Victim Of Circumstance

My wife has been tolerant of so many things, like the presence of sports on our television. Even when I am not in the room. She understands that sometimes I want to have the results spill out of the screen, but I am not always strong enough to look at them directly. She has also been very patient with the number of films that, even though I have committed them to memory, I insist on staring at once again as if they were new. Often reciting vast chunks of dialogue as they tumble by, as she sits idly by, waiting for another one of these nostalgic reveries to come to an end.
So imagine my surprise when she came in from the kitchen, took one look at the screen, and shouted, "How can you be watching this?" I was a little taken aback by her reaction, since I believed that everyone of our era had, at one time or another, been subjected to repeated viewings of The Lawrence Welk Show.
When my grandmother came over to babysit her three grandsons, we were made to understand that a certain portion of the evening would be spent in quiet reverie while soaking in the majesty of Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music Makers. This was a time when the number of devices available in any household to watch television was limited, and color? Forget about it. So we sat, eyes rolling and ears aching as we endured the commercial breaks for Serutan, in hopes that we might be released from this vortex before we slid on into reruns of Hee Haw, another favorite of grandma's.
And somewhere in there, that whole mess became normal to me. The big hair. The polyester. The frigid homogenization of all music. It simply was exactly what it was. It became part of the firmament. Which is why I didn't flinch as hard as I might have when my younger brother and I were introduced to our new piano teacher, a woman with a deep and abiding obsession for all things Welk. With a specific focus on the accordionist, Myron Floren. While it is true that I did not suffer the way my brother did, attending Myron Floren concerts and having an accordion strapped to him at an age when a drum set or guitar would have suited him so much better.
But we didn't know any better. Which is why I was sitting in my living room, decades later, staring at a PBS rerun of a show taped before there was an Internet. Or remote controls. We watched what was on. We watched what grandma insisted we watch. And for this, I owe my wife a debt of gratitude: She shocked me out of my polka stupor, and got me back to not watching the baseball playoffs.

The Week That Was

Listen: This is the world in which we currently live.
In an unprecedented effort to diffuse lingering questions about her heritage ahead of a possible presidential bid, Senator Elizabeth Warren on Monday released the results of a DNA test that the Massachusetts Democrat said proves she has a Native American in her ancestry. "The President" on Tuesday revived his disparaging nickname for Elizabeth Warren after the Democratic senator and possible 2020 presidential contender released a DNA test that she said shows she has a Native American in her family tree.
In a related story, "The President" called Stormy Daniels “Horseface” on the same day that he was calling Senator Warren "Pocahantas," continuing his longtime pattern of attacking women’s appearances. Following this tangent, a little over a week ago, the "First Lady" claimed that she is perhaps "the most bullied person" in the entire world.
And meanwhile, in music news, "The First Lady's" spokeswoman has called for a boycott of T.I. after the rapper released a “disgusting” music video featuring a look-alike of the first lady stripping in a fake Oval Office.
Just a hop, skip and a jump down the news wire comes this nugget: Dennis Hof, the owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, featured in HBO’s Cathouse series, was found dead at one of his other brothels, the Love Ranch in Crystal, Nevada, on Tuesday morning, hours after supporters cheered him at a campaign rally for his bid for a seat in the state Legislature. People, including adult film star Ron Jeremy, former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and others were in Hof’s orbit in the hours leading up to his death.
Mister Hof is projected to be the winner of that election. 
And I leave it to you to unravel the connections between these events, beyond the obvious points on the timeline. These are not made up. These moments occurred over the course of a week in our current climate. And yet, Fox News still refers to climate change as "a point of view." 
Sleep tight, America. 
And vote. 

Lightning

I can be pretty judge-y. I rationalize this behavior by turning that laser focus on myself on a regular basis. It's that little voice in my head that barks at me for running a stop sign when riding my bike, or walking past a piece of trash instead of simply bending down and ferrying it to the nearest receptacle. So I go back and pick up the trash, grumbling at myself. And you can bet that the next time I roll up to that stop sign, I make a conscious effort to come to a complete and full stop in order to make up for the one I missed.
Which is why I feel the need to correct others making similar faux pas as I wander through my day. Like the gentleman who zipped past me early the other morning as I was making my way out into the darkness. I was getting on my pedals as I heard the whir of his sprockets bearing down on me. Then there was the conciliatory whistle as he sped past me, which is the moment that I made my full assessment of this fellow bicycle commuter.
He had no lights, not even a reflector, even though the sun had yet to peek above the horizon. My glimpse of him was aided by a streetlight under which we found ourselves for that moment. He had no helmet. This is a lesson I had impressed on me early in my teaching career. Not only was it a proactive safety measure, it was modeling for all those youngsters with whom I had contact each day. I was an example. Hopefully a good one. My guess was that this guy was not on his way to teach elementary school, so that obligation may not have made his list. But what about safety? This question was answered in my last impression before he disappeared into the dawn: He had his earbuds in.
I decided that I was obviously dealing with a person who expected others to clear a path for him. The whistle I got was more "out of my way" than "look out." Untouchable and Indestructible. I decided to refer to him as "Lightning." It was not a term of endearment. It was the grist for the mill as I made my way, carefully and considerately, to school.

Not

If you are old enough to remember when you had to stay up late to watch Saturday Night Live, rather than wake up the next morning to catch the YouTube distillation of the best bits, then you may remember a cat named Chevy Chase. He was the first Weekend Update anchor, and he had this catch phrase: "Good evening. I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not." It was a flippant bit of arrogance that began as a humorous jest since no one had any idea who Chevy Chase was. Then it became something more: arrogance for arrogance's sake, since he had quickly evolved as the first breakout star of this new late night skit show. In part because he was the only one who announced himself weekly by name. 
If you were tuned in to the Sixty Minutes interview with the "President" this past Sunday, you may have missed his moment of channeling the spirit of Mister Chase. “I’m president―and you’re not,” he told Leslie Stahl. We can only assume that this was his way of reminding the viewing public that he continues to be, not unlike the way Francisco Franco was able to remain dead, "President." And a big blustery ball of denial as well. When pressed by Stahl about whether he believes he treated Justice Kavanaugh accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Fordwith respect, Trump said: “W―you know what? I’m not gonna get into it because we won. It doesn’t matter. We won.”
Way back in 1950, UCLA football coach "Red" Sanders told a group of PE teachers he was mentoring, "Men, I'll be honest. Winning isn't everything", then following a long pause, "Men, it's the only thing!" So maybe it was Red that Orange was channeling rather than Chevy. 
Then Ms. Stahl asked the "President" if he would pledge not to shut down the Mueller probe. The probe that has already resulted in thirty-two people being indicted. And how did he respond to this challenge? “I don’t pledge anything,” he said. “But I will tell you, I have no intention of doing that. I think it’s a very unfair investigation because there was no collusion of any kind.” When asked once more, Trump again fired back, saying: “There is no collusion. I don’t wanna pledge. Why should I pledge to you? If I pledge, I’ll pledge. I don’t have to pledge to you.”
He doesn't have to pledge to anyone. He's "The President." And you're not. 

Where Are They Now?

I went to see First Man over the weekend. I did this with the primary motivation of re-instilling my youthful love of NASA.  I was seven years old when the Eagle landed. The summer of Apollo Eleven was one that remains etched in my memory. There were toy rockets and coloring books and an older brother to keep me fascinated by all things lunar. My family was sitting in the audience of the Central City Opera's production of Die Fliedermaus when a chorus member burst onto the stage shouting, "The Americans have beaten the Russians to the moon!" Perhaps the only time this line appeared in any version Johann Strauss' operetta.
This was a year after I had gone on a Space Odyssey thanks to Stanley Kubrick. I was hungry to go  beyond the bounds of the earth. It was becoming more and more clear to me that if heroes were to be found, they were not going to be found in the White House, or on the battlefields of Vietnam. My heroes were astronauts. Michael Collins, "Buzz" Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong: The crew of Apollo Eleven.
Especially Neil Armstrong. The first man on the moon. The first person to set foot on something that was not Earth. The first human to be counted as a lunar citizen. It wasn't until I sat in the audience of the film of his life that I started to contemplate all the ways that things could have gone horribly wrong. Apollo One ended tragically. All three of those astronauts died in a fire before their rocket left the launch pad. The part I had not considered, as a starry-eyed seven year old, was what could happen if Aldrin and Armstrong were unable to take off from the moon once they had landed at Tranquility Base. Eventually the food water and air would run out. Rescue from the moon? Not a possibility.
When the movie was over, I thought about where my heroes come from these days: sports, rock and roll, movies. Movies? Pretend? Where were the explorers and innovators and risk takers?
Where were the astronauts?
At last check, a pair of American astronauts crash landed with their Russian counterparts on a failed attempt to reach the International Space Station. They are fine, but the crew on the space station is left without replacements. There are people in space right now. Not on the moon, but hanging out off Earth. Do you know their names? Did you know that Russia is going to stop sending people into space, due to cost and safety?
Do you know where your heroes are?

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

#MeToo
#HimToo
#BlackLivesMatter
#AllLivesMatter
And so on. Just as soon as someone shouts out from the bottom of the pile about oppression, an anguished cry comes from some other corner, suggesting that, "you think you're oppressed? Try taking a walk in my moccasins." And so this merry-go-round of judgement continues. The saddest part of all of this equivocation is that it dulls the reality of those who are truly suffering.
It also means that we as a society are relieved of any responsibility for that suffering.
Lucky us.
It's a matter of math. African American males are two and a half times more likely to be shot by police. If there were two and a half times more African American males than white males, that would make sense. That's why it doesn't make sense. That's why people are upset. That's why there is a movement.
Here in the United States, one in five women will be raped in their lifetime. That contrasts smartly with one in seventy-one men who will be raped during their lives. Which does not mean that we should ignore the trauma inflicted on men, but since the perpetrators of those rapes are overwhelmingly men, it seems as though mounting  a movement to protect men from being wrongfully accused of these crimes seems like a secondary concern.
People being wrongfully accused of crimes is a big deal, but wait just a second: Guess who is more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder? Did you guess African Americans? Which is just a hop without a skip or jump away from the percentage of the prison population, which happens to be thirty-seven percent African American males compared to thirty-two percent white males.
And so it goes. Until there really is an "us" in the U.S., we need to keep our eyes on the realities we create. Not the ones we imagine.

Ride By

Sometimes I write about shootings that result in the deaths or injury to dozens. Sometimes I rail on about the nearly one hundred Americans who die every day as a result of gun violence. Just recently I wrote about the relative safety of the route I take on my bicycle commute to school every day. All of this came rushing together as I rolled past the intersection of High Street and Congress Avenue. A thirty-seven year old man was shot and killed there this past Tuesday.
I know his friends called him Dre.
I know he was loved.
I know this because of the number of candles and inscriptions on the wall of the convenience store that have been left there since. The empty bottles left by mourners compete with the burning wicks, kept lit night and day. The local news had this to say: "A nineteen-year-old man was arrested Tuesday night as a suspect in the fatal shooting five hours earlier of another man in East Oakland, police said Wednesday."
This is not an obscure act in Oakland. The seemingly randomness of it does not take into account the terrible repetition. Guns going off in neighborhoods all over Oakland, so many that the city has employed a system called "Shotspotter," a computer aided listening system that can be used to detect gunfire on the streets and yards and alleys and everywhere else guns might be going off. Or they could rely on the eyes and ears of passersby on a busy thoroughfare like High Street at four o'clock in the afternoon. 
Last Tuesday, I was wrapping up my after school program at my school at four o'clock. I walked my fourth and fifth grade students who were working on a community service project to bring more kindness into their world to the front steps. That was when Dre was shot. I went back to my room and cleaned up some loose ends. I left just after four thirty. That was when Dre was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. When I came over the hill, four blocks away, yellow tape was blocking the intersection where the altar would be mounted over the next few nights. Dre's friends waited until the police had cleared the corner and picked up their cones and other caution and investigation reminders.
And that's when the monument began.