P.S. A Column On Things

Creativity

Readers of PSACOT who have checked out my poetry and listened to my songs may disagree that I’ve been creative lately, but even Babe Ruth didn’t hit a home run every time at bat.

Which is to say, I know my output has been uneven, but overall it’s been good, and frankly the quantity has been surprising.

It is not unusual for youth to be a time of prolific creativity, during which some people do their best work. After all, most Nobel Prizes go to work done before the age of 30, no matter the age of the creator on receiving the award. I could receive the Nobel Prize for literature—if every other writer on Earth died.

Before my 18^th birthday, I wrote radio scripts, short stories, poetry and a novel. Unlike Mozart, my youthful efforts will not be in circulation several centuries from now. Any discoveries of lost manuscripts (like Vernon Jones, Super-Scientific Detective) are more likely to occasion drinking games than worldwide celebration.

I chatted recently with a man who has been listening to my music, and who flattered and surprised me by comparing one of my songs to Your Lying Eyes. He said he felt he could never be that creative.

Everyone can be creative if they write about something they love. I write songs about Vicki and prose about myself.

Of course it’s not just what you love, sometimes it’s what you hear. This essay stemmed from the chat with my “fan.” Taylor Swift says she wrote Welcome to New York after hearing a friends say “I’m better in New York.” One lyric in my songbook, You Affect Me, stemmed from a comment made a half-century ago. So, you never know.

Creativity

 Oops! Accidental rerun from Nov 15

More Life Lessons For 2024

I am simply going to extend 72 Life Lessons For My 72^nd Birthday with new lessons as I go along. First, there is the Grams section, from my paternal grandmother.

If wishes were horses beggars would ride.
We get too soon old, und too late schmart
Sorry doesn’t make the grass grow

---

And from a psychotherapist: Hatred is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.

Gratitude and Thanksgiving

For 26 years, I have been running variations of this Thanksgiving column. During the years when I had stopped posting regular blog entries, I started writing regular entries in a gratitude journal, which got me to thinking of the difference between thankful and grateful. Google isn't much help:

Grateful: feeling or showing an appreciation of kindness; thankful.
Thankful: pleased and relieved, grateful

So, basically, it treats the words as synonymous. I do still give thanks for my health and my family. I am also grateful to have them in my life. I am grateful to be of use, to my family and others. [Turns out service is a Love Language] I am grateful for the love I get and the loving kindness I am now obliged to give everyone, since my heart Chakra opened.

If you feel life has been dealing to you from the bottom of the deck, I recommend the practice of keeping a gratitude journal. Write down one or two things each day for which you are grateful. Big or small, serious or silly. It can be an interesting and rewarding activity.

Me? I’m grateful for everything. Family, career, health, another beautiful day, and one more chance to set foot on this good green Earth. Happy Thanksgiving!

Link To My Poem: Pandemic Thanksgiving

Things I Am Grateful For

(IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)

• Children
• Consciousness
• Family
• Friends
• Grandchildren
• Intelligence
• Life
• Lovers
• Opportunity I had to be something else wonderful
• Opportunity to almost be what I wanted to be when I grew up
• Parents
• Teachers And Mentors
• Time I had as a teacher
• Vicki’s Parents

Pick Up The Damn Phone

Back when long-distance calls were expensive, the phone company ran TV ads: “Reach Out and Touch Someone.” Now, long distance doesn’t cost extra, the phone company is gone, and there’s almost no more TV. So what the hell is your excuse?

It has been ages since I last talked to one of my best friends from college. Our call was amazing and proved to be the second-best thing that happened to me that day, after seeing my wife at the breakfast table.

We compared notes and discovered that texts have largely replaced conversations, at least among our children and grandchildren. And emails for the older demographic.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I have lived a life virtually without regret and I don’t plan to add any now… like regretting that I didn’t stay in better touch with those who shaped my life for the better, no matter where they live.

It is already too late for some…

Influence a Great Work of Art

tl;dr
Imagine standing behind Leonardo da Vinci while he painted the Mona Lisa and saying, “Lennie, the smile needs some work.” This is your chance to live something like that dream, and influence another great work of art.

As Clark Smith once said of another song, this is draft 0. As folk singer Tom Rush says, “First it has to be true, than it has to rhyme.”

I am seeking advice from the 88 people I know best: you all.

I already got rid of the word “swell.” If you see anything else that needs a red line, feel free to share. I must say I finally achieved an internal rhyme; in fact, several.

Your Amazing Eyes

(CHORUS)

Your gaze so sweet, every day,
When turned on me, it seems to say
I Love You.

(Verse)

Your lovely eyes, invigorating,
I cannot help but praising,
Your eyes, mesmerizing.
Your eyes always start my day,
Whether skies are blue or gray,
Love is what your eyes convey.
Your amazing eyes.

(CHORUS)

(Verse)
The night we met, ‘twas plain to see.
In your eyes, love running free;
It was in you, It was in me.
We both felt real joy and glee.
We could see ‘twas meant to be.
I saw nothing was amiss,
In your amazing eyes.

(Chorus)

What was there was truth, not lies.
All was real, no disguise.
Clear blue skies behind blue eyes,
A place where no one ever cries.
Finding it just took three tries.
I saw birds who sang their song,
In your amazing eyes.

(Chorus)

Steve and Little League

I had a dream recently in which my father and my brother Steve appeared post-mortem. My dad’s role was anodyne; all I remember is that Steve did something irritating that made me angry (a not uncommon event when he was alive).

Which got me to thinking of Little League Baseball at Blaesing Field (now a cemetery). In our family construct, Steve was the gifted athlete, I was the gifted scholar. So he was a great pitcher, I was a hapless right fielder—the home of the hapless in a league with very few left-handers. Still, I recall my mother’s favorite (and true) anecdote, “Pop fly to right field. Pauli gets under it, nonchalantly flips his sunglasses down, walks forward, then looks over his head as it drops  behind him.”

We were never allowed on the same team, but we did play one game against each other. Steve was a hot-shot pitcher, I was the ninth batter. Both coaches were afraid Steve would walk me—although with my speed (or lack thereof) I wasn’t much of a threat on the basepath.

I managed one of my extremely rare hits, an infield popup. The third baseman dropped it, then threw to first, where it whizzed past the first baseman. The shocked first-base coach waved me to second, where the ball was missed again. On to third I went. Steve was turned around, trying to manage to zoo of missed catches behind him.

Long story not too much longer, I tried to stretch it into an infield home run. I bowled over the catcher (a much smaller boy) who, in the only miracle for Steve’s team that inning, held onto the ball. I’ve never seen the replay, but I don’t think it was close.

 

My Friend The CIA Agent

A half century ago, just before I found Vicki, I had a few dates with a woman named Lucy Kirk. “What do you do?” “I work for the government.”

It was the equivalent of “Where did you go to school?” “Cambridge.” The latter usually means Harvard, the former almost always meant the CIA (or the NSA), as it did in this case. Those rules have clearly loosened since 1977.

We got back in touch, and I reviewed her novel:
Poison Factory: Neither Pale, Stale nor Male. Just Terrific

Now her memoir (reviewed in more detail on my site, also on Amazon here):

We Already Have a Woman We Like: My Life in the CIA

A vivid and well-told story about the ways in which the CIA made life difficult for its first female agents. #Metoo problems existed a long time before #Metoo.

Not A Dodger, Just Lucky

I recently read the confession of a man my age who was called for induction during the Vietnam War, but simply didn’t show up and was never caught or punished.

I wasn’t an anti-Vietnam radical. I thought “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is going to win” was a load of bovine effluvium. I was against the war because I thought it was a stupid waste of people’s lives and a democracy’s money. My grandmother favored the war (my uncle was in the service) because “If we don’t stop the Commies there, we’ll be stopping them in Washington, Oregon and California.”

I carefully considered asking her how and why the Vietnamese Communists would cross the Pacific, but thought better of it.

There was much conversation about draft-dodging at MIT when I arrived in 1970. There was a popular rumor that sympathetic doctors had an injectible drug that would raise your blood pressure high enough to avoid induction.

Some cartilage was removed from my left knee after a high-school wrestling injury. I considered asking the orthopedist for a note excusing me (like that used by Col. Bone Spurs), but then another option appeared.

In an effort to improve equality, the Selective Service System started lotteries which would determine the order in which young men were called up. My lottery was August 5, 1971, and my number was 178. So, I gave up my student deferment and entered the draft pool. The highest national number called that year was 125, but some local draft boards went higher.

There was no Internet, and long distance phone calls were painfully expensive, so it was hard to keep track of what number the Portland, Ore. draft board was calling. They were higher than many boards, but never made it to 178. I passed the year 1972 without being drafted, and that was it.

I am neither proud nor ashamed of not serving in Vietnam. My heart goes out to those, draftees and volunteers, who were thrown into that meat grinder.

I am ashamed of the American political system which, under Democrats and Republicans alike, allowed mindless fear of Communism to guide foreign and military policy. I think our democracy and economic system would have driven the Commies into the ground even without Korea and Vietnam, but what do I know?

Twenty-Six Years Later: PSACOT

(A reprint of my annual anniversary item, with small adjustments).

As of Oct. 16, it's been 26 years since my online revival of this 53-year-old column. (As published, as a Typepad Entry) Online for 26 years! (with a small six-year gap in the middle). I’ve written almost 1,000 columns, successors to an idea born in MIT’s objectivist student newspaper, ERGO, on September 23, 1970, six days after my 18^th birthday. (see entire first column here)

When I started this column online, "W" was still the second-rate governor of Texas, Sara Palin was busy running Wasila, and John McCain was angry. W is still second rate, Palin isn't running anything, and John McCain is gone.

I was still working for CMP (computer journalism company), and had invented the weekly podcast, back before Ipods (the lack of which definitely cut into our audience). My heart beat by itself and I weighed 270 pounds. In short, things were different.

In 1998, during the Clinton impeachment, I either had to start a column or check into a mental institution. PSACOT gave me a forum in which to express, to an audience (no matter how small) my feelings about that political circus. [As a one-time U.S. history teacher, I am forced to note that Andrew Johnson's impeachment was a rabid partisan witch hunt, as was Clinton's. Only Nixon's near-impeachment was bipartisan--and only Nixon resigned. And only Trump was charged twice for crimes he actually committed.]

The column/blog has since evolved into a combination of diary for my family and me and bulletin board for my clever friends--in short, a personal column. Like, but not as good as, former San Francisco Chronicle columnists Adair Lara or Jon Carroll. Or Doug Baker of the Oregon Journal.  Or, to take a national example, former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen, considered the mother of the personal column concept (even though Stanton Delaplane and Charles McCabe of the San Francisco Chronicle actually beat her to it--but of course, if it hasn't happened in New York, it hasn't happened).

PSACOT is also a revival of sorts. My MIT readers would remember the original P.S. A Column On Things, which ran in ERGO, MIT's objectivist newspaper from September 1970 to March 1971, and The Tech, MIT's semi-official student newspaper, six times from March 1971 to May 1971. Those were among my happiest days as a journalist. If I had truly understood the fulfillment a personal column gave me, perhaps I would have fought harder to keep it when Bob Fourer killed it, or I would have revived it when I became editor-in-chief two years later, or tried to practice the craft as an adult (and become the father of the personal column).

In any case, I expect to still be doing this next October; I'll meet you here.