Up on the roof

I had a very interesting dream last night, and when it opened up, I was at the top of a very high tower with some sort of acquaintance. Though the guy and I didn’t know each other well, we were stuck in the same predicament. Both he and I needed to get down from the tower, which was about 50 feet off the ground. A ladder was attached to the tower, but unfortunately it ended 30 feet above the ground. The guy, who was heavyset, gave me instructions on how best to descend the tower. First, he said, I should take off my shoes and place them on the ledge. Then, when going down the ladder, I should keep my eyes straight ahead of me and at no point look down.

I was skeptical. Below us were several people with whom this guy and I were friendly. They were telling us that we had to come down, that we had no other choice, and that we should stop being afraid. After all, they said, they had come down the same way. But this guy and I were hesitant. Finally, the guy decided to go. He followed his own advice and for a while it all seemed to work. But then, after he had gotten down as far as he could on the ladder and had jumped -- I guess that had been his strategy: to jump the rest of the way, even though it was a major drop -- he landed on a surface that had looked like earth but was actually ice, and sank.

Obviously, this didn’t make me more enthusiastic about jumping or following the guy’s advice. I had thought that I was trapped and I really didn’t know what to do. Then, I noticed that there was a building next to the tower. I noticed that if I was careful, I could climb from the tower onto the building via the roof of a doorman booth, which for some reason was wedged between both structures. 

I worked up the nerve to climb over the small roof and was successful. From the building's roof now, I looked down on my friends and laughed at them “See!” I said. “You don’t have to do it the way you guys said I should. I did it my own way and it was perfect!"  For some reason, though, I had to go back to the platform of the tower. I had left some important papers on it or something. I was very unenthusiastic about this because I had just reached safety. But in the dream I felt it was my duty to go back. Luckily for me, my friend Kaivan was there -- he was one of the friends who had been waiting for me below -- and he did just want a good friend would in such a situation. He came up onto the roof where I was and told me that he would accompany me back onto the tower.

"Field of Dreams"

Last night I had a dream and when it opened up, I was sitting in a dark room with a teenager. For some reason, I was supposed to give him tips on how to write better. The only really thing that stood out about this guy, besides his seeming nice, was that he had tattoos  — including face tattoos — and he had had his earlobes stretched. I remember saying to him, half kidding, “In my day, we just got our tongues pierced. And that was crazy enough.” This kid had a book with him, one that he had heavily annotated. The book was “Field of Dreams.” I'm not sure if "Field of Dreams" is even a book, but in my dreams, it was. I remember thinking to myself that "Field of Dreams" was a super strange book to have, just really random. But he had underlined and highlighted lines and passages that he liked, and was eager to have me help him with the writing that he wanted to do about the book.

Dream

Last night I had a dream and in it I was sitting in a classroom full of kids. The kids were about 15 or 16 years old. It was an ESL, or English as a Second Language, class and when the dream opened up, the teacher had just begun handing back tests we had taken. 

As I sat there waiting for my test to be returned, I felt a bit antsy. I was very curious about what my score was going to be. The funny thing is, I couldn’t see the teacher, or couldn't really, anyway.  I knew the teacher was female, but all I could see was her bottom half, sorta like how they used to do it on the "Muppet Babies."

Anyway, after a minute or so of just sitting there,  I began chatting with the student next to me. I think I might have been chatting with a few students, but I’m sure that I was chatting with at least one. I remember feeling nervous because I knew that if I got anything less than a “1” -- in Germany,  a "1" is the highest grade you can get -- the students around me were going to think that I was not very impressive. After all, English is my native tongue.

Finally the test was put down on my desk. I got a 1. The first thing I did after getting the result was show it off to the student I had been speaking to.  “Boom, see!" I said, “of course, I’m going to get a one,”  I said and I started laughing. Everything at that moment felt harmonious and proper. When I looked at the test, I saw that out of 90 questions, I had gotten all correct but three. Still, that qualified me for a 1.

A little German practice

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

According to Urban Dictionary, “Flexin” means to “show off the stuff you got.” Well, I have been studying German a lot lately and I thought I would just use this blog post to show off the stuff I got. It’s also good practice for me, just to actually write out some of the things I've been learning. After all, I learn best, I think, through writing. Here we go.

P.S. If you have no experience with the German language, this post won’t make much sense to you.

Das Loch meines braunen Schuhs ist groß. The hole in my brown shoe is big. If there are two holes in the brown shoe, it would be, Die Löcher meines braunen Schuhs ist groß.  If we want to pluralize both the "hole" and the "shoe," it would be, Die Löcher meiner braunen Schuhen sind groß.

Let’s see . . . what else . . . OK, so we have der Hund, das Hotel, Die Frau, "the dog," "the hotel" and "the woman," respectively. Here we go, ready? Der schöne Hund ist groß. Das schöne Hotel ist groß. Die schöne Frau ist groß. But . . . ready for this? Ein schöner Hund, ein schönes Hotel, ein schöne Frau. 

Want some more? I got some more. Ich liebe den Hund. Ich liebe das Hotel. Ich liebe die Frau. Not enough? Ich liebe meinen Hund, ich liebe dein Hotel, ich liebe die Frau. Even more: Ich liebe den schönen Hund, ich liebe das schöne Hotel, ich liebe die schöne Frau. But if that wasn’t hard enough: Ich laufe mit meinem Hund, ich bleibe im Hotel, ich laufe mit meiner Frau.

But what if we want to add adjectives before those nouns? Well, buckle up! Ich laufe mit meinem schönen Hund, ich bleibe in einem schönen Hotel, ich laufe mit einer schönen Frau.

Now, let's just make a little story.

Ich ging in ein wunderschönes Hotel. (I went to a beautiful hotel.) Ich trug einen schönen Pullover. (I was wearing a really nice sweater.) Doch hat der Pulli ein Loch. (But the sweater had a hole.) Die Größe dieses furchtbaren Loch war groß. (The size of this stupid hole was big.) Ich fragte eine Frau, die für dieses schöne Hotel arbeitete (I asked a woman who worked for the beautiful hotel), "Wo finde ich einen Laden, der Pullis hat?" Sie hatte keine Ahnung. (She had no idea.)

Basketball diaries

So I've been really into basketball lately. I mean, like, really, really into it. I had always played as a kid, but I never really took it seriously. Well, last summer I started to play again and it just snowballed. I now play several times a week and when I'm not playing basketball, I'm watching it on YouTube or I'm reading about it. And there is just so much to learn. It's funny, someone once said, "The game of chess is like a sea from which a gnat may drink or in which an elephant may bathe." I almost feel like that's true for basketball, too. There's so much to learn. Just footwork, alone, is paramount.



Anyway, sometimes after my games, I write down what I liked and didn't like about my performance. After I played last Monday, I wrote a list of many things I'd still like to improve. Below is that list. Hopefully I'll return to this list in a few months and I'll be able to check a few things off, or at least say, "OK, I made some progress there."



I really need to work on taking two steps when I go to the basket. I've been driving to the basket more, but I haven't really been taking full advantage of the two full steps that I'm afforded after I pick up my dribble. I need to learn how to dribble left better. I need to improve shooting with my left hand and taking layups left handed. My jab step has gotten a bit better, but I still don't fully understand everything there is to know about jab stepping. There are many possibilities when one jab steps and I need to learn exactly what they are. I should continue utilising the "triple-threat" position. I've been keeping the ball out of the "box" pretty well, too, so I should keep that up. I need to learn how to position my body better when posting up and I need to perfect a finishing move, one that I can always go to after posting up or successfully;backing down a defender...probably a hook shot. Today I hit a turnaround jumper but I'm not sure it was that pretty. I really have to work hard on my fadeaway and really try to use it more in games. It wouldn't hurt to work on my three pointer. I don't want to work on my crossover yet but I'd like to down the road.  Speaking of down the road, I eventually need to learn how to go baseline. Maybe I'd like to add a step-back jumper to my repertoire at some point?



UPDATE

So the last time I was at basketball, I actually learned a few things that can help me improve my game. The first was how to execute a pick-and-roll better. During the game, my teammate had noticed that when I was setting picks for him, I was doing so with my body at a 90-degree angle in relation to the opponent. This is wrong, my teammate said, as a defender can get around you more easily if your body is set at such an angle. However, if you set the pick at a 45 degree angle, you're good. Also, the same teammate said, when I was rolling to the basket after having set a pick for him, my eyes were in the wrong place. Maintaining eye contact with the man for whom you've just set a pick is essential because that man is going to want to pass to you if he can't score.



The other thing I learned last was a finishing move in the post. Another of my teammates had noticed that I enjoy backing down defenders. However, he saw that I was having trouble finishing, so after the game, he showed me how to do so better, especially from the left block. Basically, he said, while facing the basket, dribble once with your left hand and at the same time seal the defender off with your right foot. Once you've done that, you can go in for a lay up or even go baseline.



UPDATE II

Last time at basketball, I positioned myself near the rim pretty well. By constantly moving (when I didn't have the ball), I was able to get open right underneath the rim more, and score. Another thing that I did that I was proud of was I didn't dribble the ball when I was near the rim. I understood that I had achieved a good position and didn't put the ball on the ground. This is an improvement. Many times when I had been under the rim, I erroneously power dribbled. But not this time. This time I just caught the ball, maybe took a step or two, and put it up.



UPDATE III

 Last Friday, I was practicing with a friend and I got two things out of our session. One, when I'm about to shoot a fadeaway, I sometimes hold my breath. My friend reminded me to breathe, and after I did, my movements were a lot smoother.  Also, sometimes when driving to the basket, I sort of just gave up right before the finish line if a defender is still on me. My friend was able to help me correct this. She guarded me really hard during a drive and at the critical moment, when we were both around the right block, she shouted, "Go! Go! Go!" to motivate me to continue on with my drive. And it really helped. Even though I didn't score a point off the layup every time -- in fact some times she stuffed me -- I was successful a few times and feel a little more comfortable now taking the rock to the hole.

UPDATE IV

So I did it. I finally scored really nicely off the fast break. I had been having difficulty making a layup off the fast break. When I first started playing, I would just stop before reaching the basket because I knew my opponent was hot on my heels and was scared he was going to stuff me from behind. After I built up enough courage to drive all the way to the rim, I missed the layup because I was too frazzled – after all, that opponent was just a step or two behind me. But not last Monday. Last Monday, after receiving the ball on the fast break, I drove all the way to the rim with an opponent in tow, took a layup and made it. I scored this way a couple of times, actually, and it felt good every time. That had been a big deal for me, making a layup off the fast break. It sounds easy, but it hadn’t been.

Update V

Pretty interesting yesterday at basketball. For the first time, I kept a mental note of my shooting accuracy. I was 9 for 19, which means I shot at 47 percent. I definitely have room to improve, but that’s not that bad, I don’t think. I was proud of several things, though. Again, I scored off the fast break, beating the opponent to the rim and laying the ball in with a soft touch even though I was running very fast. I also sharply crossed an opponent left and then drove to the rim. I didn’t make the lay up, but the move was nice. Another time I crossed an opponent left and made the shot. The opponent was way too slow in trying to react, but hey. What I have to work on, though, is not getting stuffed. Several times yesterday I went in for a layup and was totally stuffed when trying to shoot. I have to work on moving the ball around while going in for the layup. It’s not good enough to just go in for the layup and hope that you’re opponent is not going to have a hand with which to stuff you!

Update VI

I finally did it. I had told myself before that I had done it, but I don’t think I ever really had. I finally shot a true fadeaway, and scored. I say that I had said that I had done it because I wanted so bad to have done it. But all those times I made what I thought, or had hoped, was a fadeaway, I was only making a turnaround jump shot, I think.

But today at basketball, I got the ball and began backing down my opponent near the right block. All I felt was a body on me and arms frantically – or what felt like frantically – reaching around, trying to get the ball. The next thing I know, I’m pushing the defender off, turning around, with my footwork right – and I know my footwork was right because a) I saw my feet and b) it just felt right felt –jumping and firing. It was an incredible feeling and everyone cheered after I made the shoot, even some people on the other team.

I had practiced that shot for nearly a year. I made it many times while practicing. But today was the first time I truly made it in a game, and it was awesome.

Update VII

Not too much to report today. I think the one thing I was proud of, believe it or not, was how I bodied my defender off me. The motion that I made to get him off me, as well as my balance, was just right.

I had just received the ball in the post around the left block and was trying to do something, anything. All of a sudden, I felt my defender all over me. Using my left upper arm and shoulder, I sort of pushed, or nudged him backward, toward the hoop. He didn’t fall back on his butt, which is good, but he was pushed back enough for me to get some room to shoot, which is real good. I’m not even sure if I made the shot, but the move was right and many times, getting the move right feels just as good.

Update VIII

Give me an A! A! Give me a C! C! Give me a C! C! OK, this is taking too long. The word I want to spell is “accuracy.” Accuracy, because that’s what my game was all about today – shooting accuracy. Some backstory: The weather in Hamburg these last few weeks has been beautiful – an average of 75 degrees day after day. So all of last week, or at least four days out of seven, I went to the park to shoot around. Well, today at basketball, the practice paid off. I was hitting big time. One of the things I always said I could do, if I could anything, was shoot. Usually, if I’m lucky, my shooting average is about 45 percent. But today, I was hitting about 75 percent of the time. My team won two out of three games thanks in part to my accuracy. Practice makes perfect, I guess.

UPDATE IX

Today I wasn’t proud of my shooting or the way I drove to the basket or a fadeaway. Today I was proud of something less sexy but incredibly important – stamina. For the last year I have honestly struggled to play basketball for one full hour without totally dying. The difficulties I had been having can probably be attributed to the fact that for a long time I had been overweight.
But over the last year, I have played basketball nearly every Monday and have shed 15 pounds along the way, and today, finally, finally, I was able to go for one full hour with no real problems. It was a payoff that had felt long overdue.

UPDATE X

The first time you successfully do a move in a game, it’s always such a thrill. For the last couple months, I had been practicing driving left. I’m a righty, so my instinct is to drive right. But you’re limiting yourself if you can only drive one way. So when I’m practicing, I make sure to practice driving left. Anyway, not only did I drive left today, but I managed to make a left-handed hook shot.
How cool is that? My teammates congratulated me after the shot, and I gotta say, it did feel good.

UPDATE XI

Today was pretty cool because I did a move I hadn’t even known I had in me. I had been near the right wing, inside the 3-point line, and had just been passed the ball. My defender was directly in front of me, sort of shadowing my movements – so when I would lean right, he would lean right, when I would lean left, he would, too, etc. I had wanted to drive past him, but there were no opportunities. Then, for a split second, my defender let his guard down. He put his hand down for just one moment and came slightly out of his defensive stance. When he did, I just reacted and shot the ball – and made it. I must have had something like a .30 second window. But I reacted the right way. I had always seen players do this kind of move – especially Koby Bryant – but had never practiced it. A very nice surprise indeed.

UPDATE XII

When I first started playing basketball again, I thought one of the things I would have to do to get better would be to learn some new moves. So I took to YouTube and began watching basketball-move tutorials.

One of the moves that I thought would be really cool to learn was called the jab-step. A jab-step is basically a fake first step toward the basket. The offensive player uses the jab-step to throw off the defense or to keep the defense off balance.

I had really learning this move could help me improve my game, so I did just that, I learned it, and ultimately brought it to the basketball court.

But every time I would use the jab-step or attempt to use it, something wasn’t right. Then one day a light bulb went off. I had been putting the cart before the horse. A jab-step, I realized, is a move that a player should do only after he has learned how to drive to the basket properly. After all, what sense does it make to pretend to be about to drive to the basket, if in all actually, I really can't.

Considering that at the time of my first implementing the jab-step, I hadn't yet learned how to properly drive left or right, you can imagine how I looked while doing the move.

So . . . What’s the point of all this? Well, today I jab-stepped properly for the first time. And you know what, it just came natural. I didn’t even realize I had done it until after the game. Go figure.

UPDATE XIII

For the longest time, I had been unable to score on a friend who is taller than I. Every time I would back this person down, they would be able to swat the ball away when I would try to take a shot. But then I realized that if I learned to fake a little or to shimmy while backing this person down -- maybe fake left, maybe fake right . . . maybe use the feeling of their body weight to my advantage --  I might be able to score. And that’s exactly what happened today.

UPDATE XIV

Last night was such a monumental night at basketball

I finally did what I had wanted to do for so long.

Let me back up. When I was a kid, I never played basketball aggressively. I almost always shot the ball.

When I began playing again, about a year ago, my main goal was to be more aggressive — to take it  to the friggin' rim more.

But, really, I didn't even know what that fully meant.  Was my goal just to drive the ball like a crazy person? To go baseline? To post up? To "shake and bake" my opponent?

After playing for a couple months, I finally realized that what I really wanted to do — what I hadn’t done as a kid — was to drive to the rim “through traffic” — that is, pick up the ball in the key and outmaneuver the opponent or opponents in front of me to get at the rim and shoot the layup.

Once I learned that this was exactly what I wanted to do, I did it, but not usually that well.

But then, a couple of days ago, I watched a YouTube video about driving to the rim. One of the tips that the video’s creator gave I had already heard before: “Cradle the ball after you pick up your dribble.” The other tip was "take small dribbles when you are going through traffic."

However, the only thing that was different about this video as opposed to others on the same subject was the little bit more of info. The video’s creator showed, for example, where one should be when picking up one’s dribble — in the key, usually — and he also focused a bit more on how the footwork works.

As I watched the video, something just clicked. Again, I had seen such videos before, but this time, something clicked; that’s the best way I can say it.

And so, when I arrived at basketball last night, I followed the dude’s advice, or rather, I should say, I was finally able to follow it. Every time I got the ball and the circumstances were right, I tried to take those two steps and keep going no matter how intimidating it was to see two defenders lined up to block me.

And the method worked. I mean, it didn’t always work — sometimes I was blocked or lost the dribble, but several times I picked up that dribble, cradled that ball, outmanoeuvred my opponents and scored.

It almost felt as if I were a bowling bowl, or if I was seeing things from the perspective of a bowling ball, and the defenders were the pins.

One awesome moment from the game: I had just crossed the half-court line when I saw that a teammate of mine was near the opposing team's key and was open. However, I didn’t pass the ball to him. Instead, I said, mostly joking, “I want the glory!” and then went in through traffic for the layup and scored.

As my team and I were heading back to our side of the court, to get back on defense, that teammate of mine who had been open, said, “And you got it!”

Some words, some words...

Ever notice how some words are very close in meaning, so much so that if they get confused no one even really knows. It’s almost as if these words convey such a distinct idea that we don’t even really care if we are using the precise word, because, after all, we understand the idea.

Consider “perspective” and “context.” These words, I think, often get used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing, of course. 

If former U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement about climate change and that statement reflects poorly on industry, well, that might piss a lot of people off, especially people who don’t agree with Obama. However, if we really want to make an assessment of Obama’s take on climate change as it relates to industry, we really need to know, among other things, what Obama has said previously on the subject, what the current beliefs on climate change are and how Obama’s statement figures into those beliefs. That’s "context."

On to “perspective.” If Obama gets thousands of "likes" on Twitter after making his statement, it might seem as though a sea change is underway. However, if we know that no U.S. president has been able to sway Congress on matters of the environment very much after leaving office, that’s "perspective." "Perspective" is like "context," but perspective involves a little more judgment. It gives us a fuller picture of the matter as well but also places more weight on certain things than on others.

Oh, and since we’re on it, let's have a tiny chat about "significance," too.

If Obama’s remarks were similar to what other former U.S. presidents have said after leaving office, but none of those other presidents had made such wave-making remarks so quickly after having left office,  and Obama's decision to make the statement so shortly after returning to civilian life signaled a new way in which a former president can behave, then that would be "significance." Why and in what other ways were those comments important?

Ta-da!

So I finally did it. I finally fooled my girlfriend really good with a magic trick.

See, I have been really into sleight-of-hand card tricks recently and have been practicing them a lot. But every time I had shown my girlfriend such a trick, she had noticed how it was done or had found some other flaw.

At issue most of the time was how smoothly I was executing a double lift. When a magician does a double lift, he fools the spectators into thinking that he has only lifted one card off the top of the deck, when in reality he has skimmed off two. Thus, when the magician returns his “card” to the top of the deck, the one that the audience saw is actually the second from the top.

It’s Magic 101, really, but every time I would try to do a double lift during a card trick on my girlfriend, she'd be like, “Uh-uh. I saw that...You really have two cards there.” Or she'd say, “Almost.”

Until today. Today I executed the technique on her perfectly, and here’s how I know.  After commencing the trick with some banter, I flipped over a card -- the Jack of Hearts -- and told her to remember it. When she said OK, I flipped the card back over. When I turned the card over again, it was the Jack of Spades. “Ta-da! Magic,” I exclaimed, half serious and expecting her to criticize me. But she didn't. Instead, she said, “What are you talking about?  That’s the same card you just turned over."

“Ah, but it isn't,” I said, and then flipped over the second card on my stack, revealing the card she had originally seen, the Jack of Hearts.

Ta-da!

Litte epiphany

So I had a little epiphany today when it comes to how fast time goes when you get older. I had gone out with a friend of mine to get lunch. This friend is significantly older than I; she’s 61. Anyhow, we had been talking about jobs and whether she still likes hers and then she said, “Well, it doesn’t really matter now because I only have two more years until retirement.”

Wow, it really hit me at that moment. I remember meeting this woman on a sunny day in August of 2007. She had just come back from vacation and had only recently turned 50. But now she was 61 and talking about retirement. And then, suddenly, it was all spread out before me, like it usually is when you have an epiphany. She’s getting older, I’m getting older. A decade can pass relatively quickly when you're older if you are not looking too hard. People change. Statuses change. Couples that you know don't just have a baby but a 2-year-old baby, jobs are gotten and lost, goals are exceeded, buildings change, streets change, the character of streets change, stores that you had loved go out of business, stores impressively remain, celebrities die, people who you had never thought would be parents become parents, Sundays are wasted, people move out, people who are old get significantly older.

Even more interesting, maybe, is that the conversation I had with this woman today took place just one block away from where we had first met, on that sunny day in August, and as I sit here and write this entry now,  my impression of her from that day is as clear and powerful as the one of her from today. Yet 11 years have passed.

When I was a kid, I never understood why adults were happy when you would say they looked young for their age. I just knew it was something they liked. I also found it confusing when they would say that time moves so fast. Well, I don't think that time always moves fast -- there are still many Sundays left, for better use -- but it can if you're not looking too hard.

What dreams may come

Ever wake up from your dreams straight up thankful? Maybe you didn’t have nightmares, but the feelings that your dreams left you with were so bad that you were just thankful they were not real. That’s how I felt this morning.

In all honesty, I think it’s boring to hear about other people’s dreams. Dreaming is such a personal thing that sometimes it's hard to get on board when other people tell you about theirs. Still, I’m going to tell you about mine from last night.

They were basically a big mishmash. Just think of a ball of snow, black snow, that gathers more black snow as it rolls downhill and is filled with images. That’s what my dreams were like last night.

The first sequence was about those shootings that recently happened at that newspaper in Maryland. I dreamed that on the day of the shootings, I had been near that newspaper and had actually dropped into the office for some reason. However, my visit preceded the attack by two hours. In my dream, I thought about how close I had come to dying.

In another sequence I was touring a palace somewhere in Cambodia or something. There was a tour guide and he told us that the temple we were in honored children who had died. In fact, the tour guide said, the dead children, hundreds of them, were actually entombed in the building, in the cement that was under our feet. He said that they had all been buried vertically because space was scarce.

In another sequence, my father was supposed to meet me at a seaside town. The way that he was going to find me was I would turn on my phone's GPS signal and when he arrived at the town, he was going to turn on a program on his phone that would be able to pick up my signal and lead him to me. At some point, he finally arrived, but when he did, he had an entourage -- he was famous! I gave him a hug and told him he looked great. However, later that evening, when he said bye to me for the night, he called me by a wrong name, “John.” This pissed me off big time and I said to him several times, “What the fuck did you just call me?”

In another sequence, one of my friends from the U.S. told me that he understands how some people can be ostracized after they have committed murder because he once killed a woman in self-defense in Spain. I asked him where it happened and he told me at a department store that he had been working at, during a robbery. Suddenly, I was transported to this department store on the day of the robbery. I was standing at the concierge desk and I was right in the middle of the action.

The robbers were actually quite polite, and the whole time I wondered how my friend was going to wrest a gun from one of them, a woman, and shoot her. One of the robbers actually hung out with me and another employee near the entrance, an area that resembled a soccer field. My dog was on this field and this other employee had a ball and tried to throw it at my dog in such a manner that, if it connected with her, would make her tumble over. I told him not to do that and asked him if he was crazy.

In another sequence, one of the last I can remember, I was with my girlfriend at a seaside resort town, a different one from where I had met my father. I wasn’t feeling very well, I just wasn't feeling like myself, and my girlfriend was flirting with many guys. Then someone told me that my girlfriend had been to that same resort town when she was 25 and had been very promiscuous during her stay. This disturbed me.

I have no idea how long it took to dream these dreams, but they seemed to occur throughout the duration of the night. And they sure were disturbing. So disturbing that I woke up on several occasions from them. One time, around 2 a.m., I opened my eyes and said to myself, “What the fuck...wow...what the fuck!” Another time, around 4:30 a.m., when it was still pretty much dark out but not fully, I woke up to the sound of birds chirping. But there was one bird that seemed super loud, as if it were singing through a megaphone. I lifted my head, looked through the window onto my balcony and saw that a blackbird was sitting on the railing, singing its little heart out. I thought that that was very beautiful.

They just don't mix

Very interesting stuff. Yesterday my mom and I were on the phone doing a crossword together. One of the answers was “eggnog” and it made my mom think of an event she had gone to, one where eggnog was served. Even though we were doing the puzzle, she felt moved to tell me about this event, and asked me if she could. I agreed, and she did, but before I knew it, she had already moved on to another topic, something about the Corning Glass Museum, in Corning, New York. I really didn’t want to hear about this museum -- I just wanted to get back to the puzzle -- but she was off and running: "The collection at Corning rivals any in the world." … "The exhibitions they have there are great." … "It’s in such a lovely part of New York." I  was just letting  her speak and was basically tuning in and out. However, she eventually did say something that caught my attention: “You were in Corning as a little boy.” That’s right, I thought, I was. All of a sudden, I remembered the pizza place where my mother and I ate after having visited the glass museum. The memory was vivid, the image of me sitting inside the establishment perfectly clear. Why? Because it was at this pizza place that I learned that spicy food and Coca-Cola don’t go together.

trick

You know, it's amazing the reactions you get from people sometimes.

Yesterday, over dinner, I had wanted to show my girlfriend a type of magic trick. It didn't involve playing cards but it was a cool trick nonetheless, one I had seen David Blaine perform and thought really cool.

Before I tell you any more, though, here it is:

Think of dessert. Don't think of ice-cream or anything like that, like any dessert you might have at home. Think of a dessert you can imagine ordering at a restaurant, like tiramisu... Got it...? OK, now think of the last letter of that desert. Do you have that letter in your mind? OK, now think of a breakfast food that begins with that letter. Got that too...? OK, now think of the second letter in that breakfast food. Got it? Good, now think of an instrument that begins with that letter.

Are you thinking of a guitar?

Now, this trick worked on me. When I watched David Blaine do it on YouTube, I indeed thought of a guitar and was thoroughly freaked out. But yesterday, after I did the trick on my girlfriend and she said, yes, that indeed she was thinking of a guitar, she showed no real surprise whatsoever. Instead, she said her answer all had to do with statistics. She then tried to dismantle the trick from every angle and to show why she knew she had been led to choose what she had chosen.

Now, granted, her reaction might have had to do with the fact that after she said yes, that she was thinking of a guitar, I basically yelled in her face, "Ha ha! See! I told you I could do magic!" But still. It's just interesting the reactions you get from people.

Hard to capture

Ever notice how hard spontaneity is to capture? Anyone who has ever tried to take a candid photo of someone else can tell you about this. There is something so difficult about capturing the human condition the way it actually is.

That's why I wanted to post the recording below. It's of a jam session that I recently had with my friend Chris and my girlfriend. The three of us were trying to add lyrics to a melody that my girlfriend and I had already created. Although the end result, the song, really isn't that impressive, the recording definitely captures something unguarded and real, something spontaneous and true. Enjoy.

Jam session 06/18

A bit of appreciation

In addition to writing a blog as a hobby, I also write songs. The first song I wrote was at 19, for a girlfriend. However, it wasn’t until 2017 that I began writing songs more seriously. I must have churned out almost 10.

One tune I wrote in 2017 was called “You Gotta Say Grace.” It’s a song that reminds the listener to be thankful for the small but amazing things that occur in daily life and to try not and overlook or disregard them.

The first line of the song:  “Sometimes/In our lives/We fail to appreciate.”

And it’s true. I mean, how often do we stop to appreciate that our bodies are working properly or to enjoy the feeling of warm sunlight on our skin? It’s super easy to get lost in routine and in the discomforts of having to perform certain routines.

For example, this morning I went for a walk with my dog at the dog park. It was around 6 a.m. and all I could do really, or least initially, was focus on how tired I was and how biting the wind was. But after some time at the park, sitting at a bench and playing fetch with the pup, I realized that I was “failing to appreciate.”

So I had an idea. Because I’ve been into birds lately -- have a look at one of my recent blog posts -- I thought I would write about all the birds I saw during my walk to and from the dog park and where I saw them. Such an exercise, I thought, could be fun and would help me renew the promise I made to myself when I wrote “You Gotta Say Grace.”

OK, so. . . after I left my apartment, the first bird I saw -- one that I see everywhere in Hamburg -- was a Eurasian Blackbird. It was walking on a large lawn adjacent to an apartment building, foraging for food. Eurasian blackbirds, the males at least, are small, have black plumage and short yellow beaks. Thanks to a memory game I recently got on birds, I knew that the blackbird that I was looking at on the lawn -- based on its appearance, brown plumage instead of black -- was a female. Pretty cool.

At the park -- a really pretty park I should add, one that is right on the Alster -- my dog lunged at something that had been on a railing that I was leaning against. I had been looking down at my iPod before my dog jumped forward, but when she did, I looked up to see a crow flying away.

After the park, I decided to walk down a street that I don’t usually walk on because I wanted to get rolls from a bakery. At one point, I paused before a sign in front of a house that was actually a veterinary clinic. As I stood there reading the opening hours -- it’s always good to know the opening hours of a nearby vet when you have a dog -- a small little bird flew onto the waist-high metal fence in front of me.

I had seen this bird before, but it wasn't one I see often. It was very small -- maybe a little bigger than a sparrow, but rounder, one might even say bulbous, almost like the shape of a Hostess “Snoball” -- and was mostly tan, though its plumage was a blood orange red around the chest and face. It was a European Robin.

Still on the same street, while looking up at one of the many nice, 3-story apartment buildings facing it, I saw two Magpies, one of which was hopping along on a balcony.

Once I got to the main street, I saw one of my favorite birds: the Eurasian coot. I like the Eurasian Coot for two reasons. One, though it’s black, its distinctive white bill and the nub above it, located between its eyes, are white, which makes the creature look like it’s wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask. I get such a kick out of this feature and the bird's overall appearance. Two, this bird is out in all weather -- even in the coldest days of winter. When the swans are all gone and the ducks aren’t anywhere to be found, you can still find the Eurasian Coot out, dutifully motoring around. Because the bird is so rugged and so often "on the scene" I've come to think of it as a real hard worker -- a "grinder," and I this is an attribute I can relate to, though of course I'm anthropomorphizing.

After the bakery, I headed home, and on the street leading to my apartment, I saw a pigeon fly up onto the roof of a two-story house. However, this pigeon wasn’t your average pigeon. No, it was a wood pigeon. Wood pigeons are like common pigeons that have received an upgrade. If the common pigeon -- also known as the rock pigeon -- were to be dusted off and began doing yoga -- it would look more like the wood pigeon.

So there you have it, a normal walk transformed. The walk could have been just a routine thing. But what fun would there have been in that? “Sometimes/In our lives/We fail to appreciate.” I think this time at least I succeeded instead.

Rivers

“Stadt, Land, Fluss” -- or "City, Country, River," -- is the name of a popular game here in Germany. To play it, you take a piece of paper and at the top write five or six categories. The categories are divided from each other by vertical lines. The first three categories must always be “City,” “Country” and “River” -- hence the name of the game. The other categories can be decided upon, but players usually go with, “Animals,” “Colors,” “Famous People” and "Professions."

After you have written out the categories, one player says the first letter of the alphabet out loud and then continues on saying the rest of the alphabet to himself. Another player then says, “stop” at the moment of his choosing and when he does, the player who had been saying the alphabet to himself tells the players which letter he was up to.

So, for example, if the player who had been saying the alphabet to himself  says he was up to the letter “S” when his opponent said "stop," all the players would then have to fill in each of their categories columns with a noun that starts with "S." For each entry you get correct, you get points.

Pretty simple game, huh?

Yeah, except there’s just one catch. The rivers. The rivers always snag people. People can think of a few rivers, but really not that many. Knowledge of rivers is gold in this game.

So why am I writing all of this? Well, I have a student who loves to play “Stadt, Land, Fluss” with me. Every time we play it, it’s like she’s playing the game for the first time; it’s all brand new, and I love that, find it very encouraging. The problem is, though, both she and I always get snagged at the rivers. It's hard to name rivers!

Well, last time before we started to play, a light bulb went off. I said to her, "Why don’t we memorize a river for every letter of the alphabet?  Well, we did that and the list we came up with is below. I hope to learn all 26 rivers and then be a champ at this game. I mean, the "Zam River"? Who's going to know a river starting with the letter "Z," let alone the Zam River (which is in Romania, by the way)?

The Amazon
The Biber
The Colorado
The Don
The Elbe
The Fish River, Alaska
The Ganges
The Harlem River
The Inn
The Jade River, Germany
The Kuban River, Russia
The Lena River, Russia
The Mississippi
The Nile
The Ob, Russia
The Peace River, British Columbia
The Queen River, Rhode Island
The Rhein River
The Seine
The Tigris
The Ural River, Russia
The Volga
The Weser, Germany
The Xin River, China
The Yellow River, China
The Zam River, Romania

Birds

I once told a friend of mine that I was able to imagine myself becoming interested in birds when I got older. My friend and I would often laugh at this thought, picturing me as a gray-haired man with binoculars around his neck, on the lookout for beautiful winged creatures.

To this friend’s and my surprise, I’ve actually gotten into birds a lot sooner. The interest was spurred by having had the opportunity to observe the swan, geese and other waterfowl in the waterways near my home. Especially exciting was having had the opportunity this spring to observe a bird called a
Eurasian coot (pictured above) build her nest, roost on her eggs and then tenderly care for her chicks after they were born.

Below you will find an email I recently wrote to my mom about my new interest in birds, along with her response. My mother had always liked birds, but I never really paid attention when she would tell me about the ones that she had seen on her travels. I only paid half attention to her, like when she would tell me about the different types of flowers she had bought for her balcony. But now, of course, I’m paying attention.

I hope you see, as I do, the bit of poetry in this email exchange. Enjoy.


***

Hi Ma,

I forgot to tell you but recently I've gotten into birds. For my birthday I even got a bird memory card game and I was so excited when I learned my first bird. Remember when I told you this one bird looked like the Phantom of the Opera, with a white mask? Well this bird is actually called the Eurasian coot. You should look it up. I also now can identify a Eurasian sparrow, both male and female, and a Mallard duck and a mute swan.

Hi,

I think getting into birds is really cool.  They're great.  I checked out all the birds you mentioned and the Eurasian coot really is the "phantom" of birds.

When I go to Wakodahatchee Wetlands, I see wood stork, multiple varieties of herons, great white egrets, anhingas and other great birds. Sometimes there are so many great blue herons in the trees, they look like ornaments.  That's why I drive 70 miles round trip two to three times a week.  I've watched the storks build their nests this year, with two of them fighting over branches.  I saw the eggs and then the sweet little babies.

Send me the names of any other bird that you identify.  I'll definitely check it out.

Love,
Mom

A rip-off

Well, that was quite the wake-up call.

Usually, I don’t look at the price when I’m buying produce. I mean, I have an idea what the items cost, but I just sort of let the cashier ring up the stuff and I'm content to pay.

Today, all the money I had on me was one euro.  With it, I figured I would buy two apples at the supermarket before going home. I have been eating a lot of yoghurt with fruit lately, so I thought two apples would be perfect -- I’d have a bowl of yoghurt with fruit now and another later.

When I got to the cash register, the woman rang me up. "1.45 euros."  I couldn’t believe it. “What!" I exclaimed.

“Oh, are they Elstars?" the lady said, referring to the type of apples they were. "Those are expensive."

But it really didn’t matter what kind of apples they were. 1.45 for two apples is a rip-off. I mean, just down the road at another supermarket, you can get a bag of 20 apples for about 2.50 euros, which means that the apples at this second supermarket are six times cheaper.

I just paid for one apple and left.

A wake-up call indeed.

Between Them

One thing I've noticed is I do a lot of explaining on this blog. Whenever I post something, I want to be crystal clear. This makes sense because as a writer, I have always prided myself on my clarity. I like to break things down for the reader.

But, I must say, doing so usually involves a lot of explaining. Sometimes I even over-explain, so much so that people who have edited my stuff have said to me, “Chad...we get it.” Well, for this next post, I thought I would do the opposite -- I would refrain from explaining.

Recently, I finished the book “Between Them,” a memoire that the author Richard Ford wrote about his parents.  As I read the book, I underlined the sentences and passages I especially liked. I do this with all my books.

In the following post, I’m going to reproduce each and every line or passage I underlined in "Between Them." But I’m not going to provide context -- no explaining, no set up, just the things I underlined. I thought this could be a fun exercise, as it will force you -- and me, probably -- to draw different kinds of conclusions.

So, without further ado, here goes.

***

“Whereas being ignorant or only able to speculate about another’s life frees that life to be more what it truly was.”

“…being together in a way that defines category. They more than certainly had that in them.”

“He was her protector, be she was his.”

“Possibly he dreamed at night … of winding curb-less streets without transients for neighbours.”

“Between them…”

“He was invisible, but different from how he’d been invisible. It satisfied him almost completely.”

“In retrospect, the advent of death can cast a too dramatic light on the events leading toward it.”

“There is one quality of our lives with our parents that is often overlooked, and so devalued. Our parents intimately link us, closeted as we are in our lives, to a thing we’re not, forging a joined separatness and a useful mystery, so that even together with them we are also alone.”

“‘Oh, yes. Your mother’s the cute little black-haired woman up the street.’ These were words that immediately affected me, and strongly, since they proposed my first conception of my mother as someone else, as someone whom other people saw and considered and not just as my mother.”

“It is, of course, a good lesson to learn early—cute, little, black-haired, five-five—since one of the premier challenges for us all is to know our parents fully—assuming  they survive long enough, are worth knowing, and it is physically possible. The more we see our parents fully, after all, see them as the world does, the better our chances to see the world as it is.”

“A life lived efficiently wouldn’t save you, but it would prepare you for what you couldn’t be saved from.”

“His job may have even have been harder than ours was—though only on that day.”

“The obvious question—how serious is all this?—can be dispensed with in a hurry: the very worst.”

“And still, in a way, even this news did not change things. The persuasive power of normal life is extravagant. To accept less than life when less is not overwhelmingly upon you is—at least for some—unacceptable.”

“I resumed my teaching and talked to her most days, though the thought that she was getting worse, that bad things were going on, and I couldn’t stop them, made me occasionally miss calling. It quickly became an awful time for me, when life felt to be edging toward disastrous.”

“And that was how we did that. One more kind of regular life between us. I went to campus, did my work, came home nights. She stayed in the big house with my dog. Read books, magazines. Fixed lunches for herself. Watched the Dodgers (this time) beat the Yankees in the Series. Watched Sadat be assassinated. Looked out the window. At night we talked—never serious or worrying things. With Kristina, who was working in New York and commuted on weekends, we went on country drives, looked at antiques, invited visitors, lived together as we had in places far and wide all the years. I didn’t know what else we were supposed to do, how else such a time was meant to pass.”

“My mother’s eyes were very brown.”

“I never saw her dead. I didn’t want to. I simply took the hospital’s word when the nurse called early one December morning, just before her birthday.”

“But, as I said, I saw her face death over and over through that autumn. And because I did, I believe now that witnessing death faced with dignity and courage does not confer either of those—only pity and helplessness and fear. All the rest is just private—moments and messages the world would not be better off to know.”

“My mother and I look alike. Full, high forehead. Same chin, same nose. There are pictures to show it. In myself I see her, hear her laugh in mine. In her life there was no particular brilliance, no celebrity. No heroics. No one, crowning achievement to swell the heart. There were bad things enough: a childhood that did not bear strict remembering; a husband she loved forever and lost; a life to follow that did not require much comment. But somehow she made possible for me my truest affections, as an act of great literature bestows upon its devoted reader. And I have known that moment with her we would all like to know, the moment of saying, Yes. This is what it is. An act of knowing that confirms life’s finality and truest worth. I have known that. I have known any number of such moments with her, known them at the instant they occurred, and at this moment as well. I will, I assume, know them forever.”

The Deliveryman

Recently, I have been researching a story about the 75th anniversary of the Bombing of Hamburg during World War II.  For my research, I have been meeting with people who survived the event. Actually, these are people who have not only survived the event but have also made themselves available to talk about it and any other event in history.  In Germany such people are called "Zeitzeugen," or contemporary witnesses. Zeitzeugen usually travel to schools and tell students how things were -- the good, the bad and the very bad.

Yesterday, I had a meeting with a Zeitzeuge, a woman who was about 9 years old when WWII broke out. We spent a few hours together at her home and she told me interesting things about the Bombing of Hamburg. However, I was more interested in some of the other stories she had to tell. Some of her best stories she had already typed out and had made copies of. Below is one the stories that she had already made a copy of. It doesn't a happy ending, but I do think it is compelling. The story was given to me on a sheet of paper in German. I'm going to translate it, of course, but I'm going to preserve her spacing. I hope you appreciate it.

***

"The Nice Mr. Wolpert"

My mother used to operate a tobacco and jam shop in Wilhemsburg, Hamburg. The small shop was attached to our house and it was my mom’s principal place of employment until a bomb destroyed our house.

I have a vivid memory from 1941 or '42, when I was around 11 years old, that is connected to this shop.

Mr. Wolpert, a nice man, was one of the men who delivered cigarettes to the store. My mother enjoyed his presence every time he came by. Sometimes I would be in the store during his visits and Mr. Wolpert and I would greet each other.

After he had finished discussing businesses with my mom, he would talk with me. He would ask about school and he would ask me which of my subjects was my favorite and whether or not I got to school by bike or by foot. Often he told us of his family and he asked whether I had nice friends and which books I liked to read. Every time after he would leave, he would nicely say, “See you next time.”

One day we were sitting eating lunch when all of a sudden my mom walked in, really upset. She had just come from the store and she said:  “You’re not going to believe it, but Mr. Wolpert just stopped by to say goodbye. On his jacket he was wearing his Jewish star and he looked very pale. He said that was going to get picked up soon.” “Where is he going?” I asked, to which my mother replied, “He will be brought to a labor camp [“Arbeitslager”] and he won't be coming back again.” My mother and my grandmother looked very downcast.

“Who exactly are these people, these Jews?" I thought to myself. My mom never told me anything about them. On the afternoons I would go to the Hitler Youth, we were told that Jews were a dishonest and conniving people and were mostly money lenders and fraudsters. But that absolutely does not describe our Mr. Wolpert! Never!!

 I cannot fathom it, I'm stunned.

 We never saw him again.

That Was Difficult

This week I have been asking the students in my English classes to write a small essay about a difficult decision that they’ve made in their lives. After the students submit their essays, I mark them and then give each student feedback on his or her writing. The whole process is relatively easy for me. However, I haven’t once stopped to think about how the exercise is for the students. Is it very difficult to write an essay in another language? To be fair, I decided to write the essay that I have been assigning, in German. What’s it like to write a small piece in another language? Let’s find out.



 „Eine Schwierige Entscheidung“

Als ich meinen Bachelor-Abschluss in 2006 kriegte, kriegte ich danach sehr schnell einen Job. Die Stelle war eine Werbetexten Stelle für eine Firma. Jedoch entdeckte ich an meinem ersten Tag, dass die Chefin der Firma wolltet, dass ich „sales calls“ mache. Ich sagte ja, weil ich einen guten Eindruck machen wollte. Jedoch sagte ich auch, dass ich irgendwann schreiben wollte. Meine „kleine Chefin“ versprach mir, dass ich irgendwann schreiben würde.
Der ganze Sommer vergang, und ich schriebe gar nichts. Jeden Tag machte ich die blöden „cold calls“. Ich verdiente sehr gut aber ich war sehr unglücklich.

Also musste ich eine Entscheidung treffen. Soll ich in dem gutbezahlten Job bleiben oder soll ich den Job kundigen und dann nach einem anderen Job suchen.Ich kündigte. Es war schwierig, eine Entscheidung zu treffen, weil zurzeit ich nicht wusste, was passieren würde, wenn ich den Job kundigen würde. Jedoch war ich nicht glücklich mit diesem Job.
Vier Monate später kriegte ich einen neuen, besseren Job und ich war sehr glücklich damit. Ich denke, ich traf die richtige Entscheidung.


Phew. That was really hard. No joke. I thought it was going to be a little bit easier. But wow. It took me a good hour to get that as perfect as I could. I guess I should not be so cavalier next time I tell my students to just fire off an essay on the topic of my choice.

Invisible Transitions

I once read in a book about writing that the best transitions were none at all. What the author of the book meant was that a properly used transition word, such as “however” or “therefore,” can be effective, but the best transitions between paragraphs, or even sentences, involve no transition words whatsoever.

Today, as I was listening to the Gettysburg Address -- don’t bother asking why I was listening to the Gettysburg Address; I just was -- I noticed that it was a good example of a piece of writing that moves seamlessly from one thought to another without the use of transition words.

To show you exactly what I mean, I'm going to reproduce the super famous speech, or at least the part of it that relates most to my point, and I’m going to highlight the words that Lincoln uses to connect his ideas in subsequent pieces of text with those in previous ones.

I hope you find it all of  some interest. 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.    

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

Just Right

OK, so I was just teaching an English class, and to fill some spare time at the end of the lesson, I told the students a small story from my life. I had known that the story was amusing, but the students thought it was exceptionally funny. I'm going to reproduce this story below.

A tiny bit of backstory before we get started: the tale is about my experience buying a mattress. That’s about all you have to know. Oh, also, I’m going to write the story in a manner similar to how I related it orally, just for fun. Enjoy.

Oh, man, do I have a funny story for you when it comes to buying a mattress. OK, so a few weeks ago I bought a new mattress. I had really liked this one particular mattress in the store, but when the thing arrived at my house, I was unhappy with it because it was too hard. When I called the store to ask if I could return it, they said no. When I asked them why the mattress I had tried at the store was soft and the one I had in front of me was so hard, they said, "Well, the mattress in the store has been lain on thousands of times." Great, I thought, just great! I was really upset. My girlfriend, however, said that I should not worry. She said once the mattress was broken in, everything would be fine.

A few weeks, later the mattress was still totally hard. But things weren't all lost because my girlfriend, who lives with me, still had her own mattress, from her old apartment. But that particular mattress had been too soft. What were we going to do? We did some thinking and came up with an idea: What would happen if one lay a soft mattress on top of a hard one? And would you know, the answers is this: You get the perfect mattress! Yup, the mattress on which we now sleep -- it's actually two mattresses -- isn’t too hard or too soft. It's just right.

How great is that? Oh, oh, also, this story has a funny coda. After this was all said and done -- it was probably about two weeks later -- my girlfriend and I went back to her hometown for a weekend. When we were there, we stayed at her mom’s house and slept in her childhood bed, like you do. And this bed, wow, let me tell you, it was a stone. It was the hardest bed I had ever slept in. When the weekend was over, I asked my girlfriend what was up with that bed. She then said to me, "Oh, it's always been like that. I've had it for 15 years."

I couldn’t believe it. "15 years!” I said, “and it’s always been like that!” I was flabbergasted. “OK, so then what made you think that the mattress that I had bought was going to get any softer?” And at that,  she just smiled. She smiled because she had been gotten. She had no answer.

Arm & Hammer

A former U.S. poet laureate once said that one quality that makes a great poem is specificity. As an example, he cited a poem about the culling of chickens and how the event was meticulously, even lavishly, described.

I really agree with his statement. If you look at great poems, one common denominator that they often have is that the objects and images described within them have been described accurately and with great specificity.

For example, just think about how well Wordsworth describes the abundance of daffodils in his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”:

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way

They stretch in never ending line

Along the margin of a bay

Or how about how ominously Edgar Allen Poe depicts the raven:

And his eyes have all the seeming of a

demon’s that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o’er him streaming

throws his shadow on the floor

There is certainly something about specificity that makes it an undisputed ingredient of good writing.

Enter Kevin Gates, a rapper from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Kevin Gates is a badass, tattooed-covered dude who wears diamond studded fronts – or, a “mouth full of ice” – in many of his music videos. He had been or still is very involved in street life and has served time in prison on several occasions.

At first blush, he’s not the kind of guy one would think would have something in common with Wordsworth or Edgar Allen Poe.

But he does. It’s the writing. Yes, Gates lives in a totally different era from the other two writers and has quite the different lifestyle, but he too has written something that transcends the mundane, or even the good, thanks to specificity.

On his 2014 mixtape “By Any Means,” Gates has a song called “Arm and Hammer.” Yes, that’s the Arm & Hammer that your mom used to put in the refrigerator to absorb odors. However, drug dealers also use Arm & Hammer, which is really sodium bicarbonate, to turn cocaine into crack. Gates’ song of course refers to the latter usage. The main idea of the song is that the narrator is so successful as a drug dealer that he keeps running out of Arm & Hammer.

Now, of course I don’t condone drug dealing and drug use. But by zeroing in on this one object, Arm & Hammer, and its importance in the world of a drug dealer, Gates has written something that surpasses good and rises to the level of exceptional. By focusing on this one object – an object one would never think to write a song about or to make art about -- he really brings us vividly into his world.

Refugee story from 2015

During the summer of 2015, about a million refugees from war-torn Syria and the surrounding area came pouring into Germany. For journalists, especially in Germany, this was a big deal. I mean, tectonic plates were shifting and the influx of people created thousands of story opportunities. How, for example, were the refugees fitting in? Where were they being housed? What problems were they facing? How had the journey been? The opportunities for stories were endless. 

Now enter me. The only real thought I had to myself during this time, journalism-wise, was, "Dude, if you don't write at least a few stories off this, there is something wrong with you." Well, in the end I did write a few stories related to the refugee situation, but I'm most proud of the one below.

A bit of backstory: around Christmas 2015, I would always pass this one particular area at the main railway station in Hamburg. It was this makeshift command post for refugees who were just arriving or stuck in limbo or just needed some help. What struck me about this command post was how ragtag, yet efficient it seemed. They had translators at the place, supplies, bulletin boards, and there would always be people manning the area, even around the clock. 

I became intrigued about the people working at this station. Below is a story I wrote about them. I had sent the piece on spec to the Christian Science Monitor. Unfortunately, the editor there said, "We are pretty well covered on the subject," and passed. All right. But here the story is. I thought it was worth sharing, even if two years have elapsed.

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For the last five months, a small brigade of volunteers working at a makeshift aid station at the Hamburg Central Train Station has been offering various forms of assistance to the droves of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghani refugees who have been passing through Hamburg on their way to Scandinavia to seek asylum.

The volunteers, most of whom are German citizens but some of them refugees themselves, translate for the newly arrived refugees, help them buy the proper train tickets and show them where they can get food and water. They also help the refugees solve the many unique problems that they face.

It has been well documented how kind and generous many Germans have been to the refugees who have been arriving in Germany from war-torn countries. But the aid station is a good representation of how grassroots and vigorous the effort to help the refugees often is.

“We just try to help the refugees however we can; the most important thing is that help is being given,” said Felix Brugger, 27, a volunteer at the aid station, which is located in the train station’s main entrance hall. Brugger made his comments after having just told two Afghani refugees which route they need to take to reach a particular city in Sweden.

Ever since last September, when Angela Merkel began allowing thousands of refugees to enter Germany, a couple hundred refugees have been arriving at the Hamburg Central Station each day.

Though the German government gives cash subsidies and other benefits to refugees who are in the process of seeking asylum in Germany, the refugees at the Hamburg train station are looking to go to Scandinavia, which means that the German government views them as “Transitflüchtlinge,” transit refugees, and does not give them any special support.

But that’s where the volunteers at the aid station come in. The volunteers -- there are about 40 of them in total and they work in shifts -- know which shelters are open for the night, keep detailed lists of the trains leaving for Scandinavia, escort the refugees around the train station and constantly stay abreast of the border situations in Scandinavia. They also raise money for the refugees, so if a refugee gets in a major jam, there’s cash on hand to help him get out of it.

“We try to make things easier for the refugees,” said one volunteer, Sumane, a 19-year-old Hamburg resident with Iraqi heritage.

Though the effort to help the refugees at the Hamburg Central Station seems robust and well coordinated, it wasn’t always that way.

Only a few people helped the refugees when they first began arriving at the train station in September. Those helpers, said Brugger, just handed out bottles of water and put makeshift barriers around an area where the refugees had been sitting to give them a little breathing room.

However, in mid-September, it was rumored that members of a far-right political party were going to hold an anti-immigration rally in Hamburg, and fears over how those protesters might treat the refugee if they encountered them at the train station galvanized more people into aiding the transit refugees.

“After that day in September,” Brugger said, “the effort to help the refugees here just got larger and more sophisticated.”

Indeed it did. In October, the volunteers got several humanitarian non-profit agencies to set up large tents with soup kitchens just outside one entrance to the train station, so all transit refugees now have access to free meals and an enclosed place to rest. And in December, the volunteers raised enough money to rent several rooms in a nearby office building so they can administer services to the refugees in a nicer environment, guarded from the elements and away from the hustle and bustle of the train station.

Though the number of refugees who pass through Hamburg on their way to Scandinavia has gone down since the winter began, it may rise again in the spring.

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Nail on the head

Ever notice how sometimes someone will say something that is so on point, you just have to say, “Yeah. Wow.”

Recently, I heard someone say something just like that, that really just hit the nail on the head.

I had been watching a video on YouTube about the history of the Air Jordan sneaker. The documentary was very positive about the shoe, but some criticisms were shared too.

One criticism was that people had been willing to commit violence to obtain a pair of Jordans. 

The person who shared this criticism was Dr. Harry Edwards, a former professor of sociology at U.C. Berkeley.

What made Edwards' words so insightful was that he didn’t just address the problem superficially. He tried to describe the underlying issue with American and consumerist culture at large. 

Here is what he said:

“The tragedies that took place between kids -- the killings, the assaults, over clothing as well as shoes -- was an indication of what we had taught as a culture. [And unfortunately] wearing the right clothes, identifying with the right image became some kids' sole hook and handle on their own personal self esteem.”

That about says it, I think. Yeah . . . Wow.

Desert Island Discs

A few weeks ago, I was searching iTunes for podcasts that involved Paul McCartney in any way. After a few minutes, I found one. It was called Desert Island Discs. Desert Island Discs, I learned, is a BBC show in which the guests have to tell a host which 10 songs they would bring with them to a desert island. A Desert Island Discs from 1982 featured Paul McCartney as the guest. 

After finding this episode, I downloaded it and played it on my computer. At first there was a bit of banter between McCartney and the host, but after that the two got down to business. Some of the songs that Paul said he would bring with him to the "desert island" were “Heartbreak Hotel,”  "Tutti Frutti," "Searchin'" by the Coasters and "Beautiful Boy" by John Lennon. 

I found this show very interesting. But what I found the most interesting was this: At the end of the episode, the host asked McCartney which one of those 10 songs he would bring with him if he could only choose one. 

And McCartney chose “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon. 

Wow. 

Here’s a link to "Beautiful Boy"; here’s a link for more info on McCartney’s appearance on Desert Island Discs.