It's easy, in these days of fast cars and High Def, to wax reminiscent about the good ole' days.
Days when there was one movie screen. Everybody went. It cost a nickel.
Photo by Tommy Hughes Bowling Green Since 1950
Days when there was one telephone operator. Phone numbers looked weird, phone lines were shared, and nosy neighbors were on the other end.
Back when you grew your own food.
Lit your own oil lamps.
Read your own books.
Thought your own thoughts.
No, it wasn't the pretty, Instagram-altered life we wish it had been.
But it was real and it required real, human attention.
Brought to you, on my very own Apple, first sent to me via YouTube in my very own Facebook mailbox, a reminder that we are but minions in one vast, very fake, empire (and yes, Disney, that includes you):
When I was a kid growing up in Madisonville, Kentucky a boy a few years older than I who lived exactly across the street from me was arrested because a beautiful, really beautiful, girl he was hanging out with died of an overdose. The media attention to her death and his arrest led to CBS reporters somehow finding their big-city way down the Pennyrile Parkway with cameras and microphones.
Drugs were everywhere in those days, even in my small town. And you know what? Drugs are still everywhere. New drugs. Powerful drugs. Glamorous, sexy drugs that make people think they can do anything at any time, anywhere. And they still kill.
There's a new drug out there (new to me--to users, it's been around a while). It's called Opana. On a recent happy trip to an out of town athletic event a young friend, somebody I love, shared with me that three members of his immediate family are hooked on this drug. It is ruining their lives. Even as I type these words on this blessedly beautiful day it is ruining their lives. My friend is a survivor. He will continue to be a survivor because I know him, I know his spirit. But their actions have been and will always affect him, for the rest of his life.
Just this week I sat with another friend, a mom with whom I have shared the ups and downs of mom-hood on more than one occasion, and I listened as she unflinchingly told me her own tale from the trenches where she is fighting strongly, faithfully, against this drug that has taken its hold among her own bright, beautiful children.
This drug is killing our kids. It's taking them down paths from which there may be no return. This isn't melodrama. It isn't hype. It's fact.
It starts innocently enough. Drinking (all teenagers do that, don't they?) Some weed (it's no worse than drinking a few beers, right?). Then something a little more. A line or two of coke. No problem--didn't affect me one bit. And then the self-conscious girl (and aren't they all, no matter how sexy, self-conscious), the guy who wants to be tough (and don't they all, no matter the size of their biceps, want to be tough), is offered a new high. This one is guaranteed to beat all others. C'mon man. You'll love it. You're a ***** if you don't.
One sniff. One swallow. That's all it takes. And there he or she goes. The beautiful kid we love is lost.
We parents are the last to know. That's nothing new to 2012. Even in 1975 or 1955 the parents were the last to know. So it always has been, so it always shall be. And with the advent of lightning-speed technology, of 24-hour communication access to the subculture that is the adolescent/young adult world, it is even more so.
So the mom is in the kitchen cooking supper, the dad sprawled out in front of ESPN, or they both are at work, safe in the knowledge that said beautiful daughter, said strong son, is at school, living the dream, when the phone rings and life never looks the same, will never be the same. Ever.
I don't have an answer. All I have is more questions. But I do have this to offer: it's Opana. It's heroin for the privileged. It's a killer--swift, indiscriminate and sure. And it doesn't look like you think. It looks like this:
Tennis is a sport that requires fierce, man-to-man combat. It elicits the very best and the very worst from its athletes, with absolutely no room for the fearful or weak. Through some 30+ years of spectatorship and study of this sport, I have seen a lot of balls bounced, witnessed a lot of excellence, and suffered through some dismal displays of ill humor and incompetence. In short: I know the sort of play I like.
Last Friday, far too soon, we lost a friend and fellow competitor, a young man whom I had seen grow and develop over the years, from towheaded little bounce-about to handsome young adult, confident and sure.
Bradley Ross Boling 4/5/90 - 2/17/12
Bradley Ross was the type of player I like to watch. I could pick him out from three courts over, even with the sun in my eyes and a brisk wind whipping around the fence posts, and I would make my way over there in anticipation. Never once did he let me down.
He stepped out on the court with the sturdy, rolling gait of a surefooted sailor--he looked ready and he was. From first warm-up to final handshake Bradley Ross was in battle mode, and I can see him now--poised athletic stance, racquet up and ready, eyes straight ahead, flashing with energy.
When he played, his hair bounced in a way that was specific only to him--we could pick him out by that hair bounce. He was quick, like a cat, and his workmanlike game reminded those who watched of Boris Becker or other stocky Germans who play with a gritty, stoic, unbeatable fire.
He played offensively, attacking the net and moving forward, always up on the balls of his feet, quick to find his way home with racquet back and ready to keep the ball in play, and then, in a flash, he'd be back up there again, smashing the ball down the throat of some unwitting foe.
He grew up in a tennis family, rooted in a long line of players, and the day I took this picture his whole family celebrated, lit up with happiness by a regional victory, not only for Bradley Ross, but for the entire Bowling Green High boys' team. I will never forget the unbridled joy on his father's face, and I am glad I was there to see it.
My husband and I watched Bradley Ross play many times. After every single match I would look up at him and say, "I love to watch him play."
When I was a child I loved to read TV Guide. I loved the gritty cheap paper, the way the pages rustled against each other as I riffled through each week, looking for especially artsy films I couldn't begin to understand, or checking for ABC After School Specials. I liked the little red-n-white television set in the corner of the cover, the tightly packed row after row of channel, program, date, time, and movie star minutiae that filled every single page.
More than the Guide, I loved TV. All of it. I even loved ABC Wide World of Sports with Jim McKay and his Timex watches, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (I wanted one of Jim Fowler's cool safari jackets with the handy pockets), Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Midnight Express and Soul Train, (RIP Don Cornelius)...you name it, I would watch it.
Fast forward forty-plus years and I still have plenty of television pleasures--I indulge in my fair share of ESPN, American Idol, What Not to Wear, and Kelly (she just keeps getting thinner, poor thing). Bottom line: a television prude I am not.
But tonight I came across some mildly unobtrusive, even reserved, words penned in 1938 and they gave me pause.
"...I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world....We shall stand or fall by television--of that I am quite sure." E.B. White
Television as we know it didn't even exist in 1938. E.B. White was a fairly well-connected man--and somehow those connections had, two years earlier, provided him with the rare opportunity to observe the transmission of sound and image from one room to another.
The observation of that naive little transfer a mere handful of feet was enough for White's no-nonsense New England mind to grasp the global magnitude of this new invention and to question what we, in our childishly grasping need to be pacified, would become.
White goes on to note, succinctly and without melodrama, that with the addition of the Elsewhere, we will become ever more oblivious to the Here, to the what, to the why, of our own daily lives. Because if it's there, of course we have to look.
As they say on GMA, what's everybody going to be talking about at the water cooler? I don't want to be the one lone dweeb, standing there clutching my sad little cup of break room coffee, with no idea who made it to Hollywood, or who got a rose, or who hit the three-pointer at the buzzer. Not me.
I have a hard time letting go. Just ask my kids--three of whom have already flown the coop--number four is in the driveway with the engine revved and ready, counting down the seconds to graduation, and five isn't far behind. As the day draws near, the maternal clutch grows ever more white around the knuckles.
Same premise holds for certain writing projects, only the struggle isn't so much the letting go as it is the getting started. The knuckles are just as white.
Portia's Protocol for Not Writing (for non-writers, this plan may easily be applied to any new undertaking):
1. Have an idea.
2. Toy with the idea, like a dog with a bone, until any shred of meat that might have proven useful has long since been removed.
3. Scratch, scribble, scratch, scribble. Mark it all out. Tear it all up. Put the offending digital file in the handy little trash can at the bottom of one's computer screen.
4. In the wee hours decide that the idea was never very good anyway.
5. Go to the library, the bookstore, on-line, your own bookshelf, and make a huge pile of books that you must/should read/re-read before ever trying to write again.
It works every time. Cling to any idea long enough and it's bound to become ridiculous.
A wise man once told me you wouldn't even buy a color TV set if you waited until the time was exactly right, much less have a baby--I certainly took those words to heart and leapt off the precipice into motherhood five times over with very little planning.
I have more faith in my ability to bring another human being into this crazy world than another piece of writing.
The same premise holds true for any major undertaking in life: college, a new job, marriage, any creative work of art--if you wait for the time to be exactly right, for all the closets to be cleaned, the credit cards to be completely paid off, the insurance policies to be precisely executed with the lowest possible deductible, you will stay exactly where you are. In a comfy chair with the remote control.
Today's visit to the library brought the perfect words regarding this paralytic condition into my hands:
"[faith and fiction] both start with a leap in the dark.....Faith is less a
position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch."
How’s your February? The Super Bowl is over and I have a little down time between now and Valentine’s Day, so thought I’d jot you a note. I’m doing this thing called “A Month of Letters” where I try to send at least one letter every day. Well, I’ve already messed up and I didn’t write a single letter on Saturday, so I made up for it and wrote one letter and two postcards last night after little Eli took care of business. An old friend from college (he’s so old) said he probably wouldn’t write me a letter but would a video with lots of envelopes and words count? He sent me the link, and it way more than counts (thanks, Mike). If you like words, stamps, envelopes (AND a great song that Cassie and I blast out in the 4-runner every single day, me singing at the top of my very tuneless lungs), then you have to watch this.
Watch it. You will be glad you did. Then get out a piece of paper and write a letter. Write it because this is the point:
“Our differences, they do a lot to teach us how to use the tools and gifts we got, yeah, we got a lot at stake and in the end, you’re still my friend. We had to learn how to bend without the world caving in…”
When I was a kid, I had an address book. Doesn't every second grader need such an item? Good little bespectacled nerd that I was, I actually used it--because more than an address book, I wanted a pen pal. I even made a few childish attempts at keeping correspondence going--with a friend who moved to Florida after our 2nd or 3rd grade year, and then later, with another friend who moved to Illinois the summer I was thirteen. Both attempts foundered. I can't recall who dropped the pen first, just that eventually the letters stopped coming and going.
As much as we all enjoy a good e-mail--the speed, the easy casual camaraderie or the brisk business-like relay of data--nothing can or ever will compare to the many pleasures of a letter. I have a friend who has spent countless hours photocopying six hundred pages of family letters, organizing them into ring binders, so other family members can have them to keep and enjoy. Think anybody will be copying e-mails a hundred years from now? Heck no--an e-mail doesn't even last a good day!
To support my habit, I recently bought a box of somebody else's family letters at a local junk store. Just what I need--more paper--paper to which I have not one whit of historical or emotional connection. I had to have them--that flowing script and small window into another life was too hard to pass up.
To wit, I am hereby issuing a personal invitation to you, to join me in A Month of Letters . It's simple. It's easy. It can be as meaningful as you want it to be, or as happily inane as the most slapdash of jotted notes. The important thing is it's in your handwriting (penmanship is not the point--the movement of the hand across the page is), and the good old USPS is charged with its delivery.
Write to whomever you please--friends, family, enemies (if you are brave!). The editor of the paper or the customer service department at your favorite snack food company. Your dental hygienist probably never gets a thank you note--or the guy in the window at the dry cleaner--or the dude who sprays off your car at the car wash. Just write.
These letters will mean something in a way an e-mail or a tweet could never even begin to touch--they will be personal, they will take time (to write, to receive, to respond to).
And they will last. In a box, under a bed; in a drawer; in a closet. They will last.
Yours,
Portia
P.S. Some of my favorite novels are "epistolary"--stories told through letters. If you feel like dipping into one, check out Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith (one of my all-time favorites), or the soon-to-be-released Same Sun Here by fellow Kentuckian Silas House and Neela Vaswani.
I'm worried. This is no surprise to those who know me well. It's pretty much my personal status quo.
But now I'm really worried--not about stuff like where the dog is, or if my kids are hanging in, or if I'll get everything done before Thanksgiving. I've moved on to big ticket items, like the future of humanity.
Any given minute of any given twenty-four hour period, it only takes a flick of the TV dial or a speedy on-line check to find ample room for concern about our collective moral health, and then it's one quick-n-easy slide to obsessive middle-of-the-night fear for the future. Most days I am able to attain a fairly healthy balance of being aware without becoming obsessed (made possible by strict, highly controlled, pointedly limited access to any news outlet, regardless of political agenda).
The last twenty-four hours have made it impossible to ignore or to deny--all of us should be engaged in some serious middle of the night worrying and some fairly intense soul searching. Our global family is sick and we need a global intervention--now.
Full disclosure: I love football. This fact surprised even me, since it only took me about thirty-five years to figure out the most basic elements of the sport. I came to love it because some dedicated men took their time to teach a motley bunch of ragtag little boys. They taught them the finer points of a good tackle and the intricate workings of offensive plays college athletes would struggle to
master--and they taught them the absolute necessity of becoming good men.
Those were happy days. My son worked hard. The coaches worked hard. The fans cheered hard. And the boys played hard. Every single person affiliated with that team walked away from the experience richer for having had it, whether or not football remained in his or her future.
Sport and the love of sport is a fantastic form of communal communication. We come together in our gear, we cheer the same cheers, we love the same athletes, we adore the same coaches. But like anything done in a group, all too often we willingly forfeit our ability to think critically for ourselves. We willfully and rapidly make a judgment about another person based upon the color of the jersey or the logo on the cap. Sport has become the Church of the Common Denominator, operating under the same rigid, separatist rules one can find in the most rigid, fundamentalist of creeds.
And heinous deeds are being committed in the name of Sport.
At this point details have almost become immaterial. All we need know is adults, most if not all of them men, failed young boys who trusted them. Boys much like my son's teammates, some of whom were also "at risk" and in dire need of love. Those same adults have apparently, for several years, been able to avoid facing what those young boys will never be able to forget: the awful depravity of a grown man unable and unwilling to control his most primitive, pervertedly bestial drive.
Now other young men are rioting in the streets, destroying property and chanting, all in the name of what? All in support of whom? A mascot and a jersey. A communal Saturday afternoon experience that has worth, yes, but at what cost? Is it worth one's ability to think, to discern, to decide for oneself? That's a huge price to pay for a fight song.
Behind every shot of Joe Pa waving from his front porch, under every red, white and blue banner, crouched in the dark shadows cast by every single bleacher, are the rigid, terrified faces of at least eight little boys. Faces much like those I knew and loved, faces we all have known and loved, faces every single one of those kids screaming in the streets once were.
That's what this is all about--those children. It's a tough lesson in growing up for those college students who love their school, but getting an education is all about lessons such as this, a lesson dearly bought and paid for by eight scared little boys. We should all take their painful and very personal sacrifice and put it to work, not by pushing over lamp posts and knocking over news vans, but by working together to keep children safe. By assuming adult responsibilities in an increasingly frightening world--a world where grown-ups should never, under any circumstance, use the power of age and stature to take advantage of the weak.
On a recent weekend two friends and I did something we have never done: we left home together.
For millions of American women this is not a foreign concept. They gather. They gab. They eat, shop, drink, watch chick flicks, and then they start all over again. We don't really belong to that august sorority known as the American woman. Ours is a weird little group, with weird little ways of whiling away a beautiful autumn weekend.
We got together to Create. On any normal day we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about creating--unfortunately, perhaps, more time talking about than actually doing. So this weekend the proof was going to be in the pudding.
There were rules: 1. No filing. 2. No sorting. 3. No cleaning.
That last item ain't so hard. The first two, not so easy. Some of us yearned to fill the yawning storage compartments in our vehicles with legions of plastic tubs and cardboard boxes, seeing endless hours of gleeful girl talk as the perfect antidote to the mind-numbingly depressing task of sorting. But some of us are hardened taskmasters and would not allow such pursuits.
Eureka! It worked. We hunkered down and we got stuff done. Fascinating, interesting, unusual stuff we wouldn't have done if we had stayed at home. Stuff like the little gal above, cut from a 19th century magazine, sweeping her way along a pathway of technology created from a now obsolete computer card.
And we talked, a lot, about creativity itself--the elusive muse we try to "catch by the tail" and wrestle to our own ends. In a fit of desperate avoidance behavior I hit Facebook (that old cheater of creativity) and found a fellow writer fighting the same battles had on this very day posted the following lecture about nurturing creativity--a talk given by writer Elizabeth Gilbert. We listened while we worked, the result being more conversation, more thoughtful inquiry, and, eventually, more work:
It all boils down to this crusty remainder: behind every creative impulse is the fear of failure and the fear of so much more. We are the descendents of a long, lusty artistic culture based on "the notion that creativity and suffering are linked." And, as Gilbert so pointedly asks, why have we accepted that? Why have we let that ridiculously childish notion inform our view of the arts, to the point that if a loved one is considering following their passion into a world of art, we question their wisdom, their foresight, even, perhaps, their sanity?
Because it's just plain hard, there's no road map for living it, no prescriptive plan for results. There's simply the giant question mark that all creative impulse must answer--that little bit of the divine placed deep in every human heart that yearns for an earthly voice.
And bottom line: it's work. Like anything else, it requires discipline, focus, repeated practice, and yes, even failure. But...
I write (a lot). I read (a lot). I dream (a lot). I work (a little). I have one husband, five children, three sons-in-law, three dogs, and five chickens. I love a clean house and hate housework. My best day would be getting to read "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "A Wrinkle in Time" for the very first time, all over again.
