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[geezeralert]

And in the end . . .

Some 45s from my collection, including the first three from the Beatles.

(Third of three parts)

Now this really IS for Beatles fans only.

Non-fans reading this, even if they managed to pay attention to the first two installments describing my little aural/intellectual immersion into the group’s musical output, will likely find my third discourse hard to take.

For here I will discuss what to outsiders would seem silly -- what it all means, or how does studying each of the tunes recorded by the Beatles make a person any different or change his or her place in the hierarchy of fandom.

For starters, we must clearly acknowledge (as we did at the start) this type of project is all about fun, like a hobby. And any written analysis likewise is done in the spirit of being an entertaining diversion from real life, meaningless in the overall scheme of things.

If you take pop group fandom — or any celebrity fandom — to a level more serious than that, then you are in a place beyond my grasp.

My effort was born of a curiosity about this legendary musical group that was important in my youth. In that regard, the project was an absolute success.

I satisfied my curiosity about Beatles songs big and small, loved and hated, popular and obscure. While I have not committed to memory many of the details, I know where to find answers to just about any questions I might have.

Beatles’ music came at me fast and furious in the 1960s. I rarely stopped to understand its origins, musicianship, meaning or other minutia beyond what was in album liner notes or news media coverage. It was just enjoyable and interesting.

The unique individuals involved also were worth understanding and following, for all their achievements and personal tales.

Now I’ve seen their production up close and personal. Good for me. Fascinating stuff. Totally worth the effort.

Do I want more? Yes, a little.

There are books that still sound interesting, like those I noted in part one (the Lewishon study, the Best or Epstein memoirs, books by Philip Norman and Barry Miles). The much-anticipated “Let It Be” movie reissue also will be fun to watch, after seeing a very rough video of a video of it that I bought off E-Bay (at least it gave me a general idea of what it looked like).

After taking a break from all-things-Beatles, I’ll tackle that stuff from time to time. (To stay sane and clear-headed, I did seek out lots of non-Beatles reading material throughout my project. Lately, I’ve discovered the crime novels of Elmore Leonard, whose works were the basis for some of my favorite movies.)

But I’m pretty sure I will never reach HUGE fan status for the Beatles (or any other celebrity, for that matter).

Those people, of which there are perhaps millions, do know all the details of the Beatles songs without looking them up in a book or the internet or Wikipedia. They own all of them in all of their forms. They also own all the music produced by the individual Beatles both before they formed and after their breakup (I pretty much stopped my purchases a few years into their solo careers, although I picked up John Lennon’s final one and the complete Traveling Willburys collection with George Harrison.)

They would spend the incredible amounts that are being charged for such major works as “Places I Remember. My Time with the Beatles,” by photographer Henry Grossman (going for $2,609); the “RTBBook. Recording the Beatles,” described on Amazon as: “A detailed look at every piece of studio gear used, full explanations of effects and recording processes, and an inside look at how specific songs were recorded,” by Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, going for $500 (originally $100); and “Kaleidoscope Eyes. A Day in the Life of Sgt. Pepper,” another compilation of Grossman photos going for $688.

(I also once saw a George Martin box set of materials going for over $2,000 but I can’t find it now.)

These super fans have been to Beatles concerts, either when they were together 50 years ago or as individuals in the years since.  I have not, nor do I want to, really.

As I was in the midst of my project, tickets went on sale for Paul McCartney’s concert this July at Dodger Stadium in LA. OK, I said to myself, that could be interesting. He is a legend, after all. And he travels with a tremendous band, I’ve read, even if his own 76-year-old chops have long since gone weak and raspy.

I set myself a limit of $100 a ticket for myself, my wife and my brother. If we could get close enough to really feel the music and see the star performer, that would be worth the price.

Within hours of the ticket pre-sale opportunity, the best seats in the house (ground level in front of the stage) were sold, some for a few thousand dollars, all for amounts well beyond my budget.

The best I could get for $100 was seats up in the stands by the baseball stadium’s press box. I may as well as sit at home and watch the concert on a laptop with headphones. Not much of an experience.

Those people who immediately ponied up the big bucks for such a geezer Beatle performance are the HUGE fans. They have probably been to more than one such concert and will keep going to them.

They would probably also spend serious dough to see Ringo Starr’s all-star band perform, something I would not consider (his songs and solo hits are not in my top 300 favorite Beatles songs, as a group or individuals).  

The closest I would have come to paying a major sum to see a former Beatles was if I had had a chance to see The Traveling Willburys, with Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne. That was a super group with an outstanding sound.

Huge Beatles fans also travel to London to see the places that are part of the group’s lore, likely have memorabilia like guitars or sticks, have T-shirts or other clothing with Beatles pictures or logos, know every detail of their personal lives and go weak at the sound of their music.

Many probably have rooms decorated with Beatles stuff. They go to downtown LA for Starr’s annual peace and love declaration. They follow news about them every day on their website.

To me, that level of interest borders on obsessive. However, I cannot criticize such people without being somewhat of a hypocrite. I’ve gone to the edge of that pond, after all. I just won’t jump in, and a lot of what’s holding me back is simply the cost (of books, tickets, memorabilia, plane fare, etc.) not philosophy.

I wish nothing for the best for those who do find the time and money to devote to the subjects of their passion, stopping short of stalking or otherwise intruding in the subjects’ lives.

For now, I am happy being a Really Big Beatles Fan with an advanced degree in discography.

[geezeralert]

Deep Dive Duly Delivers

From my boxes: Some sleeves that came with Beatles’ 45 rpm records

(Second of three parts)

I still love Beatles music.

In my months of replaying and studying all the songs produced in the group’s eight-year recording period (1962-1970), I continued to close my eyes and listen raptly to the tunes, often over and over and over (my practice since youth for favorite songs; I’m like a little kid repeatedly playing a favorite video or asking for a re-reading of a favorite book).

From “She Loves You” to “All My Loving” to “Words of Love” to “No Reply” to “Tell Me Why” to “She Said She Said” to “Hey Bulldog” to “Penny Lane” to “With A Little Help From My Friends” to “Get Back” to “Two of Us” to “Let It Be” to “Glass Onion” to the “long medley” on side two of “Abbey Road” . . . the foursome’s pop output of 50-plus years ago remains among the most pleasant sounds to my ears.

That state of enjoyment is to be expected, I guess. These musical creations dominated the soundtrack of my taste-formulating teen years, ahead of other loves like Motown, Sinatra, the Beach Boys and the myriad of hits coming out AM and FM radio.

Of course, my knowledge of the Beatles’ songs is now greatly enhanced, which, I’m pleased to find, only serves to heighten my enjoyment.

Learning how individual songs were conceived and executed, and then hearing the eventual product and how (or if) it reflects — by design or accident —the artists’ intentions, adds layers of fun to the listening experience.

The same was true for songs I do not particularly enjoy, like “Rain,” as those I do, like “Penny Lane” or “Two of Us.”

For “Rain,” the revelation was that Ringo Starr considers his drumming work on the song his best ever. Song chronicler Ian MacDonald (“Revolution in the Head”) called Starr’s work “superb” while also lavishing praise on Paul McCartney’s “high register bass” as “sometimes so inventive that it threatens to overwhelm the track.”

Perhaps any “true fan” of the Beatles knew such details but I never paid attention to either the drumming, the bass line or just about anything else about that song. Now, listening to it with this new knowledge, I at least give it some respect.

Likewise, for many tunes I did listen to closely and often over the years, there were plenty of tidbits that make them even more fun to hear.

Like the painstaking attention paid by McCartney to the rather simple-sounding (to me) “Penny Lane,” the technically expert drumming of Starr on “She Said She Said” (called “the outstanding track” on “Revolver” by MacDonald, who says that album is considered by many the Beatles’ best) and the performance on “”Two of Us.”  

Hearing that last tune, with my new knowledge, had me choking back tears.

Understand, “Two of Us” was recorded for the Beatles’ second to last album, “Let It Be,” and I played it after months of reviewing their musical endeavors as boyhood chums (McCartney wrote “When I’m 64,” one of the classics from “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band,” when he was 16), as a newly formed band spending hours at their craft in a foreign country, as an insanely popular pop group dominating the musical world, as a trend-setting studio creative force, as a drug-addled crumpling unit and, finally, as bitterly feuding individual musical achievers no longer interested in being a fabulous foursome.

But even as the storm clouds gathered, producing occasional thunder claps, there were still lightening flashes of what made the Beatles the Beatles.

Moments like the one, in late January 1969, when McCartney and John Lennon sang in beautiful harmony — a sound straight out of 1962 — strumming acoustic guitars, on “Two of Us.”

“The close harmonies of “Two of Us” reminded McCartney and Lennon of their teenage Everly Brothers impersonations and, during the second day’s work on it, they broke off to sing ‘Bye Bye Love,’” wrote MacDonald.

The image of these two boyhood chums and creative masterminds, after years of ups and downs, burying the hatchet for a few minutes while under the influence of nostalgia — well . . .  (insert cry-face emoji).

To be sure, that continued camaraderie for all four group members was captured in the “Let It Be” film, along with the more well-known contentiousness. They jammed to rock ‘n roll standards in the studio and played their last live performance as a group on the rooftop.

The books I consulted also told how these four individuals continued to work together despite all their mounting, serious differences, and, like the tale of the “Two of Us” recording, those passages were among the most noteworthy to me during my research.

MacDonald notes this this lasting togetherness showed the Beatles to be “in no respect an ordinary phenomenon.”

He continued:

“Many have spoken of the charismatic atmosphere that switched on whenever all four were together — a group-mindedness which kept them united through a further 18 months (after their “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper” successes) of in-fighting during which they recorded well over 50 more tracks and which continued, albeit less reliably than before, to function as the psychic antenna by which they maintained contact with the shifting currents of popular feeling at large.”

Listening to their musical creations while getting more details about how much they were starting to really hate each other in the late 1960s was a indeed revelation for this big Beatles fan.

It culminated with the tale told by the engineer Geoff Emerick (“Here There and Everywhere, My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles”) of the band’s final recording together, Lennon’s “Because,” as it wrapped up the “Abbey Road” album.

The tune brought their legendary producer George Martin back into the studio to orchestrate nine harmony parts. For technical reasons, it required John, Paul and George Harrison to sing their three-part harmony together live, rather than overdubbing each part one at a time, and then add two additional passes to add on the remaining six parts.

Emerick recounts how the three Beatles were totally into the effort.

“They knew they were doing something special and they were determined to get it right. There was no clowning around that day, no joking; everyone was very serious, very focused,” he wrote.

He continued:

“That day I saw the four Beatles at their finest: there was 100 percent concentration from all of them — even Ringo, sitting quietly with his eyes closed, silently urging his bandmates on to their best performance — all working in tandem to get that vocal nailed, spot on. It was a stark example of the kind of teamwork that had been so sorely lacking for years. It’s tempting to imagine what the Beatles might have been able to accomplish if they could only have captured and sustained that spirit just a little longer.”

For me, though, the “Because” effort was amazing for taking place at all, both in terms of the Beatles’ problems and just how long any group of performers can co-exist and produce excellence.

Another fascinating act of cooperation, in my judgment, was Paul helping John on his very personal “Ballad of John and Yoko.” By that time, Yoko One was an extremely divisive element in the groups’ universe so I found this friendly cooperation especially praiseworthy.

Speaking of Yoko . . .

Of course, all Beatles fans have read stories of how disruptive her constant presence was during the final years. But one of the biggest revelations I’ll take away from my project is just how badly she disrupted the group’s cohesiveness and creativity, from early 1968 forward.

Emerick believes much of the improved atmosphere in the recording studio during “Abbey Road” could be attributable to the absence of John and Yoko, who were injured in a car accident in Scotland.

When the pair finally were recovered enough to attend the recording sessions, John arranged for a bed to be brought into the studio for Yoko, complete with a microphone suspended over her so she could comment on the proceedings.

Yikes

Wrote the engineer:

“For the next several weeks, Yoko lived in that bed. Her wardrobe consisted of a series of flimsy nightgowns, accessorized with a regal tiara, carefully positioned to hide the scar on her forehead from the accident. As she gained her strength, so too did she gain her confidence, slowly but surely starting to annoy the other Beatles and George Martin with her comments.”      

Interestingly, as the Abbey Road sessions progressed and Ono got out of bed, she  was asked by John to stay in the control room while he, Paul and George performed what, in my opinion, was one of the most incredible feats of their later years: the three simultaneous guitar solos during “The End.”

I always wondered how that section of the song was done and was amazed to find that it was all three of them taking turns. I never tire listening to it.

Emerick says perhaps it was Yoko’s absence “or perhaps it was because on some subconscious level they had decided to suspend their egos for the sake of the music, but for the hour or so it took them to play those solos, all the bad blood, all the fighting, all the crap that had gone down between the three former friends was forgotten. John, Paul and George looked like they had gone back in time, like they were kids again, playing together for the sheer enjoyment of it. More than anything, they reminded me of gunslingers, with their guitars strapped on, looks of steely-eyed resolve, determined to outdo one another. Yet there was animosity, no tension at all — you could tell that they were simply having fun.”

I suppose knowledge of these scenarios, and the different parts played by the Beatles, in something that separates the really big fans of the Beatles from the really huge fans.  

The latter already knew those details. And they also can say what songs were played when and by whom without consulting the various books that I used.

And they know a lot of other things that were news to me in my research.

Like the fact that Harrison auditioned his classic “Something” (originally eight minutes long!) for the group during the “White Album” along with “Old Brown Shoe” and “All Things Must Pass” but had them rejected.

Perhaps even some “really big” fans also had picked up those tidbits over the years while I missed them.

In any event, here’s some of they other things that jumped out at me in addition to the inspiring, intermittent camaraderie and the depressing, disruptive force of Yoko Ono:

** The amount of drug use by the group and the effect it had on their music.

The marijuana, the LSD and, for Lennon, the heroin all took at least the two main songwriters into their various musical directions. MacDonald notes that 50 days after the soaring achievement of “Because” Lennon “was back in the studio howling his addiction in ‘Cold Turkey.’” He makes the conclusion that heroin was “flowing coldly around its composer’s body” at the “Because” sessions.

** The influence of their various girlfriends on their songs.

Many of the songs chart the various stages of McCartney’s romances with Jane Asher and Linda Eastman along with John Lennon’s marriage/breakup with Cynthia and, of course, infatuation with Yoko.

** The nonsense of their lyrics— many of them were just thrown together and others had strictly personal meanings.  

Under scrutiny, a vast number of their early songs are far better musically than lyrically. I guess the simple old “moon June” love messages sounded plenty deep enough to my teen ears.  The Beatles themselves got tired of them and rarely returned to basic love songs in their later years.  

Then we have a lot of phrases or passages that have meaning only to them, like those in “I Am the Walrus” (Lennon says it was a deliberate attempt to parody “the fashion for psychedelic lyrics” prevalent at the time) “Across the Universe”  “Savoy Truffle” and “Glass Onion,” to name a few.

Another example: McCartney and Lennon, in a fit of marijuana-inspired laughter, made up some Spanish-sounding gibberish for “Sun King” on Abbey Road.  

** The synchronizing of the songs — how they came at us on albums or singles — was far different than how they were conceived or executed.

I suppose this is pretty obvious to even the most passing fan but when you experience the songs in the order they were recorded, as I did by following MacDonald’s sequential presentation of them, it gives you a much different feel than what we originally had.

One example: “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” intended for “Sgt. Pepper” (they were the second and third songs recorded for that album, after “When I’m 64”) but released instead as a 45 rpm single, were followed in the studio by the intricate “A Day in the Life,” which eventually was put at the end of that album, giving it its unforgettable finale.  

That sequence presents a far different perspective on the songs than how they were publically presented and received.

Another tidbit: The last song recorded by the Beatles as a group was “I Me Mine,” a Harrison tune produced for the “Let It Be” album after it was played informally in the “Let It Be” movie. It was formally performed and mixed after the “Abbey Road” sessions had wrapped.

Lennon was absent for that session so it was ironic that the next time the former Beatles recorded together was when his three ex-bandmates gathered again, after his death, to play with Lennon’s home-produced tune, “Free As a Bird.” That tape (three songs recorded by Lennon) was provided McCartney by Ono at Lennon’s 1994 induction into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.  

Another tidbit in that category: In between “Abbey Road” recording sessions for “The End” and “Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard,” McCartney recorded “Come and Get It,” playing all the instruments and double tracking the vocal.

The tune went on to be a big hit for the Apple group Badfinger and MacDonald calls it “by far the best unreleased Beatles song.” McCartney “knocked off” the recording in under an hour, he wrote. He offered it for Abbey Road.    

** In contrast to the Hall of Fame’s insulting choice to induct Lennon years before honoring McCartney, my conclusion from what I read and heard is that McCartney was the dominating force behind the band’s production, creativity and longevity.

He softened Lennon’s often-harsh musical tendencies and pushed all of the others to  better themselves, often to their annoyance.

In fact, McCartney’s criticisms of Harrison’s guitar playing was a major source of the friction in the group. There are several tales of McCartney going back into the studio to re-do the guitar solos for his songs.  

He also kept the group involved in challenging projects, like the “Magical Mystery Tour” film and attempts at stripped down recordings for “Let It Be,” at times when other members wanted to just end things.

And his continued musical endeavors surely pushed the others to also keep trying to explore and create.  

As a teen, Lennon was my favorite Beatle (every kid had to choose one!). Now . . . it’s complicated.

** A fun part of my listening experience was following the progress of the four Beatles as musicians, particularly McCartney on bass.

He was made the group’s bass player by default in their teenage beginnings. He quickly progressed to some great work on “All My Loving” and “Tell Me Why.” And from there, he perfected his skill on the instrument until it became a major contributor to a lot of the recordings, most especially “Hey Bulldog.”

I also was impressed by Starr’s drumming. He has been downgraded by some as a “human metronome” and a deep-background player in the Beatles saga but he gets a lot of credit in the books I read for his savvy, expert drumming. My own listening, as a simple fan, supports those conclusions.

Beatles songs were not about blasting percussion but needed the steady, consistent, skilled drum sounds that Starr provided.

** Another interesting part of the project was learning various music or recording terms.

These included: arpeggio (“the notes of a chord played in succession as a fan-like spread rather than as a single sound, as if on a harp”; used on “You Never Give Me Your Money,” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Sun King,” the middle of “Here Comes the Sun” and “Because.”); ADT (artificial double tracking, used often for Beatles’ voices and now a music industry stable); flanging (too technical to summarize here); and compression (“reduction of the overall dynamics generated by a voice or instrument”).  

The amount of what we hear (and love) that is affected by such studio tricks as ADT, flanging, compression, manipulation of microphones or drums, or changing speeds on recorded material (to name just some of them) was astonishing to learn.  

** Taking the Beatles’ catalogue as a whole over a short period of time demonstrated just how much effort the group put into always trying new sounds, new recording techniques and new musical approaches.

These could range from a simple change in how a piano was played (“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” “Oh Darlin’”) to an entirely radical approach like “Revolution 9.”

This was done out of personal musical interest along with inter-group competition and intra-group competition. It was a key to why the group remained together, creative and popular for far longer than normal bands, particularly those in the rock era.        

To be sure, the three primary songwriters in the group also borrowed liberally from what sounds were popular at the time — Motown, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, psychedelia, the Byrds, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Who, the Kinks — but improved on them and created a sound all their own.

** MacDonald feels the McCartney song “You Never Give Me Your Money” was the earliest musical acknowledgment that the group was coming to a close, particularly its opening verses.

“To anyone who loves the Beatles, the bittersweet nostalgia of this music is hard to hear without a tear in the eye. Here, an entire era — the idealistic, innocent Sixties — is bravely bidden farewell.

“Having regretted this loss, the song shows us what it was all about in a quick kaleidoscopic resume of the group’s ambiguous blend of sadness, subversive laughter and resolute optimism. Everything hangs on the words ‘nowhere to go,’ arrived at ruefully but instantly spun around and seen from the other side: as freedom, as opportunity. The Beatles’ future may be gone but McCartney is determined to salvage their spirit, and that of the Sixties, for his future. ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ marks the psychological opening of his solo career.”  

** Emerick’s own conclusion about the Beatles’ breakup gave me a new perspective.

He begins with an opinion I found startling, given all his and others’ accounts of how well the Beatles could still get along even as their inter-personal troubles mounted:

“By the end, it’s fair to say that the four Beatles hated one another, for a variety of reasons. It’s actually understandable, considering all the time they’d spent together, stuck in hotel rooms and recording studios for year after year; no wonder they couldn’t wait to get away from one another. When the announcement was made, I couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that it had been almost four years since they’d done their last tour. For four years, they had been doing nothing but recording in that dank, depressing place known as Abbey Road.”  

Emerick goes on the discount the financial squabbles or presence of Yoko Ono as the key reasons for the end of the group, saying Ono was good for Lennon. He concludes:  

“No, I always felt that the main reason for the breakup was irreconcilable artistic differences. John, Paul, and George Harrison simply wanted to follow different paths. John wanted to make art; Paul wanted to continue doing pop music; and George just wanted to pursue his Eastern interests. Sadly, inevitably, there was no common ground anymore, only a common history.”

So, having digested all this material over the last few months, where does that leave me as a Beatles fan?

I’ll explore that in part three of this little exercise, coming tomorrow.

[geezeralert]

A Beatles fan gets back to where he once belonged

(Some albums from my collection)

(First of three parts)

As a really big fan of the Beatles, I have always been somewhat in awe of those who are really HUGE fans of the famed singing group.

They just seemed to enjoy the music on a whole different level, with thorough knowledge and appreciation for what was produced by this unique musical foursome in their eight-plus years together.  

So, over the last four months, as a retired-geezer-bucket-list endeavor, I took a huge leap towards earning my “huge fan” badge.

I re-listened to, re-enjoyed and studied — consulting at least five books — each of the some 300 Beatles’ recordings, as contained on their 13 official albums/CDs along with many of their various related versions (on the three two-CD anthologies, various collections like “One” and the BBC live sessions).

I am blogging about it because, honestly, I’d just like to share my experience and put my basic impressions down in writing.  It was riveting and sinfully fun, spending too much money and too much time — including many breaks to just sit back, travel down memory lane and simply be entertained by these pop songs/albums that took me through the 1960s, from my pre-teen to college years — on what’s really a rather personal, trivial pursuit.  

But I’m also holding out hope that my findings could be interesting for other Beatles fans, of whatever level.

Quick bottom line: I am more impressed now than I was before with the output of this pop group and the incredible blending of the four multi-talented musicians Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.  I’ll write about why and list the highlights of what I learned in the second part.

First off, though, I should define “really big fans,” my current state and that of many millions of my contemporaries worldwide from the sixties.

This group is familiar with all the Beatles recordings (able to identify them when hearing just the opening notes), their background as a group and individuals (back to teenage years), their basic timeline as recording artists (who authored what compositions and when), their alternate recordings, their post-Beatles recordings, their relations (girlfriends, wives), and their basic life stories.

In other words, we just just paid attention all these years, watching the relevant movies and videos, buying their records and reading at least the most reliable major books about them — first by Hunter Davies and then by Bob Spitz — while also picking up more than a few of the annual money-grabbing “new” ones.

I’ve read two books by “first wives” Patti Boyd (“Wonderful Tonight”) and Cynthia Lennon (���John”) and Lennon’s sister, “My Brother.”

I also bought one of the first song-by-song compilation books, “Beatlesongs” (1989) by William J. Dowling. For decades, it was my go-to source for day-to-day inquires like “who played that great bass part on ‘Hey Bulldog’”?  

By being a big fan, my Christmas and birthday presents from family and friends often have been Beatles stuff (when they tired of stuff feeding my other passion, baseball) including three coffee table books, a box of “The BBC Archives” TV and radio broadcast material, and three other books going into each of the group’s songs.

From all that, I am left wondering if the Beatles ever had a private, unphotographed, unrecorded (in writing or audio) stretch long than five minutes.

It was the final gift last Christmas,  “Revolution in the Head” by Ian MacDonald, that propelled me to finally take on this long-planned intensive study of the Beatles’ music.

MacDonald’s definitive work, updated three times since published in 1994, is classified as a textbook by the Los Angeles Public Library. It goes into great detail on the musical and sociological aspects of each song so it was sometimes beyond my sphere of interest. But it was most useful to me by going song-by-song in chronological order, referencing all the alternative versions of the songs and telling where to find them.  

Along the way, I also found the fascinating (although partially disputed) book “Here, There and Everywhere” by Geoff Emerick, a teenage recording studio prodigy who helped engineer (record, mix) just about every Beatles song, either as an assistant in his teens or the primary engineer in his early 20s.

His first-person observations helped flesh out the more technical aspects or third-party accounts of the Beatles songs.

(Other books used for the song-by-song marathon: “The Beatles: A Hard Day’s Write. The Stories Behind Every Song” by Steve Turner and “All the Songs. The Story Behind Every Beatles Release,” a massive, picture-filled coffee table book by Jean-Michel Guesdon and Phillippe Margotin.)  

Meanwhile, there are a ton of other written works out there awaiting my attention once this project is done – exhaustive books by Mark Lewisohn; memoirs by the group’s producer (and Fifth Beatle early on) George Martin and original drummer Pete Best; “Shout: The Beatles in their Generation” by Philip Norman; and “Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now,” by Barry Miles — to name a few . . . in my price range (more on that in part three). There’s a seemingly never-ending flow of written material and reworked music.

And it’s fair to assume “really huge fans” have read them all. (I’ll delve more into what constitutes that fan level in parts two and three.)  

The original idea for trying this project came after advanced technology, resolved legal issues and a favorable marketplace brought about the production of the entire Beatles catalogue on CDs nine years ago.

I had tried keeping up with the Beatles’ output over the years on vinyl, eight-track tapes and cassettes but, for one reason or another, had some holes.

Nearly my entire Beatles collection of vinyl albums was stolen from my college dorm room in the early 1970s. I then rebought some of the biggest ones at that time but then sat back and waited for releases in the latest medium (eight-track, cassettes, CDs, digital) and lost track of what I had.

So, when the complete collection on CD (remastered to sound even better!) became available, I perked up. But the price tag ($150-200) gave me pause.

Then came an offer to buy the whole shebang at half price. I was ready to pounce.

But there remained another major issue.

The Beatles’ studio personnel, I learned, recorded each of their songs in both monaural (“mono”) and stereo. Each version had/has its strong backers, especially as the original tapes were revisited and reproduced with improved quality (both in stereo and mono) for the latest CD versions.

For the “true experience” of listing to the Beatles songs, did one really have to possess and listen to both stereo and mono versions? The inner Beatles fanatic and picky perfectionist told me “yes.” My practical and realistic self, though, said that’s crazy, unnecessary and an expense only the crazy wealthy fan would want to pay.

Luckily, many music critics recognized the dilemma this posed for the average fan. From reading a few of their comparisons and conclusions, I came up with a fairly consistent recommendation for which albums are best in mono and which are best in stereo:

Mono sounds best for “Please Please Me,” “With the Beatles,” “Hard Days Night,” “Beatles For Sale” and “Help.” Stereo is recommended for “Rubber Soul,” “Revolver,” “Magical Mystery Tour” “The Beatles (The White Album)” “Yellow Submarine” “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road.” (The latter two were only mixed in stereo anyway.)

Mono and stereo versions of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” both offer great listening experiences, and the 50th anniversary remix in 2017 added yet another aural mix.

The mono box set includes all the songs released as singles (45 rpm) and not on any of the basic albums (though some, those that rose to no. 1 on Billboard lists, are included in the “Beatles — 1” album/CD).  

Emerick actually recommended the mono mixes of  “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper,” which he engineered. He said much more care was given to the mono versions than the stereo ones, which were rushed at the conclusion of the project.

He wrote:

“True Beatles fans would do well to avail themselves of the mono versions of Sgt. Pepper and Revolver because far more time and effort went into those mixes than the stereo mixes. The stereo versions of those albums have an unnecessary surfeit of panning and effects like ADT (Automatic Double Tracking) and flanging. (Fellow engineer) Richard and I would sometimes get carried away with them because of their novelty value . . . especially if George Martin wasn’t there to rebuke us. Needless to say, it was John who especially loved that kind of overkill — we’d sometimes whack something on too severely just to see how it sounded, only to find him winking at us, saying, ‘More!’”

It should be noted that Emerick wrote his book in 2007, before all the remastering of the Beatles albums took place. So, perhaps the new stereo mixes enhance those versions to the point that they now are preferable.  

And then there’s the whole “Let It Be” controversy, when the original recordings were turned over to “wall of sound” maestro Phil Specter, reportedly by John Lennon, much to the chagrin of McCartney.

So, a stripped down version of those songs “Let It Be-Naked,” was produced.

For my listening project, I listened to that naked CD as well as a number of mono vs. stereo renditions of Beatles’ songs.  

Basically, I agreed with experts (they are so grateful, I’m sure!) that the early albums are best in mono.

This was a time when few people had quality stereo systems, if any stereo at all (I had a small portable one in my room), and thus much more time and care was given to the mono versions (says my books). Those tunes in stereo sound pretty tinny and awkward to listen to (says my ears), especially with headphones (e.g. the drums and base in one ear, the voices in another).  

Of course, musical preferences, like all reactions to art, are wholly subjective. When I posted a list of my personal choices for “five worst Beatles songs” (yes, they did produce some songs I cannot stand: “Rain,” “Paperback Writer,” “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” “I’m Down,” “Helter Skelter”) on a Facebook site, several respondents said the tunes were actually among their favorites. Some fans treat all of the group’s output as wonderful and any criticism as sacrilege.

In the books I consulted, Beatles tunes certified as “classic” by one author sometimes were depicted as “a disaster” by another. Even the Beatles disparaged as “garbage” some songs I (and others) enjoy.

Typical of most listeners, my reactions when sampling the stereo and mono recordings are probably based on how I first heard the songs. And for nearly all of them, that would be mono. Anything different sounds off kilter.

Some examples: The stereo “Taxman,” the lead song on side one of “Revolver,” has the bass and rhythm section on the left side while the lead guitar and percussion are on the right, with vocals in both. It sounds wrong to my ears, which first heard all the music coming out of both speakers (mono). Likewise, on the same album, “She Said She Said” (a favorite of mine) splits the instruments into separate channels and doesn’t sound quite right to me.

Still, the later works, as remastered, do have much greater depth and clarity in the stereo versions. Songs like “Martha, My Dear,” “Savoy Truffle” and “Glass Onion” sound terrific (I played them over and over). Likewise, most of Sgt. Pepper, which was remastered a second time for the 50th anniversary CD, is fine in stereo.

In several cases, like “Martha My Dear,” I enjoyed a song in the latest version far more than I did originally.

Which brings us to my general observations on what I heard and read. That would be part two, coming tomorrow.  

[geezeralert]

Coast of living increase

[geezeralert]

Ask your doctor if this is right for you

My fourth anniversary as a blogger passed recently and it found me smack in the midst of my latest barren spell, idea wise.

Coincidently, I went through my last major dearth of inspiration, aka “writer’s block,” last spring. I broke out of that one after three months with a “Geezer Alert” post in late July on the subject, titled “Just around the block.”

So, this time, I can’t, in good conscience, resort to that same device — writing about not writing — to get going again.

My next best option would seem to be revisiting a past topic with fresh eyes.

And a good one would be my December 2014 post, “The pain of pain,” which examined the confusing, troublesome world of pain medications.

The subject is back in the headlines with the death of musical legend Prince due to apparent misuse of prescription medications that included painkillers.

In addition, a recent Los Angeles Times investigation into medically endorsed misinformation about the dangerous painkiller OxyContin included these facts:

“Over the last 20 years, more than 7 million Americans have abused OxyContin, according to the federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The drug is widely blamed for setting off the nation’s prescription opioid epidemic, which has claimed more than 190,000 lives from overdoses involving OxyContin and other painkillers since 1999.”

Beyond the national painkiller plague, though, I’ve been feeling the agony of the entire drug universe as I progress further into my 60s and traipse into the post-retirement medical jungle (with my wife retiring last December).

It’s a scary land, where the steadily increasing aches and daily discomforts of senior life are met with tempting-but-dubious promises of medicated relief, all at a steep price and just about all with a slew of potential side-effects worse than the original malady.

So far, I have maintained a minimum of drug “dependence.”  I use prescription medications to deal with our Central New York atmosphere (which wrecks havoc on the nasal and bronchial passages) sensitive teeth and the threat of glaucoma in one eye.

But more drugs regularly are recommended for me by doctors — people for whom I have the utmost respect — at just about every turn.

I won’t go into specifics on my situation. It’s not what this piece is about.

Rather, what’s been alarming to me is how drugs seem to always be the go-to solution for what ails us and, as a result, we are taking hundreds of different types.  

This was brought home to me by a display ad that runs periodically in this area’s daily newspaper, offering supposedly great discounts on drugs. The ad lists dozens of drugs by name, with accompanying price “deals” that are amazingly expensive, if one has to consume the pills (or liquids) on a regular basis.  

Whoa. The list is stunning for both the sheer number of drugs out there and the money involved.  

Of course, I’m not the first to realize this whole situation has made pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies the most powerful forces in medicine (and politics) and, by extension, the biggest influences on geezers’ quality of life.

It’s just that we, as a nation, encourage it.

We are one of two countries — the other being New Zealand — that allows direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, those ubiquitous television drug pitches spots found primarily on programs with older audiences, such as the evening news.

If we are to believe just one of the most frequent advertisements, we can take two pills every day and be free of just about all our routine aches and pains. Don’t you think, if that were actually even close to the truth, we’d all be popping those pills with our morning Corn Flakes?  

According to a recent radio spot I heard, the American Medical Association is trying to have the U.S. government ban such ads due to the confusion and unwarranted drug-pursuit they cause among the general public.

In the rest of the world, the pharmaceutical industry and lobby groups have tried unsuccessfully to overturn bans against on such advertising in Canada and other countries or regions, such as in the European Union (EU), according to the website http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3278148/

Notably, the website states, “in 2008, 22 of the 27 EU member states voted against proposed legislation that would have allowed even limited ‘information to patients’ to be provided.”

The bottom line is we should not be pushing drugs, at least not as the first alternative to ailments.

Yes, they do really help millions of people. And, yes, natural solutions (exercise, diet control, Yoga, “mind over matter” mental discipline) are not for everyone. But a more balanced approach to medical issues, putting patients in touch with such natural potential relief measures as well as drugs, seems to be needed.

Sounds so logical. And this whole out-of-control U.S. drug situation certainly is not a big reveal . God knows, once the narcissistic Baby Boomers got caught up in the situation, it’s been the topic of much media and government attention.

Stlll, it is only the arrival of the geezer years that makes many (like me) confront the harshest realities.

So, what’s holding up a full-scale attack on the problem? Corporate profits? Politics? I guess it’s a complex combination of both, plus basic supply-and-demand economics.

I’m not qualified to analyze the financial and political issues (but presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is, and he’s lambasted all involved for the obscene cost of drugs).

The “demand” part, though, is something I’m part of.  

For starters, then, I would advocate leaving New Zealand all alone and banning  those direct-to-consumer drug advertisements.

That would reduce both the consumer temptation to try certain drugs and the repeated presentation of drugs as a primary solution for what bothers us.

A side benefit would be saving the drug companies millions of dollars, which, of course, they would pass on the consumers in the form of lower drug costs.  (cue the laugh track.)

Beyond that . . . a tough but obvious conclusion: Our society needs a whole new medical orientation — an emphasis on non-pharmaceutical solutions. To work, it needs to stop well short of drug-hate (as promoted by many in the alternative treatment field) but maintain a constant vigilance on the limitations of drugs and when their use, once started, can (and should) be halted or, at least, curtailed.

The starting point in this process would have to be the medical establishment but starting point 1A is us, the consumers. People have to take on their maladies with far greater willingness to try natural relief methods.

That’s easy to say (and write) but virtually impossible to implement because, when we are look for relief from pain or discomfort, it’s, “Give me the pills, Doc.”

I’ve been there. With tooth pain from root canals and eye pain from corneal abrasions, I was absolutely desperate for relief, in the form of ibuprofen, which I downed by the hundred of milligrams. (A prescription for hydrocodone proved to be a nightmare, however, as even in a low dose it put me through a tortuous few hours of panic and hallucinations.)

In recent years, I’ve also had to turn to relaxants to deal with some late-in-life claustrophobia. Without the pills, I wouldn’t be able to face airline travel or MRI exams, even with extraordinary “mind over matter” attempts to deal naturally with panic attacks.  

So, yes, drugs serve a purpose. Modern medicine is a godsend.  

But human nature is human nature and self-control, when it comes to drugs or pleasure-enhancers (like alcohol), is a rare trait.

I guess we can only start with removing the teasers (drug commercials) and take it from there.

[geezeralert]

Believe it, or not

Can we discuss religion?

 I mean, can I/we create a little blog post here about religious preferences without inciting passions and incurring wrath?

 I doubt it.  Nothing seems to stir up craziness like talk about religion.  

 But I would like to take on the subject, if for no other reason than to clarify my drive-by mention, in my last post, of barely tolerating religious zealots.

 In addition, though, it’s a timely topic. Extreme religious types currently are having an influence over our future that is wholly disproportionate to the sway they should have in our diverse country, thanks to the nutty importance given the presidential caucus in evangelist-heavy Iowa (and future primaries in southern states).

 (For an apt analysis, see Susan’s Jacoby’s Feb. 5 Op-ed piece in the New York Times, “Sick and Tired of God Bless America,” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/opinion/sunday/sick-and-tired-of-god-bless-america.html?_r=0 )

So, if you’re the type who gets all bent out of shape by people who don’t share your religious beliefs or convictions, then read no further. This post likely will really, really bother you — so why bother? Don’t pay me no mind. Be happy. Bye.

 Now, for the rest of us, I’ll start by positing that religion is a personal choice, a private choice, a conversation between your brain and your sense of what’s needed for a full human life.  

 If we can agree on that, read on.

 If you want to share and celebrate your personal conclusions with others, you join a congregation that suits your needs. Maybe that’s understated — like going to a church service once a week or once in a while — and maybe that’s demonstrative, like singing and praying out loud or taking part in lots of joint activities with fellow believers. In the extreme, think Pentecostal holy rollers.

 The whole group thing is not necessary for religious purposes, though. It’s also a very personal decision, a choice.

 If I choose not to be religious or not to express any religious views, publicly or privately, that should be okay. A belief in God should carry with it a belief in the highest virtues of our existence, and that would include tolerance and love of all mankind, according to the basic beliefs I’ve read about or experienced growing up a Catholic.  

 But that’s where the rub comes in.

 Many people just can’t hold back their enthusiasm for their religious convictions and seek to impose it on others, whom they berate if they don’t go along. These pushy types somehow find justification for this outreach in their bible of choice. Think Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses, or some strains of Pentecostals.  

 For some, it goes even further: A belief that it’s the will of their chosen superior being that his or her particular private convictions be spread to the rest of the people on the planet, with eternal rewards granted for successful such work. (And otherworldly penalties inflicted for failure, either on individuals or the world as a whole.)

 That is the world of zealotry: A fanatical and uncompromising pursuit of one’s beliefs, with the intent of forcing them on others. That’s where I draw the line on religious tolerance.  That’s where something very personal is invaded by someone else’s very personal something.

 The extreme example, of course, is the current inhuman ISIS violence, supposedly in the name of their chosen god. There aren’t too many people outside the jihadists who see this as a religious act. It’s barbarianism masquerading as religion.

 But there is another level of zealotry, just under the all-out ISIS or Al Queda craziness but a few paces farther out into the badlands than the door-to-door salesmanship of the Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses.

 These are the people who believe aggression or even violence is justified in the name of their religion — to lash out at those who don’t hold their beliefs.

 For Muslim extremists, we now all know it’s called jihad.  

 But we have such extremists right here in our own country. I’m talking about elaborate deceptions of — and attacks on — Planned Parenthood over their abortion practices. I’m talking about business owners or public servants — and the politicians who support and promote them — who feel they can discriminate against persons with lifestyles or beliefs that aren’t condoned by their religions.

 My point here only is that I simply cannot understand how religion can be used as a basis for hurting other people, depriving them of equal rights or even making them feel uncomfortable.  As I noted in my last post, I just put this little mystery of human nature into the same category as people who toss litter out their car windows or drive their vehicles right up to the one in front of them, endangering themselves and those in the other vehicle for no other reason than . . . what? Tell me, please, what’s the point? I just don’t get it.

 Likewise, I simply fail to grasp the justifications for religious zealotry. It all seems so hypocritical, so full of obvious contradictions.  

 Here, I guess I should mention my own religious stance. I am a lapsed Catholic or, as the editor of the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” unit described himself after his team’s efforts exposed hundreds of sexual abuse cases involving Catholic priests, a “very lapsed” Catholic.

  I am not an atheist or agnostic, just a skeptic, with beliefs that come closest to those espoused by humanism.  

 That worldview was expertly described in detail by Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University, in his 2009 book, “Good Without God. What a billion nonreligious people do believe.”

 It would be tough to summarize or defend here what Epstein spent more than 240 pages explaining but the title provides the gist: Humanists believe in being good for goodness sake, without promise of some eternal reward or threat of eternal punishment. Good, without God.

 Humanists have a very strong moral code of conduct, one that is inclusive of all beliefs as long as no one attempts to impose theirs on us or discriminate against non-believers.

 An on-line definition states humanism is “an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.”

 As Jacoby points in on the lede of her Times’ essay, the number of U.S. non-believers is significant:

 “The population of nonreligious Americans — including atheists, agnostics and those who call themselves “nothing in particular” — stands at an all-time high this election year. Americans who say religion is not important in their lives and who do not belong to a religious group, according to the Pew Research Center, have risen in numbers from an estimated 21 million in 2008 to more than 36 million now.”

 As with all things, there are humanist organizations and websites and magazines and all sorts of other outgrowths seeking to galvanize those who share this approach to life and to present counter-narratives to the religious ones that seem to control our societies.

 But I am not a joiner — no clubs, movements, political parties, etc.  It’s a lifestyle that was cemented by three decades as a journalist, seeking to remain objective in the pursuit of news by keeping all groups (and individuals outside the newsroom, for that matter) at arms length.

 So, I do not go so far as to promote humanism or its group priorities. I keep my beliefs private unless provoked or spurred into a (hopefully) calm or rational discourse by external events, as is the case here.

 I understand the desire to find meaning in our crazy human lives by assigning control or power to a spiritual being — some force, outside what we can see or touch, that provides an explanation for all the seemingly illogical things that take place: “It’s God’s will,” “God works in mysterious ways,” “if God had intended it to happen it would have happened.”

 Without presenting the many arguments for why such a spiritual force makes no sense to me, or why the world’s plethora of different religions obviously means no one is the right one, I will just say my mind simply cannot wrap around the notion that external forces are shaping what happens.

 That’s just me.

 Most unnerving, the acceptance of a willful God overseeing our world seems to make him a very mean and evil presence, allowing beheadings, torture, wars, slaughters and all kind of cruel and ugly acts to take place, many in the name of religion.

 That alone makes me doubt the existence of God, even with the old Catholic rationalization of “free will” — that God somehow is a wonderful supreme being because he gave his creations the absolute freedom to choose their paths in life, even if that makes them horribly bad.

 Just sayin’. If You’re up there Lord, Ya just gotta intervene before making any of Your “creations” suffer such really bad fates.

 Anyway, back to the basic point, it’s fine with me if the majority of people want to believe in a supernatural being and practice their beliefs.

 And I’m okay if anyone wants to push even further, as long as I can just shake my head and walk away, we’ll all be alright — bugged, maybe, but alright.

[geezeralert]

We want game. We get talk.

Somewhere out in the grand old United States of America there must be millions of people who enjoy — maybe even love — the sound of incessantly chattering commentators on televised sporting events.

 How else do you explain the ubiquitous, growing, all-encompassing presence of this noise?

 It’s either something a lot of people really want or the powers that be in TV land must strongly believe they need this audio accompaniment, regardless of whether viewers want it.  

 It drives me crazy. And this isn’t some geezer thing. I have long been annoyed by the intrusions on my sports watching by over-talking broadcasters.  I see them as one of life’s little inexplicable aggravations, like tailgaters or litterers or religious zealots.

 Play-by-play and “color” contributions for sportscasts should be limited to the bare necessities — information to provide background on or better explain the action, which we are seeing for ourselves.

 The subject of the broadcast is the game itself not the people providing the telecast. The problem arises when broadcasters feel they are an important part of the entertainment value of the event.  They are not. And I resent it when they present themselves as such, when two or three people keep talking and interject tales or information or opinions extraneous to the game in front of them.

 It’s as if a portion of their pay is docked if more than two seconds passes without someone speaking.  

 Some exemplars of nice, restrained-but-informative style were the likes of Jon Miller/Joe Morgan on ESPN baseball, Gary Thorne/Barry Melrose on ESPN college hockey and Joe Buck/Hank Stram on NFL national radio coverage of the 80s.          

 While I’ve came to accept chatty broadcasters as a necessary evil, I gladly welcomed the arrival of remote controls with the almighty mute button,  augmenting the one for simply turning down the volume.

 In 1980, one TV network actually responded to criticism of broadcasters by featuring a football game without any.  I thought it was a glorious thing — just a game, with the crowd noise and other auditory aspects one experiences from being there in person.

 Here’s the Wikkpedia entry on the event:

 “The Announcerless Game was an American football contest played on December 20, 1980, between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League. As an experiment, the NBC television network broadcast it without assigning any commentators to cover it.

 “The two teams were playing the last game of that season for them as neither had qualified for the playoffs, and since the game was being broadcast nationally NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer decided on the idea to boost what would otherwise have been weak ratings. The Jets won a 24–17 upset victory.

 “To replace the announcers, the network used more graphics than usual and asked the public address announcer at Miami's Orange Bowl to impart more information than he typically did. Efforts to use more sensitive microphones and pick up more sound from the field, however, did not succeed. While the experiment did increase the telecast's ratings, it was widely regarded as a failure since it did not provide sufficient context for viewers. No network broadcasting any major North American professional team sport has ever tried it again, except through alternate feeds of games offered with announcers.”

  Yes, the reaction of the broadcasting establishment was predictably protective of their employees and programming.

 Conintues Wikepedia:

 “Reaction was mixed, ranging from "good-natured humor to applause to some surprising anger," as Bryant Gumbel would later put it on air shortly before the telecast started.

 " ‘My first reaction was of incredible nerve, nervousness,’ Dick Enberg, one of the NBC announcers, recalled to ESPN 30 years later. ‘We all gathered together, hoping that Ohlmeyer was dead wrong ... What if this crazy idea really worked?’

 “As Ohlemyer had hoped, the telecast drew higher ratings than it probably otherwise would have. ‘It was a dog of a game,’ he recalled to ESPN. ‘It did much better for than [it should have].

 “Writing two days later, Chicago Tribune television columnist David Israel agreed: ‘People talked about a game they would otherwise have ignored.’ Of the approximately one thousand phone calls to the NBC switchboard, the network reported later, about 60 percent were supportive of the decision to go without announcers.

 Gumbel discounts the importance of that reaction, noting that a thousand callers is not statistically significant when set against the U.S. population of 200 million at that time.

 " ‘I thought it was more amusing than anything else,’ he said later. I viewed it as kind of a stunt with a small 's.'”

 I personally would give more weight to that 60 percent supportive figure. I think most people would welcome less talk and more plain video display of games.

 But the sports establishment has had the opposite reaction.

 A third person has been added to most national baseball broadcasts, with a fourth roaming the stands. Televised NFL, college football and college basketball contests have retained basic two-person teams but sideline reporters are omnipresent and each play is given instant, chatty analysis.

 The long-time personification of obnoxious commentary has been ESPN’s basketball expert Dick Vitale. Judging from various accounts, he’s annoyed as many viewers as he’s pleased over the decades.

 But, again, the reaction among his contemporaries has been to embrace his style rather than accommodate those who hate it.

 Prime examples are Doris Burke on professional and college basketball telecasts and Kirk Herbstreit for college football games.

 Burke, whom I have praised for her knowledge and skills in a prior post, has taken the Vitale approach of instant commentary following every possession on the court, often running over the next basket in her eagerness to unleash all her opinions and observations on the previous one (or some other subject).

 Likewise, Herbstreit cannot stop blurting out analyses within milliseconds after the play-by-play announcer has quickly recounted the action.

 Both Burke and Herbstreit obviously know their subject matter but neither respects viewers enough to just let game action flow by itself, open to all of our own reactions and observations.

 And, as is the case with all journalism, this rush-to-react style often leads to inaccurate or misleading statements. Getting to the truth of any situation takes time, perspective and work.

 One recent example was Herbstreit’s instant conclusion after Alabama’s turning-point decision to attempt an onside kick in the fourth quarter of the Jan.11 national title game against Clemson.

 According to a YouTube clip of the action (I didn’t watch it live), Herbstreit said Alabama’s decision stemmed from an observation in its coaching booth that Clemson front-line defenders were crowding forward toward the kicker — something he had noticed — and thus would be susceptible to a pooch kick over their heads.

 Wrong.

 Sports Illustrated’s report on the game found that the Alabama coaches actually had seen on film that Clemson’s defenders “squeezed to one side of the field” on kickoffs when they “expected the ball to be booted deep into the corner.”

 “When Clemson lined up that way several times on Monday, (Coach Nick) Saban knew the pop kick would work . . . ,“ the magazine reported.

 So, rather than wait for a post-game account of the particulars surrounding the onside kick, compulsive talker Herbstreit immediately offered his own, quick, uninformed statement, leading listeners to believe he and Alabama coaches shared an observation that led to the bold decision.

 He and others like him — particularly the trios assigned in recent years to ESPN’s baseball broadcasts — are just bursting to tell us all this incredible stuff they’ve got in their heads or game-preparation sheets.

 I just want to tell them, “Slow down, please, and let us enjoy the game. Show some restraint. Less is more. There will be plenty of time and opportunities for us to eventually find out the stories behind the action.”

 In addition to producing inaccurate information, mega-blabbering also often generates instant attempts at event analysis rather than concentrating on the hear-and-now and letting matters settle so informed scrutiny can be undertaken, as was the tradition in the good ole days, in the hours or days afterward.

 This is what happened in the second half of Monday night’s broadcast of a women’s college basketball game between Notre Dame and Tennessee.

 As the Irish built a 25-point lead early in the final quarter, Burke began a thorough critique of the Volunteer team and its program. Meanwhile, the team itself was demonstrating the exact opposite of the problems she was citing — hustling, hitting shots, disrupting Notre Dame and battling with a never-say-die spirit that cut the deficit to an approachable 12 or 13 points with a few minutes left.

 Burke and play-by-play person Dave O’Brien gave it a “too little, too late” spin but the reality was their rush to judgment overplayed Tennessee”s troubles and missed a key part of the game’s drama — Notre Dame was forced to reinsert some starters to stem the rally — not to mention a major flaw in the Irish’s game this season: weak fourth quarters.

 This over-broadcasting of sports events is part of the over-important role that TV has assumed in the entire sports arena.

 With the millions of dollars being poured into sports by the broadcast networks, they control when and how games are played.

 To fill programming needs, we get college and professional football games mid-week instead of Saturdays (college) or Sundays (pros).  We have media timeouts for football and basketball games, directly impacting the flow of action and ability to strategize during stoppages in play.  We get baseball postseason contests played at night in chilly temperatures and continuing well past the bedtime of (at least) children, working parents and seniors.

 And TV’s interest (read: cash influx) is largely to blame for turning college football into an NFL minor league system, taking away much of the storied, campus-centered traditional bowl format and expanding some schedules to 13 or 14 games (see blog post of March 23, 2012, “Good, old college football”).

 From all of that, television personnel evidently started feeling pretty darn important in the whole sports scheme of things.  Hence, they treat their broadcasting of events as being equally part of their appeal to viewers — that people are tuning in to games as much to hear what the telecasting personnel have to say as they are to watch what is actually taking place.

 They’re dead wrong, I believe.

 But I have to go back to my opening conclusion:

Somewhere out in the grand old United States of America there must be millions of people who enjoy — maybe even love — the sound of incessantly chattering commentators for televised sporting events.

 To put it nicer, a whole lot of people must actually tune in to hear what Vitale, Herbstreit, Burke, Chris Collinsworth, Phil Sims, Bob Costas, John Kruk, Aaron Boone, Al Michaels, etc., have to say about a contest.

 For me, that just means wearing out the mute button.

[geezeralert]

My winter wonderland

As I started this post, I was looking out my office window at our early-January snow cover.  And I was feeling so lucky.

 It was, in reality, a sham snow cover. At that point, there had been just two “storms” that dropped lasting snow this winter. One was a crusty ice mix that just barely put a few inches on the ground. The second contributed an inch or two of easy-to-manage stuff on top of that.

 Somehow, with an ensuing dip in temperatures, our ground retained enough snow to keep it white, at least in the unpaved portions, through last weekend. It was a non-threatening, non-inhibiting cover. It was most un-January like.

 And thus it was my version of a wonderful winter wonderland.

 Yes, I’ve come to hate northeast winters. The daily pummeling of snow last February sealed the deal. Shoveling off one’s home and garage roofs for a few days a week tends to darken your thoughts.

 But I had been drifting toward this utter disdain with each passing year as getting around in ice and snow conditions became harder.  

 This is mostly an age thing. Vehicle control and body control become more difficult as our reflexes slow, bone strength withers, mental tolerance grows short for challenging weather conditions and fear increases for the dangers they pose (slipping on ice, sliding off the road).  

 Geezers want (need?) safety and comfort. Hence, the winter pilgrimages by thousands of “snow birds” to warmer climes.

 But, to be perfectly honest, I was never really much of a winter guy. I don’t like being cold. Neither skiing nor skating ever attracted me.  Both require long stretches in freezing conditions. Give me warmth.

 For those who can enjoy winter athletic pursuits, the season becomes at least tolerable if not downright enjoyable. A friend and former skier told me she used to look forward anxiously to the first snowfall. I’m sure there are millions like her throughout the north.

 When our children were young, they played winter sports (hockey and figure skating) and that kept us busy and excited throughout the long cold months. Travel to distant cities for games — either those our sons played in or those featuring teams we followed — was second nature, even in the midst of the most dire snowstorms or icy conditions.

 I was always the most bundled up spectator but, hey, I was comfortable. Being a screaming idiot parent also helped keep me toasty.  

 Then came winter travel to the high schools or colleges they attended in distant cities and towns, requiring trips down highways to at least catch a plane. Snow storms, ice storms, high winds . . . they all had to be watched closely as the travel dates approached.

 Many times we had to battle dangerous road conditions. With time, any residual good feelings I had about winter dissipated.

 Now, as past blog posts have detailed, we have our sites set on a permanent shift to the west coast where most of our immediate family resides.

 Even several of our most winter-living, hometown-loving friends from this area have made similar post-retirement moves. So, I don’t feel too wimpy. If someone can afford to move, and has children or grandchildren in distant warmer areas, they get out of town as soon as they can.

 Likewise, what seems to keep a lot of folks in this area is the closeness of family and the distance of financial security.  But, as noted above, even many of these lifers escape from their frostbitten homesteads for the worst months: January, February and March.

 Those snowbirds have little reason to flee this year’s El Niño-generated warm and dry winter hater’s wonderland. But some locals predict these conditions won’t last long. A major blizzard is known to have followed at least one of the last such atypical early winters. Forecasts for this year do call for lots of snow through March.

 Even then, though, a harsh finale will be far easier to take now that we’ve enjoyed a mild start. It’s the length of the northeastern winters as much as the cold and snow that brings on the anguish.  

 Everything becomes harder when temperatures dip and the skies unleash their seasonal precipitation, be it snow, freezing rain or some such “wintry mix” of all things hazardous to outdoor pursuits.

 Out come coats, sweaters, sweatshirts, heavy socks, shovels, roof rakes, heating supplies (oil, gas or electricity), humidifiers, ice chippers, windshield scrappers and walkway salt.  

 And out come clouds. Sun takes a holiday. Daylight grows short. Darkness prevails, outside and inside, turning moods likewise dark in many of us.  

 But that Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) lessens a bunch when the bleakest month, December, is not also hit with snow or ice or freezing temperatures.

 Then, when sunshine begins reappearing with some regularity in January, it has a much stronger effect. We had three days of bright sun and blue skies last week, making walks outside possible despite the snow cover and crisp air. Likewise, the gradual lengthening of the days can be appreciated better when one is not exhausted from the usual December blues and outdoor challenges.

 Of course, this winter respite meant that our area did without its (curiously) longed-for white Christmas. That was disappointing for guests like my son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, who visited us from the golden state of California.  

 But when a brief snowfall did finally arrive on their departure day, it brought with it one of its most troublesome side effects: disruption of plane schedules. Their flight was delayed four hours in Syracuse (mostly due to weather in the Midwest, evidently), causing them to miss their connection in New York City. (Eventually, as often happens in such situations, the mix of flight cancellations and delays worked in their favor and they were able to secure seats on a later flight, albeit a “red eye” absent their luggage, which temporarily went to the destination of a flight they previously had secured.)

 Still, my oldest grandson made the most of the few hours he had with the snow cover. The four-year-old begged to go outside (despite a constant rainfall that followed the early-morning snow) and walked all over our property with a snow shovel, digging or breaking up the ice chunks that covered the fallen inflatable snowman.

 Ahh, to be young and love snow again.  

 Meanwhle, as I wrap up this piece, weekend rains have reduced even our sham snow cover to just a few spots (see photo above). It’s the 11th of January.

 Ahh, to be a geezer and have no snow worries.

[geezeralert]

Of trash and treasures

And now, in response to all who have questioned my intelligence, I can offer absolute proof I graduated from kindergarten — that place where, as we all learned from author Robert Fulghum, we learn everything we need to know.

 My kindergarten diploma — officially my “Bachelor of Rhymes” degree from Saint Teresa School in Summit, N.J. — is among the many priceless items discovered inside the dozens (hundreds?) of boxes we’ve gone through as part of the Great Meyer Empty Nest Cleanout Project.  

 Close behind that gem is a photo of my (championship?) Boston University floor hockey team and the final baseball team lucky enough to have me as a member before my premature retirement due to “igenium defectum” (lack of talent).  

 Yes, this geezer household unloading process, which I announced in my May 7 blog post, has been full of interesting finds.

 Quickly recapping the circumstances: With two grown children and two retirees (one long done and a second on the way), we faced a pressing need to clean out our living space, either as a prelude to moving to be closer to our West Coast family or downsizing elsewhere or simply being responsible geezers (and not leaving a huge mess for our children to clean up after we’re gone).

 A really positive person would describe all the many discoveries in this endeavor, like those above, as comforting stopovers on a heart-warming trip down memory lane.

 Conversely, a “Debbie Downer” would see them as preludes to death — you

know, when your whole life flashes before you.  

 There are, of course, elements of both. The entire mission is a mixed bag, sort of like (heavy stuff alert) life itself, which (again) is what all the mounds of material represent: our 60-plus years of living semi-large.

 For starters in the emotion department, there is the highly anticipated “freeing” feeling as burdensome stockpiles of curiously saved items are finally discarded. The stuff had to go eventually so it’s terrific that we’re getting it out now.

 That is balanced against constant sadness as once-valued possessions — and the wonderful memories they stir— are tossed aside forever. I mean, really forever. Good-bye.

 It’s very tough to let go.

 Accompanying those emotions is tremendous guilt at sending an ungodly amount of stuff — paper, clothing, toys, newspapers, magazines, boxes, notebooks, furnishings — to local landfills or recycling centers.  Even with the most reusable items being put aside for a hoped-for garage sale in the spring, there has been a steady stream of disposable items every week for the last seven months.

But keeping items also carries guilt. I just can’t get up the strength to immediately jettison things like scorebooks for my sons’ baseball teams (I was the scorekeeper), memorabilia from several fun family trips, keepsake T-shirts and sweatshirts (for favorite sports teams, vacation spots, special occasions) and clips or copies of dozens of news articles I wrote over my nearly 30 years in the newspaper business.

 There will come a time to bid adieu to them all, I know. Just not right away. Gonna take a few more months.    

 Were we hoarders? Some may see us that way, if they are the type that discards life’s accumulations as soon as they no longer have a role in their lives.  They are lucky to have that mindset, in some ways. But, in other ways, they are kind of coldly detached from their past, under-appreciative — in my way of thinking, at least — of the many wonderful things and moments and accomplishments they have experienced.

 A better word for me would be a “savorer” — one who likes to savor the good times. (In the most negative sense, I guess I’m an “extreme savorer” or “chronic savorer.” )

 Going back over saved greeting cards from family members, some now deceased, brings back special times, long-forgotten sentiments.

 Reading my news coverage of numerous issues in Hickory, N.C., or Kingsport, Tenn., or Clinton, N.Y., allows a rare, concrete pride in a life well-lived, replacing a vague regret for an exciting life now long past.  

 There is no way I would have remembered many of those special parts of my life, and countless others, without spending time with the items we stored.  It’s like a memory stirred by an old song or photograph, only a thousand times more intense. It is a good thing.

 The steady flood of quality nostalgia so far has come primarily from:

 ** My two sons middle school and high school stuff.

 ** Every Clinton Courier and Kirkland Newspaper produced over my 17-18 years of stewardship.

 ** Notebooks and files from seven years of news coverage at daily newspapers in Kingsport and Hickory along with all my files and notebooks from the Courier and Newspaper/Newsline years.

 ** Favorite toys and stuffed animals (and a lot of ordinary ones) from our sons’ youth.

 ** Armloads of clothing that once were a regular part of my wardrobe.

 ** Folders of personal items kept from various trips to California and other places.

 There have been a few “what were we thinking?” moments along the way. We kept a lot of room decorations, furnishings and boxes, including boxes for just about every major toy purchase, for no other reason than laziness — not knowing what to do with them or not wanting to get rid of something that could prove valuable/needed or just not wanting to make an immediate decision about their fate.

 The idea, evidently, was to keep the stuff temporarily. But “out of sight, one of mind” ruled as life’s other priorities took over.

 In retrospect, though, our failing was not the uncontrolled saving of a ridiculous amount of things that would prove to be worthless. Our mistake was not periodically revisiting our storage places — say once every five years — to pluck out trash-worthy items. That’s the lesson for all you “youngsters” out there who may be planning to own their own homes and start families. .

 Yes, it also would have helped if I were a little less accumulative in nature. I didn’t need a hat or a pen or a T-shirt or a hoodie or a refrigerator magnet for each important place or event in my life. But, to be fair to myself, the items did help me feel very good for many years — wearing that BU hockey championship T-shirt, writing with that Yankee mini-bat pen, throwing on that “Wicked” hoodie, doffing the Los Angeles Coroner hat or T-shirt (from our strange visit to the coroner’s gift shop featured in a CNN report) . . .

 With such purchases, I was able to stretch the enjoyment of many sporting events, trips and special occasions over several years.  The problem is that, over time, such stretching piled up and, in hindsight, got out of control.

 Still, I am getting to relive lots of those moments now, in my early 60s. Thus, the past purchases continue to broaden my present experiences — filling out, or deepening, if you will, my memory.  In addition, there have been a number of “finds,” like special toys from our sons’ youth that can be passed on to our grandchildren.

 But, for all but these relatively few items, our quick re-immersions in the nostalgia pool are the grand finale. Sad but true.

 Memory-sparkers by the hundreds are being given just a glance, a brief encounter, maybe photographed, maybe shared with family, and then sent on their way to the dustbin of history (i.e., landfills). As I noted in my original blog post on the process, we really have no other choice.

 And, as indicated above in my warning to future empty-nesters, we are behind in the exercise. Thus, we have the added factor of sheer exhaustion in the effort.

 Even with pacing ourselves — putting in about two hours at a clip, two or three days a week — the removal and proper disposal of all these items has been physically draining.

 There are dozens of trips up and down stairs and from house to garage. There are a few dozen trips to the Salvation Army for clothing donations, to the transfer stations for trash disposal and to the solid waste facility for dumping electronics.  

 We have come far but we have a long way to go. It may be mid-summer before we’re in a position to declare our home move-ready, or at least garage-sale-ready. That would put us about three months behind our original schedule.

 So, second tip for families facing the same situation: Put aside lots of time for the household emptying.

 Along the way, we also must decide what it all means. Are we moving? Has the vast disposal left us better off or worse off?

 I will only be able to reach a conclusion on such matters once we settle on our residence of the future.

 That’s an entirely different process, one we have only addressed so far in dream fashion.  

 For now, as 2015 draws to a close, we still have our residence of the present and our slowly dwindling possessions from of the past.

 An entirely different scenario awaits us in 2016. 

[geezeralert]

Time-tested, time-honored

As our decades of life mount up, the humans we continue to admire outside of family and friends — the celebrities, sports figures, politicians, etc. — are probably much more worthy of our high regard.

 They have passed the test of time, which can be particularly harsh on those in the spotlight. Just ask Bill Cosby. Or Roger Clemens. Society loves to build people up and then watch as they get knocked down, either suffering numerous indignities or working to climb back into our good graces.  

 If an individual can continue to achieve, continue to function within the boundaries of our expectations, continue to just live life without hints of scandal . . . wow. They must be special.

 Thinking about this quirky part of our collective existence, I asked myself just who do I really admire (again, outside of my personal sphere of operation, such as family, friends or associates like teachers or bosses or fellow workers, whom we hold to different standards)?  

 Just going with my gut, I immediately came up with a list:  

 ** Hall of Fame baseball manager (and former player and current executive) Joe Torre.

** Hall of Fame basketball coach (and former player) Muffet McGraw.

** U.S. President Barack Obama.

** First Lady Michelle Obama.

** NPR talk show host Terry Gross.

** Rocker and author Patti Smith.

** Singer, actress Kristin Chenoweth.

** Radio show host Garrison Keillor.

** Singer, actress Bernadette Peters.

** Retired Yankee baseball player Derek Jeter.

** Washington Post investigative journalist Bob Woodward.

 I stared at the list for a while and agreed with my gut. I’m sure there would be others, if I sat down and thought hard, but this off-the-top-of-the-head group of names readily meets my personal criterion for admiration.

 And just what would that criterion be, you ask?

 Great talent seems to be one common denominator. They are all extraordinary in their chosen fields.

 I do pay attention to those who can be the best at some endeavor. I’m particularly moved by excellence in high-risk pursuits: music, sports, comedy, acting, journalism, writing, politics.

 But beyond being supremely talented, these individuals stand out for their well-rounded, well-grounded, sincere, real personhoods — at least those that we fans get to see. And, as my main point here, it’s pretty certain, after all the public scrutiny over many years, that the positive qualities of these celebrities are for real.

 Namely:

 JOE  TORRE

His deep knowledge of baseball was put to the ultimate test, under extreme pressure, during an 11-year run as manager of the New York Yankees. They always made the playoffs, winning four World Series.

 For those years alone, really, he deserved election to the Hall of Fame.

 Along the way, he was a model of class, style and maturity under trying conditions, professionally and personally. And he’s continued as such in the years since. He just always seems to have life in perspective, to value integrity above all else and to just be a naturally good person, not an above-it-all celebrity.  

 MUFFET MCGRAW

She’s a tough competitor, to be sure, but her off-the-court persona, combined with the praise heaped on her by her University of Notre Dame players, coaches and administrators, not to mention rival coaches, indicates she is one fair, smart, witty, sincere, down-to-earth woman. Like Joe Torre, she just seems like a really nice person.

 She built the ND women’s basketball program into a perennial power and a major draw in South Bend, Ind., two incredible achievements when you consider: A) the ups and downs other most sports experience at colleges with high academic standards; and B) women’s basketball takes a deep back seat to men’s basketball at most schools.

 And now she has become just the second coach in the storied history of Notre Dame athletics to record 700 victories.

BARACK OBAMA

 Just about everyone outside RWCW (Right Wing Cuckoo World) recognizes President Obama has achieved great things despite incredible, blind, total opposition by RWCW-cowed politicians from the moment he was elected.

 He may seem too young to be considered “time-tested” but his eight or so years in the public spotlight have been the equivalent of about two decades for your average celebrity. His every twitch and glance have been scrutinized and analyzed from every possible angle. And, in the real world (outside RWCW), he’s come out unscathed.

He’s got his faults and has made mistakes. That makes him human. But he’s done his best to get us out of the devastating wars and economic collapse that his

predecessors left behind. We are far better off now than we were seven years ago.

 Like Torre and McGraw, he’s whip-smart, witty and accessible, a person of high personal standards and a genuine family man. Just a nice guy who’s withstood ungodly amounts of personal attacks with remarkable grace, fortitude and resilience.

 MICHELLE OBAMA

 If there’s one person I would prefer to lead our country other than Barack Obama, it is his wife, Michelle.

 She has all the attributes I listed above for her husband and the other two — the smarts, the wit, the class, the head-screwed-on-right approach to the daily highs and lows of living.

 She can handle herself in just about any situation, and she’s been put in a few hundred different ones. A great person.

 TERRY GROSS

 A 40-year career in any entertainment field is extraordinary. Ms. Gross’ continued excellence as a radio interviewer over four decades, with that mellifluous voice and those educated, considerate inquiries, may be unprecedented.

 What I’m fairly certain IS unique is the mesmerizing effect she has on thousands of listeners.

 Many fantasize about being her guest, according to a recent profile in the New York Times Magazine (the article’s author herself had such daydreams).

 The normally cynical and caustic comedian/podcaster Mark Maron positively gushed when given the chance to turn the tables and interview Gross. It was almost embarrassing to hear his effusive praise for her.

 What impresses me, though, is her consistency over four decades — her personal standards, her interests, her curiosity, her lifestyle. I often find fault with her shows but I appreciate that she is who she is. I know what to expect and so the choice is simply mine whether to pay attention.

 PATTI SMITH

 I only came into her orbit when I was swept away by her first book, “Just Kids,” (made aware by a “Fresh Air” interview, of course) but I’ve since come to greatly appreciate her music career and artistic life.

 As with my other honorees, she’s exhibited a time-tested honesty. She’s real, she talented, she’s remarkably incisive.

 Her second memoir is awaiting my attention right now on a bookshelf (first gotta struggle through a current non-fiction book).  

ETCETERA

 You get the picture.  

 My main themes for those listed above apply for the other names on my list, in short:

 ** Garrison Keillor is simply a genius who has remained incredibly down to earth, decent and likable over the decades.  

 ** Kristin Chenoweth is that rare fundamentalist Christian with a heart and mind (she describes herself as a "non-judgmental, liberal Christian"), overcoming a severe physical malady (Meniere’s disease) to continue performing at peak levels.

 ** Bernadette Peters has overcome personal tragedy and remains a consistently good person, dedicated to finding homes for stray dogs.

 ** Derek Jeter survived the cauldron of New York City sports celebrityhood, keeping his high personal role-model-worthy standards intact over two decades.

 ** Bob Woodward turned his role in the heroic Watergate investigative journalism effort into a career that has amazingly often come close to replicating it.

 So, given a chance to sit down for lunch with one of these admirable people, whom would I choose?

 I think I have the most questions for Bernadette Peters, given her career and personal story, so that would make a lunchtime conversation the easiest to navigate, helping me get over the nervousness I’d feel in the presence of such a beautiful celebrity.

 She, McGraw, Torre, Keillor and Michelle Obama would probably be the best at putting me at ease. They just seem so genuine and relaxed.

 Even with all the steady, durable attributes of these celebrities and others I admire, I still must be prepared for uncharacteristic developments. These are human beings, after all, and, by design or choice (mine), we really do not know intimate details of their lives.

 Hell, a lot of the bad things we do know about entertainers, politicians and the like come out after they are dead.

 But given the proximity of my age to those on my most-admired list, I don’t expect to be around much longer than they are, so any big negative posthumous revelations probably will be lost on me.

 That’s another thing those listed people seem to have in common: Good health (although Torre battled prostate cancer a while ago).

 There’s a message in there somewhere.

[geezeralert]

Not your teenager’s Facebook

As much as us geezer folk like to slow life down and cling to how things were “when we were young,” we sure have taken to this newfangled thing called social media.

 Primarily, from my observations and several news reports, old folks now are all over Facebook. They’re sharing lots of personal pictures, playing games, spreading political views, sharing funny videos or catchy phrases, pushing causes or sports teams and just generally spending a lot of time on something nearly all of them had nothing to do with only a few short years ago.

 Various media and internet outlets have been pointing out this trend for years but now it has become very obvious.

 From a May 2013 report on Gawker:

 “Facebook is quickly becoming a spooky graveyard, bereft of teens, populated by only a few try-hard adults and a pile of old elephant bones according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. There’s also a lot of drama there. Specifically: too much drama.

 “As the AP puts it:

 “ ‘Twitter is booming as a social media destination for teenagers who complain about too many adults and too much drama on Facebook.’ ”

 From a December 2013 post on Jezebel:      

“Facebook is fast becoming the internet's parent pasture for recently replicated humans who've decided that absolutely everyone in their immediate (and not-so-immediate) social circle needs to see a 60-photo series of their new infant hiding behind a sofa to take a dump in its tiny pants. Like a monkey. A small, hairless monkey that knows how to lie and express monosyllabic thoughts. Teens don't want to see anybody else's infant monkeyperson, which is why they're fleeing Facebook forevsies.

 “The Great Teen Facebook Flight isn't shocking news, and it's been pointed out before that younger people are avoiding what is increasingly becoming the social media site for people "of a certain age," i.e. an old age. A recent (and extensive) European study, though, confirmed that Facebook is "dead and buried" to older European teenagers, who've all been fleeing the Facebook galleon for Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat. Since European teens are ahead of the curve on everything, it's only a matter of time before their parochial, arithmetic-challenged American counterparts also set fire to the desiccated corpse of Facebook and perform a ritual dance around it (metaphorically).

 “Teens just want to be as far away from full-blown adults as possible, even on the internet, which means that Facebook will soon be that thing you tell people about when you want to insinuate that you're old and all the most interesting things about your life have already been posted, liked, and forgotten on Mark Zuckerberg's Repository of Aging Adults.”

 Kinda harsh but the point is: The youthful, cool aspect of being on Facebook is fading fast. It still has its benefits for many youths — like staying in touch with family and friends and quickly reaching a sizable audience when help is needed — but the rising, dominating presence of us older humans on the site is giving it all the hipness of a chaperoned high school dance.  

 So, as we geezers or near-geezers gradually take over this social phenomenon — created in 2004 but only open to the general public since 2006 — I have mixed emotions.

 My entry into Facebook a few years ago was solely to promote my book. Social networking — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr — was seen as a major way to get the word out about self-published books.

 Then, my old camera-supply guy (his name actually was Guy) said I absolutely have to have a personal Facebook site in order for people to find my book.

 That brought me into the Facebook world, and a second attraction quickly became its connection to distant family members.  

 From that came regular participation in the site and a furthering of the magnetic properties of its family connections.

 Now I am “friends” with a few dozen people, still a paltry amount by Facebook standards, but more than enough for me.

 Actually, the real question is: “What are Facebook standards?”

 Is a “friend” just anyone you happen to know, as opposed to someone you are actually friends with? Do you build up your roster Facebook “friends” in order to have a wide network of contacts for sharing your personal, business, political or other stuff? Do you befriend individuals because you really want to know their likes and dislikes about all the minutia in their lives – like pets, sunsets, grandchildren, meals, trips, political views, cat videos, music choices or job status? Or do you put up with such stuff as part of the price of being well-friended on Facebook? Or do you take most of the “friends” off your newsfeed so you don’t have to get such stuff?

 I guess, like all things in life, everyone would have different answers to those questions.  

 But I would also guess most of us just jumped aboard this social network train for pretty simple reasons like mine and now don’t give much thought to why they continue or expand their usage. It’s just an easy and, if used sparingly, harmless way to pass the time.

 For many, Facebook networking probably is the modern-day version of the old in-person coffeeshop, country store or barroom networking. You get lots of news about community comings and goings (aka “gossip” or “scuttlebutt”) being passed around by people you at least remotely know. I was never one to mix and mingle like that (just part of the old journalistic, stay-distant persona) but it is popular everywhere, even to this day (at least for older folks).  

 That role for Facebook, though, is quite removed from the original intent for Facebook, as I understand it. In the book “The Social Network,” and the movie it inspired, the origin of this transition to a crazily popular and lucrative worldwide networking site is traced to the intersection of innocent Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and wily (greedy?) Napster founder Sean Parker.  Whether that’s true is open to debate, I guess, from reading the Wikepedia entry on that literary work and motion picture.

 But the resulting product is indeed far removed from the youthful meeting and socializing place envisioned 11 years ago. In addition to becoming a cyber gathering place for the geezer set, it’s highly commercial, ubiquitous and widely used by the general population, not just its youth. Hence, as noted in the articles cited above, it’s growing lack of appeal to its first intended audience.

 Is this a good thing?

 I guess I’m not the person to answer that. My interest in Facebook is pretty limited when I’m not in the self-publishing, book-pushing business.

 There are some enjoyable aspects, like a weekly entertainment question posted by a former resident of my hometown who, as a high school student, once wrote movie reviews for my weekly newspaper. That reaches an audience of his varied Facebook friends and exposes me to lots of different movies, music, TV shows etc. (and the multitude of personal tastes associated with them) while allowing me to express/share my own eclectic interests.  

 Also, on the hometown community front, I’m keeping up with the major life events of many individuals who were part of my past. It’s interesting, if a bit on the nosy side. Meanwhile as befits my own approach to life, I’m not sharing much of my own personal stuff, just your basic family, proud parent, proud grandparent postings in addition to this blog and book promotional items.

 So, just continuing in such an arms-length mode suits me. It seems innocuous, as far as that goes.

 But this takeover by the geezer set obviously annoys a lot of the youths who were properly using the site for its interacting, social value within their own demographic.

 And that trend is probably only going to get worse, if you believe the main argument being advanced in a recent controversy in our town — that a wide swath of older people still has yet to discover the internet, much social networking, in general, or Facebook, in particular.

 The local disgruntlement involves the shutdown of the more than 150-year-old weekly newspaper, the one my wife and I ran for a decade (1982-92). The new owners, a married couple in their 20s, are replacing it with a daily regional online news and sports site.  

 There are lots of issues involved with this move but one of the biggest ones evidently is that many of the newspaper’s longtime subscribers are not computer savvy and thus will no longer have a source for their local news.

 Based on my Facebook experiences, I would be amazed if this is really the case — if more than a few older local residents still are not on the internet, regularly using email and possessing smartphones. I often come across men and women in their 80s or even 90s (a fellow swimmer) who are internet savvy.

 The World Wide Web has taken over, worldwide. It takes more effort to avoid it than accept it and use it. It’s almost scary how much society depends on it now.  Plus, once you use it, you find it has a lot to offer, so there’s that addictive factor.

 And Facebook, being free and fun, seems so benign. The biggest problem is that, as we geezers all know so well, nothing in life is free.

 Facebook is not all it seems. It is out to gather information about you and sell it. If you’re comfortable with that, then it may not otherwise pose much of a threat. But if you’re bugged by intrusions into your personal life, the entire internet thing can drive you batty unless you’re tech savvy enough to know how to protect yourself.

 For older folk, now that they’ve taken on this social networking at a surprisingly fast clip, it would be good to retain their tried-and-true take-it-slow skepticism toward the new and complicated trends of modern life.

 Meanwhile, as youth begin migrating to the latest and greatest new thing, we geezers better pay attention. We’ll probably be going there next.

[geezeralert]

Hometown pride, unplugged

Thousands of people love living in the region surrounding where I have called home since the early 1980s  — Central New York, with the City of Utica at its core.

 They have family here, jobs here, many happy memories here. They just find so much to enjoy here.

 So far, so good.  

 But for many there is at least one ugly outgrowth of this love affair. To them, it is extremely important that their hometown also be held in high regard by any and all.

 God help anyone who dares utter a disparaging word or issue a critical report about the Utica area, as seems to happen at least once a year. (The latest coming a few weeks ago with a Forbes magazine ranking the area as having the third worst climate for business and careers.)

 The “critics” are vilified in print and online as ill-informed and ignorant. If they have the courage to identify themselves as fellow residents, they get the good ole “love it or leave it” retort — words usually aimed by super patriots/jingoists at level-headed patriots who raise questions about the absolute wonderfulness of the United States of America.

 As you may have guessed by now, I just don’t get this provincialism, this emotional defense of a living area, this anger that someone may think you’re not living in one of the best places on earth.

 As a person who has lived for extended periods in 10 different locales, and has family and friends residing in many more, I can attest that great people, great schools, great community leaders, great natural beauty, great businesses and, yes Uticans, even great local foods and great pizza exist in copious quantities throughout our great land.

 People in the Utica area certainly have every right to claim their own greatness in all of the categories listed above. They just don’t have the right to posit superiority in any of them — that’s just being blind — or to get hyper defensive when someone finds fault.

 To use the popular paraphrase of a line from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: “Me thinks they doth protest too much.”

 To be clear on that point (from Wikipedia): “The phrase's actual meaning implies the increasing likelihood of suppressed feelings for the contrary of that which is being argued. i.e., the more passionate and fervent the argument, the greater likelihood the cause is a suppression of belief for the contrary argument, and the subsequent confirmation that it is the (actual) truer statement.”

 Put another way, if this area was really as wonderful as all these passionate defenders claim, they wouldn’t have to go around loudly blasting its critics or trumpeting its virtues. They could calmly slough off criticism, confident in the virtues of their chosen hometown while privately aware that, like all areas of the world, it has its weaknesses. Big deal.

 That’s how most of the really nice places, like my current 33-year hometown of Clinton, function — with a quiet confidence.

 If anything, these communities are loath to loudly proclaim their virtues lest they attract an influx of new residents who may not fully appreciate the wonderfulness of their surroundings. (At the same time, I’ve seen many new residents who do immediately recognize what a prize location they’ve just found and then want to quickly close the door behind them, stopping all new developments or community growth.)

 So, as Shakespeare would no doubt see, dwellers in Greater Utica, both the self-confident ones and the hyper-sensitive ones, evidently doth realize a lot of negative things exist here. Many are working hard and long to counter this and bring good things to the community.

 Understandably, some involved in those efforts feel compelled to rebuff the area’s detractors lest their progress be impeded by negative attitudes within the community itself or those thinking about moving here.  

 But many other defenders go beyond simple spinning or fact-checking the narrative.

 And I’m not just talking about those anonymous social media commenters or tweeters who plague all current-day public discourse. Many of the extremists have been community leaders or government officials, pressed to state politically correct loud defenses of the area lest they lose voters/business.    

 In my observations over the years, one particularly awful such case came in the spring of 2012, when the then-editor of the Utica Observer-Dispatch reacted harshly to the work of an award-winning freelance photographer who stopped by and snapped a few shots of downtown Utica.

 (Blogger side note: I’ll refrain from naming the individuals involved. Their identities are not germane to the issue and I really don’t want to involve them personally at this juncture, three years removed from the dispute. The reason I have so much information on this particular situation is that I saved, in my computer files, what was publicly written at the time, intending to send my reaction to the OD, but I never got around to it. )    

 Dozens of his photos appeared under the headline “Utica Struggles” in slideshows featured on the websites of the Albany Times Union and USA Today. Among other things, the editor pointed out in a more than 1,000-word demagogic rebuttal that the pictures showed “dilapidated buildings with broken windows and graffiti marks, empty and lonely streets and people without jobs and, seemingly, without hope.

 “Local people were puzzled and annoyed at the narrow focus of the package. There’s no mention of the Boilermaker, the thriving immigrant population, the safe neighborhoods, the burgeoning nanotech industry, the widely-respected colleges and much more.”

 She goes on to depict the photos as misleading and misrepresentative, basically accusing the photographer — a well-traveled professional and winner of the 2006 World Press Photo of the Year award — of shoddy journalism and having an agenda to only show the negative side of Utica as part of his project.

 It was a stunning overreaction to a simple series of photos that candidly took a look at one aspect of Utica as an example of one upstate community trying “to make the transition from a former manufacturing hub,” a situation the editor did not refute.

 The editor also agreed that Utica is struggling and the photos accurately depict elements of its problem. No, what she wanted was a totally different story, something entirely removed from the photographer’s limited intent — an all-inclusive profile of the City of Utica.

 Whaa?

 Geez, any person looking at such pictures could see the photographer’s openly narrow focus. It was clearly not supposed to be a feature on all things Utica.  

 It’s like someone faulting news reports on the current refugee crisis in Europe for not also showing the many wonderful things also taking place in Hungary, Germany, Greece, etc.

 “I didn’t have an agenda,” the photographer told the editor. She noted that he spent one day in Utica, “parked his car, and walked around Genesee Street and nearby neighborhoods, talking with those he found in the streets.”

“It really bothers me that people think this is negative,” said the photographer.

But the editor did not buy it:

“He said his project was part of a series about the economy in smaller post-industrial cities. ‘My interest is old American cities and what is happening there,’ he said.

“He added that the photo gallery wasn’t really about Utica but that the city is just representative of what has gone horribly wrong around the country.

“Which to me sounds like an agenda. Go find a city that looks like what is wrong with America. How else to explain that, if (the photographer) ate lunch at the New York City Gourmet Deli as he said, he missed the beautiful Stanley Center for the Arts across the street? Or the world-class Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute up the hill?

“He said he did ‘street photography,’ meaning he only shot what he saw on that particular day. This is a way of explaining why he didn’t contact any city officials, community activists, historians, artists, business people or anyone else who may have been working (and not on the street) the day he came through town. He didn’t look very hard to find things that didn’t fit his narrow and stereotyped image of what Utica is.

“(He) repeatedly said that, as a journalist, it wasn’t his job to be a cheerleader for the area. He’s right. That isn’t my job either. But just as the picture is not all sunshine and roses, it is not all doom and gloom either. While each extreme serves its own agenda, neither one tells the true story -- which is more nuanced and messy than you can capture in a day.

“We are aware of our unemployment numbers, educational and economic challenges. The issues facing Utica and cities like it are not simple and did not spring up in the past few months or years. They are complicated and represent economic trends that have hammered American cities for decades: suburban sprawl, a switch from manufacturing to service industries, uneven access to quality education and healthcare. Add to that our mix of many immigrant populations and you have a complex set of challenges for the region.

 “And ones the community is addressing every day, as evidenced by Utica’s growth, which has increased in population by nearly 3 percent since 2000, according to U.S. Census data, and success – seven out of ten seniors graduate from Thomas R. Proctor High School now and the rate continues to climb. Our growing, nationally-recognized microbrewery has served as the cornerstone for the resurgence of Varick Street, where (the photographer) stopped for a drink during his brief visit. An entire downtown block of Bleecker Street was saved from demolition and every single building was renovated. There are many more examples.

“In our lengthy phone conversation, (the photographer) was clearly passionate about what he called the “crisis situation” in this country, concerned for the most vulnerable members of our community and worried about what kind of world will be left for his daughter and all other children.

“We in the Mohawk Valley share his passion to make our city a better place, to help those who are in need, and to solve the issues that face our region. Yet when I look around, I don’t simply see the lonely faces and abandoned buildings. I see the thousands of caring people who turn out for the Heart Run and Ride for Missing Children each year, who volunteer in extraordinary numbers for all kinds of causes, who take pride in this place we call home.”

Clearly, the editor was pulling an “Emily Litella.” She was a fictional character played by the late comedian Gilda Radner in a series of appearances on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.” She famously went on furious rants in her editorial rebuttals, defending issues that she misheard: “What’s all this fuss about violins on television?” or “”What’s all this fuss about Soviet jewelry?”

This editor went on a furious rant about something she misread, seeing an innocent, sincere portrayal of her town’s legitimate problems as an unbalanced, unprofessional attack.  

(Blogger’s note: This editor, despite her passionate proclamations for Utica, soon left the area entirely. Such is not an unusual occurrence. Newspaper editors often come to a town, take up the party line of how absolutely wonderful their new home is —and how smart and successful they were to choose it!! — and then leave when the next better offer comes along, former hometown nirvana be damned)

The newspaper followed up the editor’s column with a front-page story headlined “Utica’s Image Problem,” which reported on an outpouring of support for a new pro-Utica photo website — which had a whopping 1,000 views by that time. Now, the Mohawk Valley has close to 500,000 residents. Oneida County has about 233,000 residents. Utica’s population is more than 62,000. One thousand views of a website is nothing to brag about.

 Meanwhile, the photographer himself said he was surprised by the editor’s rant. He wrote the paper soon after her column appeared and said he was “perplexed about the perceived level of anger as I have so far heard only from her, a local television station and exactly one Utica resident.”

  Yes, to repeat his observation: There was no major outrage over his photos, as the editor claimed.

 You see, people who are over-the-top in love with Utica may have justifications but they are in the minority. Poll after poll after poll shows a solid majority of area residents are not happy with the key “quality of life” indicators: overall life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment and basic access.

 The OD’s own unscientific poll in the wake of the photo flap found that most people (about 70 percent of the 500 or so respondents at the time I voted) agreed with the depiction of the city in the pictures (I forget the exact question).

 Who are these people? As one of them, I can tell you we are not the “grumps,” the simply cranky individuals, once mocked by the former OD publisher in a column shortly before the editor-photographer flap, reacting to the latest “happiness index” that ranked the Utica-Rome area near the bottom while putting Hawaii at the top.

 The poll respondents are the clerk at the electronics store, the hotel maids, the college professors, the grocery store stockroom workers, the waiters at your favorite restaurant . . . just your everyday people.

 I’d bet even many of the OD’s vaunted teen all-stars are in their number, along with their parents. How many will choose to stay here or even return here sometime in their post-college careers? Less than half, I believe.

  So, those with the “love it or leave it” mindset may ask, “Why are you here?”

 My wife and I came to Clinton DESPITE Utica – despite our drive through the sad, drab city on our way from the Thruway, down Genesee Street to the village. We took a gamble on quaint, attractive Clinton, though, for business reasons (we bought the weekly newspaper). And we found our new home a wonderful place to raise our young family — great friends, the Hamilton College connections, great school, great sports, great music and plenty of news to keep two young journalists hopping.

 The point: the Utica area is what it is.  A mostly cloudy, mostly ordinary small town. It has very nice people (just like the ones in my former homes in Westfield, N.J., Boston, Chicago, Kingsport (Tenn.), Hickory (N.C.) Bluff City (Tenn.), Bristol (Va.)). It has some quality schools and community features (museums, art centers, nature walks, et.). So do countless other places in America.

 If you were born and raised here, chances are you have strong feelings for it — nostalgia beats objectivity. My sons can’t wait to come back here for visits. 

 Fine, enjoy. But why try and make it something it is not — some unique and wonderful place to live, a little undiscovered slice of heaven? It may be this to you, but remember it is not this for many others, and with good reason.

[geezeralert]

Too close and too cold

Plenty has been written on the steady toll that aging takes on us, physically and mentally. This blog — being, of course, a “Geezer Alert” — has touched on it and, with millions of fellow baby boomers now entering their final glorious decades, most media regularly visit the subject.

 That’s life, we all know. Be ready for it, prepare for it, deal with it.

 Fine. Most are pressing forward (kinda).

 But entering the “September” of my years has brought on at least two curious conditions that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere: Claustrophobia and an acute sensitivity to cold swimming water.

 Facing these strange developments, I’m left pondering, as I have before regarding my geezer sensations: Is this just me? Or are these things another fun part of growing old for the majority of us?  

 Of the two, claustrophobia is by far the most troubling. It affects all tightly packed situations, such as crowds, airplanes and, to my surprise, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) tests.  

 It was my recent experience with an MRI that revealed how bad this condition has gotten.  

 Approaching the MRI machine at Little Falls Hospital, I was pretty confident it was doable. It is open on both ends. My body would only be slid in about three or four feet.

 My only concern was the memory of an isolated panic attack I once suffered on an airplane. It was maybe five or six years ago.

 That cross-country flight was on an unusually hot, cramped plane. I had a window seat in a row of three seats and, out of the blue, this horrible feeling came over me of being trapped. I had to get out. I tried total-focus reading (moving my bookmarker down each sentence as I read it), sleeping and mind-over matter (“This is ridiculous. There’s nothing wrong. I’ve been in this situation countless times. No problem.”).

 Nothing worked. I finally had to get out of my seat and walk down the aisle to the back of the plane, where I asked the flight attendant if I could stand there awhile. She said no, not possible. I returned to my seat and forced myself to weather the panic attack.

 Several fellow passengers, hearing me mention my anxiousness to my seatmates, piped up that the heat and cramped rows in this particular small plane were very unusual. That gave me confidence that this was just a freak occurrence and not an indication of a more serious condition.  

 Still, after that, it’s been only aisle seats with extra legroom for me. No sense risking another awful feeling of panic.

 Just in case, though, I mentioned my fears of panic to my doctor and he prescribed a relaxant for me that he referred to as a “pocket pill.”  He said just having the pill in one’s pocket during airline flights is enough to calm nearly all potential claustrophobics — the knowledge that any feeling of panic can be blocked or halted.

 That worked for me on two eight-hour flights to France last year and two subsequent cross-country flights.

 So I approached the MRI with guarded optimism. The calming, friendly nurse gave be a squeeze ball to hold. It was attached to a rubber tube. One squeeze and she’d wheel me right out of the MRI.

 Eyes firmly shut, I gave the nurse the go-ahead to slide me in the tube. Then, about 10 minutes into the 25-minute exam, I tried to move my arms, felt how constrained I actually was and was overcome with a wave of utter, horrible panic. I squeezed the rubber ball as hard as physically possible.

 Then I felt silly. I apologized to the nurse, asked for a brief breather and agreed to give it another try. The second slide-in lasted, oh, about two seconds.

 Now I was a confirmed claustrophobic. In coming days, I would learn I am most definitely not alone, either among the senior set or the general population. At great expense, “open” MRIs have been created  for us, allowing freedom of arm movements, calming and spacious surroundings, piped-in music of our choice over headphones and personal accompaniment during the exam.

 One problem: The MRI machine still is just inches from a patient’s face.  Once I saw that, I panicked anew. It was time for a relaxant pill, prescribed by my doctor at twice the strength of the one I received for airline flights.

 I was still nervous but got through it, with the help of cheerleading from the nurse and a radiology technician, not to mention a strangely comforting beanbag mask and a CD of Rossini opera overtures, conducted by the incomparable Leonard Bernstein, barely audible over the machine’s grinding roar.

 Even as I learn from casual conversations about lots of younger people who suffer from claustrophobia, I still wonder if advanced age brings it out for many, like it did for me.

 Yes, I can recall being uncomfortable during childhood games that called for hiding under a bed. I didn’t stay there long, and I’ve avoided any similarly confined conditions over the years.

 Still, neither non-aisle seats on airlines nor packed crowds (like one that brought on a panic attack while boarding a recent flight) ever bothered me in my younger days. Now, just looking at pictures of huge throngs — like hundreds of kayakers gathered to break the Guinness Book of World Records — fills me with dread. Same with even the thought of being trapped under rubble after an earthquake.  

 So, it may not be an entirely new mental frailty but it has worsened with age.

 The cold water thing, though, came out of nowhere.

 I can recall swimming in near-freezing ocean, lake and creek water. In the ocean, my body acclimated after a few minutes of riding the waves into shore. In lakes or creeks, just a little moving around was needed before I felt comfortable. At all of them, I could then stay in the water for long periods.

 Likewise, when I began my current lap-swimming fitness routine about five years ago at indoor pools, the opening chill dissipated after just five or six 25-yard travels.  

 Then, a new swim coach arrived at the college where I’m a member of the Aquatics Club. She began turning down the water temperature, reportedly to better prepare her teams for conditions they would find at away meets. Eventually, I learned conventional wisdom holds that competition pools should be kept around 76-78 degrees so that swimmers will have the stamina needed to perform at peak levels.  

 (Side note: I have swum at more than a dozen college pools that are home to championship-caliber swim teams and keep their temperatures around 80 or even higher. Very comfortable and very conducive to fast swim times. One of those pools — at the University of Southern California — once hosted the Olympics.)

 (Side note #2: Amazingly, the change of just a single degree in water temperature makes a huge difference.  New simmers or non-swimmers are always very surprised to learn this.)  

 Soon, either due to a pool malfunction or the coach’s desire (the actual reason depends on who you talk to), the temperature at this particular pool dipped into the mid-70s. I found I could only make a few laps before my muscles and head began to ache. I had to get out.

 Subsequently, I learned that I can only tolerate (i.e. swim for any length of time) temperatures above 78. Once the temp dips even slightly below that, I immediately can tell the difference. And with the regular reduction in temperatures at my chosen pool (the only one in my area to offer public swim times that are convenient for regular lap swimming), I’ve had to resort to a wetsuit for the duration of the swim team’s season.  

 I repeat: A wetsuit  . . . in an indoor pool. While the chilly water produces a lot of complaining among the older swimmers, only one other person wears a wetsuit at this pool. Others may just avoid swimming during the cold-water months but the majority just swim and bear it.

 So, that begs the question: Is it just me — a person who once readily dipped into water that barely reached 60 degrees — who is now hyper-sensitive to water temperatures in my golden years? Or are those fellow geezers who continue to swim in cold water without wetsuits just too cheap, or prideful, to buy one?  

 Like most life situations, there’s probably no clear-cut, black-and-white answer; it’s probably a little of both.

 But, having been surprised by the arrival of claustrophobia and cold-water intolerance, I have to wonder what other joys await me as I amble forward through the adventure that is aging.  

[geezeralert]

Just around the block

Back by popular demand: “Jurassic Park.”

Back despite popular indifference: “Geezer Alert.”

Surprise! I took a little geezer spring break. It’s going on three months now, so it’s also a summer break!  That’s the great thing about being retired and voluntarily writing internet essays that no one depends on for living a quality life.  

 Still, I don’t take such interruptions lightly. I enjoy writing and hope one or two of my pieces over the last few years have entertained a few.

 But there were several reasons for the writing vacation.

 It began with a decision to wind down promotion of my second book following announcement of the Eric Hoffer Book Award results. (My blog was started to gain a following and hopefully generate interest in my writing and, by extension, my books.)    

 Self-promotion is my bete noir, anyway, and four or five months of efforts to get the word out — through social networks, a book giveaway, local press releases, college and high school alumni publications — was enough for me.

 And, to be honest, it went nowhere. To be painfully realistic, it will take a miracle for either of my books to be bestsellers. In the self-publishing world, it’s all about luck and timing and some crazy hook, like 50 shades of wild sadomasochism.

 Aggressive promotion can pump up a few hundred sales (at least that’s what those internet business pitching services for self-publishing say) but that’s in the world of young authors, not geezers. If I was in my 30s, either just starting an internet newspaper like my old Kirkland NewsLine or pursuing my novelist dream, I believe my energy level would give me a fighting shot at success.

 Now, my best hope/fantasy is that someone with filmmaking connections will discover my narratives and see their cinematic potential.  Call me silly but I really do believe in both stories.

 Reason number two for taking a break was the arrival of annual spring/summer cleaning or home maintenance projects: washing 15 windows and screens, restoring the lawn from its winter beat-down, top-to-bottom office dusting and vacuuming, monthly dog bathing  . . .

 Tackling these labors replaced my three to four hours of daily writing.

 As those projects wound down a few weeks ago, a tired cliché became my third reason for a geezer break: writer’s block.

 I stared at the blank Word document each day and found no reason to type.  Nothing struck me as interesting. What you’re reading now is a forced exercise — writing about not writing — to get me jump-started.

 So, is “writer’s block” real or just an excuse for being lazy or mentally bankrupt?

 I’d say it’s an individual thing. I can only speak for me. (Read: Copping out!)

 Sometimes my head is just bursting with subjects that I want to expound on. (For examples, see past blog posts.) Once they’re in my head, I can’t wait to put them on “paper.”

 Other times, I’m pretty convinced I‘ve covered every topic that interests me and about which I can offer any valid opinions. (Some would say I was in that state  before I started, but that would be cruel.) That’s what I would call writer’s block, and for me it’s a legitimate mental freeze.

 I reach that point primarily because, in my current situation, my only deadlines are self-imposed ones. Deadlines, while dreaded anxiety-producers, are necessary for all but the most self-motivated among us.

 As a news reporter or columnist for products that had specific publication dates (either daily or weekly), I knew that I had to come up with articles by a certain time or there would be hell to pay — like disgruntled editors (when I was an employee) or blank spaces and boring fillers (when I ran my own newspaper).

 That “creative pressure” just about always produces some good stuff, I must say. Songwriters, authors, artists . . . just about anyone in a creative field knows that some external force, applied in healthy doses, can force their brains to function at top speed and produce their best work.

 A brain without such pressure can become sloppy and sluggish.

 Of course, too much pressure can inhibit growth, push anxiety to freak-out levels or simply stifle any desire to continue, a.k.a. make a person just give up.

 I’ve been in all of those situations over the course of my writing career.

 “Creative pressure” got me through a few hundred news articles, including several that won state or local press awards when I was in my 20s (That sound you hear is my horn tooting).

 But when I think back to such work, I shudder as I recall how nervous or pressured I felt at various stages of getting them done. I doubt I could stand it now, in my inexplicably nervous geezer years (see blog post of September 2012, “A Geezer’s Day or Just This Geezer’s Day?”)

 And there were also times, even then, that the pressure was destructive, not creative, when things just got too much for me to continue with my normal output.

 Most of those times came while I was putting in 80-hour workweeks to get out a weekly paper. I remember especially when I just could not find enough time or inspiration to write my weekly column.

 Once, in desperation on publication eve, as I faced a ton of photos that needed to be developed and several meetings still to be covered, I filled the space with Sam Spade’s classic send-off speech to Brigid O'Shaughnessy in “The Maltese Falcon.”

 Not a proud moment.

 I must have left a few hundred readers either scratching their heads in

bewilderment or shaking their fists in annoyance. But no one said a thing, at least to my face.

 In my current situation, pride is my biggest motivator. I started something and I want to see it through. As for deadline pressure, there’s just the notion that a blog takes several years of regular production to achieve widespread attention and build a readership.

 But there’s no real pressure to continue — no livelihood at stake, no monetary investment to justify. It’s just a personal goal, one part of a quest to continue writing in my geezer years.  For a while, of course, there was the added notion that greater visibility on the internet and social network sites could drive book sales.  I would say it did but not enough to register on any bestseller lists.

 What will the future bring?

 Hey, that’s too much “creative pressure” to contemplate. For now, I’m thinking maybe two posts a month for the foreseeable future.

Yes, I’ve got a few ideas for August.  

But first, a little joke I found while searching vacation clip art!  

[geezeralert]

Past lives, once removed

One by one, we pick through the articles of clothing. The funny t-shirts, the team jerseys, the school-logo sweatshirts, the once-stylish jeans, the gym shorts. One by one, the golden memories stir to life.

 And, one by one, they are discarded.

 It’s empty-nest clearance time for the geezer Meyer duo of Clinton, New York.

 Out goes nearly all the clothing that got our two sons through childhood and adolescence. Some is being washed and donated to the Salvation Army. Other items — too worn, tattered or soiled to salvage — are being trashed.

 Then, at the end of the day, the memories are returned to their proper rear-brain bin.

 Less mental warmth (and physical value) is accorded the boys’ old school supplies and papers, which we’ve kept from pre-school through high school. Now, we’re saving almost nothing, at least in our initial attack on the boxes stored in the first room of the clean-out project, which we expect to take the better part of a year to complete.

 Headed to the trash bag are the math work sheets, the social studies essays, the doodles, the notes, the assignment pads, the drawings, the book reviews . . . all the early academic stuff that meant so much for so long, that took so much work, that caused more than their fair share of anguish.

 Many of these memories are best left alone. I grimace as I recall the many nights spent by these two young minds at their home desks, struggling to finish projects or homework. From outside my sons’ rooms, I suffered silently with them, feeling their drive for excellence (pushed by us and teachers alike) like it was my own, which it was when I was their age.

 Was it all necessary? Pros and cons abound, a debate best left for another time and place.

 But, regardless, we’ve all moved on, so it’s good-bye school stuff. Your departure is long overdue.

 Will such cold, stark necessity be able to hold off the pull of sentimental value as we progress to the creations of their younger years, stored in boxes deep in the attic? These were more joyful, less pressurized works. Most of the backward mental trips they take us on could be downright tear-inducing.

 Still, these nostalgia-drivers also must go, if we are to maintain our steady march to what we’re banking will be a bright, unencumbered senior-citizen future.

 Really, we all have no choice.

 Whether we downsize our residence or stay in this old one, the stuff we’ve held onto for decades, whether out of sentiment or inertia, cannot remain part of lives that are entering their final decades.

 It’s something nearly all families face sooner or later: what to do with a lifetime of accumulation. Either the parents (alone or together) have to make the decisions or leave it up to their children.

 The parents are far more capable and qualified — not to mention obligated, being the accumulators-in-chief — to make these choices, in consultation with their offspring. If it comes down to the children, then it probably follows the death or debilitating illness of one or both parents. The sons and daughters will already be dealing with the burdens of either grief or increased medical needs while attempting to keep their own lives churning.

 My octogenarian mother, to her everlasting credit, has been taking on the task at her California residence for many years now. She has been shedding possessions left and right, making us all a bit uneasy at first, both at the thought of her mortality and the prospect that some valuable things would be lost. But it’s been painless.

 Our own situation is different, taking place 20 years sooner than hers and with the intent/need to put ourselves in a position to downsize, move or at least cope in our later years. With the situation we face — two crammed attics, four other barely accessible rooms, a two-section shed overflowing with stuff, a kitchen lined with storage boxes, a 10-by-10-foot storage facility packed to the doors — any move will take years to accomplish.

 We’ve known for years that we needed to tackle this massive elimination project. The impetus for action finally came with the prospect of  . . . well, it’s a secret right now.

 But I can say some further inspiration came last winter while I was reading the riveting, moving memoir by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast, “Can’t we talk about something more pleasant?” It’s a graphic non-fiction book about the final years of the author’s parents.

 After her mother and father, at age 94, were relegated to a nursing facility, Chast was faced with the task of cleaning out their Brooklyn apartment. Her account of that daunting chore hit home, so to speak.

 “I was aggravated that they hadn’t dealt with their accumulations, back when they had the ability to do so. That instead, when they decided to leave, they simply packed a couple of little bags and walked out, leaving me the task of cleaning out their apartment,” she wrote.

 The randomly stockpiled possessions she found were unique to her parents — such as a “museum of old Schick savers,” her mom’s old glasses, tons of pencils everywhere, enough old purses to cover a bed, a drawer of old jar lids — but the overall borderline hoarding syndrome is pretty universal.

 Just peering into the first room we had targeted for excavation, I could see piles of stuff that only stuck around to provide me occasional distant memories to savor: a dozen pompoms from hockey or football games we had attended to cheer on my college alma maters; clothing from my sons’ various stages of life.

 A desk housed two long-obsolete computer towers and their likewise useless printer, scanner, speakers, software CDs, instructional books and reams of paperwork.

 They had been kept for basically two reasons: They have to be hauled to a disposal site 10 miles away; the hard drives need to be destroyed so bad guys cannot mine them for personal information.

There also was old now-useless satellite radio equipment in one box and a shelf full of every pair of goggles I had bought in a years-long quest to find the right pair for comfort, vision and anti-leakage. I kept figuring somehow stuff like that would come in handy at some future time, like if someone wanted to swim and needed a pair of goggles. Sounds silly now. But I am still keeping at least one pair.    

 The desk debris was the first to be jettisoned. Then came the pompoms, unsalvageable clothing, old school papers and some old toys that would never be used by children in this day and age. Local landfills are bulging with Meyer discards this spring.

 I had stared at these items daily during my morning exercise routines. Much of the clothing had been visible through the sides of plastic containers.  The pompoms were atop a cardboard box full of clothing.

 Yes, just knowing they were there brought me a degree of nostalgia and comfort during down times. However, like a ton of other items scattered around our house  — baseball hats, pictures, books, paintings  — they also make me sad. They are reminders of good times gone by, with the key words being “gone by,” meaning never to return.

 I appreciated those experiences at the time and a lot of the memorabilia was bought so that I could retain some semblance of the good feelings that emanated from them, like those that fill us when we hear a favorite old song or see scenes from a favorite old TV show or movie.

 But now the decades of distance from the memories has taken some of the edge off the nostalgia. And saying goodbye to the items, while a bittersweet act in itself, is freeing — an escape from the sadness they bring.  

 That’s pretty much what my mom said would happen, and it is true. The much-dreaded severance from the material representations of my past is turning me loose to start building an environment that can nurture future growth.  

Of course, the “glass half empty” approach to life would depict all this jettisoning as the beginning of the end rather than a rebirth. After all, it is a prelude to creating a simpler, easier-to-handle living space, suitable to the geezer years, which, of course, are the end of the line.  

 Believe me, those morose thoughts are always hovering.

 But I am trying my best to embrace a “glass half full” attitude:

 Because there are just a few decades of life remaining, that makes these mounds of material possessions much less necessary to my life.  Why not free myself up and finish with a new burst of life — fulfilling the bucket list, making new memories, enjoying my children’s exploits, hanging with the grandkids, discovering new things?  

 Makes sense, if you can envision the end of the process.

 Right now, we are at the beginning, just getting used to the conflicting emotions and the massive time needed to accomplish the task.

 It’s springtime, there is yard work to be done, a graduation to attend, a family to enjoy, warm weather to feel.

 Incorporating the autumn of our years into this season of hope and change will take discipline. But, of course, we have no choice.

[geezeralert]

Eternal Beatlemania

“Enough, already, about the Beatles!!”

 Those are the words I imagine many younger people scream, at least mentally, a few times a year.

 It seems that almost daily there’s a new book (“John Lennon, the Potty Training Years”), a new anniversary (“50 years since ‘Hey Jude, Live’!”), a new discovery (“Ringo’s Hospital Bed Drumsticks”), new photos (The Beatles walking down the street, waiting in line (1962)”), a new compilation of music (“The Beatles: Near Misses of the 60s, Part 1”) or a new Paul McCartney CD (“Duets with Myself”).

 Us baby boomers cannot get enough of those legends of our youth and, as nostalgia steadily takes over more and more of what’s left in these aging brains, it will only get worse.

 In my three years of blogging, I’ve already weighed in once on this phenomenon. For part two of my February 2013 posts on individual taste, “Passion and Community,” I  wrote how my own deep interest in the Beatles, while falling far short of the obsession felt by thousands, had resulted in multiple purchases of books and the complete collection of the group’s re-mastered recordings on CD.

 Those releases, and their subsequent history-making availability on iTunes, should have been the end of Beatle things for all involved.

 Not even close, even for me.

 First, I couldn’t resist a half-price offer on The Criterion Collection’s release of a beautiful digital restoration Blu-Ray of the Beatles’ first move, “A Hard Day’s Night,” with lots of extras in a dual-format edition. Great to see, great to have for viewing whenever I want.

 Then there came a gift from my wife last Christmas of a coffee table book with details on every song every recorded by the group. It was my third — yes third —such book, going back a few decades. I plan to consult them as I go through my aforementioned CD compilation.

 Any month now. Patience.

 Well, that should do it, I concluded.

 Geezer alert: Wrong again.

 A month or so ago, I heard an interview on my primary book-tip program, NPR’s “Fresh Air,” with Beatles historian Kevin Howlett. The occasion was the release of “On Air — Live at the BBC Volume 2.” That’s a very rare collection of recordings by the Beatles on BBC radio programs of the early 60s.

Somehow, with incredible self-control, I had resisted the 1994 release of volume 1 of those BBC tunes (five million sold worldwide), its re-release in 2013 and the later publication of an accompanying book by Howlett, “The Beatles: The BBC Archives.”

 But the snippets of the Volume 2 songs on “Fresh Air” piqued my little Beatle-crazed brain and, as soon as I got some nice discount coupons from Barnes & Noble, I was off.

 Within a few minutes one recent Saturday, I had: ordered Howlett’s book (at half price) and bought both volume 1 (What a surprise! It’s still available!) and volume 2 of the BBC archives.

 I know. It’s a sickness.

 But please allow me to explain just how incredible these two discs and book are.

 We are dealing here with raw, unpretentious early performances of great pop music by four young men who would go on to become international legends. So,  to begin with, there’s that historical element.

 The recordings were left to the BBC archives, destined to be lost or forgotten, until Howlett began his project. In other words, the music and interviews were done for the music and immediate entertainment value alone — for experience and fun and maybe (for the radio station) historical purposes, as opposed to sharing on “social media” or legacy-building or commercial branding or any other of the values current artists attach to musical performances. It was all pretty innocent.

 And this innocence makes the quality of the musical performances even more astonishing.

 This was one tight little band with four very talented singers and musicians in their early 20s who had honed their skills with hundreds of live performances in the previous years.

 Then came the BBC shows, just as the group was beginning to gain widespread public notice. As the CD cover describes:

 “Between March 1962 and June 1965, no less than 275 unique musical performances by the Beatles were broadcast by the BBC in the UK. The group played 88 different songs on national radio — some were recorded many times, 37 were performed just once.”

 The first double-CD collection presents alternative versions of songs that eventually became part of their recorded music plus 30 others being released for the first time. Volume 2 adds 10 more songs never recorded by the group — “Two of those are released for the first time ever” — among “37 previously unreleased performances and 23 newly available speech tracks.”

 As of this writing, I’ve only listened to volume 1 but I’m already prepared to gush about the experience.

 First impressions:

 ** It took some genius of engineering to make such quality compact-disc recordings out of the old reel-to-reel tapes that contained the original shows. They sound like studio recordings. I fully expected scratchy, tinny, inconsistent audio sounds.  

 ** In contrast to many barbed comments and satire over the years, Ringo Starr is one great drummer. He plays lots of intricate riffs while keeping a steady, mistake-proof beat that augments the music and allows the songs to flourish.

 ** All four band members had excellent rock n roll voices (yes, again, including Ringo) and natural musical abilities. These are vocal and instrumental performances without studio enhancement — using bare-bones hookups at a radio station (with photos to prove it!) — and they sound amazingly like those later recorded in a studio.  

 The CDs demonstrate conclusively why the Beatles rose above the dozens of bands on the music scene of the late 50s and early 60s. They had paid some serious dues and become, with the invaluable guidance and promotional efforts of Brian Epstein, showmen capable of sustaining the interest of a wide cross-section of the youth market.

 It’s also plain to see why they had staying power. A less practiced, less adaptable, less talented group would have faded soon after the initial hysteria of screaming females got a few years past puberty.

 But this Liverpool foursome, just like crooner Frank Sinatra before them, had a level of talent that withstood the test of time and flourished for decades.

 Still, Howlett’s book tells how, from the start, there was nothing preordained about the Beatles’ success. With the newness of rock n roll and the ever-changing tastes of pop music fans, the band’s prospects looked to be short term.

 They were asked constantly on the radio programs about what they planned to do once their popularity faded.  (Ringo famously always said he wanted to be a hairdresser.)

 Listening to the BBC performances, I would conclude that the group’s musical versatility — rock, blues, country, standards, rockabilly — played the most important role in their longevity.

 Yes, good looks and good timing created their roaring popularity, along with their easily accessible music, as spoofed by the Rutles in the mockumentary “All You Need is Cash” and on “Saturday Night Live.” But the group’s wide-ranging musical background, being able to draw upon many different sources for their songwriting and recordings, was the key to their sustained creativity.    

 In conclusion, if there remains doubt regarding whether the Beatles are worthy of the accolades given them, these BBC archives should dispel them.

 It’s always struck me as odd that The Rolling Stones were given more credibility than the Beatles as true rockers — as a group more worthy of serious attention among real rock fans.

 The Stones’ harder-edged music, together with their street-tough stage and public personas, gained them instant rock n roll legitimacy. Meanwhile, the Beatles’ lighter fare was seen as more commercial and lacking in the grittiness that many rock fans deem necessary for qualification as rock n roll.  

 But the truth is that the rock n roll brand is wide enough for a lot of different sounds, from very hard (punk, acid, heavy metal) to very soft (the bulk of what used to be known as Top 40 radio).

 The Stones also went commercial for much of the 60s but their music still exists within pretty narrow perimeters. The Beatles, though, often explored the harder edges of rock while keeping their basic, accessible musicality intact. On the BBC recordings, John Lennon and Paul McCartney both let loose their hard-rock chops.

 Further, as individuals, the Beatles came from hardscrabble backgrounds more befitting the image of tough, hard-rockers while the Stones had the artsy pedigrees more befitting the softer musician types.

 As noted, the Beatles sounded so good at the BBC because all but Ringo had spent years together, pleasing audiences in Hamburg, Germany, and Liverpool. For his part, Ringo was an established, experienced drummer, playing for years with another group.

 They were able to set themselves apart from a pop music scene that largely relied on studio musicians to produce great recordings, ala The Wrecking Crew on the U.S. West Coast and The Funk Brothers at Detroit’s Motown.

 In the recently released documentary on The Wrecking Crew, we see that even the Beach Boys — arguably the Beatles’ biggest rivals for pop music popularity in the 60s — relied on studio musicians for their recordings. The Beach Boys may have played their own instruments in concert, but they were only background contributors on many of their great-sounding records.    

 When the Beatles’ concert days were over, they turned into studio sound experts themselves for their later albums (most notably, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band”) before returning to their simpler, tight-band roots in their final years (“Let It Be,” “Abbey Road,” the white album.).  

 Along the way, they kept creating music, even in their solo careers, which were good enough to earn them selection to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as individuals atop their admittance as a group (Ringo being the last inducted this year).

 With all that recognition, the absolute last thing that group needs is a blog post by me, singing their praises.

 But maybe, just maybe, these words can help some Beatle-stuff-exhausted younger soul appreciate why we boomers just can never get enough of the Fab Foursome.  

[geezeralert]

Needed: Brilliantphones

For this piece, I started out wanting to explore the continued telemarketing pestilence in our lives.

 My taking-off point was a feeling that somehow, with our world’s incredible smartphone craze and the age-old disdain for these unwanted solicitation calls, you would think something could be done to stop them.

 I figured if the smartphone people at Apple or Google or wherever want to upgrade their products — to make them “brilliantphones” — they should figure out how to permanently block telemarketers.  

 Same goes for our prehistoric phone systems, aka land lines. If the various telecommunications companies want to gain an edge on their competitors, they should look at ways — outside of the porous “Do Not Call” government registry effort and the limited call blocking allowance — to keep out telemarketing calls.

 But as I researched these topics on the internet, I found, to my surprise, efforts are indeed underway to at least address the mobile phone intrusions. Okay, good to know.

 So, that turned my focus to two areas: whether we would need to surrender too much personal information (caller preferences) to make these succeed; and just what makes these sales efforts stand the test of time.

 For the latter, the logical conclusion is that telemarketing, bottom line, is successful. And that means there are many thousands of people who answer them and buy stuff. And, further, that means they are the ones we should be blaming, then, for the persistence of these annoyances.

 A quick internet search of “telemarketing works” finds several sites with success stories.

 A blogger named Sylvan Courcous, billing himself as an “internet entrepreneur,” writes that he was one of those nefarious callers and “in reality:“ telemarketing does work. Usually, the generally-accepeted conversion ratio is 1%, which means that it takes about 1,000 calls to acquire 10 solid prospects, or that 99% of all people will say no. Note that I'm not using the word customer because once you have a prospect; you then need to convert that prospect into a customer: prospecting is not about necessarily selling over the phone, sometimes it's just about getting an appointment. For instance, if you're selling a product or a service that requires one or more face-to-face appointment then 1,000 calls will yield 10 appointments which may in turn convert to 0 or 10 customers. Of course, the number varies a lot from salesperson to salesperson and from industry to industry. Overall, telemarketing is a numbers game that relies on the law of large numbers, meaning lots and lots of phone calls.”

 On another site, Geoff Thomas, managing director of something called “Integrity Business Connections” at UTalkMarketing.com, writes:

 “Telemarketing, especially when run in association with supporting PR, can be a highly cost effective method of kick starting new business development in a recession because securing every new customer starts with one important factor — a face-to-face appointment.

 “Intellectually correct. But what’s the real reason? A lot of people don’t like using the phone to make that ‘cold-call’. Emotionally that’s even more right isn’t it? I bet there are quite a few of you out there who just hate the idea of making that cold call to a new contact. Terrifying.

 “Men don’t seem to like using the phone as much because our brains are hardwired to respond more to visual clues. Studies show the emotion control center of the brain, the amygdala, shows significantly higher levels of activation in males from visual stimuli than females viewing the same images.

 “It seems that men need all the clues from people’s faces and body language. Is it also a fear of failure in men compounded by the lack of visual clues that turn us away from the phone?

 “So, don’t think of it as telemarketing, think of it as appointment arranging without having to pick up the phone.”

 The point, for my purposes, is that a lot of people apparently are out there justifying the sales method that involves cold-calling  strangers en masse . And they don’t like making the calls any more than we like receiving them.

 But once they’ve swallowed hard and gone forward with the calls, they take their lumps, accept failure, keep going and, finally, make some money when even a few victims accede to their pitches.

 Not good news for the rest of us.

 But, going back to the “brilliantphone” that could eliminate telemarketing, my quick internet search showed there are now apps that attempt that.

 “There are dozens of free apps available in the Google Play store that let you screen your calls, alert you to potential fraud and even block suspected voice and text message spam,” said a June 2014 report by Herb Weisbaum on CNBC. “These services, such as Truecaller, PrivacyStar and WhitePages Current, use crowd-sourcing—reports from their users—along with information from public databases and their own algorithms to detect unwanted calls.

" ‘When your phone rings and you have to decide whether to answer or not, we try to help you figure out who's calling and why,’ said Jonathan Sasse, CMO of PrivacyStar.”

 (Details: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101758815)

 Sounds a bit sketchy at this point — “crowd sourcing” can be corrupted, and the apps present the prospect of information sharing (desired phone numbers, undesired phone numbers) that could be worse than the telemarking problem itself — but they are on the right track.

 It’s comforting to know attempts are being made to address this widely shared concern.  Personally, I’ll let others use and rate the different apps for a year or two before trying them.

But that still leaves our “land lines,” whether hard-wired or wireless. What can be done to block unwanted calls to our homes?

 Eventually, I guess, the goal would be to transfer just about all domestic calls to mobile phones. That way, those protective screening apps can be installed.

 Otherwise, it’s just a matter of dealing with the non-profits or other solicitors who can legitimately stay off the “Do Not Call” registry.

 And that leaves up to each individual to just say “no” when the calls come in.

 Sounds easy enough. But our recent experience with the Democratic Party was anything but.

 I gave a token amount to an online fundraiser for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. My wife gave a little more.

 From that, my email address was handed out to at seven or eight related entities, including the fundraising arm of a Syracuse congressional race and the Democratic National Committee.  

 They sent out a daily barrage of pleading, sky-is-falling emails, all of which ended with a solicitation for money.  They were comical in their alarmist tone and extremist cries. They made the Democrats look remarkably like their hated Republican extremists opponents.

 When the election was over, I opted out of all of them. My wife had done the same.

 Meanwhile, though, several of them got our phone number, evidently because my wife had given a pretty good sum (by our standards) at one point.

 That began an onslaught of fundraising calls to her from different Democratic organizations, both immediately after the election and for months afterward. When my wife tried to demur, under our blanket policy of not making any donations (or doing any other business with strangers) over the telephone, some of the callers got argumentative.

 Finally, in recent weeks, after repeated requests to put us on their “do not call” lists, the calls appear to have stopped.

 The lesson here is that even the entities allowed to stay off the “do not call” registry can be a nuisance.  A second tier of banned callers needs to be established, a registry of non-profits, political parties and others that we have had past relations but wish to not hear from any more.

 We should be able to even put on that list those awful guilt-trip solicitations from organizations stating they represent law enforcement agencies, such as the New York State Association of Sheriffs or New York State Police or Police Benevolent Association.

 These may or may not be highly laudable not-profit groups seeking to do wonderful things but they also could be fronts for scams. We have no way to tell, really, without taking the time to investigate.

 And there’s always that unspoken hint that giving to law enforcement causes — I believe at least one fundraiser promises bumper or window stickers to show your support — can somehow help you in any future dealings with officers of the law and, conversely, failure to give could harm your standing should you someday be involved in anything requiring said personnel.

 That’s offensive.

  All such groups should be limited to anonymous group fundraisers (like selling calendars or raffle tickets or bike safety courses).

 But, or course, we’re back to point no. 1: Telemarketing works.

 And this must be especially true if the hint/threat of law enforcement connections hangs over the call.  

 Just be glad the CIA doesn’t need fundraisers.