Another Chicago Writer

It’s Getting Cold Out There (Here)

2011-11-17T00:36:00.001-06:00

Those of us who live in northern climes are starting to feel it. The chill in the air, the extremely early sunset, even some flurries beginning to fall.

It’s getting cold out there.

But it’s getting cold in other ways, as well. Cities across the country are starting to crack down on the “Occupy Wall Street” protests that have sprung up all over the country – and, indeed the world. It’s also true that the Arab League has suspended the country of Syria from their ranks for their brutal, murderous response to protestors in that country. That is a “cold” that I welcome.

Here in the U.S. we are in the early phases of the 2012 presidential election. The Republicans are trying to decide whom they are going to nominate, and having a tough time doing so. First Perry was on top, then Cain, now Romney, and now Gingrich is gaining traction. The most popular Republican candidate? Anyone other than those who are running. Can’t we have Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush? Not this time around, it doesn’t seem.

The current occupant, Mr. Obama, who will be running for reelection, is not enjoying great approval numbers in the polls. The latest one I saw indicated that 46% of the electorate think he’s basically doing a good job. But, it is also instructive to look at polling that indicates that Mr. Obama would beat any of the leading Republican candidates if the election were held today. The only contest he loses is against a Republican who is not running, some dream candidate who has yet to emerge from the woodwork.

“Obamacare,” as my friends on the right like to call it, is heading to the Supreme Court, and we all knew that would happen. Fine. We’ve had two appellate court decisions that upheld it as Constitutional, and one that didn’t. It will be fascinating to see what the Supremes decide on the matter. Either way, our country is going to face a clear – and, I suspect, a stark – choice in a little less than a year.

Will we decide to elect someone who wants to cater to the 1% or the 99% (to borrow the parlance of the Occupy Movement protesters)? Certainly, the Republicans are not going to be able to argue that Mr. Obama is soft on national security – after all, he has presided over more drone attacks than Mr. Bush, found and killed Osama bin Laden (and many other Al Qaeda leaders), and helped orchestrate the removal of Gaddafi from power in Libya. Mr. Obama is also fulfilling the terms of the Iraq withdrawal, negotiated by the Bush administration, and removing our troops by the end of this year.

Here’s where we are: The economy is growing – slowly. Too slowly. Unemployment remains a problem, and a significant one, but it is VERY slowly becoming slightly less of a problem. The Obama administration is trying to enact what it can to ease the burden on the unemployed or underemployed, on those who are severely burdened by student loan debt, on those whose mortgages are underwater, and on veterans who will soon be returning, looking for both work and adequate health care. Are these programs perfect? No. Are they a good start? I think so.

Many of us are hurting in our country today. I’m among them. I am fortunate to have work, but it’s not enough to make ends meet. I am “floating rope” – borrowing money from a credit card for one month to the next – in order to try to keep up with bills. There’s only so long that this kind of behavior can go on, and yet I am convinced that the answer is not to lower the corporate tax rate or to keep the Bush tax cuts in effect. How is that going to help those of us who are struggling? I keep hearing about these so-called “job-creators.” Where are the jobs that they are creating?

It is long past time to eliminate loopholes that allow corporations to park money in tax havens (such as The Netherlands, Ireland, and the Cayman Islands) to avoid paying taxes on income. No one wants confiscatory taxes, we just want fair ones. If you, corporation X, have earnings of one hundred million dollars in a given quarter, then you should pay your fair share of taxes on one hundred million dollars. I pay taxes on every penny I earn. And, I don’t earn anywhere near that much per quarter, as I’m sure will not surprise any reader of this blog.

Please don’t misunderstand what I’ve written above. I’m not about “soaking the rich” and I’m not interested in engaging in class warfare. I’m interested in our country adopting a more fair and equitable tax system. I find it alarming that when I was a boy, the average CEO made about 40 times more than the average worker at his company. (I say only his, because, back then, there were no female CEOs) Today, the average CEO makes 350 times more than the average worker at his or her company. This is obscene. Call me kooky, but is a CEO of a company really worth 350 times more than the sales staff, the very people who are ensuring the success of the company? I don’t think so.

I’m afraid I’ve gotten a bit riled up. Must be because it’s cold outside, and I’m not quite ready for winter.

The good news: I’m working. My wife is working – although for the past couple days, she’s been working so much that I haven’t seen her at all; we’ve been like ships hoping to pass in the night, but having to settle with passing in the briefest of moments in the early morning hours when we are both resting and about to get up. We are both grateful. We both love this country. We both want this country to succeed and to live up to its fullest potential.

Election season is upon us. The cold us upon us – in more ways than one. Let us rise up and meet it with thought and foresight and compassion. Let us strive to be the best Americans we can be.

Namaste

Thoughts Upon Starting a New Semester of Teaching

2011-10-26T00:25:00.000-05:00

Those who are in college trying to earn a degree in order to better their lives are working hard. They are sacrificing. Some of them might not much like their classes, or at least some of the required classes, like the classes that I am very likely to be teaching. English. Essay writing. The research paper.

It’s hard for them, sometimes, to see how it’s going to matter in the future. I get it. And yet, I also know it is going to matter to them in the future.

This term, when administering a start-of-class diagnostic essay, I asked students to write about their previous experiences with English classes, writing, and/or reading (with thanks to Bob Zacny, who suggested the prompt). The results have been fascinating. Some students have written passionately about how much they HATE English classes and being told what to read and write. In fact, the finest diagnostic essay that was written was written by a young man who passionately and persuasively argued how much he hated English classes and being told what to read and write.

It was beautifully written. Passionate, clear, concise – all you would want in a well written five-paragraph essay. Now I need to figure out how to channel this young man’s passion into the assignments that he’s going to have to write on in this course. I can’t change the curriculum, but perhaps I can help make a connection, or help him make a connection to something that interests him. He’s a very good writer and I want him to learn and succeed.

Earlier this evening I was thinking about composing a blog about the “grotesque disconnect” between the Wall Street bailouts and the lack of jobs for so many in America today, and that is likely a subject I will return to, but, it seemed to me that this subject, this thinking about, “How do we effectively teach our children?” seemed somehow more important.

We need to teach our children. We need to meet them where they are, and we need to understand that they inhabit a world that is FAR different from the world in which many of us, or at least, I, grew up. I did not have the distraction of the Internet or the pleasure of the iPod when I was growing up and first enrolling in college. Nor did I have the beneficial parts of the Internet (research, hello?) when I was first in college. But, students today need to learn how to marshal these resources effectively, and they need to learn how to judge the reliability of what they are finding on the web. There are a lot of bogus websites out there.

At any rate, I’m rambling now, so should stop. I guess the point of this blog is that I think we all can write. It’s about writing about things or issues or ideas that we care about – that’s what matters. That’s what makes our writing worthwhile.

So, write. Express yourself. Even if it’s only for you to read in some distant day.

Namaste.

Thoughts On an Early Autumn Night

2011-10-05T01:33:00.001-05:00

A lot of my fellow bloggers write wonderful posts that celebrate blessings and things for which to be grateful, and I am very glad they do. I also have much to be grateful for and thankful for, and I often like to write about those things; but I can’t help but point out what craziness I see in our so-called national leaders when I see it.

The Minority Leader of the United States Senate is on record as saying that his most important priority is to make sure that president Obama is a one-term president. There’s simply something – a GREAT deal of something – that’s wrong with that. (And let me be clear, if the American people decide that Mr. Obama should be a one-term president, then they’ll decide that, fine. But for a legislator – a leader, no less – to say that that’s his number one priority is unconscionable. Why? Because he was elected to serve the people, that’s why.)

How about approving emergency aid for counties and states hurt by massive flooding or hurricanes or droughts? (All of which have occurred in the past several months.) How about closing tax loopholes that allow some of the largest and most profitable corporations in our country to pay NO taxes, while they are also creating no jobs? (Nope, can’t do that. Can’t tax the ‘job creators.’ – How can they be called job creators if they are creating no jobs?)

What we are hearing in these early days of the presidential campaign is discouraging to say the least. And it is – much of it – not very connected to reality. Mr. Obama cannot blame the previous occupant (with thanks to Garrison Keillor for the term) all that much on the stump, but the fact remains that the previous occupant started two wars that weren’t paid for and pushed through congress a massive prescription drug bill that wasn’t paid for. Are those nothing? No, those are billions – nay, trillions – of dollars! And, we wonder why we have such a debt problem now? Never before in the history of this country has our citizenry been asked to go to war without making a concomitant sacrifice. Never before.

But in the 2000’s, we were told to “go out and shop.” There’s leadership for you. We should go shop?

How about the people fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan? How about those soldiers who lack the body armor and other equipment they need? (Or, needed?) How does our shopping help them?

I, a self-proclaimed fiscally conservative social liberal, think it’s time we bring back the draft. If we had the draft, I doubt we’d still be in Afghanistan or Iraq. We – this country – are sending our poorest people to fight for… for, what? For ready access to oil? I get why we had to go to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, but isn’t it interesting that now that Obama has overseen the killing of Osama bin Laden and some 15-20 other Al Queda leaders, the Right still doesn’t give him any credit for that? Hell, we haven’t seen so fierce a warrior as commander-in-chief since Harry Truman, who, in case you’ve forgotten, dropped 2 nuclear bombs. (Not a bad reminder that we remain the only country to have ever deployed nuclear weapons.)

I wonder how we can stop this madness. I wonder how we can reset our course. I wonder why Warren Buffet’s staff pays more, as a percentage of their income, in income taxes than he does. (He wonders the same thing, by the way.) This is nuts.

It’s time for more change. More change. More change.

Namaste.

Choices

2011-09-29T03:26:00.000-05:00

Here we are – heading into a new election cycle, the Democrats against the Republicans, with perhaps a few Independents thrown in there for good measure. What are we arguing about?

National policy, to be sure. Tax policy? Check. Entitlements policy? Check. The Democrats seem to believe that heath care should be a right, not a privilege. The Republicans think otherwise, or at least that’s how it seems.

The Democrats seem to think that we should have a fairer and more balanced tax structure that ensures that the wealthiest among us and corporations are paying their fair share of taxes. The Republicans seem to think differently. Interestingly, a lot of the wealthiest Americans also think that they should be taxed at a higher rate than they currently are taxed today.

But are we to tax the so-called “job creators”? What will happen if we do? How will jobs ever be created in the good ole US of A? Well, the job creators, or at least a lot of them, are creating jobs overseas. Not here. They are also the same folks that the taxpayers have bailed out in the last several years, like Citibank and Bank of America and GE and General Motors. Where are the jobs? We saved these corporations, and what do we have to show for it now? Have you tried to refinance your mortgage lately? Good luck! (If you aren’t already facing foreclosure and potentially bankruptcy.)

So, was Obama untested, a little naïve, perhaps a little not-ready-for-prime-time when he was elected in 2008? Perhaps so. But, he’s no longer untested, no longer unready, no longer naïve. He’s learned the hard way. He tried to compromise, he tried to make nice with the other side, and they stymied him on nearly every turn. I am happy to see a more vigorous and combatant President Obama. I’m happy to see him threatening vetoes and taking his case to the nation. It’s about time, if you ask me.

We have a huge responsibility next fall: Are we going to elect another George W. Bush clone or are we going to reelect President Obama to finish the important work that he has started? Is it possible that this country would elect Sarah Palin, a woman who didn’t think it important that she completed her term as Governor of the state of Alaska, President? I don’t think so. This person doesn’t know how to finish something she starts.

I urge the American people to think long and hard about the choice facing us next year, and vote Obama.

Namaste.

It’s time to pay our bills…

2011-09-21T01:31:00.000-05:00

The previous occupant took us into two wars without asking Americans to sacrifice anything, he instead asked us to go shopping. He also decided that that was a great time to enact a generous prescription drugs bill that wasn’t paid for and to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, those that the Republicans like to call the “job creators” these days. Well, they got the tax breaks, but they stopped creating jobs. Instead, they shipped jobs and profits (that would otherwise be taxed) overseas.

These tax-evading companies are scofflaws. They know precisely what they are doing. It’s legal. But it is wrong. They are funneling money into Ireland and Denmark and the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes on their HUGE profits, and there is no legal recourse that the United States government can take, because it’s all legal. Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.

The United States Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 decision earlier this year in the Citizens United v. FEC case that corporations were “citizens”, and therefore entitled to the first amendment protection to free speech, specifically as it applied to political speech. Well, if they are entitled to the right of free speech as protected by the Constitution, then they are also responsible to contribute to the general Treasury.

Why is it that wealthy folks who earn most of their money from capital dividends pay only 15% on their income when most of us pay a good deal more than that, on a percentage basis? Why is it that Warren Buffet himself has balked at the fact that his secretary and the rest of his staff pay a higher percentage of they pay in taxes than Buffet (a billionaire) does? Because he thinks it is fundamentally wrong, that’s why! And, he’s right. Why should his secretary be paying 25 or 27 or 29 percent when Buffet is paying a fraction of that?

As President Obama said in his Rose Garden speech earlier today, “This is not class warfare… this is math!” Indeed.

It is math. Plain and simple. And, it’s about time we start realizing that we can’t get something for nothing. That’s what the last decade was about. We’ll fight two wars, but there will be no sacrifice. We’ll enact a generous new prescription drug benefit, but there’ll be no sacrifice. We’ll cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but there will be no sacrifice. Who is – or who did – peddle myths?

It’s time to pay our bills. And, we are all going to have to gird our loins and tighten our belts. There is an old saying, “To whom much is given, much is expected in return.” It’s time for those who have profited from our corporate-leaning tax structure and wealthy-leaning tax structure to pony up a bit more to help our country recover and rise like a Phoenix out of our current ashes.

Namaste.

Being Tested

2011-09-16T01:21:00.000-05:00

We’re all tested from time to time in our lives.

The boss wants something extra quick, the kids need fill-in-the-blank, several torrential rainstorms follow one after another flooding your basement, or worse, you know, tested!

Well, it seems my wife and I are in one of those patterns again. Nothing like a hurricane or a flood, mind you. Just serious enough to demand immediate, urgent attention. The other day, one of our tenants called to say that she was smelling gas in her bedroom when she came home from work every evening, and that the back doorknob wasn’t working properly, and that the bathroom sink was draining slowly, despite their having tried Drano. “Okay, we’re on it,” I said.

It so happened that I had to teach for 8 hours the following day, so my ever-the-trooper wife took care of the drain and the doorknob and called the gas company. They came out. They found a leak. They told us that they’d fixed it, but also said that we needed to make sure that our tenants never hung anything on the gas line pipe in the closet where the meter is. So, we decided we’d install a closet rod to provide something for our tenants to hang their clothes on that wasn’t the gas line pipe.

Go to Home Depot. Get the materials. No problem.

But, while we’re installing the new closet rod we smell gas. A lot of gas. The day after the gas man was out and told us it was fixed. So, after successfully installing the new closet rod, we (my wife, actually) call the gas company again. “We’re smelling gas. Could you please come out and see what’s going on?” Turns out that there’s another leak, a second gas leak. They fixed the first yesterday and the second today.

Fortunately, no one got hurt; nothing blew up, no serious harm done. But it was a trying day nonetheless. Smelling gas while hanging a curtain rod is alarming. Knowing that there has been gas leaking into our tenants’ environments for some days, or, God forbid, weeks, is also alarming. But, here’s a shout-out to People’s Gas, who did a good job at solving the problem(s) this time. The last time we had to call them it was a nightmare, but I think I posted a blog about that then.

Meanwhile, we have been tested a bit, but we are passing. We persevere. Next up? The quickly heating up presidential campaigns. Who do you think should be nominated on the Republican side? Do you think there should be a Democratic challenger to Mr. Obama? I’d love to know!

Alex: The Life of a Child - You must read this!

2011-08-05T01:42:00.002-05:00

Earlier this evening I finished reading an extraordinary book. It was moving, lyrical, funny, heartbreaking, instructive, inspirational, and wise. The book is Alex: The Life of a Child, by Frank Deford. Yes, that Frank Deford – the Frank Deford you might have read for years in Sports Illustrated or the Frank Deford that you’ve heard since late 1981 on National Public Radio. He’s also written novels and screenplays and essays and just about anything you can imagine.

In 1971, Frank and his wife welcomed a daughter into their home. She lived for another 8 years. She had cystic fibrosis, a disease that was not nearly as well known then as it is now. (Part of why it’s as well known as it is now is because Deford wrote this magnificent book.)

The book is notable for many reasons, but one of the things that stands out to me is that Deford manages to tell this painful and heart aching tale in a voice that is breezy, casual, and familiar. It is as if a favorite uncle is telling you a difficult story but his sense of humor and perspective is always intact. Deford obviously loved (loves) his little Alexandra, Alex, but he never falls into the maudlin and never succumbs to self-pity. The story is rich in detail and wrenching emotion, but always rendered with a deft, light touch.

This is creative nonfiction at its best.

I recognize that some folks wince at the term “creative nonfiction,” but if you read this book you might wince a little less. This is a book of nonfiction to be sure. And it has been rendered beautifully, lovingly through the techniques that our greatest fiction writers employ.

Deford is a master storyteller, and he is not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve when that’s what the story requires. While attending the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference last month, I had the good fortune to hear Deford speak and to briefly meet him. The man is no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is, AND bring your craft to bear. In other words, he’s a writer. He’s a writer’s writer.

Alex: The Life of a Child is a slim volume, weighing in at just slightly more than 200 pages, but it packs a powerful emotional punch and it contains a story about love and loving that any person can benefit from experiencing. Deford’s little girl Alex had an enormous impact in her eight short years of life – impact on many people beyond just her immediate family, and reading this book is a potent reminder of the potential we all have to make a difference in the world, to make an impact.

I recommend this book without reservation. It is beautifully written and the story contained within is simply and truthfully, heartbreaking and lovely.

Namaste.

Time to Act

2011-07-16T21:35:00.002-05:00

Yesterday on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, regular commentator David Brooks, a conservative columnist for The New York Times (I understand that some of my right leaning friends might think that previous phrase an oxymoron, but he is conservative) said that he didn’t understand why the Republicans would be walking away from a deal wherein this so-called Socialist leaning Democratic president is offering 1.5 trillion dollars in spending cuts, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare that are sure to upset his base.

The aforementioned is part of a 4 trillion dollar deal that president Obama is pushing for, a combination of deficit reduction, significant spending cuts, and some revenue enhancements, most of which would come from closing corporate tax loopholes and repealing George W. Bush’s tax cuts on those making more than $250,000 per year.

What are the Republicans thinking? Do they think they are going to get more spending cuts out of this president, or any Democratic president for that matter? Do they not care about not raising the debt ceiling and allowing our nation to go into default? No, of course not – that’s why they have Sen. McConnell’s (R-KY) cynical suggestion to give the president the authority to raise the debt ceiling on his own, so they don’t have to take any responsibility for the issue. And yet, wait a minute…

Who was it that approved more spending than Mr. Obama asked for? The Congress. Who was it that approved spending for a prescription drug plan that was never paid for and two (arguably three) wars that were never paid for? Answer: the Congress.

It is far past time for this nonsense to stop. Perhaps Mr. Obama overstated his case yesterday when he said that 80% of Americans favored a balance approach to solving this problem, with a combination of spending cuts and increased revenue. The latest polls I’ve seen peg it at about 69%, which is still pretty significant, and which includes a significant number of folks from the other side of the aisle.

It is time to fix this problem. It is time to get control of our fiscal situation. It is time for legislators to do what we sent them to Washington for, namely, to legislate. And, it is far past time for everyone involved to come together and work for what is in the interest of the American people – not the republicans, not the democrats, but the American people.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the present situation, but the time to act is upon us. It’s far past time to end senseless subsidies to oil companies who are pulling in record profits. It’s far past time to end senseless subsidies for ethanol, which is a net loss when it comes to attempting to alleviate the emissions of greenhouse gases. And, it’s time to get real about cutting our spending and sensibly increasing revenues so we can get our fiscal house back in order.

It is, in short, time to act. Not to posture. Not to grandstand. It’s time to act.

Namaste.

Responding

2011-03-14T00:28:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, every now and again, an event occurs that causes us to hit an internal reset button, to reassess our own troubles or struggles or disappointments or difficulties. Such an event occurred last Friday, March 11, in Japan.

That day, Japan was struck by a huge earthquake and then a far more devastating series of tsunamis. Even now, we don’t have a clear picture of just how devastating these events have been. We know that at least 1,500 people have died and Japanese authorities are estimating (as of now) that the death toll will likely exceed 10,000 people. There are multiple nuclear reactors that are in danger of melting down or overheating to near meltdown conditions, and there remain threats of additional tsunamis.

This is an enormously difficult time for the small island nation of Japan. Earlier today, Japan’s Prime Minister said that this was the worst crisis they have faced since World War Two. That’s saying something.

(At the end of WWII, in case you don’t know, the US dropped Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only times that these particular weapons of mass destruction have ever been used.)

Since those horrible days in 1945 the Japanese have become close Allies, close friends. I was relieved to learn earlier today that a friend of mine who interned for me when I was at American Theater Company several years ago is safe and sound. She made it through the earthquake and did not suffer from the tsunami – she was in Tokyo, and, thankfully, on high enough ground.

Others are not so fortunate. Now is a time for us to think about and pray (if that is part of your personal ethos) for our friends in Japan. They are facing an extremely difficult time right now. They need all the help we can provide. Money, gear, support, prayers, and thoughts.

Reading of what’s going on in Japan right now and watching snippets of coverage on CNN makes it clear to me that this is going to be a long, hard battle for our friends on the other side of the world. They need to know that we support them. And, we need to understand that it could just as easily be we who could be going through such a disaster. California has the San Andreas fault. It’s really not a question of if, but more a question of when. It’s coming. No one knows when, but California is going to experience a big earthquake in the undetermined future. As will Illinois. Illinois? Yes, we are also on an unstable fault. Earth’s tectonic plates don’t care where we live, or what language we speak, or what sort of government we have. They move. They shift. On their own. They don’t discriminate. Nor should we in our aid for our friends. And today our friend need to be the Japanese, who need our help immediately.

Transitions, Part II

2011-03-11T01:58:00.001-06:00

Sometimes what’s in our heart is not worth public consumption, so what do we write about then?

Well, here’s trying to answer that question. Of what do we write when we are feeling so down or lost or blue or sorry-for-ourselves that no one would possibly want to read what we have to say?

Well, I suppose the first thing we’d do is not blame anyone else for what we are feeling. I suppose the first thing we’d do is say, “Well, here it is. Here I am. I feel what I feel. And perhaps the only reason that there’s any worth in writing this is that there might be others out there who are also feeling just a little bit lost, or at-sea, or flummoxed with this difficult job market and all the rest.”

Okay, that’s not too bad. That’s not blaming anyone; that’s just admitting that I’m feeling like I’m in a rough spot right now. At the same time, I also must say this: I’m among the lucky ones. I have a good, solid roof over my head. I have a good education. I have a wonderful, terrific, spouse who is immensely supportive of me – even when I’m a little off of my game.

Last year I published (thanks to my dear friend and great supporter Katerina Stoykova-Klemer) my first chapbook. I’m deeply grateful. Katerina went on to nominate the second chapter of that book for a Pushcart Prize, for which I am also very grateful. Last year, I also earned my MFA in Writing, for which I am ALSO grateful. And yet… and yet… here I find myself in a sort of limbo, a sort of haze, a sort of . . . lost feeling.

I’m applying for jobs, although I’m not sure I’m doing the best job of it. I’m continuing to work, sporadically, but not enough. I’m not writing nearly enough as I need to. It’s as if I’ve lost faith. In myself. In my voice. In my work.

Boo-hoo, stop feeling sorry for yourself, you over-educated, self-indulgent asshole!!

Yeah, those are my sentiments exactly. There is no time to feel sorry for one’s self. There is no time to wallow in self-pity or to endlessly engage in “what-if” questions. Therefore, the time has come to move the f**k on. As a good friend of mine likes to put it, “Get on with the bitch!” Indeed. And I shall. This I vow, with this blog post. It’s the only reason I’m posting this. So anyone who reads this can, perhaps, be helpful in holding me accountable to moving on and getting on with it.

When I graduated with my MFA, Tori Murden McClure, the newly named president of Spalding University discussed in her address to our graduating class how these newly graduated MFAs might be emotionally vulnerable for a while, but she assured family and friends that we’d be okay eventually. Well, that eventually has come for me. It’s time to get back to work. Time to turn the page, so to speak.

Thank you for your indulgence.

Namaste.

Momentous Times

2011-03-10T00:01:00.001-06:00

We are living in momentous times, I think.

Look at what’s happened in the past few months in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and other North African and Middle Eastern countries. Look at what’s going on in Wisconsin and Indiana and Tennessee and Ohio and, likely, in other states, of which I am not yet aware.

People are rising up. They are demanding that they be heard. Legislators and Governors are making demands, some of which make sense and some of which seem to feel like an over-reach, a power-grab, or choose your adjective.

The exciting thing is that people are being heard. Voices are mattering.

A couple of days ago, I was at a rehearsal for a corporate gig the I was directing, and a right-leaning friend of mine asked me as we were coming off of a break, “Would you be willing to wait a year or two for your Social Security benefits to kick in if it would help take care of the current national deficit?” I thought for a moment, and then said, “Yes, absolutely, no question!”

He said, “You know? I’ve asked that of my right wing friends and my left wing friends, and everyone has had the same answer: Yes!”

So, why can’t we get it done?

Why won’t this Congress do what they need to do and pass legislation that begins to slowly raise the retirement age? When Social Security was first enacted the life expectancy in the United States was 62 (or something close to that) and one didn’t qualify for SSN until you were 65!! It’s STILL at 65, and yet we are living longer and longer. Where is the sense in that? (Okay, full disclosure, it has started to rise VERY incrementally for those who are my age… I may have to wait until I’m 66 1/2 … oh my!) It needs to rise more. I would happily add another 2 or 3 years in order to help this country, MY country, OUR country, deal with our fiscal mess.

We spend too much in this county. Too much on defense, too much on health care, too much on energy, too much on… well, I suppose, just about everything. Only discipline and a new way of thinking is going to change that. I know a lot of my Republican friends think that the answer is to get rid of social spending and to bust the unions, especially the teachers unions, but, honestly, why should teachers lose the right to collective bargaining while we keep that right for firefighters and law enforcement? I don’t understand the distinction.

Have there been abuses? I imagine so. Are there areas where we can improve these negotiations? I imagine so. But, let’s not throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Let’s all be adults and deal with the situation. The relevant unions in Wisconsin, for instance, have already agreed to all of the wage and pension concessions that the Governor has requested, why does he have to do away with collective bargaining?

Returning to the question my right-leaning friend and colleague asked me about being willing to delay retirement a couple or a few years if it would help our nation. I said, “Yes,” and he told me that everyone else he asked said, “Yes.” We are not so far apart as it sometimes seems. I think we share more in common than we might always know. Let us stop attacking one another over trivial things like: Who’s more patriotic? Or, Who’s got the best interest of our country at heart? We ALL have the best interests of our country at heart, and that’s precisely the point of our political process – we determine the policy directions of our country (and our states and our municipalities) through the political process. But there is simply no need for anyone in this country to demonize another. We are strongest when we work together and when we understand that even if we disagree, we can do so agreeably.

Namaste.

Encouragement

2011-03-03T01:37:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I posted a blog entitled Discouragement. Tonight I want to visit the flip side.

Twenty-nine years ago, in the spring of 1982, I was a student at New York University and Ronald Reagan was president of the United States. He was pushing for massive cuts to student loans and grants and what-not, and several thousand students decided to mount a protest to Reagan’s planned cuts. At the time, my brother Scott was living with our natural father, Bob Jaycox, in Joppa, Maryland, not very far from Washington, D.C. Once I knew I was going to be going down to D.C. to protest Reagan’s proposed Draconian cuts, I called my brother and asked if he might want to meet me in Washington for lunch or something.

He said, “yes.”

We met on the steps of the Capitol building one March afternoon, almost precisely twenty-nine years ago. It was the first time he and I had ever chosen to see each other, to spend time together. As I recall, we walked around a bit, took in some sights and eventually had lunch somewhere – I have no idea where. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was with my brother. It was great.

I just got off the phone with my brother a few minutes ago. We talked earlier this evening for nearly ninety minutes. We talked about our lives, our hopes, our worries, our concerns, our joys.

We recalled that day twenty-nine years ago that we decided to meet one another on neutral turf, by our own choice, and I couldn’t help but tear up. It was a pivotal moment in both of our lives, and a joyful one. It was the first time that we decided we wanted to see each other, to visit, to spend time with one another. It was – and remains – a gift. A gift that we gave each other. We decided that we were brothers, we embraced it. It was always so, of course, but it meant so much more after we embraced it.

And so while last night I mused about discouragement, tonight I write of encouragement, because the meeting that my brother and I had twenty-nine years ago is one of the most encouraging things I can imagine. And the conversation that we had tonight was just what the doctor ordered.

Namaste.

Discouragement

2011-03-02T01:50:00.001-06:00

None of us is eager to embrace the title, to admit to being discouraged. And yet it happens in most of our lives, or at least many of our lives. Sometimes, we get discouraged. We might lose hope or feel like we aren’t getting anywhere or feel like we are aimless or restless or lacking the sort of clear guidance that we might prefer.

Perhaps you’ve placed a call to an old friend or a trusted colleague and left a message and it’s been days without a return call. Perhaps you’ve reached out to someone who assured you that they would always be there for you, but this time that’s just not quite the case. What do you do?

You soldier on. You find your own strength. You hold your head as high as you possibly can and even when you feel like you don’t have a damned clue as to what your next best move is you keep on going. You resolve to do what it is you want to do, you resolve to be better at communicating with your friends, you resolve to go after each and every opportunity you can find, you resolve to NOT be dragged into the morass of self-doubt and self-pity. You resolve to tell yourself, “It’s time to stop wondering what life is going to bring me and time to start determining what life is going to being me.”

I’m writing – of course – to myself. It’s time for me to stop wondering what life is going to bring me and it’s time for me to start determining what life is going to bring me. I’m applying for jobs, yes; I’m working (too sporadically) on my manuscript, yes; but I need to embrace that no one can determine more what life will bring me than I can. It ain’t easy. And it often isn’t much fun. But there we are. There it is.

It’s time for me to get back to work; to my work. To writing. Of course I have to pay the bills, and I will – whether that be through writing and directing corporate training work or teaching as an adjunct wherever I can get the work, I’ll do it. But I also need to do the real work, the writing work that I’ve trained for and worked for and that I… ultimately, love.

My late birth father had a phrase that he used a lot. He would say, “Well, good enough.” His saying “good enough” meant so much more than what those two words instantly imply. It meant, “All is well.” It meant, “Now we can proceed.” It meant, “Full speed ahead.” It is high time for me to heed my late father’s words, “Good enough.”

Damn whatever torpedoes might be waiting in the wings. Full speed ahead.

Namaste.

Transitions

2011-02-07T00:14:00.002-06:00

Change is often difficult. We are often afraid of the unknown, of the what-will-come-of-our-current-efforts.

I'm in that sort of place right now. I'm applying for a bunch of teaching jobs. My wife is about to leave her job, which has provided us with health insurance for the past three years. We are in transition.

I've applied for jobs here in Chicago, but I'm also applying for a number of jobs that aren't here in Chicago. Michigan, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, among others. We might experience significant change. We might not. But, here we are. We continue, we persevere. We do what must be done.

I'm not afraid to admit that I'm concerned about what comes next. Will I finish my book? Will I get a good job? Will I get anyone interested in publishing what I'm writing? All of these questions lurk, and yet... and YET... one must do what one can to carry on, to keep going, to keep working. On what matters. Chicago has been hit hard in the past week or so by a major blizzard. The snow is still overwhelming. Tomorrow morning, I will dig out my car (again) for the first time in more than a week because I have to be somewhere for auditions for an upcoming project.

It's okay. It's alright. Solutions don't appear overnight. They come when they do. I missed being at AWP this past weekend. At least my book was there. (Thanks Katerina!) I wish you all, whoever might happen upon this - strength and courage and stamina to go on, to face the world as it is, because it isn't always as we might wish it to be. It is what it is, and we must soldier on, trying to find our place in it.

Namaste.

Brian

On Not Blogging Much Recently…

2011-01-03T18:13:00.000-06:00

It’s been more than two months since my last post and much has occurred in that time – I’ve been blessedly busy with work for the past two months (needed the money big-time after months of underemployment); a chapter of my chapbook Meeting Dad: A Memoir was nominated for a Pushcart Prize (thank you Accents Publishing and Katerina Stoykova-Klemer!); and, I’ve been cooking… a lot!

Recent dishes include: Linguini with White Clam Sauce, Filet Mignon and Fettucine Alfredo for Christmas Eve (2nd annual meal for that night); Sloppy Joe’s from scratch; tacos from scratch; various and sundry one-pan-wonders with meat (pork or beef) and an assortment of vegetables; Spaghetti and Meatballs (veal and pork); and, on New Year’s Eve, authentic Buffalo Chicken Wings. Perhaps I’ve been putting more creative energy into cooking than I have into writing? Perhaps. Perhaps I also simply needed to take a break, to take some stock, to recharge my batteries, as it were.

On New Year’s Day, I spent some time with some friends (old and new) and was fascinated to discover that there were several of us who either hold (or are close to earning) an MFA in Writing. It felt good to connect with the writing vibe again and I realized that it is time for me to get my butt back into the chair and to finish my memoir-in-progress. I’ve been stymied for several weeks because of my old demons “self-doubt” and “second guessing.” That, I suppose, and simply being exhausted from the pace of work and other vicissitudes with which we all deal, pretty much every day.

There’s been another thing at work however. I think I’ve grown weary of the din, of the constant noise with which we are so often bombarded – pundits and prognosticators making their oh-so-self-important proclamations about Obama and the tea party and Congress and Palin among many other subjects. I suppose I’ve been less eager than other times to add my voice to the din, at least not unless I thought I had something interesting to say, and, frankly I don’t think I’ve had anything too terribly interesting to say about recent political developments. Honestly, I think we all need to take a collective breath and calm down. So maybe that’s it? Maybe I needed to give myself a timeout? Perhaps. Maybe I simply needed to spend some more time in the kitchen – mixing, stirring, inventing, interpreting, exploring.

Now, it’s a New Year. 2011 has arrived. The economy is showing slow signs of recovery, the 112th Congress is convening, next month Chicago will elect a new Mayor, Jerry Brown is once again governor of California and Ahh-nold is likely headed back to Hollywood, given that he can’t run for president.

Here we go, then. A new year, a new decade, and – I hope – a new chance to embrace the work of our lives.

Namaste.

Trick or Treat?

2010-11-01T19:40:00.001-05:00

Late last night, near midnight, my wife Gloria and I walked into our kitchen and smelled gas. There had been previous occasions when we’d wondered if we were smelling gas, but then we’d stop and smell some more and think… nah, there’s nothing wrong.

Last night, there was no doubt. We smelled gas and we called the gas company for emergency service.

A man and a woman from Peoples Gas arrived relatively quickly, but then proceeded to treat us in a horrific manner. We explained that we smelled something like the smell of rotten eggs, and the man said, “Our gas doesn’t smell like rotten eggs. We put Mercaptan in it.”

Wikipedia tells me that Mercaptan is “a colorless gas with a smell like rotten cabbage.” So, I guess we were wrong. But, what you need to understand is the tone with which the man asserted that their gas didn’t smell like rotten eggs. It was derisive, haughty, and, frankly, insulting. As if we were idiots to describe that – threatening – smell in such a way. And, neither he nor his partner would let this faux pas go – they kept saying things like, “It doesn’t smell like rotten eggs” and “You don’t know what you’re talking about” and “We’ll determine whether or not there is any problem here,” etc. – all with that same, curiously hostile and dismissive attitude.

The man had a device with him to check for leaking gas, a handheld instrument with a tube attached to it, something like a Geiger counter. It clicked slowly, perhaps at one-second intervals, when there was no unexpected presence of gas, but clicked quite rapidly when there was a significant amount of gas present. When he steered the end of the tube behind our gas stove, it went ballistic, clicking like mad.

We had a gas leak.

This meant that the duo had to check all gas appliances in the house as well as the source of the gas coming into our house. Down to the basement we went – water heaters, fine; incoming gas line (in our tenants’ apartment), fine; upstairs gas fireplace, fine. Throughout all of these additional checks, they continued to be hostile and dismissive of my and my wife’s concerns. They did, in the end, replace the flexible hose leading from the gas valve to the back of our stove, but I doubt I will ever understand why they were so rude to us.

Discovering that you have gas leaking in your house late at night is rather troubling and worrisome. In that, well… the house could have blown up!

The kicker? The literature that they left with us after we signed to cover the bill contains the following line: “Peoples Gas adds an odorant (Mercaptan) that smells like sulfur or rotten eggs to alert you in the event of a gas leak.”

Maybe they should tell their workers that.

Namaste.

Identity Theft

2010-07-28T20:39:00.001-05:00

It’s been far too long since I’ve posted anything on this blog – life has simply been overwhelmingly busy of late. In May, I completed my MFA in Writing and had the great honor of addressing my fellow graduates and the assembled guests at graduation. The following day, I enjoyed the privilege of giving a public reading from my recently published chapbook, Meeting Dad: A Memoir (Accents Publishing, 2010), at the Morris Bookshop in Lexington, Kentucky. (By the way, if you find yourself in Lexington, pay a visit to this terrific independent bookstore! They are great and friendly and knowledgeable and everything you want in a bookstore experience.)

Earlier this month, I started teaching at DeVry University here in Chicago. I am teaching English 112 (Essay Writing) to 29 high school students who are part of a wildly innovative program called the DeVry University Achievement Academy, whereby the students complete their high school education and earn an Associates Degree at the same time. I’m also teaching HUMN 303 (Introduction to the Humanities) to juniors in pursuit of a Bachelor’s Degree. Seven credit hours over an eight-week summer session is a pretty heavy load, but I am, by and large, loving it! It is a privilege to teach, and an awesome responsibility. (By the way, I don’t use the word “awesome” very often, but in this case, it is the exact, right word.)

So, why is the title of this posting “Identity Theft?”

I learned earlier today that my debit card number has somehow been compromised. I don’t know whether it was due to some store losing data that a thief got a hold of or whether someone transcribed the numbers while they had my card in order to process a transaction. My debit card is in the right front pocket of my pants at all times, except when it is on my desk when I go to sleep at night. But, I learned today that someone – some thief – made an innocuous charge of $2.49 to some company in Kansas and a very much less-than-innocuous charge of $1,675 to a jewelry store in Los Angeles today! The debit card has been cancelled, a new one ordered, and a fraud claim will be filed within the next day or so.

How the thief or thieves secured my debit card number is a mystery. The good news is that my bank has assured me that once I’ve filed a fraud affidavit, my money will be returned to me – along with any bank fees that might be assessed while this whole issue is working itself out. The bad news is that it’s going to take me a few days to clear up this whole mess, and that during that time, I will have no access to a pretty significant amount of money.

Ah well… these things happen. I’m not going to let it ruin my day or week. I have classes to teach, papers to grade, and an upcoming birthday for my wife to prepare for. I guess I wanted to share this with you simply to say, be cautious. Be careful. Shred anything that might have account numbers on it. And, most importantly, be well.

Namaste.

You Don’t Know Jack

2010-04-25T00:40:00.002-05:00

So I just watched the premiere of Barry Levinson’s new film, You Don’t Know Jack, starring Al Pacino as Jack “Dr. Death” Kevorkian. It was extraordinarily well made and featured the most nuanced and understated performance I’ve seen from Pacino on-screen in, well, a long, long, time! He was great, as were Brenda Vacarro (as Jack’s sister Margo) and Susan Sarandon (as a Hemlock Society organizer who is stricken with pancreatic cancer) and Chicago’s own, Rondi Reed (as the judge who finally sent Jack to jail).

More importantly than it being a good film, however, is the issue with which the film engages – namely, assisted suicide, death with dignity, or euthanasia – depending upon your point of view. I personally believe that if a human being is suffering unbearable pain with a terminal illness and is rational that he or she should be allowed to request that a doctor help usher him or herself out of this world with some dignity, some grace. I understand (and respect) the concerns that some have about potential abuses if we as a society were to embrace this, but I also believe (strongly) that there are some pretty simple ways to avoid abuse – like getting two or three opinions from licensed doctors that the patient is mentally competent.

Look at what happens all too often now: many folks are bankrupted in the last months (or weeks, or even days) of their lives spending all they have on medical care that is more about prolonging their life than improving their life. Or making them comfortable. Why is it okay that people go bankrupt to spend another several weeks in agony? Or, why can’t we trust that a patient who is in constant pain and has no chance of recovery might reasonably wish to simply let go – say their goodbyes, get their affairs in order, and let go? Is that irrational? I think not.

This whole subject seems to have moved to the back burner of our national discourse in the past several years – understandably so, given wars and the recession, et al – but perhaps its time we start to discuss it again. At the moment, only the state of Oregon has any allowance for physician-assisted suicide. Perhaps I’ll move there if I am unfortunate enough to contract a life-threatening terminal disease.

It’s a conversation worth having, I think. It’s hard, yes. It’s painful, yes. But it matters. None of us want our loved ones to suffer needlessly and yet so many do, every day of every year. I’m hoping that this fine movie might help spur an increased dialogue on this very important – and, very controversial – subject.

Namaste.

That Didn’t Take Long, Did It?

2010-03-24T17:10:00.001-05:00

Less than 36 hours after President Obama signed the historic health insurance reform bill, more Americans now support it than don’t, according to a USA Today poll released today. The newspaper reports, “By 49%-40%, those polled say it was ‘a good thing’ rather than a bad one that Congress passed the bill. Half describe their reaction in positive terms — as ‘enthusiastic’ or ‘pleased’ — while about four in 10 describe it in negative ways, as ‘disappointed’ or ‘angry.’”

What’s more, fully 52% of those polled said they feel the bill either “makes the most important changes needed” or is “a good first step, [although] more changes are needed.” With most in the GOP and many right wing pundits screaming about the bill being “shoved down the country’s throat” and wildly asserting that “the vast majority of American don’t want health care reform” one has to wonder how these numbers could have developed so quickly.

Might it be that Americans are beginning to learn what’s contained within the bill? Might it be that most Americans – that is to say, a clear majority – are tired of things like pre-existing conditions and being dropped just when one needs health insurance? How about the fact that this bill assures that check-ups and other preventive care will – for the first time in history – be covered by new insurance policies with no co-payments?

Is it perfect? Of course not. And no one – no one – has suggested that it is. Is it a start? Indeed.

What troubles me the most is the deception and fear-mongering that has informed and surrounded this so-called debate. Taxes are not hiked on the middle-class, they are hiked on those earning more than $250,000 a year. In the last twenty-thirty years, the real rates of taxation have steadily fallen on the wealthiest in our society while rising on the middle and lower middle class. It’s about time that this trend gets reversed. I’m not engaging in class warfare here; rather, I am advocating some basic sense of fairness. The gap between rich and poor has never been as wide as it is today. Closing it would be a good thing for all Americans. Does this bill fix that problem? Not entirely, no. But it’s a good start.

Obama ran on health care reform. He told the American people that this would be his biggest domestic priority. So, how can anyone express great surprise that he pushed hard for this? It’s what we elected him to do!

A conservative friend of mine recently griped to me that many of the proposals take 3-4 years to kick in, as if this proves that it’s bad. Obama addressed this issue directly before signing the bill yesterday, explaining that certain elements are phased in over time so that changes are made responsibly, adding, “We have to get this right!”

I agree.

I believe that as Americans learn what this bill does and does not do that support for it will only continue to rise. I believe that the Democrats will run on health care reform next November, not away from it. I, unlike Rush and some of my other friends on the right, want this president (and by extension, our country) to succeed, not fail. And, I’m not ashamed to say it.

Certainly we will find there are things that can be done to make this bill better. Great, let’s do them. But let’s also try to engage one another once again with a modicum of civility and honest recognition of what is and is not in this or any other bill. The fact is there are some two-hundred GOP proposals contained within the bill Mr. Obama signed yesterday. The bill didn’t garner any GOP votes, but it’s got a lot of GOP ideas. As it should. Let’s all turn down the rhetorical heat a bit and keep our eyes on what’s important. Namely, our country and the health of our citizens.

Namaste.

A Regrettable Ruling

2010-01-22T01:05:00.000-06:00

Thirteen years ago, I received a letter from my natural father, Bob Jaycox, in which he railed against “legal fiction of the corporation,” observing that they have “never breathed a breath of air, never watched a sunset, never held a child,” but they “feed at the trough of government largesse, wield political power on a measure which should never exist in this nation, and cast off those who live and breath at their own whim and convenience.”

Today, in a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that corporations should be able to spend whatever they want to spend in political campaigns, arguing that corporations had the same rights as individuals and that this spending was protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. But, wait a minute… First of all, are corporations really individuals? The Supreme Court has held as much for many years so let’s put that aside for a moment. But, another question: I, as an individual, am limited as to how much I can spend on a political campaign. I have a cap on my contribution to a candidate or party I support. Now, corporations have no limitations whatsoever, but my ability to contribute to a candidate or party remains limited. What’s up with that?

Is a corporation now more of a “person” than I am? Or than you are? Your political contributions are strictly limited under current law and yet Aetna or Philip Morris or Pfizer can now donate whatever they want. No limits. None. What in Sam Hill’s name is going on?

My friends on the right (and I do have some) will likely not approve of what I’m about to suggest but I think the time has come for serious reform of campaign finance, and the reform I want is public financing. This would stop the millionaires from having an unfair leg up on the rest of us and level the playing field. We would (collectively – uh-oh, he must be a Socialist!) finance campaigns for all federal elected offices; states could decide what they want to do for statewide elections on their own. But it seems to me it wouldn’t be that hard to create a legitimacy test for prospective federal candidates that entitle them to public financing. Once they satisfy that test they could only receive public financing and we would have a level playing field in terms of ad buys and the like. Each candidate would have to prove him or herself in the arena, through the cleverness of the ads the public finances allow them to buy to their personal pressing-of-the-flesh to their performance at debates. Let the best woman or man win.

Corporations are NOT individuals. As my late father said, they’ve “never breathed a breath of air, never watched a sunset, never held a child.” Individuals do all of those things. We breathe, we notice the sunset (and the sunrise), we hold children, even if we don’t have them ourselves – we hold our nieces and nephews or the children of friends, or, our own younger siblings. We are individuals. We breathe, we see, we touch, we taste, we feel. Corporations don’t cry or hurt or laugh. Their stocks rise or fall and individuals involved with them might cry or hurt or laugh, but corporations themselves demonstrably do not. That’s why they can lay off 10,000 workers at a time without blinking an eye.

Let me be clear. I am not anti-corporation. In fact, I, along with my wife, own a corporation. It’s called Russell Creative, Inc., and we formed it because it was a good tax move. But Russell Creative, Inc. is not and never will be an individual. It is a tax haven. It is a way for us to pay for medical expenses and research expenses and other business related necessities on a pre-tax basis. But, I wouldn’t ever in a million years argue that Russell Creative, Inc. should be thought of as an individual. It is demonstrably NOT an individual. It is a VERY small company run by my wife and me. It exists because given the current tax laws it makes sense for it to exist. Why should it be able to spend more money in support of a candidate than I am able to? This makes no sense.

This ruling will surely be overturned eventually, but meanwhile, I urge you to be in touch with your Representatives and Senators and push them to enact new legislation to try to work around this abominable ruling the Supreme Court. Our lives do, in fact, depend upon it.

Namaste.

Saying Goodbye

2009-12-27T23:44:00.000-06:00

“Oh, these sweet, sweet creatures who love us and bring us so much joy and depend on us to make this difficult decision.” That’s what my friend Carmen wrote to my wife and me a year and a half ago when we had to make the painful decision to put Gloria’s beloved dog, Buddy, to sleep. He had a brain tumor covering fully one-third of his right lobe and there was nothing at all to be done.

Now, we find ourselves needing to make the same decision about Max, a dog who has been at my side for thirteen years. I haven’t had a relationship (outside of family) that has lasted thirteen years!

Two years ago, Max had surgery on his left rear leg to replace a tendon that had worn away somehow. The doctor opened his leg up, drilled through the bone and essentially tied in a new tendon to keep the bones operating properly. The recovery was long and painful. But it eventually worked. For a time Max was able to walk on both legs, run even, with little or no sign of pain or discomfort. Last summer, I noticed that he seemed to be having the same sort of trouble with his right rear leg that he’d had with his left rear leg that led us to approve the surgery of two years ago – something, by the way, that I would never have imagined I would do for a dog, but I’m glad I did… I fretted and worried and took him to the veterinarian. She put him on anti-inflammatory medication and gave us some pain medication as well, for when it was really acting up. He’s been on the anti-inflammatory meds ever since and we’ve generally given him a pain pill once a week or whenever it seems necessary.

Last week, he injured his right rear leg running in response to some neighborhood dog barking or something and it’s been downhill ever since. He can no longer put any weight on his right rear leg. He cannot ascend stairs on his own. I have a sling that I put under his mid-section to help carry the bulk of his weight as he lumbers up the stairs, hopping his front feet up a step and then hoisting his weak back legs up a step with the help of the sling.

Max is fourteen years old, nearly fifteen. He’s had a great life. He’s traveled to more places than many humans I know. He has been swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Ocean, and Big Gull Lake in Ontario, Canada, and, of course, Lake Michigan. He explored deserts and mountains and dunes and woods.

Tomorrow we have to say goodbye. He’s suffering and it’s time. I’m sad, of course, but I’m also beyond words grateful for the years of joy that he’s given me, the years of companionship and love that he’s provided. I know he knows that I’ve always loved him. I know he knows that I’ve always thought that he was/is a “good dog.” That helps, a little.

In this holiday season many of us try to take a moment to count our blessings, our joys, things for which (or for whom) we should be (are) grateful. Max has been a blessing, a joy, a treasure. Tomorrow I will execute the final act of my responsibility for Max, even though it’s the last thing I want to do. I will say goodbye and Godspeed and thank you and I love you and always will.

When I adopted Max from the Animal Shelter on Grand Avenue in downtown Chicago, they told me he was called “Maru.” but I didn’t think that name fit at all. So as he lay curled up on the floorboard in the front of my Subaru Justy as I was driving him home I tried out different names. When I called “Max” he lifted his head up to me and raised his ears. That’s how I knew that was his name.

Tomorrow I’ll say goodbye to Max. I’ll remember him forever.

Veteran's Day in the USA

2009-11-11T16:39:00.000-06:00

Many have made the point that one day is not nearly enough to honor America’s veterans, and I agree. Whether veterans of foreign wars or stateside support personnel, our veterans deserve our respect and deep gratitude, regardless of our personal thoughts regarding the politics behind a particular conflict (war), be it Vietnam or Iraq. It is not, after all, the veterans who are responsible for starting or continuing a war, those decisions are made by our civilian leadership, including our congressional representatives and, of course, our Commander-in-Chief.

My and my wife’s families have a long history of military service, even though neither of us has served ourselves. My birth father served in the Army, my adoptive father served in the Air Force, my mother served in the Navy Reserves, my brother served in the Army (I think I’m recalling that correctly) and as an MP, my sister served in the Air Force, and my uncle served in the Navy. Gloria’s brother served in the Navy and her father served in the Army, storming the beaches at Normandy in WWII.

The sacrifices that veterans make for each and every one of us Americans are hard to adequately catalogue. Whether it is being away from family for long stretches of time or being put directly into harm’s way, all veterans sacrifice in order to secure our freedom and to protect our way of life. For many years in this country, we have had an all-volunteer military, for which I am grateful, and also deeply humbled. Those folks who have enlisted, who have fought the fights and prevented other fights from having to be fought are to be honored – beyond one day a year.

So thank you, veterans. Thank you what you do each and every day. Thank you for standing guard over our country’s constitution and way of life. To those currently serving, I am especially grateful. I hope we can find a way to get you all home safely soon!

Namaste.

A Mixed Bag

2009-10-31T01:36:00.001-05:00

I am thrilled that President Obama is issuing an executive order to rescind the ban on HIV infected individuals from entering the United States. I’m pleased that he is working to close Guantanamo and trying to open up dialogue with Iran and other countries with whom we have strained relationships.

But, what the heck is it with this $250 check that he wants to send to Social Security recipients because the cost of living has decreased? The COLA (cost of living adjustment) would properly LOWER social security payments if reason prevailed. Obviously, that’s not going to happen, and that’s fine, but why add the extra dough? The cost of living (statistically, at least) has fallen, so why should Social Security recipients get more money? Bear in mind, my mother, father, uncle, aunt, and sister-in-law all will benefit from this government giveaway, so I’m happy for them, I suppose, but, really? We’re in the midst of a recession. A downturn. A contraction. A serious as shinola problem.

My wife and I got our property tax bill today. Our property taxes are nearly 20% higher than last year, even as our property has lost as much as 40% of its value. What’s up with that? Are our schools better? No. Are they more effectively educating the young people in our community? No. Are our streets safer or better maintained? No. Is crime down? No. So, why are we paying 20% more in property taxes when services are no better or diminished in comparison to a year ago? There is no good answer. Greed, corruption, graft, perhaps? Or perhaps it’s simply incompetence and foolishness. I honestly don’t know.

I don’t like to simply issue complaints on this blog, but I’m concerned. Worried. We need leadership, and I’m not seeing as much of it as I would like out of Washington, DC right about now.

All for now…

Namaste.

Death is not proud…

2009-10-28T01:00:00.002-05:00

It simply is. Death is arrogant, sometimes swift, and often wildly unexpected.

When Death takes a fifty-eight year old man in the middle of the afternoon while walking down the street, Death is alarming. The man was a good man. He left a wife, Miriam, and a daughter, Megan, behind. His name was Michael Philippi. He was a deeply gifted lighting designer and a kind and decent man.

Death visited him on Dearborn Street Tuesday afternoon October 27 and took him away from us. The suddenness of his passing made all who knew him gasp. Nothing could have possibly prepared any one of us for this.

It’s hard to know what to think in the wake of an event like this. It seems there have been so many unexpected, too-soon deaths of friends and colleagues in the past several years. I run across their email addresses in my contact list and can’t bring myself to delete them, as if to do so would be a final erasure or a turning away of some sort.

Years ago I worked on a new musical that (to the best of my knowledge) never did get a full production, but it had some great pieces in it, and some deeply moving sentiments. One of the lyrics read, in part, “The dead get tired of waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for the living to live and do something! Do do do something.” Perhaps that’s what we need to recall when we are forced to face Death, that we must live while we can and not waste our precious time here on earth, here with our loved ones, our family, our friends.

Death is the one thing we all share, the one fate that awaits each and every one of us and yet it remains so… difficult for us to accept, for us to cope with. Even if a death is not a huge surprise or not completely unexpected, we are still shattered by the loss. And yet… We also, at some level, in some place, know that it’s an inescapable part of life. All that lives shall die. Cold comfort, that. Or, no comfort, I suppose.

What do we do? We carry on. We persist. We persevere. And, perhaps most importantly, we remember and we celebrate the lives the departed lived, and the lessons they taught us through their living and their grace. We cherish those memories and keep them alive through our stories. We lift them up, and in so doing, lift ourselves up in the process and recommit to living each day to the fullest and being grateful for our lives and try to keep the dead from waiting for us to live.

Namaste. Rest in peace, Michael.

Health Care

2009-10-14T00:19:00.003-05:00

Earlier today the Senate Finance Committee voted to send a health bill to the full Senate with one Republican vote, from Olympia Snowe, of Maine. Is the bill perfect? No. Will it be passed in the US Senate as is? No. Will it survive a conference committee as is? No.

But, it is still an accomplishment. This country has been working on passing comprehensive health care reform since FDR or earlier. We must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The bill passed out of the Finance Committee today ends pre-existing conditions and disallows insurance companies from dropping covered individuals when they need the coverage the most - when they are sick. This is a good start. It will not solve all of our health care problems and challenges, but it is a good start.

In the richest country in the world, is it acceptable that we have so many people without health care coverage? I think not. And, this pre-existing condition thing hits home with me... you see, about a year ago my wife, Gloria, got a great new job that provides us both with health care. That's wonderful. But, I had to stop getting my allergy shots, because that was/is a pre-existing condition. So, now I've spent a year or more with no shots and my hearing has worsened a little bit more, but soon I'll be able to start up the allergy shots again because we've waited a year. I should be grateful, right?

Grateful that I had to wait a year to continue treatment that is critically important to my health?

I could not afford to continue those treatments without health insurance covering them, but I had to simply forego them for a year because I changed insurers. Do you not think our system needs fixing? Do you think that nothing is wrong with this picture? The bill that passed out of the Senate Finance committee today is far from perfect, but it's a good start. It will end pre-existing conditions. That, in and of itself, is reason enough to support it. We will - they will - make it better in sessions to come. But we simply MUST have health care reform soon.

Namaste.

Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T22:55:00.003-05:00

On November 27, 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament, and in describing what he wanted as the criteria for the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, he wrote that it should be awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

President Obama has eliminated torture on the part of United States military and intelligence personnel, he has pledged to close Guantanamo Bay and is making progress on that pledge, especially with the recent news that prisoners there will be allowed to be tried in U.S. courtrooms, he has pulled forces back in Iraq on the way to a complete withdrawal, and he has – successfully – begun talks with Iran about their nuclear program.

Are the two wars he inherited won or over? Of course not. Has he fixed the economic quagmire he inherited? Nope, hasn’t done that either, although the stock market did record its highest close of 2009 today. Has he brought peace to the Middle East? No, not yet, and he may not succeed at that, but nor has any other president since 1948.

What he has done is significantly opened up and fostered good will for international diplomacy. In the nearly nine months that he’s been president he’s traveled to thirty-one countries, more nations in the first (not quite) year of his presidency than any previous occupant of the office. He has told the world that America wants to listen and talk to the rest of the world, that we wish not to dictate how their countries should be organized, but that we wish to partner with them, and to be their friends.

The Taliban and Rush Limbaugh both agreed that Mr. Obama didn’t deserve the prize. He hadn’t earned it, they said. But Mr. Obama, in his speech this morning indicating that he would accept the prize, said, “I do not view it [receiving the prize] as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations. To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize.” He has said that he will donate the $1.4 million cash award to charity.

Mr. Obama understands that the award is meant to motivate, to catalyze actions towards peace in the months and years to come. He has been advocating for a nuclear weapon free world. He has been willing to talk to enemies as well as friends, something for which he was ridiculed during last year’s campaign, but something for which the majority of Americans voted.

Mr. Obama has not yet accomplished much of what he has set out to accomplish, but he is on his way, and the world is listening. The world’s view of the United States of America has undergone a major shift for the better because of Mr. Obama’s election, and it is likely that, as much as anything else, that explains why he was honored with a Nobel Peace Prize this morning. It is an honor that looks to the future, that embraces his message of hope and optimism, and that understands that things don’t change overnight, but that this sort of recognition might help move the rest of the world to be more eager to work with this young, vibrant president to forge a better future for all of us and for our children.

I salute and congratulate you, President Obama. God speed. Do us proud.

Namaste.

Okay, Chicago. Now’s your chance!

2009-10-07T20:46:00.000-05:00

Now that we have lost the 2016 bid for the Olympic Games, perhaps we will focus upon some other – arguably far more important issues – such as, how do we keep our children safe? How do we provide them with a world-class education? How do we maintain, repair, and improve our crumbling roads, bridges, and train tracks?

Isn’t this just the opportunity we’ve been looking for?

All sort of forces mobilized to raise untold amounts of money and to put in untold numbers of hours in preparing the city for the Olympic Games. Well, we didn’t get the games, but there sure is a heck of a lot that needs work here in our city. Let us get to it, shall we?

When an honors student (and, frankly, it doesn’t matter whether or not he was an honors student) can get beaten to death in broad daylight outside of a school and it is filmed and put up on the web for all to see and no one (apparently) called either the police or 911, doesn’t that tell you something is rather wrong here? What’s more upsetting is that this is no longer surprising. Children have been murdered at astonishing rates in this city for many, many years. Victims of stray bullets or gang beatings or downright gang-ordered assassinations. When will the madness stop? When will our elected leaders – and I’m talking to you, Mr. Daley, and you, Alderman Vi Daley (no relation to the Mayor) – when will you at long last take action?

How many people have to die before we get serious about these problems? How long will we allow folks in poverty to languish in inadequate housing with inadequate, or no, health care? What really matters to us? That’s the question, isn’t it? Is it more important that we get a big influx of visitors from across the world in 2016 or that we create a city that everyone from across the world will want to visit?

Mayor Daley, the time is now: pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and announce a bold, new initiative to quell gang violence and create safer, more effective schools once and for all. Enough is enough already. Let’s all harness the energy that was created behind this Olympics bid and put it to use making our community safer, stronger, and more healthy, which will, by the way, make it more attractive to tourists from all over the globe. The time for action has come. The only question is, will we take it?

Namaste.

The Congressman and the Crooner

2009-09-29T22:48:00.002-05:00

I don’t often veer into the overtly political in this blog, despite my confirmed status as a political junkie. But two stories that I happened to catch this evening compel me to comment, briefly.

According to the Huffington Post, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Az.) asserted that president Obama “has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.” Has no place in any station of government? – he was elected president by a healthy majority. Is an enemy of humanity? Excuse me???

In an article linked directly below the one quoting Rep. Franks, we learn that Andy Williams (remember him? Of Moon River crooning fame?) asserts that Obama “wants the country to fail.” Right. Of course he does. Why wouldn’t he?

What are these people drinking? (Clearly they are not thinking!)

Disagree with the man, fine! But, to suggest that he wants the country to fail or that he is an enemy of humanity is beyond the pale. When are we going to stop this nonsense once and for all?

No one on the left asserted that Bush wanted the country to fail. They asserted that he made some bad decisions, led us into a war of choice (in Iraq) rather than a war of necessity, but even then, none of them said it was because he wanted the country to fail or that he was an enemy of humanity.

Jimmy Carter was roundly vilified for suggesting that racism might have something to do with some of the harshest (read: stupidest) criticisms of Obama. I don’t know whether he was right or not, but, please – when is the last time you can remember such outlandish charges being leveled against a president? Enemy of humanity? Wants the country to fail?

Get a grip, folks. Fight for the policies in which you believe with respect and decency and decorum. Maybe you’ll win.

Namaste.

The Mutability of Memory

2009-09-25T00:14:00.002-05:00

Earlier today I was writing about my experience taking piano lessons from one Edmond Gordinier, of Buffalo, NY, when I was eleven years old. I felt as if I was in the room again, smelling it, seeing it, experiencing all of the visual stimuli – a floor-to-ceiling bookcase on one wall, a bay window on the opposite wall, which framed a seven foot Steinway grand piano that was almost always covered with sheet music and assorted books. In this memory, the floor was adorned with overlapping Oriental carpets, and I think that they, in fact, were there.

But what if they weren’t? What if the floor was covered, rather, with a short pile dirty brown rug? Or what if they were oaken hardwood floors buffed to a high sheen? (I assure you they were NOT that!)

My memory is that there were Oriental rugs in that room, and I suppose I think that says something important about my memory of the feeling, the essence of that room. Whether there literally were or were not Oriental rugs is of less importance than that in my memory it seems to me that there were. Do you follow?

I spent ten or eleven months, once a week, in this room some thirty-five years ago. My precise memory of exactly what it looked like is, therefore, somewhat suspect, at least in my own mind. But I do not doubt or suspect my memory of what it felt like to be in that room or what it smelled like or what the overall experience of being in that room entailed.

The piano held a place of prominence. The bay windows in front looked out onto majestic American Elm trees, trees that are likely no longer there given the infestation of Dutch Elm disease that plagued Buffalo in the 1970s. The books were there, the sheet music piled high on every conceivable surface was there, and, most importantly, Edmond Gordinier was there. His discipline, his demeanor, his praise when warranted, his taking to task when necessary – all of those things were there.

And so I ask myself, late on a Thursday evening as I’m eager for sleep but dealing with a brain that is racing, what does it matter what the rug looked like? What matters is what I remember it looking like, for that memory captures the essence of the milieu, whether factually true or not. Perhaps his was such an outsized personality that he was able to make a short pile dirty brown rug appear (in my rearview memory) to have been Oriental carpets. Perhaps. I doubt it, though. And, more to the point, I don’t think it matters.

The passage of time causes each of us to highlight certain memories and diminish or even dismiss others. We recall what we wish to, what we need to, and what we can’t help but recall, even if we wish we could blot it out forever. Some memories go the way of the unmatched sock from the dryer, never to be seen or heard from again. Others tug on us with a constancy that can be maddening, and sometimes is. Either way, they are memories, and as such, they are to be both trusted and viewed with a degree of skepticism. I think what we trust about them is how they make us feel, or how they made us feel back then. What I think we need to be skeptical about is their veracity – memories are easily distorted, diminished or magnified, either way, it’s a distortion.

I say, fine. As long as we are open and honest about the whole affair. Remember what you do, what it felt like, why it mattered, and, if you get a detail wrong here or there, what’s the harm? At the same time, one must always (I think) take care to not let our memories get the best of us. Dickens famously wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Such it is with memory. We can inflate or conflate or bloviate about our memories such that we make a perfectly fine time horrific or the reverse.

Above all, if we are being honest with ourselves, I think we owe it to ourselves to respect and listen to our memories. They may be telling us something, at times, that may well open our eyes, provide a new look at things, and teach us something.

Namaste.

Will We?

2009-09-17T02:05:00.002-05:00

Will we finally, in the richest country the world has ever known, pass meaningful health care reform?

Given what came out of the finance committee of the US Senate, I’m not feeling very confident about the prospects. The not-quite-yet-a-bill does not include any so-called public option. It contains mandates (unfunded) that might be very detrimental to many small businesses. It increases Medicare (which States pay at least half of the cost for) without adding additional funding for the States that would have to find a way to provide this increased care. And, it pleases pharmaceutical and insurance companies. What’s wrong with this picture?

Why are we being so timid? Why are we not insisting upon a public option? In my view, all Americans should have access to the same insurance coverage that our Representatives and Senators enjoy. Wasn’t the election last November a choice for fundamental change?

The dust-up over South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s shouting “You lie” to Barack Obama at last week’s joint session of Congress address is a lot of sound and fury signifying little. He was a jerk to do it; he apologized, and Obama accepted the apology. The real issue is far more important. Are we going to cover folks? Are we going to make sure that people aren’t needlessly dying because of horrendous realities like insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or dropping individuals because they get sick?

It seems to me that the time has come for those of us who believe that health insurance is a right and a necessity for ALL Americans to start speaking up and acting up, if necessary. We have lots of these right-wing wackos staging “tea parties” and what-not, and they are getting all the attention. I think we might need to take to the street, my mild-mannered, liberal minded, equality-valuing friends. Let’s face it: If someone gets sick enough or injured seriously enough, they go to the Emergency Room where they are treated whether they have health insurance or not. Wouldn’t it be better if everyone were covered and could go to see a doctor earlier? Wouldn’t it be better if Emergency Rooms were not avenues of last resort for sick, uninsured folks and could rather focus – as they were designed to do – on real emergencies?

The United States of America spends more on health care than any other country on the planet and yet I’ve read numerous reports that indicate we are 37th on a scale of the healthiest countries in the world. Something is seriously wrong here! When are we going to wake up?

Maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll just spend more time, money, and energy shouting at one another and portraying our political enemies as the new Hitler or Stalin or Marx. That seems to be what the right-wing Republicans are most interested in these days. What ever happened to the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln? I’ve always wondered: If Lincoln had not been assassinated, might Reconstruction have worked? Had Lincoln lived, might the so-called “Redeemers” have been foiled in their successful efforts at rewriting history and creating Jim Crow, which amounted to a Second Slavery?

We must all be strong. We must all let our Representatives and Senators know what we want them to fashion in the arena of health insurance. It is our responsibility to make our voices heard. We may not get precisely what we want, but if we don’t express what we want, then we have no right to complain about what transpires.

Namaste.

RIP Apple Tree Theatre

2009-09-11T23:34:00.003-05:00

It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. After 26 years of producing the very highest quality plays and musicals on the North Shore, Apple Tree Theatre’s Board of Directors will reportedly announce tomorrow that they are closing, shutting their doors forever.

Eileen Boevers, the founder of Apple Tree Theatre, passed away last year at the young age of 68, but she was the theater’s life blood.

I miss her and I will miss the theater.

I am blessed to have worked for many years with Apple Tree with some of the finest actors and designers and technicians and directors in the business. My first project there was music directing “The Spitfire Grill,” directed by Eileen and featuring the terrific Susie McMonagle and Marianne Thebus. (I’d directed Marianne previously, but this was her first musical and she was very nervous – she did great!)

Then I was the music supervisor (with music direction by the brilliant Doug Peck) for Susie’s star turn as Mae West in… the name is escaping me now. Something silver?

Following these shows were the great gifts of directing “My Old Lady,” “Three Tall Women,” “The Winning Streak,” and, “The Gin Game,” featuring such brilliant actors as Ann Whitney, Barbara Robertson, Gene Weygandt, Jenny McKnight, Matthew Brumlow, Tony Mockus, Bob Breuler, and others. These experiences were sublime. These productions were supported, and encouraged, and nurtured, and loved by the Apple Tree Theatre.

Times were hard, sometimes. Money was sometimes an issue, a challenge. But there was always a will to make the show as good as it possibly could be. There was always a commitment to what we were there to do: to tell a great story in a compelling way that might, just might, lead an audience member to have a new understanding, a new insight into what it means to be a human being.

I am honored to have been part of Apple Tree Theatre’s history and I wish it a fond, and very heartsick, farewell.

And Tim and Robby and Lynn and Kurt and Scott and Rita and Julia and Bill and Mark, thank you so much!

Namaste.

The Character of Our Country

2009-09-11T00:46:00.001-05:00

What does it say about the character of our country that popular talk show radio hosts are comparing Barack Obama, the duly elected President of the United States, to Hitler and Stalin, who – leave us not forget – were mortal enemies and radically different, albeit both tyrannical, leaders? What does it say about the character of our country that high-profile politicians are saying that Mr. Obama will soon be “taking all of our guns away,” when there is no evidence whatsoever that he has any interest in doing so, and he has said he supports the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States? What does it say about that character of our country that some of these same folks are even suggesting that Mr. Obama is getting ready to set FEMA loose in order to lock up right-wing opposition figures in concentration camps?

This rhetoric is shocking and disturbing, to say the least.

When President Obama delivered his address to a joint session of Congress last night, a republican representative, Joe Wilson of South Carolina, shouted, “You lie!” when Mr. Obama said that his health insurance reform proposals would not cover illegal immigrants. This was an amazing and disappointing turn of events. To Wilson’s credit, he quickly issued an apology. To Obama’s credit, he accepted the apology without hesitation. But, please… what in Sam Hill is going on when we have stooped to this level of discourse???

Did anyone yell, “You lie” when President Bush talked about the yellow cake uranium that Iraq had supposedly acquired from Niger? (A charge that was, ironically, completely rebuffed by another man named Joseph Wilson.) No, they didn’t. Even though it was an absolute falsehood.

And what about when former Vice President Dick Cheney bent over backwards to connect Sadam Hussein to the 9-11 attacks?

Radical right-wingers are pulling conspiracy theories out of their posteriors that are dumbfounding in their inanity. “Obama is creating a Shadow Government through the appointment of Czars.” See above for the rest. It’s scary. And it’s just plain nuts.

So, what is this all about? Hard to say; hard to discern. Sore losers? Perhaps. Racism? Perhaps.

I am pained to imagine that I live in a country where there exists any percentage of the population who believe that President Obama could rightly be compared to Hitler or Stalin.

You don’t have to love President Obama or fully support his policy prescriptions, but for crying out loud, comparing him to Hitler and Stalin? This is not worthy of our country. This is not worthy of all that our founders fought for in securing our independence. Health care is a prickly and difficult issue, to be sure, but can we not discuss it with a modicum of decency and mutual respect?

Namaste.

Our Red President

2009-09-09T01:13:00.000-05:00

Earlier today, our president had the unmitigated gall to address the school children of our great nation and suggest that they should work and study hard, pay attention to their teachers, and take some modicum of responsibility for their own lives and their own education.

What an outrage!

He said that those who have succeeded have done so (largely) because they had failed earlier, but not given up and kept on trying. He cited Michael Jordan, and J.K. Rowling, among others as examples of folks who had failed before achieving great success. Well, don’t be fooled. He might has well have cited Adolf Hitler and Albert Spear because he’s a Commie through and through. He was attempting to indoctrinate our poor, sweet, innocent children to the virtues of Socialism by discussing personal responsibility and setting goals and doing your homework even when you don’t particularly like it. Oh my. What are we to do?

That presidents Reagan and Bush 41 made very similar speeches to American children in their terms is conveniently forgotten. Reagan valued education so much that he slashed student loan funds in half and attempted to abolish the Department of Education. Bush tried to get rid of the department as well; thankfully, both of them failed in that particular endeavor.

Obama told the school children of our country today that they should: work hard, not look for shortcuts, respect your parents and teachers, and recognize that failure is a step on the road to success. Yeah, that sounds pretty communistic to me. Socialism through and through.

Newt Gingrich thought it was a great speech that all American children (and parents) should hear. Laura Bush thought it was a great speech that all should hear.

Take a moment. Listen to it. If you disagree with a word he said, please, get back to me!!

Namaste.

A Life Well Lived

2009-09-03T01:13:00.000-05:00

Six years ago the doctors told her she would be lucky to live for another year. Four years ago, she sent an email to her friends and family with the subject line: “Don’t Cry For Me.” In that email she told us that the doctors had told her that she would be alive for a matter of a couple of months, or perhaps only a few weeks. She died last night. Five years later – at least – than the doctors repeatedly predicted.

Judy Jaycox Wilmoth Payton passed from this earth on September 1, 2009 at approximately 10:45 p.m. She turned sixty-five on August 3rd this year. Her dear friend and sister-in-law Lainey Morrison (another Aunt of mine) had a birthday the following day. Judy’s wedding anniversary with her beloved husband, Bert, was August 20. She told Lainey many times over the last several weeks that she wouldn’t die in August, because she didn’t want to ruin the month. She waited until September first.

Judy was a pistol, as my brother Scott referred to her during an early morning conversation today. And it’s a good descriptor. She was a fighter and a lover and a tireless advocate for causes in which she believed. She would send out emails excoriating thin-skinned Americans who took “offense” at the least controversial issue or idea. She was also a dyed-in-the-wool progressive, an FDR democrat. What some might today call “socialist.” And she wouldn’t give a damn if you did call her that!

She thought that a just society should care for those less fortunate than us. She thought that equality should be equality and that it should be real – gay, straight, male, female, black, white, brown, yellow, red, abled, disabled – ALL should be afforded the same basic human rights. I couldn’t agree with her more.

On May 19, 2005, I received an email from Judy. It was late at night. The tone of the email was somewhat frantic. She was desperately trying to find the Brian Russell that was the son of Robert Jaycox, her brother who had died the night before. She found me. I called her that night and we talked for at least an hour. We spoke more the following day. She was the person who told me my natural father had died. She was the one who made sure that my brother Scott and I knew that our father had died.

I only met Judy once in person. It was in 1979 or 1980, in Maryland where my natural father Bob Jaycox then lived. She was lovely. She was vibrant. She was opinionated and, yes, sometimes loud. I loved her then, I loved her when she and I talked in 2005. And I love her now as she is settling into her rest.

Namaste

Beluga Whales

2009-08-30T11:32:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Gloria and I spent about forty minutes in the water with three Beluga whales at Shedd Aquarium, here in Chicago. If you ever get the opportunity, you should do so.

To touch these magnificent creatures, to see them swimming at your feet, gliding their large bodies against your own, is humbling and joyful. I felt that I was in the presence of an intelligence that likely rivals our own. We were able to pet their heads, bump our own heads with theirs, touch their flukes, and – the whales’ favorite – tickle their tongues. The Shedd trainer, Jessica, taught us several simple commands that we were then able to execute. We each had the opportunity to ask a whale to vocalize, rise up and out of the water, turn around several times, and to spit toward us – both underwater and above water. To get one of these Beluga’s to spit underwater, you plunge your closed fist into the water in from of him and then open it wide. Once you do, you feel a steady stream of the Beluga spitting water at your hand, which is an extraordinary feeling. Want to whale to spit at you above water? Simply splash water at her face while she is looking at you – she will quickly gather water into her mouth and spit it towards you repeatedly. (I got soaked doing this, and loved every minute of it!)

Tickling a Beluga’s tongue is humbling and joyful as well. Humbling because putting your hand into the mouth of a sixteen hundred pound whale that could easily take you into the water and drown you on the bottom if she wanted to is, well, humbling. Joyful because she enjoys it so much. While stroking her tongue, the beautiful Beluga closes her eyes in joy, just like we might if someone is rubbing our shoulders in a particularly pleasurable way.

I’ve long had mixed feelings about any institutions that keep animals and other wildlife in captivity. However, if they succeed in raising public awareness regarding how important it is that we protect these species (many of which are threatened or endangered) then I suppose they are performing a critically important task. Whales – cetaceans - have populated the oceans of the world for fifty million years. They are warm blooded, they breathe air, and they feed their young milk from mammary glands. Sound familiar? How is it that they have managed to find a way to spend fifty million years on the planet without threatening their environment, when we humans have walked the earth a fraction of that time and find ourselves facing the threats of global warming and extreme climate change? Might we have something to learn?

Namaste.

Taking Time to Look

2009-08-23T11:32:00.003-05:00

For most of this blog’s relatively short lived life, I have signed off each post with the word, “Namaste.” There are several slightly differing definitions of this term that derives from the Sanskrit word, “Namaskaram,” including: I bow to the divinity inherent in you; I respect divinity in you that is also within me; and, my favorite: The light within me honors the light within you.

You see, everyone – from your closest friend to your worst enemy to that sibling that knows precisely how best to push your buttons and get under your skin – has a light within, a loving place, a place with which we can empathize – if we take time enough to look. It is so easy in our fast-paced, highly caffeinated, plugged in world to make snap judgments about people and their intentions. It’s so easy to assume what “sort” of person someone is by how they carry themselves at the office or how they order their half-caf triple mocha. We all too often instantly categorize folks into a folder or box of some sort, telling ourselves: “He’s aloof” or “She’s a whiner” or “She’s the quintessence of hipness” or “He’s just a jerk.” How often does it then happen that we encounter that person about whom we made a snap judgment in a different environment? Or, there arises an opportunity to see them in a new light, and – aha! – we were wrong! What seemed to be aloofness was, perhaps, concentration and passion for getting the job done right the first time. I know I’ve experienced these reversals of perceptions, and if you are honest with yourself, you’ve probably been there too.

Yesterday afternoon I was walking home from my local Starbucks and I was smoking a cigarette. (I know, I know, I should quit. Working on it. At least I’m only smoking out of doors these days.) At any rate, a man was walking toward me and he asked me for a cigarette. I said, as I always do when asked for a smoke from someone I don’t know, “I’m sorry, man, no.” As he passed me, he said, “No smoke for the black man, eh?”

I was stunned.

I turned around and said, “Listen man, it has nothing to do with your race, these things are expensive, you know? I wouldn’t give you a cigarette is you were white or Hispanic or whatever!”

“You’re just a racist, white boy, just like everyone else is, and you may as well admit it,” he shouted back.

I wish I could tell you that I found a way to see the light within this man at that moment. I didn’t. I told him where he could go and walked away.

But there is a light in him just as there is a light in me. And on further reflection it occurred to me that this must be a man who has felt the bitter pain of racism on numerous occasions. That doesn’t make it right for him to accuse me of being a racist, but it does allow me one small way to empathize with him, to begin to see how the light within him has been systematically diminished over time through the brutality of racism. I say “diminished,” not “extinguished,” for I’m certain it remains within.

I wish I’d had the quickness of thought to say to him, “If I were to give you a cigarette, would that mean that you would no longer see me as a racist? What if I gave you a whole pack of cigarettes? Or twenty dollars? Would I then just be a racist who had a small streak of kindness?”

If I ever see him again, I will try to ask these questions. I will try to allow him to see the light within me just as I will be taking the time to look, and to look hard, for the light within him.

Namaste.

A Note to Restaurateurs

2009-08-19T00:51:00.001-05:00

When you encounter a customer who tells you that he is deathly allergic to the plate that has just been put before him, it is best not to argue the fact.

True story: Earlier this evening, my wife and I went to a restaurant that we had previously patronized with good results. I thought (mistakenly) that I had previously had their red sauce and that it had been fine. You see, I am deathly allergic to the acid in fresh tomato, but a nice, long cooked tomato sauce on delicious pasta is just about my favorite dish on earth. (If it’s cooked long enough and doesn’t have big chunks of tomatoes, I have no problem with the allergy – the allergy is to one acid or another that is in fresh tomatoes.)

Well, thinking that I had previously successfully ordered a red sauce from this particular restaurant, I gamely ordered the linguine with meatballs in marinara sauce. Oops!

When the plate arrived, I saw some terrific looking meatballs, served over a bed of lovely looking linguine, surrounded by large chunks of tomato. Uh-oh.

I called the server over, apologized profusely, and said, “I’m so sorry, I thought I’d had the red sauce here before, but this has huge chunks of tomato, and I’m allergic to the acid in fresh tomato.” She assured me this was no problem and said she would bring me a menu so I could order an alternate dish.

Then, the trouble began.

A manager of some sort came by the table a few minutes later. She said, “This tomato has been cooked a long time, at least two hours here. And, we buy it chopped up in large chunks, because we don’t want to blend it or have paste or anything like that, but it’s been cooked for a long time and was likely cooked for a long time before it was canned.”

I shall not bore you with how much longer she went on with this. Suffice it to say that she was not listening to a word I was saying. I said, “The acid to which I’m allergic stays in large chunks of tomato. I’m scared to eat this. My throat closes up if I eat this and that acid is in there.”

I have never in my life – before tonight – encountered someone in a restaurant so seemingly uncaring, insensitive, about a customer’s potentially life-threatening allergic reaction to food. She was arguing with me, saying, essentially, “It’s fine, don’t be a wussy, eat it!!!!” She was trying to convince me to try the marinara sauce, even after I told her that my throat would close up if there were too much tomato acid within. I felt like asking her if she happened to have any Benadryl on hand in case the worst occurred.

Rather, I ordered a replacement dish of linguine carbonara, with prosciutto et al. It was overwhelmed with onions, but that’s not the point. The point is that if a customer presents him or herself as an individual who has serious food allergies (my wife carries Benadryl in her purse at all times, for me!) then you’d best take that seriously.

I will never frequent this restaurant again, because they demonstrated in no uncertain terms tonight that they just don’t really care. It’s too bad, too, because we’ve had some nice meals and experiences there before. But not tonight.

So, to you restaurateurs out there who might just possibly happen upon this blog? Take note. If you have a customer with a food allergy, don’t try to convince him or her that he or she will be all right. Attend to the issue. And for Pete’s sake, don’t argue with the customer!!! I was frightened, scared, petrified, to eat the food in front of me. Can you imagine what it feels like to have a restaurant manager tell you that “it’s all in your head? It’ll be fine, really. Just try it.”

Yeah, well, when you’ve had your throat close up such that you’ve had to OD on Benadryl, YOU try it!

Those of us who suffer from food allergies do not enjoy it. We hate it. But it’s real. We can’t wish our way out of it, as much as I think most of us wish we could. We despise being the “problem customer,” but we have to be, for the sake of our well being, indeed, our lives.

In general, I’ve noticed that restaurants have become much better about understanding the realities and consequences of food allergies in the past 10-15 years, but tonight was an appalling instance of the management seeming not to care a whit. I won’t be going back there.

Namaste. And, bon appetit!

“The Air Around the Butterfly” – a gem of a poetry collection

2009-08-15T12:59:00.002-05:00

Katerina Stoykova Klemer’s first book of poems, The Air Around the Butterfly, has recently been published by Fakel Express, a publishing house in Sofia, Bulgeria. While she originally wrote all of these poems in English, she has also translated each of them into her native Bulgarian language and they appear in the book side by side, English and Bulgarian.

Her poetry is elegant, concise, witty, inventive, and often very surprising. She has a knack for bringing inanimate objects (like a spare tire, or letters of the alphabet) to vividly engaging life. Her observations about the world around and within are keen and deeply insightful. Her work is among the most engaging poetry I’ve ever encountered.

I cannot recommend this volume highly enough. Full disclosure: Katerina is a friend and classmate in Spalding University’s brief residency MFA in Writing program, but my personal relationship with her has zero bearing on my deep admiration for her work.

Get this book and savor the poems within. You will not regret it. (It is available to order on Amazon now!)

Namaste.

Walking Away

2009-07-25T19:52:00.000-05:00

Who among us never had a moment as a child when we were tempted to – or when we did – simply grab up our toys and walk away, leaving the company of whomever had offended us? Most of us have lived that scenario in one form or another at one time or another, most likely when we were very young.

But have any of you experienced the adult variation of this childhood game? Or, more accurately, game-playing? I’m sad to report that I have. And, I recently was reminded of how childish and hurtful it can be.

The details are not important and if I go into them here there could me trouble, but suffice it to say that I struck up a friendship with a colleague many years ago, more than ten years ago. We worked well together, got along very well, began to socialize more regularly, and that sort of thing. Then, a few years into the friendship, something did not go the way he wished for it to go and he got upset. When I would not intervene (read: take his side) and use the authority that came along with my then-position to make things “right” for him, he gathered up his toys, left the organization we were both involved with, and severed the friendship with me.

Fast forward nearly eleven years. Last week, I went to meet another friend and colleague who was in town for a brief visit. The aforementioned fellow was also present at the gathering. We had what I thought was a rather cordial chat, I wished him well, congratulated him on an accomplishment I’d heard of in recent months – you know, that sort of thing. In due time, he left and I visited with my out-of-town friend.

The following day this gentleman’s name popped up on the “suggested friend” list on Facebook, presumably because we have so many friends in common. I thought, “Well, surely it’s been enough time and bygones must at long last be bygones, mustn’t they?” (I’m sure you know where this is going by now.)

I invited, he declined, with a reiteration of how hurt he was by my actions in that past life. “Seeing you last night confirmed it,” he added in the Facebook message with which he declined my offer of “friendship.” Okay. I’m sorry for him and for me. So many of us are as the walking wounded, at times, but I’ve been feeling, of late, that life is too short to walk away from anyone who ever mattered to us.

Namaste.

On Our Political Discourse

2009-07-16T19:05:00.002-05:00

I’m concerned about how we talk about things over which we disagree.

When I read a posting where someone refers to the president of the United States as the “Commander in Thief,” I worry that perhaps we are too far gone to have civil debates and conversations with one another about important public policy issues. I was no fan of the previous occupant, but I never referred to him as Commander in Thief, despite how he ascended to the presidency in the aftermath of the 2000 election debacle. When I referred to him, I referred to him as the president – plain and simple. I might have noted that I neither voted for nor supported him, but I never smeared him with epithets like “Commander in Thief,” nor did I ever hope that he would fail, as Rush Limbaugh and several other Republicans have opined about Mr. Obama, the current occupant (to borrow a phrase from Garrison Keillor).

How can any American citizen want his or her president to fail? We can surely argue against policy initiatives with which we don’t agree without expressing the wish that we hope the president will fail, can we not? Maybe I’m naïve. Maybe I’m overly optimistic.

I did not agree with the decision for this county to invade Iraq (a country that had not attacked us and that had no ready means to do so) but never once did I express that I hoped our president or our troops would fail. Especially the troops! They, after all, are simply following orders. I hoped that our troops would be as safe as possible and grieved over stories of hearing that they were not being provided with adequate body armor or adequately protected vehicles.

Elections matter. They are of consequence. The American people made a choice last November. And to my friends who did not vote for Mr. Obama I would simply say, please understand that we had an election – the people chose. Should you express your opinions? Should you share your concerns about the direction in which Mr. Obama is attempting to lead the country? Of course! Big-time of course. That is your right and your duty. But is it too much to ask that you do so without resorting to calling Mr. Obama and others in his administration or those he has nominated to high office names? Aren’t we a little more mature than that?

People call Sonia Sotomayor a racist for her ruling in the Ricci decision in the Second Circuit Court. Anyone saying that of the other judge who voted with her to uphold the actions of the City of New Haven? I think not. But look – here’s my point – I also think that that case was decided wrongly when it comes down to simple fairness, but Sotomayor was following precedent and the law. And, she and her colleagues vehemently expressed their sympathy for the plaintiffs' situation, but ruled on a matter of law as they saw it. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled differently there is new precedent, new law to be followed by the lower courts.

I think it’s far past time for us to grow up in this country, for us to give each other the respect we are all due, whatever our political beliefs and affiliations. To hear Rush Limbaugh say that Judge Sotomayor and Mr. Obama are “anti-constitutionalists” is an outrage! Mr. Obama was a constitutional law professor and Ms. Sotomayor has been a judge sworn to uphold the Constitution for seventeen years. Please. Let’s stop the grenade throwing and the headline grabbing nonsense like the term “Commander in Thief” with which I began this posting. I’m tired of it. I’m ready for us all to embrace Lincoln’s dream of a country “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” And, if we’re going to succeed at that dream, we need to turn the rhetorical temperature down a bit and give each other a little respect and the benefit of the doubt. And, let’s dispense with the name calling once and for all.

Namaste.

The Wise Latina

2009-07-15T17:51:00.000-05:00

Is anyone else as sick as I am of hearing these bloviating Senators ask what Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor really meant when she referred to a “wise Latina” possibly, perhaps, just maybe, approaching cases with a slightly – just a tiny, insignificant difference, really – different perspective than a white man? Is this statement not obvious on its face? And, as she has reminded us repeatedly over the course of the last three days, she was playing off of something that former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (a Reagan appointment let us not forget!) said in a speech about the different sensibilities that women (of all races and ethnicities) bring to the Federal bench.

I don’t recall anyone making a stink when O’Connor made her remarks. What gives? Oh, it couldn’t possibly be racism or sexism or sour grapes that the results of elections actually have an impact on the civil life of our country – no, Sotomayor (and, WHY does she have to accent the last syllable, anyway? That’s downright un-American, wouldn’t you say?) is a young, learned, gifted, judge of Puerto Rican heritage. Perish the thought!

Obama didn’t ask her about abortion. The Senators have, however, and she’s made her view clear in very transparent language. She said, and I’m paraphrasing here: It is settled law that has been upheld by the Court on numerous occasions. Okay, so enough with the questions about it, all right? Dang.

I, for one, am very excited to finally see a person of Hispanic descent on the highest court in the land, and that she’s a woman as well is icing on the cake.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog posting, we live in an increasingly diverse country and those who choose to ignore that or to dismiss that do so at their own peril. They marginalize themselves. I’m interested in being inclusive and that includes my friends who are more conservative that I am. We all need and merit a seat at the table and representation on the bench. So, I say, “Go, Sonia, go! Sí, se puede!”

Namaste.

On Writing, July 8, 2009

2009-07-08T17:04:00.002-05:00

In his terrific memoir, The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer writes, “Above all I suffered from a naïve view that writing should be easy. I thought words were supposed to come unbidden. The idea that errors were stepping-stones to truth never once occurred to me…” Ah yes, there is that.

Guess what? It’s hard!

I’ve had a difficult and productive and frustrating and joyful day of revising my extended critical essay on how yearning induces empathy and compels action in memoir. My brain is a little tired, a little “tweaky” as my wife Gloria might say. But, I have produced words – some of them good, I think!

What makes them good? They are clear, specific, and absolutely the right word to express the precise idea(s) I am trying to convey. It’s hard, that. Finding the right word. Le mot juste, as Flaubert famously put it. It is also exhilarating when you succeed.

It’s been a rather gloomy day here in Chicago, with the skies looking more like October or even November than the second week of July. But the light rain and cool winds matter not when the words are flowing. The dogs have been mostly well-behaved today with a bare minimum of barking inside the house, and I rewarded them with some extra walks, during which I turned word over word in my head – do I want “consistently” or “systematically” to modify the phrase “thwarted wanting?” Perhaps both? They are different, after all. Do I go so far as to employ the word “perniciously?” Maybe so. Setting aside the near-constant injunction many writers hear to “never use adverbs,” sometimes they are precisely what are required. And, the New American Oxford Dictionary defines “pernicious” as: having a harmful effect, esp. in a gradual or subtle way. That might just be right. I’ll think on it some more, I suppose, but at least I have choices.

I’ve put in a solid day’s work and will shortly meet up with a friend and colleague for an adult beverage before returning home to share dinner with my wife. Things could be much worse.

Namaste.

Independence Day

2009-07-04T00:03:00.001-05:00

As I listen to the neighborhood fireworks that make my dogs (canines: Max and Beau) go nuts in fear and anxiety, and to the drunken frat boys in my Lincoln Park neighborhood on the night before our official Independence Day celebration, I can’t help but wonder if those revelers really understand what it is, exactly, that we are celebrating.

Call me a curmudgeon, a stick-in-the-mud, an old man; call me what you will. That’s fine. But, really? Is celebrating our independence about getting drunk and shooting off illegal fireworks? Now, don’t get me wrong – I can enjoy getting a nice buzz on as much as the next guy (and any of you who know me know that that’s true). But, what I don’t do is go out and get drunk for the sake of it and set off dangerous firecrackers in a neighborhood with many young children, or anyone else, can easily be hurt. What I don’t do is get wasted beyond all measure and leave beer cans and bottles in the front of other people’s houses (read: mine) and puke on their lawns. I don’t do any of that.

I have my own sins, my own vices, Lord knows. But I’ve never really understood why or how the fourth of July has turned into an excuse to be an asshole, to be inconsiderate, to be an unadulterated jerk. The fourth of July represents something truly extraordinary – if you know your history.

At the time that those men signed the Declaration of Independence, thirty thousand British troops were disembarking at a port on Long Island, not very far at all from Philadelphia. The signers were putting their signatures on a document for which they would be hanged, if caught, as traitors to the Crown.

What they did was truly courageous and it set in motion the Revolutionary War through which we secured our independence as a country. That act has inspired countless others (Ghandi, Mandela, even Dr. Martin Luther King) throughout the past two centuries all over the globe. And we honor it with illegal fireworks and drunken bacchanals? I know I’m sounding like the aforementioned curmudgeon I assured you I was not, but there’s something about this that sticks in my craw.

At the same time, I also revel in the fact that we are free to behave like jerks – as long as we don’t hurt anybody else. We are free to act in an immature or even disrespectful manner – that is our right, under the greatest Constitution that has ever been written. (Despite its many flaws, like, oh, only white land-owning males being accorded the right to vote and blacks being considered “property” or, at best, 3/5 of a person, but that’s a blog for another day.)

I’m proud of our country. I love our country. I celebrate our Independence. And, I’d like to think it means a little more than waving a flag and setting off Chinese made fireworks and grilling some wieners on the trusty ole Weber.

And let us never forget that the moment we take our freedoms for granted we are sure to lose them. We must always and forever remain vigilant to Abraham Lincoln’s ideal of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” That demands engagement, involvement, and attention. Not just shooting off fireworks and going on a bender once a year in the name of “celebrating” the fourth of July.

Sermon over.

Namaste.

On Being Tested, or, “Fire and Rain”

2009-06-30T01:38:00.002-05:00

It’s been an interesting several months. In January, while I was sitting at my desk in the renovated attic of our Victorian house that serves as both my office and my wife and my Master Bedroom I heard a loud, grumbling, rumbling sound followed by a crash. I immediately ran downstairs, out the front door, and into the alley that is directly south of our home. There I saw our fifty-six foot gutter crumpled and bent in the alley, along with the remnants of our DirectTV satellite dish, which the gutter took out. Apparently a large expanse of ice and snow started to melt off of the roof and slid down into the alley taking our gutter and the satellite dish along with it. That was a little more than six months ago.

Ten days ago Chicago “enjoyed” Noah-like Biblical rains. The gutter on the north side of our house was pouring water down onto our side porch in sheets. What was strange is that we’d just had the gutters cleaned not five weeks earlier and here this water was pouring down – water-fall like – onto our side porch, flooding it in the process. As the water worked its way downstairs it began to flood, and, when I say “flood,” I really mean “flood” our outdoor basement stairwell.

The water was rising against the basement door, foot after foot. Rising and rising. Two feet up the door. Three feet now. Imagine the progression.

My wife and I did not speak, we acted. We found buckets and brooms and any other water displacement device you can imagine. For nearly three hours we diverted water. That was our job. Our calling. Our reason for existing: to keep the water from entering our basement. We must have moved in excess of five hundred gallons of water from the back of our house to the front (where there is an incline that leads to the road) that day. How can I be sure of this huge number? I’ll tell you: at one point we brought out a 55-gallon rain barrel to help catch some of the water. It was full in less than ten minutes.

Tonight? Fire.

After having done some "old tenant leaving"/"new tenant about to move in" cleaning on our studio apartment downstairs, we decided we would settle for a bit on our lovely side porch. Have a drink, a bit of relaxation, you understand. We lit the Tiki Lamps. It was a windy night tonight, and at one point, Gloria asked, “Does that look a little strange to you?” referring to a Tiki Lamp behind me. It was smoking. A lot.

I said, “Um, yeah, something’s wrong.”

We went into overdrive scrambling for water, for anything that could put out the quickly growing conflagration. I poured water on it. No luck. I refilled my container and procured a towel. I wet the towel as I was filling my water container. Went to the fire and threw the water on it and then tried to tamp the fire down with the wet towel. Gloria was behind me yelling, “Careful, it might blow up.” She asked, “Where’s the fire extinguisher?”

We both thought it was in the front room, the guest room, so I ran there to look for it. I’ve never really known how to operate the light switch in that room (believe me, if you were here you would understand, it’s not just a toggle switch, it’s some sort of weird imbedded knob I don’t know what-the-hell-it-really-is) so I had no light there, but I was frantically searching for the fire extinguisher in the corner near the dresser when I realized, “I think the fire extinguisher is upstairs, in our bedroom.” At just about that moment, Gloria said, “I think the fire extinguisher is upstairs.” I said, “I’m on my way.”

I run upstairs, I get the fire extinguisher, and just after I’ve lifted it into my arms, I realize, I don’t really know how to use this thing. So as I’m running across the upstairs floor toward the staircase to go back down to where the fire is, I am reading and learning: 1) Pull pin and hold unit upright, 2) Free hose. Aim at base of fire. Stand back 8 feet. (my porch is only 6 feet wide, so I don’t have 8 feet), and, 3) Squeeze lever and sweep side to side.

So I learn all of this as I’m running across the floor and heading downstairs to extinguish the fire and save the day (night, really), only by the time I get downstairs, Gloria has already put the fire out with water. Which is good. Really!

So the fire is out. The house is safe. No one has been hurt. This is good. Gloria says, “You think we are being tested? We’ve had flooding, fire, ants (that’s a story for another day), etc?” I say: Maybe so. She says, “Well, I think we’re passing the test.”

And that’s why I’m writing this blog tonight. We’re passing the test(s). And that is a joyful thing.

Namaste.

Father’s Day 2009

2009-06-21T13:41:00.000-05:00

This time four years ago, my natural father Robert “Jay” Jaycox had been dead for nearly five weeks. He was sixty-six years old and his death was completely unexpected and a terrible shock. I was looking forward to seeing him at my June 25 wedding that year, but he departed this world on May 18, 2005.

For the past year or so I’ve been working on a memoir that is largely about his absence and what it meant to me as a boy, and as a maturing boy struggling to become a man. You see, he was absent when I was a boy – he left the family shortly before I turned three – and, he is (of course) absent now. Taken from us as we will all eventually be taken from our loved ones.

We were in touch to one degree or another for twenty-seven years, from the time I tracked him down in Puerto Rico at the age of fourteen to his untimely death when I was forty-one. I last saw him in 1998 when I took a wonderful cross-country trip to see him in Oklahoma City, a dear friend in Los Angeles, and to celebrate my grandfather’s eightieth birthday in San Jose. He’s gone now, too.

I spent far too many years of my life identifying myself as a “fatherless child.” I had been abandoned. Left. I searched for surrogates, replacements, men who could provide what I felt I got neither from my natural father nor from my adoptive father. You never really find it. It finds you. If you’re lucky. And, I was. I am.

Both of my fathers gave me more than I’ve ever given them credit for I suppose.

From my adoptive father, the Rev. John A. Russell, I learned much about theatricality and storytelling, even if it was never his intention to pass those lessons along. But watching him (and serving alongside him) conducting church services provided lessons in theater and storytelling. Listening to his sermons taught me the power of words, of ideas to move people and to inspire change.

As for Jay, he taught me about loving people. Jay was a “people person” big-time. When I first “met” him, he was a sales manager for the Icee drink franchise in Puerto Rico. One summer he took my brother Scott and me on his customer calls and I will never forget how people greeted him when he walked into a store. Jay knew everybody’s names, and the names of their spouses and children. He remembered if someone had been ill or if a kid had broken his arm a few weeks earlier and he would ask how the boy was doing.

So to Jay, to Dad, to Grandpa, and to Paul Donnelley, Richard Pearlman, Mike Degnan, Paul Hauser, John Wulp, Bob Moss, and all the other surrogates who have “fathered” me over the years, Happy Father’s Day, and many, many thanks.

Namaste.

Mad Men: They’re mad all right, as in Insane!

2009-06-18T16:22:00.000-05:00

So I know I might be committing heresy with this posting by suggesting this, but my wife and I watched the first three episodes of “Mad Men” last night and – despite all of the rave reviews I’ve heard about this series – I am not terribly impressed. Sure it’s moody and smart and the writers know how to construct a cliffhanger, but really! These people are miserable. They are lying, cheating, two-faced bastards. Almost all of them. It should be called “Miserable Men” or something like that.

And the smoking? Now, I am a smoker. At times I have been a heavy smoker. But on this series there is never a time that is inappropriate for a smoke – including a gynecologist lighting up as he’s commencing to examine his patient. Puullease! (I don’t know that the commonly accepted spelling is of the word “please” rendered so as to rhyme with “valise.”)

What happened to the idea that we should care about a main character? This guy is a scumbag. He’s a louse. He’s a jerk. How do I really feel, you might ask…

Anyway, I’m not spending any more time with these unlikable folks. After all, I’ll never get last night’s 2 ½ hours back.

Namaste.

Readings…

2009-06-17T20:13:00.002-05:00

So as I find myself in the early stages of my third semester in Spalding University’s MFA in Writing program, it seems an appropriate time to take a cue from a fellow Spalding student and friend Colleen Harris and share with you readers my cumulative bibliography to date. It is copied below, and I ask you to feel free to make suggestions about things I have not yet read that perhaps I should – especially in the genre of creative nonfiction, which is what I’m finishing my degree in. This includes memoir, essays, and the like.

To be clear, these are only books I’ve read and absorbed since beginning the MFA program a little more than a year ago, so it is certainly conceivable that you might suggest something I’ve already read, but I welcome any suggestion anyone has. Really. I mean it.

Meanwhile, I’m hard at work at my extended critical essay, or ECE in Spalding parlance, and am actually enjoying composing it quite a bit. It’s about how yearning compels empathy and action in memoir. I’ll let you know when I’m done.

Here’s the list:

Buckley, Christopher. No Way to Treat a First Lady: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2003.
---. Supreme Courtship: A Novel. New York: Twelve, 2008.
Butler, Robert Olen. From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. Ed. Janet Burroway. New York: Grove, 2005.
Carver, Raymond. “Cathedral.” Cathedral: Stories. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1984. 209-228.
Conroy, Frank. Body & Soul: A Novel. New York: Delta-Random House, 1993.
---. Stop-Time: A Memoir. New York: Penguin, 1997.
DeLillo, Don. Falling Man: A Novel. New York: Scribner, 2007.
Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Driskell, Kathleen. Seed Across Snow: A Collection of Poems. Los Angeles: Red Hen, 2009.
Ellroy, James. My Dark Places: An L.A. Crime Memoir. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1997.
Emerson, Claudia. Late Wife: Poems. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2005.
Finch, Robert. The Iambics of Newfoundland: Notes from an Unknown Shore. New York: Counterpoint, 2007.
Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines. New York: Quill-HarperCollins, 2003.
Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2003.
Goodman, Richard. French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2002.
---. The Soul of Creative Writing. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008.
Gorman, Jacquelin. The Seeing Glass: A Memoir. New York: Riverhead, 1998.
Herr, Michael. Dispatches. New York: Vintage International-Random House, 1991.
Holloway, Monica. Driving With Dead People: A Memoir. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007.
Iyer, Pico. Sun After Dark: Flights Into the Foreign. New York: Vintage-Random House, 2004.
Jones, Edward P. Lost in the City: Stories. New York: Amistad-HarperCollins, 2003.
Katz, Jon. A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me. New York: Random House, 2003.
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Anchor, 1995.
Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew. Portland: Eight Mountain, 1998.
Lisberger, Jody. Remember Love: Stories. Louisville: Fleur-de-Lis, 2008.
McClure, Tori Murden. A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean. New York: Collins, 2009.
McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: ReganBooks-HarperCollins, 1997.
Moehringer, J.R. The Tender Bar: A Memoir. New York: Hyperion, 2005.
Moffett, James and Kenneth R. McElheny, eds. Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories. New York: Mentor, 1995.
Monsoon Wedding. Screenplay by Sabrina Dhawan. Dir. Mira Nair. Mirabai Films, 2001.
Oates, Joyce Carol, ed. The Best American Essays of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Rev. ed. New York: Three Rivers, 2004.
O’Brien, Tim. In the Lake of the Woods. New York: Penguin, 1995.
---. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.
Patchett, Ann. Bel Canto: A Novel. New York: Harper-Perennial, 2005.
---. The Patron Saint of Liars: A Novel. New York: Harper-Perennial, 2007.
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---. Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. New York: Harper-Perennial, 2005.
Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. New York: Plume-Penguin, 2006.
Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. New York: Gotham, 2006.
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I can't seem to figure out how to get things underlined in this blog, alas... please understand that all titles are underlined in my official cumulative biography. Same goes for the hanging indentation that doesn't translate when I copy here. LOL...

Namaste.

Reclaiming the House Part 2

2009-06-14T00:09:00.000-05:00

So reclaiming the house turned out to be more difficult, or perhaps a better word is strenuous, than I initially thought it would be. We had to move furniture back in place, of course, and return art to walls – but there was also a good deal of painting and cleaning and rearranging that is pretty much de rigueur when one’s house has been upended.

Simultaneous to reclaiming our house from the renovations I have re-signed up on Facebook. A lot of old friends and some new have materialized. It’s cool. No one has yet tried to get me to engage in any vampire or bat or what-have-you games and for that I am grateful. But there are many folks from my MFA in Writing program at Spalding who are online and it’s great to “see” them. Also, many folks from my past life (sometimes current life) in theater and it’s wonderful to see them as well.

So… reclaiming the house? Reclaiming one’s identity? They aren’t too different if you think about it. We get comfortable with what we know, with what feels familiar. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It is at it is. But I guess I also think it’s valuable to understand that we are comfortable with the familiar, that we are comfortable with what is, with what we know. Sometimes we need to face the unknown. All of us. Regardless of our socio-economic status, our race, ethnicity, creed, religion, you name it – whether we are prepared or not, we will be forced to confront the unknown. And, perhaps it’s not a bad idea to get ready for it. We can’t quite “prepare” for it, because we don’t know what “it” will be, but we can be ready to expect the unexpected. We can be okay with the unknown, ready to face the unknown, the heretofore not known. Soon it might become more comfortable than we can imagine.

For now, I am working on reclaiming our house, reaching out to friends and loved ones and carrying on.

Namaste.

Reclaiming the House

2009-06-10T23:08:00.002-05:00

So yesterday was the last of the workmen… for a while. And what a day it was. Not only did we have four guys here replacing half of our windows but we also had two guys by in the middle of the day to install our custom glass shower door. Now the bathrooms are officially done. And we have replaced all of the windows in our home – half were done 2 years ago, the other half were done yesterday.

Gloria (my wife) put it very well yesterday evening: She said, “I feel like we’ve been given two big presents and we aren’t allowed to open them for two or three days.” The reason? The shower door has to sit there – don’t even look at it, let alone touch it – for 48 hours, and the new windows must remain locked and closed for 72 hours. Given the weather today here in Chicago it was no big thing not to open the windows. Brrrr… Are we going to get summer soon? I sure hope so!

But what’s important it this: We’ve had terrific contractors/workmen in our lives recently and we are deeply grateful. They’ve done their work beautifully and (for the most part) have also cleaned up behind themselves thoroughly. We are blessed people living in a beautiful land (to paraphrase my friend Aaron Freeman).

Went back on Facebook today; connected with a bunch of folks, which is good. But if any of you Facebook amigos are reading this, no pokes, no mob wars, no vampire bites please – I’m there to connect and network only. No Scrabulous or anything else. It’s too distracting.

Gloria and I are reclaiming the house. Moving furniture back, or in some cases, to new positions; doing some post-renovation painting and the like, getting it to the new Almada/Russell household, which is a good thing. I’m trying to write and making some slow progress. Home renovations do take a toll after all. But life is good. In a very real way.

Namaste.

A Diverse Community

2009-06-05T09:53:00.002-05:00

Last night my wife Gloria and I got together with some friends and colleagues, most of whom I’ve known for ten years or more. Some I’d seen a number of times in recent months and some I hadn’t seen for years. It was a lively gathering with lots of laughter, vibrant conversation, and several bottles of wine. We talked about current events, past shared experiences, current passions that are driving us along in our professional and personal endeavors, the usual “cocktail party” fare.

But thinking about the gathering this morning a few notable things struck me. This group of ten people included two breast-cancer survivors. Six of the ten present will be spending all or most of this coming weekend performing a marathon walk to raise money for breast cancer research. Indeed, they were sporting custom-made hats celebrating the walk complete with the logo of the sponsoring company, my single biggest client for the past several years.

Another notable aspect to the group was their accomplishments: Among us were a CEO, two college professors, a retired creative director, and a two-time national Emmy Award winning video editor. I mention this not because we are defined by what we do or what level of “success” we have achieved – no, I mention it because our gathering was one of the most down-to-earth and least pretentious gatherings I’ve enjoyed in some time. There was no grandstanding or braggadocio or anything of that sort. We were just people enjoying community, fellowship, and a sense of our shared humanity. Among us there are several not insignificant differences, in religion, politics, socio-economic status, marital and familial status, race, and sexual orientation. And yet, none of those differences mattered a whit – if anything, these differences enriched our conversations and broadened our sense of community and fellowship.

It is easy, sometimes, for us to get cynical or dismissive when we hear a politician talking about how our nation’s diversity is a strength, not a weakness. We might roll our eyes at hearing the same old hackneyed phrase again and again. And yet. And yet! It’s true. When Christian and Jew and Agnostic and Atheist can sit around the same table and share hearty conversation and respectful humor, this is something to celebrate. When republicans and democrats and independents can discuss the historic nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court of the United States with no one engaging in useless and unfruitful hyperbole or ad hominum attacks, this is something to celebrate. (And, for the record, all gathered agreed that Rush Limbaugh has become absolutely certifiable lately – asserting that Sotomayor and Obama are anti-constitutionalists who want to shred the U.S. Constitution? Please, give me a break. But I digress.)

Our differences, when embraced, do strengthen us. They open us up to other perspectives, other ways of looking at the world, and that is a very good thing. We all can disagree without being disagreeable. We can disagree and continue to love and support and encourage one another. We can agree to disagree and then move forward to those things around which we find common ground. One of my friends at the gathering last night wisely noted that our entire system is built on the idea of compromise and yet too much of the rhetoric we hear shouted on the cable news programs – from the right and from the left – is black and white, night and day, extreme, extreme, extreme. It’s enough, already. As Tori Murden McClure notes in her magnificent new book, A Pearl in the Storm, “Good and evil are creations of mankind; in our image, we created them.”

Namaste.

Post MFA Residency

2009-06-03T19:58:00.000-05:00

All right, so I had an initial goal of blogging each day during my recent MFA residency at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. I made it to Day Two.

They keep you busy there and exhilarated and excited and challenged and inspired. It was a wonderful residency and terrific to reconnect with students and faculty I’ve known from earlier residencies and to meet some of the newbies – fresh-faced, with big plans, I’m delighted to welcome them into our fold.

Being among a community of writers is a wonderful thing if you are a writer. It makes you feel less alone. Less odd. Less solitary.

Upon returning home to Chicago last Sunday afternoon, I was hit with the reality that the contractors were still not done with our bathrooms – you know, the ones that were supposed to be completed before I left for my ten-day residency? On one hand, the work they’ve done is top notch and looks great (and, I’m very grateful for that) yet on the other hand, God supposedly made the world in six days and these guys have taken nearly thirty (more than twice what they thought it would take) to do two bathrooms!! It’s endlessly distracting to have people banging and pounding on walls and floors and whatever else they can decide to bang and pound on. Not the most conducive environment for writing.

But, I do not wish to complain.

Residency was great. It’s wonderful to be back home with my lovely wife Gloria and our two adorable dogs. And, the bathrooms are almost done.

Namaste.

MFA Residency – Day 2

2009-05-23T20:07:00.001-05:00

It is now Saturday night, May 23rd, nearly 9:00 pm and the end of the first full day of residency here at Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program. The day was, well, in a word: long. And, this is not just according to me. I heard it time and again from students and faculty members alike. It was also: terrific, exciting, exhilarating, and inspirational.

That’s kind of what residency is all about. We are thrust into the company of a number of writers in all sorts of genres with varied interests, lives, talents, and ways of looking at the world. Today was the first day of workshop and the first full day of lectures and readings and sharing meals together. Some are down in the lobby of the Brown Hotel right this moment sharing a beer or a glass of wine or – given that we are in Kentucky, after all – a glass of fine bourbon. (I will join them there soon!)

The final event of this day was the first installment of Spalding’s Festival of Contemporary Writing, featuring six faculty members reading from new and/or recent work. Dianne Aprile, Greg Pape, Jody Lisberger, Ellie Bryant, Philip Deaver, and Mary Waters each read this evening and each was positively delightful in their own particular ways. What a pleasure (and inspiration) to hear such magnificent work from these faculty mentors (many of whom I’ve worked with and/or come to know over the past year).

Tomorrow we’re at it again and I, for one, can hardly wait.

Namaste.

MFA Residency – Early Day 1

2009-05-22T11:07:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Louisville, Kentucky a little before 8:00 p.m. last night having left Chicago right around 12:30 yesterday afternoon. This morning I’ve been rereading and revising my comments regarding the writing of five of my fellow MFA students with whom I’ll be in workshop these next ten days.

This afternoon things begin with a meet and greet of sorts followed by dinner and then the Book-in-Common discussion led by Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund and Associate Program Director Kathleen Driskell. This residency’s Book-in-Common is Claudia Emerson’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book of poetry, “Late Wife.” “Book-in-Common” means that all MFA students regardless of genre or term within the program read the book prior to residency for a full group (plenary) discussion. Later in the week, we’ll have the opportunity to meet and speak with Claudia Emerson, which is always a highlight of the residency here at Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program.

Soon, I will meet up with one of my fellow students for lunch at the Bluegrass Brewing Company, a nifty bar and restaurant just across the street from the Brown Hotel. Fellowship with other writers is one of the most enjoyable and gratifying aspects to the 10-day residencies we have twice a year here. Writing is such a solitary vocation most of the time that being able to share notes and work and thoughts and victories and frustrations with other writers is very welcome, indeed.

Spalding is a highly supportive community of writers and I’m enjoying the anticipation of all getting under way, of seeing the many friends I’ve made within this community, and, most especially, of continuing on my journey to try to be a better writer.

More to come… Namaste.

The Peace of Wild Things

2009-05-17T18:34:00.003-05:00

Earlier today while taking a short break from preparing for my upcoming MFA residency in Louisville, I was cleaning up the kitchen – while listening to National Public Radio’s Speaking of Faith – and the announcer mentioned that a Wendell Berry poem would be featured in the next segment. Having been assigned some Wendell Berry prose to read in advance of this month’s residency, I turned up the volume and looked forward to hearing the poem. This is the poem Krista Tippett, the show’s host, read:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998.

Wow. Indeed. And all that.

This reminds me so much of what I’ve been reading lately, most especially the works of Eckhart Tolle. It also calls to mind the following well known Biblical verse: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Matt. 6:28-29)

Berry writes of the “wild things/who do not tax their lives with forethought/of grief.” Isn’t it interesting that he writes “of” grief rather than the more expected (and, I suppose, more pedestrian) “or” grief? And the idea of “not taxing” one’s life is precisely what Tolle is talking about when he counsels that we should live in the present moment in a spirit of acceptance; for, what is is. And there’s really little we can do to change that. What we can control is what action(s) to we take or not take in response to what is.

The “day-blind stars/waiting with their light” that Berry writes about remind me of Tolle’s reminder that even on a cloudy day, the sun is still there. We simply are not able to see it.

Thank you Mr. Berry. Thank you Ms. Tippett for reading this on today’s program. And thank you wild things for demonstrating peace and living in the now and accepting things as they are each and every day.

Namaste.

On Smoking Outside…

2009-05-12T11:51:00.000-05:00

Lest the title make you think that this will be a rant of one sort or another regarding the burdens of having to light up outside rather than inside, worry not. Quite the contrary…

Yes, I’ll admit that I was not in favor of the laws spreading across the country that ban smoking in restaurants and bars (and, I suppose I’m still not in favor of them on a free-market sort of principle, but let’s not go there), but, honestly, that’s not what this posting is about.

Last week, last Wednesday to be precise, my wife and I decided that we were no longer going to smoke in our home. If we wanted a cigarette, we could go outside to have one. This may not sound like that big a deal, but believe me it’s a major shift – especially for me. Gloria has never smoked as much as I do and she also has a job nine months out of the year where she has to smoke outside, so she’s pretty used to it.

I, on the other hand, work at home almost all the time. I have become very accustomed to smoking at my desk while writing, talking on the phone, reading, you name it. Not anymore.

Here’s the great thing. There have been many moments in the past near week where I’ve had the impulse to light up while working at my desk and then I remember, “Oh, right, we don’t smoke inside anymore.” Sometimes, I’ll take a moment to walk downstairs to where our porch is (my office is in the refinished attic of our house) but more often I’ll just wait. The result has been that I have cut my cigarette consumption in half. I know that this isn’t precisely the same as quitting, which is an ultimate goal, but it is a step onto the glide path towards quitting. And that’s a good thing.

By deciding to ban smoking inside of our home, the decision to light up has been made significantly more conscious. And let’s face it, part of what makes smoking a “habit” is that it can become an unconscious or a barely conscious thing to do for the addicted smoker. The phone rings, you light up. You send some files to upload and see that they will take seven minutes, you light up. You get the picture. That’s unconscious smoking.

You might say, “Well, it’s spring in Chicago now, going outside to smoke is no big deal.” Sure, to a degree, but it also got down to forty degrees last night, spring or not. And, besides, I’m hoping that by the time autumn returns (and morphs into the cold winters for which Chicago is well known) I’ll be ready to kick the habit once and for all. If not, I’ll bundle up tightly.

Namaste.

Renovation Day 2

2009-05-08T12:42:00.001-05:00

These guys are good! Amazing, really.

The work began yesterday and by the end of the day all the fixtures had been removed (including getting the bathtub upstairs), the walls were opened, and all of the tile was removed. Early this, the window came out and the new glass block window will be installed later today – that is, if the contractors come back. They left for more parts and tools nearly three hours ago. “We’ll be back in about an hour,” they said. Am I nervous? Just a wee little bit. As you can see in the top two pictures, there’s no window at the moment and it’s looking like rain…

They’ll be back I’m certain. They know their stuff and I have to say that this is really the first time that I’ve ever felt like contractors are performing the work as if they were working in their own house. There’s been a minimum of mess – but, let’s face it: when opening walls, there’s always going to be some dust.

Namaste.

The 21st Century Shower #2

2009-05-07T15:06:00.003-05:00

Okay, so perhaps we aren’t as old fashioned as I asserted in my last posting.

Yes, we are eschewing the thermostat that the lady at the store kept saying we simply MUST have. But, we are installing a pretty snazzy showerhead from Grohe called Freehander®. (Gloria and I have already started referring to it as the freeloader. We’re sometimes silly that way.) If I’ve been able to figure out the technology properly, you should be seeing an image of Freehander® directly to the right.

I have to say that I am very much looking forward to trying this. The two showerheads both pivot and rotate and arm can move up and down. As the promotional material on Grohe’s website exclaims: “Thanks to its ingenious design, GROHE Freehander® shower can simply be turned from an overhead shower to a side shower.” Sold!

Today the work on the bathrooms began. There is not a toilet and a sink sitting in front of the fireplace in our living room. A five-foot cast iron claw foot tub sits about ten feet away from my desk in my office. It’s awaiting its new home up here. The contractors tell us that the new shower might be done as early as next Tuesday and then they’ll move up here and start the demolition of this bathroom.

Fortunately we will never have to do this again.

Namaste.

The 21st Century Shower?

2009-04-30T11:56:00.001-05:00

So my wife and I are having our two bathrooms renovated. A claw foot tub in the downstairs bathroom will be going upstairs to replace a small and hastily installed shower stall. Downstairs, we will have a new, large, custom-made shower – lovely porcelain tile, new fixtures, sliding glass door, a built-in bench, the works. (Having officially reached “middle-aged,” sitting down to wash one’s feet seems a priority.)

So – we need to provide our contractor with the fixtures for the new shower. Yesterday, we went to a store that specializes in this sort of equipment and suffered a severe case of sticker shock at first. We were thinking that we wanted a decent showerhead and a hand-shower wand attached to the wall, near where the bench will be installed. Well, the lady who helped us told us that we needed a thermostat, a volume control valve, the showerhead and hand-shower materials, and then an additional volume control for the hand shower, because “you never want to use a diverter!” (I need to mention here that both my wife and I were kind of scratching our heads at the mention of a “thermostat.”) All of this – plus the door – could be ours for only $2,200.

Said I: “Now, why exactly do we need this thermostat?”

The lady: “Well, it will always keep the water at the exact same temperature and it will be warm the instant you turn it on. Really, it’s how everyone’s doing it these days. You’re going to love it!”

Said I: “But, there is an option where we can just have a valve, right? Something you turn on and adjust to the desired water temperature?”

The lady: “Oh my! You want to fiddle around all day trying to find the right temperature?!?!?!?”

Said I: “You know, I’ve been finding the right temperature in the shower for 45 years now, and it’s never really been a problem for me.”

What amazes me about this is that I’ve stayed at four and five star hotels all over the world (Kuala Lumpur, Frankfurt, Vienna, Huatulco, and many US cities) and I have never encountered a shower with a thermostat. Since when did this become a must-have luxury? I can’t imagine it’s very energy efficient either to have one’s shower water kept at the same high temperature 24 hours a day. Yikes.

Call us old-fashioned if you like. We’re going old school and saving many hundreds of dollars (and energy) in the process.

Namaste.

The First 100 Days

2009-04-28T16:54:00.002-05:00

So, do elections really make a difference?

I think that’s abundantly clear at this time.

Consumer confidence (it was revealed today) is rising for the first time since last summer. Gitmo will be closed within the year. The United States of America no longer engages in torture. The USA will, once again, support real science and advanced medical research, including stem-cell research that seems to hold a good deal of promise for eventually treating – perhaps even curing – diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. There are indications that the hemorrhaging of real estate values is beginning to slow down, if not yet turn around.

Yesterday I received an email from my brother Chris (a Republican leaning Independent) that recounted all sorts of bad things that he was told would happen if he voted for John McCain for president. Items listed were along the lines of: unemployment will rise, more troops will be sent to Afghanistan, the federal deficit would increase, things like that… then, the punch line at the close of the email was something along the lines of, “Well, I guess my democrat friends were right, because I voted for McCain and all these things have come to pass!”

It’s clever, sure.

But, it also fails to acknowledge what President Obama inherited upon taking office. How did this current financial crisis begin? With an ideologically driven compulsion toward deregulation and so-called free markets. The Bush administration (and, to a degree, the Clinton administration before it) sowed the seeds that led to our current financial crisis. Mr. Obama was handed a plate of feces on a platter and he’s working hard to try to fix things. Has everything been fixed in the first 100 days? Of course not. But, we are on our way. And there are some positive signs, indeed, some very positive signs of change.

The world views our country in a more favorable light. Greater than two-thirds of the country (according to a Pew Research poll) think that the country is “heading in the right direction.” And, nearly 70% of those polls give Mr. Obama high marks for his job performance.

Change is coming. That’s what he promised us and that’s what he’s delivering.

Today, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced that he’s trading in his ‘R’ for a ‘D.’ Cynics will call this a self-serving move designed to help insure his political survival in a state that has been steadily becoming more blue over the last several years. Pragmatists (as I like to think I am) will take him at face value when he says, “The Republican party has moved far to the right.” It has.

Welcome, Senator Specter. And, keep on keeping on President Obama. A lot of us have your back!

A Change of Seasons

2009-04-24T11:18:00.000-05:00

Today in Chicago we expect to see temperatures above 80 degrees for the first time since October 12th last year. Ahhh, spring! Tulips have sprouted in the parkway in front of our house. Buds are opening on trees up and down the block, including the majestic maple that stands in front of our house. The day before yesterday I swept all of the branches, twigs, and dead leaves off of our porch and this evening I will fire up the Weber grill for the first time this year and cook our dinner outside.

Winter in Chicago can be a long haul. This last winter was one of the worst on record, with several record-breaking snowfalls and extremely cold temperatures. Sometimes people ask me how I can stand the bitter cold of winter, and sometimes I wonder myself as well. The answer is: spring, summer, and autumn (when we have autumn, which never really occurred last year). Spring and summer in Chicago are glorious. The lake shimmers and beckons, the sun doesn’t set until mid-evening, and there is often a pleasant breeze to check the rising temperature – often, not always.

There’s another thing about the change of seasons. It helps demarcate time. It helps me to feel as if I’m progressing in some way. Just as finishing one semester of my MFA in Writing and preparing to start the next semester provides a measure of sorts, so, too does the changing of seasons. For instance, I can vividly recall many instances and events from the summers of 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1989 (to name just a few) in a way that I doubt I would be able to recall had they not been summers – set off from the other seasons of those years. Likewise, I can recall events from the autumns of 1981 and 2008 with equal recollection because they are set against the backdrop of autumn. (In the case of 2008, it was a summer-like autumn, but I recall it nonetheless and always will. Something to do with a guy named Obama, you know.)

Every now and again I’ve been seduced by the idea of living somewhere like San Diego or Sarasota. A place where it’s relatively mild year round. But when I think about it for more than a few minutes, I always come to the same conclusion: I would really miss clearly changing seasons. As much as I sometimes don’t particularly enjoy winter (snow shoveling, digging the car out of a parking space, etc.) it is also clear to me that without winter, I would likely not appreciate spring and summer and autumn as much as I do.

It’s been more than six months since we’ve had an eighty plus degree-day here in my beloved city of Chicago. When you wait that long for a beautiful summer like day, you sure appreciate it!

Namaste.

Sea Turtles, Dolphins, and Whales

2009-04-20T14:20:00.005-05:00

Last week, my wife Gloria and I were fortunate to spend six days and five nights on the Pacific coast in Huatulco, Mexico, a town that’s perhaps fifty miles north of the Guatemalan border. Huatulco is comprised of nine bays, four of which have been developed with luxury resorts, condos, and some private residences. The other five bays have been designated by the Mexican government as national park land, protected forever from any development – which is great!

Last Friday, Gloria and I took a four-hour boat tour of the bays. We rented snorkeling equipment and had been assured that there was a beautiful black coral reef in one of the bays. We also hoped that we would be lucky enough to see dolphins and a sea turtle or two. We were very lucky indeed!

Early in the boat trip, we came upon a large flock of seagulls and several pelicans that were engaged in a literal feeding frenzy. Fish were jumping in and out of the water and the gulls – which I’ve always thought of as beautiful and graceful and peaceful – nudged other gulls out of their way in order to get to a fish. The pelicans slowly circled overhead stalking their prey before executing a kamikaze-like dive straight down into the water plunging beneath the surface for a moment or two and then emerging with a fish crushed in their enormous beaks.

A short while later, we saw a sea turtle. Gloria saw it first and pointed it out to Primo, the captain of our boat (Paraiso 1 was it’s name), and he immediately cut the motor and reeled in the two fishing lines that were almost constantly trolling behind us. (More on the fishing lines later.) As we got closer to the sea turtle, we realized that it was two sea turtles! They were mating on the surface of the ocean. An amazing sight.

After the turtles, we proceeded out further into the ocean and it wasn’t very long before we came upon a school of dolphins. I had never before seen dolphins in the wild, in their own habitat, and I can scarcely describe their beauty and grace. There were at least a dozen of them, perhaps more, and I’m almost certain that they were bottlenose dolphins (like Flipper). Two or three abreast, they executed their beautiful arcing leap out of and back into the water over and over again as if they were performing just for us. But what made it so beautiful, so moving, was knowing that they weren’t performing for us – they were being who they are and doing what they always do.

Shortly after our encounter with the school of dolphins, we could see a geyser-like spray of water up into the air in the distance. At first, we thought it was another school of dolphins, but as we got closer we could see that these were much larger creatures: three grey whales, blowing copious amounts of water out of their blowholes. Gloria turned to me and said, “We’re going to need a bigger boat!” (If you haven’t seen “Jaws,” that last phrase will mean nothing to you.) At any rate, here we were about twenty or thirty feet away from three enormous grey whales. Stunning doesn’t begin to describe their majesty. Seeing them was absolutely awe inspiring, and “awe” and “awesome” are words that I generally avoid using given how they’ve been devalued by overuse in contemporary pop culture. A few minutes after we first spotted them, they dove, displaying their magnificent back fin, which I’ve since learned is called a fluke.

Throughout the journey, we also caught six fish - two chulas and four bonitos. The chulas were four to six pounds and the bonitos ranged from eight to perhaps twelve pounds. Gloria reeled in one chula and I reeled in the rest.

We completed our four-hour excursion by snorkeling in the bay that has an extraordinarily beautiful black coral reef. We swam among schools of tropical fish of every color imaginable – yellow, red, blue, orange, chartreuse, and purple, among others. Gloria spotted a sea turtle swimming above the reef and followed her for some time until the turtle decided to swim back out towards the open sea.

In that one day, we were privileged enough to see the turtles, dolphins, and whales, as well as gulls, pelicans, hawks, black eagles, and a few great herons. We saw a stony point that contained a blowhole such that when a large wave crashed onto the shore, a moment later an enormous stream of water would shoot up into the air, geyser-like, before falling back down into the open passage within the rock. It was breathtaking.

And I am filled with gratitude. Namaste.

The Multitude of Things…

2009-04-11T00:20:00.002-05:00

My mother Mary posted a comment to my last blog posting that read, “I need to remember now and then to honor my accomplishments and accept my failures and the multitude of things that fall between the two.” This got me thinking about “the multitude of things that fall between the two.” Between accomplishment and failure? I suppose so.

That led me to ask the following question: “What is accomplishment and what is failure?” And, a follow-up question: “Are they always (or ever) that easy to name or recognize or categorize?” For instance, what today might feel or seem like a failure might, in fact, be the first step in what will, one day, end up being a great success or a source of great happiness. How are we to know in the myopic vision of this precise moment? And isn’t it equally possible that that which we look at today as an “accomplishment” might tomorrow seem a mere triviality or a step along a long and winding (to borrow from Paul McCartney) road to a yet to be determined destination? Maybe it wasn’t so much an accomplishment as a crucial or critical stepping stone.

Yes, I agree that we need to honor our accomplishments and accept our failures. Absolutely. No argument. I also think that we need to allow ourselves to color outside of the lines every now and again and to realize that perhaps not everything we do can be tallied up on a scorecard as either an accomplishment or a failure. The in between, it seems to me, is where we likely live most (or at least much) of our lives. And, let’s not discard or disregard or disrespect that now, shall we?

I’ll attempt to get specific: Last weekend my wife, Gloria, and I spent a couple of hours with our accountant. We were completing our corporate and personal tax returns with him. We neither experienced any great accomplishment nor a great failure. We got the taxes done. Just today, we had a man over from Andersen Windows. We’d replaced about half of our windows nearly two years ago and now it seemed the right time to replace the rest. No great accomplishments or failures here, either. However, in each interaction, both last week with our accountant and earlier today with Frank (the window man), we got the job done. We made progress. So, maybe I was wrong earlier; maybe these do represent great accomplishments. And if so, all the better!

Either way, if we really examine the “multitude of things that fall between the two” we might realize that many of them are accomplishments (great or minor) indeed. Successful communication between human beings is, in my book, always an accomplishment. No one getting (or feeling) hurt or cheated or used is an accomplishment in my book. A nice, simple home-cooked meal can sometimes feel like an accomplishment, it seems to me.

And failure? I think we are too quick to attach that label to an endeavor. I think it takes (often) a good deal of time to determine whether or not a particular overture or impulse or attempt is a failure. And I also think that failure is part of life. Tires fail, light bulbs fail, computer programs fail, and, sometimes, we fail to do what we said we would do or fail to be who we’ve set out to be. It happens. We also have (until we die) another day to live and try to do better. But our failures – however we might define that term – do not define us any more than our successes do. We are who we are. We need to go to sleep with that and wake up with that. It is.

Namaste.

MFA Midpoint

2009-04-06T19:13:00.000-05:00

Well, as hard as it is for me to believe, I’m roughly halfway through my MFA in Writing experience. I’ve sent my final packet of my second semester off to my mentor and am eagerly awaiting her feedback. And, just an hour or so ago, I submitted the creative nonfiction (an excerpt from a memoir in progress) that will be workshopped at May’s residency session at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.

In the past year of being enrolled in this program, I’ve produced about 400 pages of original writing (fiction and creative nonfiction) and an additional 80 -100 pages of short critical essays on 18-20 books I’ve read as part of the program. I recall that at the end of my first term, my creative nonfiction mentor, Richard Goodman (author of French Dirt and The Soul of Creative Writing), suggested that I clear off a large table or workspace and lay out all the work I’d produced during that semester. It was a great idea. It’s easy while in the midst of a program or a project or just our everyday lives, I suppose, to lose track of how much we’ve accomplished over a certain period of time. How often do we take a moment to step back and “lay out our work” so we can take a look at it, regard it, appreciate it? Not often enough, I would assert.

Life is, of course, more about the journey than it is about the destination. But even allowing that, there are milestones. And they exist, in part, at least, in order to provide a moment of repose, of reflection, of perspective, perhaps. Birthdays can be milestones, anniversaries can be milestones, and the beginnings and endings of a year or a month or a semester (or even a single day) can serve as milestones.

Taking a moment to look at how we’ve spent our time in the past x weeks or months or even years can help boost morale and/or motivation, it seems to me, especially if we find ourselves in a relative rough patch. Maybe there are heavy storms or blinding rain or conflicting passions or just too many things to be taken care of in the hours with which we’ve been allotted. We’ve all been there, Lord knows. Maybe the gutter fell off of your house or the storm drain just outside of the basement door stopped draining water or maybe half of your windows need to be replaced. Well, I hear you. I’ve just described this spring at the Russell household. It can feel, at times, overwhelming. But, it also, simply, is. What is happening is happening. All we can do is choose how to react.

So tonight I’m choosing to put aside the drain and the gutter and the windows for a moment, and celebrate that I’m halfway through my MFA. I’m on my way.

Namaste.

The Seeing Glass

2009-04-03T19:49:00.001-05:00

Several weeks ago I mentioned that I had started to read my friend and colleague Jacquelin Gorman’s 1997 memoir “The Seeing Glass.” Well, a few days ago I finally found some time to get back to the book, and I finished it early this morning. This is a magnificent memoir. Beautifully written, an amazing story, and deeply, deeply moving. Jackie’s writing is fluid, graceful, nuanced, and both brutally and beautifully honest. The twin tales she spins about her own temporary blindness (horrifying) and the short and difficult life of her autistic brother Robin are absolutely riveting.

A couple of moments ago I did something I’ve never done – I posted a review of a book on amazon.com. It was a review of Jackie’s magnificent memoir. In part, I wrote: “If you have ever lost a loved one or felt alone or felt afraid of anything, anything at all, you owe it to yourself to read this memoir, and recognize (perhaps again) that you are not alone. As Mary Karr writes in her introduction to the tenth anniversary edition of her memoir, ‘The Liars' Club,’ ‘the boat I can feel so lonely in actually holds us all.’”

Reading Jackie Gorman’s “The Seeing Glass” will remind you that you are not alone, that you are able to overcome your fears, and that there is so much more to live for than so many of us always remember on a day to day basis.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Namaste.

Taking Things Personally, Part 2 (Or, Dead Dog Walking)

2009-04-02T12:39:00.000-05:00

For a few days there, Beau, our five and a half year old Sheltie was a dead dog walking. He’d done the unthinkable and bitten me in the face, my upper lip to be precise. Whether he would be literally dead or not was not completely decided, but it was certainly considered. My wife Gloria and I discussed whether we should try to return him to PAWS (Pets Are Worth Saving) here in Chicago, or simply have him put down by our vet. After all, if he’d bitten a child on the street, that is precisely what the Chicago Police Department would order – put the dog down, no ifs, and, or buts.

Fortunately, we decided to go talk to someone at PAWS. We wanted to talk to someone who knew something about dogs, who would be empathetic to our cares and concerns, and who might be able to offer some valuable advice. That was last Saturday afternoon. Can I tell you how glad I am that we did that?

At PAWS, we met Melissa Dragovan, one of the adoption program coordinator’s there. She was empathetic, non-judgmental, and very reassuring. She told us that PAWS would absolutely take Beau back if that’s what we decided we wanted to do. She also recommended that we consider meeting with a dog trainer – a “dog whisperer” named Curtis Scott – who has had a lot of experience dealing with negative dog behavior.

We called Curtis that late afternoon/early evening and spoke with him for 15 or 20 minutes. He could hear the nervousness in our voices and agreed to come to our home Sunday evening at 5:30, following an entire day of giving a seminar in Indiana. He quickly diagnosed the problem – a lack of clear leadership on the humans’ parts, and gave us a ton of specific and very helpful advice.

Even though it’s only been five days since his visit, some pretty extraordinary transformations have already taken place. And, not only has the change in our behavior not been difficult, it’s been enjoyable!

Old dogs, like this Chicago writer, can learn new tricks, it seems!

Namaste

A pre-blog blog

2009-04-01T00:02:00.001-05:00

This was written the day before my 45th birthday, but I think (sadly) it retains some resonance today. I wrote this on October 1, 2008.

I’m flabbergasted. I know more about foreign policy and the financial markets than the Governor of Alaska, and current vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin does. Tonight I learned that she couldn’t answer Katie Couric’s question, “What magazines and newspapers do you get your information from?” Palin’s answer? “All of them. All that are available to me.” Well, I can tell you right now I get my information from the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, The Economist, The New Yorker, CNN, NPR, and other sources such as drudgereport.com, MSNBC, 60 Minutes, and, yes, even now and then Fox News. Is this a difficult question for, oh, just about any citizen of the United States of America to answer?

Palin says she has foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from Alaska and yet she’s never (according to CNN) been to the island off the Alaskan coast from which one can actually see Russia. She has held a passport for a little more than a year. I – a non-politician who has spent the vast majority of his life working in the theater, the theater! – have visited more countries than Sarah Palin has. I’ve been to Malaysia, Mexico, England, Austria, and Germany. Both Palin and I have also been to Canada. And, let’s not forget, she had a fueling stop in Ireland, so that means she’s been there too. I changed planes in Hong Kong. Whoop-dee-dooh! I once stopped in Lincoln, Nebraska to fill up my gas tank, but I’ve never once represented to anyone that I’ve “been there.” I was at a Citgo station, for crying out loud!

My heart aches. I worry for our country. I am deeply afraid that too many white people – and I imagine some non-whites as well – are telling the pollsters that they are prepared to vote for Barack Obama now but that when they are in the voting booth, they simply will not be able to bring themselves to pull that lever or fill in that circle or touch that touch-screen button for… horrors!.. a black man. I worry that we, as a country, remain racist – hip to hip and stem to stern. I recall what happened with Tom Bradley in the 1980s in Los Angeles. I know the history of Harold Washington’s election in Chicago and know that he would never have won without some ninety-three percent of the African-American vote. North Shore liberals – many of them – voted against Harold the first time he ran. The encouraging thing is that a lot of them voted for him the second time he ran.

Our country is facing a potential financial meltdown. We remain embroiled in a supposed “War on Terrorism,” which is odd, because generally wars are fought against an enemy rather than a tactic. Al Quaeda is an enemy, Hamas is an enemy, the Taliban is an enemy. “Terrorism” is not an enemy; it’s a tactic. It’s a tactic radical Islamists (and others, including the IRA let us not forget) use to attempt to advance their political and ideological agendas.

This is part of why the “War on Drugs” is such a colossal failure. It’s not properly targeted and it’s hypocritical. We don’t put nicotine addicts or alcohol addicts or caffeine addicts in jail. Can you imagine? Starbucks would go out of business overnight if we adopted the same posture toward caffeine – which has been proven to make caffeine users (full disclosure: I am a caffeine addict) more prone to cysts, nervousness, anxiety, and heart disease. Yes, heart disease – the leading cause of death in men and women in the United States of America. Sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it?

Now, let me be clear. I’m certainly not advocating that we should run Starbucks out of business – I am a stockholder, after all (more’s the pity these days) – and, I would tell any fascist-leaning leader that you can pry my grande coffee in a venti cup out of my cold dead hands before I agree to give up my daily caffeine fix. I’m simply saying, where’s the consistency? Where’s the logic? Where’s the smart and straight and problem-solving thinking being brought to bear on the challenges we face as a nation?

It seems to me that we spend too much time on the trivial. Who’s up and who’s down. Well, at the moment it appears that no one’s up and we’re all a little down. We’re all worried about our IRAs or 401ks or pensions (remember when there were pensions? We’re concerned about how the current credit-crunch might affect us.

The government has done a fine job of scaring us out of our wits and a lousy job at trying to solve the problems we are facing. Wall Street’s in the doldrums? Let’s give them $700 Billion dollars. And the worst part? We basically have to. Because if we don’t, we are going to see our access to credit stop on a dime. Jobs will be lost. Companies will have serious difficulty in making payroll. The housing market will get even worse than it already is. We’re stuck. Even though the vast majority of us didn’t make this problem, we’re going to have to be part of solving it, because if we don’t we will be in a mess of hurt. Is it a drag? Yes. Is it fair? No. Do we have to buck up and take some responsibility? Yes, I think we do. And then when things get a little calmer, a little more secure, I think we need to hold the greedy bastards accountable. Some heads need to roll, in time. Not for vengeful reasons, mind you, but for upholding the principle of accountability. If this happened due to your decisions, your mistakes, you must be held responsible.

How likely is it that that will happen?

Not a chance.

Embracing the Masters

2009-03-31T23:34:00.001-05:00

In recent days and weeks I’ve felt the need to commune with, to consult with, some masters. Whether it has been my own anxieties or fears or concerns about my life, my relationships, or my work, or the reality of having been bit on the upper lip by my dear dog Beau, I’ve recognized I needed some help.

In earlier posts on this blog I talked about perhaps consulting a psychiatrist, getting on anti-depressants, and a number of other assorted potential solutions. But consulting with the masters has really made a world of difference.

Eckhart Tolle is a master of awakening to the presence, or the Being, that is within us, the awareness that we are, that we exist, and that our existence is really defined by what is happening “now.” We only live in the now, not in the past (unless we choose to, which is generally not very healthy) or in the future, which doesn’t yet exist, so how can we live in it? All of our life, every single day is experienced in this one present moment. As long as we recognize that, indeed, embrace it.

Curtis Scott is an expert dog trainer. He came by the house last Sunday evening. Within five minutes he said, of Beau, “He’s a good dog. There are some issues, he needs leadership, he needs to know who’s boss, but he’s a good dog.” Turns out my wife and I have created a bit of a spoiled brat, and we weren’t paying attention to some of what he (and our other dog, Max) needs. Discipline being one of those things.

Tolle and Scott are masters. They have studied their subjects for many years, they have trained and observed and read and listened and heard and seen things that give them insight and wisdom. How foolish would it be of me to not at least listen to their words, their suggestions, their thoughts? And, when I find them compelling and sense-making, how foolish of me would it be to not work to adjust my own behavior such that I can learn and implement the lessons of their wisdom?

I am working (an irony there!) to be in a state of non-resistance, of acceptance, of embrace, of learning, or growing, of maturing to their wisdom. I have small successes and smaller failures. This is okay. What happens happens. What is this moment is, in fact, what is. (And, this is not dependent upon what the meaning of the word “is” is, as William Jefferson Clinton once famously uttered.)

A friend and colleague called me earlier today to give me an update on a project we’ll be working on together in the upcoming days. She told me what she knew about the project and then said something along the lines of, “There might be a 5-minute video scene, but I won’t know about that until Thursday, if that’s okay.” I replied, “Well it is, so I guess it is okay.” Then I joked, “No, it’s not okay, you need to tell me know!” Isn’t that absurd? And yet, how often do we do that sort of thing rather than accepting that what is is? If she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know, and my wishing that she would know won’t change that. Accepting that fact is liberating. Really.

This lesson I learned from a master. I embrace it.

Namaste.

Taking Things Personally

2009-03-28T17:08:00.000-05:00

We all do it from time to time, I suppose. Or, at least many of us do. We take things personally in ways or at times that are not technically appropriate. What do I mean? Well, some of us (I plead guilty to having done this in the past) can, at times, even take something as manifestly not personal as the weather personally. Arrgghh, that wind, that cold, that rain. And, what?? More snow today? It’s the end of March for crying out loud! Like Lear, we rail against the bitter winds that care not a whit about us.

Another example: Our Sheltie, Beau, bit me on the lip the other night. It hurt (still does a little), it was scary, and it is certainly neither acceptable nor appropriate behavior from a dog. But what it wasn’t is: personal. A dog doesn’t distinguish between a nip on the hand or the leg or the face. My wife Gloria and I had a good conversation with a highly experienced dog trainer a short time ago. The gentleman’s name is Curtis Scott and he will be coming by tomorrow evening to get to know Beau and to try to properly diagnose the situation and create a plan to move forward. I don’t know that we’ve completely committed to keeping Beau, but it seems at least worth making this effort to see if we can get control of the problem, reset the roles, and (hopefully) be able to enjoy Beau in a healthier environment again. If we can’t, we’ll do what we need to do.

But I have certainly learned one very important lesson already. Taking this incident personally is not going to lead to a productive way forward. Taking the bite personally leads only to fear and misgivings – and, you know what? I’m kind of over that.

Namaste.

Dog Bites Man

2009-03-27T17:11:00.001-05:00

Okay, so I really don’t want this blog to be a downer or anything, but sometimes we don’t exert very much control over what happens in our lives. Yesterday’s news brought the troubling story about the effective end of American Theater Company’s ensemble and the better news that is the flip side of the story: the rebirth of American Blues Theatre, populated by so many artists for whom I have so much respect and affection.

Last night brought another story, the titular story: Dog Bites Man.

Beau is a 5 ½ year old purebred Sheltie who my wife and I adopted about a year and a half ago. Early on in his time with us, he occasionally nipped either Gloria or me. He’s bitten Gloria a couple times when she was brushing him, breaking skin more than once, but it somehow didn’t seem like a huge or insurmountable problem. He’d bitten me on my leg, once on my head when I playing a little too roughly with him, so I always let it go. Until last night.

The scene: Gloria and I are sitting on the couch watching a DVD. Beau is on the couch, lying down between us. At one point, I leaned down to kiss Beau on his head (a gesture I’ve successfully performed hundreds of times), and Beau bit my upper lip, leaving two gaping gashes in the process. The bleeding was, well, profuse. Today, I have a fat lip with two black scabs on it – neither attractive nor comfortable. As much as it breaks my heart, we are going to have to part with Beau. We’re exploring if there is a Sheltie rescue group that might help, we’ve already contacted PAWS (where we’d adopted him) to see if they will take him back. It saddens both of us, but there comes a time when enough is precisely that.

Yesterday when I was walking Beau and his much older brother (figuratively, not literally) Max, there were two different young children who stopped to pet the dogs. Had Beau bitten one of these children (which he didn’t, thankfully) the police would have him put down instantly. It’s a risk we can no longer take, I’m sorry to say.

Here’s to a better day tomorrow.

Namaste.

When Families Split

2009-03-26T16:32:00.001-05:00

My heart has been heavy today upon learning that twenty-three members of the American Theater Company (ATC) Ensemble have decided to break away from the theater and restart American Blues Theater, which is what ATC was first named when founded in 1985. Nearly one-half (eleven, to be precise) of the departing ensemble members were invited to join the ensemble during my tenure as that theater’s artistic director, between 1997 and 2002.

Let me be very clear: I wish each and every one of those artists (and they are all artists, and highly accomplished artists at that!) nothing but the best. I hope that American Blues Theater rises like the proverbial phoenix from what seems to be a very splintered, very sick ATC. For many years, these people were my family, my “chosen family,” as several of us liked to term it. We spent countless Thanksgivings and New Year’s Days together. We labored to produce plays and to find a way to squeeze two dollars worth of value out of every one dollar we spent together. We lifted many a beer and many a cocktail together. When one of us was sick or mourning, we comforted one another. When one of us suffered a loss – like the death of a family member – we were there for one other. We attended funerals, weddings, and baptisms.

I left my position as artistic director of ATC in October of 2002 because I felt certain that the theater could not only survive, but thrive, without me. And it did. I have had no formal relationship with the theater in these past nearly seven years, but I have continued to support it. I remain close friends with several ensemble members – both past and present, or, present until today – and I have always only wanted the theater to succeed. Today is a death of sorts. And a rebirth, I suppose. But death is always to be mourned. Or at least noted. Respected. As Arthur Miller said, “Attention must be paid.”

My old family is going through a difficult time. I send them my love and support and my very best wishes for happier times ahead. I am so very grateful to have been privileged to lead this extraordinary group of artists for six years, and yet also deeply saddened that the ensemble has been ripped asunder. I hope for healing, both for ATC and for the newly reconstituted American Blues Theater. Or, perhaps they will return to the original spelling, theatre. Either way, I wish them well.

Namaste.

Our Pragmatic President

2009-03-24T22:56:00.000-05:00

Earlier tonight President Obama held his second prime-time news conference. He took questions from 13 different reporters from a wide variety of news outlets, including Univision, Fox News, and Stars and Stripes (the military’s newspaper), among others. After his speech, the pundits pounced: “He looked tentative.” “He looked tired.” “He was angry when our own Ed Henry (I was watching CNN) asked why it took him so long to express outrage at the AIG bonuses.”

Well, fortunately they replayed that clip. He didn’t seem angry to me. He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I don’t like to talk about something before I know what I’m talking about.” He didn’t raise his voice or furrow his brow or anything that might suggest that he was angry. He said, simply, and calmly, “I don’t like to talk about something before I know what I’m talking about.” (Or, something like that.)

What I saw was a president in command of the issues and thinking pragmatically. He said, “If we don’t deal with energy, health care, and education, we won’t have an economy that’s growing – at all.” He is absolutely right. So the White House is counting on 2.6% growth (in the near future) and the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) is expecting 2.2% growth in the near term. These four tenths of a percent matter hugely to the budget deficit we will be facing in years to come, but they aren’t THAT far away from each other.

This president looked into the camera and said, “We’re going to make mistakes. And, when we discover them, we’ll fix them.” “What a relief!” I say. “How refreshing!” I say. After eight long years of a president who couldn’t own up to any mistake, I find it terribly/wonderfully refreshing to hear a president say, “We’re going to make mistakes, and as soon as we spot them, we’re going to fix them.” How adult. How responsible. How accountable to the American voters is that?

What I saw tonight was a president who knew the issues, who demonstrated that he has thought about them very carefully, and who was willing to be open to another person or persons having a better idea than his. That’s leadership in my book. He said, “If Republicans or anyone else has a better idea how to fix the economy, I want to hear it.” Amen.

It’s time for us to come together as Americans. It’s time for us all to put our petty politics aside and work for the regeneration of our economy. I am not for a minute suggesting that we shouldn’t question President Obama’s or Treasury Secretary Geithner’s prescriptions for the economy. Rather, I’m suggesting that if we have better ideas then it is our duty to share them. In the meanwhile, we should support what they are trying to do. As Mr. Obama said tonight regarding the question about charitable donations: “A bus driver who makes $50,000, or $40,000 a year gets to deduct 28% of his charitable donations, but I (who make FAR more than that) get to deduct 39% of my charitable donations. That doesn’t seem fair.” You are right, Mr. President, it isn’t fair. And, it’s time for this to change!

I make far less than President Obama’s hypothetical bus driver and still contribute to charities. I don’t do it for the tax deduction, as I’m sure he doesn’t either. It’s nice, but it’s an after thought, a gimme, if you will.

Let’s back our president. He ain’t perfect, but he’s pragmatic, and that’s a far cry better than the last eight years!

Namaste.

Writers In the Storm (With apologies to Jim Morrison)

2009-03-23T23:36:00.000-05:00

As I sit at my kitchen table this evening nursing a Jameson Irish Whiskey (the last of the night) I think – what? I’m thinking about the day, about my work, about my wife (she’s upstairs reading Tim O’Brien’s “In the Lake of the Woods” and if you haven’t read it yet, you should!) and, I’m thinking about my two dogs, lying on the floor on the rug in the center of the kitchen. One of them, Max, is old. He’s gotta be at least 14 by now, maybe 15. And Beau, Beau is around 5, he’s still a little young and very energetic. He’s a purebred Sheltie and he barks his head off at cars or trucks or really anything with wheels of any sort. Fortunately, he doesn’t bark all that much inside, mostly outside.

Today I wrote a bit, read a bit, walked a bit, visited with Gloria a bit, watched a movie with her (“I’ve Loved You So Long,” a wonderful film featuring Kristin Scott Thomas), and thought a lot. Nothing wrong with thinking. Sometimes it’s what we need to do the most. Especially if it is productive thinking. Thinking about what I will next tackle in my writing, thinking about how I can find a better, more perfect word for a story that is almost done, almost ready to send out into the world.

Earlier today I ran across this website (http://mfaconnect.com/) and it looked very interesting. I composed a posting and sent it along to them and they wrote me back saying my posting will be listed within a day or two. I think we writers benefit when we connect with one another, when we remind ourselves that we are not so alone as we might sometimes feel, so I sent the post. It’s an open invitation to connect, to communicate, to share. They tell me that there will be a link to this blog when they post what I wrote, and that’s great, because I want more connection with other writers, not less. I want to break our solitude, not romanticize it.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Namaste.

This moment, now.

2009-03-22T20:24:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, in the stillness of a night or in a moment of sweet repose there is a clarity heretofore unknown. An understanding of the machinations through which we put ourselves, hanging on to painful memories, bitter disappointments, and our own sins of omission and commission. How much have we held on to that which causes us pain? Or grief? Or sorrow? Or fear? Or, as Frank Conroy wrote of in his memoir Stop-Time, to “irrelevant tears?”

The thing is, I seem to at long last be learning, we get something from these feelings. We need to feel sad or small or angry or a failure or doomed. If we embrace those feelings, then we trick ourselves into thinking we will be immune from the pain when it is once and for all established that we, in fact, are sad or small or angry or a failure or doomed.

Problem is, it doesn’t work. Never has. Never will.

These terms are overly simplistic, wrongheaded, and self-tortuous at best. An emotion is just that, an emotion. Eckhart Tolle suggests (and for the record, I think he’s right) that if we allow ourselves to feel whatever we are feeling then it will soon simply matter less, hurt less, and do less damage. If we accept that “there is, at times, an unhappiness within us,” the mere act of acceptance begins to rob that unhappiness of its power. Because the thing to remember is: that unhappiness or fear or anger is not us, it is not you, it is not me – it is simply and solely a feeling that exists at a particular time. If we accept it and let it be okay, we soon learn that there are a bunch of other emotions we are capable of feeling at the same time. Gratitude, peace, calm, love.

We live in the moment that is, regardless of what we so often tell ourselves. I know that I spent more years than I care to mention spending all my energies (or nearly so) anticipating how GREAT things were going to be when x, y, or z happened. But it never really pans out that way, does it? Of course not. Why? Because by the time those things happen, we already have compiled a new list of x’s, y’s, and z’s that are required in order for us to be happy, to be content, to be whole.

We’re whole right this very second. This one. No, this one. This one. You see? It is always about the moment in which we are, the moment we live is this one right now. Enjoy it!

Namaste.

Laying One’s Self Off

2009-03-19T19:43:00.001-05:00

Today I laid myself off. Put myself on furlough? Trotted myself over to the Illinois Department of Employment Security to apply for unemployment benefits for the first time in the nearly seventeen years that I’ve lived in this state.

Work has rather dried up. The last project my company (Russell Creative, Inc.) produced was in January. The last paycheck I was able to cut for myself was more than a month ago. So now I’ve laid myself off.

But think about that terminology for a moment. It’s patently ridiculous in some fundamental ways. I am, after all, still myself. The “self” that others recognize in me still exists, it’s not as if that “self” or “identity” has been released, let go, set aside for a time. I am me and I am always me – working or not, writing or not, fill-in-the-blanks. Only death will terminate my “me-ness,” my identity. And my identity is not what I do to make a living, what I do to keep food on the table and clothes on my back.

More accurate than “I am me” is “I am.” That’s it. It’s that simple. It’s the same for you. You are. You exist. You live.

Of course it’s not a terribly pleasant event to “lay one’s self off” but it’s important to maintain a perspective. Unemployment Insurance is just that: it’s insurance! My company has paid the premiums for years, now, and I’ve simply never filed a claim before today. I probably should have done so long before today. After all, if you get sick, do you not go see a doctor? (At least if it’s a serious enough illness and you have insurance.) If you have insurance, you use it. Why should it be different as regards unemployment insurance? Why should there be a stigma or a stain to filing for something to which we are entitled – not because the “state” should take care of us, nonsense! – but because we paid for it. I had to give myself a talking to in order to convince myself to file the claim, believe you me. I can be a stubborn so-and-so sometimes, nearly always to my own detriment, my own harm.

Therefore, new language: Today, I temporarily discontinued my employment with my company and filed for insurance benefits to help until the next project comes along or I find a different job. Isn’t that a tad bit less negative?

Namaste.

The Soul of Creative Writing

2009-03-18T17:11:00.002-05:00

A couple of hours ago I finished rereading Richard Goodman’s terrific, charming, engaging, and insightful book, The Soul of Creative Writing. [Full disclosure: Richard was my mentor for my first term in Spalding University’s Brief Residency MFA in Writing program.] I first read the book just as my six months of working with Richard as a mentor was commencing. I’ve spent nearly six months with a different mentor – working in a different genre as well, fiction rather than creative nonfiction – but, as I’m returning to creative nonfiction for my final two semesters at Spalding, I was required to read Richard’s book again, as it is the Faculty Book in Common for my upcoming May residency.

I am so grateful that I “had” to read this book again. Richard’s breezy and confident narrative voice – dare I say avuncular? – is pitch perfect in each of these ten essays that he likes to describe as “a love letter to the English language.” Indeed, it is. If you care a whit about the English language, about words, then you simply must read this book!!!!!!!!!!!! (Those who have read the book already will carefully note how many exclamation points I used at the end of the last sentence. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.)

Richard’s writing is, quite simply, inspirational. His command of the language is impressive and his respect for it is readily apparent on every delicious page. (I know writers are counseled to avoid adjectives whenever possible, but sometimes they are required.)

The Soul of Creative Writing has recently been released in paperback, so do yourself a favor and surf on over to Amazon or walk down the street to your savvy independent bookseller and get yourself a copy right away. It’s that good.

Ever wonder how to approach finding the “exact right word” or “le mote juste,” as Richard’s hero Flaubert is said to have written of? Read this book. Want to know how strong and resilient punctuation is and what wonders a writer can accomplish through the creative use of punctuation? Read this book. Care about rubbing shoulders against some of the greatest literary figures in Western literature? Read this book. Now. Go on. Do it.

You’ll thank me.

Namaste.

Disambiguation

2009-03-16T19:26:00.001-05:00

Isn’t that a wonderful word? It carries a couple of meanings. On the most basic level, it is the act of making unambiguous, or, to put it another way, the attainment of clarity. It also has a linguistic meaning, which is the establishment of a single semantic or grammatical interpretation of a word or phrase – for instance the word “bass” can be both a fish and a low, male voice type. Disambiguation clears it up.

I’m using the former definition in regards to what I experienced this past weekend. I was mired in ambiguity, betwixt and between (to use a cliché), and struggling with anxiety – both of known and unknown causes. Finding myself in a bit of an existential quandary and facing some long-standing demons, I started to listen to and read Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth.” In it, he suggests that we (many, if not most of us) are driven by ego and thoughts, that we define ourselves by what we think and believe rather than who we really are behind our thoughts, behind the received wisdom that colors so much of our thinking and our behaviors. He talks about how we often take (perceive) negative events (even something as impersonal as a snowstorm) personally, as if the weather cares about us one whit!, one iota!, and demonstrates the awakening power of separating one’s self from an emotion and recognizing it for what it is, thereby defanging it of its power to cause anguish.

While this entry will in no way be a comprehensive study of Tolle’s book (I’m still reading it, after all), I would like to share one remarkable re-casting of the word “sin” that he provides early in the book: He writes, “Literally translated from the ancient Greek in which the New Testament was written, to sin means to miss the mark, as an archer who misses the target, so to sin means to miss the point of human existence. It means to live unskillfully, blindly, and thus to suffer and cause suffering.” Wow. I love that definition. It makes so much more sense to me than my previous understanding of the word, which had something to do with doing bad things like stealing or lying or cheating on your taxes.

In this definition, Christianity’s “original sin” (a term with which I have never been comfortable) is not as harsh as it has always seemed to me. It is a missing of the mark, an error, or, for tennis fans, an unforced error. Isn’t that radically different than a clear “wrong?” Tolle writes of a “dysfunction inherent in the human condition.” This dysfunction is, largely, a confusion between the endless array of thoughts that stream through our minds constantly and the notion of who we really are. We think that our thoughts define who we are when, in reality, who we are is simply who we are. Behind the thoughts. In spite of the thoughts, perhaps. Our thoughts matter, of course, but they no more define who we are than what we order for lunch does.

My first posting to this blog was entitled “Embracing Ambiguity.” This evening, I am enjoying embracing disambiguity. Clarity. Peace. As Confucius said, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.” I think the beginning of being able to do that is recognizing that our feelings do not define us; they are part of us. Recognizing that our response to any given situation is more operative than the situation itself. As Tolle observes in his book, "The Power of Now," (and I'm paraphrasing here) even on the cloudiest day, the sun is still there, it’s still in the sky, we just can’t see it for a short time. But we can take comfort in the clear and certain knowledge that it is still on the job.

Namaste.

Not religious… but, Spiritual

2009-03-12T16:50:00.003-05:00

In her blog, “All Shall Be Well,” my mother writes the following, in part as a response to the first entry in this blog:

“I still struggle with what it means to be ‘spiritual’. I have often said the same thing myself, ‘I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.’ What does that mean to me? What does that mean to my son?”

While I certainly can’t ascertain precisely what this means to my mother, I can attempt to answer what it means to me, her son.

It is not an easy question to answer.

What chafes me about many (most?) organized religions is their dogma, their certainty that theirs is the one, true, right way – especially when this is extended to the absolutely ridiculous notion that all “nonbelievers” (meaning people of other faiths as well as true nonbelievers) shall be condemned to hell or some such excruciatingly painful place. I believe in Hell. It’s here. In the Elah Valley. In the deserts of Darfur. In Bagdhad or Bangladesh or the barrios of the Bronx. What I don’t believe is that Hell is a fiery place overseen by Beelzebub in red cape and horns.

So, why would I assert that “I am not religious, but I am spiritual?” I suppose it has something to do in how one looks at the women and men around us. My wife Gloria likes to ask: “Do you think man is inherently good or inherently evil?”

Well, we can all point to countless examples of man’s inhumanity towards man and of countless deeds that appear very evil indeed. On the other hand, we can see many examples of good if we allow ourselves to recognize them. (These acts tend to receive less newsprint than the latest murder or genocide or Ponzi scheme.)

I guess I embrace the word “spiritual” because I think there is more that binds us together than that drives us apart. We all must share the scarce resources of this tiny planet hurtling through space at I-can’t-recall-how-many-miles-an-hour. We all breathe from the same atmosphere, and we are all impacted by the billions of gallons of pollution that choke it on a daily basis. We all derive benefit from our various communities – be they friends, family, book discussion groups, or churches. (I’m not anti-church, per se, I just choose not to participate.)

So, these shared experiences, these communities that enrich and enliven and support our lives are perhaps what constitutes “spirituality” for me. I’ll borrow another phrase from my wife, who is also not religious, despite having been raised as a Catholic. She has told me several times about the experience of looking out on the vast, beautiful expanse of Lake Michigan, which is only a mile or so from our house. She’ll describe her awe and wonder and then thinking, or even saying aloud, “I didn’t make this.” Indeed. Whether you call it nature or God or Allah, not one of us can take credit for the grandeur of the Rockies or the lush beauty of the Everglades. Organized religion didn’t make it, either. And no matter what they tell you, they don’t know who did. This is the mystery. This is what “spiritual” means to me.

Cory Booker Is Da Bomb

2009-03-07T23:58:00.002-06:00

Okay folks. This guy is the real deal. Tonight, my wife and I watched Bill Maher’s show “Real Time” that originally aired last night (Friday, March 6th). Cory Booker, the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, was one of the panelists. This man is a breath of fresh air. He is a pragmatist and a positive person and a true American – what word should I use here? – I’m not particularly fond of the word “hero,” and I don’t know whether or not he’s done anything particularly heroic, so let me just say he’s an American. Who wants to find solutions.

He’s not interested in demonizing others and casting blame and pointing fingers, he’s interested in working to solve problems in our communities. Where we live. Where we work to pay our bills and raise our children and keep our streets safe. This man should be the second African-American elected president, after Barack Obama has served eight years!

There is wisdom in some of the simplest things we were taught when we were young. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Don’t take what isn’t yours. If you borrow a tool or a pen or an anything, put it back where you found it. These are not tough lessons to learn. But, apparently we need to learn them again as a country.

The real estate market didn’t implode by itself. It had help. It had help from greedy speculators who were looking to make a quick buck. It had help from normal folks who thought they could bite off more than they could chew. Regardless, we are all in the fix now, and we all need to try to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. We need to spend wisely and save what we can. We need to support those in our communities who need help. We need to not stuff money into our mattresses, but save it or invest it or spend it – wisely.

But who am I? I’m just another Chicago writer…

Dilated Eyes Can't See So Well...

2009-03-04T00:11:00.003-06:00

So about six or seven weeks ago, I went to see an eye doctor to get a new prescription for my glasses - tri-focals, or what they like to call "progressives" thank-you-very-much. During that exam, the doctor determined that there exists some sort of asymmetry between my optic nerves. The left didn't match the right or the other way around. Given that my insurance coverage for medical (as opposed to Vision Care - which optometry falls into, but ophthalmology does not), he was unable to perform the sorts of tests he thought I needed - namely, to determine if I have Glaucoma, so I was referred to another Eye Doc who works with the medical insurance I do carry.

Well, today was the day. Good news, I don't have glaucoma and the Eye Doc thinks it unlikely that I will develop it, although he would like the opportunity to torture me again in a year, if that's all right with me. The bad news. I couldn't see. All day. No reading, no writing. Blurry, blurry, blurry. No focus, no nothing. It is now a little after midnight and I left the doctor's office at approximately 11:15 am. Now, I can finally see, although, truth be told, it's still a little fuzzy.

Now as I write this I am thinking about a friend of mine who lost her sight completely for some time. She wrote a wonderful memoir about her experiences. It's called, "The Seeing Glass." Look it up, get it, read it, you'll enjoy it. So, I know that one day without clear vision and tight focus is not the worst thing in the world to happen. But WOW does it smack you upside the head in the sense of: "This is something I've been taking for granted!" I've taken for granted that I can pick up a book and read it when I want, or do a crossword puzzle when I want, or compose and reply to emails when I want, or write the revisions that I so desperately need to write on 2 or 3 stories currently in progress when I want.

Not so fast Buster. Not if you've just had your eyes dilated. So, I head off to bed soon, grateful that my lids will be covering my weary, blurry focusing eyes, and so very grateful that they will (most likely) focus well again in the morning.

Namaste.

A Life Less Ordinary

2009-02-26T00:38:00.004-06:00

The title begs the question: Less ordinary than what?

Does it mean being a Senator or a Congressperson? Does it mean being a celebrity or a best-selling author? Does it mean being a Captain of Industry or a Titan of Finance? Or, might it just mean holding more fast to one’s dreams than most of us do? Might it mean being willing to risk the scorn and/or ridicule of one’s peers, one’s family, one’s friends, to go after what it is you really want?

Last Sunday evening, the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” pretty much swept the Oscars. Best Picture, Best Director, and a bunch of other awards. Danny Boyle was the director. So, I decided to look into Danny Boyle’s previous movies on Netflix to see what I could see. “Trainspotting,” saw it. Liked it, but I’m kind of tired of watching movies about heroin addicts. Then I came across “A Life Less Ordinary.” It sounded intriguing. Starring Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz, with Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo as co-stars. I rented it. It also features strong performances by Ian Holm, Stanley Tucci, Dan Hedaya, and Tony Shalhoub, along with some delightful smaller parts by Judith Ivey and Maury Chaykin.

My wife Gloria and I watched the film earlier this evening, and to say that it was absolutely delightful is an understatement. But, I’m not really interested in reviewing the film here – I’m interested in exploring what “a life less ordinary” might really, actually mean.

Again, I bump against the question: Less ordinary than what?

Perhaps less ordinary than what we are programmed to desire: a good job, a nice house, a family with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. Perhaps it’s less ordinary than summers on the Cape or the Vineyard or the Keys and the sports car that no one ever drives because we wouldn’t want it to be ruined in case of an accident, now, would we? Perhaps it’s less ordinary than the PTA and the Lions Club and the Country Club and the teas after church on a Sunday morning.

But, it interests me. What defines a life less ordinary? Following our bliss? (As Joseph Campbell famously advised us all to do.) Daring to try something new? Something unexpected? Something risky or dangerous or worse?

I think it might be singing one’s own song. Or, as Henry David Thoreau put it, “If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.” Isn’t it funny that in the pop cultural sphere this quote has been transposed or transfigured to become something along the lines of one who “marches to the beat of a different drummer?” Thoreau writes of one who “loses pace with his companions,” not one who is marching.

I think many of us – perhaps most – live a life less ordinary. We might think we are living ordinary lives, but what is ordinary? What does it really mean? For some, ordinary is working eighty hours a week for nine months a year – this group of people might include high school teachers and video editors of network television shows. Are they ordinary? Others might gig on Saturday nights at grungy bars in the northern suburbs and then don a suit and tie for their week of work at an accounting firm in the Loop. Are they ordinary? Are you ordinary if you’ve written a song, a poem, a sonata? And, what if you’ve written these things, but no one has ever heard or read them? Well then, you MUST be ordinary, right? Let’s not forget that “The Confederacy of Dunces” was published posthumously, eleven years after John Kennedy Toole killed himself. Was he ordinary?

Are you? Am I?

Ignatius J. Reilly may have been a slob, but he was also one hell of a compelling character. And both he, and his creator lived a life less ordinary indeed.

Writer's Block and Tackle

2009-02-19T17:39:00.006-06:00

Robert Olen Butler, the Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, asserts (and, I’m paraphrasing here) that writer’s block is something that only thoughtful and likely very good writers suffer. He says that the Stephen Kings and John Grishams of the world do not suffer writer’s block because they are turning out work that comes merely from the head, not from a deeper, more unconscious (and therefore – at least he implies – more trustworthy and valuable) place. The dream space, he calls it.

Well, given my experiences of today, I must be a very thoughtful and likely very good writer indeed. At least, if Mr. Butler is correct in his assertion.

Today I began two different stories. The same thing happened with both of them. I’d developed a character, given her or him a deep yearning of one sort or another, and then – SPLAT!! Wall. What would the obstacle or obstacles be? How would they work to overcome those obstacles? What, in the end, would be their fate? (I know, I know, I need to let the characters tell me what their fate will be. I do, sometimes.) Everything I thought of seemed, well, trite, hackneyed, overdone, already explored.

I seemed to become overwhelmed – and, ultimately, short-circuited – by my ability to choose any fate for these characters. (This is a syndrome that my poet friend, Katerina, refers to as agoraphobia. An apt term, I think.) I could invent a horrible car accident or the murder of a previously close friend or the unexpected death of a parent. But which one of these? Which one would be most perfectly attenuated to the particular yearning such that my work would (to use Robert Olen Butler’s words again) thrum, thrum, thrum, with nary a twang?

I decided to stop for a bit. Did some cleaning. Organizing. Taking care of those pesky piles of special coupons, too many literary magazines to count, books to-be-read and recently read. I filed things away, cleaned the kitchen table, took the dogs for a longer walk than usual, despite the slippery sidewalks and the biting, cold wind that February in Chicago often delivers. I considered doing my laundry, but decided against it. It can wait until early next week and maybe it’ll be a little warmer then.

Last week I attended the AWP Conference here in Chicago. (AWP stands for “Association of Writers & Writing Programs.” I am a member by virtue of my matriculation in Spalding University’s MFA in Writing program.) The best part of the conference was seeing several of my Spalding colleagues – students and staff alike, as well as my good friend Andrew, who recently completed his MFA in Writing at Columbia College. The second best part of the conference was the book fair, where writers and editors of magazines and presses alike could appraise one another, dance about, and rub elbows. It was all, in the end, rather overwhelming. So many panel discussions, so many booths to try to visit at the book fair, and so so so many people!! Who knew there were so many writers in the world? One had to take care not to let it become depressing.

One of the panels I attended featured the aforementioned Robert Olen Butler, whose book From Where You Dream, I recently read. He has some very interesting ideas and speaks passionately about the central role of “yearning” in the creation of fiction. He is also, however, quite dogmatic and prescriptive that his is the one and only way to successfully write fiction. (If you are curious as to my response to this sort of certainty, please refer to the initial entry of this blog, posted yesterday afternoon.) Why must his be the only approach that is right or real or legitimate? Why can’t it just be a very useful, helpful, or good approach? I’m glad I heard his talk and I found several of his anecdotes very amusing, but… really! The one, true way to write fiction? Give me a break.

That said, he has a Pulitzer and I am struggling with today’s writer’s block and composing this blog entry. Maybe he’s right after all.

New blog, Change template

2009-02-19T01:08:00.002-06:00

My mother mentioned in an email that the white type against a black background was/is difficult to read - and I think she's absolutely right! So I have changed the template. I hope this is more pleasing, easier to read, aesthetically... uh, er, better.

(I recently finished watching Oliver Stone's film "W" so the uhs and ers are just teeming in my head now.)

The movie? Only okay. Josh Brolin did a masterful job, but there was too much caricature. Too many cheap shots against a man for whom I have little to no sympathy. Richard Dreyfuss was delicious as Cheney, Jeffery Wright apt as Colin Powell, and James Cromwell perfect as "Poppy" Bush, but, really, do we need to be so darned literal in the casting choices? Where is the imagination? Frankly, I think the movie would have been a heck of a lot better if more was fictionalized. Like what Shakespeare did. He did pretty well at that, didn't he?

You could have a son whose powerful father is disappointed in him and he rises to the highest level of power and fucks things up big-time because he is seeking the approval of his father. Okay? This is what happened. But, the likenesses, etc. are irrelevant, in fact, distracting. This story is mythic, gothic, any other -ic you might wish to apply. Just my late night ramblings on "W."

Off to bed and ready for another day. (Oh, and the weathermen lied. Snow DID accumulate this evening. I shoveled it.) Ahhh, winter.

Embracing Ambiguity

2009-02-18T15:54:00.001-06:00

A friend of mine has a new blog called Lost Glove Found. Another couple of friends - Katerina and Andrew most especially - have been encouraging me to start a blog.

So here I am. At the beginning of a journey of unknown duration, no destination in mind.

Would somebody please tell Roland Burris that the time for him to go has come? I know, The Chicago Tribune called on him to resign today. Good for them. I also sent an email to Senator (barely) Burris's office today asking him to resign.

I'm tired of Chicago and Illinois politics making us look like jerks to the rest of the world. Sure, some of us are jerks in this town, but not everyone.

Anyone who has met my wife can tell you without fear of exaggeration that she is not even remotely jerk-like. Don't take my word for it. Ask anyone who's met her. It's true.

It's snowing again this afternoon but at least the weather folks are saying there is little chance of significant accumulation today. We've had far too much snow in Chicago already this winter. But, enough about that - I certainly have no wish to make this blog simply a vessel for my whining or complaining about the snow. (What some don't know is that the spring, summer, and autumn seasons here in Chicago are so glorious that living through winter makes it all worth it. That is, the year's that we have an autumn this is the case. Last year, we went from 70 degrees on the glorious Election Day to minus fifteen a few days later.)

Some Things I'll Share Before I Close:

There's a very nifty online literary magazine called Public-Republic (http://www.public-republic.net/) I encourage you to visit. They've published some of my recent writing.
I am relieved beyond my ability to express in words that the long eight years of "W" have come to an end.
I am thrilled that Barack Obama and his family are in the white house!
I am currently pursuing (that's precisely the right word - it feels, at times, like I'm chasing it down, running at top speed, lungs aching, breath short, feet beating on the pavement, wind rushing by my face) an MFA in Writing with Spalding University's Brief-Residency Program. I recommend it highly for anyone considering an MFA in Writing.
I am grateful beyond measure for the writing community into which I've become immersed through Spalding.
I don't see the dentist as frequently as I should, but have begun to work on rectifying that. Next visit, next Wednesday. Honest. Made the appointment earlier today.
I am mistrustful of organized religion, but deeply respectful of spiritual people.
I distrust anyone who says they know the one, best, most surefire way to accomplish something. (See above.)
I embrace ambiguity even as it causes me no end of grief. Sometimes.
I'm learning not to title work until it's already been written. And read aloud. At least once.
Let me be clear: Ambiguity in writing is not something I embrace. I think writing should be as specific, detailed, nuanced, subtle, thriving, moving, and alive. Ambiguity in life, it seems to me, is unavoidable.

If you are still here, thanks so much for reading.