Here's a few paragraphs on what's going on.
Last weekend went well starting with a gathering at Tim and Bruce's place in the PRAA. It was 85 degrees at 9PM, and they had a 5,000 gallon bucket of Sangria: Can I really be blamed for overindulging? I think it's society's fault. Played some poker, met some new people, had a good time. It was planned as a stopover on my way across the state to Sid's place, but the stopover seemed to have lasted 14 hours. Ah well, a good time was had until I woke up with the worst red wine hangover of this century. Which meant of course, driving to Kalamazoo in 90 degree weather (no AC in my car) with previously mentioned hangover. If you're keeping score at home, this is not recommended.
The trip west was to work with Sid on a soundtrack for a local indie horror film. The director had heard some of Sid's music and wanted him to put something together. So we gathered up a ridiculous collection of instruments, bleeps and bloops, and locked ourselves in his living room for 3 days. You can hear the results here.
It was a great time. I love collaboration, especially musical collaboration. When its working and things are clicking it really is the greatest feeling in the world. Unfortunately, I don't get the opportunity as much as I'd like. Sid and I work well together, which I remembered, but it was nice to get back into the swing of things. It is kind of funny to watch him break out in hives when anyone suggests doing anything conventional. He really wants to sell out, but he's allergic. Anyway, hopefully we'll get the chance to get together and do it again soon.
Went to the fireworks (International Freedom Festival) last night and it was incredible. Being there is just unreal. You start out watching and you say "How will we know when the finale' happens?" Because the first 5 minutes is like a finale' at any other fireworks show you've seen. But then they start it and fill the sky 5 times over and the whole building shakes, and then you know. Da and I just kept laughing at how amazing and ridiculous it all was at the same time.
Also, official announcement coming out tomorrow, so stay tuned. Thanks for coming.
Still a great comedy writer capturing the apoplectic liberal zeitgeist of the mind.
(Which is rarely this good)
I've been a Stratford festival fan for many years now. This season looks awesome. First is "As You Like It" Summer-Of-Love style with BNL soundtrack. And then William Hutt, who is incredible and still formidable in his 70s playing Prospero in "The Tempest". Any of my extended family theatre friends want to go on a trip with me? Early August?
SC4 Drama Ass, this means you, Dottie and Alfie and Chuck and Kerry!
Tech STA, this means you Andy and Lenny and Kristin and Karen and Laura!
Troupe, all of ya!
Sid and Z, come on down!
Hell, anyone who knows me and digs The Bard, join the caravan!
Sometimes books can change your mind, sometimes they can tell you what you already knew, sometime they can make you question everything. And sometimes, they can do all three, and change your life as a result.
Here are 3 books I recommend without qualification, that together have helped to form (or at least self-clarify) much of my world view. Much of it was something I already knew somewhere inside me, but like magic, the act of reading it in these books concretized what I knew in my head into something solid and real. And so ....
The three books cover three aspects of life, which some might say encompass the whole of it: Mind, Body, and Spirit. Here they are:
Mind: The Culture of Fear, by Barry Glassner
Body: Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating by Walter C. Willett, P.J. Skerrett
Spirit: Everyday Zen: Love and Work by Charlotte Joko Beck
The Culture of Fear:
First, I said above that I recommend all of these without reservation, which I stand by still, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't read critically. In fact, one should read any book (including (especially) The Bible) critically, else our minds are asleep.
And so, certainly there are things here with which I disagree. For example, I find Glassner's position on guns to be vastly oversimplified, which is quite unlike the degree of scrutiny he applies to other social ills. But the core concept hypothesized and supported in the book remains strong: Life keeps getting safer and yet people are more terrified than ever. Also, people are afraid of the wrong things. They fear crime in the city rather than their drive to work. They fear the disastrous effects of illicit drug use rather than overprescription by doctors. They fear West Nile Virus or anthrax rather than global poverty and hunger, although in each case the latter is far more dangerous than the former.
These fears are pervasive and powerful and common and totally irrational. Glassner doesn't offer simple answers, as the cause of this national (and even global) mass delusion does not flow from a single source. From the media's desire for sensation to the politician's need to control, there are a large host of influences making our populace more and more insanely scared, and focusing on the wrong things. Glassner parses through these influences and examples and shatters many of our society's pet phobias from killer kids and monster moms to crack babies and the evil young black male. You'll find numerous examples of things you've always taken to be true, which were reported widely in the media, but whose corrections were buried.
Life is too short to live it in irrational fear, and this book points out the myriad ways we all do from time to time.
Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy:
There are no shortage of diet books out there. Eliminate Carbs. Eliminate Fat. Eat more Carbs. Eat more Fat. Eat only whole foods. Eat only between 11 AM and 2 PM. Eat only raw foods. Stop eating meat. Eat more meat. Perform obscure mathematical formulas to your calories. No matter what the most recent fads, the truth about health and nutrition hasn't changed all that much.
But it has changed, and this book is not so much a diet book as it is a nutrition science book. It makes and attempts to compile the latest as well as long-established research on diet, nutrition, and health. There are some surprises, but if you've followed the news or the diet hysteria closely you'll be surprised by how little has changed.
It seems new pronouncements come out every few weeks about the health benefits or drawbacks from some food or another, and sometimes they even contradict each other. But if you understand the nature of science you understand that science is not dogmatic. One study that shows benefits from drinking alcohol does not mean that it is an unalterable truth, science builds upon itself over years and many studies create a body of work. By focusing on individual results, the media misses the forest for the trees.
I'll summarize a few of the items here so you can see both the simplicity and revolutionary nature of current nutrition research.
1. When it comes to weight control, what you eat is totally irrelevant. The only that matters is how much you eat. More directly: The only way to lose weight is to take in less calories than you burn. You can reduce the calories you take in by eating less or increase the calories you burn by exercising more. But what you eat has *no* effect on weight control. If you burn 1600 calories a day and eat 1400 calories of only sweet cream butter, you will lose weight. Its a bad idea for nutrition, but that doesn't affect its weight control aspects.
2. Fat is not evil. Saturated fats and trans fats have been linked to long-term negative health effects from heart disease to cancer, but the unsaturated fats are linked to long-term positive health effects. So you should be eating unsaturated fat daily. To reiterate from number 1 above, eating more than 30% fat in your diet is not linked to health problems if it is mostly unsaturated, in fact it can be better for you, and eating more than 30% fat in your diet has *no effect* on your weight if you are controlling total calories.
3. There are definite real benefits to focusing on whole grains and foods rather than processed when eating carbohydrates. Processed carbohydrate does increase the glycemic load, resulting in insulin spikes which can play with the bodies satiation sense. But eating whole-grain carbohydrates are very good for you, and eliminating them will have negative effects on your health. In fact, eating no carbohydrates at all increases your risk for cancer and liver-failure.
The USDA food pyramid is definitely out of date, and even the new updated version owes more to agricultural interest groups than current science. But that is not a good justification to follow the parade of soul-less pricks willing to sell out peoples health to make a quick buck in the diet wars. Anyone can make a hypothesis and even put together lots of fancy sounding scientism to justify it. But that doesn't make it true. You'd be far better off to focus on the things we *do* know, and this book is the best current source to find that out right now. The upside: Its not as complicated to eat healthy as you think, its just the doing it part that's tough.
Everyday Zen: Love and Work
I toyed with the concepts of Zen as a teenager, but I had always considered it to be beyond me. "I'll get into it when I'm 60 and I have the time," I thought. "I'm too busy with earthly attachment right now."
It wasn't until later that I learned a bit more and started to understand it. I first read Alan Watts, which gave me an appreciation to look further. And that was when I found Joko.
Its hard to describe how incredible this book is. And the thing that is so incredible is its simplicity. Reading it is like discovering the truth of something you've always suspected. And its not about being a perfect emotionless monk, or attaining enlightenment. Really, ultimately it's about sanity.
We live with lots of crazy ideas in our daily lives. We think that we have real problems from anthrax and West Nile. We think that we can have the perfect body by following the latest extreme diet plan. And we think that our opinions about these things have some genuine effect on reality.
That's crazy. Its a widespread and very comfortable delusion for most people, but that doesn't make it less crazy. The universe really doesn't care what our opinions are, and reality doesn't stop and check in with our self-image, but we live our lives as though our opinions and self-image are more important than the world we actually live in. And we keep this delusion running because we want it to be true.
And we've been trained our entire lives. Its a very human tendency to use our minds to create the universe, and think that the universe we created is the real one. This book won't change that overnight. But it will help you to recognize it as it happens in your life. And it will help you to find the path away.
One personal note: Zen is not religion. It came from the study of Buddhism in China (and later Japan), and it does dovetail well with that religion, in that both presuppose some of the same things (the most important being the four noble truths). But Zen is really a process, a method for attaining human sanity that can be compatible with many different faiths. For my own part, I do not consider myself a Buddhist. I value the lessons and respect the faith, but I do not really recognize it as a part of my daily life, and am uncomfortable with its more mythological aspects. If I was forced to classify my spiritual beliefs, I would probably call myself a Zen Agnostic. I do recognize a general sense of design or intelligence in the universe, which you could call divinity, but it does not require an object of this. I'm comfortable with this design being the result of random processes. In short: I don't care, I'm just glad it exists and brought me here.
I think no matter what your background or faith, and whether or not you choose to continue on with "the practice" of Zen, you can benefit from Joko's simple and direct explanations. She does an excellent job of explaining what Zen means to you, which is to say just another person trying to get by day to day and not living in a monestary. And maybe, after reading it you'll find that true sanity is more important to you than your opinions about it.
So give these three a try. They're all pretty short, but pack a lot of power into the small page count. And maybe they'll have as strong an impact on someone else as they did for me.
There's no language with words enough to truly describe Glenn Schultz. There's no tribute that can really recognize a life of willful abandon and beautiful intensity. And yet I try, because by trying, maybe I can learn something, and maybe I can have a bit more of Glenn in my life.
In the 60s my father managed a coffee house in Port Huron, MI called The Cellar. It was during the folk explosion in the 1966 timeframe. My father is a serious music lover, and the folk scene played to what he loved most: intelligent socially-conscious songwriting, simple yet powerful music and instrumental virtuousity. In the tableau of this labor of love walked Gypsy, a brilliant, white-hot, larger than life musician named Glenn Schultz.
Glenn was both an anachronism and able to adapt to any situation, by always being just who he was. Its true as was mentioned in the eulogy that Glenn might have been uniquely suited for Elizabethan England, and the mere act of asking for more coffee had a quality of verse to it when it came from Glenn's lips, and yet, he made the world his home.
I didn't know him back in those days, being merely a potential for life. I know he made a strong impression on my father and they became good friends, but then lost each other for several years during much of my childhood. I had heard stories, but I don't have any real memories of my life before 6 or 7 years, so I didn't really *know* him. He had carved a sword for me from wood, with my initials carved into the base of the blade. I remember it fondly (and just found it again and have it sitting next to me by the computer now). I looked at that carving all through my childhood. It was one of my favorite toys growing up, but I didn't really remember Glenn at all.
So the first time I remember meeting Glenn was like meeting a character in a story I had read many times. And he didn't disappoint being more than any story could prepare you for. I was 20 or so when we finally met again. He was coming to visit for a spell, where we would hang out in my parent's newly renovated backyard garden. A telephone conversation set it up:
Ma: What would you like to drink?
Glenn: Like a fish. Red Wine. Cheaper the Better.
And it began again with that minimalist free verse, and it was how he spoke. "Darling," he'd say, pointing at his palm, "might you present the pepper to me?"
Glenn was deeply in the throes of chronic back pain (possibly stemming from a lifetime working as a machinist for Generous Motors, and a large percentage of that time bent over lathes and such. To be true I don't know the whole story.) and found cheap red wine to be the most effective method for getting through the day. His emphysema hadn't fully taken hold yet, but foreshadowed its horrible grip with full minute-long bouts of coughing spasms.
And yet, he was electric. There was so much brilliance and so much power huddled in his somewhat hobbled frame, you could feel it, shining through his eyes. He brought with him a full quarter wheel of Stilton cheese. "Fooking Marvelous, I tell you" he said of the cheese, by way of introduction. And 'twas, and that afternoon spent in the garden drinking cheap red wine ("Hand over the jug, kid") and eating Stilton is a fond memory and a perfect reunion. He recited from memory a poem he had written in the style of the grand old masters, played "Dandelion Wine" (one of my father's favorites by Glenn, and now one of mine), and we generally caused a ruckus.
And I guess, since the jig is up, and since holding back achieves nothing, I'll admit my own personal impression: For me, Glenn was like a wizard who had been half-destroyed by his own creation. He had learned magic and had taught himself to fly, but in flying had gotten too close the the sun, too close to God and had been thrown back to the earth. Still and yet, it didn't destroy him, merely wizened him (a lot), humbled him (a little), and drew him back to only fly when no one was looking.
It was a short while later I got to (re) meet his family, Vicki and Bree (and later Cody). Bree and I, almost the same age, became fast friends as though the intervening dozen years did not exist. And it was like my other family, who I always felt comfortable with, who I always looked forward to visiting. I never saw them enough (and I take my own share of the blame for that, sizable share 'tis), but it never seemed to matter, as each time was like rejoining right where we left off.
Glenn was a precision machinist, a brilliant musician, a master craftsman of celtic whistles and flutes, a poet (or "verser" as he might put it) and a wonderful human being who was a joy to have known. At the wake (and then following at the house) it was still hard to believe that he was gone. It just seemed like he was missing, and he was obviously missed. There was a swell of great music, as the remaining members of Modesty Forbids (Glenn's mostly Irish music band, also featuring Vicki and Bree) played with several guest stars from the local Irish music scene coming by, and then continuing with more music back at the house. And Guinness flowed freely as we tried to send the man off as best we could. But he was missing, and he was missed and it couldn't be the same.
It was hard to leave. Several times Da and I both knew we should be getting on the road, but couldn't. Because it was the last time we'd be there for Glenn. We'd undoubtedly return, and it would be nice to do, but to leave meant to say goodbye for good. Da left around 7, but I ended up staying and playing well past midnight (and perhaps my welcome, though my hosts 'twould be too nice to say it).
The last few years had been incredibly difficult for him, as the emphysema had locked him up completely, and he spent most of his time on oxygen tanks. But still, he was out back in the workshop making "weasels", writing verse, giving that trademark singsong laugh, and being as difficult and inspiring as was his wont. Glenn was no saint, and he was a full five handfuls on any given day as he was challenging and challenged by all those he knew. But the world without him is surely missing something, as surely as he is missed.
Notes:
I'm late publishing it, but it took me a long time to figure out how to say it. I still think I've failed mostly. Forgive me, Glenn. I tried.
Info on Glenn's book of verse and where to buy it
Glenn's website for the whistles he crafted
Discussion forum thread on Glenn
The Reaper is my neighbor now; he lives next door to me.
I see him out my window as I sip my noonday tea.
No scythe, no cloak, nor tail nor horns; a plain and honest sort
Aware that his profession is a business not a sport.
He moved in on a desperate day, the sky was full of snow;
I helped him tote his household in and made the furnace go.
We worked the day long side by side with purpose and good cheer,
And dined on cheese and crackers, and he handed me a beer.
He offered then to pay me for the labor I had done;
I said he’d paid me years ago, and labor was my fun.
He thanked me very kindly and he thanked me very much
But did not proffer handshake, so of course we did not touch.
He lives a modest life, and mows his lawn and does his share
And tends the flowers at his door with more than passing care,
As if he means to transplant them upon some future day
To places of his choosing, there a long, long time to stay.
And if he’s oft away at night, what care is it of mine?
He is a gracious gentleman, and that suits me just fine.
He makes no stir, he makes no mess; bytimes he clears my walks;
And our back fence is a forum for occasional quiet talks.
He knows my family all by name and wishes them good health;
I could not have more pleasant fellow chosen by myself!
His patient gentle smile is given for no recompense,
The same I’ll see the day I clasp his hand across the fence.
For death is not a punishment, and death is not a cheat:
It is but smooth transition, and in no wise a defeat.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I have much to give and get;
My neighbor waits the fence for me, but I’m not ready yet.
Glenn A Schultz Sr. 2-19-05
(1941- 8Jun2005)