Cultural Voyeurism

My wife and I have now lived about 7 decades each. In that time expertise has been developed by only one of us, in only one field. My wife was a better than average pediatric occupational therapist. Except for that we have lived totally superficial lives. As an example of our lack of knowledge neither of us could say if merlot is white, pink, or red. Rather than delve at length into anything we have sought variety in our experiences. We have skimmed lightly over the surface of activities. We are dilettantes. We think of ourselves as cultural voyeurs. We have played bingo on a Saturday night at the fire hall in a small town on the Oregon coast. We have been supernumeraries in a production by the Seattle opera company. We have passed a New Year’s Eve putting flowers on a parade float in Pasadena, CA. In two days we will host a cultural voyage for some friends into the realm of professional American football. People not often found at sporting events are coming to our house to watch a playoff game between the Chicago Bears and the Seattle Seahawks.



From the participants' perspective professional football combines strength, speed, agility, conditioning, honed skills, and brains. Not withstanding the myth of baseball as the intellectual’s game, football is clearly the most cerebral of American sports. I would guess that the average football play takes 10 or 15 seconds to run. The teams then have 30 seconds to plan what they will attempt next. Though they seldom use all 30 seconds, it is clear the actual time that play is going on is less than half the minutes in the game, not counting time outs. Football is mostly a planning activity and of course the planning that goes on between plays is nothing as compared with the planning, and study that happens between games and between seasons. This is true for both offense and defense. Football contains a very highly refined intellectual component.



Football is also the king of the team sports. In baseball where there are nine players on the field only one or two are doing anything most of the time. The rest are just waiting. Even when the ball has been hit and is in play many field players will not really have anything to do while at least five members of the team at bat will necessarily be seated on the bench. Always. Basketball is the same. Most of the time not more than two or three players on each team are involved in the action. Frequently only one offensive player is active with only one or two defensive players opposing his efforts. In football every player is active on every play and the actual outcome of any given play is dependent on the success or failure of most of the players on both teams. What players know in a deep visceral way as the game advances and what fans barely glimpse is how each guy is doing against his immediate opponent. Are you mostly winning those small battles or are you mostly getting beaten? Football games are won and lost by the blockers and those who would be blocked, or not. The spectators, with their eyes on the drama of where the ball is, miss most of the real show.



Our cultural voyage on Sunday will not be into the realm of players and coaches. It will be into the realm of the fans. From the fan’s perspective football involves sitting (mostly), snacking, and vocalizing. We can surmise that the intensity of the fan’s experience is substantial given the time and money devoted to it. That intensity is related to two things. One is identification with the team. It is apparently possible for people of ordinary intelligence to ignore the fact that nobody on “their” team has ever even heard of them, let alone actually cares about them. There is a curious asymmetry between fans and players. While the fans know something about the players, the players know nothing about the individual fans. Somehow fans manage to overlook the fact that they have almost nothing to do with how well the team does and instead feel personally fulfilled by success and chastened by defeat. This remarkable suspension of disbelief underpins the modern sports industry. Billions of dollars are spent on account of it, I am sure.



The other pillar on which the sports industry stands is gambling. In this case caring about the outcome is at least sensible. My father was a lifetime gambler, mostly on sporting events. Although he had a couple of good scores over the course of 70 or 80 years he must certainly have been a net loser in the long run. In any case he never got into trouble from his gambling. I now see his gaming as a savings program which paid a negative interest rate and provided random withdrawals. Almost every night he had a handful of “tickets” on one or more games. Each ticket had possible scores for the competing teams and when the end result of the games matched his ticket, he won. Buying the tickets was his “savings account deposit". Winning represented a “withdrawal”. Though the effective interest rate was negative, the randomness of the withdrawals made it way more fun than any bank account. Typically when a withdrawal occurred he would use the money to buy something he wanted. Thus he saved up for many of the tools I now have.



Our friend Ellie, who knows a lot about a lot of topics, including that brevity is the soul of wit, replied to our invitation as follows. I will come “as long I don’t have to either KNOW what a tight end is, or HAVE one.”

Happy Just Being Alive

I have biked the twelve or so blocks from the Montlake bridge to my home many many times; certainly hundreds, possible thousands. Recently I have come to think of it as completely dead time. Not always of course. Occasionally there is some curiosity or good looking dog, or cute child or a new idea to take note of. But mostly it is just a matter of turning the pedals until I get home. I now often day dream of an instantaneous bodily transportation that eliminates the dead time and drops me at my door. I don’t want to change anything in the universe. I just want to skip the mindless minutes and be home. If I could just become unconscious for the few moments needed to make the ride, I suppose that would work.

Yesterday I rode to town. It was raining and because the ride starts with a climb I chose to wear only a bike shirt with arm warmers under a rain coat. It doesn’t take much climbing to be warm even in cold wet weather. When I had done my chore downtown I rode to Ballard on another task. That ride is basically flat and the rain had increased. I soon realized that it was quite cold. After passing some 20 minutes standing in conversation in a bike shop I faced about 4 miles of flat ride through the cold rain to get to the warmth of my house. I have often affirmed that there is no such thing as a bad bike ride. Riding is always good. Etc. etc. That is of course pure bull. There are unpleasant bike rides and I had one yesterday. But we come now to point. That ride led to a new state of mind. One not previously explicitly recognized, but once so noted, found in my memory.

On arriving home I shed my wet clothes, built a fire, and sat. No thinking. No reading. No eating. Not really warming especially at the fire. Simply, as near as I could tell, just being alive. And it was a pleasure. Just to be alive was enough.

A Tribute

My wife and I bought our home on 26th Ave East, adjacent to the Arboretum, in 1970. We paid peanuts for it, even in those days. It has sheltered us. It has grounded us among many wonderful friends. It has provided parks, and water, and urban amenities, and cultural diversity and academic opportunities, all within walking distance.  It has sustained us financially during several periods when we lived away from here. I cannot conceive of a more perfect place for us to have made our lives.

Often when a large group of people cooperate to achieve some good end, it is possible to identify one or two particular ones upon whom the enterprise truly depended; people without whom the end would not have been achieved. Maynard Arsove was such a person in the battle in the late sixties to halt construction of the R H Thompson Expressway in Seattle. Those off ramps to nowhere that we know so well are Maynard’s work. The Arboretum, as we know it, free of a North-South freeway, is also Maynard’s work. But when I think of Maynard I don’t think of him as the guy who stopped the R H Thompson, I think of him as the guy who saved my house. Without him, this place where I sit at this moment tapping on my computer would be a spot on the south bound lane, probably crammed with cars crawling home from work.

Here’s to you Maynard, with my eternal and heart felt gratitude.

Maynard passed peacefully on November 14th.

The Answer to an Important Question

When I arrived at the gym today to do some yoga and cardio, I found a sign announcing an opportunity to get one’s body fat measured by the submersion method which is considered the best. I bit. An hour later, after expelling all the air I could from my lungs and lying on the bottom of a tank of comfortably warm water for a moment, a guy informed me that my body is about 19 % fat. He also provided a chart, calibrated by age, that indicated about five categories of this value ranging from life threatening up to healthy. (Just below healthy was good which is to say if you are only in the good category you are less than healthy in your percentage of body fat. How good is that?) 19% it turns out is just at the bottom of the healthy range, just above the not so good “good”.



Conclusion: I interpret this result as meaning that somehow I have managed in my life to eat just the right amount of ice cream. Any more and I would not be healthy. Any less and I would have gone without for no particular reason. What a relief.

The First Wednesday in November 2010

Really the only thing wrong with the United States is that it is run by homo sapiens.

Get ready bugs.  Your time can't be more than a couple hundred years away.

Gravity, The Real Winner

You have to really respect gravity.  It is so patient, so subtle, so unassuming yet ultimately so victorious.  It's going to get you, you know.  Eventually.  Not only will it swallow you into the earth, or at least clutch your remnants in tiny pieces flat to the earth's surface, it is going to do the same to everything you ever created.  And not only you of course, but everyone including God, if you think God made the mountains.  Good old gravity.  Just sitting there tugging gently, unnoticed against it all.  Well, I guess that recently there have been a couple of escapes, but a few cans of wire and metal tossed out of reach, hardly count against gravity's over all record.  It's pretty impressive.

Doggerel

Some words assembled on the occasion of my wife's 70th birthday

              Come Grow Old With Me

One time I chanced to see, on a bench beneath a tree
Some words carved with a knife, about the course of life.

Though tender was the verse, the truth it did reverse.
It said,” Grow old with me. The best is yet to be.”

The best is yet to be? This I’d like to see.

I stared at it bemused, my senses all abused
To say the last is best, just does not pass the test.

Our best I fear my dear, lies in the rear view mirror.
The future holds scant bliss. Reality is this.

Eyes grow dim and hair gets thin
Knees creak and bowels leak
Necks get crepey and tricepts drapey
As jowels sag and back is bent, the skin resembles old parch-ment.
As memory fades and wit expires, we find we’re running on old tires.
With withered grip and pruney lip, I fret about a rigid hip.

The future I must tell, just doesn’t seem that swell.
But come grow old with me.
When I meet eternity
It’s with you I want to be.