12.13.21 – The Duchess & The Dump Truck
#CountYourBlessings – Life can change in a New York Minute.
One year ago today, almost to the exact hour, my wife and I got the call you never want to get. Our daughter, Emma, was on her way back to Memphis passing through Nashville in the early evening after some time in Johnson City visiting friends. A careless driver behaving the fool in front of a fully-loaded dump truck with rocks and gravel caused a 20 car pile-up which shut down I-40W for hours, with Emma’s car (see pic) winding up within inches of the back truck tailgate as it toppled over, spewing its contents everywhere.
Emma – thank the Lord – was unhurt but shaken up. Her car, her beloved Jeep, was ultimately totaled, but it protected her beautifully. A Good Samaritan kindly took Emma and her belongings to her house a few miles away while waiting for us to come fetch her. The trip to Nashville was a very long one with Melissa and I reassuring each other that she was unhurt, she was in good hands, it was just a car, and we would soon be with her. The way back to Memphis was a long one filled with conversational What-If’s and What-The-Hell-Happened’s and a lot of coffee from truck stops.
When I get asked by younger kids about what it’s like to be a parent, I usually explain more about the highest highs, the joys that your kids bring, their accomplishments and their dreams for the future. I also sometimes include days like this one, where that scared, angry, tearful, confused voice comes down the phone line with noise and confusion in the background, asking for a ride home after reassuring you countless times to your repeated question, “Are you sure you’re all right!?” Being a parent is not easy, and it’s not for the faint-hearted.
At this time of year, and all throughout the rest of the year, a good reminder to treasure what’s important. This could have been much worse, but it was not. Again, thankful to God for keeping everyone safe. One of the best Christmas gifts I could have ever received: keeping my Duchess safe on her travels out there.
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A Farewell to Big Chili & Hot Pickles – May 14, 2022
Proof positive that you should enjoy and cherish the little things in life, because you don’t know when they might not be around in the future. Memphis has its neighborhood BBQ joints. Topeka’s place was a combo neighborhood grocery store and restaurant.
Blink and you would have missed it. Squint a bit from a distance and you might have been able to see the signage to help you navigate there. The best way to find it was to navigate towards the address, knowing you were nearby when the mass of parked cars taking up whatever convenient spaces available at the time during what was known as “Chili Season” surrounded the building with a line of folks waiting outside to get in and dine at one of the more famous Topeka establishments.
Around the curve that goes from NE Sardou Avenue and becomes NE Porubsky Drive and along the railroad tracks north of the Kansas River, is a small house-like structure, twice as big as some of the shotgun houses that make up the Little Russia neighborhood, is – well, was – a piece of culinary history for the city that is known far and wide for those that love chili. After 75 years in business, Porubsky’s Deli and Tavern has closed its doors for good. The iconic Topeka deli/diner has been a staple within the ‘Little Russia’ community since 1947, having the waters of the Kansas River come to its doorstep in the Great Floods of 1951.
Every once in a while, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to find a place that – while being the proverbial Hole In The Wall – will be some of the better food you’ve had in That Town or The Place That Everyone In One City Says You Have To try. It won’t be spectacular to the eye, maybe even a bit shabby, but the feel of the place will be one that will stick with you for the rest of your life. The outside of the store is pretty typical for a diner; soda machine between the west side of the store which was the grocery and the east side being the actual restaurant.
I never went into the grocery side of the establishment, but saw through the window what probably the first small Piggly-Wiggly-ish stores were like; a very few staples like snacks and paper towels and canned veggies and a deli counter with a wide variety of sliced meats.
If you’d never have the chance to dine there for lunch, it’s difficult to describe the structural situation on the inside without having been in line for lunch personally: typical long counter for customers with stools and the usual accoutrements with mints and gum and cigarettes behind the counter in the shelves in the wood-paneled walls, adorned with plastic menu boards and advertising signs for soda and beer mixed with magazine and newspaper articles about the Porubsky’s family members and their establishment.
If I was writing a real estate blurb, my best headline would have been “Definitely Not Roomy”. (Probably explains why I don’t work in real estate right there.) The restaurant, like the grocery, was the width of a single-wide trailer which featured a couple of larger tables for parties of five plus, and just a few straight-backed wooden booths which fit four people well enough. Six would have been a stretch, and you wouldn’t have been able to do much of that. Much, anyway. Hardly any room between the booths and the barstools either. Which meant if you wanted to wait indoors for your table, you would be in the path of the servers coming out of the kitchen with much Pardon Me/Excuse Me happening as people went to and fro. If you had the chance to sit in the booth closest to the front door, the doorstop was your table and you got a burst of icy wind whenever a new round of customers entered. You paid at the counter where Mr. Porubsky would ring out your check next to the soda machine crowded around with meat snacks and hot sauce bottles.
It was crowded and only served a few people at a time, but it was part of the Porubsky’s experience. By the time my dad had introduced me to the place in the late 1970’s there was a healthy bit of grime around, dust on the shelves between the various items. Fortunately I had been familiar with establishments like this for a while when I traveled with my dad around the state to his architecture job sites. You got used to homespun places that either served some of the best dine-and-dash food that the locals talked about glowingly, or was served Death Warmed Over On A Plate that you remembered in the bathroom over the next few days.
To a foodie, or an out-and-out food snob, the location and the menu wouldn’t have tipped the scale in the slightest. The food, as it was, was perfect for Kansas winters: a steaming bowl of tomato-and-beans chili with a few generic cracker packages along with an Assemble-Your-Own sandwich kit of a cold plate and horseradish hot pickles that had a spicy horse-kick to them that mixed well with the rest of the fare. I don’t remember any menus on the tables as there was one over the counter for all to see, and the only thing worth having at Porubsky’s was the chili and cold plates. Out of everything, the pickles were my favorite of all. They were crisp and delicious and absolutely the best cure for a stuffed-up nose and, if you planned ahead for it, a great help during allergy season. They weren’t ghost pepper hot, or I Dare You To Try This To See Your Nose Run And Eyeballs Spin Hot. They had a pleasant Zing! to them that complemented the chili which was actually quite mild.
It was a place well known to the movers and shakers of the Kansas legislature as the busiest days were had when the lawmakers were in town. The crowds at their thickest could stretch around the building. Not the most fun when the weather was foul having to wait for the half-dozen or so booths to open up, but that was part of the entire Porubsky’s experience. The concrete floor was well marked by hundreds of thousands of feet traveling through over the decades. It was a comfortable place, if not crowded, at its busiest time.
This is also where I learned the technique known as The Porubsky Stare, an exercise I learned from my dad in patience and concentration, something I have introduced and passed along to my kids. If you were lucky enough to wait inside the restaurant on a cold and breezy Kansas winter day in the narrow space between the counter and the compact booths for a spot to open up, you would pick a particular table and focus on the diners. In doing so, you would hopefully make them more uncomfortable and, in doing so, cause them to eat faster and then finish quicker and then you would get your table faster. It was a very good place to realize that – where seating was in demand, and to be as kind as possible to those waiting – you were much better off as a human being if you ate a little faster and allowed the next customers to take your place. It wasn’t fast food, but the food moved from kitchen to table in an unbroken stream in as efficient a manner as possible when there were less than three feet between counter and booths. It was fast enough, and good enough.
If I’m not mistaken, the last time that I had the chance to dine there was in 2006, when I returned to Topeka for the Topeka West High Class of 1986’s 20th Reunion. My family and I went with my dad to enjoy the cramped booths and practice the Porubsky Stare, my son, Tristan, and my daughter, Emma, trying the hot pickles for the first time.
Likewise, when I returned to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to my work at KFSM-TV, I brought a jar of famous Porubsky’s hot pickles to one of the newsroom pot luck lunches for the news staff to try. I will never forget Anna Katayama popping one into her mouth with a Bold Famous Last Words statement of “Oh, they can’t be THAT hot.” Bringing a bit of Topeka culinary specialty to the rest of the world was a fun memory. One of those pickles would keep you warm for the rest of a winter day on its own.
I’m one of those people who don’t share their meals on social media. (Maybe, possibly for a special event with friends and family.) To be honest, I’ve never understood the attraction of documenting Every Single Cheeseburger You’ve Ever Had Just To Get Internet Hits. I do believe in frequenting local businesses, especially if the food is tasty and the service decent. I’ve had my share of formal meals before, but, like Marvel Comics Tony Stark, I believe that sometimes there is nothing better than a good meal from a Hole In The Wall Joint. If you want to get really nit-picky, there is no specific way to say that this was an amazingly-special place that would serve the finest five-course meals that you could find in the busiest and largest cities of the world. Any foodies who had their noses in the air for only the finest cuisine would have turned around and left just looking at the place from the outside, to say nothing of being required to wait for a table smooshed between barstools and One Size Too Small wooden booths.
What it was, was one of those places that lived up to the If You’re Visiting This City You Have To Eat Here Once requirement. If someone would buy the name and the property and open it up again (which I’m really hoping they would) I’m sure they would enjoy a prosperous future at that location, the one that the old timers (like me) would enjoy introducing to the kids of tomorrow. I’m not sure what the dozens of Kansas legislators will do when they need a place to have lunch anymore. It was a perfect, understated piece of Topeka, and it’s part to believe its time is over. I just know I’m going to be on a quest to find hot pickles worthy of being close to the Porubsky’s level of heat and then store them to have during winter complementing a bowl of homemade chili and a House Onek assembled cold deli plate.
I’m glad that I had the chance to introduce my family to a small part of Kansas history. It was one of the best places that Topeka had to offer and I will miss it.
From A Lutheran Perspective: November Lutheran Witness 2021 Submission
Having attended Topeka Lutheran School in Topeka, Kansas, from the earliest time I can remember we were taught that we were God’s representatives during our time on Earth. Instructed to be mindful of our behavior and our words at all times, we were to be God’s hands, God’s voice, God’s heart, bringing the Gospel to everyone, always. As attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: preaching the Gospel always, using words if necessary. The opportunity for bringing God’s word to the world, we were taught, was always before you. How you acted out your faith said just as much, if not more, than what you spoke about; putting your money where your mouth was could show how much you truly believed what you were preaching. Through some of the best teachers, I learned that the outreach of a friendly hand with a cup of cold water in His name to those who were thirsty was a much better example than lashing out to whack sinners over the head with a Bible while expecting them to be grateful for the experience. Reaching out as God’s hand to whomever was listening/watching, no matter what they wore, what accent they spoke with or what color their skin was, what they were wearing, whom they were with… the opportunity was always there to be the messenger of God.
In like fashion, just to the west of The University of Kansas campus in Lawrence is Immanuel Lutheran Church & Student Center which became my church-home-away-from-home, where students like myself, many from different walks of life and faith, would gather for dinners and worship, many of whom became friends for life. The campus ministry pastor, Rev. Mark Hoelter, taking out advertising to announce church and fellowship service times in The University of Kansas student newspaper, used to describe our church and group as “The Non-Denominational Denomination”: inclusive to everyone, welcoming to anyone of any faith, or those of no faith, or those with questions seeking answers about faith, or the merely curious, or the lonely looking for a sympathetic ear or a new friend.
(Or tax collectors. We weren’t picky.)
After graduation, with a degree in atmospheric science in the early 1990’s, it was back to my hometown of Topeka to work at KTKA-TV 49 as the greenhorn weekend meteorologist. I had a magnificent time learning and growing in my career, and making many friends on both the news and the production staff. A weekender tradition was for the Sunday nightside production crew, after the Sunday 10PM newscast was concluded, to rush to Molly McGee’s restaurant back in Lawrence for the late-night-special: ten cent buffalo wings and all-you-could-eat french fries, topped off by dessert: a sundae large enough for ten people served in an enormous kids plastic dump truck that could be rolled back and forth on the table. (No calories whatsoever. Honest.) Plus lots of root beer.
Some of the best hours of my life were spent with these good friends together, working weird hours and doing their best to make a good television news product in our own role at the station and enjoy each others’ company on our time off. We were a unique collection of people that didn’t care anything about the details of who we were except that we cared for each other as the best of friends: a few agnostics, a couple of atheists, some pagans, some borderline every-once-in-a-while-Sunday-Christians, and one Druid if I recall correctly (I was the singular Lutheran representative; they weren’t tax collectors or heathens – they were my friends) all stuffing our faces into the early morning hours of Monday. Up way past our bedtimes, collectively collaborating on current and future projects on our respective TV news plates, debating and discussing issues of the day, and making each other laugh like crazy at our terrible jokes and foibles while root beer came out of our noses.
(Your spiritual experience(s) may vary.)
One of the production crew, a good friend of mine – who labeled herself firmly as a skeptic when it came to anything religion-related – told me something that has stuck with me for my entire life, something that might be seen as a slight by some but was a heartfelt compliment to me. “You know, you’re the most un-Christian-like Christian I have ever met before.”
I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. I could not have asked for a better moniker to be bestowed on me. I have tried my best in being welcoming in spirit and action, and that was something that she had not experienced greatly – and sadly – from many other professing “Christians”.
Did I preach and proselytize while at the station? No. Did I encourage prayer breakfasts and anti-swearing policies? No. Is this going to be seen as a mistake by some of you? Probably. For those of you thinking as such, I offer this: I let my actions do the talking for me. I offered myself as a friend and someone who would work shoulder to shoulder without condemnation or indifference. The outreach of a friendly hand with a cup of cold water in His name to those who are thirsty has a powerful effect. A kind word. An offer of help. A smile on what could be a terrible day. These, too, are actions taken to help in the Master’s holy name.
I am not someone with all the answers, yet I am someone who listened to what the Master commanded us, the One who showed friendship to tax collectors and prostitutes, the One who forgave and forgave and forgave, the One who walked the walk and talked the talk, the One who commands us to follow His example. This is what I have learned being Lutheran and having the best teachers along my path: that I am to mimic and amplify what the Master has taught us. We are to be Christ’s likeness here. My parents, my teachers at Topeka Lutheran, the pastors at all the churches where I have worshipped, the Christians who do not set the best examples, ALL are learning experiences about what, and what not, to be. I listened and learned from all around me, teaching me how I can be better in walking the path with others while here on Earth.
I am not perfect, and have never claimed to be. I have made my share of mistakes in time that continually drive me to be better than what I was yesterday. Did I bring anyone actually closer to Christ? Did I make any new followers in my words and deeds? I have not heard whether or not any of them became Christians. Some may judge this a failure, saying that I didn’t quote scripture or put the fear of God into them when their sin was evident and needed correcting.
In the words of Dr. Martin himself, “I can do no other.” What more could I do from the bottom of my heart, the depths of what faith I have, was to extend the hand of friendship no matter who the person was? The willingness to work with a crew of people that were very different, did not believe spiritually the things that I did, having very much different paths that they had tread, the ability to say to them, to anyone, “I am not a perfect example of Christ, but I will do my best to be the best Christian I can to you. I will offer a hand instead of a put-down or a critique to whatever problem you may be having. I offer myself as a friend, a co-worker, a confidante, whatever I can be that shows you more clearly the reflection of Christ in our time together, the best example that I can be along our journey together. I will show you what I believe by showing you who I am.”
This is what I can do – what anyone can do – as a lay person, as a human being, as a Lutheran / Christian who is always wanting to do better, I can demonstrate the love of our Saviour by doing just that: showing, proclaiming, demonstrating God’s love, being the best un-Christian-like Christian as needed to point the way to that holy, unending love reflecting Christ’s actions in our everyday lives.
Using words if absolutely necessary.
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“You, too, have a Spirit-given language of some sort—a way to reach out to the people around you who do not yet know Jesus or believe in Him. It may not be a literal language, like Spanish or Vietnamese. It may be a skill that you have that brings you into contact with people who need help—a gift like nursing, accounting, or building. It may be a gift of caring or hospitality—something that helps you build relationships with your neighbors, and ultimately allows you to share your faith with them. Whatever your language is, it’s one you can speak “in the street.” It’s one that, if you are willing, God can use to bring His love and mercy to other people.
You don’t have to be experienced or wise. You just have to be willing.”
– Daily Devotions from Lutheran Hour Ministries, May 21, 2021 “Go Outside!”
TILTING AT WINDMILLS AND VIRUSES
Sitting in my office, watching the rain come down again on a grey Friday, watching the world come pouring in through my computer like some foul full-gutter backwash about the recent disbelief of the science of the recent virus outbreak, I decided to play some music and set the list to random to see what I hadn’t listened to in a while. Computer set to random, it was then – concerned over the mood of some in society to rather not know the details, not understand the facts, not believe the science behind both the virus and the race to find a vaccine – I realized was listening to “Man Of La Mancha” from the amazing episode #CatchAFallingStar on the #QuantumLeap television show soundtrack and realized, in my reverie, that I was staring at my across-the-street neighbor’s garden windmill turning in the muggy Memphis breeze. In the amazingly well-done episode, Sam leaps into the life of an understudy actor in the hopes of saving a veteran actor from himself. The odds are small that he will succeed, but Sam keeps trying, ultimately saving the veteran in a stage fall, and assuming his role in the final night of the performance.
Scott Bakula, who plays the main character of Sam, has an amazing singing voice and his performance of Don Quixote was inspiring. I’m quite glad that they saw fit to include his version of “Man Of La Mancha” on the Quantum Leap soundtrack.
People are scared by this virus, and some are scared by the science that they do not understand that is trying to help them.I remembered Carl Sagan saying on the 1980 PBS series Cosmos: “The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.” We must continue to tilt at the windmills of fear and ignorance, strive to reduce misinformation and shout down the trolls or those who launch mistrust and doubt as weapons of self-entertainment.
Keep striving to get the facts out. Keep tilting at the windmills.
WASH SOME DISHES AND THINK ABOUT IT
I really miss Anthony Bourdain. Kitchen Confidential is still one of my all-time favorite reads. Before the culinary expertise, learning the food business from the kitchen floor upwards was his path. The first part of the journey is crucial to the rest of the path traveled. And, sometimes, the most painful. This quote, hearkening back to the days when his adventure began, says a lot in a few words. The rest of the tale is just as revealing as well, at that time of his life:
“Dishwashing saved my life. It was the first time that I went home respecting myself, respecting others, with anything to feel proud of.”
The days that I have spent in a television or radio studio dealing with others of greater experience than myself are numerous. Those who sit in The Big Chair (anchor, host, correspondent… anyone in front of the camera or microphone) reveal themselves and their character in the treatment of others, especially those in the production or engineering positions. If you work in the news industry long enough, those who did not spend enough time in the trenches as producers or fixers or organizers reveal themselves as not having that added (and necessary) experiences on the other side, which is too bad in my opinion. I have seen too much in the way of snapping fingers and tapping feet, deeply frustrated out loud sighs while the main on-cam/on-mic person wants X, Y or Z done by the staff (doing their best) so they can get on with whatever they were doing before their work interrupted. The attitudes cast from on high are sharp, small, mean and totally unnecessary, and unwelcome.
Lucky as I was to have people who were willing to take time and effort to help me not commit the same mistakes twice, it was embarrassing to go through the newby motions, screw up with your director’s voice ringing in your ears, committing to memory that which you just did so that you would never, ever do that wrong thing again. Mr. Bourdain had his time at the dishwashing stations. I had my time behind the camera (panning the wrong way), the teleprompter (not paying attention), the audio board (wrong source / mic clip with my not-so-nimble fingers), the editing decks (wrong assemble edit point for the nth time), the typewriter/word processor backspace key (ask your parents, kids) from my earliest days gave me that experience that guided me forward to where I am now: still making mistakes, but more aware of my errors and a deeper commitment to not make as many.
Also, neither willing to blame my mistakes on others, nor wishing to act like *that* person in The Big Chair, who wasn’t as blessed as me to have that experience. Just because you’re sitting on top doesn’t mean you have the right to look down on those around you. Doing so just makes you look like a jerk in everyone’s eyes.
If you’re “up top” in the chair: congratulations… you’ve made it. If you’ve never spent time beneath your station, look around and understand what it takes to get your voice/image on the air. Learn why the engineer fixing the camera has to get everything correct. Don’t consider it beneath you to learn how to run the teleprompter. Going to a radio remote? Help the crew set up and tear down before you take off.
Wash more than a few dishes before you become head chef. The extra experience will be worth it.
AO
GERMANTOWN TN PLASTIC RESPONSE
(written in response to a Facebook Germantown TN Bulletin Board comment complaining about plastics and a misunderstanding regarding recycling)
ALL the plastic is the problem, not just the bags. The plastic – jugs, bags, wraps, etc. – are convenience incarnate: use once and throw away with no plan (or ability or willingness) for reuse – and are spoiling the environment in ways that can’t be immediately seen from Germantown. A large garbage truck’s worth of plastic enters the waterways of the world every minute, which is helping to eventually choke wildlife and spoil our planet’s food chain.
Just because you throw the plastic into a recycling container does not mean the plastic immediately becomes properly recycled. The amount of plastic (plastic jug, sliced ham or the bag you carry it home in) often sits for years accumulating in either recycling processing facilities or – more likely – to the landfill. Most civic/county “recycling” programs are just temporary storage facilities as there are no actual sorting/processing facilities to properly dispose/recycle plastic (and other recyclables) for re-use. Sorting/recycling facilities cost taxpayers money, and a good portion of local/county governments are not willing to spend that kind of money on that kind of effort (Don’t believe me? Do your own research. It’s not good.) As long as elected leaders (elected by us) are willing and able to take the perpetual Kick The Can Down The Road / Not In My Backyard approach, the problem with one-use waste like plastic will continue and get worse.
While the plastics are “waiting” for recycling, the wind can blow it away, water can wash it into the watersheds, wildlife can remove it for nest building (or eating) and humans continue to improperly dispose of plastics in their homes and businesses, perpetuating the problem. WE need to do proper research on the problem of OUR plastic by realizing there isn’t a giant landfill hole that it disappears into somewhere. Also, WE as plastic creators/users need to elect leaders who recognize the problem and to also have the foresight to look down the road far enough to plan to do something about this, and many other issues involving natural resources for our children’s and grandchildren’s future.
#WeHaveMetTheEnemyAndHeIsUs
STAY IN YOUR LANE
(Submitted for review to The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for inclusion in their op-ed section online at TheBulletin.org)
“Stay In Your Lane”
Growing up in Topeka, Kansas and witnessing the immediate locations around you turn to nuclear ash in the televised ABC movie “The Day After”, and the other contemporary nuclear terror works that were released around the same time (“Testament”, “Threads”, “Miracle Mile”) was more than enough to convince me not all was well. Around that time, as my dad was an architect that frequented Kansas City’s Bartel Hall Convention Center during the annual home products show, having the chance to view the anti-nuclear activists in their booths with their Ban The Bomb bumper stickers and Question Everything buttons between the shingle brands, energy-saving windows and the dishwasher demonstrations caused me more concern listening to the representatives tell the passers-by that our time was shorter than they were comfortable thinking.
Time Magazine’s inspection of the world’s nuclear threat featuring prominently a finger poised over a big red button in a black circle gave me more fear than the actual report did. News programs like CBS News “The Defense Of The United States” educating the audience that within the next hour, possibly within a few minutes if on either coast, life could be over and done had more dire impacts on my middle school self. Notably also with my friends in school at the time was the impact of these programs, who were either dismissive or fatalistic about our chances should an exchange begin.
The greatest effect personally was in 1980 from the PBS Cosmos episode “Who Speaks For Earth?”, in which Dr. Carl Sagan informed people of the destructive ability of nuclear armed states, the madness of money spent on Doomsday in the hope that they were never needed, and the furor of banging the war drum to increase that budget no matter the country, all of which would spell the end of humanity, possibly all life, on our home planet.
The mathematics of the situation staggered me in my younger years. And yet, when I asked my elders around me at the time if this concerned them, the response was effectively a dismissive wave of the hand. I had already heard from my parents’ generation the idea that those missiles were all that were standing between us in America and the godless Communists on the other side of the world. A nuclear war is not possible just on basic logical grounds according to most that I spoke of: the people who ran the nuclear program were wise, they were always on guard, they would not dare let something get out of control.
After a while of asking uncomfortable questions (“How are you so entirely sure?”) I was urged to reduce my curiosity level. Nagging questions continued with me during the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism in the early 1990’s: where are the weapons, and are they actually being stood down to non-alert levels, and if so how many? Asking anyone the general public about this evoked a common response: the Cold War is over so all of those weapons have been taken off-line or destroyed and we don’t have to worry about them anymore.
This attitude continues into current times with the advent of social media. While never mentioning it directly during my weather casts on air for fear of angering my managers, as a broadcast meteorologist I had become recently active in posting information on social media sites at nighttime, scheduling stories and website posts about world-threatening weapons or ill-conceived nuclear deterrents at 11:58 PM every night, Two Minutes To Midnight as The Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock stood. This information and postings to any thinking person (I would have thought) to stir some sort of action, to contact legislators, to question the situation at heart, to ask more questions.
When I put this information to the public on my webpage, the response was either a non-response (the posts receiving less in the way of hits or views than a standard weather forecast), or – my favorite bit of blowback – the “You’re just a weatherman. Stay in your lane.”
Stay in my lane. Which lane would that be? “Just” a weatherman? A scientist? Not even a scientist to most. So: A parent? A member of the community at large, be it national, local or world?
A human being?
Is it me, as all of the above roles put together, as a fellow traveler on Spaceship Earth in fear of losing my life and home for the fear of a technology grown out of our control and dangerously outdated? Am I causing you to think about things that you should be concerned about already which makes you uncomfortable? Am I swerving outside “my lane” to share those fears with you in the hopes that together we can make a change, creating a safer world to live in? What scares you the most about being outside the lanes? What is it that would cause you to look beyond the lanes you are comfortably in now? Is it the fact that I’m bringing up the information about nuclear weapons and possible war that scares you? One of those worst case scenarios that everyone has in the back of their minds that sometime jump to the front, only to be tamped down with the comforting “Oh, that’ll never happen!” thought / hope.
As a scientist (granted, nowhere near Nobel status) that thinks about the world in general and how to improve life for everyone, and one that was taught by his parents to think of others and not just himself, it is important for me to raise those questions of planetary survival in this now 100 Seconds To Midnight world that we find ourselves in, that all of us must face. Questions that other – more knowledgeable and much wiser scientists than I will ever be – must continue to keep in front of the public’s view. If you see a situation that needs correcting, you can hope that no one gets hurt or you can act. In posting information that is not a weather forecast, going outside my lanes to some, I hope to stir interest in the planet’s survival, even if it means that it makes some uncomfortable. To move forward to a safer tomorrow, lanes must be crossed.
In one of the most haunting scenes from The Day After movie, (pre-end-of-the-world-but-only-just time frame) the wife of Dr. Ochs asks, “What if it does happen?” The question hangs in the air for only a couple of seconds as Dr. Ochs doesn’t respond before the next scene arrives, but it is worth decades of dread when considered in earnest as The Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock reminds us: how much time do we really have?
The answer, whether you like it or not: not as much as we would like to think, no matter which lane of life you find yourself in. Whatever your lane may be – student, professional, amateur, expert, Nobel prize winner or local on-air meteorologist – cross the lines and raise the questions that must be asked. The questions may be uncomfortable to some, but our home in the universe depends on it.
Punching The Encyclopedia (Linked In op/ed)
I was in 6th grade when the Iranian Hostage Crisis unfolded. It didn’t take much to notice from our adults that tensions were high. (Didn’t help to be stuck in the middle of the Cold War as well, but that’s another post for another time.)
Coming back into the classroom, post-lunch/recess before our teacher returned to the room, there was a decent amount of noise as several of my male classmates had taken the “I” encyclopedia book out, turned it to Iran, laid it on a spare desk, and were taking turns punching the Iranian flag as hard as possible, followed by raucous laughter of all involved. I didn’t take part; merely watched from my seat as the same pattern repeated: punch, ouch, shaking the hand to alleviate the pain with a smile and laughter, get back in line to do it again.
I asked one of the guys afterwards, “What was the point of all that?” His answer, and all the other participants, ended up the same: “It felt good.” I can understand stress relief, but lashing out – even in a supposedly physical/macho bit of comic relief – says that you would rather react than understand.
I know (or I’d like to think that I knew) them well enough that they would not do something like vandalism or wilful destruction just because a person has an accent or comes from another part of the world. As pictured, there are those who cannot distinguish (nor voluntarily choose to understand) the differences between governments and their decisions and the people of that government.
Any time this behavior is noted locally – sad and idiotic as it is – it is an opportunity to be called out, by schools, by places of worship, by local media in their editorial sections, loudly and often. Granted, the people who engage in maximum boneheadedness like this are probably not watching the newscasts.
But others are.
Speaking out on the news might give someone else the courage to speak up when fear and ignorance are on the rise, when “it felt good” is no longer an acceptable excuse.
Epilogue: I was asked by the guy I queried as to why I didn’t take part in their fun, why “I was on Iran’s side”. I told him I wasn’t “on their side”. I just saw no point to their games and decided not to participate as it solved nothing. Wasn’t there any better action they could think of? All I got back was a roll of the eyes and a shrug. #SameAsItEverWas
Chess and the Zen of School Rooms
I was six when my dad introduced me to chess. When I was a substitute teacher for Bartlett City Schools, if the students behaved and if their work for the day was complete, I would use my computer to show the multiple live chess games from LIChess.org on the classroom projector screen.
“What are we watching?”
“Chess. Live. Several games in motion at once, being played by people all over the world.”
Several students would ask “Why are we watching this?”
“To hopefully get you interested in playing chess,” I would respond.
“Why would we want to?” was usually the next, and somewhat cynically-skewed question. I would make a small list of reasons, first and foremost being ‘to challenge you’, followed by my responses:
‘to help you think better’,
‘to broaden your horizons’,
‘to help you plan better’,
‘to show you that the time is always right to challenge yourself’,
‘to help you think your way out of a situation’,
‘to introduce you to something you may never have seen before’,
‘to help outthink an opponent’,
‘to help you be a better student’,
et mindbending cetera.
A good deal of the students didn’t care one pair of rat’s pajamas and went back to whatever studies they had in other classes to while away the rest of what was left of the class period. “What’s the point?” was often asked. I tried to counter with world chess champion Anatoly Karpov’s quote: “Chess is everything: art, science and sport…” but was roundly ignored.
Well, by most, but not all.
Some, the curious few, asked how they could know more about the game, seeing it on the screen with pieces going this way and that. I told them, many being surprised at the fact, that their school computers had the chess game already installed. “You mean, this has been on my computer all along?” was one of the usual questions.
After poking around on the program, a smaller number of students asked if they could challenge me to a game who felt they knew the rules well enough. Had an enjoyable time playing them when it was possible to do so, class time limitations applied of course. Some of the students began to play each other, and it became a great point of pride to out-maneuver their opponents, listening to the gasps and shouts of joy almost as expressive as if they were at a school sporting event. Introducing students to something new that can help them in the years ahead was a blessing to me. I hope it was likewise a blessing to them.
Did this do any good? Did it help them with their studies? Did it improve anyone’s grades? Are they still playing chess?
Who knows?
A saying in chess applies quite well to everyday life: When you find a good move, look for a better one. I could have played it safe and not done anything at all. I could have been Just Another Substitute Teacher wandering through the school day not doing anything out of the ordinary. Instead, I took a chance in showing the kids something new. In doing so, there was no guarantee it would work well, if at all, in the challenge. The students who didn’t try chess on that day might have become curious enough later on to look up the game in the library, try a game on the many chess sites online or ask another teacher about it.
I hope that some of them enjoyed it enough to not only try it but become familiar enough with the game and pass on that appreciation to another generation, as well as apply the tactics of the game to any situation that came their way either in school or in life. And that makes a slight interruption to a school day with an unexpected learning experience in the form of an ancient game worthwhile.
#YourMove
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! GOOD NIGHT, MR. WILLIAMS, AND THANK YOU – 2015 OP/ED
“Stay hungry….stay foolish!” Steve Jobs
“You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” – Robin Williams.
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.” – Ayn Rand
A friend of mine from Topeka chimed in yesterday and asked if I had heard about Robin Williams. I don’t know about you, but – being in the media, and a news junkie – that statement about someone famous never precedes good news. The comedian/actor’s suicide leaves a major hole in the world, again. Too many good people have left us in the past few years, well before their time. This one, especially, hurts all the more for all the incredible entertaining effort he put in to life. The laughter was over the top of a very hurting person, it seems. The maniacal energy and humor – which is so very needed in today’s world – is gone, and I’m very sorry that he felt like he couldn’t continue.
I first watched Mr. Williams, like many people, during the debut of Mork And Mindy. Living in Topeka, Kansas, at the time, with no ABC station in town, I had to watch via grainy transmission from station KMBC in Kansas City, some sixty miles away. I had never seen anything like it before. Completely gonzo and unpredictable, it was a joy for a kid in elementary school to watch. Flinging the egg into the air and shouting, “FLY! BE FREE!” before the egg crashed back to the counter with a disappointed look on Mork’s face still sets me laughing.
When I was a trainer with The University of Kansas’ football team, when we traveled to The University of Colorado, I stood under the goal posts of the CU football stadium where Mr. Williams had stood in the show’s opening credits just to say that I had been there. It was about as close as I would ever get to meeting him, and – of course – if I would have had the chance (short of being a stalker) – I would have gladly taken a risk to shake his hand just once and thank him for all the insanity…
…and for the tears inspired, and the lessons learned…
the God-Almighty-damned-hard-never-saw-that-coming-in-a-million-years lessons learned.
To this day, Dead Poets’ Society is, far and away, my favorite film with Mr. Williams in it. If you haven’t watched it before, watch it today, right now, soon. The lessons it teaches the boys, and the heads of the school, and the adults in the film (though they are not readily accessible to the lessons, being adults) is timeless, and so, so very important to us all. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, is a warning, but also an encouragement. Before there was modern YOLO (You Only Live Once), there was the original YOLO, in the form of the Latin: Carpe Diem. I don’t know how dark Mr. Williams world was, nor do I know if you are fighting your own demons of air and darkness, and how bad the situation is. My own personal demons are those that revolve around giving up, giving in or getting such a poor attitude that says nothing is worth the effort, so screw everyone else except yourself. I thank God every day that I have a clear mind, blessed with no sign of depression, and I have sympathy and whatever goodness I can offer to my friends and family who battle it. Some days, it’s all you can do. Some days, it’s enough. Some days, like yesterday in Mr. Williams life, it wasn’t, and that was curtain down. While I have my mind and my faith and my hope and my health, I will do my best to make things better, to offer the hand of friendship where possible and to – maybe, hopefully – help someone see a brighter horizon, knowing all the while that it may not be possible to help anyone. That is the hardest lesson of all, and I’m sure Mr. Williams family is feeling that more acutely than anyone right now.
Why do things like depression happen? Why does this happen? Honestly, like so many others, I don’t know. I can offer no help with that whatsoever. I’m not a doctor and I’m not a psychiatrist, and, as much as a philosopher as I would like to consider myself, I don’t have a clue. The only thing I do know, when it comes to our mutual crimes of being human, with all the frailty and problems that come with the package of existence, is this: we all must do our best to make the world a better place. I have always said so and I have always thought so, and always will do so.
That’s not an excuse for me to point fingers at those who have a condition I cannot rightly understand or empathize with having no frame of reference and say “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and smile, damn it!”. That’s my way of saying that you – whoever you are, and whatever the state of your spirit and mind is in – you, yes you, count for something. You are worthwhile. You are you for a reason. You bring something to the world.
I don’t know your circumstances. I don’t know your world. I don’t live there every day with you, the way YOU do. Therefore, I can’t tell you to run and jump for joy if you are wheelchair or crutch-bound. I can’t tell you to ‘don’t worry, be happy’ if you are diagnosed with depression. I can only do my best to do my best. Yes, I know: to some of you, that is considered psycho-babble, and double-talk claptrap. So be it. If you don’t like it, I don’t care. Because, it’s the truth. So, to be true to that truth, I will continue doing my best. (As an Eagle Scout, it’s in the Scout Oath; I swore to do my best and always will try to do so.) The truth matters, and the truth is: no matter who you are, no matter your circumstance, you can do something to make things better. If you can make it better, do so. If you can make things better by looking a little foolish (by standing on desks, maybe?), then do so.
Look further, explore, ask the questions that must be asked, be comfortable enough in who you are, and who you are to become, to push forward every single day knowing that you’ll probably fail somehow, but knowing that you also succeeded much more than you failed. Dare to go that far. Dare to fail. Emulate Mr. Keating… sorry, O Captain My Captain, by standing on the desk to get that new vantage point.
Most importantly, when someone asks you “What the hell are you doing up there?!”, do not be afraid. Never be afraid of those who are afraid of you upsetting the status quo. Especially if you are doing so to help someone else feel better about themselves.
Also, never be afraid to offer someone help who is depressed. How? How about this idea?
Ashley Ford @iSmashFizzle (via Twitter)
The best thing anyone has ever done for me when I was deeply depressed was send this text: “I’m here. You don’t have to respond to this.”
For some of us the load gets to be too much, and the darkness swallows us whole, never to be seen again. Some of the greatest minds in history – acting, comedy, science, law, technology – history’s finest cannot escape themselves and their own biology. I am blessed with a healthy frame and body, a wonderful marriage to an active, caring woman, two healthy and incredibly smart and talented not-quite-so-young kids, two jobs and a healthy inquisitiveness that I hope to pass along to people each day in the hope of brightening their world somehow. That, somedays, is all I am able to offer, and – hopefully – to someone out there, it’s enough to encourage them to go on, to push one more boundary, to ask one more question, to fight back against the darkness of this world and to not give up. Don’t take “no” for a final answer. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. If you want something, the only thing standing in your way is you. If you don’t understand something, and you’re not the teachers’ pet, have no fear of standing up in front of the entire class and saying “I DON’T GET THIS. PLEASE HELP ME UNDERSTAND.”
For those of you who have depression, and continually fight against it, know that there is always an option beyond that of suicide. Always. Yes, I know: it’s very easy for me to say that from the comfort of my own decently-non-crisis-or-darkness-covered world. It’s also true that I care, and that I want others to care just as much, in order to help those who need it.
The world, make no mistake, is a dark place. His death was tragic and as a celebrity, the world will get much notice of his passing, moreso than the thousands each day succumb to their own demons in a much quieter fashion than that of Mr. Williams, their end full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.
Really? Nothing?
“900 years of time and space and I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.’’
– The 11th Doctor
That one moment that you realize you spoke too soon or too rashly or too glibly and came across as being an ass, that one moment that that one particular person needed a ray of sunlight when you provided yet more overcast, that moment is with you forever. Impossible to correct, forever on the brain as yet another “woulda-coulda-shoulda”. I have plenty of those moments stored away. So do you, and you know it. That regret that you missed that sunset/sunrise, that one event you were too lazy, or too afraid of, to attend. The words of knives rather than the words of kindness.
The young men in Dead Poets’ Society learned that lesson, and many others, along the way. After Neil’s suicide, his father’s inflexible nature, the willingness of their leaders to place blame on Mr. Keating for Neil’s death, a few of his students realize – some too late – that he was right: today, alive and young…. tomorrow, darkness and pain. Like his character, Mr. Keating, in Dead Poets Society, Mr. Williams did suck the marrow out of life for all it was worth, and hopefully his warnings in the film were enough to inspire others to carpe their own diem as much as humanly possible.
I often wonder how many of us would truly, truly do what they did at the end of the movie: stand up on the desk, even after the hard nosed teacher is shouting at us to return to our seats at the threat of being expelled, all to salute someone who taught us so much, the last lesson as Mr. Keating walks out the door for the last time. I wonder how many of us would try to offer the person caught in the darkness of depression a smile, a kind word or just to sit with them as long as they would deem necessary or accept?
Offer your help and light – whatever that help or light may be – to those who need it. Brighten the world as only you can. Maybe you don’t think it is much – or worth much – for the effort expounded. To that one person whose life you made better by just a kind word, a smile, an open door, you will have done something good, and that is what matters most: to be kind.
For those who need it most, I hope that you will be able to accept what light is there, and what help and what hope comes your way, to help you battle your own darkness. I’m sorry for all those like you who suffer from the same condition, and hope that all who are diagnosed with depression have friends and family and professionals in their lives who can help.
To Mr. Williams: I’m sorry that your darkness was so strong that in the end it claimed you. I wish you could have been around for longer, and hope you have found the peace now that eluded you in life. You were brave to laugh when you felt like crying, you were honest and straightforward as a zig-zag, bing-bang-boing-off-every-single-wall-twice-over bolt of lightning could be, and you were funny. You brought your God-given gift to billions of people, and you did it so well. Carpe diem.
Good night, Mr. Wiliams, Mr. Keating / O Captain My Captain!, Peter Pan, Dr. Patch, Good Genie, Mr. Cronauer, Leslie Zevo, and thank you very much for everything. For what it’s worth (and it is): in a dark and sometimes horrible world, you helped me to smile.
AO
Meteorologist Austen Onek 