Born Nelle Harper Lee in Monroeville, Alabama (1926). She has written just one novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), but it has sold more than 30 million copies. She hates interviews and speeches, and prefers to live quietly in Monroeville, where she is known as Miss Nelle.
She wrote: "I arrived in the first grade, literate, with a curious cultural assimilation of American history, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapunzel, and The Mobile Press. Early signs of genius? Far from it. Reading was an accomplishment I shared with several local contemporaries. Why this endemic precocity? Because in my hometown, a remote village in the early 1930s, youngsters had little to do but read. A movie? Not often — movies weren't for small children. A park for games? Not a hope. We're talking unpaved streets here, and the Depression. [...] Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it."
At the tail end of 1996, I was living in the big city of Dallas, Texas, and all that entails...big hair, big boobs, big cars. In other words, a lot of flashy Jerry Jones-esque white people and every stereotype you see on GCB. (I've never seen that show, but the previews nail Dallas to a 'T').
My life then was in a bit of transition. Boring job, great friends, cheap apartment in the most crime ridden part of Dallas (fact), and at a crossroads in my love life: in December of that year, my then girlfriend (now belle) had just been offered a job in San Antonio, Texas.
I only knew San Antonio through my brothers, who both attended medical school here. The belle, however, was born in San Antonio. In fact, she has so many family members living in San Antonio that if you took them all out and replanted them in the middle-of-nowhere-West Texas, you'd create the highest populated city, with the absolute *best* Mexican food, for 100-miles in every direction. That certainly made for an easy decision when it came to taking the job, but it still left me back in Dallas. Over the next few months, I got to know the route from Big D to "the big city with the small town feel"* like the back of my hand.
The first thing I noticed when I started visiting was how friendly people are. It might have something to do with the fact that San Antonio is known as a destination city, what with the Riverwalk, the Alamo, Fiesta Texas, SeaWorld, USAA, and Wilford Hall, the United States Air Force's largest and best medical facility.
That's part of it. A genuine sense of hospitality seems almost bred into people here. But it's not because they're trying to sell you a good time. It's more like they wake up every day knowing how lucky they are to live here. Personally, I think it's the beer, floating the river, and the Mexican food. (dude - it's the Mexican food).
But here's how it worked for me...I followed my heart to San Antonio during those weekend treks up and down I-35. Got offered a job after filling in as shortstop one Saturday night at a local softball game (read: excuse to sit on tailgates and drink beer). Accepted because it meant lurve with my belle and gainful employment before starting law school. Packed up what little I had in my cracktown apartment and made one last trip through the hell of Austin traffic. And there I was - rolled into town on a Friday planning to finish several errands before starting work the following Monday.
What I didn't know, however, was that I'd made plans to *get things done* in a city that shuts down, entirely, for two weeks every year.
Bleachers start going up on every street leading into downtown.
And cab company phone numbers are dutifully added to cell phone contacts to avoid the PoPo, although some people still haven't gotten the memo.
And, every night, the Tower of the Americas (as seen in the photo at the top of this post) shines down like a benevolent abuelita who's lit a candle and sits in the dark, waiting for a wayward child to come stumbling in. Usually trailing cascarones crumbs with every footstep.
Needless to say, when I drove into town, pleasantly surprised at the lack of traffic, I couldn't open a checking account (bank closed), rent an apartment (manager back later), sew up this severed limb (doctor's in very important meeting...down at the Riverwalk), or anything else of so-called importance.
What I could do, though, was experience Fiesta. And that's exactly what I did. I remember thinking to myself after driving away from the third bank that wasn't open for business that I could probably really get used to living in a city that was secure enough to shut down everything all for the sake of a party. When you think about it, is there any better reason?
From that moment on, I've been having a love affair with this city, and my belle, that I hope will never end.
When you hear people say Texas is "a whole other country," I'm here to tell you - they ain't lying.
But don't take my word for it...come see for yourself.
Viva Fiesta, baby!
* San Antonio is the seventh largest city in the United States.
Did you know that if you sit with a dog and slowly, repeatedly, close your eyes like you're getting tired, eventually the dog will do the same...typically ending with the dog actually falling asleep?
I was walking with my friend Bob last week out at Red Rock National Park and had a most excellent time. Part of it was being outdoors in a different, but beautiful, part of the country. The best part, though, was the interaction, the conversation, the opportunity to be with a friend and talk about life.
We talked about a lot of things, and I remember telling him that would be my ideal job - getting paid to discuss and talk about the meaning of life. Like Socrates and Plato did, back in the day.
See? Talking with me about the meaning of life would be cool, laid back, we'd use phrases like "back in the day" and keep things hip.
What's that you say? "Back in the day" is no longer hip? The hell you say!
Well, we could discuss stuff like that, too. I'm easy. Besides, just who gets to decide what is hip, anyway?
These are things I wonder, occasionally.
But, I digress...
The point is, I dig conversation. I'm curious. I love finding out what makes people tick, and why. Sometimes these stories shock us, sometimes they sadden us, sometimes they bore us. But when we're honest, when we're vulnerable, when we're real - that's the meat of life. I believe all of us seek these connections.
Their ability to be genuine (in Vegas of all places!) is what I enjoy so much about Bob and Jen. My time with them last week was too short.
Being real is hard to do today.
First of all, everyone's so busy. Who has time to talk about the meaning of life when homework needs to be done, baths need to be run, and work is a 24 hour proposition?
Second of all, how can I find out what really moves you about a movie, a song, a painting, a project, or anything else for that matter, when you're staring into your phone every five minutes? Or, *I* pick up my phone every five minutes, right when you're getting to the good part?
How do we even know what moves us anymore if we can't sit still long enough to think about it - without distraction?
Today, there *is* no life without distraction.
Third of all, and maybe most importantly, nobody wants to be real anymore. Not really, anyway. It’s too hard. It’s too scary. It’s too painful to be real, to be vulnerable, and to have that realness dismissed.
So we connect at arm’s length. 140 characters at a time. Or on FaceBook. Or blogs or email or text or skype or IM or, sheesh, what else is there that I’m forgetting?
And these connections are often just glimpses of the best possible foot we can put forward, without showing that which moors us, as well as that which unhinges us, day in and day out.
But then again, that’s what’s so attractive about social media…because too much of what’s below the surface can be off-putting. We don’t want to be off-put. We want to be entertained, to laugh, to clown…not to be made to think too much or actually, God forbid, have to *do* something.
I think about these things as I walk my trail. I think about my daughter, who’s an only child and is growing up in this age of distraction. She's got lots of cousins, and she's got friends about the same age who live on either side of us. Her days at school are full, and when she comes home and gets homework done, her evenings are, too. More often than not, she plays outside, and I like that because I know the time is coming soon enough that she'll be just like me - in front of the computer all the time. On the phone all the time. On the iPad all the time. In front of the TV all the time. All.The.Time.
This is not an exaggeration. I wish it was.
I'm fortunate that, barring a rare late work appointment,* I get to be with her when she gets home from school. I appreciate the routine we've developed with homework and that, for now, the first thing she wants to do when we get home is for me to swing her on the rope swing that hangs from a tree in the backyard. We've had some amazing talks during those swings. But I worry. I don't think talks stick like modeling does.
I try to get her ready for the truth of life.
"I know, Mom, not everybody's gonna like me."
"I know, Mom, not everybody has two moms and some people might make fun of me for that."
"I know, Mom, not everything in life is going to be easy and I have to be like that sailor who can take the boat in the thunder storm, not just when it’s sunny. I know, Mom. I know!"**
If I've told a story (or a variation thereof) more than twice, it's always, "I know, Mom. I know!"
How can you know, child? You're seven.
All I can do is have faith she’ll figure it out, or will seek to try, every day.***
Maybe in the end the seeking is what it’s all about anyway….
The things I read today that got me thinking about all this were from @_otis_, and Sherry Turkle, and Jim Dougherty, and this Ted Talk video.
***
* Or, ahem, a trip to Vegas, hello parent-of-the-year!
** If any of this made you think of Idgie Threadgoode, we could totally be friends.
*** If any of this is making you think I’m seeking reinforcement for my parenting skills, let me assure you I’m not. I try to be a good parent, but I am far from it. See *, above.
As I come to the tail end of my twitters and FB sabbatical, I'm finding that some things have changed with respect to my social media diet (and my thoughts on same), but I recognize that my displaced habit simply manifested in new ways.
Namely, I just channeled a lot of energy into Instagram (which was pretty much my only other social media outlet, besides email and blogging). But, life also happened and without constantly looking into my iPhone screen (or laptop or desktop screen), I found I read more, did more, and was present more.
But...the thing is, social media is just part of our landscape today. And I like it. I've made some really good friends via social media and I really wouldn't want to trade that for anything.
Understatement of the year - Twitter is a great source for news. But, it's a constant streaming of "eye-bites" that unless you do a little (or a lot) of digging on your own, can often lead to a really distorted picture of what that piece of "news" is really all about.
One way I've counteracted the loss of Twitter "news" during my day was to subscribe to two newspapers that I now read over breakfast or before going to bed. One is my local paper (the San Antonio Express News) and the other is the New York Times. I'm aware (at least via my folks) of a bias against the Times for being a liberal rag, but I find it excellent. A very wide array of news, entertainment, opinion, that reaches globally. I've enjoyed the heck out of my subscription to date.
I bring up these two reading items to say that one downside I've discovered from my Twitter usage was just that I'd stopped reading as much as I used to, and I hate that. I think there's a lot to be said about the many stories of late that have come out illustrating how much our attention span is impacted by using things like iPads, and iPhones, and other electronic devices to read everything from books, to work documents, to our newspapers. For me, anyway, I do find myself in the middle of a kindle book, or news story, and if I want to look something up, it's just a swipe of the finger to connect me to the internet, which can lead to indiscriminate surfing or gaming, and before I know it, an hour's passed and I haven't returned to the book, or the article, or the whatever.
Then, last night, I read this great piece from the Times that realllllly resonated with me. If you've ever found yourself inexplicably drawn for the kajillionth time to a game of Angry Birds or Words with Friends or, my personal favorite, Land Grabbers(don't judge me), it'll probably resonate with you, too. It's called Just One More Game...Angry Birds, Farmville, and Other Hyperaddictive 'Stupid Games'. And, it even has a poker component that I find amusing.
The author, Sam Anderson, makes some great points. One, simply being his description of the iPhone itself: they're "sophisticated game console(s)" that otherwise non-game playing consumers can now carry around and interact with at all hours of the day and night.
Think about people you know on Facebook who you constantly "see" playing Farmville or the Sims. This stuff is addictive, and Anderson tries to find out why.
He writes:
Stupid games, on the other hand, are rarely occasions in themselves. They are designed to push their way through the cracks of other occasions. We play them incidentally, ambivalently, compulsively, almost accidentally. They’re less an activity in our day than a blank space in our day; less a pursuit than a distraction from other pursuits. You glance down to check your calendar and suddenly it’s 40 minutes later and there’s only one level left before you jump to the next stage, so you might as well just launch another bird.
Hmmm. I know the feeling.
The poker component comes in at the tail end of the article, when Anderson spoke to Frank Lantz, the creator of a game (Drop7) that had overtaken Anderson's life. Lantz claimed that poker was the game to which he had the deepest relationship. To him, poker was:
...like a tightrope walk between this transcendently beautiful and cerebral thing that gave you all kinds of opportunities to improve yourself — through study and self-discipline, making your mind stronger like a muscle — and at the same time it was pure self-destruction. There’s no word for that in English, for a thing that does both of those at the same time. But it’s wonderful.
I can definitely relate to that, too.
Anderson ultimately concludes that 'stupid games' "force us to make a series of interesting choices about what matters, moment to moment, in our lives."
With an iPhone or other mobile device constantly at the ready, it seems to me (from experience) that it's easier than ever to leave 'real life' decisions to later in favor of one more drawing, or one more level, or one more...something in whatever game I find myself then immersed...that, ultimately, really just doesn't matter.
And at what cost? Seems to me that as these devices become more and more prevalent in our society, the people who are better able to compartmentalize and detach will be the purveyors (of what?) to those that can't.
At any rate, just some food for thought. One thing that's been a blast in helping me to 'detach' is my daily trail chronicle, which I've been keeping a record of over on Instagram.
This is from today (I'm never gonna be able to get a job as a camera person in Hollywood, that's fer dang sure. Back story, over the past couple of days, I've come across a nest with chicken-size eggs. Before Tuesday, the nest has always been unattended, and what started out as four eggs, turned into seven. Maybe she's now sitting on babies?):
Funny how even without Twitter or FB, the most trivial of poker brouhahas can still find itself on your radar.
Someone sent me a link to this particular part of the 2+2 thread and while I have no way of knowing whether or not it's a photoshopped pic, it sure made me laugh.
Social media is great, but it is of no help when it comes to defeating cynicism. Instead, it's a great breeder for same. This post is an excellent example. Le sigh.
Point is, there are no heroes in poker. Just as there are no heroes in the real world (or are there?). For under the white hot microscope of the interwebz, we are all burnt up in its searing, probing, privacy invading light.
