Father's Day

Sunday is Father's Day.

My father died on April 3, 1967.  He suffered from arteriosclerosis, or as we were told, hardening of the arteries.  In those days, the treatment involved taking nitroglycerin pills and baking fish for dinner every night.

As the end grew closer, we decided to take a few day trips and short vacations.  I wasn't told, but I knew that his days were growing short.  At one point, he was put in Cooper Hospital, in their Intensive Care Unit.  When he got out, it was still against the rules for a child to go up and visit him.  My mother hid me inside her raincoat and got me into the elevator so that I could go up and see him.  I remember how happy he was to see me and getting a big hug from him.  How could a hospital deny a child the right to see his father, I wondered in my child's mind?

This was the man who threw my first baseball at me and allowed me to hit left-handed, even though most of the world hit right-handed. We sat at his tape recorder and told jokes from books to each other.  He laughed, even though he knew the punch line.

He told me war stories.  He talked about what "great guys the Germans were" and how they used to sit around and tell jokes to each other.  Later, I found out that he spent the war in San Francisco, protecting the California coast from the Japanese invasion.  I think the reason he told me that the Germans were great guys was because he didn't want me to hate people because of where they lived.

He took me to Phillies games, usually on Sunday.  I remember getting up and seeing him at the breakfast table, looking over the schedule in the newspaper.

"Bunning and Koufax today," he said.  "Let's go."  Mid-morning, we'd be off to a sporting goods store in Oaklyn to buy a couple of tickets.  We would arrive obscenely early, in time to watch batting practice.  It's probably the same reason I get to the ballpark at 5:00 for a 7:05 game.

We lived through the historic Phillies' 1964 collapse together.  I was 7, and I remember him telling me that "we'll get World Series tickets" when they won.  They did not win, but I never doubted his word that we would have gone to that World Series together.

At his viewing, our family and friends showed up - of course.  Among the well-wishers was a co-worker of his.  The thing that struck me about it was that he was the only black man at the service.  He came to me and shook my hand, introduced himself and told me how much he liked my father.  Even though I didn't realize it at the time, in later life I would come to appreciate this as an example of how race doesn't matter - that friendship makes race irrelevant.

One lesson he taught me was that I should treat everyone with the same amount of respect.  Regardless of whether they cleaned the toilets or ran the place - people are people, and we are equal.  That sentiment was brought to life when a (so-called) human resources representative at work told me that "your father was wrong" after I was reprimanded for daring to speak-up to a superior.  My father was not wrong.

Sunday will be the 46th Father's Day I have spent without my father.  Perhaps his disease is the reason I am so devoted to physical fitness?  I have greatly out-lived him but I have no legacy.  My great regret in life is that I have no children to teach those same lessons to.  The lessons of racial tolerance, equal treatment and his good humor.

We can spend a lifetime wishing things were different. I think that, when our lives change as children we fail to realize what is happening at the time.  I had no idea what was going on.  Dad died in our living room.  The doctor came to our home and attended to him, even though they knew it was too late.  My mother exclaimed, "I can still feel him breathing!" as she held her hand near his nose.  The doctor told her that it was the air being expelled from his lungs.  How can a child be exposed to that and not be changed?

I was sent to a neighbor's house and waited.  I remember seeing the doctor's black Cadillac outside our house and how insensitive my neighbor's children were to my plight.  I was angry, but I didn't know why.  The next few days were a blur.  I was taken out of school and attended the viewing and funeral.

Among other things, my mother had to sell his 1967 Volkswagen Beetle.  I wish I had that car today.

So, there it is.  Another Father's Day without my beloved father.  As it turns out, I'm more like my mother than my father, but I suppose that's because she bravely reared me and encouraged me and supported me thoroughout my adult life.

I have no idea where I would be if my father had survived.  I know that I would not be any stronger.  I would not be any less tolerant or have a greater sense of humor.  My early adulthood might have changed because he would have been able to put me through college.  As it was, at the age of 40, my employer and I put me through college. By then, I had established who I was.

However, that person was in large part due to the man he made me into.

I hope he would be proud, because I am proud of him.

Happy Father's Day, Armondo. I'll always love you.

Stronger than the ... what now?

New Jersey has been running TV and radio ads proclaiming victory over "Superstorm" Sandy.

Side note:  I'm not sure how this thing got to be called a "Superstorm."  I've studied meteorology and I've never run across the term Superstorm. It was a hurricane.  TV turned it into a Superstorm.

OK, now we've gotten that straight. Let's move on.

I've been listening to those "Stronger than the storm" ads for a while now, and I'm a little put off by them.  "How?" you ask.  It's like this:

First, you are not stronger than the storm.  The storm kicked your ass.

Second, the Jersey shore is all about the boardwalk, beach, rental properties, and commerce.  That's what the ad campaign is aimed at.  There's nothing about people - just implied images of how you should come back to the shore this summer and spend your money because the state spent the whole spring getting all their businesses back so that you had someplace to spend your vacation dollars.

That's a huge part of the deal down there.  If the summer is rainy or cool, they spend the fall bitching about how rainy and cool it was.  They bitch about jellyfish and rip tides too, and they're not stronger than the jellyfish either.

It's a swell marketing gimmick, but it is so crassly commercialized that it leaves me cold.  The ad reminds us that "our restaurants and attractions are open."  That's nice, but I wonder how many residents are still dealing with mold and water intrusion? 
I'd feel better about it if they were up front about their motives.  Instead, they feel like they have to put out some false bravado and proclaim something that isn't true.

The Animal Within

 

The problem I have with the gun control issue is that guns are such a pervasive factor in our lives, that it bothers me.  If you have a gun and you do something wrong with it, we will find a bigger gun and kill you with it.  That's where I fall off the tracks.  Which part of "bigger gun" makes the reaction sensible?  They have ceased to be a method of self-defense and have beco

me instruments of destruction, which, I suppose is their sole purpose, when you get down to brass tacks.

 

There is that part of the argument that alleges that our retaliation makes sense in light of your mistake.  We'll kill you because you killed us.  The vindictiveness of it all distresses me.

 

Part of it is a reaction borne of anger and part of it is that "eye for an eye" attitude that pervades society.  If you make a mistake, we will make you pay for it in like fashion.

 

I am more interested in motive and behavior than retribution.  I want to know why.  What makes people do these things?

 

If I am watching The Food Network and I see someone making a nice dish, they can give out the recipe and I'll jot it down, go to the grocery store, buy the items and bring them home.  By the time I've set them down on the counter I think, "Geez, do I really want to do this?"  The usual answer is "no."

 

These two nut-jobs had this idea in their head to construct a bomb from a pressure cooker.  They purchased the filler ingredients, put it all together, dropped it off and detonated it without once (one figures) thinking, "Maybe this is a bad idea."  That's what I want to explore.  What inspires anti-social behavior and what bigger part of their psyche makes them follow-through on their ideas?

 

Killing them satisfies our animal instinct but gives us no clue as to their motivation.  You can hate me for not wanting to see them die, but I'm more curious as to their behavior pattern than I am in being satisfied that they died to pay for the people they killed in satisfying that idea.

 

Perhaps the bigger victory would come in understanding such behavior and resolving to try to stop it rather than making us feel as though we have accomplished something by extinguishing the perpetrators.

 

We have treated a symptom, but the disease goes on.

 

 

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing.

He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.

- Herman Melville

 



Et tu, Facebook?

I was going to write about a confrontation I had at the gym today, involving a spin class and what one perceived as a slight and I perceived as my preference - but that took a back seat to something that happened recently involving my favorite social interaction, Facebook.

 

George Carlin did a bit about how being an asshole was relative to the distance.  Someone on TV was really AN ASSHOLE. The guy in the car who cut you off is An Asshole, and the one next to you in line was [whispering] pretty much of an asshole.  Distance is a great defender.  Such is the case with the Internet.

 

In this environment, we can comment, tweak or otherwise say things that we wouldn't normally say to people to their face.  It's a great insulator.  Even when we have a named sign-in and people know us (like on Facebook) we feel free to stop over, pick fights and leave.

Likewise, our posts on Facebook and Twitter can be dissected and analyzed to the extent that people we do not consider real-life friends can opine on our lives and thoughts as though they know us or have actually interacted with us.

 

We are told (by experts) that we should express ourselves and tell the truth whenever possible.  What those experts do not know is that the truth is hard to swallow. 

 

I have read that our true personality is defined by the things we do in private.  Our social behavior is a put-on for either our job or the impression that others would have of us.  The things we think are different from the things we do.  Different to the point that discussing our difficulties is off-putting to our Facebook friend community.

 

I have been referred to as being "suicidal" with some of the things I have posted.  In fact, the people who have referred to me that way have made no effort to contact me or discuss my problems.  Merely, they have made an assumption based on circumstantial evidence - which is the best way to react.  As a reaction, I have been unfriended by at least two people over the past month.  That's disconcerting.

 

I suppose it's because people want Facebook to be a "Happy Place," filled with tales of vacations, photos and exciting events that either mask ones true feelings or make others think that their lives are filled with happiness.  Some of us live in the real world where bad things happen to good people and good people need to talk about it.

Thus is the quandary that is Facebook.  Post good things and the world is at your doorstep.  Post a problem and the world walks away.  It's human nature, I suppose.  We want to deal with the low-hanging fruit.  The easy stuff.

Over the past month, I have had an issue with two "Facebook friends," one of which I suspect never liked me to begin with and the other I thought liked me, but turned out to be a Facebook Friend.  The former picked fights with me over my opinions, and when I confronted him over it, he took the "Unfriend" route.  The latter, I suppose, got tired of reading and, even though I supported him in his plight, unfriended me in an effort to ... I don't know ... relieve himself of any responsibility?

Either way, it's to my benefit that they are gone, I suppose.  And such is the fault of this so-called Social Media that we have become addicted to.  It isn't so much about our happiness as it is about their happiness.

So, be happy, Goddamn it!




Peter Banks (1947 - 2013)

"All that dies, dies for a reason.

To put its strength into the season."

- Survival, Yes

I remember when I bought Yes' "Fragile" album.  I was at the Record Museum store in Audubon, early in 1972.  I had heard Roundabout on the radio and wanted to know what else was going on.  I took the album outside and pried open the shrink-wrap.  This was the day of LPs, and some of them had amazing artwork.  Roger Dean's cover and album artwork is iconic.  I sat and gazed at it.  When I got the record home and listened, a love affair was born.

Forward to September 13, 1972.  Yes released "Close to the Edge," and being the hip 15-year-old that I was, I had read about the album in Circus magazine.  I invaded the Franklin Music store in the Echelon Mall and asked a clerk if they had the album.  It was in a carton of them below the display rack.  They hadn't put them out yet.  I was the first person in Camden County to have the album. Needless to say, my mid-teen aged mind was blown by the record.

 

Naturally, I started going backward through their catalog.  I discovered their first two records, Yes and Time and a Word.  They had a different lineup than the two I had bought.  Keyboardist Rick Wakeman had replaced Tony Kaye and guitarist Steve Howe had replaced Peter Banks.  When I heard the first two albums I wondered why they would replace a wonderful guitarist like Peter.  Turned out there were creative differences and such.  Regardless, I thought that Peter had a technique that was closer to the music than Steve's. The band was clearly advancing with Howe, but those first two records have a heart about them that they didn't approach in their later work.

 

If a band was a football team, the bass player is an offensive lineman, the singer is the quarterback, the drummer is the head coach and the guitarist ... the guitarist is the diva wide receiver.  Necessary, but still must be tolerated because the quarterback can't throw the ball to himself.

 

The guitarist on those first two Yes albums helped define the progressive era.  I heard a colleague once proclaim that all he did was "play scales."  Scales, schmales - he was a master of the instrument and had a way of blending a jazz feel with rock.  All one needs to do is listen to Yes' version of The Beatles' "Every Little Thing" to hear him at his best.  He could make that Rickenbacker guitar sing.

My kiddie mind was again blown by hearing phrases of "Eleanor Rigby," "Norwegian Wood" and "Day Tripper" mixed-in with his introduction solo.  I had never heard anything like him - and still haven't.  Sadly, last Sunday, he left us, but he left behind a glorious legacy of music.

 

Today, musicians sample and copy stuff and dub it in.  Once upon a time, one had to develop a feel and play to the music.  Yes was so naive that when they went into the studio to record their first record, Bill Bruford didn't know that you could get a separate mix in the headphones. It was 1969.

 

When he was "kicked out" of Yes, he formed a band called Flash, who recorded four equally beautiful albums and, in my opinion, rivaled anything Yes did in their heyday.  Regardless of whether or not it was recognized by that bastard mainstream, they were great records and heralded the exit of that progressive era that Peter helped form.

 

His later work was scattered.  A solo record with Jan Akkerman, a strange project called Empire and some session work.  That's him on Lionel Ritchie's "Hello," albeit uncredited.  He said it was merely showing up and playing the solo and leaving.  A day's work.

At least two of his solo records are worthy of a listen.  "Two Sides of Peter Banks" is unfinished, but the first side is classic.  Akkerman was irritated that Peter released it, but the scheme of Capital Records was that it and Flash's "Out of Our Hands" would be released on the same day, so he rushed it. Such was the state of the recording industry in 1973.  His "Instinct" album in 1994 is more good work.

 

Anyway - when I heard of his death on Sunday, those thoughts flashed [pun] through my mind.  How a young person could be so inspired by someone he doesn't know and develop a love of music because of a few people he would never meet.  There are people like Peter Banks, Jan Akkerman, Bill Bruford, Keith Emerson, Robert Fripp, and Peter Gabriel who had a great influence on me and the aspect of quality.  To the extent that I find it difficult to tolerate much of what passes as music today.

 

When they die, a bit of me dies with them.  Fortunately, their recordings, and videos like this can remind us of when they were vital young men.

 

Click here to see them perform "Beyond and Before" in 1969, with some curious camera work.

 

Supposing ...

I awoke (abruptly) at 3:00am and found myself thinking back to my high school days.  My thoughts drifted to a geometry teacher we had who would start most of his sentences with "Um, supposing..."  And it wasn't the normal 'um' that some of us use when we are trying to connect our thoughts. This um was a major pronouncement - as though he was proclaiming some monumental thought.

 

Um

Like that.

 

The thing I remembered was that we used to keep track of the "um's" and the "supposings" with those hand-written roman numeral charts like I suppose Nero used to use when he was deciding who he would throw to the lions [do not research my historical reference]

 

Those of us who were in the gang would laugh amongst ourselves and gaze knowingly whenever he would say "um" or "supposing," and laugh harder and gaze more staringly when he would use "Um, supposing" in the same sentence.  That was a real holiday for us.

 

The shame of it is that, with all the geometry he was teaching us, we didn't learn much outside of the ability to count his um's and supposings.  There was no real world value to be had in that, as I learned later in life.

 

It got me to thinking (as most of this does) that we often overlook the value of the lesson in favor of the absurdity of the act itself. 

Many times we overlook the significance of the act while we are evaluating the method.  Such was the case this week when the Catholics were choosing their new Pope.  Smoke proclaimed whether or not they had found one, when most of us would have just texted a smiley face.

 

While the election of a new Pope may have no real world value to some of us, most of the value of it was lost in the people who were busy counting the smoke and counting the rings. As usual, we missed the point.

 

Um, supposing electing a human to run a religion is really pointless?

 

Garbage in, garbage out.

The Internet is a great source of information.  Some of the information, however, is crap.  And there's no place like Facebook for crap.  So-called "friends" can share posts with other so-called "friends" and the friends accept it as fact because, well - it's on the Internet, and it must be true.

Or crap.

I had three shares on my Facebook page today, and each one took about two minutes to search and destroy.

The first one was a post about drunk driving, with a gruesome photograph of a woman allegedly thrown through a car windshield after allegedly being involved in an accident allegedly involving drunk driving. It contained the text:   went to the party and remembered what you said. You asked me not to drink alcohol, so I drank a Sprite instead. I felt proud of myself, as you said I should feel. You said I should not drink and drive, contrary to what some friends told me. I made a healthy choice and your advice was correct, as it always is.

All I had to do was insert that text in a web search to find that the photograph depicts a simulated car accident created as part of "Every 15 Minutes", an educational program designed to emphasise the dangers of driving while impaired or texting. The same story has also circulated for several years as part of a bogus MADD email petition.
Besides, wouldn't you ask yourself, "How could someone get a photo like that, of a woman through a windshield and a grieving man?"  I guess not.

 

 

The second one contained an equally gruesome photograph of a motorcycle having collided with an automobile after allegedly texting while driving. The first red flag was that I was supposed to believe that a motorcycle rider could text and drive. The second was that it was shared on Facebook.

The Honda crotch rocket rider was traveling at approximately 85 mph.
The VW driver was talking on a cell phone when she pulled out from a side street, apparently not seeing the motorcycle. The rider's reaction time was not sufficient enough to avoid this accident.

It's easy enough to come up with horrible examples of dopes behind the wheel of a car talking on cell phones or texting without having to resort to made-up crap.  This one occurred in 2003 and none of the police reports contained anything about anyone using a cell phone at the time of the accident.  More made-up crap.

The third one was attributed to comedian Bill Cosby.  This was easy to disprove because Cosby doesn't write anything that he doesn't say out loud.

Bill Cosby "I'm 83 and Tired"
I've worked hard since I was 17. Except for when I was doing my National Service, I put in 50-hour weeks, and didn't call in sick ...in nearly 40 years. I made a reasonable salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, it looks as though retirement was a bad idea, and I'm tired. Very tired.

Not only is Cosby not 83 (he's 75) but he didn't write this at all.  It was written by Robert A. Hall, a former Massachusetts state senator and Marine Corps veteran.  It was part of a blog entry he wrote on February 19, 2009.  In this case, Facebook posters aren't really trying at all.  They are assuming that it matters more because Bill Cosby said it than it would if a retired senator and Marine said it. That's just ridiculous. If it's a good idea, it doesn't matter who came up with it.

In all three cases I pointed out the errors to the "sharers" and they replied that it didn't matter because the message was all that mattered to them.  So, if someone takes your words and twists them around to benefit their cause and does not credit you, it's OK because the message is all that matters.  Remember that the next time someone at work gets credit for something you did or one of your kids has an idea stolen and gets some shit-ass school award.

The other lesson to learn here is this:  Take three minutes and do a simple web search of this crap before you mindlessly click "Share" and inflict your "friends" with this junk.  You'll do the world a service if you do some research and credit the RIGHT people with their thoughts.  The ideas are great, but remember that it's important to cite the right people with them.

Use the same standards you would use in talking face-to-face. Would you go running to people with some half-baked story about something you knew nothing about?  Oh ...