Hey Kids, What Time Is It?

“…asks Buffalo Bob, turning over in his grave (if you know who that is, you know how much time has passed!). Not nearly as simple a question as it sounds.

We have just gone through the semi-annual ritual of adjusting our clocks between Standard Time and Daylight Savings, with the usual casualties today. Church congregations were likely smaller, as at least some of the faithful weren’t so, in failing to set clocks ahead for DST, thereby missing the service, or at least the sermon. Darn.

The fist fights over the time changes are usually more intense in the spring, since being early (the consequences of failing to “fall back”) are usually less severe than being late, from failing to Spring Forward. Today, the newspaper in the city where I once worked apparently posted the wrong clock graphic and had to issue a correction, sheepishly admitting that it should have asked readers if they had remembered to push their clocks forward, presumably instead of the other way. Whoops.

Even the mnemonic devices are suspect, since Congress fussed with the start and finish of Daylight Saving, and now we actually Spring Forward before spring itself has sprung. Many of my electronic devices had time change codes built in before the extensions were approved by our esteemed representatives. And then there are Arizona and Hawaii, that don’t recognize DST. Sounds like a hot mess to me.

Trusting legislatures with standard-setting is a dicey proposition anyway. There is, of course, the famous story of how the Indiana legislature almost established the value of “pi” as 3.2, rather than the 3.1417… we all grew up with. A few irate math professors were able to talk them out of it at the last minute back in 1897. So what else is new? You would think most human female functions are relatively standard, but a surprising number of male legislators haven’t read the manual.

Look, I love DST, since as a child I was able to go outside and play for a couple of hours after dinner, then see the fireflies arrive before I went to bed.

But enough sentimental nonsense, right? There are many things in life that shouldn’t be standardized, but there are many things that should. Like time, which happens to all of us. If the legislatures want something to do, how about requiring us to use a 24-hour clock and Greenwich Mean Time for official purposes. Of course, if you were calling someone in a distant place, you’d have to know what time of day sun-wise it was so as not to wake them up (but don’t we sort of have to do that anyway?).

OK, well that’s my opinion, and I’m stickin’ to it. And my opinions, as my dear readers in this space know, are worth their weight in bitcoin.

Free Associations

I listened with great appreciation to Bette Midler singing “Wind Beneath My Wings” at the Oscars Sunday night. I’m a little embarrassed at exposing my schlocky sentimental taste in music, but there you go – I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs out there. But I see many of you heading for the exits. Why?

Aside from some not sharing my taste in schlock, this song has been co-opted by funerals. When you get to a certain age, you go to more funerals than weddings, and there’s a much-better-than-even chance you will hear this song at a funeral service. Especially in the UK, where it’s said to be among the top five most-requested songs at memorial events. The usage was likely prompted by the movie “Beaches,” where it was the background at a cemetery scene.

Oddly enough, the word “death” doesn’t appear in the lyrics, and there’s really nothing about the words that would suggest it’s intended for funerals, but most of you are sick of this song because you’ve heard it too often, and, in this case, not on pleasant occasions.

I’d like to complain about this, except most songs seem to have associations with events. The associations can be personal or collective. War seems to have an especially collective associative quality, even when the lyrics don’t actually talk about war. “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,” sang Vera Lynn. It’s the quintessential World War II ditty, but there’s nothing military about the words. The Vietnam War seemed to have a lot of these. Jim Morrison and the Doors lit our fire. Even the Gulf War – which we won, as I recall – seemed to have its own song, “From a Distance,” also sung by Ms. Midler -- though the lyrics of this one did concern war and peace. Curiously, Iraq and Afghanistan don’t seem to have signature songs, or am I missing something?

Individual associations, of course, vary widely. A friend who is a major Frank Sinatra fan could not stand Mr. S’s version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” because it was played over the jarring scene in “The Execution of Private Slovik,” where Martin Sheen is felled by a firing squad. In a personal example, as a child I knew “Swan Lake” as the theme music to the 1931 version of the movie “Dracula” before I knew it was Tchaikovsky’s ballet classic. OK, well I was depraved on accounta I was deprived, as the delinquent teen says in “West Side Story.”

Most married couples have “their song,” but the most cheerful music can sometimes be ruined by a tragic association, like a fatal traffic accident or a devastating storm. That’s how we’re wired. It only takes a few bars, or the first notes from a particular voice, to transport us instantly back to our ”big events.”

Getting back to the starting point here, though, I wish there could be a moratorium on the funeral usage of “Wind Beneath My Wings.” Some of you might actually get to like it again.

The Envelope, Please

We’re at it again! We only just got through with the Olympics. Here come the Oscars.

Last night, I did a Facebook post about how I’d seen both “12 Years a Slave” and “Gravity,” and allowed as how after all was said and done, I liked “Gravity” better. I will leave it to you to decide if I’m a cold fish or not. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for “Slave” when I saw it, but there you go.

Tonight we go to an Oscar party, and part of the annual routine is, we turn in our ballots ahead of time with our Oscar picks in every category, including the obscure ones. The individual who gets the most right wins a prize and a small money pot.

One thing you learn really early in this game is that if you go with what you like, you lose. This is more like picking stocks. If you want to win, you don’t fall in love with anything. Some in this party group watch all the preliminary awards shows and read all the critics’ picks before making their choices. There are those who just can’t play games. They’re always in it to win it.

When you think about it, taking two or more disparate works of art and having to decide which one “wins” is a little silly. I liked one movie better than the other, maybe because I was in the mood for one and not for the other. Are Academy politics – which is now what the Oscars are about – any loftier as criteria?

The Oscars have spawned all kinds of wannabe awards ceremonies. I myself attended banquets as a broadcaster and won quite a few trophies for my work in that field. The first year I won, everyone had to give speeches, and the small-market awards were at the end, so my speech was after midnight, and most people had gone home, There were so few left in the audience that I offered to take them all out for breakfast.

But name me an industry, club, school, or even pastime that doesn’t have an awards show. I once had to cover a luncheon of a professional organization in the town where I was working, and I’m sure that everyone attending got an award. In fact, at one point the emcee/presenter had to leave the podium and sit down so someone else could give HIM an award.

It’s a privilege to be alive. We don’t necessarily need a trophy or a badge to validate it.

But not watch the Oscars? Are you kidding?

The Invasion: B-day, 2.9.64

Naturally, the first I ever heard of the Beatles was from a wannabe girlfriend in 1963. As you may have figured, I was the “wannabe” in this relationship – she was incredibly beautiful, and no doubt still is, wherever she lives. But if she said, “I love the Beatles,” I had to pay attention.

I was living in New York at the time. No, I wasn’t in the studio on Feb. 9, 1964, when the Beatles debuted on the Ed Sullivan Show. But in those days, just being in NYC was enough. It was in the air, and stayed there. Local legendary DJ Murray the K on WINS used to be the first in the country to play new Beatles releases – they were phoned in to him and his audience – literally, before being released on record in the U.S.

I was privileged to be in London in 1966 for a couple of weeks during a summer between my junior and senior years in college. The British who weren’t in the first wave of the invasion were planning their assault. I was accosted on the street by the “Get Rich Group,” who, upon hearing that I worked at a college radio station in the U.S., played their wannabe hit single for me right in the street.

I used that status of college radio DJ to finagle my way onto one of the pirate radio ships off the U.K. coast. These ships were the only real source of current music for Britain, programmed exactly like American radio stations. I traveled to the ship aboard a skiff out of the British port of Felixstowe. How I survived this experience, I don’t know.

I stayed at a small hotel in London W1, recommended by the radio station personnel. The price I paid was rooming with an Irish dishwasher who insisted on playing a portable record player with failing batteries, so the music was all off-speed. But the band called the Troggs (“Wild Thing”) practiced in the hotel’s basement!

I did visit a local record store. They used to let you sit in booths and listen to records before you bought them. I bought a Beatles Parlophone EP (4 tracks, two on each side). They sounded MUCH better than the Capitol Records releases in the U.S., which seemed somewhat distorted. An audio engineer explained to me that recording standards in the UK were different then.

The Beatles sort of lost me after “Rubber Soul,” but I wasn’t a hippie. Maybe I liked to shower daily too much, don’t know.

But the Beatles were a precious phenomenon: a collective American experience (actually, a worldwide one). That appearance on the Ed Sullivan show was important for many reasons, not the least of which was that it was the first such experience – a joyous one -- after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Believe me, the Fab Four were there when we needed them.

Falling Dominoes

It’s nice when you only have to worry about your legacy and not re-election. President Obama said he was going to make use of executive action, and he has. Attorney General Holder announced that the federal government was extending full rights and benefits – or as much as current law would permit – to same-sex married couples. These rights will apply where federal issues are involved, even in the states (still in the majority) where such marriages are not yet legal.

So it appears Mr. Obama’s “evolution” is now complete in this area – and it begs the question, what’s next? Legalized pot, most of us will probably say. Will the federal government do the same, at least agreeing not to prosecute in states where marijuana use is OK?

It may seem that dominoes fall with great speed and in rapid succession. Of course, they don’t. The actual fall takes no time at all, but the fall is only made possible by very slow but inexorable underground tectonic forces at work long before plain old gravity takes over. Mr. Holder’s announcement was preceded by Stonewall in NYC a half-century or so ago. It’s been more than a half-century since the release of “Reefer Madness.” The abolition of slavery took decades before proclamations were made and laws were signed, and way more than that for full acceptance, which some would argue hasn’t happened yet.

I have my own answers to the “what’s next” questions. For instance, I think the smoking of tobacco will be illegal in 10 to 25 years. Smoking is a pretty big no-no already. Cigarettes are prohibitively expensive. There are fewer and fewer places where one can indulge this habit. When all medical benefits are denied to smokers by the federal government and insurance companies, that will just about be the end. I am old enough to remember smoking. I actually enjoyed it – when “it” included things like the glow of cigarette-ends in the dark during an intimate late-night discussion with a friend.

How about the consumption of red meat? I probably won’t be alive when that’s outlawed, but I have no doubt that it will happen. There will be laws regarding the raising and treatment of cattle. Beef will become prohibitively expensive (if it isn’t already), and eating it will be thought of as barbaric. Personally, I still like the stuff and will be perfectly happy to be outta here when it all comes to pass.

The simple rule is, you stick around on Earth long enough, and what was anathema 50 years ago may now be cool, and what was cool 50 years ago may now be anathema. Some of this is enlightenment, and some may be mostly fickleness – but it takes more time than we think. That’s what history is all about.

Anniversary Waltz

B’day greetings to Facebook, 10 years old today. And no, I don’t want to give it a gift, but it does have a place in my life.

I was first invited to FB by a former colleague who accidentally hit the button to invite all her contacts. In those days, I was worried about the now-quaint concept called privacy, so I didn’t bite. Then I was invited by a former boss, who probably hit the same button. Curiously, to this day, he almost never posts anything, while I, always needing to perform, am whaling away at it.

Addicted? Not quite yet, but a “user” nonetheless. Working alone from home now, I realize how great it was to have actual co-workers, even though I didn’t always like the job. FB allows me to keep in touch with former colleagues. Since most of them are about half my age, they keep me in touch with the world. The real world? That’s another discussion.

There are people in my life whom I never thought would still be in it – and maybe a couple who don’t belong in it – because of this invention, created so that male college students could evaluate females. I could look down my nose at that, but if I were that age and a college student in 2004, I’m sure I would have been a major player.

Now I’m at a certain age where I seem to keep reminding myself that Facebook is an artificial tether. There are those whose lives I wouldn’t be participating in – even those on other continents – were it not for FB. But hang on a minute. Didn’t people of a certain age say that at the arrival of the telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, or Skype -- how all these would alter human interaction forever?

They were right! None of these is a substitute for flesh-and-blood contact. But the healthy among us (not necessarily including me) have managed to make room for these devices in our lives, putting them where they belong.

My dear FB friends, some of you are boring (not many). But some of you are enlightening, some are entertaining, some pierce my soul, and most of you do all these things at one time or another. I just hope I’m holding up my end of the bargain.

Side Effects

By now, many of us have heard the story of the execution of a murderer in Ohio who seemed to refuse to die after he was injected with lethal drugs. Instead of passing on quickly and painlessly as expected, he appeared to struggle for at least 10 minutes, at one point clenching his fist.

Apparently, authorities in Ohio had to use a new combination of drugs, because the European pharmaceutical companies that make what Ohio had previously employed to kill bad guys didn’t want their products used for executions anymore. Ohio was running out of its supply of the Europeans' stuff, so it came up with its own, previously untried "cocktail."

Please forgive me when I say there’s a faint Final Solution-y echo to this discussion. The difference being, of course, that the Nazis weren’t worried about whether their victims died in pain – their concern was efficiency and cost – pfennigs and Deutschmarks.

This is not a subject for humor – but because it’s so black it almost begs for it. Some might say, for example, that Big Pharma shouldn’t be relied upon to supply something that would kill quickly – they are much better at killing us slowly….When it comes to execution drugs, should there be a warning label on them saying that one of the unintended side effects may be LIFE?...One of my favorite lines from a prominent comedian, uttered during the first Jerry Brown administration, concerned California’s obsession with green power. “Don’t commit a capital offense here,” said the comic. “Gov. Jerry Brown will put you in a solar-powered electric chair, and it will take you a year to die!” Ba-doom-boom.

I’ve often wondered what method of execution produces the quickest death. It turns out this is all quite a science. I saw that movie about an English expert whose advice was sought before every hanging when the U.K. still used that method. He had to calculate the weight of the bad guy, the length of the drop, etc., which involved a detailed knowledge of both anatomy and physics. The unsavory elements of the electric chair and the gas chamber are well known to us, thanks to Hollywood. Personally, I always thought the French had it right. The guillotine, while messy, seems to get the job done.

In my blackest humor on this topic, I once joked that executions should be publicly available live pay-per-view cable TV events, with the proceeds going to the crime victim’s family. I kept that to myself, thinking it was too crude a thing to say, but somebody eventually came up with the same idea and turned it into a movie.

Ah, but aren’t the victim’s family and friends entitled to just a little revenge? An Ohio judge said there was nothing in the law that guaranteed a pain-free execution.

Wow. I think we need to stop here, take a breath, and play back some of this. Can we really be seriously discussing (with all the appropriate legal head-scratching) the best methods to use for a painless execution? Do we not have a forest-and-trees problem here?

All I can say is, after using any of these, if death is taking more than four hours, contact a physician immediately.

Flesh and Blood

 It’s disheartening to see that the federal budget deal includes a reduction in the cost of living increase for the military pensions of those who are still in uniform – designed to save about $6 billion over 10 years The cut is a drop in the proverbial bucket and affects only 1 percent of the military – but there are numbers, and then there are people.

While disabled veterans were spared this cut – and while benefits for veterans have actually improved in recent years -- it’s distressing to watch the rules being changed for players still on the field.

In civilian life, those wearing uniforms seem to get a much better deal. Retiring cops and firefighters who have put in their time and been judicious with their money can actually leave the job wealthy, and the ability to retire on disability is sometimes misused. Is it because our local heroes are fighting wars here at home – and the ones doing it elsewhere aren’t top-of-mind? As dangerous as police work or fighting fires is, does it compare with being in the middle of a shooting war?

Of course, it’s true that only some of those in the military will ever get close to shooting at the enemy, or being shot at. But they are available to do so, if needed. Similarly, while the potential is always there, cops and firefighters don’t see “action” every day – but they are there because we need them. As they rise in the ranks, they are paid more, while the chance that they will be out facing danger lessens.

In one of my earliest jobs, I had a boss who was always complaining about “overhead” – meaning for him, “Too many people work here, and they are paid too much!” The number of people was in the debatable range, but trust me – we weren’t paid enough, even by our industry standard.

Pentagon bosses who support the military pension cuts say the money going out the door for pensions could be better used tor training and other improvements. But what about the promises made to real human beings? Would such cuts be necessary if the resources available were better managed?

As an aside, I am actually in favor of re-instituting the draft – not because I love war. Quite the opposite, in fact – I wouldn’t want to see people drafted. But just having the system in place would ensure that the general public – and the voters – remain engaged with this subject. Would the President and our legislators have as easy a time involving us in never-ending wars if the public were paying attention? Jeez, both World War II and the Civil War lasted less than five years.

But I digress. I have developed a real distaste for the word “entitlement,” – or rather, the way it’s being used. An entitlement is something that’s owed to people based on a promise in exchange for something. Social Security isn’t a perk – those getting it paid into the system all their working lives. Those in the military serve their country at relatively low rates of pay, but have been promised certain retirement benefits. Some of these folks have fought in our never-ending wars. Don’t they deserve better?

But We Like Him, Don't We?

A lot of us, including me, have enjoyed spending this week whacking away at Chris Christie. Will Fort Lee-gate (or GWB-gate) be his undoing if he tries to run for President? Depends on the American attention span. But look, he wouldn’t be a contender unless there was something about him we liked. Go on, admit it.

He is perceived as a plain speaker who says what’s on his mind when it needs to be said, even if we don’t like what he says sometimes. The scandal will prove his undoing only if he is shown to be an outright liar – or at the least, a very poor administrator who didn’t know what he should have known (the latter isn’t a deal-breaker by any means: Ronald Reagan?).

President Obama is not perceived as a plain speaker, but as someone who seems to talk out of both sides of his mouth when he feels it necessary, or whose opinions “evolve” when it’s politically convenient. That doesn’t mean he is any worse, though, than recent occupants of the office, or than politicians in general.

But remember Herman Cain? He shot to the top of the Republican heap very quickly, because he had mastered the art of plain speaking. His plans were oversimplifications, though, and his problems with women also undid him. Still, that quality was attractive.

Voters found plain speaking attractive in Harry Truman – in spite of the fact that he approved dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.

If Teddy Roosevelt were a zombie, I would vote for him. He is generally thought of as the plainest of speakers, totally unafraid to stand up to special interests. Walking softly, carrying the big stick. Obviously, he wasn’t as simple as all that. Here’s the guy who became the hero of our national park system, who loved the environment – and also enjoyed hunting. But he was perceived as caring about the average citizen. Who’s the last President to have done that – and meant it?  

Maybe we can get Aaron Sorkin to deisgn us a President. The guy Martin Sheen played in The West Wing wasn’t perfect – but would probably work for me.

Android technology still has a ways to go yet, though, so for the time being, we’re stuck with finding someone who can speak to us. But it’s not just plain words. Believe it or not, dumbing down doesn’t work with the majority of voters. It’s about connecting. Can our system produce someone who really connects with us, even if we disagree sometimes -- someone we TRUST? I haven’t given up on it quite yet. But I think we’re all more than ready. We'll know it when we see it -- and listen when we hear it.

In Search of a New Rhythm

At the risk of sounding bah-humbug-ish, I’m glad the holidays are over. They are fun and uplifting in many ways, but they’re also a source of pressure and unrealistic expectations. And, of course, in 11 months or so, they will be back again. Some years, it can seem like next week.

But the “holidays” (a term which almost always should have quotes around it) are just the beginning. After New Year’s Day, what’s next?  Super Bowl Sunday. Valentine’s Day. The Oscars. St. Patrick’s Day. March Madness. Major League Baseball. Easter. Cinco de Mayo. Dads and Grads. July 4^th. (August is pretty much dark.) Labor Day. Back to School. Football. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Black Friday. Christmas/Hanukkah et al….and then we begin again. (Apologize if I left something out).

All of these occasions seem to be reasons for eating, drinking, or spending money. From a commercial point of view, there doesn’t seem to be much “down time” anymore. I guess I’m more tuned into this because I used to work in newsrooms, and in the absence of actual news events, there were always the obligatory stories that seemed to go with some holiday-ish season. Some of these days, like Halloween, might as well be actual holidays, as the observance of each seems to intensify as the years pass.

Now please don’t get me wrong – I have enjoyed many of these  – some, of course, much more than others. But there are times I get that treadmill sensation. I sometimes dream of vacationing in another country where they don’t observe some of these things, just to have a season “off.”

Holidays in other countries can actually be interesting. I flew to New Zealand once, and the plane was packed to the gills. It wasn’t just because New Zealand was that popular. I just happened to be flying there just before Waitangi Day, their national holiday, which happens in February.

But if traveling to such a place isn’t an option, the only other one is to take charge of your life and decide exactly what you’re going to participate in. Yes, it involves a certain amount of swimming against the tide. But since this is the season for resolutions, I am going to try to make 2014 at least a little different.

Tick Tick, Bong Bong

Most of us are probably familiar with the depiction of the New Year as a baby, often brought in by a stork. The idea is that once the clock strikes midnight on Jan. 1, something brand new arrives, along with infinite possibilities. A clean slate.

Really? Of course, we know that the dropping of the ball at Times Square, the chimes of midnight by Big Ben, and, in this case, the change in the final digit of the calendar year don’t really clean much on our slates. Most likely, the same set of circumstances we face at 11:59 p.m. will still largely be there at 12:01 a.m. – the bad along with the good.

To further complicate matters, we all don’t observe this change in digits at the same time. The champagne corks start popping in New Zealand, and the sound works its way around the world to Hawaii. Calendars and clocks are human inventions. It was only fairly recently that the world agreed on which calendar to follow among numerous choices. Clocks only became critical in the 19^th century, triggered by the rise of the railroad. And even now, time is subject to human decision-makers. Arizona doesn’t recognize Daylight Saving Time (nor do some of my older electronic devices, since Congress changed the opening and closing dates for DST).

They say our brains are wired to remember the bad things more vividly than the good, and as the New Year reminds us we’re not getting any younger, we consider some of the less-than-brilliant decisions we’ve made, occasionally at critical times. If we could only go back, we think, and undo that thing we did, or failed to do, life would be much better today. Would it? I don’t necessarily believe in “God’s plan,” but I do believe in chains of events. You can’t pull a link out of the chain and assume that all the links that followed would necessarily have been any better. Different, yes. But we are always forging new ones.

A young friend changed her life in 2013, selling her home in one state and moving to another where housing is cheaper, taxes are lower, and most important for her, the people seem more genuine. There was also a unique set of circumstances that allowed her to do it. That said, you can’t discount her courage in moving to a destination where she knew nobody. I often tell her that while there was wind beneath her wings, she’s the one who did the flying, often through storms.

But even she couldn’t change everything -- and how could she? The slate is never “clean.” At this moment in time, we are all the sum total of our experience. The changes we make ourselves, good or bad, are only possible because of previous events. We are all the product of our past, whether we like it or not.

Are the possibilities before us truly infinite? More so, it would seem, for some than for others. Infinite or not, we can all agree that possibilities are out there for all of us, and there’s something uplifting in that at seasons such as this.

But that’s always the case – not just at midnight on 1/1.

The Solstice Isn't Simple

Here in the West Coast city where I live, the winter solstice is supposed to arrive a little after 9 a.m. tomorrow (Saturday 12/21). The summer solstice is about my favorite time of the year – the time of the longest days. The winter solstice is also a favorite, but only because the nights will finally start to get shorter. But which is exactly the shortest day – and conversely, the longest night? The online charts don’t seem to agree on that issue. If tomorrow is the shortest day does that make tonight (Friday) the longest night of the year? As I write this, it’s too early in the morning to do math. For you solstice celebrators, at least it’s a weekend, so you can begin and end it when you want. Just go easy on the mead if you’re driving, OK?

North of the Arctic Circle, the sun doesn’t rise at all – and won’t until the first week in January. The town of Inuvik in northern Canada actually has a festival every year to mark the return of the sun, which will have been a no-show for about a month.

Scholars seem to agree that it’s tied in with Christmas. December 25 is the traditional day of Jesus Christ’s birth – but was he actually born on that day? The evidence seems to point to the holiday being related to pagan solstice festivals – it may actually have been created as religious competition for those older celebrations. And does our annual orgy of Christmas lighting figure in? At the most basic level, the lights fight the darkness, here in the Northern Hemisphere at least, so there’s a similar principle at work.

However it happens, the behavior of the sun – or more precisely, the Earth wobbling on its axis -- is something we count on. For us, it’s the universal constant in what is otherwise an uncertain existence.

There is no better way to end this discussion than to leave you with one of the most beautiful songs in American musical theater, from “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opened on Broadway in 1964, and later became a movie:

Sunrise, Sunset 

TMI

The first two bullets fired in what could become one of the biggest legal battles in American history have struck a target. A federal judge has ruled that the NSA’s massive collection of phone data on millions of us appears to violate the Constitution, and ordered it to stop doing so on two plaintiffs.

A big section of pavement has been laid on Edward Snowden’s likely road to sainthood. If it weren’t for him, of course, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. But if it weren’t for the government taking on private contractors to operate this system, there probably wouldn’t be an Edward Snowden, either. How many other private contractors are there, with access to information on us, who just might not be as interested in the greater good?

When a sitting federal judge throws around terms like “Orwellian,” it tends to get your attention. Personally, I have no problem with the use of modern information systems to prevent terrorism. But does this massive NSA program actually work? As critics have pointed out making the haystack bigger only makes it harder to find the needle.  

I have this creeping suspicion that while our lives are becoming more transparent to government (and Google, Microsoft et al, BTW), government operations are becoming more and more opaque. Is it really all about safety and security? Do you think sometimes, when government power is exercised, it’s just because it’s there and justifies someone’s job?

Of course, these issues are not as black-and-white as the Snowden fans would have us believe. But 9/11 happened in large measure not because the dots weren’t already there, but because nobody connected them, which seems to be a factor in many high-profile man-made tragedies, such as school shootings. Can we have a reasonable discussion about what information the authorities need about us and what they don’t – and what government operations need to be secret and what don’t? The deep end isn’t all that far away, and I’d really hate to see us go off it.

Skin in the Game

We’ve been having a lot of fun – at least I think it’s been fun – about Fox anchor Megyn Kelly’s assertion a while ago that Santa Claus was white – kind of like Jesus. I hope the comedians and satirists out there send her thank-you notes for this great holiday gift. Saves paying writers for it.

Let’s start with the hard one first (or is it the easier one?). Scholars have debated this for a long time, but to my mind, there’s a much better-than-even chance that Jesus was Semitic (BTW, a designation that could apply to other Middle Eastern ethnicities besides Jews). Which means he likely had dark, curly hair and olive skin. Fine. Many classical artists, on the other hand, have depicted him as white. Why? I don’t think they were making political statements – more likely, that’s what they were surrounded by and were used to. It seems doubtful, given the difficulties of travel in his day, that Jesus would have been either white or black. But he didn’t do selfies, and the Shroud of Turin isn’t going to shed any light on this one, either.

Seems artists have had similar problems with the Virgin Mary. Images of her as a white woman seem to predominate in our culture, but unlike Jesus, she’s apparently been “coming back” over the centuries on a semi-regular basis, and doesn’t always look the same. Hispanics in this hemisphere have depicted her as one of them – based, I suppose, on one of her regional appearances.

Santa? Well, he would seem to be a Northern European invention – snow, reindeer, etc., so the depiction of him as white does not seem to cause too much pain, at least for me. As a young man, he may have even been blond before his beard turned white. But hang on a minute: If Santa Claus is actually based on St. Nicholas, who was a real figure, there might be a problem. St. Nicholas was Greek or Turkish. There’s a good chance, then, that he had olive skin and curly hair as well, right? (And while we’re dealing with popular symbols, is Santa, as commonly depicted, sending the wrong message to kids about obesity? Just wondering…)

Even the reindeer have their secrets. From what I heard yesterday, male reindeer shed their antlers in the winter, while females, who also grow them, hang onto theirs until after they give birth in the spring – meaning all of Santa’s reindeer, according to the depictions of the season, have to be girls. So what does that make Rudolph? A “transgen-deer”?

I think the Muslims may have a point. They forbid depictions of Allah. No white guy with a beard sitting on a cloud hurling lightning bolts at them. This has allowed those of that faith to move on to other issues. Shouldn’t we?

Language Barriers

In just a couple of weeks now, 2013 will be history – for some, it will be more historic than for others. It was especially so for a friend who was summing up her life events of the past 12 months. I commented that for her, it was an historic year – unaware that I had just stepped on a verbal land mine.

Not long ago, she and I were part of an industry that required working with words, so for us, stepping on such explosive devices is a more likely occurrence, perhaps, than with most people. Anyway, my use of “an historic” was called into question. What’s the “n” doing in front of a hard “h”? she wanted to know.

OK! Well I have always written it that way out of habit, and as far as I knew, it was still accepted usage – which brought back the equivalent of ,”Oh yeah? Where?” And I was double-dared to Google it – which I did, and found several discussions which led me to believe that the issue wasn’t entirely settled. The most reasonable explanation was that certain English words that were derived from French, in which the “h” was silent, as in “histoire,” could take the “an” in front. While my former colleague was willing to accept the explanation, she still didn’t accept the usage itself. Pet peeve, she said.

Still awake here, folks? In any case, this wasn’t a battle I felt like fighting to the death. I have to admit that she has a point, in the sense that only snots who have read too much English literature (like me) write that way. You can be sure that in writing to her, I won’t go THERE again.

But when it comes to language, we all have things that make our blood boil. A TV anchorwoman in the city where I used to live would end lists of items with “and etcetera.” That makes me almost homicidal.

Fortunately, publishers and media companies have developed style books for both the written and the spoken word. Otherwise, the murder rate in newspaper offices and TV newsrooms would be much higher than it is today. 

But language evolves, and we all have to evolve with it. I still occasionally call the big white (or chrome or brushed stainless) thing you put food in to keep it cold an “icebox”. Didn’t people stop using those most of a century ago? I think it’s an Eastern thing. Or maybe my former colleague is right – I need a good dose of evolution.

 After all is said, written, and done, isn’t the goal just plain old getting your point across? If your usage interferes with that goal, then “…what we have heeahh…” to quote the warden in Cool Hand Luke, “…is a failyuh to communicate.”

Watt's New?

Holiday lighting is cheery…up to a point.

Like everything else in America, it has been turned into an Olympic sport.  A few white lights on the tree outside used to be sufficient. Now, every other house is Disneyland. At the newspaper where I worked, the photographers went out to shoot the most spectacular displays, and we published a different picture or group of pictures for several weeks. Fortunately, we stopped short of awarding prizes.

A few spiders, skeletons and cobwebs got the job done for Halloween. Why do you need 500 lighted reindeer on your front lawn? I’m very glad to know there’s a happy – and well-heeled -- family living in your house, but geez Louise, when does artistic decoration turn into actual light pollution?

Is Dad outside on a ladder stringing these lights along the roofline himself? Of course not, there are companies that do this, and it’s a growing business.

Now I’m not a complete Scrooge. There are homeowners on certain streets who deliberately choose to go all-out and light everything up, publicizing it ahead of time, and welcome parades of cars through the neighborhood. I assume new homebuyers have to be told what’s expected of them if they move in. But if this is the way that street wants to share holiday cheer, have at it.

On the other hand, there are homeowners’ associations that turn into little police states. If you want to put colored lights on your outside tree, that’s a no-no, “We don’t do that here at Snotty Acres, white lights only, please.”

The good thing about this holiday season in the Northern Hemisphere is that thanks to the lights, we can see where we’re going in the dark, which is two-thirds of the day in the dead of winter. Anything that keeps us from slipping on black ice.

Wrap Sheet

First, I need your solemn promise that you won’t share this post with any of my relatives. Deal?

This is about gift wrapping, one of the things I most hate in life and which is required this time of year, or seems to be.

Like everything else in America, this is something of an Olympic sport now, at least in my family. While we have gift boxes that already have appropriate decorations printed on them, there’s still an unwritten rule that we have to freshly wrap everything. It is noticed when someone has produced a wrap job with absolutely flat corners. While the degree of difficulty is adjusted for large cubical boxes or odd shapes, there are still unspoken points taken off by the judges for excessive use of Scotch tape.

I especially hate the ribbons, because they are always miserably twisted when I try to wrap. I simply quit the team on this one. I will wrap the boxes, but it’s my wife’s job to do the ribbons. She even does the thing where you make them curl by pulling on the ends of the ribbed ribbons with half a scissors.

As if this weren’t enough, there is the UNwrappping. My position has always been that if I’m opening a gift, I cut and tear vigorously to get into it and ask questions later. But there are family members who are so enamored of the wrapping paper that they sloooooooowly remove it, being careful not to wrinkle or fold it, because it’s so beautiful that it must be used again for something next year. We do keep bows. We have a green garbage bag ready for the wrapping materials to be discarded and a white bag to save the bows – and a few scraps of precious paper -- for re-use. They work on birthday gifts, too, fortunately.

But if you run across me in my next life and you want to give me a gift, it’s OK if you just hand it to me as is, I’m 100 percent down with that. It’s just that in this life, we don’t usually have quite as much time to spare. Ya think?

Where Were You?

That’s the question of this day – actually, the question of this month, as the 50-year anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is observed.

In order to answer the question, of course, you have to be a certain age, which I am, so here’s my story. I attended a fancy New England prep school, one of many in that part of the country. For today’s discussion, though, it’s significant. It was the Choate School, then an all-male institution, which JFK also attended, in his case, in the 1930s. I was there a generation later.

On the day of the President’s killing, I had taken a math exam which I didn’t do especially well on – fortunately, because of the news of the day, it seemed they weren’t graded quite as strictly as usual. We were all glued to the TV sets in the housemasters’ apartments, watching events unfold. It hit especially hard, as we knew President Kennedy had used the same sidewalks, sat in the same classrooms, and crossed the same athletic fields we did on a daily basis.

When JFK was at the school, according to historical records, he was a bit of a troublemaker. His older brother Joe, who would die later in World War II, was a top athlete and scholar at the time, and as the story goes, the younger Kennedy compensated for his second-fiddle status with pranks, one of which was blowing up a toilet seat with a firecrcacker. At a chapel service, which was required for students, the headmaster denounced the “muckers,” as he called them, who pulled it off. Kennedy adopted the name for his group, forming the Muckers Club.

The mood on campus was somber in the days following the news of his death, especially those daily chapel services. As a U.S. Senator, Kennedy had addressed students from the same pulpit from which the headmaster had excoriated the muckers.

This was the most significant shared American moment since Pearl Harbor – the only one since that time for which people could say they remembered where they were at the exact moment they heard the dreadful news. It’s difficult to think of another one quite like it since then. But it was only the emergence of electronic media that had made such moments possible.

Personally, I’m distressed that exploration of the events of November 22, 1963 has been turned into a hobby. I don’t think there is now or ever will be a set of facts that will completely convince some people that there wasn’t a conspiracy to kill the President. And even if that turns out to be true, by the time it’s revealed, the shock value will have greatly diminished.

What is going to happen is that this event will officially fade into history after this. The 51^st anniversary just won’t be the same, nor will the 75^th, though I may not be around to make a judgment about that one. The beat, as Sonny Bono reminded us later in the 1960s, goes on.

'Tis the Season

My brother-in-law got upset the other day when he saw a Christmas-type commercial on TV during one of the breaks in his football game. A radio station in the city I used to live in has already started playing holiday music.

Meanwhile, the days are shorter, which I abhor. It’s depressing to see the sun setting at 5 p.m. This time of year, almost two-thirds of the day is in darkness or semi-darkness here in the Northern Hemisphere, and I get a little depressed.

Last year, a friend told me this is known as SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and that I would feel better if I only took Vitamin D pills. Another friend, in Seattle, is acquiring some kind of ultraviolet lamp. Well, OK then, I understand, that’s Seattle, after all. What am I complaining about – it hasn’t even rained here yet. Meanwhile, the East dipped below freezing this week, but we in my part of the West have yet to see the other side of 40 degrees F.

Something in me, however,  resists the notion that this annual depression is just some kind of chemical or physical imbalance which can be righted by pills or artificial means. I actually think moods are useful. Some of our best literature and music has been written by those in certain moods, often brought on by natural environmental changes. I actually write pretty good stuff when I get depressed (not necessarily this, of course!).

I especially resist being told how I am supposed to feel over the holidays. Suppose I’m not feeling thankful at Thanksgiving or filled with cheer and brotherhood at Christmas? Suppose it doesn’t make me happy to learn from your holiday letter that your son has been named a Rhodes Scholar? What if some years I want others to join me in a chorus of “Bah, humbug”? But I digress.

In the town of Inuvik in Arctic Canada, they have a ceremony the first week in January to mark the return of the sun, which disappears for 30 days in the dead of winter at that latitude. The sun just begins to reappear on the horizon on Jan. 6, and that’s a good reason to party.

One of my favorite quirky horror movies is called “30 Days of Night,” in which a pack of Eastern European vampires visits Point Barrow, Alaska during its month of darkness. That’s when vampires can go on a real bender – no sun.

The only cure that would work for me, I guess, is an expensive one: getting a winter home in the Southern Hemisphere. Perth or Cape Town or Buenos Aires, here I come!

But they still do the same holidays in those places, too, where it’s hot. Must be tough on the reindeer.

PC Virus

You thought this was a place to come get your computer fixed. Wrong. The PC and the virus I’m talking about have to do with Political Correctness, and now it’s open season on sports teams. The latest wave started with the Washington Redskins. OK, that name might actually be considered a racial slur. If Bob Costas says it is, it must be.

But a high school in the Southern California desert whose teams are known as the Arabs is coming under criticism from some quarters. Coachella (you know that name) Valley High’s mascot is an angry-looking hook-nosed Arab, which some Arab-Americans feel is a racial slur. While the name and mascot may seem odd, it goes back generations, thanks to the date industry (I mean the fruit, folks). That desert area represents the largest date-growing region in the world outside of the Middle East, from which date palm trees were imported long ago. Every year, there’s the National Date Festival (a.k.a. the Riverside County Fair), which features a parade including young women wearing fetching Arabian Nights harem costumes. It’s all part of the region’s culture. BTW, the Arabs’ big rivals down the street are the Rajahs of Indio High School. Farther up the Coachella Valley, the Palm Springs High School teams are called the Indians. Even the late longtime chairman of the local tribal council didn’t have a problem with that. But there are other institutions with similarly named teams that have chosen to change names and mascots to preserve feelings.

I’d like to scream, STOP IT, but the comeback is going to be that I’m white and of course I don’t have a problem. No, I don’t. But being partly of Irish descent, I certainly would have had one if I’d lived a couple hundred years ago in the United States, when the Irish weren’t treated all that much better than black slaves. BTW, when it comes to sports teams,  a friend tells me that JFK High School in La Palma, California, has a leprechaun for a mascot.

What’s the solution to all this? I don’t have one, except, isn’t there an “unreasonable” or “overboard” light hat goes on in most of our heads? I’m surprised PETA hasn’t objected to the use of animals. Or maybe they have, don’t know.

Some high schools have a sense of humor. At Key West High in Florida, the teams are known as the Fighting Conchs. That’s a shelled sea creature, for you landlubbers out there.

Don’t worry, if your own ethnic group or country of origin hasn’t been slammed yet, the spotlight just hasn’t fallen on you – your turn will come. But when will we embrace each others’ differences instead of trashing them, or conversely, beating others over the head with the misrepresentation of our own marks of distinction? Do we really have this much time on our hands?