My Dinner with Andy

Posted on 06/16/2012 by paulefallon

In honor of Father’s Day, I am posting this essay I wrote three years ago.  It actually happened, and was the best Father’s Day gift a dad could receive.

 

 

It’s getting on seven o’clock Saturday night.  I’m sitting in the kitchen, by myself, a pot of ribs in the oven, a pair of dinner settings on the table, thumbing through an out of date newspaper.  There’s no sign of Andy anywhere.  We had planned dinner at six so we could be finished before an eight o’clock football game he wants to watch with his friends, but he called around 5:30 to tell me he was running late.  I am feeling squeezed; not an uncommon feeling when it comes to Andy.

Andy is my nineteen year old son, back in Cambridge after a rocky freshman year at Cornell where he mostly learned what he doesn’t want – Ivy League pressure, fraternities, Engineering.  He’s taking a year off, living with his mother, working part time as a lifeguard, taking two courses at a local college, and planning to hike the Appalachian Trail with some high school buddies come spring. Since being home he and I have dinner together once a week, a schedule I pronounced the day he returned, in a parental voice that disallowed negotiation.   For me, it seems a paltry amount of time after spending 18 years of three afternoons a week plus alternating weekends together, but to an adolescent fresh off a year of independence, I suspect I’ve created a burden.

The oven clock dings seven and my temper stirs.  Maybe when he finally arrives I’ll remind him how important it is to keep appointments. But he did call, which is polite.  Maybe I’ll demand a bigger time slot in the future so I cannot be boxed in between other plans.  Maybe I’ll…  The basement door opens, shuts.  I catch a deep breath.  Maybe I’ll just put my temper on hold, skip the disciplinary tone and let the evening evolve.  After all, how many times did my father expect to have dinner with me when I was nineteen?  Exactly never, which is why I think it is important.

“Hey Dad, sorry I’m late.”  Andy bounds up the stairs, flushed from hurry.  The kitchen throbs with youthful energy that quashes my anger.  Andy stands taller than me, leaner too.  He drapes a casual arm around my shoulder and smiles with an easy confidence that I’ve seen him throw in a thousand directions, but when he tosses it my way, it always makes me glow.  Perhaps someday I will look at this young man, so different from me, without being dazzled.  But by the mystery of genetic fate he is my son, and that wonder has yet to wear off.  Where I am rock, he is wheel where I am Woody Allen, he is Brad Pitt, where I am the infield fly, he is the long ball; and although the world accommodates solid chumps, nebbish comics and spiked parabolas like me, what we idolize is what Andy’s got – fluid beauty and grace.

Andy’s appetite is huge but simple, long on protein, tolerant towards vegetables and salad, short on dessert; so dinner is ribs, ribs and more ribs plus a few raw carrots, rice and a mix of romaine, parmesan and Caesar.  He is full of talk; he’s got a new venture.  Seems he did the math and realized that part-time lifeguarding was not going to generate the money he’ll need to spend four months on the AT.  His mother and I decided that although an extended walk in the woods is a valiant undertaking, it is not the same as sitting in a college classroom, so we are not going to foot the bill for his hike.  His entrepreneurial response has been to post notices around the neighborhood seeking odd jobs.  I smile at the naiveté of telephone pole posters in an internet world, but sure enough, Andy’s phone has been ringing.  He spent the afternoon putting together furniture for a local business, will be painting a porch tomorrow and is cleaning out an old women’s basement on Monday.  “I already have jobs lined up for next week; if I didn’t have classes on Tuesday and Thursday I could make a killing.”

After Andy reports his business news, our talk falls into our predictable pattern.  I ask about his classes, he responds.  They are a breeze.  I ask about lifeguarding, he responds.  It is the easiest job in the world.  I ask about college transfer plans, he responds.  He has seen his old guidance counselor, has made some selections, and is on track with the paperwork.  I ask about his older sister, Abby. He responds.  They have not been in touch.  I ask about his friends.  He gives a breakdown on the ones I know. There is an interview quality to our talk.  After all, we are father and son, close by the measures applied to that relationship, but not exactly friends.  Some evenings, towards the end of the second helping, some thread of interest will take hold and our conversation will linger beyond the meal.  We might latch on to politics, where Andy is well informed but uninterested; or science, on which he is keen; or even religion, which he finds incomprehensible.  On those magic nights we transcend our litany of logistics and single sentence responses.  We explore the realm of ideas on a plateau unbound from our roles as parent and child.

But Andy eyes the clock; almost eight, and I accept that this will not be one of those nights.  “Do you want any dessert?”  I ask in the dim hope of delaying his departure; Andy rarely eats sweets.  “You know, some ice cream would be good after the ribs.”  Ice cream is a staple in my house, on hand with greater predictability than even milk or bread.

I get us each a dish. I sit back down and ask if he’s seen any movies.  “No time, but I’m reading this cool book at the pool.”  Lifeguards have long breaks, which Andy finds good for reading.  “It’s a Harlan Corbin mystery.”  I had never read Harlan Corbin until I learned Andy enjoyed them, and then I read one to get the taste.  He asks me what I am reading.  I tell him I am deep in Les Miserables, the annual novel selected for my Great Books group.  I explain how contemporary I find the style, the participatory narrator, and the long tangential detours Victor Hugo takes to immerse the reader in 1830’s Paris. Andy compares my comments to some of the books he read in his freshman seminar at Cornell.  The clock slips past eight.  For all that he considers his year there a waste; his critical thinking skills are keen and sharp.

Our spoons scrape the bottom of the ice cream bowls. Andy stands up, grabs mine, heads to the sink and starts to wash them out.  I don’t even have to ask.  I grab a towel, begin to dry. We stand side to side, silent in our simple tasks.  I am thankful that we never got in the habit of an automatic dishwasher.

“Dad, do you mind if I ask you a question?”  Andy’s voice is measured, thoughtful.

My heart stops.  Only a terrible question could require that preamble.  But there is no choice in how to respond.  “No, go ahead.”

“How did you do it?  I mean, how did you and mom do it?”  He struggles for words, which results in a question so broad I am baffled and a little worried.

“Do what?”  He was three years old when his mother and I split up; he has never asked a single question about it. Even though she and I have one of those odd, lucky divorces where we remain civil and sometimes friendly, he must know that at some time in the past, a time proximate to his birth, a volcano erupted and two reasonable people who had committed their lives forever crumbled under the folly of such optimism.  We shall never know how the separate lives Lisa and I carved out of our diminished, if more realistic, expectations contributed to the children we have raised.

“How did you teach me and Abby to be responsible?  How did you know when to give us what we wanted and when to hold back?”

“Do you mean why didn’t we give you money for the Trail?  I know some of your other friend’s parents are contributing.”

“No, that’s not it; I mean I guess that’s part of it.  You see, I have to make the money and so I am making it, and they don’t have to make it and so they’re just hanging around.  How did you know that it would be better for me to make the money myself?”

I could have cried, except I knew that would be wrong.  I pushed the well of sentiment in my chest aside and focused on his words.  “There is no formula, Andy; your mother and I make it up as we go along, just like you do.”

“No you don’t.”  He sets a dripping plate in the rack and looks me in the eye.  “You and mom are not random.  You’re the furthest thing there is from random.”

I laugh.  It’s rewarding, and also creepy, when your children come to know you so well.  “It’s about consistency, and having guidelines. Some things are easy.  We pay for college, but we don’t dole out party money. The grey areas are trickier.  Like last year when you were having a tough time and so I paid for your spring break trip; but this year we figured if you really wanted to do the Trail, you have the time and ability to make the money yourself.  Sometimes you’re still a kid and need a little extra help; but sometimes it’s good for you to shoulder your own load.”

“Well, just for the record, you should know that you’re doing it right.”  Andy looked out the window as he said this, which I appreciated.  Compliments between guys are always awkward.

“Thanks.”  This was enough deep bonding for one evening. I had gotten more than I could expect from our dinner; it was time to set him free.  “So, where are you watching the game tonight?”

.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 3 Comments

In A Country of Teenagers, A Young Man Grows Up

Posted on 06/10/2012 by paulefallon

Haiti is a country of teenagers.  I did not originate that saying, Renee did, but it is the best single description of the place I’ve heard.  Teenagers are unformed yet egotistical, lack competence yet are overconfident, wound others recklessly yet are so thin skinned they bruise easily.  Teenagers are fiercely defensive of their clan, prideful beyond reason, focused on narrow desires and clueless to other interests.  Their bodies are drenched with passions that flash and burn to the limits of their world, but unfortunately their consciousness ends about two inches beyond the surface of their skin.  They are self-absorbed, self-centered and oozing with potential.  Just like Haiti.  I am one of those rare parents whose favorite period of child rearing was the teen age years.  Perhaps that is why I love Haiti so much, the land where teenagers go on forever.

The superintendents at our two projects provide good insight into the Haitian inclination of perpetual teenagerdom.  A superintendent is the person who works across all trades and makes sure that people, materials and tools are in the right place at the right time to keep construction moving. He is responsible for building the project according to the drawings and ensuring quality.  A good superintendent needs to be able to manage people and time, be skilled in construction, accept criticism and give direction.  It is a job for an adult.

Fanes is our superintendent at BLB, a guy with a solid gut and a firm handshake.  Chronologically we are the same age, but our world views are decades apart, which cause us ongoing stress.

My first run in with Fanes spans over two trips.  As the crew is forming and installing the reinforcing for the second floor slab, I ask for one section to be finished for review – everything in place so we can understand problem areas and develop realistic expectations for progress.  Fanes nods at my request but does not do it.  I ask again, I get the same nods and zero action.  Every time I find an error in construction he tells me they aren’t finished, yet he will not finish anything.  Eventually, as work proceeds and unresolved errors pile up, he tells me that all I do is complain and that my demands are unrealistic.  By this time he is right, because the list of unsatisfactory work has grown so long I am a complete nag.

I change my approach and apply enlightened management techniques to work our way out of this quagmire.  I wrap Fanes in the cloak of senior management; I spend extra time reviewing the drawings with him to make sure he understands the intent and the details; I insist that Fanes join Gama and me whenever we walk the site.  Fanes responds to my inclusiveness like a trapped rat frantic for escape; he chases any excuse to be absent.

On my following trip conditions are worse.  In a confrontation Fanes yells at me to stop chastising him for the bad work because he didn’t do it. Yes, he tells me, he is responsible to get the work done, but he is not responsible if the work is bad.  I recall similar logic from my thirteen year old.  I realize, too late, that Fanes takes every criticism personally. I have wounded his honor.  ‘Why don’t you ever tell me what’s good?’ he pleads.

American muscle may no match for Haitian strength, but our hides sure are tougher.  We focus on the work; we give a passing nod to the overall product and then dive right into the meat of the issues.  In Haiti, where the meat is so close to the bone, that approach is a disaster.

Over time Fanes and I have built some trust but we will never be simpatico; he is simply too high maintenance for the results he delivers.  Like most teenagers, he puts off whatever can be put off, he winds up creating more work down the road and then he pouts at the fallout, storing it in his personal arsenal against me.  Still, things have improved.  I start every conversation with Fanes by asking about his family, I begin every discussion by praising all aspects of the work that are good, and though it seems a waste of time to me, I have learned that when I sugar coat the criticisms he can digest them, which is not to say he actually acts on them.

Huguener arrived in Grand Goave almost twenty years ago, a shrimp of a kid who looked four when he was eight; yet another of Lex’s cousins emigrated from La Gonave.  Despite Huguener’s small stature his mind was quick and he soon became top of his class.  He grew tall and sprite and became a soccer star.  Then he picked up a guitar and laid down a good lick.  He became a hit in the church band, pushing the limits of loud twangs and sliding across the stage on his knees before screaming, quivering girls on Sunday mornings. His studies slipped, but genius is not a prerequisite for the ultimate teenage fantasy of being a rock star.

Unfortunately Huguener’s fame did not extend beyond Grand Goave and his music brought him no fortune.  Six days a week he worked for Lex, doing construction or driving errands or whatever chores appeared.  Reality is no match for a heady fantasy and Huguener did not apply himself to his work.  A clever lazy guy is the worst possible employee; much more creative in his evasions than a lazy guy who is just plain stupid.  Lex and Renee bristled at so much potential frittering away in a country that needs every bit of talent it can muster. Huguener was none too happy either.

Once MoHI decided to capitalize on my regular visits to Haiti and increase construction, Huguener became a natural interface for me.  He was a serviceable carpenter, but I needed his obvious intelligence and excellent English to act as my translator and keep the project running in my absence.  He was magnificently lazy, disappearing at all times of day, shirking any accountability.  I have no patience with a bad attitude and was not about to play the ridiculous Fanes and Paul game with a guy twice as smart and half my age.  During the first stint Huguener and I worked together I told him straight out he was the sharpest guy on the site, the laziest and the most disappointing.  I told him he should be running things, but his attitude was holding him back.  I don’t think he much liked me, and I didn’t blame him. I am not here to be liked; I am here to nudge Haiti forward every way I can; and the most effective nudge carries bite.

Two weeks later I return and MoHI has met our most ambitious construction targets, the site is clean and tidy, the workers focused. “I don’t know what you told Huguener, but he is a new man.” Lex tells me. This is Huguener’s doing, not mine.  Still, I capitalize on the momentum and stoke Huguener’s engine. I tell him everything he has done well along with what needs to get done better. He listens to both with equal care.  We review the MoHI drawings, the construction details, the spread sheets.  I add him to our email distribution list.  He organizes meetings every day before we start work, he has an agenda planned, he even wears nice shirts to address the crew and then changes into construction clothes after the meeting.  He confides in me the pushback he is getting from the guys who used to be his peers and now have to take his direction.  We become confidantes.  The project, Huguener, and I all benefit from the change.

I can’t take much credit for Huguener’s transformation.  He just needed the right nudge at the right time to step into his own.  He is bright and confident, unburdened by superstition and able to separate constructive criticism from personal wounds. Fanes is a nice guy, but he will never transcend the myopic vision common among many Haitians and fourteen year olds.  Huguener represents a more promising breed.  I hope he can continue to grow into a capable, confident man and benefit himself, and his country, in the process.

 

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A Map of the World

Posted on 06/04/2012 by paulefallon

What does the world look like to man who has never traveled more than forty miles from home?  He lived in a quiet place among his own kind.  There were missionaries, of course, earnest white people who dispensed clothing and medicine along with their god; benevolent rarities who eased their way into Haitian life.  But then the earth rattled and blan sprinkled out of the sky like salt from a shaker, bearing tents with flags of Italy, protein crackers with flags of Great Britain, rice with flags of Brazil, backhoes with flags of China and pop-up shelters with flags of the United States.

I am part of that blan invasion, the people who pack the planes into Port au Prince, which have more than doubled since before the quake.  We are not rare anymore, though we are certainly odd.  We tell Haitians we come from the United States or Germany or Canada, or we tell them we are from Massachusetts or Ohio or Boston or Akron and their heads nod with the same comprehension as a bobble-head on a dashboard.  We might be better off saying we are from the moon; at least they can see that.

One of our MoHI volunteers, Daniel, is from Alaska.  He left in February, while I come and go regularly.  Whenever I return to Haiti the crew asks after Daniel, and wants to know if I see him back home.  They have no idea that Alaska is further from Cambridge than Haiti, that the United States is huge and encompasses so much more than the place names Haitians hear so often – Miami, New York, and Boston.  So, on this trip I packed a map of the world with photographs of their favorite stateside volunteers and arrows to their hometowns.

I hang it on a wall at the MoHI job site and at lunch I tell the crew that this is a drawing of the entire world.  I circle Haiti in red. I show them the United States, and where we all live when we are not building their school.  I don’t even touch on the two-thirds of the earth that is Africa and Eurasia. They pay rapt attention, which says less about my speaking ability than it does about their thirst for new experience.  Some may have never seen a map; some may have never seen a colored print hanging on a wall.  A few get up close and point to their red circle, incredulous that it is so tiny.  They like the photos of the people they know.

I don’t imagine the map dispels the notion that Daniel and I have lunch together when I am home.  But the next time someone asks, we can walk over to our map of the world and talk about geography and scale and distance and the people they know who are scattered across the globe.  And each time we do that, the world will get a little bit smaller and a little bit more familiar, and these guys will be a little bit bigger part of it.

Huguener and MoHI’s map of the World

 

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Hoola for Happiness

Posted on 06/01/2012 by paulefallon

With seven billion people in the world I should have guessed that one would be a hula fairy, but who knew I would be fortunate enough to fall under her spell beneath the thatched chaconne at Mirlitone?

Any adjective short of a superlative fails to describe Carissa Caricato.  She is tall, blonde, gregarious, charming, effervescent, frivolous, fabulous, utterly useless, and utterly lovely.  Every moment in her presence is electrified by the alternating current that she adds no measurable value to the world and yet she makes the world an immeasurably better place.

Carissa runs a non-profit called Hoola for Happiness, a group that makes hula hoops and distributes them to third world outposts like Haiti, Nicaragua and India, to spread joy and a bit of Gospel.  The hoops come in five attachable pieces for easy transport, each an Olympic color.  Carissa’s web site hawks them for $30 a pop, and she travels the world distributing them to poor children.  When Carissa fixes you in her gaze and describes hula hoops as the communication bridge between cultures you weigh the possibility.  She gets me to try one; I am all bones and no swagger.   But when she steps into a hoop and gently sways to and fro, when she sends an Olympic swirl around her waist and hips, adds another around her neck and arms, and a third along an outstretched leg, you become convinced of her enlightened form of communication.  The hoops shiver up and down her body, unburdened by gravity.  She is innocent as Sesame Street, enticing as Salome.

Carissa arrives at the MoHI construction site mid-morning with a gaggle of hula hoops over her arm.  She knows that what a tight construction site with 50 laborers and piles of aggregate and sharp rebar cutters and a concrete mixer all running full gear needs even more than 300 school children (which we already have) is to have those children gyrating in hula hoops.  Within moments of arriving the site is a jumble of lithe black bodies in tan school uniforms enraptured in hula frenzy.  The girls are good, the boys are amazing.  I discover a new force field in the world, about thirty inches off the ground, where hula hoops find equilibrium; the children can spin them forever.

Carissa departs as quickly as she arrives and the hoops vanish.  One or two break and the occasional segment of green or red gets kicked into a corner of the site.  Carissa does not bring anything as rudimentary are food or clothing, or buildings to Haiti.  She brings shards of colorful plastic and she brings joy.  She brings joy in such abundance that even after she is gone it lingers on the breeze.  The children return to their studies, the crew returns to our construction, each of us better for the fairy who anointed us with her circles and her spirit.

MoHI Students take a break to hula hoop.

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Squeegee Guys

Posted on 05/31/2012 by paulefallon

Remember the squeegee guys?  Down on their luck fellows, mostly immigrants, who assaulted cars coming off New York City’s bridges and tunnels with soap, sponges and squeegees, spiffing up your car in the hopes of a tip.  Innocent enough until some got belligerent to drivers and added another level of anxiety to city living.  Mayor Giuliani and New York Police Chief Bratton made their careers off these guys, taking a rigid stand against the petty annoyances of life they represented and in the process turned the city around.  New York is safer and more hospitable, if less colorful, without the squeegee guys and the other hucksters who preyed upon citizens in the distant seventies and eighties.

Ever since then, the bottom up theory of public safety prevails.  Get rid of the squeegee guys and the murder rate will fall.  So you can imagine how happy I am to arrive in Port au Prince today and find a morsel of squeegee tightening in this haphazard place.

When you come out of customs at the PAP airport you are in a large shed with one conveyor of bags.  If you don’t grab yours on the first pass a Haitian yanks it off on the back side and tosses it on a pile.  There are little carts for loading bags, but they are in a jumble in one corner with a small army of mean looking men hovering around them.  Being a beta male, I prefer to shoulder my bags and huff my way through the gauntlet of guys grabbing at me rather than try to figure out how to get a cart.  Everyone in the place looks untrustworthy; I keep a firm grip on my goods.

But today, the world is a more joyous place.  Instead of a jumble of carts, there are neat rows.  And even though there is still a battalion of bouncers, a friendly woman stands at a small podium and takes two dollars in exchange for a ticket, which one of Mike Tyson’s cousin’s accepts in exchange for a cart.  With four wheels, I can manage 100 pounds of hockey bag supplies plus my backpack better, and I can pretend I am a bumper car to any of the supposed porters try to handle my stuff (I believe some are real, though I have no idea which ones).

Getting out of the airport with such ease lifts my spirits, puts me in a better frame to greet dirty and oppressive Port au Prince.  If the airport can organize their carts, anything is possible, right?  Twenty minutes later, stuck in PAP traffic behind a garish tap-tap with my driver Ricardo, a squeegee guy pops out of nowhere, sprays our windshield and then curses us for not rolling down a window and handing over some bills. Civility evolves slowly, one step at a time.

 

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Memorial Day

Posted on 05/27/2012 by paulefallon

Memorial Day has always struck me as a holiday in desperate need of a root cause analysis.  We honor our war dead, who deserve to be honored, but we fail to ask the deeper question, “Why are there so many of them, and why do we continue to have more?”

I have an idealist viewpoint on war – I am against it without exception.  If we suggest that this war is just or that war is necessary, we capitulate to the fantasy that war can accomplish some good.  War occurs when all else fails, but as long as war is an option, we excuse ourselves from the work required to achieve peace.  As long as war is an option we can talk of justice but insist our point of view prevails.  As long as war is an option we can talk of respect but consider our own country superior.  As long as war is an option we can talk of communicating but we won’t have to take the difficult walk in another man’s shoes to understand his point of view.

We love war, even more than we love to say we are for peace.  We are violent creatures, our capacity to destroy is incredible, fascinating really.  We do not weigh war’s outcome realistically because we believe the virtue of our cause will tilt the outcome in our favor.  Whether we are the rebel or the establishment, each side finds precedent to support his cause.  War can smile on the light-footed and inspired, as it did when the Minutemen beat the Hessians in 1775 or the Vietnamese whooped us back nearly two hundred years later.  Other times simple might makes right prevails.  After we pummeled Dresden with thousands of bombs, and Hiroshima with just one, we brought our enemies to heel.

We also love war at a personal level.  War is the ultimate adolescent activity, raging action, reckless and liberating.  No one ever thinks they are going to die in a war; if they did they would not go.  We always think we are invincible, the other guy will die.  But sometimes the other guy kills us, and though it is tragic, we die heroes, our deaths count for something, we exit this earth at the height or our virtue, and are honored forever.  We make an early exit but it is glorious.

As a child Memorial Day included a ceremony at the high school stadium with a military procession, a twenty-one gun salute, and tri-folded flags.  It did not stir me.  For years I did not celebrate in any way, pretending Memorial Day was nothing more than a calendar glitch for a long weekend.  Then a few years ago the City of Boston began a simple, stunning Memorial Day that stirs me deeply.  On a rise in the Common, volunteers plant small American flags.  There are 33,000 this year, representing every Massachusetts soldier killed since the Civil War.

I am discouraged that the number of flags keeps growing.  But I also find hope in the sea of dense packed red, white and blue flags. The individual colors merge, like pointillist dots of an Impressionist painting. The flags lose their unique identity, their their national symbolism evaporates and the hill becomes a graceful sea of purple.

I doubt the day will come when the people of this earth understand that our commonalties are more important than our differences, that nations and ethnicities and religions do more to separate us than to unite us, and that our best future is the one that makes a seat at the table for everyone.  In the meantime I choose interpret Boston’s inspiring tribute to dead soldiers not as a collection of individuals lost to us in war’s folly, but as a beacon of what the world might look like when we lay down our arms and move forward together.

Boston Common on Memorial Day

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Slow Go

Posted on 05/20/2012 by paulefallon

I like maxim’s to live by.  They provide structure and form, if not meaning, to our everyday tasks.  I have a new one that has been boiling up for a year or so now.  Slow Go.

Slow Go means wherever I have to go, I get there the slowest practical way.  I have never been enamored of speed; fast planes, fast cars, fast women, they all leave me bewildered.  But I never really appreciated the virtues of going slow until last summer, when I took seven weeks to travel 3,000 miles by bicycle that could have been traversed in an afternoon’s flight or a couple of days of automotive comfort.  I started the journey because I wanted to do something different.  Then I realized that going slow was not just different, it was often better, and by the end of my trip, I realized that going slow is almost always better.  When I reentered my regular life I decided to test the notion of traveling slow, and I have decided Slow Go is for me.

I have five basic modes of transport.  I fly in airplanes, I drive a car, I take the bus (or subway), I ride my bicycle, and I walk.  There is the occasional cab ride and recreational run, but those five get me from point A to point B most all the time.  My preference in terms of enjoyment is inversely proportional to their speed.  I like to walk, love to bicycle, abide the bus, dislike the car and abhor flying.

Flying is just terrible these days.  The planes are packed, the schedules tight, the security noxious.  Actually, the planes are noxious as well; everyone catches colds on planes.  Planes are a rapacious use of resources by any measure.  I thought I was a responsible energy user until I took a carbon footprint measurement test.  I was well below average in every category, but since I fly 20-30 times a year, my carbon footprint is the size of the Lochness Monster.  Still, when I have to get from, say, Boston to Port au Prince in a day, it is the only option and so I hatchet my consciousness, hold my breath, and climb aboard.

As long as I can stay on the ground, my travel habits are much better.  I own a car, though I do not know why.  If I drive 100 miles a month that is a lot, except for business trips when I rack up 55 cents a mile and it turns into a profit center.  My economical, paid off, not-so-old-it-needs-a-lot-of-service car operates for a lot less than that.  Still, I do not like to drive.  The vagaries of traffic violate my sense of control; I don’t like wrapping my anonymity in metal and glass, and the moment I step behind the wheel I suffer acute road rage.  I consider it a community service that I rarely drive; I don’t like being on the road and neither does anyone else.

When the weather is bad and I need cover during travel I take the bus.  Even though it takes twice as long as driving I like it much better. The bus breeds virtue; I am comrades with the common man, sharing our burdens while competing for a seat.  Studies show that public transportation uses just as much energy as private cars per passenger mile.  But that is because no one uses public transportation. Where there are buses, as in my neighborhood, the marginal energy difference between me riding the bus and driving my car is real. The bus is making the trip whether I am on it or not.  If I tag along, I contribute less total energy burn to the system.

Bicycling is my most beloved form of transport, and I have expanded the scope of acceptable cycling conditions to encompass nearly all my travel.  I don’t bicycle if I wake to downpours or snow or temperatures below ten degrees.  But I might pedal to work in a drizzle, and I never let grey skies or a bad forecast push me to the bus.  The bicycle is the default mode for any trip under twenty miles, It usually takes three times longer than driving, but the benefits are worth the time.  Bicycling is good for my health and great for the planet, I feel in control of my destiny and parking in the city is a breeze. I love the way the world looks at ten miles per hour, a speed that is fast enough to give the big picture yet slow enough to highlight the details in our built environment.  I have learned that cycling to a business meeting has multiple benefits.  No one expects you to look all polished, which I can never quite pull off anyway, and I arrive with fresh energy even in midafternoon. I make time to wash up really well, but that is all factored into the trip.  Realistically, my time is not all that valuable and if most of us made a critical assessment, we all waste more time in frivolity than I spend on my bike.  Besides, have you seen my legs?  I am the Betty Grable of middle aged men; I have terrific legs.

Walking is wonderful, but unrealistically slow except for the most leisurely adventures.  There are places I prefer to walk.  The grocery store is four blocks away; I almost always walk.  Ditto the library and the park.  On a late summer afternoon there is nothing finer than strolling down Brattle Street to eat in Harvard Square.  When I walk the world is nothing but detail.  I completely lose the scale of the forest; I get to savor every flower.

So the next time you have to go somewhere, ask yourself if there is a slower option.  The time you spend may restore your sanity.

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Nursing Our Children into Debt

Posted on 05/16/2012 by paulefallon

After two weeks of no TV or radio, my favorite pastime upon reentering the United States is to divine what ‘big story’ captivates the nation.  Will it be something inspiring like Occupy Wall Street or tedious, like Mitt Romney’s bully past, or trivial like Howard Stern’s spin on national TV?  It is fascinating to land in the middle of these media extravaganzas, because regardless the details, all the big news bear common traits.  They reflect a society that foments conflict and anxiety, that would rather point fingers than take responsibility, and that above all, trumpets entertainment over serious discourse.

This week I was fascinated, and ultimately dispirited, by two major trending stories.

Dr. Bill Sears, pediatrician and author of The Baby Book is a well-respected advocate of attachment parenting.  When Time magazine chose to do a feature on him, does his photo grace the cover?  No, we get model and mom Jamie Lynn Grumet standing in a sultry pose while her three year old (who is very well nourished) stands on a stool and sucks at her breast under the headline ‘Are you Mom Enough?’  Kinky?  Maybe.  Sexualized? Definitely.   In an interview with the article’s author, Kate Pickert, disavows penning the headline, but acknowledges that it addresses the fundamental question of every American parent, ‘Am I doing a good enough job?’  Since the vast majority of us do not subscribe to attachment parenting (which may be nurturing and supportive but can also be seen as self-indulgent and elitist), and most moms don’t look like Jamie Lynn Grumet, the answer to ‘Are You Mom Enough?’ is a resounding, ‘No.”  And thus, Time taps into two great American preoccupations.  It simultaneously titillates us and renders us insufficient.

Time knows what will sell, and we buy it.  Shame on us.

The second big news item is both more substantial and more disturbing.  Sunday’s New York Times featured a terrific page one story about the increasing dilemma of college debt. It covers all the usual parameters of the problem – college costs rising faster than inflation, colleges shuffling the real costs by focusing on ‘the package’ while soft pedaling the reckoning that graduation brings, the naivety of students who choose expensive colleges over more economical options, and the increasing cost of public colleges, who labor under ever decreasing amount of public support.  The article contains the requisite heartbreak stories of earnest young men and women who are starting out life mired in debt, and I came away convinced that this is not entirely their fault.  There are also compelling graphics demonstrating the unsustainable economics of a college education.  The subtext of all this bad news is that, maybe education isn’t worth the price.

Tucked into the graphics is a chart that illustrates how people pay for college today compared to twenty years ago.  Although it is not referenced specifically in the article, it suggests a giant omission in the text.  Twenty years ago between 30 and 50 percent of families paid for their children’s college education, varying by public, private and for-profit institutions.  Today that percentage is less than 10% for any type of college. Regardless where we fall in the economic spectrum, we all know intuitively that more than ten percent of American families can afford to send their children to college.  How families have gotten off the hook for providing their children a college education is a perfect example of the twisted logic of our entitlement society, and an indictment of what is wrong with America.

Seventy-five years ago college was the province of the rich.  After World War II the GI Bill made college available to a huge cross-section of our population.  Our educational standards rose, our economy boomed, by the 1960’s our higher education was the envy of the world; Americans were the best educated people on earth. Middle class people saved money and sent their children to college, which was not cheap but within reach.  With noble intention schools started to provide financial aid to help students from poor families attend college.  The government got in the act, providing direct student loans.  The eligibility requirements for the loans became looser over time, because if that kid can get it, why can’t mine,  until we got to the point that assistance was not only provided to those in need, it was available to everyone.

In the process college became just another product that we buy now and pay for later.  Like all things easy to come by, it lost its luster.  We are no longer the best educated nation on earth, or even in the top ten.  No one worried if the cost outstripped inflation; with money so easy to borrow, the actual cost became less important.  The perceived cost was deeply discounted by earnings in a rosy future.  Families stopped saving for college; it is always easier to borrow than to save. Private lenders got involved, private colleges developed predatory practices.  Colleges got very expensive, and now the bills coming due are astronomical while a college education’s assurance of economic advancement is not so rosy.

I am a champion of college education.  I do not subscribe to the argument that college is only relevant if it increases one’s economic standing.  College is relevant because it increases our exposure to the world; it grows our minds in ways we cannot anticipate. That is why college is exciting, that is why students are often radical; that is why the powers-that-be would prefer college to be more job-focused.  The status quo is well served by students who graduate so tied to debt they cannot raise their eyes to change the world.  After all, powers-that-be usually like the world just the way it is.

College transformed my life.  As a student from a barely middle class family I received generous aid, including loans; not so much aid that college life was luxurious but not so many loans that that they cramped my future.  For all I appreciated the government’s help in pulling me up through the middle class, I did not expect it to do the same for my own children. We had enough means to send them to college. No aid, no debt.  And until I read the NY Times article I did not realize how unusual our family is in that respect.  But I am glad that we did it that way, because we could; and I am equally glad there is help for those who need it, because I know how beneficial it can be.

But I am an outlier in this arrangement, for the college debt debacle is another example of the entitlement society run amuck.  Instead of people going to college in order to explore themselves, and society investing in our effort to reach optimal potential, we have created a system that layers anxiety and worry over the student’s college life. There are so many people to point fingers at – lenders, colleges, students, the economy – that no one has to bear full responsibility for anything.  And even in a well-tempered publication like the NY Times, the propensity to highlight the individual’s plight and enhance conflict among parties supersedes a deeper analysis and thoughtful suggestions about how to get out of the mess.

For in the end, the question about college education is the same as the question about healthcare, as it is about social security, as it is about sanitary housing and good nourishment.  Are Americans entitled to these things because they are Americans, or do we have to ‘earn’ them?  We cry ‘socialism’ against any system that is available to all, yet we are unwilling to deny people just because they cannot pay.  So we cobble together patchwork programs of public housing and food stamps and Medicaid and student loans, we give people a taste of what of they want but make them pay some price because we are convinced the best pie is the one with the thumb of capitalism jammed into its crust.

Forty years ago the United States lent me money to go to college.  In exchange for that generosity I have earned multiples more than I would have without a college education and have happily paid all of the taxes those earnings require.  The United States invested in me and we both enjoyed excellent returns.  A student today owes ten times what I did, often to a private company.  The student graduates with dimmer prospects and the returns go not back to our nation, but to some deep pockets.

And where are the parents in all of this? Off at our second house or second car or on vacation; willing to put a burden on our children that we did not have to bear ourselves.  Shame on us.

This week’s top stories cause a conflicting flurry.  One is about how we extend infancy, and whether it delays our children’s ability to develop.  The other is about how we force our children to grow up too soon by burdening them with debt that hampers their best possible start as adults. Problems that we create ourselves; only in America.

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Airplane Nightmare Averted

Posted on 05/12/2012 by paulefallon

One of the many arcane rules of American Airlines is that when you change your ticket in Haiti, they will not assign you a seat on your new flight.  Since I extended my recent stay by a week, I was rebooked but had no idea where I would sit.

I am pretty charming when I approach the ticket counter with no seat assignment. I mention casually that if they have an exit row window available, I’ll take it.  About half the time it works.  But not today.  The agent nodded at me without a word and gave me a boarding pass from Miami to Boston with seat 34 B – the middle seat at the back of the plane.

So in Miami I attempt my customary Plan B for improving my seat – being the last man on.  Since I do not carry a rollie, there is no need for me to rush onto planes for the overhead space.  I loiter at the gate to be the last person down the jet way.  A good portion of the time an exit row is available and I snag it, or I just plop into any empty seat more desirable than my assignment. I have never been caught out yet. But today, no luck. This plane is standing room only.

I have no choice but to hunker down to row 34 and squeeze myself between whatever awaits me there.  I have a middle aged woman at the window, and – oh no – a man with an infant in the aisle seat.  I slither into my slot and resign myself to three dreadful hours.

The plane pulls away from the gate and twenty feet later, everything goes black.  The captain comes on the overhead with a story so lame I can tell he has already filtered through Plans A, B, and C and his playbook is running dry.  He tells us that the ‘start-up’ engine failed to trigger, but that is normal.  This I doubt.  He tells us we will get towed back to the gate and kick started again.  This, I not only doubt; I wonder whether I really want to fly to Boston in a ‘kick-started’ plane.

The story is so ludicrous a buzz ripples over the assembled.  ‘Well, this plane’s going out of service.’  ‘I never heard of that before.’  ‘Is there a guy with a crank at the nose of the plane, like on a Tin Lizzy?’  The captain’s voice returns and suggests that if we close our shades the plane will stay cooler.  Shades flap down faster than a hummingbird’s wings.  As for being cool, our silver metal tube sitting on the tarmac in Miami packed with sweaty people stopped being cool less than a minute after the lights went black.

At this point the baby next to me starts to fuss, the dad leans forward and presses his forehead against his son’s noggin and whispers the infant into complacency.  Even in my disgruntled state I have to admit, it is one of the most effective parenting moves I’ve ever seen.  I look over and realize that, in the opposite aisle seat is a woman with an identical baby, and next to her a toddler girl. There comes a point when things slip so bad that you have to stop being upset and just laugh it off.  In the dark, stalled at our gate, with all kinds of babies around me, I feel the weight of displeasure lift.  At that moment the nook falls out the closest baby’s mouth. I just cannot pretend these people away any longer.  “Excuse me, let me help.” I reach into the father’s elbow nook and retrieve the pacifier.

From there everything trends positive. The plane actually jump starts and we only get to Boston 30 minutes late.  Better than that, the family next to me turns out to be fascinating. The dad is an environmental consultant in St. Croix, he spent his Peace Corps years in Costa Rica, he is interested in our work in Haiti, and both parents have a firm but caring style that help the children navigate the flight with little fuss.  As a guy who rarely offers more than a cursory hello to my seatmates when the attendants pass out the drinks, spending time with this family is both uncharacteristic and rewarding.

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When I Grow Old I Want to be Like Pastor Beauvais

Posted on 05/07/2012 by paulefallon

Pastor Beauvais is a twig of a man.  Five feet tall and one hundred pounds, maybe; a 36’ belt would surely ring his waist twice.  In a country where the average life expectancy at birth is just over 62 (Index Mundi, 2011, the shortest lifespan in the Western Hemisphere), Pastor Beauvais has beaten the odds and then some.  He is a very old, very spry man.

I first met Pastor Beauvais in 2009 when Andy and I built him a house behind his original one, damaged by the earthquake. Pastor Beauvais was not content to have workers arrive and build him a new house; he had to be in, under, and over every bit of the place.  He held joists true and stretched his tarp walls and when the house was complete he huddled everyone together and whooped out some really loud praise.

A year later he accompanied Len and Bernie Gengal and me up the hill for our first look at the site of Brit’s orphanage. He stood on the wide meadow and opened his arms, a little guy with a Napoleon complex channeling Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue.  He blessed the site in every direction.  He bowed, he exalted; he made great noise but no sense.

I chalked up my lack of comprehension to feeble Creole.  But now, after seeing Pastor Beauvais for years, developing some ear for the language, and talking with others about his mangled vocabulary, I realize that no one really understands him.  When he preaches, his energy has tornado force, but his message is anyone’s guess.  I am sure that many understand more than I can unscramble, but I don’t think anyone fully grasps everything what rattles around this guy’s head.  What is clear, despite the garbled syntax, is that Pastor Beauvais has a passionate, unified vision of the world; one that has sustained him through a long life in a difficult place and continues to nourish him.  If he is only one with the full picture, so be it.

Born during the American invasion, persevering Doc and Baby Doc, the excitement of Aristide, the terror of the Tontons macoutes, enduring the UN’s attempt to bring order to Haiti’s chaos, surviving hurricanes and earthquakes and floods and droughts, Pastor Beauvais has lived through it all.  He appears to have been untouched by the tragedies yet energized by the successes.  He is relentlessly cheerful despite that fact that to most of us, he hasn’t much to be cheerful about.

I believe Pastor Beauvais’ vitality comes from a solid sense of self and contentment in his world.  The zealots would say his spirit comes through Christ, but I see just as many unsatisfied and frustrated Christians down here as folks of other stripes.  Pastor Beauvais would be equally as indomitable if he identified as a Buddhist, a Jew, or an agnostic.  He is an upbeat guy and if Christianity is his chosen vehicle to express his joie de vie. I’m glad it works for him. Appreciating his character does not make me feel the need to be Christian.  What draws me is his authenticity; the vagaries of popular culture or passing fashion don’t make a dent on this guy.

I should be so fortunate to grow old with such a strong, particular identity.  I can’t think of anything better than being lively and energetic beyond my years, full of joy, with a mind brimming from a life so well lived that I can’t quite verbalize it coherently.  It’s always a good idea for geezers to keep the youngsters guessing.

 Pastor Beauvais

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