The Word From G

Anna Jarvis Isn't Happy

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:17:00 +0000

Wait! Put down that box of candy. Forget about ordering those flowers. And whatever you do, don’t put that card in the mail! Anna Jarvis would not be happy.

What on earth am I talking about, and who the heck is Anna Jarvis?

For those of you who didn’t know Anna Jarvis is the woman who created our modern celebration of Mother’s Day. She also ended up hating what her creation had turned into, and spent the rest of her life trying to kill the “monster” she had created.

But let me back up a little bit.

She had intended Mother’s Day to be both a memorial to her own mother, who had died in 1905, and a day like many of the other observances that came out of the Sunday School movement of the time; things like Roll Call Day, Temperance Sunday, and Missionary Sunday, which have long been forgotten. As such, it was her intent that since it was on a Sunday, it would be a “holy day, not a holiday,” and a day on which people would write heartfelt letters to their mothers, telling how important they were to them.

However, within 10 years of Woodrow Wilson’s 1914 proclamation of the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day, Jarvis was soured by what she considered to be the commercialization of her “holy day,” and actively campaigned against it. She had meant for it to be “a day of sentiment, not profit,” and was angered by the huge profits that the candy, flower, and greeting card industries were making off of her mother’s day.

She was incensed that it had become that most loathsome of all things…the dreaded “Hallmark Holiday,” a term which is horribly misused, because Hallmark didn’t create those holidays, they simply made a mint recognizing that many people would like cards to send out on them.

And that’s what pissed her off…the fact that people sent their mothers printed greeting cards rather than a heartfelt, handwritten letter. Or to quote her:

A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.

Now, I’m quite certain that if I wrote my mother the kind of letter that Anna Jarvis wanted me to, she’d be on the phone immediately, asking how many days I had left to live. I also know that if I wrote the kind of letter that Jarvis wanted us all to write, I’d have to double my insulin dosage for the day. My family is just not that overtly sentimental.

And that’s OK. For you see, the other thing that Anna Jarvis didn’t get is that for many families the candy, the flowers, and the dreaded greeting card, are symbols of what she wanted people to say outright. They are symbols of what is already understood within the families that use them, and that might even mean more than the handwritten note she insisted upon.

I can only imagine Anna Jarvis’s reaction to the grandmother of a friend of mine who would’ve seen the handwritten note as a sign that you were too lazy to go to the store and pick out a nice Hallmark card for her. She'd say "Write the note if you want…but make sure it’s in a proper card!"

Ironically, one of the reasons that Anna Jarvis didn’t get it was because she was never a mother herself. To her, Mother’s Day was always about her own mother, and was never something she got to experience from the other side, where she might have gained a different perspective.

She didn’t understand that once she’d let the genie out of the bottle, people would observe Mother’s Day any way they wanted to, whether it was the way she had in mind or not. And so she spent the rest of her life trying to stuff that all too independent genie back. She was so set on having Mother’s Day observed the way that she had intended, that she never paid attention to the joy millions of women got from the way that it actually was being observed.

And so if your mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, wife, whatever, enjoys the candy, the cards, and the flowers, I say run out and get them right now. Thank Anna for the idea, but then tell her that she's being a bit too much of a control freak.

For more information, you might want to check out these links:

For the Mother of Mother’s Day, It’sNever Been Just Right

Mother’s Day Creator LikelySpinning in Her Grave

Christians and Scientologists

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:55:00 +0000

Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock for years, most of you know that I’m a tad religious. I’d like to think that you also know that I’m not one of those people. Not one of those people who’s always in your face about why my group is right and yours has to be wrong. I’d like to think that you know that I maintain that the very definition of the word believe implies that you don’t really know for sure, but are putting all your money on it (in fact, I even discussed that in this blog a few years ago); and that that also implies that I could well be the one who’s wrong…but in good faith.

Well, I’ve had this thought experiment going on in my head for years about how to explain to certain other Christians that the people who just don’t get it, and who think that we Christians are nuts aren’t being willfully stubborn, and refusing to accept what has to be perfectly and obviously clear to them. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to come across any Martians to do this experiment with.

Martians?

Yes. My scenario involved plopping down a Martian here on Earth, and having her meet people representing Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and every other ism right on down to Pastafarianism; and then see which one she determined was true…or if she thought that we were all out to a seven-course lunch. Or…if she was biased by her own Martian beliefs, and started trying to proseletyze us.

My point here was that we’re all influenced and biased by what we grew up with, and of course we’re going to resist some new belief someone’s trying to tell us about, when it doesn’t fit in with what we’ve been taught for years…and especially when it doesn’t seem to make any logical sense.

But as I said before, I couldn’t find any Martians. I did, however, find a Scientologist.

Well not quite, but hear me out.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine who’s a very devout Christian was telling me about her friend George, an atheist, who seems to be resisting God’s call at every turn.

Now, before we go any further with this, let’s get away from the common practice of demonizing atheists. The “a” in “atheist” doesn’t mean against theism, it means without it. There are a lot of really nice, friendly, loving, and moral atheists out there. They even like puppies. They just don’t happen to believe in a god of any kind.

So now that I’ve gotten hat out of the way, as I thought about what my friend was saying, I suddenly found my Martian, but in a different way than I had expected.

I said to her:

Suppose you had a friend who belonged to the Church of Scientology. And suppose you found yourself, against your better judgment, starting to find some of its claims to be credibile. You’d start fighting too, because you’d feel that you were starting to be sucked into this thing that you knew couldn’t possibly be true. Well, that’s how George feels. Christianity is to him as Scientology is to you.

And let’s face it, we all do this. Most of us don’t take the time to take an honest, impartial look at all the other religions out there before deciding what we want to believe. We all come from a place where we have one set of beliefs, and will dismiss another set completely out of hand.

Just as most of us would dismiss Scientology.

And George is dismissing any kind of theism in general.

Just sayin’.

Turn it Off Already!

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 07:30:00 +0000

A few months ago I went to get the oil changed in my van, and as I walked into the waiting room at the dealership, I noticed the most amazing thing.

Silence.

Yes, silence. The TV was off and the two other people sitting in the room were happily reading books or magazines. I commented on that, and they both said that it was wonderful to have the TV off.

How about that? They thought it was wonderful to have the TV off. Why? So they could read.

There are many places where we’re held captive by TVs that are on, supposedly for our benefit. And ironically, these places also have stacks of magazines for us to read. Wouldn’t it be easier for us to read without the TV? I go to the offices of three doctors who have TVs on in the waiting area, and when I go there, I put soothing music on my iPod to drown it out so I can read.

My dentist, mercifully, doesn’t have a TV in his waiting room. The only thing that could possibly distract me from my reading is the music that the receptionists are listening to behind the desk.

There are so many places where we’re held captive by TVs that are on, supposedly for our benefit. I remember a ride on the Cape May-Lewes Ferry 10 years ago, where there was a TV on no matter where you went, and they were all set to CNN. There was no way to escape them unless you either went to one of the outside decks or went back down to sit in your car. But if you simply wanted to sit at one of the tables on one of the inside decks and enjoy the view, you couldn’t get far enough from the current day’s reporting of death, destruction, and mayhem…things that maybe I didn’t want my kids to have to deal with while we were on vacation. I complained saying that I didn’t mind there being a TV on the ship somewhere tuned to CNN, but it shouldn’t be in our faces everywhere we went.

But the iPod and its like are game-changers. Not only can I now drown out what’s on their TVs by listening to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Bolero, or even Tubular Bells on my it while I read; I could listen to a podcast of my choosing. I could listen to Freakonomics Radio, The Bowery Boys, or selected downloaded segments from NPR’sMost Emailed Stories.

And irony of ironies, the iPhone, iPod Touch, and other similar devices allow us to even choose what I want to watch. I can watch Singin’ in the Rain, a TEDTalk, or an episode of Mythbusters. Privately, without inflicting it on anyone else. I can even watch CNN…but only if I choose to.

Now, for those of you who complain that this simply puts each of us into our own private little world, where we don’t interact with those around us, isn’t the same true of reading, that activity that many of you complaining have raised to almost sacred status? Whether I’m reading a book, watching a movie, listening to music, or even taking a nap, I’m in my own little world. So what’s the difference? I think that I should have the option of retreating into my own little world, or that my family should, without being held hostage by what someone else has chosen for us.

OK, wait, I know…you in the back seat over there. You’re gonna ask what the difference is between the car dealership and my dentist’s office…besides cars and teeth. What’s the difference between someone choosing the TV show I have to hear and someone choosing the music I have to hear.

Really? You’re really asking that question? The answer is so basically simple. The background music doesn’t require any of your attention. It can be there without intruding on your little world, and doesn’t force you to listen to it. The TV show or movie that you didn’t pick sucks you in despite of, and maybe even because of, all efforts to resist and ignore it. Perversely, the more you don’t want to hear a movie or TV show, the harder it is to tune out.

So for Pete’s sake people…enough with the TVs in captive public spaces.

Turn it off already!

Let's Hear It For The Shallowness of Facebook!

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:30:00 +0000

Time and time again I’ve heard people talk about the shallowness of Facebook. About how it fosters a sense of false intimacy by enabling us to have many relationships of precious little depth. And I’ve heard this spoken of as if it’s a bad thing. But as I look at the names of former students and former high school classmates among those on my roster of friends, I’m beginning to think that a little shallowness is not such a bad idea, and actually may be a pretty good one.

Why? Well let’s start out by considering my old High School. The East Orange High School class of 1974 had about 435 students in it. My wife’s entire high school didn’t have that many students in it. But going on, this meant that there were roughly 2000 students at EOHS. There was no way that I knew all of them…heck, I didn’t even know all of the kids in my own class…but I came into contact in some way with quite a few of them on a regular basis.

Out of the 400-odd kids in my class, I recognized maybe 200, knew maybe half as many, regularly traveled with 30, and was really good friends with about 15. But the fact that I wasn’t really good friends with Sharon didn’t stop me from greeting her in the hallway and asking how she was. The fact that Eric was in the class below me, and was really one of my sister’s friends, didn’t stop us from talking when we ran into each other at the library. And the fact that I only really saw Michelle in study hall didn’t stop me from playing Scrabble ™ with her in Dr Handleman’s room every day.

There was a lot of shallowness in EOHS because while you couldn’t possibly be everyone’s best friend, you could still know a little something about them and be nice to them.

Then there were the kids I spent up to nine years with at Ashland Elementary School, but who went to Scott High School because they lived on that side of the line that Ashland straddled. Even though Brent wasn't a regular part of my life anymore, it was nice to see him when we went shopping at Pantry Pride, or when I was riding my bike near Upsala College. I didn’t have to engage in deep conversations with people like him, but it was definitely nice to know what they were up to.

That’s the great thing about the supposed shallowness of Facebook…it’s like running into Sharon in the hallway, Eric in the library, Michelle in Dr Handleman’s room, or even Brent near Upsala. It’s not just about staying in contact with the 150 or so people that sociologists say are your real friends, it’s about briefly hearing about what Suzie’s doing, or seeing pictures of Paul’s grandchildren (am I that old?) without feeling the need to sustain a long conversation. It’s running into these people in the hallway again.

And let’s face it…some of us just try too hard to connect, or reconnect, anyway, and it feels awkward for everyone as a result. But if we can be as comfortable with the “shallowness” online as we were IRL, then it can be a wonderful thing. Maybe a quick little response to someone’s status update is really all that’s needed.

This is why I generally accept all friend requests from people I remember from high school…even if I didn’t hang out with them. We share a common past, and it’s great to be able to run into them in the hallway again. Yes…I still have my really close friends who I talk to all the time, but there’s something to be said for those “mere acquaintances,” and keeping in contact with them, no matter how tenuously.

And so I say, “Bring on the shallowness!”

¿Should Sra Fishman Get Her Period?

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 05:16:00 +0000

Abbreviations. We all know what they are. We all know them when we see them. We all know that Mr is pronounced “mister” and not “mur,” and that Mrs is “missus” and not “murse.” And what about St? Well, we all know that that’s either a saint or a street, that Blvd is “boulevard” and not “blivid.” We all know that. And that’s why I’ve consistently not put periods after abbreviations in anything I’ve written for the past who knows how many years. If some editor wants to come along and do that, fine. But I’m not doing it, because I know that we all know that things like Mr, Mrs, St, Blvd, and Dr are abbreviations. We don’t need it spelled out for us.

Or so I thought. Marla Fishman may have changed my mind.

Marla Fishman is the Spanish teacher in my upcoming short story 20 Candles. I didn’t refer to her as Marla in the beginning; I started by talking about her as Sra Fishman.

And that’s where the trouble started.

As my wife was reading a draft of the story to our 10-year-old daughter, she assumed it was a typo, and read it as Sara Fishman. Um…no. Her first name is Marla, but she’s the Spanish teacher, so she’s Sra Fishman…you know, Señora Fishman.

Cheryl suggested that maybe when I introduced the character, I should actually spell the word out, since most people wouldn’t know that Sra was the abbreviation for Señora when they first saw it.

Oh. Well, I suppose that made sense.

But then I got to thinking about the rest of the story, and that abbreviation. Sure, I knew that Sra was the abbreviation for Señora, but actually, I think Cheryl did too, because she’s taken as much Spanish as I have. I think that what caused the confusion in her case was not having any context for it yet. Not knowing yet that Marla was a Spanish teacher made her think that “Sra” was a typo rather than an abbreviation.

On the other hand, putting the period there would’ve signaled to her that this was an abbreviation for something, that it was an abbreviation that she might not already be familiar with.

Darn.

So what do I do now? Do I now start consistently placing periods after all of my abbreviations, just in case I ever have to deal with another Spanish teacher, or use some other abbreviation that the general public might not be familiar with?

I really don’t want to do that. Stylistically, I like the idea of not having a period in the middle of a sentence.

I guess the smartest thing to do to consistently follow Cheryl’s advice. When I know I’m about to use an abbreviation that people might not be familiar with, I’ll spell it out the first time, and then figure that people are smart enough to realize that what they see later on is the abbreviation.

And this means that none of the women I write about will ever have a period.

The Way It Was

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:38:00 +0000

I don’t remember what brought it up, but there we were standing around talking in the kitchen about how old we were when we got married or had kids. I think it may have started out with me mentioning the Eew Equation, a formula that one of my students taught me about how old the youngest person is that you can go out with, without people thinking it was gross. That formula is half your age, plus 7.

So at 14 you can go out with another 14-year-old, because half your age is 7. Then when you add 7 to that, you end up right back at 14. At 30 you can date someone who’s 22, and at 56, I could date someone who’s 34 without people thinking it was totally disgusting.

Now, my 10-year-old daughter loves to point out that the formula doesn’t work if you’re younger than 14. If you’re 12, then half your age is 6, and when you add 7 to that, you end up with a 13-year-old as the “youngest” person you can date. But we seem to have gone off on a little tangent here.

As I said, we were talking about how old we were when we got married or had kids. I was the old guy in the group in many ways. Not only was I the oldest, at 56, but I was 32 when I got married, and 36 when my first daughter was born. The youngest person in the room was 33, and got married and had her son when she was 21 (and according to the formula, she’s also just a year too young for me to date).

But wait, there’s more. Her mother had her when she was 19, and her grandmother had her mother when she was 17. Being the math person that I am, I figured that if this patterned continued, her son should have his first child when he’s 23.

Then one woman mentioned that her great-grandmother got married at 16. Yes…16. Now intellectually, we all know that people did things a lot younger all those years ago, and especially in certain parts of the country, but it was still a little jarring to us, because we tend to think of 16-year-olds as being gum-chewing, iPod-toting, high school kids who don't have the common sense that God gave a broom handle. But it wasn’t always so. In fact, there’s a wonderful story behind her great-grandmother’s marriage.

It seems that one day great-grandma’s boyfriend showed up at the house and asked to speak to her father. He wanted to marry her. Her father figured that he had gotten her pregnant and wanted to “do the right thing,” so he said yes. A quiet little ceremony was arranged a few weeks later, and the rest of the family sat back and waited for the baby.

And waited. And waited.

A year and a half later, a baby arrived.

Great-grandma’s family was a little confused. “We thought you wanted to get married because you were pregnant,” they said.

“No,” she replied, “we wanted to get married because we loved each other.”

Now, while that’s a touching good story, it’s important for what it implies. And what it implies is that back in great-grandma’s day, people assumed that with all the time the kids had taking long walks near the creek and such, with all the time that they had together without being under the watchful eye of some sort of chaperone, it was only reasonable to assume that some of them…maybe even a lot of them…were going to have sex. And if the girl didn’t get pregnant, that was fine, but if she did, the boy was expected to “do the right thing” and marry her.

My friend’s great-great-grandparents were no fools. They knew what was going on around them. And they probably knew what was going on around them because they had done it too, as had their parents before them.

But something changed in the generations after that. For some reason we began to officially pretend that people didn’t do that before they were married…at least good people didn’t. Or maybe it was “good people” of a certain social class. And as a result, all kinds of pain, sorrow, and hypocrisy followed in its wake.

Now, however…we seem to be back to the days of great-grandmother and her parents. 16-year-olds being what they are these days, none of us thinks it’s a good idea for them to be having sex yet. But as I’ve said before, if you’re 26 and have been seeing someone for more than six months, we all pretty much assume that you’re having sex, and no judgments are made. In fact, we’re sort of surprised if we find out that you aren’t. Some people may not like it, but at least the hypocrisy is gone.

I’m glad that the way it was has become the way it is again.

He Never Really Loved Me

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:11:00 +0000

Many years ago I read a letter to one of the two twin sisters of advice…Abby and Ann…from a woman who was totally devastated after the death of her husband of 50 or so years; a man who was well-respected in the community and with whom she had an almost fairytale marriage. No, not because of his death itself, which is to be expected, especially after that long of a marriage. But because of what she found out in the weeks after the funeral.

You see, after her husband was dead, someone felt free to tell her about the many affairs he had during those 50 years, and that he had worked very hard to keep her from finding out about.

Now, before I go on, we will all pause to virtually smack that person upside the head with a 2 x 4. Why? I mean really, just what did this person hope to accomplish? What good did this person think would come from this? Was getting this long-held secret off their chest worth the price of what it would do to her? I’m guessing that you can figure out my answer.

When this woman wrote to the twins, one of the things she said was that when she learned this, she realized that her whole life was a sham, and that her husband never really loved her anyway.

Wait. Time out. Hold it. Stop. It’s logical fallacy time. It’s also time for me to introduce you to a little cognitive dissonance.

In our culture, we make the mistake of confusing love and fidelity, and maybe they’re not always the same thing. Maybe you can love someone with all your heart, and not be able to be faithful to him or her, as hard as you might try. I can see that some of you aren’t buying this, so let me give you a different example.

Suppose someone said “If you really love me, then you’ll learn how to play the piano?” And suppose you just happen to be tone deaf? You could love that person with all your heart and soul, but not be able to play Heart and Soul. Does your inability to play even the most rudimentary piece of music, despite getting the rest of the relationship right, mean that you don’t love that person? I know this is an imperfect example, but can you see my point?

Conversely, in the song Silver Threads and Golden Needles, the singer says that she doesn’t care about his stupid mansion or all his money. She wants him to stop fooling around with other women and love her again. Um…I hate to ruin her pretty little picture, but his being faithful to her wouldn’t necessarily mean that he loved her again, but simply that he was following the rules because they were the rules.

Is it reasonable to ask, nay, demand, that the person who claims that they love us be faithful? I’ll give you a definite “maybe” on that. Perhaps it can be done most of the time. And perhaps we modern westerners are a little to tough on ourselves. Look at the story of Jacob from Genesis. He was counted as being faithful while having two wives and being able to get it from the maidservants.

But let’s go back to the beginning. The letter-writer claimed that all of this showed that her husband never really loved her anyway. I beg to differ, and this is where the cognitive dissonance kicks in. I can see him as really loving, really adoring, his wife, but knowing that no matter how hard he tried, he could never be faithful. And I can see him working very hard to make sure that she never found out, so that he could preserve the world she knew…precisely because he loved her.

And then along comes some well-meaning dolt who feels that they have to tell her the truth.

Vinny, get me the bat.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Piece of Paper

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:24:00 +0000

It was the late 60s and early 70s, the time of “love and piece,” and especially of love. Couples had openly started living together without being married, and not merely as a temporary arrangement either to test out the relationship or while planning the wedding. I’m talking about the people who had moved in together with absolutely no plan of ever getting married. Their battle cry (or should I say love cry) was “We don’t need no stinkin’ piece of paper,” which was pretty much what Joni Mitchell sang in her 1970 song My Old Man.

That’s right, they didn’t need a piece of paper to validate their love for each other. They didn’t need to get city hall or the county clerk involved in their relationship. Their love would stand the test of time, thank you very much, and so they didn’t need that little piece of paperwork called a marriage license…and a simple civil ceremony in the county clerk’s office.

Delaney and Bonnie famously sang “I’ve got a never-ending love for you” in 1971 and that’s what they believed. Long before Neil Sedaka wrote it and the Captain and Tennille sang it, they believed that love would keep them together.

Frankly, even at age 15, I thought that was kind of naïve, but then what did I know? Maybe the world was changing, and these people were right.

And then it happened. The famous Michelle Triola Marvin “palimony” case of 1976. When it first broke, my reaction was pretty much along the lines of, “Excuse me, but you didn’t need no stinkin’ piece of paper, and now you’re suing for the rights that it would’ve given you? I don’t think so.” I wasn’t vindictive, I was simply a realist. That “little piece of paper” gives each person certain rights and protections in the event of an unfortunate breakup. That “little piece of paper” ideally protects each party from being unfairly taken advantage of by the other. That “little piece of paper” prevents his or her relatives, who never liked you in the first place, from throwing you out on the street in the event of a fatal accident that leaves you alone in the house that you had shared, but that they’re the legal heirs to.

That “little piece of paper” would’ve given Michelle Triola Marvin a legal leg to stand on. But because she joined the throngs of people crying out that they didn’t need it, it made perfect sense to me that she didn’t get the protections that it would’ve given her. The judge apparently felt the same way I did, and denied her the $1.8 million she had asked for.

That “little piece of paper” is not only very important, but it’s a bargain. Right now a marriage license in Syracuse is $40. That’s far less than the hundreds of dollars that I know some people spend to draw up non-marriage contracts that give them the same rights, but without “the interference of the state in their private affairs.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this isn’t about “morality.” I really don’t care whether or not two grown people are married when they’re having sex. For me it’s all about practicality and taking care of each other. I feel that if you love each other enough to move in together, then you really oughta spring for that $40 piece of paper. Both to protect yourself and each other.

Amazingly, after the disaster with Lee Marvin, Michelle Triola moved in with actor Dick Van Dyke, without getting married. He says in his autobiography, My Lucky Life, that he asked her to marry him several times, but she just never got around to it. They did, however, have contracts drawn up to avoid what happened to her earlier, but you know…I think the $40 would’ve been cheaper.

Oh, and by the way, despite the sentiment of the song, Delaney and Bonnie got divorced in 1973.

What an Old Lutheran Wants from Young Catholics

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 05:00:00 +0000

I was sitting in the living room playing on my iPad with a new app called Zite that lets you create your own custom digital magazine, when I saw the article from the Washington Post about what young Catholics wanted from the Church. I was too busy fiddling around with the app at the moment to read it, but I cynically and impatiently said to myself that they wanted to be Lutherans and Episcopalians, but just couldn’t bring themselves to admit it.

Cynical? Yes, I admit that my first response was cynical. But that other word in there was even more important…my response was not only cynical, but impatient. For you see, I’ve been hearing young Catholics wanting these things since I was a young Lutheran who hung out with young Catholics. That was over 30 years ago, those once-young Catholics are now 50-something, and I think that listening to this for 30 years gives me the right to be a little impatient.

I understand not wanting to give up on the church you grew up in, and, as one friend of mine said, wanting to be there to be part of the dialog that helps to affect whatever changes are coming. But after 30 years I think there’s also a point where you have to (excuse my Latin) “sh*t or get off the pot.”

And yet, I’m actually not being cynical when I say that these people just need to admit that they’re really Lutherans or Episcopalians. Rather, I’m being a librarian.

Yes. A librarian. A cataloging librarian, to be specific. For you see, I went through this issue myself those 30 years ago, when I was both dating a Catholic girl and working in a library.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church and had always been interested in religion, reading about Christianity and Judaism voraciously. This Catholic girl gave me reason to start reading more about Catholicism, and as I read more and more about it, and especially the changes that had occurred as a result of Vatican II, I started to wonder if there was really any good reason for Protestants to even exist anymore. I started to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t just be a Catholic and get it over with.

But there were a few problems. While I could accept about 80% of the “official party line” (the most that I believe anyone really accepts in any denomination), there were just some things for me in the Catholic Church that were deal-breakers. So now the big question was, “what was I really?”

Well, I worked in a library, so I treated this as a cataloging problem. If I were looking at a book, I’d carefully consider its contents and then decide what category it best fit under. I wouldn’t try forcing a music book to be a history book by ripping out 75% of the pages. And so it was with myself. I looked at what I really believed, and decided that I really should be shelved under either Episcopalian or Lutheran (the Southern Baptists never had a chance). And so, despite the fact that I had grown up in the Episcopal Church, I ended up “cataloging myself” under “Lutheran.”

So am I asking today's disaffected young Catholics to “switch sides" and change what they are? Not really. As a librarian today, I guess I’m just annoyed that they complain while refusing “to do the proper cataloging,” insisting on shelving themselves where they don’t fit, just because that’s the kind of book they’ve always been told that they are…whether they really are or not.

There’s nothing wrong with being Catholic. Really, there’s not. There is, however, a problem with being a “closeted Episcopalian.” And now that I think about it, maybe that’s where the big issue is for so many of these people…coming out of the closet is hard. So I guess I should stop being so cynical and impatient, and have a little compassion for them.

After all, isn’t that a Catholic virtue?

What's Wrong with Cliché?

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 05:07:00 +0000

Last year Redbook Columist Aaron Traister complained that he had a problem with Valentines Day because it just seemed so cliché. He didn’t like dealing with what he thought was yet another Hallmark-created holiday (and by the way, for all of you who regularly get down on “Hallmark Holidays,” Hallmark didn’t create them, it’s just that the folks in Kansas City recognized that a lot of people were looking for cards to help celebrate them, and were very successful in fulfilling that need). He was looking for a way to celebrate Valentines Day with his wife that didn’t involve candy and overpriced flowers and all the other stuff that Big Romance pushes on us.

My response? Get a grip. What’s wrong with a little cliché every now and then? I’m willing to bet that he’s one of millions of guys who sits in front of the TV every year with his beer and large assortment of “guy snacks” as he watches the Super Bowl. And don’t try to tell me that Big Beverage, Big Food, and Big Sports aren’t trying to push all of that consumption on them. It’s the same thing every year – lots of food while sitting and watching a football game – so why isn’t that considered cliché?

Or is it not cliché if it’s something that’s near and dear to your heart?

But let’s talk about another cliché: birthdays and birthday parties. I wonder if he passes on them because they’re so cliché, or whether he gets into all the food, and cake…and presents. I know that I sure enjoy celebrating my birthday…especially since the tradition with me, my mother, and my sister is that you get a check for your age in the birthday card. What’s not to like about that? If that’s a tired old cliché, then I say should have more clichés!

Heck…Valentines Day is like a birthday party…with sex! And who’s gonna complain about that? (OK…you in the back row…sit down and shut up.)

Really though, so the tradition is that it’s supposed to be about chocolate and flowers and romance. Is that a big problem? I figure that there are lots of ways to deal with those that aren’t all that cliché at all.

Let’s start with the chocolates. There’s no rule that says it has to be a box of Whitmans. It could be a gift bag full of Hershey’s Kisses and Hugs (and wouldn’t it be really cool if they made…oh, never mind). That’s what I gave Cheryl last year…and then found out that she really doesn’t like the Hugs. That was fine with me, because I love them and ate them for her.

But I know what you’re saying, you’re saying “Those little red and pink-wrapped candies are still just soooo cliché. Do I really have to do that?” You’re hopeless, aren’t you? OK, how’s this for original…find out what kind of candy she likes…you know, like what kind of candy bar she likes…and get her a bagful of them. Imagine the look on her face you present her with a huge gift bag full of Snickers or Caramelos or Nestlés Crunch bars. That’s chocolate…and it’s different. And make sure that you keep your mitts off of what’s supposed to be her candy.

What about the flowers? Sorry, I can’t help you there. That’s because, quite frankly, I’d love to send Cheryl flowers but I can’t. I can’t send them to her at work (which I’d love to do, in order to show all her colleagues how wonderful I am) because she works the night shift, when no one’s delivering. I can’t send them to her during the day because she’s sleeping, and she’d have my head if she was from her bed untimely ripped, to answer the door from the flower delivery guy.

Oh wait…bring some home myself…in my hands? Wow. I never thought of that. I could just stop by the supermarket on the way home and bring her some flowers. What a concept.

Now I have to admit that I’m sort of lucky when it comes to things like Valentines Day and anniversaries. That’s because while I’ve been planning for weeks in advance, Cheryl usually forgets until she sees the present from me sitting on the bed. Then she decides to take me out to dinner at our favorite restaurant.

And that’s almost as good as two checks for my age.

Explaining Shame to a 26-Year-Old

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 05:30:00 +0000

In so many ways it’s a different world out there than it was 30 or more years ago. And that’s a good thing.

Why do I say this? Because my wife was telling one of her colleagues about the conversation I had with my daughter about the social pressures that might lead a girl to feel that she had to have an abortion, and 26-year-old “Emma” looked at her like she had three heads.

You see, Emma doesn’t remember the dark ages when it would have been a major league SHAME to be pregnant and unmarried. She was born just as those days were winding to a close. She neither remembers nor can conceive of a time when getting pregnant without being married was something that brought such shame on yourself and your family that it’s why we have the term “shotgun wedding,” as the parents of the girl rushed to make sure that she was properly married when the baby was born. She doesn’t remember when children born outside of marriage were called "illegitimate" (and that’s the nice word). She has no concept of an unmarried girl being so ashamed to face her family and bring that shame upon them, that she felt that her only choices were an illegal, and often dangerous, “back alley” abortion or suicide.

You see, mercifully, our world isn’t like that anymore. We no longer have the official pretense that people are waiting until they’re married to have sex, and that anyone who doesn’t is a Bad Person™. It used to be that the unmarried pregnancy was a sign that you had been one of those Bad People. While it’s still not a good idea for 16-year-old girls to have sex, and an even worse idea for them to get pregnant, we pretty much assume that a 26-year-old woman is sleeping with her boyfriend. And while it may be a little embarrassing to explain, we no longer pin a scarlet “P” on these women if they get pregnant. In a world where sex before marriage is assumed, most of us see an unplanned pregnancy as just a little “oops.”

At least most of us don’t. There are still some quarters where the unwed pregnant girl is sent off or “hidden away” so that she doesn’t set a “bad example” for the others.

And that’s one of the big differences between then and now: SHAME vs embarrassment. One would think that the with the SHAME gone from being pregnant and unmarried, more women would be willing to carry the baby to term and then place it with an adoptive family.

Let me make myself clear, I’m pro-choice, but that doesn’t mean that I believe that you should be able to have an abortion just because it’s Tuesday, or just because it’ll ruin your vacation plans. I’m pro-choice because I remember the days of SHAME and coat hangers. I would prefer that women make the “tragic choice” to have an abortion because of “tragic circumstances” such as a threat to her own life or rape…or facing the SHAME that some of the very people who are fighting abortion would subject her and her family to. I have a problem with it being used because the pregnancy in “inconvenient.”

And what of me and my family? What have I said to my two daughters? I’ve said very simply that if they should ever find themselves unmarried and pregnant, while it may be a little embarrassing, I’d like to get to know my grandchildren, no matter when they arrive.

Explaining Abortion to a 10-Year-Old

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:30:00 +0000

It all began with a postcard from our older daughter.

She sends us postcards, real drop-in-the-mailbox postcards, a few times each week, with a little snippet or two about college life or something interesting she’s learned on them. The latest one said that a good portion of women who have abortions consider themselves to be pro-life, and think “I’m a good person who made a mistake, so it’s OK if I get an abortion.” But when “those” people get abortions, it’s because they’re bad people and irresponsible.

As I read the postcard to myself, her younger sister asked what it said, and when I told her, I got a question that I wasn’t expecting: What’s an abortion?

Now, the reason I wasn’t expecting the question isn’t because I was naïve. My daughters are nurse’s kids, and knew more about sex at age eight than many kids knew at age 14. If you ask us a question, we’ll give you the answer. Besides, just last week she was in the same room with me when I was talking about our church’s position on abortion with a friend, and she hadn’t asked any questions then.

And in case you’re interested, the last time I checked, the official position of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is that abortion is, and needs to remain a “tragic option,” one that is sadly necessary for some people in this fallen world.

But back to the main story here, when she asked me what an abortion was, I could easily have deferred that one to her mother, but she was asleep, and I figured that this was something that we needed to talk about right then and there. I was going to try to talk about it in the most neutral way possible, without hitting either of the rabid extremes, but coming from the uncomfortable middle, where I find myself, along with most other people in this country.

I don’t remember my exact words, but I explained to her that an abortion was an operation where a pregnant woman goes to have the baby removed, and it dies. I didn’t use the word “baby” over “fetus” for any political or ideological reasons. It was simply because I was talking to a 10-year-old, and that’s the term she understood.

When I explained this to her, a look of horror went over her face. Once again, not because of any particular political or ideological reasons, but because this is the kid who can’t walk through the mall without saying, “Ooh, look at the baby!” While she can imagine someone not wanting a baby (she knows that having a second kid was really not on my personal To Do list, and laughs at me for losing that battle), she can’t imagine anyone not wanting one badly enough to kill it. Her immediate response was “couldn’t they just have someone adopt it?”

Ah…in a more perfect world that would be the case. But I also took the time to explain some of the social pressures that might lead a girl to feel that she had to have an abortion, and that how, ironically, those pressures can come from the same religious people who are fighting against it. It used to be that an abortion was one way of hiding the “shame” that you had been having sex without being married. Or rather, of hiding the shame that you’d been caught. We all knew that people were doing it, we just didn’t want to admit it. Nowadays we assume that most people have sex without being married, so getting pregnant is only the confirmation of what we figured you were doing anyway.

In recent years I have been very pleased to see the baptisms of a few babies in our congregation who were the children of unwed parents. I was pleased to see that the mothers were not “sent to visit Aunt Sue for a few months,” but remained as part of the community, and that their children were fawned over just like any other new baby in the congregation. I was quite proud to know that our congregation isn't part of the problem that I told my 10-year-old about.

But I know that this conversation isn’t over yet, and while I really don’t want to talk to her about coat hangers, I know that I need to in order to put this whole issue in context.

And even though I’ve run long over my self-imposed word limit, the conversation here isn’t over yet either, and will resume in a few weeks as I think about a book that influenced me a great deal when I was in high school.

Today's Word is Theodicy

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 07:39:00 +0000

I’m back. Sadly, I’m back. Well, actually, it’s not sad that I’m back, but the event that made me drop everything else, and get back here to write is. You know what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, then mercifully, you’ve been living under a rock for the past two weeks.

The word for today is theodicy. It’s a word that few people know, but a concept that’s as old as the hills; at least as old as Job’s questioning, and a concept that many of us have been struggling with since the events of Newtown. It is the concept of questioning how a loving, all-powerful God could allow such horrible things to happen.

Now, if you’re an atheist or agnostic (and nothing against them personally, some of the most moral people I know are atheists and agnostics), the fact that this concept and these questions exist proves that there is no God…or at least that if he does exist, he doesn’t operate the way that we’ve been taught since childhood.

There’s a bumper sticker out there that says “God is good. Evil is real. And God is all-powerful. Pick two.” It forces the theodicy issue to the front, especially at times like this, and it can be the statement that causes many believers to just pack it all in and give up.

And you know what? I wouldn’t blame them.

What? Did I just say that? A card-carrying Lutheran for 30 years, and an Episcopalian before that? A preaching deacon at our church since 1992, and the head deacon for more years than I can keep track of? Did I really say that?

Yes, I did. I wouldn’t blame any of the families who lost people two weeks ago if they said, “Screw this, God, I’m done. You weren’t there for us, I’m not there for you, because obviously you either don’t exist or don’t care.” I wouldn’t blame them, and I wouldn’t try to change their minds. Because the midst of such unbelievable pain is not the acceptable time to talk about Job or any other biblical examples of unwarranted suffering. It’s not the time to talk about how CS Lewis compared the pain we deal with for 70 or so years as being a pin prick when compared to eternity. It belittles the pain that they’re going through, and ignores their very real need to shake their fist at God and say, “What the Hell are you doing up there? Can’t you control your own people!”

Ah, control…there’s the issue.

Some of us on the religious side of the fence try to make sense of this by saying that God’s somehow stepping in to prevent tragedies like this would violate our free will. I’m not one of those people. To me there’s a very real difference between God stepping in and saying, “Nope, I’m not gonna let you do this,” and him saying “this isn’t what I want you to do.” Or to be more precise, him saying clearly and understandably “this isn’t what I want you to do,” because let’s face it, there’s a lot of misunderstanding and disagreement even among those of the same religion, same denomination, and even the same congregation about what God seems to have been saying, and means for us to do today. And there are a lot of us on the religious side of the fence who are just a tad frustrated with this lack of clarity which seems to be the root of so much well-intentioned evil; or this apparent silence which leads some people to figure that there’s no God in the first place, so who cares?

And come on, can anyone realistically claim that someone who is mentally ill has free will? Seems to me that that’s the ultimate loss of it. How would God be violating the free will of a mentally ill person (who doesn’t really have it to begin with) by stepping in and preventing them from doing horrible things?

The answer here is that I don’t have an answer.

What! I brought you this far, only to tell you that I don’t have an answer?

Yes. Not only that, but I’ve also brought you this far to tell you to be wary of anyone who claims to have an answer…because they don’t. None of us do. There are no simple answers to this question, and this is where a good read of the book of Job will put those who want to give simple answers that somehow put the blame on us in their attempt to protect their idea of how God works in their well-deserved place.

So then what do I have to say? Very simply, I find myself sitting here with you, yet again shaking my fist at Heaven and saying “WTF! Come on, this is no way to run an airline if you want to keep your passengers.”

But I’m also a stubborn little SOB, and I figure that there’s an answer somewhere that makes perfect sense, that ties everything together, and makes everything right in the long run; but I don’t get to find out what it is if I give up, say “Screw this,” and walk away because I’ve seen this happen too many times.

Instead, I take my cue from Jacob, who while wrestling with the angel, said, “I will not let go until you bless me.” Well, even in the aftermath of such incredible horror…again…I find myself saying “You’re not getting rid of me until I get the answer, until I see everything made right in the end.”

It may not be the answer that you’re looking for. It certainly isn’t the answer I want. But it’s all I have at the moment.

Truly Intelligent Design

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 04:18:00 +0000

I remember it was another pretty nondescript day in Mr Van Gilder’s General Science class 42 years ago at East Orange High School. It wasn’t the day when, after being caught not paying attention to a lecture on the weather, Curtis Brockman answered that they call the wind Mariah. No, that day was pretty descript, because I felt embarrassed for the poor white kid who just made a fool of himself in front of the 27 other members of the class…all of whom were black.

The day was nondescript because we were finishing up watching a film on the circulatory system that we had started the previous day. It was an OK film. I already knew pretty much all of the stuff in it, because I was a human body geek, and had been one since about 4^th grade. At the end of the film, the narrator came on-camera and said a few words about how the way that this incredibly complex circulatory system worked in this incredibly complex body meant that there had to be a designer.

Well, duh. Of course there was a designer…and it was God. Where was the news in that?

Apparently, this 14-year-old who could name and draw every organ in the human body, had missed the news that, aside from the occasional atheist, there was any question about whether or not God had made us.

And this 14-year-old knew and understood Darwin’s theory of evolution.

You see, to me, evolution didn’t necessarily mean that we lived in a totally God-less, random universe. Far from it; it meant that God was so slick that he set up this method to eventually create us, and that the stories from Genesis were told to and by people who at that point would’ve scratched their heads going “Mah?” (Hebrew for “what”) if you tried to explain to them what a half-life or a singluarlity was.

And I went blissfully unaware that there was any debate about this until I was in college.

I mean, yeah, we read Inherit the Wind in English class, but that was about people 50 years ago. Surely no one really questioned it now, did they?

Little did I know that not only did people still question it, but that college-educated people questioned it, and tried, and still try, with all their might to come up with some alternative thesis that would allow them to believe that the Bible was word-for-word, literally true, in the current translation…totally forgetting the fact that we may have misunderstood some of the original Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Latin.

And so these people went on to do what I call “science with an ax to grind.”

You see, real science does a few experiments, looks at the results, and says, “OK, until proven differently, it looks like this is how things work.” The Creationists, Intelligent Designers, and Young Earthers aren’t doing experiments and letting the chips fall where they may…they have a very clear goal, and that goal is to prove evolution and everything that the scientific community has accepted for years about the age of the universe, and our planet, wrong.

And this is so that they might “prove” the Bible to be right.

The Creationists and their ilk seem to think that science is trying to prove that there is no God. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Granted, there are a fair number of scientists who believe that evolution and an old universe negate the need for God to exist, but there are also quite a few who believe that the apparent randomness of Quantum Theory is where God and miracles hide from the view of us mere mortals.

And that, to me, is truly intelligent design.

Giftless Parties

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:08:00 +0000

My daughter, Sofie's birthday is coming up next week, and with that in mind, I figured I'd treat you to a reprint of a piece of mine that was published in the Syracuse Post Standard back in 2009.

Has anyone noticed the new trend of "giftless birthday parties?" We've been invited to three of them in the past few years and they're great. The invitation comes and says something along the lines of "Instead of bringing a gift, we'd appreciate it if you'd make a donation to such-and-such charity, which really means a lot to us."

I like these for two reasons. The first is that it makes my life easier as a gift-giver. Knowing how many useless and ill-chosen gifts my kids have received over the years at birthday parties, I strive to give what I call zero-footprint gifts. These are things that take up no space at all in the house, and include movie passes, bookstore gift cards, and the like. But giving to a charity is the ultimate zero-footprint gift, and teaches the kids that their birthday party isn't and shouldn't be all about what they get from their friends. I've come to believe that until they become teenagers and they all have a better idea of what their friends like, the best birthday presents come from family members.

The other reason I like this is because it now gives me a way to avoid all the useless presents that might otherwise arrive in my house, while also giving me a way to teach our daughter that it ain't all about her - even on her birthday.

Now in a previous generation, the great twin sisters of advice, Ann and Abby would've frowned on "no gifts please" invitations because it assumed that people were gonna bring gifts, and that was impolite. PULEEEZE! We all know that people are gonna bring gifts. We all know that the minute we receive the invitation, the first thing that goes through our minds is "What should I get this kid?" Sure, a gift may not be the "price of admission" to the party, but the person who comes without one sure looks funny. The time has come to stop pretending.

And that's the third reason why I like these giftless parties, no one looks odd when they come with only a card and no gift. In fact, if you're having a few financial difficulties, you can put off the gift of the donation until you're doing better (when you get your tax refund) and no one knows. Even better, this gift is tax deductible. Who could ask for anything more?

Let's hear it for more giftless parties.

Two Tubes of Toothpaste

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 03:44:00 +0000

Amanda and Joe got married this past weekend, and as a wedding present I gave them two little travel-sized tubes of toothpaste. You may think this is a rather strange gift, but I think it was a very important one. The card I gave them with it should explain why. It said:

There are two types of people: those who squeeze their toothpaste from the middle, and those who steadfastly believe that you should squeeze it from the end.

I say that each person should get their own tube.

When I first tell people about two tubes, they argue that that will cost more money because you’re buying two tubes instead of one. But it’s not really true. You’re actually still buying the same amount of toothpaste. The difference is that instead of buying a tube a month for two people to share, you’re buying two tubes every two months so each person can have their own. Either way you’re buying two tubes every two months.

But there’s much more to this than a simple lesson about shopping.

So many marriages fail these days because ask too much of it. Yes, you saw that right, we ask too much of marriage. I’m all for the bride and groom being each other’s best friends…I think that the best marriages are built on friendship rather than passion or hotness, the latter two of which will eventually fade away. Cheryl and I are each other’s best friends, but just as we each need our own tube of toothpaste – and different brands too – we each need our own circles of friends to hang out with every now and then. Sometimes those circles will overlap, and sometimes they won’t; but the moment that one of us expects the other to be our everything, and to “complete us,” we’re in trouble.

And that goes for everyone. Everyone needs a little time and space to themselves in a marriage, otherwise life together gets claustrophobic. And when things get claustrophobic, you find yourself screaming and clawing to get out.

We also need our own activities and interests to be involved in…which may not necessarily be shared by the other. If he likes Shakespeare while she prefers science fiction (in which case I’d wonder how they ended up together in the first place), he shouldn’t have to be dragged to every Star Trek movie by her, nor should she be dragged to every production of Macbeth by him. It’s OK to have separate interests, and not to constantly inflict them on each other.

Now, that being said, he should understand that he’ll get serious brownie points for suggesting that they go to see the latest sci-fi flick together. The same applies to her for not only suggesting that they go see Kiss Me Kate, but for also understanding that it’s a modernization of The Taming of the Shrew. But she shouldn’t get upset, and think that he doesn’t love her, just because he doesn’t want to go to the All-Night Star Trek Festival. That’s what her other sci-fi friends are for.

I don’t know how or when this trend started toward looking at our spouses as our “soulmates,” or of looking for a “soulmate” to marry, but I think it sets us up for expecting too much. Me? I was just looking for a nice girl who I shared some of the same interests and values with, who was nice to me, was smart, and funny, and was “low maintenance.” It’s important that when I met Cheryl, my first thought was that she’d make a great friend…and later, a friend that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Too many people expect perfection in their marriages, and are devastated when they don’t find it. My advice to everyone is to expect less, and you’ll be amazed at what comes your way.

And while you’re at it, get separate tubes of toothpaste.

Black Like New Jersey

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 10:03:00 +0000

There are a number of misconceptions about New Jersey and people from there. Some come from people who aren’t from there, and others come from those of us who grew up there.

The first is that it’s a vast industrial wasteland. Now this is understandable if you’ve only ever driven along the New Jersey Turnpike, that 122-mile swath of highway that runs from just outside New York City to just above the Delaware Memorial Bridge. The entire point of the Turnpike was to move goods quickly from one end of the state to the other. And with only 18 exits along the entire route, it’s more of a route through the state than for it.

And yet, New Jersey is officially known as The Garden State, and while this may not be seen as easily from its other major highway, the Garden State Parkway, with almost 90 exits over its 172-mile route, this road for the state takes you through slices of suburban and rural New Jersey that people who only drive the Turnpike, mostly outsiders, never see.

But there are a few other misconceptions about New Jersey, and one of them is that everyone from New Jersey is like the people in North Jersey, or Northeast Jersey, just outside of Manhattan, to be specific. But the people who live in Southwest Jersey, near Philadelphia, might have a different view. And then there are the people who live in the shore towns, or in Northwest Jersey. The simple fact of the matter is that there is no one way to be from New Jersey. The people from Passaic are just as much from New Jersey as are those from Phillipsburg or Cape May or Camden. The people who order “pizza and subs” are just as much from New Jersey as those who order “tomato pie and hoagies.”

And you don’t have to love Springsteen or the Four Seasons in order to be a legitimate Jersey Person.

What’s my point? For my birthday, my daughter gave me Baratunde Thurston’s book How to be Black. After jokingly asking her if she was going to read every other chapter (my wife is white), I sat down to read this book myself.

I couldn’t put it down.

This was the book I wish had existed when I was in high school back in the early 70s. The problem was that Thurston wasn’t born until I was in college. This book pointed out that there are many ways to be black. To some people being black is about being from the inner city. To others it’s about being from the south. To still others it’s just about what ethnic group they are, even if they much prefer Rachmaninoff to rap.

In other words, there are as many ways to be black as there are to be from New Jersey.

I could’ve used this book when people, mostly my classmates at Ashland Elementary School and East Orange High School, accused me of “not being black” or worse, of being an “Oreo” (black on the outside, white on the inside), because I didn’t fit their narrow notions of what it meant to be black. This is a book that I’m certain many kids could use today, as they find themselves accused of “trying to be white” when they’re merely being black in their own particular way; one that looks more like the view from the Parkway than from the Turnpike.

And this is a book that I believe everyone, black, white, or purple, should read, before you go on making assumptions about what is and isn’t “legitimately” black, Asian, or even Irish.

My name is Keith, and I’m from New Jersey.

I’m also black.

Gentrification and Blockbusting

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 04:30:00 +0000

I had heard the term gentrification long before I moved to the apartment in Jersey City. To me it simply meant that middle-class people were coming into a previously run-down neighborhood, and were slowly improving it by their presence and efforts.

Others didn’t see it in quite those terms. They saw gentrification as something evil that pushed the poor out of affordable housing, either when landlords realized that they could charge more for the spots that existed, or when investors tore down entire blocks of what had been substandard housing, and replaced it with newer units for people who wanted to live near Manhattan, but not pay through the nose for it.

A few years ago, as we took a trip on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, we passed through my old Jersey City neighborhood, and I didn’t recognize it at all. 25 years later, the transformation had been that complete. The slightly dicey neighborhood I had lived in for a year was now beautiful, and I probably couldn’t afford to live there now myself.

However…I didn’t have the history with Jersey City that I had with my hometown of East Orange. I hadn’t lived there during its “better days,” if it had any, so I didn’t know quite where it came from before the gentrification started. As a result, I didn’t have an answer for those who thought that gentrification was evil because it displaced the poor. But looking at East Orange, where it came from, where it fell to, and my hopes for its future, gives me a whole different perspective on the whole gentrification issue.

And my new perspective is that gentrification and blockbusting are two sides of the same coin, with the former possibly being a correction of the latter.

Now, for those of you who are two young to be familiar with the term “blockbusting,” it’s really quite simple…and truly evil. It was the act of scaring the current middle-class residents of an area into selling their homes at a loss, and moving out, because “those people” are coming; and then selling, or more likely renting, those homes to “those people” at a profit. In the years after the 1967 Newark riots, a lot of blockbusting went on in East Orange, and a lot of the middle-class, both white and black, moved to “safer” places like Scotch Plains, West Orange, and Montclair. As more of the middle-class moved out, more of the poor moved in, and it became a repeating death spiral, to the point where what was once one of the wealthiest towns in the state has almost a 20% poverty rate.

But this trend can be reversed. East Orange can be saved, and it can be saved by something that has run right through the middle of town since about 1836. I’m talking about NJ Transit’s Morristown Line. As young professionals moved out of Manhattan to Hoboken and Jersey City in the 1980s because of its convenience to the city via the PATH line, East Orange, just a few stops away on the Morristown Line, may be the next stop for the Gentrification Express, as those two cities become almost as expensive as Manhattan.

“But what of the poor?” you might ask. “Won’t the influx of all these professionals displace them by making housing there impossible for them to afford?”

This is where I see both sides of the equation. Because I know where my hometown came from, I can see that while gentrification may indeed displace many of the poor who are there now, it would not be artificially and unfairly raising property values, but instead, would be bringing them back up to what they would’ve been, had the blockbusting and middle-class flight of the 1970s and 1980s not occurred in the first place.

And I can see so many reasons why a mass influx of the middle-class back to my hometown would be a good thing for everyone.

But that’s something to talk about later on.

A Tale of Two Cities

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0000

It was the best of towns, it is the worst of towns.

Well, maybe I overstate both cases a little, but my how my hometown of East Orange, NJ has fallen. I discovered a book, East Orange, by Bill Hart (ISBN 978-0-7385-4549-3), that says that at one time East Orange was one of the wealthiest cities in the country. It had some of the best schools. It had a great park system. And when Andrew Carnegie donated money to build a public library, some of the residents were insulted, and one stated, “We are a wealthy community able to provide for our own library.”

I don’t remember East Orange being a wealthy town, but I do remember it being a proud and beautiful one. It was a town that regularly won awards for its cleanliness, and a town with a thriving middle class. I’ve mentioned before that East Orange was a small town even though it had 77,000 people because it was physically small. We were only four square miles in size, but with no height restrictions, East Orange was the home of many beautiful apartment buildings. In fact, according to Hart, we were once known for having more apartment buildings than any other East Coast community. But I also remember the beautiful homes on Ampere Parkway, Woodland Avenue, and Brookwood Street.

In the years since I left for college in 1974, East Orange seemed to start going downhill, and actually, the spiral had started while I was still there. East Orange is no longer the beautiful town it once was, and the school system is one of the poorer ones in the state.

What happened? Newark happened. But no, Newark is not the second city in this tale. Specifically, the Newark riots of 1967 happened, causing white and general middle class flight from both Newark and East Orange and an influx of some of the poorer residents of Newark. East Orange now has a black population of 89% and a 19% poverty rate. So much for being one of the wealthiest cities in the country.

And then there’s Bayonne…and Harrison and Belleville while we’re at it. These towns are also right next to Newark, but neither have the huge black population nor the poverty rate that East Orange does. I wondered why it was that those towns didn’t take in as many “refugees” as East Orange did. I had theory; I was betting that it was easier for poor blacks to move into East Orange because of those apartment buildings we were known for, and that to move into Bayonne, Harrison, or Belleville would’ve meant buying a house.

I tested my theory by asking a friend from Bayonne, a town with a 6% black population and a poverty rate of 10%. He said that not only had I hit the nail squarely on the head, but that in the 60s, Mayor Fitzpatrick intentionally had block after block of old apartment buildings in Bayonne torn down and replaced by one and two-family houses. Many people complained that this was blatantly racist, and forced the poor to move out of Bayonne…but they also said that it “saved” the city.

Wow. Could East Orange have been “saved” by tearing down some of the many apartment buildings we were known for? Now before you call me either racist or insensitive, I’m neither. But perhaps a better distribution of people…a little more diversity…would’ve done everyone some good. Perhaps East Orange could’ve torn down some of the apartment buildings and Bayonne could’ve left some standing.

On the other hand, maybe some of those apartment buildings in East Orange are the next stop for the young professionals who find that they’ve now been priced out of Jersey City.

But I'll talk about that next week.

What is Facebook For?

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:05:00 +0000

Just this past weekend, Sam Biddle, a writer for the tech blog Gizmodo, posted his list of 11 things you should never, ever say on Facebook. Expecting it to be the regular commonsense things about getting drunk, how much you hate your current job, and having a dead body in the trunk of your car, I decided to see what made his list. Here it is:

Birthday thank yous
Deaths
Personal messages to your significant other
Hangovers
College admissions
Exercise
Requests for money
Romantic anniversaries
New phone number
Screeds bemoaning Facebook
Engagements

My first reaction when I saw the first two things on his list was “You’ve got to be kidding!” But then as I read further, and saw the rationale for each of the things he said didn’t belong on Facebook, I said it again…along with “This guy is a shallow schmuck who doesn’t want to know about the lives of his friends…if he really has any!” Because let’s face it, these things are exactly what most of us use Facebook for. Let’s take a quick look at his issues with some of these items.

What’s wrong with birthday thank yous? He says that it’s less sincere than the “dozens of perfunctory congratulations from people you barely know anymore.” I say that he needs to remove the telephone pole from the darkness.

And deaths? In his own words, “Bummer city. A death has no place on Timeline, because Timeline is beautiful…” Get serious dude! There are many people whose deaths I wouldn’t have known about if it weren’t for someone posting it on Facebook. Apparently he believes that Facebook should only be used for posting videos of the stupid cat trick of the week, and not for anything that might reflect on your real life. Yes, deaths are awkward to deal with on Facebook…they’re bloody awkward to deal with in real life too. Would it kill him to post the same perfunctory “I’m so sorry” that he would’ve said in person?

Personal messages to your significant other? His response to this was “we’d prefer that each of you stop by our computers and gag us by hand.” Are you beginning to get a picture of how totally self-absorbed this guy must be?

College admissions. He says that nobody cares except your family and friends, most of whom can be reached directly online anyway, and that you should stop bragging. My response is that they’re on Facebook precisely to find out stuff like this. I personally enjoy finding out where the kids of my friends are going to college, and don’t consider it to be bragging. In addition, this is how my daughter and her friends let everyone know where they got in. What is wrong with this guy?

Romantic anniversaries? He says “There are two people who truly care about this, and you are one of them.” I like hearing about romantic anniversaries, but then again, I’m an incurable romantic. This whole article sounds like it was written by a guy who isn’t getting any, hasn’t gotten any in a long time, and won’t be getting any at all until he changes his pathetic attitude.

Finally, we have engagements. Why doesn’t he want to hear about your engagement? He says that you should simply change your relationship status, rather than screaming it out to the rest of us. I don’t know, I’m thinking that that may be just a little too subtle for most of us on the receiving end to notice. He also says that this is like broadcasting your upcoming wedding to hundreds of people who won’t be invited. Yeah? So what. Happens IRL too. I’ve known about the engagements of tons of coworkers and friends whose weddings I was never invited to. NBD.

Basically, he wants people to stop using Facebook for the very things we all use Facebook for. He doesn’t want you clogging up his newsfeed with your life. And if we don’t use it for things like this, then what’s the point of even being on Facebook to begin with?

I suspect that if he removes the telephone pole from it’s rather unfortunate placement, his heart might grow three sizes…if he has one.

The Pre-Fab Forty

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 04:30:00 +0000

Davy Jones, the short, cute Monkee, died back in February. Yes, I know I’m coming a bit late to the party…or the funeral, I suppose…on this, but I’ve had a few other things to deal with in my life.

Getting back to the point, for those of you not old enough to remember, Davy Jones was a member of the popular 60s group The Monkees who were derisively referred to by many as “The Pre-Fab Four,” because this was a group built specifically created to cater to the market for “boy bands” among 1960s teenaged girls. It was a group where the members were not selected for their musicianship, but for their showmanship and acting ability (hmm…sounds a little like Big Time Rush, which my nine-year-old daughter watches on Nickelodeon).

But while they were derided by musical “purists,” in 1967 they sold more albums than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. That just made the sting even worse to people who enjoyed “real” musicians. What right did these upstarts, who supposedly didn’t even play their own instruments, have to outsell “legitimate artists” like the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, and the like?

And the same question has been asked about performers such as Brittney Spears, the Spice Girls, and the A*Teens (anyone remember them?). Don’t people understand that these people don’t write their own songs or play their own instruments, and therefore have no talent? Don’t they realize that they’re just a bunch of people who’ve been trained to look good and sound good while they’re singing someone else’s stuff?

Well, quite frankly, I resemble that statement…and so do about 70 or 80 of the people I hung out with when I was an undergrad. And so do hundreds of students at St Olaf College, and other schools that are famous for their choirs. You see, while I was an undergrad at Syracuse University, I was a member of the Hendricks Chapel Choir, and we not only sang for the regular Sunday morning chapel services, but we gave a concert each semester, and went on yearly concert tours. I will also tell you that we didn’t write our own material, we rarely played our own instruments, and we were most definitely trained by a succession of excellent choir directors to look and sound good while were singing someone else’s stuff.

I suppose you could call us the Pre-Fab Forty.

So I’d love to ask all the music snobs out there what the big difference is between being in the Hendricks Chapel Choir and being one of the Monkees, or one of the Spice Girls, or a member of any of the current groups that I’m too old and out of the loop to know anything about unless my daughter downloads one of their songs from iTunes and plays it incessantly. OK…so they make a whole lot more money than most of us will ever see. But are they only “legitimate performers” if they write their own stuff? Most opera singers, as well as most actors on the Broadway stage, would answer “no” to that.

For his part, Davy Jones was already a professional actor, having played the Artful Dodger in the Broadway production of the musical Oliver! before landing the gig of a lifetime with the Monkees. So was Mickey Dolenz, who those of us of a certain age remember as Corky on the TV show Circus Boy. He went into this thinking that he was simply playing the role a rock star, and ended up becoming one for real.

Were he and his three bandmates, as well as other “made for TV” or “made for the studio” groups “real performers?”

Well…I’m a believer.

Only an Eye for an Eye

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:47:00 +0000

One of the commonly cited problems with email is how easy it is to misinterpret what someone has written because you can’t hear the inflection of their voice to know whether they’re kidding or not. But this problem isn’t restricted only to email, it happens with every form of writing. If the writer doesn’t go out of his or her way to telegraph to you the fact that they’re kidding or being sarcastic, you may well miss the point. And yet some writers prefer not to telegraph their intentions for fear of insulting the reader’s intelligence.

The problem comes when someone reads that same piece or that same letter years down the line, without knowing the back story, or without knowing the writer’s personality and their relationship with the original reader.

And don’t even get me started on how the meanings of words can change over the years…even simple words that we think we know the meanings of. Take for example happiness. Our 21st century minds think of something much different than Thomas Jefferson did when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. When he wrote about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” he was not talking about the pursuit of hedonism or personal gratification. He had something much more lofty in mind than that. But unless you take the time to study the language, as well as what educated people were thinking during the era we call The Enlightenment, you’re going to think that Jefferson was saying that one of our inalienable rights was to be able not only to chase after, but to eventually get, that hot babe or guy that we’ve had our eye on.

And the problem only gets worse the farther back you go, and the further removed you are from the person who said the thing you’re quoting. Often, it doesn’t mean what it appears to at first blush. This is the case with many well known and perhaps overused quotes from the Bible…the most overused of which is “an eye for an eye.”

Now, I have to tell you, that I get just a little worked up whenever I hear people who claim to be Christians stating that they believe in an eye for an eye…”just like the Bible says.” That’s because if they spent as much time in their New Testament as they want you to think they have, they’d know that in Matthew 5 Jesus said:

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

With that in mind, it seems that Christians should be the last people calling for an eye for an eye.

But there’s something that most people don’t get, and that I didn’t get until I stumbled across it a few years ago…the lex talionis (as the eye for an eye concept is known) wasn’t about saying, “You took out my eye, so I get to take out yours!” Instead, it was a limitation. It was saying that if someone made you blind, you only got to make him blind too…you couldn't also torch his village. It was saying only an eye for an eye, and no more. And in a culture where long-running vendettas were common, this was an important change. The lex talionis said that you couldn’t slaughter your enemy’s entire family because he had called your mother’s honor into question. The most you were allowed to do was to insult his mother in the same way.

And then it was to stop.

It’s funny…a lot of people think the world would be a much better place if we all followed the rule of an eye for an eye. I guess I could go along with that…

if we followed it the way it was actually meant.

You May Be Right - They May Be Crazy…and Armed

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 04:50:00 +0000

OK, before I say another word, let me state right now that I firmly believe that George Zimmerman should never have gotten out of his car. Had he followed the dispatcher’s orders, and just stayed there, we wouldn’t be looking at the situation we’re looking at now, and Trayvon Martin likely would still have been alive.

That having been said, without “blaming the victim,” I can easily see how Trayvon could’ve been alive today had he just used some basic common sense. And I’m not even talking about the well-known advice that many black parents give their kids of “Don’t argue with the police. Just be polite, and call the lawyer when you get home.” Heck, that’s good advice for anyone. It’s what I said to my melanin-impoverished wife when she was pulled over for speeding in a Pennsylvania work zone almost ten years ago. I knew something was wrong with the signs, but I told her that we’d quietly go back and check out the signs after she got the ticket.

No…I’m talking about something more basic, that applies to anyone, black, white, or purple; something that this least street-smart person in the world learned as a kid in Jersey.

What I’m talking about is this: If you think that someone is following you, don’t look back, don’t acknowledge them, don’t let them know that you know they’re there or that you think they’re following you (because maybe they’re not). Just walk a little faster to where you’re going, or to some “safe” place. Do not run, if they are following you, that will just make them chase you. And above all, Do not confront them. People are nuts; you don’t know why they’re following you or what they’re carrying. This is advice that this “least street-smart person in the world” had to follow more than once in his 55 years.

Zimmerman was one of those people, and had Trayvon followed this simple advice, he’d likely still be alive today.

To paraphrase Billy Joel, “You may be right - they may be crazy…and armed.” And sometimes backing down to defuse the situation, even when you know that you’re in the right, is the better part of living to see another day. I worry about some of my young friends, black, white, and all kinds of shades in between, who don’t understand this, and who I can easily see getting themselves killed over a principle, when they could easily have backed down and walked away.

Unfortunately, that’s the problem with being young; you don’t get that. I’m not sure that even I would’ve gotten it at that age.

And once again, I will say that Zimmerman instigated the situation that Trayvon was not experienced enough to know how to handle wisely.

Some people, upon hearing what I’ve just said, tell me that there’s no guarantee that Zimmerman wouldn’t have killed Trayvon Martin even if he had acted calmly and wisely. I can accept that. You never know what might have been.

But had Zimmerman still shot him anyway, the evidence against him would be even more damning.

So please, take a little advice from this “least street-smart person in the world;” if you think you’re being followed, don’t look back, don’t acknowledge them, don’t let them know that you know they’re there or that you think they’re following you. Just walk a little faster to where you’re going, or to some “safe” place. And above all, Do not confront them.

Oh, and by the way, cell phones are wonderful things. Use them to call for help.

Putting Her to Bed

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:19:00 +0000

Two and a half years ago I wrote in my post The Half-Life of Grief that maybe 100 years after some great tragedy, after anyone directly involved would’ve long been dead, as would most people directly affected by it, we should have one last observance, and then put it to bed.

This coming Saturday will mark the 100-year mark of what is probably the most famous peacetime maritime disaster: the sinking of the RMS Titanic. And fitting with what I’d previously said, the youngest, and last survivor, Millvina Dean, died in 2009 at age 97. The only people left now are those with indirect ties; people such as Robert Burr, whose grandfather was a steward who went down with the ship, or Philip Littlejohn, whose grandfather left the ship in Lifeboat 13. People who weren’t there, but were told the story by people in their families who had actually been there on that night to remember.

And in a move that was seen as some as tasteless and tempting fate, the MS Balmoral left Southampton last week, as a 100th anniversary commemoration cruise, following the same course that the Titanic had intended to take.

Yes, I can see how some people might think that this was in terrible taste. I did when I first heard of the plans to do it a few years ago. But when I read the article about it in the Daily Mail, I changed my mind. This was to be no simple “party cruise” for people who had gotten “Titanic-mania” after seeing James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster. This “Titanic Memorial Cruise” was to feature meals from the original menu, a five-piece band playing music from the era, and lectures from historians and experts. It would also stop, on April 14th, for a memorial service at the site where the ship went down. Later on it would stop at Nova Scotia, where some of the bodies were buried, before finally continuing on to New York.

If you still think this is crass, and that the people who spent up to $9500 for tickets are trading on the sorrows of others, let me ask you about the many history buffs who visit places like Gettysburg or Normandy or Auschwitz every year. Aren’t those people, especially the ones who go “dressed for the occasion,” doing the same thing?

And what about the people like Burr and Littlejohn, descendants of passengers and crew members, who have decided to make this anniversary voyage, and successfully complete the trip that their ancestors started out on? Are they tasteless gawkers too?

I don’t know. I guess that 100 years later, when everyone involved would’ve been long dead anyway, is a pretty good time to put it to bed, and to do it in a grand way. I guess also that when you consider that the Titanic was built in Belfast, they’re putting it to bed in the grand tradition of the Irish wake, combining both the joy and the sorrow.

So let’s raise a cup to the Titanic and the 1514 people who went down with her.

And then let us say “goodnight.”

Not Quite According to Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Mr G) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 04:23:00 +0000

It was a very simple plan. Six weeks after Cheryl and I started seeing each other we figured that it was inevitable that we were going to marry each other; but we also figured that our friends and family members would think that we were absolutely out of our minds to announce that so soon. So the plan was that we would officially announce our engagement in July, on the first anniversary of our first date, and plan to get married a year later, as close to our second anniversary as possible.

That was the plan. But I was a little impatient. I knew she was going to marry me…actually, she had brought up the idea first…but I couldn’t tell anyone outside of a few trusted very close friends. I had to wait until July before I could announce to the world that I was going to marry this wonderful person…and that seemed like waiting forever.

Every now and then I’d look at her and say, “So…will you marry me?” and she’d smile and say “Not yet,” or “Yes, but you can’t tell anyone yet.” Both of those answers made me absolutely crazy. Like I said before, I knew what the deal was, but I wanted everyone else to know the deal too.

The months seemed to go by very slowly. December to January, January to February, February to March, and it was the same thing each time. I’d ask her, and she’d tell me that she couldn’t give me an official answer until July.

And then April came, and one evening, after watching TV together, I turned to Cheryl and said, “Marry me already.”

To my surprise, she said, “OK.”

“Really? Officially? You mean like this counts, and we can tell people?”

She smiled and said “Yes.”

Why am I telling you this? Because this week is the 25th anniversary of the day that Cheryl finally said that we could officially tell everyone what a lot of our friends had already figured out…that we had decided to get married.

What about the rest of the plan? Well that went just as we had laid it out in the first place; we got married on July 16th, 1988, just three days shy of our second anniversary.

And quite frankly, I think things have worked out just fine. And I’m still as thrilled to tell people about Cheryl now as I was then.