Poles on the Pope

It’s hard to take seriously those who say that the Pope is just struggling with a bout of the flu. Haven’t they noticed that the Pontiff cannot hold his torso in an upright position anymore? And still, the Poles have hope, as if their privilege will end with the end of the Polish papacy. Consider this statement by Walesa:

"Every person past the age of 50 has some ailments and that is why we must understand…''

Indeed, the Pope, Mr. Walesa and I (according to Mr. Walesa) are swimming in the same sea of ill health. It may be the only time a comment is made that places the three of us in the same boat over anything. Oh, and the fact that we’re Polish. That’s it. No other similarities are readily identifiable.

I’m ready for my Benidorm leave

It’s February in Wisconsin – possibly the worst combination of place and time-of-year on the planet. The groundhog may feel ready to reach into storage and take out his bathing trunks, but I know this is all show and no substance. We have ahead of us a number of months (not weeks)where the dominant color outside will be a muddy gray.

Now, were I an employee of the large British food chain, ASDA, things would be different. The company has implemented a package of work-leave options for employees that is consistent with the British government’s desire to move more employers toward a greater appreciation for the “work – life balance.” One of the many* offerings is the so-called Benidorm leave (named after a Spanish beach resort) – available for employees over 50 who wish to spend winter months in warmer climates. I qualify! Oh, could I go for a Benidorm leave!

* Other benefits include: time off to conceive a child (recognizing that some couples need a little extra time and space…), grandparents’ leave, the usual maternity and paternity stuff, time off for religious festivals, etc. For those who are willing to forgo a salary but still want their job held for them, the company offers even more extensive “time off from work” options. If you have been an employee for at least three years you can take between 6 months and two years off for a career break.

Back to community service: Ocean wants to take a stand on the matter of gifts and urge you to make friends with the post office

Tonya recently posted a question on her blog: what does one send in a care package to a (obviously favorite!) college kid?

It’s so easy to fill a box with pleasurable items for a kid. But why do we neglect ourselves? When Tonya and Ann were in a serious car crash, I wondered if either would have liked a care package… There is nothing (I think) as uplifting as an unexpected mail gift.

Perhaps I am reacting to a week-end of stress, but I do have this nagging thought: why is it that we celebrate and honor the obvious and neglect the days when a gift wrapped in tissue paper and decorated with a cloth ribbon would have meant a lot?

I am reminded of the obsessive gift giving I encountered while traveling in Japan last spring. Could it be that they have it figured out and we are still muddled and confused? Instead of selling trashy candy bars at airports and train stations, why aren’t vendors displaying gift boxes for us to purchase and deliver to the important people in our lives?

Hand me the mike, I have something to say! [Or not.]

Ann, who views herself as a political moderate, is saddened by the vicious way in which she is discussed and linked to by lefties.

I have to both agree and disagree with her. Because, as a “lefty*,” I have to say that, in the days when Ocean was more engaged in political commentary, I was plenty slandered for it on right-leaning blogs. Not many, but then Ocean addresses a smaller audience than Althouse.

But I do agree with one aspect of her post: I, too, am saddened by so much of what I read in blogs, and comment threads are even worse. It’s as if writers are grabbing the mike and running to the stage without having once practiced the song they are about to force onto the audience. At first it seems funny and then it just seems sad, desperate, irresponsible.

The blog is a stage and unfortunately anyone can grab the mike. And I admit, sometimes, in fascination, I log on and listen, mesmerized by the lack of restraint, a demonic pleasure derived from seeing someone so exposed, so childishly out of control. But the experience always leaves me feeling empty. Writing and ranting that is neither clever nor funny hardly qualifies as banter. And most often, it pushes the boundaries of meanness.

It’s not just the left or the right. Thoughtlessness and meanness are, unfortunately, universal. Though thankfully, I have come across far more kind posts and blogs than snarky ones. Now if only blogs had a two-hour delay before publication, so that people would have a chance to think about what they had just typed with that first rush of adrenaline and reconsider going up on stage with it...

* I think Ann would agree that I do not shy away from talking about politics with moderates or even (gasp) right-leaning types, though I routinely walk away from people who feel they have to shout their ideas and use screechy language to be heard.

Pittsburgh: sunny side up

Breakfast out on the town

Good morning, how many?
Table for four please.

Smoking or non?
[This is still an option in Pittsburgh]
Non.

I’ll take you'ns (Pittsburgh tries hard not to be outdone by y’all) there now. Coffee?
Yes, thanks. Could I have skim milk on the side?

Skim? We don’t have skim. Just regular 2%.
Okay, 2% then. Can you warm it up a little?

Oh gee, I don’t know. I’ll check. You want it warm. Okay, are you ready to order?
I'll have the oatmeal, please.

Just oatmeal?
Yes. Do you have honey?

Honey? I guess so. I’ll check that for you. Be right back.
(comes back with huge jar of honey)

The oatmeal comes with fresh fruit?
Sure: here’s some melon and pineapple chunks for ya.
[is there a worse combination?] Thanks.

Remaining guests to me: if you make one more difficult request, we’re leaving.

What’s so difficult about oatmeal with honey and fresh fruit (that are not pineapple or melon) and a cup of coffee with warm skim milk? I never even considered asking for a latté.

Pittsburgh reconsidered

Are sunsets over a suburban-commercial wasteland worth noting? You decide.

a room with a view? 

Redefining Pittsburgh

Allegheny, Monongahela, Ohio. Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, Max & Erma’s. Eat ‘n Park, King’s, Hoss’ – what do they all have in common? They surround you from all sides, like a fence with too few gates.

Looking out the Hampton Inn window, I’m tempted. Forget the highways, the world looks wintry-nice.

hills and highways 

But once outside, I cannot go anywhere without feeling that I am going to get run down from all directions. There is nowhere to walk. Since when did walking become the riskiest of activities? Not having a place to release some energy makes me too restless to be much good for anyone and so I set out anyway. But I am reminded of yesterday’s sign on the local road: “Watch out for aggressive drivers!” it said. I forge ahead. Surely no one will run me down on purpose. Will they?

I walk thinking how once Pennsylvania had associations for me that were all-Americana: like the picture on the Pennsylvania Dutch cigar box. Like Indian names (Monongahela has to be the coolest word to say out loud). Like cracked bells and Amish buggies. Now it’s more like all-American. Bob Evans for breakfast, Panera for lunch, Chili’s for dinner. The local chains (Eat ‘n Park, King’s, Hoss’) draw the neighborhood crowds (what neighborhood are we in though? A non-neighborhood of hilly suburbs with small brick homes). Increasingly one hears people speaking with the brassy twang of the southern Ohio and West Virginia counties that are not too far away. Pittsburgh, once ethnic, now mixed up, lacking an identity.

I walk and walk, looking for a destination until finally I come across a strip mall and I think I’ve hit rock bottom. The central focus of the little shopping center is a store ("Low Carb Headquarters") where you can buy all Atkins stuff. Gift certificates too. I think back to a blogger’s offense when he was told that Slender Fare might provide some good menu options. Is giving an Atkins gift certificate going to make you popular with anyone?

...and t-shirts too, with pictures of juicy hamburgers... 

I head back to the room with the view of the Turnpike and hills. Sometimes the walk isn’t worth the effort.

Ocean’s contribution to scientific argument

Now that Larry Summers opened the door for the possibility of evaluating innate ability based on scientific knowledge gained from observing the behavior of one’s little daughter (or those in one’s immediate surroundings), I felt empowered to do the same. If his girl was girlish because she called her little trucks a daddy and a baby truck, I think I can offer sensible anecdotal evidence as well that would contribute to the debate.

For instance, this afternoon, I watched the captains of both my flights (to Chicago and then to Pittsburgh), to see if they would take out a bottle to feed the engines formula. It didn’t happen. Moreover, they both landed the planes safely, without so much as a bounce and a shudder, and so I concluded that my two women pilots were the exception to the Summers rule.

I did note that the first pilot sped our little plane to the gate and I wondered if maybe she missed her calling as a speed car racer. Maybe as a next career.

Pittsburgh: always looking back

I have been going to Pittsburgh just about every year since 1976 (a little less frequently in recent years). The city has transformed itself, I know. The downtown area, the neighborhoods surrounding Carnegie Mellon and Pitt, they’ve become urban-presentable, in ways that Milwaukeeans can only dream about (sorry – not enough home-state pride, I know).

But that first visit, now almost 30 years ago, was the one that defined the city for me and I haven’t been able to shake it. I can’t think where else I am so unmoved to make adjustments over time. Pittsburgh is now as it was introduced to me then, by members of the family I’d married into.

Today as I pack my bag to catch a flight to this steely city, I’m thinking about that first encounter with it.

I always thought it was like no other American city (I am making no value judgment here). It’s so hilly! And so many rivers, hemming it in, tightly, from all sides.

But it is because I learned about it from people who had lived for several generations in the once-tight ethnic communities, that I see it from the expanse of time. Pittsburgh postcards in my head show steel mills, Kennywood (the amusement park where I was told you took *your girl* on a Saturday evening), the Incline for a panoramic view, and the river boat rides for polka dancing. I know where you once went to get Italian cookies and Jewish breads, where the Croatian clubs were and what took place within. Sure, I visited the Warhol Museum and the Pitt International rooms. But the city is really, for me, the city of postwar times, when young adults were making up their future within its blocks.

Maybe each generation, ours included, has a fascination with the lives of people who entered adulthood just before we were born. Maybe that’s why I’m stuck on examining so minutely the years immediately after the war (just prior to my birth), on both sides of the ocean.

Have you ever flown into the sunset in the same instant that your family flies into the sunrise?

One could, I suppose, draw great symbolism from this, but I haven't quite figured out what it is. As I was booking my return flight to Madison for Monday and a return flight for other family members living on the east coast on that same date, I came up with the most unusual reservation: same airline (United), same point of departure (Pittsburgh), same time (5:45), opposite destinations (Chicago and New York).

Do the two planes share a runway and pass each other at take off? Should I wave?

Some weeks are a breeze; some are not.

That this week has tested the “difficult” to “impossible” continuum is an understatement. That I am unscathed toward its end is attributable entirely to those of you who have ridden with me, chatted with me (on email or otherwise) late and early, and allowed me to keep chipper and sane as I navigated endless hurdles that cropped up. Thank you thank you.

Light posting ahead (Saturday through Monday) as I travel to attend to business elsewhere. I will have my computer with me, but be patient: Ocean will be surfacing here and there, as time and circumstances permit.

An unusual beginning to an Ocean day: a poem by Robert Frost

(bold emphases are my own)

An Old Man’s Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off;—and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man—one man—can’t fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.

Poles serve as examples of complete incomprehensibility

I am at the gym. I have the usual props: cell phone, book, earphones. Some combination of the above keeps me from focusing on the boring repetitions. Then I hear it: clear, lucid, beautifully articulate, accent-free Polish. It’s coming from the TV screen. Have I finally cracked my noodle and plunged into the deep dark tunnel of insanity, for real?

Why no. It is a commercial for EdwardJones financial consultants. The beautifully articulate Polish speaking gentleman serves as an illustration of someone you DON’T want for a financial wizard: he is the incomprehensible one, the Person To Avoid. Apparently EdwardJones doesn’t have any of THOSE. EdwardJones, you and I are never doing business. Ever.

Where politics should never obfuscate, tarnish or in any way take away from a commemorative event

Sorry, Ocean readers, but a somber note is in order.

Today marks the 60th Anniversary of the liberation of Oswiecim (Auschwitz). Vice President Cheney is attending a commemorative ceremony in Poland. As are a number of world leaders. And, please let’s not forget the survivors. And a handful of men who once participated in the liberation of the death camp.

This was the wrong time to make a speech about a commitment to fighting tyranny around the world – a very thinly veiled allusion to a certain inaugural speech of a few days back.

Typical

5:30 Wednesday: seminar ends.
8:00 Wednesday: make my way home, scramble eggs.
8:30 Wednesday : make a whole batch of calls that needed to be made.
(email and post comments on blogs throughout)
10:00 Wednesday: turn on The Daily Show.
10:15 Wednesday: feel guilty, turn off the Daily Show.
10:30 Wednesday: take out lecture notes for next day’s class, start playing with them.
Midnight: decide I need to rewrite some of the conflict of laws and full faith and credit issues – after a brief nap.
2:30 Thursday: brief nap was too long. Oh well. Plow ahead.
5:30 Thursday: sufficiently happy with lecture that I take time to write blog post.
6:30 Thursday: break for granola and laté .
7:00 Thursday: tweak lecture more (I could do this forever).
8:00 Thursday: I tweaked too long. I rush to shower, get ready and fly out the door.
8:25 Thursday: pick up Ann.
8:30 Thursday: pick up Tonya. (Both are ready and waiting – thank you!)
8:35 Thursday: realization floods me: I did not “send” the lecture to my office computer!
8:45 Thursday: drop off Tonya and Ann.
8:46 Thursday: begin breaking speed limits to get home.
9:05 Thursday: press “Send” on my computer and wonder if I am really a sane person.
9:20 Thursday: drive into Grainger garage.
9:27 Thursday: Turn on office computer, print out 9 single-spaced pages of lecture notes, pick up important phone call.
9:30 Thursday: Begin teaching.
11:00 Thursday: collapse.