Mark Your Calendars! April 5, 2006

Yes, it's something, all right. April 5, 2006 is the 100th birthday of Lord Buckley.

http://www.lordbuckley.com/LBC/LBC_Misc_Pages/LBC.html

Lord Buckley was born April 5, 1906 in a little mining and lumber town called Tuolumne, California. His parents were William (Bill) and Annie Laurie Buckley. Bill Buckley was proportedly from Manchester, England. Annie Laurie's parents were born in Cornwall, England.

His Royal Hipness was as unique as they come, an eccentric old white man who made his mark by recasting familiar tales--from Shakespeare, the Bible, and beyond--in a frantic spray of black street lingo, jazz-speak, and hipster jive. In Buckley's mind, Jesus became "The Nazz," Gandhi "The Hip Gan," and explorer Vasco da Gama "Cabeza de Gasca." That would be adventurous now. It was simply unheard of in the 1940s and 1950s when Buckley was plying his trade, entertaining audiences he called his Royal Court.

He was too weird to be more than a cult figure, but his defiant persona, deep individualism, and comic sense of cool certainly influenced the likes of Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and even Bob Dylan.

My mother had some recordings of his, broadcast on Chicago radio. WFMT's "Midnight Special" on Saturday night would play some of his rare stuff, and it was enthralling to hear.

He died in New York in 1960. I sure hope somebody's doing something somewhere to commemorate this special man. Since I'm living in Seattle now, maybe something's happening here...

Just Like Heaven

Just saw this movie on a flight from Cincinatti to Seattle. It stars Reese Witherspoon, who plays a very busy doctor who must confront death.

The movie is extremely charming and a great light romance. If you're looking for something inspirational and heartwarming, this is it for sure.

But there's a fascinating subtext for it, too. A character in the movie is on life support (extraordinary measures) but has left no clear instructions on whether life support should be ended. Since nothing has been specified, the task of deciding something as significant as this is left to a suriviving sister.In order to make the plot work right, the audience must assume that a decision to terminate this character's life support is tragically wrong. In fact, it's a fairly short step to the assertion that life support must never be terminated.

As the Karen Anne Quindlan case demonstrated, decisions like this pose horrible moral and emotional dilemmas on family members who must make them. One 'moral' of this lighthearted and wonderful movie, then, is that each of us should make a "living will" instructing our loved ones on exactly what to do if we are on life support. The law recognizes this important human right of self-determination, but it's only as good as our use of it.

Do it today for the people you love...

Happy New Years and Silicon

At midnight this morning, Lynne was at work, Michael was in the basement doing whatever he was doing, Alicia was at a party, and I was on the back deck waiting for fireworks. There were some, but the louder noise was party horns. I was fascinated to look into my neighbor's window, though...

My nextdoor neighbor owns a silicon mine in the hills west of here. Given what he brings out of the ground, there is a great market for what he provides, and he has done very well financially. He is the hardest-working man I think I've ever seen; when he's "relaxing at home" he's in constant motion, gardening, cutting the grass, taking care of his dogs, and I don't know what else. He keeps his father's dark green 1959 Chevrolet pickup truck in his garage, perfectly restored. He has little pieces of cardboard under each of the four tires. He has built a really beautiful house, with extremely carefully tended lawns and gardens. He also owns several other lots in our neighborhood and down the hill from our neighborhood.

How does a man like that party in the new year? As I stood out on the deck, he was perfectly framed in his window, almost perfectly motionless. I though he was asleep, in fact, until, he moved his head a certain way. He brought in 2006 in a completely still way - no toasts, no confetti.

Of course, I was more or less doing the same thing. I was fascinated about him, though, as I have thought about him quite a bit in the four years we've lived here. Through hard work, he has succeeded in his ambitions, and he is, perceptably, a very simple man. When I've encountered people like that - disciplined, successful, ambitious, fulfilled - I've been obsessed by the question of whether they are happy.

And when are we happier than New Year's?

So, really, now, should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?