Indiana Oh Indiana

Along with much of the rest of the country, and perhaps the world, I have been thinking this past week about the apparently senseless stabbings at Franklin High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania.

This outburst of mindless violence is certainly nothing new. The Columbine shootings from 1999 and the mass slaughter at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in July of 2012 are only two examples that come to mind, though making a long list of additional examples need not necessarily strengthen the point I want to make about the seeming lack of motive in such cases.

As “rational” beings, we crave reasons or catalysts for most occurrences, especially those incidents resulting in wanton cruelty and violence. As inappropriate and horrific as such attacks may be, we can begin to comprehend them if there is any reason for provocation, such as bullying or actual physical torment first. As unspeakably violent as war is, it usually remains a somewhat distant and safe abstraction for most of us, softened further by our clinging to “reasons” like, protecting our freedom or that of another country in distress.

We can’t quite get our minds around a seemingly unprovoked, haphazard attack on innocent people, especially those completely surprised and unequipped to defend themselves (larger example on a national scale might be Pearl Harbor in December of 1941). All of this goes against reason itself and creates short circuits in our sense of the rational. The attorney of the sixteen-year-old, knife-wielding attacker called the young fellow a “nice young man” with no history of psychotic outbursts or other violent behavior. That attorney went on to say that those knife attacks seemed to come “out of nowhere.”

One concern that continues to haunt me about those individuals, who tote weapons of any kind and suddenly go mad in attacking crowds of innocent people is that in so many cases no one around the aggressors seems to have noticed any odd behavior before the dreadful acts of ferocity began. Like most other people, I feel a terrible need to attribute a reason for such aggression, not because it can diminish in any way the grotesque results of the crimes, but because I have a human need to believe that our behavior happens in reasonable sequences, one leading to another through need or provocation. Horrible acts of violence that cannot be connected to any source or reason are perhaps as terrifying to me as asteroids changing their orbits for no apparent reason and heading straight for my home and those I love.    JB

I suppose this may turn into some kind of confession, but it would be seen as such only by people who see me on the train, walking down the sidewalk or in a grocery store. Strangers might not guess that I have an obsessive compulsive disorder.

My friends and family are well aware of my frenzy for a sense of harmony and order, though I don’t impose my mania upon others, except maybe my partner Jim, who doesn’t dare leave an unfinished drink on a table for fear of returning a moment later to find the glass washed, dried, and put back into the cabinet, or a clean shirt innocently draped over a chair and being found just seconds later in the dirty clothes hamper upstairs. I don’t do these things to aggravate others. My actions are simply automatic responses to what my mind (or what’s left of it) sees as parts of my world being in some way out of alignment.

Part of all this nonsense is based upon my excessive desire to be able to find things right away when I need them and not to see them scattered about. An avid fan of the TV show Hoarders, I am repeatedly fascinated by people whose lives seem to have no anchors of material organization and for whom even finding the household vacuum cleaner can mean calling in a team of professionals to do a major search, while wearing masks to avoid the fumes from the pumpkins and grapefruits that have been on the kitchen counter since 2003. Of course, those hoarders might see me as an extraterrestrial creature too, one that organizes linens and pantry items by color. Maybe a TV show about obsessive compulsive folks like me would entertain the crap out of hoarders. Who knows?

A friend told me last week that I was so OCD that I should really be labeled CDO, only because of my inclination to number or alphabetize everything in my home. Though Don was spot on regarding the issue, I was a bit put off by his remark, because I see myself as being politically liberal, generous to friends, family, and worthy outside causes. I would never dream of judging or criticizing organizational habits of friends, even if those habits resembled those of Ma and Pa Kettle.

I admit to being Felix Unger, and I believe that Jim would have to admit being Oscar Madison. I make sure that Jim’s wallet never goes through the washing machine cycle, but he solves problems involving plumbing, carpentry, and electricity. He asks me almost hourly where things in the house are, everything from an electric drill to a paperclip, and I invariably know the location. Our two worlds collide in practical ways, as one partner takes care of the other, always defusing anger that for other couples might mean one of them being found eventually buried under a freshly poured concrete driveway.

The advantages to someone living with an OCD person are that there will never be dirty dishes in the sink, that clean laundry will be folded neatly and organized in drawers and on coat hangers, that there will be clean windows, carpets, and floors, and that everything in the house will have its place in an environment of comfortable, physical stability. The downside might be that the Oscar Madisons in these households will feel, by contrast, even more like slobs than they ever did before.

If it were up to Jim to organize the house, it would contain stray shopping carts found on the streets and filled with our worldly possessions. Our tax records and other important documents would undoubtedly be stored in old pizza boxes, possibly by year but more than likely by the dried pizza toppings on the outside of each box.

I shudder to think of the rebuttal Jim might create in response to my little diatribe, but if he writes one, I’ll be glad to post it, if only in the interest of sequences, organized communication, and humor itself.    JB

As someone who taught high school English for thirty-five years, I know the value of reading and the joy or sorrow it can bring to students of all reading levels.

My first motivation to read came from my parents. When I was only two years old, they began a ritual of reading to me at bedtime, taking turns each night. This habit made bedtime a pleasure for me and then for my younger brother and sister. Bedtime stories read aloud became things we looked forward to and provided a peaceful bond between us and our parents. After I reached the age of two,  Mom and Dad took us to the public library, where we were able to choose books in the children’s section. At that early age, I began by picking books for the pictures and then for the stories. Next my parents would ask us to tell the stories based upon what we remembered of the books, often using illustrations as guides. Then came the words we began to recognize and repeat.

Dad said that if we liked books, we need never be bored or feel lonely. That wisdom was proven true over and over again as I was growing up and is still as accurate as it ever was when I was a child. On every summer trip we took with us in our station wagon a selection of books to read en route.  I will always be grateful to my parents for hooking me and my siblings on reading. A new book to read was the one thing we were never denied as kids. There might not always have been money for new bikes, but there was always money for new things to read. My brother David, my sister Connie Lynn, and I could often be found curled up in a cozy corner with books we loved. Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, Dr. Seuss, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Aesop’s Fables were among these.

My grandparents bought us the Young Folks Shelf of Books, a set of ten volumes published in the 1940’s by Collier. There were earlier and later editions of these books, but I still have the ones given to us when I was still in diapers.

When I taught high school, I tried hard to find books that interested each kid, even though we also had a roster of books in the required reading curriculum. I knew that once a kid found a book he or she loved, a life could be changed forever.

It saddens me at times to see kids constantly using their thumbs to text mind-numbing and uncreative messages instead of challenging themselves with good books. I was delighted by the Harry Potter revolution. I still love seeing teenagers and younger kids carrying books that are their own choices, books that enrich as well as entertain. We can all be sensitized and made better by reading. It’s a private joy but also one that can be shared in our discussions of why we liked what we have read as we pass on books to friends and relatives. It doesn’t matter if the book is old with yellow pages that smell of the distant past or electronic Kindle Readers. Reading is a window to enhance our curiosity and sense of wonder about everything around us. I urge all the parents out there to make reading a pleasure you share with your kids. They will be forever enriched by it and grateful for your loving efforts.   JB

It’s 8:30 Sunday morning in Pompano Beach, where I spend winters now. Clocks across the country moved ahead an hour, but my mind tells me it’s really only 7:30, insofar as that makes any difference. I don’t feel cheated in any way, because I’m sitting in my favorite spot on the planet, my terrace overlooking a small lake and golf course, where sunlight is splashing across the mirror surface of the water, the green of the lawns with many old Banyan trees and palms. The only sounds are those of the many songbirds and an occasional airplane on its way to some polar region.

It’s important to have a special place where you can find a sense of peace, a place where you can regenerate your spirit, even if that “place” is only a little nook in the mind, a niche bringing the memory of a quiet corner at Grandma’s house, a seat on a log in a well-loved forest retreat, or a book in which to escape for a while the world’s intrusive hustle and bustle.

Buddhists and yogi are good at creating through meditation that sense of tranquility that renews a feeling of wellbeing. I’m not so spiritually accomplished. In the middle of a traffic jam, I’m a puddle of impatience and conflict. I need the harmony and repose of an actual, physical place, where serenity is around me, usually from nature, as on a quiet beach where I’m listening to the steady pulse of waves breaking on the shore. Here is a photo of the terrace view I have over my coffee every morning.

It is here I gather amity and concord to get me through whatever I may have to face during the rest of the day. In these terms, it becomes easier to understand the purpose and power of prayer, or at least some kind of healing connection to something greater than the self alone. It may be similar to that glowing sense of communion we experience from the beauty of an exceptional piece of art, or the wordless power of a sunset.

Whatever it is, we all need it in one form or another, as a material place, or some kind of imagined or remembered environment tucked away safely in the heart and mind. Either way, it can be a place we go in order to find quiescence and strength again in an agitated and noisy world.  JB

The music we listen to often provides signposts for the events of our lives. A song or other piece of music can be a sensory trigger catapulting us back to moments we think we’ve forgotten.

Marcel Proust believed, and demonstrated in his monumental novel, La Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) that olfactory stimuli (primarily taste and smell) were indelible sources of recollection. The mere taste of a madeleine (type of French lemon cookie) dipped into a cup of hot mint tea resurrected with great intensity a moment from his childhood thirty years before. Our sensory experiences are often stronger than our intellectual ones in terms of their ability to remain dormant but powerful.

The same sensory principle applies, I think, to audio stimuli, particularly ones involving music and human voices. I have a cassette tape my sister Connie Lynn and I made in 1978 of our grandparents. The recording is ninety minutes of conversation with Grandma and Grandpa along with their verbally animated stories of times gone by. Whenever I play it, those voices from all those years ago transport me back to my childhood and youth, despite the deaths of both grandparents before 1995 and the death of my sister in 2011. The timbre of those voices in some chilling, powerful, but unexplainable way, makes me young again just for a moment.

The song, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” takes me back to the fourth grade in the rickety, old portable buildings of Harding School in the early 1950’s. Even just the tune to “Happy Birthday” summons scenes of my family gathered ‘round cakes with candles to be blown out while making wishes. “Silent Night” and other carols take me back to the Christmas seasons throughout my life and those cold winter nights when the songs had such profound meaning. The Beatles, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, The Doobie Brothers, Tony Bennett, The Supremes, Judy Collins, and The Temptations carry me back, as if in a time machine, to the dorms of my college days. Whenever I hear “The Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber, I experience again with perfect clarity the aftermath and television news coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November of 1963.

The ear recalls so much joy and sadness through music we’ve loved and the voices of those people who influenced us most, especially those from childhood. It’s possible for most of us to unearth strong memories tied to associations between music and vivid times in our lives that the music represents. Each of us can create his or her own list of music and voices from the past through sensory and emotional association. 

What pieces of music have the most power to take you back to another time in your life?   JB

A couple of weeks, ago I received a notice from the IRS concerning a mortgage deduction I took in 2011. The letter indicated that I would owe an additional $1022 (and any further interest) unless I produced documentation showing that my deduction was justified. This is the first issue I have ever had with the IRS, so the letter made my blood chill a bit when I considered the horror stories I had heard from friends and relatives about their experiences with this allegedly grim, American institution.

I gathered some paperwork and set my car’s GPS for the IRS office, which is ten miles from my winter home in Florida. I arrived at the gray stone building (just the kind of architecture one would expect for an IRS structure) and saw a line of people outside its big doors. This was not a good sign, but I parked the car and joined the folks outside those massive portals. Though sunny, the morning was chilly, and the line of twenty to thirty people stood in that shaded area shivering as though it were a winter’s day somewhere up north. Of course, I didn’t have my jacket, which was in the car, but I was afraid to leave my place in the line, which was growing by the minute. A uniformed guard opened the door every few minutes to admit five more people. My turn came, and I was led to a security area equipped with metal detectors and a walkthrough x-ray kind of machine. We were asked to place everything metal, including change, jewelry, watches, cellphones, and belts with buckles into baskets, like the ones at the airport and then were led a few at a time to the first waiting room, where we were issued call numbers. The room held about forty people called three or four at a time to the next waiting area, where we were issued new call numbers. There were approximately seventy of us sitting on chairs in the new area, called tree or four at a time to the ten numbered windows behind which were IRS agents, ready to deal with our various problems and questions.

Behind me was an Asian Indian couple with two small children, a girl aged about three and a boy about two. The beauty of the little family faded gradually as I observed that the boy was horribly spoiled and controlled both his parents by screaming at the top of his lungs whenever he wanted something, even if only some attention. His shrill voice had the effect of a fingernail on a chalkboard. It was obvious that he was able to play his parents like musical instruments, and I suspect that this was due to the fact that in their culture, boys are given more leeway than girls, who are considered the less important gender. The three-year-old girl was absolutely charming and beautifully behaved. She knew exactly how her parents expected her to control herself. There was simply no question about that. The little boy, however, was in charge. I knew that I couldn’t leave my seat to escape outside even for a minute, as I would lose the seat to the many others, who were streaming into the room to find seats too. After four hours, my bladder felt ready to burst, but I couldn’t risk losing that chair. Standing would have been worse, and I didn’t know how much longer I would have to wait. The worst moments came when a woman changed the TV station in the room to a fundamentalist channel with a screaming rightwing preacher hurling accusations of sin at all of us, even though there was no sound, just printed words on the screen. I turned away, avoiding the eternal damnation that seemed to be the evangelist’s programming sponsor. In fact, the hellfire described by the preacher didn’t seem any worse than what the IRS might have in store for us poor taxpayers.

The waiting room was filled with the sounds of Spanish, Hindi, Eastern European tongues, an African dialect, and a little bit of English. It made me think of Ellis Island at the beginning of the last century, with all those people coming to America to find a better life than they had known abroad. I felt like an immigrant myself this afternoon, puzzled by languages I didn’t understand, hoping that everything would come out all right for me at last.

Finally after more than five hours, my number was called for “window ten,” which turned out to be the only actual room. I entered and closed the door behind me to help muffle the shrieking children still carrying on in the waiting room. Joe, the agent, smiled and welcomed me, apologizing about the long wait, which he said was even worse on some other days. I gave him the letter from the IRS and explained my circumstances. He gave me instructions on how to clear up the matter and shook my hand before I left. When I walked out of the room, I actually thought briefly that it might have been worth just writing a check to the IRS for the $1022 instead of sitting in that torture chamber all day. At least now I know how to deal with the matter, should it ever come up again. If it does, I’ll just mail in the documents in order to escape the nightmare of hours in that waiting area, a place with which even Dante’s Inferno couldn’t compete.   JB

I love Southern Florida for many reasons, including the balmy winter weather, the beauty of flora and fauna, the ocean breezes, the friendly people, and the absence of state income tax. Among those reasons, driving will not be found. Native drivers here continue to astonish me with their apparent oblivion over simple rules of the road that are encountered in most other parts of the country, except perhaps in New York City.

I was here in Pompano Beach for several weeks last year before encountering another driver who used a turn signal. That event was a relief to me just when I was beginning to believe that using turn signals down here might actually be against the law. Strange as it may seem, I thought there could be a different rule in this part of the country…something like, “If you use your turn signal you WILL be arrested and do prison time.”

Countless times I have been cut off by other drivers, who simply assume that my psychic powers will notify me that they are changing lanes. In a moment of wild mental abandon, I also wondered if there might be clinics down here, where drivers had those tiny portions of their brains dealing with turn signals surgically removed. Standing in lines at the bank and at super markets, I’ve been looking at the backs of people’s heads for cranial scars as proof that my bizarre notion might be factual. No luck yet in detecting scars like those, despite the bald head of a shopper in front of me at Publix Super Market the other day, a head sporting tattoos of two arrows, one pointing right and the other pointing left. I groped for an interpretation but was afraid to ask what the arrows meant. Maybe he was just bisexual.

In Southern Florida there are also more licensed drivers over the age of one hundred than in any other place in the country. The other day I saw a woman driver I’m guessing was at least two hundred years old, whom I couldn’t even see until I passed her vehicle that appeared to be driving itself. She was too short to be detected except for two arms upward grasping the steering wheel. I suppose she wasn’t even able to reach the turn signal controls.

Because it is perpetually summer here, many drivers leave their car windows down and instead of using the standard turn signal lights, those motorists simply lean their left arms out the driver’s side in a lazy, casual attempt to let others know of some kind of turn. This attempt, of course is not effective, because such drivers rarely, if ever, form an “L” to show the intention to turn right or use the arm straight out to signal a left turn. It’s almost a challenge that says, “OK, everybody. I’m about to do something here with my car. See if you can guess what it is in time not to create a crash.”

I continue to use my turn signals from years of not having driven my car any other way and am pretty sure that Floridian drivers behind me see me as an anomaly or simply as someone, who has indulged in fancy accessories for my automobile.   JB

This morning I’ve been watching some of the personal videos posted on FaceBook. I’ve looked at twenty of them so far and have been surprised at how deeply moved I have been at every one of them.

To see someone’s life compacted into a tiny video filled with photos of those shining moments of vitality, sentiment, and recollection of those who are loved and kindly remembered is a powerful experience.

The wedding scenes, the newborn babies, old friends, birthday cakes, graduations, even the silly moments of unexpected humor along the way make what is found in these little films a reminder of some things that we share as a species.

Those small clips of memories show us that we all experience together more than we usually think we do. They have all brought both smiles and tears today, because they are reminders of what we all share somehow in being alive as human beings.  JB

Downton Abbey…Episode for February 2

For me the most interesting conflict of the evening was between the Dowager Countess and Isobel Crawley. They are on such opposite poles of values in society, the dowager being so spoiled and used to being the cherry on top of the sundae…and Isobel so conscious of her duty to make the world a better, fairer place for people like the newly hired hand of whom the dowager is so very suspicious from the beginning. I enjoyed Isobel’s triumph, but was also relieved to see that the dowager was actually made of better stuff than I had supposed in her apology and rehiring of the young man. For the first time, Isobel was speechless. Isobel is the modern woman, while the dowager is a throwback to the serfdom of times gone by. What marvelous social foes they make!

Thomas Barrow is a villain of the first degree. The tension he creates only adds to my desire that he be thwarted for his efforts to ruin other people’s lives. I want the hold he has on the new lady’s maid to be broken soon, though I doubt that will happen.

Tom Branson, the late Sybil’s husband, is a good man with good intentions for helping to take care of the estate. I’m hoping that he acquires more confidence in himself. The family has accepted him. They respect him and even like him.

Lady Mary remains in a nether world, still grieving over the loss of her husband Matthew. Now I grieve for her.

Mary’s sister, Edith, is a puzzle to me. I fear she may have placed her trust too soon in the man she has agreed to marry. Not yet sure where that’s going.  At any rate, I love the series and feel drawn into the plot twists and conflicts. For example, I loved the way Lady Grantham handled the restaurant scene when the head waiter was snubbing Bates and his wife Anna. Great stuff!   JB

We live in a world that is fragmented by special interest groups represented by social classes, political parties, religious sects, race, education, gender, age, income, even language. Divisions between groups and factions range from subtle to severe, almost to the point of convulsive, as in cases involving fundamentalist religious zeal, separating fanatics from everyone else, even to the point of genocide and other heinous crimes that under any other circumstances would be considered unspeakable acts of horror, even by the zealots themselves.

As human beings we share a need to belong. Being excluded from groups with which we identify in some way makes us feel separate in negative ways, and our sense of self-worth takes a nosedive from the awful feeling of being left out.

At this time of year, for example, group loyalty to sports teams becomes laser sharp regarding the Olympics and football teams for the Super Bowl. That powerful feeling of being outside the borders of acceptance is especially vigorous on a larger scale at a time when the division between the haves and the have-nots (the one percent versus everybody else) is so pronounced. No matter who we are, we are all strangers somewhere in places we feel we don’t belong. The borders we create are often purely artificial, or at least more psychological than physical. Our human tendency to categorize is also what prevents us from seeing our species as one vast but varied human family.

Our insatiable need to create comfort zones socially, economically, politically, and religiously creates at times much more strife than harmony. Such divisions are based also upon our all too human need or desire to be “right,” which generally means that somebody has to be “wrong” too.

Even the best informed among us live within walls of some kind of prejudice, especially when we accept without question what has been told to us by those who came before. Ignorance breeds ignorance until we see that as human beings, we are probably more alike than we ever suspected. There was a time when slavery was considered by many to be perfectly all right and was condoned even from pulpits all across our country. It seems we can justify almost anything, at least for a while.

It would be a much more harmonious world if we could remember that everyone has a life story to tell and that all those stories contain elements of pain and joy, despair and hope, ignorance and awareness, fear and courage that, in their purest forms, have not changed so very much over many thousands of years, any more than the human face itself has changed in that time.

Our human tendency to look down our noses at others who are different in some ways is perhaps one of the greatest stumbling blocks impeding enlightenment, and it is a stumbling block that cannot really be removed by technology alone. In that sense, we have a long way to go before we reach any mountain top or promise land.   JB