A Voice for Reticence

Like many of you, I’ve attended my share of diversity or social interaction training sessions, and I always come away from them feeling embarrassed. I blame my mom for that.

My mother passed away three years ago at age 89, and while she had an enormous impact on my life, she was a modest, unprepossessing person whose political and social views were nearly always expressed — if at all — with the disclaimer: “I just don’t know.” As a child of the Great Depression and from modest means, Mom greatly admired FDR and Democrats generally, and she was never comfortable around wealth or opulence. She hated war and could have been a pacifist or an anti-war marcher (a scene I can’t even imagine). For reasons I never fathomed, she loved baseball. She held biases and prejudices, but never overtly, and like many people of her time, Mom felt that if you didn’t have something good to say about someone, it was better to say nothing.

I was thinking about my mom’s reticence last week as I sat through a mandatory meeting with 40 or so of my work colleagues. The people moderating the meeting and directing the conversation wanted — somewhat desperately, I thought — to get everyone talking and sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings about sensitive issues like racism, gender identity and empathy for people not like yourself. They went about this using several tactics. First, we were divided into sub-groups of three and invited to interview one another silently; that is, we had to answer questions about the other person (such as the kind of vehicle they’d like to drive, of what religion were they raised in) by sheer guessing. Following that was an exercise that involved choosing a life we’d least like to experience, and then one we’d most like to have among several not very attractive alternatives. I joined a large group who apparently felt it would be very bad to be an illegal immigrant in America, unable to speak English, and without a job. On the plus side, I joined a slightly smaller contingent who felt that to be a genius-level physicist, but also a quadriplegic, and out of work, wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing in the world. And so on. The last exercise involved responding to a page of questions such as at what age did we discover that there are two genders, or when did we realize we were rich, or poor, or middle class?

Apparently, these are tried and true techniques that, when properly conducted, enable people in group circumstances (like the office) to find out if they are insensitive or culturally deficient. Once our individual prejudices, perceptions and biases are brought out into the open and people have bared their souls, the theory goes, the group can then move forward as a more cohesive, sensitive and empathetic unit.

I kept wondering whether any of this had a basis in quantitative and qualitative research. Was it proven, for example, that by guessing the kind of car someone I barely know was driving, I would be revealing my hidden away biases and pre-conceived notions about relative strangers? I didn’t ever really find out, in part because I managed to pick exactly the kind of vehicle — an SUV — the other person was driving. I even got her religion right. And what did that prove? Nothing much.

I’m not attacking the motives of the people conducting this meeting; in fact, they are in all ways professional. But I think what they are selling is suspect. Underlying this kind of consulting work is an assumption that there are methods that can be employed (like asking you to guess the religion of a person you don’t know) that will reveal your prejudices. And that, furthermore, getting out these prejudices and perceptions in a group setting is the first and necessary step on the path to reconciliation and understanding among individuals with widely varying backgrounds and experiences.

Is that really valid? For one thing, people can always lie, or say what they believe others want to hear. There’s also the presumption that people know how to get in touch with their real feelings, and can articulate them with and among others. Most people I know, including myself, struggle all the time to express their true feelings, even in the private conversations that go on only in our heads. I question the efficacy of building group training around the notion that individuals, sitting with their peers, will not just be willing, but also able to say what they really think.

But my largest objection is to the notion, which seems so pervasive these days, that it is always better — more cathartic, more empathetic, more useful — for people to “share” their feelings, whatever they might be. Doing so makes everyone know you better and helps engender a more “open” society.

I don’t buy it, and here’s why: I have my share of prejudices, like everyone, and I do not believe I am contributing to the world by uttering these views out loud. To the contrary, there’s much in my mind, and perhaps yours, that’s best left unsaid. What may be appropriate in the Confessional booth or the psycho-therapy session seems to me to be not at all helpful when shared among colleagues in the business or organizational environment. After all, what can they do about it? Or me? Revealing to my peers that I dislike short people (actually, my issue is with people who are taller than me) isn’t going to change their minds about me, about their attitudes towards short people, or their hidden prejudices about race or gender, much less mine. And so, what’s to be gained, collectively, by my personal revelation concerning the height of others? Very little.

These kinds of meetings also reflect the growing noise of public self-indulgence — the mindless chatter online and elsewhere by people talking and writing about themselves. Deeds, not words, the old saying goes. Many people, through the ages, have managed to make a mark on society and, at the same time, remain modest and reticent about themselves. We may not know everything about them, but we know enough to admire, respect and even love them.

Like my mom.

Could I Go Over the Top?

Nothing, to me, is as compelling as reading the accounts of men under the stress and confusion of battle: how they felt, how they reacted, what was going through their minds as they confronted the very real possibility of death.

A Union Cannon at the Angle on Cemetery Ridge

Now, just back from a tour of the great Civil War battleground at Gettysburg, these thoughts have taken on a more tangible dimension.  Away from the books, I stood in places where men shot at distant targets and were in turn shot at.  Many thousands were killed, many thousand more wounded in three days of fierce combat at places called the Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, Little Round Top and Culp’s Hill. The question I asked myself, as I looked down the barrel of a cannon still poised on the Union lines at Cemetery Ridge, is the question that long has bedeviled me, and perhaps you: would I have the courage to stand and fight, to fix my bayonet, leave my shelter and attack the enemy?  Or would the instinct of self-preservation take over, causing me to stay hidden and out of the line of fire?

(This search for understanding is different from, and much more personal, than my enduring fascination with the causes of war; the broader context of politics, economics and social currents that lead to the clash of nations and peoples. What I want to know is how, why and where ordinary men found the courage to go over the top.  Gettysburg helped me find an answer).

Much has been written over the years about why men fight (and some die) in war.  Until around the time of the Civil War, most explanations centered on a strong identification with an abstract cause (such as freedom or defense of homeland); Confederate troops were said to be more highly motivated than their Union counterparts because they were defending their beloved Virginia or South Carolina from the encroachment of the looming federal government.  Yet that explanation makes only partial sense.  Something more fundamental is required to fully explain why men do not flinch in the face of certain harm.

Gettysburg’s splendid new National Military Park Museum provides helpful clues.  The words of officers and soldiers who participated in the battle on both

A view across the battlefield to Little Round Top

sides are  widely quoted.  What emerges from the museum exhibits (and the narratives of highly trained and personable tour guides at the battlefield) is that there is a very thin line separating the fighters from the frightened.  Those who are able to overcome their fears do so not because they are especially brave (most expressed grave fears of combat) but rather, because they felt a sense of obligation not to let down the comrades in their squad or troop — their friends, their comrades in arms, the fellows who are beside them behind the parapet or crouching in the shell hole or shallow trench. Interviews with veterans after both World War I and II confirmed the finding: amid the horror of war, and perhaps compelled by it, men fight for one another.  This is especially true when there are common ties linking the men, such as home town, school or work place — anything that reflects common interests or backgrounds.  In the Civil War, units on both sides were composed of soldiers from the same state or city, or calling.  At Gettysburg on the third day, with Pickett’s famous charge close to breaking through the Union lines, New York City firemen, serving together in the same unit, helped sway the tide.

It surely has to be this.  How else to explain why at Gettysburg, men from Maine and Massachusetts and Mississippi threw themselves into the bloody fray. How else to  explain why, with Rebel troops surging towards their entrenched positions, soldiers from the 1st Minnesota Volunteers began a counter-charge in which 215 of its 262 men were killed or wounded in the space of a few short minutes.  What other motivation would compel the actions of a young Union officer named Patrick O’Rorke, out of the Irish diaspora struggling to gain a foothold of acceptance in mid-19th Century America, who led a counter-charge of fellow Irishmen to stem a Rebel advance on Little Round Top and lost his life in a hail of bullets. Ardant du Picq, a 19th- century French colonel and military theorist, explained the influence of common bonds forging a fighting spirit this way: “Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely.”

The answer, then, is so simplistic that it risks sounding trite:  soldiers do what they are trained to do, and they do what they are trained to do because they don’t want to let down the men they are with.  So it is both a professional (I am a soldier) and a personal (I’m going to do my part) rationale that appears to motivate men in battle. They are drilled to act, but to act, they must draw upon a deep and abiding willingness to sacrifice even their own lives for the sake of those around them.

Which makes the verdant fields of Gettysburg, nearly 150 years after three days of mortal combat, such a melancholy and yet uplifting place.

The Obsessions of Vacation

With my family, I spent most of the past week at the ocean, specifically the warm Gulf of Mexico, sitting on a beach chair under a sheltering umbrella, wondering why I found myself once again situated in the same spot, on the same stretch of beach, in the same “destination” with the same view of the horizon, that I had experienced the year before, and the year before that, and for several preceding years.

It’s got to be an obsession, is about all I can make of it.  Perhaps you have one, too.  All I know is I simply had to be there.

Matter of fact, everyone in my family appeared, at least during the week we were away, to have a similar disposition to want to do something repeatedly, which is a fair definition of “obsession.”  My son read three or four sci fi action adventure novels — in five days.  My daughter decided to be an artist, and so sketched out a view of our rented beach house’s kitchen, until the lure of riding the waves on a boogie board proved irresistible and became her obsession.  My wife seemed determined to bake in the sun, which she proceeded to do whenever she was not snapping photos with her digital Nikon — another obsession.

Me?  As is always the case during these summer interludes, I had several obsessions to indulge:  I was determined to avoid wearing socks of any kind (check); seek and find the world’s best fried fisherman’s platter (nada), and somehow, in the space of a few days, conjure the plot and characters of the novel of the century while nursing a salty dog on a bar stool at a windswept beachside tavern ( I got the bar right; the novel waits still).

Other than becoming a Hemingway or Hiassen, my only other repeatable obsession is to relax, which I suppose is everyone’s ultimate goal.  Harder said than done, as they say.  I cannot relax as long as there is green algae bloating the ocean water.  I cannot relax with anvil-shaped clouds looming over the shore landscape, lightning spitting across the sky and thunder rumbling, the sound amplified and scarier because I am out in the open and vulnerable.  I cannot relax because it’s typically up to me to make the right restaurant choice for dinner.  This is a nearly impossible and always thankless task because the familiar places from previous trips are either “under new ownership,” or so over-priced that to eat there would be an act of colossal stupidity.  $36 crab cakes, anyone?  I also obsess over what book to read, and obsess about whether to forego reading to sit in my beach chair and ponder the meaning of life — an endeavor made more urgent and relevant by the repetitious lapping of waves on to the sand.

A finger-painted image of the ocean

However, this time, I am glad to report, I found an obsession that occupied my time, caused me to relax, and resulted in my family smiling at me sympathetically:  electronic finger painting on my iTouch.

Laugh not.  The iTouch/iPhone App Store sells an application called “Brushes,” and with it, you can with very little practice (and no appreciable skill or talent), paint Winslow Homer-like seascapes on your phone screen.  I learned, doing this, that fingers are imprecise paintbrushes.  But Brushes compensates with a variety of brush styles and widths from hairline to cover-the-sky.  Your finger points and glides, swirls and pirouettes, and the app does the rest, as if a brush were attached to the end of your index finger.  There’s also a virtually endless range of colors, opacities and shadings available.  If this sounds like an unsolicited plug for Brushes, it is.  Great fun, especially when the alternative — pondering the fates of humankind or choosing between grouper or pizza — brings on a headache.

Now, back home, I wonder whether this obsession with Brushes was just a temporary fling into my imagined world, sitting under a thatched lean-to on a beach in Tahiti with Paul Gaugin, sharing an easel and throwing caution to the wind in splashes of brilliant, surprising colors.

Can you do that on a PDA or a telephone screen?  Now there’s a question worth pondering.

Walking Capitol Hill

I’ve recently had the occasion to walk the halls of Congress on Capitol Hill, and the experience is comforting and, at the same time, unsettling.

Comforting, because office visits still seem to be the most viable way for ordinary citizens like you or me to directly contact our elected Representatives and Senators. It’s a tradition that stretches far back in our national history.  Even Presidents used to greet people at the White House; Abraham Lincoln set aside major parts of his work day to meet with job seekers, psychics, schemers and pastors.  Not many people get appointments with the President these days, but the labyrinthian buildings on each side of the Capitol where the Members have their offices are typically very crowded.  Wherever I went, I was preceded or followed by groups representing causes as varied as the protection of Israel, tax breaks for medical equipment manufacturers, pro- and anti-abortion advocates . . . and God knows what else.

Yet I had the distinct feeling that much of this activity, although earnest, was very much a pro forma ritual.  By that I mean that there appears to be a widening psychological and physical gulf between those who hold elective office and the voters who put them there.  It’s grown to such an extent that, in my view, the world of politics and government resides in a parallel universe with it own language, codes of behavior and established procedures.  We citizens are offered a glimpse into this world, but we seldom penetrate it.

Meeting Your Member of Congress

The sense of estrangement is accentuated by security concerns that have, since 2001, placed a series of access barriers between the general public and the offices of official government. You can still visit with your representative, but it takes some doing.  Scheduling is something of a challenge, and there’s never any guarantee that the Member will be able to keep the appointment.

Because there’s such demand for visits, and with so much else to do, it is impossible to accommodate everyone who wants a meeting and still leave time for the representative to carry out official duties, such as voting or attending committee hearings. The most common result is the five to 10 minute fast-track meeting, in which the Member quickly shakes hands and extends best wishes to the visiting delegation, and then exits through a side door, leaving a staff person to politely take notes. No wonder Congressional staffers appear glassy-eyed by mid-morning.

There’s nothing at all odious or objectionable about this situation; much of it is unavoidable.  And to be fair, many such meetings are pre-scripted by the visitors with “talking points” about whatever issue or cause has brought them to Washington. Members and their staffs have their own repertoire of practiced or canned responses designed to placate the visitors without committing to any particular action.  So there is little spontaneity. The result is that many meetings are not much different from those you might have when you exchange pleasant “hellos” with someone you pass by on the street whose name you can’t quite recall.

You could say that Hill visits are mostly all show, but there’s more to be said on this subject.  And that is that while we value Congressional visits as our right as citizens, even if they end up being pleasantly perfunctory, there are many others who rely upon these brief interactions as opportunities to influence government policy for themselves and those they represent.  Highly paid and politically astute professionals (many are attorneys) representing untold numbers of special interest causes, foreign and domestic, ceaselessly make the rounds of Congressional offices. It’s their job. The good ones, whose names you never see or read about, make comfortable livings securing legislation that benefits or protects small, narrow slices of the American population:  ethanol producers, for instance, or insurance carriers, or assault weapon manufacturers.  With so much at stake and with so many causes competing for access, money and power frequently determine the winners and the also-rans.

None of this represents an earth-shattering revelation.  Lobbying and special interest pleading are as much a part of the fabric of our democracy as Memorial Day parades. But it does help illuminate a cold, blunt reality of the political process in these times:   money and power still speak louder than the voice of the common citizen.

We should all expect more, probably, for our five minute appointment.

Grading the Band

I found myself, with family, seated in the local high school gym for our daughter’s season-ending fifth grade band concert.  It is an event — a ritual, really — that is repeated inumerable times across America as spring rolls toward summer and another school year winds down.  I’m sure many of you have attended one of these musical events — no doubt many times, if you have several children — and if you’re like me, you probably don’t have much in the way of expectations that there will be soaring music or startlingly original solos. Instead, you count on your son or daughter doing well, not dropping the instrument on the gym floor and completing the evening with pride intact amid a light rain of polite applause.

These concerts are worth noticing for what they may say about how the ebb and flow of household life in America unfolds in such a surprisingly uniform way. How everyone ends up at one of these concerts on a mid-week May night — students, teachers and family members alike — is the culmination of many individual and community decisions stretching back months:  the decision that your son or daughter is going to play in the band; the choice of instrument that will be played (flute or saxophone or drums or violin or trombone), and the over-arching decision of your child’s school district that band is a desirable and necessary component of a elementary school education. (There is, of course, the even farther back decision to have children and see to their upbringing).

Kids play in band, school administrators insist on having band, and band teachers teach band earnestly if not entirely successfully, because there is a fundamental belief that youngsters need to be exposed to music.  What better way to learn about music than to play an instrument, even if it is not one of your child’s choosing!  Once, in the fourth grade, someone had the bright idea that I was a tuba prodigy and so, for six agonizing months, I twisted myself into the giant instrument and nearly blew out my innards attempting to create the sound a tuba makes.  I wanted to play the clarinet (then and still), but apparently there were already sufficient numbers of clarinetists in the band, so tuba it was for me.

Fifth Grade Band Concert

As parents, we must support band, and of course our child’s participation.  However, support in this sense is largely one of logistics, in that parents are expected to drop off and pick up their children for band practice. Parents are also expected to be on hand whenever a concert is scheduled, even if it conflicts with soccer, private piano lessons or fast pitch softball practice.  Somehow, everyone gets to where they are supposed to be, more often than not. I sometimes feel that delicate surgery would have to be postponed if it meant missing a performance.

But it’s more than logistics, of course. By some cultural imperative, parents are all but required to cheer and applaud at the appropriate moments, and bestow praise on their children afterwards.  Truth be told, if you can make out even one note played by your child, you have the ears of a field hawk.  The point of it all is the show of support for the effort expended, and it’s not just applicable to band, but also to the science fair, the Holiday pageant, the book fair, and so on.  You could reasonably conclude that much of elementary school is a series of showcase events, with our children playing the lead roles before a ready-made, captive audience.

No one really likes any of this, candidly.  You see a lot of fixed smiles on the faces of parents at band concerts.  And who can blame them; very few mothers are excited, at the end of the typical school year day, to check the calendar and see, with dismay, that the spring concert — all hands on deck — is starting in just 45 minutes and dinner prep hasn’t even begun. Parents can become nearly unglued trying to leave work on time to make the drive through rush hour traffic for two or three minutes of actual playing time.

Yet we all do it, every day, in cities and towns all over the United States. These school-related activities are an integral part of the lives we lead, like it or not. They represent the compact we have made that our children have priority status in everything we do, and we would not want it any other way. We gather together, us parents, like atoms collecting, to hear the muddled, halting renditions of “Home on the Range,” or “Ode to Joy,” with our eyes and attention fixed on our son, our daughter — the flautist third from the right, second row — who is sitting on the edge of her folding chair, precisely as instructed, blowing air into a perforated pipe.  Maybe she’s not Jethro Tull, but from where I am sitting, her playing is perfect, as good as good can be.

Up Close and Personal

This blog being about space, I thought I’d deal with what’s an increasingly common situation in which the space between people is momentarily reduced to a bare minimum.

I’m talking about hugging, of course (what did you think I had in mind?).

Hugging appears to be on the rise, despite the fact that can be cumbersome, awkward and potentially embarrassing. I have literally poked in the nose someone I was attempting to greet with a hug.  I’m sure something similar has happened to you.

Besides revealing my decreasing motor skills, hugging is an affront to my naturally reticent nature.  Somehow, I must be conveying that predilection because many people  I meet appear ready to launch a hug with me, but then back away and opt instead for the traditional handshake (which in itself is on furlough until the flu epidemic subsides).

A lot of people have misgivings about hugging, judging from what I read on the web.  Online posters will confess to the world that they find hugging distasteful or, as someone chose to describe the gesture, “irksome.”  That’s a good word, and it gets at my objections to hugging, but not quite.

I should digress for a moment to point out that I come from a family of non-huggers, so perhaps it’s a matter of genes.  The fortunate among us learn hugging from our parents because that’s what parents do:  hug us. Mine, however, not so much. My mom was restrained even on sun-filled days, but we’d hug every so often. While my father was ebullient and friendly (and a ballroom “pip,” according to his high school yearbook), he was not a hugger at all.

Hugging these days is proceeding full steam ahead and, unlike previous times of stress, it appears that hugging has become some kind of societal thumbs up. I’ve witnessed Starbucks barristas lean over the counter to hug customers.  Rugby, a game of organized hugs, is growing in popularity.  Ever notice that virtually everyone on television is always hugging everyone else?  A lot of celebrity types appear to be constantly trying to hug themselves.

In my dramatically more mundane world, professional behavior has created a hugging protocol that is more ritualistic than heartfelt.  The actual embrace goes down literally in an instant of arms entwined over shoulders, backs gently padded with the entire episode lasting no longer than, say, a lightning bolt.  Before you know it, things are back to normal, and you move on to the business at hand.

The rest of the world holds American-style hugging in barely concealed contempt, even among cultures in which rubbing noses is a traditional greeting.  And while it’s true that many Americans struggle with hugging, we are one nation, under God and indivisible in our loathing of European-style greetings (the ones with a kiss — on both cheeks, heaven help us — that is more like a bird poking at seed). Personally,  I lke the traditional greeting in India, in which people join their hands with palms pressed together (Alec Guiness was a master at this in movies) to greet another person or pay respect to an elder. When a person joins his hands and says namaste, he actually says in humility, “I bow to God in you; I love you and I respect you, as there is no one like you.”  How nice is that!

Misgivings aside, I am actually warming up to hugging as I enter my winter years.  It feels young to me, and (although awkward), fresh, and I want to be au courant, so I’m finding myself embraced in frequent rapid fire hugs, some of which I have initiated. I wish there were more to it, though; more emotion, more actual true feelings of happiness at seeing someone.  That’s difficult to do when you are about to confront your neighbor about the dog droppings left on your lawn — definitely not a hugging situation.  Certainly, you wouldn’t want to make a habit of greeting the people you work with every day with a hug; it’s how rumors start.

And so, because we don’t often mean anything by our hug, hugging is becoming devalued. A gentle suggestion, then — one that will be taken up by no one — would be that we vow to reserve hugs for those times in our lives when we absolutely need personal contact.  Like when we hit a walk-off home run or when two dear friends meet up at a high school reunion.  I’ve long admired the no-holds-barred hugs members of the military receive in airport waiting rooms.

Hugs also can be the only response in certain situations.  Years ago, when I was a reporter, I was covering a what everyone feared was a drowning.  A boy had fallen into a swollen creek and a crowd had gathered when the boy’s head bobbed up to the surface.  He was hauled onto the bank and his father came running, lifted up his child in his arms and squeezed him tight to his chest, holding on for dear life.

Hugs, reserved for the momentous occasions in our lives, are an acknowledgement of openness and vulnerability.  In that sense, they are intensely human. If you’re willing to hug or be embraced, you are signaling that your guard is down, that your defenses are on hold, and that your heart is out from behind its hiding place. They are the currency exchange of intimacy, when we have nothing left to give but ourselves.

Those are the hugs we most remember, like the moment when my Dad, in his last night in the hospital, kidneys failing, heart faltering, called me close for one last — and first — hug.

Sunlight Illumination

You have to think about sunlight to appreciate its impact on your life as it is, and has been. We know that exposure to light is a necessary component of life and that people act more graciously and are less dour on sunny days.  I know I am less of a curmudgeon.  But these are aspects of light we normally just accept as givens. Given the choice, we want sun, and when it’s obscured behind gray clouds for days on end, as it often is around here, we pine for its return.

Grain Stacks

My very first conscious memory is of sunlight illuminating the shingled roof of a house next door, which my new eyes could see out my nursery window. I was about two years old.  The details of the roof have faded (I was peering out through the rails of my crib, after all), but one thing I very much remember was that the sky that day was not blue, but white.  All these years later, I feel I am reliving a moment in my infancy on those days — usually very hot or bright — when the sky is white with thin clouds that only barely screen the sun.  On such days, I find myself transported back to that moment in my crib as I tried to make sense of the world beyond myself.

From these and similar experiences, I’ve concluded that filed away in my subconscious mind — and perhaps in yours, as well — are memories that are like templates of days. These templates form in our earliest years, and are composed of elemental senses, and they stay with us.  The effect is eerie yet also pleasant: every day is different from the last, of course, but some days jog our memory bank until it locates the identical day template from a prior (most likely much earlier) experience.  Sunlight seems to dominate the memory fragment, more than sound or smell.  We all vividly recall the particular circumstances of certain days, such as especially fun vacation days, or the dampness of a rainy spring afternoon.   What I am attempting to explain is something more basic: revisiting a certain set of circumstances that we experienced very early in life that is suddenly floods into our consciousness.  These circumstances, I believe, are most recalled as involving some  aspect of light, which is the first of the senses we have to grapple with.

I’m not talking about the well-known sense of deja vu that we all experience. Those moments are mind tricks that cause us to believe we are reliving prior events, usually a conversation or a chance encounter, when in fact we are not.  We have felt days before, going back early in our lives when light and shadow and colors were just sorting themselves out in our nascent minds.

Street Winter Sunlight and Snow

Thus, I invariably feel in the watery light of winter a cold Minnesota afternoon and the sting of snow on my chin as I fell face first from a sled.  In a similar way, crisp, sunny winter days are all brittle and snap, just like the day my father let me ride with him to the gas station — a huge concession on his part and a momentous event for me. Summer thunderstorms brewing in roiling pewter clouds looming behind shimmering green and silver leaves cause me to become fearful, just like the day, as a toddler, when I was left out in the front yard as everyone scampered for cover.  The light that at that moment, which I have seen many times since, was suffused in pink.

Which brings me to a consideration of the art of painting, and how accomplished painters are able to capture the visual depiction of light and also its visceral essence.  No matter their style or “school,” artists as varied as Constable and Diebenkorn, Van Gogh and Vermeer, all possess the uncanny ability to capture their own day templates for the world to see.

Sunday Morning

Edward Hopper’s “Sunday Morning,” for example, is surely not a study of deserted urban streetscape.  It’s about (to me, anyway) loneliness and isolation. In his evocation of a moment in time, Hopper portrays sadness as — masterfully — sunlight.

Other painters, especially Impressionists, use light (and shadow) to elevate our understanding of nature to the realm of revelation. Monet, for example, devoted a series of paintings of grain stacks as seen through different natural light settings.  His intention in these paintings was to portray how perception and emotion are conditioned by the external environment; how sunshine (or the intensity of light by season) alters both the perspective and the emotional resonance of the scene. These paintings, to me, are Monet’s day templates — visions of early life, when he first embraced sunlight.

Monet’s grain stack series points to another facet of the treatment of light in art. Painters deal with ambient light by the way it reflects off objects, and also by focusing on the effects of weather, clouds especially, on the strength and vividness of light.

Bulb Field

Van Gogh’s “Bulb Fields,” painted in 1883, focuses on a large field of flowers. The thing that catches my eye, and creates a shudder of recognition, is his treatment of thin, scudding clouds and the wan, diffused light that unifies the composition. In seeing it, I am recalling a day template from somewhere in my past.

The brilliant insight of artists like these is that light — and in particular, sunlight — is an emotional sense, and not only a physical one. The exceptional artists have, over the ages, rendered  light through the lens of emotion and memory. We’re the better for it, because when we come across a Pissaro pastoral scene or Winslow Homer landscape, our delight is two-fold.  We are looking at great art.  And we are seeing, again, a memory of a moment in our early life.

Heading Down the Highway

The recent Easter weekend provides a good reason to offer some thoughts about Interstate highway driving.  After all, it was behind the wheel of my family vehicle (Escape Hybrid) that I spent about eight hours — one full working day — driving with my family back and forth across Ohio to visit the in-laws.

Driving, especially in the vast expanse of the United States, is all about time, space and distance.  Early on, driving was thought to be pleasurable and, to some, adventurous, if not romantic.  But those notions have mostly disappeared.  Driving is a chore for most people, a drag on their “productive” time and something at best to be endured

Which Exit is Ours?

The Interstate Highway system, launched in the mid-1950’s during the Eisenhower Administration, is largely to blame for this change in attitude.  If it weren’t for the blue, white and red Interstate shields, you’d be hard-pressed to know where you are at any given moment.  Interstates don’t normally follow the scenic route because fun has been sacrificed on the altar of efficient movement from Point A to Point B.

Driving’s also become impersonal and anonymous.  It occurred to me, maneuvering through I-71’s heavy traffic, that each car, van, SUV and truck on the highway constitutes a mini, albeit temporary, world in which one or more people are encapsulated for the duration of however long the trip happens to be.  You know nothing about them, or they you, because everyone on the road is unknown to everyone else, so it’s impossible to say where folks are headed, or where they’ve been.  This was not always the case. Back in the days of CB radio, you could chat with truckers, other drivers and overnight radio hosts and find out lots of things about your fellow travelers.  Other than a few die-hards and long-haul truckers, who does that any more?

The vehicles we pass by, whose passengers are sealed from our knowledge, are not shielded from our peering curiosity.  You can see inside most cars, which is something I do whenever I am accelerating past slower drivers. You can take in a lot in a glimpse: people eating, of course, and talking on their cell phones — sometimes simultaneously.  Stoic farmers on their way to a funeral.  Rock musicians headed to a late night gig. An estranged couple furiously arguing over children and infidelities.  Any plot line is valid on the Interstate.  Drivers text messaging, or flailing at misbehaving kids in the back seat, or spilling hot coffee in their laps are all easy to spot, and best avoided, because their cars swerve across lanes, speed up and slow down for no reason, and otherwise hurtle erratically along the highway. Give me the silent farmers any day.

Our fellow travelers may be a disparate lot, but certain habits appear to be widely shared.  One is the confounding habit of most drivers to always want to position their vehicles in the passing (a.k.a. “high speed”) lane, even if that lane is crammed bumper to bumper with other cars whose drivers previously made the passing lane decision.  The thinking seems to be that it is preferable to be bogged down in the high speed lane than trapped in the right — or slower — traffic lane, which is where most tractor-trailers labor, causing annoying slowdowns.  Many people also appear to believe that drafting the vehicle directly in front of you helps with gas mileage.  Why else do drivers tuck their front end grilles as close to possible to your rear bumper, if not for the drafting technique they saw on last week’s NASCAR race?  A final bit of driving behavior comes directly from the Grand Prix circuit: many drivers you encounter on the Interstate would rather risk life and limb than allow someone to pass them. There clearly is some visceral satisfaction to be derived from preventing that Lexus or Mercedes-Benz from getting around you until you’re good and ready to let off the pedal, or exit to find a restroom.

Interstate Highway drivers and passengers are also hungry people, or so it appears.  Normally responsible parents will load up their children (and themselves) with obnoxiously bad food choices, and in sufficient quantity, to last until the next rest stop or fill up.  Chips, nuts, candy bars in gay profusion, popcorn, corn dogs, super-sized soft drinks, bottled water, pizza, candy of all flavors: these are the staples of highway travel.  Not to be confused, mind you, with regular fare available at fast food franchises that are present all along the Interstate highway system, like bamboo. What is it about driving along the Interstate that compels a rational adult to consume a double cheeseburger, large fries, a Super-sized soft drink — and a Snickers chaser?

It’s boredom.  I think the eating — and the race car tactics — have ultimately to do with our super-charged, frenetic life styles.  We simply cannot accept “down time” at any time we are not asleep. Work (or seeming to work) expands to fill each and every minute of our waking lives, so we’ve become adept at multi-tasking, even behind the wheel of a two-ton machine that in the hands of a distracted or daydreaming operator could result in horrific crashes, injuries and death.  We appear willing to take that chance with our lives, and with the lives of others, just to stay on schedule, check those voice mails, meet a deadline or check up on the whereabouts of our children.

Technology may save driving, in the end, and free up even more time to fill.  Certainly within a decade or two, we will likely give up active driving control of our vehicles for new rides equipped with breakthrough technology that will keep all vehicles at a safe distance the way magnets repel each other.  Cars and trucks will propel down the highway on puffs of air or attached to narrow-gauge tracks. Travel will be faster, safer and drudgery-free.

Then what will we do to pass the time?  Eat additional quantities of junk food until we are unable to get out from behind the wheel? Use the cell phone to tweet someone you haven’t talked to in the past year?  Reading might work, except it looks like there won’t be any newspapers or magazines around to pack for the trip.  Converse with the kids?  Are you nuts?

I’m all for bringing back the CB radio culture.  At least we could talk to the chump who’s blocking the lane ahead.

Breaker, breaker, good buddy. Park it on the right side, over . . .

He Makes the Catch

The arrival of spring brings with it the return of blessed baseball, for my money still the best game to play and watch.  One of baseball’s many pleasures is its spatial symmetry, which is best appreciated from a seat in the upper deck where a full view of the infield diamond’s subtle dimensions are visible. Did you know (I did not) that the arc from first to third base is exactly equal to the distance from home plate to second?  The measurement is 127 ft., 3-3/8 inches, let the record show.

I also like baseball’s expanse beyond the diamond, a reminder of the game’s pastoral roots.  Outfields can be, and are, as big or as oddly laid out as the real estate “footprint” allows. It explains why parks are considered either hitter or pitcher friendly based upon how close in or far out the walls are positioned vis-a-vis the batter’s box.  The outfield is where foot speed is most valued, because of the absolute need to cover so much ground. Outfielders must be lightning fast to run down fly balls and line drives, and also sufficiently skilled to judge where to run to reach the right spot for the catch.

I played baseball as a kid, on a team named the “Red Rockets.”  No unis, but we all had dark blue (wool — this was 1956) baseball caps, upon which our moms had ironed two, bright red felt letter ‘Rs’ over the bill.  I played some right field but mostly first base because I am left-handed, and baseball lore had it that lefties had an advantage at first base.  I was a no-field, no-bat kind of player, but good for a laugh or two in the dugout.

What I most remembered was how big everything really was!  As an 11-year-old, running the bases from first to third required enormous effort and stamina because of the sheer amount of ground to be covered.  The outfield was even more vast an expanse. I was fairly fast and could reasonably judge most fly balls, but I was in constant fear of being unable to track down a line drive hit into the gap between center and right field.  If you didn’t get to the ball, and it rolled to the fence, chances were pretty good that the batter (faced with his own challenge of speed and distance) would be headed for home by the time you retrieved the ball and threw it back in to the infield. Then, because baseball moves at its own languid pace, you’d be left standing out there, alone, sheepishly digging at the grass with your spiked shoe and afraid to look up or at anyone.

Sportsman Park

One summer weekend, our team, coaches and some of our parents boarded a bus and traveled to St. Louis, then and now a real baseball town, to see the Cardinals play in Sportsman Park (long since torn down).  We sat in a group along the left field line, which put us in close proximity to the great Stan (“theMan”) Musial, a lumbering but graceful hero who was a prolific hitter and a graceful fielder.  A batter for the opposing Cubs hit a looping fly ball into left center and Musial, taking off at the crack of the bat, chased down the fly for a long out.  He had to run a long, long way, but the ball was always within his loping, easy reach.  I can still see Musial’s uniform jersey, number 6, loose and baggy, surging and receding like an ocean wave, as he galloped away towards the ball.

Now it is many years later, and I recently found myself standing in the outfield of a baseball field where my son’s team was limbering up to start its spring practice.  I figured no one taking BP was ever going to hit it to where I was.  I was reminded, standing there, that for many decades in the early years of baseball, some fields didn’t have fences.  In fact, at New York’s old Polo Grounds, where the Giants played before moving to San Francisco, the fans were the fences!  Long flies could literally disappear into the crowd and still be in play, until Major League Baseball mercifully changed the rules.

Interrupting my thoughts, one of the kids practicing his swing hit a long fly that appeared headed in my direction in a high, looping arc.  If I were to catch it (and of course, I had no choice because baseball instinct compelled me to try) I quickly calculated that I needed to start running backward and fast.  I took off, but within a few steps, I slowed as if tethered.  My legs were suddenly mush. I could not traverse the grass from where I was to where I thought the ball was headed.  Helplessly, I watched as the ball plopped into the ground about 20 yards away. I retrieved it slowly, walking to it, while the kids and coaches waited.  I threw the ball back in the general direction of the infield, but the ball went mostly sideways and down, and one of the new spring players came out to pick up the ball, like a birding retriever.

It was clear to me at that moment that those vast spaces of the baseball field had now, for an older me, become as unavailable as a distant galaxy. What I once could do — and did, many times — was no longer in my power.  Try as I might, I am past the time when I could conquer the space between me and the white baseball bounding along the green grass.

What’s Your Theme Song?

Traveling the other day, I was struck, once again, by the overwhelming percentage of passers-by who wear earphones or buds. At a busy airport concourse, I guessed that probably six out of every 10 people were listening — to what?  Rock music? A book on tape?  An NPR podcast?  The Vienna Symphony?  No way to know.

The cumulative effect of this phenomenon is that it creates a privacy zone around anyone who happens to have earbuds lodged in their ears.  It’s a much more formidable “don’t bother me” barrier than, say, a scowl, because you can defuse a mean glance with a pleasant smile or a nod of passivity.  But someone who is lost in sound is usually oblivious to the sea of humanity surging by.  It really becomes challenging to even gain their attention, much less eye contact. The result is like the proverbial ship passing in the fog. People with earphones move near by, close and yet distant: there, but practically speaking, not.

Well and good.  However, the widespread use of ear devices does suggest yet another diminishment of what we used to call “society,” as the term was employed to describe the interactions and communications among neighbors, colleagues, and even total strangers.  Think about it:  how many times in the past week have you actually said “hello” to someone on the street, standing in line at the grocery checkout, or waiting to pass through airport security.  We’ve apparently concluded that extending such an old-fashioned pleasantry might be construed as something more sinister, like a pick-up line at a bar, or that there might be some sort of hidden agenda lurking behind the greeting.  Better not to become involved.  Earphones help create and maintain the proper distance.

I prefer a more benign explanation:  folks wrap their heads in earphones because they need background theme music to get them through their mundane days.  Thanks to movies, especially, we’ve become accustomed to “theme” music to drive our emotions and signal our thoughts. Hollywood producers are especially adept, these days, at choosing just the right cuts from just the most appropriate pop artists to help set off or accentuate the expressions of the actors on the screen.  The effect, I think, is to prompt the rest of us non-actors to conclude that if it works in the movies, it can work for us.  The results are magical: we’re sitting in a plane awaiting take-off and a song pops up on our iPod (one we forgotten we had downloaded). Suddenly, we are transported to some plateau that is clearly different and much less boring than we would normally experience as the jet trundles down the runway.   Music pulsating into our ears helps define who we are and, more fundamentally, who we had once set out to be.

It’s a wondrous transformation, like moving from gray winter to green spring.  The only problem is that, with earphones, it’s like being in the movies by yourself.