Category: Uncategorized

My Fantasy Baseball gathered the day after the All-Star game to draft players. Each of us wanted to replace those who had underperformed during the first half of the season. We talked about the ten home runs in the game, four more than the previous record number, and how many strikeouts there were. The game was a mirror of the current trend in baseball—all or nothing.

I mentioned to one of our group that I thought professional sports offered a revealing perspective on the condition of the social order. Pundits think baseball, once called “America’s pastime,” is too slow nowadays, games averaging nearly three hours. Football has emerged as a widely-shared passion for many who follow sports although more and more people are questioning whether playing the game involves too much risk of permanent brain damage.

Mixed martial arts, where the object is to use whatever body part you can to beat your opponent into submission, has rapidly developed a large fan base of men and women nationally. Brawling used to be consigned to the streets. At least boxing involved padded gloves.

With all due respect to my friends who are fans of football or brawling in the ring, I submit that our nation might benefit from being reintroduced to some basic American values if baseball were to be celebrated again as our national pastime.

Readers who do not like professional sports are rolling their eyes now. Given all the turmoil in the world, does it matter what sport one watches or how long the games take? Really?

Full disclosure: I would not have been at Zippy’s across town for the after-All Star draft if I didn’t love baseball. I am biased.

I can’t remember when I first developed a love for the game. I do remember playing third base and pitching for the Mission Hills Realty Giants when I was ten. I can probably still name the starting lineups for the New York Yankees and Milwaukee Braves in the 1957 World Series.

I got excited when Mom married a descendant of the fellow who codified the rules of the game in the 19^th century. And, I relish the memory of sitting with Joe Torre’s sister in the third row behind home plate in Yankee Stadium for a Yankees-Blue Jays game in 2002.

I learned geography from baseball and how to compute batting averages, expressed as they are in decimals. A trustee who was involved in hiring me as Headmaster at Sacramento Country Day School says that an answer I gave in the interview that involved baseball won me the job in his view. (Asked what I would have been had I not been in education, I said, “Center fielder for the Yankees. Only the lack of size, speed, and talent stopped me.”)

And now, thanks to a friend, I have a daily date with mlb.com to see how the guys I chose to play for this week did in the games that day. So, impartial I am not. What fan is?

In a recent The Atlantic, Pete Rose is quoted as saying, “Baseball is a team game. But nine men who reach their individual goals makes a nice team.” Can the genius of the ideal of America be expressed any better? If all Americans reached their individual goals, wouldn’t that make for a nice country?

We keep statistics about all of the players on a baseball team—hitting, fielding, pitching—so players and fans alike see the individual nature of playing the game. No one tracks how many good blocks the left guard made in a season; the left guard has a specific assignment within the context of a larger play plan or game plan. He is a cog in the wheel, important but not individuated.

For better or worse, our country is comprised of individuals pursuing their own goals, coming together from time to time to achieve common ends, but inevitably judged by their individual accomplishments. In baseball, a player can make it to the Hall of Fame, based on his career statistics, without his team ever having won a championship. Think Ernie Banks.

Baseball games are measured in innings, not minutes. Those who complain about the length of a baseball game block out the fact that, in the precisely timed 60 minutes of an NFL football game, there is actual action for less than seven minutes. Baseball’s concession to the clock demands that a pitcher throw the next pitch within 20 seconds of receiving the ball back. Imagine action every 20 seconds!

The synonyms for pastime are: hobby, leisure, sport, game, recreation, amusement, diversion, avocation, entertainment, interest, sideline. A pastime implies relaxation and enjoyment. When did taking time out of our lives to relax and be entertained give way to watching the frenzy and violence of football as a good use of time?

Baseball executives fret that the game is too slow for millenials. Given the centrality of electronic devices and social media to that age group (but not just that group), I can understand the perception of a mismatch.

But, People of a Certain Age, why must traditional virtues be sacrificed to the frenetic pace of chasing current fads? Why not take the time to make the case, to educate the younger among us about the virtues of enduring values?

George Carlin once observed that, in baseball, the object is to reach home. What’s not to like about that?

Daniel E. White

July 2018

You People of a Certain Age who are around my age did not, in all likelihood, grow up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. But, I bet few of you have not heard about him. He was an icon to millions of children, valuing slow over fast, love over hate or indifference. He made clear that he cherished the spirit and soul of every child with whom he came in contact, in person or on TV.

We saw the documentary about Fred Rogers playing in theaters, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? The film chronicles Rogers and the phenomenon he embodied on a medium where most other programming for children was inane or violent or both. Can you imagine anybody these days in any of our entertainment media putting a clock on the counter, setting it to tick for sixty seconds, and saying to the audience, “let’s find out how long a minute is,” and then staying silent to watch? Or having a child fix her eyes on a hand puppet while Rogers used one of his many voices to talk, not trying to pretend that he was doing the talking? Some special neighborhood!

Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister who summarized his theology as “love your neighbor” and “love yourself.” Anybody was his neighbor. Presbyterians don’t canonize but if they did, St. Fred Rogers would be enshrined. Acerbic TV host Tom Snyder once asked Rogers if his square, upright, kind, and gentle image was really him. By all accounts, it was.

Rogers’ goals started with the desire to make every child feel special and wanted, just as he or she was. Critics didn’t get him. They thought he was fostering the sense of entitlement epitomized by such actions as giving every child a trophy for excellence or rewarding as good behavior what should have been expected behavior. Critics often do not understand goodness.

Rogers was talking about a child’s spirit. His was the plainest explanation of the Christian belief that every child is a child of God. He knew that every child wants to love and be loved, and there are no trophies for that. It ought to be how we all behave, every day, child or adult.

The film suggested that his own childhood was not entirely a happy one, the affluence in which he grew up notwithstanding. He was a plump kid who was bullied. That might help to explain why he wondered about his own self-worth his entire life. He used his puppets, especially Daniel Striped Tiger, to talk about his own hurts, doubts, and disappointments in a way he could not otherwise do. Indeed, as he lay dying, he asked his wife if she thought he have lived a virtuous enough life to have earned a spot in heaven.

Individual children by the millions were his primary audience yet he could touch the hearts of adults profoundly. The film related the story about Rogers testifying before the U.S. Senate. President Johnson had signed the legislation creating the public/private partnership called PBS and described it as addressing the spirit of the nation. President Nixon wanted to stop public funding for PBS, and his chief ally, Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, held hearings about the funding.

Rogers began by noting that he had prepared a philosophical statement that would take about ten minutes to read. But, he said to Senator Pastore, “I trust that you will read that.” Rogers then proceeded to pour out his heart about children and what a publicly funded PBS might provide in its programming that countered the other kinds of programs for kids. Rogers even quoted the lyrics of one of his songs for children to help make his point.

When Rogers finished, Sen. Pastore turned to the rest of the committee and said, “Well, you just got your $20 million.”

Rogers also used his show to make moral statements. When news media splashed the story nationwide about how a hotel owner in the South had poured chemicals into his pool while African American and white swimmers were in it, Rogers had the African-American who played the policeman (another subtlety) share Rogers’ wading pool to cool off his feet on a hot day, and Rogers toweled the man’s feet dry.

One of Rogers’ moral statements late in his career made clear his acceptance of gays. That prompted anti-gay activists to picket his memorial service, the intolerant protesting tolerance.

Contrast his ways of making a statement with the incivility that makes the news today.

Therein lies worry and hope.

Is there still room for Mr. Rogers in the world? On screen, one interviewee asserted that “there are lots of Mr. Rogers out there,” blunting my concern by contending, not only is there room but there are real people like Fred Rogers still around. Their stage might not be national TV. Theirs are neighborhoods, figuratively and literally, and in those neighborhoods there is no litmus test to be a neighbor. They touch the lives of others through profound and simple actions taken out of love.

Mr. Rogers had trouble, in the end, believing that he had made a difference because the challenges are so big. Really Fred? For those who try to live their lives doing daily “little unremembered acts of kindness and of love” (Wordsworth, via Dad) as a habit, you are a saint.

Daniel E. White

July 9, 2018

June 20 marked twenty years since Dad died, on the Saturday before Father’s Day in 1998. That means he has been gone for 30% of my lifetime, a number I hope grows. That’s a long time to carry memories.

In recent days, a commercial on TV has had an unexpected affect on me. In the first scene, a boy about ten years old is dressing up, perhaps as did I for church. He stands in front of a mirror in the middle of trying to tie his necktie. He looks back at his dad and says, “I can do this, Dad.”

In another scene, we see the boy, now in puberty, his face covered with shaving cream, assuring his father with a hint of exasperation in his voice, “I got this, Dad.”

The boy is in his car preparing to drive off to college in a third scene. Yet again, he faces his dad and reassures him that he’s going to be fine.

In the final frame, the son, now preparing for his wedding, is standing at a mirror, tying his necktie. He spots his dad in the mirror, turns around, and asks his dad to help him tie the knot right.

“I thought you knew how to do this,” says the father, a bit surprised.

“Never as good as you did, Dad. That’s for all your help.”

The ad rings true. As sons, our job growing up was to break away from our fathers to become confident adults, able to do the tasks present in our daily lives. Often the process included trial and error—it took me several attempts to tie a Windsor knot correctly—but the default position as a kid was nearly always “I can do it myself.”

Then, when we are grown up, we recognize dad’s impact, positive or negative.

Over the years in schools, Judy and I cautioned parents of children just entering teenage that, in the eyes of their offspring, the parents would become dumb, often illustrated by a frustrating “you just don’t understand” remark from the child. Then, about the time the child turns twenty, the parents begin to become smart again.

I am not sure, People of a Certain Age, how many of us turned to our parents at some point to say “never as good as you” or “thanks for all the help.” The point of the TV ad was not to stimulate reflection about our relationships with our parents or whether we had ever expressed gratitude to them. The ad does pay homage to the rhythm of life.

I was already thinking about fathers and sons before I first saw the ad, even before I realized that twenty years had raced by since Dad died. We get the publications of a school we once served where the current Head of School is a young man we hired at the school in the mid-1980s.

The school has thrived in the years since we were there, achieving academic acclaim and financial successes about which we could only dream back then. The head has been in the job for several years and has built on the successes of a long-term head of school with whom we worked in the 80s. Reading the magazine was pure joy; which of us would not feel elation that a place we had served had prospered.

As is the custom in such school publications, the school head wrote an introductory column. There were pictures of him with various alumni and donor groups sprinkled throughout. In the message and in the pictures, I saw his dad reflected.

I once told the head that his dad was a reason we interviewed him as a young man so many years ago. His dad was a man of high moral character, played out on an international stage, with a recognizable name that made me curious about the son when he contacted us for an interview.

The son made his own strong and positive impression that day. So we made a job for him, using his talents to fill needs we had. Later in his work with us, we asked his dad to speak with our students about his moral code. Dad was a hit.

Son is, too, I am sure. What he writes resonates with the character, intellect and compassion we found in his father. Son seems to have his dad’s drive to learn and listen, then to lead. Son might very well have said to his dad “thanks for all your help” and meant something more than assistance tying a necktie.

It has been twenty years. I cannot be sure whether or not I ever thanked my dad. He, too, was a man who cared about character, his and that of his children. The founding principles of Island Pacific Academy reflect his values. Maybe that constitutes saying thank you.

The stories of our lives have been different. Yet, in the mirror, I can see something of Dad, and that helps me to remember, the absence of neckties and shaving lotion notwithstanding.

Daniel E. White

June 25, 2018

I went to Pasadena to assemble IKEA bookcases for my sister. She turned 75 this year, and 75 years is a lot of time to collect stuff. Additionally, she took lots of boxes of memorabilia to her home when Mom died. The bookcases were presents from her daughter and us to help her store stuff until she could look it over.

Mom would have chuckled at the notion that I was going anywhere to build something. My brother got the construction gene in the family. But, I can read IKEA instructions now that I have figured out how to interpret all those arrows. When you sell in multiple countries, arrows eliminate the need for words. But I miss them.

My assembling adventure began at the world’s most noticeable store now that Tower Records has folded. Bright blue and bright yellow behemoth buildings dwarf everything nearby. Inside is stuff beyond imagination, all waiting to be assembled. We found three Billy Bookcases. A friendly man, whose job seemed to be helping People of a Certain Age get their cartons of pressed board into their cars, loaded ours into my rented SUV at 12:30 p.m.

By 5:00 p.m., there were three new 6 ½ foot tall white bookcases in her second bedroom, and no stuff in boxes on the floor anymore. What did people do before IKEA, when they had to measure and drill and fasten on their own? Maybe fewer bookcases got built by amateurs like me. I felt like a pro. I think the founder of IKEA counted on that feeling.

Once before, I put together an IKEA bookcase for my sister. It was a learning experience. I had not rented a big car but the friendly IKEA man that day eased my anxiety because he knew the back seats of my rental folded down, and the 80” box could angle in. It was my first exposure to IKEA assembly arrows and the process took me nearly two hours.

This time, three done in two hours. Old dogs can learn new tricks I was disappointed that she hadn’t needed a fourth one.

The next day we went to see a movie to celebrate her birthday and to dinner afterwards. She wanted to see Lives Well Lived. The filmmaker had asked her 100-year old grandmother some questions like “What does it take to live a life well-lived?” And “What are your thoughts about mortality?” And “What would you want younger people to know about being older?”

A light bulb lit. She filmed forty people answering those and other questions and produced a 90-minute film for movie theaters. The youngest person filmed was 73, the oldest 103 when the film was done (her grandmother). The average age was probably 87.

We didn’t hear any new thoughts about aging. The old truths were on display: “The only thing in life you can control is your own attitude;” “Keep moving;” “The best things in life aren’t things.”

There were notable threads. Several people had come to the U.S. because of the Nazis and one Japanese American woman had been incarcerated in a relocation camp. When they die, there will be no one left to remind us, from personal experience, of the danger of scapegoating people. Who will warn us about seeing all (fill in the blank) as bad and all (fill in the blanks) as good, instead of seeing individual human beings?

Many in the film had gravitated toward some form of artistic expression in old age. One woman said she was able to express herself now more with paint than with words. Another man fell in love with sculpture. A third person danced.

One of my retired friends has taken up watercolors. Another square dances. Another is learning a musical instrument. Perhaps retirement has unmasked the notion that doing something arty is frivolous, something for which active movers and shakers cannot spare the time. Perhaps we are just drawn to try new things.

The people in the film reflected a different sense of time, too. Several were critical of how younger people always seemed to be too busy, never having “enough time.” Ironic, that people nearer death feel free to take the time to enjoy themselves, try new things, be in the world and attuned to it.

All those interviewed had active relationships with other people, often a spouse, sometimes not. Judy and I treasure these words from Wallace Stegner’s Spectator Bird that speak to this point.

“It is something—it can be everything—to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below; a fellow bird whom you can look after and find bugs and seeds for; one who will patch your bruises and straighten your ruffled feathers and mourn over your hurts when you accidentally fly into something you can’t handle.”

The folks in the movie would understand this. And my sister. And Mom and Dad, whose stuff now sits on newly assembled bookcases.

A life well lived. Some assembly required.

Daniel E. White

June 11, 2018

It’s the music. Always has been. Probably always will be. It takes me places I have been. It invites me to places I would like to be. It is a surefire prompt for myriad memories.

With Heart and Voice on Hawaii Public Radio has been a Sunday ritual for many years. The first host, Richard Gladwell, a transplanted Brit who broadcast from the public radio station in Buffalo, New York, played tracks from what must have been a vast collection of sacred choral and instrumental music around themes. When Gladwell died, Peter DuBois became the host.

Not surprisingly, on the Sunday before Memorial Day, many of the selections DuBois played related to remembering or evoked a martial feeling. He began the show with the hymn “God of Our Fathers.” If you know the hymn, you recall that each stanza begins with a trumpet flourish. It is the only hymn I remember doing so. Those eight notes put me in the pew at University Christian Church, Seattle, around 1954.

Dad was the Minister of Christian Education, in that church, the number two person on the ministerial hierarchy, responsible for the Sunday School programs for people of all ages. In my little blue suit, white shirt and tie, and Homburg hat (just like Dad’s, though removed when indoors), I sat with Mom and my sister on the left side, (my brother was waiting to be born in September) in front of Dad’s lectern. Most Sundays, his role was to read the Bible verses informing the text of the sermon by the Senior Minister.

The church had a magnificent pipe organ, befitting a sanctuary that could seat over 1,000 people, all inside a classically Gothic-looking brick building with a square tower that projected power and authority. On the Sundays that we sang “God of Our Fathers,” the call to worship of the trumpet pipes of the organ stirred the blood. To me, at age 7, the voices of the congregation sounded louder and more confident when the trumpets finished their call.

I can go back to that pew just by closing my eyes whenever I hear the trumpets of “God of Our Fathers.”

People of a Certain Age, where does music take you?

PBS telecasts the national celebration of Memorial Day from the Capitol Mall in Washington the night before the holiday. Typically, a celebrity hosts the show and introduces various musical groups and soloists who sing songs that celebrate the nation and its founding values. The TV cameras scan the crowd, many of whom are waving small American flags, some even singing along.

The crowd is quintessentially American—faces of many colors, some heads covered as befits a particular religion, every age present, all sharing a moment that celebrates the idea of America and the lives of those who have served in one of the armed services to defend that idea.

At some point in the show every year, or so it seems, the anthems representing the branches of the military are played, representing the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. (Maybe the Coast Guard is in there, too, but I don’t remember their anthem like I remember Caissons Rolling, Anchors Aweigh, the Wild Blue Yonder, and the Halls of Montezuma). These are songs we learned in grade school in San Diego. Did you learn them, too, People of a Certain Age?

“Anchors Aweigh” puts me in Grossmont Hospital in May 1998, my sister, brother and I around my father’s bed following his simultaneous heart attack and stroke a few days before. The stroke left Dad without speech. We were watching that year’s Memorial Day show from Washington, and he seemed to be tracking the event, though he was unable to tap out any of the rhythms or say anything about the performances.

However, when the chorus began to sing “Anchors Aweigh,” Dad sang along with them and got all of the words right.

I have written before about that evening because it marks a moment when we siblings bonded as adults in a way we had not before, not because we were not close but because our lives had spread us around the country.

Dad’s singing did something else for me that I cannot name: I just know.

One of the last selections Peter DuBois played was the spiritual, “Going Home.” The song itself is beautiful and moving; this rendition was particularly noteworthy. Judy and I wondered whether the genesis of the song was religious—going home to Jesus after death—or political—going home to the land from which they or their ancestors had been cruelly kidnapped in one of the darker hours of human history.

It struck me that the music of that morning before Memorial Day had taken me home in some way.

Memorial Day has its origins in remembering the service and sacrifice of others to the benefit of the nation. It is also okay if the day reminds us of the service and sacrifice of those who have enabled our lives to be rich and full of meaning.

If I ever have any difficulty remembering, somehow there is always music around to help me.

Daniel E. White

May 28, 2018

I don’t think it was grief, the rhythm of grief notwithstanding. It was more the riches of memory that brought tears to my eyes Mother’s Day.

This was only the second Mother’s Day when I did not pick up the phone to greet her, if I could not be present in person. Sometimes she had flowers from me, too, and she always made me feel like I had picked each one for her specially.

If one is at all conscious, the culture in which we live makes sure that we know about Mother’s Day. Clothing store ads feature moms and daughters (looking remarkably close in age to me these days) laughing over the deals they scored for the latest fashions. Major league baseball parks have special events for moms. Even the local sports section featured our local world champion surfer who said he owes all his success to his mom. (Reading the story, you see he’s got that right!)

A favorite comic strip featured the tale of a young man whose mom tells him how proud she is of him as he publishes his first book. The book turns out to be a smash hit, and the book tour crowds are large.

The young man publishes a second book. The critics pan it as a disappointment. Book signings are now lonely events for him. In the next to last panel, we see the young man’s mom telling him how proud she is of him, and the last panel underscores how moms are like that.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro hosts “Sunday Weekend Edition” on NPR. As the second hour of the show on Mother’s Day drew to a close, she featured comments by various people of some renown about advice they had received from their moms. Lulu’s bit recalled that her mom, who had little formal education, impressed on her kids the value of going to college. She said that education was something that “couldn’t be taken away from you.”

The comment that hit closest to home for me was by Scott Simon, host of the “Saturday Weekend Edition” program on NPR. He said his mom told him that it is always better to be a little over-dressed than to be under-dressed. Imagine, she would say, that you accidentally ran into the Duchess of Cambridge. You would want to be in a blazer and tie rather than in a sweatshirt.

Mom gave me two bits of advice on clothing. First, always wear clean underwear in case you get into an accident. (People of a Certain Age, your mom said that, too, right?) Second, how you dress is an unspoken sign of the respect you have for whom you are meeting or where you are going. This last nugget came in response to my complaining about having to put on a suit as a 9 year old to go to church. Mom did not mention any duchess.

Then to wrap up that section of “Sunday Weekend Edition,” the producer slipped in a recording of Lulu’s husband wishing her a Happy Mother’s Day and her daughter, around 6 years old, doing the same, then wishing all mothers listening a happy day. Lulu confessed to tears after that. Me, too.

I texted my sister “Happy Mother’s Day” before I checked my e-mail. In my mailbox was a message from her with a photograph of what she described in our family lingo as “nearly the whole Fam Damily;” Judy, Sandee’s daughter, Hope, and me in the back row (and I am wearing a blazer!), Sandee, Jody, Mom and Chad seated in front. It was taken at Mom’s church some years ago and lacks Susan, Annie, and Sarah, the Georgia Whites, and Dad. Mom and Chad are beaming, in the picture of good health, before either began to decline too much physically.

I don’t remember the exact circumstance of the photograph. I do remember the joy whenever Mom’s kids could be with her at the same time, the unspoken safety and love. Hope and Chad in the picture only amplify the feeling that love can be contagious.

A recent issue of The Christian Science Monitor features a story about how groups of mothers in Puerto Rico have taken charge of feeding people and providing aid and comfort in places and times when the official sources of support have been unable to provide all that is needed. Why are we seldom surprised that it is mothers who so often step to the forefront to address critical needs?

I think about Mom and Dad often, perhaps more so in retirement than when I was working because I have more time to think. Mother’s Day is an obvious trigger for memories of times like the family being on a blanket in the campground, ready to take the required post-prandial nap (how did she know my eyes were open when her back was to me?) or seeing her as a minor local celebrity hosting her show, “The House of Happiness,” and interviewing my favorite San Diego Padres player!

Snatches of our shared history slip into my mind’s eye without warning. Grief? No, probably not. But surely riches, enough to make clear once again that the cacophony of the political world or our allegedly fractured society pale in importance when compared to the memory of Mom.

Daniel E. White

May 14, 2018

Reading college alumni magazines seemed a useful way to spend a recent rainy Saturday afternoon. We get two—one from UC Riverside where we earned three degrees between us, the second from the University of Washington, from which I left a three-year scholarship after only one year with a degree and a resolve not to go to school for a while. That resolve did not last long.

UCR and UW send the magazines because we give money to each every year. It seems a fair trade—a contribution for interesting information about places we once were. I have begun to think about the trade as exchanging money for memories.

Both magazines teemed with stories about the accomplishments of alumni and current faculty. The impressive, ground-breaking research, the history and development of the campuses and, of course, the athletic programs are regular features every issue.

I learned a lot. I had not known that a graduate from UCR is playing a key role in the Inland Empire to get people of different political persuasions to talk with each other civilly, ending each session by focusing on areas of agreement. That story reminded me of the students who, in 1971, got UCR into Time magazine by engaging the local citizenry in conversations about why they were upset with the war, People’s Park, etc. I’m proud that our school stands on the side of conversation rather than thoughtless confrontation.

I learned that UW was one of the first universities to establish an institution-wide office focused on minority students. A sit-in at the office of the UW President in Spring 1968 by members of the Black Student Union, who had a list of five “demands,” resulted in the creation of the new office and other changes proposed by the students, none of which was unreasonable. The story was a reminder that significant social change can result from collective action, thoughtful confrontation, especially when all parties involved are resolved to listen to each other.

By the time I arrived at UW that fall, the collaboration between authority and petitioners to deliver a real change was already underway.

Both magazines reported on physical changes on campus. UCR, now over 22,000 enrollment (there were less that 3000 when we were there), will build more dorm space in an effort to re-balance, to a small degree, the number of commuter students and campus residents. The assumption is that residents sustain on-campus student life better than commuters. We lived in dorms until we got married; our experience would support that assumption.

And it is our experiences that bubble up in memory every time I read one of the magazines. To be sure, there were challenges and disappointments that must have occurred while we were in Riverside and Seattle. They pale, if we even remember them, in comparison to the rich memories we have of those years, our relative lack of money notwithstanding.

People of a Certain Age, at what other time in our lives has it been our job to confront new ideas, especially those different from the ones we brought from home, and assemble ways of looking at the world informed by the opinions and conclusions of others? And in the company of other seekers, too?

Because college resembled a playground for our minds, Judy and I have been skeptical of the idea that those years should be focused on preparing for a specific career. We are also critical of the notion that universities should edit the content of courses to assure that no one has to hear something that might be viewed as offensive or upsetting. For us, the university was the place we learned how to respond to ideas with which we did not agree. People at my universities made me think about what I believed.

The magazines take me back to heady days, comparatively carefree, when we would try on different versions of ourselves among friends, and live almost on our own, away from our parents. All we men had to worry about was doing well enough to keep our Selective Service System student deferments.

One might contend that we were a privileged lot. We were. Perhaps not in the way of blue-blood young adults attending the family’s legacy private college as full-pay students, but we were blessed with a life-changing opportunity nonetheless that was not available to others our age.

For us, graduating college was an expectation, not an entitlement. “To whom much is given, much is also required,” whispered Mom’s voice often, and I hear it even now. For us, insuring that young people after us have the option of the privilege of attending university feels like an obligation. So we give money and receive our quarterly stimulants to happy memories.

In this UW magazine, an alumna who has written several memoirs, wrote “my persona from those days has shaped the person I am today.” The magazines remind me of how who I was and where I was has impacted who I have become.

This is the time of year when high school seniors are sorting out their options for after graduation. Many have been admitted to several colleges and universities and now must decide which one to attend. What a glorious choice to have to make!

I hope for them days in the distant future when they will sit down on a rainy Saturday afternoon to read about their alma mater and remember.

Daniel E. White

April 30, 2018

You might recall, in The Odyssey, that Odysseus threw a javelin into Cyclops’ one eye, blinding him, in order for his men to be saved. The Greeks then hurried out toward open seas as Odysseus yelled:

“ ‘Hey, you, Cyclops! Idiot! The crew trapped in your cave did not belong to some poor weakling. Well, you had it coming! You had no shame at eating your own guests! So Zeus and other gods have paid you back.’”

“My taunting made him angrier” (continues Odysseus as he recounts the story). “He ripped a rock out of the hill and hurled it at us. It landed right in front of our dark prow and almost crushed the tip of the steering oar. The stone sank in the water; waves surged up. The backflow all at once propelled the ship landward…I told my men, ‘Row fast, to save your lives!’…We got out twice as far across the sea and then I called to him again. My crew begged me to stop and pleaded with me. “Please! Calm down…He hurled that stone and drove our ship right back to land. We thought we were going to die.’”

“But my tough heart was not convinced; I was still furious and shouted back again.”

The upshot of this scene is that Cyclops appeals to his father, Poseidon, to apply a further curse on Odysseus, and Dad happily complies.

After the fact, Odysseus acknowledged that he should have kept his mouth shut and sailed out of danger. Had he done so, the story would have been shorter, of course. But how many times do the boasts of the seemingly triumphant snatch defeat from the jaws of victory or create future embarrassment?

Remember the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln? President Bush calls that one of his most obvious mistakes as President.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that, in a recent baseball game, the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Torey Lovullo, complained to the umpire about calls on balls and strikes and said something implying that the catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, Yadier Molina, was treated differently than other players. Molina took exception.

“’I used a poor choice of words and he (Molina) took offense to it,’ Lovullo said. ‘I wish I could take back what I said. It really wasn’t directed at him. I was just frustrated over what I was watching.’”

People of a Certain Age, if you have never spoken words (or written them in an e-mail) that, once you have said them, you wanted to reach out and grab them, like in a cartoon, before they reached their intended target, you have lived a purer life than mine (at least in this respect). How often, too, have words spoken in anger hit an unintended target as well?

Senator Daniel Akaka died recently at age 93. He was Hawaii’s junior U.S. Senator from 1990 to 2012. One of his staff members remembered:

“Capitol Hill is someplace where you show your power, but he was so deeply respected by his colleagues because of the fact that he had these values and they could trust him…He was really focused on Hawaii and what we need to do. He wasn’t focused on making sure that everyone knew that he was the one doing it.”

That life of aloha earned him a rating in 2006 by Time as one of the worst five U.S. Senators at the time they published a story about senatorial effectiveness.

Another former staffer said: “Senator Akaka knew how to hold people accountable—without attacking…I once told him, sometimes it’s very difficult to try to get your point across unless you’re heard at a certain level. Sometimes things just aren’t fair, and you want to call people out on it. I asked him ‘how do you do that as a leader?’ He looked at me and said, ‘measure your words.’”

Think about the leaders in our history whom we hold in highest esteem: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt. All were masters of measuring their words.

“Plant a thought and reap a word;

Plant a word and reap an action;

Plant an action and reap a habit;

Plant a habit and reap a character;

Plant a character and reap a destiny.”

On-line you can see how many people in history have been credited with this or similar wisdom. Words matter.

Perhaps I reveal my own character flaw by saying that I form opinions of people based upon the words they use. Circumstance tempers my opinions; when one is angry, one’s judgment about what to say, and how, is usually impaired. Ask Torey Lovullo about that.

Odysseus’ boastful taunting contrasts with a sign in the window of our local Army recruiting office: Heroes don’t brag.

The Star-Advertiser article about Senator Akaka’s career concluded: “Akaka was admired by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. ‘He’s a loveable person and most of us are not that lovable,” Sen. James Inhole, R-Okla, told the Advertiser in 2003.’”

“’He was a quiet man,’ said U.S. Senator Carl Levin, D. Mich. in 2012. “He was a powerful force, one of the most decent people you’d ever want to meet here.’”

Enough said.

Daniel E. White

April 16, 2018

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates

I had an unusually clean windshield from the start of our New Zealand trip until about two weeks after our return. This is not a report about a fit of the tidies on my part.

Kiwis drive on the left; all rental cars sport a sticker that says “drive left” near the steering column. Fortunately, the brake and accelerator pedals are in the same position as in a right- hand drive car. BUT the turn signal and wiper levers are reversed. So, invariably, when first driving in New Zealand, (and last spring in England), I inadvertently hit the wiper lever to signal a turn.

In such situations, one tries to remain cool, to not reveal to other drivers that you are a dufus, turning on your wipers on a hot, sunny day. Of course, no one else cares. But, you do.

Then, when you get back to the United States, after having retrained your automatic self to use the lever on the right-hand side of the steering column to signal turns, you blow it again—wipers instead of signals—until you un-train yourself from left-hand driving to what for most of your life has been an action taken completely without thought.

I have to do a lot of thinking before I act until the automaticity returns.

These wipers are a provocative metaphor, People of a Certain Age, for automatic responses about which we never think. What are the actions we take on a regular basis completely without thought, and are any of them worth thinking about from time to time?

Not one of us was born knowing on which side of the column is the lever for turn signals.

Before we moved to Hawaii, we liked watching the movie, “South Pacific.” We enjoyed seeing beach scenes filmed at Lumahai Beach where we would go to search for olivine crystals in the sand, and we chuckled at the way the movie-makers used a prominent rock outcropping near Ke’e Beach as the mysterious Bali Hai. The music is compelling, too.

Once, we invited friends to our home in Riverside, got the film from somewhere (on two reels—remember those?) and a projector from the university, popped popcorn, and spent a couple of hours with Joe, a sailor in the U.S. Navy, Bloody Mary and Ensign Nellie Forbush, a Navy nurse.

In one of the most moving songs, Bloody Mary laments the difficulty Joe will face because he is in love with a native woman by singing “you’ve got to be taught to hate.” Underscoring the point are the words “carefully taught.”

Judy tells of a time in the 1960s when she was entering a store with her mother and grandmother in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. She noticed an African-American woman about her grandmother’s age approaching the store just behind. Judy held the door open for the woman who demurred with a nervous look around her, “Oh no, missy, you go first.” It was not hard for Judy to conclude that she had just learned a lesson about race relations in southeast Missouri in the 1960s.

Confusing the accelerator and brake pedals moving from right-hand to left-hand drive could produce great harm. Trying to drive a standard shift car where the gear-shift is on the left and the “H” of gear positions is reversed can amplify the potential for dangerous driving, so I always rent an automatic. Thus, in the case of the location of the pedals, there is an agreed standard and in the other, I can choose not to confuse myself further. Turning on wipers instead of signals could slow down one’s indicating intent to others, but the flapping wipers are a quick reminder to use the other hand to engage the turn signal.

Myriad political and social commentators have opined over the past several years that tribalism is on the rise, in the United States and worldwide. They mean the term as a negative. Tribalism inhibits the creation and sustaining of the common good because tribes have a hard time agreeing among each other what is good. Historically, tribal loyalties have been the primary cause of warfare as allegiances to one’s tribe outweigh allegiances to anything beyond the tribe.

In short, in tribal society, one’s response to any situation becomes automatic, dictated by the norms and beliefs of the tribe. No one is born with those norms and beliefs hard-wired into their brain.

I wonder to what tribe I belong, or if I do belong to a tribe? What are the responses of mine that are dictated by my tribe? Instinctively, I reject the idea of being a creature of a tribe, deprived of individuality by my tribal membership. What if my tribe is comprised of those who reject tribalism? Is it sometimes useful to be a member of a tribe? Has tribal membership been an essential factor in the survival of our species?

I might benefit from having an indicator about these matters and about my own automatic responses, something like the wipers wiping when the signal should be signaling, as a reminder to think.

Daniel E. White

April 2, 2018

My sister, Sandee, and I were chatting on the phone when she asked if I remembered the poem Dad recited frequently, one that he had learned from his father, the first Dan White in our line. I didn’t until she recited it.

“He drew a circle that drew me out

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,

But love and I with wit to win,

We drew a circle that let him in.”

The lines got me to thinking about how many poems have woven themselves into my memories of Dad, and how select poems have been frequent visitors in the story of my life. This, despite the fact that some of my early language arts teachers seemed more interested in teaching me about iambic pentameter and rhyming schemes than about the artistry of the words or the beauty of the thoughts.

The poem above, it turns out, is but one stanza from “Outwitted,” by Edwin Markham, published in 1913 in the book, The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems. Markham was highly acclaimed as a major American poet in his lifetime but hardly read since his death. I thought about the verse after Sandee rang off. I got a different glimpse of my paternal grandfather, apparently more of an ecumenist in faith and pragmatist in life than I had known.

I have made reference before to poems Dad liked. “The Blind Men of Hindustan” was his homage to ecumenism. Devout believers believe that the truth they perceive is the whole truth. But Dad’s affinity for the poem suggests that, despite his firm faith, he allowed that the faith of others might have merit, too.

Dad used Rudyard Kipling to engrain in me the personal traits to which I ought aspire in order to “be a man.” “If” urges stoicism—“If you can keep your head about you when those around are losing theirs and blaming it on you; “ physical stamina—“If you can fill each unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run;” and humility—“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch.

There was a framed copy of “If” in his office at home, and not a few times, he would recite a line or two to exhort me to right behavior.

Another of his favorite lines of poetry, he would be happy to know, were the seed that sprouted as one of the founding values at Island Pacific Academy; “those little unremembered acts of kindness and of love,” from Wordsworth’s Lines Composed Above Tinturn Abbey.

A friend of mine who is an English teacher—it seems that several of my friends are English teachers—loaned me a book of poetry written by a poet from whom my friend had taken a class. I read it. It was the first time I had ever read an entire book of poetry.

I liked it. In the ways of the universe, my friend was probably compensating for all those hours I spent in school dissecting pentameters and rhyme schemes.

He likes to write poetry, too. I have not been so moved. Dad was. For any event or just because, he would dash off a few lines of verse. Mom collected some in a spiral-bound book for him. At her request, I matched one poem with an English folk tune to create a hymn that sounds pretty good.

I still don’t feel moved to write poetry. But I use poems a lot, in things I write and to spark thoughts about particular things at particular times. There are those from Dad. Then there are ones of my own where specific lines (like “Take something like a star to stay our minds on and be staid” from Frost) or thoughts (“But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep,” also from Frost) are ones I remember well.

“August 1914” by William Butler Yeats contains multiple prompts for reflective writing, even some titles for About Aging, like “Things Fall Apart.” At the bottom of our staircase is a poem by Sam Walter Fawn encased in a frame but without a title. It begins “Let me live in a house by the side of the road where the race of men go by. The men who are good, the men who are bad, as good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner’s seat or hurl the cynic’s ban. Let me live in a house by the side of the road, and be a friend to man.” That one came from Judy’s grandmother.

People of a Certain Age, do you have poems that enrich or inform or embellish your lives? Are they long-time friends? Do you “friend” new ones still?

I can’t tell what makes a poem good enough for the poet to become Laureate or win a prize or publish a whole volume that sells. Sometimes I know I miss the intent of particular symbolism or phrases.

No matter. I know what I like. I know that it isn’t one of my talents. (My English teachers friends will write—just try!). I know the poems are treasures I can revisit. I know they probably reveal something about me.

If the poems you like do reveal something about you, I know from one stanza of one poem written in 1913 that, if that is what he believed, the first Dan White was my kind of guy.

Daniel E. White

March 5, 2018