Philosophy Via Sitcom: Everything Happens For A Reason

“Everything happens for a reason.”

I cringe when I hear people say that, feeling a little like Sheriff Taylor on the Andy Griffith Show, the way he gently smirked, shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck when Opie or Goober mistook the true message in a teachable moment.

“Everything happens for a reason,” is usually an evasive misreading of what actually happened or worse yet, blatantly false. What’s more, it often feels like loser talk masquerading alternately as religious doctrine, superstition, Buddhism or folk wisdom.

I call it, “loser talk,” because it’s offered with a shrug of the shoulders after things don’t work out as hoped. Nobody ever wins a game, then pumps a fist in the air and shouts, “Oh, hell yeah! Things happen for a reason!”

There’s a classic episode of Andy Griffith when Andy is alerted by the feds that a delivery of gold will pass through Mayberry on the way to Fort Knox. He and Barney must provide security. Andy tells Barney and swears him to secrecy. Through a series of foolish, prideful stumbles, Barney tells person after person until all of Mayberry knows. Barney wants to blame it on town gossip – on the inevitability of the relentless forces of human nature, rather than blame his own actions.

I have experiences not unlike that in my real estate career. Clients will ignore my advice and make repeated decisions based upon false logic and ego, then when the bad thing happens that I warned them about, they very rarely say, “Wow, I blew it.” Instead, they shrug, “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. Everything happens for a reason.”

 

If I’m lucky, they stop there. If I’m not lucky, they say, “Guess it just wasn’t in God’s plan.”

That makes me crazy. If there was a modern HBO version of Mayberry, Andy would say, “Now Barney, don’t blame God for the convoluted clusterfuck of bad choices you made.”

People want to blame the great beyond, when they ought to blame themselves.

I realize sometimes things really do happen for a reason. Aunt Bea carefully and lovely makes a pie with a flakey crust she fills with fresh apples and lots of sugar and cinnamon. Floyd the Barber coos, “Oooo, Bea, that’s gooood pie!” The pie was good, “for a reason.” Earnest T. Bass throws a brick through the jewelry store window and Andy takes him to jail. Earnest T. Bass went to jail, “for a reason.”

Cause and effect, plain and simple.

But that’s not what people mean when they say, “Everything happens for a reason.” They’re talking mysticsm. They’re talking fate and inevitability, as if there’s nothing they could have done to make things turn out differently.

That’s rarely true.

In one episode of Andy Griffth, Gomer outsings Barnie to win a spot on the Mayberry choir. If, “Everything happens for a reason,” is the mantra Barney repeats over and over to make peace with his disappointment, I accept that as reasonable. But if it’s the salve Barney rubs on his wounded ego – as if the unknowable blackness of the universe meant for him to fail, then I think he’s missing the point of the failure. Take singing lessons! Practice! But stop blaming fate!

And sometime things in fact don’t really happen for any reason whatsoever.

Truth is, I’m also in the, “Shit Happens,” camp. I’d like to think Howard Sprague would be in that camp with me. I can imagine his reasoning, professorial tone explaining to Thelma Lou that “there’s a lot of chaos in the world, entropy if you will, and so sometimes shit just happens.” Howard would explain to a disbelieving Thelma Lou in his familiar rising and falling notes that, “God didn’t pre-ordain everything and there’s no pre-written script dictating what will happen at every given moment to every single person. I think there are thousands or millions of possibilities depending on which turn you take or choice you make.”

"God doesn't direct every moment on earth?" Thelma Lou asks, searchingly." Howard answers with two words, "Free will."

If there’s ever a positive connotation to, “Everything happens for a reason,” it’s when offered in retrospect, when one realizes they’ve ended up in a good and happy place, despite the fact that something bad happened to them in the past, like they were meant to face that earlier obstacle so they could find true success later, somewhere else. Let's imagine Andy with his third season girlfriend, Helen Crump, looking back on his first season girlfriend, Ellie Walker. He might think he was always meant to find happiness with Helen, but first had to be tested by a breakup with Ellie. But I don’t believe that. When bad things happen, we adjust and learn, making the best of the situation we’re left in. If we’re really trying, it makes sense we’d end up in another good place. It doesn’t mean it was meant to be, it means we made-do with our situation. If the shit hadn’t happened with Ellie, and there’s no reason to believe it was inevitable, Andy wouldn’t need to hook up with Helen in season three. But things didn’t work out and so he adjusted and made things work with Helen.

Meant to be? Happened for a reason? That’s storybook talk. Andy made-do and Helen was a great gal. Isn’t that enough?

I think sometimes the phrase, “Everything happens for a reason” is a like that single, pathetic bullet in Barney’s shirt pocket. Maybe people who say it lack intellectual or emotional ammo. They just have the one single bullet-phrase to explain the disappointment of failure. And the unthinking use of the phrase by otherwise intelligent people, like that lone bullet Barney has – meant for a gun with six chambers, is an embarrassment.

Though I’m an outspoken guy, most of the time I ignore it when people pointlessly say, “Everything happens for a reason.” Just as Sheriff Taylor most often would, I purse my lips, smile knowingly and say nothing. 

It would take too long to explain all this anyway.

My Affirmative Action Program

In the wake of events in Ferguson, I’ve had many discussions with folks about race and often come away saddened by the quick, self-satisfied judgments I hear white folks make. I’m not saying that everything coming from the African American community sounds entirely rational either, but I’m not immersed in their world, I’m immersed in mine, and it’s mostly white. I’ll speak to what I know. It’s an American history that for some reason, some of my peers never think to apply to their own success and comfort.

I’ll call this history, “My Affirmative Action Program.”

My grandfather Meyer grew up in a poor German-speaking farming family in northern Indiana in the early 20^th Century. He went to school with his German heritage in tact. In fact, though all 12 of his siblings were born in America, they didn’t bother speaking English until they went to school – good schools by international standards at that time. As a young man he took that work ethic and education to the nearest small town, married my grandmother and got a job at the post office. It was a good gig for the 1920s.

I imagine the African American version of my grandfather. That man’s grandparents were slaves. His ancestor’s culture, religion, language were all beaten out of the generations that led up to him. And if he had a school, it likely wasn’t as good as the one-room schoolhouse my grandfather had. He too probably grew up in hard circumstances, but there was no post office job for him. Though he might have been a janitor at a post office making a fraction of what my white grandfather earned.

I once interviewed a local African American woman whose husband was the rarest of 1930s black men. He got a degree in chemistry at IU. After graduation he applied for a job at Eli Lilly. But he was told, “The only job we’ve got for you involves a broom and a mop.”

My grandfather wasn’t ambitious enough to get a degree at IU, but he qualified for a better job than his black IU peer. That IU chemistry grad never used his degree.

My grandfather learned that if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll be rewarded. What did the black IU grad learn? I’m guessing he didn’t learn the same lesson from his experiences that my grandfather learned from his. He might have learned a bitterness that white people couldn’t understand.

When my grandparents’ two sons went to school, my grandmother got a job as a secretary. They bought a house in the 1930s and built equity with each payment. As they approached retirement, they built a new house and paid cash.

My grandparents were good, hardworking people. There’s nothing in the rewards of their hard work to apologize for.

My grandparents’ sons went to good white schools in an all white small town and both my father and his brother then went to Purdue and got engineering degrees in the 1950s.

Jim Crow laws were still in affect. It didn’t just keep the black versions of my father and uncle from white lunch counters and front rows in the bus, it kept them segregated in poorly funded schools. Few made it to college. I wonder how many blacks were at Purdue getting engineering degrees in the 1950s. The degrees weren’t handed out like candy. My dad and my uncle, worked hard, they struggled, but they did it with an opportunity that was systematically kept from their black counterparts. Their black counterparts likely lived with a bitterness that white people couldn’t understand.

Yet, there is nothing about the college degrees that my dad or uncle need apologize for. 

In my little Indiana hometown in the 1960s and ‘70s I went to safe, nurturing schools. I was blessed. I was born white and middle class in 1960 in an all-white town, attended an all-white school, and learned along side kids whose families had not-so-different backgrounds from mine. I say "blessed" because these were places with the best resources, where the spoils of earlier generations were concentrated so that even if you were white, poor, and uneducated, there were radiating waves of economic activity that provided you with a good job. And because you were white, you and your children were welcome to climb a ladder not so easily available to those of the wrong color.

My dad’s engineering job put me in a big house on a nice street with virtually zero-crime. And there was enough money to send my mom to night school and summer classes. She got a teaching degree and eventually a teaching job.

Though I didn’t try very hard in high school, I still got into college. I wonder how many of my African American counterparts could say they day-dreamed their way through high school and still got into college in the 1970s. I grew up watching black people on TV behave with a bitterness I couldn’t understand.

As a young man my grandmother sent me money every Christmas – first $100, and eventually a $1,000 each year. I once bought a trip to Europe with that cash. Later I used the money to pay for the raising of children. I would eventually build a career for myself as a small-business person, working, literally, sometimes seven days a week, earning every single paycheck. I still do.

There’s nothing in my success to apologize for. But I had a leg up. Over and over again.

Fast-forward to the year I turned 40. After my grandmother died a check arrived in my mailbox for $60,000. The only thing I did to earn that was to have the right DNA. It was my cut of the estates of a frugal postal worker and secretary. I’m not sorry I got it. I’m proud of my family heritage. But I’m Christian-enough to wonder about my African American counterpart – the grandson of the man who couldn’t get a post office job in the 1920s because his skin was black – the son of a man who didn’t go to college in the 1950s like my dad did because his skin was black and his own dad didn't get the post office job – and so as a result, he’s the same guy who didn’t get annual Christmas checks and then a big one for $60,000 like I did.

I invested that money in my home and my kids’ college funds.

Two of my kids have graduated college – the youngest is still in college. They have no apologies to make for their opportunities. But are they encountering black peers who grew up with a bitterness that is hard for them to understand?

I’m gonna guess yes.

It’s over 100 years since my grandparents were born into a country where being white meant unlimited possibilities if you were wiling to work hard, and being born black meant 2^nd class status and limited opportunities, no matter how hard you worked . . . and then you were judged deficient for all the things you didn't accomplish. The money my grandparents earned in their privileged position is still at play in the lives of their grandchildren and great grandchildren – giving us an affirmative action program that wasn't available to everybody.

To this very day, research shows that black students are more likely to be expelled than white children for the same infractions. Reviews of arrests and sentencing records show the exact same disparity in our criminal justice system. Current research also shows that blacks who apply for jobs, home loans, and apartments are more likely to be rejected than their white counterparts with equal education and employment records. My black friends tell me, “If you think racism isn’t alive and well in America, you’re a fool.” It is a common feature of their lives. But it’s not out in the open anymore, it’s gone underground.

I’m not asking for any new law nor a new government program to fix this disparity. I’m simply asking my peers to stop callously judging struggling African American communities with questions like, “What’s wrong with those people?” or, “Why are so many of them in jail?” or “Why are they so angry? You can get ahead if you’ll just work hard and act right.”

I want my peers to think about their own family history and acknowledge the privileged shoulders of those they stood on to grab the success they found in life. I want them to be a little less self-satisfied and certain in the superiority of their own effort and a little more empathetic of those who’ve had less opportunity. If you don't know what I'm talking about, consult the Bible.

I don’t want my peers to apologize for their success or their peaceful, safe communities. I simply want them to broaden their view and acknowledge the obvious truths of American history and the affirmative action program people like us had.

There “but for the grace of God” I went, lucky that my grandparents were born white in early 20^th Century America rather than black.

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This Summer's Wedding

Sean

As June bled into July, it seemed I was in a protracted stage play where the actors each made timely, carefully choreographed entrances.

Late June, mid-morning, the first actor loped from behind the curtain of my kitchen doorway. It was the groom–my adopted son Sean, a week ahead of schedule with that familiar vandalous grin spread across his sharp jaw.

Jack

Chika & Cal

On a Saturday some ten days later, through the windshield I saw my son Jack’s broad shoulders pop through an automatic door at the Indy airport. He’s the best man, home from Denver with a trimmed beard and fresh haircut. The next day, their brother, Cal sprung from his mom’s car in my driveway, tall and lean with a travel-wearing smile. He and his Japanese girlfriend, Chika had come from Tokyo. She introduced herself to me with a firm handshake. Soon thereafter the bride, Courtney arrived from Ohio, her signature lion’s mane of blonde hair framing that happy, childlike face.

Courtney

A year ago right now, my kids were all living here. Since then they’ve each flown the coop. But for that week this house where my kids grew up was wonderfully full again.

 

Josh, the blonde, longhaired, bearded, barnstorming musician and groomsman entered the stage early in the week in time for beers and a pool party. His ready laughter was written deep in the week’s script.

Josh

Seeing Sean and Courtney’s accumulated relationships appearing one at a time in the form of family and old friends, reminded me of all the people we touch and who touch us as we move through life. There were cookouts, bar meet-ups and late night conversations around the kitchen table.

Schweke

Some of those who played serious rolls or mere cameos first arrived at my house years ago on bicycles or skateboards in their early teens. Now they’re college grads spread across the country and around the world.

 

Jake

I don’t really recall when Schweke showed up, but he’s hard to miss with a face that never ages and a 1,000-watt smile. When I headed up the stairs to bed Wednesday night, I think he was the one who asked me to leave the front door unlocked. “Jake’s gonna arrive in the middle of the night from Nashville.” When I came down in the morning, Jake was asleep on the couch, an arm thrown across his face. He opened one eye and waved.

 

Michael

Later that day as I sat alone drinking a beer at a picnic table at Bonge’s in Perkinsville, waiting for the bachelor party to float down White River from Anderson, a fresh-faced young man wandered down the road toting a heavy backpack. He looked lost. I noted, then ignored him, then dashed down to the river to pull sun burnt and drunken groomsmen from their canoes & kayaks. The young man with the backpack was still waiting along the road when we returned to the restaurant. Turned out it was one of Sean’s college buddies, Michael, linking up with the group.

Dan

And Courtney’s brother Dan, too, found a place on my living room floor. A gentle soul with and a kind, sober-face, Dan would pass the time throwing Frisbee out front on Cherry Street.

The accumulated scenes played out at bars and restaurants, on patios and pools, and even on the river during that week were a testament to the rich relationships Sean and Courtney have created in their young lives. During the rehearsal dinner I looked about and noted common threads among those faces. None are shallow or foolish, no hot messes, no macho jerks, no lost souls. Not a one you wish would hurry up and go home. All are well-grounded young people composing the next act in their lives – taking new jobs, marrying, moving to new places.

The groomsmen at Bonge's: drunken & sunburnt

Birds of a feather.

There was a lot of beer, and some fun-loving craziness here and there, but more often there were thoughtful conversations about life, faith, love, and the possibilities that lay ahead. We are just past the clustered years of graduations with this group, and entering the years of weddings. When your kids are little people tell you to savor the moments, because they’ll grow up before you know it. Fear not. I enjoy the company of my children and their friends more now than ever.

Courtney & Sean at the wedding

And appreciating those faces, loving having them drinking beer on my patio or crashing on my couch reminds me that Sean and Courtney’s real journey didn’t start the way we often think of it – on the wedding day. Instead, they were already deep into the journey by that time, and the people who took the stage here were the proof – the ones they’d already gathered up along the road; the sympathetic souls that make up a circle of friends.

The wedding was held far from plastic-covered subdivisions and asphalt-ringed stip malls. It was in a grassy patch beneath tall ancient trees, ringed on all sides by cornfields – a place that still looks like Indiana. It went off without a hitch with each player reading his lines to perfection.

And as quickly as they came, they stepped off stage, scattering across the world, back to their personal journeys: gone in the morning, or dropped at the 
airport, or pulled away from the curb.

Buy Kurt's book: Noblesville
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REBUILDING A NOVEL

When River’s Edge Marketing came to me last year and asked to reedit, repackage and remarket my first novel, Stardust, I was amazed. I thought the ship had sailed on that old story. That somebody thought it still had a chance at a wider audience outside of Indiana was exciting.

It took me back to the brief excitement of 13 years ago when I signed with the original publisher. But that excitement quickly turned to frustration. The best example of that first fractured publishing experience came they asked to cut a chapter. They said that chapter’s story line was one tragedy too many. I explained that I was simply writing what had actually happened in the small town of Noblesville in the summer of 1893. It was reality that was crucial to the entire story. “Nobody will believe that,” they said. I became suspicious they were just trying to cut the book for length instead of quality. So I suggested, “It would be far better to cut this other chapter and keep the one you want to cut.” Before I could finish my sentence, they say, “YES! Then let’s cut that one.”

 

The original cover.
Hate the color. Love the image

I was right. They were cutting for length only.

I challenged the logic. They claimed the average best-seller was approximately 333 pages. I replied, “That’s meaningless. When I’m in the car with my daughter, the average age of passengers is nearly 24-years-old. But I’m 41 and she’s 6 (at the time), so averages can send you in the wrong direction if you don’t see them for what they are. Mitch Albom’s Tuesday’s With Morrie is 192 pages, and John Grisham’s A Time To Kill is 515 pages. Both best sellers. Why don’t we edit for quality, not length?”

The frozen silences on the conference call betrayed pursed lips and knitted brows around a conference room table in Portland. They were no doubt thinking, “Kurt’s a difficult artist. He’s not a team player.” At least that’s how they treated me from that moment on.

I would later discover that they were in financial trouble and just pushing product out the door as fast as possible, in some cases to get authors off their backs, and in others hoping that something would catch fire and make some quick money. Within a couple months of my book’s publication, they were bankrupt. I spent two years marketing the book, doing book talks, sending press releases to newspapers, and stocking stores myself. I eventually sold all 5,000 of the copies that were printed.

Eleven years later, the folks at River’s Edge saw the weaknesses in the pages of that original manuscript and suspected that with more professional editing it could reach a wider audience. I flew to Little Rock, Arkansas last January and signed a contract. Stardust would live on.

The new editor worked like a therapist, seldom making bold pronouncements, but mostly asking of weak or tedious points in the story, “How does that make you feel?” constantly urging me to listen to the voice at the back of my head. “If it doesn’t feel entirely right, it isn’t right. Trust the voice.”

What resulted is a tighter story, less pontificating–which I am prone to, more of the soul of the story–the romance between David and Mary. And the technology that constantly simmmered at the background of the original was updated to reflect how smart phones, wifi, and the Internet have affected our lives in the past decade.

Last January, in a Little Rock conference room that looked out over the Arkansas River and a high bluff beyond, I was asked to give a synopsis of the book to the marketing department. They listened carefully. Finally a man about my age asked, “What does Stardust mean?” I quickly realized he had no knowledge whatsoever of the song Stardust, written by Hoosier songwriting legend Hoagy Carmichael and the most recorded love song of the jazz era. “How is that possible?” I thought to myself. But he was smart. Yet he didn’t know. Anyone would know by the end of the book, but we were debating how to get them to open it and read the first page. On the flight home I kept replaying that conversation in my mind, finally realizing that it was a very smart question.

He then slid the original book out onto the table. “Let’s say I’m walking down the main aisle of a Barnes and Noble and I see this cover on a stack of books on a table among a vast stack of other books. What is that cover supposed to mean to me?”

I stammered some vague comment like, “The past is a foreign country and the cover conveys a compelling lost language that kinda evokes the past, blah, blah, blah.” Truth was, I mostly just thought it was cool.

The new cover created by Paula at River's Edge Media.

He shook his head, smirked, pushed himself away from the table and folded his arms, “I don’t get it.”

It didn’t insult me. Didn’t hurt my feelings. I like having my feet held to the fire and having to defend what I’ve done. But if he didn’t understand, how many other people wouldn’t understand? In the end this can’t be me trying to figure it all out on my own, like it was first time around. These are trained professionals. I decided to let them do their jobs. It felt right.

Back to the title. Neil Gaiman’s highly successful book called Stardust created problems for us. If readers went looking for my book, they would first find Gaiman’s. My title had to go. That was tough to accept. But again, it made perfect sense. Easier to retitle my book than unpopularize Gaiman’s book. My very fitting title had to go. When the editor and I kept coming up empty handed, Paula, in the River’s Edge marketing department said, “Why not just call it “Noblesville?”

For a split second, it sounded dumb, but it sounded smarter and smarter as each day passed. Every step of writing the story I was trying to evoke a sense of place and to respect that place as Indiana. Why not make the boldest and simplest of statements about place and name it for the town where it's set, “Noblesville.” Paula not only renamed the book, she designed the new cover.

Smart girl.

So here I am, 22 years after I started writing the story, it’s being published for a second time with a new title and a new cover, leaner, at 15+ pages shorter, and it’s more expressive than it was first time around. Thanks to the folks at River’s Edge, it’s a better story by far than the one published a dozen years ago.

We're still in the very early stages of placing the book in retail locations, but a few options are already online. It can be bought in the town of Noblesville currently at The Wild Bookstore.

Books from River's Edge Media 
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In The Garden

Charles Jonas Good (aka "Chalk), my 
great uncle and gardening inspiration.

As a very small child I once “helped” my great uncle Chalk dig potatoes and peanuts. He’d press the pitchfork into the ground with his boot and invite me to help him pull the handle back. When we did, roots and potatoes and peanuts emerged from the dirt like magic. He’d pull the wood-framed window screens from his Victorian-era home, lay them across saw horses and spread the potatoes and peanuts there to be rinsed and then dried in the sun.

There was something magical about things of value waiting in the dirt – like getting something for nothing. I’d get the same rush watching archeology documentaries.

My parents kept a garden for awhile when I was a kid. I burnt it to the ground once. Late one dry fall when the corn stalks were yellow I was sent to burn the trash in a barrel at the edge of the alley. I must have gotten to playing with the fire, beating the burning paper and cardboard with a stick to watch the sparks fly. Later while I was watching TV, my mom came and grabbed me by the arm and drug me to the back yard. You know that way a parent grabbed you too hard by the arm or the ear when they were mad? It was that kinda “shit’s-about-to-go-down” arm-dragging. She man-handled me across the patio and shoved me into the open of the yard so I could see the blackened garden smoldering. Looked like a bomb hit it.

I guess some sparks must of gotten loose.

I laid in bed that night with a sore arm, a sore ass, and tears running down my cheeks, considering the situation: I’ve kinda done ‘em a favor. This will be the easiest autumn garden clean-up ever. But I was alone in my glass-half-full rationalizations. My family still likes to tell the story about when Kurt burned the garden down. I nearly burned the house down a couple times, so I endure the garden story with good nature. It coulda been a lot worse.

Asparagus making its first 
appearance this year in my garden.

I planted a garden of my own at the first house I owned, excited that things of value would grow in the dirt for me and my family. My salvage tendencies provided stacks of old wooden storm windows which I made cold frames from, allowing me to make a little green house and plant early in spring and grow late in the fall. I grew a lot of brocolli, tomatoes, peppers and spinach in that garden.

One Saturday evening I picked jalapenos and carried a bowl full into the house. Baby Cal needed to be but in the bath next to the kitchen, so I set down the peppers, took off his diaper, and sat him in the bath water. As I diced the peppers in the kitchen, I could hear Cal wimpering in the bathroom. I looked ‘round the corner to find him desperately clawing at his hips, trying to peal back the pain. The residue from the skins of the peppers on my fingertip had left handprint burns on his tender toddler skin.

That was the last time that my gardening led to burns (so far).

Fast forward more than 20 years and gardening has become cheap therapy. On warm, sunny days like the ones we’ve had lately, I pull into the drive after a day in the car or at the office staring into a computer screen and drop my computer bag on the patio and wonder over into the plants, often still wearing a sport coat and dress pants. My gray tabby, Gracie follows and lays in the grass nearby, watching as I snap off a handful of asparagus, pull weeds in the garlic and onions, and pinch the early sucker-starts from the tomatoes. Gracie’s been keeping the bunnies from eating off the starts of the green beans.

 

Each year I can salsa, marinara sauce, bruschetta, pickled jalepenos, sriracha sauce, roasted red peppers and green beans, the ingredients all coming from my garden, including the herbs. And I water it all during dry spells with rain water gathered from the garage roof and stored in barrels. City hose water rarely touches my garden. And it’s all mulched with leaves from my yard. I put almost no leaves on the curb for the city to take. I keep them on site and let them partially decompose over the winter.

Gracie, the garden watch cat: She may be small, but 
so is a stick of dynamite. Many a rabbit and 
chipmunk have underestimated her.

I’m not a crazed back-to-earth guy, but it’s become a healthy game: how much can I produce with what’s here, on this little piece of urban landscape. Last year I pulled out a useless row of lilly of the valley and planted blueberries. That should be a nice addition.

Last week I carried bags of produce to family gatherings in Tipton. My cousin Pete and his wife Jen mixed a bundle of my asparagus into the mushroom risotto and a big head of my backyard romaine into a salad. The next night they steamed my broccoli. Sunday I ate my morning bagel with black raspberry jam I canned last year and later that night carried a bag of fresh cut spinach to Danny and Allison’s for the dinner salad.

Spinach & garlic coming on strong 
this spring.

Who needs morning devotionals and weekly therapy sessions when you’ve got a garden? If the garden isn’t getting you closer to God or your inner Chi, you’re doing it wrong . . . or you have an infestation of aphids. Or asparagus beetles.

In the Garden: Susan Tedeschi & Double Trouble

The Worst Band In America

We’ve all seen them, the back window decal of Calvin, from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, urinating on the car number of the NASCAR driver someone hates the most. When I first saw these, years ago, it always amazed me that it wasn’t enough to love Dale Earnhart. You had to equally celebrate your hatred for Jeff Gordon.

But this need to hate one side as much as you love another has taken hold in an ugly way in our culture. It comes out among music fans in a big way. Over the years, no topic I write about gets more people irrationally angry than when I write about music.

I’m a big music fan. I manage my own home digital database of over 20,000 tracks of music. Name the act, they’re probably there. And playlists. There’s a blues playlist with 700-800 songs on it, and playlists of Reggae, Soul, Folk, Western Swing, Country Blues, Jazz, Americana, Rockabilly, and on and on. Each playlist only plays songs I like, songs I put there by choice. There’s more than a decade of digitized hard work in that database. Thousands of albums. So I have opinions about music.

But scanning through an LA Weekly article titled, “The 20 Worst Bands of All Time,” I found myself dismayed by the condescending snark of critics actually listing bands they hate. Bands on the list inexplicably included The Eagles, LCD Soundsystem (c’mon, that’s not even a band, it’s a guy) Pearl Jam, The Black Eyed Peas . . .  well okay I get the hatred of the Black Eyed Peas. No, I’m kidding (kinda).

How about I list music critics I hate? You know, the ones who can’t play a musical instrument or write a song but have a lot of opinions about people who can? Naw. I won’t do that either.

When I was a kid, I loved The Monkees. They were a manufactured band with manufactured music made for Saturday morning TV - a unique item in that cartoon laden world, but as music went, they’re weren’t the real thing. But being an 8-year-old kid, I didn’t know that. In the black & white, vanilla Indiana of my upbringing, The Monkees looked pretty dam cool. I dreamed of having a car and an apartment just like theirs. I listened to their music and read the liner notes on their albums. There I found songwriting credits for Neil Diamond and Carol King and Gerry Goffin. I followed those liner note threads and still follow musical threads to this day.

Of course, The Monkees

Those liner notes led me from the waning days of Tin Pan Alley to lessor known music that was raw, real, and homemade, not made for Hollywood or the top 10, but just out of a musician’s desperate need to be heard and understood by someone . . . anyone.

I eventually became a guy with hundreds and hundreds of albums, hundreds of CDs, and now a guy carefully managing that ever-growing digital database of high-def music, all because I was once inspired by the Monkees. That’s a little fucked up, but how lots of people come to music. My playlists now include Dave Brubeck, Jimmie Rogers, Jimi Hendrix, Hank Williams, Count Basie, Joni Mitchell, Mozart, Robert Johnson, Fleet Foxes and Uncle Tupelo, to name just a few, all because I got inspired by the Monkeys. How can that be wrong?

So stop making fun of music you think is dumb. It’s inspiring somebody. I was once that guy, way too often, the one rolling my eyes at people not “smart enough” to like what I liked. What a horrible bore I was with my opinions about what music was best or worst.

There is no best or worst. There’s just what I like, what you like, and what others like.

Recently a petition signed by over 100,000 people was sent to the White House asking that Canadian, teen music sensation, Justin Bieber be deported. If America needed a list of over 100,000 of it’s residents with too damn much time on their hands, it’s just been conveniently compiled. People who like Justin Beiber MIGHT be dumb. But people who signed that petition are definitely dumb.

And Phil Collins, former drummer and eventual front man for the late-era version of the band Genesis, who sold 150 million records as a solo artist, has had entire web-sites dedicated to hating him. He actually quit music in part because of the relentless venom directed at him. I haven’t wanted to listen to his stuff for years, but I’ve got a life way too full to spend any of it hating on him. Besides, I have fond memories of Phil Collins. Remember hearing In The Air Tonight when I was about 20 and thinking it was cool as hell. Remember driving a rental car in England in ‘82 and having my roommate put Walkman headphones on my ears as I drove so I could hear Collins drumming with Scottish singer, John Martyn. Recall going to Bloomington with college friends to hear Collins in the early ‘80s – and one of my buddies on that trip ended up marrying one of the girls who went with us. Good memories.

That LA Weekly article listed the Dave Matthews Band as the worst band of all time. I’m almost embarrassed for the calculating, condescending guy who wrote that article.

I realize he was hired to inflame music readers. I’m guessing he’s the kind of critic who loved that Radiohead or Wilco album I couldn’t quite get into. The critic who said those were masterpieces. I love Radiohead and Wilco. So I kept listening and listening. Listened sober. Listened drunk. Listened high. Only to realize I just didn’t really get those albums, but was also left feeling maybe I’m not as smart as that critic. He must be tapped into the real deal. I’m just not cool enough to figure it out.

No. He likes what he likes. I like what I like.  And way too stupidly often if you’re wearing what’s out of style, you feel dumb. But you’re not dumb. You’re just wearing other clothes.

Dave & the boys

The Dave Matthews Band is not the worst band of all time. Not even remotely close. The worst band of all time is murdering perfectly good songs in a basement or a garage and they really do suck and we’ll never, ever hear about them because they really are that bad. But the Dave Matthews Band and the other 19 bands on that snarky, hateful list, are not the worst bands of all time. The list should have been titled: “The Bands I Resent Most Because They Get More Attention Then The Bands I Like More.” That’s what the list is all about, bands whose success seems unwarranted to people who prefer other talented, worthy, struggling acts who are less appreciated by the masses.

If you’ve got time to hate Dave Matthews, Justin Bieber, or Phil Collins, you’ve got way too much time on your hands. Instead of hating them, ignore them and turn your attention to music you love, and be happy that those acts are inspiring somebody who will someday share a musical love with you.

The Duckling Heart

During marriage counseling, I was told by no fewer than three mental health professionals that we marry one of our parents.

After the first one said it, my ex and I stood in the parking lot outside his office building and mutually agreed, “That’s a lotta Dr. Phil bullshit!” But the third therapist took us through a process that identified which of my parents I had married, then led us through an exercise that put a big, expressive, tear-gushing exclamation point on the truth of it. It was one of the most emotional, revelatory experiences of my life.

How appropriate the sessions were held in the dimly lit, low-ceilinged basement of an unassuming, small office building in my own neighborhood. Into the rabbit hole of our childhoods my wife of twenty-five years and I tumbled. What I saw down there rang true, like the details of a hazy, half-remembered, fever dream from childhood, suddenly recalled and focused. And so I tried to grip the feathery, blow-away edges of those truths and understand the formative events that led to my impulses.

The theory that we marry one of our parents begins with the idea that we grew up in conflict with a particular parent. It can be as devastating as sexual, physical, or emotional abuse, or as simple as a longing for the nurturing and love a parent withheld. When we encounter people later in life who have personality traits similar to that parent, we often connect with them. Subconsciously they speak to our hardwiring because we know how to play a role in that familiar relationship. We may even see promise of the emotional resolution we’ve always yearned for but never got with the parent – The nagging itch that never got scratched.

We yearn to be loved by THAT kind of person.

In the same way that good dramas require conflict, seems life is more compelling when we have something to push against, which might explain why we pursue things that actually make us unhappy.

Late last winter I had a couple interesting, intense dates with a lovely woman named Jan. I’m a talk show host on a date – part Johnny Carson, part Dr. Drew, so better be ready to talk about your life in detail or hear about mine. Over the course of two evenings I coaxed out of her stories of an emotionally abusive father, an emotionally abusive ex-husband, and an emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend. This cute, fit, brunette mother of 3 told the stories with no air of victimhood, like it was just bad luck. Clearly a strong woman, she talked like she, “ain’t takin’ that shit no more.” But the first thing I thought once the common threads of those three men dangled in front of my face: I don’t stand a chance with this beautiful, dynamic, intelligent, hardworking gal. Why? Because I’m not silent, emotionally distant, or abusive. I’ve got my own issues, but not those.

Jan didn’t choose her abusive dad, but she chose the husband and boyfriend. They may have been assholes, but she’s the common denominator. She knows their traits, understands them, and knows what to do with them. Whatever the abuser’s best behavior at the start of a relationship, those qualities speak to her, to her imprinting, perhaps echoing the joy and relief she felt at the moments her father actually treated her well. She can say all day long she’s looking for a kind, loving man, but I’ve met way too many woman – friends and lovers who expressed that delusion, only to watch them fall for the next charismatic abuser who showed up.

First time I faced this I was a teenager. The girl even sent me a tender birthday card gushing about what a “Nice guy” I was. It had a picture of Charlie Brown on the front. She soon dumped me and went back to the older, ex-boyfriend who had cruelly, sexually abused her.

It’s not just women choosing unconsciously and poorly. On another date with another bright woman, I shared my belief that while many women say they want kindness, they often don’t choose it. She rolled her eyes and shot back, “And men say they want an intelligent woman, but how often do they actually choose one?”

Touché!

Now, don’t mistake my harsh honesty for disrespect. I’m feeling utter sympathy in these moments . . . and maybe my own dysfunctional urge to fix things for them. That illusion is called the “savior complex.” It’s about being attracted to “birds with broken wings,” thinking you’ll save them, lighten their burden and get their love in return. I had a lucky childhood. My male and female role models were fixers. They fixed people’s problems. I know how to do that. I know how to play that role. And in my love life I’ve chased that fantasy even when it didn’t serve me well. That’s why women who are attracted to abusers have broken my heart regularly. I fall for them thinking I’ll fix them, but that doesn’t speak to their hardwiring. Don’t get me wrong, they want to be happy – but unfortunately they’re just not attracted to people who can make them happy.

Which is kinda a problem.

Somehow as adults, we seek roles familiar to the skill sets we learned as children. And it seems to form what we think we’re worth, what we deserve, what we’re worthy of, where we “belong.” And it can go way dark and way ugly.

Long ago in my teaching days I worked with another teacher, Mike. He was lovably nerdy, a good guy, and a good teacher.

The week before classes started one August in the 1990s I stopped in the empty central office of our school to check my mailbox and heard fingers typing furiously on a keyboard in the back room. I poked my head around the corner and found Mike at a keyboard, sweating bullets.

“Dude, you okay?” I asked. He motioned desperately for me to step in and close the door.

In a confession that clanged like fire crackers set off in a dumpster, this seemingly kind, gentle man explained that he’d been arrested during the summer for child molesting. “I want you to know that I never touched a child,” he said urgently. At this point, I didn’t care, I just wanted out of that room. “I was molested as a child,” he said. “I know I’m screwed up and I need help and I’m gonna get it. But I plea-bargained that I would never again work around minors. So I’m typing up my resignation.”

This guy was a great teacher. Visiting grads stopped in before holidays for years after asking me where he was, saying they wanted to thank him for preparing them for their intensive college courses.

I guess beauty and damage are tangled together in all of us.

I totally believed Mike when he said. “I got screwed up as a kid.” And as an adult he got caught doing weird, upsetting things near children, things that echoed what was done to him in the real life nightmares of his childhood. It excuses nothing, but explains a lot. Though I wish he hadn’t, he told me the whole story. Things I can’t unhear, though I wish I could.

How do we get imprinted so deeply in the half-forgotten dream of our childhood? Following and re-acting out the hurt of our early years like little ducklings who got one good look at their mother, whether matron or monster at just the right developmental moment, and so would follow her or anybody who looks like her off the edge of a waterfall, again, and again, and again, thinking this time it will be different, or more likely, we’re not thinking at all, just following a feeling.

The psychiatry world tells us that children who were abused often grow up to be abusers? That’s their norm. That’s what their roll models did. You think it would be the other way around – that they’d resolve to be different. But the human mind is a rabbit hole with immeasurable variations. 

Even folks like me with minor childhood issues can find it hard to shake their imprinting.

Just like I read between the lines on those two dates with that lovely women named Jan – the one with a habit of choosing abusive men? Any psychologist reading this story is reading between the lines, doing what any smart person does when they hear someone judging others; they’re pulling my common threads together, for often judgments say more about the person pronouncing them than about those he’s judging.

There was another rabbit hole in my life, one that at first looked like clear-eyed, adult clarity.

In a spare, darkened bedroom, on a mattress that lay flat upon freshly refinished, blonde oak floors, in a late night argument with a woman I dated after my marriage ended – a woman I thought I loved more than anyone else I’d ever met in my life – she silenced our angry debate with a simple, searching observation about herself, and me. Lying on her stomach, leaning up on elbows, her long, dark hair falling over her shoulders, she softly but urgently whispered at me, “Well maybe I’m attracted to birds with broken wings – thinking I’ll fix them.”

Occasionally, in that bed I awoke in a sleepy fog in the middle of the night to the glow of an iPhone screen cast against the wall. I’d turn to find her using it as a flashlight, her face illuminated in the blue-white glow, writing furiously on a small notepad. First time it happened I mumbled, “What are you doing?” She replied without looking up, “Writing down my dreams before I forget them.” She told me often she wanted to understand her dreams, tease out their hidden meaning.

The night of that earlier argument, we fell asleep back-to-back, then woke in the morning with our arms apologetically wrapped around one other.

But that didn’t fix anything. How I wish it could.

You see, I was still me and she was still her. We talked a lot about changing for each other, but never got there. The tea leaves of her dreams and my rabbit hole journeys with a therapist couldn’t outrun our old impulses or keep us from stomping out the last remaining embers of each other’s innocence.

Though the relationship ended painfully with us at odds with each other, perhaps we were more alike than we ever realized – both of us fixers, trying in vain to repair the other person’s broken wings. And how that urge got imprinted on our little duckling hearts in our long distant childhoods is anyone’s guess.

could you be loved?