The Stone Philips Effect

The dog days are here. I can tell, because I want to scratch myself in odd places, and I circle the sofa before collapsing on it for a wasted hour or two watching bad television.

August is the best month for bad television. You can see the junk that you missed during the rest of the year, and your mind is in precisely the right kind of condition for it.

Why is that so?

A number of reasons – it’s the time when you begin to accept the fact that the yard work you’d promised yourself to do since April won’t be done, the winter clothes at the bottom of the basement stairs to be put away have contributed to the well-being of the resident moths, and anything that does survive does not have to be unpacked…just dragged back upstairs for the long stretch of darkness and cold here in Minnesota, holes and all. You can write letters to yourself in the dust on any table in the house, the kitchen looks like a Crime Scene Investigation team has just ransacked the place, and Labor Day is fewer than three weeks away.

Much better with a cold beer on the sofa, and you can learn stuff. The other night on public tv I learned about the Spartans, and Queer Eye For the Straight Guy has me thinking “neatness really does count.” Baseball is always good for a nap or two during the nine innings, but then I’ve known that for years.

But the Big News for this August is that I have both discovered and named a new television phenomenon which I call “The Philips Effect,” names after Stone Philips, of NBC’s Dateline program. Every time the camera opens on Philips, he does this quirky little up and down nod, like a little kid….looks like his chin is just falling down the last three stairs.

It conveys a sense of involvement, commitment, agreement with whatever random thought might be firing up your neural synapses – did I leave the stereo on, what was the name of that woman I met at last night’s art opening, boy, how about that navel lint.

The Philips Effect became particularly noticeable during the early stages of the present conflict in the Middle East when correspondence waited to hear and to comprehend the questions being thrown at them from Washington or New York. Now it’s leaked to local news anchors, weather and sports people.

By golly, you can sit right in front of the tv in your underwear and have a handsome or pretty television person agreeing with you and encouraging you to agree with them by nodding a lot at you.

Another tv discovery in their constant drive to replace content with style. Maybe Robert Siegel and Bob Edwards do it in front of their microphones at NPR, but I doubt it, what with their relentless interest in content.

The Philips Effect…another reason to watch television. Yeah, right.

Uncertainty And Belief

Last Friday I was completing my morning ablutions when there was a knock on the front door. I put on some clothes and went to the front door to find that it was my neighbor Betsy who suggested in no uncertain terms that I go down to the lake…something about a goose she said.

My old farmhouse is on a small lake, so I headed out the door to the deck and was amazed to see about fifteen kids from the near- by exercise club and their leader, a guy with a kennel crate covered by a towel, a woman taking pictures of it all, and Betsy.

It seems that in early May, a Canada goose had been hit by a car along our road as s/he was trying to shepherd the goslings across the road to the lake. The driver had not stopped, and when Betsy came upon the scene, she got the goose to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center at the University of Minnesota.

The goose had mended successfully and was now ready to be liberated. The door to the kennel cage was opened, and after a short wait, the goose walked out, and slid into the lake.

We all waited to see what would happen next, and we didn’t have to wait long. The goose swam out about twenty feet and then flapped its wings and once airborne flew just above the water off to the East.

The group lingered, chattering away about this rare success – most creatures wouldn’t survive an injury like this without someone like Betsy – about the insensitive lout who had struck a living creature and driven on, and about whether the goose would find its mate and their goslings again.

It was one of those cool, quiet, and sunny summer mornings, like the ones you treasure from childhood, a morning suddenly filled with optimism and hope. A few minutes later, silence had returned to the shore.

Later on in the day, I was busy repainting the front door; I declared a coffee break and poured myself a cup in the kitchen and was taking my first sip when I looked out over the deck toward the shore.

And there at the edge of the lawn was a pair of Canada geese and eight goslings, all foraging for food.

Now I don’t know whether this was our injured goose with his newly found mate and their flock. I’ll never know.

But what, exactly, do I need to know? After all, does not uncertainty help create belief?

On Mother's Day Phobia

Me: My Name is Nick and I’m a Mother’s Dayphobe.

You: Hi, Nick.

Me again: I don’t know when these negative feelings started….decades ago, and I adored my Mother. Maybe it was the day I realized that McDonalds’s, Disney, and Hallmark had decided to take over our psycho-emotiono-culturo-familio world.

Now you can add to that Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Starbucks,….well, you probably have your own list, but you get the idea.

We are whipped into a frenzy of brunches, and little bouquets, and very expensive cards with somebody else’s poetry instead of our own words, and so when Father’s Day rolls around we’re ready, and by Halloween, we’re really ready, so that by Thanksgiving we are in a positive frenzy, to be sure that by Christmas the rate of neural transfer in our brains cannot be measure by any machine on this earth. There is a brief respite until Valentine’s Day, and St. Patrick’s Day seems like just a bump in the road of life. And then, there’s Mother’s Day.

In parts of my family, the definition of conflict can be measured when Mother’s Day is on the same weekend as “the Opener,” which, in these parts refers only to the first day of legal fishing for the serious game fish, and that conflict will erupt again next weekend. In another part of the family, that particular Sunday reminds us, uh, them that outdoor drinking has resumed , and that never, repeat never, and especially never, stands in the way of Mother’s Day. In fact, it probably helps some of us deal with it.

My mother and I had this unwritten agreement. I called her the day before Mother’s Day to remind her that yet again, I was not celebrating with the rest of America. We would have a nice chat (so much better than a card with poetry by a stranger), and she would thank me and head off to think about what she would be wearing the next morning at brunch.

So on Mother’s Day, I think of my Mother and all the others who’ve helped us paddle through our lives – parents, teachers, step-parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, social workers, doctors and nurses, therapists, ministers and rabbis, social workers, and all those who take it upon themselves to care about and for others formally and informally (including four footed creatures and other pets, and I celebrate them, too).

In spite of my trying to be inclusive, I thought about putting politicians on my list, but upon reflection decided to take the Fifth….and on Mother’s Day maybe drink some of it. (Well, we can each celebrate in our own way, no?)

There isn’t a day that I don’t think about my parents, both gone now, but our conversations continue in their own way, and one day a year will never be enough to honor what they – and others - have done for me.

Thank you.

Some Of The Loons Are On The Lake

I was taking my regular constitutional around Birch Lake last week, mulling over the state of my world: The winter was long and gloomy, punctuated by stretches of genuine blackness involve war, famine, pestilence, corporate greed which more and more resembles the behavior of the mob but without the barber shop “rub outs,” venal and small-minded politicians, misbehaving members of the clergy, a press dependent on governmental and military hand-outs, increasing intrusion on our private lives by government bureaucrats, and stupidity creeping across the land to the point where one wonders if anybody is thinking anywhere.

At about this point, I begin fantasizing about moving to a cottage on an island off the coast of Scotland, but without The New York Times at my door each day and Diet-Rite in the fridge, I’d say the chances are slim. I have always admired Huck Finn but can no more light out for the West than ply a raft down the Mississippi River.

As I came to the Northwest corner of the lake, I had achieved a state of darkness which was making me angry – angry at the world and angry at me for being angry during a perfectly decent walk around a smallish but attractive lake.

Then I saw them. A pair of loons diving just off the shore. Loons, our state bird here in Minnesota, plumage of black and white in varied patterns, incredibly adept in the water, clumsy on land, and linear in the air. Birds with an air of mystery because of their diving abilities, but most of all, their strange and haunting calls which come echoing across the eons and the water into your core, unrelentingly unforgettable.

He was alert and protective while she continued to dive around him. Gradually, they moved off toward the center of the lake.

We’ve had a nesting pair of loons on the lake since I moved here twenty-five years ago. Most years, there is a baby loon, and once in while, two. Sometimes in my kayak I can drift quietly within fifty feet of them before they disappear under the waves, and every once in a while a loon will come up from a dive within a few feet of me – we are both equally surprised, and the loon disappears back under the water and pops up some distance away in a few seconds.

The fact that the loons were back on the lake was the best news bulletin I’d gotten in weeks. I doubt any of the inhabitants of the cars speeding by me took note of the loons – too busy on the cell phone, eating breakfast on the move, chatting with a passenger, thinking about work to see that the loons had returned to the lake.

But the arrival of our loons was the best news I’d gotten in months, and I was grateful. So I went home poured myself a fresh cup of coffee, sat down at the dining room table, looked out at the loons as they moved off to the East, and felt some of the accumulated tension of the recent past begin to ease its way out of my body.

Walked By A Dog

On a balmy Spring day, there is nothing better than taking a stroll with a small child or a dog. In those few minutes, you might learn more about the natural world than you would if you were on your own for an hour.

In my case, I walk with Gus the thirteen year old Scotty; we head down the drive, take a right at the street and wander for a couple of hundred yards down the bikeway/walkway next to the lake.

We do this twice a day, and during the cold, dark winter months we get up a head of steam: Get out, do your stuff, and head back (being environmentally responsible to bring any, uh, debris home with you). Speed and performance are our criteria.

Now, the walks have become more like a royal progress. Because dogs can perceive something like 70,000 different smells, Gus takes the considered view that each smell must be absorbed, analyzed, categorized, and – sometimes – marked in that wonderful way which dogs do.

He also observes the ducks, loons, and geese on the lake. Each Spring when we go through this transition, I suffer from a short stretch of impatience. It dissipates as Gus meanders from smell to smell because I have time to observe the buds on the trees changing each day, to see the loons and listen closely to their tremolo call, to speak to the geese, all of whom are interested in talking right back. In the morning especially, the sunlight strikes the skin and the soul with equal force.

Meandering is good, but you can’t be listening to the Walkman or ordering your day on your PDA or chattering on your cell phone. I can’t smell the smells which intrigue Gus, but there is enough to remind me that most of what I do is not nearly as important as this all-to-brief contact with the natural world.

Having said that, I am delighted to report that unlike every dog I’ve known, I still have not developed the urge to roll in something revolting as part of my “rite of Spring.” Next year,
perhaps.

Walked By A Dog

On a balmy Spring day, there is nothing better than taking a stroll with a small child or a dog. In those few minutes, you might learn more about the natural world than you would if you were on your own for an hour.

In my case, I walk with Gus the thirteen year old Scotty; we head down the drive, take a right at the street and wander for a couple of hundred yards down the bikeway/walkway next to the lake.

We do this twice a day, and during the cold, dark winter months we get up a head of steam: Get out, do your stuff, and head back (being environmentally responsible to bring any, uh, debris home with you). Speed and performance are our criteria.

Now, the walks have become more like a royal progress. Because dogs can perceive something like 70,000 different smells, Gus takes the considered view that each smell must be absorbed, analyzed, categorized, and – sometimes – marked in that wonderful way which dogs do.

He also observes the ducks, loons, and geese on the lake. Each Spring when we go through this transition, I suffer from a short stretch of impatience. It dissipates as Gus meanders from smell to smell because I have time to observe the buds on the trees changing each day, to see the loons and listen closely to their tremolo call, to speak to the geese, all of whom are interested in talking right back. In the morning especially, the sunlight strikes the skin and the soul with equal force.

Meandering is good, but you can’t be listening to the Walkman or ordering your day on your PDA or chattering on your cell phone. I can’t smell the smells which intrigue Gus, but there is enough to remind me that most of what I do is not nearly as important as this all-to-brief contact with the natural world.

Having said that, I am delighted to report that unlike every dog I’ve known, I still have not developed the urge to roll in something revolting as part of my “rite of Spring.” Next year,

Near Year's Resolutions

OK, Christmas is over, so now it’s time to write down your resolutions for 2003. No, it’s not enough to think them up and leave them in your noggin – that allows for “online editing,” forgetfulness, denial, all those strategies we use to avoid any potential for trying to make some improvement in us and our lives.

For many years I would sit down a couple of days before the new year, create a list of really boring statements about my intended goodness in the next twelve months. Statements like
“Get More Sleep,” “Lose Weight,” and “Exercise More” showed up on these early attempts dedicated to failure, and more often than not, the piece of paper disappeared in the frenetic clean up around the house (also on the list but without the adjective frenetic), and rarely turned up again.

Time, which seems endless when one has accumulated little of it on life’s odometer, suddenly becomes as scarce as the proverbial hen’s teeth when your bones begin to tell you that your odometer is beginning to wobble. If you don’t receive that message clearly, you will get it when you hear a colleague who is no longer working regularly (such a nicer way to put it than “he’s retired, you know”) say something like, “You know, I thought when I ceased crushing grapes in my chosen vineyard, I would have more time, but – by golly [or some equally assertive phrase of emphasis] I just don’t seem to have any time at all.”

Further investigation is needed as to whether he is spending his afternoons organizing his collection of trout flies by color, size, weight, region, and history of success, and entering it into an inheritable data base, polishing the Christmas tree ornaments before placing them into stout plastic boxes filled with crushed tissue paper, or writing a very short book on “Discernible Political Philosophies of Contemporary American Politicians” or a long book called “Family Anecdotes To Bore My Descendants To Tears.”

As time shortens, it should be well spent. Period.

Last year, I sat down and wrote out my goals for 2002 for such categories as work, health, travel and stuff I need to do around the house. I slipped the sheet into one of those plastic sleeve thingies and kept it on the top of my desk. The only goal not achieved will be the renovation of the upstairs bathroom, and that should be done by March of ’03.

So now I have a new sheet, well two actually - one is for 2003, and the second is a preliminary list for 2004.

I’m getting so organized, I think I’d better go lie down for a bit.

Cheers!