"We are family!"

We did real good, M and  I, with our three kids and their 6 spawn, too. Nevermind the five family dogs ... Kazimierza, Schreber, Shayna Rosa the Wonda Dog, Mitzvah, and the now-aging GuntherDog ... and the Cats ... Hans (shoulda been called Gretel), Munkacz, Matyos, Emily, and Pretty Girl Freud.  Then there are the Grandcats and Grand-dogs, a number of which have bunked down with us for varying periods of time. Lives are lived as they reproduce patterns from generation to generation ... 

The past few weekends have seen many ... sometimes all of the human-us ... celebrating together ... Pretty cool, if someone were to ask me. I've known many families that have fractured ... not only producing new and independent families but new tribes that cannot live in proximity to each other. M and I have been able to make space for our generations who choose to hang out close to us. Lucky, that way, I suppose. Two weekends ago, we all gathered to celebrate the 5th grandchild's pubertal initiation rite ... her bas Mitzvah. Not one of these big bashes with dance parties ... no black-tie optional or otherwise. No band ... no orchestra. Some religious services that were quite moving, even if the type of observance in each of the four separate families are quite different. And some food and good speeches about connection.

It's ok to visit another's way of living without getting lost in comparisons. For me that's close to my notion of health ... the acceptance of others' differences. 

This past weekend, most of us gathered for swimming and eating and then on Sunday, my one and only son-in-law agreed to accompany me on what was planned to be a 26 mile bike ride in 90+ degree weather over hill and dale into the city and back with a group of Mad Dogs/No Englishmen! I surmised he was chosen to be witness and photo-journalist should I succumb to the heat. And it was a good thing he came and even better that God saw fit to give my 1974 Raleigh International a flat tire shortly before the half-way mark. I had already jump-started my heart into a bout of a-fib and might well have been foolish enough to ride on had I brought along a spare inner tube, ... instead of Al, Father of three of my Grandspawn, a Philosopher by training and smart enough to nudge towards choosing life.

While waiting for our Redeemer, M, to pick us up, I suggested that Al take a picture of me lying at the feet of the statue of the cinematic boxer, Rockie Balboa. It would be a kind of modern Pieta. Me lying in the yogic Corpse Pose in front of a great Mother! Didn't happen, though. M arrived ... and I and Al survived. It must've been twelve years ago when he was sent on a similar mission on a winters 10k. We survived that, too, and managed to finish the race in 7th and 8th position ... from the end, that is! Family lore is that we finished ahead of 4 newly- postoperative knee replacements and two dead folk!

Family? Pretty cool, indeed!

"Tyrany of the Majority" redux

The Hebrews spoke of "after the many to act badly" (Exodus) (אחרי רבים לרעת) ... The Greeks called it ochlocracy (ὀχλοκρατία) ... The Romans thought similarly (ochlocratia) ... Here, in the West, we think of  mob rule or the Tyrany of the Majority. 

How to create a system of governance that listens to the aggregate but keeps in mind the rights of minorities? For $1,000 or more per ticket, I could go see the rap-version of this on Broadway ... of how the American Founding Fathers tried to work around this obvious gliche that exists in Democracies. The requirement for supermajorities in certain actions taken by a legislative body or regs for the pas de deux done by two such law-making bodies, in concert ... these were established in the Western Representative Democracies to protect the populace from 

The Supermajorities of the Senate, the requirement for even bigger majorities to over-ride vetoes of the Executive Branch ... all have the same general goal ... .

Curious, then, it is that a simple majority in the House of Representatives can block even votes on legislation that a supermajority might favor. 50+% of the House can block any legislation that might limit the availability of certain types of guns or certain weapons to certain people even if 75+% of the population is in favor of such laws.

Complicated, isn't it? The Second Amendment protects by permitting the population to maintain armaments. A good thing, I would think. Wouldn't want a 3 year old armed with AR-15's or a psychologically troubled adult to own RPG's (Rocket Propelled Grenades). Wouldn't be great for your local Chevy dealer to sell Surplus Sherman Tanks to any of us ... or so I would think.

Still, we know of countries where dissidents are given labels and incarcerated in Gulags ... and the US knew times when dissidents were followed, investigated and scapegoated.

I feel too old to figure this out ... to consider all the complexities. Still, I'm plagued by two thoughts:

(1) Some cancers have gone too far to treat ... 300,000,000 guns in the USA? Maybe the dangers inherent to this arming of a nation is irreversible? I dunno. 

(2) I find it disturbing that a simple majority in the American House is curiously capable of shutting down the introduction of any laws that might tweak the Right to Bear Arms.

The Tyranny of the Majority is a knife that cuts both ways.

There was a discussion among the Masters of the Babylonian Exile. One group of Fundamentalists was moved to cite Scripture in its arguments that "The words of this Law shall never leave your mouth" (לא ימוש ספר תורה זה מפיך), while another group thought it wise to enact in such decisions Common Sense (דרך ארץ). What should we do when intuitive common sense goes against Constitutional Fundamentalism?

I dunno.

"Almost Cut my Hair" ... Well actually ...

People keep asking me why? It's more or less only M, my closest of friends and my siblings who have ever known me to sit in a barber-shoppe chair and get a professional haircut. Since the late 1960's, I have cut my hair with a scissors, looking in bathroom mirrors. Then ... I think it was two weeks ago, I went to a book signing ... Great book, btw, by James Rahn ... a kind of cross between autobiography and the history of a writing workshop he began some 25+ years ago and continues to run. It ends with ten short stories by some of his seminarians ... among which are some well-known names. 

But all this is besides-the-point ... non-sequitur. James recommended that I check out the pictures online of the evening book-signing. And THERE! was one of me! I told M that I looked like a mostly bald and bloated and heightened troll with thin hair wildly falling off the baldness. I asked her why she hadn't told me that I was bald ... hell ... 

"Why didn't you tell me that I was getting to be more than bulky ... 

and more than a bit slovenly ... 

and arguably bald, dammit?"

Well, she hadn't and there I was somewhere in the middle of the Fourth Quarter looking like a slovenly oversized troll. Odd because I have spent a couple of Quarters preaching against "why" questions. One of my favorite examples were the questions parents asked their adolescent kids at 1:09 AM on a Saturday night with echoed voices bouncing off the living room walls:

"WHY ... ARE ... YOU ... HOME ... 10 minutes 

AFTER ... OUR ... AGREED-UPON CURFEW?"

Why queries make it awful difficult to answer with any degree of honesty. Just imagine:

"Mom, Dad ... You know I love you." 

(M&D hate you right now, Kid!)

"And I was in the door by 1:08." 

(Wrong time to quibble, Kid. The Gas pellets are about to fall.)

"Dear Mom-Dad (you really are one person, aren't you?... )

I was having a really good time smoking pot and making out 

(that is what you called it middle-last-Century) with Heather 

and I really didn't give two-shits with whether you were worried 

though 

I wasn't keen 

on gettin' reamed

or tag-teamed 

by Shirley and Sheldon."

(Kid, never use the names your parents got 

from their parents ... bad idea!!) 

"So, I decided to continue to "Carry-On, young Soldier" 

and Heather showed every indication of approval and, 

point-of-fact, "Carry-On, young Soldier" 

were almost her exact words, barring a different

predicate." (Kid, M&D could give the same two shits 

about your stellar grammar, at this point.)

"Now, I'm tired and heading up to get some shut-eye ... "

(Y'think, Kid) 

Y'might both consider the same." 

Truth is what is "two-shits" to the Kid can quickly turn into Deep Shit  if he tries honestly answering a Why Question. But, y'gets my drift, don't ya, and, anyway, I don't have a clue of why I walked into a barber shop a week ago. When I got in there, a woman asked nicely what I wanted. ... 

"I want a haircut." 

"First one this month?"

"What year were you born, Miss?"

"1967, if you must know."

I explained. It was 1969 or 1970. My sons are a couple/three years old and I walk into a Barber Shoppe next to the Blue Galaxy Diner on Main Street in Buffalo. The Blue Galaxy? Where M and I ate breakfast one AM and a bunch of scruffs drove up in a pickup or a funeral flower car selling their records out of the back. They called themselves the Grateful Dead ... it was another era and I was an advanced doctoral student in Mathematics with a coif appropriate to the times. Kids got haircuts ... maybe $1.50 each and I asked the Barber if he had time for me.

I sat down and got wrapped.

"How much?"

"$135."

"$135? How come."

"Well, I just calculated that you likely haven't had a haircut in 20 months ... 

$5 and a tip for each haircut you shoulda had ... 

You can count that high, can't ya?!"

"I don't got $135?"

"Then, Kid (I was the Kid, then), y'pay for your Kids' Kuts and get lost."

"So, y'see, Young Lady, 

my last haircut was when you were a couple-years-old 

in 1969 or thereabouts." 

But who knows? Maybe, I decided to be shorn feeling dirtied by the political process going on. Truth? I've been struggling. I'm proud to be an American and that pride grew with the 7+ years of Obama's presidency. I identified with his "no-Drama" and careful thinking (whether I agreed with a specific conclusion or not) and with his family. I was quite drawn to Michelle, the kids and his Mother-in-Law gracing the White House and protecting it from scandal. I feel grateful to him that he, as the Capitol Steps singing group phrases, that he kept his "Bowsers Truckled." I'm still angry at Bill Clinton and blame him for Gore's defeat in 2000. Taking on the Presidency is, indeed, something like joining a religious order or, for that matter, being a therapist. Those who rely on you need you not to sully yourself at their peril. 

And Trump rhymes with Hump.

Dear God, God of my forefathers, King of the Universe ... 

protect me and my grandkids from Little Rich Kids grown 

to Pathological Narcissists. 

Now, I need to lose 35 pounds.

And I don't have a F...ine clue about WHY I had my hair cut!

Trump, trump, trump; the boys are marching

The Union prisoners sitting in their dirty cells waiting for the Civil War to end  and for their liberators to flow in from the North would sing:

In the prison cell I sit,

Thinking Mother dear, of you,

And our bright and happy home so far away,

And the tears they fill my eyes

Spite of all that I can do,

Tho' I try to cheer my comrades and be gay.

      Chorus:

Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,

Cheer up comrades they will come,

And beneath the starry flag

We shall breathe the air again,

Of the freeland in our own beloved home.

It's the middle of June and Election Day draws closer, each day. I tell myself that no Idiot Rich Kid (IRK) could take over the Presidency of the United States of America .... I tell myself that no poseur could convince a plurality of Americans that their promises of Pie in the Sky that only they can bake are realistic ... that no such pretender ... no such Deuteronomic False Prophet could trick so many. Yet, I see that many are those that will follow one such as he.

I suppose by coincidence, a number of people have recently bemoaned that folk just don't return calls, lately. A small thing. A trivial thing. But some indication of just how rude we have become. One,
nowadays, feels it's just fine to be rude ... killing has become a daily event. Call MacCain a loser ... Hilary Clinton? a lying swine! Attack all who may mourn for those others who we have killed ... we only mourn those who fall who wear our own uniforms. That IS our tragedy, I suppose.

Sophocles wrote a play about a young woman engaged to a prince who mourns a brother who fought on the wrong side of a war and is sentenced, therefore, to death. 'The President's apology tour makes him a traitor,' says IRK, the Little Orange Man. 

I took a professional haircut for the first time in over 45 years. People have asked me "why"? I tell them that I don't know. Am I celebrating a period of mourning? Maybe. For all the dead in Orlando and those in Iraq and Syria and the Sudan and Israel and Gaza. For the threatened death of the American Dream of decency and kindness.

Trump! Trump! Trump! The Wrong Boys are Marching to the Bog!

Or, at least, I fear that the footfalls I hear in the distance do not presage redemption!

Trump! Trump! Counter-Trump!

Among the less celebratory perceptions of the Fourth Quarter has to be the recognition that the world hasn't changed. I think it was Avraham Friedman (who blogs from the Middle East mostly about Viktor Frankl and the ideas that grew in Frankl during his years in WWII camps) who cited one of his students as reporting that 'birthdays are those days when the Creator has indicated by the birthday-person's birth that the World just couldn't continue without them.' Maybe the Fourth Quarter begins with the recognition that -- in spite of the fact that you haven't, yet, brought peace to the world and cured cancer -- the World will, indeed, go on without you and that if the Creator thought you were going to change it all, She oopsed.

So, I've lived for all this time and politicians are still hoodwinking the public and, likely, lying to themselves. I've preciously suggested that the National Debt might be remediable were we to charge admission to public floggings of all those who intentionally tell mistruths to the voting public.

I don't wish to diagnose Mr. Trump (DT) but I do have reactions to what he says and how typical it is for his statements to represent others as having done what many believe he does regularly. I suppose, that is, that the most forthright comment he makes is that he is "a Counterpuncher" ... but in a different sense than the one he uses. 

His most recent attack on a judge whose parents were Mexican immigrants is not untypical. Let me explain. It works something like this:

******************

Punch: DT promises to bring the Mexican Government to its knees by forcing it to build the now infamous DT's wall and suggests that that Government chooses to send all its dregs to the USA. In short, he depreciates the power and the decency of Others ... an aggressive act.

Counterpunch: DT concludes that the judge/offspring of one so-aggressed-upon is incapable of judicious thinking because DT has aggressed upon him and he, the judge, is therefore predisposed to aggress against DT.

**********************

Let's see: According to his reasoning, Mexican, Women, Muslims and Democrats would all need to recuse themselves in legal/judicial matters related to DT's alleged fraud in the Trump University case.  It would be facile, too, to say something insulting about all other groups, while he's at it.

But lemme give some other examples:

DT is an extreme pragmatist ... the kindest way I can describe someone who will say whatever it takes to get a job done. It is not so much the Pragmatism is un-American but our Constitution and its Bill of Rights demand of us that we temper that Pragmatism with Rules. DT must have a degree of intelligence and a basketful of guile to accomplish what he has. 

***************

Punch: Like many of us -- myself included -- we did what we could to avoid military service during the Viet Nam era. They were, indeed, complicated times and the issues surrounding such decisions were equally difficult to parse. M & I were "Waist Deep (not) in the Big Muddy" during those years but in diapers. DT, I can only surmise, may well have been among those who had connections that permitted him a pass. I don't know.

Counterpunch: Sen. McCain is not a War Hero. War Heroes are those who don't get captured, according to DT.

****************

Punch: DT has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to single out women for derisive comments, foul and demeaning descriptions and attempts to undermine their careers. Undoubtedly, he has helped women, as well.

Counterpunch: Let's talk about Bill Clinton. By the way, I do hold Clinton responsible for Gore's loss in 2000 ... I can't help believing/considering that he he kept his trousers buckled, many -- even if a small minority -- would have voted for Gore and, perhaps, the mess we are in would be less of a mess. Perhaps?

*****************

Punch: The Drumpf's came from Germany, apparently .... a country that was, indeed, brought to its knees by the Allies ... twice. I don't know what the youngster/man thought of himself in the post-War era growing up in Queens. If your grandpa speaks with a middle-European accent, who are you? Who knows? Was there Shame? Guilt? Reparations such as many very wealthy people offer (the Koch brothers are a simple example or the Kimmels or the owners of Comcast who support the Arts and build Hospitals) are not familiar to me with the DT's name upon them.

Counterpunch: Implying that Obama is not eligible to serve as President ... not an American.

*******************

Punch: DT's rhetorical device of denying and saying something at the same time is well-known to the listening public. 

"I'm not saying that s/he's A-B-or-C but she's at least A-C and maybe D-C!"

"I'm not sayin' you should beat up these protesters but back-in-the-day, they'd be carried out."

"I'm not sayin' that he was born in Kenya, but ..."

The famous list goes on.

I think it's fair to say that DT often peppers his talk with conflicting or paradoxical positions.

I could but I won't .... Inuendo but not ....

Counterpunch: "Lying Ted" ... "Lying Hillary" .... 

**********************

Punch: DT very cleverly gets all the major news networks to cover his campaign in what seems obvious was an enormously unbalanced way. He uses outrageous behaviors and comments to accomplish this. The Left and the Right give him 10's of Millions of Dollars of air-time during which they inevitably talk about the over-the-top and offensive comments he has made. The other 20 candidates (D and R, alike) are arguing about quotidian and boring 'crap' like policy. The Networks take the bait.

Counterpunch: "The Networks are against me" and each and every comment is permitted to more or less fall by the wayside. Can we really have a president who says the things he has about women? I suppose we can, after all he's been treated unfairly. ... OMG!

**********************

I welcome others to send other examples which I shall append in your name (hhcovitz@aol.com) ... In any case, it is a disheartening component of Last Quarter living to see these same techniques used so openly with the public as they have been in many previous Strong-Man Led Regimes. Mid-Fourth-Quarter? and I've changed the World very little, if at all. I do hope I've on a much more local level influenced those people I've loved.

Glad, Sad or Mad?

(a picture of me without my masks ... )

These have been weeks of Glad and Sad. Throughout my ramblings on this blog since, I think 2011, I've revisited my sense of my and maybe Monty Python's sense of life ... mine acquired over the past seven decades. They don't have the feel to me of deep metaphysical truths espoused by students of Nietzsche, but maybe by Nietzsche, himself:

"You have your way;

I have mine.

As for the Perfect way

or the only way,

that doesn't exist."

Among the movies that have moved me is a feminist one about Antonia and her Line ... her daughter and grand-daughter. Maybe it's unfortunate that it mocks men a bit ... but we men and our need to prove ourselves is, in the end, a comically pathetic attempt to hide and deny vulnerability. In any case, in the film is a man ... a student of Nietzsche who cannot quite leave his home or his books ... his name in the film is Crooked Finger. Maybe he serves as counter-character to a crazed lady, la Luna, who howls at the Moon, at night. Crooked Finger suicides; la Luna keeps on howling!

As I said: these weeks have been Glad and Sad. M's baby Sister turned 60 and we travelled 300+ miles each way to celebrate. Just M and I in the roadster ... top down ... at one time leading a caravan of Corvettes anxious to pass our little German 2 seater. Just fun! ... Just Glad, though talking a bunch with each other about the loss of a 57 year old friend ... the one I spoke of last, I think. We talked, too, about a 37 year old daughter of a friend who tried very hard but couldn't make it and was dying ... and, indeed, died a day after we returned. Can't imagine what it's like for her Mom and Dad. Our youngest used to babysit for her ... a sweet young woman plagued by chemical Demons and undoubtedly demons of another ilk. 

I haven't been able to write very much, these days ... a problem as I need to speak in New York in just 4 or 5 days and I'm not certain what to say to the very Nietzschian audience of serious-minded thinkers. Maybe it has been watching GuntherDog struggling in these weeks. This morning, he did what he's been doing each morning, lately. Climbs down slowly from his chair and waits for me to pee and then walks out of our bedroom. He pauses, at just that moment, and walks towards a bedroom that is no longer occupied, sniffs a bit, and gets back on path towards the stairs. I've never been quite certain what to say to him, especially as his vocabulary is limited. He knows "upstairs" and barks and clammers to go up each evening after hearing that word. He knows "wanna pee" and it moves him to the door. "Couch" takes him out of my chair and onto the love seat where he and M snuggle. Still, he doesn't get: "They're no longer there." How do I explain these things to an Old Dog ... to myself ... I think Gunther is about 14.

So, back to the issues of my five simplistic truths.

First -- maybe foremost! If y'can't juggle Sad and Glad, you're phukt!

Second: The Canvas on which you get to Paint your Life is Framed and Finite;

it's very big but y'don't get to expand it.

Third: Life IS the Only Game in Town; 

Life IS the Only Thing that IS -- at least in these dimensions!

Fourth: Life is Meaningful only in the context of Relationships.

(if y'don't believe me, go read Kohelles, author of Ecclesiastes)

&

Fifth: For the Envious, Mad and Miserable cover Glad and Sad.

Frankly, I think Gunther and the 6 or so other Noble Beasts who have accompanied M and I on our journeys taught us all but the second of these so-called truths ... and the second, unfortunately, I won't be able to explain to him.

Alas!

So Little Time ... but So Much

Whenever I/we go to a funeral, the recognition of just how little time may be left becomes, at least momentarily, unavoidable. R led the good life. I never heard him say a bad word about someone in public. Seemed to love his Kids, adore his Wife and include his Mother in his posse. He was famously a good Doctor who took care of little babies for a living ... those endangered infants who came out just-too-soon ... some, no bigger than a guinea pig. I knew him to be uncomplicated. We attended a prayer-group, together ... I had come there about 17 years ago ... the year before, M had met him in the weeks after his Dad died on the same day that M's Dad, Murray, had. 

In those years, R would contribute to discussions ... always in straightforward yet fundamental ways. I recall one discussion where somehow the conversation about the Biblical text turned to the requisite need to think positively about one's illness. R wasn't suggesting a pessimistic attitude but one -- pointedly -- where the ill person didn't have the additional burden of being encouraged to believe that his illness was his fault. That stuck with me, as did, I think, everything else R said. He died two days ago. Yesterday, when I was discussing the weekly texts in front of the group, I heard myself saying and meaning that I remembered what he said more often than what I had. I then heard myself talking about Moses' Blessing/Curses at the end of Deuteronomy, a part of which has always moved me.

"May Z'vulon rejoice in his goings-out and Yisasschar in his ethereal studies."

One of the great commentaries of the 13th C, Simon Yitzchaki, comment, I thought I recalled (I haven't checked, yet) that these two Tribes of Jacob had an agreement. Z'vulon would indulge in what Simon Yitzchaki called in his Old French prakmatia ... pragmatics ... business ... earning a buck. In the meantime his successes would support Yisasschar's studies. Good enough, I recall thinking in Seminary in 1960, but Moses only addresses Z'vulon ... only bothers talking to the Pragmatist. I thought of R. as just such a pragmatist ... decent? always ... a gossip/trash-talker? never. Simpler, as the kids say it in describing the Mosaic distinction:

"Bullshit walks and action talks."

Or as the Poets might say it (like Lerner and Lowe):

"Don't talk of stars, burning above

If you're in love? show me!

Tell me no dreams, filled with desire

If you're on Fire, show me! 

... Don't talk of love ... Show me!"

As his sons and Medical Practice partner and Brother spoke, I was to learn much more about R than I knew from our brief supportive moments in our prayer groups; R or I or both of us would show up exhausted after days of caring for sufferers:

"Y'OK?"

"Pretty Good."

I recall no bullshit. And I only was privy to a part of his life ... At the memorial service (what in my tradition is called "accompanying the dead" on their final journey), I was to learn that R.  really listened to the Grateful Dead and Bruce Springstein on his way to driving his son last-minute 100 miles to see some great basket-baller? I had no idea that he loved Baseball, Football, was enamored of the local teams, skiing, Fly-Fishing, or that he had really encouraged his two sons to follow their dreams away from the Medical Practices that he, his Parents, and his wife had each built. I hadn't known that he and his wife met 40 years ago on maybe the first day of undergraduate studies or that  he had built what his brother called a Full Life that Lady? He used the same expression when he was first diagnosed with Cancer 23 years ago ... "I've had a good ride." I knew none of this. Nor did I know that he'd been invited to testify on a Medical Miracle in the Vatican.

I let the cat out of the bag, didn't I? .... started school 40 years ago? So R was 58 when he died and hadn't yet been blessed with playing in the Fourth Quarter, as I think of it.

But fullness of life isn't measured in linear and equal measures along a stick or by hand shaped pointers running about a circular dial. When at 57, the Cancer returned and even in the many months that followed, it could be said by those who knew him:

We loved you, R ... we'll miss you.

Y'did real good!