Dog vs. Bird Watcher

Dog vs. Bird Watcher

"We aren't used to using animals to augment our strength and speed. We used them to extend ourselves not reflect ourselves." I wrote this on May 23rd on Facebook in response to an essay about poet Longfellow. Today animals reflect who we are. Today we have machines to augment our speed and strength.

I think the statement, "We used them to extend ourselves not reflect ourselves." is apropos for the Bird Watcher-Dog Incident in New York's Central Park. Amy, the culprit, would have reacted the same way whether the man was Black or White or whether the person was a woman or man. Because in Amy's mind, her dog "reflects who she is", hence the man was attacking her personally, her identity, and in today's identity based hierarchical status value system, identity is extremely important. Amy defended herself as a woman; the Bird Watcher later would defend himself as a Black Man. Both were instrumentalized by a postmodern defense construct. To their credit, they were playing from the same deck but the Bird Watcher was holding the trump card...he was Black.

Amy had an unleashed dog, a park violation; because an unleashed dog represents freedom, that is, untethered liberty even though that untethered liberty might literally bite somebody. I have to wonder whether or not Amy is a Trumpist since she was a high level finance administrator. She probably saw the unleashing of the dog as an unlocking of the economy and breaking the park rule as her way to protest and resist the tyranny of common sense. She probably saw the Black bird watcher as a liberal progressive. The incongruent perception of a Black man as a bird watcher probably caused her to have a mental reboot which threw a monkey wrench into her machinery that prevented her from gauging consequences. She panicked and went into a frenzy like a child denied her own way. "I'm going to tell my daddy." So she calls the police.

Amy's dog reflected the person she is the same way pit bulls reflect the aggression of young Black men. When I see a pit bull, I am afraid. I wonder about the outcome and publicity had the situation had been reversed. Had a young Black man with an unleashed pit bull encountered the Bird Watcher, what would have been the Bird Watcher's reaction? Would he have chastised the young Black man for having an unleashed pit bull? I doubt it unless he was willing to swallow his teeth. Amy reacted without violence. She acted like a woman. She drew on all her prior knowledge, all the ways she learned to get her way with her big brother, to defend her dog, her self-hood, and probably her political beliefs.

I wonder how a young Black man with an unleashed pit bull would have defended himself against the Bird Watcher. I wonder if the Bird Watcher would have made the incident viral had it been with a young Black man and a pit bull. Probably not, because that would have been a self-deprecating wound; one Black demeaning another Black plus since the Bird Watcher would have gotten his ass kicked, the incident would have compromised his manhood and judging from the photo montage from the New York Times essay exhibiting the Bird Watcher's big arms and Rainbow Flag, I would imagine that compromising his manhood would have been the last thing he wanted.

The real issue in this case is the personification of animals not racism. A culture that treats animals like people is a declining culture. I refer to the decline of Rome; Caligula made his horse a senator. Hey! That's not a bad idea.

I wonder who will be hurt the most by this event; Amy a woman who behaved like a little girl; or the bird watcher, a man who behaved like a woman.

Plasmic Thoughts

Plasmic Thoughts

I can come close to God

when I see the bottom of a river

or lift a lightening bug

that has lit upon the grass.

Or watch a plasmic wave of heat

rise above a field

of geometrically cut wheat.

Or remember the day I held my father's leg

and begged him not to beat me

while my mother made her famous cookies

and laughed at me in the kitchen.

I have open ears to the crying child;

I can hear him when I'm thinking;

or when I'm dreaming about the river

sinking but still breathing.

It is God's way of reminding me

part of living is forgiving.

I share the pain of the child

resolved to accept a beating.

Defending Chester County

https://delawarevalleyjournal.com/can-we-just-be-honest-about-the-philly-suburbs/?fbclid=IwAR3DIxhXS-JR-0pV3gsLo6nXE9sCsiQcEEyR4ZNdc4bJ4YzGQgq-zjzfy9I

Chris Stigall is a radio talk show host. He wrote a piece for Delaware Valley Journal “Can We Just Be Honest About The Philly Suburbs?” (May 8, 2010).

5/16/2020: I had a chance to listen to Stigall's show on Thursday, May 14th. I wrote the piece below on my blog, Defending Chester County, on 5/9/2020. A friend emailed me the article and I posted it to one of my Facebook group's pages, All about Chester County. I posted Stigall's piece there because he speaks directly about Chester County. I made no comments on Stigall's piece; I just posted it. Subsequently, I was banned from commenting or posting on the group's pages for 24 hours. I messaged the moderator but got no response. I have since left the group. 

My wife and I were driving up 322 into Lancaster County. I listened to Stigall until Radio 990 faded out. The station's signal became weaker the farther west we went.  After listening for about an hour I thought to myself Stigall does not portray himself very well in the Journal piece. If you read the piece out of the context of Stigall himself, you might think he is a freaking Nazi. He isn't. He is a Christian and he talks Christian values, authentic Christian values, during his show. For one thing, he mentioned going to church. That's a giveaway right there. I still disagree with Stigall and I, as a writer, regret the allusions that he uses. I think they are out of character. By posting the absurd comments of a caller, Stigall is identified with the caller just as I posting Stigall am identified with Stigall.

----------------

A caller into Stigall's radio show inspired him to write the article for the Journal. Stigall's bias leaning to the Right is evident in the article. Stigall says that the caller expressed the "disconnect between working class Philadelphians and their suburban, upper-middle class expatriate peers." What Stigall calls "working class Philadelphians" are White guys from South Philly; what he means by "suburban, upper-middle class expatriate peers" are the same White guys who left South Philly (and their South Philly brogue) for West Chester after college educations at Drexel, Villanova, or St. Joe's. I say West Chester because Stigall goes on the attack against Chester County and West Chester, today, is the heart of Chester County. 

I say "today" because I'm from Coatesville. Coatesville is literally the heart of Chester County set logistically in the middle of one of the most affluent counties in the United States. But being from Coatesville I would never dream of moving to West Chester. I would be a fish out of water. Why would I escape to a place I have been trying to escape from all my life. That's a real working class attitude. We make no excuses about how much our working class surroundings have oppressed us but we certainly don't feel that being ostentatious makes us any better. And that's the difference between a South Philly White guy who moves to West Chester and a Coatesville White guy who stays home.

The caller to Stigall's radio show said, “There’s no greater tyrant than the white, suburban soccer mom. They move out of the cities, and as long as they’ve got bike paths, Whole Foods, and SUVs — everyone else can burn in Hell.” 

A proud South Philly friend of Stigall's told him that suburbanites"are the people who allow politicians like Wolf to tear us apart.”

Stigall finds it difficult to disagree with his caller. I guess he would since he obviously is anti-Wolf. I find the comparison between White, suburban soccer moms and tyrants absurd; and it isn't Wolf who is tearing apart the working class and the upper middle class. That was begun forty years ago by Ronald Reagan, Maga the First, with his attack on unions. The Republicans gave the blue collar union guy a choice; his pocketbook or his country. This is how unselfish and patriotic that guy was. He chose his country but on the Republican Party's terms. The working man hasn't had an increase in real wages for forty years.

White, suburban soccer moms aren't tyrants. The greatest tyranny we face today are the lost generation young people who feel a nonchalant, violent and aggressive contempt and derision for anybody outside their friendship circle who is not one of their associates in the drug trade, sexual proclivities, binge playing video games, guns, and antisocial music. They are the condition that underscores the narrative in the city, the suburbs, and rural areas of Pennsylvania when it comes to revitalization, education, and real estate. And who is to blame for the tyranny of youth...for one, the Left, who ever since the mid-sixties has patronized delinquent, miscreant youth by legitimizing popular culture and elevating it to the same level as high culture and creating a cult for every identity group who spews an anti-western vitriol. On the other hand you have the Right, who promulgate living the American Dream that greed is good. When everything is seen through the lens of the business model nothing is as important as money. The result is young, entrepreneurial  Black males killing each other in their communities to gain a greater market share of turf and young White males touting AR-15's, tattooing their foreheads, and seig heiling statues of dead Confederate soldiers in hopes that out of the granite, the manufacturing job that their father had will magically be conjured up; a job that was exported to China when he was still a toddler.

So you see...I am no friend of either Left or Right.

Stigall then takes the opportunity to attack Governor Wolf for not restoring our constitutional liberties: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I didn't know they had to be restored because I don't feel like they have ever been taken away. But just let me note that the fist constitutional right is life; the second is liberty. My life matters more than all the money in the world and if that isn't true then nobody's life matters. As the poet Dylan Thomas writes about counting the innocent dead during the London Blitz, "After the first death there is no other." And John Donne: "any man's death diminishes me."

Stigall describes suburbanites as “detached, graduate school, educated elites who have a disdain for the very society and culture that allowed them to succeed and thrive in the first place." Wow! What a grand generalization. Perhaps, those South Philly White guys do disdain South Philly. Something must stink there for so many to leave and for Stigall to pay so much attention to their leaving. Shouldn't Stigall be more interested in the diaspora than soccer moms? I will grant that Lukens Steel Company was the backdrop of my success but on the other hand that blue collar, mill-rat mentality did its best to hold on to me. It was due to my own volition that I broke away. Likewise, shouldn't those who escaped South Philly to the suburbs get some modicum of respect?

Why is it that Mr. Stigall feels that because of the decisions I have made in my life that have helped me live a “better life” than somebody else that now I somehow have to feel his pain and feel guilty because I don't have to worry as much as he does?

The key is to accept responsibility for the decisions you've made that have put you in your present position and not to criticize me for being better off than you are. That working class South Philadelphian, friend of Stigall, ignored opportunities in his past. He made his choices. I made my choices. I was no genius Southie like Will Hunting who could drink and fight all night and then ace an impossible math equation. I stayed at home Sunday afternoon before my final exam on Monday morning at 7:45 and studied while that proud South Philadelphian watched the Eagles, drank beer, and tried to score with the girl up the block. Does this make him a hero? In his neighborhood, maybe, but not in mine. As Will would ask, "Do you have anything original to say or if you have a problem with that, we could take it outside?"

Rejection...Why I am quitting Facebook

In the Introduction of my recently published book Leftovers, I write about what Nietzsche calls one's greatest weight. Everyone has this weight or burden although most haven't characterized it as a meme in their lives. You might hear somebody say, "Why does this always happen to me?" That's their great weight. You might call it a chip on their shoulder. Many laugh about that chip as if it were some kind of psychological quirk or paranoia. But, remember the adage, even a paranoid person has enemies? Others who are semi-conscious of their meme might blame their mothers, bad luck, or the lack of fairness in the world.  The cause of this weighing down is not necessarily due to bad habits, most often the weighing down is due to one's boldest strivings against a world that might think we are overreaching. I remember being turned away from a junior high school dance at the Coatesville Country Club because a guy at the door didn't like my hat. I've never gone back to the Coatesville Country Club

I think I have been rejected, especially in my hometown, because of where I come from. Mother functionally illiterate, father handicapped. I like to describe myself as trailer trash with a brain. Those of us from the dregs of society are a threat not so much to the upper classes but to the bourgeoisie who need to step on others to get a peg up on the status ladder. This is why the nouvoriche are so detestable and old money understandable. 

In horse racing, a horse must carry a specified weight based on factors such as past performance, so as to equalize the chances of the competitors.  Rejection equalizes the chances of my competitors. I think we can make an analogy between the conditions put down for a horse race and the human condition especially in a world that wants to draw us downward to the mean. This weight of which Nietzsche speaks might be the world's way of keeping our feet bound to the ground so that we don't think we can soar with the gods like Icarus.

For Nietzsche one's greatest weight is an event that recurs in our lives. I wrote that rejection was the recurring event in my life and that it is best to embrace one's weight with joy. One's recurring event is the measure by which one has overcome; a mark of strength and character.  One's recurring event is not always easily recognized. Sisyphus' recurring event, most think, is the pushing the boulder up the side mountain only to have the huge stone fall back and thus the eternal repetition of pushing it back up is his life's weight. That's not the case. Sisyphus' recurring event is that he never finds a mountain high enough for his boulder not the boulder itself. Sisyphus loves the weight of the boulder just as the horse loves to run. 

Here are selected excerpts from the Introduction to Leftovers:

Rejection

For those of us with character (êthos), there is an event that recurs in our lives. It is what Nietzsche calls one's greatest weight (The Gay Science, Aphorism 341). For me, it is rejection. I share this weight with many famous people who have been rejected. I am in good company. I don't need to name them but they end up heroes and geniuses and hated in their time. 

I was baptized with rejection when my mother cried that she wanted a girl when I was born. She told me she shouted to the doctor, “Put him back. Put him Back.” The doctor slapped her across the face and me across my ass and said, “Emma, you have a beautiful boy.”

Those of us with character can’t escape our recurring event. It emerges from our subconscious and plays with us in dreams...No matter what we do, we cannot prevent the eternal recurrence of this event. My event is rejection and I embrace it. I have learned to love it like a horse learns to love the whip. Horses feel euphoric when they run; and when they are near exhaustion and feel their rider's whip they climax.

God's mistake. Born outside of nature after God's pit stop visit and his great escape. An anomaly. Quirky. The world would have preferred a muffled heartbeat at birth or a cut cord to bleed me out. A boy I was not meant to be. What an inconvenient shouldn't be. And if I would have been born of a different uncle, I would have been much more manly, much more army and navy, a three chord country ballad rather than Bernstein Gershwin symphony combined orchestral. Too complicated but just as White but still a second to the first born child; an after thought for my father's side.

I always thought there was something wrong with me. Something I said. Something I did. A slip of the tongue. Speaking out of turn…

I have been plagued by rejection since birth. I wait for it. I know it’s on its way. It hides in the hedgerow with white eyes. It always surprises me when it finds me and I limp away like a wounded animal howling, cursing the earth and myself. Perhaps, it comes in a letter, a phone call, an email, or in the first meeting with your new boss. It comes every time I write something. It's the self-inflicted wound when I ask someone to read something I've written. Oh, how I love it!  

Maybe, rejection comes with a knock on the door in a special delivery or in a policeman’s question. Maybe it comes when a neighbor shouts, “Nobody likes you! Why don't you move!” I wouldn’t want to prevent it. It is the event that defines who I am. A rejection. One of the love-less rejected. As long as I am rejected, I am winning my battle against the world. I am a better Christian. If rejection is the world's only weapon, I could be a greater conqueror of men than Alexander and a greater builder of temples than Solomon…

This brings me to the topic at hand...I was rejected by my own. I was rejected again. I came face to face with my weight, my recurring event. It confirmed and validated what I had written.

Why I am Quitting Facebook

I rejoined Facebook about a month ago after about six years. After six years I had forgotten why I left Facebook but after one month of being back on it, I remember why I left it. I left because the people I wanted to get in touch with, folks from my high school, the people I liked, hadn't changed very much. High school might be the only place where a person can like somebody, but the other person not like them and it be OK. That kind of up-down relationship is understood at the high school level. As you get older, relationships become more valuable so if a person likes you, be they your superior or subordinate, that's a relationship you want to cultivate and nurture not lose. What I found was that my classmates still had the same attitudes, still had the same up-down perspective, and seemed to be in the very same cliques they were in in high school. Everyone wanted to be what they were, not what they had become. Instead of revealing how they had grown, they wanted to show how they were the same as they used to be. That's OK if you're trying to be nostalgic but not OK, not even palatable, if you are trying to be condescending.

In between the time I left Facebook and my return to Facebook, my class had our 40th reunion. I wasn't contacted but was told about it. We couldn't make it to the 40th reunion at the Moose but I was able to make the after party at the Thorndale Inn. I received a mixed reception when we arrived at about 11:00 PM. As I walked into the Thorndale Inn a classmate spotted me and began to loudly hurl insults. "Look. Here's Richard Beck. He can come here but he couldn't come to the reunion." Then, later on, when my wife and I went out on the dance floor to dance, we found ourselves all alone as every one stopped dancing and returned to their seats when we went out on the floor. We continued to dance as if nothing was happening. I knew I was the same class pariah that I had always been and in a way it gave me a sense of security. I belonged because I didn't belong. If I wasn't the one who didn't belong then they would have to find somebody else who didn't belong. I wasn't sure whether anyone could play the part as well as I could so I was happy to play it. I had a place, role, just like everyone else.

Since rejoining Facebook, I have been attempting to join my High School Class Group. Yes, that same group who received me so well at the Thorndale Inn. In fact it was the first thing I did when I rejoined Facebook. I went looking for my high school class group. My classmates and I are all around 65 years old; that endangered species in the middle of a plague. I thought, if there ever was a time to bury the hatchet, to be adults, genuine and authentic, to reflect upon all we have gained, all we have lost, what might have been etc. etc....this might be the last opportunity.

My class group is a private group so I had to request to join. Over of a period of about a month, I tried to join the group three times. As I said I was very sincere about bonding with these folks. The first time I tried to join I received no response but I waited. You know, like checking your checking account for your Covid-19 money to come. I withdrew my request. I waited then I tried a second time. No response. It was at this point I felt like little Chava, Tevye's youngest daughter, in Fiddler on the Roof --- I was being shunned. Would they ever bend for me a little bit? I withdrew the request and waited then tried a third time. No response. 

Then today, I received a message. My soul jumped with joy. The door is open. Was I being anointed? Then, I read it:

Hi, Rich- there seems to be some confusion, maybe only in my mind, about you. You have another profile which I used to mes sage you a couple of years ago, but never heard back from you. Did you graduate with us? If so, I’ll be happy to add you to our group! This virus stuff has put us behind the eight ball as far as birthday party planning and we haven’t begun to plan for the re union next year, but hopefully soon!

Before I posted this essay, I phoned my sister to get her response to the situation. She said that social media can be very cruel. She said that the person who sent you the FB message probably has her yearbook right next to her. There is no excuse for her not looking up your name in the yearbook before asking if you graduated “with us.” She advised me not to respond; but that if it made me feel better, I should post this response to my blog as a sort of essay. She said the essay is very good. So that is what I did.

I would like to ask this person who by the way, I know, a couple of questions. I won't mention her name because I'm not into embarrassing people like she is: “There seems to be some confusion about you.” and “Did you graduate with us?”

1. How many Richard Becks are there in our class?

2. Do you remember I spoke with you personally at the after party at the Thorndale Inn about why we couldn't attend the Moose?

3. What the hell are you talking about? Birthday parties?

Last, I know Richard Beck wasn't a popular guy in high school but he was very well known, in fact, unforgettable if you met him; he was outspoken; he had a kind of bravado that's called Short Person's Syndrome. 

You have met him before but most importantly...here he is now. He has given you 1805 words. You are documented in history. You are forever part of this writer's portfolio. I don't think anybody in our senior class has ever given you so much. You have made your contribution to the social narrative of postmodern, plague infested America. You've just met Richard Beck again. Still confused?

until we can find it

until we can find it

april is not a poet's month

what we thought we'd mastered

we found we've lost

i'll take a winter's worth

at creative cost

before i'd give april

a penny's worth of second thoughts

april is a time to plow and seed

a time of water, mud, and expanding bees

a time for baseball players to dream

a Koufax or Gibson perfect season

april is a time of the hand not the mind

a time to do and not to rhyme

daughters dress in brighter colors

shoulders and navels go uncovered

they dance around with seldom lovers

the one who’s lost is the one who’s jealous

the farmer's market and roadside stand

amish girls sit on the running boards claim

a beardless boy to drive the buggie home

after the sunday go-to-meeting psalms

a crocus is the sweepstakes winner

first to pass the test of winter

afterward the trees grow green

and i lose my feeling

for philosophical reflection and poetics

poorly read and poorly measured

my verse stands out apathetic

competing with the apple blossom,

flowering pear, and okame cherry

offside, offset, and out of rhythm

my sleepy words profound only

in their contemptible lack of meaning

as commerce lifts front porch voices

we scratch the bark to see who's living

vines begin to cover stockade fences

dogs extend their masters' leashes

behind old walls spinsters whisper

and plot new troubles for the neighbors

a poet needs a frosty morning

not walk barefoot like a postmodern jesus

perhaps i'll spend some time at the beach

before the tourists take their leases

read sartre on the bay at havre de grace  

the sunrise crimson on the chesapeake

wearing sandals with a velcro lace

no, i'll buy flowers, abandon verses

oxydol clean my dirty vases

buy my wife a dozen roses

mow the grass, fertilize bushes

wait for the return of the muses

did they fly north or remain down south?

or perhaps they sought a water-spout

to summer home their afternoons

and loon their evenings in dreary song

it must have been the weather, no doubt,

that confused their navigator's whereabouts

i can hear the wind but i can’t describe it

my feel for things i cannot see

have somehow turned to real life things 

like the two for ones at the acme,

having enough gas for summer grillings, 

or late night oaths so unfulfilling

a poet needs a frosty morning

not daffodils and nesting robins

they are all quite distracting,

debilitating, and irritating

perhaps they are best for novelists

whose words portray settings missed

the green hue blushes blur my eyes

as if too sleepy to sleep the hour wise

april is not a poet's month

young girls throw kisses and poets die

old lovers cross and feign surprise

someone giggles and we realize

that all we have ever really wanted 

hides behind leaves until we can find it.

2015

Critique of Price's Essay

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/k12_ten_lies_teachers_tell_you.html

Critique of Price's Essay...10 Lies Teachers Tell You
Phonics vs. Whole Language

Here's a perfect example of the Nietzsche saying, “There is some truth even in the greatest lie.”

Here are Price's 10 lies:

This is a lie 1. Everything Is Hunky-Dory.  

Price is correct. 1/1. Education is far from perfect; far from where it was in 1965 when we switched from a content-centered curriculum to a student- centered curriculum.

This is true. 2. We Do Teach Phonics.  

Price is incorrect 1/2. Teachers still teach phonics. Schools and school districts might have a whole language philosophy but any teacher worth their salt doesn't give a fuck about what some administrator says when it comes to the best interest of their kids.

This is true. 3. No One Method Is Best.  

Price is incorrect. 1/3. See above #2.

This is a lie. 4. English Isn't Phonetic.

Price is correct 2/4. All languages are phonetic.  

This is a lie. 5. Word Calling Isn't Reading.

Price is correct. 3/5. There's a link between oral language and written language. To figure out what that link is you have to go way back, back before written language to the so called “oral traditions.”

This is true. 6. Your Child Isn't Ready.

Price is incorrect. 3/6. Some kids aren't ready.

This is true. 7. Your Child Is Disabled.

Price is incorrect. 3/7. Just as some kids aren't ready. Some kids have disabilities.

This is a lie. 8. It's the Parents' Fault. 

Price is correct and even if it were true in some cases, it's just too fatalistic for teachers to embrace. 4/8.

This is a lie. 9. Too Much TV.

Price is correct. TV might be the cause of kids reading less but it isn't the cause of kids not reading. The same with technology. 5/9.

This is a lie. 10. We Now Teach All Children.

Price is correct. 6/10. This is political slogan. This is an excuse for not closing the achievement gap between the haves and the have nots.