Quick recap: In 2008 building inspector Wingard issues a permit for the largest house in town at 8333 square feet. Neighbors immediately sue, putting the project in jeopardy, you would think, but nothing daunted, the Klines proceed full speed ahead. State courts rule in 2010 and 2011 that Wingard’s permitting logic to the contrary, tripling the size of the existing house cannot be construed as a “alteration” without stretching that term unacceptably out of shape. Given this ruling, the town in January orders Wingard to order the house torn down. Kline appeals are filed.

At this point, the house still stands; the town says it will not act to enforce the demolition order until legal issues are sorted out. There is a ZBA hearing on May 21.

The controversial house has been endlessly debated in letters to local papers. A popular argument declares the house anathema because it sits in the so-called Hopper View, what the famous artist whose cottage sits nearby saw out of one of his windows, the assumption being that he would have been disgusted at the sight of the Kline house. (A dubious assumption, given a lot of Hopper’s subjects.)

The bigness of the Kline house is held against it. The modest little Hopper cottage arouses underdog sympathies.

But are smaller houses in fact intrinsically more virtuous than big ones? Not to everyone. Somebody wrote a letter to the “Provincetown Banner” claiming that the architected Kline house is a lot better looking than the Hopper house. “If I were the Klines, I would be suing to tear down that ugly old Hopper house that’s spoiling their view.”

But the actual legal issue here has little to do with what an artist used to see out his window or the relative virtue of big vs. little houses. It’s really just about the meaning of the term “alteration”. But the controversy triggered goes beyond the legal details. What it comes down to finally is old-fashioned class struggle: the working and middle-class that created the traditional modest, unadorned look of this town versus a wealthier class and its lifestyle, values, and ostentatious architecture. Or as we might put it now, it’s the architecture of the 99% vs. that of the 1%.

This is a fight that neighboring Wellfleet fought recently and, in the eyes of most, won, when town meeting enthusiastically voted in zoning restricting house size. Wellfleet’s Kline house was the infamous Blasch house sited prominently on on a spit of land in the National Seashore . Was the Blasch house bad architecture? Actually some people admitted, if sheepishly, rather liking it. But in context it seemed to many arrogant–not the architecture per se but the social and economic meaning of it. It stood out like a sore thumb.

The Blasch house shoehorned its way in but it ended up being, in theory anyway, the last house of trophy house size when we legislated a more modest aesthetic.

Truro and Wellfleet have always felt like outer Cape sister towns, but in this crucial issue there are indications we may be parting ways, taking different routes into the future . In special town meeting last November Truro citizens failed to vote in proposed size restriction zoning.

If the anti-Kline house sentiment indicates a widely shared desire to discourage a change of town character in the direction of oversized, big-money housing, Truro is being pretty relaxed about putting that feeling into law.

Last year the Kline neighbors, also with pretty n ice houses, agreed to drop their suit, in exchange for some nice perks, including a deeded path to the beach. It is to be hoped that the town will not be swayed by what seems like the selfishness of this deal. With its mandate from the state court, the town has its own stake in seeing justice done. From south of the Wellfleet-Truro border I’m rooting for Truro’s ZBA to have the courage to follow through on the demolition order and demonstrate that big bucks and its architecture can’t always have their way.

Yeah, I know, everybody changes the world in one way or another. With the politicians and generals and CEOs, the movers and shakers, it’s easy to see the big effects they create: a far-off nation is bombed, an interest rate changes and a Wall Street index jumps like a seismograph needle.

But to most who knew him, Robert J. (as we took liberties with his name) was only a voice. And what’s in a voice? How does a radio announcer transform the world?

Robert J. had a deep rich voice, as has been often remarked. But it was not so much that unique texture or timbre—voiceprints are all unique, I’m told—as h ow he used it as an instrument to tweak our expectations of that hackneyed self-parody of a field, the the classical music program with its unctuous, museum-like narrative.

One of Robert J.’s trademark innovations was a decision not to use his voice. Instead of starting the program with the usual sort of voiced introduction, or even with music, which itself have been innovative, he eased into things with an indefinite session of birdsong.

What an idea—letting nature introduce art, cardinals and thrushes and song sparrows open for Mozart or Bach.

And then, all in good time, would come the seque of lilting, spring-like music—I never got the name of the piece—softly at first, then seeming to get closer, like the first human up and about in the morning, maybe a faun skipping toward us through a meadow. Robert J., of course, coming to lead us on the morning’s meander through the music.

But not before setting a certain tone for the day with his own story of the news. He insisted on editing and reading it himself, instead of an official news pro, preferring not to segregate the arts from the real world.

The words never deviated from journalistic objectivity, but the voice—the darkening and lightening, the pregnant pauses—said worlds about our world. The most lasting impression is of profound deliberateness. Nothing was glossed over. Anything worth saying at all was worth giving its proper emphasis. Here was a human being to guide us not only through the fields of music but the day’s main events.

Robert J. would also do the weather. It would often enough annoy me (with my emotional dependence on warm temperatures and bright skies), that voice, by seeming perversely to lend energy to the nastiness of typical New England weather: yes, cold rain this morning, all day, most probably tomorrow and into the forecastable future. No false hope here, no obligatory hint at light at the end of the tunnel. But also in the rendering of that forecast the implication that if the sun never shone again, we would, with our host and musical selections, muddle through. The human spirit does not, finally, depend on the vagaries of the weather.

What’s in a voice? In this voice the simple, and yet—in this era in which flawless, glib delivery is the standard of excellence for radio announcers—radical insistence on being a real voice. He grumbled, he rumbled, he paused. (A Lurtsema pause was hardly “empty air,” but rather filled with the man puzzling something out.) In place of the typical radio “personality” without personality, here was a believable person.

Our host, while never seeming to throw his arm, in a manner of speaking, around the shoulders of musical heroes nevertheless asserted the right to inhabit the same world. He was a voice which took the music out of the museum and returned it to the light of day. In a voice, even more, or at least more intimately and viscerally than with the history-making moves of the politicians and generals, is all of life reconfigured, given another flavor, another feel.

A voice like Robert J.’s persisting over the decades in a key spot in our lives inserts a new possibility into history, a new wrinkle into the human repertoire. A new resource in the spiritual arsenal.

What’s in a voice, this voice? It comes down to this: music matters, details matter, people matter. What you do makes a difference.

]]> http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/2012/05/the-difference-a-voice-makes-op-ed-cct-5-july-2000/feed/ 0 http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/2012/05/school-bullying-in-a-bullying-world-op-ed-cct-1-may-2012/ http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/2012/05/school-bullying-in-a-bullying-world-op-ed-cct-1-may-2012/#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 22:58:23 +0000 Brent http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/?p=333 Presumably the heralded new movie “Bully” will soon be in local theaters, punctuating a period of heightened interest in this subject. Stopping the evil of bullying in schools has been one of the hot topics in the last couple of years.

In Massachusetts a lot of the discussion was triggered by the suicide of South Hadley teenager Phoebe Prince which led to the recently implemented law requiring schools to implement anti-bullying programs. There have also been a number of high-profile cases of cyber-bullying, homophobic and other bullying brought to public scrutiny.

The anti-bullying movement is a heartening and overdue phenomenon. But there is a troubling disingenuousness to a lot of the publicized concern. News stories present evidence of bullying as if it were a result of ignorance and simple inadvertence on the part of adults in charge in schools and at home. It’s as if we’re all just innocent bystanders puzzled by this phenomenon: What’s this you say? Bullying in the schools? Why that’s terrible. How can our schools allow such a thing? If we had but known …

But of course since K-12 is a passage of life we all go through, we don’t need the proliferating reports of bullying to have a pretty good idea of what goes on there, what has always gone on at that level of society. K-12 has, compared to later life, a bit of the feel of an underworld, beneath the gaze of teachers, operating by less civilized rules than post-school life. When we emerge at age 18 into the light of the adult world suddenly there’s a rule of law. People who pick on other people, at least in the middle-class world I live in, are treated like criminals. We have policemen to do our fighting for us.

Bullying has always been officially condemned, but a widely held idea has always provided a certain amount of unofficial acceptance if not approval. De facto tolerance is based on the idea that K-12 is not just about book- learning, it is a social proving ground and if life is a little tough for kids, including dealing with bullies, it serves the positive function of toughening them for life beyond school. This idea was and for all I know still is found in such standbys as “You’ve got to learn to stand up for yourself, son.” “Don’t go telling tales; you’ve got to learn to fight your own battles.” “Life is hard, you’ve got to learn to be tough.”

In other words, life itself is a bully and school is where, once out of the nursery, you learn to cope with it. It is shocking to see in a novel such as Thomas Hughes’ “Tom Brown’s School Days” the extent of the cruel, institutionalized bullying accepted in 19^th century British schools as preparation for later life.

My guess is that at least some readers of this will say at least to themselves, Well, what’s wrong with that? That ‘s simply true. Life is tough. You do need to learn not to take —-.” Some parents may well see their responsibility to act as stand-ins for the world as ultimate, inescapable bully: the world as boss, the world as a lousy, debilitating job, the world as death and taxes and other inevitabilities; to toughen their kids up for a hard, bullying world that will try to beat you down.

How many parents are there out there feeling less outraged that bullying still survives in schools than that their own kid has learned to cope with it?

It is to be hoped that through all the publicity and institutional intervention bullying is being rapidly made into such downright repulsive behavior it will soon be a thing of the past. But as with domestic abuse we know it’s not so easy. To the extent that school-as-proving-ground feelings are still common it will b e hard to make much real headway against the phenomemon.

Oh, the decadence.

It’s been 15 years or more since stories began to appear about the vacation gap between Old and New worlds. Expanding leisure time had always been a key ingredient of the superior standard of living America bragged about. It was something of a shock to be told that those whose continent had not long before been in ruins from World War II were now working shorter weeks and getting three times the vacation of their American counterparts.

The average American vacation has actually been shrinking in recent decades. It’s down to something less than two weeks. Compared with those decadent Europeans, we have become a nation of workaholics.

A lot of us here on the Outer Cape are rather French ourselves in our attitude toward vacation. We believe in vacations—the longer the better. Our financial investment in the seasonal tourist frenzy is only part of it. Lifestyle is, if anything, more important. Many of us don’t believe in a life dominated by work in the usual sense (i.e., work done just to make money). Surrounded by a national park, we make a point of mixing a generous sprinkling of vacation in every day of the year.

We are, of course, grateful that many of our summer visitors, in order to afford their week or two among us, subscribe the rest of the year to a regimen of 60-hour weeks and two-income families. Many of us pulled out of that scene for fulltime access to the best things in life that, as the old song goes, are free.

What better time than high summer tourist season, with ants and grasshoppers temporarily cohabiting vacationland, to debate the question: How much vacation should there be? Are we born to work or to play? What ratio of work and play works best?

We all know what all work and no play makes Jack and Jill a dull couple. But is a frantic two weeks of all-out pursuit of recreation enough to change that? Would J and J be better off with the six-week European vacation (and long weekends) disparaged by Friedman?

I’m talking, of course, of the sort of work defined by contrast with weekends, vacations, retirement. We work to live, as the saying goes, to pay the bills. But, as the saying goes on, we don’t live to work, most of us. We live to play, if we’re lucky, for two weeks on Cape Cod. This sort of work—let’s call it the Type A variety—is what we look forward to stopping ASAP, in the form of an early retirement, with as much life left in us as possible for non-work.

Those relatively few who insist on Type-B work, that is, whatever it is you would do anyway even if it didn’t ay money, don’t retire. They just go on doing what they love to do, what gives their life meaning, as long as they are able to.

Clearly a society that can arrange for you to live decently and do less Type-A work is doing better than one that goes on requiring 40 or more h ours a week, 50 weeks a year for most of your years.

I like to think the Outer Cape has more than our share of those committed to maximizing the role in our lives of the creative, inherently rewarding Type-B work; and wangling as much time off as possible from inescapable Type-A work to enjoy our ponds, beaches, restaurants and galleries.

In the advertising game they talk of sizzle and steak. The point being that of the two, it’s a lot easier to sell the sizzle. Sarah Palin is all sizzle and since she was unveiled at the Republican convention has remained an easy sell, even as journalists have scrambled to reveal the steak itself. A woman, an attractive woman, an outdoorsy attractive woman–sizzle.

Handsome, rugged husband, so secure in his masculinity that a bit of Mr. Mom looks good on him. Hockey mom, special needs kid. All sizzle.

Even her wayward 17 year old pregnant daughter works as sizzle: Hey, everybody knows teen hormones can get out of hand. Republicans can be human. Who knew?

Palin. Better than Viagra for a flaccid campaign. And all sizzle.

Even the outrageous irresponsibility of choosing such an inexperienced person for the vice president most likely to become president of any VP choice in history is part of the s izzle. (Imagine the old guy being proving capable of such a shoot-from-the-hip move. Are these Republicans a wild-and-crazy bunch or what?)

Sensing that it’s McCain’s only chance, the Republicans have attempted to reduce Obama to sizzle too, a celebrity on the level of Paris Hilton, a carismatic bubble now deflating.

Steak and sizzle. We better hope we get clear in next few weeks which is which.

Sizzle: appealing woman looking to crack the glass ceiling.

Steak: her ideas, which would reverse the gains made by women in the past 40 years.

Sizzle: Palin as breath of fresh air, something new under the political sun.

Steak: a conservative package, including creationism and other fundamentalism more retrograde than McCain himselfor, for that matter, Bush.

Sizzle is the Republican party high on Palin.

Steak is the Republican record of the last eight years: the lowest ever ratings for getting us into a war on false pretenses, for making our name mud , when not a laughing stock, around the world., for attempting to legitimize torture, for suspension of civil rights, for what many think are indictable war crimes. That’s a big hunk of rotten meat currently stinking up the place.

Sizzle: Palin and her father figure posing as as reformers and outsiders promising to put something much more appetizing on the plate.

Steak: the fact that McCain has supported 95% of the Bush era, including the centerpiece of the war, and the likelihood that he will continue, for lack of any better ideas, an itchy trigger-fnger with regard to Iran, healthcare as usual, the assault on Roe v Wade, favoritism toward corporations and the long-stagnant wages of the middle class.

Republicans have tried to depict Obama’s obvious virtues as all sizzle. But in fact they are filet mignon: his obvious intelligence, his articulateness and ability to think on his feet, his carisma, will all be a huge advantage, in the tradition of FDR and JFK, in inspiring the country and re-constructing our reputation abroad.

Finally, perhaps more reliable than the campaign rhetoric of either party, there ‘s the steak of history: What are the basic ideas that separate the two parties? What do Republicans tend to do? What do Democrats tend to do? What party produced the social security reforms of the Depression, the checks on corporations? Which has traditionally been identified with civil rights and worker rights? What party, the last time it had the chance, balanced the budget and cut the rise of the national debt?

Sizzle and steak. An electorate that can’t tellor doesn’t care aboutthe distinction is in big trouble.

]]> http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/2012/04/the-sizzle-and-steak-of-the-election-op-ed-23-september-2008/feed/ 0 http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/2012/04/sacrificing-for-the-greater-good-or-not-op-ed-cct-17-april-2012/ http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/2012/04/sacrificing-for-the-greater-good-or-not-op-ed-cct-17-april-2012/#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2012 06:00:13 +0000 Brent http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/?p=330 In recent years we’ve bought ourselves a lot of nice items here in Wellfleet. Expensive, but nice. A quantum leap of a DPW facility, $7.68 million worth of state-of-the-art fire station, a beautiful senior center about 10 times as big as the old one, a spiffy remodel of the pier with perimeter promenade for taking in views of the harbor, a complete reconstruction of town icon Uncle Tim’s bridge; just last year world class sidewalk job for Main Street. I’m probably forgetting some.

The population has scarcely grown in the 12 years or so bracketing those purchases, but insofar as quality of life is measured in such things, we 3000 or so citizens certainly have a much higher quality of life now than then.

The warrant for town meeting (Monday, 23 April, 7 pm; be there or be square) proposes several more improvements: more new sidewalks and other beautification efforts ($590,000), composting bathrooms at Mayo Beach ($790,000), a new town office building ($300,000).

All worthy stuff and all we have to do is decide whether we can afford that price. If all three of these articles pass the first year’s boost in taxes for a house of average value will be around $73. Sounds like a bargain.

But in a sense we don’t really know the price. Our finance committee is worried about the 6.5 million in capital items predicted for 2014 to 2018 “placing a heavy burden upon the taxpayer.” It seems like it’s the finance committee’s job to worry about that. But you hear it a lot., the assumption that “we” are suffering from rising taxes, that “we” are living above our means. But the fact is that although my taxes have gone up several- fold, I would not say I am suffering, exactly. In fact nobody I know seems to be suffering from over- taxation in any but a poetic sense. If they are, they’re not letting on. So: who is actually suffering?

In Falmouth, the individual people who are suffering from nearby wind turbines are well known. The only question for that town’s selectmen and citizens is: is it OK for The People, the town, to pay for a desired outcome—saving on electric costs–by sacrificing the health and quality of life of some of its citizens?

Maybe it’s not actually an established principle that its OK to sacrifice a minority for what we like to think of as “the greater good”–a new jetport or superhighway–but we do it.

In Mexico you know some of the people who are suffering because they are crumpled against buildings begging. (Not a good advertisement, it always seems to me, for prevailing social arrangements.)

But in Wellfleet if the ‘we” who can afford all this stuff is an abstraction, so is the “they” who can’t afford it.

The big selling point in the debate over the new fire station was how it was needed to better “serve” the townspeople. But are there some of us who are not being served? That $7.68 million price tag breaks down , according to the fact sheet, to $113 a month for 20 years for a $500,00 (pretty average) house. Is that really inconveniencing anyone? Is there anybody who really needed that $113 per month? Or the $73 for the items we will be voting on this time? Any people who are eating poorly or not getting their teeth fixed or being foreclosed on for lack of it? Whose health and welfare are worse because of the construction of this building dedicated to health and welfare?

It’s a cliché to mention the growing tax burden, but burden on whom, and how will they hurt? If we don’t know who is actually hurt by this spending we don’t really know the price.

Maybe we’d rather not know. Maybe it would feel embarrassing to put names on a list. But we should at least be thinking about it in town meeting when deciding whether “we” can afford this or that amenity, improvement. What is the real cost to actual people? And is the greater good good enough?

It came to mind in connection with the controversy over the Danish cartoons and the muslim reaction to them. Can’t a cartoonist, who is paid to make fun of everything, make fun of a religion? Well, of course he can; he has a perfect right. But the current situation would seem to expose the limits of the old saying.

The philosophical underpinning of the rhetorical question about the cat and the queen is contained in another bit of wisdom from one’s early years: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Since the cat isn’t really hurting the queen, she is being unreasonable in objecting to being looked at by him. Of course, as the cartoon controversy shows, the names vs. sticks and stones d ichotomy is wrong in suggesting a clear distinction between real weapons and mere words. Sometimes, words can hurt more than sticks and stones.

The Danish cartoonists say: Hey, wait a minute, we didn’t hit you with sticks and stones or shoot you. This is only a cartoon, for heaven’s sake. Argue back with cartoons of your own, if you want, but all this torching of embassies and threatening our lives is pretty tacky. You guys are so sensitive.

The Muslims say: Those cartoons hurt more than sticks and stones. But since words apparently have no power to hurt in your culture, we will have to behead you to make the point.

The assumption behind all this uproar is that had Party A been a little more sensitive, had Party B been a tad less sensitive, all this pain and conflict could have been avoided. But it is naïve to think that the exercise of freedom of expression can be so simple and pain-free—and not just dealing with a culture lacking the separation of church and state.

Over 10 years ago, responding to a murder/rape/suicide just off Cape, I wrote a column about the responsibility of a community to let the angry men in its midst know just how unacceptable and downright unattractive bullying is. The morning the column appeared, I answered the phone to venomous obscenities: “Why you ——. What is this —- you wrote?” Surprise! It was an angry man—that’s how he identified himself.

He was calling to let me know that my uncomplimentary comments about his kind didn’t sit well with him. Having exhausted his supply of names, he moved on to threats of sticks and stones. I was shocked. I learned that I had been naïve to think I could just have my say against angry men without arousing some of that anger against myself.

The lesson is not that the angry man was in the right to call or that I should relinguish my right to freedom of expression but that it doesn’t help to be naïve in my exercise of it. Why bother to write if the words don’t hit home, perhaps with the force of sticks and stones? And if they do, don’t be surprised if people respond in kind.

It was a terrible ordeal for Salman Rushdie when he fearfully hid out all those years of the fatwa against him. But it was perhaps naïve of him to think the Muslims he had hurt with his uncomplimentary portrayals of their religion, however indispensable to his novel, would turn the other cheek (wrong religion, for one thing).

Neo-Nazis have the legal right to demonstrate and to flaunt their obscene ideas. (I feel safer saying that here and now than I would have in Germany in 1937.) But, given the history of those ideas, for them to expect a meticulously law-abiding response from those whom those ideas grievously wound—that’s naïve and stupid.

“Use your words,” is the standard parental advice to their kids in the settling of playground disputes. It’s what we want to say to violently demonstrating Muslims. But it’s naïve to think that we get to dictate the choice of weapons.

The cat can look at the queen, sure, but there may be unforeseen consequences.

]]> http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/2012/04/free-expression-has-built-in-risks-15-feb-2006-cct-15-february-2006/feed/ 0 http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/2012/04/rethinking-the-running-movement-op-ed-cct-3-april-2012/ http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/2012/04/rethinking-the-running-movement-op-ed-cct-3-april-2012/#comments Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:02:39 +0000 Brent http://www.brentharoldjournal.com/?p=318 On April 16 the famous Boston marathon will be run once again. 30 thousand or so people will be heroically pounding the hell out of their joints over 26.2 paved miles, almost all for the sheer fun—and celebration of health and vigor—of it. They will be widely admired by millions of other runners and couch potatoes alike.

In 1897, the first year the race was run, there were 18 entrants. Until the mid 1960s this biggest marathon in the world, one of the few at that time, attracted at best a couple of hundred participants. For those relatively few even aware of it, it was less a model or heroic event than a curiosity: a handful of skinny, marginal types for no good reason exhausting themselves running through the streets in their underwear.

It’s hard to believe that there ever was a time BF, before the fitness phenomenon, in which running has played a large role, a time when we didn’t spend hours a week running in circles, bouncing in place, sitting on stationary bike putting in the digital miles over digital hill and dale, or other unproductive expenditure of energy. But until the late ’60s, most men (running was not considered ladylike for women) felt they had performed enough heroic exertion earning a living (by the sweat of their brow, as it was put in those days) when not saving the world in a war.

Starting with the “running boom” of the 1970s, the number of runners rose exponentially, as did the number of marathons staged over the world. Running became a “movement.” Suddenly there were herds of executives issuing forth from office buildings, using their lunch hour to get in five miles. Jim Fixx, who wrote books about the running way of life, declared completion of a marathon to be permanent protection against heart attack. (The great irony of his own death of a heart attack at age 52, while running, did little to slow down the movement’s momentum.) Running was talked of as a “positive addiction” and pre-prozac antidote to depression.

Suddenly the nation was on a giant fitness kick, getting healthier and healthier, smugly comparing itself to the drinking and smoking and couch potato generations BF.

For decades, running the marathon has been considered one of the most heroic things an ordinary citizen can do, perhaps even more than fighting in one of the wars America has specialized in over this same period. Now: many millions,whether runners or not, share the assumption, almost axiomatic, that it’s good for us.

And yet there is reason, 40 years in, to doubt the virtue of all this running. If running (and fitness in general) is supposed to create a healthier America, why the obesity epidemic of the past couple of decades? We are told that we have never been so fat and unhealthy. You could say that they are two different populations, the exercisers and the fatties. That may be, but on average, population wide, the latter seem to be winning out.

And it’s a good bet that a good portion of the current epidemic of joint replacement is in fact the toll the exercise movement has taken on the aging bodies of its adherents, chickens coming home to roost now to the tune of a quarter of a million hip replacements and equal number of knee jobs every year.

In a “Runner’s World” (name of a magazine that has come along way with the movement), certain questions don’t get asked: If running the marathon (and putting in the hundreds of miles needed to prepare for one) is not, however heroic, a model for sensible exercise, what is? You don’t get a lot of credit for being an exercise hero for a half hour walk every day or two, but is there any evidence we need more than that, especially when damage to joints is factored in?

While we’re questioning assumptions, what’s the effect on the national psyche of the belief that a heroic five or 10 (or 26.2) mile run is an acceptable substitute for heroism ( creativity, meaning, calories burnt) at work, in family or civic life?

There was a letter in a local paper late last summer about why dogs should not be allowed on beaches. “I reminded one lady of the regulation [about picking up after recreating pets] and she said, ‘I pick up after my dog. I said, ‘We pick up solids from our cat’s litter box, but I would not expect you to lie down in the box.’”

The writer concluded: “Dogs do not belong on any beach where humans sunbathe. I personally do not want to sit or lie in someone’s dog sandbox…even after the solids have been removed.”

Good point, graphically made, I thought. But then I don’t own a dog.

The human race can be divided many ways—mountains vs. ocean vacationers, folders vs. scrunchers of toilet paper, those ashamed (or not) of belonging to the same species as Rush Limbaugh. But one of the most interesting is dog owners vs. non-dog owners.

And it’s not peaceful coexistence. Hence all the stories in the paper of constant friction between the two cultures. Dogs should or should not be allowed on this or that beach. Dogs should always be on a leash. Dogs should be allowed to run free on this or that beach. Dog owners do or do not clean up after their pets. That pit bull should be put down for mauling that kid vs. “don’t blame the dog, it’s the owner’s fault.” And on and on.

Ten thousand years into our long association with domesticated wolves, a large portion of us own dogs; an even larger p ortion of us don’t. According to the Humane Society about two-thirds of Americans manage to get along without what one-third considers an indispensable accoutrement to life. To many of the one-third it goes deeper than that. Dogs provide a form of companionship not even available with fellow humans, a life-affirming connection.

To the rest of us, not so much. Dogs often represent loud noise, unwanted attention, and the real possibility of being bitten. The Wikipedia article estimates that 2% of the population, or 4.7 million people, get bitten every year. Only 26 fatalities result from those bites (on average the last few years). But still…

Here’s a stab at how the two sides of the dog culture divide look at each other:

To dog people non-dog people are : uptight, untrusting, and downright heartless– at least those who fail the test of enjoying the attentions of their dog. What’s wrong with people who just don’t get it about dogs? There’s obviously a huge chunk missing from their souls.

To the dogless dog people are : needy (otherwise why would they put up with the indignity of following along behind their companion picking up poop); bossy (they must love getting to say “down boy,” “fetch,” “no, Bowser, heel boy” and all the other classics of dog conversation); and insensitive (“Oh it’s fine. My dog jumping up on you is just his way of saying howdy”).

At least some have skewed priorities. There was a story in the paper last October about how dog owners were organizing to influence San Francisco politics. Since dogs outnumber children 150, 000 to 108,000, the thinking goes, when it comes to budget conflicts it’s only democratic to push city government to put the welfare of your dog over that of your neighbors’ children.

San Francisco aside, what about the politics of dog-owning? How does the left/right dichotomy map onto dog/nondog? Despite what you might think would be a 2-1 advantage for the non-dog candidate, According to Wikipedia’s survey of White House p ets, dog-owning (like baby-kissing) is de rigueur for presidential hopefuls of either party.

Both constituencies are too large for the other to ignore but peaceful co-existence is not in the cards either. With spring and a renewal of the battle for the beaches, we may expect more stories of the dysfunctional dog culture divide.

Time to come clean: I’ve been in Mexico. As much as anyone actually gets away these days, given the internet apron strings.

My main motivation, of course, like that of many another gringo, was to get away from the northern winter. But I’ve been noticing that the warmer more clement weather comes with, of all things, a country attached. A country, it turns out, of 115 million people.

Mexico, the place that gives “went south” its meaning. Confronting my own fantasies of this cultural rorshach, I’ve been reading around in a fat history of the country from the library of our rental (T.R. Fehrenbach, “Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico”), cross-referencing with Wikipedia.

What I’ve found is that Mexico’s long history since the Spanish conquest, over a 100 years before Europeans established a beachhead in our part of the world, is a panorama of suffering on the part of most of the people occupying this land.

At the start of the 20^th century, 80 years after independence from Spain, according to Fehrenbach, only 3% of rural families owned any land. “The quality of life was miserable and hopeless: filthy, overcrowded huts, an unbalanced, monotonous, meager diet, ever-constant death, disability and disease…..the survivors of infancy had little to look forward to but their parents’ misery…. Periodic protests were suppressed with force.”

And those were the good old days, well along in the 35- year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, celebrated for stability and great advances.

“Yet,” according to Fehrenbach, “ the miracle was that the…Mexican peasant was not a surly dog . . . or a man choked by an eternal rage. He had a deep and sensuous grasp of life and his humanity, an acceptance of what might be, and a marvelous dignity that let him make music even on his knees. Somehow the Mexican could not quite be dehumanized.”

Better music on your knees, I guess, than no music at all.

There followed, as a corrective one might think, the revolution of Villa and Zapata. But most of a century after that, as recently as 1995, when this history was updated, “the tragedy of Mexican history” continued. “The problems [of 100 years earlier] remained unsolved.” “At least sixty percent of the people within the Republic’s borders … were still dispossessed, living more or less as the dispossessed had lived for four centuries. ..poor, remote, apathetic people who expected very little and received it.”

But straining for an upbeat conclusion: the people were “humble as only the Mexican poor could be, but people with enormous strength to endure. . . .The lesson is that people endure, and enduring, may yet hope to prevail.”

Good luck with that, was my reaction. Is there any evidence that the meek actually do inherit the earth?

In a Foreword the author addresses his likely readers north of the border: “The people of the United States like to believe that political will and good intentions can solve most human dilemmas. They often find it hard to understand Mexicans, who know better. And Mexicans are baffled by people who lack a timeless, tragic view of life. Yet both peoples have something to learn from each other.”

This a period in the U.S. in which many of what we now think of as the 99%, are experiencing considerable disillusionment about the efficacy of those “political will and good intentions” . Perhaps it is easier for us since 2008 to understand long-suffering Mexicans. Whether, as this author suggests, there is profit for us in learning a tragic view from Mexicans is a question.

Fehrenbach repeatedly praises the Mexican character as a sort of tough, all-weather carpetting which gets walked all over but somehow endures. As depicted here it seems almost a genetic endowment. This gringo wonders what that depiction contributes, as self-fulfilling prophecy, to the endurance of the tragedy of unresponsive government and dispossessed people.

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