Stretched Upon Parting

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It is only natural that a work with the length and complexity of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings would merit more than one post here on The Wall. This is the first, others may follow.  

As Frodo prepares to leave Middle Earth to sail to The Havens with Bilbo, Gandalf and the great Elves of the now-ending Third Age of the World, he speaks to Sam of the nature of partings.  He is, in his words, “stretched” between the world in which he has lived, but where he can no longer find his ease, and The Havens, a place that he has never seen but which promises peace and, my word, harmony.  My thoughts about retirement bounce about in that conceptual space.  Doing “phased retirement” in which one essentially becomes half a faculty member for two years seems sometimes an excellent idea. Other times it recalls the old saw - a uniquely appropriate noun - about cutting a dog’s tail off an inch at a time so that it doesn’t hurt so much.

I find myself in a situation that will become increasingly unique. I have worked in the same job, at the same place, for 37 years. And, depending on where you draw the lines, I will have been here 39 or 40 years when I become “really” retired. Teaching as I do about technology, media and communication, it has never really been the "same job."  When I first came here we were teaching film and audio editing using razor blades and tape.  Today audio and visual editing is an exercise of keyboard, mouse and screen, of hard drives and 4K resolution. A reality built around black mirrors in purse or pocket and speakers in your ears.   

The “messages” of the early 80s were “programs" that would begin each fall, and show “reruns" in the summer.  If you missed it, well, you missed it.  Home video recorders lurked somewhere on the horizon for thousands of dollars. The idea of using critical methods cribbed from Sociology, English, and Philosophy to examine the cultural and social meanings embedded within those programs needed to be defended in professional journals.  I wrote one of the first of those defenses for the 2nd edition of Critical Studies in Mass Communication back in 1985. It was called "Of Butterflies and Criticism,” and was seen, with the exception of a few like-minded renegades, as being every bit as flighty as the title might imply. 

Today we post 300 hours of video to YouTube every minute, and independent entities like Netflix and Amazon create new video narratives that we can “binge on demand” for hours and hours.  News programs give way to social media posts, rants and tweets. Further, any insightful analysis of this brave digital world without multiple references to dead French philosophers and their intellectual progeny is considered, if not completely passé, then at least in very poor taste. So, yes, I work in the same physical place, but not in the same intellectual or pragmatic space that I walked into those several decades ago. Like Frodo, I feel stretched. 

Frodo had grown up in the Shire, a sun-kissed and bucolic land, lolling blissfully amidst gently revolving seasons, careless and carefree, and utterly oblivious to the encroaching dangers from which unseen hands did provide shelter.  I do not mean to imply that my professional world in 1981 fit that gentle description. The aphorisms “fights in the academy are so vicious because the rewards are so small,” and “trying to lead a faculty is like trying to herd cats,” did not spring from some innocent Socratic world beneath shady oaks.  Still the conflicts in those academic Shires seemed more polite, the politics less naked.  

Yet now almost 4 decades later, “the shadow in the East,” as it was known in Middle Earth, has crept upon my academic landscape. The change is all the more ironic in that it is one we dearly sought, earnestly courted for years. You see, in the modern “research university” a department without a graduate program sits at the children’s table, separate from and irrelevant to the conversations of the adults at the big table. For a decade or so we have been able to offer both a Master’s and Doctorate degrees. So we now sit at the big table amidst the cut-crystal of research grants and funded-centers, while fawning graduate and research assistants wait table, hoping to be invited to port and cigars afterwards in the billiards room.

Frodo had gone to war. He had cast the ring into the fire. But upon returning home to the Shire, even after purging the remnants of the shadow, he could not find comfort in this land he had left behind.  Were we to grab, for just a moment, another book off the shelf, and turn to a different wizard - Frodo had seen the man behind the curtain.  After 40 plus years in the academy, here and elsewhere, there are few if any curtains behind which I have not peeked. Yet, the pipe-dream of a university that still beguiles me, and provides the hazy lenses through which I view my professional ideal, comes from the academy’s version of the Shire. From 1967 until 1971 I was a student at Kalamazoo College, a small liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan - not unlike Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio where my father had taught when I was boy. I saw both those institutions as part of the academy’s "sun-kissed and bucolic lands, lolling blissfully amidst gently revolving seasons." They may have looked very different from within, from the front of the classroom. If so, I was willfully deceived, and have worn those comfortable blinders for 30 years.  

Ah, you caught that discrepancy. I have been in front of the class for 40 years, but the blinders have served me for only 30. Try as I might, I have not been able to keep them in place this last decade.  As we rushed to take our place at the adult table of graduate degrees, the gentle laughter of the children’s table - and yes, the occasional tomfoolery - got left behind.  We began to take ourselves terribly seriously. We hired - sometimes under significant pressure from the big table - colleagues who delighted in taking themselves very seriously, who would parade around in invisible yet insistent robes of their own importance and reputation.  We also hired, often of our own volition, bright and brittle young colleagues whose voluminous resumes cloaked aspirations to possess similar raiment. Their abilities were without question, their loyalty less so.  I have watched them come and go this last decade and more, drawn away by bigger chairs at larger tables.

So dear Frodo, I too am stretched. We know we cannot return to those Shires of ours that once were but are no more. Tolkien has given you The Havens where the gentle folk of the Third Age of the World walk, and laugh, sing and talk amidst elvish trees of wondrous blossoms and matching fragrance. He leaves me no such solace. Friends whisper from the beguiling glades of retirement, “Come on over! It’s wonderful.” That may well be. Maybe the academic Shire I hold in my heart never actually existed. It surely exists no more in my waking and walk-about reality. Perhaps I would feel less stretched had I not so loved the illusion. 

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Linguistic Larceny

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It was time for our semi-annual HVAC inspection.  The technician showed up with his impressive tool belt, and a small satchel leaking wires, gauges, and other gizmos and gadgets necessary to his trade. I do not know what your experience is in these instances, but mine inclines me to hide the checkbook and credit cards. It seems that no matter how well the system seems to be operating major - and expensive - adjustments are necessary. And, if one is to believe these modern day snake oil sales reps, the company requires them to advise you just what all needs to be done.

Anticipating a sales pitch for a small nuclear power plant for the attic or a backyard wind turbine, either of which would allow us to sell power back to the grid once the reasonable installation costs of 8 to 12 thousand dollars had been defrayed in just 15 years, I tried to cut him off at the pass: “I’m moving into phased-retirement, so we are really in a ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mode.’”

To my astonishment his reply was a wry chuckle and, “I hear you friend, believe me, I hear you.” And he went off about his business. A couple of hours later he came back into the house for me to sign off on his inspection forms. One page included several hundred dollars of suggested “upgrades.” “You don’t really don’t need any of this stuff, but they expect me push it,” he allowed. 

He did want to talk about some of the art in the house and we spent a pleasant half hour or so talking about Venetian masks and Christine’s fondness for Renaissance religious icons. However, upon leaving he said, “Oh, the pollen is about to get bad. You might want to replace your furnace filters. Lowe’s has pretty good prices.”  I thanked him and hustled off to the computer to visit the company website to give him a glowing review.

The next day I gathered up the old furnace filters and took myself off to Lowe’s to purchase replacements. I found the right aisle, made sure I was in the section for the brand of ultra-hypo-allergenic-catch-everything filters we use and started to put one in my cart when the price tag smacked me upside the head: $60.00!  Now don’t get me wrong, I was expecting 25 or 30 dollars, but 60 just seemed off the chart.

I inspected the filter more carefully.  I discovered that there was a mustard colored disk nestled in the middle of the filter with instructions written below. Seems I was about to purchase a “Smart Filter” which, once I had downloaded the app and paired it with my phone would use a proprietary algorithm to detect optimal airflow, report on local atmospheric conditions, and, oh - let me know when it needed to be changed, for another 60 bucks!  My inner-Luddite rose up in indignation.

Maybe the damn thing works. Who knows. That is not the issue. The issue is that the marketers have stolen another word - “smart.”  We see it everywhere. Our telephones are “smart” phones, our televisions have become “smart” TVs - both themselves linguistic remnants of a previous era when “tele” was all the rage.  Look in the beverage section of any drug store or convenience store and you will see Smart Water on display, seriously. A closer inspection of the label might well reveal that the Smart Water is also “gluten-free.” I don’t know. I am afraid to look.  

But I digress. Let us return to the issue at hand. These filters are not “smart.” They are anything but. Let us seek some clarity in the dictionary. Dictionary.com - which compiles from some more recognizable sources gives us this:

Smart (1- 6) deal with pain, as in “that smarts”, an opportunity for cheap shots that I pass up only reluctantly.

—adjective, smart·er, smart·est.
7: quick or prompt in actions, as persons
8: having or showing quick intelligence or ready mental capability: a smart student
9: shrewd or sharp, as a person in dealing with others or as in business: a smart business person
10: clever, witty, or readily effective, as a speaker, speech, rejoinder, etc. 

My furnace filters - actually their furnace filters, I bought the ones with similar filtration that did not “pair” to an app on my “smart” phone - are not, by any stretch of these definitions “smart.”  Yes, it can “say” “I am dirty - change me.” But it cannot say “I am dirty. Change me. And by the way, the house is on fire.” You need a different app for that.

There is, perhaps, a better descriptor for these filters. I suggest “savant”. Back to the dictionary: 

Savant -

1: a person of learning; especially : one with detailed knowledge in some specialized field (as of science or literature)

2: a person affected with a developmental disorder (such as autism or mental retardation) who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (such as mathematics or music); especially : autistic savant.

These filters are “autistic savants,” in less PC days also known as “idiot savants.” Brilliant in one tightly focused area, but complete idiots in the rest of the world. Think Rain Man but without Dustin Hoffman’s tug at the heart strings.  The reinvention of “smart” is the salesforce’s foot in the door, which by design or not, pries open the way for the “Internet of Things” We are encouraged to see the Internet of Things as this helpful safety net of “smart” products moving in graceful accord to cocoon us safe from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” An equally, if not more, plausible interpretation is that the Internet of Things will be an unruly conglomeration of idiot savants who don’t know that the house is on fire.

But, I keep forgetting that this is a post about linguistic larceny. “They” have stolen “smart.”  Mind you I do not believe, as apparently the French still do, that language is a static beast, doomed to be forever constrained by the standards of the breed.  Not at all. I believe the chief glory of the English language lies in its complexity and flexibility. After all, Shakespeare invented words. By various counts some 1,700 English words first saw the light of their literary day in his plays and poems. 

But Shakespeare didn’t just toss in words “willy-nilly” or “dilly-dilly” for that matter. Rather he did so when the language as it stood failed him; when the emotion or meaning of the moment stretched the fabric of the language to the shredding point. Then a new word, a better word, a more precise articulation became necessary, and he supplied it. The current pilfering of “smart” is no such moment.  It is rather the opposite of such a moment,  it is a cheapening of the language that smears nuance or clarity to confusion - a child’s finger painting with streaks of red, green and yellow still visible around the edges, but which on closer examination fades in its center to grit and mud.

In truth, I am more disappointed than offended.  One clings to the hope that humanity remains on an ascending path. That we become, with each succeeding generation, something better, more refined, more perceptive, more capable of expressing beauty and harmony than we were before. Yet when our language which, with our visual depictions, enables the expressions of our most ascendant selves becomes instead increasingly brutish and simplistic, the opposite conclusion presents itself: we are, in this aspect at least, devolving. 

It may well be, to complete my earlier uncited cribbing from the Bard, a time to “take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.”

Hamlet, Act III, scene 1.

By which I mean one should seek to apply the second tenet of Distilled Harmony, Enable Beauty, to your language. Written, spoken, dreamed, imagined. Who knows, well-crafted language might eventually morph into a meme.

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And for those of you who might be curious, some etymology on “dilly dilly” - a phrase so completely stolen by Budweiser that hollering it at the 2018 Master’s Golf Tournament will get you ejected. Right, the Augusta National Golf Club, while creaking its way to admitting women and people of color still prohibits any commercial “messages” on the club grounds. Obviously the apparel and the equipment of the golfers is excepted.

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that in the 1700s a “dilly” was a cart used in agricultural and industrial work. As in “Get your dilly over here.” However, in that era it was also used as an adjective meaning foolish or mad. That might lead to “Are ye dilly? Get yon dilly over here!” It was not until the early 1900s that it acquired the Budweiser stolen meaning of “delightful” or “delicious.” Yet, Wikipedia traces the phrase/lyric “Lavender blue dilly-dilly, lavender green” to English nursery rhymes as early as the late 1600s. Which could, in theory, allow for “That lavender blue dilly dilly seems a dilly color for yon dilly.”

No more dilly-dallying around .  .  .  .   

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Hawking Contradiction

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Steven Hawking’s death continues to recede, but I am still processing it. Given his physical challenges it seemed a continuing miracle that he was alive. But strangely I kept thinking he would persist in defying the odds, and somehow always be there. You’d think our knowledge of his frailty would make his passing easier to accept. But it doesn’t.  

I often encourage my students to avoid being intimidated by the experts, the professionals, even the geniuses. If you want to write, write. If you want to sing, sing.  Driven to sculpt, start a business, become a philosopher or cosmologist, cardiologist, guitarist? Do it, do whatever you choose. Don’t worry about the myriad examples out there who seem to do it better than you. 

But once, maybe twice in a lifetime, you encounter an entity so exceptional that you realize that you could never reach the plateau from which they view the world. I saw Steven Hawking as one such person. But not merely as a physicist. Mathphobic from an early age, I never seriously contemplated playing in that sandbox, so have no real basis for evaluation. I am perfectly content to accept the shared notion that he was the best and brightest since Einstein. Yet there are others who would respond, “Yeah, but what about Feynman? Weinberg? Higgs? Greene? “ Not my sandbox. Not going there. And as I said Hawking staggers me not solely because of his accomplishments as a physicist, but more because he did it all inside his head. No blackboard, no scratchpad, no tablet computer. He was the captive of a body in full revolt, eventually able to only control a few facial muscles. But even so stricken, he was still able to think those amazing thoughts. So, confessing to that level of admiration, I feel less constrained in addressing what appears to be significant contradictions in some of his more broadly focused pronouncements.

  

The New York Times obituary reveals a few of them:

In “A Brief History of Time,” Dr. Hawking concluded that “if we do discover a complete theory” of the universe, “it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists.” He added, “Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that,” he continued, “it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.” 

But then later, "Dr. Hawking felt that there was no need to appeal to anything outside the universe, like God, to explain how it began.“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper,” he wrote, referring to the British term for a firecracker fuse, “and set the universe going.”

He went further later that same year, telling the British newspaper The Guardian, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” 

But still again elsewhere, “God not only plays dice with the universe, but sometimes throws them where they can’t be seen.”

I find the certainty implied by these “Hawkingisms” interesting especially in light of his major finding “Hawking Radiation,” the formula for which he requested to have carved upon his tombstone. The intellectual pursuit that found its resolution in Hawking Radiation, began with other physicists challenging one of Hawking’s own earlier certainties - that nothing could escape the gravitational embrace of a black hole. Nothing, we now know, except Hawking Radiation, the electromagnetic energy that escapes when a black hole captures only half of a particle-antiparticle pair that can spontaneously form along the event horizon of a black hole.

So, I ask myself, is there not an inconsistency between an individual who has literally reshaped our perception of the universe purely through the manipulation of the electronic impulses in his brain, and the idea that “the brain is a computer that simply stops working when its components fail.” What happens to all the information - encoded in cascading mercurial electronic flashes, that resided in his living brain - information that, in my admittedly limited understanding of the reasoning underlying Hawking Radiation - cannot be lost? So where does that resident information go when the “components” fail? 

Perhaps Hawking’s earlier musing regarding the eventual potential to “know the mind of God” is informative. I have no intention of addressing what Hawking may have meant by God, or even more mysterious, “the mind of God.” But there is - in that phrase - an inescapable implication of a kind of universal sentience that still transcends even Hawking’s incredible intellectual scope. A sentience that may well find its clearest manifestation in a “sentient field” that - like the Higgs field imparting mass to all the particles in the universe - permeates the universe lending a shared sentience to existence. 

Again, it is good for us to remember that the awesome mental manipulations that led Hawking to the notion of Hawking Radiation were jump-started by the fact that his initial thoughts about black holes were wrong. They were “certainties” that had to be revised through deeper consideration. More energy, more information being ordered and reordered inside Hawking’s head.

I am reminded of Arthur C. Clark’s (author of among others, the Space Odyssey works) assertion that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It strikes me that there is a warning there. What appears to be magic will, given more time and additional reflection and research, reveal itself to be no more than the latest version of evolving technology. The same might be said of the transient certainties in Hawking’s seemingly conflicting observations. Is there “a mind of God” or do we need not “seek God to light the blue torch paper” of the universe? 

Surely, the most insidious intellectual trap for physicist and philosopher alike is certainty. In asserting the finality of death  - the final crash of the brain, the human computer - Hawking proves himself no more immune to hubris than the rest of us less gifted. The intricate patterns that danced across his stunning bundle of neurons were no random firings. They were intellectual symphonies of surpassing - and lasting - beauty.  And while they were certainly his creations, it is not for him to declare them extinguished with his passing.

I have no trouble imagining philosopher-physicists a thousand years hence explaining to their students, “Yes, they believed that the energy patterns of thoughts died when the individual brain in which they originated ceased its primary biological functions. Settle down now. I know, I know, it seems quite primitive. But remember we’re talking about the early 21st century. Things were quite primitive. It wouldn’t be until  2347 when Jannis et. al. discovered that .  .  .”  

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Two Paths Converged in a Wood That Appeared Yellow

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Two paths converged in a wood that appeared yellow . . .

(This post was actually written a couple of weeks before Stephen Hawking died, but I had not posted it before his death. Then he died and I lost focus and began to work on the essay prompted by his passing. I have pretty much finished with that post. But I will post this first as the two make more sense together. I’ll post the other in a couple of days. - RLS)

I have been encountering some new interest in an old discussion. Most recently the March 3rd issue of New Scientist reviews Angela Potochnik’s book Idealization and the Aims of Science and a collection of essays titled Science Unlimited?: the concept of scientism. Both works are epistemological in nature, focused on how we come to know and understand the physical nature of the universe and the philosophical nature of our own existence. Unfortunately the collection of essays seems, from these reviews anyway, to see the issue as some sort of contest. And they bring out the big guns, quoting Hawking as saying “philosophy is dead,” and Feynman asserting that a philosophy of science is as useful to science as ornithology is to birds. These pronouncements constitute a warning - and perhaps one to which we all should pay more attention - of how wrong even the brightest among us can be when they mistake their own expertise for a kind of global certainty. Potochnik, an unrepentant philosopher, appears to try to take more of a middle road, but is anything but oil on troubled waters when she declares that “science isn’t after the truth.”

I wonder why this intellectual cat fight seems to have nine lives of its own. But then again, having spent almost half a century on university faculties, I am really not at all surprised. The academic world is a world of competitive storytelling. It is the “best” story that gets published, that attracts grants, that gets you tenure. And so to elevate your own story, you must demean or destroy the stories of those others seeking the increasingly limited rewards the academy has to offer. When the storytelling contest takes place within the confines of a particular discipline the contests are usually bound by the canon of the discipline - those dominant stories that define the current beliefs of the tribe. Those narrative duels often tweak and expand the canon, but rarely challenge its central core.

However, when the fight breaks out across disciplines, things can get totally out of control. It is a shame that the “winner takes all” nature of intellectual debate in the academy has seen fit to cast scientists and philosophers as antagonists. Distilled Harmony reveals that nothing could be further from the truth. Academic cat fights proceed from the assumption that for me to be right, you must be wrong. Distilled Harmony proceeds from the mandate of its first tenet - Foster Harmony. In this context that means we should seek to learn what we can from the perspective of the other in order to increase our shared understanding of larger issues.

The truth is that at their most fundamental level science and philosophy seek to answer the same question: what is the nature of the universe and what is our place in it? The fact that we have arbitrarily given the first portion of the question over to science and the second part to philosophy is intellectually myopic.

It is true that to date science has concerned itself primarily with the notion of the mechanics of the universe: how it came to be, what it is made of, and how its various parts work together. The progress it has made down this path in the past thousand years is truly astonishing. Even now hardly a day passes without some new insight regarding the very large frontiers of black holes, distant galaxies, and gravitational waves. The same is true of the incredibly tiny world of nano particles, quantum mechanics and quantum computers.

Philosophy has been less overtly successful, perhaps because its focus has been less precise - seeking, often through religion, to answer those questions better left to its sibling science. But rather than railing against science’s success, philosophy would be better directed to turn its attention to the issues that blend more naturally with science’s investigations.

Science has made great strides in revealing what the universe is and how it works, and occasionally uses those advances to assert its intellectual primacy. However it is only able to tout these advances by quietly failing to address one of the questions that every first year journalism student is taught to apply: why? Why are the universe and existence so structured? And that should be the true calling of philosophy: seeking to understand the reason for, and the universal nature of existence.

If there is one great common theme between these cosmic twins of Science and Philosophy it is that notion of seeking. Both disciplines rest on the cornerstone of curiosity - always searching for the next set of questions posed by the current answers. Assuming certainly should be anathema to both. Certainty in science turns science to dogma and certainty in philosophy ends in fundamentalism. In each case the discipline stagnates and grows more concerned with staking out positions to be defended rather than creating paths to new knowledge and greater understanding. These are fatal flaws as the universe cannot be constrained in a terrarium nor can existence be finally explained with tracts of mystic, unquestionable, declaratory prose.

Perhaps a metaphor offers the best conclusion to this current rambling:

Consider four mountaineers attempting to scale the face of an unknown peak. They may choose to climb separately or together. The two youngest, most fit, and perhaps even the most skilled, sprint off alone on separate paths, determined to be the first to reach the summit. The remaining pair decide to climb together. They carefully check their equipment, study the few available maps and begin their studied ascent. Each takes the lead when the terrain favors his or her unique skills. The other leads when the situation is reversed. They move steadfastly up the mountain eventually gaining the apex from which they can see their younger colleagues, paths now crossed, bickering below. As the pair on the summit survey the surrounding vista, they see another peak nearby, even more beautiful and alluring than the one on which they stand. After a brief meal, and perhaps a nap, Science and Philosophy gather their gear together and, curiosity flaring, begin their next ascent.
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Tanked

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I had hustled over to the grocery 

Later than intended, 

But needing a few things that  

Would ease the morning. 

Eggs, coffee, juice. 

Maybe some English muffins. 

I rounded an end cap  

Featuring a flashy rainbow  

Of sugared cereals, 

When I glimpsed him 

From the corner of my eye. 

He was backed, or perhaps 

More accurately, “fronted” 

Into a dark corner shadow. 

The traitorous tail tucked under, 

Beady eyes studiously turned away 

From those lingering shoppers  

Still stalking the aisles at closing time. 

Perhaps it was a conscious strategy, 

Shrinking away from the fluorescent 

Glow illuminating the gaudy filets 

Of “wild caught salmon” nestled on  

Uncomfortable beds of crushed ice. 

If so, it seemed to be working. 

He was, after all, 

The last lobster in the tank. 

All alone he, or she -  

How do you know which? - 

Seemed more piteous than 

The cluster of similarly fated 

Crustaceans that usually caught 

My more focused afternoon attention. 

They would mill about among bubbles. 

Almost like an aquarium  

In the lobby of a posh lawyer’s office, 

Or along the wall of a therapist’s 

Discrete and confidential retreat, 

Aping a display at Seaworld. 

Still, no amount of dissembling could 

Hide the eventual end of this tail. 

Yet there he was,  

Tucked behind a carbonated veil, 

Hoping in vain that somehow the deepest 

Reaches of the tank would provide 

The sanctuary denied him 

At the bottom of the sea. 

It all saddened me somehow, 

So I hurried past

Seeking something grass-fed, 

Or even non-GMO free-range, 

Comfortably wrapped in plastic, 

That I could take home 

And toss out upon the grill. 

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Silliness . . by any other name.

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According to the blinking screen on my phone it is 2:29 AM. Which means she must have shown up, what, maybe 20 minutes ago? My ex-wife’s brother’s second wife. She wandered into a dream. Didn’t play a major role in the dream as I recall. But, of course, now that I’m awake the details of the dream have fled. Still, I can remember quite clearly what she looked like. Very pretty woman. A little Polynesian blood perhaps? I can even remember some details of her life, a few of which sent my then brother-in-law off to wife number three. Actually, now I’m not sure if he married number 3 - maybe not. My brother did, but did my then brother-in-law? Who knows? That’s not the point. You see, the problem is I cannot for the life of me remember my ex-wife's brother's number 2 wife's name.  Got the names of her two kids, who remain in touch with my children. I can even recall  the name of my ex-brother-in-law’s first wife. But ex-sister-in-law number two remains nameless.

You might think this would cause me to worry about my fading memory. No, that is not the issue at all! The real cause for concern is far more sinister and widespread. The issue is names. There are simply too many of them. Malthusian doomsday voices cry out about the impossible task of feeding the planet’s burgeoning billions. Feed them? First things first. How are we going to name them all? George Foreman, who famously named his four sons after himself- Georges I, II, III and IV - may have pointed us in the right direction. But even that is I fear, only buckets against the flood. The Hapsburgs tried it, the Catholic Church still does. So a few kings and Popes slipped by, but more kept appearing on the horizon, all needing names! Like the Super Bowl - where does it end? King George the 312th?  CCCXII? Pope Pius the 87th? LXXXVII?

Parents are already cracking under the strain. My class lists grow increasingly weird, evidence of desperate parents driven to Krogers in search of a name that will be unique in preschool. I understand the pressure. But Cheerios Huntington-Smythe? Really?

It is not a new phenomenon, I admit.  Freshman year, Kalamazoo College, circa 1968. A classmate and I presented an original one-act play in a local campus venue called The Black Spot.  Together we crafted the memorable line - “Name names now Norris near Nancy’s nice newly named nuisance.” Ah, they don’t write ‘em like that anymore.

The name of that co-author of my youth? Ah, yes. Ah, Clint. Clint something . . No, not, Eastwood. It will come to me.

4:20 AM. Anita! Her name was Anita

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Page World

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“The trouble with poetry is

that it encourages

the writing of more poetry,”

                    - Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry 

An empty page contains

Every possible nuance.

Nouns gather in a circle

As verbs scramble beneath them.

Adjectives pass ammunition . . .

Then everything stops

While the ellipses stroll through,

Holding hands, laughing,

And talking of something else

Entirely . . .

Cowed pronouns huddle together,

Praying that the adverbs 

Can best the dangling participles,

Who seek to breach 

The wall of complex sentences,

Before it all stops

At the bottom of the page.

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Stalking the Waking Brain

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It is an image that, not surprisingly, occurs to me most often when lying awake in the hours just after midnight. A brain, not a floppy, oozing true-to-biology brain, but a cartoonish, cute, vaguely puppy-like brain scurries about in the imaginary space above me, avoiding my gentle net of sleep. It is a clever little critter. Just when I think I have it cornered it leaps away chortling  “Ah ha! How about matter and anti-matter? If there had only been a tiny bit more anti-matter after the Big Bang, it would have consumed all the matter and there would be no universe! What do you think about that?” And then it slips out of sight around a corner.   

I follow it down the stairs. Thinking I have it trapped on the landing, I raise my net, “Taxes!” It hollers and slides laughingly down a spiral bannister . 

“Did you lock the garage door?” “Do you think your hip will hurt if you sleep on your right side?” “Will shrinking sea ice doom the polar bears?” “Did you finish the PowerPoint for tomorrow’s lecture?” “Does love extend beyond the heliopause?” “Will we remember previous lives if we attain enlightenment?” “Are there enough eggs in the fridge to make an omelet for breakfast?” “What will retirement be like?” “Should we get a dog?” “Is Milton a silly name for a black lab?” “What is a memory palace and why do I keep forgetting to build one?” “Do people see colors the same way? Or do they see what I call purple when they look at what I call turquoise?" 

I plod gamely after the little bugger and, just as the rosy-fingered dawn begins to flirt with the eastern horizon, I find it curled up on the couch. Eyes tightly closed, it is sucking its little brain thumb, smiling and thinking secret thoughts.  Softly I slip the net of sleep around it. 

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Tasers for Teachers

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[Prologue:  Back in 1977, those callow days before the Internet and email, Don Novello aka Saturday Night Live’s  Father Guido Sarducci published a little 160 page book titled The Lazo Letters: The Amazing Real-Life Correspondence of Lazlo Toth: American. To quote Amazon: "In letters to stars, dignitaries, and chairmen of the country's most powerful organizations, Don Novello's alter ego Lazlo Toth pestered his victims for photographs, offered outlandish advice, fired off strange inquiries, and more. The strangest part? Practically everyone answered, leaving Toth with a hilarious collection of outlandish correspondence unmatched in the history of American letters.”   

The book truly is a riot and is still in print. I recommend it highly. Lazlo’s occasionally tortured prose only heightens the impact of his often misguided passion. But beneath the brilliant satire lies a darker side. Novello occasionally takes on the absurdities of the rich and powerful, pointing out with razor-sharp wit that “Look! These folks are naked. The Emperor has no clothes. They are not only naked, they are also stupid.” Having spent 65 years in classrooms, either as a student or a teacher, I feel qualified to assert that President Trump’s recent proposal that a good response to the continuing national disgrace of school shootings would be to arm classroom teachers falls beyond the pale of rational thought.  Frankly the proposal calls into question the President’s mental health.  It is clear from his personal history that at one time Donald Trump was a cagey businessman, adept at working a complex commercial world to his personal advantage. This recent proposal provides no indication of such acumen. Rather it seems to reveal evidence of significant intellectual decline. It hints of the aggressive and irrational outbursts commonly found in the victims of dementia. As such it becomes a natural target for Lazlo Toth: Real American.  If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, I hope Mr. Novello will accept my poaching on his nom de plume as just such a tribute from a fellow Buckeye.] 

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Right On Mr. President!

Well, I guess you Trumped those fake crisis actors from Florida! “Trumped,” get it? Ha ha. I don’t understand why there haven’t always been guns in classrooms. I mean guns for the teachers - forget that ruler on the knuckles, or a quick swat on the butt. Guns for the teachers! Yeah! I bet our founding Four Fathers didn’t leave their muskets at home when they rode over to the old one room school house! And how about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and John Wayne? Real Americans with guns!

But, Mr. President, here's an idea that might play better in the faking liberal press. “Tasers for Teachers!” It fits really well on a bumpersticker or as a hashtag. And there are other good things about the idea. Saving money! With tasers whining teachers can’t come asking for money for school budgets, books and stuff instead of guns. Tasers are cheaper than guns! And they don’t use expensive bullets!  Have you checked the price of ammunition for an AR-15 these days? Disgraceful! How are we supposed to defend ourselves at those prices!? Besides, from what I see on TV you get two taser-thingies that shoot out every time you pull the trigger! Twice the chance of hitting what you shoot at!  No need to pay for target training!  And dual purpose. If you just crank the charge down a bit, teachers could use the tasers on the students too! Those smart-aleck kids in the back row who are always laughing and checking their Facebook pages? Let’s see if they are still laughing after they catch a few thousand volts from the teacher’s taser! 

I think this could be really big Mr. President! The National Taser Association!!  Yeah! Yeah for the NTA!!  Scoop up those chicken companies who are abandoning the good old NRA!

Yours for safe schools! 

Lazlo Toth, Real American

Make America Grate Again!

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Clarity Will Take Some Getting Used To

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To begin at the beginning, I don’t remember life without glasses. Well, that’s not really true.  I wasn’t one of those babies you see in the newborn nurseries with glasses taped to their tiny little heads. I must have started school without glasses, because I remember sitting in the back of class and peering through my fist so I could read what was written up front on the blackboard.  I’m not exactly sure how that worked but it did. You turn your fist into a little telescope, peer through it and you can see the blackboard better. No doubt some deep principle of optics at work there.  

My teachers probably reported my strange behavior to my parents, and I’m guessing it was around then that I got my first pair of glasses. Hence for pretty much all my life I have “visually challenged,” very, very nearsighted.  I wore glasses until my sophomore year in high school. The musical that year was West Side Story and I was cast as one of The Jets - the Anglo gang. It was 1965 or 66, and so while the idea of dancing gangbangers seemed tolerable, Action singing "Gee, Officer Krupke" while wearing glasses the thickness of Coke bottles just wouldn’t wash. So, one rehearsal I went on without my glasses and casually danced off the stage and into the orchestra pit. My pride, a major aspect of any high school identity, was the only casualty - and I got contacts!

Now, contacts in the late 1960s were very different than today’s high tech versions.  But they were well-suited for the lifestyle of my next few years. Hard little disks of plastic they were well nigh indestructible.  No solution really needed. At night you could just stick them on any surface - the nightstand, between the pages of a book, or in the spirit of full disclosure, down the sides of a pack of cigarettes.  Come morning you just popped them in your mouth, sloshed them around a bit and transferred them directly back into your eyes. No big deal. I know, I know, sounds totally disgusting nowadays, but those were simpler times. Like the rest of the world I eventually moved into soft lenses with toric astigmatism correction that required a second mortgage to buy the necessary cases, fluids, etc. 

About 15 years ago a normal check-up at the eye doctor detected a cataract in my right eye, so I had that fixed.  Leaving my really, really near-sighted left eye untouched.  I had actually become rather attached to the visual anomaly in that eye. Those of you out there who are near-sighted may understand what I mean. An uncorrected near-sighted eye is also a pseudo-microscope.  I could take out my left lens and see tiny things in incredible detail. Great for removing splinters and - much more importantly - drawing tiny little details. And so I have lived in that visually-unbalanced world ever since.

Fast forward to, oh, maybe 6 months ago.  My microscopic left eye began to acquire a plastic wrap like persona.  I would pop the lens out several times a day, run it through its multiple solutions, and put it back in.  It would, seemingly, be better for awhile, and then not.  It eventually dawned on me that the problem might lie elsewhere. I went to see MyEyeDoctor.  

“Whoa,” she opined. “You are really nearsighted!”

“Yes, I am.” I replied proudly.

“And I can’t believe you can see at all though this cataract.”

“Beg pardon?”

That conversation led me to another round of cataract surgery about a week ago. And the world truly is different.  I can now read my powerpoint slides in class without having to stand directly in front of the screen. I can tell immediately that I did not leave my keys, phone, iPad, etc., in that empty space where I thought I had left them. My doc tells me that I now have 20/20 vision in that eye.  However, unlike the folks touting lasik in commercials I do not walk around muttering “I can’t believe I didn’t do this years ago.” More often I find myself thinking “This is strange.”

Take waking up for example. For most of my life I would ease my way into consciousness. The world first presented itself through a gentle haze. Back in 1967 the film Elvira Madigan made its debut.  It was largely forgettable except for the incredible visual quality - ethereal, yet lush, quite beautiful.  It was rumored to have been shot with a silk stocking stretched over the camera lens.  The point is that that is how I used to see the world in the morning.  Then, when I decided it was time to fully engage with the world, I would put in my lenses.  Now I open my eyes and "WHOA! WAKE UP, DUDE! HERE WE ARE! UP AND AT ‘EM!" The temptation to simply close my eyes and go back to sleep again is significant. 

And then, as I mentioned earlier, there is the drawing thing.  Those of you who bought my coloring book.  .  .  What, you haven’t? Well, I can wait. Just log in to Amazon and search for Schrag Color Me Chilled Out. There it is. Hit “Buy with One Click.” OK, back now? Good. As you can see there is a lot of detail in some of those images - even more if you were looking at the original drawings that are 17 x 14. Back in the  PL (pre-lasik) era, all I had to do was pop out my left lens an I could draw those tiny little lines. Now I have to scramble around for ultra-magnifying reading glasses. Not the same thing at all.

Mind you I don’t regret the surgery.  The dizziness and unsteadiness on my feet that I used to write off to just another little gift of getting older have either disappeared or been greatly reduced. Driving at night is no longer a nervous game of “dodge ‘em” in a snow storm. The TV has gained significant clarity. Typing is a lot easier. I can recognize friends, students and colleagues from a far greater distance.

So, yes, no regrets. But unremitting visual clarity is not always the unabashed “good thing” you might assume. I now wonder what we might learn if we could slip back in time and give the impressionist and expressionist artists modern eye exams.  We might discover that they were actually realists - painting to world exactly as they saw it.

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Gelato Implications in Collisional Augmented Poetic Constructions

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I’m sure my friends over in English have the proper phrase. 

We are talking about poetry, and they are academics. 

And that is what we do, isn’t it?  

We make up phrases for conference programs, 

Or titles for articles in learned journals. 

“An Exploration of the Epistemological and Theoretical Implications of  

Collisionally Augmented Poetic Constructions.” 

I am thinking of a form of poetry 

That draws meaning from the improbable  

Intersection of two trains of thought. 

It is approaching 2 AM, so one train is insomnia. 

The other, for no particular reason, is a piazza in Florence 

That houses, according to our guidebook, 

Two exceptional gelato shops. 

Both claim to be the best in the city. 

The inevitable intersection  

Of these two trains of thought  

Demands a deeper consideration of the  

Various flavors of insomnia. 

Basic, of course, is vanilla insomnia. 

A subtle form, you may not realize 

You are involved in it until you notice 

That midnight has turned to 2 AM. 

Mild concerns ping the cranium. 

Chocolate insomnia is the darker shade. 

You brought the seeds to bed with you. 

The “I should have saids!” the “Oh, yeahs?” 

Chocolate insomnia is a pillow thumper, 

A fan adjuster, a fetch a glass of water 

Variant of the breed. 

Your chocolate cherry insomnia 

Is all of the above, but sweeter.

Irritating, of course, but sprinkled

With a happy occasional recollection.

Perhaps the fleeting memory of 

A favorite face or place.

Not surprising, pistachio insomnia 

Can drive you nuts. 

Layered between chucks of dreams 

It masquerades as sleep, blending 

The real exasperations of the day 

With those we construct internally  

Until we are unable to mark the difference. 

Peach insomnia is rare and gentle. 

Sweet thoughts shepherd memories, 

Sunny and drowsy. 

Still awake, but pleasantly so, 

You drift down the river that leads, 

Sometime before morning, 
To actual sleep. 

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It Is Quite Different When You Know It Is The Last Time

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First times are easy to recognize. “Wow. I’ve never done that before.”  “Who is that? I’ve never seen them before.” “Interesting taste. What did you say it’s called?” First times are brand new and usual carry the possibility of a second, third, or fourth opportunity.

Last times - not so much. You often don’t even realize that it is a last time.  What’s the line from that James Taylor song?  Fire and Rain “I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain, I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end, I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I’d see you again.” Sometimes the last time just sneaks up on you.  Like the fact that next Fall will be the first time in 45 years that I will not watch the leaves change through the windows of a college classroom.

Currently, I am teaching a course called Communication Technology for the "last time." I didn’t teach it the “first time.” We saddled a young assistant professor with the rather challenging task of designing the course.  It was to be a required course with the daunting charge of covering both the history and impact of technology on human communication.  He did a great job, but as you might be able to tell from the content demands, the course really should have been at least 2 or 3 courses.  He taught it the first couple of times, but we soon realized he’d never get tenure if we kept beating him up with that course load. So I took over the course and have taught it ever since - 30 or 40 times.  He will teach it again next Fall. Everybody hum “The Circle of Life.”

But for me, now, it is the last time.  

Obviously, the world in which the course lives has radically changed. Today you can Google “advances in communication technology” and encounter a world of incredible gadgets, networks, processes and policies. But when our course began there was no Google, there was barely an Internet. 

The students who inhabit the world have also changed. Before the Internet, the World-Wide-Web and Google, students would read - books. There were no K-12 rubrics, no fantasy 5.3 GPAs on a 4.0 scale. There were no internet savvy helicopter parents - should we call them “drone parents” now? - plotting their child’s academic life and keeping unruly professors on task. There seemed to be a greater degree of curiosity, fewer feelings of entitlement. It was, to sound like an old fart, a simpler world. 

And now it is the last time. 

There is no “Hm, maybe I’ll do it differently the next time.” There will be no next time. A little scary, but a definite sizzle as well. In my attempt to always bring at least one new fact or concept to every class meeting I have amassed a dragon’s hoard of fun facts, strange ideas and important concepts.  And so my last semester in this course has something in common with the first time the course was offered - way too much content, way too little time. The challenge, obviously, is to put the most important content into the smallest amount of time, to get it right this one last time. But how?

My father, also a university professor, once told me “Teach to the top 10%, the others will stretch, And if they can’t, they shouldn’t be there.”  Ah, yes. He lived and taught in an even “simpler simpler” time. Back before “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” designed to guard students against actually learning “uncomfortable” concepts. Back when universities believed that exposing students to “everything,” the good, the bad, and the ugly, was part and parcel of their mandate.

But now it is the last time.

What to say?

I always quote a “rule of three” to my students: Three years after graduation you will remember three courses you took here. And if you think, very hard, you may remember three things you took away from those three classes.

I acknowledge that our course - a required undergraduate core course - will probably not be among those three. But if it were, here are the three points I would choose for them to remember:

1. Technology is designed by, made for, and should serve, people.
2. Every technological innovation follows the same process which is ultimately driven by our demands as expressed in the marketplace.
3. Despite the “herd” implications of the Internet world, you are absolutely unique. No one can be a better “you” than “you.” Becoming that best “you” is the only job you will keep all your life.

And now it is the last time. 

How do I teach them that?  

They will want to know if it will be on the test.  

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Many Worlds at the Edge of a Black Hole

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I love it when I encounter data that supports my biases. We all do. That's what makes fake news work.  We love the feel of our blinders. Breitbart or Slate, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal, Fox News or CNN. Love one, hate the other. I try to get my students to occasionally browse across the ideological aisle. Who knows, maybe they do. But those blinders, so soft and comfy, so affirming. So mostly we stay curled up in our slanted digital silos. 

The point is that I just read in New Scientist that the black hole firewall paradox may have been resolved. Makes your heart go pitter-pat, doesn't it? Makes my blinders quiver! This particular paradox grows out of dueling notions regarding how space-time behaves around the edges of a black hole. General relativity says one thing, quantum mechanics another. For those of you intrigued by the debate, it is in the January 6, 2018 issue. Take a look, it is an interesting read. But I'm not going to go into the details of the debate, I'm going to cut right to the solution: "many-worlds," because that fits right here in my blinders. 

In a nutshell the many-worlds idea - found in quantum mechanics - asserts that our "here and now reality,” the one we wake up in, live in, walk around in, etc., is simply one iteration of countless realities that chain out as a result of our existence in a quantum universe. It is this view of reality that resolves the the firewall paradox at the edge of a black hole. There is no forced choice of either general relativity reality A or quantum mechanics reality B at the edge of a black hole. There is no either-or at the edge of a black hole, rather there is a both-and, and another and another and another. A cosmic kind of schizophrenia that is really amazing once you get past how freaky it seems. 

OK.  Being a fan of supersymmetry I ask myself, "Self," I ask. "What keeps this notion of many-worlds from functioning in our lives?" I mean what are our lives but a series of existential choices? Obviously we think that our "here and now" is the "real here and now." But what if the major choices in our lives were quantum branch-points? Each choice wasn't either-or but was rather “a both-and multi-path branching?” And we followed all the paths. One self followed the 5th grade aptitude test and became a forest ranger, another joined a religious order, a third went to Hollywood, a fourth married that pretty girl in seventh grade and had 8 kids, and so on and so on and so on. 

This isn't just idle rambling here. Well, maybe it is, but the New Scientist article reminds me that I have rambled down this path before. You see, there have been times in my life when I sensed that I was at a quantum branch point. I chose, and followed, a particular "here and now" yet never completely severed ties with the other self who chose another branch. I know, I know, they have medication for that. But consider this quote from the New Scientist article: 

"In this way of thinking, the formation of a black hole and its evaporation due to Hawking radiation - both of which are quantum mechanical processes with different possible outcomes - lead to possible branches of the wave function. An observer monitoring a black hole also splits into multiple observers, one in each branch." 

I just love that! If the observer splits along with the observed "here and now" weren't those myriad observers once one? And who is to say that those observers don't remain a bit "entangled" - another cool quantum mechanics concept. And if they remain entangled should they not be able to experience what their other entangled selves are experiencing? So maybe those dreams, or sensations of being present in "the paths not chosen," are not totally illusory or "an undigested bit of beef" as Scrooge Before the Change might claim. Perhaps they are instead echoes, not of the path not taken, but soundings from the paths taken by our other selves. 

Perhaps enlightenment, or grace, or nirvana, or however we might seek to define the undefinable, contains some element of consciousness across those many selves, down many paths, in many worlds. 

To what end? In truth, I don't think the idea of an "end" is at all relevant. At least it seems to have no place here, in my blinders. 

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Claiming the Legagcy

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My previous post claimed that in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol,  Scrooge pointed the path to compassionate optimism. Yet, we need to remember that Scrooge did not simply awake to Christmas morning magically transformed through his own efforts. Indeed, left to his own devices, he might have remained unchanged, or to be truly pessimistic, may not have awakened at all, left instead in the graveyard to which the spirit of Christmas yet-to-be had led him. It was the spirits of Christmas past, present and yet-to-be, who taught him the path to compassionate optimism. And in truth, attaining the grace of compassionate optimism does require guidance, skills and practice. 

As Dylan Thomas requires, "to begin at the beginning," it is my firm conviction that compassionate optimism rests most firmly on a bed of language. Language not only separates us from the other creatures with whom we share the globe, it is also the uniquely human tool that allows us to both formulate and communicate our most subtle perceptions. Furthermore, it is those perceptions that define our truth, our beliefs and our attitudes. If we are to confront the misanthropic pessimism of “Scrooge Before the Change” and become compassionate optimists we need to learn and practice the language of compassionate optimism. 

Back when I was a young fresh-faced grad student "counter attitudinal advocacy" was a hot bit of jargon in the discipline.  It sprang out of courses and theories dealing with debate, argumentation and advocacy. Leon Festinger was one of its primary advocates. Bottom line, it became an element in the "how do you win an argument" toolbox. The idea was that you would attempt to construct an argument based on the beliefs of your opponent. By attempting to get inside your opponent's head to construct the opposition's best argument, you could discover the weaknesses in their position and take advantage of them. Interestingly, and perhaps not intentionally, forming an argument from your opponent’s point of view allowed you to also learn the strengths of their position. You could learn the language of an alternative perspective. 

To claim Scrooge’s legacy of compassionate optimism we can employ that same "counter attitudinal advocacy" strategy in the service of a linguistic objective.  The idea is to convert the language of misanthropic pessimism into the more gentle, kinder, and humane language of compassionate optimism. 

Not surprisingly, I will assert that Distilled Harmony can smooth the path to compassionate optimism with a designed application of the power of language. But first we need to understand the issues that may stand in our way. The tools of digital technology used in current human communication would have sent their practitioners to the stake in any previous century. To our ancestor's eyes our smartphones and other digital whiz bang gizmos would have appeared at best to be magic, at worst witchcraft.  And while we may still cling to the slippery belief that Facebook, Twitter, et al have not sprung from the dark arts, digital communication has deeply bruised some of the more graceful aspects of language. 

We have, in service to the overpowering digital need for speed, sacrificed nuance for numbers. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways - in 146 characters and spaces or less. Better yet in two - a V lying on its side followed by the number 3 which makes a kind of heart. [A construction I cannot replicate here because because the blogging software tries to read it as HTML code.]

Pessimism finds its expression more easily in harsh language: No! Wrong! Liar! Just about every racial or political slur, and of course the all purpose "F You!" Pessimism uses sledgehammer language, brutish, blunt, bullying, often profane, and emotionally simplistic.  

The first tenet of Distilled Harmony is to foster harmony. This dictates that in the linguistic pursuit of compassionate optimism we must purge our own language of those traces of brutish pessimism. That is harder than it seems. Language evolved. It did not descend from the perfect prose or poetry of the angels. As human thought and perception elevated, language worked to keep pace. The graceful capabilities of language are hard won prizes that must not be tossed aside for some facile flirtation with speed or a childish fear of falling behind in the pursuit of the latest obsession of the herd. Oops. Obviously I meant FOMO. 

To foster linguistic harmony means to avoid the language of discord. Nobody is truly interested in our complaints. They may be irritated by the same issues that grate on our nerves, but in truth - contemporary American politics notwithstanding - venting does little to assuage our listeners ire or our own. Rather ranting and brief bursts of accusatory complaints merely increases discord and fosters pessimism. Think of a recent example of brutish, bullying language you had the misfortune to encounter. To quote Professor Harold Hill: "Make your blood boil?  Well, I should say!"  

The language of misanthropic pessimism makes does make your blood boil. The language of compassionate optimism cools the venting spleen, gentles the roiling soul. So train yourself to bite back the cutting remark, the disparaging retort. No one really wants to hear about it, and you simply raise your own blood pressure to little or no avail. And here kindergarten may offer a bit of wisdom - if you can't say something nice, it is preferable to say nothing at all. 

The second tenet of Distilled Harmony is to enable beauty. The potential for beauty in the language of compassionate optimism, to twist a metaphor, leaves one speechless. From ancient tomes, through the compelling literature of every age, to the latest novel or musical lyric we all cling to phrases that stagger us with their linguistic perfection, with their ability to engage and enchant our soul. Truly it is the hope of crafting such a phrase, poem, novel, essay or post that has inspired millions of persistent souls across time to confront the daunting challenge of the blank page. 

When considering the contribution of the the third tenet of Distilled Harmony - distill complexity - to the language of compassionate optimism I must admit to significant personal failure. Brevity can be beautiful. But clearly I am not so inclined. A quote attributed to many sculptors is the advice to envision the finished work within a block of marble and then simply carve away everything that doesn't look like the finished work. I can offer similar advice when you sense I am having too much fun with words. Read the whole post and then throw away whatever words you think I really don't need. After all, once I hit "post" you are free to make what you will of my ramblings. 

Oppose Harm. What role does this fourth tenet of Distilled Harmony play in our pursuit of a language of compassionate optimism? A simple one I think. Do not debase yourself, your thoughts, emotions and beliefs with blunt and brutish language. We should use language thoughtfully to express our best self, the person we would most like to become. Our language, written, spoken or sung should paint that person, clearly, gracefully, beautifully. 

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Ebenezer's Legacy

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A couple of weeks ago my younger daughter, knowing of my lifelong affection for Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol and buttered theater popcorn, wrote to urge us to see the recently released, The Man Who Invented Christmas. We did and it proved a delight. The film, which depicts the variety of personal and professional pressures and convictions that led to the novel's completion, is a kaleidoscopic construction in which the characters of the incubating narrative wander through Dickens’s real life much like Scrooge and his ghostly companions wander unseen through Scrooge's past and present lives in the completed novel. 

Other than recommending it, I will not dip deeply into the film. That is not the purpose of this post. However, I must offer a word of caution. If you are among the handful of unfortunate souls in the world who have neither read nor seen A Christmas Carol, you must remedy that sad situation before seeing The Man Who Invented Christmas. I suppose the film would still engage the unprepared viewer, but knowledge of the original text adds significant spice to the dish.  

The novel is widely available in both digital and analog media. To my mind, it is one of those works that particularly lends itself to the turning of physical pages. A comfortable chair and some mulled wine further enhances the experience. If you prefer your fiction on the big - or little- screen, I strongly recommend the George C. Scott version. Others have portrayed Scrooge well. Scott becomes him. The attentive parent will shield their young children from the Disney version. The damage this travesty can visit upon the evolving brain is still uncertain, but in this unfortunate instance one cannot be too careful. 

While The Man Who Invented Christmas is a welcome addition to the Christmas Carol universe, I came away from the film thinking more about the original work. It strikes me that the actual world to which the three spirits led Scrooge that Christmas morning had changed not a whit from the one realized in the Christmas Eve before. What had changed was how Scrooge saw the world. 

It was a profound change. In the course of a few short hours Scrooge morphs from a miserly misanthropic pessimist to a gregarious generous optimist. In The Man Who Invented Christmas Dickens, as the author, agonizes over the seeming improbability of such a transformation. In the end it is "the Scrooge character in Dickens's head" who sways him. Standing in his own grave the changed Scrooge promises, "I will honor Christmas in my heart!" And Dickens, finally realizing the power of that sentiment, captures the words on paper, and with the novelist's omnipotence, makes it so and ends the book. 

Christmas was, in Dickens' era, a minor holiday often viewed suspiciously by the Anglican Church of the time as having pagan roots. As such, it makes sense that the dominant theme of the work is social rather than religious. As Scrooge's nephew Fred puts it, "I have always thought of Christmas time…as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they were really fellow-passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

This sweeping, secular definition of Christmas is a call to a compassionate optimism that in those days was economically feasible only for the gentry. Today, in our hopefully more permeable society, it is an option open to us all. It is a choice we can shoulder in the face of a cynical pessimism that advocates behaviors and social policies that spring from a fear that some pernicious "other" will steal what is rightfully ours. Following this path of cynical pessimism leaves us as snarling dogs fighting over a single bone, blind to the feast that surrounds us.

Pessimism, then, is a self-protective worldview with its roots in fear. From the point of view of the pessimist, one must seek to beat a punitive fate to the punch. If I habitually assume the worst will happen, it hurts a little less when I am proven right.

Optimism however requires the courage of hope. Yes, things may go badly, but I choose to believe they will not. Furthermore, if things do go astray, I hope to have the courage to carry on and seek the silver lining of whatever clouds I may encounter.

It is this compassionate optimistic worldview that is Ebenezer Scrooge's legacy - should we choose to accept it. This is Dickens's pantheistic spirit of Christmas, the one his protagonist urges us to honor in our hearts. It is not a simplistic Pollyanna optimism. It is rather a worldview of hope chosen in the face of an often capricious realty. It comes with its share of bruises. But, more often it brings the gift of a quiet enlightenment that allows us to echo Tiny Tim - who remember, did not die - and say, "God bless us, everyone!"

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Bedtime Poetry

The problem with writing poetry 

In bed, in your head

Is that should you happen to stumble across

A good one

You either have to get up

And write it down

Or give in to the futile illusion 

That you will remember it

In the morning.