Songs Sung Blue!

The lonesome, nasal wail of a b-flat clarinet fills the concrete canyons of an anonymous back-street in the Pangratti section of Athens, Greece. Three street musicians stroll by: a fat man, his cheeks puffing against a licorice clarinet; a shabbily-dressed, older man, his shoes run-down on the heels, squeezing against an ancient accordion; and a tall, slender man carrying a tambourine which is more beggar’s offering plate than a musician’s instrument. These three ply their trade, carrying their sad songs to the frightened masses, in search of a few Euro pennies in return. Few residents come to their verandas, testimony to both the cooler weather and the cold reality that acknowledgement of the music carries with it the obligation to throw money down to the uninvited music makers.

Beneath the shrill notes of the music, an air of despair seems palatable. Greeks of all walks of life feel the squeeze, more powerful than an accordion’s pressure, of the European debt crisis and its multiple impacts. Into this relaxed, “Mediterranean” culture, financial stressors have recently become familiar, yet unwelcome guests, showing up at the front door of everyone, regardless of how stringently one pays taxes or how effectively another routinely avoids the citizenship obligations of normal social intercourse.

Despite the non-response, the musical trio proceeds down the street. What else can they do? They stroll past small shops recently closed, due to the economic crisis. Here a small green grocer’s shop; there a butcher’s shop; over there a ladies lingerie boutique; all shuttered tightly with fresh graffiti embossing the pull-down doors. In another neighborhood, closer to the Parliament's Syntaugma Square, they will walk past burned-out buildings, the most recent legacy of violent civil protests.

Less talented beggars now have appeared on many streets in Athens. For decades, poverty, homelessness and street-side begging were the exclusive prerogative of the immigrants here. Greeks, with their proud family system intact, were much better able to hide their poverty. But now, perhaps as many of 30,000 Greeks are actually homeless in Athens. Many are showing up at charitable feeding stations whose clients have traditionally been the foreign-born.

And, so the tune has changed and few are dancing. The vaunted tourist image of some happy-go-lucky Zorba, dancing and jumping with traditional glee and light of both spirit and foot, in celebration of all things Greek, has been replaced. Today, the picture is of deep, dark brown eyes that look furtively about, black hair on heads bowed down and tired feet that more shuffle than sparkle. Indeed, the proud image of this country is being humbled by the publicly embarrassing world-wide acknowledgement of her all-too obvious deficiencies.

Like street musicians in Pangratti on a cool morning, most Greeks are helpless to do anything but what they have always done. A vaunted classical past and a reputation as the birthplace of democracy offer little actual help for an economic system that is hopelessly dysfunctional and routinely in denial.

“Songs sung blue. Everybody (here) knows one! Songs sung blue, every garden (here) grows one!”

Public Bathrooms & Private Barcodes

As you no doubt know, there are powerful, yet unspoken rules and societal norms associated with public toilets. Among them is the strict requirement that men, shoulder to shoulder before stand-up urinals, must always keep their eyes straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge the persons on either side. More about this and my violation of this taboo in a moment.

Late in 1949, when Bernard Silver and Norman Joseph Woodland filed a patent for Classifying Apparatus and Method, the era of the barcode was born. When David Collins of GTA Sylvania developed the Kar Trak method of keeping tabs on railroad cars in the early 60’s, this movement and the science back of it began to pick up momentum. By June 26, 1974, after the National Cash Register company installed a test system at Marsh’s Supermarket in Troy, Ohio, Clyde Dawson lifted a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum from his shopping basket and Sharon Buchanan, the check-out clerk, scanned it; the pack of chewing gun is now in the Smithsonian Institution, since it signals the initiation of what has come to be called the universal product code method of product inventory. Although conspiracy theorists and some fundamentalist Christians initially viewed this development with alarm, as a potentially threatening and intrusive surveillance technology or the “sign of the beast,” in reality the barcode method of machine-readable representation of data has been booming, ever since.

Barcodes are now used all over the world to identify, track and evaluate products and procedures of all kinds. Barcodes are, after all, remarkably proficient. They enable the recognition and storage of mountains of data in just a few seconds. With one swipe, one can record data and store it for retrieval at a later time, often for purposes unknown to the consumer/user. Somewhat disconcertingly, these tiny lines and numbers also help the check-out person to record your purchases, update the store’s inventory, calculate individual and total prices, add the appropriate taxes, delete any available discounts and even electronically wish you a happy day - all without ever thinking, adding, subtracting, making eye contact or interrupting his/her personal cell phone conversation!

On the Athens side of our recent three-month visit to the States, I am busy filing receipts and the various bits of paper associated with this international traveling business. In many instances, barcodes accompany my paper records. How easy and convenient has this magical, digitally encoded and computer recognizable, but illegible to the human eye recording system become. Where would we be without barcodes and what would we do without them?

Although you may think it a bit ineloquent of me to share this, I recently observed barcodes on the urinals in the men’s restroom at a Texas airport. While I am not certain exactly how and why they were being used in that precise location (Perhaps it has something to do with original shipping or recording how often the toilets are serviced, etc; I’ll check it out on Wikipedia!), I am convinced that these easy-to record electronic ink blots stuck on the top of urinals have something to do with the presumption of enhanced efficiency.

Barcodes and universal product codes provide a reliable and speedy assessment for everyone. And, after all, isn’t everyone interested in accurate and swift assessments – the better to do our “personal business” and move on with our lives?

Although our human brain does not (yet) have computer chips and scanners to enable swift and easy assessments, for millennia, long before digital and cyber developments, humans have been using short-cuts to help assess the value and “place” of other persons. We often too-easily fall back on ethnic, racial, gender or age stereotypes and, by scanning the “data” from our previous prejudices and limited experience, we evaluate, assess and store unthinking and often overly-generalized “facts” about another person.

While I may be unable to avoid using barcodes and universal product codes, I am praying that, in this year ahead, by God’s grace, I can be a little better at making eye contact with others and seeing them for all of their uniqueness and value – in the supermarket lane and, perhaps, even in the public toilet!

Harry! Neil! Hands! Sweet!

A disclaimer: The following is nothing more (or less) than my unadorned confession of a few powerful streams of subconsciousness occasioned by my recent travels and observations. Although it may not make unmitigated sense to the reader, I write anyway. I pound the motherboard with as much clarity as I can because this sentence string and these feeling sequences apparently have been travelling beneath my conscious awareness; at last, they have rapped on the door of my sleep, waking me in mid-slumber in the small hours of New Year’s Eve, 2011, demanding cognitive recognition. Perhaps I also write because this tiny discipline may offer a small glimpse into the incomplete, but hopeful ruminations of my soul as I have journeyed through the recent holidays in America and as I look, with a mixture of trepidation and optimism, toward the approaching year. First, some background:

Three-days before Thanksgiving, we were in the Chicago O’Hare Airport, waiting for our Southwest Airlines flight. Financial considerations dictated that our air-hop from Nashville, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi should be routed through the Windy City. While awaiting our flight, Janice grabbed a crusty, fried serving of “fast food” in the Food Court and I waited for my allotment of nourishment at Harry Caray’s airport eatery. With a touch of family pride, my own Riley daughter and I sat next to the Reilly’s Daughter pub, conversing, with food in our mouths, over the airport noisy-ness. And, then, ….

Late one night just after Christmas, we had returned from our glorious Christmas family celebrations with our children in Austin, Texas and were flipping channels. Watching television in the Trinity Baptist Church of San Antonio, Texas guest residence was an unexpected luxury, largely unavailable in Athens, Greece. By a fortunate accident, we came upon the broadcast of the most recent Kennedy Center Awards. The crooner & pop star, Neil Diamond was among the honorees. We had presupposed that our interest would be peaked by the award given to the superb actress, Meryl Streep, but it turned out that Diamond may have made the most lasting impact. Finally, ….

On the eve of New Year’s Eve, with Jerry and Rita, we travelled to Fredericksburg, Texas for a performance at the Rock Box Theatre. The very professionally done rock & roll tribute featured, among many others, an additional recognition of Diamond’s musical talents. So now, the recurring melody of Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” keeps showing up on the back-lots of my mind. That chorus about “Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you!” sings its way through the open spaces of my cerebral cavity and runs laps on the treadmill of my feeble (and out of shape) mind.

In Harry Caray’s Chicago pub, there is an homage to the baseball announcer’s legendary practice of leading Chicago baseball fans in a stirring rendition of “Take me out to the ball game!” in the “seventh-inning stretch” of every home game for many years. While waiting for my lunch order, between flights, I was reminded of the potent human need to rise and sing together; although we routinely do it at church, Harry led it in the middle of “America’s pastime.” And then, through the Diamond tributes, I recalled that in sports events across this American nation, fans often sing together Diamond’s signature song, celebrating the “reaching out, touching me, touching you” that seems, when you think about it, such a soul-blessed response to an equally human need.

While I return to sleep, now, the demon of my subconscious at least temporarily surfeited, for a while, I leave you with but one thought, brought courtesy of Neil and Harry and the subterranean environs of my mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if 2012 could be marked by a massive universe of humanity who, for a “seventh-inning break” from the usual rivalry and competitiveness, would put aside the differences that so easily separate us, chose to make open our greedy, angry or gesturing fists and decide to reach out to others and make personal contact! This old world of ours so desperately needs to connect and to lift our voices.

Here’s my hand! Sweet!

Texas Toast!

Our extended visit to the States is in full swing! In less than three weeks, we have crossed the ocean, celebrated my birthday with Matt & Nancy in Austin, Texas, had a great, but short, time with Janice’s mother and her brothers’ families in Gulfport, Mississippi, had a not-so-profitable visit to the Greek Consulate in Atlanta, Georgia, been officially reoriented with our organization and returned to Texas.

The San Antonians have already made us feel so welcome. Randy met us at the airport and we shared a great Tex Mex dinner with Joann & John David and Barbara on Friday evening. Emmanuel brought us the loaner vehicle on Saturday and we figured out how to get back to our temporary home with only one freeway mistake. On Sunday, we worshipped with Trinity Baptist Church, in whose guest residence we are temporarily residing and even figured out how to arm and disarm the security system!

Since we have been adopted Texans for over forty years, we are happy to be back where the Lone Star flies high and proud. Today, in San Antonio, when we enjoyed a quick, refresher walk through the Alamo and some vintage Texas culinary delights at a place called “Good Time Charlie’s,” I felt the urge to lift a glass of root beer and propose a toast to Texas.

So…, Here’s to Texas:

Where “beer belly” and “country fried” are redundancies, at least to some!

Where unsweetened tea is an option, as opposed to Mississippi, where sweet is naturally assumed!

Where Tex Mex stands for much more than just spicy food!

Where the locals know themselves to be a part of a distinct southwestern culture, yet also celebrate their global connectedness!

Where Blue Bell still rings my bells!

Where Halloween tricksters began early by cutting up and carting off the front license plate on the vehicle, which has been generously loaned to us, while we’re in Texas!

Where, contrary to the Greek bureaucracy, we managed to get replacement license plates in only two days, despite the reality that the vehicle's owners currently live in India!

Where a delightful, informative and free newspaper can be appropriately entitled “Much Ado”!

Where some of our luggage will wait for us, while we travel about the country raising funds and friends for PORTA – the Albania House in Athens!

Where Pastor Les Hollon still makes house calls and has an open door policy!

Where Baptists know themselves to be among a blessed family, but where their vision is wide enough to include Albanian immigrants in Athens, Greece!

Where, despite the various versions of the “new normal” around the globe, time-tested and eternal values are still held by loads of good people!

Where, despite the xenophobia of some and the nearness of the border, a welcome to the stranger is as warm as jalapenos are hot!

Thanks, Texas! You did not birth us, but you helped to raise us and you keep on raising our sights and our hopes!

Head Stones or Stepping Stones?

On our recent holiday in the southwest coastal and midlands regions of England, we visited the small village of Lyndhurst, still known as the capital of The New Forest, because William the Conqueror established the area as a royal hunting ground, back in 1079. The Church of St. Michael’s and All Angels perches precariously at the top of a steep hill, overlooking the tiny town. Like many historic church buildings today, my guess is that most visitors are travel-weary tourists like me, intrigued by its architecture and history rather than by devout worship of God and a serious intent to follow Jesus.

The church and its grounds, with the aged cemetery surrounding its venerable walls, stand as a silent, yet poignant and compelling historical statement; without uttering a sound, the place speaks in brick, mortar and moldy ornaments of the passage of centuries and the persistence of the venerable institution known in the Bible as the “Bride of Christ.” In my travel guide, I read of this little church’s claim to fame. Among those buried in the church yard, the church boasts of Alice Liddell, Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for Alice of his famous Alice in Wonderland. Her burial plot has, today, been cordoned off and a full bed of roses now grows over this otherwise little-known woman’s body.

What struck me as most interesting, however, was not the burial ground of a woman pseudonymously immortalized many years ago by a writer of a famous children’s story. What intrigued me were the head stones of many other “regular” persons who lived and died years ago, whose families placed their mortal remains and stone markers in the old church yard. The years have not been kind to those ancient grave stones. With the passage of time, they have fallen down and, doubtless, they and even the graves themselves have been crowded out with the inevitable “population explosion” of the continuing deaths of others, generation after generation.

What are the living to do with these old grave markers, citing the brief or lengthy life spans and “sacred to the memory” of those long gone and now, mostly forgotten? Well, the wardens and leaders of the Church of St. Michael’s and All Angels have come up with a rather practical solution to this somewhat indelicate problem. They have chosen to recycle the venerable stone markers and reposition them as steps along the foot path leading up the hill to the church building! I do not know when one has been dead long enough for one’s tomb stone to be removed from the graveyard to the hill side, but it obviously happens. At some point, by some ecclesiastical dictate, the markers are transitioned from the noble and ceremonial, but challenging task of standing erect at the top of the hill to the more plebian, but functional duty of lying down on the side of the hill, the better to assist modern-day visitors to ascend the heights.

As I stepped on top of the names, dates and loving tributes, I thought to myself how effectively and exactly this pragmatic, mobility-assist solution expresses one of my life wishes! Write it down if you have to! Take note and do not forget! If there is any memory of me after my days on this earth have ended, I want the remembrance never to be carved and captured in an otherwise useless and ceremonial head stone. Find a way to place any appropriate tribute, rather, as a stepping stone. Let whatever recollection of my life some may elect to recall be used in a handy, helpful manner, the better to stabilize the foot-sore feet and assist the daunting journeys of fatigued pilgrims in the struggle of their uphill, earthly and eternal climb!

Dream Drapery!

Like it was yesterday, I can still recall that cold winter’s January morning when they took me out to Walden Pond. With snow on the ground and ice on the top of the water, I crunched the frozen turf near Concord, Massachusetts and walked slightly uphill toward the still-remaining stone outline of what once was Thoreau’s tiny cabin. At only five years of age, the boy Thoreau had first glimpsed the tiny lake and its welcoming woods and his life was shaped by the encounter. He (and many of us, for that matter) would be forever changed by the child’s seemingly innocent visit to a humble, but becoming, peasant-looking natural habitat. Thoreau would later describe it this way: "When I was five years old, I was brought from Boston to this pond, away in the country, — which was then but another name for the extended world for me. [...] That woodland vision for a long time made the drapery of my dreams."

The world beyond as “dream drapery.” What poetic imagery! What an apt descriptor! What a powerful reality!

For most of my father’s life, Lauderdale County, MS provided the drapery for his window on the world. The hangings gathered around and surrounding his world outlook were understandably somewhat provincial and often drawn over much of the window’s already limited view. I remember when, just before his death, we travelled together for my older son’s graduation in California. Because it was so far removed from his ordinary window on the world and his treasured window dressing, Pop called the Southwest Airlines flight from Mississippi to California “the trip of a lifetime.”

No matter how cosmopolitan or provincial our point of view, we all have dream draperies. All of us have some kind of “window dressing” on our weltanschauungen (world view). Each one of us looks out on a world, whether wide or narrow, that is shaped and, in some powerful ways, affected by whatever immediately surrounds it. Often, the drapery is emotional or psychological. As likely, it is also political, economic, cultural and ethnic. We tend to view the world in light of what we have come to accept as customary and limited; our perspective is defined by what we perceive to be its outer edges. Our hopes and dreams are focused largely by what has come to surround our outlook.

Some have been known to belittle “window dressing,” as if it is of little consequence. My sense, to the contrary, is that, in this case, the draperies with which and by which our culture and experience have caused us to frame our world-view are most influential. One of life’s big challenges is to get close to our personal draperies and to push them back, allowing us a wider view of an even wider world. Of course, there is value in choosing to look out on the world from different windows, from others’ perspectives. But, before one moves to another window, a great beginning place is to pull back the drapes surrounding one’s own, personal “picture window.”

Do you “see”?

Dream Drapery!

Like it was yesterday, I can still recall that cold winter’s January morning when they took me out to Walden Pond. With snow on the ground and ice on the top of the water, I crunched the frozen turf near Concord, Massachusetts and walked slightly uphill toward the still-remaining stone outline of what once was Thoreau’s tiny cabin. At only five years of age, the boy Thoreau had first glimpsed the tiny lake and its welcoming woods and his life was shaped by the encounter. He (and many of us, for that matter) would be forever changed by the child’s seemingly innocent visit to a humble, but becoming, peasant-looking natural habitat. Thoreau would later describe it this way: "When I was five years old, I was brought from Boston to this pond, away in the country, — which was then but another name for the extended world for me. [...] That woodland vision for a long time made the drapery of my dreams."

The world beyond as “dream drapery.” What poetic imagery! What an apt descriptor! What a powerful reality!

For most of my father’s life, Lauderdale County, MS provided the drapery for his window on the world. The hangings gathered around and surrounding his world outlook were understandably somewhat provincial and often drawn over much of the window’s already limited view. I remember when, just before his death, we travelled together for my older son’s graduation in California. Because it was so far removed from his ordinary window on the world and his treasured window dressing, Pop called the Southwest Airlines assisted flight from Mississippi to California “the trip of a lifetime.”

No matter how cosmopolitan or provincial our point of view, we all have dream draperies. All of us have some kind of “window dressing” on our weltanschauungen (world view). Each one of us looks out on a world, whether wide or narrow, that is shaped and, in some powerful ways, affected by whatever immediately surrounds it. Often, the drapery is emotional or psychological. As likely, it is also political, economic, cultural and ethnic. We tend to view the world in light of what we have come to accept as customary and limited; our perspective is defined by what we perceive to be its outer edges. Our hopes and dreams are focused largely by what has come to surround our outlook.

Some have been known to belittle “window dressing,” as if it is of little
consequence. My sense, to the contrary, is that, in this case, the draperies with
which and by which our culture and experience have caused us to frame our
world-view are most influential. One of life’s big challenges is to get close to our
personal draperies and to push them back, allowing us a wider view of an even
wider world. Of course, there is value in choosing to look out on the world from
different windows, from others’ perspectives. But, before one moves to another
window, a great beginning place is to pull back the drapes surrounding one’s
own, personal “picture window.”

Do you “see”?