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Pedestrian

Pedestrian

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While each terrorism event evokes shock, horror and the sickening realization that it’s happened again, each has its own particular stamp of sadness. Yesterday’s was familiarity — I’ve walked that path often — and the pedestrianism of it all.

While terror has struck crowds of pedestrians before, they’ve never been at places I know so well. This happened on a late autumn afternoon, the perfect time to hop on a bike or stroll a walkway with a splendid view of the harbor and the Hudson. If last month’s incident was an assault on the concert-goer (an all too familiar theme), yesterday’s was an attack on walking itself, on the pedestrian.

Not just pedestrians but the pedestrian: “lacking inspiration or excitement, dull.” And of course that’s the point, isn’t it? To make even the most quotidian of tasks an opportunity for mayhem. The retort is pedestrian, too. We will keep riding, keep walking, keep being ourselves.  It’s pedestrian, but what else can we do?

Telling Numbers

Telling Numbers

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In Vietnam we learned the battlefield could be anywhere: in a rice paddy or a house full of children. So we should not be surprised when the bullets ring out at elementary schools, college campuses, nightclubs, restaurants, amphitheaters and now in the most unreal of all unreal places, the Las Vegas Strip.

Violence is always unreal, until it is not.

So the children and grandchildren of a generation defined by “four dead in Ohio” have …

59 dead at Mandalay Bay
49 dead at Orland’s Pulse
32 dead at Virginia Tech
26 dead at Sandy Hook.

When will it stop? I think we’re all afraid that it won’t. So we say prayers, light candles, hope the next time never happens — even though in our heart of hearts we know it will.

Earth from Saturn

Earth from Saturn

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When the children were young and studying the planets, Suzanne decided she didn’t like Saturn. “It’s a show-off, Mom,” she said. All those rings, you know.

I’ve been thinking of Saturn the last few days as images of it were beamed back by the spacecraft Cassini, which plunged into the planet’s atmosphere on Friday, ending a splendid 20-year mission.

For decades Cassini has been enlarging our knowledge of the solar system, taking us to Saturn’s cool green moon Titan, and, with its Huygens lander, actually touching down on the moon’s rocky surface. Cassini discovered plumes of water vapor spouting from another moon, Enceladus, and made many other discoveries.

And then there were the photographs Cassini sent back. The rings and moons and other planets. My favorite is the NASA pic I’ve reposted here.  Earth is the tiny speck on the lower right-hand side of this photo.  Beautiful, yes — and very, very small.

Comey Walk

Comey Walk

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There is the quiet walk: no earphones, mind open to bird song and insect chirp.

There is the musical walk: with Brahms or Bach or Simon and Garfunkel.

And then there is the Comey walk. That’s what I’ve been taking the last few days. It’s a subset of the all-news walk, and it consists of the following: what will he say, what did he say, and now, what will happen because of what he said.

This is not the most restful soundtrack for an early-morning stroll. But it’s an itch that must be scratched. As soon as I returned home this morning I picked up the newspaper. Now I’m reading about what Comey said. At least I’m consistent.

Honorary Degree

Honorary Degree

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I didn’t place much importance on the commencements of my youth. I completed the requirements, I graduated.  These were launching pads not retrospectives.

But watching these ceremonies as a mother, aunt and sister is altogether different.  Now I tear up at “Pomp and Circumstance,” get goose bumps from an academic procession. It’s clearer to me now that these are true endings and beginnings, the kind of clear line life seldom hands us.

It’s also clear that for many, a degree is not a given. And for every smiling graduate there is someone who will not walk across a stage this year, someone who may never have worn a gown, hood or mortar board. Their reasons for not doing so are legion, and may have nothing to do with intelligence or drive. For like their robed compatriots, they too have completed difficult assignments.

So this post is for them, an honorary degree of sorts. Maybe there will be no diploma this year, but there was learning and effort and sacrifice. To the great, un-graduated multitudes, I offer my humble, heartfelt congratulations.

Internal Dialogue

Internal Dialogue

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As national events heat up and the news changes by the minute, I’m tuning my headset to news stations as I hoof it.  It’s not the calm strolls I usually crave, but it makes for some brisk walks and some fascinating internal dialogue.

“How could he?” “Will they really?” “Oh yeah?” “We’ll see about that.”

These conversations take place only in my head, but they are stimulating in their own way.

Walking and talking: It’s the way it is now.

Pink and White

Pink and White

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They were selling pink and white carnation corsages at church yesterday — pink if your mom is living, white if she is not. I bought neither, but even the choice made my eyes sting.

I can remember wearing corsages on long ago Easters and maybe I could even fish up a memory of wearing a corsage on Mother’s Day. It wasn’t reliving memories that made me sad. It was knowing that, if I had bought a flower yesterday, it would have been white.

Which is why I was even more grateful to come home, take a walk and spend the rest of Mother’s Day on the deck with my daughters. There were some vague plans for a group hike, but we all agreed that just sitting and talking was best.

There was a fullness to the day that doesn’t come often enough and is all the more precious when it does. There was laughing and talking and cooking and eating. And there was this thought, poignant and comforting : If my girls were wearing corsages, theirs would be pink.

Continuity and Change

Continuity and Change

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It was a weekend of reconnecting, revisiting and reminding myself why I do what I do.

There was the “World Room” with its stained glass window, the stairs that were always quicker than the tiny elevator, especially if you were racing to turn in a story by a 5 p.m. deadline.

There was Broadway, with its jumble of stores and restaurants and Cafe Milano where Mama Joys’ used to be. There was the campus quad, with libraries on either end and a new coffee shop in the journalism building. In other words, there was both continuity and change, as there should be.
The Righteous Mind

The Righteous Mind

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In The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt uses moral psychology to explain political polarization. One of his major points is that when we make decisions we may think conscious reasoning is in charge, but actually it’s just a puny human rider sitting atop a large, strong elephant (the automatic and intuitive part of our brains). The elephant almost always wins.

What does this have to do with politics? Actually it has to do with everything, but Haidt applies it to politics in this book by pointing out that we’re often unaware of the motivations that underlie our political choices and the narratives that bind us.

Published in 2012, this book long precedes the current political paralysis — but as I read it I had many aha moments. More than Hillbilly Elegy or any newspaper or magazine article, it explains how we ended up with the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It’s difficult to summarize the nuances of Haidt’s argument in one post, but here’s one of the passages I found most useful. “If you are trying to change an organization or a society and you do not consider the effects of your changes on moral capital, you’re asking for trouble. This, I believe, is the fundamental blind spot of the left. It explains why liberal reforms so often backfire … It is the reason I belive that liberalism — which as done to much to bring about freedom and equal opportunity — is not sufficient as a governing philosophy. It tends to overreach, change too many things too quickl, and reduce the stodk of moral capital inadvertently.”

What to do now? Most of all, try to understand ourselves and each other. And, of course, read. On my nightstand now: The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt’s first book.

Final Farewell

Final Farewell

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First, it was the elephants. Then it was the clowns. Turns out, there was a good reason to feel sorry for the circus.

These are the final days of the Ringing Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Its last performances are in May, and the last ones here are next week.

I’ve never been a circus fanatic but there’s something so sad about the end of this tradition. I know, it’s kinda creepy and the opposite of PC. But it was a big deal before the advent of continual palm-held entertainment, something that linked the generations: my parents went, they took us and then they took my kids.

I wondered in my last circus post if this institution would be around in 20 years. I was off by 18. In little more than a month, it will be the end for the Greatest Show on Earth.