A lesson frommy dad

How could he do it? My dad used to sit in front of his record player and listen to operas and symphonies for hours without doing anything else.

If you’re like me, that is impossible.  I will go for a walk, tinker on the internet or cook while listening to music.

The solution is focus. It’s close to what some call “mindfulness.”  My father, who was often irritable and certainly no mystic, could block everything from his mind except the sounds of Verdi or Beethoven.

Like my dad, my wife Pickett is good at focusing. She rarely looks at the time and offers forgets scheduled events. She can read or listen to a book for hours. She recalls the plot of a TV show better than I do because her mind isn’t wandering.

Lots of people enjoy dangerous challenges that focus their minds. When I used to ski from the top of a steep mountain, I forgot about my bills or my argument with a desk clerk and thought only about how to avoid getting hurt. Mountain climbers and car racers have a similar experience.

Unplanned crises can do the same thing. A friend told me she had been quite stressed with personal matters until the hurricane hit Asheville, N.C. where she lived. Her home wasn’t damaged, but there was so much going on that she forgot about her problems and actually felt calmer than before.

Here is a personal experience that I have written about before: I was in front of the teller’s window in 1978 when armed robbers stormed into the bank and demanded cash. One jumped into the tellers’ cage.

The teller in front of me looked horrified. I was calm. Why? There were no choices to make. Was I going to attack the robbers? Of course not! I forgot about everything else.  I was calm enough to tell police what happened.

I’m not recommending this as a way to reduce stress, but it was a memorable experience.

After a series of recent stressful troubles, I tried to find a way to get to sleep.  All of the meditations recommended to me didn’t help. Then I had an idea.

I turned on the music, dimmed the lights, closed my eyes and listened to Schubert’s “The Wanderer” played on piano by Alfred Brendel. The next night I tried his “Moments Music Aux.”  I thought of nothing else.

I slept just fine.

My dad was right.

 

My vavorite comics

Was I an avid reader as a child? Well, of course. I read lots of comic books and the funny papers. That doesn’t count? Well, why not?

Here were some of my favorite comic books. What were yours?

“Scrooge McDuck:” He stashed millions of dollars in pennies, nickels and dimes in a warehouse? Any investment counselor would have been horrified. How much gasoline would those coins buy today?

“Archie:” I identified mostly with Jughead because I was not part of “the scene.”

“Popeye:” I also liked Wimpy, who loved hamburgers.

“Little Lulu:” Poor Tubby, always getting the short end of the stick.

“Superman:” How did he change clothes so fast?

“Dick Tracy:” I didn’t read it often, but didn’t he invent the Apple Watch 80 years before Apple did?

“Classics Comic Books:” They were terrific. But I never read the book after gliding through “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Scarlet Letter.” Why should I? I already knew the story.

And then there were the newspaper funnies:

“Blondie:” What boss could be as bad as Mister Dithers? I had tons of them as an adult.

“Peanuts:” I wished Lucy would stop yanking the football away just as Charlie Brown was about to kick  it.

“Lil Abner:” I figured the comic strip was doomed when a newspaper publisher called me at Associated Press in 1970 to ask about allegations of indecent exposure and attempted sexual assault against cartoonist Al Capp.

“Bringing Up Father:” I felt sorry for poor Jiggs, who was rich but a real slob, hen-pecked by his  society-climbing wife Maggie.

“Beetle Bailey:” I often thought about him and his stupid sergeant during my six months on active duty.

“Marmaduke:” This big dog ran the whole household. Just like our dog named Ethos.

As an adult, I really liked these comic strips:

“Doonesbury:” I enjoyed him more after he left he commune and faced the real world. One friend called me “Michael Doansbury.”

“Cathy:” She was more librated than Blondie Bumstead.

“Tank McNamara:” I remember him sitting in a field, waiting for the cable TV lines to be installed so he could watch ESPN.

“Zits:” That’s the only one I read now. His poor dad, an orthodontist, is such a square. And I am old enough now to be HIS father.

(Note: Thanks to Ron Miller, who lent  me his Scrooge McDuck comic  book, and a kind note he received from the artist.)

 

The most unliely governor

Who  would have hought that a champion weight lifter and body builder from Austria would become both a famous actor and the governor of California?

I wasn’t  expecting this when Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke to us at the California Chamber of Commerce convention in 2002. Despite his heavy accent, the man who was “Conan the Barbarian” and “Terminator” made a lot of sense. He knew California and the political issues facing it.

Then came the crazy recall election in 2003 to replace the unpopular Gray Davis as governor. Dozens of people ran, including the outspoken Arianna Huffington, “Hustler” publisher Larry Flynt and  Gary Coleman, the 4-foot-8 actor from “Different Strokes.”

Most people thought Schwarzenegger would not actually run. Unfortunately, the deadline for my Kiplinger California Letter was the day before he was going to talk about his plans on a late-night TV show.

When I wrote that he would not run, my boss, Melissa Bristow, asked me, “What if he does run?" I was glad that I hedged the article because he did decide at he last minute to enter the race as a Republican.

I never met the man, but  he was exciting to watch in  person.  Already a celebrity, crowds gathered around him at campaign rallies as he shouted his famous slogan, “I’ll be back!” When he was finally elected, the circulation of my newsletter took a jump, just as it did when another actor, Ronald Reagan, whose campaign I covered briefly, was re-elected to the same job in 1970.

I thought Schwarzeneggar  was a terrific governor.  He pleased my business readers enormously by bringing workers compensation costs down dramatically with new legislation.  Yet he was a fervent environmentalist, trying to bring down greenhouse gases.

Things turned sour before his second term ended in 2011.  California relies heavily on income tax revenue, and the recession left the state in a budget sinkhole.  His approval rating dropped to an awful 23%.

Things got worse for him in 2021, when his marriage with Maria Shriver fell apart after it was disclosed that he had once fathered a son with another woman.

Can you believe it? “The Governator” will be 80 next year!

TV shows from yesteryear

 

I have gotten the best response to columns when I have written about nostalgia. Seniors seem to like looking back at memories from their younger years.

So today I am writing about TV shows from the past and some of my thoughts:

“I Love Lucy:”  When Lucy Ricardo had her TV baby the same day as Lucille Ball really had hers, 44 million people watched. The show wasn’t allowed to use the word “pregnant” beforehand.

“Andy Griffith Show:”  Who knew Opie and “Meathead” of “All in the Family” would become two of the greatest movie directors of a later era?

“Beverly Hillbillies:”  The highest rated show of them all in the 1960s. I never watched it once.

“Ozzie and Harriet:” The youngest boy, Ricky Nelson, became a famous pop singer, then died in a plane crash at age 45. He had sold almost 50 million records.

“Dragnet:”  My best friend’s father, a drama professor, wouldn’t let his son watch the show because the acting was so bad. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

“Howdy Doody:”  Bobb Keeshan, who played the silent Clarabell the Clown, later starred as Captain Kangaroo in his own show.

“The Jackie Gleason Show:”  He wanted variety shows with music and dancing. His audience wanted “The Honeymooners.”

“Carol Burnett Show:”  Same story.  The viewers preferred family skits with Harvey Korman.

“Golden Girls.” I keep seeing women in my age group who remind me of each of the characters.

“$64,000 Question:” Terrific until the game show scandals killed it.

Saturday night in the 1970s:  It’s a dead zone for TV now, but “All in the Family,” “M*A*S*H,” “ Mary Tyler Moore,” “Bob Newhart” and “Carol Burnett” made people stay at home.

Same with Thursday night in the 1980s on NBC: “The Cosby Show,” “Family Ties,” “Cheers,” “Night Court” and “Hill Street Blues.”

“Superman:”  The role is cursed. George Reeves, the 1950s TV star, killed himself. Christopher Reeve, who played Superman in the movies, was paralyzed by falling from a horse. Margot Kidder, who portrayged Lois Lane, died by suicide.

“Your Hit Parade:”  I think rock ‘n’ roll is what killed it. Snooky Lanson and Dorothy Collins just  couldn’t mimic Elvis or Chuck Berry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The October terror in D.C. long ago

It was like a bad suspense thriller in the movies. Yet it was real. And near.

Over several weeks in October, 2002, the D.C. snipers killed 10 people and wounded three in random attacks in Washington D.C., Virginia and Maryland.

People were afraid to leave their homes. Our daughter’s soccer games were cancelled.  No one was safe—children or old people, rich or poor, urban or suburban. There was no theme at all for the people selected.

Authorities searched for a white van that was seen in the places where the shootings took place, but that was a false lead.  The two shooters rode in a black sedan with one of them firing from the trunk.

They were finally captured on Oct. 24, 2002, at a rest stop along I-270 in Maryland, near Frederick. One of them, John Allen Muhammad, was executed in 2009. The other, Lee Boyd Malvo, 17 at the time of the killings, is sill in prison.

Why did they do it? One thought he was getting revenge against his ex-wife. They also wanted to terrorize society for some reason.

My biggest memory:  When our family was riding in a car from South Boston to Arlington, we stopped, as we often did, at a Wendy’s in Ashland Va., about halfway there. As we got out of the car, we looked for a place for the dog to relieve herself. There were woods with tall grasses right behind Wendy’s. I thought, “We should be careful. You never know where a sniper might be hiding out.”

Then, in the restaurant, the lady at the counter warned us,  “I heard that the sniper just attacked in Richmond.  Be careful out there!” Well, she was wrong. The snipers had really killed an FBI analyst outside the Home Depot where we often shopped in Falls Church, two miles from our home.

Five days later, we got more news. The snipers had shot and wounded someone in Ashland. It was at the Ponderosa restaurant next door to the Wendy’s we had visited.

I  wondered if the snipers hid out in the same parking lot or in those same woods that worried me last time we were there.

When they were captured, the panic was over. Soccer games resumed. It never happened again.

 

Craving variety today

Where is Ed Sullivan  when we need him?

In the 1950s and 1960s, the arthritic journalist with poor stage presence hosted a variety show offering a variety of talented performers.

There were Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Jerry Lewis, opera star Maria Callas, jugglers and Topo Gigio, the popular hand puppet.

Millions of people watched on one of only three or four channels available in the “good old days.”

Today there are so many choices that you rarely see so much variety in one place anymore.

I was raving to my friend Peter Sever about all of the opportunities we have to be entertained now. I can ask YouTube to play the Four Freshmen, Mel Torme and Rosemary Clooney and their  jazzy tunes all day long if I want. And rather than look at ads that would never interest me, Facebook will find what I have looked at online and try to sell it  to me.

Peter came up with a downside. Your choices have really been narrowed. You don’t have to explore anything at all outside of your interests. You learn nothing new.

We have already heard about how the fragmenting of media has made us such a divided nation. If one person gets all his news from Fox News and another watches MSNow, they can’t have a civil conversation. Each gets facts from somewhere else.

This also extends to entertainment. I have never heard a Taylor Swift song. I’m told she is good. If we had an Ed Sullivan today, I would have seen her. And her fans would have watched today’s version of the jazz greats I adore.

I even have my own YouTube channel (“Pickett Craddock and Mike Doan”) with about 30 songs. If someone became hooked on that, maybe they would never discover Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald! (Dream on, Mike!)

Peter’s solution:

Go outside of your media box and find new things yourself.

 

Loathings avertising--with one exception

This article is  for Facebook and my blog onlyonly, because it is too sensitive to run in newspapers.

The topic: My hatred of advertising.

I just can’t help it. It runs in my family.

My grand father tore out all of the full-page ads of the Saturday Evening Post as soon as it arrived in the mail.

My father may have invented the first remote. He took a radio volume knob and attached it by wire to the television in 1951. When an ad came on, he would turn off the sound.

What do their offspring do? I never look at any ads in newspapers or on TV. I scroll past everything online. I record everything on TV, even football games, and fast-forward past all ads. Including the Super Bowl.  I never see that annoying lizard with the British accent on Geico ads. Or the famous football players raving about their beer.

I don’t watch streaming services with ads either. I even fast-forward the credits and  Viking cruise  ads on the PBS shows I record.

If I do look at ads by accident—maybe when fast forward is disabled—I feel like I have just lost three minutes out of my life. If you watched TV a lot in your lifetime, maybe that’s an entire year of being dead?

In most of my career as a writer,, I just hung out with other news people. But when I was a magazine editor, I dealt with the advertising staff all the time. When I told them about my forebears’ loathing of commercials, they were horrified. Who could dislike ads, which fuel the free enterprise economy? By avoiding ads, I was stealing from them, they thought. Surely I realized that my news content was just filler to lure people to see the real content—the pitch for hemorrhoid cream, kitty litter or a drug that could kill you.

So I see their point—but I am still skipping ads.

That said, I make exception: local radio ads on WHLF (95.3) in South Boston, owned by Lakes Media Company.l  I like hearing the colorful local people pitch their wares in a Southern drawl--the mattress company, the appliance dealer, the restaurant and the lawyer looking for car wreck victims. I know some of these people. I have shopped at many of their places of business. I may actually want something they offer.

If I was selling something I would go there. The audience is well targeted, you hear the station all the time in stores, and the rates are cheap.

 

 

Itcing to wrie about AI

In the 17 years since I retired, I have never wished I was back at work. Until now.

At the Kiplinger Letter, I covered the growth of new technologies—from the early years of the internet through personal computers, social media and smart phones. But nothing compares to artificial intelligence, which I think is he biggest advancement since the atomic bomb.

Well, I don’t  have the energy to go back to work, so I am going to share my thoughts here in the style I would have used back then, looking at both the good and the bad, without judgment.

Some of the changes ahead, for better or for worse:

--Personal agents. They will make appointments for you, negotiate with vendors, fill out complex forms, do your taxes, book airline flights and find stuff in your computer that you never could. In fact, Meta is offering most of this now.

--Computer programmers. Someone could say, “Build me a computer that will do this” and no one would have to come up with complex codes.

--Individual tutors. They would take the skills and learning level of children and adults and provide personal instruction, sounding just like a real person.

--AI “doctors.” Already you can upload a test result and get an analysis of what it all means. Soon they will be able to diagnose diseases and recommend treatments and medicines.

--Manufacturing: Robots will handle production schedules, find faulty materials and give out their own instructions. Will they hire and fire too?

--Transportation. They’ll coordinate traffic lights and direct trucks, autos and industrial equipment from afar. Also, water and energy systems. They are aiding air traffic controllers now.

--Arts. Music, literature and art are being mechanically produced already. Will we get an artificial Beethoven, Shakespeare or Michaelangelo?

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad:

--The job market will be thrown into chaos. What will happen to all of those tossed out of work by these machines?  Not just assembly-line workers but the brainy people who program computers, manage banks, supervise factories and—of course, old men who write columns.

--Copyrighted works are out the window. There is no easy way to protect them.

--Too much of the thinking will be left up to machines, making human judgment less needed. The impact will be worst on school children. And what can they aspire to be?

--Cyberterrorism: Think of what an AI hacker could do to damage a traditional network.

--AI agents are already going rogue, defying their masters and cheating right and left. Their human creators are holding back on their plans to let AI design its own next generation of AI for that reason. And there’s no telling what AI could do in the wrong people’s hands.

--So much investment is going into AI now that other financial sectors are being neglected. Are we in a financial  a bubble that will burst? (Personally, I think not.)

--States and localities will limit data centers because they use too much electricity and water. Still, that won’t be enough o slow AI’s growth.

--The federal government is slow to act. It has historically  regulated industries such as aviation, food, medicine, finance, telecommunications  and weapons. But a consensus is building that AI should be slowed down and there will have to be rules. Will that put us at a disadvantage with China? Don’t think so. China’s  AI hasn’t advanced nearly as much as ours.

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Fears of Ai  wiping out civilization seem way overblown to me.

I look at the atomic bomb as the best comparison. In the 1950s we debated its merits, but there was no way to stop it. We thought it would destroy us all, bur 81 years later, here we all are!