One Small Step

Neil Armstrong died today at the age of 82. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon. As he stepped from the lunar module onto the moon’s surface, creating the first footprint in the gray dust, he uttered the historic words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” He had worked on what he was going to say all the way to the moon and during the decent. But when the moment came, he flubbed the line he’d planned – “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” – the exclusion of the article rendering the statement self-contradictory (“man” without the article is the same as the generic “mankind”) You can hear the pause between the phrases when he realizes his mistake, but he (rightfully) carries on. This was history, not a grammar class. And who didn’t know what he meant anyway?

I watched the landing in a mansion in the hills of Berkeley, California, which that summer was serving as a bizarre hippie commune. The house was owned by a professor at the University of California who was doing research in Poland for the summer. Two female students were serving as house-sitters, but they had extended the occupants to between ten and a fifteen at any one time (I don’t think anyone ever knew for sure) in the six-bedroom house. A gardener came once a week to care for the lawn and citrus trees and raspberry vines. A lot of brown rice, cheap wine, marijuana, and LSD were consumed. Conversations stretched into the night, though none of any consequence. One night I dropped some acid and for a stretch of time wrote several pages of poetry into a notebook. The next morning I tried to read what I’d written, but whatever it was it was neither legible nor language.

We watched the moon landing that night in the relatively small TV room that looked out over an expansive view of San Francisco Bay. I can’t recall whether the TV was black-and-white or only the broadcast of it. And I can’t remember how long the whole landing and first moonwalk was. But it was riveting and as surreal as any drug trip we might have been on. After Armstrong had stepped onto the moon, we stepped out onto a balcony overlooking the bay where we had a good view of the moon. The idea of there actually being humans up there walking around was more hallucinogenic than any drugs we might have taken. And we hadn’t taken any.

A (Un-) Informed Electorate

The Washington Post published today an opinion piece by Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2009-2010 and current vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup, “Five Myths About Paul Ryan’s Budget.” (If all American adults were reading this, 97% would bail at this point.) In brief, here are the myths:  

1. Paul Ryan’s budget would reduce the deficit. “If you take out everything Ryan is assuming and look at his concrete proposals, his budget is not fiscally conservative. Without the magical reductions in Medicaid, other spending and tax breaks, his plan would expand the deficit in 2040, not reduce it.”

2. The Ryan budget would help the middle class. “Ryan says he would cut tax rates for all families, but that doesn’t mean the middle class would be any better off. Even after the Bush tax cuts, Ryan’s reductions would amount to about $1,000 a year for families with annual incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 — compared with a cut of more than $250,000 a year for those with incomes above $1 million.”

3. Ryan’s proposal would cut health-care spending by reforming Medicare. “[T]he plan is similar to what we already have: Almost 30 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are also enrolled in Medicare Advantage, which offers private plans alongside the federal program. The evidence suggests that these plans cost more than traditional Medicare, once you take into account the ability of plans to skim off the least costly beneficiaries. So much for Ryan’s health-care-competition tooth fairy.”

4. Ryan’s plan would provide certainty to the markets and the economy. “How would tax deductions be rolled back? How would the block-granting of Medicaid work, and what happens if it doesn’t? What programs would be cut to hit Ryan’s spending targets? All of these are huge questions. Leaving them unanswered does nothing to reduce uncertainty.”

5. If Romney wins, Ryan’s budget will be his fiscal blueprint. “If the Romney-Ryan ticket wins, their administration would probably have to choose one or two of the big three items: tax reform, Medicare changes or block-granting Medicaid. . . . Among the three, I’d bet on Medicaid, given how difficult the other two goals are. The fact that the harm from block-granting would be concentrated on the poor, and that Congress would get to leave it to governors to impose the pain, sadly makes that change more politically viable than the others.”

There’s nothing new in this criticism of the Romney-Ryan (or Ryan-Romney) budget (though Orszag’s vita should carry some weight). What I find interesting is that it will never make the mainstream media discussion (or babble). The only election coverage on the TV news (the actual mainstream media) tonight was the “horse race” – who was polling better with seniors or women in the swing states of Florida or Ohio or Wisconsin. Sound bites and gaffes, costumes and scenery make up election coverage on TV, the medium of preference for most voters. Why couldn’t the networks devote a segment each night to one issue, outlining the position of each candidate, and running a fact-check for both sides? It’s called information and would perhaps lead to what Thomas Jefferson saw as most important to a working democracy, an informed electorate. But information – particularly economic information (what we most need at this point) – doesn’t make good TV. Good TV is strippers readying to work the GOP convention in Tampa. Or Obama brewing his own beer in the White House. Or who should be the new American Idol judge. The electorate may be informed. But it still doesn’t know anything.

Peter Bis

Peter Bis died last week of an apparent heart attack. He was 61 years old. He grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, graduated from Western Michigan University in 1974 with a degree in history, spent a year in law school at Michigan State University, worked briefly as a hotel night clerk, and started a car-painting company. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and after spending several months of in-patient treatment began wandering around the country. “He never hitchhiked, but people would give him rides,” his brother James said. “He crossed the country two or three times. . . . He never drank alcohol or took drugs. He just smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and thought he was from another planet.”

For the past decade Bis has lived on the streets near Union Station in Washington D.C., no address, job, or phone. He claimed to be an alien from another galaxy, an enemy of the state, an aerospace magnate, and former Princess Diana lover. He claimed that Bis stood for “British Intelligence Services.” He often wore a lead-lined baseball cap wired with red lights.

He spent most of his time near the corner of Second Street and Massachusetts Avenue NE, between Union Station and Capitol Hill. He never begged for money. He used the restrooms at a nearby Exxon station, helping to keep them clean. When the weather got particularly cold, he was allowed to sleep in the station’s garage. His circle of acquaintances included Capitol staffers, economists, and waiters from area restaurants. They would bring him coffee, bagels, leftovers, and cigarettes and he would engage them in conversation, well-versed in current events by reading discarded newspapers. “He knew everybody here, everybody,” said a worker at the nearby Federal Judiciary Center. “If you stood here talking to him for 10 minutes, he’d greet 50 people by their first name. And then he’d ask about their spouses. ‘Hey Joe, how’s Judy? You’ve got a baby coming in two weeks, right?’ The guy had an incredible memory.”

An impromptu memorial has grown around an oak tree on his favorite corner where friends have left flowers, signs, and packs of cigarettes. A neighborhood church is organizing a formal memorial in a few weeks. There will be a crowd.

Our inclination is to paint the homeless in a monochromatic distance. But Peter Bis should remind us that the homeless are in this one way very much like all of us – diverse and not so easily known.

Legitimate Rape

I’m not sure whether Todd Aiken (Rep. Missouri) is ignorant or just not good at using the English language. “From what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV. “If it’s a legitimate rape,” he continued, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” And then he incredibly added, “But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.” This original utterance would support ignorance, if not full-blown lunacy. Who are these “doctors” who tell Aiken that pregnancies from rape are “really rare”? What the hell does “legitimate rape” mean? And what does “shut that whole thing down” refer to? Conception? That’s what doctors told him? And “there should be some punishment” for the “[legitimate] rapist” but not “the child”? What about the woman, the missing person (sometimes also a child) in Aiken’s scenario? Aiken would punish her by requiring her to bring the product of her rape to term.

The following day, after the political and cultural worlds crashed down upon his head, Aiken said, “In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview [can remarks in an interview be “off-the cuff”?] and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year.” It’s good that he does, after all have “deep empathy” for “the thousands of women who are raped” – though not enough to allow them an out from their trauma of having to carry the fetus to term. And what exactly does he mean by that weasel word “misspoke”? Does he mean he wasn’t telling the truth? Or does he mean he shouldn’t have said anything at all? Or does he mean that he was telling the truth but he just didn’t word it very well?

Aiken followed up by opting for the last option, that he isn’t good with the English language: "I said one word in one sentence on one day, and everything changed," he told former pastor, former Arkansas governor, and current talk show host Mike Huckabee. But he didn’t specify what that “one word” or “one sentence” was. There are so many words in his original three-sentence utterance, it’s hard to determine what he’s identified as his sole slip-up. And let’s be clear: It’s not his wording that’s the problem. It’s his ideas. There’s no thesaurus that can save Aiken from the cruel and callous ideas that he espouses. He’s both ignorant and not good at using the English language. And heartless. And he shouldn’t be in any office in the U.S. government. That he already is – and may well be again – does not say anything good about our democracy.

1967 -- The Greatest Year In Rock and Roll

The year 1967 (the year I graduated from high school) arguably saw the release of the most great rock albums in any one year (and I bought all of the following).

Consider first just the debut albums from that year (in order of their release):

The Doors, The Doors. The group was only a year old when it recorded these 11 songs, with the romantic-influenced poetry of Jim Morrison and the jazz-influenced trio of Ray Manzarek (keyboard), Robby Krieger (guitar), and John Densmore (drums). Highlights are the forceful and wandering “The End” and “Light My Fire” (the lengthy improvisation unfortunately cut for the single).

Surrealistic Pillow, Jefferson Airplane. One of the first psychedelic bands out of San Francisco (this was to become “the summer of love”), Grace Slick had just joined the group, fortunately in time to record the signature “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit,” both of which rose into the Top Ten. (Apparently the album’s title came from Jerry Garcia, who while sitting in on the sessions as an “advisor,” commented, “This is as surrealistic as a pillow.”) The band I played in that spring hired a female singer and a light show (movie, slide, and overhead projectors, a strobe light) and became the first psychedelic band in Wichita, maybe in Kansas.

Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead. Another San Francisco psychedelic-folk group that had been around the Bay for several years, The Dead’s first album wasn’t their best but was their first and too-often overlooked.

The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground. This album was neither a critical or commercial success, but that’s probably because it was the antithesis to what was coming out of England to the East and California to the West. But this album is the beginning of punk and alt-rock to follow. I wouldn’t have known about this group if I hadn’t taken an art class my last semester of high school and been introduced to Andy Warhol (the group came from his Factory, and he did the art for the cover (a banana)).

Moby Grape, Moby Grape. Probably the best group ever to last so short a time, this S.F. band had five members who could all write and sing, and three guitarists who could play very different but complimentary styles. They combined folk, country, and jazz with rock and psychedelic. “Omaha,” “Changes,” “Hey Grandma,” “8:05,” and “Sitting By the Window” were all released as singles,  but only “Omaha” made the charts (at #85) – they all should landed toward the top, but were released too close, too fast. Apparently internal strife, combined with drugs and egos, led to their untimely breakup.

Big Brother and the Holding Company, Big Brother and the Holding Company. Yet another band to come out of S.F., this isn’t a great album, but it’s the first Janis Joplin album, and that’s enough. Grace Slick and Janis Joplin, two very different but very powerful female singers, emerge from S.F. in the same year. And Joplin’s “Women Is Losers” hints at what’s to come. Two years later I would meet Joplin when she played Wichita, a meeting she probably had forgotten by the time she got back to her hotel that night.

Are You Experienced?, Jimi Hendrix Experience. Many consider Hendrix to be the greatest electric guitar player ever, and while I could make an argument for two or three others, I’m not going to do so. This is one of those albums that changed music, with its fusion of rock and blues and jazz and psychedelic, and Hendrix’s screaming-to-plaintive Stratocaster over it all on “Purple Haze,” “Foxey Lady,” “Manic Depression,” and “The Wind Cries Mary.” Two years later I would see the Experience play at Red Rocks in Denver, what would turn out to be their last performance.

Procol Harum, Procol Harum. “Whiter Shade of Pale” reached the Top Five in the summer of ’67, and remains in my top ten. I was at the beginning of my English major career when this came out, and all English majors were required to find all of the Chaucer references. And of course, living in Kansas I had to be drawn to “The Devil Came From Kansas.” Oh yes, the music is good too. (In 1972 I was in a strip club in Germany, and “Whiter Shade of Pale” was the accompaniment to a sex film, an unnerving moment.)

Blowin’ Your Mind!, Van Morrison. This brief eight-song album is not at all Morrison’s best, but it was his first solo album after the break with Them (“Gloria”). And it does have one of my favorite songs of all time, Brown Eyed Girl.” That’s enough for me. And Astral Weeks was only a year away.

OK, in case there’s any doubt remaining, let’s add a few other titles that were also released in 1967 (again, in order of their release):

Younger Than Yesterday, The Byrds. One of my favorite bands of the ‘60s (half of the playlist of my first band was Byrd’s tunes), this is not the strongest of their work, but it is the first album after the departure of singer-writer Gene Clark and does show the way they would go over the following few years. And “So You Want To Be a Rock and Roll Star” is a classic self-mocking of rock stardom.

Flowers, The Rolling Stones. Not one of their best, but this compilation of singles and not-released-in-the-U.S. tunes includes “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” “Ruby Tuesday,” and “Mother’s Little Helper” (though there’s also the odd “Lady Jane,” which is probably some personal reference which should have remained personal).

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles. This is considered by most lists the #1 rock album of all time, in part because of the songs, but mostly because of its being the first celebrated concept album. I skip over “Within You Without You” that opens side two of the album (halfway through the CD), but the opening three songs of side one – “With a Little Help From My Friends,” “Fixing a Hole,” and “Getting Better” – more than excuse the later lapse. For a very brief time (we played only one public show) I was in a group from Colorado who performed this album (not very well (even the Beatles didn’t perform it live)) straight through.

Strange Days, The Doors. The group’s second album in the same year, but for the surprise, almost as good. Witness “Strange Days,” “Love Me Two Times,” and “When the Music’s Over.” And the street circus cover is a compelling meditation to accompany the music.

Absolutely Free, The Mothers of Invention. Frank Zappa was a genius of bringing together any and all forms of music – classical, jazz, rock, blues, whatever – into a mash-up that combined with his socially critical lyrics produced wonderfully complex musical parodies: “Plastic People,” “The Duke of Prunes,” “Call Any Vegetable,” “America Drinks,” “Status Back Baby,” “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.” I’ve never seen a group cover a Mothers song. I don’t think there are any that could.

Disraeli Gears, Cream. Has there been a better second album? All of the influences are here, from the Arthur Reynolds’ “Outside Woman Blues” to the rock of “Sunshine of Your Love” to the jazzy “We’re Going Wrong” to the surreal free verse of “Tales Of Brave Ulysses” (“You see your girl's brown body dancing through the turquoise, / And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea. / And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body, / Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.”)

Buffalo Springfield Again, Buffalo Springfield. This dysfunctional group that would soon morph into Poco and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and (later) Young, was at its dysfunctional height. But the folk-country-rock successes of this album are considerable: “Mr. Soul,” “Bluebird,” “Rock & Roll Woman,” “Broken Arrow.”

Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles. Again, the Beatles. Some say their second album of ’67 (which came from their worst movie) is even better than the celebrated Sgt. Pepper’s. And there is certainly evidence to support that claim: “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Penny Lane,” “Hello Goodbye,” “I Am the Walrus,” and “All You Need Is Love.”

John Wesley Harding, Bob Dylan. After going electric two years earlier, Dylan here goes to Nashville and changes direction for the second (but not the last) time. Everyone has a different list of Dylan favorites, but there are a number on this album: “All Along the Watchtower,” “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest,” “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” (a foreshadowing of his next album, Nashville Skyline).

The Immortal, Mississippi John Hurt. The gold standard of the ‘60s blues-folk rediscoveries, Hurt’s finger-picking, singing, and lyrics on this album recorded when he was 73 and released posthumously would be as compelling if he were 35 when he first recorded in 1928. “Since I’ve Laid My Burden Down,” “Richmond Woman Blues,” “The Chicken,” “Stagolee” (probably the best version of that traditional song) – ‘nuff said. I tried to learn a number of Hurt’s songs, but despite the seeming simplicity of the picking, never could get it down.

The Who Sell Out, The Who. Another concept album, this one a wonderful parody of British pirate radio, the mostly comic songs – “Mary Anne With the Shaky Hand,” “Odorono,” “Tattoo,” “I Can See For Miles,” “Silas Stingy” – interspersed with jingles for baked beans, deodorant, pimple cream. For some of us, The Who’s best album.

There might be some other year that could produce as lengthy a list of great rock albums as this, but I seriously doubt it. And probably not another year where the albums cost less than the $2.00 they cost in 1967. And I did buy all of the above (and others, as well). I sold all of my albums a few months ago ($60 for probably a couple hundred). There’s a part of me that regrets this, especially looking over this list. But then I remember that I no longer have a turntable and couldn’t listen to any of them anyway. Time and technology move on. I now have Pandora and iTunes, and all of the songs on all of these albums are accessible there.

Life -- February 14, 1949

I have a copy of Life magazine from February 14, 1949, the week I was born. The cost was 20¢. The cover is a black and white back-lit close-up profile of Viveca Lindfors, an attractive (in that 1940s way) young woman who I have never heard of. The relatively brief (pages 76-78) photo story (all Life stories are photo stories), “The Sad Short Story of Viveca Lindfors,” says that despite “a beautiful home, two lovely children, [and] $2,000 a week,” she was “unhappy in Hollywood.” Seems Viveca had left Sweden for America in 1946, following fellow Swedes Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman. But she got miscast in several not-very-good movies and was “fed up” and wanting to return to Sweden. The final line of the story is prototypic Hollywood: “There is always the chance that someone will offer her a good and rewarding role in Hollywood, where even sad storied have happy endings.” (I googled Viveca Lindfors, and was surprised  to learn that she did stay in the U.S., and did end up playing in a number of movies, TV shows, and plays, though I’m not sure any could be called “rewarding.”)

The featured story in the magazine that week was the second installment of “The War Memoirs of Winston Churchill” (pages 39-52, 55-56, 61-62). Churchill was still a major figure in World War II, and publishing his memoir must have been a coup four years after the end of the war.

I knew that I had been born in a snow storm, but according to the article “West Fights Worst Winter In History” (pages 19-23), “In the mountains and on the Great Plains snow had been falling with few letups since Nov. 18.” Most of the dramatic photos – a buried farm, a crashed plane, a marooned couple, marooned sheep – are from Nebraska, but that was just three or four latitudes north of the hospital where I was born. If there’s any significance to the weather that accompanies one’s birth affecting the outcome of one’s person or life, then I’ll bet there’s plenty to mine in that “worst winter in history.”

Another feature story, “Hard Times On Broadway” (pages 87-95), reports that “Too many actors with too few jobs dream and scrabble to keep sock and buskin together.” (I had to google “sock and buskin” to learn that they refer to the two Greek symbols for comedy and tragedy, respectively.) Apparently “not even one out of five of Actors Equity’s 6,000 members [had] theater jobs,” and “Producers who put on 300 plays a season 20 years ago now put on a bare 90.” Ironically, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman – maybe the greatest American drama – had opened a few days before this issue hit the stands, and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific – one of the greatest musicals – was to open three weeks later.

I don’t know much about sports in the post-WWII years, but I would have thought that during the winter, basketball would be dominant. I would have been wrong. The only sports story is “Two-Mile Thriller” (pages 67-70), about the Millrose Games, an indoor track meet in Madison Square Garden. Belgium’s Gaston Reiff won the two-mile run, usually “the dullest event on the program,” but that night it “turned out to be the thriller of the evening.” But “U.S. distance-racing prestige was upheld . . . by Don Gehrman,” who “nipped Holland’s Willy Slykhuis at the tape in a 4:09.5-minute mile.” 

As ghostly intriguing as the articles are, though, it’s the many ads – probably half of the magazine comprises ads – that are haunting. An ad for Camel cigarettes reports that “In a recent 30-day test of hundreds of Camel smokers, noted throat specialists reported NOT ONE SINGLE CASE OF THROAT IRRITATION due to smoking CAMELS!” and that “MORE DOCTORS SMOKE CAMELS than any other brand.” Cannon Percale Sheets ask the question “Can wives work money-miracles today?” and answers, “Miracles can happen!” because “Your favorite Cannon Percale Sheets are now COMBSPUN . . . combed till only the long, smooth fibers remain!” Armour offers “8 ideas for better eating – morning, noon and night! . . . All 8 of them – in this free bacon recipe folder!” (Apparently “better eating” didn’t mean healthier eating back then.) 

“Quick, Ladies! Here’s a bargain that’s a beauty” is a headline that draws attention. It turns out to be an offer for “Lovely, all-purpose precision-ground SCISSORS!” for “Only 50¢ (regular value $1.00 or more) AND THE LABELS FROM 2 CANS OF FAMOUS Pard Swift’s Dog Food.” Boasts an ad for Playtex: “It took a research group of chemists, physicists and fashion girdle designers to develop the revolutionary New PLAYTEX Living Girdle.” (It would take them another 60 years to develop Spanx.) The Pacquins Hand Cream ad goes the celebrity endorsement route: “Metropolitan Opera Star Risë Stevens says: ‘for dream hands, Cream your hands.’” (No comment.) A full-page ad for Old Gold cigarettes shows a pack of the cigarettes at the top, and a woman in an apparent snowfall below, and between, the only text: “For a TREAT instead of a TREATMENT . . . light an Old Gold.” (I have no idea what that might mean. I suppose it could refer to lung cancer, but I don’t think so.) I thought the promise in the Firestone ad sounded like fun – “Now you can modernize your car with Firestone SUPER-BALLOONS” – until I read further to discover it wasn’t balloons at all but rather tires.

This is the world I was born into. I have no memory of it, of course. But I do have this issue of Life. And I’d like to think that as my father was in the waiting room that snowy, cold February Sunday morning, smoking his doctor-approved Camels, this is what he was reading.

Purple Martins Fledged

My purple martin colony has fledged for the year, the last four hatchlings in two nests having flown in the past few days. This year I had 19 pairs of birds lay 87 eggs, 67 of which hatched (some just didn’t, a few apparently fell to predators), and 58 fledged (a few hatchlings succumbed to the heat of July, a couple to predators). This was an unusual year, no doubt affected by the early spring and summer heat. The first eggs were laid May 13, hatched May 31, and fledged June 27. The last eggs were laid a late June 29 (two days after the first hatchlings fledged), hatched July 16, and fledged August 15. They all – parents and successful youth – should be in their usual staging area south of town, where they meet up with other colonies from the area before making the migration down to Brazil, a journey I can’t imagine, though I can’t imagine flying on my own power, whatever distance, anyway. They won’t send postcards and they don’t call, but like welcoming children back home from their wanderings, I’ll still be looking forward to their return next spring, and hearing how their warm winter went.

Retrirement -- Be Prepared

For two or three years in my pre- and early-teens I was a Boy Scout. I attended Monday evening meetings regularly in the basement of Central Christian Church, I went on weekend campouts mostly in the summer but occasionally in the winter as well (snipe hunts were best in winter), I attended a National Jamboree in the Colorado Rockies (the altitude and water and stress gave me an ugly case of cold sores covering my mouth that took weeks to heal), I learned to tie knots and carve wood and paddle canoes and build campfires and a little bit of first aid. I actually achieved the rank of Life, the penultimate level in scoutdom, though more out of endurance than effort (just showing up was 90% of the accomplishment). And I had joined and endured only because of the camping and games and it’s what my friends were doing. But I realize that through that experience those many years ago I must have absorbed and retained what is at the heart of the scouting experience, as expressed in the motto – Be Prepared.

Occasionally someone who knows I’m retired will ask me how I’m doing and, especially if they’re in their 50s or early 60s, how they might look forward to their own retirement years. I guess I’ve become something of an expert on being retired if only because I am. Experience is wisdom. And whenever I’m asked, my advice always reverts back 50 years to my Boy Scout days – Be Prepared:

Laziness – Hopefully this is something that you’ve developed over years. It’s the umbrella of skills necessary for the life of retirement. If you aren’t lazy – and comfortable in your laziness – you aren’t properly ready for retirement. All else follows from it.

TV – TV is your friend, day and night. We live in an age of hundreds of stations with nothing on worth watching. Our generation has cultivated and preserved this “vast wasteland.” Embrace it, support it, even if only lying on the couch, passed out, drool seeping from the corner of your mouth, the 40” HD set illuminating the walls and droning into the night.

Beer – Or wine or gin or Scotch, whatever, though beer is less aggressive and dulls the senses more easily. You don’t want to spend the day drunk, and certainly not passed out, only morose. And because you’re retired you don’t have to drive.

Sports – This sort of unites the above three. There is some sort of sports programming on 24-hours a day (and night), even whole channels devoted to nothing but sports. You might every once in a while attend a live sporting event, though you don’t need to. And if you do there are TV monitors scattered around most sporting venues these days as well as plenty of beer stands, making the experience just like you were at home.

Reading – OK, this may sound a bit too cerebral. But I’m not talking Shakespeare, Proust, or Joyce. It’s often good to break up the routine of nothing during the day, and reading can be a good break. Especially if you’re lying on the couch, a baseball game on TV, a beer in hand, and a book about the 1961 Yankees across your lap.

Internet – It’s little known, but the Internet was originally developed for the gratification of retirees. All else is ancillary. You’ve got email, newspapers and magazines, blogs, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and all kinds of other ways to waste your remaining days. Enjoy.

2L-5D

Well into my teen years (1960s), if someone asked for my phone number, I would respond, “MUrray 4-3069.” That’s the way phone numbers were designated back in the old days, with a prefix made up of the first two letters of some word and then five numbers, the first a part of the prefix and then the final four the particular phone number. I have no idea what logic there might have been in the assigning of the names and letters, any more than the numbers, all of which were probably random. If you go back into popular culture from the 40s through the 60s you’ll find vestiges of the phone letter prefix: Glenn Miller recorded "PEnnsylvania 6-5000" in the 1940s (it would become Transylvania 6-5000 in a Bugs Bunny cartoon), and The Marvelettes recorded the wonderful "BEechwood 4-5789" in 1962. Elizabeth Taylor won an Academy Award for Best Actress in BUtterfield 8 (a reference to the character’s phone exchange). The Ricardo’s phone number in I Love Lucy was MUrray Hill 5-9975. In the 1973 movie about the late-1950s, American Graffiti, disc jockey Wolfman Jack mentions phone number "DIamond-3132.” The Simpsons TV show occasionally displays the family’s phone number as KLondike 5-#### (the media convention uses the 555 prefix in TV or film, which is not in official use for personal numbers).

This system was known as “2L-5D” – two letters and five digits. Apparently as the number of phones and phone numbers grew, the possible combinations with letters diminished. They just couldn’t come up with a 2L word that began with BC, JK, MN, PQ, QR, RS, etc., so from the 1960s to the 1980s, the shift was made from 2L-5D to the All-Number Calling (ANC) we have today. And then a three-number area code was added to the seven-number number, and a 1 in front of that. All numbers all the time.

I’m not particularly nostalgic. I prefer my 2006 all-wheel drive, air-conditioned Subaru to my 1959 two-stroke, two-cycle, wing-door Saab. Still, I’m awash these days in numbers – phone, credit card, checking account, passwords, etc. And the tune to "BEechwood 4-5789" is so much better than 1-212-234-5789. And when I call my mother, I still dial (even when I press a keypad) MUrray 4-3069.

My Grandfather Smoking

My maternal grandfather, a German immigrant who arrived in this country a few years before WWI, smoked for all his life, or at least for all of my life while he was alive. He smoked cigars, pipes, and cigarettes. This was back before smoking was a health and social sin. My earliest memories of baseball games are with him at Lawrence Stadium watching a Wichita Braves game, the stench of his cigar smoke the fragrance of the game. In his later years he would fall asleep in his chair with a cigar or cigarette in his hand, burning holes in the arms of the chair. My grandmother made him stop smoking cigars and cigarettes, but he would fall asleep with a pipe in his mouth, it falling out and spilling into his lap. He was banned from pipes as well. I smoked myself in college, cigarettes mostly, a pipe in grad school. When I’d come home occasionally on weekends, I’d sit alone with him in the living room of my parents’ home and slip him cigarettes as we talked about his youth in Germany and how I was doing in school. He wouldn’t fall asleep then, of course, and even if so I was there to catch any ashes (and if he’d forget he had a cigarette, I’d offer him an ashtray to flick them off).

I haven’t smoked cigarettes in almost 40 years, and I stopped pipes about 25 years ago, mostly because of health but also because of my stepchildren. My grandfather didn’t die of lung cancer, though he did have a daughter (my aunt) who did a few years ago (she smoked most of her adult life). But it’s difficult still for me to be as harsh on smoking and smokers as our culture is. So much of my memory of my grandfather is connected to smoking, and in a positive way, that it’s difficult for me to see it as an evil. I know smoking is bad in any number of ways. But memory can hang like a cloud over better judgment.