Chasing Down Taliaferros

Well, it’s a day that obviously wasn’t going to conform. To anyone fearing joblessness, I can tell you—it’s not hard. (As long as you have someone—thanks, Mr. Fernández!—who does have a job…) But there are rules.

Readers will know that the day begins with the trot. Actually, it’s now a modified trot-plunge-retrot. (Go the Escambrón beach, swim for five minutes, return home….) Right—did that. Then went to see Charisse’s brother’s wife’s mother (I think) in the hospital.

This, of course, only makes sense when seen through Puerto Rican / Caribbean eyes. Seen through gringo eyes, it would almost be an affront to visit someone on the strength of so—well—weak a connection. But Puerto Rico is blessed with excellent doctors.

The problem?

It’s also cursed with horrible hospitals.

And Cbwm’s (come on—I can’t be writing Charisse’s brother’s et cetera forever) is elderly and in frail health and—more importantly—doesn’t speak Spanish.

Well—I know about that. So I went off to the hospital, on the assumption that visiting hours would start at ten. (I can hear you—that maternal exasperation rising in your voice—“well, did you ASK???” Nooooooo!)

Good news—the hospital has a Starbucks—very nice doppio espresso….

A child of corporate America, I bring you the solution, not the problem.

I’ll go back at 1PM….

Right. So the post has not been written, and that’s major. That’s a sin. As you know, my international readership (curiously, the blog got 66 hits from Russia last week—don’t know what that’s about) is both famously discerning and way exigent. A day that goes by without a post provokes howls. Or at least nasty emails…..

Well, it’s now 12:30—and what have I done?

Worried my head about the Taliaferros.

Eric knows someone who knows a Taliaferro who considers Madison her home.

Well, Jack knew the Taliaferros, and talked about them, and deemed them a good, upright family—and no, that’s not condescension. You had to work hard to get those words outta the old man’s lips.

And I thought—couldn’t be sure—that the family was one of the oldest black families in town. Which would make them damn interesting—Madison being not known then for excessive racial heterogeneity. (Marc? Could you just talk straight? Town was lily white!)

Well, google Taliaferro and what do you get?

One of the fascinating things about Wikipedia is its variability. Sometimes it has a lacuna of information, other times it’s almost embarrassingly rich.

Well, I’d bet that the Taliaferro family has an ardent genealogist, and he / she certainly gets right down to business! Starts off with a bang!

Taliaferro (/ˈtɒlɪvər/ tol-i-vər), also spelled Talifero,Tellifero Tolliver, or Toliver,[1] is a prominent family in the United States Commonwealth of Virginia. The Taliaferros (originally Tagliaferro, Italian pronunciation:  [ˌtaʎʎaˈfɛrro], which means "ironcutter" in Italian) are one of the early families who settled in Virginia in the 17th century. They migrated from London, where an ancestor had served as a musician in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The surname in that line is believed to trace back to Bartholomew Taliaferro, a native of Venice who settled in London and was made a denizen in 1562.[2]

Right—notice how quickly we take an Italian name, make it Venetian, and then throw in the reference to Queen Elizabeth I! A nice way of saying—we’re no pizzeria owners here!

Nor does he relax his grip….

A legend exists about the name having originated in Roman times in what was called Cisalpine Gaul, which leads many bearers of the name to believe that their ancestors were actually French, not Italian, since Gaul is generally known to be the ancient name for today's France; however, Gaul was a term applied to a very wide region that also comprised the whole of northern Italy. Tagliaferro is indeed a common surname in northeastern Italy, especially in the area around Venice.

Arms of Tagliaferro family of Tuscany. Sketch sent from Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 1786

The origins of the Taliaferro name were of interest to George Wythe, Virginia colonial lawyer and classical scholar, who had married a Taliaferro. Wythe urged his former student and friend Thomas Jefferson to investigate the name when Jefferson traveled to Italy. Jefferson later reported to Wythe that he had found two families of the name in Tuscany, and that the family was of Italian origin.[3] Jefferson enclosed his sketch of the coat-of-arms of the Tagliaferro family as reported to him by a friend in Florence, Italy.[4]

Well—having Tom Jefferson poking into the family heritage is something of a feat! Then follows a list of some twenty prominent people, all bearing the name of Taliaferro.

Curiously, clicking on any one of the links brings the same vast quantity of information—could it be?

The plot thickens into something the consistency of oatmeal when the author of the article (why do I think it might be a Taliaferro?) throws in info on people whose middle name was Taliaferro. He starts with Dr. John Taliaferro Close—who has a daughter named “Glenn.”

Ends with Booker T. Washington.

Say whahhhh?

Yup, that “T” you’ve been saying for years is actually a Taliaferro. And guess what! Here’s a couple of lines from Wikipedia’s article on Booker….

Washington was born into slavery to Jane, an enslaved African-American woman on the Burroughs Plantation in southwest Virginia. She never identified his white father, said to be a nearby planter; he played no significant role in Washington's life. His family gained freedom in 1865 as the Civil War ended, and his mother took them to West Virginia to join her husband.

Well, mother may never have said who the father was, but ask me, and I’ll tell you.

She wrote it, and on the birth certificate!

Well, Booker, it seems, was a little more than just that nice verging-on-Oreo educator from Alabama. Here’s what one historian has to say….

Historians note that Washington, "advised, networked, cut deals, made threats, pressured, punished enemies, rewarded friends, greased palms, manipulated the media, signed autographs, read minds with the skill of a master psychologist, strategized, raised money, always knew where the camera was pointing, traveled with an entourage, waved the flag with patriotic speeches, and claimed to have no interest in partisan politics. In other words, he was an artful politician."[1]

Oh ho! Damn, that’s good! Why can’t I write like that? Here’s the citation, by the way….

Michael Scott Bieze and Marybeth Gasman, eds. (26 March 2012). Booker T. Washington Rediscovered. Johns Hopkins UP. p. 209.

Well, we’re a long way from Madison, Wisconsin and the Taliaferro. Except not. Actually, Booker T. Washington was invited to Madison, and spoke before 4000 people at—I’m guessing here—the Stock Pavilion.

OK—it’s clear. This day is wasted. I have produced nothing of worth today—barring having cleared up the mystery of Booker T. Washington’s biological father (send the check, historians, to POB 902…oh forget it!) So I might just as well call up Gary—who can clear up the mystery if anyone can.

He’s on it like a sailor in a whorehouse after a six-month stretch at sea. Takes him just an hour.

Odell Taliaferro—head of the Madison chapter of the NAACP.

Oh, and the Taliaferro whom friends of Eric know?

Here she is!

Paths, Crossing

First path—Susan. She sends me an article entitled “Religion for Everyone” by Alain de Botton. The thesis is that however much organized religion got it wrong, it did do some good things. Mostly, he says, it brought everybody together—rich and poor, strangers and friends, and formed a community. Also, of course, got people to think of a higher goal than money in the bank or the car in the garage.

But why not let him tell it?

Religion serves two central needs that secular society has not been able to meet with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in harmonious communities, despite our deeply-rooted selfish and violent impulses; second, the need to cope with the pain that arises from professional failure, troubled relationships, the death of loved ones and our own decay and demise.

Well, it’s a point of view. And it’s also true that some religions—one thinks of the Quakers—do a nice job of the two points above without intruding too much annoying theology into the whole business. And yes, it would be nice to go somewhere, be in a community, share pain, joy, and sorrow.

Also true, of course, is that we’re a stratified society. And very likely a lonely one. How many times has a person sat and just listened to you, asked questions, heard your story? And when was the last time you did that for someone?

I was lucky—they paid me to sit in a room and hear the stories of people’s lives. They didn’t know that, of course—they thought I was teaching English. And since the students were speaking English, in a sense I was. The students knew better.

“You’re the psychotherapist for the Wal-Mart Home Office….”

Could have been. I heard a surprising amount of information prefaced by, “I’ve never told anybody else about this, but…”

And here’s the rub—most of my students went to church every Sunday. Reading Facebook, as I now do, I realize how profoundly religious they were and are.

They were also very lonely.

Their churches taught them that God loved them and that He was all-powerful and that loving Jesus was all that mattered. In many cases, it provided an emotional vent, a way of letting go. A sort of spiritual rock concert.

The rest of the week?

For the single mothers, there was no adult contact beyond co-workers and child-care providers (that would be mamita).

Didn’t use to be this way. There was a time, I told the students, when everybody sat down and ate together, three or four generations, and extended family as well. Sundays were long, slow days—sitting in a rocking chair, swapping stories, remembering the good and the bad times….

Sometimes people chatted. Sometimes they just sat in silence together.

Well, we don’t do that anymore. At least, most of us don’t.

Which leads us to the second path: Truman Lowe, or—to use his Ho-Chunk name—Hawk.

He drifted in the door last May when I was up in Wisconsin, attending a party in my mother’s house, and getting her out the door. And the first thing I noticed about Hawk?

He listened. Oh, and observed.

It’s a quality that’s sufficiently unusual that I wanted to look him up. And that’s easy to do—he’s a significant figure in the world of art.

Born in Black River Falls on the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin reservation, he grew up in a family of six kids. The language spoken at home was Winnebago. Even now, he considers English a second language.

Goes to the University of Wisconsin, but during the summers plays “Indian” at Wisconsin Dells. (Where he meets a young Eric Newhouse—hence the connection.) Then he begins to teach—first high school, then (and currently) at UW-Madison.

From which he took a leave of absence to become the first curator of the National Museum of the American Indian.

And so he’s had—or rather is having—a distinguished career.

I like his work very much. As much, in fact, as I liked the quietness in him. And as much as I liked this quote, freely lifted from Wikipedia

If I have a religion, it must be canoeing...I canoe wherever there's water. It puts me in a totally different state of mind and provides all I need to exist. - Truman Lowe[2]

Was that what I sensed that May day in Wisconsin? A man who can be alone, who likes to be alone on the water, who feels joy in his arms making the rhythmical motions of paddling, who sees a landscape float by in God’s time?

Think so. As well as a man who grew up as few did or do—in a family, yes, but also in a community. Which gave him all the strength to be alone.

And to listen.

Slack Times

Well, we live in slack times. Readers of this blog will know that I barely achieved yesterday half of what Trollope did daily over a writing career of half a century: write 2500 words.

Wait—it wasn’t a career. Just a pastime, a hobby that he did before breakfast, before he went off and invented the post box.

Well, I can’t say the effort exhausted me. But today I’m tired. It’s Sunday. Surely even a blogger is allowed a day of rest?

(81 words—2419 to go! Got your answer?)

Damn—it seems to have gotten into me. Besides, shouldn’t I be calling Eric? He sent me all those photos, plus the question—what to do about Franny’s poems, or rather the box full of ‘em that we compiled the day after she died, when we were ransacking—ooops, that’s clearing out—the house.

Well, well—Trollope would know what to do about that! Get up at 1:30 and spend three hours a day compiling them and publish them and shoot her into posterity—the Midwest’s Emily Dickenson! The moving story of a youngest son’s championing his late mother’s poetic oeuvre—damn, that word is getting to be a habit—in the years following her death!

OK—I’m not Trollope. The flesh and the spirit are weak. (Though I’m now at 220—hey, coming up to 10%!)

And speaking of Eric—did you know that he too is a blogger? Yeah, and a real one, that writing star of the family. Publishes for Psychology Today. And guess what? All his posts were snorefully ignored. Until the day he wrote about soldiers’ wives taking off their blouses and writing inspirational messages on their backs. (Though how they did that I don’t know….) Well, somehow the word “breast” got into the post and guess what!

It’s called SEO—search engine optimization. Post virtually went viral.

Hey, I could do that, you know!

Gentle Reader, do not read the following paragraph! (Note to editor—print in red.)

Breasts breasts breasts, cocks hard cocks—more breasts!—hey, and babes hot babes hot Latin babes, BOYS BOYS BOYS, hot Latin boys (oooh!), triple XXX action (redundancy there—oh, who cares!), oh, and duh, SEX SEX SEX, steamy Latin sex, steamy steamroom sex, panties panties panties, hot nipple action (don’t know where that  came from) and…

STOP!

Guess what! I’m now at 390—well over 10%, and all without having said a damn thing! This post is as meaningless as a Trollopian digression!

Hey, could I do that? Write a digression? Anyone doing that, nowadays? They teach it in the Master’s of Writing programs? Brian would know—he just got an MFA in creative writing.

Ahh, his was an idyllic childhood, with long, cow-pie flinging summer afternoons spent lazy in the cornfields of northern Illinois. The hours would pass slowly, as the gentle clouds wafted slowly (as opposed to all that fast wafting you see so much of) across the azure (nice, Marc!) sky. His mother, an indomitable pie-maker (shoot, will the reader think Mina is making cow pies? Oh forget it—it’s just a digression…) labored in her kitchen; his father ministered to the turkeys, always alert to the possibility of a sudden rain, and thus imminent death, as the turkeys, their mouths agape, scanned the sky in wonder at the atmospheric disturbance. (Not true, but who cares!) He wondered, this gentle and gentled son of the plains, of his life to come. Would he till the earth, as did his ancestors, bringing forth the fruit (err, soy beans?) of the land, the richness of the earth? Would he bask in the humid August nights, hearing the cicada destroy his evening rest? (Anyone still around?) Little did he know that breast breasts breasts—just checking to see, as well as doing a little optimization—that he would travel far, far (just love that repetition, as well as adding to the word count...) across the chilly Atlantic, the churning (oh, like my stomach?) Atlantic, reversing the journey his ancestors had made!  

646!

OK—so that was the trick. Happy to report that the stuff just writes itself. Really nothing to it.

Well, now I’m feeling bad. I really have delivered nothing of value, today. I’ve wasted your time. You deserved better. Take a look at these. Relax.

It’s Sunday.

Bet it’s the black guy….

When Grandmother is Right

I swore, as a younger man, that I would never sing that old tune, made popular by (I think) Mark Twain: “when I was twenty, I though my father was an idiot, at age 25 I was surprised how much he had learned…”

It’s so smug, assuming the young know less than us, assuming that they too will grow up and make the compromises and—too often—forget the dreams and the ideals which on occasion can have real worth. And if they don’t? Well, isn’t it better to have had them? Who wants a 21-year old Republican investment banker? I’ll take a kid writing the great American novel in a garage studio any day….

So why am I reading a book called Willpower, a New York Times Bestseller by Roy Baumeister (the social scientist) and John Tierney (science writer)?

Well, the first reason is that I want more of it. As I sit writing this, my eyes see a group of coupons for Swanson Vitamins (excellent source, by the way, and cheap), two containers of juggling balls (decided to learn to juggle in lieu of getting a job), a little device that I had no idea what use it could provide until I figured it out—it’s the iPod (from aPple!) charger.

Well, Messieurs Baumeister / Tierney would hate that. The first thing they suggest is to clean your desk. Get a to-do list that is concrete, not fuzzy. No “clean the house”—who can possibly do that? Where to start? Instead, “clean guest bathroom sink, dust piano, remove junk from desk…”

You get the idea…..

The book has much to commend it. Which is better—to give kids self-control, or to give them healthy self-esteem?

Confession—that’s the next chapter. Haven’t got to it, yet. But I did sneak and read the two quotes under the title. The first is by someone called Lady Gaga—a popular entertainer (haven’t heard her, don’t know if she can sing): “You’re a superstar no matter who you are or where you come from—and you were born that way.”

Back in a moment—gotta do 100 units of insulin for that surge in blood sugar….

The second quote is just a bit tarter: “Brats are not born. They are made.”

That’s from a lady called Deborah Carroll, a.k.a. Nanny Deb (which does suggest somebody with a bit more hands-on than Lady Gaga…)

Why do I feel that I pretty much know the thesis of this chapter—just by reading the two quotes?

OK—the book also has some great ideas for increasing will power. In the first place, like a muscle, the will can be strengthened. How? By repeated exertion, so that the act or action stops being an act of will, but becomes instead a habit.

And thus steps the explorer Henry Stanley into the book. You’ll remember him—the guy that set off into darkest Africa to find Dr. Livingstone? By the way, it appears that Stanley made up at a later date the famous line, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” A fascinating guy—our Stanley. Born poor, was put into the workhouse, and emerged pretending to be an upper-class American—he even affected the accent. Anyway, he kept voluminous diary accounts—he never missed a day—and guess what one page has been torn out of all his diaries?

Yup, the day he finally stumbles on Stanley….

Well, besides being rigorous on the diarying (oh, all right, computer! Diary keeping!), he also shaved every day of his life. Even in the jungle. Even when he had yellow fever or malaria or whatever-it-was and had gone from 160 pounds to 110 pounds. Even when his beloved Miss Alice—to whom he was romantically attached; who was his North Star; who said screw-this and up and married someone else almost before the ship had left the harbor—wasn’t there to see him. Just the cannibals.

With whom he dealt quite well. In fact, on one of the expeditions, he was the ONLY guy to walk out of the jungle—his entire party had died. And yes, he seems to have understood and empathized with the natives.

Was it because he had shaved, that morning?

Yes and no. It seems that by building habits that promote self-control, you no longer have to exert self-control except when really necessary. His sense of rectitude and command, in other words, came easily. When the cannibals shouting “meat, meat!” set upon the group, Stanley had the strength to—as we would say—dialogue.

In addition, the book tackles the thorny question—why do religious people, in general, live longer and happier than agnostics / atheists? Does AA really work, with its invocation of “a higher power?”

Seems so—which is why I may start to meditate again. In the case of Stanley, he was an agnostic, as am I, officially. But his Miss Alice—that less than faithful fiancée—worked for him as God does for the religious. He spent years of his life struggling to be worthy of the woman he had chosen to be his goddess (you do have to be sorry for her—all that adoration would drive anybody into another’s arms….). So, she served him well, in a sense.

Lastly, we come to Trollope.

The learned and educated Readers of this blog don’t need to be told that Trollope has some claim to be a major Victorian novelist—and the Victorian era industriously produced some great writers. And no one was more prolific than Trollope. A more devoted blogger than I would have counted the works listed on Wikipedia. But I can tell you that the list is two-columned, AND you have to scroll to come to the end of it.

Not all was great, of course. But what is great is like nothing else. Or at least George Eliot thought so—she wrote that she could not have written Middlemarch without the novels of Barsetshire (this is too funny—Barsetshire was the fictional shire created by Trollope, and the computer has red-squiggled it! Self-reference turning back on itself?)

And how did Trollope do it? Did he devote himself to working from dawn to dusk?

Nope, he had a job—working at one point for the Royal Mail. He’s the guy who dreamed up a little red post box—an obvious idea, but novel at the time.

He also wrote every day from 5:30 to 8:30. His routine output was 2500 words per day. (This post is at 1083—and will be ending soon…) He charted his progress, and wrote in his Autobiography, “a week passed with insufficient pages has been a blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.”

Well, it goes against the romantic myth of the writer, desperately awaiting the muse, struggling and fighting to give birth to a work of genius. Trollope is at his desk, counting his words—250 words a quarter-hour, 1000 words an hour. 

“I have been told that such appliances (i.e. the watch) are beneath the notice of a man of genius,” he writes. But he’s not, he claims, a man of genius. Yet goes on to say, “a small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.”

Well, such ideas—shaving in the jungle, dining formally in the desert, industriousness and duty—all seem from another time, when ladies wore corsets and the legs of the piano were seemly dressed, so as not to provoke wanton desire. The time of our grandmothers.

“You can’t grade papers with a red pen,” a student told me, I thought in jest. But no, it’s true. A paper slashed with red ink wounds the self-esteem of the students, according to popular theory. Red pens are no longer permitted in the schools.

Yeah? There was a lot not to be kept from those times. But there may also be a place for self-control—for the rigor of sane and healthy habits practiced over a lifetime.

Note to readers—1341 words. Just over half of Trollope’s daily production….

Honor?

I gotta be honest—there are some concepts I just don’t get.

Take my first three years at Wal-Mart, for example. My supervisor changed jobs in my first week of work. Then the director of the department quit. It was all a muddle, and they left me blissfully alone, never bothering to “evaluate” me.

Well, that was perfectly fine. My old boss, Ofelia, had never really evaluated me. Or rather, she was always evaluating me.

“How are you liking your classes,” she’d say in low tones and with a you-can-tell-me-anything look.

“Wonderful,” the student would whisper.

“Ofelia, you pumping the students again!?” I’d boom….

So I was nicely under the radar—the best place to be in corporate America. Had I stayed there, I might still be there….

“That’s a lack of respect,” cried one of the students. “You have to demand an evaluation!”

Why? Would it help me? Did my boss know anything about what I was doing? (Answer—no, which she cheerfully admitted. So she did what Ofelia did, and figured all was well….) They gave me a raise every year, evaluated or not, so there was no financial motive.

But respect is a big thing down here—and the phrase una falta de respeto signals serious annoyance and hurt. And I am as deaf to it as Beethoven was to his last symphony.

In the first place, if I perceive that someone has dissed (seriously expected that to get red-squiggled, but no, it passes!) me, is it true? A boss irritably asks for a report that is overdue, the student comes in the very highest dudgeon to class and reports this assault on her dignity. Time for an open-door! (Read, jump one level over the supervisor and complain….)

I would be delicate. Wasn’t the report overdue?

Right—so maybe the supervisor was having a bad day and his supervisor was riding him for the report—or the information in it—and yes, he should have been nice. Maybe.

Or maybe not?

The second problem I have with all this respect stuff is that I can’t figure out how someone’s bad behavior to me diminishes me. My boss at Wal-Mart told me the shocking story of a boss at another renowned company—3M. She had submitted a report. And he threw it on the floor, denouncing her and it.

In a staff meeting.

Not the classic example of Minnesota nice.

Right—that truly is an assault. But did anyone in the room think that the report was bad? Did anyone think that the boss was anything but a pathetically weak, rude and petty tyrant? His behavior diminished him, not my boss.

OK—now we come to honor. Susan, in perceptive comments, rightly points out that “honor killings” predate religions, and are not endorsed in the Qur’an. In fact, just the opposite.

And she sent me to an interesting—however chilling—Wikipedia article on the subject.

Well, well—the old problem sticks its head up again. Because whatever the Qur’an says or doesn’t say on the matter, twenty percent of Jordanians—in one survey—think it does.

And it may be that I am just as ill-informed as those twenty percent. I didn’t know, for example, that there are a dozen or so honor killings in Great Britain, every year. I vaguely knew that there are honor killings of guys engaging in homosexual acts. Nor did I know that honor killings in the United States both exist and are probably under-reported, since people want to be politically correct and respect “cultural differences.”

Did your blood pressure just rise?

Should have. But apparently some people value correct over life. Here’s one citation from the Wikipedia article:

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, an anthropology professor at Rhode Island College, explains how honor killings can be viewed in cultural relativist terms. She writes that the act, or even alleged act, of any female sexual misconduct, upsets moral order for the culture of interest and bloodshed is the only way to remove any shame brought about by the actions and restore social equilibrium.[9]

Yeah? You know, I’m not sure if this “explanation” has crossed the line and joined into “justification.” I also don’t see that we get much from this point of view.

The real truth—in my view—comes from another writer, also a woman. Try this out….

As noted by Christian Arab writer, Norma Khouri, honor killings originate from the belief that a woman’s chastity is the property of her families, a cultural norm that comes "from our ancient tribal days, from the Hammurabi and Assyrian tribes of 1200 B.C."[31]

More like it, hunh? And could we add that 3212 or more years have passed, and men are still valuing women only for their ability to make more men? Or more chattel that might later produce more men?

There’s cold reasoning and hot reasoning, the social psychologists say. Cold reasoning is what you imagine you’d do in a given situation. Hot reasoning is what you think and do in the situation itself. In other words, it’s easy to look on in indignation at the American soldiers torturing guys in the prison in Iraq. You’d never do that!

But you weren’t there. You didn’t see the mine blow up, the body parts of your best buddy fly past you, feel your bowels turn to water as you shit on yourself. You don’t know terror.

And it may be that it’s easy to think about cultures relatively in Rhode Island. So maybe Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban should watch the clip below.

On Edge

Tell me again—when did we agree that it was OK to play your music into my ears?

I know, I know—you must be tired of this rant. Look, everybody’s life is hard, and mostly getting harder. You don’t need this.

So here’s the good news. It wasn’t I, this time, who lost control. Just the guy next to me, on a supremely jammed subway train on the upper West Side of Manhattan at 8AM.

Well, we crammed ourselves in, and a black woman and boyfriend were having sharp words. I tuned them out, of course—do I need that? Isn’t getting to the airport on time with two bags in a subway car holding people in the low three figures enough?

Well, miraculously, a seat became vacant. I sat, figuring to chill until Columbus Circle. That’s when the black guy flipped on a transistor radio and treated us all to some (I think / presume) hip-hop.

Let me put this gently, Refined Reader. Every stanza made explicit and very street reference to the pudenda of African-American females.

We all stood it for a couple of minutes. Then the eye telegraphs began among us—the brows furled, the eyes flicking heavenward, the shoulders shrugging. And then the guy next to me said, loudly but politely…

“Would you please turn that down!”

Guess the response…

Second time, and note the absence of “please.”

“TURN THAT DOWN.”

Just realized—it can’t be a response since it wasn’t a response. It was…what? Ignoration? Ignor-ance? Ignorance? You choose….

The guy has the insight to say…

“I’M LOSING MY CONTROL!”

But he doesn’t have the power to act on it. Instead, he lunges across several people to get at the black guy.

I don’t do well in emergencies. I look on, a stunned witness, as the lion mauls me, or the scorpion plunges its stinger into my foot.

So I was not among the group of guys who separated the two.

I did hear, however, the screaming rage of the black woman as she soundly (pun intended) berated the white guy. Must have had some effect—the guy sat down, and then said, “I apologize for my behavior.”

“I am leaving this train,” said the black woman, stomping out of the car. Her boyfriend / husband sauntered out—every movement a “fuck you.”

The man was shaking with rage—I could feel it just sitting next to him.

Well, first question—am I gonna go there?

Nope.

I’m not letting that into my day. Which was very nice—got to the airport with plenty of time, came home, scolded / caressed the cats, talked with Mr. Fernández.

Second question—why did the guy act so explosively?

Well, first there is the…right, it’s not music, so let’s call it “aural incitement.” Because make no mistake, the stuff is there to provoke rage. I once heard a song blaring down the street (started up by the Governor’s mansion, ended down by the plaza) in which the last word of each line was the endearment “motherfucker.” Took twenty minutes of meditation to wash that out….

The city is also on edge. No, not up in Upper Manhattan. But the train was coming from the Bronx. When was the last shower the guy took?

Third question—what about the black guy? Why didn’t he react? Yeah, he was trying to throw punches too—who wouldn’t? But when the situation stabilized—or perhaps was stabilized—he went back to being his insouciant self.

Well, a blogger on his toes would have the answers to all these questions. The Internet, however, is slow these days. The best I can do is to provide the conclusion of a research paper by an admittedly less-than-stellar source—The Journal of Undergraduate Psychological Research. Eliana Tropeano, in 2006, wrote the following:

This study examined whether or not watching a violent music video would provoke individuals to answer questions with violent responses. Eleven participants watched a violent music video, 11 participants watched a non- violent music video, and 11 participants were in the control group and did not watch any videos. It was found that watching the violent music video containing violent lyrics, aggressive behavior, and degrading behaviors toward women did make an individual feel and react more violently with regards to responses to questions about fictitious scenarios. The conclusion was that watching violent music videos does negatively affect behavior.

Well, well, so the dog bit the man. Nice to know.

Now, here’s my absolutely un-researched theory. This music does what pornography does. It blunts you, stupefies you, and puts you into a mindless state of inert violence.

And what happens when there’s a trigger?

Two Muslims (Part Two)

Readers may remember my rant against a “religious” Muslim, who in the name of Islam was going to kill his 15-year old daughter for the sin of writing a boy’s name in her notebook.

Three hours after writing the post we’re in a cab, John and Jeanne and I. The driver is clearly an Arab, and—let’s assume—Muslim.

The first thing he says?

“Wow, Ma’am, that’s a wonderful button you’re wearing! I love it!”

“Oh, you mean the one of Big Bird?” asks Jeanne.

“Yeah, it popped right out at me—even before I stopped! Love it—it’s terrific!”

And so we meet our second Muslim.

Who doesn’t lack for words, nor opinions. In fact, he’s on a par with Puerto Rican volubility—and that’s high in the nineties on the standard scale.

“My daughter just loves Obama—she calls him ‘Barrack.’ And the other day, she told me, ‘Daddy, why does your belly stick out and Barrack’s doesn’t? You’re never gonna get to be president with your belly sticking out!’”

Jeanne inquires—how many kids does he have?

Two girls—12 and 5.

And he wants to know—where can he get that Big Bird pin?

The pin is round, has Big Bird smack in the middle. Above—“Save Big Bird.” Below—“Vote Obama!”

“I was almost going to give him mine,” says Jeanne later, “but I have a collection of pins going back decades, and this one is special.”

That’s when she remembers—the Obama campaign committee is striking camp at Broadway and 93d. So she proposes that he stop, she’ll get out, grab one, and we can be on our way.

“God bless you, Ma’am!”

So we do, picking up one for me as well.

Well, the cabbie is ecstatic with the gift; he can barely wait to get home and give it to his daughter.

We go on to talk politics.

“You know, it’s incredible to me that the first thing the Republicans are saying is that they’ll do everything possible to prevent Obama from doing ANYTHING! I mean, aren’t they elected to lead, to make compromises, to make the country a better place? Isn’t that what we pay them for?”

A cab? Nah—we’re in the Democratic National Convention, with the cabbie the keynote speaker!

“And you know, what I like about Obama is that he’s all about the next generation, about improving the schools, about making a world that’s better for all, about seeing your kids go places that you couldn’t get to!”

Balloons are dropping!

“People come into my cab who are Republican, I tell them ‘hey, that’s OK! We’re all American, we’re all working for the same goal, and even though we may disagree, that’s great! That’s what makes us strong! That’s what unites us, our ability to listen, criticize, compromise, and respect each other! That’s the American way!’”

Confetti!

“I see my kids learning things I never knew and I know that their world is going to better than mine!”

And the spotlights pan the backseat!

Fearing that at any moment the Stars and Stripes Forever would fill the taxi, I asked about the gasoline situation. The governor has imposed rationing, and so you can only get gas every other day, depending on the last number of your license plate.

And yeah—that applies to cab drivers, as well.

‘What,’ I think, ‘that’s completely outrageous! Gas is the lifeblood of this guy’s business!”

The guy responds—he was in a line from 7 to 11PM to get a tank of gas.

Right—but what about tomorrow? Will a tank of gas last him?

“It’s a hard life,” remarks Jeanne. “Most cabbies gotta make 200 bucks a day, just to pay rent, expenses, gas….  So a lot of them have partners, who can work the extra shift.”

I’m thinking something different. I’m thinking of two parents, two fathers. And three girls. One father is somewhere in Pakistan, planning—perhaps—a ritual killing of his daughter in America.

The other father is on the streets of Manhattan, driving for hours on end, thrilled that a stranger—now a friend!—would stop and buy him a campaign button.

Two fathers, both Muslim.

One has gone forward—physically, to another country; spiritually, to another reality.

The other is locked into his past.

We should have a word, I think.

“Two fathers, both Muslim,” I wrote four paragraphs up.

A word for a father who is, and who is not.

Performance Through Panic?

If true, it’s amazing.

The problem?

I don’t think it’s true.

But what do I know? I don’t play golf. So I have no way of knowing whether Charlie Beljan—28-years old, recently married, recently childed (his son was born in September), and needing a top ten finish to stay in the PGA—played his way through a panic attack to win the Children’s Miracle Network Classic.

OK, so I don’t know anything about golf. But I do know something about panic attacks, having had two or three at the beginning of this year. That said, could I have done a routine activity, an activity I had spent thousands of hours to perfect?

Teaching. I have taught for twenty years, and the average person works 2000 hours per year. So, I have an estimated 40,000 hours of teaching notched on my belt. Could I have taught a class—that day the decision to hurl myself into the stream of cars or fish out my cell phone and call for help was made by convention only?

No.

Well, the clip below lets you see for yourself. Something is clearly happening. I don’t think it’s a stunt. I’m convinced that what was happening was exactly what we see—a guy struggling with anxiety, a man battling demons.

And Beljan was fighting some heavy odds. There are three things, scientists say, that completely remap your brain: getting married, having a child, moving to a foreign country. Beljan was married early in the year, and his first son was born two months ago.

Never had the experience, but I’ve heard about it. Yes, initially it’s exhilaration. But it quickly turns to exhaustion.

So he’s already under stress. And then, last Friday, on the second round of the first day of the golf tournament, he goes into a panic attack. And emerges with a 64—his second best performance.

Gets into an ambulance, goes to the hospital, gets a battery of tests. Comes out the next day, and decides to do the last two rounds. “I was crying on the range because I was so afraid these feeling would come back,” the New York Times quotes him as saying.

Two other quotes:

1.     Beljan also picked up a paycheck of $846,000

2.     “I never tried to make golf something more than it is.”

Well, my question would be ‘what is it?’ Is it a game or a high-risk, high-exposure job under conditions that you mostly cannot control? The Times quotes an expert as saying that golf is the most mental of games (though what about chess?).

And certainly sports is about pressure, and how we react to it. My current theory is that guys, for most of our evolution, were hunters. The chase, the hunt, the kill are bred into us. The corporate world isn’t quite the forest or savannah we crave. A football stadium with 250-pound muscled beasts facing us is more to the taste.  

And there’s a term in sports—the choke. A talented player, someone who has worked ceaselessly to perfect his game, loses it completely, enters into a panic, gets worse, gets tight, starts to analyze when he should relax. It’s a horrifying spectacle to see. (Even worse to go through, as I have….)

My take? Beljan did a reverse choke. He was operating under extreme stress, but somehow never lost his automaticity. Look at the clip—yes, he’s gasping for air and crouching on the sidelines (or whatever golfers have). But when he’s playing? He seems as loose as a jellyfish.

My question? What would have happened if he had lost, just for a second, that automaticity, that ease? For most of the time, that’s what happens. A missed note, a missed shot—the shoulders go up, the forearms tense, sweat forms and runs down the fingerboard. The next high note will now be harder, you think, and then….

…you’re spiraling down.

Did Beljan trust his body so much that he never lost flow?

Think so.

Panic attack?

No.