The Importance of Earnest Service

We drove by a remarkable orange and magenta sunset backing a mountain view. A man had pulled off the road to take some photos and at first I was annoyed with myself for driving in the country with neither my camera nor my phone.

To console myself I remembered how I tend to best recall missed incredible photos more distinctly than most of the thousands I’ve taken and put away in albums or boxes. The mother and daughter on horseback early in the morning in either Upper or Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds is another example. I had no film–it was that long ago–but I see the two of them emerging from the fog, dressed for the hunt.

We have selective memories. If a doctor or nurse asks me details of some disease I’ve had I have to think long and hard to remember the year or details. I know folks who can relate every gruesome detail. I may recall a childhood event neither friends nor relatives do. Conversely, they reminisce about a party or conversation that seems new to me, yet they assure me I was there.

Can you imagine being a politician, being held accountable for details you really can’t remember? “You said this in 12^th grade when you ran for treasurer and stood for that at overnight camp! You belonged to the such and such club as a college freshman and your first job out of college was at XYZ, tisk, tisk, and didn’t you once baby-sit for the so-and so’s?” [Actually, I remember all of that...but I shudder to think what I've forgotten.]

I’m amazed at some of the insignificant details I do recall–a psychiatrist would either have a heyday or fall asleep. [I'm of average size now, went through a few too-thin periods and was a blimpette until I was 14. I vividly see myself sitting in assembly hall in school looking down at the fattest thighs in America--through senior year.]

I tend to try to remember happy events or interactions and on occasion test unhappy ones-as you might touch a black and blue mark to see if it still hurts or has healed. What a fabulous feeling of relief–as when Advil erases a headache–when something that had me swiveted to the Nth degree no longer bothers: That boss or friend who lied or took advantage, for example.

I’ve heard that it’s bad for your health to masticate past upsets and forever grind them around inside, keeping them alive for years. Resulting anger makes you grumpy. It’s probably best to be grouchy sometimes to protect you from the fate described in the saying “Only the good die young,” but best not overdo.

Do you tend to brood endlessly over the negative or select the happier moments from your memory bank? What seemingly insignificant details do you remember from the past? Why? Are you shocked when an old friend or long lost cousin recounts hilarious tales that your memory has dismissed?

The Sunday before I left to live in the Middle East for two years, the final song at church was “God Bless America.” Prone to tear up while watching Hallmark Card Mother’s Day commercials, I burst into tears that morning.

Being chauvinistic implies fanaticism. Being patriotic is considered inappropriate by many, or vulgar, but I am, even when unconditional love is hard to maintain.

I feel about this country quite like how I feel when someone I love does something I object to or makes me roll my eyes in disbelief. I may wince and speak up with voice and/or vote yet I cringe when the US is accused of doing something wrong even if I agree that it shouldn’t. [You know, the old I-can-say-something-negative-about-my-child, sister, brother or parent-but-God-help-you-if-you-do syndrome]. I also mourn when I notice how America has lost its luster in areas in which it used to shine.

I have friends whose pedigrees affiliate them to this country well over a century closer to the signing of the Declaration of Independence 234 years ago than any one of my fattest American bloodlines. They don’t feel the slightest excitement when they see the flag snapping smartly in the wind on top of a building or bridge or watch a small town dressed in flags and families following the town fire engine down Main Street to celebrate the 4^th of July. I do. In fact, many don’t “get” me.

Where do you stand on patriotism?

Flag on Mid-Hudson Bridge, shot from the car

Do you avoid walking under ladders or cross the street when you see a black cat or shudder if you break a mirror or worry that you’ll have a fight if you spill salt on the tablecloth so you fling over your shoulder a pinch of the dropped grains to avert a spat?

My husband wants to shoot me when I toss a steamed clam that in spite of the heat remains clamped shut. He made me sit still and do nothing but listen while he read aloud from “More Classic Italian Cooking” to hear what renowned cookbook author Marcella Hazan wrote to debunk what I’d been told: That you’ll get sick if you must pry open such a clam shell to get to the mollusk inside. Hazan, who grew up in a fishing village, wrote that being closed tight just proves that the clam is fresh. How did the myth I’d been told get going–because there are so few that stay closed while most open? This is no doubt why I am still suspicious of a closed steamed clam shell.

I have a friend who believes that when a plant dies it means that someone you know will die. [She must have a green thumb.] I hadn’t heard of that one before but I tucked it in the back of my mind where it popped to the front this winter as a dear friend become increasingly sick and eventually died. Simultaneously my usually robust indoor garden, that for years shouldered cold temperatures and countless gray days with barely a shrug, suffered a lot of losses.

While on the subject of death, my husband told me that a moment after his Mom died, the woman who was caring for her opened the bedroom window to let her spirit go free.

I pick up coins and cross my fingers on behalf of a friend who is hoping something will happen because I love the concept that something can stimulate luck.  I also knock on wood to ensure that good–health, client, windfall, job offer–remains so.

These days we get piles of wild information over the Internet much of which seems too good to be true–and often is. There’s Snopes urban legends reference pages to confirm everything from news of a deadly computer virus, outrageous claims about a politician’s antics to a campaign to send a get well card to cheer a terminally sick child [who never existed].

Do you pick and choose the old wives tales and superstitions you believe in? What are some of your favorites and which have you found to be merely tales? Do some tales stick with you no matter what?

I’ve been thinking about the things that we may soon all be living without. Some include:

Wrist watches, because people increasingly tell time by looking at their computers, phones or other handheld devices. Youngsters don’t seem to want or wear them anymore. Another sign that watches are going out of favor is that prices at discount stores are rock bottom. The same thing happened to calculators.

Books printed on paper, because more and more bookworms will be using wireless readers. With small print-runs, the price of the printed word will be exorbitant. Printed college texts will be an exception, for a while at least. This seems to be a profitable business if the groans of parents and college students I know are any indication of sales volume.

We all know what is happening to the print version of newspapers.

Physical therapy. A good friend needed PT after an operation. When his insurance company doubled his co-pay, he stopped going well before he’d completed the work. Multiply his situation by thousands of others and the result can’t be rosie for the PT industry.

Standard mail hardly exists at our office right now and as the cost increases and service decreases, the prognosis is bleak. A subset of this turn of events will affect birthday, Valentine and holiday cards and this makes me sad. I understand clearly that an e-card saves a tree, postage and handling, time etc. but I love receiving and selecting cards. I enjoy feeling wonderful paper, seeing a funny or stunning image and I will miss cards when they go.

Classical music on the radio–we’ve already covered this topic in posts on May 8^th and July 16^th.

Landline phones as cell phone service is less expensive and cell phones increasingly become entertainment and business centers. I prefer cradling a phone between my ear and shoulder when I interview someone so I can type answers as they speak. I’m not fond of wireless or any ear appliances, but that’s too bad.

Will you miss any of these things? What others do you predict will join garter belts and black and white TV?

In an article, “Toy Stories,” in I.D. Magazine’s September/October 2009 issue, four reporters asked designers, creative directors, authors, educators, curators and entrepreneurs to “offer an emotional design critique of an iconic toy.”

Most selected toys from their childhoods. The introduction reports that participants covered “the smart design thinking behind these timeless playthings while also recalling what their treasured toys meant to them personally.” Some of the featured toys were Play-Doh, Crayons, balloons, Lincoln Logs, Spirograph, toy soldiers, dirt, Radio Flyer, cat’s cradle and Naef Toys.

Nobody picked Silly Putty, Slinky, jacks, pick-up-sticks or jump rope–all favorites of mine. I don’t think my life was transformed by any of them or that they pointed me in any particular direction or were symbolic of what I ended up doing with my life.

 They were straight-forward and designed to work again and again and I enjoyed playing with them for years. In fact, I’d be happy to challenge anyone to a game of jacks or pick-up-sticks right now and it wouldn’t hurt me to grab and use a jump rope!

What were/are your favorite toys and what is it that you especially liked about them? Have any of your toys served you well in later life?

Hank Goldman, creative director of Goldman Advertising, New York, responded to all the questions this blog asks. He began his communication, “Questions of my own.”

Hank submitted this post early last week. We noticed that on Saturday, September 12 on the front page of The New York Times, Joe Nocera, in his “Talking Business” column, “Lehman Had to Die, It Seems, So Global Finance Could Live,” used the same train of thought. His column begins: “What if they’d saved Lehman Brothers? What if, a year ago this weekend, the government and the banking industry had somehow found a way to keep Lehman from filing for bankruptcy?”

Hank posits:

Have you ever thought about ”what if” you were born into another age or era?

What universal service skill or adaptable-knowledge-skills do you possess that could have flowered in any age?

If you came into the world when I did, early in the 1940’s, pre-transistors, and there were no computers… What would you do or become?  An English teacher? Get involved in math? Early nuclear physics? Run for political office?

 If you were artistic, would you be an art director in a mechanical age?

What if it was 100 years ago? Invent the automobile or airplane? No gas stations around so you couldn’t own or run one of those! Work as an ad copywriter? Run for President?

What if now, when everything in a household of the civilized world has a chip in it?  Improve on microprocessors? Create Cloud Computing? Dream up the next big thing? Run for Senator of Massachusetts?

What if you were born 100 years FROM NOW? What might you do?

Your answer:____________________________
 

We add to Hank’s questions: Is this a period, more than most, where people tend to think in terms of “what if?”

I was on a NYC bus years ago holding a sled gift wrapped in FAO Schwartz paper. A little girl stared at me for several stops. Finally she could no longer contain her curiosity and asked me what was in the box, noted how lucky the child receiving the gift was and volunteered how much she loved FAO Schwarz.

I don’t know if she was old enough to read, but like Tiffany’s blue box that you recognize from blocks away long before you can see a logo, children all over the city at that time recognized FAO Schwartz wrapping paper.

When FAO Schwartz failed the first time, it was partly because its marketers forgot how special it was and tried to compete with toy discounters. I read that mothers said they’d gladly pay the supplement for the play dough they bought there because it didn’t ruin furniture as less expensive versions did. To compete with discounters, FAO Schwartz dropped a lot of the pizzazz that attracted visitors from around the world.

Recently, I read that Toys R Us bought FAO Schwartz. I worry. I’ve been burned by once high-end brand toasters or coffee pots available at discount that break in a year. I admire brands that stick to their last.

Granted keeping up quality and price is a tough call in this economy. But if we represent or work for a brand, do we owe it–and the public–anything? Should we warn folks that we’re changing the formula?

Jeremiah, our guest writer, is a retired international business executive and classical music devotee. Like those who face losing their favorite newspaper or magazine, television or radio program, he is bracing himself for a blow–the silencing of a longtime radio friend and access to the music he loves.

Last night I heard a remarkable performance of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony at Carnegie Hall, which got me to thinking about how quickly the music I love and so deeply enjoy is vanishing. The number of traditional concerts given there has declined each year the past few years as the audience for them has been literally dieing off. The average age of those in the Hall last night must have been at least sixty.

Worse yet is the sad news that we New Yorkers are about to lose the oldest classical music station in the country, WQXR. According to rumors in the marketplace, its parent company, The New York Times, has had the station up for sale for several years to raise cash, and there was a story published in the New York Post a week or so ago that it is possibly being sold to the sports network, ESPN.

I have been listening to WQXR since 1945, daily in recent years, and most days all day. It has been a close friend and a better one than many. I am already grieving and will grieve still more when the station is actually gone. My first reaction was to rant and rage about the “Decline and Fall of Western Civilization.” My second has been to listen to WQXR as much as possible while it is still possible.

Friends have suggested that I should listen to public radio, but I don’t care for its patronizing political correctness. Furthermore, I feel strongly that the government should not be in the entertainment business. No more should it give tax breaks or subsidies to music makers than to baseball teams! This smacks of “Bread and Circuses.” 

However, there is a counter argument. In our culture, responsibility for the old and infirm for many valid reasons has now shifted from their families to the state.

The common sense thing to do would be to let nature take its course, force classical music lovers to accept change as being a natural progression and adapt to liking what I call noise. But maybe we should keep some classical music around to enhance the declining years of the older people who love it.

What do you think?