Jason and Meghan are my Token Black Guys.
You know how in buddy movies there’s always one black guy in the otherwise all-white gang, and how the TV networks always haul out the Reverend Jesse Jackson or Dr Cornel West as unofficial spokesperson for the (strangely monolithic) “African American community”?
Well, Meghan and Jason are my representatives of the Younger Generation. Or, more precisely, The Not Always Irritated and Vaguely or Overtly Threatened By Nearly Every Manifestation of 21st-Century Life Generation.
I didn’t specifically choose them for this role, and God knows they didn’t ask for it. In each case it was a product of proximity.
Jason is the older of the two. He’s in his early 30s and is the “Web guy” at my workplace. In fact, he set up this blog for me. Which isn’t surprising, because he’s generous to a fault. This keeps me from hating his guts for being smarter, better looking, more successful and two decades farther from death than I.
Meghan is in her mid 20s and has the office next to mine. She’s smart, pretty, has unlimited potential and is roughly half my age. But she typically laughs at my jokes, so all is forgiven.
When Jason first came to my workplace from his previous job as a hotshot writer for the Green Bay Packers’ Web site—a gig way cooler than ANY I’ve had in my 30 years in writing/editing, not that I’m bitter or anything—he was assigned the office where Meghan now resides. So, it’s not exactly a mystery how I became acquainted with these two. While it’s true I don’t get out much—at any given time I probably couldn’t identify by sight, let alone name, more than half of our 170-plus employees—I do at least get next door.
Jason is a huge sports fan and film lover, so we kind of bonded from the start over baseball and movies. Still, when he suggested a couple of years ago that we set a standing lunch date to ensure a weekly hour of face time in the midst of any given crazy work week, I felt rather like Sally Field at the Academy Awards, marveling that the young stud “really likes me!” And if that sounds a bit homoerotic to you, well, I offer as counterevidence the number of crude “That’s what she said” jokes we make all the time. Which you might say is only further evidence of a subtext of sexual tension. To which I respond, “Uh uh!” and “I’m a married heterosexual male,” and “Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay” and “Why am I needlessly belaboring this point in my own blog?!”
Anyway.
It took a little longer for friendship with Meghan to develop. We didn’t have obvious things in common, and I didn’t want to do or say anything to put her on skeezy-older-guy alert, locking her door in dread that I’d stop by to confide my wife doesn’t understand me, or to offer fashion suggestions involving greater display of skin. But it developed over time that for all our differences—encapsulated in a conversation during which, to paraphrase, I mourned for the days before 24-hour connectivity and she wondered why anyone would eschew its marvels—we share a number of crankinesses. Like wishing people would shut up in movie theaters, and loathing bad writing and stupid grammatical mistakes, and being driven batty by some of the same co-workers. We also found that our senses of humor and tastes in music are in many ways attuned.
When it got to the point that we were sharing dark cartoons and riotously offensive Onion stories with each other, I sensed we had crossed some generational Rubicon. Also, as I got to know Meghan better, I was endeared and put at ease by her tightness with her parents—who, after all, are my contemporaries. She clearly counts her mom and dad as friends, which is a strange concept to me. I mean, I love my parents, but I don’t hang out with them. I schedule short visits, hope nobody blows a gasket, then beat it out of there. Still, I like the fact that Meghan thinks coolness can extend beyond age 50.
Like most crabby old farts, I used to reflexively assume that “kids today” were completely self-absorbed, rude, disrespectful, ignorant of history, slavishly devoted to every new gadget, incapable of breaking away from groupthink long enough to decide a tattoo really isn’t necessary, and governed by the fashion rule that if it doesn’t annoy yours truly, it shouldn’t be worn. And I’m not saying that my experience with Jason and Meghan has disavowed me of all those notions. As that old-school nautical philosopher Popeye used to say, I yam what I yam. Which is to say, I really am crabby and old. (And sometimes farty, as Lynn would attest, but that’s a different story.)
I mean, my overriding feeling about the 21st century and my place in it was succinctly and brilliantly described in the New Yorker cartoon from a few years ago that shows a weary looking older guy saying into a phone, “Just waiting for Facebook to go away.” That cartoon bespeaks a mindset—my mindset—that doesn’t take kindly to the world it knew so rapidly disappearing.
But you know, I think my two Token Young Guys (Guy and Gal, whatever) serve me well, and that the gods of office seating showered me with providence. Because, for every debate I have with Meghan about whether cell phones are indispensable or an abomination, for every time I wish Jason would renounce his iPod and buy economically indefensible CDs like me, I enjoy many more moments with them that are built on commonalities or spent laughing at our gulfs.
Perhaps within their circles of friends, I’m a token, too. The Naysayer. The Holdout. The “Ungooglable Man,” per another New Yorker cartoon, by Roz Chast, that marvels “Even the most powerful search engines cannot detect him! No Facebook page, no MySpace page, no nothing! And yet he walks amongst us!” In many ways I am that man. But I’m also living proof that even the Ungooglable Man can start a blog. It might have been set up by Jason, and it may be known to only a handful of people, but this blog is one new millennium wave I’m actually riding.
I’m still waiting in vain for Facebook and its inevitable successors to go away. But I can’t say there aren’t things I love about this day and age. Like doing what I’m doing right now at my keyboard. And acquiring friends who add richness and variety to my old and farty life.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Ellie
Ellie was, in a sense, the Chauncey Gardiner of dogs.
Ellie being Elska Abbott-Ries, the cancer-stricken greyhound our friend Julie Smith, DVM, euthanized in our home last month. Chauncey Gardiner being Chance, the blank-slate gardener onto whom others projected their hopes and expectations in Being There, the 1979 film based on a Jerzy Kosinski novella.
This is my third mention of Ellie in this blog. The first was contained in my post of July 16, when she’d visited our bedroom after an early morning earthquake. I’d mentioned her illness at that time. The second appearance came on July 29, when I’d kiddingly (sort of) blasted her failure ever to sniff us up a human corpse amongst the chicken bones she always seemed to find on our walks. In that post I’d noted Ellie’s death, but had added that the pain was too raw to linger there.
In between those dates, on July 24, Lynn and I had said our tearful goodbyes to our 10-year-old rescue dog, transported her body to a pet crematory and, the next day, brought her back home in an attractive cherrywood box that now sits on the baker’s rack in our sunroom. So, at this point Ellie has been gone more than a month. Time has helped heal that wound—Lynn and I truly have grieved—but it also has helped me clarify Ellie’s legacy.
Some readers of this blog received an e-mail from me the day after Ellie’s death that, upon rereading, strikes me as having been a verbose way of expressing what Lynn has been telling people in two short sentences: “I miss Ellie. I don’t know why.”
Meaning, more precisely, “I can’t easily articulate why.”
In my e-mail, I’d listed a succession of things Ellie was not: affectionate, responsive, playful, joyful. I’d pointed out that she’d spent the first half of her life crated at a dog track, and I’d speculated that her harsh and regimented years there had prevented sunny adjectives from developing in her. I’d praised Ellie’s adaptability and temperament, and had made note of her physical beauty. Those had been the tangible things we’d loved about her. Her easiness. Her gentle nature. That sleek, sinewy body. The sad doe eyes and the exquisite, deer-like snout.
But my e-mail had only hinted at the intangible things we loved about Ellie. I’d mentioned how she’d stand statue-like next to us and not budge until we stopped petting her. I’d submitted that as evidence we were pleasing her—meeting a need in her that had no other expression. I’d suggested that this had brought us joy. And it had. It always made us feel wonderful—as if, in adopting her, we’d done something very, very good.
For a dog who showed little and revealed less, Ellie had a remarkable capacity for expansively rewarding us. When she fairly scampered for an hour straight during walks in the crisp, autumn air, she reminded us of the importance of savoring every moment. When she maintained a doleful equanimity in the face of our cat Winnie’s endless tauntings, she tutored us in perhaps this century’s most useful skill: forbearance. When a halo of sunlight spotlighted her perfect body on a bright spring day, she almost made us believe in God.
As the news of Ellie’s death spread among our friends and family, many, many people called, wrote or came by the house to express their condolences. Every word and gesture was truly and deeply appreciated. But two e-mails in particular, I think, bespoke Ellie’s power.
One was from our friend Adrian, the husband of our friend and doggie daycare provider ilkim. Adrian had co-parented Ellie whenever she stayed at their rural home. The following are excerpts from his e-mail to us:
Ilkim told me Monday night about Ellie. I had to tell her that for some reason as I was walking to my car last Wednesday after work, Ellie entered my thoughts. There was no precursor. I was just walking, and shortly before I got to the parking lot she popped in. Being ever so light on her feet, I guess she is well capable of such stealth.
Perhaps the unusual part of this is the fact that Ellie, being such a quiet and easy-to-please girl, entered into our thoughts and conversations quite a bit. She left such an impression after every visit and I never tried to understand why. It was just there. But with her passing, I have been thinking all morning about her and why she had such an impact on us. I can only try to convey this feeling: She had a way of sharing a bit of her soul, and at the same time knowing the entirety of your own soul.
Then there was this from Ellie’s sometimes-walker Ritch, a friend and neighbor who frames our pictures and enriches our lives with his dark, funny and utterly idiosyncratic insights:
Ellie and I have had many insightful conversations together while walking. It’s hard for me to remember every profundity, every simple truth she blessed me with. I should have taken notes when the professor spoke, but she assured me that there would be no written exam. “Just go and attempt to live well, and be fair to everyone around you,” she would say. “And respect nature, and the animal world too, dammit.”
Once, she asked me if I remembered “the wind in [my] face while running full tilt” when I was young. I said, “Ya, wasn’t that great?” She nodded and said, “I miss it too. But I had it once, I really had it.” I said, “Ellie, I’m a little afraid of dying,” and she looked at me and said, “Don't be. It’s like the wind in your face once again. Just take one day at a time, and you’ll be all right.” I thank her for everything she did for me.
Sure, you can look at these as the hyperbolic musings and extrapolations of people—Adrian, Ritch, Lynn, me—who’ve superimposed our own stories onto the still photograph of a deceased animal. You can blow it all off as our attempts to parse why we so miss a dog who gave nothing back by way of face-licks, Frisbee acrobatics, or, frankly, much long-term interest in humans save our usefulness as food providers and walk facilitators.
But, in reflecting from this distance on my love of Ellie, I see these musings and extrapolations as something more than a mere collection of happy, self-soothing anthropomorphisms. Ellie was a sweet, gentle and sublimely lovely animal, to be sure. But beyond that, our dearly departed friend somehow enriched the spirit. She inspired what, given Adrian’s and Ritch’s beautiful words, can only be described as poetry. I’ve no idea how or why Ellie had this effect. She just did.
Perhaps she whispered her secret to Ritch. I must ask him.
Ellie being Elska Abbott-Ries, the cancer-stricken greyhound our friend Julie Smith, DVM, euthanized in our home last month. Chauncey Gardiner being Chance, the blank-slate gardener onto whom others projected their hopes and expectations in Being There, the 1979 film based on a Jerzy Kosinski novella.
This is my third mention of Ellie in this blog. The first was contained in my post of July 16, when she’d visited our bedroom after an early morning earthquake. I’d mentioned her illness at that time. The second appearance came on July 29, when I’d kiddingly (sort of) blasted her failure ever to sniff us up a human corpse amongst the chicken bones she always seemed to find on our walks. In that post I’d noted Ellie’s death, but had added that the pain was too raw to linger there.
In between those dates, on July 24, Lynn and I had said our tearful goodbyes to our 10-year-old rescue dog, transported her body to a pet crematory and, the next day, brought her back home in an attractive cherrywood box that now sits on the baker’s rack in our sunroom. So, at this point Ellie has been gone more than a month. Time has helped heal that wound—Lynn and I truly have grieved—but it also has helped me clarify Ellie’s legacy.
Some readers of this blog received an e-mail from me the day after Ellie’s death that, upon rereading, strikes me as having been a verbose way of expressing what Lynn has been telling people in two short sentences: “I miss Ellie. I don’t know why.”
Meaning, more precisely, “I can’t easily articulate why.”
In my e-mail, I’d listed a succession of things Ellie was not: affectionate, responsive, playful, joyful. I’d pointed out that she’d spent the first half of her life crated at a dog track, and I’d speculated that her harsh and regimented years there had prevented sunny adjectives from developing in her. I’d praised Ellie’s adaptability and temperament, and had made note of her physical beauty. Those had been the tangible things we’d loved about her. Her easiness. Her gentle nature. That sleek, sinewy body. The sad doe eyes and the exquisite, deer-like snout.
But my e-mail had only hinted at the intangible things we loved about Ellie. I’d mentioned how she’d stand statue-like next to us and not budge until we stopped petting her. I’d submitted that as evidence we were pleasing her—meeting a need in her that had no other expression. I’d suggested that this had brought us joy. And it had. It always made us feel wonderful—as if, in adopting her, we’d done something very, very good.
For a dog who showed little and revealed less, Ellie had a remarkable capacity for expansively rewarding us. When she fairly scampered for an hour straight during walks in the crisp, autumn air, she reminded us of the importance of savoring every moment. When she maintained a doleful equanimity in the face of our cat Winnie’s endless tauntings, she tutored us in perhaps this century’s most useful skill: forbearance. When a halo of sunlight spotlighted her perfect body on a bright spring day, she almost made us believe in God.
As the news of Ellie’s death spread among our friends and family, many, many people called, wrote or came by the house to express their condolences. Every word and gesture was truly and deeply appreciated. But two e-mails in particular, I think, bespoke Ellie’s power.
One was from our friend Adrian, the husband of our friend and doggie daycare provider ilkim. Adrian had co-parented Ellie whenever she stayed at their rural home. The following are excerpts from his e-mail to us:
Ilkim told me Monday night about Ellie. I had to tell her that for some reason as I was walking to my car last Wednesday after work, Ellie entered my thoughts. There was no precursor. I was just walking, and shortly before I got to the parking lot she popped in. Being ever so light on her feet, I guess she is well capable of such stealth.
Perhaps the unusual part of this is the fact that Ellie, being such a quiet and easy-to-please girl, entered into our thoughts and conversations quite a bit. She left such an impression after every visit and I never tried to understand why. It was just there. But with her passing, I have been thinking all morning about her and why she had such an impact on us. I can only try to convey this feeling: She had a way of sharing a bit of her soul, and at the same time knowing the entirety of your own soul.
Then there was this from Ellie’s sometimes-walker Ritch, a friend and neighbor who frames our pictures and enriches our lives with his dark, funny and utterly idiosyncratic insights:
Ellie and I have had many insightful conversations together while walking. It’s hard for me to remember every profundity, every simple truth she blessed me with. I should have taken notes when the professor spoke, but she assured me that there would be no written exam. “Just go and attempt to live well, and be fair to everyone around you,” she would say. “And respect nature, and the animal world too, dammit.”
Once, she asked me if I remembered “the wind in [my] face while running full tilt” when I was young. I said, “Ya, wasn’t that great?” She nodded and said, “I miss it too. But I had it once, I really had it.” I said, “Ellie, I’m a little afraid of dying,” and she looked at me and said, “Don't be. It’s like the wind in your face once again. Just take one day at a time, and you’ll be all right.” I thank her for everything she did for me.
Sure, you can look at these as the hyperbolic musings and extrapolations of people—Adrian, Ritch, Lynn, me—who’ve superimposed our own stories onto the still photograph of a deceased animal. You can blow it all off as our attempts to parse why we so miss a dog who gave nothing back by way of face-licks, Frisbee acrobatics, or, frankly, much long-term interest in humans save our usefulness as food providers and walk facilitators.
But, in reflecting from this distance on my love of Ellie, I see these musings and extrapolations as something more than a mere collection of happy, self-soothing anthropomorphisms. Ellie was a sweet, gentle and sublimely lovely animal, to be sure. But beyond that, our dearly departed friend somehow enriched the spirit. She inspired what, given Adrian’s and Ritch’s beautiful words, can only be described as poetry. I’ve no idea how or why Ellie had this effect. She just did.
Perhaps she whispered her secret to Ritch. I must ask him.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
The Other Cheek
Last night the Cherry-Wheelock family, visiting from Tokyo, dined at our house. Six-year-old twins Nina and Lianne needed to know exactly where Winnie and Tess were every 15 minutes, so at one point I raced downstairs with them to see if the cats were there, hiding from the sweet but grabby girls. I had only ankle socks on my feet, and I slid down the stairs, bouncing off three or four of them directly on my hindquarters. As I stumbled to upright myself, Nina complained that I’d brushed against her head on my way down, and Lianne noted that I’d scared her with my noisy careening. (It’s OK, kids! I’m only in intense pain!)
Later that evening I sensed a disturbance in my ass-ular region, right cheek zone. I then touched my hand to what felt like a baseball in my back pocket. Only, it actually was a huge, solid protrusion. Its size rather alarmed me, so I asked Lynn to feel it through my shorts as she was busily preparing dinner. Strangely, she declined and suggested the timing was vastly inopportune. I literally sat on the edge of my seat through dinner, and not from suspense as to whether Lianne and Nina would eat Lynn’s vegan meal. (They mostly did not.) In fact, at this very moment I’m sitting on the edge of my office chair during my lunch hour, trying not to place direct pressure on the huge black-and-blue bruise (I prefer to call it a “hematoma”; it’s graver-sounding and somehow more dignified) on my gluteus (now-even-more) maximus. I iced the affected area last night and again this morning before work, but it retains the heft and solidity of a good-sized rock. I was unable to ride the stationary bicycle this morning, and a sore left foot also sustained in the fall is making my ability to run this weekend look dubious. So, as if to add fat-joke insults to injury, I’m doomed in my mind to physical inactivity and spiraling weight gain. (This in addition to having an ass cheek the color of eggplant.)
I know: “Thanks for sharing!”
So, OK, let’s take a stab at transitioning this tailbone tale into something a bit more socially relevant. How’s this for a ripped-from-the-headlines—if admittedly awkward—segue? Another thing that’s giving me a major pain in the ass this week is the national idiocy over the proposed “9/11 mosque.” You know, the building complex “at” Ground Zero that’s actually two blocks away, that isn’t so much a mosque as it is an education center, that’s the dream of a Muslim who preaches peace and tolerance and is endorsed by the US State Department, and that would appear to present a shining opportunity to spotlight values our nation purports to hold dear? I’ve so had it with the right-wing jingoism and fear-mongering of the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins, and I’m nearly apoplectic that increasing numbers of Americans are telling pollsters President Obama is a Muslim (as if that should matter, anyway).
The fact that the conservative blogosphere is going nuts over this issue does not compel me to meticulously counter their arguments in this, my own very obscure forum. But it does make me want to do something. Something positive. I therefore have decided to act on what I consider a somewhat related issue: The failure thus far of Americans to show anything close to a Haiti-like response to the flood-related devastation in Pakistan.
Now, I know people have a variety of reasons—in addition to Pakistan’s predominant religion and its reputation as a terrorist hotel—to hold that country at arm’s length. The government is famously corrupt, for example, and there’s reluctance even by some Pakistani ex-patriots to give money except to family members for fear the cash will be funneled into the pockets of crooked bureaucrats and military men. But the simple, overriding facts of the situation, to me, are that 1) millions of people are suffering, and 2) reputable aid organizations exist that can help those people. One such group, an Islamist organization dedicated to relief efforts in Pakistan and among needy populations worldwide, has its US headquarters right here in Alexandria and is very highly rated by Charity Navigator. I either will hand-deliver them a check or donate online before heading home tonight.
Now, I’m not saying I needed the mosque controversy to compel me to donate, but the vociferousness and willful ignorance of the anti-mosque contingent certainly added to my motivation. My piddling donation won’t make a tremendous difference in Pakistan, but I figure it beats doing nothing. It’ll help at least a little. And I’ll feel, in a sense, that I’ve put my money where my mouth is in the wider fight against stigmatizing all of Islam.
The literal pain in my ass will take a good while to subside, but I can do something positive today to help smooth the figurative one.
Later that evening I sensed a disturbance in my ass-ular region, right cheek zone. I then touched my hand to what felt like a baseball in my back pocket. Only, it actually was a huge, solid protrusion. Its size rather alarmed me, so I asked Lynn to feel it through my shorts as she was busily preparing dinner. Strangely, she declined and suggested the timing was vastly inopportune. I literally sat on the edge of my seat through dinner, and not from suspense as to whether Lianne and Nina would eat Lynn’s vegan meal. (They mostly did not.) In fact, at this very moment I’m sitting on the edge of my office chair during my lunch hour, trying not to place direct pressure on the huge black-and-blue bruise (I prefer to call it a “hematoma”; it’s graver-sounding and somehow more dignified) on my gluteus (now-even-more) maximus. I iced the affected area last night and again this morning before work, but it retains the heft and solidity of a good-sized rock. I was unable to ride the stationary bicycle this morning, and a sore left foot also sustained in the fall is making my ability to run this weekend look dubious. So, as if to add fat-joke insults to injury, I’m doomed in my mind to physical inactivity and spiraling weight gain. (This in addition to having an ass cheek the color of eggplant.)
I know: “Thanks for sharing!”
So, OK, let’s take a stab at transitioning this tailbone tale into something a bit more socially relevant. How’s this for a ripped-from-the-headlines—if admittedly awkward—segue? Another thing that’s giving me a major pain in the ass this week is the national idiocy over the proposed “9/11 mosque.” You know, the building complex “at” Ground Zero that’s actually two blocks away, that isn’t so much a mosque as it is an education center, that’s the dream of a Muslim who preaches peace and tolerance and is endorsed by the US State Department, and that would appear to present a shining opportunity to spotlight values our nation purports to hold dear? I’ve so had it with the right-wing jingoism and fear-mongering of the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins, and I’m nearly apoplectic that increasing numbers of Americans are telling pollsters President Obama is a Muslim (as if that should matter, anyway).
The fact that the conservative blogosphere is going nuts over this issue does not compel me to meticulously counter their arguments in this, my own very obscure forum. But it does make me want to do something. Something positive. I therefore have decided to act on what I consider a somewhat related issue: The failure thus far of Americans to show anything close to a Haiti-like response to the flood-related devastation in Pakistan.
Now, I know people have a variety of reasons—in addition to Pakistan’s predominant religion and its reputation as a terrorist hotel—to hold that country at arm’s length. The government is famously corrupt, for example, and there’s reluctance even by some Pakistani ex-patriots to give money except to family members for fear the cash will be funneled into the pockets of crooked bureaucrats and military men. But the simple, overriding facts of the situation, to me, are that 1) millions of people are suffering, and 2) reputable aid organizations exist that can help those people. One such group, an Islamist organization dedicated to relief efforts in Pakistan and among needy populations worldwide, has its US headquarters right here in Alexandria and is very highly rated by Charity Navigator. I either will hand-deliver them a check or donate online before heading home tonight.
Now, I’m not saying I needed the mosque controversy to compel me to donate, but the vociferousness and willful ignorance of the anti-mosque contingent certainly added to my motivation. My piddling donation won’t make a tremendous difference in Pakistan, but I figure it beats doing nothing. It’ll help at least a little. And I’ll feel, in a sense, that I’ve put my money where my mouth is in the wider fight against stigmatizing all of Islam.
The literal pain in my ass will take a good while to subside, but I can do something positive today to help smooth the figurative one.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Chute Me Now
My immediate reaction to the story of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who colorfully took his job and shoved it earlier this week, was, “Thank God my car didn’t need to be serviced.”
That’s because the only times I’m ever forced to watch the insufferable morning “news” shows like Today and Good Morning America is when I’m sitting in the waiting room of the Subaru dealership, subject to the tyranny of the blaring TV set. Those are perhaps the only times in my life when I wish to God I had an iPod, that I might set the volume on “deafening” and bury my head in the newspaper rather than be forced to hear Ann Curry ask a grieving widow “how it felt” to discover her husband had been consumed by a cannibalistic serial killer, or to listen in as the studio gang trades yuks over that viral video of the chimp riding the unicycle.
I have no problem with Slater losing his cool with obnoxious passengers and sliding down the escape chute to whatever the next chapter in his life might hold. I can see where being a flight attendant could suck in a major way, and how a blow to the noggin from an overhead bin could constitute the last straw. I wish the guy no ill. There’s something to be said for exiting with style and not a loaded gun. I’d rather disgruntled employees go flighty than go postal.
But I also wish I didn’t live in a world in which, per one newspaper story I read, “By 7 pm Tuesday more than 50,000 people declared themselves supporters of Mr Slater on a page on Facebook dedicated to him.” A world in which there already is talk of getting the guy a reality show. A world in which, needless to say, I would have found Steven Slater quite inescapable had I been sitting miserably at the Subaru dealership any day this week.
What the world needs now—in addition to love, sweet love—is more water coolers, less social networking, and no infotainment TV. Years ago, we might have read about Steven Slater’s blowup in the newspaper, commented on it at work the next morning, then forgotten about it. How, sweet Jesus, I miss those days.
That’s because the only times I’m ever forced to watch the insufferable morning “news” shows like Today and Good Morning America is when I’m sitting in the waiting room of the Subaru dealership, subject to the tyranny of the blaring TV set. Those are perhaps the only times in my life when I wish to God I had an iPod, that I might set the volume on “deafening” and bury my head in the newspaper rather than be forced to hear Ann Curry ask a grieving widow “how it felt” to discover her husband had been consumed by a cannibalistic serial killer, or to listen in as the studio gang trades yuks over that viral video of the chimp riding the unicycle.
I have no problem with Slater losing his cool with obnoxious passengers and sliding down the escape chute to whatever the next chapter in his life might hold. I can see where being a flight attendant could suck in a major way, and how a blow to the noggin from an overhead bin could constitute the last straw. I wish the guy no ill. There’s something to be said for exiting with style and not a loaded gun. I’d rather disgruntled employees go flighty than go postal.
But I also wish I didn’t live in a world in which, per one newspaper story I read, “By 7 pm Tuesday more than 50,000 people declared themselves supporters of Mr Slater on a page on Facebook dedicated to him.” A world in which there already is talk of getting the guy a reality show. A world in which, needless to say, I would have found Steven Slater quite inescapable had I been sitting miserably at the Subaru dealership any day this week.
What the world needs now—in addition to love, sweet love—is more water coolers, less social networking, and no infotainment TV. Years ago, we might have read about Steven Slater’s blowup in the newspaper, commented on it at work the next morning, then forgotten about it. How, sweet Jesus, I miss those days.
The Fallen
My general feeling about roadside memorials was perfectly captured by an Onion article several years ago. The headline was “Site of Fatal Auto Accident Tritely Remembered.” Purporting to chronicle the scene of a two-car collision in rural Kansas that had killed three people and critically injured another, it recounted with faux-journalistic solemnity a procession of grieving townspeople who, “with plastic flowers, stuffed animals, and hand-painted signs,” had arrived with an abiding determination to “consecrate the death site in the most trite and hackneyed way possible.”
Perhaps my favorite lines in that piece had come from “off-duty sheriff’s deputy Scott Tierney.” Noting that the one of deceased had been, like Tierney, a family man, the reflective lawman had noted, “It’s sobering to think that everything can disappear like that, in the blink of an eye.” He’d then added that the dead man “must have been quite a guy to warrant that purple horse piñata.”
I do understand and appreciate the fact that grief takes many forms. It’s just difficult for me to fathom why it should take the form of an outsized teddy bear shedding a plastic tear, or a mawkish poem rife with misspellings. I therefore was predisposed to be more bemused than moved when, during a Sunday-morning run about a month ago along a green and sleepy stretch of MacArthur Boulevard near the Carderock naval facility, I emerged from the dark of the Beltway underpass to spot two makeshift blue-and-white crosses across the road to my right. They were three or four feet high, standing side by side just inside the guardrail. While the site was not surrounded by what the Onion article had brutally described as a “heap of embarrassing kitsch,” I did note bouquets of plastic flowers affixed to the crosses and surrounding their bases.
As I continued down the road, I speculated about what might have happened at that place, and when. The guardrail was intact, and the dense vegetation surrounding the site didn’t look at all disturbed. I couldn’t recall having heard of any recent accident along that stretch of road. There had been writing on the crosses, but I couldn’t make out the words from my side of the street.
I passed the site a couple more Sunday mornings, becoming a bit more curious each time. Finally, I resolved to buckle down and do some investigative reporting. It was an exhaustive process that consisted of hopping in my car, parking on the underpass’s shoulder, walking maybe 30 feet to the memorial site, pulling out a pen and a piece of paper, jotting down the names that had been handwritten on the crosses, conducting a Google search and printing out the results. All of that together must’ve taken me 25 minutes, giving me renewed respect for Woodward and Bernstein. I mean, back in the pre-Internet 1970s, piecing together the intricate Watergate puzzle must’ve taken, what, twice that long?
Anyway, I discovered that the memorial didn’t mark a recent crash, but, rather, a one-year anniversary. As I combed through online accounts, the accident’s broad outlines came back to me. It had been a big local story. Around 11 pm on a Tuesday last July, a 33-year-old Bethesda woman who’d gotten sufficiently plastered at her neighborhood bar to imagine her drive home ran through Virginia had almost reached that state when, just north of the American Legion Bridge, she’d rear-ended and forced off the road a truck in which two Springfield, Virginia, men were traveling. The truck had plummeted 60 feet down a ravine, instantly killing the driver, a 39-year-old Honduran immigrant, and his friend, who was 37.
The newspaper accounts I read said little about the passenger, Franklin Manzanares, but contained much information about the driver. Over the course of nearly 20 years in America, Gradys Mendoza had risen from restaurant worker to banquet manager to construction company owner. He had become a citizen. He’d married and had three children. Newspaper articles and letters to the editor of the Washington Post attested to his having been well-loved and admired. In a video clip, a retired Army warrant officer choked up while describing how Mendoza had been like a son to him.
That man, Walt Purkoski, had been one of nearly two dozen Virginians who’d chartered a bus to attend the trial in Maryland this May of the ironically named Kelli Loos. The former meeting organizer had been sentenced to 20 years in jail, with parole eligibility after 20 months because, the judge said, she showed “a huge level or remorse” and dedication to overcoming her alcoholism. (Being responsible for the deaths of two people apparently is literally and figuratively sobering.)
Loos, according to a Washington Post account, had sobbed nonstop in court as tributes to the men she’d killed went on for nearly an hour. Judge Louise Scrivener, despite having sentenced Loss to “the high end of state-recommended guidelines,” paid her the mercy of saying “she’s not a horrible person by any means.” Among the many people in the courtroom who likely had begged to differ were Mendoza’s widow, Maria. She’d written a long letter to the judge in advance of sentencing that had read, in part, “I want you to know that the 7th of July, 2009, destroyed our lives.”
So, that was the backstory to the crosses along MacArthur Boulevard. The truck had landed in a ravine away from the road, which explained why I’d never associated that area with the crash until the makeshift memorials arose to provide my clue. Mystery solved. This was the spot where two men and many more hearts had plummeted into a dark, unyielding hole.
The aesthetist—and, OK, the snob—in me will not mourn the fake flower-bedecked tribute’s eventual disappearance. But if this roadside memorial’s greater purpose is to make death seem a little less vast, the departed a bit less anonymous, the world a touch less indifferent, by my lights it’s done its job. Because I can’t imagine ever again running past the site without thinking about two men on their last ride, a grieving widow, three fatherless kids, a convicted killer with a lifetime of guilt coiled cancer-like in her chest, and a bereaved old Army man living out the rest of his days missing his Honduran son.
Perhaps my favorite lines in that piece had come from “off-duty sheriff’s deputy Scott Tierney.” Noting that the one of deceased had been, like Tierney, a family man, the reflective lawman had noted, “It’s sobering to think that everything can disappear like that, in the blink of an eye.” He’d then added that the dead man “must have been quite a guy to warrant that purple horse piñata.”
I do understand and appreciate the fact that grief takes many forms. It’s just difficult for me to fathom why it should take the form of an outsized teddy bear shedding a plastic tear, or a mawkish poem rife with misspellings. I therefore was predisposed to be more bemused than moved when, during a Sunday-morning run about a month ago along a green and sleepy stretch of MacArthur Boulevard near the Carderock naval facility, I emerged from the dark of the Beltway underpass to spot two makeshift blue-and-white crosses across the road to my right. They were three or four feet high, standing side by side just inside the guardrail. While the site was not surrounded by what the Onion article had brutally described as a “heap of embarrassing kitsch,” I did note bouquets of plastic flowers affixed to the crosses and surrounding their bases.
As I continued down the road, I speculated about what might have happened at that place, and when. The guardrail was intact, and the dense vegetation surrounding the site didn’t look at all disturbed. I couldn’t recall having heard of any recent accident along that stretch of road. There had been writing on the crosses, but I couldn’t make out the words from my side of the street.
I passed the site a couple more Sunday mornings, becoming a bit more curious each time. Finally, I resolved to buckle down and do some investigative reporting. It was an exhaustive process that consisted of hopping in my car, parking on the underpass’s shoulder, walking maybe 30 feet to the memorial site, pulling out a pen and a piece of paper, jotting down the names that had been handwritten on the crosses, conducting a Google search and printing out the results. All of that together must’ve taken me 25 minutes, giving me renewed respect for Woodward and Bernstein. I mean, back in the pre-Internet 1970s, piecing together the intricate Watergate puzzle must’ve taken, what, twice that long?
Anyway, I discovered that the memorial didn’t mark a recent crash, but, rather, a one-year anniversary. As I combed through online accounts, the accident’s broad outlines came back to me. It had been a big local story. Around 11 pm on a Tuesday last July, a 33-year-old Bethesda woman who’d gotten sufficiently plastered at her neighborhood bar to imagine her drive home ran through Virginia had almost reached that state when, just north of the American Legion Bridge, she’d rear-ended and forced off the road a truck in which two Springfield, Virginia, men were traveling. The truck had plummeted 60 feet down a ravine, instantly killing the driver, a 39-year-old Honduran immigrant, and his friend, who was 37.
The newspaper accounts I read said little about the passenger, Franklin Manzanares, but contained much information about the driver. Over the course of nearly 20 years in America, Gradys Mendoza had risen from restaurant worker to banquet manager to construction company owner. He had become a citizen. He’d married and had three children. Newspaper articles and letters to the editor of the Washington Post attested to his having been well-loved and admired. In a video clip, a retired Army warrant officer choked up while describing how Mendoza had been like a son to him.
That man, Walt Purkoski, had been one of nearly two dozen Virginians who’d chartered a bus to attend the trial in Maryland this May of the ironically named Kelli Loos. The former meeting organizer had been sentenced to 20 years in jail, with parole eligibility after 20 months because, the judge said, she showed “a huge level or remorse” and dedication to overcoming her alcoholism. (Being responsible for the deaths of two people apparently is literally and figuratively sobering.)
Loos, according to a Washington Post account, had sobbed nonstop in court as tributes to the men she’d killed went on for nearly an hour. Judge Louise Scrivener, despite having sentenced Loss to “the high end of state-recommended guidelines,” paid her the mercy of saying “she’s not a horrible person by any means.” Among the many people in the courtroom who likely had begged to differ were Mendoza’s widow, Maria. She’d written a long letter to the judge in advance of sentencing that had read, in part, “I want you to know that the 7th of July, 2009, destroyed our lives.”
So, that was the backstory to the crosses along MacArthur Boulevard. The truck had landed in a ravine away from the road, which explained why I’d never associated that area with the crash until the makeshift memorials arose to provide my clue. Mystery solved. This was the spot where two men and many more hearts had plummeted into a dark, unyielding hole.
The aesthetist—and, OK, the snob—in me will not mourn the fake flower-bedecked tribute’s eventual disappearance. But if this roadside memorial’s greater purpose is to make death seem a little less vast, the departed a bit less anonymous, the world a touch less indifferent, by my lights it’s done its job. Because I can’t imagine ever again running past the site without thinking about two men on their last ride, a grieving widow, three fatherless kids, a convicted killer with a lifetime of guilt coiled cancer-like in her chest, and a bereaved old Army man living out the rest of his days missing his Honduran son.
Friday, August 6, 2010
The Immortal Mortals
There are certain prominent people I somehow can’t imagine ever dying, despite the statistical impossibility they won’t. These individuals can be downright ancient, yet I tend to be stunned when they ultimately check out.
One such person was Daniel Schorr, the investigative journalist and commentator. He was 93 when he passed away on July 23, yet you could’ve knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I got the news. As some similarly gobsmacked luminary asked on the radio that day, hadn’t we just heard him critiquing Middle East policy or the Russian spy swap on NPR—his media home for the final 25 of his 60 years in broadcasting? I’d seen him interviewed onstage in a Smithsonian program a few years ago, and his conversation then was so lively, his mind so sharp, that I’d subliminally assumed he’d outlive me—mathematics and actuarial tables be damned.
I admired Dan Schorr, who built a long and controversial career exposing perceived injustices and hypocrisies and generally pissing off the powerful. He had, by all accounts, a big ego, and he could be self-righteous, but I didn’t have to personally like him to appreciate the contributions he made to the national conversation. In fact, though, I did kind of like him—and not just because my politically conservative parents didn’t. On NPR, he engagingly reminisced and kibitzed with host Scott Simon, who days after Schorr’s death warmly and with great affection eulogized his late colleague and friend.
But, getting back on topic, Schorr was one of those people whose mortality never quite seemed a given, to me. Another was the actor and Golden Age of Radio star George Burns. He already was roughly as old as God when he started portraying Him in the movies in the 1970s, yet Burns just kept chomping cigars and croaking out jokes until he, too—rather to my surprise—finally croaked in 1996. Then there’s fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who may at this very moment be doing jumping jacks at age 95. I watched him on black and white TV when I was a kid; now he’s doing infomercials on digital cable. On the distaff side of celebrity, comedian Phyllis Diller immediately comes to mind. She’s not so much in the public eye any more, but she still pops up occasionally on tributes to much younger comics. Surely her self-amused cackle won’t ever be quieted. Right?
What called this subject to mind in the first place was reading a newspaper story earlier this week about Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who I believe first joined the Nittany Lions’ gridiron staff sometime before the school relocated to State College, Pennsylvania, from Pangea. The article quoted the 83-year-old coach as saying recent intestinal problems were “nothing very serious,” and that he might, in fact, continue coaching for another “one year, two years, five years, whatever.”
Never mind that many Penn State alumni, from what I’ve read and heard for years now, think Paterno’s refusal to hand over the pigskin to someone younger, savvier and more energetic really stinks. And never mind that this state of affairs quite literally may stink, in that the coach himself concedes his recent intestinal problems left him, at times, “not having control of some things.” Meaning? “I had to be careful and not to get into a position where I would embarrass myself.” Paterno’s sort of reassuring update yesterday was, “I hope I’m ready to go. I think I am.”
What this degree of determination tells me is that even if Coach Paterno craps out on the football field in the next few seasons, he won’t go quietly into that good night. His passage into the Big Sleep may be noisy, it may be smelly, but it won’t be soon, I’ll wager. And I imagine his obituary, whenever it comes—will blindside me. As have, or will, the death notices of all the other immortal mortals on my mental list.
Perhaps I’ll encounter the fateful news on ESPN’s bottom-of-the-screen ticker. I’ll ask myself, “What? Didn’t I just see Coach Paterno barking instructions to his quarterback at that bowl game?” Or, perhaps by that point my question will be, “Didn’t I just see him shilling for Depends in a TV commercial on the Hallmark Channel?”
One such person was Daniel Schorr, the investigative journalist and commentator. He was 93 when he passed away on July 23, yet you could’ve knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I got the news. As some similarly gobsmacked luminary asked on the radio that day, hadn’t we just heard him critiquing Middle East policy or the Russian spy swap on NPR—his media home for the final 25 of his 60 years in broadcasting? I’d seen him interviewed onstage in a Smithsonian program a few years ago, and his conversation then was so lively, his mind so sharp, that I’d subliminally assumed he’d outlive me—mathematics and actuarial tables be damned.
I admired Dan Schorr, who built a long and controversial career exposing perceived injustices and hypocrisies and generally pissing off the powerful. He had, by all accounts, a big ego, and he could be self-righteous, but I didn’t have to personally like him to appreciate the contributions he made to the national conversation. In fact, though, I did kind of like him—and not just because my politically conservative parents didn’t. On NPR, he engagingly reminisced and kibitzed with host Scott Simon, who days after Schorr’s death warmly and with great affection eulogized his late colleague and friend.
But, getting back on topic, Schorr was one of those people whose mortality never quite seemed a given, to me. Another was the actor and Golden Age of Radio star George Burns. He already was roughly as old as God when he started portraying Him in the movies in the 1970s, yet Burns just kept chomping cigars and croaking out jokes until he, too—rather to my surprise—finally croaked in 1996. Then there’s fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who may at this very moment be doing jumping jacks at age 95. I watched him on black and white TV when I was a kid; now he’s doing infomercials on digital cable. On the distaff side of celebrity, comedian Phyllis Diller immediately comes to mind. She’s not so much in the public eye any more, but she still pops up occasionally on tributes to much younger comics. Surely her self-amused cackle won’t ever be quieted. Right?
What called this subject to mind in the first place was reading a newspaper story earlier this week about Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who I believe first joined the Nittany Lions’ gridiron staff sometime before the school relocated to State College, Pennsylvania, from Pangea. The article quoted the 83-year-old coach as saying recent intestinal problems were “nothing very serious,” and that he might, in fact, continue coaching for another “one year, two years, five years, whatever.”
Never mind that many Penn State alumni, from what I’ve read and heard for years now, think Paterno’s refusal to hand over the pigskin to someone younger, savvier and more energetic really stinks. And never mind that this state of affairs quite literally may stink, in that the coach himself concedes his recent intestinal problems left him, at times, “not having control of some things.” Meaning? “I had to be careful and not to get into a position where I would embarrass myself.” Paterno’s sort of reassuring update yesterday was, “I hope I’m ready to go. I think I am.”
What this degree of determination tells me is that even if Coach Paterno craps out on the football field in the next few seasons, he won’t go quietly into that good night. His passage into the Big Sleep may be noisy, it may be smelly, but it won’t be soon, I’ll wager. And I imagine his obituary, whenever it comes—will blindside me. As have, or will, the death notices of all the other immortal mortals on my mental list.
Perhaps I’ll encounter the fateful news on ESPN’s bottom-of-the-screen ticker. I’ll ask myself, “What? Didn’t I just see Coach Paterno barking instructions to his quarterback at that bowl game?” Or, perhaps by that point my question will be, “Didn’t I just see him shilling for Depends in a TV commercial on the Hallmark Channel?”
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