Saturday, October 29, 2011 – Night Howl #1

The theme(s) for tonight -

“citizens vs. consumers” and “a future for our grandchildren”

First up, “citizens versus consumers.“

Five or six years ago I started ranting about this commonly accepted notion that we are consumers, first and foremost. That our behavior was always being described in relation to consuming; and that our sole worth as beings is being measured in terms of how much we can spend and where we choose to spend it. The refrain being that our only power is our power as consumers. We are being marched to our graves accepting this more and more as the way things are.

The real “emperor has no clothes” horror of this idea crystallized for me one day while I was driving to work, listening to Diane Rehm talk about healthcare. In the midst of the conversation,  I suddenly heard her asking her guest panelists (who they were I cannot remember) “but what about us as healthcare consumers?” Healthcare consumers? What the hell?

“What do you mean, consumer? Consumer?! WHAT ABOUT CITIZEN???” I bellowed at the radio. Diane Rehm had swallowed that nifty trick of language and was blithely accepting at face value the insidious notion we “consume” healthcare. She was not questioning at all the craziness of a world where our need for care when we are sick, ailing, dying, broken and in pain is somehow conflated with the marketplace.  As if needing pain relief or an operation was the same thing as buying a car.

My dismay, my argument, if you will, is that we are a social animal who must live together in societies. It is just who we are. We also are conscious beings, and therefore have both the ability and the responsibility to ask ourselves “what kind of world do I want to live in? What kind of social behavior will best benefit my species and the world that supports us?”

So I ask…what would a world look like where people are taken care of when they are sick? Where there is a sense of what belongs in the marketplace and what simply DOES NOT?

“a future for our grandchildren”

I was reading Kurt Vonnegut’s book A Man Without a Country last week. It was funny, wry and smart, but it was also deeply grim. He was 81 or 82 when he wrote it and he’d been watching the same things happening in this first decade of the 21st century that I had and had come to many of the same dire conclusions.

In one sentence, as the concluding thought in one of his pieces, Vonnegut said, “I don’t know many people who are dreaming of a future for their grandchildren.” Is there anything sadder?

I hope that there are others who see past this grimness I feel, and can counteract my dire feelings with a realizable vision of sustainability and optimism that Kurt and I simply cannot muster. I’m only 57, so if I’m lucky, I have miles to go before I sleep. I’m going to keep my eyes and ears and heart open for an optimistic vision of the future.  Anyone?

On Reading Bill Keller’s “Let’s Ban Books”

Sunday, July 17, 2011

While clearly tongue-in-cheek, Bill Keller’s “Let’s Ban Books” article (Sunday 7/17/11, NYTS Magazine)  got me thinking about how we human creatures are mad beings who must tell our stories. We are helplessly driven to create the sweet, agonizing, cacophony of stories that roil around us in increasingly thick cumulus swirls.

Confession: from 1987 till about 1995, I was a book publicist. We were a small independent company, which meant we got to work with a myriad of clients and an veritable ocean of books – fiction, nonfiction, business, children’s, poetry, computers, health. Like Sherwin Williams, “we covered the world.” We constructed multiple-city author tours that focused on print (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast (radio and television) publicity. We worked with authors with big names, and those just starting out. It was a nuts and bolts operation – from planning the tours, targeting the media, writing the press materials, to assembling and mailing the press kits, following up with everyone, tracking the reviews, booking the interviews, and feeding all of the info back to the author and publisher. Like the seven dwarves, we worked together to hand-glue book covers onto shiny pocket folders for press kits, which we filled with multi-colored pages of info inside: a press release, an author bio, suggested interview questions, an 8 X 10 b & w glossy of the author, copies of reviews as they came in, and any else interesting that might help us catch the eye and interest of the reviewer, editor, or producer we were trying to reach. We were successful and it was fun.

In those days, self-publishing was in the very beginnings of becoming a legitimate pursuit, something barely a step beyond a vanity press, but inching toward the light nevertheless. (One of the main reasons for the proliferation of self-publishers back then was the advent of the Macintosh. Not the Mac simply in and of itself, but in and of its intent, to put the power of the computer, and soon the internet, directly into the hands of people. To make the programming invisible. To make it easy. And Apple’s design aesthetic backed up that promise. “You can do this,” it whispered. “Go forth and tell your story.”)

So here we are, 20 years later. The publishing world has revolved on its axis into a new, confusing and constantly morphing configuration. It the midst of the chaos, it gets easier and easier for everyone to add their “book” to the mix. Publishing itself has broken the bounds of its very definition. Every voice longing to be heard, every story needing to be told is pouring forth, filling Kindles and IPads, clogging the print-on-demand machines, and even still showing up on bookstore shelves. With no end in sight.

Ironically, 20 years ago the superstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble were poised to obliterate all of the small, locally owned bookstores across America. Now, they’re almost a relic themselves. Today we have Amazon, where anyone can be a publisher and get their book directly into the hands of their audience. And happily, some of the savviest independent bookstores also have hung on, almost by accident. These tough survivors recognized that the hunger people seek to assuage in a bookstore has everything to do with our longing to feel connected to our communities, to our history, to our culture(s). It’s not just about the book as a product, it’s about the complete experience of holding a world of ideas in our hands, of knowing that books connect us to all who have come before, and point the way to where we just might be headed. Which is the essential urge that drives the storyteller in us all.

While the platforms and delivery systems for “books” continue to morph and change, allowing an endless tidal wave of beauty and drivel to pulse out across the world, what drives it all is our deep desire to know one another, and to feel a part of something lasting – a world with a history to share and a future to dream of.

Under My Bed

Navigating unemployment can leave me feeling devoid of imagination, low on verve, and a good deal more vulnerable to an apocalyptic vision of the future than is tolerable. During these low moods, my inclination is to crawl under my bed, curl into a sobbing ball of frail humanity, and pray for sleep. I can be going along with a good head of steam, sending in applications, networking, picking up small contracts here and there, and suddenly get sideswiped by an offhand remark that throws the whole exercise into a turbulent sea of cold, wet doubt.

Just yesterday I was talking with an acquaintance about her insights on a job I’ve applied for with her organization. In the middle of the conversation she asked, “What have you been doing lately?” When I told her that I’d been unemployed and looking for work for seven months, she replied, “Well, that’s not going to look good.” BAM!

I was stunned. Her thoughtless, dismissive comment gave voice to the wrong-headed but commonly accepted assumption that merely by being unemployed, I am suspect of having been lazy or willfully unproductive. I quickly had to accept that although thoughtless, her assumption about how it would be perceived is nevertheless true. Long periods of unemployment don’t “look good.” Even in this economy, even with so many people struggling, I’m certain that the taint of the struggle, the taint of “failure” is another goddamned brick in the wall.

The only productive response to this is to crawl out from under my bed, shake my fist a few times in righteous indignation, howl at the moon a bit and push forward. It’s not as if I’m lolling in bed (well, sometimes I’m under the bed, but there is no lolling involved), chomping on bon bons and waiting to be taken care of. I’ve been pounding the virtual pavement for months.

A couple of weeks ago I started compiling a detailed list of all of the jobs I’ve applied for over the last several months and the responses I’ve received. I lost heart when I realized I’d applied to close to fifty jobs and gotten less than eight responses. I would be grateful if someone “in the know” could help me determine what I should glean from this. I’ve worked for thirty years developing skills, putting in the time, and doing my best. So, no longer at the beginning of my career, do I conclude that it’s all come to nought? Is this rough patch somehow more significant than the years spent “making something of myself?”

Enough howling, now is the time to push forward. In the end it’s all about perceptions: what we see, how we judge it, what we celebrate and what we condemn. We’re all struggling animals trying to make our way in a world we cannot control, or truly understand. And one person’s perception, even if it gives voice to a codified collective vision, is still just a perception and in time, will likely show its flaws.

Meanwhile there is a dust bunny with my name on it.

Monday, Monday

It’s late May and, thank the stars, we’re just beginning to feel the real heat here in Phoenix. By the end of the week we’ll be at about 105 degrees, and my long, leisurely morning and evening walks with Henry will be just a memory for awhile. We’ll still walk, of course, but until ’round about late October, out of necessity rather than joy. Sigh.

Since we made it through the faux apocalypse, we’re back to the grindstone of seeking gainful employment. And grindstone it is. I’ve been working hard to keep my spirits up in the face of this soul-numbing quest for work. But Mondays are tough. Still, what is there to do but get up, get out of bed and soldier on?

Panda Fun for Post Rapture, Day One

Because the silliness has passed and we’re all, for better or worse, still here slogging away in the world as we know it. I only wanted to post one photo, but I’m WordPress challenged and can’t figure out how to delete the extra copies of the photo. So be it. Enjoy.

Celebrating in the Park

In Which I Explain to the Reader the Intended Purpose of This Series

I am fifty-six years old and unemployed. I am not very wise about money management and made classically bad decisions during the years heading into the economic meltdown. From my vantage point, the world is all awry and I’m lost in the woods trying to find my way home. These posts are the breadcrumbs I’m leaving, like Gretel, as I fumble my way forward through the underbrush looking for a sunny glade to stop for a rest and figure out what comes next.

It may be a good idea to start at the beginning, but it’s a long way back and I’m likely to get bored, and then so would you. So for now, I’ll begin in media res and see where it leads. Onward.

Touchy Feely Tangibility

I can’t stop both reveling in and being dismayed by my newest, deepest exercise in nostalgia. I’m completely bananas for anything that seems truly tangible – something that can be touched and felt.

To that end, I’ve fallen in love with all things mechanical. Metal, wood, little felt bobbins and mysterious wirey bits all moving in perfectly timed dances just make my heart sing. Even though I heretofore have seen no evidence of any innate mechanical abilities of my own, watching a machine move with all of its parts exposed and interconnected, makes me believe, if push came to shove, I could fix it. I could follow the wire that leads to the pulley thing that attaches to the rod and, eventually, find the source of the hiccup and set it all to right. But hey, talk about a virtual world. That Jill, the one who would dive in and fix a machine, does not exist.

Of course, at some point the entire notion of tangibility will likely be swallowed by the increasingly virtual world we seemed absolutely destined to create. But that is for rumination on another day.

In the meantime, some mechanical loveliness to enjoy:

On “Listening” to Roger Ebert at TED

I was a fan of Siskel and Ebert’s original PBS show back at the beginning of its national broadcast, and being a huge film buff, have read many of Ebert’s reviews over the years. I did not consider him particularly gifted as a writer. I thought perhaps the force of his physical voice and his presence on tv made me pay less attention to his writing. I wasn’t sure. I only knew that since I’d discovered @ebertchicago and his blog when I joined Twitter back in the fall of 2008, I’d been knocked out by the power of his online voice.

When I first start following Roger Ebert online, I would notice his posts coming in at midnight in Phoenix and realize that he was up in the middle of the night in Chicago talking. I sometimes wondered if his wife Chaz was up too, but usually I pictured him awake by himself, typing in a darkened room.  I was struck by the profound new pleasure I took in hearing his writing voice, which seemed exponentially stronger to me than I’d ever noticed before. Had he always been this strong of a writer? Had I simply not noticed?  Suddenly I found myself constantly retweeting his posts and entreating my friends on both Twitter and FB to connect with him. “Everyone,” I cried, “You have to read Roger Ebert. This guy can write his socks off and tell a story that will have you ringing like a bell.”

Watching this TED presentation made me realize that I was actually discovering the new voice of Ebert. His online eloquence was tangibly altered by his losing his physical voice and going deeper into his online voice. His TED presentation condenses this journey, from the speaking Ebert to the new Ebert being born out of his computer – an amazing, mysterious always-evolving tool that has sprung into being just during his lifetime, and has become embedded and essential almost overnight.  As Ebert says, “The computer has gone from being a useful tool to being necessary for my actual daily existence.”

Ebert, using the MAC-embedded computer voice Alex, along with his wife and two friends, all work in tandem to speak as Ebert for the presentation. This story, of the journey of his losing and gaining his voice, articulates the reason we, as humans, must always be pushing forward. We are genetically driven to express ourselves, to go forward and discover, create, manufacture, and problem-solve. Computer technology has simply opened up a whole new vista of what that means. It’s a brave new world, indeed.

And now we come to the seeds of my own dark imaginings.  He talks about the day when a human judge listening to two voices won’t be able to tell which one is the computer. On that day, the computer will have “passed the test,” which in its implications is both exhilarating and frightening. If our voice is such as essential part of who we are, when we can no longer hear the “Hal” in the computer, who will we be?

And yet…what is has done for Ebert and will go on to do for others is mysterious and wonderful, and we are compelled to do it.

Watch this TED presentation. You’ll be so glad you did. http://www.ted.com/talks/roger_ebert_remaking_my_voice.html

Will Work On This

A mea culpa to anyone who’s tried reading my blog. I know that the type size and weight leave a lot to be desired when it comes to readability, but I’ll need hand holding by someone more Word Press adept than I to make a change.  It all started as little ruminations for myself, and has little value beyond that, AND YET…If I’m going to post and bother to make it public, I should do something to render it less of a daunting challenge to read. Sigh. Will work on this.

 

Poetry

Short Poem #1 (summer)

Lost aromas of boys, fourteen
With eyes for blondes, beach-scented and brown
Foal-limbed.
Hints of nothing but perfect, timeless stretches gleaming
Just over there.

(I can find myself wrestling for 1/2 an hour with punctuation. But I’m going to let it simmer in this configuration for awhile. Gives me a puzzle to solve later. To my delight!)