Decrepitude

Decrepitude

By Charles E. Kraus

I’ve been conducting age related research about how decrepitude might be affecting our democracy.  This is a hands-on investigation.  I’m 75,  younger than Joe, much younger than Nancy, Mitch and Justice Breyer.  Amazingly, The Donald and I hit New York a month apart in 1946.  None of us should be allowed to climb a stepladder to change a light bulb.  

Before renewing your driver's license, issuing authorities in Maine, New Hampshire, Illinois, Utah, Oregon, and North Carolina require you to get retested. Those states represent north, south, east and west.   Not as spry as you used to be when attempting to pull into that tight parking space?  The Department of Motor Vehicles wants to know. Of course, as far as the Department of Politics is concerned, your only required twisting skills involve an ability to manipulate the truth.  

The energy and stamina of numerous older politicians is inspiring.  Many project vitality and cognitive dexterity uncommon for their advanced years.  This mirrors the vibrant mindset I too can employ -- sparingly.  When company arrives and excitement and ego produce surges of adrenaline, causing my inner resources to perform at absolute peak.  The burdens of discomfort, of reduced functionality, those “senior moments,” sore joints, worn out limbs —are relegated to the back burner.  I am in the moment.  Ageless.  Completely alive!   This raging overdrive can be sustained for up to forty-five minutes, after which, I’m depleted for the rest of the week.  I imagine that if I were zooming with the Russian President, excitement would keep me on my toes (while I sat in a comfortable chair)  and see me through.  But later, my feet would ache, and my mind would feel abused.  Personally, I don't know how these weathered captains of government keep going.

In 2016, Trump accused Hillary of taking naps.   Whoever gets to run against the ex-president in 2024 might gain an edge by accusing him of insomnia.  Sleep deprivation may not be a crime, but it is no way to run a brain.  I consider myself in excellent condition — considering.  And part of my health conscious regime involves not being awake too long on any given day.  

The residue of human mileage is experience.  Seniors have perspective going back over decades.  They can call on personal history and acquired knowhow to counter any physical, age related deficits.  And, of course, our elected officials can deploy support personnel to fill in all the gaps brain fog places in the middle of sentences.  

My support team, mostly doctors, seems to be staffed by kids in their thirties.  Their life “experience” consists of the courses they’ve taken and the books they’ve read. The lumps and bumps of life are on their still-yet-to-do lists.   But, I suppose young people are useful.  Trump, it is said, listens to his children, especially to Ivanka.  Clinton has Chelsea. See what that's brought them.

In many ways, elders have adjusted to the onslaught of the decades with unique accommodations.  But in at least one way, all have taken a similar approach.  Check out the face lifts, hair transplants and hair dyes.  I am sure you will agree, none of them wants to look in the mirror and say, this is me, ladies and gentleman, the unvarnished, unadulterated, organic me.  

 

MORT SAHL REMEMBERED

 

Mort Sahl offended everyone and you were lucky if you could catch his act | 

Updated: Oct. 27, 2021, 4:29 p.m. | Published: Oct. 27, 2021, 4:29 p.m.

Mort Sahl on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour - 1969

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By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist

By Charles E. Kraus

Mort Sahl has died.

I own all the records, even the very early At Sunset album famous for being the first Mort Sahl recording and because Fantasy Records increased the speed so they could fit the entire concert onto two sides of an LP (Fantasy Records Mono 7005 Red Vinyl Deep Groove), Mort sounds like a perceptive Mickey Mouse on Benzedrine.

My collection began in 1959. A few years later, I was a kid in a boarding school with the Verve and Reprise records in my closet. The rule was, doors open, hit the books each night from 7 until 9. Except, I had the records. My roommate and I would close our door and play them endlessly. You listened long enough and you started speaking like Mort. Took on his point of view. Did what he did, finding what you said funny and laughing at your own jokes.

Mr. Weinberger would come by. He was an old man with a drill sergeant’s voice, hired to enforce the rules. He’d open our door, step in, listen to Sahl for a while, then step back into the hall closing the door behind him. Mort Sahl was a kind of a hall pass.

Howard Liberman and I returned to the Village Gate nightclub over and over again trying to determine just how much of the routine was ad-lib, taken from the day’s newspapers and current events. That was the official story. What we discovered was that Sahl arranged and rearranged. Adjusted material. Added something, brought back an old comment in new pants. One of his talents was keeping track of what he’d used early in a set so it didn’t get repeated.

Once, a few years later, I attended a performance at the Alhambra Library in Southern California. He wasn’t working much, rumors had it he’d been blacklisted courtesy of the Kennedy clan once he’d begun doing jokes about Jack. The show took place in a basement community room. It was packed. Crammed with fans who’d been waiting for an opportunity to hear from the man. Sahl went on and on and on. Two hours, at least. More extemporaneous than not. When he was hot, the guy could really wing it. Nobody wanted to leave, not even Sahl.

My first job in broadcasting was in the script typing department at CBS’s Television City. We began in the late afternoon, once the writers had left the building, and stayed into the night, often into the early morning, typing, mimeographing, collating, and stapling scripts for All In The Family, The Carol Burnett Show and other programs produced in-house. Then our little unit would head up the street to Cantor’s Deli. Open all night, we’d arrive at 2 or 3 in the morning, and sometimes spot Mr. Sahl at a table reading the papers and taking notes.

We didn’t bother him. It would have been rude. But several years after that, Sahl and I crossed paths at a Denny’s in Sherman Oaks. I couldn’t stop myself. I have all your records, I have your book, I’ve seen you dozens of times, on Broadway, TV, in the clubs — New York, LA, Chicago, Vegas. I was just the kind of fan I knew Sahl hated; knew could upset him. But I’d picked a good moment. He shook my hand and thanked me. He wasn’t as tall as I’d imagined.

There were rough edges. He walked away from his role in Lorraine Hansberry’s play, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.” Hosted, then left various radio and television programs under awkward circumstances. He wasn’t erratic, so much as subject to misunderstandings. That was part of the baggage and the mystique that he brought on stage if and when you were lucky enough to catch his act.

I’d played his records for my daughters, talked about him often, repeating favorite lines. “Not everything I say is true, but it’s accurate.” “The reporter said he’d never been told what to write. But he knew what to turn in.” “A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.” “Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they’ve stolen.”

At 77, he’d returned to New York. The Village Gate, his old stomping grounds, had become the Village Theater, and he was booked for a week. I had flown east with my kids to see a few shows. Someone else was doing a last stand in the city. Hal Holbrook presenting his Mark Twain.

Mort showed up with his blackboard routine, graphing the political stance of various members of our government. He’d updated things, switched from a blackboard to a whiteboard. Had some magnetic cutouts that he slid around. Two of his friends, Woody Allen and Dick Cavett sat directly in front of us. It was a modest crowd. But friendly and pleased with the familiar routines. Sahl wore his trademark sweater. Cavett had dandruff.

Over the years, particularly as Trump turned politician, I hoped that a Sahl comment, some bright new line, observation, insight, would surface. None materialized. But I could, I can, still hear him. “Are there any groups here I haven’t offended?”

No. And none that you haven’t entertained.

Charles E. Kraus is the author of “You’ll Never Work Again In Teaneck, NJ.”

Mask Men - a meditation on masks

 Mask Men - a meditation on masks

By Charles E. Kraus

Seventy years ago --

I'm guessing most of you did not sit in front of the radio, later the television, listening to, then eventually getting to watch, the Lone Ranger pursue and ultimately capture a weekly quota of desperados. To refresh my memory, if not yours, this would have been in the mid 1950s.   I might add that none of the criminal element on either the radio or the television versions of the program, wore masks.  Only the good guy, the Lone Ranger, got to wear one.  His mask was a trademark.   It shielded him.  Not from health risks, but from detection.  He preferred an unlisted face.  

During the earliest run of the show, when Lone was merely a radio cowboy, it was difficult to convince the listening public to picture him wearing a facial covering.  Tonto, his Native American sidekick-companion-partner-administrative assistant,  addressed his chum as Kemosabe, but when discussing him with other characters in the script, uses the term Masked Man.  That moniker was repeated by as many cast members as possible.  The idea was to remind audiences that the show's namesake preferred to remain visually anonymous.  

This brings me to my mask.  Mine is not worn to hide my identity, unless of course, I decide I want to avoid getting Covid while robbing a hometown credit union.  I've merely taken a common sense approach to outlasting the pandemic.  Though I hate to admit it, I have trouble remembering to don mine; even after this extended pandemic, covering my face still feels counterintuitive.  I rush from my car hoping to purchase a quick 7-Eleven coffee before hitting the freeway, and wouldn't you know it, I've once again left my mask on the dashboard.  (I don't usually wear one while driving alone because I feel no need to protect myself from myself.  Too redundant.)

Shortly after the start of the pandemic, my wife and I acquired boxes and bags of the highest rated masks available on Amazon.  The ad copy indicated tight fits, superior filtering, an assortment of fabrics, patterns, and artwork.  Unfortunately, my facial structure is rather narrow, and most masks give me foggy-glasses-syndrome. Coming in from the cold, I find air escaping from the upper regions of my N95, flowing across my lenses and creating enough frost for my eyeballs to finger paint.

These days we are all old hands, or maybe old faces, when it comes to using masks.  Adjusting the ear straps, crimping the nose piece.  We know the protocol; how to fasten them, when to remove them.  We understand that they are a long term temporary inconvenience.   But, imagine being a toddler who believes for sure that before people leave the house, they get dressed, and that part of an outfit is the mask.  Someday, soon I hope, Dr. Fauci is going to stand barefaced in the middle of Times Square, and give us the all clear signal.  Most people will rip the masks from their faces and heave them asunder.  But not the very young.  Told to remove their facial covers, we may find tears, or at least resistance.  Whispers of never trust anyone over three.

As for the Lone Ranger,  no unmasking for him.  Asked why, he told the press he's allergic to sunblock.  

A home is not a house

A home is not a house

By Charles E. Kraus

At this point I am certain all of us, left, right, Trump, Biden, Bernie, Cruz, even really extreme outliers such as .... never mind.  This is not about that kind of crazy.  I'm talking crazy real estate.  Let me put it this way, I'm seated behind my desk.  Same house for about 30 years.  Same room.  Same chair.  Purchase price (the house, not the chair) was $135,000.  What's crazy is its current value.  Seattle has evidently run out of properties.  My daughter tells me our place is worth, oh, let's say a cool million, give or take enough spare change to buy a few Teslas and a tightly budgeted trip around the globe.  The real one, not the scaled down beach ball located in our storage room.  

Did I tell you, we have a storage room.  No garage.  Just a carport.  Actually, our no car garage reduces the asking price.  Cancel the trip around the real world.  I'll sell you this abode for a firm $973,250.23.

Some time ago, when my other daughter and her partner were house hunting in Oakland, the realtor suggested that along with their offer, which needed to be 10% above the asking price, they provide a nicely written letter explaining why they were best suited to become the next occupants.  How they loved the wallpaper, and would care for the garden, appreciated the time and effort the owners had put into creating a charming dinette.  This was so much more than just a house.  Versions of the letter went to a dozen sellers, and finally they landed a half million dollar 'fixer upper' that only needed a new roof, new pipes, new electric, water proof windows, and, dare I say, half a foundation.

When I was a kid, my dad bought us a two bedroom house in Bergenfield, New Jersey.  It came with a working foundation.  I believe it cost seventeen thousand.  I was pretty young, but recall the agent prompting hims to make an offer because someone else was interested.  It had to be accompanied by earnest money.  He didn't have any cash with him, borrowed some from me and ended up forking over fifty cents to the agent`.  One quarter, two dimes and a nickel, so my father used to tell it.  Amazingly, even for back then, we became the new owners.  Wonder how much earnest money you'd have to put down these days.  Seventeen thousands sounds about right.

We live in what they used to call a bedroom community, about ten miles north of Seattle.   Despite Covid and working from home and the decentralization of employees, the freeway is congested, come rush hour.  Our original plan had been to find a house in the City.  Quite honestly, in 1990, we couldn't afford one.  We expanded our search, looking further and further north until we reached a financial comfort zone.  Nice homes offered at reasonable prices.  Same dwellings are now going for eight hundred thousand and up.  Mostly up.  If you are attempting to use our technique, moving north and then some, until you find a home you can afford. I'd like to welcome you to British Columbia.

During our years in Los Angeles, we were friends with a screen writer who hit it big.  At one point, he was trying to decide whether or not to purchase a multi acea property in Rustic Canyon, complete with an appropriately splendid house set back into the palisades.  It boasted a two story guest cottage where he could set up his typewriter, as well as a high end maintenance shed that looked suspiciously like the home in which we lived.  I believe the asking price was something like $260,000.   That was in 1973.  I'm curious how the property is valued today.

What do people do?  I mean now.  I mean twenty somethings, thirty somethings.  How do they save enough for a down payment?  Come up with their monthly installments?  For those wishing to become house owners, it is no longer a two income economy.  A three, perhaps four, income economy sounds about right.  Most "new" buyers have been priced out of the market.  For them, a home is not a house.

Today that modest place my father bought back in Bergenfield costs more than the three homes we've owned during our 50 year marriage.  Fortunately, the next place I move to does not require a letter expressing my enthusiasm, nor a credit check.  Not even fifty cents of earnest money.  Comes with free heat.  Lots of it.  Hell of a good deal.

The Newest Reader

THE NEWEST READER

By Charles E. Kraus

Discovering that you can read is one of those monumental aha moments.  A life changer.  A right of passage.  The door swings wide and you are suddenly looking out at a panorama of limitless possibilities.  Millions of concepts, stories, characters, explanations, laughs, tears, places, enchantments, just sitting there waiting for someone to turn the page.

I'm a parent, a grandparent, the husband of a teacher, and I'm a reader.   There are lots of readers in our family.  The latest is eight-year-old Alice, who is suddenly reading everything.  

During her yet-to-be-born phase, you know, when her mom reported feeling some movement, a kick, a turn, as the fledgling was transforming from a potential person into the real thing, Alice's dad began reading to her.  The nightly ritual continued through infancy and beyond.  Reading was assumed.  Anticipated.  These days, of course, Alice reads to her father, or just goes off into a corner, perhaps in the yard, under that tree, and reads to herself.

A variety of methods purport to teach children the essential skill of translating symbols into language.   Maybe some work better than others, depending on the child.   But self taught or formally instructed, it seems to me rather natural for people to find themselves reading -- just as soon as doing so becomes desirable.  

Paul Goodman, the 1960's maverick intellectual and author of books such as, Growing Up Absurd  and Compulsory Miseducation, recalled teaching illiterate army recruits to read within the span of a few weeks.  What method did he use?  Very simply, he said, "we told them they had to read to get out of bootcamp."  That was a motivator!   My own children attended a school where formal reading was introduced pretty late in the curriculum.  The delay upset the kids, who demanded to be taught sooner.  The skill was seen as advantageous.  A right.  Nowadays, students, well or poorly educated can be found not only talking on their smartphones, but texting on them.  

Recently, Alice reported that her little sister had come to her in the middle of the night, frightened by a nightmare.    

"I told her I'd wrap her in a monster protector," Alice reported.  She tucked the sheet completely around Lila and proclaimed the four-year-old safe from harm.   Where'd you get that idea, mom wanted to know.   She'd read about it while thumbing a parenting book left on the table. The takeaway was more than learning how to stave off bogeymen, it was that solutions are often just waiting to be read.

A few weeks ago, Alice and her family came for a visit.  Her dad brought along a tent complete with a bag of aluminum tubes that, once assembled, would form a complex superstructure.  My granddaughter and I made several ill-fated attempts to put the contraption together.  I was running out of patiences.  Looking up, I spotted Alice on the iPhone.    

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Googling the instructions," she explained.

Of course she was.  Somebody had to do it.

My dad was an IRS tax man

By Charles E. Kraus

When tax filing deadlines arrive, people think about many things. Last-minute appointments with their accountants, concern that they might have exaggerated their exaggerations just a little too much. Maybe they are wondering whether it will be possible to space out the payments. I think about my dad. He was an IRS agent.

Father went to work for the Internal Revenue Service in 1931.

Many years later, he happened to be issued a license plate with an alphanumeric sequence beginning "HH." His wife said it stood for Honest Harold. He was honest, more or less. That is the impression I gathered from the stories he told about his life as a tax man.

Dad kept a shelf of code binders in the den. Unlike my school binders, his were more substantial. Inches wide. Dignified, or at least very official looking. Fitted with hardware designed to withstand abuse. Snapping the rings shut after replacing pages of out-of-date regulations required agile fingering. The rings slammed into place instantaneously.  When I was about 10 years old, my father pointed to the binders and playfully explained, "Using those, I can prove or disprove anything."

His beat was corporate compliance. But that did not discourage relatives from stopping by for an annual early April dinner served with tax preparation for anyone who just happened to bring along the appropriate forms and a shoebox of financial history.

After the meal, aunts and uncles sat around the table organizing and reorganizing documents. They whispered to one another in tones appropriate for a doctor's waiting room. As Dad completed a return and delivered the verdict, the rest of us could hear responses from his den office, which occupied the other side of the wall. Sounds of relief, regret or occasional disbelief. Protests, even accusations. Harold didn't understand, they would say. He was unfamiliar with personal tax law, they would protest. Pleas for a little more flexibility – after all, an uncle pointed out, this was family.

One year – taxes completed, as Mom served cake and coffee, I wandered into my room for a moment and found that same uncle seated at the desk erasing numbers Dad had entered on his tax papers.

A shame if something happened ...

Dad didn't talk all that much about his work. I recall two stories.

My father and his team had been set to report tax fraud allegedly committed by a famous crooner, someone known for his talent and his underworld connections. Moments before the charges were to be brought, "word came down" that the investigation was closing. Done. Through. Gone. 

Each time he spoke about the incident, or about the accused perpetrator, my father turned purple with rage. I wasn't allowed to purchase or play records by the singer. If a radio or television station happened to feature the guy, we adjusted the dial, tuning to a program that offered a more congenial, law-abiding entertainer.

How could that happen? I asked. How could a case just shut down?

Dad didn't offer details. Instead, he told a companion story.

Another agent was working on an equally explosive investigation. One Saturday morning, the guy’s home phone rang. A pleasant-sounding stranger said hello. The stranger wanted the agent to be aware that he knew where the agent lived. He knew the route the agent's son took to school, the park the agent's daughter visited when she headed to the playground. She was 7. He was 10. Nice kids.

That's all he said. Perhaps it was enough.

Every once in a while, I wondered if a caller knew where I parked my bicycle when I visited the library.

------

Charles E. Kraus is the author of "Baffled Again .. and Again," a collection of more than 100 of his newspaper essays.

I'm Jewish, older than Israel and more confused than ever

 

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2021/05/im-jewish-older-than-israel-and-more-confused-than-ever-opinion.html

Newark Star Ledger

Opinion

May 24, 2021

I'm Jewish, older than Israel and more confused than ever | Opinion

Star-Ledger Guest Columnist

By Charles E. Kraus

I am two years older than Israel. Have never been there, but evidently, as a Sunday School student, purchased tiny stamps containing pictures of leaves and pasted them onto olive tree illustrations. My nickels and dimes were sent to the new State of Israel, where they helped fund the planting of actual trees. Thus, we, American Jewish children of the 1950s, assisted in providing shade and bounty in what we were informed would otherwise remain barren desert. I pictured the Sahara.

It took me many years to realize that being Jewish didn’t automatically require me to support the Israeli government. Initially, doing so felt like a given. Then, the given became a burden. I’m wondering if gentiles can truly understand this tension.

From time to time during the early 1950s, my mother and I traveled from New York City to Baltimore where we’d stay in Aunt Fanny’s gigantic American Craftsman house. The porch wrapped around the place. The yard was bigger than a park. For a kid raised in a cramped Bronx dwelling, this was an expansive, two-story palace. The best part was Fanny’s basement. It was a wonderland filled with every prop and costume a child could need if he wished to spend the afternoon pretending endless scenarios. I experimented with canes and hats and dinner jackets. With tools and gadgets. Dozens of each stacked and piled so high the cargo overflowed onto the staircase.

Fanny was not holding a garage sale. The inventory was destined for Israel where it would help refugees begin new lives.

My formative years were nominatively integrated. New York’s public thoroughfares offered a rather nonchalant mixing of all the ethnic, religious, philosophical, economic and aesthetic approaches. But away from the Commons, people tended to live with and among their own. Little Italy, Chinatown, Germantown, Harlem, the Lower Eastside, Greenwich Village, the Park Avenue elites, the Bowery.

Because the city was home to the largest Jewish population in the world, it was somewhat chauvinistically said that everyone who lived there was a little bit Jewish. Meaning somewhat influenced by Jewish sensibilities. Secular sensibilities.

Secular was the key to my upbringing. Formalized religion was not used as a prescription for life’s challenges. Not in my family. Our rituals were — liberal attitudes, an approach to life that prided itself in sobriety, industry, education, knowledge, language, science, the arts — these tinged with a dash of humor and a strong sense of irony, all fueled by Jewish cooking and a certain pride in Israel.

Later, long after the Suez Crisis, after our elder’s silence was broken and we children were informed about the camps, after the book and movie, Exodus, and the sense of pride my Jewish generation took in the outcome of the six-day war, my allegiance to Israel was tested.

There had been indifference to Jews fleeing the Nazis. There had been a holocaust. The formation of a homeland where the diaspora could collectively grieve then focus on building a brighter future. This was not a utopian fantasy. Israel was a practical but problematic response to traumatic events.

After World War Two, maps were redrawn in Africa, Europe, the Far East and the Middle East.

The 1947 partitioning of Palestine was not some isolated event, but rather part of a reconfiguring of power and peoples designed to stabilize the world. That said, most of these ‘adjustments’ involved repositioning lines on maps, not uprooting populations. The Palestinian situation was dramatically different. The act of seizing land and relocating people was an outrage.

Over the years, I’ve come to feel sympathy for both Jews and Palestinians. Israel could have, should have, done much more to help its non-Jewish citizens thrive, and its neighbors respect both its might and compassion; if not out of altruism, then at least out of self-interest.

Houses were demolished. Settlements grew, encroaching on more and more disputed land. Netanyahu remains, his approach to leadership encouraging the hard and hardened right. Here in America, it has become more and more difficult for me to defend Israel. Or even to explain it.

--------

Charles E. Kraus is the author of four books, including “You’ll Never Work Again In Teaneck, NJ” and ”Baffled and Baffled Again.”

A lesson from boot camp

 

APRIL 27, 2021 11:40 AM PT

By Charles Kraus

Kraus is an author who served in Vietnam for part of his four-year enlistment. He was awarded the Bronze Star. 

1966 — I’d enlisted. Our country was going through what felt like a tectonic shift. The anti-war movement. Urban riots. Civil rights. There was a lot for young recruits to talk about. But animated discussions were held in check by a military that needed its men and women to stick to task. Generally, we did. We spent our days drilling together, then co-existed within our separate clusters during the evenings. To the extent that we spoke about the external — civilian — world, we presented gripes, solutions and opinions that assumed the system was in need of adjustment. Nobody proposed dismantling the government.

I went through boot camp with a guy from Texas. Tall. Handsome. Smart in a practical way. We worked together on a few of the ridiculous projects handed to us during the course of training. Boot camp is designed to break your resolve, deflate any sense of individuality, then replace it with a team spirit and an unflinching willingness to obey orders. We enlisted men more or less worked as a unit to placate our superiors. To that end, the Texan and I scrubbed whatever it was our battalion leader claimed needed perfecting. As we wore out brushes and mops, we talked. Our voices controlled so as not to be perceived as contentious. The topics included integration and the war.

At the time, I was big on proving my positions. These were the facts. You added them up. This was the conclusion. Airtight case. I presented my views about the lack of equal opportunity. About intimidation and rigged systems. You couldn’t look at a photo of a child being chewed by a policeman’s vicious dog and claim the act did not occur.

I stated my reasoning. Society could not expect high-end, informed performances from individuals who had been denied meaningful education, and found themselves being manipulated by everyone from drug dealers, to politicians, to the marketplace, to the media, to history and to society at large. We had to close the gaps and right the wrongs if we wanted to put people on an equal footing. Like most young folks in the ‘60s, I was bursting with generalities, but vague on the specifics.

Perhaps I was eloquent, or just another blowhard, well-meaning but naive. Either way, the Texan seemed to have some appreciation for what I was saying. He offered counterarguments. Traditional. Biblical. Apocryphal. And there was a feature that I detected in many Southerners. Possibly a misguided, incorrect observation. But one I’ve become attached to over the years. I detected a seething. A ready supply of unmitigated hate mixed with an equal share of rage. An undercurrent of vitriol waiting for a target. Sort of a Lindsey Graham on/off switch.

In those days, you could declare a draw. I couldn’t budge my Texas compadre, he couldn’t budge me. Touché. Plus, an afterthought, an explanation provided by my debating competition. He revealed his membership in the Ku Klux Klan. My arguments did not matter, he explained — he couldn’t allow them to matter. This wasn’t about facts. It was about allegiances. It was not possible to win him over by logic, or information, or by pointing out how everyone would benefit from a more integrated world.

2021 — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s efforts to reduce racism within ranks won’t find easy resolve. Brotherhood happens when reasonable attitudes prevail. Unfortunately, human nature is the biggest of tents. Some of its occupants, fueled by hate and stupidity, cannot be persuaded to reevaluate their faulty perceptions. Diversity training only works when the minds of participants are both willing and capable of change.

If you can’t reason with a dangerous individual, or with members of a group dedicated to inflicting harm, you have to approach the problem at a global level. After weeks of violence that reflect years, decades, of failed solutions, I think we would all welcome a consensus approach that imposes common sense. Rules and laws need to be enforced. See, I’m still vague on specifics, and a little naive.

Together

Together

By Charles E. Kraus

Our children and grandchildren live in Northern California.  "Only a plane ride away," we used to say, heading again and again to the airport.  Either to board a flight or pick up arriving family members.  For the past year, these trips have been curtailed.  But my wife and I have now booked tickets.  Not virtual tickets.  Actual tickets for an actual visit. We are feeling tentative.  And giddy.

Back in them old days, my concern about air quality had to do with smog levels, with gaseous air pollutants such as carbon monoxide.  Now it is not so much about forest fires and industrial waste.  It's about people exhaling, especially on planes.

We've revised our travel reservations three times.  So far.  These are rethinks.  Will our shots be fully effective by mid April?  May 1st?  Should we wait until a larger percentage of the public has been inoculated?  Late Spring?  Summer?  Our grandchildren are learning that the word "soon" is an expandable concept.  Like them, I need a hug.

Of course, there is no such thing as a virtual hug.  Hugging is one of the physical elements that has gone missing during our too numerous to mention family Zoomethons.  About fifty years ago, Ashley Montagu published a book titled Touching.  In it he advanced the theory that physical contact, tactile experience, was one of the essential methods people employed to communicate.  That touch provided unique and important emotional messaging.  Let me tell you, we've been out of touch.

Our grandchildren have become quite skilled at participating in virtual family interactions.  They display lots of artwork and demonstrate ever increasing skill levels on bicycles and scooters.  To keep up with this, their parents have substantially honed videography techniques.

Alice, who is almost seven, is now qualified (and certified by her mother and father) to borrow an iPhone and take us on a tour of the house.  We generally end up at the hamster cage where she gets her new pet to demonstrate its prowess on the rodent ferris wheel .  Three-year-old Lila wants Bubbie, her grandmother, to read another story.  My wife has gotten pretty good at holding the book so illustrations fill the screen.  If she falters, Lila takes on the role of director.  "Higher," she says, "More up."  Not only does this kid understand camera dynamics at our end, she is quite capable of directing her selfies.   

Zoom and other visual chat systems have built-in filters designed to improve screen appearance.  On camera, I seem to be a little less wrinkled, my aging skin not so blotchy.  And because audio is adjustable, nobody at the other end has heard me say, louder, speak up, can't hear you.  I'm hoping that when we finally arrive for our in-person visit, family members won't be asking themselves if it's really me.   

Fortunately, my hugging techniques remain constant, so I should be able to prove my identity.

 

Short Rest Before Continuing The Journey

Short Rest Before Continuing The Journey

By Charles E. Kraus

I've spent four years feeling, thinking, assuming, presuming, and anticipating the news of the day.  Not just taking it in, but reacting to events so outrageous and preposterous that I've found it impossible to discuss them without shouting.  

I know there is a lot going on in the world.  And I am as frightened by some of it as I'm sure you are.  But I find that I'm more hopeful than I've been in quite a while.   So hopeful, in fact, that I've taken a vacation from newscasts and the endless eyeballing of 'breaking news' hysterics.  

Currently, I stay abreast of essential issues by reading or listening to a story here and there reported by responsible news sources.   I am finally able to absorb such information because I don't get sidetracked from emotional button pushing.  I am able to think rather than react.  Yet, to tell you the truth, even this level of civic participation feels a little forced.   Generally, if I tune in to an occasional broadcast of All Things Considered, my need to know is satiated.  For now, I can let the world operate without my oversight.

At some point, years ago, instead of watching everything go wrong, I was simply on watch in a war zone.  In certain ways it felt less dangerous.  Anyhow, after being on guard for a predetermined period of time, my relief would show up.  The military formality had me requesting to be relieved followed by the new guy staying I could go.  Biden and I must have conducted such a dialogue.  He's on watch.  I'm back home.

My relaxed attitude has been brought about by a new found confidence.  Days no longer seem filled with brinkmanship and irrationality.  When I do scan the papers for an update, I am informed about progress, planning, strategy, intent.  The rhetoric is civilized.  I get the feeling intelligent people are making sincere efforts.  There seems to be a kind of positive flexibility at work in Washington.  Imperfect but determined.  Responsible government doing its best.  

Partisans want us to believe the country is about to come apart.  They are trying to finesse mass unrest.  Extremists point to their numbers, to their mobs, but these forces are self-limiting.  As rational, reasonable people move forward with decency and perseverance, the partisans are going to learn there is a big difference between holding a one-day, failed, insurrection, and toppling an increasingly popular form of government.

A very long time ago, I had a journalism teacher who defined news as the items that made it into the newspaper.  Minorities weren't news.  The environment was news.  Poverty wasn't news.  None of these -- until they were.  Right now, news means political instability, a deadly pandemic and economic uncertainty.   And tomorrow?  What will I be reading when I re-engage with the press?

Tomorrow the stories that get into the paper will be concerned with community, prosperity, dignity, empathy, optimism, facts, and a highly visible sea of unmasked smiling faces.  

Running Out The Clock

Running Out The Clock - Awaiting the golden elixir

By Charles E. Kraus

At first, we were elated.  My wife and I had managed to remain covid free.  Vaccines were being manufactured and distributed.  And now we'd reached Tier 1 of Phase 1B with its head-of-the-line privileges.  We were home safe.  Or, more to the point, we would receive our vaccinations and become away-from-home safe.  Our daughters, both members of California's helping professions, had already gotten their initial inoculations.  We'd reunite.  Then, before long, the rest of the family would join a parade of the immunized.  A family reunion was on the horizon, grandchildren leading the way!  

However, it has turned out there is no head-of-the-line.  Actually, there is no line.  Not here in Seattle.  Just more uncertainty.  Evidently, no vaccine is currently available.  No appointments are being scheduled.  Seniors have been asked to pause.   My wife and I (we are in our mid 70s) seem to be walking an endless tightrope.  Continuing our balancing act.  Attempting to stay safe until safety is no longer an issue.  Eleven months and counting of hiding from the enemy, waiting for the cavalry to rescue us, to make it to Seattle, saddlebags filled with the golden elixir. Their horses must be tired.

My feelings are multifaceted. A mixture of fear, anger at the Trump administration's poor handling of the pandemic response, upset with my own state and county.  Disappointment. Astonishment.  Quite a system you folks have put in place.  

I've developed an ambivalent sense of marvel and jealousy because some of our out of town friends have received their vaccinations without much difficulty .  Why is it, I wonder, that Hal and Carolyn visited their local Walgreens, be it in Reno, and walked out inoculated, while Linda and I sit here in sophisticated big city Seattle doing our best to navigate a 'figure it out yourself,' hit and miss hodge-podge of a delivery system whose main feature is gridlock?  

I've been making daily, occasionally hourly, internet searches hoping to happen upon a set of available appointments.   I've heard the rumors.  There are some spots, or maybe not.  We do this by rumor, yes?  Or we can stick to the internet instructions, lots of them.  Simply follow the prompts down each web-trail until you reach the 'sorry no appointments at this time” “awaiting vaccine, check back” “closed” “visit our calendar for future dates” (doing so leads to aspirational calendar pages upon which dates cannot (yet) be selected).

My wife and I have been spending a great deal of time discussing strategy.  Is it feasible, is it realistic, to drive a few hundred miles inland?   Seems as if vaccines are readily available in less populated areas.  Assuming that is so, I wonder why.  And what is more dangerous, me behind the wheel of our ten-year-old Kia in wet winter weather, or waiting it out in Seattle?  

I received my polio vaccine when I was eight.  Each class was escorted to the playground where kids took part in the extremely successful mass inoculation.  At the moment, the concept, 'successful mass inoculation,' seems archaic.  

Will the cure be relevant by the time someone somewhere is ready to stick my wife and me with the needles?   Basically, the two of us are running out the clock.