I’m a singer: I bring my own consensus!

Did you ever notice how a group of people often decide to sing together? It seems as if they’re looking for consensus. One looks someone else in the eye and says “We should sing!” Maybe that person will agree, and then the stage is set for consensus and singing. Most people are uncertain of their own abilities, so they don’t open their mouths without consensus, by which I mean some assurance that they will not be the only one in the room singing. For me, however (as everyone who knows me will attest), this is not a problem.

I work part time as a telemarketer for a small company near my home. I’m a consultant, not an employee. This allows me to concentrate on telemarketing tasks without having to go to meetings. It also means that I largely let the employee culture pass me by. None of the employees really expects me to have to show up at a meeting or a birthday party get-together in the break room — and up until now, I have ignored such get-togethers, despite my desk being the closest one to the break room. It’s probably only once or twice in a whole month, but sometimes it’s so loud in there I have to focus myself like a blowtorch to keep calling.

So there I was, sitting at my desk making calls, when I saw someone walking briskly towards the break room. And then there were two heading in the same direction, and I knew something was up. Then there were four, all scurrying like people expecting something good. Turned out it was Sharon’s birthday. She inhabits the office (with door) in the corner near us telemarketers. She’s pleasant but very busy, and unlike some of the other employees, she and I had had no conversation beyond “good afternoon” since I came to work here. I overheard the employees wishing her a happy birthday and describing the snacks that they brought. No one sang “Happy Birthday” — I supposed they couldn’t find their consensus.

Mary Ann, my fellow telemarketer, whispered from two desks away “You should go in there and sing Happy Birthday!” She already knows I am ham enough to do it, and that I would love to tell people about my choir. I whispered back, yes, she was right, that I should do it, but deep down, I was thinking that I wasn’t going to. I was just going to sit there and make my calls, and let them have their singing-free gathering. But with each call I made, the idea kept coming back that I could go, that I should go and destabilize their non-singing. After finishing a call, I said to myself “Mary Ann is right! I’m going take the chance and just barge in there and sing!” So in I barged.

“Sharon,” I said, “I saw the sign at reception that it was your birthday — so Happy Birthday!” I looked around the room. “Hey, doesn’t anybody sing Happy Birthday around here?” People chuckled. I smiled at Sharon and added “Well, I’m a singer, and I don’t care!” I sang the birthday song right to her. She was charmed, if a little embarrassed. And everybody else joined in the song. That is the other way by which people decide to sing — following a leader! I’m a singer. I brought my own consensus.

It was a good decision. I did something nice for Sharon. I got to mention my choir. I took with me a delicious peanut butter brownie that someone passed on a plate. And I took the advice of a friend. Thanks to Mary Ann, the day was a little brighter and a little more fun, all because I took her suggestion to do something joyful and unexpected. I think the ability to make that happen is one of the best things about being a singer.

Rededication Day, Part II — 9/14

Read Part I of this Entry!

This show that we in the Starlite Chorale were gathering that night to rehearse was a patriotic-themed show called “Sing Out, America!” As part of our show we were singing an arrangement of the folk song “Shenandoah”, George M. Cohan’s “You’re a Grand Old Flag”, Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” and a medley of the songs belonging to our armed services — “The Marines’ Hymn”, “As Those Caissons Go Rolling Along” for the Army, “Anchors Aweigh” for the Navy, and “Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder” for the Air Force. We would be singing it at the end of September in Ocean Grove, New Jersey as part of a yearly scholarship-fund benefit for the Asbury Park Lions Club, so it was important on the night of September 14 that we have a rehearsal despite the uncertainty of the time.

A day or two after the 9/11 attack, word was getting around through e-mail and the Web that on Friday the 14th, there ought to be a patriotic candlelight vigil, to be held informally on street corners all over the United States by patriotic Americans who wanted to make a statement to ourselves and to the world. People would light candles against the darkness and wave American flags to show our love for our country, no matter what happened.

As I exited the Garden State Parkway, around 6:30 p.m. on my way to Linden, New Jersey, I began to notice that the candlelight vigil was already beginning. True enough, but candles and American flags were out in force on many of the suburban street corners on my route. People were calling out and waving to cars passing by, trying to get them to join the vigil. There were a lot of flags. I remember a very big man on one corner waving a huge flag on a big flagpole — the sort you would put on your house — way far over his head. It just amazed me, but even more it amazed me that I wanted to be on the street corners with those people. I was always someone who wondered why people had to go do things like that — wave flags in public and be sentimental and patriotic. “Don’t we all love our country?” was the thought I often had. Too often, I had seen people whose sentimental patriotism, whose love of our country, seemed only a first step on the road to hating the outsiders, whoever they were and however defined. I distrusted patriotism. That day though, I had changed. I just looked around and loved the people — out on the street corners — and places that truly belonged to my country — suburban towns and streets in New Jersey — and they belonged to me, and I belonged to them. I wanted to be counted among those who loved the USA. I discovered that my love for my country was just love, unmixed with any kind of hate towards those people who had attacked it.

But I had a choral rehearsal to go to, so I passed them by and parked in Linden near the church. I remember it being a chilly September evening, the ground a little moist from an earlier rain — not unpleasant, but a foretaste of the coming autumn. The Starlite Chorale waited outside the door to Stryker Hall for someone with a key to come and let us in. We talked about 9/11 as well as our upcoming show. Then, I think our director appeared with the key, but stopped us before we went in, and said: “Let’s not stay in and rehearse when all these people are out on the street. We should go out and sing with the people!” So that is what we did. As we walked along we sang familiar hymns as well as singing “America the Beautiful”, and “My Country ’tis of Thee”. Wherever there were people gathered that night, we stopped and sang with them.

We stopped in front of a restaurant and asked if we could sing for them. Of course they said yes. The windows were open and we sang our patriotic songs. We started to develop a following. I think it would be so rare for 20 people to be all walking together along the street that you almost couldn’t help but gain a following of people asking “Why are all these people walking along together?” There was a pretty girl wearing a T-shirt with the paratrooper emblem of the 101st Airborne Division. She said that her fiancé was currently serving our country, and could we sing the Army song for her. So we sang our military medley, dedicated to him and all the soldiers and sailors protecting our country. We moved on and arranged ourselves on the steps of City Hall to sing more of our show and more of our songs for the people who’d followed along. I noticed a young twentysomething man, with purple hair, no less, who you would pass on the street with no idea that the heart of a patriot beat within him. But there he was, singing along. Maybe, like me, he had had no idea that he had any form of an unashamed patriot’s heart.

So that is why, when we in the United States officially commemorate the date of September 11 and remember those killed in the attack and those heroes who died trying to rescue them, in my heart there is another date to celebrate. I call this day Rededication Day. It was September 14, 2001, a late-summer Friday night, when I and without doubt many of my countrymen realized the deep love we have for our country and its people, a love that had been there all along but was waiting for something to wake it. It’s only when you understand that something is in jeopardy that you can see it for the precious thing it is. It is unlikely that we as a nation will commemorate this day, but I believe there are thousands of people across the nation who will remember it. Rededication Day would be a day when Americans would stand on street corners, light candles, wave flags and sing the songs of love for our country and our heritage. It doesn’t have to wait for September. Let it be today, on the anniversary of Dr. King’s birth. Let it be tomorrow, at midnight, when Barack Obama becomes our next president, or during the Inaugural celebration. Just let it be. Let us rededicate ourselves to liberty, rededicate ourselves to our Constitution, and rededicate ourselves to the protection and continued success of the United States of America.

“Our fathers’ God, to Thee, author of Liberty, to thee we sing,
Long may our land be bright with Freedom’s holy light,
Protect us by thy might, great God, our King.”

– Samuel Francis Smith, “America”

Rededication Day, Part I — 9/11

The other day, Tony, the director of my choir, the Starlite Chorale, sent us an e-mail detailing how we would be performing our Spring show in Stryker Hall, which is part of Linden Reformed Church. His message made me think about September, 2001, which was the last time we were there — an unexpected Friday evening rehearsal on September 14, 2001, a day which ought to be celebrated every year in our nation, a day which I now call Rededication Day. To explain why I feel this way requires me to tell you my experiences on September 11, 2001, the day of the attack on and terrifying collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

On that Tuesday morning, I was commuting to work as usual. I had about a 40 mile commute each way, so I would always listen to the radio for music, talk and traffic reports. I was just about to make a turn off to the next highway I had to travel when I saw a traffic jam ahead of me. I turned on my favorite talk radio station expecting a report, but heard some commentator talking excitedly about how “the plane hit the World Trade Center”. I thought of a TV show I’d seen which talked about how a propeller plane had hit the Empire State building in the 1930s, and then wondered when this report would be over so I could get the traffic. Then he said that another airplane had struck the other World Trade Center tower, and with chilling certainty I knew that it had been an attack. I no longer cared about traffic. I found myself yelling at my radio as if someone could hear, as if those people who planned this attack could hear my hatred of them. I yelled, “Death to my country’s enemies! Death to my country’s enemies!” over and over again. People who know me would tell you that this is not a typical thing for me to say, ever. I never wanted to hate my country’s enemies — I wanted to defeat them with courage, resolve and graciousness in victory. There’s a quote from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s book, Mother Night, that explains how I feel:

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting…but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all sorts of ugliness so attractive. It’s that part of an imbecile…that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.

But on that day, I suddenly did not care to listen to any gracious, moderating influences. I wanted someone to pay with their lives for this attack on my country.

If you lived through this day, you, like me probably couldn’t concentrate at work, you probably turned on the radio and kept it on if you could, or if you had access to a computer, went out to all the news sites to find out what was really happening in New York. At my office, any time anyone found anything out, they simply called it out for general hearing. I heard that the Pentagon had been attacked, and someone else called out that 20 airplanes had been hijacked and were likely to be crashing into other important places. It reminded me of that verse from the book of Revelation, that in the end times there will be “wars and rumors of wars”. One row over, a woman said “A tower just fell down!” I wondered what tower she meant, thinking of something as flimsy as a radio tower, and not ever imagining that it was an entire skyscraper that had fallen into a pile of rubble and expanding cloud of deadly, noxious dust. Then, we all went out to the building’s lobby which always had CNN playing on television screens in the corners, and we watched over and over video of World Trade Center towers falling. There was no work getting done anywhere. The company closed early and sent us all home.

The first thing I did was to travel to my wife’s office, with almost a compulsion to talk to her face to face, and to see that she was all right. Logically, it made no sense. Her office was even farther away from New York City than mine, in a green, suburban location that was really unlikely to have ever been a target. But, as with moderation, reason also had decided to sit this one out on me.

My wife’s company also decided to close early, so we picked up our daughter Sarah in daycare and went home to await Abby coming home on the bus, and I think we all felt better when we were all home again and the door shut behind us, as if it were a real barrier against this fearful time.

Not long after, Tony, the director of the Starlite Chorale, called up to let me know that our regular Tuesday-night rehearsal was canceled. There was just no way anyone could concentrate on something so seemingly trivial that day as a choral rehearsal. I imagine everybody else was just as happy to stay in their homes behind closed doors, eating dinner and compulsively watching the news. The next day, Tony sent e-mail suggesting we get together at Linden Reformed Church on Friday to rehearse. It was important for us to rehearse, because we were preparing for one of our big shows, a charity benefit for the Asbury Park Lions Club at the end of the month. So that was how we all happened to be in Linden, New Jersey, on the night of September 14, 2001.

How I learned about sharingVillage Cancer Survivor Groups

I was getting ready to go to my new job as a telemarketer for a business publication, when I saw a commercial for the NJEA.  A man dressed as a doctor said “I am a pediatric oncologist, and…” Even though I’d heard that commercial 10 times, it had never been processed by the emotional part of my brain that processed it that day.  I got all choked up and teary-eyed over the fact that we need pediatric oncologists — the fact that children suffer and possibly die from cancer.  I soon got over it, marveling that such a thing had never happened to me before.

What I do at my job is call businesses in my state and offer them free trial subscriptions.  We hope that they will find our publication useful in conducting business and, after the free subscription expires, will buy one for the discounted price we offer to pre-trial recipients.  The listing usually has the name of the company’s business manager or owner, but we are willing to talk to anyone answers the phone.  I called up this one company where “Bill V.” was listed.  It’s a bit of a surprise to me when the owner answers the phone himself.  I spieled my spiel to him, and usually people just listen and then say yes or no, but he was asking questions about the newspaper, such as what it was like, what kind of articles were in it and so forth.  Suddenly, he was making a pitch to me — saying that he was a big contributor to a charity that needed people who could talk on the phone the way I can.  Then he told me that it was a charity whose mission was to help people and especially children who were fighting cancer.  When he talked about the children, I could hear he was getting as choked up about them as I had been watching the commercial.  He invited me to a volunteer meeting which would occur in a few days. Considering my new-found emotional connection to the issue, it was like God and the universe were trying to tell me something.  I could not pass it up.

What I learned was that his charity is called sharingVillage Cancer Survivor Groups.  Their mission is to improve the quality of life for people with cancer, using physical, mental, spiritual and social means.  They do two things primarily.  The first one is to set up cancer survivor groups where people of all ages who have cancer, at whatever stage it might be in, can meet and talk and share and strengthen each other in the fight against this cellular rebellion.  The groups are led by “wounded healers”, which means a layperson and a psychologist who are either currently are fighting cancer or have successfully survived it.  The second thing they do is entirely for children. They call it “Driving for Surviving”.  In conjunction with the United States Equestrian Team,they take part in a multi-disciplinary program which includes art therapy, education and filmmaking, as well as the most unexpected part of it, which is that they learn equestrian carriage driving, using small carriages which are drawn by small and miniature horses who themselves are wounded healers, having suffered in some way themselves or have been rescued from certain slaughter.  Both the cancer groups and the driving programs cost nothing for the participants.

If you were looking for a good group in a worthy cause that you could donate to, this is that cause.  I have seen the devastating effects of cancer and cancer treatment on people I love, and the thought of giving people the wherewithal to fight cancer, to beat cancer, or simply to choose to live for one more day, is very precious to me.  I hope it may be precious to you.  If you would like to make a donation, please mail a check or money order to:

sharingVillage Cancer Survivor Groups, Inc.
P.O. Box 682
Far Hills NJ 07931-0682

sharingVillage Cancer Survivor Groups is as you might expect a certified nonprofit organization, and as such any donation you make to them is tax-deductible.

Please go to their website to see some photos and learn more!
http://sharingvillage.com/

Wherefore “Bruteforce Manor”?

The genesis of the name, of course is the phrase “brute-force manner”, a way of using sheer computer power to figure out someone’s system password rather than using craft, guile or personal knowledge. But I am no cracker or hacker. So why?

One day, there was a collision in my brain between “brute-force manner” and “Crackerbox Palace”, which was a 1976 George Harrison song, and “Voila!” (excuse my French,) a goofy, whimsical, welcoming English estate mutated into a creepy, decaying manor house where you will probably not have a good time.

The photo on the front page is of Eastern State Penitentiary, a creepy, decaying erstwhile prison which has mutated into a Philadelphia tourist attraction, and the photo comes courtesy of my daughter Abby, who has mutated into an excellent photographer. She has a way with images. Thanks, Abby!

You could read a lot into my choice of names, but the best answer to the initial question is found in the following quote:

” ‘Second to the right, and straight on till morning.’

That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland; but even
birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners, could not
have sighted it with these instructions. Peter, you see, just said
anything that came into his head.”
- J. M. Barrie, “Peter Pan”