GRAY DAYS, GOLDEN DAYS, AND LESLIE NIELSON

It's a cloudy, chilly, gray day today. Yesterday was colder, but the air was crisp and invigorating, the sky was bright blue with white, puffy clouds. The day before as well. Only the day before my oldest son and his wife and my grandson were all here, with their terrier (my daughter and her family still up in the Berkshires), filling my apartment with the kind of life force I grew up around and my youngest son, here too, hasn't. At least not on a daily basis.

But on all three of those days the economy was pretty much the same, as were the wars going on around the world, not just the ones our troops are fighting in. Whatever basic problems exist in our lives, the daily ongoing kind, didn't change or change much in those three days. Just the weather did, and the configuration of me and some of my progeny's whereabouts.

The better weather brought me pleasure, as did the presence of my older son and his family. The absence of others generated a feeling of nostalgia or even sadness, but that in turn left me feeling good, because to feel is to be alive and I am very very grateful to be alive, especially in order to be there for my little guy and my other children and grandchildren, and friends still around and other family...

My old friend Hubert Selby Jr. used to always say to me when I was going through my usual drama over my love life and finances, "Michael, you can't have up without down, you can't have left without right, so if you're looking for pleasure, you better be prepared for some pain, and if you want success, you have to accept the failure that comes along with it..."

He probably said it better, but you get the idea. Or more importantly, I do.

The idea here being, every day, every event, every person, every every contains the opposites that make up reality. To accept that reality is to know peace, in my experience. To embrace it and be grateful for it, no matter what, is to know happiness. (Woops, I just gave away the secret I meant to put in a book someday!).

Listening and watching the many tributes to Leslie Nielson yesterday had me cracking up in my car or in front of my TV set. As I did from the first moment he appeared in AIRPLANE! and in everything he did thereafter. What a story heh? A guy from a horrendous background, who I had grown up watching and never remembering his name but always thinking him very unappealing in the serious roles he played until AIRPLANE!

And then, by not taking himself seriously and doing it with a straight face, he became one of the funniest movie stars we've had in the sound era. Every line that he said that makes us laugh, or at least smile, to hear ("And don't call me Shirley") is because it was him saying it. What a gift! He'll be sorely missed, but then again not so much, because we can watch his funniest stuff pretty much anytime we want nowadays.

And I can relive moments with people long gone on the physical plane, reread favorite authors and poets many of whom were friends, etc. And I can see the forest despite the trees, as in: the economy fell off a cliff thanks to eight years of Bush/Cheney (with a modicum of responsibility going back to previous administrations, especially Reagan's) BUT it ain't The Great Depression.

And the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even the Congo and Somalia et. al., are destructive and terrible but they don't even compare to the death and destruction of WWII. The Great Depression was started over eighty years ago, WWII over sixty. Things could always be worse and usually have been.

It's a gray day today, compared to yesterday's golden beauty, but I bet as I go out into it, I'll find a lot to be grateful for and even to give me great joy. Like just being alive in it.

ANOTHER FAVORITE SITE

I'm always adding and cutting and rearranging the blogs and sites I check in on every day or so. Sometimes I remember to mention them and sometimes not.

But just in case you don't notice them on the right somewhere, I'll point out that recently I added the home page for one of my alltime favorite poets Maureen Owen.

You can actually go to this site and read a copy of her totally unique early poetry book THE NO-TRAVELS JOURNAL in its the originally mimeographed typed up form (if I remember correctly, unfortunately my original copy disappeared somewhere over the years and I only have these poems in a later book that included them). If you don't know this series of poems, check them out and remember she wrote these back in the 1970s.

MAKES SENSE

I missed this editorial a few days ago on Truthout. But it's still worth reading.

Oh, and another bit of contrary news (contrary to the right's perspective that is):

"The Congressional Budget Office this week released its latest report on the effects of the Recovery Act and found that it 'raised the GDP, lowered unemployment, and increased the number of people with jobs." —ABC News

HERE'S AN INTERESTING STATISTIC

In 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, besides the surplus he left and all the other accomplishments, the number of terrorist attacks around the word was only 423.

In 2009, by the time Obama was facing the historic deficit and economic collapse, and more worldwide and U.S. problems Bush/Cheney left him, there were 10, 999 (including 4,584 in Iraq and Afghanistan).

So much for Bush/Cheney "winning" the "war on terror"—how about "creating" it.

[The numbers are from the latest issue of Time magazine]

THANKS FOR...

My condolences to anyone who lost a loved one since last Thanksgiving, but aside from the sorrow of lives lost or terribly injured, I suspect we all have a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

Starting with the loved ones who are still here. My parents have been gone for many decades, and I started losing siblings before I was born—out of seven of us there is only one sister and me left. But I am blessed with three terrific children, two very grown and my thirteen-year-old still at home(s, he alternates between his mother's and here with me) and two wonderful grandchildren. Thanks for them, and for all family and friends.

Then comes health—spiritual, mental, physical and financial.

As for the latter, I know these are tough times, I'm broke for the first time in many years. And broke for me isn't like broke for a lot of friends I've known over the years. So I'm thankful for the Democratic Presidents and Congresses that made Social Security possible and protected it from attacks from the Republicans over the decades, and who have done their best to protect pension funds, both of which are at risk thanks for the even more virulent strain of rightwing Republicanism now on the march again.

And I know people are losing their houses, I've lost two and am doing just fine in my old but comfortable apartment (and when the waste tank overflowed in the basement of the old house its in a few days ago, I could call the landlords to take care of it!).

And physically, how could I be more grateful for having survived cancer and various heart conditions and now brain surgery! So many thanks to many people and developments, how lucky I am to be living now in this age of medical miracles!

Mentally, after the slow recovery of my reading and writing capabilities after the brain op, I couldn't be more grateful either.

And spiritually, let's just say surviving coming face to face with your mortality does something for the soul and leaves you, or at least left me, more certain than ever that love is all that matters in the end, and in the beginning and middle too.

I could go on for ever with a gratitude list, but let's end with an obvious one that I don't hear many people mentioning these days. And that is: thank you thank you thank you that the Bush/Cheney gang are no longer in charge, even though they are still doing all they can to thwart "the will of the people"—in this case the historic majority that elected Obama president, and thanks as well that Sarah Palin is not the vice-president or governor (or president!) of anything, and let's pray it stays that way. Amen.

FRANK: THE VOICE (THE NEW BIOGRAPHY)

Like a lot of people, I'm sure, I've had a love/hate relationship with Frank Sinatra all my life.

I was born into a time when he was challenging Bing Crosby, my tribe's champion, for the bragging rights to most popular crooner. We all loved Bing, I grew up loving him too and grew to appreciate how revolutionary his impact was on the development not only of popular music but on jazz and swing as well (no less an authority than Loius Armstrong claimed Bing as an influence on jazz music).

Several years ago we got a great first volume of a Bing bio (Gary Giddins' POCKETFUL OF DREAMS) that hasn't seen the sequel yet but set the record straight about Bing's early years and innovating influence and did it in a way that had me wanting more.

James Kaplan has done the same with his FRANK: The Voice. Sinatra was equally popular, equally influential in the world of not just popular music but jazz and swing as well. And like Bing their impact went way beyond mere music, as through the movies they elevated our country's sense of its immigrants, first the Irish and then the Italians, as well as a lot of young men's styles (and Bing went right on influencing style 'til the end, only then it was older white golfing men).

Kaplan gets it right, though, when he characterizes Bing's persona and style and music as "cool" compared to Frank's heat. What he means has nothing to do with the slang sense of "cool" (though that too in ways most people might not get) but in the passions these men aroused.

Bing's laid back vocal mastery made an amazing musical talent seem as easy as chatting on the phone, while Frank upped the ante in several ways, including making almost every ballad he sang sound so personal he created that whole swooning screaming teenage girls things because each one felt he was singing just to her and meant it!

And as this book shows, in many ways he did, not just as a Lothario. Bing was a lot more accomplished and brilliant than his image may have let on, but whatever emotional and psychological complexity he may have had, he never showed. Frank expressed his emotional and psychological complexity in just about everything he did and said, and especially in everything he sang.

This too looks like a first volume, as it follows Frank from birth only up until he won the Oscar, his comeback move, for the role of Maggio in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. Kaplan puts the GODFATHER horse-head-in-the-bed myth to rest, or tries to, but the mob connection is delineated in other ways that make it clear "the boys" were helpful in other ways, including never giving up on him like a lot of others did when he went through the slump before the Oscar year.

The best thing about FRANK, is that Kaplan gets a lot of the artistry correct as well as the reasons why Sinatra isn't just a pop icon or once adored singer or a Hollywood history gossip mine, but actually is one of the few who have truly had an impact on not just his times but on the history of his times.

It's always difficult to explain to someone young who has grown up with the internet or texting or e mail or computers or whatever dominates the ways in which we communicate and create, what it was like when none of these things existed. It's equally difficult to explain what it was like before Sinatra, or to go back even further, before Bing.

No one is really sui generis, there's always past influences and accidents of history that bend those influences toward a new outcome, but nonetheless, not just 20th Century "America" would look different and sound different and BE different without these two men, Bing and Frank, but the 21st century as well. Kaplan's book gives you a few facts to support that argument, as well as a lot of distillation of a lot of other people's versions of the events recorded, including some scholarly and some not so much.

I couldn't put it down. And when I finally reached the end and did, I got a new feeling—I can't wait for the second volume, which I hope Kaplan is finishing up right now.

ANOTHER HMMM...

Don't know if anyone else noticed this, but U.S. corporations made higher profits this year than ever before in history! And yet...

...rightwing media mouthpieces and the rightwing Republican politicians they represent, or in some cases dictate to, continue to push the myth that Obama is "anti-business" and a "socialist" and all the rest of their obvious lies. And I don't see anyone in the mainstream media pointing this out (Olberman noted this on his MSNBC show). As usual.

But neither do I see anyone in the administration, let alone Obama, pointing it out either (though he did point out the resurgence of GM as a result of the "bailout" that has turned out to be a wise investment on behalf of "the American people"—as the rightwingers always refer to the people who support them, only in this case the President, and I, mean all of us).