Portraits in Black and White

Each of us is a product of our age. The particular circumstances of how we're brought up -- the family that we land in, the times we're raised in, the forces that affect us along the way -- contribute to who we become as adults.

I know that from experience. For example, I react badly to civil disobedience.

I can trace this negativity toward lawlessness to a clear and obvious source: the televised unrest of the late 1960s. Watching teargassed crowds, vicious police dogs, water cannons, chanting protesters, nightsticks, police barricades, National Guardsmen and fighting in the streets scared me. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was, for me as a kid of six, a nightmare.

I had no context for it. Couldn't source the outrage. Couldn't comprehend the issues. Saw only a bunch of crazy people doing crazy things.

And now, here we are again.

My initial reaction to the wanton looting that overtook cities across the US in the aftermath of the George Floyd death was scorn. What the hell? Since when does the death of a black man halfway across America entitle the citizens of Philadelphia or Boston or New York to an armful of boxed sneakers or a new Keurig, swiped from the smashed display window?

If anything, the wholesale theft of goods undercut the entire messaging of Black Lives Matter. The takeaway seemed to be: Okay, Black Lives Matter. But to those who rampaged city business districts, the extent that they "matter" is a value equal only to an armful of sweatshirts or a plasma TV.

A law enforcement officer's prejudice took George Floyd; I'm taking this iPhone. We're even.

Thankfully, cooler heads are now prevailing, as the protests have taken a turn for the more peaceful. My echoes of late-1960s anxiety have calmed down.

In that more level-headed space, I've thought a lot about Black Lives Matter.

At first, I was dismissive: Black Lives Matter, sure, that's obvious. As do Brown Lives, Asian Lives, Muslim Lives, Christian Lives, Jewish Lives and Unborn Lives.

But then memes like the following began popping up:

And the logic behind BLM became clearer.

I thought about this in the context of the annual MS Bike Ride I participate in. Each year, I raise funds for this charity, essentially asking my donors to support my notion that MS patients matter. Each year, I could just as well be asked: Don't cancer patient lives matter? Don't drug addict lives matter? Don't heart disease lives matter?

Don't black lives matter?

Yes. Yes they do.

My focus on one health issue doesn't lessen the importance of all health issues. Our current focus on one racial component of the US doesn't lessen the importance of all racial components of the US.

I then took the logic further: The fact that we even have to assert that Black Lives Matter -- amid police brutality and white privilege and rampant Karen-ism and inner-city crime and disparate public school funding and gerrymandering -- tells us how bad things are. How in need we are of change.

I know there was racism in my background: My grandparents (my father's parents) were highly distrustful of black people, who they blamed for many of the social ills that beset their home city of Philadelphia. I remember both my grandfather and grand mother using cruel racial slurs in casual conversation.

Fortunately, that viewpoint did not seem to pass to my father. And my mother -- as a registered nurse -- learned by necessity to treat people of all backgrounds with respect and dignity. When commenting on race, she often said things like "Everybody bleeds red blood." And "Nobody's skin color matters in a hospital gown."

So I'd like to think that my own racial prejudices were filtered out. Perhaps not totally, if I'm going to be brutally honest. But I strive for that.

Where's all this going?

I hope it leads to a more just, colorblind system of law enforcement. We will never weed out all bad apples, but we can at least stop turning a blind eye to their blatant disregard for some human lives. And take swift, just action when they do.

I also hope that this discussion on the value of life can extend to the unborn. Lives matter. All lives. Even those in utero.

I know this brings up a ton of related issues. If this stance means we also launch conversations on supporting parenthood, healthcare, education, wellness, employment, equity, opportunity, community and all the other related issues to raising a wanted child, then it's time for steps in the right direction on those fronts as well.

I get it. I see it. Black lives do matter.

As If I Didn't Dislike Joe Namath Enough...

My migration from football hater to football fan has been a relatively recent thing. As a student, I can remember trying to muscle through homework on Sunday afternoons while both my parents bellowed at the gridiron action on television, specifically their Philadelphia Iggles.

From those days, I remember my Dad's dislike of Broadway Joe Namath. Dad found him too flashy, too egotistical, too much of a pretty-boy to throw his allegiance behind. Namath's appearance in pantyhose in a high-profile commercial didn't help either.

That genetic disposition aside, I've now got one more reason to grind my teeth over Joe Namath: His nonstop television commercials for a Medical Supplement Plan.

Like most Americans, I'm home now ... lot. Unlike most Americans, I've been home longer than the pandemic called, having been tossed from my full-time job back in November. That's six months, folks, of job hunting, which fills much of my time, but certainly not all of it.

And I'm not exactly proud to admit this, but I will: Much of my downtime between searches on LinkedIn and Indeed has been taken watching television. Where Namath's mug extols the virtues of "prescription drug coverage and even rides to and from doctor's appointments" in a seemingly endless loop.

I can say, however, that he's not the worst offender. Liberty Mutual -- whose ads I've liked in the past (including the one with the clueless beefcake actor who can't get his lines right) -- has one that's a parody of cop-chase-scenes in countless movies and TV shows. But for some reason that I don't quite get, the officer giving chase has as a partner an emu (!). This commercial starts with a police siren, for which the producers opted for the cheesiest sound effect in history. It sounds like an 8-year-old blowing a birthday-party horn-favor until his cheeks turn purple.

Perhaps my over-exposure to these ads results from the shows I'm watching. I've been enjoying reruns of such 1970s staples as What's My Line? and The Waltons.

The former is the 1970s edition, where host John Charles Daley was replaced by Larry Blyden and black-and-white shooting was replaced by color. However, there's something appealing to me about a game show where intelligent conversation and probing questioning takes place in a quiet, suit-ad-tie setting (if you can forgive Soupy Sales' occasional mugging). No screaming audience members; no blazing lights; no set-pieces that mimic theme-park rides; no six-figure payouts.

The latter (The Waltons) just makes me feel good. It's a worthy reminder that bad times end, that people persevere and that there's a lot to be said for faith and family.

They're both almost worth putting up with Joe Namath.

One thing in all of the above is clear. I need to get back to work. Not just intellectually but financially, socially and psychologically.

Hopefully soon!

Happy Knee Year

Climb every mountain; ford every stream.

Thank you, Rogers and Hammerstein, for encapsulating pretty well where I am right now.

In the midst of an ongoing job hunt, I'm on the mend from a knee replacement. Or, conversely, in the midst of a knee replacement recovery, I'm on the job hunt (so yes, PA Unemployment Compensation Office, I am still actively seeking work as directed, just in case you monitor recipients' social accounts).

The declining status of my right knee necessitated its replacement. This joint has been deteriorating for some time now. I remember trying to navigate London in 2018, when we went to visit Daughter Claire who was studying abroad, and suffering mightily. London is definitely a walking city -- steps to/from the Underground, wandering museums, standing in queues -- and I had a tough time.

I wasn't quite aware of what my specific knee problem was, but shortly after arriving home, I knew I needed to see someone about it.

Turns out, the meniscus was just about gone, worn away to almost nothing. So all that grinding I was feeling was the femur coming into direct contact with the tibia. Ouch, right?

My Osteo guy tried some short-term fixes, a series of gel injections that bought me some time. And they worked, for a bit. But eventually, the deterioration continued apace, and a more permanent solution was needed.

So now, I've got a bionic knee on the right. And might be due one on the left, if that one continues having issues. Oh, the joys of aging.

Spent one night in the hospital recovering -- a first for me, which is a good thing, I guess, to have made it to 57 without ever spending a night in a hospital.

And now, I'm clunking around the house with a walker, sticking to doctor's orders, trying not to be a total pest to the rest of the family and managing my pain as best as possible.

I know Day Two will be better than Day One, and Day Three even better than that. Looking forward to feeling great, regaining my mobility, getting back to my music ministry (currently being paused, can't imagine trying to navigate a pedalboard with my limitations) and returning to full-time work.

I've really had my spirits lifted by the number of family and friends reaching out to see how I'm doing. It means a lot. And my immediate family has been very patient and helpful. Parker, FWIW, won't leave my side.

2019 was not a total annis horribilus for us -- yes, we're watching The Crown on Netflix and loving every episode. But it definitely ended with a whimper.

2020, as I see it now, has nowhere to go but up.

To the Moon, Alice. To the Moon!

"Boys.... Boys: Wake up."

I remember this call very, very faintly. It was my mother.

And it was around midnight, Eastern Standard Time.

And it was July 21, 1969.

Blinking and shielding our eyes from the light, we padded down the hall to my parents bedroom, where the TV was.

And on the screen was a fuzzy, blurry, black-and-white image of ... I wasn't really sure. I was, after all, only six years old.

But what really struck me -- and what remains memorable these 50 years later -- is what my mother said to me and my brothers: "I want you to see this. I want you to be able to tell your grandchildren you saw man land on the moon."

I'm not sure what drove my mom to be such a fan of the space program. I can only guess that it was her fandom of President Kennedy, who kicked this effort up big time before his assassination.

My dad was equally as interested, working in Naval Aeronautics his entire career. He was wowed by the engineering of it all.

He was also pretty conversant on the nighttime sky. He liked pointing out the constellations to us, whose shapes he learned at sea. Topside on a ship at night, he claimed, enabled even the most faint of faraway stars to stand out like a diamond on a black cloth.

He also told me to look for the man in the moon by imagining it was like the logo for the Jackie Gleason Show. I took him literally, and was trying to see Ralph Kramden in a surface of vague pits and crevasses.

Can't tell you how old I was before I finally discerned the man in the moon.

As the following years unspooled, man in space, man on moon became more common. I remember the advertising associated with it, specifically Tang (even though the stuff had been around since the late 1950s). And I remember things like the lunar rover.

CBS on Saturday Mornings ran a show called In the News, which was a two-minute recap of national stories that the producers thought would be interesting to kids. Christopher Glenn was the host, and the show would be nestled into the lineup of cartoons. Many of these reports centered on the space program into the 1970s (lots of coverage on Skylab), and I well remember waiting for them to be over to get back to "Archie" and "The Groovy Ghoulies."

When we went as a family to Walt Disney World in 1973, Dad worked in a side-trip to Cape Kennedy. And in all honesty -- after a handful of days of audio animatronic attractions, stellar fireworks, elaborate parades, amazing restaurants, and character interactions -- I was bored to death looking at rocket towers and gigantic warehouses.

(Always thought we should have flipped those trips, done the space stuff first, then gone to Disney. Eh. Hindsight.)

The space program faded somewhat from my consciousness after that, until the Challenger disaster in 1986.

Since then, I've hoped we could recapture the technological oomph (and the budgetary resources) to get back into space. It's currently resurfacing as an idea in Washington (Space Force. Yes!! Even if it sounds like a cheesy Sci-Fi TV series), but I doubt it has the public support to find funding, especially under the current administration.

Still, I'm grateful for that midnight call to come and stand in front of the TV set. I may not remember every detail to tell my grandkids.

But I remember some.

And I look upward a the full moon often.

And somehow see Jackie Gleason.

Plots but No Plotzing

Gad, it's hot.

High temp is expected to soar to a feel-like 100 degrees plus over the next few days.

When we were kids, 100 years ago, days like these usually meant an afternoon at our nearby swim club. Or hunkering down in front of a fan in the living room for a marathon Scrabble game.

But I also remember escaping the heat by riding my bike to the local library.

Not only was the library a place of access to a seemingly unlimited number of books, which was appealing on its own because of my love of reading. But it was also air conditioned! 

Which meant blissful browsing. Novels in Nirvana. Plots but no plotzing!

The bike ride was about two miles from home. Traffic made it generally safe, but there was a point where one of the road squeezed its lanes together as an underpass beneath an old trolly line. I remember that section requiring extra attention, given the close proximity between handlebars and passenger doors.

Once inside the library, I was in another world. A cool, quiet place with nothing but reading material as far as the eye could see.

I remember often pulling books from the shelves and, in a burst of enthusiasm to start, sitting down in the aisle and starting to read. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I finished a book before I even had the chance to take it home.

Each summer, the library would embark on a campaign to encourage reading throughout the school recess. These efforts were usually embodied by some method of tracking the books kids had read; I know one year, we were given an empty U.S. map, and each read book was logged by getting a sticker (a cluster of a few states, as the Library didn't expect us to read 50 books between early June and late August). 

Participants who filled their entire map were awarded a small prize and the honor of having their maps -- or whatever the monitoring artwork was -- hung on a library wall.

I can't recall a single tchotchke I received; I only know that I'd have my paper done well before July 4, and often before the library had received its supply of prizes.

Didn't matter. 

I never participated for the prizes. I participated because I loved reading.
... and, well, okay, I was a little competitive.

As I got older, my visits to that library became less and less frequent. The bike was replaced by a car. Enrollment in elementary school eventually became high school and then college, where I spent an awful lot of time in the library and never earned a sticker for it.

I'm still an avid reader. The trips to the library to browse thousands of books is now a logon to the Kindle store to browse millions of books.

But the joy of escaping the heat by diving into a gripping story still has appeal.

Rockets Red Glare

I've written before about my rather obsessive love of fireworks.

I've seen some great shows in my day: July 04 displays that end with a barrage of shells made me think the night sky was noontime. And the deafening explosions rang in my ears until I'd finished the long walk back to the car.

One memorable show was on the Philadelphia Parkway, in front of the Art Museum. The power of the explosions was so forceful, I felt the legs of my shorts being tugged with every shot, moving on their own from the sudden changes in air pressure.

But only one fireworks show stands out as truly unforgettable.

And not surprisingly, it was courtesy of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts in Orlando.

I had heard about this show, which blazed nightly over World Showcase Lagoon in EPCOT. I'd heard about the power of the music and the use of multiple visuals including fountains, lasers, fire, barges and projections to create a fireworks show unlike any other.

What I wasn't prepared for was the sheer emotional wallop this show packed. At least for me.

We first saw it when Kristin was very young; in fact, she spent most of the performance cowering in Eileen's shoulder to escape the sheer power of the audio and visuals.

I, however, was rapt.

From the impressive opening, whose narration about the power of gathering to share stories, ended with the whimsical blowing out of a ring of giant torches, ala a massive birthday cake.

The music then took over, full of chaos and fury but evolving into a four-movement symphony that helps the story unfold. It covers the dynamic range of fortississismo (that's three fs, people) to pianississimo (three ps) and back again. Its time signatures swung between syncopated measures of 5/8 and 3/8 to calmer sections of 6/8 to bouncy measures of a more traditional sounding 4/4.

The accompanying visuals were showers of sparks, explosions of color, bursts of fire, beams of light and video images on the large globe that had been floated to the middle of the lagoon.

After the dazzling finale, it segued into two vocal selections ("We Go On" and "Promise") before the final exit music.

Eileen was rather distracted as Kristin was freaking out, and Amanda was somewhat nonplussed by it all. But I remember Claire looking up at me as it ended, with tears streaming down her cheeks (matching my own waterworks, fyi). When I asked her what was wrong, she said, "The magic's all over."

To this day, I'm not sure if she meant the magic of the fireworks display or the magic of the entire trip, which was indeed ending, as we were departing the following morning.

We got back to Disney a handful of years later and Illuminations was must-see. Kristin was much calmer this time and enjoyed herself.

Somewhere along the line, I acquired an EPCOT soundtrack, and the Illuminations music remains to this day a favorite. I play it in the car loud enough to strain my speaker system. But it still moves me.

Illuminations is on its way out, according to the Disney folks. The lagoon at EPCOT is due for a refresh, and with it will come a new show. And I suppose that's as it should be. "We Go On" is more than just a theme song to an evening entertainment extravaganza; it's a viewpoint for all of Walt Disney World.

And life in general, I suppose.

So tomorrow night, July 04, I will stand with neighbors and family at our local golf course, stare at the sky and oooh and aaah.

But somewhere deep, I'll wish I was in Florida once again being literally blown away by a fireworks show.

A Bomb of a Prom

Kristin, our youngest daughter, is in a flurry right now, prepping for her Senior Prom. This is a milestone for us as a family, the final time we will navigate the dress-buying, hair-styling, accessorizing, make-up, transpo, ticket-buying, flower-deciding, photo-snapping and post-dance gauntlet.

Whew!

It brought to mind my own high school proms.

In general, I had a meh-time at most of them. I found school dances to be an awful lot of fuss over not much of anything, and that was the days way before guys were expected to wow a girl with a truly memorable (and Insta-worthy) promposal.

But my Junior Prom.

Oh, my Junior Prom....

I will keep her name to myself out of a sense of discretion that maybe she has matured since those days. I certainly hope so. I shall, for the purposes of relating this tale, call her Toni Kathcart.

I believe I had a math class with Toni. And that I sat near her. And that in the course of the semester, we struck up a good friendship.

And in the run-up to the Junior Prom, it was made known to both of us that neither she nor I had a date.

So I asked. And she accepted. And she made me aware of a post-prom party at the home of a friend of her's.

Fine. Great.

Prom night came, and everything went off without a hitch. I picked her up. We went to the school gym and navigated our way through the crepe paper decorations. Picture staged (hand here, flowers there) and taken. Onto the dance floor. Dined on cafeteria cuisine. Pretty much business as usual for a Junior Prom.

Things really didn't jump the tracks until after the dance was over.

I drove her to the party. Parked the car on the street. Walked with her up to the door. And right before she went to ring the bell, she turned to me.

"Well, thanks. I had a great time."

"Huh?"

"Well, I'm going in..."

"And?"

And her next words have stayed with me to this day:

"Well, I was invited to this party. But you weren't."

And in she went.

And I stood on the stoop for a moment. Partly to catch my breath. Partly to pick up the shattered pieces of my soul before turning around and heading back to the car.

We never spoke again. Math class unspooled for the rest of the year, and we ignored each other. Senior year came and went. And we graduated and went our separate ways.

I, of course, got married to someone lovely and caring and considerate and funny and wise... someone who would never do anything like eviscerate another human being on the doorstep of a complete stranger.

And Toni? I have no idea. I'd like to think she has matured a lot since those days, or at least developed a compassionate heart.

And if she's married with kids and has a son who sheepishly asks a math classmate to the Junior Prom.

Well, I at least hope he gets better treatment than I did.