Saturday
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3/10/05
Family By Firelight
It was in early nineteenth century Nottingham that a mythical textile worker by the name of Ned Ludd was busy plying his trade and was also, I'm sure he would have you believe, generally minding his own business. By 1811 though, self proclaimed Luddites had decided that the voracious socio-economic steamroller of change that was the industrial revolution had gone far enough and was clearly destroying their way of life through rising unemployment and falling wages. So it was in that year that they rose up in protest and, depending on which political stripe you are, either heroically or criminally began smashing the mechanical looms that symbolized the ascension of profit driven kleptocracy over the rights and needs of the common man.
The local authorities, if you can believe it, didn't take very kindly to this sort of bad behavior and came to the rescue of the beleaguered and defenseless industrial plutocrats who owned said looms and hanged 17 of Ned's closest friends for their efforts in 1813. If nothing else, this did ensure them historical notoriety as proto-hippies fighting the insatiable beast that is progress.
After the lights went out our boys shrieked. I swore an oath. My Lovely Bride, as best I can tell, remained as placid as ever. Despite everyone's varied reactions though, we came together as a team in surprisingly fine form: My Lovely Bride filled the house with candles, I finished cooking dinner on the grill, the boys chased each other through the house with flashlights like maniacs, and a few well placed logs in the fireplace warmed our now furnace-less home.
By 8:30 we were all snuggled up around the fire as an unfamiliar sort of peace began to settle over us. Our oldest lad was reading one of the innumerable Lemony Snicket books as my Lovely Bride read one of the innumerable Magic Tree House books to our youngest. I did my part as well; I sat quietly in the big blue chair in which no one ever sits and gazed into the fire.
It wasn't long before that sense of peace came precariously close to resembling tranquility. There were no episodes of Queer Eye to Tivo, there was no last email of the day to check, and there was no stereo droning on in the background as it usually does to provide the soundtrack of our lives. Indeed, it had taken only a few hours for all the noise and chatter and busy nonsense of our electronically over-stimulated lives to melt away.
That night we spent just reading and talking quietly by the fire actually struck me as reminiscent of a scene out of any Regency era novel; it was not unlike spending an evening with a few of Jane Austen's favorite characters. Except without all the romance, intrigue and witty banter. You get the idea.
But still, all it took was just that one quiet night to remind me that it's far too easy for us to lose each other in the tsunami of noise and distraction that fills our lives.
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3/10/05
Family By Firelight
It was in early nineteenth century Nottingham that a mythical textile worker by the name of Ned Ludd was busy plying his trade and was also, I'm sure he would have you believe, generally minding his own business. By 1811 though, self proclaimed Luddites had decided that the voracious socio-economic steamroller of change that was the industrial revolution had gone far enough and was clearly destroying their way of life through rising unemployment and falling wages. So it was in that year that they rose up in protest and, depending on which political stripe you are, either heroically or criminally began smashing the mechanical looms that symbolized the ascension of profit driven kleptocracy over the rights and needs of the common man.
The local authorities, if you can believe it, didn't take very kindly to this sort of bad behavior and came to the rescue of the beleaguered and defenseless industrial plutocrats who owned said looms and hanged 17 of Ned's closest friends for their efforts in 1813. If nothing else, this did ensure them historical notoriety as proto-hippies fighting the insatiable beast that is progress.
~~~
And so it was that a mere 193 years later our power went out, leaving us in the dark. More specifically, the northeast had a wild and wintry day this last Tuesday, and at roughly 6:45 pm a tree took down some power lines and our little corner of Rockland County was unceremoniously plunged into the nineteenth century.After the lights went out our boys shrieked. I swore an oath. My Lovely Bride, as best I can tell, remained as placid as ever. Despite everyone's varied reactions though, we came together as a team in surprisingly fine form: My Lovely Bride filled the house with candles, I finished cooking dinner on the grill, the boys chased each other through the house with flashlights like maniacs, and a few well placed logs in the fireplace warmed our now furnace-less home.
By 8:30 we were all snuggled up around the fire as an unfamiliar sort of peace began to settle over us. Our oldest lad was reading one of the innumerable Lemony Snicket books as my Lovely Bride read one of the innumerable Magic Tree House books to our youngest. I did my part as well; I sat quietly in the big blue chair in which no one ever sits and gazed into the fire.
It wasn't long before that sense of peace came precariously close to resembling tranquility. There were no episodes of Queer Eye to Tivo, there was no last email of the day to check, and there was no stereo droning on in the background as it usually does to provide the soundtrack of our lives. Indeed, it had taken only a few hours for all the noise and chatter and busy nonsense of our electronically over-stimulated lives to melt away.
That night we spent just reading and talking quietly by the fire actually struck me as reminiscent of a scene out of any Regency era novel; it was not unlike spending an evening with a few of Jane Austen's favorite characters. Except without all the romance, intrigue and witty banter. You get the idea.
~~~
Anyway, I'm certainly no Luddite as I like my Xbox and TV just fine. Neither do I have any intention of giving up my comfortable and reasonably priced boxer shorts that were made with big, bad machines.But still, all it took was just that one quiet night to remind me that it's far too easy for us to lose each other in the tsunami of noise and distraction that fills our lives.
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3/3/05
Waiting For Kierkegaard
Having fallen behind and been forgotten, it now lies on the floor of my car just between the center console and the driver's seat. But why is it there? What secrets does it jealously guard as though it were a lingering ghost from the past?
When looking at it, the adjective 'forlorn' comes to mind… but is it really? Is it as sad and mysterious as it might first appear? As sad and mysterious as a phone number hastily scribbled on a matchbook that lies forgotten amongst last night's ashtrays and empty gin bottles?
Or has it been purposely cast away as would the last letter from a faded love? Certainly if that were the case another glance would be too painful to bear; indeed it might secretly harbor the hopes and dreams of first love and, yes, the memories of first betrayal.
Perhaps it lies there in it's final resting place on the floor of the car as a cruel reminder of the capricious indifference of fate; an existential riddle that mocks us as we begin to understand that there may be no definitive reason for it being there at all.
Ultimately there can be no real explanation for it's raison d'etre, if only because we are limited to viewing it's existence through the context of our own limited experience. So then, in the end I know that I have long since been predestined to resolve the entire affair in the only way I know how: I grab a napkin and wrinkle up my nose.
"Yuck," I say to myself, "So that's where the hunk of egg sandwich I dropped last week went. Ewww."
I wonder if I should mention this discovery to my wife. No, probably not.
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3/3/05
Waiting For Kierkegaard
Having fallen behind and been forgotten, it now lies on the floor of my car just between the center console and the driver's seat. But why is it there? What secrets does it jealously guard as though it were a lingering ghost from the past?
When looking at it, the adjective 'forlorn' comes to mind… but is it really? Is it as sad and mysterious as it might first appear? As sad and mysterious as a phone number hastily scribbled on a matchbook that lies forgotten amongst last night's ashtrays and empty gin bottles?
Or has it been purposely cast away as would the last letter from a faded love? Certainly if that were the case another glance would be too painful to bear; indeed it might secretly harbor the hopes and dreams of first love and, yes, the memories of first betrayal.
Perhaps it lies there in it's final resting place on the floor of the car as a cruel reminder of the capricious indifference of fate; an existential riddle that mocks us as we begin to understand that there may be no definitive reason for it being there at all.
Ultimately there can be no real explanation for it's raison d'etre, if only because we are limited to viewing it's existence through the context of our own limited experience. So then, in the end I know that I have long since been predestined to resolve the entire affair in the only way I know how: I grab a napkin and wrinkle up my nose.
"Yuck," I say to myself, "So that's where the hunk of egg sandwich I dropped last week went. Ewww."
I wonder if I should mention this discovery to my wife. No, probably not.
-
Monday
3/2
Hold Me Dearest Skadi, Hold Me As If There's No Tomorrow...
Hold Me Dearest Skadi, Hold Me As If There's No Tomorrow...
"From what little you may know about bears,
you probably have the sense that they can be a bit cranky
if their long winter's nap is unnecessarily disturbed."
--Carol L. McClelland, PhD
I am reminded every now and again that our lives are filled with all sorts of little inconsequential truths, most of which we take entirely for granted. Like the fact that the Earth, as it turns out, is apparently a sphere rather than a flat disk hovering in space like a celestial pie plate. Or, for instance, the fact that lifestyle guru Martha Stewart is in reality a relentless cyborg sent from the future who's mission is not, oddly enough, to destroy human kind, but rather to simply annoy us to distraction for generations to come. See? That sort of common knowledge.
Well, just this very morning I was reminded of yet another bit of folksy wisdom that is, simply put, that March sucks. Even more, it is truly the only month with not a single redeeming feature. Not a one. March is dark, dreary, snowy...
Oh bother. Although it's tempting to go on ad nauseam about March and all its shortcomings, I suppose I should just fess up and note that the presumably lovely Ms. McClelland, (PhD, mind you) has hit the nail right on head. I do indeed feel like a bear prematurely woken from a much needed rest while in the realm of the dark Goddess Skadi. Why? I got a call this morning from my older lad's little league coach letting me know that first batting practice is this very Saturday at our local batting cages.
Little league, already. This can only mean that it's the official opening of the season of myriad nonsense events: postponed birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese, various Easter goings-on, little league practices, little league games, all the usual karate, assorted after school activities and endless First Communion celebrations that follow each other with the relentless regularity of Swiss trains.
I suppose the case could be made that rather than being a curmudgeon about the whole thing I should revel in these special times that my Lovely Bride and I get to share with our boys. It will, after all, be in the mere blink of an eye that they'll be grown and gone.
But still, while I know that's all true I still can't help but feel a sort of wistful nostalgia for the dark months when most of our social responsibilities were on hold and it was really ok to just snuggle up with each other on the couch and giggle at SpongeBob and play Halo2. In other words, Im pretty sure that bears know what they're doing when they blithely ignore the perils of that seventh deadly sin. Now if only February had a snooze button...
Friday
2/17/05
A Rose By Any Other Name...
It was just a little over a year ago on a crisp sunny afternoon that I was engaged in my usual routine: warming the front stoop as I looked over the days mail and enjoyed a fresh, steaming cup of joe whilst waiting for the school bus to arrive. And arrive it did, heralded as always by a squealing of brakes that was just barely drowned out by the squealing of its occupants.
This particular afternoon turned out just a little differently than previous ones however; rather than disgorging my older lad who would then normally trudge towards the house with a Sisyphean air of resignation, today the bus disgorged a lad who resembled mine in all ways except that this one was bursting with excitement. As it turned out, this pleasant change was because he and the rest of his third grade class would, for the time being, leave behind their normal curricula of the oft-stultifying beaux-arts and turn their attention skyward to learn about our solar system and the majestic planets that inhabit it. Even better, they were to build models of the solar system that would be hung throught his classroom. My son was, in short, thrilled to pieces.
We all remember, of course, (at least those of us who tended to gravitate towards the geeky end of the dance floor in high school) the tried and true mnemonic device that reminds us not only of the name of each planet, but the order in which they circle our sun: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. (Thats Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, for those of you who tended to gravitate towards the end of the dance floor where everyone was gorgeous and actually had a good time. But I digress.)
Unfortunately though, armed as I was with this useful tidbit of knowledge, it wasn't long before I could no longer resist the recurring urge I often get to play the family provocateur. And, sure enough, it was over dinner that very night that I lost all willpower and, right in front of my Lovely Bride and the younger lad no less, I mused aloud as how that despite the presence of Pizzas in that handy example of astronomical mnemonics, Pluto is not, in point of fact, a planet.
There was a sudden silence in the room accompanied by the furrowing of my Lovely Bride's brow that was a certain signal that I had indeed crossed the line and had officially become a troublemaker. A few more beats went by and, as is no great surprise, the older lad looked up from his plate with his own brow furrowed and asked in that charming tone typical of eight year olds: "Wait, of course Pluto is a planet. What are you talking about?" Ahh good, I thought to myself, reel him in slowly...
Although it took some doing, I successfully avoided making eye contact with my Lovely Bride as I launched into an explanation of Pluto's deficiencies as a planet. To wit: its orbit around the sun is nearly perpendicular to all the other real planets... Pluto is not only smaller than our own moon, but there are no fewer than seven other moons in our solar system larger than it is... the area Pluto inhabits also happens to be strewn with quite a lot of other debris, implying that Pluto is nothing more than a particularly big chunk of astronomical detritus, and perhaps most damming, astronomers were already looking for a ninth planet they hoped would be somewhere out there, thus making Pluto's discovery the product of a flawed, self fulfilling prophecy.
I took a deep breath and sat back with what Im sure looked all too much like a self-satisfied smile and awaited a response. What I got, of course, was an unexpected response that I should really have seen coming: "Well I'm going to make my solar system model with Pluto because my science book says its a planet." There are few things more pure than the definitive convictions held by children, are there not?
Anyway, the matter was concluded by my Lovely Bride who explained to us both that, regardless of Pluto's real status, as long as our son was in school he would tow the party line and publicly sing the praises of Pluto's planethood. I, of course, learned long ago that it is usually wise to quietly acquiesce to my Bride's wishes if only because she's usually right.
But still, I cant get rid of that nagging suspicion that it would just be easier to move to Tennessee or somewhere that notions such as evolution are scoffed at and that believing in facts is optional. Lets try it out... "My grandpa was a monkey? Yeah, right."
Gosh, that really is easier. I'm moving.
|
A Rose By Any Other Name...
"I still have folders of hate
mail from third-graders"
Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of
New York's Hayden Planetarium
mail from third-graders"
Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of
New York's Hayden Planetarium
It was just a little over a year ago on a crisp sunny afternoon that I was engaged in my usual routine: warming the front stoop as I looked over the days mail and enjoyed a fresh, steaming cup of joe whilst waiting for the school bus to arrive. And arrive it did, heralded as always by a squealing of brakes that was just barely drowned out by the squealing of its occupants.
This particular afternoon turned out just a little differently than previous ones however; rather than disgorging my older lad who would then normally trudge towards the house with a Sisyphean air of resignation, today the bus disgorged a lad who resembled mine in all ways except that this one was bursting with excitement. As it turned out, this pleasant change was because he and the rest of his third grade class would, for the time being, leave behind their normal curricula of the oft-stultifying beaux-arts and turn their attention skyward to learn about our solar system and the majestic planets that inhabit it. Even better, they were to build models of the solar system that would be hung throught his classroom. My son was, in short, thrilled to pieces.
We all remember, of course, (at least those of us who tended to gravitate towards the geeky end of the dance floor in high school) the tried and true mnemonic device that reminds us not only of the name of each planet, but the order in which they circle our sun: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. (Thats Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, for those of you who tended to gravitate towards the end of the dance floor where everyone was gorgeous and actually had a good time. But I digress.)
Unfortunately though, armed as I was with this useful tidbit of knowledge, it wasn't long before I could no longer resist the recurring urge I often get to play the family provocateur. And, sure enough, it was over dinner that very night that I lost all willpower and, right in front of my Lovely Bride and the younger lad no less, I mused aloud as how that despite the presence of Pizzas in that handy example of astronomical mnemonics, Pluto is not, in point of fact, a planet.
There was a sudden silence in the room accompanied by the furrowing of my Lovely Bride's brow that was a certain signal that I had indeed crossed the line and had officially become a troublemaker. A few more beats went by and, as is no great surprise, the older lad looked up from his plate with his own brow furrowed and asked in that charming tone typical of eight year olds: "Wait, of course Pluto is a planet. What are you talking about?" Ahh good, I thought to myself, reel him in slowly...
Although it took some doing, I successfully avoided making eye contact with my Lovely Bride as I launched into an explanation of Pluto's deficiencies as a planet. To wit: its orbit around the sun is nearly perpendicular to all the other real planets... Pluto is not only smaller than our own moon, but there are no fewer than seven other moons in our solar system larger than it is... the area Pluto inhabits also happens to be strewn with quite a lot of other debris, implying that Pluto is nothing more than a particularly big chunk of astronomical detritus, and perhaps most damming, astronomers were already looking for a ninth planet they hoped would be somewhere out there, thus making Pluto's discovery the product of a flawed, self fulfilling prophecy.
I took a deep breath and sat back with what Im sure looked all too much like a self-satisfied smile and awaited a response. What I got, of course, was an unexpected response that I should really have seen coming: "Well I'm going to make my solar system model with Pluto because my science book says its a planet." There are few things more pure than the definitive convictions held by children, are there not?
Anyway, the matter was concluded by my Lovely Bride who explained to us both that, regardless of Pluto's real status, as long as our son was in school he would tow the party line and publicly sing the praises of Pluto's planethood. I, of course, learned long ago that it is usually wise to quietly acquiesce to my Bride's wishes if only because she's usually right.
But still, I cant get rid of that nagging suspicion that it would just be easier to move to Tennessee or somewhere that notions such as evolution are scoffed at and that believing in facts is optional. Lets try it out... "My grandpa was a monkey? Yeah, right."
Gosh, that really is easier. I'm moving.
