Going Down to the Office

When we were selling our hillside house in Huntington, Indiana, we were in frequent phone contact with our realtor, Marcellus Scher, and he'd always say when he'd be available "down at the office" next Tuesday morning or this Friday after four o'clock, etc. Sometimes when we'd call his wife would answer and say he was "down at the office," and we should call there, and repeat the number. But we never knew exactly where that office was. He had been with a big Realty office downtown for several years, but wasn't currently.

Finally one day we got an offer that he wanted us to drop by his house out on Stults Road to hear, and we drove out of town to the address.

I knew the house well. My parents' friends had lived there years before--a nice little Cape Cod box with a finished dormered second floor upstairs and a finished paneled basement. It was a comfy country cottage I'd been in in several times previously. Scher greeted us at the front door and sheparded us through the front hall directly into the down staircase.

"I went down to the office this morning," he said, "and I got an offer on your house--just a second." He fumbled with some keys and found the one he wanted, unlocked a solid door and stepped into "the Office," inviting us to follow and sit down around a big round antique table.

Thirty minutes or fewer later we had accepted the offer in writing and sold our house, and Scher locked up his "Office" as if it were located in the most insecure part of town instead of at the foot of his basement stairs, and we all climbed back up and were seen out the front door, with a nod to Missus Scher who glanced at us over her shoulder from the kitchen.

We've often chuckled at how serious Marcellus was about keeping a professional demeanor as he went to work on definite schedules by going ten steps down to his basement. Here was a man who kept his work separated from his private life with a zeal.

Now, as I try to feel my way into more internet publishing and marketing activities, I find it remarkable my "business," my "office," is sitting here on my laptop computer that I normally work with on my family room couch. When I go online to try to increase traffic to new sites or write some more help menus for the spreadsheet budget I'm trying to sell online through affiliate sites, I laughingly tell Barb "Well, guess I'll go on down to the office today," and she knows exactly what I mean.

We Can Hide but We Can't Run.

I'm not sure what the main industry is in South Florida, but advertising is surely right up there. People who don't live here don't know what they're missing when they open their SoFla mailboxes. When I open mine I find layers of sundry ads of various sales and promotions, all unattached and slipping over each other so that only someone with a strong grip can keep them together long enough to get to the trash. These fillers clutter the mail and hide the first class items so well in their unbound, unstapled, loose-fitting, varied-size sheets and folds that we've more than once tossed something we really needed. Surely the military would like to know what their printers coat these thinner-than-newsprint flyers with, that makes them slicker than teflon or jewelers' oil.

And these nuisance ad bundles are there anew every day. The idea of them flying apart is so you have to pick them up, and presumably in doing so have to look at them. And it works. Frequently one or more of them slips out and falls on the grass, and despite my attempts not to look, I'm visually drawn to some sale price for some product or service before I can crumple it in my hand.

Today I learned from one that "I'm too busy to clean my own house," and that "Bertha and Crew Maid and Painting Service" would do it for me, for only-- . And from another I learned that "Loyalty like mine should be rewarded," therefore I should drop my cellphone carrier and switch to AT&T. Well, that doesn't seem very loyal, does it.

The magazines we get that seem so thick and meaty with reading when we carry them inside and open their pages dissolve into limp little pamphlets as they empty their loose ad insert cards onto our table. Barb then goes through and finds the glued ones and rips them out and throws them on the floor in disdain. What's left is a flapping mess with many jagged pages, and of course most of those are filled with ads also.

One particularly irksome new wrinkle has popped up on the front page of our Sun Sentinel newspaper, which now uses stick-on ads right over the front page headlines! Similar to sticky notes, these thin little three-inch square pests with their thinly-gummed backs can be gently peeled off and removed, but they still take some of the day's top story with them. Barb sticks them on our table items and vitamin bottles, where they continue to work their magic every time we reach for the Equal or pop a Stresstab. Again, the idea is to force me to notice something I didn't want to before the Sun-Sentinel will let me see something I did want to. Bad on them, say I, shame shame.

But advertisers are a shameless species. Some have promoted putting large ads in geostationary orbit so we are involuntarily urged to "Eat at Joe's" every time we try to look up and enjoy a pretty sunset. Others want to plaster their commercial messages over the inside of public restroom doors so we have something to read while--well--something to read, other than the graffiti. Still others want to decorate our shopping cart handles or force us to walk over their ads underfoot as we wheel through grocery aisles. If there were any way to invade our sleep, or even our eternal rest, I'm confident they would try. I'm wondering how long it may be before we will stare down at a dearly departed viewing and see "Betty's Beautiful Bouquets" tastefully arranged on the pillow next to the remains.

Sometimes we try to revolt against the onslought, but it's like shadow boxing with the rain. We join the national "Do Not Call" list, but of course the politicians exclude their causes, so we're swamped with electioneers' calls this year with its heated contests. Charities are also exempt from exercising self-control, and there are always those that just don't comply. We still get a barrage of calls from our college alumni associations every evening, and the "frat of police," as our caller I.D. announces. Fortunately, the caller I.D. works, so our super-cellular voice-announcing, coded-color-and ringtone phones all go off and broadcast "PFRATF OF POLIZ" with a loud, obnoxiously-instrumented tune so we don't inadvertantly bite out of habit. I guess we have barricaded ourselves about as well as we can against the commercial world. But I'm equally sure they will forever strive to find a way to wheedle and twist their way around our defenses.

imposed upon by most indirect causes

Lest we forget how affected we can be by those myriad things that happen even continents away, consider my poor student from Venezuela who went home for her spring break. While there, she learned that her government refused to renew her visa to return to Florida and finish her semester at our university.

I seem to recall reading something about Hugo Chavez's threats to withhold visas to the U.S., among his usual rants against us "Yankee Imperialists," which are so frequent I hardly pay attention most of the time. But this time it affected me directly. My student's predicament led her to contact my administration, who promptly contacted me to arrange online work with her so she can continue to meet her requirements in my course and earn her credits. I'm also asked to report back to the administration as I proceed so they can monitor the situation.

The extra workaround isn't difficult but is time-consuming, as with any individual needs outside the regular class meetings. It's not really part of my responsibility as an adjunct instructor, but I'll do it, because it was no fault of the student--nor any fault of my university or even me. It's Hugo Chavez's fault, as I see it. Yet there's not much any of us can do otherwise, in fairness to the student.

I'm sure she flew down without her texts or assignments--it was her spring break after all--expecting to fly right back. But all her stuff's up here in her room, and I have no idea how or when or even if, she'll ever get it back.

The incident reminded me how fortunate I am to live in a free country which offers me at least some protections against the infantile whims and pouting gestures of a despotic leader.

The Ties That Bind

Once again my state, Florida, has bolixed up an election process, and once again it has managed to appear foolish in the eyes of the nation, and once again it's citizens are all a-dither for something to be done to set it right--without paying for it, of course.

In a pushy attempt to pre-empt the national Presidential primaries, our ex-governor Jeb and the Republican-dominated legislature moved up our primary by a couple of weeks, over the objections of just about everyone else in the country, including the candidates. Not screaming so loudly was Michigan, which made a similar cut to the front of the line by moving its own primary earlier as well. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party quickly levied punishment for breaking the rules: Florida's Democratic delegates were denied seats at the national convention, thus disenfranchising the state's democratic voters and rendering their primary votes moot. The state's Republican delegates were divided by half at that party's national convention. No delegates campaigned in the state, by their mutual agreement (though Hillary came down to crow over her victory briefly after the vote).

So the move to increase influence in the primary selection process backfired in spades. Not only did the state receive far less exposure to the candidates, with the chance to influence issues and positions, but they got next to zip. And worse, even with the primary taking place January 29, its results didn't alter anything at all. And worse still, Florida's delegates were unseated and the electorate punished with their votes not counting at all--surprise surprise.

Now both Florida and Michigan are scrambling to undo the damage and rush through a Democratic party do-over, either in actual balloting or a mail-in choice, but even that has the devil in the details and no one can agree on how it would be feasible or fair, or affordable. The national party won't pay for a repeat, nor should they.

What the legislature did not foresee--besides the foolhardy thumbing of noses at the national rules--was the tie. The tie between Obama and Clinton--or potential near-enough tie to make the super-delegates a factor going into the convention, and the very real possibility that neither can win enough delegates to capture the nomination outright. That effective tie means that something has to give. Someone empowered to elect the Democratic party nominee for President has to switch his or her vote. Actually, quite a few have to, to assure the number for victory.

But wait! Isn't each delegate bound by law to vote for the candidate the voters elected in the primaries and caucusses? Actually, not exactly. It's not against the law to switch. But wait! Isn't each delegate bound by moral obligation to reflect the will of the people's votes? Guess what. This is what is called hardball, friends, and anything goes.

So it turns out that the ties that bind, where elections are concerned, are not binding very firmly, that the back-room deal-making and phone call deal-breaking has already begun, both candidates promising the super-delegates the moon many times over to switch to their side.

And ironically, with Pennsylvania coming up in its primary in a few weeks, that state and others which follow, which kept their place in the pecking order of traditional primary dates, are now the ones which are apt to actually have the greatest impact on the election, not Iowa, not New Hampshire, not even Texas and Ohio. And certainly not 'lil ole Flawda, which in its reckless gamble just lost its clout entirely. The latest state to vote may actually be the one to put Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton over the top. He who laughs last,....

Oh well, at least we got to see a lot of Rudy Guiliani. He campaigned here and nowhere else, and came in last, and quit. The ties that bind aren't very firm.

Are We Getting Dumber?

This morning's Today show aired a segment asking if American youth were quickly becoming dolts, and citing as evidence that fewer than one of four college graduates could identify Iraq on a map; that ditsy Idol contestant Kelly Pickler, during an interview, did not know France was a country and Europe was not; that fewer than forty percent of American high schoolers had read a fiction or nonfiction book during the past year, and other eyebrow-raisers.

For years Jay Leno has sidewalk-interviewed "dummies" for us to chuckle at sadly. One, who said she was studying to be a teacher, couldn't recognize a picture of Bill Gates but instantly identified another of Harry Potter. Some couldn't name the nation south of Canada. The culprit, according to Matt Lauer's technology advocate, an NBC employee, was benign, not sinister--simply a changing lifestyle, a higher importance given by today's youth to "knowing how to use computers and the internet than to knowing Proust." With the internet's efficiency mere facts could now be instantly Googled or gained on Wikipedia--no need for tedious reading searches. Lauer's other guest, advocating for her book's position that yes, indeed, our youth are dumbing down significantly from previous generations, descried the technology monster which, she suggested, had made today's youth believe that learning basic traditional knowledge in wideranging fields of the languages, the social, natural, and physical sciences and mathematics, geography, history, philosophy, religions, the arts and literature was unimportant. What was important was what Paris Hilton wore to last night's party. Now that's knowledge that can be used, messaged and gossiped to posses and friends.

Another culprit cited by the dumb-and-dumber theorist was the media, who almost never attempt to raise the intellectual store of viewers but eagerly capitulate to the lowest forms of entertainment--inane reality shows as an example--sought by the greatest numbers, in a total sellout to commercialism.

Ah, Rome, Rome--are we so different in our decline from you? I have always been amazed at how quickly "civilization" can disappear. We falsely assume that knowledge once gained can never be lost, that law and order once established cannot be destroyed, that future generations, raised with the blessings technology has brought, will be better, live longer and stronger lives, become smarter and wiser, than their forebears.

It takes about two generations--perhaps only one--to nearly wipe clean an entire generation's knowledge and social memory, and along with that catastrophe to replace previously-held values. To do so requires only mindless entertainments, lowering of expectations and requirements, socially expedient promotions through grade levels, parental neglect and abandonment of any curbs on tv and computer use, the failure of the generations to interact collectively, and a sellout by government at all levels in order to get and maintain power, giving the greatest number of voters the ease and comforts they want rather than the challenges and opportunities for growth that they need.

Are we getting dumber with each generation? I'm not ready to say we are, though what a young adult today is expected to know is certainly different than it was twenty or forty years ago, as any employer can attest. Nor do I believe the fops paraded on tv by Leno or the gross ignorance suggested by books and articles is necessarily proof of decline. There have always been those who have learned more basic knowledge, always been those who have from lack of education or experience not become "smart" in this field or that. Such displays don't indicate whether young people today are better or worse at solving problems, at interacting in socially cohesive groups, at organizing purposeful activity, at living effectively and competitively in a complex world or instilling needed values in their children in turn. Nor do such displays of factual ignorance indicate much about the state of their conscience or their capacity to love, their sense of right and wrong, or their moral and ethical judgement. To me, these areas of the person are more important than whether or not someone has mastered Proust.

But it is worrisome that our expectations of what young Americans should be expected to know have become so low that I'm not laughing so much lately at the screened interview tv "dummies," not as entertained by the idea that ignorance is something to be proud of. It's not necessary for youth to turn away from technological gains--quite the contrary. Technology is a tool like fire or firearms that can be used for good or ill What people need to learn is how to use it wisely. Nor is it necessary for youth to read the entire canon of literature or master any other field of knowledge revered by their parents, in order to be considered "smart." But I do believe that parents, teachers, government, the church and other social institutions, the commercial sector and the media must share the blame for someone becoming an adult who cannot find his nation on a world map, and who is unconcerned that he cannot.