A YEAR IN ESSAYS: 2/9/2022: Olympic Ideals

In the ancient world, the Olympics were a quadrennial time of truce. States laid down their weapons to allow the athletes to come together for open if not friendly competition. That’s the myth at least.

Now during two separate Olympic cycles the bully leader of Russia has waged war on neighboring Ukraine, in one case riding the surge of Nationalistic pride from hosting (Sochi 2014) and this year banking on the distraction of the spotlight on a more powerful enemy who may have be in accord with Russian ambitions. Such naked aggression would seem to be against everything that the Olympic movement stands for.

Except we haven’t had an Olympics free of rabid nationalistic fervor in, well, forever. For every feelgood story of a Russian and an American forming a lifelong friendship, there is another of blood in the water polo pool. And even if athletes are becoming citizens of the world, playing more for their sponsors than for their countries, the fans and observers are ever obsessed with owning the national rival, of using the competition as a surrogate for war.

There is nothing wrong with patriotic pride. I enjoy the images of a brilliant athlete basking in the glory of their national anthem with gold strung around their victorious neck. Does it make me proud to be American? I guess so, if only with the vicarious pleasure that I watch any sporting event. If a team or individual for which I am rooting wins, I enjoy their moment. But I cannot see how the brilliance of an American Olympian is any reflection either on me or on our society.

Neither then are the athletes the carriers of a nation’s glory. They are engaging, beautiful individuals who had the fortune of being born in one country (or in some cases to citizens of a country). They do not of necessity embody the beliefs or the politics or the foibles of their nation. We call out for them to support this or that which aligns with our own beliefs, but those are our beliefs, not even our country’s, and they may have their own.

In a world where everything is politicized beyond reason, can’t we set aside the jingoism and simply enjoy the pageantry of glorious competition? It was a beautiful myth in the ancient world. It is a beautiful myth now.

A YEAR IN ESSAYS: 1/25/22: Why Meat Loaf Matters

 A huge loss recently was the singer Meat Loaf. His music was entwined with my adolescence. He was the soundtrack and the aspiration of my younger self.

The album Bat Out of Hell came out in 1977, an explosive debut for the rising star. I don’t know how many of the songs became big hits, but some of them seemed to be playing everywhere. The biggest hit, “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights” was the song of that summer, a summer when I had just begun to drive and was just aware of the power of songs on the radio. The cut is driving and frenetic, barely a moment of release in its churning base-driven frenzy. In Boston, the radios had substituted out local announcer, Dick Stockton, for the famous spoken part by Phil Rizzuto so the song had a local charm. And, oh yes, I was “barely seventeen” at the time. Meat Loaf was singing about me. He was singing to me. And even if I could only dream about being in a situation like the doomed protagonist in his epic song, I felt the passion and the heat every time the song played or each of the thousands of times I listened to it on the LP.

The album and the singer stayed with me as I grew up. In college I discovered Rocky Horror Picture Show and Meat Loaf’s soulful, murderous Eddie was a powerful and haunting presence (whatever did happen to Saturday night?). His later music was elegant and emotional. I noticed his touch as a producer in songs I loved like Bonny Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” or Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All.” But it was the powerful virtuosity of his first songs that stayed with me.

His voice was a gauge by which I measured mine. In 1978-79, I was just coming to terms with possessing an expanding tenor voice, singing both classical and jazz in college. Intensely proud of my upper range, I wanted to be great. Meat Loaf’s voice was the reach just beyond my grasp, particularly on the ballad “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”  I sang through the song an untold number of times, sometimes with the record, sometimes on my own, in showers, common rooms, bedrooms, archways, hallways. I must have been a real pest. It was the high notes I was aiming for, those magnificent soaring lines that Meat Loaf made so effortless and for me were a hash of squeal and falsetto. I never got there back then and, with time, tucked the song away into my file of memory.

The other day when Meat Loaf died, “Two Out of Three” popped into my head at once. With the miracle of Amazon Echo, Alexa was playing the song for me almost before I had asked her to. I was singing along, every word etched in the deep recess of my long-term memory. Sailing through chorus and verse, the mature tenor me stayed with Meat Loaf high note for high note. Then the bridge, at the stratospheric line about the “Coup de Ville hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box,” miraculous to see, I was still in the game. But Meat Loaf had another register and the song transposes even higher, “never be able/ to give you something/ something that I just haven’t got.” Beaten again and at last. Well played, Meat Loaf. Again and finally, well played.

Ah well. What’s a heaven for?

 

A YEAR IN ESSAYS: 1/20/22 - Is Time Money?

The adage goes, “Time is Money.” As with many an old saw, this is one of my most pet of peeves.

I don’t dispute that time is valuable. It is a non-renewable resource, the only one that all humans have in their personal possession. Time is also an unknowable and unmeasurable asset. None of us can speak with certainty about Time except in the broadest of platitudes and generalizations. “There are only twenty-four hours in a day,” we say. “There are seven days in a week,” we remind ourselves. Even these are arbitrary. There are twenty-four hours in a day only because we have decided to measure time from sunrise to sunrise and because we have chosen to split into the odd increment. Even then, it is an uneven balance, changing as the year (another arbitrary designation) rolls along so that some days will have slightly more or slightly less time in their documented hours. The week is even more profligate. There is nothing special about seven days. A Sunday need not be distinct from a Tuesday or a Friday.

What is most at dispute is the concept of value. We make the tacit assumption that life (and therefore time) has value and in felicitous circumstances I hope it does. We can choose to appreciate the beauty of our time, of each breath, of each whisper of breeze on our cheek, of each delicate color of sunset. But that is a choice. For some bleak souls, time is a curse – loneliness, illness, pain, the whole litany of things that are also part of the human state. I guess it is safer to say time is precious, although even that is a value judgement. Perhaps, the truest and blandest statement is that time is finite.

Which brings us to my peeve. “Time is Money” implies that money is the equivalent of value or even that the finite nature imparts a monetary value. But money and its pursuit are the most arbitrary of goals. The implication that any moment spent not in accumulation is wasted is both erroneous and insulting. The statement makes Money the defining factor for all of endeavor, not what we do with the money nor what pleasure it may provide.

I would argue that Time is not Money, but the reverse. Money is Time; time to enjoy the fleeting moments of beauty and humanity that our finite and precious moments offer us.

 

A YEAR IN ESSAYS: 1/18/22 - Against Radical Education Reform

 Yesterday, I bit off more than I could chew. I tried to write an essay about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth anniversary and got weighed down in awkward description. My anger got the better of me in a way that Dr. King would not have accepted. There is too much to respond to and too much need to speak out.

Today, I’ll try to clarify my writing in discussing the radicalization of attacks on educational freedom. Contrary to the conservative argument, educational freedom is not achieved by banning teachings or books. How could outlawing thoughts be any form of freedom? Rather, it is in allowing open thought and discussion to foster, even when those avenues may not be comfortable or glorious.

There are a few facts that are glossed over by the proponents of strict governmental control on teaching. The first is that education is not a comfortable experience. By definition, it is a step into the unknown and that may make a student leery. But facing the unknown and learning to accommodate one’s expanding knowledge is an integral part of growing. I was exceedingly uncomfortable learning calculus. It made me feel foolish to struggle through many of the mathematical ideas and to get low grades. But I would never have expected or wanted my parents to try to ban it from the school curriculum.

Another fact is that Critical Race Theory is NOT being taught in grade school curricula. It is true that History and Social Studies are now being taught through a broader framework than the “Glory of Our National Heritage,” but that should not shame or discomfort anyone who is interested in learning more than a superficial truth. What IS being taught in a graduated fashion is the formation of critical thinking skills pertaining to American and World history – context, nuance, perspective. Parents should welcome this since it will make their children better prepared for the subtleties of real life beyond the safe harbors of the schoolroom and home.

Finally, there is no scenario where the umbrage of a single parent or even a group of them should influence the curriculum for all children. A parent or even a collective organization must not have control over what is offered in education to all students. I guarantee that what I want my child taught is not the same as what you want your child taught. There already is a mechanism to control the interaction between curriculum and student. It is called parental involvement. If a child is uncomfortable with a facet of learning, it is the parent’s place to discuss it with them, not the school’s or other parents’ responsibility to compensate.

A YEAR IN ESSAYS: 1/16/22 - The State of the Game

For a Patriots fan, the season crashed to an end yesterday in a dismal drubbing by arch-rival Buffalo. I have no problem with the Bills being is ascendency for a while. I have always liked them as a team, lamenting their four straight Super Bowls with no victories, one of the saddest records in professional sports if only because of the dire disappointment that each sequential loss caused.

This was a season overall that failed to capture my attention in a grand way. I still think this and last seasons (not just for the Pats) should have huge asterisks next to them because of COVID and the odd ebb and flow of teams and players. The Tennessee Titans were (are) the number one seed in the AFC – that should tell you everything you need to know about the year past.

After so many years of not just relevance but predominance by my team, it is disconcerting to have them as after-thoughts. Rebuilding was inevitable. Even if TB12 had stayed with the Pats, they were still going through vast changes in personnel, in coaching, even in philosophy. Brady’s last year with the team was a disappointment all around, especially after three Super Bowls appearances in four years before that. Despite how things look, Brady will not last forever and eventually the team would have been faced with the need to work in a new Quarterback, whether that be Mac Jones (who I think still has the potential to be very good or great if he listens to Belichek and Saban and not to his press) or someone else. The Pats were not terrible this year, except in the first and the last few games but they were so ordinary that the whole season felt like it was mired in doldrums from the start. In many ways, this was worse than the horrific Billy Sullivan days. At least those teams had a horror show comedy vibe about them. These Patriots teased with brilliance (they might have won two or three more games with a little football luck and better officiating) but more often they just, well, were. They just filled up one side of the field with little expectation of the great or the horrible. And that’s a side of our team that we have not seen in ages, perhaps never in its magnificent and checkered history.

So where from here? Root for the usual suspects, I guess. Brady is still in play, so hope for an eighth SB win? Wish for Mahomes to regain his freebooting, swashbuckling form? Or perhaps side with a Cinderella? I have no resentment to the Bills as I’ve mentioned before and would not hate to see them win it all. How about those unlikely Titans or the Bengals?

There are teams whom I wholeheartedly will root against. The Cowboys of course – no pandemic or likeable quarterback (go, Dak!) can change that. The Packers have lost all semblance of sympathy in my eyes due to the arrogant boorishness of Rodgers. And despite upbringing and family ties, I still can’t bring myself to rally around the Steelers while Big Ben is behind center.

All of this (except of course the Cowboys) is subject to change.  If I can get the energy and excitement to even care about the playoffs. As I said at the beginning, the season is over. Who cares about the rest?

 

 

A YEAR IN ESSAYS: 1/12/22 - Dental Wars

 I am in a continuous battle with my teeth.

When I was young, there was a Mankin legend that my teeth were soft because my mother used Erythromycin during pregnancy. Or perhaps it was her smoking. But I will take full responsibility. Most certainly, it was my affinity for Twinkies and sugary cereal that led to the myriad of fillings that I carried around through childhood. Add a hockey injury that took out my front tooth in 9^th grade and I had a mouth that was more resin and amalgam it seems than native enamel.

As we have all learned, yesterday’s brilliant innovation is often tomorrow’s headache. Some of the resins and amalgams, not to mention the “Space Age” plastics that my former dentists used had a functional life that was far shorter (thank the lord) than mine. Dr. Brill and Dr. Berman paved the way for plenty of work for dentists to come, whether through well-meaning progress, poor technique, or outright malevolence I will never know.

I don’t mind the work, to be honest. Dental treatment has never held any terror for me, even on the day I discovered that I could bite the inside of my cheek without pain the first time I had Novocain, proceeding unsupervised to tear it to shreds. Maybe it is my Puritan upbringing that tells me I deserve the pain. Maybe it is that the work is actually rather fascinating. Regardless, it is not the procedures themselves that I resent. It is the wasted time. The parade of hours spent captive to HGTV while the dentist or hygienist scrapes and drills.  Or maybe it is the unrelenting nature of the issue. It never rains but it pours. I will complete one major treatment when the dentist will say, “Hello, what’s this?” and find a new crown to replace or new cracking in a hitherto innocent molar.

No end in sight, but I guess it beats the alternative. I remember being with my aged father in Chicago for his last ever AAOS meeting. I had found a hideaway on the busy exhibit floor for us to rest and had scouted out a Diet Coke and a gorgeous chocolate chip cookie for him, his two favorite foods. He bit into the baked good, made a small face, then reached into his mouth and pulled out a tooth, unbroken but unmoored. He shrugged, wrapped it in his napkin, and returned to his snack. What was one less tooth at his time of life especially compared with the joy of a chocolate chip cookie?

A YEAR IN ESSAYS: 1/10/22 - There's Something About Betty

A nation often mourns the death of a beloved figure. I was in Ottawa on the day that the Friendly Giant died. He was the star of a CBC children’s show for forty or so years. His passing was so important that Canada observed a National Day of Mourning.

There were many icons who passed this year, some more revered than others, but all of note. Yet none of them struck the national consciousness quite like Betty White. Her death prompted front page stories on all major newspapers and even was the headline banner in some. She was eulogized and tributed throughout all media, both traditional and social, and by generations ranging from contemporary (she was almost 100 at her death) to GenZ or whatever the youngest crop of influencers is terming themselves now.

Which leads to the important question: Why did Betty White command such attention? She was a well-known television star, a celebrity host when such a thing was dignified, and an acknowledged spreader of sunshine. But others answer all those callings and do not generate a fraction of the outpouring. What was it about this particular actress engendered this much adoration?

Part of her draw was the sunniness of her persona, which by all accounts was genuine and not just on-camera. She radiated optimism and happiness without ever seeming callow or naïve. She could exchange quips (or even frank insults as her late work in the underrated “HOT in Cleveland” demonstrates) without losing the welcome affection. She may cross swords with you, but there are no grudges, only respect and love.

She was also very typically American: in looks, in cadence, in movement. In her we saw the girl-next-door growing into the favorite aunt or great-aunt. She was wise without being condescending. For decades Americans have wanted to be advised but not talked down to, and no one seemed to have a better voice for that than our Betty.

But maybe the reason she resonates so much is that her death has been a punchline for so long. There have been any number of Betty White Is Dead hoaxes throughout the internet, staunchly countered immediately by her loyal fandom. Even this time, I could not respond to the initial report until I had seen it confirmed in other sources. For years, we have been fascinated by her age and experience. We learned that she is older than sliced bread, than the NFL, than any number of institutions that we hold as foundational. Thus, she became a bell weather of the country – the clock by which all experience is measured.