Everything That Rises Must Converge

I love Lost. Can't help it. Only one other show, ever, has captured my imagination like this, and that was Northern Exposure. So now, it's Lost. I avoided it for four-plus years, but my neighbor Curt loaned me the first four seasons on DVD and I watched it all in about three days. Not sure whether to thank Curt or curse him. Considering the complicated nature of the show, maybe both courses of action are appropriate.

So, thank you, Curt. And curse you!

I got hooked early because of the literary allusions and direct references to things that interest me. Early on, I liked the idea that Sawyer, the resident con man, was a big reader. And when the first book he read on the show was Watership Down -- one of the books that shaped my literary ambitions as a child -- I was absolutely geeked.

It's been like that throughout, actually. They'll sneak in a subtle reference to a literary work or music and it makes the geek in me glow. This season, Daniel Faraday, the resident mad physicist, played Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu as a kid in a flashback. His mom told him to knock it off, because he was destined to use his mind in other pursuits (like manipulating the space-time continuum). Still, there was my favorite composer, Chopin, smack dab in the middle of my favorite show. Someone on a fan site noticed that the song itself, as played by the young Faraday, picked up at the 1:08 mark. It actually is the beginning of the prettiest segment of the song, my favorite part of the song. Anyone who's watched the show knows the significance of that number (1:08). There is no way it's coincidence that the scene began with Faraday playing the song at that instant, and that's one of the reasons I love this show.

Like most of the geeks who've been sucked into this show's vortex of mind-numbing mystery, I have theories. I'm not going to write them here, though. Instead (and this part will be of interest only to those who watch the show), I'll point out what I thought was a huge clue from the season finale.

It occurred as Jacob sat on a park bench in the "real world" off the island, waiting for (the real) John Locke to be pushed out of an eighth-story window by his father. Before we see Locke's body plunge to Earth in the background, Jacob (a moving force -- for good? for evil? -- on the island) is reading Flannery O'Connor's short story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge. The title itself is a pretty big clue, coming as it did from the work of this guy, who basically believed that human existence is a collective striving to cast off the crude, violent nature inherent to the species and "rise" to "converge" into a single, higher level of existence. OK, I found that on a fan site, but as big a geek as I am about these things I had never heard of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin before Wednesday. (And oh, can it be coincidence that one of the main Dharma characters, Dr. Chang, is named Pierre?)

So, the good vs. evil dynamic being played out on the island is actually about Jacob's belief that, despite the apparent brutal nature of human beings, it is possible to ascend to a higher form collectively -- eventually.

Now, what about O'Connor's book? I happen to own it, and when I went back to read the title story, I noticed something astounding. Among the other titles in the collection are these stories: A View of the Woods; the Comforts of Home; the Lame Shall Enter First; Why Do the Heathen Rage?; Revelation; Parker's Back; Judgement (sic) Day.

Wow. It's almost as if the writers of Lost took almost every important theme they've explored for the past five years directly from the titles in O'Connor's collection.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that's what this show does to you. It's actually participatory television (if your curiosity is powerful enough) and it makes you want to search deeper into the mystery.

Can't wait for Season Six. In January. Curse you, Curt. And thank you.

Countrywide To Homeowner (me): You're Out Of Luck

I just got off the phone with a "home retention" representative for Countrywide, the company that holds the 30-year fixed mortgage that my wife and I took out on our house in 2004. It was, to say the least, a frustrating conversation.

The goal of my call was to find out what, if anything, is available to help people (like my family) who have never missed a mortgage payment but whose financial circumstance has shifted so dramatically that making those payments over the coming months will become much more difficult, if not impossible.

I explained that I lost my job in July and, even though we haven't missed any payments, our income has been essentially cut in half and a once-affordable mortgage has, for the time being, become unaffordable. After I explained our circumstance, Lori the Countrywide Phone Drone (CPD) told me in clipped tones that there is no program of aid available for customers whose mortgages are current.

I then told her we're trying to make sure that the mortgage stays current, something that might be impossible with our family income slashed by more than half after my layoff eight months ago. Was there really nothing to be done? Then why do we receive almost daily emails and snail mails from Countrywide inviting us to call and find out what can be done to make the mortgage payment easier to meet? Is all of that just marketing BS and meaningless advertising?

Again, she told me I was basically out of luck.

I asked her if I would be better off, in terms of finding help from Countrywide, if we had missed a few payments. She told me there was no guarantee I would be helped if payments were missed.

Then, helpful soul that I am, I told her that it might be a good idea (and maybe even good for her career) if she were to tell her superiors at Countrywide about our story. I told her I'd be willing to bet there are millions of Countrywide customers in similar circumstances, people who were good customers but had lost their jobs and were in danger of falling behind on payments, and that many millions more were coming down the tracks with all the job loss the nation is suffering now. I told her that if Countrywide was smart, it would do something to help those customers. Otherwise, Countrywide might find itself on the figurative fiscal breadline with other failed financial institutions.

What could they do? Here's one solution:

Create a program that allows good, responsible customers who want to pay their mortgage the opportunity to pay interest only for a year. That would essentially cut the payment by one-third (leaving a substantial monthly escrow payment and whatever the interest would be). In our case, it would save us about $500 a month for a year, giving us a little more breathing room while I continue to search for work. Once the customer's situation improved, or at the end of the year-long suspension of principle payments, the mortgage payment would revert to its previous level.

I tell you what else. The CPD I spoke with could use an attitude adjustment. I was cordial and calm throughout the conversation. She had my payment record in front of her, so she knew she was talking to a responsible customer, someone who ABSOLUTELY WANTS TO DO THE RIGHT THING, but she was rude and short from start to finish. I signed off by informing her, in the pleasantest of voices, that she had been no help whatsoever.

Look, I'm not asking for a handout. I'm asking for help from a mortgage company to prevent yet another mortgage from becoming a "toxic asset." I'm asking for breathing room while my family adjusts to its new financial situation. I'm asking for time to find a job, at which point we'll gladly pay the mortgage as it's written. I'm asking for common sense from a company with everything to lose if the millions of others in my situation suddenly can't make their payments.

I'm asking myself whether there is a solution at all, especially with people like Lori the Countrywide Phone Drone (and the mindless corporation she represents) holding the keys.

Cut The Crap, Geithner

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was as uninspiring as a pile of dead leaves and as informative as a homeowners association newsletter. I know very little about the machinations of macroeconomics, but somehow I know even less today than I knew before Geithner's disastrous "unveiling" of the Obama administration's plan for the remaining $350 billion of TARP money.

I, like Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and the rest of MSNBC's talking heads, am left feeling a bit disgruntled with our economic leaders. These are the people who are supposed to get us out of this mess? Well then, good luck to all of us.

Contrast Geithner's pathetic performance with Obama's in Fort Myers on Monday. He is a communicator of the highest order. He exudes confidence. He oozes empathy. When he walked over and kissed the homeless woman who asked, "Please help," Obama struck exactly the right emotional tone.

Very nice. Very touching. But . . .

I still have many, many questions. As an accomplished professional sports journalist who has been out of work since July, I have yet to see any real progress. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's more difficult today to get a job than it was six months ago. Six months from now, it will probably be more difficult still.

My family is quintessentially middle class. The difference between us and most? We aren't saddled with thousands of dollars of credit card debt. With help from generous relatives, we have done things the right way.

We didn't overspend on our house, and we financed it with a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage. We did get a second mortgage, but we used that money to pay off both of our cars and what credit card debt we had remaining. We hardly ever use credit cards, and when we do, we pay them off as quickly as possible. We don't spend to excess, but we do pay all of our bills on time -- including the first and second mortgages.

I'm looking for work. I've found that I'm utterly unqualified for the few jobs that actually are available, and all this talk of millions of new "green" jobs seems geared toward people who already have degrees in ecology or environmental engineering. I always thought I'd be able to work at a book store or somewhere similar if things got really rough, but that option won't be there now, either. I'm trying to write fiction, but trying to make a living doing that is like trying to make a living playing the lottery, even in the best of times.

These are not the best of times.

We are the face of these times. My wife and I worked hard to build our careers. We proved ourselves competent in our work. We had a nice, steady income and a nice home in a clean, safe neighborhood. We thought we had prepared the way for our two young sons to grow up happy, healthy and with the promise of a better life than Beth and I have had. Now? Because of matters that seemed to have been beyond our control, we've had to cash in my retirement fund and hope something ... anything ... comes along for me before that money runs out.

I wish President Obama and Timothy Geithner could hear my story. Then again, would it even register? Obama has spoken glowingly of his devotion to the middle class. Well, here we are, Mr. President. Struggling to survive. Worried about the future. Still willing to do things the right way, but unsure anymore if that will be enough.

So, cut the crap, Geithner. Quit approaching your job like some wide-eyed doctoral candidate who thinks he can scrape by with vague generalities and high-sounding diction.

For God's sake, DO something.

Make 'em take lie detector tests

I wrote this almost three years ago, but it's just as relevant today. Especially in light of the Alex Rodriguez admission of steroid use.

Want to know who's using? Hook 'em all up to a polygraph.
Want to know who's lying? Strap 'em all to a lie detector.
If Major League Baseball wants to clean up its act, there's a way. It might be flawed, but even the result of a scientifically debatable polygraph is better than having to take these guys at their word ever again.
If the notoriously overprotective players union wants to clear the collective name of its constituency, it will voluntarily waive the players' right to hide behind the Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988, which states (in part):
"An employer engaged in commerce ... cannot, in any manner or for any reason, have an employee or prospective employee submit to a polygraph test."
Give up that right, and make a show of it. Bring everything into the light. Right now.
Do it before any more IRS investigators break down the door of [name redacted] or that other suspected steroid/HGH user, [name redacted].
Want the scandal to go away? Forget about financing a virtually hopeless study at UCLA in a quest for a urine test that reliably detects human growth hormone (a substance that is extremely difficult to detect even in a blood test).
Work out a deal with the American Polygraph Association - whose business is truth, a strong dose of which baseball could use - and set up an independent board to administer, monitor and analyze the results.
Do it every year, to major-leaguers and to minor-leaguers. Make it a standard part of reporting to spring training, an annual ritual, like the preseason physical or daily pitchers fielding practice.
Pop the polygraph on 'em at random times during the season. Keep 'em on their toes.
Make every result public. Players who admit during the test to having used performance-enhancing substances should receive reduced penalties, an acknowledgment that for once, they told the truth.
Players who lie about it should be fined, suspended and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
They have done this to themselves. Jason Grimsley has done it to himself. But it's not only Grimsley, or the six names redacted from the now-infamous affidavit that brought to light the most celebrated IRS investigation this side of Al Capone.
It's Grimsley, it's the six blacked-out names he named, it's every name of every player of every organization for the past 15 years - and maybe before. That includes this year, Year Two of MLB's supposedly tough-as-nails but really soft-as-cotton policy governing the use of performance enhancers.
They're all under the same blanket now, the blanket of suspicion. No one is above it.
Is that fair?
Not to the players who have spent their careers legally squeezing every ounce of ability out of their unenhanced bodies and minds. Fair or not, it is what the current culture of baseball dictates.
Speculation. Whispers. Suspicion.
Who now can watch a pitcher throw 98 mph and not wonder? Who now can watch a batter slug a baseball 450 feet and not suspect?
Want to know for sure? Read the printout after the polygraph. Those jagged lines don't lie.
Not that it will ever happen. For one thing, as reliable as polygraphs are, there always is that element of uncertainty - just as there are Web sites selling synthetic HGH, there are Web sites out there that teach you how to beat a lie detector.
Besides, union leader Don Fehr fought tooth and nail against steroid testing, on the grounds that testing "without cause" would violate the players' civil rights. To think that he would submit to a solution as admittedly drastic as across-the-board lie detector tests is ludicrous.
Nor would Commissioner Bud Selig ever stoop to such draconian methods.
So, what? Believe [name redacted] when he says he's clean? Take it on faith that the same players who pass the toothless MLB drug test aren't using something else?
That's hard to do now. And maybe it always will be.

I wonder just how united we really are

I was moved, as I'd like to think most people were, by the events of Tuesday in Washington. It wasn't President Obama's best speech, but he said what he had to say and hit on all the themes that needed to be hit on.

The networks gushed all day and into the night about how now we can move forward together "as one." I want to feel that way, but anecdotal evidence suggests it's just not so.

At this Yahoo! baseball blog, a cute examination of Obama's connection to his beloved White Sox devolved into a back-and-forth snipe fest among the commenters at the bottom. This is only one example; on my Facebook account, mixed among all the expressions of joy, I saw comments from friends that were cheap shots at Michele Obama's gold outfit and frank expressions of fear of Obama's policies. Why are people afraid? Why do people feel the need to belittle the First Couple already?

It's no surprise, though. The people who spewed such hate at the Palin and McCain rallies during the campaign aren't going to change their hearts just because 52 percent of the country says they should. They are who they are, and this country is what it is: still split along Rovian lines, still a Red America and a Blue America.

I have as much cause as anyone to feel disenchanted with the economic future of this country. Yet, my natural sense of optimism (blind optimism?) is in keeping with Obama's message. That's enough for me today.

What I hope Obama will say in his inauguration address tomorrow

Fellow Americans: I stand before you today on the steps of this hallowed building, humbled by the enormous responsibility we share. Humbled, but determined. Determined to stand upon the shoulders of those who came before us in order to meet the enormous challenges of our generation. Our mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, and generation upon generation of Americans have risen up in the way most appropriate to their times to overcome the great problems of their age. The citizen patriots of the Revolutionary War, who gave birth to our great nation; the abolitionist voices in the wilderness in the first half of the 19th century, who recognized and dared to speak out against the evils of slavery; the men, women and children of the age of Lincoln, who waged a brutal war and died by the hundreds of thousands to secure the sanctity of the United States of America and to give freedom to the unjustly chained; the children of the Great Depression, who, even as their empty stomachs rumbled, never lost faith in the promise of our nation; the men and women of the Greatest Generation, who partnered with the forces of good in the world to strike down tyranny and preserve the rights of human beings everywhere; the marchers of Selma, Ala., risking life and limb to transform Dr. King’s dream into reality; all of these people, all of these Americans, helped nourish the ideals of a young and burgeoning nation by not only weathering the change inherent to a life of freedom, but by becoming themselves the very agents of change.

It was not easy. Throughout our nation’s history, change has upended lives, shattered dreams, shaken us to our very foundation. In the darkest hours of our history, when the days and nights were fraught with grief and uncertainty, all that remained was hope. Hope for a better future for ourselves, for our children, for our children’s children. But hope we had then, and hope we have today. Yet, hope without action is one cruel moment removed from despair. We must hope, but we must do more than hope. Our sense of ourselves as a people, as a nation, demands that even as we gather to our hearts the glimmer of hope in the darkness of our age, we act upon our impulse toward that shining beacon of the promise of a better life.

Where else, but the United States of America, can a people reach back into their collective history to seek for such a clear course for the future? Where else, but the United States of America, could the disjointed rhythm of history propel a Hawaiian-born son of a Kenyan father and a Kansan mother into the highest office in the land? Where else, but the United States of America, have the lessons of the past proven so eloquently that, as Benjamin Franklin warned his fellow Founding Fathers, “We must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately?” The path forward, while not smooth, is thoroughly known and eminently passable if we merely listen to the message cast down through history by those who came before us.

We might ask, as President Kennedy urged 48 years ago, “What can I do for my country?” In asking this, we must ponder the purpose of the question: simply, to engender a stronger, more vital America, where anyone who works hard and wants a better life has a fair chance to achieve it. It is our sacred duty as a people to continue the work begun by those citizen patriots of the late 1700s and to honor the hard work and sacrifice endured by the generations that followed. Only by doing so, by mirroring the example of our forefathers, can we ensure generations to come will have their chance to pursue the American dream. What we do for our country today, we also do for your children, for my daughters, for our children’s children.

It will not be easy. High-minded questions and philosophical answers will not alone soothe the fears of the unemployed factory worker in Ohio or Michigan; the retiree whose life savings has been devastated by the worst economic climate since the Great Depression; the young college graduate, burdened with student debt and unable to find a job; the lifelong journalist, out of work as the newspaper industry crumbles; the soldier back from service in Iraq or Afghanistan, ready to return to private life, only to find his or her civilian job no longer exists. These and millions of their fellow Americans are, and by right should be, the agents of change. Confronted with the reality of a sick economy, worried about how to pay the bills and keep a roof over their heads, they seek answers.

These answers will not surface quickly, but surface they will. For the one constant in our nation’s history has been our resolve as a people not only to confront change, but to embrace it and mold it to our present and future needs. Change, while painful, is the only way to grow. And, to paraphrase Dr. Franklin, if we do not grow together, we will surely grow apart.

And so, fellow Americans, I stand before you today and echo the call to action of President Kennedy, who understood the truth about the deeply independent spirit of his fellow countrymen. He understood then and we understand today that together, we the people of the United States of America CAN overcome all obstacles, CAN rise to new heights, CAN live by the example of our ancestors, CAN help our children’s children live a better life, CAN transform the smallest glimmer of hope into the towering promise of a future brimming with optimism, a future worthy of our great nation. Together, we can. Together, we will.

Thank you, God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

Not The Professors' Fault

In my last post, I complained about the lack of vision I witnessed from the University of Florida and University of South Florida journalism schools in the early 1990s. The kind of vision that might have better prepared that era's burgeoning writers (and today's laid off journalists) for the changes that were coming in the way the public received its news.

Let me be clear about one thing, here: I don't put it on the professors at all. With few exceptions, the teachers I had at UF and USF were outstanding. A couple, in particular -- USF's Randy Miller and Rick Wilber -- became mentors to me and I consider them friends, still. Miller provided the inspiration for me to finally graduate, and Wilber gave me moral support and the occasional verbal kick in the butt that I needed back then.

The skills they and others taught are just as relevant now as they were then. It will always be vitally important to know how to report and write well, regardless of the medium used to present the information.

There are multi-media graduate degrees now at USF. One of the first (if not the first) graduate of that program now works for tbo.com. Ironically, I gave the good folks in the Tribune/tbo heirarchy a glowing report on this guy before he was hired (he had interviewed me for a baseball project he did, and I thought he came off as very professional and competent). I don't know how much (if any) that influenced the decision to hire him, but the fact remains he works there now and I don't. So, was this a simple case of "out with the old" (me) and "in with the new" (him)? Eh. Maybe. I certainly don't begrudge that guy his job; anyone who can cling to a position with a media company in this era has my full support. I do have to wonder, though: If USF had offered that program in 1991, with an eye toward the future of the business, and if I had chosen to participate (and actually graduated), would I still have my job today?

That's what I meant in the previous post. I wish I had had that choice way back when.