blahg, blahg, blahg…

I saw the movie “Public Enemies” over the weekend. Like its big-screen predecessor “The Untouchables”, it traces the story of 1930s gangster-laden Chicago. John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson. Pretty Boy Floyd and Al Capone. The gangsters rule, the government comes in, the idealistic agents (Treasury Department or Bureau of Investigation) are assigned the task of bringing them down, they try every legitimate and legal way to “get their man”… and they fail. They always fail. Until, of course, they become gangsters themselves. Unless they themselves break the rules, they simply cannot catch the rule breakers. 

One of my favorite movie lines of all time is spoken by Gene Hackman playing Agent Rupert Anderson in “Mississippi Burning”. The FBI has come to Mississippi to investigate the disappearance of civil rights workers. Agent Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) is adamant that the FBI will solve this case using its superior intelligence and modern crime-fighting techniques. He believes in the good of what they are doing, the justice of it.

But they get nowhere and in time the violence grows worse. Mounting frustration leads to a heated exchange between the two agents and Mr. Anderson finally shouts, “These people crawled out of a sewer, Mr. Ward. Maybe the gutter is the place we should be!”

And they go there. They use the same tactics of the Klan – fear and torture – and then they get them. Beat them at their own game, so to speak. It’s Hollywood. Or is it?

Does good ever really win without becoming a little evil along the way? Can justice prevail without breaking the law? Can acceptance come not disguised as tolerance? Can peace come without war?

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Were she still alive, my mother would be 70 today. Sadly, she didn’t live to see 50, let alone 70. And this is how I know what “old” is. Or more, how I don’t.

Over the past year and a half or so, I’ve experienced and/or been aware of a lot of loss (the nice way of saying, “death”). My spouse lost both her step-father and her father. We lost our dog. A good friend lost her mom. Another a brother. People who have been “present” during my entire life, the most recent being Senator Kennedy, have passed. Walter Cronkite. Farrah Fawcett and Ricardo Montalbon (What would middle school years have been like without “Charlie’s Angels” and “Fantasy Island”?). John Updike. Michael Jackson (premature, but gone). John Hughes (the same).

There is a time in your life when, if you are following a “normal” trajectory, you don’t experience much death. People surely die, but you don’t really know them. Great uncles or old movie stars. You notice that others are sad, but you’re not really sad. You don’t really have need to be. Death is still far away.

But then there comes the time when passings become a step closer to home. Grandparents and parents; the grandparents and parents of friends or co-workers. We get older and thus, by definition, so do those we have closer relationships with. Some may ask, “Why is all the death all around us?”. To me, this is why. We’re older. And with age comes passing.

Still thinking of perspective – a lingering thought from yesterday. Thinking about the “normal” trajectory of life. Thinking about how when experiences come out of the normal range, they can throw off your sense of normal. I couldn’t help but think, when my father-in-law died suddenly last year, I have been here before. I have done this before. A long time ago. It was new for my spouse, but for me all too familiar.

Yet I hardly feel old. Death visited me early in life. Perhaps this is why I have the response I have when I overhear people asking, “What is going on?” Nothing, really. Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway. From my perspective.

Gee… what a grim little posting for a Saturday morning. Just random thoughts. The daily muse.

I once saw Ralph Sampson (of college and NBA fame) outside of a dorm complex at the University of Virginia. He was standing, arms folded, chin on hands, leaning against the roof of his car, talking to someone on the other side. His car was a full-sized Econoline van. And this is how I know how tall 7’4″ is. 

We do this often in photographs. Stand in front of that mountain to show how big or how far away it is. Take a picture of that spider next to a dime. It gives it perspective. We need something to base our perceptions on. Something to help us understand a concept that might otherwise get lost in the description.

I think of this as I watch and listen and read the comments of many regarding the passing of Senator Kennedy. The talking heads of the media cannot seem to speak of him without somehow bringing themselves into the conversation. At some point they saw him or met him or spoke to him. They have a child with illness, as he had a child with cancer. They once sailed off Martha’s Vineyard, as he often sailed off Hyannis. They love their dog. He loved his dogs. Truly, their stretch to connect to him too often seems a bit much for me.

And as I watched the overwhelming numbers of fellow-Massachusetts folk line the way from the Cape to Boston yesterday, tears in their eyes as the motorcade carrying his body passed, I found myself growing a bit cynical. He was indeed a good man, a great champion of many a valued, liberal cause. A wonderful representative for all of us in the state – and beyond. But as I kept hearing people, average people on the street, speaking through sobs, telling the reporters how shocked and sad and lost they now felt, I couldn’t help but think the exaggerated responses were just a ploy to grab attention – of the camera, of friends, of strangers. Cynical thinking. Yes. I know.

But then I stopped and I thought of Ralph Sampson. Perhaps this is really our only way to understand things so much bigger than ourselves. We have to somehow relate it back to us. The person of Ted Kennedy was huge. The idea of him, of the Kennedy family, even greater. And there is just no way we can possibly comprehend the magnitude of his passing, both the person and the idea, without bringing it back to ourselves. Maybe the doing so, in some ways, diminishes the meaning, but without it I fear there isn’t any meaning for us at all.