The Options Are Freedom or Safety, Not Both

A friend of mine moved from India as a child, not speaking English, to a rural Oklahoma community. On his second day of school a much larger kid had a bit of fun pushing and shoving the unusual brown boy. Shortly thereafter the bully found himself on the ground with a bloody nose.

Yes, my friend got in trouble at school. Yes, he got in trouble at home. But the bullying stopped. He gave up momentary safety on several fronts for future freedom. 

Just over a half century ago an America that valued freedom over all else stood toe to toe with Russia, risking inhalation of the world to prevent placement of offensive weapon systems, missiles, within a hundred miles of American shores, our country endured eminent risk to ensure freedom.

It’s ironic the same week we’re restoring the relations we sacrificed with Cuba for the sake of freedom so many decades ago, that a large American cooperation, Sony, is bowing to threats from North Korea. 

It’s not a bombshell Kim Jong Un is upset by a satirical comedy based on his assassination. Neither is it shocking a man with a horrid human rights record against his own people thinks the threat against innocent lives is an appropriate response. But it is surprising a company making billions from American citizens is choosing safety over freedom…sort of.

Unfortunately, a growing portion of America is going soft. We respond to attacks against our children by vilifying guns instead of training and arming our school personnel. We react to a government spying on its own people with acquiescence bred from fear of our fellow citizens’ freedom. We tolerate growing untraditional racism to avoid being labeled ‘racist’ for demanding all people, regardless of the past, be accountable for their own situations. We’re not the America that grew strong based on the ability to choose the hard path because, politically indelicate or not, it’s the right path.

Sony, like all major corporations, has one function, to make money. If the public is afraid to go to the movies during the holidays they lose money in the short term. But if America is offended by their seeming cowardice, they may forfeit profits well into the future. 

I wouldn’t pay 8 or 10 bucks to see a Seth Rogan comedy, don’t care to fight crowds and don’t wish to overpay for popcorn, so pulling ‘The Interview’ doesn’t affect my immediate plans. But an unwillingness to support a business that offends my sense of right and wrong does affect priorities. Among my selection criteria for future purchases will be the lack of Sony on the label.

I welcome the opportunity to legally buy a Cuban cigar. More importantly I see the need, for reasons of national strength, to have a working relationship with our closest neighbors; upgrading Cuban relations doesn’t bother me. Allowing anyone, foreign or domestic, to determine our freedoms, even in something as insignificant as entertainment, does. Our options are freedom or safety, not both.

*Since this article was written 'The Interview' has had a limited release. This is a slight improvement...slight.

I’d Pick Sunday

Sunday mornings are relaxed, sleeping until I awake, coffee in bed watching CBS Sunday Morning and then writing.  On the other hand, Friday mornings are up early, hurry around and get to work.

Most of the day Sunday is spent doing whatever my heart desires while most of the Friday is spent at work doing what someone else demands.

Sunday evenings are similar to Friday evenings, sometimes there’s something to do, sometimes there’s not.

Sunday wins easily 2-0 with evenings a tie…but Friday’s still favored.

When I think forward to Friday, it’s a happy anticipation. Friday is the eve of the best day of the week, Saturday, and like roadies for a rock star, catches the overflow of love.

Truth be known, Friday is just evil Monday’s good twin brother.  Not much happens on either day that doesn’t happen on the other; up early, work all day, go home, do whatever needs doing at home.  Poor Monday gets all the flack but if you had amnesia and no calendar you couldn’t tell the two apart.

Garfield’s syndicate has made a fortune pasting the disgruntled orange cat on posters, tee shirts and mugs grumbling, “I hate Mondays.” Yet Friday gets its own acronym, TGIF, “Thank God It’s Friday”.  It’s a wonder Monday hasn’t completely quit and gone into another line of work.

Sunday isn’t quite as similar to Saturday as Monday is to Friday, only because both weekend days offer so much freedom…far more freedom than any weekday. And I wake up both weekend days feeling great, like the day is my oyster. The feeling lasts until bedtime on Saturday but just past 3 PM on Sunday, a full seven hours before my waking hours are over.

Around 3 the oppressive weight of the workweek starts to burden my heart. Even though I’ve got the equivalent of almost two weekday evenings of free-time left before bedtime I feel the burden of responsibility descending like a dementor on Harry Potter.

The kicker is, I love my job. Except for having to get up to an alarm clock, I don’t mind getting around and going in. The downside to working isn’t the work, it’s the inability to do whatever else crosses my mind…compared to most, that’s really not that bad a deal. Yet it’s the impending workweek that makes Sunday evenings such a downer.

I know full well Sundays are better, far better, than Fridays, it’s not even close, but my heart doesn’t seem to agree. Still, if you give me the choice between Friday and Sunday, like a teen girl choosing the Captain of the Debate Team over a biker-dropout, I’d pick Sunday.

I Don’t Believe Exclusively In Coincidence

And that’s why I just got irritated. On CBS Sunday Morning, the only ‘never-miss’ on my DVR…besides Doc Martin…was a story about coincidence. (Coincidentally, I was looking for a topic to write about.) It wasn’t the story that irritated me; it was Professor Jay Koehler, at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.

Professor Koehler stated a coincidence is, “a striking co-occurrence of events that appear to be meaningfully related but, in fact, are related only by chance.”

Technically (according to Merriam-Webster Online), a coincidence is a situation in which events happen at the same time in a way that is not planned or expected. Similar definitions but with the Prof’s being, to my ear, a bit judgy.

I believe coincidences happen, and often, but I also think fate plays a part in our lives. There are too many stories of the stars lining up, so to speak, for random events to be a proper explanation. But that’s not what this story is about.  It’s about my reaction to Professor Koehler.

A guy whom I’ve never met, who I’ll likely never meet, who has no impact on my life outside what I grant him, disagrees with my opinion and it irritates me (which is me allowing him to have an influence on me). I was offended he had a different opinion on something neither of us could ever prove right or wrong. Why!?!

Because I felt threatened. If there is only coincidence it affects my belief that life has a plan for me, that my lack of success in pursuits is personal failure instead of a series of events preparing me for a specific future success. It means my wife’s hand wasn’t guided to pick my name out of the hat (literally) and we weren’t meant to be.  It means Mr. Scott’s example of acceptance and encouragement was randomly a part of my schooling instead of a seed for my success working with the irrationally opinionated, unjustly self-confident Millennials. It means the ‘grand scheme’ isn’t awaiting my contribution and I’m not important, that life goes on with or without me. 

And it doesn’t matter…not whether coincidence does or doesn’t rule the day. What doesn’t matter is anyone else’s opinion…unless I let it matter. If someone doesn’t like my bald head and beard it doesn’t mean I need to be offended, I need to shift my shaving 180 degrees or that I’m less of a person for my grooming habits.  It doesn’t even mean they have poor taste. It means they have different experiences, observations and preferences…leading them to have poor taste.

I’ve heard it said, you can’t be offended without your own permission.  I believed that before this morning, and I still do.  Apparently, my emotions forgot to check with my belief system before reacting to Professor Koehler’s statements.  So, regardless of his or anyone else’s statements, based on my lifetime of experiences, observations and preferences, I don’t believe exclusively in coincidence.

You Won’t Miss Me When I’m Gone

Death sucks for the living.   

Depending on your personal beliefs the dead themselves are either in a better place, no place or getting their just deserts, leaving those who loved them behind to face the day alone…but maybe not in a few more years.

According the founder of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, John Smart, digital twins are in our future…our near future. Drawing off our computer interactions, phone communications and whatever else can be harvested about us, a computer program could be our understudy. Capable of making decisions, it might take care of paperwork and have conversations as though it were us. And, assuming the hard-drive doesn’t crash, outlive us, giving our family and friends an ongoing fix of our charm and personality once we’ve gotten busy pushing up daisies.

According to Smart, “Where we’re headed is creating this world in which you feel you have this thing out there looking after your values.”

Nope!  We’re creating this world in which you feel like you better not turn your back on a computer.  If we’ve learned anything from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘War Games’ it’s that computers are just waiting in the wings to take things over.  (On a side note, does anyone else think Mathew Broderick changed his name and got a job on ‘Two and a Half Men’?).

As I write this article, I wonder what’ll actually get emailed to the editors.  Maybe what I write…maybe what I would write if I wasn’t relying on the computer to do my job…or maybe propaganda from the Cyberluminati trying to convince you everything is just fine and I’m not tied to a kitchen chair with printer cables and a mouse-pad taped over my mouth.

It’s bad enough that we pickle deceased bodies, nail them in a crate, seal the crate in a giant concrete humidor and bury them with a large “here’s the dead guy” marker.  Now we’re going to be capable of pretending nothing is wrong, their spirit has simply moved from a fleshly vessel to a Mac Book.

If it keeps a person from being lonely, I suppose it’s not a bad thing.  The pain of loss associated with the death of a loved one is devastating.  My grandfather died in his early sixties and it would have been a tremendous comfort to my grandmother to speak with him, even via a computer screen (which was dark gray and capable of only green letters back then).

But it reeks of those ‘My Buddy’ dolls they used to market before we invented computer games and the internet to socially isolate children.  The idea of computer ghosts piques the same apprehension in me as a table full of teens busily ignoring one another to text.

Living vicariously through anything, a sports hero, a television, a cable news station that tells you half of society is pure-evil, is human nature.  But, as with coffee, Twinkies and Disco music, moderation is key.  

I’m pretty sure, once I’m gone, everyone who happened across my path during my living years will have had enough of me.  So after my funeral leave the computer off and go visit some breathing friends, that way you won’t miss me when I’m gone.

I Love the Smell of Old Bugs

Oktoberfest in McKinney, Texas was a compilation of several things I adore: Germans (my wife’s half), beer and Volkswagens.

 

Of the three, VWs have been in my life the longest. In grade school our next door neighbor had a Beetle. I liked how he took a tiny car to work as a big rig driver and that the roof resembled his bald head. It would be a decade, except for playing Slug-Bug, before Volkswagens would have an impact on me. (‘Slug-Bug’…’impact’…see what I did there? I would be a delight if I were as clever as I thought.)

I’ve owned three Beetles and a Karman Ghia. My first Bug was a red ’67, eighteen years old when I got it (both of us) and the start of what appears to be a lifelong affection (affliction). The other two came in the next decade and the Ghia a few years later.  

They all shared one trait, odor. There’s a certain smell to every old VW. Not leaky exhaust, though most of mine carried that aroma, it’s got an organic feel, probably something to do with the horse hair padding in the seats. More than familiar curves and trademark chirping, the smell of the cars at Volktoberfest sent me back in time, recalling not just memories but feelings. Turns out, the nose has a strong link to emotion.

The perfume of oak trees and minnows makes me happy, probably rooted in my grandparents’ place on Lake Eufaula. The tang of freshly cut grass in the morning makes me queasy…running at football 2-a-day practices. The whiff of antifreeze makes me apprehensive…a ’67 Chevy I had as a teen with a leaky heater core. Oddly, the smell of money, somewhat unpleasant as an odor, evokes little to no emotion, I guess I haven’t been exposed enough.

Location, location, location. The reason for such a strong emotional response being connected to smell has to do with the olfactory bulb (where your nose sends info) being next-door neighbors with the amygdale (where emotions are processed) and the hippocampus (responsible for associative learning). These brain buddies work together to tag odors with emotions so we have a reference for what to expect the next time we smell that smell.  

With scent being so closely related to taste we get the emotional connection to comfort food. I suppose you could even train a kid to eat veggies with a bit of affection. Though probably not Brussels sprouts, they reek of anger and hate.

In my thirties I finally realized the cut grass/2-a-days torture connection and the nausea subsided; partly due to knowing the source of the emotion and partly from the awareness I can now be sessile if I choose.  Antifreeze, however, still smells like work and expense.

So far as the good emotions, recalling the fun of running trotlines, swimming and playing as a child seems to reinforce the sentiment brought by Eufaula’s smells. The scent of summer pasture still reminds me of freedom from responsibility. And (this is a strange one) the smell of cow manure, unpleasant to the majority, reminds me of working with animals as a kid, something I still love today.

As for the musty organic smell of decades old horse hair, it recalls memories of freedom, an oil covered 3-year-old mechanic’s helper and owning a car with personality. That’s why I love the smell of Bugs.

There’s a Reason Men Marry Women

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The following story is sad…but, hey, the guy was asking for it.
Recently, Muhammad Niaz, a 40 year old resident of Mubarakabad, Bahawalnagar, a ‘normal Joe’ with a wife and six kids, agreed to let Pakistani pir (faith healer) Muhammad Sabir kill him if he promised to bring him back to life.  Niaz laid on a table, had his hands and legs bound and allowed Sabir to cut his throat. 

Now, I won’t delve into questions like: “what if it doesn’t work?”, “if it does work, how will you eat with a big slash across your throat?” or “if you really trust this guy, why are they tying you up?”, but I do have this question: “where was your wife in this decision?”

Before you get the impression I’m pointing out her entitlement to an opinion based on potential loss of a spouse, support for the family or general emotional trauma, I’m not.  My question is based on a general principle associated with men.  We are genetically prone to leap without looking.

Case and point: I want a crossbow for hunting season.  We have the money in savings for the crossbow.  Theoretically, if I get a few deer we could repay savings with grocery money from beef not purchased.  But there’s more information to be added to the equation, like: “do we have space to store a bulk of meat?”, “can we eat venison in place of beef all the time?” and “am I a decent hunter?”  The ‘across the board’ answer to all of the questions is, “nope!” 

The odds that my testosterone driven ego would ask those extra questions are low…because I suffer a genetic disability, a Y chromosome.  Fortunately, my fear of hugely ticking my wife off (I do it on a mini scale all the time) keeps me from heading to the sporting goods store.

I HATE sitcoms like “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Tool Time” that base their entire premise around the idiocy of men and brilliance of women.  After all, I’ve made some pretty good decisions in my life, like asking my wife to marry me, and…some other stuff.  And she’s made some boneheaded choices like…I’ve forgotten because I’m so quick to forgive, but I’m sure there’s a long list.  But I am willing to admit; in general men need a voice of reason in their ear when they’re going to make big decisions.  And by ‘voice of reason’ I mean someone who has a stake in the game, not a guy who gets great amusement from watching a buddy stub his toe.

Back to Muhammad, well, he died.  At a time when she should have been rolling her eyes at a husband moping around like a pubescent kid grounded for sneaking out at night, she’s burying the moron.  And in a few months when she should have been setting her jaw not to say anything while Muhammad rambled on about how cool it would have been to be resurrected, she’ll be struggling to feed a half dozen kids.

Evolution has favored reproduction of those smart enough to survive…and those lucky enough to marry them.  There’s a reason men marry women.