Mourn the lost art of Letter-writing? Well, Don't.

Recently, I’ve been reading essays that lament the lost art of letter writing, and in some ways they’ve echoed my own feelings on the matter.  But I’ve also concluded that grieving the loss of letter writing is moronic, because writing letters is still an achievable quest.  It’s like mourning the loss of...say, hamburgers.  Who the hell is stopping you from eating a Big Mac?  No one - not even my high-maintenance vegetarian daughter.  And no one is stopping us from writing letters, either - not even the barely viable U.S. Postal Service.  If you miss getting letters in the mail, try sending one first.

Up until about two years ago, my friend in Milwaukee and I corresponded via letters several times a year.  We decided it was simply a more satisfying way to converse than email.  When I noticed one of her letters amongst the daily piles of junk mail, I handled it with eager anticipation and mentally set aside a time when I’d be able to relax on the sofa with a cold drink in hand and really digest the letter’s content, rather than the cursory scan I give messages received on a computer.  A letter is more urgent.  More tangible.  More vivid.

And more meaningful.

Receiving a Dear-John Letter?  Heart-breaking.  Receiving a Dear-John Text?  Merely off-putting.  A love-letter?  Inspiring.  A love-text?  At best, kind of cute.  Maybe.  Possibly.

And how much less meaningful would it have been if Joe Cocker had sung,

                She sent me a text

                Said she couldn’t live without me no more

Not sure that would have been a hit.

So over the years, my friend and I kept up our letter writing, technology be damned.  Year after year, we shared our thoughts and fears and dreams on paper.

And then we didn’t.  We just stopped, the same way so many others have.  But no one forced us to.

Last week while visiting the FDR museum in New York, I read a copy of the Pearl Harbor speech that solidified the United States’ commitment to join the war in 1941.  It was typed with several hand-written cross outs and substitutions, including FDR’s decision to add the word “infamy” in place of “world history.”  And it made me wonder: what archives will remain of President Obama’s and future presidents’ tenures as commander-in-chief?  Will we gather around a hard drive?  A printout of texts?  Will we get to read Obama’s message, “FYI, we got Bid Laden.  LOL.” 

What will remain?

All three of my kids are currently at camp, and the best part about it isn’t having a quiet house or a chance for my wife and me to dine together; it’s the letters they’re sending to us that so beautifully capture their personalities.   Just today, I received a letter from one of my daughters, and she wrote:

Grandma wrote me again and wasted no time in telling me that (my sister) has one-upped me in letter writing, so I may have to write to her again soon.  I finished reading In Cold Blood and I have to say HOLY CRAP!!  It scared me out of my mind!  But so well written!  Go Truman Capote!

Yeah, it’s nothing highbrow or earth-shatteringly important, but it captures her spirit in a way that’s seldom conveyed in an email.  And who knew that camp could reinvigorate a dying art form?

I’ve enjoyed receiving these letters so much that I’ve made a decision to write a letter a month ongoing.  It could be to a relative or a friend.  It could even be to someone living in my house.  And it doesn’t matter if I get one in return.  I’m just going to write.  Maybe you should too.

And who knows?  Hundreds of years from now, maybe our rather mundane lives will be studied and analyzed the way historians today research the life and times of great men and women from years ago, not because of the content of our years on Earth, but because ours will be the only lives captured through a tangible trail of the written word. 

Memorialized by default.

The Internet is (apparently) Not Forever

We’ve been led to believe that the internet is forever, but the recent disappearance of two treasure troves of worthless data have convinced me otherwise.  Diamonds may be forever.  Some say God’s love is forever.  An old photo of you puking your guts out at a party in 1988?  That’s probably forever too, which is exactly what’s prompted parents worldwide to have The Discussion with their college-bound offspring. 

But cool websites that offer hour after hour of procrastination opportunities for those avoiding their responsibilities?  Those are ephemeral fantasies, subject to the whims of corporate stupidity and pimple-faced techno geeks who, rather than postponing sleep into the wee hours by perusing trivial websites, stay up late destroying them, leaving guys like me wondering what the hell to do when insomnia strikes.

In 2007, a brilliant archive of Siskel and Ebert’s movie reviews was made available for cinema lovers.   Although the database didn’t include the early PBS years prior to Disney’s purchase of the show, every review from 1986 to the present was viewable in all its digital glory, searchable by movie title, actor or director.  Also available were special programs on the Oscars, top-ten best movies of the year and worst movies of the year.  What more could a film aficionado desire?

After an illness stole Ebert’s ability to speak, Disney attempted to revive the show, but in 2010 it was cancelled after 24 years of national syndication and a full 35 years after Siskel and Ebert began reviewing movies on PBS.

Bummer, right?  But oh well, at least fans still had access to a great database of movie reviews.

Not so.  Disney/ABC pulled the plug on the database, further corroborating the assumption that corporations are run by numbskulls.  Since the database had already been created, and since no new movies were being added, keeping the website fully functional would have required minimal resources, and I’ll bet that enough movie lovers would have paid a small annual fee to keep the archive not only operational, but profitable.  I know would have.

In the end, The People shall prevail.  In lieu of a corporate-sponsored archive, two movie lovers have started the website siskelandebert.org, whose mission is to grow an on-line collection of complete Siskel and Ebert programs that viewers themselves donate.  The database continues to grow, and unlike the original Disney-sponsored site, this one includes shows that pre-date the nationally syndicated shows that started in 1986.  It’ll probably never be as complete as what was offered on the original archive (as of this writing, 1986 only has 9 episodes), but it’ll at least be a viable option for those of us who like to piss away our lives living in the past. 

Now for the not-so-happy ending to another tragic loss of worthless data.  Fans of prog-rock will likely remember the amazing forgottenyesterdays.com, an extensive tour log of the group Yes, detailing every performance since their inception in the late 60s.  Set lists, transcriptions of what was said between songs, fan reviews and remembrances of the shows, ticket stubs  – it was all there.  So if you wanted to, for example, learn details about the show you attended during Yes’s Relayer tour in 1974, jogging your memory was only a click away.  A more meaningless yet fun-filled hour of perusing a website there has never been.

And perhaps, never will be again.  The site is down, and has been for over a year, apparently due to a virus that rendered the database useless.   There’s no word on when it’ll be back up, if ever.

Note to hackers everywhere: if you must hack, can’t you hack something we can all agree on, like...I don’t know...how about neo Nazi or Al Qaeda websites?  You’d finally get some support for your efforts – applause, even.  But a site dedicated to the best prog-rock group ever?  Come on!

All this just goes to show that nothing in life is as permanent as we’d like to believe, or at least not the stuff worth saving.  Sure, that time you got canned for flipping off your boss (note: this is not a personal anecdote) might haunt you to your grave, but our attempts to record our histories – both personal and societal – are open to destruction.  What’s cool is that very often, they can be built back up again.  Like Aaron Lansky’s  efforts to save and revive a dying language (if you haven’t checked out the book Outwitting History, it’s a great read), sometimes people prevail over incredible odds.

You hear that, Yes fans?

College Costs: the Game-Changer

College campus tours.  Early action and early decision admissions.  Net price calculators.  Online-applications.  Annual costs exceeding annual salaries for many American families.  Graduates with mortgages, minus the home.

I haven’t even dipped my toe in the cesspool of the college admissions process for my children, but already I anticipate drowning in it.  In two years time, I suspect that managing my twin daughters’ college application process will drive me to the brink of insanity.

But talking to friends who are currently knee-deep in deferments, financial aid applications, scholarship and grants is interesting to me.  From a distance, it’s all very fascinating.  There’s a rhythm associated with the college application process that’s oddly compelling, akin to understanding the tax code in hopes of maximizing your return.  There’s terminology to learn, rules to understand, and advantages to be gained, as if there’s a hidden code that can be cracked to set you on the road to success.

In fact, I love to talk about the current college process, as long as it’s with people whose kids aren’t mine.  When I consider my own children, the process begins to sound stressful, overwhelming and ridiculous.

In the fall of 1985, when I applied to a grand total of one university, none of the current complexities were on anyone’s radar.  Not only had I never toured the University of Wisconsin, but my entire experience at UW was a football game during which I focused on the cheerleaders and a two-week camp that confined me to a sliver of the campus.  Neither my parents nor I ever entertained the idea of touring universities.  No one even suggested it.  My parents didn’t nag me about what I wanted to be in life or where I wanted to study.  And costs weren’t much of a concern.  Even working for the minimum wage of $3.35 an hour, I could easily save enough money during the summer to pay for at least a semester of tuition at UW.

My oh my, how times have changed.  And costs.  College costs are a game-changer.  No longer can people afford to have little Johnny attend a school he’s never visited to earn a degree he’s never heard of before.  Now kids have to grow up and grow up fast.  Don’t know what you want to be when you grow up?  Start looking.  Study the projections, or you might just wind up in the field with the highest unemployment of recent college graduates (do you know what it is?  Read on.).

The idea of attending a university to learn how to learn, to study the classics, to understand the world around you – that’s a hard sell when the prospect of graduating with over a hundred thousand dollars in debt looms over you like a death eater at Azkaban.

Several years ago I had a drink with a guy who said that when his children go to college, they’re going to have to show him the job statistics that support their preferred major.  I found this idea absurd.  “What if your child wants to become an archeologist?” I said.  “Show me the numbers,” he countered.  “If you can’t get a job in that field, then you have to change majors.”

I walked away thinking this was one narrow-minded guy.   And yet...

In the last decade, how many fathers watched their sons and daughters do what they wanted to do in college only to become one of the ever growing number of unemployed architects?  Yes, that’s right.  A major in architecture, according to a study quoted in TIME Magazine, has the highest unemployment of recent college graduates.

So now my drinking companion seems like a genius, years ahead of his time.

Of course, predicting the job market is messy at best, and you never know if your kid could be one of the few to obtain a foothold in the profession of his or her choice.  And while I’m certainly not advocating pushing children to major in something they have no interest in, I am advocating sharing with your children the realities that to them are no more tangible than their mortality.

Consider asking your son or daughter the following question: “How much debt do you suppose you can graduate with and still manage okay?”  It’s a good question.  Let’s say your child says something like $50k, not an unreasonable amount.  Okay. 

But your child has no concept of what $50k is.  None.  Do you?  What is fifty thousand dollars? 

Fifty thousand dollars is a $580 dollar per month payment for the next ten years at 7 percent.  And you still don’t have a building to live in, a car to drive, a place to park, food to eat, electricity, water, cable, internet, heat or anything else.  Furthermore, student loan debt is the one debt that can’t be discharged through bankruptcy.  And one day you’ll find someone to marry, and in all likelihood, he or she will also have loans of $580 a month, maybe more.  What if you marry a doctor, or worse – a doctor of philosophy who’s racked up $120,000 in debt ($1400 per month) and who’s selling extended warranties at Best Buy?

Sounds crazy, but read October 17, 2011’s issue of TIME Magazine, and you’ll learn that these numbers are not at all far-fetched.  There are graduates right now who, like the country they live in, are never going to be out of debt.  Ever.

Things look pretty bleak, and they're not necessarily going to get better, but there a few things parents and students can do to make life a little less painful.  I’ll discuss this next week.

The Beagle Has Landed

Singer-songwriter Graham Parker once wrote:

Children and dogs will always win

Everyone knows that

I won’t work with either one again

It’s not in our contract 

These lyrics must have seeped into my subconscious, because for years my standard reply to my children’s request for a dog was a resounding “No.”  Either that, or “Sure, we can get a dog, but you have to kill the cats first.”

Neither response was appreciated.

Some days, after denying my children their only opportunity for happiness, I’d watch the neighborhood dog owners walking their canine friends and think a bit about who I used to be and who I’d become: a man unwilling to get a dog for his children.  What had happened to me?  After all, I grew up with a dog, a hyper Maltese named Butch that peed on my record albums and frantically ran in circles when I came home.  My friends and I chased him in the yard, we let him lick our ice cream on hot summer days (ew!) and we searched throughout the neighborhood when he got away (which was often, almost as if he didn't want to be our dog).

Even after Butch left us for that Great Big Dog Park in the Sky and I grew into a young adult, I considered myself a Dog Guy, the kind of guy you’d see at the park with his trusty golden retriever strutting by his side, its tongue dangling happily, pretty women smiling as a more handsome version of me walked by.  What had happened to that guy, aside from the hair loss?  Why such an aversion to dog ownership?

Part of the answer could be attributed to what can only be described as a double homicide.  Six years ago, my sister’s dog, Murphy, killed both of my daughter’s hamsters, not by eating them exactly, but by using his teeth to play with them until they were dead.  And though the event traumatized us (to this day my daughters block out Murphy’s photo on our refrigerator with a strategically placed magnet), the murders did provide us with an opportunity: a silver lining, if you will.  We now had a clean pet-slate, the equivalent of using a small house fire as an excuse to update one’s living room furniture.  We could now purchase whatever family pet we wanted without worry of compatibility for the rodents we’d been keeping in cages (and whose lids weren’t quite as secure as we’d thought).

Time to get a dog, right?  Nope.  On a whim, we chose a couple of cute, flea-ridden kittens to join our family, and though Murphy’s murders could have been blamed for my avoiding a canine companion, the truth is that in the back of my mind I kept hearing that Graham Parker tune:

Children and dogs will always win,

Everyone knows that

In a sense, I had internalized that lyric, the way one might internalize a parent’s suggestion not to eat yellow snow.  It was just good advice, and instinctively I knew that I, as an at-home dad and writer, would be the dog’s keeper.  I would walk it in the morning.  I would walk it at lunch-time.  I would walk it in the afternoon.  I would feed it, play with it, train it, scold it.  I would be the one left to schedule dog-sitting when we decided to head out of town for a few days.  It was all on me, baby, and I wanted no part of it.

Children and dogs, my friends, will NOT always win.  Or so I thought.  

On a frigid Friday in January, I walked past a friend of mine bending over with a blue, plastic bag as she picked up a mammoth-size turd that her Alaskan Husky had happily laid.

“It’s come to this, has it?” I said to her.  She laughed.  I laughed.  And I thought to myself, “What a silly, silly woman you are and what a smart, smart man am I.”

Twenty-four hours later, I was picking up poop.

Children and dogs

And wives.  And cell-phones.

Not one full day after my little quip, my son and I were enjoying a warm winter’s day, unusual in Illinois, and I was experiencing what can be only described as a joyful mood, equally unusual.  And then I received a text with a photo of a small brown and black beagle licking my daughter’s face and the accompanying message from my wife: “Can we take her home?”  I, in my crazily joyful mood, unable to see anything but the best in everyone and everything at that particular moment, texted back, “Yep.”

And so what started out as a shoe-shopping trip for my wife and daughter, ended up with me picking up Toffee the beagle’s feces later that evening.

Toffee is perfect for us.  Like the wands of Olivander’s Shop in Harry Potter, I feel like dogs choose the person.  At the adoption center, Toffee, with her floppy ears and mournful eyes, chose us, and who were we, the chosen, to say no?

These days I walk Toffee in the morning, I walk her at lunch, and most days, I walk her in the afternoon while my children attend their after-school activities.  I feed Toffee, play with her, train her (sort of), and scold her (lovingly).  And soon, I will be the one left to schedule dog-sitting when we decide to head out of town for a few days.  

And it’s all good.  Sure, children and dogs will always win.  Everyone knows that.  But we adults are the benefactors.

Our cats?  Not so much.

Wherefore art thou, Harry Potter?

In 2009, after yet another Oscars ceremony with five best-picture nominees that no one had seen, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made the decision to double the best picture pool to ten, thereby ensuring that at least a few blockbusters would make the cut each year (the snubs of “The Dark Night” and “Wall*E” were probably the deciding factor).  Increasing the nominees to ten would – in theory – raise ratings, promote the industry in general and lead to more ticket sales.

For the first couple of years it seemed to pan out.  In 2010, “Avatar” and “Up” – both top-ten grossing pictures – were best picture nominees, as were the “The Blind Side” and “District Nine.”  Things seemed to be going exactly according to plan (although “Avatar,” the biggest money-making motion picture in history, lost to “The Hurt Locker,” which came in at 116 for the year).  And last year, big money makers “Inception” and “Toy Story 3” made the list, with “The King’s Speech” – coming in at eighteen – taking the award.

This year, I have to believe that some of the bigwigs in the Academy were shuddering when the best nine picture nominees of 2011were announced (for reasons unkown, they dropped the number of nominees to nine this year):

"The Artist"
"The Descendants"
"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"
"Hugo"
"Midnight in Paris"
"The Help"
"Moneyball"
"War Horse"
"The Tree of Life"

Some of these movies are still in theaters and will be sure to add to their totals, but as of today, “The Help” is the highest grossing of the bunch, coming in at thirteen.

Not exactly what the Academy was hoping for.

For a guy who only sees about ten movies a year (and most of them being of the “Puss in Boots” variety) I somehow managed to see five of the ten best picture nominees.  A small miracle.  And I can tell you straight out, none of them was any better – and some were worse – than ”Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2."

The most successful franchise in motion picture history doesn’t even get one nod in the major categories?  Not even an Alan Rickman best-supporting actor nomination?

Seems a little silly.

When “The Return Of the King” won best picture of 2003, it felt more like a “thanks for three successful movies” award than overt recognition that it was in fact the best movie of that year.  Had the final “Harry Potter” movie been given the same honor this year, it would have earned the award.  At the very least, it should have cracked the top ten. 

But just like with the NCAA tournament, no matter how many you allow in the Big Dance, there will always be some on the bubble who are snubbed.  This year, it was Harry Potter.

Maybe next year the Academy could expand the number of best picture nominees to twenty?