Rich White Baby Boomer – Page 3

That’s My Valentine!

Last Saturday morning, I received a phone call from Jabra Tannous in Cypress, Texas. He had gone on a double date to Valentine’s Day: the Movie on its opening night. There is a scene in the movie where a school teacher is telling the story of St. Valentine. Taped to the chalkboard behind her and with a second copy in her hand are prints of the icon to the left. Jabra said, “Oh no! Somebody owes Cranford money!”

Jabra recognized the icon from my business website for “Come and See” Icons, Books & Art. He assumed that permission was not obtained for this use, so he called me. He was correct, except that they owed Nick Papas money. Artwork belongs to the artist for his lifetime plus 70 years to his heirs and assigns. If one buys an original piece of art; one does not own any right to copy it or control over the copyright, unless that right is specifically purchased from the artist.

I immediately called Nick Papas to let him know about the use of his icon in the movie and he confirmed that he had not given permission. I tried to call Constantine Nasr, whom I got to know when we were in the House of Studies at the Antiochian Village ten years ago. He produces and directs documentary films, so I figured he would know about copyrights in Hollywood. His phone was out of order, so I got a busy signal. I continued to research the movie and found that the icon was on the website, as well. It’s in the classroom shot in the gallery. I called Constantine again on Monday morning. This time, he answered his phone. It had been repaired just five minutes before. As I described the situation to him, he kept saying, “Oh no!” and “This is not good!” and the like. He told me some stories of how other, similar copyright issues were resolved, and offered to call one of his colleagues who worked in Warner Bros. copyright clearance department.

On Tuesday, I received a call from Warner Bros. The negotiation began. I researched Warner Bros.’ and New Line’s case histories for resolving copyright violations; both for when they were the plaintiff and the defendant. Nick and Patty saw the movie on Thursday night. He called me from the lobby of the theater to tell me that his icon was right at eye level on the movie poster (by the second N). By the end of Friday afternoon, we had a signed copyright agreement with Warner Bros. / New Line whereby they agreed to pay Nick $5,000 for the use of his St. Valentine icon in connection with this movie.

It was a fun negotiation. I probably did leave some money on the table, but the point wasn’t to be nasty or to make a killing. It was basically found money for Nick, but we did want it to cost the studio enough to send a message to their set decorating people to be more careful. Five or ten minutes on Google would have let them know that this was not in public domain. Warner Bros. was very willing to do what they needed to do to correct this oversight quickly. Nick said I missed my calling; that I should be a lawyer. I replied, ” No thanks. I like sleeping at night.”

In the Orthodox Church, the main commemoration for St. Valentine is July 6, as that is the date of his martyrdom. However, there is ancient precedent for a February 14 commemoration. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius set February 14th to honor St. Valentine to counter the pagan “love” festival that Valentine had originally interfered with. St. Valentine was a priest near Rome. Feb. 15 was the pagan feast of Lupercalla. On the eve of the feast, the young men of the village were allowed to take any of the young maids for the night. To protect the young people from this promiscuity, Fr. Valentine held an all night vigil in the church for all the young people that night. This so enraged the local, pagan authorities that they sought for a way to eliminate this troublesome priest. Emperor Claudius Flavius banned marriages of any young men, because he felt that married men did not make good soldiers. Fr. Valentine continued to conduct marriages secretly. This was found out and brought to the attention of the emperor. Claudius valued Fr. Valentine as an intelligent man and a respected leader in the community. He had General Asterius try to persuade him to become a pagan. What happened instead was that Fr. Valentine healed Asterius’ daughter of blindness, and he and his whole family converted to Christianity, being baptized by St. Valentine. They were all martyred together on July 6, 269.

He fixed a flat and served mankind.

The first time I helped to change a flat tire was when I was not yet ten years old. The whole family was in the station wagon on a lonely two lane road in the middle of Minnesota, on our way to a lake. A car was stopped on the side of the road with a flat, left, rear tire. The woman driving the car was just starting to try to figure out how to change her flat tire. This was long before the days of GPS and cell phones. My dad pulled over to offer assistance. He then backed the car up so that we were behind the lady’s car, so our headlights could help us see. He proceeded to change the tire, instructing my brother and me on how to properly foot the jack and remove the nuts while the tire still had contact with the ground. My brother, Tom, who was six years older got to help pump the jack and loosen the nuts. I was in charge of stowing the nuts in the hubcap.

After the tire was changed and the jack and damaged tire secured properly in the trunk of the lady’s car, she thanked us and offered my dad payment of ten dollars. This was the early 1960s, so that would translate to be about $75 to $100 in today’s money. My dad thanked her, but told her to keep her money. I was just a little kid, so any paper money was a big deal. I couldn’t imagine turning it down. She insisted that my dad accept it. He firmly told her no thanks, and added, “The way you will pay me back is the next time you see someone in need and you are able to help, you will help them out.” When we got back in the car he repeated the conversation for my sisters to hear. He stressed that everyone is in need sometime, so if you hope to be helped in an emergency, you need to always do what you can when the opportunity presents itself. That was probably the most important life lesson my dad ever taught me.

This was not the only time he taught this lesson. It was repeated by example countless times and by words a few. But this was the time it stuck with me.

(Since then, I learned that stowing the lug nuts in the wheel cover is not always a good plan. If you step on the edge of the wheel cover, it acts like a catapult launching them in unpredictable directions.)

Charlie was the baby of his family, the youngest of four siblings born to Mae Wise Coulter and “Freeman” Joseph Coulter.

Are Lawns Green?

From the time I was six until I was twenty, we lived in Golden Valley, Minnesota. Golden Valley is a suburb of Minneapolis. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was home to General Mills, Honeywell’s MIRV control plant (making it the #16 strategic nuclear target for the Russians), Carl Sandburg Junior High (right across the street), Glenwood Hills Hospital, Theodore Wirth Park and Golden Valley Country Club. We were told that the village took its name from John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley. This was Steinbeck’s journal of the time he bummed around the country with his standard poodle, Charley. They sat down in a field of amber grain and John said: “Now this truly is a golden valley!” I now know this is not true, but this is the myth of the place that we were taught at Carl Sandburg. Poetry apparently trumped science. Travels With Charley happened in 1960; the village was incorporated in 1886. By the way, Carl Sandburg attended the dedication of the school in 1959 and our family was there and we met him. I was only four at the time. I was dressed in a suit. He treated me without condescension.

At any rate, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The point of this whole ramble through Golden Valley is that the valley still had some golden fields when Steinbeck may or may not have traveled through it with his poodle in 1960. By the summer of 1961 my dad had built our house in a subdivision of the last one. The fields of wheat were gone. We had a clean, new suburb with lots of green lawns.

But how green are lawns?

Before we get into the whole chemical fertilizer, gas power mower, crabgrass killer end of things; let’s take a look at just the idea and physical presence of lawns and see how things add up.

Why do we have lawns, anyway? Years ago, in a magazine called Country Journal, there was an essay on lawns on the next to the last page. From it I learned that the idea of the individual lawn came from English and northern European aristocracy. It was a sign of great wealth. It indicated that you had so much land that you could afford to mow some of it. You already had more than enough for your crops, more than enough for your livestock, more than enough, even, than for your herbs and flowers. You had so much land, in fact, that you could afford to intentionally waste some of it. It was the epitome of conspicuous consumption. This idea was carried forward to American farmers. It was a sign of prosperity and overabundance to have a small lawn around the farmhouse.

Then came the mechanization of farming with its accompanying great migration into cities. Those who managed to benefit from industrialization and centralization chose the same sign to advertise their prosperity. They had enough wealth to have a piece of ground that they could mow without even having to farm at all. On top of that, came the expanding middle class with the idea of a consumer society. Then came the cold war with its xenophobia which led people to want to have a buffer zone between themselves and their neighbors, as well as enough space to build a bomb shelter in the backyard. Then came the urban race riots of 1965 and 1968 that caused more people to be afraid of cities and flee to the perceived safety of the suburbs. Television evening news with its “If it bleeds it leads” policy combined with the economy of showing all the news that is convenient (i.e., urban) only reinforced these fears. White flight from the cities has caused so much urban sprawl that on a night time flight from Philadelphia to Minneapolis in 2000, I saw only suburbs below.

Just the fact of lawns existing, increase the need for transportation, because they increase the distance between us. Paradoxically, lawns cause more land to be paved as we need more and longer roads to get around them all to get anywhere. The more paved land there is, the higher the incidence of flash floods with its damage to life and property, not to mention the accompanying erosion. Lawns take land out of agricultural production and deplete wildlife habitat. By the lawns being clipped short, they do not produce as much oxygen and sequester as much carbon as would a farm, pasture, meadow or woods with undergrowth.

By taking land out of possible agricultural production, we have limited our opportunities for energy independence by means of biofuels. Although I have looked into the possibility of replacing my lawn with switchgrass or poplar trees to produce home heating fuel.

The bottom line is: No matter how green they appear to be, lawns are not green.

Next time, I’ll talk about the effects of lawn maintenance and some greener options.

The house pictured above is 4845 Lowry Terrace, Golden Valley, Minnesota, the location of the lawn I mowed as a child. My dad built that house in 1961. Photo is from Google Earth.

Screens and Circling the Square

As promised, I made and installed the screen on Saturday. I found a helpful person at Home Depot who actually listened to my description of what I wanted for a track for the screens and knew where the channel aluminum was. I say I made the screen, but I should add, it isn’t pretty. It is functional. I managed to bend the frame because I didn’t have it sandwiched properly when cutting it with a saber saw. I managed to straighten it enough to work. When I attached the aluminum screen to the frame, it ended up not uniformly tight.

This is where the weakness of the premise of “If you can read …” comes to bear. If the written instructions are not complete or clear, there can be trouble. Or if the activity requires a knack or natural or intuitive skill somehow, instructions will only get you so far. Also you need to have a good idea of what the final result is supposed to be to properly interpret the instructions.

I am very good at reading and following step by step instructions. I clearly remember when I was in kindergarten and Miss Richardson gave each student a square piece of paper. She told us that to make it into a circle shape, all we had to do was take a scissors and round the corners. I followed her instructions with precision. I ended up with a square shape with neatly rounded corners. It looked like a television screen, not a circle. Just about everyone else in the class made something more like a circle. It was obvious to me that they had not followed Miss Richardson’s instructions. I informed Miss Richardson that her instructions were deficient.

Miss Richardson had a lengthy absence that year, so we had Mrs. Carlson for a substitute. I don’t know why she was gone for so long. Perhaps it was a nervous breakdown. Later in my school career, I came to learn that they were fairly common among teachers in the schools I attended.

At any rate, for the rest of the screens, I asked my daughter Rosalie to make them. She is an excellent screenmaker.

“If you can read, you can cook.”

My mom was a great cook. When anyone would compliment her cooking, especially one of her new, more adventurous dishes, she would reply, “If you can read, you can cook.” Both of my parents taught the four of us kids that if we could read, we could do just about anything we set our minds to. They taught us that each of us is ultimately responsible for our own education. I took this to heart. Through the years, I have had many different jobs and have attempted many different do-it-yourself projects and crafts.

These blog entries will try to document some of my experiences trying new things. They will explore both the truth of and the limitations of my mom’s maxim. This category will be part memoir, part current project reports, part cautionary tale. Taken together they will describe the explorations, accomplishments and misadventures of a restless mind; the confessions of a renaissance man.

Several years ago I attempted to recall and write down all of the jobs I have done in my life so far. I kept having to go back to that list and add more that I had forgotten to include. I lost that document in a computer meltdown a few years ago. I will make an attempt to reconstruct it now. These are only jobs that I did for money. They do not include the volunteer work, hobbies, crafts or DIY home repairs.

Before age 16: snow shoveling, garden weeding, bartending, babysitting, newspaper delivery, data entry, filing

Age 16 – 20: landscape nursery yardman (got to tip over a Bobcat), busboy in a lobster restaurant, grocery carryout, bicycle mechanic, bike store manager, sewing machine & vacuum cleaner salesman, door-to-door Bible salesman, janitor in a junior high

Age 20 – 30: housekeeping in a hospital surgery suite, floor waxer, painter, wallpaper hanger, machine operator in a machine shop, just about every job possible in a poultry processing plant from grinding bones to running the ovens and chillers to QC lab work, inspection & sanitation, aerial photographer, real estate salesman, computer & electronics salesman/instructor, prison chaplain, apple picker

Since age 30: prison chaplain and volunteer director for over 500 volunteers serving 8 different populations in three jurisdictions, blueprint printer, architectural office manager, project architect, purchasing agent, archivist, receptionist, landscape worker, lawnmower, newspaper ad salesman, roof inspector, roof designer/specifier, architectural specification typist/proofreader, furniture mover, warehouse organizer, scaffold builder, picker/packer, floor waxer, house detailer, painter, electrician, cement laborer, inventory taker, chocolate candy maker, home addition/renovation designer, floor refinisher, security system salesman, printshop worker, graphic designer, writer, icon installer, website builder, entrepreneur, icon maker, woodworker, artist, painter, electrician, plumber, floor installer, muralist, author

I’m pretty sure I forgot some of them. No matter. You get the idea. I have never worked in fast food, but I’m only 64. (re-edit, 9/16/2019) There will be opportunities yet.

I will list the hobbies, crafts, volunteer jobs, DIY projects and other miscellaneous skills in another entry. The next post is about me installing my first set of replacement window sashes.