The Diving Bell & the Butterfly

"Today, my life feels like a string of near-misses. Women I was unable to love, opportunities I failed to seize, moments of happiness I let drift away. A race whose result I knew beforehand but failed to pick the winner. Had I been blind and deaf, or did the harsh light of disaster make me find my true nature?" ~ Jean-Dominique Bauby

Every once in a while a film moves you toward something inexplicably powerful. It is as if you are a child listening to adults talking about something serious which is beyond your comprehension, but it is something real and you lack the life experience to grasp it. Yet you are drawn to understand, because there is something profound taking place.

Such, for me, is Jean-Dominique Bauby’s story The Diving Bell & the Butterfly. I have not read the book, so these comments refer to the Golden Globe Award-winning film by the same name. And maybe the epiphany is simply this, that life is an awesome experience, even when tragic.

What is astonishing is that the film is equal to the task of conveying the story, a real man’s reality. Bauby was a French journalist and editor of the fashion magazine Elle. His life consisted of fame and style, wealth and women… a lifestyle others only dream of. Then one day, at age 43, Bauby suffered a stroke that left him victim to what is called “Locked In Syndrome.” His mental faculties were totally intact but his body paralyzed. Though speechless and immobile, he learned to communicate by blinking a single eyelid.

There are so many beautiful moments in this life affirming film. Despite the seemingly impossible circumstances, he wrote a memoir by blinking with his one good eye. His assistant would repeat the letters of the alphabet until she reached the letter he wanted, at which point he would blink. It took 200,000 blinks, and immense determination, to complete the memoir.

Bauby wrote that he had two things that were not paralyzed: his imagination and his memory. Hence, the title of his book. The paralysis made him feel like a man in a diving bell, cut off from the world, floating helpless, remote. But his mind, with the aid of memories and imagination, was like the butterfly, free to explore, taking him away from this seeming death trap imprisonment.

Based on the reviews, his book is evidently well seasoned with keen insights from a man who had lived life to the full and now recognized that there was still as much yet unseen within us waiting to be discovered, uncovered, revealed.

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this week

"Hear Ye Hear Ye
On Gobbler's Knob this glorious Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 2009
Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators..." saw his shadow, thus predicting six more weeks of winter.

If you don't know the story, you can Google it, of course. The essence is this: in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the official home of Phil the groundhog, there is a celebration every year regarding this purportedly Celtic tradition of determining the arrival of spring based on a groundhog's shadow. Punxsutawneyians have been conducting the ritual since 1887. You might say it's a great excuse for a party. And I am guessing one of the major events there for filling hotel rooms. (Here in Duluth we have Grandma's marathon, for example.)

A few stats you've probably always wanted to know about these furry critters:

All groundhogs have 22 teeth.
Groundhogs hibernate one to a burrow, with at least two doorways.
Males emerge earlier than females each spring.
Groundhogs can lose 50 per cent of their body weight in hibernation. Their maximum size is 10 kilograms.
They can both swim and climb trees, and have a top speed of 15 kilometres an hour.
Groundhog Day is halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox.

My favorite part about the occasion is that one of my favorite movies of all time is based on this ritual celebration. You can read all the reviews at imdb.com, but these excerpts from one reviewer capture the essence of why Groundhog Day, the film, is on my top ten list.

Author: kylopod from Baltimore, MD
Even the funniest movies eventually stop making me laugh after I've watched them enough times that the humor no longer surprises me. A joke never has the same effect when you know the punch line in advance. But every once in a blue moon, a comedy comes along that is so thoughtful and meaningful in addition to being funny that after seeing it a dozen times and laughing less often, I start noticing its depth and insight. For me, no movie has so perfectly united hilarity with profundity as "Groundhog Day," which happens to be my favorite movie of all time.

Superficially, this film belongs roughly in the same genre as "All of Me" and "Liar Liar," comedies in which a character becomes the victim of some weird supernatural fate and must adapt to the insane logic of the situation. But Steve Martin and Jim Carrey are geniuses of physical comedy, whereas Bill Murray specializes in understatement. I can't imagine any other approach having worked for this film, where the world is going crazy around Phil the weatherman, Murray's hard-edged character who keeps his emotions bottled up. What makes the initial scenes in which he first discovers his fate so hilarious is the mounting panic in his demeanor even as he tries to act like everything's normal. All he can think of to say is, "I may be having a problem." Uh, no kidding. Throughout the rest of the film, he'll deliver similarly muted lines to describe his situation, like "My years are not advancing as fast as you might think." It's striking that a man who has all the time in the world would choose his words so carefully, but it reflects a well-conceived screenplay.

In this comedy, the laughs are reinforced by repetition. The absurdity of Phil discovering that he's repeating the same day is funny enough, but every time that alarm clock goes off, and the radio starts playing, "I Got You Babe," and Phil goes through the same motions and meets the same people and then goes out into the street to be accosted by the same annoying high school buddy ("Phiiiil?"), I laugh again because I'm reminded how funny it was the first time around. People who didn't like this film (I've met one or two) emphasize how annoying it is that everything gets repeated. I sort of understand that complaint, since jokes repeated over and over usually fail miserably. "Groundhog Day," however, works uniquely well because the situation gets increasingly absurd and Phil gets increasingly desperate with each day that fails to pass....

Though this film has a serious message, it is still quintessentially a comedy. But it's a comedy that uses psychological exploration of a fascinating character to make its point. After the laughter has worn down, "Groundhog Day" turns out to be one of the richest and deepest films I've ever seen.

That being said, this week's forecast from Punxsutawney is for six more weeks of winter. What the Wall Street Journal wants Phil to tell us, however, is how many more weeks of recession we're going to see. The answer to that will probably come from some monkey on CNN.

The Fighting Never Ends

"I don't think this is a very bright page in American history." ~ Robert Kennedy

I've been reading a biography of James K. Polk called... Polk. He's not someone the average citizen really knows much about, despite being a U.S. president. He pretty much gets lumped in with a host of other unknowns like Harrison, Tyler, Taylor and everyone's favorite unknown Millard Fillmore.

Polk really did make some significant moves, nearly doubling the size of the United States through aggressive negotiations with England to take Oregon and a dubious war with Mexico to secure Texas to California. The book is loaded with anecdotes and details which I certainly have no space for, but the net net is this: Polk, the book, is a worthy read.

In my junior year in high school we had a great set of team teachers who provided a more complex view of U.S. history than we'd previously encountered. Our studies of the Mexican war were especially interesting, told from the point of view of Mexico. It wasn't pretty. Especially when the philosophical underpinnings were melded with the religious notion of Manifest Destiny. It is God's will that we steal these lands, because we will put them to better use than they can.

As the war drums began to sound, a homely looking skinny representative from Illinois stood up in Congress and called the president on the carpet saying this war had no right to be. Mr. Lincoln's arguments failed to win the day, and the war was carried to its ignominious conclusion.

Like many wars, the Mexican war continued to be "fought" long after the bullets stopped flying, hence Bobby Kennedy's comment during a trip to Indonesia in 1962. Upon hearing this remark, Vice President Lyndon Johnson released his own volley of venom, defending the history books by calling our Texas land grab "a bright page indeed."

Ironically, the former Texas senator helped immerse us in yet another controversial war, this one in Southeast Asia, a war that nearly split the country. More than forty years later, this war too is being debated, its motivations and costs and value heavily examined and re-interpreted. Unpopular war, yes. Yet many still defend its ends, despite the manner in which it was executed.

The 21st century introduced yet another controversial war. Just last week I saw an article saying this war, maligned as it is, will look different fifty to a hundred years from now. I do not wish to comment on that. My only comment here is that I'm willing to guess that fifty to one hundred years from now, we will still not have consensus, and somewhere someone will be arguing about it with someone else who disagrees with them.

Oh well...

One more trivial piece I learned from this biography about our second president from Tennessee. He was a slave owner. Almost immediately after leaving office he died, probably from the stress of this demanding occupation. In his will he freed his slaves... which would go into effect when his wife passed away. Unfortunately for the slaves, his wife lived 42 more years. Fortunately for the slaves, that skinny fellow from Illinois became president in twelve years, and declared those slaves free men in 15. Such are the twists and turns of history.

Turning Aside

It is interesting that the world’s three major monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – share a common holy book, the Old Testament. At the heart of this book is a history. Abraham, for all three religions, is a father of the faith. He left his country, then dominant Babylon, to live in tents in another land. God made a covenant or compact or contract, and promises.

Year later, the descendants of Abraham were ill treated slaves in the then-great empire of Egypt. Most of us know the story in Exodus of how a man named Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt and to “the promised land.” The Exodus, the giving of the Ten Commandments, the wandering in the wilderness are all part of our cultural history.

The story begins, however, with a failure. Moses saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite, and after looking about to make sure the coast was clear, Moses killed the guy. A bad decision. The next day the word on the street was that Moses had done this thing. And Moses knew someone saw, so he fled to the backside of the desert.

Decades later, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Moses had an encounter that changed the direction of his life.

Exodus 3
1Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
2And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
3And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
4And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

It’s the story of the burning bush. Moses was going about his business, taking care of his father-in-law’s flock, a stranger in a strange land, when he saw something that caught his attention. Instead of continuing on his way, he turned aside and went over to this bush which burned with fire but was never consumed by the fire.

I bring all this up because our pastor last Sunday preached on this passage, drawing particular attention to Moses’ turning aside. It was a defining moment for this man Moses. And it became a defining moment in world history as the great Egyptian empire was brought to its knees.

My question is, what will it take to bring about world peace today? Here are three religions with common roots, yet at each others’ throats it seems. The past hundred years or more has seen a development of increasingly cruel weaponry. Horrors have been committed and still more will be committed, and so many innocents suffer as a consequence. In other words, history is heading down a path toward an end that seems inevitable... more of the same. What will it take for the nations of this world to turn aside?

What will it take for the world to stop this mad pursuit of self-destruction and violence?

Our pastor Sunday proposed that the bush was still burning. To see it we must turn aside from our various busy paths and check it out.

As for conflicts in the Middle East, isn’t it obvious that as long as we keep arming everyone to the teeth, we will continue to reap a harvest of blood and tears? What will it take for the nations of this world to “turn aside” from this path of violence we are on?

I really don’t know.

25 Random Things About Ed Newman

Yesterday I was "tagged" on Facebook. I just started a Facebook page about six weeks ago and it is a mixed blessing. Every one of these variants of Web 2.0 involves a little bit of time commitment, yet I see why some people like Facebook... If you are going to hang out in a social network, you might as well hang where some of your real friends are.

A week or two ago I think I was tagged by someone else, but didn't know what it meant... but yesterday John Heino tagged me and I sort of got it. You write 25 random things about yourself, then share this list with 25 "friends" on Facebook. Yes, it is a lot like a chain letter, but I like the exercise better because it is more free form. There are some of those email chains that ask you all these questions. You are locked in by someone else's design. I like coloring outside the lines, so this feels much more natural to me.

Here's my list, then. And if you want to post a random list about you in the comments... or somewhere else on the Internet, have at it. And if I am lucky, maybe I'll also figure out how to tag a few people on Facebook, too.

25 Random Things About Ed Newman

1. My internet “handle” since 1994 has been “ennyman” which was a variant of my initials (e.n.) blended with the concept of Everyman from French Revolution, which fascinated me when I was in junior high school.
2. I also liked the Alamo in junior high school and built a model of the Alamo for Mr. Capetta’s seventh grade social studies class.
3. I am currently reading a book called Polk, who was president of the U.S. during the Mexican War. He was the second president from Tennessee.
4. My favorite president was U. S. Grant. Mark Twain published his memoirs, which I was reading in the hallway when my wife Susie was in labor the day my son was being born. I have read the Memoirs of U.S. Grant twice and the fifty dollar bill is my favorite. I have several other books on Grant and recommend Grant Win the War to any Civil War buff, especially Grant fans.
5. I’ve been tagged a couple times already but didn’t know what it meant. Without resorting to a 2 x 4 across the side of the head, John Heino explained it better, hence I am following through this time.
6. I have published more than 250 articles and 600 blog entries and 535 Tweets as of Feb 2, 09. (You can follow me on Twitter at ennyman3)
7. My original website looked like this: http://www.enewman.biz/ and was created in 1994-95 using Adobe Pagemill and some html I taught myself from a book, which is handy to this day.
8. I like learning new things. I tried podcasting when it first started, started a blog to learn what it was about.
9. I was one credit short of being an art major in college. Got a B.G.S. instead.
10. My grandmother encouraged my mom to enroll me in art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art when I was about five or so. She told me I never scribbled when I was a toddler but was fascinated by tracing things through the paper and stuff like that.
11. Having an art background has helped my career. I am currently Director of Advertising at AMSOIL INC. in Superior Wisconsin. Some samples of my work can be seen here: http://www.amsoil.com/adslicks.aspx
12. I moved to New Jersey when I was twelve.
13. I went to college at Ohio University in Athens, 1970-74
14. In 1976 I came to Minnesota to go to Bible school at Bethany Fellowship where I met my wife Susie.
15. Ich spreche ein bischen Deutsch, pero hablo Espanol un poco mas.
16. I’ve been a Mac guy since 1987, but had to learn how to use PCs at the office, so you might say I am ambidextrous, if you catch my drift.
17. My ties rack is an antler which is fastened to the side of a shelf in my home office. In a white shirt business suit culture the tie is your one means of making a statement. Use it.
18. I own about thirty Dylan albums and CDs and have quite a few books about Dylan including his Chronicles, Volume 1, which I have read twice.
19. I have been listening to audio books for nearly ten years whenever I am in the car and have probably listened to hundred of them…
20. I like reading favorite books or stories over and over again. I used to do this in second grade and both the librarian and my teacher commented on it. Favorite books, favorite music, favorite movies… their like good friends that you never get tired of.
21. Today was Groundhog Day, and Groundhog Day is also one of my favorite films along with Educating Rita, Truman Show and Paths of Glory.
22. Life is amazing. If you’re bored with life, the fault lies within.
23. When it comes to politics I like to read both sides of issues in an effort to develop my own perspective. I strongly dislike being told what to think or how to think about it.
24. I agree with Francis Schaeffer’s first sentence of Whatever Happened to the Human Race? When he wrote, “Cultures can be judged in many ways, but eventually every nation in every age must be judged by this test: How did it treat people?”
25. The Twin Towers came down on my 49th birthday. It was not my best birthday.

Borges, The Bet and A Piece of Steak

SHORT STORY MONDAY

In a departure from the usual fictions I share here on Mondays, I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite short stories and one of my favorite authors.

Fourteen years ago, when I built my first website, I included a page of lists of my favorite things, including favorite movies, favorite writers, favorite music... and favorite short stories.

Because tastes change and we change, I am sure that any list of favorite things will develop new contours as it morphs with our own personal evolutions. And I am certain that were I to assemble a new list from scratch, it would probably include some alternates to these here.

Nevertheless, for the sake of this Short Story Monday I will leave the original list unaltered. And, a special feature of this list is that now, fourteen years hence, the first two stories on the list are also available in total on the web. So, instead of my own story today, please take a few minutes to visit with these masters.

The Hemingway story made this list because I had to tip the hat to Mr. Hemingway for his impact on modern literature. I chose The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife because of the incredible tension he was able to create with such spare use of language. It's mystifying how deftly he works emotional wonders with such simple words. Pow! Slam.

You will also see three stories here by Borges, who influenced me mightily as a younger writer. Click on his name to find a website of labyrinthine wonderment devoted to these remarkable creative genius. Or click here for a fascinating essay which originally appeared in Christianity Today on this Argentine luminary.

Enjoy!

1. The Bet by Anton Chekhov
2. A Piece of Steak by Jack London

3. The Lagoon by Joseph Conrad

4. The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad

5. The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges

6. The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges
7. There Are More Things, again by Borges

8. The Harness, by John Steinbeck

9. Here We Are, by Dorothy Parker

10. The Doctor & the Doctor's Wife, by Ernest Hemingway

The End

EVERY ENDING IS BUT A NEW BEGINNING

Will It Always Be This Super?

A couple of us played a little game the other day at the office. He had heard there were nine quarterbacks who have won two Super Bowl rings. Who were they? Together we could only come up with eight, and then checked online to see that neither of us could remember Jim Plunkett. Kurt Warner has a chance today.

I remember the first Super Bowl, the newly formed AFL vs the veteran NFL. Bart Starr & Vince Lombardi took it to Lamar Hunt's Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. I sat in my family room taping the game on my reel-to-reel tape recorder, keeping score on notebook paper, recording every play... and hoping Len Dawson could pull it off. No such luck. Note: A television spot cost $75,000 then.

Here's a rundown of what to expect today.

The Commercials
NBC will net $206 million dollars in commercial revenue for today's game. Average price for a thirty second spot, if you want to save your quarters for next year: 3 million. But don't kid yourself. You also need a quality spot. Average price to produce that: 2 million. How would you spend 5 million dollars if that were your money?

For some people, the commercials are the most interesting part of the game. I myself purchase a USA Today on the Friday before this event, and review the commercials so I know what to expect and what I don't want to miss. Even this activity has lost some of its luster as it has become over-hyped along with everything else associated with the big game, but I am certainly looking forward to a few of these.

The Pre-Game
Like much that passes for sport these days, it's all about the party. The evolution of the Super Bowl as a playoff game to ultra hyped circus is illustrated by the manner in which the sports channels begin 24 hours of historical reviews before the main event to get us in the mood. And NBC starts Super Bowl Party coverage before Midwest families are even home from church.

The Game
How can this game ever live up to the hype?

Halftime
It's a spectacle. This year, Bruce Springsteen and what's her name. Cost is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of Haiti's entire 2008 GNP.

The Rest of the Game
Usually it's boring. One team has clamped its teeth down hard and the other team just tries not to embarrass itself. Occasionally, like the Giants' upset over the invincible Tom Brady, there is a real game played right down to the wire. Everyone hopes for a good close game, especially those who paid 3 million dollars for a commercial that is airing after the halftime show.

Post Game
Often, if not usually, a phone call from the president congratulating the winners. My guess is that President Obama has two sets of talking points in his pocket. If the Cardinals win, he will no doubt comment on how underdogs can be winners if they never give up. If the Steelers win, well, hmmm.... some kind of comment about the best offense being a good defense? We'll find out soon enough, if you keep tuned in.

Nothing profound today. What did you expect? It's Super Bowl Sunday.

Here's a sneak preview of Miller's one second ad. Bookmark this page when you get the urge for Miller Time.

PHOTO NOTE: Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, Bobby Layne & the Green Bay Packers. Layne was quarterback for the Steelers back in the late fifties and sixties. I was a Browns fan and the Steelers were our arch rivals. Bart Starr was the first quarterback to earn two Super Bowl rings, leading Lombardi's Packers to wins in the first and second Super Bowls.