A Pilgrim’s Digression

I found this funny article at Slate that extols the virtues of the lazy parent, How to be an idle parent.  At first I thought it was a joke, but now I’m not so sure, and the author has even convinced me that maybe he’s right and parents shouldn’t feel guilty for sleeping late while their little ones have the run of the place.  Here’s a sample quote that I find both hilarious and true:

Children actually have an inbuilt self-protective sense that we destroy by over-cosseting. They become independent not so much by careful training but in part simply as a result of parental laziness. Last Sunday morning, Victoria and I lay in bed till half past 10 with hangovers. What a result! And the more often you do this, the better, because the children’s resourcefulness will improve, resulting in less nagging, less of that awful “Mum-eeeeeeeh” noise they make. They can play and they will play.  So lying in bed for as long as possible is not the act of an irresponsible parent. It is precisely the opposite: It is good to look after yourself, and it is good to teach the children to fend for themselves.

I say, absolutely right!  Let the kids fend for themselves for breakfast.  Let them learn to pour milk over cereal, and maybe while at it, they can make a pot of coffee for Mom and Dad.  Furthermore, the dog needs to go for a walk in the morning–by all means, the child knows where the leash is just as well as Dad.

I am so happy to find a general guide to parenting that, for once, I wholeheartedly endorse.  I only wish I’d found it sooner, when it would have made a difference.  My son is eight and mostly independent, in the mornings, so sleeping late is no longer much of an issue.  If only I’d discovered this philosophy of idleness when he was three, I could have been enjoying these long mornings in bed five years ago.

My reading lately has taken me into some odd places. I’ve been steadfastly working through Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March, despite the distinct feeling I will remember very little about it once I’ve finished it.

It’s a novel from another era, when a writer could pass off yet another bloated tale of a young man’s coming of age as a contender for the GAM (Great American Novel). Yet I still enjoy such novels, if only because I, too, am a young man coming of age. Ahem. Yes, seriously.

But my interest has really been piqued by this old book I discovered in the library, after hearing it mentioned by N., a friend.

The Mask of Sanity, by Hervey Cleckley. N. read the book as part of an introductory psychology course in the sixties, and she has referred often enough to it in conversation that I thought it worth checking out.

I don’t believe there is a more recent edition than 1976, and that edition was a fifth edition, the original having been published around 1940. It should here be noted that Cleckley is also the co-author of The Three Faces of Eve.

What makes The Mask of Sanity interesting is that Cleckley starts from the premise that people who pass as “sane” in our society, but who nonetheless demonstrate non-adaptive and anti-social behavior, are perhaps more interesting than the lunatic. Modern psychiatry knows what to do with a lunatic–permanent hospitalization is in order–but for the sociopath who is otherwise what we would call “high-functioning,” what is to be done?

As always with books on human psychology, the best parts are the case histories. Clekley’s presentation is as interesting for its candor about the subjects’ sexual history as it is humorous–a true rarity among psychologists. Take the following example. Writing of a millionaire who had spent his money irrationally, Cleckley writes:

For months he had maintained 138 bird dogs scattered over the countryside, forty-two horses, and fourteen women, to none of whom he resorted for the several types of pleasure in which such dependents sometimes play a part.

I don’t think Cleckley could have anticipated that far from being considered irrational or a sign of mental defect, in our era, pointless squandering of wealth in conspicuous consumption is actually celebrated.

Take another example of, perhaps in this case, unintentional humor. Describing the aberrant sexual history of a female patient, Cleckley writes:

Occasionally during her early thirties, but also a few times since, Anna had engaged in a pastime know as gangbanging…Usually drinks with five or six men , whom she might pick up in one of the less inviting honky-tonks or frolic spots about town, constituted the first phase. Later the group rode out into the country and all her companions had sexual relations with her, each taking his turn.

“Frolic spot?” The phrase leaves me wondering what he meant. I imagine playful youths celebrating the pleasures of Bacchus in a willow grove. And it was quite gentlemanly of the men to at least take turns, I think.

Anyway, again humor arises from the juxtaposing of low and high–the term “gangbanging” with a more or less clinical description of the act. As a dangerous compulsion (Anna was beaten up and thrown in a river during one of these gangbangs), her behavior is worthy of clinical analysis, but I’m not sure that even today Anna would find any help from a therapist unless she herself asked.

In 1940, it would have been Anna’s parents or husband who sought help for her, usually in the form of involuntary commitment.

Perhaps far more interesting from the modern perspective is that such case histories remove the rose colored glasses with which we often view the past. If asked, most people would probably say the term, if not the concept, of a gangbang, originated in the nineteen-sixties rather than the nineteen-thirties.

I’m of the opinion that whatever depravity we practice today was probably not unknown to our ancestors.

The Mask of Sanity is a fascinating book, and worth a read, if you can find a copy. The essential problem–what can be done to help the neurotic who cannot be committed, but has difficulty functioning within the bounds of society–remains relevant to our time.

I got a phone call yesterday afternoon from my landlady’s daughter, N., telling me that her mother was in the hospital, dying. The call reminded me of my grandma’s death last year, for a number of reasons. Of course there was age, though my grandma was about twenty years younger than A. who was 95.

But then there is also the fact that when N. called, A. wasn’t dead yet (she died later in the day), just dying, and that was my grandma’s condition when I got the phone call about her last Fall. My grandmother actually died while I was on the phone with my stepmother; my stepmother was going back to the hospital room to put the cellphone to grandma’s ear so I could say goodbye to her, but she died before that could happen.

In A.’s case, like my grandma, she was in an induced coma as well. I didn’t ask to say goodbye; it seemed inappropriate.

N. said she had a bad fall early Friday morning as the result of what the doctor called a “catastrophic event,” but she’d managed to drag herself into the bathroom where she pressed her med-alert button and called the ambulance. The first N. knew anything had happened was when the paramedics pounded on the door.

A “catastrophic event” just about describes death perfectly, doesn’t it? Whether we die slowly of cancer, or suddenly of a heart attack, it is catastrophic. The body just suddenly fails.

It seems like these deaths are happening so frequently now, I hardly know what to say anymore. This morning, lying in bed in the gray morning light, I found myself thinking about who might be next. It seems like my grandpa will be around for awhile yet–he’s only 77–but his older brother Jim seems more elderly every time I see him. My Dad’s a smoker, and middle-aged, so he’s racing down heart attack alley without a seatbelt.

Depressing stuff. We should be able to stop time at about age 30, when our parents and grandparents are still reasonably healthy, our children small and lovable, our own lives full and rich.

To live to be 95 seems almost a cruel joke, when you consider what life is like at 95. A. was so frail she often felt like a skeleton with skin stretched over it, when I’d hug her goodbye on Wednesday nights, prior to going up to bed. Her teeth were bad and she could never get false teeth that fit properly. She was vain about her looks, having been quite beautiful in youth, and would never let her picture be taken in old age. There was an oil painting of her in her twenties in the nineteen thirties that hung in an upstairs hall, and indeed she was a blond beauty at one time. The painting did not exaggerate either; her wedding photo that sat on the mantle confirmed the artist’s impression.

She took a battery of pills every day that sometimes seemed to sap her energy and upset her stomach. Her husband, all her friends, and most of her family were dead. She came from a large family of brothers and sisters, and though they all lived to be very old, she outlived every one of them. In the end, she had her three children, one grandchild, three great-grandchildren, and a niece with whom she remained close.

She had me, I guess, too. Although she never let me off the hook for rent (it was a pittance really), she always said she thought of me as family. I lived in her home for over six years, from January 2003 to the present.

When I first moved in, she was 89 and could still go up and down the stairs with some care, so she slept upstairs in her old bedroom. I’d eat dinner with her in what she called “the stone den” because the walls were made of the same stone as the outside of the house; it was like a small sunroom with windows all around. We’d eat dinner, talk, and watch the evening news, and these became our habits throughout the years I lived there.

In a short time, her kids started to worry about her going up and down the stairs, so they moved a small bed into the stone den, and that was where she spent the last years of her life. However, I am pretty sure she defied her kids and went upstairs during the day, because I’d find subtle little things different about my room when I’d come home in the evenings.

N. once told me that when she was a girl, her mother gave her no privacy whatsoever, snooping in her room, her purse, etc. I suspect A.’s visits to my room were to rifle my things for contraband, or perhaps just to snoop, as well; but I never particularly cared. Aside from my clothes and toiletries, laptop and books, there wasn’t much else to find amongst my things.

After she moved into the stone den, I continued to sit with her in the evenings, and we watched the news and talked. Because I once told her that I went to school in Morgantown, West Virginia, she told me at least a dozen times a year the story of Max Morgan, a 2nd lieutenant in the Navy who had boarded with her and her husband during World War II. Max was from Morgantown, and A.’s story always ended with the same question, “Do you think his family founded Morgantown?” To which I’d have to say, “I don’t know.”

Just to keep a record of it, the story went that Max liked to play Pinochle with A. and her husband, and after the war he went into the oil business in Oklahoma and became a millionaire. Apparently Max was also an alcoholic because one time, A. added a detail to the story suggesting he had to be taken out of the home by ambulance for detox.

She loved the Civil War and would read book after book on the subject. Later she became fascinated with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and we’d talk about that for hours. I read some books on the assassination as well, so I’d know where she was coming from. She was convinced Mary Surratt was innocent. I have my doubts about that.

When she was healthy, she had her daughter take her for a drive along Booth’s escape route into Northern Virginia, ending at the spot of the former Garrett farm where he was shot. It’s just an empty field down a dirt road now, with a plaque along the highway marking the spot. But she made the trip and often talked about it. She also made frequent trips to Surratt’s tavern where the assassination was planned; it remains a tourist site and museum.

Gettysburg was another trip she made with her daughter once or twice a year. In fact last week, N. tried to keep A.’s spirits up by promising her a trip to Gettysburg this weekend, if she’d eat a little something and get her strength back.

When I saw her last, on Wednesday night, she seemed almost like her old self. She was sitting up in bed, talking and watching the news, complaining about “that Obama” and looking forward to the visit of her youngest son, who was coming up from Florida. She did get to see him a little, since he arrived late Wednesday night. I don’t know how he felt, since she died so soon after his arrival, but he was likely relieved that at least he got to see her.

I’m glad my last memory of her is a good one, as well. I hugged her goodnight and told her I’d see her next week. She seemed cheerful, and she said “I’ll see you next week” without hesitation. I went upstairs thinking to myself, “Well, she’s pulled through again.”

She always surprised me with her resilience, but I guess this time there was no springing back. The fight was over. Now she’s amongst so many loved ones who went before her, and probably feeling better than she ever did in life.

There is a contradiction at the heart of American conservatism that I’ve always found fascinating to contemplate.  Even in the days when I considered myself a conservative, I could not help but notice that among the most right-wing of conservatives, there is an almost treasonous dislike of the U.S. government and its representatives, with the exception of the people holding the guns: the military and those involved in law enforcement.  Myself, I’ve never been able to divorce the government from those charged with enforcing its will upon people.

Although I have high regard for individuals who serve in the military or the police, in short, I don’t trust either of  those entities as an indiscriminate unit.  This is especially true for the police.  I’ve always thought the British have a much healthier attitude towards their law enforcement.  Over there, the cops are called “the filth,” as in “the filth took away my license.”  That’s a much more powerful term than even the antiquated Americanism, “pig,” but it conveys (I think) a healthier sense of what the police are capable of.  A policeman can be as filthy as the next person.

I know there has to be someone in a society who holds the gun to our heads, otherwise society as a whole falls into anarchy; however, I don’t like that fact.  I can live my life just fine without either the government or its enforcers, as long as other people leave me be.  Of course we don’t live in that perfect world.  Anyway, all this is leading to a point I want to make.

I love reading news stories about bad cops.  There is something uplifting in a story about the disgrace of someone charged with keeping others in check, to the point that he can even kill us, if he feels it is necessary.

We have a small local newspaper here in town, seperate from the “official” paper that reports on all the light and happy topics in the community.  It’s called The Advocate, and it has a reputation for reporting the stories that the official paper won’t touch.

Our county sherrif’s 18 year-old son and a friend used his Dad’s police band radio to call in a false report of a crime, resulting in officers from all over the county as well as state police being scrambled.  The boy received barely more than a reprimand from the judge.  The Advocate reported on this travesty.   Somehow I think if an ordinary citizen had broken into the Sherrif’s car and used his radio for such a purpose, the punishment would have been pretty severe.

In another story, a deputy lost control of his car on his way to a report of a crime and crashed into a citizen’s house.  The resident was in the shower at the time, and she was injured and transported to the hospital.  The Advocate reported that when the homeowner tried to sue, the judge threw out the case because the county has “absolute immunity” from such lawsuits.  Not only that, but the county’s insurance provider doesn’t have to pay.  I guess this is why we take out homeowner’s insurance–just in case some cop crashes into our house while on duty.

My wife actually had a run-in with the cop in the above story, in a  restaurant here in town, which makes me completely unsympathetic to him.  I wouldn’t feel bad if he lost his job, at the very least because he damaged his patrol car.  Does that make me unpatriotic or unsupportive of “the police” as an entity?  Yeah, it probably does.  However, on the other hand, there are local cops I’ve met and liked; one of them even goes to our church with his family.

In another case I read about in The Advocate just today, a cop on the local drug task force has been suspended because his confidential informant claims to have had an affair with him.  He gave her money to buy meth so that he could arrest her buyer, but apparently something went wrong with the buy and her cover was blown.  When she was arrested on previous charges that were going to be dropped, if she cooperated, she claimed to have had an affair with the officer and that he fathered her child.  The paternity test exonerated the cop, but he failed a lie detector.

I don’t know why I like stories such as this so much.  I think it validates my perception that cops are just human and not to be trusted any more than anyone else.  I feel much the same about military personnel.  I appreciate that someone has to do that job, and it’s not easy.  However, I think it’s absolutely imperative not to be blind to the possibility that those in authority over us can do great harm–whether that person is a President, a congressman, a policeman, or a soldier.

I’d also like to add a bit of a plea here for papers like The Advocate.  It’s a monthly, so I’m sure its circulation is low, but it does a powerful job of exposing those in power in our community.  I’m sure those on the receiving end of its stories call it a “rag” and say that it spreads rumors and gossip, convicting innocent people in the process.  I guess that makes me a gossip-monger, because I truly love it.

This has to be one of the greatest opening lyrics in the history of pop music:

(Sweet, lilty woman’s voice) Whatcha gonna do when you get outta jail?
I’m gonna have some fun!
What do you consider fun?
Fun, natural fun!

I’m…in…heaven
With my boyfriend, my laughing boyfriend
There’s no beginning and there is no end
Time isn’t present in this dimension.

So, let’s see who knows their eighties music. One hint: it’s not the Talking Heads, but two members of TH were members of the group that sings this song.

James Broooowwwwn, James Browwwwnn

Despite all the news about pirates, stimulus package fraud, and torture, the stories that have caught my attention recently have all been of a more local and personal nature. I’m appalled and probably a little fascinated, in a morbid way, with the recent spate of parents and spouses murdering their families and then committing suicide.

The one that is garnering the most press in the Washington area is this story about a man who murdered his wife and four children, then killed himself.

In notes left in family’s killings, Md. man details debts, depression

The title tries to explain everything in a few words, the way newspapers always do, so that the reader immediately grasps what happened. Depressed and anxious over mounting debt, a loving husband and father murders his family and then kills himself.

There you go, a one sentence explanation. Move along, now. Nothing more to see here. Except that sometimes it’s hard to accept the preferred meaning of an event.

Read more…

Recently at my job, a new pilot project has started up, and my supervisor recommended I apply for a part-time position on the project.  It’s not a promotion, just an opportunity to work on a different project.  I’d still be under my current supervisor as well as the supervisor of the pilot, but I’d have something new and different to add to my resume.

He told me to write a short memo detailing my credentials and work experience, and he would pass it along to the chief selecting people for the project, along with his endorsement.

I wrote my memo yesterday and sent it to him, and he cc’ed me on the email to the chief, in which he recommended me.

The problem is, in his recommendation, he indicated that I have a Masters in Library Science.  I don’t have an MLS.  I have a Masters in English and am state board certified as a k-12 Librarian.  I have plenty of training and experience in Library science, but I don’t have the MLS.

This is a common misunderstanding here at work.  People assume my Masters degree is in Library Science.  It’s natural to assume my Masters is in Library Science, I suppose, and I always correct the mistake in conversation.  However, this is the first time the mistake has been made official in some way.

To be clear, in my own memo citing my qualifications, I didn’t even mention my education.  It didn’t seem relevant.  This is an in-house position, so I cited my work experience over the past six years.

What should I do?  Should I bring the mistake to my supervisor’s attention?  Should I let it go?  It’s probably insignificant in the long run, and I will correct it, if it comes up in an interview-type situation.  I guess I’m just a little nervous.  People can get in trouble for inflating their resumes, although that is not what happened here, exactly.

I am probably not going to say anything, but I just wonder what other people think of this quandary.  What would you do?

Fair warning, this is going to be a discursive blog post.

My landlady is probably close to death at this point. I say “probably” because, even though she’s 95, she has had close calls before and somehow pulled out of it. I don’t think she’s pulling out of this one. Her doctor says there is nothing to treat her for, she’s just very old and her lungs and heart are slowly shutting down.

Ordinarily the death of a landlord or landlady would hardly be worth mentioning–and might be cause for celebration by some. But I’ve lived with this woman several days a week for over six years now, since January 2003. I’ve lived in her home, ate dinner with her two nights a week, kept her company in the evenings while we watched the evening news, listened to her paranoid fears about Democrats, illegal immigrants, and minorities in general, and also listened to her stories about her childhood in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

By now I know her stories probably as well as she does, but even when I know she’s about to launch into the same story I’ve heard dozens of times, I let her tell it. Her stories are important to her. When she dies, I will probably have to tell a few of her stories here, just so I don’t forget them.

Read more…

Easter wasn’t a special holiday in my family, growing up.  My parents weren’t religious, and in fact were in some ways anti-religious.  They wouldn’t allow me to go to church with my best friend from elementary school, although his parents invited me several times. So Easter had no religious significance to me, and I didn’t know anything about the significance it held for others, either.

So my only remaining Easter memory is of the one time I got a present for Easter, rather than just candy.  The year must have been 1981 or ‘82, because I woke up early on Easter morning to discover a Pac Man Atari cartridge in my Easter basket.  I couldn’t believe it.  I had no idea the Easter bunny even brought presents.  It was probably a bad precedent my parents set that day, but then again, I don’t remember getting another present for that holiday, although my Mom and Grandma continued making me an Easter basket of candy all the way into college.

I immediately went to the TV (one of those big, wooden consoles that sat on the floor) and flipped the A/V switch on the back and sat down to play some Pac Man.  It was the best video game I’d ever played, although he Atari version was somewhat less visually exciting than the Arcade.  I never understood why the Arcade machine could have better graphics, if “graphics” is the right word to describe the electronic equivalent of a child’s drawing of stick figures.

Looking back, it’s hard to see what was so enjoyable about those mind-numbingly repetitive video games.  You couldn’t save your game, so you had to sit there, and sit there, and sit there, running around that maze, the only variation being that the ghosts sped up as you progressed to a new maze, and occasionally a piece of fruit would appear that you could gobble up for extra points.

If I remember, there was even a Pac Man Saturday morning cartoon for awhile, and a pop song, “Pac Man Fever.”  Strange.

Even when the original Nintendo Entertainment System came out, it offered similar game play.  No memory, so you had start over once you’d spent all your “lives.”  In a way, though, it made beating Bowser at the end of Super Mario even more significant.  If you could sit there for that long, playing until a blister developed on your thumbs, and most important NOT DYING (either in game or in real life), then you were a true gaming pro.

There was a brief time, after I discovered computer games, when I actually thought that Doom and Castle Wolfenstein were too easy because they allowed you to save your progress.  That quickly passed, though.  I still have my old NES, and it still works.  Every once in a great while, I play some Mike Tyson’s Punchout (still the best game ever), but I don’t think I could go back to playing Atari, even if I still had it.  At the very least, the electronic beeping and bopping of Super Breakout, not to mention the “jet noise” in River Raid and “tank noise” in Combat, would drive me insane.  I don’t think my thumbs could take it either, though.

The first time I heard that line from the Beatles song, Helter Skelter, “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!”  I didn’t think of a guitar player’s blisters. I felt the pain of having played too much Atari or Nintendo, but still trying to keep playing through the pain of a raw, open sore on my thumb or hand.  Because I couldn’t just stop, busted blister or not.  I’d come too far to quit.  After I lose my last life, then I’ll quit.

And now for something completely different…

I read with great interest a story in the New York Times today about a mystery from the Civil War, Whose Father Was He? by Errol Morris. It’s a five part story, and so far only parts one through three have been published.

The “he” in question is Amos Humiston, a Union soldier from New York state who died at Gettysburg and could not be identified from his body or personal effects. He was an unknown soldier for a few months, but through the efforts of a doctor, he was finally identified due to a photograph he held clutched in his hand at the time of death. The doctor publicized the photo and succeeded in discovering Humiston’s wife and three children.

Part three ends rather ominously with the foreshadowing that the story will take a “wicked” turn, so I am looking forward to reading the next two installments.

What fascinates me about stories such as this is how, through chance, later generations might learn of the life of an ordinary person living over a hundred years ago. Unless we possess some claim to fame, whether through notoriety or genius, not many of us linger on this world after death, in the form of artifacts, stories, and documentary evidence.

I’ve always thought it a great injustice that those who take lives in the most horrific manner—the Manson family, for example—will live forever in books, documentaries, and websites, while their victims are accorded almost footnote status. And as for the rest of us, we aren’t even graced with being a footnote in history.

But here was an ordinary man, Amos Humiston, who died an ordinary death in battle at Gettysburg, and who due to chance “survives” in a sense to this day. Someone has even written a book about him [Mark Dunkelman, Gettysburg’s Unknown Soldier: The Life, Death, and Celebrity of Amos Humiston (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999].

I say “due to chance” because luck really does play a part in the story. If he hadn’t been holding that photograph of his children…if it had been destroyed…if it hadn’t come into the hands of a tavern owner…if Dr. Bourns hadn’t passed through and stopped at the tavern…if he had never seen the picture, or if his interest hadn’t been piqued…if…if…if…

I went through something like this recently when my great-grandmother died and I was left a stack of letters from one of her nephews, a World War II veteran. He was pretty much a forgotten family member, since he died so young, in a car accident shortly after the war. But because my great-grandmother saved his letters, as well as other artifacts, such as the Bible he carried, his dog tags, and the news article describing the circumstances surrounding his death, I was able to know quite a bit about this person.

I transcribed his letters, organized the originals and placed them between sheets of acid free paper, then filed them chronologically in acid free folders, and then donated the to the Veteran’s History Project at the Library of Congress. I did my best to, in short, build a kind of memorial to this family member I’d never even heard of.

Preserving/archiving the letters of an unimportant person, in an unimportant family, might seem like a waste of time–even by a family member. But I often think ordinary people have the most fascinating stories to tell, though they don’t realize it. Nor do they have the means to tell it, even if they recognize it’s importance. For example, I’ve come to the conclusion I will never write my story. I just don’t possess the talent.

Yet every life does have a story. Most remain untold, or are lost, forgotten. One of the main reasons I used to think I wanted to be a writer, a story teller, is this desire within me not to forget, the desire to conserve or preserve through the written word.

Thus it’s pleasing to me to discover the story of Amos Humiston, and judging by the comments on the article, other people are fascinated as well.