Are Children Today Being Raised "Too Safe to Succeed"?

"The worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety."--C.S. Lewis

This past month I read The Coddling of the American Mind, an insightful book that helped me understand some of the controversial events taking place on campuses the past few years.  The book is by a first amendment expert (Greg Lukianoff) and a social psychologist (Jonathan Haidt), which I found to be an interesting combination.

The book is awash with disturbing anecdotes that show how screwed up things have become as the Z-generation enters into the college experience. One of the problems, which they go to great lengths to demonstrate, is that our efforts to raise children in a "safe" world has had the unintended consequence of making them fragile.

The authors have been fairly prolific writers, with articles in high profile magazines such as The Atlantic. The following anecdote is from an article in Reason titled The Fragile Generation, by Haigt and Lenore Skenazy. After citing two or three examples of society being overprotective they write:

And then there was the query that ran in Parents magazine a few years back: "Your child's old enough to stay home briefly, and often does. But is it okay to leave her and her playmate home while you dash to the dry cleaner?" Absolutely not, the magazine averred: "Take the kids with you, or save your errand for another time." After all, "you want to make sure that no one's feelings get too hurt if there's a squabble."

As you read that, you were probably as stunned as I to see the editors' rationale for not leaving the kids home. You don't want anyone's feelings hurt if there is a squabble.

Really? The subtitle of the article is "Bad policy and paranoid parenting are making kids too safe to succeed."

Whatever happened to the stories we were told about how baby birds had to break out of their shells on their own, or they wouldn't thrive. That illustration from nature was applied to life. You may want to help but then the baby birds will fail to learn something important that evidently is imprinted in their little brains.

When I saw the C. S. Lewis quote about "the committee of public safety" it dawned on me that our current over-protective parenting styles and "safety culture" did not suddenly spring up. It's had a much longer evolution than I'd realized.

Yes, it's good to have safe streets where you won't get mugged or shot, but safety from getting into an argument while playing, lest feelings be ruffled? If your kid sprains an ankle playing football in the front yard, should the parents worry about being carted off to jail for negligence?

When I was growing up we would have annual family reunions in which dozens of cousins would play unsupervised for 12 hours a day while the parents played cards or caught up on family stories. We played kick the can, spud and other games, and one year even created a "haunted house" in my aunt's basement.

When my parents went out and my brothers and I were left home alone we often played a game we'd created called Boston Strangler. The game didn't produce nightmares, nor did it cause any of us psychological damage. Sometimes my younger brothers couldn't wait for mom and dad to go out so we could play again.

My aim here is to raise questions and hopefully create an interest in learning more about what has been happening in our current period in history. You can follow these links to learn more.

Related Links
The Fragile Generation
The Three Great Untruths that Are Harming Young Americans
TheCoddling.com

Kylie Jenner: World's Youngest Self-Made Billionaire? Only In America.

 Creative Commons
 Attribution 3.0 Unported

When I was doing the karaoke scene in the 90s* one of my openers would frequently be the 1964 hit Come A Little Bit Closer, by Jay & the Americans. It fit my range and I'd enjoyed the song in my youth.

For 50 years I'd always assumed that Jay & the Americans were a Latino group from South o' the Border, based on that song and another in the playlist, Only In America, which opens like this:

Only in America
Can a guy from anywhere
Go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire

Only in America
Can a kid without a cent
Get a break and maybe grow up to be President

I had no idea that Jay Black (real name, David Blatt) and his buddies were from Long Island. The sentiments in this song were similar to what many have believed who migrate here from abroad.

Only in America
Can a kid who's washin' cars
Take a giant step and reach right up and touch the stars

The song, of course, is about a poor boy ending up with his dream girl who also happens to be from a higher class. But it's also cherishing this "land of opportunity."

I remember reading a book by a young man from Indonesia who seemed shocked to discover upon his arrival that the streets were not actually paved with gold. (Currently a lot of our local streets are pockmarked with potholes, but that's another story.)

This song came to mind for me when I read this week that Kylie Jenner, age 21, has become the world's youngest "self-made billionaire"? It seemed like an "only in America" kind of story.

(How the other half lives.) Photo by Vita Vilcina on Unsplash 

The story I read appeared in Inc. Magazine, referencing the annual Forbes listing of the world's richest which they publish each spring. The article begins, "If you hope to become a billionaire, the United States may be the best place to live. That's one obvious conclusion from Forbes' list of billionaires for 2018."

The article by Minda Zetlin is titled Here's Why the U.S. Created More Billionaires Than Any Other Nation in 2018. Zetlin points out that the rich did not all get richer in 2018, that 46% declined in net worth for various reasons. (I remember Ted Turner noting that when he went from 10 billion to two billion, he still ate pretty well.)

The U.S. leads the league in billionaires, adding 21 new ones to their roster for a total of 607. That is 50% more than were on the Forbes list in 2010.

How they obtained their riches is what the meat of the article is about. Though some billionaires inherited their fortunes, entrepreneurs make up the bulk of the new billionaires. And though Kylie Jenner is the youngest ever, other notables have climbed that ladder in their 20s, including Mark Zuckerberg at 23.

There's a sense in which she gained a lot of help by flowing in the tailwinds of the Kardasians, but building a following of 104 million on Snapchat didn't hurt anything either. Oh, and did we forget to mention she created a cosmetic business? She didn't inherit her wealth. She essentially leveraged her fame, with her name an established brand.

I know that a lot of people have issues with capitalism right now, but you can be sure Kylie is not one of them.

At the pinnacle is Jeff Bezos, followed by the familiar names of Gates (the college dropout) and Buffet (Warren, not that guy from Margaritaville.)

Only in America.

* * * *
Related Links
To see the Forbes article visit www.forbes.com/billionaires/#24597813251c
Wikipedia entry on Kylie detailing her entrepreneurial acumen. She skipped college and has no college debt.
A REAL rags to riches story about a freed slave and black woman who made a fortune in the cosmetics game, Sarah Breedlove Walker.

EdNote: No doubt Kylie's privileged background contributed to her achievements. She didn't start her career as a shoeshine boy or bellhop, so would probably be disqualified as a Horatio Alger story role model.

* I actually sang karaoke in 14 states. 

An Examination of the Physics of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

"I don't remember a thing about Rolling Thunder. It was before I was even born." --Bob Dylan

The film begins with some nostalgic footage of a magician making his assistant disappear and re-appear. It's a metaphor for the story you are about to see, of course. A little hocus pocus as we go back in time, and maybe a little hokum, too.

Then we find ourselves at the 200th Bicentennial, the tall ships and the mayhem of that mid-Seventies moment in time. There's a bit of Nixon footage, then Gerald Ford, and the stage is set with a reference to Bob as Mr. Tambourine Man who states, "Life isn't about finding yourself. It's about creating yourself." (Best line in the film? Maybe one of the best lines ever?)

It's a great place to begin. If that statement doesn't sum up the 78 years of Bob Dylan's life and career, then you haven't been paying attention.

Much has already been made of the mixing of reality and fiction in Martin Scorsese's second Dylan documentary on the Rolling Thunder Revue, so I will just make comments on some things that jumped out for me personally.

Early on, Bob mentioned "the idea of having a jug band." That jug band feel, on a grand carnival scale, was part of what he did in fact create. A hallmark of jug bands is the informality and the camaraderie.

Publicity still that everyone seems to be using.

When asked where the name Rolling Thunder came from, he described the sound of rolling thunder that rumbled across the stratosphere one evening while thinking about all these things. I am sure that it happens in all parts of the country, but the rolling thunder in Northern Minnesota's skies can be exceptionally powerful when the arctic and equatorially driven weather fronts collide. It was only later that he learned that Rolling Thunder was also the code name for Nixon's carpet bombing of Cambodia a few years earlier.

Masks and "Truth" were two of the threads running through the story here. As Dylan explains, "When somebody's wearing a mask, he's gonna tell you the truth." Of course with so much fictional flak getting flung into the mix, you don't know if he's being earnest here or just playing with our heads.

The manner in which the story is told, like a traditional documentary, gave the whole of it a feel of veracity, even when the characters were bogus. The snippet interviews did achieve one thing for sure: we gained a range of perspectives so as to see this flash from history in a variety of ways. Even when incoherent the collage/montage made an impression.

Ronnie Hawkins compares Bob to a gladiator. Sizzling violinist Scarlet Rivera's summing up was priceless: "Mr. tambourine man gives us the opportunity to be whoever we wish."

In my notes I scribbled the words, "High holy gypsy holiday" which was either something someone said or my interpretation of what I was seeing.

Another feature of the film was its ability to convey the chaos of the tour as well as the love affair between the players and their audiences. The rough edges of this Revue undoubtedly contributed to the remarkable music that was generated. I'll try to explain this by contrasting with a couple other performers I'd seen in 1973-74 Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick tour and Emerson Lake and Palmer. In both cases they were in the spotlight to showcase their music and their talent. ELP were exceptional. In both cases, however, the shows were so scripted one wonders where the "heart" was.

By way of contrast, Dylan seriously comes off as from another galaxy. The RTR was the complete antithesis of a scripted concert tour.

As you watch Dylan singing and moving about, interacting with the various performers, you can't help but be struck by the energy. This energy emerges from the tension created by its lack of structure, its freedom within form, its uncertain destination.

The concert camera work was exceptional, too. Look at those eyes. At times you can see lightning flashin' out from Dylan's eyeballs as he sings about Isis, Hurricane and all those other great themes from his Desire album.

Because of Scarlet Rivera's visits to perform in the Northland in recent years I have no doubt that many of us here were especially thrilled to see so much footage featuring her violin-work that so contributed to the unique Desire sound.

The film has received much fanfare from the critics, though not all have been equally on board. Olivia Elston's review in the Indiana Daily Student had this to say regarding what she saw as a shortcoming: "While 'Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story' will be welcomed by Dylan fans who may want to relive the tour or even see it for the first time, it tends to be a little lackluster. Behind the scene clips do not offer much excitement or insight to the concert tour as a whole."

Being a Dylan fan, these little side eddies were not an impediment, though I understand how they could be for some.

As for the physics behind the tour, it's based on the formula e=mc2. Albert Einstein demonstrated that there is a relationship between mass and energy. The conversion of rest energy to other forms of energy occurs in ordinary chemical reactions, but much larger conversions occur in nuclear reactions. What Dylan did with the RTR was to bring all these various elements into play, creating a chemistry whose chemical reactions resulted in some remarkably explosive releases of energy.

If you don't like that explanation, then MC in this equation represents Magical Carnival which when multiplied produced the energy that we saw flashing from Bob's eyes. You saw it, right? Inexplicably intense, riveting and empowering.

* * * *
BONUS TRACK

Louie (L) and Mr. Tambourine Man.

It may as well be noted that Bob's childhood friends Louie Kemp and Larry Kegan both appeared briefly. That was Larry in the back of the van singing "Your Cheatin' Heart" with Bob. And as for Louie, though a bit part, he had his fingerprints on a lot of what happened behind the scenes as producer of the tour.

To learn more about Louie, here's a half-hour interview on SiriusXM radio.

Themes include how the RTR got started, what Bob Dylan was like as a kid, and how his book Dylan & Me got written. The anecdotes here are a foretaste of many other stories that have yet to appear in all those other books we sifted through for "the good stuff."

Memories: Both a Comfort and a Curse

Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

"What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories."--Somerset Maugham

While assembling quotes about writing, by writers, I stumbled upon the above quote by Mr. Maugham, which so resonated with me.

It somehow seems that as the years pass, experience offers us new perspectives on our past, like a receding landscape while ascending a mountain. These new views from a higher elevation reveal much that we missed when we were in "the thick of it" so to speak.

Life is an experience. For much of that experience we weren't as attentive as we might have been. "I was there but where was my head at?" we may be asking ourselves.

In reflecting on life we see highlights such as weddings, breakups, transitions, travel experiences, deaths. These major moments and events each left a mark on our inner narrative. But in truth, there were other events which seemed so insignificant at the time that we failed to notice them. Or we noticed but failed to give them their due respect.

My grandmother's poem Aftermath of a Stroke shows how the good times, remembered, bring us comfort in our later years. This may be why as people age and slowly distribute all the things accumulated over the course of  lifetime, the last thing they part with are photos of the children and grandchildren and those special people in their lives.

As I've aged, I seem to have become increasingly aware of that other class of memories that causes one to cringe, to be ashamed. Friendships destroyed by one's own careless stupidity, relationships marred by one's failure to see what was really happening, opportunities wasted by personal weakness. How could I have been so blind, so foolish. Worst of all, I have only myself to blame.

I accused, I misunderstood, I failed to see. I spoke when I should not have, and failed to speak when I should have....

Marcel Proust in Swann's Way wrote, "We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full."  Maybe this is why the more painful memories still surface from time to time. It may not be possible to go back and find resolution through asking forgiveness from those we've hurt, but we can choose to accept, even embrace, the pain it causes us, instead of denying it or trying to escape it. Fully experienced, it loses its sting as we forgive ourselves.

* * * *

I don't know if every generation has paced so much emphasis on "living in the now" or "in the moment" but it's certainly been an oft-repeated message over the course of my own lifetime. I doubt that anyone really does this fully, though. There are simply too many experiences and so much nourishment received as we relive them through our memories.

It was this kind of thinking that led me to write my short story The M Zone 25 years ago, which you can read here on Medium. The story also appears in my eBook Newmanesque.

* * * *

EndPoint: Each day is an opportunity to make new memories, for ourselves and for others. Wherever you be, live with your eyes open wide and make a difference. 

Twelve Great Quotes by Ten Great Writers... On Writing

Photo by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash

While looking for a quote to embellish my recent blog post on The Murders in the Rue Morgue, I came across this first quote below by Edgar Allen Poe. It was so true and so intriguing that I decided to scrounge around to find eleven siblings to accompany it. If you're a writer I'm certain you will enjoy these.

How many good books suffer neglect through the inefficiency of their beginnings!
--Edgar Allen Poe

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human condition. --Graham Greene

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.--Graham Greene

Photo by Andrew Perfetti Photography

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
--Edith Wharton

Fiction pays best of all and when it is of fair quality is more easily sold. A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration.--Jack London

Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.--Jack London

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.--John Steinbeck

In plucking the fruit of memory one runs the risk of spoiling its bloom.--Joseph Conrad

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.--Somerset Maugham

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”--Anton Chekhov

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”--Ray Bradbury

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.”--Orson Scott Card

To my writer friends....write on! 

To all the rest, make the most of your day and,,,  

Thanks for reading. 

A New Script For Responding to Telemarketers: Dylan Trivia

Unwanted robocalls from telemarketers can be nothing short of exasperating. Their knew technique is especially so. I am referring here to the way they now use phone numbers with familiar names on your caller I.D.  For example, yesterday the I.D. read, "Bernick's" which is a Pepsi distributor in town. I answered anyways, knowing it was probably fake, which it was.  (It used to always say "Caller Unknown" on the caller I.D. slot.)

Automated woman's voice: "THIS IS AN IMPORTANT CALL. WE'VE TRIED SEVERAL TIMES TO REACH YOU TO LET YOU KNOW THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO LOWER YOUR CREDIT CARD RATE." There were a few more words and the instruction to enter "one" if I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity.

As soon as I hung up I wondered if a Real Person would have been on the line had I pressed "one."

In the next instant, a line from a Dylan song came to mind. (As any Dylan fan knows, there are lines and lyrics for every sitch and this triggered a few.)

So I crafted  a script which I  am now keeping by the phone so that if I am able to get through to a real person, I can take control of the conversation. The important part is to be loud and cheerful and to maintain control of the conversation as you play it out. I share it here so you can use it, too, for these unwanted calls. Please let me know if it works.

SCRIPT FOR RESPONDING TO TELEPHONE SALES CALLS

(For use when you get a human being on the line.)

Congratulations on being my tenth caller. If you can answer these three Bob Dylan Trivia Questions you will win a prize. Who am I speaking with today?

OK, thank you, Jack. I have you on speaker phone so our live audience can hear you.

First: Which Bob Dylan Song begins with the words, “You’ve got a lot of nerve”?

I’m sorry, Jack, the answer was Positively Fourth Street.

Second: What song contains the following pointed lines: “I hope that you die, and your death will come soon.”

Again I’m sorry, Jack, that was from Dylan’s classic Masters of War. Great line, eh?

Finally, here is your last question and a chance to win bigly in the bonus round: These lyrics can be found in what song on Bob Dylan's album Shot of Love?

"Ooh, I can't stand it, I can't stand it, what are you tryin' to prove?"

Need to call a friend, Jack? Do it. Just stop calling me and my friends.

* * * *

FOR TIPS ON HOW TO STOP UNWANTED ROBOCALLS

JUST ASK GOOGLE.

The End

The Chemistry of Photography: A Father's Day Tribute

Scarlet tanager, photo by John Heino

My first experiences with a camera must have been when I was in Cub Scouts because I remember taking double exposure photos of my brother boxing with himself against the wall of our basement in Maple Heights. After we moved to New Jersey my father helped me set up a darkroom with chemicals and trays, a red light and an exposure lamp. I must have been in seventh grade when I went through this stage, and for a spell it was quite exciting, taking photos and doing all that darkroom magic.

I share all this because although I knew my father had been a chemist, primarily working in the development of latex paints, polymers and adhesives, I was unaware till this spring of his college term paper titled The Chemistry of Photography.

It begins, "The science of photograph is becoming increasingly essential in the modern world of today, yet relatively few people are acquainted with this history of, the chemistry of, or the uses of photographic art."

The paper then details the various discoveries related to how light interacts with certain materials to produce images. Johann Schulze was the first to record the observation that light, and not atmospheric conditions, was what caused silver chloride to darken. The chemists of the day found ways to produce an image but had not discovered a way to "fix" the image so you had something permanent. This would not occur till the 1800s.

My dad when young and in school.

It was Joseph Niepce who found a way to create a permanent image, with one drawback. The exposure time required was six to ten hours. (You can imagine the scene: "O.K., when I count to three say, 'Cheese.' Now hold it, don't move till I get back from Paris later this afternoon.")

Eventually Niepce hooked up with Jacques Daguerre who was also working on the problem of light sensitive materials. In 1939 Daguerre announced his process for making permanent images, which he called Daguerreotypes. That process involved copper sheets plated with silver that were highly polished and exposed to iodine vapors, which turned the surface a golden yellow.

This prep took five to 30 minutes, but had to be exposed immediately for five to 12 minutes. After exposure to light the plate was placed into another closed box where it was now exposed to mercury heated to 167 degrees Fahrenheit. Next it was washed with hypo and then distilled water.

You can see why this didn't catch on as all that popular with the masses.

Two years later paper negatives were developed by Williamd Fox-Talbert. Easier to process but not as sharp of detail in the images, so a step forward and step back at the same time.

In 1850 a process involving glass plates covered with milk and albumen was patented. Albumen is egg white, so you have to wonder how these guys came up with all this  stuff.

At the same time the use of collodion was suggested, and after a year of experimentation this process was perfected. It was known as the wet-collodion process, utilizing iodized or bromized collodion which forms, after the solvents have evaporated, into a thin, easily damaged film. On immersion in a silver nitrate bath, light sensitive iodide and bromide of silver are formed. The plate should be exposed while still moist and developed immediately.

Studio photography was reasonable to accomplish, but if you wanted to capture landscapes, all this gear was somewhat cumbersome. In short, there was great pressure on the chemists of the day to improve all these things.

What followed were Ferrotypes which produced negative images. In 1884 this guy named George Eastman secured a patent for a stripping film which was a temporary paper coated with soluble gelatin that was then coated with gelatin bromide emulsion. After developing and fixing, the image was stripped from the supporting paper and dried, hence the name stripping film.

As film sensitivity increased, exposure times decreased. In 1851 the average exposure time was 2160 times faster than in 1826. And by the 20th century it was 10,000 times as fast as in 1851, something akin to Moore's Law in the digital chip realm in our computer age.

The quest for speed and detail consumed many decades, but there was still the hurdle of color that was sought after. In the early 1900s the Autochrome process was invented, but it wasn't until the 1930s and Kodachrome that color photography and slides took off.

How brief the reign of film photography proved to be. Just over two decades later the first digital image was produced. It would be decades later before digital eclipsed film, and when it happened it happened quickly.

1973, Fairchild Semiconductor produces the first image-capturing chip.
1986, Kodak scientists offer up the world's first megapixel sensor.

The late Lee Newman

None of these latter developments were covered in my father's 1949 paper, nor were the anticipated. Whereas all previous advances had been linear explorations involving chemistry, the digital phenomenon was altogether outside the box. Silver halide, developers, sodium thiosulfates, fixatives, ammonia and emulsions all became a thing of the past.

His term paper concludes with one of the modern applications of photography: advertising. He then cites the Chinese proverb, "A picture is worth ten thousand word." Indeed!

My father became a career chemist. His first-born son eventually grew to pursue a career in advertising, ever in search of the best images to accompany content crafted to connect with readers.

Dad got an A on his paper, with the instructor's comment scribbled beneath it in ballpoint pen. "Very interesting paper." It's my hope that you've also found this abbreviated summary interesting as well.

* * * *

This has been a Father's Day tribute to an important man, Leon E. Newman