Martin Luther King's Legacy

 

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 15, 2022 is Martin Luther King’s 93rd birthday.  It is remarkable that in recent history we have replaced Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and George Washington’s birthday on our calendar with celebration of President’s Day and a celebration of a civil rights leader.  As the holidays we celebrate change very infrequently, this signifies that MLK is extremely important to America.   

I am interested in how our view of race is evolving.  When my daughter is 85 years old in the year 2100, how will our country think?  I am also asking myself what Martin Luther King has to say to us as individual Americans celebrating his holiday outside of a civil rights or social justice context. 

There are three questions I would like us to ponder.

1)      What does history and biology and law tell us about race? 

2)      What are contemporary minority voices telling us?

3)      Is there specific advice Martin Luther King offers all of us?

Race is a fraught topic.  I have emotional responses when a relative brings up the subject of race in passing.  Why is it necessary for an aunt to tell me that Beetle Bailey was replaced in the comics page by Curtis, which she points out is a strip with Black characters?  I am less interested in the loss of Beetle Bailey than suspicious about the motivation of an 80 year old bringing up the race of new comics characters.  Race is a topic that sets off alarms inside me.

Today, I report what I have learned and am discovering relating to the three questions I asked you to ponder.

1)      First, What does history and biology and law tell us about race?

I look to Will and Ariel Duran for their analysis of race and history:

I look to Stephen J. Gould for his analysis of race and biology.

I look to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for the law as it pertains to race. We shall not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

All men are created equal, women too.  We grow up knowing this, intellectually, anyway.  I want to make this point first.  Regardless of race, we are all humans, all the same, some of us with different traditions.  I’m providing reference material to make a scholarly case for getting beyond racism. (1)   Experts have spoken.  I think it is important to make this point first.

2)      Next, what are contemporary minority voices telling us?

I’m a father now and I read to my child.  Books get recommended to me by Red Balloon bookstore.  I often find myself reading books to my child that represent diverse views and positive role models.  (2) Let me summarize a few of these minority authors:

a)       Coretta Scott King award winning author, Renee Watson, wrote “Ways to Make Sunshine” about a Black girl who moves to a smaller house and wants to fit in with relatively wealthy popular White girls.  The girl is named Ryan, which translates to king, and signifies leadership.  Grandma is a beautician who once per year straightens Ryan’s hair for Easter.  Ryan gets invited to a pool party and is teased that she is afraid of the water.  So, Ryan jumps in and her hair immediately curls to its natural state.  Ryan learns from her mistakes and tries hard to be leader.  All can relate to her.  This is a really well written book.

b)      Susan Tan wrote Cilla Lee Jenkins, Future Author Extraordinaire.  The Cilla character is a fun and imaginative little girl.   We learn about her schoolmates and her grandparents and her favorite Chinese food.  We learn that her mother’s parents and father’s parents are not in any photographs together.  This gets rectified once her little sister, The Blob, is born.  This is another great book, not preachy in the least.

 

Why did Susan Tan write these stories?  As a young child, a teacher had the class divide themselves up by identity.  The Asians sat on one side of the room and the White kids sat on the other side.  Susan sat midway between the two groups.  The teacher got upset by this nonconformism and called her parents.  The parents told the teacher that their child was a “Susan.”  An unnecessarily divisive teacher inspired Susan Tan to write the Cilla Lee-Jenkins series of books with relatable and entertaining stories about a mixed-race child. 

 

c)       Kelly Yang wrote “Front Desk”.  This is a series of books about Mia, who attends middle school.  She experiences harsh conditions and racism.   Her family of Chinese immigrants works at a motel.  Mia works at the motel, too and calls herself the manager.  Her school aged friend, Lupe, a Mexican immigrant, faces possible deportation as California laws are in flux.   This is another book with positive role models, but far more political as the main character starts petitions, fundraises, writes letters to the editor and gets herself on the news toward achieving social action for her friends, family and community.

These three authors show us that the majority of life’s challenges are very similar for all of us. 

Kelly Yang’s books go a step farther by addressing more blatant forms of racism and delving into activism, letting us know how to make change.

We regularly get ourselves in trouble when we address the subject of race.  I served on Union Park District Council.  What minority populations want was often the subject of our discussion.  Often times, some of us in the white majority would argue about what minority populations wanted.  We’d even sometime argue with the minority representation at our meetings about what they want! 

The reality is that we are all the same.  Saint Paul Councilmember, Dai Thao, a Hmong immigrant, communicates that the different races and cultures in Ward 1 want the same types of things for the same types of reasons. 

What are contemporary minority voices telling you?

3)      Finally, Let's see if there is there specific advice Martin Luther King offers all of us?

I found a speech King made to an audience of middle schoolers October 26, 1967.  What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?  Though there are many references to race by the civil rights leader, this is a message to all of us, geared more to the youngest among us.  It has a standard three point Toastmaster’s format:

1)      We must have significance and worth

I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life’s blueprint. Number one in your life’s blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you fell that you’re nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.

2)      Determine your field of endeavor 

Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

3)      Set out to do such a good job that the living the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

Is there other specific advice Martin Luther King offers us all?  If you watch Youtube videos of a King speech, I suggest you will find it an inspired use of your time!

Martin Luther King spoke of civil rights in the time when the very last Black Americans born into slavery were still alive.  He inspired Black Americans, White Americans and the World with his dignity and passion.  We celebrate his birth each January. 

Current books young children read engage and enlighten on the topic of race.  This is how progress is made. 

I wonder how many years it will be before bringing up the race of a comic strip character stops raising our emotions?  My lifetime?  My daughter’s lifetime?  How soon will it be before we are truly colorblind and judge by the content of character?  Who will do the work to accomplish this task?  As we consider this question, we must remind ourselves that it is up to us.

“Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to work to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”

― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

 Reference Material:

                                  1)     Biology, History and Law

RACE AND BIOLOGY

Humans are one species with pervasive cross-breeding among all races.  There are much larger genetic differences within races than between races.  Racists and proponents of eugenics wrongly assume (implicitly) that Darwinism and survival of the fittest are continuous processes-- that homo sapiens evolve from generation to generation.

Instead, the evidence with human evolution shows “punctuated equilibrium”.   Bones of Lucy’s species of 3.4 million years ago (A. afarensis), per hard anatomical evidence of non-change, remained indistinguishable based on measurements over a period of almost a million years.   

Humans are not evolving.  If humans are to evolve, isolation from the main group is required, such as perhaps could happen if a small group of humans moved to a distant planet.

Reference: Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in A Haystack, 1995

 

RACE AND HISTORY

A Chinese scholar would remind us that his people created the most enduring civilization in history—statesmen, inventors, artists, poets, scientists, philosophers, saints—from 2000 B.C. to our own time.  A Mexican scholar could point to the lordly structures of Mayan, Aztec, and Incan cultures in pre-Columbian America.  A Hindu scholar, while acknowledging “Aryan” infiltration into north India some 1600 years before Christ, would recall that the black Dravidic peoples of south India produced great builders and poets of their own, the temples of Madras, Madura, and Trichinopoly are among the most impressive structures on Earth.  Even more startling is the towering shrine of the Khmers at Angkor Wat.  History is color-blind, and can develop a civilization (in any favorable environment) under almost any skin.

Reference: Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, pages 18-19, 1968

 

RACE AND LAW

To enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes, this Act may be cited as the "Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It shall be an unlawful to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

 

Reference: US Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

 

2)      DIVERSITY REPRESENTATIONS OF CHILDREN’S BOOKS

Renee Watson, Ways to Make Sunshine, 2020

Parents need to know that in Ways to Make Sunshine, by Coretta Scott King Award and Newbery Medal winner Renée Watson (Piecing Me Together), 11-year-old Ryan, an African American girl, adjusts to changes in her family life and her last year of middle school. The landlord sold the place where she lives and her dad has lost his job as a postal carrier. The family moves into a smaller house and has to live on a budget, but they make themselves at home there. Ryan still gets to cook with her mom, the extended family still gathers for Easter, and Ryan now lives closer to her friend KiKi. Ryan faces some challenges like getting over her stage fright and bickering with her older brother, Raymond. There's a scene where Ryan is embarrassed when her straightened hair reverts to its natural state while she's at a pool party with White friends.   Sequel: Ways to Grow Love (A Ryan Hart Story, 2)  (2021)

Source: CommonSenseMedia.org

 

Susan Tan, Cilla Lee-Jenkins, Future Author Extraordinaire, 2017

Cilla Lee-Jenkins is 50% Chinese, 50% Caucasian, and 100% destined for literary greatness! In this middle grade novel, she shares stories about a new sibling, being biracial, and her destiny as a future author extraordinaire.

Priscilla "Cilla" Lee-Jenkins is on a tight deadline. Her baby sister is about to be born, and Cilla needs to become a bestselling author before her family forgets all about her. So she writes about what she knows best—herself! And Cilla has a lot to write about: How did she deal with being bald until the age of five? How did she overcome her struggles with reading? How do family traditions with Grandma and Granpa Jenkins differ from family traditions with her Chinese grandparents, Nai Nai and Ye Ye?

Sequels: Cilla Lee-Jenkins: This Book Is a Classic (2018), Cilla Lee-Jenkins: The Epic Story (2019)

Source: Macmillan.com

 

Kelly Yang, Front Desk, 2018

Parents need to know that Kelly Yang's Front Desk is a powerful, moving tale about 10-year-old Mia Tang and her parents, who live and work at the Calivista Motel in California during the early 1990s. The novel, which is the first in a series, is loosely based on the author's experience as an immigrant growing up in America, and she doesn't shy away from tough, real-world topics such as immigration, poverty, racism, fraud, and bullying. Characters arrive at the motel after being beaten up by loan sharks or fleeing an ICE raid. Another character is beaten up by robbers. Insults include "Chinese doughboy," "ugly-nese," "idiot," "moron," "loser," and "Mr. Tightwad." There's also one use each of "bull" and "bastard." Although there are many heartbreaking stories in the book, there are plenty of positive messages for kids about fighting for what's right, treating people with kindness and respect, and never judging someone by the color of their skin.  Sequels:  Three Keys (2020).  Room to Dream (2021).

Source: CommonSenseMedia.org

My Brother / Dealing With Death

 

 Obituary | Rolland Eugene Rasmussen of West Des Moines | Overton Funeral Home (overtonfunerals.com)

One of my first memories is walking around with a sling.  "I have a broken arm.  Don't people with broken arms need a cast?"  I had been pushed off the back step by my older brother.  I was so young that I didn't need a cast.

Another of my early memories is waking up in the morning to find a wastebasket on fire in the kitchen.  I woke up my parents.  As I recall, the fire department came.  It was a relatively serious fire as part of the floor in the kitchen burned.

Rolland was high energy.  He would throw shoes out the car window as we drove down the road.  He would run away from home and go for miles in the cold.  My aunt remembers him pulling down the curtains.  She was dealing with putting the curtains back up as Rolland was emptying cannisters of flour and sugar.  At about the time I started kindergarten, Rolland was placed in a foster home as his need for constant care was beyond the capacity of any ordinary family.  

Mrs. Hanson, an elderly woman in Pleasant Hill, became foster parent for Rolland. Several older boys lived with her.  The older boys would watch Rolland 24/7 and keep him out of trouble.  Mrs. Hanson kept calm and was always in control.  I would see Rolland regularly.   

After I finished second grade, my parents divorced.  My sister and I lived with my father.   There was a regular schedule for Donna and me to visit our mother.  Very often, we would have an outing by the lake with Rolland or go swimming with Rolland during this time.  Rolland was still challenging.  One was issue was that Rolland would regularly remove his swimming trunks when we were swimming at public pools.  We just expected things like that would happen.  No big deal.  

My mother visited every week.  I don't think I ever missed a birthday party.  He would color in coloring books or put together jigsaw puzzles.  Those types of items were good gifts for him even as an older man.  When "American Pie" was a hit song, I imagined Rolland was singing this to me by the car at Mrs. Hanson's.  This was a subject of conversation for decades.  He might have sung and hummed a little bit of it.  My mother always imagined him as someone who might speak one day.  My parents felt responsibility for him not being "like everyone else."  At this point in time, my parents would individually brainstorm possible reasons for Rolland not talking and sometimes blame each other.

Rolland was afraid of dogs.  I think that went back to before Mrs. Hansen.  If there was an unguarded bottle or can of soda pop, Rolland would guzzle it.  If there was food in front of him, Rolland would eat it.  These things never changed.

Upon the death of Mrs. Hanson, Rolland moved to Woodward State Hospital School.  This was the low point for Rolland's care.  Though Rolland was non-verbal and autistic, Rolland was a discerning person.  Rolland's cohorts were more aggressive than him and lower functioning than him.  Rolland's behavior declined based on the role models around him.  

What were Rolland's skills?  He had a strong sense of order.  If something was mis-shelved in the grocery store, Rolland would move the item to where it belonged.  Rolland was good at jigsaw puzzles.  Michelle, Link Associates, told me how Rolland was the only person she ever saw who would put jigsaw puzzles together upside-down.

In the 1990s, Woodward closed, or at least his program closed.  He moved to group homes, residential homes and finally a host home in Des Moines.  Rolland's behavior quickly improved as peer role models were now typically higher functioning than him.   My mother and my father continued to regularly visit and take him for outings,  separately of course.  

Medications slowed Rolland down.  He had always been very thin.  At some point in time, Rolland became over-weight.  As an adult Rolland was childlike in how he hugged and wanted his feet rubbed, but he was almost always in control.  He became very good about fastening seatbelts and not exiting the car until he was told to.  He followed instructions well.

His routine for the last 20 or 30 years of his life involved a home setting and a work setting with other vulnerable adults.  Mosaic was the non-profit in charge of Rolland's home placement. Link Associates was his work setting.  While at work, Rolland would perform tasks such as putting items in little plastic bags.  Imagine a table with four workers and a supervisor.  There would be a van in the driveway of his home (17th Street in Des Moines, for most of this time).  Residents would go to Link on East 14th Street as a group in the van.

My mother declined in health starting around the year 2000.  Still Rolland would regularly visit and be visited.  In 2003, a doctor told us her end was near and she was placed in a large hospital room.  A large family group, maybe 13 people, visited.  Rolland had been extensive coached by his staff.  He told her "I love you."  All of us hearing this were impressed by Rolland's words. We only heard him say that then.  The next day, as I was visiting my mother in this same room, I held her hand as the radio played and baseball scores scrolled on a TV. Our mother died.  Rolland's staff was called and Rolland visited and entered her room fifteen minutes later. He spent 30 minutes with her to take in her death. At her funeral, the Mosaic director told us it was unusual for family to remain close to people like Rolland.  He pointed out how exceptional our mother was and explained that this was why he was at her funeral.

My father lost his second wife is 1999.  Rolland was especially appreciated as a reliable presence in his life starting this period.  On a Saturday, I would visit my father in West Des Moines.  Rolland would be there.  On a Saturday, I would visit my father at the condo in Des Moines.  Rolland would be there.  On a Saturday, I would visit my father in Urbandale.  Rolland would be there watching TV.   This routine continued until his death in 2016.  

Donna took over guardianship responsibilities and I started to regularly go to evaluations.  We visited Rolland when we went to Iowa.  Visits to the park continued.  Birthday parties continued.  Rolland very much appreciated this.  Rolland liked Monica.  Rolland liked Rose.  There was a family Thanksgiving at the condo.  There were trips to Indianola.  He got along with everyone in the family. 

Jean-Marie noticed how well Rolland and Robert got along while he was working for Mosaic at 17th Street.  He took over within Mosaic as Rolland's host (and Robert's) in a host home in West Des Moines.  Robert was Rolland's friend for the last twenty years.    Jean-Marie as host was the best situation Rolland ever had.  It was the right time for change given lower functioning, higher energy men had moved in with Rolland and Robert causing conflict. Rolland, Robert and Jean-Marie had many smiles together.

Covid-19 closed the  Link work group.  There were issues anyway.  We were told that Rolland had "retired" and had chosen to stop doing his tasks.  But, he was still going to work before covid-19 caused the facility to close.  Without this routine, Rolland lost his days and nights.  He became sedentary.  His health declined. We were not allowed to visit.

With vaccination, we visited again.  We had a hard time keeping him out of bed that Summer.  In the Fall, Rolland had lost a lot of weight and did not look healthy.  She the photo (below).   He fell as we walked through Hy Vee.  But, he remained good natured and loving to the end.

I miss Rolland.  He is involved in my earliest memories.  I always got along with him. It was a unique relationship.  As his younger brother, he looked to me as his older brother pretty much once I could walk.

Sonia Sotomayor writes about grief.  Is grief from guilt, a feeling of not being there when we feel we could or should have been there?  Or is grief from loss, a feeling that Rolland should have had opportunities that we somehow prevented?

Either way, I don't feel family has a lot of reason for grief.  We were there for him from the beginning to the end.  Rolland wasn't going to have many unique experiences with us that he hadn't already had.  Though his mother was very devoted and though his father was very devoted, some of his most loving times were in West Des Moines toward the end of his life.  Though those at his host home in West Des Moines do not deserve to feel guilt, they feel loss and suffer most.

The Last Frontier

The final frontier is space, according to Star Trek.  The last frontier is Alaska, the 49th state.  What is developing in the final frontier?

Ten years ago, I visited Alaska and met dreamers, self-promoters and the operators of single family businesses.  There was still a greatest generation vibe.

• George Brown was still talking aviation at the Lucky Wishbone in 2011.
• The promoters who started the Iditarod dogsled race were still promoting as we listened from a distance while visiting their museum.
• The Museum of Transportation and Industry in Wasilla, AK still feels like a family-run operation, though  one of its proponents is no longer around.

The generation who viewed Alaska as the last frontier may be reaching an end.  What kind of dreamers do we see in Alaska now?  

• Our conductor on the train was a woman.
• Our captain on our Major Marine 3 1/2 tour of Resurrection Bay was a woman.
• The Park Rangers at Kenai Wildlife Refuge were women.
• Our tour leader at Spencer glacier was a female Park Ranger.

People are dreaming.  The male World War II veterans of old are no longer around and in charge, though.  Women are in charge in the last frontier.

More: NPR: Miss America makes history, as a Korean American from Alaska wins the title.

More : https://www.npr.org/2021/12/17/1065378452/miss-america-makes-history-as-a-korean-american-from-alaska-wins-the-title

The Great Resignation

 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/03/us-jobs-report-june-trend

One effect of the pandemic that was predictable is that people had time to rethink their situations.  In many cases, people decided not to return to their jobs.  The current jobs report reflects this.  

What are people's aspirations?  Does my job match my life goals?  In many cases, people are concluding that they can do more.  Perhaps, people have decided to go back to school.  Perhaps, people get more satisfaction out of volunteer opportunities.  Perhaps, people with lives turned upside down have different priorities than they did before.

This is what happens when people have some time away from the grind and finally reflect a bit.

BLM and other social justice causes will be even more prominent than they were last year.

I predict this is also what happens when people have some time away from the grind and finally reflect a bit.

More:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/big-tech-is-suffering-from-a-great-resignation-of-workers-who-say-its-a-good-time-to-leave-11628267291

Identity Crisis

 

I just had a birthday.  Now my age ends in zero though I don't feel any older.  Do I have sudden urges to buy sports cars or electric scooters?  Might it be time for an identity crisis?

The neighbor just sold their house.  They will rent elsewhere starting a month from now.  It seems sudden.  There was never even a "for sale" sign.  What's the rush?

It is a prime moment for identity crises, as covid-19 starts to wind down.  We've had some time to reflect.  Are we living congruently with our true selves?

I've had various identities through my life.  In high school, there were the standard identities that are still around per the above.  Following that, "what's your major?" led to an answer that was my identity.  Career aspirations tend to define college aged people.  Last month, my alma mater sponsored a Facebook event with actor, Dan Levy.  There were few questions about Dan, himself.  An hour of student questions related to how to get entertainment industry jobs matching the dreams of students.

In my late twenties and early thirties, I had an identity defined by job title.  I was officially a product development engineer. My job title reflected myself better than any previous identity.  I DID actually live my dream.  The job title was distinct from my identity though.  It wasn't so much what people called me.  It was the job activity itself, in support of a company that prioritized product development.  I idealized the product development role as a way to broadly improve the living conditions of the world.

Was I imagining that the focus of the company was changing from year to year?  It took me a year to prove to myself whether what I hoped was still real actually was not real.  My hardest week was when after concluding the company talked about (and no longer actually cared about) product development,  I walked away.  

What changed wasn't me.  Nonetheless, this change led me to an identity crisis.  Was I the person I identified as?  Was I the same as the person others saw?  How can I be a product developer without products to develop?

What do I do after leaving the job title that defines my identity?

This is what I did.  I still do the majority of this.

My Transition Approach:

n  Writers Group
n  Networking
n  Volunteering
n  Travel
n  Season tickets, not TV

A high point of the coping I needed to do was a party I held in 2003 or 2004 for liberated workers.  This casual and fun daytime event with friends outside the 9-5 grind helped me over the stigma that I felt about no longer "earning a living" through a relationship with an employer.  

(Throughout all this time, I have purposefully stayed career adjacent in case, like the college students, I become motivated by dreams about writing for others.)

Intermittently, while in my "liberated worker" days, some saw me and sometimes I saw myself as a traveler, radio host and board member.  

Presently, I define myself by my family and my role as a parent. 

We create our identity by identifying along different axes:

• Geographical (Locality/ neighborhood)
• Religion
• Ethnic
• Cultural  (Race, origin, Disability)
• Political  
• Family
• Sexual 
• Career/Work

My place along these axes is well defined.  

Having just hit a zero birthday, will I reassess who I am?  Will I decide I need to retire to Waimea tomorrow or next year? 

I feel healthy and good.  There is lots of time to assess.  There is no impetus to sell the house.  There is no crisis.

Fantasy Baseball: Urgent, But Not Important

 President Eisenhower classified issues according to a grid.  On one axis was urgency.  On another axis was importance.  Two of the four quadrants are easy to figure out.  If it is urgent and important, it should be priority.  The National Covid-19 response is important (1000 people die in a day) and urgent.  Urgent actions such as vaccine approvals and prioritization processes are decided each day toward reducing the number of deaths.  

What is not urgent and not important is also easy to figure out.  Don't answer that spam call.   Cross it off of the to do list!

Two other quadrants fill out our schedules.    What is important, but not urgent?  What is urgent, but not important?

Urgent but not important is how I might describe our national pass-time, baseball.  For me, fantasy baseball has been the preferred mode.  Something is always happening.  If I know first, I might get the latest closer or promoted prospect for my team.  News is on a minute by minute basis.  John Means threw 7 one-hit innings.  Too bad he was on my bench.  I should start him next week.  No, he pitches at Yankee stadium next week.  For week 3, definitely start John Means and get his two starts.  

When I was in the working world I knew better than to have fantasy teams.  If I were to get a team it might take all my time.  I got a team in 2001 and guess what?  It did take all of my time.  My aunt became a life master at bridge.  She played for ten years and quit.  It was taking too much time, she said.

I do like baseball though.  The fantasy game does keep me informed.  The Twins and Saints this year should be fun even if we don't see as many games as we once did.  Feels urgent.  Doesn't feel top priority important.

Now, the final quadrant.  During the previous presidential administration, there was a circus of provocative statements and actions.  It felt important to stay on top of the latest developments and maybe even to watch impeachment hearings.  But, was doomscrolling something that we needed to prioritize?  Not really.  We missed nothing if we read the Economist once per week.  The travesties felt like they required our urgent attention.  There was little or nothing we could do, though.  Some were responsible for responding.  Thanks, Capitol police!  Most of us were not responsible except on the first Tuesday of the November.  Important, yes.  Urgent, No.

Cleaning my desk-- important but not urgent.  Then again, I really should clean my desk.

Is it important and urgent?  If so, it is definitely worth our time.

Eisenhower focused on what was important.  Eisenhower was a better president than the last guy.

Ignoring the Experts: The Decline and Death of My Father

 In my father's last years, I would try to get him to a doctor.  He had medical complaints.  They made absolutely no sense.  That didn't mean he was healthy.  The issue was that what seemed to be the real problems were ignored.  I finally talked him into going to the doctor with me.

My father mostly talked about breathing.  His complaint was dust from the vents.  This was a serious issue to him.  He would regularly hire people to clean the vents.  He did this at his house.  He did this at the retirement condo.  As a non-medical observer, that made sense to me.  It seemed extreme, but what was the harm of having clean vents?

The other issue he talked about was constipation.  This was a serious issue to him.  He regularly went to the doctor to complain about constipation according to his medical records.  This complaint dominated our discussion when I went to the doctor with him.   

The doctor told him to take Miralax and Metamucil.  He said how much to take and said that if he needed to take more he could.  These products, if taken in sufficient quantity, were going to do the job.  He should try to take the same amount every day.  There was a process for figuring out the right amount to take each day.  Problem solved.  Right?  Actually, not.

I told you that my father's medical opinions made no sense.  Here is an an example.  Per my father, the air quality issues which were affecting his breathing were also causing the constipation.  What was the expert opinion on that one?  The doctor said it made absolutely no sense.  As a retired teacher of middle school health, my father knew that, too.  There is the GI tract.  There is the respiratory tract.  What is breathed into lungs will not cause constipation.

This doctor's appointment was the most drawn out visit I could imagine.  It went over an hour.  The visit approached two hours.  We went through the entire medical record.  This doctor was to soon retire and he might never see another patient, but he was going to treat us well.  That, and he didn't want the next doctor to hear my father complain about constipation.

Toward the end of the visit, I pointed to my father's swollen legs.  

"My wife is worried about that.  Should his heart be checked?  Those legs were even more swollen at Thanksgiving when he visited."

The prescription was TED socks.  We found them at Walmart.

I feel this doctor was extraordinarily patient.  What doctor spends 100 minutes with a patient?  We went over every complaint in my father's history.  

Aside from our two minute discussion, there were no complaints about circulation or swollen legs.  My father's imagination conjured most of what we discussed, I believe.  My father's father smoked and had asthma and would avoid pollen season via a trip to Texas.  My father's mother died of a blockage associated with colon cancer.  Breathing and constipation were issues to be taken seriously per my father's thought process.  Everything else that happened to him medically was irrelevant.  Circulatory issues were not to be acknowledged.

After we left the office, my father told me of his dreams about dust from the vent next to his bed.  The dreams sounded like a horror film.  He described these dreams as crazy.  Psychological issues were certainly not to be discussed with professionals.

My wife, based on her hospital experience, also had theories about my father's medical issues.  These theories were demonstrated as fact when my father died of heart issues a few months later.  My father passed away following a significant number of years of vascular dementia.  

I had tried to convey what I knew to the doctor.  It would have taken a three hour appointment to do so as my father was in the room.  It might have taken all day.  No doctor has that much time.

 I am sad that my father died in 2016 of causes that would have been better treated if he would have just acknowledged them.  

I feel I am blaming the victim.   He did live to be 85.  He spoke as if he had lived long enough.  He was a man who couldn't authentically ask for help.  Maybe, he would have listened to his wife had she still been alive.

My father's death was a learning experience for me.  When my wife tells me to see the doctor about an issue, I do so.  She earned my respect on all things medical.  I also learned that it is my responsibility to listen to my doctor, not so much vice versa.  The doctor is the expert, not me.  We need to rely on others as we get older.  We need to rely on others all of our lives.

Do we benefit from the experts we have at our disposal?  

Not all of us.

Retirement Dreams

 

I have been looking online at Real Estate lately.  Could I retire to Hawaii?  If I were to retire to Hawaii, where would I live?

Me, retire?  Didn’t I do that twenty years ago?  People retire once, not twice.

It turns out I still have some retirement dreams.  There are places where I would enjoy living.  Hawaii.  Shanghai.  Korea.  Of these, Hawaii seems like the least extreme change.

In Hawaii, I would be stuck on an island with limited shopping and limited things to do.  However, COVID-19 taught me and my family that we didn’t need to go to the grocery store every week.  We survived just fine without the malls and without the zoo.  If we were to live away from it all, we could!  COVID-19 gave us experience at this.

The Big Island offers a mountain with an observatory, a Toastmasters club, a university and other schools, a couple of Costcos, beaches, pleasant weather and 11 climate zones.  For me, this seems enough.

In Hawaii, would we move to a house with upkeep and a yard?  Would we move to a turn-key condo with monthly fees?  I would be happy with a turn-key condo.  A house with a yard offers other benefits my family might enjoy.  Options are available!

Shanghai, Seoul, San Francisco and New York offer metropolitan experiences that I also would like to experience.   Since I also enjoy big cities, I may have to retire a third time!

Making It Big

 

I dreamed last night about musicians, about how being an entertainer is fundamentally a profession.  I’m not sure most of us realize that our favorite actors and actresses, and those we choose to hate as well, are essentially middle class.  They work for companies.  They have bosses.  There is an audience.  They perform.  It might feel degrading or they might have great pride.  Either way, it is doing a job.

I first figured out that actors were middle class during my visit to Universal Studios, Los Angeles, in the 1990s.  I took the train through the backlots.  The announcer talked about how Jim Carrey often appeared during the tour, said hello and hammed it up.   What was Jim Carrey doing there?  Oh, that’s right.  He had a job working for a company where he needed to be at Universal Studios for the purpose of making movies to satisfy his contractual obligations. 

Why would he work so hard as an already highly marketable movie star?

 I imagine Jim Carrey worked hard because he had to.  The job is highly competitive.  There were lots of people who could do his job well and were very eager for the opportunity.  Any extra points for showing up every day and representing the company only aided his cause.  Unless Jim Carrey got tangled in drugs and bad investments and thieving managers, he did alright. 

What about the rest of us and what about our heroes who make film and music? 

My friend that I haven’t seen for a long time is a location manager with credits in major films.  That is success that would be hard to fake.

Then, there were efforts that made TV and Amazon Prime.  It’s hard to know if there was money paid out, but certainly a strong attempt was made.  A whole scene got involved in that.  

My acquaintance who has made small budget films over three decades is making the attempt as well.  Who knows what comes of it, but film festival credits and authenticity count for something.

I have a Facebook friend who writes scripts and directs plays.  A production was set at an Eagles Club.  I enjoyed it.  This is very likely what a person would have to do toward being asked to do more.  (I imagine the same production in LA would have a lot bigger potential career impact.)

Maybe you know people on the periphery of a Hollywood career.  I definitely do.  Do these people have real careers where good money is made?  From the outside, how would we know?  Let’s say they won an award.  Does that even mean anything? 

The hustle is something they go through whether they succeed in a financial sense or they don't.  Few if any are wandering the streets assessing artistic merit toward offering big opportunities.

This brings me to my music heroes of the past.

The band, X, was one of my favorites from the 1980’s.  They toured.  They had fans.  Ray Manzarek (Doors) liked them so much that he chose to produce them.  The mass market apparently never latched onto them.  They never did the stadium shows or got the real money.  Still, members of X showed up frequently in movies and Dave Alvin was in any band he wanted.    Likewise, Danny Elfman suggested that Oingo Boingo broke up because they weren’t popular enough to continue.  Oingo Boingo was in movies as well.  Danny Elfman moved on to a career scoring films.  Icons of the generation were not mass marketed toward financial success at that time as the Boomer market garnered 100% of the marketing dollars.  (At least that is what X and Elfman say.)

This brings us to today.  Do artists need a mass market to continue onward?

The means to self-publish a film, music or a book are out there.  Your release is available in Saskatoon via the Internet if not at the local record store.

First Friday of each month, I am finding non-mass market new releases by entertainers I have seen perform and met personally.  Others use Patreon.

I’m not sure how viable these approaches are for those paying a mortgage.  Most have day jobs, I imagine.  Nonetheless, I appreciate the effort and the art.  Success is not always measured by the size of the audience.

Last night, I dreamed some songs.  They were really powerful.  Were these songs by Grant Hart?  He was there in the dream.  The music faded from my consciousness in the morning dawn. 

Did you know Grant Hart, post Husker Du, wanted me to put out his music financed by my self-started record label?  We met.  A musician named Lori Wray, recently deceased, was there with me too.  We went where Nirvana recorded. A dream?  No, that really happened.

With my generation, from when the mass market never existed, rock stars show up on Christmas card lists.

I hope the Bandcamp musicians, Eagle’s Club play makers, Amazon Prime movie makers, and Kindle self-publishers are successful enough to keep making their art. 

They are the real artists.  Nothing against Jim Carrey.

 

Looking Through A Different Colored Lens

 

In the San Francisco Chronicle, reporter Rachel Swan wrote the tragic story of Laudemer Arboleda.  I subscribe to the Chronicle because it provides a different perspective on the same issues as what happen here.  The Laudemer Arboleda story was tragic for many reasons.  His life was ended when a police officer shot him for no well-defined reason.  What I felt was also particularly sad is that Laudemer had demons, he had untreated psychiatric problems.  His mother tried to get him mental health help, but the mental health system turned him away, spit him back out, without helping him. 

People look at this story through various lenses, such as untrained or incompetent or racist police officers.  I’d like you to examine a different lens—mental illness.  I’d like you to see a failed mental health system when you watch the news or many societal ills.  I’m going to tell the stories of three people who suffered from bipolar syndrome.  Each is no longer with us.

When I spoke at my mother’s funeral, many there did not know she had mental illness.  Though mental illness led to her divorce and loss of custody of her children, including me, there were only a few episodes of mental illness in her life.  It was a once every ten years problem.  Medication kept it under control.  There was the time she didn’t recognize me and was sure I was an imposter.  I showed her my driver’s license.  She still wasn’t convinced.  There was the time we called the sheriff who got us a court hearing so that she could get treatment.  We certainly would not have ever gotten her out of bed by ourselves.  My mother was a great piano player, a great example and a great mother.  She died at age 66 of kidney failure.

My aunt (my mom’s sister) also had bipolar syndrome.  I remember my grandmother and me driving to check in at her apartment one day when she was hospitalized, when I was 15.  Aunt Ellie embraced her illness just as she embraced roles when she appeared in plays.  Fellow patients were her friends.  Her psychiatrist was her hero.  When she was in hospice for lung cancer, she visited her doctor friends and fellow long-term patients one last time.  She had a productive role as a mental health advocate and politically active solid citizen of Des Moines.  My mother relied on family.  My aunt relied on her care providers.  Both successfully managed the issue, once it was identified.

Gary relied on his mother to manage his mental health issues.  When his mother died, he went off his medicine and was seriously mentally ill for five to ten years.  He moved out of his low rent house because of ghosts.  He declined free VA housing because they required him to seek mental health treatment.  He would “borrow” my father-in-law’s pickup until it ran out of gas.  One winter he moved into my father-in-law’s decrepit abandoned old farm house, no electricity, no water, mouse droppings everywhere.  He was discovered weeks later because of the $400 electrical bill after he connected a space heater to overhead power lines.  My father-in-law tried year after to year to help him by giving him money or whatever he said he needed.   Gary would tell the mental health hospital that my father-in-law was taking care of him in order to escape treatment.  As long as those demons were in his head, he was a danger to himself and others.  A passing truck hit him as he walked down the center line of a rural highway with a bicycle.  Treated, Gary was an intelligent man and good friend.  Untreated, he was a problem that the whole town knew about, nut mostly chose to ignore.

Mental illness defined my Aunt Ellie.  A person can choose to own who they are.  Mental illness shaped my mother’s life, but did not define her.    Untreated demons killed Gary.  After his mother died, mental illness controlled and defined him.  When I see homeless people on the side of the road, I see Gary and a failed mental health system.

  I challenge you to change your lens when you watch the news or drive by homeless people.  Will you see “poor people” seeking shelter?  Will you see substance abusers?  Will you see unhealthy people controlled by demons?

There are 140,000 homeless persons with serious mental illnesses in the US.

BTW, there is such thing as police officers who murder people.  Here is someone other than Derek Chauvin.  The officer who appears to have murdered Laudemer Arboleda just killed again.  Danville police say officer shot man who pulled out a knife (sfchronicle.com)

 

 

 

Happy Valentine's Day

 Monica is my valentine.  This is the story of how we met and how we collaborate.

David's speech

Vitalia Bryn-Pundyk and Roman Pundyk at Power Talk offered me this speaking engagement.  They are experienced and exceptional at helping people begin a speaking business.

Art Frommer-- Budget Travel

Arthur Frommer was born in 1929 and became world famous as a travel writer-- Europe on $5 a Day.  He is still around though is no longer regularly contributing to his blog.  The last post I find is following the George Floyd killing:  A Statement from Arthur Frommer on #BlackLivesMatter and Racial Discrimination | Frommer's  The blog is in good hands with his daughter Pauline.

There are two approaches to travel.  We can spend lavishly on rooms, have people deliver drinks to us and relax on the beach.  We can hit the museums, natural wonders and coffee shops and eat and drink with the locals.  Though some combination of approach a and approach b does not offend me, and down time should be planned as part of our vacations, I consistently choose Art Frommer's approach.  My primary goal of traveling is to learn.

In 2005, I decided to sell my house and see the world, starting with a three month visit to Asia.  Art Frommer's blog was my tour guide.  I went to a Berkeley travel agent and bought a three month Cathay Pacific All-Asia air pass.  I could travel by air on a highly rated airline as much as I wanted during this time.  The only catch was that all flights were through Hong Kong and visas were extra.  I weighed whether to go to Pakistan deciding a $200 visa was not justifiable given that I didn't have a good plan for what to do in Pakistan.  This air package still exists.  Today, you can only buy it in Japan, however.

I blogged about this trip.  Here is the entry about the World Fair I stumbled across- https://davetravels.blogspot.com/2005/05/expo-2005.html

I spent money on our honeymoon trip, Fall 2006, to Florence, Cortona, and Paris. because I didn't want the mundane day to day of budget travel to distract.  Call it insecurity.  After that, we followed the Frommer playbook and typically used their recommended deals to visit Australia, Russia, Paris, Iceland, Ireland, China, Shanghai, Hawaii and Alaska as well as our own continent.

If you read the June, 2020 blog post by Art Frommer, you will find it is political.  How a person travels is indeed a political choice.  One either views the world as a purchase or as a place you can more broadly join.

Walking Down the Street

 Over the past fifteen years, it has not been unusual for me the walk down my residential street with flyers that I drop off at each house and apartment.  What do you suppose is the reaction to this?

The reaction, at first, was that I could see people moving away.  The next neighbor over would suddenly go from their lawn care activity to inside the house.  The person in the car would rush to the house.  The people inside the house would turn off the light.  People reacted appropriately to the threat.  They assumed I was trying to change their religion and wouldn't go away when when requested.

The reaction Wednesday was different.  It is a sunny winter day with snow on the ground.  Some are outside enjoying relative warmth.   I approach a house.  I slide a flyer inside the door.  I walk away.  The door opens.  A man reads the flyer and asks questions.  "Where is this planned?"  

"Just across the street from us and next to the apartment building going up.  It will adjoin the church parking lot."  

"It would be nice if they put something there.  No one likes an undeveloped area.  Playground equipment would also be nice."

"Email the people on the flyer and they will invite you to the meeting in a couple of weeks."

Up and down the street, instead of fleeing us (it is a pandemic), people walk toward us and tell us their opinions.  All are in support of development.  All prefer someone in charge of the area rather than continued neglect of the vacant lot.

We walk to the corner where the apartment caretaker is often having a cigarette or drinking a beer.  A man we don't recognize takes our last flyer.  "You should post another flyer downstairs through that back entrance," he says. 

Democracy can work in the United States.  The key is that people listen to people. In person works best.

On Coaching

 My father defined success as being a "coach".  I assume he meant a high profile college coach such as Bobby Knight, Hayden Fry or Woody Hayes.  I'm not sure whether he admired the role of coach based on the high profile, high salary, the responsibilities or something completely different.    "When you grow up, you should be a coach" is all I heard.  The "what" and the "why" of coaching was not communicated.

Being told what you should do maybe effective communication in some situations for some people.  My wife is ISTJ in Myers-Briggs personality type.  I regularly hear "just tell me what" from her.  She is not always interested in hearing my logic in detail.

The key question I want answered as a Myers-Briggs INTP is "why".  Why is it that I would enjoy or be successful at coaching?  My father was a school teacher.  Maybe, a really successful school teacher is successful at coaching?  Maybe, there is pride in having a really successful student?  My father did enjoy talking about students toward the beginning of his career who were highly successful.  From listening to my father talk, however, you would conclude the success of these students was preordained based on skills and abilities that they brought with them to his eighth grade class.  He never took credit for anyone's success at nuclear physics.

My father failed if he wanted me to become a coach (as he defined the term).  To convince me, he would have needed to communicate a "why" in addition to a "what".  Leadership and coaching involves communicating "whats" and "whys".  That may explain why having a good mission statement is important.  Is my goal "to win at all costs" like some of those coaches from the 1970s that I mentioned?  Is my goal something else?