Shades indoors and a cigarette. What a poser! (My wife loves this photo, but then she hadn't been born yet when it was taken in the summer of '62.)
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Friday, October 15, 2004
Smokin'
One of my favorite bloggers mentioned today that she and her husband are smokers and it got me thinking about my former tobacco addiction.
Both of my parents were smokers. My earliest recollection about my father smoking was that his brand was Phillip Morris. The company had a signature ad campaign on radio and magazines and on early TV that featured a hotel bellboy with the characteristic chin-strapped pillbox hat worn at a jaunty angle. His name was Johnny and he could be heard across America shouting out, "Caaaaalllll for Philllipppp Morrrrrrrissss!" Besides offering a glimpse of big city hotel amenities, it was a catchy campaign. Years later, when my dad's older brother Joe retired to a mobile home park (don't dare call them trailers) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., we were all amazed to discover the original "Johnny" was one of his neighbors. Apparently the gig didn't pay very well.
I think my mother smoked the occasional Phillip Morris too, but mostly I remember my dad as a smoker.
I remember him sitting at the kitchen table after meals and lighting up. There was no ashtray on the table, so he used his plate for an ashtray, stubbing out the butt among the egg yolk or mashed potatoes or whatever was left on the plate. Just to complete the image, I remember it being Fiestaware. That all seems desperately uncouth today, but my dad was raised on a farm and so was mom, so she never got on his case about it.
Given today's sensibilities, especially about smoking, most people would find such behavior horrifying.
Anyhow, by the time I was 8 or 9, my friends Jack and Bill would occasionally involve me in their clandestine forays into cigarette smoking with cigarettes they had filched from their parents. (This was in the 1950s and just about everybody smoked.)
But I didn't pick up the habit until around my sophomore year of high school when I took it up during a road trip to Terre Haute with friends to see the Dave Brubeck Quartet in concert at what was then Indiana State Teachers College. I started with Salem, which was convenient because that's what my mother was smoking by then. Dad had long since transitioned to Winston.
By the time I got to college, I was smoking a pack of mainly Salem or Winston every couple of days. Sometime during my freshman year, Jim West - my neighbor in the dorm - got me converted to Viceroy. He wasn't really trying to change my brand allegiance - he just always seemed to have plenty when I ran out of my brand.
When I got into the newspaper business I found myself among hardcore smokers. A blue haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air of the City Room and almost everyone had a cigarette in his mouth or burning in an ashtray all the time. I remember the custodial staff changing acoustic ceiling tiles occasionally and being shocked at how the new, white tiles stood out in sharp relief against the yellow, tar and nicotine-coated tiles.
By this time, I was up to three packs a day. My first conscious act every morning was to reach for cigarettes and lighter on the bedside table and fire one up on the way to the bathroom. Likewise, the last thing I did every night was stub out that last smoke in the bedside table ashtray.
Sometime around 1969 or so, I got the psychological leverage on myself to actually quit and I stayed quit until an emotional crisis about three years later.
I quit for keeps around 1979. Naturally, my metabolism changed and I gained 40-50 pounds, some of which I manage to lose and gain from year to year.
I had a relatively easy time quitting the last time because I did it in the context of a Transcendental Meditation Sidhi course at Maharishi International University (now the Maharishi School of Management) in Fairfield, Ia. I was in an environment where nobody smoked, I had no access to cigarettes and I was spending several hours a day in meditation. I took about 40 rolls of Certs breath mints with me and, by the time the two-week course was over, all desire for a smoke was gone.
Even so, for several years afterward I had occasional dreams in which I went back to smoking. I'd invariably awake with a start and the horrible fear that I had actually started smoking again. It's a very powerful addiction and I believe the researchers when they say it gets a stronger grip on you than does cocaine.
As a footnote, my dad was about my age when he lost his voice to cancer of the larnyx that his oncologist said was almost certainly a consequence of smoking.
Both of my parents were smokers. My earliest recollection about my father smoking was that his brand was Phillip Morris. The company had a signature ad campaign on radio and magazines and on early TV that featured a hotel bellboy with the characteristic chin-strapped pillbox hat worn at a jaunty angle. His name was Johnny and he could be heard across America shouting out, "Caaaaalllll for Philllipppp Morrrrrrrissss!" Besides offering a glimpse of big city hotel amenities, it was a catchy campaign. Years later, when my dad's older brother Joe retired to a mobile home park (don't dare call them trailers) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., we were all amazed to discover the original "Johnny" was one of his neighbors. Apparently the gig didn't pay very well.
I think my mother smoked the occasional Phillip Morris too, but mostly I remember my dad as a smoker.
I remember him sitting at the kitchen table after meals and lighting up. There was no ashtray on the table, so he used his plate for an ashtray, stubbing out the butt among the egg yolk or mashed potatoes or whatever was left on the plate. Just to complete the image, I remember it being Fiestaware. That all seems desperately uncouth today, but my dad was raised on a farm and so was mom, so she never got on his case about it.
Given today's sensibilities, especially about smoking, most people would find such behavior horrifying.
Anyhow, by the time I was 8 or 9, my friends Jack and Bill would occasionally involve me in their clandestine forays into cigarette smoking with cigarettes they had filched from their parents. (This was in the 1950s and just about everybody smoked.)
But I didn't pick up the habit until around my sophomore year of high school when I took it up during a road trip to Terre Haute with friends to see the Dave Brubeck Quartet in concert at what was then Indiana State Teachers College. I started with Salem, which was convenient because that's what my mother was smoking by then. Dad had long since transitioned to Winston.
By the time I got to college, I was smoking a pack of mainly Salem or Winston every couple of days. Sometime during my freshman year, Jim West - my neighbor in the dorm - got me converted to Viceroy. He wasn't really trying to change my brand allegiance - he just always seemed to have plenty when I ran out of my brand.
When I got into the newspaper business I found myself among hardcore smokers. A blue haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air of the City Room and almost everyone had a cigarette in his mouth or burning in an ashtray all the time. I remember the custodial staff changing acoustic ceiling tiles occasionally and being shocked at how the new, white tiles stood out in sharp relief against the yellow, tar and nicotine-coated tiles.
By this time, I was up to three packs a day. My first conscious act every morning was to reach for cigarettes and lighter on the bedside table and fire one up on the way to the bathroom. Likewise, the last thing I did every night was stub out that last smoke in the bedside table ashtray.
Sometime around 1969 or so, I got the psychological leverage on myself to actually quit and I stayed quit until an emotional crisis about three years later.
I quit for keeps around 1979. Naturally, my metabolism changed and I gained 40-50 pounds, some of which I manage to lose and gain from year to year.
I had a relatively easy time quitting the last time because I did it in the context of a Transcendental Meditation Sidhi course at Maharishi International University (now the Maharishi School of Management) in Fairfield, Ia. I was in an environment where nobody smoked, I had no access to cigarettes and I was spending several hours a day in meditation. I took about 40 rolls of Certs breath mints with me and, by the time the two-week course was over, all desire for a smoke was gone.
Even so, for several years afterward I had occasional dreams in which I went back to smoking. I'd invariably awake with a start and the horrible fear that I had actually started smoking again. It's a very powerful addiction and I believe the researchers when they say it gets a stronger grip on you than does cocaine.
As a footnote, my dad was about my age when he lost his voice to cancer of the larnyx that his oncologist said was almost certainly a consequence of smoking.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Why Osama is irrelevant
I just finished today’s post to the Blonde Sagacity (mobyrebuttal.blogspot.com) blog, which is the text of an open letter Osama Bin Laden wrote to America in November 2002.
You can go to Blonde Sagacity to read the text. Bin Laden explains why he hates us and wants to kill all of us unless we shape up, forget the Enlightenment ever happened and become his brand of medieval Muslim.
At the root of his complaint against us - not counting our support of Israel – is what he sees as the immoral corrupting influence of American culture.
Well, Osama, that’s precisely why you can’t win.
I call it my Doctrine of Stuff and I cognized this cosmic truth more than 40 years ago during the Vietnam war.
A basic fact of human nature is that people want Stuff.
We like our possessions and we always want more.
It occurred to me during Vietnam that we would be more successful against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnam Army if, instead of dropping expensive high explosives on them, we dropped planeloads of sneakers, transistor radios, bluejeans, and other consumer items.
At the very least it would confuse them. At best it would undercut their ability to stay pissed off at us. How can you be seriously angry with someone who flies over every day and drops a couple of tons of cool stuff on you?
And it would probably cost a lot less than the tons and tons of ordinance we expended in our unsuccessful effort to subdue them.
It was that realization that led me to predict the fall of Communism, something that caught the CIA completely by surprise.
Not me. I saw it coming 20 years earlier.
The seeds were sprouting in the ‘60s when Soviet youth got infected with rock and roll and other American cultural influences.
It was just a matter of time until the people of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe – bombarded for decades with images of western affluence and consumer-driven economies – decided they’d had enough of cardboard shoes and crappy cars and shoddy merchandise.
In the space of a few months, people all over the Soviet sphere of influence decided individually and collectively, “We’re done. We’re not doing this anymore. Fuck you and fuck your system. We want the same stuff people in the U.S. and Canada and West Germany and the rest of the civilized world have and anybody who tries to stop us does so at his own peril.”
The plain truth, which scares the bejeezus out of Osama and his crowd of stone-age control freaks, is that there is not a single religion, ideology or belief system known to man that cannot be co-opted, corrupted and rendered harmless by American consumer culture.
The culture is relentless in its ability to absorb and trivialize any threat. Remember how scared the Establishment was when the hippies showed up with their long hair and paisley? Within five years, Republican bankers were wearing bellbottom pants, hair over their collars and using words like “groovy” and “hip.”
The people’s desire for Stuff is morphing China into a consumer-driven state that none of the old Communist cadre can thwart.
At this moment, the mullahs in Iran have their hands full suppressing a youth movement driven by American music and style that will surely overwhelm them before the decade is out.
Cuba, the last Communist holdout, will be owned by Wall Street within five years of Castro’s death.
The best Osama and his band of psychotic idiots can hope for is to go down fighting.
He demands we renounce materialism and convert to Islam.
I demand he lose the Halloween costume, have a couple of beers and shut the fuck up.
You can go to Blonde Sagacity to read the text. Bin Laden explains why he hates us and wants to kill all of us unless we shape up, forget the Enlightenment ever happened and become his brand of medieval Muslim.
At the root of his complaint against us - not counting our support of Israel – is what he sees as the immoral corrupting influence of American culture.
Well, Osama, that’s precisely why you can’t win.
I call it my Doctrine of Stuff and I cognized this cosmic truth more than 40 years ago during the Vietnam war.
A basic fact of human nature is that people want Stuff.
We like our possessions and we always want more.
It occurred to me during Vietnam that we would be more successful against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnam Army if, instead of dropping expensive high explosives on them, we dropped planeloads of sneakers, transistor radios, bluejeans, and other consumer items.
At the very least it would confuse them. At best it would undercut their ability to stay pissed off at us. How can you be seriously angry with someone who flies over every day and drops a couple of tons of cool stuff on you?
And it would probably cost a lot less than the tons and tons of ordinance we expended in our unsuccessful effort to subdue them.
It was that realization that led me to predict the fall of Communism, something that caught the CIA completely by surprise.
Not me. I saw it coming 20 years earlier.
The seeds were sprouting in the ‘60s when Soviet youth got infected with rock and roll and other American cultural influences.
It was just a matter of time until the people of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe – bombarded for decades with images of western affluence and consumer-driven economies – decided they’d had enough of cardboard shoes and crappy cars and shoddy merchandise.
In the space of a few months, people all over the Soviet sphere of influence decided individually and collectively, “We’re done. We’re not doing this anymore. Fuck you and fuck your system. We want the same stuff people in the U.S. and Canada and West Germany and the rest of the civilized world have and anybody who tries to stop us does so at his own peril.”
The plain truth, which scares the bejeezus out of Osama and his crowd of stone-age control freaks, is that there is not a single religion, ideology or belief system known to man that cannot be co-opted, corrupted and rendered harmless by American consumer culture.
The culture is relentless in its ability to absorb and trivialize any threat. Remember how scared the Establishment was when the hippies showed up with their long hair and paisley? Within five years, Republican bankers were wearing bellbottom pants, hair over their collars and using words like “groovy” and “hip.”
The people’s desire for Stuff is morphing China into a consumer-driven state that none of the old Communist cadre can thwart.
At this moment, the mullahs in Iran have their hands full suppressing a youth movement driven by American music and style that will surely overwhelm them before the decade is out.
Cuba, the last Communist holdout, will be owned by Wall Street within five years of Castro’s death.
The best Osama and his band of psychotic idiots can hope for is to go down fighting.
He demands we renounce materialism and convert to Islam.
I demand he lose the Halloween costume, have a couple of beers and shut the fuck up.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
In case you ever plan to visit Kansas City, let me recommend this guidebook by my friend Katie Van Luchene. Katie, who also edits Kansas City Home Design magazine, is one of the best writers I've ever had the pleasure to know and her clever style puts the Insider's Guide to Kansas City head and shoulders above any other guidebook I've seen. Hell, buy a copy even if you don't plan to go to KC. It'll make you want to plan a trip.
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Weasels
I just got what must be the 50th e-mail from identity thieves posing as Ebay administrators.
It directs me to what purports to be an ebay secure web page where I can re-enter all of my personal/financial data. But if you put your cursor over the hypertext and glance down to the bottom of the screen to see where it really goes, you'll note that it's actually a server in Romania.
And, as I typed the previous paragraph, I got an e-mail from "Dr. Richard Smith" who says he's "a 65 years old man and a British living in zimbabwe."
Oh, really.
His scam is that he's dying of esophageal cancer and wants to give me $10 million to distribute to fire victims in Australia. Of course, I may keep 5% for myself.
I'm asked to respond and, of course, he'll need my bank account number and transfer information so he can send me the money.
This must be my lucky day.
It directs me to what purports to be an ebay secure web page where I can re-enter all of my personal/financial data. But if you put your cursor over the hypertext and glance down to the bottom of the screen to see where it really goes, you'll note that it's actually a server in Romania.
And, as I typed the previous paragraph, I got an e-mail from "Dr. Richard Smith" who says he's "a 65 years old man and a British living in zimbabwe."
Oh, really.
His scam is that he's dying of esophageal cancer and wants to give me $10 million to distribute to fire victims in Australia. Of course, I may keep 5% for myself.
I'm asked to respond and, of course, he'll need my bank account number and transfer information so he can send me the money.
This must be my lucky day.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Just for the record...
Things I’ve Never Done:
Traveled outside North America.
Done cocaine, heroin, LSD, Ecstasy, or methamphetamine.
Killed another human being.
Knowingly committed a felony.
Used a parachute.
Gambled on a riverboat casino.
Been to a NASCAR race.
Watched a NASCAR race.
Cared about a NASCAR race.
Bungie jumped.
Tasted caviar (it was offered).
Been to a Wagnerian opera.
Missed voting in a presidential election.
Run out of gas in a car.
Been the victim of a violent crime.
Ridden in a tank.
Owned a chimpanzee.
Been to Burning Man.
Lost a home to fire, flood or wind.
Made money on the stock market.
Learned to SCUBA dive.
Graduated from college.
Leased an automobile.
Been fired from a job.
Ridden a motorcycle in New England.
Been to the Smithsonian.
Things I have done:
Been to the end of a rainbow.
Flown in a hot air balloon, glider, DC3, Ford Tri-Motor, Twin Beechcraft, Piper Cherokee and various commercial jetliners.
Had a Kundalini experience, with a bolt of light/energy shooting up from the first chakra to the crown chakra.
Ridden a motorcycle to all three coasts (Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf) in one season.
Sat in a motel room with Willie G. Davidson and watched Easy Rider on TV.
Experienced earthquakes.
Passed Donald Trump on the escalator at Trump Tower.
Held Eva Braun’s pink silk slip in my hands.
Built a geodesic dome.
Water skied.
Counted one of the original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers as a personal friend.
Seen two people die – one of natural causes, the other a police officer shot by a felon.
Been a motorcycle instructor for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and a motorcycle examiner for my state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Been published in a national magazine.
Had my photos used on MSNBC.
Been to Mount St. Helens (three times).
Had an affair.
Worked in a factory.
Been a garbage collector.
Owned the 45 rpm picture sleeve of Street Fighting Man – the rarest picture sleeve in the record-collecting world. (I sold it in 1992 for $4,300.)
Traveled outside North America.
Done cocaine, heroin, LSD, Ecstasy, or methamphetamine.
Killed another human being.
Knowingly committed a felony.
Used a parachute.
Gambled on a riverboat casino.
Been to a NASCAR race.
Watched a NASCAR race.
Cared about a NASCAR race.
Bungie jumped.
Tasted caviar (it was offered).
Been to a Wagnerian opera.
Missed voting in a presidential election.
Run out of gas in a car.
Been the victim of a violent crime.
Ridden in a tank.
Owned a chimpanzee.
Been to Burning Man.
Lost a home to fire, flood or wind.
Made money on the stock market.
Learned to SCUBA dive.
Graduated from college.
Leased an automobile.
Been fired from a job.
Ridden a motorcycle in New England.
Been to the Smithsonian.
Things I have done:
Been to the end of a rainbow.
Flown in a hot air balloon, glider, DC3, Ford Tri-Motor, Twin Beechcraft, Piper Cherokee and various commercial jetliners.
Had a Kundalini experience, with a bolt of light/energy shooting up from the first chakra to the crown chakra.
Ridden a motorcycle to all three coasts (Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf) in one season.
Sat in a motel room with Willie G. Davidson and watched Easy Rider on TV.
Experienced earthquakes.
Passed Donald Trump on the escalator at Trump Tower.
Held Eva Braun’s pink silk slip in my hands.
Built a geodesic dome.
Water skied.
Counted one of the original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers as a personal friend.
Seen two people die – one of natural causes, the other a police officer shot by a felon.
Been a motorcycle instructor for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and a motorcycle examiner for my state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Been published in a national magazine.
Had my photos used on MSNBC.
Been to Mount St. Helens (three times).
Had an affair.
Worked in a factory.
Been a garbage collector.
Owned the 45 rpm picture sleeve of Street Fighting Man – the rarest picture sleeve in the record-collecting world. (I sold it in 1992 for $4,300.)
Four years an orphan
Today is the fourth anniversary of my mother's death.
Here's what I wrote for her funeral:
Saturday evening, two nights after my mother died, I got around to going through her purse.
My initial thought was to make sure there wasn’t anything important or valuable there, but I think I was really looking for my mother – for some trace of her and her personality.
I found it.
Tucked into various pockets and pouches were the little notes that had become her memory in recent years, notepad lists of information she wanted to be able to recall as Alzheimer’s cruelly robbed her of her ability to retrieve all but the most basic information.
There was a yellow Post-It note to remind her of a beauty shop appointment she won’t be keeping at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
There was the list of meal times at the retirement center nursing home: 7 a.m. breakfast, noon lunch and 5:15 p.m. dinner.
And there were several little slips that listed my name, my address and my phone number, some with talking points she wanted to bring up when she next spoke with me:
• “Blank checks” – She wanted me to bring her some checks because she felt powerless without a way to pay for things she was sure she needed.
• “My car, where is it?” – She had places to go.
• “Ready to go home.” – She desperately wanted to get back to the house that had been her home for 46 years.
Going home was the dominant theme of all of our conversations and visits from the time we moved her to the retirement center last April. After asking if I had a by-line today and telling me I needed a haircut, she always reminded me she had work to do and the house on Columbia Street needed her. I would assure her that I’d checked on the house and everything was just fine, but she never really believed me.
My mother was a woman who needed to be busy, going places and doing things.
For a lot of years, that meant being a Registered Nurse and helping people. I remember when I was a kid and she was a nurse in Dr. George Wagoner’s office how patients would call our house on weekends and late at night with questions they didn’t want to bother the doctor with.
She was proud of being a nurse and she made sure everyone knew it, especially the staff at the retirement center. The director of nursing once told me how my mother would listen to the health complaints of the other residents there and how, more than once, they noticed her sitting wheelchair-to-wheelchair, checking the pulse of one of her neighbors.
I never expected this moment to come so soon. When I described her to friends, I usually compared her with the Energizer bunny who keeps going and going and going.
That’s why I couldn’t believe what I was hearing Thursday night when the nurse called to tell me my mother had just died.
How unlike mom.
I learned she died in her sleep and then it made sense. Her 85-year-old body betrayed her and death took her unaware.
I was sad until I had a vision of her emerging from the fog of Alzheimer’s and being welcomed into Heaven by Dad, her brothers and sisters and her parents.
Maybe, without knowing it at the time, that’s what she really meant when she scribbled those memos about “ready to go home.”
I’ll miss her, but there’s not the slightest doubt in my mind that this separation is only temporary. In the meantime, I have her notes to remind me of a mother who was proud of me and loved me unconditionally.
Here's what I wrote for her funeral:
Saturday evening, two nights after my mother died, I got around to going through her purse.
My initial thought was to make sure there wasn’t anything important or valuable there, but I think I was really looking for my mother – for some trace of her and her personality.
I found it.
Tucked into various pockets and pouches were the little notes that had become her memory in recent years, notepad lists of information she wanted to be able to recall as Alzheimer’s cruelly robbed her of her ability to retrieve all but the most basic information.
There was a yellow Post-It note to remind her of a beauty shop appointment she won’t be keeping at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
There was the list of meal times at the retirement center nursing home: 7 a.m. breakfast, noon lunch and 5:15 p.m. dinner.
And there were several little slips that listed my name, my address and my phone number, some with talking points she wanted to bring up when she next spoke with me:
• “Blank checks” – She wanted me to bring her some checks because she felt powerless without a way to pay for things she was sure she needed.
• “My car, where is it?” – She had places to go.
• “Ready to go home.” – She desperately wanted to get back to the house that had been her home for 46 years.
Going home was the dominant theme of all of our conversations and visits from the time we moved her to the retirement center last April. After asking if I had a by-line today and telling me I needed a haircut, she always reminded me she had work to do and the house on Columbia Street needed her. I would assure her that I’d checked on the house and everything was just fine, but she never really believed me.
My mother was a woman who needed to be busy, going places and doing things.
For a lot of years, that meant being a Registered Nurse and helping people. I remember when I was a kid and she was a nurse in Dr. George Wagoner’s office how patients would call our house on weekends and late at night with questions they didn’t want to bother the doctor with.
She was proud of being a nurse and she made sure everyone knew it, especially the staff at the retirement center. The director of nursing once told me how my mother would listen to the health complaints of the other residents there and how, more than once, they noticed her sitting wheelchair-to-wheelchair, checking the pulse of one of her neighbors.
I never expected this moment to come so soon. When I described her to friends, I usually compared her with the Energizer bunny who keeps going and going and going.
That’s why I couldn’t believe what I was hearing Thursday night when the nurse called to tell me my mother had just died.
How unlike mom.
I learned she died in her sleep and then it made sense. Her 85-year-old body betrayed her and death took her unaware.
I was sad until I had a vision of her emerging from the fog of Alzheimer’s and being welcomed into Heaven by Dad, her brothers and sisters and her parents.
Maybe, without knowing it at the time, that’s what she really meant when she scribbled those memos about “ready to go home.”
I’ll miss her, but there’s not the slightest doubt in my mind that this separation is only temporary. In the meantime, I have her notes to remind me of a mother who was proud of me and loved me unconditionally.
Monday, October 04, 2004
Friday, October 01, 2004
Home again, home again
My son and his bride were wed Monday evening in a Jewish ceremony in Portland, Ore.
My new daughter-in-law, Ruth, has a Danish mother and a South African Jewish father who are divorced.
It was my first encounter with my new extended family and I found them bright, witty and delightful.
My son, for the record, was baptized Presbyterian, grew up in a Catholic/hippie Hindu atmosphere and isn’t much for organized religion. Nonetheless, he donned a yarmulke and stomped the traditional wine glass into a bazillion pieces in keeping with Jewish tradition.
The rabbi who conducted the ceremony offered that Sean and Ruth are among the five most seriously committed couples he’s counseled/wed in his 40 years in the clergy.
My younger son and his wife flew out from Cincinnati and my ex and her two sisters converged on the occasion from Illinois, Indiana and California.
We stayed at the Doubletree Hotel at Lloyd Center, which is a splendid base from which to explore and enjoy Portland. There is a light rail system that runs from the airport to downtown and to the zoo and other attractions beyond and it runs right past the hotel. If I’d done my homework and discovered the light rail option, I might have passed on a rental car, since the ride from the hotel to downtown where the wedding festivities were held is free. But then we wouldn’t have been able to drive up the Columbia River gorge on Saturday to photograph Multnomah Falls and the windsurfers at Hood River.
The flights out and back were uneventful. The Hurricane Ivan redux we’d expected in Dallas on Friday never appeared. It was my first encounter with the Dallas airport. Maria has been through there several times and warned me about it.
Our outbound connection involved widely separated arrival and departure gates and we had to run to make the boarding of our DFW-PDX flight. Happily, we had a leisurely hour-long layover on the return trip.
Maria’s son, who had the house to himself from Friday through Tuesday evening, seems to have managed well and has had no incidents with his new car (at least not that he’s told us about).
My new daughter-in-law, Ruth, has a Danish mother and a South African Jewish father who are divorced.
It was my first encounter with my new extended family and I found them bright, witty and delightful.
My son, for the record, was baptized Presbyterian, grew up in a Catholic/hippie Hindu atmosphere and isn’t much for organized religion. Nonetheless, he donned a yarmulke and stomped the traditional wine glass into a bazillion pieces in keeping with Jewish tradition.
The rabbi who conducted the ceremony offered that Sean and Ruth are among the five most seriously committed couples he’s counseled/wed in his 40 years in the clergy.
My younger son and his wife flew out from Cincinnati and my ex and her two sisters converged on the occasion from Illinois, Indiana and California.
We stayed at the Doubletree Hotel at Lloyd Center, which is a splendid base from which to explore and enjoy Portland. There is a light rail system that runs from the airport to downtown and to the zoo and other attractions beyond and it runs right past the hotel. If I’d done my homework and discovered the light rail option, I might have passed on a rental car, since the ride from the hotel to downtown where the wedding festivities were held is free. But then we wouldn’t have been able to drive up the Columbia River gorge on Saturday to photograph Multnomah Falls and the windsurfers at Hood River.
The flights out and back were uneventful. The Hurricane Ivan redux we’d expected in Dallas on Friday never appeared. It was my first encounter with the Dallas airport. Maria has been through there several times and warned me about it.
Our outbound connection involved widely separated arrival and departure gates and we had to run to make the boarding of our DFW-PDX flight. Happily, we had a leisurely hour-long layover on the return trip.
Maria’s son, who had the house to himself from Friday through Tuesday evening, seems to have managed well and has had no incidents with his new car (at least not that he’s told us about).
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Checking in, checking out
We're off to Portland tomorrow morning and, naturally, Ivan has regrouped and will likely be waiting in Dallas where we have a one-hour layover. Yeah, I know Dallas doesn't look like it's on a logical route from here to Portland. Go ask American Airlines.
My stepson bought a car last night. Well, actually I wrote the check because he hasn't figured out how to get to the bank, since it's closed when he gets out of school every day. He's keen to start driving himself to school immediately and I don't want that worry in the back of my mind while I'm on the other side of the continent. He hasn't driven a car for nearly a year because he wasn't insured and I have concerns about how sharp his skills are. I figure I have enough to be concerned about with him staying by himself while we're out of town until Tuesday evening.
His sister seems to be stable, for the time being. We took her to a stress clinic last Friday night for evaluation and they concluded she should be seen on an outpatient basis. She seemed relieved that she wasn't going to spend the weekend at the facility and so were we. I think the prospect of being institutionalized, even for a weekend, was enough to make her get a grip.
Twelve years ago I was wallowing in despair over my impending divorce when my two best friends let it slip that they were conspiring to have me admitted to a stress center. It took me about 10 seconds to decide it was time to suck it up and move on.
My stepson bought a car last night. Well, actually I wrote the check because he hasn't figured out how to get to the bank, since it's closed when he gets out of school every day. He's keen to start driving himself to school immediately and I don't want that worry in the back of my mind while I'm on the other side of the continent. He hasn't driven a car for nearly a year because he wasn't insured and I have concerns about how sharp his skills are. I figure I have enough to be concerned about with him staying by himself while we're out of town until Tuesday evening.
His sister seems to be stable, for the time being. We took her to a stress clinic last Friday night for evaluation and they concluded she should be seen on an outpatient basis. She seemed relieved that she wasn't going to spend the weekend at the facility and so were we. I think the prospect of being institutionalized, even for a weekend, was enough to make her get a grip.
Twelve years ago I was wallowing in despair over my impending divorce when my two best friends let it slip that they were conspiring to have me admitted to a stress center. It took me about 10 seconds to decide it was time to suck it up and move on.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Friday, September 17, 2004
I go to the MSNBC site (www.msnbc.com) every Friday to check out their The Week in Pictures gallery. This was the last in the sequence and, to my surprise, it brought tears to my eyes. It's a 9/11 sunrise memorial service in Shanksville, Pa. for the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who showed their reptilian hijackers what Americans are made of. They were the first to fight back in the struggle that continues today and all of them are heroes.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Monday, September 13, 2004
I never had one of these, but my best friend Tom did. This little RCA Victor phonograph, that only played 45 rpm records is the main reason the 45 format succeeded. There were literally millions of these things sold, despite the fact that the fidelity was awful and the amplification was feeble. This was a phonograph for the masses. It was, of course, monophonic, stereo being a few years in the future and, at the time of its introduction, available only on 33 1/3 rmp records.
For the first seven years of my life, a big Philco console radio like this was the source of broadcast entertainment in our house. It stood about four feet high, had a series of pre-set station buttons and received broadcasts in the AM and shortwave bands. It was made years before transistors, so there was a warmup period of a minute or so between the time you switched it on and when you began to hear sounds. Ahhh, vacuum tube technology.
Who knew that this cheesy little box camera would put me on the path to photojournalism? My parents bought me one just like this on the eve of our trip to Yellowstone National Park the summer between my fifth- and sixth-grade years. It took 127 type film and made a very satisfying "click" when I pushed the shutter button. I would have been utterly dazzled to know about today's digital photo technology.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Reelin' in the years...
I’m sure most of us can look back at our childhood and think of it as the ideal time to be a kid.
That’s certainly the case with me and I see the childhood worlds of kids since the 1950s as sterile and devoid of the kind of freedom my friends and I experienced growing up in a small town in the decade or so after World War II.
It seems to me that we’ve become increasingly frightened and protective of our kids, to the point where they’re content to be couch potatoes and video game addicts rather than riding bicycles all over town or tramping through the woods like we did.
Among my favorite things of childhood was Saturday morning TV. When I started watching, it was all black-and-white and included such staples as:
The Lone Ranger
Ruff ‘n Reddy – the first Hanna-Barbera cartoon series
Space Patrol – a pioneering science fiction series
Fury – a series about a boy and his horse
Sky King – an aviation-minded show in which Sky and his niece Penny flew around in a twin-engined Beechcraft called the Songbird and solved mysteries
And my personal fave: Captain Midnight
Captain Midnight had been around as a character since before World War II and kids had been joining his Secret Squadron since long before I was born in 1945.
The television series that ran from 1955 to 1957 was the final incarnation of the character and starred Richard Webb. It was easy to join. All you had to do was send in the wax paper seal from a jar of Ovaltine chocolate drink mix and $1 to:
Captain Midnight
Box P
Chicago, 7
Illinois
Yes, kids, that was before Zip Codes were implemented in the early 1960s and big cities like Chicago were divided into postal zones.
By return post – which seemed to take freaking forever – you got a membership card, manual and decoder badge. The decoder was used to communicate with fellow Secret Squadron members and to decipher a secret message given at the end of each week’s program. Not exactly the Enigma machine, but it was great fun for a boy.
Conspicuous in its absence was the “pocket locator” – a walkie-talkie-like communicator that the Captain used to enlist the help of Secret Squadron kids in various dramatic episodes. All of the kids on the show had them, but there was no mention of them in the membership literature, largely because they were beyond the technology of the day.
I thought of that the other day when I took a call on my Handspring Treo 300 cell phone, realizing we’ve taken the personal communication concept far beyond the wildest imagination of a 1950s TV show.
Everyone in the Secret Squadron had a membership number. Captain Midnight, being at the head of the food chain, was SQ 1 (notice they avoided the more obvious SS designation, no doubt because that letter combination had a very bad reputation from the recently deceased Third Reich). SQ 2 was the Captain’s comic sidekick, Ichabod Mudd, or Ikky as he preferred to be called. The Captain and Ikky lived in a mountaintop observatory/laboratory along with Aristotle Jones, nicknamed Tut and played by Olan Soule. Tut was the scientist and gadget maker. Accordingly, he wore glasses and a white lab coat and was obviously the brains of the organization. Tut was SQ 3.
Far far down the mountain in the real world were the actual Ovaltine-drinking, card-carrying, pocket-locator-deprived Secret Squadron kids. The card in my wallet identified me to all and sundry as SQ 24418. I made a point of memorizing the number, but this is quite possibly the first time since childhood that I’ve written it.
Along with the basic membership kit, you could also send off for a red plastic Captain Midnight Ovaltine mug and a red plastic Captain Midnight Ovaltine shaker cup with blue plastic top. Both were emblazoned with a decal showing a goggled previous incarnation of the Captain with some goofy winged midnight-indicating clock logo on his flight helmet and proclaiming, “Ovaltine – the heart of a hearty breakfast!” Naturally, I had both items and used them often.
A second version of the decoder badge, resembling the Captain’s jet plane – the Silver Dart – came out in 1957 and, of course, I had that too.
But one by one, over the years, all of those items save the Ovaltine mug, went missing and I found myself wishing I had them back.
Fortunately for nostalgia-ridden baby boomers, there’s Ebay and the chance to recapture the toys, touchstones and talismans of our childhood. In recent years, I’ve replaced my two decoder badges and now stand ready to decipher any message sent to me by a Secret Squadron member.
Fortunately, I realized early on that I couldn’t afford to buy all of the stuff I had as a child. Besides, where would I put it? My wife already thinks I’m a little nuts about hanging on to stuff and the last thing she would tolerate would be a museum of my childhood.
So, I do the next best thing. I snarf the photos of these items when I find them on Ebay, making it possible for me to look at them without actually having to find a place for them.
I’ll post a few of those pictures, just in case someone else remembers them.
But somehow a picture of the Buck Rogers Sonic Ray Gun, a pistol-shaped plastic flashlight with a buzzer, can’t reproduce the barf-like smell of the plastic that fascinated me when I was 9 years old.
That’s certainly the case with me and I see the childhood worlds of kids since the 1950s as sterile and devoid of the kind of freedom my friends and I experienced growing up in a small town in the decade or so after World War II.
It seems to me that we’ve become increasingly frightened and protective of our kids, to the point where they’re content to be couch potatoes and video game addicts rather than riding bicycles all over town or tramping through the woods like we did.
Among my favorite things of childhood was Saturday morning TV. When I started watching, it was all black-and-white and included such staples as:
The Lone Ranger
Ruff ‘n Reddy – the first Hanna-Barbera cartoon series
Space Patrol – a pioneering science fiction series
Fury – a series about a boy and his horse
Sky King – an aviation-minded show in which Sky and his niece Penny flew around in a twin-engined Beechcraft called the Songbird and solved mysteries
And my personal fave: Captain Midnight
Captain Midnight had been around as a character since before World War II and kids had been joining his Secret Squadron since long before I was born in 1945.
The television series that ran from 1955 to 1957 was the final incarnation of the character and starred Richard Webb. It was easy to join. All you had to do was send in the wax paper seal from a jar of Ovaltine chocolate drink mix and $1 to:
Captain Midnight
Box P
Chicago, 7
Illinois
Yes, kids, that was before Zip Codes were implemented in the early 1960s and big cities like Chicago were divided into postal zones.
By return post – which seemed to take freaking forever – you got a membership card, manual and decoder badge. The decoder was used to communicate with fellow Secret Squadron members and to decipher a secret message given at the end of each week’s program. Not exactly the Enigma machine, but it was great fun for a boy.
Conspicuous in its absence was the “pocket locator” – a walkie-talkie-like communicator that the Captain used to enlist the help of Secret Squadron kids in various dramatic episodes. All of the kids on the show had them, but there was no mention of them in the membership literature, largely because they were beyond the technology of the day.
I thought of that the other day when I took a call on my Handspring Treo 300 cell phone, realizing we’ve taken the personal communication concept far beyond the wildest imagination of a 1950s TV show.
Everyone in the Secret Squadron had a membership number. Captain Midnight, being at the head of the food chain, was SQ 1 (notice they avoided the more obvious SS designation, no doubt because that letter combination had a very bad reputation from the recently deceased Third Reich). SQ 2 was the Captain’s comic sidekick, Ichabod Mudd, or Ikky as he preferred to be called. The Captain and Ikky lived in a mountaintop observatory/laboratory along with Aristotle Jones, nicknamed Tut and played by Olan Soule. Tut was the scientist and gadget maker. Accordingly, he wore glasses and a white lab coat and was obviously the brains of the organization. Tut was SQ 3.
Far far down the mountain in the real world were the actual Ovaltine-drinking, card-carrying, pocket-locator-deprived Secret Squadron kids. The card in my wallet identified me to all and sundry as SQ 24418. I made a point of memorizing the number, but this is quite possibly the first time since childhood that I’ve written it.
Along with the basic membership kit, you could also send off for a red plastic Captain Midnight Ovaltine mug and a red plastic Captain Midnight Ovaltine shaker cup with blue plastic top. Both were emblazoned with a decal showing a goggled previous incarnation of the Captain with some goofy winged midnight-indicating clock logo on his flight helmet and proclaiming, “Ovaltine – the heart of a hearty breakfast!” Naturally, I had both items and used them often.
A second version of the decoder badge, resembling the Captain’s jet plane – the Silver Dart – came out in 1957 and, of course, I had that too.
But one by one, over the years, all of those items save the Ovaltine mug, went missing and I found myself wishing I had them back.
Fortunately for nostalgia-ridden baby boomers, there’s Ebay and the chance to recapture the toys, touchstones and talismans of our childhood. In recent years, I’ve replaced my two decoder badges and now stand ready to decipher any message sent to me by a Secret Squadron member.
Fortunately, I realized early on that I couldn’t afford to buy all of the stuff I had as a child. Besides, where would I put it? My wife already thinks I’m a little nuts about hanging on to stuff and the last thing she would tolerate would be a museum of my childhood.
So, I do the next best thing. I snarf the photos of these items when I find them on Ebay, making it possible for me to look at them without actually having to find a place for them.
I’ll post a few of those pictures, just in case someone else remembers them.
But somehow a picture of the Buck Rogers Sonic Ray Gun, a pistol-shaped plastic flashlight with a buzzer, can’t reproduce the barf-like smell of the plastic that fascinated me when I was 9 years old.
This was my first bicycle - a red Monark with a streamlined front fender headlight and a feeble battery powered electric horn in the tank, operated by the red button on the right side. (Well, actually this is a picture of a similar bike I found on Ebay.) It had one speed, coaster brakes and stood up to a lot of abuse, including a few years of delivering newspapers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)