One Man's Trash...

One night in 1982 an art student in Philadelphia decided to head out to an area of the city known for transient housing. It wasn’t just a normal night, however. It was the night before trash pickup. As he scours through the trash, garbage and debris, he comes across a handful of random items tightly wound in an encasement of wire. Then, he finds another one, and another… and another. When they are all retrieved from the trash there are 1200 of these “wire sculptures”.

The student turns the collection over to the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia.

These wire bundles rock the world of contemporary art and have since been exhibited in numerous prestigious galleries throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Absolutely nothing is known about the artist. He has become known in the world of outsider art as simply, “The Philadelphia Wireman”.

This sets in motion a whirl of questions in my head. What constitutes art? Can something become art even if it wasn’t created for that purpose? Do we, as a society or an individual have the right to label something as art, whether the “artist” does or not? If the Philadelphia Wireman considered himself an artist then intentionally discarded these pieces as unsatisfactory to him, how can we presume to exalt them to prominence? Who should profit from the sale of these discarded objects? Can anyone legitimately impose intent with no knowledge of the artist?

Speculation abounds concerning the personality and motivation of the Philadelphia Wireman. Personally, I’m not even convinced he considered himself an artist or that he produced these items as objects of sculpture. If he did indeed create them as art objects, he apparently never sought to sell or display them to anyone. They existed as his personal, very private collection. Why else would he hoard all 1200 pieces? One theory is that all of his possessions were abandoned because he died.

What interests me is that these items are recognized and accepted as artwork. I guess that means art is not dependent upon the person creating it (the artist is unknown), the reason it was created (was the intent to create modern art?) or the selection of materials (these were common discarded items).

I guess I’m hoping that in the final analysis, what we establish and regard as art is not merely artificial hype nor a carefully designed marketing decision, but rather, something that resonates a sensation within us that would otherwise remain dormant apart from the eye of the beholder.

To The Summit And Back

On May 15, 2006 a man named Mark Inglis accomplished something that no one had ever done before. Mark Inglis climbed to the summit of Mt. Everest, even though he has no legs.

After suffering severe frostbite while stranded in an ice cave for 13 days on a mountaineering expedition in New Zealand more than 20 years earlier, both of his legs were amputated just below the knee.

His successful ascent to the top of Everest with 2 carbon fiber prosthetic legs is a legitimate inspiration to many. But for me, it was what happened on the descent that impressed and moved me even more.

Phurba Tashi (pictured above) is a Tibetan Sherpa who has stood atop Mt. Everest 16 times. Many of his ascents include the added rigor of hauling gear and fixing ropes for a return trip with people who need his expert guidance to survive their own attempts at the summit of Everest.

As Mark Inglis began his descent, it became apparent that the stumps of both his legs had become so damaged and frostbitten that he would not be able to continue under his own power. A type of sled was rigged using sleeping pads and rope to slide him down with the aid of six other climbers. Once they reached the final leg from Camp Four to Advance Base Camp, there was no more snow to slide on. Mark expected it would take 3 or 4 men to carry him across the rugged rocky terrain. It was at this point that Phurba rigged a harness and proceeded to hoist Mark like a backpack onto his own back. With a strap across his forehead to help pull some of the weight, Phurba, with Mark Inglis facing backwards on his back, negotiated the remaining rocky terrain by himself safely to Base Camp.

To me, Phurba exemplifies the depth of character that puts most of us to shame. Here is a man who works tirelessly and quite literally at the risk of his own life in order to accomplish success for someone else. It is his achievement to see others succeed. And he does it all with a trademark smile on his face.

Consider how different many of our relationships would be if it was our desire to be invisible in the glory we worked for someone else to receive.

Keepin' It Real

I stopped at McDonald’s for a cup of coffee the other day and quickly realized I was at a very unusual McDonald’s. It’s hard for me to remember the last time I was in a McDonald’s that did not have a playland. How did this franchise escape? I was sure it must be mandatory. But then I saw the reason. They had apparently provided an acceptable child enticement substitute. There were 3 fixed video monitors with stools permanently placed in front of them. On each stool was a child hypnotically fastened in place, except for what I can only describe as restless leg syndrome. I watched as they were slapping and swiping their hands across the touch screens maneuvering the images to play different video games. The video games I noticed them playing were tennis (the slapping) and billiards (the swiping).

Some of you probably think you know where I am going with this. At the risk of sounding like some old fogey – “Go out and play some REAL games”. If not tennis or baseball, then Kick the Can or even Tag… something real. The protests arise, “There’s no place for us to play” or, “There’s no one to play with”. But you see, these issues are just as important as the playing of the games themselves. It forces interaction with others and cooperation in problem solving. Sometimes, when we were kids, we adapted the game to fit the area available to us to play. Other times, we had to recruit enough people to play whatever we had in mind. These were good challenges that built life skills. The movie Sandlot is a good example of what I'm talking about.

As for billiards, well… anyone who has ever played on a real table knows that video billiards is just wrong.

So, all of this virtual activity has given me an idea. Instead of going to the fitness center every day to work out, I could do it “virtually”. What tremendous advantages there would be to this approach. First, I wouldn’t get nearly as tired and I probably could avoid showering afterward. Also, no waiting for a machine or wiping it down when I’m done. With my new workout video game, you would monitor the progress of your physique based on how much weight you are lifting, how many reps you do and which exercises you choose. That perfect chiseled body can now be obtained from my laptop while sitting at Starbucks drinking a double mocha latte.

Speaking of the double mocha latte has given me another idea - virtual cooking. Crack the eggs, measure the ingredients (remember to use the proper size mixing bowl), mix (hmmmm… by hand or with the mixer?), bake (oven temperature and time). You did remember to preheat didn’t you? This kind of fun will never stop.

The next time you feel the urge to do something physical – stop and think. There may be a video substitute and who can argue with the results?

Mary Jane Birdsall

Buying a big 1 gallon can of applesauce seemed like a good idea at the time. To the 4 of us guys all living together in a staff house in Walworth, it seemed to be the very best grocery purchase we could make at 10 pm that night. We all liked applesauce. Arriving back home with the eager anticipation of sweet gluttony, it dawned on us that we did not own a can opener of any kind. Undeterred by such a minor obstacle, we rapidly began stabbing, poking and tearing at the lid. As the lid began to yield, one of us grabbed it firmly to yank it off. The lid, at this point, much more stubborn than the hand, managed to deliver a deep and sizeable slice to one’s palm (Yes. That would be my palm). Did we have any bandages, or antiseptic, or band-aids? Come on…we didn’t even have a can opener.

So, sometime around midnight, we did the only reasonable thing for this type of emergency. We called Mary Jane. After driving over to her house, she carefully bandaged my hand with a light scolding and rolling of her eyes. I still have the scar.

Mary Jane Birdsall taught countless Bible studies to hundreds of people over the years, but the images I remember are of her bandaging my hand or making me a sandwich while I sat at her kitchen table.

Why is this important?

Mary Jane did more than deliver Biblical information, she taught me the value of knowing God. She taught the Bible with an unapologetic directness and conviction that was contagious. But above all, her heart burned for people. She invested hours and hours in the lives of people most of us considered hopeless. It was not in her to give up on someone, even when they had already given up on themselves.

My conversations with her left me encouraged and challenged. Of all the things I’ve heard her say in the nearly 40 years I’ve known her, much of it was wise and some even profound. Nevertheless, it was not what she said, but who she was and the life she lived that impacted me.

So you see, the point is: It’s not just that she bandaged my hand in the middle of the night – It’s that she was the person I knew I could call when I needed help… day or night.
Can that be said of you or of me?

Thank you Mary Jane for doing more than saying it – but for living it.

Judging An Ebook By Its Cover

It began with a simple quest to buy bookends.

As we have been bringing more books into the apartment, our bookshelves are filling to the point that we are putting them on open shelves. This means bookends are required. We went to several stores that sell household décor and, surprisingly, they had no bookends to offer.

Once, when I was a teenager, I remember being asked what I wanted as a gift for my birthday or Christmas and I requested bookends; specifically, heavy ones. I received a pair of bronze Lincoln Memorial replica bookends. And yes, they are heavy. I still have them.

But this post isn’t really about bookends. It’s about Ebooks.

Ebooks are these wonderful new electronic devices that replace conventional books. Conventional books, as you know, have numerous paper pages enclosed by two covers and united by a binding. An Ebook is an electronic device about the size of a half sheet of paper and approximately ¼” thick. It is easily held in one hand. The screen displays a single page at a time. Pressing a button turns the pages. An Ebook can store thousands of books and you can carry it in one hand. You never need to go to a bookstore (Is that good or bad?), because you buy the books and download them directly to the device.

There are two major Ebook brands on the market; the Kindle from Amazon and the Nook from Barnes and Noble. I was killing some time in a Barnes and Noble the other day, so I spent about 30 minutes investigating the Nook and quizzing the college kid selling them. It was fun and interesting.

When it comes to books, I am a purist. To the point that I always prefer buying a hardcover rather than a paperback. An Ebook would never appeal to me. Or so I thought, but I have to admit I am warming up to the idea.

It’s difficult to predict the things I would not like about reading with an Ebook. There are small pleasures associated with conventional books. I like to look at a book sitting on the coffee table and as the days go by I notice my bookmark making its way through the pages. I can see if the book is fat or thin. I am a quarter of the way through it, then half, then nearing the final pages. I like that. I like to feel the weight of the literature in my hands.

But ultimately, a book is about its contents, not its cover. You know the saying. So, it is now possible for a book to be written, published, sold and read all electronically and never even actually exist in a tangible substantive sense. This kind of blows my mind.

Today, I came to the realization that there is a major advantage for many people to own an Ebook. They can appear cerebral and sophisticated, but actually be reading trash. Picture this – a sharply dressed, high level career woman sitting in the airport. She is holding and reading an Ebook. Now, picture the same woman holding a well worn paperback romance novel with a scantily clad woman in the arms of Fabio on the cover. You see, with an Ebook you can always look like you are reading something important. I’m not only picking on women here. Since you can download magazines, men never need to appear superficial or shallow. “Hey, he has a Kindle. He must be reading philosophy or the classics.” Nope, just the latest issue of Varmint.

There is more to be said about this topic, but this post is already too long. In the meantime, let me know where I can get some bookends.

Super-Size Me

Friday morning, I stopped in at Dunkin Donuts for a cup of coffee because I actually really like their coffee.

I went inside to the counter because the drive through was pretty busy.

Approaching the counter I ordered a large coffee. I moved to the side so the man behind me could order. I heard him order an extra large coffee. When I saw his coffee, I said, “Wait a minute. That’s what I want. I didn’t know you could order an extra large”. They gladly swapped it for me. Now, I know.

All this reminds me of an episode I once had at a fast food restaurant. I ordered a medium size French fries. The girl taking my order cheerfully declared, “We don’t have medium”.

As I scan the menu board, I ask puzzled, “you don’t?”

Still smiling, she recites, “We have regular, large and super-size”.

Finally grasping the concept, I ask, “But you have three sizes, right?”

Once again, as if someone had pulled the string on her back, “We have regular, large and super-size”.

“OK”, I said very deliberately, “I’ll take the middle one”.

Here’s my philosophical complaint about these semantic maneuvers.

Obviously, the goal is to make me feel like I am eating more fries if I call the same bag “large” instead of “medium”. Unfortunately, the intellect can sometimes be a barrier to sophomoric marketing strategy.

Instead of using language to describe reality, language is being manipulated as an attempt to define (create) reality. In my opinion, that’s the tail wagging the dog. And I feel personally insulted.

Maybe a Quarter Pounder should be renamed the Double Eighth Pounder.

Halfway Down

The other day, I was going through boxes of things we had in storage. One of the boxes contained an entire set of Childcraft books – 15 volumes.

Sets of books like these were usually sold by door to door salesman. Typically, payment was made in installments and volumes would be sent periodically about once a month until you had a complete set. The Childcraft books were geared for young children, containing poems, fables, nursery rhymes and other children’s stories. Encyclopedias were the most commonly sold sets. When I was growing up, a set of encyclopedias was an absolute necessity for doing any kind of homework or research. You have to remember the only other resource available for writing any school papers was the library (no home computers, no laptops) – not a good option at 11pm with your paper due the next day.

In our house, we not only had the Childcraft set, but also the complete Encyclopedia Britannica as well as a complete set of Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedias. These were wonderful books and I spent many hours pulling one of these heavy hardbound volumes off the shelf, leafing through the glossy pages absorbing all kinds of random information. Why do cows have more than one stomach? Are there fish at the bottom of the ocean no one has ever seen? What do we really know about Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Buffalo Bill, Eli Whitney, Christopher Columbus, Winston Churchill, Cleopatra, radio waves, the atom, or outer space?

As I opened the box and saw this old Childcraft set (they were a little worse for wear after so many years), I immediately wondered if I could find the only poem that I could recall from these books. For some reason, it was my favorite and I always came back to that page with the little boy sitting on the stairs. As I read it now, it’s not really profound or terribly meaningful in any sense. It has been there, all these years on a page in a book in a box. But this poem and this illustration have also been rattling around inside my head all these years. It was comforting to find it – something from my childhood that remained unchanged. That page was exactly as it had been the very first time I ever looked at it.

After all these years, that little boy is still sitting halfway up and halfway down.

The poet Alan Alexander Milne is best known for creating Winnie-the-Pooh and all of the associated children’s stories.

A.A. Milne died January 31, 1956, one day after I was born.