Genesis - a Parable

In the beginning, Mr. Morse created the telegraph.  Crude, costly, and rare.  And Mr. Morse looked upon his creation, and saw that it was good.

And Mr. Bell said, “Let there be voice, that travels across the wires.”  Mr. Bell called it the telephone.  Then Mr. Bell said, “Watson, come here, I need you.”  And there was voice, and it was good.

And Mr. Cooper held a brick into the air and said, “Begone the wires.”  And he called his brick the cell phone.  And there was voice, and there were no wires.  And it was good.

And Mr. Gore said, “let the wires and the bricks, and the larger bricks called computers, come together in cyberspace.  And the thing shall be called the internet.  And it shall be everywhere."  And Mr. Gore looked upon his creation, and saw that it was good.

And Mr. Ayyadurai said, let the postal mail travel across cyberspace so that all mankind may be instantly contacted, even he who has no voice and no brick. And thus the internet begat e-mail, and it was very good.

And the corporations said, “let us replace our postal mail with e-mail, reducing costs while increasing throughput and efficiency and morale.”  And so it was. And it was pretty good.

But the young, those not yet shackled to the corporations, said “send and receive not from the tree of e-mail, for it is evil, and ye shall be uncool.”  And the young instead communicated in an obscure language of tongues known as texting.  And it was fast, and it was kewl, and it was blasphemy unto all spelling and syntax.

The corporations beheld the young texting, and asked, “who told you that you were illiterate?”  And there was silence, for they did not understand the question.

Lo, in the early days before cyberspace, graduate students in the distant and foreign land known as MIT had said “let our messages traverse the wires of yon mainframe instantly, to inform and enlighten each other without delay.”  And this later became known as Instant Messaging, or AIM, or the Serpent in the Garden. 

And the young looked upon the Serpent, and called it cool.  And AIM begat Skype; and texting begat sexting; and Skype begat Webcam Girls, and it was all very, very bad.

Then the corporations, seeking to harness the superior technical knowledge of the young so as to maximize profits, purchased licenses from the Serpent, thence known as Microsoft Lync.  And they looked upon Skype, and repurposed it as Web Conferencing.  And the corporations saw all that they had co-opted, and saw that it had saved money. And they called it good.

Then all the workers in the land became users of Instant Messages and Web Conferencing.

And lo, there were no more face-to-face meetings, except online.  And it came to pass that they could no longer focus on their work, for e-mail, which had replaced the telephone, had itself been replaced by the IM.  And the tyranny of the Serpent known as IM demanded instant and constant attention.  Productivity was lost.  Money was lost.  And the Consultants looked upon this, and declared that it Was Not Good.

And the Consultants, Pharisees of the corporate world, said “I give you every tool of empowerment on the face of the whole Earth, the fruit of every keyboard and the wisdom of every gigabyte; go forth and heal thyself.”

And the workers said, “Watson, come here. I need you.”

And it was good.

  

 

 

 

Where are you from?

Since former senator Scott Brown lost his re-election bid in 2012, I had lost track of his career; so I was quite surprised to read press accounts of his announcement, earlier this week, that he has formed an “exploratory committee” to evaluate another possible senate run – in New Hampshire. 

My own opinion of Senator Brown’s record or his politics notwithstanding, and actually quite irrelevant in this context, my initial gut reaction was negative.  New Hampshire?  He moved there?  When did that happen?  Assuming he has indeed taken up residency and unpacked his boxes, what qualifies him to seek to represent the good people of the Granite State?

As it turns out, my initial reaction was shared by many.  The term “carpetbagger” has been popping up regularly in social media circles that I frequent.  Mr. Brown has clearly been trying to defuse such perceptions by claiming that he has “deep roots” in New Hampshire.  He has owned a summer home in the wealthy beach community of Rye for many years, and beyond that, his maternal ancestors had lived in New Hampshire for centuries.  Who knew? 

Intrigued, I came across an analysis of Mr. Brown’s claim, “I’m ninth generation from New Hampshire” in this article at politifact.com.  The article goes beyond simple confirmation of the facts of Mr. Brown’s lineage, briefly exploring what it means to be “from” New Hampshire, and by extension, “from” New England.  Cultural factors come into play.

This got me thinking… and pretty much forgetting about Scott Brown.  As for him, I still find his current political ambitions to be somewhat disingenuous, though certainly no more so than the Clintons’ calculated move to Chappaqua, enabling Hillary to almost instantly become the junior senator from New York; or all manner of Kennedy cousins holding elected offices while sprawled across Rhode Island, New York, and who knows where else they’re not actually “from.” 

Far more interesting to me is the question of what criteria apply in determining the legitimacy of a person’s claim to be “from” a given place.  We are all from someplace, right?  Or are we?

People I know who were raised as “Army brats” tell me that for them, “home” is wherever their loved ones happen to be.  They are, I suppose, ‘citizens of the world.’  While I can appreciate and even admire that perspective, it is foreign to me. Having never experienced it, I can’t really imagine what it’s like to feel that way.  I’ve always had a powerful sense of place - an emotional attachment to a relatively small handful of specific places that have significance to me.  If there is a spectrum of rooted-ness, I am at the opposite end from my home-anywhere friends.

If I strike up a casual conversation with a stranger who asks me where I’m from, in most circumstances I’ll simply answer “Massachusetts.”  It’s an unrehearsed, uncritical, and for most purposes, accurate response.  I’ve lived in Massachusetts since coming here to attend college, decades ago.  It is my home.  My children have never lived anywhere else.  But I wasn’t born or raised here, and if I allow myself to over-analyze the question, things get complicated.

Facebook, in its infinite, zeitgeist-shaping wisdom, provides its users with profile data fields in which to enter their “current city” and “home town” information.  I have never entered values for either, because place names are validated against a database (presumably to prevent people from misspelling the names of their own towns?)  This prevents entry of multiple “current cities” or “home towns.”  I imagine this must wreak havoc with the integrity of profiles for my globe-trotting friends, but even I am stymied by it, because if I were able to answer truthfully, I’d have to declare allegiance to two of each.

So, what would this mean if I were to decide to run for office?  Would my options be limited by the fact that my “New England roots” run back only a few decades?  In an odd twist of fate, the boat that brought my first Gould ancestors to these shores landed in Hull, Massachusetts, in 1664.  Does that count for nothing?  I’m sure Scott Brown could find a way to milk it.

On the flip side, If I were to uproot my family and move back into the New Jersey home where I spent most of my childhood – the house in which my mother still lives – would that make me an outsider, a carpetbagger, or might I get a pass from the populace there by playing up my “deep New Jersey roots” which do in fact reach back hundreds of years, despite the fact that I only spent a dozen or so actually living there?

And what of our summer home, Wellfleet, on Cape Cod?  My wife and I have been second-home owners there since 1999 – a longer span of time than I spent living in my “home town” of Hawthorne, NJ.  If we decide one day to move there full time, Wellfleet will be my Rye, albeit within state boundaries.  But I know full well that in the pecking order of Cape Cod street cred, we will never be considered more than “washashores” – the caste that is above tourists but below natives.  It’s that New England cultural thing again.

In the end, Scott Brown and I share a peculiar problem.  We are misfits, in a sense.  We are not globe-trotting world citizens; we have deep roots and allegiances to a relative few particular places.  Yet we aren’t quite all-in anywhere.  The problem, I think, lies in allowing others to define the answer to the question “where are you from?”

One can attempt to apply an objective formula – e.g., your “home town” is the municipality in which you spent the longest period of time as a legal resident while under age 18, or some such nonsense.  But it would be just that – nonsense.  The real answers, I believe, come from a more spiritual place.  We aren’t limited to having just one “home town” or being “from” a single place if, in fact, we feel connected to multiple places.  It’s tempting to tie these connections to other people, but in reality, people move on, and places remain. Some remain in our hearts, bound to memories that will die only with us.

I will close with a shout-out to all the places that I am “from”:  The villages of Warwick and Greenwood Lake, NY; North Haledon and Hawthorne, NJ; the Jersey Shore, especially Wildwood Crest; New York City; Boston, especially the neighborhoods of Back Bay and Hyde Park; Canton, Truro, and of course, Boxford and Wellfleet, MA.  Thanks for the memories.

So where are you from?  I’d love to see your list of special places in the “comments” below.

 

Hyper-specificity

Nearly a year ago, the Boston Marathon bombing pierced our collective sense of well-being.  Our nation was riveted by the news coverage - the horrific scene at the finish line, the subsequent shootings of MIT and MBTA Transit police officers, the surreal “lockdown” of the entire city as the police engaged in an unprecedented manhunt, culminating in the shooting of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the capture of his brother, Dzhokhar, huddled in a winterized boat in a Watertown backyard. 

Almost immediately, the stories of heroism and courage emerged.  Jeff Baumann, his legs blown off, providing an eyewitness description of the suspects that, without question, helped law enforcement to hone in on the perpetrators. Scores of others - rescuers who ran toward the bombing site to render aid, victims whose lives were forever altered, but who nonetheless persevered with dignity and incredible bravery – all etched this event onto the soul of this city.  “Boston Strong” is still heard in these parts from time to time, with no small measure of regional pride.

Now, as we approach the 2014 marathon, news reports of tightened security along the marathon route are taking center stage. And this is where I lose the thread of logic.

The centerpiece of the new security initiative is a “no backpacks” policy.  Also no handbags, no shoulder bags, no bags of any kind.  Boston.com (2/26/2014) reports: “Bags, used in the past by runners to carry clothes and other personal items, will be banned on the buses that carry runners from Boston Common to Hopkinton, where the race starts. And no bags will be brought by those buses back to Boston.”  No. Bags. At. All.

Ostensibly, because the Tsarnaev brothers used backpacks as containers for their deadly bombs last year, we will inoculate ourselves against another bombing by banning bags. 

Right.

Like almost everyone over the age of fifteen, I vividly remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. I need not recount the horror of that event, nor the palpable, fully understandable fear that clouded the years that followed.  One thing about those years has always – even then – struck me as bizarrely illogical: Our national reaction to the fact that airplanes had been used as weapons was to focus intensely on tightening security measures at airports. Air travel became a nightmare of silly rules and endless lines.  Three ounces of liquid in transparent plastic bags.  Random “pull-outs” for more intense pat-downs.  TSA profilers who deny being profilers.  We all accepted, and continue to accept the indignities of this treatment, because airplanes had been used as weapons, once.  Airplanes.  Not trains, buses, tunnels, or other transportation-related items.  Airplanes, specifically.

In December, 2001, while aboard a flight bound for Miami, Richard Reid attempted to detonate bombs embedded in his shoes.  In response to the would be “shoe bomber,” to this day every air traveler must remove his/her shoes as part of the TSA screening process.  Shoes.  Not wigs, gloves, or other particular articles of clothing.  Shoes, specifically.

And now we will focus intensely on bags along the marathon route.  Because two backpacks had been used to effect a horrible outcome, once.

I get it, sort of; but if I go into town to watch the marathon (running is, and always has been, out of the question) I’ll be keeping my eye on the trees, the storefronts, the manhole covers… pretty much anything but the bags, because we’ve got them covered.