The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Sunday, May 24, 2015

◊ No Women — or Enlightenment — In the Car Showroom

Economics/Business ... Society ...

My brother has been living in hell lately. At least some of the time. His old Chevy S-10 pickup is on its last legs, and he has to get some new wheels soon. His finances might allow him to get a new pickup or SUV (he’s not a Honda Civic or Ford Focus kind of guy, given that he is a drummer in a local band and has to lug drum kits around); so, he’s been doing his homework on-line, and is now ready to enter the dealers showroom.

Actually, he already had his first encounter, with a Nissan dealership here in northern NJ. His experience was not good. He got all of the usual dealer tactics and was pressured to buy something different from what he wanted (more expensive, of course). He had the good sense to walk out, but not before experiencing a lot of macho angst and being made to wait and then having the “wizard of oz” (i.e. the manager or someone pretending to be the manager) come over and try to smooth the situation out. He definitely needed a glass of wine – or three – after that encounter. But he’s gearing up for his next battle in the upcoming week.

He and I have been talking about this, wondering what percentage of car salesmen are decent people who work to balance the interests of both the customer and the dealership, who try to be helpful to the potential buyer (and not set out to confuse and wear you down, so that in your exhaustion and despair you finally » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:32 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, May 17, 2015

◊ The (Rail) Road Not Taken . . . Into Gun Fire?

Current Affairs ... Personal Reflections ...

It’s hard to get interested in, never mind emotionally connected with, all of the tragedies that you hear or read about in the media these days. The world is probably not more tragic than it ever was, but given how interconnected we are these days, we hear about most everything unfortunate thing that happens anywhere on the planet. Even the big ones like the recent earthquake(s) in Nepal often don’t get more than a minute or two of my attention on any given day.

So, I pick my tragedies based on personal connection. The recent train crash in Philadelphia made it to my personal interest list, because I was once a railroad buff like 32-year old Brandon Bostian, the Amtrak engineer who last Tuesday night drove his passenger train into a 50 mph curve while moving at about 106 mph. This caused a violent derailment that killed eight passengers and took the important Northeast Corridor line between New York and Philadelphia out of service for about a week. I also rode trains over that track quite a few times in my life, especially in the late 1970s when I lived in Arlington, Virginia and often took the train to visit my family in Jersey.

When I heard that a train using the same kind of passenger cars that I used to ride in had crashed, I immediately read up about it on the media web sites (I don’t get much of my news from radio or TV, as they seldom take the time to drill-down into the details). But being a train guy, I wanted more than the media could offer, and I knew where I could get to it. There are a variety of railfan discussion sites on the web, where both train buffs and actual railroad employees » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 5:10 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, May 16, 2015

◊ In a Hard Town by the Sea

Current Affairs ... Society ...

The title of this essay comes from Randy Newman’s 1977 song “Baltimore“.

As something of a wanna-be pundit, I find the recent “civil disturbances” in Baltimore (triggered by a fatal police incident) very frustrating because it is so difficult to digest and say anything useful about. Ditto for Ferguson, New York, Berkeley, Cleveland, and the other sites of current unrest over police shootings. The 1960’s (especially 1967) were a time of many civil disturbances in major cities (Detroit, Newark, Watts, Roxbury, etc.), where African American communities vented similar anger about aggressive police actions. It was fairly clear back then that the triggering police acts were just a spark that ignited a volatile underlying anger, which stemmed from a multitude of unjust social and economic conditions faced by black communities. And it seems reasonable enough to conclude that the same applies to the angst and frustration expressed by African-American leaders and communities responding to more recent police shootings involving unarmed victims such as Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Kimani Gray, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sean Bell, Trayvon Martin, et al. Police bias is certainly a part of it, but is far from the extent of it.

Unlike the 1960’s, however, it is more difficult for the nation as a whole to grasp the overarching social and economic injustices involved, and to see what can be done to fix them. The starting point for those who decry these injustices is racism, of course. The many fatal police incidents in and of themselves allegedly prove that racism is alive and well in the American criminal justice system, and thus by implication is rampant throughout all of our social institutions, large and small.

Unfortunately, however, when you look at the details of at least some of these police incidents, the alleged racist inspirations become more and more difficult » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:45 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, May 9, 2015

◊ Stamping Out Doubt (with thanks to Thomas Merton?)

Current Affairs ... Personal Reflections ... Photo ...

In my last post, I discussed the Stamping Out Hunger food drive being held by the postal workers union. It was scheduled for today, and I said in that post that I’d give it a go, I’d put out a bag or two of non-perishable food items for the mail carrier to pick up. I also said that I had some doubts as to whether the pick-up would actually occur, given that the union’s website itself said that some carriers “don’t participate”, since it isn’t a mandatory thing. My friend Mary thereafter wrote in about her past experiences with Stamping Out Hunger, where her own food donations never left her premises. And then last night, my brother told me that he too had heard about this and put out a bag, only to find that it was never touched.

So my doubt level was pretty high. Nonetheless, I put out two bags this morning, then left for a morning drive to upstate New Jersey for a 3-hour nature hike (near Monksville Reservoir). The hike went fairly well (the weather was cloudy, but no bears, no snakes, hopefully no ticks), although I did get a little too close for comfort to some hunters firing off their guns — good thing that I was wearing my orange hat. I got back to my car around 1 pm and had some lunch, then drove home. And guess what? The food bag was gone! Since I’ve never heard of anything being pilfered from the porch here, I’m going to assume that the local mail carrier actually did “participate”, and that my donation is on the way to a local food panty for the needy. It’s a miracle!!

Hmmm, let’s see, what dead persons are up for “beatification” (sainthood) in the Catholic Church these days? The church often attributes miracles to a beatification candidate, as a » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:13 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, May 7, 2015

◊ Stamping Out Hunger — With Unionized Government Employees?

Current Affairs ... Politics ...

I got a card in my mailbox a few days ago telling me about an upcoming food drive being held by the postal carrier’s union. It’s called “Stamp Out Hunger” (mail delivery people, stamps . . . get it?), and its taking place this coming Saturday, May 9 (in 2015, for anyone tripping across this post some years from now). The idea is that you, the American citizen, can buy some non-perishable foods and put them in a bag, as to be left by your residential mailbox this Saturday. During the day, the merry mail-person will come by on her or his usual rounds, but in addition to delivering your mail, they will pick up that food bag and take it somewhere such that it eventually winds up available to people in need. The National Association of Letter Carriers web site suggests that all food contributed will be donated to a local food bank or pantry program, where it will be distributed.

OK, sounds like a nice idea. It’s probably not the most efficient way to provide food for the needy, but it allows local participation and engenders the “community spirit”. So I’m going to give it a go. I went to the supermarket today and picked up some basics like cereal, rice, pasta, sauce, beans and juice, and filled three bags. On Saturday AM I will set them out on the porch in front of my apartment building, right under the mailboxes. Just to make my intentions crystal clear to the local carrier-person, I will staple the “Stamp Out Hunger” announcement card to one of the bags. And from there, I will just wait and see.

Obviously, I’m just a tad skeptical about this. Postal carriers are government employees, and let’s face it, government employees are not looked at as kindly as they once were by the public. Especially unionized government employees, which the postal carriers are (again, their union is sponsoring this event). Most of the postal carriers we’ve had here » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:47 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

◊ A.D. The Bible Continues . . . Hidden in Plain Sight

Art & Entertainment ... History ... Religion ...

Despite my aversion to television shows, I’m trying to catch up with NBC‘s “A.D., The Bible Continues“, a weekly 12-part series that began this past Easter Sunday (of course). There have been plenty of video renditions of the life of Jesus, but not a heck of a lot has been done regarding what happened after his death on the Roman cross. For almost 30 years (not counting infancy) I was a practicing Catholic, and was subject to a lot of this Jesus material, in Sunday school classes, adult education series, or via popular entertainment channels (TV shows, movies, etc.). I thus suspect that for most Catholics and other Christians, the matter of how the long story of world-wide Christianity unfolded from a small band of 1st Century Jews in Palestine reflects a huge gap in popular understanding of religious faith.

A.D. will no doubt serve to fill in some of this gap. But from what I’ve seen of the series thus far (I will admit that I haven’t seen every minute of each of the 5 episodes that have aired to date; but I have done some supplementary reading about the series, and I think I get the general flavor of it), I would say that the writers and producers of A.D. did not necessarily intend it to reinforce the official teachings of the various Christian churches. It does not directly contradict anything said in the Bible (the series is based on the first 10 chapters of Luke’s Acts of the Apostles); but it adds a whole lot of speculative material about what could have happened in-between the events of the early Christ-followers that are discussed in Scripture.

And it’s the flavor of this “added narrative” that points A.D. in an interesting direction. The faith-and-miracles stuff is all there, such that believing Christians can still bask in the glow of the Resurrection and » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:31 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, April 30, 2015

◊ A Little Reminder of the Past

History ... Photo ...

If you are under the age of 30, maybe even 35, you probably don’t know why the telephone poles in this picture have red and white painted bands around them. Unless you are a real local trivia fan (or maybe when you were around 7 or 8, you were very curious about your neighborhood), you probably wouldn’t even notice them as you drive down the road (in this case, Grove Street in Montclair, NJ). And even if you did, you probably wouldn’t ask yourself, hmmm, why are there poles with red and white paint on them every quarter mile or so?

But now that I’ve made you think about it . . . here’s the answer. Once upon a time, most urban and suburban town of any appreciable population density had fire alarm boxes spread throughout the town. Every box had an individual number, and was electrically wired into a central location at the town’s main fire station. So, if a fire were to break out and a citizen walking down the street happened to see it, they could run to the corner and push or pull on a little button in the firebox that would send an electrical signal alerting the police and fire department that they should get out to the vicinity of the fire box, on the double.

Now you might ask, with all the telephones out there, even if you go back a decade or so when pocket phones weren’t yet universal, why were these street fireboxes needed? Wouldn’t it be better to wait for someone to call and explain the situation? And wouldn’t it be tempting for wrong-doers to push the alarm button as a false alarm, given that probably no one could see or trace it back to you? That’s all true. But once upon a time, telephones were NOT all over the place. Before 1950, not every household had one. Up to the end of World War 2, telephones were an expensive luxury, mostly used by the bigger businesses and affluent families.

Obviously then, these fireboxes go way back to the early part of the 20th Century, when you couldn’t count on a telephone being available if a building suddenly caught fire. The thing that got most cities to invest in public firebox systems was » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:09 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, April 25, 2015

◊ Mid-Afternoon Bird Nap

Nature ... Photo ...

A mourning dove recently decided that the window air conditioner outside my mother’s former bedroom at my brother’s house would be a good place to nest her progeny for the season. My mother passed away about 5 years ago, but the soon-to-be mother bird perhaps sensed some metaphysical traces of Mom’s former presence, and decided that the spot had good feng shui and positive chi. Here we see the bird trying to catch up on some zzz’s in mid-afternoon. If all goes well, she will soon be very busy flying in worms or seeds or other tid-bits for the hungry chicks. I’ll try to post some further pix once that happens.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:09 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Monday, April 20, 2015

◊ A Marked Man

History ... Personal Reflections ... Society ...

A few days ago I was looking for a book in my apartment, and I just happened to brush across an interesting collection of spiritual writings from the late Dag Hammarskjold. This book, called “Markings”, was NOT the book that I was looking for; but in another sense, perhaps it was. Markings is Dr. Hammarskjold’s life-long spiritual diary, a collection of reflections on his inner struggle for truth, meaning and transcendence. I.e., a place where you write stuff like:

Courage and love: equivalent and related expressions for your bargain with Life. You are willing to pay what your heart commands you to give.

Night is drawing nigh – How long the road is. But, for all the time the journey has already taken, how you have needed every second of it in order to learn what the road passes by.

Deep thoughts, indeed. So I moved the book from a bottom shelf in a remote storage area to my bedside nightstand, where I can take in some of Dag’s reflections before retiring. The book itself brings back memories for me. It’s a 1977 printing and is now turning brown and brittle around the edges. I received it in 1978, when I was a young man who himself was not yet turning brown and brittle. It was given to me as a going-away present by some nice people at a social services agency that I volunteered with » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:07 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, April 16, 2015

◊ December 8, a Date That Will Live . . .

History ... Zen ...

My Zen group recently held a “zazen-kai”, which is basically a long day of meditation and other Zen ceremonial accoutrements. Our normal weekly zazen service lasts 2 hours; zazen-kai goes about 6 and 1/2. Most of the extra time goes to sitting quietly in meditation. And that’s a good thing, as far as I am concerned. But some of it goes into more chanting, more walking around (i.e. “kinhin”), breaking for refreshments (in silence, thank goodness), and listening to the wise teacher ruminate on the contrarian glories of the Zen / Buddhist traditions. During our zazen-kai, our sensei talked about the traditional December sesshin commemorating the anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment. The last day of this week-long ceremony marks the morning when Buddha awoke before dawn, saw the morning star (the planet Venus) shining brightly over the horizon, and decided that he was finally seeing the big picture. I.e., the Buddha realized enlightenment.

Enlightenment is the holy grail of the whole Buddhist enterprise, so the date on which this happened is treated as a holiday in many parts of the East. During his talk, sensei named the date on which the big man supposedly had his great celestial insight — i.e., December 8th. Being a supposedly anti-intellectual tradition, it’s a no-no in Zen to stimulate the mind (or let it be stimulated). But my mind was nonetheless stimulated by this little factoid. December 8th — pretty close to December 7th, the day of infamy, Pearl Harbor Day.

Hold on a minute — Zen is largely a Japanese tradition; it has ancient historical roots in China and India, but Japan is where it all came together during the Middle Ages, where the legendary Zen masters such as Dogen and » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:34 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

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