Long Live the Sixties

The sixties, as I so fondly recall, were as much about about color as they were about love and peace and fairness. Color abounded on t-shirts that if not designed to, came to irritate the hell out of the checkout generation. It played center stage in the saga of civil rights unleashed on a Brooklyn baseball diamond years earlier by Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson.

Unmistakably color played out in the bedrooms, dorm rooms, and party rooms of the flower child generation. It pulsated in flashing lights wired to new found pre-electronic contraptions designed unwittingly to petrify the most forgiving Fire Marshall. Black lights (more purple than black), strobe lights, lava lamps and more beckoned the young to question authority, celebrate youth, and desire change. Light responded to music, to sound, to mood in mysterious bursts and glows. The chain reaction of electrical innovation led ultimately, and not unsurprisingly, to the Clapper, the quintessential rescue device for hippies gone to pasture.

That which was not electrical was pharmaceutical. Color which did not emanate through a chord, did with the pop of a pill, a chemical, or a drug. It was life described through a rainbow of psychedelic rapture.

And now as those revolutionaries of fad and facsimile become the uber population of assisted living it returns - color incarnate. The Apple store devotes a whole shelf to LCD color replaced by LED spectra. A rudimentary switch steps to the background as wifi, iPhone, and Internet step in to offer lights of yellow for wake up, of blue for calm, and purple to set the mood for love and rapture. $199 buys what hours of amateur electrical engineering effort struggled to perfect fifty years ago with electronic precision and certainty; the generation that yearned for it left too befuddled to understand, much less appreciate.

To be sure, the legacy goes further into the night. Boeing, not to be outdone by a bunch of Apple geeks and Phillips engineers is hot on the trail of this magical sixties color resurrection. It beckons air travelers aboard the newest 737 with softly sculpted mood lights for boarding, take-off, flight, landing, and leaving. Unsuspecting revenue generators sit calmed by slowly changing hues that mesmerize their senses into calmed obedience. Quiet transcends the flying tube as it hurtles through the atmosphere delivering its unsuspecting charges to their destination.

And so a small piece of the revolution lives on if only in the hearts and minds of the few still coherent enough to notice and drug free enough to remember.

Long live the sixties!

Thanksgiving Travels

Wednesday has come. A yellow taxi waits quietly in the dark of Hilo Lane. The driver reads quietly. His charges scurry about behind closed doors and windows wondering if he will arrive. Inexperienced at such things, we know not that a text message has proclaimed his arrival seven minutes earlier. It awaits attention on a Droid buried warmly between sweaters and shirts in a tightly packed bag.

The airport slowly awakens to the chaotic pace of pre-holiday travel. TSA sparkles with an air of family warmth for the early few ahead of the hoards sure to follow. Starbucks commands attention and presence beyond all else. Dozens await macchiatos, lattes, and roasted beans of choice. Bagels, croissants, and egg sandwiches move swiftly from shelf to out stretched hand. Calories and carbohydrates are of no consequence in the early morning hour.

20C and 20D await our arrival. Two twenty-somethings venturing home to Mom in Texas to my right. A Mom in waiting between Joanie and a matronly spinster gobbling down MacDonald’s fare atop an open tray table to her left. Our 737 lurches from full stop to unapologetic roar as it hurtles skyward toward Dallas.

Lunch waits at DFW, with nearly three hours to while away between flights. A smidgen of space in one carry-on beckons a trinket from an airport gift shop. Not needed. Not necessary. Not likely to be left behind.

Terminal C exudes old. It breathes 60's culture. It screams modern gone by, futuristic turned historic. Sky Train rescues the senses transporting us with awkward speed past Terminal E to the modern, majestic splendor of D - only presumably for Dallas. Restaurants, shops, services await the plastic finances of each traveler’s personal budget.

We explore the intertwining hallways, passing through the music generating maze to find our way to the Auld Irish Pub known only figuratively for age. A perfectly prepared and proportioned salad for me; delightful fish and chips for Joanie. Free wi-fi, a table on the rail near travelers shuffling by. Service which starts with a flair of friendly efficiency quickly turns like the remnants of a Texas dust storm. In no rush to deplete our three hour layover, we leave behind American Greenbacks and return to the pull of our pioneering instincts.

Joanie tolerates my desire to load the AA app on her iPhone to access an electronic boarding pass. Her look belies her inner most desire to resist reminding me that paper from the home HP works fine; card stock from the terminal kiosk better. Unbelievably, our first guess at a password works. One step away from triumph and a newfound adventure into the world of technology, my satisfaction and her skepticism collide in the reality between great idea and actual use at the gateway. That barcode concept which works flawlessly at Starbucks struggles, burps, and collapses in the hands of Texas Ticket Agent anxious to send her charges off to out of sight and out of mind. Her colleague waits unknowingly, preparing to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast with an opportunity ahead to redeem the system come Monday.

Puters and Potties

Somewhere along the line, the computer took over my life. Not sure where or when. It just happened. Kind of like getting old. It just snuck up on me to become a reality.

It started with an Apple IIc. Why II? Why c? Why a lower case c? An Anthropologist not yet born will be challenged to figure it out some day far out into the future. I won't be here to see it, but what I would give to come back just for that day. A whippersnapper, newly minted PhD in hand, uncovering the birth of my computer age in a landfill long since forgotten. You just have to smile at the quizzical look on the face of Dr. Why Did They Do It This Way? First the Apple. Then the double II. And, alas the c, the lower case c. Surely it will warrant a headline story in the Gallactica World News:

Early Humans Created Computer from Garden of Eden Fruit

It was a two thousand five hundred dollar investment, that Apple IIc. No hard drive. One floppy disk drive. A symphony of disk exchanges to perform the simplest of simple tasks. A1+1 was my favorite. Type in the first cell. Hold down the Open Apple key. Touch c (There's that c thing again). Copy down 100 cells and watch. Magically one is added to one to make two. Then, one is added to two to make three. And, one is added to three to make four, until 100 magically appeared in cell A100. Boring today. Mesmerizing then. It consumed hours of thought, wonder and amazement. No drug could ever match the euphoria it produced. No twenty-second century Anthropologist will ever fully understand it. It was circa 1984. It rivaled the 1960's. You just had to be there to understand. You had to live it to get it.

But (or maybe it should be butt), now the world has decided that running water and memory chips should live in joyous harmony in a public restroom near you. (Is it restroom or bathroom? Lavatory or privy? Not sure. Not concerned.) Lest you miss the point, I must digress.

A new building has risen from the abandoned strawberry fields in Anaheim, just south of the perpetually clogged 91 Freeway (Why 91? Again, I digress.) The Architect was surely a bright young person. Surely he or she will leave behind sufficient genes to create a brilliant young Anthropologist generations from now. Obviously raised on an Apple, but accepting of the diversity of a PC, this young Architect enveloped the entire edifice in computerized ecstasy from guard gate to indoor outhouse.

It is cool that the Security Guard uses the latest Bill Gates' technology to print not only your name, but the name of your host on a stick this to your chest name tag. That same Security Guard touches with the greatest of ease a button that signals the iron gate before you to magically open as though your motorized chariot bears a regal leader to visit. No less impressive is to watch the front door respond to the command of a magic card wanded before it within seconds of being released from the warmth and love of the belly that it hangs before on a lanyard around the neck of your host.

It all makes sense. Perfect sense. The computer generated name tag. The computer controlled door opener. The computer controlled LCD on the wall. The computer etched images of precious symbols of the past hanging in the entry way. God must have wanted it this way. It is far too mysterious to be anything but divine. Surely it did not emanate from the likes of Wozniak, Jobs, or Gates in the dawn of microchip creation. Surely not. Surely so. I accept. I kneel down in humble recognition of human accomplishment beyond all possibility, much less expectation.

But now, venture with me to the hallway. Turn to the right. Then turn right again. Stop. Do not push upon the door. How primitive to think of doing that! How preposterous in this computer age! Do not think of entering this sanctum where washed hands were once an assumption and now are logarithm gone wild. This is it. The bathroom where there is but one place to sit. The washroom where there is only a bowl for washing two hands at a time. The privy where the unsold door frame allows weird, curious strangers to glimpse at your inner most privacies against your will.

No. Do not touch that door to enter. Let computers do computer work. Wand your hand. Stand aside. Await your majesty, whilst the door respondeth to your molecular energy. Be patient. You are human. The door is digital. It computes. It counts zeroes and ones to sense your sweat producing human body. It will open. It will open for you. March through it to your spot. Take the position. Deposit the processed product of your last meal for transport to the bowels of the earth. Step away. Step away as a microchip senses your departure. It will signal an electrical switch which will open a mechanical (imagine that - mechanical) water valve to wash your biodegradable body substance on an underground journey back to the sea salt world of Flipper. (Curiously, your Charmin must still be acquired with manual dexterity. I guess Mr. Whipple missed the eighties and the wonders of electromagnetic wizardry.)

Move now to the glistening wash basin. Work up a slight cosmic aura to signal first your need for soap. Wait as the computer gods dribble a precise drop of cleansing solution to your waiting palms. Beckon now the flow of fresh, clean H2O to slowly lather your digits to a sanitized solution conclusion that would bring Dr. Kildare back from the grave.

You are not yet done. You must first dry. But do not disrupt the dance of zeroes and ones who await the opportunity to musically whir a single piece of precious paper towel to aid you in your task. And last but not least, wave again for the electronic door butler to clear the way for you to return to society without worry about the scum before you who used none of the marvel of these germ obsessed microchips and actually touched, can you imagine that, touched the door handle with a bacteria laden hand to open it? Oh yuck does not do this misdeed justice!

There are children in the womb as we speak who will come into this world one day soon believing that all of this is normal, right, and sacred. They will believe that an outhouse without water, a toilet handle for flushing, a paper towel dispenser that requires human intervention, and a door that demands physical exertion are props made of movie lore that surely could have never existed. It has to make you wonder what they will wonder about , for my generation has already done all of the wondering that needs to be done. They will laugh as we laughed at Grandmother saying, "I used to walk five miles through the snow to get to school." (As I recall, it was uphill both ways!) Alas, the laugh that they will laugh will be on us.

Oh. One more thing. Did I tell you that I have a computer in the bathroom? But that is a bedtime story for another time.

Friends. Acquaintances. Strangers.

There are people, and then, there are people. There are people that you know and there are people that you do not know.

Our world revolves around the people we let into our lives. They come, they stay a while, they go. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they do not. But in a way they never leave. The mind is a funny thing. It holds a special depository of life, living and moving on. It retains some good, some bad. It mellows with age, placing perspective on the passion, the emotion, the value of friends, acquaintances, strangers.

Dorothy, the substitute mother in charge of the Buena Park Teen Center in the old Firehouse on Ninth Street. She made Friday night special. The inside walls of her old fire station kept countless kids from ever looking out through the chains of a jail house fence.

Coach. Gosh? What was his name? He taught a bunch of kids how to craft a baseball field out of the raw dirt in the back of Calder Middle School. He would be a field day for lawyers today. Twelve, thirteen year old kids taking turns dragging a chain net behind an old school bus to level the infield. Hot, sweaty kids, not knowing that heat exhaustion was a step away, learning about life, work, living, responsibility. Memories and values built in the dust of an early summer Saturday.

Professor Grob. Granny Grob to the freshman class of 1967. Her strange perspective about God, creation, and the world made curiosity a requirement, accepting for the sake of accepting, a sin.

Ron Yielding, gone in recent months, a first boss with a soft gift of teaching and friendship that keeps giving near forty years later. Don Fox, a mentor, not appreciated at the time, but taken for granted until it was too late to say thank you. An endless list of people, conversations, experiences, and relationships too numerous to list, too valued to leave behind.

People come and go in a life, but they stay forever. Their chemistry mixes to become who you are and what you are. The alchemy is far too complex to understand. Indeed, It may be the case that understanding would rob the beauty of what once was, but will always be a part of you in the mosaic of friends, acquaintances, and strangers you have known and are yet to know.

Pitter. Patter. Twitter.

Made the leap to Twitter tonight. It seems important to follow the herd these days. It did not work out well for the buffalo, but humans seem to think it is the way to go. Twitter may be the fastest growing of the electronic herds. PBS ran a story this morning that CDC is getting more swine flu hits on Twitter than You Tube is getting on Susan Boyle. Imagine. The disease trackers getting more hits than an amateur singer from across the pond. Science trumps heart throb. What is next? It is enough for me. Can't wait for television to give me my daily dose of CDC news. Daily, heck, hourly. No, by the minute. I am in with electronic parakeet. Me and Tweetie forever.

You just have to keep up with this stuff. Remember when it was cool to have an account on Prodigy? I think it was called Prodigy. Wow, was it that long ago? Then AOL became the rage. Grand kids two generations from now will read about it in their history books. Well maybe not. The news says that schools are outlawing activities where one kid wins and another loses. I guess the Christians were right, Darwin was wrong all along. There is no survival of the fittest. Everyone is same. No one does better than anyone else.

It is all part of our economic woes. Don't believe me? Try buying a red pen. They barely exist. Can't have a kid getting a red mark from a teacher. Red signifies something. Not sure what. Might pain the little sucker forever to get a grade in red. Too bad for all the red pen makers in the world. Guess they will just have to get used to living on their unemployment check like everyone else.

The World. Our World.

It just seems that nothing is real any more. The world, our world, goes from bad to worse, from unbelievable to more unbelievable. Each day brings a new worse than the new worse from the day before. The economy or lack thereof. The CraigsList killings. Now the swine flu (who would ever think that a pig could add to the list) and on and on.

Maybe we have too much news. I think Will Rogers once said something like, "Did you ever stop to think that we have just enough news to fill up the newspaper each day?" That was long before cable television. It was before instant Google News. You have to wonder if our problems are as bad as they seem or if seeing them over and over and over again makes them seem to be more than they are.

One friend is eating crackers because the money is gone and a job is not forthcoming. Another is looking at buying a tent and asking if there is anything left to contribute. These are real problems for real people. They are personal. They are gut wrenching. They have no time to wait for a bailout.

Yet another friend once pointed out that we should quit worrying about saving the earth and start worrying about saving the human race. The logic is sound. The earth will be here a million years from now. It may or may not have people on it. We worry about icebergs melting, but we let companies and the jobs they provide disappear in a heartbeat. We sue over individuals experiencing discrimination and allow entire workforces to stand in line for unemployment insurance that protects no one and no thing. We worry about a mouse on the beach losing its habitat to development and allow millions of people to lose their homes to the greed of finance companies while the blithering incompetence of politicians allows them to give pay raises to their staff as the rest of us go without a paycheck.

The older I get, the more I realize that I have no answers, only questions that people much smarter than me cannot seem to answer. Tim Russert always said that he asked questions for Big Russ and his buddies at the VFW hall. (I think it was VFW.) They were simple questions. They usually got complicated answers. I always liked his questions. I never quite understood the answers. I always thought those Washington bigwigs he asked were trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

Maybe that is the answer that I am looking to find. Maybe we need a world with safe bacon and no wool. Don't tell the sheep that I said that, but I think we are on to something tonight.

Bailout Bathrooms and Beach Parties

Okay, so the press is full of stories about lavish spending by people and organizations now feeding at the government trough. I understand the frustration, even the anger of the moment. But there is one lesson that we seem never to grasp as hard working, taxpaying, beer drinking members of these United States:

WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER!

It is basic physics and believe me I did not do well in physics. Every action has a reaction. A rich person spending money creates work for a non-rich person. I understand and appreciate that tax dollars were not intended to build million dollar bathrooms, but buying creates making and making creates jobs. There are lots of examples of wasted tax dollars. Remember the Senator who gave out an award for dumb government spending? What was his name anyway?

People need jobs. They need all kinds of jobs. They need put up a beach tent so Sheryl Crow can sing jobs. They need put fuel in the auto executive's corporate jet jobs and senator jobs and middle manager jobs and factory jobs. They just need jobs. Jobs come from spending - either a lot of people spending a little bit each or a few people spending a lot, or maybe this is what we are missing, a lot of people spending a little and a few people spending a lot.

The circle is too complex for simplification. But riding the high horse of indignation about one piece of the intertwining puzzle does not create a job, it stops a job. Where are those people that put up the tent on the beach last week. Where are the ones that put fuel in the corporate jet a couple weeks before. Are they still working? Are they still paying taxes? Or, are they reading the fine print of the stimulus bill to figure out how long their unemployment benefits will run?

I wonder where they are.