Where to Sit

When I was in elementary school, I was a victim, the girl that was always picked on. I was not the lowest in my grade in terms of status, but the second lowest, and I am ashamed to say that I exhibited no empathy at all, and picked on the girl who occupied the lowest rung.

Amazingly, 4th and 5th grade girls will go to incredible lengths to ostracize an individual, to make another person feel rotten. There were parties to which I was specifically NOT invited, play dates that failed to materialize, friends that somehow always had other plans, even though I knew they had made plans with me. There was no specific reason for this – I didn’t pick my nose and eat it, I bathed regularly, could make a joke that was moderately funny. It was almost just the luck of the draw.

The lowest on the ladder did pick her nose, she didn’t bathe regularly, and she didn’t have a winsome personality. But I still shouldn’t have picked on her. In fact, at the time, it was a relief to have someone lower than me, as my own lack of status probably met the needs of all the moderately-close-to-the-bottoms or even middle-of–the-ladders. Rather than actually finding me abhorrent, my elementary school colleagues probably kept me there because it gave them an elevated sense of their own rank.

Rank has its privileges, I have been told, but I will NEVER be a bully in order to achieve it. I will never tell someone about a party to which they have not been invited; I will not fail to call if I cannot make it to an appointment. I will not stab someone in the back for personal gain. And so, I perch happily near the bottom rung, but not actually on the ladder at all, professionally unsuccessful, but personally satisfied. And Linda, I'm sorry I was a jerk.

What I discovered yesterday . . .

. . . from random surfing and time-wasting.

So I'm sitting at my desk, and my Launchcast radio is playing a song from Face Dances (that I rated with some improbable number of stars) when I find that Pete Townshend has his own blog, right here on blogger. Who even knew he was still alive?

http://boywhoheardmusic.blogspot.com/

It's a little weird, but then it should be.

Check Your Inbox

Part of my job is to clean out our spam filters, looking for any “real” e-mails that have slipped in there. So I have to ask, has anyone actually purchased a replica watch from one of those spam vendors? How about cheap software? Viagra or Cialis (no prescription needed!)? Okay, surely you’ve applied for a mortgage with one of those great rates they offer. Maybe you’ve sent money to an unknown man in a West African country to help him out (you’ll triple your return).

Are enough people actually falling for this that it is worth a lot of somebody’s while to fill e-mail accounts with this garbage both in English and Cyrillic? If yes, what an even sadder commentary about humanity than even the political situation in America.

Kill Your Television

After many years of having no television access in my house, I succumbed to getting satellite. It was totally the fault of the Red Sox, who had finally delivered on a World Series – I was tired of sponging off other people who had cable to watch the games. Satellite seemed like a better deal than cable, what with my bundling options, so now the dish sits on the front of my house, marring her unusual Victorian lines.

Until now, I have treated the satellite dish as a transmitter for baseball games and nothing else. With the season winding down and a night to myself I decided to explore the world of television beyond baseball. What a mistake. Not only did I get sucked into watching an awful movie about gang rape on Lifetime, I got sucked into it until 1:15 a.m. There I was, helpless on the sofa, being told about the side affects of every kind of prescription drug on the market (“. . . and in some cases even death.” Ooh, sign me up!) wishing desperately that someone would make it stop but being too damn lazy (and sort of interested in a pathetic way) to do so myself.

The movie ended. I’m late for work. But not from oversleeping – no, I had to write in my blog.

Why We Need God

It’s hard to imagine that I would ever write an essay with that title. I remember clearly when I was a 10th grade Biology teacher and, during a discussion on Natural Selection, one student asked, “what about Creationism?” I told her that was an idea I would be happy to discuss in a religion, philosophy, or even art history class, but not in a science classroom.

But after the 10 days of reflection between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I think I would amend my answer. Creationism is certainly not a science, and has no place being discussed in a Biology class, other than to say, some people ignore an enormous body of evidence in order to blindly follow some person’s doctrine.

In fact, reading the Torah, or the Old Testament, for Christians, gives a tremendous reinforcement to the theory of Natural Selection. Over and over again, within each passage, we are told how to behave. The constant repetition of the lists of both the things we do wrong and the things we do right is a reminder that human nature tends toward competition, underhandedness, and all of the traits that make us more successful as individuals. To believe in God as it is written in all of these scriptures is to believe in transcending that nature and ALWAYS doing what’s right, morally, spiritually. And it isn’t so subject to interpretation. The rules are specific. Don’t speak deceitfully (including scoffing, slander, talebearing, and swearing falsely) or behave in any self-centered manner. Similarly, the things you should do are also laid out: feed the hungry, do not cast out the poor from your house, cover the naked, let the oppressed go free, loose the bands of wickedness. In the end, this behaviour is what makes us successful as a species and perhaps can even get a skeptic such as myself to believe.

We are the only group of animals who can communicate an awareness that there is something larger than ourselves out there. Our evolution has reached a state at which we CAN think of the whole of the species. My Chihuahua doesn’t think beyond her own dogness even though there are other dogs in the house. This doesn’t mean we should have a group mentality. It merely means that each of us should behave in the best way possible, and that will serve the needs of the group. It is what is written – it is what it means to REALLY believe in God.

There is a Torah portion (Isaiah 58) that talks about people praying, fasting publicly and still being jerks, and how that isn’t what God is looking for. If you believe in what God REALLY stands for, you aren’t George W., a member of the Free Republic, Cherie Sweeney, or any of an enormous number of other self-proclaimed religious zealots who either claim to take the bible literally (mmmn, burnt offering) or follow its precepts.

So, Virginia, there may or may not be a God, but there is Natural Selection AND something that makes us recognize that we do better together than alone. It’s what sets us apart as humans; forsaking it will be the demise of our species.

Bring On the Commercial Art

I went to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA over the weekend. There’s a good description of the museum at Rockin' Norman Rockwell. In addition to the regular NR collection was a temporary exhibit of New Yorker covers, the New Yorker being the ONLY remaining magazine that dedicates its entire cover to original art. It was a powerful exhibit, with pictures running the spectrum from Gary Larson cartoons to meaningful reactions to the aftermath of 9/11. Amazingly, these are all artists who are making a living (for themselves, not their estate) as artists. I live in an “art” community. It consists of a group of individuals who create art for themselves, but then bemoan the fact that they are misunderstood, broke. It isn’t hard to look at a painting and understand when it is too shocking or too dark for people to grasp. It is necessary to shake the public up gently, let them be uncomfortable with a visual idea over time, not get right in their face; of COURSE people don’t like that. There are so many artists who don’t get that, but the ones on the walls of the museum DO understand. My local artists would call it “selling out”, but instead, they are selling nothing. If they didn’t care, it would be one thing. But they do.

Play Ball!

The Baseball Hall of Fame could be THE AMERICAN MUSEUM. It underscores every aspect of social and economic change in the US from the 19th century on, using one topic as a theme. Here are covered racism, the women’s movement, the depression, war, all under the benign blanket of Baseball, America’s Past Time. If you feel anything about the sport, you cannot fail to be moved while you are there, beginning with the 12-minute multimedia presentation that can bring tears to the eyes of a sap such as myself. My passion for baseball is greater than many, certainly more than most women, and I love it as an art form and for all the things that were iterated within the museum. I wish the labels for the artifacts weren’t written on the glass cases in white letters – they are nigh on impossible to read with the lighting. But other than that, the museum tells a thel story of America’s development through baseball in a beautiful manner.

In that vein, the stores around the museum tell the modern tale. If you are not a Yankees or Red Sox fan, you will find little apparel, paraphernalia, information to address your needs. In fact, a foreigner coming to Cooperstown might be hard pressed to tell you what other teams exist without going to the museum itself. Where are the Pirates, the Reds, and all the other teams that had successful pennant runs long in the past? We are told of the magnitude of the rivalry of the two teams, but something else too. The Yankee tee-shirts brag about the number of wins they have, and like so many Red Sox fans, I can’t help but think of how boring that is. Oh yeah, the Yankees are in the playoffs. Again. But (dear Red Sox fans) so are the Sox. In fact, these two teams, with their massive budgets, continually dominate the American League. It is as successful an illustration of America today in terms of both government and opportunity as the Jackie Robinson story was of desegregation.

So this year: Go Chicago White Sox!