Category Archives: Culture

The Freedom Index

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Actually, there is no Freedom Index, except in my possibly fevered imagination.  The idea came from reading the WordPress Daily Post, “What Does Freedom Mean?”  That’s a good question to think about.  It is very hard to answer, which makes it interesting.

All of the obvious answers lead you in circles.  Millions of people in these troubled times long for the freedom that work brings, but that reminds me of all the five dollar bills I tossed into lottery pools at work.  I’m guessing that nearly all working stiffs sometimes dream of winning the lottery and achieving that sort of freedom – even though lots of studies show that a year later, most winners are no higher on the Happiness Index (which really exists).

News reports are always full of threats to our freedom, often couched in words of blame for someone else.  Still, on a hypothetical Public Freedom Index, things could be a lot worse.    We can watch fireworks if we choose – or not, since we don’t have mandated public celebrations.  The explosions tonight will be for fun; we live free of the threat of real bombs.  We can can blog and tweet to our heart’s content, and Google on a staggering array of topics.

Personal Freedom is always a little more dicey.  We are still guaranteed “the pursuit of happiness,” but you have to wonder how most people would answer the Dr. Phil question:  “How’s that working for you?”

The Dalai Lama says all of us desire happiness and an end to suffering, but we really don’t know how to go about it.  Many of our choices lead to the opposite result.  Perhaps the freedom to ask – really ask – where our real happiness lies, is one of the greatest freedoms of all.  That and Freedom of Information which allows us to follow the trail where ever it leads.

Here is Buddhist blessing/prayer, known as The Four Immeasurables:

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all beings know the supreme happiness that is beyond suffering.
May all beings rest in equanimity, free from attachment and free from aversion.

Happy Fourth of July!

About Branding

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In response to my comment yesterday about writers “building a platform,” my wife, Mary, sent me a gem that had popped up on her Facebook page.

Washington Post columnist, Gene Weingarten wrote a hilarious and scathing article called, “How ‘branding’ is ruining journalism:”  http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/2011/06/07/AGBegthH_story.html

A journalism student had written to Weingarten, as part of her thesis research, asking how he built his brand.  His reply was short and to the point:  The best way to build a brand is to take a three-foot length of malleable iron and get one end red-hot. Then, apply it vigorously to the buttocks of the instructor who gave you this question. You want a nice, meaty sizzle.

The conditions that Weingarten describes in journalism – a financially-driven battle for “eyeballs” – affects traditional publishing as well, where writers are urged to “market themselves like Cheez Doodles.”  He cites Snooki as an example of publicity run amok.

Read it and weep.  Or better yet, read it and laugh.  Sometimes the two responses are not so far apart!

What is YA and Who Reads It?

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Recently someone suggested a novel to me, but cautioned that I might not like it because it was “women’s fiction.”  That sparked a mini-revelation.  I realized I read a lot of women’s fiction because I read a lot of young adult books, and the two have become synonymous.  As if to underscore the notion, an email from Amazon popped up in my inbox called, “New Releases in Young Adult.”  Of the ten recommendations, nine were by women, and the single title written by a man was a paranormal romance with a female protagonist.

That got me wondering about the history of YA, its origins, its audience, and its nature in the olden days, which I guess means before Twilight.  Wikepedia came to the rescue with a well done page on the history of YA fiction:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young-adult_fiction.

The honors for coining the phrase, “young adulthood,” and distinguishing “books for children” from “books for young persons,” goes to Sarah Trimmer, in 1802.  Even so, 19th century publishers did not use any distinct classification for young readers, though some of the titles published remain classics to this day:  Swiss Family Robinson, Oliver Twist, Alice in Wonderland, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Kidnapped, and The Jungle Book to name a few.

The trend continued into the 20th century, and the roaring 20’s established young adults as a group apart, but it wasn’t until the 50’s and 60’s that “young adult” as a classification entered the publishing world.  The genre as we know it did not begin to emerge until the 70’s and 80’s, for books like The Catcher in the Rye (1951) and The Lord of the Flies (1954) bear little resemblance to what you find in the YA section today.  In case I’m being too subtle, I don’t really think that’s a good thing.

Neither did a thoughtful blogger named Annalee Newits, who posted a piece called, “Stop Writing Young Adult Science Fiction,” in 2008.  Though she writes in defense of her favorite  genre, her observations transcend such confines:

If we really want to open science fiction up to new readers, we won’t do it by dividing our audience up into smaller and smaller groups. Nor will we expand the minds of young people by telling them that they should only read specially-designated novels for young people. Why not admit that teens have a place in the world of adult imagination, and vice versa? Adults and teens are different in all kinds of ways, but surely they can meet in the world of fiction.  http://io9.com/5037686/stop-writing-young-adult-science-fiction

I posted earlier about my frustration one day when I cruised the blogs, in search of the “proper” age for protagonists in young adult vs. middle grade fiction.  It turned out that just as in real life, no one knew what to do with the 14 year olds.  The real question is why we are asking this question at all?  Who told us we have to, and why?

Ursula le Guin, Madeline L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien of course, Mercedes Lackey, Robin McKinley, and Neil Gaiman – these are just a few of the names that pop right to mind when I think of writers who have played by their own rules, who have written stories for young adults that have weight, substance, and staying power, and defy our feeble attempts at classification.

The blurb for the young adult winner of the 2011 Amazon Breakout Novel Award begins, “In the increasingly crowded paranormal marketplace…”  Apparently that’s what it has all come down to in young adult – we introduce an award for excellence by noting how the book has positioned itself in the marketplace.

Life is way too short to play by this kind of rule.

Marginal People, People of the Margins

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Given the doings and structure of the psyche, there is no such thing as being alone.  If you are the only one in the room, it is still a crowded room. – Michael Ventura

While reading and enjoying the interviews in Bill Moyers Journal (which I discussed here, https://thefirstgates.com/2011/05/24/bill-moyers-journal-the-conversation-continues/), I came upon a phrase that evoked a cluster of other ideas.

Moyers interviewed author, Louise Erdrich, concerning her novel, Shadow Tag, which he considers exceptional.  During the interview, Erdrich, who is the daughter an Ojibwe mother and a German American father, said “I live on the margin of just about everything, Bill.  I’m a marginal person, and I think that is where I’ve become comfortable.”   I recommend the interview as a whole, as I do the others in Moyers’ book, but right now I want to focus on the phrase Erdrich used – “marginal person.”

Louise Erdrich

In context, she was talking about the split between people’s waking selves and their dream selves, which is one of the subjects of Shadow Tag.  She was also talking about the tensions between her Catholic upbringing and the Ojibwe culture, as well as the tensions between her various roles, such as mother and writer, which don’t always fit well together.

In short, I take the phrase, “living on the margin,” and being a “marginal person,” to mean”outsider,” one who stands at the edges watching, related but not quite part of.  I am going to take this notion a step further, because it accords with recent thought in depth psychology as well as conditions in our culture.

James Hillman, a prominent post-Jungian thinker, has written eloquently of our “polytheistic” psyches, formed of a number of archetypal forces that often compete with each other.  This is in distinction to Jung’s “monotheistic” psychology, which posits a central “Self” which is alpha and omega of the psyche.

James Hillman

Here is what Michael Ventura, a journalist, screenwriter, and friend of Hillman’s has to say:  There may be no more important project in our time than displacing the…notion that each person has a central and unified “I” which determines his or her acts.  “I” have been writing this to say that I don’t think people experience life that way.  I do think they experience language that way, and hence are doomed to speak about life in structures contrary to their experience.  Ventura adds, The central “I” is not a fact, it’s a longing – the longing of all the selves within the psyche that are starving because they are not recognized” (Michael Ventura.  From “A Dance For Your Life in the Marriage Zone,” in Shadow Dancing in the USA, 1985, out of print).

Ventura’s essay on marriage names a few of these “selves:”  My tough street kid is romancing your honky-tonk angel.  I am your homeless waif and you are my loving mother.  I am your lost father and you are my doting daughter.  I am your worshipper and you are my goddess.  I am your god and you are my priestess.  I am you client and you are my analyst.  I am your intensity and you are my ground.  These are some of the more garish of the patterns. 

You get the idea, and though you may find it mildly interesting, perhaps you wonder, what is the point, and what does it have to do with margins?

Plenty, I think, and it’s all wrapped up in a word in a word related to margins.  The word is liminality, from the Latin word, limen, which means, “threshold.”  People and cultures in liminal states are “betwixt and between.”  The definition given in Wikepedia is:  a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the “threshold” of or between two different existential planes.  Though the word was initially used by anthropologists to anaylze the middle stage of ritual practice, it has passed into broader usage, with this important meaning: [liminality is] now considered by some to be a master concept in the social and political sciences writ large…very useful when studying events or situations that involve the dissolution of order, but which are also formative of institutions and structures.

Hermes, the Greek messenger god, is the archetypal figure of liminal states, for he can easily pass between the worlds and speak to gods and mortals.  His Roman name, Mercury, is synonymous with quicksilver, that flashing liquid metal that is not quite one thing or another and cannot be contained.  My suggestion is that marginal people, people who are at home in the margins, people whose psyches welcome Hermes, are fortunate in this liminal state of our culture and world, as it becomes increasingly hard to bury our heads in the sand and fail to note “the dissolution of order…which [is] also formative of institutions and structures.”

Hermes, Messenger of the Gods

My previous post on nonfiction writing spoke of the “dissolution of order” in publishing and the nimbleness that is likely to characterize and benefit those writers who can adapt and even help create the new structures that are going to emerge.

The landscape of work is another example that touches everyone.  My father worked forty years for the same company, doing the same sort of job, before retiring with a pension.  Showing up as the same person every day served him well.  I had three distinct careers in six different organizations; that is the current statistical norm, and I bet it will seem tame to the generation now coming of age.  Access to a variety of “selves” was an asset in sailing those waters.

Rigid and hierarchical structures are not faring well this year, be they Arab governments, the government of California, the management of Borders, or people in almost any endeavor who cling to business as usual.

If you recognize yourself as a marginal person, a child of Hermes, one who has never been quite “this” or “that,” but both and neither, relax.  These may be the very times when you shine, when your gifts are needed, and when the ways will open as you come into your own.

Father’s Day Musings

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About ten years ago, a woman from the U.K. told me that in a British poll, Homer Simpson had been voted “the most influential living American.”  One thing hasn’t changed much over the last decade:  men don’t get a lot of respect in the popular media.  Best case, they come off as lovable though horny goofballs like Joey and Chandler on Friends.  Worst case they are portrayed as liars and nincompoops who couldn’t survive a day without the steadying hand of a woman.  Without Carl’s Jr. bacon cheeseburgers, some guys would starve.

If you believe the marketing experts who layout the Father’s Day advertising supplements, the male imagination is limited to Docker’s shorts, socket-wrench sets, wide-screen TV’s, and golf balls.

When I was in the first grade, my bus used to stop to drop off a boy at a corner then turn uphill toward my house a mile away.  One day that boy’s father shot himself; it was clearly accidental.  He was a WWII veteran who brought home a German luger, and as he was cleaning the gun, he forgot the round in the chamber.  The details were discussed all over the schoolyard and the kitchen table at home; how the man had tried to reach the telephone before he died.  I lay awake quite a few nights with this reminder of my father’s mortality.  I think of that boy every Father’s Day and wonder what thoughts he has.  It may be that no one appreciates a father as much as those who have lost or never had one.

Father’s Day is a nice time to celebrate the expressions of men’s generosity as they have appeared in our lives.  It’s a time to celebrate every man who ever told us, “You can do it,” and made us believe we could.

Finding Your Civil War Ancestors

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For a number of reasons, which I will discuss here later, my thoughts at this time of year turn toward the battle Gettysburg, an event in our history that has long haunted and fascinated me, especially since I toured the battlefield one June many years ago.

The campaign began at this time of year, on June 15, 1863.  Bolstered by six months of stunning victories against superior numbers, Robert E. Lee led 70,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac to invade Pennsylvania.  He planned to strike as far north as the capitol in Harrisburg, or even Philadelphia.  Anti-war sentiment in the north was so strong he believed that one more victory on northern soil would force Abraham Lincoln to negotiate for peace.  He was probably right.

On the battlefield’s web site, I found a fascinating page for locating civil war ancestors:  http://www.nps.gov/gett/historyculture/ancestor-search.htm,  If you click the top button on the right, called the “Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System,” you can plug in names and states to search the National Archives data base.

I started by trying my name, because it’s unusual, and discovered eight soldiers named Mussell, seven who fought for the Union, and one Confederate from Georgia.  I doubt that any were direct ancestors, since my paternal great-grandfather didn’t arrive on these shores until 1870.

I searched on my mother’s maiden name, which is more common, but that carried its own difficulty:  she was born in Virginia, her father came from Michigan, her grandfather from New Jersey, and all three states had soldiers with her name.  Out in a trunk in the garage I have an old hand-drawn genealogy, and such tools are likely to be necessary.

The soldiers’s names are matched with regiments, and if you click those, you can see where they were formed, where they fought, and where they were disbanded.  Tragically, in every regiment I checked, the number who died of disease was greater than the number who killed in battle, a statistic that holds for both armies as a whole.

It’s pretty amazing to have this kind of information at our fingertips, and one thing we can be sure of:  everyone who lived in this country 150 years ago was affected.  There were almost a million casualties at a time when the population was only 31 million.  If you are lucky enough to have some letters, a family Bible, an aging relative, or family legends, who knows what you can find with this database.

Books for Brainiacs (literally)

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I was browsing the NPR list of recommended Sci-Fi titles today, and could barely manage a ho-hum.  I’ve slipped into one of my periodic non-fiction moods, and I’ve learned to follow such whims to see where they take me.  I fear that my book queue may get even more unmanageable after stumbling upon these NPR recommendations:  Insane Science:  Five New Books that Explain the Brain.  http://www.npr.org/2011/06/08/136896426/insane-science-5-new-books-that-explain-the-brain  Here is a quick summary of the article:

The Compass Of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, And Gambling Feel So Good  by David J. Linden.  Everyone probably guessed Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Vodka, and perhaps Generosity, but the author claims that Paying your taxes belongs in that category too.

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts To Gods To Politics And Conspiracies — How We Construct Beliefs And Reinforce Them As Truths by Michael Shermer.  Shermer, a former Evangelical Christian who became an agnostic in college claims that belief precedes the explanations we invent for them.  However, Shermer acknowledges that, “we could be wrong.”

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through The Madness Industry by Jon Ronson.  The bad news:  an estimated 1% of the population is psychopathic.  The good news:  if you wonder if you are, you almost certainly are not.

The Optimism Bias: A Tour Of The Irrationally Positive Brain by Tali Sharot.  Even if you are a cynic, your brain is probably hardwired for optimism.  “Most people are programmed to predict happy endings in all facets of our lives.”  As you might have guessed, there is measurable survival value in thes.

A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What The World‘s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam.  If you want to know what people really think about sex, look online, claim the authors, and that is what they did.  Their conclusion, after sifting through “reams” of data?  Men’s sexual brains “are more like Elmer Fudd,” and women’s, “like Miss Marple.”  That hook I think, is enough to get me to download this one.  Not that I would be crass enough to ever make a joke about Elmer Fudd and Congressman Wiener – nope, no way.

Happy reading, everyone, and I categorically deny all rumors that I have too much time on my hands!

High School Confidential

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The day after our local graduation made me pause and consider high school for the first time in a long while, an interesting article arrived in the June 20 issue of Time.  In “Life After High School,” Annie Murphy Paul says, “We’re obsessed with those four years.  But new research shows we’re not defined by them.”

“Obsessed” will seem an appropriate word if you follow and enjoy popular media as I do.  Think of Rebel Without a Cause, Grease, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club, and any number of recent TV shows, some of which I really enjoyed, like Buffy and Joan of Arcadia.  Think of all the new authors piling into young adult fiction.  Think of Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” or “Married With Children’s” Al Bundy, whose life has been downhill since the day when he caught three touchdown passes (or was it four?).

At the core of Annie Paul’s article are a number of studies, now yielding results, on high school experience as a predictor of futures.  The longest running study, sponsored by the National Institute of Aging, followed 10,000 members of the class of 1957 in Wisconsin for 50 years.  There seem to be correlations, but they are not all that clear cut.  “Coveted as they are in high school, brains and popularity get you only so far in the real world,” says Paul.

Author Alexandra Robbins coined the term, “quirk theory,” to explain the fact that, “Many of the differences that cause a student to be excluded in school are the identical traits or real-world skills that others will value, love and respect…in adulthood and outside the school setting.”   In her recent book, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, Robbins says, “I’m still a dork,” but believes that helps her connect with those she was interviewing and her readers.

Nothing is fixed, the various researchers seem to be saying, except the ideas we may hold of ourselves.  Such considerations may have motivated a University of Virginia psychologies to say, “Our work shows that popularity isn’t all that important.  The key is finding a group of people with whom you can feel at ease being yourself.”

In that respect, nothing much has changed.