Here Today, Gone Tomorrow,

—It Won’t Be the First Time

 

In discussing the proposals to battle the effects of global warming, specifically ambitious carbon reduction, Thomas Donohoe, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said, “There is no way this can be done without fundamentally changing the American way of life.”

Now there is no way to know what aspects of the American way of life he was referring to; the ongoing effort to eliminate the middle class, our fascination with guns, our propensity towards violence as a first line of defense for matters big and small, our love affair with mediocre T.V. and lots of it, our dependency on fast food, our refusal to avoid HOV lanes at all cost, or our determination to live in the past even when we know the past wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

My guess is it is the last one. We continue to think, as Jerry Lee Lewis expressed so aptly a half century ago—Has it been that long?—that we Americans really “have the bull by the horn-a.”

Has fundamentally changing a way of life ever been a good thing?

The obvious answer is ah…well…ah yes, yes it has—especially when that fundamental way of life doesn’t seem to be working.

Living in filth during the Black Plague seemed like the only way to go until someone got the bright idea that cleanliness is next to Godliness. It took a while because Europe was a pretty big cesspool but in time and with a great deal of effort and expense, Europe cleaned up its act and eliminated a deadly disease in the process. And when it was over, the only question being asked was, what the hell took us so long.

Of course, the answer to that question was that for a long time not everyone was walking around in the filth but when they learned that you didn’t have to actually walk around in the filth to be affected by it, fundamental changes occurred and plagues, for the most part, now only turn up in children’s nursery rhymes.

But you can go back even further, right to the beginning in fact. There was a time, and people tend to forget this, but there was a time when men lived in caves. Not only did he live in caves but he was damn happy to be doing so. He had his fire going, a bed of straw, a coat of fur, and a stack of rocks to keep the neighbors out of his yards.

Then someone came up with the bright idea that they could do better and the natural response was, “What, better than this?”

That was a cave man trying to hold on to his fundamental way of life. That was a caveman flat out rejecting the idea that while bear coats might be appropriate for everyday wear, deerskins might be better for formal events.

The world that has been continually changing from day one. And no faction of society has successfully been able to apply the brakes to change. So again the question becomes, why do we still fear it?

The answer is no one really fears change. But some people have a stake in avoiding it.

So the next time someone—someone in the oil business, say, makes the argument—yes, we could go to wind power and solar power, and it would be cleaner, but do we really want to turn our backs on dirty coal?

You tell him not to let the windmill blade hit him on the way out of the 20^th century. And remind him that today’s fundamental way of life is yesterday’s old news and today’s new ideas will be tomorrow’s fundamental way of life—but not forever.

  

Writing will improve when readers demand it. Reading will improve when there's something worth reading.

A recent article entitled, “SOL SCORE STAGNATION” highlighted the fact that

reading and writing scores are down. State officials point out that like math scores, which were once also down but are now on the rise, reading and writing scores will also rise once students become more comfortable with the tests. Interesting. They do not say that reading and writing will become better—only that scores will get better.

I garnered this information from my Thursday edition of the Virginian-Pilot but the vast majority of people getting this news will pull the story off the Internet. There, they will be free to go immediately to the comment section and read what anonymous people everywhere were saying about the story; and by the fifth or sixth comment also discover what these anonymous people were saying about everything and anything else under the sun while breaking every imaginable grammar rule in the book—assuming there still are grammar books.

They can then Tweet and text their friends about the article. The good news is no one will be grading those.

Reading and writing scores are down because reading and writing serve no purpose in the modern world—at least not reading and writing the way it used to be. Today, words are out, punctuation is out, complete sentences are out, and coherent ideas are out.

LOL, !!!!!, & :'(  (for crying out loud) are in.

For the past year, I have been transcribing letters between my father, when he was a POW in Germany and my mother, a WAVE serving in Pensacola, Florida. Their engagement, like those of most of their friends from that era, was carried on through the mail. These letters help to point out the stark differences between then and now. They also say something about reading and writing.

Most importantly, I can hold these letters, which are over 70 years old in my hand just as my parents did when they sent and received them. Most of the millions of Tweets and comments that have been posted online over just the short time I have been writing this have already been forgotten and been moved down the page—never to be seen again, replaced by even less important and equally forgettable stuff.

My father was captured in Sicily on July 22, 1943. She continued writing even though her letters were being returned, “addressee missing in action.”  He continued to write not knowing if his letters were even being received. Finally, on February 4, 1944 he receive his first letter from home. He responded immediately, “Finally received a letter from home. You can imagine what it meant to me.”

Waiting for something makes it more important. Knowing that someone else is waiting for your response makes what you say and how you say it even more important.

Today, if something is posted on Facebook and doesn’t receive a “Like” within a reasonable amount of time—usually a few hours—the poster wants to know what happened. With so many words going out to so many people so many times on so many subject, the obvious question becomes, “How can any of it be important?”

The answer is, it isn’t.

And neither are the writing skills that go into texting and Tweeting. Once you become used to reading misspelled words and miss-punctuated sentences, not to mention sentences that don’t even make sense to begin with, it’s not long before reading skills also go out the window.

In today’s world, speed is of the essence. That and ease—easy to write, easy to read. If it isn’t easy and it isn’t fast, then it isn’t getting done. In today’s world of low reading and writing scores, nobody is going to wait almost a year for a response. Who has that kind of time?

Lest a young reader think I’m just another disgruntled old dinosaur out of touch with the always changing times, I’d point out that when I was their age we had abbreviated, coded messages, too.

Whether as students away at college or soldiers in Vietnam, our correspondence often contained the cryptic message S.W.A.K. (sealed with a kiss) on the flap of the envelope. The only difference between then and now is that we also had a written letter inside that could be held in our hands and read. Some of us still have those letters.

 

  

 

 

The Times They are a-changin'

The Virginian-Pilot Sunday Forum, August 3, 2014.


FIFTY YEARS ago Bob Dylan recorded what for many became the standard for the turbulent ’60s. 

Most of the politicians he sang about are gone now. So are most of the parents. He was right: “The times, they [were] a changin’.”

The young people he sang to have become today’s politicians, parents and grandparents. 

Back then, as teens, we were looking to the future and telling our leaders and parents that if they couldn’t do the same, they should “get out of the way, don’t block up the road.” Today, we’re the ones looking over our shoulder.

And just like our parents and leaders then, we aren’t comfortable in a changing world. I talk to people all the time who say they don’t care anymore. They’ve given up on their leaders, their country and everything in between. They don’t vote because “they’re all crooks.”

The Wealthy Also Have a Dream (final installment)

Don't Wake Us From This Dream

To their credit and despite the brutal attacks waged against them by workers—often out of sheer jealousy—the rich continued to make money. The number of millionaires grew from a mere 50 in 1848 to 5,000 in 1910. Despite a crippling income tax that stole virtually every dime they made, the number of millionaires somehow—by hook or by crook—grew to 50,000 in 1958 and 500,000 in 1980. But always in the back of their minds was the notion; how much more money could they have acquired were taxation not robbing them blind—or at least making them teary-eyed.

Workers continued to accuse their bosses of being greedy and indifferent, some might say insensitive, to the plight of labor. But workers didn’t have to walk in fine Italian shoes or ride in long limos or fly in company jets and know that those shoes could have been even shinier, the limos even longer and the jets bigger and faster. Workers didn’t have to spend every waking moment burdened by images of how things might have been, could have been—dammit, should have been.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. The “Money Movement” that had begun with so much promise with Taft-Hartley was faltering. Who would deliver the spark needed to restore dignity to the downtrodden rich man? The young didn’t worry about the rich the way they had worried about the Vietnam War. Blacks didn’t concern themselves with the plight of the rich the way they had obsessed about Civil Rights. And the rich certainly couldn’t count on Feminists, whose concerns were lagging so far behind that “glass ceiling” wasn’t even in the vernacular yet.

The Wealthy Also Have a Dream (continued)

The Dark Days

Many say the beginning of the end to actually enjoying being wealthy was the great railroad strike of 1877 and the many other labor strikes that occurred in its wake. These events served fair warning to the Captains of Industry that the gilded train they had been riding was about to derail. Maybe derail is too strong a word, but the ride was going to get a little bumpier as their grip on the purse strings loosened. But they weren’t going to roll over and die without a fight. They weren’t called Captains of Industry for nothing.

In 1957, the Mafia held an informal, casual dress board meeting at the palatial estate of Joseph “The Barber” Barbara in Apalachin, N.Y to devise a game plan for dividing the underworld empire of assassinated kingpin Albert Anastasia. Big news at the time, it wasn’t the first time the rich and powerful got close and personal. Back in 1889, the great railroad magnates assembled at J. P. Morgan's home at No. 219 Madison Avenue to form, in the phrase of the day, an iron-clad combination on how to deal with the labor issues confronting them.
Key to their plan was maintaining their control over the federal government, which was already very much beholding to these money magnates. How beholden?

In 1887, President Cleveland vetoed a bill appropriating $100,000 to draught-stricken Texas farmers because he didn’t want to weaken the sturdiness of our national character by encouraging the expectation of paternal care by the government. This tough-love approach was for the farmer’s own good. That same year, when it came to dealing with wealthy bondholders, his paternal instincts kicked in, and his concern for the sturdiness of our national character took the day off as he used a treasury surplus to pay off $100 bonds at a rate $28 dollars above value—a gift of $45 million.

Whether Republicans or Democrats held office made little difference because the real power rested with this small group of men with all the money. Socialist and Populist groups took up the cause of workers, but were never more than weak third parties capable of small gains but unable to make a real difference.

The Wealthy Also Have a Dream

The Good Olde Days

Shedding the shackles and scourge of oppression is never easy.
Just ask the wealthy.

Never have so few had so much taken from them under the guise of helping so many inferior and ungrateful peons. Why, they’ve been down so long, they don’t know which way is up.

But, you say, aren’t they rich? How hard can being rich be, and might their sense of oppression be all in their heads?

The answers to these questions are yes, harder than you think and of course it’s all in their heads. That doesn’t make their oppression all right or even a little right—or them all wrong or even a little wrong.

Charles Dickens didn’t know the half of it when he wrote in 1859, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” He could have also added, “And you ain’t seen nothing yet.” The decades just ahead would be recognized for both the unfathomable accumulation of wealth by the very, very, very few and the unspeakable poverty experienced by the many, many, many millions of workers. 

There was a time—and you may find this hard to believe—when the wealthy controlled everything. Captains of Industry, sometimes irreverently referred to as Robber Barons, had it all—money, power, Congress and presidents in their back pockets—not to mention the hatred of almost every American worker. This hatred was more telling than you might imagine as any CEO will tell you: if the workers don’t like you, you must be doing something right.

Fourth of July—the way our forefathers intended it to be

There are probably a dozen different ways to celebrate the Fourth of July, but this year I found myself focusing on only two. One I actually participated in and the other, an imagined Tea Party rally based on what I’ve garnered from the nightly news over the past four years.

Both celebrations included flags, lots of them, often incorporated into shirts and vests, but everything else about the two happenings were very different.  

The Tea Party party I envisioned in my head featured a number of speakers who called for taking back the government—from whom, no one would say. They also touched on the notion that our president is a dictator; that our unemployed—once productive workers when they were working have somehow morphed into lazy moochers now that their jobs are gone; and that the immigrants flowing across our borders are a different, substandard class than the ones most of us are descended from.

The speakers were confident that once this government take-back was accomplished, taxes would go down, the economy go up, roads will become drivable again, and the nanny state will get off our backs—freeing us all up to become the millionaires we were always meant to be. We will again be a nation of God-fearing, patriotic, self-reliant rugged individuals like the ones that built this nation into what it is today before all the losers started tearing it down into what it is today.

It goes without saying that there was a multitude of guns present, which any freedom loving American will tell you is the cornerstone of a strong free nation—not to mention, the lynchpin of a strong economy.

The Fourth of July celebration that I actually attended took place in the community of Brockport, New York along the banks of the Erie Canal. It consisted mostly of farmers from the neighboring towns or men and women who used to work at the nearby Kodak plants before those in charge cashed in their chips leaving Rochester’s industrious workers to fend for themselves. These people now worked in the local businesses that dotted the area more known for its cabbage, corn, and fruit crops. In spite of the hard times that have bedeviled this area for the last 20 years or so, everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Because the real world they lived in kept them from trouncing around the country all the time, and they were too practical to invest in something they could wear only once a year, I saw a lot of overalls but no tri-corned hats.

The flags at my real celebration were your basic “Stars and Stripes.” I didn’t see a single “Don’t Tread on me” or any flags with images of Sarah Palin. There were no Confederate flags because even though New York fought in the Civil War, New Yorkers choose to associate with the war that won our independence, not the war that almost tore our nation apart.

The Brockport celebration didn’t depend on outside agitators with agendas to carry the day but rather on locals with unbounded spirit. Instead of incensing the crowd with rhetoric, they inspired us with song—patriotic music performed by community choruses and ensembles and, of course, the world famous Brockport High School band. Each performance, no matter the group, included present members, future members and alumni from across the nation. To my untrained eye, the adults, young adults, children and senior citizens seemed to value each other’s contributions.

One highlight was a medley of service songs, calling on those in attendance to stand when their anthem was played. This was as military as it got. There was no discussion of America’s involvement or lack of involvement in overseas struggles.

Our president wasn’t insulted. He wasn’t accused of being too weak, too strong, too hardheaded, or too indecisive. It wasn’t even suggested that he is un-American. In essence, the whole affair seemed to be a celebration of America and not a condemnation of Americans.

I didn’t speak to anyone during my stay in Brockport who wasn’t a hunter or didn’t own a gun; but I saw no firearms. And there didn’t appear to be any militias present, although everyone seemed capable of defending themselves and property. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, was exercising his or her own second amendment right to own and bear arms but apparently, the right to own and bear arms does not entail making a spectacle of yourself. 

I came away from the two events—one witnessed in person and the other seared into my brain by three or four years of news reports, with one very intriguing question about America.

Why do people who proclaim to love their country seem to hate their president, government and fellow citizens so much?