Life In the Slow Lane

Jabberwocky: Why I'm awake at 5 a.m.

It's 5 a.m. I should be sleeping.

But I'm wide awake. My mind is spinning. Why? Jabberwocky, that's why.

It came to me as I slept. Jabberwocky. That's what's going on. It's plain as can be, to me, in the foggy limbo betwixt subconscious and conscious.

I stumble towards my computer. J-a-b ... Hmmm. Not exactly what I thought, but close. Still true, nonetheless.

We're divided, you see. Some of us believe one thing; the rest of us believe something else. Some of us play by house rules; the rest of us don't. There is disorder in the house and the rules don't seem to matter. Jabberwocky.

Up is down. Right is wrong. Say it often enough and it's true, no matter how absurd. Not exactly jabberwocky; closer to Through the Looking Glass, the story that lifted the nonsense poem, Jabberwocky,  to prominence. Those topsy turvy pronouncements were recognized as nonsense as soon as they hit print in 1871. Not anymore. Truths are lies; lies are truth. Jabberwocky is winning.  And I'm not sleeping.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is now available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

Facebook: Where death is just a status update

At least 4.1 percent of my Facebook friends are dead. And that's just the ones I know about.

I shouldn't be surprised. In real life, people are born, live their lives and die. Relationships function in much the same way. Someone enters your life, interacts a while, then leaves your life (sometimes by dying).

But Facebook is different.

In real life, friendships develop more or less organically, and at close range. You can engage all your bodily senses when interacting with real-life friends. The closest you get to some of your Facebook friends depends on your typing skills. Some people collect Facebook friends like Niek Vermeulen collects airline barf bags (the Dutch collector has over 6,000 of them).

I have Facebook friends from different parts of my life. There are family and real friends, such as co-workers and classmates. I also have a considerable number of Facebook friends developed through my books or other writings. A few are still with me after my brief career as a personal historian or the time I spent in my local Chamber of Commerce, though it's been years since I was active in either one.

Although a person's circle of friends is constantly evolving over the course of a lifetime, it's been my experience that Facebook friends just sort of hang around, no matter how tangential the connection. I'm certain that the great majority of my Facebook friends pay absolutely no attention to whatever I post  and may have even hidden me. That's OK (I've hidden people, too). Managing a Facebook news feed can be a full-time job if you let it. Which brings me back to dead people.

I find it kind of creepy to get a birthday reminder or "Friendversary" greeting about a person I know is dead. Sometimes it evokes great sadness if it was a real friend. The only way to stop these reminders, apparently, is to "Unfriend" someone, which seems cruel and callous to me.

Some people don't mind messages about the dead, diligently sending "Happy birthday in heaven" messages to the departed. Some Facebook pages have been changed to "Remembering" or tribute pages. Some even accept new friend requests on behalf of the deceased.

Facebook, of course, wants to know everything about everybody -- dead or living -- and is taking bold steps to ensure that no one has to die, at least not on Facebook. In a brazen attempt to keep even the dead tethered to Facebookland, it has made it easier to preserve a person's Facebook legacy. In time, the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook. That should sound creepy to everyone.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is now available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

The real lesson from the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton: Go for it

A common refrain on cable news these days is that Democrats are reluctant to try to impeach Donald Trump because they fear the backlash suffered by Republicans in 2000 after their failed effort to oust President Bill Clinton. The impression is that the Republicans suffered greatly since their impeachment charge only made Clinton more popular and the Republicans paid at the polls.

But a look at the actual results of the 2000 presidential campaign show these concerns to be vastly overblown, if not downright wrong.

Whatever you think of the outcome of the 2000 presidential race (what with all the hub-bub over Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, hanging chads et al in Florida and the Supreme Court stepping in), the White House flipped to the Republicans' benefit with the inauguration in January 2001 of President George W. Bush.

That "bloodbath" in the House resulted in Republicans losing two seats and the Democrats gaining one (an Independent took the other) with the Republicans still holding a slim majority for the 107th Congress.

The Republicans did, indeed, pay a price in the U.S. Senate, where the Democrats picked up four seats on election day to forge a 50-50 deadlock between the two major parties. The Republicans effectively held the advantage, though, with Republican Vice President Dick Cheney available to break any deadlocks. Until, May 24, 2001, that is, when Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords switched from Republican to Independent and caucused with the Democrats, giving them a 51-49 advantage.

There are other interesting tidbits from that election in 2000: Hillary Clinton won her first election as a Senator from New York, Barak Obama lost his bid for an Illinois Congressional seat, the deceased Mel Carnahan was elected to a Missouri Senate seat (his wife was named to replace him) and Jeffords would be succeeded by Bernie Sanders six years later.

But all that talk about the Republicans being humiliated after trying to impeach Bill Clinton ... not true.

Larry Lehmer is a writer based in Urbandale, Iowa. His latest book is Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll, now available from Sunbury Press and major booksellers. He is also the author of The Day the Music Died: The last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.

 

This is why old people hate the Internet

I spent a decent amount of time this morning listening to a person very close to me trying to make sense of that cyber mungled-jungle known as the Internet.

"But why did you have to change it?" came the plaintive wail, obviously not buying any explanation coming from the other end of the cyber communication.

This person is not Internet-averse and freely uses computers, iPads and smart phones to conduct routine daily functions, like checking schedules, keeping in touch with friends and relatives and ordering all manner of widgets online. The issue this morning came while checking a bank account.

Now, I know that buying a latte with a swipe of a smart phone is no big deal for many of you and illegibly scribbling your name with your index finger on a tablet may be a nifty way to pay for a furnace repair, but for many of us who grew up making regular visits to an honest-to-goodness physical building known as a bank, any sort of financial transaction that doesn't involve forking over some good old U.S. of A. cash and receiving a paper receipt in return scares the bejesus out of us.

In my friend's case, it wasn't even a transaction that threw up the red flags. It was simple access to the account that was called in question.

When logging in, a funky screen came up with all the warmth of a Doc Martin prognosis. What's your name? What's your social security number? When were you born? Did you ever buy a John Davidson record? (Oops. Nobody ever asks that question).

By now, we all know that whenever anyone asks you those highly personal questions, you back off a bit. A quick phone call to the bank ought to square things, right? No such thing as a quick phone call these days. It was more like a lengthy, unrequested side trip to Phone Hold Hell. There was time to unload the dishwasher, start a load of laundry and maybe knock off a few chapters of War & Peace before a human voice appeared.

After a panicky explanation of the problem, a calm voice at the other end of the line explained that yes, the web page had changed, but you're really going to like it when you get used to it. From then on, it was confusion at my friend's end of the line. "What's THAT?" ... "You mean I have to change my password?" ... "I've never seen that number before. How was I supposed to know about that?"

Eventually, the matter was resolved. More or less.

"I liked it better before," my friend lectured. "I don't like it that you changed it."

We've all been there. Update this, upgrade that. This doesn't work with that since that's changed. You'll have to change this.

In fairness to those on the company end of the line, they've got things tough. Internet security is a big issue for them. They've got to protect their business. That includes their relationship with their customers. Enough businesses have been burned to merit additional precautions. But that doesn't make it any better for consumers who are bombarded by creepy targeted ads, fake news and memes and Facebook "friends" in a relentless pursuit of Likes with one digit perpetually twitching atop the Share button.

That's why old people hate the Internet.

Larry Lehmer is an Iowa-based journalist and author. His book, Bandstandland: How dancing teenagers took over America and Dick Clark took over rock & roll, is scheduled to be published in 2019 by Sunbury Press.

 

I came, I saw. I forgot.

Sorry, Target

That quart of half & half somebody left in their shopping cart recently? That was me. It wasn't intentional. I wasn't trying to send a message. It's just that, well, I sometimes forget things.

This sort of thing has happened to me a couple of times before. One time, at Sam's Club, I left a big bag of rice tucked into that lower part of shopping carts designed for bulky and heavy items. Another time, I think, it was soap, also down under whatever else I bought that day. On both of those occasions, I left something behind in the parking lot that I had paid for and pushed right to my car's trunk and still forgot it. I know I'm not alone. I once scored a case of that weird-tasting unrefrigerated organic chocolate milk that a forgetful Costco shopper unwittingly left for me in a discarded cart.

At least I didn't pay for the half & half. I only went to Target to buy two things, but decided to take a spin around the store in search of post-holiday bargains. I passed on the 70 percent off candy canes and 90 percent off Christmas ornaments in what was ultimately a waste of time. I'm not much of a shopper, but I once enjoyed shopping at Target. Ours is a Super Target, which means it's huge, but it was logically organized, reasonably priced and adequately appointed with those little red price-checking scanners sprinkled throughout.

It's not much fun anymore.

It's still huge, but a recent remodel is hopelessly incoherent to me. One of the things I was looking for was athletic socks. It used to be easy finding a package of reasonably priced off-brands. Not now. My search for a bargain was complicated by big boldly branded displays of Hanes and Fruit of the Loom. I eventually found what I was looking for, around the corner, hanging quietly on a sad, singular hook.

One of my New Year's traditions is to buy a marked-down Target turkey for my annual half-Thanksgiving dinner in late spring. Sadly, there was no such offering this year. I can't blame a store for not catering to the whims of loss-leader shoppers like me, but I was quite pleased to find the store-branded half & half at a very reasonable price, which is why I added it to my cart.

My shopping done, I set out on the two- or three-block march to the store checkout area, only to find just two stations open. Our Target has probably a dozen or more of these checkout stations. That's a pretty optimistic view of their retailing prowess, in my opinion, but two open stations just doesn't cut it. One of the more annoying results of the remodel is the sprouting of a half-dozen or so self checkout stations. I realize that this is a growing trend among retailers, but I hate it. Rather than getting in line behind Target shoppers, I'm sure many find the brightly lit self checkouts have the allure of a casino's flashing slot machines.

Personally, I prefer my checkouts to be staffed by employees earning a wage suitable for putting roofs over their family's heads and food in their bellies, which is why I chose to get in line behind a chatty lady and her cart full of groceries. There I stood for what seemed an eternity as the lady ahead of me and the Target clerk engaged in endless banter about every item as it made the journey from cart, over scanner and into tidy plastic bag. "Do you want your milk in a bag?" "Oh, where did you find that? My family loves it." "Yeah. The store brand is just as good. And cheaper, too."

I was not in the mood for conversation, when it was my turn. Nor, I suspect were the half-dozen or so shoppers lined up on the Target tarmac behind me. I blame my eagerness to complete my transaction for the carelessness that resulted in some hapless Target employee having to restock a fairly priced quart of half & half.

Sorry, Target.

Larry Lehmer is an Iowa-based journalist and author. His book, Bandstandland: How dancing teenagers took over America and Dick Clark took over rock & roll, is scheduled to be published in 2019 by Sunbury Press.

How I spent my college years: Dragging hoses and making a feeble attempt at writing poetry

When I was a college student, I burned through a couple of majors before embarking on a career as a journalist. I was as surprised as anyone as my career path wound through my initial mathematics major to my eventual undergraduate degree in psychology to a lengthy newspaper career as reporter and editor, with side trips as a personal historian and pop culture author.

But I really shouldn't have been that surprised. I enjoyed my college writing courses -- narrative writing, expository writing and creative writing. But there was a lengthy gap in my writing for pleasure, from the first story I ever wrote, The Go Away Dog, as a kindergartner to the terribly pretentious and dismal attempts at poetry in my college years. My poetry years largely coincided with my railroad years, about 1965 to 1967. Those were the years I worked full-time for Union Pacific while attending Omaha University, full-time as well.

My work hours those years were most often midnight to 8 a.m., at Union Station in Omaha. Those were the hours that U.P. streamliners passed through Omaha and it was my duty to provide drinking water to the passenger and sleeping cars as they paused on their journeys. On any given shift, we'd service 4-6 trains, giving us ample time to ourselves. It was great for a college kid like me to hear stories from railroad men who were mostly of a different era and who were raising families on the same salary I was making to advance my education. Much of my education actually came from those guys trying to stay awake between trains.

I also spent considerable time "upstairs," sometimes in the magnificent Union Station itself but more often in the neighboring Burlington Station, which was just a short over-the-tracks bridge away. If I was going to be seen loitering, I reasoned, better at a rival railroad's station than that of my own employer. So there I sat in Burlington's waiting room at 2, 3, 4 a.m., writing feverishly in a 25 cent stenographer's notebook. I was fairly prolific in those years, filling up one notebook and most of another in 1967 alone. While there are no surviving copies of The Go Away Dog, I do still have those notebooks.

Most of the work is pretty bad, though I did manage to sneak one whimsical poem into my university's literary magazine, The Grain of Sand. My poetry was heavily influenced by two of my favorite singers at the time, Bob Dylan and David Blue. My essays owe their opacity to the wacky styles used by John Lennon in his early books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard In the Works.

I can't tell you much about how Union Pacific trains fared in the wee hours of June 9, 1967, but, according to my notes, I was laboring in the vastness of Omaha's Burlington Station, scribbling out a tale of a go-go dancer:

BRILLIA CONDUSO

High heeled boots and Spanish lace,
Tight blonde hair never out of place,
Graceful movements with marked finesse,
Golden bangles on a golden dress,
And yet you asked me how I guessed.

Brillia Conduso, is she what she seems?
In her long tight nylons with long black seams?

Tattered bikinis all over the place,
Backstage a young girl pleads her case,
Up front, salesmen clap their hands,
And their devious minds make devious plans,
And yet you asked me is it all that bad.

Brillia Conduso has yet to show.
And even when she does, will anyone know?
And if they know, will they let it show?

The spotlight tears through the gaudy balloons,
And casts a sickening glow on the dressing rooms,
Not a very pleasant sight you say,
Brillia Conduso faces it every day,
And yet you asked is it all fun and play.

Brillia Conduso in her cap and gown,
Should have been smiling but you know she frowned,
While everyone looked up, she looked down,
And couldn’t help seeing what she hadn’t found.

Brillia made her entrance, like a queen she appeared,
Everyone in front of her guzzled their beer,
Hands flew, horns blew, she knew what it meant,
The roar that followed came from every shallow gent,
And yet you ask me if you could go to where she’s been.

Brillia Conduso never had a chance,
Brillia Conduso can’t really dance,
Brillia Conduso can’t make it at all,
Brillia Conduso’s had a great fall,
Brillia Conduso’s not like you or me,
Brillia Conduso can never be free,
And yet you ask me if I can really see.

I think it's a good idea for writers to revisit their work, if just to remind them of where they once were and what they may have been thinking about at the time. For me, poetry was just something I once dabbled in. I'm still not much of a poetry guy, but I hugely respect some of the great songwriters of today who take on the twin challenges of creating memorable lyrics that also sound good when you sing them. One of my favorite examples of concise storytelling is in Buddy Holly's I'm Looking for Someone to Love where he tells a complete story in just nine words: "Drunk man, street car, foot slipped, there you are."

Larry Lehmer is an Iowa-based journalist and author. His book, Bandstandland: How dancing teenagers took over America and Dick Clark took over rock & roll, is scheduled to be published in 2019 by Sunbury Press.

It's no longer a secret: The really cool Des Moines nonfiction writers have united

That's a pretty nifty writing group we've got going. Thank you, Des Moines writers. To recap:

We started the Nonfiction Writers of Des Moines a couple months ago when I couldn't find a local writing group that focused on nonfiction. There are several very good general writing groups in the area but they tend to focus on works of fiction. Thus, our group was born. The group has a pretty lively Facebook page that is accessible to anyone. So far it's been a decorous place, free of the trolling and general nastiness that plagues many online forums. Check it out here.

Our membership list is slowly growing. We already count among our members a documentary film maker, a book publisher, a former Drake journalism instructor, a professional musician, an ex-priest and a prominent local freelance writer. Our roster includes published authors (traditional and self-published) and writers who are seeking inspiration and assistance in starting a project. Genderwise, it has about the same number of men and women. It's an interesting and diverse group of bloggers, historical fiction writers and other wordsmiths who share a passion for storytelling.

We've had three meetups so far, the most recent this week. Among topics covered this week were using Twitter as a writing tool, various means of promoting a blog, the value of writing every day, an update on how the book publishing business has changed over the past 20 years, a fascinating briefing on Alfred Lawson (A Detroit entrepreneur whose career ambitions crashed and burned in Des Moines) and the story of how one writer turned in a 700-page manuscript to a Beta reader and was told, "Well, it's a good start."

As good as the group is, we still have room for more. Whether you're a seasoned writer or just someone who is yearning to share a good story, we all benefit from the company of like-minded, supportive people. Please share this post with anyone who may be interested.

We'll probably have one more meeting in our home, but our group will soon outgrow our cozy living room. We'll probably be looking for another site after that. A couple of possibilities are our local Urbandale library or a coffee shop, like the gathering room at Twisted Bean on Merle Hay. We've been meeting on Wednesday nights, but we could change to whatever the group decides. If you have any thoughts, please send me an e-mail.

Again, thank you, Des Moines writers, for supporting our group. Let's keep the ball rolling.

Now, an interlude from one of my favorite guitarists/groups:

 

Life without a spouse? Unthinkable, yet likely

Do you often think about life without your spouse?

That was the theme of a movie Linda and I watched last weekend. The movie, The Leisure Seeker, was the story of an aging couple determined to check off one last item on their bucket list before one or the other succumbs to the inevitable infirmities of aging. It was a well-crafted tale that dealt with one of the most common yet seldom discussed aspects of human life – adjusting to life alone after decades of sharing with a loving spouse.

Ironically, we watched the movie on the same day that Dody Boswell died. She had been widowed just a week earlier with the death of her husband, former Iowa congressman Leonard Boswell. It’s not that rare that a spouse dies within hours or days of a spouse. Think back; when George H.W. Bush was hospitalized right after the funeral of his wife, Barbara, didn’t you think he was a goner, too?

Lengthy marriages are special. To get to 40, 50 or more years in a marriage means a lot of hurdles have been overcome, lots of compromises have been made. Working as a team becomes second nature, almost automatic. As we age, though, things also become more complicated. A married couple may have grown together over the years, but they may age differently from each other.

This has been the experience in my family. As my parents aged, my mother’s physical condition deteriorated much more rapidly than my father’s. Conversely, my dad saw a decline in his mental acuity at about the same time. Together they made a good team for years, but Dad was pretty much in a fog in the years between her death and his. With good professional care and the help of my brothers he was able to live out his final years in dignity.

It’s much more common, of course, for a widowed person to carry on after the intense immediate grief following the loss of a spouse has settled into a person’s soul. My paternal grandmother had more than two productive decades after being widowed in her 50s. I have several friends who seem to be coping quite well several years after the death of a spouse.

There’s little more daunting than the prospect of living a life alone after sharing virtually everything with a loving companion for a half-century yet it’s something that half of us old married folks will likely face in our lifetimes. We can do our best to prepare for it, even accept it, but we don’t have to like it.

I watched a good bit of the Little League World Series on TV last week, mostly because there was a Des Moines team in it. Little League has come a long ways since I first played for my church team, wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt as our uniforms, more than 60 years ago.

I noticed on a visit to Dick’s Sporting Goods a few years ago that you could buy a kid a $39.99 tee ball bat, a glove specific for each position and eye black stickers (10 for $5.95). Tee ball would have been called a sissy sport if it existed when I was a kid.

Here's the trailer for The Leisure Seeker:

 

 

 

In the news: Aug. 19, 1957

If you like heated bathrooms, you may have liked Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz

Remember Earl Butz?

He was the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture four decades ago, first appointed by President Richard Nixon and continuing under Gerald Ford. In 1976, John Dean, former White House Counsel under Nixon, was released from prison after a short stay for his role in the Watergate scandal. Rolling Stone magazine hired Dean and sent him to Kansas City to report on the Republican National Convention. It was while Dean was acting as a reporter that he found himself engaged in a conversation with Butz and singer Pat Boone. Here's part of Dean's story, as reported in Rolling Stone that fall:

"Pat [Boone] posed a question: “John and I were just discussing the appeal of the Republican party. It seems to me that the party of Abraham Lincoln could and should attract more black people. Why can’t that be done?” This was a fair question for the secretary, who is also a very capable politician.

“I’ll tell you why you can’t attract coloreds,” the secretary proclaimed as his mischievous smile returned. “Because colored only wants three things. You know what they want?” he asked Pat.

"Pat shook his head no; so did I.

“I’ll tell you what coloreds want. It’s three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit. That's all!”

The quote was generally cleaned up for publication but versions of it found their way into newspapers across the world within hours of Rolling Stone hitting the newsstands on October 1, 1976. On the morning of Oct. 4, UPI reported that Butz was under pressure to resign but had told the press that he had no intention of quitting. He resigned that afternoon.

My, how times have changed. Look where we are today.

Just thinking of enumerating the fissures in our republic give me a headache. There's no shortage of analysis of our predicament on cable TV, if you dare watch. As one institution after another crumbles from within, our future looks increasingly bleak. Real matters of consequence -- like climate change, income inequality, fiscal irresponsibility and basic humanity -- are swept aside by increasingly strident bickering.

It's beyond belief to me that a segment of our citizenry sees this civil foment as a good thing. Regardless of social status, we all have a stake in this. It wasn't that long ago that a politician would lose his grip on power for saying something stupid. Who would have guessed that the Watergate era would be seen as the good old days?

That's depressing.