Tag: zeitgeist

Florida

Sun, sea and sand!!! The enduring image of the state of Florida. It seems it has been advertising its sunny and seductive presence to winter weary northerners in a palette of pinks and pale blue and orange forever.

Invariably garish. Gigantic billboards. Often in neon. Bigger than life. Florida and oranges have always been closely associated.

I have lived in Florida off and on now for over eight years. I could not be more surprised to find myself here but such are the mysteries of both life and love. It is much less gaudy place than I remember it from the Fifties.

One winter, my parents decided to drive to Florida. They followed the route snowbirds still take today. The I-95 interstate highway opened in 1956 and started on the Canada/US border from New Brunswick at Houlton, Maine.

The impetuosity of that trip fits what I remember about my father’s character. A new and interesting option had opened up. I can see him intrigued and eager to explore. So that is what he did. Headed South on the big, brand new highway, with his family in tow.

We often stayed at Howard Johnson motels along the way. My heart would jump when we pulled into the parking lot and saw the familiar orange and blue logo looming large in front of us.

Howard Johnson no doubt had amenities like swimming pools and vending machines to lure families in. All I cared about were the clam strips. Unreplicated in any restaurant I’ve ever been to until this very day. Perhaps that is nostalgia’s memory.

My most real and enduring memory of Florida was driving our car on the beach. I was beside myself with excitement. We drove on the sand in our big maroon Chevy with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and miles of beach grass beside us as far as the eye could see. I was surprised we didn’t sink.

I remember the wind whipping through the open car windows. The sun beating down from a blue and cloudless sky. The sense of joy and freedom of that day is unmatched in my memory.

I remember little else of that vacation except warm, happy memories. I must give a nod to Georgia. The old plantations were open to tourists where beautiful Southern belles sauntered in elaborate and colorful hoop skirts with parasols to match. There were demigoddesses in the eyes of an impressionable child. I may have aspired to be one when I grew up.

What was not evident at the time were black people. Maybe I couldn’t make a distinction back then. Perhaps there weren’t any in the locations we visited. Black voices would have been mostly silent in that time. Especially in the South. Blessedly, we saw no strange fruit hanging anywhere. It may simply have been that they were kept well away from the tourist traps.

Florida today has not lost the natural beauty, warmth and tropic lusciousness it has in my memory. But I cast my mind back through the tumultuous social history the US has gone through in the sixty-odd years since our family had that momentous vacation.

Florida today is a world where unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was brutally and senselessly murdered by a paranoid white man. It is where the USA’s only female serial killer was executed, less than an hour from where I still live. It is the home of radical, lifelong Republicans to whom Trumpism is next to godliness. Store clerks still wish everyone a “blessed day.”

Change when it comes can either be painfully slow and way too sudden. We seek oases of calm and stability in a world that is marked by constant change. In Florida, it is a fascinating and perplexing mix of old South, tourist mecca, retirees’ paradise (no state income tax is one hell of a draw) and ongoing tension between races and social classes.

We live in a predominantly white community. Yet only a few miles away, in a poorer section, a young black mother of four was killed on her doorstep by an angry white woman because the black woman’s children inadvertently trespassed on her property.

That seems the general Zeitgeist in America today. Uneasy tensions abound. The center cannot hold. Indeed, these days there doesn’t seem to be much of a center at all.

But Florida is still here. If the world does not soon implode, it always will be. Sunny. Seductive. Awash in sun, sea, sand and Disney characters. It changes when you live here. You see these elements for the marketing advantages they are. Day to day life is different. Just day to day life.

A more personal pain point is that Hojo’s went bankrupt and has gone out of business. No more exquisite clam strips.

Such is the egocentricity of self-interest. Such is the refuge of the politically impotent. And the politically discouraged.

Think I’ll head to the pool for a swim.

House Keeping

I am enticed by and enjoy fine TV British dramas such as Downton Abbey and the older, but venerable PBS stalwart, Upstairs, Downstairs.

Prominent in every cast of characters is the terse and tight-lipped housekeeper who reigns over the various house servants in her domain with an implacable and impeccable air of quiet authority. She perpetually carried a faint air of disapproval and danger. Cross her at your peril.

The skill of keeping a house used to be a marketable trade. Right up there with plumber and electrician and carpenter. Mind you, when English country manor houses were roughly the same square footage as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, considerable management skill was required.

Keeping an English manor house would have been the origin of the modern day skillset of project management and logistics. Admission to the hallowed halls of keeping a great house usually started with apprenticeship.

Emerging housekeepers started their careers at a young age starting out with ignominious job titles in ignominious jobs: scullery maid, house servant, kitchenmaid, chamber attendant, scullion.

You worked up to the post of housekeeper, if you ever did, and were not waylaid by marriage and babies. I can only imagine the degree of skullduggery and political finesse required to succeed in that post. Part military strategist and part politician. The rules of conduct and the standards were much higher and more inflexible than they are generally today.

But a young man or woman who “went into service” could comfortably rely on – if they obeyed the rules of conduct and consistently met the required standards – a “career for life.”

In a similar vein, I once met a bright and lively thirteen year old German girl aiming for a career as a waitress. I was her colleague for a summer in a massive German resort hotel in the middle of the Rhine River Valley’s wine country.

I was amazed that the German school system had young people choose and start planning for a lifelong career at such a tender age. It seemed to me that she was going to miss out on a lot of life adventures by tying herself into a career path.

My attitude, I now realize, was the perspective of an entitled young North American woman who was reaping the rich rewards of a generous post-feminist establishment. I was a young woman living through the age of affirmative action.

As society was test driving the radical notion that women could, indeed, perform tasks equal to their male counterparts, you saw the rise of courses like “powder puff” mechanics (in large bright pink lettering on every poster) aimed at teaching women to keep their car in top fit condition. Imagine.

What I came to realize was that I took for granted the career opportunities I had with seemingly boundless economic rewards that were specifically tied to the early 70s and the Zeitgeist of that particular juncture in history.

So when I hired young people recently to “deep clean” my house, I got a first hand look at how sad and low the general standards of housekeeping have fallen. Deep cleaning now may mean wiping down counters but not taking toothpicks into greasy nooks and crannies.

Fridge handles get wiped down but if the greasy residue remains, no one hauls out a Magic Eraser. I saw no one using hydrogen peroxide to bubble away food crud.

Houses need love as much, if not more, than other inanimate objects. Like your car. If you ignore these objects and cease giving them love (which is generally called “maintenance”), it doesn’t take long for a house to start complaining. And eventually, to start failing and then falling apart.

Having the required skills to identify problems in a house is training that usually only comes with experience. If your parents haven’t engaged you in the basics of how to fix a leaky drain or clean out air ducts, you are likely to bump into some unpleasantness when you first start managing your own house. The learning curve can be mighty steep and ruthless.

I sometimes feel I’ve had it all thrown at me in my “house keeping” journey. The foundation that cracked mid-winter and flooded the basement bedrooms. The toilet flapper that stuck in the up position and occasioned at $1500 water bill.

The ongoing battle with critters who feel completely entitled to settling into my lodgings. They burrow through walls and wires and appliances in their ceaseless quest to find a safe and happy home for their young’uns. Not unlike us, if I can see past my anger to admit that.

So I am not exactly advocating that “housekeeping” be brought back as a laudable ambition for young women today. But I am saying they should at least deliberately arm themselves with the skills to keep a house in top working condition.

There is no guarantee that Prince Charming is going to know what to do when a breaker blows. You had best make sure that you do.

Are You A Hammer?

“When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

This quote is variously attributed to so many people that I wont attribute it to any. I prefer to play with what the concept might actually mean.

For some, it speaks to the narrow-mindedness of seeing only one use for a particular tool. There is something in there about opposites attracting and seeing something that the other needs. It can be argued that hammers and nails need each other to feel effective in the world.

There is also something in there about sticking to scripts we have internalized and faithfully observe. What we have learned. And in many areas of life, there are absolute “rights” and “wrongs” about how to do things.

Apply those hard-and-fast rules and success will be your reward. I find this particularly comforting when I’m flying. I like knowing that every pilot has been tested and approved by a very stringent set of standards on their skills and competence to fly the airplane.

This quote has also been interpreted to explain cognitive bias. Cognitive bias makes a mockery of so many academic pursuits. But can we apply the same formulae to artists and philosophers? The boundaries are much more blurry in these pursuits. Laws are at work that can best be described as fluid. Creative pursuits are more often informed by culture, zeitgeist, current affairs and spirituality, among others.

I should know. I have a masters in sociology. To this day, studying social groups requires a methodology that is hard to pin down with the traditional “scientific method.” It is more like a smorgasbord of journalism and keeping a diary. Indeed, the term “participant observer” was concocted as a methodology back in the day for what we would now likely call “embedding.”

That sticky bit of intellectual rationalization led to huge disclaimers assuring readers that the sociologists had gone to great lengths to ensure and preserve their objectivity. That strikes me as funny. Along the lines of “methinks the lady doth protest too much.” If sociologists were so sure that their research methods were pure and unsullied, disclaimers would not likely necessary.

As in the example above, it’s good to know that pilots are following a successful flying formula. The gap between engineering and arts has always been huge intellectually. Engineers – like pilots – learn skills based on certain immutable laws and forces. We count on them to do that.

It does seem we all have certain built-in competencies. Maths ability over writing ability is a common example. But when we only stick to what we know and pursue only those areas where we are sure we can excel, growth stops. Without the natural human tendency to explore and keep trying out new ideas, the world would be bereft of innovation.

We often end up balancing two opposing forces in our lives: the comfort of the familiar or the excitement (and danger) of pursuing new challenges. Maturity informs us which path to pick when usually because we have already screwed up in this regard a few times.

And there is always that great X factor: the unknowns of pursuing a particular path and the general uncertainty of the future.

So which are you? A hammer, a nail or something else entirely. Are you locked into stale and outdated ways of thinking and acting that aren’t moving you forward in the direction you want to move? I think about this periodically. I haven’t actually decided which one I am.

Certainly in recent months, I have moved well beyond almost any of my known patterns and ways of being. It’s stressful, for sure, but also satisfying. It has been the price I have had to pay for any new skill, experience, accomplishment or romance in my life.

They didn’t all work out the way I wanted, obviously, but they all expanded my worldview and understanding every single time. That seems like a fair tradeoff for the inherent risks in following unfamiliar paths. I think I’ve learned enough to modulate my chances whatever path I take.

So there’s that.