“Charles” does not play well in America. It’s too formal-sounding, like Reginald or Humphrey. Too butler-ish, maybe, or too British. And probably for that reason, it gets more nicknames than any name I can think of. Charlie, Chuck, Chip and Chaz are the most common, but there are plenty more. I have an uncle named Charles who has been called Buster all his life (he just turned 89). His daughter, my cousin, named her son after her father. He’s also a Charles, but they call him Chad. My grandfather was Charles Donald Maclean, but he was called Mac. My father is Charles Donald McLean, but he has always gone by Don. I was born Charles Donald McLean, Jr., but was called Skip as a boy (and well into my adult life).
When people address me by a nickname I don’t like – Chuck, for example – I usually correct them, casually and politely, and say, “I go by Charles.” And if they persist in calling me Chuck, or Chaz, or some other name I don’t like, I assume they’re deliberately trying to provoke, offend, or antagonize me. Or maybe they’re hard of hearing. But in any event, it’s my name and I get to pick how I’d like to be addressed.
Which brings me to politics.
If you listen to John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, or almost any other Republican spokesperson, you’ll notice that they commonly refer to their political opponents as members of the “Democrat” Party. Not Democratic. Democrat.
Now these are all career politicians, and most of them (Ms. Palin excepted) have spent virtually all of their adult lives in Washington, DC, where politics is the big game in town and they get to suit up with the varsity. They know that Democrats belong to the Democratic Party (it’s in the dictionary!), but they persistently refuse to use the proper adjective for the Party’s name.
I think this is a case of Chuck for Charles, and I blame Bob Dole. Back in 1976, when Dole was running for Vice President, he debated his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale, and blasted the “Democrat” wars of the 20th Century. Republicans loved Dole’s skewed take on history, and were apparently even more pleased with how his use of “Democrat” as an adjective riled their opponents.
Frank Luntz, the long-time spinmeister for the Republican establishment, actually road tested the adjectival use of “Democrat” with a focus group in 2001. As Hendrik Hertzberg reported in The New Yorker a few years later, Luntz concluded that “the only people who really dislike it are highly partisan adherents of the – how you say? – Democratic Party.”
Not all modern-era Republicans have been guilty of this gratuitous insult. “Ronald Reagan never used it in polite company,” Hertzberg reported, and neither did George Bush senior. William F. Buckley, Jr., often called the Father of Modern Conservatism, was also no fan of the “Democrat” slur. “I have an aversion to ‘Democrat’ as an adjective," he wrote in a National Review column in 2000. “It has the effect of injecting politics into language, and that should be avoided.”
But Buckley’s heirs – at the Weekly Standard and the National Review, at Fox News and the conservative think-tanks, and, of course, in the halls of Congress – don’t seem to share Buckley’s reservations. In fact, George W. Bush, the most recent Republican president, was a chronic offender, routinely referring to “the Democrat Party” in his press conferences and weekly radio addresses. And the “Democrat” slur has, if anything, become even more popular among Republicans – and now with the Tea Party Movement – since Democrats won control of the White House and Congress two years ago.
So next time you hear a Republican lawmaker on Meet the Press or Face the Nation talking about how the “Democrat Party” refuses to reach across the aisle and negotiate in good faith with the minority, you might want to say, “Excuse me?” Because if Republicans really want to do business with the Democrats, they should start by showing some respect. They should get the name right.
Democratic, not Democrat.
Charles, not Chuck.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Tano
On the spur of the moment I decided to adopt a baby elephant. Actually, I took out the adoption papers in my daughter’s name, so Tano (who will celebrate her first birthday in May) is technically and officially my daughter Olivia’s foster daughter, and my wife and I are, technically and officially, Tano’s foster grandparents.
She is adorable and spirited, and watching her romp in a mud bath with her 19 orphaned playmates, as I had a chance to do in Nairobi last week, you couldn't imagine the hell she’s been through.
Tano is one of the lucky baby elephants whose lives have been saved by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya, which rescues baby elephants orphaned by poachers. Elephants are delicate creatures, and many of the orphaned babies die before they reach the age when they can be returned to life in the wild. But Tano looks like a good bet for survival. The Trust’s records contain the following entry about her:
“Tom Silvester, the Ranch Manager of Loisaba, rescued this tiny female who was only about 2 ½ months old. She had been located near ‘Boma Tano’ (the 5th Cattle Enclosure on the Ranch) and was suspected to be a poaching victim. The baby was too young to understand fear, and was trusting of humans from the start, instantly capturing the hearts of the Ranch Staff and the Manager’s children. They asked that she be named ‘Tano.’”
I visited the Sheldrick elephant orphanage last week during a business trip to Kenya and I was enormously impressed by the care and attention paid to these beautiful and intelligent animals. Dozens of Keepers tend to the elephants’ needs – feeding them a special, imported milk formula every three hours and even sleeping next to them at night. “No elephant is ever without a Keeper,” we were told. And the Keepers know the names and histories of every elephant in their care.
“That’s Turkwel over there,” the Trust’s spokeswoman told us. “A Park Warden risked his life by taking a team into a dangerous area around the South Turkana National Reserve, where warring tribes were constantly fighting over grazing lands for their livestock. With gunfire all around, he managed to get Turkwel safely to a landing strip and they flew him out to Nairobi.”
“And that’s Olare. A safari tourist in the Masai Mara spotted her clambering over her mother, who was stumbling, half paralyzed by a poacher’s bullet that had shattered her femur. Despite her excruciating pain, she struggled to protect her panic-stricken calf. Sadly, we had to euthenaze the mother, but we were able to save Olare.”
“And that’s little Shaba over there. He’s named for his homeland, the Shaba National Reserve in the northern part of the country. The drought has been tough on the local Samburu herdsmen who live there, and many of them have taken to grazing their cattle on the Reserve. Some of the tribesmen have also taken to poaching elephants in order to sell their ivory. Last September, a young schoolboy named Jacob noticed that a baby elephant, just days old, was trustingly following him as he walked home. The elders in his village alerted the Rangers, who called us. We were able to arrange a flight to rescue Shaba and bring him here the next day.”
And so it went. Story after story, and usually with a common thread: poachers killing elephants for their ivory, and calves, too young to have tusks of their own, left wandering in the bush. About half a million elephants remain in Africa, but conservationists estimate that poachers take the lives of as many as 60,000 of these extraordinary animals every year. Without restrictions on the ivory trade, they predict, African elephants could become extinct as early as 2020.
The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) imposed a ban on the ivory trade in 1989, but granted permission to Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe to sell limited stocks of ivory to Japan in 1997 and 2002, when African elephant populations appeared to have stabilized. Not surprisingly, the easing of restrictions on ivory sales resulted in a dramatic up-tick in poaching throughout Africa. As the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust note in their literature, “As long as there is a demand for ivory, and a legal market for it, the story will not end. But the existence of the elephants will.”
Tanzania and Zambia recently petitioned CITES to lift the ban on ivory sales once again, but just yesterday, at the CITES meeting in Doha, the Convention’s delegates – led by the US, the EU, and courageous conservationists in Kenya – voted against lifting the ban.
“It’s welcome news,” Dr. Ian Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants told reporters. “But my anxieties remain about the increased levels of poaching in Africa.”
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust does great work. If you would like to adopt an elephant of your own, you can do so by visiting the Trust’s website: www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org. A minimum donation of $50 will get you a “fostering certificate” with a profile and photograph of your adopted orphan, plus regular e-mail installments of a “Keeper’s Diary,” charting the progress of your baby elephant. Most important, you’ll have the satisfaction of helping save an endangered species. And speaking as Tano’s foster Grandpa, I can tell you, it’s a pretty good feeling.
She is adorable and spirited, and watching her romp in a mud bath with her 19 orphaned playmates, as I had a chance to do in Nairobi last week, you couldn't imagine the hell she’s been through.
Tano is one of the lucky baby elephants whose lives have been saved by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya, which rescues baby elephants orphaned by poachers. Elephants are delicate creatures, and many of the orphaned babies die before they reach the age when they can be returned to life in the wild. But Tano looks like a good bet for survival. The Trust’s records contain the following entry about her:
“Tom Silvester, the Ranch Manager of Loisaba, rescued this tiny female who was only about 2 ½ months old. She had been located near ‘Boma Tano’ (the 5th Cattle Enclosure on the Ranch) and was suspected to be a poaching victim. The baby was too young to understand fear, and was trusting of humans from the start, instantly capturing the hearts of the Ranch Staff and the Manager’s children. They asked that she be named ‘Tano.’”
I visited the Sheldrick elephant orphanage last week during a business trip to Kenya and I was enormously impressed by the care and attention paid to these beautiful and intelligent animals. Dozens of Keepers tend to the elephants’ needs – feeding them a special, imported milk formula every three hours and even sleeping next to them at night. “No elephant is ever without a Keeper,” we were told. And the Keepers know the names and histories of every elephant in their care.
“That’s Turkwel over there,” the Trust’s spokeswoman told us. “A Park Warden risked his life by taking a team into a dangerous area around the South Turkana National Reserve, where warring tribes were constantly fighting over grazing lands for their livestock. With gunfire all around, he managed to get Turkwel safely to a landing strip and they flew him out to Nairobi.”
“And that’s Olare. A safari tourist in the Masai Mara spotted her clambering over her mother, who was stumbling, half paralyzed by a poacher’s bullet that had shattered her femur. Despite her excruciating pain, she struggled to protect her panic-stricken calf. Sadly, we had to euthenaze the mother, but we were able to save Olare.”
“And that’s little Shaba over there. He’s named for his homeland, the Shaba National Reserve in the northern part of the country. The drought has been tough on the local Samburu herdsmen who live there, and many of them have taken to grazing their cattle on the Reserve. Some of the tribesmen have also taken to poaching elephants in order to sell their ivory. Last September, a young schoolboy named Jacob noticed that a baby elephant, just days old, was trustingly following him as he walked home. The elders in his village alerted the Rangers, who called us. We were able to arrange a flight to rescue Shaba and bring him here the next day.”
And so it went. Story after story, and usually with a common thread: poachers killing elephants for their ivory, and calves, too young to have tusks of their own, left wandering in the bush. About half a million elephants remain in Africa, but conservationists estimate that poachers take the lives of as many as 60,000 of these extraordinary animals every year. Without restrictions on the ivory trade, they predict, African elephants could become extinct as early as 2020.
The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) imposed a ban on the ivory trade in 1989, but granted permission to Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe to sell limited stocks of ivory to Japan in 1997 and 2002, when African elephant populations appeared to have stabilized. Not surprisingly, the easing of restrictions on ivory sales resulted in a dramatic up-tick in poaching throughout Africa. As the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust note in their literature, “As long as there is a demand for ivory, and a legal market for it, the story will not end. But the existence of the elephants will.”
Tanzania and Zambia recently petitioned CITES to lift the ban on ivory sales once again, but just yesterday, at the CITES meeting in Doha, the Convention’s delegates – led by the US, the EU, and courageous conservationists in Kenya – voted against lifting the ban.
“It’s welcome news,” Dr. Ian Douglas-Hamilton of Save the Elephants told reporters. “But my anxieties remain about the increased levels of poaching in Africa.”
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust does great work. If you would like to adopt an elephant of your own, you can do so by visiting the Trust’s website: www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org. A minimum donation of $50 will get you a “fostering certificate” with a profile and photograph of your adopted orphan, plus regular e-mail installments of a “Keeper’s Diary,” charting the progress of your baby elephant. Most important, you’ll have the satisfaction of helping save an endangered species. And speaking as Tano’s foster Grandpa, I can tell you, it’s a pretty good feeling.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
A Disease of the Soul
My return trip from Nairobi, Kenya took about nineteen hours, airport to airport, and I was exhausted by the time I arrived home. But I was delighted to sit down to a home-cooked meal with my family and share my experiences. Over a fresh salad, chops, vegetables and rice, we talked about hunger in Africa.
I’d flown to Nairobi to meet with a non-profit called the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Their mission is to modernize agriculture on the continent and, in so doing, help end the chronic hunger and starvation that claim millions of lives there every year.
At this point – the beginning of paragraph three – you’re probably tempted to stop reading this column. Please don’t. These are problems that you might think you understand, or think you’ve heard enough about, but you don’t and you haven’t.
For five years, back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, I served as Africa Bureau Chief for NBC News, and during that period I covered famines in Ethiopia and Mozambique, and visited rural farming communities in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South Africa. It was clear then that Africa was losing the battle against hunger. But in the past two decades, things have gone from bad to worse.
UN health and food organizations estimate that 25,000 people in the developing world die every day from hunger, malnutrition and related diseases. As Wall Street Journal reporters Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman point out in their book, Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, that’s the equivalent of sixty jumbo jets crashing every day. And fully half of these hunger victims are in sub-Saharan Africa, where close to half a billion people are undernourished.
The statistics are numbing, and that’s part of the problem. Like so many challenges in Africa, it’s tempting to put hunger and malnutrition in the “Too Hard” basket and move on to more tractable problems. Fortunately, powerful organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and African organizations like AGRA aren’t moving on. They’re tackling the challenge head on.
The Green Revolution began with the work of an agronomist named Norman Borlaug, who received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1942. Two years later, Borlaug was recruited by the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program to help Mexico increase its grain production. During his fourteen years with the program, Borlaug developed new varieties of high-yield, disease-resistant wheat that helped Mexico go from a net wheat importer to a net wheat exporter. In 1963, the Rockefeller Foundation sent Borlaug to India, where he replicated his success. Wheat production there increased from 12.3 million tons to 20.1 million tons in just five years. Borlaug moved on to Pakistan, and then to China, adapting the techniques of the Green Revolution to the specific soil and climate conditions he found in each country and region.
But Borlaug’s efforts foundered in Africa, where smallholder farmers, mostly women, struggled against both the natural elements (primarily drought) and an economic infrastructure that stymied efforts to improve crop production and profitability. To make matters worse, misguided environmentalists campaigned against Borlaug’s utilization of genetic crossbreeding and use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, the very techniques and products that had saved so many lives in Mexico, India, Pakistan and China.
“If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things,” Borlaug said of his critics.
The folks I met with at AGRA are trying to re-start the Green Revolution Borlaug began decades ago, but this time, they say, it will be a revolution with an African face. Led by its chairman, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and the organization’s president, Dr. Namanga Ngongi, AGRA is looking to reduce food insecurity by 50% in at least 20 African countries and double the incomes of 20 million smallholder families in the next decade.
These are ambitious goals, and it will take more than Gates and Rockefeller money for AGRA to achieve them. It will take a genuine commitment by Africa’s fifty-two nations to work together to defeat hunger and end starvation, and it will require the cooperation and collaboration of countries around the world – especially with regard to tariffs and farm subsidies – for Africa’s Green Revolution to succeed.
I left Africa on Wednesday evening convinced that AGRA’s goals were achievable, at least on paper. They’ve assembled a talented group of smart and experienced people to meet the challenge, and they have some powerful allies and champions. But it’s also clear that success will require a level of selflessness, generosity and commitment from nations and political leaders that has been, sadly, in short supply.
Volli Carucci, who works for the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia, observed that starvation is “something people in Europe and the United States have forgotten about." But Carucci, working on the front lines in the battle against hunger, said he couldn't forget. "Looking into the eyes of someone dying of hunger," he said, "becomes a disease of the soul.”
Norman Borlaug, the founder of the Green Revolution, died six months ago, at age 95, after a life of extraordinary achievement. When he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, it was estimated that he had saved more than a billion people from starvation. In accepting his award in Oslo he said, “Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of famine, as he has so often done in the past.” He concluded, “We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines.”
Forty years later, our criminal negligence continues.
It needs to stop.
I’d flown to Nairobi to meet with a non-profit called the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Their mission is to modernize agriculture on the continent and, in so doing, help end the chronic hunger and starvation that claim millions of lives there every year.
At this point – the beginning of paragraph three – you’re probably tempted to stop reading this column. Please don’t. These are problems that you might think you understand, or think you’ve heard enough about, but you don’t and you haven’t.
For five years, back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, I served as Africa Bureau Chief for NBC News, and during that period I covered famines in Ethiopia and Mozambique, and visited rural farming communities in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South Africa. It was clear then that Africa was losing the battle against hunger. But in the past two decades, things have gone from bad to worse.
UN health and food organizations estimate that 25,000 people in the developing world die every day from hunger, malnutrition and related diseases. As Wall Street Journal reporters Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman point out in their book, Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, that’s the equivalent of sixty jumbo jets crashing every day. And fully half of these hunger victims are in sub-Saharan Africa, where close to half a billion people are undernourished.
The statistics are numbing, and that’s part of the problem. Like so many challenges in Africa, it’s tempting to put hunger and malnutrition in the “Too Hard” basket and move on to more tractable problems. Fortunately, powerful organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and African organizations like AGRA aren’t moving on. They’re tackling the challenge head on.
The Green Revolution began with the work of an agronomist named Norman Borlaug, who received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1942. Two years later, Borlaug was recruited by the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program to help Mexico increase its grain production. During his fourteen years with the program, Borlaug developed new varieties of high-yield, disease-resistant wheat that helped Mexico go from a net wheat importer to a net wheat exporter. In 1963, the Rockefeller Foundation sent Borlaug to India, where he replicated his success. Wheat production there increased from 12.3 million tons to 20.1 million tons in just five years. Borlaug moved on to Pakistan, and then to China, adapting the techniques of the Green Revolution to the specific soil and climate conditions he found in each country and region.
But Borlaug’s efforts foundered in Africa, where smallholder farmers, mostly women, struggled against both the natural elements (primarily drought) and an economic infrastructure that stymied efforts to improve crop production and profitability. To make matters worse, misguided environmentalists campaigned against Borlaug’s utilization of genetic crossbreeding and use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, the very techniques and products that had saved so many lives in Mexico, India, Pakistan and China.
“If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things,” Borlaug said of his critics.
The folks I met with at AGRA are trying to re-start the Green Revolution Borlaug began decades ago, but this time, they say, it will be a revolution with an African face. Led by its chairman, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and the organization’s president, Dr. Namanga Ngongi, AGRA is looking to reduce food insecurity by 50% in at least 20 African countries and double the incomes of 20 million smallholder families in the next decade.
These are ambitious goals, and it will take more than Gates and Rockefeller money for AGRA to achieve them. It will take a genuine commitment by Africa’s fifty-two nations to work together to defeat hunger and end starvation, and it will require the cooperation and collaboration of countries around the world – especially with regard to tariffs and farm subsidies – for Africa’s Green Revolution to succeed.
I left Africa on Wednesday evening convinced that AGRA’s goals were achievable, at least on paper. They’ve assembled a talented group of smart and experienced people to meet the challenge, and they have some powerful allies and champions. But it’s also clear that success will require a level of selflessness, generosity and commitment from nations and political leaders that has been, sadly, in short supply.
Volli Carucci, who works for the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia, observed that starvation is “something people in Europe and the United States have forgotten about." But Carucci, working on the front lines in the battle against hunger, said he couldn't forget. "Looking into the eyes of someone dying of hunger," he said, "becomes a disease of the soul.”
Norman Borlaug, the founder of the Green Revolution, died six months ago, at age 95, after a life of extraordinary achievement. When he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, it was estimated that he had saved more than a billion people from starvation. In accepting his award in Oslo he said, “Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of famine, as he has so often done in the past.” He concluded, “We will be guilty of criminal negligence, without extenuation, if we permit future famines.”
Forty years later, our criminal negligence continues.
It needs to stop.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Lessons from the Pinewood Derby
My favorite possession is a wooden racecar about eight inches long and about two and a half-inches wide, plastic wheel to plastic wheel. It was originally glossy black, but it’s pretty scuffed up now and the paint is chipped and worn at the edges. An orange number 3 is painted on the tail.
My Dad and I made the car more than fifty years ago, when I was a Cub Scout. It was our entry in the Pinewood Derby, a father-son event that began in 1953 and has been an annual tradition ever since. Every spring, tens of thousands of Cub Scouts around the world enter their cars in local Derby matches, racing them down carefully constructed, regulation-grade wooden ramps in elimination heats that culminate in a final showdown race to determine the Pinewood Derby champ.
Our car started out as a block of pine, two wooden cross axles, four narrow plastic wheels and four one-inch steel nails. Our job was to shape the block of wood and the various bits and pieces into a racecar, then paint it and prepare it for competition. The Pinewood Derby kit came with a set of rules. You had to use the wheels supplied with the kit, for example, and the final weight of the car could not exceed a certain number of ounces.
My Dad and I knew what a real racecar should look like. Every September we’d go to the midget car races at the Allentown Fair and watch young hot shots drive scaled-down Indy cars around the fairground’s dirt track. It was loud and dusty for the spectators and frequently dangerous for the drivers (we usually saw a spinout or two, and sometimes a crash). But it was really, really fun. And it was something I did with my Dad.
So we tried to make Number 3 look like a real racecar, at least in its basic proportions. My Dad was a dentist (we lived upstairs, above his office) and he was good with his hands. He kept a few basic tools around the house, including a power drill. To shape the racer, he fitted a sanding disc to the drill and had me hold the drill steady while he pushed the pine gently against the abrasive surface.
We ended up with a handsome car, streamlined and sleek. We put a drop of oil on the hub of each wheel and tested it by racing it up and down the hallway. Then my Dad had a thought. He asked me to take the car down to Rader’s Market, a block and a half away, and ask the butcher if he’d mind weighing it. I probably made it there and back in under ten minutes.
“We’re light,” my Dad said, looking at the numbers the butcher had scribbled on a piece of paper. “If we can put some weight on this car, she’ll pick up speed down the ramp and we’ll have a better chance to win.”
My Dad took the sanding head off the drill and fitted a fat, quarter-inch bit in its place. He drilled four or five holes in the bottom of the car, then went down to the lab in his dental office and mixed up some amalgam. I just had some fillings replaced and I know that the material used today is a lot stronger, lighter, and safer than the amalgam my Dad used in the ‘50s. But this stuff was absolutely perfect for a block of pine in need of an extra ounce or two.
Again I raced down to Rader’s, but the car was still way too light. Another half dozen holes. More amalgam. Another trip to the market. Then more holes, and yet another dash to Rader’s.
When Number 3 was placed on the scale on Derby day, she weighed in at a fraction of an ounce under the maximum allowable weight. If you’d flipped her over, you would have seen seventeen neatly-filled “cavities,” still visible under a thin coat of black paint. She was fast and she was beautiful, and in heat after heat, she proved to be a winner.
What I remember most about that experience wasn’t winning the Derby, but the pleasure I had making that car with my Dad. He was young then, much younger than I am now, and he was busy building his dental practice and putting food on our table. But he always seemed to have time for me.
As the years went by, we put together electric train sets in the basement, and built gas-powered model planes that we flew in circles on the baseball field. We threw a softball in the backyard in the spring and a football in the fall.
I’ve been a father myself for about twenty years now, and I often reflect on all I learned from my Dad. He did so many things right, and I know I’ve often come up short by comparison. But I’ve always tried to be there for my daughters, the way he was there for me. It’s a lesson I learned from him and one I’m reminded of every time I glance over and see Number 3, chipped and worn, on the corner of my desk.
Don McLean, co-champion of the Pinewood Derby, will turn 88 on Sunday. He’s a great man and a great father. And twentysome years into his retirement, he’s still pretty good with his hands.
Happy Birthday, Dad.
My Dad and I made the car more than fifty years ago, when I was a Cub Scout. It was our entry in the Pinewood Derby, a father-son event that began in 1953 and has been an annual tradition ever since. Every spring, tens of thousands of Cub Scouts around the world enter their cars in local Derby matches, racing them down carefully constructed, regulation-grade wooden ramps in elimination heats that culminate in a final showdown race to determine the Pinewood Derby champ.
Our car started out as a block of pine, two wooden cross axles, four narrow plastic wheels and four one-inch steel nails. Our job was to shape the block of wood and the various bits and pieces into a racecar, then paint it and prepare it for competition. The Pinewood Derby kit came with a set of rules. You had to use the wheels supplied with the kit, for example, and the final weight of the car could not exceed a certain number of ounces.
My Dad and I knew what a real racecar should look like. Every September we’d go to the midget car races at the Allentown Fair and watch young hot shots drive scaled-down Indy cars around the fairground’s dirt track. It was loud and dusty for the spectators and frequently dangerous for the drivers (we usually saw a spinout or two, and sometimes a crash). But it was really, really fun. And it was something I did with my Dad.
So we tried to make Number 3 look like a real racecar, at least in its basic proportions. My Dad was a dentist (we lived upstairs, above his office) and he was good with his hands. He kept a few basic tools around the house, including a power drill. To shape the racer, he fitted a sanding disc to the drill and had me hold the drill steady while he pushed the pine gently against the abrasive surface.
We ended up with a handsome car, streamlined and sleek. We put a drop of oil on the hub of each wheel and tested it by racing it up and down the hallway. Then my Dad had a thought. He asked me to take the car down to Rader’s Market, a block and a half away, and ask the butcher if he’d mind weighing it. I probably made it there and back in under ten minutes.
“We’re light,” my Dad said, looking at the numbers the butcher had scribbled on a piece of paper. “If we can put some weight on this car, she’ll pick up speed down the ramp and we’ll have a better chance to win.”
My Dad took the sanding head off the drill and fitted a fat, quarter-inch bit in its place. He drilled four or five holes in the bottom of the car, then went down to the lab in his dental office and mixed up some amalgam. I just had some fillings replaced and I know that the material used today is a lot stronger, lighter, and safer than the amalgam my Dad used in the ‘50s. But this stuff was absolutely perfect for a block of pine in need of an extra ounce or two.
Again I raced down to Rader’s, but the car was still way too light. Another half dozen holes. More amalgam. Another trip to the market. Then more holes, and yet another dash to Rader’s.
When Number 3 was placed on the scale on Derby day, she weighed in at a fraction of an ounce under the maximum allowable weight. If you’d flipped her over, you would have seen seventeen neatly-filled “cavities,” still visible under a thin coat of black paint. She was fast and she was beautiful, and in heat after heat, she proved to be a winner.
What I remember most about that experience wasn’t winning the Derby, but the pleasure I had making that car with my Dad. He was young then, much younger than I am now, and he was busy building his dental practice and putting food on our table. But he always seemed to have time for me.
As the years went by, we put together electric train sets in the basement, and built gas-powered model planes that we flew in circles on the baseball field. We threw a softball in the backyard in the spring and a football in the fall.
I’ve been a father myself for about twenty years now, and I often reflect on all I learned from my Dad. He did so many things right, and I know I’ve often come up short by comparison. But I’ve always tried to be there for my daughters, the way he was there for me. It’s a lesson I learned from him and one I’m reminded of every time I glance over and see Number 3, chipped and worn, on the corner of my desk.
Don McLean, co-champion of the Pinewood Derby, will turn 88 on Sunday. He’s a great man and a great father. And twentysome years into his retirement, he’s still pretty good with his hands.
Happy Birthday, Dad.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Playing for the Devil
Dwayne Carter is headed to prison and, I have to say, I won’t miss him. “Lil’ Wayne,” as he’s known – or “Weezy” to his friends – is a rap artist whose album, “Tha Carter III,” was the top selling album in 2008. Carter pleaded guilty to felony gun charges for possession of an unlicensed handgun in New York City and was sentenced to a year in prison at Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday. He’s also wanted for felony drug possession and weapons charges in Arizona, so he may have more legal troubles ahead of him.
I have a wonderful relationship with my two daughters – I’m incredibly fortunate – but the biggest arguments I’ve had with them, hands down, have been about rap music. I think it’s toxic, and they think… well, it’s probably better for me not to characterize their points of view. Suffice it to say, they like to go to parties and dance, and rap music has been a big part of the dance scene for a decade or more. I understand that. But – and here’s where the arguments start – I think that rap music, apart from its dance beat, conveys messages that are misogynistic and anti-social. The lyrics, as far as I can tell, celebrate gun violence, drug use, criminal behavior and sexual exploitation of women. And based on what I’ve seen and read, it appears that the financial and social success that rap artists have enjoyed as a result of their popularity has made them role models for a generation of young African American men, many of whom have turned their backs on education and responsible relationships with women for the “hip hop life.” But then I’m a middle-aged white guy from the suburbs, so my credibility on this subject is probably somewhere close to zero.
As I’ve reflected on my arguments with my daughters about rap music, I’ve come to believe that my disapproval, and parental disapproval in general, is probably an important part of rap’s appeal. Rap wouldn’t be very exciting for my kids if mom and dad played it at home. And not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s plainly hypocritical for those of us in the Woodstock generation to complain about the music our kids enjoy. (I don’t think my own parents were too thrilled to turn on the radio and hear “Let’s Spend the Night Together” or “One Toke Over the Line”). Music provided a soundtrack for rebellion in my generation, and there’s no reason to suspect that things have changed much for kids today.
When you’re young, there’s something irresistible about things that are dangerous. I picked up on this when I was a little boy growing up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, listening to early Rock ‘n Roll playing on the loudspeaker at the local swimming pool. Pat Boone was boring. Jerry Lee Lewis was dangerous.
I recently found a clip of Jerry Lee on You Tube and played it for my younger daughter, who is a senior in high school. The video featured “The Killer” performing on a British television show in the early to mid-sixties, several years past his heyday and looking fairly ridiculous as he pounded out “High Heeled Sneakers” in the midst of the proper-looking British kids who were dancing around his piano. My daughter thought the performance was somewhere between gross and laughable, but I thought it was terrific.
Jerry Lee has led a colorful, and not always happy life. He’s almost 75 now, and he’s been married six times, once, notoriously, to his 13 year-old first cousin, once removed. One of his wives drowned in a swimming pool and one died of a drug overdose, and one of his six children drowned when he was only three years old, and another son, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jr., was killed in a car accident at age 14.
Lewis envied the greater success and popularity of Elvis Presley, and was once arrested when he showed up drunk and disorderly at 3 a.m. at the gates of Graceland, waving a loaded gun and demanding to see The King. Later that same year, The Killer made news again when he was playing around with a loaded gun and accidentally shot his bass player in the chest. So when Jerry Lee sings “I’m gonna take my pistol Baby, cause some cat might wanna fight” in High Heeled Sneakers, he has some credibility.
Jerry Lee Lewis had grown up as a poor but God-fearing southern boy in eastern Louisiana. In a story I found on the Internet, a friend of Lewis’s, Peary Green, remembered him getting expelled from school after he played some “worldly” music at a church assembly. Years later, Green asked Lewis, “Are you still playing the devil’s music?” And Lewis said, “Yes, I am. But you know it’s strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I’m playing for the devil and they don’t.”
Casablanca Quiz Answers:
In a previous post I included a trivia quiz for fans of the movie Casablanca. Answers below:
1. Rick’s last name
Answer: Blaine
2. The bartender’s name at Rick’s Café Americain
Answer: Sascha
3. Maiden name of Ilsa
Answer: Lund
4. Ilsa’s home town
Answer: Oslo
5. Amount Louis bets Rick that Victor Laszlo will not leave Casablanca
Answer: 10,000 francs (Rick proposes 20,000, but Louis insists they bring it down to 10,000 because “I’m just a poor corrupt official.”)
6. Color dress Ilsa was wearing when the German’s marched into Paris
Answer: blue (“The Germans wore grey, you wore blue,” Rick remembers).
7. Name of Signor Ferrari’s bar
Answer: the Blue Parrot
8. Name of Rick’s bar in Paris
Answer: Le Belle Aurore
9. City where Victor Laszlo was arrested by the Germans and put in a concentration camp
Answer: Prague
10. The kind of water Louis drinks
Answer: Vichy
11. The winning roulette number for the lucky Bulgarian refugee
Answer: 22
12. Name of the town Louis suggests he and Rick retire to at the end of the film
Answer: Brazzaville (currently the capital of the Republic of the Congo, but then the capital of French Equatorial Africa)
I have a wonderful relationship with my two daughters – I’m incredibly fortunate – but the biggest arguments I’ve had with them, hands down, have been about rap music. I think it’s toxic, and they think… well, it’s probably better for me not to characterize their points of view. Suffice it to say, they like to go to parties and dance, and rap music has been a big part of the dance scene for a decade or more. I understand that. But – and here’s where the arguments start – I think that rap music, apart from its dance beat, conveys messages that are misogynistic and anti-social. The lyrics, as far as I can tell, celebrate gun violence, drug use, criminal behavior and sexual exploitation of women. And based on what I’ve seen and read, it appears that the financial and social success that rap artists have enjoyed as a result of their popularity has made them role models for a generation of young African American men, many of whom have turned their backs on education and responsible relationships with women for the “hip hop life.” But then I’m a middle-aged white guy from the suburbs, so my credibility on this subject is probably somewhere close to zero.
As I’ve reflected on my arguments with my daughters about rap music, I’ve come to believe that my disapproval, and parental disapproval in general, is probably an important part of rap’s appeal. Rap wouldn’t be very exciting for my kids if mom and dad played it at home. And not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s plainly hypocritical for those of us in the Woodstock generation to complain about the music our kids enjoy. (I don’t think my own parents were too thrilled to turn on the radio and hear “Let’s Spend the Night Together” or “One Toke Over the Line”). Music provided a soundtrack for rebellion in my generation, and there’s no reason to suspect that things have changed much for kids today.
When you’re young, there’s something irresistible about things that are dangerous. I picked up on this when I was a little boy growing up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, listening to early Rock ‘n Roll playing on the loudspeaker at the local swimming pool. Pat Boone was boring. Jerry Lee Lewis was dangerous.
I recently found a clip of Jerry Lee on You Tube and played it for my younger daughter, who is a senior in high school. The video featured “The Killer” performing on a British television show in the early to mid-sixties, several years past his heyday and looking fairly ridiculous as he pounded out “High Heeled Sneakers” in the midst of the proper-looking British kids who were dancing around his piano. My daughter thought the performance was somewhere between gross and laughable, but I thought it was terrific.
Jerry Lee has led a colorful, and not always happy life. He’s almost 75 now, and he’s been married six times, once, notoriously, to his 13 year-old first cousin, once removed. One of his wives drowned in a swimming pool and one died of a drug overdose, and one of his six children drowned when he was only three years old, and another son, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jr., was killed in a car accident at age 14.
Lewis envied the greater success and popularity of Elvis Presley, and was once arrested when he showed up drunk and disorderly at 3 a.m. at the gates of Graceland, waving a loaded gun and demanding to see The King. Later that same year, The Killer made news again when he was playing around with a loaded gun and accidentally shot his bass player in the chest. So when Jerry Lee sings “I’m gonna take my pistol Baby, cause some cat might wanna fight” in High Heeled Sneakers, he has some credibility.
Jerry Lee Lewis had grown up as a poor but God-fearing southern boy in eastern Louisiana. In a story I found on the Internet, a friend of Lewis’s, Peary Green, remembered him getting expelled from school after he played some “worldly” music at a church assembly. Years later, Green asked Lewis, “Are you still playing the devil’s music?” And Lewis said, “Yes, I am. But you know it’s strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I’m playing for the devil and they don’t.”
Casablanca Quiz Answers:
In a previous post I included a trivia quiz for fans of the movie Casablanca. Answers below:
1. Rick’s last name
Answer: Blaine
2. The bartender’s name at Rick’s Café Americain
Answer: Sascha
3. Maiden name of Ilsa
Answer: Lund
4. Ilsa’s home town
Answer: Oslo
5. Amount Louis bets Rick that Victor Laszlo will not leave Casablanca
Answer: 10,000 francs (Rick proposes 20,000, but Louis insists they bring it down to 10,000 because “I’m just a poor corrupt official.”)
6. Color dress Ilsa was wearing when the German’s marched into Paris
Answer: blue (“The Germans wore grey, you wore blue,” Rick remembers).
7. Name of Signor Ferrari’s bar
Answer: the Blue Parrot
8. Name of Rick’s bar in Paris
Answer: Le Belle Aurore
9. City where Victor Laszlo was arrested by the Germans and put in a concentration camp
Answer: Prague
10. The kind of water Louis drinks
Answer: Vichy
11. The winning roulette number for the lucky Bulgarian refugee
Answer: 22
12. Name of the town Louis suggests he and Rick retire to at the end of the film
Answer: Brazzaville (currently the capital of the Republic of the Congo, but then the capital of French Equatorial Africa)
Sunday, March 7, 2010
We'll Always Have Casablanca
If you saw the movie Shakespeare in Love you might have been struck by how popular "the theatre" was to the commoners back in the late 1500s. Similarly, if you saw Amadeus you might have reflected on how important the opera was to the hoi polloi in Europe back in the late 1700s. The theater in Shakespeare's era, and the opera in Mozart's, were the popular art forms of their day. And as you were watching Joseph Feines, Gwyneth Paltrow and Tom Hulce up on the big screen, you might have reflected on the fact that you were enjoying the popular art form of our day: the movies.
And tonight, of course, is Movie Night. The Academy Awards.
I have my own favorites -- for Best Picture (The Hurt Locker), Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker), Best Actor (Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart) and Best Actress (Carey Mulligan in An Education) -- but I suspect the Motion Picture Academy will think differently about at least some of these choices. It doesn’t matter. It’ll be a good show and we’ll all be talking about it tomorrow morning.
Thinking about the movies got me to dusting off a list of Favorite Films that I’ve kept on my computer for years. It’s too long to reprint here (more than 90 films), and it contains a lot of titles that would probably appear on almost everyone’s Top 100 (The Godfather, Saving Private Ryan, Citizen Kane, It’s a Wonderful Life, etc.). But it also contains some quirky films and some smaller films that I consider gems, like The Great Santini (with a tour de force performance by Robert Duvall), and Nightmare Alley (maybe Tyrone Power’s best work). My list includes what my wife and daughters call “guy films,” like Gladiator, The Right Stuff, Tombstone and Braveheart, but it also contains movies we all enjoy, like Top Hat, Jerry McGuire, Father of the Bride and Little Miss Sunshine.
My list of favorite films includes a few that you might have to go to an art-house theater to see, like Fellini’s La Strada, and Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, but most of the titles are shamelessly middlebrow and mainstream. The movies are the people’s art form, after all.
As I’m looking down my list I realize that it includes some movies that were undeniably great, but that I’ll probably never watch again (The Deer Hunter and Gangs of New York come to mind), as well as a few films I’ll watch almost anytime they pop up on one of the movie channels, like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Cinderella Man, and Get Shorty.
But there’s one film I know I’ve seen more than any other, and that’s Casablanca. I first saw it when I was a sophomore in college and I’ve probably seen it twenty times since then. I remember that I was hooked on it from frame one. As the film opens, a globe spins in the mist and an announcer’s voice intones…
“With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the great embarkation point. But not everybody could get to Lisbon directly, and so a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up… Paris to Marseille… across the Mediterranean to Oran… then by train, or auto, or foot, across the rim of Africa… to Casablanca…”
Casablanca is a great war movie, a terrific love story and (by the end, at least) a classic buddy picture. Bogart’s Rick is a character right out of Hemingway, and Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa is one of the most beautiful leading ladies ever to appear on the silver screen (and it was silver back then). Sure the movie is corny and clichéd, but that’s part of its charm. Millions and millions of people have seen Casablanca, and millions of us have seen it more than once. It won Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Curtiz) and Best Screenplay in 1943, and in my view it might be the best picture of all time.
Every Casablanca lover knows that neither Rick nor Ilsa ever actually said, “Play it again, Sam.” But even dedicated fans might not know that the film's writers, Philip and Julius Epstein, are the only twins to ever win an Academy Award. (I had to look that one up).
So for all of you who think you know all there is to know about Casablanca, here’s a not-ridiculously-difficult trivia quiz to test your knowledge. If you’ve seen the film ten or more times, you should get all of these right. If you’ve seen it fewer than ten times, well, then I guess you’ve got some catching up to do…
1. Rick’s last name
2. The bartender’s name at Rick’s Café Americain
3. Maiden name of Ilsa
4. Ilsa’s home town
5. Amount Louis bets Rick that Victor Laszlo will not leave Casablanca
6. Color dress Ilsa was wearing when the German’s marched into Paris
7. Name of Signor Ferrari’s bar
8. Name of Rick’s bar in Paris
9. City where Victor Laszlo was arrested by the Germans and put in a concentration camp
10. The kind of water Louis drinks
11. The winning roulette number for the lucky Bulgarian refugee
12. Name of the town Louis suggests he and Rick retire to at the end of the film
Answers will be posted in my next column. No prizes will be awarded, but everyone who answers all twelve questions correctly is entitled to a smug and well-deserved sense of self-satisfaction.
Final note: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman never made another movie together. But as every Casablanca lover knows, they always had Paris. And we’ll always have Casablanca.
And tonight, of course, is Movie Night. The Academy Awards.
I have my own favorites -- for Best Picture (The Hurt Locker), Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker), Best Actor (Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart) and Best Actress (Carey Mulligan in An Education) -- but I suspect the Motion Picture Academy will think differently about at least some of these choices. It doesn’t matter. It’ll be a good show and we’ll all be talking about it tomorrow morning.
Thinking about the movies got me to dusting off a list of Favorite Films that I’ve kept on my computer for years. It’s too long to reprint here (more than 90 films), and it contains a lot of titles that would probably appear on almost everyone’s Top 100 (The Godfather, Saving Private Ryan, Citizen Kane, It’s a Wonderful Life, etc.). But it also contains some quirky films and some smaller films that I consider gems, like The Great Santini (with a tour de force performance by Robert Duvall), and Nightmare Alley (maybe Tyrone Power’s best work). My list includes what my wife and daughters call “guy films,” like Gladiator, The Right Stuff, Tombstone and Braveheart, but it also contains movies we all enjoy, like Top Hat, Jerry McGuire, Father of the Bride and Little Miss Sunshine.
My list of favorite films includes a few that you might have to go to an art-house theater to see, like Fellini’s La Strada, and Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, but most of the titles are shamelessly middlebrow and mainstream. The movies are the people’s art form, after all.
As I’m looking down my list I realize that it includes some movies that were undeniably great, but that I’ll probably never watch again (The Deer Hunter and Gangs of New York come to mind), as well as a few films I’ll watch almost anytime they pop up on one of the movie channels, like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Cinderella Man, and Get Shorty.
But there’s one film I know I’ve seen more than any other, and that’s Casablanca. I first saw it when I was a sophomore in college and I’ve probably seen it twenty times since then. I remember that I was hooked on it from frame one. As the film opens, a globe spins in the mist and an announcer’s voice intones…
“With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the great embarkation point. But not everybody could get to Lisbon directly, and so a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up… Paris to Marseille… across the Mediterranean to Oran… then by train, or auto, or foot, across the rim of Africa… to Casablanca…”
Casablanca is a great war movie, a terrific love story and (by the end, at least) a classic buddy picture. Bogart’s Rick is a character right out of Hemingway, and Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa is one of the most beautiful leading ladies ever to appear on the silver screen (and it was silver back then). Sure the movie is corny and clichéd, but that’s part of its charm. Millions and millions of people have seen Casablanca, and millions of us have seen it more than once. It won Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Curtiz) and Best Screenplay in 1943, and in my view it might be the best picture of all time.
Every Casablanca lover knows that neither Rick nor Ilsa ever actually said, “Play it again, Sam.” But even dedicated fans might not know that the film's writers, Philip and Julius Epstein, are the only twins to ever win an Academy Award. (I had to look that one up).
So for all of you who think you know all there is to know about Casablanca, here’s a not-ridiculously-difficult trivia quiz to test your knowledge. If you’ve seen the film ten or more times, you should get all of these right. If you’ve seen it fewer than ten times, well, then I guess you’ve got some catching up to do…
1. Rick’s last name
2. The bartender’s name at Rick’s Café Americain
3. Maiden name of Ilsa
4. Ilsa’s home town
5. Amount Louis bets Rick that Victor Laszlo will not leave Casablanca
6. Color dress Ilsa was wearing when the German’s marched into Paris
7. Name of Signor Ferrari’s bar
8. Name of Rick’s bar in Paris
9. City where Victor Laszlo was arrested by the Germans and put in a concentration camp
10. The kind of water Louis drinks
11. The winning roulette number for the lucky Bulgarian refugee
12. Name of the town Louis suggests he and Rick retire to at the end of the film
Answers will be posted in my next column. No prizes will be awarded, but everyone who answers all twelve questions correctly is entitled to a smug and well-deserved sense of self-satisfaction.
Final note: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman never made another movie together. But as every Casablanca lover knows, they always had Paris. And we’ll always have Casablanca.
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