Lace Curtain

The greatest generation was formed first by the Great Depression.

— Tom Brokaw

My parents both experienced the Great Depression.

But their experiences could not have been more different.

My mother's was a "lace curtain" home. As a 10-year old, she was hardly aware, much less affected, by the disquiet outside.

But she did recall vividly that strange men often appeared at the back door, asking for a sandwich.

She also recalled a Thanksgiving when her grandparents fed hot turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes to strangers they gathered in the cellar.

My father's was a much different home.

He never spoke of it, not once, nor of the Great Depression.

I only know things turned so desperate, his dad sent the baby sister to an orphanage.

If you don't believe there are years of pain ahead for countless millions, I envy you.

You're in the camp that hopes this interregnum is V- or W-shaped.

Perhaps you're an optimist, misinformed by leaders, or simply "lace curtain."

Whatever the case, spend a few moments with MOMA's new video.

PS: Read my most-popular post ever. It's also based on a life experience of my mother.

Changes Ahead

We have it within our deepest powers not only to change ourselves
but to change our culture.

— Gary Snyder

Fifty years ago, San Francisco Beat poet Gary Snyder published Four Changes, a hippy-dippy broadside that fast became environmentalism's manifesto.

Who'd ever have guessed fifty years later that not men, but microbes, would trigger the "total transformation" he envisioned.

Snyder conjured a world blessed with a healthy and diverse global population which is governed not by national leaders but a "world tribal council." A world blessed with a "technology of communication, education, and quiet transportation." A world blessed with societies that inhibit power and greed and encourage instead "music, meditation, mathematics, mountaineering, magic, and all other ways of authentic being-in-the-world." And a world where women are "totally free and equal."

Listen to Gary Snyder read his remarkable statement.

Because there's something in the air.

Getting Real

The order of our perceptions shows the goodness of God, but affords no proof of the existence of matter.

— George Berkeley

A new paper published in the science journal Entropy says consciousness underlies the universe.

The paper seeks to unify quantum mechanics and immaterialism.

The paper claims that, in reality, everything—you, your spouse, your kids, your dog, your house, your car, your office, your boss—everything is... pure thought.

The universe "self-actualizes" into existence through an algorithmic rule the authors call the "principle of efficient language." 

Everything, they claim, is a single "grand thought." 

Human beings—as well as animals, houses, cars, offices and bosses—are just "emergent sub-thoughts."

"The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" is the product of a team of scientists led by the Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and cannabidiol-promoter Klee Irwin.

Sound too woo-woo for you?

Well, in the words of Yogi Berra, it's déjà vu all over again.

Eighteenth century philosopher George Berkeley—namesake of the California college-town and woo-woo world headquarters—also maintained that reality is a mental construct.

In his 1710 book A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley explained how things are actually thoughts, and that the thoughts composing the universe persist through time—even after we're dead—because God is keeping her eye on them.

Berkeley was an Anglican bishop, not an entrepreneur; and he lived in London, not LA.

But, oddly enough, Bishop Berkeley was a promoter—not of CBD but of "tar-water."

Indeed, his best-selling philosophical work, Siris, published in 1744, sought to prove the elixir was a panacea: it could lead you to perfect health and (special bonus offer!) to the contemplation of God.

Here's a handy one-minute guide to Bishop Berkeley.

My Take on the Events Industry

Dear Pollyanna:

So sorry to burst your bubble.

The ride you're on is neither brief nor V-shaped. 

Covid-19 has thrust events into an existential crisis.

Whether the crisis was overdue is beside the point.

Everyone knows this year will be seen disruptive.

But no one knows—once we get control of the virus—whether or when the events industry will rebound, or what shape events will take.

Yes, I agree with you: face-to-face fills a Maslowvian need.

But events will have to be reformulated to succeed post-pandemic. 

Attendees aren't going to revert to old behaviors. 

Your can't, either.

If you're betting otherwise, call me.

I have a bridge to sell you.

Green When Green Wasn't Cool

70

 22

The first Earth Day

How the First Earth Day Was Borne From 1960s Counterculture

On April 22, 1970, a nationwide “teach-in” inspired millions of Americans to care more about the environment.

SARAH PRUITT

I took a lot of kiddin' 'cause I never did fit in

Now look at everybody tryin' to be what I was then

— Kye Fleming & Dennis Morgan

The Jesuits had assigned us Silent Spring three years earlier, but not because they were environmentalists. 

They considered Rachael Carson's book exemplary science writing and thought we'd learn effective argument from it. 

It did make quite an impression.

So when school let out that April day in '71, my friends and I caught the PATH from Grove to 14th Street.

We dashed up the subway steps and filed into the mob. 

A quarter million hippies and wanna-be hippies were romping 5th Avenue, free of traffic by mayoral decree.

It was the giddy "birth of the green movement," as history books record it.

To us it was a massive schoolboy lark.

The spring weather was joyous, the kind of New York City weather celebrated in schmaltzy Broadway tunes. We bought Good Humor bars from a cart and picked our way along the teeming street, stopping to gawk at the painted performance artists, the jerry-built exhibits and impromptu demonstrations.

Most memorable was the rock band we encountered performing on the pavement in front of Madison Square Park. 

The Lower East Side Band was fronted that day by a long-haired Puerto Rican named David Peel, who belted comedy songs about hippies, teeny boppers, reefer and LSD.

We loved them!

Only a year later, Peel and the band would emerge from obscurity when they were discovered in front of another city park by John Lennon, who rushed out The Pope Smokes Dope on Apple Records. 

The album was banned in every Catholic country.

But Earth Day was not. 

And from it arose the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the EPA.

Not a bad payoff.