Freedom To Chill

PotD / Social Commentary

Freedom To Chill

July 4, 2016

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. —Soren Kierkegaard

Eschewing all the seriousness afforded this day, let’s celebrate the fact our lives are not horrid

Happy Independence Day, United States! My, but we do love our 4th of July celebrations. Fireworks, parades, bands, families, and cookouts are all part of the tradition. We also have a tendency to wax philosophical on this day. Look around the Internet and you’ll find dozens of essays on freedom. Some quote the Declaration of Independence: “When in the course of human events …” Others quote the preamble to the Constitution: “We the people, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union …” Plenty discuss responsibility and many honor the sacrifice of those who have fallen.

All of those topics are well and appropriate for the day. I have no problem with the topics themselves, but at this point in my life, I’ve heard those topics run into the ground. One would have to be masterfully eloquent to keep my attention very long.

I understand the responsibilities of being an American. I appreciate the sacrifice of those who served and are serving (we’ll be talking with our Marine later this morning). The part of being an American I have difficulty doing is what many of you seem to do so well: sit back and relax. I can sit and try to watch a movie, but it is difficult to not have my phone in my hand. There’s also the matter of keeping the kids and the animals from destroying the house. One does not just sit and chill in this house without some effort. Where is that freedom thing, again?

Freedom To Not Work All The Time

Please note the qualifier in that heading. I’m not saying there is a freedom to be a lazy bum that sponges off society. Few people in our society actually milk us for our generosity. A majority of people who receive some form of federal assistance are employed, but still earn less than the $1000 a month income cap on assistance. But everyone who works needs a break. We look forward to our weekends, our vacations, and our federal holidays. While we may work hard, the US still has a party mentality that celebrates those moments when we’re not working.

Except, I can’t do it. You’re reading the results. Despite the fact that it’s a holiday, I’m sitting here in the wee hours of the morning doing research and writing. Kat always suggests that I just rerun a previous article on days like today. Certainly, I have the freedom to do that and give myself the day off. I can’t bring myself to do it, though. I have to get up to walk the dog, anyway, and as tired as I am, I feel obligated to sit down and create at least one new article every day.

Keeping busy is a point of anxiety for me. I need to be doing something all the time. Even things that should be relaxing, such as grilling out or entertaining friends becomes work for me. Still, I think of the garment workers in Bangladesh who work 80+ hours a week, live in cramped dorms provided by their employers, and rarely see their families. They do not have the freedom to not work. They have no choice. No matter how busy I make my life, I am still better off because I have the freedom to stop if/when I wish.

Freedom To Improve

We are all far from perfect. There is a lot we don’t know, even though there are books written on almost every topic imaginable. Fortunately, we have the freedom to improve. We can read. We can take specialized classes. We can even go back to school and get a degree completely different from anything we’ve done before. While perfection may always elude us, we have the freedom to make ourselves a little less imperfect.

An important part of that improvement is the freedom to read anything we want. I read with interest this week how what we read matters in our brain development, even as adults. Those who involve themselves with “deep reading,” such as academic journals, non-fiction, poetry, and literary fiction, hold advantages over those who only read online or mass-market fiction. Deep reading synchronizes the communication areas of our brain. As a result, we speak better, write better, and are more articulate in our conversation with others.

I remember hearing in school how children in the former Soviet Union were given tests at an early age that determined their eventual occupation. They were trained to a level of proficiency in that occupation and that was it. Improvement was limited and opportunities were few. I am thankful we have the freedom to make ourselves better.

Freedom To Love

We’ve had to fight for this one and there are still many places across the US where loving whomever you choose to love is challenging. The freedom to love, though, has grown tremendously over the past two years and shows no sign of letting up. Part of that whole being able to chill and relax thing is dependent, at least in part, on being with people you love. This is why families get together on holidays such as this.

Loving is important and understanding why we love the ways we do deepens and enhances our ability to love. At least, I think it does. There is a book by Skye Cleary called Existentialism and Romantic Love that I highly recommend. In the book, Cleary considers all the various webs of relationships into which we’re born. She explores the complexities of loving and being with others and how that affects our place in the world. After reading the book, I’m fairly sure there are even more areas of love we have yet to explore.

Not everyone is so fortunate, though. There are still too many places where LGBT relationships carry a death sentence. There are too many places where young women are not allowed to choose their own mate. The freedom to love is a relatively new concept for the entire world. We should celebrate that we are here to appreciate and take advantage of the progress.

Freedom To Be Entertained

I don’t watch a lot of television, but it’s there when I choose it. We don’t go out to a lot of movies or shows, but they’re there when we want them. We have more entertainment options than we have time. There are even places you can download or stream movies legally. We are inundated with the freedom to escape reality for as long as we need.

Entertainment is a critical part of our lifestyle and our ability to chill on weekends such as this. Whether we’re taking in live music or binging on Netflix, our entertainment choices give us the opportunity to set aside all the worry and stress that threatens to kill us. Some of us are good with an hour or so a day. Others need a bit more. Plenty of people even sleep with their televisions blaring away at them. While a danger of slothfulness is worth watching, that we have such freedom is exceptional to this time and place in history.

I plan to try very, very hard to chill the rest of the day. I want to enjoy that freedom, maybe take a nap, sing songs with my 18-year-old, or enjoy a cup of coffee with Kat. Thousands of men and women died for this freedom, after all. Even the lesser freedoms are worth celebrating. So light up a cigar if you’re so inclined, fill a glass of scotch if you have it, and let’s enjoy the day.

Happy Birthday, America. Thank you for the gift of that freedom to chill.

Advertising / pop culture / PotD

Hardcover No Longer Undercover

May 17, 2016

Getting 10,000 listeners for a free podcast novel is a lot easier than selling 10,000 hardcover novels at $25 a pop. —Jeremy Robinson

charles i. letbetter - hardcover no long undercover

Everyone was so sure that hardcover books were all but extinct. They were wrong.

My favorite people all read. A lot. The smartest people you’ll find are avid readers. The richest people in the world always have a book handy. People who don’t read regularly don’t just bother me, I find them quite frightening. Interestingly enough, I have found that those who have no hardcover books on their shelves seem to have the hardest heads, least likely to be open to information, creativity, or anything new.

For the past several years now, we’ve been told that hardcover book publishing is all but dead. Sales numbers supported that claim. E-readers were everywhere for a while, and it wasn’t all that unusual to see them on the bus, or the train, or at the local coffee shop, typically in the hands of someone young, hip looking, and wearing earbuds to avoid conversation or interruption. Going digital seemed like the environmentally friendly thing to do, too; more books could be published without killing thousands of trees. Going digital also meant one could carry multiple books with them without suffering the weight of an overcrowded bookbag. The whole premise sounded good, and to some degree still does.

What any avid reader will tell you, though, is that while digital publishing does have its advantages, there’s still nothing like the feel and pleasure of holding a real, hardcover book in your hands. We’ve always known that. We might give e-readers a try, and there are moments when they can be quite convenient, but we always come back to hardcover books because holding that physical tome of paper and ink is almost as much a part of the reading experience as is the story enclosed in the book’s pages.

Now, here’s the surprise: Hardcover books are coming back, both in terms of what is fashionable as well as hard sales numbers. The numbers are not huge, yet, according to Publisher’s Association; some $50 million or so out of a $7 billion-plus market. At the same time, though, digital publishing took a similarly-sized downturn. Put the two together and one has to optimistically consider this a trend.

Oh, and on top of that, the British bookseller Waterstones stopped selling e-readers, converted the shelf space to hardcover titles, and saw a five percent increase in sales! Considering the complete demise of Borders books, and how other booksellers have struggled, one has to wonder if perhaps those in charge of such operations might have given up a bit too quickly, tossing in the towel without putting up a sufficient battle.

What has pushed the trend back toward ink-on-paper books? Some point to an increased popularity in lifestyle titles such as Andrew Weil’s Spontaneous Happiness and Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover. The popularity of coloring books among young adults hasn’t hurt sales, either, though that hardly counts as a literary genre. Ultimately, what has brought us back to the hardcover is emotion and practicality. We love our books. We love how they feel in our hands. We love turning down pages. We love decorative bookmarks. We love that ability to make sure everyone sees the dust jacket so they know what we’re reading.

We’re also more keenly aware of the shortcomings of e-readers. The portability is great for the first couple of hours, but battery life is limited and no one likes to be tethered to a wall outlet while they read. Environment is a problem, too. Too much or too little sunlight and you can’t see the screen, and the quickest way to ruin an e-reader is to take it into the kitchen while you’re cooking. Drop your Kindle? Sorry, you’ll have to buy a new one. Set the reader too close to anything magnetized and you lose your entire library.

Books are back. We’re not really surprised, are we? While this does not necessarily mean brick-and-mortar bookstores will return in the fashion we once knew, we can be certain that hardcover books are not going to disappear anytime soon. Probably never. Real readers know this. We love our books.

Current Issues / PotD

Saturday Morning Illiteracy

February 27, 2016

Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them. —Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

Illiteracy is the one problem that doesn’t require an act of Congress to solve

I am very much aware that I am a person of privilege. Not only am I white and male, two factors in which I had no choice but still give me advantages that are, unfortunately, not yet available to everyone, but I also have a superpower that puts me ahead of roughly 87% of the U.S. population: I am proficiently literate. Not only can I read and write, but I can comprehend material intentionally written at a severe academic level. To that end, I am one of the most privileged people on the planet.

Growing up, I thought everyone knew how to read and write. Reading and grammar were emphasized heavily even before I started school. My mother, a teacher herself, made sure I started kindergarten already reading at a basic level, and this was in a day when preschools only existed in the largest of cities and were the domain of the elite. Right there, though, was my first advantage. By the time I was five years old, I was already reading better than 32,000,000 adults in the United States. If anything, the numbers were probably higher back in 1965 than they are now.

Illiteracy is one of those problems you may not ever consider if you are capable of reading what I write. Most days, for most articles, at least 60 percent of adults can read and comprehend what I write. I’ll admit, I am sometimes frustrated by having to re-write whole paragraphs to bring the readability rate into line; I want everyone to read at the same level at which I am most comfortable communicating. However, one-third of the US population cannot read this paragraph.

Not being able to read and write at even a basic level is one of the most costly problems in America today, but yet you’re not likely to hear anything about illiteracy mentioned by the politicians running for office. How much does illiteracy cost? Here’s an infographic for those of you already tired of reading:

Like many of societies problems, illiteracy rates are worse among non-white populations. While a part of that is due to the challenge of immigrants even trying to learn our often complex and complicated language, the majority exists because reading is never encouraged. If one has not learned to read at a basic level by the time they are ten years old, the chances they will remain illiterate the rest of their lives is extremely high.

Pearson, the global publishing behemoth, produces much of the educational material in use around the world. They understand all too well the challenges of illiteracy. This week, they released a new video as part of the #ProjectLiteracy campaign. Produced by ad agency FCB Inferno, the claymation piece titled Alphabet of Illiteracy is a frighteningly clear representation of how illiteracy impacts our society. The campaign’s goal is to make sufficient strides in literacy so that by 2030 no child born is at risk of not being able to read and write.

I encourage you to not only watch the video below, but share it, and then consider how you can help combat illiteracy. Teach someone to read. Encourage someone who is struggling to read. Introduce someone to your local library. The options are many, the benefits are tremendous. There is no better way to spend a Saturday.

https://youtu.be/U0Ezto8HG_8

PotD / Social Commentary

Bookstores And Dreaming: A Natural Combination

February 3, 2016

charles i. letbetter - bookstores and dreaming

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.—Jerry Seinfeld

charles i. letbetter - bookstores and dreams: a natural combination

Bookstores do so much to stoke our imaginations that our dreams cannot help but be influenced by what we see there

This past summer, I was downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee with two of my sons enjoying Moon Pies and Coca-Cola when we came across a store they hadn’t visited before. The storefront was unassuming, a simple black on yellow sign giving the name of the store but not really indicating its contents. From the opposite side of the street, glare prevented seeing through the plate glass window, so we chose to investigate.

Walking through the door, our senses were immediately overwhelmed. Books lined hand-made shelves from one end of the store to the other. Not just new books, either. Beautiful, old, brown-at-the-edges books that had been loved and read for years upon years were there, some dating back to the very first part of the 20th century. My boys are equally avid readers as their parents and quickly took to exploring everything they could find in the stacks. There were books they’d never known were available. Books that were so far out of print that even digital reprints can’t be had. Every genre one could imagine, at every reading level, was right there, waiting to be explored, to be loved, and perhaps to be taken home. Had common sense not prevailed, we might have gone broke.

Bookstores were once a staple of Western culture, a part of life that was critical to society. Having a bookstore meant a town had vision to look beyond itself. Having more than one bookstore meant the city was open to ideas and fostered intellectual pondering. Bookstores were part of a neighborhood identity and their contents gave as clear a demographic picture as any census or survey. Bookstores were heaven.

Then came the mega stores, Borders and Barnes & Noble, that forced the small mom-and-pop stores out of business. We griped. We complained. But the new stores had coffee and would let us sit and browse for hours without actually making a purchase, so we still shopped there.

Along came the Internet and a man named Jeff Bezos introduced us to this thing called Amazon.com and the entire business of bookselling changed. There were easy comparisons. There were ready reviews. There were lower prices; sometimes significantly lower. Slowly but surely, even the biggest brick and mortar bookstores began to close or severely downsize. While bookstores still exist, they’re much more difficult to find.

Yesterday, a mall real estate developer, Sandeep Mathran, said during a corporate earnings call that Amazon, that giant online retailer that drove everyone else out of business, is going to open between 300-400 new brick-and-mortar bookstores. The Internet lost its collective mind. Yes, we understand the irony. At the same time, though, the romantic thought of 400 new bookstores dotting the country got everyone very excited.

Since that initial statement was released, there has been speculation that Mr. Mathran may have been trying to paint a picture for investors that is less than accurate. Amazon has refused to confirm or deny Mathran’s statement and persons close to the company say the move doesn’t make financial sense for the retailer. So, don’t go planning those browsing trips just yet.

Still, we like to dream and nothing fuels dreams any faster than do bookstores. While shopping online might be more cost effective and give us access to a wider range of books, nothing beats wandering the aisles of a bookstore and finding titles and authors we would not have considered otherwise. Bookstore shopping is very different than online book shopping. When we shop online, we are typically looking for something specific, either in terms of subject or author. We might, occasionally, click on the automated recommendations of the website, but we go to the site with a fair idea of what we want to buy.

When we shop in a bookstore, however, we allow ourselves the option to browse. We might go in looking for a specific book, but then we stay and look at different genres, explore different interests, and allow ourselves to be swept away by all the possibilities. Instead of leaving with just one book, we are more likely to walk out the door with multiples.

As much as I like bookstores, I will admit that I frequently do shop Amazon. Not only do I shop on Amazon, I sell on Amazon. You can buy all my books, including the one in the pictures above, by clicking this link. One of the great advantages of Amazon is it that they have the ability to sell print-on-demand titles that a bookstore would not be able to stock. Where I would never be able to convince Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million to carry my tomes, Amazon is eager to cooperate.

I love bookstores and can get lost spending hours wandering the stacks. I would not complain at all if Amazon were to actually open several brick-and-mortar stores (though 400 does sound unreasonably aggressive). Bookstores and dreaming are a natural combination and I don’t know any creative person who doesn’t like to dream. We’ll wait and see what happens. Should Amazon open a store near me, though, don’t expect to find me online too often. I’ll be somewhere midst all the shelves, indulging in dreams.

PotD

Sunday Of Sanctity

January 3, 2016

My mother always kept library books in the house, and one rainy Sunday afternoon – this was before television, and we didn’t even have a radio – I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered I was reading and enjoying what I read.—Beverly Cleary

Growing up in the home of a Southern Baptist minister meant Sundays were anything but calm or quiet. There was a fairly precise schedule to the day: Up at 7, showers, dressed, breakfast, family devotions, all before 8:30 in the morning. There would be Sunday School, then church, then around 6 or so in the evening, depending on the time of year, Training Union, which became Church Training in the 70s, then evening services, then often a rather pointless choir rehearsal and sometimes a youth activity. The day was full.

What little “down time” there was on a Sunday came in that brief period after lunch (which Mother typically had prepared for dining as soon after the service as possible) and the snack that passed as dinner before heading out to church again. This time was for napping. Always. No excuses. Interruptions were frowned upon. Typically, Poppa would sit in his recliner, leaf through the local paper a bit, maybe turn on a football game that he wouldn’t watch, the fall sound asleep. Mother would go to their room and sleep while Squirt and I were given the instruction to, at the very least, stay quiet.

Such a respite only came on Sundays and was almost as sacred as the services on either end of the day. Poppa loathed allowing anyone to schedule anything on Sunday afternoon and on the rare occasion he was forced to do so one could be certain that his mood would not be as pleasant and accommodating as normal. Poppa’s take was that if God rested on Sunday, certainly he meant for us to take a couple of hours to do the same.

As I grew older and moved away from home, my Sunday habits changed. My view of church changed rather dramatically and Sunday became a day that was given to the very respite Poppa tried to squeeze into a couple of hours. I’d start with the Sunday edition of the New York Times, coming up for air and a coffee refill between articles. Brunch back then was less of a social gathering and more of a way to quiet the growing rumble in the stomach without actually admitting that half the day was already gone. I acquired my father’s habit of sitting in a recliner, turning on the football game, and promptly falling asleep. Sunday evenings were for a quiet dinner, maybe some cuddling, reading, or, more likely, laundry so we’d have something clean to wear the next morning.

Now, Sundays are more complicated, less quiet, and too often frustrating. There are too many people who can only shoot on Sundays. The local paper rarely holds any information I’ve not already seen online and even the long-form enticement of the Times isn’t as enjoyable as it once was. I do still hold to brunch because, damn it, I’m not cooking anything before 10:00 if it can be avoided. Laundry is still a must, and so is reading, but increasingly that reading is done through some form of digital media, whether the Kindle or this large-screened smartphone I carry.

The sanctity of Sunday is largely gone now. Kat is frequently at the salon, which means I’m stuck with the kids (or they’re stuck with me). Having time to read quietly means getting up about the same time the party people are getting home. I can make the kids wait for brunch, but they want lunch an hour later and a large snack an hour after that. Sunday afternoon nap? My body aches for one, especially after getting up so early, but the kids would likely burn down the house if I dozed for even a minute. Peace comes only after they’re in bed for the night and by that time I’m rather ready for bed myself.

I understand now, more than ever, the value of a quiet, thoughtful, Sunday. I’m hoping that as the children get older we can hand them a good book and not see them for a couple of hours, knowing they are being sufficiently entertained and, perhaps, even learning something. I can dream. I can hope. I have a library card and I’m not afraid to use it.

We need to allow ourselves downtime; just one day when we don’t intrude on others, nor they on us. May we have one day, please, that is a little more void of noise and a little more contemplative. We need time to re-asses our world, our place in it, and then get our shit together before tackling another week. Not allowing for some sanctity on Sunday is a fast trip to spending one’s vacation either in rehab or the mental health center, and there’s already a shortage of space at both.

Take some time. Breathe. Read. I’ll try to do the same, right after I fix brunch for these heathens.

pop culture / PotD

The Final Countdown(s)

November 22, 2015

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.—Martin Luther King, Jr.

We’re hurtling toward the end of the year and that means we only have ten, count ’em, #POTD posts left before we take our December break. So, we’re going to spend these final few days with pictures that we weren’t able to make fit anywhere else and counting down a number of things we think are fun and important.

There’s no real cohesive point to the images. Some, like today’s, are quite old by digital standards. The Legends Football League’s Cynthing Schmidt was only 19 years old when we took this picture. Now, you’ll find her popping up in places like Sports Illustrated’s Lovely Lady of the Day feature. She seems to have done quite well for herself, but that has absolutely nothing to do with today’s list.

10 Things We Need To Do Before The End Of The Year

Kiss A Baby.
Chances are, unless you live in a cave with absolutely no interaction with anyone, you know someone who has a baby, or at least a toddler. Nothing is as calming and joyful as being slobbered upon by a six-month-old who thinks you taste good.

Spend five minutes doing nothing but petting an animal. Animals are wonderful givers of affection and are surprisingly effective at de-stressing humans. Just be selective about the animal. Lions and fish aren’t so cuddly.

Take an online class. Yep, there’s still time for you to actually accomplish something so that you’re not totally embarrassed while visiting with family over the holidays. Mashable has a good list here.

Donate some time to a charity. This time of year, charities who directly help the poor need more than just money, they need your time. Packing and distributing food take a lot of effort. If you have children, make it a family affair. The lesson in giving is invaluable.

Count your blessings. Seriously. Pen. Paper. Write. Do it the old-fashioned way so that it actually sticks in your head how fortunate you’ve been this year. Then, seal it in an envelope to open next year when you’re feeling blue.

Try the new Oreos® churros. Seriously. They’re real. Check here for details. The holidays are time for special treats, right? J&J Foods just gave us the best present ever. You know you want to try them. Go ahead. Give in. We won’t tell.

Read a book. You’ve been meaning to do that all year, but somehow the time just slips away. There are a lot of lists with great titles from which to choose. We rather like the choices at NPR Books, or just visit a bookstore and browse!

Join a sing-a-long. The world is full of timid singers that would never dare to sing in public on their own, but one of the joys of this time of year is that several groups sponsor community sing-a-longs, usually featuring holiday songs that everyone knows. Look around and find one near you.

Wrap something different in bacon. There is no going wrong with bacon. I’ve put it around food I otherwise detest and it totally changes my ability to down brussel sprouts. I’m thinking bacon wrapped sugar cookies sounds like a good idea.

Thank a service member. Holidays can be especially tough for those who are away from their families. Remember, the US military is comprised totally of volunteers. Show them some appreciation for their sacrifice.

This is your final chance to keep the year from totally sucking and should keep you busy for a moment or two. Should you become bored, don’t worry, we have more lists coming all week!