Divine Masculine Art Installation Q/A

In preparation for the Divine Masculine Art Installation that I am attending organized by my daughter and artist Pampi of alpoarrentao Productions, folks were asked to answer four questions.  Here are my responses:

1. If you could convey anything to your adolescent self, given all the experiences you have had since then, what would it be?

Don’t spend so much on albums because in 30 years you can get them for free on Spotify, (with ads)

2. Looking back, what are some people, advice, events – anything – you are grateful you had during adolescence? Why?

My sister’s advice to get and stay involved with whatever matters to me, and that translated into high school debate, which literally changed my life and way of thinking. I’m grateful to my mom for forcing me to take piano lessons even though I can’t play, because I can appreciate better what it really means to have talent when I hear it. Oddly, my love of keyboard music – all kinds, came from my own failed attempts. My dad introduced me to the concept of patience.  He’d always say “hang in there”.  And it made me feel better – that and music, my brand of thorazine.   My grandfather had a lot of patience too.  We’d fish all day and catch nothing and enjoy every moment on the lake.  It was good to know that it really wasn’t all about the catch.  While in college, my friend John was my visa to a world outside the Southern states – my ticket to Chicago, NYC, Europe and my eventual passport to Boston where I remain happily uprooted and rooted today; a domestic immigrant with documents.

3. Looking back, what do you wish you had had in adolescence to help you transition from childhood to adulthood? Why?

I didn’t have much guidance really – lots of good general advice, you know, do your best, follow your passions, work hard, do right, earn enough to support yourself, and all that, but the advice came without instructions – it was like “figure it out on your own”.  It took me a long time to figure things out.  Funny, to this day, I can’t understand instruction manuals.  I just try stuff out, “let’s see, this way – no that way, what does this do” and that sort of thing. I don’t like maps much either – I sense my way around.  I guess I could have used a map as an adolescent, or Google or Frommer’s Guide to Life or something.  I’d have gone to a different college too most likely, but I have no regrets and am thankful to my parents and grandparents for the sacrifices they made and support they gave to ensure I got an education.  And I met some great people along the way, including my wife and our children. Didn’t need a map or Match.com for that.  Al Gore hadn’t gotten around to inventing the Internet anyway back in my day.

4. What is something you are going through now that you think additional guidance in adolescence would have helped you figure out earlier or make easier for you now?

Environmental guilt. If only I had known about the harmful impacts of styrofoam, aerosols, plastic water bottles and those campfires and all that leaded gas my parents burned in the family gas guzzling Chevy Impala. As I kid, I didn’t recycle, or compost.  I ate genetically altered corn.  I carried a heavy carbon footprint.  Why didn’t I pay more attention to the Earth Day organizers?  Things changed a little for me after hearing Ralph Nader speak when I was 18 and I began to eat sunflower seeds and granola bars.  I became more environmentally conscious. But by then it was too late.  I could have saved the planet and I did not.  If only PowerPoint had been invented sooner, Al Gore might have really made a difference.

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Auto Sales Up Despite “Uncertainty”, but…

The Auto Industry in the U.S. is alive and thriving, thanks in part to President Obama’s auto bailout, an improved economy and, let’s see, meals on wheels, no…cash for clunkers? no, not that either…I’m going out on a limb here but I think car shows have whetted our appetite for cars, or as the Brit Mike from Wheeler Dealers would say, motas.  Americans are crazy about their motors again thanks to the many TV car shows on the airwaves including Chasing Classic Cars, Mecum Auto Auctions, What’s my Car Worth (mine, not much), Desert Kings, All Girls Garage, Overhaulin’ , and West Coast Customs.  These shows glorify the car and plant the seed in our brains that we need to buy one or another.  The car products sponsors on the shows create other needs in our tiny brains for synthetic motor oils, all-weather floor mats, brighter halogen headlamps so that we can see people standing in the middle of the highway who would otherwise be invisible until it was too late, and bullet proof all-weather tires built to grip the road during a tornado.  Ok, I just made that one up.

U.S. Car Sales are up for all makes.  But one dealer says that sales would be even better if there weren’t so much uncertainty, uncertainty of who will be President in 2013.  I’m sorry, but I beg to differ with the dealer who is no doubt a Republican.  Consumers are not saying behind close doors: “because of the uncertainty honey, let’s delay the purchase of a new car until after the Presidential election.”

What difference would it make, really, who is President, except that if Mitt Romney were elected, he’d probably “roll” back all the safety and environmental regulations in place so that automakers would be once again free to pollute with impunity, and design cheap gas guzzling cars that are Unsafe At Any Speed, and really light trucks made of vinyl siding or balsa wood.

Most Powerful Woman in the World

Fareed Zakaria of CNN interviewed Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsico on his Sunday GPS show. Zakaria asked Nooyi to respond to her reputation as the world’s most powerful woman.  She seemed embarrassed by the title, but remarked that she works very hard, often sacrificing precious family time.  The interview moved along fairly tamely until it came to the question of healthy food and the growing American problem of obesity.  As you may know, Pepsico is a snack food conglomerate.  Their products include Pepsi, Gatorade and other sugary drinks and Frito Lay, known for salty chips.  She was not at all apologetic and gave what I thought to be an incredibly silly but revealing  answer which to me was a tacit admission that Pepsico is more concerned with profit, than juvenile diabetes or clogged arteries.  She characterized Pepsico’s products as “20% good for you and 80% fun for you”.  Said another way, what’s good for you is not fun for you, and what’s fun for you may not be good for your health. It sounded like a clever marketing pitch to skirt the question, but it does show that Pepsico is 80% about profit. Once the 20% becomes more profitable, things will change, but this is likely to take a long time.

30 years ago, I heard Ralph Nader speak at the University of Arkansas.  He described a hot dog as a pink missile and railed against snack food, suggesting that the vending machines could be stocked with healthier food.  Fast forward to 2011, and not much has changed.  The majority of stuff I see in the snack aisles at the supermarket and in vending machines are sugary drinks, candy bars and salty chips.  Just the other day I was delighted to see a bag of sunflower seeds in the vending machine where I work.  I was disappointed to learn that the seed shells were coated in a powdery salt.  I guess seeds qualify as “good”, and with all the salt also “fun”.  But those seeds were unsafe at any speed and not even fit for the birds, who seem, by and large, more fit than an average American.