Sticks, Stones, and Shirley Sherrod

Posted on July 25, 2010 by nowandthenadays

Long, long ago, grown-ups taught me to respond to schoolyard taunts with a dignified “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!”  It was reasonably effective because even if the offender responded by escalating the taunt to something like, “You are ten times stupider than a stupid-head,” I could repeat my “sticks and stones” mantra till he or she got thoroughly tired of hearing it.  I miss those days.

Sadly, the world of child’s play where the sticks and stones mantra was meaningful, no longer exists.  Verbal and psychological abuse have been ratcheted up to an art form by groups like the “mean girls” immortalized in film.  Nowadays, the mean girls and boys are even more destructive, having a wide selection of technological assists like individual phones and social (or anti-social)  networks. Parents, teachers, and administrators spend countless hours worrying about this bullying and how to protect children from the unmitigated cruelty of their peers.  In this context, a few broken bones might be a preferable substitute for the lies and ugliness being broadcast through cyberspace.

It’s not just a little ironic that the progress of this civilization has led to the development of tools with such destructive potential.  The seeds of destruction can be sown through cable television, internet social networks, blogs, websites, and cell phones.  While we achieve higher levels of technological progress, we are becoming less civilized.  Technology seems to have subverted any appreciation of the value of truth and the rules of fair play or simply doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.  Unfortunately, young people are not gifted with perfect judgment, and they make mistakes.  Always have and always will, no matter how many times we say that they should know better.  What has changed is how the effect of a mistake can be amplified by being broadcast to the world with a few keystrokes.  More than one young person has chosen suicide as an escape from ridicule, bullying, and betrayal via our hi-tech modes of dispersion.

It’s hard to censure youth culture when its members are simply imitating what they assimilate from our so-called civilized society as a whole.  They hear elders and pundits who tell lies, half truths or sensationalize the trivial, e.g., politicians who call the President a liar, groups who turn a war hero into a military slacker, pundits who spin black into white, and paparazzi who stalk others for intimate photographs for which they get big bucks.  No one is beyond attack or smear.

And even our own words can come back to harm us, as Shirley Sherrod found out this week when her statements were played out of context on the internet in a snippet of video promoted by Andrew Breitbart, professional smear artist.  Did anyone question the context?  Did anyone in a position of moral authority and power (the NAACP) sit down and talk with Ms. Sherrod or ask to see the tape from which the offensive piece had been cut?  Did her bosses at the USDA stop to think that – considering the source – it might not have been what it seemed?  No, she was  accused, convicted, and executed almost in one fell swoop.

There seem to be no rules anymore.  And what’s worse is that people who have fought long and hard to achieve fairness threw her summarily under the bus, virtually without blinking.  As for the USDA bosses, a few days ago, I would have never conceived that a federal agency would dismiss an employee without as much as a hearing to gather facts and listen to her side of the story.

One of the things that attracted me to a legal career is the existence of clear rules governing the courtroom.  Granted, bad things can still happen and outcomes can be questioned.  It can seem like armed combat – but the weapons are rule books and everyone has equal access to them.  The accused always gets a chance to tell her side of the story to the fact finder(s).  No one can put a document into evidence unless it has been authenticated first.  Participants must identify themselves and swear to telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  And if someone shows just a part of a document or videotape, there are rules of evidence providing that the other side can object and require that the entire document or videotape be shown.  Invoking this rule of the courtroom would have guaranteed that the folks who “convicted” Ms. Sherrod  would have heard all of her speech and how she overcame her racial bias against white farmers, helping them simply because they needed that help.

While lawyers generally get a bad rap in our society, I believe the legal system guarantees as much fairness as we are going to find anywhere, most of time.  And as things degenerate in the high-tech jungle of the real world, I like knowing that there is still a sanctuary for fair play, where a referee in a robe takes the rules seriously and will force – in most cases – the participants to play fair, even if it isn’t in their nature.  I like spending my days in the legal world, because – even while I’ve encountered bullies imitating legal professionals – there are far more of the other kind, those who suit up and honor the lawyer’s creed every single day.

To those legal bullies, I can just say in perfectly civilized legalese, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

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Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming!

Posted on July 19, 2010 by nowandthenadays

In case you noticed my absence, I escaped on vacation last week and didn’t have an entry to post before leaving.  Fortunately, I’ve been saving some comments from readers that I’ve been wanting to share with others  and now is the perfect time.

In a couple of the posts, including “Bury My Heart in Austin,” I mentioned Bicycle Annie as an Austin “character” from the 60s and 70s.  My friend Adrienne wrote that – contrary to my description of Bicycle Annie as tolerating no interlopers – she actually tolerated at least one.  Adrienne says, “ I was sitting at a sidewalk café just off Guadalupe when she walked by, pushing her bicycle as always.  For some reason, I asked if she’d like to join me and she graciously accepted.  She sat across from me and was as proper as any of my friends in the Austin Lawyers’ Wives’ Club or the Symphony League.  In spite of her appearance, on closer inspection she looked very clean and there was no odor whatsoever which, I’m embarrassed to say, surprised me.  We had a lovely conversation; she was completely lucid and very charming.  She told me that her father was a professor and she’d been raised very properly; she said she’d married the love of her life, who died young [I don’t remember how or when].  She claimed that after that, she couldn’t bear to be indoors and had never stopped grieving for him.  I don’t know how much of the story was true and how much was fabricated for my benefit—or hers.  Her grammar and manners were excellent and she seemed quite intelligent.  The more she talked, the more I was able to see beyond her actual appearance to what she might have been under different circumstances.  When we parted, she was lovely—as if she’d just met an old friend for a cup of tea; neither of us regarded it as a handout.  I wish I could have done more, but I don’t think it would’ve been accepted.  I’ll always be grateful for that encounter; it changed how I looked at her forever.”

In regard to that same post – “Bury My Heart in Austin” – about the Austin Heritage Society’s Historic Homes Tour and my speculating how helping to build his grandfather’s house might have influenced Robert Redford’s future vision as a film maker, I received a fascinating email  from an energy consultant/dancer/choreographer living in San Francisco.   Maya is one of the most accomplished 20-somethings I’ve been lucky enough to meet and her comment here links architecture and dance in a way that helped me understand choreography from a different angle:

“Architecture seems to be a very-present theme for me lately, in the likes of your inquiry into the impact of Robert Redford’s grandfather’s architecture on his filmmaking craft.  In fact, I read this one dance review comparing the choreographic process to architecture, which I found to be hugely insightful and very useful.  The review described a dance piece called Rammed Earth, referring to the housebuilding technique where dirt is lifted from the site and mixed with water and clay to be formed into particularly solid walls.  I like the concept because it clarifies the character of choreography as an art form.  The problem with dance is that many people try to solicit direct meaning from movement, as though it were a language and a story can be told by each shape of the body or sequence.  For me, dance does not do this well – it is too abstract to be looked at in this same narrative way that writing and, often, music and visual art are viewed.  Rather, a choreographer envisions form in the space he or she occupies, and carves walls from the space to solidify that form.  This metaphor of rammed earth helped me to clarify this concept: dance does not narrate a story, rather, it solidifies one possibility of the body in space, achieving function and aesthetic.”

As for my post “Lessons in Rainbows,” I should have consulted first with my sister Alison for more details.  Why do I think, as the older sister, I have the complete store of family memories?  As many times as I’ve been proven wrong on this point, you’d think I would learn.   Alison remembers Lorenzo (our family’s “Pat”), much like I did, but even more vividly, as she recounts here:

“My memories of Lorenzo were of this large woman in flip flops, white shirts, capri pants, and bright red lipstick on her huge smile.  Whenever she came to Grandmother’s house, she arrived like a whirlwind, talking a mile a minute while she cleaned and, alternatively, berating grandmother – like a mother to a lazy but much-loved child – and telling wildly funny stories that had everyone laughing . . .  Mother never kept a clean house and I was a slob too.  I lived in mortal fear when Grandmother would come to Austin to visit because she swore she would throw out anything she found on the floor, including my favorite “little pillow.” One time she brought Lorenzo, who jumped all over Grandmother for mistreating me by threatening to throw out my things.  I was a precious little girl, Lorenzo told Grandmother, and it was well and proper that someone should be picking up after me.  Needless to say, I adored her.”

I love your comments, folks!  Inspiring you to remember things from your thenadays or simply connecting you with new ways of looking at things now, is my aspiration and inspiration!

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Keepin’ Up My Coolness Cred

Posted on July 5, 2010 by nowandthenadays

The truth is that for many years I’ve felt my “coolness” factor dwindling in the music department.  I can’t distinguish between Pearl Jam and Oasis most of the time, and I can’t tell you the name of a single song by Vampire Weekend.  Some stuff just sounds like whining that shifts into shrieking.  Hip people like this stuff.

I sensed a momentary resurgence of cool when the Stones came to Austin a couple of years ago and I danced and “jumpin’-jack-flashed” along with the audience . . . all of us jamming like the ‘60s were back!  My older son and daughter-in-law were brought along as witnesses and both were impressed with my ability to time travel.

When Rolling Stone magazine issued its Special Collectors Edition of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, I was delighted to see that practically all of the great songs belonged to “my generation,” as The Who would say.  It was worth $10 to buy the magazine so the milk in my shopping cart wouldn’t curdle as I pored over  it, verifying that we knew good music when we heard it!   In the top 10, first was  Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” and afterwards in order, “Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” “Imagine,” “What’s Goin’ On,” “Respect,” “Good Vibrations,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Hey, Jude,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and “What I’d Say?”  With the exception of song Number 9, sung by newbie Nirvana, most self-respecting Baby Boomers could sing any of these songs in their sleep…..after all, we probably first listened to this music in an altered state of consciousness.

It’s not that I’m hopelessly lost in the 60s and 70s.  I liked Michael Jackson, and my kids’ interest in music of the 80s, 90s and 00s, allowed me to attain some appreciation of Madonna and bands like Green Day and Coldplay.  At times, I’ve strived to understand my younger son’s  fascination with Radiohead, listening to hours of their music.

That was hard (apology to you R-heads), but when hip hop and rap came along I balked.  Rap music?  Not too many years ago, I would have said, “That’s a line I will not cross.”   Such music, I would say,  seemed characterized by a monotonous beat, not much melody, talking rather than singing, and the lyrics – assuming I could catch a few – are … hmmm … a bit “unpleasant.”   Rap was the final frontier and I was not buying a ticket for that trip.

And then, my younger son, who wrote and performed music for a number of years, collaborated with a long-time Austin friend and co-worker, writing some rap songs and making videos which they posted on YouTube.  From my un-hip Baby Boomer perspective the most interesting fact about these rap songs written and performed under their stage name, “Sniper Twins,” is that I like them — and my equally un-hip friends like them!!!   In fact, there seems to be a universal appeal, as demonstrated  by a comment regarding one of the rap songs about good nutrition called  “Salad Wrap.  This woman writes, “I know that this probably isn’t your target audience, but my two-year-old LOVES this song. Anytime my husband or I go over to the computer, pretty soon there he is saying, ‘Shake the ranch….shake the ranch.’   Then once it is playing, he does a little ranch shaking dance.  Thankfully, this is one song that my husband and I also thoroughly enjoy listening to, so we don’t mind playing it for him.”

In fact, I recommend all dieters and nutrition conscious folks (along with two-year-olds) listen to “Salad Wrap” at least once a day.  Along with its catchy beat, it inspires me to go for green veggies when visions of Blue Bell ice cream appear like annoying computer  pop-ups.  After all, how often do you hear a song where “big boy” gets rhymed with “bok choy?” Here are some other lines:

“Lady’s so lucky to find a brother
who’s blood pressure ain’t about to rupture
keep it on the low, low with cucumbers
fried food, hell naw, not for supper.”

And then there’s web favorite, “Computer Friends [Stack the Memory]” with another former Austinite, Rob, and lines that will make even the nerdiest computer geek feel cool:

“Despite my fiber optic cable ethernet
my quadruple core processor is working up a sweat
something slowing down my system that I can’t even see
my folder’s full of cookies, eating up my memory.”

And if you want to see candy-making set to rap music that sounds like bad dudes getting ready to make a move on a rival gang, watch “Chocolate Shoppe,” filmed in the Hershey’s chocolate factory.  Factory workers, take heed!  You can be “bad dudes” even while wearing hair nets!

I’ve heard rap music compared favorably to written poetry, and I wouldn’t necessarily dispute that.  I just haven’t made the move from Sniper Twins to the more mainstream stuff, like Snoop Dog or Puff Daddy on a regular basis.  But it still gives me a bump on the coolness meter. Like, if I’m in a group of young hipsters who start talking about rap music, I can always  say, “By the way, have you seen those rap videos on YouTube by the Sniper Twins?  Talk about great beats!”

I don’t think I need to tell them that my son just happens to be one of the Sniper Twins . . . that would just detract from my coolness cred.   Just let me regain a bit of “cool” before I start collecting social security!

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Too Late for the “Austin Worth Keeping” Festival

Posted on June 28, 2010 by nowandthenadays

Thanks to the H.E.B. grocery chain, the “Keep Austin Weird Fest” had its 8th annual go-round.  Viewing photos of people (I think) arrayed in various versions of weirdness, I began reflecting on Austin’s claim as a home of the weird.

My impression as a long-time Austinite is that most people, especially newbies, think Austin has always been a hotbed of funkiness, live music, and zany characters.  The truth is that Austin’s longer history has been that of “Sleepy College Town, U.S.A.,” by which I mean laid back, unexciting, and not especially unique, at least not in the “weirdness” department.  Admittedly, we’ve  had folks like “Bicycle Annie” who eccentrically pedaled an apparent mental disturbance along the public streets, but every town has an Annie or two.  I wish it weren’t so, but their plights remind us to feel gratitude.

Even the not-so-weird festivals like South by Southwest and the Austin City Limits Music Festivals are of recent vintage.  Before they came along, the most exciting event for many years was the Austin Aqua Festival – an event that took our minds off of August heat and humidity.  The big draws were the noisy drag boat races on Town Lake, but there were also skiing contests, water parades, beauty pageants, and a “Battle of the Bands,” a competition among our decidedly “unweird” local bands.

Aqua Festival entertainment also featured a showcase for local citizens to perform their talent on a stage before a local audience on the shores of Festival Beach.   After all these years, I’m still awed by how persuasive my guitar teacher – Austin’s legendary Wayne Wood – must have been to get me on that stage with another student, Claudia, co-sufferers of fourth-grade girl timidity.  Needless to say, our fellow-Austinites did not get even a whiff of weirdness as we performed the popular folk hit Green, Green in our matching gray skirts, white blouses, and saddle shoes.   We oozed apple pie in small town America.

Back in March, 2000, American Statesman humorist, John Kelso described what he remembered about “old” Austin, defining “old” as being the 1970s and “before cappuccino and dot-com were in the vocabulary” of Austinites.  He waxed nostalgically about times before the onslaught of national chains:  “Where Wendy’s now sells square burgers on S. Lamar Blvd., a trashy little combination beer joint and live music club called the Split Rail once attracted a mix of hippies and cowboys, brought together by an appreciation of country rock and getting loaded.”  Looking back on pre-1980s Austin, he said: “Sixth Street had clubs, but they were mostly beer joints with jukeboxes, pool tables, and personalities . . . the major smog problem was the cloud of pot smoke that wafted out back of Spellman’s, a long-gone hangout on West Fifth Street.”  The good old days.

Responding to Kelso, Ben Wear (a 1971 graduate of Austin High and long-time transportation columnist at the Statesman’) wrote a piece entitled,  “Austin’s good old days really weren’t that good.”  From his “true old-timer’s perspective,” he said, “Austin in the 1960s and early 1970s was pretty laid-back.  But, it was also really, really boring . . . pretty much Omaha with trees.”  My own memory corresponds with Ben’s on several points, including Sixth Street:   “. . . aside from those seedy . . . bars Kelso looks back on with so much fondness, Sixth Street night life was mostly confined to the Pecan Street Café and a corps of transvestite prostitutes who hung out on nearby corners.”   About Austin dining establishments, Ben noted, “There were maybe 20 restaurants worth mentioning, about half of which served Tex-Mex that all seemed to be cooked by the same guy.”  Kelso’s “off-the-wall Austin,” Ben concluded, is a “mythical place” that began with the decision “to turn an old armory south of the river into longnecks-and-longhair heaven.”

Ben and I diverge a bit on the college bar scene.  He remembered the “. . . Hole in the Wall on the Drag and a couple of uptown places called the Blue Parrot and Rick’s American Bar where you could listen to a guy named Bernie sing while playing a white baby grand.”  But, he neglected to mention the Chequered Flag (a.k.a. Castle Creek) on the corner of 15th and Lavaca where you could hear Michael Martin Murphey, B.W. Stevenson, and Willie Nelson, and the dance clubs on East Riverside catering to college students beginning to populate the area.  And Ben never found the Hungry Horse on San Jacinto where a local band, where a local group called Jabbernow convinced us they were channeling Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and a bit of Young on Thursday nights.   Very laid-back and unweird.

Reflecting on the “Keep Austin Weird” movement, I wonder what Austin we are really striving to keep?  We’ve witnessed our open areas being paved over by restaurant chains, malls, and other developers into a sad Starbuckian sameness.  Sure, we want to keep our Split Rails, Armadillos, Hungry Horses, and the other local venues that make Austin special, but we let most of them slip through our fingers long ago when we took the exit ramp from the boring Sleepy College Town route to zip along the big city fast lane.  But, the further that Austin has traveled in search of something that looks like progress, the less weird it has become.

Now, with a few exceptions, all we have left are a bunch of people dressing up as if it were Halloween and calling it a weird festival.  No one seems to realize that the Austin worth keeping has already left the building.

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Take Me to Your (Sucky) Leader!!!

Posted on June 21, 2010 by nowandthenadays

Call me hyper-critical, but when Barack Obama was elected to the presidency, I admit to being pleased that we once again had a leader who spoke in complete sentences with proper syntax, grammar, and all the bells and whistles of a person with a secondary education.   I also imagined less hot air spewing from those specialists of naysaying and more of that post-election kumbaya-ing.

I was so wrong.  Simply put, no American president can do anything right.  We might as well elect a bumbling fool rather than a Harvard-educated, constitutional scholar.  At least, our expectations would be suitably low.

For example, in the BP crisis, Americans cannot fathom why President Obama doesn’t pull out his magic key to stop the oil flowing into the Gulf.  How could he have let it happen?  Why can’t he stop it?  Why doesn’t he declare war and nuke those snippy redcoats once and for all?  People seem to be divided as to whether he should let BP continue efforts to stop the flow of oil instead of having some unidentified crew of federal roughnecks do the job, despite the fact that the government doesn’t explore for oil and gas, and therefore, doesn’t employ such folks.  Outsource the job to Exxon?

The consensus, however, seems to boil down to this: he needs to emote more and learn to give better speeches.  In other words, he needs to communicate that “he feels the pain.”  Not that he should say those words, since President Clinton has a de facto copyright on that handy gem.   Nor can he grab a bullhorn and yell out to the Gulf coast residents, “I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you!” Aside from them actually hearing him, that’s President Bush’s signature move.  President Obama, however, took a cue from Bush’s signature absence during Katrina and actually visited the Gulf area, not just once, but several times.  But those visits didn’t lead to any significant increase on the national emote-a-meter.

David Remnick, editor-in-chief of the New Yorker magazine characterized the situation well: the obsession of the press has been drama criticism as if they are on the fifth row watching a play and analyzing the President’s emotions.  So it was after his speech on Tuesday night, and the critics spoke:  thumbs down.  Robert Reich, former Clinton Labor Secretary, complained that the speech was “vapid.”  Rachel Maddow of MSNBC said “it didn’t do anything for her,” so she rewrote the speech and aired a vigorous performance as “fake Obama.”  According to opinion analytics company Crimson Hexagon, of the almost 90,000 Facebook/Twitter users who commented on the speech, 11% thought that Obama’s public speaking skills were lacking: i.e. he used too many hand gestures, he looked like he was reading from a tele-prompter.  Gail Collins of the NY Times called the speech a “disappointment” because she said we wanted him to declare war on the oil companies and all he did was talk about a new energy policy.

The day after the speech, it got really interesting.  The President met with BP executives, which resulted in a BP offer of $20 billion to help victims of the disaster.  (Let’s not declare war until that money has been deposited.)   But even getting $20 billion from BP the easy way (by agreement rather than warfare or litigation) wasn’t good enough for the American public.  First, after the BP Chairman’s apology to Americans, wherein he said that BP cared for the “small people” – everyone had to have a hissy fit about the word “small” even when they knew that his native language was Swedish and that he was simply contrasting a big company to an individual or family business.  He obviously didn’t intend to insult anyone.  And, by the way, Mr. Chairman, if you want to give me a few billion dollars, you may refer to me as “fat” instead of “voluptuous.”  I’ll know what you really mean.

(As to the next day’s lambast by a Texas congressman of President Obama for blackmailing a corporation, I’ll defer to others to explain or send you to google.  It’s beyond this Texan’s pain threshold to describe.)

But later in the week, singer/songwriter Carole King sounded a hopeful note against negativity.  While discussing her reunion tour with James Taylor on Morning Joe, the oil spill comes up in the conversation and she says that she thinks the President is doing great and that he’s not a magician.  She asks us to consider the following analogy: “I’m on stage with James Taylor . . . and what if there were people in the audience who were yelling out, “YOU SUCK!!!”  How functional do you think we would be?  That’s what people are doing to the President!”

Frankly, I think Americans are locked into this “YOU SUCK” approach to free speech and government criticism.  I am reminded of an op-ed piece that Russell Baker, NY Times satirical columnist, wrote in 1994 during the Clinton administration, about the prospect of being president.  Here’s an excerpt:

Many have pleaded with me not to seek the Presidency in 1996, but I must. Call it selfish, but I yearn for the utter humiliation that only the Presidency can bestow. . . . I want to be scolded by columnists and editorial writers for not possessing sagacity and cunning as profound as theirs. . . . I want to watch telegenic journalists tell the entire country what needs to be done to perfect society and belittle me for not doing it. . . . I want to be held in contempt by shrewd veterans of Washington politics, and not only that: I want to be denounced by them as a rustic dolt so innocent of Washington’s magnificent iniquities that I am unfit to lead the country. . . .

I guess I just need to accept the fact that we Americans like our presidents boiled, broiled, barbequed, and basted often.   And our presidents need to accept the fact that no matter what they do, citizens of this fair country will sit in the audience and yell, “YOU SUCK!”

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Grand Finales

Posted on June 15, 2010 by nowandthenadays

Since I recently mentioned sending the Sports section to the recycle bin as soon as I unfurl the newspaper, many of you are probably dying to know, if not Sports, then what?  At the risk of sounding morbid, I admit that I go straight to the obituaries.  I may glance at some front-page headlines to see whether our governor has lost his hair or gone hiking, but my first order of business is checking on those who have checked out since the previous day.

Yes, this interest may be a sign of advancing age, but the truth is that I’ve been reading obituaries for many years.  Being a life-long Austinite, the death notices have included many who have played roles in my history, as classmate, co-worker, and friend or their relatives.  What keeps me hooked, however, is reading about people I never knew – about their dreams, loves, passions, and accomplishments, along with their connection with this city and its institutions.  So many times, I find myself thinking, “I wish I’d known this person.”

I am not alone as I have several colleagues who share in this interest.  Nancy or Cynthia will alert me – and I, them – when one of us comes across a particularly noteworthy notice.   We speculate as to what was not said, as well as what was.  If the cause of death is unmentioned, we look to the mentioned charities for clues.  (Cause of death is increasingly important given our place on the actuarial tables.)  And we have reached a consensus that some people should think more seriously about their obit pictures during their lifetimes.

Some obituaries are like short stories that leave you wanting more.   One woman had “amassed an impressive collection of cocktail napkins and wrapping paper.”  Were they used or new?  Who in the family would keep the collection?   At the notice’s end it says “Mom, we promise we are wiping our feet before entering the house and using coasters.”  Would they also be using her cocktail napkins?

And then there are some that tell you everything you need to know.  Mr. Clark’s death notice says that he “who had tired of reading obituaries noting other’s courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle as a result of an automobile accident.”  It was also reported of Fred, “During his life he excelled at mediocrity.”  Fred himself suggested that “in lieu of flowers, you buy a sizeable amount of alcohol and get rip roaring drunk at home with someone you love or hope to make love to.”  Read all of this charming obituary at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/timesdispatch/obituary.aspx?n=frederic-arthur-clark-fred&pid=18382676

And then, there are some that leave you scratching your head:  “She was born of [mother’s name] and [father’s name], a pair of restless school dropouts who accounted for a combined dozen marriages in their lifetimes.”

Most folks are pretty nonchalant about their obituaries.  After all, they will be gone, so why should they care?  Whoever is left will worry about that, they might reason.  I know many people who don’t even care what music is played at their memorial (or celebration of life) service.  (For the record, I want Sinatra’s “Fly Me to Moon.”)  But, when someone in the future wants to dig us up, metaphorically of course, that obituary may be the only retrievable piece of information. That assumes, of course, that newspapers don’t also die.

But, in the more short-term, I’d like friends, acquaintances, and non-friends alike to read about me when I reach the end of the trail and think, “I’m glad I knew this person,” or “I would have liked to know this person.”  My co-obituary aficionados agree and worry about leaving obituaries for family members to do.  Cynthia, still in her prime, told me the other day, “My husband is an engineer, and if left to him, it will be facts and numbers.  No color, no life!”  We agreed that she deserved more and that he should be instructed to turn over his draft  to our review committee (Nancy and me if she goes first) and let us add some verve.   Who wants dry  prose following them around in eternity?

My friend Liz and I discussed this subject and in a moment of high spirits, we decided to write each other’s obituary.  I got no further than the first sentence of hers, but it seemed a good beginning: “You may not have heard them, but on (date in far future), Mary Elizabeth “Liz” Bills passed on and the members of this world’s animal kingdom let out a collective howl of woe that told the heavens Lizzie was on her way.”

My sentence wasn’t in her obituary a few years later when she died unexpectedly.  In fact, I had forgotten all about it, so great was the shock of her death at age 49.  I don’t think her family would have used it anyway, since it was, perhaps, a bit dramatic.  But, along with regretting that she didn’t have more time to do things with the animals (and some people) she loved,  I regret not having a finished an obituary that she might have approved.  I didn’t see the one she wrote for me, but I’m pretty sure it began with something like, “Jeffee’s adventures in hair color have officially ended.”  She was always much more terse than I.

Truth is, it’s hard to think about death and crank out obituaries when the subject is still living life in full gear.  That, of course, is why most of them end up being on the dry side.  But just in case I don’t get around to mine, I’m putting in a request for something like “Jeffee was a nice person who, after her boys were grown and all the dishes were washed, picked up her passion for the written word – a passion that sustained her spirit, soothed her soul, and brought pleasure to others for the rest of her years.”

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Lessons in Rainbows

Posted on June 7, 2010 by nowandthenadays

This weekend, Austin hosted a variety of events to mark the Pride movement, sponsored by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community.  This reminded me of my own rainbow education that began – not here in Austin, as one would think – but in 1950s Dallas, Texas.

I spent my youngest years either living with or visiting my maternal grandparents, and there was where my barometer of normality was set.  In the context of everyday life with them, I was introduced to Lorenzo, an individual who came to the house about twice a week to do laundry, ironing, and other cleaning chores for my grandmother.  The biweekly visits had begun in the late 1930s, before the advent of washing machines, when getting clothes clean was a laborious task largely accomplished by using big tubs of water on the back porch or in the yard.  Lorenzo was strong and could manage this laundry work easily enough.  By the time I came along, washing machines were doing the hard part and he did ironing and other tasks around the household.

My issue with Lorenzo was that I never knew whether he was man or woman – he was the original “Pat.”   And no one called him “Lorenzo.”  Instead, for whatever reason, he was called “LorenzAH.”  Not that I was familiar with the name Lorenzo, anyway.  But it wasn’t Henry and it wasn’t Mabel.  Since the name didn’t offer any clues, I considered the fact that he wore his hair rather long, touching the shoulders.  No men sported hair that long back then.  I remember asking my grandmother many times, “Is Lorenzah a boy or a girl?” Alternatively, she would respond with “It’s not polite, young lady, to ask questions like that,” or “Don’t you be so nosy, young lady,” and the truly mysterious, “Lorenzah is just Lorenzah.”

Even though I grew up and came to accept, “Lorenzah is just Lorenzah” as the final answer, I recently decided I needed a definitive, if somewhat  belated, answer to my questions.  I asked my aunt to tell me about Lorenzo.  She explained that he was born and considered to be male, but that his mother noticed some anatomical differences and kept him at arm’s length as a result.  When he began to menstruate, the mother’s employer, a wealthy Dallas woman, took Lorenzo to a doctor who explained hat he was a hermaphrodite (which now we refer to as a sufferer of a disorder of sexual development or DSD).  Subsequently, the employer took him under her wing (given the mother’s distinct lack of interest in him by this point) and taught him how to do things around the house.  She then helped him find jobs among friends and friends of friends, which is how he ended up working for my grandmother.

From what my aunt remembered, he could have gone either way in the gender department, but he preferred being a woman.  He dressed ostensibly female until he got tired of being picked up by the Dallas Police Department who continually arrested him on morals or disturbing the peace charges.  My grandfather would often be called to bail him out of jail.  After a prison sentence of about a year or so, he and the police agreed that he wouldn’t appear in public wearing dresses if they would leave him alone.  I seem to recall a dress or two and maybe even the outlines of a bra, but mostly I visualize his stocky frame covered in twill pants and a white shirt.  While dressed like a man, however, he lumbered through my grandparent’s craftsman bungalow keeping up a constant patter and laughing a high-pitched cackle of amusement that, one suspects, might have been mimicry of his own mother’s voice.

Family lore has it that he gave my aunt her first bath when she was brought home from the hospital.  My aunt also told me that he was very protective of her and my mother – my grandmother couldn’t criticize either one of them when Lorenzo was around.  When grandmother complained that my mother changed clothes too many times during a day, Lorenzo would pipe up with, “Now, Mrs. G, who does the washin’ and ironin’  around here?  I do! And I say that girl can change her clothes as much as she wants to!!” As she recalled her long relationship with Lorenzo, my aunt said of him, “He was probably the one person in my childhood who loved me unconditionally.”

All during my childhood, Lorenzo was there.  He was a part of the fabric of my grandparents’ life and it seemed normal that one should know a black person of indeterminate sex and that he could be a protective mother hen of young girls against my grandmother – no mean feat.  It also seemed normal that our family would help him wrangle with his police problems when needed and that these problems would be of little concern to the household as long as Grandaddy was able to spring him.

Even in our post-civil rights act, politically correct times, I imagine many in this country would consider it a bit odd to have such a person working in their home, taking care of their children.  They would be fearful of the values that another Lorenzo with all the gender-disorder baggage might instill in their impressionable young girls.  And yet, half a century later, I was struck by my aunt’s comment.  Her memories are not about interracial relations or gender disorders, but about shared humanity and the unconditional love of one human being for another…a rainbow that colors her heart.

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End Me Your Ear

Posted on June 1, 2010 by nowandthenadays

This just in …. I have two nominations for the JEESH (Jeffee’s Excellent English Spoken Here) Award.  As you will remember, no nominations will be accepted for someone who uses the word “absolutely” in lieu of the single syllable “yes.”  But there is another major hurdle for a JEESH nominee, and that is the following:  the nominee cannot have been heard using the phrase “at the end of the day” unless it has something to do with the actual end of an actual day.  In other words, no one should be saying “at the end of the day” as a metaphor to mean “in the end,” “in the final analysis,” or “after we’ve looked at this from all directions,” etc.

You see, the phrase “at the end of the day” has a real and useful meaning that has nothing to do with the “some future day” meaning that commentators and policy wonks in the media have foisted on it, instead of using words that have that precise meaning.  Even the more poetic “when all is said and done” is perfectly understood as meaning “at the end of our review” or “when all the votes are counted” or “when all policies have been implemented” or whatever point needs to be made about something that will happen in the future.

The difference is that if you use “end of the day” correctly, you have to clarify that you mean the actual end of that or some other specific day.  As soon as I’ve uttered it, I feel the need to add descriptors such as “today,” “by 5:00 p.m.,” “before the stroke of midnight,” or “before you go to bed.”

With “at the end of the day,” I am reminded of other metaphors such as “at the end of the trail,” to refer to death, or “the end of the world” to signify big tragedy, “the end of my rope,” to express the end of patience, and “the end all and be all,” as a reference to the essential factor .  In the right place and at the right time, they are perfectly acceptable phrases.  But just imagine if – instead of “end of the day” – these media folks started using “when the sun sets in the western sky,” like this: When the sun sets in the western sky, we’ll have an answer to that question about [(fill in the blank) our political system, the failing economy, Toyota braking systems, immigration reform, or any one of hundreds of non-poetic issues].”  It’s just silly!

So, it should be no surprise that my first nominee, Daniel Schorr, senior news analyst at NPR, has never been heard (at least by me) to use “at the end of the day” metaphorically.  I have listened to his prepared commentary on “All Things Considered” many afternoons, but the true test is his Q & A with Scott Simon on “Week In Review,” a segment on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday.”  As far as I know, those sessions are not scripted and — I’ve been delighted to notice — that he has not slipped once.  Moreover, he properly responds “yes” or “no” when appropriate.  His on-air expositions are precise and simple; there is an eloquence that results in absolute clarity.  As he imparts information and wisdom, his words stream into your mind as easy as cool, clear water quenches your thirst on a hot summer day.  As his NPR biography notes, he is the last of Edward R. Morrow’s legendary CBS new team still active in journalism.  I’m just glad he’s not reached the end of the trail.

Now, my second nominee, Frank Deford, is not necessarily the plain speaker that is Mr. Schorr.  And frankly (no pun intended), he may have used “at the end of the day” in his commentary on “Morning Edition,” where he broadcasts every Wednesday at 7:55 a.m. on Austin’s KUT radio.  But, if he has ever slipped, I can forgive him because where else am I going to hear someone use words like “jeremiad” (a lament), “immaculate infusion” (how steroids find their way into ball players), “divertissement” (French for diversion or amusement), or “hoosegow” (jail)?  And his recent attempt to educate the Wall Street Journal, whose style it is to speak of all humans as Mr. or Ms., made me laugh all day.  While he was glad that the WSJ was venturing into sports for its NY edition, he exhorted the paper not to call A-Rod Mr. Rodriguez, and urge it to get “on the same page with the rest of us ‘World’s Jock Glitterati.’” Mr. Deford is a master of language, but he throws these word punches sparingly, increasing their effect.   He speaks his mind but his mind is always engaging us as he illustrates how hurling, bouncing, and chasing balls is no less a part of the human drama than running banks, practicing law, or flying men to the moon.  I confess to tossing the Sports page into the recycle bin as soon as I unroll the morning paper.  But come Wednesday morning, I wait for Mr. Deford…..and when he starts talking, I am a jock!

I will gladly add your nominations to our contenders list if you tell me why they are worthy.  In the meantime, listen, love, and laugh with your  local public radio station.

For more about our nominees:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2101143
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2100422

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Bury My Heart in Austin

Posted on May 27, 2010 by nowandthenadays

I have traveled far to visit historic sites recommended by one of the two Fs (Fodor’s or Frommer’s) or listed in 1,000 Places to See Before I Die, marveling at walls, both great (China) and imprisoning (Alcatraz), canals, towers, gardens, and thrones of emperors, kings, queens, and popes.  Last year, I took my penchant for history to the final resting places at Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn.

For many year, anyone who was anybody in New York City could be found after death in Green-Wood.  A list of notables is too long to include here, but I’ll mention Louis Tiffany (maker of lamps), Alice Roosevelt (the president’s wife), and Leonard Bernstein (maestro/composer).  Also tucked among the cemetery’s 478 rolling acres is George Catlin, who I’ve long admired for his endeavors in the 1830s to paint as many Native American tribes as possible before they disappeared.  With our cemetery map (more impressionistic than precise) in hand, my patient son helped me find his unremarkable marker under a large tree on a hill of exposed  roots and peat moss.

Last week I read about Austin Heritage Society’s historic home tours, and decided it was time to be a tourist in my own town.  Admittedly, I was prepared to be underwhelmed since history has always seemed more interesting the farther I fly from Austin.  But the experience surprised and interested me.  For example, one of the homes included the “Tot” Hart house on Scenic Drive overlooking Lake Austin.  Tot owned a car paint and body shop on 5th street in the late 1920s and bought a cottage on a plot of land accessed by a dirt path, eventually building a larger dwelling that he continued to add to over the years.

When he and his wife divorced, she moved to California with their only child, Martha, who in time became the mother of Robert Redford.  Deciding that Young Robert needed a male role model, he was sent to spend summers with his grandfather and helped him build on to the house in stages, partly with old car parts!  When Tot passed away in 1959, Robert was his sole heir, but as a young, struggling actor in NYC, he could not keep up with the taxes and maintenance, even with the rental income from the house.  In 1965, he sold the property.  Robert, however, has kept his connection with the house as we saw in displayed pictures of him at the house with the current owners.  Reportedly, the dwelling’s style was once described as “Medieval Romanesque Italianate Spanish Baroque Revival,” by a former architecture student.  However categorized, one can only wonder how participating in his grandfather’s crafting of this unique dwelling shaped the man whose skill and love for crafting films has shaped a whole generation of filmmakers.

Another of the houses we toured was the Gatewood House on Tarry Trail, built by William Gatewood who established the first hamburger stand at 21st and Guadalupe in 1919.  As a student, he conceived of a used textbook exchange for fellow students, that grew into five stores in various states.  After a time, Gatewood sold all but the “Texas Book Store” so he and his family could live in Austin.  Their house was originally built in 1938 on a 19-acre plot of land, which was subdivided several times afterwards.  The Gatewoods donated the land for Westminister Presbyterian Church and later gave land for the Austin State school in exchange for providing free water to their estate.  What is probably most remarkable was that Gatewood is remembered for frequently giving money to “Bicycle Annie,” a garishly-garbed and -groomed woman who rode through the Drag area on a bicycle, sadly lost in a world of her own that tolerated no interlopers.  During the 60s and 70s, she was a fixture —  a character we all recognized, much like Leslie today.  When she died, Gatewood was the person who paid for her funeral.  Where else, but Austin, would this be a part of man’s legacy?

The four other houses on the tours were equally interesting, connecting to other bits and pieces of Austin history I have experienced or heard about over the years.  Although I had started the tour to experience Austin as a tour, by the end of it, I realized that Austin can’t be another city in a guidebook for me.  Austin is the mold that nurtured my youthful contents until I emerged as the person I am today.  I remembered the “city wars” of the 60s – Dallas and Houston were always vying for tops honors as Texas’ most important city.  All the while, Austin sat quietly radiating its charm and natural beauty – the true jewel of Texas – while we basked and thrived in her embrace.  For all of the grown-up children of this town, I thank the Austin Heritage Society for preserving the old Austin – like Catlin’s Native American tribes – before it disappears.

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We are not Sucking Aliens

Posted on May 16, 2010 by nowandthenadays

The Statesman this week reported that Speaker Straus had suggested some unsavory solutions to reducing  the state budget shortfall.  Two of the unsavory solutions (at least to me) include unpaid work furloughs and four-day work weeks for state employees.   Personally, I would embrace a four-day work week, but my creditors might have a problem with my reduced income.  I just don’t think “We’re balancing the state budget, folks,” is going to garner much sympathy.

I hear my private sector friends asking, “Why should you government workers be immune from getting nasty letters from your creditors like the rest of us?”  My best answer to this question is simple:  public sector employees, in essence, negotiate a Faustian contract with the devil of capitalistic competition in which we relinquish high salaries and bonuses (what’s that?) in exchange for job security and some decent benefits.   The runner-up answer is that the world doesn’t need more widgits or promoters or financiers of widgits like it needs the services of people who keep our civil society civil, clean, healthy, and safe.

It has always perplexed me how government employees are oft depicted like an occupying force of aliens equipped with hoses that suck up money to use in some alien form of thumb-twiddling.  As if government employment were some form of jobs program or government handout!  Ross Perot might say, “If we could only deport these employees back to their planet, we could stop that sucking sound and balance the budget!”  But if you look around, these  employees are members of your family, church group, and circle of friends, or your fellow joggers, golfers, and Willie Nelson fans who, during the work week, keep Texas beaches open, roads built, water protected, and restaurants contaminant-free.  I would say, “We’re Government!” but that sounds too much like the UT “We’re Texas!” whatever-that-means slogan (I remain convinced that genius advertising execs adopted it as a compromise between the two warring contenders,  “We’re Education!!” and “We’re Football!”)

Like many state employees, my flights of fancy often take the form of a government official who takes a stand in support of his/her employees, saying something like, “State employees work hard, support families, and do a job for much less pay than those in the private sector:   don’t balance the budget on their backs!” (That bolded text would be the sound bite.)  Maybe this fantasy official would point out that state employees often work year after year without pay raises or that exotic thing called “bonuses,” while their private sector counterparts shake their heads and ask why they aren’t pursuing the big bucks in the “real world.”  (Yes, I’ve really heard that.)   My fantasy statesman or stateswoman also expresses concern that good government cannot be achieved when its employees are treated like the stepchildren of the American labor force.  Since this is Texas, maybe he or she would pull out a little carrying-around gun and  demonstrate what “shooting yourself in the foot” is all about.

As Texas Comptroller, Bob Bullock came as close to this fantasy officeholder as any I have ever known.  Bullock would go to the Legislature and fight for a budget that included pay raises, new equipment, training funds, etc., for his employees, explaining that he employed the best and brightest people in state government and they merited the raises and resources that would maintain the productivity he demanded and the State deserved.  With this kind of support, we all worked a little harder at our jobs, as well as forgiving his general lack of warm fuzzies.

The truth is that whenever the budget won’t balance, there is the 600-pound gorilla hovering nearby and sporting a t-shirt that reads “More tax.”  But, in political-speak, “tax” is the solution that cannot be named unless in close proximity to the word “never.”  The inevitables of life, death and taxation, are not considered as separate events for a politician — there is a direct causal connection between the two.  If you start talking taxes, (political) death will invariably follow.  Better to go hiking in Appalachia and explain that misstep rather than why you may have suggested more taxes.

The only official I can remember who didn’t shy away from the tax solution in a budget crisis was Ben “Jumbo” Atwell, a 24-year veteran of the Texas House of Representatives from Dallas.  Jumbo sponsored many tax bills and for 10 years chaired the Revenue and Tax committee (later renamed the “Ways and Means” committee to hide the word “taxes” from public display).  He often mentioned that no one wanted to take credit for sponsoring tax bills even though getting one through the Legislature is one of the most difficult things a legislator can do.  So, at some point, he began thinking of immortality and pre-ordered his gravestone:  a large piece of pink granite chiseled  into the shape of Texas and inscribed with Ben Atwell, Lawyer – Legislator, Author of Tax Bill. He parked it next to his pre-selected burial plot at the State Cemetery – strategically visible from Cisco’s, one of his favorite breakfast spots.  He had years to admire it before it became his final address and took pride, I believe, in remembering how he had fought the taxation battles.  “Nobody wants to be taxed,” he would admit, but taxes are necessary to keep the government in business.  Granted, many  factors contributed to his continual electoral victories even with his name on tax bills year after year, but I wonder how close state government will come to self-destruction before someone, re-election be damned,  takes up Jumbo’s mantle and begins a frank discussion of how this state can expect to thrive on less and less revenue with an ever-growing population demanding more services.  The fact is that Texas cannot win the lottery to solve its economic woes, and given that reality, it’s worrisome to think of what the state — not just its employees — may endure before we see the likes of another author of tax bills.

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