Spare Us

In the fall of 2002, I was as riveted as anyone outside of the DC area could be by the shooting and murder spree of the "Beltway Sniper." My wife at the time was about to begin a temporary assignment in Washington, and it hardly seemed safe to be contemplating such a move. The odds of encountering the sniper were millions to one, but that never stopped us from worrying.

Tonight, seven years after his capture, one of the two snipers was executed. If anyone ever deserved the death penalty, he did. His guilt was not in question. His crimes were particularly heinous, because they terrorized millions and struck down ten people for no reason any of us could understand. Yet tonight, as happens any time there's a prominent execution (for example, that of Timothy McVeigh), I actually feel worse. Somebody just got killed, somebody else intentionally did the killing, and we all knew it was coming. I would have preferred the murderer spend the rest of his life in prison, if only to spare us all this day when once again we had to relive his crimes and witness yet another planned death.

I've Admired You for So Long

I was walking into Bruno's grocery store this evening all by myself, as usual. Passing an elderly couple on their way out, I wondered whether they were happy together. My mind probably turned that way because I like thinking I'm happier not being part of a permanent couple. I've also been thinking a lot about such matters since Monday, when I read the following comment on a blog at the Washington Post:

The human species does not naturally mate for life. People in hunter gatherer societies today don't do that. People form loose pair bonds for the period of time it takes a child to be conceived, born, and weaned from its mother's milk. Then the chemical that is produced by the brain that causes people to want to be with one another is no longer produced in response to that person and they split up and form a new pair bond. This increases the genetic diversity in a small tribe where everyone is related to everyone else, and therefore has survival value which was selected for by evolution.

Marriage for life developed after people invented agriculture. Once they owned land, it became economically unfeasible for them to be continually dividing it up every few years. Also, with the invention of the animal drawn plow, a male was needed to work the farm. Males also wanted to be able to pass down their land to their sons and needed to know that the sons were really theirs. Hence marriage for life.

Now that these factors are no longer in play, and now that the social and religious restrictions on divorce have been loosened, people are reverting to their natural behaviors. What you see in Hollywood with celebrities is actually "normal". It's the rest of us that are abnormal, or at least unnatural. (this commenter, I might add, identified himself in a previous posting as a former divorce attorney!)

You have to be careful not only to read things you already agree with, or that serve merely to confirm your ill-informed prejudices. Be that as it may, this made a lot of sense to me. People feel so horrible for "falling out of love" or for seeing their marriages end in divorce within a few years. At least part of what gets us in the mess may be a chemical in our brains that produces feelings we articulate as "love." Nature may have only meant for that chemical dose to last a few years, so that you could then mate with someone else in your tribe and prevent all your families' bad genes from ending up pooled in your and your mate's offspring.

In a society like ours, that means the divorce business is always going to be good. A cultural message reinforced by thousands of years of practice that pushes us to marry collides with a biological imperative crafted by the preceding tens of thousands of years of evolution that drives us to spread our genes more widely. People marry thinking they're in love, fall out of love (i.e., lose the chemical stimulus), and then either decide to stick with it and maybe transform the marriage into something workable but less than they had hoped for, or they get divorced.

With all this in the back of my mind, I passed the couple at the grocery store this evening. I then pictured older people grocery shopping alone, and for reasons unknown to me my mind moved quickly, for the first time in years, to its memory of one of the most remarkable people I've ever met. I've admired her for so long, yet I rarely have a chance to speak of her to others.

It was September 1988. I was 25 and had finished four years of graduate school, with two to go. I was about to spend a year in Germany, France, and England to research my Ph.D. dissertation. I had driven my car, a 1978 Chevrolet Chevette, back to my parents' house in Alabama for the year (and, if you're wondering about the recent collapse of the American auto industry, simply compare the number of Japanese or German cars you still see from that era with the number of Chevettes you've encountered since the early 1990s).

I had to return to Chapel Hill, North Carolina for my flight to Germany. I felt too poor to fly (and I was -- this was the only month in my entire life I was without health insurance). So I took my one and only long-distance bus trip, from Montgomery to Durham. I was excited but a bit apprehensive. Somehow I knew the buses I had seen portrayed in movies were inaccurate, and I would likely experience something different. That it was. It was a little worse in some ways, but far better in others. The worst part was the layover in the downtown Atlanta bus station. The best was meeting the woman I've admired for so long.

She got on the bus in South Carolina somewhere. I want to say it was Greenville. She took the seat next to me, and somehow we started talking. In her mid 60s, she was a single mother who had put many children through college, after which she got a nursing degree herself (a few years earlier, in her late 50s and early 60s). She had already retired and was on the bus all by herself at the start of a journey I couldn't even imagine, but which she had longed for. As a black woman who had been born during the worst of Jim Crow, she had come far just by getting on the bus in her retirement after seeing her children through college. A moment later I would find out how far she really intended to leave the restrictions of her younger years behind.

"Where are you headed?," I must have asked. "Nova Scotia," she replied. After some immense internal astonishment had died down, I brought myself to inquire, "Why Nova Scotia?" She laughed a little and said simply, "Oh, I just always wanted to go there." I had been worried about riding between Alabama and North Carolina. Now she was going to forge ahead for days, change buses, and endure layovers in inner-city bus stations at odd hours, only to arrive by herself in a sparsely-populated, wind-swept maritime province she had only dreamed of. I took my leave at the Durham station in awe of her. My admiration subsided quickly enough in the face of my own upcoming adventures, but it was only lying dormant. It awoke this evening to remind me that no one is a success because of whom she is with, but only for the content of her dreams and her bravery in bringing them to life. I hope one day I grow up to be just like her.

Everybody Tells the Truth

It's long been one of my favorite TV episodes. It aired originally on March 3, 1973, as part of the series All in the Family. Entitled "Everybody Tells the Truth,"it bears a crucial similarity to the classic Japanese film Rashomon. The audience is presented with very different views of the same event from several eyewitnesses. In the All in the Family episode, the three truth-tellers are Archie, Mike ("The Meathead"), and Edith.

The events center around the visit to the Bunker residence of two refrigerator repairmen, one white and one black. The repairs go awry, words are exchanged, and the repairmen leave before the job is finished. Mike recalls the black repairman as a weak Uncle Tom sort whom Archie mistreats; Archie remembers him as a menacing Black Panther with a switchblade knife; and Edith presents what is meant to be the reality, that the repairman was just a normal guy going about his job.

I was reminded of this episode in the current controversy over the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates in his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. No one knows what happened except the people who were there. Unfortunately, like any of us would have done, they brought a lot of personal, societal, and cultural baggage along with them into the encounter. The participants themselves may yet unite around a common narrative of events, but for the time being they're presenting contradictory accounts. I think it would behoove us to show restraint in light of the uncertainty and the lack of any good reason for us outsiders to speculate. It may be hard if you've had bad experiences with the police before, or if your house has been burgled. You want to line the events up with a paradigm your mind already has waiting for them.

Both sides are, in one sense each, absolutely right. How you can be arrested in your own house for just speaking some words is beyond my imagination, at least in a free society. On the other hand, we must all reckon with the possibility one day that we will run into the police as they are answering such a burglary call in our neighborhood or looking for a car that matches the description of the one we're driving (I remember all the poor owners of white vans in the D.C. area in the fall of 2002). When I was 16 I was pulled over doing my early morning paper route (about 3:00 a.m.) because the hospital in my hometown had just been robbed by people stealing narcotics. Any car moving at that hour was going to be stopped. It shook me up, but I don't know that I would have done anything differently if I had been a police officer at that moment.

I'm very curious how the truth is going to develop out of the current imbroglio. Until it does I'm going to keep my mouth shut and probably wince every time I hear anyone offering an uninformed opinion. That includes everyone from my Facebook friends to the president of the United States. Move along folks, nothing to see here -- yet.

Ten Things I Learned about Italy

Observations from my recent journey...

1. There's a gelato opportunity on every corner.
2. Italy is a hyper-democracy, and yet the trains run on time well over 95% of the time. They really didn't need Mussolini for that.
3. The political rhetoric is coarser even than in the U.S., but there's rarely violence associated with it. In Carpi, I saw a stand that had been erected to distribute election materials for the anti-immigrant Northern League. Right next to it, several men of South Asian descent had gathered and were just shooting the breeze. Neither group paid attention to the other. I'm sure it's not this way everywhere, but it seemed to show a tolerance despite harsher anti-immigrant rhetoric than we hear in the US.
4. The police are very active. I saw many random traffic stops, many patrolling officers, and even was sniffed (along with all the other passengers) by a drug dog as I got off the train in Verona. I think the dog liked the smell of the cherry jam I had spilled on my duffel bag, but he didn't give the drug signal to his handler.
   
5. The Italians are as proud of their language as anyone, but they don't expect foreigners to learn it. They're very tolerant of tourists.
6. Stamp every transportation ticket in the validating machine before boarding the vehicle!
7. Wi-fi is slow in coming.
8. Watching simplistic TV dramas with subtitles is the best possible way to improve your Italian quickly.
9. Macedonia (fruit salad) makes the best desert.
10. Espresso is the travelling coffee drinker's best friend. If you learn no other Italian, "un espresso, per favore" will always give you a way to stop for a minute, get some caffeine, read a newspaper, and reflect on how the trip is going while standing at the counter.

Italian Journey

Like Goethe, I'm off now on a meandering journey to reacquaint myself with Italy. The agenda: Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Modena, Ravenna, Rome, Verona, and the Lago di Garda. I'll update my photos from the trip here and on Facebook as I have time. The photo below should change every time there are new pictures to see.

Photos updated as of Friday, June 5, 2009, 10:20 am Central Time

Italy, May-June 2009

How Not to Get Ready for Your High School Reunion

Nearly ten years ago, I attended the 20th reunion of my high school's graduating class of 1980. During an assembly in the high school auditorium, we were feted by the current students in a ritual that we too had participated in when we were in school. Skits are always presented making light of the school and the world 10, 20, 30, and 40 years earlier -- one skit for each of the four classes holding its reunion that weekend (those graduating 50, 60, or even 70 years earlier are invited to the assembly, but don't get a special skit).

Last time, the classes were seated as I suppose they must always be: the 40th closest to the stage (to help with hearing?), the 30th behind them, followed by the 20th (my class ten years ago), and finally the 10th in the back. As I took my seat I looked down below me at the members of the class of 1970 gathering for their 30th reunion. My response was immediate and lasting: if that's what people look like after 30 years, then I won't be back.

I hadn't attended my 10th reunion because I was a poor graduate student living a thousand miles away. I went to the 20th because I was back in the area and a bit curious. We had barely gotten an email list started at that time, photo attachments to emails were a novelty, and there was no such thing as a blog or Facebook. The reunion could thus fulfill its ancient and enduring purpose: letting us see what everyone else looks like.

It's not just their faces, hair, and weight. It's not just the relative pulchritude of the person on their arms. It's the way they carry themselves: have they accommodated themselves to life's vagaries, or in trying to control life's ups and downs wantonly or foolishly have they begun to wear themselves down prematurely? Are they posing by smiling too much at the wrong moments? Are they interested in other people or only how they stack up against them using some arbitrary measurement of looks or status?

I got a good taste of all this at my 20th reunion. I told myself, "That was interesting, but it was the last one." In the meantime, Facebook emerged among college students, but has found its true calling in reconnecting much older sorts with their high school classmates (I even friended someone from my 4th grade class). I friended some in my graduating class from high school, others friended me, and in the sixth months since I've had Facebook, I've been connected with about a dozen of those who got their diplomas in May 1980. It must scare them or at least shock them when they see my graying hair and other signs of age in my photos. I've been forced on more than one occasion myself to stare at the eyes in their photos before I could recognize them, so much had their other features changed.

More than anything else, this is now why I don't want to go to my 30th reunion. It must inevitably devolve into the world's largest free-range open-casket funeral, where we all walk up to living corpses of what we once were and either admire or criticize the mortician for how the remains are presented. Do I really want to take part? Is there any function of a high school reunion that can't now be fulfilled by Facebook and email?

Somebody must be on the verge of organizing our 30th reunion, since it's due to occur this October. If I go, I will have to decide why to ignore the logic of this post. There are some awfully nice people in my class, and we've all learned things that it would be good to share. But I don't want to remember. The sweetness, bitterness, and poignancy of the late 1970s is only exacerbated by the passage of time. Recalling it all at once might lead to an emotional overload. Moreover, I don't have stories of children (or grandchildren) to share, leaving me high and dry during most of the conversations (I noticed this even ten years ago). I think I'd rather just lurk on Facebook, hope that none of my classmates unfriend me if they read this, and do my remembering in much safer, and smaller, doses.

Joseph Nigota, 1940-2009: Three Remembrances

By Joe Nigota's Colleagues Dan Rogers, Mike Thomason, and Richmond Brown

When you lose someone, it hurts a little more if you realize you can't remember the first time you met him. I know I must have encountered Joe Nigota, who died last Friday at the age of 68, during my job interview at the University of South Alabama in January 1991. But when did I first shake his hand, hear his name, or look him in the eye? It's all lost to me, and I'm saddened at the oblivion created by my faulty memory.

For over forty years Joe taught in our History Department. He arrived in 1966, while he was still a grad student at Emory. His master's thesis and his Ph.D. dissertation, which he finished in 1973, concerned medieval England. He taught courses on Western civilization, medieval and early modern England, and medieval and Renaissance Europe. From the very first quarter I taught at South Alabama in 1991, I realized the students thought he was special. I struggled to figure out why, because I wanted to be a good teacher too. And I couldn't see it based solely on the Joe I knew outside of his classes.

He was slight of stature and slow of gait. He didn't walk: he ambled. And not only did I never see him run; I can't imagine him running if I try. When not lecturing, he talked in a low deep voice that my poor hearing struggled to understand every single time. He always sat off to the side in our department meetings and said little. When he did speak, of course, I never understood a word. I couldn't figure out how he could transform himself into the great teacher I'd heard about.

I finally decided he must be like an accomplished actor, far more skilled at losing himself in his role than most of us who adopt a different persona when standing in front of a crowd. He truly came alive in ways he never did outside of the classroom. That may well be why he continued to teach into a fifth decade, even though he probably could have retired and made more money from his pensions and Social Security than from remaining as a full-time faculty member. He positively needed to be in character, and the rest of us sometimes made morbid jokes about how they were going to have to drag him out of the classroom one day because he'd never leave willingly or alive. In the end it didn't quite go down like that, but almost.

His teaching relied heavily on slides, and he continued to use them despite the advent of PowerPoint and the unconditional surrender of the academy to its cognitive style. But he had been adapting, slowly and steadily. This semester, his two classes bracketed mine in the same room; i.e., he taught, then left for 90 minutes, then came back; and in between my class took place in the same room. Thus I was pleasantly surprised to discover he was using the computer and projector system before me and I wouldn't have to turn it on from scratch or shut it down each time. I was delighted to see him striving, like any great teacher, to find new ways to reach and seize the attention of students.

He would hate being talked about like this. He would hate even more having his photograph displayed as it is below. He was a perfectionist of the sort that I understand all too well, because I'm one too. Usually "perfectionist" is meant to connote someone who won't rest until something is just right. It's an overt obsession. With Joe and me, it was and is different. We got the idea sometime in our childhood that being good or perfect was essential to our survival. Our lives thereafter would thus always be a struggle to reconcile the mess of the world with the standards fabricated by our earliest caregivers in order to teach us to become healthy and functioning members of our families and societies. We don't constantly adjust things to make them perfect; we tend to just give up in frustration. For us the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. We know it and struggle with it all our lives.

I wish I could talk about his teaching. I never witnessed it. A close friend who has a Ph.D. in history from Oxford and is a renowned scholar in his field once visited me here in Mobile. He asked to sit in on a typical class, and I asked Joe if my friend could do so in one of his classes. My hidden motive was to get a first-hand report on Joe's teaching style. Now, not only was Joe's professional specialty English history, he loved most things about England and was happy to have an English visitor. My friend came out of the class amazed -- he blurted out: "every department should have someone like him!" But I never had the pleasure and honor to see this for myself. Joe's techniques often involved using maps on stands, and he would usually put one in front of the window in the classroom door. I couldn't even spy on him as I walked past his room, much less hear him. He must have wanted it that way, to be the star of a one-man show hidden for 50 or 75 minutes at a time from the outside world.

He loved fiddling with his computers -- perhaps too much. I'm often frustrated that some people who ask me for help won't spend time just exploring programs to see what they can do. Many of the features they want to know about would be obvious if they'd just looked around a bit first. Joe looked around all right, but had a penchant for going a little too far. Basic settings would get changed, and I'd be at a loss to help. His final battle was with Vista. He sent me this e-mail last August:

Dan,

Just a note. Vista has won. I'm so overwhelmed and unnerved by it all that I can't do basic things. Like typing this---or sending it. I typed the address wrong the first time! Thanks for "lending me your ear." I'm trying hard not to go over the edge. Joeeeeee..........

Later he reported the score in his struggle against Vista as if it were a football game. He claimed to be far behind in the first quarter. In the end I think he'd pulled ahead to stay.

For many years he was our liaison with the University Library. He sorted thousands of cards and slips we were sent containing reviews of new books in history. His tedious work of selecting the cards or slips to send to each faculty member meant we would receive only the ones relevant to our fields. He passed along the task to a colleague recently, but for decades I think he knew more about our library, and cared more, than anyone. I can imagine our librarians will mourn him as much as anyone. He was a true standout as a bibliophile among the many bibliophiles in our profession.

If I had any real issue with Joe, it was because of the cigars he used to smoke in his office several doors down from mine. I hate breathing tobacco smoke. I've seen the stuff kill people I've loved and cared about, and it also stinks and annoys me. But he was my senior colleague, and for me, the way I am, it was impossible to say anything to him. He probably sensed it, but he never said anything to me and I never said anything to him. He would only stop with the cigars after bypass surgery several years back.

In 1998, during one of his last summer sojourns in London, my British friend and his wife, along with me and my wife at the time, visited Joe and his wife at their summer flat overlooking the Thames across from what was then called the Millenium Dome, but is now "The O₂." Joe delighted in sharing the history of London with us and anyone else who saw him there. He was no snob: he made it a special point to indicate a church that had recently been used to film an episode of Friends, "The One with Ross's Wedding," that had aired the previous May. He treated all six of us to dinner at a Chinese restaurant on a docked barge at nearby Canary Wharf. That evening meant and means the world to me still.

You don't get to choose whether to be photographed if you're in public (only whether to turn and hide your face if you realize you're being shot), and you don't get to choose how people remember you when you die. They will do what they need to do to begin processing their grief for you. So while Joe could successfully insist his University web page have no photo of him and that there be no public funeral, I feel I have to do things like post photos and reveal details and share observations, all of which would have made him cringe or request silence. One of my final encounters with his shyness and perfectionism came when I tried to nominate him for our college's teaching award. He refused because he believed his teaching had suffered setbacks since his heart attack. There was no way to nominate him without his cooperation, so I demurred. But it was a shame. I and others could see a lifetime of success, but he was concerned with what he saw as a slight recent decline, so concerned he blocked any attempt to honor him.

I took this photo of Joe in 2005. I've cropped out a student with whom I asked him to pose at our department's awards day, since he never would have stood still to be photographed by himself. In mandatory group photos he often hid or mostly obscured himself by standing in the back behind taller people. This is not unusual, I know. I have many family members who feel the same and who scowl silently and briefly when they see me take out my camera. Like so many things, though, the photographs are not for the subject alone, but also for those near to him or her.


An essay like this one would normally have at least a few words to say about Joe's childhood and youth. I know nothing of either. That would indicate we weren't close friends, which is true: his colleagues from the earliest days of the University in the 1960s would have to share such details. It also speaks for his general reticence about the circumstances of his private life. For example I found out only due to an offhand remark that he'd gotten married some years ago.

If in writing these words I've violated that maxim that Joe would have known so well, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, of the dead speak only good, it's only because we have differing ideas of the good. To me, at this moment, the good involves showing and sharing more about this amazing, kind, loving man than was possible while he lived. He was a far more interesting and complex person than I and most ever got to experience first hand. Perhaps by sharing some of the more poignant things in my memory -- even and especially things Joe would have wanted to leave unspoken -- I can encourage others to speak or write. And then just maybe we can start to assemble what we all want but never had: a fuller image of this brilliant scholar and teacher, this self-effacing and helpful colleague, the soul of our History Department, the lovably imperfect man who walked among us as Joseph Anthony Nigota.

Dan Rogers
February 22, 2009
===

When Marilyn and I came to Mobile in 1970 we felt very much like fish out of water. One of the History faculty, Joe Nigota, who had been here for several years at that point, took pity on us. I suppose being from New York City and a Medieval history scholar, he knew what it felt like to find yourself in this strange place, Mobile. Now, Joe was not the only member of the faculty to extend him or herself, but he was very kind. One evening he drove us down Dauphin Street and as we went along the street east of Wentzell's he pointed out the new sky scraper, the First National Bank Building. He called it the "Running Building," because as we drove along it seemed to be running. Joe pointed out that no matter how fast it ran, it couldn't escape Mobile! Neither could we as it turned out, thanks to the shortage of jobs in History after the early 70's, so we were here, for better or worse, and here we stayed for the rest of our lives.

Joe took refuge in his teaching and in his trips to London in the summer. Marilyn and I had been there and we returned after coming to Mobile until the arrival of children made it difficult. Joe kept going and introducing colleagues and students to that wonderful place. He did careful research in medieval documents, including the scrolls in the PRO, which very few could read. He did so. Scholars who worked with those documents were my heroes, as I had no idea how anyone could do that. Many years later I read an entry in the English Dictionary of National Biography he had written. Based on such research, the article was just wonderful. He brought his subject to life and wrote about him as if he had known the man personally. Joe had to let me read it as I was on a department promotion and raise committee, and it was in his file which he had to submit. Otherwise he would never have shown it to me. He just refused to accept that he was gifted as a scholar, writer and even as a teacher. He would not allow us to honor him, but he couldn't stop the students. Year after year he was voted as the department's best teacher. And simply put: He was.

Marilyn and I lived in Hillsdale the first four years in Mobile. We had parties from time to time and Joe would come and I think he enjoyed himself. At least once we got him to do an imitation of Milton Cross explaining an opera being broadcast from the Met. Joe had been submerged in opera and classical music as he grew up in midtown Manhattan. He knew the characters and plot lines of most operas and that knowledge allowed him to invent an opera and describe it as Cross would have done, if it had been real. He had us laughing so hard that I cannot remember most of what he said, except for, "And the heroine says, 'For you I do this!' and stabs herself, dying on stage." Thereafter, "For you I do this!" became a catch line for any outrageous action. Joe had a wonderful sense of humor, laced with a fine sense of irony.

I never heard Joe teach. I knew if I did I would feel obliged to kill myself because I was so awful by comparison. As the years went by I think he got better while I got worse. He lived to teach, while I lived despite my teaching ability. I finally became so disillusioned I retired early. Despite serious health issues, Joe just couldn't desert his students. He and I corresponded via email after I left the university. We talked about the university, students and music. I asked him to take the WHIL listener survey, as we both were disappointed in its changed programming. Sadly, I sent that email on the night he died.

There are many things to be said about Joe Nigota. We should have found a way to see him promoted to full professor, but he just wouldn't play that game and it never happened. He probably should have been paid more, and over the years he served the university he got few rewards from the institution. He deserved more, but simply refused to play the game that most of the rest of us embraced. As time went on he taught, read, researched and got books for us for the library but gradually lived apart from most of us. He was a very private person, neither aloof nor unfriendly, just reserved. There was a sadness there too, though he took great strength from his wife Carolynn, and her love meant the world to him.

There is no way I can think of to end this essay. Like Joe's life, which didn't have an especially happy ending, this won't either. Marilyn and I will miss Joe as one of the more remarkable people we have known, as a good friend and an inspiring colleague. All sounds rather grandiose and Joe would dismiss this without a word. But, nonetheless, we will miss you, my friend.

Mike Thomason
February 23, 2009

==

My dear colleagues Mike Thomason and Dan Rogers (and they will be my colleagues wherever I happen to live and work and whether they claim me or not) speak with enviable eloquence about Joe Nigota, our dear friend and role model, who, as many had predicted, kept teaching right up to the very end. I started at South a year before Dan did and left about two and a half years ago for the University of Florida. I still wrestle with the move and often think (or hope) that I will awake from this dream and be back in Mobile with my friends at USA. I often think of Joe Nigota and Lenny Macaluso, his inseparable friend of more than 40 years, and miss them deeply. I'll be damn sure to tell Lenny that as soon as I can. 

Like Dan and Mike, I learned of Joe's amazing teaching mostly vicariously, through the comments of students. His classes were always the first ones to enroll to capacity. Good thing our classrooms were mostly limited to 45 seats, so the rest of us got a few students. The closest I ever came to seeing his gifts firsthand was during a colloquium he once presented on Christopher Columbus as a man of medieval Europe. He held the audience transfixed. I often wished we could videotape his classes for posterity. I'm sure he would never have indulged the idea. Like Dan, I was struck by the personality transformation that Joe seemed to undergo when he entered the classroom. Outside the classroom, he always seemed on the verge of exhaustion, mumbling and shuffling down the hallway, barely seeming to have the energy to make it to his office where, until the campaign against smoking in public buildings finally forced him to do otherwise, he took refuge in his microfilms and his cigars. But then there would be another class.

I wish I had gotten to know Joe better. I never made it to London for the kind of visit Mike and Dan were privileged to experience. It would have been great to see Joe in another place, away from the third floor of the Humanities Building. He was a big sports fan and we shared a common rooting interest in the Braves and Saints, hapless franchises for most of our lifetimes. The 14 consecutive division titles for the Braves seemed somehow an aberration and their losing efforts of the past three years more in the natural order of things. Of course they did only win the ONE World Series, so they could still be the lovable losers our psyches seemed to demand. Lenny can have his Yankees and their 27 championships! Joe and I needed to pull for the underdogs. At least the Saints never let us down.

Like Mike and Dan, I was sometimes frustrated by Joe's seemingly misplaced humility and refusal to be acknowledged. I'm sure that this was an essential part of who he was and governed the way he approached the world, but I wish he had thought better of himself and his amazing talents and I hope that he had some sense of the way his colleagues and students felt about him. His perfectionism and his reluctance to publish perhaps deprived the scholarly world (in part at least) of the vast knowledge he had to offer. But perhaps that knowledge was saved for his kids, his beloved students. I can still see them lining the halls in little Nigotavilles frantically trying to finish their blue book exams because Joe never had the heart to take the test booklets out of their hands and he had to yield the classroom to another instructor. 

More than any of my colleagues at USA, Joe was the one that our former students (they always seemed to be working at restaurants and bars around town) would ask about if they knew or learned I was a history prof at South. Students would have majored in Nigota if they could and some of them no doubt tried. I've been pondering Dan's acting analogy. I'm not sure that it was the case that Joe had to stay in character so much as that he poured everything he had into his 50 or 75 minutes in the classroom (and the long nights preparing) and it left him exhausted once he was outside the arena.

In my last few years at South (at least for now!), I became rather involved in the Faculty Senate. Too involved. I don't know what Joe thought of such endeavors--fool's errands perhaps, but I always comforted (or deluded) myself by thinking that whatever I was trying to accomplish in wrestling with the administration on this or that matter, I was trying to figure out how to make USA a better place. My simple guidepost was, "what could we do to make Joe Nigota's work easier, more satisfying, rewarding or recognized?" Because for me, what Joe (and Lenny, and Larry Holmes and others) did in their classrooms was the whole point of the university. 

I visit the USA campus as much I can now living 6 hours away and I've tried to make it a point to drop in on Joe and my other old friends. I sensed he was proud of me (he always greeted me warmly as "my friend") and that while he was happy to see me he was also happy that I had escaped USA. I didn't share that sentiment at all (and perhaps I am imagining this). I just know that I became who I am at that place, trying to be like Joe and Lenny and Larry, and that wherever I ended up could not be a better place, or as good a place at that.

I miss Joe deeply but I'm grateful to have been touched by his quiet and unassuming greatness. I'm glad others feel the same.

Richmond Brown

February 23, 2009

Doc in a Box

Today I had my first experience with an "urgent care" practice on the weekend, and I loved it.

At about 4:00 a.m. when I couldn't sleep due to an incipient illness that was tossing out some pretty unique and worrisome symptoms, I googled "mobile alabama urgent care". The result pointed me to a group of three physicians who treat injuries and illnesses outside of normal office hours for doctors. Instead of having to wait for Monday at 8:00 a.m. and call for an appointment to see my regular doctor whenever he could fit me in, I could have the problem seen to within the next few hours.

I walked in at opening time, was seen within a few minutes, diagnosed, prescribed, and turned loose all within half an hour. The most difficult part turned out to be waiting for my pharmacist to open at 9:00.

I will not look forward to going back there, because that would mean I have a problem. But if I do, this practice will be my first choice for the more routine sorts of questions. Imagine: as I walked out, the staff even told me they hoped I feel better. I have seen the future.

Zuneless, Three Days over Two Years

Along with hundreds of thousands of others, I hit a snag in my everyday life on New Years' Eve. My Microsoft Zune MP3 player stopped working. The 30 megabyte models produced in 2006 had a simple but profound programming flaw: they couldn't handle the fact that 2008 had been a leap year. The 30 MB Zunes all froze on December 31 when the clock found itself in limbo between 2008, according to one of its calendars, and 2009, which would begin in 24 hours according to another of its calendars.

Unfortunately, I was one of the first to discover this, before Microsoft analyzed the problem and posted a solution, which was to simply wait until after noon Greenwich Mean Time on January 1 and reattach the Zune to the computer. I thought I could reset the Zune myself by opening it up and unplugging the battery for a few seconds. I found unofficial instructions on how to do this online (thus voiding the warranty, but I think it had expired anyway). I took some pride in prying it open for the first time. But unplugging the battery not only failed to fix the problem, it meant Microsoft's easy solution of waiting until after noon GMT on January 1 would no longer work for me.

It was complex and frustrating, but finally, thanks to some instructions posted online by others who had made the same mistake, I regained control of the Zune on January 2. I then had to reinstall the device's firmware and all my music and video files, which was a small price considering the frustration I had endured over the previous three days.

The lessons? Most important was the one they teach medical students early: "Don't just do something, stand there." Once I discovered it was a widespread problem, waiting for Microsoft to tell me what to do would have been a lot smarter than being proactive (i.e., destructive). I'm glad I know what the inside looks like now, but it wasn't worth the trouble.

Second, like the NASA engineers who goofed and crashed a Mars probe because of a conflict between the metric and English systems of measurement, software engineers (and all other humans, myself included) are capable of overlooking the most obvious issues, like February 29ths. Imagine if the same engineers had built this problem into a car's computer. The car wouldn't have worked for a day and might well have stopped in the middle of the road.

Third, buying hardware from Microsoft is now something I'm probably never going to consider. The Zune (a gift, for which I remain very grateful) works very well when it works, but I'm not going to be able to purge my memory of these three days if I'm ever in the market for anything Microsoft makes for which they have a viable competitor. They've promised to fix the Zune's leap year problem by 2012, but if mine's still working then, I'm going to give it New Years Eve off.

The Year of Hearing Dangerously

I've written more this year than in any of the previous two years of this blog, although the pace has slowed over the last months as my life stayed very busy and made writing here less compelling.

To close out the year, here are some things I experienced or learned in 2008 that I can share without revealing events better left in my or someone else's private life.

• Hearing aids have a five-year life span. They require increasing attention and repair thereafter, and if you use two, you'll be half deaf for much of the time while waiting for one of them to be repaired. Once this year, both of my nearly ten-year old hearing aids became defective at once, making me functionally deaf and seriously impeding my ability to do my job. New ones had to await the start of 2009 because of substantial tax advantages, but help is now on the way (including Bluetooth capability!). And I'll know to budget for replacements in 2014.

• Assuming that "fate" has intervened to place you into contact with someone is dangerous. Even if it's true, fate's purpose might just as easily be to force you to learn from your disagreements and your falling out with them as from your commonalities and companionship. Fate's role is best determined decades later.
  

• True friends are timeless. Absence from them or not hearing from them have no effect on your feelings for them. If you're antsy because you haven't heard from someone, they're not your friend, but someone you're using to keep yourself emotionally occupied. They're a crutch. Make them your friend by letting them come and go – or to slightly rework the line from "Hey Jude": "let 'em out and let 'em in."
  

• If someone involves you in a decision in which you have a stake, but not the final say, then keep your emotions out of it. If you give advice, expect it to be ignored or rejected so that you don't get your feelings hurt. Your main function is to serve as a sounding board, not a participant.
  

• The single security line at the Denver airport is the most grotesque abomination in the history of air travel. At this monster airport, everyone goes through the same line. Any natural anxiety about travel is compounded by the sight of thousands of people ahead of you in line. When you reach the metal detectors and x-ray machines, they don't even take you on a first come, first served basis, but force you to choose between 6-8 lines, meaning you may well see people who were behind you get ahead if they choose more wisely.
  

• If I were charged with a crime of which I was innocent, I would want a jury composed of people like those I met when called for jury duty last summer. No one wanted to be there, and everyone griped about the way we got herded around and left in the dark for long stretches. But when the time came and we almost got put on a jury, everyone was extremely conscientious and highly respectful of the court and the law.
  

• Taking first-year Italian helped me see a lot of things from the students' perspective for the first time in twenty years. I never realized how hard it was to ignore your phone till I was sitting in class with one in my pocket. Book prices and academic bureaucracy were other experiences to which I was reintroduced. Our students are a tolerant bunch – I can't imagine professors routinely putting up with it all. And I've never been more grateful for a helpful, hardworking, and tolerant teacher: thanks Roberta!

• Biggest regret: Even when you hear the words being spoken to you, there is great peril in assuming that you assign the same meaning to them as the speaker. On more than one occasion this year, I've heard stories and interpreted them in the light of similar experiences I've had. In the end it emerged that the similarities were deceptive; the other person and I were talking past each other without realizing it. We got thumped, and thumped others in the process. This is my biggest regret of the year, and if I could apologize to those others in person, I would do so.
  

• Most grateful for: I'm happiest this year that people emerged or reappeared to challenge me to move out of the same old patterns and habits, or at least to question them. The patterns and habits were there for a reason, of course. They represented my approach to life, one I had grown comfortable with and had succeeded with. Tennyson's line, "Though much is taken, much abides," was never more apt. That I've been able to add to my comfort by selectively challenging its very premises has been the one thing I've been most grateful for this year.

Merry Christmas. Happy 2009.

Creative Self-Destruction

If we're lucky, we experience periods when we bring all that has been certain and reassuring into question. Many things that have remained beyond our comfort zone suddenly seem like real possibilities. The simplest name for this openness to change is "growth." You don't get it for free, though.

One of the greatest costs will come in your relationships with those around you. They had a vested interest in you as you were. Unless they're the catalyst for your growth and are experiencing it with you, they're likely to be puzzled, offended, or even repulsed by the changes. They don't want to have to reimagine you. You're leaving them behind. It may even appear that you've come unhinged. As far as they're concerned, you might just as well show up with a Mohawk one morning as change any of the basic patterns of your life.

I think we all have aspects of ourselves that we'd be better off without. Outside intervention alone could never destroy them. There has to be an intense inner desire to become a fuller person. In essence, we decide to take on the task of destroying ourselves, not as an act of suicide but of preparing for a renaissance. As long as the behavioral changes are not physically harmful to oneself (drugs or booze, for example) or others (abuse, criminal behavior, etc.), then those of us seeing our friend move through the process would do well to stand aside, watch, and offer to help if it gets too hard to handle.

For our friend is going through an act of creative self-destruction, to play off the economic concept of Joseph Schumpeter and others. It takes a certain courage, even if born of desperation, to begin this journey. Success is highly uncertain. But when remaining stagnant is no longer an option, when either a slow fade-out or a quick flame-out is all that awaits, you've got to grab the wrecking ball when it appears and let it have a go. As Forrest's mom said, you don't know what you're going to get -- other than a chance to learn from pushing past boundaries and making mistakes, and to be more fully alive.

The cinema's greatest recent example of
creative self-destruction: Kip Dynamite

The Election: My Only Comment

Hoisted

A year or two ago, I borrowed a published idea from a professor who required anyone (herself included) whose cell phone rang in her class to bring a high-quality cookie for the rest of the class at the next meeting. This was a substitute for my previous draconian policy of often asking those whose phones rang to leave the class immediately, not to return until the next class. Faced with an epidemic of ringing cell phones five years ago, I had adopted the harsh policy to try to restore the quiet that had been one of my most effective tools.

In my syllabi I've included myself among those who might have to bring a cookie for the class, because I realized the way my habits had changed that one day I might well forget to turn my phone off. In the last couple of years I've recoiled in horror a few times when I discovered after a class that my phone was in my pocket and had been on for the entire period.

The other day it finally happened. I reddened, but didn't have to panic and turn off the phone quickly because it was just the text message alert and only sounded once. I shut the phone off and let the students all know they'd be getting a cookie from me. They seemed to be laughing, but I don't know for sure because I couldn't quite bring myself to look up at them, such was my embarrassment.

My conundrum was all the more profound when I recalled a student I asked to leave class five years ago when her text message alert went off. I felt bad at the time, worse in the intervening years, and downright horrible after it happened to me. If I were ever in one of those programs where you get to Step 9, I'd have to hunt her down and apologize. I had no empathy five years ago because I had no cell phone. Even when I had a cell phone I at first got so few calls on it that I still didn't understand how easy it was to make the simple mistake of assuming your phone is turned off.

My experience may demonstrate again that we're either in a place where we can empathize with those around us, or we're headed there.

The Illusory Void

We often hear it described as the quest for the meaning of life. But I think we're more familiar with it as a sense of being incomplete, bored, restless, depressed, aimless, or lost, or of not knowing who we really are. Whatever we call it, we're not who we feel like we should be.

The solutions range from palliatives like ceaseless activity or conversation, surfing the Internet, watching TV, reading, exercising, or drinking a little too much, to searching for a new religion, hoping or assuming another person (usually a new or lost partner) will end all disquiet, and ultimately various forms of suicide, either slow (like drugs) or immediate.

Throughout history all searching for a cure outside the stillness of one's own mind or consciousness has proven fruitless. Those who have found a sure sense of purpose in their religious faith first learned to be utterly content with precisely who they were inside. Their religion was a bonus, not a cure. It wouldn't be of the slightest use if they weren't ready to receive its comforts. On the contrary, it would merely disguise their lurking horror at the presumed abyss within and postpone their reckoning.

Most of us will never proceed directly to the desired point. Instead we have to try and fail at all alternatives because we can't believe the answer would be as simple as looking inside ourselves and realizing that we're already perfectly complete. There is no void, but we are conditioned by everything else in our experience to feel, behave, and believe otherwise. It requires the painful corrective of seeking solace in worthless and harmful alternatives before the fortunate and brave can return home to the perfection that has always been there, but so artfully hidden.

Suicide by Court

It wasn't one of my better predictions -- at least for a long time.

About thirteen years ago, on the very day Hurricane Opal blew past us here on the Gulf Coast, O.J. Simpson was acquitted of two murders in downtown Los Angeles. It mattered little that he would be found responsible for those same murders in a civil proceeding in a suburban L.A. courtroom two years later. He could roam the world free, living well on pensions and investments that couldn't be touched.

I predicted that he wouldn't live too long. I thought he would have some kind of "accident" like driving his car off a road into a tree. I pictured a man who must have been secretly overwhelmed by his own guilt and by the disparity between his public persona and his private self-image. Surely (I reasoned) he would start living wrecklessly and aimlessly, leading to some kind of early death.

He turned out to be a hardier psychopath than I had imagined. He never had the "accident" I had foreseen, but he did have repeated legal difficulties. His chosen path to self-destruction would not be speed or drugs, but the system that had failed by allowing him to escape punishment for what he had done. He continued to offer it chances to bring his private and public selves into line. Today it obliged in Las Vegas by finding him guilty of kidnapping and robbery. It's said he may receive the equivalent of a life sentence for his latest crimes.

He still has appeals and he may yet find a way to walk out of this one. If not, it looks to me that Simpson at last has discovered his route to self-destruction. Instead of feeling any pity for a 61-year-old man being led away in handcuffs perhaps never to emerge from prison again, we might realize that in a way he's getting what he wanted but lacked the physical courage to engineer. He couldn't bring himself to actively work toward his own demise, but he never minded involving as many others as it required. That is the true measure of the menace he represented, and of the relief now offered him by a life's imprisonment.

Show Me How It Would Have Been, Clarence

I've been wondering how the last few years would have gone down if much greater care had been exercised in lending money and if mortgage debt had not been repackaged as a new form of investment that would be used and re-used many times as collateral in further specious transactions. Where might we be today, versus where we actually are?

Some people who timed their exits from stocks, mortgage backed securities, etc., would be far worse off. But more importantly, the economy would have experienced slower, steadier growth over the last few years because an artificial and unsustainable run-up in home prices would not have encouraged such free consumer spending and acquisition of further debt. The stock market would be a little higher than it is today, but it never would have reached the stratosphere and caused so many who bought in at the top to lose so much. There would be millions of people who never would have moved from rental to owned housing. Their credit ratings would be better and their jobs would be more secure because the economy wouldn't have oscillated so wildly between boom and bust.

This entire imaginary scenario would have been the reverse of the scene from It's a Wonderful Life: instead of Clarence the angel revealing the horrors of an alternate present, we would witness the results of a steady if unexciting period of slow growth and widespread but incremental increases in wealth.

The problem is all that would have been so boring. Without the huge risk, there never would have been the huge gains that produced so much instant gratification. When "house flipping" enters the mainstream vocabulary, you might realize everyone's gone a little giddy or mad. It gets me back to one of my favorite quotations about the source of human unhappiness, from Blaise Pascal in the 17th century: "all human troubles stem from a single cause -- the inability to sit still in a room." The slightest excitement can create what is probably at least a brief chemical dependency on such a state and then withdrawal symptoms unless more and greater excitement is immediately forthcoming.

In contrast to how Clarence's vision ended, we wouldn't return from such a divinely-enabled reverie to the beauty of the actual present, but rather to a mad dash to socialize the financial services sector (or at least the risky portion of their business), calls to trust the executive branch with nearly a trillion dollars without the slightest accountability, and no idea how to rework our system so this doesn't happen again. It's as if George Bailey really did run off with the bank's money, his friends came by with more money to help after the bank examiners discovered the loss, and he kept all the donations anyway. Then he expects to return to the bank the same as always. Wouldn't it be time to think about switching banks, or at least asking George to find another job?

Stand and Deliver

If the rest of the country -- and maybe the world -- is anything like me, they're moving from a stunned silence to a more overt anger as they realize what's about to happen over the next few days.

From an American system avowedly hostile to anything it considers socialism is coming a plan to nationalize nearly a trillion dollars worth of assets, in effect transferring wealth from all of us to a smaller number of us who made catastrophic, bizarre, and easily foreseen investment blunders. In the great mortgage crisis, money was lent hundreds of thousands of times to people who didn't have the ability to pay it back unless the real estate market continued to climb to outrageous heights. In effect, everyone's money was put on the same roulette number, and it didn't come up. You'd think you could have seen that one coming.

I can believe that if something isn't done, credit will all but evaporate and the economy we have come to know will collapse. I can also believe that these mortgages must be nationalized. What I can't believe is that once again we're going to borrow money (i.e., add to the federal debt and postpone indefinitely a final reckoning) in order to evade paying for our own mistakes with our own taxes, and that we're not going to require anything substantial in exchange for saving all these companies. At the very least, for a trillion dollars we should be able to get more oversight of the "financial services sector" or an equity stake in these firms in exchange for cleansing their balance sheets of all their bad debts.

I'm not one of those who think every single person who got into a bad mortgage needs to be helped out. If there's no risk, there's no reason to be careful. Many who agreed to these mortgages never stopped to think that they were gambling their future on a spin of the roulette wheel, betting on the increasingly unlikely idea that home prices would rise indefinitely.

Others are being trounced more or less innocently, since they had no intention of gambling on the real estate market, but just wanted a place to live, got a conventional mortgage, and followed all the rules. Now if they have to move because of a job transfer, they may have to sell their house at a loss and come up with cash to get out of the mortgage. Or maybe they want to borrow in order to tap the down payment they originally put into the house, but they can't because the house isn't worth as much as the mortgage on it. These are the people who should feel angriest of all. Not only will they have to share in the increased national debt along with the rest of us in order to take all the bad mortgages off the books of financial firms, they will also bear a huge personal cost for having bought a house at the worst possible time even though procedurally they did everything right.

In a different century and in a smaller community, we'd be gathering the pitchforks and torches and heading out together to enact a crude but efficient justice on the few who have betrayed the rest of us so badly. In our own time and complex economy, instead we borrow more money and hand it over immediately to these same people. But frustration's going to have to find an outlet, and that right soon.

If only...

What We Bought Yesterday

Yesterday I became a part owner of AIG. From what I understand, it's a large insurance conglomerate, but I have to admit no one gave me many details before they included me among the new owners. For without consulting us, yesterday the Federal Reserve bought most of AIG while acting on behalf of me and everyone else in the United States. AIG was on the verge of collapsing and taking large segments of the world financial services market with it.

It seems to me that if we're going to be required to step in and buy failing businesses whose collapse would lead to financial chaos and depression, we have the right to expect far closer scrutiny of any such businesses in order to make sure they don't fail in the first place. This scrutiny comes in the form of regulations that companies resist because they cut profits. Over the past thirty years deregulation has come for some industries all at once, and for others in bits and pieces as lobbyists pushed for incremental changes that allowed for expansion and increased risk taking.

The cumulative result is the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe. Millions were suckered into homes they couldn't afford to finance. They not only bought unserviceable debt; they also bought into the American Dream of home ownership as a wealth-generating machine. Imagine if someone had were fooled into thinking that another of their basic needs, such as food, would be better met if they owned and operated a restaurant. We'd all laugh. But we don't laugh now because our culture has elevated home ownership to a place in our values beyond all reason.

It's cheaper to own a car than rent or lease one, so I buy it. And for many necessities there's no real rental market, so I have to buy (e.g., clothing outside of formal wear and costumes). As for housing, it may be cheaper to buy shelter than to rent it under a few limited circumstances (and if you have large reserves of assets), but more often it's not. A substantial rental market exists to fill this gap, but it's not as large or cheap as it might be because our culture and its marketing tell us we're incomplete if we don't own a house. The mania for home ownership led millions of renters to desire a deed to a piece of property, and the lack of regulation allowed financiers to offer these renters loans that could never be paid back. Like in a classic pyramid scheme, those who got out first walked away with the profits from the transactions, and the rest of us -- the taxpayers and investors like myself who watched passively -- now have to step in and buy up the losers who are deemed too big to fail.

The results lie before us. Stock markets have retreated and will require years to reach their previous highs. Credit will get even tighter, leading to problems throughout an economy that requires credit like an engine needs oil. Re-regulation will be on the agenda, as the new owners of giants like AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac (i.e., us) ponder how to sell the things and avoid having ever to buy them again.

In a way, it's exciting to live through such times and experience first hand the wildly oscillating emotions. If it gets much worse, it may become like re-living the fall of 1929. What historian wouldn't value the chance to witness great things close up? But the price for such a view will be hideous, and I'd rather pass. I don't know if the world is going to let me though.

Charming

Unless you're coulrophobic. (If you are, better not watch...)

The singer is Ingrid Michaelson. The song is "The Way I Am."

(Click here if the embedded video player above says the video is no longer available.)

Goethiness

In the film "Almost Famous," the character played by Frances McDormand quotes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as follows: "Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid." I liked it, because it's the kind of thing that can inspire one to take chances necessary to improve or start fresh. Searching for the quotation in the original German proved fruitless, since I couldn't find any quotations from Goethe using my translations for the individual words. I ultimately began looking for it in English, hoping that the name of the work in which it appeared would be cited. Then I would renew my search in German.

Mighty forces brought him here

I quickly discovered not only that Goethe had not written it, but that it was probably a derivation from something by a far lesser known Canadian author. Why did the words lose some of their power for me then? I think it's because if Goethe had uttered and believed them (as a man who had clearly lived according to the maxim), they would have been eternally true and universally applicable. But if he didn't say them, doubt would seep in, and doubt is absolutely antithetical to the spirit of the quotation. You might just as well not have heard it to begin with or have read and internalized one that said "Take no chances. They never pay off. Don't try to be anything better than average."

Since the quotation can be applied to Goethe's life, perhaps there's a way of salvaging it after all. In the last 300 years there probably hasn't been a human being (we know of) who's lived more fully than Goethe did. He risked his life, health, and reputation many times over in order to experience the world as he believed best or most advantageous. We all have to decide for ourselves if leaving behind literature and science as he did means that such a life was more worthwhile than anyone else's. But it's impossible to read him, even just little snippets or quotations, without realizing he mastered life better than anyone. And could that have possibly have happened if he hadn't broken with his father's dreams for him, his own expectations for his life when he was young, and the demands of the world around him? That is, if he hadn't trusted implicitly that after acting in a way true to himself mighty forces would provide material, philosophical, or spiritual support?

The Ten Latest

Ten more things I think I've learned by now:

1. True enough, things sometimes end up being different from what they seemed. Often this is because people unintentionally misrepresent themselves. Then new information, or new weight given to old information, appears to make such people change and shifts your relationship with them. It pays to be tolerant of this constantly recurring human foible and not to mistake it for malice or treachery.
2. Installing beta programs on your computer isn't a good idea. There's a reason the designer wants you to serve as a guinea pig: to see how loudly poorly tested features and tweaks will make you squeal. Wait until the others have squealed and it's been properly fixed.
3. People are rarely interested in the totality of another human being. Something, or some things, might at first interest, fascinate, absorb, or attract. Almost always hidden aspects will later counterbalance the first features that were observed and admired. Most relationships and friendships must and should therefore remain superficial. Rarely will one emerge that can survive the plunge into both parties' depths.
4. If you have a mustache, or a beard with a mustache component, it will smell like butter for hours after you've eaten corn on the cob unless you wash it with soapy water.
5. If you learn how to keep the muscles of your lower back fully relaxed at all times (especially when sitting, lifting, or bending over), you'll avoid a lot of down time from excruciating spasms.
6. Many people won't benefit from a second chance for the same reason they didn't benefit from the first one. Giving second chances is a necessary part of living with others, but expect nothing and be pleasantly surprised if the outcome differs from the first time. Be wary of third chances. Don't give fourth chances.
   
7. Always look backward every few seconds when moving down an unfamiliar path. The reverse perspective may well prove invaluable sooner than you think.
8. Very little in politics is to be taken seriously. The part that is actually important is dangerous to ignore. Learn the difference and live accordingly.
9. Tipping outrageously high feels great.
10. Never assume you know what another human being is thinking or what is motivating him or her. Just don't.

Torn

I've always liked Boeing. For years I've derived a strange pleasure from its victories over Airbus, agreed with Boeing that its new 787 "Dreamliner" was a much better bet on the future than the behemoth Airbus A380, and cringed when I heard that one or another airline placed an order for the A380. Honestly, who would want to queue up, board, and fly on a plane with 500 other people? And didn't Europe need to learn a lesson about the folly of subsidizing, designing, and producing an airplane by international agreement among Airbus's host nations rather than relying on marketing necessities, engineering dictates, and passenger preferences?

Thanks...but no thanks.
I think I'll wait for a smaller one.

Now I find myself in an odd spot. Boeing is competing with a consortium led by Northrup Grumman and EADS (the parent company of Airbus) for a contract to build airborne refueling planes. If the Northrup Grumman-EADS group wins, they will assemble the tankers in my hometown of Mobile. More important than the over 1,000 new jobs involved would be the change in mentality that might emerge in (and about) Mobile.

To be sure, they also need the work in Everett, Washington (and Wichita, Kansas, and elsewhere). But these places' reputations in aviation are already made, and their workforces are diverse and well-educated. For us, it would not just be more work, but a leg up into a different world. And many more people locally would begin to view their lives as connected to the entire globe and not merely to whatever's passing in front of their noses at any moment.

For me personally it might be more advantageous if the tanker weren't to be built here. I've chosen to rent my housing rather than to purchase it in cooperation with a bank. My financial interests should dictate that I favor nothing that might increase competition for rental units and thereby drive up my housing costs. A vast aircraft assembly complex would likely do just that. Already there are construction engineers for the enormous new ThyssenKrupp steel mill living in my apartment complex. If ThyseenKrupp had chosen Louisiana over Alabama for their steel mill, these apartments might be empty and the upward pressure on my rent lessened.

No matter. I'd still much rather see the aircraft assembled here. On some recent flights in and out of Mobile I could already tell that the new steel mill and the Northrup Grumman-EADS partnership were bringing in many new passengers -- which will mean more direct flight opportunities and an increased international presence here. Furthermore, working at a tax-supported institution leads me to see great benefits in anything that will improve our local and state economies, whose upswings lead directly to increased appropriations for our schools and universities. And I'd also like to see more of our students have the opportunity to work for international companies at home upon graduation.

The Northrup Grumman KC-45A
Would It Make a Small Southern City?

Still, I do like Boeing. Sure, it's triumphed over (destroyed) all domestic competition in building large commercial airliners. And it's doing all right in many ventures unrelated to building aircraft. But because of a long history of rooting for their success, it pains me to see them lose a contract, any contract, even the one for the tanker. If it works out that way, I hope it's only because the competing aircraft is much better. Given Boeing's long history supplying the Air Force and its immense political clout, I can imagine it losing only if a competitor offered a truly outstanding product. While we all await the outcome of the endless tanker procurement process, perhaps uniquely among everyone watching closely I'm going to be pleased no matter what, but also sad no matter what.

The Boeing KC-767
To those who have, shall more be given?

Rain with a Name

Look out, everyone. Fay may be in the area over the weekend! Our local newspaper knew it could sell more copies today by shouting as much near the top of its front page:

If if has a name,
it must be coming after you

Right now it's known as Tropical Storm Fay and deserves a little respect -- if you're in Florida. By the time it gets close to us in Alabama -- if the current prediction is even correct -- it will be what is normally called a "low pressure system," i.e., a lot of rain. But because it has a name, or had a name, it will generate more interest -- and fear.

I've often wondered how much more calm and composed we might be during hurricane watches and warnings if we gave every low pressure system a name. In Europe the weather services actually do give names to most low (and high) pressure systems. If "Erika" or "Thomas" are said to be on the march in your direction, it's hard to get too excited when that usually means a little rain and wind.

Killer cold front passing through:
hold on in Kiev

The fear generated by new named storms is mostly a residue of the post-traumatic stress disorder experienced following previous hurricanes. Dealing with Frederic, Ivan, or Katrina has led us all to be wary of anything with a name. But not everything with a name is dangerous, and not every newspaper telling us about approaching rain merits our attention.

Postscript (Post-Fay):

A kind reader sent the photo below under the title "first picture of wind damage by Fay in Mobile." I can't vouch for the photo's authenticity, but I got a big laugh.

The Fallacy of Sharing

Sharing with others is a fundamental human need. It goes beyond offering our money or our time. Sometimes you also have to share secrets and feelings. The need is well illustrated by the prevalence of criminal confessions: the justice system would collapse immediately if many suspects didn't volunteer their culpability to officers eager to record every word while posing as sympathetic and interested comrades in a joint search for truth and peace of mind.

In more routine encounters, especially with those with whom a future romantic relationship cannot totally be excluded, there's also a lurking trap in sharing. If we reveal deep thoughts, past blunders, foibles, secrets, fears, and feelings, the illusion of a long-term or continuing connection may quickly be created for one or both of the parties. The illusion builds hopes and expectations that, if dashed, can leave one feeling worse than ever.

Encounters in which we open up often come unexpectedly. We may begin talking with someone and risking progressively more daring disclosures precisely because our partner is new to us and we expect him or her to disappear shortly. It's the "strangers on a train" phenomenon. You can disclose just about anything to random new friends since they don't know you, they don't know others who know you, and therefore they can't hurt you by blabbing.

The depth of communication with such a new partner is sudden, surprising, and intoxicating, because it provides the unfamiliar feeling that we're totally known and understood. We've been momentarily expanded into something better than we usually are. It's then easy to want or assume the connection will continue and perhaps become more profound. Because it feels so good, we're easily tempted into thinking it must last.

I've recently seen a couple of good cinematic explorations of this fallacy. In "Once," a struggling musician meets a woman on the streets of Dublin who appreciates his music, tells him so in a forward way, and then begins talking about other things with him. Later they're alone and sharing more about their lives with each other. As the woman gets up to return to her life's chores, the musician can't stand the thought of the connection's being broken. He suggests she spend the night. She's shocked and a little angry, brusquely refuses, and leaves immediately. She hadn't needed the connection as much as he had and never assumed it would move beyond talk. Crestfallen, the musician must spend the rest of the film re-establishing the original level of trust between them and adjusting to having her as a collaborator and friend only.

In an early scene of "Dan in Real Life" (I love that title), the main character is browsing in a place that reflects his tastes: an independent book store. He can safely assume that most people who enter the store share his values. In walks a charming, slightly scatterbrained woman with a French accent, and he does what it takes to begin talking to her. They move to a nearby place to sit down, and they continue to talk. Dan opens up to her about the loss of his wife and other aspects of his life he hasn't been able to share with anyone. Naturally, he's floored a few minutes later when he finds she's already in a relationship and is reluctant to continue the sharing of such details beyond the initial encounter.

At different times, I've found myself at both ends and in the middle of this fallacy. That is, I've been the one who desperately wanted to continue building the connection, the one one wanted it to go no further, and one who joined with the partner in hoping that it could endure despite substantial practical barriers. And it's decidedly unpleasant no matter what.

While such emotional intimacy is necessary for a strong and lasting relationship, it isn't sufficient by itself. Many disappointing romantic relationships and marriages must have been built on the illusory foundation of a brief period of intense sharing. Sooner or later the secrets and the feelings are exhausted, and there you are again. If you don't have a lot more in common than a history of mutual self-disclosure, what basis is there for a shared approach to the rest of your lives?

If I had any answers to the fallacy of sharing, I'd write a book about them. I can only suggest that we move through such encounters in greater awareness of their power. It may be better to always purposely hold something back, to leave yourself wanting to say more and the other sensing that there is more to be shared. That way we get most of what we wanted from the openness (that sense of being known and understood) without creating for ourselves or the other the mistaken appearance that our lives have been fundamentally altered, for the better and forever.

Is It Always What You Don't Have?

While winding along the back roads of the Southeast yesterday on my way home to Mobile, I stopped in Warm Springs, Georgia. For years I'd driven by signs on I-85 pointing to the Little White House of Franklin Roosevelt, but didn't want to take the time to stop. I was glad I finally did. There's a small but well-done museum with hundreds of interesting artifacts both of FDR's presidency and of his struggle with polio.

You're told that the cabin is in the same shape as the day he died (April 12, 1945). If so, the simplicity is affecting. For example, this wealthy and powerful man had the smallest and simplest of bedrooms and bathrooms. I could only think that he must have needed a place to get away from the trappings of wealth and power. If he'd been poor, his vacations might have been to a fancier place whose bathrooms gleamed with porcelain and gold fixtures. Instead he sought functionality alone.

The Presidential bathroom at Warm Springs,
just off the bedroom with its single twin-sized bed

Are we all this way? Do we automatically tire of what we have and unthinkingly seek what we don't possess, even if it means (temporary) renunciation of large parts of our lives?