Contact me.

Tomorrow I'm going to do something I have never done before.  I'm going to volunteer to assist in the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders.  I can't think of a task more unattractive than cold calling strangers, reciting a script in order to try to elicit a vote or a monetary donation, or knocking on a stranger's door who more than likely is not political... let alone liberal... and trying to convince them to sign on to a campaign.  I'd rather stay at home, take a break from the work week, and do nothing.  But this is something I feel I need to do for my own sanity.  I'm compelled to do this and I would only let myself down if I didn't act upon this need.
I'm tempted to list all the negative reasons why I'm going to volunteer.  There are more than a few.  I'm driven in part by a righteous anger and a desperate sense of weakness.  I'm driven by disbelief at what I hear on a daily basis.  I'm media sick.  I'm alone in my sense of outrage.  I'm surprised by the misery I'm surrounded by.  I'm convinced I know all the answers and everyone else is naïve and willfully ignorant. I'm not really convinced he can win.  I will accomplish nothing with this task.  I am going to be an un-greased bearing in a small gear on a big old machine that nobody wants to use anyway. 
But I'm going to throw all that away.  I'm going to go into this thing with an optimistic attitude.  So much of the world is dedicated to handing us reasons not to believe in humanity, and as we grow older we keep finding more examples to lose our faith in people.  When I was young, I didn't vote.  I was a cynical young bacchanalian, riding through life easy and distorted.  Life was too big to dedicate to the political world, and I missed a lot of history.  But now, I see the political is the personal.  Politics is an everyday occurrence, our relationships with each other is political, and we are shaped by the world at large.  Imagine if everyone everywhere has woven a small tapestry of our lives, and each tapestry is lain upon each others in a haphazard fashion, strewn in a big pile, each touching others, circling ever upwards, creating a grand pile that stretches into the deep past.  We stand now upon that pile of prayer rugs.  We are descended from those stories.  We are living amongst a long history of decisions that were made for us a long time ago, and the world we see today could have looked much different but for a few rugs being bigger than others.
If I was to come up with a hundred reasons not to volunteer, I could do it easily.  But to come up with one really good one is a little trickier.  I don't want to say the wrong thing and I want to convince you that I'm right.  For every superficial reason I can offer about Bernie's policies and his issue priorities, a counter argument can be made.  And no doubt that no one man can change the world for the better (he can for the worse... one man can ruin the world for everyone... John Wilkes Booth proved that much).  The fact is I'm inspired by Bernie.  I'm inspired because he's calling on all of us to remember the simple fact that the government is ours.  People stopped believing that the government was working for us many years ago, and started believing that it was working against us.  They aren't wrong.  The two political parties have us dancing on strings in a sort of macabre gala.  If you step back and look at the parade, you can see that they are no longer concerned with service, they are mixed up in an arms race, a power grab.  They are more interested in symbolic gestures and facades than solving real problems.  Bernie has been an independent for all of his career because he can see how both parties have forgotten the people.  He is the only one of all the candidates with a consistent eye on our needs.  It's as simple and complex as that.  The time has come for us to stop electing "vetted candidate #456238909" and put people in power with the moral mandate of prioritizing the health of the world, and the health of the people.  There's two ways to go this election.  We can hire someone who is finally going to work towards lifting everybody up, or we can hire someone who is going to keep doing the same thing we've always done. 
I'm open for anything.  Contact me.

Thoughts on the coming Autumn

Overlook at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park, Traverse City, Michigan.

Summer has ended and Autumn is upon us.  More so than the Winter, I become more pensive, introverted, and perhaps... regretful.  I regret the passing of the seasons.  It's a reminder that most of what I wanted to accomplish in the warmth of the sun went undone.  We traveled, yes.  We worked and played and had our long days and warm nights, but there is always more to be done and the hard realization comes like an old ache, I am letting life pass me by all too easily.  The river of time becomes like a lullaby, drifting from dream to dream, filling us with a drowsy pleasurable feeling that lets us forget that sooner than we think, the river will dry up and the race will be run.  My passive nature, my lack of ambition, comes glaring into focus during the changing seasons.  With the cold coming in, the memories of spring and summer still alight, I see myself on a couch, wasting such precious time, wasting my mind away, living a vicarious life, letting myself get bored and loathing the ennui.  I feel like I've been quite properly subjugated!

Seek the beauty, not the truth

Changes are coming soon.  I am too much of a dreamer.  I've let my muscles atrophy and the world has grown into this burning Giant, seething with energy while I admire it from the distant hills.  This path that I'm on, this path of acquiescence, leads to only one destination... Cynicism.  And I hate cynics.  The cynic is the apathetic among us.  The cynic is a person who cannot find any redeeming qualities in the world of men - he hates!  He is the one who has bought the myth of Eden hook and line, who knows the world was better before, worse now, and doomed eventually.  Will he offer his mentorship?  Will he affect change? No.  He will sit in his unhealthy chair and await a miserable end.  And I will not let that be me.  It's the world I love.  It's this grand river!  Optimism is the righteous reward for keeping a free mind and an open heart.  I wish... I wish I wish I wish... I could get back all those wasted minutes, but this life is a miracle, our consciousness is a gift, and our minds can change without any pain.  So the lessons of time are very harsh, and age comes creeping like carrying a water urn that fills drip by drip, until the burden becomes too heavy.  But I must endure, because there is a happiness to be found by living a true and full life.  I've made such bad choices in my life, I've avoided trying anything because it's much easier to just float along.  I can see now that we are all born to strive- to walk forward.  So I will stop this meaningless pursuit of lost minutes, and instead lean into the wind.

Soledad Brothers "Handle Song" Music Video

Old Friends

This past weekend I had a chance to reunite with some dear people I knew in my early 20's at a bar in Maumee called the Village Idiot.  The Soledad Brothers, a band formed by a couple of my friends, were doing a kind of reunion tour and it was timed perfectly for people coming back to town for the holiday.  As well, another close friend of mine was in town with his wife and baby boy and were staying the night at our house.  This was a good chance to unwind from Thanksgiving, get away from the propriety of family, and cut loose like we used to.  So I dragged my buddy out of the house, despite his exhaustion from having to care for his kid and socialize with his family, and we headed to town.  Even though we got there at a time which would have been considered rather early 20 years ago, the bar was already packed deep.  I like the Village Idiot but it is a small place and they still have a kind of innocence when it comes to bringing in bands because they leave tables right in the middle of the room and serve pizza well into the night.  Their pizza is fantastic but it creates havoc when there's 150 people milling around between the bar and the bathroom.  Even as we walked in I saw my people, and we were able to get our drinks and weave our way back to the mid 1990's.

It was as good as it had always been.  I know they would hate me for boxing in their band but the best way I can describe it is blues-rock, influenced by the Rolling Stones and that particular branch of the pantheon of rock music. They hadn't played together for quite some time but those guys are so good it was like riding a bike.  They had played together for years, touring Europe and the U.S. and tightening their style into a taut, sinewy core.  With them providing the soundtrack, about 20 or so men and women who had, decades earlier, burned in the brightness of youth, collected together to marvel at the passing of the years.  There were a few people who I hadn't seen in a decade, and we spent a lot of time joking around and catching up.  To say it was surreal wouldn't be accurate... it was more... refreshing.  Everybody was in great spirits and the music was loud and we all stood in front of the stage bobbing our heads to the beat like we were young again.

I was lucky, all those years ago, to be introduced to a great group of people who were very good at Rock, and they introduced me to several tiers of bands and music that probably would have taken me years to uncover by myself.  We were also very young and waking up to a new world where we were unbound by old conventions.  We didn't have to answer to our parents, and we had a license to go crazy.  They all listened to music with a passion and they formed bands on a yearly basis, mingling and experimenting with styles and playing in clubs and bars all around town.  In fact, these people and their love of music changed my life entirely.  I listened to music differently after those few summers, and had totally different priorities.  Coupled with my time at college, I had shed a self that was too small and young and had my eyes opened to an alternate life.  For most of my adult life I've been reconciling myself to that brief explosion of madness.

Truth be told, though, so much has changed in the 20 years since I had been friends with that group of people.  The center never does hold, and we were all scattered to the winds to live our separate lives.  As much as we try to hold onto our place, this is what life on the river is, dynamic and ever in motion.  I needed something else from this night, however.  Something that perhaps the others didn't need because they were realists at a time that I was idealistic.  I needed to be on their level.  When we were young they were much more experienced and worldly than I was.  They had all grown up together and I was coming in from the outside, both physically and metaphysically.  I was very green and wet behind the ears when I hung out with them, and in that strange time of our mid 20's when I was awakening, they were all getting married or settling into jobs and planning out their next steps.  So in the ensuing years whenever we got back together I gooned about the old days, and acted like a fool.  I needed to be in that youthful sun again while they were living in the now, and I couldn't figure it out and it depressed me.  It was my wife that gave me the perspective to realize that I was being the guy who couldn't let go of the past, and that they weren't the same people they were when they were 21, and they didn't need to relive those old days again.  They weren't the kind of people who went to high school reunions to rehash old glories on the gridiron, and that was exactly what I was doing.  So Friday night I went to the show to say hi to my old friends, introduce my good friend to them, have a few beers, and enjoy the show without any expectations.  It made all the difference.  Everybody was in the same place and the same time, we all had wives and husbands and kids at home to check on, and I walked out of the bar at a reasonable hour without saying goodbye to anyone.  I might finally be learning how to be on the river.

Until we meet again...

Veteran

One small story my mother used to tell us when we were young illuminated my father in a way that no other story had before.  Before I was born, in the very first few years of their marriage, my parents lived in a small apartment above a Laundromat in Perrysburg.  It would have been either 1972 or 1973 and my dad was probably 4 or 5 years removed from his time in Vietnam.  One night they were sleeping in bed when my mother woke to him tossing and making noise in his sleep.  Figuring he was having a nightmare, she attempted to wake him up.  From the depths of his dream he grabbed her by the neck and pushed her against the wall, pinning her there and warning her not to move a muscle.  It took him a few moments to come to his senses and realize where he was and when he came to, he let go of my mother and of course, felt terrible about it.

I have no doubt that my father probably suffered from a depression after fighting in Vietnam.  He never talked about the war and he never specifically answered my questions about his actions.  When I asked him if he was ever in battle he would say yes... had he ever killed anyone...? "I'm sure my bullets were in there."  This speaks volumes.  At some point, my dad was probably diving for cover, then assuming a firing position, finding the sparks coming from the forest, then pulling the trigger, hoping he was sending bullets in the right direction.  A boy from a family of 7, grown up playing basketball and baseball, from small town USA, thrust into bloody combat.  The thought must have occurred to him that he might not make it out of this mess, that he might be overrun. 

I wish there was some kind of salve, some healing rub, to heal those kinds of wounds.  I wish men and women didn't have to see such awful things.  I hope that veterans from all walks of life find peace.  I hope we all do.  Mostly, I hope I was a good son to my dad.

Why I'm an optimist

This old world keeps spinning round
It's a wonder tall trees ain't laying down.
-Comes a Time- Neil Young

I think maybe the best thing about humans is that we are getting increasingly better at living in peace with each other.  Even as I write that sentence I smile at the thought of everyone reading it in disbelief.  I've grown into an optimist, and maybe it's because I've been lucky in my life, but maybe it's because the more I learn about this world the more I see hope for us all.  Even though many people I know will not agree with me and will call me naïve or blind, I know that they are getting lost in the forest of cynicism surrounding them while I can rise above it all and see the forest from a different perspective.  To me, cynicism is for the young.  Optimism is something you have to grow into.

When I went to vote on Tuesday, I wasn't doing it because I was filled with patriotic pride.  I didn't do it to honor those who died to bring me that right, and I harbored no illusions that my vote held some kind of power to sway public policy.  I did it because in this country, we exist in that electrified no-man's land between theory and practice.  There is a tension to our lives and it isn't, as most cynics will claim, because the world is falling apart and we are blowing it as a species.  The tension comes from the unknown, the unprecedented.  There is no such thing as a perfect philosophy.  There is no social or economic theory that can account for the happiness of everyone everywhere.  Every idea that all the great minds of the past have put forth can be expanded and carried into the absurd and unworkable.  If you argue for a central government or "state", then you can take that argument to its natural conclusion that the state is more important than the individual, and with that you can argue that indeed, it is only right and proper that individuals should be sacrificed to preserve the state.  If you argue that the individual should be completely free and not bound by any laws, then you could argue that the individual has the freedom to engage in any behavior he/she chooses, even if that behavior might harm others!  Why do we do it?  Why do we even bother to form into civilizations?  If life is meaningless as the pessimists say, then what drives us to join together?  They will say that it was mainly for survival.  They'll say that the survival drive became corrupted by greed and lust for Power over each other.  They aren't wrong in thinking that.  That's probably exactly what it was.  But to me, the fact that our consciousness is constantly growing, the fact that we have been able for the last 2000 years to leave a trace of ourselves for the next generation to learn from our mistakes, is proof that we are still in the process of shedding off our natural instincts of annihilation.  For the vast eons of our existence, the world was nothing but a zero sum game.  You had good water and hunting grounds and I didn't, therefore I will take it from you by force.  Ingrained in our DNA is the idea that not all men are equal, and that the only way to survive in this world is to become stronger than your enemy.  How we have progressed! 

Happiness is as fickle and fleeting and undefinable as love.  Our country, our democracy, is defined by us as we go along.  We are making it up on the fly.  We have taken some basic ideals from previous empires but each day as the sun comes up over the Atlantic we argue and debate over the way we are doing things until the sun sets over the Pacific.  There is really no good explanation why we have lasted this long as a country.  By rights, we should have flown apart at the seams a long time ago, or at least spread ourselves across the planet until we were stretched way too thin and the barbarians could storm the gates.  Our Founding Fathers never could solve their debates.  They never actually did come up with some perfect world, but they knew that they couldn't do it on their own.  They were fully aware of their own limitations, and were conscious of the flow of time through the ages, so they left us with a government that could adapt and redefine itself.  There is no one right way, there is only the way that works right now.  This constant debate, this anger and rhetoric and discourse, it is how we have always lived.  We argue our theories back and forth, and we could easily stand our ground and say "You are wrong!" until the world actually does fall apart, but in the end, we compromise.  We say, "let's just try it this way and see if it works, then we can revisit it in the future."  This is how a government should operate... this is the Action after the Thought, and it has led to great things. 
Until we meet again.

Lessons from the Jeep Wrangler

This year in Toledo, we have awoken to the news that, in all probability, the Jeep Wrangler will no longer be made at our home plant.  Due to fuel efficiency regulations, the Jeep has had to be re-engineered, and the frame will have to be made out of aluminum.  Fiat Chrysler has done their analysis and found that it wouldn’t be cost effective to retrofit the factory with all new equipment necessary to produce the Wrangler.  Apparently, this change won’t affect employment, Jeep won’t be shut down and moved to Mexico, Toledoans will simply continue without the Wrangler.  The unions have asked GM to reconsider, the mayor has petitioned Sergio Marchionne in person to change his mind, and he has said that as long as he is in charge the Wrangler will continue to be made in Toledo.  Of course this isn’t the best news because he has also announced he will be retiring in 2018.  So it seems inevitable that 70 plus years of a proud tradition will come to an end.

On the surface, it isn’t a major affair, but the reactions of the people around here speak to a broader point that I never hear addressed in the media.  I count myself a believer in global warming, and I understand that humanity has caused immeasurable damage to the environment.  I don’t need the science to believe what I see with my own eyes.  We consume and discard with abandon, we build and destroy, and we waste energy and material.  I don’t get my information from some source that other people don’t, I listen to the same media outlets as everybody else, and the only conclusion I can reach is that there is now no place on Earth that we aren’t affecting negatively, and it’s time for a change.  However, there are many skeptics who seem to be actively ignoring the truth of this.  The power elite who are invested in the industries that are doing the most harm have been spreading false accusations and people are swallowing it whole.  They say that science is corrupt.  They say they’ve been misleading people in order to keep money coming in from government grants.  They say the sun is the real cause of global warming, not us.  In my mind, it is a form of self-delusion that is born of something deeper.  The only way to address the problem of delusion is to address the root causes, and I think the Jeep Wrangler story illuminates one of the major problems that is stagnating the debate over global warming.

The Jeep Wrangler has become an icon for Toledo.  Alongside the Mud Hens, Jamie Farr, and Tony Packo’s hot dogs, we speak of the Jeep Wrangler in hushed and reverent tones.  Here is the vehicle that won World War 2… Here is the car that carried people over this country’s mountain trails and wilderness.  Jeep workers go back generations.  Grandfathers welcomed their sons onto the line, then the grandsons joined the Auto Workers Union.  I think nowadays we can’t imagine what it meant for people to have a steady factory job.  Our grandfathers’ generation grew up in a time when they had to hustle for every penny.  A job at Jeep meant a steady paycheck, money that could be saved for a future.  They could get a loan to buy a house, get married and have a family.  It wasn’t just some illusory American Dream, it was a foothold in the world.  They were invested in something other than hard struggle and survival.  They could settle in and raise kids who didn’t have to leave school to work in the fields.  They were contributing to a war effort against an oppressive enemy, and they could lift themselves out of crushing poverty.  Loyalty to the company became an extension of their lives.  The men and women who connected their lives to Jeep, in much the same way the men and women who worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, or the ranches in Oklahoma, or the oil fields in Texas, or the loggers in Wisconsin, played the game by the rules.  They worked hard and earned a happy life.  They bought cars and televisions and watched their country become wealthy and powerful and it proved beyond doubt that our system was a path to peace and freedom for the world.  Our way of life not only worked for us, but it was exportable.  We were that shining city on the hill.

Now, the scientists and the lefties are telling us that it has all been a big mistake.  Our grandfathers and all those preceding generations that we turned into myths and heroes have created a society that is destined to fail.  The hard work, the success, has created a sickness in the world and unless we drastically alter our lifestyle the air will be poisoned, the water will be toxic, and food will be scarce.

Is it really so simple to turn off peoples’ sentiments?  Is it enough to simply say, “the facts are on our side.  If you can’t accept these facts then you are a fool.”  We need to take a step back and reframe the debate.  I have tried my best to understand the world better and the only way I could was to try to see the next person’s perspective.  If the facts that we state over and over don’t convince people of the truth, then we need to at least listen to them to try to get at the heart of the problem.  For the people in Toledo who are angry that the Administration has instituted reforms that are straining industry by making them conform to “Green” regulations, the same advice applies.  Things need to change.  Sacrifices need to be made and I don’t necessarily agree that a manufactured product copied a million times from an original model is the “heart and soul of this town.”  We can be proud of our tradition, proud that we made a great and popular product, and we can still be proud of this town, but we need to take a serious look at how we are walking on this precious ground.