Anna Jarvis Isn't Happy

Wait! Put down that box of candy. Forget about ordering those flowers. And whatever you do, don’t put that card in the mail! Anna Jarvis would not be happy.

What on earth am I talking about, and who the heck is Anna Jarvis?

For those of you who didn’t know Anna Jarvis is the woman who created our modern celebration of Mother’s Day. She also ended up hating what her creation had turned into, and spent the rest of her life trying to kill the “monster” she had created.

But let me back up a little bit.

She had intended Mother’s Day to be both a memorial to her own mother, who had died in 1905, and a day like many of the other observances that came out of the Sunday School movement of the time; things like Roll Call Day, Temperance Sunday, and Missionary Sunday, which have long been forgotten. As such, it was her intent that since it was on a Sunday, it would be a “holy day, not a holiday,” and a day on which people would write heartfelt letters to their mothers, telling how important they were to them.

However, within 10 years of Woodrow Wilson’s 1914 proclamation of the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day, Jarvis was soured by what she considered to be the commercialization of her “holy day,” and actively campaigned against it. She had meant for it to be “a day of sentiment, not profit,” and was angered by the huge profits that the candy, flower, and greeting card industries were making off of her mother’s day.

She was incensed that it had become that most loathsome of all things…the dreaded “Hallmark Holiday,” a term which is horribly misused, because Hallmark didn’t create those holidays, they simply made a mint recognizing that many people would like cards to send out on them.

And that’s what pissed her off…the fact that people sent their mothers printed greeting cards rather than a heartfelt, handwritten letter. Or to quote her:

A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.

Now, I’m quite certain that if I wrote my mother the kind of letter that Anna Jarvis wanted me to, she’d be on the phone immediately, asking how many days I had left to live. I also know that if I wrote the kind of letter that Jarvis wanted us all to write, I’d have to double my insulin dosage for the day. My family is just not that overtly sentimental.

And that’s OK. For you see, the other thing that Anna Jarvis didn’t get is that for many families the candy, the flowers, and the dreaded greeting card, are symbols of what she wanted people to say outright. They are symbols of what is already understood within the families that use them, and that might even mean more than the handwritten note she insisted upon.

I can only imagine Anna Jarvis’s reaction to the grandmother of a friend of mine who would’ve seen the handwritten note as a sign that you were too lazy to go to the store and pick out a nice Hallmark card for her. She'd say "Write the note if you want…but make sure it’s in a proper card!"

Ironically, one of the reasons that Anna Jarvis didn’t get it was because she was never a mother herself. To her, Mother’s Day was always about her own mother, and was never something she got to experience from the other side, where she might have gained a different perspective.

She didn’t understand that once she’d let the genie out of the bottle, people would observe Mother’s Day any way they wanted to, whether it was the way she had in mind or not. And so she spent the rest of her life trying to stuff that all too independent genie back. She was so set on having Mother’s Day observed the way that she had intended, that she never paid attention to the joy millions of women got from the way that it actually was being observed.

And so if your mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, wife, whatever, enjoys the candy, the cards, and the flowers, I say run out and get them right now. Thank Anna for the idea, but then tell her that she's being a bit too much of a control freak.

For more information, you might want to check out these links:

For the Mother of Mother’s Day, It’sNever Been Just Right

Mother’s Day Creator LikelySpinning in Her Grave

Christians and Scientologists

Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock for years, most of you know that I’m a tad religious. I’d like to think that you also know that I’m not one of those people. Not one of those people who’s always in your face about why my group is right and yours has to be wrong. I’d like to think that you know that I maintain that the very definition of the word believe implies that you don’t really know for sure, but are putting all your money on it (in fact, I even discussed that in this blog a few years ago); and that that also implies that I could well be the one who’s wrong…but in good faith.

Well, I’ve had this thought experiment going on in my head for years about how to explain to certain other Christians that the people who just don’t get it, and who think that we Christians are nuts aren’t being willfully stubborn, and refusing to accept what has to be perfectly and obviously clear to them. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to come across any Martians to do this experiment with.

Martians?

Yes. My scenario involved plopping down a Martian here on Earth, and having her meet people representing Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and every other ism right on down to Pastafarianism; and then see which one she determined was true…or if she thought that we were all out to a seven-course lunch. Or…if she was biased by her own Martian beliefs, and started trying to proseletyze us.

My point here was that we’re all influenced and biased by what we grew up with, and of course we’re going to resist some new belief someone’s trying to tell us about, when it doesn’t fit in with what we’ve been taught for years…and especially when it doesn’t seem to make any logical sense.

But as I said before, I couldn’t find any Martians. I did, however, find a Scientologist.

Well not quite, but hear me out.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine who’s a very devout Christian was telling me about her friend George, an atheist, who seems to be resisting God’s call at every turn.

Now, before we go any further with this, let’s get away from the common practice of demonizing atheists. The “a” in “atheist” doesn’t mean against theism, it means without it. There are a lot of really nice, friendly, loving, and moral atheists out there. They even like puppies. They just don’t happen to believe in a god of any kind.

So now that I’ve gotten hat out of the way, as I thought about what my friend was saying, I suddenly found my Martian, but in a different way than I had expected.

I said to her:

Suppose you had a friend who belonged to the Church of Scientology. And suppose you found yourself, against your better judgment, starting to find some of its claims to be credibile. You’d start fighting too, because you’d feel that you were starting to be sucked into this thing that you knew couldn’t possibly be true. Well, that’s how George feels. Christianity is to him as Scientology is to you.

And let’s face it, we all do this. Most of us don’t take the time to take an honest, impartial look at all the other religions out there before deciding what we want to believe. We all come from a place where we have one set of beliefs, and will dismiss another set completely out of hand.

Just as most of us would dismiss Scientology.

And George is dismissing any kind of theism in general.

Just sayin’.

Turn it Off Already!

A few months ago I went to get the oil changed in my van, and as I walked into the waiting room at the dealership, I noticed the most amazing thing.

Silence.

Yes, silence. The TV was off and the two other people sitting in the room were happily reading books or magazines. I commented on that, and they both said that it was wonderful to have the TV off.

How about that? They thought it was wonderful to have the TV off. Why? So they could read.

There are many places where we’re held captive by TVs that are on, supposedly for our benefit. And ironically, these places also have stacks of magazines for us to read. Wouldn’t it be easier for us to read without the TV? I go to the offices of three doctors who have TVs on in the waiting area, and when I go there, I put soothing music on my iPod to drown it out so I can read.

My dentist, mercifully, doesn’t have a TV in his waiting room. The only thing that could possibly distract me from my reading is the music that the receptionists are listening to behind the desk.

There are so many places where we’re held captive by TVs that are on, supposedly for our benefit. I remember a ride on the Cape May-Lewes Ferry 10 years ago, where there was a TV on no matter where you went, and they were all set to CNN. There was no way to escape them unless you either went to one of the outside decks or went back down to sit in your car. But if you simply wanted to sit at one of the tables on one of the inside decks and enjoy the view, you couldn’t get far enough from the current day’s reporting of death, destruction, and mayhem…things that maybe I didn’t want my kids to have to deal with while we were on vacation. I complained saying that I didn’t mind there being a TV on the ship somewhere tuned to CNN, but it shouldn’t be in our faces everywhere we went.

But the iPod and its like are game-changers. Not only can I now drown out what’s on their TVs by listening to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Bolero, or even Tubular Bells on my it while I read; I could listen to a podcast of my choosing. I could listen to Freakonomics Radio, The Bowery Boys, or selected downloaded segments from NPR’sMost Emailed Stories.

And irony of ironies, the iPhone, iPod Touch, and other similar devices allow us to even choose what I want to watch. I can watch Singin’ in the Rain, a TEDTalk, or an episode of Mythbusters. Privately, without inflicting it on anyone else. I can even watch CNN…but only if I choose to.

Now, for those of you who complain that this simply puts each of us into our own private little world, where we don’t interact with those around us, isn’t the same true of reading, that activity that many of you complaining have raised to almost sacred status? Whether I’m reading a book, watching a movie, listening to music, or even taking a nap, I’m in my own little world. So what’s the difference? I think that I should have the option of retreating into my own little world, or that my family should, without being held hostage by what someone else has chosen for us.

OK, wait, I know…you in the back seat over there. You’re gonna ask what the difference is between the car dealership and my dentist’s office…besides cars and teeth. What’s the difference between someone choosing the TV show I have to hear and someone choosing the music I have to hear.

Really? You’re really asking that question? The answer is so basically simple. The background music doesn’t require any of your attention. It can be there without intruding on your little world, and doesn’t force you to listen to it. The TV show or movie that you didn’t pick sucks you in despite of, and maybe even because of, all efforts to resist and ignore it. Perversely, the more you don’t want to hear a movie or TV show, the harder it is to tune out.

So for Pete’s sake people…enough with the TVs in captive public spaces.

Turn it off already!

Let's Hear It For The Shallowness of Facebook!

Time and time again I’ve heard people talk about the shallowness of Facebook. About how it fosters a sense of false intimacy by enabling us to have many relationships of precious little depth. And I’ve heard this spoken of as if it’s a bad thing. But as I look at the names of former students and former high school classmates among those on my roster of friends, I’m beginning to think that a little shallowness is not such a bad idea, and actually may be a pretty good one.

Why? Well let’s start out by considering my old High School. The East Orange High School class of 1974 had about 435 students in it. My wife’s entire high school didn’t have that many students in it. But going on, this meant that there were roughly 2000 students at EOHS. There was no way that I knew all of them…heck, I didn’t even know all of the kids in my own class…but I came into contact in some way with quite a few of them on a regular basis.

Out of the 400-odd kids in my class, I recognized maybe 200, knew maybe half as many, regularly traveled with 30, and was really good friends with about 15. But the fact that I wasn’t really good friends with Sharon didn’t stop me from greeting her in the hallway and asking how she was. The fact that Eric was in the class below me, and was really one of my sister’s friends, didn’t stop us from talking when we ran into each other at the library. And the fact that I only really saw Michelle in study hall didn’t stop me from playing Scrabble ™ with her in Dr Handleman’s room every day.

There was a lot of shallowness in EOHS because while you couldn’t possibly be everyone’s best friend, you could still know a little something about them and be nice to them.

Then there were the kids I spent up to nine years with at Ashland Elementary School, but who went to Scott High School because they lived on that side of the line that Ashland straddled. Even though Brent wasn't a regular part of my life anymore, it was nice to see him when we went shopping at Pantry Pride, or when I was riding my bike near Upsala College. I didn’t have to engage in deep conversations with people like him, but it was definitely nice to know what they were up to.

That’s the great thing about the supposed shallowness of Facebook…it’s like running into Sharon in the hallway, Eric in the library, Michelle in Dr Handleman’s room, or even Brent near Upsala. It’s not just about staying in contact with the 150 or so people that sociologists say are your real friends, it’s about briefly hearing about what Suzie’s doing, or seeing pictures of Paul’s grandchildren (am I that old?) without feeling the need to sustain a long conversation. It’s running into these people in the hallway again.

And let’s face it…some of us just try too hard to connect, or reconnect, anyway, and it feels awkward for everyone as a result. But if we can be as comfortable with the “shallowness” online as we were IRL, then it can be a wonderful thing. Maybe a quick little response to someone’s status update is really all that’s needed.

This is why I generally accept all friend requests from people I remember from high school…even if I didn’t hang out with them. We share a common past, and it’s great to be able to run into them in the hallway again. Yes…I still have my really close friends who I talk to all the time, but there’s something to be said for those “mere acquaintances,” and keeping in contact with them, no matter how tenuously.

And so I say, “Bring on the shallowness!”

¿Should Sra Fishman Get Her Period?

Abbreviations. We all know what they are. We all know them when we see them. We all know that Mr is pronounced “mister” and not “mur,” and that Mrs is “missus” and not “murse.” And what about St? Well, we all know that that’s either a saint or a street, that Blvd is “boulevard” and not “blivid.” We all know that. And that’s why I’ve consistently not put periods after abbreviations in anything I’ve written for the past who knows how many years. If some editor wants to come along and do that, fine. But I’m not doing it, because I know that we all know that things like Mr, Mrs, St, Blvd, and Dr are abbreviations. We don’t need it spelled out for us.

Or so I thought. Marla Fishman may have changed my mind.

Marla Fishman is the Spanish teacher in my upcoming short story 20 Candles. I didn’t refer to her as Marla in the beginning; I started by talking about her as Sra Fishman.

And that’s where the trouble started.

As my wife was reading a draft of the story to our 10-year-old daughter, she assumed it was a typo, and read it as Sara Fishman. Um…no. Her first name is Marla, but she’s the Spanish teacher, so she’s Sra Fishman…you know, Señora Fishman.

Cheryl suggested that maybe when I introduced the character, I should actually spell the word out, since most people wouldn’t know that Sra was the abbreviation for Señora when they first saw it.

Oh. Well, I suppose that made sense.

But then I got to thinking about the rest of the story, and that abbreviation. Sure, I knew that Sra was the abbreviation for Señora, but actually, I think Cheryl did too, because she’s taken as much Spanish as I have. I think that what caused the confusion in her case was not having any context for it yet. Not knowing yet that Marla was a Spanish teacher made her think that “Sra” was a typo rather than an abbreviation.

On the other hand, putting the period there would’ve signaled to her that this was an abbreviation for something, that it was an abbreviation that she might not already be familiar with.

Darn.

So what do I do now? Do I now start consistently placing periods after all of my abbreviations, just in case I ever have to deal with another Spanish teacher, or use some other abbreviation that the general public might not be familiar with?

I really don’t want to do that. Stylistically, I like the idea of not having a period in the middle of a sentence.

I guess the smartest thing to do to consistently follow Cheryl’s advice. When I know I’m about to use an abbreviation that people might not be familiar with, I’ll spell it out the first time, and then figure that people are smart enough to realize that what they see later on is the abbreviation.

And this means that none of the women I write about will ever have a period.

The Way It Was

I don’t remember what brought it up, but there we were standing around talking in the kitchen about how old we were when we got married or had kids. I think it may have started out with me mentioning the Eew Equation, a formula that one of my students taught me about how old the youngest person is that you can go out with, without people thinking it was gross. That formula is half your age, plus 7.

So at 14 you can go out with another 14-year-old, because half your age is 7. Then when you add 7 to that, you end up right back at 14. At 30 you can date someone who’s 22, and at 56, I could date someone who’s 34 without people thinking it was totally disgusting.

Now, my 10-year-old daughter loves to point out that the formula doesn’t work if you’re younger than 14. If you’re 12, then half your age is 6, and when you add 7 to that, you end up with a 13-year-old as the “youngest” person you can date. But we seem to have gone off on a little tangent here.

As I said, we were talking about how old we were when we got married or had kids. I was the old guy in the group in many ways. Not only was I the oldest, at 56, but I was 32 when I got married, and 36 when my first daughter was born. The youngest person in the room was 33, and got married and had her son when she was 21 (and according to the formula, she’s also just a year too young for me to date).

But wait, there’s more. Her mother had her when she was 19, and her grandmother had her mother when she was 17. Being the math person that I am, I figured that if this patterned continued, her son should have his first child when he’s 23.

Then one woman mentioned that her great-grandmother got married at 16. Yes…16. Now intellectually, we all know that people did things a lot younger all those years ago, and especially in certain parts of the country, but it was still a little jarring to us, because we tend to think of 16-year-olds as being gum-chewing, iPod-toting, high school kids who don't have the common sense that God gave a broom handle. But it wasn’t always so. In fact, there’s a wonderful story behind her great-grandmother’s marriage.

It seems that one day great-grandma’s boyfriend showed up at the house and asked to speak to her father. He wanted to marry her. Her father figured that he had gotten her pregnant and wanted to “do the right thing,” so he said yes. A quiet little ceremony was arranged a few weeks later, and the rest of the family sat back and waited for the baby.

And waited. And waited.

A year and a half later, a baby arrived.

Great-grandma’s family was a little confused. “We thought you wanted to get married because you were pregnant,” they said.

“No,” she replied, “we wanted to get married because we loved each other.”

Now, while that’s a touching good story, it’s important for what it implies. And what it implies is that back in great-grandma’s day, people assumed that with all the time the kids had taking long walks near the creek and such, with all the time that they had together without being under the watchful eye of some sort of chaperone, it was only reasonable to assume that some of them…maybe even a lot of them…were going to have sex. And if the girl didn’t get pregnant, that was fine, but if she did, the boy was expected to “do the right thing” and marry her.

My friend’s great-great-grandparents were no fools. They knew what was going on around them. And they probably knew what was going on around them because they had done it too, as had their parents before them.

But something changed in the generations after that. For some reason we began to officially pretend that people didn’t do that before they were married…at least good people didn’t. Or maybe it was “good people” of a certain social class. And as a result, all kinds of pain, sorrow, and hypocrisy followed in its wake.

Now, however…we seem to be back to the days of great-grandmother and her parents. 16-year-olds being what they are these days, none of us thinks it’s a good idea for them to be having sex yet. But as I’ve said before, if you’re 26 and have been seeing someone for more than six months, we all pretty much assume that you’re having sex, and no judgments are made. In fact, we’re sort of surprised if we find out that you aren’t. Some people may not like it, but at least the hypocrisy is gone.

I’m glad that the way it was has become the way it is again.

He Never Really Loved Me

Many years ago I read a letter to one of the two twin sisters of advice…Abby and Ann…from a woman who was totally devastated after the death of her husband of 50 or so years; a man who was well-respected in the community and with whom she had an almost fairytale marriage. No, not because of his death itself, which is to be expected, especially after that long of a marriage. But because of what she found out in the weeks after the funeral.

You see, after her husband was dead, someone felt free to tell her about the many affairs he had during those 50 years, and that he had worked very hard to keep her from finding out about.

Now, before I go on, we will all pause to virtually smack that person upside the head with a 2 x 4. Why? I mean really, just what did this person hope to accomplish? What good did this person think would come from this? Was getting this long-held secret off their chest worth the price of what it would do to her? I’m guessing that you can figure out my answer.

When this woman wrote to the twins, one of the things she said was that when she learned this, she realized that her whole life was a sham, and that her husband never really loved her anyway.

Wait. Time out. Hold it. Stop. It’s logical fallacy time. It’s also time for me to introduce you to a little cognitive dissonance.

In our culture, we make the mistake of confusing love and fidelity, and maybe they’re not always the same thing. Maybe you can love someone with all your heart, and not be able to be faithful to him or her, as hard as you might try. I can see that some of you aren’t buying this, so let me give you a different example.

Suppose someone said “If you really love me, then you’ll learn how to play the piano?” And suppose you just happen to be tone deaf? You could love that person with all your heart and soul, but not be able to play Heart and Soul. Does your inability to play even the most rudimentary piece of music, despite getting the rest of the relationship right, mean that you don’t love that person? I know this is an imperfect example, but can you see my point?

Conversely, in the song Silver Threads and Golden Needles, the singer says that she doesn’t care about his stupid mansion or all his money. She wants him to stop fooling around with other women and love her again. Um…I hate to ruin her pretty little picture, but his being faithful to her wouldn’t  necessarily mean that he loved her again, but simply that he was following the rules because they were the rules.

Is it reasonable to ask, nay, demand, that the person who claims that they love us be faithful? I’ll give you a definite “maybe” on that. Perhaps it can be done most of the time. And perhaps we modern westerners are a little to tough on ourselves. Look at the story of Jacob from Genesis. He was counted as being faithful while having two wives and being able to get it from the maidservants.

But let’s go back to the beginning. The letter-writer claimed that all of this showed that her husband never really loved her anyway. I beg to differ, and this is where the cognitive dissonance kicks in. I can see him as really loving, really adoring, his wife, but knowing that no matter how hard he tried, he could never be faithful. And I can see him working very hard to make sure that she never found out, so that he could preserve the world she knew…precisely because he loved her.

And then along comes some well-meaning dolt who feels that they have to tell her the truth.

Vinny, get me the bat.