Happy reflections

Scientists announced recently announced that a 34-year-old elephant named Happy looked in a mirror and tried to get the schmutz off her face. This suggests that elephants may be self-aware like people.

And here I used to like elephants. Now I find they are as vain as fashion models and, well, me. Self-recognition, scientists say, may lead to altruistic behavior and empathy.
Does the sound right to you?

Last week, I developed a big honking zit on my left cheek. I'm 48 years old and this is not standing operating procedure for my middle-aged body. I've spent a lot of time in front of the mirror looking at the thing, wondering if I'll ever get asked to the prom.

The more time I've spent in front of my mirror these days, the less altruistic and empathic I've felt. The more you watch yourself, the less time you have to care about anybody else.
If Job had had a mirror, he might have followed his wife's advice and then where would we be?

....in a handbasket

I'm always amazed at the number of people who seem absolutely certain that they know who is going to hell - and absolutely flabbergasted at the subset of those people who put me on the list.
It takes a special kind of arrogance to presume so much, it seems to me, especially in light of Jesus' great declaration that there will be surprises there at the end of time among those who thought they didn't stand a snowball's chance of getting into heaven given the red carpet treatment and those who already had the draperies picked out for their pearly gates condo getting the old heave-ho by the heavenly equivalent of the bouncers at a night club.
I'll be praying for you and trying to put a good word in for you....

Definition of marriage not eternal or inviolate

Now that the New Jersey Supreme Court has punted on the issue of gay marriage to the Legislature (where, one could argue, is where it belongs) it's safe to assume that Western civilization is safe.

There's no way this legislature, or the next one, is going to allow gay marriage. But in the half-a-loaf-is-better-than-none department, they will craft a civil union sort of thing. So maybe Western civilization is crumbling a little bit.

When I perform wedding ceremonies, I always leave out the line that goes "and now, by the authority vested in me by the State of New Jersey....'' because I don't feel the state has any authority to bless or ban a covenantal relationship between two people and their God.
Sure, I'll sign the license to keep things on the up and up, but to stand in church and say that just rankles.

Do I believe that God can bless the union of two people who have the same genitalia?
You betcha. God is interested in love and hope and the joy that two people share. He cannot be that interested in what goes where when the lights go out. Do I believe that gays and lesbians can mess up their relationships. Sure. Especially if they follow the model of all those heterosexual couples who wind up getting divorced.

Please don't tell me that the definition of marriage is eternal and inviolate. In my lifetime, in some places in this country, marriage was defined as the union of a white woman and a white man or a black woman and a black man. And don't get me started on the wisdom of King Solomon, with his hundreds of wives and hundreds of concubines. (Let's see the legislature bring back concubines!)

We tinker with fundamentals all the time. The world will keep on spinning, and loving couples will keep on finding each other to cling to when the wind blows hard and the world is so cold.
I pray for their love and know it's real whatever the law turns out to be.

The trouble with similes is like....

I have a good heart and the purest of motives, neither of which is very much appreciated by certain newsroom colleagues of mine. I appreciate the bonhomie of the newsroom and seek to contribute to it, even if I have to eavesdrop and interrupt to do so.
So it was that I happened to overhear someone compliment a fellow reporter on her stylish jacket.
"Yes'' I said. "It looks like a potholder.''
This was met with silence of death, and taken as an insult. The potholder-wearing woman would not speak to me for hours, even when I explained that my comment was not a criticism but an observation.
"Actually,'' I said, "your jacket reminds me of a very fancy potholder, the kind that never gets used to handle hot stuff, but remains hanging in the kitchen forever.''
This did not help matters......

Rush to ignorance

My mother taught me two things as a child that have always served me well:
1. Never make fun of the sick, halt or lame.
2. If you don't know what you're talking about, it's probably a good idea to keep your yap shut until you can get up to speed.
One assumes that Rush Limbaugh's parents taught him those same lessons. Apparently, they just didn't take.
Well, that's not really fair. If Limbaugh and his ilk limited their talk radio fare to just stuff they knew about, silence would reign on the airwaves and then the terrorists would win.
It was earlier this week that Limbaugh suggested that Michael J. Fox was exaggerating the ravages of Parkinson's disease in a filmed campaign ad designed to help Democratic candidates who support an expansion of federally funded stem cell research.
Even his apology was one of those non-apology apologies the hard-hearted feel compelled to muster up now and then. If Fox was not hamming up the central-nervous betraying effects of his disease, Limbaugh says, then he was being exploited for political purposes. Some choice: sick or a dupe.
The total tonnage of ignorance on talk radio these days is so bad I may switch to a "classic rock'' station until after the election. Compared to talk radio, the lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven'' make perfect sense.

Liberation or bust!

America's foreign policy seems designed to liberate countries for all of about 20 minutes.
Nobody questioned our decision to invade Afghanistan. This was the country hiding the leaders of the people who destroyed the World Trade Center. So we liberated them. Freed them so much that the Taliban is coming back, heroin production is booming and if you happen to be a Christian you can be executed unless you're said to be crazy.
We might have done some more liberating of Afghanistan if we hadn't been distracted by the shiny object of Iraq, a nasty place that had nothing to do with 9/11. Well, we liberated the heck out Iraq, essential allowing the Shiites and Sunnis to start killing each other and us, if we happen to get in the way.
Anybody else need a nice shot of liberation?

Also sprach Zarathustra, my butt!

What is it about Nietzsche that so fascinates undergraduates?
My first-born zoomed in the house this weekend to bum some money off me and my wife.
And also to show off his new fashion accessories: including a piercing just below his lower lip and a spiked bracelet that looked like a cartoon bulldog's collar. (So our dream of the boy one day becoming the CEO of a Fortune 500 company is still alive!)
We managed to have a brief conversation about some philosophy class he was taking, and Nietzsch came up: the old "God-is-dead-everything-is-permitted-the-will-to-power-ubermensch'' philosopher. Josh is quite taken with this particular old dead white male.
And I can't figure it out. You have more freedom as an undergraduate than at anytime in your life. And the whole "will to power'' sounds all fine and dandy until you actually get some and then, as any parent can tell you, you realize that power is a cross to bear, a terrible burden.
As Spiderman once said, "With great power comes great responsibility.''
And my kid has about nada in the responsibility department.
Love also gets in the way of the exercise of unbridled power, you know?
"I'll stack Ghandi and the Dr. King against old Nietzsche any day of the week, son,'' I told him.
I suspect that his infatuation with Nietzsche will end at about the same time he takes that godawful stud out of his lower face.

On a day like this

"I shot the morning in the back,
with my red wings on.
Told the sun it better go back down ..."
-- Tom Waits, "Mr. Seigal''

I'm pretty sure that Waits performed his grievous bodily harm to the dawn's early morning light owing to the effects of a particularly hangover. I know how he feels, and I don't even drink on weekdays. You wake up every morning, resurrected to a new day, and the news comes on and you feel like you are working off a bender.

North Korea is setting off nukes, a particularly forceful way to flip the bird to the world. It looks like we liberated Iraq right into a civil war, Sunnis and Shiites killing each other and our soldiers. The people of Iran go to bed at night, dreaming of a world without Israel and hoping North Korea might pass a little fissionable material their way without catching the teacher's eye.
You want to have hope, and you do wake up and get through the day somehow.
How do you keep your hopes up in a world that seems like it's circling the drain?

The future of newspapers...It's all about me

The newspaper business has tumbled on to the fact that this whole Internet thing isn't a fad. It ain't going away, and it's taking away readers from print. For the longest time, I myself didn't worry about my job going the way of buggywhip makers. I figured two things:
1. It seemed to me that the Internet consisted of Amazon.com, eBay, a million Nigerian credit scams and a gazillion porn sites - none of which would seem to compete with the newspaper business. Turns out there's a whole lot more in cyberspace than any of us thought.
2. Whether people actually read the paper or not, they are still going to need something to line their birdcages and wrap their fish with. Let's see MySpace do that.
But newspapers are continuing to lose circulation. The same people who say they don't have time to read the newspaper are the same people who surf the Web for hours. Go figure.
Well, the powers that be at the company where I toil have decided on a bold plan of action.
The future of journalism, it seems, comes down to....me.
That's right. Somehow bloggers are going to save journalism.
God help us all.
Actually it's bloggers and you folks who are going to save the day. When you start sending your pictures of car crashes, house fires and videos of your cute little grandson singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,'' we're going to be all set for this century.

I'm no Luddite, but....

I'm a big fan of technology, progress and all that. Anything that makes my life easier is fine by me. But there are some things I just don't get, and I fear it means the future is leaving me in the dust.
I don't understand iPods and MP3 players for one thing. If I buy a CD, I own something. Something I can touch and hold on to. Pretty pictures, lyric sheets, liner notes.
If I download a song, I pay a buck for nothing but a series of digitized ones and zeros. Now I suppose I could burn the downloaded material onto a disc, but then I've got more work to do, not less.
My kids don't care about the thing itself, just the sounds, and I think something is lost.
Honest to goodness, I like progress: I hated 8-tracks.
And I don't want to be stuck in the 20th century, but it is where I spent most of my life.
Is there hope for people like me?

Scrunch over!

Word is that sometime next week, the population of America will reach 300 million. Sure, that seems like a lot of people, but maybe the kid will be born in Montana where it really won't matter much.
Does America seem crowded to you?
Heck, New Jersey doesn't seem all that crowded to me and it is the most densely populated state in the Union. I mean it doesn't seem all that crowded in the Soylent Green, Black Hole of Calcutta sense.
You drive some parts of the Parkway south of exit 63 late at night in the fall or winter and you can feel mighty alone there in the Pine Barrens, just you and the dark. And you swear you can hear that "Deliverance'' banjo music coming from the woods.
When my two oldest kids are home from college, there are seven of us in a three-bedroom apartment. And if you know my two oldest kids, you know we're talking about a particularly "dense'' population. (Rimshot!)
I guess New Jersey doesn't seem all that crowded to me because I've spent all my life here, except for five years just outside of Boston.
If you want wide open spaces, move to North Dakota.
Give me bright lights, huddled masses, noise and the whole world within a 20-minute car ride any day.

Trick or treat?

My wife Susan is a butterfly. That's a given. We're locked into that. The question is, what will I become for the Halloween party to which we've been invited?

Sue is a pre-school teacher and the staff in her classroom had decided on the butterfly motif way back when. I wasn't consulted. Which is fine with me, since I don't plan on attending her party. But now, she's not going to get another costume for our party, so I'm stuck. Sue did suggest that I could get a pith helmet, a safari jacket and a butterfly net.

You try to find a pith helmet is all I've got to say about that.
And if you do find a pith helmet, I bet it wouldn't fit what some members of my family refer to as my "freakishly large head.'' So if you have any ideas about an appropriate, non-dainty costume for the husband of a butterfly, let me know.

Say it with flowers

I sent my wife flowers at work today.
No special occasion. And no, I haven't done anything wrong and don't feel guilty about anything.
I know guys who will send flowers to their wives with the same reasoning as the current administration's views on invading other countries -- as a pre-emptive strike against possible problems somewhere down the line.
That strategy doesn't work in marriage either.
Everyone once in a while, I just send my wife flowers.
I'm a swell guy.
But there is no such thing in this world as a pure motive. I know that a few pistils and stamens go a long way in the whole "Keeping the romance alive'' thing.
The tricky part of the whole flower thing is when it comes to dictating the card of sweet nothings over the phone to the gal or guy at the flower shop. First thing is making sure your co-workers don't hear you breaking out into high-flown poetical rhapsodies.
But if you want your sweet nothings to have a little naughty kick to them, a touch of the bawdy, you really have to put aside any feelings of embarrassment and just soldier on through it.
Luckily, that's not a problem for me.
Let's just hope Sue doesn't read the card out loud to her co-workers.

Sex and death in Verona

I've just finished reading Ron Rosenbaum's new book "The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascos, Palace Coups.''
This is some good book. The author reports on men and women who have given their careers and their lives to studying the work of Shakespeare very, very closely.
There are controversies in Shakespeare studies: Which of the three versions of Hamlet is the most "Shakespearean?'' What were the "real'' last words of King Lear?
These things matter to people who love the Bard and for those who love language and the things it can do to the brain and the heart.
Even a pronoun can matter.
The virgin Juliet says,
"Give me my Romeo, and when he shall die
Take him and cut him out into little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Quite the profession of love. How many of you men have ever had that kind of effect on women?
But some scholars believe the first line should have Juliet say ...''and when I die/Take him and cut him.....'' as one version of the play has it. That makes little sense, others argue....unless we remember that in Elizabethan times "to die'' was often a euphemism for "have an orgasm.''
And so, they say, Juliet is contemplating the earth-shattering consummation of her relationship with Romeo. Which would be fine, except that in the play Juliet is probably younger than one of Rep. Foley's pages.
I try to put that aside and, in fact, I'm not in the business of looking for the "naughty bits'' in Shakespeare's plays.
But the man could sling around the old iambic pentameter like nobody's business and some lines stay with me, as when Benedick, in "Much Ado About Nothing,'' tells his true love when she asks what she should do with the world falling apart around them that she should "serve God, love me, and mend.''
And that's good advice for anybody, anywhere and anytime.

From here to paternity

I want to go on record as stating that I am not the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby. I'll submit to any kind of medical procedure to prove it.

I realize that this sort of makes me odd man out these days. Guys are apparently falling all over themselves to stake their claim to the baby.
Not me. Not possible. Would never happen.

Does the phrase "Not for all the money in the world'' mean anything. Now, it is true that Anna Nicole does stand to come for a sizable chunk of all the money in the world. That's what's probably fueling the dueling daddy wannabees in this case, sort of a reverse Maury Povich Show episode.

If Anna Nicole Smith were the last woman on the planet and I was the last man, I still think I'd have to pass. "Well,'' I'd say, "the species had a good run, but I guess it's time to bring down the curtain on homo sapiens.''

When faith is hard to hold ...

"The peace of God passes all understanding,'' Scripture tells us. But there other things that pass understanding as well: an insane milkman lining up young girls in an Amish schoolhouse and shooting them dead.

This is one of those stories that can shake your faith. We understand that God gives us all the terrible freedom to get sick, to do evil. And yet we wish, we pray for a miracle somehow. A gun that would not fire, a lightning bolt striking with pinpoint accuracy. And when no miracle happens and the blood of children spatters a blackboard, what do we do? Some of us weep with Jesus, some of us watch our own precious children with a keen eye and some of us do both.

I think of a Bruce Springsteen song, "Souls of the Departed:'' A kid dies in a schoolyard shooting, caught in the crossfire of a gang war. "Tonight, as I tuck my own son in bed,'' the singer calls out, "All I can think of is what if it had been him instead. I want to build me a wall so high nothing can burn it down -- right here on my own piece of dirty ground.''

To keep them safe -- it's all we really want. Now and then it seems like the peace of God is so hard to find.

Rise and Rhetoric!

Sue and I had a late night out Saturday. And I knew even as the hours ticked by that I had to give a presentation to an adult Presbyterian church group miles from home at 9 a.m. The subject was "The Basis of Christian Authority: 2000 Years of Theological Thinking On the Matter.'' The presentation was supposed to last no longer than 40 minutes.
No sweat.
On the other hand, Sunday morning arrived quickly. I've never hit the snooze button on my alarm. But this Lord's Day I hit it three times.
Finally, Sue rolled over, nudged me and said, "Honey, you have to get up and talk.''
What a wonderful phrase, I thought.
And what a wonderful life as well: Arise and speak. We create the universe anew everyday with what we say and how.
What were your first words this morning?
I try to start my days with some variant on "I love you.''