Why Do This?

After a few months off, I've come back here and it feels good. That should be enough, right? But of course I discount that feeling and overthink and worry that I should build a bigger audience, find ways to make this blog more important (whatever that means), and find some larger meaning. I've been writing regularly since 1987. I was going to say writing seriously, but that sounds like I've made a career and also sets off alarms about building something else instead of accepting what I'm already doing.

Whatever my worries, every so often someone reminds me why I do this, what effect I'm having. Last night it was a friend from college who had been catching up on my postings. He was reading "Learning Is Messy", a piece I wrote in July after leaving teaching but still being very much in a teacher's mindset. I was also stuck installing a damn doorbell. My friend thought it one of my funnier and more publishable pieces.

It felt good to hear the compliments — I'm a sucker for such things — but here's the thing that's really good: I got a clear reminder that writing connects me with people I love and need. It helps me meet new people. It reconnects me with those I would otherwise lose. Just last week, an old friend subscribed to the newsletter and though we didn't talk, it was like seeing her smile from across the room, across years. Lovely stuff, that.

The reason to do this — and by this I mean anything worth doing — is that it's good and leads to good things. That should be obvious, but I need to be reminded every so often. If you do too, then that's something mre reason to do this. I might as well write on.

For The Greater Good

John Tumino does good work and is kind. He runs In My Father's Kitchen and spoke Thursday morning about Hire Ground which helps homeless people earn money by working. The real mission, he said, is getting people to the point where they're ready to change. Paid work, good food, fresh socks, real friendship, all of these are just the means to getting people to that point.

I believe in kindness. National news is largely bad, almost hopeless, but I still believe in kindness. This morning I worked out what kindness means to me.

Kindness is dependent on caring for our neighbors, especially those less fortunate, and understanding that almost everyone is less fortunate. We make our lives better through making other lives better.

Greed, thinking mostly of ourselves, is a path to misery. Doubt that? Think greed pays? Then just try to imagine the fraction of a man in the White House ever being happy. I've never seen a more miserable creature. In my kinder moments, I pity him. The rest of the time I have other feelings about him.

Even some of his stuff might turn out good, but being kind means doing good deliberately. John Tumino does that with In My Father's Kitchen. My wife does that working with pre-school teachers, kids, and their families. You likely do that raising children and caring for aging parents. Real kindness is the result of our choices.

Sometimes doing good is draining, tiring, and seems hopeless. Yet, we still know it is good. That's why we keep doing it.

That's also why I'm not hopeless yet. I believe in kindness because the alternative is a road to suicide and because I see kindness in my world, especially in my immediate vicinity. I'm shown kindness too often not to believe.

Does kindness win in the end? Maybe, but that's a foolish question. There is no winning nor any end. We continue living together, understanding and helping one another as best we can, and standing in opposition to the politics of greed.

Go buy some pasta sauce. Invite people to dinner. Keep believing and being kind. Do it for the greater good.

Cool & Uncool

Do you have a steady boyfriend
Cause honey I've been watching you
I hear you're mad about Brubeck
I like your eyes, I like him too
He's an artist, a pioneer
We've got to have some music on the new frontier
—Donald Fagen, "New Frontier"

---

I've finished prepping dinner after bringing laundry upstairs for my wife to hang. On the speakers I'm playing the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Jazz Impressions Of Eurasia playing and there is nothing at all cool about any of this.

Back when I taught high school (all of four months ago), kids asked why I didn't wear a Gucci belt, Jordans, or whatever else they thought was cool. One kid said, "I don't know how you freaking stand being so uncool, man." (He didn't say "freaking" or "man," but the two words he used, while cool to those kids, are things I'm purging from my life).

I smiled. This was a pretty smart kid, the kind I liked and most of why I was still teaching. He smiled a little too, knowing I was about to try and teach him something. I said, "here's the best thing about getting old: you stop worrying about being cool." He nodded, then schooled me: "Yeah, you're old, but you were never cool, were you?" Touché.

I'm fifty-one and really like the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet: Desmond, Wright, Morello, and Brubeck improvising over whatever time signature no one else used. It's called cool jazz but not because the people still listening to it are cool. The cool folks are digging the newly unearthed Coltrane, the weirdly wondrous Ornette Coleman, neglected Jessica Williams, and every Miles Davis album except maybe Kind Of Blue. Look at my record collection and the largest section has Brubeck down each spine. So uncool.

That kid kind of understood. Most didn't, but he was cool in the ways that really matter. The ways I still want to be cool. He was a little bit open to things. He could be taught. He could learn. He could come to understand. He sure as hell wasn't going to listen to Brubeck and I bet wherever he is now, he's wearing a Gucci belt that isn't doing a damn thing to hold up his pants. He's cool that way too.

Me, I'm not even close. But I'm cool with that.

From a Columbia Records Sleeve circa 1961

This was inside the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Brandenburg Gate Revisited album:
 

HERE'S HOW RECORDS GIVE YOU MORE OF WHAT YOU WANT:

1. THEY'RE YOUR BEST ENTERTAINMENT BUY. Records give you top quality for less money than any other recorded form. Every album is a show in itself. And once you've paid the price of admission, you can hear it over and over.

2. THEY ALLOW SELECTIVITY OF SONGS AND TRACKS. With records it's easy to pick out the songs you want to play, or to play again a particular song or side. All you have to do is lift the tone arm and place it where you want it. You can't do this as easily with anything but a phonograph record.

3. THEY'RE CONVENIENT AND EASY TO HANDLE. With the long-playing record you get what you want to hear, when you want to hear it. Everybody's familiar with records, too. And you can go anywhere with them because they're light and don't take up space.

4. THEY'RE ATTRACTIVE, INFORMATIVE AND EASY TO STORE. Record albums are never out of place. Because of the aesthetic appeal of the jacket design, they're beautifully at home in any living room or library. They've also got important information on the backs—about the artists, about the performances or about the program. And because they're flat and not bulky, you can store hundreds in a minimum of space and still see every title.

5. THEY'LL GIVE YOU HOURS OF CONTINUOUS AND UNINTERRUPTED LISTENING PLEASURE. Just stack them up on your automatic changer and relax.

6. THEY'RE THE PROVEN MEDIUM. Long-playing phonograph records look the same now as when they were introduced in 1948, but there's a world of difference. Countless refinements and developments have been made to perfect the long-playing record's technical excellence and insure the best in sound reproduction and quality.

7. IF IT'S IN RECORDED FORM, YOU KNOW IT'LL BE AVAILABLE ON RECORDS. Everything's on long-playing records these days…your favorite artists, shows, comedy, movie sound tracks, concerts, drama, documented history, educational material…you name it. This is not so with any other kind of recording.

8. THEY MAKE A GREAT GIFT because everybody you know loves music. And everyone owns a phonograph because it's the musical instrument everyone knows how to play. Records are a gift that says a lot to the person you're giving them to. And they keep on remembering.

AND REMEMBER…IT ALWAYS HAPPENS FIRST ON RECORDS.