Cliff Osmond Unedited

Political Process

2012-01-24T23:12:00.000-08:00

We are born honest, with deep emotional needs. We are soon overwhelmed by emotional fears (some taught to us by our parents).

We learn also to cater to those fears.

Accordingly, we live half lives. Puberty challenges. We become self-aware human beings, sensing we are co-conspiring in our own self-demise. We lose self-esteem. To re-affirm dignity and self-worth (truth), we turn to our educational system. There (with the help of other thwarted human beings called teachers) we create a series of sophisticated intellectual social/political/economic rationales to justify our chosen fear syndrome. Reflecting Post Modernism, we are taught to cherry-pick only facts from reality which support those rationales.

We get (only) As and Bs as the student marketplace dictates. We graduate. We become Republicans or Democrats, affiliating only with people with like-minded set of half-truths. We soon reduce our quest for knowledge to watching only CNN or Fox or MSNBC. We become self-righteous. We vote.

We win. A rush of power. Emotional fulfillment. Power to the people (the mob).

Four years later...fear. Another election? Mommy! Daddy! The child is emotionally naked (and fearful) once again.

Asking an old man to be patient is like asking a poor man to spend money he doesn't have.

2012-01-17T17:51:00.001-08:00

500 Years Later

2012-01-13T17:41:00.000-08:00

Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein and Watson.
The benchmarks of the modern humans
A half-millennium journey to...myself?
They echo within me, if only to diminish me
with their fathomable truth
each waking day.

The Pole flung me out from the center of God's universe,
to become a distant star
one only lit unspectacular
among the vast void
streaking through life's uncertain tasks.
No longer it, spinning around us,
now, we
spinning,
around it .

Later, the mechanical Master offered
certainty
a fixed, inrerelated universe
(later, true, to prove an illusion)
but true enough, at the time, to create,
steam, electricity, trains and cars and planes.
Carrying me rapidly, proudly, may I say, Enlightened,
to ease, pleasure and less pain.

Until, Galapagos
ripped me from that reasoned, opulent bosom,
To become, only, lowly,
animal among animals, a stopping point
to who knows where--or what.
Genesis = eternity.
And no one rests (especially not my mind) on the Seventh Day.

The Vienna Jew beckoned.
Inner voyage now,
engorged penis seeking puerile pudendum
a flight into and from oneself,
to be cellularly re-invented, made immortal and whole--perhaps,
through other's hole.

The Austrian government clerk next offered
even less: he says
all this--the newness/nothingness I now comprehend--
is only relative to where I am.
An unfixed, ever-shifting dot.Soon containing a twenty-six-year-old's
double helix.

Too much truth? Five hundred years of shrinkage. Why awaken?

Because I must (Double Helix dictates)...

To discover:
life is joyful.
In spite of my (and you) being (relatively speaking), nothing but a sexual-seeking,
evolving set of mechanistic (stringed?) participles
operating (according to Genome)
somewhere of the edge of..black holes and multiple universes?;

Spitefully
(in spite of)
I am happy.
I am important.
I am...even if now I am only allowed to whisper it in a segregated locker room...MAN
(the unfixed center of myself).

Art and Amusement

2011-12-20T18:27:00.000-08:00

From "Cliff Osmond on Acting" blog:

Amusement seeks to distract the viewer from her everyday life, to give them restful pause. It detaches the auditor from meaningful life, at least in any long-term, or deeply felt, way. It quiets the audience without pain; it heals by numbing.

Art on the other hand stirs passion up; it hurts before it heals. That is why art endures and amusement vanishes quickly. The latter, amusement, is a topical salve; the former, art, is eternal healing.

Art engages the audience; it forces them to consider their depth and breadth of their own inner and outer lives. It seeks to make the viewer ruminate inwardly on the relevance of the work of art to the fullness of themselves.

It does so by first stirring (whether consciously or unconsciously...it doesn't matter) the audience's deepest emotions, by forcing them to confront in the work of art their self-image (once again, either consciously or unconsciously...the value accrues in either circumstance), to see closely who and what they are, what are the benefits and costs of their most personal beliefs, values and inner structure (sense of aesthetics).

In art, when the deepest passions have been thus stirred, thereby ratcheting up the viewer's inner demons and conflicts to almost unbearable and imbalanced portions, only then does the work allow the viewer to rest; and most often exhausted; or, as in John Milton's famous image (at the close of his dramatic poem, "Samson Agonistes"): "...with calm of mind, all passion spent."

Great art takes courage to behold; it is fully and tumultuously participatory. It fractures the viewer's certainty before putting it together again...and generally in a new way.

Amusement on the other hand can be...it is designed to be...held at arm's (and heart's and soul's) length. In amusement, when Humpty falls, he never fractures. He just gets a bump in the head.
In art, however: "...and all the King's horses and all the King's Men could never put Humpty-Dumpty together again"...except in the subliminal--and eternal-- ensuing political and personal lesson learned (even in a nursery rhyme!) by the audience young and old : when you fall from too high a (moral, ethical) wall, you may never recover your wholeness again.

Art reveals the complexities of life. Amusement renders them (purposely; too) simple.

There is nothing more cynical than a disillusioned liberal.

2011-12-18T17:56:00.001-08:00

Why is it that the less humanity knows about a given subject there are more experts ready to stand up give you their definitive opinion?

2011-12-18T17:53:00.001-08:00

Death is the ultimate inconvenience.

2011-12-11T15:19:00.001-08:00

Give me WILL over SKILL.

2011-12-11T15:18:00.001-08:00

"Do you believe in God?" " No; but I do believe in believing about God."

2011-12-11T15:17:00.001-08:00

Hmmmm?

2011-12-11T15:13:00.000-08:00

Parallel with the past 40-year rise of women's prominence and feminism in the America social, political and economic fabric, America has been on a 40-year spending (and shopping) spree; so much so that our national debt is our of control?

Is there a correlation here?

"Attractive Nuisance"

2011-11-26T17:42:00.000-08:00

My friend the cynic came into town the other day. He proceeded to rant:

"Do you see that woman the other day on TV, the one who charged a guy with sexual harassment? I think she was represented by Gloria Allred? The complainant was wearing a blouse that showed cleavage down to her naval? Sexual harassment?! The first thing I would do if I was the guy's defense lawyer is ask if she was wearing that blouse when he harassed her? If so, she should be charged with "attractive nuisance" and he should sue her. What do you mean 'what do I mean' by attractive nuisance? It's a theory that I remember from business law. Suppose you're digging a hole in your garden to build a little pool. And you leave it open overnight without any fence around or boards covering it. And a little boy walks by your yard, sees the open hole and comes on your property and plays in the open, dug-out hole...and injures himself. Well, you, the owner of the property is liable...even though the boy trespassed on your property. The law considers an open, unprotected hole on some one's property an attractive nuisance to children. That's the argument I would use in defense of men who are charged with harassing women with plunging necklines: uncovered cleavage are attractive nuisances. They are open holes. They (the women) are liable. It is an irresistible attraction. Especially to men, whose sexual natures, as we all know, are akin to a little boy's needs and desires to play and roll in the dirt. I rest my case."

A Plea for Understanding.

2011-11-22T04:05:00.000-08:00

From the old to the young:

Why do we oldsters take forever at the counter. picking up our change?

Because we have lost a great deal of sensitivity in our finger tips, and we can't quite feel the edge of the coin; much less do we have the ability to fight through the arthritis to engender finger suppleness and knuckle dexterity to flip the coin into our pockets once we pick the coin up.

Why do we always seem to have food stains on our blouses and shirts, like pigs?

Because we can't see as well as we used to; we can't see the dropped food or drying residue on the favorite shirts we wear day in and day out; also neatness primarily being a tactic to impress work colleagues, our Moms or the opposite sex, we're not working so much anymore, Mom is in the grave, and sex is confined to self-infliction...with no one looking, including ourselves.

Why do we look so dumb-founded when you talk to us?

Its just that we can't hear you as well anymore. Also, even if we do hear clearly, our brain-synapses don't work as quickly as before, translating the sound into clear cognition. And maybe, to be honest, it is a little bit because of stupidity. Not ours; yours: maybe we can't believe that you would say something so dumb and uninformed?

Why do we always seem so conservative?

In short, because we have more to conserve. It is old saying: "if you're young and not liberal, you have no heart; if your old and not conservative, you have no brain." Let me put it this way: when you've seen so many rainy days, you tend to save more assiduously for them.

Why do we always seem to be picking our teeth and sucking food from between our teeth?

Because our gums have receded, leaving more space between our teeth to have food sticking in there after a meal. That's why the Indians call old people "long in the tooth." Because they have shorter gums and so their teeth seem longer. Facts of life. See how the seemingly undesirable habits of old age are merely logical responses to the practical facts of aging life.

Why do we always wear sweaters, or for that matter, silly sailing hats or peak caps, or golf caps, even when it warm outside; why do we wear blankets when we sit down to read at night?

Because the capillaries under our most surface skin are dying, thereby carrying less warming blood to the surface of our skin. So we're always cold.

Why do we seem grouchy and complain a lot?

Because our bones ache when its damp, and we remember (with the help of our partners) all the mistakes we've made in our lives. Our hearing and eyesight is failing, the price of everything is always going up, technology is requiring us to learn new things, expanding population is making our life more crowded, and our children are failing us (if not merely disappointing us, they are back home living with us...and blaming us for that underachievement). I finally said to me kids one day when they were really bitching bout me about me failing him: do you think you are what we hoped for when we conceived you? We're as disappointed in your as you are in us. I caught a little break from their complaining about my early parenting.

And finally (turn away, kids, if your stomach is delicate), when caretakers take us to potty, or bath us, why are our undergarments always stained?

Because the muscles in our penis don't work as efficiently as when we were vital in pushing the urine down and out the tube; nor do the muscles close as efficiently in shutting down the mechanism when all is done; hence, a lot of leaking. As to our backside: just like our face skin isn't smooth anymore, neither are our assholes. They got wrinkled over time just like our faces; and stray bits of make-up gets caught in the crevices of our faces; so does our human waste get caught in the crevices of our ass. Cleansing (witch hazel) pads for both ends are thankfully available in the same section of the supermarket.

So forgive us young folks. We wish we didn't have to operate the bumpy way we do; but the flesh and bones are weak; and the skin is sagging.

Hey, the good news. The way science of aging is developing so fast, maybe, by the time you get our age, perpetual youth will be discovered. And you'll miss experiencing all of the above.

But if not, I hope the above recitation of old-age truths and facts helps you to a little understand what is waiting for you, Have pity on us...especially a little more patience when we hold up the line while we pick up the change from the counter. "Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it may be tolling soon enough for thee and thy caretaker." And nickles, dimes and pennies are important when you no longer have a job and you kids are off spending all their money on yourselves.

The Power of Laughter

2011-11-20T21:43:00.000-08:00

I laugh to avoid crying, to save me from the blindness of my tears.

I also laugh to escape the bordom of dull talk. I see the serious import of the conversation; I truly do; but while waiting for others to see it fully (or perhaps not caring when and what others see--or think), I co-opt it. I veer off as rapidly as possible to its underbelly: the tasty irony shadowing the truth, the sweet comic present in the bitter tragic; I am eager to taste the happy, sweet/sour taste of life.

I also sometimes laugh to avoid the tension of conversation's truth, or, worse, the repetition of the obvious. Comedy's mask seems more easily worn than than the narrow, sad mask of tragedy. I like the way it hangs on my face; and heart.

This attitude of 'jokester-ism' and my witty comments (at least I think they are) can be off-putting to my co-conversationalists. They think I lack any serious side. They feel I am being indifferent to death, or poverty, or sadness...or whatever great issue is the topic of our spoken moment. Sometimes they think I disrespect them; and their thoughts, or humanity in general. I agree...but I couch my apology in another joke.

Life is short, meaningless (except of course with the meaningfulness we give through our loved ones and our work; or our sense of elegance and dignity). Life should be lived deftly, with a light touch. The sound of laughter gives buoyancy to weightiness, brings lightness to the universe's eternal darkness. I daily hunger for it.

Norman Cousins believed that cancer could not be contracted while laughing; the joyful process arrayed the body's molecules in chemical flows to prevent it. He proclaimed the healing power of jokes.

I agree.

So, please, Dear God: give me the power to laugh in the inexorable, to smirk in the eventual face of death...to existentially argue with a joke to Him that my life has been truly enjoyable. Make my last verbal utterance be a quip, witty and profound, commensurate with the joke He is playing on me.

Maintaining the Economic Fulchrum

2011-11-13T12:21:00.000-08:00

The challenge to any political economy is balancing the need to produce bountiful goods and services--by creating a system of incentives that reward and encourage economic creativity to flourish--while at the same time establishing and maintaining the willingness to share the benefits of that creativity, to fashion a distributive system that fairly and equitably rewards all participants effort and contribution; remembering also the dictates of need: "a society is only as high as it's lowest member."

Economic justice and effectiveness demands that effort and merit must be rewarded, while luck (both good and ill) and dishonestly-gotten gain (through unfairly accumulated power) must be disincentivized and negated and abolished.

I yearn for such a system...and we must all work hard to attain it.

The Three-legged Stool

2011-11-10T21:54:00.000-08:00

Events occur in one's life. They challenge you. They ask you for a philosophical response, a guiding set of approaches, and practical paradigms to live by, to operate by. For me, the framework is like a three-legged stool: leg (1), each day must be spent fighting against the challenges as hard as possible, believing you can win; leg (2), prepare for the worst in case you lose; and leg (3), while fighting to win and preparing to lose, live each day--at least an hour of two--as a joy unto itself; after all, why live except to live? A three-legged stool: fight; insure; enjoy.

Balancing this three-pronged approach is a constant triangulation of effort and equality. If any side of the trianglation is overwhelmed by the combination of the other two legs, the stool's very shape implodes...and the beauty of its essential nature disappears, and we are doomed to a life of imbalance. If any leg gets longer or shorter than the others, if our daily effort and concentration is spent over- or under- emphasizing one leg more or less than the others, the three-legged stool tips over and we crash to the ground.

Remember: Fight hard to win, prepare well to lose, find daily happiness amidst the struggle. And maintain the balance.

No one improves by standing still.

2011-10-07T23:36:00.003-07:00

The true measure of a man is how he handles 'No.'

2011-10-07T23:36:00.001-07:00

Who did it?

2011-09-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

We have Gay pride, Latino pride, Black Pride, Woman's Pride...how about Gay Shame, Latino Shame, Black Shame, Women's Shame?

Come on, let's be fair. For every yin there is a yang. Is there any success without failures; cheering without booing, self-congratulation without self-criticism, rights without responsibility? Have gays sometimes failed themselves? Don't Hispanics stumble on their own, blacks tripped themselves up and women cut off their noses to spite their faces. Is is all powerful white males' fault?

Could some of group-identity difficulties be a product of one's own f___ing up and not necessarily the product of others failing us? There is a common theme in modern identity politics of blaming one's problems on someone else that seems a little too-simplistic: the idea that everything good in life has been a product of my one own group's achievement and everything bad (counter-productive) a result of another group's fault?

Shakespeare said in his play, "Julius Caesar": "The fault, Dear Brutus, lies not with the stars, but with we ourselves." Always blaming someone else for all our difficulties seems too easy...and juvenile. It's what children and adolescents do: "look what Mommy and Daddy did to me!" and they go into their room and slam the door; waiting for Mommy's and Daddy's guilt to alter the situation.

Adults rather, shrug somewhat philosophically, accept that 'shit (even shit that may have been caused by somebody else) happens'...and move on forward, by accepting responsibility (ownership) for our own undesirable situations, and spend valuable energy fixing the problem and not worrying so much about affixing the blame.

To view it from a macro- level: "Ask not what America can do for you; ask what you can do for America." That was President's JFK's inspiration for America in his 1961 inaugural address. It seemed a better rally cry for national consensus, and personal achievement, than the cry-baby-ing that seems a bit too rampant amongst our political parties...and minorities...today. It's time to alter the 50-year descent in self-excusing and other-blaming. Grow up, America. Blame yourself--ALL of ourselves--for the Great Recession and wealth imbalance. And change it.

Goodbye, T.

2011-09-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

I decided to pay a respectful visit. I promised myself to arrive at a certain near future time,
when the family agreed, the caregivers permitted,
wanting not to disturb those angels, who, by now, in their
role-functioning of bed-sore salves and diaper removals and soothing words
of comfort , now said low and slow--
presaging his last gurgle soon to come.

(After all, I too will one day die; I therefore needed to see
for selfish reasons death's stark and silly face.)

"We'll meet at T's apartment
on Sunday," I suggested to the ill man's truest friend (outside of daughter)
of course. A combined visit semed more logical (easy?).

While the clocks ticked away our waiting time to visit, I imagined: that
sweet daughter laboring mightily in a fog of fury;
Her Daddy, who was abandoned/divorced by Mommy years before, and
who was raised by Step-Daddy and Mommy in a far away state
But he was still her blood, her fantasy-factual Dad to love,
dying now, in a cold distant apartment town, needing her help,
to offer up her final serving of daughterly faith.

I knew him best years before, thirty to be exact.
We were not close. He didn't like me much, as I perceived it then.
Never nasty, but rather aloofly, wittily, condescendingly arch,
a joke (a laugh to cover) and snide remark the weapons of his distaste.
Working together, however, made us try to form a friendship...
but the form of friend ship never congealed. I was at his wedding, though.
An invitation, more I thought, from his wife than him. I knew her well, before.

Over the next thirty years we met briefly, accidentally really,
unavoidably so, it would be most honest to say,
at a few gathering of co-worker friends, milestone birthdays,
weddings, graduations and the such
pleasant, warily, protectively, not even sharing notes of successes. Nor either, potentially more friend-inducing, failures. Just jokes.

One day,
unbeknown to us, the common disease co-joined.
The mutual friend's phone call came out of the blue: "Mind if I tell T. about your experience with the disease?" He had known of my plight..
"You might be able to help him, give some insight."

Instinctively, without malice before thought...or after thought...I said "Of course;" and meant it. Death is important. too powerful a foe to let human trivialities stand. Who cares whether we were close or not before. War makes strange bedfellows but it does make bedfellows.

So T. and I soon meet once again, over the phone, then in face, at his birthday party, seeming old friends now, any separation breached, mercifully.

At the party I also met there the daughter, his life's charming child,
who soon moved from a continent away,
DC to here, to care for ailing father, to share and aid the fight.

But soon thereafter, and more frequent times now, at least measured against the past, he and I talked, exchange inside information
about doctors and medicines and nutrition and pills,
and websites and institutions that might avail him best.

We even met at a doctor's lecture, and shared a laugh, a memory, and sandwich later.

Then, after another month without contact (he was out of town to consult new doctors)
the mutual friend calls: "T's disease has progressed mightily."
"Ironically he lives near you now," moved to a nearby apartment, convenient to the hospital and the daughter's new school.

I call; T. and I talk (although not of death...
We fighters never give in to eventualities, preferring to fight,
with drugs and protocols and second opinions; death is for us a vanguishable foe.) "I'd like to get together," he says. A few stabs at places and times to meet, nothing set
"Will call later" agreed by both.
Then another call, days later, from the mutual friend, "T's in the hospital."
We form a plan for our visit together.
Then the next call: "He's at home, in hospice." Life tumbles to death speedily. Another plan to visit,
The final call from the friend: "He's dead."

"Thank God the suffering's over," he says, the common wail. I agree.
But no less true, in our hearts and minds, co-mingling with
the unvoiced desire to spit, shout and curse at all-conquering death.
"We'll be setting up a memorial service," the mutual friend says. You and I will have to have lunch soon." "Yes," I say. "We must not postpone, or just promise." We mean it.

The dead man was more a friend in death than he ever was in life. Yet the breach remained, even in these last days. Or so I assumed. An email list he had given others, to form a Internet group to keep his friends appraised of his progress, had not included me. When discovered, I was not surprised, shocked or hurt. Life is nothing if not consistent. But I still miss him. He was a fellow human being. "Ask not for whom the bell tolls..." and so on.

It's five AM now, he is still dead and my sleep is dead, abruptly ended at two AM; denied. So I paw and peck away at this keyboard trying to make a pact with sleep: please allow me to join my wife in bed in the other room, I am growing weary. Can I assuage you, oh sleep, can I, like him, rest a bit, until the universe--owner of us all--throw another of its meaningful meaninglessness to interrupt our bliss?"

I finally sleep, another night. He, too. A bit longer.

The Stream of Memories: 1940s

2011-09-24T18:29:00.000-07:00

Memories of the early 1940s: sitting in the old Plymouth car with a rumble seat and a running board we used to jump on and ride as kids; all civilians standing up for soldiers when any arrived at a crowded restaurant counter to eat during WWII; my father wearing a fedora at all times out of the house, and always tipping the brim when passing a lady; scouting the gutters for tin foil (cigarette packs) so we could later cash the ball of much government needed tin foil in at special depositories and make some money; scouring the same gutters for matchbook covers we used as $$$ for card playing (hotels were 100s, X-lax fifties; 10, 5, 1 covers were based on amount of printing on inside; giving you some idea what was rare and valuable in our upper-poor circumstances); making balls of rubber bands, large enough that they bounced. and using them as baseballs; footballs made up of wrapped-around newspapers; scooters made of orange crates where we nail them on end to a length of two-by-four, with hand-made handles on the top of the box for turning and old, discarded skate wheels attached to the bottom of the two-by-four as scooter wheels; 'war projectiles' made of long blades of grass (weeds) and carefully enveloped with black tar dug up from hot streets and then wrapped around the thick end of the long grass blade to throw at one another; neighborhood block-ladies gathering at night, sitting out on under a streetlight chatting and, as out-of-factory paid 'piece work' cutting insignias for WWII uniforms; burning dried-out swamp tails to keep away mosquitoes; the same women doing other 'piece work' putting together puzzle pieces that hung from chains; other women and some older men gathered on a porch or under the same streetlight getting buckets of beer from the Clinton Cafe corner tavern to drink on those same hot night; WWII rationing and stamp allowances from the government (so many monthly allotments of stamps for scarce meat and sugar and other food items)--that's how we 'at home' participated in the war effort--sacrificing; my mother sending me to the grocery store to feed a friend newly dropped-in, shopping on 'account' at Eddie's (Vargian's) Market; we'd order, Eddie would pack our foodstuffs in bags, he'd record what we owed for daily purchased items in a marble-covered school book, amounts written in with a thick, black pencil, whose sharpened head he always placed in his mouth first, to darken the result by that application of saliva...and my Mom and Dad would pay up at the end of the month--Eddie charged a little more for items, but if you didn't have money (which we many times didn't), we always were able to eat; the horse parlor (bookie joint) with my father, where his day was: work all night as a waiter, from 10 at night to 8 in the morning, come home and sleep, up at 2 PM and listen to the horse race results on the radio and go back and forth to the bookie parlor to place new bets on each races in cash and pick up any winnings--this happened until dinner time--he did that six days a week; Sundays driving to White Castle's for bunches of 5-cent hamburgers and a visit to Hudson County Park...and on and on.

Memories. Where have seventy years gone?

In Gratitude

2011-09-11T19:01:00.000-07:00

My wife used to tend to the garden....now she is tending to me. She waters me with constantcy, fertilizers me with love. In gratitude, I will try to bloom as faithfully as a geranium if not the rose, smell as sweetly in the early evening dusk as jasmine, and seek the sun as tenciously as the tallest, elegant sunflower; while continuing to place my roots firmly in the ground like the common shrub I am.

Prejudice...a Friend

2011-09-08T21:47:00.000-07:00

I believe in prejudice. It means--literally--"pre-judgement."

An event occurs, a meeting with a stranger, a change in the texture of the sky, a sudden eruption of noise in the next room...and we make a determination--based on our prior experience in the past--with such an event. ..and act accordingly: we shun the stranger, prepare for rain, check to see whether our aged mother fell down.

Pre-judgement is using our knowledge, gathered through our experience (which includes our reading and education) to assess (based on the past) the benefits or dangers inherent in the new event. It would be illogical to do otherwise. The purpose of knowledge and experience is to create a body of prejudices to inform the logic of our future decisions. Refusing to heed our knowledge of the past is counterproductive. The human need for better decisions based on the operation of pre-judgement is essential to the beneficial functioning of the human mechanism. It remains at the core of universal evolution and survival.

Bigotry, on the other hand, as opposed to prejudice, is bad. Bigotry produces bad decision-making. It refuses to heed the logic of new information even when it is incontrovertible.

Bigotry refuses to change its pre-determinations, pre-judgements, when new evidence indicates otherwise. For example, a stranger enters the room; and based on prior (bad) experience with similar strangers, I logically remain wary. But when this particular stranger soon exhibits all the tell-tale signs of a friend and compatriot--and I steadfastly keep him a stranger even though my new information says he is a friend; that is bigotry.

Bigotry is a form of insanity; it is prejudice gone awry. It is a healthy decision-making now diseased and perverted by inflexibility and the rejection on new facts.

Bigotry is bad. But prejudice is good. And we must learn to distinguish between the two--and not let the worry about bigotry over-concern into giving the valuable functioning of prejudice a bad name. We must not become bigots about prejudice.

Iran and Nuclear Bombs

2011-09-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

Everyone is wondering if Iran is trying to develop atomic weapons. Of course they are. Here's the logic: Iran has Israel to the West of it, with their atomic bombs, Russia to the North with their huge amount of atomic bombs, China, India and Pakistan to the East with their atomic bombs. Iran is surrounded by atomic powers. And then...there is America, the biggest atomic power of them all, stridently and opening calling for regime change in your country. If you were Iran, wouldn't you be developing atomic weapons...fast? I would.

The American Century

2011-09-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

The Twentieth Century was The American Century, as earlier centuries were: from the Fifteenth Century on, there were Spain's, Dutch and French and English Centuries (Portugal, Germany and Russia tried to have their centuries, but never quite succeeded in doing it).

The greatest US era of The American Century was 1945 to 1965; after an earlier (1890 to 1928) gradual climb to world dominance (even the depression years of 1929 to 1939, brought on by the greed and excesses of the Roaring Twenties, was felt around the world, underscoring America's ability to lead, downward as well as upward.

1941 to 1945 was the apex of America's show of world military might, echoing America's tipping positively the scale against Germany in WWI (1917-1919). Then, after the war, came the Marshall plan in Europe, re-investing and economically dominating the world, and culminating domestically in the Lyndon Johnson's Great Society

Today, ironically (or jealously?) we belittle the 1950s as plastic and shallow. Take it from me, who was raised in that period, the 1950's were neither. The period exuded confidence, equity (the greatest growth of the middle class was during that period) and humble greatness. The racial, gender, diversity and sexual revolutions that occurred subsequent to the zenith years of the early sixties, rolling through the rest of the century, accompanied America's decline in the latter part of the century. Was it coincidence or correlation? Future historians will have to decide, Did we want too much "sharing of the wealth and power" too soon? Did those revolutions takes America's eyes the the growing economic challenges of the rest of the world, especially the oil sheikdoms, India, China and Brazil.

Will the Twenty-first Century be The Chinese Century, or the perhaps the Indian Century? Will America therefore have to learn to slip back gracefully into back-of-the-pack status, as Spain, Holland, France and England have done in centuries past? Or will America re-capture its sense of "exceptionalism", re-inserting earlier generations (1930 to 1945) sense of duty, shared sacrifice, investment and hard work for consumerism for NIMBY (not in may back yard)? Will the present entitlement generation(s) eradicate their sense of automatic deserving, and substitute "earn and learn"
for "take and grab"?

Time and history--America's and the world's--will tell.

My father said, when I was eighteen:

2011-09-02T21:44:00.001-07:00

"We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so." (He said that when I ridiculed him.)

"I cried because I had no shoes, because I had no feet." (He said that when I felt sorry for myself.)

The next fifty-six years I have tried to live by their admonishments. They have enriched my life.

Said He to She:

2011-09-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

Definition of a Hook-Up: "I'm not here to fill your needs. I'm here to fill your wants."

Me and Sofia at Seven

2011-08-28T22:36:00.000-07:00

I have not written for a long while about my granddaughter Sofia. Why?

I think the reason for my dereliction to do with her achieving the age of seven.

Catholics say at seven the age of reason begins. That's when a child is introduced to First Holy Communion classes, preparing him or her to receive the Eucharist, the literally (for Catholics)transformed body and blood of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

Before then, the Catholics believe, a child is still an unreasoning child. Only at seven do they become a beginning adult, capable of reasoning and understand the complexities of religious life.

I was raised Catholic. However, in spite of that, probably because of that, during this seventh year of Sofia's life, I felt a change in her, especially during our frequent conversations over the phone. Was it her reasoning that set off an alarm in me?

Nothing tangible, but as we talked she was no longer an unquestioning little girl. The "why?" phase which of course had existed in her since she was three, was now blossoming into a "why why why why?" phase. Simple answers were no longer enough. She would keep asking why until her line of questioning had provided a satisfying answer. "Why?" was no longer a simple question. It was a probing for full wisdom and understanding.

I felt I had lost something. She no longer needed my automatic voice of authority, Grandpa's (or Grammy's or Mama's or Papa's) loving logical embrace--passing on my beliefs to protect her from her own troubling questions. Logic was now demanded; "I love you" and "Trust me" was still wanted, but it was joined with a deeper need to know.

Perhaps that's t why I stopped writing about her, especially in this blog? Because I felt I had lost my easy-to-answer little girl? I was silenty mourning all year for the lost innocent child, the toddler walking fast but not capable of running without stumbling, who needed my arms to right her when she started to became confused, the child who, when she did fall, did no longer cry and seek full solace in her grown-up loved-one's arms, but also wanted answers: why did she trip, what could be changed to keep her from falling again, why did the world put impediments in her way and cause her to stumble?

Up until this month I had not seen Sofia for a year. When she finally did come for our not to be missed annual family summertime fun trip to Grandpa and Grandma in beach-filled Southern California, she had, as I suspected, changed. Not just physically--she was so much taller--but she had also changed attitudinal, thought-wise. She was no longer a little child randomly facing a new and huge universe, She had become a child who wanted to define it.

Her speech patterns had now transformed into logical sentences (something that had only been hinted at during our prior phone conversation), with a noun, verb and adjectival and adverbial modifiers placed in correct syntax. Sentences began affirmatively and developed logically, before ending with a period, or question mark.

She was still young, but she was also old. She moved her body differently. I no longer felt she might trip at any moment, fall to the earth with a thud. She was no longer clumsy; she had found her own, unique balance and grace. She was the acorn turning into the tree.. She was a mini-teenager. The mini-woman was not far behind.

But I was not forlorn. Instead of mourning the innocence lost, I regaled in the joy of her growth. During her vacation with us we still played children's games, "war" (the card game), and other 'board' games, but this time they were even more MORE fun to play. A ritual we've always enacted on the arrival trip home from the LA airport, a quick breakfast stop at the bowling alley where Sofia and I go to the back game room and play table-hockey while waiting for the pancakes to arrive in the restaurant, was more gleeful than ever.

During the visit at night I still read her stories, but on two nights she returned the favor: she read a story to me. Sometimes, during the day, we would watch DVDs on the TV and she introduced me to her world of Harry Potter (the first three episodes only, by Mama's and Papa's fiat). And she questioned me until I understood it.

The time passed too quickly, as usual. But when she left, she told me--as she always does--that she didn't want to go. She wanted me and Grammy to move closer to her. I am always moved by her reluctance to leave Grandpa and Grammy, believing her sentiments to the bottom of our souls. But this time her her reluctance to part from us had greater significance. I believe we had had become friends as well as Grandpa, Grammy and Granddaughter. We were all involved in our age of reason.

Sofia reaching the age of seven is not a sad event, some unwelcome rite of passage, some deep foreboding step into that hard, cold world of adult reason. The little girl is still there; only now blossomed into the fuller, larger, wiser girl. The age of reason has sweetened her, like frosting on a cupcake...her favorite desert by the way. Frosting has not replaced the cupcake dough below, but only enhanced and deepened its taste.

Yesterday my beloved daughter (and Sofia's Mommy) Mishi called and said Sofia had awakened that morning at home with tears in her eyes. When asked the reason for her sadness, she said she missed Grammy and Grandpa. She wanted to be with us forever. When told that I (also as usual) welled up as I always do when she says that...but I also felt prouder of our family love than before. Sofia has begun to enter our adult world. She loves us for a perhaps for some fully thought-out reasons.

I am writing about her again.

The Meaning of the Great 2011 Budget Deal

2011-08-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

The House, Senate and the President found a solution to the question of raising the debt ceiling. The major points of settlement: The Republicans got no new taxes. The Democrats got no tinkering with Social Security. The President got the next big ceiling discussion put off until after the 2012 election. Everybody was happy (and unhappy, which is supposed to be a sign of a good compromise).

'A very symbolic vote,' I thought, 'very and properly defining of all the negotiators: Each got what they are most interested in, what most concerns them most.' The Republicans made sure their "productive class" wasn't disincentivized by what they see as burdensome taxes. The Democrats protected their "equity" interests, the aged and the infirm. And Obama, the politician, got a breather from re-opening the debt-ceiling issue until after his run at re-election.

The producers, the allocators, and the political class...welcome to 2011 America.

Condolences

2011-07-02T15:38:00.000-07:00

My friend's mother died today. She was a brave woman, spending many years in wheelchair. In spite of her malady she raised three children, taught decades of students, wrote poems and inspired all who met her with her wit, charm and intelligence. She was a "life force."

She is gone. How do I now console a son, or her husband? There is always a hug, but distance prevents. There is a note, the formal language of condolence, but that is somehow unfulfilling. It must be sent nonetheless, because, while both issuer and receiver recognize the gesture as less than adequate, it's absence is a sin.

Death leaves such a vast individual emptiness. "Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." Memories with the dead one rush into the vacuum, pleasant and sad, silly and profound. "Remember when...?" the rally cry of self-solace, the ligua franca of a memorial or a wake.

She was Irish, sprightly and spunky, with a down to earth humor and insight. She defined the word "folk," as in "folk wisdom." Nothing escaped her gaze, or her honesty. She was one of those people you couldn't fool at all...unless she felt it would hurt you too much to tell her the truth. In that case, she would, as you lied, nod and smile, to assure you she agreed with your mendacity...and be happy that you were happy that you thought you had fooled her. She suffered fools wisely and well. She called it love.

She is gone. The earth is a lesser place because of it. Others will come; none will replace.

Goodbye.

Contentment

2011-06-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

What is contentment? I was wondering because I was feeling that way today.

The first image that comes to mind is a level line; mot overly long, not too thick. It a straight line...balanced, and perfectly horizontal...a black line neatly drawn across a white piece of otherwise blank paper. Balance. Harmony. Stasis.

Contentment is a baby lying comfortably in a wooden crib made of white pine, two months old, on its back, wrapped in a soft diaper, having recently been fed, looking up smilingly, with arms and legs extended; not in need but in thanks, to the young Mom and Dad who gaze lovingly and proudly down on it: one plus one has equalled three.

Contentment is the 1950s America--much maligned now, but for those who lived then and who were embraced within its inclusion--we were awed at the flag, cheered the Yankees (or Cubs, or Dodgers, or...) and loved walking through parks, giggling at picnics, and were proud to be a Mom/Dad/American/worker/citizen.

Contentment is sunny day, the temperature hovering at about 68-degrees, with occassional white cotton clouds passing overhead, creating shadow patterns along the ground, grey forms darting across us and then up the near-distant curving hills, eventually disappearing behind the brightly seen mountain tops at the edge of the city.

Contentment is the car ride on a Sunday with Mom and Dad--his one day off a week--and Kurt my brother and Joy my sister to get five-cent hambergers on the way to Hudson County Park.

Contentment is recalling all this, and the pointer-fingers gently pounding away on the keyboard, definitizing these thoughts, as I move steadily to the final period, contant that the effort--all seventy-four years of it--has been worth it all.

Contentment is my wife in the next room, finishing her tasks as we prepare to drive to the beach, a few minutes away, to have lunch and watch the blue waves smack caressingly against the infinite dots of white sand. We will sit and chat and munch, and call on the cell phone our daughter and our lovely Granddaughter, and they will both chirp at us, like birds on the sand, about their day's activities.

My wife and I will then spend the rest of the hour silently at the edge of the ocean, both in our space but no longer part of this moment in time; each of us will have our own thoughts, the traffic and the rest of America behind us. We will look out and see the ocean, and the pencil-thin, imaginary but very real, line where the sea meets the sky; neither finitude pressing on each other but lying there together like that baby in the crib.

We will be content.

Mrs. Vanotti -- Parts Six and Seven (The Finale)

2011-06-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Vanotti would visit our house weekly; either driving by car from her house on 48th Street to our 6th Street house, and in later years—when her eyes “started to go” and driving became a chore--she took the bus. In the early fifties, especially when it became hard for her to even see the ground beneath her feet, my mother and I would drive to her house to pick her up, always finding her waiting for us patiently on the porch for us alerted by phone that we were on the way.
We never entered the house, however. We would drive her home, pick her up or deposit her at the curb, and wait until she entered the house safely before driving away.
The ritual of her visits was always the same. Mrs. Vanotti would arrive at our house in the late afternoon, with a small gift for me and Kurt. My mother would prepare some tea and cookies for her. Then, as my mother moved about the kitchen to prepare dinner, they would talk for hours, Mrs. Vanotti seated at the guest-linen covered kitchen table, sipping tea and daintily chewing cookies, while my father would chat pleasantly with her a moment, then arise from his kitchen rocking chair and go to the living-room and listen to the race results on the radio.
Occasionally he would leave the house to go back and forth across New York Avenue to another candy store half way down the block from the old Mrs. Vanotti’s candy store (which now had new owners) and visit the back room of the store, which served as the neighborhood’s informal bookie parlor. He would place his bets on the next race…and occasionally—perhaps too occasionally--collect his winnings. When he won, I was treated to an ice cream cone at the other—Mrs. Vanotti’s old—candy store.
Finally, at dinner time, at six or six-thirty, after the race results were all in, and my father having bathed and shaved for work, dinner would be served.
When Kurt was still living at home—he was nine year older than me, remember--he would return from being with outside with “the guys” and join the family for dinner. As I grew older, that was my play-outside-until-dinner ritual also. However, when young—and even when older--I would more often than not, returning from school, hastily do my homework; join Mom and Mrs. Vanotti in their conversation. I always loved talking with adults.
After dinner was served, Mom would pack up the leftovers in the icebox for snacks or maybe dinner tomorrow, and Kurt I would do the dishes, after which Kurt would either go upstairs to do his homework, or go out again with “the guys.” Dad would sit in the rocking chair in the back-window corner of the kitchen to read the afternoon paper, the Jersey City Observer, or maybe peruse the morning paper, the Hudson Dispatch (Mom’s favorite), and then we’d listen to the radio shows: “The Lone Ranger,” “Dr. Christian,” “Inner Sanctum,” or the comedy shows, “Burns and Allen,” “The Jack Benny Show” or the “The Bob Hope Show.” I would be curled up at his feet, listening word-by-word with him to the shows, and with Mrs. Vanotti and Mom sitting across the room from us, chatting at the kitchen table, each twosome in their own world.
At precisely nine-thirty, Mrs. Vanotti would say, in her beautiful, sing-song voice: “Half-past after!” This would mean it was my father’s time to go to work. He would get up from the rocking chair, put on his tie, suit coat and fedora, issue goodbyes to everyone, and start his walk to work. Mrs. Vanotti would linger with Mom and me for a few more minutes, and drive herself—or in later years, we would drive her—home.

______________PART VII
Many years later my father told me a strange tale about my mother and Mr. and Mrs. Vanotti. I attributed the tale to the anger and rage my father felt toward my mother after my mother’s and father’s years-later subsequent divorce.
He said that my mother and Mr. Vanotti had had an affair before in the late 1930s, before the purchase of our home, before his accident, at a time when my mother and father lived in the Fourth Street apartment, and when he and Mrs. Vanotti owned the candy store. That would be the time before Mrs. Vanotti loaned my mother the $100 for the down payment.
When I scoffed at his assertion, my father scoffed back. Mr. Vanotti was a passionate Italian artist, wasn’t he? Well-read and successful; whereas my mother was never satisfied at being the wife of an unschooled immigrant restaurant waiter, was she? She always want more.
He said Mrs. Vanotti knew about the brief affair, and accepted it. She was a sweet humble person, who knew her husband had only married her for her beauty and not her intellectual achievements or interests; whereas my mother on the other hand was intensely curious about all life, knowledgeable and, although unschooled, intellectually oriented. Also she was a flirt who positively fluttered around male brilliance. The affair had not lasted long. Nor had it ever interfered with the love and affection between Mrs. Vanotti and my mother.
Do I believe it?
It fits my mother’s temperament; and her extreme idolization of Frank Vanotti’s art. It fits Mrs. Vanotti’s sweetness and innocent worldliness. It fits what I have discovered about the world. But, plausibility makes for possibility; but not certainty. However, I want to believe it. In a strange way it ties Mrs. Vanotti even closer to me.
There is an ironic twist to the tale. Many years later, my father informed me that when he was still married to my mother, he had had his one marital affair, and it was Mrs. Vanotti who had serendipitously discovered it. She was walking past a neighborhood apartment door where the young woman in question lived. She saw my father and the girl kissing. Mrs. Vanotti diligently called my mother. They joined together in front of the candy store; then she and my mother walked to the apartment and confronted my father and the girl who were still talking and kissing in her apartment house vestibule.
My father swore to me that he never saw the girl again (not privately; they continued to see each other publicly. She was a waitress at the Sunshine restaurant. That’s how they had met. She would leave its employ three months later.) My father told me this story in the last years of his life. My mother never spoke to me of the affair.
Mrs. Vanotti died in the summer of 1955, when I was eighteen. I had just graduated high school and was working as a barker on the New Jersey shore, on the Boardwalk, in Seaside Heights, a beach town about 40 miles south of my home. My mother had called me in the morning to tell me that Mrs. Vanotti had died. I asked her when the funeral was. She said the next day. I told my mother I was coming home for it. She said “How? You have no car. And I can’t leave work to pick you up.”
I hitchhiked. I had never done that before in my life; nor had I ever attended a funeral. I have always hated death, even at my earliest stages. But the idea of not honoring Mrs. Vanotti was beyond debate. To dishonor her was to dishonor myself.
The hitchhiking excursion took over fifteen hours. (I was not a very experienced or smart hitchhiker.) I remember nothing specific about the people who picked me up, or of any other of the particulars of the trip, except that during one of the rides, a new, young singer, Elvis Presley was on a car radio, singing a new release: “Heartbreak Hotel.” I had never heard of him before. I became a lifelong fan.
I remember nothing as well of the funeral: where it was held or what the funeral parlor looked like. Nor do I remember how I got back to work the next day. But to this day I remember Mrs. Vanotti: her beautiful face, the cloudy shininess of her hair, the many, many evenings we spent together at our house, the gifts she always brought to me on her weekly visits, her unrelenting sweetness and kindness in coming to all my grammar and high school events, the enveloping soft-breasted loving hugs she gave me when I was hurt or wounded and lacking in confidence, and, most vividly, I remember, even now, in the late evening, when the sun is gone and darkness surrounds my adult world, the melodious chirp of her English-accented voice -- “Half past after.”

The $$$$$-Face Behind the Mask of Diversity

2011-06-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

I was reading a book, "Winner-Take-All Politics." It's basic thematic thrust was to statistically show how the US economy has skewed since the 1970's toward the super rich, much to the dereliction of the poor and even more strikingly, to the middle class. It accuses the Rupublicans for actively forstering and encouraging this trend, but also accuses the Democrats for allowing this a "drift" to occur. In effect, it accuses the entire political system, the media, and the political class in general for allowing this disarming trend of economic concentration to occur.

When I finished, I was reminded of many years ago writing about a cycnical opinion of mine: that the white male power structure in this country, when it was first being attacked (circa 1965) for racism, homophobia and genderism in keeping woman, gays and people of color off the ballot and out of elective office, they (the white male moneyed power structure) seemingly retreated and accepted the inevitable wider distribution of political power in the US." I wrote "seemingly;" because my thesis was that while the white male hetrosexual power structure "seemed" to accede, in reality they simply changed tactics. They would, as in John Edwards wonderful phrase when he withdrew from his attempt to run for President and capitulated to Barack Obama, "get out of the way of history" and let women, gays and people of color into the political arena, but in reality the power structure would become wolves in sheep's clothing: maintaining their stranglehold on the money arena...which they knew was the true source of political power in America. So while after Women, gays and blacks and browns would be able to now attain many more political offices, but in order to do so, they would have to come begging to the white, male power structure--who still controlled the money arena--for $$$$ to run for office. Ms. Senator, Gay congressman, and black and brown Governor would be a mask of power, where none really existed. These now culturally diverse officials would still do the bidding of the white power structure...as dictated by their paid lobbyists.

Perhaps that is the reason the American public has so little respect for the contamporary political class. They know the seeming power structure are really powerless; beards, women/gays/non-white fronts for the money people behind them. The people in office don't represent the people; they represent the white, moneyed--and may I say greedy--power structure behind them. And as long as $$$$ is required to get elected to office, as long as office-seekers are more and more beholden to campaign contributors to get elected to office, the neuetering of the political class will remain; the 'new' political class, while on the social, sexual and cultural surface more "representative" of the US population, will be in truth puppets on a string, ineffective pawns in dealing with the problems of anybody but the moneyed class.

Death and Blood

2011-05-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

I was recently thinking about what was important to me; my 'legacy', as it were, a bit of morbid reflection to be sure, but, as one ages, these are the pre-occupations that replace the sex-drive and quiet the incessant cry of ancient ghosts reminding one of uncompleted life-events.

That led me to thinking: Who do I want to speak at my funeral service? My first thought was: I want a long list of people: with a long list of maximum tears and maximum lies all recording the wonderfulness of my life and death.

But most of all I want to be surrounded by family; the primitive call of blood. My wife, my two children, my Granddaughter, even those nephews and cousins I ignored during my life (to be fair, they ignored me also, but, to be scrupulously fair, they ignored me in response to my initial ignore); I want them to stand at my coffin, in some strange way missing the 'me' they rarely encountered in life, and scream into the coffin that they are of my blood.

What is that call of "blood"? Today, the most hip people talk of family as function, not necessarily of blood: the alternative family, the modern family, the family of choice and not genetic necessity,

But in me "blood" calls, genes trump; at least in my atavistic heart. I hear the call of generations, and of Darwinian logic: we are our gene pools, and those gene pools which have gotten as far as we are. We are the surviving strands of DNA, the singular lone series of sperms that found or was attracted by that one egg(s), still floating through the universe in this cell-splitting amalgam of cells, the form we call human. This is me, my blood, the destiny that immortalizes me, and that I seek to surround me foremost at my funeral. My family, my clan, my tribe.

Others may remember me for as long as they live and in so doing, grant me the immortality of their memory cells; and to the degree that those cells and their effect on their evolution are ties to me, they are my blood also.

So I want them there, too, at the funeral parlor, scattered throughout the room, with their tall tales of my earthly importance. But mostly, in the front ranks nearest the coffin, I want blood.

And later in the day, when the coffin slips with its echoing thud into the earth, I want blood to issue forth a scream, a shriek, a cry, a wail of dominance: "We, this family. this clan, this tribe, still exist in the face of death...and the seduction of nothingness we call universe. This man is leaving, but we, of his blood--and therefore of him--goes on! And then, with a solemn spit in the face of the void, my blood kin rushes home from the burial ground not to cry, mourn, despair any longer, but to laugh, dance, drink, celebrate me in their respective bedroom, with extra effort, to create anew the unending gene pool that makes me live forever.

A Happy Day

2011-05-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

Some days are just happy. Today is one of them. I woke up from a nice sleep. I did my floor exercises full of energy; in fact I did more repetitions than usual. I came downstairs to breakfast to find my wife sitting up in the breakfast room on the lounge chair wearing lovely satin pajamas reading the paper. She look so pretty and content. I ate the fruit dish she had prepared for me. It was delicious. I dressed and went out to brunch with an old friend from Canada. The restaurant was pretty. The customers and wait staff all behaved civilly. My old friend and I ate vegan food; which I rarely do. It was healthy and delicious. I even had a chocolate desert, which I even less rarely do. I said goodbye to me friend, started to return home. The weather was beautiful; a gorgeous Southern California day. I pulled over to the side of the road. I called my daughter to tell her that her father was happy; not to worry about him getting old; and what she could do about making my life easier. I told her she was today free to worry about all the other problems she had in her world: the mutual worries all we all share about work, family, self. Exclude her father from her list of worries today. "Papa was happy." She put her daughter on the phone. She made me even happier. She said, "I miss you so much, Grandpa." She started singing one of our favorite shared songs: "I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushed and a peck and a barrel and a heap..." We spoke to each other about her upcoming visit: she was coming out to visit me and Grammy in California in three weeks. We mutually promised to count off every day until then: "Twenty more days, nineteen more days..." We concluded the talk with and mutual "I love you" and said "Bye." I smiled contentedly as I closed the cell phone. I completed the drive home. I took a route that avoided any beach congestion. Traffic moved smoothly. I pulled the car up to the house. I decided to visit our neighbors across the street, to see how they were doing. They always come over to see how I am doing. They postponed their walk and invited me in. We watched the news to see if the world was going to end at 3 PM, as predicted by a particular religious group. It didn't. We then talked of how long we've known each other, over thirty years. We talked about life and death, and how to deal best with both. I crossed the street, entered my house. I called a friend with whom I had had a rancorous, brief verbal tiff a few days ago (all my fault). He told me he was still hurt, but he kindly accepted my apology, I promised to improve. We agreed to move forward. The sun was still shining; the light cool breeze was still blowing in the neighborhood. I called my wife (who was at the hair salon) to tell her I was happy. Then I sat at the computer to write this blog. Days like this make living worthwhile. "Carpe Diem," as my neighbor had earlier said.

[You won't believe this...just as I finished writing this bog...but before I could hit the "PUBLISH POST" box...my computer crashed! Did I panic? No. Did I curse all technology? No. Did I threaten to smash the computer? No. I decided to see if I had lost this posting, while immediately and forlornly wondering if I had the desire or ability to write this blog a second time if it had been lost? Could I re-capture its essence. I calmly, and with hope, closed the computer, then opened it again, went to my blog site, and, lo and behold, there, in the 'Draft; section. my original blog! I told you: this is a happy day.]

Forgetting

2011-05-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

I think I've finally discovered a couple of important reasons why old people tend to forget. One: They have too much to remember. Like a glass that gets filled to the brim: when you try to put anything else in it, it spills. Who has time or energy (or, in modern parlance, new memory receptors) for new information. My mind is too busy with the past. I don't remember last Christmas because, like Scrooge, my mind is already filled with the Ghosts of Christmas Past (like when I was a little boy).

Two: my senses are gone. I can't hear very well, can't see very well, can't smell the flowers very well. And see how long it takes me to pick up a coin on the counter? That's because it takes me three seconds to even feel it. So a new experience doesn't resonate with my sensory appreciation of it. Dull senses means dull and easily forgotten new memories.

Three: even if you could see, hear, smell, taste and touch everything now as acutely as you did in the past, it's all less important. When you're young and meet a new and striking person, you say: "Wow! This may be the most important person I'll ever meet. They may become my new love, my new boss, my new customer...the one that will put me over the top. I BETTER REMEMBER THEM! But, when you are older, you say, when meeting a new person or experiencing a new event: "So what?! The last thing I need is to fall in love again. Or: Another boss-y person! And...a new customer? I'm not selling anything anymore, anyway. And even if I was, there'll be someone else to come by and buy my product tomorrow. Forget it!

Four: The past is too great a friend. It is deliscious, tasty, and vivid. It recalls a time (and events) when one saw minute details of butterflies' wings, heard the sound of the wind, tasted the nuances in the skin of others you kissed. Those specific memories pushes the present away. It's like a good meal; you're so content digesting and remembering the taste of what you just swallowed that the last thing you want to do is stuff more food into your mouth.

The past is one's best friend. It's always with you. It's cheap. It's been paid for and delivered. You own it it. It's yours to arrange and re-arrange at your leisure. Who needs the present?! Forget it!

Mrs. Vanotti -- Part Five

2011-05-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

I also do not know Mr. Vanotti’s involvement in all this, whether he even knew, or approved; especially of his wife's loaning my mother the $100. However, what I do know is that in all the years I knew and loved Mrs. Vanotti—as I said, she was our Grandmother surrogate--I never met or saw Mr. Vanotti, except for the charcoal self-portrait. I don’t remember him ever visiting the candy store. We never went to his and Mrs. Vanotti’s house. He never came to our house.

Years later my mother explained to me that soon after my mother’s purchase of the house, Mr. Vanotti had gotten into a car accident, which left him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. He immediately stopped all his art work, and become increasingly angry and bitter. He became a recluse and misanthrope.
Mrs. Vanotti sold the candy store soon after my mother bought the house, perhaps in conjunction with Mr. Vanotti’s accident, perhaps because Mrs. Vanotti was now charged with the responsibility of taking care of her now-demanding husband.
But these personal changes and events never interfered with my mother’s and Mrs. Vanotti’s continuing close relationship. They remained in constant contact, both during and after the end of the war, throughout the late forties and well into the decade of the fifties.

(...to be continued.)

Osama bin Laden

2011-05-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

To kill another human, even out of necessity, even when the death is deserved, is a solemn occasion. "Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

(Sigh) No More Sexual Metaphors?

2011-05-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

I just wrote this blog on my "Cliff Osmond on Acting" blogsite. I thought I would like to share it with this "Cliff Osmond Unedited" personal blogsite:

I have often been accused in my teaching career of using too many sexual images in my meditations on acting. Why? A dirty young man? A dirty old man? Perhaps both. But I still find sexual analogies oh-so-apt when trying to explain acting. To begin with, both efforts involve similar concepts and language: both acting and sex involves mutual interrelating, conflict (people banging into one another, pun intended), build, climax, passion, deep emotional involvement. Also, both acting and sex shared the same divine origins (at least in Western Civilization)...they were favored by the same Greek God: Dionysus (who also was connected strongly with wine).

Good acting has always been to me like good sex. The less you fake it, the more satisfying it will be; and the more the passion arises in conjunction with the other person, the more both of you will be served by performance success and gratification.

There are differences between acting and sex of course: for one thing the dialogue in sex seem to be less important than in acting. (The Dionysian rites--early Greek religious rites that were at the origin of drama--were at their core dance efforts. Dialogue--scripts--talking while moving and feeling came later. NOTE: when the dialogue if acting or sex does transcend banalities, however, both efforts are served. A good script --sculpted language--is always welcome, in bed or on stage.

I must confess I use sexual images less in teaching...it is unseemly at my age. My wife recently criticized me for writing sexual banter in a scene I was creating...it had to do with two people in the seventies recalling a distant time of love: "I don't think it's realistic for people of their age to talk so openly about sex like that. It doesn't seem real, " she said. I just sighed, and moved on.

(Full disclosure: I use sports analogies less now as well; but that diminishing of usage may have to do with gender appropriateness rather than age-appropriateness: less women relate with sports: they often sit boringly unresponsive when I talk about sports in terms of emotion, spontaneity, conflict and...yes, I must admit, banging around within a proscribed field of endeavor.)

They say each effort, whether in analogy or in teaching, has its own time and effectiveness. So goodbye to sexual analogies; goodbye to sports analogies. And hello to...old age, death and eternity analogies?!...forget it.

Acting will always be, with or without sexual and sports analogies for me, a celebration of life, not a meditation on it. Acting is a joyous effort to create life, and celebrate characters involvement in it. As a teacher I may be forced by aging appropriateness to use sexual (and sports) analogies less...but I encourage other younger teachers to use them more. They are true. They are effective. They are pertinent. Acting is Living. Sex creates Life. Sports celebrates Life. They are different sides of the same Living coin.

Mrs. Vanotti -- Part Four

2011-04-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

The house Mrs. Vanotti proposed my mother buy was a big house. Mom knew the house from her many neighborhood walks with me in tow. It was, as I said, three stories tall, sitting on a lot fifty feet long by twenty feet wide, with a small front yard, a bigger back yard, and an undeveloped half basement where coal could be stored for the kitchen furnace which brought water heat by pipes to the first floor and to the radiators in the rooms above.

Mrs. Vanotti suggested my mother could meet the mortgage payments by renting the upstairs two floors of rooms to renters--single men, Mrs. Vanotti advised, not women. Women were trouble, unless it was all women…but renting to only women would limit the desirable renter pool too much. She encouraged my mother rent to men only; working men; single men, men with steady jobs.

Our family could occupy the first floor--living room, bedroom and kitchen plus adjoining pantry room—and maybe an upstairs room reserved for Kurt and me. True, the house was run down, and, true, the economy had not fully sprung back from the Great Depression, but, whatever the circumstances, Mrs. Vanotti always believed in buying your own home, not “wasting” your money on rent. It would require work; the five ‘rent-able’ rooms, three on the third floor, two on the second, would require cleaning and bed-changing during the week. And Mom would have to make sure the renters (men) were courteous to one another. There was only one bathroom, on the second floor, one sink, one toilet, one tub, to serve what would be at least ten people. That would require total ‘community courtesy.’ But, she countered, Mom was stay-at-home Mom and I would be off in school in less than two years. And Kurt could help. We could get it done.

Mrs. Vanotti brought out from behind the counter some paper and a couple of pencils, and she and my Mom sat there all morning figuring rents-to-charge and bills and possibilities. They even figured in a sum for eventual improvements and repairs. Mrs. Vanotti had discovered from her inquiries the roof leaked and there was a problem with rats in the basement. But, she said, until we could afford to make repairs, we could put pots and pans out to catch the drips during the rains and Kurt and I could set the mousetraps with cheese nightly and remove the caught mice in the morning after breakfast and before going to school (which, in fact, we did for quite a few years of our youth, wrapping them in newspaper and depositing them in garbage cans that lined the community alleyway to the street that ran behind the six houses that made up our row).

My mother was quickly and positively convinced. She was ready for whatever work was required. But…the down payment; she and my father had no savings? Mrs. Vanotti told her not to worry. She would loan my mother the money ($100; a deal made on a hug and handshake). Furthermore, Mrs. Vanotti had already talked to a local merchant: the remaining $700 toward the purchase of the $800 house could be financed by the Hanrahan Mortgage Company, a local lender with a nearby office only a few blocks away on Seventh Street and Summit Avenue.

Within days, the details were worked out, and a firm offer for the house was made, and accepted. Within weeks, the paperwork was formalized and signed. The mortgage was made out completely in my mother’s name. My father would not be on it. Nor would his name be on the Deed of Trust. (Whether that was my mother’s idea or Mrs. Vanotti’s, I have no idea. Moreover, I do not know if my father was happy with that arrangement. But I do know that’s the way it was; and would be.)

Mrs. Vanotti -- Part Three

2011-04-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Vanotti would greet me and my mother with a gleeful hug, and move from immediately from her chair at the counter to behind the counter to make Mom and me a chocolate cream fountain soda or a malted milk shake (or a hot chocolate in winter); and, while Mom sipped and rested, and I slurped and chomped (cookies were often part of the daily treat), Mom and Mrs. Vanotti, between Mrs. Vanotti’s duties waiting on customers coming in and out of the store, would sit on those swiveling stools for hours and chat.

During one such visit, Mrs. Vanotti hatched a plan for our family’s home-owning future. She told my mother about a house that had recently become available. It was located diagonally across from the candy store; a little down Sixth Street, across New York Avenue, on the northern side of the street. We could see it from the candy store front window.

It was 322-6th Street; a narrow row house, the fifth of six such row houses, built around the turn of the 20th Century, with a porch and a roof with a Corinthian cornice molded across the full expanse of all the adjoining six roofs.
A trolley track ran past the house, down the middle of the slightly sloped street. It was a connector track between the main trolley lines on New York Avenue and Palisades Avenue. There were cobblestones set between the steel tracks. At the other end of the street, perpendicular to Sixth Street, and parallel to New York Avenue, lay Palisades Avenue, and across the avenue, sat forbidding and foreboding the great limestone white Yardley’s of London cosmetic factory, its back loading doors and four story tall windows overlooking the shale palisades, the viaduct, Hoboken, the Hudson River, and New York beyond.
Mom had been dreaming increasingly of owning her own home.

From 1923, when, at the age of fifteen, she had run away from and her middle-class family home in St. Paul, Minnesota—and a school for wayward (incorrigible) girls—more pointedly away from her oppressive grandmother who had forced her to enroll in the school--to go to Detroit and fend for herself, my mother, by now thirty two years of age, had only lived in a series of tiny single, or one-bedroom rented apartments.
At first, she liked being footloose and fancy free. Whether when working as a teen-ager in the auto factories of Detroit, or subsequently upon moving to New Jersey where she married Dad and they lived happily and in a series of single apartments--Mom would stay up all night reading book after book waiting for Dad to return so they could sleep the morning and early afternoon away together--she always enjoyed the simple lifestyle; that was, until children came into her life.
She always said having children (Kurt, me and years later, our baby sister, Betta) was the defining event in her life.

Now, in her thirties, with two children, and with memories of her middle class upbringing increasingly flooding her mind, her desires and needs for living housing circumstances changed. She wanted more.

(...to be continued.)

Mrs. Vanotti -- Part Two

2011-04-19T12:25:00.000-07:00

My father was a waiter by profession. He worked nights, as he did all through my youth: the 10PM to 8AM graveyard shift, at a nearby Sunshine Restaurant, in the Bus Transfer Station section lower Union City, where many local bus lines converged within its three block radius and exchanged passengers.

He was a local favorite of many of his late night customers. He was known as Sam. His real name was Ismail, but he was always afraid his bosses, two Greek brothers, would fire him if they discovered he was a Turk. So he became Sam Adams; Greek. (He was able to maintain the fiction because he spoke fluent Greek as well as Turkish.)
Sixteen years into his job, he finally told them. They laughed, and nothing changed in the relationship.

At work my Dad was always smiling, and always in control of his job and the customers he served. He was super proficient at taking orders (he prided himself on never having to write down an order, even when a party of six or more was involved) and he swore he never making a mistake on serving the order. To insure tranquility with sometimes rowdy late night customers, especially those had flowed after closing time from the many bars serving the Transfer Station area, he made sure that a series of full Heinz Ketchup bottles were strategically placed under the U-shaped restaurant counter in case drunken customers got a little too frisky and/or physical. He rarely used them; his smile and professionalism as a waiter seemed always enough to defuse any threatening situation.

After finishing his ten hour shift, every morning, six days a week, my father would move from behind the restaurant counter, still smiling, start his exit amidst a handful of goodbyes, and place his slightly stained waiter’s apron on the hook in the kitchen area, put on his suit jacket and fedora that was hanging nearby, and walk home, arriving at our one-bedroom apartment at the latest by 8:30 AM, already having had (free) breakfast at the restaurant. He would greet us, kiss us good morning, see my brother off to school, and go to bed.

My mother made sure mornings and lunch were quiet time at our small apartment. During the school week, she would pack Kurt off to the nearby Thomas A. Edison grammar school, and soon thereafter take me, a typically rambunctious three year old boy, out of the house to the nearby Washington Park.

Washington Park was a four block-wide city oasis of swings and slides and trees, benches, hedges, play areas and ball fields located at the most southern end of Union City. It encompassed the width of the city from Palisades Avenue to the east to Central Avenue to the west. (Union City was—and still is--a narrow strip of land, only one square mile in area, forty eight clocks long by, at most, ten blocks wide. It is situated between the neighboring cities of Weehawken and West New York to the north and northwest, Secaucus and North Bergen to the West, Jersey City to the south, and Hoboken—which could be seen directly below Washington Park--to the southeast. The population was 50,000 people. The whole greater area was so contiguous that, unless you lived there, you never knew where one city ended and the other began.

Almost the entire strip of Union City lays on the rock hard shale plateau of the southernmost part of the great Hudson River Palisades, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River valley, almost directly east from New York, across the NY-NJ Lincoln Tunnel connecting it and surrounding cities to mid-town Big Apple.

Union City sits 200 feet above the city of Hoboken, itself also a flatland mile-square city of 50,000 people. Weehawken, where on its bluffs Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr, part hillside, part flatland, is to Union City’s northeast. Both of Union City’s sister cities nestled between the black hard shale palisades cliffs and the Hudson River to its east. A cement viaduct—starting at Washington Park--ran down the hill from Union City to flatland Hoboken, connecting the two cities.

During the school week, fall, winter or spring, whether the day was hot, rainy or snowy, Mom would take me to play in Washington Park, where we could view Hoboken and beyond that, the Hudson River. Beyond that grey or blue--depending on the weather--rib of water, one could see the tall, great towers of the skyline of New York City majestically punctuating the sky. (My lifetime dreams of success and fame began with that every day morning visit to Washington Park and its view of New York.)

After an hour or more releasing most of my energy in the park, Mom would daily take me, my little legs churning with somewhat tired eagerness, a straight shot along New York Avenue, which bisected the park, to Mrs. Vanotti’s candy store, four blocks away. Once there, Mom would plunk herself down at one of the four round stools at the soda fountain, with its marble counter and dizzying array of machines and faucets dominating the central area of the candy store. To the left of the fountain stood two large glass enclosed candy displays; the magazine and comic books racks were to the right, near the front and side windows.

(...to be continued.)

Mrs. Vanotti -- Part One

2011-04-17T17:11:00.000-07:00

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FIRST IN A SEVEN-PART SKETCH OF ONE OF THE MOST MEMORABLE PEOPLE FROM MY YOUTH:

Part One

Mrs. Vanotti was my surrogate Grandmother.

She owned the neighborhood candy store at the corner of Sixth Street and New York Avenue, in Union City, the northern New Jersey town I grew up in. I was three years old when Mrs. Vanotti, already middle-aged, entered our family’s life. The year was 1940, just prior to America’s entrance into World War II. She soon became my family’s benefactor, enabling my mother, father, brother and me to own our first home.

Mrs. Vanotti was average height, and “pleasantly plump” (the phrase she liked to use about herself). Beautiful of complexion, she had milk-white skin, reddish cheeks, and lovely, round, twinkling eyes. She had velvet steely grey hair; always well coiffed, piled high on the top of her head. She spoke sweetly, with a lovely, alluring sing-song British accent. She was for me Billie Burke, the good fairy godmother from The Wizard of Oz.

Mrs. Vanotti had been in her native Great Britain a theatrical dancer, a “showgirl,” a “dance-hall girl,” as she laughingly liked to say. From pictures of her my mother showed me from her youth, she was slim, beautiful and sexy.

When I first met her, Mrs. Vanotti was firmly ensconced in America, married to an artist, Frank Vanotti. She had met him many years before, on one her dance troop visits to America. He was a very successful Italian-American artist, reportedly designed some of the murals in the lobby of New York’s Rockefeller Center. He was excellent in other art media as well: charcoal portraiture and copper etchings prominent among them. On the wall of our living room, displayed proudly by my Mom, was an original charcoal self-portrait. Hanging next to it was an exquisite copper etching he had made of the New York City skyline. The etching was intricately graceful, smooth, precise and detailed; the self-portrait, black on off-white, was dark, brooding and powerful.

At the time of our initial family involvement with Mrs. Vanotti and her candy store, my father, mother, I, and twelve year old brother Kurt lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Fourth Street and Palisades Avenue, in Union City, three blocks from Mrs. Vanotti’s candy store.

(to be continued...)

Freedom is exhausting.

2011-04-11T12:15:00.001-07:00

He was born to greatness, but lacked the emotional structure to support it.

2011-04-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

Operate out of need, not greed.

2011-04-04T21:45:00.001-07:00

Lunch With an Old Man

2011-03-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, while researching a film, I stopped in a small town called Truchas nestled high in the Sangre de Christo mountains, outside Sante Fe, NM, to have a quickie lunch. It was a languidly warm day and I was a little sweaty from rushing. I stopped at a local grocery store to buy a Pepsi and a sandwich, and exited the store and sat on the curb in front to eat. Running past me was the narrow two-laned highway that ridged the mountains, carrying occasional traffic between Santa Fe to the south and Taos to the north.

As I unwrapped a sandwich I noticed an old man seated on a blanket in a open, grassy field that lay across the highway. I saw him signal to me. At first I thought he was signalling to someone else. I looked about, but there was no one else near me. To be sure of his intent, I pointed to myself. I saw him nod affirmatively, smile, and pat the ground on the blanket next to him, gesturing for me to join him.

I slowly arose, somewhat reluctantly, re-wrapped the sandwich, picked up from the ground by my feet my also recently purchased can of Pepsi, crossed the highway to join him.

I remember the gravel that edged the other side of the highway that crunched beneath my feet as I moved toward him, and the soft, tall wild grass that covered the field. When I arrived at the old man's side, he gestured for me to sit down. He re-arranged his blanket to create sitting room for me.

As I settled only a few feet from him, he said, "I have too much to eat. We should eat together." His face was lined with experience. I noticed the homemade lunch that filled the small dishes and glass jars that lay next to him. They bespoke a loving wife or daughter at home, I thought. "We will share," he said.

I opened my sandwich, set it on the white paper wrapping, and he placed some of his food next to it; a piece of bread, some olives and cheese and grapes. "My wife takes care of me," he said. I offered him half my sandwich and he demurred. I offered him a drink of Pepsi. He took a small sip more from courtesy than from need, and placed the can on the ground again. I noticed his hands: they were gnarled, spotted with age, but beautiful, long, elegant and graceful.

We ate slowly. As the time passed, we talked, about the weather, the land, the town, and a group of religious men called Los Hermanos, or the Penitente. This was the mysterious religious group I was researching for the film I was preparing to direct. He spoke clearly of them, as he did of all things, softly and knowledgeably, his eyes sometimes wandering about the landscape, loosely focusing as they retreated into the past, recalling a memory or two as they came to him, relevant to the point, drawing a lesson for from his experience to underscore the conversation we were having. "They call the Penitente the 'silent ones'. One never hears them coming or going."

I finally became impatient; with myself. I loved spending time with the old man, but I felt guilty. I had wasted valuable research time, already having missed one appointment, having overindulged in the stolen pleasure of lunch. I gathered together the wrapping from the sandwich. As I moved quickly, the old man nodded at me. He saw what I did not say: I must go. The setting sun was striking the old man directly in his eyes; yet unblinkingly he turned to me, and said quietly: "See that tree over there." I turned and noticed a modest-sized, gnarled tree, filled with branches and leaves, leaning over, as if to embrace the earth. "When I die," he said, "I am going to be buried under that tree. Do you know what that means?" he asked. I paused. I had no quick answer. "It's a beautiful placed to be buried," I finally offered. He smiled, nodded. "That means for the rest of my life I'm going about twenty feet. Why rush. I am going to enjoy every wild flower and blade of grass along the way."

I left...the old man, but never the memory

Focus

2011-03-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

Why rush?
There is nowhere to go
'Here, there, everywhere'
is nowhere.
Only here,
this place,
is fulfilling.
See it. Taste it. Hear it. Touch it. Smell it.
Envelope it.
Destiny.
Life.
It is here.
The rest is chimera.

Good talkers talk for understanding, not effect.

2011-03-27T17:03:00.000-07:00

In time, youth's smooth mask will sadly melt into the harsh lines of trtuh.

2011-03-16T16:15:00.000-07:00

Breaking Up

2011-03-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

My father’s and mother’s marriage broke up in 1949, when I was twelve years old. It was the year of the blizzard on the East Coast. In that year I became part of what was then called a “broken home,” a term I’ve always loved for its simple accuracy. Humpty Dumpty: “…all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.”

It was a cold, winter night. Snow was on the ground outside.

Inside our home, a yellowish haze flooded from the hallway light, spilling out into the dimly lit kitchen where I was seated. My mother and Father were a few feet away from me, standing in the hallway facing each other, just outside the kitchen. Next to them was the entrance to the basement, which was across from their bedroom door.

They were shouting, screaming. “I’m sick of this,” he said. “I can’t take your goddamn criticism anymore! I’m leaving.” He whirled around, as if looking for a place to go. He stopped. Where?

My mother coolly reached behind him, into the dark alcove space beneath the stairs that led to the second floor. Out of the darkness she withdrew out a large, brown, worn leather suitcase. “I’ve already packed you.” Caught between his pride and her will, his bluff and her ante, he looked at her for a long moment, and nodded. He reached his arm past her into the dark alcove. He took his suit coat from a hanger on a hook, put the coat on. Then from a shelf above the hanger, he quietly removed his favorite blue fedora, grabbing it, as he always did, with three fingers pressed against the front crease. He firmly put the hat on his head and picked up the suitcase. He walked slowly to the end of the hallway, stopped before the door, turned. He looked at her, then turned his eyes slightly toward me. I saw his eyes were dark and soft. A sad smile creased his face. He returned his look to her one last time; a plea more than hope. Then, adjusting his shoulders under the weight of the suitcase, he gathered himself into a singular resolve, lifted his head, looked at her for one last fleeting prideful, dare I say loving, moment, and walked out.

My mother stood deep in the hallway. The yellow glare from the overhead light cast an even softer glow on her than when he was there, making the hallway and kitchen seem like old photo yellowing with age. She was wild, almost animal beautiful. I wanted to shout after him to stay; that I loved him. But I didn’t. I heard his steps descending the porch, slowly but firmly; one, two, and three, and then he was gone. My mother moved silently to the kitchen table, immediately lit up a Pell Mell cigarette, and sat. She inhaled deeply, the smoke disappearing into her throat and lungs, emerging only after a long while, in a gush through her open lips. Then she looked directly at me.

I knew from her look: I was to leave her alone. I went upstairs. I entered my room, lay down on my bed, and stared up at the dark ceiling. Finally, after many, many minutes, I changed into my pajamas, snuggled deep under the bed covers. I turned on the reading light, and picked the book lying next to it: “A Yankee Flier in the RAF.”

I removed the page marker from where I had left off reading the night before. I could hear my mother below, moving about the kitchen, making a pot of coffee. I kept waiting to hear some sound of emotion from her, some cry in the night, but there was none; just the silent, rhythmic and determined shuffling of her slippers moving across the linoleum floor.

I kept reading the same paragraph over and over again, until, hours later, the book having fallen quietly to the floor, I fell asleep. In the morning, the bed light was still on, and life began again. Only it was forever different.

I become increasingly fascinated watching myself live my pre-written script.

2011-01-09T18:03:00.000-08:00

Nothing enhances the beauty of a woman more than a smile in your direction.

2011-01-09T18:01:00.001-08:00

Work hard. Don't cheat the gift.

2011-01-09T18:00:00.000-08:00

Sofia and the New Year

2011-01-04T12:34:00.000-08:00

January 4th, 2011. It is the third full day after Sophia's visit. No more "cock-a-doodle-doo" wake up calls, no more six-and-a-half-year-old-granddaughter's energy, no more giggly laughter, no more fun and games (especially her post-dinner version of charades); no more Santa Claus, and no more cuddles and hugs.

The void is just that. The house is suddenly immense. One can actually walk across the floor without tripping over her "children" (dolls and other miniature people). The Xmas tree is down, the trinkets that hung on the tree (some crafted at home and school over forty years ago by Sophia's Mommy when she was a toddler) are put away in the eaves, along with Xmas cards with them from old friends in Sudan.

New memories are stored in the eaves of our hearts...including, and perhaps most especially, our final trip to the airport.

With Grampa, Gammy, Popi Jorge, Mama Mishi and Sofia well in tow, the car pulls up to the curb. Everyone gets out. Luggage is unloaded. Hugs and kisses are given. Warm, clinging ones; I hug first my son-in-law; a particularly heartfelt, sentimental embrace. I kiss him on the cheek. I hug my daughter. She cries; an unusual response. And then a final, magical forever-to-be-remembered hug is given by Sophia to Grandpa: she wraps her arms around my legs, looks up at me. "I had fun playing cards, Grandpa. I had fun playing Candyland , I had fun playing Lion. I had fun playing Mitchell and Violet (her rules: we were brother and sister...I was the baby brother). A slight pause, and then: "I had fun just being with you." She presses her face against me, holds me; a hug seemingly stretched to infinity. I unwrap her arms and smile.

"I love you," I say. "I love you, Grandpa." We all seem to linger to look at one another one last time. Then:

My daughter, my son-in-law, and Sofia start start toward the terminal. Grammy and Grandpa get into the car. Grammy informs Grandpa that Sophia told Grammy she wants to watch us leave. She is waiting by the terminal door, poised behind glass. I close the car door; Grammy's and Grandpa's seat belts are secured. I turn to see Sofia, looking toward us through the glass. She is just standing there, leaning against the door, looking forlornly out at us. I start the car; we wave once, twice, and then a third time. The car slowly leaves, breaking sight lines.

As we weave in and out of airport traffic, I say to Grammy, "For the first time in all her visits to us, Sofia seemed sadder with our leave taking as we usually are with hers. You think it was a sign of her growing up? A sign of her realization that we are growing old, getting nearer to...?"

Grammy says nothing. She stares straight ahead. "Perhaps, being now six-and-a-half, approaching seven...you know what they say, seven is the age of reason, " I continue, "when a child begins the full journey to adulthood. Perhaps she realizes that..."

My wife sighs. Not a rebuke; she is not even listening to me.

Her heart has other concerns. It records such events; without understanding, but with great, and enduring, passion. I shut my mouth and open my heart. I realize I was talking to salve my ache.

Happy New Year! Back from Vacation!

2011-01-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

Good Old Mom and Dad and Us

2010-12-21T16:06:00.000-08:00

Even if Mom and Dad were shitty parents--the 20th Century Great Excuse for a self-limited life--get over it. You still have the need and obligation to get your life together and become a decent human being.

In all probability, Mom and Dad were probably not that bad in the first place; it's just that we too often remember only their mistakes. Shakespeare said, "The evil that men do live after them; the good is oft interred with the bones." So it probably is with our memories of our parents. (2) On top of which, even if our memories were precise (they were horrible and they did screw up our childhoods), remember most of them were in their twenties when they gave birth to you. How bright were you at their age?; (3) Almost all their mistakes were most likely unintentional. They didn't start every day thinking: 'How can I fail my kids today?'; (4) Have you done any better now (or, will your kids only remember your mistakes and not your successes. "What goes round, comes round." (5) And finally, no matter how disappointing they may have been as parents, we were probably as disappointing to them as children: do you think we are what they had in mind when they gave us birth?

Family disappointments and expectations are a two-way street. Maybe if we forgive our parents for not living up to our expectations as parents, perhaps they'll forgive us for being less than ideal as progeny.

Of Baby-Boomers, Protest and the Tea Party

2010-12-18T15:16:00.000-08:00

Why are today's young liberals and progressives so surprised that the Tea Party is filled with baby-boomers? Baby-boomers were born to protest; they were raised in the era of protest.

As youths, they protested segregation. They protested the Viet Nam War. They protested bras. They protested for against male exclusivity; for women's and gay rights. Why should they change now?

Protest is the nature of baby-boomers.

The Tea Party is just a re-affirmation of their youthful protest. Their goals may have changed, but the love of protest has remained.

Fatherhood

2010-12-18T14:59:00.000-08:00

From my acting blog, "Cliff Osmond on Acting" (I felt it was worth repeating here):

The student told me he was having trouble playing a father. He said he has never been a father, doubts he ever will become one...and in general finds emotionally identifying with fathers difficult.

But he was now of the age when he was going to be offered father-parts to play. What to do?

I told him we should try to find a common denominator: Is there a universal emotional element in fatherhood that fathers and non-fathers (like him and maybe half the audience) can warm to? What does being a father mean? Is there a synonym for "fatherhood," I asked?

After an unresponsive, silent pause: "Responsibility," I offered. "Once that child's life enters the world, you are responsible...for it's food, it's emotional contentment and and spiritual nourishment." I asked the student if he ever felt responsible for something? "Of course," he said.

Well, I said, with a new-born child that responsibility never ends. "Jesus, Dad, enough already. Stop with the advice!"

"Never. At any age. Not until you are totally happy. Is your life perfect? Well, as long as the answer is no, I'm going to be in your life. As a father, I am responsible."

Irrational? Yes. Maddening? Yes. Inevitable? I hope so.

Love...paternal, maternal, spousal, or filial...is responsibility towards an other's existence. You are charged with being tethered to the other's life, to their needs, wants, desires and yearnings. Your life is no longer defined by just your life, but by theirs as well. (That's why you have every right to tell them what to do!) Your happiness is their happiness; and visa-versa. You will die, for them, with them, because of them...or you would kill for them. You no longer have an independent existence. You are they; they are you.

Responsibility. Love. Fatherhood. Endless. Eternal. Maybe that's what rigor mortis is: the dead body still trying to fulfill it's responsibility toward its children. Nothing more ecstatic. And exhausting. Fatherhood, along with motherhood: it makes the world, and the species, go round and round.

The Dangerous Class

2010-12-10T23:30:00.000-08:00

The dangerous class: young men; captives of their own Darwinian testosterone. Look around the world: see the graphics of riot, protesters and disruption. Young men are everywhere, clashing in Haiti, Gaza, London, Mexico City, interfering and running riot with rules and public order. Their cause is irrelevant; their craziness is unavoidable.

Marriage and family was the age-old corrective. The Mormons had/have it right; marry young men off early, in their teens if possible; get them quickly into family responsibilities. After a full week of work, family nights and weekend Little League coaching, they will be too tired to cause any further chaos.

Modern Americans: beware of undermining the bonds of matrimony and family life. Electronic war games, action movies and pro football may not be distraction enough. Eventually, a critical mass of violence-prone young men on the loose may be the unintended consequence of weakening the bonds of matrimony. (I wonder what percentage of day-traders and derivative creators were married; and if so, how many children they had?)

Truth and Lies; and the Allure of the Latter

2010-12-08T16:13:00.000-08:00

Human truth is harsh. It is thrust upon us. Self-recognition is a necessary evil forced on us by the failure of our illusions.

What would you rather have: the bumpy road of human truth, or the smooth highway of successful self-deception?

Kill the messenger, indeed. Less he goes off and discovers (and reports) of even more tragic circumstances.

All I ask of the lie is that someone (including myself) lie to me well; what I ask of the truth is distance...unless I absolutely require its factual presence.

The truth I am avoiding is: we are doomed to finitude. The illusion I desire is: we can live forever (graced with the goodness of God or the wonder of molecular re-incarnation.)

Do I believe in God? No. Do I believe in re-incarnation? No. But, oh boy oh boy, do I believe in believing...desperately, fervently, dare I say, spiritually and religiously. Life's truths are too heavy to bear.

"Our Father, who art in heaven..."

Crisis in Democracy

2010-11-28T21:54:00.000-08:00

Democracy is based on mutual trust. Trust is based upon common values. Values are based on shared belief. What ever happened to Mom, country and apple pie? ( :( :(

Economics 2010

2010-11-28T21:51:00.001-08:00

The reality in today's United States economic life: everyone trying to get a less narrow slice of an increasingly decreasing pie.

The Problem of Aging

2010-11-28T21:45:00.000-08:00

I was speaking to an writer friend of mine. We were discussing aging. He said he was having trouble reading the type on his computer. He was especially having trouble telling the difference between a period and a colon. I nodded. "It's a problem in gender difference," I explained.

Regrets

2010-11-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

Today's fruit
if left unpicked,
withers,
drops,
rots.

Today's opportunity,
un-grasped,
withers,
drops,
rots.

Into regrets.

In both cases
we are left
with
excruciatingly
painful
hunger.

Dereliction of Duty

2010-11-11T19:52:00.000-08:00

I have been derelict again. I vow to write; then I procrastinate. Ten days gone by without a word. I started to write something yesterday, something controversial, then I thought: "Who will I hurt with this?"

That angered me...against myself. I was hurting myself by not writing.

The truth is: we all deserve pain. Because we all try to sustain ourselves with lies, denials, avoidance. We 'kill the messenger' because we don't want the truth of the message. It pops our balloon of convenience and self-deception.

You have to hurt someone when you write (or say) the truth. There is not universal agreement on anything. The truth demands the dispensing of pain to someone, somewhere. So we often, to avoid giving general pain, we select a target we see as 'deserving'. Which leads to politically correct diatribes against whomever is outre at the moment; at least outre my reference group of friends and loved ones...or, even more importantly, those whom I want to pay the bills.

To tell the truth I suppose you have to be angry at someone. Or perhaps, it helps even more to be angry at everyone. Then...the shackles are off. Let the word games begin.

So I have started writing again by being angry at myself.

Sad, isn't it?

I have GOT to start being angry at others...in public, to make my all-too-frequent private rants public. The truth? I need love and acceptance too much.

Now that is sad. To need others (and their acceptance) so much that I refuse to be true to myself. Because...the truth is (and I will state it here): I am mad...at the universe: to be born destined to die? Now there's a sad truth no one wants to hear. I will join you in 'killing that messenger.' Off with his head. But not his pen.

Or his computer. I am writing again! For a moment I am not mad.

Albert Schweitzer

2010-10-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

I see the bug on the sink. I am about to turn on the water. I think of killing it...then...I think of Albert Schweitzer.

Schweitzer was one of the greatest human beings who lived in the 20th Century, a Nobel Prize winner; yet he is mostly overlooked now. I think because he was such a strongly religious man. His devout Christianity was held against him by the intelligentsia; and his accomplishments demeaned by their cynicism. His bio is amazing. A world class Philosopher and writer (of myriad books and voluminous letters) in his 20s, as well as a brilliant, world class organist, he then became a minister as well as a medical student (and doctor) in his 30's. Completing his medical studies, he gave up on civilization (at least in life style) and went to work as medical missionary and doctor amongst the poorest of the poor in Gabon, Africa' There he spent the remainder of his days, and used his growing world fame to raise money to build a hospital in the middle of the jungle. It was his crowning achievement. He remained there, ministering to the body and spirit of the local natives, until he died at the age of 90s.

Throughout his five decade sojourn into the heart of Africa, he lived according to his philosophy, "A Reverence for Life" (the title of a book his wrote early in his career). According to that simple yet comprehensive doctrine, he refused to kill any animal or insect or other living thing. He lived in the tradition of Jesus, whom Godhead believed in and loved devotedly, and Gandhi, Buddha and, eventually, later than him, Mother Teresa. He maintained a reverence for all life,

After my brief ruminating on Schweitzer, I paused in turning on the water in the sink until I lifted the bug on a sheet of paper and deposited it gently on the ground outside my door. "One for you, Albert," I thought. Then I recommenced washing the dishes.

I though it was the least in that small way I could do to honor him, one of his Century's great human beings; a great man who walked the walk and set standards of compassion and life's interconnectedness as he watched and refused to participate in humanity's wasteful defoliation, deforestation, war, animal cruelty, species' extinction and all the other unthinking death and pain humankind rains down on the planet;s fellow creatures.

Few of us can be Schweitzer, but we can honor his standards by (1) accepting the impossibility (and yes, naivete) of his ideals in the abstract; and yet (2) each day, striving to match them in the smallest way. Isn't that the purpose or reason; to gain mastery over chaotic and cruel existence? Thus illogical grows into logic, and progress moves forward in spite of itself...one silly little living bug at a time.

A Hooray for American Democracy!!!

2010-10-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

Are we finally coming to the end of the five-decade Age of Entitlement? Where the American dream trans morphed from "Work hard, save and your kids will eventually prosper;" the American dream became "...to "Work only hard enough to qualify for a credit card, spend on trinkets and toys and a lackluster education, and create the illusion of prosperity when it was really spending/mortgaging your own and other's (your kids' and grand children's...if you weren't too selfish to have them) future."

"I deserve. I have right to. What is mine is mine; what is yours is ours. There are no winners; just equal participants. I play in the league: I deserve a trophy, too. Self-esteem is not the reward for effort; it is an inalienable right. Why do I have to say "'I'm sorry?' If I did anything untoward to you, my mother and father caused me to do it. The apologies should come from them." "I should say 'Thank you?' For what? I earned all that I'm taking from you by the simple and glorious fact of my birth."

From the five-decade long indulgence in Entitlement also came the modern horrors of the political left and right. The left is self-righteous in their equitable sharing of the goods of others (note that they are not too excited about higher taxes on themselves.") And on the right, the sense of entitlement has produced greed, elitism and smugness.

The antidote to this five-decade old Entitlement experiment?: the Great Recession. 2010 come-up-ance; chicken's coming home to roost; if you don't pay now, you'll pay later. The inevitable fact of life: what goes up must come down.

Do I have sympathy for today's American malaise; mine and other's? No. Not a bit. We deserve it. Dare I use the almost archaic concept?...we are RESPONSIBLE. We are responsible for the muck we're in, and boy are we ever RESPONSIBLE for the muck of getting out. Victims (the other side of the human coin of entitlement) BEWARE. We are all victims now! Poor babies, those prior victims. Today's situation leaves no one for victims to blame. You are nothing special. You want to bitch about your situation? Don't start bitching to me! Because a few words into your rant I start bitching to you about my situation. We are all on the same floor in the hospital, if not the same room. We are all on the same oxygen machines and life-support. Forget black, brown, woman, men, illegal immigrants or Daughters of the American Revolution, young, old, gay and straight...your/our unique victimization is over. The great leveler has occurred: when we all look into each others' eyes for sympathy, when I look in the face of my social and economic problems, and I see...that I look just like you; another miserable person!!

Democracy, equality, equity has occurred. Nobody on Team America gets a trophy. Self-esteem is out the window, Misery. The cold hard facts of reality. That is the game today. We are all the same. Power to the People! The American Dream...finally fulfilled after almost fifty years of the coming of the Age of Aquarius. Hooray!

The Tale of a Sperm

2010-10-06T00:11:00.000-07:00

Does a sperm ever get tired? I mean. just flat-out, deep-breathing, muscle-aching, beat-up, wasted, exhausted tired? I do when I think about them.

First of all, if you're a sperm, you're not very big. You're just a single cell. That's it...a single cell, seen only by a microscope. On top of which, inside, amongst many other things you're carrying 23 chromosomes, designed to seek 23 other chromosomes somewhere out in a universe; which a goal that is somewhat elusive. They say the whole human race is depending on you. Talk about a soldier's backpack. The whole human race, all six billion of them, are depending on you. (And you know when the original model of you was created: 1 and a half million years ago? That's right. The first one of you was created one and a half million years age. So you really don't have the benefit of a modern design!)

You've got a head, surrounded by some chemical stuff around it, designed to help you penetrate something called an egg (whatever the hell that is). You also have a neck and a long tail. The tail is designed to move you forward; and get this: it is designed in such a way that you can't go backward. Right. I mean it: that's the way your tail works. You can only go forward. Forward march! Like a Marine "grunt" on a WWII landing craft, doors opening, depositing you on the sands of Iwo Jima with your Sargent holding a bayonet an inch from your asshole saying: "Forward, march!

Suddenly, out of nowhere, due to some huge thing sometimes called a prick getting hard, and, as they say, "getting off" you and a million other cohorts are suddenly swept up by some moist stuff called semen. It surrounds all of you like a wave set loose by a hurricane. You are summarily shot out of a cannon with millions of other moisture-surrounded competitors into this narrow (sometimes wide; it doesn't depend on you. The choice was made by the "prick" and the egg holder) receiving vessel. They call it a vagina. Caught up in the tide of moisture, you start your journey forward, swimming like hell, upstream. By the way, you better stay withing the moisture. Without the moisture, you die.

Now...if all this isn't bad enough, and here is the penultimate exhausting part of the whole "being-a-sperm-reality": only one of you, amongst the million other spear swimming along with you (everybody is going forward, remember, probably bumping like hell into one another) is going to MAYBE win. MAYBE.

Winning is getting to one egg. Right, at the end of this journey there is one egg...ONE...fucking...egg...hopefully waiting to embrace one of you amongst a million or so other competing sperm. Talk about a lottery.

So let's say you're a winner; the athlete amongst athletes. You get there first with the most-est. Does anyone cheer your victory? No, just the opposite. The egg pushed you away, holds you off, plays hard to get. That's where the design part comes in. You now have to batter your head, aided by a helmet of chemicals, with tail churning, against this one egg who is not exactly welcoming you with open arms. So you batter and batter, until...FINALLY...PERHAPS...MAYBE...you get through...and for what? What is the pay-off for this long, tiring, winning effort? Your 23 chromosomes unite with the egg's 23 chromosomes and you are gone. You are no longer a sperm. You have disappeared, merged, co-joined, united. You are bye-bye. The egg goes on...oh, boy, does the egg go on! It hangs around dividing and dividing until it grows into a full fucking human form; sometimes a vagina holder, sometimes a "prick." It's all designed to be about 50-50. It doesn't matter for the sperm. Existential exhaustion--the long swim--has become existential extinction.

The Egg and the Sperm. Aesop should have told that one.

The Joy of Process

2010-10-01T21:26:00.001-07:00

"Process" (the love of the activity itself) is a faithful long-term lover; whereas "achievement" is all too often capricious, fleeting and unfaithful. Embrace the first; flirt with the second; and if the Gods allow, you may have them both.

Time; it humbles all.

2010-09-27T16:06:00.001-07:00

Spending on Health Care...a Bad Thing?

2010-09-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

Why is everyone bitching about the ever increasing cost of health care: as in the panicky statement: "We are now spending one-sixth of our Gross Domestic Product on health care. (Gasp!)" Shouldn't spending on health care be a good thing? What should we be spending our money on: more football games? Trips to Vegas? More credit card debt? Higher alimony payments?

Higher health care expenditures produce productivity gains: A healthier citizenry can work longer; they can work harder, better, their mind unshackled by disease, pain and days off. Isn't that a good thing? Isn't that the proper goal of any investment (which in a sense, consumption on health care really is)? The whole society benefits from that increasing focus and spending on a healthy body.

We keep talking about spending more and more on education and government (at least Democrats do). Aren't all three the same thing? A healthy mind and a healthy body (personal and politic) all contribute to a healthier citizenry.

Granted, like any investment, we want health expenditures--and, for that matter, educational and governmental expenditures--to be more efficient, with greater bang for the buck: greater benefits per dollar of cost. But efficiency and the reduction of waste, fat in any system--health, educational, or governmental--is a separate issue from the general direction of our national focus on better and better health.

I say: let efficient health care costs rise and rise in proportion to educational and/or governmental costs. And then let the most efficient and productive horse among the three win. What a wonderful way to spend wisely our collective dollars!

Your Friend, the Truth

2010-09-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

Challenge truth. Embrace it, and you'll thrive.

Run from it and you will eventually be doomed.

Reality will eventually win out in the long run.

Like a river, the flow of truth may be blocked, diverted, go underground; or in human terms, denied, but it will eventually be forced by gravity to find its natural level. All nature--including human--finally adheres to reality.

Sometimes, like pain, in the short term, reality can be dulled, avoided, narcotized; but the disease from whence it comes, its origins and control of our destiny, will only continue down its destructive path: culminating in its long term inevitability.

There are unpleasant truths, like forcing on you a harsh blast of pain from a diseased tooth. In the short run you may avoid chewing on that side of your mouth, or place an aspirin on it to alleviate the pain, but the logic on inexorable reality says: Go to the Dentist. Face reality. Otherwise the tooth--your life--will only get worse.

Your finest, best choice, even if it is painful, is always to face truth, reality, as soon as possible; understand it, embrace it. It is your dearest friend.

Getting Out the Vote

2010-09-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

President Obama encouraged black voters to get to the polls this year, to prevent a "return to the past." A code word for racism and segregation?

Should his appeal to black voters to vote Democratic be matched by a call for Republican to turn out white voters? (Have the latter done so already?)

Racism cuts both ways; and whatever the source, left or right, Presidential or Tea Party-ish, is abhorrent, disgusting and undignified.

What a horrible, cheap time we are living through.

True Freedom

2010-09-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

True freedom is vulnerability to everyone and everything.

I am free because I am unafraid of nothing. Personal fear is what imprisons us. Once we conquer that fear, and open ourselves to total emotional vulnerability, who can conquer us? What can our enemies threaten us with? Telling our secrets? Ha! We have none! Death? We understand it. We have fully exposed our vulnerability. And it has made us unconquerable.

Happiness comes from self-respect. Self-respect comes from effort. Effort comes from courage.

2010-09-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

In order to touch many hearts, we must first touch our own.

2010-09-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

The Woes of the Upper Middle Class

2010-09-13T16:55:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who, along with his brother, are trust fund babies. One day my friend's brother came to him and suggested that they invest in a moderately risky--but highly rewarding, if successful--new venture. My friend thought about long and hard, but finally turned his brother down. When I asked him why, he said, "I can't afford to lose," he said, shaking his head forlornly. "I just have enough now to pretend I have more."

I cried because I had no shoes; until I met a man who had no feet.

2010-09-12T01:47:00.000-07:00

The moment of greatest anxiety is just before positive change.

2010-09-12T01:44:00.001-07:00

Total Vulnerability: the Ultimate Weapon

2010-09-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

The true freedom is open vulnerability to all and everyone. "Now I am free...because I am open and unafraid of no one." Personal fear is what imprisons us. Once we conquer that fear, and open ourselves to total emotional vulnerability, who can conquer us? What can they threaten us with? Telling our secrets? Ha! We have none! We have fully exposed our vulnerability. It has made us unconquerable.

Vive le Difference

2010-09-05T22:51:00.000-07:00

I have come to a wonderful conclusion: Racism, sexism and ageism is primarily dead in America. But cultural ism is alive, thriving and kicking. And the two should not be synonymously used.

What do I mean by "culuralism". By that I mean the refusal to most people to be around people with different likes and dislikes, affinities and sensibilities, irrespective of color, gender or age.

I like running backs that when they cross a goal line do not self-congratulate by dancing, shimmying or jumping into the stands. Similarly, I prefer not to play--if I were still young enough to play--football with them. Or darts. Or cards. Black, white or brown, male or female, or age is not the issue.

I like soft Jazz and Mozart. I don't like Acid Rock or Hip-hop or the modern vocal singing style of screaming. Black, white of brown, sex or age is not the issue.

I like books, intelligent discourse and a subtle, ironic sense of humor. I don't like People magazine, screaming heads and fart jokes. Black, white and brown, sex or age is not the issue.

So, if I avoid other people, black, brown, or white, female or male, young or old, who don't like things that I like, who avoid quiet achievement, quiet, complex music, and quiet truth-seeking--as opposed to opinion bombarding--conversation and humor, I'm sorry. The others should--and do--seek each other out and probably--and understandably should--avoid me.

I believe people naturally tend to like people who like like what they like, who behave in a manner that they find compatible--who share their cultural desires and affinities; and to avoid others who do not share these desires and affinities. That is not racism, or sexism, or any other -ism but culturalism.

Let me go a step further: I offer the idea that diversity is not a fundamental fact of human society. It is a learned choice; it is similar to sharing. Both concepts are and should be taught in kindergarten. They are very civilized ideals, mind-enlarging and choice expanding, like a liberal arts education. But like any other element in life, they become off-putting when taken to extremes. If one remembers from one's college experience, although we took a wide array of courses across the whole spectrum of human knowledge in our first two years, eventually we were asked to major, to focus on that which primarily appeals to our sensibilities and likes.

So it should be. (And will be whether we like it or not,) Soon after kindergarten, let the geeks find the geeks, the cheerleaders find the football players, the homely seek the homely, the quiet seek the quiet, and the self-congratulatory seek other self-congratulatory.

This is good and natural: an over-emphasis on forced diversity or endless college courses that have no appeal--or sharing, for that matter--can quickly become very divisive. America was coceived of and works best as a melting pot, not a blender, a stew not a puree. The pursuit of happiness does not mean everyone will end their pursuit with equal desires or achievement.

Viva le difference.

I am not a racist, sexist or, for that matter, in spite of being old, am I an ageist. I like young people, middle-aged people, and old people. But I like them at any age, color or gender to listen with me to quiet jazz and Mozart, to discuss all matters intelligently and humorously, to share the ultimate ideal of objectivity (which is as hard to attain as sharing and true democratic diversity, by the way), and to avoid self-congratulation and fart jokes.

Is that too much--or more importantly, unnatural--for me to ask?

Thinking is a kind of doing...only lonlier.

2010-09-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

A Return to Politics...Sort Of

2010-08-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

Why haven't I written about politics lately? Have I become uncaring? Or am I simply tired. The problems have become intractable. The solutions are exhausting to conceive much less implement.

Oh, I've found as topic. It is political, in a sense. But it is politics in the sense of power; personal power. I believe the electorate, the culture has become lazy, selfish, flabby with the aura and expectation of entitlements.

Not just welfare, food stamps, lower taxes, medicare, social security...all of us, from Wall Street to Main Street has been in one form or another sucking at the public teat, all of us, rich and poor alike. We no longer believe we have to earn heaven, but rather we are entitled to it because we have been brought into this American world.

No longer is St. Peter standing heaven's gate, judging our entrance according to the compiled book of our deeds, but, like the last thirty years of Little League team members entitled to a trophy to have their self-esteem bolstered, no matter what their batting average is, no matter whether their team won or lost. Nonsense...what a lie; worse, what a frightful, debilitating, socially corrosive fiction.

The American dream is no longer "work hard, be frugal and goodies can one day be yours," but rather "get it on credit, and work as little as possible to pay it back...and if you disagree with that you a fascist." The constitution is no longer a guarantee to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" but an entitlement to "Life, Liberty and Happiness": I am born, I have a right, I deserve, I am entitled.

That is a lie. No right is automatic. All national rights and privileges --dare I include duties and responsibilities--are a group decision; an agreement among members how to treat each other.

Welfare, food stamps, lower taxes, obscene profits, medicare and social security are not unalienable rights; they are acts of social charity, and a just society must work hard to be able to afford those acts. True charity blesses the charity-giver with self respect; but the charity-receiver must recognize that first someone must work hard and well, and deny themselves before charity can occur; the receiver must be grateful his societies fellow members, and say thank you; or the charity-giver will feel like a fool...and, unfortunate for both, will soon start giving.)

President Lyndon Johnson famously said "Politics is the art of the possible," (not be forgotten is that he also said "Politics is a contact sport"). We Americans must remember that this a great political experiment called democratic America will only be continue to be a happy fact due to our recognition that we are not entitled to any of it; we must, as Thomas Jefferson reminded us over two hundred years ago, continue to deserve it...through our hard work and communal civility, humility, and charity and dignity.

If not, America and Americans be only be "entitled to"--and deserve--social disintegration and American dissolution.

"If you are young and not a liberal, you have no heart; when you are old and are not a conservative, you have no brain."

2010-08-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

Sofia and Tooth #2

2010-08-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

A week ago, the tooth fairy left Sofia a dollar under her pillow for her lost baby tooth #1.

Tooth #2 came loose two days ago. Unfortunately, the experience surrounding lost tooth #2 was going to be more complicated. Sofia swallowed it. "Mommy! Mommy! Somebody at school told me I have two tooth holes in my mouth. I must have lost another tooth." "Where is it?" Mommy asked. "I must have swallowed it!...What will I do about the tooth fairy?!!" Mommy thought fast on her feet. "The tooth fairy will know you lost a tooth." "No, she won't. How will she know?" "We'll leave a note under the pillow." So Sofia wrote. "Dear tooth fairy: I lost my tooth." Only the tooth fairy must have been tired that night, and went to sleep without visiting Sofia. No dollar was left for missing tooth #2. "Mommy, Mommy," Sofia exclaimed, coming down for breakfast, "the tooth fairy didn't come." She was about to cry. A well-rested Mommy said: "Don't worry. We'll leave another note tonight. There were probably a lot of teeth from a lot of children falling out last night and the tooth fairy just couldn't make it." Sofia bought that explanation; barely. That night, she made sure the note remained under the pillow. But no tooth fairy, again. Breakfast was not a calm affair. Mommy explained: "The tooth fairy must really have been busy...or maybe fell asleep. Tooth fairies get very tired from all that travelling. Just like Mommy sometimes gets tired from travelling?" Sofia was beside herself with worry. Maybe the tooth fairy wouldn't come. She wrote a more extended note this time: "Dear Tooth Fairy: I'm sorry. I swallowed my tooth. At the back-to-school pot luck picnic." That night, the tooth fairy arrived, and, the next morning, all was well. The very contrite tooth fairy was off the hook. Tune in for more tooth fairy travels and tooth adventure #3...

Are you someone easy to like, but difficult to love; or someone easy to love, but difficult to like?

2010-08-27T16:36:00.000-07:00

Sofia, the Tooth Fairy and the Rest of Us

2010-08-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

The phone rang and I picked it up. I said "Hello." It was Sofia; chirpy and excited. "Grandfather...Grandfather...(I know it was important. Grandpa was too casual a greeting)...The Tooth Fairy is going to come tonight!! The tooth fairy!" My mind quickly caught up to her. A few weeks ago during her visit to us in California, she had had a loose tooth. It was the first about-to-fall-out baby tooth. I chirped back into the phone. "Did your tooth come out? "Yes, yes...just now!" "Did it hurt?" But her mind was churning faster than such mundane concerns. "No, no" she said dismissively..."The tooth Fairy is coming tonight! And I've got to keep my eyes closed and not see her! THE TOOTHFAIRY, Grandfather!" After a long pause, she was done with me. "Let me talk to Grammy!""

I handed over the phone and glowed with happiness and contentment.

We need myths. Myths arise out of the collective unconscious. They are truer than truth. More essential.

What is the truth? That human existence is nothing but a separate universe of molecules, the universe itself an unending expansion of energy, and we humans, a mere molecule with the molecule we call a universe. I thought of her father, the intellectuals intellectual, the historian, the scientist, my daughter Mishi, Sofia's Momma, the truth-seeker, the prize winning investigative journalist, I thought of myself, a non-believer except in the grandeur and glory of life itself, I thought of Grammy, cynic wrapped in naivete...and I thought of Sofia, ecstatic with a lie, a fiction, a make-believe myth...the greatest truth of all.

What would we all be without our lies? The universe would be a far sorrier place, and our lives within it far, far emptier...we would be molecules with sub-molecules inside or out.

Long live Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. May they live until the universe ends, or at least as long as humans are part of it. Tomorrow I can't wait to find out what the Tooth fairy left under the pillow for Sofia. I hope she kept her eyes closed. It will make my life's myth even more worth living.

The Sun Comes Out Again

2010-08-13T16:41:00.000-07:00

I have been absent from these pages for a long time now, There are good reasons, and there are bad. The good reasons are that I have been visiting with Sofia, my granddaughter, and my beautiful daughter Mishi at my home in California, FOR TWO GLORIOUS WEEKS!! and I have also put the finishing touches on an acting book (one in progress for forty years!) The bad reason is that I am overwhelmed with thoughts and ideas...too many. I read the newspapers every day and they infuriate me on some primitive level. The articles are often false, which is fine on one level--everyone has a right to their opinion--but that falseness is corrosive in another respect: the absence of ANY truth seeking commonness. I like an argument as well as the next person, but there must be some adjudicator, some judge and jury, some standard to measure the validity of our internecine public battles. There seems to be no sense of intellectual shame any longer. Shame in public discourse used to serve as guilt does in private matters, as the glue that binds the divided heart. It is gone, replaced by self-righteousness and ignorant certainty. The Right and Left are both on the edge of their own cliff, threatening to careen arrogantly to their own certain shoals below. Power, and entitlement, seems to be the only rallying cry, the only element we as a disintegrating culture all assent to: I, me, my and mine seem to be the only pronouns still operative and valued; you and yours, much less we and ours seems banished to an ancient time, a time when civility, the search for truth and a sense of common quest and purpose united us. There is no United States any longer; no boundaries to our self-centeredness. There is no common pie any longer, just a million pieces grasping greedily to devour themselves and grow larger. Language has lost its purpose to define and create agreement; it now is used to obfuscate and cheat. Words are omitted from a sentence to shade the truth into self-fulfilling argument; language is debased; twitter, the vocabulary of twits, rules the shorthand world of supposed communication, to let everyone know who I am and what I'm doing, be it ever banal and self-posturing. Citizen has become resident; duty, obligation, and love of country has become words of derision; gender, like nation, refuses to accept any boundaries or rules; we fight each other to support our individual specialness without blinding ourselves to our common humanity.

Fortunately for you, dear reader, and for me, spilling out with disappointment and sadness, my wife has entered the room and told me the sun is shining and we should go to the beach for a picnic. I heartily agree. I love the sun. I love the beach. I love picnics, I love my wife. I love you. I love God and country. And I certainly don't want to debate whether these latter two are real or simply figments of our imagination.

The sun is shining and I am writing this blog again.

Being Left Behind is Harrrrrd on Sofia

2010-07-16T16:11:00.000-07:00

About three week's ago, Sofia's Mommy, my lovely daughter Mishi, came to visit my wife and I in LA for a day and a half. Her visit was at the tail end of attending a two and a half day convention of investigative journalists in Las Vegas. Her visit to us her parents meant she would be away from Sofia, her daughter and our granddaughter, for "four WHOLE days", as Sofia might phrase it.

On the night of Mishi's final day in LA, she, my wife and I visited the home of an old friend of ours, Katherine, a former teacher at Mishi's childhood school.

We had a delightful time visiting with her and her husband, Dale; and as we started the short drive back home, Grammy felt the need to call Sofia on the cell phone. Immediately.

(LONG BACK STORY NOTE to conversation: For the whole four days Mishi had been away, Sofia had complained of a sore tummy. Her Popi, who was overseeing her at home, was of course worried that something serious was wrong, and was in constant telephone conference with Mommy, both in Las Vegas and in LA. Grammy, of course, couldn't keep herself out of the issue. She was in daily contact with Sofia and Popi over the phone, getting reports and giving advice.

It seems Sofia did not attend school during that period, saying she was too much in pain. The question, of course, was whether Sofia was truly sick with a bug, or mildly discomforted by constipation (the menu was somewhat erratic without Mommy helping with the cooking)--which meant Sofia should have gone to school, or "doing a number" on Popi because of Mommy being away. Opinions varied.

Once a fever had been ruled out by Popi placing a thermometer in Sofia's mouth, Mommy and Grandpa tended to see constipation as the prognosis, Popi and Grammy leaned to a more serious problem, hence Popi allowing Sofia to stay at home.

Back to the cell phone call.)

Grammy (concerned but bubbly--Grammy is always bubbly when talking to Sofia): "How are you, sweetheart?"

Sofia (low and drawn-out voice): "Not good. My tummy hurrrts."

Grammy (still bubbly, still rambling on): "We just were visiting Katherine and Dale. Remember them [from a former visit Sofia made to California]? They said to say hello."

Sofia: [Silence}

Grammy" "We had a wonderful time."

Sofia: "I'm bored. (after a long pause) It's more fun when Mommy's here."

Grammy: "Well, guess what? Mommy is getting on the plane first thing tomorrow morning."

Sofia: (emphatically) "Tell her get on the plane NOW."

Grammy: "Her ticket is for tomorrow."

Sofia: "Tell her to get another ticket."

Grammy: "She can't do it. It would cost too much money."

Sofia was silent. Then:

Grammy: "You want to talk to Mommy?

Sofia: (Even more silence)

Grammy handed the phone to Mishi, who glumly and guiltily got on the phone.

******************

The next day Mommy got on the plane.

Sofia's sore tummy was somewhat better when Mommy got home; and and even better when Sofia went to the potty.

Put off was the question of Sofia not attending school while constipated but without a fever. Hugs and hellos and kisses rules the moment.

Mommy re-inforced the rule later that night: "No fever, you go to school."

The next day a phone called arrived at Gammy's and Grandpa's house.

Sofia: "Mommy's home! and guess what, Grammy? I had a poopy. It was harrrrd."

The moral to this fable: "Loving, and leaving, and being left behind, is harrrrrd on Sofia...and Mommy".

I'll be Damned. What a Small World.

2010-07-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

From today's news concerning the FBI agent testimony at the trial of former Illinois Governor Blagojevich:

"...two government witnesses, business executives Robert Williams and Michael Winter, testified that they had worked at a company owned by convicted political fixer Tony Rezko following Blagojevich's 2002 election, when Patti Blagojevich received a $12,000-a-month consulting fee from the firm for seven months.

"The two men testified that she showed up at the company only occasionally, often with her children in tow, and never seemed to take any major part in the development firms projects.

"Williams said Rezko told him he wanted to find ways of getting money to Patti Blagojevich."

Rezko! Tony Rezko??! Wasn't that the guy who, at about the same time he was helping Blogojevich, aided President Obama (when he was Illinois State Senator) to buy his home in Chicago and buy the adjacent lot so nobody could build next door to it?

The Promise of Sofia

2010-06-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

My daughter Mishi just told me on the phone today: good news! She and Sofia are arriving for vacation at our house on July 24th; to be followed by the arrival of Popi a week later. My mind sets to racing. Grammy and I will have to schedule all Sofia's favorite places: on the way home from the airport, we'll stop at the bowling alley and its adjacent restaurant for our usual pancakes and syrup; and while waiting for the food to arrive, Sofia and I will play the arcade games in the bowling alley's back room. Then the next day we'll to go the park, or maybe the pool (which pool? Rustic Canyon or Annenberg?), to be followed by the Santa Monica beach; and at night maybe the Pacific Palisades library for book readings. Then we'll go to the pier, the merry-go-round; then, maybe late at night, Sofia and I will pack ourselves in the car and go chase the moon, hopefully it will be full and magical when she is here; then...oh my God...oh my God...oh my God...foolish old man. Feel your mind racing...your heart a-flutter, your breath suspended; then gulped in deep draughts...she's no longer a baby, a toddler, a little girl! How stupid can you be? Don't you remember the pictures Popi Jorge sent you?! She a big girl now; the tallest one in class. Maybe she doesn't want to do those things anymore?! She's now six years of age, entering the first grade in the fall. She's learning to read and write. You have the visual proof, old man. She is not that little girl any more, the one who sat in your arms, cuddled up while you protected her from the world. You have the picture, the one that your lovely Mishi took in the back yard: Sofia so small, so tiny, her blankey and your arms covering her. Remember? You were ready to to kill, to maim. You were Grandpa; the old man of the mountain, the hirer of assassins. How can she grow? How can she possibly not need me anymore? Is the past just ritual now, to be re-experienced but not lived? Where has time gone? Where has her youth flown? Where is yesterday? Show me the craven crack it has crawled into. I will crushed into a fine powder, to be blown into nothingness. I want it back...the magic of tomorrow and innocence. Mine? Hers? All of ours?...Stop!!! Stop!! Banish. Banish old man. No more sorrow, the brimming tears. The cheap philosophical hand-wringing. Tomorrow is coming, a soon-to-be yellow arising of hope, eagerly awaited. Haven't you learned the lesson yet? The past is not to lament. It is to serve only as a guide, a teaching experience, a preparation for tomorrow. Grandpa, Grandpa, Grandpa...It is June. Then July. Then July 24th! Sofia and her beautiful Mommy will arrive...in whatever form, whatever dimension. They are both ours, born of us, Grandpa's and Grammy's, ours to behold, and loved forever, beyond form, years, and shape and even death...timeless, eternal. Love itself.

Of Immigrants and Chocolate

2010-06-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

My friend the Cynic is having problems with the increasing and abundant flow of illegal immigration. He says one-on-one, he likes the illegal immigrants, sweet people, for the most part. But, like chocolate, it's great a piece at a time, but if too much is jammed down your throat, isn't it only natural to gag and spit it out.

Consciousness

2010-06-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

Consciousness is self-awareness of our own life being played out by universal forces beyond our control; a cognitive awareness that seduces and confuses us into the illusion of personal choice and command.

Minus X Minus = Plus

2010-06-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

My friend the Cynic was asked the secret of his marital longevity. He said: "Stubbornness. Neither one of us wants to admit we made a mistake." He then added: "I've got a friend whose been married even longer. He says he and his wife stay together because they both know they would have done even worse with somebody else."

The New Civil War (War Between the States), circa 2010

2010-06-15T15:40:00.000-07:00

Wait a minute! Something's illogical here: Arizona passes a tough, new law aimed at uncovering and deporting illegal aliens. Los Angeles, CA, USA, disliking the Arizona law very intensely, states it is going to declare economic war (stop doing convention business) with Arizona. A sovereign US county is going to war with a sovereign US state on behalf of foreign nationals??!! Never mind "Doctors Without Borders"; is LA saying we now have "Nations Without Borders?" Please, someone, help me with my confusion.

My wife says that my friend R. is a user; I say he has nothing to give.

2010-06-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

If, as some philosophers aver, the universe is infinite, maybe I AM the center of it.

2010-06-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman is the Salieri of economists.

2010-06-09T15:40:00.000-07:00

Sofia and Leah King

2010-06-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

"Hi, Grandpa!" Sofia my granddaughter, age six, said sprightly over the phone yesterday.

"Hi, sweetheart. What are you doing today?" I replied, with that little joyful heart flutter the her voice usually inspires in me.

"Listening to Leah King," she said happily. I could hear the CD in the background.

A little back story: Leah King is a singer/songwriter in Los Angeles. Smooth and silky as velvet. She also happens to be an acting student of mine who once gave me a CD of some of her songs. About a year ago, on one of Sofia's visits to Grammy and Grandpa, I pulled it out of my CD pile and thought Sofia, who loves music, might like to hear Leah King sing.

She did; and obviously charmed by Ms. King's voice played the CD over and over again.

When her Popi, ever the researcher, who was also visiting, asked her if she liked Leah King because she sounded like Nora Jones, another favorite of Sofia's, Sofia answered: "No. I like her because she sounds like Leah King."

Back to the present.

A year has passed. And Leah King has continued to be, along with Shakira, Sofia's favorite..

Another piece of other back story: I had also recently sent Sofia two autographed pictures of Leah King, which Sofia had requested long ago and I had been derelict, until recently, to request from Ms. King and send to Sofia. On one of the pictures Leah King explicitly promised to write a song for Sofia. "I promise," Ms. King graciously wrote.

Over the phone: "Thank you for the pictures of Leah King," Sofia said to me, even more chirpily. "You're welcome. Did you like them?"

"Yes. Grandpa," she said with heartfelt gratitude. "when I come out in August with Mommy and Popi, I want to go to Leah King's house."

"Well," I said, "I don't think that would be the proper thing to do. But I could invite Leah over to our house. That might be possible. Would you like that?"

I could hear the excitement and anticipation in Sofia's voice. "Oh, yes, Grandpa (underline yes)."

Our conversation went on to other things: school and swimming and friends.

"Grandpa, Mommy is going to take a work trip soon. She is going to Las Vegas."

"Yes, I know. Then she's going to come to Los Angeles to visit Grammy and me."

"Is she going to meet Leah King?"

"No. I don't think so."

After a long pause: "Don't let her meet Leah King," she said quickly and firm.

Another long pause: "She can't meet Leah King until I meet her in August. Okay, Grandpa?"

"Okay," I said.

She decided to believe me. "Okay. Love you, Grandpa. Want to talk to Mommy?" The question was more a goodbye than a legitimate seeking of my affirmation.

She handed the phone to Mommy Mishi, my lovely daughter.

Sofia was gone, Sofia, the vapor, gone as magically as she had arrived.

Just before I spoke to my daughter, I thought: of such stuff stalkers are made; it was all my fault. Mishi's laughter on the other end of the phone corroborated my fears: I better get Leah King to dinner in August or I will be the stalked.

Tortured Logic

2010-06-03T23:26:00.001-07:00

Tortured Logic is when you have to torture someone to accept your logic.