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Sunday, August 26, 2012

Reflections on...Yard-saling


Blogger is reporting from Middletown, Ohio, home of pater familias Bob Dickerson, at the conclusion of Day 2 of yard-salin’.
  
        I am hot, sticky, sale-shocked, eating nothing but sugar and carbs, and stupefied with water weight gain. My ankles are not looking dainty right now in the brand new shoes I bought at the yard sale next door for $3.00—Naturalizers with a nice low heel and ankle straps that are hiding under rolls of bloated tissue. "Next door" is the Middletown Senior Center, which is also having a yard sale today—some venders out on the lawn; and in the cafeteria/multi-purpose room, donated items sorted into categories—very tidy. 
          Yes, my dad (who is pretty sharp--selectively) is never slack about piggy-backing on the marketing of others—the balloons and colorful signs for the senior center also guided buyers (buyers-beware) into his ample front yard. Under the beautiful old oak by the street we spread our merchandise on large tables, loosely grouped by category (books, housewares, toys, clothing, etc.) and by source (my sister Kathy, my dad’s friend Melanie, and his neighbor Charlotte).
We had this very Vera Bradley
bag for sale--and it was
priced too high to sell
        I threw my stuff in with Dad’s stuff and didn’t worry about making money. I live to serve (ha-ha-ha) and helped out wherever necessary. The other stuff-providers, though, had certain prices they wanted for certain items and we had lots of counter-pricing going on—Dad and I were pretty much always ready to deal (Will you take $5 for this? Yes). We definitely had too many captains and not enough sailors, and even though I was there to be a sailor, well, nobody thinks I’m shy, so my opinion was often added to the pricing puree.
          The crowd at Dad’s sale differed greatly from sales in my hometown of McArthur, Ohio. In McArthur, the people are poorer, are sometimes desperate, and are often looking for low-priced necessities, not novelties or kitsch. The Middletown crowd was made up of a lot of seniors (because of the neighboring sale) and the people were pretty well off.
Typical house in Dad's neighborhood; he,
however, lives in a Cape Cod.
          Dad lives in a moderate house in a blue collar, aging area, but his street is ringed by higher-cost housing—and they came out to support the seniors (and thus Dad). It was odd to be around so many well-off people, I’m so used to the low-income people of my town. We are different in both dress and conversation. The most significant commonality was love for children and grandchildren. In both towns, people are happy to talk about children and want to buy nice things for them. They look over children’s items with critical eyes.
         Because so many different people brought stuff, we had an interesting sale—not overloaded with children’s clothing or sports equipment or any other category. Well, OK, we had too many purses, probably. And they were overpriced and the women selling them would not bargain or cut the price. I assume these purses will be leftover unsold.
          I spent lots of time getting into and out of a lawn chair (moved gradually across the yard throughout the day—to follow the shade) and a fair amount of time just chatting up the customers. Each one has a story to tell.   
          One thirty-something woman pulled up on the other side of the fence next to the driveway in a van. She got out and asked us if we wanted a walker. Dad jumped right on it and started to talk price. (Resale of lightly used medical equipment usually leads to a tidy profit.) But the woman insisted that she was giving us the walker, she wanted to give it away. Her mother had died two years ago this weekend and she was just now able to face the medical aids left over from her mom’s illness. She would be glad for Dad to make some money off of it and for it to go to people who needed it.
          We all quieted while she told us the story of her grief, and handled with respect the walker that she pulled out of the back of the van and handed over the fence. Over the fence came a portable toilet. Over the fence came two different bath benches. Over the fence came an elevated toiled seat. Over the fence came a long-handled shoe horn and sock-helper stick. Over the fence came an anti-bedsore mattress (with air pump).
         The woman’s van was crammed with stuff. She cried. Each of us had at least a quivering lip if not a tear. Turns out we were helping her with a significant event in her grieving. She and we were all sacred for a moment, right across the fence, under the oak, next door to the senior center, on Central, in Middletown, on a summer afternoon, in August.
          Sacred.
          At our most human.
         That’s yard-salin’.

Sidebar: Bob Dickerson’s Rules of the Yard Sale
 My dad worked in the shoe business for several years and even though he didn’t like it very well (you had to have more loyalty to and spend more time with the store than your family), he has a natural bent toward retail. He has many sensible rules for his sales (he says, however, that no rule can't be broken). Here are some of his guidelines.
        Make some money even if you cannot make the money you want. You won’t get rich with a yard sale, but you might get some mad money to play with.
        Keep stuff off the ground as much as possible. People are not in the habit of looking down. Borrow some tables if you need to, or stretch a board across some chairs. Whatever. Dad has many tables that have detachable legs so he can store them flat.
         Fit your tables to your tarps (for sales longer than one day). Dad lays down the tall items on a table, sticks other stuff under the tables, and then throws on a tarp that fits right over that set of tables—clamp, clamp, clamp, and you’re closed.
        Open early--at least be ready at the designated start time. And, decide how you want to handle “early birds”—those people who come the night before a sale or show up at 7:00 a.m. for your sale that you advertised to start at 9:00. Dad doesn’t worry about fairness or justice—he’ll sell to any early bird who wants to shop.
        Have shade or canopies—anything that encourages people to linger a bit is good. Dad doesn’t usually sell food, but on a cool day I think an urn of coffee would not go amiss. It takes a long time to drink a cup of coffee.
        Mark prices on every item or keep all the items in a group at the same price.
        Keep prices divisible by $0.25 or $1.00; this way, you save tons of time making change—and you only need to get quarters from the bank.
        Be ready to make change. Have at least $10 in quarters, fifty one-dollar bills and 10 five-dollar bills. (Remember, you’ll get this money back out at the end.)
        Greet each customer with a smile. Have bags available for their stuff. Circulate. Tell the customer something about the item he or she is handling.
        Keep it tidy. Kathy and I spent a lot of time straightening tables, filling in gaps.
        Only put out clean merchandise. No one will buy filthy items and they bring down the whole sale. If you want to sell them, put a low price on them. Salt-stained boots? They will sell at $1.00 but not at $5.00.
         Fix broken things, if it is not too expensive. Dad recently painted the handlebars of two tricycles he bought for $5, turning $5 items into $15 items.
        Have various sizes of batteries and an electrical outlet (or plugged-in extension cord) so customers can see if things work.
        Don’t keep everything you don’t sell. Drop it off at a Salvation Army, Goodwill, AmVets, the Red Door Thrift Store, or any number of other charitable organizations.
        Don’t hold things for people unless they pay in advance. You should always stay free to sell what you have.
        Make your sale visible—put some large, sexy items out by the street. Don’t hide your light (or merchandise) under a bushel, folks. Balloons are a great attention-getter on your signs and at your site.
        Coffee mugs, golf clubs, crutches, dolls, winter clothes at summer sales—hard to sell.
        Clean stuffed animals, tools, medical equipment (except crutches), furniture, jewelry—easy to sell. However, just about anything will sell if you price it right (low).
        Have the courage to be generous. Dad often gives away toys to kids, or throws in a free item here and there. As my dad testifies, generosity almost always returns to the giver.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Space Cadet, by Robert A. Heinlein

Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher could never
escape his goody-two-shoes reputation on
Star Trek: NexGen
No, there is no irony in the title of this book--Heinlein wrote his book Space Cadet long before "space cadet" became synonymous with "airhead." And, really, I wonder if this book wasn't the inspiration for the most noteworthy of space cadets--acting Ensign Wesley--Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: Next Generation. The main character Matt Dodson shares only a certain earnestness and respect for authority with Wesley. Unlike Wesley, he is not that great at science and math (but is a natural as a pilot), hangs out with people mainly his own age, and he travels without his mother.

Space Cadet, written in the late 1940s, is the tale of teenager Matt's training for the Space Patrol--a peace-keeping force created to prevent the use of nuclear weapons on Earth and its neighboring planetary bodies. The story follows him from newbie to independent young officer. With his friend Tex, Matt goes through many agonizing tests in a boot-camp setting, during which many applicants are winnowed out. These tests include a ride through the too-many-G-forces/too-little-G-forces gizmo (Matt withstands 7 Gs and passes the test); personality challenges (there's a faked tragedy for the applicants to respond to); academic tests; and even ethical tests.

The 1948 cover--see below
for other covers with
other goals
Matt and Tex pass the tests and move on to a training ship and further study. Eventually, they move out into space as junior officers attached to a working ship. Eventually, they move into increasingly dramatic settings and adventures--especially when they crash land on Venus. On Venus, you see the impact that the training has had on these young men--the resources they have to draw on, the principles they follow. (And, of course, there is a counter-example, a cadet who washed out of the program early and scorns its values.)

But, the charm of this book is not particularly in its plotting. It's in the details. It's in the pace. Once again (see my blog entry on Rocketship Galileo), Heinlein pulls me right into the world of the book. Although nothing dramatic happened for pages on end, Heinlein created enough hooks on Matt for the reader to feel attached, to slide into Matt's spacesuit with him (that sounds kinky), to face the challenges, wonder at the new systems and knowledge, hope for success, fear failure. 

Slide rule--yet another wet dream
of science in the 1950s and 1960s--looks
like a tool for WASPs only
Heinlein is adept at drawing enough details into the picture to make it real without overdrawing or over-explaining. He gives enough for your imagination to complete the environment but does not worry if what I picture is not exactly what he meant. I was amazed, because I was hooked into this obsolete boy's adventure  novel right away. I struggled with moving through weightlessness and with magnetic boots and with trying hard not to need to use the airsick bags. I fretted over "astrogation" and the mathematics it required (and the slide rule!). I worried over my fitness for such an elite corps. (see the video at <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MiRlJSttQuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> for a tutorial on weightlessness, which makes it look embarrassingly easy.)

Young Matt is a great character--fun, but not dangerous; flawed, but not a loser. I was most interested in what happened to him during his Earth-leave, when he visited his home in Des Moines for the first time after entering the Patrol. What he found was a total disconnect. He found that his family could not understand anything he talked about and that it was all too complicated to explain. It was not discussed in the book, but I saw it as a critical moment for Matt--when his life in the Patrol became more real to him than his life on Earth.

This beautiful photo of Venus uses
color to indicate the concentration of
various chemicals in the atmosphere
The Venus part of the book was charming in its antiquated vision of Venus. For now, scientists do not believe that any life can exist on Venus--not only is the atmosphere thick with poisons, but the air pressure is so great that it exerts a dramatic crushing force. The surface is barren. If life might be there, we would have a hard time detecting it--our apparatus would need to be so thick to avoid being crushed that any delicate maneuvering would be difficult.




For more information, go to  http://library.thinkquest.org/18652/venus.html.

Matt and Tex, however, find a tropical dangerland with swamps and creepy critters and alien intelligence. This is their lab for putting into practice all of their training--their training in values and self-control as much as in any particular subject. They find that as a group they have more intelligence that any of them individually.

So, another thumbs-up for Heinlein. I don't think I've been to Venus with Matt, but I do feel like I went to some other world that was mistakenly called that. I have a feeling of movement, of time, of growing up. That's cool. And, that's good, because I have three or four more Heinlein books to read from my Easy Reader children's literature list.

Me and Space: Evolved Lemur

This is the tech-guy cover
from the 1980s or so, I'd
guess
I was a child in the 1960s (I turned 10 the year the moon landing took place in 1969), so maybe it's not a surprise that I have so much interest in space and space travel and the interaction of humans with unearthly conditions (such as weightlessness) and with others unlike themselves (such as Republicans). How do we solve the problems? Are there human characteristics that truly define us as a species? One of the most defining characteristics of humans is the sense of wonder, the tendency to gawk and to explore that which puzzles and amazes us. What lies beyond the horizon? What lies beyond the end point of the solar wind? But does this define just some of us? Is hide-boundedness another trait of humans--the desire for stasis and certainty?

See, these are issues that my submergence in the genre of science fiction have awoken in me. Because I did (and still do) submerge. My inner self resonates with the themes and imagery of sci-fi. It is abiding, and I know that because it has abided. There are episodes of Star Trek I have seen dozens of times, but I am still somehow intrigued. One of these is an episode of NexGen in which the crew started to devolve because the inactive content of their DNA was triggered by a virus. Troi was turning into a fish. Riker became a Neanderthal. Even scarier, Worf turned into a Neanderthal Klingon. But most touching was Captain Picard devolving into a lemur, acutely aware of sounds and sights, ever fearful. Could his humanness reach through the genetic programming to rescue the ship?

This is the soft-focus warm and fuzzy cover, probably
from the 1990s. Makes science fiction safe for kids--
although this is a distinctly adolescent book--not
for children.
I have seen Godzilla in the original. I have seen Hitler's hand creeping across the gangway of a submarine. I have made first contact with species so radically different that communication was nearly impossible (Republicans again!). I've been on so many different planets and spaceships that I cannot count them. What has this done to me? First, I know that it leads me to see humans as a species like any other on Earth, subject to the same survival pressures as any other. We are not divine. We are not the chosen ones. We are not on top. Second, it has increased my likelihood to see events from many points of view, to see that there are as many priorities as there are people. It has led me to attempt to lead with peace, not hostility.

There. That's my space manifesto. I am most touched by the Voyager space probes, which have now reached the endpoint of the solar wind, the outer edge of our solar system. And yet they travel on. They continue to gather information and will even after they can no longer communicate it to us. The Voyager probes mirror the journey we are all on--we are curious and communicating beings and we will keep looking...for what? For whatever comes.

So, weird, dweeb, nerd, geek? I'll accept the title of "evolved lemur," thank you very much.












Sunday, August 12, 2012

And the Dead Shall Rise, by Steve Oney

Leo M. Frank at his trial; behind is his wife Lucille
Earlier this year I saw a production of the musical Parade at a theater in San Diego. The play tells the twisted and tormented story of Leo M. Frank and the murder he became involved with. The production was beautifully sung, danced, and acted, but the story had too many balls in the air and I'm not sure they all got caught. Now I am having the same feeling about Steve Oney's exhaustive examination of this same case, the book And the Dead Shall Rise. There are so many lenses presented through which to view this story that in the end confusion is enhanced rather than resolved. I have the ability to see the images of this compound eye, but I cannot make them make sense.

Leo M. Frank was a factory supervisor in Atlanta, Georgia, in the early years of the 20th century. In 1910, he was accused of the murder of a young woman who worked in the factory, 13-year-old Mary Phagan. Police were under pressure to find the perpetrator; prosecutors were under pressure to make charges stick. Newspapers were under pressure to fan the flames of circulation. Politicians made hay while the Georgia sun boiled it all to a breaking point. It was almost a time of wilding, when good old common sense was somehow swamped in a deluge of emotionalism, sectionalism, and craven self-interest.

My point in this post is not to re-try the Frank case, but to discuss this book And the Dead Shall Rise. I've been reading this book for months...it is about 800 pages long and slow going--at times almost a catalog of available documentation, at other times a sociological analysis. Not a page-turner. But my time with this book is well-spent. I was shocked after I saw Parade to have been ignorant of this case. Reading And the Dead was my way to keep the Frank story alive, at least in my head, if nowhere else. In light of the somewhat fevered tenor of this year's (2012) presidential campaigns, I am doubly glad I read it. I can't be reminded too often of the dangers of bigotry, and class, race, and religious hatred.

An unmentioned element of this book is that the death sentence is too severe. Oney makes clear how a totally unassailable case was made against Frank out of virtually no truth. And Frank was sentenced to death for a murder to which he was barely tangentially connected. His sentence was commuted by the governor at the last minute--but Frank's innocence remains officially unproven.

Religious hatred was inflamed by journalist/preacher/politician (oh that combo) Tom Watson, who used it as a whip to gain money and power. Frank's Jewishness became a factor in the case. Many Jews, including wealthy and influential ones, supported Frank and funded his defense, up to an including a full-out publicity campaign. Watson turned this strategy on its heels, descrying the Jews who were trying to run (and ruin) Georgia and buy its institutions.

Leo and Lucille Frank in Parade,
as the trial swirled around them
Hatred is like a cockroach--if you see one, you might as well prepare for an onslaught. Racism was an embedded feature of Georgia society in those years. The savvy witness for the defense was coached and rehearsed to sound as ignorant as possible and he never cracked. He knew he was in the catbird seat instead of in the electric chair (evidence pointed strongly to him as the killer). The jury bought the proposition that a Negro would be too ignorant to commit the crime himself.

Police and judicial corruption joined forces against Frank. Testimony was openly bought, then a recantation was purchased by the other side, and often a third round of money changed hands for an un-recanting. Key evidence was ignored or withheld. The prosecution played on the mysterious ritual (!) of circumcision to tie Frank's religious beliefs to a likelihood of sexual perversion--something that had little to do with anything at the trial but which ensured a guilty verdict.

I could go on and on. In the end, the author takes no real position. After his exhaustive re-examination of the evidence, he does not draw a conclusion. He hints that evidence is still out there somewhere and with his underlying theme that we carry the past around with us and are shaped by it minute by minute, maybe he's correct.

I don't regret the hours spent on this book. The story is a microcosm of so much that is ugly in America (not just the south). And Frank's story deserves to be told over and over. And also the story of power--when the end is power, any means will do, to the point of a noose slipped over an innocent man's head while "official" Georgia looked the other way. In the end, a group of well-known men secretly arranged the kidnapping (from a state prison) and lynching of Leo Frank. If you are squeamish, do not look at the photos still in existence of this event. They haunt me and sicken me. Not our finest hour.

An account of a film version of the Leo Frank story can be found at: http://monstermania-batcat31.blogspot.com/2011/07/story-youll-never-forget.html

Background on the musical of this story, Parade, can be found at: http://www.broadwaymusicalhome.com/shows/parade.htm