: lower black pain.

I, Jaime.

Each night at our home, in those twilight moments betwixt dinnertime and bedtime, I wash the dishes. It’s the end of the day, days long and deep and somewhat stressful, but a wholesome meal and bright conversation at the dinner table have soothed me, and all I have to do is make a clean bridge from that delicate balance to well earned slumber… …so I wash the dishes. But every so often, there at the sink, my mind would drift back to the stress of the day, and as I turned off the kitchen light I knew that sleep would be elusive, and fitful, and fretful. So I employed a mollifying strategy - placing my iPad where the water (probably) wouldn’t hit it, I watched re-runs of tv shows I was too young to watch at the time (M*A*S*H), didn’t see all the way through (Gilmore Girls), or wasn’t subscribed to the service they were on (Westworld). This was Plenty Distracting, but I soon learned that the material had to be very specifically curated - exciting enough to keep me from snoozily dropping a soapy glass, simple enough to follow without staring at the screen, and - most importantly - optimistic enough to provide sufficient emotional buoyancy to float my weary spirit off to bed. In the years I’ve been doing this, many shows have competed for the crown, but I believe that I now have a winner: the 1977 science-fiction classic: “The Bionic Woman”, starring Lindsay Wagner. I was only eight years old when The Six Million Dollar Man debuted on ABC - the story of Steve Austin, an astronaut who suffers a terrible spaceship accident, requiring replacement of his eye, both legs, and an arm with robot parts which provide him increased strength, speed and agility. Somewhere in his third season he got a girlfriend, who, as bad luck would have it, suffered a terrible skydiving accident, requiring replacement of her ear, both legs, and an arm with robot parts which provided her with increased strength, speed and agility. Lindsey Wagner’s guest starring role as tennis pro turned reluctant superhero Jaime Sommers was supposed to be a limited deal, since her character died at the end of the two episode run. But THOUSANDS of letters were written, so she became the first female lead of a sci-fi tv show in history. Soon, her worldwide ratings outpaced that of the Bionic Man, because her show, with the exact same premise as his, just felt different. Where Steve ran after a different villain every week (in slow motion), Jaime had a real job as a teacher and did all her adventuring on weekends and bank holidays. Where Steve was all power punches, Jaime was more of a MARVEL hero, with her intelligence, deductive reasoning, and empathy as her true advantages. Even their metal lunchboxes were different - Steve’s had him fighting Bigfoot on the front, and Jamie’s showed her teaching fifth grade history. She was a bright new story to tell, but it WAS made in the 1970s, so on last night’s episode, Jaime very reluctantly entered a national beauty contest to retrieve a “space age microchip device” (which was the size of a medium apple). There was lots of action, but there was still a swimsuit competition, and for her talent portion she performed the song “Feelings”, North America’s closest ever imitation of a Eurovision entry. Jaime Sommers has always been one of my favorite characters: she was gifted and talented before her bionics, and her kindness didn’t suffer when she got them. She was smart, and she was nice, and she was hard working - all which I was instructed to strive for. But I connected most with the fact that she was consistently underestimated by everyone. As a kid of a specific sort, I knew what that felt like. And one had to admit that while being a he-man hero type was all that Steve Austin really had to do, Ms. Sommers held down a full-time career in primary education and was a superhero on top of all that. Like Jaime, my mother was a fifth grade teacher, plus I had figured out that at least half the things Mom did at home everyday must've traditionally been “Dad” stuff to do, so she was technically triple-booked, and busier than Jaime was. The Bionic Woman lasted three seasons on two networks for a total of 58 episodes, which for me translates into just under two months of KP duty. So until mid-July I will stand at the sink, occasionally making that oddly percussive “tschee-tschee-tschee-tschee-tschee-tschee” sound to indicate when I’m using my bionic strength, just like Jaime does. Just like I used to do in fifth grade. And high school. And a few times in college, when I was lifting something heavy. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Spirit of '26.

I used to have to read the book before I saw the movie. My prime example is Jack M. Bickham’s “The Apple Dumpling Gang”, a 1975 summer family film that I earned a ticket to upon completion of the paperback. Disney changed a great deal from the original novel (its first line is, “The fact that John Wintle was drunk didn’t matter.”) and I had to discuss, compare, and contrast the two versions of the story with my Mom after seeing the movie. (We did stuff like that a lot. I’m lucky that my last name wasn’t Tenenbaum). The deal only worked for screenplays based on pre-existing books: “novelizations” of screenplays were considered cheating. It was important to begin with the original story before any adaptations were considered. Ok. Tie a ribbon around a finger to remember all that for a minute. I drove through Brooklyn in the early afternoon on this Spring’s first bright, dry and warm Saturday. Fresh from a triumph at Whole Foods (my Prime Code had discounted eight dollars and thirty-seven cents from my weekly total), I felt that I was at last emerging from both winter’s frozen desert and my last six weeks of dire allergy and illness. The universe and I were in some kind of sync again, moving slowly forward. This calmed me, because I’m gonna need all the help I can get this summer - New York is gonna be crazy with World Cup games, a potential basketball championship, and the city’s largest ever “Fleet Week” celebration, where record numbers of maritime vehicles and visitors will celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday. Navigation through all of that is going to be particularly challenging, but while the intricacies of international soccer dominate the news, I am personally focused on the sestercentennial. Which is why it seemed particularly significant when, at a stop light, a man walked past wearing a dull purple t-shirt with thin yellow lettering that read, AMERICAIS AN IDEA There was no modifier for the direct object. Not, “America is a great idea” or “cool idea” or even “bad idea”. Thus, the t-shirt was impossible to refute while strangely non-political due to its unique color scheme which plainly avoided every possible hue of red, white, or blue. At the next stop light I looked up the word “idea” in the OED on my phone: idea /ʌɪˈdɪə / ▸ noun 1. a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action 2. an opinion or belief 3. a defined aim or purpose 4. (from the philosopher Kant) a concept of pure reason, not empirically based in experience. This offered less clarity than I’d hoped, steering my interpretation of the shirt’s message in four different directions: America is a thought suggesting a possible course of action. America is an opinion or belief. America is a defined aim and purpose. America is a concept not empirically based in experience. Hmn. The rest of my drive home was a ponder. The Bicentennial was bonkers. Every magazine from People to Playboy to Time proudly featured a waving flag on their cover. There were collectible quarters, half dollars, and two dollar bills (and soda cans and jelly jars). There were minute-long historical lessons during prime time TV network commercial breaks. EVERYTHING was red, white and blue (ice cream, t-shirts, gum, bathroom tissue, lighters, sport shoes, breakfast cereals, chainsaws...), and the unofficial yet universal tagline representing the event, which we saw EVERYWHERE, read: “The Spirit of ’76”. I have not yet noticed the same kind of enthusiasm regarding this July. I thought it was just me, since when I was 10 years old, 200 years was a vast expanse of 20 lifetimes, and now 250 is just a wee bit over four. Context, perspective, exhaustion - don’t know exactly why, but I just don’t feel the old “Spirit of ’26” (which doesn’t really work because it lacks that self-aware ambiguity of “1776 or 1976?”). There will be fireworks, but there’s always fireworks. There will be bumper stickers and t-shirts, but the “Spirit” of the holiday seems to have shifted in the last (yikes) 50 years. You know. The “idea” of it. So I took into account that full OED definition. America is a thought, suggesting a possible course of action. America is an opinion, a belief. America is a defined aim and purpose. America is a concept not empirically based in experience. Thoughts, opinions, and concepts seem flimsy materials to build a nation out of - very “first and second little pig” architectural standards. Belief, aim, and purpose sound sturdier - solid bricks to form a foundation, and the group of documents known as the Charters of Freedom - the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution - are those bricks for the United States - our original national software. I have only read the Constitution once, decades ago. And despite the fact that I’ve memorized most of the musical “Hamilton”, I have only read twelve of the Federalist Papers. I have experienced more of these works through, embarrassingly, other peoples thoughts and opinions of them. So - The Apple Dumpling Gang. In the next seven weeks, I am going give all of these original documents a fresh read. First of all, it represents a low-level dedication to the concept of citizenship. Second, I owe my mother an apology for making gentle fun of her a decade ago when she spent an entire weekend painstakingly reading the entire iTunes contract before clicking the “AGREE” button to update it, for that is the kind of logic this undertaking mirrors, and the level of concentration I now must employ. Before our sestercentennial I will (hopefully) deepen my understanding of the ideas which form this nation, strengthening my position that America is not “a concept not empirically based in experience”, because our experience IS America, all of it, good and not-so-great. There should be room in these documents to fit those experiences. And once I’ve read the book, this movie should make more sense… …right? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

So.

This time of year is CRAZY busy, with May Day and Mother’s Day and Star Wars Day and Cinco de Mayo and our anniversary and Eurovision and Beltane and Free Comic Book Day… the days are just packed. Mixed into this is the birthday of this column, which is technically the second Thursday in May, which means that this is the week we mark the completion of four years of :lowerblackpain, together. Somewhere a medieval Warner Bros. cartoon herald is playing one of those long gold trumpets. Thank you for your time, and your company. Let’s review: I am still actively archiving that box of videotapes: * https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/that-boxful-of-magical-time-ribbons [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/that-boxful-of-magical-time-ribbons], with the humbling understanding that No One Cares, Or Ever Will. I am not Barack Obama or Ernest Hemingway and my memories and bric-a-brac will never be stored at the perfect humidity and temperature behind glass under tasteful lighting. It’s…just not that kind of party for me, and I accept that. However, I am still trying to USE all these bits of time, like a magpie trying to build a nest from branches, twine and Starburst™ wrappers. I realize now that I may need to move into the realm of fiction writing in order to gain a more generous canvas. In the province of imagination, my card tricks and science experiments can dance jauntily to the bossa nova soundtrack I’ll make on that tambur I brought back from Istanbul. Where IS that thing? Hold on… …found it. I have zero idea how it’s supposed to be tuned, but I haven’t approached it in years because I didn’t have time to properly learn how to play it and wanted to show one of the world’s oldest instruments the respect it absolutely deserves. Ah, the stalwart determination of the Young. Feh. No time for all that nonsense now. I’ve got to get started on my third act. I’ll just make it up. Ok, maybe I’ll look it up on YouTube. I enjoyed the singing so much for this year’s Halloween Costume - * https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/life [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/life] that I actually finished a song and sang it live for an entire room of classmates at a school reunion earlier this year. It reminded me how much I like to just belt out a tune, and how punishable by local law that is in Brooklyn apartment buildings. But there’s always the car, where the whole family can join in, and the good folks at Apple™ provide an endless cornucopia of musical choices. While Queens of the Stone Age is the family’s official favorite band, for in-the-car sing-along purposes my daughter develops these dynamic playlists of artists like The Jackson 5, The Cure, Dee-Lite, Stormzy, BTS, Chase and Status and Becky Hill, and David Bowie. It’s fun. I may have mentioned at some point that The Partridge Family was a seminal influence on my grade school life, and for a fleeting moment as a little kid I dreamed of growing up and singing with my wife and family. But then I saw The Sound of Music, and thought, well, maybe not. I would like to be able to say “that my kettlebell is going well”, mostly due to the rhyme scheme, https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/the-winter-of-this-content [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com/p/the-winter-of-this-content], but it hasn’t taken off quite yet. There were various Winter illnesses to contend with and a bit of confusion as to the proper technique. My family pointed out that most of the kettlebell enthusiasts online look like inverted squat isosceles triangles with a little circles on top for heads. I might be able to rock an inverted trapezoid resemblence, but don’t think I can rock that Tolkienesque Dwarf Warrior build. Maybe if I grow my beard out, like, a lot. Well, THANK YOU once again for dropping by. You’re always welcome. Next week I’ll be starting the fifth year (yikes) of :lowerblackpain, and for a guy who writes about the past so much, I’m actually really excited about the future. Meet you there. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Ember.

Dorothy Parker is my favorite writer. She was born in 1893; by the 1920’s she was one of the most famous writers in America, with an unmatched rapier wit and seemingly endless supply of clever verses. Much of her work was famously collected in “The Portable Dorothy Parker” a rather thick volume covering the majority of her fiction and reviews. I’ve had five copies (I gave two away as gifts). She moved to Hollywood in the 1930’s, where her work garnered two Oscar™ nominations (including her script for the Judy Garland version of “A Star Is Born”). Then before WW2 she spoke out against fascism and got blacklisted and no one hired her anymore. But her books were still steadily being read. Particularly the Portable. In her will, she left the entirety of her literary rights to Dr. Martin Luther King (whom she had never met) to assist in his national fight for civil rights. Upon the death of Dr. King, again at Ms. Parker’s request, these rights were transferred to the NAACP, who receives royalty checks from her body of work to this very day. That’s it. That’s the story of my favorite writer. And I must admit, when I found out about the Dr. King part, I liked her even more, even though someone at school said it was just to get back at Lillian Hellman. If so, sick burn. My first Parker story was assigned in college, presented as a breezy distraction between the more weighed tomes of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The way that she depicted people who felt very deeply yet expressed themselves in extremely shallow ways made me very very happy, so I went straight to be bookstore and bought my first “Portable”. See, I’d always wanted to be a writer. From the age of four it’s what I told everybody: teachers, preachers, other people’s parents, girls I was dating or wasn’t… I had no alternative employment plan or career path narrative, save maybe someday teaching at one of those colleges with old stone buildings. And I did write. A lot. I had LOADS of extremely very bad writing, and was looking for someone to teach me how to make it better. But when I finally got into an English composition class, I found that many students had already spent summers at “writing camps” with famous author seminars and inspiring lectures, at sunset, down by the lake. These kids were in that Writer’s WORLD already, and some of them hadn’t even written anything yet. I was late to the game. I explained all this to a girl who saw me reading my Dorothy Parker in the grass, giant Sears Optical glasses on as my near-fro attempted to waft in the wind. She was intrigued by my choice, but later admitted that she’d assumed I might be what today is called a “performative male”. A bit of conversation convinced her otherwise, and we spoke all evening. We agreed that the assumed “baseline experience” at a college like this was socio-economically impossible for a vast minority of the students attending, regular kids who “summered” the same place they “wintered” and “falled”. I mean, there were lakes in Kansas City, but all I was gonna get is mosquito bites hanging out there. “Well, you should just consider Dorothy your personal teacher.” my new friend told me. “She never took any of these people seriously - neither should you. Just keep them all in your head, and write about them later.” To follow Dorothy Parker’s footsteps, I later visited the The Algonquin, the famed Manhattan hotel where most every weekday of the 1920’s, one could find the New York’s premier literati surrounding their Round Table, enjoying another long and somewhat boozy lunch. Dorothy Parker was a key member of this group, I had learned. It was also the hotel that my grandfather stayed in when visiting New York as a young county commissioner from Kansas City. I appreciated the gentle luxury, as well as the fact that my grandparents had been welcome here in the early ‘50s. The concierge asked me if he could help me. I told him I was a student studying - “- the Round Table? Of course. Would you like to see it?” “Um, sure?” It was between meal services: the man walked me into the dining room just off the main lobby. A large round table was in the center. “This isn’t the actual table” he told me. “It was that one.” he pointed to the slightly smaller round table in the corner by the door to the kitchen. “People want to take a photo of the Round Table, but that one is 80 years old, so we keep this one…” he again indicated the table in the middle, “polished for pictures. I bet you actually want to sit over there.” “I feel I should tell you now that I can’t afford to buy anything.” I told him. “Don’t worry about it… do you want some coffee? Water?” “Water would be awesome.” I sat and drank a glass of ice water where my new literary hero enjoyed many hundreds of liquid lunches. Technically, that’s what I was doing too. Due to an incredible true story, Dorothy Parker has been buried two and a half times. Her (final) resting place is now in a plot with her family in New York City, under a memorial inscribed with cleverly appropriate lines from one of her poems. I haven’t visited: for me she either lives in her work or at that table in the back of the Algonquin dining room. I would love to pay the inspiration I have received from Mrs. Parker forward. I’m not quite there yet, but I feel lucky to have the opportunity to keep working at it. I’m a little bit more optimistic than she, but she paid close attention to the human condition, and I am grateful to carry her torch of polysyllabic empathy (if not sympathy) a bit further through time, because Dorothy Parker is my favorite author. Yes, I am a fan. But I want to be the kind that feeds a flame. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Objects In Motion.

The CORIOLIS EFFECT is a scientific principle describing how one object on Earth can be accurately propelled to meet another object on Earth while both objects, the air around them, and the Earth itself spins at 1000 miles an hour. The coriolis effect also explains why, even though the Earth is in constant motion beneath us, we can’t just hover in helicopters to travel long distances or jump in the air and land half a mile away. It’s a science of moving objects, similar to the prediction magic involved in shooting a rocket into the sky toward where the moon WILL EVENTUALLY BE. In practice, the coriolis effect is chiefly important to those whose professions involve ballistic trajectory: cannons, missiles, etc. But I have found this a terrific theory to philosophically explain “What I’m Doing” to my mother, wife, and daughter, reframing what may seem to the untrained eye as “Warner Bros. cartoon madness” into a unique example of logistic strategy. Or to quote Pee-Wee Herman, “I meant to do that.” It started at a picnic just after high school graduation. I had an interesting conversation with a kid that I knew that was also heading off to college: he wanted very much to study something called “computers”. It was 1984. We weren’t even a decade past the pocket calculator and most people still had a TV set with a physical knob that changed the channel. But this kid was SO EXCITED; he had a natural affinity for computers, and loved working with them so much that his science teacher had strongly encouraged him to study “programming”. But, the young gentleman had been firmly steered away from this field by his family, as computer science was (at the time) a somewhat obscure career choice with no obvious path to employment. Now, today, perched atop the summit of Hindsight Mountain, one might assume that if the young man had pursued this interest and moved to where his teacher told him all this was happening (California), he would have been on the absolute cutting edge of a worldwide cultural evolution, with the opportunity to buy first round Apple stock from a happy bearded fellow in a San Jose garage. But back then? This was all crazy-talk. Computers? Bru-ha-ha. Programming? Balderdash. California? Ballyhoo. A future where all that made sense was pure science fiction. So this young man soberly aimed his life directly at targets well within range. Measured choices. Smart decisions. Good sense. Birds in hands. From here to right over there. In contrast, my personal trajectory from high school was seen as random, ill-conceived, naive, and somewhat feckless: I was rocketing myself toward a future I couldn’t see, that no-one could see, well understanding that it hadn’t been created yet, since my personal goals were not as clearly defined: I wanted to be Jerry Lewis in The Bellboy,I wanted to be an orchestral composer for film,I wanted to be an author, and a college professor,and most of all I wanted to be a guest on the TV show Match Game, but I just couldn’t figure out a clear line from completing my math homework with a Bic™ pen on a little bedroom desk in Kansas City to scribbling clever quips on printed blue cards with Sharpie markers, sitting next to Charo™ in L.A.. There wasn’t any major for all that, at any college. My mother was confused but incredibly supportive: she didn’t want me to waste my time or money, so she advised me to cover the basics: * be empathetic and polite - * always keep working really hard - * and learn how to learn. “Facts change.” she told me, “Every so often we need new globes, new schoolbooks… people keep ‘discovering’ history and inventing incredible new machines. But when you learn how to learn, you’ll be able to add anything new to what you already know and keep up with whatever’s going on.” Three. Two. One. And liftoff. How are any of us supposed to have clear paths to the future? I was launched from the social instability of the 1960’s toward the bullseye-in-a-whirlwind present. From J. Edgar Hoover to Obama. From 8-track tapes to streaming. From pen-pals to FaceTime. Where’s the clear path? Thus my affinity toward the coriolis effect. Aiming is not as vital as momentum. I’ve always felt that I’ve been headed somewhere (if not exactly somewhere more specific than that), but after a while I realized that who I was became more important than where I was going. And after decades moving at breakneck speed, I still don’t feel that I’ve arrived at the future yet. It’s such a lovely trip, I’ve taken tons of pictures, but I’d appreciate a chance to clean out the cupholders and top off the wiper fluid. And now there’s a new generation; how best to pass on the maps we’re plotted and the cautionary tales we’ve survived? What would we have studied in college if we knew that laptops were coming? the internet was coming? cell phones were coming? Can I offer ANY valid advice to a teenager growing up in a world of posts, stories, and edits? What is she supposed to wear if I can’t predict the weather? I’ve given up on predictions. She’ll just have to make do with be empathetic and polite, work hard, and learn how to learn. That way, no matter where she flies, she’ll be the steadiest arrow in the sky. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com [https://lowerblackpain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]