Are we there yet?: The value of timelessness

No one likes to wait, which is probably why everything’s getting faster. But for all the time-saving technologies, we’re still waiting. Just for different things. That’s okay, actually, because there’s value in waiting. You don’t have to use your phone to pass the time.

I think the value of waiting is in its eternity, and I don’t mean that hyperbolically. If the present is the portion of time most like eternity, then how we spend that time is crucial, even preparatory. Blank time forces us to deal with our essential existences, and that can be scary. Some French Irish guy wrote a play about that, but I’m not going to mention it until the end.

Anyone who’s played a video game on any sort of disc has waited. Even this time doesn’t have to be wasted. Once, I was playing Half Life 2 with a friend, and we were waiting for the next stretch of one of the hovercraft levels to load. There was nothing to do but wait. We stared at the word LOADING and watched the ellipsis’s animated stoppage. In an uncharacteristic moment of inspiration, I hacked the blank time.

“Looks like we’ve encountered my old Chinese friend again, Loa Ding.”

Lame? Yes, but that hasn’t stopped me from using it again and again, in every applicable context.

Friend: “Looks like we’ll have to wait fifteen minutes to get a table.”

Me: “I guess we’ve encountered my old Chinese friend again, Loa—“

Friend: “Nathan, this isn’t a video game. And you really shouldn’t make Asian jokes in a P.F. Chang’s.”

In an effort to court the worst parts of waiting, I’ve developed a taste for elevator music, smooth jazz to be specific. There used to be a radio station that broadcast in Chicagoland, 95.5 WNUA. It pioneered the smooth jazz format, creating imitators the nation across. I used to tune in to 95.5 and accompany the blank time of driving with the silky sounds of saxes. Sadly, at 9:55 am on 22 May 2009, the station switched its format and began playing Spanish pop music. I don’t care how many times they play it, Daddy Yankee’s ‘Gasolina’ can’t soothe like a lazily improvised clarinet can.

Now, I like smooth jazz ironically, but smooth jazz is also a warning. Fall under its spell and you will’ve lulled yourself into accepting inactivity. Many people sleep or take drugs to do this, but smooth jazz can do the trick just as well. Subdued inactivity is very nearly lifeless. To enjoy waiting is to be active. To wit, I was just reading a G.K. Chesterton essay the other day called ‘On Running After One’s Hat’. He’s a man who knows how to wait:

Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of little boys' habit in this matter. They also serve who only stand and wait for the two fifteen. Their meditations may be full of rich and fruitful things.

You can be in this same spirit at airports, bus stops and queues of all sorts. Waiting’s only boring if you let it be.

When enjoying blank time in public spaces, you may find yourself laughing, singing or talking to yourself. I was doing the penultilatter walking the south bank of the Thames the other day. (No, I wasn’t dancing: the penultilatter is not a Victorian version of the Robot. I should’ve just said ‘second’ here in reference to singing, but I pride myself on having coined penultilatter and antepenultilatter to describe the next to last and next to next to last in a list. It’s actually wordier and more confusing than just saying ‘second’ or restating the item, singing in this case, but this is my blog. I’m going to use made-up words from time to time.) As I said, I was ‘doing the penultilatter’ on the south bank of the Thames the other day, pleasantly working through the first verse of ‘Jerusalem’ when I saw a round man with an ear piercing. He was wearing a mesh top, carrying a messenger bag and talking to himself. “He’s a crazy,” thought I. Then I realized I was probably freaking people out myself, singing an English national hymn in an American accent and pushing quickly past all other pedestrians on the path. Rather than stop singing, I made a mental note of how extraordinary it is to enjoy blank time. Too few do.

But waiting is not always an event. Sometimes, it’s a season. Time spent in the desert can tax even the most patient and imaginative. At worst, waiting can push people into existential despair as in Waiting for Godot. (I regret that I couldn’t write this post without mentioning it, but it’s got waiting in the title!) As memories fade along with hopes for the future, the present becomes increasingly bleak. It’s hard to hear anything above the sound of your thoughts which are not, at this point, cheering you.

It’s a wonder to discover there are created things outside yourself. Some of these things are visible. Some are invisible. And people kind of fall into both those categories.

So as you wander in the desert or simply wait for your laundry to dry, enjoy. But know yours is not the only story. Compositions have some instruments resting while others play. And even though you may not have the score, you can still enjoy the harmony.

A Single's Guide to the Workplace

Couples look to each other for validation. As a single, you validate yourself through your work. And what’s unique about the workplace is that it’s one of the few places you have to interact with others. You probably spend most of your time in agonizing isolation, but you must work for a few reasons.

First, working gives you the opportunity to lord your skills, honed in utter darkness, over your colleagues. This not only assuages your deep insecurities, but will probably get your promoted — which is a great transition to the second reason.

You must make more money to hoard. You and I both know the economic argument for staying single: dating is expensive! But so is living comfortably or, in fact, living at all. Ideally, you’ll reach the point where you have moonshine tastes and a champagne budget, pushing a shopping cart of all your possessions down the street but sitting on assets that put you near the top of the Forbes Rich List.

Finally, we all know the real reason you keep showing up for work. Without work, you’d have no reason to get up in the morning. So here’s how you should spend your time at the office.

1.      Be the most intense commuter. No one works as hard as you do because your workday begins the second you wake up in the morning. And since you’d never tolerate incompetence at work, you can’t abide it in strangers slowing your commute. If you drive, bottle up your road rage and let it explode one day down the line. If you take public transportation, study up on Olympic speed walking techniques, and make sure to stare condescendingly at those insufferable others on the bus or train with you.

2.      Ironically acquiesce to on-site security. These days, most workplaces have some form of security. Most workers would become friendly with these security guards. After all, they’re just doing their jobs, too. But you know that security only distract from your work. Do whatever they say just to get back to working as soon as possible, but do so with an eye roll and a smug smile. Then go home and memorize your company’s security policies so you can throw them in the face of the guards. They’ll like that.

3.      Compete against yourself so no one competes against you. Once you get started on your formal tasks, you might notice there are other people around you. They work with you, unfortunately. Whether it’s blatant or subtle, there’s a competition going on with these people. Everyone is trying to show they’re better than everyone else. Lucky for you, you actually are. Frustrate your co-workers by refusing to play their game, and compete only with yourself. When someone else does well, say nothing. In fact….

4.      Only express positive emotions. Unfortunately, your brain releases chemicals that make you feel things (read: emotions). Get in the practice of only expressing the positive ones. You will rarely feel positive emotions. You’ll most often feel stressed, angry at yourself for your own perceived incompetence and entirely sick of everyone around you. Internalize all of it. The only way to get ahead is by pretending everything’s okay. This will also freak everyone out. They’ll think, “How’s he doing that? I’ve never seen him stressed or angry!” That’s because those emotions don’t contribute to productivity. It’s either robotic apathy or mild pleasantries for you.

5.      Time your trips to the bathroom well. Most people go to the bathroom to avoid getting assigned unfavorable tasks. You go to avoid breaking down in front of everyone. Sometimes your emotions will get the better of you, but you can’t let anyone in the office know that. Just check to make sure your supervisor isn’t in the stall next to you before you start weeping.

6.      Always look focused. Even if you’re done with your work and you’re killing time — after all, you’ve just a shopping cart to go home to — let no one know. Read the news or do someone else’s work, but do not have any fun. Fun is unproductive.

7.      Feign weekend and leisure activity. By working hard and only displaying positive emotions, you may fool your co-workers into thinking you’re not dead inside. They might ask you what you’ve done the night before or how your weekend was. Since you obviously did nothing, make stuff up. Just don’t go too wild. People will think you’re mocking them if you say you went spelunking in Switzerland over the weekend. Say you went to a national park or something. People love that crap.

8.      Get too much sleep. Pass the time between working hours by sleeping, a lot. Don’t let anyone disturb your slumber, either. You need your rest to get up for work the next day and do it all over again, and again, until you grow old together, er, alone and die. Retirees are quitters after all.

The Longest Day in Haiku-story

I miss writing This Day in History for the Graphic. (Check out the new website: http://www.pepperdine-graphic.com/.) So I picked the summer solstice as my excuse to once more summarise Wikipedia for other people. Overwhelmed by the number of 21 June’s noteworthy events — it is the longest day of the year after all — I elected to write about them all.

‘Good for you, Nathan, but I’m not going to read about them all.’ Neither would I, so here follows This Day in Haiku-story. You get to read less. I get to write less. You get to (pretend to) learn and laugh. I get to combine my loves for history, Japan and pedestrian prosody.

Also, I refuse to change my Microsoft Word language from ‘English (United Kingdom)’. You could think that pretentious, but I’m not trying to impress you. Don’t flatter yourself. I write in British English because I want to. I guess that’s just self-absorbed, but I’ll choose self-absorbed over pretentious any day of the year — especially on the twenty-first of June.

1377

Edward the Third died

having started a long war

to rule France. Wait, why?

1547

Moscow burned, killing

thousands but empowering

Ivan, terrible.

1631

John Smith was Disney’s

favourite colour of the wind:

white. He died alone.

1684

Charles the Second

revoked the Mass. Bay charter:

‘Now they’ll heed their king!’

1788

N.H. approval

made the Constitution law,

but it’s just paper.

1798

Brits crushed Irish who

yearned for liberty like U.S.

Beaten, they drank more.

1834

McCormick got his

reaper patented. Seasons

don’t fear it — cowbell.

1887

Victoria’s reign

turned fifty. Britain cheered her;

the Empire grumbled.

 1893

Chicago’s Expo

premiered the first Ferris wheel—

revolution’ry!

1895

Kiel Canal opened,

linking North and Baltic Seas.

Hooray for Denmark!

1898

The U.S. got Guam

from Spain, and Americans

totally know that.

1905

Jean-Paul Sartre was born.

He declined the Nobel prize,

unlike Obama.

1945

After long fighting,

U.S. troops took Okinawa.

There’s no joke to make.

1948

Columbia played

the first LP. Vinyl’s still

loved. Why not 8-tracks?

1953

Benazir Bhutto,

Pakistan’s female PM,

was born. Dull husband.

1968

Chief Justice Warren

left the Supreme Court, alive.

That’s called quitting, kids.

1975

Spielberg’s Jaws opened,

the first summer blockbuster.

Sharks loathed the bad press.

1982

Hinckley found insane,

not guilty. Reagan moved on

to promote gun rights.

1982 (Again)

Chuck and Diana’s

first son, William, was born. He—

Will and Kate! Marriage!

1990

‘I am a Yankee!’

said Mandela. The Red Sox,

pissed, cheered Apartheid.

2004

SpaceShipOne achieved

private spaceflight. You can too

if the price is right.

2007

Bob Evans, restaurateur,

gave us much before he died:

lots of pork sausage.

Go Skateboarding Day

Time to shred it up

like Tony Hawk then ask your

mom for Capri-Sun.

World Humanist Day

Christian, Marxist or

Existential, humanists

love people — TOO MUCH?!

As you can see, my haiku are really hit or miss.

Fly the Flag Modestly

This is a short one.

The fourteenth of June is Flag Day in the United States. On this day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted Betsy Ross's homespun stars and stripes. Many other countries celebrate flag days, but America's is today. (Denmark's is tomorrow.)

Eddie Izzard has a good bit about flags. Here it is set to a Lego animation.

Symbols attract attention either to themselves or to what they represent. In one sense this is good. The invisible is difficult to understand without visible symbols. But the problem arises when the symbols start to take on a life of their own and outshine what they symbolize.

Numerals are just symbols for numbers, and language is comprised of symbols for thought. But sudoku is not high level mathematics, and sesquipedalianism is not intelligence. Ideally, we'd all follow the words of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein when we communicated: "Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly." In this way, symbols (read: words) would point directly to their parent thoughts. We discover this truth every time we get wrapped up in a book. The words on the page fall away, and we become part of the author's internal world.

But we love conspicuous symbols. Platinum credit cards, sports cars, big homes, and high fashion make us seem wealthy and powerful. Our own insecurities, shortcomings, and mounting debt are brushed under the rug.

This occurs on a larger scale, too. Skyscrapers make our cities seem more important, and they’re often built at great expense. But both the Empire State Building and the Burj Khalifa struggled to find tenants once completed. Magnificent as both buildings are, they overreached.

Dubai: the objectively greatest city in the world. Does your city have a taller building?

"Wealthy people and architects are stupid. I don't let my symbols run wild. In fact, I don't think I have any symbols." Facebook profiles are our own boastful PR. Emblazoned with the personal symbols of our own names, our Facebook profiles say only the best things about us. (Emos are still stuck on Myspace and LiveJournal.) There is no "dislike" button on Facebook for a reason. Activity must be overwhelmingly, if artificially, positive for the site to remain healthy. People don't become addicted to websites that insult them.

Modest symbols, ones that don't attract undue attention to themselves, tend to stand for the most powerful forces. Nazis don't get that. At the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, one Nazi mistakenly assumed the Holy Grail would look like the cup of a king. Here's what happened to him:

In fact, the grail was a simple, carpenter's cup.

Many people wear symbols all the time in the form of wedding rings. What kind of ring would a blue-collar laborer be able to buy his wife? Now, what kind of ring would an aging millionaire be able to buy his new, young wife? Which ring better represents love?

Ultimately, the best symbols are impossibly simple. Communion is just food and drink, but it's everything more. And any child can draw a cross, but the wisest sage can never fully understand what it means.

So, as far as symbols go, the American flag is all right. It has some meaning and isn't unduly flashy. It can make people think about the United States if it isn't completely overused. But, whether the flag attracts attention to itself or to the nation it represents, it's not about the symbol. What matters is what's behind the symbol.

Futurama is a source of great social commentary.

A Single's Guide to a Lazy Sunday

Sunday boredom reminds the single of his true loneliness. Whether you’re a student or you have a real job, Monday through Friday force you to be around a bunch of other people you probably don’t like. But hey, at least you have company. On Saturday, you may find yourself spending time with all those friends you pretend to like. Again, at least you’re not alone. But on Sunday, you are.

“I go to church on Sunday!” Great, but unless you plan to make it a twelve-hour affair, you’re still going to have to face Sunday boredom.

“I sleep in on Sunday!” Congratulations: you’ve already anticipated suggestion No. 1. But, again, unless you plan to hibernate, you’re still going to have to face Sunday boredom.

“I work on Sundays!” Then you have more money than time or not enough of either. Don’t waste a second reading this.

I’ve found a few ways to endure lazy Sundays without the company of a significant other. In the absence of a loved one, there’s no better way to warm your heart than in the microwave of distraction.

1.      Power nap to depressing music. Simply losing consciousness is actually somewhat of a copout as an activity, but that never stopped a bored single from sleeping away his troubles. If you’ve gone to church, you can actually justify taking a nap. If you’ve slept in, you can believe the lazy man’s maxim — “The more sleep you get, the more sleep you need.” — and go back to bed. Trip-hop and post-rock make for great lullabies. Both are just mellow enough to slow your mind and just dark enough to cast a shadow over your dreams. (I’ve known some who preferred Pink Floyd; but, with Dark Side of the Moon at least, you risk getting startled awake by the screaming woman from “The Great Gig in the Sky.”) Whether you choose Portishead or Sigur Rós, you can guarantee you’ll wake up wishing you had never gone to sleep.

2.      Write a Shakespearean love sonnet — to yourself. Imagine getting all the benefits of writing a real love sonnet without feeling the heartache of your special someone realizing how much time you spent honing your iambic pentameter and getting really creeped out. “This is so thoughtful… so… very… thoughtful.” Writing for yourself, you get to practice your verse, pretend you’ve accomplished something, and self-aggrandize. What could be better? (See No. 3.)

3.      Redact a newspaper for a sweet old widow. There’s a lot of terrible stuff in the news, and rightly so. The truth hurts. That’s why so many people like to watch cable news networks that merely reinforce their beliefs. (MSNBC is as guilty as Fox.) So, why not take a Sharpie to a Sunday edition and elide your way into the good graces of a little old lady? Air strikes over Libya kill 10? No, no, no. Air strikes over Libya kill 10! Every old woman loves clean air, and if you can convince one to go to Libya in search of it you stand to inherit both life insurance money and an extra vote in the next election.

4.      See how much water you can consume in a day. You must be near a bathroom to attempt this one. Seriously, hyper-hydration is deadly. But exercising your kidneys is healthy! It has exercise in the name, so you know it’s good for you! See if you can beat my record of six liters without wetting your pants, because going to the bathroom that often does tend to get old fast. Wearing Depends is cheating.

5.      Disagree with the premises of commercials. No better way to trick yourself into contentment than by channel flipping for commercials and convincing yourself you don’t need the products or services advertised. Online dating services? Those are only for people who need people, and you don’t need people….

6.      Facebook stalk prospects. Let off some steam the healthy way; creep on your secret crushes and frustratingly attractive exes. You can even spend some time Photoshopping yourself into photos with your would-be partner. Just remember not to upload said photos to your own profile and tag the target of your obsession, adding the caption: “HAPPILY. EVER. AFTER.” I know you don’t care about the social backlash, but the person will probably unfriend you. Then whom will you stalk?!

7.      Tell no one what you're actually doing. Never, under any circumstances, let anyone know how lonely your Sunday afternoons are. As a single you must fool everyone into believing you’re perfectly content in your singlehood. In fact, you’re better off alone. I think Sun Tzu’s words about making your enemies believe you’re stronger than you are apply here. (Yes, I am pitting other people as the enemy here. What have they ever done for you, anyway?) Cheer up, though. You’ll soon be back in the Monday through Friday routine of feigning niceties to your peers, dishonestly answering “How are you doing?” with “Fine” so you can go back to brooding silently as quickly as possible.

Near and Far — An Essay That's Neither Here nor There

Since 420, I’ve been thinking a lot but writing very little. Stir in equal parts ending my junior year and the all-but-complete abandonment of my journal, throw in a dash of international travel, and you’ll have a thick bowl of excuses stew. (Be careful: it’s not good for your heart.)

But, as I said, I have been thinking a lot. So, there’s that.

Before I left for London, I watched two parts of Alan Alda’s three-part, PBS documentary on what it means to be human entitled, appropriately, The Human Spark — http://video.pbs.org/program/1356407145/. (It’s well worth the three hours, or two in my case, if you’re at all interested in philosophy or anthropology.)

His conclusion? “Imagination and insight. That’s the human spark.” Essentially, we’re at our most human when we’re just doing nothing. Even when we’re idling, our brains continue to function and work on problems we’re not even aware of. In other words, daydreaming is completely unique to humans. So, too, is the ability to adopt different perspectives, be they interpersonal or temporal. Combine these two abilities, Alda argues, and you have our humanity.

My friend Alex is studying to be a neuroscientist. He thinks that’s reductionist, and he’s probably right. But Alex didn’t star for eleven series in M*A*S*H.  251 episodes spent in that U.S. Army hospital in Korea qualifies Alda to make definitive statements about our fundamental humanity. I’ll analyze what he has to say, anyway.

I think Alda’s “imagination and insight” is one side of a dichotomy in our consciousnesses. There’s present-mindedness, and there’s daydreaming — near and far. I leave it to Grover to illustrate this dichotomy.

Thankfully, we won’t need to suffer cardiac arrests ourselves to rectify this dichotomy. I realize this is probably a false dichotomy, but I think analyzing extremes informs how we can best blend those extremes. But which focus, near or far, better enriches our lives? I contend the “far” roots the sprout of the “near.”

First off, is "far" even a focus? It would seem that those who focus most on the past or future rarely focus at all. Next to hypocrisy, one of the biggest objections people have to Christianity, and Calvinism specifically, is that it keeps people thinking about Heaven to the exclusion of life here on earth. That’s problematic. How can Christians love their neighbors as themselves if they’re only concerned with what carat of gold will cover the streets in the sky? My other, future-financier friend, Adam — Yeah! I have two friends! — really hates it when fellow Christians say things like, “Oh well, it’ll all be worked out in Heaven.” In this instance, it’s as if Christians are absolving themselves of their present responsibility to enact their faith by appealing to the distant future. That can’t be the right way to rectify near and far, let alone to live.

In fact, everyone is guilty of forsaking near for far. Most technologies produced since the Industrial Revolution have been geared toward transcending space and time. Transportation innovations meant we could only move bodily: the railroad, the car, the airplane, the space shuttle. But other inventions meant we could go elsewhere in our minds: the telegraph, the phone, radio, TV, the Internet, cell phones. (Granted, books had been around for some time, even though few could read. But as Ray Bradbury demonstrated in Fahrenheit 451, a book cannot compete for sensory immersion in the same room as a TV.)

Even Angry Birds allows people to escape from their present circumstances. In one sense, this is good. All these technologies free people to choose the circumstances that best suit them. After all, only children and paranoid schizophrenics think the food in the fridge disappears when the door shuts. Everyone else believes firmly enough in object permanence to feel comfortable leaving things behind for a little while to drift elsewhere in mind or body.

The issue arises when people cease to be grounded at all. You know that guy. He only stops texting to Skype his friends back home. He scours Facebook for photos of friends from yesteryear and watches inordinate amounts of TV to escape from having to think about his present situation. This is not a firm belief in object permanence. This is obsessing about the food in the fridge when you have many other things to do.

But, as Hawkeye Pierce contends, our ability to be somewhere else in our minds is what makes us human. So, does "near" reduce our humanity?

Eastern religions like Buddhism and Taoism love the concept of mindfulness — i.e., living fully in the present. Indeed, Eastern enthusiast Aldous Huxley included parrots in his utopia, depicted in Island, that constantly squawked to the island’s inhabitants: “Here and now, boys.”

Zen-like focus could be broadly seen as the logical conclusion of division of labor and specialization. Those best suited to do the most specific jobs will be those who can focus calmly, and entirely, from 9-5. Wired even argued awhile back that autistic savants would soon become the most desirable employees. What employer wouldn't want someone abnormally focused on their job to work for them?

Yet, attempts to enact the ideal presently have resulted in the most prolific bloodbaths in history. The Crusades, The French Revolution, the Taiping Rebellion, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Third Reich, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia collectively killed tens of millions of people. Were these instances of “near” going too far? Or of “far” corrupting the “near”? Would John and Yoko have had to kill a few dissidents to make “Imagine” a reality, too?

I don’t know. But I do know that Grover was right. Near and far are two different places, even mentally. And if “far” roots the sprout of the “near,” then we have to have both. That’s not a cop out because, actually, the only way to enjoy your fruit or veg is to pick it. Even potatoes and carrots must be dug up and brought near to eat.

So, in other words, you can’t neglect your roots, but you can’t enjoy them underground either. Live only in the present and you’ll have no direction. Live only elsewhen and you’ll have no life at all. We must trust our imagination and insight to inform our present, but we must act presently. Just make sure not to attempt to enact unrealistic ideals. Historically, that’s killed a lot of people. It’ll hurt you, too.

420 Ain't So Bad....

For years, I’ve commemorated 420. Except the literal train touring the Dole Plantation in Hawaii, I’ve never ridden the Pineapple Express. I’ve merely bombarded my fellowmen with trivia about the historic date. It’s just generally an awful day in history. Besides being the cannabis feast day, it’s Hitler’s birthday. It’s also the day not-very-American-supported troops failed to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. It’s also the day of the Columbine shooting. Generally bad stuff all around.

Although I started telling people 420 trivia back in the eighth grade, more recently I’ve been writing a “This Day in History” column for the Pepperdine Graphic. It lets me peruse Wikipedia, ground my historical understanding in concrete events, and disseminate history humorously. I have a lot of fun with it.

But the Graphic’s last issue of the semester hit the stands on Thursday, 7 April. (There are almost certainly still copies on the vermillion rack in Firestone Fieldhouse. Pick one up if you haven’t yet. Also, check out Currents.) Thus, if I want to rehash events that happened on 420, I must do it on this, my blog.

My goal in this entry is to redeem 420 from the throes of wacky tobaccy, the Führer, American military debacles, and Coloradan school shootings. I want to prove that even on the darkest of days, many good things happen too.

On 420 in 1657, the colony of New Amsterdam (present-day New York City) granted Jews the freedom of religion.

Jews first came to New Amsterdam back in 1654. They came in two waves. First, Ashkenazic Jews arrived with passports from the Dutch West India Company from (Old) Amsterdam. The second wave were Sephardic Jews escaping Portuguese persecution in Brazil. Since I don't have much more information on that, here’s a list of famous Jews.

Famous Ashkenazic, read ‛German’, Jews include psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Zionist Theodor Herzl, the physicist and highly quotable Albert Einstein, despairing author Franz Kafka, Israeli PM Golda Meir, American composer George Gershwin, and... diary-writer Anne Frank. Quite a lineup.

Famous Sephardic Jews, or Jews from the Iberian Peninsula include rationalist philosopher Baruch Spinoza, Conservative British PM and demigod Benjamin Disraeli, “New Colossus” poet Emma Lazarus, and Simpsons voice actor Hank Azaria. In my book, while the Sephardic Jews make a good showing, they just don’t measure up to the Ashkenazic Jews.

That having been said, on 420, 1657 the Dutch gave these new Manhattanites the right to worship freely. This was no small feat, for it went against the will of the ornery, peg-legged director-general of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, who would still not allow the Jews to build a synagogue. Little did he know how thoroughly Jews would come to dominate the culture of New York. And little did he know his colony would be conquered by James II, Duke of York and become New York. Today, Stuyvesant’s name lives on in the Brooklyn neighborhood where Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z were born— “Bed-Stuy, Do or Die.”

315 years later, in 1972, Apollo 16 landed on the Moon.

The lunar module had an engine crisis before landing, and Thomas Mattingly, the astronaut who was removed from the infamous Apollo 13 mission at the last minute, was able to deal with the issue, correct course, and land the craft. This was the penultimate manned mission to the Moon, and astronauts roamed the surface in the lunar rover and collected over 200 pounds of moon rock, exfoliating the pores of the chronically dry-skinned Man in the Moon.

Four years later, former Beatle George Harrison sang the “Lumberjack Song” with Monty Python.

When Harrison died, Royal Albert Hall hosted a tribute concert to George where a reunited Python crew, including Tom Hanks (look for him in the lower right-hand corner of the Mounties) sang an ode to the enthusiastically transvestite Canadian. I can’t really make any joke about this song to make it any funnier than it already is. Here’s the link:

420 has also been a good day for the Chicago Bulls. In Jordan’s 1986 rookie season, he scored a then record 63 points in a playoff game against the Boston Celtics. Larry Bird described the rookie: “God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

On this same day ten years later, the Chicago Bulls won a still record 72 games in a single season. That means they only lost 10 games in the whole season. Incredible. The Bulls went on to defeat the Seattle Sonics to win the NBA Finals, making it their fourth win in the ’90s. The really amazing thing in those days, however, was the Bulls’ starting lineup video. So good.

My point is not that these events outweigh the bad things that happened on 420. I really don’t think there’s any way to measure that. My point is that no day, no matter how bad, is all bad. Whether it’s begrudgingly bestowed freedom of religion, a Moon landing, a Beatle making his mark on British comedy, or just generally a good day for Chicago sports history (and thus world history), no day is as dark as it seems. Remember that this 420.

Where/When you at? – An Exploration of Place and Time

"History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology." –James A. Garfield (Twentieth president of the United States)

When Charles Guiteau pulled a .44 on President Garfield, he was targeting one of the great minds of the nation. Garfield was a Republican in the tradition of Lincoln and was serious about granting blacks civil rights during Reconstruction. He was even smart enough to oppose the fiat currency Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase had peddled on the nation during the Civil War. It’s truly a shame Garfield’s doctors weren’t smart enough to sterilize their hands before they went digging around in his back for Guiteau’s bullet.

That having been said, Garfield’s thoughts on history are intriguing. If history is a why meeting a how, then, according to Garfield, that union has both a where and a when.

Disgruntled office-seeker and crazy person Charles Guiteau (left) put a bullet through the lung of ambidextrous polyglot President James A. Garfield (right). 

When and where consistently converge in discrete events. E.g., President Garfield was shot in Washington, D.C. on 2 July 1881. But discrete events are merely the pegs on which we hang our understanding of the past. Do the how and why emerge directly from the where and when? Specifically, how do place and time affect an individual like Guiteau?

Individuals are the most beguiling variables of history, but are they merely pawns of place and time? If I can answer where and when someone is, can I determine what he or she is going to do?

Which place and time made Guiteau shoot Garfield? Was it growing up in Freeport, Illinois during the 1840s and 50s? Was it spending his younger days getting rejected by a utopian religious cult in New York? Was it spending the 1870s writing a speech for Grant and being repeatedly rejected for cabinet positions for which he had no qualifications? You might think the cult is what did it, but the assassin is often described as a disgruntled office-seeker. And does mere rejection really necessitate his shooting Garfield?

Okay, I’ve probably asked a few too many questions, but I hope you’re tracking with me. I’d like to think place and time aren’t the sole determining factors for an individual’s path. I know Morpheus would be upset with me as I cling to free will — “What happened happened and couldn’t have happened any other way.” —but Laurence Fishburne isn’t Emperor of the Universe, even if I’d like him to be sometimes.

This is the captain of the Nebuchadnezzar and Neo’s Obi-Wan, not the Emperor of the Universe.

Like the Oracle’s kitchen lintel plaque says: TEMET NOSCE. Know thyself. I’m going to make this piece a bit more personal than “History is for Lovers.” After all, it is my blog. Don’t worry: I’m not going to turn this into my diary.

I’m going to give three instances of place and time being the how and why behind one of my choices. Then, I’m going to go on the flip side and give three instances of place and time clearly pushing me in a direction I consciously turned from. Calm down: I’m doing it with pictures.

Elementary school Nathan was in the same class as P.J. Mangan from kindergarten to fifth grade, excepting the depressing fourth grade. Nathan became best friends with P.J., and they are still friends today. (There’s a great picture of us in a furniture/pillow fort back in kindergarten that I just don’t have access to. Believe you me, it’s a great picture.)*

Middle school Nathan could not watch PG-13 movies until he was 13. Thus, he watched all the old James Bond movies, rated PG before the PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984. He developed a deserved hatred for George Lazenby. He appreciates Australian Lionel Logue’s work with King George VI as portrayed in The King’s Speech, but no Australian has any business playing James Bond as Lazenby did in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

  High school Nathan watched CoCo, who was then just Conan, interview Sarah Vowell about her book Assassination Vacation, probably on 21 February 2006. (That book is an excellent read and, incidentally, is how I learned about President Garfield’s tragic assassination.) Now college Nathan wants to express history creatively like Sarah Vowell did in that book—even if it means sporting the original General Burnsides sideburns.

Now for ways in which place and time pushed me one way and I went t’other. Again, pictures.

Middle school Nathan’s parents were, and are, straight-ticket Republicans. He, however, developed a strange fascination with communism, even using the AOL screen name “SovietSting.”

     Nathan’s Texan mother pushed high school freshman Nathan into attending football summer camp. Instead of showing up to doubles, Nathan stayed home and played his Nintendo Gamecube.

      Prospective college Nathan was an intelligent, white, Protestant from Wheaton, Illinois. He did not attend Wheaton College but randomly decided to enroll in Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. Go Waves.

The careful reader not distracted by these poorly Photoshopped pictures will notice that even in these contrary examples, I still reference specific places and times. These places and times did have a bearing on my choices, of course. But did they determine my choices? I’m leaning toward no.

We cannot escape where and when. We occupy space-time. But given the inputs of where and when, I believe we have a little wiggle room in choosing our own how and why. If only I could have chosen for Charles Guiteau to have been anywhere else besides Washington, D.C. on 2 July 1881. Then, I’m confident, we would all celebrate the Garfield presidency and see his bearded visage hewn into Mt. Rushmore. Would that it were. Would that it were….

President James A. Garfield takes his rightful place in the presidential hall of fame.

*2014 update: P.J. found the photo.

History is for Lovers

The Commonwealth of Virginia has a funny slogan: “Virginia is for lovers.” The phrase has attracted tourists to the commonwealth since 1969 and even inspired the “I Love New York” campaign of the 1970s. The Virginian phrase, however, originally referred to the multitude of American historical sites in the commonwealth. The original slogan read: “Virginia is for history lovers.” I quibble with the commonwealth and contend that history itself is for lovers.

(Incidentally, Quibble With the Commonwealth is the name of my first EP. It’s six bass-thumping tracks of hardcore gangsta rap.)

I’ll say it again, history is for lovers.

Studying history in college is like dating someone you really love. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, but it still requires a lot of work. I’m convinced those who study history are aware of this phenomenon at an unconscious level, even if they don’t admit the metaphor explicitly. Why else would these impassioned students pursue the field with such vigor?

All the history students I know are liable to light up talking about their pet subjects. Granted, I don’t know enough to constitute an acceptable sample size or anything like that, but I see the glint in the eyes of these students. They love the past and are sticking around to learn its wily ways. More than sticking around to learn, however, these students study history for the love of it.

I genuinely love the people I learn about from two hundred years ago, and when you read someone’s journal and personal letters, how can you not just fall in love? I’m talking, of course, about Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island. And you’ll have to excuse me when I mourn the cruel assassination of President James A. Garfield on 2 July.

It’s this love for history that makes the study an argument. Poll any two historians about any one subject and you’ll see they disagree. Really, historians can admit we fought the Civil War and there was a Great Depression, but they will never agree on the why. That’s because, as historian and author John H. Arnold states, “History provides us with the tools to dissent.” That means every person who wants to change the present must wield the past.

A far more prominent author, George Orwell, spoke to the power of history in his dystopian novel, 1984. Later, he would have his words shouted at the American public by Rage Against the Machine in the song “Testify.” The quote reads:

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

This means that those who spend the present loving the past will shape the future. We can see this process at work in the history of cities. In 1920, the U.S. census showed a majority of Americans lived in cities, and they have ever since. As such, how we relate to our cities reveals how we interact with our environments.

There’s no more American city than New York. Millions of people <3 NY. They love the city so much that they don’t care for its shabbiness. They would see the boroughs bolstered by developers and improved for the sake of the soul of New York. This is not ignoring the past or hurrying past it; it is loving those aspects of the past that best embody the spirit of the city but loving the city enough to replace those bits that don’t. For example, the Woolworth Building still stands nearly one hundred years after its towering completion. The city’s abysmal tenement houses have been rightfully demolished.

It’s only by looking back, by asking “How’d we get here?” that we can begin to look forward. This process must be guided by love for effective change to come. Indeed, this idea of municipal improvement as historical love was espoused by theologian G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy. For a man to really want to change a city like New York, for example, he must love the city so much he wishes to see it bettered for the sake of its ideal self.

But history is not just for students or civil engineers. It’s important to anyone in a relationship, too. Anniversaries, birthdays, and Valentine’s Day pass by unnoticed by the obtuse and careless. It’s only the real lover who cherishes the history of the relationship. This keen observer of every important date for the couple has not only a relationship with a person in the present, but a relationship with the past. Far from unfaithful, this relationship with the past actually enhances the relationship with one’s beloved. A lover who also loves the history he has had with a woman is the true lover of that woman. He, loving the time he has spent with her, is most likely to project that love from the past, indefinitely into the future.

So fellas, remember her birthday and don’t forget your anniversary. It’s important. While you’re at it, do some light reading on Wikipedia’s homepage about what happened “On this day….” You just may find another reason to celebrate today.