1morethingaustin

Innocence for sale

2011-06-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

I tried to sell my innocence today.

I fell in love when I was 18. Holly and I worked in the remote corner of a baseball stadium parking lot. For hours a day at least two weeks a month for a summer, we were alone with no one to talk with but one another. But for part of that summer she left for a church mission trip to Brazil. It was only while she was gone that I realized I felt more than friendship. When she returned, I couldn't wait to tell her.

That Christmas she gave me a silver ring with inlays of pearl and turquoise. And I vividly remembered her asking me to share something special with her. She took me to a little chapel off to the side of the big church and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus with just she and I. It was a simple, sweet gesture.

Being who I was then - and who I would remain for decades to come unluckily - she and I would never cut it. I was in no way ready to love someone because I had such trouble loving myself.

But after all those decades, I still have that ring. Thinking myself overly sentimental and unwilling to let go of the past, I decided to sell the ring to one of those precious metal buyers.

On the drive over, I pondered the ring in my pocket. Was it really a Rickie/Holly ring? Or was it anything else? I pulled it out and looked at its tarnished finish. I thought of how I had grown since that time and it would no longer fit on the intended finger. But I placed it on a smaller finger just to see if it belonged there. It probably didn't in terms of current fashionability. But there was a flash of how it maybe did in terms of Rickie.

I handed the girl making the bid the ring with a stated trepidation. The minute it left my hand, I knew. It wasn't about any past relationship or state of emotion. It was a symbol of the struggling threads of innocence in what has become a too cynical heart. It was the core of what was now under a lot of armor and history and experience. I had handed her not only what I used to be, but what I was once brave enough to be.

I needed to be sure it wasn't what I needed to be. I couldn't do that taking a few dollars for the metal value. I needed to have a substantial, solid image of my innocence, even if that innocence had waned.

I kept the ring. I just put it back in the not very secure, not very preserving place I'd found it. But I hung on to it, even in that rather cavalier way. Even if it's off to the side in a spot with little honor, at least I know it's still there.

Social experimentation

2010-11-08T14:05:00.000-08:00

For the last several days, I've been conducting a social experiment using social media. I'm afraid the outcome doesn't say much about our society.

The posed question was if we can still conduct human discourse over issues. For my efforts, I've been called a poopy-head.

Okay, no one used those exact words. But it seemed the direction most wanted to go and tried to drag me.

The recent past was chosen because an election fell in those days. I'll admit the sample was only my 160 or so "friends" on Facebook. And not all of those likely had a chance to view my enticements. I stated a viewpoint on issues or outcomes and waited to see how others responded. To be honest, I didn't always believe the stances I took. But they were meant to inspire response. They ranged from health care to defense and into taxation.

For the purposes of discussion, I'm using progressive (which I find arrogant for a bunch that is as stalled as their counterparts) and conservative labels here because I do believe the current major parties have pretty much made themselves indistinguishable and irrelevant when it comes to issues.

I found that when I tried to get response on an issue or got debate, it was most often schoolyard. I don't completely blame the respondents. This is the current methodology. Call names, point fingers, regurgitate slanted "facts" and play to stereotypes.
* "I won't stop being sick until Obama is gone." No policy reason.
*"We have to throw out the Democrats ruining the budget." No response on what programs to cut that will make a meaningful dent.
* "Pelosi is an idiot." Although I didn't disagree, no action that indicates such was proffered as evidence.
* "Obamacare must be repealed." No one could tell me what horrible impact proves this (since it has yet to be implemented) or an idea of how to make health care work so the poor don't drain the system and die needlessly.

There were a few who when asked to (1) prove it, and (2) offer solutions, actually gave it a shot. But even some intelligent and well considered answers always contained a stereotype or attempt at slander. Unfortunately, most never went any farther than repeating when some radio or television pundit had said in the last 45 days without giving credit. When asked for back up, I was told I could "look it up for myself" or given a reference that had a kernel of truth that had been twisted into a cornfield of conspiracy.

Does anyone think anymore?

I caught some a bit off guard, and was complimented for it at times. I tried not to belittle opinions based on facts. There were times people made their point intelligently and I admitted I simply disagreed with the philosophy but accepted their logic. When pressed, I offered solutions to some problems that were more middle of the road than standard progressive.

But here was the fact I found most fascinating. I know some of it is because of the outcome of those ongoing elections. But it's a trend I'd seen before I conducted my little experiment. Every conversation I had, every post by another that gave me a chance to move into a different genre, was me vs. a conservative element. They responded, they posted, they fought back.

Not once did another of a progressive viewpoint add to my argument. I got personal notes encouraging me to keep fighting. But not once did anyone else actually speak up.

I believe we have absolutely no chance in this nation until we can say I think this because of this, this and this. And have all the "this" be concrete facts instead of fear and conjecture. We have no opportunity for such conversation when one side sits silent unwilling to both talk and listen.

My great hope has always been that what we hear most is the severe minority. That reality lies somewhere right in the middle. But people are swayed by the screaming on the ends. We just might have a big majority willing and able to go somewhere if we could hear and process the reality behind the emotion of everything going on right now.

But the Facebook I've seen is of millions with mouths open and ears and minds shut.

The little whys

2010-10-28T10:55:00.001-07:00

All of us sometimes wonder why the world is so harsh, why innocents get hurt seemingly needlessly and why we can't all just be a little more rational.

It can make you crazy. Especially if you have a natural tendency for obsession as I do. So one of my releases is to let go of the big whys and spend some fun time with the little whys. Quite often, they involve my dog, Rusty.

Observing him is one of the great and small pleasures in my life. He and I have only been together since last summer, and he's still growing up. So the changes and behaviors are often new to us both.

An example is his reliance versus independence. Almost all of the time, Rusty is exactly at my side one step back. While I'm doing the mundane or the important, that is the post he chooses. He's fairly wise about avoiding my sudden moves and his apparently tender feet. It's a good thing because something about his golden retriever breed makes him almost silent. I have no idea how something about 70 pounds and a big swishy high tail can appear and disappear without a sound. But I don't get much space. Just enough.

Until fall approached. And I noticed the other side. He wants that back door open to ensure his ability to return to his post. But he'd rather be outside again and again exploring a small space he ought to have down pat by now. If I'd join out there, he'd be in heaven. He could fulfill his duty and curiousity all at once.

I don't understand his sense of obligation and alternate sense of freedom and adventure. But I recognize it.

And then there's his sense of organization. Regularly each day, he has to put his toys away - by his order, not mine. Sometimes they are gathered and placed on my bathroom floor. He has a couch upon which he can sit before an upstairs window and watch the world go by. Most often, it is upon that window sill the toys are stored. A squeaky ball, what's left of the end of a rope chew and whatever current chewbone he has been provided. Nothing he steals, only what he is given and shown is his. If you take them down and play with them, they will eventually be returned to the spot by him.

On the other hand, Rusty fulfills his need to chew with fireplace logs. Like many people, there's a log pile in the back corner of the back yard. He chooses his logs from there. Drags them into a shady spot under the big oak where he can keep an eye on everything and sharpens his amazingly white teeth on a hardwood. In comparison to his other belongings, however, these logs never get put back. In fact, when oak stops tasting so good, cedar becomes a new challenge. But within a few feet of the oak log. This changes at least four times over a couple of days. The wood pile is soon a wood strewn. And even when I go and reassemble the pile, he repeats the sloppying process.

Today I was smirking at these seeming dichotomies when it struck me. He's not confusing. Rusty is Rickie. Not in the exact behaviors, but in the incongruities. I am never middle of the road, aware I choose the bar ditches to see what surprise is hidden there. And I switch from left to right constantly. I do some things consistently because I believe it is my duty, my responsibility. And every now and then I say screw it and do whatever I want completely upon whim. Because it feels right to me.

I sometimes feel guilty about my inability to be consistent. But then I laugh aloud at the silliness that is Rusty's behavior. And see how his doing those things make him do the Goofy Dance, straight up in the air, body twisting and tongue lolling. He doesn't try to understand them, he just does them and finds it makes him happy.

I'm going to come up with more little whys and just enjoy them. Hell, maybe even find myself in a Goofy Dance every now and then.

Demon dance

2010-10-26T17:22:00.000-07:00

"Devils and demons dance in my head"

I wrote that line when I was 18. Wrote it without understanding that I might recognize the struggle going on, but I still hadn't looked the characters in the eye. And that meant they would continue their disrupting dance for decades.

The blog post immediately prior to this was to remind me that point again. Inside the commentary, I can see ongoing actions that would be detrimental for way too long. And the unpublished memory of that same day adds to that understanding.

I come from a family and world where dealing with feelings was not taught, not displayed and not respected. That's tough on a highly sensitive man. But I learned the lesson of taking the feeling and shoving it farther down. And down. With whatever weight was required.

The prior post is my finding a feeling I couldn't hold back. The unpublished part is that after that funeral, I had to drive across the Texas Panhandle to the family burial site. It's a landscape where you can see any oncoming vehicle on the tiny two-lane ribbons literally miles and tens of minutes before you cross. So I loaded up on beer feeling invincible on those roads and too vulnerable inside.

It was the latest lesson I'd learned. If you need help getting those feelings out of the way, drown them, anesthetize them.

Here's the problem with any method of ignoring - it doesn't work. Never. For decades I put away feelings, jammed them way down until I couldn't see them anymore. But they kept knocking and probing until some incidental thing happened that created a crack. And while it seemed the incidental thing was being way overblown, in reality it was just pressure spewing everywhere and all of the sudden.

It never failed. I got a reputation for having a quick temper. But it wasn't really that. It was the voracity of the temper when it came out that made it seem so full blown and sudden.

The physical result was I've found years later I've repeatedly broken my hands and wrists. I've never seen a doctor over that specifically, never worn a cast, but only learned of the breaks and heals from a body scan looking for something in my back. Valuing people, I'm almost always hit inanimate objects - walls, trees, signs.

The emotional results is deeper and more prevalent scars. Those closest to me could never tell what was coming. Because I didn't know. But I had no idea how I felt at any moment, even in the midst of rage. And for anyone who cares about you, that's a precarious place to be. When it came to my emotional punches, I threw them right to the face of those who least deserved it.

I feel almost fortunate to have known people who were strong enough themselves to reach a point of refusing those emotional blows. With losing them, I have learned.

These days, I try to recognize what I feel. I try to let it be. Those around me still sometimes don't like it. But they get it in more bite-sized pieces that mean they can digest it and we can all move on. And I can feel at peace much more often, instead of having so many things fermenting inside my psyche.

If you're one of those who gets my bluntness, my uncomfortable honesty, who I tell I like immensely even when it makes them a tad squirmy, believe it's for the better. Better than dancing with the devil in the dark with no idea where the edge of the stage is.

The importance of a bologna sandwich

2010-10-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

(This was written in 1989 and is transcribed unedited)

It was only a bologna sandwich, didn't even contain mustard. But it was one of the best tasting things I've ever had.

The sandwich was served at the small, sticker-infested Lefors, Tex., park. The park was just a concrete picnic table, a couple of swings and a marble state historical marker of an 1800s army attack on some Cheyennes which recovered two kidnapped white women.

It would seem the vistas couldn't have led to the sandwiches' exquisite taste, but that was a large part of it. The bread was slathered with sweet West Texas sunshine and the entire sandwich was sprinkled with the mystery and history of the small canyons winds had dug into the slight rolls of the land.

It was also a specially prepared sandwich, made by my Grandmother. I had been kind of dumped on her most of the times between my second and fifth birthdays. We were a strange team, a woman in her forties and a child still forming trusts and beliefs. But she took me when no one else did, and even at that early age I seemed to realize it.

The reason the sandwich comes to mind is a return visit to the park today. It's almost 30 years later and I've returned to Lefors to bury my Grandmother.

Wandering around the town alone just before the services, I was drawn to some regular stops - the water tower we hiked to each day of Vacation Bible School and the muddy fork of the Red River.

But for some reason, for the first time, I was drawn to return to the park. The taste of that sandwich came to me immediately, but it seemed like a small memory to demand my subconscious to make the trip.

As I looked across the little canyons though I found the trip's reason. Moving across the road at the top of the ridge was the vehicle bringing my Grandmother's body from the nearby larger town of Pampa.

Although my Grandmother was a church woman, that building filled with mourners wasn't where she wanted to say goodbye. This park, those times, the taste of that sandwich, were her farewell.

Finally, I cried.

Antithesis

2010-10-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

I have lost my identity. Not to some Internet thieves, but to a 65-pound ball of play called Rusty the Goofball.

I had a friend tell me once that I was remembered though small encounters because I'm somewhat gregarious. But that seems to have been overwhelmed by Rusty.

Someone stopped me at the gym one day to ask if I owned a red retriever. "I saw you sitting in the median with what has to be the best behaved dog on Earth." Well, at times.

If we go to restaurant patios, pretty waitresses bring Rusty a bowl of water. My chances of getting a refill are much more limited. Friends question his well being before mine. The homeless guys working the nearby street corners know him. A neighbor greets me with "how is the happiest puppy on Earth?"

He is hard to overlook. He needs to greet everyone. I mean everyone. When he does cross a street, our system is he must sit, wait and then when I say go he turns around to put a portion of his leash in his mouth, do a vertical leap and then cross. The vertical leap is fairly common. All feet in the air, tail slashing, body twisted. The goofiest dance you've ever seen. Pure joy.

He eats lemons, tomatoes and tree logs. He steals paper money, tears it into pieces, but doesn't eat the pieces.

All this is actually a life reminder. It was one year ago today, I lost my best friend at that time. Often, he had been my only friend. It left a gaping hole. One I honestly questioned I'd survive. Not just from that single incident, but that it was the topping on a series of blows that brought me to my knees and now lower.

Months later, Rusty came along in happenstance. It just turned out he was the right personality with the right instinct for me. Not a me that was with the previous friend, but the me right now. In fact, he helped create the me right now.

In the reality that true loyalty goes both ways, I don't forget Sam, sometimes miss him. I remember the pain he was in the final days. The look of abject fear when he was taken in for the final decision I had to make is emblazoned in my consciousness. Yet I also remember the experiences we shared, the times we went through together and the support Sam provided.

As importantly, I look at then and now and realize how one day in life can be the antithesis of another. For the feelings of one year ago today, I get to view the wild abandon with which Rusty rushes across a yard, bounds into the air to pounce on a football with a full growl and then come back at me like a fullback at a goal line. I am daily amazed at the hours he can spend sitting on a couch in an upstairs room looking out the window, nose awiggle and eyes vigilant for whatever the world brings by. I can absorb some of the ecstasy that comes with getting to go for a walk, even though it happens every day. I can appreciate how he wants to hurry to a street corner so he can do his sit, wait, go process and prove his behavior.

You know what today is like. Sometimes that's not all that good. You can't ever guess what tomorrow will be. Sometimes that's better than you could ever imagine.

Loneliness

2010-09-20T20:09:00.000-07:00

"The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."

A friend brought this quote attributed to Mark Twain to my attention several days ago. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

Part of it is I've known several people to whom this applies. I've watched them fear spending even a few hours alone with themselves. It's as if they fear some voice in their head won't be drowned out by the sounds of others. It isn't limited by gender or age.

They go to extremes to not be forced into listening to that internal sound. Quite often, I've seen it lead them to substance abuse. They seek out places where they know there will be other people, and in the time between being away from their jobs and being asleep, they've often targeted bars as their only reliable safe haven. And constantly being in the bar usually meant consuming the products. They're quite often the first ones there for happy hour. And they don't leave until they've passed the point of caring about whatever drove them there in the first place.

Sometimes those same people find the time of day to be a constraint. Weekends can be the worst for them because they find they can't spend a full 18 hours in a bar. They try movies to be around others and fill the blank spaces. But there are only so many movies a weekend one can absorb.

I find these same people don't know themselves very well. Maybe that's obvious because if you're afraid to face the screaming in your head, you never get to the normal conversation with yourself that leads to understanding.

It's possible that's exactly what they want, to be avoid the introduction to themselves. Because there always seems to be this hint they don't like themselves very well. It all becomes a recipe for a very sour life. Those who don't like themselves don't like to be alone. So they go to bars where the liquor helps them forget they don't like themselves. The two factors together make them drink to abuse. Which doesn't make themselves any better and still hasn't done a thing about the sound in their head.

Ah, but the thoughts haven't just been judgemental. Because Mr. Twain was glancing at me too.

It isn't that I don't like to be alone. Sometimes I crave it and force it. I right out disappear. And I've been told by some that I have an ability to be in a room filled with people and be alone. I can put up a shell that puts anyone around on the outside.

But I also seem addicted to others. Sooner or later, I need stimulus, contact, input and connection. Maybe I see too much of myself, don't like enough of it, and need to drown it out just like those I've observed. Maybe it's just a human condition, the pack mentality of the human being. Maybe I need reinforcement in that I'm alright and somebody does like me.

I try to make a balance. I insist I be alone and look myself in the eye so I can develop a comfort with myself. I call it facing my demons. If I see them and they're taking over, I try remediation. I just have to force myself to not just see the brightly colored weaknesses in me and look through to the greys that are the good parts. Then I need to count up the two categories and make sure the less vibrants outnumber the look-at-me factors.

Sometimes I'm lonely. Sometimes I'm uncomfortable with myself. But I have to consciously ensure I don't carry loneliness just because I don't like me. I have to fix me if that's true. And that's a better cure for loneliness than hiding in a bar with strangers.

Baptism

2010-09-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

I should have known it was coming. After all, it's about to rain.

It's an odd historically accurate fact. Whenever I set my heart aflame to see if I can destroy it, storms come. Not just gentle showers like some bad country song, but tropical depression-crack-the-lightening-pounding-downpour storm.

I've tried to think of it as some type of baptism, washing away the pain of the just passed sins and giving me a new start. But that's not me. I keep bits and pieces of everyone, good and bad. I have been fortunate enough over the last few years to use those keepsakes as learning tools, what to repeat and what to let go.

But most recently I went back to old reactive habits. I felt-acted-thought. That means if my feelings were irrational, I acted irrationally and only then thought through the realities. I had learned to rearrange, to feel-think-act. I guess somewhere inside me there's a real disorder that instinctively changes that.

It's hard for people outside to deal with the "act" in the middle instead of end. They don't understand what's coming at them. The more I try to explain, the more insane it turns. Sooner or later, their only remaining move is to just leave.

You'd think I'd recognize it in the middle of it. But I guess that's part of the insanity that grows. Internal blindness.

But the outcome is crystal clear. And is always followed by the storms. Maybe it's the storms that slap me in the head and make me pay attention. There was one time when I traveled to a coast and was caught in a storm of a century that turned angry at the coastline and traveled back up my path to flood my home area. It was immediately after I'd gone overwhelming.

I've spent the last weekend in that insanity. I've made a mess of something that was simple and important. It all went on when the first front gently came through, forced Texas summer to surrender its dominance and turned the air crisp for a few hours each morning and evening. But last night was when I set it all afire. And awoke to warnings a tropical storm was bearing down on me with buckets of rain.

For the next few days, I'll be trapped. Both in by the weather and my actions. They will be in my face. There will be nowhere to run. I'll try to use one to make me clean again. But there are some sins with which you just have to look in the eye and live.

Fear of feelings

2010-09-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

Men get accused of being emotionally cloaked. Usually by women. But my experience is, no one really wants to know.
There are lots of kinds of writing. Some used to vent, some hoped for publication, some to let something personal out. Most people draw lines with their expression. They choose the size of their audience based on the content. Often how well you know some people and trust them helps limit the size of the chosen audience. It can come down just to what they can handle.
I had one writer coach me that "you don't want to let them see you go to the bathroom." Her point was there the general reading public has one comfort level, those who know you may have a greater level. It's often up to the writer to know their readership and provide only appropriate fodder.
One of those defining lines seems to be emotion. Just as there are many types of general writing, there are sub-genres of emotional writing. There is just finding the right way to express others' emotion. There is helping others "re-feel" something, to tap into what may be dormant. There is expressing emotional contact between two people. And just expressing your own emotion.
The boundaries can cross. For example, in this blog, I've expressed deep emotion about losing a friend. But discovered others had similar feelings from similar experiences, and my personal expression brought them back to those.
But I've also learned that something about our culture makes many of us, maybe most of us, uncomfortable facing many emotions. Not just our own, but those shared or raw.
I find this especially true when I share anything rhythmic or rhyming, call it poetry or lyrics. Somewhat because of copyright laws, and somewhat because I find those types of things more personal, I don't post them on this writing outlet. But if something comes out I personally like, I'll sometimes share it one on one.
What's funny to me is how uncomfortable that makes so many people because they take it personally. If there's a reference to a hair or eye color, for example, the blonde or green-eyed automatically think it's about them. And the state of our relationship may not call for expressions of current or past emotional ties. So, they squirm. If not disappear.
That's most interesting because my most recent string of personal ties has been pretty limited. So I compile, take the feelings for one and another and put them together, one verse may be about one person, the chorus about another.
But there are those that are completely about one person or one experience. I used to practice the philosophy that if someone caused something to be created, it was in part theirs and they deserved to see it.
But despite constant conversations throughout my life that included requests of "just be honest with me" or "don't be afraid to express yourself," that isn't how life works. People think they want to know. They don't.
Maybe it's our society that makes us afraid of feelings. But even those who are societal rebels have blanched at my emotional honesty. Maybe it's that there's so little honest expression, it's the unexpected that can't be dealt with. Or maybe we're just a repressed, withdrawn, afraid bunch of people.
I don't want to be that pessimistic. But I want to respect others' boundaries. I want to be honest with them. I don't want to chase them away.
So there's an entire world of words out there just waiting for their father to die. Because only when no one has to look the holder of the expressed emotions in the eye do those who earned them feel comfortable with them.
I wish I knew how people feel about me. I wish they knew how I feel about them. But when we go from a superficial shout to an honest whisper, it seems no one wants to listen.

Trust

2010-08-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

I've been pondering trust quite a bit lately. Taken in some other folks opinions, looked at my own levels of trust and just let the philosophy run around in my head.
I think trust is critical to the human condition. It's not just personal relationships, but trust is a vital cog in our business lives too. Who we do business with and how open and free we are with those transactions is based on how much trust exists.
Our ability to trust probably comes from myriad sources. It has to start with our upbringing. And not just with what we're told, but the actions we see and feel - absorb - before we're even cognizant that's what we're doing. Do we feel totally safe and supported in our childhood environments? If so, trust probably comes much easier throughout our adulthood. If we question it, or if we lack it, we're probably much more careful, if not even incapable.
I won't say we can't develop the ability to trust. I started to say if we're loved down the road, it probably increases our trust-ability. But it struck me that the ability to love and be loved probably starts and ends with trust first.
Some of this consideration comes from observations of other people lately. There's a couple who indicated levels of trust that made me bold enough to make honest statements to them. Their reaction was fear (the anti-trust, I suppose) and they visibly retracted their indications of trust.
Another is someone who has every reason not to trust due to a difficult childhood and bad choices as an adult. Under a disguise of independence, this person didn't trust anyone really and stated trust wasn't expected. But the bit of trust I did give was violated greatly. I severed the relationship.
Several weeks later, a note came back stating this person had recognized what refusing to trust and honor trust had done to life overall. A new leaf was trying to be turned. The question was if trust lost could be re-earned. We're seeing.
Another can never trust in what is, but constantly expresses distrust and asks for reinforcement. It's overly dramatic and completely insulting. Friends should provide support, but each of us has to absorb that and carry that strength inside somewhat. The past can make us suspicious. But we can't alter it. We can only believe in what is right now. We have to trust in what is, not what has been done to us.
But at the root of it is myself. I'm very miserly with my trust. I protect with a shell of bravado and bullshit. And then I complain about the vacuum I find myself in.
Yet too often when I've given in to my desire to trust, I've been disappointed. Sometimes, that's human frailty. Sometimes it's unexpressed expectations on my part. And in general, it's fear, that old habit of believing history is bound to repeat itself.
I hope that recognizing all that makes me more willing to trust. I hope I now find the right people in which to trust and am making better people decisions. I pray that finding trust honored by the right people will fortify me.
I guess in the end, what I have to do is trust myself.

Reunion

2010-07-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, I went to a high school reunion. It was typical of those types of things. Liquor flowed, people told stories about one another they hope their children never hear. I saw people I'd seen in recent months and some I hadn't seen in more than three decades.

I don't consider high school a great time in my life. In a sea of 750 or so faces in my graduating class, I most often felt on the fringe. Some of that was simply being a teenager, some of it my attitude, some of it social class realities. But it's not something I hold in an idealized memory.

But time does even things out. I'm not sure caste systems and cliques ever completely disappear, but the boundaries fade greatly. You stop fearing speaking to the most beautiful girl in the class. Major jocks' physical appearance and athleticism fades. People improve their social skills and appearance.

And there's something to be said coming from the same basic time and place. Although some of those people preferred disco over country or could afford designer clothes over a single pair of torn jeans, there is some type of commonality. We talked about things we did that should mean we'd not lived to this point. And we joked we were lucky to "grow up in Mayberry."

We also recognized many of us grew up in a world that was laying the groundwork for too much substance abuse, where societal expectations often left us with absentee fathers who worked too much and parents who simply didn't know how to be emotionally honest.

But the ingredients of a safe environment and challenges under the surface were shared and created that group of people who'd survived and returned.

In addition, there were those who'd grown enough to express themselves in ways they hadn't then or in the interim. To say for their entire lives they'd held onto some little relationships that had been in that time and helped them throughout the rest of their lives. People recounted single conversations that had stayed all this time. They pointed out bonds they'd felt never frayed despite being stretched greatly by distances and time.

I saw and heard a lot of people in a lot of different ways express how important not only someone was to them, but is to them. Even if they hadn't spoken in 30 years.

I'm constantly surprised by our humanity. I think watching it and wanting to point it out is a major reason this blog exists. The human condition is so complex, unexpected and invigorating it should never be overlooked. We prove how complicated we are in the most basic simple ways. Little sentences like "thank you" or "you're important to me" are fuel for going on.

I'll raise a toast to the Class of '75. Not for the parties or the stories or the girlfriends. For the surviving humanity.

To remind myself

2010-07-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

There's purpose for the great and the common.

". . . whether it's stories, poetry, music, whatever. None of it tells you anything new; it merely reminds you of something you already know but forgot you knew." Bill Witliff

Law and order at the Farmers' Market

2010-07-05T14:05:00.001-07:00

It's the time of Texas bounty. The greens of watermelons, reds of tomatoes and golds of peaches are in abundance. So Rusty the Goofy Dog and I decided to take a Saturday morning trip to the local Farmers' Market.

Rusty loves to go, but he's still young enough that he hasn't gotten the complete hang of the leash yet. So I have to keep a close eye on the temperature and time of day to pick times when he can go. A Saturday morning during a rainy period where I'd spend at the most 15 minutes away seemed the perfect Rusty opportunity. I cranked down the windows halfway and headed off, with him barking a hearty "come back soon."

I returned to what had to be a riot. Police cars everywhere with lights emblazoned and even a siren honk a couple of times. Unfortunately, the center of the riot seemed my truck.

Now the Farmers' Market of proximity isn't in Austin, but a little burg surrounded by Austin. The Sunset Valley residents are a tight bunch, apparently feeling a bit squeezed by the Austin City Limits signs on all sides. They have two major shopping centers within their little limits, providing an abundance of tax receipts. That cash infusion allowed them to greatly beef up their police force. Now, it's not like the neighborhoods are crime ridden. But that plethora of patrol cars also lets Sunset Valley blanket some of the adjoining major thoroughfares. It's kind of an example of where the Old World phrase "police state" arose. But with a nice dose of capitalism throw in from citation receipts.

And now, something about my truck had galled that impressive force.

The officer informed me that although general law was that intervention was mandated if a dog or child was in a closed vehicle and in distress, the fine citizens of Sunset Valley had ordained to take it step farther. No dog could be left in a vehicle no matter what. And Rusty - head out the window, nose twitching in excitement and tongue at the roll ready to lick - was getting me a ticket.

She then kind of stood there. "You want my license?" I questioned. "Oh, yes sir," she said. I began to question who was in charge of this scene at the moment. Had a gotten the Valley's hire du jour?

Another car arrived. While Officer Confused ran my particulars, he came over to chat. "She make you roll down the windows?" Officer Two asked of his cohort. I told that's how they were when The Force descended on me. Officer Two shook his head and requested I take Rusty out. It's your clean uniform, I thought as I complied.

The so feared for Rusty bounded out and straight over to Officer Two, swishing tail flying. He did his goofy dance, all four feet into the air and headed twisted with an emphatic "Pet me! Pet me!" Yeah, it's a good thing the vigilant Sunset Valley force had been around to save Rusty from trauma.

Officer Two told me the emergency had been declared because a resident had called in a dog in distress locked in a car with the windows rolled up. Although he said nothing more, his demeanor and head angle made it clear he found this entire exercise a bit extreme. I'll admit, the law, but extreme.

Officer Confused came back with my clean record and offered me a warning to record our encounter. Obviously, I carry the air of a repeat offender. She wasn't too thrilled when I questioned why she needed my phone number, I'd identified myself and that was enough. I might have stood my rights grounds except all this standing in the parking lot waiting for the police to protect Rusty was getting him a bit heated. He would have been basking in air conditioning long ago if he didn't have to stand here waiting for saving. So I just gave away personal information and took my long pink punishment.

I'm glad there's a sentiment to protect the weaker of our world. It's too obvious there are those who think only of themselves and society might need to raise the stakes. But I also believe there's a line where people should mind their own damned business. There's a law to try and protect animals. The people of Sunset Valley don't need to step over the line and force their patrol cars to step needlessly in my business. There's not a crime wave at the Farmers' Market. There's not a threat to Rusty beyond whether he might bruise his nose making his ball squeak.

I'd like to let the complainant step forward and take a face full of Rusty slobber as evidence things are okay this side of the line.

Friendship expectations

2010-06-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

I used to have a rule. Every friend got one strike. One mistake, one failure, and I no longer used the title friend for that person.
I thought at that time that I wanted my number of friends to be very limited. This was before friend had been minimalized by social networking, and my definition was as tight as my rules. It was appropriate few could qualify.
But the one strike rule was one to which I couldn't live up. And in reality, keeping my definition and rules so strict was simply a self-fulfilling prophesy. I came into friendship expecting to be disappointed, to be left, and therefore I did every thing I could to make it more likely.
Today I'm more likely to use the word friend in description. But in my heart, I'm not much more lenient.
Superficially, I'm a very social animal. But the reality is there's always a guard up, I'm always sort of inside looking out, peering over the character that is conducting the socialization. I'm now aware I'm fortunate to have a wide cast of acquaintances. But whether I'd internally admit many - if any - of them to the list of friends is highly questionable.
One astute person I know describes my usual haunt, with a standing cast of characters, as "easy." She claims the reason I choose the spot is because the others in attendance don't challenge me. And that although I'll sometimes complain of boredom, the reality is I'm most comfortable with the assurance I can coast. No one in the equation asks much of the other.
I know a young lady who I've described as a friend. But she's wildly inconsistent, disappearing for extended periods of time and becoming completely uncommunicative. Since I can't count on her, in my heart I don't consider her a friend. Some of it I write off to youth, some to personal issues about which she's confided in me but with which I'm uncertain she has come to terms. But the lack of unaccountability leaves me reticent.
Recently, a third party questioned our relationship to her. Without hesitation, she stated that she believed I'd do anything for her, that she could completely count upon me and I was therefore her friend. She'd never said anything even similar to that to me. But the third party passed it on with some incredulation at her vehemence.
When I've been in crisis, I've gone old school Texan. I don't turn to others. I try to "man up." It really doesn't work. While I'm internalizing, the pain is an infection festering. It's been my karma to have people unknowingly step up and do little things that catch my attention, make me call myself lucky. But it's been just that, luck, that has kept me alive and going.
Maybe that's because I have such strict internal friendship rules, am so careful, am so doubting, that I don't really believe I have anywhere to turn. Whatever vows of friendship and support have been made at me in the past, my expectation of failure is greater than my trust.
So, I guess the circle is do I really have friends? Am I ignoring what exists? Or are my standards reasonable for a designation I want to have special meaning? Or do I set unreachable standards in the belief I ought to expect failure that is bound to happen?
I hate a paragraph of questions. I expect myself to be more self aware than that. But experience shows I don't know the answer. I'm at one end of a friendship spectrum or the other. I just don't know where I really stand.

Don't act your age

2010-05-23T19:17:00.000-07:00

I recently slept outside.
Now this is no small decision. After all, there's been a few decades pass since I entered this Earth. The ground and I became much less friendly a long time ago.
Part of it was that it was Earth Day. Part of it was that there was a meteor shower expected that night. Part was the weather cooperated. A big part was that I simply found my tent again.
I know I recalled elementary school years camping out in backyards. That would be in a more trusting, safe time. A friend and I would throw up tents and wait for the adult world to settle in. Then we'd roam the neighborhood some, through backyards that didn't have fencing distinctly marking territory. It was like taking to the prairie before barbed wire. We were limited only by our imaginations and braveries.
We go into our freezers in the garage and sneak way too many Fudgesicles. We'd swear that we were going to listen to the wind and our own tales right through the night and see the sunrise.
I doubt we ever really made it too far past midnight.
Then we'd creak out of the tent when awakened by the dawn, finding the frozen treat wrappers scattered all over the yard and feeling the sticky still on our hands. Usually, we'd part ways and go inside to warm comfortable beds for a few more hours, with a pact we'd say we'd seen every single-digit hour in the a.m. right up to sunrise.
It felt so good to remember all of it that I convinced myself a night in the outside dark would do me good. I didn't know what kind of good, but good.
My tent has netting over the top for which you can remove the cover and see up to the stars. I thought it a good viewing point for the after-midnight meteor shower.
I expected to make it to the shower easily as I hadn't been sleeping well anyway. Awakened at all hours by myself, random thoughts then keeping me from slipping back. Not worries really, often just questions or possibilities, those both out there and already missed. I guess the kind of stuff that sits in the back of a mind that lives long enough.
But I didn't make it to the celestial show. Nor did my expectations of cool night weather, humidity or hard ground keep me from sleep. It came on kind of easy and unexpected as a real love. Only daylight roused me.
And I realized why I'd really wanted to sleep outside, why I conjured up those long ago days and why the difficult elements didn't deter me from sleeping solidly. It was a feeling with which I awoke.
It was simply innocence.
Simple little things done completely on my own for my own edification give me something back. Something seemingly lost in everyone I know no matter their age. You can't really describe it, but you know it. It's when something feels pure and real. I had to call it innocence.
In the beginning I noted I'd done this recently, but the Earth Day reference shows it was weeks and weeks ago. In the interim I've thought it through and considered referencing it here. But I think I feared it would be tainted.
Instead, I decided to use the experience in hopes it might encourage someone else to seek their innocence. It's still there for everyone. They just have their own special version.
I fear as we get older, we give up on innocence. I more greatly fear as time goes on giving up happens earlier and earlier in life as life seems to get tougher in general. As more give up, it makes it harder on others and influences them to give up. It's a downward spiral.
Unless we don't let time beat us down and we still reach for innocence. Even if it's just a pilfered Fudgsicle with a friend at 10:30 at night. If we'll just ignore the common wisdom that says sleeping in the night air on the ground is no good for a body after a certain age. Because the truth is, the good it does for the soul completely heals the body.

Man of epiphany

2010-04-18T09:18:00.001-07:00

I've been accused of being overly dramatic. I'll concede I have a tendency to overreact. But I think it's partially because I don't seem to learn slow and steady like most. While most seem to travel a path of consideration, time passed, understanding and resolution, I get struck by lightening.
I have moments of epiphany.
I can pinpoint the exact place and moment when I realized I was free from a past relationship. The same for my seeing a long-term relationship was over. I can stand in the same spot where I understood how much wasted time I spent in yesterdays and worrying about uncontrollable tomorrows while never giving right now notice or a chance.
I think others may believe they experience the same. But in observing, I find they refer to the exact remembrance of others' words in those moments, or simply looks upon faces. For me, it only comes solitary.
There are those who would call my sudden understanding divine intervention. I don't disagree. Sometimes understanding arrives like a thought in my head, a feeling in my soul, that was totally absent immediately prior. Sometimes it comes when I'm trying to construct something like this and it comes out somewhere my conscious had never envisioned.
It's not like I don't put myself through hell to get to this nirvana. I just never understand I'm traveling until I get to the destination. And that is a total surprise.
I've been accused of being mercurial. This is one of the reasons. It's because I don't understand until I'm there. And this enlightenment is strong and solid. It alters my behavior and function completely and irrevocably.
That's because I am an excellent liar - to myself. I tell myself something is true even though it makes me uncomfortable. But when the actual truth strikes me, it's undeniable. Most importantly, a simple indescribable feeling that truth is complete reality makes it impossible to ignore. It becomes dominant.
I'm grateful it happens. I spent a large portion of my life ignoring the slight nagging that something didn't ring true and had disconnected the real voice that sometimes spoke out of the blue. For all those years, I was fading. When I let myself hear the voice again, it came more often and louder. When I became conscious of it, my life began to alter.
I can't predict or ask for my moments of understanding. They don't have a trigger. They just are suddenly there. But then I guess that is a definition of epiphany.

Blessed friendship

2010-03-23T12:11:00.001-07:00

I'm fortunate that I get to encounter a lot of people. I'm a sociable guy most of the time. I'm even more fortunate that a few of those part with some impression. It seems favorable - most of the time.
Some of those folks I see very regularly. And in some circles, that is identified as the creation of friendships.
But I was recently reminded of the special chemistry that creates real friendship. It's a lesson I'm especially thankful for.
The lesson came in the return of a long-time friend. We'd been separated by miles and some sort of discomfort for years. But reuniting was quite simply easy.
Despite the gaps, we were immediately comfortable. It stemmed from a sense we know each other beyond the surface. We have history, good and bad, which has let us see inside one another. We have shared experience that has tightened the bonds. We didn't deeply delve into the whys and what ifs of what had gone before. We just slipped into now and let what we each are, and what we are together, be. We are intimate in our physical reaction to one another and our comfortable laughter. More than half a decade of disconnect didn't exist.
In more than half a century of life, I think there are maybe four people like this for me. One I see sporadically, another seldom, a third not in years. And then this fourth.
But for all of them, it's as if time doesn't pass. This friend has a somewhat cynical theory that "people don't change." But instead of coming off jaded, it came off as connection. I think the friend believes people grow and become more aware, but that there is a core value system. We count on the good and bad in that value system, the fact we recognize it in one another, as a strong part of friendship. And it lets us pick up wherever time paused for us.
I've become a settler. I can often label friendship, maybe even love, in relationships that fall short of expectations. If that's all there is for an extended time, that's what you take.
But visits like this one, friends like this one, remind me something more is possible. I hope it makes me hold out for better. Because when you have friends who justify these expectations, who are like no others for some reasons you can't even identify, you feel blessed.

Behind great men

2009-12-29T17:34:00.001-08:00

I have a theory that has been espoused by many others with some sort of twist. Men with great potential also have great frailties.

Now, I'm going to use men for the example, although many of the same discussions apply to women. But some just don't seem to. So the gender choice is on purpose.

It's kind of the yin and yang of the human composition with the positives for success needing a likely negative. Men with compassion only have it because they have passion, which leads them down paths of sexual destruction. Men with the confidence to try great things teeter on the verge of arrogance which is always guaranteed to topple. Those who amazing focus require some type of escape to keep them from madness, escapes which are often debilitating.

I think it's one of the reason we see so much mediocrity in leadership anymore. For people to qualify for our vote or agreement to leadership, we vet them to pointlessness. Do we expect to find someone with the qualities to lead who hasn't made mistakes? How can they relate to the human condition after living unlike a human? It's likely the cause of our disappointment too. Maybe the "perfect" person can attain leadership, but their humanity catches them and they disappoint our expectations by eventually giving in.

This wasn't so true in the past. If we look at Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln - politicians we forgo political parties and give respect - we see huge human frailties. Across the seas, examine Churchill. Their weaknesses didn't drive them to evil but there's no doubt they had a special appreciation for the pleasures of the flesh and their own egos. But they are peccadilloes compared to the big picture accomplishments.

I also believe there's a corollary to this hypothesis. Behind these men with weaknesses, there is quite often a "suffering" woman. I quote suffering only because those who would examine the situation would label her so. Yet she may be quite happy and tolerant of the situation. But the more important aspect is that she is there as a support that may be what keeps the weakness from overtaking the overall man.

I think these men of weakness are hard not to love. In the more general population, they are the bad boys. But where the majority of bad boys only carry the negative yang of the equation, those capable of bigger things also carry the positive yin. And their zest for life, constant interest, and altruistic face draw the hearts of many women. But those women have to be wise to understand and tolerate the combination.

They also must have a combination of traits, they are special women. Strong enough to not be run down but flexible enough to endure the dark leanings. Passionate enough to keep interest and compassionate enough to understand such immense weakness only they may view.

It is as if we've decided to take our human race into mediocrity by eating those who have such great possibility. We feel more comfortable with those more like the majority, the average instead of the exceptional. Our inability to understand and accept the humanity that is combined with striving leaves us mired. It frustrates the best of us by the refusal to understand the worst in us.

We need a renaissance of reality.

Who's driving?

2009-12-20T14:09:00.000-08:00

My family lives 200 miles away. As in many Texas trips, it's so simple I know I can go from my doorstep to their's with four rights and two lefts.

But when I make the trip for the holidays this week, it won't be that simple although I'll make even fewer stops than usual. There's no co-pilot.

All dogs seem to love to go. Sam was the same way. Although with his cocker spaniel hips, he couldn't jump into the pickup and had to take a half jump while I pushed his butt into the floorboard. Sam also wasn't like other dogs who want the window down. The blowing even seemed to bother him.

Despite quirks, he loved to go. So, he got to. He just seemed to like to see the world go by in the windshield and the new faces out the window.

When I'd leave the vehicle, he'd commander the driver's seat. Not curl up in the seat, but park like a person. I came out of a restaurant once with a German tourist taking pictures of the Texan dog who drove the pick up.

The longest trips we took were those holiday sojourns up to my family. Three hours on the road isn't really that long. But it helped to have anything else breathing in the vehicle, to observe the goings on of passing vehicles and see their reactions. Sam and I had it down. We'd stop at this barbecue spot in Salado because he liked the dirt parking lot as a place to do first business. We'd stop at this truck stop outside Waco to the single patch of grass under the sign for the same reason. And then we'd march for the final push into Arlington.

It was holiday tradition. One that after more than a decade I guess I got used to without knowing it.

It'll be time to leave again in a few days. I'll notice packing doesn't require a couple of bowls and a bag of food. I'll catch I don't have to do a bump butt to get anyone in the seat. No matter how loudly I play the radio, it will be oddly quiet.

But I think I just might stop in Salado for some barbecue, whether I'm hungry or not.

The noise of writers

2009-12-16T12:04:00.000-08:00

An acquaintance has a blog, like millions of people. Recently he sought recommendations for subjects, stating he preferred something he could "rip on." For him, it's a forum to ridicule and bitch.

Another acquaintance asked me to review her blog sometimes and comment. She stated she was looking to improve as a writer. She'd post about other people's writings or point out world events. When I asked if she ever considered revealing something about herself and her personal thoughts in the blog, she posted a sidebar hidden in a longer note that she intended the blog to be impersonal.

Many, many people want to be a writer. The previous incidents made me ponder what exactly that means. It probably made me judgemental. But I couldn't shake the question. When I used to coach journalists day to day, I stated that anyone could teach a monkey to write a story. It's really almost always a formula. I felt much differently about the innate talent it took to get information from people and to process that information, but presentation was almost plugging in a template.

It's the same in presenting most information. People can learn to arrange words in an easily digestible order, built sentences so the general populace can capture their meaning and construct a presentation that leaves a reader with the proper information. (Although it seems our society is less and less willing to do these things these days).

That is what most people who try to express themselves do. They utilize a skill. They implement an English lesson.

But I don't believe that makes them writers.

I define writing as using words to be more than words. To invoke an emotion, from laughter to tears. To paint a vision, not just describe a scene but make it so vivid someone feels as if they're standing there. Something that pushes the thought process beyond the boundaries that seem to exist and go places not imagined.

I suppose it's something that can be learned, practiced and refined. I don't think that happens by doing the same thing over and over, just pushing information. It takes gambles and innovation. Maybe actually be a writer involves simple, innate talent.

The entire process made me think of a piano player. First, I don't believe people who do not know a note would ever sit down and pound away and call themself a player. Secondly, most people can practice and learn notes and communicate a tune. But there are those who turn notes into emotions, somehow put some of themself and their experiences into the instrument and are a musician.

In the same way, it's like the blogosphere has become a room jammed with thousands of pianos. Most people are in there banging away not because they want to make music but because the pounding feels good to them somehow. And somewhere in there, there might be a true tune, something beautiful and melodic, something that would move and inspire.

I wonder if we could even hear it.

A meeting place

2009-12-02T09:32:00.000-08:00

While I was growing up, it was obvious my father and I were very different people.

He was a former professional athlete, I was skinny and uncoordinated. He was gregarious, I was a loner. He put together car parts, I put together words.

Obviously, we found long periods of time where we really didn't have much to say.

Yet about the time I was a junior in high school, I learned we'd found a regular meeting place to which I still refer to this day.

It started with a simple quiz. In those days, I ran with some kids who were older, more cultured and artsy. One of them asked me to quickly respond to the question what I thought of when he said Carmen Miranda. "Bananas," I blurted. "Exactly," he said with some astonishment.

Miranda was a 1940s movie musical character who most often danced with a hat comprised of fruit on her head. Now how did I know the character, much less the fruit compilation?

In that same time period, a new fad arose related to those musical. A movie was built of outtakes from the movie musicals over the previous decades called "That's Entertainment." It was a smash hit, and as I watched I questioned how instead of getting an education, I felt deja vu. I'd seen these spectacular dance numbers before.

It was similar when I stumbled across drama. Flipping through channels, I already knew Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper and the plots they were playing out.

It was then this hazy undefined memory arose. It seems like a dark den. My father is in a recliner and I'm on a couch. There's no conversation in the memory, but everything from "White Christmas through "Singing in the Rain" to "West Side Story" washed across me. And apparently registered.

It made me a departure from many of my peers in the future. Although I joined my redneck buddies in an appreciation for "Smoky and the Bandit," I found myself sitting alone and transfixed just as much by "Cabaret" and "All That Jazz."

All of our parents provide us with gifts over time. We think of values and education, a general upbringing. Sometimes I think that's just the genetic cycle at its best. But the human trait is often reflected in the things passed on to us subtly and almost unrecognized.

A place where even completely different people can meet for all time.

2009-11-20T09:35:00.000-08:00

How am I alive?

I guess I started pondering that question right before Halloween. I was combining candies and considered Payday, peanuts around nougat. I started to put it back thinking of horror stories of children and peanuts these days. Then I remembered the peanuts in the M&Ms and the Snickers and decided I wasn't clearing the decks for something parents should review anyway.

Within days, I also saw a report on the growing percentage of children allergic to common things in our world.

It made me wonder, am I lucky or has something gone askew in the human condition? Because when I remember how I lived my childhood, I guess I should be dead.

We ate everything. The kid who was allergic to something was quite the anomaly. School lunches were an assembly line with Sloppy Joe's guaranteed one day and pizza another. Memory fades, but I'd suspect the other three days were top of the nutrition chain and reviewed to be allergy approved.

But it's even worse. I think of the creeks in which I played and sometimes foolishly ingested. I realize the world has gotten generally dirtier in the decades since. But I lived in a burg next to an Air Force base and airplane manufacturing site. Near the creek, they had a dump site which I recall once had an fighter jet tail section. The manufacturing site was also where they developed composites that eventually became the stealth technology we use today. Who knows what all leached out from those operations as they went through failed composites, leached into the creek from which I was catching crawdads on a string with bacon tied on the end.

And then there were my bicycle habits. The bike itself would probably be considered an outlawed death trap. Stingray, high rise handlebars and a gold banana set with sparkles (funny how what was fashion at one time would now get my sexual preferences questioned).

Our daily use of the bicycle would also be considered deadly today and only allowed as an extreme sport with adult supervision with paramedics standing by. We just found the biggest, steepest hill around, put a launch ramp at the bottom comprised of a big rock and a board and went flying.

Most importantly to the overprotective parents today, this is without helmets. In our day, such headgear would be more dangerous than banging your head as it would get you beaten to a pulp daily. I've never quite understood the mandate of helmets when I think of the plethora of bicycle rides for my friends and I, the amazing wrecks, and the dearth of head injuries. I've had friends who've been saved by their headgear as adults, but it seems as though we've legislated for the very few from my own experience. I also find it especially ironic as today's helmets remind me of half of the deadly peanut shell.

Then, there is night. Night is a special memory for me. Even for a child, there came a point in Texas when day just was too debilitating to be outside. But summer evenings were an escape, a chance to burn off energy and see the world in literally a different light. We got to run the streets in the night, and dash through backyards. There were almost no fences for some reason, the neighborhoods weren't cordoned off house by house but an open field. If I lived my summer nights now as I did as a child, I'd be shot within 10 yards. Although no self-respecting parent can allow their child to enjoy a summer's night in a world suddenly full of disappearing children and Nancy Grace trumpeting the failures of everyone but herself which led to the tragedy.

Surely, if I were a child today, I'd be dead. Maybe that reality - or that view of reality - is what makes childhood seem so much shorter these days.

Stages

2009-11-10T09:32:00.000-08:00

I have an odd hobby. I'm a stage sampler.

Using tactics that can be described between sneaky and blatant, I find my way onto performance stages.

It's not simply some fantasy/hero worship. I've had official access to many stages and during The Lost Years when I helped manage some performers, I stood on stages with various performers to argue not over who went before an audience in what order, but who conducted sound check in what order. I understand stage pettiness.

And although I've been on stages with thousands of people out front and gazed upon the adoring throngs, I'm not so enamored with that either. To me, I guess it's like a history lesson.

I look from blank stages out onto the audience site and try to remember the vision for when I'm on the other side. I trace backstage to dressing rooms and consider the ingress and egress of musicians. I look closely at the backdrop and note the vast difference between the flimsiness you see in immediacy and the falsity from an audience. I consider the floor and review whatever is in my memory of the footsteps and perspiration of performers I know have worked and played in that spot.

Some of those stages are ones anyone can access, like Gruene Hall and Luckenbach. Although I was lucky enough at Luckenbach to find a posted set list from the previous night's Pat Green show, which I stole.

Some just take the right timing, like the Austin Music Hall and La Zona Rosa. Although those were as much fun for the ragged room/nasty couch backstages into which I sneaked.

Some are just pure luck and timing, like The Erwin Center when I walked in the wrong door at the right time.

But without doubt, my favorite is Austin City Limits. I was in the building on a Saturday morning to do a public television show as an alleged watcher of the economy. Like lots of television and movies, it was a bunch of hurry up and wait. So I wandered. And in an adjacent studio, I got into ACL.

The famous backdrop and the corridor through which so many unbelievable performers had passed to applause growing in their ears. The simplicity of it all. The boards that had supported a score of names I reviewed in my mind. And the view all those people had of the simple bleachers in front of them.

I'm glad I squeezed that one in. As we speak, a new studio is being constructed for ACL in downtown Austin, ensuring it will be engulfed in the shadow of all the condo buildings that are so not Austin it makes the famous ACL backdrop have to be either misrepresentative or pointless. I always laugh at venues which move and carry the stage itself or a piece to the new spot. It's kind of like carrying around a lock of a child's hair in your pocket. It's not the smile or scent or complete package that creates the whole, it's a false sense of connection.

So I get to carry all those complete stages in my mind's eye, especially ACL. What's next, Madison Square Garden?

Friends II

2009-11-09T10:30:00.000-08:00

Circumstance has led to the need for an addendum to the previous post because a new question has arisen. How forgiving should you be as a friend?

The reality - there is someone who I really what to be my friend, and believe we have been friends. But there has been a lot taken for granted. Repeated failures to follow through on agreements and promises. A belief that a basic apology or profession of feelings makes it all okay. So, I very likely put a knife in the friendship this weekend.

Of course, I feel guilty and sad. I'm too focused on my limited friendships to be casual about losing one. But there comes a point when you must have self respect.

A friendship is a two-way street. Both people have to invest. Each has to treat the other as valuable and worthwhile. It requires time. It requires dedication. You cannot expect a friendship to be self-sustaining. It needs nurturing.

I have friendships that have endured for decades although the interaction between myself and the friend may have gaps of months or even years. But they were each established long ago over long periods of more work. They have a foundation.

But for newer ones, I believe they need time spent together. Friendship grows or withers with interaction. Because within that interaction you see proof of trust, connection and mutual respect. The two prove they value one another by what they do, not what they say.

I have been told I'm too rigid and I'm unrealistic about friendship. Some came to that conclusion from experience, and I agree with them. There have been times in my evolution where I spent more time telling everyone to constantly prove it than actually looking at the reality. I hope I've remedied that somewhat, and believe the proof it's better is in the fact some who fed me my medicine have come back around as friends.

But I still have a line I have to draw. I'm one who does not allow myself to be taken advantage of for very long. I know it limits my friendships. But it also makes the ones I have real. I used to honestly believe one strike and you're out. But as my own foibles became so much more apparent, I've come to realize so many factors can cause a friend to fail you now and then. Circumstance, maturity and humanity can cause my friends to fail.

Yet I still must have a limit. I believe it makes me more valuable as a friend. It maintains my self respect. And it expresses my expectations, which allows people to choose to meet them or not.

I can forgive. Even more than once. But not forever.

Friends

2009-10-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about friends lately.

Obviously, some of that is explained by the post right previous to this in which I note losing a great friend. Less obvious is the reality of how that situation revealed friends. There were those who knew enough to say just a little, but to know how much the situation affected me. There were those who knew they were closer still and could expound on their view of the relationship and express their condolences.

And there were those who ignored the situation. I'm glad they did. Because it helped clear my vision of the nature of our relationship, something to which I can blind myself.

The combination of all that made me stop and think about friends again. We live in a world in which friend may have been minimalized. Social networking such as Facebook leads us to make the word a verb and "friend" people we barely know. It over expands our list of friends to include entire other genres such as acquaintances, business associates and people to whom we only nod in real life. For those who fear offense, it can lead to even enemies making a "friends" list because they don't want to hit that ignore button and instead sheep-like accept an offer.

With all that in mind, I not only thought about whittling my alleged friends list, but stated it was a process I was conducting. That too was educational. I had direct requests to not eliminate specific people, people who I would have thought were so on the periphery they could care less. Some people gave reasons for asking me to continue to consider them friends, even though we hardly communicated. Those said they silently maintained connection via things such as this blog or visible conversations with others. They weren't that comfortable participating, but wanted to keep the pipeline open.

And I'm certain there were some who didn't state it, but prayed they would be removed from any connection because they'd had enough of me.

But there was one specific other that blunted my cynicism. One that made me think through friend with a more open mind, to give me the courage to be friends.

We hadn't crossed paths in decades, and even then it was glancing. We had re-established a dialogue and found growing up in the same place at the same time sets a template that is an automatic connection. During the final days of my good friend's life, that person kept an eye on me. She offered experience, advice and quite simply a crutch. And when it was over and I had to deal with the reality of one friend being gone, she was a new friend who I quickly came to believe was there if needed. A pretty good definition of friend.

She wasn't someone I would have thought of as a friend. But she was a friend in waiting. Her time for friendship just hadn't arrived.

She taught me to not be so rigid about my friends. She helped me see that not all friendships are stated or obvious or even yet in existence. The only friendship that isn't for certain is the one I won't let be.

I still don't believe I'm friends with everyone. I still believe friendship is earned on both sides. But I don't think of it as obvious as I may once have.

I have to believe I have more friends than I know. And hope more people think of me as their friend than I let.

Sam

2009-10-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

Sam was a confused pound puppy when he came to me. Well, I say puppy although the age is uncertain coming from an orphanage. He might have been two then.

From what I can put together, Sam had been adopted from the pound, brought back, adopted again and again brought back.

By the time I came around, I thought his demeanor was “what did I do wrong?” His method of communication in that cage was to simply walk up and lean on me.

I guess some type of cocker mix, but who knows what else. He had this big droopy mustache. Therefore, Yosemite Sam. Yosemite Samuel P. Puppy for formality.

The day I was to pick him up for adoption, they opened his cage for cleaning and he made a break for it. They pinned him against a fence and grabbed. Just as I would have, he bit them.

That earned him several weeks of isolation, allegedly to ensure he didn’t have rabies. (If he’d been previously adopted from there, and they require inoculation, didn’t that mean they knew it wasn’t possible?)

When he’d served his time all alone with no visitors, he was greasy and angry. In fact, I believe psychologically damaged. He wouldn’t allow anyone to pick him up. To go home, we had to fight to put him in the back of a pickup for the ride.

We stopped at PetSmart for some type of cleaning materials to at least make him not smell. We walked through the store and as we checked out, he looked up at me. And in his mouth was a yellow ball he’d pilfered from one of the bottom shelves. Guess he’d made a choice.

That type of dichotomy never left. He was thrown out of two grooming places for bad behavior. But he wouldn’t touch a trash can or walk out a front door unless you put a leash on him. Even I could not pick him up. But I was essentially only one he ever “kissed” in a decade.

Sam and I rode quite a roller coaster. Lots of people coming and going in our lives. There was one lady he grew used to coming to his home most early evenings for awhile. There was a couch in front of a big window out front and just about 6, he’s hop up there and watch for the vehicle to arrive. When she and I ended, he continued watching from about 5:45 to 6:30 for about two weeks. But then seemed to decide it was he and I again, and that was okay.

The last couple of weeks were harder on Sam. He’d always had a heart murmur and that condition worsened. Like many cockers, his hips were so weak I don’t think I’d ever seen him run. They began to betray even his interest in walking into the yard, much less farther.

When he reached that point, the slightest stairs or slick floors were too great a challenge. After more than a decade of maintaining pride and independence beyond even most pets, he let me pick him up and get him to the places he needed to be. Even seemed thankful.

When Sam and I joined forces, we were damaged. But we each gave each other little bits to try and work on that. Despite being betrayed so many times through his life by people, in the last days he gave me the ultimate trust of carrying him. And despite being a 52-year-old Texan man who has some belief you need to stand strong and deal with your emotions, I’ve cried more in the last week than possibly in the majority of my life.

Sam found trust and I had to deal with my heart. I think we’ll both take those gifts and hold onto them.

Social networking and our society

2009-10-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

The last couple of days, I've been watching something play out on Facebook, and couldn't help but be struck by how it echoes the bigger picture of our society.

One of the dramas is a 20-something girl's ongoing saga. You can watch her involve herself with substances that every few days lead her to consternation and conflict. They're really just the trigger. But whether they lead to her battling other people, straining or even losing relationships or even getting arrested, it only takes her days to return to them and have negative results. But she doesn't admit to the cause and effect.

That's a serious situation. It's not up to the common observor to decide if she's addicted to something or not.

But it is interesting to watch the hue and cry that is always ongoing with her 20-something female friends, who feels slighted or wronged, who justifies and who swears off to only return almost as quickly as the page can refresh.

Although the substances may be reflective of some part of American life, it is the maelstrom that is always ongoing that is much more indicative of a dominating piece of our culture right now. It's like they've all watched too many episodes of The Hills and feel they have to make their own lives as "exciting," at least as gossipy. They would claim they hate the drama, but you can watch and see it gives them spark and energy. It is their cause for going on each day.

On the other side, I've watched a high school acquaintance learn of his cancer, reveal it to the world and deal. In contrast to the very public debacle of the young girls, his revelation was matter of fact. His internal consideration of what it means was a single sentence of how quickly he needs to ensure he's lived life. And his gratitude for the outpouring of attempted comfort from people he's barely crossed paths with for three decades was complete and compact.

Drama is an overused word in our society. I've used it too many times in this piece. Once there was melodrama used for the superficial and pointlessly public outcries that some love to draw attention. And there was drama for the true struggles of life. But we've lumped them all together under the simple smaller world anymore.

I don't think the gap between the two types justifies the compression of our language.

Living history

2009-09-14T09:28:00.001-07:00

I think everyone ought to grow something. It gives you responsiblity and the enjoyment of seeing the fruits of your labors.

Now, for those parents, I'm not about to make that comparison. You may get something slightly similar, but parenthood has got to be so much more rewarding, is so much more important, that I'd never put the two anywhere near each other.

But I have a secret in my plants. They're people.

That doesn't mean I talk to them and believe they respond. It means they represent people to me. I'm lucky that I have a few that have been around for years and years. When I got them, I made the choice because something about them reminded me of someone specific. It might be the color of the flower, or the scent or even the way it grows. But each one is a person to me.

Maybe most important to me, they are people who are now only on the periphery of my life. Even if I don't physically see them for years on end, whatever it is that made the person important to me at one time lives on in the plant I see daily. I get to keep the enjoyment.

I never tell them. It's something personal to me. Just a little something that keeps history alive.

Who you dance with

2009-08-26T13:03:00.000-07:00

A little less than a week ago, I wrote something simply too dark to post here, as indicated by its title "Embrace the Insanity."

It was really Rickie talking to himself about just letting the demon in his head that he'd learn to manage go. To take a break from what can be the exhausting ongoing chore of control. To just be.

Of course, if I wrote it, I tried it. And I still can't process the result.

Without picking and choosing, I went down unexpected trails. I had to react on my feet instead of using experience. I felt the rush of adventure and maybe the fear of not knowing next. Even as the visceral part of me knew it was in situations it craved because they were unknown, the observer part of me was in the corner reviewing.

For almost all my life, I've kept Observer in the corner. He never forgets, he always comes around later to speak up, sometimes to even say "I've told you so before and will again." But he had to be second to Visceral.

I don't believe in regret. It's all about choices and consequences to me. Visceral was sort of a given choice every time. Observer was the expressor of the consequences. But they went in that order.

Except on the holiday I'd deemed for insanity embrace. The demon began to dance. He worked up a decent sweat. Visceral was in his prime. And Observer spoke up. Maybe it's better to say he expressed. It was almost as if he was just at the side shaking his head and taking notes for the consequences symposium.

I listened. I didn't really want to. In honesty, I'd covered my ears throughout the evening. But at a critical juncture, at the crossroads, I saw Observer's eyes. In there, I didn't see a need to control, but concern. Not concern that would reject me or even be disappointed, just concern that what I wanted wasn't what was happening. It wasn't happening with me, but to me.

I asked Visceral to take a seat. He argued, he even struggled some. And he's strong. But I told him it had to happen.

Observer didn't congratulate me. To this point, he hasn't really spoken up on what happened and the whys. But he also didn't have to note consequences.

I think I did embrace the insanity. The thing is, there's a chance the insanity has changed.

The sounds of silence

2009-08-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

I've noticed an annoying speech pattern recently. People are afraid of silence.

It's highly recognizable in television commercials. Too often, that means marketers find young people speak this way - as that's the only ones they try to address outside the nightly national news - or the agency people are all that age and reflecting their own cadence. Either way, it means this is the way the next - or is it current - generation speaks.

The style is to refuse to let there be silence, to never end a thought and begin another. The speaker reaches the end of a thought and says "sooooo" until the next thought is expressed. Or says "annnnd" at the end of each thought. It ranges from the people fishing for love in EHarmony testimonials to the philanthropist who gives away shoes thanks to his cell phone.

I have a friend in which I recognize this too. Although I've known him for a decade and a half, he seems to squirm if common conversation lulls. "Sooooo," he'll say out of the blue. Worse is when he spouts "it is what it is." Even he's noted this annoyance, but utilizes it like a heroin addict taps methadone for relief.

Silence in conversation lets us process. It lets the less aggressive have a chance to chime in. It lets the conversation current drift and move somewhere else.

Maybe that's why this trend exists. There are people who need to not be required to think through their comments, to hold the stage forever and to control it all.

Or maybe they're just afraid they'll hear themselves in the silence and it will embarrass them.

Hope

2009-08-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

On the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, I was watching tributes. It's nice to see the time when hope was so high, everything seemed possible and righting wrongs seemed a generation's mission. It was also fascinating for me personally to see the strength and struggle it took to enjoy the event, took me back to my own version of Woodstock and the odd circle that occurred.

Despite how I feel some mornings, I'm too young to have experienced Woodstock. But less than a decade later, I joined forces with a friend to leave Dallas-Fort Worth for Austin and an outdoor event we'd heard about there.

As near as I can recall, it was an odd amalgamation of bands. I think it was the Steve Miller Band high-flying off its album "Fly Like An Eagle." It was The Band with its ties to Bob Dylan and unknowing to us on the verge of dissolution with one of the best concert movies ever, "The Last Waltz." It was the band Chicago in its heyday. And it was a California band that was touring supporting a self-titled album and was working on something it gave us previews of called "Rumours."

Like many outdoor events in those days, the ticket sales and basic requirements didn't match up. The road to the venue was a two-lane country path that was soon jammed to immovability with thousands. Almost everyone abandoned cars and walked miles to the site, the bands' tunes wafting over hills somewhere in Austin I still can't identify. It was that walk that created camaraderie, all of us suffering together and sharing information on the music as we struggled to the site. We were joined, supportive, hopeful.

Years later when I called Austin home, I found that a curmudgeonly co-worker who tried to hide a gentle soul and with an eclectic past had been one of the promoters of that show. He cussed about the difficulties and financial loss, I told him the feeling I walked away with. I think he liked it.

One day, I found that man was gone. He wasn't young, but from all I can tell, he wound up taking his life. It's likely he was sick and didn't want to suffer. It's even more likely he simply lost hope.

In these days, I feel that way sometimes. The world's unsteady, the nation is vitriolic and intolerant in its disagreements, the economy seems to sit upon me like a bully on a playground. I look at the macro and micro and feel hopeless.

That night watching the Woodstock documentary, I enjoyed the old hope. I recalled the feeling of the Austin show that occurred after the hippie hope had been pummeled by stupid war, social revolt and assassination. I thought of the karma that let me tell the man who had given me that experience that I'd held on to it.

And I thought hope is something that survives because you don't know what will happen. And that unknown can be uplifting when it occurs. You've just got to find the strength to wait for it.

The Goatman and my innocence

2009-08-09T13:53:00.001-07:00

Sounds like an early, bad Bruce Springsteen song, huh?

It was 40 years ago that the Goatman "terrorized" the Lake Worth area outside Fort Worth. He really was just a hulking bunch of hair that scared good behavior back into parking teenagers and now seems was likely some high school offensive lineman with a wig and 1969 summer hippie hair running prank.

The event was very clear to me in part because I lived in the burg right next to Lake Worth, White Settlement. It was transition time for a 12-year-old, the cusp of teenagerness and moving from elementary school into junior high. I remember peddling my bicycle into the area where the Goatman was sighted - during the day only, of course - and wondering if during the sunshine he crouched in the surrounding areas through which I peddled.

The bicycle had high rise handlebars and a gold banana seat with silver flecks. It was so flashy that if a child chose it these days there would likely be questions about his sexual orientation. But in 1969 it was almost standard issue and we seemed to believe that 12-year-olds didn't have an established orientation to consider.

The timeline made me think of that bicycle and our relationship even further. Even in the two years prior to Goatman time, I put miles and miles on those wheels, disappearing for entire days peddling over next to the then unnamed Bobcat Canyon where I knew every trail in the woods, along the gates of the then General Dynamics plant where unknown to me research was on for the next generation fighter plans and up to the fences along Carswell Air Force base where B-52s still made the earth rumble like California earthquakes and the rumor was they had atomic weapons just in case.

I probably peddled through creeks poisoned with the metals from the plants, dodged commuters along too small roads who drove gas guzzling vehicles and was always far from anyone who could identify me and who I was with. And there was simply no such thing as a bicycle helmet. It was my hair in the wind (yes, there was a time I had lots of hair) and crashes that left elbows and shins bleeding but from which I just got up.

It's that innocence that's lost. What child could ride without a helmet anymore, much less for hours and wandering miles without his parents knowledge, much less accompaniment? It's a time that made me feel free and to instill a still-sought thrill for wandering aimlessly and anonymously. In that period I think I found a lust for unexpected adventure, for heading out and dealing with what I find when I get there. I still long for it.

But in our world we can't have children with free range, or Goatmen. We lock down their brains with helmets and curfews and limitations and danger. We round up search parties and infrared and satellites for Goatmen.

We just don't have an appreciation for the unknown anymore. And that seems to be a big blow to innocence.

For what it's worth

2009-08-03T19:20:00.001-07:00

Lately I've been doing a lot of considering of my view of the value of the written word.

Previously, I've always held fast that if it was worth writing down, it should have impact. It should cause thought or laughter or feeling.

I know this review has arisen from my finally giving in to Facebook and to the inundation of Twitter in our society. I disdained the Facebook habit of telling me what you had for lunch or your mundane plans for a Saturday afternoon. I took special exception to the character limitations in Twitter. At first glance, there just didn't seem to be enough room to express in that limitation, and therefore we got mired in minatue.

I had to give second thought when I considered some of the great statements of Anglo literature. They are small phrases. "To be or not to be," for example.

Then again, they don't stand alone. None of them. The phrases that are critical to our feeling and thinking and part of our vocabulary are outtakes from something larger. Even Ben Franklin's greatest pithy quotes are from entire volumes of Poor Richard's Almanac.

I also considered if I'm just being elitist. Facebook and Twitter, like copious numbers of other Internet opportunities, have let anyone and everyone with a computer speak out. That should be a good thing, the benefit of widespread viewpoints.

But, again, it's not used to express. It's used by far the most often to just speak. Maybe babble is a better word.

I'm glad I did Facebook. I found mountains of former acquaintances. I got to see the faces of some very important to me whom I hadn't viewed in years. But I think it's like all the other information we all have to plow through everyone day. We have to cut through the volume to find the importance.

I just hope it doesn't become so much garbage we never discover the rose by whatever written name that smells as sweet.

A good virus

2009-07-26T16:02:00.000-07:00

I spent most of an overheated afternoon watching Walter Cronkite's review of history during his time and his personal ties.

I came away with two very distinct visions of Cronkite. And a sadness welling up that those traits might not be around enough for the future.

The first was his seemingly innate feeling he served the general public, that it believed he knew that and therefore would do all he could to represent its interests and deserve its belief in him. Although he was personal friends with many powerful people upon whom he reported, the cornerstone was he would put aside his personal like or dislike of them to seek out reality. Where the cards fell after that was of no consequence because truth was the supreme goal.

The second trait was curiosity. He never seemed to be a political junkie or a war correspondent or an environmentalist. He was simply interested in knowing about a lot of widely varied things and people. This has always seemed to me the critical trait in journalists. It's what makes them informed enough to ask the right question. And the constant search is what leads them to what you want to, and need to, know.

I fear we've created a culture that doesn't have much use for those traits anymore. We've become so politically correct that offending anyone with an aggressive query or thinking outside the norm is considered wrong. We've become so cliquish and afraid of being alone, we do anything to avoid offending those around us. Plus, we don't respect differing opinions, but ostracize those who suggest there is another way.

And as for curiosity, it seems much more focused on Britney Spears' mental state or the machinations of some television sing off than what is going on in our world and, more importantly, why.

But simple statistics leave me with a glimmer of hope. As with Cronkite, the people who we have historically turned to to trust as our protectors of truth and providers of curiosity have been journalists.

Now that has faded over the last several years as what was once journalism has morphed into much more of a business seeking the highest profits and too often going to the highest bidder. Those curious people with a moral center of duty seemed likely to avoid this new journalism. There is also simply fewer of them around as reliable studies have estimated about 10,000 newspaper jobs have disappeared over the last few years, leaving a mere 47,000 such jobs in existence.

But I'm apparently wrong. Because in this time of useless journalism where people take their information too often from random blogs (such as this) and comics joking about daily affairs, journalism schools report enrollment skyrocketing, often in double digit percentages. In a world with such few jobs in the industry and the usual mediocre pay, something is driving students into building journalism skills.

Maybe they have Cronkiteitis.

Headline today, same as yesterday

2009-07-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

In these dog days of summer (trust me, if you'd watch Sam the Wonder Dog start panting at 3 p.m. and go until 8 every night, you'd know dog days) I've come up with something that perplexes - why does the weather report need a third of every local broadcast?

Weather can obviously be news. In fact, people want to know about tomorrow. But let's be honest, particularly in Summer of 2009, tomorrow is a high of 101-103 and a low of 77. Again and again and again. Pretty much, until Sept. 15.

So why not take 30 seconds to say just that and give the other five of telling me for the 30th time why tomorrow is like yesterday is like today to some sort of reporting? Tell you what, just for folks with relatives elsewhere or traveling the next day, I'll give you another full minute for a national report and map.

The methodology of weather reporting seems weak to me too. It's all about the temperature numbers. But it's much more important to tell me how it feels. Right now, we're in a string of triple digits. Weathercasters are all gaga over the prediction we'll go only to the upper 90s soon. But that's because clouds are expected. Do those clouds arise because the humidity will increase? Then wouldn't I rather 103 and lower humidity?

So, here's the deal. Let's make the weather part of the news. If something is going to change dramatically, like a stray shower or even a front passing, we'll give you time at the beginning of the entire program. Then we can go straight from the City Council report to the Dallas Cowboys report (is Jessica in or out?). Except we'll ensure there's time at the end for the anchors who obviously have had enough of one another to stumble and snicker over the just finished video of the skiing squirrel.

Back talk

2009-07-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

I was reading an acquaintance's blog which included a reference to a character trait.

"Bullshit," was my immediate reaction.

It's true I haven't spent time with the author in a few years. Prior to that, we were very close. That's the cause for the use of "acquaintance" as opposed to "friend."

Despite that gap, I found the self analysis misleading. I know people can grow and change, but believe in the philosophy there is a core that is built when you're still single digits in age. You can be cognizant of that base and try to consciously not act upon it. But in terms of who you are, it's always there. In natural reaction, that is what we will revert to.

Having thought that through probably even too much, I try to be aware of what I am, good and bad. I've fooled myself some in the past, but after having lived much longer than I actually expected, there is a history that forces me to review actions instead of just opinions.

But that's not enough. I also watch how others react to me. Sometimes, too much. I read more than is there quite often. In an example, my natural inclination is to closely examine what I think is a reaction and to question it. With a history of seeing how that blows up in my face too often, I try to just keep the questioning internal and to a limit. In terms of some philosophy, it is changing from feel, react and think to feel, think and react.

I wondered if the acquaintance drew the self character declaration from experience or thought. If it was only thought, I knew how an outsider calling bullshit would be helpful. But with my own experience, I also knew that is something that takes a trusting, extended relationship or an invitation.

But this is more about me than someone I haven't seen in four years. So it leads me to extend an invitation. I hope that those who have a view of me that isn't simply passing would call me out if need be. If they were to read something on this blog that they believe is false, they'd question it. Because I don't do this completely to yell into the empty forest and get a release. There's value in listening to the echo too.

Notable

2009-07-06T12:08:00.000-07:00

I can't relate to all the Michael Jackson hysteria.

I don't deny he was a talented man, might even agree that he's an American icon thanks to a career that spans five decades (although the final decade might be more notoriety than fame). Yet I find a lot of what makes people go ga-ga derivative. I never had much respect or understanding for the gasps, squeaks and squeals he felt were part of songwriting. He was an excellent dancer, but his real talent was in creating an amalgamation of Gene Kelly, James Brown and some steps he picked up off the streets.

There's just nothing there I can see that should make people hold vigil or battle for the lottery chance to be part of a memorial service.

It made me ponder who I would consider American icons that I would miss. I came across names like Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Simon and Willie Nelson. They would all cause me pause and realization something was gone, but nothing like creating a need for the barrage of information now created by Jackson.

I did stop to consider my off the cuff list was all white. Maybe it's a cultural thing, I thought. But here's the sadness I fear. If there were an African American who should be lionized in death, it should be someone like Sidney Poitier who created new career opportunities for American blacks and lived his personal life and used his fame to improve the lot of his entire race. I fear thousands of those who will push their way into the Jackson memorial will not even know who Poitier is.

That train of thought creates an even greater fear. Has our culture reached a point where we don't celebrate even fame anymore, but only infamy? We constantly seem to need to tear down what we build up. Do we need something lascivious to go with success to make those we note human?

Journalism must die

2009-07-05T13:08:00.001-07:00

Recently the daily newspaper lauded one of its reporters for extended reporting on a local utility's financial abuses. About the same time, I reviewed the most recent Pulitzer prizes for journalism, and noted one for work on a local sheriffs department's focus on identifying and deporting illegal aliens and another for the Pentagon's recruitment of certain commentators for national news to bolster policy.

Although all those are properly lauded efforts, the truth is it's a miracle they happened at all. And reporting of that ilk is less and less likely - although tremendously important to the preservation of our society - as long as journalism is run by sales people and marketers.

Because you say you are very unlikely to read such reporting.

My case for what might seem mundane reporting is an open society needs watchdogs. Human behavior is there are those who will abuse freedom. But rather than limit it, there simply needs to be oversight to remind those same people there can be consequences to their actions. Be it misbehaving politicians or greedy businesspeople, there must be someone to represent the general masses, question actions and present them for judgement by the general public.

If you were to survey people, they'd tell you they mostly care less about such reporting. But when it doesn't occur, and economies collapse or the powerful run roughshod, they scream at the top of their lungs.

If the general public were completely in charge, a newspaper front page would be pictures of pretty girls and puppies followed quickly by the comics and football scores. I guess I'm calling the proper practice of journalism parenting in some ways. You can't offer a family a steady diet of candy. There must be vegetables even if they create grousing.

For the last several decades, those who made the decision to serve unpopular squash have had less and less influence in journalism. Those who say the way to make money in the business - and I would never deny it is a business - is to constantly give the majority what it says it wants. In addition, those folks hear most often from not only focus groups, but those who hand them a check for appearance in the bottom half of those newspapers. It has become imperative to not upset those advertisers.

While years and years of training and experience may lead some journalists to a mundane and potentially controversial coverage of government and budgets and influence, there is a Big Brother over the shoulder questioning if that coverage will have mass appeal and not generate that dreaded call from the major advertiser.

For the last few decades, that Big Brother has come to run the family. Look at the recent exposure of the internal workings at the Washington Post. The publisher offered access to journalism sources high in the White House and to the editors and reporters who keep an eye on those folks for a "sponsorship." Reporters are the representatives of millions of members of the general public when each of them can't question the White House Chief of Staff. Therefore, special access to the powerful. The Post publisher tried to sell that access to bolster the bottom line.

The result of all this print pandering and control by accountants instead of reporters is newspapers that don't really have a point in existence and have faded fast.

Ah, but you say, it's not bad business decisions, it's the Internet that is killing print. You're right. But not why you think. The Internet is even more skewed toward the lowest common denominator because you can actually count. It's way too often not the import of the story which justifies reporting, but the number of clicks it registers. Every newspaper Web site notes the most viewed stories right out front every day. Those who have the hands on the wheel also watch those closely and make the results the driving force.

An example is also in the most recent Pulitzers. Two other major stories that some might consider political malfeasance won. But they were for reporting on the use of prostitutes by the New York governor and the Detroit mayor's affair. Sex sells, baby.

My main point is journalism must die. It seems to me the marketers and sales people who have dominated the industry are causing that to happen. And no one cares not because this type of journalism isn't wanted, but it is not needed.

But journalism is a phoenix. Frustration at a lack of watchdogs will cause new forms to arise from the ashes. They will be extremely small, underfunded and provincial for quite some time. They will likely focus on subjects the man on the street would tell you beforehand he couldn't give a damn about. But when the watchdog has to bark, that same man will join the chorus with his angry yelling.

In the meantime, focus groups and advertiser conversations will have a major influence. There will be backlashes. Recently the same editors who lauded their reporter for the utility reporting stated it will build an investigative team and give it a special Web page to do the work. The folks down the hall will scoff at the few number of clicks it gets each year. But in that one week when its work is published and the social responsibility of journalism actually lives, people will scarf down their veggies ravenously. And then go back to the fast food offered in such huge quantities everywhere else.

Gender sickness

2009-06-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

Having wrestled with the flu for a few days, I couldn't help but notice something. Men and women just handle sickness differently.

This isn't some 1980s Seinfeld rant about how men whine. But there does seem to be a gap between how men and women process through sickness in the United States.

When the boys on my playground asked me to come out and I told them I was down, they unanimously responded with a "take care of yourself."

When the girls heard I was taken to the bed, they responded with questions about what drugs I was taking and what the doctor had said about my suffering.

Now I'm one of those who think there are some illnesses that we just go through. I'd prefer to save antibiotics for when my arm is rotting off rather than when my lungs rattle a little. I don't even really understand putting down the Tylenol for a minor fever. All it does it supress the symptom, and I think of the uncomfortable fever as how my defenses jump up. As for going to the doctor for a bit of a virus he or she can't do anything about, well, how long do you sit needlessly in the reception room?

So when I responded to the ladies I was just riding it out, the ladies tsk-tsked me. I was being a martyr. Or just foolish.

I suspect I could find a psychologist to tell me this has something to do with nurturing instincts or something. Probably even one who relates it back to sex.

Circumspect sentimentality

2009-06-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's good to know what people think of you. It helps you to understand how you come across. You can decide if you want to react to it. Or not. But even having a vision of other people's view is some form of self realization.

I'm fortunate to know there are some people who like me. They find me engaging, gregarious and adventurous.

I realize there are some people who do not like me. They find me blunt, even rude. They consider me overbearing and demanding.

Within both groups are people who believe I'm a bad boy, a rounder, a player. Whether they find that good or bad is in their own set of priorities.

The fact there is that division somehow pleases me. I suppose I think it makes me well rounded, real.

There are people in both groups who consider me a loner and moody. There are those I frustrate by their feeling I'm guarded, keeping a careful wall up to shield some parts.

I wouldn't argue with anyone who holds any of the aforementioned opinions. From my own internal viewpoint, I completely agree with them all. In fact, although I work to create a me I will like, there are times I do not.

There's also something else I've been thinking over for quite some time. There's something only a few people who have ever encountered me would place as a label. But it's a gigantic part. I am very sentimental.

It is reserved for those who have at some time shown me a little of their heart. To me, that's the ultimate trust. Even if they withdraw it at some time, I remember that glimpse and retain it in a special place.

For those who have ever given me a peek and those who still do display that trust, I've noticed a trend. My expression of that sentimentality makes them uncomfortable.

I used to believe that it was important for me to make such expressions, that others' discomfort was something which could be overcome and they come to accept my feeling. But it has simply never proven true. So, I've become circumspect.

This review comes on the heels of my finding a need for a minor expression of the sentimentality I carry for two women. I've been as close as you can to the two at one point, although the connection has frayed greatly. But I had cause to drop each a note, and within it I simply stated "I sometimes miss you."

One dismissed it as quickly as possible. The other, whom I believe has gone through quite a emotional growing spurt in the last year, accepted the feeling with grace.

I can easily play the character that is the image almost all see and upon which they make their opinions of me. It gives them comfort and a sense of consistency, fulfills expectations. Inside of that character the sentimentality can grow for people I encounter. But these days whether they know of it depends on how I see them look at me.

And my own simple bravery or cowardice.

Legacy

2009-06-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

I've known teenagers Jamie, Casey and Jordan all their lives. That's because I've known their Dad for more than 30 years.

I got to spend some time with them the last few days and was reminded how much I like them. They're feisty, quick-witted, sweet and real.

It also made me think of a girl I know who just left her teens who, for soon to be obvious reasons, I'll just call L. L is smart. L one of those girls who makes men gulp when they look at her. She's long and blond and big eyed.

She's also afraid, frozen in time and determined to meet a destiny she recognizes but refuses to acknowledge, one that will chew her up and leave her unfulfilled.

Why would I put the four together? Because I can see how each got where they are.

The first three may have come from a "broken family," but the parents kept them priorities. Even at the worst of times, they did the right thing for the children even if it was painful for the adults. Both parents broke the mold of their own parents, and therefore a potential cycle. They recognized what they didn't like about the way they were raised and made a conscious effort to not repeat the mistakes. But when it came to the positive lessons, both parents echoed those good efforts again and again.

L tells me her father raped her before she was in double digit years. He was then out of her life for almost all the remainder. Her mother seemed to just give up and L took it upon herself, most likely only by default, to keep things together for Mom and the two younger brothers. You might think that gave her maturity and a lesson in perseverance that applies to this day. She is older than her years. But it comes without their seeming to be a childhood. There is no innocence left in L. Having such responsibility meant she simply could not fail.

These days, when there's a chance she might disappoint someone, she simply doesn't try and distances herself from that person, eliminating the potential for having that disappointment. I see the reason for her struggles and her potential. But when I told her such, she took it as an expectation of success and rather than face it, she had to stop communicating with me. That way, she would never fail.

We are all constantly measuring the people we know. I've only found one fail safe review - look at the children they create. Nothing is more truthful, covers more time and has a greater impact on the world.

I believe in a philosophy of choices and consequences. We make choices, pay with the consequences and learn from them but don't regret them. I have a single exception. I regret not having a child.

Because I'm one of those people who wants to change the world. I can do my own part, campaign for others who can have a still wider impact. But the single greatest opportunity I had, I let slip by.

I hope I would have created a Jamie, Casey or Jordan. Maybe even prevented an L from having to face the next 60 years.

You know your balloon will burst

2009-06-03T14:47:00.001-07:00

With just a little bit of review, you can't help but be amazed at how entitled we seem to think we are. So much that we're more than willing to suspend common sense.

I find this particularly true economically. We seem to have insisted on believing that everything is wonderful and will always be wonderful. The reality is, sooner or later the bottom always had to drop out. We've been lucky for decades that the drop out was a singular industry with just a bit of blow back. The current Recession is really just when all our pretend came tumbling down as if the entire fairy tale book went up in flames at once.

In terms of personal experience, I guess I could go back to the early '80s and the savings and loan implosion. The falsity there was lending practices. To put it best, there's the story I watched personally. I was consulting for an entrepreneur/attorney who was also building an office tower. He needed some extra funds to finish the building and deal with some business ancillaries. We went over and visited the S&L with which he did business. He walked out with a $2 million check. He showed the note referencing the collateral as a motor home. It was worth less than $100,000.

I quit working with him and he continued down the road to the scenic area of Big Spring and the federal jail there. He just didn't seem to believe the gap between reality and his "opportunity" would ever end.

It was a similar situation in the tech boom a decade and a half later. Everyone crowed about innovation and entrepreneurship and opportunity. Seeing early companies which offered a service or product people could really use make some ridiculously rich, venture capitalist put together funds to invest in other companies and drive them to a point they could go public. Hoping to get in on the feast, regular people bought up the stocks. The original investors cashed in, the companies "paid off debt" and "invested in marketing."

But it had to go Humpty Dumpty on us for a simple reason - after the original surge, so many of these companies explored technologies or put together products no one wanted to buy. It was a Ponzi scheme of a great magnitude, except the books were much more open. There were seldom profits in the companies. But everyone wanted to get theirs before it all came tumbling down and just kept pouring it on.

So much of the current economic failure is blamed on the homebuilding and lending industries. But who couldn't see it coming with just some common sense? Maybe population is increasing, but not in the numbers homebuilders were churning out structures. It was misleading because there were buyers. But more importantly than the volume of homes being built was the size of the market which could actually pay up when the bills came due.

When that market was exhausted, in order to keep the ball rolling, loans were simply made to those who were destined to eventually find themselves unable to pay. Obviously seeing the pending Jericho, lenders packaged up such loans and sold them up the chain and up the chain. But it was inevitable and obvious. We just didn't want to see it. We were too busy getting ours.

Economics isn't really that difficult. You can throw around phrases like supply side and global marketplaces and obfuscate. But in the end, it's common sense. If you're not so wrapped up in your personal greed, you can easily see a bigger picture of success or failure.

It doesn't matter how much the pretty red balloon floats around. You keep inflating it, a pop is a certainty.

Who's surprised?

2009-06-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to pontificate too much on this, just get to business.

So we spend the first several weeks of every Texas legislative session patting each other on the back and passing resolutions honoring or recognizing this and that. Lobbyists buy dinners, legislators meet at the Brown Bar and Four Seasons Hotel for drinks and conversation with their very young and attractive interns who happen to be the daughter of a major contributor.

And then we helter skelter for a couple of weeks to actually take care of needed business. So why are we surprised that nothing gets accomplished on the state departments that our ability to move and the cost of our life and health insurance? That the clamor starts for a special session with all the attendant cost in tough economic times?

This gives new meaning to both words hope and despair.

Happy

2009-05-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

"I had lunch with and old friend last week," she told me. "And she asked me when was the last time I was happy. I had to think and decided it was two years ago."

I have to admit to being no less than stunned. I try to keep the temperature of my friends, from both near and afar. But I didn't really see this coming. Two years without happy just didn't seem like her. She always tried to present strong and self reliant. And to just admit to a dearth of happiness caught me off guard.

But it's something I ponder quite often. I have long kept my mind on a paraphrase that I think is Emerson. In essence, "most men lives of quiet desperation."

It was just not what I wanted. And nothing like what I'd hope for my friends. Even if I can't label myself happy, I'd like to see it in them.

I do watch closely. In the immediate vicinity, I watch eyes and actions. I see when they openly laugh. I see when their eyes glitter. We all have ups and downs, but when laughter and glitter are gone for too long, I wonder about their happiness.

I do it from afar. I read old girlfriends' blogs trying to get a handle on their lives. I quickly understand I'm much more confessional in what I write in public. But just sitting to put anything down says something to me about their strength, which I believe comes from happiness. I drop hints in emails. Some people like to keep a little emotional distance. They like email for that exact reason. But subject matter and phrase of expression can tell a lot even in those block letters.

I fail to keep too close tabs on my happiness on purpose. Maybe I don't want to know. Because it frustrates me. Maybe it's part of what makes me watch for everyone else's happiness. Because I fully understand, it's hard.

I've been financially secure and it didn't bring happiness. I've had success and didn't find it created happiness. I've been in love and found a modicum of happiness but not the type we seem to believe from fairy tales. I've been told I refuse happiness. I'm not that self aware to agree or disagree.

Now lack of happiness cannot be called unhappiness. I guess I call the in between the state of just being. Maybe that's Emerson's "quiet desperation." It's never where I've wanted to be. I've often told people who claim I inflict my challenges upon myself that I understand it's easier to ride the high middle rise in the road, but I'd rather bounce from bar ditch to bar ditch just because it's more fun to see what's everywhere.

My original friend told me the story to see if I could up with recommendations for happiness. I haven't stopped thinking about it in the weeks since. I just have no answers. Not for her or myself. I sometimes wonder if I'd be standing in the middle of happiness and never even know it. But I'd like to try. Just so I could tell someone else all about it.

Breaking it down

2009-05-18T19:16:00.000-07:00

As a writer, I'm a collector of fragments. Sometimes, I sit down and just spew. But other times I'll collect a few words or phrases that I like the way they go together. Or I'll throw down a few lines that try to capture an emotion I can't quite get my hands around at that time.

When I hit that spot where I emotionally crave to write, but can't quite get anything useful out, I'll sometimes visit my fragment graveyard and try to dig up old stuff. And it can be truly old stuff.

For instance, I was pushing through some old papers recently and came upon an aborted attempt that I recognized immediately. It was a girl who could never quite commit, who always tried to always keep me from investing too much in our time together and always seemed to have a guarding hand over her heart and an eye on the door. But I couldn't identify the feeling that was she and me those years ago when I threw down a few lines and saw them just peter out as I got lost.

I thought maybe I knew myself a little better now, maybe had a better perspective on everything. So I began to try. But just couldn't find it. With years of distance and hard lessons learned, still I couldn't get the feeling. I could get the situational description, but just no feeling that made it alive.

In the background, I heard two girls talking. They were in the early 20s and they were trying to understand why not only the boys they cared about acted the way they did, but why they themselves took the actions they did. They used examples, "he does this" and "I keep doing that." They knew both genders felt, but couldn't see it reflected correctly in the actions. I had to see the parallels in what both they and I were wrestling.

I thought maybe I'm looking from the wrong angle. And that was what I tried. Instead of remembering my experience and looking for my feeling, I turned the tables and looked at it from the female viewpoint. I found all the same actions fit exactly, but it was easier to put them in emotional context. I couldn't find the feeling in it until I tried to describe someone else's feeling instead of summon up my own.

Sometimes the fragments have to be broken just one more time before you see how they really fit together.

A cooling fire

2009-05-10T14:20:00.000-07:00

Three deaths in the Austin community were related this last week. Stephen Bruton, Bud Shrake and Poodie Locke all touched based on an 80s movie called "Songwriter," via writing, appearances and the presence of Willie Nelson in the film.

But their passing is a major reminder. Although their deaths are punches to the heart for those who knew them personally, they should also be a persistent tap on the shoulder for those of us who loved an Austin they represented on a much wider scale.

The three were key components to an Austin that was about art, be it music or letters. They were also about life that is like music, impressive and inspiring to be done hard, fast and full but with a realization of the critical component that is the easy, quiet spaces in between.

And although it may sound like old man nostalgia, I fear it's an Austin that is almost gone.

It's an Austin that's been fading. I picture it in the mid-1970s. I didn't even live here, but had to visit every three months or so from Dallas-Fort Worth for another baptism. It was a time of transition for all of Texas. Generations had grown up if not entirely rural, with a deep tap to the rural roots. But cities were exploding and those base values were proving more and more difficult to keep in sight.

It was then and here in Austin that an amalgamation which already had an excellent base took hold. It recognized the value of urban knowledge, but didn't disdain country. It wasn't just in music, although that was a key outlet. It was in literature that used Texas as a base to talk about the modern human condition. The two artistic communities intertwined, maybe too often over potions and powders that were bound to run down the consumers. But it was like shooting stars burning unbelievably bright to astound viewers.

Austin was a place where it was possible. The atmosphere was more tolerant for odd and misbehavior. Someone looking for their voice could simply afford it. There were affordable places to nurture and visit and take a chance.

I find it very hard to find anymore. Simple survival in Austin is much tougher. It seems the more we struggle to simply stay alive, the less ability and remaining will we have to live and express life.

At the same time old wood frame houses sheltered by 100-year-old oaks crumble under the weight of 40-story condominium towers, written words seem to become lighter and lighter. Finding a hearty affordable meal is washed away with wine and sushi bars and music becomes less about lyrics and more about rhythms only. Country life is considered owning a mini-ranch in Dripping Springs close enough to the new HEB to fetch a quart of milk at 9 p.m. Living the quick and dangerous life is subordinate to ensuring you're in line with the decibel limit and curfew.

There are other icons of Austin as an artistic place for whom timing is ticking away. And there's simply not that many I can identify who look to take their place when the torch is passed. I just hope the fuel isn't running out and that torch isn't extinguished.

Karmic balance

2009-05-07T12:37:00.001-07:00

My friends probably believe I use the word "karma" too much. But I can't avoid it. Not from habit, but evidence. I almost never fail to see some balance that eventually comes.

Statisticians would likely say if you look and wait long enough, you're bound to dig up correlations. But last night was the perfect example of how it just seems to balance out.

I went to catch up with a friend at a downtown establishment. It is the same spot where I last spent meaningful time with another long-time friend, someone who I in ways considered a mentor. It had been years since I'd been to the site, probably because that same friend wound up committing suicide.

Having arrived a few minutes early, I took the opportunity to make a call checking on a pregnant acquaintance. With minutes of my having made that call, she gave birth to a little girl.

Right there in those few minutes, I confronted sad death and had it salved with beautiful birth. It balances.

Living and dying are words

2009-05-04T17:39:00.001-07:00

An acquaintance recently noted a difference she sees between a writer and a content provider.

It's an interesting division to me. I've been tagged as a writer for more than 30 years. During most of that time, I could be labeled professional writer because someone was willing to write me a check for it.

During that same amount of time, I've taken tons of criticism for what I've done. Not just the constructive "I'd do it this way" type of review, but comments that suggest those writing the checks and myself have been fooling ourselves. My most cherished is "you write too conversationally."

See, I don't think I need to follow the very specific constraints of someone with an odd name like Strunk to consider myself a writer. To me, writing is expression. For pay, usually to express information, like in newspapers. Sometimes to just get something off my chest. And to me, the proper placement, or even use, of commas, colons and assorted punctuation shouldn't be what rule applies, but what gets the point across easiest.

I also believe there is something hardwired I don't understand. I was very surprised in my teen years to discover I had an ability to convey emotion with written words. I don't really know how that happens, but people have told me repeatedly they can feel the words or are moved to smile at them. Yes, I consider humor a major emotion.

But lately, I haven't found many words to express emotions. I know the emotions are there, but making that connection to the right word has been beyond difficult. I've kept putting out words as I believe writing is a muscle that atrophies if not used. But I know I've been a content provider.

I think it has a lot to do with how my life has gone lately. I'm not sure I've been living. Maybe subsisting is the proper description. Maybe even hiding. But living is not near the right word.

It's happened before for little periods. Sometimes I've felt in overload. Sometimes I've just slipped into fleeing, for unexpected periods almost not able to deal with people or myself. Sometimes life's flow takes its own little break.

But this is a combination of the worst of those and nothing at all to do with the latter. I've behaved jaded and cynical and distant from others and myself. It's frustrating. And the punishment is I've got nothing real to say about anything.

Most people would see this recognition and recommend stopping the disturbing action. But it isn't that easy. It's really a cause and affect without an ability to define which comes first. Obviously, not living creates a vacuum of subject. At the same time, not having that examination and expression makes me less interested in being part of the human experience. Living gives life to writing, not writing makes living feel like dying.

Pay attention to me

2009-05-03T20:12:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's only been about a week to 10 days. But I'm ready on this day to declare the swine flu panic (don't you love how the name changed when an interest group complained) was a media invention.

I'm not usually a black helicopter kind of person. I like to believe I'm even more informed than the average guy. But this wolfpack journalism where half of newspapers and newscasts were dedicated to a single issue seemed to lead government to come blazing with both barrels which led to the circle being completed with more coverage.

Theories on why: People were tiring of economic news and tuning out. A basic disease is easy for journalists to understand and reflect, certainly simpler than economics or world politics. The flu can be illustrated with cute children having check ups. Politicians can say "we're here for you" in such an issue.

But at the base of how much coverage was needed is simple math. As of this May 3, estimates are there are about 24 million people in Texas. And 43 cases of this flu. If that is the ratio that calls for such major news action, I'd bet on about 100 other diseases that should demand even greater review.

Gotta love the British

2009-05-02T10:31:00.001-07:00

Maybe it stems from centuries on that cold, dank island. Maybe it comes from a society that has so long had such huge gaps between haves and have nots. But I gotta love the British for simply being naturally quirky.

Quirky is a big thing with me. I cannot stand those who put it on as a pretense. There's a lot of that in current bands, their suit of "we're weird because we play instruments." The truth is, quirky comes from just who you are. It tends to not be a reflection of something of the past and the quirky usually can't identify themselves as such. They just are.

So when I find organic quirky, I revel in it. For example:

A good example was on the world page of the Dallas Morning News one recent day. It included two stories on British actions I found particularly indicative of the natural quirk.

The first was of a couple who had been visiting Windsor Castle. The queen's residence is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the nation. These two decided to celebrate their visit by having sex - on the castle's front lawn. The report was the two had "been drinking a lot of champagne" and not only weren't cognizant of the number of tourists in viewing vicinity, but in fact didn't realize "exactly where they were." In the name of full disclosure, the woman was an American, but it's likely she was heavily influence her British paramour. And in the quirky British way, the two were charged with "outraging public decency." This despite the fact several in view expressed their outrage by taping the act for future posterity.

The second was on the British poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. The story focused on the fact she is not only the first woman to hold the post, but tacks on the fact she is openly lesbian. But the quirk is in her remuneration. The poet laureate gets $8,500, which she donated to a poetry contest. But she also gets sherry from the Sherry Insitute of Spain. Only the British would understand reaching the muse might take a nip of sherry or two. Imagine the United States of Religious Rightists' reaction to boozing up an American writer on the tax dole.

I bet it would outrage the public decency. But then we American are pretentious in our quirky expression.

Badge of influence

2009-04-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

It's that wonderful time of year when it warms up and political flyers bloom in our mailboxes.

Although they're often full of half-truths, bluster and pointless accusations, they're also very telling. For example, who you should really fear.

It's the most common complaint in Austin politics, and the one most used by single-member district proponents - this city is run for and by those who live in Central Austin.

But you ought to have much more fear for those with badges. That's the real powerbroker.

It is almost impossible to get elected to city office in Austin without the police and fire political action committees. They are the most moneyed, organized and involved groups in this town. Look at how loudly the candidates who get those endorsements trumpet the prize.

The members of those PACs and their friends also have a very narrow agenda that has an impact on every citizen in town.

Under the label of public safety, police and fire budgets take up almost three-fourths of the budget. And it is in the best interest of the employees under those budget numbers - police and fire - to keep those numbers up and even growing.

You may say that it is incumbent upon us to maintain such status quo. I am all for maintaining safety, and those two organizations are the spot where it happens. But I'm also for all departments always being reviewed and reorganized to ensure money is spent to do the core duties and not too much involved in administration or layers of bureaurcy. And that's harder to so when the PACs' approval prove to be the most sought after in local politics.

Public safety gets into the field with the other sacred cow, education, much too often. In education, we say "it's for the kids" and people are automatically willing to authorize tens of millions. Public safety says "it's to keep you from getting robbed or your home burning" and we nod like cows watching cars go by.

You want proof? City Manager Mark Ott has told all city departments to cut 7 percent in their proposed 2010 budgets from what they have in 2009. Except public safety. They should cut 3.5 percent.

Don't think Ott made such a decision on his own. This council chased off the last city manager saying it wanted to work the budget details. Now, it does such a little quieter since we're in recession and the decisions are difficult, but you can be assured Ott was consulted by council members who dearly wanted police and fire on their side at election time.

It's not even a vote thing. Large percentages of the two departments live outside Austin. But they carry clout - dearly sought endorsements and money.

I believe members of the police and fire departments have as much right as anyone, resident or not, to speak out on Austin politics. I admire them for being involved. But no one should believe city elections are controlled by a few zip codes between Ben White Boulevard and Enfield. Those areas do cast votes more often, but those votes are greatly influenced, as are many, many city council decisions, by those in uniform who have a very special interest in all the tax dollars.

Buffoons, skanks and culture

2009-04-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

I have friends who brag they never watch television. But I've always felt, to be part of and understand our culture, you have to sample. Some you may watch, some you may visit to get a taste. But to know who we are as Americans, there's no broader vista than television.

It's kind of sad to view.

I'm not suggesting television is all-encompassing, although from Discovery to M-TV and all in between, you get a pretty extensive set of choices. I guess my discouragement arises from how pervasive the lower rungs of our society are displayed, particularly in what is called reality.

In a more specific question, how can they find this many buffoons and skanks and why are they so popular?

Subquestions that lead to the big query:

1. Why is Terry Bradshaw doing sports analysis? He pretty much plays country bumpkin and yucks a lot.

2. Could Ben Stiller, Seth Rogen, Jim Carrey or David Spade make you laugh by appealing to your head instead of contorting, stumbling, playing a ridiculously broad and shallow character or appealing only to people who feel antisocial because pot isn't a part of everyday life?

3. Who are these throngs of women who want to twist tongues with yesterday's used up rock musicians like Bret Michaels?

4. Who are these women dying to join any household wired with television cameras so they can flounce and sleep with any moving object?

5. Who are these guys who join those houses and get their testosterone so flowing they can only express themselves screaming in tempter tantrums and with flying fists?

6. It's a been a few years since I've been to California, but is it possible the 20-something residents are that shallow, self-centered and simply stupid?

I'd like to deny it's a generational thing. The Three Stooges, Three's Company and even Beavis and Butthead weren't exactly enlightening. It's just the proliferation that makes me question right now.

Is this America? Does that "reflection" give insights into declining high school testing and graduation rates? Did someone slip something in the water? Maybe high school is just our training ground for the next generation of television stars.

Still a ways to go

2009-04-21T13:22:00.001-07:00

In the middle of December, I wrote an unpublished piece about the sliding economy having an up side.

My thought was this is when the flotsam is cleared, the bad boats moving up on a rising tide began to sink and the best would rise to the top. It would be a time of innovation and increasing customer service as everyone battled to draw the dollar.

By April, anecdotal evidence has me thinking we've got a ways to go.

I'm still not convinced there are so many critical businesses that should be kept afloat by artificial means. At least not at this cost.

But I'm also unsure how many are getting that it's now become better or be dead.

Here's my example. In a somewhat innovative move, the local outlet for a national pizza chain I've patronized for decades dropped a note at my home. It said it wanted to be thankful for continued business and therefore offered a good discount on a pizza. "It's a straight deal for straight dealing folks," it claimed.

Things got crooked. I ordered to pick up the pizza with a cohort on the way. I was then informed the offer was only good for delivery. I questioned how that could be as the offer made not such stipulation. "It's a typo," the poor order taker responded. I questioned why that was my punishment. "That's the manager's policy," she said.

Ah, the customer is always right unless a manager has blundered.

I cancelled the order and filed a complaint with the corporate office. Nothing much has changed there either. I've traded three or four emails with always the promise "we're looking into it."

Now, in the interim I tried a different, more local brand and liked it. So my habit has now changed, frustration level continues to rise dealing with a corporate bureacracy and I'm questioning the business sense of what used to be a given.

In tough times, attitudes have to be reviewed and change. That is survival. That is common sense. You can't even let individual customers go as the margins are so slim those individuals add up to be here or not very quickly.

Little bites out of business soon turn into consumption entirely.

My town

2009-04-13T13:29:00.001-07:00

I have to applaud the Austin City Council for standing up for the city's sovereignty today.

It voted unanimously (when two are fighting one another for the mayor's seat, it says a lot when they take the same position) to fight proposed legislation by State Sen. Wentworth that would force single-member districts upon Austin.

Now I am against single-member districts as I find they create provincialism and are a detriment to getting anything done. But that's not the cause for my admiration.

This is an Austin decision, not a state question. Austin has held elections and declined such districts SIX times. After another census, it's likely Austin will look at it a seventh time. Sen. Wentworth needs to mind his own business.

Now, some of South Austin is in Wentworth's jurisdiction. He claims he received a request for his legislation from some of those constituents. But if you watch the ID next to Wentworth's name, it says San Antonio, not Austin.

(By the way senator, after years and years of simply sucking cheap water out of an aquifer, has San Antonio dealt with its water crisis yet? Wait, isn't that the site of the greatest drought in the nation right now? And it still doesn't have a proper reservoir because voters look at the cost and keep saying "no"? Maybe some state legislation is the answer.)

Every senator gets requests for special interest legislation. One way this is a representative democracy is those folks weed out non-viable requests that have nothing to do with a senator's job. I don't find Sen. Wentworth very representative, nor discerning, here.

We've got financial difficulties out the wahoo, an education system that isn't turning out productive citizens, infrastructure that is underfunded and crumbling and Sen. Wentworth thinks the senate should wander off into meddling in Austin's affairs.

What the city council did was not turn its back on single member districts. It told Wentworth to mind his own business. Just because he spends a few months here every two years doesn't make this his town. It's our town.

And as for those consitituents who made the request. Tell them to vote. And get their neighbors to vote. That's how you create change.

Into the lioness' den

2009-04-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

I'm a single, middle-aged guy. So I've long ago not only determined I'm unlikely to meet decent prospects in bars, I'm as unlikely to get much of a shot. Unless I alter the hunting grounds.

You don't hunt deer by hanging around your backyard and expecting a big buck wander by. You go into the woods where they feel safe and comfortable. And although I'll take the gun immediately out of the metaphor, it seems sane to do the same with women.

Now, at this point, I haven't really taken aim at anything. I've kind of been in an observational mode. And it's been fascinating and educational.

I've chosen two "habitats." Both are flush with women. Both attract limited men, in numbers not necessarily in ability.

One is a downtown Austin restaurant. I've dropped by a couple of times and eaten there once. I've seen dozens of females and only about three men in all that time. The only explanation at which I can arrive is the restaurant's base product is salad. Hearty salad, tasty salad, yet salad. And that seems discouraging to men.

In fact, I've noticed quizzical looks when I'm there as if I walked through a door without noticing the shadowed dress on the person on that door and hadn't yet noticed the lack of urinals in the room. But all there is to note here is the lack of smell of burning meat and absence of bread crusts on bowls on unbussed tables.

At the tables, women of all ages and types lean in for conversation in the exact opposite of how men lean back to talk to one another. They seem proud they've chosen a vegetable spot for lunch, albeit a bit put off one of the other side is catching them grazing. But they seem to instinctively know this is their world and a certain air of relaxation permeates the room. As long as I don't pollute it with seeking a ribeye on the side.

The second outpost I've visited is a wine spot. I wouldn't suggest that wine and men are anthema. But this spot in Southwest Austin seems a female hangout. So much so, and with an atmosphere that is so different than the restaurant, I feel an interloper. In general, the visitors here are in their late 30s to mid 50s. They've been through the gender wars with the skirmishes in bars. And they seem a little bitter. Whereas the restaurant denizens seem surprised at my male visitation, these seem a little defensive. Maybe pissed is the truer word.

But it's not like guys don't exude the same attitude in certain situations. Visit a sports establishment during a critical University of Texas game and watch men relegate any female tag along to imposed silence. Maybe more indicative, I've seen men in gentlemen's clubs reject the mere presence of half-naked beautiful women when the big screen has been dropped for a mixed martial arts pay per view event.

But this feeling is different. I suspect there was talk of a "girls' night" and my simple existence in the same place wasn't on the imagined agenda.

I visited twice. The first time I felt so uncomfortable, I pretty much sought invisibility. I compared it to accompanying my lesbian friend to ladies night at her favorite club. I was more than ostracized, put in my place. The second time at the wine spot, I tried a different gambit. I minded my p's and q's like a little child. No hint of reviewing the room, no whisper of flirt, minimal conversation - actually closer to only introduction - followed by an immediate "I'll let you ladies get back to your evening." Recognize their ownership and get the hell away.

The result - I felt tolerated. Not appreciated, certainly not accepted. I am still one of them.

It was educational to visit these hideaways of female domination. I quickly learned my place. I recognized that experience has, probably deservedly, created some wariness for the male attitude and action. And I know these are also not spots I'm likely to meet someone for future interaction of any kind.

These are lands with No Hunting clearly posted.

Write away

2009-03-29T12:33:00.001-07:00

I've been writing what I internally call slice of life essays or columns for more than 30 years now. Some have been for publication, some just for my own need for expression. Because I've done it for so long, and probably because a few have received competitive recognition, I'm sometimes asked to provide input on creating similar pieces. And out of many mistakes and few successes, I've come to some conclusions.

* Be courageous. It's too easy to avoid putting yourself out there when you have complete content control. But such work doesn't fulfill anyone. You simply can't fear what other people will think and censor yourself to fit that mold. The result is boring. You have to expose your emotions, your sometimes controversial opinions and your weaknesses. Anything else and you're writing to a wall. The real, honest hope is you're creating a dialogue, even if the other voice is never heard. But if you express something and someone else has a reaction - even just in their head - you've achieved creation. It's not just about grammar rules and clarity, it's about truth.

* But be couth. The first point isn't to simply puke your brains and heart. It's a fine line. A really good writer once told me I'd gone too far, to the point any reader was uncomfortable. "Don't let them see you go to the bathroom," was the way she put it. As long as boundaries are chosen because of respect instead of fear, you'll probably hit the mark.

* You've got to be real. If you don't feel it, don't bother. It's amazing how obvious it is to any reader when something's forced. I've had monthly and weekly deadlines for such product. But I've honestly put together several when I felt it, and ran to the mental pantry when a deadline came and I was empty. I can fake it. You can tell it.

* Don't be so serious. Life is a challenge. It's also pretty damned funny. And if you think it's difficult to express a controversial opinion or heartfelt emotion, try to relate a comical experience in pure written words without inflection or facial expressions to relay it. It is the greatest stretch of the writing muscle you can imagine.

*Never stop. As suggested just prior, I believe writing is a muscle. It atrophies without use. And it strengthens and surprises with use. There are dry spells, but you sometimes just have to sit down and doddle around during them. But always keep your mind open for reasons to write.

*Enjoy the experience. When it works, I find there's almost no comparable feeling to having created a good written piece. Although it may be similar, there are no two times it's exactly the same. Releasing a feeling, letting go a strong opinion or simply telling the tale well can leave you with the emotion after good time with a strong friend or a true lover.

Love lives on

2009-03-25T18:07:00.000-07:00

I was just kind of wandering around reading and came across an old girlfriend's tossed-off reference to her current beau.

And I felt that pang.

I'm generally respectful of feelings, but I sort of have to call this one stupid. It's not as if I want to ever have anything meaningful to do with this girl again. Heck, she's cold enough to try and pretend our time together didn't exist, much less have specifics. And with time letting the chemicals of early encounter lose their potency, I can clearly see the huge negatives of she and I.

So I can't call the feeling jealousy. I suppose the pang comes because I envy someone else possibly experiencing that love when I have it only in the past. Or maybe believing somewhere inside that person isn't providing safe harbor for that little bit we had together. I don't mind being left behind, but can't bear being forgotten and made inconsequential.

It's not about living in the past. It has something to do with memories and nostalgia, but not an urge to return to something gone by.

It's a totally irrational pang, but then my love tends to be irrational too. One such person told me early on she'd only break my heart. Of course, I had to go full throttle into it to provide that opportunity. She lived up to it, and I had no authority to be disappointed in her.

But although nameless, I know the pang well. And although I may find it stupid, I still respect it.

It's a pang I actually feel bounce around in any kind of encounter with someone for whom I used to have feelings. Even if the person knows nothing of the encounter, like someone else tells me something about them or I read about them or I even stumble upon their web site.

I hope it has almost all to do with being genuine the first time. See, it only happens with people I actually loved. I may have hated them in many ways, but somewhere in there I loved them too. And I've come to realize that's a dangerous place for me. Because once I love, it never stops. I retain that love for as long as I live, even if it becomes swirled with anger and disgust and shame. Those ugly colors may be in there, but there's a glowing nugget of whatever led to love in the first place.

But my love is what it is. It's never quite the same twice, but it has longevity that I suspect will match mine. I don't regret the pang, although I also don't enjoy it. I just acknowledge it. Maybe it's an unconscious reminder of what love is when I'm not directly in it, and a tap on the shoulder of how I can damage it.

The pang is the lesson that keeps on teaching.

One domino

2009-03-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

Let's make an imaginary household budget, in these difficult times. The keeper o' the bills has some money in the bank, but knows there's this bill sitting in the in-box waiting for payment. It's a really big bill. But that bill payer knows there there has to be some cash kept in hand to simply keep the household surviving. So that payer doesn't try to improve his family's situation, he or she simply does the basic necessity and keeps a wary eye on that pending bill. It's a fiscal stalemate.

That's kind of how I've viewed the American economy for several months. Especially post the banking industry "bailout" that was first executed at the end of last year.

Billions of dollars went into the system and everyone screamed "but where?" They sure weren't seeing it available for car, home or small business loans, cornerstones of our economy. It was kneejerk to cry that it was simply doled out to more executives, although the millions that might have gone in that direction were a drop in the bucket compared to the billions supplied.

I felt the truth was, the banks were sitting on a good portion of that money looking into their own ledger books at billions of dollars in real estate loans that were far more than the value of the real estate which was collateral.

It goes beyond tax or bailout or federal loans or whatever you want to call the dollars. Top government officials and economists have said the true sign of recovery is when PRIVATE money starts flowing around. Yes, there are still billionares and, much more importantly, many multimillionares out there. But you haven't seen them making business moves.

I think it's because capitalism still exists. Those moneyed - albeit less moneyed - people are waiting for opportunity. And best opportunity may reside in those real estate loans. They've seen it before.

Here's the scenario: The federal government joins with the banks to put up funds less than the loan totals to dump those upside down loans into one bucket. The banks take a loss, the government absorbs a debt, but they get off the banks' books. They then look for buyers for those properties at a discounted price. Private consortiums have already been formed to make such purchases, they just haven't had the store open yet. The private buyers make those lands available to other buyers - developers and homebuilders - at prices that make sense with the current value of those properties. The first buyers can do such as they bought at a discounted rate. With those dirty loans off their books, banks feel safer making base loans - small business, cars and homes. Commerce begins, from the federal money flowing through more solid banks to CREDIT-WORTHY small businesses and consumers who actually make payments, but more importantly from the private enterprise of those waiting private investors and their customers. Yes, we take a hit at the federal government level from those discounts, but this is the true trickle down economics, setting the table properly so movement can begin and create a much grander scale.

Some call those waiting for the distressed properties vultures. I'd call them the restart to our economy, the next generation of entrepreneurs. More simplier, I'd call them the first domino to fall in getting a waterfall of positive action.

Failure to communicate

2009-03-17T09:45:00.000-07:00

I think of myself as a communicator. It's what I've done as a profession for quite some time. But it's also how I've thought of myself as a person. More and more, I realize if that's true at all, it's done impersonally.

This may be true for anyone who likes to write. I have put almost too-intimate moments into print. I've put even more revealing comments down on paper. But in a growing amount, I realize that I require that buffer of time and place to be truly honest. I do not do it looking into anyone's eyes.

I have an urge to blame it on the times. It feels like there's a growing amount of carefulness, almost personal distrust, in human relations and therefore communication. It seems easy to blame it on technology, how it's easier to write an email than phone someone, how it seems so much safer to blog than talk.

I have another urge to blame it on me. It has taken a conscious effort to be open with others, to gamble on that potential rejection. It's an effort I most often put on the backburner. I also gravitate toward people who might not be able to handle, may not deserve, that personal investment that is communicating truth. I choose who might be available to listen to me with a methodology that ensures they won't be worthy of emotionally honesty. My escape, excuse, is there's no one there.

A friend of mine who lives far away has been communicating with me about suppressing emotions. We both often refuse to acknowledge our own emotions and shuffle them to the back of our consciousness until they can no longer stay bottled up and raw undefined emotion comes roaring out in a irrational torrent. (By the way, staying in our safe zones, we've discussed that in succinct emails).

I created this blog with an original premise of I had things I not just wanted to say, but had to say. As time has progressed, I've found it more and more difficult to stand up and speak. It's like this anonymous blog has become too close and I'm afraid to speak with it honestly.

I think I'll continue to use this arena to focus and organize my thoughts and feelings. But I think I need to also look into the eyes of people around me and try and read if they can talk. Because this method is effective but inhuman. It's not really communicating. It's not talking with, it's talking at.

It's too safe.

Truth on the brink

2009-03-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

Over the last week, I've had the opportunity to spend time with a variety of journalists. Some are working journalists, some formers and some departing. In addition, there's been quite a bit of analysis of the journalism profession printed recently.

All together, it's left me both encouraged and discouraged. And even if your not a journalist yourself, it has a direct effect on you.

On the positive side are the journalists themselves. Most are young, in their 20s. This is almost a given anymore as the industry has viewed cost-cutting as eliminating anyone with much tenure and therefore a higher salary. Plus, it's a demanding business, putting a physical and emotional strain on people much more than most industries.

It's listening to those people that engenders hope. Journalists have always been odd characters. They quite often know that's what they'll be at a very young age. They are quickly reminded they'll never make much of a wage and they'll endure those previously noted challenges. And it doesn't deter them. Sometimes they'll say it's all they know how to do. I think that is their talent, hardwired into them somehow at a preschool age. But there's another common theme that seems to drive them all forward and sustain them. They say they want to change the world.

Despite some stereotyping, politically based screaming, they don't want to make it more liberal. The media isn't really liberal, it's cynical. Its members spend a lot of time with a much closer view of government and crime and life than the typical person. They see day-to-day city government move, they view with their own eyes gunshot and burned people and they see and listen to the suffering of people more than the common person.

What they consistently say is they want to make it fair. They want to watchdog government and be the conduit to tell the masses what government is really doing to allow the general public to speak up with facts and not spin. They want to follow business not just as a conduit for information, but an analysis of what that means in a bigger picture. They see business not just as a money-making enterprise, but a key factor in our society. They want to report on things because they have an impact on you and I, and believe we have a right to know and speak back. They want to do right.

And that leads to my discouragement - and I believe the place where media is today.

Because for all the good intentions, journalists really don't have a choice. The top level of media will tell you it's about the readers. It's not. It's about the money. And fear of losing the money keeps journalists from being the best they can be, probably keeps them from even being good.

There is no such thing as objective reporting. It's performed by humans and they bring some level of themselves into every move. Being conscious of that truth helps them "do right" and avoid any bias, but it's there. Objectivity is even removed by what is covered and what is not. It's a purely subjective decision. It can be based on community knowledge and feedback, history and an understanding of a bigger picture of how individual events affect a bigger societal situation.

But I can't say that's why things are chosen for coverage or how they are covered. For some time now, those choices are greatly influenced by who advertises and puts their money into the business of journalism. It is transmitted into newsrooms by publication leaders who use their own agendas and have their ears filled with too many advertisers and too few ground level readers. To get a community consensus of need, it takes a village, not an executive committee. And when egos close ears to voices "down" the ladder and only open them to equal and up, it narrows the truth.

Those publication leaders will shout loudly that it's a business and that income is required to publish any news and pay all levels. But it's all about how decisions are made and the courage to believe truth has value to the many. Realtors may not like to hear that sales are down double-digit percentages, but if your publication has enough value and veracity and focuses on the things that really matter to the most people, those Realtors would still buy into your publication even if you admitted those double-digit numbers. And publications try not to go there many times. They don't lie, they just avoid the subject.

I still have enough faith in the general public to believe it sees that quick step and it is a key reason for the fading heartbeat of journalism.

The leading local publication has recently been criticized for its "wussification," fear to offend anyone with its writings. One-time subscribers are fleeing papers across the United States because as the content gets softer, simpler, less immediate and generally less analytical. Marketers will tell you surveys show readers say those are good attributes. If newspapers followed reader surveys, they would be dominated with comics and photos of topless women and dogs. Of course people say they like those things. People also say they like ice cream. But they need meat and potatoes to fuel themselves too.

There is a need for mass appeal papers in this world. There is a need - and a desire - for independent, non-advertiser influenced, gutsy reporting too. I think there's a generation who wants to provide such reporting, and they have peers who want to read it. But there's a generation with a grip on journalism which is in lock step with Countrywide Mortgage, AIG, and a big portion of Wall Street that has manipulated the system to grab quick profits without any view of a bigger picture.

It's a struggle that means a great deal to our society.

It never happened

2009-03-08T18:15:00.000-07:00

I'm always amazed at people who hide from their past.

I'm not a proponent of living in the past. It's too easy to wallow around in the things that have happened before. You're reviewing things that you can't change and the result is you miss what's happening right now.

I can understand someone who puts a heinous crime behind them, for example. But what I don't really understand is those who take prior relationships they've had, or periods of their lives they now in retrospect wish had gone differently, and pretend they didn't exist.

My best friend questions why I try to maintain some type of communication with women with whom I've had relationships. His theory is that it's over and he moves on. I hope I too move on, but each of those people taught me a lesson and contributed to my view of relationships now. If I'm to be cognizant of a theory of relationships, I have to be aware of those lessons and histories. Most importantly, I have to recognize that even if there was poison in the water with those women, they had something in which I found value. I'd like to continue to enjoy that value in a more superficial and less personal way.

One such woman is a prime example. Despite a difficult division between us, she's kind enough now to participate in some level of communication. And she's strong enough to have boundaries, and express them. But one of her unexpressed boundaries seems to be ignoring that we ever had a period of intimacy or that she had a period of life around Austin. If it's brought up, she simply doesn't acknowledge it.

My observation is she regularly reinvents herself. Maybe she's searching for truth. But it seems to me embracing her history, mistakes and successes, gives her vision into who she is and helps her define what she wants to be.

For me, I have to realize that I'm a culmination. My most horrendous mistakes are not regretted. My losses aren't ignored. Because I have to see value in myself now, and that means I have to appreciate that all the negatives contributed to the current product.

I guess there is a thought that without a past, you can create something right now that might be good and fulfilling. But I can't see a person built in an instant with a wish upon a star. You have to toil and get muddy. Sometimes the construction will crumble and you'll take steps back. But when I look out from whatever vantage point I have now, I like to have a vision of the road traveled.

Don't let him see you

2009-03-06T13:34:00.000-08:00

One of the cool things about a career in journalism is access. You quite often find yourself standing next to people almost everyone else only sees on television. That includes musicians. Usually newspapers only want some sort of review on a concert or maybe a report on the event some entertainers can create. A lot more goes on that you only catch with an all-access pass. These are some of my favorites to repeat. And repeat.

I was assigned to cover a stadium concert with Chicago and The Beach Boys. But my deadline was somewhere likely in the middle of the first set. It was kind of a small paper, so they asked me to "fake it." Without definition.
As I wondered around backstage pre-show, I noticed they'd taped Chicago's play list at different stage positions. So, I stole one. I could at least note favorites played, even if I didn't get to hear them.
But I needed as much from The Beach Boys. They had a dressing trailer behind the stage. So when they all stepped out to see the stage set up, I sneaked in.
And laid out along the tables inside was the longest trail of colorful pills and gleaming powders I'd ever encountered in my life. I decided getting caught could suggest pilfering more than a piece of paper, and split.

Another stadium concert, this time with Willie Nelson. Backstage was relaxed and gentle before the show. And as The Family as Willie calls them walked onstage, a jacket on one waved open and revealed half the biggest revolver I'd ever seen stuffed in the pants of one of the musicians. How he played and didn't think about something going off, I'd never guess.

A somewhat overly sentimental musician named Richard Marx (now a major producer, by the way) came to a smaller stadium, a high school football field. It was the kind of music 14-year-old girls and 50-year-old Moms can sway too. The band came out to do a sound check and crawled through a hit. And then broke into a Led Zepplin tune that was simply on fire. "Shit yeah," Marx said and went back to a trailer to blow dry his hair. The Zepplin tune didn't get into the show.

Michael Martin Murphy was perfecting a cowboy ballads show. I was the only person at the Florida paper who knew who he was, having already made my Austin affinity well known.
I'd had my wisdom teeth removed, but still soldiered on - with a head full of Vicodin for the pain. Murphy has a reputation for sometimes being prickly, but I was bulletproof. About all I remember was arguing with him about the merits of his latest Top 40 stuff versus the Cosmic Cowboy stuff I enjoyed. He endured me.

Arlo Guthrie holds an annual benefit concert in Florida for the Indian River that runs along the coast inside the barrier islands. This show was Arlo, Michael McDonald who'd just left the Doobie Brothers and solo act Don Henley after The Eagles.
Backstage was like a hippie fest, flowing dresses and lots of food and drink and some smoke floating around. But mostly it was comfortable. Arlo and McDonald standing around with anyone and everyone telling jokes.
Then, suddenly, it all changed. Everyone was sectioned off, plywood was put up from the back of the area to the stage creating a corridor. A limo pulled up. Seems Henley didn't want to be gazed upon as he mounted his throne.

Applied Materials used to hold concerts for employees and friends in the tech heyday. Once was the Go-Gos, for example. But another was Stevie Wonder.
I ran late and for some reason they locked the doors. I kept circling the Erwin Center until I found an open loading area and then just kept walking forward. About halfway there, someone finally stopped me and I identified myself as lost press. He shook his head and said to follow.
We stopped once to review the coast as clear and I realized the room he'd stashed me in was the back up band. They filtered out and my guide retrieved me. We moved into semi-darkness and I realized we were backstage Erwin.
We came upon a group of people and the guide stopped me with a strong grip on my arm and gave me a shush sign. "Let's pray," someone said. It was the band doing a pre-show prayer. The guy next to me began the prayer and the voice suddenly struck me - it was Stevie Wonder. They broke and moved on stage and we to the wings. "That was close," my guide said. "If Stevie had seen you, he'd have been pissed." I just looked at him and let him think it through.

Slow death of a simple pleasure

2009-03-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

There was a bit of time when my life was so structured and I was somewhat isolated, so much so that my access to daily newspapers was very limited. It was then I realized how I had turned something once so basic in people's life into a comfort. And now I confront that comfort is slowly dying. Likely even committing suicide.

I'm not much of a morning person. My best transition into functionality is actually the processing of basic information, like that in a daily newspaper. Before anything else, I like to head back into a bed with the room now illuminated with morning light. Usually a cup of coffee before anything to eat. It is ritualistic, a review of the front page, followed by sports, then local, then national, completed by the comics. In about 30 minutes, the fog is shaken from my mind and I 'm in a relaxed state ready to face a day.

This doesn't come from a social journalism user either. I realized I'd be involved in newspapers when I was in the seventh grade, which would be about four decades ago. I've received paychecks from six different newspapers over time. Still, instead of seeing it completely as a business, it has remained a pleasure. A fading pleasure

Quickly, some reader is thinking, "ah, another Luddite (another generation's showing off instead of using old fogey) who just won't accept the world online."

It's not the same thing. An opened spread sheet takes you places a computer screen doesn't. Graphics catch you, headlines slip into your subconscious and give you some sense of subjects you'd otherwise miss and fact boxes may sneak information into your mind. Online forces you to click again and again to garner page views for sales purposes, while an open newspaper is like a gentle wave of information reaching you.

But I can tell I'll soon have no choice. In fact, I'm a good way there now. My hometown daily newspaper is simply mediocre. It always seems behind the times on developing issues and its breaking news is superficial. In totality, it only fills about 10 minutes to be done. I've long tried to augment my newspaper addiction with another from a major Texas city. But as the economy slips and business especially becomes more critical than social obligation, that paper too has cut back its efforts. Both papers have also greatly increased their cost, percentage-wise.

It's become a simple equation of cost versus return. Will I be foolish enough to pay more for less, even when the less is mediocre, in order to deal again with a semi-fulfilling experience?

I hope all those years of reading have helped me be more informed than that.

Rhythm and baseball

2009-02-28T17:55:00.000-08:00

As baseball begins its spring stretching, television channels begin breaking out movies like The Natural. It's a movie I've seen a dozen times, yet always find myself sucked in again. Although it's one of the most beautiful movies ever filmed, it's not the usual film ingredients that make me stick. It's the accurate depiction of some of the sport's more subtle rhythms.

Now, I know something about baseball. Lord knows it's not from playing experience. In honesty, I pretty much suck at the game. Still, it's part of me.

When I was a very little kid, my father was a minor leaguer. When I was a high schooler into college, I worked at a major league baseball stadium. Actually it was two jobs, one during the day and another during games. Together, it all left me with just out of toddler to just into adulthood memories that are so deep they sometimes only come when triggered accidentally, like an old song's lyrics which come to you out of the recesses although you haven't heard it in decades. Baseball's rhythms.

I think it's my ability to have those rhythms come on that separates me from my friends who have lost their affection for the game. They've gotten too accustomed to the speed of life now and can't let their heartbeats slow to baseball anymore.

But I still can catch the tap of cleats on concrete walkways as players go to and from dugouts strewn with paper cups. I still know the glove pop and bat crack not of the game itself, but of the special crispness of batting practice when the stadium is empty and the players full of just playing. I can hear post-game locker room chatter that is men behaving like boys. There's the pre-game preparation around the stadium, concession stands being loaded with ice from chugging carts where fans will soon mill. And there's the special sound of paper cups that once held beer and soft drinks clunking together as they're swept up in a cluttered, empty stadium after a game.

All together, they are much more than a multimillion dollar sport with too many drugs to get better or test invincibility, much subtler than egomania, much less regimented than the three hours or so from the national anthem to the eight and a half to nine innings. They are a tune that hasn't altered that much for decades and decades and has a direct tie to dirt fields and paper plates as bases.

It's the real rhythm of baseball. The tune that still has beauty.

Austin delayed

2009-02-26T11:47:00.000-08:00

Austin city business seems to be in a wait-and-see mode lately. Be it solar energy or large land development or planning for future development, there's a lot of "let's talk about it later.

It's not just that leaders are waiting to see the income for conducting business. In fact, there could be many reasons for the rush to wait. The truth is in the cynical or trusting eye of the beholder.

Among the possibilities:

* After the last election having so much transparency and community involvement talk, the city council is giving more time to garner such and spread the word on possible actions.
* With another election coming up, including one for the mayor's spot, leaders are trying to let the next generation of council members be part of major moves and not have lame ducks be a driving force.
* With another election coming up, including one for the mayor's spot, candidates currently serving are avoiding potentially controversial decisions that could be fresh wounds for some voters and the deciding factor the election.

From this viewpoint, I'm not real pleased with any of those. From the bottom up, you're elected to serve, so serve. I voted for some of those currently on the council and expected them to fulfill their representative duties for the entire duration of their terms. And though there have been some rushed to judgement council decisions in the past, if community leaders want to be involved, they too have a duty to stay informed and to multitask, juggling several controversial issues at the same time. Slowing down bureaucracy so trailing complainers can stay on board doesn't get business done.

Yes, it's a tough stance. But governing is a tough job.

Facts

2009-02-23T13:25:00.000-08:00

"And the stock market fell 500 points today due to the White House's actions."

I've never understood why the public is so gullible about the media, especially in business matters. The first question should be that if media members were so informed as to make such statements - and that is a statement, not reporting - wouldn't they likely be doing something else that makes a lot more money than journalism? And that's about everything.

There's no way to really know why the stock market moved. Yes, the highest profile thing that happened today may have been out of the White House. And China may have made a financial move. Or the bloggers may have rumored oil had run out. Or the computer-based investors may have just been cranky hung over and decided to dump stocks in volume. But to point to a single action driving the decisions of tens of thousands is simply ludicrous unless it is as big as airplanes crashing into the main financial buildings of our nation.

We are willing to be naive about so much "reporting." The size of a problem in China is said to be the worst in the world because the numbers are the highest. But isn't that probably influenced by the fact there is greater opportunity for those numbers because there are billions of Chinese? Or we so often hear how little people in some countries make per day. But we're trying to compare that to the United States. A reasonable meal here may be $5, but in that nation, it might be 50 cents. So, if they make a tenth of what an American makes, it's really even, not despicable.

The media is like a child. It needs boundaries. It will give you what you ask of it. You want front page Brangelina and octuplets and indicate you don't care how much money is pissed away in Iraq, the media will try and give it to you to draw numbers and make money. And if you're willing to swallow statements that lack logic if examined at all, the media is more than willing to take the easy way.

"The United States collapsed today because its residents were too naive to care."

Don't believe that one either.

Who do you know?

2009-02-22T10:43:00.001-08:00

Or maybe the question is who knows you?

I'm not talking about simple familiarity or recognition. I'm using a deeper "know."

Through a variety reasons, some of which I understand and some of which I don't, I know hundreds and hundreds of people in the superficial sense. And am known by those types of numbers in the same sense. You know, recognize you in public places, maybe are able to place your name from some encounter in the past.

Yet I've come to realize very recently that I am pretty much unknown in the deeper version. I've been in this life for more than half a century now and there are maybe three people at tops who might know me. And I'm likely stretching that.

An example. I recently went to a birthday party for a one-year-old. Yeah, I'm much too old for the clowns-and-cake-smeared-on-the-face crowd. But I simply love children and their company. I've always felt if children and dogs loved you, you were all right and to hell with the rest. The rest, though, expressed almost unanimous amazement that I clung so tightly to such young ones. They seemed to believe I had no interest, patience or gentility to be that way.

I'm well aware a big portion of this is self inflicted. To say I've been guarded with my revelations is an understatement. I've been downright distrustful. But it hasn't been much of a challenge to be that way because I've almost never met anyone who probed, questioned or showed much of a curiosity.

Back to the three or so who might exist. They lack a pattern. Gender doesn't matter. Time around one another isn't a factor, one possibility I see about once a year, another once every decade. It's not long revealing talks that create knowledge either. There maybe a foundation there, but in general I think we just "get it" when it comes to one another.

Nor is it a trade. There are many more people I think I know, I understand and have vision of where they are and why. But I stay at about three.

Maybe I sometimes expect too much of human interaction. Maybe I've created impossible standards for uncommon connection. Maybe I'll just never know.

Mind control

2009-02-19T15:26:00.000-08:00

I am brainwashed.

And I don't even realize it. Although that may be a critical part of being brainwashed. But in my earliest childhood, I was programmed with a constant barrage that has apparently never left me, although I've worked mighty hard at eliminating a lot of brain cells.

But from my earliest moments until the public school system began pounding something different into me, I've discovered country music was pumped into me like a drug that could be called back up at the strike of three chords.

I guess you could call them flashbacks. It happens again and again. I'll hear a Hank Williams Sr. song and wonder how in the hell I already know it. Or Buck Owens. A slew of compadres who would be true honky tonkers, back when those where dark places with deep red stains on the sidewalk from the knife fight du jour.

In retrospect, I can sort of see how it happened. A critical part was location. I sort of really grew up with my grandparents in the Texas Panhandle in the late 50s and early 60s. Although their little town's music was dominated by the high school band, it was only about 10 miles to the rough and rugged Pampa. There still stand lines of honky tonks. Only recently, I learned it was once home to, and exerted its influence upon, Woody Guthrie.

One of the major pre-six memories is of the big wooden stereo and turntable dominated by Eddy Arnold records. And for a nod toward an alternative lifestyle, I strongly remember Roger Miller's greatest hits. Songs about skating in buffalo herds and seasoned with what I only now know could be described as jazz scat and popping noises. But I most remember two things - how soothing Arnold's voice was and the sadness in the odd song on Miller's album, a tune about friends burying one of their own after a suicide. I learned country was yippee-ki-yay and hard truth all in the same package.

The other overwhelming influence was the road. No one flew back then although the distances between Texas towns were almost overwhelming. In those straight, dark gaps of highway there was usually only one radio signal to keep you sane or awake. And it was always country music. In the blazing afternoon begging to make it between Odessa and El Paso and in the pure nothingness of 3 a.m. while I slept and others drove between Wichita Falls and Amarillo. In my subconscious, country music was making a home.

I don't know what deep corners all that settled. I can't consciously access it. It only comes about when some radio station plays an "oldie" or a musician does a remake to honor an influence. But I already know the words and can predict the coming lines. Except I hear them crack through a huge wooden cabinet.

Greed and responsibility

2009-02-18T17:06:00.000-08:00

Way, way back in the '80s, the phrase "greed is good" popped out of the movie Wall Street and was supposed to help us learn a good lesson.

What it seems we learned was that we agree.

This isn't going to be another diatribe about greedy CEOs salaries. I actually believe if a CEO is working to turn around a difficult company or makes one legitmately very successful, tens of millions of dollars isn't out of line. I'm more considering the bigger picture that got us in this more-than-difficult situation.

It was greed. And lack of responsibility.

Let's start with the lending industry. The first domino to fall in the current fiscal flameout was subprime mortgages, according to most. And it's the longest list of greedy, irresponsible people I can consider. See, the fault was, no one was responsible. The idea was to churn volume and the related dollars. Once you burned through the potential borrowers who had the wherewithal for the loans, then the pool became the less than deserving. But there was no reason for anyone in the chain of lending to hesitate, because they all just kept taking their share, selling off the loans and risk and forgetting the entire transaction. "I got mine," was all that mattered. It was a Ponzi scam of the largest proportions. Who couldn't have seen, as in all such scams, sooner or later the chain runs out?

I don't blame the big banks for all this process. I blame loan officers and processors and underwriters as a group who in their need to get their share and continue "business" just kept the scam going. They'd like to point their fingers at regulators who allowed them to do the work that way, but isn't that the old lack of personal responsibility?

And as long as I'm firing broadsides, let's take the automotive industry. Yes, it got staid and made bigger and bigger cars without really putting much effort to moving us toward conservation and new fuels. But I as much blame the unions who staff those manufacturers. When the corporate world greatly abused people, unions were a necessity. But do we believe that a high school graduate who crawled through school with an eye on the local plant deserves the types of salaries and benefits that the unions shoved down manufacturers' throats? By the way, don't ever look at hourly rates alone and think it seems reasonable. It is a necessity to factor in the cost of generous insurance, pension plans and extensive paid holidays to get the full picture of an employee's cost to a company.

A liveable wage is appropriate. But it should be related to your value to the process and your company, not the volume of people behind you threatening the company. That's playing to the lowest common denominator.

The 1970s got labeled the Me Generation, but it never seemed to stop. Baby boomers have a long history of acting individually entitled. And now the greed animal has grown strong on our lack of responsibility and is turning around in attack.

Why am I here?

2009-02-17T11:32:00.000-08:00

Ever had a friend who had an opinion about everything? Well, that's me. At least I know it.

Over the years, I've fortunately been able to expel those opinions before I burst. Yes, sometimes in barroom debates, but also in a variety of published articles. Now with print seemingly only a few years away from children asking "what was print, Daddy?" I've had to seek an new outlet.

I've been around Austin for almost 20 years now, which makes me a mid-range old timer. I've been nosy about business and politics and the whys and wheres for most of that time. And too often I've used the usual venues of information gathering and been left with one more unanswered question or train of thought. So I'll come here to ask, and maybe answer, those questions. At the least I'll pose another train of thought.

Sometimes I'll do it angrily. I hope it will come across fairly often as I'm doing it with some humor. Sometimes it might seem fairly personal. Maybe it will create additional thoughts and questions.

But at least I won't explode from holding it in.