Category Archives: personal essay

and look away . . .

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I’ve just recently learned that my old friend, Jack Le Sueur, retired from the North Carolina Arts Council last December after thirty-five years’ service. Thinking about Jack brings back a flood of memories of a life I no longer have—of friends and places, sights and sounds: shaking hands with Jimmy Carter in the town park in Southern Pines, a copy of T. S. Eliot’s poems I bought in the Intimate Bookshop on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill when there was still such a place, the smell of woodsmoke at the Malcolm Blue Farm in Aberdeen, and the fireplace poker Jerry Darnell made me at his forge there one day. So many details, flakes of being floating on a river that never stops running.

Many of those memories include Jack. We met in 1974, some time in the fall, I think—though it’s been too many years to be sure. I got a call one day from a young man who had just taken a job with the arts council in Raleigh, and he wanted to come and see me. In a few days he showed up at the Campbell House in Southern Pines where I was housed as Executive Director of The Sandhills Arts Council (now the Arts Council of Moore County). We drove around the county all day together, getting to know one another and looking the place over. I had been on the job only about a year at that time. But I knew enough to take Jack to Jugtown, then operating as a nonprofit under the tutelage of the late Nancy Sweezy. I think I remember that we watched as interns unloaded one of the pottery’s big groundhog kilns.

And I’m sure I must have remembered to introduce Jack to board members and any community leaders I could find. I must have taken him to see Sam Ragan in his office at The Pilot, where he hid out behind a three-foot-tall pile of manuscripts that took up the front of his desk and banged away on the old Underwood he used to do his writing. But my memory of that day with Jack is mostly a recollection of country roads—Moore County is a beautiful place—and of pleasant conversation with a soft-spoken young man who was ten years younger than I but already an ex navy officer and a graduate of Duke, where I had studied for a PhD I never managed to get.

In his years at the North Carolina Arts Council Jack had many jobs. In those early days his job title was Community Coordinator. Jack, and later Fred Schultz, traveled the state as liaisons with local arts groups of all sorts. It was a natural step for Jack to become the administrator of the Arts Council’s signature Grassroots Arts Program, a program that’s been much copied around the country and a source of public funds for arts efforts large and small that continues to this day. But to me Jack was the North Carolina Arts Council, its face and its true soul, the embodiment of bureaucracy with a heart, something I guess I still believe is possible. Jack had a wonderful way of striking a balance between being my friend and advocate, which he mostly was, and sometimes being my boss. There was no pretense in him, no self-importance. He was always just Jack.

Hardly a month went by that we didn’t talk on the phone, sometimes just because he’d call to check in and see how I was. We’d meet at least four or five times a year at meetings and workshops, my favorite of which was a meeting of us professionals at the Quail Roost Conference Center, usually around Christmas time every year. We’d sit around a big seminar table and hear reports and instruction from peers during the day, and we’d party in the evenings. I remember one good poker game when I think I won ten dollars. I’m sure there were other communities of culture around the country like the one I was part of in North Carolina in the 1970s, but I was privileged to be part of that one. Thinking of Jack still takes me back to a time before the culture wars ruined so much of life for us, albeit I’ve not seen him these last twelve years. It was like Kristofferson’s great song; we were advocates for everything good we knew.

And so I’m moved to learn of Jack’s retirement and wish him godspeed in whatever future he travels. Jack is a fine musician. We used to spell one another at meetings singing and leading singing. He and his wife, Pattie, began performing together before they got married and have continued to do so over the years. They have a lovely CD that includes a wedding song, “Two Paths.” I hope Jack’s future holds lots of opportunities to perform and that I get to hear him and Pattie again before I go somewhere else. Here they are in a little video medley from a few years back that I found posted on the net. Jack’s “Administrator Blues” reminds me of a meeting in Denver when a couple hundred of us listened to Jack sing one evening and there were lots of lighters in the air at the close. I also especially like the Kate Campbell song that’s last in the video, and Pattie’s take on it, speaking of things the culture wars have ruined for us.

birthday thoughts

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Today I have achieved the age of 72. I am not old, though I do make an occasional joke about geezerdom.

Last week at my regular appointment with my primary care physician, on whom I have a geezerly crush, I was asked if I had fallen in the past six months. I thought of replying, “Only in love with you, my dear,” but I bit my tongue and said merely, “No” as the question required. Later, as I was leaving she flashed me a big grin and averred, “Isn’t it good to get a clean bill of health?” which I interpreted as assurance that I am almost as good as new, youthful ardor and all.

But yesterday things turned somber. I renewed my driver’s license, since the old one expired today, and was allowed to renew for three years only, because of my advanced age. In addition—I was asked if I wished to become an organ donor. “No,” I said; thinking I’m not quite ready to parcel out my nearly new body parts yet. The young woman behind the counter smiled as she purred, “No problem.”

Now, I am in favor of organ donation. Upon reflection I think I should have answered, “Yes.” It was just that the question surprised me. I was still in a self-congratulatory mood having been given a clean bill of health. And not only that, I had just won a battle with city refuse collectors over a dumpster that had been blocking my garage door. So it’s a good thing the bountiful State of Missouri allows me to correct my error in three rather than the seven years’ licensure available to those under 70. Still, I have other, more disturbing thoughts.

Should I interpret the experience of renewing my driver’s license as placing subtle pressure upon me to get it over with and kick the bucket, cash in my chips, pass on to a better place (without, of course, my corneas, liver, and lights)? Does the redneck state of Missouri wish me dead—so as to be rid of my liberal, medicare-consuming ass? Is my driver’s license in reality a death license? Does President Obama have designs on my body parts?

—these questions boggle the mind.

fouling in the endgame

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The score is 86 to 79, and there is a minute and a half to play in a game between two big-time NCAA basketball teams. The game is a regular season game, no more of a must-win for either team than any other, but the losers have already started to foul the winners. Each time the winning team gets the ball, the member of the losing team with the lowest number of infractions scored against him fouls the member of the winning team with the poorest record at the foul line. The fouled player goes to the line, makes one or two points, or none; and the losing team gets the ball back and a chance to score a two- or three-point field goal. The losing team scores or not, gives up the ball, and fouls again. This scenario will repeat itself until the final buzzer.

Most basketball games end this way these days. It’s normal, what we expect, not remarkable. If a losing team should opt out of the procedure and play out a game without fouling, fans and sportswriters would call them losers, accuse them of lacking in competitive spirit, or worse yet, lacking a proper work ethic. Their coach would be vilified for failing to teach them proper values, and perhaps be fired. The fact that this style of play is unsportsmanlike, involves intentional rule breaking, and is something that a society that values fairness and the rule of law ought to reject, has never seemed to occur to anybody since the practice began forty or fifty years ago. By now, as I say, it’s normal, what we expect. A species of flagrant unsportsmanlike conduct has become the right thing to do.

If I ask myself why this should be so, part of my answer has to recognize that we live in a society in which winning trumps everything else. It’s so important to be a winner, to be associated with winners and winning (and even more important, not to be a loser), that when some curmudgeon like me questions some injustice that is broadly perceived to be an enabler of winning, I (or whatever person does this) will automatically be accused of 1) not understanding how things are and what’s really important, 2) being a wimp or a wuss (that is, a loser), or at a certain level at which this discourse is sometimes pursued, 3) being un-American or unpatriotic.

We live in a time in which the Presidency of the United States (at certain times in the last century called imperial), has largely become a criminal enterprise, pursuing an illegal program of domestic spying, detaining foreigners without due process of law, engaging in criminal torture, and pursuing a foreign war that has no strategic or other value to this country outside the interests of a venal military establishment and the presidency’s own need for legitimacy and a second term in office. The president who led us into this situation is now vastly unpopular. It ought to be possible to deconstruct the moral pretensions of his administration and put right at least some of its most egregious wrongs.

But apparently not. George Bush is unpopular because he didn’t win the war in Iraq, not because his depredations have offended the moral sensibilities of a great number of Americans. John McCain, who aspires to be Bush’s Republican successor, tells us that we can still win the Iraq war if we just hire him as the new coach; and he has now backed away from any criticism of the war or opposition to torture, echoing the president’s claim that waterboarding is a crucial tool in the war on terror, so as to appear tough and patriotic — to look like a winner, one supposes. Even Barack Obama, perhaps the war’s most serious critic among remaining presidential candidates, has criticized the war on pragmatic, not on moral, grounds.

Looking like a winner can be as important as winning in today’s high-stakes political arena. Ron Elving reviews the results of the Texas Primary/Caucus at npr.org and argues that the Clinton campaign had anticipated a split decision before it occurred.

That’s why efforts had been made to discredit the caucuses in advance. Her campaign complained that the caucuses were too small to be representative and too random in administration to be fair.

On caucus night, her campaign held a stormy conference call with reporters to say Obama forces were attempting to hijack the proceedings at specific sites. Similar complaints had been lodged against caucuses in other states in January and February, as the Obama campaign racked up consistent wins in delegate counts.

The Clinton campaign have consistently followed an endgame strategy of fouling their opponent, gaining whatever short term advantage that strategy can produce, in order to look as much like winners as possible. Clinton even gave a victory speech after the Iowa caucuses, and has continued to follow that strategy as she has lost contest after contest. With respect to Texas,

. . . most of the country will go on thinking that Senator Clinton collected a bonanza in Texas . . . . So even if she didn’t, and even if she did not quite meet her own goal . . . , she got her momentum back . . . .

That is: she started to look like a winner again.

jim’s diner

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[Thinking about Fry Street reminded me of this piece I wrote about Jim’s Diner, a Fry Street institution of some years back, when it closed. I thought I’d repost it here for nostalgia’s sake and because Jim’s is really gone now, if there’s such a thing as more gone than gone. I was wrong about a couple of things. The Delta Lodge did rebuild, and the mural I thought would disappear remained at the time I left Denton.]

Friday, March 20, 1998

I wandered to my office today along empty sidewalks. Denton gets pretty deserted around campus during breaks. As I was returning home I passed what had once been Jim’s Diner, a local institution on Fry Street where I live in the heart of the funky district of this funky little town, which I mostly love for its funkiness. Jim’s is no more, and as I passed the place it used to be I noticed that the new owners are redecorating. Let me tell you about Jim’s and why this makes me sad.

Many an afternoon I have walked into Jim’s, taken a cold Shiner out of the ice locker on the counter, paid my buck and a quarter, and sipped my beer in the shade of the porch on the north side of the place; sat at a big aluminum-topped picnic table, watched the street people and the dogs, been entertained by the art deco mural on the wall depicting the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, and Elvis, talked with my student friends and others about the neighborhood being destroyed by police moving into a new station nextdoor, maybe a little about Zen (old farts don’t know much about Zen, but we like to learn whatever we can) or whether it would ever rain. I belong to an informal old farts club. We eat breakfast together on Tuesdays, and we used to eat at Jim’s, enjoying the fifties awful food, laughing about the Elvis cup you could rent for $100 (something the original Jim had left behind), soaking up the decor consisting of a couple of mannequins dressed in funky costumes, posters and newspaper articles from the fifties framed and unframed on the walls, signed pictures of movie and rock stars, a large foot wearing a two-color shoe, and other objects d’art which might have appealed to P. T. Barnum. No old gas pumps or longhorns in the place, no deer trophies, no branding irons, nothing gauche like that.

About eight months ago, Jim’s was sold. Right off the bat, they quit serving breakfast. The fellow who had owned the place for the last ten years, bought it from the original Jim and kept its tradition, had sold out to a couple of Italians, whom I have nothing against, but among things Denton doesn’t need more of are Italian, Chinese, and Tex-Mex restaurants. Greek would have been nice, we only have three Greek places; or Thai maybe, we have two of those. My favorite Italian restaurant is just around the corner, maybe a block away, and get this—the same guys own it who bought Jim’s. I guess I just don’t understand capitalism. As I say, I live in this neighborhood by choice. I like it, and it’s cheap, but I have terrible dreams of gentrification some nights now, of rents being raised to drive out the old farts and cops chasing away the street people. Now that Jim’s is gone, an anchor of my life no longer exists.

If you think I’m an alarmist, consider these facts. The Delta Lodge at the corner of Fry and Oak, just across the street from Jim’s, which used to be the Sammy house before the Sammys got in trouble with the wowsers, is no more. A fire took it three years ago, and I don’t think the Lodge will ever rebuild. How could they replicate what they had anyway?–a ramshackle old three-story wooden house, a firetrap some said, decorated in Halloween-carnival awful. The Fry Street Fair, which the Lodge sponsors, has moved back to the street for a weekend in April, having been kicked off by the city for a while, but it’s a shadow of its former self. A jazz club in an old convenience store building was evicted, not because its music was loud but because its clientele included lots of grunge-dressing, tattoo-wearing young folk; and where there’s fire there’s smoke, if you get my drift. Soon somebody will decide it’s time to ban appearances by Brave Combo, or evict the folks from the beer and wine shop on the corner, or arrest me for jaywalking or loitering. The cops now regularly stop young folk on the street without real probable cause, just because they look strung out or homeless.

So the demise of Jim’s makes me sad because it comes as part of a perceptible trend, and today was especially sad as I walked past my old haunt, closed, as it was for spring break. The windows had been covered with paper, but I heard hammering and looked in an open door to see what was going on. All the old decorations had vanished, the mannequins, the foot, the old pictures of Tom Mix. The new owners had left things pretty much as whey were until just last week, but now I see stucco-like stuff on the walls, all the wonderfully ugly fifties booths gone. I fully expect to see silk flowers and red checked tablecloths when the new Jim’s opens next week. A spanking new set of outdoor furniture, metal mesh painted green, sits on the porch. The Beatles mural has big holes in it now; they’ll probably just paint over it.

Ubi es, ubi es, O my good place, Jim’s—I miss you old buddy! But they’re not getting me out of here just yet. Us old farts have moved to Ruby’s on the square, where we are protected by domino players, a senior citizen’s buffet, and a stuffed alligator. It is here that an old friend who went crazy used to like to give tourists copies of a photograph of the last hanging in town. Ubi es, O my good place! The stuffed alligator is nice, a real piece of culture, but I have often wondered about the fate of Jim’s Elvis cup. I have heard the last Jim’s owner is now a race car driver in Florida. He probably took it with him.

[Originally posted at Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms.]