Over the weekend I traveled to north Georgia to help congratulate and celebrate my nephew's high school graduation. And being absent from the world o' blogs for three days is akin to missing 6 months of work. But it was time well spent away from the virtual world and immersed into the real one.
Sitting on the lawn of my nephew's prep school Saturday morning as the sharp blue skies and warm sun was overhead was a fine thing. I became even more convinced he is far better prepared for life post-high school than I was. He's already earned numerous accolades and awards for his many achievements and he's been one of the smartest and most talented folks I know for many years anyway. Though he might be a bit perplexed at all the hoopla and excitement and by what a proper reaction to such might be, events again made me realize that while I made good use of the many freedoms that high school liberation provided, mostly I simply raced out into the world with a reckless abandon. But as I told him, I don't think there is such a thing as the Right Way to handle all the coming changes.
(I was kind of proud of myself too, as I never caved in to making an obscure movie reference with the joke of saying "My boy, I just have one word to say to you - plastics.")
It occurred to me as well while listening to the commencement speech that perhaps the adult world needs a regular schedule of commencement exercises as adulthood marches past. First, the value of ritual events heralding notches in time could add much needed sign-posts that we humans sort of require. Commencements give a shape and form to the ideas of "You started here, you went through this, and now you're headed here."
Second, adults could get that sense of being part of a community effort, much like being a part of a particular class of seniors, which makes achievements at many levels, and that your community will continue to progress further, with some changes to that community taking place as well.
Now I have no solid concept of how to create a criteria for organizing such Adult Commencements . Some might say that events such as annual meetings for Rotarians or Elk Lodge members, or the occasional retreats of your corporate business might be the contemporary version of Adult Commencements.
It's just that as we provide these events more and more for our young people, with commencement events being held for the transition from kindergarten to first grade, from elementary to middle school, from middle school to high school, from high school to work or college, and the many levels of college, those events are more likely absent for the rest of our lives.
We do have the Marriage Commencement events, and the Birth of Children Commencements (and even the Divorce Commencements), but most of the other milestones we have are of a more nebulous social construction which is far harder to perceive. The social conventions seem to change from year to year. And high school/college reunion events seem more an opportunity for renewals of previous commitments to alcohol consumption, or realizations that we've mystically morphed into new shapes and forms.
I've even begun to ponder attending some high school or college commencements at random from now on as each Spring converts to Summer, simply to participate in well-ordered rituals marking change. Each Spring I could be regaled with messages that not only had I endured, but that the Future was utterly open and ripe with Hope, that I have Time to manifest my own personal Destiny. Those notions often get nudged aside as we age.
So here's a toast to the graduates - to full lives, to the known and the unknown, to the world you will all be creating. And if you wish to take some time to wander just now, enjoy that too. If I've learned anything as I make the daily steps from Youth to Old Age, it's that everything we experience is useful even if we think at the time it is not. Cheers!
An arrest last week in Nashville of a 16 year old boy from California has left me pondering many questions. Headlines and TV reports across the country said the teen, flying on Southwest Airlines, was "foiled" in a "botched hijacking" attempt of the airline. Some seriously mistaken reports claimed the teen was going to make the plane crash into a Hannah Montana concert - even though the teen was flying on a Tuesday and the concert in Louisiana was on Saturday. So short of some astonishing time-travel, Hannah was never in danger.
The press reported the teen was in possession of three items, none banned on planes, to effect the "hijack" - a pair of handcuffs, some duct tape and some yarn. The yarn was first reported to be rope, but it was just yarn. Also curious were claims the teen had a "mock cockpit" in his home in California, but no, it was "a photograph of the inside of a small airplane" according to Nashville prosecutor Jon Seaborg.
On Friday, a Nashville judge charged the teen with "juvenile misconduct' and he was sent home - and home is apparently in a small suburb of San Francisco, called Novato.
"It could have been interpreted as harmless or a joke, but it still (is) something we have to take seriously. Whether anything could realistically be carried out is irrelevant," Seaborg said in a prepared statement Friday afternoon." (Perhaps I should ask for some follow-up on this story from Brittney Gilbert, who is now working as a blogger for KPIX in San Fran.)
Anyway, the reports all sort of indicated that the FBI and the TSA had varying accounts of the incident. And let's say the teen did have some actual plan involving handcuffs, yarn and tape. But he apparently took no overt action, so it's pretty tough to imagine how he might have sought to use the items. I was glad to read the judge in Nashville drop charges significantly and send the boy home.
The reporting sure seems a bit hysterical but it does indicate something afoot in the minds of law enforcement - that something you might be thinking about could be a cause for arrest. And that idea has been bugging me since I read about it.
When discussing the incident with some friends, we decided that it takes very little to cause massive leaps in logic to label actions as a threat of terrorism or some other nefarious act of mass destruction. It's as if there is a persistent belief that any one among us could be mere moments away for an act of horrifying destruction.
It's the all or nothing days, as if we live in the most fragile realities and the stakes are higher than a world series of Texas Hold 'Em.
Many times in recent weeks and months, I've read local online news accounts of a wide range of alleged criminal acts and it seems the comments on such reports from the general public take about a nanosecond to decide that the suspect involved should be publicly tortured or maybe just given a hanging or other types of fierce punishments. The thought I am left with most after encountering such items is that the dubiously empowered "court of public opinion" has much in common with the ignorant and superstitious purges of a medieval-era of madness.
Our ready-made suspicions make it difficult to identify all the things that are right with the world, and focus instead on nameless dreads and invisible enemies. Blame for every evil is pointed at The Republicans, The Democrats, at Hispanics, at children, at music, at TV and movies, at Anything Even The Tiniest Amount Not-Me.
I'm more than ready to move away from the Monsters On Maple Street neighborhood and return to less fearful times.
"I just need to quickly write 8 random facts/habits about myself, then tag 8 people. If I tag you, you had better play."
Okey doke, I'm on it, NC.
1 -- First, I must say a random fact is that right here on the floor by my foot there has been a copy of "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III" in the Uncut VHS version and it has been there for months now. It has not moved and I've been watching it daily and it just stays right where it is. I don't think I've watched anything on VHS on more than two years ... wait, no, I take that part back. I did watch my VHS copy of John Woo's "Hard Boiled" about two weeks ago. When Chow Yun-Fat plays a cop named Tequila and ends up rescuing babies from a maternity ward during a bajillion-gun slo-mo shoot-out, you have some serious entertainment. Viggo Mortensen is in "Leatherface" and the movie features the line "The Saw Is Family" but I still have yet to place that VHS in the VCR and watch it, so it just lays there like some demented dust-bunny.
2 -- Can a habit be random? I must remember to think about that.
3 -- This year I have not been fishing yet, which is a habit I used to have more intensely. I love to go fishing and am surrounded by some most excellent lakes. So I will have to go to it soon. Have I ever told you about the time I went fishing and lost my pants and had to run naked to my truck? It is a true story. I was crossing a dry (I thought) spot in the lake-bed one December day en route to my truck at a nearby state park. The not-dry lake-bed suddenly became an evil mud-bog and I was suddenly stuck chest-deep in the mud. Fearing for my life, the only safety tip I could think of was about what to do if you fell through some ice into a lake, which was to flatten my arms and what was unstuck of my upper body across the muddy ground. So I sank no further. I let go of my tackle box, which was in one hand, and used my fishing pole in the other hand to attempt to leverage my body out of the muck.
That's when I felt my sneakers go. Ah well, I thought, there is no getting those back as 70 percent of my body was still beneath the ground. I could see my truck, about 80 yards away, taunting me. Again, I used my fishing rod to leverage me up and that's when it started -- my jeans slid off of my backside and weirdly cool mud mingled freely with my nether regions and I stopped moving immediately sensing like a bona-fide psychic what would soon be my future mud-slimed naked self standing near the boat ramp of a state park.
I pondered my options for the next few moments. I noted the utter absence of any other people nearby and then considered trying to snake an arm down into the vice-like grip of mud surrounding me to snag the jeans. Putting more of me back into the muck was not an option. With great relief, I recalled that my wallet and my keys to the truck were in my tackle box, which was above ground. I took a deep breath and did what had to be done. Like those earthworms I had, at times, used as bait, I wriggled up from the dirt and mud inch by inch until I had a naked knee on the ground and the wind whipped about my muddy butt. As all of my legs emerged, the hole closed up behind me as if it never existed, my jeans and shoes forever a part of the earth's crust.
I stood for a moment, wearing only a muddy t-shirt, feeling like a primeval creature who dared approach the world bipedally. Snapping back into reality, I bolted for the truck somehow opening my tackle box in mid-flight to get my keys out. And then I realized that even once I reached the sanctuary of my vehicle, I still faced about a 15 minute ride home through heavy commuter traffic naked and covered in lake mud. Also, the impending naked run from truck to house. This was not over. I never veered from my goal, however. I was nakedly committed to finishing this episode. Suffice to say that driving naked was kinda fun, but not fun like you might repeat the act. True, I may have smiled more at the vehicles around me as I steered through school zones and shopping districts, especially when I was stopped at traffic lights. Finally home, I appreciated the usefulness of pants in a new way and to this day know that the lake ate my jeans and sneakers with extreme prejudice. Still, I survived to tell this tale.
4 -- Wow that last point was way to long. As a rule though, I have never ever fished naked. Just went home naked once.
5 -- I must remember to ask the guy at the record store when the new Beastie Boys is coming out. I wanna get that. Their new one will be an all instrumental album and those boys can play some funky grooves. (I really should not have told that story about me being naked.)
6 -- Really, I'm thinking I should not have told that.
7 -- This isn't going well is it? it's turned from a random fact/habit list into something else, but on the plus side, I'm almost done.
8 -- Whew! I reached number 8 and am almost done here. OK, one more random fact/habit. Ummm ... how about .... I collect old post cards and ... nope, all I can think now is how embarrassed I am that I told that naked fishing episode. Damn.
OK, that's my fulfillment of the Newscoma Directive. Next -- name some other blog writers to take on this project. How about:
There are too many topics rattling around in my own head today, some are fine and good things, some are ugly and idiotic. What follows is, obviously, the result of what I just said.
1. Big ole' Happy Happy Birthday wishes to one of my favorite places to read and discuss just about everything. Brittney runs the Nashville is Talking blog and it's her consistent effort to provide a wide range of topics to discover, pictures to marvel at, people and things to laugh at, provide a forum for all kinds of viewpoints and she's mighty expert at calling BS when something is just that - BS. Happy B-Day!
2. I've recently found another fascinating place to read about all things Appalachian. Hillbilly Savants has a staggering amount of information, links to bajillions of newspaper, television and radio sites, bloggers from across the South, colleges, research and policy groups, a hefty list of contributors and much, much more. Exhaustive work is evident here. The topics cover culture and politics and tall tales of the region, history, science - you name it. I was more than honored to find they linked to this humble but lovable blog, too. How they describe themselves: "This blog is about our Appalachia - the real one, not the Hollywood-stereotype nor the third-world nation-esque stereotype being sold by do-gooders, or even the neo-Romantic sylvan stereotype that Rousseau would probably buy into. It should be interesting."
3. I noticed too at Hillbilly Savants they have an image made by Tennessee Jed:
In explaining a little bit about himself in the above-linked post, Jed offers the following:
"I don't like being over charged, over taxed, tricked with schemes and lawyers, underpaid, under served, under appreciated, neglected, ignored, belittled, deceived or anything that takes from me without asking in a very real and obvious manner. If a subject takes too much haggle after the fact then it most likely is purely designed to fool the lesser gifted sorts like Jed. I will call them out in my normal "whiney-assed-wish-things-were different" way that is my own. I think that capitalism has reached a plateau in America where some aspects need to be changed to protect workers/consumers from legalistic loophole side stepping. If this sort of thinking makes me a socialist-pinko-commie, then so be it. It doesn't need be another law or ethics committee (we got too many that ain't workin'), it needs to be a matter of known fact, obvious really: take no more than you need from your dealings, examine your needs daily. Do it because you care and want to make a fair place for your babies (or any beloved ones) to live and grow. Turn the soil fine for your land, don't show up for the harvest and leave. Make someplace your real home and it will pay off. It appears to this observer that past superpowers have fallen due to the same mistakes we are seeing/making now. Misplaced goals, it is as simple as that. Invest in people, invest in people because without them there is no market at all. Invest in exploration, because there are things to be found. Our table of elements has some open spaces, one of them might be the solution to unlock the Utopia we all seek. OK - That's the Good that's been in my head of late. Now for The Bad,
1. Bone-dumb ignorance and intentional hatred are promoted by the King of The Daily Hate, aka R. Limbaugh regarding the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech. He and his chorus of doom crusaders naturally know exactly the cause of Cho's insane rampage -- Liberal college professors, and specifically the school's English Dept. (You know, the one that had been persistently warning administrators about Cho, the one encouraging him to seek counseling.)
"For some reason -- don't ask -- I was looking at Rush Limbaugh's web site, and I saw this headline: "Can Any Good Come from V Tech Horror?" followed by this blurb: "Maybe, just maybe, we'll face the hatred for American traditions and capitalism infesting our campuses." No, I thought. No, no, no. So I clicked the link. The transcript I found quoted at length from an article called "Was Cho Taught To Hate", by one James Lewis ....
"Lewis' article would be beyond despicable even if it accurately represented the Virginia Tech English department. That it's just another hit piece against an academic department that makes precisely no attempt to characterize that department accurately, that Lewis chooses instead to treat the members of that department as mere instantiations of some "trend" that exists only in his head, and that he does this at a time when the people he uses as political props must be suffering enormously, makes it lower than dirt." Sadly, others too have jumped on the Blamewagon, like the American Family Association, who says the killings were all the fault of "lack of school prayer and video games" - they even have a video to explain it to you. Warning - watching this will induce adverse reactions.
I think you'd have to be deeply and truly uneducated to blame the violence in the world today on something that happened since 1950, like comic books, television, video games, or not voting Republican. It's been pretty damn constant in human history that a handful of reasons are at the heart of brutal violence - tribal/ethnic warfare, religion and religious intolerance, treating other humans as possessions, and there are some folk who, as Kurt Vonnegut once said, have some bad wiring in their heads.
OK, Now on the topic of the Internet.
Yes, yes, I know this post is kind of all over the place. But my brain takes the oddest paths at times.
For example. just this morning I woke up from a dream where (no lie) I was making a crowd of French people angry at me because they did not like the way I was imitating the way Maurice Chevalier sang a song called "Louise." In my dream, heck, I sounded pretty good, in my opinion.
I have no idea what that was all about. It's not like I spend much time pondering the French. Much less songs by Maurice Chevalier. And how the heck did the lyrics to that song get lodged in my memory? I will admit I watched an old French film by Jean Luc Godard, "Alphaville" the other night, but that had no reference to Maurice Chevalier.
Anyway, after I had some time to ponder that dream, I wondered if Maurice or that song had their own piece of the internet to call their own. Naturally, of course they do. Here's a video someone made in appreciation of an actress named Louise Brooks, a silent film star, set to Chevalier's singing. Funny thing too, this video was uploaded just within the last week.
PS - I cannot think of Chevalier without thinking of this scene by the Marx Brothers, where they steal Chevalier's passport and all try to pretend to be him.
