odyssey

The Odyssey is an epic poem, probably written by Homer, which describes the adventures of Odysseus on his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War. The Coen Brothers’ movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, is a retelling of The Odyssey, set in the American south in the 1930’s. Another version of the epic is being played out by twenty-somethings in America today.

In an article in the New York Times last fall, David Brooks wrote about a current life phase that follows childhood and adolescence, a period of roughly ten years, which precedes adulthood. This phase, which he calls “odyssey,” is the transition between student life and adult life. It is the time when adult children move in and out of everything: home, relationships, careers and school. It is a time when parents become increasingly anxious because their adult children can’t seem to decide what they want to do with their lives and get on with it. Brooks says,

“There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.”

Using Brooks’ figures, fifty years ago some seventy percent of thirty-year-olds had moved away from home, become financially independent, gotten married and started a family. Ten years ago fewer than forty percent of thirty-year olds had done the same things.

There was an odyssey phase in my own life, but the only name we had for it at the time was “early mid-life crisis.” I left a terrific teaching job in my mid-twenties to take advantage of an opportunity in broadcasting. I gave up regular hours with great vacations at a job I knew how to do well for overnight shifts and a decrease in pay at a job for which I wasn’t trained. I’m sure my parents were very anxious.

It wasn’t easy for me either. I loved teaching, but I didn’t love my life. I didn’t want to be stuck in the same position ten or twenty years down the line. I wanted to try something new. When the rare opportunity for a paying gig as a performer fell right into my lap, I ran with it.

Brooks acknowledges that this is not an easy thing to do, “The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities.”

My journey into the world of radio and television lasted about six years. It was filled with the notable experiences and hardships that characterize an odyssey. I believe I am a better person for having taken the trip. That doesn’t mean, however, that it is always easy for me to watch my children as they struggle in their own odyssey years. I remember well that it is not an easy time.

coyote

The only time I have seen a real coyote was in the parking lot of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, AZ. My cousin Lynn, who lives in Tucson, acted as though it was almost an every day occurrence. She reacted as I might have, had it been a raccoon going through the garbage at a Minnesota State Park.

The coyote that I saw was smaller than I expected, more like a medium-sized mongrel dog than a wolf. He walked stealthily between the parked cars with his head and tail lowered, eyes slyly shifting from side to side, disappearing into the desert scrub as quickly as he had appeared on the concrete. He looked thin and hungry and I wondered, “Is he tracking a rabbit or some chicken nuggets?” I grabbed my children’s hands, fearing for their safety.

I saw a dancer portray another kind of coyote on stage last weekend in Border Crossing at the Ritz Theatre in Minneapolis. Jennifer Ilse brought to life the trickster coyote, popular in folklore. She did not slink, but held her head high. She drummed a native beat with her feet and spoke with the cunning of a survivor coyote, one who has used her wits to adapt. Mothers should hold their children tightly in the face of this animal, as well.

Ilse’s coyote earns her living transporting human cargo. She is a smuggler of illegal immigrants at the United States-Mexican border. Ever the trickster, she entices groups of migrants to relinquish their life’s savings and follow her, exploiting their need and promising things that she cannot deliver. My daughter is one of her desperate followers.

This is a tragic story of our time, well told. I recommend it. Performances continue this weekend, Thursday through Sunday.

LE:MON

LE:MON is an acronym for Leadership Evolved: My Oh Nine. The Oh Nine could also be written as '09, the year that my son and his classmates will graduate from college. He is currently running for president of his class as the LE:MON candidate and he has faced some criticism from his opponents because he is new to student government. Colin channels Daniel Day-Lewis and addresses his critics in this You Tube video, which I find very entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfQ-5yF3YE0

madrassa

All of us have seen disturbing news clips of young children in the Middle East shouting hateful things about Americans. We are shocked and saddened by these images and we are angered at the people who have taught these kids to hate us so much.

In Pakistan, Afghanistan and some other parts of the world, it seems that the virulent Anti-American sentiment is being taught at madrassas, Islamic schools, funded by the Saudis. Madrassa or madrasah is actually an Arabic word for any type of school, but it has come to mean a school where Islam is taught. The madrassas built by the Saudis in Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent years are said to espouse a radical, violent form of fundamental Islam that is anti-Western and Anti-American.

That is not to say that madrassa schools, by definition, dispense hatred for Americans. Barack Obama attended a predominately Muslim school, which could be considered a madrassa, when he lived in Jakarta as a teenager. Minneapolis StarTribune columnist, Katherine Kersten, reports that there is a Muslim charter school in a suburb of the Twin Cities operating today. She gives compelling evidence that this school, TIZA, which is funded by Minnesota taxpayers; provides class time for the study of the Qu’ran. The problem with TIZA is not that the students study a radical, hateful breed of Islam, because there is no evidence to support that they do. The problem is that they study Islam in a public school. I spend a lot of money to send my kids to a private school where they learn about world religions, examine their own faith and are allowed to sing Christmas Carols. Taxpayers do not support my children’s school and they should not support TiZA.

The Saudi-built madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan raise even greater concerns. Vali Nasr, the Iranian-American Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University has said,

“In order to have terrorists, in order to have supporters for terrorists, in order to have people who are willing to interpret religion in violent ways, in order to have people who are willing to legitimate crashing yourself into a building and killing 5,000 innocent people, you need particular interpretations of Islam.
Those interpretations of Islam are being propagated out of schools that receive organizational and financial funding from Saudi Arabia.”

Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, has asked, "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, has denounced madrassas in Pakistan and several other countries as breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists."

These people know a lot more about all of this than I do, but I recently read a book that supports what they say. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin tells the story of a lost mountain climber, Greg Mortenson, who stumbles into a remote village in Pakistan after his failed attempt to scale a mountain known as K2. Mortenson’s decision to repay the villagers for their kindness leads him to build them a school. Since then he has built 57 other schools, all in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where 24,000 students, more than half of them girls; are currently learning to read, to write and to do arithmetic. The only other schools being built in these remote areas are Islamic fundamentalist madrassas, where students learn fundamental Islam and to hate Americans.

It is Mortenson’s mission to “promote peace, one school at a time.” He has his detractors, but there are many who believe he will one day earn the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Tom Brokaw, one of his first supporters, describes Mortenson’s efforts as “proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world.”

rhinotillexis

Congratulations to my brother-in-law, Pete, who made it to the final round of Jeopardy at the Mall of America last weekend, when the Jeopardy Brain Bus rolled into town looking for contestants. His name now goes on file with those of the other finalists from Minneapolis and everywhere else try-outs are being held. Pete was told that he has a shot at being called up for the TV show anytime in the next eighteen months. He’s down-playing the whole thing, which is characteristic of him; but I am hoping he gets the call, wins big, retires early, travels everywhere and invites me to visit him.

I do not know if the word rhinotillexis was a part of my brother-in-law’s try-out, but I have been told that this is one of Ken Jennings’ questions: “What pastime is technically termed rhinotillexis?” In these days of the internet, the answer to the question is easily found: What is nose-picking?

At first I was not sure why I was provided with Ken Jennings’ question about rhinotillexis and this picture of Pete in the same e-mail from my sister, but I assumed there was a reason. After thoroughly scrutinizing the photo, I think I have figured it out. I now wonder where the future Ken Jennings is hiding his index finger.

Just kidding, of course! Bravo, Pete!

shipoopi

I remember my dad singing songs from The Music Man long before I first saw The Music Man. I remember him imitating the traveling salesmen, “But he doesn’t know the territory,” loving how the lyrics matched the cadence of the moving train.

I also remember his: “Oh, we got trouble! Right here in River City! …..Capital ‘T,’ …..rhymes with ‘P,’ ….. stands for Pool!” I’d write the whole thing, but there is that law about copy infringement getting in the way.

My dad didn’t have Robert Preston’s voice, but he did have his enthusiasm. His delight with The Music Man rubbed off on me and I thought of him last weekend when the musical opened to a full house at Breck School. I wish he could have been there to see his granddaughter perform with all of his enthusiasm AND a lovely singing voice.

Somer plays the farmer’s wife, which she claims, tongue-in-cheek, is the best part in the play. She is pictured at the top of the cast photo, re-enacting Grant Wood's American Gothic. The lead roles of Harold Hill and Marian the Librarian are played by deserving seniors, who do a great job. Somer, as a sophomore, is waiting her turn. She has the right attitude: There are no small parts, only small actors.

Cast members are now wearing t-shirts advertising the play with the word Shipoopi across the front. It’s the title of a lesser-known song from the play, one I never heard my dad sing. A shipoopi, according to the lyric, is a girl who’s hard to get. The actors in the play sing out the merits of the shipoopi while dancing the Virginia Reel. They have a great time with it and the audience does, too.

Congrats Somer, Sweet Sixteen! Break a leg in your final performance! Your dad and brother and sister and I will all be there, puffed-up with pride as we watch our shipoopi!

mendacity

“They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway. They say there's always magic in the air.” Ian and I got to experience George Benson’s Broadway magic in New York City over President’s Day weekend, twice.

The first was a college improv show at 116th and Broadway, which is about eighty blocks north of the theatre district, but on Broadway, and magical for the parents of the performers, just the same. Our son was both the emcee and a performer in this year’s “Fruit Paunch Formal Show,” and he did a great job. In one of his sketches he played a young schoolboy with an exaggerated lisp giving an oral report on walruses (walrutheth). He described how they had three tusks (tuthkth) that were so (tho) long that if they were laid out end to end they could stretch (thtretth) all the way to Buffalo. The college audience loved it, but I loved it more than they did. I actually remember when Colin was that earnest, bespectacled schoolboy giving oral reports with a slight speech impediment.

On our second night, the three of us had dinner at a great little Italian restaurant near campus and then took the subway to Times Square. On the train, I sat next to an artist who frenetically sketched three portraits of other passengers and a quick profile of me in our half-hour ride down Broadway. Our destination was the Broadhurst Theatre, the same stage where Joel Grey gave his Tony Award winning performance in Cabaret some forty years ago.

We had tickets to see the Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with a star-studded all-Black cast. I had never read the Tennessee Williams play or seen it performed, so I am not familiar with the Elizabeth Taylor-Paul Newman version, or any other version, for that matter. The play we saw was directed by Debbie Allen (“Fame”) and starred a foul-mouthed James Earl Jones (“The Great White Hope” and the voices of Mufasa and Darth Vader), an overweight, unkempt Phylicia Rashad (“The Cosby Show”), an alcoholic Terrence Howard (“Crash”), and a very hot Anika Noni Rose (the “Dream Girls” star who takes a back seat to Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce Knowles in the movie). Also very recognizable is a henpecked Giancarlo Esposito (“Homicide: Life on the Streets” and “Law and Order”). I can’t imagine any way in which Taylor, Newman, Burl Ives or any of their cast mates could have been superior to any of the actors we saw.

In the play, Terrence Howard’s character, Brick, is disgusted with his family’s mendacity. The word, which is new to me, describes the primary motivation for his behavior. He blames his struggles with honesty and his escape into alcoholism on his family’s mendacity, or untruthfulness and tendency to lie. He doesn’t call his family members prevaricators or outright liars, but mendacious, a term which refers to much more clandestine behavior. He accuses them of lives filled with secrecy, concealment and attempts at deception.

I like Tennessee Williams’ choice of word. Years of subtle mendacity in the lives of his characters have destroyed any good that may have once existed in their relationships, and make it very difficult for each character to recognize the truth. Keeping secrets, brushing small annoyances under the rug, keeping up appearances and refusing to face hard truths are not in the best interest of family harmony or personal satisfaction, although they may seem to be at the time. I am grateful for the new word and all that it illuminates in my own life.

Bravo to Broadway magic and neon lights!