Category Archives: Everything Else

Life’s Magical Moments

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By Bill Shein
April 14, 2011

The science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” One implication, of course, is that today’s technology – from hand-held gadgets that wirelessly connect us to all human knowledge, to social-networking platforms that link people across time and space, to numerous online services that offer great utility – has enabled us to live in what would previously be considered a “magical” realm.

It’s important to establish this context, because a few weeks ago, while engaged in a very old-fashioned, pre-Internet activity – reading a library book in bed – something truly magical happened. And it was something that couldn’t happen with an e-book reader or fancy iPad, though I’m not dead-set against reading pixels rather than print.

In a delicious irony, my nifty experience – which I’ll relate below – happened while I was reading David Ulin’s excellent little book, “The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time.”

Ulin is book editor of the Los Angeles Times. In 2009 he wrote a column about reading and the Internet age, and his growing sense that today’s frenetic flow of information has diminished our ability to slow down and immerse ourselves in deep, contemplative thought. He suggested that we are increasingly distracted by “the sound and fury” of fragmentary, seemingly urgent, but ultimately irrelevant information. And that it’s to our detriment.

Our near-religious, unquestioning embrace of technology is fueled by a central-but-unstated promise: Thanks to the “magic” of this gadget, or that online tool, life will be easier, better, and more predictable. Based on habits and preferences, and those of aggregated others, a “recommendation engine” will ensure you never see a movie you aren’t sure to like, or buy a book you won’t enjoy. At long last, security!

While no doubt useful, our fondness for these algorithms is also troubling. Do we really want our experiences to be predictably “good”? Because it’s been my experience that life’s most interesting, memorable, exciting, thought-provoking, and valuable moments are not usually the result of careful planning or predictive algorithms. Instead, they happen when things go a bit wrong, or when some random occurrence or happy accident puts us in the path of a previously unknown person or idea. Unpredictability is what gives life its magic and richness.

Like when your car breaks down and your day takes an unexpected turn. Or you walk down one street instead of another and cross paths with someone, randomly, who changes your life’s trajectory, literally or figuratively. Or you stumble across a book – left in a coffee shop or in a heap on a curbside – or perhaps a newspaper column(!) that changes how you see things.

Which brings me back to me, immersed late one night in David Ulin’s book, considering technology and predictive algorithms. Appropriately, I discovered Ulin’s book only because a librarian had shelved it in the “New Books” section, a collection of otherwise unrelated materials that no recommendation engine could possibly assemble. I had found it by pure chance.

The hour was late, and it would soon be lights out. My cats were in their usual spot on the comforter, signifying bedtime. Turning the page, expecting more text, instead I found a $10 bill stuck deep into the book’s spine. A yellow sticky note was attached. It said, “Enjoy This Gift!”

Wow.

Someone had done something wonderful and fascinating. Something more magical, I’d say, than a game of Angry Birds on an iPhone. Something that made me feel good for days. And it required just pen and paper. (And, um, $10.)

Did this generous person put money tagged with “Enjoy This Gift!” into other library books? Who knows.

CUT TO: Everyone reading this column racing to the library, en masse, to rifle the pages of book after book until their fingers bleed.

By the way, I didn’t keep the ten-spot. Instead, a few days ago I placed it deep in the spine of another library book, with another sticky note attached.

CUT TO: Anyone who didn’t previously race to the library now racing there to rifle the pages of book after book until their fingers bleed.

The lesson? That the true magic of life – and human beings – can never be captured in lines of computer code or represented in liquid crystal. It simply exists within us.

Even in a distracted age, if we stop long enough to listen, we’ll hear it.

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Bill Shein enjoys receiving gifts of all kinds.

 

My Strange Wisconsin Connection

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By Bill Shein
March 3, 2011

The protests in Wisconsin in support of collective-bargaining rights for working people have an odd link to my longstanding hobby: Stamp collecting.

Let me explain.

Since 1978, when my fifth-grade teacher sparked an interest in world geography, I’ve collected stamps. Back then, money I earned as a newspaper-delivery boy went for glassine envelopes of stamps that arrived through the mail “on approval” – buy the ones you want, send back the rest.

As a result, my pre-teen years were filled not only with Little League, soccer games, and too-sugary cereals, but also endless hours in front of my enormous Master Global Worldwide Postage Stamp Album. In 1981, I even wrote a BASIC program on my newfangled TRS-80 Model III computer to log information about my growing collection.

(Note to teenage boys: Computer programming plus stamp collecting equals instant popularity with the ladies!)

For me, stamp collecting offers engaging solitude in a frenetic, hyper-connected world. It’s inexpensive, carbon-free, and rich with diverse subject matter. My interests have long been aesthetic and historical; I like the art and history represented in postage stamps. Currently my focus is on worldwide stamps from the middle of this century that feature animals, nature, and topics related to democracy and peacemaking.

As news broke from Wisconsin, I thought immediately of an American stamp issued in 1975 that honors “Collective Bargaining: Out of Conflict … Accord.” It shows two overlapping circles, suggesting common ground.

Back then, the U.S. Postal Service regularly issued commemorative stamps that recognized the lives of working people. Perhaps the impetus was the hundreds of thousands of postal employees who earned decent wages and benefits – particularly beginning in the early 1970s, when collective bargaining helped to secure them.

Review the last half-century of our postal history and you’ll find stamps honoring railroad engineers (1950), truck drivers (1953), Labor Day (1956), and a campaign to employ disabled Americans (1960). One 1950 stamp honored Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor. A 1957 commemorative honored teachers and the National Education Association. In 1962, a new stamp even gave a nod to union-run apprenticeship programs that trained young people for good-paying jobs.

Exactly 50 years ago, a new stamp recognized American nurses. Two stamps that year honored Gandhi as a “Champion of Liberty” – noteworthy during this month’s campaign of nonviolent noncooperation in Wisconsin.

Also in 1961, new stamps recognized worker-compensation laws and former Sen. George W. Norris, a progressive Republican from Nebraska who in 1932 passed a law making it illegal to demand that prospective employees not join a union. (He was featured as one of JFK’s “Profiles in Courage.”)

In the mid-80s, as President Ronald Reagan’s policies began to undermine the economic prospects of lower- and middle-class Americans, our postage stamps abandoned these topics. Stamps boosting labor were replaced with benign subjects like sea shells and steam engines, cats and owls, classic cars and polar explorers.

By the 1990s, stamps featured popular comic strips and flowers, movie monsters and fighter jets. In 1999, new stamps actually “honored” teen fashion and extreme sports, and in 2002, one even recognized the 100th anniversary of the teddy bear.

Occasionally, stamps featuring American heroes like the trade unionist and civil rights pioneer A. Philip Randolph (1986) and Great Barrington’s own W.E.B. Du Bois (1992) slip through. But in general, it’s been actors and architecture, Disney characters and “The Simpsons.”

Last month, just days before the first Wisconsin mobilization, the Postal Service issued another stamp featuring Reagan – a man whose approach to labor, organized and otherwise, set in motion the 30-year race-to-the-bottom that today pits workers against workers across the nation. (Ominously, the new Reagan issue is a “forever” stamp.)

Of course, the hobby of stamp collecting is politically neutral. FDR, whose presidency did much to advance the interests of working Americans, was an avid stamp collector. So was Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged,” whose ideology of unabashed self-interest was embraced by a young Alan Greenspan – the longtime Fed chairman and a key architect of our current economic mess.

(In 1999, the U.S. issued an Ayn Rand stamp. And one honoring the Slinky.)

Could stamp collecting bridge the partisan divide or make a difference in Wisconsin? Um, no. But it’s worth noting that 1975’s collective-bargaining stamp features two solid circles, one red and one blue, overlapping to produce an area of bright purple.

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Bill Shein wants that shoebox full of worthless stamps you have in your attic.

 

All Violence is ‘Senseless’

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By Bill Shein
January 10, 2011

Writers pay attention to words. We listen closely. And what has struck my writer’s ear since a disturbed man, with too-easy access to semi-automatic weapons, gravely wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed and injured many others is the phrase used to describe what happened.

President Obama said “this senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted that “acts of senseless violence such as this one affect us all.” Search the Internet for news stories about Tucson containing “senseless violence” and you’ll find thousands.

It is a telling phrase – all the more so because it goes unquestioned. In truth, there’s no need to modify the word “violence” with a descriptive adjective. To say this attack was “senseless violence” is to suggest that sometimes violence makes perfect sense. Which it doesn’t. The pain and anguish of this awful tragedy should remind us that all violence is senseless.

In the coming days there will be heated debate about our political rhetoric. There will be arguments over our (inadequate) gun laws. There will be fingers of blame pointed left and right. All of this will likely end in the usual partisan maelstrom, and media attention will quickly shift to new ratings-grabbing topics.

Yet the extended conversation we must have – in our homes, legislatures, places of worship, and within our own hearts – is about our nation’s complicated embrace of violence.

As the president suggested, “senseless violence” has no place in our society. Indeed, democracy rests on the idea of solving problems, wielding political power, and resolving differences peacefully. But collectively, through our elected government, we deploy awful violence on a daily basis. President Obama sends unmanned drones on missions of targeted assassination, routinely killing innocents abroad. This is not described as “senseless,” but rather, as essential and even just.

Here at home, we are engulfed by myriad forms of violent “entertainment,” from movies and television shows filled with guns and torture and murder, to video games simulating war with ever-more “realistic” weaponry and bloodshed. We pay media conglomerates for the alleged pleasure of immersing ourselves and our children in such fare.

The issue is not whether violent entertainment causes individual people to become violent. The problem is that by steeping ourselves in violent imagery, we make real violence and war appear normal. We make it seem acceptable and inevitable, for now and always. We soften real violence’s painful, human edges by blithely using it as fodder for entertainment. On our screens, real and fictional violence appear increasingly the same.

Rather than debate Sarah Palin’s lucrative use of violence-tinged rhetoric, let’s reflect on why the word “shooter” has in recent years become so widely used in regular conversation. And why we tolerate the fashion industry’s unquestioned and troubling use of military-inspired designs, especially during times of war. What does that say about us?

We could explore why we’ve come to spend half of every discretionary federal budget dollar on the military, and how we always seem to find a new enemy. We might think about our love of the barely controlled violence of American football. We might ask if it is appropriate for our military recruiters to fund a free, online “first-person shooter” game called America’s Army, available to children as young as 13 years-old. And we could, perhaps, discuss how these pieces fit together into a troubling whole.

We probably won’t, of course. We’ll find ways to shift the discussion away from the American way of violence. We’ll say Tucson was carried out by someone who is mentally ill – though that argument is unlikely to restore necessary funding for mental-health services, or make automatic weapons harder to acquire in Arizona and elsewhere.

We’ll convince ourselves that Tucson has no possible connection to the state-sanctioned violence and war we overtly support, merely tolerate, or, quite frequently, simply ignore. And we’ll refuse to explore any connection to the handsome profits earned by turning death and mayhem into a sea of gruesome entertainment, violent sport, and “fashionable” apparel.

In our refusal to address our complicated relationship with violence, we expose a longstanding American sickness, one that conflicts with our better angels. It is a sickness deeply rooted in our history – so deep that even during these moments of collective anguish we are unable to confront it.

Until we connect every real and imagined act of violence, and see them all as “senseless” and unnecessary, and expose the myths that suggest violence is sometimes acceptable or necessary, this sickness will fester. Meanwhile, let us pray for the Tucson victims, and for each other.

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Bill Shein is a writer living in Alford, Massachusetts.