Tublosophy

Ruin, everything is ruin—

2011-04-19T14:15:00.000-06:00

Says Hecuba at the end of Euripides', The Trojan Women. A play written over 2,500 year ago about War.
The universal horror, futility and degradation of war. And— wars unintended consequences that may result in an empty victory when the aftermath creates new circumstances that are not an improvement.

So, What have we learned in two-and-a-half millennia? Not much, except efficiency.

Cassandra gives this warning at the beginning of the play.

"It comes to this: if a man is wise he will shun war. But if war must come, it is a crown of honor for a city to perish in a good cause; in an evil cause there is infamy."

Honor — infamy—how do we live with war? We don't seem to be able to live without it.

Maybe a visit to Euripides Greece will help. You can do this be seeing DSC Theatre's production of: The Trojan Women, This Thursday through Saturday in the Black Box theatre in the Eccles Fine Arts Center.

72 Years

2010-09-15T09:42:00.000-06:00

I was born August 31, 1938.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are dancing in the photo on the cover of the Life magazine my father gives to my mother to read in the hospital.

FDR is halfway through his 3rd term as President of the United States, after several years of economic improvement, but a recession hit and unemployment is back to 19%.

Adolf Hitler is Chancellor of Germany and Time magazine, Man of the Year. Benito Mussolini is Prime Minister of Italy. Joseph Stalin is terrorizing Russia. Neville Chamberlain is Prime Minister of England achieving, Peace in our Time, while Winston Churchill is a has been. Ernest Hemingway is covering the Spanish Civil War in Spain. The Republic of China and the Empire of Japan are engaged in total war. The sun never set on the British Empire. Heber J. Grant is President of the LDS Church. Henry H. Blood is the democratic governor of Utah.

The minimum hourly wage is 25 cents per hour for a 44 hour working week. The average annual income is $1,730.00. The Average cost of a new home is $3,900.00 and rent is $27.00 per month. There are sidewalks that people walk on and front porches that people sit on.

A new car costs $763.00 and leaded gasoline is 10 cents a gallon. Bread is 9 cents a loaf, hamburger 13 cents a pound, candy bars cost a nickel, first class postage is 3 cents and the, Penny Postcard, which includes both the card and postage is 1 cent.

in 1938:
A giant hurricane slammed into the east coast with no warning, 40 foot waves hit Long Island killing 700 people and leaving sixty three thousand people homeless.
A 450 ton meteorite hit the earth in an empty field near Chicora, Pennsylvania.

Joe Louis knocked out Germany's Max Schmeling in the first round for the heavyweight championship. Seabiscuit beat War Admiral in the horse race of the century and the New York Yankees win the World Series defeating the Chicago Cubs, 4 games to 0.

Howard Hughes set a new Round The World Record of 3 days, 19 hours. The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth is launched in Clydebank, Scotland.

The March of Dimes Polio Foundation is created and seeing eye dogs introduced.

Action Comics issues the first Superman comic, Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town opens, and the first cartoon to feature Bugs Bunny is released.

Edward R. Murrow gives the first live radio report. Kate Smith sings a rendition of Irvin Berlin's, God Bless America, for the first time during an Armistice Day broadcast. Bob Hope's Pepsodent Show debuts on NBC in the slot following, Fibber McGee and Molly and Orson Wells dramatization of, War of The Worlds, radio program causes panic when it is broadcast more like a news breaking story than a play.

In Hollywood: Filming starts on, The Wizard of Oz. The Best Picture is, You Can't Take it With You. Disney releases, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to compete with, Boys Town, starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney, Jezebel, starring Bette Davis, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, starring Shirley Temple.  

And, actress Natalie Wood is born.

But?

If I’m to reach adulthood, I must endure and survive: chickenpox, german measles, flu bugs, mumps, scarlet fever, whooping cough, bee stings, ant and dog bites (dogs roam free, live outside and chase cars) and that insidious killer and maimer—Polio. There are no antibiotics. Any wound or scratch can kill. Doctors make house calls. Dentist use slow grinding painful drills. Life expectancy 65 years old. There is no health insurance. My mother and father have carefully saved the $150 that pays my entire hospital and doctor bill. I go home paid for.

Soda is 5 cents a bottle, plus a 2 cent deposit on the bottle and must be opened with a bottle opener. Milk is not pasteurized and is delivered in the morning to the front door—unless there is a cow in the back. Banks are open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and stores are closed on Sunday. Sales tax is 1 cent on a dollar.

There is no automatic anything: washers, dryers, dishwashers, etc. Men shave with safety or straight razors. Woman brush their hair with 100 strokes to keep it healthy. Central heating is new, using coal, and outhouses are still in use. Icemen deliver blocks of ice for the iceboxes still in use. Modern refrigerators are small and have a motor on top.

There is no TV, everything is Black & White, movies, newspapers, snapshots, magazines, business cards and books. There are no wall to wall carpets, seat belts, frozen food, deep freezers or vacuum cleaners.

Telephone operators say “Number Please” and you can be listened to, and listen to your neighbors, on party lines. Long distant communication is by telegram. A three minute long-distant telephone call is a major family event.

Students in school still used quill pens and ink wells set in holes in the top of their desks and schools shut down for two weeks in October for a harvest recess to bring in the crops.

And!

My grandparents are AMAZED at the wonders of the Modern World I’m born into.

The world of coast-to-coast radio. They listened to The New York Symphony Orchestra, play-by-play baseball, up-to-date news and an myriad of programs unimaginable in their youth.

They traveled on two lane paved roads to nearby towns at speeds of 40 and even fifty miles an hour. Amazing! Letters can be sent by airmail. They travel by rail long distances in comfortable coaches, sleepers, dining and smoking cars.

Screen doors and windows keep most of the flies out of the house. Electrictisty did away with oil lamps, hand cranked rollers on washington machines and cast iron coal burning cooking stoves.

What modern innovation could be more marvelous then the Bicycle? The Airplane! Invented by bicycle makers.

Both my parents attended and graduated from the latest educational innovation—which was unavailable to their parents—the High School.

Yes, how lucky I am to be born into the Modern World.

In the seven years it takes me to learn to crawl, walk, talk and start to learn to read, over sixty-five-million people are killed in War—until it is finally ended by the Atomic Bomb in August just before my seventh birthday.

Welcome! Carl, to the Modern World.

From my tub to yours,
Carl

THE JOY OF WORK

2010-09-14T09:38:00.000-06:00

In a quite moment of reflection, years ago, I asked my Uncle Grant (Uncle John’s youngest brother).
“What’s your fondest memory of growing-up on the farm?”
“My father teaching me how to plow. He could plow the straightest and deepest furrows in the county. You have no idea how hard it is to hold the horse in line and keep the plow from bouncing or zagging. He taught me how. I’ve always been proud of that.”

Growing up on that farm Uncle Grant was taught many skills by HIS father. How to milk, plant, harvest, butcher, fence, ride, etc. and the personal integrity that comes from daily hard work.

And —

The satisfaction of a job done right. When the plowing was done. It was there for all the neighbors to see: the straight deep furrows cut close to the banks of the field.

My first memories of that farm are in 1943-5 when I was four to six years old— during the War when there was rationing, shortages, fear, and just making do. There was no complaining. Today, it is amazing to me how much happiness bubbled on that farm from the joy of hard work.

From my tub to yours,

Carl

Under Repair

2010-02-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

It’s the second day after the "total joint replacement" of my right hip. I’m in the physical therapy rehab room on the 4th floor of the Dixie Regional Medical Center.

With one exception the six other patients in the room are one day behind me in their surgeries. All of us are still tethered to “IVs” hanging from rolling IV poles and have tubes draining fluid from our operations into round suction boxes pinned to our clothes. We ambulate using walkers with catheter bags attached.

Two patients have knee replacements. The rest, like me, have a hip replacement. Each of us is assisted by our spouse wearing an official “coach” badge. Together, we learn the exercises that will be repeated ad infimum over the six-week recovery period. With my wife’s (Blanche) help, I start the next set of exercises.

One... two... three...

Suddenly, what I see around me flashes a scene from the musical: Fiddler on the Roof.

Tevye comforts his wife Golde with the question: “Golde, do you love me?” We have reached the plot point in the story where Tevye learns the essential thing necessary to his character development in the story – what love is?

(At the stories beginning, Tevye expresses his frustration with the lot fate has given him and fantasizes in the song, If I Were A Rich Man.)

Now, his daughters are falling in love and getting married. Tevye desperately hangs on to tradition as his world changes around him. In his confusion he asked Golde, “Do you love me?”

She bushes his question aside.

He asked again.

Golde sidesteps again.

Tevye persists.

Golde finally faces his question and enumerates the things she has been doing for Tevye for 25 years and concludes with the statement: “If that’s not love, what is.”

Embarrassed by the discovery of their mutual love, they temper it with the word “suppose” and concludes with. “It hasn’t changed a thing, but after 25 years it’s nice to know.”

But, it has changed everything! Tevye and Golde will never be the same again. The center of their world has shifted from tradition to love (Tevye realizes that he is a "rich man".) and it is this shift that allows Tevye in the final scene to give her disowned daughter Chava his blessing.

Five... six... seven...

On the plent (raised exercise table) next to me a woman with a blood plasma bag added to her IV pole is laying on her back. Her husband is sitting next to her on a stool clasping her hand in both of his hands. His head close to hers. He whispers encouragement.

Across from me on plents and reconstruction bikes this scene is repeated – patient and spouse working together, physically close – all of them 18 inches or less apart – a magnetic like force between them. I hear Golde’s words, “If that’s not love, what is?”

I loose count.

“How many?” I asked.

”Two more.” My wife answers.

Nine... ten.

I feel a congratulatory caress across my back and like Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” — I’m a rich man.

From my tub to yours,
Rex Roadunner

Grumble! Grumble!

2010-02-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

My father was a geek. In the 1920's before geeks. The "bees knees" for geeks in high school before there were geeks, was the "Crystal Set". They were homemade from a small crystal encased in lead, an antenna and ground wire, a wire to poke the crystal, headphones and wire rapped around what was handy to serve as a capacitor. It was portable, needed no power source, and my father could listen to it in the tree house, the garage out back, in the cellar, or pull the covers over his head at night when he went to bed.

Later, my grandfather bought the family a "Superheterodyne Radio" with glowing pregnant vacuum tubes and filled his home with the outside world. A country cousin of mine had a neighbor walk five miles to his home every Sunday afternoon to listen to Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic. It was Magical! Unbelievable!

What? The iPad is just a big iPod! Grumble! Grumble!

Ah! Progress: "The Smart Phone" The strongest muscles in our face are now our squint muscles.

Bigger is better —much better. and as Steve Jobs said, "very intimate."

There is a sleeper here. It's the Video Podcast. What are the possibles??????

A Video Podcasting Orson Wells will show us the way. So, pull the covers over your head.

Blindsided

2010-01-13T10:34:00.001-07:00

I saw Avatar 3D the first weekend it showed, after being doped for several weeks with pseudo TV commercials perpetuated by the film-makers gushing their creative genius. It was interesting, clever and visually stimulating, pure entertainment and that’s about it; a circus freak side show. Who want’s to be the only one in town who didn’t see the ‘fat bearded lady’?

It took a while to discover the ‘in your face’ simple plot. It had the traditional ‘cardboard cutout’ hollywood villains. The demonic corporate executive. The brutal dumb cop. This time dressed as an x-marine. It glorified primitivism and nature worship while damning capitalism and is filled with ‘political correct talking points’.

It had story conference fingerprints all over it; executed with an Orwellian manipulation, punctuated with ‘mash and bash’ to keep the audience mesmerized. It was a fantasy— and that’s all — a fantasy on Red Bull.

When I was ten I rode the Lagoon roller coster for the first time. At the crest of the first hump I looked down to the bottom of the track to certain death, but I survived. In junior high I went with friends on consecutive rides each time holding my hands higher and higher above my head until the fun was over. The theme park industry has beat this common malaise by building rides higher and higher, faster and faster, and steeper and steeper.

Avatar is making a lot of money. There will be many clones, each one will have to be higher and higher, faster and faster, and steeper and steeper.

The ride is over. How easy it is to forget. The one thing sticking in my memory is morphed jelly fish floating in front of my nose.

Yesterday, I was blindsided. My wife took me to a movie that ‘word of mouth’ said was good. The movie poster looked like it was about football. It not about football.

It is about what Matters.

No ‘cardboard characters’ here.

No ‘axes to grind’. A good story well told.

I thought about the movie all last night and again this morning and will think about it from time to time the rest of my life. That’s why I’m writing this.

The roller coaster on Coney Island is scheduled to be torn down. Soon, that generation of roller coasters will be gone and their thrill passé . Soon, Avatar will be dated and go the same way.

Years from now The Blind Side will still be current. It’s story is universal and it made me feel good. It is worth remembering and seeing again.

From my tub to yours,
Rex Roadunner

Is Avatar a Flash in the pan?
READ:'Avatar': Backlash Builds Against Film and Filmmaker James Cameron

Cellphone Babble The New Pollution

2009-07-26T16:18:00.003-06:00

The woman is jabbering into her cellphone, distracted, moving fast and heading straight towards me. I'm at a stand still, blocked in traffic and cannot avoid the collision, the left front bumper of her shopping cart hits my cart broadside and pins it against the dairy case in the supermarket. For a millionth of a second her eyes acknowledge my presence then without the slightest interruption in cellphone blabber the woman backs away, turns and continues down the isle.

I sit down at a picnic table in the park to relax. Fifty feet behind me a woman with her five-year old son in tow roams in big circles her cellphone pressed into her face. Her passion drives every word she says inside my head as she dials one poor soul after another and unloads the latest. Relief comes forty-five minutes later when she grabs her son by the hand and drags him to the car saying: "Come-on I've got to recharge the battery."

Over one hundred job applicants are reduced to three finalists who must make a fifteen-minute presentation to the twenty members of the selection committee. The second candidate is in the middle of his presentation when his cellphone rings. He takes the call and talks for almost five minutes, with a friend, about where to meet for lunch then he resumes his presentation. He does not get the job.

At Taco Bell the man behind the cash register is verifying my order. Before he is done, he answers his cellphone and chitchats for three minutes and thirty-eight seconds (I timed him.) with his wife. There are customers waiting in line behind me and when my order is filled it is two items short.

Will the clatter of dishes in restaurants soon be lost in cellphone chatter? Will the cheers at little league ball games be drowned out by the din of cellphone babble? How many hours will each of us lose every day waiting for an intrusive cellphone conversation to end? How many tiresome one ended conversations will we be forced to endure because of proximity? Is this the new noise pollution of the Twenty-first Century?

A cellphone book of etiquette will appear on the best seller list. In the mean time, here are three rules to follow that will also save you the price of the book.
First, the benefits of a new technology do not annul common sense or good manners. Callers to cellphones can wait their turn and should not be allowed to "butt in". Second, private conversations should remain private and not be forced on hapless bystanders. Third, the cellphone on-off switch should be in the off position most of the time.
Emerson said: "There is nothing as profound as common sense."

From my tub to your tub.