Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
RIP: Greenwich DTC Chair and friend, Dave Roberson
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 03/12/2010 - 13:05“In the end, we all die alone”. Last November, Greenwich Democratic Town Committee Chair Dave Roberson started off his tribute to his recently deceased father challenging this view. He spoke about those who cared for his father in his final hour and he spoke of his belief in that “great cloud of witnesses” that Saint Paul talks about.
Monday, Dave challenged that view again. The newspaper reports talked about a witness who saw Dave’s car veer off the road as he suffered an apparent heart attack. They talked about the EMTs that pulled Dave from the wreckage and tried in vain to save his life. They did not talk about the angels or the great cloud of witnesses that I am sure God sent to be with Dave as he moved from this world to the next. Perhaps some of my sleeplessness Monday night was not due to the stresses in my own life, but my spirit longing to be near an old friend as he moved on as well.
Dave had a lot of friends in politics. He was a cheerful, dedicated, hard worker. As I think about his life and the crowds that will gather to memorialize it, I remember a scene from the movie Norma Rae. In it, Reuben Warshowsky, a union organizer, talks about his own father’s death and those that came to the funeral
On October 4, 1970, my grandfather, Isaac Abraham Warshowsky, aged eighty-seven, died in his sleep in New York City. On the following Friday morning, his funeral was held. My mother and father attended, my two uncles from Brooklyn attended, my Aunt Minnie came up from Florida. Also present were eight hundred and sixty-two members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and Cloth, Hat and Cap Makers' Union. Also members of his family. In death as in life, they stood at his side. They had fought battles with him, bound the wounds of battle with him, had earned bread together and had broken it together. When they spoke, they spoke in one voice, and they were heard. They were black, they were white, they were Irish, they were Polish, they were Catholic, they were Jews, they were one. That's what a union is: one.
That is also what we, the friends of Dave Roberson are: one. We became his friend through politics, through church, or many other activities. We might not all share the same religious beliefs or political beliefs, but we share an important kinship, or friendship with Dave Roberson and hopefully that will spur all of us on, to work for a better country and a better world.
I will miss Dave.
Note: For those of you who have not seen Dave’s tribute to his father, I am including it below the fold.
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Juxtaposing Blog Posts and Museum Exhibitions: A Deconstruction of a Family Trip to the Whitney Biennial
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 03/04/2010 - 10:13”Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow.” Said Mrs. Ramsay. “But you’ll have to be up with the lark,” she added.
Miranda is home from college for winter break. Not completely home, she’s staying at her mother’s house, and she has her own life now. She’s studying art and would rather spend time having lunch with gallery owners in New York than dinner with her dad and his family in Connecticut. Of course the best of all worlds might be if she could go museum hopping with Fiona, Kim and I in New York.
Kim had to work, but we decided to take Fiona out of school for the day. She has been longing to see her half-sister and a trip to the Whitney Biennial could be a great educational experience. Unlike Mrs. Ramsay in Virginia Woolf’s ‘To The Lighthouse’, I did not expect Miranda to be up with the lark, and we planned a late morning train.
What a lark! What a plunge! My thoughts shifted to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. I discovered Virginia Woolf in my college days and fell in love with her writing. She captures a world from a viewpoint so different than I had developed growing up on a small farm in Western Massachusetts and that diversity of viewpoints I found so intriguing. Slowly, I grew out of my fascination for the outsiders that Hermann Hesse portrayed to the crazy older men of other great literature. What did Mr. Ramsay struggle with as he tried to get beyond ‘R’? What opium induced visions did Augustus Carmichael see as he shuffled past Mrs. Ramsay, reminding her of the inadequacy of human relationships.
Some one had blundered.
As I thought of these characters, various idealists from Anton Chekhov’s plays came to mind. Marcel Proust joined the fray and the opening line, For a long time I used to go to bed early comes to mind. Fiona went to bed early before the great trip to the museum, and my thoughts mingled together into strange dreamlike sequences as I drifted off that night.
The train ride in was uneventful. Fiona was full of excitement about seeing her big sister. Miranda was full of excitement about seeing the Biennial. I settled into my role of the crazy old uncle. I had thought about titling my blog post something like, “Having a Crazy Uncle for a Dad”. As we talked, I asked Fiona what she thought ‘art’ was. I explained that it sounds like a very simple question, but really, it is very complicated. She admitted it was complicated and started talking about things that are painted. I asked if a painted house, car, or mailbox is art. As we talked, Fiona decided that everything was art and moved on to other topics.
Is this blog post art? How does it compare to the video of people talking about America projected on to the cracked windshield of a 1960s era ambulance? What is the purpose of art? Miranda was less interested in those installations that were making some sort of political statement. If she were older and more cynical, I could hear her deriding anything except art for art’s sake. Yet what is the ‘sake’ of ‘art’? Towards the end of the exhibit, we looked at a painting by Mark Rothko and Miranda talked about how he resisted his work being called abstract and berated using words like ‘juxtaposed’ to describe it. We joked about so many of those little write-ups on the walls using words like juxtaposed and deconstructed. I remember the old joke about people who can’t do, teach, and wandered if something similar applied to these art write-ups. Those who can’t do art, write little descriptions for the walls of museums.
At one point during the visit, I glanced out of one of the rare windows in the Whitney to the scene outside. I remembered the old homeless man that Miranda and I had seen dumpster diving at Grand Central. What is art? What is its purpose? What do we learn by juxtaposing the homeless man against the Whitney?
More immediately, what am I doing here, writing my blog post about going to the Whitney with two of my daughters? How do blogs fit into the greater picture? Where does other technology fit in?
For me, perhaps some of it comes back to the crazy old men who look at life a little bit different. Perhaps I’m becoming one of them. Perhaps, I might even cause someone else to stop, if even just for a moment, and look at life a little bit differently. I know that my experience at the Whitney has caused me to look around a little more closely, and I hope it has had a similar effect for my daughters, as well as for others that visit it.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, Lion and Lamb
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 11:45The wind was strong last night and I did not sleep well. It was March, coming in like a lion. The weather forecast for the next couple of days calls for rain and snow, but the sun is shining right now.
March seems like a turbulent month, as winter passes to spring and new growth comes. It seems like a particularly good month to start off with the childhood invocation for good luck, “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit”. Perhaps this turbulence and luck will come through for people starting new jobs, looking for new jobs, or simply for exciting new projects. Perhaps the turbulence and luck will come to people as they rebuild their lives after earthquakes or personal traumas.
There are so many things I need to write about, but many of them take a bit of time and so I’ll go through my normal start of day, start of week and start of month activities, and hopefully have more to show a little later.
Bloomers and Lingerie
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/05/2010 - 09:44Every day, I try to visit a wide variety of blogs to get a sense of what people beyond my own geographic, political, socio-economic cohort are thinking. Sometimes, it is fairly clear what people are thinking, other times, you just have to ask yourself, “What were they thinking?!”
Yesterday, I stumbled across two very different viewpoints that I thought I would juxtapose. The first is an article, Selling Sex To Little girls, Miley’s 9-year-old sister launching a lingerie line for kids. “What were they thinking?” seems to be a common response. Some have asked how this is different that little girls in tutus and leotards in their ballet classes, or three year olds in the Dora the Explorer undies. Others have said that it looks more like Jon Benet Ramsey. What were they thinking? Perhaps all that they were thinking was, “Cha-ching”
It made me think of one of the blogs I often visit. Penny Raine describes herself as a “born again, spirit filled, blood bought, Christian” and asks on her Facebook page, “Is what you are living for worth Christ dying for? While we were still sinners Jesus died for us.” This is also reflected in her status, “know that if you are a Godly parent desiring to raise Godly children that you have an enemy, he seeks to steal and destroy your children, he is a big bad, wants to eat your lunch enemy, and he will stop at nothing, but ... not to fear cause we serve a Jesus who has overcome the world and we will overcome here too!”
On her webpage, she describes herself this way:
Let me see, to introduce myself. Well obviously my name is Penny Raine, I am momma to 8 youngins, 1 with Jesus, the rest still here all in one house, that is until last year when the oldest got married. Now she has a husband and they have a home of their own and a baby on the way. I am wife to minister hubby known locally as “jumpin Jim” we have been married since ‘86, goodness how many years IS THAT? We all live on a horse farm in Mid TN where our favorite thing to do is worship the Lord.
With that, she shows a picture of her family leaning against an old blue pickup truck, with three of them wielding guitars. I suspect that Jumpin Jim puts on a real different show than Miley Cyrus does and I suspect that I probably have some strong disagreements with Penny and Jim on politics and theology. But I also suspect that Penny and Jim are much closer to being my kind of people than the Cyrus family.
One of the things that Penny promotes on her blog is Jumpin Bloomers which sells “modest clothing for girls of all ages”. The outfits are cute and remind me of the clothing some young Mennonite girls would wear to Sunday School when I visited their churches in Ohio back in my college days. It also made me think of the sort of clothing I always imagined Laura Ingalls Wilder would wear as she moved from big woods to the prairie.
One of the things that many of the bloggers do is have various contests to build traffic. Penny is having an Apron Giveaway contest to promote her blog and jumpinbloomers. I had read about the contest and initially decided not to enter. I usually don’t go for these sorts of contests. I’m not likely to write a review of a blog for a one in a hundred chance of winning an apron or some other little trinket or treasure.
However, the contrast between Jumpin Bloomers and Noah Cyrus’ lingerie was just too great to leave this without a comment. So, shake your head at the Cyrus family’s latest venture, but don’t stop there. Join with others to promote young girls clothing that glorifies childhood instead of glorifies sexuality.
The Crowd Sourcing Winter Vacation Contest
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/04/2010 - 09:43Fiona’s week long school vacation starts a week from tomorrow. It will include Valentine’s day, President’s day, Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, and probably some other important days I am not aware of. In other years, we haven’t really done anything special during winter vacation. It has conflicted with my work or my wife’s work. However, this year, we really need a few days away.
We’ve talked about various things to do. We could go into New York City, or maybe up to Boston for a day of exploring museums. We could go Cape Cod for a few days and walk on quiet beaches. I started looking for ideas online.
One site I checked was Festivals.com. They listed Dance Flurry, the great folk dancing festival up in Saratoga Springs, NY. Last summer at Falcon Ridge, we spent a bit of time with folks from Bungieville, a group of dancers from Long Island that always camp together at Falcon Ridge, and dance together at Saratoga Springs. Unfortunately, it conflicts with a few things, so we won’t be at Dance Flurry.
Festivals.com also listed the Chainsaw Rendezvoux. This is a weeklong gathering of chainsaw artists in western Pennsylvania. It seems like a fairly long trip to see some chainsaw artists in action, but it does sound very interesting.
The State of Maine’s Festival Page for February listed a nice collection of winter festivals, and we might head up there. However, many of them are focused on snowmobile races or ice car races. Races don’t rank high on our list of interesting things, but there is also going to be ice sculptures and fireworks.
I’ve wondered if sites like Dopplr, Where Are You Now?, CouchSurfing, Yelp, 43 Places, Upcoming, Foursquare, BrightKite, or some other set of sites might be helpful in finding a special vacation.
Then, it occurred to me, why don’t I put this request out on my blog, and spread it to various social media sites? So, I open it up to friends, followers, readers, and anyone else that stumbles across this website. Share your best idea for inexpensive, interesting things to do in the North Eastern United States for a husband, wife, and eight year old girl. If I get some good ideas, I’ll recap them in a later blog post, and perhaps do some blogging and other social media activities from the event. If it comes from a blog in one of my blog networks, I’ll through a little link love in there too.
So, what do you say? What fun events are happening in mid February?
