closing that barn door
even though the horse was gone
felt better, maybe
On Friday, June 5th, the Associated Press reported that, “Negotiators for the city of Minneapolis agree with the state to ban the use of chokeholds by police. Police would also be required to report and intervene anytime they see an unauthorized use of force by another officer.”
emotional lives
wonderfully intricate
as music of Bach
Jim Harrison writes in his book, Sundog;
People can be truly amazing.
I got this little theory, an utterly unimportant theory, that most people never know more vaguely where they are, either in time or in the scheme of things.
People can’t read contracts or time schedules or identify countries on blank maps.
Why should they?
I don’t know.
There’s a wonderful fraudulence to literacy.
Yet these same people have emotional lives as intricate as that Bach piece.
Arlo Gutherie once said something along the lines of, “We got to remember who we are so when other people stop for a moment and wonder if its possible to get along in this world, we can be doing that for them. In a world that sucks, you don’t have to do very much at all to make a difference in this world. You can do more with just a smile, hold somebody, say hello to somebody.“
Sometimes you make a difference just by showing up.
So many of my friends and relatives are turning up these days in unexpected places.
In parks.
In downtowns.
In streets.
It cities.
In towns.
Amazing people doing amazing this things.
amazing ability
crowds have to police themselves
supporting others
In recent decades, detailed analytical research has produced ever-more sophisticated insights into crowd behavior.
“Crowds have an amazing ability to police themselves, self-regulate, and actually display a lot of pro-social behaviour, supporting others in their group,” says Anne Templeton, an academic at Edinburgh University who studies crowd psychology. She points to the 2017 Manchester Arena terrorist attack, in which CCTV footage showed members of the public performing first aid on the wounded before emergency services arrived, and Mancunians rushed to provide food, shelter, transport and emotional support for the victims. “People provide an amazing amount of help in emergencies to people they don’t know, especially when they’re part of an in-group.”
Strange things happen to our brains when we’re in a crowd we’ve chosen to be part of, says Templeton. We don’t just feel happier and more confident, we also have a lower threshold of disgust. This is why festivalgoers will happily share drinks (and by dint of their proximity, sweat) with strangers, or Hajj pilgrims will share the sometimes bloody razors used to shave their heads. In a crowd, we feel safer from harm.
from The power of crowds by Dan Hancox.
capture the moment
Christo – behold, here then gone
create the moment
Looking at the google, it was in 1983 that I first became aware of the artist Christo, who died on May 30th.
That was when he created Surrounded Islands, in Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida.
At the time I thought, what a nut.
But I also had an apreciation for the nut who could sell such a thing.
It wasn’t until much later that I learned that Christo was actually Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
It was the team of Christo and his wife that created these works of art.
I also learned much later that they did not seek or accept government grants or funding for their projects.
All their projects were self funded through the sale of their other art.
I had to admire the couple.
Much of their art involved years of working out details with government agencies.
My Brother-in-Law Bob is a top shelf property developer.
I asked him once what was the secret to Richard Daley and Chicago.
Bob said you had one meeting.
If Daley said yes, there was no need for other meetings.
The opposite was also true in that if he said no, there was no need for another meeting.
Bob recounted had to took 17 zoning board meetings to put a K Mart in Livonia, Michigan.
So here are these local and federal government agencies.
Here comes Christo and Jeanne-Claude and they want to set up a cloth wall running for 25 miles across multiple jurisdictions.
Or they want to set up umbrellas along the coast of Japan and California.
Or they want to wrap islands in pink.
Or drape buildings in gray.
There was no Mayor Daley for art.
And yet somehow they pulled it off.
There weren’t making art for the ages but art for the moment.
Sometimes setting up a project for a few weeks.
Sometimes arguing with police to let a project blocking a road stay up for a few hours.
But taking years to develop and plan this projects.
I didn’t begin to really enjoy Christo’s work until I had a Christo moment.
Back in the late 1990’s I worked at Zondervan Publishing in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Zondervan had an art department to design the covers of the books they published.
Part of the Art Department equipment was a state of the art thermal transfer color printer.
This printer was one of the first color printers I had ever seen.
Instead of ink, the colors came in these long rolls of thick transparent plastic, much like plastic cling wrap, but thicker.
This ink roll was probably about 1000 feet long.
After each roll was used up, it would be replaced and the old roll tossed in the trash.
I happened to be in the art area one day and I noticed one these in the trash.
The art area being a corner building where at least three columns of Steelcase office cubicles came together from the the left and right.
A 1000 foot rolled up transparent rainbow of plastic wrap.
The last 3 or 4 feet was loose in the trash barrel.
I probably thought about my next move for at least, well, one second before I grabbed the old roll out of the trash.
I took the loose end and looped it several times around the handle of drawer.
I the plastic by its ends loosely in my fingers so it would unroll.
Then I took off running down the aisles and rows of cubicles yelling CHRISTO CHRISTO.
Back and forth and around I went with the rainbow row of color plastic trailing behind me.
Christo! Christo!
Soon I had wrapped the cubicles on an entire side of the building with a wide ribbon of red, yellow and blues.
Such abandon.
Such freedom.
Such joy.
No wonder Christo did these crazy things.
The Art Department went along with it.
The Editorial Department put up with it.
The Sales Department got out their scissors.
It didn’t last long.
It was before everyone had cell phone cameras so no photos exist.
It was a moment.
It was wonderful.
I take this moment to remember Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
A moment to remember and to say thank you.
silence, loudest sound
When look to Presidents for
meaning and comfort
I tried to think of moments in history where people looked to their leaders for words of meaning and comfort.
It is easy to come up with Winston Churchill’s, “Let them do their worst. We shall do out best” and “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
It is also easy to forget Herbert Hoover’s , ““Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish,” said in January, 1930.
But silence.
I think of the death of Diana, at one time, the Princess of Wales.
I think of how the people of the Great Britain demanded that the Queen, “SHOW US YOU CARE.”
I very much fell that way today.
Where is the President?
Where is the person I was taught whose number one job was to ‘educate the people.’
This is the only job the entire country votes for.
I don’t want to mess around with the popular vote right now.
I have heard it all.
His opponent won by more votes.
But few Republicans voted in California in 2016.
That is neither here no there for this point.
This feller had the job.
Part of the job is to show their empathy and steadfastness in caring for the lives of average Americans.
As David Gergan said in a CNN Opinion piece, “But we should pause for one more moment to recognize how sad and sharp a departure his silence is from past traditions of the presidency moments of crisis.”
His silence.
Let that word fall on the crowd like a wet blanket.
Silence.
Sometimes silence is the loudest noise of all.
PS – For the ease of everyone I reproduce the David Gergan op ed, “In a sad week for America, Trump has fled from his duty”
This past week has brought tragedy upon tragedy to our nation: the death toll from Covid-19 passed a grim milestone of 100,000 deaths; the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited mass protests in Minneapolis and beyond, and seven people were shot in protests demanding justice in Louisville. But our President was mostly busy with other things: getting into a public fight with Twitter, condemning China over Hong Kong and terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization — an entity that once looked to the United States as the world’s leading institution in fighting pandemics.
President Donald Trump also took time, of course, to send out a stream of new, controversial tweets. He called protesters in Minneapolis “thugs” and repeated a racist line from a Miami police chief years ago, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” He even retweeted a video in which a supporter says, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” But other than a brief tweet in the midst of another storm, Trump remained silent on the most sensitive issue of his presidency: the pandemic that is killing so many older Americans and people of color living near the edge.
Understandably, with the rash of other news, the press is moving on. But we should pause for one more moment to recognize how sad and sharp a departure his silence is from past traditions of the presidency moments of crisis. After George Washington was sworn as commander in chief of the Continental Army, Ethan Allen’s younger brother, Levi, wrote to Washington in 1776 that he had become “Our political Father and head of a Great People.” Shortly thereafter, Washington was frequently referred to as “Father of Our Country.” As he steered us through war, the constitutional
convention, and two terms as President, the phrase caught on. He wasn’t much of a speaker — he thought his deeds spoke for him — but he was a leader of such strong character and rock-solid integrity that he became the gold standard of the presidency.
Lincoln began his presidency during great uncertainty about his leadership. He won the election of 1860 with the smallest plurality ever (39%), and his military experience was virtually nil. But over time, he kindled a special relationship with Union soldiers, many of whom called him “Father
Abraham.” Historians say his homespun ways, common manner and kindly empathy converted them. In his re-election, soldiers were his greatest supporters.
Franklin Roosevelt was known to be self-involved in his early years, but his struggles with polio transformed him into a caring, compassionate leader. Working families and many people of color thought they had a friend in the White House. So attached did his followers become that when he gave a fireside chat on a summer evening, you could walk down the streets of Baltimore and hear every word as families sat in their living room by a radio.
Historians generally agree that Washington, Lincoln and FDR were our greatest presidents. All three are remembered for their empathy and steadfastness in caring for the lives of average Americans. They continue to set the standard.
In contemporary times, it is harder for any president to sustain deep ties with a majority of Americans. We are too sharply divided as a people, and the internet often brings out the worst in us. Even so, several of our recent presidents have found moments when they can unify us and make us feel that at the end of the day, we are indeed one people. In many cases, these moments have come to define their presidencies: Ask any American adult and they can generally remember one, two or even three occasions in which recent presidents connected with us emotionally, stirring our hearts.
I remember with absolute clarity the Challenger disaster in 1986. One saw the plumes of the rising space craft against a bright blue sky — and then that horrific explosion as it instantly disappeared.
Ronald Reagan was one of the few presidents in our history who expressed our emotions so well in
a moment of shock and mourning. For hour upon hour, the networks had replayed the explosion, and it seemed so meaningless. But then Reagan used his speech to replace that picture in our minds with a different one: the astronauts waving goodbye. They became our heroes, especially as Reagan (drawing upon speechwriter Peggy Noonan) closed with lines from a World War II poem: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey
and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.'”
One thinks, too, of Bill Clinton traveling to Oklahoma City after the bombing there of a federal building in 1995. Clinton, like Reagan, was at his best when he captured tangled emotions and gave meaning to deaths of some of our finest citizens. He not only consoled families in private but moved the nation when he mourned them publicly. As I recall, that’s when presidents were first called “Mourners in Chief” — a phrase that has been applied repeatedly to presidents since. (Not coincidentally, Clinton’s speech of mourning in Oklahoma City is widely credited with resurrecting his presidency, then in the doldrums.)
One remembers, too, George W. Bush standing on the top of a crushed police car in the rubble of the World Trade Center bombing. When a first responder said he couldn’t hear the President, Bush responded through his bullhorn: “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
One also remembers Barack Obama flying again and again to speak at gravesites where young children or church parishioners were being buried, victims gunned down in a gun-obsessed nation. Thinking about the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, one’s mind returns to the image of the President of the United States leading a memorial service, singing “Amazing Grace.”
Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama — two Republicans, two Democrats — served as our “Mourners in Chief.” All four bound us together for a few moments, and we remembered who we are and who we can be. Why has our current “Mourner in Chief” gone AWOL? God knows. But his flight from responsibility is yet another sadness among this week’s tragic losses.
