Performing The Coda

Coda: A few measures added beyond the natural termination of a musical composition.

While I waited for Murphy’s daughter to arrive I walked around the exterior of the house taking notes. After making a loop of the yard and ending back at the front step, I recalled a snowy Saturday a few years ago when two friends and I came over and shoveled Murphy’s front walk so he could get out and about.

When his daughter arrived we went inside. It was like Murphy might be home any moment. His magazines were in a neat stack. His clothes in the closet. The remote control sat on the coffee table before the TV.

It is an odd thing to walk the rooms of an old friend’s house after they’ve passed, trying to estimate its value. This is the place where Murphy and his wife raised their children, where he came home from work everyday for decades, where he cared for his wife as she was dying, where he aged alone in his 80s.

He was born black in a time of segregation, lived in this neighborhood for 88 years. He served in WWII, set type for printing presses, served on the City Council, sold insurance, and lived to see a black man elected president of the United States.

A photo of President Obama hangs on the same walls that hold framed newspaper clippings and awards that span Murphy’s 88 years.

And it has all come to this just a few months after this lovely man died; me walking the rooms of his house trying to figure out what the place it worth. In this way, I’m the coda – the final notes beyond the piece of music that has ended.

The guy who taught me this business was Dale.

The last time I saw Dale was at Murphy’s funeral in May. He was supposed to speak but wasn’t feeling up to it. The cancer was taking its toll. I sought him out and said hello. That brief moment of small talk in a noisy room filled with people would be our last conversation.

We sold real estate together for 8 years. He was generous to my family beyond imaging. But Dale and I were relentlessly on opposing sides of civic and political events. He hurt my feelings. I hurt his. But when I saw his white hair and broad shoulders above the crowd at Randal and Roberts Funeral Home, I sought him out to show him the respect I felt for him.

Sitting at his funeral just a couple months later listening to stories about his life, I thought back to one of my own stories about Dale’s generosity.

I had a listing owned by an elderly woman. Dale announced one day he had the perfect buyer. I rolled my eyes when I found out it was someone he’d bailed out of jail (Dale was a bail bondsman, too). But he got his buyer pre-approved and my seller accepted their offer.

Immediately Dale discovered the buyers didn’t have enough money for their loan application. He told the lender to take it out of his own commission at closing. The appraiser demanded that the peeling paint on the eaves and trim be scraped and repainted. My seller had no money to do it. So Dale delivered his own ladders, paint brushes and paint he bought himself to the house and told his buyers, “If you want the house you’ll have to paint it.” They did.

There were other fees his buyers couldn’t pay, like a gas company deposit. He paid them all or arranged for it to be taken from his commission. At the closing he joked and told stories as usual and was eventually handed a very, very small commission check. He walked out of that closing spinning his key ring on a finger and whistling a tune. You’d have never known he’d just got paid near nothing for a hell of a lot of work.

He’d given a break to somebody who needed a break, a gesture he would brush off as unimportant if you complimented him for it.

A couple weeks ago my phone range while I ate lunch with Stacy at Noble Coffee. I stepped into the tearoom for privacy. It was an attorney I didn’t know. She said a deceased client of hers had identified me in her end-of-life planning documents as the Realtor who should list and sell her house. She gave me a name I didn’t recognize. She read off the address and I mentally walked down that street until I realized it was Sandi. The last name had thrown me off. I forgot she had remarried in the decade since she disappeared from my circle of acquaintances.

A few days later I was meeting that attorney, standing on the back porch of that familiar house for the first time in years. Distant memories flooded my mind.

Before I was a Realtor, when my wife and I had small children and were living on one teacher’s salary Sandi had noticed we were struggling. Earlier that year she’d seen a friend and me strip two old houses of their aluminum siding. She asked me what I got for recycling it. “$500 apiece,” I told her. So as she began renovations on this house, she asked me if I wanted the aluminum siding. “Sure,” I told her. I figured I would be removing it myself, but I got a call one day from Sandi saying her construction crew had removed it all and stacked it in the yard for me.

Walking through the house I noticed a cabinet my wife had refinished for Sandi. I saw porch columns I’d salvaged from a Victorian-era home at 8^th and Cherry and sold to her. She used them to decorate her bedroom. I recalled the Christmas vacation she did me another favor, hiring me to strip the woodwork in the upstairs bathroom.

And when I became a Realtor, she hired me. In one of my last conversations with her, almost 10 years ago, we sat in the dining room and went through legal documents to sell another property of hers.

It has been a sad summer for a lot of reasons. Especially sad that three friends, mentors . . . people I looked up to when I was a young adult and new to Noblesville have all passed in a single season. But there’s also a feeling of purpose to play a bit of the coda in their lives, those random notes at the end of the piece of music they lived.

The Formula Foul

Lately I’ve been pondering the easy way we sometimes cast judgment.

We do it so often it’s a reflex. You see a recognizable dispute playing out, feelings hurt, conflict escalating, be it political, interpersonal, work-related, whatever, and when the players involved take on a sympathetic shape and their actions resonate emotionally our biases quickly tell us who’s to blame and who’s the victim.

And we’ll hang onto that even if we’re completely wrong.

All this came to mind recently while I watched an NBA playoff game with my 20-year-old son and became frustrated anew with the “formula fouls.” The formula foul is a term I conjured years ago for lazy, reflexive foul calls in the NBA.

Sometimes fouls are called because a foul was actually committed. But nearly as often fouls are called simply because of who moved at a certain moment while someone else moved nearby. That’s how a hard elbow to the chest amid a complicated scrum under the basket isn’t a foul, but a defender’s pinky grazing a shooter’s wrist out along the three-point arc IS. Why? Because that hand to hand combat under the basket takes thought to decipher – though it has real impact on events. The pinky grazing the shooters wrist is easy to see and understand, so though it has little impact on the moment, the whistle blows.

A series of formulas, like recognizable dance steps are agreed to be fouls in the culture of NBA referees.

And once the whistle blows the defender is incredulous. He won’t raise his hand to accept the call in the old tradition of the game so scorekeepers can keep track of foul tallies. He argues with the ref as if he thinks he could elicit a reversal of the judgment. But that ain’t gonna happen. Never does.

We’re all referees everyday of our lives and we all call our fair share of formula fouls. Our biases regarding who’s at fault in moments of trauma can be so deeply engrained we question them as little as we question the sensations of hot and cold. They just are what they are.

If there’s conflict between a man and a woman, most of us have an inkling who’s at fault before we even know the facts. And we’ll look for facts to confirm our bias and ignore the ones that don’t. If it’s a white, English-speaking citizen vs. an dark-skinned immigrant with an accent, a boss vs. an employee, a senior citizen vs. a teenager, a well-dressed businessman vs. a homeless bum in tattered clothes, in moments of conflict we quickly I.D. the victim and the perpetrator. And it doesn’t matter if there’s no victim at all, but just a couple people struggling with the complexities of life. When the shit goes down, we look to hug one and point a finger at the other.

True as that may be, a friend reminded me recently that if we’re going to enjoy any peace in life perhaps we have to find the grace to relinquish our fate to the overwhelming power of bias.

On a recent evening I sat in my friend’s living room drinking beer. Bill and his wife and I chatted about music, writing, books, and politics. After his wife went to bed we drank another beer, then sipped some scotch.

At some point I turned to my familiar gripes. My complaints about the formula fouls called on me in the drama of my personal life began to roll off my tongue in their familiar rhythmic cadence. Bill crossed his legs, folded his arms across his chest and fixed a stare on me that parents save for a come-to-Jesus-moment with a petulant child.

He looked me hard in the eye and said flatly, “Kurt, you’re a prideful person, and you’re gonna have to let go of some of that.”

It was like he’d thrown a firecracker in my face. My ears rang a bit from the concussion.

Bill went on, “You’re clutching your pride to your chest while people are trying to tear it away from you. But you need to let go. Let them take it. And let them go, too. Make something else of yourself in its place. Reinvent yourself. Let go!”

In moments like this two familiar traits emerge in me: 1) I have an impeccable ear for recognizing good advice when I hear it, and 2) a stubborn habit of ignoring it.

But I am trying to do better. Failing sometimes, but trying.

I know Bill is right. When you can’t change the outcome of the judgment it doesn’t matter how the blame is laid. Maybe it only matters how you take it.

I know I need to learn to raise my hand and take the formula foul calls in my own life with a greater measure of acceptance. There are people keeping score and I can’t stop that and people passing judgments that I can never reverse. I need to stop arguing with the referees in my life, need to let them tally, and let them go, and reinvent that part of me.

"Ludicrous" Campaign Financing in Noblesville

In a January 27^th story in the Indianapolis Star, I was quoted questioning Mayor John Ditslear’s campaign financing methods, a system I call the “Money Machine.” My concern? The Mayor invites City contractors and their wanna-bes to give him campaign donations. This is not proof of anything illegal. But the Money Machine system gives the appearance of “pay-to-play,” as if the donation is the cost of admission to being considered for City contracts.

Again, I’m not saying that’s what’s happening, but with this existing outward appearance, if the next mayor were truly conducting an illegal pay-to-play scheme, there’d be no way to tell because it would look exactly the same.

In the Star article, Mayor Ditslear called my argument, “ludicrous.”

Here’s a brief history of what I’m talking about:

In the mid-‘90s, during former Mayor Dennis Redick’s first term, the Money Machine concept took hold locally. It appeared as though the City’s accounts payable records and Planning Department application records had been gathered into a mailing list. These engineering firms, construction managers, architects, developers, consultants, builders, road pavers and trash haulers were invited to a golf outing with the mayor . . . for the price of a donation.

This system was so successful Redick entered the next two elections very well funded.

In June of ’03, after winning the primary election for a 3^rd term, Redick was charged with domestic assault and his power began to unravel. John Ditslear threw his hat in the ring, running as an Independent. Ditslear had a record of civic involvement and so had solid local connections to draw upon for contributions. As a result, 90% of Ditslear’s pre-election campaign funds came from local sources.

In the run-up to the general elections, the Money Machine donors largely stuck with the incumbent, Dennis Redick.

But that November John Ditslear won and allegiances immediately shifted. According to campaign fillings, in the 40 days after winning, before he was even sworn in, Redick’s former Money Machine donors sent Ditslear nearly $20,000 – even though the election was over.

It didn’t stop there. Within 9 months of taking office Ditslear held his first golf outing and reaped big bucks from Redick’s old Money Machine donors. And oh what a machine it is. In 2004 Ditslear raked in over $70,000. In ’05 he raised $80,000 and in ’06 took an additional $75,000. Of that nearly quarter of a million dollars, over 75% came from out of town business interests who couldn’t vote in local elections.

None of this is illegal, but it should be, because it’s fundamentally unethical.

An example: When constructing the new city hall, two lucrative contracts were handed out. One went to Odle, McGuire, & Shook of Indianapolis, the architects who designed the building. The other went to Meyer/Najem of Fishers, who would be the construction managers. Neither contract required competitive bids. Both companies’ combined donations to John Ditslear totaled nearly $9,000. Their smallest donations came in the mayor’s first year in office, then grew larger in ’05 and ’06 as the City Hall project was in full swing.

Absolutely none of this suggests anybody did anything illegal. But consider the process: the Mayor sends invitations for a campaign fundraising golf outing to people who can’t vote for him but who’s business relies on winning government contracts, and they oblige.

The Money Machine is dangerous because even though John Ditslear, Meyer/Najem and McGuire, Odle, & Shook may be the most ethical collection of Hoosiers ever assembled – and I’m absolutely ready to believe they are, the next mayor and contractor/campaign contributors may not be. And if that next mayor actually traded contracts for campaign donations – classic pay-to-play, how would we know? We wouldn’t. And what if it’s as simple as a mayor giving contracts to those he feels most obligated to, no secret agreement, just a feeling of obligation because of a big donation? That’s still wrong.

Is that argument “ludicrous?” I don’t think so. That’s why 7 states, including neighboring Illinois have barred entities bidding on governmental contracts from making political contributions to government officials. This movement has been prompted by a wave of pay-to-play scandals across the country.

In the Star article, Mayor Ditslear actually argued, “They [the donors] offer to help me get re-elected because they think I do a good job,” and “I don’t invite people because they do business with the city; I invite people who I think would enjoy a round of golf and a nice meal.”

Now that’s ludicrous.

First off, they generally don’t “offer,” they’re asked to donate. And go to the county’s web page (http://www.hamiltoncounty.in.gov/), click the “Laws, Elections . . .” tab in the right hand sidebar and download Mayor Ditslear’s campaign filing for 2010. Look through the list of donors and see how many typical Noblesville voters you find - you know, local folks who think the Mayor is doing a good job and want to enjoy a round of golf and a nice meal with him.

Good luck with that needle-in-a-haystack endeavor. There are only a few on the donor list. The overwhelming majority are people who don’t live in Noblesville and can’t vote for Ditslear. So if he’s looking for people who think he’s doing and good job and want to help him get re-elected, why doesn’t the Mayor look in Noblesville? Why is he pursuing out of town people who have and/or want City contracts – people who can’t vote for him?

What’s more, why would somebody from Naperville, Illinois (who last year gave Ditslear $1,550) or Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin (who last year gave $500) give a crap how good the mayor of Noblesville, Indiana is? Is it because of the golf and the nice meal or is it because both of those donors represent engineering firms?

As ironic as it is unfortunate, at least once when he invited these out of town contractors to donate, the front of the invitation read, “Wanna Play?”

The Beerfest

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” –Ben Franklin

Entering the Brewers of Indiana Guild Winterfest at the State Fair grounds with my oldest son Cal Saturday there was a giddy thump in my heart: the promise of endless samples of micro-brewed beer.

Once through the doors a lanyard is placed around our necks with a handy rubber O-ring that cradles a small drinking glass. Love it, love it, LOVE IT! Don’t have to hold the beer glass while I’m eating.

Did I mention I love it?

We hit the closest row of brewer’s booths, getting 2 oz. samples at World Class, BBC, Victory and 3 other breweries in a sipping flurry. It’s only when we make it through the Harpoon, Brooklyn, Rogue, Pyramid, Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada booths I realize we’ve already had the equivalent of 2 beers.

There is a passing notion to pace myself.

And frankly, I don’t like some of what I’m drinking. So before the next sample, I ask the brewer to dump out the last half of the last brewer’s sample from my cup. This endears me to the guy. He winks, nods and smiles as if to say, “Yeah, that guy’s beer sucks.”

All along the way we’re filling our swag bags with free bottle openers, coasters, and a broad assortment of stickers I have absolutely no use for, but hell, they’re free. I even get a Bell’s Brewery temporary tattoo. Sah-weeet!

There are fashion trends at work. People are wearing homemade necklaces made of ordinary cotton string strung with pretzels. Some get clever with a big baked pretzel as an eye-catching pendant, surrounded by smaller store-bought pretzels. Drink a little beer – eat some pretzels - repeat as needed.

I have no pretzel necklace and suddenly feel naked.

Neck Beards Abound!

Cal proclaims, “Lotta neck beards here,” as we move to the second aisle of booths. He’s right. There are a lot of guys pouring brew with neck beards – you know, where the guy doesn’t shave his neck. This is often accompanied by a gray or muddy-khaki button up shirt, occasionally accessorized with a sock cap.

In all, it’s a pretty mellow crowd. You’d think copious drinking would lead to trouble, but no. The fact that everyone is drinking a depressant might have something to do with it. Folks smoke around the campfires in the Beer Garden, helping each other lite up, making room for strangers, letting others cut in line I front of kegs.

The Rinse Tank: Nobody wants stout foam in their porter.

Halfway down the 2^nd row I realize I’m not really an India Pale Ale (IPA) guy anymore. This style was originally created for transport to British troops in India. The extra hops acted as a preservative and the extra strength allowed for bottle fermenting on the long journey ‘round the horn of Africa. I learned to like it back in the day when it primarily came from England and India. But when the American microbrewery craze hit in the late ‘80s, the IPA seemed to morph into a super-hoppy, tongue-burning, blazing guitar solo of a beer. And like guitar solos, the first couple are pretty damn cool, then I just wish they’d stop. And they like to give ‘em cute names like Good Karma, Yellow Snow, Bitter Woman, Torpedo Extra.

Yeah, whatever beer dudes. I’m not looking for beer acrobatics. As I age, I find I admire the finessed dipsy-doodle more than the in-your-face-slam-dunk.

I start requesting more stouts, porters, Scottish ales, lagers and the rare Czech-style pilsners.

Somewhere in the fog of booth hopping someone calls out, “Kurt,” and grabs my arm. It’s Marsh Davis, President of Historic Landmarks Foundation. Known the guy for 20-plus years. He gives Cal the, “I knew you when you were this high,” routine. We catch up and move on.

Cal has taken to inserting himself in the background of group photos. He’s tall, so he stands behind any group of strangers posing for a picture, then makes this bizarre ugly face (at right).

The most endearing thing about the microbrewery movement is that many of those pouring samples actually brewed it themselves. They’re trying to carve out a little flavor identity in their Indiana Town. I sampled beers from Aurora, LaPorte, Brazil, Brown County, Kokomo, Lafayette, Auburn, Warsaw, Elkhart, Crown Point, and yes, Noblesville’s own Barley Island. The crowd is bias in favor of these little guys, with a nod of respect toward the big guys who were once little guys, with the exception of the chain restaurant brewers like RAM – which I actually heard someone boo as they passed up a sample.

As Cal and I stumble out into the cold air of the Fair Grounds there’s a warmth in my chest, clouds in my head, and a latent IPA burn on my tongue. And almost immediately, there’s our designated driver, my 19-year-old son, Jack pulling up beside the Coliseum.

Perfect day.

Becky's Wedding

A Vintage Contrarian

This originally appeared in NUVO Newsweekly in April of 2001

Couple years back my family converged on the tiny town in Tipton County where we lived when I was small. My younger cousin Becky had been a missionary in the environs of New Guinea for several years and come home to marry a wonderful black South African man she’d met there. The wedding reception was held in a park that was built on the site of the school where I went to first and second grade. It was across the playground from the ball diamond where my big brother played little league, across the street from the house where our doctor lived and saw patients, a half block down from the house where my mother left me with a baby sitter, a block down from the corner diner where we often ate and the volunteer fire department that my father had served with, and a block from the water tower I used to lay under on my back with friends at noon to see if we could stand the ear piercing blast of the siren that was tested each day. But that was nearly forty years ago. It is a different place now.

Beside the park where the wedding reception was held stood the gymnasium, the only part of the old school that was saved. As the wedding reception wore on, as people took pictures of each other with the disposable cameras on the table, my older sister and I wondered into the old gymnasium and studied the giant, framed, black and white photographs of the Pep Club taken more than three decades ago. We searched for my aunt and finally found her in one of the groupings from the early ’60s. She sat in the bleachers among a crowd of teenagers; all seemingly wearing painted corduroys and saddle shoes.

As we wondered through the darkened, cavernous gymnasium, I found myself studying my sister – this remarkable woman, as she walked about. Now in her forties, once she was a little girl taking gym classes here, playing in this innocent place, still unaware that she was a lesbian and that the world would hate her for it.

She and I and my brother and my other sister grew up in this town and went to school in that long gone building that was once next door. My sister and her companion live in California. She’s a nuclear engineer with an MBA – the only woman on her company’s board of directors. My other sister is also a wonderful success in life, a woman who has overcome great struggles to be happy. My brother is a college grad and an incredibly talented artist. I am a schoolteacher, a Realtor, a writer. We four are all college grads, all homeowners, all gamefully employed.

What I was thinking as I studied my sister and remembered this place is that we all found success in life, having been educated at a school that would be considered substandard today. There were no TVs hanging from the classroom walls continuously running PBS specials. There were no computer labs with Internet access, no planetariums or indoor swimming pools. There was no robotics labs, no greenhouse, and no security guards, not even air conditioning. Unlike my own children today, we did not come home each day from elementary school with an hour or more of homework.

When you consider what is believed to be necessary to insure the success of the average child today, my siblings and I should be utter failures.

After school our parents didn’t drive us around to endless enrichment activities - ballet, piano, gymnastics, soccer and baseball (in overlapping seasons), indoor soccer and basketball (in overlapping seasons), computer camps, space camps, horseback riding lessons. Sure, we did some of that, but just a little. In those days summer was 12 weeks long. We filled our spare time riding bikes, flying kites, fiddling with frogs and fish in a stream and playing basketball on a dirt court against our garage. We camped in the back yard and read comic books. We actually played hide and seek and kick the can – games that are foreign to most children today. We had no cable TV, no VCR, no Play Station. When we went on long trips, we didn’t have a mini van with a TV/VCR for the kids to watch, no Game Boys to pass the time. We had to look at the countryside, play word games and use our imagination. Yet, I don’t feel cheated. Quite the contrary.

In that distant town that was once in this place, low calorie diet foods were almost unheard of, yet children then were far less likely to be obese. In this weird world where we grew up there was a commercial area at the edge of our neighborhood that children were free to interact in and we could walk to school – two things that would rarely be designed into the average new community today.

Still, in some ways I know it is a better place now. My sister is less likely to be ostracized here and my white, freckle faced cousin can marry a black man from South Africa in the park and cause little or no commotion.

Yet, in my childhood here, considering we were so deprived of what are considered necessities for any middle class kid today, how did we become computer literate breadwinners who know how to set our VCRs?

My own three children wondered into the old building to find us. They looked about that old 1930s-era gymnasium, that aging temple to a Hoosier God, and wondered at its foreignness. There were no practice gyms off to the side, no state of the art sound systems, no health club-quality weight lifting facilities. The looks on their faces said it all, “What a strange . . . primitive place.” They looked into the old Pep Club pictures and giggled. These children, grown up with fashion trends like the plumber’s-butt, low rider pants of hip hop culture, face piercings and the unfortunate return of bell-bottoms and clogs, dared to say, “Why did they dress so funny?”

With everything my children have I sometimes worry what will become of them. They’ve come to expect so much of life – materially. Granted, they have some very valuable things I didn’t have. I would have never been taken to an interracial wedding in my childhood, nor would two of my most beloved relatives be an “out” lesbian couple. Still, as we left that old gym, I wished I could give my children what little I had when I was their age. In some ways it looks more valuable than the material things they have. Less is more? Perhaps.

Later, as I sat among the wedding crowd looking at what remained of the place I once new so well, I thought that perhaps the worst thing we could give our children is the best of everything.

Found In Translation

The night before New Years Eve my son’s Japanese girlfriend, Machiko made dinner for our family. Afterwards, Greta and I, Cal and Machiko downloaded Toy Story 3 to watch together.

As the animated film unfolded, I could hear Machiko quietly quizzing Cal about what was happening in the story. Her English is good, but when the dialogue is complicated she loses detail.

I’m missing some of the movie myself thinking about something connected to this moment that I saw that day on Facebook. Scrolling through the posts I see a list of people who “have the new profile,” and see a familiar face: Florence.

When I arrived in London for the first time in 1982, Florence was sitting behind the hotel desk, a lovely, aloof French girl with shoulder length, coal black hair, dressed in a style that would later become known as “Goth.” The Austrian night clerk told me in his broken English, “She like to play hard to get.” Once I got to know her I told him, “No, she just is hard to get.”

In the months I lived in that hotel Florence and I became close friends, drinking gin into the night in her room where the walls were plastered with David Bowie posters, a fragrant vile of ground flower petals sat on the window sill, and Ricki Lee Jones played from a cassette deck.

One night Florence and I took the subway to Piccadilly Circus and saw, “On Golden Pond,” a late career film for both Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn.

I have vivid memories of sitting in that theater with Florence. As the film unfolded, she quizzed me about what was happening in the story. Her English was good, but when the dialogue got complicated, she lost detail.

At some point she quit asking questions and watched quietly at my shoulder. Near the end, in an emotional climax when both Fonda and Hepburn’s characters are forced to confront their aging, ever-limited abilities, I saw Florence wiping tears from her face. The pantomime of action, the gentle flourish of orchestral strings meant to tug at the heart, punctuated by the nouns and verbs she was getting were enough. She understood pretty much what we English speakers in the theater were getting.

When we emerged from the dark theater onto that glimmering circle of the city, I asked if she understood what she had seen. “I didn’t understand everything they said, but I understood the meaning,” she said to me.

When Florence friended me on Facebook a year ago, it had been 23 years since I last saw her. The year after Greta and I were married, we backpacked Europe and Florence drove up to meet us in St. Raphael on the coast of France. I scanned her FB photos and saw recent vacation pictures that, if I had to guess, looked to be taken on the coast in northern Africa – there is a handsome husband in the photos and two teenage girls who look like they must be Florence’s daughters. The voyeuristic miracle of Facebook – to be able to peak into the lives of old friends from thousands of miles and a quarter century away.

At the end of Toy Story 3, when the grown up Andy handed over his own childhood toys to the little girl, I looked back over my shoulder at Machiko, snuggled up against my son and see that she’s wiping tears from her cheeks. I’ve had enough conversations with her to know that the dialogue is going too fast for her to understand all that’s being said, but that doesn’t matter. She understands.

Language and meaning are funny things. So essential, and at other times not so necessary.

At the end of the movie I accessed Facebook on my cell phone and sent a message to Florence: “I wish all the best for you and your family in the new year.” And a day later she responds in pretty darn good English, “My best wishes for this new year also. I think of you all very often. With all my friendship.”

South of France 1983

A photo Florence sent me on Facebook last year, one she took of me in the garden of her parent's hotel in St. Tropez in the summer of 1983.

Conspiracy Theories and Dirty Underwear

Many years ago, soon after moving into a new home, a neighbor waved me over. He’d read my newspaper column in that day’s paper and said it made him think of something he wanted to share. But there was no connection whatsoever between what I wrote and what he told me.

He claimed NASA never landed on the moon. “It was all filmed in the desert in Texas,” he said. He claimed that governments of the world were controlled by a triumvirate of Jewish businessmen who adjust world events for profit. You think you’re voting for this person or that, but elections are fixed. The fake moon landing was simple misdirection, devised to distract the world from what was really going on.

As this hallucinogenic riff built up steam, I began to suspect he was nibbling at the edges of Holocaust denial. That’s when I lied that I heard the phone ringing and headed back in the house.

Some years later this neighbor concocted a conspiracy theory about me built on an ironic grain of truth.

“Who do you think you’re fooling?” he sneered. “I know you’re up to something. I’ve seen you sneaking around.”

I actually had been sneaking around.

After that first loony tunes conversation I’d avoided him at all costs. If he walked down the sidewalk while I was doing yard work, I’d walk casually into the garage, as if looking for a tool, then watch from the window until he passed by. I’d do anything to avoid the crazy talk. He apparently caught that vibe and thought it looked sinister rather than what it really was: pathetic.

In December of 2001, just 3 months after 9/11 I arrived at a banquet hall in Indianapolis for 2 days of classes to renew my real estate license. As the room filled with nearly 100 people, I noticed everyone avoided seats near a Middle Eastern-looking man. I felt bad about how Muslim-Americans were being treated in the aftermath of the attacks and decided to conduct a random act of kindness. I right next to him. He looked up with wide, gentle eyes that seemed to say, “thank you.”

During the morning break we chatted about his childhood home in Afghanistan, the cold shoulder he’d gotten from his neighbors since 9/11, and news he was hearing from family back in the Middle East. As we gathered our things to break for lunch he leaned close and whispered to me, “You know, on the morning of September 11^th, the Jews who worked in the Twin Towers didn’t go to work.”

“You gotta be f’in kidding me,” I thought to myself.

I’d heard this little lump of horseshit already. The conspiracy theory that Israel was behind 9/11 – did it so that we’d go ape-shit on the Arab world, doing Israel’s dirty work for them.

I nodded a thoughtful, “Hmmmmm,” in response. Returning after lunch I sat far, far away from the Afghani man.

On one hand I’m embarrassed for conspiracy theorists. But I know that believing the conspiracy satisfies something in the believer. As they say of those cheated by a con man, “You can’t be conned by a con man if you don’t really want what he’s selling.”

I have to admit I have my own proclivities. If I could choose what was true, I’d believe a lot of things I can’t prove. I’d love to believe in ghosts. But I’ve been living in old houses my entire life and still haven’t seen anything remotely passing as proof.

I’d love to believe in UFOs. When I was a kid I laid on the grass in the backyard endless summer nights staring up at the sky with my brother and sisters, looking for proof – “Please, please, please let me see something flying in the sky that’s unexplainable,” I’d plead silently to the great beyond. Never saw a thing.

So if a UFO landed in the street and a ghost appeared nearby, a part of me would be ready to believe. But another part of me would quickly suspect a car crash resulting in smoke from an engine fire.

Wanting to believe something isn’t enough to make it true.

My conspiracy theorist neighbor eventually moved away. Who knows, maybe I scared him off. The new neighbor is a lovable smart ass. He found a pair of the previous owner’s underwear tucked in the old plaster walls around a window for insulation. He knew it was the guy’s underwear because it had his name sewn along the back label (I promise, I’m not making this up). Also knowing of the animosity between myself and the old neighbor (as it is now legendary in our neighborhood), last year the new neighbor gift-wrapped the underwear and left it on my front porch at Christmas as a joke. It was labeled, “To Kurt, from Santa.”

I will gladly take dirty underwear over conspiracy theories whenever given the choice.