A Geezer in the Making: an ode to aging

We have all heard it said that youth is wasted on the young. That may or may not be true. Though I’m not yet at an age where I’m appalled and offended by everything the “kids these days” do, I am often envious of their energy and carefree (usually) lives. I’m still young enough to admit that I am no longer that full of energy. I’m not so young though to believe the other adage, that one is only as old as they feel. That one is built on whatever passes for logic among con artists. Whoever forged this old saw on the anvil of mendacity clearly had the misfortune to not live past their thirties. I very often feel much older than my age and if “feel” was the key to how young I’m supposed to be, then some days I might be approaching ninety.

According to Stephen King, there are three ages of mankind: youth, middle age and “Jeez, you look great”. I think that's about as close to true as I can see from my vantage point. I've not quite reached fifty, but I'm getting there (we’re all getting somewhere). There are days I do not feel my age. There are days that I do. The former are still in the majority, the latter are coming from behind and closing the gap. More than ever before, I get sore in the bendy places, my energy levels approach empty and I feel like my limbs are filled with lead. Not every day, I hasten to add, but some days. The change is noticeable. There has been a marked increase from just ten years ago when I rarely had a day when I felt worn out or overdone. Ten years before that, I never had bad days unless I over-indulged or had the flu. These days, my physical frame is less flexible or springy, I notice that I tend to be a bit more grouchy. The weird aches, strange shooting pains, creaky joints and the weird forgetfulness that comes with the accumulated trivia of half a century likely contribute. I’m in middle age now and these things are part of the landscape. 

The inventor of the adage above might have been clever to clarify that by “feel” they meant inside the brain. Even when I'm achy I feel pretty spry mentally. I'm not immune from the fog of busy days or emotionally charged weeks, of course, but I'm still able to function as if I am only half forgetful. To be honest, I have never been that great in the memory department. I have too many moments when I am flying on autopilot, listening to the music in my head; I am a walking daydream and that presents issues of obliviousness that can make it hard for me to pay attention or retain facts. During meetings facilitated by someone else, I’m the first to go glassy-eyed. This isn’t new for me. It may be one of those youthful intolerances that I retain from my school days.

There are parts of growing older that I really dread. I don’t want to wear my pants up under my armpits or drive a Cadillac the size of a battleship or careen around looking for the senior specials at diners that begin serving 40% off meals at 3 p.m. I’d like to try to remain as sharp and outwardly un-elderly as possible. In order to do this, I resist thinking about things in terms of ‘back in my day’ or calling other, younger men ‘young fella’ and, where possible, avoiding things like orthopedic shoes and double knit polyester suits. 

I had a person no more than twenty years my senior call me “young man” recently. That used to bug me. Now, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have the compliment bestowed. I assume that, despite the copious white in my beard and hair, I still look younger than I imagine myself. I refuse to drown myself in beard or hair dye to hide from the inevitable. As our North Carolina state motto so eloquently points out, “it is better to be than to seem”. I have to fight against the rising derision I feel when I see a man in late middle age or approaching his elderly years with coal black hair and beard. Worse is the ill-concealed toupee. I will likely get thin on top, in the back. Long hair helps to cover that, but at some point I'll develop a solar panel back there. I'm not worried. I'll try to make it look good. 

Age also seems to bring a steadiness that is absent in youth. Kids are impulsive and unaware of the consequences (most of the time) of their actions. This is by design, as our prefrontal cortex only solidifies when we reach our mid-twenties. I feel a little sturdier emotionally and generally. I’m much less apt to be temperamental and though I’m grouchier than ever before, I am not so easily pushed to fury. There’s no rush for me, either. I like to be prompt and I like to leave when it’s time, but Christmas comes soon enough and so do my birthdays and the days seem to slide by much faster, and so why look forward unnecessarily? Time will pass and so will I. Steadiness is key.

In recent years I have been learning to focus (if not fixate) on the moment. I try to remember that all we have is this instant. That helps, because how I am feeling in the moment often determines the kind of decisions I will make and how my day will turn out. There's not much I can do about tomorrow or yesterday. As my mother used to say, quoting the book of Matthew, “sufficient for the day is the evil thereof”. This is actually true. I'd go a step further and add that “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly up.” Living in the moment is a significant cure for the aging process, but it can also temper our understanding and patience with life's travails. 

My mother passed away just after her 57th birthday. When she was my age, she had just shy of a decade to live but didn't know it. None of us know when our ticket will be punched. Although her loss was devastating for our family, it taught us that the current moment is what matters. I try to maintain my thinking in a way that I am reminded to be grateful to be here (on the right side of the meadow) and for all the good in my life. Life isn’t always easy, but at least I love and am loved. 

If I have any doubts about my possible longevity, the children have told me that they believe I will live to be quite elderly. My grandmothers were both in their nineties. My maternal uncle who battled health issues all his life lived into his eighties, and my maternal great-aunt just passed this year at 109. Pops is in his eighties and still spry, and his elder sister (my good and deserving aunt) is a nonagenarian and is as regally beautiful and sharp witted as when she was my age. All good indicators but there is no guarantee. Without wishing to be morbid, I could be hit by a falling satellite this afternoon while raking leaves or struck by lightning during a rain delay at a local baseball game. It happens.

Intentionality helps when it comes to facing the inevitable final problem of age. I exercise regularly which helps with mental acuity and energy levels. I have learned the hard way that the days I don't feel like exercising are the days I absolutely need to exercise. I can still build muscle and increase my tolerance while decreasing my blood pressure (which is excellent). Eating well, taking time to enjoy those wonderful peaceful intervals between the hectic and frustrating parts of life are essential. A good strong cup of tea in a quiet part of the house, enjoying every silent minute that ticks by is a rare and wonderful rest.

Another positive of aging is that I am getting to have a bit of natural skepticism and a healthy amount of cynicism. Though I am hopeful for the future, I don't easily get roped into stupid ideologies or self-delusion about how things will be. We live in a world with a lot of bad ideas and credulous folks (and those who prey on them). My tolerance for stupid people is reaching low ebb as a result. It gets harder and harder for me to hide my total impatience for those who are certain about everything all the time and who are easily hoodwinked by the false gods of politics and religious belief. However, I care less about what people think and, through practice, I have found that rigorous honesty is always better but that thoughtful reflection before I speak is the best thing.

And yet, I merely point out what I have noticed in myself that I hope has come with some experience and a growing extended history. I don't know what I will face as the years come. Loss, disease, failures of the mind and body, the eventual indignity of age and the resumption of infant-like helplessness. Nothing can stop that except accidental death by falling space debris. A character on one of our favorite shows said “Life is short and death is sure.” True, but I always liked the Latin axiom, “Tempus fugit, Memento Mori.” Time flies. Remember death. I hope that, without being morbid, if I can just keep hold of the fact that I’m mortal and won’t be here forever, maybe it will help me remember to try to use my time wisely. To me, that seems doable and it takes the edge off the fear of the party ending.

Navalny's Side

 Navalny's Side

As I was writing and posting this essay, news came of the detention and arrest of a duel-citizenship ballerina who lived in LA and was of Russian birth, who donated money to a nonprofit pro-Ukrainian charity. She has been incarcerated in Russia and threatened with "life imprisonment" for "treason". Also, Russia is holding a Wall Street Journal reporter, an uptick in pressure on representatives from "the West". Some believe that this could be a way to encourage a trade off for Alexander Smirnov, who has been arrested by the FBI for lying and for connections to Russian intelligence. These events are ongoing but are relevant to the topic in the essay.

I had an entire essay for today and perhaps I will send it out next week, but the week's events in world politics seemed to demand comment.

Alexei Navalny, the opposition party leader in Russia has “died” in prison this week. If you've been paying attention to Russia and the war in Ukraine, Putin and world affairs, you know that Navalny's death is significant for several reasons, some of which affect us here at home.

Navalny had quite a following as a possible popular replacement for Vladimir Putin who has continued to win power for several more presidential terms than normal. No one has any doubt that Putin is an authoritarian tyrant born from the Stalinist totalitarian system and trained by the KGB and NRU to be a goon and thug. At least that ought to be obvious and distasteful to people in free countries. His kidnapping of an American journalist, the tendency for those who fall afoul of him to be poisoned or “fall” out of open windows and other reprehensible behavior leaves no doubt what kind of “leader” he really is.

 In 2020 as Navalny's popularity grew too potent for Putin's fragile ego (and grasp on power), the opposition leader was poisoned. He survived ingesting Novichok nerve agent, a substance intended to kill him. He was flown to Germany for medical treatment. After he recovered, Navalny opted to return to Russia though he knew his life would likely be forfeit. Not long after he returned he was quickly whisked off into a Solzhenitsyn-like archipelago of prisons. None of this diminished his popularity or support among the beleaguered Russian people, of course. Not long after his incarceration, news came that Navalny had “disappeared” within the prison system after being sent to one of Russia's worst sites on trumped up charges of “extremism”. His imprisonment was obviously to keep him out of the public eye and to isolate him from those who hoped to help him win his freedom.

This week the world was informed that Navalny had died in mysterious circumstances while in prison.

The significance of this loss to the Russian people cannot be overstated. Navalny predicted his death, because he knew that his anti-authoritarian and anti-corruption movement was a threat to Putin's regime. This week, mourners and small groups of protesters were “arrested” and taken away by goons in black SWAT gear for the audacity of putting flowers out for Navalny or for showing support in any way.

Why is this important?

As a sideshow to this drama (that seems like it is from the last century), there have been three significant stories here at home occurring at more or less the same time which deal with Russia and its influence on American politics. 

First, of course, there is a bill in the House of Representatives intended in part to send much needed aid to Ukraine and deal with immigration issues at our Southern border that has stalled. The bill passed the Senate and had promise in the House, but failed because of its bipartisan support from both parties. Radical Republicans tried to kill the bill because their de facto leader (former president Donald Trump) told them to. Pundits on both sides of the political spectrum have observed that Trump cannot run his campaign on the problems at the southern border, if the problems at the border received funding while he isn't in power. Immigration and border security are top tier issues among his base. However, because aid for Ukraine was wrapped up in that bill, the Ukrainians will not be getting the help they need to fight against a grueling invasion by Putin. One wonders if that wasn’t the real reason that the hotly contested Ukrainian aid (which had been removed and then replaced) is stuck in deliberation.

Next, we also found out this week that the FBI whistleblower Alexander Smirnov who was supplying details to an ongoing impeachment investigation against current president Joe Biden has significant ties to Russian intelligence operations. Claims by Smirnov that Joe Biden and his son Hunter were accepting bribes from a Ukrainian energy firm called Burisma have fueled the hysterical right-wing rumor mills for several years. Among the many aspects of the false information that was being circulated by right-wing media from Smirnov was an oft-repeated bit about a laptop owned by Hunter Biden. The flimsy case against the Bidens evaporated when agents arrested Smirnov for lying under oath and for his clear ties to Putin. All this suggests that information used to try to impeach the 46th president were generated and supplied to members of Congress from Putin’s overactive propaganda machines.

Finally, in what can only be described as a clown show, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson (a MAGA supporter and Trump lickspittle) went to Russia to interview Putin. Carlson was fired by Fox over his continued lies about 1/6, election tampering, the Biden laptop and sharing false information to help Trump stay in power. In the ‘program’ Carlson goes about Russia, gasping in delight and awe at the subways and grocery stores after he “interviews” Putin. The actual interview wasn't much more than a chance for Putin to spout his revisionist history, in which, among other things, he suggested that Hitler had hoped to take Danzig in Poland “amicably”. During the two hour speech, Carlson rarely interrupted or hit back nor did he fact check Putin, appearing mainly to agree with him.

These three scenarios are significant to us because they outline the power that Russia already has here at home. The far-right loves Putin. They have been programmed by frontier Calvinism and years of right-wing propaganda to like a strong man who “says it like it is”. This is what they liked about Donald Trump. They (like Trump) like how Putin operates. Radical Republicans in Congress have trained their constituents to believe that Ukraine is the bad guy and that sending aid to them is a betrayal of American independence. Far right wing talking points are all based on the idea that authoritarianism is good. They kill legislation that could help Ukraine because they don’t like that the bill had support on both sides of the political spectrum and they lie about the severity of issues at the border but then prevent the necessary money to address the problems. 

The leader of this lunatic ideology is a former president who tried to manipulate and break the machinery of political succession to stay in power and who has many times over the years, expressed a deep fondness for Putin. He even admitted that he would be a dictator for “ just one day” if he returned to power just so he could eliminate anyone he considers a political enemy. Just like Putin did to Navalny and his supporters.

The right has been suffused with Russian propaganda. Carlson’s fawning, the far-right flank in congress and the attempts to impeach Biden are all based on Russian interference in American politics just like in the 2016 election. 

One of the many legal issues that Donald Trump has faced was his illegal removal of highly secret documents from the White House. One wonders where those documents were intended to go. 

Navalny is the key. The way that Russia's tyrannical leader eliminated a popular and powerful adversary is a foreshadowing of how another Trump administration will be. When I was a kid, we did not like the Soviets and we feared their nuclear power. The Cold War was fought to prevent Russian influence in the United States and the West. Today, one half of our political culture seems to love Russia and supports it either by spreading propaganda and lies to eliminate political enemies, or (like Carlson) wants to lay on the floor licking Putin's shoes. In either case, the good and (for now) free people of Ukraine are being attacked and our politicians are preventing needed aid because their boss, a would-be tyrant himself with all the hallmarks of an authoritarian thug, wants power again. Some Americans actually want this man back in power. That’s how strong the influence of Putin in America has become.

I fearlessly support the wife and son of Alexei Navalny and every single mourner and protester attacked and arrested in the streets of Moscow. That is the correct position of anyone who wants to be on the correct side of history and until the right side of American politics releases its sycophantic grip on Putin's hand, I will never support any of their policies or their candidates. It has to be said: the Trump side of politics in America is merely Putin in a mask. It doesn’t matter how bad or old or ridiculous the political left is, I won’t support Russian interference in any way and that means that I do support anti-corruption, just like Navalny.

When it comes to being on the right side of history, I want to be on Navalny's side. It has to be said.

Beware the Flying Baby

The following essay contains mythological nudity and sexual themes of a Greek and Roman nature and a scathing rebuke of the lack of original story ideas from the ancient times until today. Also, there’s an iPhone, in case that triggers any readers. It certainly triggered the author.

Less now—perhaps because he resembles Renaissance angel paintings—do we get to see the cherubic little lad with his love arrows flying around this time of year. That may be for the best. The entire idea of a flying baby with a projectile weapon is dangerous and frankly implausible. However, it may be worth stepping back in time a bit to understand the significance of that airborn infant just in case he makes an appearance on the day.

When two immortal beings (we'll just call them gods with lowercase ‘g's’) are attracted to one another, they may sneak off behind a doric arch for a romantic tryst. In mythology, like on day time television, this is how trouble begins. Blind passion, fierce attraction, a little too much of Bacchus’ delight and nine months later (or however long it takes to gestate a god) along comes the wee one. In this case, the lovebirds Aphrodite and Ares consummated their deific lust and brought forth Eros. Okay, perhaps it was Venus and Mars and they had Cupid. From the Roman point of view, the story you're about to hear is true; only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Like all kids, Cupid bore the genetic stamp of his folks. Momma was a fertility god. Papa was a god of war. Cupid presents the personality of physical intimacy, lust, physical affection and the ordeal of unrequited love, infatuation and snuggling. Forever young, this lanky young fellow with curling locks and white wings is usually displayed by the Greeks as a boy in his teens, full of latent adolescent tumescence and bearing well developed abs. Artistically, Cupid had a serious case of Benjamin Buttonism. As time progressed, he reverted from lanky teen to chunky kid and eventually, thanks to the resurgence of some Hellenistic representations in art, he became a tiny, mainly nude baby (always carefully covered by floating bits of cloth) with an arrow and bow. For our purposes, though, the Greek teenager is how we'll think of him now.

The Romans understood the war aspect of love; to conquer someone else’s firm resignation with acts of devotion, and they knew about the ordeal of infatuation that goes unheeded. Love that burns or rages in the blood and seeks for release but has none is what the boy represented for the Romans. Cupid's arrows were the darts of love and when struck by them, individuals were filled with the kind of untamable desire that modern literature can only produce by the pastiche of love potions or curses. Back in his prime (if a kid with wings can be said to have a prime) it was considered good fun to shoot someone and watch as they became desperate and fawning, groveling love slaves to people they had originally hated. All a lot of entertainment for the boring life of sociopathic immortals who lived in the sky, I guess.

Enter Psyche. The youngest and fairest daughter (of them all?) of an unnamed king and queen, she is thought to be the offspring of a secret union between the king and Venus. Her beauty is timeless for a young girl and all the local boys are quite fond of her. Meanwhile, a horrible serpent ranges about their kingdom wreaking absolute havoc. Because Venus is jealous of the girl's beauty, innocence and virtue (and purity, we assume) she instructs her son, Cupid, to shoot Psyche with his arrows so that the girl will fall in love with the hideous beast and be devoured all the while feeling adoration for it (and, one presumes, taking care of an illegitimate demigod offspring?) Always the obedient son, this Cupid sets out to do, but he is so startled by Psyche’s beauty that he scratches himself on the blade of an arrow and falls madly in love with her. 

The day comes when the girl is to be fed to the beast (lots of good foreshadowing to feeding a virgin to a dragon trope of the medieval era) and she is wheeled up to a smoking cave and stripped bare. The outward thought being that, if she is devoured, it will satiate the beast's murderous antics and stop the destruction. The king and queen hope that with the pretty one gone, some of the eligible bachelors who were falling all over Psyche might actually pay some attention to her two older sisters. Does any of this sound familiar?

Anyway, in the meantime, the god of the wind conjures a tornado and sweeps the poor, shuddering girl up into the air where she faints presumably from lack of oxygen. When she awakens, she finds that she is in a beautiful garden bathed by trickling fountains and boasting a small, ornately decorated cabin for two. Inside she finds food, wine, beautiful silk robes and an iPhone 15 Pro. She eats, drinks, covers herself with the robes and quietly surfs the Internet and gets to feeling quite lovely. Suddenly, she hears a deep voice call to her and she gets up and goes into a darkened room where she is ravished by an unseen lover. When she wakes up he is gone.

As is usually the case, Psyche finds out that she is pregnant and goes home to mom and dad, where she certainly has some ‘splainin’ to do. Meanwhile, momma Venus has some questions for dear old sonny boy. 

Psyche, assuming that it was the beast that she spent the night with, gets a pretty unhappy response from mom and pop who try feeding her to the monster again. This was before libraries, so they didn't have a lot to go on. Once again (now preggers) Psyche is taken up without a stitch on her to the cave. Once again Uncle Windy comes along and saves her and puts her down at the honeymoon suite. Once again, she eats a bit and drinks a bit and she's feeling pretty good. Here comes that beautiful rich voice calling her to the bedroom. She goes back there and the lights are off. She waits for the beast. 

Later, she wakes up, but realizes that her lover is still in bed with her. She goes to turn on a lamp so she can stab the beast (this was before The Clapper) and accidentally scratches herself on an arrow (these kids are a walking advert for weapon safety). She falls immediately in love with the boy on the sheets who is none other than Cupid. She “accidentally” spills warm oil on him and he wakes up and is shocked by her advances and departs. Isn’t that just like a man?

When his mother finds out what he's been up to, Venus lashes out and injures the lad. Meanwhile, out of pure jealousy and rage, she sets Psyche impossible tasks and mocks her relentlessly for conceiving a child out of wedlock. Fully under the control of Venus because of her unborn child, Psyche realizes that she has no choice but to obey.

While she is wandering around and trying to do the bidding of the goddess, she meets several other lesser goddesses who she implores for help. In each trial she finds a way to overcome impossible odds, but none of the goddesses can actively take part against one of their kind. Fearing that she will forever be held as a slave to Venus’ rage, she intends to drown herself on her way to the underworld for a final trial.

Venus is jealous of the wife of Pluto. He is god of the underworld and his wife has perfect and enduring beauty. Psyche goes to Proserpina to ask for her undying looks for Venus and pleads her plight. Proserpina has no love for Venus and as the goddess of the underworld she also has no rules to follow so she agrees to help the girl and gives her a box with the beauty in it.

Psyche intends to take this to her mother-in-law to be, hoping to be free of her debt, but she gets really curious as soon as she crosses the bridge into the mortal lands and opens the box to see what’s inside. Immediately she is hit with a stupor and falls to sleep. Cupid, meanwhile, has healed up and goes looking for the girl, finds her sleeping and takes off the sleep and puts it back into the box. He takes her before Zeus and pleads for her to be spared. Zeus likes what he sees and tells old Cupid that, if his wish is granted, he must forego his unruly behavior and focus his love only on the girl. Cupid agrees and Zeus marries them and their child (Voluptas) is born. They are often considered an ideal couple.

The allegory is fairly clear. Love rebels against rationality and often hasty and sometimes forbidding problems arise from insatiable desire; but sometimes, if we are lucky (and the gods smile on us) we can unite Cupid (love) and Psyche (soul or mind) in ourselves and enjoy the conception of Voluptas (pleasure), not just for a night, but for an entire lifetime. 

May love’s arrows give you amiss, but may you find true happiness of heart and soul. Happy Valentine’s Day. 

A Tale of Two Kettles

 A Tale of Two Kettles

My good aunt gave us an electric kettle when we visited her several years ago. Until that point, although I knew such conveniences existed, we never owned one. If I wanted tea, I merely popped a bag in a favorite mug with water, placed it into the microwave and hit the ‘hot drink’ button. My gods, what savages we were back then.

The gift came as a response to my surprise at her own electric kettle, which boiled water in moments and produced an exceptionally hot and delicious cup of Earl Grey tea. Perhaps realizing that we needed to step into the modern world, she had a brand new kettle awaiting us on our bed in the spare room in her house the day we departed. Micki, who is our family's stowage and packing genius, cleverly placed the box within her expandable carry-on bag and we gratefully bid the blood relative adieu and flew home.

The next summer, we flew across the Atlantic to visit Micki's relatives in Liverpool. As much as I profess to be an anglophile, I ought to have expected them to have an electric kettle, but I was still pleasantly surprised. Micki and her cousin primarily drank coffee, but his wife and I drank good “proper English tea” and I'm pretty sure my fondness for the strong and bitter brew truly began when we returned to their house after a long day of strolling and sightseeing for a cup of the refreshing liquid.

The kettle that my good aunt gave us resided in a place of honor on our counter. It got a lot of use until we had our kitchen redone. Then, it went over to a section of the house that had been a mother-in-law suite but had since morphed into a makeshift apartment and storage for our boys. Somewhere during that period, I'm sorry to say, someone decided to boil something in the kettle that wasn't water or possibly even liquid. The downstairs kids did try to clean it, but it had been ruined beyond repair. I didn’t find out until later because I had a nice new kettle that matched our new kitchen's aesthetic. When I did find out that it was gone, I was irked—it had been a gift after all—but it was too late by then.

Time passes and people change, our habits shift, hopefully we improve and become a little more stable. Unlike when my aunt gave us our first kettle, I now mainly imbibe tea. It has become a fact of my existence and I'm never without my vacuum sealed, spill proof cup that keeps the brew hot as poured for hours. My coworkers are aware of my tea habit and often remark about the cup that is forever by my side. For the last few years, I have boiled enough water to fill the big lake upon which my father's sister’s city dwells. I have drunk enough Earl Grey, green, English Breakfast, peppermint, chamomile, lemon ginger, Irish Breakfast and oolong tea, and heaven knows what else, to keep an entire city of stout English laborers on their feet for years on end. Every morning, so long as the power is on, I have switched on our trusty electric kettle to boil water for both Micki's French pressed coffee and to fill up my cup of hot squash. It’s important to have a routine.

At work, my tea-drinking colleagues and I even prevailed upon our business manager to get an excellent electric kettle for the staff lounge. At first, we were the only users, but as time has ticked by, more and more people started to use the work kettle for their afternoon spot of tissue restoring oolong or rooibos.

During the lead up to a much covered winter storm, I dashed off to the super store, not for milk or bread, but to get a traditional kettle for our gas stove top because the power was forecast to be out due to downed branches and slick conditions. Electricity be damned. I must have my tea. I cannot express how spoiled I have become by modern convenience that the thought of being parted from my electric kettle and the ability to quickly boil water makes me feel positively apocalyptic.

Last year, for Father's Day, I was given the best treasure a tea aficionado could ever get: a portable electric tea kettle. This marvel of the modern era folds down nearly flat, but can pop up like a silicone accordion and boil water in a flash. Until then, when we went on vacation or to stay with family (especially those who didn’t have one), we brought our electric kettle with us. It's first audition—at our summer vacation beach condo rental with the whole family in July—the little kettle did great service and became the favorite of all the tea lovers in our family, especially our daughter-in-law who was pregnant and unpleasantly nauseous during that part of the year. Ginger tea soothed her unhappy tummy. The rest of us found it useful to make tea, but also hot water for ramen noodles or to add anti-bacterial steam to the after-dinner dish soak.

Expecting their wee daughter in the late fall, the middle kids had us come up a few times to help move furniture and prepare their mountain home for the incoming bairn. I was shocked that they were still using a Pyrex measuring cup to heat up water for their tea. This couldn't be borne. So when it came to deciding what to get them for Christmas, the answer was a “no-brainer”. A flowery kettle now resides on their counter providing 1.7 liters of boiling water for tea.

This year for an early Valentine’s Day gift to each other, we decided that, though our trusty little kettle had served the family's needs quite well, it was time for a new, bigger electric kettle. After all the research we had done for the kids, it was easy to provide a list of basic functions that we found desirable. Of course we wanted a kettle with a larger capacity, but also varied temp levels, a keep warm function and perhaps something that did its work at lower decibels (our former kettle had a loose cork handle on the top lid that rattled when the water began to roll, driving our cats and their owners a bit mad with the jangling).

We found one to our liking that met all our requirements with a price tag that was also quite agreeable. It now adorns the part of our countertop where our trusty (and noisy) old kettle sat for years. That old friend has been moved over to the former mother-in-law suite where it will hopefully not be used to boil pudding or whatever. That space which became the apartment-ish dwelling of our youngest and his partner now stands empty after their departure into the wide world of life. Though it is in need of a good cleaning, our little kettle will rest in semi-retirement, standing in as understudy for when visitors come to see us for a weekend and want tea (of which there is no lack in our home).

It's funny that I feel somewhat sad about this new state of affairs. I love our new kettle. Yet, I feel sort of guilty at moving our old one out of regular duty. I'm fascinated by how we think of the things we own as if they had feelings. We become so emotionally attached to items we use regularly. Sometimes, like with the original electric kettle given to us by my aged ancestor, I bubble with a bit of fury when I think someone scorched something in it in much the same way I might rage if someone dented my car or tagged the side of our house with badly scrawled invective. The old kettle will help to fill the pail with hot water, when I go over there to scrub the floors, I guess.

I try to remember that, perhaps more valuable than the kettle itself, is the understanding of how important it has become to our lifestyle. I'm afraid we're kettle proselytizers, bringing the gospel of electrically boiled hot water and good tea to our kids and our friends and whoever will listen. It is part of who we are now, and I like that about us. We could be sharing worse things.

Although I didn't initially remember it, my father reminded me that my grandmother had a plug-in kettle which she used to boil water for her wash up after dinner and to make tea and sometimes instant coffee for when we sat around the kitchen table eating homemade pie or cake. My other grandmother had a gas stovetop like we do, and she always had a glass kettle on the boil. I sort of feel like the period we didn't have a kettle I was letting our side down, but I think we've made up for any lapses of judgment now. We stand in good stead as dutiful electric kettle owners and avid aficionados of hot drinks, both of the tea and coffee variety.

As I write this I am sipping Irish Breakfast Tea and glancing at the clock. Soon it will be time to refresh my steaming cuppa and so I'm going to walk over to our new kettle, tap the fancy light-up display, select ‘boil’ and watch the temp creep up with the interest of a scientist monitoring an experiment. This kettle is third generation, much as I am a third generation (finally) kettle owner, thanks to the generous gift of my favorite family member. It may not seem like a big deal, but I’m glad that we’re electric kettle people and I owe it to her for getting us aboard that train.

The Strong Man we Need

 

During the early part of the 20th Century, humanity became obsessed with beings that were all-powerful, who had nearly perfect moral sense and who were capable of rising above the calamities of humankind's harsh and volatile reality—literally. One of the artistic representations of the perfect man arrived as a baby that had been sent to Earth from a far-flung planet that had already been doomed by its culture's hubris and reckless belief in its own technological divinity and was awaiting its final calamity. That baby's cosmic conveyance landed him in the heart of rural America, where he was adopted by an aging, childless couple who instilled in him the true-blue values and common sense of prairie sodbusters. 

It turns out, however, that the baby was more than just a child from space. Due to his molecular and genetic peculiarities, the lad (named Clark) absorbed radiation from our younger, yellow sun, which made him stronger, more dense, more powerfully gifted with abilities that only revealed themselves as he reached age twelve.

Taught to hide his powers so as not to draw attention to himself, Clark began to see that he could still use his skills to help people and by the time he reached man's estate, he adopted a dual role in his life. In one, he is a quiet but gifted journalist, a country boy living in the big city. In the other, he is a powerful hero who saves people and uses his strength of character (and of frame) to fight bad guys and save hapless victims.

Of course, this is Kal of the house of El from the exploded planet Krypton, raised by Martha (Ma) and Jonathan (Pa) Kent in the flat, boring, bucolic grasslands of America’s central expanses and who later dons the mantle of his homeworld to fight for truth, justice and the American way, a mantra scoffed at by his paramour Lois Lane in the 1978 movie because, she says, it will put him in direct conflict with every elected official.

Superman is a powerfully recognizable character in American popular art and comic book literature. He has spawned countless TV and movie variants, while dominating the comic book scene since his genesis in 1938. From the moment he first “landed” on newsstands he has captured the imagination of generations of children and moviegoers and regardless of how many times his story is recycled, it nevertheless inspires.

The planet on which this Kryptonian son landed was a world in duress. America was reeling from the crash of ‘29 and the effects of The Great Depression. Communism was taking Eastern Europe by storm and an Austrian-born upstart jailbird house painter was rallying the German people to a frothing rage of racial supremacy and Nordic blood myths. The world was shuddering under these burdens and needed a savior to capture its imagination. Hither came Clark Joseph Kent, mild-mannered journalist by day, but whenever there was trouble, this faster-than-a-speeding-bullet, skyscraper-leaping hero came on the scene and saved the day.

It is impossible not to see the messianic undertones within Big Blue's origin story. A boy from another father, adopted by a humble family, the adolescent development of apparently superhuman powers, the growth to a savior of his adopted people, is all generally a pastiche of the early chapters of the gospels. Superman saves everyone he can and is forever recognized as a kind of deity by the people of Metropolis (his adopted city). Jesus “springs” from God, though is adopted by Joseph, who is the scion of a formerly childless couple (Abraham and Sarah) and of a lost kingdom (Solomon/David). At the temple, Jesus demonstrates keen understanding of the laws and of unusual powers and eventually he grows to manhood as both a humble carpenter and yet accepts his destiny to die for the salvation of mankind. The similarities are uncanny until we remember that this is how humans tell stories and that there are trends like the hero’s journey and story arc which explain these otherwise remarkable likenesses throughout all myth.

At the time of Superman’s creation, the world was fascinated by questions of human superiority. Thinkers of the period were trying to advocate for ethnic tampering to create the “perfect” human. They argued for the sterilization of those people deemed unable to meet certain intellectual skill levels. Although wrongly attributed to Darwin, the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ was born from this era. Formally known as eugenics, this mish-mash of pseudo scientific hokum was entirely based on the false idea that within the confines of our ancestry lay the admixture necessary to breed superior humans, perfect in every way. Many comic books in this period of history exorcized these desires for super humans by bringing them to the comic book page.

Assimilating some of the concepts from eugenics and adding a dose of Nietzsche, that former house painter mentioned above, also became obsessed with a race of perfectly Germanic people (totally opposite in every way of himself—almost a photographic negative). Tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, this so-called Aryan Race would sweep the world after Europe’s sovereign powers fell beneath Nazi tank treads and the swastika. Or so it was to be believed. Along with this sickening racial hygiene ideology came the abhorrent scapegoat motive that required the extermination of the Jews.

Antisemitism wasn't a German idea, though Germany may have perfected it. For decades leading up to the vast crematoria Hitler’s goons created to eradicate the Jewish diaspora of Europe, the world had been incredibly intolerant of the Semitic peoples. The Russians had used purges, called pogroms, to eradicate those who didn't fit the ideological standards of “The Soviet Man”. In America, antisemitism was basically endorsed, if not overtly, by those in power and reflected in popular culture. The term “intellectual” became synonymous with a dread of the Levantine. Hitler’s ideologies were quite popular at the time, especially in rural and Southern America, though usually in the form of hooded and cloaked hillbillies dancing around burning crosses and favoring the extermination of Black Americans rather than the smaller Jewish populations. Their spittle-flecked diatribes and blood-soaked race crimes bore more than a passing resemblance to Hitler’s brown-shirted bully boys beating up the sick and elderly and leaving them to die in the streets. On a visit to the American South prior to the beginning of the war in Europe, the German cleric and hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about how much the crimes perpetrated against Black Americans reminded him of the Nazi treatment of the Jews.

Superman’s creators, Joe Shuster and Jerry Seigel were perhaps unconsciously reacting to these growing intolerances when they created their now universally known hero. Both were avid readers of the popular pulp comic magazines of the time and were aware of characters with latent or overt powers. They created their super hero to outmatch any of these other limited versions by giving him super strength, super speed and the ability to (at first) leap quite high and far. It’s true that they were mainly influenced by John Carter of Mars, the character written by Edgar Rice Burroughs (incidentally, a deeply antisemitic author who invented Tarzan based on eugenic ideas) and how his earth-born abilities translated to superhuman strength on the surface of Mars. Superman’s powers were based on the fact that the harsh environment of Krypton made him far stronger than any human could ever be having been born to our yellow star.

I’ve always marveled (that pun was not intended) at how they designed Kal-El to look. With the rise of the Aryan übermensch—blond, blue-eyed, tall, fair of skin, Nordic—Shuster and Siegel’s creation was something more American in composition and clearly designed to be in direct antithesis to the Reich’s ideal human. Superman has the square, lantern-jawed and aqualine, almost Roman profile of other popular heroes of the time like Dick Tracy or Sam Spade. He is taller than average, with well-built muscles and glossy blue-black hair perfectly quaffed. As his alter-ego, Clark Kent, other than not wearing his Superman suit (at least not over his clothes) the only thing to hide Kent’s secret identity are a pair of thick, tortoise shell spectacles and a slightly smiley, good-natured country-boy personality, not quite Gomer Pile, but certainly not self-possessed or decisive and powerful like the hero he actually is. I have never understood how this thin disguise fools people.

Superman probably arose in popularity, like so many cultural icons, from a blocked wish for a savior. The world was on the brink of war and suffering the brutality of financial collapse. The old gods had become irrelevant or, more accurately, part of the problem. The belt buckles of the villainous Reich were inscribed with the self-righteous phrase ‘Gott mit uns’, thereby ratifying their divine right to purge the world of their enemies and secure an empire of a thousand years. The Nazis most assuredly had the endorsement, at least the blind eye, of Pope Pius XII and many church fathers were either outwardly complicit with the atrocities or capitulated out of fear (though Dietrich Bonhoeffer proved a hero of the period by not allowing himself to become an accomplice of the Nazis). In either case, America needed a hero to rally around and Superman fit the need. Although he did not participate in the war effort more than to get people to do their part or on the covers of his comics (he did fight the enemies on the radio, in the movies and in his newspaper comics), he was nevertheless a symbol to unify American consciousness behind.

Today, Superman has followed his other god-like predecessors by dying and coming back much changed and more powerful. He has also curated an entire pantheon of ‘meta humans’ who have powers similar to his and that nod squarely at the ancient animal/human hybrid deities of cave paintings. Superman is like Zeus or Jupiter or Odin or Ra or Vishnu in this way, but his Judeo-Christian origins cannot be ignored. What people really mean when they look up and say, “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman,” is that there goes an immortal who is better and more powerful than we ever will be and we need him to save us from ourselves. This is doubly implied by the fact that many of Superman’s earlier villains were regular people gone insane from seeking power or by pursuing some horrid scientific goals. His most prominent antagonist is Lex Luthor, a mad billionaire real-estate tycoon who winds up hoodwinking America into voting him for president and then refuses to leave and who, like all villains, escapes accountability for his unruly and criminal behavior. If it sounds familiar to you, Superman isn’t the only echo of the frail and flawed human psyche that arises in our literature and sometimes in real life.

Other variants of Superman have come about in our more cynical modern era, where writers play havoc with the established origins to drum up sales or to engage readers. In an arrestingly eloquent comic series by Mark Millar called Red Son, we are asked what would happen if Kal-El’s ship cratered in the steppes of Russia and became a symbol for the Stalinist Soviet movement. Likewise, in a 2019 movie called Brightburn written by the Gunn brothers, rather than being a good, honest and noble being, a Clark Kent-like boy is actually a horribly powerful alien conqueror sent to Earth as a baby to grow into a usurper. He has no care for humanity or even his parents. Although fun speculations like these abound (there is even a comic alternate reality where Lex Luthor is the good guy and Superman is bent on world domination) the truth is, Superman is merely a modern output of the human religious impulse and he reflects the best of us, at least for the most part. 

At some point, every child, spurred on to fascination by movies or cartoons or comic books, dreams of putting on a red cape and using the amazing Kryptonian powers for good. For a little kid to read about and believe in superheroes is one thing. Once they grow to a certain age, we might expect them to come to terms with the faulty reasoning and lack of evidence for Superman’s actual existence, in much the same way they might grow out of the child-like belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If people persisted in believing that Superman was real or that he would save us if he was, we might look askance and find it unsettling and even an excuse to have someone committed. If they went around indoctrinating little children and forcing the homeless to believe in Kal-El in order to get food and shelter, we’d probably feel the need to step in and prevent it. No government official would ever endorse tax exemption for small groups of devoted Superman worshippers, nor would they try to get Superman’s symbol enshrined in the halls of government or schools, nor would they teach Kryptonian history or argue over which origin story was right. Such things wouldn’t ever be tolerated. Imagine if a man wearing the symbols of Superman bombed the home of a man who drew Captain America comics, because he wasn’t a member of the church of Detective Comics. The outrage would be rightly universal.

So, although Superman is real in the sense that we know about his characteristics and his origins and it is fun to pretend what it would be like if we had his powers or to read about his adventures—in much the same way that Hamlet or Huck Finn are real to us—the true spirit of humanity is in its ability to create engaging and inspiring stories, rather than in the probably faulty impetus behind that creation. Our heroes in the modern age aren’t quite what they used to be, it’s true, but Superman is probably proof that, if we could disengage the iron-age fairy tales we refuse to release, we might find that our modern deities are possibly—at least in Superman’s case—a reflection of our best selves and our moral potential and that he is the only strong man we need. As Superman's father, Jor-El says in the 1978 film, “They are a great people. They wish to be. All they lack is the light to show them the way.”