"Being Connected" Means Disconnecting from Your Self

The extent to which so many people shut down their senses against things that are going on around them is astonishing. I’ve observed repeated evidence of this in recent days.

I ride the Portland Streetcar pretty much every day: sometimes for short hops as a patron, and other times for several hours as an employee. Recorded announcements over the p.a. system let riders know on a regular basis what kind of car they’re on: whether it’s heading to northwest Portland, the South Waterfront, or across the river to the east side.

Yet people don’t hear them. They constantly ask me and one another which train they’re on. “This is the Northwest 22nd and Northrup stop,” the calm female announcer’s voice stated as I stood up to get off for a work shift at another job last week. Right away, directly behind me, I heard someone ask, “Is this 23rd?”

Last Wednesday, March 11, my wife Carole was aboard a streetcar that was already passing a parked vehicle when the woman inside opened her door into the train, which naturally bashed and bent it. She screamed. Carole said everyone on board who heard her thought the train had struck someone. Why hadn’t this idiot looked out the window or in her rearview mirror before reaching for her door handle? (And could her insurance company deny coverage on the basis of stupidity?)

Songs That Are Like Old Friends

I try to avoid participating in Facebook memes and games. I know they’re primarily promotional, and designed to drive up site traffic as well as to divine each user’s tastes and interests so that bots can market stuff to them more accurately. I’ve never played Farmville or Candy Crush or Bubble Witch or Jackpot Party Casino Slots. Fortunately, nobody hit me up for the ice bucket challenge last year so I’d have to publicly demur, not least because I don’t have a smartphone to be able to shoot a photo or video and post it. But last week a friend tagged me for a five-day song challenge:

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to post five cool songs in as many days. Each day, I'm tagging three friends, in the hopes they'll do the same. Expanding horizons, facilitating the tapping of toes, providing distractions from the looming void, etc."

I liked being tapped, especially alongside two other Facebook friends of mine named David. I don’t see them or my Facebook challenger in person very often, though I’ve worked with each in staged readings or on video jobs in the past. And I really liked reminiscing about the music that has enriched my life in the past -- thinking about which five songs might be most interesting to choose; not necessarily my absolute favorites, not necessarily the coolest, but a little off the beaten path as well as personally illuminating with regard to my musical journey through life.

The Obsessive Reader Goes Cold Turkey . . . Sort Of

As I have done for many years, I submitted my reading list for the past year and an essay to Oregonian columnist Steve Duin’s annual reading contest. Without any further preamble, here’s the essay I submitted in early January:

The last thing I ever expected to announce in a reading contest essay was that I’m giving up pleasure reading for the coming year. If you’re anything like the reader I’ve been, the prospect is terrifying.

Books have been my friends forever. My parents read aloud to me when I was small. My grandmother, folks, and family friends gave me many books as gifts over the years. I also lived three blocks from the public library in my hometown, so from age 7 onward, I walked there almost every day.

In high school I was notorious as the kid with the stack of books. In college, I usually did all the required reading for courses before lecture, and still took time to read dozens of other books for pleasure.

Get Your Butts Out of Our Public Parks, NOW!

This Wednesday, Feb. 11, at 3:15 p.m., Portland City Parks Commissioner Amanda Fritz will introduce an ordinance to impose a smoking ban and tobacco-free policy in all city parks, recreation areas, and any other places where the Portland Parks & Recreation Bureau has jurisdiction. I plan to be there to observe and, I hope, testify in support.

The ban has been brewing for a while. The proposal surfaced last May, and the Oregonian editorial page came out in opposition. I sent a lengthy letter to the editor in response, which the paper put on its website and in the print edition as a “guest commentary” with a rebuttal from the editor. This is a rare occurrence, so as I observed on this blog, I must have hit the guy where he lives.

In preparation for this month’s formal proposal by Fritz, her office invited public comment in January. Here the letter I emailed to her assistant:

I am voicing my strong support for the proposed smoking ban in Portland parks.

For the Holidays, the End of The World as We Know It

December is the time for families, food, lights, and gift-giving, right?

Just as I’ve done for many years, I participated in dramatic readings of “A Christmas Carol” with actor friends at nursing homes and retirement centers, and helped serve hundreds of meals to low-income and homeless citizens at Temple Beth Israel synagogue on Christmas Day.

But my personal entertainment took an oddly apocalyptic turn in December. I don’t mean zombies and post-nuclear war battles, but actual, serious looks at Where We May Be Headed. This didn’t happen by conscious choice or design -- impulse decisions at the library and suggestions by friends in one of my book clubs set the stage -- but it’s odd how they all came together this month.

Carole and I had waited a while to get our hands on the first-season DVD set of True Detective from the library. Several weeks ago we raced through the episodes in barely a weekend. In the pilot, a monologue by Matthew McConnaughey’s character “Rust” Cohle includes the following passage:

I think human consciousness was a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist, by natural law. … I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming. Stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction … one last midnight … brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

How to Choose a College

My niece is a junior in high school. Discussions with her parents over Thanksgiving about her education plans brought back a memory about the time the head guidance counselor at my old high school asked me to speak to college-bound juniors about preparing for higher ed. I was either still in college or fresh out.

One girl asked, “How do you decide which college to go to?” I think it was the first time I had formulated my opinions about college in an organized manner, and I haven’t forgotten my answer. Here’s what I said.

“Well, there’s an orthodox method that goes like this. You decide what you’re interested in -- what you want to pursue as a career -- and then you go to the guidance center and study the school catalogs [this was before the Internet existed, for the average person] and find out which schools have a strong program in that field. Then you apply to them.

“Now, there are several things that strike me as wrong with this approach. First, when you’re 18, you don’t typically have a very clear idea about what you want to do. Odds are you will change your mind, maybe many times.

It Ain't Over, Folks. . . .

Although the mid-term elections took place a month ago, and Oregonians had begun to mail and turn in their votes as much as two weeks prior to that, the election results on Measure 92 -- the GMO labeling proposal I wrote about here on October 28 -- are not yet final.

As of Nov. 6, the measure appeared to have been defeated by about 10,500 votes. That’s a slim margin: out of nearly 1.4 million votes cast, the difference amounted to 50.4 percent “no” to 49.6 percent “yes.” Nonetheless, the Oregonian pronounced defeat for the GMO labeling effort.

But the results turned out to be much closer.

A sizable chunk of votes had not been properly signed. For our U.S. neighbors who don’t enjoy the luxury of vote-by-mail (and that’s still most of you, at this point), once you’ve filled in your ballot, you can place it in an optional “privacy envelope” -- with big air holes so your check marks can breathe, I suppose -- and then in a slightly larger, preaddressed envelope that has a line on the back where you’re supposed to sign your name.

The votes inside are not counted as valid if there’s no signature on the outer envelope. Roughly 13,000 Oregon voters failed to sign their envelope in this election. In the past, those votes were simply not counted, period; but a new state law allows election officials and campaigns to obtain the names of the people whose votes were thus invalidated so they could be contacted to correct the error.

Election 2014: Oregon Ballot Measure 90

Ballot Measure 90 is intended to rectify a growing inequity in Oregon primary elections . . . but it exacts too great a price.

Oregon has a closed primary system, which means voters can only vote for candidates in the political party for which they are registered: Democrats vote for Democrats, Republicans for Republicans.

This is a relic of elections in centuries past, when parties chose their candidates in private meetings before they were presented to the voters. Due to pressure from the general electorate and the courts, that morphed into closed primary elections in which Democrats and Republicans select their respective candidates for the general election.

The idea is that constitutionally guaranteed “free associations” of Americans could affiliate, meet, agree on what they wanted, etc.

But over the past few decades, more and more voters have registered as Independent or non-party affiliated. I’ve seen various figures for the number, but it’s definitely more than half a million Oregonians now.

Election 2014: Oregon Ballot Measure 91

For me, Measure 91, which would legalize possession, manufacture, and sale of moderate amounts of marijuana for recreational use in Oregon, is not as easy a call as 92 . . . or as it would have been ten or twenty years ago.

I’m no great fan of marijuana. I was exposed to it fairly early, as a high school freshman or sophomore. Basically, I succumbed to the blandishments of a couple of older girls when we were away from school and home at a speech tournament (on the streets of the state capital, Salem, I believe). In the 40 years since, the number of times I’ve smoked pot could be counted on the fingers of my two hands.

Just like the first time, partaking -- whether it was with a friend, smoking dope supplied by U.S. Marines in Mauretania; at the foot of the Jerry Garcia statue at McMenamins Edgefield with some other longtime Gentle Giant fans; or most recently, before attending a Laurie Anderson concert -- had more to do with enjoying the company I was with than any interest in getting high.

Election 2014: Oregon Ballot Measure 92

Oregon Ballot Measure 92, which we’re voting on this week, requires that raw and packaged foods produced entirely or partly by “genetic engineering” be labeled as such. It would apply to retailers, suppliers, and manufacturers, and take effect in January 2016.

Television ads for and against the proposal have followed hard on each other’s heels every night for the past few weeks, and the issue could involve the heaviest spending in this campaign. Despite all the fuss, the question posed by Measure 92 is the simplest on this year’s ballot.

All it comes down to is this: Would you prefer to know what goes into your food? Very simple question, very simple answer: Most of us like to know what we’re eating.

So I’m voting yes.

But it’s been amusing to see the arguments the opposition has thrown up, so to speak, in an attempt to make the matter seem more complicated than it is. Most of them are various “cost,” “fairness,” and “more government regulation” objections that evade the main point of whether the move is desirable.

Another Oregon Election . . . Find the Postage Stamps!

My (non-absentee) ballot for November’s election arrived in the mail last week. What is an unremarkable comment for an Oregonian remains unusual nearly anywhere else in the U.S.

My home state can claim a lot of political and legislative firsts: the first to enact comprehensive land-use programs between 1969 and 1973; the first to pass a bottle bill, in 1971; the first to vote for physician assistance in dying, in 1994; and the first to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana in 1973, and to approve its medical use in 1998.

Also in 1998, Oregon was the first state to institute vote-by-mail, through an initiative petition and a popular vote that scored more than 2 to 1. Statewide elections by mail began in 2000. In the ensuing decade and a half, however, few other states have followed our example.

Washington began to practice vote-by-mail in various counties over the past 20 years, but only made it a statewide practice in 2011. Colorado began holding elections by mail in 2013. Perhaps it’s not quite a coincidence that those were the first two states to vote to legalize recreational use of marijuana as well, in 2012.

At the same time as it cut the cost of elections by several million dollars each year, vote-by-mail increased turnout in Oregon for more than a decade. Turnout in the 2000 primary was 51 percent, and 79 percent in the November general election. Those figures were 46 and 86 percent, respectively, in 2004; and 58.3 and 85.7 percent in the first Obama election, in 2008.

Where Are You? When Are You?

Even the smallest incident -- or the observation of it -- can have broad implications, especially with a little input from others.

Earlier this week, I placed the following post on my Facebook wall about an incident at one of the dozens of Starbucks in downtown Portland:

I was waiting at the bar for my coffee drink. I could see my cup exactly and could tell when it was due, right after the smaller cup destined for the young woman beside me who had ordered just before me. "I have a tall latte," the barista said as she put it on the bar. "Tall latte," she repeated. The girl next to me looked up and asked "tall latte?" as she reached for it. The barista nodded and the girl walked away. "Do you think if you'd said it three times, she would have heard it?" I asked the barista. She gave me a jaundiced shrug.

It’s the sort of slice of urban life that normally might pass without comment, or receive a couple of “ain’t it the truth” comments in agreement. Somewhat to my surprise, however, several of my Facebook friends posted cautionary warnings and a spirited discussion ensued.

Processing . . . processing . . .

I recently made the acquaintance of a young man from Brazil.

In the course of our conversation, he talked about how oppressive he finds modern technology. If you send a text and the person doesn’t answer right away, you start to wonder: “Did I say something wrong? What did I write to him last time?”

Sometimes the stream of news over Facebook makes it seem as if everyone’s being productive and having a great time except yourself. Some of my friends, he told me, become depressed after checking their Facebook news feed half a dozen times a day. He was thinking of killing his Facebook page altogether.

I agreed that this can be the case, and told him I don’t own a smartphone, I’ve never sent or received a text, and my wife and I got rid of our car 12 years ago. These are all expenses that suck up resources -- both time and money -- that I would rather devote to other things (or not have to generate the income to pay for in the first place).

But it’s not simply technology’s fault. This phenomenon is mainly just an expansion of an effect that capitalist/consumer culture, especially its marketing wing, has always had -- indeed, actively seeks to impose on us.

Movies and television shows (and increasingly, newscasts), have one only purpose: to keep you watching. In order to do that, they throw the most startling, violent, thrilling, expensive spectacles and events at you. That’s how they keep the numbers of their audience high, and thereby secure funding from sponsors.

A Thought. . . .

One recent morning, just after I rose from sleep and made my usual way to the bathroom, I listened carefully to my body. I heard the usual cracks and pops of joints I hear almost every morning -- knees, elbows, back, neck -- but this time I heard all the liquid sounds.

I’m sure I’d heard some of these before, but I had never noticed how many of them there are. I listened to all of them happen, all together, one by one over the course of several minutes. They were small, discrete gurgles and blips, distinct and brief, as various liquids and semi-solids shifted inside.

Most of them came from my gut and lower abdomen, of course: various materials shifting in my intestines now that I had altered position from supine to erect, urine gurgling out of my bladder or shifting from the kidneys as the bladder emptied, I imagine. But occasionally I heard something elsewhere: in my stomach, even (I believe) my throat.

I flashed on a sudden mental image of an elaborate chemistry set, with liquids dripping and flowing into and out of beakers, flasks, Erlenmeyer bulbs, condensers, funnels, and retorts . . . which, in a way, is exactly what we are.

A Giant and Happy Step Forward

Well, we finally did it. Same-sex marriage is legal in Oregon, and probably for good.

On Monday, a federal judge in Eugene ruled that a ban on gay marriage enshrined in the state constitution by Oregon voters ten years ago would not likely stand in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions last June that struck down much of the federal “Defense of Marriage” act.

Multnomah County, where I live, legalized same-sex marriage in early 2004, and granted more than 3,000 licenses to gay and lesbian couples before court activity halted the process and a November initiative killed it altogether. The statewide vote that year was 57 percent for Ballot Measure 36, which defined marriage as “between one man and one woman,” versus 43 percent against.

It was disheartening for gays, lesbians, and those of us who support their civil rights. We knew the future was with us; we knew ever-increasing numbers of younger Americans see nothing wrong with same-sex marriage; but we figured the U.S. would have to wait another generation to make that leap.

The wonder of it is that it suddenly happened so fast. Twenty-six years ago I published op-ed pieces in the Roseburg News-Review in support of gay rights, and enjoyed a shower of enraged and abusive letters to the editor in response. Two years ago, it felt like we were no closer to change than we’d been in 1988.

Poking the Press

There’s nothing like seeing your name in print . . . unless it’s seeing the media respond to something you wrote, as well.

Last Saturday, one of the editorial writers of the Portland Oregonian published a lead editorial objecting to a proposed ban on smoking in public parks. He framed his argument in terms of freedom and the rights of smokers to do as they please versus the “minor” health threat posed by secondary smoke.

I responded with an emailed letter to the editor stating that he had missed the point -- partly because the Portland Bureau of Parks and Recreation is doing the same by promoting the ban as a health issue.

It’s also a much bigger environmental issue, I suggested. Plus, smokers have pretty much brought the ban down on themselves: If they had policed their own behavior, and properly disposed of their butts, they might not have attracted the ire of nonsmokers.

But increasingly, I see not only hundreds of cigarette butts on the ground in the parks, but it’s also all too easy to witness pedestrians and drivers at the wheel dropping lit cigarettes on the sidewalks and streets when they’ve finished with them.

The Coming Wars Over Water … and a Local Skirmish

A pretty good social, political, cultural, and scientific blog could be written simply on issues related to water.

To start with, roughly 60 percent of our body consists of water, though that varies a lot with our different body parts and how we take care of ourselves. Adipose tissue -- fats that store energy and provide cushioning and insulation -- is only 10 percent water, while muscles contain 75 percent (although you might have been tempted to think it’s the other way around).

Another fact that goes against common sense is that men tend to have a higher percentage of water in their bodies (average of more than 58 percent) than women (less than 49 percent), despite the complaints of the latter. Other factors that can make our internal water levels diminish include disease and age.

Although we tend not to feel thirsty until our inner water content is down by 2 to 3 percent, researchers have shown that mental and physical performance can begin to suffer after as little as 1 percent water depletion. (Forgetting to bring my own water to auditions, rehearsals, and performances has probably been my biggest consistent weakness as an actor.)

Another Year of Great Reading

Though I’ve never broken the top 10 in the reading contest, I always like to think I’d score near the top of the heap for variety. Every reader has genres that he or she favors and steers away from. Perhaps some of my fellow contestants read a lot of graphic novels; others favor mysteries, thrillers, and police procedurals. Still others gravitate toward history and biography, science, or Westerns.

Year after year, every year, I read at least a little of nearly type. And not because the three different book discussion groups to which I belong force me to. If anything, my personal taste is more catholic than all three book groups put together.

In 2013 read portions of various mystery series (Ed McBain, Nicolas Freeling, Ian Rankin, A.C. Baantjer, Bartholomew Gill, John Brady), sampled a little graphic fiction (Green Lantern Chronicles, Daredevil: Vision Quest), dipped into recent science fiction (William Gibson’s Spook Country and David Brin’s Existence; both okay, nothing spectacular), and zipped through the Hunger Games trilogy (actually quite enjoyable, but I skipped the movies).

I read pop culture history and bios (several Jack Nicholson biographies, Tanya Lee Stone’s The Good, The Bad, and the Barbie, Peter Carlin’s Bruce; and Mickey Dolenz’s memoir I’m a Believer and Andrew Sandoval’s day-by-day account of The Monkees because, after all, I had tickets to see the three surviving band members at the Schnitz in August).

2014 Meditation on Reading

It’s awfully tempting to state that reading makes life worth living.

But that can’t be right. I can think immediately of other activities that give greater, deeper pleasure than a book: an excellent meal, a conversation with an old friend, lovemaking, seeing a beautiful, wild place for the first time, or returning to one filled with memories from long ago.

Yet I’ve spent far more time in my life reading than engaging in -- or even pursuing -- any of those other activities.

So what’s the difference? Perhaps reading is more dependable. Those other peak experiences may be more intense, may deliver more … but they rarely last as long. You can’t keep up a great dinner, a conversation, or an intimate encounter for hours on end, the way you can enjoy a good book.

The Beatles Are Forever, Absolutely. . . .

Tonight marks a half century since The Beatles made the first of three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, in 1964. A record 73 million viewers saw that broadcast on Feb. 9 fifty years ago. It landed the band its U.S. recording contract with Capitol Records and launched the British Invasion.

I didn’t see the show. (Actually, I’ve never seen it.) I was not quite five years old, and we did not have a television in the house. (My parents were opposed to the technology, and I’m glad they were.) But for me, as for so many millions of others -- not only in the U.S. and UK, but around the world -- the Beatles created the soundtrack for our lives. In the form of their songs, they were an ongoing presence, a consolation and a source of pure joy, not only for the six short years thereafter, but forever after.

It couldn’t have been very long after that Sullivan broadcast that I heard my first tune by the Fab Four. It was “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”, and I heard it on the kitchen radio over the stove. Since my father was a piano teacher and had an extensive collection of vinyl LPs of classical and jazz music, as well as the Living Shakespeare spoken-word excerpts from the plays, I had a sensitive ear for organized sounds. As I remember, I was alone in the kitchen, and the song stopped me cold.