Bobby Bones & Morgan Wallen

I really enjoy the music of country singer Morgan Wallen, and I am disgusted, angered, and deeply saddened by the news that came out Thursday morning. 

As I drove to work on Thursday morning, I happened to tune in to Bobby Bones show on 106.7 The Bull in Denver, and I am very glad I did. Bones is arguably the voice in country music radio, as his nationally syndicated show reaches more than nine million listeners everyday. And with that platform, he gave a roughly ten minute response and statement to the news of Morgan Wallen on video, drunk and shouting a racial slur. Bones' commentary was heartfelt, authentic, and what the world needed to hear.

The entire segment is worth listening to, but I want to comment on a few parts. First of all, Bones notes that he woke up to an avalanche of texts from the industry, and the corporate voices were wondering whether he was going to prepare a statement, whether the show would play Morgan's music, and what he thought the response would be. Bones did not want to prepare a statement, as he wanted to take time to process and gather his thoughts and troubled emotions. And then when a caller to the show asked what he thought, Bones commented that well, yes he had some things to say.

Bones was deeply impacted and disturbed by the video of Wallen, noting that word doesn't even enter his mind. It's just not something he would ever think to say. But it clearly is in Wallen's mind. And that changes everything. Bones noted that while he is not a supporter of cancel culture, he is a proponent of "go away for a while." Morgan Wallen has a lot of work to do on himself. Bones (and I) does not believe people are beyond redemption, or that this is an unforgiveable action. But Morgan Wallen needs to go away "and get right." There is much more in the dialogue, and I was particularly affected by Bones' memories of his experience with his high school football team. "This is every day for them," he recalled with a heavy heart.

We still have a lot of work to do. And Bobby Bones took a big step for us with his words. I'm glad he said what he said, and I'm glad I was listening at the time because it helped me process some heavy feelings.

Love Them

 "And these three remain - faith, hope, & love. But the greatest of these is love." -Corinthians 13:13

Parenting begins with unconditional love, and it's what always remains. Based on a line from a sappy family-romantic comedy from the mid-90s, I wrote a reflection on the idea of love as the best parenting advice. It was recently published on Fatherly, a parenting magazine, as "Love Your Kids, But Also Love the Act of Loving Them." Here's a bit from the opening.

 “Love them.”

That’s the best parenting advice I’ve ever heard. It comes from a culminating scene near the end of a somewhat obscure but sappy little gem of a movie from 1995. The film Bye Bye Love, with Paul Reiser, Randy Quaid, and Matthew Modine, arrived a few years before my wife and I married and had our first child, but I’ve always remembered the scene with the advice and all its sappy sentiment. And, even now, as my kids are into high school and college, and I enter my fifties reflecting on the love with which I was raised, and the same love I hope has guided my parenting, I remember this movie and its guiding principle for being a mom or dad.

First, a bit of a warning about this film I view so fondly and nostalgically: the movie received pretty harsh reviews from Roger Ebert who called it “a soppy sitcom that would like to pass as a quasi-heartfelt story,” and the Washington Post critic who decried it as “a warm fuzzy commercial.” I won’t counter with anything other than the simple admission: “I really liked it,” and I’ve wept through a lot of commercials. I especially like the wisdom that comes at the end from a dad who has seemed anything but soppy, warm, or fuzzy throughout the film. His insight is a sentiment that’s apparent throughout the film, but it’s only verbalized in the final ten minutes: “Love them. Just love them.”

Groundhog Day - Your Existential New Year

Ever since the 1993 film from Harold Ramis and Bill Murray, the term "Groundhog Day" has become synonymous with mundane repetition and mindless boring redundancy in our daily lives and jobs, but the film was never really about that. Instead, the message of the movie and the life of weatherman Phil Connor is about rebirth and the chance every day to make our seemingly boring repetitive lives whatever we want them to be. I've written about this idea several times, most recently on my blog post from 2019:

The film Groundhog Day is actually a wonderful primer for the wisdom of existentialism, and when I taught the philosophy in my college literature class, I would often lead or conclude with a viewing of Bill Murray’s brilliant portrayal of a man trying to bring some sense of meaning to a life that seems nothing short of absurd. Clearly, the idea of living the same day over and over again in an unfulfilling, dull, mundane place and repeating the seemingly mindless tasks of a pointless job is portrayed as a curse and a cruel joke, and that realization is at the heart of existentialism. Life makes no sense. Phil spends many years in disgruntled fashion viewing his life as exactly that, a cruel meaningless joke of an existence. However, the movie shifts when Phil considers his situation as an opportunity and a second chance at reinvention with the opportunity to get it right.

And in this essay I wrote for Medium:

Groundhog Day is a film with a message — each of us will wake up again and again to the same existence that at times seems pointless. The only point is that you have the rest of your life to make it exactly what you want it to be. Bringing meaning to our daily lives was a focus of the numerous American writers like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow whose poem “A Psalm of Life” advised us that “neither joy, and not sorrow is our destined end or way, but to act that each tomorrow find us further than today.” The point is progress; the goal is getting better. What F. Scott Fitzgerald called Gatsby’s “Platonic conception of himself” was simply the eternal quest for the ideal, for striving to become our own best selves. Life is an endlessly repeating opportunity to improve. In Bill Murray’s role as Phil Connor, we can find a second chance at New Year’s resolutions and an opportunity to, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “live the life you have imagined.”

Thus, rather than a sad story about emptiness, the film and the day is a great chance to re-think and embrace the rich potential of our lives every day we live. Think about it. And perhaps even considering watching the film every year to brighten and warm up the dark days of winter.

Must-See Movies for Young Men

In the madness that was the Game-Stop rodeo this week, I texted a meme claiming to reveal the true identities of the traders who scammed Wall Street to my college-age son and several buddies. It was a pic of Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy from the poster for Trading Places. And, one of the more pop culture astute friends expressed ignorance of the image, saying "I know I should recognize this, but I don't." That quickly led to a discussion of movies these young men need to see as much for the entertainment as for the allusions. And I mentioned that I used to have a list of films which during the course of teaching high school, I would occasionally draw from, telling the male students these are movies that if they if they haven't seen them, "they are not yet men."

So, now I'm pondering exactly what I mean by that.

Many of the films were classic dramas centered on conflicts of battle and epic journeys and characters learning values like loyalty through the buddy relationships. Some leading titles are Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, The Great Escape, Cool Hand Luke, and The Magnificent Seven. As I pondered what is was about these films and the characters in them that defined some vague essence of manhood, I recalled a scene from a completely different but equally special film at least for Gen Xers, Say Anything with Jon Cusack. At the record store with his two female friends, Lloyd Dobbler hears an important distinction: "Don't be a guy. Be a man." And when we hear that, especially in our more enlightened age of confronting the toxic masculinity and cheesy embarrassing machismo that often masquerades as manhood, we just know what she means. Don't be a guy or a dude or a bro when you can be a man.

It basically comes down to character, which is an equally ambiguous term to define, though we all seem to know it when we see it. I think of that platitude about integrity - it's doing the right thing even when no one is looking. Trust and loyalty are important elements as well, as well as a disciplined sense of self worth and a quiet but secure confidence in identity and beliefs regardless of the situation. Of course, these are all equally vacuous in really defining what it means to be a man. Interestingly, after texting with "the boys" as I call them, I turned on the TV and ran across the pivotal scene in a great film that is ubiquitous on cable; I'm talking about the night of Andy Dufresne's escape in The Shawshank Redemption. Yeah, I know. It's immediately recognizable, and we just nod. Andy Dufresne and Red. These are men.

Thinking about Shawshank led me to some other buddy films which are pivotal in my thoughts about manhood. Stand By Me comes to mind. The pathos in that film is practically palpable. And I just watched another entry in the buddy genre on Netflix now, a French film from 2011 called The Intouchables, based on the true story of a quadriplegic and his caretaker. It was a heartwarming and also pensive story about what it means to be alive and what it means to be a friend and what it means to be a man. Another film that popped into my head which is certainly a buddy story, but with a different tone is The Sandlot. I mean, come on, "you're killing me, Smalls."

So many great stories about male characters learning what it means to be a man.

What are yours?

Gifted, Talented, & Advanced

"Every child is gifted in their own way."

That was the tagline years ago in a commercial for some cram school or tutoring center, and I've never liked it. Beyond the grammatical error and the manipulation of the consumer, the idea of everyone being gifted is a flawed and somewhat disingenuous idea.  

Of course, that poses an important question: Is there something special about a term like gifted? I truly believe there is. And there is something special, unique, unusual, and "extra-ordinary" about truly gifted individuals.

Advanced academic learning, acceleration, honors classes, enrichment activities -- these are all important in educating children, but they are not necessarily synonymous with or to be used as a substitute for the concept of giftedness. In many (or most) states giftedness or GT or T&G are legally defined exceptionalities that hold equal significance and are as relevant as exceptionalities protected under the American Disability Act and the Rehabilitation Act. In that regard, all schools should have staff and resources under a gifted title, as opposed to just "advanced academic services," which is what my district shortsightedly tried to call it a few years ago.

And this is not to say I believe the term is always accurately, appropriately, and equitably applied. White and affluent students are disproportionately identified compared to other demographics. And, truly the benchmarks of the 95th percentile lead to IDs for simply bright and hardworking students with resources. That doesn't mean gifted. Metrics are tough because in many ways it's a "know-it-when-you-see-it" sort of quality. My school has a large number of incredibly smart and high achieving students. However, some of them achieve through a lot of hard work and access to vast resources. And that should be honored, but it's not always gifted. If someone masters a standard or a class or a skill after diligent practice, that's wonderful. But if someone masters it almost immediately, is that not truly exceptional?

A great example of the distinction I'm getting at can be found by digging into the problematic claims by commercial intellectual Malcolm Gladwell in the book The Outliers about the the ten-thousand hours to mastery myth. While Gladwell's loose reading and interpretation of data has has been exposed as inaccurate by numerous researchers, many still believe it. And that can complicate discussions of giftedness. One of the best books on the counter-argument is David Epstein's The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Achievement. In reality, some people master skills and knowledge with hard work and access, and others simply do it naturally in far less time. Bill Gates is described in Gladwell's book as having great access to resources which led to his success. It's true. But he is also truly gifted. A real genius. The same can be said for someone like Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes. To be an NFL quarterback, you have to work pretty hard and be pretty great. However, there are some who are just beyond any sort of norms. And some are far beyond simply being the sum of access and hard work.

Some people are just gifted.

Facts, Truth, & Pierre the Frenchman

In the pandemic and quarantine, many of us returned to comfort media like favorite old movies and television shows. We've all had our binges and marathons that have been nostalgic and even healing at times. Mine has been Northern Exposure, the quirky 90s fish-out-of-water comedy-drama set in Cicely, Alaska. When I was just finishing college and beginning to step out into adulthood, the show's off-beat philosophical slant on a traditional storytelling formula just grabbed me, entertaining me while also making me think.

I loved all the characters, but the town's deejay, Chris of KBHR's "Chris in the Morning," captured my attention for his literary ways and existential explorations. To that point, I even envisioned myself working as a teacher in quaint small town where I would have an evening or weekend radio show on which I too would share quips, quotes, and reflections from Walt Whitman or Nietzsche or even Proust.  It was really in the third season that the show, not to mention Chris' on air reflections, really hit its stride with two episodes winning Emmy awards for writing.  

The sixth episode entitled "The Body in Question" was the one that I still recall moving me toward honest reflection and a belief in the enlightening potential of even silly little television comedy-dramas. That one told the apocryphal story of Pierre, a nineteenth century Frenchman frozen in block of ice along the river and discovered by Chris, of course. As the town becomes fascinated by his story, as recounted in diary found nearby, people react in a variety of ways, most notably Maurice who wants to create a museum and tourist attraction. 

But it's the two town intellectuals, Chris and Dr. Fleischmann, who become the center of discussion after it's "discovered" that Napoleon was in Alaska with Pierre at the time of the Battle of Waterloo -- at least according to the diary. If true, Chris posits, it would propose a deep existential crisis, especially after Joel asserts this "truth" must be revealed to the world. In a fascinatingly smart exchange, Chris suggests a difference between "truth" and facts, arguing that "facts remain the same, but truth twists and turns." That one really threw my twenty-one-year-old spirit for an intellectual loop. But it was the ending that stayed with me, beautifully filmed as the Tellakutans row upstream in a their canoes with the defrosted Pierre as the episode closes out on a Chris voice-over reading of Proust:

"When from a long distant past nothing persists, after the people are dead, after things are broken and scattered, still alone, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long, long time like souls, ready to remind us, waiting, hoping for their moment amid the ruins of all the rest, and bear unfaltering in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence the vast structure of recollection."

"Deal me in" - the graceful friendship of Aaron & Musial

In Henry Aaron's first All-Star game in the early 1950s, the future home run king met a baseball player known to many simply as "The Man." It was very early in the desegregation of America's past time, and it was also very early in the Civil Rights era. As the story goes, a group of African-American baseball players, all of whom who'd spent most of their careers limited to the Negro leagues, were sitting at a table playing cards. Stan Musial, the St. Louis Cardinals first baseman, just went over to them, sat down, and said, "deal me in."   

Deal me in.

Those words simply erased any racial or social barriers and said more about civil rights than hundreds of white politicians could ever hope to convey. And they meant the world to a young Hank Aaron; those words, that tacit olive branch, were also the beginning of a lifelong friendship between two of the greatest sportsmen to ever play. Sportswriter and columnist Ben Hochman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recounted that story today in his column on the passing of Aaron this weekend at the age of eighty-six. Aaron notes that those words were Musial's way of saying "I’ve looked beyond racism and everything."

These two men maintained a genuine bond the rest of their lives, and nearly every story about them acknowledges that as great as athletes Musial and Aaron were, they were equally good men of character and integrity. "I've always had him in my heart," Aaron said of Musial.

May we all aspire to live, and to play, with the grace and the class of Stan Musial and Henry Aaron.

Maybe that Degree in Art History isn't such a bad idea

On January 20, 2021, a graduate of the University of Delaware who was a history and political science major with a minor in English became the forty-sixth President of the United States. That background would make Thomas Jefferson and our Founding Fathers proud, for they believed deeply in the power and significance of a classical liberal arts education. In fact, the study of the liberal arts was the focus and goal of early higher education among those great men in order to create well-educated leaders who were deep thinkers. House Minority leader   McConnell, a political science major in college, would most certainly agree.

In recent economic downturns, as the Liberal Arts programs in higher education have continued to lose funding, the nation has begun to take a new direction in higher education, and it's a turn that will be to the detriment to our national identity. Sadly, colleges are cutting majors mostly in liberal arts to focus primarily on the study of STEM and the focus of basic utilitarian job training. But we go to college for more than just job skills - we go to study to become fully actualized and educated human beings. And those liberal arts can be more useful than many suspect. Here's a short list of the college majors of some well known people.

Carley Fiorina - former CEO of Hewlett-Packard studied medieval history & philosophy
John Mackey - the founder and CEO of Whole Foods majored in philosophy & religion
Andrea Jung - the leader of companies like Neiman Marcus and Avon focused on English Literature
Sue Wojcicki - the early CEO of YouTube eschewed comp-sci in favor of history & literature
Steve Ells - the founder of Chipotle was an art history major
Steve Jobs - Apple - the study of the humanities is credited for the unique brilliance of Apple

"It's morning again in America"

"It's morning again."

Officially known in advertising circles as "Prouder, Stronger, Better," the key commercial for Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential re-election campaign was a masterpiece of messaging. 

It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?

The message of renewal and rebirth and hope and optimism is an integral part of the American identity, the American consciousness, the American Dream. And each day as we wake up, it's important to remember that.

Our National Identity & the Tyranny of the Majority

Majority rule -- it seems to make sense, right? We use it all the time in our daily lives, deciding what movie to see or what to have for dinner. Yet, just because an idea is popular or widespread, that doesn't mean it's correct or appropriate or ethical or righteous. In essence, sometimes a bunch of people might just be a bunch of jerks. Or worse, the bunch might be a few jerks and a whole lot of mindless or weak followers. Yet, the nature of our government can complicate issues when the will of the majority takes precedence. That point is part of my earliest recollections of beginning to part ways with political parties and to disagree with people whose ideology and value system I thought I shared. 

Supporting the rights of the individual against the tyranny of the majority is also the essence of American conservatism as explored and explained in George Will's brilliant and erudite work The Conservative Sensibility.

American conservatism is about conserving the vision and spirit and commitment of the founding of America. In explaining this idea, Will introduces two moments and court cases about the will of the majority and the violation of the individual rights. One is the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which sought to overturn the Missouri Compromise and extend slavery into the territories under the idea of "popular sovereignty." Basically, the will of the majority to extend the scourge of slavery was declared by Stephen Douglas to be the foundation of American politics. To quote Will, "Lincoln disagreed." 

The second issue was the case of Minersville vs Gobitis, which was the second court case regarding "forced flag salutes." This one is definitely worth learning about it if you haven't before, for it centers on the suspension and expulsion of two elementary school children who were Jehovah's Witnesses and who refuse to "salute the flag," (which was actually a thing in the 1930s) because it violated their faith -- basically it was idolatry, or worship of an object or symbol. Now, you would think Republicans and religious conservatives would be on the side of the children, but they weren't. And I think a lot about that these days as I view rather shaky and inconsistent application of that religious liberty argument from too many Republicans. 

Basically, the conservatism linked to the founders would side with the kids. But when "patriotism" comes into play people seem to lose their minds and their values. And that's when the tyranny of the majority conflicts with the rights of the individual.

Recreating Gatsby

 Well, old sport, it's finally happened -- The Great Gatsby, that iconic, ephemeral, poetic work of triumph and tragedy that early on laid legitimate claim to the title of "Great American Novel, has entered the public domain. All bets are off now, as the derivatives and extrapolations begin to bubble up from and seep out of the admiring literary universe. And, yep, that means that a zombie version of Gatsby can't be far off.

Honestly, I am not entirely sure how I feel about this revelation, though I must admit I am a bit of a fan of the slew of spin-offs, re-tellings, and derivatives in the Jane Austen canon, which has become quite a cottage industry of public domain access which has only increased the popularity of Jane's original work. So, in the Gatsby world, there is certainly hope. And I have already procured and cracked open the first entry in the Gatsby public domain sweepstakes, Nick by Michael Farris Smith. It's too soon to comment, but the reviews and blurbs are quite positive.

There is something poetically karmic about the story of James Gatz getting "a second read," so to speak. For the entire novel is basically dripping with the idea of reinvention and recreating the past. "Why, of course you can," Jay tells Nick who had claimed you can't repeat the past. And, so we will beat on, back against the tide to revisit and reimagine the story of an idealistic young man who, at least for a short time, became great.

Traveling Writers & the Search for America

In the early 1990s when Kevin Costner released his groundbreaking epic film Dances with Wolves, I recall seeing a commercial for it, and was so intrigued by the narrator's statement:  "He went in search of America, and ended up finding himself."  I've always loved that idea, and countless books have followed that same line of thinking -- finding the self through the journey. And, of course, we often believe there is something unique in the American ethos, our national identity, that comes from are inherent restlessness and mobility. On The Road captured me in middle school, like it did many a young aspiring vagabond. In college I was intrigued by an adventurous work of non-fiction called Mississippi Solo by Eddy Harris, a black man who canoed the length of our greatest river and recorded his observations about heading into the heart of the country. The allusion-filled idea of a black man taking the river into the deep South, "from where there ain't no black folks to where they still don't like us much," was a heavy sociological current in the narrative. 

Most recently, I have enjoyed another book about a trip in search of America and the quest to understand ourselves. Tom Zoellner's The National Road: Dispatches from a Changing America is an intriguing collection of long form essays about various national locations and our national consciousness through the eyes of a veteran journalist. As I read Zoellner's work, I also picked up and started re-reading John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, about his cross country trip near the end of his life with just his dog and the people he encountered along the way for company. And while I was reading those two, I also started, but haven't finished, another work along these lines I'd only heard of in passing, William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways. The title refers to the color of these non-interstate roads on local maps. Each of these books offers a national perspective through a personal lens, and they remind me of our simple humanity.

These kinds of stories have always captured my imagination, and I'll pick them up whenever I can. The books are about writers traveling, but they are not travel writing. At least not in a traditional sense. And, I do enjoy travel writing quite a bit, reading articles and books about locales specifically for the visiting leisure purpose. But Zoellner, Steinbeck, and Least Heat Moon are onto something else entirely. Like I said, they are writers traveling, but the work is not travel writing.