Category Archives: Rumination

Control freaks

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My face is aging. Your face is aging, too. If that bothers you enough, you’ll seek out a plastic surgeon to tighten your skin, lift your eyelids, and tweak your cheeks. Of course, you don’t have to wait for the ravages of time to look for a plastic surgeon. If you don’t like your nose, your cheeks, your chin, your buttocks, your breasts, or various other parts of your anatomy, you can have a plastic surgeon adjust them, too.

Plastic surgeons are certainly easy to find. Pick up an society newspaper or magazine, and you’ll find dozens of advertisements for plastic surgeons as well as specialists in cosmetic dentistry. They generally don’t advertise to victims of birth defects, accidents, or fires; they don’t need to. Pandering, or catering, to human vanity is enough to keep them in business, and primary care physicians and others can always refer non-elective surgery cases to them.

For those who can’t afford American prices but can’t resist personal improvement through surgery, there are all kinds of options overseas at reduced prices (and possibly increased risk).

There are risks, no matter where you go or who you see. One writer desiring the beauty of youth (rather than accepting the beauty of age) died under anesthesia — an enormous price for what is an illusion at best.

Even teenagers can’t resist the attractions of plastic surgery. If you don’t like the size or shape of your nose or breasts, you shouldn’t have to live with them — just get them “fixed.”

The fragile human self-esteem is frightened of flaws and their effect on everything from social standing to potential mate selection. We’ll claim we’re doing it for ourselves, which is true in that we wish to elicit a positive reaction from others that will make us feel good — even if the others don’t see the change as having been necessary. After all, wearing a new dress isn’t satisfactory until the compliments come rolling in: “That blue looks really good on you!” “Where did you buy that?” “That suits your figure!”

I think there’s more to the interest in plastic surgery than simple vanity, and that it begins with the human need to control our surroundings, our society, and now ourselves. As children, we have little or limited control over anything, where we live, for example. Parents may allow their kids to choose their clothes, even their diets — but can intervene at any time. Parents can dictate homework time and curfews.

When the child goes to college, finally there is the freedom to do what one chooses — even to skip classes to the extent one can get away with it. Single adults and childless couples, outside work, are limited mainly by time, budget, and the constraints of their relationships. Couples with children face the limitations of increased responsibility, but still make their own decisions about much of their lives and lifestyle.

Aging reminds us how elusive control is. The frail elderly often lose the power to choose, and become increasingly limited in their choices, like children. Their independence may be gradually eroded, until they are living in a place they might not have selected, without a driver’s license — having lost what has become the ultimate symbol of emancipation for the teenager as well as of the transition from youth to adulthood.

Aging reminds us that there is only so much we can do to control the process and the progress. Nutrition, exercise, rest, and a healthy lifestyle can’t prevent tissue from succumbing to gravity and wear and tear.

Aging reminds us of the one thing we cannot control — death.

Makeup, hair dye, wigs, plastic surgery — they don’t deceive anyone, least of all death. Technology can keep heart, lungs, and kidneys working for a little while longer, but they can’t prevent breakdown and they can’t prevent death.

So much of life is about control. We try to control our environment, our government, our neighborhoods (through associations), our schools, and our churches. We try to control the people around us — our coworkers, our families, our friends. We try to control or at least influence the political and spiritual beliefs of others, either directly or indirectly.

But a large nose, a weak chin, or the beginnings of smile lines and crow’s feet remind us that we are not in control. We struggle every day with the possibility that no one is. For some, there is no God. For others, God has given man free will. Then there are those who claim that God is in control, but who nonetheless try to take control.

What would the world be like if we let go of the fears that drive the need to control? If we settled lands that didn’t need to be “improved”? If we accepted our faces and bodies and looks as the result of our own natural histories? If we accepted that aging is normal and has its own beauty? If we accepted that life is a cycle that doesn’t need us and that death is just one part of the cycle? What we if stopped fighting the undefeatable and started living instead, free of the shackles with which our fears bind us and free of the illusion of control?

What would life be like?

Error of my ways

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When I moved to the Flamingo I upgraded to digital cable, which required a box. A “trained technician” was dispatched to perform this intricate installation. When he was done we tested it, and the cable and TV appeared to be working. Then I had the idea of testing the VCR (yes, I still have a VCR), which didn’t work. The technician played around with it for a few minutes, then said, “It doesn’t work; the movers must have dropped it.” I told him the movers had never seen or touched it; a friend and I had personally carried it over from the old place a block away — and that it had been working earlier that week. “Maybe you dropped or bumped it, then,” he said. No, I think we would have noticed that. It was not a point worth arguing, however; the VCR didn’t work, and the technician was unable to help or to admit he didn’t know how to. He left, having placed the blame squarely on me.

A few days later I looked at the setup and decided that something didn’t look quite right and that switching a couple of the cables around might work. It did; voilà — a working TV, cable, and VCR setup. And I’m not a trained technician.

When something goes wrong or doesn’t work, the first reaction seems to be, “Did you . . .?” that is, to avoid responsibility and shift the blame to someone, anyone, else. At work, if there is a mistake in a report it must be the fault of the assistant or the junior staff person, even though they are not the reviewers who sign off.

Even our political leaders refuse to admit their errors, no matter how obvious they are or how thoroughly they have been demonstrated. The question is, do the leaders set the tone for the rest of us, or do we choose and support them because they reflect the standards we embrace?

To me, the ability to admit mistakes is courageous, while the inability to admit them is cowardly. It takes strength to face up to errors and their ramifications; it takes only stubbornness, arrogance, and bravado to deny culpability.

In our world, though, a leader is “strong” when he or she clings to their own errors and prevarications, as though wishes were horses. People perceive them as having the “strength of their convictions” — no matter how flawed the convictions. Those who confess to mistakes and errors in judgment are seen as weak, tentative, and indecisive — even though they have been brave enough to face the people and the consequences, whether it’s mere humiliation or a more serious outcome, such as a trial and potential conviction and sentence.

In everyday life, we blame someone else for our failings; if children don’t learn, it’s the teacher’s fault; if there’s a mistake on the printed page, it’s the printer’s fault; if a team performs badly, it’s the weather or travel. So it’s not surprising that we vote for leaders who are just like us, fallible yet self-righteous and frightened of punishment. When they do prove to be wrong beyond doubt, we abandon them like proverbial rats. It’s not our fault for choosing them. How were we to know?

The population clock

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For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder.

Paul McCartney

When my dad was born in 1913, there were about 97,225,000 Americans. In 1927, when he was 14, the world population reached 2 billion. Now, in 2005, the U.S. population is about 297,871,654; the world census is about 6,484,942,703. These population clocks will show you how fast these numbers are rising now. We had to invent computers, satellites, and the Internet simply to stay connected and to communicate.

To me, the world feels smaller and more crowded. Every weekday, someone looking out my north windows would see a long line of traffic, moving only in bits and spurts, between about 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. More people, more crowding, more strain on resources and infrastructure.

What affects me most on an emotional level, however, is the increasing scale of our endeavors — increasing in size, not in vision. Cities and suburbs sprawl further and further outward, taking over farmland like an out-of-control slime mold takes over a lawn. There are more towering skyscrapers, more massive office parks. High school buildings without windows that look more like prisons than like places that inspire curiosity and learning. Soulless McMansions, with spacious living rooms no one uses and entire bedrooms used as closets. Urban streets congested with so-called “mini”-vans and hulking SUVs.

Stores have become bigger and bigger, offering more and more stuff that is is both unnecessary and cheap. Walgreens, once a small local pharmacy, is a burgeoning chain. Walmart has achieved world domination not only of consumers (of the unnecessary and cheap) but of suppliers, too, not to mention the Chinese labor market. At the cold, uninviting, gray Sam’s Club and its warehouse clones, you can buy copious quantities of toilet paper, huge chunks of cheese, and olive oil by the gallon.

Corporations are out of control. Friendly, familiar-sounding local brands like Marshall Field’s have been sold off to conglomerates with generic names like Federated, General, Retail Brand Alliance, etc. Local bookstores, once small, cozy havens for bookish introverts, have been replaced by Borders and other national chains, as well as Amazon.com.

All this bulk is emphasized even in the materials with which we build. Warm brick and wood have been replaced by concrete, steel, and glass. Even stone and marble, hard but warm in color, have lost their cachet with modern sensibilities.

I saw part of an interior design program in which burnished steel kitchen cabinets had been finished in an icy blue. The kitchen, which should be one of the coziest, warmest rooms in the house, resembled a luxury morgue for the wealthy. Yet this appears to be the latest and greatest in design — dehumanized scale and dehumanized appearance. This room looked more appropriate for conducting lab experiments than for sharing a cup of coffee or tea with a friend.

Clearly, a scale that is larger than life and a design that is colder than death are very popular for the moment. People are buying these buildings, homes, and cars; they’re shopping at these stores. And they’re admiring the newest designs. A man on the street was quoted as saying he was glad to see new concrete, steel, and glass towers; he disliked the traditional brick and wood. Other comments were similar.

There’s nothing inherent in our natures that makes us gravitate toward the stupendous and cold, but what does? I wonder if all this ostentation in size, all this pretentious modernity and mass, is simply our effort to stand out, to raise ourselves above our 6+ billion fellow travelers, to be “bigger and better.” With every new tower higher than its neighbors, with every new store more comprehensive than its fellows, with every new car larger and meaner looking than its highway companions, with every house more spacious than the ones around it, the result is a weird uniformity and blending in. All the rows of McMansions with SUVs parked in their driveways and garages, all the steel-and-glass office towers, and all the warehouse stores, all the 12-lane expressways inspire little more than a dull sensation of “standing out by fitting in.” It’s all a mass of cold gray.

As the population grows, shouldn’t we preserve our individuality and the significance of the individual by returning to a human scale, a personal style?

Think big — think small. Most of all, think for yourself. Is that monotonous gray wall of office tower really “beautiful”?

What is a life worth?

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Every time you look into the printed photographic eyes of someone who’s been killed, are you seeing the trials of pregnancy and the pains of childbirth? The countless feedings plus clothing and diaper changes? The education, whether informal or formal; at home, at school or on the streets?

Beyond an act of love, passion, or lust (or all three), combined with intentional or thoughtlessness, it takes considerable effort to make a human being. And that effort can be destroyed in an instant, just as intentionally or thoughtlessly — an exploded vehicle in Iraq or a blown-up bus in London, a bullet ripping through an organ, a beating that ends in internal bleeding, an accidental blow to the head.

How does each of us determine what a life is worth? For most people, human life seems nearly sacred until our person, our family, or our property is threatened. A mother who never dreamed of killing might do so without thought if her child is endangered. A man might kill if he catches someone in the act of looting his home. Most of us will never face these circumstances, but we do have an idea of our priorities and an instinct for self-preservation.

How do we really feel when a stranger is killed? When soldiers are ambushed in action, it’s sad and regrettable, but all too often they’re just a face and a name, with perhaps a brief biography and some quotes. We don’t have any personal attachment, and while parents may empathize with those of the fallen (and feel gratitude that it wasn’t their child), and the same for girlfriends, boyfriends, brothers, sisters, spouses, it’s nearly impossible to become emotionally invested beyond the superficial when it comes to most strangers (with well-publicized exceptions). Undoubtedly this is programmed into our psyches; no one could afford the energy it would take to grieve every loss as though it were personally meaningful. So our reaction tends to be, “I feel bad for the parents,” “Doesn’t he remind you of Steve Flynn over on Sixth Avenue?” or “What a shame.”

Then there are those who invest their emotions in dead celebrities, in John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, John Lennon, Princess Diana. Years, decades, after the death, they write of their loss, sadness, and heartbreak as thought it were a deeply personal tragedy. Do such people value life? Or do the value the artificial association they have created with a person or an idea that is bigger than themselves? For such people, was it Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana who died? Or was it the idea that died, not just of beauty, but of fantasies of lives that never existed, of their own youth and memories that began to fade long ago? Is it the lives of these celebrities that they miss and mourn, or their own lives, doomed never to achieve the impossible fantasy that no one’s life can?

Soon there will be more deaths in the headlines, and the cycle begins again. Very little changes. We spend billions trying to treat and cure disease because disease will affect us and every one we know; we hope that violence, in whatever form, does not.

Every day, though, the behavior of seemingly ordinary people reveals a combination of egotism and lack of empathy for lives that are not our own. I thought of this when another case of a child in joint custody of her divorced parents was mentioned. The girl supposedly hates her time with her father, who fought bitterly for joint custody, because he ignores her. She senses that she was an object in a power struggle. It is long since over, so she seems to hold no interest for her own father. I find myself wondering how I could look into the face of my child, a face that would surely resemble mine in some ways, and not feel enough love and compassion to show it in everything I do, to feel only cold indifference. Doesn’t what he helped to give her — life — have any value to him? How can he not know or not care about the effect of his indifference on his own child?

In another case, the mother has one child with one man and two children with a second man. As a toddler, the first child was not welcome in his mother’s home. He has spent most of his childhood living with an uncle and aunt. How can anyone value life so little that they don’t want their own child living with them, that they prefer that someone else raise them even when they have the ability and the means? Does he understand why his mother doesn’t want him and can foist him off on a relative like he is an unwanted item for which there is no room? What value will he place on life when he is older?

The same boy had a docile, affectionate cat. One day, the boy’s half-sister, with an established reputation as a bully, decided to scare the cat while the boy was holding it. Already, she has learned her mother’s valuation of her half-brother. Predictably, the startled cat panicked and clawed the boy badly. Rather than punishing the girl for her bullying behavior, the family decided that the life of the victimized cat was forfeit. What value does life have under such circumstances, when victims are victimized twice, when they are victimized permanently?

Children are life, animals are life, trees are life, just as we as stewards of the Earth are life. Those who kill, those who destroy — they are anti-life, like matter and anti-matter. For some, it is a socially accepted hobby or habit — the hunter, the fisherman. Soldiers must kill when ordered to. Butchers slaughter animals every day of their working lives on our behalf. For others, it’s an accident, a temporary suspension of judgment, the proverbial crime of passion or anger or fear. Then there are the sociopaths, who kill compulsively, without empathy or compassion. Some value the life of some but not that of others; some value life but must destroy it, however regretfully. The sociopath doesn’t understand the value of life, if it is not his own.

For those who die to nourish ours and to protect it, we should never fail to feel gratitude. For those who have lost their lives, we should stir our memories. For those who have lost a life that they created, we should feel the deepest of sorrow. And for those who have taken life for the vilest of reasons, what must we feel? Hate? Contempt? Loathing? Pity? Anguish? Pity and anguish that that person could destroy the only thing of value that has been granted to us, the only thing that has meaning? Life itself, without which there is nothing.

Nothing personal

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Someone commented once that I don’t say anything personal or express excitement and other strong emotions in my journal. The latter is a challenge especially because nothing exciting has happened, and I can’t think of anything to be emotional about that I’d want to talk about publicly.

I think it must be close to a year since my team and I went through an exercise to determine our individual work styles. Virtually everyone was a (theoretically) organizer extrovert of varying types, while I was an off-the-scale creative introvert. I’m not sure what the exercise proved, as how we interact has not changed. The only thing that changed for me is that my sense of alienation and isolation deepened. I feel a little like the Spock or Data characters on Star Trek who can never know what it is to be human.

Visually, it would have been humorous to an outsider to see a dozen people spread out over one half of a line, with one individual all the way at the other end.

And the funny thing is that I’m better at organizing than all the so-called “organizers.”

I think of people who are leaders not only because they are charismatic, but because they have an exciting, appealing vision of something better. Martin Luther King, Jr. was such a leader. I wonder what I am, since I can be neither leader nor follower. Am I T. H. White’s one wise man (The Book of Merlyn? Potentially I have a vision, but I don’t want to see it because I don’t know what to do with it. It’s behind a symbolic door, along with a lot of emotions I don’t want to experience. As long as I focus on the ordinary and mundane, the door to the room, with its vision, dreams, thoughts, and feelings, may stay safely secured.

I’ve been sick for almost a week. Just before I got sick, I had a week of dreams odd enough that I hated to wake up. Once I got sick, the dreams stopped, and now I am tired. Tired but alert. Then this morning I had a dream about an annual contest that usually pitted a very large, sleek, streamlined modern train against a much smaller, quaint forebear; they were supposed to be toy trains, but they were also large, nearly life-sized.

Behind the scenes I kept trying to arrange other trains, switches, etc., so they would always thwart the modern bully. One train was set at what was somehow a blind crossroads, with its nose buried in a mountain tunnel, so that the modern monster ended up slamming on its brakes and hitting it, but not doing much damage. The incident allowed the quaint train to escape. I was trying to minimize the damage to all the old trains, as they were unique and irreplaceable. I didn’t not want to sacrifice any of them and spent a lot of time agonizing over what to do.

Someone else intervened on the modern train’s behalf with what appeared to be a military train and possibly ships in a harbor using missile launchers. Fortunately, the little old train disappeared into the safety of the underground. At about that point, I started to look for a bathroom from which to do my planning, so it was time to wake up.

The old train took my emotions underground with it, where they are safe from me, and, more importantly, I am safe from them.

Community

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What makes a community? What keeps it together? What do the members have in common?

In the U.S., old towns and neighborhoods in cities were often settled by immigrants of the same country and/or ethnicity. My hometown of Hamburg, New York was primarily German and Polish. In Chicago, of course, there are Chinatown and Greektown, and entire neighborhoods, like towns, of Indians, Mexicans, Asians, etc. In these cases, the residents for the most part have a common language, history, and culture, and many have the same goals — American citizenship and prosperity.

There are also company towns where nearly everyone works for the same employer. When I was involved in a consulting project for Gateway Computer, nearly everyone I talked to in town either worked at Gateway, had a family member who did, or had a business patronized by Gateway employees. The connections here are somewhat more tenuous; while the success of nearly individual depends on the success of the company, and while there area always a lot of family relationships in any town of limited size and growth, the people themselves may not have that much else in common. The residents might include everyone from cleaning staff and security guards to engineers and executives, with different social values, economic standings, and religious beliefs. The community is built based on the company, not on the people.

Now, many have flocked to suburban and master-planned communities, where the attractions are people of the preferred ethnicity (more important than most people will admit), large houses that are increasing in value, good school and services like police and fire, plus attractions like dining and shopping. There may be some common desires and even values, but this type of community may consist of people who have lived in it their entire lives, people who have moved from the city, people who have moved from other suburbs, and even people who have moved from other parts of the country. They may share a national culture, but the local cultures from which they came may be very different. Maybe the town has always rolled up the sidewalks early in the evening, while new arrivals from urban areas are used to lots of excitement and noise late at night. In one case I know of, the local culture is largely centered on hunting and fishing, and new residents from out of state were surprised to see their neighbors in their backyards cleaning their guns and other equipment.

It seems to me that the concept of community is a natural one, while the construct is often not. People need to live in communities to share in services and goods, to form social connections, and provide one another with the safety (and sometimes risk) of numbers. That said, anyone with the means and the desire can live in a community, but no one needs to participate in it. If most of us don’t participate in the community, or know our neighbors, is it a community, or is it just a conglomeration of dwellings?

When the U.S. was a fledgling nation, was there a greater sense of community? At a time when I may have lived miles from my nearest neighbor, with only the horse for distance transportation, would I have relied on him more, to help build my house and barn, plant and harvest my crops, cope with weather and natural disasters like droughts and tornadoes, and fend off enemies? I would have needed my neighbor, and he would have needed me.

Do I need my neighbor, whose house is within feet of mine, in the same way today? I might ask him to watch my house or my pets, plants, and mailbox while I’m away. His children might play with mine, but if they go to different schools they might be more likely to spend their time with their school friends. The only time we might have contact is at community association meetings, where our only exchange might be for one of us to complain about the condition of the other’s lawn. There’s not much sense of belonging to a greater whole or of real service to it, mainly of asserting one’s rights and privileges.

The Wall Street Journal ran a feature about Dallas and the city’s attempt to revitalize its business downtown. The story mentioned a national trend of people buying houses and condos downtown in large cities. Certainly this is true in Chicago, where downtown housing is booming (at boom prices). I wonder if some of the people making this move are seeking a sense of community, where they have a doorman or concierge who knows them by name. I wonder if they are people who want to be able to walk to the grocery and drugstore and encounter neighbors on the sidewalk rather than breeze by them in self-contained, climate-controlled SUVs. Are they pioneers of a sort — people willing to give up the known for the unknown and unfamiliar?

It’s an interesting experiment, and it’s natural to wonder how long it will last. Will these pioneers develop true urban communities, where the people are as important as the trappings? The kind of community Colette writes about in the Claudine novels, where people of disparate backgrounds but similar socioeconomic status pay visits and gather for one another’s “at home days”? What will people find to be the downside — the lack of personal, open, and natural space? Isolation from friends who have not made the move? Lack of neighborhood recreational opportunities for children? Lack of convenient schools? Lack of malls and familiar stores?

Is this a reaction to “cocooning,” when we rented movies and ordered food in, staying home and avoiding our community?

Is it a fad or a trend?

Are we waking up to the sense of community that we may have lost with the advent of the car and suburbia?

For how long?

Gratitude

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I’m thankful for my:

  • wonderful parents, even if I didn’t appreciate them at the time. The older I get and the more I see, the more I appreciate them.
  • brother and his family. We complement each other well.
  • extended family. They help me keep much in perspective.
  • inspirations and everyone who has taught me something, from teachers and professors to family and friends, even some non-friends.
  • job. It’s not ideal, but it fuels most of my habits, like shelter, food, and books.
  • shelter. Moving has brought me to life, and I need to keep up that momentum.
  • health. I have my problems, some typical, some a little unusual, but none very serious.
  • freedom. Love it and guard it for few have so much, and it’s so easily compromised.
  • books and poetry. As the song says, they protect me.

Happy Thanksgiving. May we gain more in all things than we lose.

Popularity

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Every time something happens like at Columbine, a distraught, shaken society returns to the same questions — about adolescence, about high school, about cliques and social class, and about a sense of disenfranchisement that some kids feel. Some teenagers (and, in some contexts, adults) believe they are so alienated that they must resort to a type of violence that will either end or ruin their own lives. Afterward, hands are wrung, task forces formed, “at risk” kids identified, etc., etc. — but ultimately how much changes? What about the large group in the middle — the kids who are neither popular nor shunned. How many are on the fringe, craving attention? How many will come to view high school as a happy memory?

I suspect that the answer is few, based admittedly on my own conversations. Most people I know don’t have fond recollections of high school, and those were on the fringe loathed it. Yet few cite those things that seem most hateful to kids at the time: boring classes, homework, difficult teachers, dull routine, and so on. For those who didn’t like high school, the sense of “not belonging,” “not fitting in,” “not having lots of friends,” or “not having a girl-/boyfriend” left bitter memories. For those on the fringe, it was blatant ostracism. It seems that, for a lot of these people, favorite classes, teachers, and assignments were the highlights of their school experience.

I remember not having a lot of friends and feeling that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t. Now I’m aware of that this is part of being an introvert — introverts focus on a few close relationships, while extroverts establish a far-reaching network of friends and acquaintances. Neither type is right or wrong, good or bad, although we do seem to live in a dichotomous society with a distinct “us vs. them” mentality. Yet both “us” and “them” are necessary. Introverts (the minority) and extroverts both contribute to their world, the former more as advisers, the latter more as leaders and implementers. We’re all interconnected and interdependent.

I didn’t know all of that at the time, nor that my personality type, INFP, was the rarest and most difficult for others to understand. I continued to wonder what was wrong with me, why I was not well liked, why at best I was ignored and at worst tormented. At some point, I stopped worrying so much about it, probably because I understood that I was powerless to change the perception. Noting I could do would let me slip into the mainstream. This was confirmed for me in college, where at first I was completely unknown and where I could reinvent myself (I thought). The problem was — I didn’t know how to.

I couldn’t figure out what separated me from kids who were generally liked (I didn’t aspire to be popular). It wasn’t an economic issue; there were others worse off (although they probably dressed better!). It wasn’t weight or looks; there were others were fat and unattractive. It wasn’t intelligence or grades; there were others who were smarter and who received better grades. It wasn’t living in or coming from a trailer park; while that may have been a factor in high school, no one at college knew that. Now I think it was primarily my INFP, highly sensitive personality, combined with a high level of insecurity and overcompensation and all the other factors, none of which helped my cause. I won’t say I was unpopular; I was mostly, as I felt, invisible.

I also didn’t understand the opposite — why certain kids were very popular, attracting others to them to the point where they could hold mini-courts. Most of these were not the stereotype of the handsome football player/pretty cheerleader. Many of the most popular were not particularly attractive physically, and I always found them a little hard to approach, a little hard to talk to, even a little phony at times. I didn’t understand the appeal.

The odd thing is that, at high school reunions, the same people are still popular; they still hold court. Some of them have not accomplished all that much, let alone anything noteworthy, yet there always seems to be a crowd hanging onto their every word. Their appeal still escapes me. What elevates them above the people who are treated as though they are more ordinary? Yet some of the more “ordinary” are far more interesting — they’ve traveled, earned advanced degrees, and held either high-level or unusual jobs, sometimes in relatively exotic locales.

In the end, and especially at my age, I don’t want hangers-on; I don’t need superficial friends or popularity. I’m happy with who I know, although I wish some of them lived nearby so we could do more together. I simply remain curious — how does it all work? I may never understand.

Edmund Fitzgerald

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October 15 — I was listening to one of my favorite songs from my adolescence, the eerie, haunting “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” I think I’ve always assumed Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 tune was about a shipwreck that had happened long ago, but today I decided to find out more. To my surprise, two of the best sites dedicated to the Fitzgerald have been developed by young people who weren’t yet born in 1975, which I learned is the year in which the Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, killing all 29 members of her crew.

The first site, S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald Online, has information about the ship, the crew, and the wreck. The second site, 3D Edmund Fitzgerald, features 3D drawings, meticulously detailed and with documentation where details are missing, for example, the hole for the ladder to the crow’s nest. I give these kids a lot of credit for their thoughtful interest in an event that is minor in the scheme of history and that most remember primarily because of Lightfoot’s tribute. Both sites are well done and worth bookmarking.

I won’t get into the details of the Edmund Fitzgerald or the wreck — just visit S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald Online. What the tragedy of the Edmund Fitzgerald reminds me of, though, is what all of us too often forget — the work of those who keep us comfortable and in comfort. The Fitzgerald was carrying iron ore in her hold for the auto industry. Who mined the ore? Who loaded the Fitzgerald? Who would have unloaded her? Who would have hauled the ore to the plant? Who would have processed it? People — people who risk their lives so that we can have heat, food, necessities, comforts, and conveniences. People who may like danger and risk and who are often fatalistic about it. People who work on farms, in mines, in processing plants, in rail yards, in dockyards — and on freighters. How many farmers killed or maimed, miners buried, rail men crushed, how many injured, amputations a testament to the risks of the machine age? How easy it is not to think of the essential work we’ve never seen or experienced, like that performed by stagehands behind the scenes at a theatrical production.

The men of the Edmund Fitzgerald experienced bitter cold, howling winds, and crashing waves — and the knowledge of wrecks that “the gales of November remembered” — November, one of the stormiest and deadliest months for shipping on the Great Lakes.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and the deaths of all her hands. No one knows what caused the wreck itself. But we do know a great deal about her crew. For the most part, they were seasoned seamen, as well as family men. One had survived Iwo Jima, while another pursued a passion for learning cooking and baking. A couple, including the captain, were looking forward to retirement. They were ordinary men who knew they could die on the job but probably never expected to, or to be memorialized in one of the decade’s hit singles — or online.

When you take a look around you, at your food, at your clothes, at your appliances, at your furniture, at virtually everything you own, remember the men of the Edmund Fitzgerald — and everyone else who, sight unseen, keeps you warm, fed, clothed, and comfortable. They deserve to be recognized for all they are willing to do — and all they are willing to risk.

On this 30th anniversary, take a moment to think about the men who died and their families, and all who die or are injured performing their work.