Groupon CEO Andrew Mason Honest Memo to Employees

Andrew Mason. Photo courtesy of
The Huffington Post. 

"After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of  Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. If you're wondering why... you haven't been paying attention."

So starts the letter Andrew Mason wrote to the employees of Groupon, upon the occasion of his dismissal as CEO of Groupon. 

The rest isn't as funny, but it is just as heart-felt. If you want, you can read it here. 

Over the course of my, for lack of a better word, corporate writing career, my experience has been that the higher you go up into the organization, usually the nicer and brighter the individual. 

The back-biting takes place down in the lower ranks, where people are still trying to claw their way to the top.  

Drift, a film by Tim Sesler

When I fly I prefer the window seat. I know a lot of people think it's cramped sitting there, and if you have to go to the bathroom or stretch your legs you have to climb over everyone sitting in your aisle. Sometimes people get really annoyed, and even show it, but you want to ask them, I have to go to bathroom, what would you do about it?

But I like to look out the window. I'll stare out the window sometimes for almost an entire transcontinental flight.

Filmmaker Tim Sessler made a film out of what it is that you see out the window of a plane. How beautiful it is.

The first time I was ever on a plane I was 18 years old and was leaving by myself for a open-ended trip to Europe. I ended up staying for three months. I had never been on a plane and I had to fly from Cincinnati to New York where I got on another plane that stopped in Iceland where the runway begins where the sea ends.

Since then I've been on countless flights, and never tire of looking out the window, at the beautiful, peaceful organic patterns nature carves on the surface of the earth. The natural way rivers flow, versus the way humans just blast a road through anything that stands in their way. The patterns and forms and shapes that nature makes on a mountain, valleys and crevices and alluvial fans, are the same ones it makes on a pile of sand in a vacant lot. The path a river takes through the flat open prairie is the same one a droplet of water takes down a pane of glass.

For me, it all makes sense at 35,000 feet. It's when I'm on the ground when it gets a little wonky.

Saying, I Love You

I'm not on the phone much. 

I have a cell phone and AT&T is my provider. They give rollover minutes--minutes you can keep for a couple of months if you don't use them--and I always have a big pile of them, that's how little I talk on the phone.

Mostly I talk to Sue and my two kids. So, when we hang up, we always say, Love you, and, Love you, too.  We do that when we leave messages, too. It's a wonderful thing to have in your life--the ability to say, Love you, to someone, or say it back after it's been said to you.

But when I'm on the phone with a client, or I'm leaving a message with one, I always get this hitch in me that I'm going to end the conversation or message with, Love you. That would be very weird. I haven't done it yet, but...

I also sign all of my email and Facebook messages to Sue and the girls, with, Love...I always sign the messages to the girls with Love, Dad. I know I'm lucky to be able to sign off like that, and I want to do it as often as I can. I know in life that all things come to an end. Someday I might not be able to sign off that way. So I take advantage while I can. I don't like to think about the time when I won't be able to say, Love, to them.

I have a friend, Debby, and when we talk on the phone (which isn't often enough) or when we see each other, when we're hanging up or leaving we say, Love you, to each other. We started doing that when she was going out with this guy, and she told me he wouldn't say he loved her, or didn't want to hear it from her. I thought that was the oddest thing, so I started saying it to her, so she could hear it once and a while.

I heard once a story about the author, John Irving. Since he writes so much about the loss of a child, someone thought he actually did lose a child. His answer was no, it's his greatest fear; that's why he writes about it.

Jennifer Lawrence's 2013 Oscar Press Conference A Moment of Truth

I didn't watch or even follow the Oscars last night online. I saw on Facebook that people were posting right and left, but all the status lines made my eyes glaze over. 

I heard Argos won a lot of awards last night. It was one of the few movies I actually did see, but I fell asleep during it. Since that event--what was called the Iran Crisis; I guess it's the original Iran Crisis--was such a huge moment in my life (my college roommates and I would watch Ted Koppel's Nightline, every night, and just a bit of trivia, Nightline began with the hostage situation then continued on for many years as a very intelligent late night news program.) I thought the Hollywood treatment of the events were, well, the typical Hollywood treatment.

I also tend to agree with the author of this article in Slate that says it was the worst best picture, because it does not address the real issues behind the events. Of course, neither does Davy Crockett at the Alamo, so there you go. I mean, really, what do you expect out of Hollywood? 

Anyway, just this weekend Sue and I were looking for something to do and looked at all the movies offered at the Boston Common cinema, one of the megascreen places that serve up 19 movies at a whack, and not one of them looked interesting to us.

Even Silver Linings Playbook.

Which brings me to the reason for this post. Not a fan of those feel-good happy ending kind of movies, especially ones where one of the characters with some form of mental illness is given the old emotional Hollywood treatment (see Argos above.)

But Jennifer Lawrence's answers to "journalist's" questions during her post-Oscar press conference were so true, so funny, so honest--everything a movie or a play or a book or any work of art should be--it should be watched over and over again by writers who need to know what the truth looks like. 

All I can say is, what a wonderful personality. Check it out.

Nemo

Nemo, courtesy of NOAA

There's a storm whipping up out there. Sue's office is closed, as are most places--yesterday in anticipation of Nemo business, schools, governments announced closings. The T shuts down at 3:00 today.

We just came in from a walk. It's great to put on all your foul weather gear and get out in the storm. It's not that bad. So far. The wind is strengthening though, and there's a underlying whine of the wind blowing through the branches of the trees, that rises and falls. Occassionally you hear a rumble, a heavy bear's cough, where the wind is shaking something extra hard.

It's actually warm out. The computer tells me it's 33 degrees F, though how snow can come down when it's above freezing is beyond me. That means the snow will be heavy though, which means more tree branches and therefore power lines will come down. We have a gas stove and heat, but the furnace and water heater are dependent upon an electric spark to heat, and the refrigerator is electric. You make due. Put your food in a snow drift on the porch. Heat water for sponge baths. It's the loss of power that's the worst thing from a storm, because it takes the utility days to bring it back up. We are so dependent on the grid, and the established infrastructure. I would love nothing more than right now being squirreled away in a little log cabin somewhere, with plenty of wood and a good stockpile of food.

What is always remarkable to me is how animals know the weather. They haven't been bombarded with all the weather updates that humans have, yet this morning a fat squirrel that lives in a hole in a tree in our neighbor's yard was racing up and down the tree, each time with a mouthful of leaves.

And Sue and I passed bush loaded with sparrows, all loudly (and it sounded frantically) battening down the hatches for the storm. They don't have nests now. I guess they just fluff up their feathers, tuck their heads under their wings, and wait it out. I mentioned that it's after the storm that we should put out some food--bread and seeds for them--because their food sources will be covered in snow. Sue noted though, that some of them won't survive this storm. This is life or death for them.

A Year Ago We Put Our Best Dog To Sleep

Bob, about a year before he died.

I can't let this day go by without remembering that we put Bob to sleep a year ago.

I still can't believe he's gone, though I have gotten over stepping over empty spaces where he used to lay. I still do, though, find stray patches of his fur in odd places around the apartment, like under the couch when we moved it to clean behind it, and it's a nice way to be reminded of him. He was a presence in our house for so long, and pretty much went with me wherever I went.

And I still can't believe that I had the strength to do it.

He was old, about fourteen and a half years. He was pretty much blind and deaf and arthritic in his hind quarters. He couldn't get up stairs, so I had to grab his hindquarters and walk him up stairs like he was a wheelbarrow. He always got a kick out of this, and most times at the top of the stairs would turn and laugh at me.

Yes, dogs look you in the face and laugh and smile and sometimes cry. Just like people. Just like dogs, I should say.

He was so old. In the last two months he couldn't hold his bowels, and he would mess the apartment sometimes five times a day. Yes. And we cleaned up after him and most times we were patient but sometimes I wasn't and those are the times I remember. I hate myself that I was even sharp with him once or twice for doing something he couldn't help, because he was always wanted to please his master--me.

Over the last couple of years of his life it was a slow decline. Bob taught me how to die. For most of us it will be a slow decline, and now, thanks to Bob, I know what to expect.

On this last day he couldn't get down the stairs, and I had to carry him down. I remember thinking this is one more, and his last, step of a slow decline.

I made his last day as special as I could. It was a gorgeous day, thanks to global warming. It was springlike. We got up and I made his favorite breakfast from when he was young: French toast with bacon slathered in maple syrup. For most of his life, Bob ate pretty much what I ate. If I made pork chops, I made an extra one for Bob. He loved spaghetti with red sauce sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.

Then we took a ride in the truck. Bob loved the truck. Bob knew about twenty-five words, including truck, leash, and walk. We had to spell when he was around if we didn't want him too excited. If he and I were going on a camping trip and I'd start to get the gear out, he was excited for days before we went. He knew that the equipment meant.

That day we drove to all his favorite place, including the field at Ashland Reservoir where other dogs romped. He was so happy. He knew every place. But he was so old, and couldn't keep up with the other dogs. It made me sad. He had been a powerful Alpha male in his time, and now lesser dogs who nonetheless were in their prime outran him. One dog rushed him and knocked him over, and Bob looked embarrassed. I stepped in and helped him up. Bob and I always were good partners. We helped each other. When I lived alone I'd wake in the middle of the night, and him lying next to my bed on floor, breathing, was such a solace for me. I hate being alone.

Bob, looking real good.

We went to the lake where he used to swim, and hiked around the woods. Finally it was time for his appointment at the vet. Back in the truck. I helped him up into the back seat where he liked to be. Just like he knew the fields and lake and woods, he knew the vet. I doubt if he knew what was in store for him. I imagine he thought he was going to get a thermometer stuck up his butt like usual. But no. The doctor who had taken care of him for years shaved a little spot on his hind leg. I held Bob's head. When the vet injected the needle, Bob jerked. I gently turned his head around and in about ten seconds his head dropped into my hands and he was dead.

Find the Stoned Musician In This Video

I got such a kick out of watching this. I stumbled on it while just poking around on YouTube, which, along with Google, is probably one of my favorite sites on the Internet. Both sites were tailor-made for me and the way I think. I love just following one link after the other. I guess the algorithms in my head coincide nicely with Google, which is kind of a scary thought.

Anyway, the song is great, and the video is highly entertaining.

I guess I should comment though. I mean, I should add value to the content. That's what we do in the blogsphere. Right? We view, we add our little bit of "value", and pass it on?

Everything about Johnny Depp makes me laugh. He is so totally cool, down to the way he dresses, his totally hip glasses, his tats, the way his hair flops just perfectly...I mean he is so perfectly hip, isn't he? Please make sure you're picking up on my sarcasm here.

I mean, even the way he holds his guitar, slung way low, which actually, is so the totally wrong way to hold your instrument. (Check out Eddie Vedder for the correct way.)

I mean, when I look at Depp holding his guitar that way, this is what I think. This image came with the caption, Hey man, I think your diaper's full.

Anyway, it's kind of sad, isn't it? Depp is such a talent. But from this point of view, it looks like he's just another of the pretty people, hellbent on self-destruction. What's also cool about this video is the comparison between Depp and Eddie Vedder. Pearl Jam actually pulled back on promoting itself and its music so they could continue pursuing their own art.

And that is very cool.

Two-Minute Commercial vs. Two-Hour Movie

This two-minute ad ran in the Super Bowl yesterday and the Huffington Post reports that it cost Samsung $15 million.

Go ahead and watch it. It is entertaining. Oh, and I have no idea who these people are. This is the result of not owning a television and trying to stay as far out of the mainstream as I can.

So, was that worth $15 million? I think the bigger point to pursue is that Samsung thought it was worth it.

And that a  major international corporation is willing to spend that kind of money to influence people answers the question of whether or not the media--movies, talk shows, video games--affects us. Of course they do. Because companies like Samsung--and Coke and Go Daddy and Budweiser and every other corporation you saw advertisng yesterday does not spend those kinds of dollars without a lot of research. Shareholders won't allow it either.

So, that pretty much answers the question, Do violent movies and video games influence people, making them do things that they otherwise may not have thought of themselves?

You got to ask yourself, if a company is willing to spend that kind of money for two minutes of influence to sell a phone, what the heck is a two-hour Hollywood violent bombfest capable of doing?

We've all heard the "experts." Violent video games give outlets to violence, they don't cause it. The same with movies.

But you know, parents long ago knew that sugar caused hyperactivity in children, and finally all the experts came to the same conclusion.

This is what's great about being a person. You really don't need the experts to tell you what's going, although most people have long ago relinquished their right to their own opinions based in their own intelligence. They wait for some "expert" to tell them what's what. People can't cook a turkey on Thanksgiving anymore without consulting Martha Stewart and all those nimrods on the weekday morning shows.

Rosebud

I had one of these when I was a child and it was my favorite toy. It's a Dennis the Menace doll, in case you didn't recognize the character.

When I was too old to play with it, it sat at the end of my bed with my teddy bear named, Bo-Bo, and a stuffed dog named Fluffy.

When I got to be a teen, I'm not sure what happened to it. My mother probably put it in a plastic bag (which is something she did with a lot of thing; used dry cleaning bags--the really dangerous ones that come with a warning not to let small children play with them) with Bo-Bo and Fluffy, and then put it on a shelf in a closet.

I imagine when I went away to college she threw it away. She did that with a lot of my stuff. (Don't worry, Mom. If you can somehow read this, I was never upset when you did that.)

Buddy Miller: I Worry Too Much

Yup. Can't help myself. I'm a worrier. 

If Sue walks to yoga, I worry about her getting mugged. 

If she drives, I worry about some crazy drunk broadsiding her. If I have a headache, I swear it's a brain tumor. If Sue catches a cold, I'm convinced it's the end. 

I worry about money. About not enough, and crazy: about too much and it will run out. 

And I've actually gotten better over the years, but I'm still an insomniac, which I've been since I was a teenager. I remember so many late nights/early mornings sitting up in my bedroom on Lester Road, sitting on the edge of my bed looking out the window. I would spend a lot of those nights reading and writing.

Yep, I worry too much. 

Sing it, Buddy. 

Two Artists Doing Neil Young Songs

Not better. Just different.

How artists can put their own twists and bends. How they can put their own personal mark on a song.

It's a big topic in theater. Playwrights hand over their work, and Lord knows what could happen to it.

The Timmins family, and Gillian and David are some of the most talented musicians today. So, what do you do when your work falls into the hands of "artists" (ahem) less talented?

Honestly? I think I actually like the Junkies version of Powderfinger much better. It's more controlled. Crazy Horse does it like a ride down the Colorado River rapids. Which is their style. But Margo Timmins? She reminds me of something I once heard about James Taylor. She could sing the phone book and make it sound good.

(If you don't know what a phone book is, I can't help you. I guess you could Google it.)

The Presidential Inauguration, Forty Years Ago

Today, Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term.

Forty years ago (actualy, January 20, 1973; thank you Wikipedia) Richard Nixon was inaugurated for the second time. I was there protesting.

I commented today on Facebook about this. I hadn't thought about this for many years. But forty years is a long time, and it's actually a funny story. It was a different time then.

I had a friend named Valerie. We were in high school together and Valerie and I were platonic friends, but I loved her, as only a teenage boy could love a girl. She didn't know it though. I was a hippie. I had shoulder length hair, and wore patched blue jeans and flannel shirts like Neil Young. She was a hippie, too. She had long straight hair, and also wore jeans and flannel shirts. She lived with her single mom, and went out with a guy, another hippie, named Micheal.

I was cool with all that because, well, hippies were cool with everything.

One afternoon Valerie called me. Hey, she said, we're going to Washington to protest Nixon's inaugeration. Do you want to come?

I swear this is what happened next. I turned and yelled to my mom in the kitchen. Hey mom, it's Valerie. She's going to Washington to protest Nixon's inauguration and wants to know if I can come.

And my mom, who I think was probably at her wits end with her youngest child, said sure, why not.

Valerie, Michael, some guy who I've forgotten, and I all crammed into a Volkswagaon Beetle (what else?) and drove through the night to Washington, arriving in the early morning to what I can still remember to be onel of the biggest assemblies of hippies the world had ever seen.

Pot smoke was in the air. We did some sightseeing (you have to remember we were high school students from Ohio on a road trip) but everything was closed for the expected violence. I looking at the Lincoln Memorial with my jaw on the ground. The mall and the Washington Monument were all closed, at least to long-hairs like us. That's what we were called. Long-hairs and freaks and hippies.

I remember signing up with the SDS, only later thinking the table was staffed by the FBI and there would be an agent at my home when I arrived. I mean, there was no email, Twitter, Facebook, anything. What was the SDS going to do? Send me a brochure?

And it was that weekend when I learned about the nature of political movements. A lot of people came just to party, get high or drunk, and cause mayhem, because they were young and bored and just as entitled and young people are accused of being today. Intellectuals weren't any better represented then than they are now. Smart people are always in short supply. I remember seeing a long-hair pounding on the hood of car that held a bunch of straight people, yelling his outrage at them. Then, straight meant mainstream. It has a different meaning today, but I still use the word with its archaic defiinition.

There's a good chance that guy went back to his suburban home in New Jersey, and later worked on Wall Street. That's what happened to those times. Even Neil Young has turned into kind of an old fogey, interested in selling his music in $500 CD collections.

Me? I wrote on Facebook today that then I was 17-years-old, had long hair, and a penchant for blue jeans and flannel shirts. For me at least, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Lance Armstrong: Heroes and Villians

(c) sportsillustrated.com

Tomorrow and Friday Oprah will air her interview with Lance Armstrong when he will supposedly admit, to a greater or lesser degree, that he participated in doping for his entire career.

Do I care? I'm mildly interested since I'm a fan of cycling.

Am I hurt, disappointed, or mad at a person I've never met?  No, I am not.

This is just one more act in the circus called the American media.

But I guess I can say that because I figured out long ago never to bet on a horse if I'm not riding it. I learned not to get emotionally tangled up with sports teams and players, because what logic is there in wanting to slash my wrists after, say the Red Sox blow a ten-game lead in the standing in a matter of weeks? There's nothing I can do about it, and when it comes out that grown men who are making tens of millions of dollars are acting like children, or worse, like drunken sailors on shore leave, why should I care?

It's just one more lesson in human behavior that the Greeks understood 2,500 years ago and we still haven't learned yet. Their gods and heroes were flawed, and why are we always outraged when a human being plummets from the heights of Olympus is beyond me.

We all know sports organizations and athletes are not the squeaky-clean enterprises and gods and goddesses we make them out to be. It's just part of their branding in order to sell overpriced tickets and logo clothing and eight dollar cups of crap beer at their venues. It's marketing, folks, and frankly most of the marketing goes to stem the tide that most sports are going the way of professional wrestling. It's all phoney and geared to make the most money possible.

I was, though, a huge Lance Armstrong fan and have been a fan of the Tour de France since I was a kid and rode a Schwinn Varsity, my first bike, and American Greg LeMond was wearing the yellow jersey. I was following le Tour when people here in the United States were calling it the Tore day France (rhymes with pants) if they were even talking about it at all. What am I saying?--there are still people who pronounce it that way.

During the heyday of the U.S. Postal Services' team's dominance of the Tour, when Lance (see, I call him by his first name, as if I really know him) won seven Tours in a row, for 21 days in July I'd be incommunicado. I still had a television set then, and I'd get up in the morning around 6:00 and watch the race on the Outdoor Network Channel. Then in the afternoon I'd watch the highlights and that night I'd watch the entire race all over again. Wonderful races, very dramatic, and of course in the back of my head I'd wonder if he was doping. What do you think I am?--an idiot?

The same way I imagine any baseball fan with half a dose of common sense had to be wondering about the likes of Mark Maguire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens when they had their runs as sports giants.

Yeah, Clemens (notice I don't refer to him by his first name) was called before Congress, but they let him off. I still don't understand why Congress cared what Clemens shot in his big butt, but, like most people, I don't understand much of anything that Congress does.

I just got finished reading Neil Young's autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, (don't read it unless you're a crazy Neil Young or music fan; it's terribly written) where he admits he wrote all--and he does mean all--his songs while high. When he was writing his book he had quit all drugs including alcohol, and wrote that he had writer's block and hadn't written a single song since going clean. Is anyone saying, hey, Harvest or After the Gold Rush suck now since you wrote them under the influence? No. But then again, everyone knows that drugs play a role in music--as we should just admit in sports.

But I'm digressing. Lance is a little different from the other boys.

After Lance's time on the hero's podium, he's going to have to serve his time getting raked over the coals of the American judicial system, better known as popular opinion run by the media. He didn't just bamboozle us in the hero department, he jeopardized the income of a lot of big names: LiveStrong. Oakley. Nike. Trek. Giro helmets. 24-hour Fitness. Anheuser-Busch. Radio Shack. The Discovery Channel.

What do they say about Bernie Madoff? Why was he the only person from Wall Street who went to jail? Because he ripped off the 1%. The U.S. Postal Service ponied up about $30 million to sponsor the team. South Australia is considering suing him for appearance money paid to him. The Sunday Times is suing him for $1.5 million for a libel settlement. Money, money, money, money. Everybody was making huge sums of money of each other. Now there's hell to pay.

And Lance jeopardized his own income and this poor boy from Texas who rose to those dizzy heights of wealth and popularity isn't going down without a fight. I'm not so enamored with Lance that I don't realize he's probably behind all this noise. He--or rather, his brand, that third-person entity that is composed of not flesh and blood, but rather public opinion--is at stake here.

If I can say one thing about Lance, he did a lot of good. He took his fame and used it to fight cancer. Maybe his story was hokum--a superhuman defeat of the Big C--but it still got people to fight cancer. That's a lot more than a lot of rich celebs ever attempt to do. Seriously, what does Mick Jagger do with all his millions and fame? Of course, Mick Jagger doesn't try to come across like Glinda the Good Witch either. He is who he is, and Lance is who he is, too.

I still think it's our society that's at fault here, as much as Lance. Our society seems rife with people who will do anything for success. And we let them and even encourage them, and then get mad at them when they let us down.

Every day...

Every day, I try to do three things:

1) Something good for myself.
2) Something good for someone else.
3) Something good for the world.

If you think it sounds easy. Try it once. And keep trying it everyday.

Even the first one is hard to do.  We have so many encroachments in our lives. Things that exert demands on us for our time and energy that sometimes we don't even have time for a meal, much lesss time for something that will really be good for us. We have to really like ourselves to pull this one off with any degree of consistancy, because the biggest obstacle is the idea that if we do something for ourselves, we're being selfish.

The second is easy to do if the opportunity presents itself. Taking time to listen to your spouse/partner. Smile at a stranger on the subway. The second one is usually my favorite.

The third is hugely egotistical, isn't it? I'm going to do something for the entire world. I tend to think small. I think recyling in my mulch pile is helping the world. Walking instead of driving to the store. That sort of thing.

What do you think? Are these good ideas? What do you do for yourself, for others, and the world?

Alejandro Escovedo: Bottom of the World

For me, it's usually the melody that hits me first. 

Then I listen and pick up a few words here and there, and then maybe a line sticks. 

And then I'm hooked. 

Ever been just down and out? I mean really down and out? This song gives a good feeling of what it's like. The world used to be one way, you used to be on top of the world. And then, wtf, you found yourself at the bottom and you're a changed person.

Anyway, there's no better person to write and sing about it than Alejendro Escovedo. 

Austin’s changed, it’s true

Show me what hasn’t

Tonight the tv’s throwing colors on the wall

As I watch the cities of the world reduced to ashes

From where I sit, at the bottom of the world

Oh, there used to be a phone booth

Down here on every corner

He used to call me up just to say my name

But now all anybody gets is a busy signal

No you can’t call home, from the bottom of the world

She said, hey newspaper boy

Don’t you think it’s time you delivered?

I said, say the word, your wish is my command

Well she ran me over like an eighteen-wheeler

And dumped my body at the bottom of the world.

You might think you know all there is to know about me

You might think the beast is in the cage

But everything you see is just an illusion

It’s about to get real, at the bottom of the world.

Oh, hey little boy, little boy you look a little frightened

For these aren’t the kind of streets for walking alone

So why don’t you get yourself home back to Houston

No I don’t think you’re ready, for the bottom of the world

No I don’t think you’re ready, for the bottom of the world.

Crazy Horse Never Would Have Used A Smart Phone

"Change was a part of life, Crazy Horse advised. Yet it is wise to hang on to the things that make us all happy and worthwhile as Lakota. In the days of the far past the lance gave way to the bow and arrow as a hunting weapon, yet the essence of being a hunter didn't change. Trading for a blanket or a length of blue cloth didn't have to change the person trading for or using the blanket or the cloth, Crazy Horse was certain. Anything in the hand didn't have to be given the power to change what was in the mind or the heart. And that, he understood, was at the root of many fears, that the essence of being Lakota could be so easily changed by new and different things. It made no sense." --The Journey of Crazy Horse, Joseph M. Marshall III. 

This quote was in reference to how Crazy Horse's father, a medicine man, thought. Crazy Horse at this point in his life still had his boyhood name, Light Hair, so called because, unlike most indigenous Americans, he had brown, wavy hair.

Things do change us though.What Crazy Horse was referring to was changing a way of life. In this case, some of the indigenous people were lounging around Fort Laramie waiting for blankets instead of hunting elk and caribou to make their own blankets, and they were waiting for allotments of beef instead of hunting buffalo. The question is, what makes up a way of life? Of course free blankets and beef made the harsh life the Lakota sometimes had to endure easier. But at what expense? What did the Lakota gain from living as one with the elements? The answer of course, is not just knowledge, but wisdom about the natural world that shaped an entire culture. That's nothing to sneeze at, or to blithely let die.

(Note to right-wing fundamentalists: that last paragraph is not in any way a commentary on what is commonly referred to as the welfare state. Some people do need help, and if nature made it hard on the Lakota in the late nineteenth century, I think our society makes it even harder on some people today.)

I ask that question all the time regarding technology in our own modern lives. I love technology and what it can do, but you can be a slave to it. Right now I'm blogging, and I'm not writing plays. What am I gaining here, and what am I losing?

As I said, I love technology. I do, though you might not expect that from a person who chooses not to have a smart phone and hasn't owned a television for almost six years now. Some people think I'm behind the times, but I think I'm ahead of the curve.

Here's why:

I tell this to people all the time: throw out your televison. Make a party out of it and get all your friends and go up to the second floor and push it out a window so it makes a loud crash when it hits the ground. And here's what will happen: After about six months or so you will have your first original thought since you were about six years old. That's about the time you started into the school system and really got indoctrinated into society.

People don't realize how manipulative television is. Oh, I know you think you're making choices, but you're not. You may even be one of those people who say, I don't care that I'm being manipulated, I like my shows. Or you may be someone who waves the standard of your intelligence and good breeding and only watches PBS and the history channel. You're still being manipulated, in so many ways. You're watching your favorite liberal newscaster, making all those deep, learned statements, and you're identifying with that person, thinking yes, that's exactly what I think, and at the same time you're looking at his/her hair and his/her clothes and you're subconsciously deciding that's how I'm going to dress and wear my hair. And then you go out and spend your hard-earned money on the haircut he has or the suit she's wearing, when the real you is supposed to be wearing t-shirt with Howard the Duck on it and a pair of bowling shoes, but you'd never find that out because the television is blinding you of that fact.

Or something like that.

To people who say they can't live without their shows or their televisions, this is what I say: That's exactly what the heroin addict says about his needle.

Throw out your television for six months. Seriously, what have you got to lose?

I've also made the concerted decsion not to buy a smart phone. Aside from saving myself I don't know how much, I simply don't want to be that person sitting on subway with my nose in a phone instead of looking around and being an active participant in my world.  I sure as heck don't want to be walking down some street in some strange city with my nose against a phone instead of using all of my senses to experience all the new sights of where I am. I don't want some phone telling me where the nearest Italian restaurant is. I want to find it for myself, just like the Lakota should have hunted their own buffalo. I don't want to be told by whoever it was who paid the most money to Google to tell me where to eat. Some of the best experiences of my life came from serendipity. Discovering that little bistro down an alley. A delightful exchange with a stranger when I asked directions, or they asked them of me. I don't want to give up that part of my life.

I'm still connected to the world, but I choose how I'm connected and where I connect. To answer my own question above, I'm blogging right now because I'm choosing to reach out digitally to the world in this manner. I will settle in and work on a play later today.

And I keep up on current events, probably just as well or maybe even better than the person glued to CNN/PBS/Good Morning America/Fox News. The difference is I choose what I'm looking into, and where I get my information. For all you smarty pants out there, PBS is still making decsions for you. Here's the difference: You watching PBS is like you going to a restaurant and choosing from the menu. You can only eat off that menu. The way I do it is like cooking a meal in your own kitchen.

The End of the University as We Know It

Well, I just published a post about not knowing what to post, and then I head over to Twitter and see this piece, and I'm all over it. This is from Elizabeth Scarborough from simpsonscarborough.com. 

She tweeted this article from The American Interest.com about the end of the university as we know it. 

The high cost of an education in the United States is one thing that drives me crazy. Everyone goes to college, and in the good old days (when I was an undergrad student) college was basically finishing school for the middle class. That was okay because it really didn't cost that much and there were plenty of jobs to go around to pay off what amounted to pittance in loans. Now there's no middle class, and what's left of of the middle class is getting charged up the yin yang for a diploma that is becoming as worthless as the one dollar bill.

Thirty years ago, when I started out in business as a writer I didn't need a degree. All you had to do was prove that you could write. Then colleges noticed a hole to fill and started communication curriculums, and today, if you don't have some kind of communications degree (communications or journalism or English) on your resume you won't even be called in for an interview.

I'm not saying degrees aren't important (the Masters I just earned, for instance, was invaluable for jump starting me as a playwright), but there are plenty of jobs that you don't need a degree for, copywriting being one of them.

I've seen and worked with people who have these communications degrees, and I just bite my tongue. My last gig there was an editor who emailed me a jpeg they were going to use on the web site, asking me to email it to one of sources I used, who she knew better than I did. Um, instead of emailing me, why didn't you just email it yourself, I wanted to ask, but of course I didn't. She was too busy "strategizing",which is business for "we don't know what the fuck we're doing but we're going to make it look like we do."

A lot of these people couldn't smell a story if you smeared peanut butter all over it.

But I'm digressing. I do think there will be a huge change soon in higher ed. People simply won't be able to afford it anymore, but they'll still have a thirst for knowledge. When you put people under pressue, they can be awfully resourceful. And God love the Internet for continuing to shake things up. People are learning to ignore the gatekeepers in our society to get what they want, and universities are definitely gatekeepers. As I pointed out, without their sanction you can't even be considered or a job writing marketing swill, and trust me, it isn't that hard. But they make it out like it is, just to justify their own existance.

Again, I want to make it very clear that I think degrees will continue to be important. I mean, copywriting is one thing, brain surgery is quite another.

But after I graduated from BU, I wanted to take a summer course from one of my professors, who was a terrific teacher, and her six-week course was $5,000! I simply can't afford that, and BU doesn't even give discounts to alumni. And frankly, is six weeks of modern drama really worth $5,000? No, it isn't, even from the best of teachers.

But Sue and I consider leaning a life-long pursuit. We have a cabinet filled with Great Courses' material, material that home schoolers and yachties use. We have their series on the history of music, relativity, quantam physics (which I haven't done yet), mythology, and the Greek tragedies, which I'm part-way through. In the spring I'll be taking two music courses from Berklee through Coursera. I just came home with a pile of books from the Boston Public Library. You don't need a lot of money to get an education.

Finally, I'm reminded of this:

Lack of Focus

I'm not sure how long I'm going to keep this up, but each year, like a resolution to lose weight or stop smoking, I come here to Blogger and here on Weebly and write. I'm not sure why, at least each year I understand less and less why I blog.

I try to write in my journal every day. I don't always do it, but I record dreams and my thoughts and sometimes I just vent. A journal is one of the best places to write down what you had wished you said, which is the reason why when I die I want all my journals either deleted or burned. No use leaving that behind.

But then, back around '08 or so, I started blogging. It was all the rage. And I figured I write in my journal, so blogging is really the same.

But blogging isn't like writing in a journal. At least I don't approach it that way. I've seen some blogs where people share everything, and by everything I mean everything. I'm too private of a person for that. I sure don't share what I write in my journal (that's nobody's business but my own) and so I find myself sort of tweaking what I write here. Then what I write becomes compartmentalized. Random thoughts here on Blogger. Only theater here on Weebly.

So I start getting crazy. I start going down this path of thinking, what difference does it make what I think about something? And then I think, well, it makes a difference to me, but what do I care if anyone cares what I think? Just live your life.

In the past decade I've given up worrying what others think in general, or what they think about me specifically. I see it as a mark of growing up. Maturing. Gettin' old. And it sure makes me a lot more comfortable in my skin, but I'm not sure it makes for a good blogger.

Anyway, I can spot rambling when I see it, and this is nothing but rambling. We'll see what tomorrow brings. I'll promise I'll try to focus better.

Standing on the Corner of Walk, Don't Walk

New Year's Eve. On the corner of Arlington and Boylston, right outside the Public Gardens. The streets are filled with people wearing their First Night buttons and, inexplicably, balloons on their heads.

Waiting for the light.

A man and his little boy. The little boy wants to push the walk light button. The man tells him not to. The little boy is insistent. The man is more so.

But why? asks the little boy. (Yeah, why? I wonder.)

The light will change, he says. It won't last forever. Then he adds: People are trying to get to work.

Huh, I thought. I look at the cars driving by. At 2:30 in the afternoon??

I wondered what other strange advice the man gives his son.

A Playwright's Exercise: Spill It On The Floor and See What We Got

Well, it's 2012 and that really doesn't mean anything to me, but I am finding my life shifting and since I'm having a dickens of a time coming up with a project that will occupy my soul for at least six months or a year, I'm finding myself writing bits and pieces like this one. I've been writing in my journal, just putting fingers to the keyboard seeing what comes out, trying to get a bead on what's really bothering me or getting me excited. That gives a writer a pretty good indication of what he or she should be writing about. That's pretty much what I'm going to be doing here. This post is more for me more than it is for you (sorry to say that, but it's the truth.) I just want to see what's in there, and by writing to an actual audience, I'm interested to see what I'm brave enough to share. You're about to get a snootful of the flotsam and jetsam of my life as it pours out of my brain like tipping over a bucket.

Work is coming along but it's still difficult. I graduated at the end of August and it took me about eight weeks to land something. I knew I was going to teach creative writing at BU, but I needed something more. Sue and I live cheap, real cheap, but sometimes it gets down to the bare bones and that can be scary. I had a few nibbles, some that looked really promising, and by that I mean they were conveniently located or paid a lot of money but I knew by the end of the gig I'd be spiritually bankrupted. Then Boston College hired me, and as Sue and I like to always point out, things do always seem to work out. I worked there one other time for a different group, and loved it. This proved to be the same experience. I can't say enough about how wonderful it was to work for Norma and her staff, and be around all the wonderful, fun, intelligent people who work in stewardship. Norma was a sane, sensible manager, and you can walk in the place without checking your morals at the door. Just as a comparison, I just got word yesterday that a company was looking at me and the feedback was, we're afraid he has too much experience. Okay, maybe I'm gun-shy, but to me that's code for he's old. I know I play the age card sometimes (others might say a lot) but until you walk in my shoes I suggest you believe me. Age discrimination is alive and well in corporate America. It is not only tolerated, it seems to be fostered. 

The downside to working two jobs, though, was my entire life was put on hold. By the end of the day I was too knackered to even go to the gym or pick up my guitar. I got fat and sloppy. And it seemed like I forgot over half of whatever I had learned in music. Big, big resolutions for 2012 are get into the gym after about a year and a half of no exercise at all, and picking up the guitar and working it. I mean, playing scales, doing the grunt work that makes you a better musician. I've inherited my father's stomach, which basically means I look like I swallowed a basketball. Not quite, but it could get there. He had a large, round, hard stomach. I could get there if I let myself go. This to me is a silver lining. If I've inherited the bulk of my father's genes, it means I won't die of cancer in ten years, following my mother.

Musically, just today I signed up for a basic ensemble class at Club Passim. I'll be studying with Kimber Ludiker and Austin Nevins. I could have taken a more advanced class, but I want to hang out with these two hip, cool, talented people; I think I can actually learn from them and I've learned in theater (and in business, too) to hang out with people you like and get along with.  Kimber is an awesome musician. She's the fiddle player in Della Mae, one of my favorite bands of recent.  Scroll down on their site and there's a pic of her. I want their song, Blessed Hands, sung at my funeral. (Besides Tom Sawyer, and I the only person who continually plans his funeral? I doubt if a lot of people would show up, so I want to maximize the tears.) I play their CD all the time, and if were the olden days (and someday these will be the olden days, too) it would have been said that I was redigging the grooves on the record. And who can go wrong with a guy whose first name is Austin?

And I'm seeing more sweat equity at the gym. Thankfully, I'm not that out of shape. What seemed to affect me even more than inactivity because I'd walk everywhere on campus, including up and down five flights of stairs in the library, was that bout of spinal stenosis that hammered me last fall. I think there was a little nerve damage done, and I'm just a bit unsteady on my feet, not a good thing for the mountains when you're hopping from rock to rock on a slope. So I want to drop a few pounds and tighten my stomach up, and also get some coordination back. I want to be back in the mountains this summer. It's been way too long, mostly because of school and Roberto, the Wonder Aussie.

Speaking of Bob, he's on his last legs (literally, he can't get up the stairs anymore and has a real hard time going down them.) I grab his hind legs and we have a wheelbarrow race up the stairs. He has hardly any control over his hindquarters, and no control over his bowels, which can get pretty gross in the apartment. It going to be my job to give him the shot, but I'm just not ready yet. Everyone around me, doesn't want the responsibility. I know this is a process. Just yesterday Sue said she wishes he'd just die in his sleep, but he won't; he's still too strong for that to happen. My wish is that the people around me would back me up when I say it's time, but no one wants to that. The hard truth is he's crippled, even though there are days he's happy and alert, even puppy-like. He goes in and out, up and down, and in the meantime, dog shit laced with Lysol smells horrible.

But when it comes to Bob, it's impossible not to draw a comparison between him and any of us who are getting old. What's going to happen to us when we get inconvenient, because truthfully, the bottom line is that's what he is, though trust me, it's a colossal inconvenience. Try the other day, seven degrees outside and he has shit all over him from lying in it and it's too cold to hose him off. I know so many people who silently worry about their future.

I'm not going to touch politics or the state of our country, though I think that's the thing I'd really like to write about, or at least tell a story set against the backdrop of a dying empire. Yep, that's how I see it. And I'm watching all my liberal friends do their typical knee-jerk because most of them don't own houses, have never been laid off or been in fire financial straits because, in this country, that's what really strips off the veneer of our society. When you have to make hard financial decisions in your own life, you start to see who the government and the financial markets (tied to corporations) couldn't care less about any of us. Until you've had to scrape to buy food or pay the heating bill, life has been way too easy on you and you're basically flying blind right now in this economy. They don't see how Obama is no different from Romney, who happens to be the Republican front runner (barely) and how Obama is just following the policies of Bush. They don't want to go there, because they haven't had to. It's easy for them to follow their old ways and beliefs, but what this country needs is someone to hit the ejector button. Democrats and Republicans alike are tainted. That includes Obama, Paul, Romney, Clinton, and anyone else you want to name. I've been bringing up Ron Paul a bit online, not because I support him, but because he's the only politician right now who is saying the things people don't want to hear. Then liberals do exactly what conservatives do: fall back on their doctrine or on something he said ten years ago, which means anything he says is tainted today. I don't understand people who just won't listen, period, to everyone and everything. It's like listening to Christians quote the bible. And it always reaches a point where I just glaze over and want to run away. I said to Sue, though, the only thing that's stopping me right now is how the #ows movement came about, and there are people who realize the system is broken--everyone from Obama on down. I'm not sure what to do next, but that's the start right there: If you just accept that even your favorite liberal politician is just as corrupt as Newt Gingrich, then you've just anted into the game. Before that, it's just the same old mess.

I'm growing my hair. Actually, it's more that I'm not going to a barber and therefore my hair is growing. I've gotten some compliments. Right now I can feel it tickling the back of my neck, and it's long enough so if it gets in my way I just tuck it behind my ears. I'm doing this because I'm tired of going to barbers to whom I say, I want to keep it long, and they say sure, then pull out their scissors and take a big hunk out. I had a great barber a few years ago then she quit. After going to a number of people, including Sue's hairdresser who is a woman and we figured she'd understand how to cut long hair, I got tired of shelling out twenty five to thirty bucks with tip and walk out looking uglier than I did when I walked in. It dawned on me if I want long hair to stay out of the barber and just grow the damn stuff, just like I did when I was a hippie. Hair's like writing, if you want it, just grow it. If you want to write, just write.

The bread machine actually walked off the chopping block today and hit the deck. I'm thinking this is the sort of news my aunt Marcella would have written. "The dern thing walked right off the table right onto the floor," she'd say. Now that I'm not working full-time (and my next gig will involve some work at home) I'm back to cooking. I love cooking and I like it the same way I like gardening. It gets you involved in your food, in your health. I baked a semolina bread today. When you make it yourself--bread soup, sauces, anything that doesn't mean opening up a package and firing up a microwave--it gets us back to a more natural way of living, which I think is necessary for people to have. And it tastes better and it's better for you, though I don't use "natural" ingredients because they are too hard to find and too expensive. It's gotten so only the rich and elite can eat healthy in his country, but I do the best I can.

I think that's about it. Thanks for listening, if you've read this far. This was helpful to me as a writing exercise, and eventually I'll be posting something at my other blog. Hopefully it will be good news, though there is a reading of one of my plays coming up in about a month on Cape Cod.