Poor David’s Family Almanack

A straight line drawn from Lincoln Nebraska to Gracemont Oklahoma passes very close to Newton Kansas. And Newton, once the gun-fighting capital of the west, just north of Wichita, is where this branch of the Kipp tree began. On a train, as the story is told, where my mom and dad met. I place the period as 1955-56. Why either of them was on a train in Newton, and where they were bound, remains a mystery to me.

Lincoln is home to the state’s flagship university, a charming college town on the grasslands. My dad was born there in 1932, his parents having migrated to Lincoln from the smaller Nebraska outposts of West Point and Craig. The Kipps and Almys were teachers; several of them ending up teaching physics on the plains at Nebraska, Grinnell and Illinois. Dad’s dad taught for years at Texas Tech and Kansas.

Gracemont ( population 309 ) is a suburb of Anadarko ( population 6,500 ) in Caddo County Oklahoma. My mom was born there in 1936, and little is recalled from this early start. Her mom had every indication of an agricultural upbringing, talking about picking cotton and retaining a no-nonsense, wiry strength in all the years I knew her. The family headed for California during the Oklahoma Dustbowl, but were more properly called “Defense Okies” rather than Dustbowl Okies, migrating to Southern California airplane factories during WWII. Mom recalls fondly her early years as a Californian, in La Jolla and Long Beach.

Lura and Debbie, products of west central Oklahoma

But my parents both arrived in The Depression. Like most people from this generation and the ones before it, they understood difficulty in a personal way. A way with which many Americans today, including this author, have little familiarity. Gradually, Bob and Debbie worked their way up, first in Kansas, then in little hamlets in southwestern Ohio, eventually landing back in the heartland, in Kansas City. Their circumstances changed, the United States enjoyed a general efflorescence, but some peculiarities of their upbringing never left.

Probably Vandalia Ohio

There is a strange old proverb, the latter part of it too often left unsaid or unknown:

“What’s bred in the bone will not come out of the flesh.”

Language scholars place the origin of that phrase in 13^th century Europe. But it enjoys many variations, including this fine specimen from the prisoner Sir Thomas Mallory’s “Death of Arthur” { The Hoole Book of Kyng Arthur and of His Noble Knyghtes of The Rounde Table } in 1485:

 “Sir Launcelot smyled and seyde, Harde hit ys to take oute off the fleysshe that ys bredde in the bone.”

Middle English has much to recommend it.

Our lives are mosaics, with bits and pieces mortared together to form the unique whole. An artist gathers and places these pieces in a careful order and pattern. Not so with the human creator, either evolutionary or divine. Some of the bits are from long ago, buried deep in subconscious memory, others learned as we stumble through life and some passed to us at birth without permission. For better or worse, and most often a mixture of the two, some pieces survive in successive generations while others disappear in the dust. New elements get added in unpredictable ways and places.

It seems that some significant part of our character is inherited – bred in the bone – in the same way as our propensities for medical conditions or our physical traits. Although I suppose it is possible to cast aside some of these bits or mitigate them in some way, better to give them an appreciative examination.

I’ve written about some of my family before, especially the more colorful ones that intermingled with the Mandans on the Upper Missouri River. One of my cousins has taken our family archaeology to a fabulous level, unearthing records from long ago that trace the outlines of the family history. Fascinating – and yet, to me, incomplete. Quirky mosaic pieces are just as valuable and maybe even more interesting, since the sources of many of them are largely invisible. Pictures and scenes like the one below appeal to me in a visceral way, and have my entire life, for reasons I suspect are bred in the bone. My attraction to lonesome landscapes became a loving/teasing focal point for my mother, who would draw and paint pictures of grain elevators for me, even though she herself had no interest in them.

Who can say where these things come from and where they go? The girl from rural Oklahoma, the boy from Nebraska, the dozens of other unusual characters, they all left their mosaic pieces in my personal, idiosyncratic portrait.

Poor David’s Ode to Violet

For some, the color purple calls to mind the adaptation of a controversial book that launched the career of Oprah Winfrey. A character in this tale asserts that walking by a field of purple flowers without stopping to notice is an offense to God. As I recall, the story is quite disturbing and noticing purple flowers serves as a moment of redemptive beauty in a bleak world.

Perhaps Alice Walker was familiar with the potent symbolism of purple.

The Advent, as we mush on in the first liturgical season of Western Christianity, is a lovely time of year with a rich tradition. The brief period between Saint Andrew’s Day and Christmastide is, for believers, a time of preparation and brings forth the magisterial richness of their faith. And even for the secular-minded, non-Christian or non-believing world, Advent can still evoke anticipation and mystery, even if the anticipation is for Jolly Old Saint Nicolaus, the winter solstice, or a welcome end to 2020.

Though Christianity began as a meagre Jewish sect in modern day Israel and Palestine, where snowflakes rarely fall, it evolved { not always attractively } over two centuries to give us today’s enriched version of Christmas. A great tradition worthy of sustaining for thousands of years should involve some sort of grandeur and elegance. The annual “holiday party” – reduced even without a pandemic to generic festivity and often unseemly behavior – doesn’t provide it, so it falls to the Christian Church to offer a call to higher aspirations.

Not until 1878 and the genius of the Right Reverend Edward White Benson did we experience a regal reimagining of Advent, in the form of The Festival of Nine Carols and Lessons, now presented annually on Christmas Eve at King’s College, Cambridge. It’s a two-hour feast, for those able to tune in the BBC.

We have come to associate Christmas with red, but the liturgical color of Advent is purple. Violet, if you insist on ecclesiastic and spectral purity. Violet is the last “pure” color on the low end of the visible electromagnetic spectrum, trapped between deep indigo blue and invisible ultraviolet. Purple is a beautiful color, mixing red and blue in various proportions along what is known to optical physics enthusiasts as the Line of Purples. The Line of Purples connects the points of spectral violet to spectral red on the chromaticity diagram. The visual connection between Advent Violet and Christmas Red is easily observed.

Perhaps hemerine Adventists should adopt violet and gold as color standards for the Christmas preparation mood. Violet and gold bring a warm enrichment to all holiday occasions, signifying not only hope, but the attributes of enlightened nobility: charity, grace and wisdom.

Long before Sir Isaac Newton and his prism discovered the rainbow in white light, ancient Phoenicians harvested small snails in the Mediterranean Sea to make a purple dye that became the color of royalty, of kings, emperors, tyrants and lords. Purple to this day carries the courtly connotations necessary for occasions calling for magis.

Houston Architect Celeste Williams offers this short precis on the history of purple:

https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi3193.htm

Tyrian Purple, exquisite and expensive, born in the sea and created in Lebanese Middle East, is the perfect reminder to rise above, to give and expect more this December. Whatever one’s religious tuning, the expectation of something better yet to come deserves a warm winter welcome.

Poor David’s Envious Almanack

There has been no shortage of treacherous reading assignments this year. Titles catering to nearly every topical grievance await the assiduous reader. Some of them even aim for malefaction. My own reading list is cheerfully eccentric, but in 2020 one of my favorite subjects has been sports attire.

In a harbinger of things to come, National Basketball Association player and noted brawler Ron Artest changed his name in 2011 to Metta World Peace. Henceforth, Los Angeles Lakers jersey number 15 displayed the name World Peace.

It took several years for the trend to catch on. But Artest’s seed eventually took root and produced a riot of blooms as the NBA season resumed this spring.

In a splendid moment of restricting speech while seeking to amplify it, the professional basketball league and its players union agreed to a menu of permissible jersey-renaming options:

“The messages agreed upon by the National Basketball Players Association and the NBA are: Black Lives Matter, Say Their Names, Vote, I Can’t Breathe, Justice, Peace, Equality, Freedom, Enough, Power to the People, Justice Now, Say Her Name, Sí Se Puede (Yes We Can), Liberation, See Us, Hear Us, Respect Us, Love Us, Listen, Listen to Us, Stand Up, Ally, Anti-Racist, I Am A Man, Speak Up, How Many More, Group Economics, Education Reform and Mentor.”

Limit one per customer.

Thus commenced my interest in reading athletic uniforms. Not a few readers reduced these messages to “slogans,” { derived from an ancient Gaelic war whoop sluagh-ghairm }, however I discerned deeper meaning. Leaving aside the more protestive literature, I fastened on “equality” for further examination.

Accepting that the single word is used loosely in the context of human equality, as opposed to, say, mathematical equality, what could possibly carry a more positive aspiration than the notion that we are all entitled to equality?

Is that you reaching for your six-gun already? Not to worry, support for equality of man’s natural rights, for equality under the law, or of any claim to equality of decent, respectful treatment at all times everywhere are central to Almanack editorial policy, to say nothing of required habits of heart and mind.

Nonetheless, lurking on the dark side of equality is something less exalting, an unpleasant emotion nobody wants: Envy. To see the relationship between equality and envy more clearly, imagine the often-cited CEO who makes 100 times more than you. Further imagine that I wave my magick wand and increase your salary by a factor of 100. You now earn what the chieftain earned. However, the wand is not discriminating, and it increases the CEO pay a hundred times too. And the question is: are you happy?

Yes? You are possibly a balanced – and very grateful – person endowed with wisdom. No? You may be experiencing something other than a strict desire for equality since I just made your income equal to a CEO. That something could be envy.

Should envy be lettered on the bottom of the equality jersey? No, although it’s a provocative idea. I am not about to propose that various social justice causes be linked to their less attractive shadows. But these are things worth thinking about. The sociologist Robert Nisbet had this to say about equality:

“If all human beings in a population either are declared equal in their native strengths and rights, or else are persuaded to believe this, then the eventual realization of the hard truth of the matter that no amount of redistribution of wealth and status can ever obliterate inequality in one form or another must often take the form of covetousness mixed with resentment: that is, envy. ….The only remedy for the poisons created by egalitarianism in a society is emphatically not ever-greater dosages of political redistribution of wealth and status, for such dosages worsen the disease, producing fevers of avarice and envy. No, the sole remedy for this pathology is the introduction and diffusion of individual liberty as a sovereign value. Respect for individual liberty makes it possible for human beings to live in and be aware of differentiation a condition that, in biology, is recognized for what it is, the basis of progressive evolution, but which, in its social manifestation, receives no such recognition because of both the inequality intrinsic to all social differentiation and the ideology of equality that has spread so widely and so devastatingly in the twentieth century.”

Nisbet regrettably included the word “rights” in his paragraph, but his thesis remains intact. With a certain amount of reflection, we may conclude that some propositions, ardently pursued, can invite entirely unwelcome mental guests. Such is the result of the complex human psyche, which has shown itself over thousands of years to be remarkably resistant to oversimplified ideas.

Yes, all this over well-meaning and harmless sports uniforms. Perhaps I will return in 2021 to reading cereal boxes.

Poor David’s Election Week Equanimity Almanack

The peak usage of the English word “equanimity” occurred during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. From a zenith in 1862, the word suffered a long slump, reaching a nadir near the end of the presidency of fellow Illinoisan Ronald Reagan in 1987. It has since rebounded smartly to a usage level roughly the same as in 1908, when the highly circumferential William Howard Taft defeated famed populist William Jennings Bryan and the socialist Debs. Eugene Debs later became the only candidate to campaign for the presidency from prison.

Amateur students of American political moments and societal trends will draw their own correlations.

The coming days will demand a liberal dosage of equanimity. In November of 2016, disillusioned voters suffered mental breakdowns following the election of Donald John Trump. Spasms of disequilibrate reactions have visited us since, resulting in an obsessive and often toxic partisan divisiveness over matters of medicine, history, justice, sport and weather. Such convulsions are harmful.

Unlike the aretaic virtues covered by The Almanack in previous eruptions, equanimity predates Greek thinking and Judeo-Christian teaching by several hundred years. Ancient sages living in the Indus River valley of what is now India were the first to describe a quality of mind that is not disturbed by immediate events and stimulants. In fact, the Indians advocated strenuously for the development of equanimity. It appears prominently in both Hindu and Buddhist epics from 200-300 BC.

“Perform your duty equipoised, O Arjuna, abandoning all attachment to success or failure. Such equanimity is called yoga”

– Bhagavad Gita

“As a solid rock cannot be moved by the wind, 
the wise are not shaken by praise or blame.

When they listen to the words of the dharma,
their minds become calm and clear like the waters of a still lake.”
 
 -Dhammapada

No yoga pants or strange calisthenics required for this kind of exercise.

Engineers are taught, in the magical world of classical thermodynamics, that the process of moving from maximum to minimum molecular disorder ( achieving equilibrium ) is the path of creating useful work. In the realm of normal psychic processes, we achieve our best and highest purpose in the equilibrium state. Equilibrium and equanimity share an obvious Latin ancestry, with the subtle difference between animus ( mind ) and libra ( balance ) suggesting an equanimous emphasis on how we think.

The equanimous mind is composed and even. It does not react with elation when praised or with aversion when challenged. But the mind dislikes this state without some directed training. It would much rather enjoy a splendid moment of ventilating some ill-considered opinion or other, directing indignation toward someone else, or basking in praise from others. It takes a good deal of cultivation to develop strength and endurance in our minds, so that it will behave with equanimity at all occasions.

Training the mind for equanimity is as valuable and effective as the phrase “calm down” is ineffective. Once upset, and conditioned to be upset, at the slightest provocation, there is no cure for the afflicted except to hide and watch for the next trigger. The better course is to seek such proficiency that no circumstance, no matter how threatening, can move your brain functioning from its most productive equilibrium.

This week, some Almanack readers will be celebrants at election outcomes. They will receive the news as victory, with their views elevated to new heights and opposers vanquished to darker corners. Others will be downcast by defeat and seek the opprobria of bitterness and resistance. Neither outcome is attractive or beneficial.

Instead, I recommend taking advantage of that ever so brief gap between stimulus and response. Expand that space and see if you can calm the mind like the water of a still lake. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the result.

I wish everyone much equanimity and good health as we lurch toward the end of 2020!

Poor David’s Mask War Almanack

The Almanack is observing a good deal of talk about masks now, perhaps more than ever. It is a dreary commonplace to hear news readers and analysts delivering acidic remarks on gatherings that do not involve sufficient masks to suit them. It is unclear whether the increasing focus on mask-wearing correlates more strongly with the proximity of our presidential election or, inversely with the rather obvious weakening of the novel coronavirus. But whatever the cause, news and social media tempers continue to flare over face-masks.

And actual tempers. Here are a few noteworthy aviation-themed expulsions that appear to be fueled by masks ( and an ill-considered dosage of alcohol, in some cases ).

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/man-arrested-after-assaulting-gate-agent-sea/JS5WAR43UFDUFK62ZDMBMYC6OU/

Passenger Attacks American Airlines Gate Agent After Being Denied Boarding Over Mask

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/08/15/no-mask-attacks-nationwide-employees-face-violence-for-enforcing-mask-mandates/#422bb62360d6

Many observers have been unable to correctly locate the source of this sort of thing and continue to repeat the errors contributing to low brawling in airports and schoolyards. Others, we suspect, are fully aware of the impetus for unseemly behavior and are delighted to fish for it. In either case, we have decided as a matter of publick service to briefly explain the phenomenon. It is quite simple.

By way of illustration, consider this common exchange between romantic partners:

Melvin: “what’s wrong?”

Jennifer: “nothing.”

Melvin ( unconvinced ): “really ? It seems like something is wrong.”

Jennifer: ( with pursed lips ); “Nope. I said nothing is wrong.”

Melvin: “It doesn’t sound like nothing. And you made a face.”

Jennifer ( hostile ): “I’ve told you twice that nothing is wrong, and now something IS wrong because you’re badgering me.”

And so on and so forth. Here we see an example of the unintentional creation of an inflamed reaction by unproductive pestering. Poor Melvin would be better served by leaving well enough alone and moving on, either taking the answer at face value or allowing time to take its course. Jennifer would be spared ventilating an overheated response that adds to the tension.

This is how it works with the mask. If you are compelled to point out every sales-clark or grocery shopper who isn’t wearing a mask, or if you compose histrionic assertions relating this behavior to mass casualties,  and particularly if you are considering issuing a diktat of some sort, you are likely contributing to a potentially combustible reaction among those with latent opposing views.

Loyal opposers come in a few varieties and, like beehives and rattlesnakes, are mostly content to operate according to their own compass unless provoked. A mild opposition to something like mask-wearing can range from a misinformed view of their efficacy, to an outright antipathy toward authority. Nothing in those views warrants a citizens arrest or publick calling out, particularly in light of an ever-evolving understanding of COVID-19 and its transmission characteristics. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, and one may be forgiven for taking a long view of the virus and a dim view of various lurches in guidance, to say nothing of those with a Porcupinian aversion to coercive words like” enforcement” and “mandate.”

Like Jennifer, who is content to keep her counsel, people with doubts are best left to sort them out. Enforcers of the shining path are well-advised to avoid hectoring and accept the situation as it is, rather than try to correct it immediately. The latter approach almost always precipitates an upward vortex of antagonism.

Please don’t misunderstand our point about masks. Like the vast majority of people, we appreciate the value of blocking infectious aerosols, particularly when in close proximity to others for an extended period indoors. Everyone at Almanack World Headquarters cheerfully and voluntarily don the coverings in various fashion versions. Do you see a great majority of non-believers, or just a few? Casual violators or hardened recidivists? Our point is that aggressive coercion or publick humiliation of those found non-compliant is a sure way to stimulate an equal and opposite reaction, which is counterproductive.

As a technical matter, we should also point out that masks are but one element of the strategy to counter viral spread. We could just as readily and with similar conviction demand hand-washing and avoidance of face-touching. Why fixate exclusively on the mask?

One of the many wonderful aspects of American life is our plurality. Visitors from around the globe are attracted to our boisterous, restless diversity in nearly everything. Our traditions, perspectives and experience may come from anywhere, and our brilliant founders foresaw that the new nation would require an expansive interpretation of liberty, as well as a pretty good reason to restrict it. In the very beginnings of coronarama, one of Mr. Kipp’s children assessed the problem in clear terms: “Americans don’t like to be told what to do.”

You and I may believe that we are among the righteous, the mask-wearers, and have a responsibility to correct the unwashed to protect our communities. Some of our brothers and sisters are not so certain. Best to respect their uncertainty, in the hope that in the fullness of time, we will all be further ahead and better off.

Poor David’s Bakersfield Almanack

About 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in a dusty town called Bakersfield, is the epicenter of one of American music’s most interesting cults. Bakersfield was once known primarily for oil and agriculture. If you know anything about the region, it may be that it was the center of the migration of families to the San Joaquin Valley from the southern great plains in the 1930s. Those Dust Bowl Okies ( though they came from Texas and Kansas, as well as Oklahoma ) were the beginning of the Bakersfield Cult. They brought their Oklahoma sensibilities to the Golden State, created new sounds and enabled in some ways the explosion of California-based music that ran counter to the prevailing trends of the time. Would you be surprised to learn that this gem originated in Southern California?

Yes, of course, that’s Buck Owens, the Godfather of the “Bakersfield Sound.”  Buck was born in Sherman, Texas, which is as good as Oklahoma and was named after a donkey on the farm. He moved his freight to Bakersfield. Buck Owens is one of our original guiding lights, long before he became widely known as the guy with the red white & blue guitar hosting Hee Haw. Buck and his Buckaroos took an old Hank Cochran tune and gave it some serious twang with his Stratocasters and an “in your face” pedal steel guitar.

Adherents in the Bakersfield Cult are few, but we are passionate and committed. As a student in Kansas, while everyone else was wasting time with Jimmy Buffett or hard rock, I was listening to KTPK-FM in Topeka and this is what I heard: Wynn Stewart, Tommy Collins, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Wanda Jackson. I was instantly hooked for life. I had no idea until much later that this was music brought to California from the flatlands.

Bakersfield was the Okies answer to Nashville, which was by the 1950s heading toward slick, overproduced pop country. Bakersfield electrified old country songs and created new ones that had a harder, twangier edge, using rockabilly instruments and beats. By the late 1960s, California rock guys like The Byrds had discovered Bakersfield. Listen to this fantastic Byrds tune called, appropriately, “Nashville West:”

Recorded in Hollywood in 1968. The summer of love may have been in San Francisco, but down in LA, musicians were creating California country rock music influenced by Buck and Bakersfield. The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Neil Young, Crosby Stills & Nash, Gram Parsons, Buffalo Springfield, Emmylou Harris and The Eagles all belong to the stripped down sound that flowed from Bakersfield honky-tonks. Even the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead occasionally got in on the act. They may have lost some of the old Okies’ working-man mentality, but Bakersfield gave them a new way of creating great music.

To me, the Bakersfield Sound sounded authentic when I first joined the cult and it still does today. I listen to a lot of Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam. Dwight Yoakam? Nobody has done more to preserve and celebrate Bakersfield music than Dwight. I’d thought Yoakam was another contrived Nashville act, a voice with a big western hat stuck on him. But I was at an airport conference years ago in Dallas when he played a short set. He played jen-you-wine Buck Owens music and I was sold. As I did more research, I discovered that Dwight made his name playing LA clubs like The Palomino, loves Buck Owens and reveres the Bakersfield Sound. God bless Dwight Yoakam – he is our new cult idol.

Holy Cow – we even get the accordion legend Flaco Jimenez on the most famous Bakersfield song ever.

Country and Western music continues to evolve, but we still have some great artists who respect the Bakersfield Sound. They’re out there in Texas and California and maybe even a few hanging around Nashville.

Buck and Merle are gone, and the California country rockers are getting up there; the original twang of Bakersfield is a thing of the past. All things change and pass away. Let us conclude this episode with a great recent remake of the John Stewart 1969 classic:

Courtesy of Dave Alvin (The Blasters) and Jimmie Dale Gilmore (The Flatlanders) on their splendid record “Downey to Lubbock.”  Bakersfield lives on and The Bakersfield Cult is always welcoming new people to indoctrinate. We are no threat to civility or our neighbors, so jump on in. Pilgrimage to The Streets of Bakersfield soon!

Poor David’s Almost Humanist Almanack

At some point during the elliptical installments known as the Covidian Almanack, I must have registered my view of the phrase “in these uncertain times.” Most things made repellent by repetition attract the gimlet eye of the Almanack, so it is a safe bet that this empty phrase has come up for scrutiny somewhere in the memory hole corpus.

However, during my campaign to rid us of poxic phraseology, I’ve observed a phenomenon associated with certainty. Whatever topical subject you choose – and there is a smorgasbord of choices – certitude is almost always accompanied by humorlessness. So closely coupled are these qualities that I think it should be defined hereafter as The Kipp Disorder, picked up by the popular press and parroted – with unleavened utter certainty.

TKD applies for now to a limited number of people, while the rest of us mush on with as much good cheer as we can muster. For the afflicted, though, Mildred Ratched seems like the life of the party.

Is TKD, like the dreaded COVID, which, I am told, destroys our ability to taste and smell, gnawing away our sense of humor? Can face-mask zealots have a good chuckle at their certainty that the sieves either prevent human destruction or warrant tea-party tantrums? Can today’s observers of the kultursmog find some measure of levity in being lectured in oppression by overpaid, undereducated athletes or in the daily antics of a coarse reality-show commander-in-chief? If the preceding questions cause a noticeable increase in heartrate and an urge to post vitriolic comments, it is possible that good humor has taken leave and TKD has set in.

And may God bless you; progress is often achieved by fervor rather than humor. For every Torquemada under the bed, there is a Professor Martin Ludher prepared to advance the cause of progress. Neither fellow known for their lightheartedness.

A liberal serving of humor in convulsive times is not without merit, though. Not long after Professor Ludher completed his anguished campaign to reform the Catholic Church, the unusual Frenchman Francois Rabelais dedicated his satirical book Gargantua with this poem:

Dear readers, who this book may read,
Let ev’ry worry slip away.
There’s neither scandal here, nor creed,
Nor any illness to allay.
It’s true there’s no perfection here
For you to note – except for laughs,
Which are my only theme, I fear.
So, noting the gloom each reader mostly quaffs:
It’s best of laughter, not of tears, to sing,
For laughter is the proper human thing.

Gargantua urinates on Paris and drowns 200,000 people, by the way, giving psychologists and English professors 350 years’ worth of material to analyze. But it remains funny, despite the analysts. And Rabelais retains a fondness worthy of the adjective Rabelaisian, referring to a style “distinguished by exuberance of imagination and language combined with extravagance and coarseness of humor and satire.”

Topps, the first name in baseball trading cards, issued a collector’s card featuring Dr. Anthony F. Ouchey, throwing out the first pitch of the truncated major league baseball season. F. Ouchey uncorked a 20 mph fastball that landed down and in – about 15 feet wide and 15 feet short. The $10 F. Ouchey card is Topps’ best seller, achieving a record-high run of 51,512 cards. Later, the newly famous physician encouraged Americans to wear goggles and/or face shields.

To halt the spread of TKD and restore a sense of humor to the land, developing an aptitude for less certainty has high potential. Henry Louis Mencken, to whom everyone should return regularly in any times – uncertain, unprecedented, unpredictable or otherwise – laid it out splendidly:

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.”

 This leaves plenty of room for a snicker or two, or even a mirthful demeanor ( of which HL Mencken is a marvelous example ). It usually takes me until December to trot out one of my favorite biblical quotes, but in an unprecedented year, it is wise to recall that “a merry heart doeth good like medicine.” The good, the proper human thing, in this case, is a reduction in incidence of The Kipp Disorder. Scolding, hectoring, disturbing, destroying, boycotting, demanding, correcting, enforcing, mandating, rioting – all begone! In their place, welcome uncertainty and a merry sense of humor.

With our new F. Ouchey goggles on, the opportunities for mirth are limitless.

Poor David’s Repentant Almanack

I read this week that city apparatus in Seattle ( San Francisco and Los Angeles used to battle for supremacy in leading edge trendsetting, but Seattle appears to have claimed the mantle ) have instituted a training program that involves “unlearning whiteness.” The article involved a good deal of language that is now becoming commonplace, but it still has the distinct aroma of academia. It’s the kind of impenetrable talk that would have been noted by my Nebraskan grandfather as “hooey.” I’m not sure that word is in use anymore.

The merits of reprogramming Caucasians are beside my point, just so there is no misunderstanding. There are a good number of people who would benefit magnificently from such a project. I could be among them, although I am more interested in submitting myself to Jungian analysis first.

What captivated me about the Seattle training is that it is part of a more widespread phenomenon making the rounds right now, having to do with repentance. Calls for repentance of others have become regular features of the news; those heeding the call are also regulars. Apologetic entreaties abound: posts, placards and articles, as well as ceremonial kneeling, bowing and genuflecting. One fellow, I recall, tried to perform maundy on another man.

Nobody on any side of any debate has tried self-immolation, as far as I know. It has long been a feature of some Asian protestations, but not since the Buddhist monks did it in the Vietnam Era has it garnered an enthusiastic following. As a means of calling attention to either sin or atonement, setting oneself ablaze is a sure headline-grabber.

There are things to admire about symbolic gestures. Symbolism can be a very powerful persuader.

Not, however, on the level of penitence. Penitence and – even better – repentance are at least a few full cuts above mere apology and symbolic remorse. So what am I to make of the demand for repenting the sin of…….pigmentation? Of course, I understand that the sin is not the color but the association. Still. I am wondering if this is even possible, except in the case of having committed the disgrace myself. I’m not sure if I can accept responsibility for whatever old Joe Kipp was up to on the Whoop-Up Trail in Montana ( see below ), or for what kind of untoward business his father, James, found himself in on the California Gold Rush. I know he decamped back to Platte County Missouri. That seems like penitentiary behavior to me. Typical Kipp. In any case, theologians differ on this point of whether I can atone for someone else.

Perhaps James changed his mind about California and turned around. That’s the original meaning of the word repent, a biblical term that was rendered first in Greek as metanoia, then in English as “feeling different after.” After what? After an error in judgment or faulty thinking leading to a grievous mistake, one would think.

When it comes to repentance, it’s difficult to surpass Jewish thinking. Those seeking familiarity with systemic oppression might beneficially consult the Jews, who have a long history with it. Were it possible to atone for ancestral sins of ethnic mistreatment, most of Europe would be lining up to be absolved of Medieval ( and some modern ) lapses. However, the Talmud, the foundation of Jewish teaching, emphasizes repentance over grievance. In fact, God created repentance before anything else. Before humans, beasts, water, earth, wind, fire, and Instagram. Repentance was the first thing.

Moses ben Maimon, the 12^th century Spanish rabbi ( shown in statuary below, in Cordoba ), devoted a splendid 10 chapters to the rules of repentance that lead to feeling different after; they distill to six straightforward steps:

• Regret
• Renounce
• Confess
• Reconcile
• Make Amends
• Resolve

 

Ah – not so simple as an apology, no matter how contrite or Twittable. And clearly not transferable beyond one’s own sphere of transgression. When it comes to justice-seeking, the only intellectually coherent demand is to repudiate injustice when one encounters it and to seek repentance only for one’s own actions. That is the only path to change.

Notably absent from the list of useful supplications: statue destruction, renaming of streets, schools, sporting teams, and violence toward others. Shallow demonstrations of penitence, from ”unlearning whiteness” to apologizing for founding fathers, provide little more than transitory elation.

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan is said to have promised himself that he would one day change the world. According to Henry Abrahamson, “When that proved difficult, he resolved to change Poland. That also seemed beyond his reach, so he determined to change his village. He eventually despaired of this as well, and decided that he would change his family. Even that modest goal seemed too great, so he resolved that he would only change himself.”

A lesson for lugubrious times. Now is the perfect time to reconsider unhelpful and ineffective thoughts. Feeling different after that consideration involves a rather uncomfortable process, and it is an individual adventure.

Poor David’s Temperate Almanack

And just like that – poof! – our interest in the finer points of Coronarama is gone. Gone with the winds of outrage and justice-seeking. Although the facts “on the ground,” as we say in wartime lingo, remain unchanged, the dramatic tension of two weeks ago has rapidly subsided. Death tolls, ominous predictions and pensive advertisements have given way to bacterial Ozark pool parties and sweaty street marches. Jolly good. The Almanack concluded that the entire corona business had strayed beyond its usefulness anyway and we are heartened by the recession of overtly coercive language of mandating, enforcing, and controlling. Now if we can restore baseball.

Our replacement summer stock theater is a distressing affair and, like socializing after midnight, no good can come of getting into it. More precisely, no good will come of The Almanack getting into it. Suffice it to say that keeping the publick entertained is a full-time endeavor, demanding ever increasing infusions of intemperance.

Regular readers who now may number in the dozens are sure to detect a few unremittent themes in our posts. By native inclination or by environmental conditioning, or perhaps by some combination of the two, The Almanack is a consistent proponent of moderation in thought, speech and action. We have returned to prudence, judiciousness, tolerance, The Middle Path, stoicism and similar antiquities, with the regularity of a dog returning to its vomit.

The modern ear cannot help but associate the word temperance with alcoholic prohibition, another episode in state adventurism that wasn’t driven into the dark corners until a Depression demanded reinstatement of a depressant. But temperance properly understood stretches back to ancient thinking. Plato wrote The Laws, his prescription for an orderly society, near the end of his life in 348 BC and included temperance as one of his foundational pillars:

 He who knows the temperate life will describe it as in all things gentle, having gentle pains and gentle pleasures, and placid desires and loves not insane; whereas the intemperate life is impetuous in all things, and has violent pains and pleasures, and vehement and stinging desires, and loves utterly insane; and in the temperate life the pleasures exceed the pains, but in the intemperate life the pains exceed the pleasures in greatness and number and frequency. Hence one of the two lives is naturally and necessarily more pleasant and the other more painful, and he who would live pleasantly cannot possibly choose to live intemperately. And if this is true, the inference clearly is that no man is voluntarily intemperate; but that the whole multitude of men lack temperance in their lives, either from ignorance, or from want of self-control, or both. 

Intemperate behavior can be deliciously entertaining. Those familiar with the term “comment apocalypse” understand the perverse appeal of invective directed at a writer with whom one disagrees. Social media platforms routinely become unattractive pits of shallow vanity, mixing photo ops, byte-sized moral preening and vitriol. Reality television serves an endless buffet of poor manners. Coarseness and crude vulgarity are staples of the Hollywood entertainment industry and the preferred lingua franca of entertainers themselves. News media feast on hot-takes and misleading headlines. Office holders and office seekers contribute largely flatulent commentary.

Our intellectual diet can easily become disturbed. Exhibiting restraint in daily living, whatever the appetite or temptation may be, takes some practice. It may demand a reasonable social distancing from outlets catering to intemperance. But it proves to be an excellent source of wisdom and contentment. A temperate attitude may aid in building capacity for tolerance and non-evaluative listening, traits in perilously short supply in mid-2020. It may also clarify one’s understanding of unstable situations.

One of our least favorite intemperate convulsions is the suggestion that we live in a world filled with hate. This is simply untrue, and the depth of its untruthfulness can be easily observed by anyone on any day most anywhere. Claiming widespread hatred toward one another is a particularly hideous canard, as it encourages the very intemperance it asserts.

Almanack readers are encouraged to contribute first-hand examples demonstrating a routinely hate-filled world. Entries that are broadly assertive in nature, not directly experienced, shall not be considered.

Failing this, perhaps the cultivation of a temperate outlook, avoiding extremes and governing the appetite for indignation produces a more harmonious, pleasant and optimistic state of mind. And if all else fails, recall the urging of Hillel the Elder:

“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole of the Torah; the rest is commentary. Now go and study.”

 

 

 

 

Poor Davids Covidian Almanack VII The Touchless Truth

Perhaps apropos of the moment, the Great Depression gave us at least two touching tributes to touching. Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach wrote “The Touch of Your Hand” in 1933 for the stage production of Roberta. In 1936, the relatively unknown Ray Noble adapted a tune called “The Touch of Your Lips,” which became a popular hit for a young Bing Crosby.

My favorite rendition of the latter song is by Bill Evans and Tony Bennett, on a marvelous duet record from the 1970s:

Bill Evans & Tony Bennett “The Touch of Your Lips”

In the spring of 2020, there is no question on the matter of touching of lips. Strictly forbidden. The touching of hands? Here we have room for discussion. A reprise of the Great Depression may hinge on the touch of our hands.

The aviation and travel industry, demolished by a viral threat and the fear factor summoned by it, turns its attention to the psyche of the traveler. Our goal has broadened from safe passage to the more nuanced confidence in safe passage. In this edition, the Almanack focuses on the current fixation on touching. More to the point, not touching.

In airports and airplanes, there have always been purists – Purellists – among us. Although not widespread in the BC ( Before COVID ) epoch, some travelers carried small containers of hand sanitizer, with which they furiously disinfected themselves and surfaces throughout their journey. These early adopters indicate a latent germophobic element in air travel, a latency that has now exploded into an insistence on “touchless travel.”

Respiratory viruses can be transmitted directly and indirectly. Direct transmission would be a contagious person expelling microscopic aerosol particles on you, which you then ingest. Such are the unpleasantries of the moment. Indirect transmission would be contact with a contagious person or a contaminated object, via hands typically, that results in the virus being received by mucous membranes that are most accessible in the eyes, mouth, and nose. The probabilities of contracting a virus are much greater for the direct method, a conclusion favoring mask-wearers.

Touching, by itself, is not the problem. Touching the face with contaminated fingers is the problem, aside from people expelling airborne particles on you. Persistent hand-washing and hand-sanitizing enthusiasts, previously viewed as mildly neurotic, should now be emulated as the saintly.

But as a practical matter, face-touching cannot be easily remedied; thus, we are left to minimize touching, period. In an airport, there are some very immediate ways to do it that require minimal effort.

Every airline offers a mobile application. Not only does it greatly facilitate easy conductance through the airport, the airlines love having you use it! Most carriers anticipate the gradual elimination of kiosks and the reduction of ticket counter and baggage induction space, coronarama or not. If you are not checking bags and travelling domestically, use of the mobile app alone eliminates many opportunities to touch things, like kiosks, readers and boarding passes.

For $85, the TSA’s PreCheck program further improves your airport experience and enhances your new touchless life. Unless the airport is using the TSA’s Automated Screening Lanes (ASL), PreCheck allows you to squirt through screening while avoiding bins, trays and dog-bowls. The secret is not removing shoes, liquids and electronic equipment. Just chuck the phone in your carry-on bag, toss the bags on the belt and you’re good.

It is one of the strange turnabouts that the pandemic has made the ASLs, which significantly improve throughput but also force bin use, unattractive.

Bag-checking is slightly more challenging because it is primarily a finger pecking kiosk operation. However, airlines and airports are considering touchless kiosks for bag-tag printing. United Airlines announced that it is installing kiosks that allow use of the mobile app to enable control of the tag printing. Others will quickly follow suit. And if you are unable to find a way to not check bags, there is the vintage way of doing things –  euphemistically, Concierge Service – by asking the friendly masked and gloved agent to print, affix and prepare your bag for travel. Still works.

The retail industry was already on its way toward a cashless future BC. There are plenty of airport merchants now that offer payment by mobile app or a form of digital wallet which work on low-power Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies. NFC is touchless; signing up for digital wallet applications is easy and is another immediate way to increase touchless travel.

Some industry factotums are proclaiming the use of face recognition technology, often using the imprecise term “biometrics,” as a touchless solution. The Almanack takes no exception with this recommendation, as some forms of face recognition are viable and already in commercial use ( Almanack on Face Recognition ). However, it is important to understand that widespread availability of the technology for non-international travel is on the horizon but not arrived yet.

Delta Airlines’ “fully biometric” Concourse F in Atlanta is instructive on how the process may eventually unfold. There are jurisdiction and privacy issues still to overcome before there is widespread adoption. Face recognition-based travel is probably in the one-year-plus timeframe.

The Touchless Truth in aviation is that for the immediate future, returning to confident travel will require accelerated use of mobile technologies, incorporation of near-field communication to yoke fixed and mobile devices, and a healthy renewal of interest in risk-based screening. With this and a modicum of attentiveness by passengers, it is possible to keep touching to a minimum in our airports.