So This Is Christmas

So this is Christmas, and what have you done?  ---John Lennon

This moment, right now, is the best part of Christmas Day.  My wife and I have had our coffee together, and she has retreated to the shower. The Christmas tree is lit, and has held onto its needles well enough to still look half decent.  Our “children,” who by virtue of age hardly qualify as such anymore, haven’t yet arisen from their beds to pierce the stillness with their bickering.    

Let me say up front that we are very, very fortunate, in many ways; and for that I am thankful.  Yet, 2012 has been a dog of a year, for so many reasons.  It seems we have entered a period of universal discontent.  It’s a bit of a paradox: by many external measures, at the national level, “things” are getting better: unemployment is ticking downward, and the economy is recovering, albeit painfully slowly.  So what explains the malaise that seems to afflict nearly everyone I know?

I am old enough to remember the Vietnam War, or more accurately, the tail end of it. It seemed then that our country was painfully divided.  We were hawks or doves.  In the 1972 election, we supported Nixon, unless we were from Massachusetts, in which case we supported McGovern {ahem… sorry, I couldn’t resist; disclosure: I was not, then, “from” Massachusetts, nor was I old enough to vote.}

I came of age in the 1970s, which by most traditional measures were terrible years.  There was the Watergate scandal, which forever changed the degree to which we were inclined to trust our government leaders. On the economic front, we had “stagflation” – persistently high inflation and unemployment, a terrible combination. There was the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, which led directly to the 1974 stock market crash.  The stock market went virtually nowhere for a decade. 

We faced gasoline rationing, with lines that snaked around city blocks. We groused, but waited in those lines for hours nonetheless, so that we could continue driving our behemoth Chevys and Fords, which in those early days of EPA-mandated catalytic converters, all smelled like rotten eggs.

There was disco.  There was cocaine.  There were Qiana shirts.  There was the Pina Colada Song.  There was no MTV.  There were no laptops, or iPods, or cellphones.  I believe I’ve made my point (OK, except for the cellphones, maybe) - the seventies sucked.

And yet, “misery index” notwithstanding, we did not turn against ourselves.  Despite our many differences, about which we were quite vocal at times, there was an unspoken camaraderie of sorts – we were all in it together.  We maintained, more or less, our national sense of humor.  We poked fun at ourselves with TV shows like Norman Lear’s All in the Family. 

Fast-forward to 2012.  What has become of us?  We have just witnessed one of the most divisive presidential elections in recent memory. We are a nation bitterly divided.  Battle lines have been drawn along countless dimensions.  Republicans vs. Democrats.  Red States vs. Blue States.  Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life.  Pro- vs. Anti- gun control.  Pro- vs. Anti-gay marriage.  Pro- vs. Anti-immigration reform.  Pro- vs. Anti-Keystone oil pipeline.   Belief vs. disbelief that global warming is real.  On, and on, and on, ad nauseum.

As I write this, we stand at the precipice of a so-called “fiscal cliff” that is likely more symbolic than it is consequential.  It displays, in sharp relief, the complete and utter breakdown of civil discourse in our politics.  The so-called “Super-Committee” failed miserably in its mission to resolve this economic quandary last year, and odds are good that we’ll soon see “Kick the Can 2.0” from our alleged leaders.

To quote an individual who, by virtue of his personal actions throughout most of his life, deserves to be relegated to the dustbin of history rather than immortalized by the likes of me, but for the fact that this is such a great line – I refer to the late Rodney King – “Can we all get along?”

Apparently not.

And so this is Christmas.  Where’s the Red Baron when you need him?  How do we move forward, now that the vitriol has become so very personal?  How do we get back to a place where, like Archie and Meathead, we manage to tolerate each other, recognizing that we have something, anything, in common?  And what would that thing, that common ground, look like?

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: we are all human.  We eat, breathe, struggle, love, die.  We nurture our beliefs, varied though they may be.  We make choices, good and bad.  We have dreams, of which some get shattered, some we abandon, some we can no longer recall, and some, perhaps, are realized.  We experience pain and sadness, illness and grief.  If we are lucky, in the sweetest of moments, we experience great joy.  We reflect and learn from all of this, or not.

I was awakened this Christmas morning by my wife, asking me to carry our beloved, elderly dog down the stairs.  Her hind legs are giving out, and on bad days she can’t do the stairs anymore.  I know, in my gut, that we will soon have a very painful choice to make. 

Later this week, we will drop our dogs off at a kennel, and drive a couple of hundred miles to visit family, including my 90 year old mother.  Though blessed with longevity, she, too, struggles against the limitations of a failing body.  Our visits are typically bittersweet, at once joyful and painful.  I’m acutely aware that any given visit may be our last.

The uncertainty is humbling.  We are reminded, daily, in a thousand small ways, of the fragility of life.  The media render this message unavoidable; our loved ones drive it home.

And so it is, I imagine, for everyone, in one way or another.  Each of us faces our own challenges, our own demons, our own motivators and calls to action.  Our biases and world-views take shape at a tender age, and are forged in the crucible of our life experiences.  None of this is new; it has always been thus. 

So what is it about this place and time that has rendered us all so rigid in our beliefs?  Why is 2012 so very different from, say, 1975?  I have theories, but this blog post has already grown way too long, so they’ll wait for another day.

I will instead offer this: We need to chill out.  All of us.  And what better time to start down a path of “Goodwill Toward Men (read: people)” than Christmas day?
 
Let’s take a moment, each of us, to think about our friend, our neighbor, our family member, our ‘frenemy’ – as a fellow human being, deserving of our respect and our kindness.  I’ll start.
 
Since starting this humble little ‘blog about nothing’ a few months ago, I’ve been gratified – and surprised – by the responses and kind comments I’ve received from readers.  I wish each of you well.  We may disagree, but that does not matter. Not to me, anyway.  More than anything, I wish for you and your loved ones: peace.

Jerry  

The Tipping Point

Another mass shooting, and once again tongues are wagging.  The massacre in Newtown is especially poignant because it involved the murder of innocent children.  There are tears, including from our president, as there should be.  It is a time to grieve.

But it is also a time to act.

Nuts With Guns have been holding this country hostage for far too long.  We have become inured to the idea of mass shootings, as though they are an unavoidable fact of life.  But they are avoidable.  Where is the outrage?

What is, unfortunately, an unavoidable fact of life is the tyranny of the minority, or more accurately, the tyranny of the very few, in which a tiny fraction of a given population ruins things for everyone else.

The world changed on 9/11.  As a society, we were shocked into action on many fronts. We were in reaction mode, collectively trying to figure out how to function in a world where our old assumptions no longer worked.  Today, the TSA certainly has its own issues; but for the most part people have come to accept that air travel involves what would have seemed an egregious invasion of privacy and personal space back in 2000.  We have, grudgingly or not, forfeited a fair number of what used to be our rights, and lowered our quality-of-life expectations just a bit, in order to harden the target. That the actions of a small number of terrorists have led us to this place is rather astounding; but this is our reality now.  Sad but true.

As 9/11 was to air travel, Newtown is to firearms.  If not, it should be.  Our old assumptions are no longer working.  We need to figure out how to function in this new reality.  We have reached, and passed, the tipping point.

The coming months will certainly see an animated debate about the merits of gun control laws.  The standard arguments on both sides of this issue (guns don’t kill people, people do; the second amendment refers to a militia, not to individuals; pry it from my cold, dead hands) are so familiar, so shopworn that I need not recount them here.  Everyone has heard them all. The battle lines have already formed.

I am a believer in the merits of small (read: non-intrusive) government.  I believe we have too many laws on the books already.  My gut reaction to any given proposal involving a freedom-restricting law is negative.  I believe we are an extensively over-regulated and over-policed society. So my evolving belief in the need for much stricter gun laws goes completely against my gut.  But it is my belief nonetheless.

I am a car enthusiast.  One might not guess that, based on the makeup of my current fleet, but trust me - I drive a Honda Civic because that is what I can afford.  In my mind’s eye it’s a 3-series.  I enjoy driving.  My friend, Jack, and I haven’t missed the annual New England Auto Show for as long as I can recall. 

I’ve held a driver’s license for 36 years. I commute 90 miles to and from work, every day.  I’ve probably owned a couple of dozen vehicles. In all that time, across all those miles, I have never been involved in an auto accident.  Not one.  Not even a fender-bender.  Yes, some of that is luck; but not all of it. I recognize my driving privilege for what it is, and I take it seriously. 

Every time I hear yet another report of an elderly driver crashing through a plate glass window, I cringe; because I know what’s coming.  There has been a burgeoning epidemic of car crashes involving elderly drivers, fueled by the giant, aging baby-boomer demographic, of which I am a part.  The calls have begun for stricter licensing requirements for older drivers.  The chorus is just getting started; the crescendo is coming. 

The AARP is fighting this notion, on the basis that it constitutes age discrimination.  In the long run, the AARP and the oldies will lose.  By the time I’m 70 years old, I will probably be required to demonstrate my agility on a freakin’ balance beam once a month in order to hold onto my license.  And odds are, at 70, I will still be a safer driver than most, of any age.  It’s not fair.  The idea of it galls me.  But it’s coming.  It’s inevitable, and I know it.

My friends who are gun enthusiasts need to develop a similar understanding.  They may be “responsible gun owners” to a person, but the tyranny of the few is wrecking it for them.  They may have the second amendment (or their particular interpretation of it) on their side, and the NRA may have their back, but the tide of public opinion is turning, and in the long run, they will lose.

It’s not fair.  I get it.  I empathize, to a degree.  But we cannot continue down this path of carnage.  Better the gun lobby should accept the inevitable now, and allow countless innocent lives to be spared by not dragging the fight out over many years. 

This is your Christmas/Holiday Card

Dear friends, relatives, acquaintances, loved ones, total strangers, and people I used to know:

It’s that time of year again, and I’m [thinking of you, wondering how you’ve been, trying to remember who you are, wondering who will show up and read this.]  We’ve had a [trying, amazing, expensive, humbling, brilliant, near-suicidally boring] year.  It’s amazing how time flies.

Each year at this time, we engage in familiar holiday traditions [/rituals /obsessions /mind-numbing tasks.]  It all begins with our traditional Thanksgiving dinner, at which every detail is an exact replica of Thanksgiving dinners past, from our last-minute inability to find the matching crystal salt and pepper shakers [and our discovery anew that the latter is broken, upon which we return it to the cabinet shelf and pull out the little rectangular metal McCormick’s pepper can for placement on the holiday table] to the dinner table conversation.

And by “dinner table conversation,” I don’t mean that we generally tend to discuss similar topics from year to year; I mean that we have the exact same conversation, word for word, syllable by syllable, as last year [and the year before that, and the year before that…]  An elderly family member kicks it all off upon entering our front door, with the words “What time are we going home?”  Yes, the Gould family Thanksgiving dinner is a scene from “Groundhog Day.”

And that’s just the beginning.

When we moved to this semi-rural town many years ago, our children were very young.  We thought it was a cool idea to go to one of the several Christmas Tree Farms in town, and “cut our own.”  There’s a ritual associated with this.  One does not just arrive at the farm wielding a chainsaw, and go for it.  It’s much more civilized than that.  Rather, while still digesting that wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, we'd visit the Tree Farm to select the family tree, and “tag” it, essentially reserving it.  A couple of weeks later, closer to Christmas, we'd return to the farm to claim our tagged tree, and the fine gentleman who runs the place would drive his rusting Dodge pickup truck, with fuzzy reindeer antlers affixed to the side-view mirrors, through the muck (it’s always raining on tree pick-up day – that’s part of the tradition) to the tree site, fell it with his buzz-saw, plop it into the truck and bring it to the front “office” [a tiny outbuilding resembling a sugar shack, complete with pot-bellied stove ablaze] where we'd pay and go happily on our way.  The kids and dogs always came along, and seemed to enjoy it. How wonderful to live in such bucolic surroundings, where such a quaint New England tradition still lives on.

But… as years have passed, the experience has become less and less enjoyable.  For one thing, tree-tagging has evolved into a blood sport.  The day after Thanksgiving?  Fuhgeddaboutit…  all the “good” trees have been claimed by then.  Not only claimed, but decorated on-site, so ornately as to appear to have been visited by Martha Stewart herself (which I understand would have been physically impossible, given that she had taken up residence in the Pokey during much of the time period in question.)  And there were we, showing up a month late and a dollar short, with nothing more than our empty plastic gallon milk container, a Sharpie, and a roll of duct tape to make “our” tree easily identifiable within the forest. 

Twenty years ago, that approach was de rigueur…  but, as with everything else in our little slice of exurban paradise, the stakes have been continually raised.  To wit, our friendly proprietor, Dodge pickup-guy, has gradually increased the price of a freshly-cut tree at a steady pace – roughly equivalent to the pace at which houses out here seem to sprout additional rooms and wings and such.  Last year, my wife and I - our children having long since lost all interest in participating - found ourselves trudging through the mud with our elderly dogs, minds still addled and bellies still swollen from our turkey-day festivities, in search of a tree – ANY tree that had more stage presence than the object of Linus’ affection in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”  We completed the ritual, but I think we both sensed a turning point.  This whole thing was just not worth it anymore.  

This year, we’ve made the bold decision to switch things up.  Change does not come easily in this household, in case you haven’t inferred the obvious quite yet.  Yesterday, we went to a familiar big-box store and purchased a cheap, already-cut Christmas tree.  I’m aware that this thing was most likely severed from its life source back in July, trucked down from some forlorn, deforested corner of Nova Scotia on a flatbed tandem trailer with about 5,000 of its brethren, and that it will likely spill its remaining needles by Wednesday.  I don’t care.  It was cheap, and it smells good.  I’m actually quite proud that we’ve deferred the ultimate concession to practicality – buying an artificial tree – a bit longer.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the greeting card writer in this household.  Each year during the holiday season, I sit amidst several boxes of cards, list at hand, trying to come up with something unique and appropriate for each person or family with whom we exchange cards.  For the past several years, I’ve experienced an increasing sense of [futility, redundancy, silliness] as I’ve gone through the motions of printing address labels, scribbling vapid content, and affixing stamps to snail-mail greetings meant for people with whom I interact much more frequently through social media and/or e-mail.  Not that any of this has ever been insincere; it has just grown to seem so… pointless.  So, I set about exploring alternatives.  There are “e-card” sites these days, at which one can find, well, e-cards; most of these seem to involve some sort of multimedia presentation of holiday cheer – music, blinking lights, dancing reindeer; I developed a headache after viewing the first three or four.  Nah.  Not for me.  I have decided, dear reader, to go commando.  And so:

If you are still reading this, you are among the faithful.  I hope you will understand why we’ve decided to go electronic with our conveyance of holiday cheer.  We’re making exceptions, of course, for the elderly [or ultra-sensitive or long-lost-and-possibly-dead] relatives for whom we have no e-mail address or other electronic means of contact.  We could point out how “green” we’re being, but that would be a tad hypocritical for people who just, once again, murdered a Douglas Fir to display in our family room (though technically, I think we may get more 'green cred' this year than in the past, seeing as how the tree was already on the flatbed long before our decision to purchase… but I digress.)

So, from our home to yours, we wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas [/Happy Hanukkah / Kwanzaa / Festivus / Holiday / Weekend] and all the best in the coming year.

With love,

The Gould Family