There's No Reason to Be Hard

Three Dog Night

Three Dog Night sang "It's Easy to be Hard."  Easy, maybe, but unnecessary. That's a perspective that has become clearer to me as I see the big 8-0 looming a couple of years away on the horizon.

The Bard, in As You Like It, famously declared there are seven ages of man, which he defined, in part, thusly:

“Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness . . . “ As though that were a bad thing. Those of you who hustle off to check the quote will realize I chopped off the more pessimistic ending of the line. But that is because it would detract from the narrative I'm exploring - and besides, we have been twisting Shakespeare for 500 years to frame our preferred narrative, so why stop now?

Let us consider this “second childishness” that the brash bard Bill asserts awaits us all (assuming that the seven ages of man, applies to women as well) at the tail end of our lives.  As I observe my fellow Baby Boomers - we started in 1946 - it seems to me that this second bout of childishness tends to diverge in a wood - Frost's two-pronged fork in the forest road. [Being born in 1874 Robert Frost  was part of either The Missionary Generation, The Lost Generation or The Progressive Generation, depending upon to whom you listen.]  It seems that you can either take the hard turn to the right that leads to a selfish childishness, or choose a smoother glide to the left that encourages a more selfless childishness.

The hard right turn to selfish childishness takes us, most publicly these days, to the Trump White House. One might be tempted to point to the high number of middle-aged members of the administration as evidence that the administration is years away from a second bout of childishness. But that would lead you astray.  First, it is in the middle of Shakespeare's seven ages - so maybe 30, 40 maybe 50ish? - that we find "the soldier" who wikipedia interprets as "Full of fierce oaths, looking like a leopard, quick to fight, and seeking a short-lived reputation even in extreme danger." But Trump's aggressive young leopards are fully aware that their current power depends on total fealty to an 80-year old president who seems to be shuffling down the road to a selfish childishness. And it is he who directs their aggression.

So what does that mean? Selfish childishness? Well, check out any examples in your own life - children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Whomever you have access to. What are the characteristics of the selfish kids? [Of course, not that any of ours are 😉] Well, everything is about them. Me, me, me. My toys, my TV show, my favorite foods, my cloths, my battleship, my hotels, my golf course, my ballroom, my triumphal arch, my names for bodies of water, my reflecting pool - which, no matter what the contractor says, was torn up by vandals. Oops. I seem to have drifted off into the Oval Office there. But you can't really make that stuff up. He is the poster child for selfish childishness. You may have a similarly afflicted friend or relative that you observe when you visit them at Shady Rest or Golden Acres or some other padded retreat for those in the throes of selfish childishness. You know what I mean.

So who are the poster children for selfless childishness?  The headlines don't provide a lot of names here. Dion also sang about Abraham (Lincoln), Martin (Luther King, Jr,) and John (Kennedy), but they were all young 56, 39, 46, when they were killed - so long before what should have been "the last scene" Shakespeare describes. 

True Mahatma Gandhi was 78 years old when he died. And Mother Teresa was 87 years old when she died. But reports of their renowned selfless childishness do not grace the screens of contemporary media - no matter how praiseworthy. So I will look for less celebrated, but more personally important models. 

For me I will stick to "the ages of man" because three men come most quickly to mind when I think of selfless childishness.  They are my Dad, F. James Schrag who passed at 100, my Uncle Calvin O. Schrag died at 95, and Merle B. Smith, aka "Smitty" who expired at 94. All obviously in Shakespeare's “Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, [ending in] second childishness." I knew them all. Obviously my father all my life, my uncle almost as long, and Smitty for his last couple decades. What they had in common was that they could never do enough for you - or for me. And they did it with a genuine smile. They were all focused on the "other."

That is not, perhaps, unusual for me to see my father and my uncle thus - I was obviously "blood kin" - and their Mennonite upbringing contributed to their pacifistic, caring, outlook on life. Which was something they both brought to their college students in over a combined century in the classroom. I hope my 50 years were a worthy contribution. As I said, the defining characteristic of both Dad and my Uncle Calvin - aka "Kelly" - was that they were always focused on the "other" as opposed to themselves.

And for Dad that "other" was often his students; he was always bringing foreign students home - I have a clear memory of a Japanese student showing us how to make a spider out of tin foil. He continued his "other-based" activities in town, serving on several local groups addressing race relations in the early 1950s. And then in 1959 he moved the family to Vienna, Austria for two years while he ran Quaker House, a joint endeavor with the Austrian government and the American Friends Service Committee to bring refugees from behind the then "Iron Curtain" into the West. As he moved toward the century mark I continued to be moved as I observed his continued gentleness and good humor, and his obvious thankfulness for my sister and her husband who were so much in his life until he passed.

I am not that familiar with how, directly, Uncle Calvin interacted with his students, other than the fact that he often attended our national communication conferences - as his research was well known and highly respected in my discipline. There our traditional "catch-up" dinners were often interrupted by students just wanting to thank him for his work. To me, he was always - in addition to his academic stardom - the young uncle who often came to our house for Thanksgiving dinner and took the time to play whiffle ball with me in the basement. Later, I came to realize that his nine books paved a path to an advocacy of gentleness, love and understanding. A message he continued to bring to his classroom well into his 90s.

Smitty was a different kind of guy. A businessman who eventually ran one of the largest hardwood flooring companies in the country, if not the world. Something I am reminded of every day as I walk over the beautiful floors he created in the home I share with Christine - Smitty's first wife, my second. Yeah, I know - seems a bit weird. But it isn't really.

Smitty and Christine remained good friends after their divorce and it made good, if unusual, sense that when Christine and I would come up from North Carolina to visit her wide circle of friends and family here in the Chicago area we would stay with Smitty. What was less likely was that Smitty and I became close friends. We cooperated on crossword puzzles, played an informal version of "name that tune" with songs he grew up with, which were also the songs my mother had taught me from between the world wars and up into the 40s and 50s. Smitty and I would breakfast together each morning at Blueberry Hill Cafe, feeding any leftovers to his much-loved black lab - named named Vido Musso after an influential jazz tenor saxophonist who was one of Smitty's favorites. Vito was a most convivial lab who would occasionally share the tail end of Smitty's nightly martinis - with a preference for the olives and the ice cubes.

Smitty's "others" included his business acquaintances with whom he was generous to a fault. But, without a doubt, the others he held most dear were his family. Whenever we ate out with his extensive family in the area, he would take offense if anyone else pulled out a wallet. A family outing - maybe a dozen of us - to the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulfur Springs, WV for a week, was all on Smitty's tab. It wasn't just that he did those things, he loved doing it - and confided to me once while sitting before the fireplace, over those martinis that Vito shared - that he was worried that he couldn't do more for the family. And it became clear that Christine and I were considered part of that family when Smitty's will, after generous bequests to his kids, declared that while his home would eventually revert to the trust he had established for his family, until that time Christine and I were granted permanent residency until both of us had passed. Complete selfless childishness.

I would be remiss in this discussion were I not mention my mother. She died, way too early, at 72 - so a couple decades shy of the guys I discussed. But she was another example of "selfless childishness." When too young to be in her final chapters, she started the "Friendship Toy Shop" in our basement in Ohio. While I am fuzzy on the details, I think she wanted to sell toys made in the Third World to give those artisans access to markets in the West. The endeavor, again as I recall, was short-lived because of her blithe inattention to the tax implications of running a retail outlet. However, I do clearly remember "The Flower Cart," a sheltered workshop for developmentally challenged [I think that is the current PC argot] young adults that she founded when Dad took them off to Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia for the final years of his teaching career. Hence, with those two influences in the home my bias for the "selfless childishness" perspective is unavoidable.

So those who turn down the path of "selfish childishness" spend their final chapters harshly seeking to increase their wealth, property, and power; those who take the road - perhaps less traveled - to "selfless childishness" seek to give to others that which makes life easier for those they love, and often to others they may not even know, but who are in need.

It is encouraging to note that some names from the news are taking the "selfless childishness" path. The Gates Foundation springs to mind, as do the Lilly Endowment and the Ford Foundation, and those contributors who march across the screen after PBS programs. But sadly they most often appear with far less public attention than the blaring reports detailing the latest boondoggle from the "selfish childishness" path favored by those in currently in power.

 

Sometimes First Drafts Work

 Back in the day when I was requiring written essays from my students - AI being alive only in science fiction - I followed the time honored advice: Get your best thoughts down in a first draft, then go back and edit, edit, edit until you are communicating those best thoughts with your best writing.

Well, I try to follow that advice in my art as well. Find what I feel is now the best image to play with. Design the rough outline. Refine the outline - the maquette if you will - to create the boundaries of the final image.

So Five Faces started with this image of five masks I had cast in porcelain:

The next step was to turn the photograph of those 3D pieces into a 2D image that could become the final image. I did that and added a background I had painted several years ago for this piece called Tequila Sunrise:

Which brought me to this final 15x10 inch image to serve as the base for Five Faces:

But then a strange thing happened. I ran a couple of 8.5x11 copies to test some design ideas. So I started drawing on one of those smaller images and suddenly I was really having fun. So I completed the "first draft." Here:

Five Faces

I'm going to go ahead and mount this version, checking with Michael's to see if the flimsy paper will need double backing. The question now is do I return to the 15x10 version and finish what was supposed  to be the "real" image, or stick with this First Draft  and move on to something else?

 

Stranger Than Fiction

 OK - 

I have sent you a number of my drawings under the heading Schrag Canvas.  When people ask me things like: "Who influences your drawings?" "What 'style' is your artwork?" I respond, quite truthfully, - "I don't know. Sometimes I see a another thing - painting, sculpture, piece of a building that I like and "remake it" into one of my drawings. Other times the images just sort of spring to mind and glasses or faces or flowers just seem to grow on the page. I often claim to be a "doodler" since many of my drawings had their roots in just doodling. I dunno."

However, I never thought that genetics entered the picture - until my older daughter sent me an image that her daughter - my 10-year old granddaughter - had drawn. Yeah, yeah I know. Doting grandparents can witness some action of their progeny and see greatness, by squinting their eyes or filtering their hearing aids they perceive what they desire - not what is actually there. Or - "she has your eyes, Uncle Jake's hair, Grandma's dimples." We see what we want. Some evidence that our "lineage" will persist - perhaps even achieving greatness.

But sometimes persistence is enough. Consider these two images:

One was recently created by my almost 10-year old granddaughter, the other by her almost 78-year old grandfather. I haven't removed the artists' signatures, but without them it would be hard to tell, right? 

Long live the Doodlers!!

P.S. Yes, you can see faces and critters in each :-)

The Flaw in the Well-Made Play

 Gustav Freytag isn't a name that pops up in dinner conversations very often, but back a few decades ago when I was teaching media analysis at NC State, I spent a lot of time with him.  You see back in 1872 he wrote a book called The Technique of the Drama, which gave us Freytag's Pyramid or the model of the well-made play.  It looks like this:

I'll unpack it in a moment, but first let me explain what brought me to this post.  Here at home we tend to stream either "continuing series," like  Professor T and Reacher or "limited series" like those Harlan Coban shows that have a few episodes. It is in those programs that the flaw in the well-made play rears its frustrating head. [Interesting aside. I just saw on some site or another, that Coban has just published a book called Plot Twist in which he discusses his writing process. I look forward to checking it out.]

So back to the pyramid. The exposition these days is usually provided by the opening montage - that series of visual clips featuring the main characters accompanied by the theme music. Most shows, thankfully, give us the option to skip the exposition and jump right to the inciting incident which is when the caper begins - the body is found, the diamonds are stolen, whatever - something disrupts the lives of the protagonists who are called into action.  The rising action or complication  traces the protagonists actions necessary to catch the bad guys - which happens at the climax, shoot-out, fight, clever capture, etc.  The falling action, resolution and denouement are the bits of action and dialogue that returns us to the calm of the exposition, ready for the inciting incident that will open the next episode. 

It works. Go ahead and plot the next episode of your favorite show. See?  And that is the flaw. It works too well. We get hooked on a particular show and we don't want it to end. So the producers just keep 'em coming! To steal some examples:

• Daytime Soap Operas: Shows like Days of Our Lives (streaming on Peacock) and The Young and the Restless have tens of thousands of episodes spanning multiple decades.

• Long-Running Animated Series: The Simpsons has over 760 episodes [0.5] and streams via platforms like Disney+.
• 
  
• Primetime Procedurals: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has over 500 episodes and is widely available across multiple streaming apps like Hulu and Peacock.
• 
  
• Grey's Anatomy: Among popular binge-watched primetime serialized dramas on Netflix and Hulu, Grey's Anatomy leads with well over 400 episodes.

and

1. The Office (US): 201 episodes, streaming on major subscription services.
2. Friends: 236 episodes, available on platforms like HBO Max.
3. Seinfeld: 180 episodes, streaming online.
4. Supernatural: 318 episodes, available to stream.
5. Criminal Minds: Over 350 episodes, streaming on Paramount+.
6. The X-Files: 218 episodes, available on streaming platforms.
7. Lost: 121 episodes, available on various subscription video services.
8. Gilmore Girls: 153 episodes, popular for re-watching on demand.

OK, you get the idea. But here is the problem. You get to know the pyramid the writers use as well as they do, and soon you know pretty much how each episode will unfold right after the initial incident. Boooooorrrrring!  So you hunt a new series, which also gets boring after the first 30 or 40 episodes.

So you give up and try actually reading books in the same genres.

• De Cock Series by A.C. Baantjer & Peter Römer: 86+ novels following Amsterdam police detective Jurre de Cock. Baantjer wrote the first 70 books, and Peter Römer took over the De Cock Series after his passing.
• The Amelia Peabody Series by Elizabeth Peters: 20 novels (plus companion books) following the intrepid Victorian archaeologist and sleuth Amelia Peabody across Egypt.
• The Hercule Poirot Series by Agatha Christie: 34 novels (and 50+ short stories) featuring the famous Belgian private detective.
• The Hamish MacBeth Series by M.C. Beaton: 36 books about a laid-back Scottish Highland police constable.
• The Stephanie Plum Series by Janet Evanovich: 30+ books following the lovable New Jersey bounty hunter.

And:

Harry Bosch Series 24+ Books: Written by Michael Connelly, this series follows Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch, an LAPD homicide detective.

The In Death Series written by J.D. Robb (the pseudonym for Nora Roberts) is one of the absolute giants of the police procedural genre, currently standing at 63 novels.

The Aloysius Pendergast thriller series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child consists of 23 primary books starting with Relic in 1995.

And my beat goes on - and my sister could give you more!  

I never thought I would recommend the Harry Potter series for its brevity! However, I would also recommend Rowling's mysteries - written under the name Robert Galbraith. There are 8 of them - but compared to the lists above that shows admirable restraint.

So why do we do it? Why do we seek out these repetitive narratives? Why do we follow these fictional protagonists through their increasingly predictable lives? Will Susie Glass and the Duke finally get together in season three of The Gentlemen? Oops. [I digress, but I'm thinking yes.] So why will I watch? Because it is comfortable.

There is a sub-genre of mysteries called "cozies" which Wikipedia tells us are: a lighthearted sub-genre of crime fiction featuring amateur sleuths, small close-knit communities, and zero graphic violence or explicit content.

I would assert that all the programs and novels I mention in this post are cozies. Not because they fit Wikipedia's definition - as many of them, particularly in the "hard boiled" and "action-thriller" sub-genres - do not. It is their predicability - as revealed by Freytag's model - that makes them "cozy." They are old friends. We know what will happen - not the specifics, but the steps that will unfold taking us from the inciting incident to the resolution. Like a roller-coaster our author will toss our protagonists through some engaging plot twists, but in the end we pull into the platform from which we departed - perhaps a bit bloody, but unbowed - ready for our next ride.

One might think that, tired of the chaos, we might turn to another sub-genre - the single work, the stand alone novel. One story, one protagonist. I have tried it with several "stand alones." And even if the work is excellent, at the end, part of me starts humming that old Peggy Lee song, Is that all There Is?

Wondering

🎶🎶 I suppose it might be  because I spent a lot of time watching Mr. Roger's Neighborhood with my young daughters. Or maybe the excessive time spent prepping my 1990 book Taming the Wild Tube: A Family's Guide to Television and Video - but I have always been a bit more comfortable in The Neighborhood of Make-Believe than in the "real" neighborhood outside my door. 

It's not that I do not enjoy and appreciate the wonders of the world in which I live. I do. I am constantly staggered by the beauty of this world. But I am occasionally chagrined by the necessity to distinguish between a fiction and non-fiction view of the world. 

My recent post on Harmonic Entanglement -

https://schragwall.blogspot.com/2026/08/harmonic-entanglement.html

defines one of my favorite spaces in my personal Neighborhood of Make-Believe so I thought I would share a bit of a ramble through the issues that "harmonic entanglement theorists" would have to confront once that became an established technology and academic discipline. Like all sciences, these theorists would be guided by things they "wondered about." So I'll go that way.

Remember to be “Harmonically Entangled” (HET) means that the string-based chords of two entities are sympathetically linked, a close personal relationship.

I wonder if: Folks who are physically related as evidenced by shared DNA, like siblings cousins, etc., are more prone to be harmonically entangled than entities with no such physical relationship.

The argument of "nature versus nurture" would follow us into the world of Harmonic Entanglement Theory. Does the intense weight of shared DNA enhance the possibility of Harmonic Entanglement [HET]? At the moment I'm inclined to believe that shared DNA increases the possibility of HET. So I'd say probably. If we consider that our DNA permeates the vast majority of our cells, and our "blood kin" share varying degrees of that DNA it is logical that those shared DNA structures would vibrate harmonically in those related entities increasing the possibility of entanglement. Which might shed some light on the "special relationship" that often seems to be the case with twins.

However, it is important to realize that physically related entities often share a close common "growing up" environment - where that "nurturing" element occurs - which can result in competition and conflict which might actually reduce the inclination toward entanglement.

I wonder if: Familiarity breeds harmony? Or, do periods of extended proximity. enhance the possibility of HET? Again I am inclined to think so, assuming that the folks in "extended proximity" are there because they want to be. For example, college roommates who started out strangers, but eventually decide to move off campus to a shared apartment - not a romantic relationship, but "close friends" who have become HET. Similarly, folks who work together for extended periods of time - particularly if they work together to solve mutual tasks. The potential downside of this possibility for HET is competition. If the co-workers are in competition for advancement or rewards then the odds for HET decline.

I wonder if: HET can exist with other "lifeforms." Again, I think so. Our pets are the best examples. I'm a dog person. And dogs are often cited for their ability to provide unconditional love, which could be seen as code for HET. Contrarily, I am not a cat person - and cats are often cited for their "independent nature." Maybe code for not inclined to HET with me. Although, I am sure cat people would strongly object to my assessment. But their inclination to reverse the perception re cats and dogs, would not argue against the possibility of HET with other lifeforms.  I'm sure there are folks out there who would speak up for hamsters and ferrets.

I would, however, point out that HET with non-human life forms is a two way street, which, I assert, should rule out exploring HET relationships with non-domesticated creatures. There are sad, and terminal, examples of those who sincerely believed they were harmoniously entangled with wild carnivores only to belatedly discover that they were - when push came to shove - dinner.

I wonder if: HET can exist with non-sentient entities. This is where things can get rather strange. First, I would define non-sentient entities as entities without biology - which conveniently avoids some of the fascinating communication that occurs between plants, insects, etc. I, tentatively, would further divide non-sentient entities into entities created with communicative intent - aka the arts. And pragmatic entities - entities intended to serve our pragmatic needs - shelter, clothing, etc., Maslow's physiological and safety needs.

First, those entities created with communicative intent. Here is a good place to remind ourselves that Harmonic Entanglement occurs at the string level, when the strings that create and define one entity are harmonic - play a symphony that is in tune with - the strings of another entity. So here we are considering the relationship between us - our dominant chord - and the strings, the dominant chord - of a creative/created artifact - paint, stone, clay, etc. My, delightfully data-free personal inclination, is to assert that such a harmonic relationship - an HET - can exist between a work of art and an individual. And possibly an indirect HET between artist and observer facilitated by the art work.

The "evidence" for me is in my reaction to art forms that literally move me - either internally or physically. Music that calms me, helps me sleep - or gets me up to clean the kitchen or down to the treadmill to do my "steps." For me the paintings from the Hudson River School are the visual equivalent of nocturnes - they calm me. My own art - which makes me chuckle or sigh.. . .  I could go on, but we are in the realm of the purely subjective here and you need to supply your own examples.

Second, those pragmatic entities - "things" created to serve our physiological and safety needs. It will probably not surprise you, but I am going to assert that HET relationships are possible with these entities. Perhaps it is because I look for them, that I think I see them. My daughter's relationship to her lost stuffed bunny, my stuffed panda that holds my head at the perfect angle to read my iPad in bed, a family member's affection for an aging car, rarely driven but cherished, my wife's affection for her extensive collection of cookbooks, my red sweatshirt with its perfect pockets and familiar hood. 

These are all manufactured entities - but that does not mean they are not, in every element of their construction made up of [at the tiniest most fundamental level] strings - those minuscule vibrating elements that manifest a chord that may, somehow, strike a responsive chord with us.

I wonder how: We can become harmonically entangled with those pragmatic, non-sentient entities. I'm saving this for last because it is probably the strangest. I think the best analogy is RFID tags - radio frequency identification tags. I'm going to steal a couple definitions from the FDA website. In RFID -

1. Every tag contains a microchip (integrated circuit) to store data and an antenna to send and receive radio signals.
2. Communication: An RFID Reader emits radio waves, which trigger the tag to transmit its stored information back to the receiver.

Here is my thinking as to how to translate that into my notion of how we become harmonically entangle with pragmatic entities:

All entities - bees, bears, and boards and beer - have within them a "chord" by virtue of the vibrations of the strings that underly every atom of their make up. Those quiescent chords are the "tags."

We are the "readers" that, as we touch, hold, observe, interact with the quiescent pragmatic entities, triggering the tags, awakening the chord of the pragmatic entity and make the HET possible - hence we become entangled with bunny, our MG, a red sweatshirt.

And that, were I an Harmonic Entanglement Theorist when such things were possible, would be my story, and I'd be sticking to it! 

 TTFN.

A Penny for Your Thoughts

A Penny for Your Thoughts

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I wrote, oh, it seems like a long time now, that I was going to flatter Edward Hopper by imitating his Nighthawks by casting it in a more optimistic tone. I was going to call it Skylarks, as an upbeat version of Hopper's work.

Nighthawks - Edward Hopper, 1942

But after I had messed around a bit with it and sat down to compose the newly created blank spaces my markers colluded with the paper to say "Not so fast, Roberto. We have some other ideas. So, I listened to them and this is the piece that came out.

We call it A Penny for Your Thoughts:

A Penny For Your Thoughts - RL Schrag 2026

 

Three Little Words

The Professor

Depending on which particular site you choose to believe, there are somewhere between 180,000 and a million words in the English language - and it is usually listed as either the language with the most words, or at least up there in the top three.  Yet, if you stream "neo-noir" movies, war flicks or limited series on your screen - you might guess at a much smaller number, with various four-letter words heavily over-represented. But I digress. 

Point is that when you opt to communicate in written or spoken English you have an incredible number of words from which to choose.  And the ones we choose to use say a lot about who we are and what we think, what we value. Parents wait breathlessly for baby's first words - debating whether the kiddo was addressing Mom, Dad or the family pooch. Then they have to endure - 10 or 15 years later - the phase when their teen disappears into a language which is really a code designed to make their communication with their peers indecipherable to their parents. Eventually, hopefully, they get a job, a home of their own - and a new "language of their profession" shared and expected by their occupational peers. And that is where I am headed with this post.

I officially entered my dominant "language tribe" in my early 20s when - having completed my PhD - I took a job as an Assistant Professor up in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. And it is the second part of that title that draws my attention to the implications of its etymology - itself an interesting word that means the history, meaning, and evolution of a word. "Professor" - most simply means "one who professes - to declare to have skill or expertise in, to claim to have knowledge in." So, some kind of "truth-teller."  And over the next 50 years, in New Mexico and mostly in North Carolina, I moved through Associate Professor to Full Professor - a title which once prompted me to inquire of my fellow "Fulls”  - what is a Full Professor full of?" 

More seriously, within the academy, and among the students, often the perception is that a Full Professor is full of truth. Debates did arise within the community as to just how this "truth" was best disseminated. A couple of points from that debate:

I have often heard the old self-deprecating cliche employed by some of my fellow professors: "I learn more from my students than they learn from me."  To which my - usually unspoken - reaction was "Then they ought to sue you for malpractice." I mean really, we were teachers, for crying out loud. We were being paid to share with our students the information and knowledge we had acquired in our decades of reading and research.

A more nuanced version of the discussion considered the question of whether it was best to be "a sage on the stage," or "a guide on the side." There were solid points to be made for either perspective - but regardless of where you chose to stand, the bottom line was you were the "professor" either providing your students with, or guiding them to, the truth.  A notion that brings me to the title of the post - "Three Little Words,”  that really should have a completing phrase - "and what makes them so hard for professors to say."

Outside my professional community, people would probably vote for "I love you" being the three words in question. But not really. We say them easily to babies, to puppies, kittens, etc., to celebrities should we meet them. So we have a lot of practice with those three words.  It is when we find ourselves faced with the scenario in which we feel moved to speak them to another person, with whom we would like to spend our lives, that they may become a bit of a stutter. But somehow we muddle through.

For those of us who spend our lives in the academy the stuttering phrase is different - and while difficult - actually should be the foundation of our community. 

The phrase is "I don't know."

It reflects a state that is difficult to admit, because in our continuing role of "profess - er," -  one who professes, a "truth-teller" we are suppose to know. That is our job - knowing, professing. To say "I don't know" seems tantamount to saying "I'm not doing my job." 

Actually the opposite is true. The real job of every "professor" is to discover what - at the end of their lengthy education - they do not know. And then seek to address that deficiency. Bring new depth, more data to that which they profess approaches truth. If we are to function as guides then the task is to guide our students along the path that takes them with us to what we don't know, and then encourage them to help find the next step, the next answer.

Both within, and outside of, the classroom there are linguistic structures that can simultaneously address the uncomfortable reality of "not knowing" and the accompanying desire to acknowledge and value all that one has learned. For example:

"I don't know. But if I were to guess I would guess that . . ." 

Or "I don't know, but we might figure it out by . . ."  

Or "I don't know, but it seems that . . . " 

Or "I don't know. But [some credible source] appears to imply that . . . "

It's a bit of a semantic balancing act, but it might work. What do you think?

I don't know. 🤷‍♂️

Harmonic Entanglement

As Monty Python used to say - Now for something completely different: 

Harmonic Entanglement

The known world can be a little boring, and occasionally depressing. So I often find a pleasing respite in indulging in the playground of the unknown.  Back a few posts ago I mused,"While finally drifting off to sleep to the early morning twitters of the birds in the trees beyond my window, a thought came to me: "panphonism" - the notion that maybe everything really is made of music, and maybe someday we will figure out how to listen to it."

Let's pretend we had done that - that we could listen to the vibrations of the strings. That we could hear the music that those vibrations produced. Which lets me stretch my notion of "chord theory" even further than I did in my 2009 book, The God Chord - String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart. Let's pretend that we can that we can "hear" everything. Not just people, but everything critters, bugs, even entities that we consider "insensate" - dumb, things rocks, boards, silverware, paintings, sculpture, everything, because remember everything is made of strings, so everything produces vibrations, that we can now hear.

OK, that is a touch weird - but here in the playground of the unknown we can play with that assumption. So here is what I have fun thinking about. Those weird connections - not just to people we love, but to paintings we love, sculpture we love, forest paths we love, puppies we love, sweatshirts we love - all those connections we now - in the playground of the unknown - realize are the result of harmonic entanglement.

Now we understand, in the playground of the unknown, that harmonic entanglement is different than the entanglement of quantum mechanics back in the playground of the known - that bizarre phenomenon that Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" where two quantum particles were linked so that no matter how distant from each other in the universe , if you knew the condition of one particle you could instantly infer the condition of the other. Piffle - easy peasy compared to the wonders of harmonic entanglement.

In harmonic entanglement any two entities might share string vibrations that result in strong sympathetic ties between the two entities. Another way to think of this is that the two different entities's billions and billions of strings vibrate at rate that create similar chords, which are in harmony with each other. This, now obvious, relationship sheds light on some previously inexplicable phenomena:

The Some Enchanted Evening Phenomenon. This is the "love at first sight" phenomenon that occurs when two highly harmonic entities come in contact for the first time and instantly become "entangled." We tend to think of this with a humanist bias - two human entities meeting. But the phenomenon can have wider applications Picture yourself shopping for a puppy. You go to a pet store, a breeder's facility, an animal shelter where you find a plethora of puppies all wiggling and whimpering, "pickmepickmepickme!" But you see a little one, sort of at the back, just looking at you. Tail slowly wagging and "Bam! Some Enchanted Evening!" "I'll take that one!" The Some Enchanted Evening Phenomenon can also be triggered by just about any entities that share harmonic chords - people, puppies, pictures, books, whatever.

It can even impact with a place. A number of years ago we hired a young assistant professor from a school out on the West coast. She later asserted that upon arriving in her new east coast home, " I just immediately felt at home, that this is where I was meant to be." Apparently harmonically entangled - as she eventually married, had a family, and swiftly climbed the academic ladder. Seemingly still entangled.

The Getting to Know You Phenomenon. By sticking to Rogers and Hammerstein's works, but jumping from South Pacific to The King and I, we discover this phenomenon. In the end the result is still entangled harmony, but it takes a little longer to recognize the harmonic chords. Thinking about this type of entanglement always takes me back to the TV series Frazier, and an episode about Frazier's father Martin's chair. It is a piece of furniture in significant contrast to Frazier's high end furniture which includes an exact replica of Peggy Guggenheim's Paris sofa and many objets d'art. But when Frazier accidentally throws the chair off the balcony and suggests a high end replacement Martin explains why that chair is the only one he every really wanted. He says:

"Okay, I'll tell you what chair I want. I want the chair I was sitting in when I watched Neil Armstrong take his first step on the Moon. And when the US hockey team beat the Russians in the '80 Olympics. I want the chair I was sitting in the night you called me to tell me I had a grandson. I want the chair I was in all those nights, when your mother used to wake me up with a kiss after I'd fallen asleep in front of the television. Y'know I still fall asleep in it. And every once in a while, when I wake up, I still expect your mother to be there, ready to lead me off to bed..."  

Martin and his chair had become - over the years, and through shared experiences - harmonically entangled. Think about it. You probably have some thing that you have hung onto over the years. A sweatshirt, a poster or picture of some person, place or thing, maybe a stuffed animal, a childhood book - anything that perhaps started out as just a "thing" but one with which you have - over the years - now become harmonically entangled."

This is all very plausible here in the playground of the unknown, but unfortunately seems more than a little strange out there where the real kids run around in their playground, texting their friends, posting pix on Facebook, TikToking away. All activities that seemed more than a little strange before there were smart phones which now, occasionally, provide tantalizing glimpses of a future in the playground of the unknown.

 

The Elephant in The Room

Having taught courses focused on the media and society for 4 decades I suppose I should share my thoughts on the giant elephant in the room. Well, Dumbo's ears weren't all that big . .  . OK, so not Dumbo. AI. Artificial Intelligence.

Seems like you cannot access any information source these days without encountering some prediction regarding the impact of AI on our lives. Like that lady over there. I tried to hide a bit in fiction and so picked up Dan Brown's 2017 offering Origin. Bad choice. Interesting novel, but all about how humanity will eventually evolve into some sort of human/AI hybrid. Yech.

First point. AI isn't one thing.  AI is simply a new way of utilizing and distributing information. The latest step in a evolution that probably began with hand gestures - "dangerous beast over there." Then speech, writing, printing press, the telegraph, radio, television, and digital media - of which AI is the latest multi-faceted iteration. And it is that "multi-faceted" aspect of AI that makes it an error to attempt to discuss AI as "a thing." It is many things with varying impacts in each environment.

Point two. I make no claim for deep insight into the hard sciences. But from what I have read, this seems to be where AI makes its greatest potential impact by simply reducing the time it takes to perform the multiple iterations necessary to legitimize results in a variety of fields - medicine, physics, chemistry, etc. However, one must keep in mind that human beings must first pose the initial intellectual seeds, the questions, that trigger these various AI endeavors.

Point three. AI doesn't always get it right. Some would assert that AI gets it wrong a significant amount of the time, sometimes with harmful, even fatal results. It strikes me that the error of considering AI to be one thing, might fuel some of these concerns. But we need to keep in mind that all versions of AI spring - initially - from human programmers creating computer code. Fingers on keyboards typing very fast. Then code talking to code. There is a very real possibility of the oops factor creeping in.

Point four. And I'll admit to a personal bias here - there are some fields of human endeavor where AI has, if no place at all, then only a very small one. I addressed this assertion more fully in this previous post: https://schragwall.blogspot.com/2026/04/artificial-intelligence.html 

But I wanted to do a little reprise here. My concern is with distancing the artistic product from the hand of the artist. I freely admit that my own 2D artistic output is compromised by my inability to draw. Took a couple of drawing lessons when I was 10 or 11, but never kept it up. [See previous post: https://schragwall.blogspot.com/2026/07/practice-practice-practice.html ] So I do compromise a bit by sometimes stealing an established piece of art and repurposing parts of it as a canvas for my "doodles." [I'm currently working a piece I cribbed from Hopper's Nighthawks. Coming your way once I figure out just how I turn it into my concept: Skylarks.]

Anyhow, I feel that many of the proposed uses of AI in the arts - music, painting, 3D sculpture, dance, theater - just feel like a bridge too far. To fire up ChatGPT and ask it to create "a forest glade beside a river in the style of the Hudson River School" and have it actually do a pretty good job, reeks to me of the hand of Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor, or perhaps more accurately, a painting devoid of any creative hand. And the same goes for other "artistic" products created by/with AI.

I do realize that my bias seems a bit antediluvian, but fortunately, AI's grandparent, Google, allowed me to find a rather posh, although a touch dated, bit of support:

"Importantly, our report highlights that the creativity involved in artmaking remains beyond the capabilities of current ML [Machine Learning - rls] technology."

Ploin, A., Eynon, R., Hjorth I. & Osborne, M.A. (2022). AI and the Arts: How Machine Learning is Changing Artistic Work. Report from the Creative Algorithmic Intelligence Research Project. Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK.

Yeah. Me too. Still.

Practice, practice, practice

So we took ourselves down into the city to have dinner at The Russian Tea Time and go to Buddy Guy's 90th Birthday Celebratory Concert with Carlise Guy & The Nu Blu Band. Both events were excellent.  At The Russian Tea Time the smoked salmon, caviar and horseradish vodka all got top marks.

The concert was really exceptional for a variety of reasons. First, it was incredibly loud. I have, as many of us have, become used to controlling much of the way we listen to music. I haven't been to anything except classical music concerts since the Woodstock era - circa 1969. I kept wanting to turn down the background music and punch up the volume on the soloists. Carlise Guy & The Nu Blu Band and the other members of the Guy family were excellent, and the presentation of the family birthday cake was a nice sentimental moment. But two solo performances were simply celestial.

Music - both instrumental and vocal - is a freakishly demanding discipline. First, I firmly believe, you have to be very, very lucky to have been born with talent. It's like sports. I could spend hours in the gym and never play in the NFL. Russell Wilson was a student of mine at NC State, and when he went to the NFL the naysayers tis-tisked "You can't coach height." - a knock on Russell's 5'11" stature. But apparently, as his career proved, talent trumps height. A couple of folks at the concert had "off the charts" talent.

First, of course, is Buddy Guy. When one goes to hear a 90-year old musician you are often prepared to be sympathetic. "Isn't it remarkable that they are still performing. S/he used to be awesome." Well, he still is. The truly exceptional world class musicians stay that way - the expected decline just doesn't happen. Guy's voice was never his claim to fame. The blues are inclined to growling, wailing voices, and Guy pulls that off just fine. But he was best known for making a guitar sing, talk, holler and weep. A voice outside the body that defines a whole other level of artistry. He can still do that. That's what I wanted to be able to isolate - turn the other stuff down.

The second instance was a bit of a surprise. Every concert comes with some "down time" while the band noodles around getting ready for the next set. Well, one of the primary "noodlers" was a guy named Dan Souvigny.  Who, I have learned on my computer keyboard, is a musical keyboard artist who has played with every contemporary jazz artist of note. Go ahead search for him on your own keyboard. Play some of his cuts. He can do on his instrument what Guy does on his guitar. He creates an additional voice outside the body. Sweet.

Which brings me to the link with today's title: Practice, practice, practice. To put it plainly, being born with incredible talent just isn't enough. OK, here is how I remember it. [An increasingly fragile facility.] I went to high school with a guy named Steve Hahn. He was in choir, so liked music. But that isn't why he is important. After we had all graduated, gone to college, got married, had kids, etc., we would often try to get together when we happened to be back in town. But Steve was never available. Always taking his daughter to violin practice, contests, concerts. Well, his daughter's name is Hilary, and all that practice has led Hilary Hahn to concert appearances all over the world.

On the other side of the coin is my personal experience with the piano. A friend of my parents was the local piano teacher, so my best friend and I somehow became her students. OK, this is around junior high school age, and to say we became her students is a bit of a misnomer. Rather, we went to her house for lessons. For me, "practice, practice, practice," was more like "pra, OK, maybe later." I remember one instance where my buddy and I were supposed to do a duet at a recital - a piece called a "tarentella - a fast-paced, traditional southern Italian folk dance known for its quick steps." But as Willy Nelson sings in Me and Paul, "I don't know if we went on that night at all."

But I do know that I am incredibly envious, not only of the great artists like Guy and Souvigny, but also of anyone who can sit down to, or pick up, an instrument and make it sing a little. Gives them a voice outside their body. So parents, no matter how they whine about wanting to go out back and shoot some hoops, or go to the mall, or whatever, make them sit down and "practice, practice, practice." They will thank you for it. 

Eventually.