story fell apart, as these things so often do, and this fellow will soon face felony charges.

I cite this as the most recent of several instances that I have seen of people acting recklessly, without regard to others, and who subsequently fail to accept responsibility. Whatever has happened to "Yes, I did it, and I am sorry"?

As I read the story this morning, I could not help thinking of my parents, who were so amazingly honest and honorable in every dealing I witnessed while growing up in Ohio. I still have a book from my mother, who inscribed "To Paul, toward a noble manhood." Whenever I have failed the ideals my parents set for me, it has not been because I had no teachers.

But today? Not even those occupying the White House can be cited as models of proper behavior. Not even to say, "We have made mistakes, and we are sorry." Not even a young law student, it seems, can be expected to behave properly today. We should all be sorry about that.

Conspicuous Consumption

Dear You,

My customary morning walk is uphill in the beginning. That way the end of the trip is something I really look forward to. A nearby winery has given that neighborhood its name: Vineyard Hill. I walk by three-car garages and long, rolling lawns, and the cars that pass me are similarly big -- SUVs, their colors ranging from white to black without anything from the rainbow in between, but invariably driven by a woman. She provides the color, and makes me think of a bouquet inside a box. Ponytail tosses a wave on her way to the grocery store, gunning the engine out of her driveway, and I plod on.

It is toward the middle of the walk when I get my reward. Among all the other 5br4bath homes sits one that truly stands out. It is a festival of lawn decoration. Full-size bronze horses, one pulling a bronze trotter cart, scatter about the yard. Twirling boys and girls, all metal, dance among the bushes, near -- unaccountably -- several wire-sculpted deer. Gazing globes, elves, windmills, assorted wildlife creatures . . . too much to record here! Near the house stand several Greek-inspired columns surrounding an enormous globe, with a fountain going most days. Each item by itself might be worthy of study -- these things are clearly expensive. But the assemblage is a chaos of different scales, colors, and types.

When I was a child, I delighted in a newspaper drawing that challenged me to find "What is Wrong with this Picture?" A photograph of this house would be similarly interesting. I speculate what the neighbors think.

And I wonder: what does it say about someone who must give this much publicity to his wealth?

Turning Leaves

Dear You,

While on a whale-watching excursion out of Plymouth, Massachusetts, several years ago, I observed at the back of the vessel a man flanked by two boys, each engrossed in a paperback book. Since they were dressed similarly and bore resemblances to each other, I took them for father and sons. We had been out of sight of shore for over an hour already, with another hour to go before reaching the Stellwagen Banks, where the whales most likely were to be seen.

I looked around at the other passengers -- some in quiet conversation, others fiddling with camera equipment, quite a few with portable listening devices and nodding or tapping to music flowing from headsets, and not a few who were just staring at the vacant seascape. Here and there was someone else looking at print: the tour brochure, a magazine . . . but I saw only those three with books. In the years since, I have observed this same situation in a variety of public places.

How to explain this loss of the habit of reading? (An exegesis, no doubt, too lengthy for this space!) Kosinski called Americans a "nation of videots" and Mencken sneeringly invented decades earlier "Boobus Americanus." If those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, I think those who aren't readers cannot be very good citizens -- certainly not in a democracy, which can be sustained only by people of reason.

I think of those three readers afloat in the Atlantic, just a few years before their fellow Americans -- those who managed to get to the polls at all! -- voted into office a man who can scarcely read his own teleprompter, and who, with little sense of, and no regard for, history, has so damaged our country that it will be years undoing him if at all. Incredibly, We, the People, returned to the polls and elected him again!

Wasn't anyone reading?

Missing You

Dear You,

As a school teacher I often was greeted at my classroom door by a student who had missed class the previous day. "Did I miss anything?" Sometimes I laughingly responded that, because s/he was absent, we had decided to do nothing that day, so the answer was "No, you didn't miss anything at all." If I had a couple of extra moments, however, my customary answer was more serious, and I explained that whatever s/he had missed, it was far less important than what the rest of us had missed -- "You."

I would explain that a class was the sum of its parts, not just whatever was in my lesson plan for that day. And if anyone was missing, the sum was diminished. So often, a student would ask a question or offer an opinion, and the entire lesson turned a different corner . . . many times to a surprising and remarkable place. I learned to watch for such opportunities.

It seems to me that it's what happens when someone goes missing from my life. Whatever a day might hold for me, it will be less than it was. An easy example is what my parents might still be teaching me if they had been granted longer lives. If one of the purposes is, as I believe, to continue learning, the loss of every potential teacher is profound. I am now old enough to know when I am diminished . . . and why.

A Water View

Dear You,

The storm gave way to light clouds and peeks of sunshine, so the lakeside cottage owner suggested a boat ride. In my everyday life, my view of any of the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York is from the highway, often during the tasting-trips I like to take to wineries. On this occasion, I was able to see through the looking-glass . . . that is, from the reverse of the usual.

For many years I have marveled at the idea that people could own more than one house and all that goes with it -- a boat, for example. Such a life surpasses need, the existance of so many who share our planet. In that life, one can live near the water (or not), can take a boat out onto that water (or not), even just look at the water whenever it takes your fancy (or not). It is a life of options, of choice.

I'm not talking about luxury. As we cruised near the shoreline we passed many houses that looked old and modest and well-loved. Perhaps the parents or grandparents had constructed them (as was the case of the cottage I was visiting), and they had devolved through the next generation or two. A sailboat hauled onto the little beach, a propane grill near a picnic table, a few plastic chairs, a towel over a branch to dry . . .

What caught my eye at length, however, was increasing evidence of such dwellings being bought, bulldozed, and replaced with "McMansions." These were way out of scale to their environment, with 2- and 3-bay boathouses, along with the docks that were two-storey affairs (a deck on top, for parties above the water?). Conspicuous consumption, to my eye.

Ahhh, for earlier, simpler times, when one's wealth did not jump out of the photographs.

Endurance

Dear You,

The cashier at the supermarket wore a wrist guard for her carpal tunnel injury and had a long story to tell the customer just ahead of me. The customer waved her checkbook around, along with a plastic gift card, and her groceries were piled high and chaotically on the belt, which in turn barely moved forward. The clerk was new at the job, and since the customer had not taken the time to weigh her own produce and affix the little barcodes to the plastic baggies, each of those had to be looked up on the card near the machine, then weighed.

I always weigh my produce. In addition I group my groceries and put their barcodes down or facing forward as I remove them from the cart onto the belt. This makes the process go so much faster, you see. It's because everything in my life in recent years has been going faster. I use a faster computer with high-speed broadband. I carry a cellphone so I can talk to anyone I want as soon as I wish. I pay for things with my credit card -- no time to give and receive change.

In the next ten minutes the cashier and customer were buddies. "I was nicknamed 'Pokey' when I was a little girl," gushed the shopper when the clerk apologized . . . again . . . for going so slow. ("Ahh," I thought. "Soulmates.") I helpfully waved off the next two customers who tried to join me in line and watched them leave the store as the belt ground slowly forward enough for me to add my things -- barcodes down and/or forward, naturally. My breathing slowed, and I looked through a tabloid to see why She-Moviestar was angry enough to divorce He-Moviestar and who was about to give birth to an alien baby. In short, I found myself seeking some peace in this busy world. Then I turned over my shopping list and wrote this short essay.

Now I'm sitting here, madly typing before tackling the next three items on my ToDo list that sits on my desk.

Budgeting

Dear You,

Over the years I've come to understand that we have only two things to spend: Time and Money. It is also clear to me that no one spends these things in the same way.

My mind goes back to a moment when I was standing in an electronics store with my then-wife (I'll call her M. here . . . and whenever she pops up in my musings). I was looking at a turntable, and when M. said, "But you don't need it" I answered, "I want it." The comeback was quick: "Well, that's it then." She understood the difference before I did. (I add, with a pang, that I was neither so wise nor generous, when some weeks later M. wanted to purchase some things for the house that we might both have enjoyed. Ahhh, hindsight.)

Time is the same way. Thoreau remarked, "As if you can kill Time without injuring Eternity." Smart guy, Henry D. If I spend time writing my thoughts in this blog instead of, say, re-reading "Walden," who is to say yes or no to that?

Whatever the commodity, the key is budgeting. One of these days the Money may run out. For certain, Time will.