Memorial Monday Musings

 

It's Memorial Day Weekend.  Today is the day that we celebrate the time honored tradition of  barbecuing pork flesh.  Or is it the day that we honor basketball by watching an NBA playoff game?  It could be Fireworks at the Ball Park Day.  In honor of filling corporate retail coffers it might be the day you get to take twenty five percent off anything in the store and take an extra 15 percent if you use your store credit card (exclusions apply; does not include Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Nautica or Izod).  Maybe it's the day we revel in the great American motor car by getting 0.9% financing on any new car in the lot (FICO score of 720 or better).  Actually those are some of the things that we DO on Memorial Day.  They are certainly not the spirit and meaning of Memorial Day; regardless of the fact that many of our fellow Americans believe so.  

My dad always called it by its original name, Decoration Day.  In 1868, Union veterans of the Civil War set aside May 5th to decorate the graves of Civil War dead with flowers.  Major General John Logan later established May 30th as the day to honor America's war dead; a date chosen because flowers would be in plentiful bloom nationwide. 

The Relativity of Money

Summer weather has arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area.  And my pool is still a deep shade of green.  Just don’t tell the boys at mosquito abatement.  Let’s just keep it our little secret.  Some years I’m good about keeping the chemical balance somewhat in line during the winter months.  Other years the “cee-ment pond” as Jed Clampett used to call his pool, actually looks like a pond; the only thing missing is a few lily pads.  After many springs of spending a small fortune in chemicals, not to mention the hours involved in getting out the green, one would think that I’ve learned the value of a little winter maintenance.  I haven’t heeded the financial lesson. 

Jumping Over the Candlestick

I indulged in a nooner yesterday.  Not that kind of a nooner; cleanse that dirty little mind.  A nooner is a weekday baseball game.  Years ago it was called a businessman’s special.  Take off from work at noon, maybe take a client, catch the game and back to work for a couple of hours.  Men went to the game in business suits; there was no such thing as business casual.  When I was working at a retail hardware store my co-worker Joe would often say, "I'm going to the businessman's special today.  Joe wasn't a businessman, he was the delivery driver.  His "suit" was jeans and a Giant's t-shirt.  The midweek day game is great fun, and usually an opportunity to get a good seat at a good price but unfortunately is becoming a dinosaur.  The reason; grousing about post-game traffic mingling with rush hour traffic.  Let's just take all the fun out of life. There was no work for me this day and in lieu of a client I opted to go with my wife; a definite upgrade.

Riding for a Cause

"The most moral act is one which is actuated by disinterested motives...from the viewpoint of the author of an action, unselfishness must remain the criterion of the highest morality."
Reinhold Neibuhr

“If children have the ability to ignore all odds and percentages, then maybe we can all learn from them.  When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope?  We have two options, medically and emotionally:  give up, or fight like hell.”
Lance Armstrong

"Cancer changes your life, often for the better. You learn what's important, you learn to prioritize, and you learn not to waste your time. You tell people you love them. My friend Gilda Radner (who died of ovarian cancer in 1989 at age 42) used to say, 'If it wasn't for the downside, having cancer would be the best thing and everyone would want it.' That's true. If it wasn't for the downside."

Joel Siegel

Running I: You Either Get It or You Don't

“Some mistakes we never stop paying for.”   Roy Hobbs; The Natural

The call came over the bullhorn, “First call, 880; First call."  That was my alarm to start warming up; a slow jog around the high school campus in my black fleece, Aragon High, sweats.

I’m sitting here staring at my right ankle.  It isn’t horribly swollen but comparing it to the left I can see a puffed up band running along the front of my ankle between those two knobs of bone on each side.  I can also tell when I slip on a sock that the right one feels noticeably tighter. 

“Second call 880; second call.”  I’d worked up a light sheen of sweat and was stretching on the infield paying some attention to the events in progress and trying to figure out how much time I had before my race. 

Working For a Living: The Retail Years

“Somedays won't end ever and somedays pass on by,

I'll be working here forever, at least until I die.”   Huey Lewis

Mulling over my working life.  I do that on these days when I come home burned out, wrung out, office politicked out and ready to opt out.  It’s been a forty year sampler of jobs.  Stocking shoes as a teenager at Kinney Shoes working for a little dandy name Marvin and watching the letch, Mr. Slick shoe salesmen try to sneak a glimpse up a skirt while forcing a pair of boots on some young thing.  Working one shift as a busboy at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor and quitting because it stunk of chocolate, couldn’t see doing that for more than the brief time I put in and I preferred going home to watch the (then) Los Angeles Rams play the (then) Baltimore Colts on Monday Night Football.  That was a good game in those days.  Beer tended at a local Round Table Pizzeria.  Then college. 

Compassion in America: R.I.P

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”
Dalai Lama

Here lies compassion, cherished offspring of Love and Tenderness and sibling to Mercy and Goodwill. You were struck down in your prime by a malignance of ill will.  May you rest in peace. 

The purchasing manager walked into my office and looking past me through the windows at the helicopters hovering nearby said, “That’s not a good sign.”

 I work a few blocks from both the Oakland International Airport and the highway so the sound of helicopters isn’t out of the ordinary.  Could be air traffic, a flight school or traffic reporters.  I had noticed that the sound was persistent and it did sound like multiple aircraft.  Being a busy morning I’d paid them no mind until she called my attention to them.  I looked out the window to count five helicopters, some hovering miles away and one or two nearly directly overhead. 

I offered that, “This might be the work of another upstanding citizen.”

She came back in my office a few minutes later to tell me that early reports were of a shooting at the Wal-Mart nearby and she admonished the staff to stay in the building.  A few minutes later I went on the internet to the website of one of the local news stations to learn that there had been a shooting, not at Wal-Mart, but at a local vocational college.  Oikos University teaches, theology, nursing, Asian medicine and music; an odd mix.  It is a Christian school associated with the Praise God Korean Church in Oakland and Shepherd University of San Francisco.  Most readers by now know that a gunman killed 7 students and wounded 3 others before fleeing and being caught a few hours later in nearby Alameda.   

Throughout the course of my workday I went back to the news station website to follow the progress of the incident.  Later in the afternoon I went to Yahoo news, read the article and, against my better judgment went on to the comments. 

By now I suppose I should be jaded to the content in the comments sections of internet news.  But I still find myself staggered by the level of ignorance, stupidity and downright meanness of my fellow citizens.  Among a smattering of condolences was a host of misplaced humor and searing malevolence. 

Among those who can find levity in just about anything were:

                Pingüino, "They give me B grade! I never get B grade befo. I shoot up the school!"

                CavoretheMoonExplorer, “It's a good thing this happened at a nursing school. Plenty of people who know how to help. There's always a bright side........”

                NObama2012, “Lets see, a California man, in nursing school? Hmmmmm....”

The anti-Christian at all costs contingent weighed in with:

                Hillbilly49, “Where was Jesus, God or the Holy Spirit today; do they get Monday's off?”

                LuisD, “It amazes me that in the 21st century we still have centers of learning that preach myth and superstition. This is the very opposite of reason and critical thinking.”

                Lancegoodthrust, “What a pathetic lot those christians are!”

And finally there was condensed venom:

                Senalvingreene, “WHAT A STUPID SCHOOL. GOOD RIDDANCE.”

There’s a flood of this bile out there, poking fun at Koreans, wagging fingers at Christians and playing a whole deck of race cards.

This kind of “humor” and bile isn’t new.  It just used to be carried on out of earshot between imbeciles who would yuk it up while elbowing each other in the ribs.  Now the moron brigade has unabashedly gone public.

I’ve nothing against humor and irreverence.  Anyone reading this blog would know that.  There is however a line; and it really isn’t a fine line.  It’s one that’s easy to spot and it delineates a boundary that when crossed is hurtful to those who have suffered loss or takes advantage of a tragedy to poke fun at the victims.   

These are people (and I use the term loosely) who really have no soul.  They are in some ways as hollow as the murdered himself because, like the killer they have no feeling for the victims or their families.  The killer was simply more overt.   

Sadly we've become a cold, merciless society, a heartless monster possessed of a relentless and ever growing animus.  I'm reminded of a former co-worker who often spoke of retiring to a deserted island where she could be free of people.  Every time that I give in to my bad judgment and dive into the raw sewage that is the news comments I understand exactly where she is coming from.