Hot Fun In the Summertime

When I was young we didn’t have sun screen or sun block. We had sun tan lotion, but that was meant only to minimize burns and help develop tans. It almost never worked to do either. The SPF was probably somewhere in the low single digits. We also didn’t have computers or computer games or video games or social media. For that matter we didn’t even have TV. There were only three TV stations and all they broadcasted during the days were soap operas. So I spent a great deal of my youth, especially through the summers, outdoors: playing baseball, playing golf, swimming, fishing in farm ponds with no shade. And I burned easily and often, my skin pale, my eyes blue. And I’m paying for it now.

For the past 20+ years I’ve been seeing a dermatologist regularly for actinic keratosis, small precancerous skin lesions that need to be burned off with liquid nitrogen before they grow into full-blown cancer. About 10 years ago, my doctor discovered a basal cell carcinoma, the most common non-melanoma cancer, on my upper arm and had to cut it out, cauterize it, and stitch it up. Today, he had to do the same for a squamous cell carcinoma, the second most common skin cancer, that had grown from an undetected actinic keratosis on my cheek. It’s minor surgery, done in-office, and the only pain is the needle injecting the local anesthesia (though the sizzle and smell of my burning flesh during the cauterizing of the wound is a tad disconcerting).

I’m one of those old farts who drive around during the summer feeling nostalgic and sad to see parks and playgrounds devoid of kids out playing baseball, soccer, basketball, kickball – anything. I’m pleased when I see pictures of my young grandkids out in the park on swings and slides or at the zoo or at the pool. But I also know now – as I hope they do – that there are dangers in that wonderful, warming sun, dangers that take years and decades to appear, and then more years and decades to play out.

Extra Credit

We’re coming up on the last two weeks of class and as usual several students have emailed to ask me if there is extra credit they can do to improve their grade. Sometimes it’s just a matter of someone sitting on the cusp, a 70% or 80%, wanting to secure the higher grade. Occasionally it’s someone in the 60s% hoping to do whatever to get into the 80s%, a delusion that probably helps explain their being in the 60s% in the first place. Despite years of these requests, the same questions always follow:

1. Why do they wait until the end of the semester? If they wanted to make a better grade than they’re making, and they’ve been making that lower grade most of the semester (which is always the case), why aren’t they concerned earlier when there might be more that they can do to improve their performance (not just their grade)?

2. Do they not read the syllabus? If there would be extra credit, it would be in the syllabus.

3. How many other instructors offer extra credit? Because I receive these requests every semester, I suspect there are a number who do, though I don’t have any idea how many or what kind of assignments it might be. In my classes (literature), extra credit would require additional reading and writing. And that would in turn require additional work (reading and responding) on my part. Unpaid additional work, I might add.

Most of my students are in the first two years of college, and they probably aren’t as versed in the ways of higher education as they might be. I suspect many of them see learning as a quantitative venture, not qualitative, that the more you do the better. So I see these requests for extra credit as teaching moments. I suggest that in the future, if they’re concerned about their grade in any class, that they contact the instructor early on to see what they might do to improve it. As for my class, I recommend they spend whatever extra time and effort they might spend on extra credit on the remaining assignments (read the readings more than once, get help in the reading or writing center), and the effect should be the same.

The XXX Olympics

I was browsing the TV listings today and saw that there were a number of programs covering the “XXX Olympics.” Woh, I thought, NBC is really scraping the bottom for ratings. Are all participants going to be naked? Women’s beach volleyball has been virtually naked for years. That’s the only reason it’s popular. And male swimmers have been wearing swimsuits that would be covered by the bellies of most normal males. But is this XXX Olympics going further? Personally I have no desire to see naked weight lifting (as Jerry Seinfeld said, “Squatting naked is not good naked,” especially squatting fat guys), gymnastics (only a very few young women can carry off naked splits), and certainly not wrestling (although there’s always seemed a homo-erotic quality to the sport). Other sports – archery, boxing, fencing – might add an uncomfortable threat of injury if they go nude. No, I just might have to sit out this Olympiad. In two years, the winter Olympics will be on, but it will be only number XXII. And I can’t imagine athletes even attempting naked alpine skiing, ice hockey, ski jumping, or curling. Well, maybe curling.

The Undiscovered Country

I was reading an essay where the writer was reflecting on the best way of leading a religious – particularly Christian – life in order to ensure eternal grace in the afterlife when the following sentence stopped me: “We will all find out when the trumpet sounds.” Will we? Will whatever consciousness we have after we die allow us to hear the trumpet? Will that consciousness possess any memory of the various disagreements about salvation among the religions (and non-religions) through the ages here on Earth? What happens if the trumpet turns out to be an oboe?

This has always been a problem for us atheists. Believers, at the end of any discussion of the undiscovered country, can fall back on the convenient bromide, “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see who’s right.” This is a classic example of “begging the question” – a statement that assumes its own assertion (there’s a conscious life after death) to prove its assertion (that there’s a conscious life after death). But the atheist argument is that none of us will be around in any sentient way to see who’s right. In a void, no one can hear you gloat.

I understand well the desire for a life hereafter where all is good and forever and we’re reunited with our friends and families (hope there are a lot of rooms, especially bathrooms). Human nature – animal nature – evolution – all favor survival, and the extension to survival here on Earth is survival beyond. Why go on, why live a productive and caring life if there’s no point (read “reward”) at the end? Well, maybe the point is as simple as just surviving the life we have briefly here and do good to ensure that human life continues on here, and enjoy it while we have it, and make that imagined “afterlife” the life we’re living now.

What would a void – no space, time, consciousness – be like after we die? I suspect it would be very much like the void we all came from before we were born. Remember? Of course not. That’s the nature of existential voids. You’ll learn to live with it.

Pickle Memory

A cousin of mine, Christine, died of cancer when she was seven years old. I was eleven or twelve at the time and of course didn’t understand much of what was going on. The last memory I have of her was in her room in her parents’ house. She was propped up in a hospital bed. The only thing I recall from that last visit was her asking me if I’d like a pickle (she had a jar of pickles by her bed). I declined. I’m sure there was other discussion during that final visit, but her offer of a pickle is the only thing I remember. She was dead within a week. Memory is an odd, random thing. Why don’t I have any memories of Chrissy other than the offer of a pickle? It seems so trivial, so mundane. Was there nothing more said or done during her seven years that shouldn’t remain of her for me than that simple gesture? But maybe it’s just the simple gesture – the offering of a pickle from a dying young girl to a still unaware young boy – that seeps into the mind and creates a memory. Maybe it’s enough.

I guess there's just a meanness in this world

Whenever there’s a horrific mass murder or serial killings, as there regularly has been through history, hands are wrung and experts are called in to speculate wildly about what could possibly have motived the killer to commit the unimaginable depravity. At least since 1982, I’ve had the answer to that question in the final verse of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Nebraska,” based on the killing spree by Charles Starkweather, who murdered 11 people in Nebraska and Wyoming in 1958:

They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world

That aside, why do we continue to offer access to weapons to this meanness that it can kill dozens at a time? The bumper-sticker slogan “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People” is too easily countered by “People With Guns Kill A Whole Lot More People.” There’s no reason why anyone needs an an assault rifle at all, let alone one with clips that can hold 100 bullets, any more than they need a machine gun, hand grenade, bazooka, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile, or atomic weapon (all currently illegal). And there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be computerized background checks anywhere where guns or ammunition are sold to anyone (including the internet). And there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a waiting period when certain kinds of guns and quantity of guns are sold. We may not be able to do much about the meanness in this world. But we could do something about arming it.

The Best Tamale I've Ever Had

The best tamale I’ve ever had was on the island of Caye Caulker, Belize, bought for $1US from a young man on a bicycle who had loaded the basket on his handlebars with tamales his wife had made that morning, a bone-in, skin-on chicken thigh, wrapped in masa, wrapped again in a banana leaf, and then steamed. I stopped at a convenience store on my way back to my hotel for a bottle of Belikin beer, and then sat on the balcony, looking out at the Caribbean, and savoring the greasy, delicious tamale with my fingers. I say without doubt it was “the best tamale I’ve ever had,” but I can’t say it was because the tamale. There are certain places and moments when you can’t separate the experience of food from the experience of place or moment. Would that same tamale have been “the best I’ve ever had” if I had it in my kitchen at home with a PBR while watching TV? Probably not. The experience of buying it spontaneously from the basket on the handlebars of a bike on a sand street on a Caribbean island, eating it with my fingers while drinking a local beer, the wind blowing in from the sea – all of this went into the eating of the meal. And all of it is in the memory.

Mortgage

I guess I imagined that the paying off of our mortgage would be something like the closing of our mortgage: Both of us meeting with a loan officer around a table in an office at the bank, signing a dozen or so documents, writing a check, shaking hands all around. But as it turned out, the paying off of our mortgage wasn’t much more than any other simple transaction: I was able to do it on my own, calling the bank that currently held the mortgage (the fourth) to get the various numbers and addresses needed to wire the final payment, going to our bank and giving those various numbers and addresses to a teller, who entered them into a computer and sent them off and then gave me a photocopy of the one page “Foreign Outgoing Transfer Request.” I had to sign one document. And the whole transaction took maybe 10 minutes – 5 minutes on the phone to get the necessary information from the mortgage bank, and another 5 minutes to wire the final payment from our bank (not counting the 5 minutes it took for me to drive to the bank). It was a bit anti-climactic. At dinner I told my wife that I’d paid off our mortgage, and she asked if we shouldn’t be having champagne or something to celebrate. I said I didn’t think champagne was something occasioned by a 10-minute “Foreign Outgoing Transfer Request.” I suppose we could have some sort of ceremony where we burn the documents we’re supposed to get in the next week to ten days officially finalizing our mortgage. But I think there’s an ordinance against open burning.

Taco Bell, Operation: Alaska

For the last week or so there have been several advertisements for Taco Bell, purportedly documenting that company’s humanitarian effort, dubbed “Operation Alaska,” to bring tacos to the small western town of Bethel, Alaska:

The only fast food the remote village of Bethel enjoys is a Subway sandwich franchise. But a month or so ago, rumors began to circulate around town of a Taco Bell opening soon. A few days later, fliers began showing up touting the new Taco Bell. Townspeople began to get giddy in anticipation. But as reported in media throughout the country (or world), the rumor and fliers were all an apparent hoax. There was no Taco Bell coming to Bethel. But in what is described in the media as a PR coup, the executives at Taco Bell decided to ship in by helicopter a truck filled with 950 pounds of beef, 500 pounds of sour cream, 300 pounds of tomatoes, 300 pounds of lettuce, and 150 pounds of cheddar cheese, in order to make 10,000 Doritos Locos Tacos, gratis, for the hungry residents of tiny, fast-food starved Bethel. Coincidentally, the taco mission just happened at the same time that Taco Bell was launching its new Cantina Bell menu. And the Bethel commercials are at the heart of the new campaign.

Call me a cynic (I am, and proud of it, if only because I’m almost always right), but I find it odd that in such a small, remote town as Bethel, that the kind of rumor and flier effort that went on about Taco Bell could remain a mystery, or “an evil hoax” as the Anchorage Daily News called it. I find it much more plausible that the rumors and fliers were in fact the first wave of an ingenious advertising campaign on the part of Taco Bell that led to the company’s “show of good will” of flying in free tacos for the whole town, followed by a series of commercials championing the noble generosity of the company and their new Cantina Bell menu. And the media aren’t about to follow up on this possibility because Taco Bell (and its parent company) is a big advertiser in their papers and on their radio and TV stations. Best just to turn the advertising stunt into news stories and let everybody have a feel-good moment about the fast-food chain. As I said, I’m a cynic. But I’m also almost always right.

Zombies vs. Strippers

I was searching through the new movie releases when I came across the following title: Zombies vs. Strippers. Intrigued, I read the full description:

The local strip club has seen better days. But tonight it's gonna see a whole lot worse. Spider has been losing money on his business for years. Now it's finally getting the traffic he's always wanted, unfortunately most of his patrons are undead. With a sudden outbreak of the zombie virus, Vanilla, Bambi, and Sugar Hills deal with the disaster the way only a stripper can, as blood and braziers [sic] go flying.

Rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for bloody horror violence, sexuality/nudity, language, and some drug use.

Excusing the several grammatical problems, I can’t say that this description holds any allure. I suppose there must be a market out there for zombie-stripper movies that promise “bloody horror violence, sexuality/nudity, language, and some drug use,” not to mention protagonists name “Vanilla, Bambi, and Sugar Hills,” but that market doesn’t include 63-year-old retirees living (as yet not undead) in Iowa. There seem to be more and more movies released each week, but at the same time fewer and fewer worth viewing. The problem with a market-driven media (film, TV, books, whatever) is that the market doing the driving is 16 to 28 years old and can’t get enough sex and gore, separately or preferably mashed together, “blood and braziers [sic] . . . flying.” Hence, someone was able to conceive of, finance, produce, and distribute something called Zombies vs. Strippers. It would be nice to think that it is a neo-theater-of-the-absurd comedy in the manner of Ionesco, Genet, or Beckett, or even Mel Brooks. But I’m not going to bet the $1.20 rental fee to find out.

Fishing Without Fish

It’s a good thing I don’t fish to catch fish. It would be frustrating otherwise. Out on the water today, water the lowest I’ve seen it in 25 years, three weeks of no rain and temperatures in the 90s and 100s, there was little chance of catching fish. Or even seeing fish. The only positive was that there was no one else on the water. I had the fishless stream to myself. To fools come the reward of solitude. Though  I spent more time walking to and through and beside and from the water than wading in it, flailing my fly rod to no effect, there was no end to the plants in bloom, the birds surprised by my presence, the dragonflies flitting along the path and by the shore. And it was easy to keep reminding myself – it’s a good thing I don’t fish to catch fish.

Road Trip Roads

The great pleasure of a road trip is the road. Especially if it’s a road off the interstates and freeways, a two-lane highway, preferably state or county, a blue highway. That’s where the local stands of produce are, and the roadhouses, and the county parks and lakes, and the few surviving drive-in movie theaters, and the Jehovah Witness Kingdom Halls, and the hay being mown, and the grottoes, and the diners and motor courts, and the cars and pickups for sale, and the museums of bicycles and Spam and barbed wire, and the meat processors, and the Amish horse-driven buggies. The best of these roads wind along streams through narrow dells, around and over wooded hills, along ridges with valleys spread out on either side, snake down and bend through towns of 478 people. There is no hurry on these roads. A tractor hauling hay to a barn backs everyone up to a crawl, but no one cares. There should be nowhere to be at any particular time on these roads. The cows lift their heads for a moment as the procession slowly passes.

4th of July

This is going to sound callous, perhaps, or unpatriotic, but it’s certainly not meant to be. If anything, quite the opposite. But this is the 4^th of July and I’m wondering when this holiday became Memorial Day or Veterans Day or maybe just Military Service Day. Independence Day is just that, a celebration – with picnics and parades and fireworks – that commemorates the founding of our country, signaled by the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a philosophical and political document and moment, not a military one. Yet, especially since the tragedy of 11 September 2001, and the wars that followed, it seems that every holiday, if not every sporting event and political rally, has turned into a jingoistic rally in support of our military. We give thanks on Thanksgiving (a harvest festival) for the military personnel who have served or are serving to preserve our way of life. We remember at Christmas (a religious-consumer holiday) the sacrifices (being away from home) the military personnel who have served or are serving to preserve our way of life (Christian or consumer). Even Labor Day has in recent years moved from celebrating the labor of the working class to the labor of the military (watch the parades, listen to the speeches).

I’m all for a military that works for us, an institution that secures our borders and engages in necessary conflicts overseas. But I’ve read too much history and literature to be comfortable with the unfettered adulation of the military that we’ve seen in at least the last decade or so. A powerful military is too powerful. Our founders knew this (read the Constitution). And a too powerful military is a threat to freedom.

Today is the holiday that celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence (though 42% of Americans don’t know in what year it was signed and 26% don’t know who we declared independence from). That is what we should be celebrating (and perhaps through education rather than picnics, parades, baseball games, and fireworks). All thanks and appreciation to our military. But we already have Memorial Day (for those who gave their lives in service) and Veterans Day (for those who have served). Let’s leave today a day to celebrate our founding, not our current military excursions, as too many of the celebrations seem to be about.

Disaster Reported

Television is probably the worst medium to understand natural disasters, or at least the worst medium to understand natural disasters as they’re reported. The reports always focus on the most devastated areas, focusing on death and destruction, destroyed homes and businesses, downed trees and fissured earth, missing relatives and stranded puppies. Watching coverage of this week’s various fires throughout the southwest, you have to wonder if anyone west of Denver is anything other than a chunk of smoldering charcoal. Sweeping panoramas of mountains consumed in fire and smoke, subdivisions leveled to ash and rubble, leave the impression of a Smokey-the-Bear Armageddon. And the storms that went through the mid-Atlantic this past weekend apparently left millions without power, transportation, food, water, hope, or an internet connection. “No one who is within a hundred miles of me right now,” you expect to hear a reporter intoning, “can hear my voice because they don’t have access to TV or radio, poor souls. Or they just might be dead.” This video portrait of doom and destruction is painted with the fine brush of dramatic selectivity. We see reporters, ruggedly outfitted in cargo pants and t-shirts and LL Bean jackets, standing before smoldering ruins, downed trees (typically smashing roofs and/or cars), and sparking power lines, and speaking in Shakespearean verse of the utter destruction that they’re heroically witnessing.

I first noticed the media distortion of disaster years ago when a large earthquake ravaged Mexico City. The television coverage the first few days focused on the rubble and loss of life throughout the city. The impression was of total devastation, the loss of what must be most if not all of a major city. It was only a few days later that I read in Time magazine that I learned that this (admittedly) major earthquake actually destroyed only about 1% of the city’s buildings. Not an inconsequential amount, but not the total destruction one might have concluded by the television coverage.

Our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughters live in a suburb of D.C., and we were worried when we read and saw on TV that a major storm had gone through the area last Friday night, that power was out for millions of people, and that temperatures were supposed to approach 100 over the weekend. The reports we watched featured downed trees, crushing roofs and cars, snapped power lines, and snarled traffic because of no power for signals. We didn’t hear anything, and worried about their now having power or phone access. But by Sunday we were relieved to hear from them, via phone and internet, and they had only lost power for a few hours, and all was well. They hadn’t seen a reason to let us know that all was OK. Maybe they weren’t watching TV.