Sense Of History

"For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!"
If you're having trouble deciphering the thought process behind that burbled statement, consider the source: Expert on Everything, Ayatollah of Rock and Rollah, our "president." He made this utterance using the space-age convenience of Twitter a month ago, but his mind never rests. More's the pity.
Yes, it has been half a century since the Americans put a man on the moon. And then we proceeded to do it a few more times, just to make sure that we left no gray rock unturned. Since then, we have been spending our space capital on a bunch of unmanned missions to various corners of our solar system, collecting data and attempting to figure out our place in this galaxy.
There was a bunch of space shuttle missions that were mostly successful in terms of doing those things for which the vehicle was designed: Shuttling. Exploration of any kind is not without its risks, as two of those missions ended in tragedy, killing all those aboard and leaving one more giant question mark next to our need to send human beings into space. Strapping oneself to a great big tank of hydrogen, mixed abruptly with a tankful of oxygen tends not to make water as much as a violent explosion when properly vented is a dangerous feat. It can move a rocket taller than the Statue of Liberty off the launching pad. Most of the time.
The energy and engineering necessary to get satellites and probes into orbit around distant planets pales by comparison to those needed to get human beings with their reliance on air to breathe and food to eat and water to drink. Maybe even an in-flight magazine. But this isn't really about any kind of practical concern. This is about a tiny-brained old man who believes he can embroider his legacy by being the one who insisted that "for what we're paying your guys, you should be going to Mars!" Not quite John F. Kennedy, there, Skippy. More like the first class passenger wanting to know why there is no wi-fi available on takeoff and landing.
Or Darth Vader throwing a snit because the Death Star wasn't ready on time to ruing the Skywalker Family Reunion.

To The Point, Quickly

Two hours.
One hundred twenty minutes.
Ten candidates.
If you haven't already done the math, that means each candidate gets twelve minutes to speak their mind in this model of a debate, designed to give Americans a taste of what the Democratic hopefuls who managed to poll around two percent. I suggested at one point that this was a little like the National Hockey League playoffs, where only those teams left for dead were left out of the competition. More than half of the franchises participate. Go figure.
But back to that time thing. I suggested initially that each candidate would have twelve minutes to say what he or she has to connect with the public, so desperate to winnow down the crowd of familiar and less familiar faces. There are commercials. And there are half as many moderators as there are debaters. The rules state that each response be limited to sixty seconds, with a thirty second follow up whenever necessary. And of course it was necessary.
"The world is broken. How would you fix it? You have sixty seconds."
Back in 1858, just before MSNBC went on the air, a young Republican was running for Senate against a Democratic Incumbent. There was a series of seven debates, each of which would take more than sixty seconds to summarize. They focused on slavery, and its expansion into territories that had not as yet become states. When it was all over, Douglas won the election, but Abraham Lincoln had raised his national profile enough to be considered a potential presidential candidate in 1860. Abe won that one.
So how are we supposed to divine the next Abraham Lincoln in these sound bites? Endless repetition and discussion by pundits who have seen tape of the debaters scrambling for their moment in the sun. Or the glare of the lights. Sure, maybe some of them are playing for second place, hoping to get a ride on a ticket that would include them as a vice president. Others could be fishing for a cabinet post. It's hard to believe that every one of these ladies and gentlemen are looking forward to going twelve rounds with "the champ." In which case, the really serious ones had better start working on their Twitter skills. So much depends on a red wheelbarrow.

The Wingos Are Poets At Last

I went to school for a long time to get a degree in Creative Writing. Nearly six years of college, with side trips and diversions into Studio Art and Film History. And binge drinking. The total package. When I graduated, I stood up near the back of a section of the basketball arena in which commencement was held, along with a thousand of my closest friends and associates who were also being granted their Bachelor of Arts walking papers that day. After an evening of celebration with friends and family, I was back the following day at my job: Working at a video store.
My Creative Writing degree provided me with endless opportunities, and when I say endless I mean the video store owner ceded control of the monthly newsletter to me. And I crafted endless short stories and poems from the mind of a brooding and sensitive man of letters. That no one seemed very interested in publishing. Which did not keep me from describing myself as a writer, because that's what I did. When I wasn't recommending the latest hits on VHS to customers who would not hold still to listen to my dissertation on the films of Terry Gilliam.
Somewhere in there, I let slip to a friend of mine that I was working on a script for the TV show Northern Exposure. She was very impressed. So very much so in fact that she ended up accepting my proposal to marry her. Even though at the time my job was assembling and moving modular office furniture. I was waiting for my big break. Until then my wife and I agreed that should one of us should break out in any creative way that meant fame or fortune, the other was more than welcome to the coattails of stardom.
I went to work in a book warehouse, where I moved stacks of books by authors who I often felt had much less to offer than myself, but it kept the lights on and had some pretty tremendous healthcare benefits. Which is how we were able to have a baby boy. And all the while I kept that writing muscle from atrophying completely. As our son grew up, he would often see both of his parents hunched over keyboards, trying to make sense of the world in which they lived. He must have been watching closely, or maybe there were genetics involved because a few weeks ago, he was offered a job writing. Professionally. I got a to a place in my life where I was teaching children how to write, and lo and behold my progeny seems to have taken my dreams and made them a reality.
There aren't words to describe how proud I am of him, which is unfortunate since this is an expressly verbal medium. I can say that in addition to the pride is a sense of relief: My son is going a step further than I did, and after just four years of college. Giving me the opportunity to write this piece. That Creative Writing degree just keeps on giving.

Group Work

Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
That's what happened two hundred forty-three years ago. A global super power was toppled by a bunch of wealthy land owners got it into their heads that being a colony was not in their best interest and they should, for tax purposes, create a more perfect union. While it is true that my innate cynicism and need to be clever cheapens the history a bit, there is no doubt that what occurred all those year ago is probably worth a fireworks display or two. Facing off against one of the world's most feared armies, a small group of thoughtful committed citizens changed the world. Forever. The notion that the United States tends to treat the United Kingdom like a distant cousin would not have been imaginable when King George was our daddy. 
These days, small groups of thoughtful committed citizens are busy trying to change the world in other ways. Global warming. Human rights. Gun control. Education for all. I would like to believe that every one of those MoveOn petitions could carry the weight of a Declaration of Independence. All the ideas floating out there that suggest that the world in which we live doesn't have to be the way it was last year because things have already been decided. You can change the world. We can change the world. 
The founding fathers did it without cell phones. Without Al Gore's Internet. Thomas Jefferson wrote all those drafts of the Declaration longhand. No global replace. No spell check. Which might have something to do with that whole unalienable/inalienable thing, but he stuck with it. And then fifty-six people signed it. It pushed our proto-country into war with Great Britain and we sent them packing. Sure, we had some help. Thanks, France. But most of all we had that small group of individuals. 
And we still do. 
The world will keep changing for the better because of them. 
Count on it. 

Toys Will Be Toys

It is possible that you looked up at a theater marquee recently and saw these two titles: Child's Play and Toy Story 4. Two stories about sentient playthings that take matters into their own hands. These are the current entries into series that have been around for quite some time. Kids in America have grown up with the tales of Woody, Buzz and Chucky to keep them company on their way toward adolescence and beyond. One series is generally considered more benign and family friendly while the other is just a little creepier, but that's kind of the point. Toys talking back are pretty creepy whether it's a product of Orion or Pixar pictures.
 This summer isn't the first time this vein has been mined. Telly Savalas, with a Homer Simpson hairline, learned the hard way not to mess with Talking Tina on a Twilight Zone from 1963. William Hurt battled little green army men in an adaptation of one of Stephen King's short stories from 1978. In 1987 a couple with a small child stumble on a mansion haunted by Dolls. They should have called Triple A. And while we're at it, isn't there something pretty awful about the idea of a wooden puppet that wants to be a real boy?
One of the very first long-form writing of any kind that I did was the recap of a game that my little brother, a friend of mine, and I imagined on a Saturday afternoon in my parents' basement. What if all those GI Joes came to life and weren't as happy to be owned like Woody and Buzz? All that Action Team training and experience was difficult to overcome. We were tactically at a disadvantage. In the end, only a great and tragic sacrifice on the part of yours truly turned the tide. In the story, the house was reduced to a pile of smoking rubble. The Hasbro regiment was reduced to melted slag. I gave my life to save my friends. So impressed with this account, we did a reboot a couple of weeks later. I remember a little blowback on the ending the second time through. Why should I get to be the noble one? Couldn't we take turns making the ultimate sacrifice?
And all that time, the Joes just sat there, watching. Waiting. Scheming. There time would come. And now they knew exactly how to avoid our scenario. Toys have a way of coming back.

One Of Us

Growing up in the mountains of Colorado, I was afforded a great deal of fresh air, freedom, and opportunities to meet hippies. This was the way things were in the late sixties and early seventies. The argument could be made that my parents were hippies. They certainly found themselves living among them, all those years ago. Initially, the property on which we built our cabin was an investment encouraged by our uncle who was anything but a hippie. When Uncle Marvin came by for a visit, we would drive into Nederland and get a table at the Branding Iron in The Redneck Room. It may be an unfair label to slap on Marv, but it seemed like a pretty safe assumption that he wouldn't be comfortable rubbing elbows with all that denim and hair out front. The Redneck Room was where my parents entertained their guests from "downtown." When it was just us, we were just as happy to be hanging with the locals, most of whom were familiar with the ways of macrame and herbs of all kinds.
We watched as construction began up and down the dirt road where we walked and played. There was a geodesic dome attempted and abandoned, and the original buildings that were erected as vacation homes by suburbanites became year-round dwellings for the shaggy set. Just over the hill we were amazed to discover a house made of sprayed Styrofoam. The future was coming, and it smelled faintly of patchouli.
It was during those summers that our own haircuts evolved. Even my mother got into the spirit one year when she opted for a pixie cut that was both practical and forward thinking. No more trips to the hairdresser for this pioneer woman. My father, who made the commute each weekday morning down the winding road to his job in the city let his sideburns grow, and the weekends he preferred his red,white and blue striped jeans to anything more subtle.
It was cabin in the woods where I read all about Watergate, and listened to the hearings on the radio. The night that Nixon resigned, we drove into Nederland and wedged ourselves into a packed Branding Iron to watch Tricky Dick ring down the curtain on his political career. There may have been tears somewhere, but there were only cheers of joy and lustful epithets thrown in the direction of the only TV we needed to see. That night, it seemed like we won. The hippies. That night, we were all hippies.

Duck Days

On our honeymoon, my wife and I visited Orlando, Florida. While we were there, our attention was primarily on Disney World, as is our family custom. In order to facilitate park tickets, we wandered away from the Eye of the Mouse and headed off campus for a two hour timeshare presentation which guaranteed us passes to the Magic Kingdom if we managed to stay awake through their entire spiel. As we drove our rental car through the side streets just a mile or so away from Disney proper, we passed a steak house. In the middle of the day, in August, in Florida, a man was standing on the curb waving potential customers in by waving a sign at them advertising their T-Bone special. He was wearing a cow suit. In August. In the middle of the day. In Florida.
Blocks away, kids and adults alike were lining up for the opportunity to shake hands with people in animal suits. This guy was pretty much on his own out there. For all the water he was shedding, he was getting exactly no love. At this point I would love to tell you that we stopped the car and pulled in to the parking lot, if only to get a photo with this poor soul. We wouldn't have to try the T-Bone. We were on our way to free Disney tickets. We couldn't be stopped.
All of this comes flooding back each time I find myself in the presence of Mickey or any of his cartoon pals while visiting any Disney park. I don't think there is a region where putting a fifty pound animal head on top of a suit covered in feathers or fur would count as casual attire. Which is why I was relieved to discover that these folks are in a union. Pluto and Goofy are Teamsters. Unfair working conditions can be addressed as a group, rather than individually, and protection can be afforded those who cannot speak for themselves. Most of them just gesture wildly from inside their character cocoons.
That relief is tempered by recent news that in Florida Local 385 is unhappy with their leadership, claiming that they have created false records, embezzled funds and obstructed. Which may be fine for the current "president" of the United States, but Mickey Mouse won't stand for it. It's been twenty-six years since my wife and I encountered that wayward cartoon steer, but I hope that all our costumed friends will be cared for when new elections are held.
Happiest place on earth, indeed.