From Easter Cometh the Wise Man

This year’s Easter feels different, perhaps because 2016 is an election year. Less the customary Easter weekend of peace and spirituality, it’s caucuses, delegates and speeches that capture attention. Brightly lit stages spotlight well-dressed politicians addressing hysterical followings. (That the politicos resemble various dark horses and lame ducks strutting around a field of wildly chirping chicks is probably just coincidence.)

Perhaps not so ironic then, my annual spring viewing of Ben-Hur, the 1959 MGM masterpiece about the life of Judah Ben-Hur, just took on all new meaning, starting with the famous chariot race scene.

Roman citizens storm the bloodied sand on the huge coliseum racecourse. Flailing their wings in hysterical delight, hundreds dash toward Hur, their new charioteer hero. Despite a smashing victory over several chariot teams, Hur remains calm, caressing the four white stallions who led the way, horses who also crushed fallen foe Messala under their hooves.

Pontius Pilate, Rome’s leader, awaits arrival of the new champion. Ascending Pilate’s emperor box, Hur’s face glistens from sweat, accentuating expressions of humility, exhaustion and pride, contrasting stony Pilate, Rome’s grey-haired figurehead clothed in fine woven fabrics.

“A great victory. You are the people’s one true God,” Pilate tells Hur. “For the time being.”

Pilate rises from his throne and approaches Hur.

“I crown their God!” he proclaims, placing a leaf circlet on Hur’s bowed head.

The crowd noise is deafening. Having used strength of character, intelligence and humility to stay alive against so many odds thus far, and now utilizing his mighty courage in the arena, Hur has suddenly accumulated power and status beyond the imaginable. His headdress now accentuates a new countenance – fear.

~

Messala’s trampled body, what’s left of it, is strapped to a table below the coliseum’s ground level. Through wretches and groans echoed across the dark chamber’s cool air, Messala begs the surgeon, “Cut the legs off me, but not before I’ve seen him – in full body.” Amputating legs in an effort to save his life is less important than presenting a strong image to Hur, a boyhood friend disenchanted with Messala’s eventual entry into the Roman power politics game.

Hur slowly enters the room and approaches Messala’s bedside space, the scene of a broken man he once respected, the same soldier he’s crushed and beaten in the heat of competition.

Strained whispers utter, “Triumph complete, Judah. You have crushed the enemy.”

“I see no enemy here.”

“You think they’re dead, your mother and sister, and the race over. It isn’t over, Judah.”

He knows what he’s about to say will crush Hur, the admission that Rome secretly sent his mother and sister to leper colonies long ago to live out their lives in misery.

“It goes on, Judah, the race … is not over.” Exhaling his last sentence through withered, useless lips, Messala has gotten in the last word.

~

Egocentrism is the personality trait that all people with great political power share. It was necessary to get to the top before, and is today, particularly in America with the political system as currently structured. Gone here are the days of tyrannical leaders trampling bodies to get to the top. What we have instead are intelligent and educated people (savvy, sometimes ruthless and charismatic if nothing else) – Hilary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Bush, Cheney, Reagan. ‘Winners’ all, but I don’t trust them.

Often, the wisest people are those who chose neither to follow nor lead. They follow their hearts. In that way, they do good for the world.

Ben Hur was too good for the political arena he had entered.

It’s ironic the actor chosen to play Judah Ben Hur was Charlton Heston, figurehead for the politically powerful National Rifle Association.

Ego riding the wheels of charisma will take you anywhere you want to travel – or chirp.

Beauty Brought On the Backs of Southern Brothers

I used to work in landscaping. Somewhere within my Scandinavian DNA I knew a skill to artfully construct with rock existed, but I chose to stay far away from hoisting heavy rocks – that was hard work. Deadheading flowers was more my forte. I owned up to that, while understanding the real artists in the dry rock trade were hardworking crews comprised mostly of Mexicans.

That was my perspective as a landscape worker in Santa Fe. As I helped beautify countless homes and businesses, I acknowledged the foundation many of these structures had been built upon was rock, and that the identity they all shared was the beautiful and deliberate integration of rockwork into them.

The workers who labored on those projects have left, their work done, paychecks cashed – many mailed back to Mexico where their families reside – but not before these craftsmen turned thousands of scrambled rocks, many uplifted from the site grounds, into beautiful creations. Rock structures can represent the unique quality of the local area, breaths of fresh air within the imitation and compressed building material world we live in.

A rock worker sees within each stone and boulder its potential to fit within the larger picture of a pathway, wall, patio, step system, etc. Houses and buildings may one day crumble, but the carefully arranged rock constructions remain. I take a moment to salute our southern brothers, the quiet, steadfast artists – many long gone – whose sweat it took to make such enduring assemblies.

Spring is on its way, and rock crews are already out. As I drive around our beautiful city today, I marvel at what’s been painstakingly created in rock through the gifted hands and strong backs of our stone worker brethren.

Not many could handle this kind of labor, working in the elements ten months a year. It’s one thing to do it; another to do it so well. Thanks. Gracias. Bien hecho.

 

I Met Jackson Browne Today

There he stands.
Looking strikingly like the man,
the musician, I’ve always known.

Strange meeting him here,
in a toy shop,
if, in fact, this is
Jackson Browne,
the folk troubadour wandering through my living room record collection back home.

He’s disarming,
with calm eyes and posture.
It can’t be him.

It doesn’t matter now.
It’s so special to meet this man, whoever he is.

He says nothing.
He looks at me like he knows me.
Like he cares.
People – customers – don’t do that. How strange.

But I do know him,
from lyrics sung about heartbreak,
truth, and celebration.
Maybe,
if it is Jackson Browne,
he knows how gratefully I embraced each of those.

Impossible.
The real Jackson Browne
has too many fans to know such things.

This man –
short in height
with beard rubble protruding from a compassionate face –
wears cool, casual clothes,
conveying warmth
(freezing images of his stormy life on the rock and roll road, the megastar I expected to see).

There’s no less appropriate moment
to meet a soulful artist
than on a market showplace sales floor.
I almost want to apologize, but then,
because we understand each other,
I know he is with me.

But so quickly,
he is gone,
whoever he was,
lost in a customer crowd,
and out the door.

Yes, I did meet Jackson Browne today.
I know this man.
He looked at me like he knew me.
Like he cared.
Just like he cares about his songs
and his connection to the domain of people.

From spoken lyric
to microphone
to vinyl
to radio station
to wavelengths through space
across to me – on Earth, in my town, my world, this shop – and my little transistor of senses.

So light a journey, so weighty his peaceful, universal words.

That’s a super star.

 

 

Why the Washington Capitals Will Win the 2016 Stanley Cup

I’ve been a Washington Capitals fan for all forty-one years of their existence. During that time, I’ve watched other NHL teams possess what it takes to win at the highest level while the Capitals for one reason or another have not. Now, for the first time, I’m watching the Capitals do to other teams what they’ve been doing to us in a million little ways for what seems a million long years, and I can’t believe my eyes. Here’s how Washington attacks opponents, 2015-16 style.

Throwing Braden Holtby at them near every night, arguably the best goalie in the game; playing mistake-free hockey like they’ve never displayed before; having great team depth from top to bottom; grabbing a lead and holding it – toying with the opposition when a lead’s actually lost, then winning convincingly in the end; having player trades pay off – finally; hurling a combination of youth, prime-age players and experienced Stanley Cup-winning journeymen in the lineup. Oh, and throwing Alex Ovechkin at them, the best player in hockey right now.

Things are looking up. So what’s brought all this about?

Bernie Wolfe  1975-79

Two years ago this summer, the Caps ousted nineteen-year general manager George McPhee and coach Adam Oates for Brian MacLellan and Barry Trotz respectively. MacLellan outed some old guard players and replaced them with solid talent through wise player trades and pick-ups. Trotz has combined just the right blend of no-nonsense coaching, consistency and effective talent assessment to produce at least three great lines nearly every game.

For the first time since their inaugural 1974-75 season, all things are coming together: GM, coach, players – not to mention important intangibles like player chemistry, luck and perhaps even fate. They’ve never had all these ingredients at one time before. Why? Just look at their history.

Early Capitals squads played hard, only to be left downtrodden for their efforts.

Gord Smith 1974-79

The Woeful Era, 1974-75 through 1981-82
The NHL awarded Washington an expansion team, one named after the Washington Capitol, the nation’s symbol for enduring stability and strength. Just a kid starting college then and anxious to see NHL hockey in the newly constructed Capital Centre sports arena, I volunteered to be a statistician for the Capitals game night staff. I wound up seeing close to 400 NHL games from the press box as statistician during Washington’s first eight seasons. Only a hopeful, exuberant boy of a man could endure what he was about to witness during the forthcoming era.

Bill Riley 1974-79

Hard-working, hungry, and interesting to say the least, the Capitals’ players were cast offs from other teams. The eight Caps squads during this era failed to post one playoff game. Often, rosters were so depleted, above average players rose to savior status quickly. As for all others, frustrations ran deep. (I’ll never forget a large color photo that hung in Capital Centre’s lobby. It was of Ace Bailey – wow, you mean the Ace Bailey who once played for the Boston Bruins!? – crouched on his knees, head bowed in anguish, holding half a smashed stick in his glove. It went without saying he shattered it out of frustration). Equally frustrated was owner Abe Pollin who announced not only that the organization had lost 21 million dollars so far but that changes had to be made immediately.

The David Poile Era, 1982-83 through 1995-96

Young David Poile became general manager and turned the franchise around. During his tenure, the Capitals made the playoffs fourteen years in a row, sending out great players like Rod Langway, Scott Stevens, Mike Gartner, Peter Bondra and Olie Kolzig. With the addition of Rod Langway in particular in 1982, the Capitals were suddenly feared. Just the look in Langway’s eyes scared opponents from entering the corners. Scott Stevens could hip check you two zones back to dreamland. Mike Gartner would skate past you and score all in one breath. Bondra could beat anybody with his offensive skills around the net. And Kolzig could stop near anybody from scoring. Even so, during this era, somebody else always halted the Capitals from getting beyond a first or second round of playoffs, reaching a third only once.

The George McPhee Era, 1997-98 through 2013-2014
New owner Ted Leonsis backed his general manager, George McPhee, for fourteen seasons. Their player acquisition style of trading players and draft picks for big name stars failed to work and swung the Capital pendulum backward from the Poile years. Under McPhee, the Capitals failed to make the playoffs five seasons. During the eight they did – spread out over several campaigns with a mishmash of coaches – Washington reached the second round of playoffs only three times. The Capitals seemed predictable, a franchise regularly constructed of choking teams. Trying Hall of Famer Adam Oates as coach in 2012 was a prayer to change things. But midway through his second year in 2014, his system fell apart. Players failed to respond. Fans grumbled. Even the Capitol Dome just down the road from Verizon Center was crumbling, necessitating the government to begin a huge repair project still in force today. But could the Capitals be repaired?

The New Hope Era, 2014-15 to present
Leonsis fired McPhee and replaced him with MacLellan who selected Barry Trotz as coach. Trotz immediately instilled a different attitude in the locker room, his first season marked by stability, a balanced system and ability to communicate and teach (especially Alex Ovechkin about how to play a 200 foot game), not to mention having solid defensemen – Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik – to work with, acquired in savvy MacLellan trades. During this current year’s campaign, MacLellan has added outstanding players, including T.J. Oshie and Justin Williams (even giving Mike Richards a comeback try. Why not?).

Capitals spirit still lives on, now with new management, coach and players.

My biggest concern, despite the vastly improved cast of defensemen, enforcers and elite passers skating alongside Alex Ovechkin, is how the Capitals rely on the Great Eight. He is key to their offense and power play. Without him, they don’t have the big threat great teams often possess to win championships. Very durable throughout his eleven-year career, Ovechkin’s missed only two games this season, but both were losses without him (combined 10-2 scores), and both to the Florida Panthers, my second biggest concern. The Panthers seem to have the Caps number (not to mention the Dallas Stars since ’08). However, other than a forthcoming trade deadline move for another solid defenseman, I’ll take my chances with this team as it is.

To date, the Capitals hold an astounding 40-9-4 record – the next best team is eight points behind with twice as many losses. Since the league expanded from the original six teams in 1967-68, only the 79-80 Flyers have more points in a fifty-three game span. As a result, the Caps may very well wind up the NHL’s regular season top points leader, earning the league’s Presidents’ Trophy for the honor. But the Caps have won the NHL Presidents’ Trophy before, during the 2009-2010 season when, overconfident, they were embarrassed by Montreal in the first round of playoffs. The Presidents’ Trophy may be an honor, but this year’s team talks about the truest honor there is, hoisting the Stanley Cup.

After all, isn’t that sport’s greatest payoff where, for one moment, a grown man acts like a boy again, embraces the world, hugs his teammates, jumps up and down, and hoists the biggest crown ever above his exhausted body, adorned in uniform that bears the logo he’s so proud of?

If the Washington Capitals win the Cup this June, a boy’s dream will have come true. A franchise’s mission will have been fulfilled. Although foundations were tested, what we all shared – the franchise, it’s long-frustrated fans, and this boy dressed in mere writer’s garb – was a daily, never-ending foundation built on hope. And a few unanswered prayers.

 

Pat Ribble and Caps celebrate a 1982 goal at Capital Centre’s east end.

This writer and friend Paul Kane at Capital Center construction site nine years earlier.

Capitals artwork and photography by Mike Andberg. Capital Centre construction photo by Paul Kane.

Mike Andberg was born and raised in the Washington DC area and, although moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1996, has continued to follow all Washington teams closely, particularly the Capitals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lightfoot!

Three houses. Fifty years apart. Two people. One great musician. Come inside.

Gordon Lightfoot, songwriter of such hits as “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Sundown,” writes songs in total isolation and composes in big batches. Solitude is a must, part of his music methodology.

Owning two houses these days, he writes, practices the guitar and plays songs in one house while his wife and family live in the other. Isolation, Lightfoot’s key to creativity, must also be a killer. “Gee, honey, if only you could read my mind. Be back at sundown.” But it’s who Canadian-born Gordon Lightfoot seems to be, and has been from the start of his career. Liner notes from his second album, The Way I Feel, reveal him working alone for a week in a room of producer John Court’s house, perfecting the album’s material. The persistence produced a great collection of songs. But his very first album, Lightfoot!, released in January of 1966 – fifty years ago this month – is what interests me most.

The house I grew up in in Silver Spring, Maryland, was nowhere near Canada, no den of folk music, but – from time to time – entertained greatness. I’d already been educated by Bob Dylan and the Beatles from songs I heard over my family’s various transistor radios. Listening to Lightfoot!, a vinyl treasure brought into the house by my older sister and brothers, I’d never heard such personal ache set to music and lyrics, at least as our old living room Motorola stereo set could produce.

A moody kid, I related to the yearning voice in Lightfoot’s songs, as if he called out from a place of wilderness, the same place I felt somehow akin to despite living in suburban Maryland all my life. There was something that connected the two of us.

Where the long river flows
It flows by my window
Where the tall timber grows
It grows ’round my door
Where the mountains meet the sky
And the white clouds fly
Where the long river flows by my window 
*[From “Long River”]

Listen to that song! Listen to all of them. I really want to play music like this. I love Lightfoot’s voice, precise guitar picking and great songwriting. Mom paid big money last year in hopes I’d learn guitar and piano, but I flopped both times, opportunities lost. I still play guitar in my room, dreaming I’ll be good some day. I ache – is playing music pleasure or pain?

Now here I am with my hat in my hand
Standing on the broad highway will you give a ride
To a lonesome boy who missed the train last night
I went in town for one last round and I gambled my ticket away
And the big steel rail won’t carry me home to the one I love
*[From “Steel Rail Blues”]

In a Orilla, Ontario, grocery store one day, Lightfoot’s mother heard him singing to himself. So moved by his melodic spontaneity, she encouraged him with music in school and church. By twelve, he excelled in voice, choir and piano, even going on to a regular gig in a barbershop quartet.

I’m gonna buy me two wings of silver
Yes ‘n Lord to fly me home
I’m gonna buy me two wings of silver
Yes ‘n Lord to fly me home
And when I get my silvery wings
Then an angel choir will sing
I’m gonna get me two wings of silver to get me home
*[From “Rich Man’s Spiritual”]

I’m no good. Maybe I should quit. It’s frustrating having to figure out keys and chords, not to mention what key Lightfoot is singing in. Winter is bleak and grey. Alone in my room, light has abandoned me.

Oh gal don’t you say goodbye
Now that I need you by my side
Love me now or be on your way
If you go be gone to stay
*[From “Oh Linda”]

Bob Dylan, frontrunner of the early sixties Folk Revival, inspired Lightfoot. As a result, his songwriting became more personal. In a Toronto club one night, he played the mournful ballad, “Early Morning Rain.” Folk group Ian & Sylvia heard him play it and became the first big group to record a Lightfoot song.

Out on runway number nine, big seven-o-seven set to go
But I’m stuck here in the grass where the cold wind blows
Now the liquor tasted good and the women all were fast
Well now there she goes my friend, well she’s rolling down at last
*[From “Early Mornin’ Rain”]

Our house has come alive! No one ever agrees on anything, but all the sudden all four of us kids think Gordon Lightfoot is cool. Time to celebrate. I can even hear rejoice in Lightfoot’s voice.

Gonna buy me a long white robe
Yes ‘n Lord to help me home
I’m gonna buy me a long white robe
Yes ‘n Lord to get me home
And when I get my heavenly gown
And I lay my burden down
I’m gonna get me a long white robe to get me home
*[From “Rich Man’s Spiritual”]

Putting the Lightfoot! album together wasn’t all merriment. The New York City recording studio was sterile and unwelcoming – lonely – despite human companionship of an unmoved assistant engineer who assisted in recording the album by misspelling names of Lightfoot’s songs.

Here in this cold room lyin’
Don’t want to see no one but you
Lord I wish I could be dyin’
To forget you  
*[From “Ribbon of Darkness”]

I can’t read a lick of music, but what feels so good is how I can play any song on guitar by ear. And my finger pickings sound just like what I hear Lightfoot doing. I’m actually pretty good. But I also spend a lot of time getting to be pretty good. Over and over. Day after day. Kinda alone.

The way I feel is like a robin
Whose babes have flown to come no more
Like a tall oak tree alone and cryin’
When the birds have flown and the nest is bare
*[From “The Way I Feel”]

Two albums later, with a folk following of his own, Lightfoot has a band family to support in addition to his own back home. Responsibility is high. Pressure mounts. And the Folk Revival is dying. Rock and roll is taking over. Lightfoot must reinvent himself without going that way. There’s still room for ballads and romanticism without sentimentality, isn’t there? Boom, his fourth album, Sit Down Young Stranger, goes gold in 1970.

Oh may the light of freedom shine
For all the world to see
And peace and joy to all mankind
Through all the years to be
For soon the leaves will die
And the long hard wind will blow
May this world find a resting place
Where peaceful waters flow
*[From “Peaceful Waters”]

A song comes to my mind. I like writing songs. Each breathes its own air. It’s the boss. It leads me, I do not lead it. I must listen, listen carefully in the cold silence, for which direction I must go. Song – is king.

I can’t say I’ll always do
The things you want me to
I’m not saying I’ll be true but I’ll try
*[From “I’m Not Sayin’”]

Suddenly, there’s regular Lightfoot gigs on weekly TV shows, Midnight Special and Don Kirchner’s Rock Concert. But then a diagnosis of Bells Palsy, drugs and alcohol abuse in the 70’s and 80’s, a 2002 abdominal hemorrhage that left him in a coma for five weeks, and a small stroke in 2004.

This old airport’s got me down, it’s no earthly good to me
‘Cause I’m stuck here on the ground, as cold and drunk as I can be
You can’t jump a jet plane like you can a freight train
So I’d best be on my way in the early mornin’ rain
*[From “Early Mornin’ Rain”]

In an 2008 interview with Matt Fink of American Songwriter magazine, Lightfoot said all his marriages were doomed to fail due to his need for isolation to write. Yet, as of today, he’s compiled 20 albums, 16 Juno awards (Canadian Grammys), Canadian Music Hall of Fame membership, and has had many of his songs sung by an impressive list of great musicians. Was all the work, the grind – the isolation – worth it?

~

I have to get out of the house. It’s time to go fishing.

As I drive through the beautiful forests in Bandelier National Monument on my way to fish near Jemez Springs, New Mexico, I slide the Lightfoot! song collection into my CD player.

Sixteen miles to seven lakes way up among the pines
In some hidden valley where the twirlin’ river twines
Where the fish swim up and down and the sparklin’ waters falls
Where the thunder rolls and the lonely puma calls 
*[From “Sixteen Miles (To Seven Lakes)”]

A tear comes to my eye.

Isolation isn’t so bad, at least when shared with Gordon Lightfoot.

 

 

Many thanks to the following sites for providing additional information:  American Songwriter and connectsavannah.com. Check them out for more on Gordon Lightfoot.

*All lyrics from original Gordon Lightfoot compositions in Lightfoot!

Un-honorably Un-mentioned

There it is, folded on the coffee table. The newspaper’s culture magazine. Their annual writing contest with all winner’s works printed inside, just a few feet away from my shaking hands.

I’ve submitted many times before, but feel this is the year I get published. I’m going to win because I took a chance. I didn’t send something I thought they were looking for. I do that every year. And lose. Instead, I sent an original, edgy, witty, and clever piece to the newspaper jurors. Adult Prose section, here I come.

I open the magazine. Adult Prose First Place winner – not me. Okay. I wasn’t expecting First Place anyway. I turn the page. Second Place. Not me. You know, it would be nice, just once, if I won … anyway. I turn the page. Another writer has taken Third Place. But, wait – something new this year, the List of Finalists, names of writers whose works were considered extremely worthy but didn’t make the cut. If I’m on the list, some progress has been made.

I wiggle my index finger down the page of ten names. Mike Andberg is not among them. Who are all these people? I’ve never heard of any of them.

The Honorable Mention section. I flip the pages. Quickly. I have not been mentioned in the Honorable Mention section either.

I check the Teen section winners. I never mentioned my age in my submission to the paper. Who knows? Maybe they placed my winning entry in the Teen category by mistake. I check it. Twice. My name’s not there. Teenagers are already in the paper and they’re, what, fifteen? I’m how old?

I peruse the Kids category. Jesus. I mean, how good can these pieces be? I’m not included in this section (whether accidentally or deliberately).

I envision tomorrow’s newspaper folded on my coffee table. A giant apology. It was all a printing mix up. Excluded from the Annual Writing Contest winners was Mike Andberg’s glorious, witty, funny, unique, and cutting edge piece. It could happen, right?

I can only hope it wasn’t placed in Obituaries.

 

Dear Todd – Texting Uback w iphone: SWHSE (sorry, we hired someone else)

Out from a dark gray hoodie, a pink-flushed face appears. It’s Todd’s. He’s ready to review his job application with Mr. Deale, the store manager, clad in a vivid red polo.

Reading the top of the first page, Mr. Deale stops and squints his eyes. “You’ve written here that your middle name is … ‘IS‘?”

“Yeah, text for I’m Sorry, ‘cuz, I mean, I don’t have a middle name. Is, is that okay?”

“Is that … okay? I suppose. No need to be sorry.”

“Cool.”

“Now, Todd, I see for ‘How long living at your current address,’ you wrote WRT?”

“With Regard To.”

“Then you scribbled the letter Y?”

“Y – you know, for the word, ‘why’.”

“Why what?”

“Why do you need to know how long someone’s been at their current address?”

“Well, it’s just a formality …. Todd, looking down your application, I see it’s all abbreviations.”

“Texts. Figured you go through a lot of applications, sir, and this would speed things up.”

“For ‘Salary desired,’ you wrote IAG, NBD.”

“It’s All Good. No Big Deal.”

“And PT.”

“For Part Time. Part time, you know, that I don’t want full time.”

“Using all these texts, it’s highly irregular. For ‘Position applied for,’ you wrote, ‘IT.’ What’s ‘IT’ mean?”

“You mean, you don’t have an IT department?”

“Oh, IT. Of course we …”

“‘Cuz if you sell tech stuff, I’d like a job there.”

“On the line about any crimes, convictions, or sentences you may have had imposed, you wrote IDNDT.”

“I Did Not Do That.”

Todd’s iPhone rings.

“Just a second, sir,” he says, pulling the smooth, blue device out from his pocket.

As Mr. Deale scans the application further, Todd texts back, ‘dude’z clulss. wtf. w2f!!!‘”

“Okay. Done. Sorry. I’m all about technology, sir. You sell iPhones here?”

“I see that for driver’s license number, you wrote BOT 953 IIRC?”

“If I Remember Correctly, I think my number’s 953 BOT.”

“953 BOT is your plate number, Todd. What’s the number on your wallet?”

“Oh, that thing. Worst abbreviation ever. And for what?”

“That’s because it’s not text, Todd.  And for ‘Means of transportation,’ you wrote GF.”

“My girlfriend, Mindy, well, till the old BOT gets fixed. But I’ll be here on time, sir.”

“References are very important, Todd, yet you left that entire section blank, blank except for NA. What’s that?”

“Not Applicable, which I crossed out and switched to WB – will Write Back, which I crossed out and put NA again.”

“Why?”

“Well, mothers aren’t references, are they?”

“As for work experience, under ‘Name of last employer,’ you wrote JTLYK MOM?”

“Yeah, for Just To Let You Know, my last job was for Mom.”

“Your reason for leaving the position was ‘POS‘.”

“Parent Over Shoulder.”

“Then, in parentheses, NC?”

“Not Cool. I mean, you know what I mean, right?”

“And then SLY?”

“But – Still Love You. S’all good. I’m ready to work.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Well … Todd, after going over your application and body of work experience, I see you’ve done some respectable work, but it’s not exactly Target level employment material, now is it?”

“But, I’m ready to work, sir. I really am.”

“Just curious. Below, you printed your name, but left the signature line blank.”

“Oh. Cursive is dead, sir.”

“Just curious. Do you know how to sign your name?”

“LMAO no! Laughing My Ass Off – no! They don’t teach that anymore.”

“Right. Well, it’s been nice to meet you, Todd. We’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

“Cool.”

“CUL8R. For See You Later. I just made it up.”

“Hey, gonna write that down, sir.”

“Try writing it in cursive some day.”

“Ha! LMAO, sir. LMAO!”

“Right. LOL back at ‘cha, Todd.”

“Cool. You got my number! Text me.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Postal Service: We Deliver Zombies

Today’s the day. I can just feel it. It’s 10:15 – exactly between the time the Post Office opens when everybody’s trying to get ahead of everybody else and noon when everybody’s sneaking over on their break. I already notice the parking lot’s far less full. Not a whole lot of people mulling around the place either. Yes!

I enter through the squeaky, automatic glass door, turn left, and there they are – twenty-five people, all holding packages, snaked around the long desk in the middle of the room. The shock and awe on my face must resemble what I look like after having sat on a tack. Or the face on the guy in Munch’s painting, “The Scream.” All I want to do is get the right postage to send off an 8×11 manilla folder containing a long letter to my friend.

I should have known better. Next time, I’ll write my letters here, right on the desk while I’m waiting in line – I’ll have time to compose ten pages if I want.

As Customer Number Twenty-six, I try to regain control by calculating just how long I might be here. Too depressing. Bored, I read the poster on the wall, “Summer Stamps.” It’s November now, not summer, which reminds me it was June when they discontinued the automated customer ticket system. Yet, on the digital wall counter, number 32 still flickers, presumably left over from Customer Number 32 on that long-lost June day. I imagine him still standing here, a zombie, holding a parcel in his rigor mortice-stiff arms.

As Customer Number Twenty-seven enters, I now get to enjoy his look of shock and awe. Same with Customer Number Twenty-eight. (Edward Munch must have frequented post offices.) Customer Twenty-nine turns around and leaves (along with impatient Number Eighteen who follows suit). Now we’re getting somewhere!

There’s five clerk postal bays in front of us. I’ve never seen five postal clerks in here – ever. Today’s there’s three. If the customers looked dead, the clerks come across as coldly limp, at best. One goes in the back and never returns. Did she die back there, die with all the others who’ve never returned to serve us? Just wondering.

I notice one clerk’s been with a customer for ten minutes. When did sending mail get so complicated? What could they possibly be talking about? What’s he mailing – air bags, cremated remains, ammunition?

But now I see the clerk smile. Hey, he’s not supposed to smile or chill or chat! He’s here to serve us – and fast. But can I blame him? Why speed up and service 500 irritated customers a day when you can get away with 300? Even 300 – isn’t that slow death for any clerk to serve in one overworked day?

I see the next customer has 8 packages. I hate Christmas. I hate it already. And it’s only early November. Someone embalm me – now.

So, as I stand here waiting in line, I compose my “Ways to Improve the United States Postal Service” list:

*Just sell stamps

*Let customers redeem their two foot-long Post Office receipts for stamps

*Eliminate Christmas altogether

*Or just disband, like aging rock groups do. Living Death, Crushed Butler and Lucifer’s Friend did (their names gone, but not forgotten, explaining exactly how I feel right now – probably Postal workers, too).

Underage Appreciation for the Long Gone Classical Music Composer

“Orchestra at Ground Level,” 15 x 23. Inks on paper

I turn around from my second row seat in Albuquerque’s Popejoy Hall and see the capacity crowd is standing and clapping. On the stage, the New Mexico Philharmonic conductor bows and the orchestra members stand, but it’s the absent composer I’m madly applauding. It’s too bad he isn’t here tonight to receive the flower bouquet laid at the conductor’s feet because Tchaikovsky’s sixth symphony, the “Pathetique,” is a masterwork.

I’m aghast how this symphony – considered a masterpiece now – was panned by critics and audiences the first time it was performed in 1893. Many great works have been panned after their first public performance, and still are. Classical music has always been owned, at least most appreciated and patronized, by older, wealthier people. I assume it was this base that panned Tchaikovsky’s sixth because, to generalize, older, wealthy people tend to be on the conservative side. Among many changes they didn’t like, perhaps the hardest was listening to the long, somber ending. What, no rousing conclusion to the fourth movement? Anything that feels too “new” or isn’t as great as the composer’s most previous work the musical establishment often scorns.

Caught up in my fervent clapping, as if hoping Tchaikovsky might hear me, I cannot believe anyone ever slammed his sixth. I don’t care what they were expecting. Beauty is beauty, isn’t it? To not be moved, I repeat – moved – by this music, seems then to have fallen upon deaf ears.

While exiting the hall, I hear negative audience response to “Circuits,” a modern piece that opened the program. Again – too new, too different, too soon for most folk? I, too, cannot see classical music evolving to the sound of “Circuits,” a rather edgy 1990 orchestral piece that places an emphasis on experimentation over “beauty.” Then again, beauty is in the ear of the listener. And wasn’t Tchaikovsky experimenting in “Pathetique,” too, a large reason audiences had difficulty with it, especially it’s “downer” ending?

When I hear raves for the night’s highlighted piece, Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in b minor, played masterfully by Zuill Bailey, I mull the fact that as classical music has changed, audiences have not. Classical music audiences tend not only to love concertos that display musician’s virtuosic abilities (and always have), but the majority of audiences are composed of the sixty and over set. My earliest concert memories attending Kennedy Center programs during the nineties were smothered by a preponderance of aging audience member’s tepid response and involvement to the events generally, complete with coughs and snores heard aplenty during them. However, in comparison, New Mexico Philharmonic patrons seem livelier and engaged, but are nevertheless overwhelmingly seniors (despite the availability of great seats for students at a huge discount). This audience loved the violin concerto and Tchaikovsky; not so much “that opening thing they played.” Sometimes when I hear responses like that, it comes across as though the people have been spoon fed what to like.

Tonight, I was caught up in all the glorious trappings that come with classical music events. I admit to my own brand of symphony snobbery by only buying seats located close to the stage. It is there I feel comfortable and most a part of the music. I can see the performers’ physical efforts of perfection, often their sweat; I bask in being surrounding by a world of concert hall browns, dotted by beautiful blacks and whites from the musician’s strict dress code, however upstaged by flower arrangement decor. While music is playing, I have difficulty sitting still like a good classical concert go-er should. And after the music is over, I clap for somebody who’s not even in the room.

I guess I strike a bit of discord with the base of classical music patrons around me, but I’m the happiest one in the hall.

The New Mexico Philharmonic performed this program October  24, 2015.
Artwork and photos by Mike Andberg.

The Second That Takes Forever

This just happened yesterday, September 26.

It comes out of nowhere. There’s a car only twenty feet in front of me, sideways to my grill. I push the brake pedal. I don’t even realize I’m pushing until I sense it’s not stopping me fast enough. I’m so close to the car now and it’s not moving away quick enough. Is it moving at all? Or is everything slow motion during this second before impact? There’s nothing I can do. I hear the tires screech but they’re only guiding my missile directly toward the car. It’s almost here. The injury. The hassle. The insurance crap. Having no car. An emotional, angry motorist I’ve hit. I see the driver’s face, looking at me like I’m crazy for hurling my car at his. But he’s moving now, completing a u turn, a stupid u turn, and I’m mad. Take this, you mother fucker! Take this! If I cannot stop, if I cannot avoid you, then take it for all it’s worth, you idiot for luring me into your stupid world of dangerous carelessness.

It’s the unmistakable sound cars make crashing, equal amounts bass and high-pitched treble. His car takes the brunt, getting knocked off course. Mine plows through and stops. No whiplash. No smashing glass. No head to the steering wheel. Clean, precise direct hit collision. Then silence.

My longest second is over. Time for its ugly, timeless aftermath.

I drive to the shoulder, crank the parking brake, open the door and prepare to meet the consequences head on. A hysterical driver? A bloodied driver? A mess I’ll pay for for months?

Nothing. The car is gone. Just over the hill from whence I came, I hear the car speeding off. An entire plastic bumper unit sits in the middle of the road, surrounded by small debris. The guy had no insurance. That has to be it. Why stick around when he knew he’d made a huge mistake – that’s what I think.

An ugly split on my bumper, a slightly cockeyed hood, but nothing else. Like a metal missile just hit a plastic tug boat. He’s gone. I never want to see him again. I’m glad there’s no insurance claims, no police scene. Should I feel bad for saying this? I clear the road of the bumper and various parts while cars slowly pass, passengers rubbernecking to view.

For such a crash, so little damage. For one so unlucky to be the guy behind him, luckier still to walk away. What remains are surprising thoughts, the collision of thoughts that flashed through my mind so quickly, as surprising as spotting a car coming at you out of nowhere.