5 Timeless lessons on 4 Letter Words

Courtsey of Jan Schneider from  Upsplash  

Last week I was a visiting lecturer at Southwest Junior College, which is a stone’s throw from the Mexico’s border with San Diego. I was also visiting with the professor who was my former student when she was a mere freshman in my English class. Quite proud I was of her, you see, because she was in charge of guiding a group of 25 students transitioning to a four year university despite their challenging circumstances.

And what where those, you ask? Professor M (for privacy) wrote me about the class because as all good teachers know, one of the first rules in teaching is know your students. They were young folks 18–23, who slept on the floor of their cramped homes, crossed the US border to come to class, came from schools that had underperformed, were living on a shoe-string budget, but they were bright, caring and loyal to her. Professor M had me at would you come….

Before I tell you the 5 lessons about 4 letter words, this preface will set the scene. I sat under the shade of a tree waiting for the class to begin and sitting next to me was a young lady whom I assumed was in the class. So I asked her if she recognized the song playing from the snack shack nearby. She said no. So I asked her if she heard of Stevie Wonder. No.

“But he is the famous singer who sang ‘You are the Sunshine of my life.’” Nope. Hmm. “Bruce Springsteen?” She shook her head politely (figuring this nice 63 year old man must be just lonely).

So I tried another tract: “The Beatles?” Ah ha! Eureka! She nodded. I worked my way back…or forward, even I was confused. “Madonna?” Again, a nod, as well as a smile. “Prince?” Yes. “Sting?” No.

So I was getting a gauge on the situation. This was going be a tough crowd for a guy with a CD player, a song and a Springsteen PowerPoint in his bag of tricks.

After a heartfelt introduction by Professor M, I asked all of the class if they ever even heard of Bruce Springsteen. No one had (except the lad who surreptitiously looked Springsteen on his laptop). “No worries,” I said, “we will get there soon enough.”

I explained that 4 letter words like f*%#; s&%#, etc. were tossed around casually nowadays even though there are 7 words one still cannot say on TV” (George Carlin: no way was I asking them about him). “But here are words that really do need to be expressed far more often, and if acted upon, would lead one to a happier life…and success along the way. Here goes:

KIND: “In my high school teaching days from 1977 until 2010, there were an awful lot of ‘dagger words’: bitch, faggot, asshole, …you know the roster. They are the stones we throw out of anger and frustration — or downright ignorance.” I reminded them that the people you meet who do a kind thing for you will be remembered — even honored. “And the ones that stuck that knife out and cut you or others; well, they will be lost or at least deposited into the bin of toxic waste.” These young folks seemed to radiate kindness already; perhaps because they had seen too many metaphoric knives thrust their way.

VOTE: “I know some of you can’t vote, or can’t yet vote. But when you are able to — please step up to the citizen’s stage and play your part in democracy. Too many folks have cynically become government atheists and forgotten that this four letter word is what makes the United States the beacon of freedom.” As I was speaking about voting I mentioned one simple word that had a visceral reaction from the entire class: Trump. The students seemed to freeze in front of me; as if simply mentioning his name was frightening. They gave me the feeling that they could be in danger if they made any movement — as if remaining invisible was the safest place to be. That image stayed with me for days.

GRIT: (I must tell my readers that these books etc. about grit are so late to the party because we teachers have known this decades before it became some authors’ Ah-ha Moment.) “I know you guys are up against some tough odds. Heck, I’m from Brooklyn. My folks never went to college. They lived paycheck to paycheck for years. I was not the brightest candle in the chandelier; after all, when the SAT test had a max score of 1600 — I settled in at 880. The motto written in bold letters above my door read: YOUR ‘I WILL’ IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR ‘IQ’. I failed at lots of stuff. I failed a test that would have awarded me $10,000 and a National Board Certification — by two points…and I heard the results I on my birthday (for literally cryin-out-loud). So I get it. GRIT makes you grab hold of the things that really matter. And BTW, I passed the test a year later.”

LOVE: The Beatles, remember them, (the students nod) had it right — “Love is all you need.” So if you are thinking of being a doctor, nurse, teacher, councilor, Lift driver…whatever the choice, if you do not find love, you are lost and no GPS will guide you there. When I was interviewed to be San Diego County’s “Teacher of the Year” I was asked this first question: what do you teach? My answer: INVISIBLE THINGS. The panel seemed confused. So I explained: ‘I teach kids about compassion, hate, love, tolerance — why Atticus Finch defends Tom Robinson; why Huck Finn loves a slave named Jim and why Jim loves Huck. These are the invisible things that matter. If one does not teach the answer to those questions, then what purpose do we have?”

HOPE: “You students are the legacy my generation leaves behind. Optimism may seem difficult for some of you. But there is a reason you are here, in this classroom, and a reason I am here, as well. Because, despite all the barriers and all the naysayers, we believe in our dreams. I’m going to play you a song and show you some of the pictures of the dreamers of the past and the present — from Jackie Robinson to Neil Armstrong to Lin-manuel Miranda to Taylor Swift. This is a song by that guy you all have never heard of and it’s called ‘The Land of Hopes and Dreams’.”

I pushed play and let Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band erupt within the walls of their classroom.

When I drove home, I had that feeling that I thought might have disappeared. It was a feeling that I made a difference today — with kids, albeit a bit older…but now wiser. I reminded myself on the 45 minute journey home, that what really matters in life is simply that you can be the sunshine of someone’s life — even if that someone has no idea who the person is who is singing that song.

I Just Saw Stars: Western Stars

Courtsey of Glen Carrie from Upsplash

I just walked out of a ‘movie house’ — as we used to say — and I saw stars; Western Stars that is, from Bruce Springsteen. It is hard to pin down exactly how to describe it. I suppose it is a spiritual symphony of horns, violins, drums, pianos, an accordion…and that gorgeous guitar I have never seen him play before. I guess the album and this live concert was literally about time. Buddy, can I relate.

Having taught English for 32 years, I found that one way I could nudge my students into an appreciation of literature and its powerful themes was to use songs, “a three minute record, baby” (as Springsteen reminds us in “No Retreat, No Surrender”). One particular Springsteen song from the 1980’s connected viscerally with my high school students: “The River.”

“The River” tells the story of young high school lovers whose passion leads to unexpected, let predictable consequences. Pregnancy, dropping out of school, a marriage of conscience, and the eventual regret these forlorn lovers feel would imprint on my high school students especially when the lovers eventually see their dreams fade away as deeply as the wrinkles that line their faces. It was a good lesson for seventeen- year olds…it is a lesson for us all.

“The River” may well have been one of the many songs in the Springsteen collection that propelled the new film Blinded by the Light; I don’t know for sure since Asbury Park is 3,000 miles from Encinitas, California where I pen this essay. But one thing I do know for sure: Bruce Springsteen has not lost his touch with his latest work: Western Stars.

Being authentic is one quality that writers understand to be essential. One either writes what one knows or seeks to find out that truth by going to the source. It boils down to understanding empathy and sympathy, and Springsteen’s thirteen songs have a little of both. They are told as vignettes with Springsteen’s raspy voice introducing each set of characters to come. 

In Western Stars, Springsteen’s stature as the poet laureate of his medium shines (pardon the pun Medium), and with the enthusiasm of a youthful orchestra behind his melodies and a enchanting barn as his backdrop, he touches a nerve in all of those willing to lend an ear.

And what, you ask does a (soon to be) seventy-year old Springsteen have to offer today? He has followed his Broadway life story chronicled from his autobiography Born to Run, with this album filled with characters facing their own mortality, and in many cases…all alone. These stories depict the evolution of Springsteen from a rollicking rocker to a wise sage, time travelling to those places west of the Mississippi where the wild Montana horses, the movie stars of Hollywood’s yesteryear, and San Bernardino truckers roam. Wherever he takes us, we remind ourselves of the pain and joy that comes with age.

Springsteen’s stories begin with a wandering “Hitchhiker” who seems content with riding shotgun and appreciating the lives of those who trust him enough to take him anywhere down the road. Far more somber is a lonely truck driver often loses track of where he is, who he is, and what loves he has left behind. He’s reduced to calling himself “The Wayfarer.”

All is not doom and gloom. “Tucson Train” is a redemption yarn, the story of a man who has worked through “the pills and the rain” in an effort to prove to his past lover that all was “not in vain.” He is going to prove to her that “a man can change” as he is waiting for her to arrive “on the 5:15.”

Perhaps the most intriguing tale is the album’s title track “Western Stars.” His aging storyteller finds himself no longer a bit player in the western movies of bygone days, but instead he’s milking the last of days of his B-star fame, doing commercials for Viagra. He knows all he is good for is retelling the old story of how he was shot by John Wayne to bar hounds willing to pick up his tab. 

Springsteen gives homage to the charros, the proud Mexican riders, who Springsteen’s narrator insists are his brothers who “cross the wire and bring the old ways with them.” It is a bittersweet melody that one is drawn to despite the fact that the old cowboy knows his only hope is that when he wakes up in the morning “his boots are still on.”

Springsteen charts the sunrises and sunsets, some somber but some miraculous as he crosses Montana, California and Arizona. The most upbeat sunset appears when he saddles up to “Sleepy Joe’s Café.” The surf guitar and the accordion get the locals who show up at sundown to dance and “flirt the night away,” putting their hard day’s work behind them for at least a few hours before beginning anew the cycle of “an honest day’s work.”

The quietest, most sober song is whispered by a guitar player who has come “into town with a pocketful of songs”: the town, Nashville. His mission to land a contract in Music City: a place that can turn a poet into a one man band. Unfortunately, “Somewhere North of Nashville” is where this poor soul realizes he “just didn’t do things right.” He’s just another broken record, freezing his ass off in his car, utterly lost.

It is an authentic, panoramic view from atop hills in Montana at all those times one “Chases Wild Horses” only to dream about catching one and someday and riding her as “her hair flashin’ in the blue” is beyond reach.; like a wild horse, he’ll never lasso or tame her — those days over and done.

These are not the songs I would teach to high school students. No. They are meant for those of us who have driven those El Caminos down Highway 5 for many a decade. When we were young, we were “Blinded by the Light” — nowadays, it’s time for us to look up to the night time stars that shine and take stock of who we are and what really matters in life.

At Last: Robert Pacilio Appears at Barnes and Noble

It has been 10 years since the publication of "Meetings at the Metaphor Cafe" and now with my newest work "Meet Me at Moonlight Beach" I seem to have made some inroads into the mainstream world of publishing and book selling. 

I was surprised when, in an attempt to persuade Barnes and Noble to carry my novel in their section What People in Encinitas Are Reading, that they had already ordered and sold the book!

"How did that happen?" I asked Katie, B and N's Community Relations Manager.

"Well, I assume that all the press clippings locally and Karla Peterson's San Diego Union-Tribune's article just alerted our staff,” Katie responded.

And Eureka! My novels were suddenly available on their website. (Three of my four novels were available ,not The Restoration unfortunately.)

Then Katie asked me if I would like to speak at the store. I calmly shrugged, "Sure. I'm pretty available."

And so it came to be that THIS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19TH FROM 2-4 PM I will be speaking, reading, and signing my novels at the Encinitas branch of Barnes and Noble. I'd love to have you come by, even if you already have the book to hear the story behind this book and all of the others novels. I promise to be entertaining an original. 

But that's not all that has happened. I will be speaking at Miracosta College with the author of Stella Luna on November 22 from 1-3 pm, as well as the featured speaker at the Delta Kappa Gamma Society earlier on November 2 (contact me for more information at www.robertpacilio.net.

Several book clubs have had me over to their homes, and I am grateful for their support for Meet Me at Moonlight Beach. 

Like on every occasion when I speak, I never know who will be there, but I do hope that you can make it. Thanks so much. Bob

 

The War on the Truth:Two Women’s Eyewitness Accounts

Many Americans believed that President Obama’s election in 2008 was the sign that a post-racial America had finally arrived. Despite the 17% increase in hate crime in 2017, far too many Americans just can’t believe that racial hatred really could be the catalyst to mass murder, Nazi protests, and white supremacy. Not here. Not now. Not us.

Then Mr. Trump came to the podium and the words fake news came billowing throughout the social network. He proclaimed that those white supremacists and neo-Nazi in Charlottesville were “good people.” And a new war on truth was born…again.

That brings me to two truth tellers and their recent testimonies to what really happened to them and to the world from which they came.

Madeleine Albright and Michelle Obama come from different generations and different continents; however, both have much in common: notably, overcoming virulent hatred stemming from racism. Both spoke their truth with undying patriotism to the United States: Ms. Albright on the international stage as “Madam Secretary” and Ms. Obama on a national stage from the White House — a house slaves built (her ancestors to be unambiguous).

These two women have a message for Americans. Beware. Ignorance is not bliss. There is no such thing as alternate facts; events happened or did not happen. Words were said. Actions were taken in churches, mosques, and on the streets of Charlottesville. Mr. Trump’s litany of bullying tactics and ignorance ranged from claiming Mexicans were murders and rapists; Hispanic federal judges could not render justice; Muslims needed to be banned from entering our nation (because he saw them celebrating in New York after 9.11); Africans would never want to go back to their shithole countries’; Trump claims he had no knowledge of David Duke (the Grand Dragon of the KKK); and anyone who contradicted his opinions were merely echoing fake news.

Madeleine Albright’s newest memoir Fascism: A Warning is both a history discourse of villains, who wrap themselves in the cloak of nationalists, but her story concerns her own persecution from her native Czechoslovakia. Whether she is writing about her homeland, Russia, Turkey, the constellations of smaller satellites that once formed the USSR, or the less developed nations dotting South America, as well as the Middle East, Albright is clear how political corruption and vicious manipulation has led to dictators like those in Syria, North Korea and the Philippines to name but a few.

Ms. Albright’s most poignant metaphor deals with the attempt to burn to the ground the ethnic hatred that fed the fascism that shrouded the world’s landscape which the Axis powers coveted. After WWII ended, she argues that the ideology of hate seemed to be scorched on the earth’s surface; however, the roots of paranoia run so deep that after a generation those very seeds begin to break through the crusty soil. President Truman, she notes, spoke of this, “Hitler is finished, but the seeds spread by his disordered mind have firm root in too many fanatical brains.” Her warning is that those ideologies are not only growing, rather they are in full bloom today. One needs only to look to the tragedy in New Zealand this March to see this on horrific display.

Albright contends, Donald Trump is the latest manifestation of how today’s dictators operate. They begin, as Hitler and Mussolini did, by stoking the ambers of fear and discontent among their masses, then slowly they neuter the media and control public discourse. The judicial system is co-opted or maligned. Any challengers are bullied, and in the case of the worst of the monsters — imprisoned, made to mysteriously disappear, or simply boldly assassinated even within embassies existing for their protection. These so-called presidents have one refrain: they claim that they alone can save their nation from the invasion of those who seek to do harm.

Ms. Obama’s memoir is not a warning — far from it — it is clearly a Becoming. She passionately writes of the love of her parents, her upbringing on the Southside, her dedication to a cause worth fighting for and eventually meeting a man of such capability and ambition that she decides to take a road she feels is wicked and wondrous: politics. Naturally, her concerns about her children being raised in such a world worries her greatly, and make no mistake, she does give witness to the dangers of being the first Black family to lead our nation. The peril her family faces equates to the constant security essential to protect her family and the President. From what you may ask? From the same bigoted adversaries who have never let go of the Original Sin of racism. Something this nation has failed to fully come to accept, and from which it has never made reparations.

Ms. Obama’s most telling moment to me was the description of the bullet lodged in the impenetrable window of the First Family’s upstairs living area in the White House. However, bulletproof glass could not stop Donald Trump, whom she can “never forgive” for the danger he so thoughtlessly created, since then candidate Obama was under Secret Service protection far before others because death threats were ubiquitous. Trump’s ignorant insistence that Barack Obama was not born in America created countless malevolent conspiracies all cordoned off under the umbrella of birtherism. Trump, along with his dutiful messengers at Fox News, conjured a sick lie that put the Obama’s in harm’s way.

__________________

In the years before it became obvious what Adolph Hitler’s plans of genocide were, many Germans and Austrians claimed that they never imagined such a thing was happening. 

The antidote is knowledge. Some of it first-hand, eyewitness truth, but for those sitting far from imminent danger in their homes today that knowledge comes from the journalists who cover the events unfolding before them.

However, the campaign of misinformation, whether it comes from foreign adversaries or home-grown propaganda, is real and threatens our republic and the civic discourse that makes America the “beacon of freedom.”

Above all, Michelle Obama and Madeleine Albright are optimists, but they remind the reader that turning a blind eye to the evil in the world does a free society great harm. These two women’s 

Lessons Germany and Austria Teach about the Sins of the Past

Ta-Nehisi Coates has written eloquently and persuasively about why America’s slaves helped build this nation and have paid a tragic price for their forced efforts, yet they have received nothing in return for their sweat, blood and tears.

So what does this have to do with Germany and Austria?

Having pleasure of just visiting these countries and speaking to those enlightened individuals who live in the two nations that were the setting of the Nazi’s holocaust, I have had my eyes opened. To cut to the chase, more than 70 years after the conclusion of WWII, the German people are still embarrassed and mortified about their involvement (or lack thereof) in the actions of Hitler and his diabolical concentration camps. So much so that, not once — but during three different grade levels — schools are focused on the history of Nazism that they allowed to occur.

I was told by our guide that when she was studying in America, she was amazed how many American flags were flown. This was startling to her because in Germany the flag is not ubiquitously waving. Patriotism to them means accepting their role in an unprecedented ethnic “cleansing” and making quite sure that future generations know the truth: the guilt lies within.

Contrast that to Austria — its neighbor. We Americans see “The Sound of Music” and assume that Austrians were like Captain Von Trapp: disgusted with the Nazi invasion of Austria. That couldn’t be further from the truth. In Austria, I was informed by numerous sources — the Holocaust is never taught in schools. In addition, Austria’s involvement with the Nazis and their blatant cooperation with Hitler is a mere footnote (if mentioned at all) in school. They want to have no ownership of what Austria did to all those murdered and persecuted in Austrian concentration camps like Mauthausen.

But the irony does not stop there. Due to the Marshall Plan and President Truman’s leadership, America and Allied forces spent millions reconstructing the bombed out cities and propping up German and Austrian economies. Who received the bulk of that money? Austria. Yes, the nation that denies involvement and claims they were victims of Hitler were one of the biggest receivers of US aid.

Another twist, Mauthausen concentration camp, which I visited, was considerably “sterilized” (save for pictures) by the Austrians, whereas the brutal truth of German camps like Dachau was evident to my eyes. Having seen both camps, the simple visual horror of both juxtaposed is visceral.

So what does this have to do with American slavery and the need for reparations?

I hate to state what I believe I have made obvious, but for the sake of clarity: we have for the most part acted as Austria. Jim Crow laws undermined for many blacks the purpose of the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960’s. I could go on and on: Red Lining, separate and unequal schools, institutional corporate bias — these are the legacy of slavery. Ghettoes, as I taught for years, were born of slavery, and drug dealing became one major avenue to economically escape poverty; only to lead to the mass incarceration of black men and the destruction of black family life.

Isn’t it about time, 400 years to be exact, since 1619 that we, who have prospered, take responsibility for the prosperity we have built as the “richest nation on earth?” One can debate the specifics of how and to what degree, but the why is not up for debate.

Unless, of course, like Austria, we claim that we were victims of the slave trade.