"Today We Celebrate Our Independence Day!" / Memories of my Grandpa Manny

First and foremost, happy 4th of July to all my American friends. Happy Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way out, You Ungrateful Colonials Day to my British friends, and Happy Super Bowl Sunday in July Day (AKA Rah Rah America Kicks Butt Day) to all of you who see this day that way (which really is what it is).

One of the things that my family thinks about on this day is the fact that on this day in 1958, 60 years ago, my grandfather Manny died of liver cancer. We didn't know much about him other than how he was the guy in the military uniform in this picture. In a lot of ways, that was better than knowing the painful last days of his life. There's no reason to relive them other than they were, so I'm not including them here.

That said, today, I found myself thinking about him, as this was the day of his death. Not many members of my family are dutiful cemetery visitors. As I talked about before, I went to visit my gram's grave after a visit from her spirit earlier this year (you can read about that HERE). However, I plan to go for his birthday on the first Sunday of August, when I'll also see his wife's (my nana) grave (it's been over 20 years on that).

My nana was always a strict Irish Catholic, so it was hard to think of her marrying a Jewish guy, knowing how important Catholic instruction was to her regarding our upbringing (it was said that he would have converted for her). Unfortunately, we caught her at the end of her life, so we never got to see her as younger and in love. For this, it was a shock to read his missives of love on the back of their honeymoon photos (you can see them all HERE).

Anyway, this day isn't about that for all of you, but to me, Manny is my heritage, even if I've never met him. You can see more of him HERE, if you're into old photos and the like. If not, you can skip ahead to the 4th of July stuff.

If you're into songs that reflect America, HERE is an old post of mine. They're not patriotic (think Billy Joel's "Piano Man), but when it comes to the "National Anthem," I prefer Jose Feliciano... especially to Fergie.

For most Americans, you're probably out picnicing and having fun with your fireworks (ours are getting rained out as we speak - the thunder and lightning have come and gone), or you are swimming (we already did, and that was great for a 95° day, though it did feel like Caddy Day in Caddyshack), then I hope you had a great day.

Maybe you're watching the Mel Gibson pretend to be American for the right to kick British butt in The Patriot (great movie by the way). Oh yeah, a really young Heath Ledger was in that, too. I'd recommend it if you're into war movies and all.

Then, there's the best ever 4th of July moment, Lou  Gehrig's speech. Who wouldn't want to be Gary Cooper getting a chance to act this out? By the way, if this isn't the best emotional black and white movie, then it has to be It's a Wonderful Life. Yeah, Pride of the Yankees is that good (especially since he wasn't part of the Steinbrenner Yankees, who made that team the Evil Empire).

So if we know today, Independence Day, for anything, it's probably these several things...

1) Lou Gehrig's speech and the greatest baseball season ever, which I wrote about last year HERE.

2) Thomas Jefferson and John Adams' shared death day.

3) That spat with the British.

4) The day Thoreau went to Walden.

5) Stephen Hiller, Russell Casse, Thomas Whitmore, and David Levinson saved the world in Independence Day, a gem of a movie from 1996.

Thus, I give you my 20 most important thoughts on that movie now.

1) Yes, kids, there was a time that Will Smith universally mattered. Of course, the last mass appeal movie he was in was Hitch in 2005. I liked the movie Concussion, but unless you're into an ESPN feature as a movie, then you might not. He was also great for a bit part in Anchorman 2, which is one of the funniest movies of all time. However, from his days as the Fresh Prince to Independence Day to Men in Black to the great beyond, he really doesn't have a niche to fill. He goes from awesome comedic action to serious action to serious movies. Then, he gets known for his kids, and well... he was more fun giving Carlton the biz. Nowhere is he better though than in this movie (though I respect his work in Fresh Prince for making him a part of our generation). Who wouldn't want to be this smack talking, handsome hero who gets to save the world?

2) It seems that 2005 was a good year for last good movies as it was the year Tom Cruise gave us the solid, scary War of the Worlds. You'd have to go back to Jerry McGuire a decade earlier to find a movie he starred in that I can watch again and again (let alone watch). There is his bit part in Tropic Thunder, which is a film that people either love or hate. Let's just say that they were trying to be offensive to almost everyone and succeeded admirably. Only Good Luck Chuck brings that much ire to a movie (in my wife's opinion).

3) Bill Pullman's President Whitmore returns him to the foray that he is best at - losing the girl. While losing Meg Ryan to Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle is OK (after all, they're both nice guys, but Tom Hanks? All of us would bow honorably to him... provided he doesn't have Da Vinci Code hair). At least he won the day with his bullet dodging Singles performance of losing Bridget Fonda to grunge rockin' Matt Dillon. The only good movie he gets the girl is Space Balls. I mean, he's a nice guy, and you'd want your daughter dating his younger self, but he's not box office smolder (then again, I'm not either).

4) The girl who plays Bill Pullman's daughter is Mae "The Duff" Whitman. She was pretty good in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is a good movie, but a better book.

5) If you're going to lose your wife, it's probably best to lose her to an alien attack, so the situation can help you want to kick E.T.'s butt off the planet, Hulkamania style. I'd be willing to kick E.T.'s butt in Trump's Space Force. Really. Who wouldn't?

6) Alien abduction jokes are always funny - unless you're Betty and Barney Hill.

7) Randy Quaid's Russell Casse proves that existence precedes essence (the key to existentialism) as he abandons being an alcoholic with post-traumatic stress from alien abductions long enough to fly a fighter jet and kick E.T.'s butt. When his weapons jammed, he had the presence of mind to fly straight at the alien ship's big gun to commit to the utilitarian course by martyring himself to save the world (thus dying a hero). Too cool!

8) All of those Roswell references before Roswell got big. By the way, this movie made me want to see Roswell when I drove cross country in 1998.

9) The whole Vivica A. Fox stripper with a heart of gold thing, where she's wonderful enough inside that Will Smith still wants to make her his bride. He may not get to fly on the space shuttle due to prejudicial thoughts, but at least she feels that she makes good money to feed her family.

10) If you're a stripper with a heart of gold and you're trying to escape from a fireball, then your dog will never die if you also have a post-toddler cute kid son with a backward baseball hat.

11) Stephen Hawking would agree that aliens coming to see us isn't a good thing.

“Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they could reach,” he said. “Who knows what the limits would be?”

“Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well.”

12) Thus, it seems only too obvious that the stereotypical ditzy wannabe blonde with the dark hair, who is carrying a sign to welcome the aliens will be the first to go.

13) Independence Day marketed itself as having the test audiences go crazy when the White House blew up. That said, taking out NYC, too, made for some hella good special effects.

14) Does Harvey Fierstein's character have a purpose as anything other a stereotypical gay / Jewish man in a role that really doesn't do anything? How was that not left on the cutting room floor? Let's just say that this character wouldn't float in 2018.

15) Robert Loggia and James Rebhorn were meant to be generals. They play their parts perfectly.

16) In a movie with limited characters in different parts of the country, it's only obvious that they'll manage to connect with one another despite moving across time and space in a way that wouldn't even be possible if they went via wormhole.

17) Soon after Independence Day, another movie began its classic experience with New Mexico's Very Large Array and R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It." That movie was Contact, and it's one of the greatest movies every according to Chateau Glass's inhabitants. Truth be told, I watch that much more than Star Wars.

18) All of those environmental references aren't just political ideology placement. They actually reflect how in the book, the aliens die due to an environment that they can't inhabit. Go figure. They're still ideology I can get with, but ideology nonetheless.

19) I really like the modern twist on viruses with a computer enemy. That works really well within the context of the movie's at the time modern take.

20) Independence Day was the first movie I saw after coming back to America in 1996. I actually walked 1.5-2 hours each way in the heat to see the movie. It still holds up well. While it's not perfect (hokey scenes like the magical reunion at the end and some other ideology stuff placed in for "message" to the youth effect), the movie is a solid 9/10. For a 22-year old movie based on special effects and a now dated period of time to hold up that well puts it in one of my favorite movies of all time. 

I hope your holiday included a little bit or a lot of bit of it!

Guardian Angels and Messages from beyond the Grave: My Gram's 100th Birthday

            February 13^th is my grandmother’s (Gram) birthday. I’m not sure if I’d remember it if it weren’t in a group of days that includes my mom's birthday (the 11th), Lincoln's birthday (the 12th), and Valentine's Day (the 14th), but every year, I always make a note of wishing her a happy birthday so that I can reflect on her life and how much she meant to me while I was a kid growing up. 

            On the other hand, I couldn’t tell you my other grandmother’s (Nana) birthday. It's not that I didn't feel close to her. I did feel that she cared about me, but it was just done with a strict Irish Catholic overseeing. Here, I do think she did and does her best to ensure that I don't drift from religion and that type of meaning in life. Perhaps she's the impetus to the need to go to church or to do things with church-related groups, which I do. On that note, I did go to church for the first time in ages to get my ashen cross for Lent this year. I'm sure she had something to do with that, especially my decision to follow the priest's homily to give up the hardness in my heart and to love while doing kind deeds and everyday sacrifices. 

             This year, I started to have this feeling about a week before her birthday that I really needed to go to my Gram's grave to visit her. There was something in me that wanted to tell her how things were in my life since the last time that I really saw her, especially regarding how much she’d like my wife Heather, my nephew Dylan, my sister’s husband Matt, and his kids CJ and Val, who have joined the family since her passing. Another part of me wanted to talk to her about how surprised she would be at how much everything changed since she passed (November 1994). Finally, a large part of me wanted to tell her how much I missed her. In that moment of overwhelming need to visit her, I found myself overcome with emotion, which signaled me I definitely needed to be there.

            I'm not sure what the last non-Alzheimer's memory I have of her is. By the time I came home in November 1990 to show her my Air Force uniform, dressed in it when I picked her up, she didn't know who I was. By that time, she was scared of a lot of things. She had old memories of my dad, but eventually, she lost all of them to Alzheimer's (I wrote about that HERE).  

            In this feeling of needing to see her, I wasn’t sleeping or hallucinating, let alone daydreaming, but instead, it felt like I was receiving a sensation / request that I had to fulfill. I've never had a moment like this before, so I'm not really sure how to describe the train of thought I experienced. All I can say is that I really needed to do this, so nothing, not traffic, other obligations, or a car in need of body work, was going to keep me from going to visit her.

            I drove over to the cemetery on Tuesday to pay my respects before I went to teach class. When I arrived, it was drizzling slightly, so I drove extra slow down the Churchtown graveyard path looking for the elusive "Glass" on the grave belonging to her and Dan (the grandfather I never knew as he died before my dad was 2) before I arrived at her resting place. When I got out, I saw a Christmas wreath and the dates of her life. Somehow, I knew what the year of her birth was before I got there, but I really didn’t know. To be honest, a part of me thought maybe she was born in the early 1920s, but I was wrong.

            February 13^th, 1918: her 100^th birthday.

            As I stood there crying, I found myself laughing at how she must have been calling for me, the grandson who came over weekly during his childhood to play Star Wars, build forts, and watch television like Different Strokes, The Facts of Life, and Saturday Night Live when Buckwheat died (she wasn’t sure if it was real since they played it pretty straight other than Eddie Murphy doing his over the top imitation). And there I was, plastic flowers in hand to give her a colorful bouquet that would survive the Amish Country Pennsylvania winter, crying my eyes out because on days like this, I could really handle making a pillow and blanket fort in her house instead of facing the world.

            In the days I knew her, she did fill it in puzzles and chain-smoked, while always being there for me with a place to go, love, and weekly presents of baseball cards or Star Wars figures. In the middle to late 1980s, as I said, her Alzheimer’s disease kicked in and devastated her and hurt our family as well. Now, we sit wondering if the bomb that went off inside of her is hereditary for those of us who have descended from her position on the family tree (as we wonder how far back these medical concerns go).

             Gone were the days of listening to Mel Tillis and taking me to the local movie theater to see movies that I wonder if she actually could tolerate (such is being a supportive and loving grandparent). I prefer not to think of those days. 

            In the same way, I don't think much of who she was growing up or during the days of my dad growing up other than remembering she was a single mother at age 16. To this, she had a warning to my dad that carried over to me (if you're going to do something that could have you end up being a dad, be sure it's with someone that you love enough to be with if that situation occurs). Knowing how her life effectively stopped in many ways, long before it ever began, the world of being a single mom with family helping raise children from the 1940s to 1960s and living life beyond that as a housekeeper at the Hassler Home, I think that's fair advice.

            Anyway, when I came home from work, I bought some Valentine’s brownies, and my wife and I celebrated her birthday because it’s what she would have wanted. Somehow, it felt to me that she knew how to get in touch with the world by finding me in that vision. After all, I'm the person who won’t allow certain parts of the past to “die that third death,” thus assuring that people live on infinitely through words, deeds, and images. While her former apartment is now so changed it's hard to see it as anything other than the address she lived at since the building is completely different, I don't mind as much as losing memories of her image in Florida or her dream to go to Hawaii, which my parents fulfilled. 

            More importantly than going down Memory Lane, Heather reflected how she’s my guardian angel, here for me in my time of Parkinson’s as she has some clue of what it means to have a neurological condition that can devastate everything. I have to say that there’s something comforting and reassuring in knowing that I have a whole lot of someones looking over my shoulder, no matter what side of the grade said person is on.

            For that reason and others, while I find myself skeptical to certain experiences, I truly do believe in life after death and divine intervention. I believe in fate, and I believe in ghosts. I believe in Heavenly-directed paths to where we're meant to be. I also believe in the evil side of the coin. That said, while experiencing the blind in my bedroom fly up at 2:00AM, the first night we moved in the house in 2009, plus other incidents of casual appearance that happened here may seem spooky, not all incidents of haunting and appearance are meant to be scary. Like the image of my wife's mother appearing as a butterfly at her sister's wedding or our great niece Ava appearing cheerfully to her sister Lydia, the other side isn't always about monster movies.

             Sometimes it's just about checking in and showing some love.

Jonathan Kozol's Theft of Memory REVISITED SEPTEMBER 2018

Minor updates in September 2018 - see also THIS for more about my Gram.

            A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I read a pair of books that knocked my socks off. These books, SavageInequalities and Death at an EarlyAge, both by Jonathan Kozol, reflected the feelings of how children in the inner cities were abandoned to economic inequality and the brutal issues that go with them. It’s easy to process how, even now, reading those books now could make a person feel like he or she is just like I was when I read them in 2000, inhaling them and wanting to change the world by making such a large leap to affect the world.

            And for a fair bit of time, I really and truly considered it until I realized I didn't have what that environment took in the second half of my student teaching with some tough luck 6th graders (though some were really and truly great kids).

            Of course, like anyone compelled to move toward a program that they advocated for, like Teach for America, there is the reality of why that huge endeavor is such a "noble idea" (registered trademark) and, at the same time, an unattainable victory for the vast majority of people who enter into it (though not all – some people are truly able to connect in such a tough environment and we need more people like them and Kozol fighting for others). Such is why Teach for America has a meticulous screening process before depositing well-meaning suburban people into inner city classrooms that present more challenges than a good social justice warrior could possibly figure out a way to battle through.

            Rescuing worker people (i.e. those people teaching) from these conditions just isn’t the end goal of this program (though it is a necessity). Rather, they want to affect as many children as they possibly can. Unfortunately, The Onion’s different realities of this (A and B) are more real for many people who leave the show and get put through this show.

I remember one girl who got disqualified at the second Teach for America interview. She was a strong student that I worked with, a cute, bubbly college gal, and a committed savior of the world (not that there's anything wrong with that). She would have given her all, but they saw something in her. Maybe it a bad interview, but more likely, it was just that she didn’t have a tough disciplinarian bone in her body or they sensed that she couldn’t have handled the failure of so many people despite giving it her all part. Failure sucks, but failure is worse when our own failures lead to other people’s failures or failing to meet subjective value terms of success (after all, not everyone is going to create a situation like Stand and Deliver). Even with 100% effort and a smile on her face, she just didn’t have something in her interview to be allowed to continue into it. I remember that she was heartbroken about this and how I thought that they did her a favor since she needed to grow into the full-fledged adult version of herself in a different way.

Her life was meant for something else. I’m not sure what since we were never close, but still, I’m sure she’s doing something else exceptionally. However, the great endeavor of getting in there and affecting people with education when they never got it before is such a tough battle that represents a bigger challenge than almost anything. To be a role model, everyday teacher, mentor, assistant, helper, or anything like that to include a playground leader type babysitter / daycare center worker is something that seems more attainable and more purposeful for people learning the ropes (and I remember going through my education classes thinking that a lot of elementary education majors would have done better in roles like daycare center worker since they didn't have enough across the curriculum skills to teach English and Math). I say that in a serious way that in no way demeans those jobs since we need great caring and intelligent people to do them, but rather to say those jobs takes teaching reading, math, or science EXCELLENTLY out of the equation and doesn’t fight to get homework turned in while still fighting for these kids’ breakfast and lunch as well as a positive tomorrow for kids who are wrestling with that prison sentence of youth, which faces down gangs, poverty, and anything that could implode in the early levels of Maslow’s food, clothing, shelter, and safety.

            I can’t imagine living like that. I don’t think anyone who didn’t live life like this could envision it, but I say once again that I’m glad that there are people who can do this and do this well enough to make dreams like 90 90 90 schools a hope. When they can give the real and get the results, then they have truly achieved something, even if the number above is too much of a stretch.

I know how in my experiences in 16 years of teaching, when wrestling to have students complete homework and read assignments as well as to deal with attitude, I’ve felt challenged to the extremes of my ability, and that doesn’t even get into prep time, overcoming life issues, redirecting expectations, speeding things up for the fast students, and slowing things down for the slow students while still grading and coming to every show as much of 100% on as I can be. Teaching is tough. It’s not just showing up and processing data. It’s about giving a hoot and having heart. I couldn't imagine doing that in a situation like this, and for those who do, my hat is off in salute to you.

For this, even though I know my calling is never going to be that of Mr. Kozol in the mid 1960s, I find his commitment and efforts to educational advocacy and empowerment are top notch incredible.

Recently, I had been looking at his books for a student of mine who is truly incredible. Said student spent a large chunk of her life giving back in difficult conditions (a decade or so of missionary nursing work in Guatemala), and I though these books would benefit her future. As I was looking for them, I came across Kozol’s latest work The Theft of Memory, which was about his parents’ death and his father’s Alzheimer’s disease. As my grandmother also had Alzheimer’s, I felt compelled to read it seeing as it came from a writer I truly respect.

            When I picked this up, I thought I would think more about my Gram while I read it, but I didn’t. I did think about her peripherally, but Jonathan’s relationship with his father Harry, who he called “Daddy,” reflected on a neurologist who used hermeneutic phenomenology to express the early days of his diagnosis and his need to be diagnosed for a situation he, himself, had treated and that now would come to reflect his final days. To me, that was something very valuable, both for neurological insights and for personal empathy and understanding, which are, as always for Kozol, very strong.

Much of the senior Kozol’s life reflected on his being a doctor, his marriage, his failing body, and how he treated and analyzed Eugene O’Neil (a famous American playwright) and Patty Hearst as well as a murderer named Albert Desalvo. To me, I related more to those sections out of solid interest in the cases as well as the history of them. Much of the talk of Kozol’s mother, also suffering from age-related memory loss, felt like it plodded through save for her revelations of the complications of being married to Harry and their infidelities, which somehow felt like “something that happened” while each of them did what they had to do in order to make their team work.

As that infidelity is not my life, I can't justify or explain it, but it was something that was their normal.

The story traces the arc of diagnosis to death with memories that come from his father’s medical notes. In that time, his father goes from nursing home back to his home through his son’s love and some amazing caregivers being there for him until Harry’s body finally gave out at 102 years.

Here, I did think of my Gram. I had spent many weekends with her until late elementary school. I got to hang out on weekends, play with Star Wars figures, make forts, and be with my Gram, who I don’t really remember talking much, though she was kind and loving consistently. If not for her, I wouldn’t have had near as many Star Wars figures, that’s for sure!

My Gram did her fill-in puzzles all the time. When she was diagnosed, she was still doing them, but when they were looked at to see how much of her comprehension was left, the letters were gibberish and not words. She was still chain smoking. That was something she remembered she did, but eventually, she forgot that, too. Isn't it funny how, sometimes, the worst can do OK things, too?

Eventually, Alzheimer’s patients forget a lot of important, loving things going back through the years, and yeah, these aren't OK.

The last memory of my Gram is Christmas 1990 after the early days of Air Force training. I picked her up at her care facility in my uniform. She didn’t remember me, and it just hurt. I had a lot of hurt at that point in my life after struggling to adjust to the Air Force, but something in that situation put the icing on the cake.

I remember seeing her again in 1992 and 1993, but after that I never saw her before she died in 1994. I was in England at the time, and I couldn't make it home for the funeral. It was just too far and too much for the family to make work since I was in England.

Nevertheless, in reading The Theft of Memory, the end of it (final 3 paragraphs of the very powerful epilogue) put the last 3 decades into perspective.

            “It will soon be seven years since the night I bent down by his bed to press my ear against his chest and listen to his breathing and his life come to the end. But even now, and even after rounding out the story of his sometimes turbulent complexity, as I’ve felt obliged to do in order to keep faith with the reality of who he was, it is the reaffirming memories that crowd out all the rest.

The sense that I was on a journey with my father – seventy-two years is a good big piece of anybody’s life – did not end abruptly on the day I buried him. On cold November nights when I’m in a thoughtful mood or worried about problems with my work or personal missteps I have made, and go out walking by myself along the country roads around my house, I like to imagine that he’s there beside me still, tapping the old cane of his, making his amusing comments on the unpredictable events and unexpected twists and turns in other people’s lives.

Perhaps over the next few years, that sense of the continuing companionship will fade. It probably will. But some part of the legacy my father and good mother gave me will, I know, remain with me even when their voices and their words and the expressions on their faces and the vivid details of their life’s adventure become attenuated in the course of time. Some of the blessings that our parents give us, I need to believe, outlive the death of memory.”

And here is where I knew I learned from her. I was given time to be me. Pictures of her are still in my office. I never knew her as a wife (my grandfather Dan died before my dad was 2). I never thought of her as a single mother, but she was to my dad and his half-brother Bob. She did housekeeping at a nursing home to make ends meet. All in all, she was a tough lady, and for all she did for me, my dad has gone on to do this for my godson.

If this is a review of the book, then the book is 4/5 though I don’t see myself rereading it, though the last chapter was powerful. The stories of nursing home failure and finding meaning with powerful caregivers resonate that there are people who care and make a difference out there.

One of those people is Jonathan Kozol. If you want to see how his father’s memories play out in him, the ones that fought with him, pushed him, and encouraged him, are all on display in the videos of him. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be influenced to make a difference in a tough luck situation and have what it takes to do it.

We definitely need good people who can push through to be great for others in many fields.