Month: December 2011

Candy Canes, Bats and Angels

One of the better veggie burgers in town is served in a restaurant that shares two names, honoring the two restaurants that merged some years ago. Retaining both names meant creating a hybrid menu representing the best of both restaurants, so the selections range from burgers to an extensive assortment of Mexican dishes. Behind the restaurant is a popular hangout for young folks, where, before she became a well-known artist, the young singer, Jewel, would sing and strum.

Anticipating a veggie burger banquet, we entered the dual-name establishment, but suddenly sensed that something was amiss. Bright, jagged patterns of red and white stabbed the ceiling, displacing its usual drab comfort. An unexpected, inexplicable army of candy canes exploded above us, the display grabbing and gluing our eyeballs upward. Thousands of candy canes dangled from the ceiling, the beams, the air conditioning ductwork, the wiring.

What could be the meaning of this candy cane convention?

Gradually, the obvious dawned upon me: it was a holiday thing. The restaurant staff had taken a break from their bleak chores of battering chicken fried steak and eyeing and peeling potatoes, indulging instead in hanging cratefuls of holiday candy cane decorations in every hang-able niche.

The display was impressive. They hung from the rafters like inverted bats, awaiting their chance to fly.

Indeed, from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, in the dark of night sometime after the setting of the sun and the welcome gloom of the moon, the world’s biggest urban bat colony emerges for their daily feeding. In one night alone, the 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats will consume 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of insects.

Unlike the unpredictable appearance of the restaurant candy canes, these bats are a permanent fixture, giving relief from an otherwise Moses-scale plague of insect life. We can only imagine the misery of living without this batty multitude, giving us an umbrella of bug protection.

Another far more ancient and intimidating population, a legion of invisible Heavenly Hosts, also invades our world. It moves without the candy cane flash of seasonal restaurant décor. It lacks the predictable routine and daily schedule by which an under-bridge bat colony is controlled.

Instead, encampments of the Angelic Community are neither regulated by temporary seasons of celebration, nor are they governed by the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon.

Their place above the rafters of our world, the firmament, is never ending. And in the moment of our greatest need, these sentinals are spirited as emissaries, so that in a crowded but often lonely world, we are not left alone.

A Sidewalk Story

Had his head not been created facing up and outward, he would have missed seeing the emergence of the woman with a bright crimson flower in her hair gradually appearing before him, returning his gaze. He was the first to arrive, his green t-shirt clad creator having arrived early for the event.

His memories of his own former existence, beyond his current chalk-dust appearance, were clouded and lacking in historical perspective. He wondered again at the woman still emerging beneath the creative hand of the neighboring artist. Her eyes emerged, then her full face—a beautiful image, he thought, despite the odd clothing adorning her, from an age and context unlike his own, an Asian woman whose time and place he could not quite comprehend.

His confusion over his own appearance gradually cleared a bit; he recalled that had been a star of the silent film, a clown bearing the name Charlie Chaplin, later also enjoying success in the talking film era.

But outside of his current chalky existence, he remembered nothing of the past or the future. The chalk could resurrect nothing of history or context. Lacking a body of flesh to connect him, this moment was all he could know.

As his artist-creator added decoration around Charlie, it gave him time to peer over his shoulder to view another woman, dressed in Western Victorian style more familiar to his own context. A playful, billowing hat crowning her head drew his attention. Her artist created her as a splashy showgirl, her beauty expressed in shades of pink. When her gaze connected with Charlie’s, he saw the two of them gliding on a dance floor, music softly cushioning them, the warm light of candles extending their stay long into the evening. If only, he pondered, they were breathing, living and loving—fully formed three dimensional creatures instead of sidewalk chalk.

A sudden splash of color above his head jolted Charlie. It was a thing, or a man, or—was it a woman? A body draped in shocking tones, a stretched torso, absent arms and a single enormous eye—or was it? Again, lacking context beyond this day’s chalk-appearance, there was no way to comprehend its abstract expressionism. The geometric human figure puzzled him; their worlds were distant, detached from each other.

Then, appearing from yet another stretch of colored chalk dust, Charlie noticed a woman—a mother with her children surrounding her. As the artist chalk-stroked the mouths of the children, they seemed to come alive, crowding, teasing and playfully challenging each another—laughter—lots of laughter. On this day of their shared chalk lives, Charlie concluded that this was the most beautiful sight within his view—it held a vision of hope and of promise.

The orange hues of early sunset announced the gradual end of the brief existence of Charlie and his chalk cadre. Soon, uncareful shoes eroded the chalk, smearing their limbs, their hair, their faces, their eyes into the concrete sidewalk. Silently as they appeared, their dust mingled, their figures retiring again into timelessness.

As they disappeared, the artist creators likewise disappeared, drifting apart and dissolving into the deepening shadows, having resurrected, if only briefly, the somnambulist activities of shared chalk-drawn lives.

But unlike their creations, the artists reserved one power, which set them apart from their art: the power of choice.

They alone could choose to end their drift, to stop the dissolve of the paths that had brought them together today as artists with a dream. Against the approaching nightfall, they could still choose to pursue, to explore the new friendships this day had held for them. And they could join with each other, bringing one another along, past tonight, and into tomorrow.

Doing the Math

Albert Pujols will earn $250 million over the next ten years to play professional baseball for the Anaheim Angels; that’s $25 million a year under the terms of his new contract.

That’s all I know about Pujols. He gets paid very well to play with a small white ball. I rarely follow professional sports on television or in the newspaper. Admittedly, some human sports dramas, for example the Olympic Games, can be exciting. But huge paychecks make pro sports hard to enjoy; many of us simply can’t afford to attend many sport venues. Inflated ticket prices are required to help pay for the giant salaries being earned by the top players.

Of course, simply bellyaching over high professional sports salaries won’t solve the problem. In this sports-crazed society, lowering player salaries isn’t going to happen. So instead, let’s increase the salaries for the rest of us so they are commensurate with that of the sports elite.

Here’s how it works. Under this sports celebrity wage-matching approach, if we’re flipping burgers at a local hamburger joint, we’ll suddenly earn far more than our current minimum wage allows. Let’s suppose the owner gets paid an equivalent salary as the sports celebrity. Of course, we should expect the restauranteur to receive, say, 50 percent of that paycheck to pay for the restaurant’s operating costs plus his own salary. He’ll still have half of the $25 million sports celebrity salary–$12.5 million–to split among his 20 employees for their wages. That will give each of us burger flippers an annual salary of $625,000. I can live with that. Of course, the cost of a burger will rise accordingly.

But don’t worry. Remember, we’re all going to receive a sports celebrity-comparable wage increase.

Here’s another example. Let’s say we’re teachers. We’re easily instructing 150 students each day. To cover the school’s overhead—expenses like building repair, textbooks, utility bills and the like, 50 percent of our $25 million salary will be deducted. Fair enough because we still get to keep the other half—we’ll take home a $12.5 million salary. Teaching even the orneriest, manners-deprived kid is worth that kind of cash. My $25 million salary, divided by 150 students, will cost parents a mere $166,667 per child. No discounts available for multiple kids. (“Oh…will that be cash or check? Please, spell my name correctly.”) And, sorry, no credit cards accepted.

Think of this. Once all of our salaries are likewise upwardly-adjusted to meet sports celebrity salary standards, we’ll actually have enough money to purchase a ticket to watch Pujols play ball!

And, oh, let’s not forget to bring $250 for the sports celebrity-adjusted price of a Stadium Dog with relish!

Half-Drawn Shades

The shades are descending; they’re being pulled down. It’s the end of an era.

Today was the last reunion of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. The Association is being officially disbanded.

One Association member who survived the Japanese attack explains, “We just ran out of gas, that’s what it amounted to. We felt we ran a good course for 70 years. Fought a good fight. We have no place to recruit people anymore: Dec. 7 only happened on one day in 1941.”

The membership of the Association is gradually evaporating from the attrition of old age, poor health and death.

It’s an unavoidable reality. No matter what our age, change due to external influences presents its challenges, whether from age and health issues, or from job loss. We feel less in demand—less needed.

We may feel like out-of-print books. The contents are still useable, but the worn cover and bent spine are not so fashionable anymore. Our sphere of influence—if we feel we ever had one—is contracting still further.

That’s life. Over time, we sense our world eroding. Tasks that we performed with ease and skill are handed off to other folks we don’t know. No matter that we still can handle the tasks with the same ease and skill. Others don’t perceive it that way, and they are the ones now in control. It’s time for us to move on.

So…what’s next? Move on to what? Our ego feels deflated.

But it’s not like there’s nothing else to do.

There’s time to focus on relationships and the skills required to being a good friend. Listening more and talking less. Befriending those who have no ability to advance our own ambitions. Thanking them, aloud.

There’s time to focus on reinforcing our values. Relaxing one discipline in our lives seems to relax several disciplines. If we write down the things we would like most to change about ourselves, they nearly always relate to the lack of specific disciplines. Time to focus on our values.

There’s time to focus on undeveloped skills. A friend of mine is taking up writing. Always a good verbal communicator, job loss and health issues forced him to re-think his goals. He’s retooling himself to write promotional materials. He’s completed the coursework. He’s made contacts. He’s reinventing himself.

Maybe we should close the shades on the room in which we find ourselves, move on to the next room, and again eagerly raise the shades.

The view might just be better.

Notes on Trees

This year’s Thanksgiving festivities brought out the best in some of us.

Someone attached partially-completed notes to trees, a park bench, and anywhere else they could draw attention in front of one of our favorite little eateries.

The creators of the notes began many of them with, “I am thankful for…” with a blank space left for passersby to complete with their own words, while some were intentionally left blank, awaiting creative and heartfelt comments.

The note about friends is hard to beat.

But here are some other suggestions: 

Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now.  ~A.W. Tozer

O Lord that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.  ~William Shakespeare

Got no check books, got no banks.  Still I’d like to express my thanks – I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.  ~Irving Berlin