Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 56

Alts Nimis G'vorin

About the same time I left home, my father decided to retire. He would maintain the apartments that he owned, but he was finished with building. He didn't like the work he said. He had never liked it. He never wanted his sons to build either. It was just a way to make money. The people he had to work with were scum. Now that he had enough money, he didn't want to deal with those shmucks anymore.

My father was about 53 years old at the time. I should have known that something bad was going on in his head. Because little of the above was really true. He had liked his work. It gave him satisfaction to excel. Yes, he screamed, he fought, and was a general pain in the ass to those he interacted with, but he was that way happy or not. He was a man with goals and ambition. It's true that because of hard work, brains, and luck, he could live a life of leisure and be semi-retired. But it just wasn't him to think of doing such a thing. The fact is that it wasn't him saying all these words of discontentment. Something dark was building inside.

My father said he was going to live a life of leisure. He was going to do all the things that he never had a chance to do. He was going to travel the world. And he would never build again.

My father didn't golf. He didn't play cards. He had given up furniture making in the 1950s. He didn't play with investing in the stock market. He didn't read books. He read the paper and watched the evening news for leisure, went to the Jewish Center once a week or so to the shvitz, went to temple once a month or so for services or for a simcha. That was it. He lived for work and fishing.

My father would frequently go fishing in the wee hours of the morning before work, probably about 100 days a year when all was said and done. Throw in a weekend here and there and a weekly annual trip up to Northern Wisconsin and that's about all the fishing he needed to do. He wasn't going to fish any more as a retiree than when he was working full time.

That meant somehow he had to fill in 80 hours a week with something new. But there was nothing new he wanted to do. For a while, he was just happy because he knew he had made it in this country and that he didn't have to work if he didn't want to. He took some cruises with my mom and they went to Israel once or twice. On the face of it, he seemed satisfied with doing nothing.

But then my parents took a cruise for their anniversary - I think this was in 1975 - and something happened to his mood halfway through that trip. He wasn't enjoying himself at all. The food. The sights. The music. Nothing was satisfying him.

He came back and the black mood lingered. The apartments were shit. His car was shit. He was still going fishing. He was still going to the Jewish Center. He maintained his routine. But he was enjoying none of it. I came home one weekend, looked at my dad, and was jolted out of my teen-age narcissism. Something was wrong with my father emotionally. It's hard to explain, but both my mother and father were intense people. They always burned bright. It was an essential part of their being. But the intensity that defined my father was disappearing. I could feel it and see it. He was changing.

I talked to him about his mood. He wasn't shy about his complaints and about his view of the world around him. Alts nimis g'vorin, he said to me. You can translate that I suppose as "nothing looks good in my eyes anymore" but the word nimis comes from the Hebrew and it's one of those profound biblical words. Jeremiah uses that word. It roughly means worthless and disgusting. Clearly, my father was depressed. But this was nothing new really. Depression runs in my family.

What was different was that my father wasn't fighting his depression like he had always done before. Up until that time, whenever he would get in one of his dark moods, he'd wake up angry about it. He was going to beat his depression. It was his enemy.

But now there was none of that beat the enemy talk. He was depressed and that's how he was going to stay.

I talked to my mom about my father. She'd reluctantly gone along with my father's plans of being a man of leisure. There were still apartments for her to manage and rent. She was still busy. If my father didn't want to work anymore that was his right although in her view part of a man being a man was possessing a drive to excel.

But now that he was depressed and wasn't snapping out of it like he always did, she had to change course. "He has to do something," she said. "He's got to start building again."

My mother pushed for my father to get back to work. He eventually agreed. But he wasn't going to build apartments anymore. He would build single family homes just as a hobby.

My father started to talk about beating his enemy again. He went fishing more and more, often heading to the jetties of Lake Michigan at 2:00 AM because he couldn't sleep anyway. Sometimes he'd come back with huge coho salmon. This gave him some satisfaction, but not quite as much as it once did.

Then he bought a strip of bargain land in a questionable part of a suburb on the near north side of Milwaukee and started to put up suburban homes, one after another. The idea was that he wasn't going to do anything risky anymore. He wanted to hold onto the capital that he had. The homes were relatively modest and he built them with cash. Because he had been so conservative and cheap in his choice of land, there wasn't much money to be made from the sales of these homes. But they did sell at a modest profit.

Despite all of this new activity, though, something was still clearly wrong with my dad. There was that elemental force missing. You could tell it was missing the second you saw him. My father had been a shtarker, a strong one. Now he was just going through the motions. He did everything he once did, but with none of the vitality he once possessed.

I thought it was all mental. There were physical signs that I should have noticed, but only did in hindsight. His features seemed frozen most of the time. He started to move stiffly. He shuffled his feet so much that my mother kept having to get the heels of his shoes replaced.

My father went to a doctor who noticed nothing wrong physically and prescribed some anti-depressants. These did nothing for his spirit. Another year went by with my father in a state of perpetual gloom. My mother decided to take him to a neurologist and reluctantly he went along. When my father walked into the doctor's office, the doctor immediately knew by my father's gait that he had Parkinson's disease.

My guess is that he had already contracted Parkinson's disease about the same time that I went to college, when he decided he didn't want to build anymore. He had lost his ambition then and ambition and drive were what defined him. One of the common effects of Parkinson's disease is depression. I imagine that if you're prone to depression to begin with, Parkinson's disease's effects on your outlook are particularly severe. That was certainly the case with my father.

The depression never left my father again, but for many years he did fight it by forcing himself to stay active. I was proud of him for trying. For instance, a few years later I was engaged to be married and my parents came down to Chicago to my future in-laws' home to celebrate the upcoming marriage. Sometime during dinner, my mother-in-law was talking to my father about his fishing. "You know I'm having a big party this week. I sure could use a smoked salmon." She was just making conversation.

That night I went back to Milwaukee with my parents and my sweetie stayed in Chicago. At two AM, I got a knock on my bedroom door. I'd been asleep for all of about three hours. I was groggy as anything. "Time to go fishing," my father said. "Your mother-in-law needs a salmon." I looked at him in the dark with one eye open. He was perfectly serious.

We went out to the jetties of Lake Michigan. There was a full moon. And that night happened to be the night of a lunar eclipse. I sat on the concrete jetty with my father. Everybody knew him. All of these people were regular fishing insomniacs. I on the other hand was a boat fisherman. This jetty style of fishing just wasn't my thing. But I put out a line watched the lunar eclipse and then conked out on the concrete as my father fished. At about four AM there was a big commotion and I woke up. My father was bringing in a huge coho salmon. Here's a picture below of my father holding it.

When I look at this picture, I always feel such mixed emotions. My father is clearly not the man I had known growing up. I get a sinking feeling every time I look at his face. The smile is there, yes, but something is undeniably missing. He's jacked up on anti-depressants and there is a big difference between someone who is naturally happy and happy because of drugs. He's a sick man both emotionally and physically. But for him to go out there at 2AM so he could fight his emotional illness instead of being miserable tossing and turning all night shows that he still was a fighter. And he is smiling. There's no doubt about it.

I went back to Chicago and delivered that coho salmon to my future mother-in-law. "Where did you get that?" She asked. "You told my father you wanted a salmon. He went out and caught one last night." "I was just talking," she said laughing. "I didn't really mean it."

"My dad takes things literally. You said you wanted a salmon. He caught you a salmon." She had it smoked and served it up at her party that week. Of course it was delicious.

My in-laws never knew my father when he was truly healthy. Neither did my sweetie. Neither did my daughter. Sometimes when I used to talk about what he was once like to my sweetie, the contrast between the reality of what she saw and what I was saying was so great that I'm sure it seemed as if I was conjuring up a myth. But there was no myth. My father had once been of man bursting with energy, who possessed incredible vitality and strength. He was a shouter. He was a fighter. Sometimes, out of nowhere, he could charm. At the age I am right now, all of that changed. I'm certainly not my father and I only vaguely worry about my own health and future. It's all about luck, really. My father wasn't lucky in the end.

As he declined further, my father became more and more of a recluse. He just couldn't stand to see the look of pity on people's faces watching him shake and shuffle stiffly as he walked. Sometimes when I'd see him, he'd be way overmedicated, manic and delusional. Other times he barely opened his eyes and got out of bed. On one of my trips home - he was about 62 at the time - he just looked at me and point blank said, "Give me a pill. This is no way to live. I can't do this anymore."

I looked at him. He was definitely completely sane and thinking straight. I went to my mom and told her about my conversation with my father. "You don't think he hasn't asked me, too? I can't do it. I just can't."

"Do you want him to keep going like this?" I asked her.

"Yes. I still want him here." That was what I needed to know.

In a much earlier post, I noted that when people would ask my father how old he was, he had this gag he always used. He'd recite the age as per his citizenship papers. Then he'd say, "But I'm really x," where x was seven years younger than the first age. People would of course ask. "Why are you x?"

"I was in a war for seven years. That's not living. It doesn't count."

My father was born in 1919. His citizenship papers said 1921. He died in 1991 after a 17 year illness. Subtract another seven years for war. My father had 48 or so good years. He deserved better than that. We all do.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, May 28th, 2009

Here's the radio chart for about 50 AAA/Jazz stations this week. Ben Harper surprises me now and then. I haven't listened to this one yet, though. There are a lot of people on this list that I've listened to in the past, but listen to not at all or hardly at all now: Stanley Clarke, Neko Case, The Decemberists, Dave Alvin, Bob Dylan, the list goes on. My view is that most pop and jazz musicians are only good for about one hour of material that's good for about 100 listens. For me, Miles Davis and and Elvis Costello don't follow that rule. That may also be true for Bill Frisell.

This week I went to hear someone not on this list, David Grisman, play a little benefit concert with his son and wife at an amazing home in Marin. He played a lot of tunes Jethro Burns used to play back in the day and (I think) used Jethro's arrangement for Sweet Georgia Brown. It was all very sweet and nostalgic for me. If David Grisman would have teased me and my sweetie for drinking coffee instead of booze, I would have been transported back thirty years or so. Man I'm getting old!

1 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine 2009
2 Steve Earle Townes New West 2009
3 Stanley Clarke Jazz In The Garden Heads Up 2009
4 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch 2009
5 Miles Davis Cool & Collected Legacy / Columbia 2006
6 Elvis Costello Secret, Profane And Sugarcane Hear 2009
7 Bob Dylan Together Through Life Columbia 2009
8 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
9 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
10 The Decemberists The Hazards Of Love Capitol 2009
11 The Resonance Big Band The Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson Resonance 2009
12 The Wooden Birds Magnolia Barsuk 2009
13 Ruthie Foster The Truth According To Ruthie Foster Blue Corn 2009
14 The Marco Benevento/Joe Russo Duo Best Reason To Buy The Sun Ropeadope 2005
15 Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women Yep Roc 2009
16 Iron & Wine Around The Well Sub Pop 2009
17 Diana Krall Quiet Nights Verve 2009
18 Grizzly Bear Veckatimest Warp 2009
19 Joey DeFrancesco Finger Poppin' Doodlin' 2009
20 Bill Frisell History, Mystery Nonesuch 2008
21 Roy Rogers Split Decision Blind Pig 2009
22 Melissa Morgan Until I Met You Telarc 2007
23 Randy Crawford & Joe Sample No Regrets PRA 2009
24 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label 2009
25 Miles Davis Kind Of Blue Columbia 1959
26 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009
27 Wynton Marsalis He And She Blue Note Label 2009
28 Mindi Abair It Just Happens That Way GRP 2003
29 Derrick Gardner & The Jazz Prophets Echoes Of Ethnicity Owl Studios 2009
30 Gomez A New Tide ATO 2009
31 Melody Gardot My One And Only Thrill VMG 2009
32 Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles The Stars Are Out Sugar Hill 2009
33 Minus The Bear Menos El Oso Suicide Squeeze 2005
34 Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band Outer South Merge 2009
35 Jimmy Greene Mission Statement Razdaz Recordz / Sunnyside Communications 2009
36 Sean Jones The Search Within Mack Avenue 2009
37 Kenny Burrell Live At The Downtown Room HighNote 2009
38 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion Domino 2009
39 Miles Davis The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions [Box Set] Prestige 2006
40 Booker T. Potato Hole ANTI- 2009

So It Goes

Yesterday, I read about the resignation of the first woman to hold the poetry chair at Oxford, Ruth Padel, a mere 10 days after she was appointed to the post. Why did she resign? She sent poison emails to two reporters reminding them that her chief rival for the position, Derek Wolcott, had a history of sexual harassment. Prior to the revelation that she sent those emails, she decried the smear tactics of others. “It seems horrible, this anonymous campaign,” she said to the NY Times.

Academicians tend to be nasty, petty, dishonest, narcissistic and generally unappealing people. Think of a used car salesman sans the charm. That’s your average professor in academe. I’ve speculated in the past why this is so. Regardless of the reason or reasons, it just is. Of course, there are exceptions. For example in my old department of roughly a dozen people, three were perfectly decent and wonderful human beings. The others, however, were sociopaths with lifetime jobs. One of the minor joys of my life comes from the knowledge that there is one thing I don’t have to do anymore: attend faculty meetings. Those were death.

But it could have been worse. As bad as science professors are, humanities professors are even worse. Think Jeffrey Dahmer. Social science professors are somewhere in between. Think Bernie Madoff. OK, I'm exaggerating here for comic effect. But only a bit.

One of the more impolitic things I did in my life related to an email exchange I had with someone who has made a handsome living evaluating colleges. He liked something I wrote and mentioned – I guess as a conversation warmer – that he was married to a Duke professor. Did I know her?

I did. She had been in an office just a stone’s throw away from me back in the day. She is also one of the meanest people I have ever met; a truly nasty personality. Think Wicked Witch of the West. I shouldn’t have done this – what a dope I was – but I mentioned that I did know her and that I remembered her as being very mean. Again I was a dope. Incredibly rude and stupid. I insulted this poor man and his wife for no good reason. In the comfort of her own home, Professor X may well be a real human being. But put her on a campus, and oh my. I kept looking for scary monkeys parading outside her office.

Once upon a time when my daughter was very young, she talked vaguely about being a professor in the humanities. A cousin of mine by marriage, a history professor, overheard her. “No way,” he said to me after. “Why not?” I asked. “She isn’t mean enough.” Even he had to admit the truth.

Stanley Fish, a humanities professor who only seems charming in comparison to the nastiness of his humanities colleagues, has tried to champion the idea that professors should simply teach their academic material. They should forget about providing a “moral education.” I agree completely, but for different reasons than Fish. How can such immoral people be expected to provide a moral education?

I note that at Duke Stanley Fish had to resign from his job as the Chair of the Department of English after he slandered a political science professor in a letter and then denied he slandered that political science professor. Like Ruth Padel’s emails, Fish’s letter became public. Oops! At least he knows he’s unequipped to provide a moral education to anyone.

Lies and slander are so common in academia that witnessing honesty and kindness is like coming across an egret on an expressway divide. I actually did see one of those birds while driving along US101 the other day. It made me smile. I type these words on the Stanford campus. All around me, there is a sea of backstabbing and petty jealousy. But I’m just visiting here. That makes me smile even more.

Now getting back to the Oxford poetry scandal, it is worth asking why someone with a history of sexual harassment would be considered for a prestigious, albeit ceremonial, post. The answer I think is that sexual harassment is such a staple on a campus that it’s the equivalent of speeding on US101. If you get caught, you get the equivalent of a ticket and maybe, like comedy traffic school, you have to suffer the indignity of taking a class about no touching, no groping, no propositioning, etc.

It’s strange. In such a politically correct environment where gender inequality seems to be the subject of so many humanities classes and dissertations you wouldn’t expect hallways, classes and professor’s offices to be such meat markets. But they are. Think Hollywood without the handsome and the beautiful. Maybe following the idea of Professor Fish, we shouldn’t be teaching about the plight of women any more than we should be providing a moral education.

Please Lord, Just One More Bubble

I volunteered for the Obama campaign and voted for Obama. I would still vote for him. He's gotten off to a good start in many ways. For the most part, I'd say he's a better version of Bill Clinton. He's putting forth the same kind of centrist policy that Clinton espoused without all the drama, all the leaks and more than likely without intern hanky panky.

If you're from the left, you might be upset that Obama hasn't turned out to be a progressive/liberal (take your pick as to what name you want to use to describe policies that are for the little guy). Just like Clinton, Obama is big on big business with a few crumbs thrown the public's way (like the new credit card law). He's serious about cutting back on our carbon use or at least having it grow at a less dramatic rate. He usually talks to the American public like they are adults (dim-witted adults, but adults nonetheless).

I'm from the left, but this is a right-leaning country. So my expectations about what we can expect from our government in terms of policy are very modest. Obama and Clinton are as good as I can expect.

That said, both Clinton and Obama hitched their wagon to the let Wall Street be Wall Street school of economic thought. Under Clinton with the help of people like Lawrence Summers, this resulted in the creation of a disaster-in-waiting that didn't take place until Bush was in office. Summers and other Wall Street sycophants created this mess we are in. They shouldn't be in charge of trying to clean it up.

I have no faith in the Fed's and Treasury department's efforts to rebuild confidence in the economy. There is a big difference between trying to instill confidence and trying to con the American public. Unfortunately, Obama's team policy has featured more of the latter than the former when it comes to economic forecasts.

There is continual happy talk about prosperity being around the corner. Banks are allowed to hide their toxic assets in their accounting. The Treasury conducted a phony "stress test" by putting its thumb on the scale. Who is dumb enough to believe all of this? Not people like George Soros who calls these institutions the Treasury thinks are going enterprises "zombie banks." Not Nobel Prize winners like Krugman and Stiglitz. And if they don't believe it, do major investors in the US like the Chinese believe it?

Prosperity isn't around the corner. Retail sales remain down. Unemployment remains up. House foreclosures remain up. While it's likely that our economy will not get appreciably worse (what this means is that I'm guessing and hoping it won't get worse, but obviously I don't know), there is no engine for it to get better. For about 30 years, we've relied on the financial industry for our nation's economic health. We can't do that anymore.

The Obama administration is fooling no one in its assessment of the health of the nation's financial industry. My view (and that of many sane people) is that by continuing to try to pretend that everything will turn around soon and that financial institutions are fundamentally healthy, we are prolonging our recession.

As Lawrence Summers has stated, lack of confidence got us into this mess and we need to rebuild confidence to get us out of it. But what Summers and others are doing is not rebuilding confidence at all. They are simply lying to the American public. Those lies are so transparent that no one with half a brain is buying them.

It would behoove the Obama administration to change course. Instead of lies, it needs to be honest with the American public. We have banks in a world of hurt that aren't coming back. We have plunged almost 200 billion dollars into an insurance company that has no future (Would you buy an insurance policy from a company with the brand name AIG?). We have built an economy on the backs of very risky financial instruments. Those instruments have crumbled. We cannot resurrect them.

Those are the facts or at least what I think are the facts. We need a different engine or engines for our economy beyond investment banking, which is now (finally) understood to be a very risky enterprise (the one silver lining in this mess). The Obama administration needs to start talking about how to create a different and healthy economy instead of trying to re-inflate a bubble that has already burst. The sooner it does so the better this nation and the world will be.

Unfortunately, I don't see honesty about the economy coming anytime soon from Obama. He's committed to this happy talk con game. My guess is that as a result unemployment will rise to the 10-12 percent range nationwide and stay there for many years. My guess is that equities will swing about the 8000 Dow Jones mark for several years (all that money has to go somewhere). Housing prices will flatten out. Our national debt will rise to obscene levels (even more obscene than now), but the dollar being the dollar, foreign nations will continue to invest in our country. And everyone will hope and pray that eventually a new bubble in our economy will emerge. I saw a bumper sticker recently that said, "Please Lord, Just One More Bubble." This is no way to run a country.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 55

The Cancer Scare

There's more about me in this post than I'd like. But eventually, a few hundred words into this thing, we'll get to my parents being the focus. Here goes.

In 1973, I left home more or less for good. I was about to turn 17, high school had bored the hell out of me and I had tried the patience of the school's principal to such a degree that he had been eager to see me leave. I took off that summer to travel around the world and my parents weren't happy about it. They were trying to hold onto their children and keep them out of harms way. Partly this was due to their nature, but a lot of it was due to having lost so much already during the War.

Americans take so much for granted. My parents, on the other hand, were mindful of every potential loss or source - either real or imagined - of danger. Travel meant danger in their view. When I said good bye I felt their profound anxiety.

I travelled here and there in no particular order. Part of my journey, of course, involved a visit to see relatives in Israel. This was right before the Yom Kippur War. I flew out of New York and the El Al psychological tester asked me a couple of questions about who I was visiting. I mentioned the name of one of my cousins, a legendary bodyguard of Golda Meir. His eyes grew big, which is very unusual for an Israeli male. "Avi is your cousin?"

"Definitely. My mom and him are still very close. He was just at my house last year."

"Hey, this kid is Avi X's cousin!" He shouted to the other El Al security agents. I was now a celebrity. The line stopped as the El Al people came around to get a whiff of my yechus.

I left Israel on the day before Yom Kippur. When I heard that war broke out I felt very guilty about leaving. People could use help I thought. I travelled around Switzerland for a bit feeling worse and worse as the war progressed. About a week later I went to Athens to try to get a flight back to Israel. I never told my parents what I was doing. They were nervous already and were ecstatic that I had left right before the war started. I slept on the Athens airport floor for a week with a bunch of Israelis waiting to catch a night flight standby. Hardly any planes were flying in. Eventually I got back.

But I never told my parents where I was until the war was over. I told my relatives not to tell and they understood completely. I'd always call my parents from a phone booth once a week covering my hand over the receiver so they wouldn't hear the Hebrew conversations in the background. I told them I was still in Greece. That I'd met this girl. Who was this girl? A sophomore who went to Boston University. Jewish? Of course.

I stopped writing post cards so I wouldn't have to use Israeli stamps. That was more than OK with my mom anyway. "Your letters are as cold as a rear end," she would say to me in Yiddish. Yes, I know that doesn't translate well into English, but you get the point. I kept the ruse of me being in Greece up until November. Then I told them I was going back to israel to help out relatives with their farm, which is what I was already doing. What happened to the girl? We broke up, I said. They seemed relieved that I had broken up with such a strange girl, someone who travelled on her own and was likely a little too loose for their taste.

The plan was for me to stay in Israel until January and then go off to Australia for awhile. I had met this Jewish guy in Israel who had a cleaning business in Sydney and he and I hit it off. He said he wished he had a son like me. And of course, he had a daughter about my age. This had happened quite a bit during my travels, running into some Jewish middle aged guy, speaking a few Yiddish words and getting offered a little work for a few days. Jewish middle aged guys back then seemed to own stores all over the world; they probably still do. The Australian guy promised me a job for a few months so I could build up some money for more travels. That sounded like a good idea to me. My parents were not happy with this news.

There was constant tension every time I talked to them. They wanted me back. They didn't like all of this loifing. I should go to college in January in their opinion. My mom had already filled out applications for me to go to UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. She definitely wanted me back.

In a ridiculously funny episode the spring before, my father had somehow pulled some strings and got me accepted to West Point. I still don't understand how he did it. He had a distant relative who was a medical colonel and got a recommendation from him. He went to Senator Proxmire's office to get another recommendation. I had no idea that any of this was taking place. All I know is that spring I received a letter of acceptance congratulating me on my scholarship to West Point. "What is this?" I asked my mom.

"Your father did it. Talk to him."

"You'll come out a gem," my father said. "Polish officers, when they finished their training, they were like polished diamonds. You'll be just like that." He then went on a riff noting that my brother in his estimation was getting a crap education that was doing him no good. "There's no discipline. You need discipline."

I politely declined. My father was disappointed. Strangely, especially considering all of the effort he had made, he didn't press the issue.

In contrast, my mother's efforts to get me to attend college seemed benign. Ironically, UW-Milwaukee, which accepts anyone who can fog a mirror, rejected me because I had only been in high school for three years. Madison, which was considerably more selective, didn't seem to mind my deficient high school education. I wasn't interested though. I was committed to going to Australia. The Australian guy, who probably had designs on me being his son-in-law, called me up and said to give him a date and he'd send me a ticket.

Then I got a call from my dad. My mother had a lump in her breast he said. He wanted me back. I told him no, that I was going to Australia in a month. He then let out a profanity laced tirade half in English, half in Yiddish about what a rotten son I was. My mother could be dead in a month. And I wanted to go to Australia?

When you're 17, you don't think about health issues. You feel immortal and you assume everyone else around you is as well. My mother had always been completely healthy. I had already decided in my head - based on no data whatsoever - that this lump was some benign thing. My mother was going to live for forever. I had no fears. And as far as I could tell, my father was using this health issue of my mom's as an excuse to get me back.

He then started to cry on the phone, I mean truly sob. My father rarely cried over anything. "I need you here. I just do." There was no doubt, reluctant though I was, that I was coming home. I called up the Australian guy with the news. He understood and told me I could come anytime and that he'd pray for my mom.

I went home to Wisconsin in the dead of winter. The second I came into my house, I could feel the sense of fear. This was something new to me. My parents were always incredibly optimistic can do kind of people. They were are neurotic as anything, but behind it all they felt like they could conquer everything thrown their way. They were survivors. That's what survivors do.

But cancer. That was something different. "In Europe, they called it the rock," my mother said. "You'd get the rock. You'd die right away." She was frightened in a way that I'd never seen. But it was my father that I was really worried about. He might as well have been wearing sack cloth and ashes. He looked beaten already.

The men in my family, me included, have more than their fair share of screwy characteristics. One of the things that we all share is that we only have a handful of male friends. None of us is particularly nice to people in general. Actually, we're all fairly jerky when you come to think of it, some more jerky than others. And we are all incredibly bound to our wives. We tell them things we don't tell anyone else. They are the ones who bring out the goodness and humanity in us.

So it was with my father. I could tell what he was thinking. He could absolutely not live without my mother. The news that my mother had a lump in her breast shook him to his core. He was probably right. Her death would have been overwhelming. A few years later when my aunt died, I watched my uncle go into an emotional coma, drinking himself into oblivion for a year and a half before he could face the world again. My father would likely have done the same, maybe worse.

In shtetl culture, fear of sickness was always present. As I have noted many times in these posts, my parents took the shtetl with them to America. When they said the words "to your health" in Yiddish as a toast or after a sneeze, it wasn't just a casual thing. The word "health" was always lingered upon for extra emphasis. Everything else was in your power to control. But health was just plain luck. When it left, the assumption was always that death would soon follow. My parents didn't believe in health miracles. Doctors, in their estimation, were there to either give you good news or forestall the inevitable for a brief amount of time. My mom needed to have a biopsy on her lump. They hoped and prayed the news would be good.

Back then, things like biopsies were major things. If you wanted them done right, you didn't do it locally. You went to a place that knew what it was doing. We drove on a bleak winter December day to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. I sat in the back seat of my dad's station wagon for the six hour drive and watched him grip the steering wheel so tightly that I thought it might bend, his face grim showing not a glimmer of hope.

It was cold and gray in Rochester the whole four days that we were there. It's probably the most depressing city I've ever visited and that's not only because of my mother's possible breast cancer. The absence of so much as a sliver of sunlight didn't help, I'm sure. It was as if the weather was conspiring to create a bleak mood, but it was more than that. Rochester is a city full of sick visitors, nurses, doctors, and orderlies. While many are no doubt helped, many also die. Disappointment and anxiety are the predominant moods in the air. Two days into our visit, the news came back that my mother's lump was benign. Then they removed the lump entirely. I remember visiting her in the hospital after the surgery. She didn't like the idea of a scar on her breast. But she didn't want plastic surgery either. "I'll live with it. I've lived with worse," she said, resigned.

The relief my father felt the day the results came back was indescribable. They had been married for over twenty years by that time. Already, they were starting to look more and more like each other. It was eerie to see this happen actually, but it was also a confirmation that my parents were joined together emotionally, physically and in every way you could possibly imagine. We drove home and the primary feeling was not elation but relief. For me, it was the first true realization I had that no, my parents would not live for forever. They were strong yes, but they were far from immortal.

My father, unlike me, always knew that life was fragile. And he had no hope that somehow God would cut him a break. God was vengeful. He either ignored you because he was too busy screwing up other peoples lives or he hurt you. My father had gotten lucky this time. He had his wife back for now. He hoped that he would be lucky enough to have her until his dying day.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, May 21st, 2009

Here's this week's AAA/Jazz top 40. This past Monday I went to hear the incomparable Dianne Reeves. It was a fun concert and she really does have a voice to die for, more than a little reminiscent of Sarah Vaughn. But to the best of my knowledge, Sarah Vaughn didn't try to sing any songs she may have written. She left the songwriting to the professionals. So should Dianne Reeves. On the flip side, Allen Toussaint and Bob Dylan who are both on this week's list, are incomparable songwriters and have been at it for decades. But as singers? You've got to be kidding. Lauren Sevian's latest is a nice nostalgic sounding CD, and is almost in the top 10. Huzzah, huzzah. AAA radio really stinks right now. I mean there has got to be better stuff than the crap they are playing. Whine, whine, whine I know.

1 John Doe & The Sadies Country Club Yep Roc
2 Diana Krall Quiet Nights Verve
3 Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi Nonesuch
4 One For All Return Of The Lineup Sharp Nine
5 Moe. The Conch Fat Boy
6 Stanley Clarke Jazz In The Garden Heads Up
7 Wynton Marsalis He And She Blue Note Label
8 Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker Work To Do Mack Avenue
9 Bob Dylan Together Through Life Columbia
10 Rob Thorsen Lasting Impression Pacific Coast Jazz
11 Lauren Sevian Blueprint Inner Circle
12 Thomas Marriott Flexicon Origin
13 Buselli Wallarab Jazz Orchestra Where Or When Owl Studios
14 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin
15 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label
16 Branford Marsalis Metamorphosen Marsalis
17 The Decemberists The Hazards Of Love Capitol
18 Sean Jones The Search Within Mack Avenue
19 John Scofield Piety Street EmArcy
20 'Papa' John DeFrancesco Big Shot Savant
21 Bell X1 Blue Lights On The Runway Yep Roc
22 Melissa Morgan Until I Met You Telarc
23 M. Ward Hold Time AAM / Dauntless Promotion / Merge
24 Grant Geissman Cool Man Cool Futurism
25 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph
26 Derrick Gardner & The Jazz Prophets Echoes Of Ethnicity Owl Studios
27 Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band Outer South Merge
28 Joey DeFrancesco Finger Poppin' Doodlin'
29 Iron & Wine Around The Well Sub Pop
30 Gomez A New Tide ATO
31 Tierney Sutton Desire Telarc
32 Scotty Barnhart Say It Plain Unity
33 Roman Candle Oh Tall Tree In The Ear Carnival
34 The Resonance Big Band The Resonance Big Band Plays Tribute To Oscar Peterson Resonance
35 Mexican Institute Of Sound Soy Sauce Nacional
36 Kenny Burrell Live At The Downtown Room HighNote
37 Lynne Arriale Nuance: The Bennett Studio Sessions Motema
38 Dr. Lonnie Smith Rise Up! Palmetto
39 Mel Martin Mel Martin Jazzed Media
40 Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! Lost Highway

Easy To Solve Problems

Sometimes you read the paper and despair. Such is the case with me and our dead economy. I don't see any light at the end of that tunnel.

But enough depressing talk. The economy is a very hard problem. In contrast there are easy problems out there that seem difficult to solve to some, but hey I just don't get it. For example, recently I read about food poisoning from TV dinners and the like being on the increase. The response of the food companies has been to put the onus on the buyer to prepare their frozen food properly. Detailed language is used to try and get people to do things like stick a thermometer in their chicken pot pies.

Of course, no one is going to do that. But...who really should eat a chicken pot pie or any prepared frozen food for that matter? The stuff is dreadful. It's loaded with salt, fat, unnecessary sugar and all kinds of nasty preservatives. The last time I ate a chicken pot pie I was at a friend's house at the age of 12. It might have been the only time I ate one. His parents were divorced, his mom was depressed all of the time, and I ate this pitiful thing and thought whew am I lucky my parents love each other otherwise I'd be eating crap like this every day.

It's cheaper and better to make your own food. There's no doubt about it. The time savings to stick some crumby piece of processed food in the oven is pretty negligible. So...have potential fears about food poisoning from prepared food? Don't eat the stuff. Make your own food from scratch. Problem solved. Whew! That was so hard!

I read another article recently about swimming records being broken at a ridiculous pace this year because of new incredible drag reducing swim suits. Ordinary swimmers are looking like Michael Phelps because of these suits. The international committee - which has some acronym no doubt - that regulates such things is talking about creating specifications for suits to eliminate the unfair advantage swimmers might have because of equipment.

But they don't have to do this at all. Really they don't. The solution is a lot simpler. Forget the swimsuits altogether. Have swimmers go out there naked. Problem solved. No more problems with equipment.

Just think of the advantages. Michael Phelps swimming naked. Watch tickets vanish overnight bought by bachelorette parties that used to go to Chippendales. And old guys like me wouldn't think twice about putting down a 20 spot to see Dara Torres do her thing in the water in her birthday suit. Not only would the sport not have to ponder detailed specifications for swimsuits that would no doubt have to be changed every year, but the sport would completely be revitalized!

OK, swimmers with big boobs and big shlongs would complain they are being disadvantaged, but hey they clearly can find other occupations in the porn industry. I wouldn't shed a tear over them. You swim with whatever nature gave you.

There. I've solved two major problems facing the world so easily that I can't believe it myself. Everything should be so easy. it really should. I think I've found a new career for myself. Problem solver. Time to make up some business cards!

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 54

Forgiveness

Here's a photo for you, an odd sliver of a thing. The date is 1967. The event is my uncle's wedding. The location is Milwaukee of course. My uncle was 29. His bride, born in a DP camp in Germany, was 19. My mother never warmed to her. It was a matter of a lot of "issues." Her parents lacked the requisite yechus to wed her brother in her estimation. She wasn't particularly smart and brains were very important to my mother. But no one was going to be good enough for her kid brother is what it was really about.

My mother did have a good time at the wedding, though. I don't think there was a wedding she ever attended where that wasn't the case. She qvelled over me being the ring bearer although being eleven and all and being stuck walking down the aisle with a four year old girl wasn't exactly my idea of a good time.* Yes, that's dour me in the picture, dutifully walking down the aisle trying to make sure that I don't go so fast that the flower girl might trip and fall. The flower girl also was the child of greenhorns. I've forgotten her name, but if you were to recite a list of ten family names and hers was in it, I'd recognize it. She lived in a brick duplex near 72nd and Congress about 15 blocks from us.

After the wedding, my mother put the photos she ordered in the family album. Then six years later she took them out and cut the bride and her family out of every one of the large pictures. She also cut her mother out of each picture. I remember her doing this on her knees on the living room floor, the photo album in front of her, a large stainless steel scissors in her hand. Her jaw was clenched. Tears were in her eyes. And every once in a while, some nasty insult would fly out of her mouth.

This is the only "cut" photo that I have left. I kept it because it is a picture of me and it isn't quite as weird as the others. For instance, I remember a picture of my uncle under the chupah with half the chupah missing. Was he marrying himself? I also kept this picture because I wanted a reminder of that day when my mother went to the trouble of physically altering her memories.

Why did my mother do such a thing? Early on in these blog posts about my family, post number two I think, I mentioned that my mother and grandmother didn't get along, my grandmother was certifiable, and that no one believed me when I told them my grandmother was certifiable (I was her confidante as a child and she used to say bizarre things to me on a frequent basis) until I was in my twenties.

When did my grandmother fly the coop? According to my late great uncle from Israel, it happened in the Tatar Republic in the War when my grandmother contracted cholera. Why didn't my immediate family understand this? I have no idea. But it was strange growing up in a family when everyone assumes that someone insane is simply an eccentric. It wasn't a matter of keeping up pretenses. Everyone truly believed my grandmother was normal. I'll make an excuse that in a family with so many outlier, eccentric people (including me), odd behavior looks pretty normal.

There are sane people who are mean to their children. My grandmother at least had the excuse that she was crazy. And she was mean to her daughter. Always. Conversely, she was nice to my father. Always. Even though this odd dynamic never changed, my mother never ceased to be hurt by it. There was screaming. There were continual insults. My mother would ask me not infrequently, "Why does she do these things?" Up until I was 12 or so, my stock answer was, "She's crazy is why." But my mother would never believe my reason. So I stopped giving that answer and would instead mumble some vague thing.

To never receive a mother's love I'm sure must be a terrible thing. Fortunately, my grandfather and my mother remained close - in a lot of ways they were mental twins - until his dying day.

My grandmother gave up a lot of her jewelry right after the war to pay for a myriad of things. My guess is that she buried a good deal of it somewhere in Tomaszov before they went to Siberia and retrieved it before they went to Germany. But she had a few items left when she came to the US. There were some rings and a rather large gold necklace with diamonds.

At a wedding in about 1973, my mother spotted her sister-in-law wearing that necklace. My mother was crushed when she saw it. The jewelry had been promised to her many years before. She tried to calm herself by thinking that maybe her sister-in-law had just borrowed it for the occasion. But after the event, she called up her mother and asked about the jewelry. My grandmother's answer was simple. She had given all of her jewelry to her daughter in law. "I don't need it anymore. She's been a better daughter to me than you. You don't deserve anything."

My mother cried that night. She called up her sister-in-law and asked for the jewelry. Her sister-in-law refused. They were a gift to her. She wasn't going to go against the wishes of her mother-in-law. Three days later my mother was on her knees cutting people out of photographs.

In Jewish religion and culture, there is no concept close to "turning the other cheek." It simply doesn't exist. The first time I heard of this Christian concept - I was about ten - I thought it was one of the oddest things that I ever heard. Someone does something bad to you and somehow you're supposed to suppress your emotions and pretend that all will be well in the end? I still don't get it. It sounds like self-torture to me, not any real way to behave. It's giving sanction to being treated like a rug. The concept of turning the other cheek is nutty beyond belief.

My mother wasn't going to turn the other cheek that's for certain. She stopped talking to her sister-in-law for years after. There is another odd concept in Christianity that I don't get. It has to do with forgiveness. The idea is that when someone makes a sincere apology you should forgive them for their transgression. In Jewish religion and culture, a sincere apology is a necessary but not sufficient condition for forgiveness. Someone can be as sincere as anything, but if it's not in your heart to forgive, so be it.

My aunt never asked for forgiveness. I know that she loved receiving those jewels and she was entitled to them. If she had apologized, I don't know whether my mother would have ever forgiven her. The incident wasn't about my aunt really. It was instead all about my grandmother. That was who my mother wanted an apology from and she knew she would never get one.

In the 1980s, my aunt was diagnosed with cancer. She was all of 37 years old when she died. I have a grainy video of her from about that time holding my infant daughter. When my aunt was diagnosed, my mother warmed up to her a little. She would come by for visits again and bring food when her sister-in-law was too weak to cook. My aunt was family and for my mother that was all that mattered.

But the hurt that my mother felt over that jewelry never left her. There was so much tied up in it that had nothing to do with money. The jewelry wasn't worth much truth be told. But I think it was the symbolism of the act and loss that made it so hard. It was a reminder that her mother had not loved her for decades. And then there was the tie of those jewels to her past, a life in a small town where as a child she was loved and wanted for nothing.

My mother did not have much of her own from Europe. There was a silver menorah and some china from Germany. She had a gold lapis ring that her father bought her at a young age. I think it came from before the war, but I'm not sure. She had a gold Jewish star that a suitor made for her by hand after the war in Germany. I think that was it. She did love that lapis ring even though it didn't fit her anymore. For a while I wore it myself when I was 12 or so. The 18 kt gold was well worn and I remember the band was getting very thin. My daughter, I think, has it now.

I've been writing these blog posts for over a year now, and one of the rules I made was that I was going to avoid saying anything disparaging about anyone still alive. I was going to keep them out of these stories. I still believe that this is the right thing to do. The flip side is that by these omissions, I have sanitized my parents' lives quite a bit. Some of the flesh and blood is missing. But really now, who needs to know everything about the dark side of a family? What real purpose does it serve? I think there has been more than enough flesh and blood presented as is. I really do.

*Many years later, my own daughter would be a flower girl. My sweetie made her a lace and gold dress. She was all of three I think. The wedding was in an old Chicago hotel that had a tea time downstairs every day at about three. Before the wedding, I went down to the elegant room serving tea, my daughter in hand. As I entered, my daughter in her dress, a woman stopped in mid-conversation with two of her friends, her eyes landing on my daughter. Her mouth dropped open. "Oh my god," she said. "Look there. That's the most beautiful thing I'll ever see." When I think of the word qvell that's my definition right there. That woman. Saying that. Looking as if she's witnessing beauty incarnate. And me beaming.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, May 14th, 2009

Here's what about 50 Jazz and AAA stations are playing this week. I haven't had time to take a listen to the new ones on this list, but I will. SF local Nancy Wright's new CD is on the chart this week. She'll be playing sax for me at a gig in a couple of months. Which reminds me to send her the charts today!

1 Grant Geissman Cool Man Cool Futurism 2009
2 Melissa Morgan Until I Met You Telarc 2007
3 Madeleine Peyroux Bare Bones Rounder 2009
4 Gomez A New Tide ATO 2009
5 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord 2009
6 Scotty Barnhart Say It Plain Unity 2009
7 John Scofield Piety Street EmArcy 2009
8 Kenny Burrell Live At The Downtown Room HighNote 2009
9 Red Holloway Go Red Go! Delmark 2009
10 Jimmy Greene Mission Statement Razdaz Recordz / Sunnyside Communications 2009
11 Terrence Brewer Groovin' Wes Strong Brew 2009
12 'Papa' John DeFrancesco Big Shot Savant 2009
13 Melody Gardot My One And Only Thrill VMG 2009
14 Bell X1 Blue Lights On The Runway Yep Roc 2009
15 Avery Sharpe Autumn Moonlight JKNM 2009
16 Joey DeFrancesco Finger Poppin' Doodlin' 2009
17 Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! Lost Highway 2009
18 Randy Crawford & Joe Sample No Regrets PRA 2009
19 Dr. Lonnie Smith Rise Up! Palmetto 2009
20 Tierney Sutton Desire Telarc 2009
21 Iron & Wine Around The Well Sub Pop 2009
22 Bill Henderson Beautiful Memory: Bill Henderson Live At The Vic Ahuh 2009
23 The Felice Brothers Yonder Is The Clock Team Love 2009
24 Branford Marsalis Metamorphosen Marsalis 2009
25 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note 2009
26 Buraka Som Sistema Black Diamond Fabric 2009
27 Nancy Wright & The Tony Monaco Trio Moanin' Chicken Coup 2009
28 Los Straitjackets The Further Adventures Of Los Straitjackets Yep Roc 2009
29 Indigo Girls Poseidon And The Bitter Bug IG / Vanguard 2009
30 Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles The Stars Are Out Sugar Hill 2009
31 Lauren Sevian Blueprint Inner Circle 2009
32 Bobby Sanabria Conducting The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra Kenya Revisited Live!!! Jazzheads 2009
33 Ann Hampton Callaway Blues In The Night Telarc Jazz 2006
34 Kenny Barron Live At Bradley's Sunnyside 2002
35 Kermit Ruffins Livin' A Treme Life Basin Street 2009
36 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009
37 Ruthie Foster The Truth According To Ruthie Foster Blue Corn 2009
38 Cracker Sunrise In The Land Of Milk And Honey 429 2009
39 Lynne Arriale Nuance: The Bennett Studio Sessions Motema 2009
40 The Vignola Collective Gypsy Grass Dare 2009

What To Do When Your Team Stinks

I've been following the Oakland A's for almost 30 years now, ever since I moved to the Bay Area. I've had partial season tickets for most of that time as well. The tickets are cheap and decent. The Giants' ballpark, on the other side of the Bay, is much nicer, but it's too nice if you ask me. It's a bit like staying at a Sheraton, all this prefab manufactured homeyness. Plus my seats at the A's ballpark average a whopping 8 bucks a ticket. At the Giants ballpark, those same seats would cost me five times as much. So I'm happy being an A's fan. Plus when I first came to the Bay Area, the Giants played at Candlestick, and games there at night were a fair imitation of spring in North Dakota.

For many years, the A's have been slow starters. Why this is so I have no idea. But April is usually, as TS Eliot noted, a cruel month (he said it was the cruelist, but really now, that's just artistic license). May is usually just as bad if not worse. The A's usually don't get started as a team until June. By the All Star break they are in full gear. If things go well, they are in solid position for a playoff spot come August.

For the last two years, though, that scenario hasn't really happened. August has been as depressing as June. Two years ago, injuries derailed them and their general manager unloaded a bunch of veterans to save money and get some new prospects. Last year, their general manager decided to unload more veterans just when the A's were within striking distance.

This year, the A's were supposed to be back on track. The pitching staff was supposedly young and vibrant. Three new veterans were added to the team to provide hitting. But I didn't understand that assessment. I'd seen most the pitchers last year toward the end of the season. They looked to be AAA material, mostly second rate clones of Greg Maddux with one second rate clone of Curt Schilling. The veteran hitters included one guy clearly in decline since he'd gone off steroids and another guy who had no history of hitting well outside of the hitter's paradise of the Colorado Rockies' stadium. I was not optimistic about this team.

We're now at about the 30 game mark. The A's have gotten off to another slow start. But it's even slower than usual. In a word, the A's truly stink. The hitting is dreadful. The starting pitching is awful. And this is the first year I've seen them with the body language that says, "we're going to lose" every time they come to the plate. I'm going to make the prediction that there will be no turnaround this year. They stink now. They'll stink in June. They'll stink in August.

I don't want to cast blame. It's not like I can effect change. But I still have tickets to quite a few more ballgames. I do like baseball. I may have given up on my team, but I'm not giving up on the game. Every team has its good and bad years, even the Cubs. There was a very silly book, a bestseller called Moneyball, a couple of years back that made the claim that Billy Beane, the A's GM, was a genius and that the A's had found the secret formula for success. It was very, very silly. Success in baseball is largely luck. You draft someone in the 17th round who turns out to be an All Star. You trade for a has been who suddenly revives himself and becomes the player of old. Your starting pitching stays healthy year after year. It's luck.

Right now the A's aren't lucky. The one player they anointed to be the cornerstone of the team fell apart physically the instant he signed a long term contract. A player they gave up on after he suffered a horrible injury in a playoff game a few years back has gone on to recover and become a 300/30 All Star on another team. Highly touted draft picks haven't panned out. Lowly touted draft picks haven't either. All the genius of Billy Beane described in detail in Moneyball has somehow disappeared. He did look like a genius a few years back, I guess. Now he looks like an idiot. But neither were/are true. He used to be lucky. Now he isn't. God does play dice with all the universe and that damn well includes baseball.

A few years ago, though, the A's led a charmed life. The A's will be back, maybe next year in fact (I'm thinking about three to five years from now actually). But what do you do in the meantime? Here are some pointers on what to do when your team stinks.

1) Beer. Ballparks always have lots of beer, Mine also has tequila and scotch. Drinking away your sorrows is a time honored strategy. I plan to drink more beer in the games ahead.

2) People watching. Ballparks attract a wide swath of the American public. To pass the time, I like to play the game, "find the intellectual." There's a certain look they have, the take the game too seriously look (I have that look as well). Then there's the dress, a little more formal than most. If you haven't found a dozen intellectuals in the crowd by the third inning, you're not looking hard enough.

3) Watch the other guy. When one team stinks and has a loser attitude every day, the other team usually comes to the ballpark with glee. They are loose. Often, they play even better than they normally would. Confidence does that you know. And it's always nice to watch a confident team even if it isn't your own. Remember, it's about the game. Loyalty shouldn't really matter all that much.

4) StubHub. This is a bit like selling your stocks in a bear market, but you can always try to unload your tickets to unsuspecting buyers. They may not know your team stinks. Or maybe they are sadomasochists.

5) Charity. Big Brothers and Sisters will always take your game tickets. Children are our future. They tend to be on the optimistic side. Plus they are just happy to be out of the house enjoying the sights and sounds of the game. Then again, having them watch such bad play might cause permanent psychological damage. Maybe this isn't a charitable act after all.

I'm sure there are other coping mechanisms I'll create along the way. Yes, my team stinks. But when you're given lemons....I'm gonna make this the most enjoyable agony I can.

They Are So Nice in the South

A few weeks ago I was in North Carolina playing pool with a couple of true good ol' boys. The good ol' boys asked me where I was from. After I told them, I became known simply as "Frisco." There was a fair amount of cultural tension at the table. But pool is pool, and the game trumps all.

After about 10 minutes of playing, a 30 something mother who looked 50 something came into the pool hall with her two teenage daughters. The daughters immediately went to the juke box and stuffed 10 dollars into the machine. When the first song came on, Poker Face, they were so, so happy, grinding in front of the juke box like pole dancers. Other songs in a similar vein came on. My game, never the steadiest, went to hell. The pounding beat. The inane lyrics. The over-processed voice. "You don't look too good, Frisco," one of the good ol' boys said. "It's the f*cking music," I blurted out. The cultural tension left the table instantly when I said that. I was now one of them.

Every ten minutes or so, Poker Face, would come back on the juke box. I'm a sensitive soul especially when it comes to music. When it's bad like that, I fall apart. Really do. Clearly Poker Face was a favorite of the two girls. But my game would sink to new lows whenever that song would come on. I was surprised I could hold a cue.

Forty five minutes later, the music finally stopped. Praise the lord! My brain was finally free from pain. I watched the mother and daughters pack up. And then something funny happened. Some pedal steel sounds came through the juke box speakers, and then I heard the voice of Neko Case, circa 2000. Neko Case and Her Boyfriends. Not bad. The 30 something mother came up to me and patted me on the shoulder before she left. "You looked to be in such pain," she said and smiled. "I thought I'd make it up to you." People are so nice in the South. They really are.

Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 53

Bigger and Bigger Boxes

There are traits of human psychology that I can understand from an evolutionary perspective and personally possess in abundance, but when I step back and think about it, make no sense whatsoever. Ambition is one those aspects that makes an incredible amount of sense as a trait that likely leads to evolutionary advantages. But really now. You live. You die. Aside from people like Shakespeare, Einstein, and Bach (and maybe Elvis, The Beatles, and Frank Sinatra), you're quickly forgotten. This whole ambition thing is a canard.

But I certainly possess ambition. And I know where I got it from. Every day I'd see both of my parents striving to do more. Both of them wanted to leave a mark on this planet. Most of the time, they said they were doing it for their children. The idea was that they were working hard because they wanted their children and grandchildren to have a better life, one filled with leisure.

But this theme - work for the children so they can sit on a beach and enjoy life the way you can't because you've been scarred too much by war - wasn't a consistent one in their lives. First off, they weren't being selfless. My mom used to talk about how she got satisfaction from her success and her work. "You ought to write a book about me," she would say time and time again. "About my life. Not about the war. But how I succeed. I know what you should call it. The Happy Landlord." She was serious about this. At the time, there was a bestselling book, The Happy Hooker. She hadn't read the book, but she knew a catchy title when she saw one.

My father used to talk about showing those American Jews just what a greenhorn could do. He wanted respect from them and from the entire Jewish community. He would talk about it not in terms of the here and now, but when all was said and done. "When I die, they'll all be there," he would say. "They will come to my funeral, not because they liked me, but because they respected me." He would say this in his forties in the peak of his health. I have no idea of how many people think of establishing a legacy at that age, but he did.* His favorite song by far was "My Way" and he would not infrequently "sing" it, bellowing it out at odd hours of the day, every note off tune in a baritone that had the real potential of shattering glass.

Then there was the expected leisure life of the children and grandchildren. They were conflicted about this dream of theirs. When I became an adult, both my parents were always telling me to "live it up a little" or "zhaliva nicht" (don't deny yourself anything). They expressed more than a bit of concern that I was working too hard as an academic. But ultimately, the concern was not that how many hours I spent in my office or in the field making measurements. They didn't want their sons to be lazy good for nothings. The real concern was that if I was going to work so hard, I should make some real money. The idea of putting in so many hours without making big bucks seemed ridiculous to them.

Money was important to my parents. It was the true measure of success.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s my parents made a lot of money. By contemporary standards, it wasn't that much. But for a couple that lived through war, and then lived on middle class union wages or their equivalent for another twenty years, the change was dramatic. It's a cliche of course that money can't buy happiness. My parents would have disagreed. They were as happy as they had ever been.

They had their work down to a system. My father would buy some fill in lot on the West Side of Milwaukee. Then he'd follow a doubling rule. If it was zoned for a duplex, he'd bribe an alderman to get it rezoned for a four family. If it was zoned for a four family, he'd get it rezoned for an eight family. He'd build the apartments and my mother would rent them.

They worked side by side seven days a week. They rarely fought and shared the same vision of success and happiness. It was as if they operated as one person. My mother was the right side of the brain. My father was the left side. Or something like that. That's a bad metaphor, but they seemed to compliment each other completely. What was one person's strength was the other person's weakness. They both recognized their differences, and both utilized and relied the strengths of the other. My mother and father were the essence of teamwork. They trusted each other and loved each other completely.

My mother truly was the "happy landlord." She had a gift for it. She understood people and had a natural warmth that seemed to instantly put people at ease. The apartments were in fairly desirable areas - where working class people with decent union jobs lived - and she'd carefully screen tenants for their credit as well as assess their reliability on the fly. My mother was patient about renting so that she could find the right tenants. She was a landlord for thirty five years and never once went to court over a tenant dispute. In contrast, when my mother died and I took over renting the family apartments, I was in court within three months.

My father had a knack as well. He built simple, well built boxy apartments made of rust-tinged or red brick. These essentially were the same as the single family houses he built when he started except bigger. First they were duplexes. Then they were four families. Then they were eight families. Bigger and bigger the boxes became. They were eminently practical and designed to last with minimal maintenance for a good 50 years. All of them still stand today.

In 1971, my father, just turned 50 (actually 52, but 50 according to his citizenship papers), stretched out to build what would be his biggest project by far. He found a strip of land backed by a freeway on the far west side of town for a ridiculously cheap price. I was at the closing for that property. The land had been held by a family for god knows how many years and the couple selling it - old, pasty faced, bewildered, and poorly dressed - looked like they were in money trouble and needed cash quick. It seemed as if this was the first real business transaction they had ever made.

The property was zoned for 30 units. My father bribed another alderman - actually I did the bribing, but that's another story - and had it rezoned for 64 units, two big boxes side by side. Courtesy of Google, you can see a bit what they look like above. They are on a street literally named Lovers Lane. The construction went smoothly. The apartments were quickly filled by the "happy landlord" with mostly young tenants, couples and singles with good jobs.

This would be the last major project that my father would undertake. After it was all done, he'd drive up to these apartments and had an air about him as he entered that is hard to explain. It wasn't arrogance. Maybe it was wonder mixed with pride.

Most people who possess ambition don't get moments like this. Their dreams and their accomplishments don't ever come close to being a match. For my father they did. Not just once, but quite a few times. I've had moments like that, too, and I feel blessed to have experienced them. We should all be so lucky. But building these apartments was something beyond that, a "I have surpassed anything I could have possibly dreamed of" moment.

It was so much bigger than anything he had ever done that he had this "pinch me" look for many months after he was finished. No project gave him as much joy. It was 1972. My father was as happy as he would ever be. He was also healthy, something that wouldn't hold for long.

I'm getting close to the end of these stories. I don't want to dwell on my father's illness. There's not much to be learned from it. I'll talk about it for maybe one post, twenty depressing years in 1200 or so words. I like to remember my father as he would like to be remembered, healthy, strong, with an incredible life force and energy. I wish I had a recording of my father belting out My Way, his arms outstretched to get even greater volume, his chin down, his mouth wide open, bellowing so loud and awful that it was both funny and charming:

"I've lived a life that's full.
I've traveled each and every highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way"

I can't begin to describe just how much conviction there was in his voice when he sang those words. His singing was awful, yes. But he really did sing that song with all of his heart. He meant every word. And I believed him completely.


*Like my father, I had an idea of a legacy as well. When I started out as an academic, I had this vision of training many graduate students who would go on to careers in academia and industry and establish themselves as leaders. I did train about 15 people over my career and liked almost all of them, but by the time I got in the academic game, potential academic jobs for my students were almost non-existent. Ten years or so down the line, I attended a retirement dinner on the West Coast of a geophysicist who was a true gentleman and outstanding scientist, a real role model. It was a great dinner and former students from all over the world - many top notch people in his field - came to attend. I left that dinner with a warm glow. I thought about the people my age at the dinner; not one of them - and there were some very talented people - was going to come close to leaving any kind of measurable legacy. That model was gone. The money wasn't there for it. The jobs weren't there for it. It's not surprising that at about that time, I decided to leave academia for good.

Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, May 7th, 2009

Here's what AAA and Jazz stations are playing this week after you knock out their top 20. If you like Mingus-flavored jazz and want to pretend you're at a decent NYC jazz club while sitting in your living room, Lauren Sevian is a good bet; the bassist on that set is one of the busiest in NYC and for good reason.

1 Bell X1 Blue Lights On The Runway Yep Roc 2009
2 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note 2009
3 Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette Yesterdays ECM 2009
4 Carl Allen & Rodney Whitaker Work To Do Mack Avenue 2009
5 Joey DeFrancesco Finger Poppin' Doodlin' 2009
6 U2 No Line On The Horizon Interscope 2009
7 Dr. Lonnie Smith Rise Up! Palmetto 2009
8 Booker T. Potato Hole ANTI- 2009
9 Branford Marsalis Metamorphosen Marsalis 2009
10 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label 2009
11 Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles The Stars Are Out Sugar Hill 2009
12 Thomas Marriott Both Sides Of The Fence Origin 2007
13 Bat For Lashes Two Suns Astralwerks 2009
14 Various Artists Dark Was The Night 4AD 2009
15 Julian Lage Sounding Point EmArcy / Decca 2009
16 Lauren Sevian Blueprint Inner Circle 2009
17 Medeski, Martin & Wood Radiolarians II Indirecto 2009
18 Scotty Barnhart Say It Plain Unity 2009
19 Raphael Saadiq The Way I See It Columbia 2008
20 Rhett Miller Rhett Miller Shout! Factory 2009
21 M. Ward Hold Time AAM / Dauntless Promotion / Merge 2009
22 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009
23 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord 2009
24 Jimmy Greene Mission Statement Razdaz Recordz / Sunnyside Communications 2009
25 Jonatha Brooke The Works Bad Dog 2008
26 Thomas Marriott Flexicon Origin 2009
27 Greg Skaff East Harlem Skyline Zoho 2009
28 Justin Townes Earle Midnight At The Movies Bloodshot 2009
29 Dan Auerbach Keep It Hid Nonesuch 2009
30 John Scofield Piety Street EmArcy 2009
31 Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown & Milt Jackson What's Up? The Very Tall Band Telarc Jazz 2007
32 Tierney Sutton Desire Telarc 2009
33 Los Straitjackets The Further Adventures Of Los Straitjackets Yep Roc 2009
34 The Doves Kingdom Of Rust Astralwerks 2009
35 Sara Watkins Sara Watkins Nonesuch 2009
36 Ramblin' Jack Elliot A Stranger Here ANTI- 2009
37 Michael Wolff Joe's Strut Wrong 2009
38 Bruce Springsteen Working On A Dream Columbia 2009
39 Indigo Girls Poseidon And The Bitter Bug IG / Vanguard 2009
40 Peter, Bjorn & John Living Thing Almost Gold / StarTime 2009

Value Added

I've been reading - well actually skimming because it's not that interesting of a read - the book How College Affects Students. It has that touchy feely approach to education evaluation that you find in schools of education that makes me cringe, but if you can get past the political bias, mushy mood, and dry writing there are some interesting tidbits in there. And one of the tidbits is that all colleges from community colleges on up teach about the same material at about the same level of difficulty.

I don't know whether to believe these assessments through and through, but it makes a kind of sense. Calculus is calculus. Economics is economics. The textbooks are about the same from publisher to publisher. My personal experience more or less gibes with this. I taught at two places, Illinois and Duke. While I taught more difficult material at Illinois, I think the difference reflected a general watering down of content at universities over my decade hiatus from teaching rather than Duke being easier than Illinois.

Researchers have looked at exams across the breadth of selectivity of college and universities and can find no appreciable difference in the difficulty of those exams with the exception that liberal arts colleges use multiple choice methods less. Post-graduate test scores - GRE/LSAT/MCAT/etc - indicate that students of similar caliber at one institution do as well as students of similar caliber at another regardless of selectivity; they show the same level of improvement from their pre-college test scores. Even when graduates are asked to rate what college has provided them growth-wise, there is little difference across institutions. The exception is that liberal arts college graduates seem to feel that they have learned more about how to live a better quality of life, but that just may reflect their own inclinations before and during college.

It seems to be that from Cuesta Junior College in California to Yale University, college is about the same from an education standpoint. I mention those two schools because in the 1990s, one infamous student - Lon Grammer - falsified his Cuesta Junior College transcript to gain admission into Yale as a transfer student. At Cuesta, he had a 2.1 GPA. At Yale, he apparently did slightly better and was a month or two from graduating when his fraud was found out and he was expelled. It's conventional wisdom that elite schools are true pressure cookers and someone who does decently at a state school just might flunk out at an Ivy League school; Lon Grammer showed that certainly isn't the case.

That which is measurable suggests one thing that separates the elites from the hoi polloi of higher ed is grading. Students from selective schools receive higher grades for the same material as do students from schools that aren't in the upper pantheon. There's nothing wrong with that. Selective schools do get on average better students and they can be expected to master more material than those from places like Cuesta College. They should get higher grades. If you look at the nation as a whole, my own research indicates that the average grade at a school can be well predicted by the average SAT score of the student body. Average GPA's go up 0.1 per 100 points in average SAT (Math and Verbal combined) with the complication that private schools grade about 0.1 higher overall and engineering/science schools grade about 0.1 lower overall.

Not to dwell on Lon Grammer - although if anyone knows of his whereabouts, I'd love to interview him - but his improvement in GPA at Yale apparently reflected his own admission that he studied more than he did at Cuesta.

Given that the material is all about the same and (likely) the teaching is all about the same as well from college to college - great researchers at elite schools aren't often particularly motivated or gifted teachers - the question exists what exactly is the benefit of paying all that money to go to an elite school or even leaving home to attend a flagship state school? And I think that the answer is the intangibles.

You're paying for ambience. Your LSAT/GMAT/MCAT score won't improve if you go to one of those fancy schools any more than if you went to your local commuter college, but hopefully your classes will be a little less crowded, the buildings will be better maintained and the desks and chairs won't be falling apart.

You're paying for your cohorts. You're surrounded by people who have about the same level of academic talent as you. Rather than being the lone smart guy or girl, you're one of many. Because academic achievement is strongly correlated with wealth, these cohorts tend to come from the upper middle class and wealthy.

How important are a better ambience and more academically inclined and wealthy cohorts? I don't know the answer to that question. But parents and students seem to think it's very important. They seem to be driven to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the "right school."

One thing that I've left out in all of this discussion of the value added by attending an upper crust college is that it does seem to give students a leg up in gaining admission to upper crust professional and graduate schools. It also gives them a potential pathway to high end jobs on Wall Street and with consulting firms that don't even bother to interview at less prestigious schools.

I certainly should have mentioned this post-graduate advantage first above the advantages of ambience and cohorts. Top notch law schools, business schools, medical schools, Wall Street banks, and consulting firms are dominated by graduates from a handful of institutions. That's really the value added in attending Yale over Cuesta. It isn't the education. It's the connections.

When someone says they are going to a fancy school because the quality of education is better, they probably believe that is the case. But way back when, I used to hear something similar about the magazine Playboy. The standard line was, "I don't buy it for the pictures. I buy it for the great journalism, short stories, and interviews." The interviews were indeed pretty good. The fiction wasn't bad either. But people bought Playboy mostly for the pictures. At the elite schools, the education can be pretty good. But people are by and large attending for other reasons. That may be partly why they put forth so little effort in the classroom.

I Still Don't Understand It, But Then Again No One Does

I don't go to see new pop musical acts much anymore. Right now I'm more or less in a highbrow stage or at least middlebrow stage. If I can predict the next few notes, the next few words or pigeonhole the act as being a new version of x, y or z, I turn off in a hurry.

For a while I was listening to a ton of new CDs I'd get sent my way. You could pigeonhole people by their influences easily in about 30 seconds. Listening to CD after CD, you start dying for something even slightly original. And when it comes, you just smile or at least I do. I have no idea how music reviewers can do this year upon year. The ratio of dreadful stuff to good music is just way, way too high for my ears. But then again that's what discovery is all about.

Over the last few years, I've seen pop musical acts rise up from the muck, launched by critical praise and then followed by public adulation. I'm probably just getting old, but these acts - groups like Kings of Leon and Fleet Foxes and solo acts like Melody Gardot and Neko Case - just leave me cold. The songwriting is way too dull. Of course I'm not even mentioning the mega-sellers here, the truly cheesy acts that garner teen support.

I still don't understand what makes an act take off and garner public support. Neither does anyone else, I'm afraid, so I'm in big company. But I'm guessing you do need some sort of gimmick, some sort of narrative that people can find personally appealing. You can be the wild sons of Pentecostal ministers, the new hippies of the Pacific Northwest, find your muse as a result of a car wreck, or be a red tressed artiste, but you do need a compelling narrative. I don't think it's really the music that does it, but the narrative and look of the person behind the music. A big voice doesn't hurt either.

Over the last few years, there have been a few acts that I've casually followed who are well, well below the radar. None will ever get picked up by a record company. But the first time I heard each of them, I smiled and said this is different in a good way or this is nostalgic in a good way. Lately, two of those acts - both solo - have bubbled up a little, probably as much as they ever will. I probably should mention their names, but I won't because they might take this little blog post the wrong way.

Both are from Texas. One of them is kind of a mix of down home Texas sensibility with PJ Harvey. Does Texas need a PJ Harvey? I think it does, but obviously I'm not from Texas. The musician in question is pretty enough and talented enough and young enough. I've watched reactions to her music and the response is usually not, "wow," but "what the hell is this?" She's won a couple of music competitions, but that's about as far as I think she'll go. She doesn't seem to have that "it" factor on stage and she just isn't predictable enough for the public. I listen and I sigh, thinking that if music like hers was on the radio the world would be a better place.

The other is a very sincere Jim Croce/John Denver type, a troubadour with warm, heart-filled songs. I used to go see him play at writer's nights in Nashville and think, if this guy had been born in 1950, he'd have a shot at being a national treasure. Instead, here he is on contract to a publishing company for a measly 12K a year trying to churn out horrible, cheesy country songs for a living.

The era of the sincere guitar-playing troubadour is long gone although it might cycle back eventually. In the meantime, the troubadour in question has thrown in the towel and moved back to Texas, although he did manage to get one of his songs on a new country record by a very cheesy male act. That song just might turn into a single in the summer and if it does, just might earn the troubadour a nice six figure check. Good things can happen to good people.

When I think about what makes pop music popular, I honestly don't think it's the music at all. The music is interchangeable really. It's all about the act. Are they good looking? Do they have a good narrative? Do they look good on camera. Do they have a little bit of cheesiness in their act, that indefinable mix of phoniness mixed with sincerity that the public loves so much.

I don't understand how certain acts can connect to a wide audience. I don't understand how certain acts can connect for just one hit and others last for years. It's one of life's great mysteries. I don't particularly like acts like U2 and Barbra Streisand and can't stand acts like Mariah Cary, Madonna and The Stones, but I know they have something that others don't possess that goes beyond talent. They have some crazy gift of magnetism that endures even when they are wrinkled and gray. Who knows where that comes from, but somehow the public responds to acts like these in a way that it won't with 99.9% of the talented people out there. God has blessed them with an indefinable gift. I really mean it.