I found myself in the awkward position a few years ago of trying to explain to a skeptical nursing supervisor at an assisted living facility how I could be the good person she perceived me to be without necessarily believing in God.
I can’t remember how the discussion got started. But the gist was that the woman, whose accent suggested Caribbean roots, had praised me for being a good Christian and following Jesus’ example by volunteering to serve those on society’s margins. I think she quoted the Bible. For whatever reason, I felt compelled to tell her I consider myself to be an agnostic and the Bible to be exactly as divinely inspired as is Bartlett's—another collection of memorable sayings compiled by run-of-the-mill human beings.
It wouldn’t be accurate to say that she and I argued. It was more an agree-to-disagree situation. We liked and respected each other before and after the discussion. What had ensued in between was mutual incredulity. She couldn’t fathom that my apparently sound moral base had nothing to do with faith in God, and I couldn’t understand her inability to conceive of secular-based ethics.
The reason I mention this is because last Saturday I attended the Reason Rally on the National Mall, and I’ve been trying ever since to sort out my conflicting feelings about this atheism-applauding, religion-denouncing event.
What I liked most about it was how it reinforced the point I was trying to make to the nursing supervisor. My favorite speaker, hands-down, was Nate Phelps, son of the crazy Kansas preacher you’ve seen with his followers on the TV news, protesting at veterans’ funerals. You know, the group that believes our soldiers deserve to die as penance for America’s homosexuality-embracing culture. The one phrase of Nate Phelps’s that I jotted down was, “The supernatural need not be invoked in order for people’s lives to have purpose and meaning.” He roundly denounced his father’s activities and worldview.
(Nate was described on the program as the “estranged” son of Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps.)
The rally’s headliner—I would call him its rock star except that the band Bad Religion was there, too, and they’re (arguably) actual rock stars—was British biologist Richard Dawkins. No, not Richard Dawson, although Dawkins has created a family feud of his own between believers and nonbelievers with books such as the 2006 bestseller The God Delusion. On stage last Saturday, as in his books, Dawkins belittled religious belief as superstition and nonsense. He suggested that a “critical mass” has been reached whereby the vast army of atheists in the world can and should “come out of the closet.”
There was a lot I didn’t care for in Dawkins’ speech. Primarily his dismissal of religious faith as lacking in any merit whatsoever, but also the hubris of his smug assumption that he’s part of a silent majority. (He certainly hasn’t spent much time in the God-fearing US of A.) But there, too, I felt conflicted. I would love for atheists to be able to live in a world in general, and a United States in particular, where they can be open about their apostasy without fear of discrimination and retribution. I personally don’t see that happening anytime soon, and that saddens me. Regardless, is equating religious faith with idiocy the best path to acceptance?
The fact is, atheism makes me uncomfortable in the same ways that religious fundamentalism does. There’s the suggestion that “we”—in this case, defenders of science and self-appointed keepers of reason (hence the rally’s name) have all the answers. And, that, by extension, those who don’t agree with us have nothing constructive to offer. There’s the suggestion, too, in atheism that everything under the sun is knowable and explainable by reason and logic. That rules out not just religious faith, but also New Age beliefs and all manifestations of spiritualism and mysticism. How vastly vanilla, unimaginative and unquestioning would a world of atheistic supremacy be?
I think my friend Alison has it right. She’s deeply active in a group called the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island (EHSLI). This is from their home page:
Ethical Humanism is a deeply held set of core values dedicated to the ideals of global justice, mutual respect and compassion. As humanists, we place our trust in the innate goodness of people. Ethical actions and ethical relationships are at the heart of all that we do.
Our connection to the universe occurs through our connections to other people, nature and the arts. We support the use of science to reveal mysteries of the natural world. We focus on this world, the here and now, and are not overly concerned about what happens after we die. We believe that what we do and how we act in this life is our most important priority.
Note the phrase “mutual respect,” and also that bit about the afterlife. Groups such as Alison’s—there are many around the country—favor certain things without feeling compelled to be against other things—unless those things are as indefensible as are, say, injustice and bigotry. Also, there’s no suggestion that the ethical humanists know everything there is to know—or even that everything can be known. What happens after you die? Who knows? In the meantime, let’s make things better in the here and now.
Alison told me a few days ago that an EHSLI member had attended the Reason Rally and had written about it for their newsletter. She e-mailed me the document. Here’s an excerpt from the article by Sylvia Silberger:
The event's theme was that secular voters should make themselves more visible. According to recent polls, secular America amounts to 16% of the US population and is the fastest growing "religious" denomination. However, the religious right has grown more dominant in political discourse and there seems to be a sense among the general public that one needs religion to have morality. It is nearly impossible for an open atheist to get elected to public office, and politicians still routinely dismiss atheists as "un-American." As humanists, whether religious or not, we know atheists can be as moral and ethical as theists. Our motto "Deed before Creed," is precisely a testament to that sentiment.
The simple brilliance of those words makes me prouder in retrospect to have attended the same rally as Sylvia Silberger than to have been in the company of Richard Dawkins and (via satellite) fellow faith-mocker Bill Maher.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the complete separation of church and state, and for getting for religion entirely out of politics. (As if that ever will happen.) Why, I’m even against opening the congressional day with a nondenominational prayer. Again, I don’t consider the Bible a holy book. And I do view many, many religious-based beliefs—zygote as person, stem cell research as homicidal, marriage as solely male-female—as loony. But I cherish the constitutionally protected freedom of speech that grants such views public voice, and that gave a succession of speakers free license to trash God and His followers before thousands of cheering spectators last weekend, right there on “The Nation’s Front Yard.”
One more thought. Not only do atheists get on my nerves, but, they strike me as dicey company. I mean, I passed an anti-“Obamacare” rally on Capitol Hill on my way to the Mall, and many of the signs raised by that angry group quoted biblical verses and conveyed anti-abortion messages. I honestly half-expected someone from that gathering—if not a full religious mob raised through social networking—to violently crash the Reason Rally in the name of the unborn.
It’s fine to talk about atheists coming out of the closet, but the truth is, it’s still pretty dangerous out in the open.
Which is why, if and when Reason Rally II comes to town, I’m sure to be there.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
An Inconvenient Truth: Home Edition
I’d been thinking for some time of blogging about how environmentally irresponsible I feel about the fact that I hate sharing the road with cyclists. But then, as I kept hearing in recent days that the United States has 2% of the world’s population but consumes 20% of its energy, I decided to expand my focus to my overall suckage when it comes to being a good son to Mother Earth.
As it happened, I started shaping this blog post in my mind when I was out running this morning. Afterward, I sat down to read the newspaper, and three stories popped out at me. One was headlined “Gallon By Gallon, the Frustration Builds.” It was about high gasoline prices and America’s huge dependence on oil. The second headline read “Younger Generation Shows Less Concern for the Environment” and spotlighted poll results that suggest kids today are less interested in saving the planet than they are in buying the latest iPad. The third story was about how voters in India are backing candidates who promise economic growth. That speaks to the unprecedented worldwide expansion of the middle class that’s great for those escaping poverty but further strains existing energy supplies.
The gas-prices story quoted angry drivers who insisted they need big, gas-guzzling vehicles to haul lumber or feel safe in event of a crash. There was a time when those statements would’ve made me feel pretty superior, seeing as how I drive a compact car and all. I would’ve silently (or perhaps vocally, depending on where I was at the time) shouted at the newspaper, “Stop hauling lumber, you tree killer!” (never mind my own newspaper addiction) and “You’re probably causing accidents because you think you own the road, you Humvee-driving asshole!” Given my recent ruminations on my own culpability, though, as I read the piece I couldn’t help but note that an all-wheel drive Subaru sedan isn’t exactly a hybrid or a Smart Car, mileage-wise. Nor could I fail to acknowledge that I rarely take public transportation anywhere, or that hopping on a bike isn’t even an option as far as I’m concerned. (More on that in the next paragraph.)
I mean, I have my reasons, as we all do. Lynn and I test-drove a Prius, but we didn’t like it, and we felt the Subaru would handle better in snow. (Which is sort or ironic, in that soon there will be no snow due to human-caused global warming.) The subway takes too long, doesn’t go everywhere I want go, and is pretty pricey, to boot. Bikes on the roads are safety hazards, and anyway, every single cyclist in the United States—no, I am not generalizing!—is a smug prick, decked out in a stupid, advertising-littered costume, whose society I’m loath to join.
(Forgive me if I’ve mentioned this before, because I sort of have déjà vu about it. My favorite Pearls Before Swine comic strip goes like this: In the first panel Pig says, “Hey Rat. I hope you don’t mind, but I invited my friend Jeff over. He’s a cyclist.” Rat responds, “A cyclist? Dude, I don’t know what it is about cyclists, but every one I’ve ever met has always been so self-righteous.” In the second panel, Jeff appears, his arms raised messianically. “I am fit! I am great! Share the road!” he shouts. Then, in the final panel, Jeff points judgmentally at Rat and says, “You are fat. You are lazy. Share the road.” Rat looks at Pig and concedes, “Well, he’s humbler than I expected.”)
Anyway, moving on. The second article from this morning’s paper cited survey results published online this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Despite having grown up in an age of climate-change awareness and “reduce, reuse, recycle” messages, fewer high school and college-aged youths now, compared with their peers in other recent generations, seem to be taking environmentalism to heart. They are less interested in public activism or even in conserving energy at home, according to the survey results.
This piece, too, was sort of in my wheelhouse, because my old-fart stereotype of “kids today” is pretty much that everyone under 30, or maybe even 40, is too busy joining a flash mob or texting in ungrammatical shorthand to bother checking the thermostat or writing his or her congressperson to vote against making the North Pole ExxonMobil’s new headquarters. (Of course, in my mind, that’s an e-mail no young adult today could write, anyway, because they are illiterate. Oh, and that earlier crack about the iPad? That was just me piling on. The article made no mention whatsoever of technology use or social networking.)
But, you see, the thing there is, I’ve got to admit that I’m no great shakes, either. My two biggest contributions to responsible energy use, as I see it, are that I don’t live in a big house and that I’m a vegetarian. I therefore am not wasting energy electrifying a McMansion, nor am I directly contributing to all the environmental horrors of meat-based farming—which range from rain-forest destruction for grazing land to the ozone-destroying methane the farm animals emit. Those two things aren’t nothing—I wish everybody would seek right-sized housing, and that no one would eat meat, for both environmental and animal welfare reasons. But they don’t exactly make me Captain Green, either.
Take house size. While our place is suitably cozy for two humans, a cat and a dog, it isn’t as if I scrimp on the heat in winter or the air conditioning in summer. In cold weather, Lynn tells me to put a sweater on if I’m chilly in the house. I reflexively answer, “I don’t see why I need to wear a sweater in my own home.” Then I shudder as I realize I’m attitudinally channeling those McMansion owners, toasty-warm in their palaces. In the summer, I often have a fan directly on me, above and beyond the AC. The feel of the breeze and the whir of the blades cool and calm me. But they’re not doing the globe any favors, obviously.
Diet-wise, I know I’d do better by the planet and the animals by going vegan. I’m still, after all, supporting Big Agriculture by consuming dairy products, and I’m contributing to animal suffering. While this is oversimplifying things slightly, my justification for staying vegetarian is mostly that life’s hard enough without my purposely reducing my options on the typical restaurant menu from Very Few Choices to Bread and Lettuce. All of which is pretty absurd, because, for one thing, my life, relatively speaking, is pretty damn easy. And for another thing, these days I’m more often in vegan-friendly restaurants—with my vegan wife and our vegan friends—than I am in mainstream joints whose menus are heavy on slain livestock. But man, do I not want to give up that melted-cheese sandwich option, or eschew skim milk for my coffee.
In terms of activism, I give money to environmental causes and the politicians who support them. That’s what I do. I contribute a little too much money for our budget, actually. I need to cut back. But wouldn’t I be doing more good, anyway, by knocking on doors, making phone calls, lofting signs and possibly getting arrested at protests? None of that is happening. I’m not a joiner. I’m not comfortable in those roles. Given my lifestyle, I’d probably feel like a bit of a hypocrite, as well. I mean, I’d probably come home sweaty from a protest and turn the fan on high when it already was comfortable in the house thanks to the AC.
I don’t even tend to sign online petitions. “Privacy concerns,” I tell myself. Or, “It won’t do any good.” But there’s this, too: I prefer to research an issue before I'll sign anything. I very rarely feel like taking the time to do that.
This all leads back to what I conceded at the outset: I’m a sorry-ass environmentalist. Why I feel compelled to point this out in a somewhat public forum, I’m not quite sure. Especially since I’m not coupling this admission with a pledge of sweeping change. I do basic things like recycling our bottles and newspapers, and I’ll keep doing that. Maybe I’ll try to use the AC in the car and the fan at home a little less this summer. It wouldn’t kill me to do the homework and perhaps sign some worthy environmental petitions. I’ve stopped ordering eggs at breakfast places, and maybe I can build on that. I will continue to nonviolently coexist with cyclists; that’s the best I can offer there.
If you’re looking for a moral to this post, maybe it’s this: Never mind ruminating over the 99%-1% divide, as presented and popularized by the Occupy movement. A better question might be what role you play in the 2% that’s responsible for the 20%. You probably think you’re a pretty upstanding steward of the planet, and maybe you are. I used to think I was, before I started really looking at the story behind my story. If it’s within your will and power to do better than I'm doing, go for it.
But if you start commuting to work on a bicycle, don’t expect me to like it.
As it happened, I started shaping this blog post in my mind when I was out running this morning. Afterward, I sat down to read the newspaper, and three stories popped out at me. One was headlined “Gallon By Gallon, the Frustration Builds.” It was about high gasoline prices and America’s huge dependence on oil. The second headline read “Younger Generation Shows Less Concern for the Environment” and spotlighted poll results that suggest kids today are less interested in saving the planet than they are in buying the latest iPad. The third story was about how voters in India are backing candidates who promise economic growth. That speaks to the unprecedented worldwide expansion of the middle class that’s great for those escaping poverty but further strains existing energy supplies.
The gas-prices story quoted angry drivers who insisted they need big, gas-guzzling vehicles to haul lumber or feel safe in event of a crash. There was a time when those statements would’ve made me feel pretty superior, seeing as how I drive a compact car and all. I would’ve silently (or perhaps vocally, depending on where I was at the time) shouted at the newspaper, “Stop hauling lumber, you tree killer!” (never mind my own newspaper addiction) and “You’re probably causing accidents because you think you own the road, you Humvee-driving asshole!” Given my recent ruminations on my own culpability, though, as I read the piece I couldn’t help but note that an all-wheel drive Subaru sedan isn’t exactly a hybrid or a Smart Car, mileage-wise. Nor could I fail to acknowledge that I rarely take public transportation anywhere, or that hopping on a bike isn’t even an option as far as I’m concerned. (More on that in the next paragraph.)
I mean, I have my reasons, as we all do. Lynn and I test-drove a Prius, but we didn’t like it, and we felt the Subaru would handle better in snow. (Which is sort or ironic, in that soon there will be no snow due to human-caused global warming.) The subway takes too long, doesn’t go everywhere I want go, and is pretty pricey, to boot. Bikes on the roads are safety hazards, and anyway, every single cyclist in the United States—no, I am not generalizing!—is a smug prick, decked out in a stupid, advertising-littered costume, whose society I’m loath to join.
(Forgive me if I’ve mentioned this before, because I sort of have déjà vu about it. My favorite Pearls Before Swine comic strip goes like this: In the first panel Pig says, “Hey Rat. I hope you don’t mind, but I invited my friend Jeff over. He’s a cyclist.” Rat responds, “A cyclist? Dude, I don’t know what it is about cyclists, but every one I’ve ever met has always been so self-righteous.” In the second panel, Jeff appears, his arms raised messianically. “I am fit! I am great! Share the road!” he shouts. Then, in the final panel, Jeff points judgmentally at Rat and says, “You are fat. You are lazy. Share the road.” Rat looks at Pig and concedes, “Well, he’s humbler than I expected.”)
Anyway, moving on. The second article from this morning’s paper cited survey results published online this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Despite having grown up in an age of climate-change awareness and “reduce, reuse, recycle” messages, fewer high school and college-aged youths now, compared with their peers in other recent generations, seem to be taking environmentalism to heart. They are less interested in public activism or even in conserving energy at home, according to the survey results.
This piece, too, was sort of in my wheelhouse, because my old-fart stereotype of “kids today” is pretty much that everyone under 30, or maybe even 40, is too busy joining a flash mob or texting in ungrammatical shorthand to bother checking the thermostat or writing his or her congressperson to vote against making the North Pole ExxonMobil’s new headquarters. (Of course, in my mind, that’s an e-mail no young adult today could write, anyway, because they are illiterate. Oh, and that earlier crack about the iPad? That was just me piling on. The article made no mention whatsoever of technology use or social networking.)
But, you see, the thing there is, I’ve got to admit that I’m no great shakes, either. My two biggest contributions to responsible energy use, as I see it, are that I don’t live in a big house and that I’m a vegetarian. I therefore am not wasting energy electrifying a McMansion, nor am I directly contributing to all the environmental horrors of meat-based farming—which range from rain-forest destruction for grazing land to the ozone-destroying methane the farm animals emit. Those two things aren’t nothing—I wish everybody would seek right-sized housing, and that no one would eat meat, for both environmental and animal welfare reasons. But they don’t exactly make me Captain Green, either.
Take house size. While our place is suitably cozy for two humans, a cat and a dog, it isn’t as if I scrimp on the heat in winter or the air conditioning in summer. In cold weather, Lynn tells me to put a sweater on if I’m chilly in the house. I reflexively answer, “I don’t see why I need to wear a sweater in my own home.” Then I shudder as I realize I’m attitudinally channeling those McMansion owners, toasty-warm in their palaces. In the summer, I often have a fan directly on me, above and beyond the AC. The feel of the breeze and the whir of the blades cool and calm me. But they’re not doing the globe any favors, obviously.
Diet-wise, I know I’d do better by the planet and the animals by going vegan. I’m still, after all, supporting Big Agriculture by consuming dairy products, and I’m contributing to animal suffering. While this is oversimplifying things slightly, my justification for staying vegetarian is mostly that life’s hard enough without my purposely reducing my options on the typical restaurant menu from Very Few Choices to Bread and Lettuce. All of which is pretty absurd, because, for one thing, my life, relatively speaking, is pretty damn easy. And for another thing, these days I’m more often in vegan-friendly restaurants—with my vegan wife and our vegan friends—than I am in mainstream joints whose menus are heavy on slain livestock. But man, do I not want to give up that melted-cheese sandwich option, or eschew skim milk for my coffee.
In terms of activism, I give money to environmental causes and the politicians who support them. That’s what I do. I contribute a little too much money for our budget, actually. I need to cut back. But wouldn’t I be doing more good, anyway, by knocking on doors, making phone calls, lofting signs and possibly getting arrested at protests? None of that is happening. I’m not a joiner. I’m not comfortable in those roles. Given my lifestyle, I’d probably feel like a bit of a hypocrite, as well. I mean, I’d probably come home sweaty from a protest and turn the fan on high when it already was comfortable in the house thanks to the AC.
I don’t even tend to sign online petitions. “Privacy concerns,” I tell myself. Or, “It won’t do any good.” But there’s this, too: I prefer to research an issue before I'll sign anything. I very rarely feel like taking the time to do that.
This all leads back to what I conceded at the outset: I’m a sorry-ass environmentalist. Why I feel compelled to point this out in a somewhat public forum, I’m not quite sure. Especially since I’m not coupling this admission with a pledge of sweeping change. I do basic things like recycling our bottles and newspapers, and I’ll keep doing that. Maybe I’ll try to use the AC in the car and the fan at home a little less this summer. It wouldn’t kill me to do the homework and perhaps sign some worthy environmental petitions. I’ve stopped ordering eggs at breakfast places, and maybe I can build on that. I will continue to nonviolently coexist with cyclists; that’s the best I can offer there.
If you’re looking for a moral to this post, maybe it’s this: Never mind ruminating over the 99%-1% divide, as presented and popularized by the Occupy movement. A better question might be what role you play in the 2% that’s responsible for the 20%. You probably think you’re a pretty upstanding steward of the planet, and maybe you are. I used to think I was, before I started really looking at the story behind my story. If it’s within your will and power to do better than I'm doing, go for it.
But if you start commuting to work on a bicycle, don’t expect me to like it.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean
I remember rushing through trick or treating one Halloween because I wanted to be home in time to catch that night’s episode of The Monkees. In those days, adults gave kids substantial candy bars—none of this “fun-sized” crap—so you know that, for me, the zany antics and catchy tunes of that made-for-TV quartet was must-see stuff.
I got to thinking about that Halloween after learning the other day that Davy Jones had dropped dead of a heart attack in Florida at the age of 66. The first thing that hit me was how much the world has changed since The Monkees’ hey-heyday, since the news came to me not via the newspaper or radio or even Yahoo! news, but in an e-mail message from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, where my friend-since-high-school David Bulla now lives and teaches. He'd thought, correctly, that I’d want to know.
Contrast that 2012 global connectivity with my life in 1967, or maybe it was 1968. I would’ve been 9 or 10 years old on that Halloween. I hadn’t been much of anywhere in the United States at that age, let alone outside the country. Nowadays, kids and their globe-trotting parents have lapped my paltry trifecta of foreign borders crossed by the time they’re out of kindergarten. Davy Jones seemed exotic to me in my youth simply because he was from England.
On the other hand, though, on the not-so-mean streets of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, back then, I was a free agent. I went from house-to-house that Halloween—as I had before and would for a few years yet—without any parental supervision or tab-keeping, save my mom and dad’s reasonable assumption that I was somewhere within walking distance of our house, and that I’d come in from the dark as soon as I’d gathered sufficient loot.
Compare that with what I see now every Halloween in my role as distributor of fun-sized candy bars to kids in my Bethesda, Maryland, neighborhood. (In my defense, it’s hard to even find packages of full-sized candy bars anymore, and I always tell the kids to take two or three of the smaller ones.) I spy the younger kids’ parents waiting for them out on the street while their sons and daughters beg for treats on my front porch, and I imagine that most of the older kids are within easy and perhaps mandatory parental reach by phone, text and possibly GPS.
Why? Because the world is a much more dangerous place now than it was 45 years ago. Because we’re aware of all the potential evils lurking behind every picket fence. There now are an array of criminal laws on the books, after all, that bear the names of children who were abused and killed by predators. Parents are more or less duty-bound to check the Web on October 30th to see where the sex offenders in their neighborhoods live, then guide their children’s routes accordingly.
When I was a kid, the Halloween movies hadn’t even been made yet. Sure, you’d hear stories about razor blades in apples, but those came across as urban (or maybe suburban) myths. And anyway, who was giving out apples on Halloween? People who wanted their house to be egged, that’s who. And what kids were eating apples dumped into their trick-or-treat bags? Those so hopelessly lame that they’d probably core and section the apple first, and in so doing dislodge any concealed danger.
The second thing I thought about when I heard Davy Jones had died was sparked by my friend David’s recollection in his e-mail about how he and his older sister had seen The Monkees in concert at the Greensboro Coliseum, with Jimi Hendrix relegated to warm-up act. The absurdity of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest guitarist playing Robin to the Batman of the Prefab Four, who couldn’t even play their own instruments, was matched in my mind by something else that has long amused me. The fame of the diminutive Davy Jones that began in 1966 forced another young David Jones, also an Englishman, to change his professional name. That artist, a musically brilliant and socially influential gender-bender who later would become rock royalty to Davy Jones’ amiable jester, would henceforth be known as David Bowie.
In a related vein, it struck me as fitting that Jones, an actor by training, had died an unremarkable if sadly premature death in Florida, where he’d lived among millions of other senior citizens who'd moved there for the warm climate and low taxes. As opposed to the substance-abusing deaths of all the men and women for whom rock music had been an end rather than a means—a graveyard populated by the likes of Janis Joplin, the aforementioned Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Sid Vicious.
But then, finally, came the third thing I thought about when I learned that Davy Jones was dead. And that was that he’d left a pretty impressive legacy and had died in an enviable way. Most critics have come around to conceding that The Monkees—whether you think of the moniker as describing four men making music or the cardboard façade of a corporate hit-making enterprise—were responsible for some of the best pop songs ever recorded. Jones maintained until his dying day his charisma on the nostalgia circuit, where he was adored by "mature" female fans and respected by their husbands. He went only from boyishly handsome to deceptively youthful looking, with no progression to unrecognizable coot. He succumbed quickly, without a long and painful decline. (In fact, I’ve since read his booking agent’s observations that “there was not an ounce of body fat on the guy” and “he couldn’t have been in better shape.”)
Mike Nesmith, the one Monkee with true musical talent, seldom joined the reunion tours and might have been expected to issue a terse, polite statement, in keeping with the distance he’s always placed between himself and the phenomenon he’d once fronted. But even Nesmith weighed in with a lengthy, heartfelt tribute. It read, in part, “David's spirit and soul live well in my heart, among all the lovely people, who remember with me the good times, and the healing times, that were created for so many, including us. I have fond memories. I wish him safe travels.”
I joked to someone the other day that, if indeed there’s a Heaven with St Peter at the gate, I hope he’ll overlook the fact that Mickey Dolenz was the lead vocalist on “I’m a Believer” and welcome Jones to the afterlife based on song title alone. I’ve no idea if Jones was a believer in the Christian sense, although the fact that he was married thrice suggests to me that he at very least was a man of faith.
At any rate, I’ve got to echo Mike Nesmith on this one. I have fond memories. And I wish you safe travels, Davy.
I got to thinking about that Halloween after learning the other day that Davy Jones had dropped dead of a heart attack in Florida at the age of 66. The first thing that hit me was how much the world has changed since The Monkees’ hey-heyday, since the news came to me not via the newspaper or radio or even Yahoo! news, but in an e-mail message from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, where my friend-since-high-school David Bulla now lives and teaches. He'd thought, correctly, that I’d want to know.
Contrast that 2012 global connectivity with my life in 1967, or maybe it was 1968. I would’ve been 9 or 10 years old on that Halloween. I hadn’t been much of anywhere in the United States at that age, let alone outside the country. Nowadays, kids and their globe-trotting parents have lapped my paltry trifecta of foreign borders crossed by the time they’re out of kindergarten. Davy Jones seemed exotic to me in my youth simply because he was from England.
On the other hand, though, on the not-so-mean streets of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, back then, I was a free agent. I went from house-to-house that Halloween—as I had before and would for a few years yet—without any parental supervision or tab-keeping, save my mom and dad’s reasonable assumption that I was somewhere within walking distance of our house, and that I’d come in from the dark as soon as I’d gathered sufficient loot.
Compare that with what I see now every Halloween in my role as distributor of fun-sized candy bars to kids in my Bethesda, Maryland, neighborhood. (In my defense, it’s hard to even find packages of full-sized candy bars anymore, and I always tell the kids to take two or three of the smaller ones.) I spy the younger kids’ parents waiting for them out on the street while their sons and daughters beg for treats on my front porch, and I imagine that most of the older kids are within easy and perhaps mandatory parental reach by phone, text and possibly GPS.
Why? Because the world is a much more dangerous place now than it was 45 years ago. Because we’re aware of all the potential evils lurking behind every picket fence. There now are an array of criminal laws on the books, after all, that bear the names of children who were abused and killed by predators. Parents are more or less duty-bound to check the Web on October 30th to see where the sex offenders in their neighborhoods live, then guide their children’s routes accordingly.
When I was a kid, the Halloween movies hadn’t even been made yet. Sure, you’d hear stories about razor blades in apples, but those came across as urban (or maybe suburban) myths. And anyway, who was giving out apples on Halloween? People who wanted their house to be egged, that’s who. And what kids were eating apples dumped into their trick-or-treat bags? Those so hopelessly lame that they’d probably core and section the apple first, and in so doing dislodge any concealed danger.
The second thing I thought about when I heard Davy Jones had died was sparked by my friend David’s recollection in his e-mail about how he and his older sister had seen The Monkees in concert at the Greensboro Coliseum, with Jimi Hendrix relegated to warm-up act. The absurdity of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest guitarist playing Robin to the Batman of the Prefab Four, who couldn’t even play their own instruments, was matched in my mind by something else that has long amused me. The fame of the diminutive Davy Jones that began in 1966 forced another young David Jones, also an Englishman, to change his professional name. That artist, a musically brilliant and socially influential gender-bender who later would become rock royalty to Davy Jones’ amiable jester, would henceforth be known as David Bowie.
In a related vein, it struck me as fitting that Jones, an actor by training, had died an unremarkable if sadly premature death in Florida, where he’d lived among millions of other senior citizens who'd moved there for the warm climate and low taxes. As opposed to the substance-abusing deaths of all the men and women for whom rock music had been an end rather than a means—a graveyard populated by the likes of Janis Joplin, the aforementioned Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Sid Vicious.
But then, finally, came the third thing I thought about when I learned that Davy Jones was dead. And that was that he’d left a pretty impressive legacy and had died in an enviable way. Most critics have come around to conceding that The Monkees—whether you think of the moniker as describing four men making music or the cardboard façade of a corporate hit-making enterprise—were responsible for some of the best pop songs ever recorded. Jones maintained until his dying day his charisma on the nostalgia circuit, where he was adored by "mature" female fans and respected by their husbands. He went only from boyishly handsome to deceptively youthful looking, with no progression to unrecognizable coot. He succumbed quickly, without a long and painful decline. (In fact, I’ve since read his booking agent’s observations that “there was not an ounce of body fat on the guy” and “he couldn’t have been in better shape.”)
Mike Nesmith, the one Monkee with true musical talent, seldom joined the reunion tours and might have been expected to issue a terse, polite statement, in keeping with the distance he’s always placed between himself and the phenomenon he’d once fronted. But even Nesmith weighed in with a lengthy, heartfelt tribute. It read, in part, “David's spirit and soul live well in my heart, among all the lovely people, who remember with me the good times, and the healing times, that were created for so many, including us. I have fond memories. I wish him safe travels.”
I joked to someone the other day that, if indeed there’s a Heaven with St Peter at the gate, I hope he’ll overlook the fact that Mickey Dolenz was the lead vocalist on “I’m a Believer” and welcome Jones to the afterlife based on song title alone. I’ve no idea if Jones was a believer in the Christian sense, although the fact that he was married thrice suggests to me that he at very least was a man of faith.
At any rate, I’ve got to echo Mike Nesmith on this one. I have fond memories. And I wish you safe travels, Davy.
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