He bore the name of the Prophet.

We had a little difficulty meeting. I was not in the place he expected me to be and the app-map did not have all the street names.

The dealership called him, a service meant to offset labor prices double what I usually pay. There was no charge for the recall, of course, but I understood that the mechanic would “inspect” my six year old vehicle and prescribe further work, which I would verify with my usual mechanic, or not.

“Are you buying a car?” Mohammad asked.

“No, just service.”

“Not something you could not do yourself?”

“A recall. But I don’t do much work myself anymore. I used to work on cars, but not anymore. I don’t understand them – too many computers.”

This seemed not to compute with this old Uber driver. “Not even changing the oil?  Or brakes?”

“I figure at 76 I can let someone else do that.”

“We are the same age, but I like to keep my hand in.”

“I understand. Keeping skills up is valuable.” I relayed my recent failure soldering. “It seems I completely forgot how.”

“Soldering? I could never do that.”

We chatted about the weather, as everyone seems to, then he got around to the inevitable “What do you do?” question. I skipped the part where I responded “retirement” and he responded, “but before?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Oh? What do you write?”

“Non-fiction mostly. I just self-published a career advice book for young consultants Traveling the Consulting Road. This didn’t seem to interest him. “I also publish some things from conversations I have with ordinary people I meet.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“Well, I often ask people, ‘What is the secret of life?’”

“Oh?’

“Yes, imagine a young person sits before you, asks for your life wisdom. What do you say?”

He seemed intrigued. He missed the next turn the GPS suggested.

“That seems such a simple question, but it is very deep.”

I smiled. Mohammad was thinking. This question always takes people by surprise. Most, not all, feel compelled to answer.

“I can only answer this from my faith. People say that Islam means peace, but that is not quite right. There is a kind of peace in it, but Islam means surrender.”

“I had no choice in my birth. I will have no choice in my death; it will come whenever. . . . But in between I have many choices, far too many choices. This is my test. That is the problem of a life. But if I make one choice, if I choose to surrender to the will of God, other choices get easier.”

“People will say ‘ How can I know the will of God?’ but they know – in here.“ He tapped his chest lightly. If ever they do not know what is the right thing to do, stop . . . listen. It seldom takes longer than three heartbeats. If my action helps me, but hurts another, that is not the will of God. If it helps another, and does not cost me dearly, what would stop me?”

I responded that Christians also talk about the Will of God, Buddhists about the eight-fold path and Taoists speak of about The Way.

“Faith is our connection to God, not any particular faith, but faith, and most of all. . . living it.”

We went on to talk about the nature of people (“99% good”), cars (“simpler is better”), food (“ a little that’s good is better than a lot”). And then, some forty minutes later, we said “nice talking with you,” and he dropped me at home.

I always learn something when I ask this question. I am not a religious person, but people often go to the Golden Rule or say that we shouldn’t be “hung up on materials things” or that “hate is toxic.” A few, like Mohammad I believe, are people who try to live their faith.

I will remember the gentle way he tapped his chest in reference to knowing the Will of God.

“They know – in here. And if not – stop . . . listen. It seldom takes longer than three heartbeats.”

I’ve been known to quote the late Andy Rooney, CBS “Sixty Minutes” curmudgeon, on religion: “I’d be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn’t believe it, which I don’t, if I thought it made people nicer to each other, but I don’t think it does.”

I further opine “too many wars have been fought in the name of a belief in God,” but then I think of someone who lives their faith, like the late Fred Rogers, PBS children’s TV creator, or perhaps this gentle Uber driver and I admire their certainty and the luminous path they describe.

Henceforth, I will endeavor to practice his three heartbeat rule. Will you?

Jake and Wil save German culture

The “Little Corporal” was ruining everything. Napoleon Bonaparte abolished the feudal system; peasants duties to the manorial class were reduced or eliminated.  The lingua franca, or trader’s tongue, that was a combination of Italian French and Spanish words suddenly had more French and was replacing High German – and not just with the confused folk of Alsace.

The Emperor decreed that all must ride horses or drive carriages on the right side of the road, which made defending yourself with a saber awkward. But the absolute worst thing was that good German folk tales were told less often at children bedtime!.

Times under the Korsisch (Corsican) were yet another trial for Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm of Hanau,  In 1796, their father died at forty-four when Jacob, the eldest, was eleven. His father was the sole breadwinner. There were ten children in the Grimm family and Jacob was head of household and had to help support his mother and his siblings. He and his brother Wilhelm were bookish, worked hard at school and were accepted at the prestigious Lyceum high school. They went to university, Jacob took time off to fight Napoleon before getting his law degree. Wilhelm studied German literature.

The Brothers Grimm were broke. They were always looking to make a little money to help “keep the wolf from the door,” so to speak. Today young men might start a YouTube channel, become TikTok influencers, or write a monetized blog.

In 1808 after their mother died they hit on a plan to publish historical German folklore and in 1812 the first edition of Kinder und Hausmãrchen (Children’s and Household Tales), what we know today as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Jake and Wil talked about the higher purpose of saving German culture; enough that it is in the lore surrounding the book. Perhaps it was their “elevator pitch” as they traveled the countryside interviewing grossmutters und hausfraus (grandmothers and housewives).

Despite my wisecracks, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were first-rate academic researchers. They documented sources and the evolution of these stories over time. The two volume collection is of significant historical importance in the fields of literature and folklore and has encouraged and enabled further research in the time since its publication. It also happened to make the brothers some money, which they sorely needed.

Und so? (Yeah . . . and?)

In my quest for “Wisdom from Unusual Places,” I decided to read Grimm’s Fairy Tales to see what I might learn. I didn’t read the whole two volume set. I read the Dover Thrift Edition pictured above, forty-three stories translated and published in 2007 about the same time Google Books put a translation and the original online.

Volume one has ninety stories; volume two has one hundred fifteen stories, and ten legends. There are forty-four other stories, the Grimms researched and documented, but never published. Many stories are other versions of the forty-three I read, but some are completely different. I read the short version, but still I learned some stuff.

The Folklore Industry

Probably people have been telling stories to children since before fire was discovered. I wrote earlier in the blog about Aesop whose fables were first recorded in the sixth century BCE. Some of the folktales in Indian culture date to the third or fourth millennium BCE. Tacitus, the roman historian in the first century CE used such stories to determine the character of a people. Jordanes, the sixth century Gothic historian created the divined the history of the Huns from their mythology and folklore, though the academic value of accounts of magical women cohabiting with forest fauns is suspect.

The Grimms collected these stories to demonstrate their Teutonic roots, “Take that Napoleon!”. I find it extremely ironic that some of the same stories were collected by Charles Perrault, of L’Académie Française to venerate French culture. “Cinderella” is in both books. The Little Reed Cap (Rotcäppchen) that we know as “Little Red Riding Hood” is in Perrault as “Le Chapperon Rouge;”

Some turned these stories into entertainment as Walt Disney did in the twentieth century, (Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty).In my house growing up there was a 19320s book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in English that was pre- Disney and Golden Books and less gruesome than what I just read, but not as sanitized as the Disneyfied versions.

Settings and Architypes

The stories I read in Grimm are all set in medieval times, a time of local feudal kings with the advantages royalty brings. It was also the time of the growth of towns and villages and a burgeoning middle class of tradesmen and shopkeepers. So the tales are full of tailors, millers, bakers, furniture makers, shoemakers etc. Farmers are often met going to the town market with a fat animal to sell. Master tradesmen have unruly apprentices, who after apprenticeship are sent on their Wanderjahr (wander-year) to perfect their skills in neighboring villages (Journeymen) until they can produce their “master -piece.”

Children, whether of nobility, tradesmen or peasant, had certain traits by birth order. The eldest was often responsible, sometimes haughty and entitled. The youngest was often ignored and so became resourceful. Middle children often “paired” with the eldest against the young kid.

Gender architypes? Well the most obvious thing is that women are regarded poorly in these stories. Hänsel and Grethel’s mother browbeats the kindly old woodcutter into abandoning their children in the woods and when resourceful Hansel leads them home by dropping white stones from the path, she locks the door so he can’t gather stones and must use  breadcrumbs.

Women are witches, evil stepmothers, uber-vain queens (“Looking glass, Looking glass on the wall, who’ in the land is the fairest of all?”). The wife  simply must have some rampion lettuce (Rapunzel) from the sorceress’s garden and so send’s her husband over the wall and then must give her firstborn daughter away. They are never satisfied like the poor fisherman’s wife who demands he ask more and more from the magic flounder until unhappy with the castle she ends them back in the hovel.,

Step parents  (especially step mothers) spoil their own offspring and are never nice to step children, (“Cinderella,” “The Three Little Men in the Wood,” “Brother and Sister”). Beautiful daughters can be sweet (Snow White and Rose Red) or conceited and demanding, (“King Thrushbeard”). Sons are either lazy good-for-nothings or resourceful (“The Knapsack, the Hat and the Horn”).

Rich men, kings, innkeepers, or robbers )are often greedy. Little people are magical, elves who make the shoemaker’s and dwarves,. The ugly and disabled are too often bad (Rumpelstiltskin, the witch in Hänsel and Grethel).

Wrong-doers are punished in a medieval way, putting on red-hot iron shoes or be pushed down a hill in a barrel with nails sticking inside. The Grimms took their name seriously.

These tales have entered language, culture and what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, ‘following breadcrumbs,” “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” “Needle in a haystack.”

Good Sense in Fairy Tales

First, there are no fairies in the Grimm collection I read. Cinderella gets her pretty ballgowns from a little white bird who sings in the hazel treen that grew from Cinderella’s mother’s grave, not some dragonfly-winged tiny grandmother spreading Disney-glitter. Still there is plenty of magic. The tales present a balanced view of the world, which might teach us today as they were intended to teach children of the medieval times.

Lesson number 1. The world is a dangerous place.  There are evil-doers everywhere, wolves in goat’s clothing, robbers, greedy-guts landlords and evil sorceresses who can curse you to sleep for a hundred years.. Even your siblings will sometimes do you dirt.

Lesson number 2. Magic abounds in the world if you know where to look. Elves can help you  make shoes “money while you sleep,” Little men in the wood can find you strawberries in winter. Talking frogs and bears can become princes. Brothers changed to ravens and swans can be returned to their human state by the love of a siter who completes a magical quest.

Lesson number 3. Don’t boast and keep your word. The miller’s daughter has to spin straw into gold (a brag from flax spinning into pricey linen thread0. The princess who goes back on her word to the frog to sleep with him. Many problems arise from a lack of humility and integrity.

Lesson number 4. Be kind to animals and the less fortunate.  Most Germanic tribes like the Celts are Indo-Europeans, peoples who migrated from India, so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that karma reigns. What goes around comes around as animals and beggars save Simpleton in “The Queen Bee”, and Dummling in “The Golden Goose” and “The Little Peasant” ends up as the richest man in the village, (because everyone else kills themselves for greed).

Lesson number 5. With a little pluck you can make your own luck.  The Valiant Little Tailor transforms the confidence derived from “killed seven with one blow,” (flies no less) into a meteoric rise to royalty. The Bremen Musicians band together and drive off the robbers.

Some will like the Disneyfied versions of these tales because they are less gruesome, but even in the originals love conquers all; princess and prince and miller and his bride live happily ever after.

Stuff Needs Fixing

The lamp is twelve years old. It was a gift from a family member because it went with our last house, an Arts & Crafts fairy-hut in a stately home neighborhood about two miles from where we now live. It does have a Dirk Van Erp vibe, the San Francisco Arts & Crafts metal worker that made those gorgeous bronze-base-mica-shaded lamps we could never afford. The metal-framed shade is made of oiled parchment and is showing its age.

The copper watering can is about six years old. The handle is soldered on in two places and I have resoldered it once at the base. I did a sloppy solder job, but held for a couple of years. The watering can was functional and still pretty if you didn’t examine the handle too closely.

Call Mr. Fix-it

I describe myself as a “fix-or-repair guy” as differentiated from a “throw-away-and-buy-new guy.” I am concerned about all the broken, but repairable stuff filling up landfills. In the words of the old Phil Ochs song “we’re filling up our world with garbage.”

I also get an unreasonable amount of satisfaction from fixing and reusing stuff, so sometimes I spend hours in my workshop fixing something that I could easily repurchase for under twenty dollars. Now in my retirement that is slightly less stupid than it was when I was making hundreds an hour as a consultant, but it still makes no financial sense.

My wife Billie is more practical than I am. She is researching online to replace the shade; I am struggling in my workshop to repair the watering can. It appears at this juncture that she will win this particular competition. I offered to strip the old shade down to the metal frame and put a reattach a covering of her choice. She has declined such assistance.

Mr. Fix-it fails again

I don’t blame her. Right now I am a fix-or-repair-guy who sucks at fixing things. My soldering skills have declined miserably. I made three attempts to resolder the handle, which detached at the top of the handle, while I was attempting to resolder the bottom. Just knowing about Murphy’s Law neither prevents nor mitigates its application.

In frustration, I decided to bolt the handle on. So I drilled a hole in both the top and the bottom of the watering can and attached the handle with some copper bolts I had. What could go wrong with this plan?

The top of the can is, of course, no problem. The watering can is never filled to the point where water would touch the hole. The bottom of the can enjoys no such advantage. Yes, it leaks. In fairness to my apparent failure to anticipate this outcome, I did mix some epoxy to fill around the hole under the head of the bolt and the handle. The watering can still leaks.

That’s the thing about water; it finds its way. The Taoists say, ”Faced with an obstacle become water.”

Now I have a watering can. . . with a hole and a bolt that is epoxied in. . . that still leaks.

My father passed away in 2000. I don’t have to close my eyes to see him shaking his head.

Handy Ray

My father was born in 1904. His father was a printer and so he was around machinery growing up. “There were no repair shops; you had to fix things yourself,” he told me.

My dad was what today you’d describe as “handy.” He fixed stuff and he fixed it the right way. I don’t think he ever used duct tape for anything but sealing the ducts of their forced-air heating system. My father and mother built their own house from plans they got at a lumber yard.

My parents took a freighter trip around the world in their late sixties. They were going to be gone for eight months and my father hatched the idea to rent the house while they traveled. His basement workshop was overstuffed and he asked me to help box things.

In a canvas roll were some tools I had never seen. “What’s this stuff?”

“Oh, that’s from Bessie.”

My father’s first automobile was a 1926 Ford Model T Tudor Sedan. Guys’ first cars are often an object of nostalgia and Bessie was no exception.

“That’s a wheel truer and that’s a spoke shave.” Ray was soon “lost in let’s remember.”

“The Model T wheels had metal rims with wooden spokes. Roads weren’t paved so if you hit a rock or a hole the wheel went out of true and maybe you broke a spoke or two. Well, you carried a spare, but you still had to fix the wheel.”

He went on to describe the process, as my expanding exasperation filled the basement. To my shame I think he threw away those tools based upon my youthful impatience. Even though he finally abandoned the rent-the-house-while-we’re-gone idea, the Bessie tools were gone when we cleaned out the house twenty years later.

What was left in the house? There were eight working electric motors stripped from old refrigerators and washing machines. He had out and replaced the brushes and rewired each.

An apple too far from the tree

He taught me many skills, but most have atrophied over the years. Some of the woodworking skills I’ve kept up, but  when I look at the dresser built by my great grandfather and chairs by my great, great grandfather, I realize I am not very good. Plumbing related skills like soldering are long gone. I worked on cars as a kid, but now I have idea what or how. I was shocked to find that my latest car doesn’t have a dipstick. “How do I check the oil?”

“The onboard computer will notify you if the car needs oil or it needs an oil change.”

I think about lost capabilities, the knowledge and skills of daily life that are no longer in demand that we’ve forgotten. When the Zombie Apocalypse comes, most of us will be truly screwed.

In the future

I read and watch a lot of apocalyptic science fiction and fantasy. Whenever I get concerned about the state of the world these stories seem to improve my mood. “At least there’s still electricity and people aren’t eating each other,” (yet).

Right now I’m reading Justin Cronin’s The Ferryman, about a world where renewable clones live in an island world called Prospera and Support Staff with service and maintenance skills live in poverty nearby in the Annex. The class struggle aspect of the book is a disturbing reminder of the inequity that exists in our world.

The book reminds me of a book I first read in high school. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano, was written in 1952, the same year that my parents build their house. Vonnegut was a General Electric public relations manager who left the corporate world to write full-time.

Player Piano is set in a future world where all work is automated. A few engineers design and maintain factory machinery. Computers maintain all the data. (They are vacuum tube monstrosities, but ignore that.) We meet a young Paul Proteus, Vonnegut’s main character,  when he is a trainee engineer listening to his boss:

“If only it weren’t for the people, the goddamned people,” said Finnerty, “always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren’t for them, earth would be an engineer’s paradise.” 

Engineers are high priests. Any non-engineering jobs with the large corporations are menial drivel waiting to be replaced by computers. Corporations fund a government sponsored minimal middle-class lifestyle. Everyone has big TVs and radar ranges and wall-to wall carpeting. It’s a bleak vision and everyone seems depressed, but the Vonnegut’s cynical humor makes it readable.

There are a few artists, writers, bartenders, and large standing army. Ten year olds take a test to see if they have the aptitude to become engineers. If you are not in that one percent of the population, you join the army or get shunted to the Reeks and Wrecks, the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps. Some of the Reeks and Wrecks scratch out a living replacing radio and TV tubes in their own repair shops, but most travel like tinkers moving from factory to factory fixing whatever they could fix with old hand tools.

Paul Proteus ponders industrial revolutions. The first “devalued muscle work, then came the second one that devalued routine mental work. I guess the third would be machines that devalue human thinking . . . the real brainwork. I hope I’m not around to see that.”

Prescient much, Kurt? I’m struck by the nearly straight line between the world Vonnegut satirized and today. Artificial Intelligence? Machine learning? We haven’t even mastered real  intelligence yet or understand how people learn and we’re teaching it to computers? What could go wrong with this plan?

A late adopter like me can get left behind quickly. Even little day-to-day fix-it skills deteriorate if not used. I guess I better start relearning to solder or I won’t even make the Reeks and Wrecks.

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The LinkedIn Wisdom Elders

I’m connected on LinkedIn to several men about my age or a little older who write posts like I do. Some also have weekly newsletters on LinkedIn where they publish slightly longer pieces, similar to what to these pieces on Wisdom from Unusual Places. I think what we have in common is that we’ve all reached the age, where we feel the need to share wisdom we’ve uncovered or accumulated before we die. We think we’re interesting and I admit I learn some things from these men.

I’m connected to a lot of wise women too. Often I learn more from the women. They are often more interesting and insightful than the men, because different genders have very different perspectives on life. The women’s stories often create what I call “flat head moments,” in reference to that spot on my forehead derived from smacking it with the heel of my hand in astonishment, “Oh man, really? I didn’t see that at all!”

I might tell some of those on another day. This is about the ‘wisdom” shared by old men, guys who think we’re interesting and that there is someone out there listening to us. To be fair judging by the comments a few people are listening, reading our posts and getting something out of it. There are some comments by women, and some comments by younger men, but all too frequently it’s other older men who read, relate and comment. We find each other interesting.

The Most Interesting Man in the World

This week a post from this wisdom brigade started me pondering about what I think is interesting, which led me to the Dos Equis beer commercial “The most interesting man in the world.” (It is amazing how the guy-mind works; somehow it always gets back to beer.)

This television commercial aired in the United States between 2006 and 2018. I’m not sure if it aired outside the US, but maybe as it was created by the EuroRSCG agency, (which became Havas Worldwide in 2010).

The ad ran for twelve years. It won a Clio award, which means a bunch of ad agency creative directors thought it was cool, and it was admitted to the Advertising Hall of Fame, which I think recognizes both creativity and sales. The campaign lasted more than ten years, continuing even after Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, was acquired by Heineken in 2010. So no doubt it sold a lot of Dos Equis beer.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the ad, it portrays an attractive bearded older gentleman, a vaguely Latin looking and sounding bon vivant whose “personality is so magnetic that he cannot carry credit cards.”

The actor who starred in the ad from its inception was Jonathan Goldsmith, who allegedly auditioned improvising for thirty minutes with one sock off, before closing with the line he was given “. . . and that’s how I wrestled with Fidel Castro.” Goldsmith says he modelled the character on his friend and sailing partner, the archetypical Latin lover, deceased actor Fernando Lamas.

“The most interesting man in the world” was an object of admiration, perhaps even envy, to the target demographic young beer dinking guys. The character was well-travelled, shown in settings around the world. He was brave, shown releasing a bear from a bear trap. He was eccentric; he is shown cooking, shooing a mountain lion from the counter, obviously a pet.

He was sophisticated and supremely confident.

“If opportunity knocks and he’s not home, opportunity waits.”

“His beard alone has experienced more than a lesser man’s entire life.”

“He had an awkward moment once, just to see how it feels.”

Most importantly, he was attractive to women. (This was an ad for young beer drinking guys.) Beautiful younger women are always seated with him. The attraction is not purely physical; The Most Interesting Man (TMIM) is portrayed as sensitive, a listener, wise.

“A wingman? It never takes more than one man to have a conversation than with a woman.”

The pitch was always: “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis.”

The message: “You wanna appear suave and sophisticated like me, have chicks hang on your every word? Dude, ditch the Bud Light and order Dos Equis.”

Then TMIM spouts a philosophical zinger, “Stay thirsty, my friends.” The implication was if you want to be interesting, thirst for experiences, learning, and a high class brew.

Personal Branding

Jonathan Goldsmith became branded as “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” He was frequently stopped on the street. Celebrities wanted to meet him. He was invited to meet President Barach Obama more than once.

In 2016 Havas worldwide made a goodbye ad for Goldsmith where TMIM was launched to Mars, from which journey there was no return. In 2016 the new agency Droga5 launched a new campaign for Dos Equis featuring a younger more Latin-looking actor Augustin Legrande. It started airing in 2018 and closed the same year. Apparently Goldsmith was TMIM and less than replaceable. Havas tried to use Goldsmith to Pitch Stella and a tequila without success; TMIM and Dos Equis were co-branded.

This is also the period when people began to talk about personal branding. Tom Peters, the former McKinsey consultant who burst on the scene with In Search of Excellence, wrote a book called Brand You 50: Fifty Ways to Turn Yourself from an ‘Employee’  into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!

It is easy to see how this evolved into the YouTuber, Instagram, and TikTok influencer, everybody’s a star getting their “fifteen minutes of fame,” as Andy Warhol predicted in 1968.

But are we interesting?

Learning from TMIM

OK, there’s a lot of stuff that I think is negative about these ads. They promote some macho male ego crap that I think is damaging to both men and women. But I’m going to leave aside the men must be strong and brave, not dress in tight pants “if I can count the coins in your pocket, spend your change to call a tailor.” I don’t support the have a ‘real man’s drink’ message, “Unless your drink is expecting rain, you should probably reconsider the drink umbrella.”

But occasionally TMIM made sense:

“Find out what it is in life that you don’t do well and then don’t do that thing.”

“In another life . . . I was myself.”

“It’s never too early to start beefing up your obituary”

“I once found the fountain of youth, but I wasn’t thirsty.”

Back to the LinkedIn Wisdom Elder-Guys

Well, us old guys on LinkedIn may not be as interesting as TMIM, but we have a good time sharing what we’ve learned:

Charles Hamm, Texas Grit: “Knowledge is knowin’ ya can do sumtin. Wisdom is knowin’ if ya should. Ponder on it, pilgrims.”

Dr. Ali Anani: “I was looking at the image of trees facing a big storm. The big tree showed character by deepening its roots.
What makes people who have all the means to make strong choices but allow events to knock them over and fall?
Be strong. Be resilient with strong roots of values, ethics and thoughts.”

Bob Musial: I found books at my local library. The harried young woman said ”Checking out?”

To which I replied in a concerned tone, “I hope not.”

She didn’t get it, but I did thank the woman next to her for laughing”

Me: “A chip on your shoulder cuts off blood flow to the brain.”

Rached Alimi: There is a road in the world, a single road that no one else can travel except you: where does it lead? Don’t ask yourself, walk.

Thanks to all my LinkedIn friends who share their wisdom. We are all becoming more interesting every day.

The joke is on me

There is a joke I first heard in my teenage years. Like a lot of jokes it is hard to make work in written form.

The jokester asks: ”What’s the secret of good comedy?”

Then as the person starts to speak “Well I think…,” he screams “TIMING!”

It is a dumb teenage joke, but it sums up some aspects of my life; I am often the antithesis of good timing.

My friend Edward, bought his first house in Toronto, sold two years later having doubled his money and moved to West Vancouver. Two years later he doubled his money again and bought an island in Vancouver Bay.

My first house, I bought in an exurb of Boston, sold it four years later for twenty thousand more and bought a house in a close-in suburb. Two years later I decided to go business school, sold literally everything I owned and moved to London. The house had appreciated thirty thousand dollars including the ten thousand dollar new kitchen. When I returned to the US two years later, the house was on the market for seven times what I sold it for, but I was broke and in debt because the economic data I used to calculate whether I could afford business school was two years out of date. This was the late 1970s and there was 26% inflation in the U.K. for both those years. Ouch.

All of my children and more than a few of my friends have May birthdays. It makes the late spring a card and present extravaganza. I’m not sure I planned it that way. The kids were planned, at least as much as you can plan such things, but when people comment on their May birthdays, I say, “Yeah their mother and I learned to take separate vacations in August.”

Second chance cadence

It took me a long time to get around to getting married again. Billie and I dated for fourteen years. At a little more than half way John, a work friend, heard the story.

“Nine years?! Culler, give the girl a break!”

Billie and I like music and in our younger days we’d go to clubs, bars and coffee shops to see live bands, Invariably we’d arrive just when the band finished a set and went on break. It became a bit of a running joke. “Here in time for the break again.”

In December of 2000 I was living in Pittsburgh and working for a firm whose offices were in New York City. All my clients were in New York and New Jersey. I realized “Hey if I lived in New York, I might actually have a real life without Sunday or Friday flights.”

I was also finally getting around to commit to a second marriage, what Samuel Johnson called “the triumph of Hope over Experience.” I proposed to Billie and miraculously she said “Yes.” We started to plan, selling houses and cars, moving to New York, and having a real wedding. It was a big plan. The Microsoft project printout stretched around Billie’s kitchen.

And we executed that plan. We decided to “rent for while,” made multiple trips to the City to find an apartment that would take Bailey, Billie’s saintly Black Lab, and arranged a mover to take whatever furniture from two houses that we didn’t sell or give away, find a wedding venue and of course a live band. So we were going to see live music in all five boroughs and arriving for the break again and again.

Somehow it all got done, sandwiched within my consulting career and Billie’s writing and editing business. We found an apartment on the Upper West Side, moved in July and went into last minute wedding prep. We were to get married at the Central Park Boathouse on September 23, 2001.

Timing!

September 11, 2001 came and we were as shocked and horrified and distraught as everyone for days and days after. It was a terrible time. The city, once a cacophony of honking impatience was an eerie quiet, no cabs, few cars, no one going underground even when the subways started running again. The streets were a sparse parade of pedestrians shuffling, staring, shyly smiling and voicelessly nodding to those they passed. The sunny September skies were silent shattered by the odd fighter jet,  a sound that was weirdly comforting.. On every vertical surface, were haunting handbills of hastily photocopied photographs, phone numbers scrawled with Sharpie pleading “Please. . . any information. . . please call. . . .”

We were new to the city and consequently one level of separation apart; we knew those who had lost people, but knew no one directly.

Then amid the chaos and heartbreak, days later we both said “Oh my God! The wedding!”

We scrambled, renegotiated with providers, called guests and moved our weeding to to an yellow and orange October day when some felt a celebration of love felt okay again.

In the interregnum, we went downtown to support the local businesses eating in restaurants and going to bars for live music again and yes, arriving just in time for the break.

Feeling Forever New Yorkers, we lived in New York for seven years. After a few years we looked at apartments to buy, watching prices rise, what we wanted always being just out of our reach. Finally we decided to move to the suburbs for a little outside space and a fireplace, amenities available in Manhattan, but only for the uber-riche.

We were outbid repeatedly, but finally found a lovely and unique 1912 Arts and Crafts house, which was selling a bit beyond the top of our range. We bid; we bought . We closed on September 26, 2008.

On September 27^th, Hank Paulsen, the US Secretary of the Treasury went to Congress and said, “I need $700 billion right now, to slow a complete financial collapse.”

Timing!

The more things change

Ten years later when we sold that house, painted historically accurate interior colors, with a new kitchen and bathroom, with new antique Arts and Crafts light fixtures and a hand carved staircase railing, we sold for exactly what we paid for it and then gave the buyers $15K to remove and rewire knob and tube, which in the interim had become uninsurable. Three years later they sold the house, with all the antique fixtures gone and a fresh coat of interior off-white paint for sixty percent more than they paid.

We were still able to retire and are grateful. We try not to talk about our investments. For years we bought high and sold low with abandon. Sometimes younger people ask how to grow their retirement funds. They find it hard to imagine ever being able to retire, and we say, “Don’t ask us. Over the last forty years, a very good investment strategy would have been to do the exact opposite of everything we’ve done.”

We don’t go to live music as much as we used to, a Covid-hangover I suppose, but when we do I’m sure we’ll arrive just when the band goes on break. It’s our special genius.

Timing!

Poor Oedipus

Born in Thebes, Oedipus was left to die on a mountaintop because a seer told Laius and Jocasta, his parents, that this infant was a threat to the throne. In real life he would have just died of exposure, another unfortunate unwanted child statistic, but in Greek mythology, a shepherd saves him and takes him to Corinth, where he is raised to believe he is the son of the king. Later the Oracle at Delphi, without so much as a “spoiler alert,” tells him he will kill his father and marry his mother. He vows to never go home to Corinth – a problem avoided is a problem solved, right? Oops.

Back in Thebes, King Laius having removed what he’s been told is the only threat to his throne, becomes a blustery bully who picks fights with travelers.  Enter young Oed, who takes crap from no one and kills Laius. Oops again, first half of the prophesy fulfilled.

But before Fast Oedi can meet Jocasta, the love of his life, he hears of a monster wreaking havoc in Thebes. A Sphinx. a mean monster with the head and bust of a woman, and body of a lion, has laid siege to the city. “Nobody get’s in or out unless he answers my riddle,” she screams.

Apparently ancient Greeks were not too good at riddle solving, because the Sphinx was murdering all who failed and there were a lot of bodies stacking up. So Oedipus stepped up. (This was in what the poet Hesiod called the Heroic Age after all, the only age which wasn’t worse than the previous one.)

“OK,” says the Sphinx, “what animal walks first on four legs, then on two, and later three?”

I don’t know if Oedipus gets it right away or has to think with the ancient Greek equivalent of the Jeopardy theme song playing in the background, but he answers,

“A man. He crawls as a baby, rises to walk on two legs, but must lean upon a cane when he is old.”

Evidently the Sphinx didn’t have much time for disappointment at being outsmarted, because Fast Oedi kills her too and then goes off to shack up with his mom, blind himself and become the subject of the Sophocles play and countless Freudian analyses.

The Riddle

One thing that intrigues me about the Sphinx’s riddle is that the Greeks cast man as an animal. Contrast that with the Judeo-Christian tradition of man with “dominion over all animals, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea.”

Another is the unity of the stages of man’s growth, four legs two, and even aged leaning on a cane, he is one animal, a man. (This really meant a “person,” but somehow for ancient Greeks man was less a gender specific  is today.) I think as a child, I felt I was treated as somehow less than human. I was to “do as I was told,” not “talk back,” and accept what adults told me without question. These days there are times when my age makes me invisible. A colleague told me, “stop telling people how old you are; no one will listen to you.”

The Greeks seem to see a person, as one animal. He learns and his locomotion changes, but is one animal.

Aesop

The Greek fabulist (or Phrygian, which is in modern day Turkey) told a story of the Man, the Horse, the Ox and the dog.

Three animals a horse, and ox and a dog walked in the winter mountains. They were starving and freezing when they came upon a cabin in the wood. The man who lived there invited them in, made a warm bed for each near the fire. The man gave oats to the horse, hay to the ox and shared his own dinner with the dog.

Grateful, the animals each gave some of their essence to the man. They divided his life between them. The horse gave to youth, the high spirits and impatience with restraint. The Ox took gave strength to middle age, for hard work, steadiness, and focus. The dog took old age and gave loyalty and devotion to those who provided care, but peevishness and disdain for fools.

Aesop also made man one animal, but noted the differing attitudes of man as he aged. I think of the Big Mama Thornton song, that Elvis Pressley made famous, “You ain’t nothin’,but a hound dog.”

Shakespeare

In As you Like It, there are two characters Touchstone and Jacques, who comment on the foibles of the other characters who behave foolishly and struggle to find or admit love. Touchstone the jester, is the optimist, the romantic who falls in love with love, whose humor is always rosy. Jacques is the failed idealist, the cynic who uses humor to mask his pain, upon discovering that the world is not ideal.

The Bard gives the description of the seven ages of man to the cynic Jaques. It has become one of the most famous speeches in Shakespeare,  and the one that Richard Kindersley’s sculpture, pictured above, is meant to represent.

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely Players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Old Will doesn’t give Jacques nice things to say about man, Babies are “mewling and puking.” Kids hate school, young lovers “sighing” and “woeful.” Soldiers are “quick to quarrel.” Justices fat and pompous.

Jacques reserves his worst criticisms for the old, the “slippered pantaloon” and “second childishness. . . sans everything.” Not sure whether this cynic would say I’m in sixth or seventh stage, but I think I’d find his remarks offensive either way.

I think old Will had some darker days. At least he had an appreciation for the depressive view of life, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace till the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. . .Life’s but a walking shadow, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” (Macbeth) That’s not exactly uplifting, but it did provide writers with some good book titles.

Touchstone has some good lines too: “The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise
men do foolishly.” But I wish that Will had him address each of Jacques cynicisms about the stages of man. For each of the negative can be countered by love.

The mewling puking child is made beautiful and adoring through love. The whining schoolboy made to care for school through a teacher’s care. The lover’s sighs are requited, the soldier’s quick temper cooled. Listening with love to the old saws of the round bellied justice, and the man-child voice of the shrunken pantaloon, and even the toothless near oblivion second child improves their stage of life and the listener too.

But Touchstone is mum on such sentiments, so the seven stages of man stand as written.

Today

Younger friends now greet me holding my handshake with two hands, offering big smiles and riveting eye contact saying “How are you?”. People my age and younger tell me to stop calling myself old or making jokes about being “still vertical,” or “one step ahead of the Reaper.”

I figure I’ve got some time left, but know that is not guaranteed. I do know that pondering the ages of man and where I fit is amusing, but even less valuable than reflecting on my life so far. Reflecting on history is only well spent as a driver of improvement, and change takes action.

I don’t even mind if people think I’m so over the hill they need to say something that implies I look better than they expect for someone my age. Sometimes I repeat the Jerry Seinfeld joke, “The three ages of man: youth, middle age, and “you look good!”

Please forgive the crass commercialism. I haven’t figured out how to attract sales for my book without hawking it. And today (January 23, 2024) is the last day of the discount for subscribers, reviewers, family and friends. Tomorrow I start advertising on Amazon and it goes up to market price. 😊 – Alan