Category: Uncategorized

Scene I: On three nights in the last week of June, Judy and I were at Petco Park in San Diego to watch the hometown Padres play the Atlanta Braves. We had gone to Major League games before—at Dodger Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Candlestick Park, Angels Stadium, even Petco once before. Never had we gone to a whole series, three nights in a row. In fact, the whole focus of this trip to the city where we started dating in 1962 was to attend those baseball games.

Judy has considerable knowledge about baseball, enough to be good at player names in crossword puzzles and to be able to keep a scorebook for a game. She might not pick going to a game as her choice for a special night out, but she has never balked (pun acknowledged) at going with me.

This time, the idea began with our sister-in-law, Susan, who suggested that, since they live near Atlanta and we live in Hawaii, and since the Braves were playing a series in June 2017 in San Diego, which does not happen every year, and since we had not visited each other’s homes in years, we should meet halfway. The series provided a good reason if we needed any.

Judy observed that going to the games would be one way to celebrate my 70^th birthday. What a trooper! I then suggested that, as long as we were all spending not insignificant sums to get to the games, that we should lay out the money to get really good seats each night. Susan got four, eighteen rows behind home plate, the same seats every night.

Two of the three games were shutouts. Avid fans appreciate the artistry of shutouts, but almost by definition, there aren’t many hits or runs. Nobody hit a home run until the third game when the Padres hit two. Management does its best to keep the crowd over-stimulated with loud music and flashing scoreboards which annoys those of us who come for the baseball. Judy was appropriately scornful of the hoopla, as was I.

Judy called the two home runs—“if this guys hits home runs, then he should hit one”—words uttered twice, just before each one. She noted the odd habit of the Padres second baseman who squatted outside the batter’s box every time before settling into his stance. She offered up opinions and information during the course of the game that, for someone who is a game attendee by marriage, were useful additions as we all constructed knowledge together about the sport in general and this game specifically.

I don’t doubt that, if the chance for me to attend a three game series anywhere, and I really wanted to go, she’d come with me.

Scene II: For twelve days in late July and early August, I was with Judy and our travel buddies, Ben and Nancy, in Southeastern Arizona to find birds, especially the ones that come north from Mexico during the monsoons. We four have been birding together before—in Kenya, England, New Zealand, around the western U.S.—but this was our first trip where finding and identifying as many species of birds as we could was the focal point of the trip.

My knowledge of birds pales in comparison to hers (I do know that there are no white hummingbirds), but at least I had my own binoculars. Occasionally, I see birds before others do (though typically I can’t tell you the kind of bird, just its size), and I can discern some differences in bird songs. I describe myself as a social birder, keeping lists, acting as a pointer-person, and enjoying the company of friends. I might not pick going birding as my choice for a special trip (Arizona in July?) but I have never balked at going with her. (Pun repeated.)

The idea of such a trip has been around for years. Judy had been there 41 years ago with her mother and brother and periodically said that she’d like to go again. In a Skype visit with Ben and Nancy, her wishes became a plan. To optimize our chances of seeing the exotic creatures we hoped to spot, we agreed that we should allow enough time at each of three different hot spots.

The trip proved a great success on many levels; places seen, birds identified, unanticipated adventures in friendship. I am now confident that I can identify a Broad-billed Hummingbird male among other advances in my learning. I saw a Pained Bunting and an Elegant Trogon on the same day! (Like hitting four homers in the same game.) I chose a favorite colorful bird—the Black-headed Grosbeak—because I liked the rusty orange and black together.

I experienced wilderness, the breath-taking beauty of Cave Creek in the morning light, the splendor of the rock formations at Chiracahua National Monument (and the colorful Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake, a rare sighting!) I don’t doubt that, if the chance to accompany Judy on a trip to Cave Creek at a different time of year, or even in monsoon season again, were to present itself, I’d go.

Scene III: On September 16, Judy and I marked 50 years of marriage, our great good fortune. We get asked for advice about the secret to a happy marriage.

Advice: See Scenes I and II above.

Daniel E. White

September 25, 2017

I once wrote a short story (unpublished, as all mine are) that conflated the premise of a 1950s TV show and an assertion about the value of a college education. The show was “The Millionaire.” The assertion was that college graduation would likely ensure that one would earn $400,000 more in one’s lifetime that someone who did not attend college. I wondered what would happen if all of us got the $400,000 up front.

(Last month I learned from the Social Security Administration that I earned $650 in 1964. That had been adjusted to $5600 in 2017 dollars. So, if you care to, do the math for “The Millionaire’s” one million and $400,000 then and now.)

My story was simple. Some John Beresford Tipton (People of a Certain Age, you will recall that name!) who had unlimited wealth and a desire to play around with people, presented everyone at age 21 with the $400,000 (1964 dollars). Then everyone could choose whatever he or she wanted for work; everyone had to work. Because people and their interests were so diverse, ran the thread of the story, every occupation essential to a smoothly operating society was covered.

This utopia worked for a while. Then, one person wanted more. The whole collaborative, cooperative, utopian society came crashing down.

I recalled that story as I thought about Labor Day last week. Our respective interests do run the gamut and often manifest themselves in the line of work we choose. In my utopia, some even chose to collect the trash of others because 1) they often found neat things to keep that others we tossing; 2) the work was outdoors; 3) the work did not involve managing people; and 4) there were no worries to bring home from the job.

Of course, my invented community is absurd. Some jobs that seem fairly essential—picking crops, caring for people in nursing homes, etc.—have required us to look to immigrants for workers. Silicon Valley notwithstanding, there is no John Beresford Tipton ready to fund our lifetime earnings. And, more than one person wants more, fueling our dynamic economy where innovation and improvements in productivity regularly create winners and losers. This can create some messy situations.

My visit to the Social Security office prompted me to think about a class of “laborer” in our society whose jobs involve helping people in messy situations. I was at the office to initiate the sending of my Social Security check to my bank. I could hear the conversations, though, at three other windows.

One concerned a Filipino man who had received some paperwork from Social Security germane to his income but could not find the papers. In heavily accented English with a voice that trembled with anxiety, he laid out his plight to the Social Security representative with some difficulty.

A second conversation featured a man who had suffered two strokes recently and was asking if there was any mechanism through Social Security by which he could receive additional money monthly to help pay the deductibles on his medical expenses.

The third window framed a family—dad, mom, and son—making their case to the representative that they believed themselves to be eligible for Disability payments—I couldn’t hear why but the dad was greatly overweight and had difficulty moving. The child was beautiful, bright-eyed, and well-behaved as his parents tried to find a way to get additional income for the family from what they believed to be an appropriate source.

I commented to the young man helping me that he must hear some heartbreaking stories. He replied that, when he started the job 18 months ago, he took many stories home with him, and they began to depress him. A longtime Social Security employee who was an informal mentor for him empathized. She had gone through that feeling, too.

But, she said, in order to last in that line of work, you needed to get past the stories to focus on what you could or could not do to help. And you could not heap guilt in yourself if you couldn’t help. So, he has survived in his job, thus far.

This year, I am thinking about laborers who have chosen occupations, like this young man, where serving others in need is the purpose. And social workers, police, those who work with the homeless or the mentally challenged or mentally sick. How about the worker at an unemployment office in an area where the dynamism of capitalism has wiped out the work people have been doing for 30 years? And pastors, and those who care for elderly parents, and teachers, and…maybe you, if the shoe fits?

This is the labor of loving humanity, wanting to make a difference in the lives of those in need. There was room for them in my Tipton-funded universe, and they would have been satisfied with their $400,000. These types do want more—more effectiveness in reaching those whose fortunes are not as good.

So, here’s to those among us who don’t shy away from the messes that show up in the lives of other people.

Thank you.

Daniel E. White

September 11, 2017

I have strong evidence that I lacked a certain worldliness when I was 9. I’m sure I’ve written about this story before. We had moved from Seattle to San Diego, and I missed my friend, Dan. I can’t remember if I asked Mom or Dad if I could call him: probably not.

I was smart enough to know that, in Mom’s address book (People of a Certain Age remember when these were actual books, not electronic files) was Dan’s parent’s phone number. Somehow, I managed to be alone long enough to place a long distance call to Dan (People of a Certain Age will also remember per minute charges for such calls). It must have been great to hear his voice.

Not so great was my father asking me one day if I had called Dan. I lied. Then he produced the telephone bill, and my worldliness quotient rose. He was not pleased. He said he didn’t care about the call. He cared about the lie.

That happened sixty-one years ago. The lesson of that day—about not lying—stuck.

I have been thinking about why people lie since Judy, in one of our lanai book reads, read about how the War Department in World War II flat-out lied to the press, and hence to the citizenry, about the ineffectiveness of a campaign to use the new B-29 bombers for specific bombing missions inside China.

One specific lie was to contend that a munitions factory run by the Japanese had been put out of commission because of bomb damage when no bombs had hit the facility at all. Of course, the citizenry had no way to check out that story.

My present worldliness quotient allows me to understand that, during wars, all sides are prone to lie if the fabrications sustain morale. In the U.S., the temptation to lie in such circumstances for such reasons might have been tempered by the experience of Vietnam, but I am skeptical.

Since 1972, two Presidents have faced impeachment because they were caught lying. Cigarette companies lied to the public about the dangers of smoking for a long while, asserting that a good smoke could even energize athletes. A manufacturer of air bags has been forced into bankruptcy because their lie was found out.

Didn’t they know about Pinocchio’s nose, how it grew longer with every lie that he told? Weren’t they in class when we were taught that, when George Washington’s father confronted him, asking whether or not George had chopped down the cherry tree, George replied, “I cannot tell a lie. I did it?”

(The worldlier me wonders how many cherry trees there were on the farm and why George was moved to hew one to the ground. But then I also wonder about George throwing a silver dollar across the Rappahannock River, a far distance. I have not even tossed a coin in a fountain. I value cash too much.)

Our hero-makers might be forgiven for creating morality lessons that show people doing the right thing. They are making myths, and myths are central to any civilization.

Someone denying responsibility for something, or making claims about safety that aren’t true, or shifting the blame so as to remain, they hope, blameless, are not in the business of myth-making. This kind of lying makes you want to point fingers and sing “Liar, liar, pants on fire, Your nose is longer than a telephone wire.” (Thank you, Castaways, 1965)

Once you tell a lie, does that condemn you to be branded a liar forever? If so, tough luck for me with that lie about the call on my record. Are there degrees of seriousness of lies; lying about the health hazards of cigarettes versus not telling the truth about Dan? I think so, but wonder when a lie passes from being a “little white” one to a lie about one’s actions to a lie that costs lives. There surely must be a hierarchy.

Then there is lying to oneself. V.S. Naipaul once noted “the only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.” “To thine own self be true…” is the beginning of Polonius’ speech in “Hamlet.” That must be a starting point.

What is worrisome is how easily folks become inured to lies or assume that anybody who sees things differently than do they must be lying. There is a danger in passing off lies as expected behavior from certain kinds of people. There is equal danger in assuming that certain kinds of people always lie.

How would our nation be different if, in the 1950s, when some people knew there were issues, cigarette manufacturers would have put their own warning on packs? What might President Nixon have accomplished had he said in 1972, “some of my supporters committed a burglary, and I knew about it shortly afterwards. I have fired the people responsible.” What if President Clinton had said, “yes, I engaged in sexual activity with Ms. Lewinsky?”

I’m sure there are folks in public life and the corporate world (Warren Buffet comes to mind) who tell the truth, take responsibility, and consider their word their bond. They could become our 21^st century stories about telling the truth, supplanting stories about cherry trees.

It does not take much worldly wisdom to see how much better our world could be with less lying.

Daniel E. White

August 28, 2017

Beginning in 1984, through 2013, except for three years, I was a headmaster. Because of so many pertinent examples in schools around the world, headmaster is a position often parodied, sometimes vilified. Mr. Chips and Professor Dumbledore are exceptions to the image of the autocratic, tradition-bound, punishment-prone power in private schools of various reputation.

I’d like to think that I was different. But, in fact, the way schools like mine worked, the headmaster was expected by the Board of Trustees to be fully in command, the final arbiter of any issue involving faculty, students, parents, vendors, the media; you name it.

Within a private school, the head of school is the person of power. Now I have learned, if the research is right, that those 26 years in “power” might have damaged my brain as badly as if I had suffered a traumatic brain injury.

I will resist the temptation to say “great, now I have an excuse for all of the dumb decisions I made.” That ignores the fact that I chose to become a headmaster and stayed in the job for so long. I could claim ignorance—who knew that power was bad for you? But there had been subtle warnings. (“Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton)  Power is “a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.” Henry Adams)

Jerry Useen might say that Henry Adams got it right. Useen, writing in the July/August 2017 “The Atlantic,” cites the research of Sukhvinder Obni, a neuroscientist, who found, through using a transcranial-magnetic-stimulator machine, that “power…impairs a specific neural process called ‘mirroring’ that may be a cornerstone of empathy. That gives a neurological basis to what [psychology professor Dacher] Keltner has termed ‘the power paradox.’ Once we have power, we lose some of the capacities we needed to gain it in the first place.”

If you are interested in further validation of the thesis, read the article. There are, though, suggestions of hope for those in power. One who is, by nature, resolutely and unfailingly other-directed might have the necessary armor to deflect constant adulation and incessant reminders of her or his power. The movie, “Patton,” ends with a tale from Roman times about the slave who is charged with whispering in the ear of returning war heroes “all fame is fleeting.”

Useen notes that psychologist Keltner suggests that people in power regularly remind themselves of times and situations when they were not powerful. He continues his suggestions by noting powerful people who have had advisors who constantly reminded them of their humanity (Louis Howe and FDR) or spouses intent on keeping an expanding ego in check as much as possible (Clementine Churchill).

Distill the various suggestions of hope and what emerges is empathy. There is much to be gained by walking a mile in the other person’s moccasins, to paraphrase Native American wisdom.

One of the greatest privileges I have in these PPP (post-power-position) days is to work with students on their dissertations prepared in pursuit of the Ed.D. degree in Professional Education Practice at UH Manoa. I have worked with five students in the most recent cohort, each one writing about a topic drawn from their individual educational practice.

One of the topics has been innovative teaching. Through interviews, focus groups, and review of relevant literature, the student has explored manifestations of innovation in teaching and catalogued the characteristics of those teachers who are acknowledged to be innovative. The research led the student to make a number of insightful observations that could be helpful to those who hire teachers or, for that matter, workers in other endeavors as well.

What surprised him was that the common characteristic in people seen to be innovative was empathy.

There are some of you People of a Certain Age saying right now, “Duh. How obvious is that?”

Perhaps so. This would not be the first time, however, when the obvious has been overlooked in favor of more complex or “deeper” explanations, or the internal emotion downplayed in favor of external technique.

Why is your favorite teacher your favorite teacher?

Would the architects of the financial crisis of 2007-08 acted differently if they had empathy for those who might be harmed by their risky, perhaps even illegal, behavior? Would policy makers act any differently if a regular part of their deliberative process was to consider whether their constituents feel served or served up, made vulnerable to the economic or political advantages of this group or that?

The student’s research has led to another question; can empathy be taught? He thinks there are ways to bring out whatever empathic tendencies one might have. I hope he is right.

And I hope that those responsible for the selection, care, and feeding of leaders—in education, politics, business, wherever—will accept the power of empathy to reduce the brain-damaging effects of power.

How many times can one hear “you’re the greatest” without ultimately believing it? How many of the powerful employ the whisperer to remind him or her that “all power is fleeting?”

Daniel E. White

August 14, 2017

Twice now, Hawaii Chamber Music has presented a concert featuring Professor Rick Benjamin, whose life’s work revolves around the music composed to accompany silent films. We People of a Certain Age have likely not gone to many movies in which there was not music. The emotional impact of the music can be powerful: think “The Mission,” or “Romeo and Juliet.”

Professor Benjamin noted that daily life in, say, 1915, in the United States was comparatively devoid of music. One did not wake up to music on a clock radio, listen to “Morning Concert” on the car radio going to work, hear Muzak in the elevator, or work in an office where soothing background melodies filled the air. At home at night, there were no TV programs—even the news—featuring distinctive compositions for each.

To hear music in 1915, one went to church (if the denomination allowed music), to a band concert in the park, or to the movies, unless one was taking piano lessons and making one’s own music in the parlor. At a typical movie house, there were music makers playing music suggested by the moviemakers as appropriate to specific scenes, an orchestra of eleven if possible, a piano and drums at least. There was musical variety to communicate danger, pathos, and adventure. The music could be martial or tender, and by its sounds, the audience knew what they were expected to feel.

Music is so present in our lives today, as compared to 1915, that often we need to reminded to listen to it. The beautiful song of a Shama Thrush made me pay attention as I was leaving a school campus near Diamond Head recently. Sometimes we need something unexpected to remind us to be aware.

I have had the lyrics of a song provide the reminder. “Oh-oh-oh, listen to the music” sang the Doobie Brothers in 1972. The Cascades in 1962 urged us to “Listen to the Music of the Falling Rain.” The Phantom extolled the beauty of “the music of the night.” As long as you have rhythm, music and my gal, who could asked for anything more?

There is something elemental in music. When in human history did a mother first sing a lullaby to soothe her baby to sleep? How early in history did people sit around at night drinking spirits and putting their exploits into song? Were American slaves the first people to accompany their hard labor with songs detailing their plight and their hopes?

When did our species begin to dance? To what?

Without doubt, forms of music shift over generations. Our music of the 60s, with its British invaders and the persistent drums of rock and roll, was as alien to our parents as rap and heavy metal have been to me. Phillip Glass compositions will hardly be confused with those of Beethoven. Tastes change. Some compositions live on. Others fade. But there is always music.

When you were in grade school, was there a piano in your classroom, a songbook with standards like “O Columbia the Gem of the Ocean,” and regular periods during the class day when the students and teachers sang together? Whatever happened to music in our schools?

How recently has a bird’s song broken into your consciousness with its melody as the Shama Thrush did for me?

I was socialized into music and raised to sing. Dad sang the lullaby at our house. Mom played records, partial to Big Bands. At church every Sunday, we sang hymns, listened to the anthem, and marveled at how the organist got such wonderful sounds from all those pulls and keys and pipes.

Mom’s love of music was evident. She had a Bose that played four CDs over and over each day, twelve hours a day, for the last 18 years of her life, at least, as background in her house. (She would change the four CDs from time to time). Turning on the music was her first act of the day, before coffee. Those tunes played through her passing until my sister turned off the Bose and would have been the last sounds Mom heard.

As a kid, I had a metal toy xylophone on which I hammered out my own unique tunes. Then I was in a church choir, a school choir, Madrigals. My primary musical failure was to give up playing the trumpet after fourth grade to my mother’s disappointment. I think she hoped for a family Al Hirt or Louis Armstrong.

Judy and I have spent more money than we care to count acquiring first vinyl records, then tapes, then CDs so that we could play our favorite music whenever we chose. Before long, we will, no doubt, convert to the more modern forms of personalized musical selections.

We grocery shop at a Safeway that plays music on the “Safeway Internal Network,” or whatever its real name it. Segments of our 10:00 p.m. TV news are introduced by dramatic graphics and snippets of special music. Have you been on hold on the phone recently and NOT be blessed with tinny music?

Like the moviemakers of the “silent” era, the people charged with keeping customers happy use music to impact how we feel. I’m not troubled by that.

Still, I need the Shama to sing for me from time to time.

Daniel E. White

July 24, 2017

Our newspaper related the facts. A Big Island farmer, 43 years old, a pillar in his community, an activist in behalf of efforts to combat the coffee berry borer, married to an American woman, father of three, a regular payer of income and property taxes, faces deportation because, at age 15, he crossed the border from Mexico without permission and stayed. Proceedings against him began in 2010 but he was granted a stay in 2014.

His community is outraged that his upstanding behavior on their behalf counts for nothing.

What a great example of the tension between the letter and the spirit of the law!

A lot of great literature has evolved from this tension. Start with the Christian Bible as Exhibit A. Billy Budd and Jean Valjean, to name just two, are widely known literary manifestations of this archetypal conflict.

It is easy to have sympathy for both sides. “We are a government of laws, not of men” is an oft-heard proclamation about our nation, standing in stark contrast to countries where law is changeable, depending upon one’s relationship with the government.

There is also the view of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who wrote, “The life of the law is not logic but experience,” in commenting on what he viewed as the unjust, though legally prescribed, sentence of a young offender. Shakespeare had an opinion, too: “The quality of mercy is not strained.”

My Dad, the preacher, used to categorize people to me as “Old Testament” or “New Testament.” I asked him what he meant. He said that the Old Testament was about setting basic conditions for a clan of people and was quite explicit about do’s and don’ts, especially the don’ts. Rules were set—about food, dress, behavior—that helped to mould the people into a community of the faithful.

Following the literal, physical law was the price of belonging.

In the New Testament, Jesus changes things. When challenged, Jesus did not select one of Moses’ ten commandments as the greatest. He came up with a new one about loving God and one’s neighbors, one that would subsume the others.

He said that following spiritual law was supreme. Love replaced obedience as the primary test of faithfulness. So, what happens when love and obedience are in conflict?

Herman Melville and Victor Hugo wrote novels that end with different resolutions to the tension between the letter and the spirit of the law. Billy Budd, a person without blemish, is unjustly accused by John Claggart, the ship’s master-at-arms, of conspiracy to mutiny. There is reason to believe that Claggart has acted out of envy; many see him as a man of “natural depravity.” Billy Budd stutters. When confronted by the accusation, he cannot get out the words he wants, and, in frustration, he strikes Claggart a fatal blow.

Everyone on board, including the captain, believes Budd to be morally justified. But, the captain is concerned about keeping order on the ship, and the law calls for any blow, fatal or otherwise, to be punishable by death. So, Billy Budd is hanged.

Jean Valjean served a twenty-year prison sentence for theft, despite the fact that he had stolen bread to keep his family alive. When he is released, the law requires him to carry his parole papers on him at all times which Valjean knows will condemn him to a life of poverty. Who would hire a convict?

He discards the papers, creates a new life for himself, becomes Mayor, serves others, fathers a beautiful daughter; in short, he reforms and lives a productive life.

His unmasking even is the result of an act of kindness that leads his jailer, Jauvert, to find him out. And so the contest between the man of the law, Jauvert, who has lived a blameless life as servant of the law, and Valjean, who has served an unjust sentence but tossed aside his parole papers while becoming an exemplar of virtue, begins.

Jauvert comes to realize that Valjean is beloved by all who know him. That drives Jauvert to madness, and he commits suicide to escape what, for him, was a world turned upside down.

People of a Certain Age, we are all at some point along the continuum between the two poles: “The law is the law. If you do not like the law, change it.” And “The life of the law is not logic but experience.”

As the Big Island deportation case illustrates, this tension is nothing abstract. Nor does it lend itself to a right answer in the same way all of the time.

There are four words over the entrance to the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. “Equal Justice Under Law.” It is justice that can mitigate the stark contrasts. “Do justly,” commands the prophet Micah and, we could surmise, those who built the building.

What is just, one well might ask?

Therein lies the question that must be answered by all of us. In sharing our answers and acting upon them, we may find a path that allows us to be a nation of laws that uses experience to breathe life into the law.

Daniel E. White

July 15, 2017

We had to persist to find the Barley Mow. We had tried a couple of roads in Clifton Hampden without finding it, and we were now in a residential area, clearly not the setting for a pub. The last option was across a one-lane bridge with traffic-control stoplights.

A sudden insight. The Barley Mow shared history with Jerome K. Jerome’s book, Three Men in a Boat, about his time on the Thames. The bridge crossed the Thames. So did we, and found the Barley Mow, lauded by Jerome as the “quaintest most old world inn on the river.” Established in 1352, it has a thatched roof, latticed windows, and a large fireplace, perfect for a pub.

We sat on a bench in the bar, front row seats to watch Chris, the publican, do his dance, pumping the tap, stopping the flow just as the brew head hit the rim, uncorking the wine, taking the food orders. He was gracious, humorous, and efficient. He seemed to know most of his customers.

Across from us sat a couple our age, their Golden Retriever on a leash at their feet. The publican brought the dog a treat or two. We surmised that the couple were regulars who had walked to the pub for dinner and that, in petting the puppy, the publican was greeting another old friend.

Two middle-aged men came to the bar and ordered their pints. They sat at a table beside us and reviewed the events of their days. When the pints were drained, they ordered another. One of the charms of the pub is that the customer orders everything at the bar. The wait staff delivers the food but ordering requires getting out of your seat and interacting with the publican.

Behind us was a family group of ten, ages ranging from six to seventy. Their dog lay quietly beside their table, too. They were surely there for a special celebration, a birthday perhaps. It would be natural, if one’s house were smallish which, it seems, most English cottages are, to go to the local gathering spot for celebrations.

From out in the garden came two young girls in summer frocks, sensibly dressed for the 86 degree, humid weather. They chatted with one of the wait staff and, from what little I could hear, seemed to be talking in a familiar way about something—perhaps the school term just over—one of the girls had just finished. Laughter from the tables in the garden, less hot now because the sun was lower in the sky, accompanied the girls to the bar.

About then, we began to hum “where everybody knows your name,” compared the publican to Sam Malone, and expected Cliff and Norm to show up any time. What a comfortable, embracing place this was. Even we, sitting on the same bench for the second night in a row, having ordered the same bowl of vegetables topped by a meat or fish of one’s choice, enjoying libations associated with pubs, felt how the Barley Mow could be a home away from home for folks in the surrounding communities.

People of a Certain Age, don’t we all need places like the Barley Mow where the ambience is relaxing, the “feel” reassuring, the people old friends or friends in the making? Doesn’t it help if the setting is ideal, matching the picture in our heads of where our community would naturally meet? Don’t we as a nation of rugged individuals actually crave community and a sense of belonging?

After dinner the second night, we chatted up Chris. We noticed a corporation’s name on the sign outside, above the pub’s name. Yes, the publican said, the pub is one of 2000 owned by Green and King, the largest beer maker in England. Yes, he was the pub’s manager as an employee of Green and King with all of the appropriate worker benefits. Yes, the menu was more or less standard for Green and King pubs, and yes, most of the beers on tap were made by Green and King.

No, he said, not many independent pubs have survived in England. What independent publican could replicate the benefits package from Green and King? How many could survive if catering only to the locals? Purchasing was less expensive because of bulk and economies of scale. The Barley Mow was not a franchise operation, like McDonald’s. It was an outlet of the parent corporation that took the profit.

Well, that will take the romance right out of a fantasy. Corporate Britain wins again.

Except.

The feel was real. The welcoming good humor of Chris was genuine. The couple with the dog was actually on one of the long boats traveling up river; this was their first time ever at the Barley Mow. But the biscuit was just as delicious for the dog. And those two girls in summer frocks and the two blokes dissecting the day over their pints, and our delicious dinners and the good beer—none of that was fake.

This is not 1352. With times, forms have changed. There are 2000 pubs owned by the corporation because the corporation has figured out how to keep the pubs profitable so that they remain a staple of English life.

What has not changed is that it takes people to create communities and other people to create circumstances and settings where communities can thrive. So we can be grateful that somebody makes it possible for the Barley Mow to be across the bridge for us to find, and in which to lift a pint to our newly-found favorite pub.

Daniel E. White

July 3, 2017

Mark Sappenfield, editor of The Christian Science Monitor, ended his introductory essay in a recent issue with these words: “…so long as the national conversation is bounded by absolutisms, common sense gets crowded out…In common sense politics, small steps are not cop-outs or the work of turncoats. They’re the path to something better. And taking that path often means finding a way to persuade people to take that first, small step together.”

In Seattle, my family regularly hosted Gabosh Singh Saul, a graduate student at the University of Washington, for holiday dinners. Mr. Saul was a Sikh. He and his religious colleagues did not celebrate the holidays we did, but Dad was always looking to befriend people who might be alone in our culture when the rest of us were celebrating. So, Gabosh celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas at the Seattle White House.

I have not known that many other Sikhs in my life. But, I remember Gabosh each time I hear about Sikh violence in India. Not him, I assure myself.

At the suggestion of a good friend, Judy and I read Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Vance, proud of his origins (to a point), is a Yale-educated attorney, former Marine, now a best-selling author and, no doubt, financially well-off. For much of my life, hillbilly has been a pejorative term, signifying lower class. If people outside hillbilly land thought about hillbillies at all, a stereotype emerged; think of the opening scene of the old TV show, “Beverly Hillbillies,” where the family arrives at their new home in an old car piled high with their rickety possessions, crowned by Granny’s rocker.

Vance’s account of his family and his neighbors is a superb introductory for non-hillbillies to a culture and a set of values both praiseworthy and troubling. Strong family ties, but a pattern of contentiousness within families, often fueled by alcohol and opiates. Wanting the best for one’s children but too often using the phrase “remember who you are” as a way to discourage ambition. Wanting meaningful work but beaten down by an economic system that increasingly leaves them out of the benefits. Vance writes about his culture but, in many respects, could be describing many sub-cultures in the United States.

I wonder how many of us ever thought about hillbillies as a sub-culture in good standing? Have they not been “other-ized?”

I am a 70-(in July) year-old white male with a PhD, living in a nice house in Hawaii, retired from a career working in tuition-charging schools that depend for their survival on people financially well-enough off to pay large sums of after-tax dollars to obtain for their children entrance into four-year colleges, and someone experienced at asking many of those people to donate additional sums of money.

How much effort would it take to stereotype me? And as what?

People of a Certain Age, how much effort would it take to stereotype you? In being stereotyped, are we not being “other-ized?” What stereotypes do we hold dear, consciously or not?

In Erich Remarque’s book, All Quiet on the Western Front, the German solider we are following becomes separated from his unit and must spend the night in a foxhole in “no man’s land.” He is startled by another soldier jumping into the hole but is clear-headed enough to see that he is French. So the German stabs him, and the Frenchman takes much of the night to die.

The German searches the man’s pockets and finds pictures of the man’s family and girlfriend and, if my memory is correct, an address. The enemy has died as a real person to the German.

War is “other-izing” to the extreme; think of the names by which we have referred to enemies—Gook, Kraut, etc. Bias and prejudice are not war but they certainly are forms of “other-izing.”

When I was a child, I thought all Catholics were tools of the Pope, all Chinese were Communists, and all people from certain areas of town were drug dealers. Having friends in each of those groups shattered that stereotyped thinking, just like knowing Gabosh conditioned my thinking at a young age about Sikhs. Having friends with whom I can debate political topics while sharing a glass of wine, without either of us raising a voice or stooping to name-calling is my small attempt to fight the forces in our culture that would turn “us” into “other.”

The Monitor issue focused on a small island off Denmark that has been, for 10 years, completely “green,” in terms of energy production and consumption. It did not get that way by having any outside entity tell it what to do. It did not get that way because everyone agreed that being green was the political and economic goal.

It got that way because a few island people started talking with a few other people about things that the island community could do to lessen the impacts of external upheavals in the acquisition from energy off-island. Political beliefs took a back seat to common sense about a shared need.

One windmill became many. Before long, the people of the island were producing energy surpluses they could sell. No mass movement. Just neighbors getting beyond political disagreements, absolutism, thinking about political rivals as the “other,” coming together to solve a common problem. They moved from other to us.

As hard as it might be, a worthwhile goal.

Daniel E. White

June 13, 2017

A friend of mine was in Honolulu December 7, 1941. Recently, she wrote about that day and the days that followed for a writing group where she lives. She lived in Nuuanu, so the attack was not apparent to her until her Mom found out by accident that Pearl Harbor was being bombed. My friend wrote about the dislocating effects of the war on her family, their move, the loss of her father’s business that had depended upon tourism, and so on.

I live in a house from which I see Pearl Harbor every day. When I visited the Arizona Memorial, I learned that a spotter plane for the Japanese was circling somewhere not far from where my house is located. I have wondered what it was like for that pilot, watching his countrymen rain bombs and torpedoes down on unsuspecting men and women, knowing that lots of people who were anticipating a quiet Sunday morning, were being killed with his assistance.

My friend wrote about the rumors that swept across Oahu that Sunday—the reservoirs were being poisoned, the Japanese Army was landing on the shoreline—and how fear dominated the citizenry until more facts emerged.

It would have been unimaginable that December day that, years after the attack, at Pearl Harbor, pilots from Japan who had participated in the bombing would embrace American service personnel on whom those bombs had been dropped.

In my line of vision from my window, beyond Pearl Harbor, stands a pu’u called Punchbowl. Inside its volcanic crater is the military cemetery that is the final resting place of many of the people killed at Pearl Harbor. Their graves lie mingled with the graves of other men and women who, whether or not killed in battle, gave some of their time living on earth as members of U.S. armed forces.

We set aside a day each year to remember those people. Coincident with that date, there is a lovely and moving tradition in Honolulu, carried out at water’s edge. Floating lanterns are launched, each to remember someone who has died—relative, friend, ancestor, whomever. As a people, we are good at setting aside days and at preserving moving traditions.

Pearl Harbor and Punchbowl are in my line of sight every day.

“War is politics by other means.” So said Clausewitz. I think war is a failure of politics by which I mean the spirited exchange of ideas in the process of hammering out policies to govern the polity. And so Pearl Harbor and Punchbowl can elicit a twinge of sadness that, as humans, we have failed at politics so much. For at least 30 of my seventy years, the U.S. has deployed soldiers and sailors to fight a war, declared or not.

The optimist in me points out that, for 58% of my life, we have not been adding people killed in action to our cemeteries.

The historian in me reflects back on the overseas wars in which the U.S. has been engaged since 1900. World War One stands out as a series of miscalculations by European governments. There is some evidence that British commercial interests maneuvered for twenty years to get the British government to fight Germany. The issue was Germany’s growing colonial interests and commercial power.

Whatever the roots, it was the British government, through its alliances with continental powers, France and Russia, that jumped at the chance to go to war with Germany. Haven’t we all seen depictions of the British as they went off to war in 1914 declaring that they would be home by Christmas, so confident they were of their military prowess and political rightness?

Three years and hundreds of thousands of dead later, the U.S. got involved to protect the rights for its ships to traverse the Atlantic without being sunk.

There is a strong academic argument that World War Two was chapter two of World War One and that the issues causing powers to fight in 1914 lingered through the Vietnam War as well. If that argument is true, a lot of people have died as a result of the machinations of British economic interests in the 1890s.

Those specific interests did not prompt Japan to attack Pearl Harbor or the Iraqis to invade Kuwait. The governments of those countries made decisions to go to war for purposes defined by the governments.

And therein lies the genesis of most wars. People of a Certain Age, can we recall a time that the people of any nation coerced its government to go to war?

I do not intend an anti-government screed. There is a significant list of ways in which my life directly benefits from the governments under which I live at the national, state, and local levels. I take seriously that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and wish that were true for all people.

Sadly, there are too many places where the consent of the governed does not mean much. There are too many places like Punchbowl where real people are buried, men and women who chose to serve their country in wars they did not want but fought as a matter of duty.

Punchbowl is not far away from Nuuanu, where my friend was living in 1941. She has reminded me that war has many costs beyond the lives of our military, costs worth remembering on every memorial day.

Daniel E. White

May 28, 2017

Before each piece is played, the concertmaster faces the orchestra. An oboe calls out a note, an A. A is the note because every string instrument has an A. Each member of the orchestra then adjusts his or her instrument to that note. To be certain, the process is repeated. And then repeated again, this time with nearly every section playing the note. Silence follows. All the tuning must end before the conductor will enter from the left.

Whenever the orchestra piece involves a piano soloist, the concertmaster goes to the piano to strike the A, foregoing the cue from the oboe. The process is the same, though. Everyone plays his or her version of the same note. Everybody in the orchestra thus begins the piece in tune with each other.

I like the metaphor. You and I benefit from adjusting the tone of our lives from time to time to a reliable tuning note.

Your note might be similar to mine but it is not necessarily the same. The important point would be that all of the “instruments” of our lives are in tune with one another. There is much to be said in favor of being in harmony with others, too.

Recently, a friend shared an article about a favorite teacher from his graduate school days. The teacher taught at the same small university for his entire 30-year career, preferring to work with students in a liberal arts college rather than at a research university.

The professor retired early, at age 63, saying that he had collected enough alumni students by that point. There was a more serious point to his early departure from full-time teaching. He envisioned, and now inhabits, a “spacious world of retirement.”

In his spacious world, he has pursued the learning of another language, playing a musical instrument new to him, and writing about new things he is learning. He speaks about his students and his teaching with great fondness. It is also clear that phase has ended. He is doing other things.

Without question, those of us blessed with the chance to enjoy a spacious world in our retirement gain the freedom to choose our daily activities in a way that is often unavailable for those still employed, or for those whose retirement circumstances are more pinched.

I wonder, though, about the oboe’s A and the note that helps us periodically to re-tune our lives. In moving from one phase to another, such as from the world of work to the privileges of retirement, does our tuning tone adjust as well? Do the present circumstances of our lives create some difference in our personal note, just as the location of a piano, its altitude or the relative humidity or whatever might require a re-tuning?

In the concert hall, it is significant that, without a piano, the oboe’s A is the standard. Once the larger, more formidable piano is involved, the orchestra adjusts to its interpretation of the A.

Do our lives require us to make similar adjustments? People of a Certain Age, what is the tuning note of your life? And who plays it, the oboe or the piano?

In your life as in mine, there might be varying ways of re-visiting your tone to center yourself, bringing the myriad activities and demands of your life into some harmony. Perhaps yours is a belief system or a spiritual practice like meditation or prayer. Perhaps it is a relationship that is so stable and dependable that reconnecting on a regular basis serves as the needed re-tuning. Maybe it is a place in which you can re-introduce yourself to yourself after a period during which the “performance” of life has somehow knocked something out of tune.

Harmony might seem a strange word to use in the context of the pace and demands of daily living. Yet when we are at our best in handling whatever stresses and challenges there might be, isn’t there a sense of harmony? And, what a great wish for each other; harmony.

The various instruments make different sounds. Another friend once observed that those who have found the right “instrument” to play in their lives were fortunate, indeed. It is under the hands of the composer and the conductor that those many sounds combine to create a symphony.

I suspect the professor might consider his professional life to have been successful, like the music of a symphony. Certainly he had a vision of his next phase, the spacious world of his retirement, which suggests the probability of a sense of harmony. He has become the conductor of this new phase of his life.

I know from the article that the professor spends much time in the woods of Vermont. So it is fair to speculate that the woods play a role in the A of his life. John Muir thought that the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

What is your metaphorical walk through a forest wilderness? Have you heard your oboe’s A recently?

Daniel E. White

May 15, 2017