Kiss it Goodbye

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The youth of today, and for this discussion, this includes anyone who’s never held their favorite music in their hand (album, 8-track, cassette, CD), don’t understand how recorded music was appreciated in the time before the internet and streaming. I grew up in the age of mixtapes which involved recording songs from the radio (remember radio?) with the deft dexterity of a neurosurgeon. And…hit…..Play AND Record at the same moment! Who didn’t feel like Casey Casum when they nailed it?

My musical education is partly due to the Columbia House ten cassettes for a penny club we badgered our parents into joining. Research and hard decisions in my youth involved selecting my three-item allotment from Columbia House and being honest on my MLB All-Star selection ballot (and not voting for every Cincinnati Red nominated).  I mention music because one of the few albums we had growing up was Hotel California by the Eagles. To be fair, my parents also had Rubber Soul and Led Zeppelin IV on vinyl and Sgt Pepper on 8-track. My sister was/is an Eagles fanatic (along with a certifiably insane Keith Richards fanboy). I can’t tell you how many times we listened to Hotel California. One of the songs I loved was The Last Resort. Being born and raised in Rhode Island, I was thrilled that music royalty was singing about my home, Rhode Island. And because I knew the immigrant stories of my family and those of most families I knew, the song’s opening verse touched me:

She came from Providence

One in Rhode Island

Where the old world shadows hang

Heavy in the air

The song, written by Glen Frey and Don Henley, describes man’s ugly takeover of nature’s pristine beauty. Specifically, California, and the migration of people searching for a new beginning in a “new” land.

She packed her hopes and dreams

Like a refugee

Just as her father came across the sea

She heard about a place

People were smiling

They spoke about the red man’s way

And how they loved the land

            They came from everywhere

To the Great Divide

Seeking a place to stand

Or a place to hide

Word spreads about such places, and the throngs of people descend on it like locusts eating everything in their path.

Down in the crowded bars

Out for a good time

Can’t wait to tell you all

What it’s like up there

They called it paradise

I don’t know why

Somebody laid the mountains low

While the town got high

And this migration, like wildfire, doesn’t stop until it hits the ocean.

Then the chilly winds blew down

Across the desert

Through the canyons of the coast

To the Malibu

Where the pretty people play

Hungry for power

To light their neon way

Give them things to do

Some rich men came and raped the land

Nobody caught ’em

Put up a bunch of ugly boxes

And Jesus people bought ’em

And they called it paradise

The place to be

They watched the hazy sun

Sinking in the sea

And here’s where the story becomes painful. In the age before the internet and before you had lyrics to every song seconds away on your cell phone, we sang what we heard or misheard. The internet is filled with videos of people singing incorrect lyrics. Yes, it’s funny now! But before you could access the lyrics, you heard what you heard and belted it out as best you could. The next two verses always confused me. I should say I felt stupid not understanding what they were referencing. I assumed “La Hina” was a town in California. It wasn’t until years later that I learned Lahaina is a town on the island of Maui in Hawaii.

You can leave it all behind

Sail to Lahaina

Just like the missionaries did

So many years ago

They even brought a neon sign

“Jesus is coming”

Brought the white man’s burden down

Brought the white man’s reign

Before COVID-19 shut down society, and before masks and vaccines began to pull those who cared about their families and neighbors out of the pandemic abyss, my wife and I went on our honeymoon to Hawaii. We stayed in Oahu and Maui. We rented a Jeep Wrangler on Maui and, on our last day, drove across the island to Lahaina. I wanted a picture of a sign with Lahaina on it to send to my sister, an ode to our childhood listening to the Eagles. We walked Front Street, marveled at the city block-sized banyan tree, bought cookies at the Honolulu Cookie Company store, shopped at the Outlets of Maui, and ate dinner as the sun sank into the sea at the Waikiki Brewing Company. As we sat there waiting for dinner to be served, across the street, we saw the most incredible sunset I’ve ever seen.

I grew up in a tourist town, Newport, RI. And as much as I hated the traffic and the crowds of pretty people, I also knew their money was the economy’s lifeblood. When I heard about the wildfires whipping across Hawaii, and first heard Lahaina mentioned, I could only hope the town would be spared. The pandemic was savage to many industries, with tourism among the hardest hit. In addition to the catastrophic human toll the virus exacted, we all know of restaurants and stores that also did not survive. To have a wildfire threaten the fragile economy of Lahaina seemed as cruel as it was unfair. And then I saw the photos.

Nothing of what I remember exists any longer. It’s all gone. As of this writing, eighty people have lost their lives, with more expected as homes reduced to ash are searched. Front Street is a warzone of burned-out cars beside the mangled remains of homes and businesses. The banyan tree was scorched and may not survive. The Honolulu Cookie Company, the Outlets of Maui, and the Waikiki Brewing Company not only burned to the ground, but with the utter devastation and destroyed infrastructure, people do not yet know if their friends and coworkers survived. My heart breaks for everyone there. Hell came to Lahaina this week and took everything.

Climate change is real. Humans as a contributing factor is undeniable. Warnings of tipping points have been ignored. Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico exceed 100 degrees in some areas. We have had the hottest weather ever recorded, worldwide. And yet, we continue to ignore the issue and marvel at the consequences with willful ignorance and feigned confusion.

The last four verses of the song, without mentioning it, describe climate change and our greedy abdication of responsibility. However, instead of a coastline, when you read these last verses below, consider they are singing about planet Earth.

Who will provide the grand design?

What is yours and what is mine?

‘Cause there is no more new frontier

We have got to make it here

We satisfy our endless needs

And justify our bloody deeds

In the name of destiny

And in the name of God

And you can see them there

On Sunday morning

Stand up and sing about

What it’s like up there

They call it paradise

I don’t know why

You call someplace paradise

Kiss it goodbye

There are no new frontiers. We have got to make it here.

Or kiss it goodbye.

My Generational Fallacy

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Maxwell and Finnegan

I am a middle-aged white man. And I can recognize some, but not all, of the societal privileges afforded to me for no other reason than I am a white man. I feel it is important to establish that upfront. I have accomplished things in life partly due to my efforts and partly because of my accident of birth. Accident of birth. What else can I call it? In addition to being born a white male, I was also born in the United States. Again, not of my choosing. But here I am, and I accept the failings in my life as my burden, my fault. I take full ownership of my failures but share my victories as being due to my efforts, others’ efforts, white privilege, and the combination of those factors occurring here in the United States.

The paragraph above is enough to exclude me from the Libertarian party, who believe they alone are responsible for the air they breathe, and they’d like you to thank them for making enough for you like it’s Reardon Steel.

With that backdrop established, let me tell you a little about my upbringing. My first best friend was black. We shared the same first name. When he or I moved away, I’m not sure what happened (I was young and cursed with a terrible memory), my next best friend was Jewish. And the thing is, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. Or I hadn’t learned from society to hate yet. The only thing I now hate is willful ignorance. I learned so much from my friend about Judaism, its holidays, and the amazing food! I was raised Catholic (as was most of the state in which I was raised). I assumed everyone was Catholic. It wasn’t until much later that I learned Catholicism was itself but a branch of Christianity and Christianity a branch of organized religion.

Throughout my life, until I was probably 30 years old, I assumed that the problems of the past were destined to be solved by my generation. Racism being foremost in my mind and the easiest to solve. It was just wrong! That’s easy to fix, I thought. It was, I thought, the low-hanging fruit of justice, and I assumed I no longer lived in a country responsible for strange fruit (listen to the song). I also thought later in life that gun violence in America would be easily fixed after 26 first and second-graders (and educators) were slaughtered at Sandy Hook in Newtown, CT. In both situations, I learned there was a generational fallacy in my thinking. I assumed my and subsequent cohorts, armed with better information, compassion, and the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, would see the obvious path to social justice. How I was wrong! Chronological snobbery? Maybe. I now believe it is a combination of regional biases and willful intransigence that prevents solving society’s problems.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be 94 years old now if he had not been murdered at age 39 in 1968. What he did, what all who fought for civil rights in America in the 1950s and 1960s, and accomplished, cannot be appreciated using today’s time prism. The Overton Window has undoubtedly shifted on civil rights and many other topics.  What they accomplished then, at great personal risk and, for some, with their lives, is monumental. However, the Overton Window is not a slider moving in one direction but a pendulum constantly swinging between the warmth of progress and the cold intransigence of those benefiting from the status quo. “Make America Great Again” is the most recent example of this philosophical ossification. “Progress” is seen as a threat to their privilege. Equity and equality are, ironically, seen as unfair. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are seen as nefarious as Affirmative Action. After George Floyd was murdered by the police, DE&I programs blossomed nationwide, and workplaces and communities benefited from new thinking. Unfortunately, today we see the pendulum swinging the other way and DE&I programs being cut in red states all across an even more divided America.

I saw an interview with Martin Sheen recently. He has been arrested for protesting more times than he can count. And it has cost him roles. He said, “If what you believe doesn’t cost you anything, then you’re left to question its value.” He is 83 years old now. And I couldn’t help but appreciate his passion.

I confess to being a West Wing fanatic. I adored that show (especially the first four seasons written by Aaron Sorkin). I think the season finale of the second season (Two Cathedrals) is the best episode of television ever created. That said, and while I remain a devout fan, I also think it ruined politics for me and a generation of those like me. I assumed life was a meritocracy and not the plutocracy and cleptocracy it truly is. I appreciated the sincere debate depicted in the show and assumed that was how politics worked. Today, there is no debate, only sound bites, social media gotcha’s, net zero wins, and tribalism, where a foundation of facts cannot be agreed upon. We can’t even agree on what is a fact!

Martin Sheen lives how Aaron Sorkin writes.

Contrast that with today’s news that 25-year-old NASCAR driver Noah Gragson was suspended indefinitely for liking a disgusting meme laughing about George Floyd’s death. He’s 25 years old. So, no, I no longer believe my generation will solve society’s ills no more than I think my children’s generation (or Noah Gragson’s) will move us forward.

They say the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging there is a problem. We haven’t graduated from that simple first step.  There is no low-hanging fruit when those on the other side will embrace any atrocity rather than let you “win.” And for that, society loses.

My generational fallacy has cost me. Not as much as those in the fight every day. It is a cost for which I feel the need to apologize. It has cost me from seeing the issues clearer. Evidence of that is easy to see. Reread this and count the number of times I say a version of “assume.” However, contrary to the familiar American saying, in this case, it has only made an ass out of me.  I hope to do better. I dream of our country doing better. And now, not generationally.

Measure Twice, Thank Often

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All of us, over the course of our lives, develop various interests. As a child, I wanted to be a baseball player or an artist. In college, thanks to my roommate, I developed an interest in the guitar. As an adult, I took to woodworking. And I have always liked to write. My woodworking skills, like my guitar playing, place me right in the middle of “I know enough to muddle through most things, but not enough to be any good.” My college roommate was left-handed, like me. He had a couple of guitars, and he was very good! He was also one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. He taught me a few barre chords, and I could follow along (if the song was simple and slow enough). In the 300 million years since I graduated, I confess, my playing hasn’t improved much. I know more chords and simple pentatonic riffs, and thanks to the internet can dumb down most songs to feel like I’m part of any number of great bands. I enjoy it, but let me assuage your fears by telling you I have no plans to perform outside of my little office, ever. You’re welcome. My family would probably prefer I take up the air guitar. It’s quieter.

Where guitar playing involves notes, chords, riffs, melody, and timing, woodworking involves something entirely different. Because I am not a pro, I am confronted on every project with the challenge of having to envision how to accomplish each successive step. And once I envision it, I invariably must adjust that plan to account for unforeseen problems, a lack of the “right” tool, and the added time required to visit Home Depot or Lowes for the 23rd time in a weekend.

I always feel like an imposter when I visit Home Depot, as if everyone is quietly judging me, eager to expose me as a hack and a fraud. Every time I’m in there, it seems three guys in the lumber department wearing work clothes that have obviously been on 300 or 400 jobs catch me out of the corner of their eyes just as a box of 100 #8 x 1 5/8” drywall screws I dropped scatter down aisle 17.

We all have those we look up to. As a kid, Pete Rose was the baseball player I wanted to be, and Leonardo Da Vinci was the artist. As a guitarist, I wanted to be David Gilmour from Pink Floyd. I always found his solos the most the most emotional and evocative solos. He speaks through his guitar. These are the people who drove me to be better. Not professional, but better. They sparked an interest in me to learn. In woodworking, it was Norm Abram. Like me, Norm is from Rhode Island. Like millions of others, I grew up on This Old House, and through several hosts, Norm was always the steady hand on the tiller. He was a teacher. Tom Silva always taught, too. His expertise in construction always showed an easier way to do something that amused the host. I learned what cripple studs were and why they were important. But Norm was the “Master Carpenter.” Maybe it was the title; however, when he spoke, it seemed to carry more gravitas. His New Yankee Workshop opened my eyes to furniture building and what a shop should look like, what tools should be in it (and what they do). And because of him, I wanted to make things out of wood. Furniture? Maybe

What Norm did on the New Yankee Workshop every week was always perfect. “I can do that!” I said to myself. What I quickly learned was that they never showed you the half hour it took the production assistants to set up the tool to make that 3-second cut. Mortise and tenon joints always fit perfectly. It took me an hour of trial and error (sometimes on my finished workpiece) to get close. Norm was always the vision of patience and safety. I can still hear his safety warning at the beginning of every episode in my head, “Before we get started, I’d like to take a moment to talk about shop safety. Be sure to read, understand, and follow all the safety rules that come with your power tools. Knowing how to use your power tools properly will greatly reduce the risk of personal injury. And remember this, there is no more important safety rule than to wear these, safety glasses.”

His experience, skill, and attention to detail, combined with meaningful explanations (and great camera work), hooked me every time. There were episodes where he made something that I didn’t particularly care about, however, despite my initial disappointment, I always found myself enthralled and eager to understand the next step of the project. I got to the point where I could anticipate the next step and the tool to be used. I loved it. Even if I didn’t have the tools to replicate the project.

And it sparked a new creative channel in me. I tried with my screwdriver, hammer, and lack of training to build things. It forced me to be patient (mostly because I had no idea what I was doing). Over the years, I’ve gotten a bit better and gained a few more tools, but still must go slow because I still have very little idea of what I’m doing. And if I’m working on a project and don’t show up to Home Depot for two days, they send out a search party. An army of orange-vested associates searching in a grid pattern across the parking lot and then my house.

I have a home office in which to perform my real job during the week. My wife had my old desk in her office but had a vision of what she really wanted. Lower cabinets, a butcher block countertop and desk surface, and uppers to the ceiling with crown molding. We researched cabinets and dove in. The cabinets were ready to assemble, and we tried to think out every other piece of prepainted wood I’d need to complete the job. We painted the walls, and then I took over the room. I put the cabinets together and ordered the butcherblock slab for the countertop and desk. I was very nervous about cutting it to fit. It was expensive, and I knew if I didn’t measure twice, I’d be cutting more than once or ordering a new slab. I could hear Norm in my head. “Measure twice, cut once.”

Each step of the process was laid out in my head, and with each step, there were questions about how to accomplish it. I sometimes took a couple of days playing it out in my head, envisioning the steps necessary and any impediments I might encounter. It was frustrating, necessary, and ultimately worth the time. I told my wife, “I can get you 98% of the way there. To get to 100%, you need to hire a professional. So, you’ll have to accept 2% being undercut, overcut, 2 degrees out of plumb, almost level, and sort of right.” I knew I was on the right track when it was only me who could see the tiny mistakes. She never saw them, no one did. I liked the challenge of thinking out the next steps and then overcoming the obvious missteps I’d take.

She also showed me a decorative shelving system she wanted in the corner opposite her wall of cabinets and desk. Again, there were challenges I would ruminate over for days before jumping in and getting it done. With one step left (putting up the shelves), I was anxious to see the finished product. I had sanded the wood, rounded over the edges, and polyurethaned the wood. All I had to do was cut the long piece into the actual shelves. I cut them and walked into the office, ready to nail and screw them into place. My wife started laughing. In my haste, I cut the shelves ½ inch too short. Without skipping a beat, my wife channeled Norm Abram. She said, “Measure twice, cut once.” Ouch. Back to Home Depot, back to sanding, rounding over, and polyurethaning. Then I measured three times, cut the shelves, and installed them.

Tony Bennett died recently, and Twitter (X?) was filled with kind words from those who knew him, thanking him for his body of work, kindness, artwork, and friendship. This happens every time a celebrity dies. I couldn’t help but notice how nice it would have been if folks thanked others while they could appreciate the sentiment.

I would never have attempted anything like that had it not been for Norm Abram and the This Old House/New Yankee Workshop. I don’t know Mr. Abram personally, but if I ever met him, I would thank him for being such a great teacher. And I think my wife would thank him, too!

Fly Me To The Past

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On an unseasonably warm night in February 2018, as the rain fell gently outside the beautiful Providence Performing Arts Center, I saw thousands of people travel back in time.

I was sitting in the back of the theater next to my mother. The audience was mainly older people, some with canes and wheelchairs. They were all there to see a legend. Tony Bennett took the stage, and the crowd roared. He was 91 at the time. His voice was thinner, but the emotion with which he always sang was still there. He knew what he wanted to do with his voice even if the vocal cords could no longer deliver. He gave prominent time to his band to shine and for him to rest. His daughter was there and sang her own songs and duets with him. None of us knew it at the time, but he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease two years earlier. Several times during the concert, he sang the same song during medleys of hits, but no one minded. He was 91 years old on stage in front of an audience of fans – and a magician.

Because I was seated in the very back of the theater, I had the benefit of being able to watch the audience. I can’t tell you how many watery eyes I saw, how many elderly couples held hands, and how many smiles I saw as each one traveled back to when each song was first released. In their minds, every man with a cane became a youthful stud, and every woman in a wheelchair became a beautiful young dancer. Sitting beside my mother, I could feel the void she felt, missing my father. Couples rocked back and forth, smiling and reliving their youth. It was indeed magical to watch.

Tony Bennett died today at 96. I have no idea how many in the audience that night preceded him. The wonder of memory is recalling events long past with others who were there. The curse is being the last and having no one to share it with. I will remember that night as long as I draw breath. If I’m the last, the bittersweet recollections will soothe me with memories of a beautiful evening with a magician who enabled an audience to time travel.

Compelled to Create

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“Necessita induce, e non diletto.” (“It is a necessity and not pleasure that compels us.”) – Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno)

There may be droughts, but ultimately, the artist must create. Left alone, thoughts smolder, and a flame sparks.

The writer must give voice to thought, the artist must give voice to vision, and the singer must give voice to sound. The musician must give voice to the melody. The medium is different; however, the result, sometimes free-flowing, other times tortured, soars.

My daughter showed me a quote sometimes attributed to Ernest Hemingway (though it probably originated with Red Smith, Paul Gallico, or another earlier scribe) that reads, “Writing is easy. You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

What I write here is the result of the wrestling match inside my head bled onto the page (screen). Writing is, for me, cathartic. I write for me. Just me. I write to exorcise the demons occupying too much real estate inside my little brain. When I am bothered, angry, upset, happy, confused, enamored, penitent, wistful, nostalgic, depressed, disgusted, or (name the emotion), I can often only truly understand how I feel by wrestling with my thoughts on the page.

I am not alone.

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in a way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.” – Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

All creative people have this compulsion to understand. The lyricist and musician (sometimes the same person) are restricted far more than me by structure and rhyme, whereas I am only limited by coherence and cadence. So too, the painter, who must become an architect to effectively develop the vision they are compelled to reproduce on canvas.

I am fascinated by the creative process and the different paths inspiration takes through inspired people. These people are heroes to me. Not in the Marvel universe way or celebrity way, but in how they are compelled to produce, driven to evict the vision seen only in their mind and share it with others. I am fascinated when I listen to a piece of classical music and find a story developing inside my head played out by the various instruments. I wonder if that was the composer’s intent or if I’m just nuts.

I write because there is an overwhelming need to sit and purge what is ruminating deep inside. I don’t know what the end result will look like or even where I come down on various topics until I sit, research, and write it down. It is cathartic and oftentimes the healthier vent for sadness, disappointment, or anger.

I have witnessed this process within my own house in different ways. My daughter studied art in college. I watched, sometimes with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, as she painted Dorian Gray repeatedly. She reflected the pain she experienced watching her mother die of cancer over many years onto the canvas. Her body image issues spilled onto the canvas. She was compelled to exorcise these thoughts through her art. It pained me and fascinated me to watch. Like me, my son writes. His work is a mélange of Douglas Adams, Rod Serling, Christopher Marlowe, and Ian McEwan. He cloaks analogies in irreverent prose and biting satire. He, too, is compelled to exorcise these thoughts through his art.

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” – Anton Chekhov

Another in our family also has this drive, this compulsion, my niece, Jackie Marchal. I call her my niece because, as my late wife was the only child of two only children, we joked that her family tree was more akin to a creeping vine. Anyway, my late wife’s cousin’s children, ergo my niece! She is a singer, lyricist, and musician. Recently graduating from Columbia after having been raised in NYC, I have witnessed her art mature with each successive song. I admit to not having seen any of her live performances in the city and have only recently focused on her burgeoning portfolio of music.

This past weekend, I worked on finishing a desk and putting on her music while I sanded, stained, and polyurethaned. The first thing that struck me was the effortless fluidity of her voice. Her voice floats. I have no better word for it. Despite not having an empty bourbon glass in my hand, I could almost see her voice floating throughout the garage as the rain beat down outside. I shuffled through many of her songs and then, and only then, listened to the words by playing them a second time. All artists pull from their personal lives. As I listened to the lyrics of each song, I wondered how much of what I was hearing was experienced and how much was storytelling. That may come from knowing the family. I generally don’t consider that when listening to other artists. The pain and the heartache in several of her songs compelled me to sit and write this because I once again saw (heard) the creative process demanding a voice. She is compelled to exorcise these thoughts through her art.

“Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.” – John Milton, The Complete Poetry

They say stereotypes are often rooted in reality, a caricaturist’s reduction of whole and unique people. The tortured artist is one such trope. And while I often struggle with thoughts and sometimes need to organize them on paper to understand how I truly feel (and sometimes it is a tortuous journey), it is an exercise I cannot do without—no more than my daughter, son, or niece. The artist must create.

For more information on Samantha Thivierge, see her Instagram.

For more information on Cameron Fucile, see his website: www.cameronfucile.com or Spotify.

For more information on Jackie Marchal, find her on Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube.

Tamara

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I want to take a moment and thank someone. Someone who, after all she’d been through, passed one more lesson on to someone needing a class.

Tamara (Lukowicz) O’Hara had every reason to be me. Every reason to be angry, pessimistic, defensive, and assuming, a person who only saw what was wrong with the world and never what was good. A victim. The war I saw my late wife Lisa wage against cancer scarred me eternally as sure as it took her life. I have guilt that will never be assuaged. It can never be mitigated despite logic and reason, regardless of the assurances from my children that my guilt is misplaced. I have bottled rage with no pressure relief valve. There is no one to complain to or in charge with whom to debate my points.

And I found myself bitter. Angry with the unfairness, inconsolable in my rage.

As a child, Tamara had childhood cancer. She battled it and beat it. She was Lisa’s cousin. I only met Tamara as a young adult after I began dating Lisa in the late 1980s. It was either a Thanksgiving at Lisa’s parent’s house or a Christmas Eve party at Lisa’s mom’s cousin’s apartment. I found her bubbly, engaging, and happy when I first met her. She greeted everyone, me included, with a smile and a story. Her parents and her sister were all there. The whole family was approachable and energetic. I took to them all fast. At the time, I think she was the only person I’d ever met who had survived cancer. Not that I ever asked. At that time, cancer was as foreign to me as hieroglyphics and certainly not a polite topic of dinner conversation.

Every time I saw Tamara, she was the same. I never once heard her complain about anything. Not the dinner, the people, the conversation, work, life, nothing. Ever. Over time, as I matured into marriage and had twins, her perpetual bubbliness I relegated to goofiness! She was goofy! Happy beyond all reason, charismatic seemingly without cause. And that’s when I first missed the opportunity to learn from her. She wasn’t goofy. She was alive in every way.

As we age, relationships fade, faltering, not through animosity, but as our lives are dominated by the mundane. Work consumes our days as we seek to purchase the bread our families eat at night. The kids’ kindergarten work morphs into helping them build a trebuchet for high school. And soon, or so it seems, after decades of this march, we see extended family members at weddings and funerals. We see ourselves taking another step up in the generational parade.

A corollary consequence of this separation is the paralysis of others in time. A different cousin of Lisa’s had a daughter who recently graduated from Columbia. I missed it! Without the periodic injection of news (touching base with that faction of the family), she was forever a student there. It is the mirror image of how we miss the small changes in those in our household. Those that have not seen them (or us) for a while notice the slow changes we miss.

And so it was with Tamara. She was somewhere out there, bubbly and happy. Except that was not how she was. She married in 2015, and I saw her in 2021 at Lisa’s mom’s funeral. She became ill again last November and endured procedures and pain I hope never to experience. She died Thursday at 53 years of age. Far too young for her shining light to be extinguished, leaving those who knew her to continue in a darker world.

I will see her family at the funeral. I will see again the familiar anguish, incomprehensible sense of loss, and appreciation that her struggle and pain are over. Her widower has lost a soulmate. Her parents have lost a child. Her sister has lost a part of herself. Cancer has again stolen one of the best of us. I have lost a belated teacher. A teacher I failed to learn from in life, but one whose message I hope to employ in the future.

Apoplettico

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My sister-in-law is celebrating a milestone birthday this year. To celebrate, she said she wanted to do something huge. “A trip,” she said. My wife and I asked where.

She’s a planner, like me. If I travel somewhere new, I have Excel spreadsheets of sites (complete with links, times, and reviews) and handmade travel brochures for my family. If I’m going somewhere new, especially a bucket-list location, I’m wringing as much out of the experience as possible. One never knows if one will ever return to this place, and there are so many other places I want to visit before my time on this mortal coil is up. It’s the same reason I don’t reread books.

“Let’s each make a list of places, and then we’ll compare notes,” she said. I feverishly retrieved the mental list of places I’d like to see and started jotting down the names of places. It didn’t take long for us to realize we all had similar places listed. England, Italy, and Ireland. “Maybe a cruise,” she said. So, with that framework, we set about finding cruise lines and itineraries that would meet our goal. Ultimately, we landed on a cruise from Rome to Pisa and Florence, then Sicily, Malta, Naples, Santorini, Mykonos, Olympia, and Athens. Unfortunately, once we started adding plane fare and tours, the price escalated well beyond our initial budget, and that didn’t include eating some of the world’s best food or shopping. We canceled the trip.

Dejected, my wife secretly began cobbling together an alternative plan. Rather than a cruise, why don’t we pick one country and go there? She built an entire trip through Italy before showing it to me. I was ecstatic! Count me in! And so, Birthday Celebration Trip version 2.0 was created. Four days in Rome, four days in Florence, and two days in Venice. The trip of a lifetime all starts on Saturday, June 24th. Bucket-list checkmarks are all over the map! We booked everything. That was early February.

Having recently moved, my sister-in-law needed to update her passport. We joked that she better get it back before the trip or else! We talked about the trip incessantly. My spreadsheet blossomed (I had a tab just for the Vatican Museums). Tours were selected based on length, location, and sites, and shoehorned into our burgeoning schedule. A good family friend was kind enough to list his favorite restaurants based on his travels to Italy.

As we entered May, we began to joke that the passport people must have been jealous, and that’s why we hadn’t received it yet. Although, as the month progressed, the jokes were soon tinged with anticipation and growing anxiety.

By the time June rolled around, anxiety had given way to panic and dread. Calls to the passport agency were met with the customer service levels you expect from the cable company. “We can’t give you any update.” “We’re swamped; call back later.” “Your call is very important to us, but blah, blah, blah….” The 90-minute wait times (if you’re lucky enough not to be told they’re too busy to accept your call) ruined a bit of my enjoyment of Mozart’s “Romanze” serenade from Eine kleine Nachtmusik! And my sister-in-law had paid for expedited passport processing! As we got within 14 days of travel, we were told we could call again and get into the expedited-expedited pile! Woohoo! Progress! We also contacted our US Senator to see if his office had any staff with connections in the passport department. Sure enough, they very kindly worked with us to tell us that since we were within 14 days of travel, we were moved to the expedited-expedited pile. We were also reassured that within five days of travel, we could call the passport agency to schedule a meeting to issue an emergency passport.

Panic, anger, depression, and anxiety ratcheted up every day as the mailman again delivered everything but a passport. We also learned that if we waited to reschedule or cancel the trip after Tuesday, June 20th, we would incur an astronomical penalty, significantly more than the cost of my first car!

So, Tuesday was the day, do or die. We’d call for the appointment! Then the knife in the heart. We called and were told there were no appointments in the nearest Passport office (Boston) and no appointments available ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES. Game over. We had to cancel or reschedule the trip.

They say man plans, and God laughs. Today is Friday, June 23rd, 2023. We were scheduled to leave tomorrow afternoon on a flight to Rome. Instead, the closest we’ll get is DiGiorno pizza and a beer to cry into.

Guess what arrived in the mail today?

My Hero Could Fly

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ 1 Comment

My kids grew up in the golden age of reading. They started reading chapter books just when the Harry Potter books took over the world. I grew up in the golden age of baseball. And by that, I mean the 1970’s. I grew up in Rhode Island that weigh station stop between Boston and New York. Many older baseball fans, stung by the Boston Braves leaving town, counted themselves as New York Yankee fans. Most of the kids I grew up with were Boston Red Sox fans. I was a Cincinnati Reds fan. Why? It’s a convoluted story of my father liking them as a kid because he followed Corky Valentine, a short-time pitcher for the Reds in the mid-1950s. Anyway, I grew up during the Big Red Machine of the mid-1970s.

I had most of the team in baseball cards. I meticulously considered my All-Star Game ballot long before dangling chads migrated to politics. And Pete Rose was my hero. He was me. He was not gifted athletically or physically. He was not a pitcher. He was aggressive “between the white lines.” And he was on one of the most dominant teams in baseball history. Tony Perez at first base, Joe Morgan at second base. Dave Concepcion at shortstop, Rose at third base, George Foster in left field, Cesar Cedeno in center field, Ken Griffey in right field, and Johnny Bench behind the plate. Believe me when I tell you, I wrote that from memory, as fresh today as it was when I was ten.

As the Fates planned, “my” Reds met my friends’ Red Sox in the 1975 World Series. Before each game, I would lay my baseball cards in their defensive positions on the rug. And while Game 6 almost caused me to drop out of school or seriously consider either homeschooling or the Peace Corps (rather than face my friends), the Reds won Game 7 and the World Series. Rose batted .370 and was named the World Series Most Valuable Player.

The thing about Rose as a player was that he was granted limited physical ability but an insatiable need to win, essentially at any cost. He was Charlie Hustle. Was he a showboat? Maybe, but he backed it up. I wanted to be a better player than I was. But I did love the game. My brother was a much better player than me, and I base that on the fact that he was a pitcher and played in college. I could barely break a window with my “fastball.” My brother once aimed at a kid’s head in Little League because he taunted him. Wrong? Maybe, but the kid didn’t do it again. Being competitive was equated with toughness. We were constantly reminded that we were not tough because we were not city-born. It was (and still is) a driving force to be overcome.

My father coached me and then my brother for many years. I can’t tell you the number of former players on those teams impressed by my father’s post-victory speech. He may have been disappointed in me (usually) or the team’s performance, but he always summarized his talk with, “The most important thing was we won, and they didn’t.” It never failed to bring goosebumps to the team. He was competitive, and so were we. Unfortunately, as my skills waned and were eclipsed by others, his pushing and my anger caused too many rifts. They ended in me withdrawing from baseball and fracturing our relationship for too long. I missed my brother’s college career because of it, and it is a regret I will live with always.

Pete Rose also made mistakes, permanently fracturing his relationship with Major League Baseball. Whether he, in the wake of the steroid era and Draft Kings advertising on MLB.com, deserves to be in the Hall of Fame cannot be settled here in 1,000 words (he does belong). He’s still a baseball fanatic and can tell you he batted .261 against Nolan Ryan for his career, but that one summer day in 1978, he went 4-4 with two doubles on an unseasonably cool July day in Cincinnati. He could tell you it was 71 degrees at game time. Ryan wasn’t supposed to pitch but came back on three days’ rest because… and he could do that with every pitcher and every game over every year of his long career.

Last weekend, my brother had the opportunity to meet Pete Rose at a baseball card show in Boston. In many ways, it culminated a baseball pilgrimage for the Fucile’s.

My dad is gone, and Rose is frail at 82, but he was my baseball hero, the tough hometown boy from Cincinnati. The Reds always were my dad’s favorite team and still are for my brother and me. My hero could fly.

Identity Chaos

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

April 23, 2023

Password management, strong and secure protection. Computer laptop keyboard and weak password on memo sticks, office desk background

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Bob Winston’s day began like any other day. He woke early, at 4:30 am, shaved, showered, and dressed before heading downstairs for his usual breakfast of coffee, a banana, and a yogurt. His commute to work was uneventful, and as he sat at his desk, he had no inclination that today he would save the world.

“I sat at my desk, turned on my computer, completed the company-mandated password challenge, then entered my username and password to log in to the network,” a humble Bob said when asked about yesterday morning. “After that, I simply entered a different password into the computer to access the group folder. Then it was simply reentering my usernames and passwords six more times to bring up the day’s files. To be honest, and don’t tell my boss, I did a little online shopping and read the news! That was just me entering my usernames and passwords on the four websites I was shopping, trying to find a gift for my wife. I like to catch up on the news by entering my usernames and passwords on the three news sites I read.”

Bob does not say that when signing into his Amazon account, he accidentally mistyped “Amazon,” which brought him to a covert dark web portal operated by the Russian FSB responsible for maintaining and, if necessary, activating the Russian nuclear arsenal. “I had no idea!” said Bob, laughing at his innocent mistake. “At first, it looked like the normal Amazon front page. I try to be an attentive husband, and my wife had mentioned in passing that she was interested in reading Atomic Habits for work. I entered Atomic Habits in the Amazon search field and was brought to a subfolder that had nothing to do with the book! I figured Amazon had a glitch on their site and decided to try again later. Claire, my wife, had also mentioned that she had spoken with Mildred, our neighbor, who said her husband Martin was planning on playing in an Under 35 softball league this summer. Being a bit older than Martin, I wondered if there were any Over 35 leagues, as I loved playing baseball. I thought I typed in “U35 leagues”, but I must have accidentally hit the 2 and 3 together and typed “U235″ instead. Well! Let me tell you, that brought me to an exciting site! My screen filled with schematics of missiles in bunkers and aboard submarines. What the heck is this, I thought!”

At the same time in Virginia, Virginia Sims began her morning at the NSA. “Yeah, just another manic Monday, I thought,” said Ms. Sims. I spent the first three hours of my morning, just like every other morning, signing into the various networks, folders, and files. I’m no different than anyone else. Just an endless series of usernames and passwords! Every day, three or four sites require me to update my password because they are outdated.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to develop a new variation on a password. There are just so many to remember!” laughs Ms. Sims. When she signed on to the last network, Ms. Sims’s screen was filled with a red background and the words “Russian Nuclear Arsenal Operational!”

“Well, you can imagine, my heart jumped into my throat! I had been listening to an audiobook on the way to work and hadn’t caught up on the news, so I was entirely in the dark about whatever geopolitical drama was unfolding!

I called my boss, but he needed to remember the password to his network. He reset it on Friday, but he forgot to write it down! He struggled to remember it, and more than once forgot to enter that he was not a robot which kicked him back to the beginning. Once he did remember it, he told me he was booted twice again when he didn’t correctly select all the photos containing stoplights or, what was it, crosswalks?”

“Anyway, he finally got signed in and saw the message I had sent him. He called me immediately and said he was unaware of any crisis but would contact the CIA and Pentagon to confirm we hadn’t missed anything.”

As Ms. Sims waited to hear back from her boss, Bob Winston struggled to get back to what he thought was a search for a softball league.

“The screen with the missiles and submarines looked real enough, but my son sometimes plays video games on my computer at home. I figured maybe the sign-on information he used for his Xbox had migrated to my work computer because the credit card was tied to me. Anyway, I’m curious, so I clicked on one of the missiles.”

“Instantly, the missile turned red, and I was brought to a different screen showing a list of coordinates. I’m not a cartographer, so I didn’t know what the latitude and longitude numbers meant! All I saw was SS-27 Mod 2 (Yars) and many numbers. It looked fun, so I clicked the big red button at the bottom of the screen to see what would happen! The screen started blinking green and then returned to the previous screen. Well, that was anticlimactic, I thought! No inflight cut-scene, no BOOM! Nothing! What struck me was that after all the usernames and passwords I had used all morning, you would think I would need some authorization to launch a missile in what I thought was a game! Poor game design, I figured!”

At NORAD and worldwide, screens started screaming. People began panicking over the seemingly unprovoked first-strike launch of a multiple-warhead nuclear missile from the Vladivostok peninsula in eastern Russia.

At the Pentagon, line officers began calling their superiors. Within minutes, it is reported, though unconfirmed, the President was relocated to a secure bunker in an undisclosed location conferring with the Joint Chiefs on both an intercept mission and a counter strike with nuclear munitions located in eastern Europe. And, as has been reported, the bunker was slowed in being brought online due to password issues with the secure internal network. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Miley, with a nervous chuckle, recounts the fifteen minutes it took his staff to sign on to the network because a Lt. Commander misspelled “Analytics” three times in a row, forcing him to reset his password using an email link, an authenticator, proving he was not a robot, and identifying all the photos containing peanuts.

In Virginia, Virginia Sims received confirmation from her boss that a nuclear launch had been verified by NORAD and geostationary satellites orbiting in low earth orbit over North Korea. Her mind flashed to a similar situation she had read about in school.

On September 26, 1983, at the height of the Cold War, engineer Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air Defense Forces waited rather than responded when confronted by notification of an intercontinental ballistic missile launch from the United States and four subsequent launches. While awaiting corroborating evidence (which never came) rather than escalating the situation to his superiors, Lt. Col Petrov prevented initiating the world-ending mutually assured destruction doctrine. What turned out to be a false reading of sunlight on high-altitude clouds was mistaken by the new Soviet early warning system as a nuclear attack. Lt. Col Petrov saved the planet that day.

Ms. Sims, with Lt. Col Petrov in the back of her mind, began, essentially, reverse engineering the situation to back beginning. After signing into the NSA internet monitoring system using a handheld token of rotating numbers, verifying she was not a robot, and identifying all the photos of chickens, Ms. Sims quickly traced the IP address to Bob Winston’s insurance company computer in Burke, Virginia.

However, in a twist usually saved for cheesy Hollywood movies, the situation ended as quickly as it began.

“Yeah, I heard the coffee machine in the break room and knew either my boss or my colleague Barbara had arrived for work. It was time for me to get out of the game. At least, I thought it was a game! I clicked the back button on my computer, bringing me back to the screen showing the missile. A popup screen appeared, and I clicked Terminate, which I honestly thought was an overly dramatic way to say End Game. Then a second popup appeared with a space for a password. I have no idea, I thought. I heard my boss’s footsteps approaching me and just entered “password” into the computer. My browser closed just before my boss said good morning. Whew!”

High above the Pacific Ocean, the SS-27 Mod 2 ICBM carrying multiple nuclear warheads detonated in a harmless fireball, splashing pieces into the ocean, witnessed only by sea life and a lone longline trawler.

“It could have been much worse,” said Ms. Sims in a monumental understatement. “Thankfully, Bob entered the right password -“password”!”

The Spectrum of Art

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“All art conspires toward the condition of music.” Walter Pater

I agree with Mr. Pater, one of Oscar Wilde’s influences and a proponent of Aestheticism (Art for art’s sake, i.e., neither social nor political).

Artists must create. It is in their blood and must be birthed onto the canvas. I use the word “birthed” purposely. I have seen the great effort artists willingly undertake to create art from nothing. As the blank page stares back at the writer, so does the white canvas mock the artist. The effort required to transform nothingness into art is akin to birth.

I once needed help with where to rank photography in the order of the arts. Artists must labor (pun intended) over their work to bring their vision onto the canvas, but the photographer “simply” captures the world before them. Now, I do not dismiss the intimate understanding the photographer has over their instrument nor the “eye” they must exercise when capturing the scene before them. However, historically at least, once the shutter is activated, most of the artistic influence of the photographer is exhausted. True, in days of old, efforts could be taken by the photographer with the development process (more additive here, more time there) to bump up the contrast or wash out a double exposure. And today, image editing software can transform any photo into a masterpiece with masking, editing, filters, and many other tools. But is that just window-dressing of an existing property? When I was younger, I would have agreed. However, I now believe photography blends perfectly well into the prism of art without hesitation or equivocation.

Allow me to diverge into another art form, music. Here, Mr. Pater is spot on. I have always said musical genres speak to the individual emotions of humans. Whatever mood I am in, there is music that matches it. A sad song can spark creativity in me. Black Sabbath can assuage my anger. Jazz can even out my temperament. Classical can elevate my senses. Smart, clever lyrics can drive me to my keyboard. A David Gilmour solo can transcend words altogether. Unlike other art forms, music elicits emotion from the audience via the ears rather than the eyes. Certain composers can tell a story with their music without the employment of any other sense.

I once attended a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, where a fully-fledged story presented itself in my mind. As it began, the piano sounded very playful, almost childlike, not in its complexity but in how it meandered in and out of the string instruments behind it. At some point, I imagined the piano as a child and the stringed instruments as the parents and extended family. The strings would play a piece first, and the piano would respond, often playful but still in keeping with the string direction. It was always strings first and then piano. Sometimes the piano would go off into a new direction without accompaniment as if a child was wandering around in the safety of the family’s embrace.

The second piece introduced the wind instruments (who’d been there all along but had yet to stand out). Because of the increased complexity of the music, I envisioned the piano as a teen beginning to interact with the wind instruments, which I saw as friends/schoolmates/lovers/colleagues. The piano would sometimes lead, and the wind instruments would follow. And then the strings would return with the refrain, telling the piano to come back into the fold and remember its responsibilities.

The third piece saw the ascension of the piano to a full-grown man (I say man because Emanuel Ax was the pianist, it could have been a fully-grown woman). The piano-led, and the strings followed. The piano assumed the refrain to which the strings (and sometimes the winds) would follow, but always with a sense of individuality and playfulness in the piano. It was as if the piano was now the patriarch/matriarch of the family and responsible for it, but it had never given up its individualistic flair. Perhaps I heard what I wanted to hear to make the story fit, but after the first piece, I anxiously awaited the next piece to see if my storyline fit- and it did every time.

By the end, I was in tears, weeping for the story Mozart had told me that day, written 234 years before. I had listened to the concerto over the previous few months, anticipating the performance. Still, there was something about seeing the piano up front, the strings extending as wings behind it, and the wind instruments centered in the back that made the story explode before my eyes. If this all sounds incredibly corny and uncultured, or if I’m missing the true intent of the concerto, I apologize. But as I sat there applauding, tears running down my face, I knew I had seen the storytelling power of music.

Painters can do the same thing with their medium. Stand before a Bierstadt landscape, and I swear you can hear far-off thunder or birds chirping. Stand before a Monet, and I promise you’ll see the wind interact with the haystacks. Stand before a Michelangelo, and I swear you’ll see muscles tense before your eyes.

Ultimately, the difference between painters, sculptors, composers, and photographers is one of perspective. Painters and sculptors offer you their vision. Impressionists do not provide you with a photorealistic version of the scene before them. Instead, they offer you their interpretation of that scene. You, the viewer, can choose what to see in the offering. Stand up close, and you’ll see the artist’s effort, brush strokes, and palette knife sweeps. Stand back, and you see sunlight where a smudge was, passion where disparate colors touched up close. Same with the sculptor. Go to a museum and listen as a docent regales a group with seemingly pretentious interpretations of the work before them. But do listen! Because while you may disagree with things being said or not “get” specific points, they offer you a vision into the artist, a glimpse into their intent.

The difference between viewing a painter’s or sculptor’s interpretation of the world before them and the photographer’s is a shift in perspective. As a viewer of paintings and sculptures, we are a passive audience of another’s life. As a viewer of photography, perhaps because it is easier for our 3D brains to insert us into a realistic 2D scene, we are the center of the world, active rather than passive. We see a photo of the shore and envision ourselves in that place. We see a picture of the mountains and ourselves on the plains before them. We may recollect a memory from a photograph of a familiar subject that fills us with the accompanying emotions. Alternatively, we may inject ourselves into an unknown scene, envisioning ourselves in that space and projecting matching feelings.

Mr. Pater is correct in that all art aspires to the purity of music in that music exists beyond our eyes. But in the end, whether it is photography, painting, music, sculpture, poetry, or prose, they all live on the spectrum of art. Ultimately, the spectrum of art is another analogy for the full scope of human emotion.