Proteus Prequel

Today I remembered what triggered the thoughts that led to my blog about Proteus and transformation.  Before I wrote the blog yesterday I could not quite recall why I was thinking along these lines. Not at all unusual now for me to forget something that happened seconds before so while it was a little frustrating when I could not quite recall the source of my musings, I have become accustomed to it.

But I remembered today. On Friday I was rearranging some books I had at work and came across one that contained some jokes.  I had, go figure, forgotten some of the jokes in the book which I'd read only a few months ago.  The good news about this is I laughed all over again when I got to some good ones. The one that made me think about the hazards of transformation went like this:

Shapiro one day walks into the bathroom looks at the mirror and does not like what he sees.  He is overweight; his hair an unkempt mess; his face looks jowly like someone who is not only chubby but sad, his clothes look sloppy, and on top of all this he notices that the short walk up the stairs to the bathroom has him breathing heavily.

Enough of this, says Shapiro.  He begins an exercise regimen, cuts down on fatty foods, gets a haircut, goes to a clothier and gets some duds that smack of class.  Two months later he looks in the mirror and he looks great. Thin, trim, handsome, well coiffed--just terrific.

Shapiro leaves his house, starts to walk across the street and is run over by a truck.  Lying in the street, about to perish, he turns to the sky and wheezes, "God, how could you let this happen?'

God responds: "To tell you the truth Shapiro, I didn't recognize you."

When I read this joke, it made me think of how we--or at least I at times--have accommodated who I was to meet a particular circumstance. And  while the analogy between Shapiro trying to get in shape, and someone copping a different persona to lose her or himself, is not quite apt--I do think that unlike contestants in a sporting event, we must be careful to stay true to ourselves and not continuously adapt to accommodate a changing environment.  Otherwise not only God, but we ourselves, will be unable to recognize us.

Proteus

I hear sports prognosticators hedging their bets when they identify the team they believe will win a game or a series.  "The Celtics can beat Miami depending on which Boston team shows up. If Rondo plays like Rondo then they have a chance.However, if  the real Dwyane Wade plays on Sunday then the Celtics can forget about it."

If Rondo plays on Sunday, well then Rondo will not only be playing like Rondo he will be Rondo.  The real Dwyane Wade will be in the Boston Garden tomorrow night.

Athletes performances will vary. The better players, like Jordan and Bird and Russell, are consistently great so the quality and style of their play will not vary much from one game to another. Rondo is difficult to predict.  He can go from a hall of fame player one night, to someone who seems uninterested the next.  In sports, there is this variability and it is one of the things that makes games interesting.  Can a player excel in certain situations and go beyond his limits.  Does an athlete in crunch time, run away from the ball, because he cannot take the pressure of the big shot?  When an opponent plays a zone, can a team adapt, changing its offense to combat the revised defense.

Proteus is a mythological sea god that had the ability to change shape.  The word protean is an adjective that  refers to changeability.  Someone who is protean can transform her or himself depending on a situation.  In sports, adaptation (as opposed to mercurial performance) is a good thing.  Not sure it is for the rest of us, especially if we lose sight of who we are what with the frequent wardrobe changes.

In the seventies and eighties I read a few of Kurt Vonnegut's books. He was something of a literary cult hero when I was in college, but it wasn't until I graduated that I began to read his novels.  My favorite (though I have not read them all, or even half of them) is Player Piano.  Great book, written in the early 50s with a remarkable sense of how technology would (and did), eventually, be omnipresent in organizations.

The main character in the book is Paul Proteus.  Proteus seems to be living the good life; he is a high level manager in the organization; has married a woman who seems to fit in with the society within which they live; has become a captain of sorts within his company by playing within the rules.  But something happens to Proteus. He begins to realize that he has somehow transformed and is not who he once was. He has copped the values of others, implicitly if not actively promulgating them, but he does not actually share these values.  True to his name, he has changed form to accommodate an environment, but he lost himself in the process.  I'll not spoil the read in case you're interested, but the question becomes can he change back.

If the Celtics continue to double team Dwyane Wade, he will have to adapt. But when we seem to be double teamed, we have to be careful to adapt or else we might become a chameleon, just a different person depending on where we are at and who happens to be our dance partner at the time.

I'm not a big short story reader, but one of Vonnegut's has stayed with me for thirty years. It is about two people active in community theatre. The man is painfully shy. He can barely say anything--except when he is on stage--then he can become whoever it is he is playing--a bully, a lover, a salesman.  Just tell him who he is and he can be it.  Another woman in the theatre group is interested in him, but offstage he can't seem to communicate with her. So their romance takes place on stage in different performances.

The story is called, "Who Am I This Time" and while it will benefit Dwyane Wade to adapt to the pressure defense tomorrow night and be protean in that way, I'm not sure it serves the average Jill and Jack to look back on their lives or look forward and ask themselves, who am I this time?

Caleb's Crossing: Book Review

Geraldine Brooks's novel is a tour de force. She manages to write as one might in the late 1600s and early 1700s. She captures the voice of a young woman--at the end an elderly woman--in a way that can make readers appreciate and understand another time. The author's use of vocabulary that was common then, but obsolete now, will be frustrating at times to readers because many of these words simply are not only not used currently but are not found in standard dictionaries. Still, Brooks's command of the language of then demonstrated how immersed she had become in the time and how careful she was to depict these times accurately. She also included events of the era which were essential to describe in order to explain the characters' decisions. I confess to not knowing or remembering anything about Metacom's rebellion/King Philip's war even though I have been living in New England for over thirty years. In many ways, this book was a beautiful history. Her description of landing in Italy and how a developed city must have looked to someone from the New World was worth reading the whole book.

However, the book is misnamed and not as advertised. It is not about Caleb. The book is about Bethia. She is the only nuanced character in the book. Caleb and Joel are peripheral characters and stick figures as is the grandfather, native americans, and the Cambridge characters. The father and Makepeace are multidimensional, but the point is that the book is allegedly about the crossing over of Caleb from native american culture to the other side. And while he is in the book, his journey is not central to it. The book is a remarkable depiction of the life and tribulations of a brilliant and courageous woman trapped in an era when brilliant women were suffocated by conventional values. It is not about Caleb's Crossing. It is more about how impossible it was for Bethia to cross over

Power of Words

My university, Northeastern, is very fortunate to have Michael Dukakis on our faculty.  Governor Dukakis as I am sure readers recall was the democratic candidate for president in 1988.  He was unsuccessful, losing to George Bush Sr. but has been successful as a university professor and, in my opinion, was an effective governor in Massachusetts.

I've had an occasion to interview the governor for a book I wrote and I found his private persona very much akin to what my perception of him was as governor:  personable, intelligent, unpretentious, and clear.  An hour or so ago I saw him walking on campus and it was this sighting that spurred this post.

The election between Governor Dukakis and then Vice President George Bush was a close one.  As has become standard the campaign included debates between the candidates. In one, the governor said something that likely cost him the election.  Dukakis was an opponent of capital punishment.  The moderator's (Bernard Shaw) first question presented a scenario to the governor in which his wife had been brutalized.  Would the governor then, asked the moderator, be in favor of the death penalty.

Dukakis responded without hesitation. "No I don't, Bernard. And I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty my whole life."  The response seemed insensitive, as if Governor Dukakis did not care about his wife. It sounded as if he, in general, lacked empathy.

Many identified or self identified pundits believe that these words cost the Governor the election.  When I saw Dukakis earlier today, I thought about the episode and how a few words which he would have liked to change or utter differently changed not only his life, but an entire nation's history.  The following is irrespective of your political perspective, but consider that if Dukakis wins the election, he likely would have run in 1992 again which would mean that Bill Clinton would not have run. If Bush Sr. had not served at least the one term he had, would his son President George W. Bush, been nominated.  Again, regardless of your political orientation, our history would have been different.

A few words can have a powerful impact not only in politics.  I worked with a professor once who told me that letters he had written had changed his life.  Another professor, an administrator at my previous university, told me that the words uttered at speeches can have, and in his case, had in fact had, a significant effect on his professional life.

The effects, of course, transcend professional life in the same way that they transcend political history.  Words we said or did not say to sweethearts, letters written; words said in haste to family members and friends, can find us now embracing those we love or missing the nourishment of family and romantic love. I'm in the communication business so I am more sensitive to this than most, but it is not difficult for anyone to identify gains and losses that are based not on thoughts but on how these thoughts were expressed.  Daniel Webster is said to have said, "If all my possessions and powers were to be taken from me with one exception I would choose to keep the power of speech, for by it, I could soon recover all the rest."  And without that power we can lose a good deal of what is important to us.

69 Mets

It's 43 years since the New York Mets won the world series for the first time. That year, 1969, the Mets went from annual losers and jesters, to champions. Players like Cleon Jones, Tommy Agee, Art Shamsky, and Ron Swoboda became heroes. Swoboda, a woeful outfielder most of the time, made one of the best catches ever during the 69 World Series against the Orioles.

 I was a serious Met fan that summer. I was home from school and working in the United States Post Office as what was called a "Mail Handler." My job was to take parcels off of a conveyor belt and trow them (you did not throw anything in my job, you trew them (or dem). You trew the parcels into bins. For this job I had to take two tests. After two months there working with assorted other summer help, I could not stop wondering where the people who failed that test were employed.

 What made the summer palatable was following the Mets. Every day from May when they started to get hot until they clinched the division I was anchored to the tv or radio hanging on every play. And, of course, I was not alone. If I speak to contemporaries about the 69 Mets, many of them can identify every player on the roster. They can tell me where they were when Tom Seaver's perfect game was spoiled by a rookie named Jimmy Qualls, and who was the unlikely mvp of the world series (Donn Clendenon).

 Forty three years ago and fans remember batting and earned run averages with greater ease than they can recall the dates of their children's births or exactly how old their youngest sibling may be. The historian Jacques Barzun is often cited with his quip, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball."  However, it is not only about baseball. Whoever wants to understand human behavior, must attempt to identify how come a 60 year old remembers the name Gary Gentry, but may not be able to tell you who ran as Humphrey's running mate in 1968, (Muskie) or even that Humphrey ran against Nixon.

Catastrophe Award

The home page on my work computer is YAHOO.  YAHOO must have a "man bites dog" gatekeeping policy for determining what stories are headlined on its page.  Yesterday the story was about Harry Truman's paperboy finally getting paid some outstanding charge.  Other recent features were about Venus Williams's diet tips and the same sex marriage of a star from the tv show "Sex in the City."

Today the story that greeted me at work was about a mother who was complaining that her 8 year old daughter had received the "Catastrophe Award" for being the student who came up with the most excuses for not coming up with their homework.  The mother felt that the child had been humiliated.

I wonder if the mother considered the possibility that her child had been negligent and needed to be held accountable for assignments like any other student in the class. There are other 8 year olds in the class who do complete their assignments.  I wonder if before targeting the instructor the mother might think about the long term damage to her daughter of a parent condoning irresponsibility.

The situation may be more complex.  Perhaps the student has some learning issues that have been identified and the excuses were an attempt to deal with some frustrating inabilities.  Perhaps the instructor is an inconsiderate fool who gives out disparaging awards to all of the students depending on their weaknesses.

But assuming that the instructor is attempting to enforce a message already discussed in class: that is, we all have responsibilities and we cannot find excuses for avoiding them, then perhaps the catastrophe award, however humiliating it may be to an 8 year old, may be a far more meaningful message than some bogus end of year stroke that may seem superficially benign, but does not educate young people to be responsible.

All of us who have worked with adults who seem to be able to make up incredible excuses for their irresponsibility--excuses that leave your head shaking and your lips parted--would have appreciated lessons like this relayed to some of our colleagues.

Leyland rant

Yesterday, I was watching the Red Sox play the Tigers.  In the bottom of the second Rick Aviles was up with two strikes, two outs and a man on second.  Aviles swung and tipped a pitch which was caught by the catcher just before the catcher's mitt hit the ground.  Some dust came up from the glove's contact with the ground around home plate.

The catcher raised his glove to show the umpire that he had caught the foul tip which--for the uninitiated-- is equivalent to a swing and a miss.  The umpire held up the catcher and looked toward the first base umpire to make sure that the tip had indeed been caught.  The first base ump declared that the ball had not been caught.

Replays showed that the umpire was wrong. The catcher had absolutely caught the ball.  When the Red Sox proceeded to score three runs in the inning after the third out was disallowed, the manager for the Tigers, Jim Leland, became understandably irate.  It is rare that a blown call can actually call a team the game. But this mistake did in fact cost the Tigers the game.

Eventually Leland was thrown out of the game. Subsequently he vented to the press and urged writers to expose this injustice.

I am a fan of Leyland. I always found him to be a stand up guy and, in this case as in almost all, I have no problem with his behavior and comments. The ump got it wrong and it cost his team the game.

But this, I think, while an injustice points out the attraction and beauty of sports.  Anyone who watched the game or particularly the replay knows that the Tigers were wronged.  The question I have today, on Monday, is how many people at work, or in their relationships, or when interacting with retailers or public servants, feel that they have been wronged--and have no arbiter to appeal to, and no rule book to point at.   The beauty of sports is that the rules, typically, are enforced, and they are written somewhere.  When your boss passes over you to promote a buddy, or behaves incomprehensibly because it is somehow in her or his best interests; when you experience an injustice with a lover, family member, even retailer--it is difficult to obtain justice.

In sports, Leyland can rant and there is a public forum to support his fury.  Last night in the Celtics-Heat game a basket made after the 24 second clock expired was initially counted. Subsequently, the referees reviewed the play and took the two points off of the scoreboard.  When someone acts inappropriately in a social or work or family situation, it is very unlikely that the injustice will be made right.  Which is one reason why, tonight, there will be millions of people watching the San Antonio Spurs play the Oklahoma City Thunder.  For the most part, the game will be fair.