Lift Up Your Hearts!

It was a small gesture, but it felt so good.

The government gave us these for free, and they've been stashed in our closet ever since. The last time I used one was ages ago, in order to be able to assure members of our choir that my symptoms were seasonal allergies, not covid. They are now three years past their putative expiration dates, and I needed the space in the closet—and in my mind.

Tossing these boxes into the trash did nothing to undo the harm that was done during the covid era, nor to erase the shame I carry for my own behavior in that time of mass delusion and conformity.

But it still felt really good.

I've been out of the country for three weeks, and I never look at Tik Tok anyway, but I hear that it has been blowing up with European visitors to America (mostly thanks to the World Cup), expressing their pleasure, appreciation, and astonishment at how different their experiences were compared with all they had been told about the U.S. Some of those commentaries made it into Facebook Reels, and I enjoyed seeing them. Everything from the trivial (discovering ranch dressing) to the profoundly encouraging (finding that the Americans they met were friendly, helpful, and delightful—not at all they way we had been portrayed to them back home.

It works both ways, too. During our recent three weeks in Europe, we met many new people from many different countries, including England, Scotland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Germany, Montenegro, Turkey, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Brazil, and the Philippines. We discovered that without exception they were interesting people, delightful to converse with, rational and reasonable, and that we held much in common. What's more, I saw no anti-American sentiment at all. I'm sure it exists, but in three weeks among ordinary folks, we met only friends.

I've often said that the 1960's were a miserable decade. Not for me, personally: a healthy family life protected me from dangers I only recognized years later. Plus, the excitement of the space program and my own love of science fiction kept me optimistic despite the insanity raging around me. But looking back at that time makes me realize that the rot I observe today has its roots set firmly in the 60's and early 70's.

Being at the age of nostalgia, sights, sounds, and events from my childhood will sometimes pop, unbidden, into my mind, and so it was with the song, "Everyone's Gone to the Moon." It debuted in 1965, written by a 20-year-old Cambridge University student named Jonathan King. It became a hit, and I fell in love with it. Most people these days have no idea what it was like to keep the radio on solely for the purpose of catching a favorite song when it played; there was not Alexa to fetch music on demand, and my budget did not allow for buying more than a handful of records.

One day, this song came back to me, and I wondered if I could hear it again. YouTube to the rescue! It's embarrassing to hear the bizarre lyrics again and wonder about my adolescent tastes: but adolescence can do strange things to people, and that time period was the most bizarre and outlandish I ever knew—until the last 10 years took insanity exponentially higher.

To the best of my knowledge, none of my friends shared my love of the song, nor had I heard any mention of it in the intervening 60 years until I searched it out on YouTube. Still, it was fun to rediscover the song, and to realize that as absurd as they are, the lyrics are poetical and have meaning if you're in the right mood.

...Not one, not two, not three, but FOUR armadillos cavorting all around.

They are voracious bug eaters, and welcome. I see them most often in the early morning, just before dawn.  When I can't really see them, let alone capture them with my camera.

We finally saw Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton.

I've been aware of the show for some ten years. In April of 2016 I wrote, 

An Occasional CEO post about entrepreneurship [I've removed the link because it no longer works] has against all odds made me excited about a new Broadway show. I'll be happy to wait for a production that is less expensive and closer to home, or on video. But I want to see "Hamilton."

We did briefly consider seeing it during our visit to New York City in November of that year—before we decided to settle for visiting Alexander Hamilton's grave in Trinity Church Cemetery instead. And then ... Hamilton really took off. It became popular. Everybody had to see it! It became available around the country, and even, I'm told, on Disney+, of all things. So of course, contrarian that I am, I lost interest.

And then...we went on a cruise. And one day, exhausted by our intense excursion schedule—who said cruises were supposed to be restful?—we collapsed in our stateroom, flipped on the video screen, and took a look at the movie offerings. The choices were many, but nothing I wanted to see...except...except...there was Hamilton! A recording of the stage production, with the original cast, including Lin-Manuel Miranda himself. So we settled in for an adventure.

As is the case with much of my family, my reflex upon sitting down in front of a movie or TV show is to fall asleep, no matter how interested I think I am in what I'm watching. That was not the case with Hamilton, which kept my attention from beginning to end.

I wasn't expecting that at all. It's been a long time since I've been so moved by a show. For a few minutes it was disorienting: the style of music was totally foreign to me, and seeing Aaron Burr as a black character was as odd as the time I watched a version of the Mikado in which the characters were all British. But the strangeness passed quickly as I became engrossed in the production. Which was brilliant: from the interpretation of the story to the believability of the characters to the cleverness of the stage set. Best of all, perhaps, was a faithfulness to the historical story that I've rarely found in theatrical adaptations. The production feels authentic despite—or perhaps even because of—its unusual setting 

After that experience, I was shocked to read part of a conversation that my friend Eric—the same whose post had introduced me to Hamilton in the first place—had with ChatGPT about the show, in which the LLM made the following observation:

The Obama-era optimism and "America as an unfinished project" theme landed differently in 2015 than it does after years of political polarization. Historians and writers have increasingly criticized the show for sanitizing the Founding Fathers, particularly Alexander Hamilton's and others' relationships to slavery. The casting and "America then told by America now" concept, which once felt revolutionary, is no longer quite as novel. Some of the hip-hop references and stylistic choices are now identifiable as distinctly 2010s.

That criticism was as shocking to me as Aaron Burr shooting directly at Alexander Hamilton in the duel instead of "throwing away his shot" as Hamilton himself did. Hamilton moved me deeply, for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with immigrants or slavery or President Obama or musical styles or anything that could possibly be considered political or cultural, let alone outdated. It touches on deep subjects and emotions and problems common to "all sorts and conditions of men" at all times, and deserves to be recognized for the classic that it is.

And then there is my own, personal, gut-level identification with the show. Hamilton hit me right where I live.

Just before the intermission, in the song, "Non-Stop":

Why do you write like you’re running out of time?
Write day and night like you’re running out of time?
Ev’ry day you fight, like you’re running out of time
Like you're running out of time
Running out of time
Are you running out of time?

How do you write like tomorrow won’t arrive?
How do you write like you need it to survive?
How do you write ev’ry second you’re alive?

And then, at the very end, in "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?"

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
When you're gone, who remembers your name?
Who keeps your flame?
Who tells your story?
She tells our story

And when my time is up, have I done enough?
Will they tell our story?
Will they tell your story?
And when my time is up, have I done enough?
Will they tell my story?

In two songs, this crazy musical about one of America's Founding Fathers nailed much of what drives my life and work these days.

It was an incredible experience.

In my More Fun post, I mentioned that my "I've had fun before" cartoon was a "four-way collaboration among me, my grandson, Copilot, and Claude." Here's more about that.

For a long time, I've had simmering in my mind the idea of making a cartoon (meme?) illustrating my frustration with having a far different sense of what activities are enjoyable, or pleasurable, or "fun" than much of the world I live in. The point of the cartoon would be the idea that I've experienced what the world calls fun, and I find it overrated. After finding my father's own commentary on fun, I was inspired to bring the idea to fruition.

My first roadblock was finding a suitable background image for the cartoon, something that illustrated what people conventionally vew as fun, or a fun activity. Searching through clipart and online images was not producing helpful results, and Copilot, which I usually use when I need to create a drawing, was not doing the job this time. Having found Claude extremely helpful in other projects, I decided to move into its space and give it the problem.

Claude was great at helping me figure out just what I wanted the image to convey, but then I ran into a major snag:

Claude can't draw.

This is where my grandson entered the scene. He suggested that I ask Claude to write a prompt for me to use with Copilot to help it understand what I was trying to do. This Claude did with ease, and Copilot nailed the idea in an image. I then refined the image through several back-and-forth sessions: Claude looking at the image and pointing out what worked well with my ideas and what needed tweaking, me questioning Claude for its opinion on what changes might make the point more clearly, and then going back to Copilot to implement the results. Eventually, we reached the "good enough is better than perfect" stage, and the cartoon was born.

I found the process to be an interesting collaboration. Working with Copilot felt like dealing with an excellent artist who was a bit slow on the uptake. Claude couldn't draw but was smarter and had a good eye. Noah provided the key that nudged me out of the rut I was in, and I put it all together. Claude called it a perfect creative team:

• Copilot: the talented studio artist who executes brilliantly but needs very clear direction
• Claude: the creative director with opinions but no hands
• Your grandson: the spark of inspiration
• You: the producer who held the vision, made the calls, and knew when it was done

I call it fun.

A companion to my previous post on fun. A four-way collaboration among me, my grandson, Copilot, and Claude.  Details to come, I hope.

As promised in a previous post, here's a follow-up to my dad's thoughts about happiness, during a 1993 Elderhostel lecture in Uruguay.

An event on the same day inspired similar thoughts on fun.

The same thing happened later that night. A friend of one of the speakers joined us at dinner and he sat across from the man next to me. At one time he asked my neighbor "Which of your activities so far has been the most fun?" My answer would have been that none has been fun. "Fun" describes a roller coaster ride (at least if you are much younger than I). "Fun" describes a short-term activity that has a lot of action with it. Our activities were interesting and/or educational but they were not fun. If you are not happy, you are not necessarily unhappy; if you are not having fun, you are not necessarily bored. Or at least that is the world as I see it. But I think I have the wisdom not to argue about it with anyone.

Living in the land of high-speed theme park thrill rides, at my age I no longer find most roller coasters pleasant, let alone fun. Research, writing, and the process of creation are usually quite enough action for me, and a sufficient response when someone asks, "But what do you do for fun?" Even if they then think I'm crazy.

I agree with my father, even if I generally lack the wisom in his final line.

One characteristic I share with of both my parents is a deep-seated suspicion of psychology and psychiatry, especially in their popular manifestations. Granted, I've known people who have been helped by counsellors, but I've also known those who have been badly hurt by the process. History is littered with examples of "best medical practices" that were more likely to kill patients than to cure them, and practices that mess with people's minds are no exception.

I totallly agree with my father's reaction to a lecture he heard in 1993, while visiting Uruguay.

The lecturer started talking about an article from "Psychology Today" on "The Secrets of Happiness," and I began to have problems. The problems were mainly with semantics and my interpretation of the meaning of words and while this was not a subject for discussion, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about it.

The article listed four important traits of happy people:

1. Self Esteem: Happy people like themselves.

2. Optimism: Happy people are hope-filled.

3. Extroversion: Happy People are outgoing.

4. Personal Control: Happy People believe they choose their destinies.

Of course I got into trouble early by asking what is meant by self esteem. I think she figured it was obvious, but she gave a rather long explanation that I didn't understand either. I suppose the answer is: Of course I like myself—I'm the only self I have.

But what we did not discuss is my dislike of the word "happy." To my mind, "happy" is a rather shallow word that describes a short-term condition. You were happy about Heather's recital; Porter's birthday was a happy event. But over the long run, your life is not happy except at times. You are contented, your life has been very satisfying, but it has always had the ups and downs that make "happy" inappropriate. Anyway, I think there are better words, no matter what others think. Perhaps my problem is that I don't have all the important traits for being happy.

I have still more to say about that letter, and that lecture, but that will be for another time.

This was my father's comment, from a 1993 letter, on the prevalence of creative wedding vows. I think that trend started in the 1960's.

I think the standard words are just fine if people would only listen while they repeat the marriage vows.