Write for God

To celebrate our public health agency‘s 75th birthday, I researched and wrote a biographical sketch about each of the 11 men and two women who have served as its directors. The in-house archives were pretty bare, so I had to rely on newspaper accounts dating back to 1936 to tell their stories.

In most cases, each physician had to battle politicians and budget cuts, even during “the good old days,” “the postwar boom,” “the golden years”…pick your meaningless cliche here. In one case, a politician wanted to defund the agency because a public-health nurse had visited his house after the birth of his baby. That was “socialism,” as he put it. And this was in the 1950s, not during our steeped-in-duh Tea Party days.

Some of the directors were forced out by politicians and others by superiors who didn’t agree with their policies. A few directors used the position as a stepping stone to higher-paying jobs. In the majority of cases, each director made a meaningful contribution to vital services such as disease control, environmental health, sanitation or services for minorities and the poor. One looked after the health of our county while dealing with two daughters with mental illness. In a sensational case, one daughter stabbed the other to death and was institutionalized for the rest of her life.

These hardworking men and women were all physicians who could have made more money in private practice or research. They considered the public’s welfare their mission; they put up with obstacles that would have deterred others without their dedication. Tuberculosis, syphilis,  influenza, AIDS and polio epidemics later, they left their mark on our county.

It’s been a privilege to research the lives and careers of these heroic people. A co-worker framed my 13 articles plus other background pieces I wrote. She hung them near the present director’s office. I’ll pass them every day as I arrive at work.

That will be my cue to be thankful that there have always been health professionals protecting the health of the community.  I work with the public health champions of today and I’m never ashamed to tell strangers what I do or where I work.

Heroes like these work in your community, no matter where you live. Politicians are still cutting their budgets and undermining their best efforts. If you have the chance, thank a public health professional for all they do to keep your community safe.

They’re working for future generations who may never know their names, but who will owe them a debt.

The most searched term on Yahoo today was John 3:16. That’s the good news.

The reason why had less to do with religious fervor en masse and more to do with football. NFL playoffs, to be exact, for the wild card spot in the AFC.

On Sunday, the Lord’s Day, January 8, unashamed Christian Tim Tebow led the Denver Broncos to the next round over the Pittsburgh Steelers 29-23 by an overtime touchdown that put his total yards at–wait for it–316. It goes beyond numerology because Tebow often painted 3:16 on his face during his Heisman days at the University of Florida.

The National Football League doesn’t go for Bible verses on a quarterback’s face, so Tebow was warned not to add any Scripture verses to the game face fans would see on TV between beer commercials. The NFL does allow dog abusers and rapists to play, but reminders that God so loved the world that He gave us his Son are frowned upon.

On Sunday, Tebow carried the verse in his heart and his scrubbed face only showed the intensity of his effort and his joy at winning. When he beat the Steelers–the team the TV commentators all but guaranteed would win–his total yards led many back to the Gospel verse that had so often adorned Tebow’s face as a Gator.  The game ended and the QB “Tebowed” on one knee to thank God for a victory as Sports Authority Field at Mile High went wild.

Miraculous? No. Amazing? Yes. Remember, this is the kid who wasn’t supposed to be good enough to play with the dog abusers and rapists in the NFL.

The real gift of Sunday’s Broncos victory was that so many searched online for the source of Tebow’s faith. Maybe, just maybe, someone looked up from a beer commercial, read John 3:16 and opened the door to Jesus in his or her heart.

That would be the real miracle behind those 316 yards.

Audrey Hepburn in 1957

“Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it’s at the end of your arm. As you get older, remember you have another hand: the first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.”

–Audrey Hepburn, actress and humanitarian

Turner Classic Movies is paying tribute to the genius of Charlie Chaplin with several of his films. City Lights, so heartbreaking at the end, and Modern Times have been first up, with some of his earlier silents later in the evening. (No Great Dictator tonight, though.)

It’s interesting that Chaplin continued to make “non-talkies” into 1940. They’re not “silents” because there’s strategic dialogue, music and natural sounds. Chaplin “talks” in Modern Times when he sings a nonsense song, which was his way of expressing that feelings and emotions don’t need words. The formerly blind flower seller in City Lights realizes that the little tramp is the benefactor she believed was a millionaire when she couldn’t see him. The look on her face and on Chaplin’s when they meet couldn’t be more perfect had they spoken.

Robert Osborne, the film historian who hosts Turner’s movie showings, has a Saturday evening segment called The Essentials. He discusses the week’s picks with Alec Baldwin, who’s usually entertaining. Today, though, he and Osborne had to disagree when it came to finding a modern equivalent of Chaplin. Baldwin said that Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller are today’s Chaplins.

With his usual grace, Osborne said that Carrey’s body comedy is more about “showing off” his abilities than integrating real body intelligence into his films to create characters. Stiller, he added, doesn’t have Chaplin’s “sweetness” in his movies. In fact, Osborne added that Stiller’s comedies are “mean.” So there, Mr. Baldwin!

In Modern Times, Chaplin’s roller-staking balleticism and his writing/directing aren’t used to make pain or embarrassment funny. In a word, they’re used because they fit into the film–and because it’s funny.  His body control as the skates closer and closer to the edge of a mezzanine at a store is a treat to watch.

Then there’s the haunting song Smile, which Chaplin wrote and serves as the theme in Modern Times. It’s been sung beautifully by many artists, including Nat “King” Cole, but the instrumental in the film is perfectly matched to its sweet and unexpectedly modern tale about the dehumanization of workers in factories and the exploitation of the poor by the powerful.

If you’ve never seen the great Chaplin features, some are on YouTube or air on Turner Classic Movies now and then. They’re also available on Netflix and other rental sites.

You’re in for a treat, without showing off or meanness.

The Three Kings with little visitors at a Spanish shopping center.

Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar.

Those three names are magic to kids in Latin America and Spain. Literally magic, that is.

The names assigned to the Three Wise Men of St. Matthew’s Gospel were passed down by tradition, since they’re not named in the Bible. The “wise men from the east” acquired a lot of character in the centuries after the Nativity.

Traditionally, the Tres Reyes Magos (Three Magical Kings) are from the corners of the known world. One is black, another European and the third Middle Eastern. It’s clear that the message was the dominion of Jesus over all the world.

To us Latin-American children, the Kings were the wizards who left presents on Epiphany Day, January 6, just as they had brought gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense to Baby Jesus. We wrote the Kings letters with our gift lists and promised to leave sugar and water for their camels. We had to wonder how three men and three camels managed to squeeze into our living rooms to leave presents, but no one questioned the method when it came time to wake early and check out our bounty.

Since I grew up in Communist Cuba, I never had a mountain of presents. I recall three or four items on the couch, one of which was a book of some sort or a school-supply item such as a sharpener or pencil case.

One fabulous year, there was a doll more beautiful than any I’d ever seen. She had luxuriant brown hair and a slight smile that showed small porcelain teeth. We named her Lola and she looked like the doll at left.

Lola was played with so gently that it took me months to realize that she said “Mama” when she was turned over. I never wanted to mess her hair or her clothes; throwing her around was never an option.

When I think back to life in an atheist nation and the sacrifices my parents must have endured to find us a few gifts for a Christian celebration, I am grateful to have had a family where my sister and I were cherished and nurtured.

Maybe that’s why not having a lot of presents never meant we were deprived. Would that so many children today who are unhappy with their mountains of expensive gifts have the same parents and extended family we did.

Lola had to stay behind when we were allowed to leave Cuba in late 1966. Possessions were inventoried before departure, which meant a last-minute decision to take her with me would have been impossible. When I see dolls that remind me of her, there’s a  flood of memories of past Epiphany Days.

On that first Christmas in the United States after our arrival just a few weeks earlier, my sister and I found some presents on December 25 from Santa Claus. The Three Kings disappeared from our history forever, except to think back each January 6 to our childhoods.

May Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar bring you joy today and every day. You’re never too old to be grateful for a Catholic childhood filled with love.

Anaïs Nin

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

–Anaïs Nin, author and journalist

G. Nolst Trenité wrote under the pen name "Charivarius"

I learned English as a second language when I was a child, which made that task a lot easier for me than it was for my parents. As native Spanish speakers, we had to undergo a major brain transformation to go from a phonetic language to one whose pronunciation and spelling are a crapshoot.

Several of my co-workers also learned English as a second language and we’ve all agreed that no language is quite the consternation that this one is. The same letter or vowel can sound totally different and forget a group of letters! The most educated foreign speaker sounds like an idiot reading aloud in English.

A Facebook friend shared this poem from a British site with a sense of humor. The author, a gentleman named G. Nolst Trenité (1870-1946) usually wrote in Dutch under the pen name “Charivarius.” This seems to have been the only poem he wrote in English. Enjoy reading this shorter version of a longer poem with 800 verbal oddities. Look  for a link to a reading–albeit in a Cockney accent– below.

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

The Chaos by G. Nolst Trenité

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964), Catholic artist and master of the short story

“When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic, I cannot afford to be less than an artist.”

–Flannery O’Connor

The Voyage of the Pequod from the book Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

I’ve been a reader since I was four. In one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, Burgess Meredith plays a distracted little man named Henry Beemis who is a terrible bank clerk precisely because, as his ornery boss put it, he’s a reader.

Burgess Meredith as the bookish Henry Beemis, "Twilight Zone"

In 2011, I moved most of my book reading from print to a Kindle and a Kobo. As someone who reads more than one book at a time, the idea of hauling my reading material around in a small device sold me on e-readers. Last year, I read some print books and I still think coffee-table books should always be real books, but I did a lot of e-reading. (Hauling the doorstop Steve Jobs bio around two airports in November made me wish I’d read that one on my thin little Kindle.)

As I looked back to the books I most enjoyed in 2011, I was struck by how many were old–really old. I don’t spend much on bestsellers, that’s true, so much of what I read has been around the block. When I got my Kindle 10 months ago, the first book I downloaded was The Scarlet Letter, which I hadn’t read since high school when Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of hypocrisy and suppressed love blew me away. (By the way, there are countless classics and out-of-print books available free from Amazon, Project Gutenberg or a host of other e-book sites. You run into serious money only when you have to read the latest hot bestseller right now on your e-reader.)

Kindle 3 e-reader in case

I’ve been through Dante’s Commedia and a fascinating Spanish-language Cuban history chronology from Columbus’ first step on the nation’s soil to the 1960s. I’ve finally read and enjoyed Huckleberry Finn on my Kindle (yes, the n-word belongs there and shouldn’t be edited to read “slave”) and muddled my way through Ulysses, James Joyce’s experimental novel, which hovers between being very entertaining and impenetrable.

There was also my annual reading of A Confederacy of Dunces, my favorite book of all time. John Kennedy Toole’s comic novel never fails to make me laugh out loud at the antics of the obese pedant Ignatius Reilly and the assorted enemies he makes from the first page until the intricately plotted ending.  I made the mistake of reading the novel during a break in one of my twins’ public-school functions and I could sense the stares of other parents who wondered what I was up to.

I read some great new books such as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the redemptive Unbroken and Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, a fascinating look at the first days of the Nazi regime.  I also read a few new novels that my work book club selected; the least said about books which have pleased others on the bestsellers’ lists, the better.

The book that was most unforgettable of all those I read in 2011 was about a subject in which I had no interest, but whose “heart of darkness,” to borrow a title from Joseph Conrad, drew me in.

Herman Melville, 1819-1891

I’m a fast reader, but it took me about two weeks to read Moby Dick. Joyce is supposed to have said that it had taken him years to write novels such as Ulysses and that he expected readers to spend at least the same amount of time getting through them. (Thank you, Kindle, for a built-in dictionary to help me navigate through Moby Dick, or else that might have been true.)

Herman Melville’s 1851 novel–a classic struggle of two great forces at war–has more than you’d ever care to know about whales and whaling, but its center is timeless. Captain Ahab must not rest until he defeats the White Whale and Moby Dick is nature itself standing in his path. It’s a tale that’s as modern as news headlines today and as eternal as the battle between good and evil.

Ahab’s relentless search crushes so many whom he considers expendable on his hunt. His employers, the boat itself and the humans on it are all fair game. How is Ahab different from the politicians and CEOs who do the same today? A fellow ship captain–his brother on the sea–implores Ahab for help finding a missing crew member. Ahab brushes him off even though the other captain’s crew member is actually his young son. We know Ahab has his own young son at home and instantly we know that his obsessions will destroy that young son, too.

Along the way, I learned something about the dead trade of whaling (whale milk with strawberries is a decent dish, according to Ishmael), but the externals are only a small part of the internal struggle in the novel. So many passages feature virtuoso writing and others are masterful in their single-minded focus on the inevitable final battle between Man and Nature.

While I was reading Moby Dick, I saw a trailer for a new two-part TV series adaptation starring William Hurt. It premiered  in 2011 on a cable station we don’t get, but a DVD must exist somewhere. More than 150 years after Melville published his novel and whaling died out, his story is still a tale worth filming. William Hurt as Ahab sounds like great casting and, although the crew calls the captain an old man, he’s really in his mid-50s or, gee, about my age.

Have there been more exotic characters than the harpooner trio of Queequeg, Tashtego and Dagoo? One is a South Seas Islander, the other Native American and the other African. They are used as muscle to harness Moby Dick, Ahab as their colonial master. Stubb, Starbuck and Ishmael enter Ahab’s madness aboard the Pequod and few survive. It all makes for an unforgettable book.

For 2012, I have a complete set of Edgar Allan Poe‘s works, all of Fyodor Dostoyevsky‘s novels and Stephen E. Ambrose’s Crazy Horse and Custer awaiting me on my Kindle. Henry Beemis, you’ve met your match!

You don’t have to be an Apple fanboy or fangirl to have an iPhone in your pocket, or your music collection on an iPod or an iPad on your wish list. Instead of brand loyalty or fanaticism, it’s the joy of using a well designed, aesthetically pleasing object that drives consumers to Apple products.

I can’t afford an Apple computer or an iPad, but I use the other major products that are the legacy of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whose early death in October 2010 coincided with the release of his official biography.

Simply titled Steve Jobs, the thick book is half biography and half business how-to. There are actually two lead characters in Walter Isaacson’s book:  Jobs himself and innovation. It’s worth reading as inspiration for self-invention, leadership and reliance on gut instinct.

The second half of the book focuses on the intrinsic changes that Apple has made on our culture. Each chapter deals with the debut of innovations such as iTunes, the iPad and the iPhone. The earlier chapters in the bio focus on Jobs’ abrasive personality, his difficult relationships and even his megalomania. It’s almost as if Isaacson were saying, “Yes, you and I know he’s a jerk, but judge him by his works.”

Jobs’ rants and his lack of regard for people’s feelings (as well as his propensity to cry) get a bit tiresome, so Isaacson was wise to look at the music, communications and computer industries that Jobs reinvented.

Read the book and you’ll be convinced that leadership is in short supply in American businesses. Was Jobs the last great entrepreneur in the footsteps of Henry Ford? Perhaps. One notable section is a discussion of why Apple under Jobs didn’t use focus groups to give consumers freeze-dried creativity. According to Jobs, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

When you pull out that iPhone in your pocket, its simple elegance will amaze you if you pull away from the apps, the browser, the phone and all the other things it can do and just look at what it is. Jobs studied Zen as a lifelong interest, and the beauty of his products is definitely Zen-like.  Apple products are, its competitors’ products do.

As we start a new year full of hope and brimming with possibility, have the courage to begin anew, to reinvent yourself. Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in Jobs’ parents’ garage in 1976 but, years later, the company was a success and Jobs was forced out. He would later return in triumph, of course, as the most sublime reinvention of a company and a zeitgeist and American business. I’ll let Jobs’ own words from a 2005 Stanford University commencement speech set the tone for 2012:

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”