Coming at the time amidst the fall-out over Arizona’s enactment of the anti-illegal immigrant law known as SB 1070, the local Phoenix newspaper ran an affecting story about the three youths. The reporter put a warm, compassionate face on their daunting struggle.
Following the 85th Academy Awards last month, I was intrigued once more by yet another undocumented immigrant student’s story. On the world-weary face of it, you might ask, “What’s the point of another such story?” After all, there are many such Dreamers.
Nevertheless, I was curious enough to find out more about the winner for “Short Documentary,” Inocente.
What I found was a surprisingly relatable, emotionally stirring and ultimately uplifting story of a fifteen-year-old called Inocente. She is a homeless, undocumented immigrant who admits to dreaming “silly dreams.” Even so, she is nonetheless determined to become an artist — “and go her own way” despite the long odds and an unsparing future.
It’s an affecting, beautifully rendered film. And she is an inspiring and talented young woman. “What if we could walk the clouds and ride shooting stars?” she asks.
“I have impossible dreams, but I still dream them,” she explains.
Here’s an item from yesterday that made my day. 92-year old Dorothy Ellis, late of Iola, Kansas, got her dying wish fulfilled — and the rest of us are the better for it.
Fortunately for Dorothy, though, her family’s a gem, especially her granddaughter Holly who with Dorothy’s hospice nurse, made sure she got her final wish. After seeing a man flying over her house in a motorized parachute, Dorothy told her family she wanted to do the same: to fly over her southeastern Kansas ranch home in the same airborne contraption. Six weeks before her death, Dorothy’s last wish was granted.
I like good stories and especially — good story-tellers. On Sunday, Joel Lovell wrote a wonderful piece on George Saunders in The New York Times Magazine and related the short-story writer’s “beautiful, brutal vision” in an enviable profile, “The real-life story of a great American storyteller.”
In waxing poetical about Saunders, Lovell quoted Saunders friend, author Tobias Wolff in an unforgettable way.
George Saunders
After first relating how Wolff believes Saunders has “been one of the luminous spots of our literature for the past 20 years,”Lovell then shared the extent of Wolff’s admiration for Saunders — not just as a writer but as a human being describing “what may be the most elegant compliment I’ve heard paid to another person: ‘He’s such a generous spirit, you’d be embarrassed to behave in a small way around him.’”
And to make more of a storyteller’s grace, also yesterday on the death of author and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Richard Ben Cramer, Esquire’sMike Sager wrote, “Cramer’s work transcended because of who he was. It is one thing to be great; it is much harder to be kind.”
I was attracted to Eddie’s story not only because it was poignant and well-written but because it was another tale of the East Los Angeles Barrio where I grew up — and because I am drawn to stories from the neighborhood — especially good ones like the ones Becerra tells about its people and its memories.
But it’s more than a parable about a persistent hardscrabble 59-year-old dreamer trying to resurrect an E.L.A. record label that once aspired to be a “Mexican American Motown.”
Gonzalez doesn’t cut the image of music impresario or music producer, something he works at while he scrambles to keep his head above water doing other things, including occasional acting.
Gonzalez inherited Rampart Records from its founder, the late small-time music mogul, Eddie Davis. Davis moved to Boyle Heights as a child and began producing Chicano rock acts in the 1960′s. They met in 1975.
But you have to admire Gonzalez’s doggedness even if he only ends up like that guy who keeps hitting his head because it feels so good when he stops.
Becerra’s essay about Gonzalez and Rampart is also about a bygone time. It’s nostalgia. It brings back memories of barrio kids and garage-bands “from Boyle Heights, East L.A.and the San Gabriel Valley with names like THE BLENDELLS, the Romancers, The Premiers, and CANNIBAL AND THE HEADHUNTERS.”
It’s also an evocative reflection as I recall “The Emeralds,” a mostly-forgotten garage-band without the garage that practiced in the family dining room of the house next door, that is, when the drummer wasn’t working at the family bakery.
They were loud and probably good enough for a neighborhood party. And I was a little kid when I heard them playing. We lived in a house my folks rented within spitting distance of Estrada Courts.
Far as I know, unlike other Eastside barrio bands like Thee Midniters,“The Emeralds”never made it beyond the old neighborhood.
As for Henry Gonzalez, while he may ultimately not find the way, he energetically continues trying to make one. And in his own way — himself a storyteller through music.
Friday is Doomsday. And I’m not just talking about Friday’s release of Jack Reacher, the new action movie starring tiny Tom Cruise — supposedly 5’7″ in platform shoes — as 6’5,” 250lb Jack Reacher.
With 2 days to go until December 21st, take a cue from the Chinese and pay attention to the Mayan Calendar or at least start “partying like it’s 1999.”
Or in either case, we should’ve already run through our list of 10 things to do before Apocalypse Friday. Granted, some of them may be contradictory.
What’s on your list?
1. Lose those last 20 lbs.
2. Cook and eat the Christmas Turkey.
3. Eat all the ‘kibbles and bits’ left in the house, including chips, candy, pretzels, nuts, ice cream and sodas.
And for lawyer readers still scrounging to find and finish calendar year-end continuing legal education (CLE) — here are a few more FREE CLE online programs to squeeze in before the world ends — and while taking care of the above-mentioned ten. What? Don’t worry, you still have time. After all, Joseph HellerinCatch-22did say“live forever, or die in the attempt.”
Agenda:
I. Appraiser Levels
II. Three Approaches to Value
III. Reviewing Reports
IV. Why Intellectual Property Valuation?
V. Value Constraints
VI. Valuation Methodologies and IP
VII. Case Studies
[1]“He was huge, for a start. He was one of the largest men she had ever seen outside of the NFL. He was extremely tall, and extremely broad, and long-armed, and long-legged. The lawn chair was regular size, but it looked tiny under him. It was bent and crushed out of shape. His knuckles were nearly touching the ground. His neck was thick and his hands were the size of dinner plates.” A description of Jack Reacher, Lee Child, A Wanted Man(New York: Delacorte Press,2012) 155-6.
Photo Credits:”Beijing walking street at night,” by Christopher, Augapfel, at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution; “Chuck Connors, Geronimo (1962); “John Wayne,” cameo appearance in George Stevens’ 1965 film “The Greatest Story Ever Told”;”Lose weight now” by Alan Cleaver at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution; “060511 food,” by Dan4th at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution; “Runners,” by Chris Waits, waitscm at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution; “Hole in One,” by Hussain Khorsheed at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution.
There’s an old guy on the park bench, crying. Finally a jogger stops, sees the guy sobbing. “What’s wrong?”
“My wife of 48 years died, and I was very lonely. I went on a JDate and met a younger Russian woman. We liked each other. So she’s moved in with me, and she’s wonderful. She’s attractive, she cooks well, and she takes care of me and almost every night we have fabulous sex.”
So the jogger says, “Well, that’s a wonderful story. Why are you crying?” The old guy says, “I’m crying because I can’t remember where I live.”
Just as funny was Joe’s parting rimshot,“It will get funnier as you get older.”
The last highly publicized end times were predicted by 91-year old Harold Camping and that last“Judgment Day” went the way of all the others. The globe’s still turning. Birds are yet chirping. The Rolling Stones are still playing. And even Pastor Harold is still around as are most of the rest of us.
After all, like the guy who complains to his bank, “Waddaya mean, I’m overdrawn. I can’t be overdrawn — I still have more checks,”the good news is that there’ll be 4 more shopping days left after the 21st, including Christmas for all the gift-giving procrastinators.
Photo Credits: “Joe Lieberman, official photo,” United States Congress image in the public domain, Wikipedia Commons; “East side of stela C, Quirigua with mythical creation date in 13 (or 0) baktun, 0 katun, 0 tun, 0 uinal, 0 kin, 4 Ahau and 8 Cumku and corresponds to August 11, 3114 BCE in the Gregorian calendar,” Cyrus Thomas (1904) Mayan calendar Systems II, via Wikipedia Commons, public domain;
Since 9/11 and two wars, it’s been politically incorrect and patriotically unfashionable to do anything but nod with approbation, appreciation and admiration at anyone wearing the uniform, especially the fruit-salad festooned high-ranking soi-disant indispensables. But the ground beneath the bobbleheads has started to shift although slightly. And though I count among friends and family, many who have honorably served, the reality-check is a good thing.
The deification of man or of his institutions is never recommendable. Not gods but mere mortals — beneath our robes and chasubles, we put on our pants or wear our birettas like anyone else and even bestride the porcelain throne the same.
Given the ethical lapses this year by top military officers, which so far have culminated with the Petraeus scandal, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has justifiably asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review ethical training standards and come up with ways to keep officers away from trouble.
Certainly,the usual suspects on the leftare deriding the “total trust” and “blank checks” given to generals, particularly with respect to David Petraeus, “accustomed to being a demigod, expert at polishing his own celebrity and swaying public opinion.”
But the criticism has also emanated from unexpected sources, includinga former officer ‘in-the-know’like John L. Cook, author of Afghanistan: The Perfect Failure, who says Petraeus’s real scandal is the legacy he left in Afghanistan. “What matters more was what Petraeus did as a commander, not what he did in the bedroom.”
And then there’s Roger Simon who also had a bit of biting judgmental commentary, “Petraeus dumb, she’s dumber,“ giving both Petraeus and “paramour”Paula Broadwell a verbal beat-down — calling the general “blockhead”and of Broadwell, “She is as smart as a bag of hammers.“
All this nastiness because Simon says they were “dimwitted” for using unsecure, traceable Gmail accounts to transmit sexually explicit emails.
. . . getting dumber.
No sooner had I digested Simon’s diatribe, where by the way, he also parenthetically praised Bill Clinton for having “gutted it out” and for lying “sensibly” when caught in his own sex scandal, I next found out the situation is more dire than I realized. Thanks to an unsettling report, “Dumb and Dumber: Study Says Humans Are Slowly Losing Their Smarts,” — don’t tell Simon but we’re all getting dumber! If you believe Simon, Petraeus and Broadwell may just be slightly ahead of the curve. The ‘dumb and dumber’ study was published at Trends in Genetics and authored by Gerald Crabtree, a Stanford geneticist.
The good Major’s riff and bodacious background sound effects “guaranteed to inspire” an appropriate musical soundtrack for sneaking around, military or otherwise — background music if you will to accompany this swordsman tale’s thrusts and gyrations.
The late Major was not a sworn member of any branch of military service. “Major” was his given name. But even after all these years, at least musically speaking, he had a military tactician’s taste for saucy soulful mischief.
Photo Credits:”What are you laughing at?” by Dave Sizer at Flickr, via Creative Commons-license required attribution; “Truth (1896). Olin Warner (completed by Herbert Adams). Left bronze door at main entrance of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building,”at Wikipedia Commons, public domain;”Caricature of William Ballantine. Caption reads “He resisted the temptation to cross-examine a Prince of the blood,” by Alfred Thompson, at Wikipedia Commons, public domain; “David Petraeus, portrait photo,” by Monica King, at Wikipedia Commons, public domain; “Bill Clinton,” by DonkeyHotey at Flickr via Creative Commons-license requiring attribution.
Perhaps it’s timely, especially post-election when losers and supporters of all stripes and kinds are still nursing wounds and regretting so muchabout ‘what might’ve been.’
And it’s almost too convenient a topic to bring up the ‘woulda-coulda-shouldas’ now that the airwaves are full of L’affaire Petraeus of which, Petraeus friend and former spokesman Steve Boylan says the now ex-CIA Directormea culpas “he regrets it on so many levels.” Or as we once said about a hapless high school buddy at his shotgun-wedding — ‘a moment’s pleasure, a lifetime of regret.’
So talk about timing, on Sunday there was another one of those occasional articles that crop up now and then about life regrets writ big and small and particularly about remorse and repentance that comes at life’s end.
Written by a Jewish rabbi, scholar and author, Erica Brown, “Death: A Nice Opportunity for Regret” detailed an exercise Rabbi Brown conducted where she asked her students to list their small and large regrets on index cards. The responses were insightful, even poignant.
“We rarely connect regret to death, but then we rarely connect death to anything because we’d rather talk about grocery shopping, gardening and taxes. Reading my students’ regrets helped me understand the connection between regret and death,” she wrote.
Regrets.
Even “Ol’ Blue Eyes” who while doing things “My Way,”had his regrets, even if they “were too few to mention.” “Regret,” it’s been said,“is insight that comes a day too late” – although Woody Allen famously wagged that, “My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.” And Arthur Miller summed it up thusly, “Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”
We try to avoid it but “the feeling of regret” has a way of catching up to us. Fortunately, most of the time, our regrets are private ones.
George Costanza, who some of you may have now discovered is one of my most quotable philosophers, once decided “to do the opposite” rather than “sit here and do nothing and regret it the rest of the day.”
Our top regrets.
But as for inventorying our final regrets, well before we utter those final words or write them down on classroom index cards, reflection confirms what studies categorize as our biggest life regrets. They’re neatly compiled into “common domains”like regrets about education, career, romance and parenting.
A few years ago, palliative nurse Bronnie Ware came up with her own list, gleaned from those about to slip their mortal coils. She identified them as the “Top five regrets of the dying.”
As a nurse involved in hospice care, Ware had the perfect vantage point. She cared for patients at the end of life and then blogged about their deathbed revelations at her blog called “Inspiration and Chai.”
Ware’s top 5 list resonates with truth:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Transforming regret.
In her essay, Rabbi Brown notes “You can’t eliminate a regret, but you can transform one.”This, of course, presupposes there’s time sufficient for transformation — never a given when you don’t ordinarily know “about that day or hour.”
In discussing what he called Habit 2, “Begin with the end in mind,”the late Steven Covey memorably asked readers in his best-selling “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,“ to create “A Personal Mission Statement.“
The way to do this, according to Covey, was to start at the end — by envisioning our own funerals. “Imagine that as your casket is being lowered down into the ground and your family and friends are standing around watching. What are they thinking about? When they think of you and your life, which statements, images and memories come up to their minds?
“What do you want them to think, imagine, and remember? It is precisely these statements, images, and memories which should be your principles.”
By living in the moment but cognizant of where we’re headed, at the end — at least we might get to that place once said about living. “Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.”
Sure, they finally broke their ancient male-only membership tradition and added its first woman members but it’s way late for plaudits. It’s not a B.F.D. to praise a jackass for moving if you had to first use a 2 X 4 across its ass.
So why are the sports and news media pundits along with all those previously mealy-mouthed, noodle-spined tour professionals suddenly making this such a big deal?
A couple of years ago, Augusta Chairman Billy Payne even had the moralizing stones to weigh in on role models while condemning Tiger Woods over sex scandals.
In 2002, when Augusta’s discrimination against women membership became a national controversy, it’s then-Chairman, the aptly named ‘couldn’t give a hoot’ Hootie Johnson, turned back criticism from NOW’s Martha Burk, saying, “we all have a moral and legal right to organize our clubs the way we wish.”
And besides, why does it even matter that Augusta has supposedly crossed the Rubicon of race and gender? The latest token gender members, the well-heeled and well-connected A-list Republican Condoleezza Rice and billionairess Darla Moore are part of the rarefied elites.
Augusta will always remain an arrogant bastion of classism. The naked unwashed epitomized by Joe Six-Pack , Two-Buck Chuck, Jane Schmoe and their Hispanic cousin, Juan Pérez, need not apply — nor will their likes be forming a low-rent, cut-off jeans foursome there anytime soon.
Photo Credits: “Joe Biden, Caricature,” by DonkeyHotey at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “The Three Mules,” by Jo Naylor at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “Golf Porn,” by Mike D. Merrill at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.
Sure, those were the wealthy ones with legacies to leave. But for the rest of Americans nearing retirement, it’s a different story. And according to one economist, Teresa Ghilarducci, it’s all because of “Our Ridiculous Approach to Retirement.”
Assuming for a moment that they’ve even saved the money to do so, our current voluntary self-directed system requires dabblers and neophytes to manage and maximize their investment portfolios. Ghilarducci calls it “denial and magical thinking” and “simply defies human behavior.” She likens it to “asking the family pet to dance on two legs.”
Why? First, middle-aged parents have no chance in hell of using compounding magic in time to pay for even one year of increasingly out-of-reach overpriced college tuition. Second, the retirement picture sucks for most middle-aged Americans. “You’ll need every penny you can beg, borrow and save, and even then, that won’t be enough,” Berko warns.
Third, kids should be looking for occupations and trades that pay better than a “worthless”sheepskin. Berko advises that instead of saving for one of those increasingly inutile college degrees, you should be saving every ducat you can for retirement. According to Professor Ghilarducci, as of 2010, seventy-five percent of Americans nearing retirement had saved less than $30,000.
So Berko is only making the same point albeit in his patented irascibly humorous and pragmatically inventive way. “Most of today’s bachelor’s degrees aren’t worth a blue pig in a green huckleberry patch,” he explains. As for graduate degrees, they hardly make things better, serving merely to pile on even more long-term, non-dischargeable tuition debt.
Unsurprisingly, the question is being asked with more and more fervor, why isn’t there “An Anti-College Backlash?” Or why law professor Paul Campos warns “Don’t trust the boomers!” as he exposes as self-serving, the Baby Boomer promoted myth that “education is priceless.”
And don’t even bring up the well-beaten dead law school horse — again. Recently, yet another law school professor in classic ‘bite the hand that feeds him’ mode reaffirmed,“Law school — still a dodgy investment.” Vanderbilt law professor Herwig Schlunk reiterated his conclusions from a paper, “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be…Lawyers,” that he wrote 3 years ago. “My overall assessment today is much the same as it was in 2009: Law school is a very risky (and expensive) investment; it should not be undertaken lightly.” Now, there’s a face-saving understatement. Playing off the same “Mama” riff, Schlunk’s reworked paper is, “Mamas 2011: Is A Law Degree A Good Investment Today?”
Savvier parents are reconsidering the Kool-aid they’ve been drinking. Kids can earn a better living acquiring a trade or a vocational credential (but not the for-profit crap peddled on daytime television). Anyone who’s recently paid for an electrician or plumber knows this.
But even despite all common sense, if parents still yearn for the dubious bragging rights of raising a kid with a college diploma, as Berko sensibly points out, there are better alternatives than eviscerating an inadequate retirement nest egg or incurring insurmountable long-term debt. Have your kid enlist in the armed forces, he suggests. “Then when their hitch is up, have Uncle Sam pay for their college education.”
*A hat tip to Jay for introducing me to Berko’s well-reasoned, often hilarious and always informative columns.
Photo Credits: “Alfie Dancing,” by Hanumann at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “Bite the hand,” by Doug Geisler, Old Sarge, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been sick? Or that I’m past my middle-earlies? But I’m confused. Is the so-called Millennial Generation, those 18 to 34 year olds who belong to Generation Y, the most spoiled generation? Or are they the most screwed over? Two articles I read this month served up the observations.
When I last discussed Millennials, it was about their supposed deficient interpersonal skills and how having been umbilically-connected, suckled and weaned to technology, they lacked sufficient people skills to successfully market, network and sell themselves. They could do it online. But could they do it offline when flesh-and-blood, first-hand interactions were required?
Spoiled?
First, there was the article by Elizabeth Kolbert, “Why Are American Kids So Spoiled?” in “The New Yorker,” which stated, “With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world.”
Wow, what a sweeping statement. The parents of Generation Y were brought up to believe they were special, the article notes. This reminded me of what Helen, the mom character in the The Incredibles (2004), says to her son, Dash, “That everyone’s special.”Quickly forgotten, however, is Dash’s rejoinder, “if everyone is special, then no one else is.”
So what’s going on? Kolbert quotes the insights of two psychology professors, “Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval.” Such a parental view is a far cry from the apparently now discarded philosophy of a dad I know who always reminded his kids, “I’m your dad not your friend.”
Perhaps this explains why the purported French antidote to American ‘helicopter parents’ explained by Pamela Druckerman’s ‘Bringing Up Bébé‘ resonated with so many people here. Spare the rod? “Non!’
Elaine Sciolino’s excellent book review, “Maman Knows Best,” succintly explains the French child-rearing approach Druckerman deconstructs in her book, Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, “The French leave their babies crying on their own if they’re not sleeping through the night by the time they’re 4 months old. The French exert their authority by declaring, “C’est moi qui décide” (“It’s I who decide”). The result of raising children French style, Druckerman writes, is “a fully functioning society of good little sleepers, gourmet eaters and reasonably relaxed parents.”
Screwed?
And then there’s Joel Kotkin’s article, which asks, “Are Millennials the Screwed Generation?” But his subtitle gives the game away laying the blame on those profligate Boomers. Kotkin states, “Boomer America’ never had it so good. As a result, today’s young Americans have never had it so bad.”
Using interviews and statistics, Kotkin boils it down to a soured future for the Millennials. His reasons? First and last, there’s the worldwide economic recession, the legacy of the Boomers and the generations immediately following. But then the list continues: high unemployment; unprecedented tuition indebtedness; the overselling of advanced but worthless degrees; and the widest ever wealth gap between the young and old. And making things even worse are the imbalances of political power between the young who don’t vote in proportion to their numbers versus the Boomers who overwhelmingly vote with a vengeance to protect their entitlements. And as if Kotkin needed anything more to make his case, he notes how Boomers who carrying their own heavy indebtedness, can’t or won’t retire and open up job opportunities for younger generations. They’re continuing to work.
In the final analysis, then, was I seeing a false dichotomy? Who says Generation Y can’t be both spoiled and screwed? After all, there’s no rule that says they’re mutually exclusive.
But happily there’s a silver lining. Over-extended, over-educated and out-of-work, the ‘screwed-over’ can and do boomerang home where the spoiled life can resume. “Peel me a grape,” mom.
Sometime ago, I blogged about Gerson, Alejandro and Jonathan, three illegal immigrant students living a hard life “on their own.”
I like good stories and especially — good story-tellers. On Sunday, Joel Lovell wrote a wonderful piece on 
The untimely but coincidental death of Harris, an old school R & B stylist, 
It gets worse. I’ve blogged before about the 
Maybe it’s because I’ve been sick? Or that I’m past my middle-earlies? But I’m confused. Is the so-called Millennial Generation, those 18 to 34 year olds who belong to Generation Y, the most spoiled generation? Or are they the most screwed over? Two articles I read this month served up the observations.
