A Decent Age

Though he watched a decent age pass by,
A man will sometimes still desire the world.

Sophocles
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Hello Val
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Now here's an interesting question. Are we now in a decent age or has our decent age passed by? Did we have a decent age and as we didn't notice it passed us by? Or is our decent age still to come?

What constitutes decency in an age? Is it the way people behave, the way they treat others and themselves? Is it an attitude toward the world and the human race, is it a rich cultural age, a flourishing economic age or an age of major military victories? Is it an age of great peace (whenever has there been any of those)?

In my childhood the country had emerged from the great depression and was beginning to show it's strength, although the cars were still black, the umbrellas were black, the rain coats were black or gray, when out of a nation of great literature. great philosophy and great, great music arose a monster named Adolf Hitler and the world turned it's head into an even more depressing, indecent age. We painted the top half of the headlights black on our black cars. When the siren screamed in pain we turned off all our lights. It was a black out, because we thought German planes were flying over New York. And they were.

We killed the monster's men and won the war. Then colors began to happen on the streets. Cars became blue and green and yellow, multi colored with fancy shapes and fancy headlights that couldn't be painted black. Now I was a teenager and I saw another age pass by when everything became red.

A mad man in Congress began investigating everyone suspected of being a Communist or a Communist sympathizer. Important American heads rolled. People turned each other in. Accusation, betrayal, black listing (there's that color again), careers and reputations ruined. We finally got rid of the
congressional monster but the damage, just like the damage in Europe, was done.

Then the wars started, against the Communists, to make the world safe for Democracy and to prove that we weren't Communists. Korea, Viet Nam. Now I was in my 20's. Have I yet seen a decent age pass?

Protests, Selma, Equal Rights. Assassinations, JFK, Bobby , Martin, Gandhi, Anwar. Kent State, Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center.

Now I'm in my 70's. Fundamentalism, regressive politics, anti Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, the proliferation of guns, drugs.

A decent age may still come and, I hope, not pass, and there may be a better world to desire. Come with me and let us try to find a place where a decent age can be.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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See Saw

Give to the poor and enjoy the praise.
Give to the rich and incur the guilt.

Dana Bate
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DB - Vagabond
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The Overhaul

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

Thomas Paine
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Hello Diane
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night is past. The past is the night.
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Lately I've been thinking of doing a complete overhaul of myself. It's not something I particularly want to do but it seems to be a necessary activity every now and then at no special time. It's sort of like testing the structure of my house to see if it's still stress worthy and if not to replace the worn out brinks and beams, and to find out just how much of a peculiar person I have become.

For one thing I know that certain garments of good reputation have been cast off along the way. Reputation is almost a non entity in the life of a vagabond. It's as hard to define as grace. You can lose a reputation through a rumor or because you don't do what some people think you should do. Hence I don't worry about my reputation. If it means doors closed to me, so what, there's another door somewhere.

Character is another matter. It is only peripherally related to reputation. A person can have a lousy reputation and still have strength of character. Those who lack it, wimps and bullies, for example, have little idea of what a good character is made. But maybe they learn.

If one is fortunate enough to grow up with a good influence around them, the example of a good man or a good woman, building a character that is positive and harmonious is much easier. The rest of us have to work at it. It's a trial and error program of education.

Scraping through the ashes of one's past is a futile activity and I make repeated efforts to convince people not to do it. The only benefit to me is to uncover the echoes of things I did that let myself down, that tarnished my character. I call them echoes because they can only be real if they relate to the way I am and think and behave today. And that's where the overhauling comes in.

Self sacrifice should not mean turning over your whole life to take care of someone or something to the detriment of your own well being, not if love is involved. The best self sacrifice can mean giving up those ideas, beliefs, traits and habitual activities, some of which you may cherish but that are antagonistic to your own well being and those around you. That requires courage, discipline and a cold hard objective look at yourself.

Check the ground under your feet. Has any of it washed away? Check the bricks of your beliefs. Do any of them need to be replaced? Check the walls. Have you allowed any mental termites to get in? Check the staircase . Are your hopes and plans still sturdy? Check the roof. Are you safely protected from the storms of life?

So with the proper tools in hand, I hope, I've begun the overhaul to determine how much character I have left and to restore the rest. Wish me luck. (Good luck Vagabond.)

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up

What A World

Vie with each other in good works.

The Koran
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Hello Bruce
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There's an amusing saying about the competition among the super rich which goes, "He who has the most when he dies wins." It's funny, but it's also pathetic.

Imagine a world in which the acquiring and hoarding of wealth is not the primary acclivity of people, where the fear of financial insecurity doesn't drive them to obtain more than they need, where there is no military-industrial complex, no multi national corporations, no mega farms, but where instead goodness and morality are the basic commodities of life.

There have been times and places where that was true. When the early Puritan pilgrims arrived in America they had a meager start to their new lives, the church was the center of their small communities and goodness was what prompted them and kept them together. Unfortunately along with their simple fundamentalist religion came superstition. Thus when the witch trials started it wasn't theft, rape and murder they were tried for. It was evil. Non goodness.

Imagine a community where superstition does not rule, where real goodness has a chance to establish itself and flourish like the flocks and crops of the first settlers. Imagine a world where the competition is for kindness, mercy, good deeds, instead of more land and more money.

Is it an impossible utopia? Maybe. But give it a lick. If we all started genuinely trying to win gold medals at kindness, benevolence and good works, what a world, what a world, what a world.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.

Flip The Blanket

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.

M. C. Escher
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Hello Ernie
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This is the 1,841st edition of Vagabond Journeys. I've been writing and posting one almost every day since 2006. To the world at large it would be known as an exercise in futility. Yesterday I had only 15 known readers when I should have hundreds, thousands. So why do I do it?

Love is one answer. I love to feel my imagination wake up and start working. I love to feel that swirl of ideas around my head. I love it when the natural flow of inspiration brings up a concept better than the one I thought of on my own.

Those are selfish things. Need is another one. I need to share my thoughts, ideas, enthusiasm for living and my life experience with other people. Of what use is a senior citizen if he doesn't open up the trunk, go through everything, throw out the old shoes, wasted love notes and foolish dreams, then bundle together the true values of decades of a life lived.

Hope is another reason why I don't give up. As an actor I have played for an audience of one and an audience of five thousand. The performance was always the same as at other times, the same commitment, the same joy. Why does the violinist return to the same concertos he has played before? Why does the golfer take his clubs out to the course even in the cold weather? Because every swing is a finger poked into the magic world of perfection. The golf swing, the music, my writing aren't perfect, but there is always the possibility that one day it will be.

Despair is another reason why to keep writing. An artist is one who must create, who must let imagination loose from any attempt to cage it, who must feel the blessing of inspiration and recognize it when it comes. For me, who lives in a cultural vacuum, I must create the only atmosphere in which I can survive.

The urge and search for perfection may seem like an absurdity to the rational mind. Yet the greatest achievers of the human race were those who did the impossible. I may get the readers I deserve some day, I may not. I may get close to perfection some day, I may not. But I will grab one side of the blanket with the other artists who are willing to try the absurd and flip truth and beauty into the sky and see haw high we can make it fly.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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The Older Ox

Either run with the big dogs or stay on the porch.

Big Mark
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Hello Val
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There's a tradition among farmers that calls for yoking a young inexperienced ox with an older ox so that the young one will quickly learn the routine of plowing. They don't send the young ox to college. They just tether him to the older ox and that's that. The young one learns fast.

When I was studying drawing at the Art Student's League I always tried to sit next to someone who was better at it, to learn from them by observing.

There are real problems connected to learning a new task, a new job or a new career. Most people don't do it right.

Here's an example. I was hired at a radio station and my first day of work the boss put me on the air at the busiest time, the morning drive time, before I knew which switches did what or what problems I was going to face with news and weather reports and phone calls. The boss thought it would be good to put me there so I would get the full effect of the job. He was wrong. It was a nightmare. But by noon I was a big dog. I had to be. At a different station I broke in on the all night shift which was much simpler and enabled me to learn all I needed to know to handle any on air shift at that station.

Approaching this topic from a much different angle there are those who come into a job situation thinking they know how it's done when in fact they don't. I'm sure that happens in many enterprises but I have found it to be quite prevalent in the theatre business, the one I have spent my life in.

No doubt the glamorous nature of what actors do attracts many people to the trade but why should anyone decide to be an actor without knowing what it entails or, worse, assuming they know. I've seen too many youngsters and others jump in with the big dogs when they should have stayed on the porch.

I partly fault the kind of education some people get. Acting is an art, but it is also a trade, a craft, and like any craft it has it's rules and it's techniques. I have worked with too many recent graduates of important Drama Departments and Academies of Art who were not taught those techniques. I don't know what they were taught or who taught them and I don't want to know. Those new to the trade didn't know they needed to stay on the porch and watch the big dogs run.

There is a highly regarded drama department at a well known college in the
East. I have yet to work with a recent graduate of the school who really knows acting. After many years away from that school I had to give one graduate a lesson in voice placement. I wondered how he could be a drama major with a BFA in Acting and never have been taught that.

It's worse when they are arrogant. They know what their teachers told them or didn't tell them and they believe it's the way without discussion. I had to give one young fellow a lesson in how to be a stage manager. He laughed at the rules until the other members of the cast threatened him. He got back upon the porch.

I have experienced this type of faulty training first hand. I was asked to perform a scene for a directing class at a very important film school in the Northeast Not only did that teacher ignore talking about the directing, he tried to correct the acting. He didn't know what he was talking about because he didn't know what acting is. I felt sorry for the students. If you're a college professor of something you don't do yourself, don't take an actor with 25 years experience in stage, film and TV and give him acting lessons. Stay on the porch.

I write about theatre and acting because that's what I know. But I'm sure the same circumstances apply to any important endeavor. Don't assume you know what you do not know. Watch out for people who think they know but don't. And always find an older more experienced ox to hook up next to if you can. Otherwise stay on the porch.

Dana Bate - The 1.840th edition of Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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Summer Mornings

Be a summer morning to your friends.

Dana Bate
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Hello Margie
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While the dew still bathes the grass.
While the leaves and petals open up to kiss the daylight.
While the coolness of the night still lingers on your land.
While the unknown stressful dreams slip into oblivion.
Be a summer morning to your friends.

Before the humidity of hard work fills the air.
Before the heat of purpose takes the wheel.
Before the noise of human life drowns out the song.
Before the blaze of struggle scatters peace.
Be a summer morning to your friends.

When the hot wind chides at work not finiashed.
When the crack of thunder signals fear.
When the smack of lightening tears at hopes.
When the drowning rains wash out the plans.
Be a summer morning to your friends.

After the firs starts to cook the meal.
After chores take their toll in sweat.
After obligations are bundled and removed.
After today's expectations fade.
Be a summer morning to your friends.

When night descends with darkness and doubt.
When there are still mountains to climb and seas to cross.
When regret looms for the stack of lost, forgotten years.
When sorrow turns down the covers for another stressful dream.
Be a summer morning to your friends.

Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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