Deep Thoughts #7 - The New Year: I'm Starting with the Mitch in the Mirror

Sit down, mitch, be humble...

Some things about me beyond the beard and the Subaru (and the fly rod), which are likely signifiers to some already (semioticians are especially delighted with the complex and unreliable shorthand of symbols these days, no doubt): My wife and I bank at a credit union; this year we have done an increasing amount of shopping at a co-op grocery store, to which we are working members (volunteer 6 hours a piece, plus the boy’s 6, each year); my wife is a vegetarian, and I don’t cook, so my meat consumption is comprised of whatever my mom feeds me when I visit and what I eat out; I pay dues to my local Trout Unlimited Chapter and send a check to Stripers Forever every couple of years; I fish barbless a lot, pinch down barbs on the cheaper flies, and I release nearly 100 percent of what I catch (maybe one 28 inch striped bass a year, and keeper fluke are harder to come by these days and very, very tasty, especially breaded and fried); I am not a “purist” with the fly rod because I like to catch all kinds of fish and like all kinds of fishing and still love to set the hook on a spinning rod loaded with braid and hear that drag give a short ascending whine; I walk a lot of places for quick errands, and my town is pretty walk-friendly; when I can’t fish, I still need to walk in the woods to be right in the head; I have hunted and would hunt, if only for another excuse to be outside in nature, if I didn’t so dislike processing game of any kind, including fish (I decline Eric’s yearly carport turned butcher shop pool (of blood) party every year—even though learning to quarter game in one’s driveway might be a good skill to acquire?); I like cities and have lived in and near them most of my life, ironically, perhaps because one can walk for what is needed in many of them; I have never been mugged and yet, due to my distaste for paying to park coupled with my affinity for seeing live music in small bars and clubs, I probably should have been mugged many times; I am not afraid to walk in cities in the dark any more than I am afraid to walk in the woods at the same time of day (I probably wouldn’t jetty hop in Atlantic City alone at midnight, however); I take the train to work when possible and can figure out a bus schedule in a pinch; my house, which is two miles from the Philly border, is under 1,200 square feet for three people, but my lot is nearly half an acre with five old-growth trees over 50 feet tall (I am counting the days until the boy can mow the lawn and better pull a rake—he is quite skilled at riding a tarpaulin full of leaves to the curb at this point); more importantly, we have woods and a stocked trout stream down the street; we have an expanding garden, we compost, we up-cycle (recycle things the municipalities don’t take in the single stream) and we have two rain barrels that we really should use more often to water the aforementioned garden.

More walking than fishing right now.

I have one master’s degree and am working on an MFA, and my wife also has an MA; we are both educators (part of the problem, as one former reader of this blog and some uber-conservatives would say); no ivory towers, however, an open enrollment college where my students are predominately working adults returning to school at an average age of 35 years old, and the majority are black and Hispanic women, followed by some young bulls, like their older counterparts, employed full-time, raising children, and going to school; I am often the only white guy, bearded or not, in the classroom and sometimes the only guy, period, so I don’t clutch my metaphorical purse in elevators or cross to the other side of the street at the first sign of melanin; my son is what we like to call a Quarter Rican (more on me not being PC below), so do the math; I was also not born into this “elitist,” “hippy” life, as some would infer; I am a first generation college student, the first in my extended family to graduate college (and I went and studied literature and creative writing instead of business or medicine or law to lift us all up.  Oops.); I was raised in a blue-collar family with four siblings, a stay at home moms, and a dad who worked his way up at a public utility; I read books and asked questions and talked to wise and dumb and just plain opinionated old men and women of all colors and backgrounds—dug ditches with guys from Southwest Philly working paycheck to paycheck who worried about being mugged getting off the bus on pay day; landscaped with a couple of pretty Italian brothers who fought like, well, brothers every day; bussed tables and washed dishes at a country club where girls from my high school were members; spent a few years in the service, the United Parcel branch, mostly to have health insurance as a college student and then graduate student over 22 years old who, pre-Affordable Care Act, could no longer be on my parent’s health insurance—as they say, thanks Obama; set skis and did food service at Pocono lodges to pay for beer and trips to the mighty Brodhead instead of classes. 

A fallen tree plotting out progress?

I have dated old money and damaged goods and possible objectively viewed hotties certainly out of my league and married a lovely and loving hard knock wife (who may fit the previous category too, as she still looks ten years younger than me), and who’s been “woke” longer than me, adopted, raised in an apartment along with her older brother by her divorcee mother; my wife, like me, also arguably managed to transcend her normal, “average” (a term her mom holds aspirational) parochial background a little bit by seeking new experiences (we are still blue collar in our views about work and spending money, among other things, which probably holds us back from other experiences that other educated people have had, like travel, for example—maybe when/if we get to retire?—but I hope it keeps us closer to the salt of the earth); I don’t have a Facebook account and you won’t find me on LinkedIn; you may have noticed that I rarely show faces on this blog, with the exception of my own once or twice a year, and my wife and I still sign a form each year at my son’s school that does not give them permission to use his likeness in promotions (same with every summer camp he ever attended); I see the value in connecting with others on social media if it means connecting with them, and I don’t begrudge commerce that provides a service or product at a fair price when I need it, but I don’t like to be marketed to and I don’t believe, for example, in giving checkout donations at the register so Target can get credit and tax breaks for charitable donations by getting already paying customers to round up to the nearest dollar on a very profitable corporation’s behalf; I see a place for charity in situations where actual hands-on help is not possible or practical or wanted, but I believe in social justice and community service over annual giving; to that end, I have taken students on service immersion trips to rural communities and gained far more from those I “helped” than they did from my unskilled labor; I didn’t give to the Red Cross after Hurricane Sandy, for example, but I did don a backpack tank of watered-down bleach and a Tyvek suit and crawled under houses spraying wooden beams to curb the onset of black mold on especially hard-hit Breezy Point, NY; I don’t think being rich means you are good or better, or indicates a life well-spent, nor do I think being poor makes you good or better or more dignified—the whims of capitalism should play no part in a person’s actual worth; I think people in power should be smarter than me, and I wish they weren’t all richer than me (people of my assumed political persuasion rarely consider that Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Corey Booker are members of the one percent) because there is something unique about poor smart people that is missing from the conversation in capitalism-masquerading-as-democracy—I am also aware that a lot of smart people also carry with them the bullied nerd experience, which makes them equally poor leaders, at times, and no one needs in positions of power angry, jealous philosopher kings any more than they need moneyed buffoons dealing poorly with microphallus.  I think that if there is a heaven, I will get there not by accepting Jesus as my personal savior but by treating all people with dignity and respect and kindness and empathy, even when they are total dicks and asshats, because I too have been a dick and an asshat at least a few times in my life.  If there is no heaven or Jesus, then the latter will simply make my life better, anyway. 

Shadows = evidence of the deep state?

All that, and I am still a hypocrite.  My favorite word this year, mitch, is a conflation of man and bitch, and is surely sexist. I sometimes pour my coffee grounds down the sink instead of into the compost tin, especially when the tin is full and it’s too cold to walk out back to the composters.   I don’t save tiny pieces of tippet scraps in an over-priced Fishpond branded container.  If I catch a big fish, I make sure I get a good picture, even if it takes more than 30 seconds to accomplish.  I will never own a photarium. I like nice fishing rods and reels and find myself spending money when I don’t need to spend money.  I don’t vote in every single off-year election because I don’t want jury duty.  I sometimes buy things from Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, and Dick’s.  I am a bonafide music and literature snob and probably a fishing snob too.  I still think our differences as people are funny, and so I am not politically correct and probably harbor prejudices and sexist attitudes despite having had more black female bosses than most people.  For a time in my life, I was more like Don Rickles than Dr. King, though both had their hearts in the right places, I think.  I have never worked with the Friends of the Wissahickon on a creek cleanup and have never participated in a stream restoration with TU.  I get lazy sometimes and get all my news for a week from Samantha Bee or John Oliver.  I let online posts get me angry, and I catch myself mansplaining things when I should be listening.  I let my car warm up too long.  I use the hose to water my wife’s garden, and I have tossed a month’s worth of upcycling in the trash after the wind blew it all over the side yard.  And, yet, I must remind myself to be kind to myself, to be patient, that growing and waking means regressing and napping too.  My resolutions this year, none too specific or measurable, have to do with just that: be better and do more out of my comfort zone but do it with humility and with patience.

Shut up and fish more.

I am a bearded, “educated” (which really means that I make an effort to keep learning) white guy who lives on the East Coast and drives a Subaru. A beard signifies something different in Potter County, PA than it does in West Mount Airy, however, and a late-model Subaru in rural New Hampshire may be a necessity in order to get milk for part of the year not a Partial Zero Emissions (is that like fresh frozen or military intelligence?) political or class or marketing tribe statement.  Facts are like assholes, and I am learning that facts, even if objectivity can be reached through education, really don’t convince people to change convictions or beliefs or get woke, anyway.  They have to have a stake in it, a gay son, a half black granddaughter, a once virile and successful uncle whose health problems have bankrupted him, a discussion about religion with a rabbi who plays blues guitar and curses like a sailor (or who was a sailor), twice losing a treasured beachfront retreat to superstorms or forest fires, and then arrive at change (or stasis) on their own personal terms, and that takes living with others, walking with others, and having uncomfortable experiences and comfortable conversations (beer and metaphorical desert islands help), things that stretch one’s experiences and preconceptions.  Facts don’t open and close people’s minds, but other people sometimes do.  Part of my educational experience, the things I learned from books, did make me see things from a certain, liberal point of view, and I understand why some think that higher education makes liberals, and why I am part of the problem or think I believe am better than them or something, but they neglect to consider that sending a son or daughter away from home into a world unlike where they were raised also plays an equal part, and it is why educated people, like history, arguably, tend to trend toward the progressive and liberal.  How can I, with a half Puerto Rican wife, a black female boss, a couple gay friends, and so on and so on, be anything but what I am?  

The out of doors is good for dad AND boy.

My 21 year old niece in Oklahoma has never met a Jewish person (knowingly at least), but she may choose to leave her local college system someday and take a job in a place that looks different from home, home on the range (and her best friend is a former male transitioning to a female, with hormone therapy and all—in Oklahoma—so she’s pretty woke in other ways).  Had I not attended college at a large urban university (after failing out of a more rural one) I still would have met colorful African American laborers from West Philly and wise dishwashers from the West Indies, sure, but I would have never met a black man raised on a poor farm in Georgia who went on to earn a PhD in ethno-musicology and marry a black woman who would become a Vice President of Student Life at a university while raising three educated children in a boring nuclear, dare I say, blackish family.  I have met an openly gay, and still celibate, Jesuit priest, have you (at least knowingly)? I have a Norwegian friend who is an Egyptologist (maybe the only one?) and will talk frankly about a social democratic government and fishing for cod and boxing, and my wife’s bestie is a gay man now writing for television in Los Angeles who was once institutionalized by his Christian parents for finding dudes attractive (yes, he was Penced, for christsake!).  Part of getting an education is about seeing people and types of people you thought you knew or could put in a category in a different light.  I spent 18 years in school, 8 in Catholic school, making homo jokes, and then I went to college and met gay dudes and realized they too made homo jokes, and theirs were sometimes funnier.  It is easy to hate groups, and hate hate groups, too, but harder to single out one person from those same groups to despise, ridicule, marginalize, or deport.  “Good people on both sides” if you look hard enough, I hear.  I’m starting with the mitch in the mirror.