Jeremy McGuire's

The Boy in Summer

Administrator — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:42:59 +0000

The boy loved summer and home-made slingshots and walking barefoot through the grass. He liked catching lightening bugs and caterpillars and crawfish and tadpoles and putting them in jars with holes in the lids until they died. He didn’t intend them to die; it just happened.

He loved doing dangerous things because they were dangerous and did not like obeying the rules and sitting up straight and going to church. He liked wrestling, both on television and in real life, but was not a fighter. If attacked he sat with his knees to his chin and covered his face with his hands and did so often.

And cried, because he couldn’t understand why he was not liked. Perhaps it was because of the patched jeans he wore or the unfortunate fact that every other kid seemed to have a father and he didn’t. If asked, his Mother said, “tell them he’s dead.” That sounded far better than “divorced.” And, so he enhanced the lie by telling them all his Dad died a hero in the War. Lies are like that. They tend to grow.

He played with dolls and puppets and made plastic models of WWII airplanes and hung them with thread from his bedroom ceiling.

He liked home churned ice-cream and hot dogs roasted over the gas burner, and Baby Ruth bars. He did not like canned peas and boiled okra made him gag.

He liked the neighbor girls.

He liked hugging them because he wasn’t hugged much by anyone else and he would do what was needed to get hugs. He drew their pictures and sometimes he drew pictures of flowers and birds and characters from Saturday morning cartoons and gave them to the girls even if they did not hug him. Giving them presents was better than not giving them presents and there was always the possibility… And making drawings set him apart.

Anyone could give them lollipops or cards from the Red Dot Store on the corner, or flowers picked from his mother’s garden, Irises, mostly.

He could draw and that made him special, or so he thought. Others whose opinions mattered to him, the pragmatists in business suits or polka-dot dresses agreed but only to a point. They thought it nice, but frivolous. What good would it ever do him? Better to apply himself to the arithmetic book and not waste time with pictures.

Yet the pictures came to him and he could not stop them. He hid them from those who would take his specialness from him and replace it with dreary samness that they disguised under the word, “adjustment.”

He loved adventure. He would often lie abed dreaming in a very unpragmatic way of being a hero and saving the lives of all the neighbor girls, each in their turn, and earning not only a hug but a kiss which he received with great passion from his pillow. Oh the adventures he had! Now a knight of the Round Table, now a jungle ape-man swinging himself and the girl through the forest canopy on a vine, now a super hero in cape and tights frightening off muggers and saving the girl from fate worse than death. Oh, he always won the day and never got hurt. Such are the dreams of young boys.

The boy liked climbing trees and running and playing baseball even though he didn’t know the rules and wasn’t at all good at it and lost his team more games than he won them. He would never be a sports hero and so he gave it up. Involuntarily.

He loved acting out the stories in the Bible or those on television with his pals, but mostly stories from television because his pals thought taking on the roles of Biblical Heroes sacrilegious and would no doubt send them all straight to hell. He put on puppet shows for the youngest children on a stage made from a cardboard box and a dish towel curtain set into the crook of an oak tree.

He loved making them laugh.

The boy even liked being alone, but not so much.

He did not like chores and put them off until the last minute and if he did not get them all done, he got a spanking which he definitely hated. He also hated paddle balls, for obvious reasons. No sooner did the rubber band break than the paddle was converted to less playful uses.

He did not like school and was never good at it. School was against his religion, his personal religion which was more natural than the one he was made to practice on Sunday morning and Sunday evening and Wednesday night and which formed the totality of his social life. In school he was made to sit straight and face forward and pay attention and color inside the lines and make his letters just so and care about the natives of central Africa and the kings of England. All of these things battled with his nature which compelled his mind out through the schoolroom window into the frigid air, down to the frosty grass, across the street where puddles formed with thin crusts of ice just right for striking with the heel of your shoe and cracking them into spider’s webs. Until the teacher called his name and brought him back into the room (she had to do that a lot) to answer the question he could not answer, and so he answered the one he could. “Seven degrees past three o’clock,” which made no sense to anyone but him and was just the way he liked it.

The boy loved life. He may have regretted that it was so hard for him to be good and longed to grow up when it would be ever so much easier, but generally he loved life. More than anything else in the whole world, the things he would most regret losing, if it came to that, were the pictures in his head. He dreamed vividly both day and night. Reality he found unsatisfying and disappointing and so he lived in his dreams.

Frivolous, adventurous, daring and dangerous dreams.

His mother threatened that if he couldn’t discipline himself, she would send him to military school, which he actually wouldn’t have minded, or to Catholic school, which he would. She didn’t do either because they were both too expensive so she lamented her youngest and despaired of his ever amounting to anything. Psychologists wrote of a thing called childhood depression in the Woman’s Day magazine she bought every week, but she didn’t credit it. She had faith in God. Besides, she thought, children can’t be depressed; they’re too young.

“Train up a child in the way he should go, “ the Bible says, “ and when he is old he will not depart from it, “ it says.

But they will and he did.

He was told that he was filthy rags in the eyes of God, that he deserved Hell and there was nothing he could do to avoid it, there was no way he would ever be good enough to earn it, except by letting Jesus do it for him. He wanted to be good enough but they told him it was impossible because he was no good. Never would be. Never could be. And he was angry.

But anger, he was told, is one of the seven deadly sins, so he was angry secretly. He stored his anger in the darkest most remote corner of his heart where the wasps and snakes and spiders and all the slimy things things that frightened him curled and writhed, a place where he hoped not even God could see, but God sees everything. “Man sees the outward appearance, but the Lord sees the heart.” And he knew his heart was evil.

So as much as he loved summer and walking in the grass and puppets and dolls and dreaming and making up stories and drawing and the neighbor girls and cracking ice glazed puddles, these things never gave him as much pleasure as they should have because they weren’t approved of and weren’t important and he felt guilty wasting his time on them. What he most loved, what he was, what he most believed in, was not approved and so he grew up, keeping his deadly sin a closely held secret from his friends, his family and even, he trusted, from God. Until he couldn’t and stopped believing in God.

Brother Jeremiah on Pro-Choice/Pro-Life

Administrator — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:30:09 +0000

I am probably going to anger a lot of people because I am going to point out that the Pro-Life faction and the Pro-Choice faction are each correct ON POINTS but that neither of them is entirely correct. Most of the time we ignore or violently condemn facts that don’t support us and that is ultimately dishonest.

Brother Jremiah and the author at the monastery last autumn during the first of our interviews.

It was inevitable, of course, that the subject of abortion should come up somewhere in my discussions with Brother Jeremiah of the Order of Buile Suibhne (OBS).* Since most opposition to the procedure is religious in nature, it is to be expected that his rather unique spiritual perspective, rooted as it is in Celtic Christian Universalism, would be sought. These interviews would be paltry indeed it they remained purely theological and theoretical, especially considering the angry letter he addressed to some of his fellow Christians last summer which became the main impetus behind this series of interviews. I wanted to learn just where that anger came from and what spiritual basis, if any, it had. We have touched upon the issues of gay rights, particularly regarding some of the more outlandish, to him, allegations made by those he terms “primitive religious,” but now we turn to perhaps the thorniest social issue, that of life and death. Brother Jay is not a confrontational person most of the time. This subject, because it does not deal only with abortion but also other situations where the termination of life is acceptable, even desirable, is likely to be controversial, if not incendiary, so was only with the greatest persuasion I could bring to bear on him, that he was convinced to discuss it at all.

M: Touching upon social questions, you mentioned in your rather harsh article…
BJ: I hope I won’t regret that one, I call it my pressure-cooker letter.
M: A certain amount of indignation is forgivable, given the incitement…
BJ: Forgivable yes, but never ideal.
M: Well, the issue I am about to bring up may require all the restraint you can muster.
BJ: Oh?
M: It is delicate and volatile and one you may wish not to comment on so early in our association…
BJ: You’re going to ask me about abortion, aren’t you?
M: How did you know?
BJ: The preparation. It’s as though you are sliding into the question obliquely, wanting to bring it up and yet not wanting to put me on the spot.
M: Well, you’ve mentioned that you are uncomfortable with politics.
BJ: If I didn’t want to be put on the spot I wouldn’t have become a cleric. And moral issues are often political and where there is a spiritual question to be addressed, I don’t mind.
M: There is perhaps no other issue in American Life that more requires the application of pure reason over emotion than this. Whenever we feel anger, resentment, hurt, fear, vituperation, frustration, angst, fury, choler, or any of a number of feelings that put us automatically into the attack mode, it is wise to perceive these as not useful and set them aside. This issue has become a lightning rod in American Politics precisely because we have allowed it to become primarily an emotional one and have allowed reason to wither into dust. It cannot be an emotional issue.
BJ: But it is. To women, there is no more personal issue than this. I don’t see how you can avoid the emotional. You can’t. It would be unreasonable to expect.
M: But not primarily emotional.
BJ: We have to set emotions aside but we cannot deny them. You are correct, though, that the solution, if there is one, and I’m not all that sure there is, must be rational and include the arguments from both sides.
M: A dialectic.
BJ: If you say so.
M: Well, you know there are in literature three basic forms of conflict resolution: The Zero Sum Resolution in which one side claims absolute victory and the other goes down to defeat, the Disengagement when both sides decide to chuck it all and go have a beer, and the Dialectic where both sides win and both sides lose and in the process create a different thing altogether. The Dialectic is the most satisfying and the most lasting. That takes sound reasoning from people who are not too emotionally invested in the outcome.
BJ: Yes, and to that point let me say up front that I am probably going to anger a lot of people because I am going to point out that the Pro-Life faction and the Pro-Choice faction are each correct ON POINTS but that neither of them is entirely correct. Most of the time we ignore or violently condemn facts that don’t support us and that is ultimately dishonest.
M: The triumph of inductive reasoning.
BJ: Oh if it were only that!
M: There are those of course who maintain that as men we have no right to an opinion…
BJ: Oh, I hear that all the time, and the contention really doesn’t bear up to scrutiny. It is an attempt to close the question without answering it. Ad hominum. It implies that we can have no opinion in any matter that does not directly involve or affect us, and that’s nonsense. The same people who dismiss our opinions on this issue do actively solicit them in any number of other issues that do not directly affect us; that’s hypocrisy. All that is required of a legitimate opinion is that it be researched as objectively as possible and the resulting interpretation account for all of theknown facts
M: Whew! Have you managed to do that?
BJ: To a point, and after speaking at great length with Sister Katerina of Värrnsgarth, I am satisfied that I have a position that is reasonably valid. Of course, opinion can always be altered when new facts emerge.
M: It may be wise up front to say where you stand and you can illuminate your position later.
BJ; I am not in favor of abortion, and neither is any woman I have spoken to who has had one. It is an emotionally traumatic time for them and they know on some level that it’s homicide. One of these women of my acquaintance, even lights a candle every year on what she believes would have been her child’s birthday in remembrance. Even so, these decisions are not, at least in the early stages of pregnancy matters of state; they should be left to the individual, her physician and her god.
M: Only the early stages?
BJ: In all honesty, the decision cannot be put off until after the last possible moment, which many on the Pro-Choice side seem to desire, because at some point in the pregnancy the state does have a stake in the well-being of the infant, and it has to do, I think, with self-awareness. Birth is not a magical process instantaneously conferring human life; it is quite simply the movement of the child from one “room” to another. At some point the rights of the woman have to be weighed against the rights of the sentient being in her womb. If the pre-born infant has awareness, if it is sentient, then it has to be protected. Now, that is not political; that is a matter of undeniable fact, and you cannot let emotions lead you to embrace the findings of science in one sphere and reject them in another. You cannot deride the Christian Right for ignoring the evidence on evolution and then ignore the evidence regarding human sentience. WHEN the state gains some authority over the infant, and to what degree at each stage in its development, is the sticky wicket. Both sides need to come to an understanding that legal abortion is not to be infringed upon but the Pro-Choice people need to concede that there is a point at which it is no longer abortion but infanticide. The Pro-Life faction, for its part, will have to concede that abortion is not infanticide from the point of conception. As soon as both sides make those concessions then real negotiation can begin.
M: How likely is that? Radicals on both sides are intractable.
BJ: Then, they have marginalized themselves. They have essentially denied themselves a place in the debate. Let them scream ad infinatum; we are fully justified in not listening to them.
M: Wow. Put up your shields, you’re likely to get lambasted.
BJ: Most likely. But, I think if I’m making extremists on both sides angry, then I am very likely approaching the truth. The fact is that it is a genetic human being from the moment of conception. It will never, if permitted to develop, become a newt, or a koala, or a water buffalo. Age is irrelevant to its status as a human being. But, that said, the Religious Right should take no comfort in that concession. Let me set a context here. You told me once about your mother’s choice of hospitals to bear her children.
M: She refused to go to a Catholic hospital because she believed, I have no idea whether or not it was true, but she believed that they would opt to save the baby’s life if if came down to a choice between the mother and the child.
BJ: So the implication was that your mother, who was a very religious woman, would rather the hospital opt to save her over her child. This was when?
M: 1946.
BJ: Way before Roe v. Wade! See, therapeutic abortion even in late term was never fully prohibited when the life of the mother was at risk or on the rare occasions where the infant was so grossly defective that it probably wouldn’t survive. In medical texts of the period exact and detailed procedures were provided for the killing of the full-term infant in such extreme situations. I have seen them. I won’t go into detail here…
M: I’d have to edit it out if you did.
BJ: But it was common knowledge, little spoken of, that such things were done and it was acceptable.
M: Even desirable; the most dangerous thing a woman could do in those days, was give birth. The infant mortality rate was already high, and that gave the unborn a certain expendability in the public’s perception. Unfortunate, even lamentable, but an inevitable cost of being mortal.
BJ: You see, the first thing we have to establish is that these issues are never, and have never been, as absolute as some would imagine or wish. Abortion, in some circumstances has always been acceptable even to the very religious.
M: You’ll never hear that from the Pro-Life groups.
BJ: That kind of absolutism is nearly always wrong
M: You’re sure?
BJ: Absolutely. HA!
M: But, you are talking about an extreme situation. Roe v. Wade opened it up to even non-life-threatening situations.
BJ: Yes, the criteria became more a question of “the greater good.”
M: Greater good?
BJ: Emotional and physical health of the mother, ability to provide for the child, circumstances of conception, any number of reasons why not bringing the child to full term might be desirable.
M: But. these reasons are far too frivolous for the Pro-Life side. What are the points you spoke of on which both sides must agree if the debate is to go forward?
BJ: One: That from conception it is a human life. Two: That we have, on either side, never been averse to sacrificing human life for what we perceive to be the greater good. Three: What is that “greater good “ that is worth the sacrifice?
M: “We have never been averse to sacrificing human life for the greater good?”
BJ: For what is perceived to be the greater good.
M: So, in sum, abortion is the necessary ending of a human life.
BJ: Yes.
M: But, the Pro-Life movement is not correct in calling it murder?
BJ: No. It is the killing of a human being but it is not murder. Unfortunately for them, they have one glaring inconsistency. Many of them, while opposing the sacrifice of fetal life, are quite supportive of sacrificing human life in other arenas as I mentioned before.
M: Human sacrifice?
BJ: What would you call it if you are willing to see your young men and women killed in wartime for some perceived greater good? What would you call it if you are willing to see a convicted criminal executed for another perceived greater good? Is it any different from the Celtic priest sacrificing a human life for a good harvest? In essence, no. there is no difference.

The things I have seen! The lives I have witnessed ruined by a simple mistake. It is difficult if not impossible for the law to dictate one thing or another. Each case is different and should be weighed compassionately and only in terms of its own circumstances aside from any pre-conceived ideologies from either side. Ideology is a sanctuary for the simple minded.

Br. Jeremiah and the author outside the cabin he shares with Br. Seamus at the monastery in the ozark mountains near Crawford's Notch, MO.

M: Abortion opponents will object to your equating the killing of an unborn child to the execution of criminals or the sacrifice of soldiers in battle. With abortion, you are talking about an innocent life.
BJ: Innocence has nothing to do with it; that’s a blind and an inconsistent argument on three counts.
M: What are they?
BJ: One: Conviction of a capital crime does not equate with guilt. There have been many instances of innocents being convicted and executed, yet it only takes conviction in many people’s minds to justify taking that human life for the good of society and the preservation of justice.
M: Or revenge if you want to be honest about it
BJ: Absolutely! I oppose capital punishment in all cases because I know it’s really about revenge and, apart from anything else, I don’t like what that does to me.
M: What is the second count?
BJ: War. We sacrifice innocent lives all the time in war, and it doesn’t seem to bother us. It’s a given that a certain percentage of fatalities will be innocent men, women and children, who die as a result of battle. Such “collateral damage” is supported by many of the same people who oppose abortion on the grounds of innocence! It seems the American Pre-born baby has more value than these foreign children. How absurd!
M: How does innocence apply to our soldiers, though? Don’t they voluntarily put themselves in harm’s way?
BJ: I don’t think anyone volunteers for service actually thinking it’s a death sentence. Most do so out of a profound sense of duty and patriotism, but many of them do so to get an education or because there are no other options for employment. None of them have death-wishes.
M: But, as much as we wish to preserve our soldiers’ lives, we still build into any battle plan and estimated percentage of casualties.
BJ: Yes, acceptable human sacrifices for the perceived greater good which we then celebrate and honor with medals and statues, which brings us to another point which is a bit of a digression but needs to be said. When our government decides to sacrifice human life for what is perceived to be the greater good, it had best be damned sure it actually is for the greater good and not just a whim or to boost corporate profits.
M: I thought you weren’t political.
BJ: It’s a moral issue that speaks to a spiritual bankruptcy; that’s well within my purview.
M: Fair enough. Okay, that’s two counts where you think innocence is a bogus argument. What’s the third?
BJ: Are you familiar with the play J.B. by Archibald MacLiesh? It’s a modern re-telling of the story of Job in the Bible and deals with these very questions of the suffering of the innocent. J.B. is a wealthy banker, one of the “Masters of the Universe” who loses not only his considerable fortune but also all of his children to crimes, accidents and war. Sarah, his wife and mother to those children, speaks a line near the end where she says something like, let me see if I remember, oh yes, she says, “If God is just then our dead children stank of sin, were rotten with it. I will not sacrifice their innocence to make God just.”
M: If God is just, then none are innocent. Not even the unborn.
BJ: The opponents of abortion don’t believe so, either. Most subscribe to the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin from which, you are right, none of us is innocent.
M: What about suffering? Even if innocence can’t be the issue…
BJ: Suffering is not the issue for them, either. They argue that we must stop abortion because the unborn suffers excruciating pain. But, is suffering sufficient reason to oppose abortion when we are so very willing to accept it in other areas? Who suffers most, I ask you, the twenty year old soldier in Afghanistan who knows, who is aware of the extent of the sacrifice, who has a life all planned out ahead of him, who may have a wife and children whom he adores and longs to be with, or the four month fetus in the womb who is aware, if it may even be called that, only of its bodily functioning and sensory impressions? Yet we are willing to accept and even praise the soldier’s sacrifice as necessary for the greater good.
M: I have to ask because it will be asked: What greater good comes from abortion
BJ: Defining the “Greater Good,” now there’s the conundrum. There are many circumstances, mostly involving poverty, where bringing another child into the world is not advisable.
M: Not even if adoption is an option?
BJ: It is a pleasant fantasy that there are many loving homes willing to take any child from any circumstance. Of course, adoption should be offered as an option but in reality, if we are honest, not every baby is adoptable. Not every pregnant girl has the options that seem so clear to the well off religious people carrying signs.
M: Religious people carrying signs?
BJ: Ah yes. The largest percentage of the Pro-Life movement is motivated by religious faith. Understandable, and that is their right, but if the Bible is their authority, they have defined the argument as a religious one and the government is constitutionally prohibited from deciding religious issues. It seems, then, they have shot themselves in the foot. And yet, they have no other substantial argument against it!
M: You seem to be coming down heavily against the Pro-Lifers. So, what do the Pro-Choice people give up in the negotiation?
BJ: The convenient notion that it is not a human being they are killing, the belief that abortion in the third trimester is not infanticide. If it is a question of sentience and awareness, then it is obvious that in the third trimester, there is a great deal more of it than in the first, and at some point, the state does have a stake in protecting that sentient human being.
M: You may get smacked on that one. What about parental notification?
BJ: In the case of minor girls? You were saving that one up, weren’t you?
M: Is it something else that the Pro-Choice people may have to relent on for entirely practical and legal reasons? To hear them, you would think letting a parent know that his minor child is pregnant and has sought an abortion is an assault on a woman’s right to choose. Do they really believe there all these monstrous parents out there who will commit unspeakable atrocities on the girls?
BJ: Some will. There are very good reasons why such knowledge would be kept confidential. Some parents will be abusive to the girl, and there are many cultures where even honor killing is accepted…
M: Well, then we would be having another conversation entirely. I would then ask why the girl is still under their roof. Child abuse is very serious and cultural differences can’t shield it.
BJ: It is not always detected. We don’t have the resources…
M: One cannot have responsibility without authority. As a parent, I am responsible by law for the health and welfare of my children as long as they are minors. I think the real fear is that parents might exert undue pressure on the girl to carry the child to term. But, realistically, is that such a great tragedy?
BJ: Sometimes!
M: And if her conditioning is such that her parents would so influence her, might she not eventually regret her choice and feel guilty the rest of her life?
BJ: You may get smacked yourself! My friend, I believe you are a good parent. Possibly even an exemplary one. But you must not be naïve. The great majority of unwanted pregnancies do not occur in comfortable middle class households. Where you might sit with your daughter and talk reasonably about her options, there are many who would not be so charitable, and it’s not always an obvious case of abuse. You say the parents are responsible for their minor children and must have authority over them. Well and good. Fair point. But, that authority also gives them the right to make the girl have the child. They can make her keep it. They can make her care for it as long as she is a minor. Some girls are not meant to be mothers and would harm the child in their care and be jailed for that offense. The things I have seen! The lives I have witnessed ruined by a simple mistake. It is difficult if not impossible for the law to dictate one thing or another. Each case is different and should be weighed compassionately and only in terms of its own circumstances aside from any pre-conceived ideologies from either side. Ideology is a sanctuary for the simple minded.
M: So, you have dispensed with many arguments on both sides. We know that the fact that it is a human being is irrelevant since we as a people routinely accept and even celebrate the sacrifice of human life. Innocence is not the issue since no one really believes in it, and suffering is not the issue either since we are quite willing to put up with great suffering for the greater good. Well then. What’s left?
BJ: Think.
M: If we eliminate their main arguments the only thing left … is sex.
BJ: Precisely. Whatever else they may say, whatever other arguments they may present, for the Pro-Life bunch it is really about their objection to sex.
M: Outside the marriage bond. But, conversely, for the Pro-Choice people, well they’re being a little dishonest about that, too. You never hear them say they are fighting for the right to have sex. that would be bad P.R.
BJ: But, I’m afraid it comes down to that, yes; the two things are inexorably linked. I’m not saying that’s good or bad; it’s not for me to judge and sexuality is a completely different aspect of the subject.
M: Immaculate Conception only happened once and there is some doubt about that.
BJ: Now, I do allow that often pregnancy is the result of circumstances outside the girl’s control, but in most cases that isn’t the case; it’s mostly carelessness and that can be remedied, and in so doing reduce the need for abortion. It is a wonder to me that we will teach children about every other aspect of their world that might impact their lives but will leave out human sexuality, which has possibly the greatest impact. If young people are aware of their impulses and know how to channel them in ways that will keep them safe, and such education must, must include information on contraception, if they, in short, know that sex is not a right but a privilege and as such should be approached responsibly, where is the harm in that?
M: So in essence, the crux of the opposition surrounds the desire to control sexuality.
BJ: Yes, it comes down to that, particularly, I’m afraid, women’s sexuality.
M: Why just women?
BJ: That is another whole subject and you would need someone wiser than I to explore it. But, I think, like marriage itself, it comes down to questions of property: its acquisition, maintenance and disposition. This is particularly true in patrilineal societies like the Romans, but not in more tribal matrilineal societies like the Celts or the Native Americans. In patrilineal cultures, the man has more of a proprietary interest in the woman.

I consider Eden an ontological myth describing the advance of the human being from infancy to adulthood. First they were infants, then came knowledge and they realized they were naked and were ashamed because of the awareness of their sexuality that occurs during adolescence, and finally the ejection from Eden into adulthood. Mythologically,Eve was the vehicle through whom all mankind received the knowledge that would allow them to leave the Garden of Infancy and create from the wilderness a garden of their own.

M: Can we get into that?
BJ: Oh, you are evil. Sex. Yes. The real objection is sex, particularly female sexuality. That’s what they really oppose and would control.
M: Why the need to control female sexuality?
BJ: In a patrilineal culture such as ours, it becomes a question of legitimacy. It has to do with property and how property is passed from one generation to the next. These things go back millennia and are so entrenched that it takes a great deal of courage to defy them. We got our traditions through the Romans. Most Mediterranean cultures were similar. But, in central Europe where the environment was less harsh and unyielding, and the religion more female centered, the Celts turned it all over to the women. Not only tribal membership, but rights of inheritance passed through the mother. In this they are not too dissimilar to other tribal cultures such as many Native Americans.
M: Is a matrilineal society, as some have stated, a matriarchy?
BJ: Oh, goodness no! Men still made and enforced the laws and fought the wars. But membership in the tribe and in the clan and the attendant rights of inheritance were passed on through the mother.
M: It only makes sense. There is never any doubt who the mother of a child is,.
BJ: And, every child born to any house was considered the legitimate heir of her husband no matter who the biological father was. In fact, especially in the “lusty month of May”* such fiddling around was encouraged so paternity could never be known. A man treated all children in the village as if they were his because they just might be. The idea of children as the property of the parents is a recent development and is rooted in patrilinealism.
M: I can envision inbreeding being a problem.
BJ: Well, every village did have its idiot. Ha, ha! But in practice, I think women were pretty good at keeping track.
M: Why was matrilinealism abandoned?
BJ: The Roman Church demanded Augustinian unity of theology and practice and the Celtic Church was finished. No longer could there be female priests. All property rights and lineage passed through the male who increasingly exerted more and more control over female sexuality. Well, he would have to, wouldn’t he? Otherwise there would have been economic chaos. Girls were given in marriage to seal a treaty or pretty much any other bargain. They were cattle. No wonder so many decided to take their destiny into their own hands and embrace the greater freedom of the convent.
M: Freedom in a convent? You’re kidding. Seems to me that becoming a cloistered nun is the very antithesis of freedom.
BJ: That’s because you perceive it as a male in the Twenty-First Century when women have more options for their lives. But under the medieval Roman Church, a woman had no such options. The convent was a way towards self determination among like-minded women.
M: It may take me awhile to get my head around that.
BJ: You’re not the only one. The ultimate control over one’s sexuality back then was giving it up.
M: Did Rome’s influence over women’s rights to their sexuality diminish with the Protestant Reformation?
BJ: Not at all. In fact, without the convents as a refuge, it only grew stronger, and thus once more removed from Christianity which was in the beginning a Jewish denomination.
M: And by the way, I might note that even today, despite the patriarchal tradition, a child’s Jewishness is determined from the mother.
BJ: Very true. It only makes sense. But in Northern Europe, Protestant Firebrands were so distrustful of women’s sexuality that they went so far as to condemn women for being too attractive and tempting men into sin.
M: That wasn’t anything new.
BJ: No, but I think they perfected it. Many witch trials were born of the power of female sexuality on men. During this period that Eve’s position as the vehicle of original sin gained a lot more traction.
M: I assume you believe they got it all wrong. How?
BJ: It was perceived that Eve lost Paradise because of her weakness in giving in to temptation from the Devil disguised cleverly as a serpent. But I ask you, what is the traditional interpretation of Eden?
M: A place of perfect peace and contentment where all one’s needs and desires are met.
BJ: A Paradise. And when was the last time you felt that?
M: I don’t remember ever having felt that.

Br. Jeremiah December 2009 at the monastery in the Ozarks.

BJ: But you did. We all did when we were infants. I consider Eden an ontological myth describing the advance of the human being from infancy to adulthood. First they were infants, then came knowledge and they realized they were naked and were ashamed because of the awareness of their sexuality that occurs during adolescence, and finally the ejection from Eden into adulthood. Mythologically,Eve was the vehicle through whom all mankind received the knowledge that would allow them to leave the Garden of Infancy and create from the wilderness a garden of their own.
M: So, God placed an angel with a flaming sword at the gates of Eden to make sure they never returned.
BJ: Who would want to? Was that really a punishment? You can’t go back to being an infant once you have become an adult. Eve had the chutzpah to do what was needed even if it meant defying orders. She was willing to risk the displeasure even of God to grow up. In fact, it is this very defiance against authority that facilitates that kind of growth.
M: I think women have always suspected as much. Were it left to Adam, he would have kicked back, popped a beer and watched the bears; the real bears, not the Chicago football team.
BJ: I think you may have something there. Eve’s role as a temptress is a complete misinterpretation of the story and that has remained operative until the present; some men, particularly the primitive religious unaccustomed to questioning or nuanced thought, still are threatened by the temptations of the flesh embodied in women. Now, those traditions are so firmly established that they are accepted as “the way things should be.” Our definitions of marriage, legitimacy, fidelity, and any number of attendant phenomena, including the current controversy over abortion, are rooted in that need to control women.
M: Had we developed as a matrilineal culture, how might that be different?
BJ: Everything would be different. There would be no such thing as illegitimacy. Nor would there be any concept of infidelity.
M: Infidelity not an issue? You’re going to get a lot of pushback on that one. “Thou shalt not commit adultery!” So spake the Lord; so the Lord spake.
BJ: Adultery was then and is now a crime of property, fiddling with the rights of inheritance. The commandments go on to say, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor’s.” (Exodus 20:17) And there she is: the wife right in there with a man’s ox and ass.
M: And all the rest of his property.
BJ: A man needed to know that his sons were indeed his sons and legitimate heirs to his fortunes,
M: And in a matrilineal culture?
BJ: I can’t say for sure because we as a species have chosen a different path, but I suspect in that alternate reality none of those things would even have been conceived of. There would have been no need, you see? That is the hardest thing to comprehend. Without the need to establish paternity, none of those other things matter. We would not seek to possess each other; there would be no jealousy because there is no fear of abandonment or betrayal of the bloodline. We would have a freer society where there is the husband and wife as heads of households, but not the exclusive property of each other. One would go where one needed to go to get emotional or genetic needs met, and custom, far from standing in the way of that, would actually celebrate it
M: I don’t think it’ll fly.
BJ: Probably not, because of purely social conditioning rooted in the harsh desert climates of late Bronze Age western Asia, evolved at least for five thousand years and codified in the Bible, which is the foundation of western civilization. When the American settlers and missionaries encountered the matrilineal culture of the native tribes, they were aghast! The absence of concepts like illegitimacy and adultery were appalling to them. The savages were therefore mired in sin and their culture had to be crushed.
M: Wow. The implications are far-reaching, a true clash of cultures on the plains.
BJ: And the Europeans won. I don’t think our customs will change. But you asked where the opposition to abortion really comes from and I have told you. No other argument is consistent. It is and always has been a manifestation of the compulsive need of patrilineal societies to control for economic reasons the sexuality of women and nothing else. If we understand that, then we won’t get embroiled in false and morally inconsistent arguments that are and always have been pure camouflage.

*The Celtic Christian Universalist Order of Buile Suibhne (OBS) is located in a former motel along Route 66 in the Ozark Mountain range about 30 miles east of Crawford’s Notch. It was founded by Brother Abbott who discovered the delapidated facility in 1977 while riding his Harley along the Mother Road and immediately proposed purchasing and rennovating it. At present it houses 24 monks and 18 nuns but membership is fluid. The actual number of members is closer to 300, not all of them in residence, of course.

Ignatius Kelly on Paddy’s Day

Administrator — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:35:12 +0000

“It’s the only holiday that is celebrated mostly by getting falling down drunk and puking on the sidewalk. It’s expected. Demanded, even. Now, Why is that? We’re the only people who are celebrated by everyone acting out our most negative stereotype.”

My old college mate Kelly was standing outside the Cork & Kerry bar last Saturday watching the Southside Chicago Irish Parade in Beverly and he waved me over when he saw me.

Ignatius Kelly outside his "living room."

Kelly and I have been friends since Bradley University in the mid sixties when he took by the arm this insufferable prig and introduced him to the ineffable pleasures of sin. Today, he was in an uncharacteristically reflective mood. He grimaced when I wished him a Happy St. Patrick’s Day.”

“It ain’t for another week, mate. This is just a practice run.”

“Well, everybody’s wearing green beads and green hats,” I said, looking about at the crowd, “and some have painted their faces green, and it all feels like St. Patrick’s Day to me.”

“Does it now?”

“Okay, what’s the problem? I thought you’d be jolly. Don’t you know that everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day?”

“Are they, now? An’ what does that mean, precisely?”

“Oh come on! Can’t you take a compliment? Didn’t you tell me once that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who are Irish and those who wish they were?”

“Pish! I was young. What does it mean, then, to be Irish?” He waved his hand toward the crowd. “What do you think it means to them?”

“It’s just fun. They’re taking the opportunity to have a good time.”

“Kelly, is that you?” I said tapping his forehead with my finger. “Is Kelly at home in there? You’ve been known to take a drop or two yourself, and if I am not mistaken, that is a pint of Guinness you have in your fist?”

“Well, a drop or two won’t kill me, for the sake of the day, but I refuse to cross the line.”

“Wasn’t it Mr. Dooley * who said it was thoughtful of St. Patrick to put his birthday in March right in the middle of lent to provide one blessed day of relief from the rigors of abstinence?”

“And he also said alcohol was necessary for a man to have a good opinion of himself, undisturbed by the facts.”

“So it’s not the drink you disapprove of…”

“It’s the stereotype. That everyone, especially those who are not Irish but want to be for a day, think that this is what being Irish is all about! What other ethnic group would stand for that?”

“Well, Kelly, don’t be too cross. Every stereotype contains a kernel of truth. And you yourself in your younger days took some pride in living down to your stereotype.”

“He looked sheepishly and smiled a crooked smile and shrugged. “The young do seem to do that,” he admitted. “But where does that come from? In Ireland, they don’t do it.”

“No,” I said, “It’s the Irish Americans. The way we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in America is purely political. The Famine Irish, mostly Catholic, who came over in the mid nineteenth century were a pretty stupid and brutal lot…”

“Of course they were! The English made it illegal to teach Irish Catholics to read. And they could be arrested and transported for it. What do you expect?”

“But, it doesn’t change the fact that when they came to America, they were the stereotype! Uneducated, unskilled, unused to being treated with any respect, and most of them half starved. No wonder they drank! But they were so numerous in New York and Chicago that politicians rallied them as a group by encouraging that stereotype. St. Patrick’s Day parades were a kind of mass media for the illiterate where they could see and take pride in Irish elected officials. That was a kind of political clout that was unknown to them in Ireland. And in return for the loyalty the Irish gave them, the politicians plied them with barrels of inexpensive corned beef and cabbage and jugs of cheap whiskey. That’s where the stereotype came from.”

“Yeah, well that was then. Ain’t it time to put it to rest? Come on, Ireland gave the world a hell of a lot more than a day-long drunkfest, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, they did. They’ve given the world a kind of fancy rooted in the landscape of the Emerald Isle. Irish scholarship and imagination are unrivaled. Irish monks preserved the greatest works of literature. And in more modern times they gave the world Yeats and Shaw, Coleridge, Sheridan and Wilde. They gave us some of the most divine music ever played.”

Kelly laughed at that. “But, they gave Scotland the bagpipes, too, and the Scots still haven’t gotten the joke.”

“HA! Now there’s my old Kelly!

“And another thing: Aint nothin’ Irish about Corned beef and cabbage. The Irish use good old thick-cut cured bacon from high on the hog.”

“Well that’s because when Mrs. O’Brien came to America she found pork too expensive. Having grassy plains, Americans gave themselves over to raising beef, so that was the least expensive cut in Mrs. Levy’s delicatessen, the brisket preserved in a brine cure. So, that’s what she bought.”

“Corned beef is Jewish, and we thank them for it.

There’s the grin I remember. Listen. There’s not much we can do about what people think of us. We’re not so much Irish as we are Irish Americans, people who get more Irish the further away we get from Ireland.”

“Well, if Ireland were such a wonderful place, wouldn’t we all still be there?”

“Then, let’s just lift a glass or two to Irish music and poetry, the George Cohen, Eugene O’Niell and Jack Kennedy, and let it go at that. What these others think and do is no threat to us, not on a fine days as this is.”

Kelly smiled and nodded. “You have an empty hand, mate. Now, THAT we can do something about.” And with a jerk of his chin toward the Cork & Kerry’s door, he invited me in for a celebratory drop.

* Mister Dooley is the fictional southside Chicago bartender created by Finley Peter Dunn for a series of columns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Federal Department of Annoyance – Come on, you knew there must be one, right?

Administrator — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 15:08:55 +0000

Why would the federal government devote an entire department to annoying us? Why, diversion, of course! If they can keep us distracted by the many little things in our lives that annoy us, but are not so annoying that we actually complain, it is less likely that we will see all the stuff they are doing that would really hack us off.

Having some other writing assignments on my desk, I have taken a week off from the blog and am re-posting a particular favorite of mine from the archives. It seems that every once in awhile, we have to be reminded that the invisible hand does indeed exist and it explains an awful lot.

Posted August 1 2009 and revised for November 3 2011

The Department of Commerce deep in the bowels of which lurks the Federal Department of Annoyance.

Just recently I had an encounter with my High Speed Internet (?) service involving extreme slowness in the connection. We’ve all been there, I know. I called the service center and this sweet young female voice with a delightful Texas accent told me to check the back of the modem for the reset button. I have always been a sucker for young sweet females with Texas accents, so I pulled the modem out from the shelf as far as the cables would allow but still couldn’t find it. I had to get a flashlight and shine it on the back of the modem and behold! There was the little hole. Then she told me to get a paper clip, bend it straight and then insert it into the hole making sure that I engaged the button, which would be right there near the entrance. Feeling only slightly dirty, I did what she asked.

Then I had to ask why anyone would put the tiny hole wherein the reset button was found so far out of sight and out of reach in the back of the modem box in the first place. “Surely,” I said, “This idea handily passed muster with the Federal Department of Annoyance!”

She laughed. Obviously she had not heard of the Federal Department of Annoyance, so I enlightened her.

“What? Do you mean to tell me you have never heard of the Federal Department of Annoyance? Well, I shouldn’t wonder. It is the most secretive of the many secretive divisions operating under the umbrella of the Department of Commerce. It is so secret that I doubt even the Secretary of Commerce knows about it.”

The function of the Department of Annoyance is to insure that no product comes to market that doesn’t have at least one thing about it that will be highly annoying to the general public. Obviously, it is not in the best interests of any manufacturer to let the public know about it, but there are standards that have to be met with the DOA or the product of service will not be approved for retail sale within the borders of the United States. (We are currently in negotiations with other countries to spread the regulations farther than our borders.)

I purchased a pair of jeans the other day that was labeled 36-29 but when I got them home, they were too large around the waist and too long of leg. I know older people get smaller, but not THAT much smaller. They slid over my hips and I am constantly stepping on the hems. Now I realize that the fashion these days is to make the pants so long that in a day or two the bottoms fray and tear, but (I have to say this loudly) I AM NOT TWENTY! To me, ragged cuffs are just plain ugly. I’m an old fart and I like my pants to fit. Whoever sized those jeans obviously had an in with the DOA.

Also worth mentioning is the shirt with so many clips, pins, cardboards, plastic collar supports and other underpinnings that just getting a shirt on your back is a major operation worthy of the Corps of Engineers. You never, no matter how much you try, get them all leaving one pin to jab you as soon as you have gotten the last button closed. And, I do wish that manufacturers would agree on what exactly size 141/2 is! I bought two shirts of the same size but different brands at the same time I bought the jeans. One squeezed my neck so hard the carotid artery looked like a polish sausage. The other fit just fine, thank you. I know what brand I will be buying from now on and not the one that was obviously made for an ostrich. You may tell me to go try them on to make sure, but in the case of men’s shirts, they are folded, pinned, and wrapped in plastic as I said before.

It is, in fact, the advent of plastic packaging that has raised the bar considerably for retail products. There was a time when packaging was simple cardboard and manufacturers of, oh say aspirin, had to depend on crushing a few pills to powder to get DOA approval. Plastic packaging changed all that. Now, anything that is enclosed in a plastic bubble will automatically get a pass. The packaging for anything from a tape measure to a meat thermometer could be used as body armor for our troops. Particularly pernicious are the ones labeled “easy open,” virtually always a contemptible lie calculated to make us feel stupid. No matter how closely you follow the instructions, you still will tear your fingers to bloody shreds. I am always reduced to ripping the thing apart with a chain saw. Okay, not a chain saw, but, I have taken to carrying a pocket knife and don’t even read easy-open directions any more.

It’s enough to drive one to extreme kitchen rage.

A close friend of mine is a police officer and she tells the sad story of a young man who offed himself one evening by stabbing himself some 27 times. He just turned to his friend and said, “Well, good-bye, then.” and began puncturing himself with a serrated steak-knife. He was obviously serious about it. People just don’t go to such lengths unless they are intent upon their own demise. No evidence was found of any motive, but I suspect it had something to do with easy open plastic packaging. Either that or he had been forced to listen to the current crop of Republican presidential candidates one too many times. (They are the darlings of the D.O.A.)

Now, I have to tell you this. The management of the firm in which I earn the mortgage has invested in a coffee machine that is a marvel of technology and carry’s the endorsement and name brand of a very reputable chef whose name you would immediately recognize were I so foolish to risk lawsuits and tell it.

Here’s the process: after selecting a coffee “pod” from dozens of varieties (most of which aren’t worth washing the floors with) you simply place the pod in the drawer, push the drawer in and push a button for light, medium or bold, or any number of other options. The machine will make you a latte or a cappuccino and put a frothy topping on it, all at the punch of a button. It might even drink it for you if you are just too busy.

Problem is, like most marvels of technology, it is also one of the Department of Annoyance’s greatest achievements and the greatest validation of Luddites everywhere. Every week, it breaks down. Every week we have people standing in line, empty coffee mugs dangling helplessly from their index fingers, waiting for the repair guy to show up. Fortunately, there is a back-up plan. It’s a drip coffee maker down the hall in a darkened snack shop, an old fashioned Bunn coffee maker like the dive on the corner uses, a plain and simple coffeemaker that has a glass carafe that you can operate by just tipping it up and pouring the black nectar into your mug. Uncomplicated, Not technical at all. If you want cream and sugar, you just pour it in yourself from little paper envelopes and a carton. Brilliant! Of course, if you want a double mocha latte with whipped cream and a squiggle of chocolate and a dash of cinnamon, you do what all right thinking people do: you go downstairs and buy it from Starbucks!

Obviously the simple carafe it hasn’t come to the attention of the D.O.A. Or, perhaps it has, which is why we now there are fewer of them and we have to hide them in the snack room. (What do I have at home, you might ask? A very uncomplicated French Coffee Press!)

While we’re on the subject of coffee, let me assert with no equivocation that deep roasted is burned. Period. I’m sure the invention of deep roasted coffee fell out rather like this: Someone forgot to set the timer on the roaster and turned the beans into charcoal. Unwilling to absorb the loss, some MBA decided to try to sell them anyway. “All we have to do,” he no doubt chuckled through his nose as MBA’s are prone to do, ” is convince the fashion conscious young urban professionals that burned coffee is cool and that anyone who drinks it any other way is just oh so quaint and rustic and not with it at all.”

“But,” says the old-time quality controller who worries about things like the product, “what if they don’t like the way it tastes?”

“Of course they’ll like the way it tastes; fashion dictates that they like the way it tastes!” He said, smacking the quality controller on the crown of his head, “And who dictates fashion? We Do!”

“But, if they like it,” sniffs the Vice President of Government Regulations, “will it pass muster with the Department of Annoyance?”

“Pass?” the MBA says, “Hell, they’ll shove it through! Nothing thrills them more than annoying people when they are willing accomplices in their own annoyance!” He laughed gleefully. “And I even know what we’ll call the vile brew: ‘Deep-roast!’ How’s that? Will that serve?”

“Brilliant!” the Vice President of Sales and Marketing says, heading off to the art department to gather clip art of fashionistas drinking coffee.

And so it happened that we have burned coffee being sold on nearly every street corner in America, much to the delight of the Federal Department of Annoyance.

Now, it has to be said that, powerful though it is, the Federal Department of Annoyance is not able to do it all alone. Nosir! It needs State and Municipal branches which are more local and immediate to the end user; it is able to be much more flexible and attentive to complaints and thus more able to assure consumer annoyance most quickly and surely. The State Department of Annoyance’s prize project is the Motor Vehicle Department.

In fact, the more I look about the world, I can see evidence of the invisible hand of the D.O.A everywhere.

The cellophane wrapper inside the plastic bag that wraps a loaf of bread. What th…? How fresh does it have to be, f’r gawd’s sake? I make it a point to remove that inside wrapper as soon as I open the loaf because if I don’t it will get in the way every time I reach in for a slice of bread for toast and I am in no mood in the mornings to figure out a way past it. It is obvious that the inner “freshness” wrapper got kudos at the Department of Annoyance.

Then there is the paper towel that tears between the perforations, or the double-ply toilet paper where the sheets never quite seem to line up (not to mention the disintegration factor.)…

Oh! I could go on, but, I have to limit this article to a manageable size. I understand that there is an annual award given to that company that shows the most contempt for the general public while being most solicitous of its welfare. I will leave you to add your own candidates. I’m sure you can find many now that you are aware of the conspiracy.

You are a Business Pro – Or some word beginning with pr…

Administrator — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 19:14:50 +0000

I have a gut revulsion to these driven men. They make me positively ill. Why? Because they are representative of the greater culture; they are held up by our avaricious society as models of correct behavior. And no class of people better represents them than the Master of Business Administration. Surely the M.B.A. is the biggest blight on American commerce, and it is that unrestrained and acquisitive mentality that has brought this country to its knees.

Perhaps it’s just me. Perhaps I am overly sensitive. Maybe I obsess over the smallest thing to the point of absurdity. Perhaps I am suffering from “The Outsiders” syndrome, still feeling the wounds of my youth, still hating the “soches” with a passion because of rejection by the rich and beautiful kids in my high school whom I envied without limits. Maybe I have no sense of humor. But, some things just hit me the wrong way and I find it impossible to be charitable.

Maybe, just maybe I am not obsessing when I loathe, despise and hate those advertisements for National Car Rental so viciously. You know the ones I mean, the ones showing smug junior executives or middle managers strutting through the airport parking lot looking as though striding the world like a colossus, disdainfully sneering all the “little people.”

Very few commercials have such a power to raise my angst. I have a visceral gut response of pure unmitigated hatred toward them. I feel compelled to yell at the screen, “You are not Donald Trump, you are renting a car, f’r krissake! You probably work in a %@#* cubicle like all the rest of us so shut the %@#* up, you self-important, narcissistic, money-grubbing, business-pr–k!

I have been told that I am overreacting by hitting the mute button every time those commercials appear or putting my fingers in my ears and singing lalalalalalala until they are over. I have been told that I am completely misinterpreting them, that they are really making fun of the people they present. But I tell you it is only my respect for expensive electronics that prevents me from throwing the remote at the screen.

I see no satire in them. Because for me there is a deeper underlying message in them, and never doubt that there is a message. It is impossible for there not to be one. And the message I get from these commercials is distressing. They are playing to a specific demographic which are known to most people as ambitious, rising young professionals but who, by me, are called by their more colloquial but accurate sobriquet, Yuppy Scum.

I have seen them, yes I have. I have even worked with a few. Their sole function in life seems to be making the next deal and getting richer. That is their sine qua non. Their bosses assert that they want no one in their employ who has a happy marriage because it indicates that their first priority is not “THE FIRM.”

I watched one of these driven acolytes of the great god mammon standing on the sidewalk outside a building owned by a financial concern and was struck by the kinetic energy radiating from his body. He leaned forward, his weight on the balls of his feet as though ready to take off on a marathon run, his elbows were out, even on the arm that was holding his cigarette which he was attempting to suck down to the filter in one, maybe two puffs, his head thrust forward as though it couldn’t wait for his feet to get moving so he could return to his cubicle and proDUCE!

This is a word I hear often in business circles. Produce. Produce. Produce, as though that is the be-all-and end all of life. Nothing matters except what business a man (or corporate machine) can proDUCE! Why? Money, of course. The corporate humanoid machine in the cubicle has one goal: “I gotta proDUCE so I can make a lot of MONEY! I want so much money my MONEY makes money and then I want more, MORE, MORE! I’ll never be satisfied!

I have a gut revulsion to these driven men. They make me positively ill. Why? Because they are representative of the greater culture; they are held up by our avaricious society as models of correct behavior. And no class of people better represents them than the Master of Business Administration. Surely the M.B.A. is the biggest blight on American commerce, caring little for the quality of the product or the satisfaction of the customer but only for the profit margin, and it is that unrestrained and acquisitive mentality that has brought this country to its knees.

Joseph Campbell in his series of interviews with Bill Moyers, “The Power of Myth” said that you can tell what a culture values by the size of their buildings. In the middle ages the largest buildings were the churches. In the eighteenth century, the largest buildings were devoted to government. Today, the largest buildings are those devoted to money.

The reason I respond so viscerally to the commercials for National Car Rental is the reinforcement of that value. The reason I don’t see any attempt at satire is because their target market is made up of the very people they would be mocking and they are not about to alienate that target market.

In the 1930s, the thing most valued was self-improvement. Products were sold to help people get better educationally, socially or professionally. Today, products are sold to people who think they need no improvement. “I’m good enough already,” and to quote the offending commercial, “I deserve this.” It is this shift in focus that I find most troublesome.

In a previous article I said that if you want to really know a culture, look at the way it is pitched. Look at how advertisers attempt to reach them and most importantly decide to buy their products and services. No advertiser attempts to sell by making fun of potential customers.

In the case of the offending commercials, they are reflecting the values of their potential customers, not making fun of them. They want to reinforce the attitudes of the self-important, pretentious, narcissistic yuppie scum they present there. And, that is what gets under my skin. Those are not really the values we need reinforced.

We see where reinforcing that kind of behavior has led us. The financial collapse of the mortgage bankers and the resulting economic meltdown is the result of our reinforcing that behavior. Is there any better reason for me to vow never to rent a car from these people as long as they run these commercials? If there is, I can’t think of one. (Not that I rent many cars, anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing.)

And while we’re on the subject of advertising and how it reflects the values of any given culture, I am particularly put off by commercials for cold medicines that depict men as helpless man-children who must be ministered to by wise and long-suffering wives. It is put out that Ny-Quil can even handle the “man-cold”, the kind that reduces men to helpless blobs of misery on the couch who even require help to reach the remote that is just out of reach.

Now that may make a lot of wives nod and smile, their stereotypes of helpless men reinforced, but I object. Any actor who would accept a job that makes us seem that ridiculously helpless must really be hard up for the work. I won’t by Day-Quil either.

I vote with my money. It’s a small thing and I’m sure nobody notices, but I simply will not buy from any vendor who insists on pissing me off. Case closed.

Occupy Chicago: A Cautionary Reminder

Administrator — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 19:35:35 +0000

Revolutions never rise from the ranks of the sorely oppressed, the lower classes, no matter how it appears. Revolutions are always the work of the middle class, particularly those in the educated class who are most able to articulate for the masses why they are or ought to be pissed off.

Monday, October 10, 2011, Columbus Day rally of Occupy Chicago. Photo by Grace Perez.

One always does, when one is of a certain age, compare any protest to those of one’s youth. In my case of course, that would be those of the mythic sixties, or to be more accurate, the early seventies. It is a mistake, however, for Baby Boomers to get all caught up in nostalgia; this is not, after all, about us. Those demonstrations came at a different time and from a different locus. The causes, also, were vastly different.

The course of the Occupy Movement, however, does follow pretty closely the pattern of most such populist protests. They start small with a gathering of a hundred or more, usually organized around a single principle. In the case of the Occupy movement, that principle is holding the Wall Street financiers who played fast and loose with regulations and speculated on marginal investments to make a quick buck before the collapse and then pled bankruptcy so the taxpayers would panic and bail them out.

The next stage is the gathering of the masses, those who sat at home and watched the two hundred and thought it a great idea. They come in droves over the course of a few days. Among those are people in other cities who begin to emulate the two hundred spontaneously, forming “occupy” organizations of their own. These also grow over weeks.

Finally comes the gathering of the “others,” those who proclaim, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” These are the career revolutionaries and their causes may have little or nothing to do with the stated goals of the original group and these must be looked out for. It is tempting to welcome them with open arms merely to swell our numbers, but one does so at a cost. They will distort the message and make it appear that the movement is unfocused. And because they will distort the message, they will be targeted by those in the media who have no sympathy for the cause.

They will then become the voice of the movement if the organizers do not clearly delineate their case against Wall Street. We may want to hold the reckless and greedy financiers accountable for specific acts of malfeasance, but we do not want to dismantle the New York Stock Exchange. We may want the government to regulate the investment industry but we do not want an overthrow of the United States.

The next regrettable phase of any protest is the forcible eviction of the protesters. This proves that the protest is being effective, but it could easily collapse as surely as the market collapsed if the eviction is not opposed. In New York, thousands of people are flocking to Wall Street to support the protesters in opposition to Mayor Bloomberg’s attempted eviction. At last word that effort has been postponed.

I cannot stress enough how much of a mistake it would be to back down. The point of a protest is opposition to authority not acquiescence. In this, the protesters will need to be willing to face arrest rather than leave willingly.

In Chicago, the protests continue, but they are quite different in character, largely because of the Chicago Police Department’s response to the protesters which, quite unlike 1968, is one of facilitation rather than opposition. They learned their lesson four decades ago. Officially, the police are not to make arrests unless individual protesters break the law and the the arrests are to be handled courteously and professionally no matter what the individual officer may think of the demonstrations.

That doesn’t make as good an image on television, but it is probably more effective. What we have to be careful of is the semi-professional revolutionary provocateur. Every protest movement attracts them.

On the day I went to the Loop for the protest I actually arrived too late for the actual rally, which had been completed by 6:00 PM. But I knew there would be an after-party. There always are. The formal protests were covered sufficiently by the press, but it is the after-party that I find most interesting. I followed a crowd from Millennium Park to the intersection of Congress and Michigan where another rally took place among the true believers and those who just thought it was over too soon.

The After-the-Rally-Rally. October 10, 8:00 PM.

It is this group that will be the undoing of the movement if the organizers are not careful.

It was a cross section of folks from teachers and lawyers on one end of the scale to overly nostalgic sixties revolutionaries reliving the glory days of their youth, to hard core partisans to people who really needed to be introduced to the concept of soap and water.

I hung around for a few hours observing them and listening to a speech read from a phone. The speech did in form resemble the Declaration of Independence though, as may be expected, not nearly so elegantly phrased. It devolved into an increasingly strident list of offenses, some legitimate and some pure petulant rant, and I quickly got bored.

I was reminded of a principle that I discovered some years back. Revolutions never rise from the ranks of the sorely oppressed, the lower classes, no matter how it appears. Revolutions are always the work of the middle class, particularly those in the educated class who are most able to articulate for the masses why they are or ought to be pissed off.

Revolutions do not happen in the streets but in the study. Revolutions are only expressed in the streets. One may move the masses to action but one may not depend on them. The focus of revolution is in the hands if the intelligentsia, as it has always been.

Everyone points to the Sixties as a reference point in populist uprisings, how the Peace Movement changed the world, Love, Peace, Truth, Beauty and all that. They may be guilty of romantic hindsight. I was there. I saw what happened to it. It wasn’t pretty.

It began with the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King was the driving force behind the struggle to gain equal rights for African Americans in the South primarily but also in the North where segregation was not the law, but existed anyway de facto. The law was easier to target and so the efforts were concentrated in the South. The key element in the civil rights movement was non-violence, based on the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi. As in India, it was not until the public at large saw the violence against peaceful demonstrators, not until images of innocent children being attacked by Bull Connor’s dogs and fire-hoses, that the corner was turned and that vast fickle thing called public opinion turned in favor of the struggle. In fact, it might be argued that the Civil Rights Act would not have passed without Bull Connor.

It was not too much longer that other oppressed minorities jumped on board and pressed for their own equal rights. Couple those with opposition to the Viet Nam war and it seemed that the whole generation of Baby Boomers was revolting against the establishment. It truth, the revolutionaries were still a minority. Most young people were too busy studying to join in the general melee or were only there for the party anyway.

I heard countless times that “When the revolution comes, things will be different.” Well, from my vantage point, the revolution couldn’t have possibly succeeded had it come on Saturday night; that was party night, date night, and no one was interested in much of anything except what social scientists euphemistically call “mating opportunities.”

The important thing to note is that any popular movement will attract its share of marginal participants and this can, if it is not watched carefully, result in just the opposite of what is intended. The mob may be needed to log impressive numbers, but it should never lead.

Pure anarchy never accomplishes anything. The Youth Rebellion of the Sixties quickly attracted the psychopaths, the violent revolutionaries like the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army. These images of heavily armed young people had exactly the opposite effect that the originators of the various freedom movements desired. Even if not heavily armed, the Left asserted, rather arrogantly, that the way of life America had always known was over. The young would take over and the revolution would be complete. Rather than get the establishment on their side, these images frightened it and led to the creation of Jerry Falwall’s Moral Majority which eventually morphed into the Radical Religious Right.

By so embracing everyone equally, the Left created the Tea Party. Until this is understood, they will continue to make the same mistake. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but he is useful … to a point.

I am gratified to learn that the Occupy movement has recently created a website to address the very thing I speak of, among other problems such as the infiltration of the movement by the extreme right for the express purpose of discrediting it. As a primary source, the public is invited to visit http://www.occupytogether.org/.

The Occupy Movement, once again, may use the energy of the mob but must never be guided by it. It is simply too diverse to ever be effective left to its own devices. Many a reform movement has been derailed by these disparate factions in the mob.

O’Shaughnessey: A Boy and His Leprechaun – Excerpt from Chapter 2

Administrator — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 19:30:20 +0000

There was nothing to do now but tell Daddy all about the morning’s surprise visitor and hope they couldn’t put seven-year-old boys in the loony-bin. So, Bobby did tell him.

When last we left seven-year-old Bobby Mahoney, he’d just awakened to find a leprechaun sitting on his bed-post. Introductions were made and Bobby was feeling a little less apprehensive about his unusual visitor when it was time to get ready for a day at the fair with Daddy. Bobby’s parents were divorced, and these weekly outings with Daddy were treasured. Bobby just wished he didn’t have to share them with his creepy five year old sister, Maggie.

From O’Shaughnessey: A Boy and His Leprechaun now available on Amazon and Kindle.

The cool of the morning gave way to a still, hot and muggy afternoon. The heat made the air shimmer. Sweat poured freely down Bobby’s face. In spite of the extreme stickiness, though, he had to admit there was no place on earth like a fair.

The midway teemed with activity. Barkers shouted at them as they passed the shabby but glittering game booths. There were the unmistakable smells of popcorn, hot dogs on a stick, salt water taffy and candy apples mixed with the less desirable odors of lubricating oil and diesel from the rides.

Of course, Daddy had to make the obligatory hike through the cattle barns, bad enough on any normal day, but on a day as hot as this can you imagine how unbearable the smell was? Bobby tried to rush through them, but Daddy’d have none of that. He’d grown up on a farm and went to the cattle barns, he said, just to keep in touch. The children scrunched their faces and held their noses, but Daddy spread his arms wide and filled his lungs and proclaimed, “Ah! Lots of vitamins in that air!” which made the children laugh, breathe again and cough.

“Eew!”

The children were patient with their father, but for them the fair was not about Black Angus cattle or bloated, fly-encrusted hogs.

Fairs were about rides!

Back on the Midway, the children’s senses were assaulted by multitudes of brightly colored balloons that hung from each booth and side show. Bobby particularly liked looking at the huge banners proclaiming the presence, just inside the tents, of the Crocodile Lady, the Two-headed Boy and the Man with No Face, ”all alive,” wonders that would be forever hidden from his sight. On a rare point of agreement, both Mother and Daddy disapproved of such displays.

In spite of Daddy’s promise not to fill the children up with junk, he was after all just a kid at heart himself and by mid-afternoon they had swallowed as much fair-food as they could handle. “After all, it’s only once a year.” They had ridden all the kiddie-rides at least once, some as many as five times depending on Maggie’s opinion of them. Her favorite was the merry-go-round.

Bobby sat on his wooden horse for the sixth time. Daddy’d tried to coax Maggie toward some of the other rides, but she’s have none of it. No sooner had they finished one ride than she wanted another. Bobby looked at her sitting astride her purple and gold spotted horse and giggling in anticipation. It was to Bobby the ugliest horse on the ride, but Maggie loved it. “Kid’s got no taste,” he thought. “Now, if Mother were here she’d take Maggie on the kiddie-rides and let me and Daddy go for the good stuff,” by which he meant the Wild Mouse, the Hammer, and the dreaded but loved Flying Loop, rides that make an old man like me tremble but are just the thing for a strapping boy like Bobby.

Bobby saw Daddy stifle a yawn with one hand while he held the other tightly around Maggie’s waist. “This is just as boring for him as it is for me,” he thought. “Why is it that Maggie always gets her way?”

As soon as he formed the question, he knew the answer. There is a special bond between fathers and daughters. Mother said, “Sons are a fathers rivals, but daughters are his joys.”

I’m not entirely convinced of that, but that’s what Bobby’s mother said. Yes, he was jealous and the feeling gave him no pleasure.

Six rides on the merry-go-round are enough for anybody, even somebody with Bobby’s iron constitution, and by the time the sixth ride was over, he regretted the three corn-dogs he’s had for lunch. Even Daddy looked a little pale, but Maggie was ready for another turn. “Not now, Pumpkin,” Daddy said weakly, “Let’s just walk for awhile.”

Bobby expected his little sister to throw a tantrum like she always did whenever she didn’t get her way, but she just nodded. To tell the truth, my children, she looked a little wobbly, too. …

Bobby tried his hand at throwing darts at balloons and almost won a prize. He moved on to the crane where, for only a dime, he could try to lift a multiplex knife or a wristwatch out of a bin with a metal claw on the end of a chain. He snagged a wristwatch but at the last minute is dropped off.

“Darn! I almost had it. Did you see that, Daddy? I almost got it out.”

“Don’t feel bad, sport,” Daddy laughed, “These things are probably fixed anyway. Just have fun.”

As Bobby turned back toward the Midway, his eye caught something that startled him. There, hanging from the top of the shooting gallery, was a little old man in a green coat. Bobby’s heart jumped as he let go of Daddy’s hand and ran over to the booth. Much to his disappointment, it turned out to be nothing more than a stuffed doll, a phony grown-up’s vision of a leprechaun manufactured out of felt plastic. The enameled red hair and ridiculously toothy painted smile gave the doll a grotesque and malicious air, not at all like the goo-humored dapper little man he’d seen that morning.

The oily man with the stubby cigar who stood in the booth grinned at Bobby. “Take a chance on the leprechaun, boy? It’s the genuine article, right off the boat from the old sod. You can have him for only a quarter of a dollar.”

Bobby looked at the man and then at the doll, then backed away and walked slowly toward Daddy.
They’d walked for about fifteen minutes when Maggie pulled them over to a bench which sat in the shade of an oak tree. “Good idea,” Daddy said, “I think we can all use a rest,” meaning Daddy could use a rest. No sooner had Maggie laid her head on Daddy’s lap than she was asleep.”

“Great!” Bobby thought, “stuck here on this stupid bench for a jillion trillion hours!” He and Daddy say and watched the people walking by. They laughed at the fat lady in the tight shorts and the bow-legged man on the bicycle. Daddy said he didn’t know why people spent money on side-shows when there were wonders enough walking the Midway and all for free.

“Daddy, have you ever seen a leprechaun?” Bobby asked.

“Where did that come from?”

“Just want to know.”

Daddy got a far off look in his eye and Bobby knew he was about to launch into a story. That was one of the things Bobby missed most: Daddy’s bedtime stories. All full of mystery and magic they were, with knights and princes and dragons and faeries and all that good stuff.

“Well now, let’s see,” Daddy said. “Not many there are who can see leprechauns. They’re not very sociable creatures.” A bit of an Irish brogue crept into Caddy’s voice. It always happened when he spoke of his father’s homeland. “The books say leprechauns are faerie folk, but hot the same as sprites and pixies. True, they don’t like people, but they’re not downright nasty toward them like spriggins and shees.”

“What are spriggins and shees?”

“Ah!” said Daddy with a consistorial glance at Bobby, “the less said about them the better.”

Bobby didn’t know whether Daddy was pulling his leg or not. With grown-ups, it’s hard to tell, isn’t it?
“Leprechauns are most often found under mulberry bushes busily plying the shoemaker’s trade. Have you ever walked through the woods about sundown and heard the tapping of a little hemmer?”
“Mother says those are woodpeckers.”

“Does she now?” Daddy’s eyes widened as he looked closely at Bobby. “Well, that shows you how much she knows about leprechauns. That tapping you hear is the sound of a tiny hammer driving hob-nails into the sole of a shoe and that’s that!” Daddy leaned back on the bench and absent-mindedly stroked Maggie’s damp red hair. “There are those who say the woodpeckers are put there my magic to cover the sound of the hammers, but I think that’s going too far, don’t you?”

“What do they look like?”

“What, woodpeckers? Why, you know. You’ve seen them in books.”

“Daddy!” said Bobby impatiently. “I mean leprechauns.”

“Ah, leprechauns.” Daddy pulled at the tip of his nose. “And don’t I wish I could tell you? There are no two of them alike. But they do have some things in common. The way you know it’s a leprechaun is by the three-cornered hat he wears and the carpetbag he carries to hold his shoemaking tools.”

Bobby almost jumped off the bench. “That’s just like O’Shaughnessey!” He’d blurted it out before he’d even thought of what it would sound like to grown-up ears. But now it was too late. Daddy was looking at him the same way he had when Bobby’d tried to convince him that the neighbor’s dog had come into the bathroom and broken the medicine cabinet mirror.

“O’Shaughnessy?” Daddy asked.

There was nothing to do now but tell Daddy all about the morning’s surprised visitor and hope they couldn’t put seven-year-old boys in the loony-bin. So, Bobby did tell him.

More than once during Bobby’s story, Daddy got a quizzical look on his face as though he were trying to look through the veil of memory at something once known but long forgotten. Finally, after struggling unsuccessfully with it for a time, Daddy shook his head and said, “Oh well, what harm can it do? I had more than my share of imaginary friends when I was a boy. I remember once thinking I saw one of the little people in my back yard under the hedge, but it turned out to be nothing more than a rabbit. I think it was a rabbit, anyway.”

Maggie stirred and woke up. She sat up with a whimper.

Daddy sensed something was wrong. “What’s the matter, Pumpkin?”

Maggie was shaking and started to cry. She was sweating far too much even for the heat of the day. Suddenly she leaned over the arm of the bench and got sick.

Daddy gently stroked Maggie’s back. “I guess we all overdid the corn-dogs, eh?” he smiled. His smile faded, though, when he put his hand on Maggie’s forehead. “Good Lord! She’s burning up!”

Daddy picked Maggie up and cuddled her against his chest as he walked toward the parking lot. “Come on, Bobby, we have to go home.”

Maggie’s little legs dangled limply from Daddy’s arms as she was carried to the car, Bobby half walked, half ran behind them. He was concerned about Maggie, of course, but darn it why did she have to get sick and ruin their day at the fair? Bobby stopped at the gate to cast one last sorrowful look at the roller coaster before turning away to begin the long hot trip home.

From O’Shaughnessey: A Boy and His Leprechaun now available on Amazon and Kindle.

Exerpts from the Diaries of Ignatius P. Kelly, Bounder – Kelly Gets a Diary

Administrator — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:12:05 +0000

In spite of my great affection for the gender, women are, in the main, meddlesome, quarrelsome, arrogant and judgmental and that’s no lie, meddlesome in the way of not being able to leave a bloke alone, but always getting about his business even when the last thing he wants is to have his business gotten about. Sometimes, he just wants to have his eggs and hash browns in peace.

I often wondered what happened to Kelly over the years since I knew him when I was a student at Bradley University. I knew that the Hiram Walker distillery in Peoria where we both worked closed down in 1981 and put thousands of people out of work: Birdman, Sarge, Bustygirl, all the old ladies on the tax sticker line and Kelly. He’s a survivor, though, and I didn’t doubt that he’d done well. He switched gears and got a job with the Caterpillar Tractor Company across the river in East Peoria.

Kelly’s first job, as is typical of newbies, was at the Burr Bench, smoothing off burrs on newly forged parts. It was a horrible job, but Kelly took it all with good humor and soon rose to other positions in the company, finally becoming a drill-press operator.

It is odd that a man like Kelly would write a diary. Not many working class men did in those days. It was considered womanish. But Kelly did. In his first entry, in Autumn of 1966, he explains why.

September 30, 1966

Ignatius P. Kelly today at his favorite watering hole.

Okay, here we go. Don’t know how this is going to work, or even if I’ll stick with it, but I’ll give it a shot.

So I’m sitting in the Corner House, my favorite greasy spoon on Adams Street, having my breakfast of fried eggs, and the Corner House specialty hash brown ‘tatoes, when Sandy walks in and I knew I was for it.. See, when a girl walks up to you in a public place with a piece of paper in her hand and trouble in her eye, it ain’t ever gonna be good for the rest of your day.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love women. Always have. I love everything about them. Almost everything. I have had many dealings with women in my twenty-two years on this earth, all kinds of women and no matter how different they may be in all other areas, they have this one thing in common and I’ve not met many who don’t, my friend Judy the musician being a notable exception.

Quarrelsome in the way they have of finding all kinds of things to pick a fight about if and when you say you don’t want them getting about your business, and it takes the devils own tenacity and intuition to get it out of them what they’re mad about. “I’m fine!” they say in that sniffy way what tells you they are anything but fine, leaving you to bleedin’ well guess. Well, I don’t guess. If they can’t come right out with it I have no inclination to dig. Say what you mean and mean what you say or leave me be, That’s my opinion.

Arrogant in the way they think that there’s something wrong with us men if we don’t do things the way they do. But, we ain’t girls, see, and we think different. No sense telling them that, though. They like naught better than getting inside a fella’s skull and sloshing about in his gray matter, throwing out whatever don’t suit them, kinda like going through his closet and throwing out his ugly shirts, and the thing is, they think they have a perfect right to do so by way of “improving” him.

Judgmental follows right along after. To them, you see, the way women do things is the only proper way, and if we men don’t do it that way, then there’s obviously something wrong with us and we are in desperate need of that same improvement I talked about earlier. “All you need is a woman’s touch,” they say.

Now you might think there that I don’t think highly of the way women act, and you would be wrong. I’m perfectly willing to let them be the way they are, but I expect the same courtesy from them, and them what can’t give it, well, I don’t have a lot to do with them.

“Well, don’t you think highly of yourself?” I’ve heard ‘em say. “Who do you think you are?” they say. “I’ll beet you get slapped a lot.”

Okay, here it is: My name Is Ignatius P. Kelly. You can call me Kelly, but only my Mum gets to call me Iggy, and I have the same right and responsibility that everyone else has to decide what I want and do not want in my life and if I decide I don’t want any woman who is MQA&J, then they’re out.

“I’ll bet you don’t get a lot of dates!” they say.

On the contrary. You’d be surprised how many women are comfortable enough in their own skins that they don’t have to give in to their natural tendency to control what a fella does and don’t do.

Right. And then there’s Sandy. “Ignatius Kelly!” she says, thrusting the paper between me and my fork. “I want you to read something.”

“Mornin’ Sandy,” I say with my most charming smile, “You want something to eat? Can I get you a cup of coffee, Hey, Mark, can you get the lady a cuppajoe here?”

“Don’t change the subject.” she said and crunched the paper into my hand. Well, what choice did I have” I read it. It was copied out of a book on one of those new thermo-fax machines and smelled like burned underwear and was really hard to read, but read it I did with her green eyes leveled at my cheek as though she was ready to burn a hole there. “Out loud.”

“A gentleman never raises his voice during a discussion and always presents his case with the greatest respect for the other person’s opinion. If he has strong opinions that he has difficulty discussing quietly and in a non-aggressive manner it is best for him not to enter the conversation at all but write these things down in a diary.”

Mark rolls his eyes when he puts down her cup like he was sayin’ “Oh, you’re in it now right up to your chest, Mate. I’ll be movin’ on now.”

Sandy slurps her coffee, sets the cup down on the saucer with a clattering punctuation and huffs, “I thought after last night you might want to see that.”

“Well, you’re wrong!” I say, “I coulda gone months without that coming into my head and now that it’s there I will try my damndest to squeeze it out.” I crumpled the page up and dropped it on the counter.

“But you got so angry with Margie last night at the party. You almost ripped her head off and brought her to tears. That’s not you, Kelly. I’ve never seen you so rude.”

Well, all right, she got me on that one. I guess I was rude. It’s not that Margie is dumber than me or nothing, it’s just she’d got these things she learned as a ten-year-old and simply won’t let them go. I was just setting her straight on a few things I’ve learned since I was ten and I guess I must have gotten a little heated, especially when she said she couldn’t accept anything I said because it was well known I was a womanizer, a seducer and a… a…. a…Bounder, that was it!

You see, every time I brought something up, like a different way of looking at things which I am known to do on occasion, the only argument I got from her was “Well, we’ve always been taught…. “and “I’ve always been told… “and “All the experts tell us…” and I guess I got a little testy with her. I pinned her to the wall with a look that would bore a hole in her forehead, kinda like the look Sandy was givin’ me now, and said, “Well, my parrot-brained simpleton, at some point you have to stop being taught and start learning!”

At which point Sandy made my apologies and spirited me out into the parking lot where she lit into me good and proper. How dare I ruin a perfectly decent party by yelling at one of her friends? Don’t I know how to act in social situations? Will we ever be invited anywhere again? And all that. Now where she got that “we” thing I don’t know. That was only our first date. I certainly don’t think in terms of “we” and she shouldn’t neither.

Sandy un-crumpled the thermo-fax up and pressed it flat on the counter with her hands. Nice hands. Small and delicate with just the right shade of nail varnish. Lovely hands, and I fought the urge to take one of them in my hand ‘cause we was having a fight, you know, an’ I didn’t think it was the best thing to do just then.

Sandy tapped her finger against my shoulder. “She’s an educated woman…”

“A-a-a-a-a, she’s a Sophomore in college.”

“And you are a high school drop-out! “ Then her eyes got big and she clapped her fingers over her mouth and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, Kelly. I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Said it anyway.”

“ I know you have to take care of your Mom.”

“Well, just ‘cause I ain’t in school don’t mean I gotta stop learning. I got me a library card, don’t I?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“I may not talk as pretty as you college folks up on the hill, but…”

“No, you don’t. I have to tell you it’s embarrassing, and I think that’s intentional! You wear your bad grammar like a badge of honor. It places you firmly in the blue collar…”

“An’ what’s wrong with that? We made this country an’ everything in it.”

Well, she gets this look on her face like she’s just about to tell me off and then she stops herself. Lowers her eyes like.

We was quiet like that for a bit while I squeezed more ketchup on my hash-browns. Mark, he give me a look and I say, “Ain’t nothing against your cookin’, mate. You got the best fried ‘tatoes in the city, but naked ‘tatoes just ain’t right.”

Sandy whispers, “You’re better than that, Kelly. You’ve got a brain but nobody knows it. The way you talk…”

“Is the way I talk. They don’t like it they can …”

“That’s the thing, isn’t it? You challenge them to try and get past it, to get close. Look. Nobody’s going to respond well to pugnaciousness … and don’t look at me like you don’t know what that means!”

I slid the page over to where I could read it again.”Where’d you get this?”

“Emily Post.”

“What, like the cereal?”

“No, silly, like the expert on manners. Now don’t get started…”

“All the experts in the world ain’t got that much sense,” I said snapping my fingers.

“..yelling about experts. Some of them know what they’re talking about.”

“Yeah, right!” I tossed the paper over to her and attacked my breakfast. “Anything in Emily Post about gobsmacking a bloke while he’s eating and letting his eggs get cold?”

“Kelly, please?”

“Wahaddaya wamme to do?”

So she takes out this book, see and gives it to me. I flip through it, and it’s got nothing in it but blank pages and I say, with my best devilish smirk , “Plot’s kinda weak.”

“It’s a diary.”

“Well .. I knew that! What am I s’posed to do with this?””

“What I want you to do is, when something happens to you and you feel like lashing out, save it for the pages of your diary.”

“I can’t have opinions? I can’t argue with anybody?”

“Well, sure. But like Emily Post says, you have to express them with respect for others’ views. See? People can disagree with you without being a threat to you. And you can accept what is theirs AS theirs without feeling like you have to make it yours. See how that works?”

“An’ in this book, I don’t hafta be nice?”

“Rip’em to shreds, Tiger!”

So here I am, writing in a diary an’ I’ll give the first bloke what laughs the back of me hand and the toe of me boot.”

The Malthusian Dilemma: The Relative Value of the Human Life

Administrator — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 11:48:12 +0000

If our resources are indeed limited, and if some will inevitably be lost, like Ko-Ko in The Mikado, I have a little list of those I believe society could well do without. As I said before, the human being is a value added commodity and if people will not add value to their lives, I see no reason to value them myself.

My friend and persona the Right Honorable Gerald Gilbert remonstrated with me rather strongly regarding my position that the street beggar has the same value as anyone else and offered to write a brief, if lawyers can ever be brief, article on the relative value of human lives. Actually, he challenged me to publish it, if I dare. Since lawyers are notoriously long winded, I have divided his essay into three (maybe more) parts under the general title: The Malthusian Dilemma.

From the Desk of the Right Honorable Judge Gerald Gilbert, Esq:

The Right Honorable Judge Gerald Gilbert, Esq.

First, I would like to thank my friend for allowing me space in his blog to express my disagreement with what I consider to be an observably wrong-headed position that all life is of equal value. I know it is a popular, and highly romantic notion, but the evidence does not bear it out.

I have seen thousands of people pass before my bench in my 30 years as a municipal judge, people of all backgrounds, races, economic and educational levels, people with complaint s and people defending themselves from complaints. Yes, I have encountered in a way most do not all manner of individuals. I therefore have some insight into them and the patterns of behavior that bring them to my courtroom. There are times I want to shout at a frivolous complainant “Oh just suck it up and move on; get out of my courtroom!” I suppose I should, but then I would not be an agent of the law but of my own frustrations. So, I don’t.

I can, however, write and trust that my friend will post my musings on the efficacy of our current programs and policies. I could tell you a little more about myself, my social and political leanings, but that might just prejudice the jury and so I will refrain from such revelations. Let my ideas speak for themselves.

I will say this, though: it is my considered opinion that equality among people is an unattainable myth.

Thomas Malthus postulated that land can only support a limited number of people and to the degree that number is exceeded, poverty and starvation result. Replace “land” with any kind of resources and you see the problem. At some point it has to be determined whose life has more value. If any society has limited resources, and all societies do, how much should we expend on saving those who have little or no interest in saving themselves?

I cannot tell you how often I have thought, thought but never voiced, that many of those standing before me have not the slightest purpose on this planet except taking up space and breathing air. They contribute nothing but expect everything. And then there are those who drain our resources in other ways through violent crime. Are they to be valued the same as the concert violinist? As much as we would like to think otherwise, the human being is a value added commodity. When we are born, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that’s about it. What we make of our lives is what adds value to ourselves and our society.

A police officer I know was once in the position of having to shoot an offender. Conscience does often make cowards of us all, as the Bard says, and this was no exception. The question was whether the officer’s life was more valuable than the offender’s and how can such a judgment be made?

As a judge, I can say something about that. It is not judgmental to say this has more value than that, that one child is more talented than another, that one painting is genius while another is garbage. These are judgments and are founded in reason, there is a mutually accepted criteria applied. Judgmentalism, on the other hand, is purely emotional, reactionary and personal and there is no rationality to it. Any kind of prejudice falls into this category. On the one hand, in the case under consideration here, we have an intelligent, educated and accomplished artist and scholar who pays the rent by working as a police officer. On the other we have a gang-banger who sucks resources like a leech from the rest of society, those whom I sometimes in a fit of pique call “street-scum.” So it is possible, and in this case desirable, to determine whether one life is more valuable than another. The point is, that the question need never have been asked much less answered, except that by pointing a gun at the officer, the offender called it, and in that instant, judgment was rendered. At that moment, the officer’s life was infinitely more valuable. I say that the officer was morally correct in pulling the trigger.

That is an extreme case. Most times it is not nearly so apparent when the question is called. Sometimes it is not a single instant that calls it but a series of events over a period of time. A rap-sheet that would stretch from Chicago to Minnesota is one such example. Some escape the judgment entirely while others place themselves into positions where the question is called and the answer must be given. I see it all the time. I must render judgment on the findings of fact as presented in the courtroom and apply the law equally to all, but oh, how sometimes it galls me to see how the system can be gamed by players, rich and poor alike (but I have especial rancor toward the rich ones) and justice not served.

If the human being is a value added commodity, it stands to reason that he is also value subtractive. We are all born with unalienable rights, but like any right, they can be voluntarily relinquished. If you insist on burglarizing your fellow creatures, you may give up your right to liberty. This is as true of the unscrupulous Wall Street manipulator as it is of the common, run-of-the-mill mugger.

You may even give up your right to life under certain circumstances, stupidity being the most common. If you urinate on the third rail of a subway track you have effectively given up your right to live and there is no need for your family to seek reparation from the city to make up for your stupidity.

Walking alone at night in a notoriously violent neighborhood is another way. I heard of a movement some years ago by some misguided souls to “take back the night.” How foolish! The plain truth is you cannot take back what you have never had.

We have as a species always been terrified of the night and only with the advent of electric illumination did we perceive the illusion of safety. Victorian gentlemen carried walking sticks, not only for fashion but because there is a certain deterrent value in an oaken cudgel with a heavy silver head. The world has always been a dangerous place and that is unlikely to change no matter how much we may wish it different. It is far better to educate our children about the dangers of the night than engage in a useless attempt to take back what was never ours, but that’s much harder than marching in a facile protest, I suppose.

You may also give up your right to life by taking that of another who also had the same right. Yes, I’m talking about capital punishment. The taking of a life by the state was instituted to replace and prevent clan retribution for egregious crimes committed against its members. To interrupt the cycles of vengeance, the state set up the trial system and claimed exclusive rights to capital punishment. From then on, any clan member who sought vengeance by killing a human being was treated as a murderer. Whether an offender’s death is or is not actively sought by the state, he has, if convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, ethically given up his right to life.

Mind you, I am not in favor of Capital Punishment. I would like to see it abolished, but we as a society are a long way from that I fear. Note the audience reaction in a recent Republican debate over Texas Governor Rick Perry executing more than 200 death row inmates! They cheered! The test of whether we as a society are ready to give up capital punishment is whether we will, in it absence, revert to personal revenge or vigilante justice. If so, then we aren’t ready. The onus is not upon the legislature then, but upon the people in a society to relinquish their desire for retribution. I don’t see that happening.

If I can avoid it I do not impose capital punishment. My hands are often tied. I must represent the law, not my personal opinion and if the law allows capital punishment and if the prosecutor makes a compelling case for it and if the evidence supports it, I must order it however reluctantly.

These are but a few examples of how people, by neglecting to add value to their lives or by actively subtracting value can, in a Malthusian Crisis where not all can be saved, make themselves vulnerable and less likely to survive. Given the limited resources in any society, it is questionable whether much effort or treasure should be expended to support them when so many others have made themselves useful.

It is a capital mistake to think of everyone as equal, to eschew any form of hierarchy. Ken Wilbur points out in his marvelous treatise, “A Short History of Everything” that existence without hierarchies is impossible. As soon as you say that your ideas are better than others you have created a hierarchy. Equality he derides as “Flatland.” No highs, no lows, just a dreary sameness to everything.

I agree. Our lives are governed and motivated by inequality. Those of us who are are of a mind to, wish to improve ourselves and the society in which we live. We seek, through bettering ourselves, to add value to our lives so the Malthusian question will not be decided against us.

Judge Gilbert will explore the Value Added Life, in which education is the key element, in the next installment of The Malthusian Dilemma.

I Can Teach Anyone to Draw. Really.

Administrator — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:13:22 +0000

The truth is that most of drawing is seeing and more importantly observing. In the words of Sherlock Holmes, “most people see but do not observe.” But, observation is vital to drawing. So the first step is training the eye to observe.

Drawing demonstration during a reading of my children's book, "O'Shaughnessey: A Boy and His Leprechaun."

I can teach anyone to draw. Anyone!

It really isn’t that hard. If you can walk, you can dance, if you can talk you can sing, and if you can write, you can draw. Really. I mean it.

Whatever you say in response to that rather bold assertion, I have heard before hundreds, if not thousands of times. I hear you. It’s nothing new. Let me see if I have it right:

“How do you do that?” “Boy, I wish I had your talent,” “I couldn’t do that on a bet.” And then, there is my personal favorite: “I can’t draw a straight line!”

Well, my dears, neither can I.

All of the above disclaimers have one thing in common, two things, actually: The desire to draw and the certainty that it is impossible.

Now, I imagine there are those who have no desire to draw or are unwilling to learn. No big deal, either to them or to me. I’m not talking to you.

But for the others, I have this to say: I can teach you to draw. How do I know? Because I have – countless times.

I illustrate my own books so I usually incorporate a drawing demonstration into any public reading I do. I want, more than anything, to take the mystery out of drawing and encourage children to learn how.

I will start by holding up a pencil and asking them what it is. Predictably, they answer, “A pencil.” I will then tell them that if they were writing, that would be true, but since they are drawing, it is a sculpting tool. It is held differently.

Where in writing they hold it above the hand, in drawing they hold it below as in the photograph accompanying this article. Immediately, this gets them to thinking in terms of shadows rather than lines, in terms of molding shapes on the paper instead of outlines. This is important, because a line seems so permanent where a shadow can be repeatedly modified until it looks right, can be darkened in ever smaller stages until one gets the impression of a line without actually drawing one.

I use the same pencil technique even when drawing in pen and ink. The heavy line is the last stage of inking in a drawing, after which the much lighter pencil work is erased.

Throughout the demonstrations I ask repeatedly, “Is this anything that you can’t do?” and the answer usually is, “No-o-o-o-o-o.”

I used to teach stage make-up when I was on the faculty of North Dakota State University. It was a three quarter sequential class.

NDSU was on the quarter system instead of the semester system. Each class was held for three months, or one quarter of the year, on the assumption I suppose that most of academia was a bunch of hot air anyway and if the teacher were any good the subject could be compacted into less time. I think they were right.

So in the first three months the students did not pick up a make-up brush, a tin of foundation or a jar of powder. They came to class equipped with gray drawing paper, charcoal and chalk. For the entire three months they were to observe shapes defined not by outlines but rather entirely by shadows and highlights and reproduce them on paper. It was a different way of seeing. They were to schmooge in shadows and highlights going from broad to detailed and under no circumstances were they to draw a single “line.” We moved from simple shapes like a ball to more complex ones like a draped towel.

Once they were comfortable with observing and reproducing in charcoal and chalk what they observed, we moved on to the face. I told them that by the end of the quarter they would be doing self-portraits. Not one of them believed me. They were all skeptical. I heard all of the disclaimers listed above and more. So what? I didn’t credit them then any more than I credit them now.

“Steady on,” I said, “have patience.”

We set aside the charcoal for a time because I really wanted them to get a sense of the shape of the human face. So, we sculpted the “perfect” human face, based on the Classical Greek ideal, in clay as the next step. By sculpting, the fingers learned the shapes much as a blind person learns to “see” by touch alone. Any tactile action, with repetition, becomes automatic, like driving a car. You don’t have to think about the shape any more, you just produce it. The fingertips “remember” what to do.

Unlike the Romans, the Ancient Greeks idealized the features of their subjects, making them conform to the standard measurements.

We started with a half-egg shape of clay and moved on from there, measuring on it the classic proportions:

1 The eyes are the width of one eye apart and you should be able to fit five eyes across the face on a horizontal line in the exact center of the head
2. The nose falls to half the distance between the eye-line and the chin.
3. The mouth is one third the distance between the nose and the chin.
4. The width of the nose is on a line drawn from the outside corner of the eye to the center of the mouth.
5. The width of the mouth is determined by a vertical line drawn from the inside edge of the pupils of the eyes when looking straight forward.
6. The eyebrow begins at the inside corner of the eye and ends on the same line drawn to establish the width of the nose; it arches at a vertical line drawn from the outside edge of the pupil.

Once established, these proportions are then sculpted in clay. It was time-consuming to be sure, but at the end of the process, they had all produced a reasonable facsimile of a human face. Well and good. Now back to the charcoal.

They applied what they’d learned drawing the shapes to what they learned about the human face and were now set to the task of drawing the classic human face, front on.

“Think of the pencil or the charcoal or the chalk as sculpting tools,” I said to them. The harder you press the deeper or darker the “cut” or the “depression” you make on the surface of the paper, which you should think of as a slab of clay. Mold the shapes on the paper just as you would into clay.”

Oddly enough, against all expectations, they were able to do it. Glory be!

The next step was the most disheartening to them. They were to apply the classic Greek template to their own features. No one has a classic Greek face. our individuality is determined by how our features DIFFER from the template. It was hard to keep them aware that these differences were actually good.

The next and final step was looking into the mirror and producing in charcoal and chalk, a self-portrait.
Without any exceptions, they were able to do it. Each student produced a credible, but with varying degrees of artfulness, a drawing that was recognizable as themselves. They were astounded.

“See?” I said. “And you didn’t think you could!”

Who knows where this disbelief in one’s abilities to draw started? Although my evidence is merely anecdotal and somewhat personal in many ways, I suspect it starts in elementary school. Teachers, who themselves have never been able to draw a straight line, cover the “art” portion of the curriculum with line drawings and crayons. Students learn very quickly that if they cannot do line drawings, then they cannot draw and the teachers are too quick to agree with them.

As author and illustrator, I like to incorporate drawing demonstrations into my readings.

Art in school should be taught by artists, just as music programs are taught by music teachers.

But in talking about how children learn the things they cannot do, it strikes me that this is true of many things, not just art. Someone, somewhere along the line, fails to encourage exploration and risk taking. And, since it cannot be done, it must not be all that important, anyway.

Rubbish. Poppycock! Balderdash!

I would suggest that no matter how young or old you are, if you think you cannot do it, try it anyway. You may never be a great artist, art results from a confluence of skill and vision, but anyone can learn the skill.

“But, what if you just don’t have any talent?” I hear you say.

Well, what is talent, anyway? Who knows? There have been many attempts to nail it down but none are definitive as far as I can tell. Talent, that elusive and mysterious quality that people think only the fortunate have, is nothing more to me than a proclivity for and an affinity with a specific skill set. In short, it is easier for some than for others, but that’s true of any skill, and those for whom is it easier are, however begrudgingly, encouraged to pursue it (but not as a way to make a living) while those for whom it is more difficult are discouraged and go on to other things. But although it is harder for some, for most actually, it is never ever impossible for any of them.

Most of the process is simply a matter of observation and measurement. It’s math. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sure there are people out there who also think they cannot do math. Never mind. Math for art is a matter of internal logic and percentages. Easy stuff.

And so I say again, I can teach anyone to draw.