"Liberty they cry when license they mean"

During the Vietnam War, young men like me faced a life-altering choice:  participate (and perhaps die) in a war any of us considered immoral or assert our consciences and convictions and pay the price.  I obeyed my draft notice but failed the induction physical.  Some friends, though, chose the second option; one renounced his American citizenship and has spent the rest of his life in Sweden, and another claimed (and was confirmed in) conscientious objector status.  In the latter case, he still wasn’t off the hook; had he been drafted, he’d still have had to participate in the war in some non-combatant capacity.

I’m a huge admirer of Henry David Thoreau; in fact, his work, along with the writings of other American Transcendentalists, was the focus of my professional career.  Especially influential was his 1849 essay, Civil Disobedience.  It was an extremist’s argument, a call to follow one’s conscience above all else (in fact, the full title is On The Duty of Civil Disobedience.)  It was a response to two great evils:  slavery and the Mexican War.  “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right,” he wrote.  Powerful stuff.  Gandhi adopted it to win India’s independence.  Famously, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement applied it as the core principle of the movement against racist oppression.  And, of course, it was immensely attractive and inspirational to those resisting the Vietnam War.

Once again, it’s become a powerful influence in American politics.  Opponents of same-sex marriage are claiming the right to provide commercial or governmental services to same-sex couples, and they have strong religious convictions to invoke.  Legislators in states such as Kansas, Georgia and Mississippi have pushed “religious liberty” bills designed to shield such claimants from punishment for their acts of conscience. 

Don’t they deserve my respect in the same way that Civil Rights and anti-war activists do?  Aren’t they following in the hallowed footsteps of my hero Thoreau?

No.  Absolutely not. There is nothing moral or heroic about it.

A true act of conscience involves sacrifice.  Thoreau refused to pay a tax that would, ultimately, fund the Mexican War—and he went to jail for his act.  He wrote: “… if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.”  Those who refused to obey Jim Crow laws were jailed, often beaten, even murdered.  Those who refused to be drafted were jailed or forced to leave their homes and families for a foreign country.  Such is the price of true civil disobedience.

What does a baker who refuses to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple sacrifice?  Their business license? So be it. A business license is a contract, a civil duty, to serve all citizens, whether they adhere to one’s religious precepts or not.  To willingly lose it is a truly courageous act, worthy of my respect.  But to be protected by the State, free from consequences?  That’s not courage; it’s a cop-out.

Gone to Shiloh

"Gone to Shiloh" (Elton John, Leon Russell, Neil Young)

Last year, we visited the Shiloh battlefield in Southern Tennessee.  It was a soggy, drippy day—perfect for a somber inspection of a place where nearly 24,000 young men were either killed or wounded in a two-day battle.  Most of the land is densely wooded, just as it was in 1862, and that somehow brought home the horror of the battle.  A soldier in those woods could know little, see little, and understand nearly nothing of what was going on around him, just smoke and slaughter.

Statues and monuments dot the battlefield.  Some commemorate Federal units, some Confederate. Most of them show where units were stationed, or the sites of the bloodiest battles.  Few honor individuals on either side, for their purpose is to help us learn and remember what happened here and its cost—and, perhaps, to warn us not to ever let it happen again.

Throughout the South, and much of the North as well, other statues honor the generals and leaders of the Confederacy.  A groundswell of people demands their removal, at least from public spaces.  Those who defend them argue that they remind us of our (or their) “heritage.”  It would be unthinkable to bulldoze the Shiloh battlefield and build strip malls on it.  How, then, is removing these statues any different? Aren’t we, in both cases, “erasing history?”

Not at all.

It is right and proper to commemorate what happened in those awful days.  The event can be divorced from the motivations of the young men who gave their lives there. I suspect that quite a few didn’t really know what they were fighting for; they were there because of loyalty to their family and community, because of a vague sense of “patriotism”, because of fear of “Yankees” (or, conversely, “Rebs”), because of a thirst for adventure.  Not so, though, with a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis, or any of the other “heroes” of the Confederacy.  These commemorate motivations, the cause for which they chose to lead their troops.  And that's the problem. 

To honor Robert E. Lee is, for all his qualities of courage and leadership, necessarily to honor treason.  To honor Jefferson Davis is to be proud of one of the most monstrous crimes against humanity ever committed, the institution of human slavery.  Stonewall Jackson was legendary for his bravery, all right—but it was the bravery of German soldiers in Normandy on D-Day.  They devoted their service to the cause of white supremacy. And not just to that, but to the oppression and exploitation of human beings they relegated to the status of livestock.

What, then, about such figures as George Washington or Thomas Jefferson?  They were slaveowners, and they too committed acts of treason.  Should their statues, their portraits, their images on our money—should these be erased too?

Yes, they were deeply flawed.  But they articulated an ideal that they themselves couldn’t live up to, but which became the country’s cause.  Washington refused a crown, and broke the concept of “divine right” once and for all.  Jefferson established the concept that “all [people] are created equal,” a concept so radical at the time that we’re still having trouble implementing it.  They set in motion a system that, while deeply flawed like them, has a noble, liberating vision to guide it, and us.

But you know … maybe the Old Testament injunction against “graven images” is the best practice.  Maybe we don’t need statues of “heroes” after all.  Not to get all Platonic here, but heroes usually have clay feet (or, in this case, bronze). A statue of George Washington or Robert E. Lee is really just a sculpted filter through which certain qualities pass to us.  The qualities are what’s important, not the particular representation of them.  What’s happening with the current controversy over Confederate statues is that, for perhaps the first time, large numbers of Americans are aware of just what these figures stood for and realizing that we don’t all agree on what those values should be.  It’s a discussion we need to have. 

It’s the sort of thing you think about on a rainy day in a forested field in Southern Tennessee.

Wet Dreams

Seattle lost a huge chunk of its soul last Sunday.

For 66 years, local television had devoted a day of live coverage of the Seafair Cup hydroplane races.  This year, KIRO declined to cover the event live, but promised to at least show highlights in the evening.

Came the highlight show:  twenty minutes of the Blue Angels, softball interviews with logboom spectators, some fluffy chatter.  Of the hydroplanes, nothing.  Oh, yeah—they announced who won.  At the beginning of the program, killing any interest we might have had in watching a clip of the race ourselves.  If, of course, they had shown one.

I can understand KIRO’s decision to end the live coverage.  There’s an awful lot of “dead air” to fill between heats.  In recent years, more spectators have come to watch the Blue Angels than the hydros.  They just weren’t that interested in watching a. small number of boats that sound like vacuum cleaners run around in circles three laps at a time.  Sure, they’re bright and colorful and they look spectacular when they run, but few know the names of the drivers or feel any bond with boats with names like Homestreet Bank or Graham Trucking.  But surely there are enough of us who still care to support a lousy highlight show.  There are hundreds of cable channels, after all, not to mention streaming on the internet.

For some years now I’ve felt defensive trying to explain why I’m a fan of hydroplane racing.  I watched the first race on the new technology of television when I was three.  As a child I, like many other young Seattle boys, made crude wooden hydros and towed them behind my bike.  I drove a patrol boat for one of the events when I was a teen.  And, as an adult, I spent a few years racing boats myself.

The boats of those years were woodworker’s art, dark wood polished to the sheen of a grand piano or painted brilliant colors, like the fabled Hawaii Kai’s coral and pink.  Stuffed into them were World War II fighter plane engines with over 1,000 horsepower.  And driving them were heroes, former pilots like Bill Stead  and Russ Schleeh, or even Cold Warriors like the popular Mira Slovak, who’d escaped Communist Czechoslovakia in a motorized glider.  It was a horribly dangerous sport; quite a few drivers, including the best of all like Bill Muncey and Ron Musson, died in crashes.

Seattle had no professional sport—no Major League baseball, no NFL team, no NBA basketball, not even hockey.  But we had hydroplanes, ever since a local car dealer, Stan Sayres, took a radically different boat back east and trounced the competition for the Gold Cup in 1951.  It was a major declaration to the East Coast and the sports media who paid attention only to them:  Seattle may have been out on the frontier, but it could excel at something. A rivalry quickly developed between two major hydroplane cities, Seattle and Detroit, and it was as passionate and fierce as Ohio State and Michigan or USC and Notre Dame.

Some of the boats had sponsors and some, owned by wealthy Captains of Industry, didn’t, but they all had histories and lineages that enabled us to form a bond.  My crude bicycle-powered model was pink like Hawaii Kai (when it retired I shifted allegiance to the Green Dragon, the Miss Bardahl).  Local television covered not only the Seattle race but other races around the Northwest, places like the Tri-Cities or Lake Coeur d’Alene, and we’d be glued to our fuzzy black-and-white tv’s for each of them.  When they’d test, I could hear the snarling modulations of the engine from my house, miles away.

But I’m old now, and it’s not the same.  Perhaps the sport lost its soul and detached from Seattle long ago.  Sponsors may change from race to race, and the drivers are faceless lookalikes. It’s impossible to form much of a bond with a billboard for a furniture store or a tire dealer.  And the boats have dwindled; only eight showed up for this year’s race.  The absence of television coverage just confirmed that something as precious to a city as any historic building or natural landmark has gone away. Seattle is a city for Amazonians and Microsofties now, and they have other dreams.

Loose Cargo

“We are stardust, we are golden …”

Joni Mitchell, Woodstock

Sorry, Joni, but let’s face it:  we are cargo.

A passenger is dragged violently off a plane to make room for late-arriving airline employees.  A mother is assaulted by a flight attendant confiscating her baby stroller.  A peaceful passenger is removed from a flight because, after a lengthy delay, he desperately needed to use the plane’s restroom. If we fly these days, we are squeezed into a space so small that our legs cramp and   been shrunken, and we’re fed tiny packages of nuts and pretzels.

But this isn’t a rant against the airline industry.  I’m an English major, and I tend to think metaphorically.  And these outrageous episodes make a great metaphor for what’s happened to us as people.

Those in the cockpit consider us cargo. Now cargo has value, of course. But it’s passive.  It must be stowed correctly, sorted by shape and weight, and carefully restrained.  And one package is pretty much interchangeable with another, unless it’s really valuable; then it deserves, and gets, special handling.  Sometimes it gets tossed around and damaged in transport; it’s all part of the process.  For efficiency, it’s cataloged, classified and crated, stored like with like. 

Kind of like us.  Politicians see us as separate voting blocs:  Urban middle class, Rural working class, African-American, Latino, Jewish or Roman Catholic or Evangelical, etc.  Marketers divide us into “lifestyle segments.” Our habits are assessed and analyzed, increasingly efficiently, and we’re crated into a convenient box until they need to open us up and use us.  And increasingly, we’re doing it to each other.

We’ve become Amazon when we should be Etsy, a mass commodity rather than a boutique craft.

Well, I for one, am tired of being considered a package.  And I suspect it’s the same with those who are part of Black Lives Matter and the Women’s Marches and even those who voted for Trump.  We deserve, and we should demand, to be treated with dignity and respect on this flight we’re all on.  We have much more in common than those who exploit us would have us think; we need to recognize and assert that.

“…and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden.”

The Home Front War

Remember October 7, 2001?

It’s a date that should live in infamy, but probably doesn’t for most of us.  It’s the date the war in Afghanistan started—and it’s still going on, over a decade and a half later.  Early on, the United States dropped a huge bomb on a cave complex where Osama Bin Laden was thought to be hiding.  The other day the United States dropped an even huger bomb on a cave complex where ISIS is believed to have been hiding. Plus change, plus c’est meme chose.

Operation Enduring Freedom.  I’m not sure about the “freedom” part, but the “enduring” is right on.

Now that’s not yet up there with some of the other wars in Western history, like the Hundred Years’ War or even the Thirty Years’ War, but it’s getting there.  And its twin, Operation Iraqi Freedom, drags on as well, with a spillover into neighboring Syria.  But it’s far, far longer than any of the previous American wars (except maybe the Indian Wars of the 19^th Century).  It’s lasted so long that it’s become the norm.  And you have to wonder what that’s done to us, the ones who ignore it at home.

Without legal justification or any stated objective, we fire missiles into Syria, a country we’re not even (supposedly) at war with.  We drop the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat on Afghanistan and refer to it, with a disturbing overtone of pride, as the “Mother Of All Bombs” (the phrase itself a nod to the beginning of the Iraq War.)  A few people take to the streets in protest, but soon go back home.  And we dutifully make our comments on Facebook and Twitter, and the people who already agree with us like them.  But increasingly we passively accept the firing of the missiles and the dispatch of carrier battle groups by the President without Congressional authorization or the slightest nod to the Constitution.  We’re a nation permanently at war, and we increasingly seem to be okay with that.

What has it done to us?  To be desensitized would be bad enough—but have the effects gone even deeper?

For over a decade and a half, we’ve sent our young people into an environment where the enemy wears no uniform, where the good guys and the bad guys speak the same languages and, from day to day, can become interchangeable.  An environment in which the ground underfoot may conceal an IED, where every building may conceal a sniper, where every car could be a bomb. An environment in which paranoia is a valuable survival tool, and suspicion of others a necessity.

And when they come back home, does that all spread to the rest of us?  Has their war environment become the home front environment as well?

All of the above was true of Vietnam too, and I vividly remember the bitter divisions between us that war brought, divisions that tore apart families split us into warring tribes and created a cultural bitterness that persists into the present.  But it seemed so much more apparent at that time; we knew it was happening.  Now it just feels like an inchoate simmering anger.  Maybe the real war started fifty years ago, and we’ve just become so used to it that we hardly notice any longer.

Can we survive decades of war?  

Song of the Closing Road

I heard a story once, probably apocryphal, about a guy who drove his new motorhome for the first time.  He set out on an interstate.  Then he set the cruise control—and walked to the back to fix himself a drink.

Very soon, that story might not have the outcome we all know it had.  Tech companies like Google, Uber and (reportedly) Apple, as well as traditional automakers including General Motors, Ford, and Tesla (or is that a tech company?  It’s so confusing) are racing to perfect “autonomous vehicles”—self-driving cars.  Already you may see test vehicles on the road, marked by any array of spinning sensors on the roof.

This could, in many ways, be a good development.  Let’s face it:  driving, in most urban areas at least, isn’t fun any longer; it’s become a stressful chore.  Immobile in traffic, breathing toxic fumes, worrying if the guy who just shouldered into your lane has a gun … who needs it?  Maybe it would be nice to program in your destination, sit back with a beverage of your choice, and read or surf the net, or even catch up on sleep.  And let’s face another thing:  a distressing number of drivers these days are distracted, intoxicated, or just plain inept.  A car that drives itself, always paying attention, always acting predictably—what’s not to like about that? But, as with all new advances, something valuable will be lost.  We won’t drive anymore.

Duh.

Okay, but think about it for a bit.  For over a century now, any one of us has had the opportunity to control one of the most powerful and, at the same time, deadly devices ever devised.  We have been behind the wheel of a multi-ton mechanism that can propel us at speeds up to and, in many cases, well over 100 miles an hour.  We take this power for granted, but it’s been one of the most important gifts of the industrial age.  And it may be coming to an end.

To turn 16 has been to assume a status previously granted only to locomotive engineers and steamboat captains and aircraft pilots.  It’s been a grant of independence.  To deny it is to engage in repression; just ask a Saudi woman.  To take it away is a cruel confirmation of decline; just ask an elderly or infirm person.  Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, Route 66, Jack Kerouac, Thelma and Louise, Bonnie and Clyde … driving has permeated every aspect of our culture.  It’s not just the ability to move that’s significant; a self-driving car won’t take that away.  It’s the acquisition and perfection of the skill itself—that will be lost.

Already, in this country, only five percent of the new cars sold have a standard shift.  Stories are told of people who try to steal a car, only to suddenly, and grindingly, find that they can’t drive it.  Just about every week comes a news story of somebody who’s driven a car into a building because they mistook the gas pedal for the brake. To drive well, to really control a car, is to know how to get moving and stay moving on a snowy road, to know how to recover from a skid, to drive with an awareness of what’s happening half a mile ahead, to make it safely through fog and torrential rain, to know what to do when a tire goes flat, to know when to accelerate past a potential accident and when to yield.  These are great and valuable skills, the marks of truly alive and awake individuals.  They are the skills of someone who controls technology rather than one who is controlled by it.

Maybe they’ve become irrelevant.  Increasingly, young people are foregoing the acquisition of a driver’s license and ownership of a car.  And maybe that makes sense in today’s environment.

The road may still be open.  But our mastery of it is coming to a close.

Ned Ludd, Where Are You?

When I was a kid, Dad would take us for rides in the Rambler and, of course, occasionally stop for gas.  He’d pull up to the pump, turn the engine off, and (usually) grind out his cigarette in the pull-out ashtray, rolling down the driver’s side window about halfway. A young man, a teenager usually, would hurry over to the car; sometimes there would be two.  He’d wear coveralls at some of the stations, or at least a twill shirt with his name embroidered over the pocket.  It wasn’t always clean.  While the tank was filling, he’d squeegee the windshield and the back window.  My perfectionist father would point out spots he’d missed and he would cheerfully (okay, at least not grudgingly) go over them again.  Dad would pay, the attendant would make change, and we’d be off.

Oregon is, in this respect at least, a time machine.  It’s a shock to purchase gas across the Columbia, because Oregon refuses to let me pump my own.  I still relive the day of the attendant.

In 1951, Oregon opted to stop the clock, passing a bill prohibiting customers from pumping their own gas.  Ostensibly, it was on the ground of safety; gasoline is, of course, explosively volatile.  But, whether intentionally or not, it preserved an entire genre of entry-level jobs, available to even callow high-school students:  the gas station attendant.

I thought about this recently as I watched a television news report about a new experiment.  Amazon.com has opened, of all things, a grocery store in Seattle. At the moment, it serves only Amazon employees (Amazonians?), but if it succeeds, the internet behemoth plans to open 2,000 across the country. What makes it remarkable is that customers can browse the shelves, choose whatever foodstuffs they wish, and walk out the door.  There are no checkstands.  And, of course, there are no checkers.

If these 2,000 stores become a reality, they could do to traditional grocery stores what the infant Amazon did to brick-and-mortar book stores, in the process eliminating another full genre of entry-level jobs, from stockers to checkers, even to managers.  And they could easily become a model for other retailers like pet supply or hardware stores.  Already, Wal-Mart is exploring the same concept.

And then there’s Uber.  The car-sharing, app-driven service has already severely disrupted the traditional taxi industry.  But they, too, are exploring automation, developing self-driving cars that are already on the road in Pittsburgh and, soon, San Francisco. Although taxi-driving isn’t exactly an entry-level job, it has provided opportunities through the years for those with lower education levels, those without specialized skills, and recent immigrants.  A recent count showed that, across the country, almost 234,000 people earn a living driving cabs. Bus driver and even long-haul truckers could face the same future.

Donald Trump won election largely on a promise to restore American jobs, the kinds of jobs that created and maintained the middle class.  Good luck with that, Mr. President.  Imagine that you’re a young person, freshly graduated, either from high school or even community college.  uHow are you going to enter the workforce?  How proficient are you at coding?

I’m not a Luddite.  I embrace my high-tech gadgets, from my smart phone (and now smart watch) to my flat-screen television.  And I recognize that robots can provide much benefit to consumers.  No waits for attendants or long lines at Costco.  No need to carry on awkward conversations with drivers.  No need, even, to wait for a UPS or FedEx truck to bring us the goodies we bought online when drone might do the same.  Oh, what a brave new world that has such gadgets in it!

But … what of the workers displaced?  Can we afford this future?  Or should we consider taking a bold step, like Oregon did in 1951, to declare that inefficiency is a social good if it provides jobs to the unskilled among us?  Or will we just close our eyes to the vast tent cities that will inevitably grace the public spaces of our cities?

Unzipped

I will not do it with an urge

I will not do it in a surge

I will not let you use the verge

I will not do a zipper merge

Traffic engineers in a number of states, including Washington, have embarked upon an “educational” campaign to convince drivers to adopt the so-called “zipper merge.”  They’re out of their calculating little minds.

You know the situation:  you’re driving on a freeway, in the right lane where you’re supposed to be.  Off to the side appears an orange “Lane Ends” sign. Since you’re a good driver who always pays attention and plans ahead, you check your mirrors, find a suitable opening in the traffic flow, and gently ease into the left lane.  Soon, inevitably, the traffic slows and even comes to a halt, and you wait patiently in line as it lurches forward.

Suddenly, some yahoo in an Audi (they always seem to drive either a German car or a Prius) zooms past you in the soon-to-end right lane.  They reach the end of the lane and nudge their way in, whether there’s a suitable space or not, while you simmer a quarter-mile back.  It’s a blatant expression of privilege and arrogance, and you’re righteously furious.

Now the State DOT is telling us that they’re right and you’re wrong!

The problem is that the traffic engineers inhabit an ideal universe, a place where logic and cooperation prevail.  A place where some will sacrifice by waiting in line for the benefit of others who cut the line.  A place where everybody understands and agrees upon the rules of the road.

It ain’t here, babe.  Zipper merging is a formula for road rage and unbridled aggression, a test of wills between the merger and the mergee.  It rewards the inattentive and indecisive, the texters and passionate conversationalists, the just plain pushy and the passive/aggressive.

Get this, drivers:  when the sign says the lane is ending, THE LANE IS ENDING.  Deal with it.  Don’t wait until the last moment and then expect me to generously make way for you.

How to Destroy Your Image

Teaching is a performance.  That’s why I need to have a roadie.

Bruce Springsteen would never go out on the road without an accompanying circus of electricians, set technicians, roustabouts and assistants.  Why, then, shouldn’t I have just one modest minion?

When I taught at Bellevue College, we had modern classrooms filled with current technology.  I presided over the class from behind a lecturn with controls for an overhead projector, surround-sound speakers, two computers (a PC and a Mac), and a DVD/VCR player.  I could show movies and YouTube clips, use PowerPoints and project copies of student essays or internet articles; I was a wizard conducting a magic show.  Problems occasionally arose—the projector’s light might burn out or the DVD player might fail—but I had technicians waiting and ready to intervene.

Then I retired and left the academic bubble.  I started volunteering to teach classes for other seniors.  My “institution” is a small, private group with extremely limited resources, so I decided to bring my own.  Confident and proud, I carried my laptop into the classroom to marry it up to their portable projector and tiny speakers.

A teacher, especially in the first few class sessions, must project confidence and competence.  In my current situation, I have to compete with a warm-to-stuffy room and the fact that I’m stealing time away from afternoon naps (including my own.)  These are not an audience conditioned to consider themselves subordinate to the all-knowing, all-powerful professor; these are peers, some with degrees every bit as advanced as my own.  To makes that all-important first impression, one requirement is paramount:

The equipment has to work.

So, before I can impress my audience with a nugget of knowledge or enlist their empathy with a self-disparaging joke, I have to plug in all the right wires.  And I have no more than five to ten minutes to do it, while people trickle in and watch.

First day, first class:  While the laptop is booting, I search for the USB port on the projector.  None.  I finally find a VGA port, but my laptop doesn’t have a VGA port.  Fortunately, the Center’s Director has an adaptor that converts VGA to HDMI, and my laptop does have one of those.  Problem solved.

Except it’s already seven minutes into the class.  And the projector doesn’t project.

I unplug and re-plug.  Nothing.  I reboot the computer.  The projector shows a blank blue square of light, nothing more.  Eleven minutes into the class, and I haven’t even introduced myself yet.  The Director comes in to help.  She unplugs and re-plugs, and crawls on the floor to check all the cables.  The projector projects the same blank blue square.  Eighteen minutes into the class.  I give up and go to “Plan B”, improvising a lecture out of hastily-recalled lectures past.

In the week before the next class, the Director experiments with the setup and eventually finds that one must start the projector before booting the computer.  Problem solved.

Confidence renewed, I open the next class session with a streaming TED talk off the Internet.  The image is excellent, given the fact that there’s no way to darken the room and I have to project onto a beige wall because the only screen is in use by another class.  But hey—we’re all adults here.  We can adapt.

Except there’s no sound.  The speakers are properly plugged in and powered, but they make no noise.  Plan B.2. 

My competence under serious challenge, I buy speakers of my own and set them up at home.  These are silent too.  A lengthy bout of befuddlement ensues.  Ultimately, I think to check the “Devices” list and find that I need an updated Sound Card driver.  These are supposed to update automatically but somehow haven’t.  I update, and I have sound.

Third class.  The entire plan for this day is to show a video.  My laptop doesn’t have a DVD drive, but I have an external one.  My audience watching expectantly, my computer screen projecting onto the wall, I pop the DVD into the drive and wait for “Autoplay”.  Nothing happens.  I go to Windows Explorer, find the external drive, and click on it.  Nothing.  I then discover that I can’t locate an icon for the long-established Windows Media program.  That, I discover later, is because Microsoft eliminated it from Windows 10.  Fortunately, I have other Media Player programs installed, so I open them one-by-one.  None of them access the DVD drive.  It turns out that Microsoft decided that nobody uses DVDs any longer, so they removed the ability to play them entirely.  They are happy to sell me an app that will play DVDs, but it’s no longer standard equipment, and reviewers almost universally pan it.  Plan B.3.

Next class will be class #4, halfway through an 8-week term.  I’m confirmed in my ineptitude in front of the class, and I’ve already used up all the material I had planned to present systematically throughout the term. But I actually have students who arrive early and enthusiastically.  They’re eager to see what happens next.

I’m beginning to rethink this whole retirement thing.

Evocations

Evocations

I’m a pretty visually-oriented guy.  I enjoy photography, and there’s little better than to spend a few hours in a good art museum.  Although with age my vision is fading from what it once was, I still enjoy the nuances of light and shadow in a cinematically brilliant movie or an Impressionist painting.  As an English professor, I of course read voraciously and translate little marks of ink on paper (or, more frequently these days, on an ebook screen) into vivid images in my mind.

But there’s so much more.  We have five senses, not just one, and one of them has been shown to be directly connected to the parts of the brain that control memory: Smell.

This has been known, of course, for a long time; the most famous example is Marcel Proust’s madeleine dipped in tea, which evoked childhood memories of “the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.” (Swann’s Way).  But I tend to relegate this powerful sense to the background—and I suspect I’m not alone.  So I spent some time today collecting scents that evoke powerful memories, my madeleines if you will, and I’d like to share them.  Maybe they’ll evoke something in you as well, or call up your own associations with other scents.  They’re not all pleasant odors, but then not all memories are pleasant, either.

Freshly cut Western Red Cedar

Stiff, never-yet-worn blue jeans

A rocky Puget Sound beach

Varnish in a woodworker’s shop

Air-dried laundry

Two-cycle outboard motor exhaust

Sautéing onions

A mountain lake on a hot summer day

Old National Geographic magazines

A store stocked with leather clothes

The “Tacoma Aroma” (the sulfurous emissions from pulp mills)

Comet cleaner

Juniper, laurel hedges, a lilac bush, and lavender

Differential grease and transmission fluid

Ski wax

Nursing homes

Hot asphalt and tar

Theater popcorn

Dried hay

A dog just back from a swim

Kerosene

Driftwood beach fires

Oil paint

3-in-1 Oil and WD 40

Ozone after a summer rain

School bus diesel exhaust

My dogs and cats pity the poverty of my world, I think.  There’s so much more than just sight.

Airbags and the $65 Car

My First Published Essay, December 1974

Airbags and the $65 Car
By Roger George
(as published in Autoweek and Competition Press December 21, 1974)

On paper, the air bag seems like a marvelous invention. Just imagine—you’re sitting on your seatbelt, after cleverly outwitting your car’s ignition interlock. Some idiot makes a left turn in front of you; there’s no room to stop or take evasive action. Technology takes over.

And obediently, a filmy plastic bag snuggled in your steering wheel explodes into action, catches your catapulting form and shoves you back into your seat. Its mission accomplished, it sigh an instantaneous deflation and lies spent on your lap. All before you’re even aware of its presence.

The airbag is touted as a pinnacle product of 2000 years of Western civilization and a space program. The Department of Transportation and insurance companies sing its praises and act to make it required equipment.

I’d feel a lot more comfortable about the prospect if I knew that just one of the airbag’s developers or promoters had ever owned a $65 car. I did, and I shudder to think of what could have happened to me had it been airbag-equipped.

“Walter” was a 1948 Chevrolet 4-door sedan. When it was new, the car was well up among post-war status symbols. When it was built, safety equipment consisted of four brakes and a lot of sheet metal; Walter was sold on other attributes, luxury and “performance” chief among them.

It was a Fleetline sedan, with all the options: two-tone paint (pale green with brown roof), radio, heater, vacuum-assisted manual shift, a yellow foglamp on the grille and a moveable spotlight on the driver’s windshield pillar. The engine was Chevrolet’s venerable and ultra-reliable straight six.

Rear seat passengers had so much foot and head room that they were virtually isolated from those in the front; an intercom would have been a useful option. Everything was oversize—the seats, the steering wheel, the radio and heater … The dashboard and door moldings were decorated with the imitation wood-on-metal so popular during that era; the seats were covered with mohair, and all knobs were of creamy beige plastic. You knew you were somebody if you drove a car like this, even though it was only a Chevrolet and not a Cadillac. People could tell you were on the way up.

Even after two decades the car retained some of its original appeal, even if it now went by the name “funk” rather than “style”. But, as I inspected the car in my brother-in-law’s back yard, I wasn’t interested in the car’s image as much as its functionality. I was a college student just needed a cheap car.

“Does it run?,” I asked innocently. He climbed in an turned the key. Nothing. I started to leave, but he lifted the great alligator jaw of a hood and replaced the battery terminal.
“Okay,” he beamed. “Now watch this. Uh … maybe you better stand back just a bit. In case.”

The engine cranked laboriously and then caught. With a whoop of triumph, he raced the accelerator. Popping and little-muffled, the engine finally settled into an idle of sorts. That was all I needed. I gave him sixty-five bucks and he signed over the title.

Assured of the sale, he then warned me about a few “little things.”

“Be sure to pump the brakes a bit,” he cautioned. “And be careful with the steering—it’s a bit loose. Oh, and the vacuum shift doesn’t work too well, especially going to second. Put it in neutral, count to ten, and slowly feel your way in.”

A bit unsteadily, I drove off into the night and tried my first shift. “… seven, eight, nine, ten, shift.” I was rewarded with a terrifying GRAUNCH! I had somehow hit reverse. The car coasted to a stop. Finding first, I tried again, and thistime found the right ggear. Proudly cruising in second, my triumph was cut short by a stop sign. Preoccupied with the transmission, I noticed the stuttering of the engine too late, and it died.

At that point, I discovered the dead battery. And the rain.

The voltage regulator was faulty, and could not be replaced that night. While I was cursing in the rain my brother-in-law drove by, oblivious to my signals for help. I threw a rock at his car, but missed.

I got Walter home the next night, and began to go to work. I am not a mechanic. People without much money, though, become surprisingly adept at keeping old cars running (after a fashion), and I was no exception. Ineptitude may be the mother of innovation; Walter was kept on the road by means of frighteningly ingenious repairs.

The car handled like a boat in rough seas. The shocks were non-functional, allowing the car to “porpoise” over irregularities in the road, and the steering box was drastically worn, creating a lag in the steering response. To execute a turn, one used a bump or the brakes to throw the car’s weight onto the front wheels and turned the steering wheel in the desired direction well before the turn. Steering corrections were likewise anticipated in advance. I was eventually able to tighten up the steering box somewhat, and new front tires helped. But steering response was never, in any way, quick.

Next on the list of improvised repairs was the shift linkage. I found that the linkage would permit the driver to select either first and reverse, or second and third, but not to shift from one set of gears to the other while moving. I tried a variety of makeshift repairs, but the linkage was simply too worn for conventional solutions. Radical surgery was called for.

I drilled a hole in the floor and affixed a steel rod to the part of the transmission tower that controlled the first/second transition. If that rod was pulled upward in perfect coordination with the column shift lever, the shift could be effected. To lift the rod, my wife became a riding mechanic, and we drilled intensively to perfect the operation.

“Ready?,” I’d ask as we approached the redline for first.

“Ready,” she’d confirm, grasping the rod with both hands.

“Okay. One…two…three…PULL!” By making a lot of second gear starts and avoiding hills wherever possible, we were able to hold her work to a minimum.

Which was fortunate. Because the windshield wipers didn’t work, and we live in Seattle. It rains a lot in Seattle.

The solution to this problem was to tie some clothesline to one wiper, run it through the wing window and across the dash, out the other wing and tie it to the other wiper. Power was, of course, by wife.

“Can I rest for a bit?,” she’d ask wistfully. My arms are ready to drop.”

“Not yet. Here comes a cop. Wipe, dammit.”

“You don’t really love me,” she muttered as I watched the cop drive by. “You only want me to wipe your windshield.”

“That’s not true,” I bristled. “I need you.”

“For what?,” she demanded.

“Well, for one thing, to downshift. We’ve got a stoplight. Down NOW!” After awhile, she became a true mechanic, right down to the language.

I learned a lot from Walter. Like the fact that beer cans and sections of drain pipe can be temporary, although not entirely satisfactory, cures for a broken exhaust pipe. And how to do a valve job with a jar of grinding paste and a suction cup on a dowel. But my ingenuity did, after all, have its limits. Walter won retirement with a simultaneous brake failure and transmission seizure, graphically demonstrating Murphy’s famous law: “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”

Which brings me back to airbags. Walter did not belong on the road. But it was there, as are thousands like it. As long as poor people have to buy $65 cars to survive in our mobile society, there will be such cars on the road.

So think of your airbag-equipped Granada in 15 years, with all of the defects of age. Is it reasonable to expect that a highly-sophisticated device like an airbag will never take the notion into its little computer to explode in the driver’s face without cause?

As for me, I think I’ll stick to seatbelts, thank you.

A More Perfect Union

I have Confederate ancestors (at least on one side of my family).  They enlisted in a Texas volunteer cavalry unit in 1862 and served in the Red River campaign.  As far as I know, they had nothing to do with slavery; they were wagon drivers and cowboys, recent immigrants from Alsace.  

I suspect that they had more allegiance to the Texas flag than to the C.S.A.  Still, they were Confederates. 

I honor them and respect them. I’m not ashamed of my ties to them.  They no doubt thought that they were fighting for liberty and freedom—but it was the freedom to dehumanize and exploit other human beings. They fought on the side of evil.

So I can understand some of the sentiment behind those who want to continue to display the Confederate battle flag.  There is much to admire about Southern culture and history.  But it, and the flag that some use to symbolize it, is fatally tainted by the original sin of slavery and, in addition, by the legacy of over a century of institutional, brutal oppression since the war ended.  And it must be noted that the Confederate flag is also a symbol of treason.  One simply cannot be a patriotic American and, at the same time, cling to allegiance to the banner of a failed rebellion.

Okay, fine.  So I’m a Yankee (and full disclosure:  the other side of my family has ancestors who fought for the Union.)  And everything I’ve written so far sounds like the typical Yankee arguments against the display of that flag.

So rally ‘round the Stars and Stripes, right?

Well, wait just a bit.

Old Glory is not without its bloody blemishes. Remember the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee?  The conquest of the richest parts of Mexico in a one-sided, unjust war?  The massacres of entire villages during the Philippine Insurgency and the Moro Rebellion?  The incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II?  My Lai?  The Stars and Stripes has flown over ethnic cleansing, genocide and atrocities as well.

And yet we proudly display it—and we should.  On every possible occasion.

What’s the difference?

One represents only the past, a past that must be remembered but also rejected.  The other represents the past as well but also, most important, a vision of the future, a promise. There have been plenty of violations of that promise, but they are violations, disgraces, crimes—not the institutionalized oppression the Confederate flag was designed to preserve and promote. One commemorates what was—and what must never be again. The other symbolizes what can be. 

From the very beginning, we set ourselves a goal.  John Winthrop expressed it aboard the ship Arbella in 1630 as the Puritans prepared to land in the New World:  For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill.  The eyes of all people are upon us.  Soe that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so ause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.

Of course, his vision of the perfect commonwealth was a rigid, unforgiving theocracy, and his Puritans promptly set about exterminating the Pequots.  But the idea was planted:  we are not a particular geography, but an idea.  We aren’t there yet, and maybe never will be, but we’re a work in progress.  We set ourselves up to be an example to the rest of the world, so we simply aren’t entitled to behave in the ways that other civilizations do.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it in his “I Have A Dream” speech, In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.

I’ll frankly confess:  I’m a liberal.  Somehow, in the past few decades, the idea got established that the American flag is the property of the Right.  If it is, it’s no better than the Confederate flag because it honors not just the good but also the shameful.  But I own it too, and I display it proudly, because it symbolizes a future, a vision that must be pursued, even if it never completely comes to be.

Render Unto Caesar ...

Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas has signed a “religious liberty” Executive Order, and other states are considering similar legislation.  The intent is to protect those who, for religious reasons, want to refuse to do their job for same-sex couples.  County clerks, for example, can safely refuse to issue marriage licenses and claim that to do so would make them complicit in a grave sin.  A judge has announced that he will only perform same-sex marriages if the participants acknowledge, in writing, his objection. The owners of a now-famous (or infamous) bakery in Oregon could escape the fines levied against them for refusing to serve a lesbian couple if Oregon were to adopt a similar law.  Nobody, supporters of such laws proclaim, should be forced to violate their conscience.

At the risk of sounding intolerant … bullshit.

Let me clarify.  I’m a big fan of civil disobedience.  I’ve engaged in it myself from time to time (including such trivial acts of defiance as failing to strictly observe speed limits).  My doctorate focused on the ideas best expressed by Henry David Thoreau, and I’m a huge fan of his seminal manifesto On The Duty of Civil Disobedience.  I admire those who take a stand against oppression, even when I disagree with them.

But only if they are willing to accept the consequences of their stand.

Maybe it would be a good idea for those who advocate “religious liberty” laws to read Civil Disobedience.  It was the original manifesto for refusing to honor a law one considered unjust.  Thoreau refused to pay his taxes because they would be used to prosecute an unjust war with Mexico.  The essay was adapted by Mahatma Gandhi to win, through non-violent resistance, independence for India.  It was a primary influence behind Martin Luther King’s campaigns to dismantle racial oppression in this country.  It was cited by conscientious objectors who, for religious and moral reasons, defied military drafts.

BUT … what those who are seeking exemption from participation in same-sex marriage are conveniently overlooking is the price these moral heroes were willing to pay.  Thoreau went to jail.  Gandhi went to jail—many times.  Martin Luther King Jr. went to jail; his own manifesto on civil disobedience was written inside the Birmingham Jail.  Draft resisters went to jail, performed alternative service, or fled to Canada or Sweden.  If one’s moral conscience is meaningful, there is always a price to pay for it.

“I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State,” Thoreau wrote in Civil Disobedience. “But, if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs.”

Let’s say you run a small business (a bakery, perhaps.)  A potential customer tries to order a wedding cake (for a same-sex wedding.  Or perhaps an interracial wedding.  Or perhaps a second or third wedding after divorce.)  Such a wedding violates your religious principles.  What’s the moral course of action?

Close the business.  There is no other option except serving the customer.  None.

A business, any business, operates under a license (often multiple licenses.)  In return for services from the state such as police protection, public roads and alleys, garbage collection, electricity and a host of other services, the business agrees to serve the public and obey secular laws—all of them.  It is a contract between the owners of the business and all of the rest of us.  If the contract cannot be honored, the license must be surrendered.

As Thoreau says, this is hard.  It requires sacrifice.  It may mean the end of dreams or material prosperity.  That’s what makes it meaningful and not just a cowardly cop-out.

Thoreau wrote: … until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. And he spent two years at Walden Pond trying to see if it were possible.  For him it was, at least for that period.  Do you have his courage?

What about county clerks who refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses or judges who resist performing same-sex weddings?  Must they violate their consciences?

Of course not.  They only need to quit their jobs.  A government job is, like a business license, a contract between the employee and me (and millions of other Americans).  In return for salary and various job protections, the clerk or judge agrees to honor the laws and the Constitution.  If that can’t be done, the job cannot be held. Simple as that.

As I said, I admire those who follow their conscience, even when I think they’re wrong. But I only admire those who are willing to pay the price for it.  In the 17^th Century, the poet John Milton (himself a Puritan) said this:

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race ... Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is what is contrary.

I agree.  Follow your conscience, by all means.  Just don’t expect me to exempt you from the consequences.

Feedback

     It’s finally summer, and the top is permanently battened down on the Miata. It’s glorious to drive it, especially in the early morning: the wind buffets from all directions, the pebbles in the road surface transmit through the tires, the sun glows from all directions, the exhaust note burbles in response to any throttle input … I’m immersed in the environment, and whatever input I give, I get immediate feedback. It’s quite a contrast to other cars I’ve driven, which are premised on the obliteration of feedback: symphony-hall-quality sound systems, hermetically-sealed cabin air conditioning, sound-deadening insulation, and a host of high-tech distractions. A sports car, a motorcycle, a jet ski or sailboat—all pay homage to the power of feedback, all can provide an experience of full awareness and control.

      It’s something I teach my media classes at the very beginning of every quarter: without good feedback, there’s no real communication. Any message has to pass through a number of barriers on its path from sender to receiver, overcoming the hurdles of encoding (choosing the appropriate symbols, whether words, images, or even musical notes, to represent the thought; filters, both physical and psychological (we tend to “tune out” messages we don’t like to hear); “noise” and static; the receiver’s own “decoding” (what we say is not always what the receiver hears) … As anyone who’s ever participated in the childhood game of Telephone well knows, what we start out saying often ends up as something very different on the other end. The only way to measure the accuracy of the communication is to provide feedback to the sender. And that feedback may well be uncomfortable or unpleasant. Without feedback, there’s no true communication, no exchange of ideas, just a one-way shout. But with the wrong kind of feedback, the kind that sets up a resonance, something even worse occurs: a feedback loop. The signal amplifies—becomes “purer”-- the filters fail, and the message evolves into an ear-splitting squeal. We cover our ears and seek to shut out the noise.

     I recently read The Filter Bubble, by Eli Pariser, which argues that modern data-mining technology is creating this very kind of feedback loop. As our internet clicks are gathered and collated, our online personas are analyzed, refined, and narrowed into tidy marketing niches. We are, increasingly, provided messages that resonate with our pre-existing beliefs and desires; we are offered the products, services and ideas we already want and agree with. As we insulate ourselves with the comfortable and shut out conflicting information, we’re setting up our own feedback loops.

      And here’s the problem. Too many of us these days are metaphorically driving luxury cars with windows up, radios permanently tuned to the same talk shows, and A/C blasting. Modern communication technology has made it easy for us to hear only what we want to hear and see only what we want to see—and it’s driving us apart. We’re believing crazy things: that the President is a Muslim, that allowing people to commit in love to each other will somehow destroy society, that gluten-free foods are good for us, that the lives of celebrities are meaningful and important … and that our tribe of congenial fellow-thinkers is all that matters.

The "Heroes" of the Hunley

I’m a sucker for shipwrecks.  I don’t know why, but there’s something about the presence of a massive structure sitting on a seabed for, sometimes, centuries that just engages my imagination; the envelope of water makes even the most mundane details magical. 

            A few years ago, I had a chance to visit the C.S.S. Hunley, the first successful submarine (successful in the sense of being able to actually kill people other than its own crew—at which it was also remarkably successful.)  On February 17, 1864, the Hunley rammed the Federal warship Housatonic, which was enforcing a blockade of Charleston Harbor, planted a torpedo in its hull, and exploded it.  For the first time, a massive warship sank, helpless against eight men and a mine.

            You have to see the Hunley to really understand just how stupendous a feat this was.  Its propulsion was by a hand crankshaft linked to one small propeller, and operated by eight sailors.  They could not sit upright, but rather were hunched over nearly ninety degrees.  They had to “power” for a mile and a half just to get to their target, and then crank all the way back.  The air was foul, and the illumination provided only by candle.  What really impressed me were the two hatches, about the diameter of a basketball hoop.  These were small, strong men—and once they squeezed into this thing, it would have been impossible to squeeze back out in a hurry.

            And they didn’t.  The Hunley sank after this mission,  drowning all the crew, just as it had twice before.  When it was raised in 2000, all eight were still at their stations.

            Heroes?  To my mind, certainly.  I cannot imagine doing what they did, and I have to admire and honor what they did.  But I’m troubled by that admiration.  They bravely sacrificed their lives, all right, but they did it for an evil cause.

            The crew of the Hunley were Confederates.  They may have had many personal reasons for committing to the side that they did, but ultimately, by doing so, they were committing to the ideal of white supremacy.  The Confederacy was dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal—but that huge numbers of people were not, well, men (or women).  Some people could be property, legally equivalent to cattle and horses.  Moreover, they were part of a culture that had engaged in ethnic cleansing, including the Trail of Tears, and that was openly advocating imperialistic expansion to Cuba, Mexico and Central America.

            Is heroism dependent upon the cause for which it’s expressed?  Can we appreciate the bravery of Nazis at the Siege of Stalingrad or the Battle of the Bulge, or the sacrifices of the Japanese at Iwo Jima?  Can bravery be recognized apart from the bearer’s ideals?

            For the first time in 150 years, we now have the chance to see the Hunley clearly.  Can we?

            Watch the following video from CBS News:  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57363382/restoring-a-piece-of-s.c.s-civil-war-history/?tag=cbsnewsTwoColLowerPromoArea;fd.morenews

From the Hubble Telescope

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GOOGLE INTRODUCES “GOOGLE GRADER”

Kirkland, WA:  Google today announced the release of a new free software package for community college instructors, Google Grader. 

“We’re very excited about this,” says Google spokesperson Genevieve Eek, “since so many of us spent some time as adjunct instructors and know the terrible burden of grading essays.”  Google Grader, she predicts, will dramatically reduce the turn-around time for returning essays to students, although it may also result in reduced teaching opportunities for recent grad school students.

Google Grader will scan electronic copies of submitted essays for common errors, such as fragments, comma splices, and run-on sentences.  An “Advanced” setting can identify dangling and misplaced modifiers, subject/verb and pronoun agreement problems, and five-paragraph-theme structures (which will automatically be assigned a failing grade.)  One touted feature, however, had to be removed after Beta testing; the “Logic Lapse” analyzer frequently overloaded the program, causing complete system collapse.  “We’re working on a new algorithm for that,” says Eek, but she concedes that, as with Voice Recognition, such a feature may be far from practical application.

Google Grader will be available for download as soon as Google can find interns capable of writing the instruction manual.

Bracing for 64

When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now Will you still be sending me a Valentine? Birthday greetings? Bottle of wine? 

I started wearing suspenders (“braces”, if you’re of the British persuasion.) Is this the final capitulation of the Baby Boomer?

 You know the stereotypes: an old man in a rocker on the front porch of a rickety store, smoking, hooking his thumbs in the suspenders on either side and telling boring stories. Or the urban working class guy with the tattered coat and flat cap (I have several of those, too). Or Uncle Joe of suspect sexual predilections. At best, I’m Captain Jack of Torchwood; at worst, friends call me “Snuffy.”

 I bought them for costumes. The first set was for a bit part in a staged reading of The Rainmaker; I played Grampa. The second pair was part of an appearance by Ken Burns to promote his Prohibition film; I dressed as a worker in a bootlegging warehouse. All in good fun, and I embraced the stereotypes.

 But then I made an uncomfortable discovery: the damn things are comfortable and practical. I’ve been having this problem. My belly protrudes. It didn’t do this when I was working out every day and riding my bicycle to work. But it does now, swelling like a balloon. And my pants keep falling down. I’ve found that I have two options: 1) cinch a belt as tightly as I can around my hips, in which case my shirts invariably become untucked and I suffer from 19th-Century female “diseases”; or 2) hitch the pants up above the apogee of my stomach bulge, in which case I become one of the Katzenjammer Kids.

 The suspenders solve both problems. The pants stay at the proper level, and the shirts stay tucked within them (well, mostly. Buttons still have a tendency to pop apart, though.) So far I’ve been able to hide them under sweaters so my concession to age has gone largely unnoticed, but Spring will someday arrive, and there I’ll be: a certified senior with suspenders and a Hawaiian shirt. Maybe shorts, too—why not embrace the decrepit dorkiness of it all?

 Gotta go. The front porch rocker needs me.

  Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?