He Calls Them Musey Rooms

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I suppose it is presumptuous to think about “your legacy” at the comparatively tender age of 72. Aren’t legacies supposed to be somehow attached to long-lived legends? To GOATS?  I am embarrassed to admit how long it took me to figure that GOAT stood for Greatest Of All Time, not a rather clueless ruminant. I still have trouble with that notion. Seems to fly in the face of another sports “truism” that - “all records are mean to be broken.”  Still, if one is to have a “legacy” shouldn’t you be a legend of some sort?  I have trouble seeing myself as a legend. I don’t suppose I can claim that status just because John Legend went to my high school? Go Panthers! Then again if you cut the categories fine enough, everyone can be a GOAT!  I played the “boy” in the Wittenberg College production of the Mary Chase play, “Mrs. McThing” when I was about 6 or 7 years old 1955? '56? I think I was probably the youngest, and most likely the only, kid to have played that role, that year, at that college - and hence by those specific criteria - I am the GOAT! But I digress as is my wont.

The discordancy that currently confuses me is a kind of Dr. Doolittle Pushmi-Pullyu consideration of the notion of a legacy. Being a 72 year-old retired college professor who taught literally thousands of students over some 40 years in the classroom, I feel somewhat entitled to attempt to draw some conclusions while looking back over specific experiences with that cadre of students. Then I remember that my father was a retired college professor who taught thousands of students over many more years, and lived to be 100.  Looking backward from 72, in that context, any claim to a legacy seems both morbid and self-indulgent, ignoring as it does, the 28 years that awaited my father at this age. ‘Tis a puzzlement! Which end is the front of a Pushmi-Pullyu? Does one head look ahead to legacy, the other head gazing behind? And which is which?

Then I remembered my lifelong friend Dan’s thoughts on a related but somehow similar notion. He has lived most of his adult life in the DC area. Which, as we have recently been made painfully aware, is an often exciting locale. Years ago, during a visit to the area we were headed off to The National Museum of Art, and he remarked on the pleasure he derived from visiting the many “musey-rooms” in the area. It is a delightful phrase and one that has stuck with me. I don’t recall if I ever asked him if how and why he came to that particular descriptor, but he is here on the Wall and may correct me if I am completely of base.

My thought is that any museum worth its salt has a bunch of rooms - sort of a riff on the "in my museum there are many rooms" kind of thing. And it is not an unreasonable stretch to presume that each of those rooms is the province of a particular muse. The ancients seem to follow that notion. Different temples for different gods, right? Athena, Zeus, Apollo, all the biggies had their own temple right? OK, now stick with me here. One's legacy is a many-roomed affair. Each Legacy Musey Room is unique to the Muse that inspired the works therein and should be seen through its own lenses.

Some legacy musey rooms are best experienced by looking backward at experiences that are well and truly over - like my life as a college professor. Been there. Done that. Not going back. Some cherished and treasured experiences in that particular Legacy Musey Room. Though many, I must admit, are drawn from a "university" that was already a thing of the past even pre-COVID. Others were even more poignant as I saw that university I loved receding in the face of contemporary realities and demands. Other legacy musey rooms peer into less precisely defined spaces of my life. My lifelong obsession with doodling eventually lead to a one man show of "doodles made big" - called Art; My Second Cousin Once Removed - which was a big hit in the coffeeshop where it was staged - but then so was the coffee. I have some hope that that particular legacy musey room might have some forward looking potential now that I am retired.

But I am discovering that even in retirement Legacy Musey Rooms have to compete for space. There are other muses out there that do not simply go away because you no longer have a "job," an "office," in truth, a private space to which you can disappear for several hours every day. The Family Legacy Musey Room is always in flux, increased by one just today as daughter Emily and her husband Jeremy presented us with my new granddaughter, Madison Ruth Kaplan! The Schrag Wall Legacy Musey Room contains prose, poetry and images which stretch back to the last millennium and will run out into the future as long as I can manage. Perhaps, The Returning to Sculpture Legacy Musey Room? Maybe. And, lord willing, the Life After Covid Legacy Room. Enough to twist any self-respecting Pushmi-Pullyu into knots.

So that's my thought on my legacy. You will note that the notion of Legacy Musey Rooms conveniently places most final thoughts on any legacy itself conveniently in the future. The exception, of course, being any legacy attached to my years in the classroom. And rightly so, as I have no legitimate voice in that discussion. Only the students who sat in those classrooms can make that determination - however, if I could make a suggestion, I feel that "teaching live in a classroom" was a totally different experience than "teaching to a camera." Which, for me, brings me to the thought that those might be two completely different realities - answering, perhaps, to entirely different muses?

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Fragments of Dreams

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Fragments of strange dreams

Surround me in nightly tiny hours.

Shards of someone else's life?

Or a forgotten one of mine?

They glitter all around me.

Little rainbows that cast light

And multi-colored shadows

Into the secret corners,

Misty spaces of the night.

Seen, it seems, through others’ eyes

With calm serenity.

They remain, through mine,

A strange parade

Of fixed uncertainty.

Places that, of course, I know.

But peopled with a cast

Of not quite total strangers

Whose knowing glances ask,

“Can you truly not remember

Where we went upon that day?

The things we said?

The lives we lived?

Before you went away?”

So I look in vain around me

For a solitary clue

Of who this carping stranger is.

Of what they were to me

Before I set off sailing

On this shining midnight sea.

It is a useless query though,

For when I start to speak

The stranger’s face has vanished.

While instead a dreamy fragment

Joins the pile at my feet.

So I pull the sheet up round my neck -

Drifting slowly back to sleep.

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On Fostering Harmony

If you think of life as a symphony, it becomes easier to understand how I have come to consider Foster Harmony as the preeminent objective in our existence, the overarching tenet of the worldview I call Distilled Harmony.  The simultaneous rise of the pandemic in the midst of, here in the US anyhow, the most virulent and divisive political and social disruption in living memory, has provided ample evidence of how life becomes stressing and distressed when we allow Harmony to become overwhelmed by discord. It doesn’t have to be this way.

We have seemingly allowed every aspect of life to become a contest. It is “us” versus “them.” Whether it is politics, athletics, music, art, philosophy, theology, you name it, there is our side and then there is that lying, deceitful, untrustworthy bunch of idiots who couldn’t recognize truth if it came up and spit in their eye! And hey, that sounds like a good idea! You see what I mean? Dr. Seuss’s brilliant “The Butter Battle Book” is perhaps the finest explication of this tragic human flaw I have ever read. If you haven’t read it since it first came out in 1989, give it another go. Especially if you are someone who reads to kids, read it to them by all means, but remember he is talking to all of us.

So how do we avoid becoming just another braying discordancy in this angry babble? I think by going back to the idea that life is a symphony, and we control only one instrument - our own voice. We need to listen to it. It may be as simple as that. Speak gently. When possible, speak quietly. Ask for clarification. Look for agreement. Try to listen more than you speak. Do not interrupt. Be a violin, not a trumpet. Listen to beautiful music, played, spoken or sung. Avoid the brash, the confrontational, the angry, the derogatory, the argumentative, the hateful and demeaning. We have a tendency to mirror that to which we attend.

Life can be a symphony, but only if each of us lends our voice to make it so. Foster Harmony and the rest will fall into place.

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It's My Cookie, or Oppose Harm

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Oppose Harm is the fourth tenet of Distilled Harmony, and is called upon only when events threaten the preceding three; Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, and Distill Complexity. Donald Trump’s declaration that he will “fight like hell” to hold onto the presidency, is one of those moments. There is, of course, the most obvious data. The certified votes, the leaders of both parties in Congress, and every court where Trump has sought to reverse the will of the voters have all held that he lost the election. Yet, he continues to declare that he will remain President. Given the total absence of any legitimate basis for that declaration, I wonder what drives his obsessive claims?

One is almost forced to the conclusion that his perception of the world has slipped more than a little bit away from reality. It is clear that he believes that if he chants “I won! I won!” long and loud enough, and persuades his hard core followers to do same, reality will magically change. This is the way toddlers see the world. If I shout “It’s my cookie!” long and loud enough someone will eventually give me a cookie. Even if there are no cookies left. Sometimes even the most well-intentioned will give in and slip the kid a cookie, even if they realize that this behavior eventually will come back to haunt them as a Cookie Monster more bizarre than any Sesame Street ever envisioned, one that will come to rule the house.

But we are not talking about cookies. We are talking about the highest office in the land. In many ways we are talking about the very fabric and legitimacy of our democracy. It is true that we have bent the intention of the Constitution many times since it was signed in 1789. And we are still seeking ways to bring its promises to all our citizens. But the one thing we have avoided - perhaps uniquely in modern history - is that we have never turned political power over to a “ruler” - a monarch or dictator - who seeks power despite, not because of, the will of the people. We fought a revolution to avoid just that.

Yet, Trump is seeking just that “upside down, toddler” redefinition of our cherished democratic reality. I remain convinced that Congress will do its sworn duty and move forward to swearing in the legitimate victors of the recent election. However, the fact that a seemingly unbalanced, unelected, pretender to the leadership of our nation has fractured our normal political process to the point of calling on a group of thugs - some of his hard core "supporters" - to violent attacks on Congress is terrifying. This recklessness is beyond the pale and has already resulted in the death of one of those "supporters." These are not grainy film clips of Germany in the 1930s as Hitler smashed his way to power. These are videos from the halls of our Congress - here where most folks are focused their improbably named professional football team. In the "real" reality such behavior is nothing less than an attack upon our time-honored tradition of the smooth transition of political power. 

As such it should serve as a sincere reminder to each of us that the greatest danger to our democracy may not lie in the manipulations of some shadowy group of foreigners, but in a man driven by an unbridled lust for power right here at home.

Furthermore, we must hold our political leadership and candidates up to closer scrutiny. We must look deeply into their history, ideals, behavior and character. Such attention is mandatory as we realize that it is our power, the power of the ballot box that, in the final analysis, protects us from the excesses and blatant falsehoods that characterized the soon departing administration.

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Actually It Is Quite Simple

And so here we are. 2021. Perhaps never more glad to put the old year behind us. But how do we move most gracefully into the new? It is certainly a question worthy of our attention, so I’ll give it a shot.

Einstein once said “If you cannot explain your ideas so that a six-year old can understand them, you are doing it wrong.”  It is in pursuit of that simplicity that I have whittled my admittedly often unwieldy thoughts about life in general down to those four tenets of Distilled Harmony that I keep harping on: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. Given that perspective it is unsurprising that I believe that we should approach 2021 with a kind of gentle courage.

FDR in his 1933 inaugural said words to this effect “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” 2020, and the pandemic to which it gave birth, was undoubtedly a frightening year. Yet, the new year brings real cause for such gentle courage. Vaccine efforts by scientists around the globe stir hope that by those using those vaccines and following the simple steps of social distancing, masks and personal hygiene, we will gain the upper hand in confronting COVID. Political changes here at home signal America’s return to addressing the issues surrounding climate change, and long-overdue steps to bring the promises of our precious democracy to all our citizens are increasing from baby steps to strides.

So why do I call for “gentle” courage, and not just “good old fashioned courage?” It may have something to do with my having read Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage,” in high school. It is a complex work and can be read to a variety of conclusions, but the one that has remained with me is that “courage,” as Crane’s work defines it, is synonymous with a willingness to dominate. A “my way or the highway, even if I’m wrong!” view of the world. We have tried that. It doesn’t work.

The problems confronting humanity here at the dawn of 2021 are global problems. Largely because of near-sighted self-interest on the part of the world’s “great powers,” we have allowed issues to evolve that threaten our very existence as a species. As I stated just above, we - and by we I mean a wide range of global “bad actors” - have tried to “fix” things, either by denying they exist, or by forcing individual, nationalistic solutions. Those strategies often grow out of the “old courage.” I am advocating the kind of courage necessary to reach the policies and compromises that assure that, not only will we be around for the foreseeable future, but it will be a future crafted for the health, happiness and prosperity of all of us “earthlings.” 

Not surprisingly, I believe that that kind of gentle courage grows out of a world view that encourages us all to Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.

Happy New Year.