A MATTER OF LANGUAGE

I have, with little humility, always fancied myself to be a student of language.
I quibble about words. I am horrified by misuse and mispronunciation. I am appalled at what the current generation, hot-wired to text-messaging, have done to language with their habits of mindless shortcuts.

But Iwill spare you a cranky old man lecture.

Tonight I watched President Obama field questions at his 100th day press conference. As always, his use of language is inspiring. The rising generation should be paying attention.

I do have one caveat: when asked by a reporter if he agreed with John McCain's position on immigration, he responded that McCain has the "right" idea. I believe, and I think Obama does too,m that nothing is a clear question of right or wrong (excepting such social abnormalities like murder and mayhem.)

I would have hoped that instead of saying McCain was right: - he should have said that the McCain approach is "appropriate" to the problemn.

The difference between the ideologue and the pragmatist, is that it is seldom any issue is either right or wrong. That's the way the ideolgue believes. He starts with a fixed notion and unswerivngly applies it to all decisions. It is a kind of intellectual straightjacket. Worse, it abdicates the responsibility to think. You simply follow iron-clad rules and reality takes care of itself.

The pragmatist is one who (and forgive me for telling you something you already know) examines every situation in terms of what shouold be done to alleviate, ameliorate, or modify. To reach, not the ultimate "right" conclusion, but to embark on a path of action that will "work."

Enough lecturing.

I return brielfy to my blog to make one point. And, while I'm at it, to l
tell yiouy that I will be out of the country until the end of Msay, home briefly, then away again to the end of June. I hope in my travels to bring new life and vigour to what I have to say based on what I will see and experience.

SEL-DISCOVERY#2

>
>
> In an earlier blog that started this “series” I wrote:
>
> "I am feeling sorry for myself. I just had my gall bladder removed. I
> sold my wife’s tricycle because she hates it. My recumbent bike is
> sitting with flat tires in the garage.”
>
> One of my readers, a successful writer herself wrote: “That could be the
> opening for a short story, a memoir, or a novel.
>
> How many times have I heard that one? It is one of many variations on a
> theme that continues to haunt me, continues to dog my life because
> people who remember me as a cranky radio talk show host, want to hear
> again about all those days.
>
> Some remember me with anger. Some remember me with affection.
>
> So perhaps I should write a memoir which would have to include the
> inside scoop on being a “cranky radio talk show host.”
>
> You asked for it. Here goes: To be good at it you have to possess two
> things: anger, and intolerance.
>
> You can’t just pretend to be angry and intolerant, you have to /be/
> angry and intolerant. In spite of comments made recently to me by an old
> fellow radio guy that all the radio talk show hosts were only “putting
> it on.” The anger and rudeness was all part of an act.
>
> He’s dead wrong. At least for me. I am angry. I am intolerant. A radio
> talk show let me ventilate by removing the civilized barriers that keep
> us polite when inside we are seething. I let the inside out.
>
> I am still angry, which is why I write many cantankerous entries in my
> blogl
>
> The same respondent who told me I had the opening for a memoir chastised
> me for spending so much time fulminating over everything that is wrong.
> She tells me I should look inside myself more. I have, I’m not thrilled
> with what I found, but it is me. Another respondent, coincidentally some
> I worked with many years ago, who still carries on with her writing,
> wrote about having to get out from under everything I had been before
> but at the same time encouraged me to keep writing.
>
> Forgive me the soul-baring
>
> I chatted with my wife who is always telling me to stop being angry
> about things that don’t really matter. “You’ll only make your blood
> pressure go up for nothing,” she says. She’s talking about things that
> irritate me. I am irritated by people who, when they are driving seem to
> have their minds in another place or have no idea where they are going.
> She (my wife) is at me for shouting at the television every time someone
> makes a terrible grammatical gaffe. “I’m trying to watch and you’re
> distracting me.” Once you have allowed yourself to vent anger, you
> continue to do it. The difference today is that nobody is listening.
>
> “But,” I reminded her, “I’m not talking about the little angers or
> irritations. I’m talking about the big things, the behaviour that
> matters in an otherwise civilized society.”
>
> Here is a short, but far from complete, list of things that make me angry:
>
> Ideologues, political or religious, whose decisions are always made on
> the basis of whether or not they fit with their ideology. It usually
> applies to people of the hard Right or Left, who cannot make decisions
> independent of their so-called “core” beliefs. I can believe I’m saying
> this: I exempt Stephen Harper, since he seems to have transcended his
> neo-con beliefs and has proclaimed himself to be in favour of the
> government using financial stimulus to help the economy recover.) Even
> the arch-enemy of anything that stems from government, our finance
> minister, has found a new pragmatism. Maybe it’s all just a ploy to stay
> in power. But that’s cynical.
>
> Ideology creates an intellectual straightjacket. Every decision you make
> has to be backed by ideological certainty. So, for my erstwhile friends
> on the left, who, in the name of Social Justice, think they can embrace
> every lost cause and every forlorn protestor, simply because they must
> always be on the side of protest.
>
> Or the hard-line religious right, who make all decisions based on what
> they believe tube canon or gospel. So the madness of outlawing stem
> cell research because of some notion that somehow a frozen 4 cell thing
> is “life.” So they invoke things like: “I can’t fly in the face of my
> basic principles.
> ” No pragmatism. No notion about things like the greater good for the
> greater number.
>
> I make this comment fully aware that many of you will ask” “As a Jew,
> how do you tolerate the orthodox view of women as inferior, or Israel’s
> right to take what “God has ordained.” The answer is: I don’t.
>
> I am echoing what generations of thinkers and philosophers have said –
> that many people simply can’t think critically enough to make decisions
> but fall back on whatever dogmas they hold dear, dogmas that offer no
> room for individual decisions. In fact, these are the people who feel
> most comfortable hemmed in by a rigid set or rules and by rulers who
> brook no heresy.
>
> Next time out, I’ll deal with intolerance. I’ll deal with the precious
> notion that “everyone is entitled to his/her opinion.”
>
>

SELF-DISCOVERY #1 (more to follow)

Writing this Blog has been a voyage of discovery. The very writing of just one idea stimulates memory and you dredge up material you had lost years ago.

I remember my feeling when I read “Angela’s Ashes.” Frank McCourt seemed to have total recall of everything from his poverty-stricken childhood, trying to survive a drunken father right down to specific word-for-word conversations he had or heard between his parents and his brother Malachi. How does anyone recall all that? Is it part memory? Part invention? I recall having heard long before the book, Frank and Malachi did an “act” portraying their turbulent early family life. So maybe it was part memory, part invention, and part clever writing.

I was in touch with a group of writers who wrote memoirs. Their advice was: “Don’t sweat remembering every little detail. Just start writing. The memories will pop up.”

It worked. I started to write a memoir about my mother, an unusual woman whose declining years were passed in a fog of dementia. As I wrote I remembered events. Conversations. Like the traditional father-son-pre-spanking-admonishment: “You’ll remember this for a long time.” But the only thing that escaped me, and it still does, is why I was ever spanked. What crimes had I committed? What misdemeanors had I inflicted on my family? Had I played after school when I should have been at the piano practicing? I have tried, without even a glimmer of success, to unearth the sins of my childhood.. I have not tried hypnosis.

The point is not just about the awakening of memory by writing. It is also the writing that stimulates readers to respond and to kindle new ideas for me. My dear friend Adrienne responds to all my blog blatherings.. The last one, about failing to maintain my “Looking Forward” attitude and letting life simply sag into indifference, brought forth a torrent of advice.

Adrienne reminded me of something I always believed but seem to have utterly forgotten. It certainly didn’t get into “Don’t Be Blindsided by Retirement.” It is about identity. You become are what you “do” not what you “are.”

Forgive me if I seem to have a knack for revealing the obvious. Think about meeting people for the first time. Unless they know you by reputation, the first question will inevitably be: “And what do you do for a living.” Maybe it’s just an ice breaker. But there has to be more.

A dear friend, who died several years ago after amassing a fortune as an investment counselor and creator of mutual funds, had the ability to “corner” his subject. I used to watch him at cocktail parties. With an earnest look he would approach someone and start to pry into their lives. He did it with a kind of English public school insouciance, so no one seemed to take offence. Almost always it began with: “Tell me about yourself.” No matter how trivial the answer, he would always listen intently as if the words were pearls. Maybe he did it just to get the jump on people. If he spoke first and asked a disarming question, they’d be speechless at first, but he would own their attention from that point on.

He was a rarity. He was not someone who himself would divulge his inner self easily. It may be that what I saw as an amiable of attitude was merely a performance

Don’t know.

But perhaps my own problem,, which may reflect the dilemmas of many other people, is that I have allowed myself to be identified by “what” I was. It has been a trap. I find myself harking back to the things I did for a living, most of which were publicly visible; to my “celebrity” and the approval that went with it; to the pleasure of being in a position to make my opinions public; and to bask I suppose, in whatever notoriety I had.

So in this, another piece of self-indulgence, (to be followed by more) is simply a precautionary tale told to retirees and more than that, to those who are planning now.
You‘d better persuade yourself that you can’t simply go on “doing” what you always have done, and passing it off a “identity.” You have to stop clinging to your past successes and look for new challenges.

I’m trying.