A Scrivener’s Lament

A Scrivener’s Lament

By Tom Davidson

At heart, I’ve always been a newspaperman. I didn’t become a journalist until I reached adulthood, and even then it wasn’t the career path I thought I’d take, but I have fond memories of watching the older man who delivered papers in our neighborhood on his bike, whom my father would often bullshit with and offer a glass of ice water to as we sat on our front porch.
At different points in my formative years we were subscribers, but with a corner store a short walk or bike ride away, I spent a few minutes each afternoon tasked with the chore of picking up the paper and getting to spend some spare change on penny candy.
It beat taking out the garbage or washing the dishes; burning the papers was perhaps the only thing I enjoyed more, but it wasn’t until me teen years that I was allowed to do that.
The paper was our window to the rest of the world: It told us what Tom Holden and Walter Cronkite didn’t have time for in their 30-minute telecasts, which I remember watching on an old black and white console television.
I was bred to be a reader and in addition to the vintage Hardy Boys mysteries, James Fenimore Cooper and Charles Dickens novels on my bookshelf, I read the paper when my father was finished with it.
We passed each section around the living room or front porch after dinner. I can still spend hours reading baseball box scores and statistics. I also came to enjoy reading Mike Royko’s daily diatribe and the stories chronicling Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini’s boxing prowess.
I hung on every word of the sports pages and absorbed enough of the rest of the news so I was informed, even at a young age.
I graduated high school and decided I wanted to be a writer and by that I mean William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway, not Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein. I wanted to be a “real writer,” I suppose.
Still, I was drawn to the newspaper office at Bowling Green State University – even though I studied serious “creative writing” instead of journalism - and I vaguely recall penning a couple columns criticizing the college president during the blizzard of 1993, when we were the only school that remained open in the state.
From my first walk into the dingy, dimly lit, cluttered sanctuary of that newsroom I came to realize that being a reporter wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I moved home and wandered a bit, dreaming of writing instead of doing it, working two-bit jobs where I developed some skills talking to strangers, and stumbled upon a newspaper job in Greenville.
I re-read Russell Baker’s two memoirs in my first weeks on the job there and checked out every book on journalism I could from the library.
I was hooked on the job from the first car crash I covered and have been listening to police scanner tones since, chomping at the bit as I race to the scene of whatever’s happening.
I’ve been lucky in my career thus far, learning the ins and outs of small town government that’s dominated with talk of sewage and zoning, covering high school field trips and assemblies and village fairs.
Since moving to Sharon, I’ve been able to cover major national stories like Hurricane Katrina, the local cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Shenango Valley’s tie to the Great Migration of the early 20th century.
I’ve also witnessed the decline in the trade brought on by the explosion of the Web, cell phones, and this Brave New World of corporate media conglomerates concerned about an ever-shrinking bottom line and declining circulation.
My dad didn’t live long enough to see me become a newspaperman (I prefer that term to journalist) and many of his contemporaries are also dead or dying. New, younger readers aren’t buying newspapers because they’re informed by Facebook status updates and Twitter tweets: they expect their news to be free and publishers have yet to figure out how newspapers and other publications will survive in this paperless, wireless world.
I’m stuck in the middle, young enough that most of my career is in front of me, but old enough to lament the heyday, back when I was still in short pants and I was just happy to buy the paper, some Swedish fish and Jawbreakers.
I like the smell and feel of newsprint and remember how the ink would rub onto my hands on muggy summer days, especially, and how when it was all read and digested I could burn it in the backyard barrel.
Now, the industry itself is burning into ashes. I got hot in the newsroom today over something silly and it’s taken me a couple hours to cool off and realize this is my calling; that it’s not anyone’s fault we’re understaffed, overworked and underpaid: at least no one in my newsroom.
The days when families were press barons like Charles Foster Kane’s filmic portrayal of William Randolph Hearst are over.
The Chandler’s of Los Angeles, the Ochs-Sulzberger’s of New York and the Meyer-Grahams of Washington have long taken their products public and Wall Street, not Main Street, decides the course.
I’m re-reading David Halberstam’s chronicle on the media, “The Powers That Be,” published in the 1970s. Then, it was thought to be a profile of the rise of the modern media, but now I see it as a warning bell tolling the inevitable decline of news as we know it.
We have yet to figure out how to compete for and attract new readers in this new age. I used to be one of gaggle of reporters covering an event, now I’m often the only person asking questions and watching as local leaders make important decisions.
Coverage areas are shrinking and don’t overlap much anymore; the news hole and staffs are smaller; people are busier these days and don’t have time to read 500 words on a topic when they can get the essentials in a 10-second sound bite or a two-sentence tweet.
When William Faulkner accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature, he said he “declined to accept the end of man.” Paraphrasing him, I decline to accept the end of newspapers.
But we have our work cut out for us.
We must figure out how to compete with the 1,000 camera phones that were disseminating then-candidate Barack Obama’s Youngstown campaign appearances two years ago as I was struggling to take notes and snap photographs.
We’ve got to become essential again, and more relevant. I miss overhearing people discussing the stories of the day in coffee shops and the telephone calls from people who were outraged at a particular story – the messenger takes a lot of shots – but most days, people lack that passion anymore.
Apathy is abundant and young people don’t seem to care what’s in the paper unless they’re looking for a job, and even then, there as likely to depend on the Internet instead of the want ads.
I don’t like it a bit.
It scares me, because even with an ipad or smart phone, the Internet remains a digital representation of words and images. One might be able to read it on a hand-held device, but what’s being looked at doesn’t exist in the facile way a newspaper or book does.
Web sites go down from time-to-time, batteries die and there are power outages; but one can read a book or newspaper by candlelight, or even write a letter with pen-and-paper, not that anyone does that anymore.
Just as people were scared and suspicious of Gutenberg’s printing press, I’m fearful of this new digitized world, much like old-school football coaches must have been after the inception of the forward pass.
To continue the football analogy, I’m at heart a Buckeye fan and I prefer Woody Hayes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” to the flashy “wildcat” passes of today’s overpaid superstars.
Day after day, I keep writing what I like to call “three quotes and a cloud of dust” – that’s a short, accurate, descriptive story of a basic news event for you non-news junkies.
But we’ve fumbled the ball too many times lately and the fans, our readers, are no longer rooting for us.
I wish I had the answers to turning it all around, but I’m just a shoe-leather scribe out in the streets of my naked city, trying to scoop the Facebook crowd in style and avoid being a mockingbird duplicating the Twitter tweets.
Read all about my travails in your local newspaper.

Fear & Loathing in Northeast Ohio

Fear & Loathing in Northeast Ohio

By Tom Davidson

They’re burning LeBron James jerseys tonight, now that the King has handed down his decision after about 40 minutes of sports commentary hell tonight.
Apparently, somewhere, someone was losing sleep over the decision, although I suspect it wasn’t Mr. James, and I question whether the move carries with it any actual importance in today’s sports world.
What doesn’t need to be hyped is that this is yet another blow to a region that’s been battered, both on and off the fields and courts of play.
It’s the area the mills left long ago, for cheap-agent contracts overseas; it’s the place where the Tribe has toiled on the baseball field without a championship since 1948; the place the Browns abandoned for the greener pastures of Baltimore.
It’s a place where a team that won 111 times in 1954 was swept in the World Series, a place where the football gods played a series of cosmic jokes in the 1980s on hapless Browns fans.
Knowing several of their ranks, I have no doubts that The Drive, The Fumble, and The Drive II, left permanent psychological scars.
The Tribe turned the corner and started winning when the powers-that-be in baseball went on strike and canceled a World Series. They lost to a Braves team that was better-coached, then stumbled against the Marlins in a collapse that rivaled the Browns losses against the Broncos in the football playoffs of the 1980s.
The Cavs were the third, perhaps lowliest of the sports franchises until they found their savior seven years ago. Then, LeBron seemed like the gift of manna in the Old Testament that kept the Hebrews alive. When the team started winning, “King James” as they called him, seemed to be even Christ-like.
That’s no more.
It turns out, he was just another Judas and betrayed them.
What maddening for the Cavs and their fans, is money wasn’t the motivating factor, winning was. He gave the team seven seasons to produce a winner and it came up short.
Who can blame him for signing with a team that plays in the playground of South Beach? Where he can hobnob with superstars instead of maybe shaking hands with Drew Carey... plus there’s no state income tax in Florida and the climate beats the winter on the shore of Lake Erie.
He’ll be away from a region that’s so stuck on losing it can’t find a way to win when it counts, even with him willing all of his magical talents on the court.
What remains in Cleveland is a legacy of losing it isn’t able to live down, even with a homegrown hero of James’ stature.
“The Decision” is the latest in a long-line of sporting anomalies to curse Cleveland. For the rest of the nation, the question now is “Was it worth the hype?”
In the greater Cleveland area, there are no questions now, it’s just another kick below the belt that leads to a grimace, tears and a resigned feeling that losing is a way of life.

Too Frosty

He warned us, but have we given him a fighting chance?
by
Tom Davidson

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” President-elect Barack Obama said when the majority of the nation elected him on Nov. 5, 2008.
Last night, we deserved a better answer.
I’ll concede I wouldn’t wish the problems he’s facing on anyone, but it was time for President Obama to start acting like he’s a part of the solution to our problems, not an impartial bystander to the doomsday events that have plagued us.
For too long, he’s been a harbinger of bad news instead of being the leader who forges a new path, politics be damned. His cool standoffishness is not what the country needs in a leader right now. I didn’t like Reagan’s politics, but as a leader, he was at least a good actor.
When it came to tragedy or terrorism, the man who busted the air-traffic controllers union, talked our way out of the Cold War, and mourned with us through the Challenger Tragedy, was able to lead with gusto and decisiveness, legalities be damned; Reagan was Presidential.
President Obama’s aloofness is costing him a chance to win over people in the name of a crisis. This is a time for us to band together, as he said when he won our hearts and minds, we Americans “who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America,” he told us then.
Really?
I’m sick and tired of the divisiveness of the nation. I don’t believe the “grassroots” support of those singing the Songs of the Doomed is as great as they say it is, but I acknowledge their presence.
I’m also seeing other folks, people who once were gaga for Obama, cool off a bit. They’re no longer flying the “hope and change” flag as prominently.
He warned us this day was coming.
Remember?
“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you: We as a people will get there.”
Thus far it's been a rough-and-tumble time of turmoil. He's gotten the change part right.
My, the changes: The New World Order that's emerging in the wake of an economic Hindenburg. The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan that is less a war and more a fact of life in this Brave New World – because wars end. The health care reform was so filled with debate that it motivated an unhealthy, New York apple-pie slice of Americans to action and near-constant criticism. They’re led by a motley cast of stentorian talking heads, who pick it apart piece by excruciating piece, in a 24/7 debate that has yet to really end.
He foresaw it, that cold Tuesday in November in Chicago’s Grant Park:
“There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can’t solve every problem.”
He was inspiring, then.
Where was the hope when he spoke from the Oval Office Tuesday night? Where’s the man who once aroused a thrill that shot up Chris Matthews’ leg?
He’s a dour man now, saddled with the soiling of the Gulf of Mexico, when he was supposed to be taking a short health-care victory lap, then waiting for the economy to make a great leap forward so people would be inspired to find solutions to our myriad problems.
He knew it wouldn’t be easy.
“But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.”
But is he hearing us? It’s time for him to show us he’s our leader, and thus far, he’s performed like a sports prospect, a number-1 draft pick who’s been given a huge signing bonus, and has so much potential, but hasn’t yet made it.
It’s not over, Mr. President. There’s still time to man the rudder. I still believe that the American ship is unsinkable because the American people won’t stand for it. We’re not like World Cup soccer fans who will settle for a tie.
We’d rather play football with each other, and since it’s the off-season, the political version of the sport is biding our time, but always, we play to win.
So here’s a “yo” to the “Party of No” that it’s time to abide by our calculated leader. Prove him wrong by getting behind him to see if he can inspire us to “join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for (223) years – block by block, brick by brick, callused hand by callused hand” or oily for that matter.
Lead us out of it all, Mr. President.

Fear & Loathing & Laziness (Unpaid)

Fear & Loathing & Laziness (Unpaid)

By Tom Davidson

The American Way has gone all awry in the 21st Century. We forgot our hard-working roots in a whirlwind fugue that brought on this downspin into the Great Abyss. In the name of profits, we’ve scaled back, using the economics of the time as an excuse to sacrifice selves in the name of more profits for shareholders.
It’s nothing new but it’s evolved to the point that some companies really, really just need to fail. End the bail-outs; instead of just cutting back, close up shop; stop being compassionate and offering across-the board temporary furloughs instead of just firing the dead weight and telling the others they need to work more because their jobs are on the line.
We’ve worked ourselves into a false prosperity by helping life’s “C” and “D” students get by. Sure, it was nice for them, but for the people really trying to make a go of it and almost-succeeding it was a crime.
We took the corporate ladder and turned it into an escalator but we didn’t decide who’s going to pay the power bill to keep the contraption running.
I think it’s best to struggle step-by-step instead of taking the free ride, but then, I’m willing to risk my mettle against a brutal system.
I’m tired of watching lesser workers getting a pass and a free paycheck; it foils industry to accept less when more is needed.
Alas, we’re doomed to fall from first place. We, the American Exceptionalists whom the fates have smiled on for more than two centuries are facing crises because we’ve grown lax; pampered; willing to let others do the dirty work instead of sweating for our own success.
So here I sit, at home, writing for free, off unpaid as work piles on my desk and news gets old. (And we wonder why circulation’s down and some people make fun of us?)
What happens to real journalists at the 40th hour of each week? Do they just stop writing?
That’s what’s happening now, most of the time, and it’s why things are suffering.
We expect less and pay less but still strive to cover more and write better, but the problem is that scale is impossible to balance.
So we’re here, treading water, barely, sometimes drowning as we roll with the waves. We cash our lower paychecks each fortnight and complain as stress builds and resentments fester and the end product suffers.
We’re caught in this Super Cycle with most other American institutions, waiting for the Next Great Hope to save us. The truth is far more unsettling: we are beyond saving; unless we collectively shape up, our ship is sunk, we’re taking on water and oil now, and Houston, did you get that radio call that we’ve got a gusher in the Gulf?
The problem is us and our attitude. The Compassionate Conservatives refuse to assume any blame, but it is all of our faults: We delegated too much power and wealth to too few people and now we’re helpless.
We’re slaves to corporate boards and markets beyond our understanding because we weren’t required to take that class in high school or college. We keep on, strident, unhappy, voiceless in this country built by people who strived to win the game. Now, it’s game over and guess what? They won.

Fear & Loathing at 35!

Fear & Loathing at 35!

By

Tom Davidson

Skylab Skylab Skylab! I remember it falling and my father collecting a piece of history in our basement. At least, that was a family joke!
The mid-to-late 1970s were a national joke and I was a punch line, a long-lost “All in the Family” episode waiting to be filmed.
Sheet & Tube had yet to be closed and my maternal grandfather had yet to be killed – squashed like a bug, according to his co-workers at Valley Mould – shortly after my parents met. Two years later, in 1975, I was borne of them, a child of the flashy-oversized collar and bell-bottom Baby-boomers who are taxing our government today.
My first relevant memories are a house-explosion on Youngstown’s North Side and the capture and release of the hostages in Iran during the Reagan Revolution. I kind of remember that Black Monday in 1977 when Sheet & Tube died and the Steel Valley became a part of the Rust Belt, but those memories are hazy.
I thought we’d be nuclear war-remnants by now; I remain astounded we’ve survived Y2K, 9/11 and whatever you want to call our world-at-the-brink-on-the-blink world as we know it.
All I know is I feel fine.
I’m glad I know what it’s like to struggle. I also remember the shock-and-awe of the 1980s: Challenger falling before my 11-yeat-old eyes, already shaded with the 1985 tornadoes; the fall of the Berlin Wall and of Communism as a Red Scare; the rise of Terror!
The horror, my horror. And now I’m tasked with covering it all. I feel it’s a sacred duty despite the horrific corporate corruption of my calling: The Truth is my bottom line, all other be damned.
As a scribe, I’ve survived Y2K, 9/11, War and Act 47. I’ve written books about sewage and comprehensive plans; I covered Hurricane Katrina and tired to do our local war dead justice.
I maintain a succor for seeing something new every day and writing about it; The Shenango Valley has yet to stump me with its foibles and I keep chasing the sirens and the story that helps to tell the tale of the best and worst of times in this Dickensian, Faulkneresque Valley that is my valley! Still green, though rust-littered after all these (35) years!
And so it goes...

Fear & Loathing in May

Fear & Loathing in May

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
-- Tom, as Narrator, in Scene One
“The Glass Menagerie”
Tennessee Williams


Getting the story started is the hardest part. I know what I want to tell you, but how to start it?
I could tell you about that hour-long drive almost 10 years ago when I went to watch a former co-worker portray the Tom character in “The Glass Menagerie” – it was a summer-stock production, or at least what passes for summer stock in western Pennsylvania. Our group was one of a handful who came to the show. It felt like we had the theater to ourselves.
I felt bad then for Schyler, that’s his last name, his full name is Radcliffe Schyler. No one calls him “Rad” or “Radcliffe” but as is the habit among boys at certain preparatory schools and over-priced liberal arts colleges, he’s called “Schyler.”
It’s an odd spelling of a last name, it seems to me. It’s as if there’s a vowel missing before the “y” and Schyler’s like that himself: He’s missing that vowel.
Schyler was performing the Williams play to less than 50 people (25 is a better estimate, but it was tough to get an accurate head count with the house lights dimmed.).
“Menagerie” isn’t the kind of play that plays well in western Pennsylvania. People like to laugh here and they like the jokes to be clean.
Not to sully anything about “The Glass Menagerie” – it’s just that is the kind of thing better appreciated by city folks or people in high school or college.
I hadn’t talked to Schyler for about 10 years after that, when he found me on one of those social networking Web sites that I used to despise, but now am unhappily almost addicted to: if I don’t log in each day, what am I missing?
It spins around in my mind until I have no choice but to get up and wait for the computer to boot up. Most of the time, I’m disappointed. The interesting stuff only seems to happen when I’m too busy to care and then I find out about it days later, when my life has slowed down and I waste the time looking at what my “friends” are up to. By then, they’re back to tedium.
As it turns out, Schyler has nothing to do with this story, he was just a digression. This story’s about two kids I saw swimming Sunday afternoon in an un-heated above-ground pool that had clean-enough, albeit cold, water.
The boys, ages 16 and 14 were splashing about and fooling around on a humid, but mild, early May afternoon. Not swimming weather by a long shot. But they made the most of the day and are probably sitting indoors by now, teeth chattering, lips blue, fingertips shriveled like prunes: I know the feeling, I’ve been there.
I’m listening to Johnny Cash sing Steve Goodman’s folk song about the “City of New Orleans” – the train, not the city – as I think about the kids splashing each other in a pool that I swam in when I was there age.
Back then, the corner store that’s almost caddy-corner from the house sold penny candy and even cigarettes to kids. I remember being sent to the store with a couple singles to buy my dad a soft-pack of Kent kings, a newspaper, and some candy with the change.
Swedish fish and fire balls were favorites, but there were so many choices: Laffy Taffy, Jaw Breakers, Boston Baked Beans, string licorice. Older kids would come in and buy 40s of malt liquor; I don’t think the clerks cared if they were 21.
Much as I reminisce about the “good-old days” I can’t help but think about how we were making the best during trying times. Looking at the facts, the Shenango Valley lost its prosperity in the 1980s: the mills were closing and unemployment was rampant. Still, I remember them as glorious days.
Much like 85-year-old Kate Yasgur, who attended a recent tea party. The Greenville resident longed for the days of her girlhood – the late 1930s. The country was in the midst of the Great Depression and was about to enter World War II, but to Mrs. Yasgur, they were a time full of wonder and delight.
She liked her government then and told me she supported FDR’s New Deal whole-heartedly. Others didn’t, equating the laws that were passed expanding the government and creating an American welfare state were un-American.
More than half-a-century later we’re still debating the issue. Some still, like Archie Bunker, maintain, “we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.”
Myself, I relish the intense debate we’re having. There is no right answer in politics and that we’re allowed to freely speak our minds is something I cherish as an American.
While right now some of us are fretting about the direction our country is headed, the kids I saw swimming in the pool will look back on this time as their “glory days.”
That’s America for you.

Fear & Loathing on the Hamster Wheel

Fear & Loathing on the Hamster Wheel

Sometimes I feel like I’m a hamster running on one of those silly wheels, spinning quickly to nowhere. The futility of the exercise is symptomatic of working within the institutions of today. My protest is just another “Catch-22”-like tome to rail against the absurdity of it all.
As a professional observer, I watch a lot of re-runs. The criminals I cover commit such similar crimes that it’s tough to keep the specific incidents straight; the community events I attend are mainly traditional, annual things that happen with little script changes each year.
Many times, I feel like I’m living the movie “Groundhog Day” infinitely. Finding something new to write about or photograph in the midst of these constants is the challenge. Finding the new in the midst of all these same-old, same-old, re-runs of life takes patience and paying close attention to detail.
When something brand-new happens, it’s a time to rejoice, to write about or photograph something the likes of which haven’t been seen here before.
For ages now, men have complained that it’s all been said before, that all things are discovered and there’s nothing new under the sun.
But that isn’t true. The newness slips in unannounced, most of the time, and I’m always ready to spot when it happens.
When it does and I capture that moment, I feel like Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose artistic credo was to capture the definitive moment. His art was in photographs and that “definitive moment” was that point that makes the picture live.
It’s the same with words and there are a few creations that live with the spark of genuine life; of energy and emotion harnessed into something that people want to look at or read again and again.
When that happens, and as an artist I am able to corral that bit of this American life, it makes all the repetition worth it.
It stops the hamster wheel and justifies the time spent spinning. It’s a re-affirming thought to think that I’m not just a hamster spinning a wheel in a cage to burn energy.
Here’s to life!

Fear & Loathing on Friday

Fear & Loathing on Friday

The whole TGIF bit chaps my ass. As someone who’s worked nights, weekends and holidays for more than a decade, I don’t get the excitement the proletariat feels for Friday.
To me, it’s just another day except the traffic seems to be worse. I hate driving on the main streets in the Shenango Valley on Fridays, when everyone appears to be out-and-about and road rage threatens to explode in a volcano of verbal vulgarities.
Making Friday out as a holiday of sorts puzzles me, however. Are most people’s jobs so bad that they look forward to the weekend that much?
I don’t know, because I don’t do drudge work.
My craft is writing, reporting and photography and I’ll admit it: I live to work, not that I consider my “job” to be “work” if that makes any sense.
Most of the time, I get to see cool things from a good vantage point, and write and take pictures of it all.
So a day off for me is a day that I’m missing whatever’s going on and I feel left out.
I feel bad for the folks who have a job where all they do is complain: sure, Monday’s busy, but again, it’s just another day for me. I don’t feel like I’ve crossed a hump when I get to Wednesday and find nothing special about Saturday night.
I don’t really have a favorite day and have never thanked God for Friday as I’ve more important things to be thankful for.
But some folks live to holler about TGIF and all the fancy stuff they’re going to do. I think it’s because everyone else is so riled up about it that I prefer to withdraw from the world come Friday night.
I’ll read a book and listen to some jazz, try to get in a little personal writing and enjoy the solace of solitude after a busy workweek.
Alas, it’s Friday, thanks to God notwithstanding.

Fear & Loathing on Obamacare

Fear & Loathing on Obamacare

I really shouldn’t let myself listen to right-wing radio. Laura Ingram is spewing inane invective as I unwind from a day in court watching another shooting case that’s the latest gang-related crime in the Shenango Valley.
I had some time to think about it all while waiting for the wheels of justice to turn (they move about as fast as Congress) and I can’t say I have much positive to say about the present state of our union.
The problem as I see it is the nation is facing a crisis not of healthcare or the economy or the end of all morality. The problem is we’ve become a nation of blamers, a group of people who know one thing for sure: It’s not our fault we're facing the life we’re living.
That’s the great American fault at the moment. It derives from lack of familiar upbringing and a broken support system of love & wisdom that used to prepare our youth for the big, bad world.
Darwin’s theories are being proven daily in this brutal new, each-man-for-himself world, where kids become adults before they have a chance to be kids.
Our solution to the problem is to throw money at non-profit organizations, schools and programs that do little more than perpetuate the problem to keep the grant money coming.
Meantime, the kids are running wild without proper role models and the closest thing they have to “tough love” is the mercies that may be shown to them by a penitent judge.
Our pro-life advocates remain hellbent on advising kids to keep making more kids that are wanted like baby dolls, but when the novelty wears off and the dolls become children, their parents are out of the picture and the cycle of kids growing up without a grounding in the basic differences between right and wrong and an understanding of that greatest of commandments, to love one another.
Until we fix that and give kids back the love and nurturing that’s required to become a capable adult, we’re stuck with a spiraling problem that gets exponentially worse with each generation.
This is all happening as our world’s going to hell and everyone’s arguing about politics as usual: healthcare myths, abortion, gay marriage that are each phantom issues, the latter two of which shouldn’t even be a subject of political debate. But we’ll waste time on it while kids devolve in the streets because no one’s watching them.
I don’t have the answer, but I know what’s happening now is missing the mark. And it makes me sad and angry when I go to court hearings and see pews filled with young people gone awry.
I’m tired of watching kids with potential get chewed up by the system and transformed into criminals.
I’m also sick of everybody blaming everybody else for it, and complaining about the problems but doing nothing to solve it.
To do so would require too much that seems like socialism, I suppose. Folks would have to work together for the common good and the ties that bind us because we’re human.
Obamacare doesn’t include a prescription to cure this, society’s greatest ill, but it should.

Fear & Loathing on Furlough (Part 2)

Fear & Loathing on Furlough (Part 2)

I’m furloughed again, this time a single day off to steel the profits of the ailing philo-industrial complex that controls words and information.
It’s the straw that stirs the drink, as Reggie Jackson was for the Bronx Bombers.
As a grunt humping a police beat in the Rust Belt, these unpaid days off are frustrating because there’s work I could be doing instead of sitting here typing up internet treatises.
I’m spewing invective in my mind as I think about the corporate and government institutions I wish we the people would revolt against: that would be a movement I could get behind.
I enjoy railing against corporate megalomania and institutional slavery: the twin banes of the post-9/11, post-industrial Brave New World.
We’re pawns in a chess game and no one’s playing by the rules, which they keep re-writing.
I thought it was check mate, but an eighteen-month stale mate turned into a victory somehow. I don’t think anyone’s considered how ‘we the people’ feel just about now.
We’re overloaded with invective and lamenting the loss of personal dignity during this time of lingering hardship: times are tight, and the smiles are few.
Dignity’s an important ideal and the unemployment, the rising costs and frustrating debts and spiraling-out-of-control financial problems; each strike blows at a person’s sense of dignity.
But without it, we wouldn’t hold our heads high and keep on, keepin’ on, to quote the master, Dylan.
As captured pawns in the game, all we can do is look on in horror as the chaos unfolds.
Add in furlough days which give people time to think about things, and the result is this kind of treatise. Pointless writing that fills the hours and takes up space on silicon-valley servers.

Fear & Loathing Before the Apocalypse

Fear & Loathing Before the Apocalypse

The Man in Black could sing a story song better than anyone. As Bob Dylan sings, “some people say (he’s) got the blood of the land in his voice.”
I’ve been celebrating Cash lately: he is one of the artists who’re etched onto the Great American Songbook. His lyrics and the subject of the stories he tells that were written by others still resonate, four and in some cases five decades after they were recorded.
“I Walk the Line” may be the best simple love song ever; and “Ring of Fire” burns with June Carter Cash’s passion.
“Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” and “City of New Orleans” capture times and places in America, much like Walt Whitman did in poetry.
This country has been a fertile muse; this land that’s your land and my land. Too often we take for granted how free we are to disagree that we fail to see how petty we may have been.
The America I know today is bigger and better than ever, but because of its largesse, we’re a bitch to manage.
Any government or creation we concoct to serve the needs of our 300-plus million populous is going to be a monstrous, messy and in some ways wasteful. But sometimes collectives are needed and no one ought to die in these United States for lack of health care.
We remain as awesome country, full of people with diverse opinions, passions and extraordinary talents.
From the days of Melville and Hawthorne and the flowering of New England, then on to Twain, Poe and Whitman and then Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Wolfe, with people like Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and Ledbelly thrown in for good measure, the American story is worth telling.
I’m but a loyal scrivener of the times. I’m a manic chronicler of the Shenango Valley at the turn of the 21st century and what the people are about now.
Today seemed to be one where the powers-that-be collectively caught their breath and plotted their next moves.
The debates of the last year-and-a-half have divided the country. It’ll be interested to see if that means outrage voiced at the ballot box.
It’s also coincidental that crunch time for healthcare reform came in the midst of March Madness, when much of the nation is tuned into college basketball and studying bracketology instead of serious issues.
When folks wake up from their hoop dreams, they’re going to find out if what passed was meaningful reform or just another failed government initiative we wasted a lot of hot air and bruised feelings over.
For everyone’s sake let’s hope it’s been worth it.

Fear & Loathing on Healthcare

Fear & Loathing on Healthcare.

So they did it. They had the vote as I napped after golfing, no news to be had early Sunday evening before the vote was taken.
I’m sure the cable news networks did it justice and made it into folks “watching history unfold” – I wonder if a chill ran up Chris Matthews’ thigh again, thinking about what Teddy Kennedy was thinking.
I can only imagine that many people in my neck of the Rust Belt are mad. They’ve bought the idea that the reform is pork-laden fat layered with socialistic bureaucratese, and they’re not entirely inaccurate in making that claim.
There are others who will be touting the passage like the second-coming of the polio vaccine that transformed America more than the Great Society did.
What I think should have been a provision in the law was something that banned, on passage, mention of “healthcare reform” for a fortnight in any print or broadcast media.
For that, I’d have bought into a single-payer system. Truth told, I don’t really care.
I’m still in the lucky age group: I’m a youngish man who’s healthy and I pay for health insurance I do not need and don’t fret too much about it because I understand that it’s my turn to dish out the money without getting something in return. I understand, my day will come. For now, it is my job in our convoluted life factory to be a feeder and provide cash to grease the wheels of most of the things that run.
So this bill is passed and whoop-ti-do! It’s supposed to right all wrongs. I won’t be surprised when it doesn’t. I also won’t be shocked when Karl Marx’s stamp on it isn’t found. We’re too greedy as Americans to be corrupted by anything but the most liberal socialism.
I’m sure there are legislative wastes in the law that will make us proud, backroom deals and sub-clauses crafted in smoke-filled rooms to calm the huddled masses in certain salamander-shaped gerrymandered political districts.
I’m also sure there’re some things to like in the legislation. Moreover, I hope there’re a few things in it that will please almost everyone. Doing something is better than letting our present system complete its suicide-mission.
I wished they left in the language about the death panels, it was the sole provision I whole-heartedly supported, but I understand that it is the graying-baby-boomers who are now the establishment power structure and they couldn’t stand for something as dangerous to them.
Now, I’d just enjoy a moment of silence, a time to digest and think – not talk – about what it all means to me?
I don’t need some television talking head to tell me, although I hope I get the chance to hear Rush’s rant about this tomorrow.
I won’t lie, if I can swing it, I’ll be listening.
But I won’t take the preaching to be gospel. Neither will I drink the White House Kool-Aid that Gibb & Co. will be handing out in equal measure.
Instead, I want silence. A simple, quiet moment. Time to ponder a point.
It won’t happen, but this won’t be the first time legislators have failed me.

Fear & Loathing on St. Patrick's Day

Fear & Loathing on St. Patrick’s Day 2010

The last day of the three-day furlough is an unofficial holiday, an excuse for drunken revelry that’s manna for any bar owner.
I’ve stayed away from the huddled masses chugging green beer this year in favor of a quiet night listening to a high school girls basketball playoff game and then Laura Ingram, one of the few people who I actually despise on this world. I think her exhalations contribute a lot to global warming, but I listen to get my dander up.
The whines of the conservatives now that they are no longer in power is becoming annoying. Especially those of Ms. Ingram, who’s artfully-edited sound bites were funny at one time, but have become cliched.
The amount of misinformation that’s been spread over the last year about health care reform has been enough to make me sick.
What boggles my mind is that we’re even debating this, as the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
I can agree with many conservative ideals (and truth be told don’t identify myself with any particular political party or philosophy) but what I can’t understand is the conservatives' apparent complete disregard to offer help to their fellow man, especially those who are worse off than themselves.
I’m all for individual responsibility, but in today’s America there are scores of people who are set up for failure because of the environment in which they are raised.
And that some people think it’s OK for those of us who are better off to tell these people that it’s their fault they aren’t in a better position is inhumane.
Compassion and giving a damn about others is what makes us humans and selfish disregard for those less fortunate makes me sick to my stomach.
I do agree with many of the folks who are sick and tired of our political system and the people who populate it: we have far too much lobbying and other political machinations in today’s government.
But the problem won’t be solved by gathering together to hold signs and listen to speeches. The problem is that most people in these United States fail to vote come Election Day.
Who knows, maybe this will change in coming elections, but as long as fewer than half of voting-age Americans fail to vote, it’s all for naught.
As for comparing meaningful healthcare reform to a plunge into socialism: get off it.
Our country runs on socialistic principals. The very idea of insurance of any sort is socialism: a group of people band together and pool their cash to protect themselves from emergency expenses they couldn’t afford otherwise.
But it’s an easy rallying cry for conservative politicians to speak about and is sure to rile up people who are blinded by patriotism.
I’m proud that in America we have such diverse differences of opinion and live to argue another day, but when the arguments get in the way of progress it’s sickening.
Ms. Ingram is particularly annoying tonight. I can’t believe she actually has fans. But as an American, I’m in favor of letting her continue to spew her nonsense.
It’s my hope that the government and the people wake up and realize just how important guaranteeing affordable health care is to the future of America.
It’s interesting that the Japanese constitution – written by all-American soldier and statesmen Douglas McArthur – contains a provision that guarantees health care as a fundamental right.
Yet it’s something that’s too much for America to swallow, as if treating the sick and allowing those with chronic diseases that require continual, expensive medication to be able to afford to live is somehow an encroachment on our collective freedom.
Again, to use a computer abbreviation, WTF?
So that’s what St. Patrick’s Day has been about this year: a losing basketball game, politically-biased talk radio drivel and my thoughts on health care reform.
The best thing to come out of the holiday was the pistachio-flavored milkshake I bought to mark the day. How sweet it was!

Fear & Loathing with ADD

Fear & Loathing with ADD

Single-tasking in this era of the multi-task, I type into a single text file, without a Web browser in the background or the television on. It’s more complicated without the distractions so I at least have to have Bob Dylan’s latest at a reasonable volume so an accordion can provide a backbeat to riff upon.
I understand there are now adults with attention-deficient disorder, one of the scores of newly-coined diseases psychological professionals want to hang on us humans.
I don’t doubt this one and wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes an epidemic. The problem isn’t us humans, it’s the oodles of information that are a mouse-click away. It’s the smart phones we carry and the Ipods and the digital cable or satellite television with hundreds of channels and still nothing of substance on.
It’s e-books and right wing radio and pod casts and social networks that keep us connected at all costs.
There’s so much to pay attention to that it’s impossible to offer undivided attention anymore, so as I’ve said, it’s no wonder there’s a syndrome among both children and adults of attention deficits.
It’s so great a problem that I’d be surprised if there was a single soul who was reading this with rapt attention: Lord knows I’m not writing it that way.
Our collective attention deficit is something that should spur more worries than the national debt, but aside from a few excited drug company execs and a couple mental health professionals, the problem barely rates a blip on the international radar; eventually it may be the subject of an impassioned PSA, but that’s about it.
In generations to come, it’s going to be more worrisome than another swine flu pandemic because it is a serious, if not lethal problem.
Kids are growing up without being able to get from here to there without a GPS. They don’t know the names of local rivers or physical landmarks and they read and write in a babble of abbreviations and slang that’s yet to be organized into a dictionary.
Ear buds deliver audio instructions, Google organizes the information and if specific knowledge is needed there’s the Wikipedia fact collective to tap into.
There’s no need to remember when i comes before e because the computer programs self-correct and there are more important things to remember like random passwords and keeping track of who posted what in the continuous news feed.
It’s beyond mind-boggling and in fact is an infinite swirling abyss of information spinning out of control.
Achtung ad infinitum, and ever changing like strobe light flashes by the nanosecond.
I don’t know what the cure is aside from repeated sensory deprivation chamber treatments and/or seclusion, but the withdrawal pains from such have yet to be studied and could probably be fatal, possibly resulting in creation of a class of zombies who are in fact living dead, perhaps moaning, perhaps chanting incantations in binary code.
It’s scary stuff: First it was not enough information, then it ballooned into too much information and now that information’s being spewed for information’s sake it’s impossible not to pay attention to it all with a dizzying intensity that crashes and burns into silence and a flatline buzz of white noise that signals it's time to re-boot, defragment and quarantine the misinformation.

Fear & Loathing on Furlough

Fear & Loathing on Furlough

The Ides of March are upon us and I’m vigilant as the soothsayer’s warning echoes across the looming fog of history. Caesar and Rome were but the first act of the American Dream.
The Roman excesses and perversions are nothing compared to the frivolity, greed and abuses we Americans have perverted our lives with.
The next three days are my penance for my contribution to the collective American sin, as I’m off unpaid per corporate orders. It beats being laid off permanently or not having a job at all and these unpaid days off are the way many American companies are using to preserve the black on their bottom line.
It’s all about the Benjamins, as the rap song goes, and in America in 2010, it’s especially all about the corporate cash. The individual can go broke, lose their home or starve so long as the conglomerate is preserved. To save our high-stakes houses of gold, we’ll mortgage the solvency of our great-great-great-great grandchildren.
It’s all about the top two percent, the extreme upper crust, of our age. They must not suffer!
It makes the sins of the gilded age of Vanderbilts, Morgans and Rockefellers seem slight. These hypocritical greed-mongers are making more money and only want to make more money and they have the power where it counts to keep doing that.
The politicians who control the purse-strings are pawns in their game and no matter what anyone says that game is rigged.
Joe Sixpack is and always will be the loser. No politician, be them red, blue or shades inbetween, has the common man at heart or mind. (Politicians don’t have souls so I won’t go there.)
Instead, they’ll get us revved up over health care, debating something that doesn’t effect the ruling class. They’ll spread fear of change and play the “Red Card” that “socialized medicine” is some sort of evil at the same time they benefit from government-funded health care that’s the best in the world.
As a people, we’ve fallen for the trick and swallowed the bait and they’re reeling us in even as we’re still reeling from the effects of this economic recession and they’re finding more and more ways to squander the cash in taxes that we work so hard for but they spend so easily.
It’s maddening to be used like this. As I sit here, being paid less to do a job that I’m already underpaid for, it makes me seethe to think about these corporate bigwigs who keep getting richer.
They don’t care that they’re creating an untenable situation and causing problems that aren’t offset by the cost-savings.
All they care about it their bottom line and it’s enough to drive a common man over the edge.
Some men have been driven thus, but for the most part we’ve swallowed this bitter medicine with little complaint.
What’s frustrating is there’s little we can do. The politicians are all the same: Democrat, Republican, tea or coffee drinker, once they’re elected they drink the Kool-Aid and join the select society that only cares about furthering itself.
The only way I can see where someone can seek solace is to withdraw in the fashion of Henry David Thoreau and to take to the woods, unplug and unwire, and “simplify” life so that it’s something the greedy men can’t take away.
All they care about is money, so they have no use for an aesthete. And the real affluence that men possess is the substance of their souls: what they dream and create with their minds or fashion with their hands not for a wage but for the satisfaction of creation. It’s to scrawl ‘Kilroy was here’ in the sands of time.
That’s what I’m living for and I’m thankful they can’t take that away.
Like Caesar and Rome, the American house of cards will one day fall. But the American Dream and Great American Creations will live forever.
So there!

The Horror

Seventy-five miles going 75 mph with the dome light on in a drizzle, dodging road construction after a back-and-forth basketball game that ended in a loss for the local team was a harrowing adventure.
It was a trip through the heart of darkness with Kurtz riding shotgun, swearing at a computer on his lap and playing tape recorded comments while pounding at the keyboard.
Driving without a map in unfamiliar territory at the beginning of the rainy season: it was like being in the Parrot’s Beak in 1970. Instead of landmines there were potholes, Jersey barriers and deer looming in the mist.
It was a close basketball game, essentially a draw that became a win at the charity stripe with .1 of a second remaining: not enough time for even a last-ditch, full-court heave.
The site was an opulent school is an affluent aberration of the Rust Belt. Penne Pasta and $2 hot dogs at the concession stand and a gym filled with banners celebrating tennis and lacrosse championships.
This was dinner-jacket territory, beyond white collar and making even this valley’s white collars seem blue.
A wrong turn out of the parking lot twisted me around and caused minor panic before I righted the course, then battled dome-light blindness the rest of the way.
No cigarettes and nothing to drink. Nothing to say to the colonel beside me, it was a wild time, alone with my thoughts spinning out of control.
Waking night-driving dreams of Conrad and Apocalypse Now wrought by the resonance of the Nelson Demille pulp fiction I’m reading.
I felt like a caterpillar crawling across a razor blade.
Now, 90 minutes after a safe return, the present keeps blurring by: I feel like I’m still moving as Bob Dylan sings about “Marching to the City” and I think about marching from the city.
I’m thankful I made it back in one piece, met deadline and now am safe at home, if home is indeed safe.
Tapping a keyboard like a maestro, taking the surreality of the world I wrought and turning it into words.
Words can redeem us. In the beginning was the word and come the apocalypse the word will be said.
Alas, the word will save the world if the world will let it. The word will fill the hollow men with substance and define the absurdities of the digital life in the next world.
Now that’s a load of nonsense and it’s time to stop the words and get back to the world.
The dreams should be vivid tonight!

Fahrenheit 450

So this is what it’s like at Fahrenheit 450.
We’re almost at burning temperature, we almost have walls that talk and we almost don’t have to talk to each other face-to-face.
Every person is a newscast now, a live wire in this war called life. Everyone’s boiling with commotion and I’m steaming.
They might as well discontinue the pencil, it’s gone the way of the abacus: an entry between Penchi and pencil pusher.
My dictionary’s smoldering as I take the time to look it up: “the individual style or ability of an artist”
Do we need individuals anymore?
Join a group, make friends, comment in a 100 characters or less. Throw all those spelling tests into the fire and
Soon it will be burning bright. Paging Guy Montag: spring forth from the yellowing pages, sir! Here’s the order:
“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”
It’s getting hotter by the day, burning heat and we keep getting dumber.
“I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.”
It’s 450 degrees and I’m sweating. My books are brown and I feel like a pencil getting chewed up in an electric sharpener.
Getting chewed up before being thrown into the fire.

Welcome to the land of the living dead

“Welcome to the land of the living dead.”
- Ruby in “Brownsville Girl” by Bob Dylan and Sam Shepherd.

The Rust Belt is teeming with life this week as light-jacket weather has arrived. The snow is melted and the debris of autumn and winter is exposed to the eyes: leaves that haven’t completely decayed, sticks and stones and litter including half-crushed beer cans, empty, faded cigarette packages and thrown-out-the-window butts that had been buried beneath a dirty-white tundra of snow and ice.
Puddles have formed in the low spots and potholes, creating mirrors to reflect the welcome sunshine and making some street corners sparkle despite the grime.
There’s beauty in this Shenango Valley, splendid sights to see if you take stop time and take it in: Aging houses and neighborhoods full of old stories told by busted-out windows and sagging porches. Old men are sitting on front porch furniture that was bought in the 1980s, kids playing in the streets, moving out of the way of cars blasting music that adds to the booming vitality that blooms in the sun.
The WPA-laid red brick streets are filled with life in Farrell and even the dogs seem happy to just be outside without shivering.
There’s hope in the air that still has a bite of cold; hope that things might improve this year; that bigger and better things are around the corner for this neglected corner of America.
It’s been a long time coming; a wait that’s been punctuated by false-starts and pipe dreams that didn’t come true.
It’s left a weight on the shoulders of the bread-winners that’s eased for a moment by the thaw and sunshine. Troubles can be forgotten for a moment and hope prevails.
There’s a quiet dignity that comes from enduring tough times, a dignity that hasn’t yet disappeared, even with job losses, crime epidemics and drug problems.
There’s hope yet for this place that we call home.

Miserable? I think not.

Miserable? I think not.

There’s something special about the Shenango Valley. After reading news that the Youngstown area was cited by national thinkers as one of the more miserable places to live on my colleague Joe Gorman’s blog, I got to thinking about this place I call home, and have to say I disagree.
Sure, we’re far from a booming area.
The Mahoning and Shenango Valleys (heck, actually the triangle from Cleveland to Buffalo to Pittsburgh) has seen better times. We’re quick to remember our glory days as the land of steel and plenty, but since those days have gone we’ve become a land of broken dreams, a place of taxed hope, where buildings are decaying and times were tough well before the rest of the country and world started feeling the pain of this most recent downturn.
But out of adversity comes triumph and it takes periods of sadness to enjoy the happy times. So I disagree that this is a miserable place to live.
I for one am glad I don’t have to navigate the Washington Beltway each day or cram into a graffitied subway to get to work. I might complain about road construction and get annoyed at some of the other drivers on the road, but I can get to work in under 10 minutes most days.
I enjoy the view from the crest of the West Hill coming into Sharon and like the Shenango River and even the smokestacks that remain along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
I like the brick streets in Farrell and the rows of factory houses where so many of the Shenango Valley’s families got their start.
I like that when I golf I can choose from about 20 courses within a 30-minute drive and don’t mind not having a Starbucks on every corner.
I talk to strangers a lot, but am mostly treated like a kindred spirit even when I talk to folks during the worst of times: at a fire, crash or murder scene.
I’m glad that when something bad happens, it’s big news because it’s rare: there are places that are far more dangerous where crime is a daily part of life, not an occasional outrage like it is here.
And when something bad happens, folks band together here and try to do something about it. They cry on each other’s shoulders and support one another instead of keeping to themselves and staring at the ground as they pass by like they do in New York.
I like that despite all the bad times we’ve been through that folks still hold onto hope that it will get better, that one day this valley will rise again.
I felt that hope Thursday at a Black History Month celebration in Farrell. I ate with kids who weren’t miserable. They weren’t complaining about another snowstorm and they weren’t lamenting the lack of jobs or the lack of things to do.
They were enjoying a program about history – it’s time we erase the racial overtones from our heritage, isn’t it? To accept our differences and celebrate the accomplishments of the Shenango Valley, where no matter the ethnicity there are certain values instilled and a certain outlook on life that’s unique to here.
It’s that sense of place that I enjoy. That community pride that’s been battered a bit but remains in spite of blows over the last three decades.
I for one haven’t given up on here.
So ignore that national ranking, that dubious distinction that’s undeserved. We’ve always been off the national radar and I kind of like it that way.
I don’t want to live too close to a toll road superhighway and the one thing nice about the mills being closed is our air isn’t that bad and can only get better.
I’m tired of complaining about what we lack and would like to see us celebrate what we have and build on it because like it or not, it’s our home.
Thinking on it, that’s the best part of the Shenango Valley: It’s home.