The Power of One

by Steven B. Orkin

On Monday morning, November 16, 2015, my daughter Julianna was dismayed by the fact that her high school did not observe a moment of silence for the people who lost their lives in Paris, France during the terrorist attacks there the previous Friday, 11/13.

That afternoon, she visited the school office to ask why not and was met with a perfunctory “There was something wrong with the PA system” though announcements were broadcast to the entire school that morning and “We’re not supposed to talk about ISIS” (a term I despise using in reference to terrorists. *Isis* is an Egyptian Goddess of nature and magic who has been around for thousands of years. But I digress…).

The point is, neither of these explanations had any substance. The conversation concluded with Julianna being told, “You can leave a note for the principal if you want.”

So, she did.

On Tuesday morning, November 17, 2015, West Islip High School observed a moment of silence for the people killed in Paris.

This simple sequence of events tells us quite a lot.

The first thing it tells us is that I have a remarkable daughter. She has a sensitivity, awareness, and compassion regarding certain things that is, to put it lightly, uncharacteristic for a girl of fourteen. I am both proud of and humbled by her integrity and character.

My wife Nancy and I take the job of being parents very, very seriously. We view the responsibility of raising a kind, loving, and decent human being not only as our moral obligation as citizens of this planet but as a truly holy endeavor. As part of that process, since toddler-hood, we have consistently encouraged and empowered Jules to respectfully ask questions and speak her mind. However, it’s ultimately up to her to pick up that torch and run with it.

Clearly, she has.

This leads us to the next thing this story tells us, which is that I may well have to bail my daughter out of jail one day for engaging in an act of civil disobedience.

Moving on…

Another thing it tells us is that the principal of West Islip High School, Dr. Anthony Bridgeman, possesses impressive leadership skills. This matter was the very definition of a teachable moment. He could have politely dismissed Julianna’s concern with a “Thank you for contacting me” platitude. Instead, he gave the matter the consideration it deserved and capitalized on his potential to positively impact the lives of his students.

On an individual level, Dr. Bridgeman provided Julianna with enormous validation. She raised her voice and that voice was heard. She may well carry this experience with her for the rest of her life.

On a broader level, he provided the students of West Islip High School with an opportunity to perceive the world from a global perspective and demonstrate compassion and empathy for others. Paris may be 3600 miles from Long Island but we’re all part of the same team: The Human Race Team. Senseless tragedies there are senseless tragedies here.

Lastly, the story of ‘Julianna & the Moment of Silence’ provides us with a cautionary lesson. In these troubled times, public discourse is often leeched of substance by the ideological parasite known as ‘Political Correctness’ which can be defined as the science of attempting to please everyone and thereby saying nothing. It has become so engrained in our society that we often instinctively employ the spirit of the concept to diffuse potential conflict (or even discussion) rather than address and resolve it. When Julianna voiced her concern, the initial reaction was to deflect it harmlessly off into the trees without any actual engagement or resolution.

But there’s more to life than smoothing the bed sheets.

Let us all work harder to defy this destructive inclination to diffuse rather than resolve. Let us face our ideological challenges head-on with a robust combination of courage, tenacity, emotional intelligence, and compassion. As human beings, we have been blessed with the gift of sentience, the capacity to reason, to see the big picture, to work together, to envision an ideal and construct a plan to achieve it. Ultimately, we all benefit from such efforts.

And that, my friends, is something to be thankful for.

Thanks for reading.

The King of Anything

 by Steven B. Orkin

 

 

 

As some of you are aware, my uncle, Leonard Hochman passed away on Wednesday, 11/4/15 after a long, hard fight against cancer (a fight that included overcoming pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal types). As in many such circumstances, at the last, cancer ended up being almost incidental to other tangential medical issues creating a cascade effect that proved impossible to overcome, even for him.

I was given the privilege of saying a few words at his memorial service and I thought I’d share them here. I modified the original somewhat to reflect this written version.

Given that Lenny was an incredibly vivacious, larger-than-life character with a great sense of humor and an equally great capacity to see the humor in himself, I began by taking a show-of-hands poll of those in attendance to determine how many of them have personally voiced or thought the following sentiment during an interaction with him:

“Lenny! For God’s sake!”

Naturally, a large percentage of the attendees raised their hands.

That, my friends, is the mark of a life lived out loud.

Alternately hilarious, loving, generous, insightful, helpful, and at times, thoroughly exasperating, Lenny was absolutely impossible to ignore. He was formidably tough, physically and mentally, a perpetual and charismatic showman, and a one-man family history encyclopedia. In short, he lived life ferociously. He was the King of Anything with an opinion on everything.

This latter quality often made for some entertaining… well, let’s call them “discussions” between him and his sister, my mom Carol. Both are fiercely intelligent and passionate about their beliefs, and though their routinely disparate opinions were usually well-considered and well-informed, Lenny was not entirely innocent of periodically employing information that can only be described as “factualish” when the actual facts did not fully suit his opinion. Regardless, these discussions often concluded as they went to their separate corners with my mom rolling her eyes and muttering (not unkindly) one of two things:

1) “Uh! He’s impossible!” (which brings to mind a snatch of dialogue from “The Big Bang Theory” in which Penny declares to Sheldon, “You’re impossible!” As she heads for the door in exasperation, Sheldon responds, “I can’t be impossible. I exist. I’m improbable.”).

2) After a particularly heated “discussion,” Mom would use a variant: “Uh! He’s such an idiot.”

I remember one occasion where they were haggling over some issue and after a few minutes, I heard Lenny say, “Wait, we actually agree?” and my mom replied, “Yes. We actually agree,” resulting in a momentary phenomena akin to the appearance of Hailey’s Comet, which comes around every 75 years or so: They were both speechless.

Perhaps Lenny’s greatest magic was that his impossibility never quite precluded him from being eminently endearing and lovable. If I had to pick two especially fond moments to remember him by, I would pick these:

At some point in recent years, Lenny was at my mom’s house. He seemed to have a special fondness for my daughter Julianna and would always take time to speak to her and make her laugh. On this particular occasion, Lenny somehow came upon the topic of egg creams. Jules had never had one, of course, and within moments, he was briskly preparing one for her. His grin of proud satisfaction as her eyes lit up and she exclaimed, “Wow! This is really good!” on tasting it was heartwarming. Though you can be sure that at some point in the near future, my family and I will be drinking egg creams in his honor, I’m quite confident they will not be anywhere near as good as his.

The second moment I’d like to share took place at Lenny & Tina’s apartment in Queens. We had gone over there for dinner to celebrate his birthday. We did not generally exchange actual gifts on such occasions but I happened to come across a quote that I thought he’d appreciate so I formatted it for presentation and printed it out for him. I can still hear that big, booming voice announce, “Oh, Stevie, this… this is perfect,” as he tacked it onto the wall.

The quote, by the writer Gore Vidal, could quite easily serve as Lenny’s epitaph (or at least a PS). It reads:

“There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”
          -    Gore Vidal

The world was a far more interesting and entertaining place with him in it and it will certainly be less interesting and entertaining without him. If the phrase “one-of-a-kind” could be applied to anyone, I think we can all agree that someone would be Lenny Hochman.

He will be sorely missed. We will not see his like again.

Thanks for reading.

Building a Better Temple

 by Steven B. Orkin

 

 

Sinai Reform Temple of Bay Shore, NY died on June 26, 2015, the date of its final service, at which I officiated. Its gravestone arrived on Friday via Priority Mail in the form of a hundred page document dripping with legalese ratifying the temple’s dissolution into B’nai Israel Reform Temple (BIRT) of Oakdale. It provides an opportunity for dissenters to present what amounts to “just cause” to refute the merger at an imminently forthcoming court hearing. I won’t. I don’t have the money. And with my work commitments during the summer, I don’t have the physical time. Besides, the chief proponents of this debacle have been extremely industrious in ensuring that everything has gone their way. Everything is all tied up in nice, neat little bows. I’m not surprised. They had a lot to gain. I respectfully submit that had they devoted even half the time and effort they expended on destroying the place on saving it, we’d have a small but thriving congregation.

Sinai Reform Temple did not die peacefully or justifiably. Indeed, it was raped and murdered, its violated corpse looted of valuables without hesitation, mercy, or remorse. The perpetrators of this crime, Apathy and Avarice, are seasoned destroyers of life, hope, and possibility. They have ruthlessly mangled the perceptions of countless well-intentioned individuals throughout their ages-long campaign of unrepentant desolation, ensnaring them in inescapable nets of obfuscation. They have set many a moral compass spinning in confusion, allowing them to at last come to rest pointing in the wrong direction.

Apathy and Avarice have killed before. They will kill again.

As with so many other things so tragically lost before their time, though Sinai Reform Temple leaves behind a multitude of good deeds done in its decades-long history, it likewise leaves behind a vast ocean of potential that will now forever go untapped. Only the swirling mists of history and memory remain where once it stood, full of hope, beauty, and grace. We will never see its like again.

As some of you may be aware, I (along with some others) spent the last year or so swimming against a rather determined tide to save Sinai Reform Temple from its premature and wholly misguided end. It was not pleasant. I learned some deeply discouraging lessons about the power of apathy and the willingness of otherwise decent and intelligent people to narrow their vision in a way that allowed them to justify destroying a 68-year old institution and looting its coffers for their own benefit and self-aggrandizement. Though some of the chief engineers of this travesty will avow that they did it “for the good of Judaism on the South Shore” or some other nonsense, the cold, hard reality is they did it for themselves. They were too apathetic to try to save the place and too greedy to stand down or walk out the door as they should have and left SRT to those who wanted to save it. But of course, trying to save it would have left far less money in the bank in the event a reinvention plan ultimately failed and we had to merge at a later time.

How much less? I am so glad you asked. At the time this process started in earnest a year ago, Sinai Reform Temple had over 2 million dollars in the bank from the sale of our building a year or two before (we had been leasing space since then). If managed and utilized properly, that money could have provided us with a truly remarkable opportunity, one that none of us will ever see again: The chance to build a better temple.

With some assistance, I created a viable framework that would have allowed SRT to move forward in our originally intended goal of reinventing our congregation. It was a plan, incidentally, that included a contingency clause that would have allowed us to merge at a later time if the plan didn't work.

I would have been the person spearheading that effort and I have no doubt that there would have been times when I would have deeply resented the accompanying stress, aggravation, and commitment of time required to do the job right. But I would have done it anyway. I would have done it because it was the morally right thing to do. The plan would not have been easy to enact and there’s a pretty good chance it would have ultimately failed but it was well-considered and built on a foundation of faith and possibility as opposed to the apathy and avarice driving the dissolution.

Even if we had burned through a staggering 1.5 million dollars of that money over the past year to fund the plan and it ended up netting us nothing, we still would have had $500,000.00 in the bank. Given that our congregation had dwindled to about 45-50 people at the time of SRT’s death, that left about $10,000.00 per person to finance membership and other perks at another temple for five, maybe even ten years. It would have been more a more than sufficient final gift to our congregants.

As it stands, with Sinai Reform Temple’s death came a very big bus ticket; one that ensures lifetime membership and assorted perks for all concerned. That’s what most of the board wanted. That’s what they sold to the bulk of the congregation, and that’s what they got. There is no possibility the money will ever run out within the lifetimes of even the youngest SRT members. Clearly, a healthy dollop of spiritual materialism goes a long, long way.

Some may think me hypocritical in deciding with my family that we will begin the next phase of our Jewish journey at B’nai Israel Reform Temple but such an allegation is inaccurate. I and my family no longer have a temple to go to. Our temple has died. The one that’s geographically closest and therefore, the one we’re most likely to drive to on a Friday night, is the one in Oakdale. The struggle to save Sinai Reform Temple never had anything to do with B’nai Israel as an institution. It’s been around a long time and has what appears to be a fairly thriving congregation. Had we not initially visited Sinai Reform Temple and been so captivated by the warmth of the congregation and the charisma of the remarkable Rabbi Emily Losben, it’s entirely possible we would have ended up at BIRT to begin with. I have no reason to believe that it’s not a wonderful, albeit different place than the one I came from. Even if for some reason that turned out to not be the case, though the financial benefits of attending BIRT can’t be denied, the bottom line is, if it doesn’t fit my family, we’ll find somewhere else to go. Most any temple will work with most any family to come to a viable financial arrangement. If they don’t, find yourself a temple that does.

Whether they're willing to acknowledge it or not, those members of the SRT board of trustees who dedicated themselves to its destruction abjectly failed the very institution they were elected to protect. To brutalize Robert Frost’s classic line, they took ‘The Road Most Easily Traveled,’ ‘The Road Most Convenient & Self-Serving.’ They mortgaged their responsibility to the founders of SRT to carry it into the future against a really good deal. They should be ashamed of themselves. And if they’re not, they should be even more ashamed of themselves.

I believe with unwavering conviction that the manner in which the dissolution process was conceived, constructed, and conducted was, to put it lightly, rife with profound ideological and logistical flaws. Though it had an outward appearance of perceived transparency, the truth is it was often underhanded, secretive, and at times overtly antagonistic toward anyone who tried to get in their way. Individuals on the board that I had had respect for or even considered friends stood by and watched as my erstwhile co-president censored an article I wrote for our temple newsletter expressing an alternative to dissolution, attempted to silence me during a congregational meeting, and engineered an attempt to remove me from the board over a typo. Before this process started, she is someone I would have described as a good friend. Now, despite my generally forgiving nature, she is someone I can visually identify.

I could spend another several thousand words recounting the details of the conflict, relaying my thoughts and feelings about it, the things I could and should have done to dismantle the whole, revoltingly greedy debacle of it. Those details mean little or nothing at this point so I will begin winding down my post with this:

My defiance of the dissolution freight train required me to think outside the box and make some choices that no doubt infuriated certain members of the board and possibly some congregants as well.

I. Don’t. Care.

Indeed, over the last several months, I’ve conducted several exploratory and investigative inquiries about this matter in my head and my findings are absolutely indisputable:

• My eyes are clear.
• My head is held high.
• My moral compass is resolutely pointing North.

The actions I took were driven by what I believed was right with every iota of my being. My only regret is that I wasn't able to do more to stop that train before it drove Sinai Reform Temple off a cliff.

So, where does this leave me?

Well, the first order of effect is pretty ground-level in scope: It leaves me thoroughly disheartened. It is an unfortunate truth that we are often at the mercy of the small-minded and narrow of vision. For purely self-preservational reasons, I will play no part whatsoever in the administrative affairs of any temple or similar organization for the foreseeable future.

The second order of effect is more esoteric in nature. Long before the atrocity of SRT’s death, I have struggled with matters of faith, with the nature of God, about how much S/He is truly capable of and how much s/he truly cares about what we mere mortals do from moment to moment. This experience has not been helpful in assuaging those concerns.

Despite the relative doom and gloom of much of the above, I feel it’s essential to note that it does NOT leave me without hope.

My theological / spiritual skepticism is not borne of doubt about whether there is a God. The inherent miracle of life, of existence is simply too remarkable, too spectacular, too exquisitely beautiful and joyful to be the result of momentarily congealing chaos. There simply must be more.

I believe there are forces out there, forces we do not and cannot fully understand that nonetheless wish us well; forces that will help us if they can.

I believe that there is ample opportunity to discover wonder, magic, and joy in our restless quest for goodness and meaning in this life.

Many years ago, I heard the following quote on the television series ‘Beauty & the Beast’ starring Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton. The show significantly amplified my respect and admiration for poetry and introduced me to my favorite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. This quote, from ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ typifies the thoughtful, meditative, and hopeful perspective I so love about his work.

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once, beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.”

-    Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘Letters to a Young Poet’

Lastly, I leave you with a far simpler and more contemporary quote from performance artist Henry Rollins. I came across it a couple of years ago, loved it, and added it to a special collection of quotes I keep on my PC. But as with many such things, it eventually slipped beneath the waves of active memory. However, in preparing materials for the final SRT service, I rediscovered it. And you know, I think it just may be my new mantra. The quote is this:

“My optimism wears heavy boots, and is loud.”

-    Henry Rollins

May God bless the spirit of Sinai Reform Temple.

Thank you for reading.

Orkin’s Law: Everlasting Rewards

by Jerome Orkin and Steven B. Orkin

Last night, I attended an orchestra concert in which my daughter performed. Though she didn’t have any solos and we could barely see her onstage tucked near the back with the rest of the violists, the concert was nevertheless enchanting. The orchestra instructor, Lynette O’Hanlon, is an excellent educator: motivated, enthusiastic, and committed. She has a unique capacity to bring out the best in her young musicians and is the kind of teacher that her students will remember with a fond smile twenty years from now.

Orchestra concerts featuring young students can often be an ungainly exercise in screeching strings, bad tempos, and worse pitch, but that was not the case here. They performed challenging selections with a wide variety of tempos and technical difficulty with impressive élan.

As I watched the performance, I couldn’t stop thinking about a short piece my father had written under similar circumstances many years ago. I’m not sure exactly when he wrote it but based on my older brother’s age, I’m guessing it was the early 70’s.

It is unfortunate that I only learned of my father’s passion for writing near the end of his life. Like me, though he had a general fondness for people, he was a fairly resolute introvert, disinclined or more likely, unable to convey his thoughts and feelings in the way he wanted on more occasions than not. Writing gave him an outlet to do that.

Let us therefore engage in a bit of time travel. Let us journey back through the years as I step aside and turn this blog over to my father, who has contributed enormously to its very existence.


CONCERT

The other night I went to my oldest son's school concert. The concert is comprised of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, and the program includes choral groups, and orchestra and band arrangements. I was all set for an enjoyable, but not very exciting evening.

I couldn't have been more wrong. It was one of the most beautiful and rewarding experiences in my life. Most of the kids had been practicing for about two months for the choral arrangements, and about three months for the band and orchestra. All the arrangements and selections on the program were beautifully done, yet, there wasn't the usual tension and frustration. They were really enjoying doing it. It was refreshing to see such glee and contentment on the faces of the kids, because they knew they did their job well; and such appreciation and satisfaction on the faces of the staff who must have worked awfully hard to obtain a successful evening such as this was.

I couldn't help thinking as I sat there, how this conglomeration of kids, so different, with so many different problems could work in such a coordinated way, and so smoothly. What a lesson we intellectual and sophisticated grown-ups could learn from them.

It was only a school concert, but to me it was an example of what could be done with things like poverty problems and civic problems. It takes a little investment of time and energy and caring, but the rewards are everlasting.
 

Thanks for the lesson, Dad.

And thank you for reading.

Delilah, The Quintessential Cat

  by Steven B. Orkin

I don’t believe in pets. I believe in companions. Sharing your life with an animal is a unique and deeply meaningful experience that benefits everyone involved, particularly children. A cat or dog (or whatever) are not, in my eyes, akin to an elaborate household item. They are a member of the family. Though they cannot contribute in the way that other family members do in terms of sharing household chores or picking up the dry-cleaning, this does not preclude them from being an essential part of the family unit, of contributing to the spirit and harmony of a household.

In this same vein, when it comes time to say goodbye to them, I believe they merit the respect of a celebration of their lives. Domesticated animals don’t generally have extended families. They can’t pass down scrapbooks, heirlooms, and photographs. Thus, their history ceases when they pass on. Therefore, the onus is on us to keep their memory and history alive, to capture their lives as best we can with the often flimsy and inadequate power of words. I hope you will bear with me as I endeavor to paint a picture of my family’s beloved and sorely missed companion.

On the afternoon of January 27, 2014, a small but bright light went dark. After 19 years of a long and lovely life, Delilah Orkin has passed on to the next phase of her existence.

Delilah was born on the streets of East New York where she was ultimately rescued at about eight months old by my wife Nancy, who was teaching at an elementary school there at the time. There is no doubt in my mind that had Nancy not liberated her from that environment, she would have otherwise lived a short and desperate life, another sad and nameless victim of hunger, disease, violence (human or otherwise), or some brutal combination thereof.

Fortunately, this latter scenario did not occur. Nancy brought her rescued cat home, though she was timid, underweight, frail, feverish, and had fur like straw. Because Nancy already had a cat, we had to keep the two separated for several days, with Delilah spending the day in Nan’s room and Emi having run of the apartment. At first, whenever Nancy came home, Delilah, who would sleep on her bed, would jump off and hide beneath it, requiring much coaxing to come out.

As the months progressed, she became stronger. Her fur softened, and she became more outgoing and inquisitive. Delilah was an exquisite calico cat with large, golden eyes and a pixie face that was half-grey, half orange. The rest of her body was a mix of grey, orange, and white, giving her the appearance of being in an especially comfortable set of sweats. One of her more notable physical characteristics was her long, skinny grey tail which ended in an orange tip that looked like it had been dipped in paint. Throughout her life, she was lean, athletic, and graceful.

When Nancy and I moved in together in a new apartment, Delilah became the dominant cat, controlling all the space except our bedroom, which Emi fiercely guarded, and the food, which Emi also fiercely guarded, often attempting to eat Delilah’s food before her own so she’d have more. In response, Delilah would frequently chase Emi, creating a cacophony similar in effect to a herd of horses tripping down a flight of stairs that often ended in a tumbleweed of furry bodies. Lilah would periodically trap Emi beneath a wicker chair we had in our living room, preventing her from leaving for as much as a half hour at a time.

Delilah had an odd, love-hate relationship with a plant I owned for several years, a fern named Horatio. Sometimes she could be found quietly sitting on the soil in the planter but on other occasions she would attack the plant, grabbing its trunk and knocking it over. I later found out that Nancy had on more than one occasion taken the plant to her mom, a skilled green thumb, to care for it when Delilah had tackled it particularly hard.

She demonstrated herself to be spectacularly graceful and agile, sometimes jumping from the floor to the top of our refrigerator in one immaculate leap. She also had a propensity for making such jumps from the floor to our shoulders, occasionally scaring the daylights out of Nancy or myself when she did it unexpectedly. We had a clear area above our kitchen cabinets and as the highest point in the apartment, Delilah could frequently be found pacing along this area like a jungle cat treading a giant tree limb, silently observing our activities. She also somehow figured out how to climb into the upper shelf of our closet where Nancy’s wedding veil and headpiece were kept, resulting in us finding our petite, feminine little cat sitting pretty in a sea of white tulle.

Delilah was easily the smartest cat I’ve ever met. On one occasion, I watched her attempting to open a door by pushing on it several times. The door edged forward but was halted by the door jam. Delilah stopped, cocked her head in that uniquely feline manner, and after evaluating the situation for a few seconds, realized her error and reached her paw beneath the door to pull it open. She would consciously place her toys in places that were difficult to extricate them from for the challenge of doing it. Her taste in toys would shift over the course of several weeks, from balls which she would leap 3-4 feet in the air for, to ribbon and the plastic ties from shipping boxes. She particularly liked playing with the colorful elastic scrunchies Julianna used for her hair. She would carry them off whenever she could get to them, forcing Nancy to replace them fairly frequently. We have no idea where she put them all and I can’t help but wonder if we’ll find her stash at some point in the future. As a kitten, she enjoyed unraveling toilet paper. We’d find a mound of it on the bathroom floor a few times a month. Fortunately, she rarely carried it off to other parts of our apartment/house. She also loved the bathtub. We had a minor leak for many years and Delilah loved climbing in to drink the cool water from the smooth porcelain surface. We’d know she was in there because the top of her head would be soaking wet from the drip as she lapped up the water from the tub. She would also often climb onto the edge of the tub between the shower liner and curtain and hang out there as we showered. On some occasions, in a rare show of solidarity, she would work in tandem with Emi to retrieve the tiny bags of cat cookies we’d buy for them or liberate Q-Tips from the bathroom, which they both loved playing with.

Delilah had a rather unusual appetite, enjoying such delicacies as bananas, cantaloupe, peanut butter, and matzah, leading us to inform her on various occasions that she was in fact a carnivore. On a more traditional note, she loved the leftover water from tuna and especially sardine cans.

When we moved to our house, despite her keen intelligence, Delilah somehow perceived our ceiling fans to be gigantic dragonflies and escaped them by fleeing into the basement for the first two weeks we were there. On the rare occasions we saw her during that time (before finally allowing herself to be bribed back up with food placed in ascending positions up the stairs and down the hall), she would slink pathetically across the living room floor, quickly eat and drink, then dash back to the “safety” of the basement. This enabled Emi to assume the alpha cat role. Though they generally coexisted peacefully, Emi would sometimes treat Lilah poorly (as an example, she would inexplicably swat Lilah when they came home from the vet as though Delilah had something to do with them going there). Delilah would patiently go her own way, never dignifying such behavior with a response.

Though she had a sweet, charming, and affectionate disposition around us, throughout virtually all of her life, perhaps as a leftover reaction to the abuse she suffered as a kitten in East New York, Delilah was a hell-raiser at the vet, requiring the use of thick leather gloves by the technicians to prevent scratches and a roll of paper towels by her mouth so she’d have something to bite other than them. All such visits were accompanied by fearsome, caterwauling growls, howls, and yowls that could easily be heard in the waiting room as she was “tortured” by the vet and techs trying to cut her nails. Nancy often joked that her chart probably had a skull & crossbones on it but the staff at our vet, particularly our favorite, Dr. Cindy Meyer, seemed to understand that she was simply communicating her stress and anxiety rather than actively trying to hurt anyone. Getting her into her cat carrier was an exercise in benign guerilla tactics.

As with most cats, Delilah was a master of relaxation and had a unique way of spilling herself onto the floor, instantly assuming a position of contented repose. She could always find a comfortable spot to curl up in. She loved sitting in sunspots, shifting across the floor as the day progressed. One of her favorite places was the bow window in our living room where she would look out and watch the world, often voicing a strange, chittering chirp when she saw birds or squirrels. She had a small, oval-shaped wicker basket with a blanket in it. Despite her petite frame, she only barely fit in it, and when she woke up from a nap and sat up, she looked more like a baby chick than a cat. She also loved sleeping on assorted blankets, and in her later years, with a brown, stuffed Gund bear named Benjamin that Nancy and I keep on our bed. She would often cuddle up next to it or even scrunch her body on top of it, resulting in a blend of real and artificial fur that could be difficult to tell apart given their similar coloration.

Delilah loved being around us, often jumping onto the couch and climbing across my leg to sit on my knee or across my shoulders. A creature of habit, she would always jump up on the right side of the couch and walk across to reach us. In her later years, she would sit with Nancy every morning, resting across her left shoulder and chest for an hour or more at a time so she could feel her heart beating.

By far, her most endearing quality was her relationship with my daughter. From as early on as possible, we taught Julianna to be gentle and kind to our cats and she learned this lesson well, never pulling swishing tails or squeezing soft, furry bodies. Though Emi was a little too self-involved to fully embrace this gentleness, Delilah took it as a great compliment and assumed a role of guardian angel over Julianna throughout her life. She frequently slept in Jules’s room and as she got older, on her bed, watching over her as she fell asleep. In her later years, she hilariously managed to position her 4.5 lb body into just the right position to take over Julianna’s pillow (we eventually bought an extra pillow for Jules) and often, half her bed, which was no small amount of real estate considering that Jules has about 50 stuffed animals taking up the lower half of it. Sometimes, Lilah would sleep in the middle of them, creating a “Where’s Waldo?” effect as she nestled in amongst her soft, furry compatriots. She was ceaselessly patient with Julianna, tolerating such things as being “taught tricks”, wheeled around in a tiny stroller, and being given a ‘check-up’ courtesy of Jules’s toy doctor kit. When she came to visit Jules at bedtime during our conversations with her stuffed animals, Lilah was always a very good sport when the various dolls and other friends would “trip” over her, “ride” her, or other such silly indignities. I playfully nicknamed her Fluffy T. Cat (T. standing for “The”) and Jules later elaborated on this by calling her Fluffy McCutiekins. In her final years, we often also referred to her as our beautiful old lady. Julianna would sometimes read to Delilah and she always stayed and listened. She also enjoyed hearing Jules play her viola. She was like a supportive big sister, always taking an interest.

In the final months of her life, Delilah became ill. I’ll spare you the details but essentially she had a neurological problem that created flare-ups affecting her ability to move. It was heartbreaking to see her struggle but she had a quiet tenacity and toughness that was likewise inspiring. The flare-ups passed after a few days and she would be fine. Just before Thanksgiving, however, despite the medication we’d been giving her, this condition so debilitated her that Delilah was unable to walk at all. We had to carry her to her litter box and hold her up to enable her to use it. We had to keep absorbent pads over the cushion of the glider chair she enjoyed sleeping on for those occasions when we couldn’t get to her in time. We moved the chair into our room so she could be close to us, placing a set of small pet-steps beneath it in case she wanted to try to get down. Though she was unable to care for herself, she did not appear to be in any pain and her general disposition was quite good. She was eager to eat and drink and responded well to attention. She had not given up. Regardless, we took her to the vet with dread in our hearts, knowing that the likelihood was high she would not come home. Dr. Meyer indicated that it would not be an unrealistic decision but given Lilah’s positive disposition and that she was eating and drinking, to say nothing of the fact that she had gotten over other bouts of the disorder (albeit less severe), there was no harm in taking her home for another few days to see how she did. Remarkably, in the early morning hours of the day after Thanksgiving, my brother and sister-in-law, who were staying in our basement for the holiday, awoke to find a wobbly but standing Delilah visiting them. “Ten lives,” my sister-in-law Magda observed. From that point on until only a few days before her passing from another, insurmountable issue, Delilah was back to her graceful and affectionate self. She loved life and was courageous in contending with adversity.

Delilah truly was a quintessential cat. She was feminine, loving, graceful, inquisitive, charming, entertaining, funny, smart, and beautiful. As a 48-year old human, I feel I can only aspire to the wonder of her great, loving heart and gentle spirit. She was the very essence of beauty, love, and grace; in a word, a treasure. Words cannot express how much we loved and adored her. We have been truly blessed to share our lives with her. We are lesser for her passing.

Delilah

April, 1994 – January 27, 2014

Postscript

Delilah was named after a delightful song of the same name by Queen. Written by Freddie Mercury, a devout cat lover, for one of his beloved felines, the song is silly, sentimental, and very funny both lyrically and musically (listen for Brian May’s yowling guitar near the end). Although the Delilah in the song is more mischievous than our Delilah, the love and affection Freddie clearly had for his cat brings to mind our feelings for our own. Here’s a link to the song. An official video was never made for it but this fan-made version with lots of stills from Freddie’s personal and professional life is quite good.

http://youtu.be/tvIya2U8_PI


Thanks for reading.


Posted: 1/29/14

Coming of Age

 by Steven B. Orkin

 

 

Several weeks ago, I had dinner with some friends, two of whom, who I’ll call John and Linda for the purposes of this essay, are a married couple. During the course of the evening’s conversation, we somehow wandered into an issue they were contending with regarding their son. The details aren’t important but essentially, he had experienced a bullying incident at school; not in the physical sense but in the frequently as brutal psychological sense. Though the school had made some effort to address the matter, it didn’t seem like it had been truly resolved. As we listened, John and Linda went back and forth about how to address it with their son and were getting fairly heated about it. They were both clearly very passionate about the matter

To digress for a moment, every once in while, I’ll catch an episode of the sitcom ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ on late night TV. Though the show is sometimes problematic for me because the character of Ray’s mother is often distractingly irritating, I love the show because when you look past the annoying mom and even past the inspired craziness of what’s happening in any given episode, you’ll see that there’s a lot of profound commentary and insight regarding relationships, about how men and women think and communicate in fundamentally different ways, how two people can have completely different perspectives on the same set of circumstances and both be right.

John’s message to his son was essentially this: “If anyone tries to push you around, if anyone says anything about you, your mom, or anyone else in our family, you need to make an example of them. You hit them and keep on hitting them until someone pulls you off.”

I realize that sounds pretty extreme but the concept has some merit and here’s why. There are people out there who don’t understand or respond to anything other than brute force. They cannot be reasoned with and are not subject to negotiation, be they terrorist extremists or schoolyard bullies. When you couple that with the fact that children can sometimes be absolutely merciless in the way they torment each other, I can totally understand where John is coming from.

But…

Linda’s position was essentially this: “That’s what you would do, not what our son would do. That’s not the way he’s wired and it’s not the message we want to impart to him. We need to give him other, more appropriate tools to diffuse and contend with this kind of stuff.”

This immediately clicked on a memory for me with regard to my own kid. Last spring, my daughter Julianna had a brief encounter in school with a girl from our neighborhood who has bullied her in the past. She was about to head into the gym when this other girl ordered her, “Open that door and hold it. My hands are full.” Though Jules later told me the other girl wasn’t so burdened that she couldn’t have opened it herself, in that moment, she was kind of shocked and didn’t know what else to do, so she complied. This was an innocuous confrontation in and of itself; it did not merit a visit to the principal or anything like that. My daughter does not bear psychological scars from it and probably barely remembers it. What’s significant about the event is that it typifies the bully mentality: “I will do what I want and make you do what I want because I can.”

When Julianna told me about this, I carefully considered how to respond. In part because of the previous history between the two girls, I can’t deny I considered telling her, “The next time something like that happens, trip her as she walks past. She’ll think twice before she does it again.” And you know what? That solution probably would have done the job just fine. But I know my kid and I know she’d never do that; she has too gentle a nature. Further, although it feels good in the moment, it’s not the methodology I want to instill in her to resolve such conflicts.

So, I thought about what she might have in her personal toolbox to contend with such people in such situations. Finally, I said to her, “Julianna, you are a very kind and polite person and you speak beautifully, but it’s important to remember that sometimes, words can be your weapon even if you’re not using them to say mean things. What would have happened if you just looked at her and said, ‘What’s the magic word?’”

Julianna’s whole face lit up because she immediately understood that those four simple words would have put her in complete command of that situation. The other girl would have had to respond to Jules instead of the other way around, even if only by stomping past her and opening the door herself without answering the question.

It’s a solution similar in philosophy to Linda’s perspective on her son. It works for Jules. It fits her personality. She can apply the concept to other situations. It seems like a total win-win. And in most cases, it will be. But this does not preclude the probability that someday, Julianna is going to encounter someone who will not be deflected by such techniques. In response to her use of verbal wizardry, they will simply try another more aggressive means of controlling or manipulating her because they can. And on such rare occasions, I may well have to consider other, more assertive techniques to impart to my daughter; something more in line with the spirit of John’s take no prisoners perspective.

To be honest, I don’t know how John and Linda ended up resolving their conflict but it really doesn’t matter. Their struggle is the struggle of all parents trying to raise and protect their kids in the best way they know how. There is no manual to consult on how to do that. Often, there is no clear path to a solution to a given problem. Further, even when you think you have one, you have to carefully assess whether that solution is based on what you want to do or what’s actually best for the situation. Yet further, you have to resign yourself to the reality that sometimes, you’re going to blow it and your kid may well suffer for it. All you can do when that happens is help everyone back on their feet, dust yourselves off, move on, and hope you get it right the next time.

Kids are the not the only ones who undergo the process of coming of age. As parents, we’re doing the same thing every single day.

Thanks for reading.

Movie Magic

 by Steven B. Orkin

 

 

I love kids’ movies! I really do. Maybe that tarnishes my artistic sophistication level (such as it is) and maybe even my intelligence (ditto) in the eyes of some, but I don’t care. Kids’ movies are special and important. By and large, they focus on the positive. They’re empowering. When they’re done right, you walk out of the theater or turn off the TV feeling good about your life and good about the world. They’re oases of hope in an increasingly cynical and grim-minded landscape.

As parents and as individuals, we have not only a responsibility, but a moral obligation to make the world a better place for our kids. More importantly, we need to teach them how to make it better themselves. That doesn’t mean hiding the bad stuff, it’s about teaching them to reconcile it and still live in a life-affirming manner.

We as a culture and society need to do a better job at letting kids be kids for as long as they can be. The pressure on children to grow up as quickly as possible and be good little consumers is damn near close to terrifying. Shockingly, children do not need Facebook accounts. They do not need to have their faces buried in a Ninendo DS or smart phone because they may have to sit at a table in a restaurant or on line at the bank for twenty minutes. They need to be given opportunities to think, reflect, and interact.

This is a topic for an entire post in and of itself, but I believe our communication technology is not, in fact, bringing us closer together as all the multi-billion dollar corporations who design it contend, but pushing us farther apart. Indeed, I believe there is an argument to be made that it is deteriorating the very fabric of our society, stunting our ability to genuinely communicate with each other both verbally and in written form. I can already see a deterioration in the interpersonal skills of kids today.

My wife told me she recently had a conversation with one of the librarians in the children’s section (how many of my daughter’s classmates spend time at their local library or even have a library card, I wonder?). They were talking about the fact that many of the kids that do come in have difficulty articulating questions in a sophisticated manner. The librarian specifically noted that my daughter is not like that. Though she is rather shy in certain respects, she speaks with poise and complexity. She does not have a Facebook account. Though she has a phone that texts, she uses it sparingly, conversing with a few select people. When she writes an email, she does so in full sentences and expresses sincere and complete thoughts and ideas. Our public library is one of her favorite places. She actively asks to go there so she can do her homework or just hang out. It is a grim and unsettling truth that my daughter is an outlier in an increasingly nonverbal and electronic world. Even talking on the phone is becoming a pastime for losers. Text me, baby. And don’t bother spelling out the word ‘you’; it takes too long.

We live in the Twitter Generation; everything in 140 characters or less, please. And make sure we’ve got plenty of pretty pictures to look at with those 140 characters or less, because really, nobody has the time or patience to read boring text all by itself. I heard a line from a sitcom recently: “Twitter is stupid and Instagram is Twitter for people who can’t read.” I think there’s a good degree of acidic truth in that statement (though I do want to mention that my intent in conveying it is not intended to specifically insult anyone who does use those services). My personal feeling is that Twitter devalues language and complex thought. I do not use it. I do not intend to ever use it. I would need extremely compelling evidence to convince me to do so. I do like using Facebook. It can be a fun tool for keeping in touch. But unless I’m having an depth-conversation with someone, I’ll spend an average of 15-30 minutes a day on it reading posts if not posting myself. I’m not in the cult. I feel no compulsion whatsoever to regularly report my activities, make multiple posts a day or even one a day. Sometimes (gasp!) a few days may pass without me checking it. Though I use it in a manner that serves my purposes, I find Facebook to a good degree to be insidious and believe that it represents a big part of some of the problems we have in the world today.

Anyway, to start bringing this back around toward where I began, for the record, if you don’t have kids, and even if you never intend to have any, you’re not absolved of responsibility in helping them be better people. I think people who don’t want kids tend to get a bad rap as being selfish and immature. Some of them are (so are plenty of parents), but if you look at it from another angle, they’ve done the world a favor by not reproducing and raising selfish, immature, maladjusted children. For those who have made a more conscious decision not to have kids because it’s not right for them (whatever the underlying reasons), I commend them for having the courage to not bow to societal pressure and do so because they think they’re supposed to or that there’s something wrong with them if they don’t. It’s a well-considered, mature decision. Furthermore, individuals or couples that don’t have children still have plenty to offer. Their perspectives, influence, and meaning can be of enormous value and significance to the children around them. The fact that they don’t have kids themselves does not preclude them from being role models of the highest order. I hate when parents express disdain for singles or couples without kids and how ‘simple’ their lives are. I think it’s rude, disrespectful, and demeaning.

But I digress. Back to the real world of movies. :-)

To some extent, kid’s movies help set the tone for how our children view the world and their own place in it. They can be a great complement to the lessons that we instill in them and an excellent conduit for meaningful discussion and teachable moments.

The impetus for this post, which I’m a little embarrassed to admit given my diatribe above began as a Facebook status update, is that I recently watched a dynamite movie with my family called 'Ramona & Beezus' (2010), based on the classic kids' books by Beverly Cleary. So many kids' movies today are effects-driven show pieces (actually, let’s be honest; upwards of 90% of them are). 'Ramona & Beezus' on the other hand, is a small, honest, loving, fun little movie about finding your groove in the world and embracing your individuality; no multimillion dollar budget and state of the art digital animation required.

It has a terrific cast led by Joey King, currently appearing as the China Girl in 'Oz, the Great & Powerful'. She's adorable; not sickly-sweet, sitcomesque, manufactured, precocious, cutesy adorable, but authentically sweet, charming, and sassy! She carries the movie with confidence and style.

The film also has a great supporting cast including the ever-reliable John Corbett, Bridget Moynahan, Selena Gomez (who is surprisingly good, though I don't know why her character's name is in the title other than to sell the fact that she's in the movie to the Disney Channel crowd), Josh Duhamel, and Ginnifer Goodwin (currently playing Snow White in the excellent TV show 'Once Upon a Time').

‘Ramona & Beezus’ does a great job of balancing the silly and the sublime. It maintains a lively pace and a sense of fun and possibility. It deals with real-world issues with sincerity but doesn’t get maudlin about it. The Quimby family contends with sometimes prickly relationships and situations but comes through them with spirit, love, and unity. This movie provides an inspiring example of what a family could and should be and for that lesson alone it’s a film worth watching.

Is it groundbreaking, award-winning, cutting-edge cinema? Nope. But this fact does not preclude it from being warm, funny, and endearing. ‘Ramona & Beezus’ is unpretentious and accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, which is something quite a lot of films never come close to achieving. 

Whether you have kids or not, do yourselves a favor and rent it or borrow it from the library. You'll be glad you did...
 

Thanks for reading.

Life on the Tracks

 

by Steven B. Orkin

 

 

Today, December 26th, 2012 would have been my father Jerome Orkin's 76th birthday. Further, 2012 marks twenty years since his passing. In acknowledgment of these two dates, I wanted to share a story about him as an honor to his memory.

A good portion of my dad's adult working life was spent as a trackman for the Long Island Railroad. Though the guys he worked with provided him with many an entertaining tale that he would often share with us around the dinner table, the job entailed a lot of difficult, physical work, potentially life-threatening at times. Despite his caution, he was injured more than once, on one occasion breaking his leg and arm after being hit by a railroad tie, the long wooden blocks that help anchor the actual metal train tracks in place.

During bad winter storms, he would be called in the middle of the night to clear snow and ice from tracks and platforms. On some of those occasions he would be gone for 2-3 days at a time, sleeping on the work crew’s bus to get the overtime pay. I remember him one time bringing home a strange pair of gloves. They were stiff and shriveled like the hands of an old corpse, far too small for his hands. However, he told us they had indeed been his gloves. After getting some sort of powerful de-icing solution on them, he had felt them shrinking and just barely had time to pull them off before they would have encased his hands to excruciating effect.

Summer had its share of difficulties as well. He and his crew tangled with bees and hornets, removed the bodies of animals that had been hit by trains. They spent every working day completely exposed to the sizzling sun. The heat was amplified by the track itself, which absorbed and continuously radiated it back out through the metal tracks. On the lighter side, we would often tease Dad about the workman’s tan he got every year: chestnut brown from the waist up, bone-white from the waist down.

Because of the intensely physical nature of the work, turnover was relatively high. Further, he was periodically moved to other crews due to redistribution of work or other factors. As a result, he encountered a lot of different guys on various crews over time and many of them knew of him if they didn’t actually know him personally. At 35, Dad was known as ‘The Old Man’ to a great many LIRR trackmen.

Though he was well-liked and the phrase was mostly intended with a kind of good natured respect, there were some that didn’t view him in that way. On one occasion, one of the bigger, younger guys he didn’t know well challenged him, saying, “You wanna lay track with me, old man? Think you can keep up?” My dad wasn’t a proponent of this kind of testosterone-driven braggadocio and wasn’t easily provoked to rash action, but he had a lot of pride and he had a fairly refined moral compass, a desire to see justice done.

Dad considered it and responded, “Sure. But we work at my pace, not yours.”

The younger guy confidently agreed, assuming the actual pace didn’t matter, and they got to it. But by the end of that long summer day, the lesson Dad’s cocky coworker learned was that though the old man was not the strongest guy on the crew and he wasn’t the fastest, he could swing a hammer all day long.

In this story, we find a timeless message of consistency and durability over flash & bang. There will always be someone stronger, faster, smarter, funnier, wealthier, more attractive, more charismatic. But at the end of the day, I’d much rather be the tortoise than the hare.

Thanks for the lesson, Dad. Happy Birthday. I love you and miss you every day.

Thanks for reading.

The Chains That Bind Us

 by Steven B. Orkin

 

The room is dark and silent. There is a sense that this has been the case for some time. The air is still; a light cover of dust has settled over everything. 

After a moment, a click echoes through the darkness as a key is placed in the entry door and it swings open.

Steve steps inside, closing the door behind him. Reaching for the dimmer switch beside the door, he nods in satisfaction as the room lights to a dim amber, then purses his lips contemplatively as he considers the space.

Moving to the small kitchenette, he checks the stove to confirm it’s functioning properly, then opens the fridge, blinking against the harsh light. Sliding a bottled water free from the door, he closes the fridge and picks up the telephone, nodding once again, and places it back on the wall. Next, he walks over to the desk and powers up the laptop, giving it a thumb-up.

"Okay then," he says. "Looks like everything here is still in working order. Let’s get to it…"

~~~

It seems incredible to me that nearly an entire year has passed since I last posted. I continue to be astonished and dismayed by the speed at which time flies. I have no concrete reason as to why it’s been so long, so I’ll spare us all the embarrassment of apologizing and issuing assurances about how hard I’ll try to write again more promptly. I can make no such assurances. It may well be another year before I post again. I hope not, but I can’t in good conscience deny the possibility. I’ll just let these entries speak for themselves, no matter how long they take. 

Though this significant amount of time has gone by, this blog has never been very far from my thoughts. My lack of attendance to it should not be mistaken for a lack of interest. Just the opposite is the case. It is something deeply personal and meaningful to me, and I find the inclination to “just post something” akin to chewing tin foil. As the months have passed, I have continued to deliberate over what I want to talk about next within its confines, but have not been able to focus in on a particular topic. Part of the problem has been my ongoing struggle with what I deem to be the confessional nature of blogging, over whether what I have to say here matters in the slightest, and even if it does, whether anyone cares enough to bother reading it.

As an individual, I am characterized by a rather reserved demeanor. On most occasions, I’m inclined to be silent rather than speak. Despite my sincere fondness for people in general, I’m difficult to get to know well; I have a very hard time investing enough validity in my feelings to warrant expressing them, and have great difficulty articulating them when I do. I have what I consider to be a fairly rich and robust inner world, but this is very likely not evident to a large percentage of the outside world. One of the reasons I so enjoyed acting, and now writing fiction is the ability to become someone else; to see the world through new and different eyes. These outlets allow me to give voice to things I don’t feel I have the power to express in and of myself.

This blog, however, is a step back in the direction of myself. Perhaps it’s a sort of catharsis-inducing self-help tool to help me find my way in this life. Though carefully crafted, there are no characters to hide behind, no music of narrative and dialogue to dazzle and engage you as I make my feelings known through the filter of story.

Perhaps I over-analyze…

Sue me. It’s my nature.

Our capacity as individuals to assess our own lives is limited. Our inevitable emotional involvement mars the clarity of objectivity. Despite this, I often find myself looking through my own windows in an attempt to evaluate what I see. Unfortunately, my objectivity is further marred by what seems to be a largely endemic proclivity of the Human psyche to dwell on the negative. In light of this, my perspective on myself is unreliable, but it can serve as a jumping off point for today’s post.

As we move through our lives, we face challenges. Some of them are generated by external forces, but I think most are generated from within. Very often, we can clearly see what it is we need to do, where we want to be, and even how to get there. In fact, it’s never just one thing. It’s several, of varying levels of importance: personal goals, responsibilities and obligations, flights & fancies, etc. etc. etc. We make efforts in the direction of achieving some or all of these benchmarks. Sometimes, we expend an enormous amount of time and energy achieving them. Sometimes, it works, and it’s all good.

But very often, something keeps those holy grails floating just beyond our reach. Some variable, real or perceived, arises to obstruct our line of sight, drag us down, immobilize us, or even send us sinking back down the hill of progress to where we began, if not further.

Why does this happen? What are these chains that bind us to who we are, rather than who we want to be? What internal forces persistently conspire to keep us down? Why are we more comfortable with stasis than motion? Why do we perpetuate our own negative behaviors even though we know they’re destructive? Why do we stay in that relationship long after it’s over? Punch in at that job we hate? Light up that cigarette? Wolf down that burger or pint of ice cream, blow off that session at the gym, even though we know it’s all going to catch up to us eventually?

There’s a lot of psychology that goes into it, much of which boils down to the power of behavior, which etches grooves in our minds as surely as a rivers carve them into the landscape. Changing those grooves is almost as hard as altering the course of a river, and even after we do, diligent maintenance is required to keep them shifting back into their old courses. Plus, it becomes ever more difficult as we get older. For one thing, our behaviors have had more time to set in; the grooves are deeper. For another, if like me, you’re suffering from a mid-life crisis, it can be very difficult to put yourself in motion and keep yourself there.

As a brief divergence, I’m going to take a moment to talk about that phrase, ‘mid-life crisis’. Most people don’t give the concept much credence. It’s usually sloughed off as a joke. Images of a 50-something guy driving off into the sunset in his cherry-red Porsche with a blond bimbo at his side come to mind. It’s more than that; a lot more, and it’s not exclusive to men. In fact, I have found it to be an occasionally crippling, existential-scope malaise that makes it very difficult to look across to the horizon rather than down into the chasm. It’s a big deal, and should be taken seriously.

Anyway, my point is, you can teach an old dog new tricks, but it’s a hell of a lot harder.

Further, our intellect is ever the bane of our emotions and vice-versa. They have equal clarity at various times, but rarely at the same time, and they routinely overpower each other. We meticulously analyze a given circumstance and deduce how best to proceed, but our emotions wrap themselves around our legs and keep us from striding forward. We are gripped with passion for a particular path, yet our intellect rationalizes us into paralysis. That’s bad enough, but it gets even more complicated because sometimes the opposing force is correct and sometimes its not.

It’s a miracle anybody accomplishes anything.

So, what do we do about it? How do we get these forces to meet and combine in an effort to move us forward? How do we shake off our insidious and debilitating internal demons, reach for the next handhold, climb the next step? Be more than we are?

Check the toolbox. You’re going to need a healthy dose of Intuition, which Merriam-Webster defines as: “The power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” (an excellent definition!) It can help temper the combat going on between your intellect and emotions. It’s the unclassifiable force within that tells you to take the other route home, and you later discover there was a five-car pile-up that you probably would have been part of. It tells you to make that phone call to the friend you haven’t talked to for a while, only to discover they were at the end of their rope and really needed to hear from you. It tells you to make that decision you’ve been putting off and follow it through, even though you’re terrified (regardless of whether it’s the wrong one or the right one). I believe that pure intuition is 100% accurate. It’s a near-mystical force, perhaps the closest link we have to the divine. The problem is that it’s not easy to hear clearly. Our ability to receive it unfiltered is routinely compromised by the pandemonium going on in our heads. Even if we do get it, there’s no guarantee we’re going to listen. Learning to hone our intuitive powers is a life-long enterprise, one that scant few ever achieve, but it’s a quest worth taking, regardless.

Next, you’re going to need what may well be my favorite word: Audacity, which Merriam-Webster simply defines as: “Intrepidly daring.” It’s the quality that allows you to look in the mirror and say, “I can do this. I don’t care what’s in my way. I am going the distance!” It gives you the power to get out there and do exactly that. Often, we have an inclination to think “Why me? There’s a million other people out there who can do what I want to do a lot better than me, so why bother?” Audacity enables you to take it from the other end. It’s not a question of “Why me?” It’s a question of “Why not me?”

You’re also going to need another –city: Tenacity, which M-W defines as “Persistence in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired.” It takes courage to move outside your box. Fear of failure and fear of success can be equally enervating. You have to fight on regardless, armed with the knowledge that any motion is better than no motion. Tenacity enables you to disentangle yourself from difficulty and/or defeat and move past it. It gives you the grit to appreciate your small victories and see them as essential components of the big picture, use them to keep moving forward; kind of a “journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” situation.

Let’s add some –ty to the mix: Proactivity, defined by M-W as, “Acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes.” Let’s boil it down a little more: Do it now. For me, the concept is driven home by a scene from the inimitable Rocky III (Yeah, I know. I’m really conveying my vast knowledge of and influence by the classics). In the movie, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is badly beaten by Grade A Badass Clubber Lang (Mr. T). He ends up training with his old opponent Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) for the rematch, but Rocky is basically suffering from PTSD; he’s totally lost his mojo. He’s sparring or whatever with Apollo, who’s trying to psych him up, but Rocky gives up and says something like, “Tomorrow. We’ll do it tomorrow,” and abandons the session. Furious and disgusted, Apollo roars after him, “There IS no tomorrow!!” 

He’s absolutely right. There is no tomorrow. Do it now. Procrastination is the antithesis of proactivity. It has wrecked more dreams and lives than I’d care to imagine. I sometimes wonder how much farther   along I’d be in this life if only I had better command of my time. And I’m quite confident I’m far from the only person to feel that way about themselves.

Lastly, we need Positivity, defined by M-W as “The quality or state of being positive”; an accurate, if unimaginative definition. I checked a couple of other online dictionaries, and they were equally vanilla about it, so I’d like to take a moment to elaborate, since this principle is kind of a governing force of the others. If you don’t have positivity, the other tools are likely going to give out sooner rather than later. To illustrate the concept, I’ll share an anecdote about Thomas Edison (one of my favorite such stories, actually), who, upon being questioned about the fact that he failed a thousand times before inventing the light bulb replied something like, “I did no such thing. I discovered a thousand things that didn’t work.” This sentiment typifies positivity. It is a fundamental ideological perspective which dictates that the possible is more inherently likely than the impossible. It is pragmatic and elegant; it opens doors rather than closes them. It does not preclude reality; it enhances it. An absence of positivity ultimately leads to entropy. If you do not have it, virtually all endeavors result in failure.

Well, sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?  Simply abide by my blathering and you’re all set!

But here’s the thing. Sometimes, your toolbox is not enough. Sometimes, the forces working against you are too strong. Sometimes that’s ultimately a good thing and sometimes it isn’t, but you must reconcile that failure will sometimes occur no matter how badly you want something or how right it is for your life. It will be up to you and your circumstances to determine whether that failure is just a setback or whether it signifies a need to reassess what you want and need.

The important thing to keep in mind is that you must not allow the prospect of failure to dissuade you from your course. I realize I’m once again displaying my rather flagrant idealism, but I truly believe that it is the journeys that truly matter, not the destinations.

Breaking the chains that bind us is no easy task, no matter who you want to be, what you want to do, or where you want to go. But it can be done. And you’ll never know whether you can free yourself from them unless you step up to the plate, face down that fastball, and take a swing.

Thanks for reading.

Jimmy & Bobby's Hot Dog Stand

 by Steven B. Orkin

 

 

It feels good to be back!  I'm going to try to post more regularly on this thing, but no guarantees. Life is a complex business, and I'm a fairly complex guy. Sometimes, I've just got too much on my mind to get my thoughts down in a productive manner. I'll do my best.

This is a fairly lengthy post, but hopefully, it will be worth the effort. Let's get to it!

~~~

Jimmy and Bobby are brothers. Back in the day, their dad Mike and their uncle Rick owned a hot dog stand called (originally enough) ‘Mike & Ricky’s Hot Dogs’. Eventually, Mike and Rick retired and bequeathed the business to Mike’s sons Jimmy and Bobby, giving them the okay to rename the business ‘Jimmy & Bobby’s Hot Dogs’ (not a lot of imagination flowing through the family genes, apparently).

Jimmy and Bobby make the best dogs in town. Everyone knows them and loves them. Though there are other hot dog stands, nobody comes close in reputation or quality. Word on the street says if you want a good dog, you go to J&B’s.

Though Jimmy and Bobby love each other and want the business to succeed, they have very different ideas about how to go about making that happen. As time passes, they become increasingly polarized in their attitudes. Though they realize on some level that they need each other to maximize the potential of their hot dog stand, their capacity to cooperate steadily deteriorates to the point where they decide they don’t want to work together, but neither one is willing to abandon the hot dog stand.

Eventually, they litigate, each trying to push the other out of power so they can run the hot dog stand solo. Despite its great location, reputation, and potential, ‘Jimmy & Bobby’s Hot Dogs’ begins to struggle financially; its reputation suffers. It even closes sporadically as the brothers fight it out in court to gain the upper hand.

Jimmy wins the first round. Bobby isn’t completely out of the picture, but his influence is now limited. He is helpless to prevent Jimmy from renaming the business ‘Jimmy’s Hot Dogs’, repainting the stand from its trademark yellow to purple and for the most part running things his way. He makes some mistakes, but overall does a pretty good job of it.

Bobby seethes in resentment at losing to Jimmy. Instead of working with his brother to get the business back on track, he spends a great deal of time and energy angling for his moment to turn the tables.  At times, he actively works against Jimmy, despite the damage this causes to the integrity of the business. ‘Jimmy’s Hot Dogs’, though not a failure, suffers yet further.

Time passes. Bobby finds a legal loophole to get back on top. He promptly renames the business ‘Bobby’s Hot Dogs’ and paints it green. He ignores everything Jimmy says and runs things his way. Despite this lack of cooperation, it runs relatively well. But mistakes are made. Aspects of the business suffer. Customers sense the tension and become nervous about what’s happening with the hot dog stand.

Jimmy continues to make suggestions, but Bobby doesn’t want to hear it. Occasionally, he co-opts some of Jimmy’s ideas for his own purposes, but he doesn’t give Jimmy any credit and basically treats him like the archetypal unwanted stepchild.

Jimmy and Bobby’s relationship has suffered sorely throughout this arduous process. They rarely talk, and when they do, it’s to berate each other and point fingers over why the hot dog stand isn’t running as well as it used to. They more or less tolerate each other.

Down the road, ‘Gunter’s Sauerbraten Stand’ opens for business. It performs modestly but steadily. No one can figure out what the hell is going on down at ‘Jimmy & Bobby’s’ or whatever they’re calling themselves this week, but there’s no denying they still make the best dogs in town.

With great effort, Jimmy wins the next legal round. A creature of habit, he renames the hot dog stand ‘Jimmy’s Hot Dogs’ and covers up all that green with purple. He works hard to get the hot dog stand’s groove back, and makes good progress, though he too makes mistakes. He demonstrates little interest in what Bobby has to offer, often demoralizing him. On the rare occasions Bobby comes up with a useful suggestion, Jimmy goes out of his way to reinterpret and re-implement it as though it were his own.

Jimmy and Bobby’s relationship is acrimonious and unhealthy. They are virtually unable to communicate in a productive manner. The hot dog stand is flat-lining because they spend more time working against each other than making the business succeed. The trash is piling up, and the ventilation and filtration systems aren’t functioning properly. If Jimmy and Bobby don’t watch themselves, they won’t have to worry about who’s running the hot dog stand because they’ll end up poisoning themselves with the byproducts of their own wares.

‘Pete’s Dogs & Burgers’ opens nearby. Jimmy and Bobby seem to be too busy fighting with each other to focus on making hot dogs. They still manage to make good dogs, but customers are starting to drift over to Pete’s, as well as to Gunter’s.

Bobby gets back on top. He spends weeks reversing virtually every business decision Jimmy has made. He ignores Jimmy’s observation that maybe they should go back to at least painting the hot dog stand yellow so they have a consistent sense of identity, paints it green, and changes the name back to ‘Bobby’s Hot Dogs’. He likewise ignores Jimmy’s suggestion that they start working together again to make the business more successful.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Mike and Ricky step in. They sit Jimmy and Bobby down, and have a long talk with them about the big picture, about priorities. The brothers nod their heads and tell their dad and uncle that they get it. They tell them they’ll do better, work together, and get the hot dog stand back to where it was.

But they don’t. They make paltry efforts to do so, and things improve a little for a while, but they quickly slip back into old habits, and things get even worse.

Since they’ve been so busy screwing each other over and fighting for control of the hot dog stand, Jimmy and Bobby have not been able to meet customer demand. In a rare show of solidarity, the brothers agree to cut a deal with Pete and Gunter to purchase some of their products to supplement their own hot dogs, though they don’t need as many as they used to, now that there are new businesses on the block.

They also agree to hire Sumira to run the hot dog stand while they continue to wage war against each other. They don’t have to pay her much; she’s cheaper than the locals they talked to, and she seems to have it together. However, though a capable employee, Sumira has no emotional investment in the success of the hot dog stand beyond its capacity to provide her a paycheck. She does what she’s supposed to do, keeps the ball rolling, but that’s pretty much it. The customers are a little unsettled by ‘Jimmy & Bobby’s Hot Dogs’ (Is it Jimmy’s or Bobby’s now?  No one can keep track) being run by a stranger, but they’re still pretty good dogs, so some of them come back.

To save money, the brothers start buying supplies from Alex. They don’t particularly trust Alex. They don’t like his politics and they have a suspicion he gets a little rough with his wife, but he’s available, so they suck it up and buy from him anyway.

The hot dog stand is running a little better to an extent, but it seems to have lost its mojo. No true forward motion. No personality. No spirit.

Shikaru’s Sushi Stand opens up. It caters to a different clientele than Jimmy & Bobby’s for the most part, but it’s another option, and the hot dog stand’s client base further deteriorates.

Where once, Jimmy & Bobby’s Hot Dog Stand was the best and brightest game in town, it is steadily being relegated to being just another player in the big game. Production, quality, and reputation are down, and show few signs of taking an upturn. 

Soon, they probably won’t even be the biggest and best known player because their in-fighting has so deteriorated the fabric of their integrity and credibility as an institution, they can’t renew their momentum and the customers are reticent about putting their trust in them.

~~~

Welcome to the geo-socio-political landscape of the United States of America.

The political party system was designed to stimulate debate and thereby create something better than either side would otherwise have been capable of on their own. Today, it is the equivalent of sandbox brats trying to pull a toy from each other, each one demanding “I want to play with it!” “No, I want to play with it!”.  Their focus has shifted from enacting the will of the people to fulfilling their own ideological agendas, and they’re willing to paralyze or otherwise harm the entire country to make sure they get what they want.

Though I believe the Right has been far more guilty of this than the Left of late, the Left is far from blameless. The way I see it, virtually every member of Congress and every other legislative body on the political spectrum ought to be ashamed of themselves!  They have completely lost their way. They are largely out of touch with what their constituents really want and need, and are often blinded by corporate influence. As a notable example, fairly recently, legislation was passed allowing corporations to make unlimited contributions to political campaigns. I would classify this as among the most obscene events of my lifetime. I’d be willing to bet quite a lot of money that if we asked every citizen of this country if that was a good idea, upwards of 95% of them would respond that it was a terrible and harmful idea. So, how and why did that come about?

The political climate is such that each team is so busy preventing the other team from doing anything, they’re accomplishing little themselves. Under most circumstances, when grown-ups have a disagreement, they sit down, talk it out, hold their ground on some things, give on others, and agree to disagree on the rest. That isn’t happening too often on Capitol Hill, these days. There is no true spirit of compromise or cooperation, and the victims of their execrable behavior are the citizens of the very country they claim to represent. By all means, let’s continue to quibble over gay marriage and dedicate ourselves to de-funding NPR while the planet teeters on the brink of disaster*.

Speaking of the planet, we continue to poison it at a frightening rate. Denying the perils of climate change and the need to shift to biodegradable packaging and cleaner manufacturing techniques is nothing short of delusional. It takes a long time to climb a mountain, but falling off it is a very rapid process. We’re just about at the top. We can’t afford to wait until disaster strikes to make changes in how we do things. The fallout is going to be so catastrophically high it won’t make a difference at that point. If anybody really believes that what’s happened in Japan can’t happen here, you’re pretty much begging to be next.

Though we’re making a certain degree of headway with alternative energy, the bottom line is, we’re not serious about it yet. We’re content to continue paying billions of dollars to nations that steadfastly commit human rights violations, some of whom have large factions that would not hesitate to destroy us given the opportunity. Just so we’re clear: The solution to high gas prices is not drilling in the Arctic Refuge or the ocean. It’s admitting that the combustion engine is not only filthy even with our technological advances, but obsolete. Even if that were not the case, I simply don’t believe we are unable to create a viable artificial oil. Bottom line: There’s a game-changing solution out there. We need to find it and wholeheartedly devote ourselves to making it work. And part of that solution may involve sucking it up and dealing with the fact that our pristine view out the window may be altered by the presence of wind farms or other such solutions. We are in peril. Concessions will have to be made.

On the corporate side, many of our biggest companies show no hesitation in shipping both service and manufacturing jobs overseas to save themselves money. In doing so, they absolve themselves of what I feel is their moral and societal obligation to help strengthen the economic fabric of this nation by giving those valuable jobs to people right here who need them. Yes, the fact is, it’s more expensive to hire American employees, probably a lot more. But (and I plead guilty of being a hopeless idealist, here) I believe that there is inherent value in doing so regardless. I believe the return on that investment is one that will bear invaluable fruit in the future. It’s not all about the bottom line. In fact, it is my belief that Capitalism does not ultimately work unless it is guided by a moral compass.

It seems as though a large percentage of our legislators have become “That’ll never work”-ers instead of “Can-do”-ers. There is so much to be done, and we have such enormous potential to accomplish all of it if we can only get out of our own way, work together, rediscover the adventurous spirit that forged this nation, and focus on the future instead of the next election.

Thanks for reading.







*Note: It is not my intent to minimize either of these issues, particularly gay marriage, which I see as a big piece of THE civil rights struggle of the 21st Century. Why we continue to deliberate over why M-F love is more sacred, beautiful, and valid that M-M or F-F love is completely beyond me. My point is, our legislative bodies often demonstrate poor prioritization skills. Though both these matters are of varying degrees of substance, let's save the planet first. Then, we'll give the gay population the credibility they deserve, and we'll make sure NPR can keep doing their thing. :)