: lower black pain.

This was the first year I forgot to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. I knew what day it was, and I did have a clean green shirt in the closet, but I rocketed through the house getting ready in the morning and it just didn’t register. Hours later, I’m sitting in a meeting and realize what’s happened. There wasn’t even green on my socks… I had the blue ones with the little clouds on.

I’m not Irish. My grandmother-in-law was, but I don’t think that’s really close enough to claim any kind of identity. Besides, I had been wearing green decades before I got married. We were all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day in Kansas City in the ’70’s… there was corned beef every year and a parade…

…that’s the thing, I even started the corned beef in the slow cooker before I left, but it still didn’t occur to me.

I don’t know how I could have forgotten. We wore green every year for luck, and it’s not that I don’t need it anymore, but I will admit that I’ve probably had my share. I even found a four leaf clover once.

It was during grade school, one “Field Day”, off to the side of the competition space in a large area completely covered with clover. I don’t know exactly why I was over there, but I’m pretty sure I was trying to get out of running another relay race.

On Field Days all the events were compulsory, so every kid had been through the long jump, broad jump, shot put, 50 yard dash, and loads of relay races (I enjoyed shot put the best). We didn’t do “wheelbarrel races” (where one person holds the others feet and they race on their hands) or “three legged races” (where two peoples legs are tied together to race) because we had an odd number of boys in our class: one of us would have to have been tied to a girl, which wasn’t going to work due to some ecumenical guideline the nuns would not elaborate on.

Having finished our obliged participation, we were all sitting amidst the delicate ground cover, looking for the impossible. We didn’t know it was impossible: none of us were budding botanists and the internet was 20 years away. The only four leaf clover any of us had seen was the cardboard cutout the teachers put on the bulletin board every year.

But I actually found one, and the kids I went to grade school with were not only nice enough to not take it from me, they were cool enough to not blow it out of my hand and have me lose it again on the ground.

I showed it to a teacher, who folded it into a piece of paper and brought it back to school. We all looked at it, and at the end of the day it was given back to me to bring home. I showed it to my mom, who thought it was cool, but also was not aware that only one in 5,000 clovers have four leaves.

We put it on the table as the world’s tiniest centerpiece during dinner, and even though I was unaware of how rare it was, I did feel lucky.

After a few days, two of the leaves came off. I didn’t know what that meant.

My mother told me not to worry, that luck was chance – hard work is more dependable, faith more personal, and patience more mature. I mean, she didn’t say all that right then, she’s not Yoda, but she eventually got around to that. At the time she just said, “Well, you can’t be lucky forever.” which was also true.

But it took hard work, faith, and patience to find that little plant, so to be honest, that’s what it represented to me.

Anyway, I’ll definitely be wearing green next year. Y’know, just in case.

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I was going to write a poem, but quickly learned that nothing rhymes with the word “avoiding”.

The line I was trying to rhyme with was

“…all the news that i’m avoiding”

Often I begin writing poems in the middle, and then branch outwards, like a pre-school child distributing a glob of finger paint on a large sheet of construction paper. This line was my glob of paint, and would not properly spread without a rhyme to match it somewhere. The closest I came was the non-word “reccognoiting”, which was so far off the mark as to derail the entire endeavor.

I wanted to write a poem dedicated to the end of this winter, one that properly redefined the season from its traditional role as fallow and quiet to something more closely matching my experience of the last three months.

Weren’t things supposed to just…not happen so much during winter? All the little sprouts hidden beneath the cold, cold ground, sleeping, waiting for warmer weather to sproot forth into the light? Instead of expressing this typical winter imagery, I was driven to a create self-confessional verse encompassing multi-layered viral infection, international military conflict, and a large scale hypoxia of empathy in some corridors.

This winter was discontent’s summer, which sprooted just fine, flourishing in news reports and social posts.

Maybe it’s not a great subject for light poetry.

Perhaps a haiku.

My dedication to consciousness is the problem; if I could sleep more deeply, or perhaps more often, there is no doubt that my ability to navigate life would benefit, but my body seems compelled to stand up and walk around; speaking to people, being aware of things. It’s entirely exhausting. I can barely maintain it for 18 hours at a time.

It is during all that “not sleep” time that I gain new knowledge as to the state of global human interaction, which is often the problem with the sleeping to begin with. It’s a cycle. It’s a news cycle. (Wait, that’s already another thing.)

So I was going to write a poem about the importance of remaining aware, how resiliency and character shine clearest during conflict, how the dreams we share require less sleep and more action, but I hit that “avoiding” rhyme problem and never even made it to my Oversized Helmet Metaphor.

The Oversized Helmet Metaphor.

I believe the scene goes like this:

a young man, passenger on a spacecraft rocketing toward adventure, begins his transformation from simple farmer to freedom fighter through an impromptu training session, where he must learn to deflect incessant shocks inflicted by a darting electrical sphere.

Armed only with a sword made of focused energy, he dodges and shifts and waggles his weapon wildly in an attempt to defend himself, to little avail.

His mentor then removes a helmet from the wall and places it atop the young man’s head, lowering a faceplate that covers his head entirely.

“With the blast shield down I can’t even see! How am I supposed to fight?” the young man whines.

Ok, I am the young man and the little laser ball is the NEWS. I don’t really have a weapon to fight with, save measured pragmatism, which I’m waggling about best as I can, but not enough to protect myself.

So I put on the helmet, which is ignoring the news (obviously), but still scroll past unavoidable headlines on my phone or get updates from BBC News.

Zap. BZZZZAP.

The wise mentor gives the young man strategic instruction.

“Your eyes will deceive you.” he tells the boy, “Act on instinct. Stretch out with your feelings.”

The young man tries this, and to his surprise deflects the electric blasts, and goes on to save the universe, until it gets bad again a few years later.

So, like a… largish group of Americans, I get most of my news in digest format from late night comedy monologues, which I understand is like picking up chicken at the grocery store where it’s all pre-cut and wrapped. It is a solid attempt to remain responsible and know what’s happening since I can’t possibly manage the constant zap! BZZZAP! ing.

It’s hard to stretch out with my feelings, but I try, and the practice actually does help navigate through all the chaos. But maybe I’m delving too deeply into all this and should just…wait. WAIT! I’ve got one!

these days if i was digesting

all the news that I’m avoiding

i’m quite certain my subconscious

would require ample Freuding

There we go. Something like that.

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During this time of year, I always try to learn something new.

This year I have once again approached my guitar, dedicating myself to learn one scale well enough to be able to play Frank Zappa inspired solos atop lydian chord progressions. It’s going well.

I made an apple crumble from scratch yesterday morning before I left for the office. That worked out.

I am still attempting a chin-up and pull-up regimen, though my recent bout of both COVID and Flu A (combined) made that goal much more challenging: my weak arms hoisting my swollen frame like two Slim Jims™ lifting a fully dressed baked potato. Giving it my best, though.

And I am reading more, though I must admit that even the best book is nowhere as clockwork orange distracting as social media. In a book, you know what’s coming next, while my Instagram feed offers constant surprise yet consistent banality - a heady cocktail that is difficult to replace, but necessary to curb in this abrasive age.

So in an effort to limit doomscrolling, I’ve gone a bit off the rails: buying a vintage princess phone on eBay and hooking my iPhone through it so my daughter can pretend it’s the 80’s, stuff like that. I self-replaced the battery on my Apple Watch™ because it had expanded over time and separated the screen from the body - it still works, but I lost the grounding wire, so I have the slightest sense of a polite amount of electrocution on my wrist now.

We’ll have to see how that goes.

I didn’t have my watch for a week. It was harder than I thought - I look at my watch quite a bit as it turns out, and was always a bit disappointed to find only my bare skin. As a result, I ended up holding my phone in my hand a bit more than I usually do, and as I did not want to fall into a content spiral, I turned to music.

COVID offers such a wide variety of post-infection suffering, a Sizzler’s Salad Bar full of brain fog and debilitating aches, to which my body responds through absolute exhaustion and Pythonesque absurdism. Thus I found myself listening to 13 different versions of a single song, “The Shadow of Your Smile”, written in 1964 for the (awful) movie “The Sandpiper” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (third of the 11 films they would eventually make together).

Even as a kid I knew the name of the composer, Johnny Mandel, because he wrote the soundtrack to my favorite movie, “Escape From Witch Mountain”, but “Shadow of Your Smile” was his big record, taking home both a Grammy and Oscar while earning Tony Bennett a #50 hit in 1966, not on the “pop” charts, but a fleeting category named “Brazil”.

I have no idea why it popped in my head, but I finally gave in and searched it up in Apple Music on my morning walk to the train.

There were over 50 cover versions to choose from…most of the artists were legends. Mancini. Fitzgerald. Wonder. Como. Davis Jr. – each bringing a new perspective.

I remember when all music was like that: a great song would be on the radio, then you’d see folks on TV covering it on variety shows and music specials. Truly great songs didn’t belong to anyone until someone NAILED a performance, created something ethereal from the work, causing every other artist to just slow clap and back off. “Over The Rainbow”. “Mack the Knife”. “Don’t Rain On My Parade”. Songs where the title brings to mind a specific voice and singer, even though you’ve heard many performances of it.

This song clearly belonged in Tony Bennett’s ledger, but on this day he did not win my spontaneous early morning commute cover version battle.

Tale of the Tape:

Honorable Mentions: Marvin Gaye’s hallucinatory free-form experiment, Shirley Bassey’s ultra-dramatic blues, Boots Randolph’s deep drunken New Year’s Eve tenor sax. Wonderful.

Runner’s up: Frank Sinatra at the Sands - arranged by Quincy Jones - the very definition of lush, even if he forgets the words. Who am I kidding, he’s Frank Sinatra, who needs the words? Whatever he says are “the words” now.

Connie Francis - what? The ESSENCE of the ’60’s. I mean, I’m not a smoker, and this made me want two cigarettes and one dry martini at 8:45 in the morning.

Barbara Streisand is a gift to the world from life itself. Her voice is quite literally perfect. I believe I said “WOW!” out loud, standing on the train, but it’s NY so no one looked up or anything. It is difficult to imagine anything better.

Ella Fitzgerald - rather than a strident statement atop a windy hill, the Queen offers a tear-stained love letter of true longing.

Winner’s Circle:

Two performers reigned supreme. Tuxedo-clad warriors, ever-so-gently holding far-too-thin microphones.

For a while, the top performance belonged to multi-talented (and syllabled) Englebert Humperdinck. I could go on and on about this phenomenon, this humble British songbird who felt his given name, Arnold George Dorsey, was too ordinary to achieve the heights of fame he imagined, and proved his instincts correct by jumping across the Pond and earning his own American TV show (which my mother watched every week). Smooth and dulcet, he ruled this competition – until A Man From Wales arrived, with Destiny by his side.

It was almost unfair.Tom Jones can sing anything.Tom Jones could sing your telephone number.Tom Jones could sing a recipe for chicken alfredo.

And the funny thing is, Tom Jones never recorded “The Shadow of Your Smile”, only performed it on his popular TV variety show, surrounded by candles in front of what I believe is a backgammon board, on which he moves the pieces, wistfully, during the verse where the strings take over. I had to find his version on YouTube.

By the time I got to work, I actually felt better. Something about all that talent, topped off with Pure Welsh Magic, took the edge off my bleary haze and set my day in motion.

Obsessive?

Ok, yeah, maybe (perhaps), but I’m still too COVIDY to figure all that out. I really enjoyed how all one tune united all these artists over fifty years. I think I’ll play this game again and give up doom for Lent this year.

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When I was 13 years old, I wanted everyone to call me “Han”. And to speak fluent Latin. Just admitting that up front as research material that’ll be helpful in a few minutes. Also, I knew I wanted to make music, but my favorite album was a toss up between the Star Wars Original Soundtrack and Barry Manilow: LIVE. And then… disco.

Ok.

The local Board of Education just wrote us an email asking our opinion of their high school selection process.

We had opinions, and suggestions, and even the lightest of criticisms, but they weren’t having any of that. They sent a multiple choice form which lacked the space necessary to truly describe the experience. I would like to use this forum to compose a brief yet more comprehensive reply.

It is only fair to point out that the task is nigh-impossible; a million children of which nearly 80,000 are graduating from middle school at once with 542 choices spread out over 300 square miles.

I can’t imagine that many of anything being sorted anywhere. Even a talking enchanted wizard hat would need a lozenge around kid number 24,080. I am not heartless regarding the vastness of the task.

However, given that a great deal of people my age attended “the school closest to their house”, it is difficult to understand this different beast, where children are asked not only what building they want to go to, but the focus of their lives beyond the next four years. High Schools are now specialized with the focus of preparing children for specific career paths. They make no pretense that this school is great in one thing and doesn’t focus so much on the other, so if you have an “other” kid, you should probably look through the extensive database and find an “other” school.

We, have an “other” kid, definitely, and did all due diligence to find that “other” school, but again, it is difficult to ask someone so young what they want to do for the rest of their lives.

Also, “Han”. The person I dreamed up for myself to grow into when I was 13 years old had a leather vest on all the time and a dance floor in his basement that lit up different colors like in “Saturday Night Fever”. I needed, desperately, a high school that taught me about EVERYTHING, so that I could fill in the (incredibly large) gaps in my curiosity, interests, and whatever talents I was attempting to cultivate. A general education, like a grocery store, but with those little tasting stations on the ends of the aisle so I could figure out what I really liked.

“Mmmm. Latin.”

“Eeeugh. Trigonometry.”

The application process was intense. Schools shared a list of basic requirements and then added specific extras on top of that. All of this was laid out in their descriptions, which also had a calculation of “your odds to be accepted” which compared the amount of seats available to the number of applicants adding in a mathematical odds science born not of Las Vegas, but of church basement raffles: every student was assigned a random lottery number. These were not, as you may first imagine, actual numbers, but coded alphanumerical hex lines, as not to alarm anybody who got the last ones.

Of course, someone decoded the numbering system, so that we all could tell where we were in the overall scene of things.

We, got the last one. We were, indeed, alarmed.

Shortly after the lottery assignments, parents began to compare percentiles, trying to casually pop them into conversation.

“Yes, well, kids clothes are more expensive than ever, you’re 100% right. Speaking of percent, we found out that we were in the 32nd percentile for schools last week! What? 44? Well, that’s still above 50%, you should do fine! How did you do?” I was asked.

I always paused a tic before saying, “97.”

AGHAST. Blanching, mouths open, the whole thing. It was kind of wonderful to watch. The looks pushed beyond pity to a Hunchback of Notre Dame kind of revulsion and fascination. Only one person was brave enough to ask “What are you going to do???”

We found some schools that did not use the lottery system, and The Child created, scanned, photographed, and uploaded many portfolio pieces to their server. She filmed videos: animations and narrated collections of curated work. If we weren’t lucky, we would be industrious.

I’ve heard parents say that the complexity and stress level of their children’s applications to college paled in comparison to this experience. Again, it is an impossible situation, tens of thousands of students, but if all the schools kind of taught all the same thing except maybe for some electives, it would be fine. It’s the pigeonholing that’s the main problem.

So if the DOE survey did allow comments, I would have included this letter:

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole six weeks to complete whatever it was you needed from us, but we think you’re crazy to make our kids tell you who they think they are. What do you care? The world sees them as they want to see them, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. My child could be either a brain, an athlete, a basket case, princess, or a criminal. Correct?

But it is our greatest hope that, no matter what school she attends, she discovers that she is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a whole lot more. Not a criminal, though…she can skip that.Sincerely yours, The Michaels.

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Dark physics are occurring in our spice cabinet.

My research has been extensive and the results undeniable; when opening the cabinet, none of the labels, on ANY of our spices, EVER point FORWARD.

A simple need for marjoram immediately necessitates a complex fingertip ballet, where jar after jar is delicately turned around to view its label, which covers about half its surface, but never the half facing me.

And yes, I heard you:

“It’s the way that you put them back in the cabinet!” you said. “You must be looking at the label in your hand, like holding a cell phone, then use it, screw the top on and put it back with the label facing away from you.”

I thought that too, but the thin little plastic part on top with the holes that the spice sprinkles through are in no way consistently positioned, which randomizes the equation.

Why does this happen? I need to know.

I’m gonna apply for government funding.

I will not get government funding.

My deepest and most sincere desire to efficiently flavor a soup is out of step with modern values, as solving this problem will harm an already robust revenue stream where I (quite often) purchase multiple jars of cardamom, onion powder, and mixed Italian Seasoning, filling the cupboard further and exacerbating the problem.

Somebody’s making good money off that, and would rather my spice cupboard remain an X-File. The clarity I desire is an unpatriotic stab in the foot of capitalism.

Of course, I could just get a spice rack for square jars which would always face forward, but we don’t have any room for it in our little kitchen, and the round jars are far less expensive.

So I won’t know which spice is which. Fine. I’ll acquiesce. I’m just a bit of a geek about knowing things, it’s how I was raised, I guess - to boldly go seek out new, well, information.

Now that the Library of Alexandria is in everyone’s pockets, information seems a common resource, not particularly valuable.

Except online, where companies are spending billions to monitor my every keystroke, determine my potential behavior, discover my favorite snack food, and pursue my image and voiceprint with the fury of hungry cats in an alley. Each of my stupid passwords is a digital jewel, desired beyond all imaginable reason. But that’s data, an international primary resource, what we are told is the most important thing about us… just input and incident, without context.

It’s context that turns data into information, personal observation that transforms it further into knowledge, and experimentation that evolves it at last to wisdom: from a recipe – to a first attempt at cooking it – to your own spin on a dish. Theory, practice, innovation.

Does it feel like I’m being metaphorical? I feel like I’m being metaphorical. The last days of Black History Month make me skittish. Let me come at this from another direction.

During junior year of college our dorm room threw a party. Everyone was dancing when suddenly the song “Shattered” by the Rolling Stones came on and everyone began singing… well, speaking the lyrics (it’s kind of a tone poem). I did not know the lyrics to this song. To be in a room where 40 people are all saying the same thing as if I hadn’t studied or gotten the memo was unnerving… even my date was chanting along, smiling at me as if I was going to catch up and remember, which I wasn’t, so I kind of moved my mouth and vigorously nodded.

The same thing occurred a decade later in Las Vegas where Zoe and I had followed some people we did not know through a velvet rope situation and into a secret basement club, where they played the song “Scenario” by A Tribe Called Quest. Again, we did not know the song, but EVERYONE around us repeated every syllable with rhythmic precision. I vowed there and then to learn that song so if that ever happened again I would not embarrass my family, and I did, although the situation has not, as yet, presented itself again.

I used to think these were stories of feeling left out, which in some ways they are, but more pointedly they impressed upon me the bonding characteristic of shared information, how important it can be to know something in direct interaction with others who know the same thing, how that creates a unique bond where the focus is the information itself. And it’s not just shared data, it’s shared experience, as each person brings their own relationship with the information into their expression of it.

I also used to think this was a phenomenon that occurred only with music, but any common experience based on shared facts holds power. When we ask someone where they’re from and it ends up being our hometown, we immediately begin naming streets and high schools - any commonalities inspire exclamations of “Yeah!” and “Did you have Mr. Pearson for math?” and “That Orange Julius was my FAVORITE!”… and a space is formed where two people not only know the same thing, but for a moment are feeling the same thing.

Just before COVID lockdown I was treated to a performance of Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden by a True Friend… we sang for the entire show along with the folks behind us from Long Island and in front of us from New Jersey (and the whole arena). At one point, people who didn’t know one another held hands and closed their eyes and lifted their heads in harmony like the Charlie Brown characters at the end of the Christmas special performing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”.

That’s not data. Data can’t inspire, or bond like that. The dull reflection of comments, tweets, reels and alerts are not who we are. Our constant digital deluge creates so much clutter, obscuring the essential information about ourselves; packing in important facts, memories, and moments with trivia, detritus, and mayhem.

What I want from my spice cabinet is to be able to open it and recognize what’s there, instantly know what I have to work with. I can’t cook if I can’t find the ingredients. In these confusing times, it is similarly important for me to have my courage, passion, dignity, and empathy clearly labeled, free from clutter, in order to better navigate, communicate, and remember what I’m really made of is not AI and crypto, but Billy Joel and cardamom.

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Subways are concrete tunnels containing smaller concrete tunnels, with the only sound absorption provided by the organic objects which move through them (on two legs or four). Thus the full-throated voice of a child careens about the place, bouncing off everything, naturally amplified to a level matching the screech of a mythical banshee.

Of course we all look around to make sure there isn’t some emergency, which thankfully is rarely the case… just another toddler losing their mind over a dire life moment: a binkie has fallen; a plastic non-spill cup of Cheerios™ now stands empty; a boom boom needs – attending to…

Or they may have just seen a blood curdling demon, masked lunatic, or hungry zombie lurching toward them, as our subways feature giant posters on the walls which every now and again promote the latest horror movie or television show. That’s what happened yesterday, and the scream was particularly epic because it was not from a baby but a three year old boy, who was using the opportunity to explain exactly to his mother (and the rest of us, due to the acoustics) his concern.

“I don’t want to go in there!”

“Well we can’t walk, it’s just too far.” His mother was coaxing him through the turnstile. She had moved to the far side of the entrance to avoid a particularly frightening promotion of a haunted house, posted last Halloween. “C’mon, just look this way and follow me over here, we won’t even go past it…”

A train arrived, heading south, filling the station with the sound of screeching metal for a minute. In that time the boy’s mother had gotten him downstairs into the station. As the train left, their conversation continued.

“Look!” The mother stood the child in front of another poster, this one advertising a new Broadway musical; it featured six friendly people who were smiling and waving. “These,” she said, hitting the poster with her hand, “are not people. It is just a picture. These are all pictures. That is not a monster back there, it’s a picture on the wall. That’s all, see?”

As a parent, one quickly learns not to critique other parents. The job is an impossible one, with no instruction book or customer service number to call. We are all just making it up as we go – steering a new being through a new world, the challenges as fresh and plentiful as a farmer’s market.

As subways are not at all engineered with child-rearing in mind, our congruent commuter experience quickly generates empathy toward other parents’ situations. So we hold a door for a stroller, or help lift one up the stairs, or offer our seat to a family trying to keep their kids from careening like pinballs once the train starts moving.

Thus the problem of the underground nightmare gallery was a familiar one. I remembered when we delivered a similar speech to our own child, that pictures were not objects. We used colored pencils and the Rene Magritte painting “The Treachery of Images” – the one showing a pipe with the words (in French) “This is not a pipe” beneath it.

I drew (as best I could) a cat.

“This is not a cat.” I told my daughter. “It is a picture of a cat. It doesn’t eat food or purr or chase anything.”

“That’s not a good cat, Dad.” my daughter critiqued. “Let me help you.”

She drew a better cat.“This is a better cat.” she told me.

It was a better cat, with more convincing whiskers and perkier ears.

“That IS a better cat,” I admitted, “but it isn’t a real cat. You understand that, right?”

“I know it isn’t a real cat.”

“So when you see a scary picture of a monster, you know it isn’t a real monster, right?”

“I’m not scared of the monster,” she told me, applying detail to the cat’s tail, “I’m afraid of the picture.”

I never tried to convince my daughter that monsters were not real. I didn’t think was fair, because certainly I’ve seen some monsters.

On a grade school visit to the aquarium, a tour guide turned over a horseshoe crab and I just about fainted. (This is not when I was little: this was when I served as a chaperone for my daughter’s trip. Don’t look it up. Yipes.) The world is filled with just about everything. It’s ok to be wary of some of it.

But I was impressed with her honesty and self awareness. Due to our household’s general nerdiness she already understood that the monsters on the screen and posters were just people in make-up or special effects from a computer. She could change her own face when we played with Snapchat. Reality wasn’t a problem for her. It was the images that bothered her.

She quickly learned the locations of these posters and, while holding one of our hands for guidance, closed her eyes to walk past them. She got so good at this that she wouldn’t miss a step or slow down, even a little bit.

It took me years to realize how truly genius her system was, because as an adult I retained a bit more ego about navigating the world, and did not admit to myself that the volcano of tragedy and mayhem force-fed to me everyday wasn’t a volcano of tragedy and mayhem but instead a volcano of pictures of tragedy and mayhem.

At its very worst, it serves pictures of someone else’s actual tragedy and mayhem. But most of the virulent headlines are pencil sketches of potential threats, rough “coming attractions” posters of shows that might get made, or might not.

And as much as the situations are disheartening, it is, indeed, the pictures that get me down. I can deal with mayhem, but I tire of its advertising campaign. So now I walk through the world with my eyes open, holding the hands of trusted friends, not looking at the walls, and just focus on where I’m headed.

And maybe, every now and then, I scream a little.

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My mother would find “her shade” of stockings by holding a large plastic egg shaped container upside down to see the color swatch printed on the bottom of the paper sleeve it was in. They all looked brown to me, just various browns, like the multi-tone color cards in the paint section.

She would hold the container next to the back of her other hand and kind of tilt her head to the left and narrow her eyes a little. I realized that they were supposed to match somehow, like her makeup did, but I wasn’t a sociologist. I was in it for the plastic eggs.

I really loved the giant plastic eggs the hose came in. They were fun. At Easter, the eggs came in bright colors. For Christmas, they were SHINY. I once made a whole space village out of them for a book report diorama, covered in black light paints.

I realize now that they did sell hosiery without a fun toy for less money, but my mother, an excellent person, supported the simple joy that a young boy could derive from the upcycling of mass market packaging, and from time to time indulged me by purchasing more expensive hosiery just so I could have the egg.

They still sell L’eggs, but not in the eggs anymore.

Those were surely not recyclable.

(Sorry, this is not about the eggs… it’s actually about the hose.)

Unfortunately this week I suffered a particularly gruesome shaving accident, necessitating the immediate triage of a dime sized portion of my face. Well, my throat, specifically, right in the middle.

After a incredibly well-deserved yowl, I eventually covered the spot with a large Band-Aid™, which all agreed made me look like a perpetual priest as its light colored stripe just above my collar and tie was unavoidable. Nevertheless, I wore that for two days.

I was then asked to substitute for someone in an interview situation that would be filmed; with my bandaged throat I looked like Frankenstein’s monster’s soul brother… all I needed was two large bolts poking out of the sides of my neck.

Then I remembered that Band-Aids™ sold bandages in various skin tones. The drug store next to my office didn’t have them, but did have a store brand version in 7 different options, designated by a numbering system which seemed a bit random, to be honest.

As I stood there, holding several different boxes up to my hand, tilting my head slightly to the left and narrowing my eyes a little, I realized that I was darker than a 70, but not as dark as a 50, for some reason.

I bought three boxes of different shades. When I got back to the office, I called home on FaceTime for Zoe’s emergency opinion. “I think 50 works the best.” she agreed.

“But, remember, you’re kind of a 40 on your face.” she added.

She was right: my forehead was an 40, and my hands were 70. I was a puzzle, a melanin mosaic. This was so much harder than when I figured out if I was a Carrie or a Miranda (miranda).

I finally went with the 50 for my throat, as it blended in nicely with the five o’clock shadow (since I wasn’t brave enough to shave near the area yet).

The interview went well.

Satisfied with my bandage purchase, I checked on the drugstore website to buy more, but the company does not make these any longer. Even Band-Aids™ now only offers three shades from the expansive array introduced in 2020. There are now other small companies that have this option, and I greatly appreciate the effort, as it IS a difficult product to sell (my winter number and my summer number are always going to be different).

The original Band-Aid™ color was “flesh”, a kind of peach tone. I always took that for granted, because there was a “flesh” colored crayon the exact same color.

I think it was the fact that everything made in “flesh” color MATCHED that made me just accept it… it was obviously something that people knew, like that Parkay wasn’t butter. I thought if a monster was hungry for human flesh, I was safe as houses. I was, apparently, only covered in skin.

Crayola™ now has a selection of 24 crayons and markers called “Colors of the World”. Pantone, the company that trademarks colors for print production, now has a SkinTone guide with 138 selections available. My daughter knows nothing of “flesh”, her reflection is light medium golden, or Pantone 7515-C.

As a three toned household, we most often go for the highly decorative, colorful adhesive bandages, the ones that stand out no matter what and often glow in the dark or something.

“I have a Boo-Boo!” they cry out to the world. “Look upon me and gently wince, experiencing a harmony with my human experience!” they silently yell to those glancing on the subway.

But this week, while these bandages last, I will have the luxury of concealing a wound. I will not have to deal with concerned looks in ZOOM meetings or questions in the elevator. It’s a tiny dignity, a teaspoon’s measure of stress removed from my day, and I appreciate it. I will quietly heal beneath a custom made adhesive social subterfuge, hoping that this wound will not scar and leave a circle of 35 in the middle of all my 50.

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During the Pandemic I had the opportunity to work with a group of black artists to produce an event during February, which naturally became associated with Black History Month. But since the event’s content focused on science fiction, it was decided we would celebrate Black Future Month instead, telling stories that focused on what might be rather than what had been.

This appealed to all the artists, but not all of the organizers, who were confused at what they considered a wasted opportunity for us to celebrate George Washington Carver again, whom we all highly respected, but just were going in a different direction.

Their blatant disdain inspired a “teach-in” session; the works of Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, and N.K. Jemisin were introduced, as well as the box office success of the MARVEL film “Black Panther” where a scientifically advanced yet somehow still firmly agrarian society thrived behind camouflage in Africa. I spoke quite passionately of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, coining it “the most successful afrofuturist manifesto ever created”, as the images and situations he spoke about were, at the time, far less likely than walking on the moon.

The detractor was not convinced. Their argument was that the audience for this event would be expecting the names and situations they were familiar with, and to supplant the invention of peanut butter for “Wakanda Forever” would be met with the same intense disappointment as if we traded La Befana for Santa Claus. “Play the hits.” they insisted.

We resisted, and said that if this event was supposed to focus on the authentic cultural truths of a specific group of people, and we were those people (whereas the organizers were not), then they could either read the room or employ ChatGPT and Canva to create a dynamic PowerPoint display in our stead.

They relented. The event was successful, quite futuristic, and authentically expressed the artists reality. I didn’t understand what the big deal was, yet the organizer’s disdain regarding what the artists wanted to say was only equalled by their keen enthusiasm to publicly promote them as partners, like on a date where they say they want to learn all about you - but by dessert you’ve figured out they weren’t really listening, just admiring what you were wearing and hoping that one of their friends sees you together.

I am ten years older than Black History Month. It used to be just a week long, but in 1976 President Gerald Ford signed an official White House declaration regarding it: ten years later it was even recognized officially by Congress.

It’s not a law, by any means, and can’t be enforced in any way… it’s a theme, nowadays most prevalent on the streaming channel landing screens which invite you to enjoy the comedy of Eddie Murphy and music of Beyoncé.

And yet, disdain. Such disdain. Good grief, it isn’t even like the checkout people at Target greet you with a “Happy BLM!”. Nary a seasonal thematic peep. Not even at Whole Foods. It’s only a suggestion to remember to consider to think about something.

Like all commemorative holidays, Black History Month just promotes information and empathy, focusing the dignity of a certain sociological group, which is why, obviously, it’s a national problem.

In 1890, Jacob Riis published a photograph series of the slums in Manhattan. While the northern part of the island was in the midst of a Gilded Age, the Lower East Side was an unimaginable ruin, the literal antithesis of the glorious splendor a few miles away. His folio, “How The Other Half Lives”, shocked the rich and powerful into action, even inspiring a young Theodore Roosevelt to seek sweeping reforms. Folks had no idea it was that bad, the situation seemed terrible, and those families deserved better.

In the late ’60s and early ‘70s, network news brought a distant conflict directly to America’s living rooms. Unlike the upbeat jaunty “Let’s Get ‘Em, Boys!” films of World War II, the daily television broadcasts showing the Vietnam War from the ground made many uneasy, and they began to question the costs versus what they were told would be gains from the outcome. Thus, many were not surprised when the nation began not to think as one, but fracture over the issue, because folks had no idea it was that bad, the situation seemed terrible, and those soldiers deserved better.

For 25 days in 1977, over 150 members of the Disability community occupied the federal building in San Francisco, demanding legal protections for disabled citizens nationwide. Fueled by years of frustration, they banded together and were seen by millions through television news reports. This attention brought pressure on the local government to negotiate in earnest, and when they left the building, their efforts had created a seminal step in the long road toward getting the ADA signed over twenty years later. This action held sway because folks had no idea it was that bad, the situation seemed terrible, and all those people deserved better.

Now, would you just look at that. Men, in suits, had to negotiate, make concessions, and share space and funds! For goodness sakes, how many of these kerfuffles could have been avoided if folks just hadn’t known things and felt things. I mean, my word.

It’s hard to understand any problem when it’s not our own, and even harder when we don’t have context or contact with anyone dealing with the situation. Information and empathy are society’s bridge to one another, a particularly powerful cocktail when art is added as a mixer.

However, the deep belief that some folks deserve better, that each person should get at least a fighting chance to thrive and build a life for themselves, is a personal conviction that cannot be generated from a photo or a news story. One is either an advocate of dignity, for all people, or they are not.

Dignity. Empathy. Information -

- oh…now I see the problem, I had never laid it out in that order… of course, you would have to take care of that, like right now. Yikes. Very dangerous.

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My body is way fancier than me.

It simply HAS to have the latest flu, while it’s still pret-a-porter, before those knockoff hags get their greedy little paws on it and shovel it everywhere. But I’m not a heartless Cruella DeVille about it, I share it freely with my family. Why, just last weekend we were all in the car for a Saturday drive, zombielike and gently wheezing, simply dizzy with designer disease. How jealous the people passing us looked in the grocery store parking lot, with their clear vision and sinuses, as we blearily opened and closed our eyes for several minutes trying to remember where we were planning to drive next.

Where we drove next was a tiny store by the water in upper Brooklyn that sold blind boxes - limited runs of small custom figures, each one wrapped in opaque foil and placed in a little cardboard box. The idea is that you don’t know what you’re going to get - a general illustration is on the outside, but the exact figure that you unwrap could be one of many options. It’s like a pack of baseball cards. Or children.

It didn’t occur to me until I first saw my entirely newborn daughter that this was the one I was going to be taking home, because in every other situation involving a Major Life Decision there were variables to consider. The location of an apartment, the durability of a sofa, the miles-per-gallon and color of a car - all weighted with pros and cons created many options to compare. But children are a blind box situation - a little surprise that grows into a very big one.

There are those kids that look like what they’re going to look like when they’re older when they’re younger. (#worstsentenceever) When first introduced to the world, my child was an infant doppelgänger of Chris Bauer, the actor who portrayed Sheriff Andy Bellefleur on the HBO television show True Blood. There was, and I feel statistically sound saying this, no possible way to determine who she is now from where she was at that exact moment.

“Is she all ok?” my wife asked. She was still on the delivery table and had sent me from my entirely useless spot next to her head offering color commentary on her miraculous achievement to taking assessment of general health and finger/toe count to report back to her from the bassinet the nurse had placed the baby in.

“She’s great.”

“Ten fingers and toes?”

I counted again. They were really small, and we hadn’t had much sleep, and my first count had been eleven.

“Yep. Ten of each.”

I told her that I was absolutely not going to show them to her until after she had seen the actual baby, but I had taken the photos that Zoe had requested. I was surprised they let me bring my camera into the delivery room. I took a few full body shots and some close-ups of the toes. Now I was just standing there, watching her move, languidly and dreamlike, arms kind of waving in the wind.

“What’s she look like?”

“She’s perfect.” This was my Yelp review. This woman had made a person and I wanted her to know that without any kind of doubt she had done the absolute best job.

“I know that, but what’s she look like?” my wife asked, demanding a higher level of detail.

I considered our newest family member closely. “She looks like a gritty southern lawman who enjoys beer and deep fried foods. But…little and sleepy..”

“Aw. That’s great.” my wife replied. They had finally come in with the drugs after 15 hours of organic pain management, and she was what I’m gonna call “ok with that”.

Life is a blind box. I mean, we make choices but who really knows? “Things” could “go one way or the other”… we look at situations from the outside and try to determine where they’re going but there are SO many factors to consider. I’ve given up on predetermined notions; I’ve watched a tiny grumpy bayou sheriff grow into a spectacular young woman, a book that most certainly could not have been read by its “cover”.

So I look at all life like that now. For instance, our viral-loaded Saturday drive ended up to be a glorious day, a true stay-cation, where we each chose two blind boxes and then opened them over gluten-free Thai food before heading home to go to bed at 8:30 PM. Hera got a farmer, dressed as a chicken. Zoe got a cute cat that had been altered by radiation into a giant crab monster.

But I had chosen a box from a series of capybaras who had oranges on their heads. Seven of the possible figures were round, as the creatures were sitting down or eating or lying on their backs, but there was a different one where a capybara had become a bodybuilder and was standing up flexing. (Blind box toy design does not at all benefit from the question “why?”) The flexing figure was tall and not round, so I figured if I lightly shook the boxes, one would sound different from the others.

Science. And it worked. Our muffled laughter at that restaurant table was the best medicine we could have taken, besides actual medicine. We all ended up laughing ourselves to sleep on a day that began as uncomfortable as they come. I’m not suggesting that indeterminacy equals hope, but from now on I’m going to “lightly shake” every new day to better my odds. You never know.

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I bought another chin-up bar. The category is actually listed as “pull up bars” now, I guess you don’t have to make it all the way up with your chin. Maybe that’s too much pressure, like calling push-ups “full body straight arms” or sit-ups “nose touching knees”. It’s still a valid sit-up even if you aren’t sitting ALL THE WAY up, though mine are kind of “lean-ups” now, when I try to do them.

( Ahem. I apologize. Give me just a second. I’m just a wee bit… distracted.)

Observant viewers may have noticed the word “another” in the opening sentence: indeed, this is my fourth chin-up – sorry, pull-up bar. The second in the last 2 months.

The very observant might be moved to comment that I do not in any way resemble a person that owns home exercise equipment, in that my physique doesn’t seem all that exercised, in any observable fashion. You would be correct. I do not resemble girth, or tone, or mass, or being jacked, ripped, cut, or swole. But I have indeed purchased home gym equipment, a pursuit that ironically does not take much physical effort these days. Amazon allowed me to accomplish this task from a prone position on the couch with my feet up and my head at an uncomfortable angle, poorly supported by throw pillows. Fourteen calories, max.

( . )

This pull-up bar has metal cups that screw into the wood of the door frame - the ends of the bar fit in these cups to make certain it doesn’t slip or fall. We have wooden doorframes. We are just renting the apartment but the building is renovating every unit that empties now – creating two apartments out of every one. When we leave here, these walls will be destroyed and replaced, along with the door frames. Not that we won’t putty over the holes nicely and repaint them anyway. We’re not barbarians.

The wood in our doorframes is strong enough to hold the bar, but there is some question as to how the frame itself would handle one of those new “pressure” bars that just stretches out to push against the frame, held only by the friction of its little rubber ends. There are cracks, in our apartment, here and there, lines of fatigue. I don’t know if it can take all that pressure - it looks great, and it’s not the apartment or the doorframes fault, it’s doing its job nicely, but there is only so much it can take.

(hmn.)

My third pull-up bar, the one from last month, worked on a new combination of physics where there is a piece that goes on the other side of the door and then locks down against the top of the door frame over there, while the bar is locked by gravity against the side of the frame on the front. My family forbid me to use this one. Once it was assembled, it looked like a strange musical instrument with no strings or mouthpiece that you played by shaking it sternly.

My family is against the entire chin-up bar - pull-up bar idea. I don’t know why. Perhaps this is a compliment, a validation that they consider me a valued member of the household with no need to become jacked, ripped, cut, or swole. Perhaps (more likely) they don’t want to hear the agonizing noises of me attempting pull-ups every day.

We used to have a pull-up bar in our old apartment. It was one of the expanding ones, with black suction cups on the side to hold it. I’ve never trusted the suction cup, particularly on porous wood surfaces, even with latex paint covering the wood, because if the bar falls someone could really get hurt. During the move to this apartment we lost one of the suction cups, so it still had the ability to expand, but couldn’t hold its place on the wall because no matter how much pressure was applied, it lost its grip and the instability was overwhelming. Again, it wasn’t its fault, just that the situation was so

(Ok. I see. I think I’m getting it now. I’m sorry… I’ll stay focused here. This is a lighthearted romp through the joys of acquiring mid-level exercise equipment, meant to brighten your day (and my own) but I feel my distractions may be leaching into the groundwater here. Again, all apologies. I’ll continue.)

My very first pull-up bar was in my room at home. It used to be so high in the doorframe that I had to jump to reach it. I would play a game where I would run the three steps from the doorway to my mother’s bedroom, across the hall, and then jump on the bar and S W I N G into my own room, then mark how far I could fly. I did that for years, until my mother warned me against it, which caused me to immediately over-correct and jump too high, missing the bar altogether and hitting it instead with my forehead, the velocity angling me nearly ninety degrees, at which point I landed dramatically on my back facing upwards, the perfect position for my mother’s languid “told you so” on her way to the kitchen to make an ice pack.

I am not attempting to get “jacked”, I just want to maintain the strength I’ve gathered up ’til now and not lose my flexibility. I’m older, far past the point where I have anything to prove to anyone or show off for any reason. I just want to remember, as days progress, the very baseline fact that I am at least strong enough to support my own weight, to start each day affirming that (while most likely generating effort based noises), and to remind myself, when things seem somewhat overwhelming, to keep my chin up.

,

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