Whitney and Elvis

I’ve put off writing about Whitney Houston’s passing because I my initial emotions upon hearing the news were somewhat complicated and not easily defined or articulated. One of my first thoughts, alongside my sadness at the loss, was of Elvis’s passing many years ago. The similarity between the two is that they were superstars in the truest sense of American celebrity, who had lost that something which made them so and had a hard time dealing with it.

Elvis died just before going out on the road for another tour. He had put on an embarrassing quantity of pounds since last seen by his adoring public and was using prescription drugs heavily with a private physician as supplier. In the weeks leading up to his tour it was obvious he wasn't ready for it. While singing, during rehearsals, he would be dazed and confused to the extent that he didn't know the words to his own songs. The King had become pathetic and he was ashamed of it, but the show had to go on. Sadly, he was a sensitive man and undoubtedly feared letting down his fans.

Whitney, like Elvis, had lived a life in the spotlight as well. But it’s a scorching light and not easy on the soul. She had beautiful looks, a tremendous set of vocal cords and charisma. Eleven number one hits and 170 million albums sold is nothing to scoff at.

But again, she put on weight and had been allowing her mind to get muddled. She was not transitioning well into her later years. And, unlike Elvis, her worst concert moments were showing up on YouTube videos watched by tens of thousands, making her a laughingstock.

These are hard things to deal with, but deal with them we must in the new era of entertainment.

It happens to athletes. Like beauty queens, athletes age. Even in a career with minimal injuries, the life span of a pro baseball or football player is limited to a dozen years or two dozen at best. Sooner or later one has to hang up his cleats. It’s a given. How they deal with it is a test of character.

I remember a Malcolm McDowell interview in which he explained that there are three stages in an actors career. The child actor will eventually become an adult and the little tricks he used to attract an audience won’t work in that older man’s body. Some child actors fail the transition. But there is another transition required which many actors fail to navigate. Michael Caine and Jack Nicholson show how it’s done, as did Sir John Gielgud before them.

I could be wrong, but I think what happened to Whitney Houston is more like what happened to Elvis than to the countless other casualties of rock ‘n roll fame, such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain, and on and on.

There was one other strand in that initial bundle of thoughts and impressions when the news of Whitney Houston’s passing occurred. I was thinking of old painters like Picasso and Matisse and Monet who carried on till the end, not performing on a stage but rather, privately, productively. Old writers, too.

Dealing with change is not, however, something that only happens to “them”… to the superstars. It’s something we must all grapple with, for there are many transitions in life and ultimately we still have to carry on. As Whitney once sang, “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.”

As Dylan once advised us, when you have mountains in the palm of your hand, “one thing that’s certain, you will surely be a-hurtin’ if you throw it all away"

Famous Trials

A few years ago I had a business trip that took me to Dayton, Tennessee. Dayton is one of those countless little communities seated in the spaces between the Appalachian hills. Each has a main street, a library, and in this case even a Wal-Mart. If you want something more than beer at the local restaurant, you bring your own bottle. And since there is no liquor store in Dayton, you pick up that bottle at Wal-Mart. Yes, it is a little different.

Dayton, like the countless other specks scattered through the region, is a place most of us would never have heard of except that it became home of a sensationally public event, the Scopes Monkey Trial. The famous "monkey trial" focused the heat generating spotlight of the media on this rather nondescript town. The high profile lawyers facing off there, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, represented not clients but ideologies which had come to a head in the early part of the 20th century.

I mention these things because of a DVD I'd borrowed from the library this week about another famous trial, Michael Jackson's 2005 child molestation trial. The DVD, titled Michael Jackson: The Untold Story of Neverland, is essentially a documentary incorporating footage taken by Larry Nimmer, a filmmaker who had worked for the Jackson defense team. Nimmer had access to nearly every nook and cranny. In the event that the jury was unable to visit Neverland, his filming of the place would be used for showing Jackson's world. As it turns out, the films were indeed needed, and now that bizarre private estate is being shared with the world. What a strange life.

There have been many famous trials in history. Douglas O. Linder has assembled details about many of these on a website titled Famous Trials. If you're not shopping this morning and wish for a bit of diversion because your newspaper is thinner than it used to be, this guy has put together a whole boatload of details and analysis on some key moments in human history. Here's a partial list of the trials you can read about:

Socrates 399 B.C.
Gaius Verres 70 B.C.
Jesus 30
Thomas More 1535
Galileo 1633
Salem Witchcraft Trials 1692
John Brown
Oscar Wilde
Scopes Monkey Trial
Alger Hiss
Rosenberg Trial
Lenny Bruce
Chicago Seven
Charles Manson
Patty Hearst
Leonard Peltier
John Hinckley
Falwell vs. Larry Flynt
O. J. Simpson

I doubt the Michael Jackson trial is really significant enough for this list, and probably a few others there may be questionable, but the aim of a trial is a verdict. And the verdict is usually important because there is something at stake.

When all is said and done, our most important trial might be the one we're going through now: the daily trial of our own personal characters.

Nietzsche’s Criticism of Christianity

I've been listening the past couple weeks to a series of lectures called The Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. It is part of The Great Courses Series produced by The Teaching Company, who's motto is The Joy of Lifelong Learning Every Day. This course is taught by Professors Robert Solomon and his wife Kathleen Higgins who are deeply in love, and have been for some time, with Friedrich Nietzsche. The 24 lectures cover all his major works and address his major themes, thus providing listeners with plenty of challenging mental stimulation.

One of the recurring themes of philosophers is origins. It is fascinating to think about the many things in our world, our lives our cultures that at one time did not exist and then came into existence. I think here of the Internet, the automobile, the airplane. Aristotle pondered how the entirety of creation came into existence, postulating the “unmoved mover” who preceded all and set it in motion. Nietzsche, in his book The Genealogy of Morals, wrestled with and analyzed the origins of our contemporary notions of morality. Darwin’s attempted to explain the origins of species.

Christianity has had many critics over the years. Nietzsche was neither the first nor the last. Many of those critics have made valid points, and instead of being defensive about it, Christians might benefit from adopting Churchill’s attitude that criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. Churchill also once said that whenever he hears a criticism, he attempts to find the kernel of truth that might have been behind it.

The idea of Heaven has a great appeal for Christians because life is hard and we live in a broken world. For people outside the faith for whom this world is all that is, heaven is a pie in the sky concept with which the masses delude themselves, believing lies in order to feel better. Marx called religion an opiate. Others have called it worse.

Nietzsche’s criticism, however, was not along these lines. Rather he zeroed in on the manner in which Christians achieved this eternal life. It was prevalent in his day and is no less so today.

A brief backgrounder on where Nietzsche was coming from. In addition to his harsh assessment of the church, he was equally vociferous against the Enlightenment scholars who elevated Reason to godlike stature. Nietzsche drew upon Dionysus for his inspiration, rooting his philosophy in the passions. Embrace life. Become fully human by stretching yourself to become all you were meant to be. Make a difference in the world. It is life affirmation, not stale analysis of it, that gives it meaning.

Turning to Christianity, his primary complaint was that he saw a shriveled representation of what Jesus intended. The message coming out of the church, instead of striving to make a difference in the world, was more focused on not doing anything bad. Goodness was not measured by the good deeds done, as Jesus would indicate in His parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46 but rather by what you did not do. You don’t cuss, don’t dance, don’t lust, don’t drink… and in many minds this adds up to a “good person” who is going to heaven. For Nietzsche this was odious. The focus was all wrong. When prohibitions become the church's most important message, it is no wonder that those outside the faith are not attracted.

According to Profs Solomon and Higgins, Nietzsche was not opposed to morality, only the unhealthy morality that he saw being played out in his day.

Nietzsche’s Concept of Eternal Recurrence

"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

“Do you remember what you told me once? That every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.” ~ Tom Cruise as David Aames, Vanilla Sky

Some people consider Friedrich Nietzsche one of the most exciting philosophers of all time. Certainly his ideas have been influential and his writing dramatic. And whatever your take on his point of view, the themes he addresses are provoking enough to give us something to gnaw on and make us think. And in the end, to some extent, maybe that was all he intended in a world where people generally just went about their business and accepted the values of the culture they were immersed in.

The quote above addresses one of his original constructs, the idea of life being an eternal recurrence. Christian teaching is not alone in giving weight to the decisions of this life by indicating their significance with regard to eternal outcomes. Nietzsche, on the other hand, chooses to suggest our decisions in this life have weight because how we choose to live today will be replayed over and over again unto eternity.

It’s a very unusual perspective in some respects, a variant on reincarnation, which also has us returning indefinitely, but in differing capacities. Scholars have argued whether the idea is meant as a serious conjecture or a concept to make us more thoughtful about our behavior here and now.

I would suggest that Nietzsche’s sole intent with this concept of eternal recurrence was to get us plugged in to the significance of our acts. His was a brilliant mind, but as far as I am aware he does not offer a supporting argument for the notion proposed. It is a certainty that he understood that even if we ourselves were recurring, our circumstances would not be, for times change, culture changes, history is unfolding all around us.

This theme of eternal recurrence is echoed in Cameron Crowe’s film Vanilla Sky. Once one grasps the film’s premise, the viewer is like Theseus following Ariadne’s thread to find his way through the labyrinth. In the film, David Aames is unaware that he is experiencing this “eternal recurrence”, but only knows that something is terribly wrong. The climactic scene on the rooftop brings a number of historically significant philosophical questions to the surface.

Of Nietzsche, we know that his ideas went on to influence innumerable existential philosophers and lay the groundwork for postmodern explorers. He lived passionately, a philosopher whose roots were less grounded in reason (the dominant theme of the Rennaissance and modern rationalism) and drawn more from the Dionysian, the experiential and the irrational.

While living in Italy, Nietzsche had a nervous breakdown while witnessing a man beating a horse. Embracing the horse, whose suffering was more than he could bear, Nietzsche fell apart and spent the last ten years of his life in a broken state.

Nietzsche’s writings are challenging to put your mind around in part because he did not believe it necessary to have a systematic, rational viewpoint. More than once he declares his distrust of systematizers. In this regard he may have foreshadowed the postmodernists who do not find it necessary to be altogether consistent in their own views. He may have even suggested that atttempts to be consistent are a waste of time.

What matters, he asserted, is not getting everything figured out, but experiencing our lives as fully as possible and becoming all we’re meant to be. “The present moment is all, so let us make the best use of it and of ourselves.” With that I would agree; the truth is true wherever it is found.

The two photos on this page are of the house where Nietzche lived in Turin, at via Carlo Albierto 6, when he had his nervous breakdown and of the plaque stating that Nietzsche lived there. In 1861Turin was the first capital of united Italy. The capital later moved to Florence and ultimately to Rome.

I painted the portrait featuring Nietzsche’s famous mustache, above right, this past weekend.

No Place Like Home, If You Live In Italy

“Making mental connections is our most crucial learning tool, the essence of human intelligence; to forge links; to go beyond the given; to see patterns, relationships, context” ~Marilyn Ferguson

When I wrote my Architectural Reflections last week I was essentially commenting on how it was once church structures that were dominant in cities but that the new structures in which we invested our imaginations were symbols of commerce (New York skyscrapers) or of excess (Vegas casinos.) What I did not talk much about is the history that is contained in the buildings themselves.

I am thinking this morning of European architecture, especially Rennaissance era buildings into which so much human creativity and imagination has been poured. The trigger for this was an email from our friend Mario Monasterolo, a historian in Northern Italy. Upon reading Sunday's comments on Pavarotti, Mario sent me these photos from Modena, where Pavarotti's life originated.

What's fascinating is that my father-in-law was there during the war, and described his emotions in response to Modena. Mario took the time to locate the passage from Bud's war memoir, And There Shall Be Wars.

Mario wrote, "Pavarotti was born in Modena; Bud was there and wrote wonderful words!" Then cited these:

"It was nice to go through Modena, a city of over 150.000. There were no old narrow streets here, and there was a really tall 290 foot cathedral. Parma was another city worthy of forfeiting a furlough in order to see... Saving these cities had to have been part of the glory of the war..."

These were scenes that made an impression on a young man from rural Northern Minnesota.

When you do a Google search for the words "European architecture" an astonishing array of images is now at your fingertips, courtesy the Internet. Some people have loved Italian architecture so much that they wanted to bring it home with them to America. In fact, that is exactly what John Ringling, youngest of the Ringling brothers did, purchasing a fifteenth century opera house from a village outside Venice, dismantling and reassembling it in its entirety in Sarasota, Florida.

With so much history on every street, in every villa and vista, it's no wonder that people like Mario Monasterolo have developed a passion for making connections with the past, bringing it to life in the present so we can enrich our futures.

Thanks, Mario, for these images and all the rest.

Internal Time Consciuosness

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
~ T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

This morning, as with so many others, I woke a few minutes before my alarm. Yesterday, when I woke there were eight seconds left on my alarm and I marvelled at this strange and fascinating phenomenon of time consciousness and our internal clocks.

Today it brought to mind one of my philosophy professors at Ohio University, Dr. Mikunis. The first essay we studied was Kierkegaard and the Leap of Faith. I remember sitting at a table dissecting the concept with Dr. M and other students.

My second year at O.U., this being 1971, I lived in the co-ed Experimental Dorm on the South Green. I believe it was an attempt by the school to pander to the laxity of the times while simultaneously devising a way to keep students in school in order to collect tuition. (Speculation.) One feature of the Experimental Dorm was this: students could develop their own class curricula if they could get a professor to sign on as sponsor.

There was a certain seriousness among some student/professor relationships in this regard, though I remember some professors would nod an O.K. to anything proposed. The class I developed, with eight or ten peers, was a class on dreams. Each week one of us was to present a paper on dreams and dreaming from a different point of view. One student presented Freud, another presented Edgar Cayce, etc. We even brought a guest presenter from Washington, D.C. one week. The last class Dr. Mikunis presented his views.

Dreams had always been a fascination for me from my earliest years. In seventh grade I decided to start a "dream diary." It seemed that my dream life was more interesting than my day-to-day existence, and less predictable. I remember my first recorded dream had Tim Conway in it, from a TV show that was popular at the time.

All the way through high school I kept up with this diary, extensively developing the ability to recall up to four or five complete dream sequences.... not at first, but over time.

Dr. M changed all that. He presented to us the ideas of Husserl and phenomenology in such a manner that it seemed my dream life was no longer relevant. What is relevant, he said, is the "now" experience. My dreams last night were part of the past by the next morning, hence they had no importance.

Truth is, Husserl's concepts about phenomenology and the consciousness of time are difficult to grasp and might have been misunderstood. As I review some of Husserl's ideas today, I note the concept of retention, that things may be past but are retained in the present by our memory and consciousness, and may thus have present relevance after all. If this were not so, nothing we experience, including the understanding of a basic sentence, would make any sense. This sentence that I am writing making sense only in the context of the fuller blog entry here, which if you lived totally in the now, the only thing you would know is the very last word word word word what whoa where go uhmmm now

None of this explains what time is or what dreams are, or why when I go to Las Vegas my internal clock is still on Central Standard Time so that I wake at 4:00 a.m. no matter what time I crashed the night before.

Husserl's writing is a bit dense, so for more on Edmund Husserl's musings on The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness this is a good starting point. I'd share more on this, but I've run out of time!

Remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life. Make the most of your present as you prepare for the future.

Daily Mirror

"...leaning over the mirror of our acts, our souls will recognize what we are."- Andre Gide

For nearly all of us mirrors play a role in our morning rituals. Whether for shaving or make-up, fixing one's hair or straightening one's tie, the mirror is a useful tool, presenting to our eyes a true reflection of what is there.

On other occasions, a reassuring glance in the mirror before a job interview or an important date gives us confidence that at least the external things are taken care of - our hair isn't mussed, collar turned right, no food crumbs on our chin or the corners of our mouth.

At the end of the day there is another mirror which is equally valuable to us, and perhaps even more so once we practice using it. We can call it the mirror of our acts. As we quiet ourselves and reflect on the day, we discover that our actions reveal our souls as surely as the bathroom mirror reveals our faces.

The mirror of our acts reveals us as we truly are, giving a more precise picture of ourselves than we may wish to see. For it will reveal not only our strengths, but also our limitations; it will show not only our inward beauty, but also the defects that mar that beauty. When I look back on my day, with honesty, standing before this mirror of my soul, what do I truly see reflected there? Thoughtfulness and sensitivity? Selfishness? Duplicity and deceit? Laziness? Industriousness? Courage? Courtesy? Insensitivity? Foolish pride? Pettiness? The character defects we see need not leave us discourage. Recognizing one's shortcomings is the essential first step to the cure. Or, as they say, no pain no gain.

Taking time for reflection at day's end can be a most wonderful tool to help us grow to our full stature as human beings. Keeping a journal where we record and analyze these insights is even more helpful. As they say, "The weakest ink is stronger than the strongest memory."

It's an oft neglected truth that if we wish to make the world a better place, there's no better place to begin than in ourselves.

The Trail Of Tears

"When a white army battles Indians and wins, it is called a great victory, but if they lose it is called a massacre." Chiksika, Shawnee

The relationship between our U.S. government and the native peoples who occupied these lands before the coming of the Europeans has had many tragic moments. One of the most appalling was the removal of the Cherokee, Choctaw and others from their native homelands in the Southern Appalachians to a desolate space called Oklahoma.

In 1830 Andrew Jackson championed the Indian Removal Act which was essentially a forced deportation. There were objections raised in some quarters. Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court stated that the act was unconstitutional. President Jackson said, essentially, "Try and stop me." In other words, the president had the army, the Court had pieces of paper.

Alexis de Tocqeville, French philosopher who was studying the American experience at the time, wrote of this forced removal, "In the whole scene there was an air of ruin and destruction... one couldn't watch without feeling one's heart wrung."

Yet, amazingly, the country allowed this thing to happen. All through the 1830's the various tribal peoples were forced out and relocated to other lands. Thousands died along the way. As they made their way west from the Carolinas, however, many escaped and disappeared into the forest hills of Tennessee and fled north into Kentucky. This is when certain of my Kentucky kin appeared on the scene in Eastern Kentucky, though they probably disowned their roots at that time for fear of reprisals. Every family has its secrets.

Today, most people give little thought to this forgotten incident. Yet we honor President Jackson with his portrait on our twenty dollar bill. No wonder history is so messy and confusing.

EDNOTE: Most of the paintings and illustrations on my blog are available for sale. If you see something here that makes you say, "I gotta have it," be sure to let me know and we can negotiate a price. I am also interested in painting portraits. I am always seeking new and interesting subject matter. You can see my style here, and the prices will be very reasonable. Feel free to contact me.

Click on images to enlarge.

Buzz Aldrin: He’s Still Out There

One of the most powerful autobiographies I read two decades ago was Buzz Aldrin's Return To Earth (1973). Aldrin, the second human to put foot on the moon, candidly talks about the dream, the fulfillment of that dream, the pressures he was under at the time, and his regrets, because here he was, standing on the moon, but with eight hours of tests to conduct in four hours he couldn't just take a deep breath and take it in. A man is not a machine or a robot, but has a soul and heart, and fifteen seconds to stand in awe was not enough.

The pressures didn't let up after the return. These guys, Armstrong and Aldrin, and several others that followed in their footsteps, were paraded around the globe as international heroes, an "in your face" statement that we had achieved the impossible and we had done it first. This was Cold War posturing, and like good little foot soldiers Aldrin & company were expected to play the game. The strain of maintaining a happy face while feeling alienated and inwardly confused proved too much for Aldrin, and a nervous breakdown swept him out of the limelight.

The book is candid, and illuminating because of its candor. One of Aldrin's regrets was that he kept his mouth shut while NASA was making certain bad decisions. As result Aldrin, at age 80, has determined to be more vocal about the direction NASA is going as it pursues a second lunar space race.

The August issue of Popular Mechanics carries a feature story by Buzz Aldrin called "A Bolder Mission." Aldrin states emphatically that the current plan is too timid. Our sights need to be set on Mars.

I know many people who question the space program's viability altogether. Other than prestige, warm fuzzies and a few moon rocks, what do we get? Supporters will point to all the technology advances that emerged from the initial space race.

But Aldrin, who even invented a concept called the Mars Cycler that will get us to Mars more efficiently, is adamant that NASA must reconsider its trajectory over the next 25 years. In a CNN piece he states, "What we truly need is not more Cold War-style competition but a destination in space that offers great rewards for the risks to achieve it. I believe that destination must be homesteading Mars, the first human colony on another world.

"By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface."

It's obvious that for many, this is their life passion. This makes them very persuasive. But is this where our tax dollars should go? Actually, Aldrin even has an answer for that. If lunar exploration fails to pay for itself with what it discovers there, then it should be scrapped.

In the meantime, what do you think?

Innovation Institute, Autumn Update

"It is above all by imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope."
~ Ursula Le Guinn

The name of the school is Innovation Institute, a state-of-the-art vocational school for the wheelchair bound. The mission is to get products into the hands of the physically challenged that they couldn’t get anywhere else or they couldn’t afford. And, to give them new skills so they can earn some extra money for the first time in their lives… to achieve a greater measure of freedom and dignity.

It is not arts and crafts for the sake of filling time, but a serious industrial arts school designed to provide hands on training in everything from from locksmithing and auto mechanics to welding and metalwork.

The school is an enormously ambitious project, the result of Harrold Andresen’s inner passion to do something significant for a neglected portion of our community: the wheelchair bound. Most of us are too busy to give much thought to the complicated challenges people in wheelchairs wrestle with on a daily basis. Andresen, who converted two thirds of his 20-stall Duncanville auto repair business (Mechanical Excellence) into a space for the school, is remarkably attuned to the needs of his students. According to Andresen, “You can buy a grabber that has two claws, but you can’t buy a grabber that has two cups that you could fill with bird seed so you could fill your bird feeder. That’s what they want to do.” In other words, they want to overcome conventional limitations.

Andresen’s insights have been culled from years of interaction, research and serious reflection. He lives at their level. In conjunction with his wheelchair bound friends and students, they creatively engineered handicapped restrooms that do more than meet the letter of the law. They are actually useful and workable. But it took innovation.

It boils down to the practical chores of daily living that most of us take for granted. “The biggest interest of the 30 or so people that have been involved so far in the last four years here is with those kinds of products, not just to make new ones that don’t exist but to fix the old ones that don’t work quite right for them. Like the guy with the squeezer, we made a longer handle because his hands are too weak, so he doesn’t have to use two hands to run his squeezer. And it’s perfect now, at very little cost. And then the offshoot of that is, okay we served this guy and it was very simple and didn’t cost very much… we just modified a nine dollar Wal-Mart grabber. But to take that idea and say there are probably other people out there who want a cheap grabber that had longer handles and was much easier to operate. Take this concept and say, ‘Okay, how can we get that to those people and can we make it ourselves? Who do we want to make it?’ We want to employ people in wheelchairs. So we talked to five people and said, ‘Well, can you guys fix rivets and shrink wrap?’

“So we get the logistics down, and then we say we gotta market this and build this. Do we need a million dollars in capital to start this business, the cost of a typical business start up? What’s so totally unique about this is that the answer is no. These people are saying two hundred dollars a month would change their lives. ‘If I had four hundred dollars a month I’d lose my social security benefits! I can’t make more than so much’… and they have a pretty small window.”

“Then there’s this disconnect where they say, ‘Well, I’ll go to Jr. college and I’ll study word processing and go try and find a job.’ And if they could, which is unlikely, but let’s say they can (find a position), the employer says, ‘Well can you work 40, 30, 20 hours?’ and they say no. ‘Well, what can you work?’

“The average person in a wheel chair, actually 90 percent on disability could work that job on the days they felt good enough to work that job. What about ten hours a week? So here I am with my diploma, will you hire me for ten hours a week? And the employer says there’s no positions open for 10 hours a week. Who do you think you are, everyone here would like to work ten hours a week and have random schedule, maybe Tuesday and maybe Thursday. So this guy can’t get a job; the system won’t accommodate him.”

Andresen, a graduate of Minnesota’s Dunwiddy Institute, is one of the most creative people I know when it comes to mechanical engineering and re-engineering. His inventions to solve problems under the hood or around the home are too numerous to enumerate here. Despite the obstacles in getting ideas to market, he is sustained by an irrepressible optimism that makes one believe all things are still possible.

Apart from his family this is no doubt Harrold’s biggest life project to date. He has five years invested in laying the groundwork. Funding for the school is dependent on the generosity of others. Harrold’s done the heavy lifting, championing the vision and bring it to a place where others can now see and understand that which was at one time only a wispy germ of a seed.

This brief introduction is inadequate for capturing the scope of the project. If interested in learning more, or in making a contribution to this important work, visit their website, which like the school is a work in progress.

A Lonesome Mournful Sound

"'Only A Pawn In Their Game' is one of Dylan's truly great songs, and what puts it over the top... is its unmatched tone." ~ John Hinchey, Like A Complete Unknown

While driving to Morris to pick up my daughter, now finished with school and coming home before the next chapter of her life begins, I was listening to the soundtrack of Martin Scorcese's Dylan bio No Direction Home. What caught me is that lonesome, mournful quality in his delivery that must have been so out of step with the pop world of its time.

Those early Sixties saw groups like The Four Seasons, The Chiffons, The Crystals and The Safaris putting records to the top of the charts. Smiles and good cheer were the order of the day. In 1963 The Ronettes produced the top hit of the year, Be My Baby, with the Kingsmen's Louie, Louie right on its heels at #2. Against this backdrop Dylan was nowhere, out of step and out of sight.

His roots: the classic folk tradition. His aim: to wear the mantle of Woody Guthrie for a new generation, drawing attention to the outcast, the forgotten, the downtrodden, the misfit, the alienated and disenfranchised. In 1963 Dylan produced an album lyrically rich and socially pointed, The Times They Are A-Changin'. Some might describe it as bleak, but I say otherwise. It's a harsh realism. Dylan's grim countenance is a counterweight to the cheery, oblivious lighthearted distractions of the pop culture within which much of America was bathing.

The images on this page were produced last night based on the somber Dylan that sears the cover of this album.

Only A Pawn In Their Game

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game.

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin" they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

The day Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.

Recorded June 1963
Copyright Bob Dylan

ENDNOTE: Click on images to enlarge. Bottom image is available as a limited edition giclee reproduction.

A Few JFK Quotes

His reputation was large. I remember hearing, while doing the Evelyn Wood training for speed reading with comprehension in sixth grade, that John F. Kennedy could read 2000 words a minute. This seemed astonishing to me. Equally astonishing was the assassination which occurred just months before.

Without doubt he became our 35th president at a very dicey time. The Cold War was hot, and the times were a-changin'. The Russians appeared to be ahead in "the Space Race" and the Civil Rights movement was in full bloom with nothing as yet resolved.

He called himself “an idealist without illusions” which feels like a pretty apt moniker. Raised from a vantage point inside the corridors of power, there's no doubt he had ample opportunity to get jaded... but somehow managed to inspire a generation to step up to the plate and make a mark in history. Despite his brief time in office, his shadow has stretched long.

The following are a few pointed and pithy thoughts from the heart of a president who's life was indeed cut short in its prime.

"A child miseducated is a child lost."

"A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

"Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both."

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."

"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men."

"Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction."

"For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future."

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."

"I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide."

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

"Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."

"Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind."

"Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process."

"Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

It's easy to see without reading too far how witty the man was, or perhaps talented his team of writers. If you enjoyed these, a Google search will bring you plenty more to chew on.

In the meantime, have a great day... and make a difference.

Background Music

"The problem with reality is that there’s no background music, so you don’t know whether you’re experiencing a comedy, suspense or a tragedy." ~ Unknown

I don't know about you, but a lot of times when I'm walking or driving in my car, or doing whatever, there is music playing in my heart, or head or wherever those tunes are coming from. Often it is upbeat and it makes me feel upbeat. Other times it puts a rhythm in my step.

But wouldn't it be funny if the soundtrack were on the outside? You walk into a room and the mood changes because the music is David Grusin's theme from Tootsie. Following you wherever you go.

Or what if the music changed from cheerful to ominous while you were heading up the stairs to your office, but you did not know it... You're still humming a happy tune, but the soundtrack has shifted to discordant, edgy.

Actually, music tracks are a strange notion sometimes. It is funny how we have learned to just accept them in movies, though even the best music can't save a bad film. An even stranger thing for me, however, is the laugh track on television sitcoms.

Wouldn't that be funny if when you said "Good morning!" to the clerk at the checkout counter a laugh track started playing?

ON ANOTHER TOPIC
It's interesting how we take things for granted that what we are experiencing has always been this way. When it comes to things Internet, it's a relatively short history, so if you wish to go back and time it's not that difficult to get there. Here is a link to a story in the tech section of the Telegraph about how 20 popular websites looked when they first launched.

We've come a long ways, baby.


EDNOTE: Most of the paintings and illustrations on my blog are available for sale. If you see something here that makes you say, "I gotta have it," be sure to let me know and we can negotiate a price. Feel free to click on images to enlarge.

Title of the photo at top right: You Crack Me Up

Bucket Lists

Last night I got tagged by a friend on Facebook with one of those games where you answer questions about yourself and share them with others who are then supposed to do the same. I haven’t decided whether to follow through on it, but might borrow a piece of it for a party mixer sometime down the road. One of the questions was to name three things on your Bucket List.

You may recall the 2007 Warner Brothers film starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman about a couple old guys who meet in a cancer ward. The one is cantankerous as all get-out (you can guess which) and the other... Well, the film revolves around a list of things they want to do before they die, their “Bucket List.”

After the two become friends, the wealthy Nicholson character makes it his aim to help Morgan Freeman experience his life dreams, to scratch off the items on his list. We see them skydiving, getting tattoos, visiting exotic locations like Rome, the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal. One item was to help a complete stranger for the common good. Another was to “laugh till I cry.”

I went online to find the source of the notion of a Bucket List and the first dozen entries seem to cite the film itself. I then went to a website that explains word and phrase origins and the meaning became apparent: “Things to do before I kick the bucket.”

Do you have a bucket list? Do you have unfulfilled dreams that you want to accomplish while still here in the flesh?

A Few Items On My Bucket List include:
Visit the Highlands in Scotland
Drink wine with Mario in Italy
See my my short story The M Zone made into a film
Publish an anthology of my short stories
Raise or give away a million dollars for charity

At the top of the list in the movie was this one: Witness something truly majestic. That has a quality feel to it that I like. If we’re going to get into the realm of fiction, what if we each try to live a life that is truly majestic.

This feels a little too high for one such as I, but it might be a good target... if one earnestly meant to do it.

Here’s another, stimulated by one of my favorite films, Groundhog Day:
Live one perfect day. To live a single day with perfect sensitivity, clarity, purity, goodhearted selflessness... What if we made this a daily quest? To do good, and strive to be all we're meant to be. What if...

How about you? What’s on your Bucket List.