By: Chris Warren.

While visiting my brother’s family a few weeks ago, my seven year old nephew volunteered to “help” pick up some pizza I bought for the kids. He thinks my jeep is totally badass and was excited about going on a little road trip. As we rolled along, he gave me a look of sincerity that only a child old can pull off and asked, “Where is the button to open the window?” My jeep is a bare-bones mode of transport, and he could not wrap his young brain around the concept of rolling the window down by hand. I likewise did not get very far trying to explain the stick shift transmission and lack of power door locks. The interaction encapsulated the stark if not humorous differences between generations and how they embrace or resist technology.

People in my age group have a unique perspective: We are young enough to accept new technologies, yet old enough to know what it was like before they existed. Less than ten years ago I was buying at least one and sometimes three newspapers every day, and subscribed to about half a dozen magazines too. Once I got a smart phone all that ended. I haven’t bought three newspapers in the last few years, and the only magazine I get is one that comes included with my membership in an organization. The thirty bucks or whatever it is I pay for the data plan on my phone is more than offset by all the periodicals I’m no longer buying. I am still an anachronism compared to guys like my nephew: He will probably go through his entire life having never read a printed newspaper.

At the other end of the scale, my retired parents still have a “dead tree edition” newspaper delivered to their door every morning. It does not impress them that they already pay for an internet connection offering infinitely greater choices and more timely information. One of my Dad’s favorite gripes is that the weather report is never correct. I’ve tried, with zero success, to explain that one of the reasons the newspaper weather report is always off is because it’s already twelve-plus hours old when the paper hits the porch. Mom & Dad are from an era when newspapers had a morning and evening edition. I spend a few minutes reviewing the news on line before leaving for work each morning, and I use my phone to update myself a few times a day. Print media has been in a death spiral for years and it’s squeaking by only because of people like my parents. I don’t know a single person in my age group or below who regularly reads a newspaper.

If it’s true young people take well to technology, then it’s not much of a reach to conclude they are least able to live without it. Teenagers are constantly staring into their phones because, well, they are not capable of going more than ten minutes without checking in with their friends. I can’t smack them around too much on this one, though: I too am lost in the little screen a lot more than I’d care to admit. In the business world the reasons may be more legitimate but the addiction is just as bad. There no longer is such a thing as being “out of the office”. My boss expects me to be responsive and there are very few acceptable excuses for not being available.

It seems that for every new annoyance technology creates, an old annoyance is eliminated. And I think most of the new annoyances are not inherent to the technology, but rather, how it’s used. In another time all my great words would have been generated on a typewriter, on paper, then sent to a publisher…assuming I could convince a publisher I had something worth printing. This blog is created with a Macbook and Open Office, and through the magic of the internet I am my own publisher, how many readers I have notwithstanding. I miss the IBM Selectric and White Out days like I’d miss stomach flu. If you were born too late to use an IBM Selectric or White Out (or don’t even know what they are), say a little prayer of thanks.

Those of us who are old enough to have lived through the transition to the internet and a techno-centric society can see it both ways: It’s great to have cool features on cars but we miss the days when cars were low tech enough to work on without plugging them into a laptop. We love our smart phones but at times resent the expectation that we remain constantly in touch with everyone in our circle. Electronic banking is easy and efficient but there’s security risks. And everyone is concerned about more and more government snooping into every little thing we do. Modern life offers plenty to love and plenty to hate.

The stress of resisting technology is greater than the stress of accepting it. I realize that’s a hard reality to grasp when sitting on hold lost in the special hell of “press one for billing, press two for sales,” but as someone who has had the dual experience of having to run to deposit a paper check in the bank before they close at 1:00 pm on Saturday (and then wait until Tuesday for it to post) versus depositing it electronically through my phone at 10:00 pm Sunday night and seeing the updated balance in real time, I can say with complete assurance that modern conveniences solve more problems than they create.

Guys like me are nostalgic for the straightforward simplicity of the old days, even if those days weren’t so long ago, while at the same time recognizing that iPads and high definition TV and zippy internet is pretty cool, even if they don’t always work flawlessly. The gadgets and gizmos give me more “screw this!” moments than I would care to endure; my rage tempered by a Zen-like moment to affirm that I would not enjoy going back to buying newspapers every day and balancing my checkbook by hand –oh wait– I don’t use checks anymore! People like my parents are understandably given some deference due to their age. As for me and my peers, we don’t feel too old to try new things, but we are old enough to remember a time when not having so many of contemporary life’s bells and whistles wasn’t all that bad.

By: Chris Warren

Before World War II, everyone either lived in the city or in the country. There was no in between. The post war industrial (and baby) boom, along with faster and more reliable transportation fostered conditions for people who wanted out of crowded cities, but were not willing to live in the sticks, to settle for a very attractive compromise. The suburbs were born. At face value it’s a total win-win: Most of the big city amenities and fresh air and wide open spaces and good schools and low crime. In the beginning, farmland near cities could be bought for cheap and replanted with very nice albeit repetitive mass produced “cookie cutter” housing. The ‘burbs did not have much character, but they were affordable, clean, and safe.

In the decades since, the suburbs have become small scale versions of the metropolises they were intended to be an escape from. They have upscale shopping, nightlife, entertainment venues attracting big talent, all the goodies, and in some cases crime and traffic jams. It’s no longer necessary to go to the big city to find cool things to do. Somewhere along the line, they took the sub out of suburban.

I grew up in a very clean, decent, safe, friendly community. The schools and local government are highly effective and there is nowhere in the town I would be afraid to walk through at night. It’s a perfectly respectable place. Now I’m seriously looking into eventually relocating to a rural area in a Southern gulf or Western state. I’ve blogged before (here and here) about the “thin veneer of civilization.” My quaint and comfortable existence is one terrorist attack or financial collapse from becoming a third world hellhole (see also, Detroit). As much as I like my neighbors, I do not want to support them when society implodes, and I certainly do not want to fight with them for whatever resources are left, especially if the resources are my private stock.

When I mention my plan to others, I typically get funny “why don’t you want to stay?”  type stares followed by the usual arguments for hanging around: It’s clean and safe, there’s lots of shops and stores, there’s good medical facilities, yadda yadda yadda. Yes, I get it. Everything they say is true. I think their defensiveness comes from a false sense that my wanting to leave is an affront on their choice to stay. As I’ve said many times, It’s a lovely place, really! There’s no need to defend it. The other and probably main motivation for my wishful exodus is much more basic: I’ve spent my entire life as a suburban white boy. Now I want something else, somewhere else. Getting out of here is a long term goal that may take another decade or more to achieve, if it’s achieved at all. I’m not completely certain where this plan will take me but I’m sure that I do not want to die in suburbia.

It’s not lost on me that rural living comes with compromises, some of them substantial. A lot of the infrastructure of society that is assumed in urban areas is deliberately excluded for the country folk. Along with probably having a well instead city water and a county sheriff instead of local cop, I can forget about a pizza in thirty minutes, good cell coverage, fast (any?) broadband, and running to the store for every little thing. Maybe I’m nuts: I see living in a trailer set in the middle of a bunch of acres as a net-plus. In exchange for big city amenities I get tons and tons of space, and with space comes freedom!

I want to enjoy my ham radio hobby with no concerns for aesthetics…tons of antennas and wire and hardware all over my roof. I want to sit on my back deck and and shoot my guns. I want to find an old dirtbike and make my own little motocross track on the property. I want a big garage where I can mess with my machines and have an electronics/radio shop too. If any family or friends fall on hard times, all they have to do is show up dragging a trailer behind them. I’ll have the means to supply a patch of dirt for them to plop down on without feeling crowded in myself. There will be plenty of fresh air and sunshine to go around. And speaking of sunshine, I need enough space for the solar panels I’ll use to power the place. When (not if) the cities become unglued and society starts regressing to chaos, I’ll be far away from all of it and hopefully situated well enough to come out the other side in one piece.

Are the give-ups worth it? It depends on what one considers a give up. Not having decent pizza for an hour in any direction is something I can probably live with but having to drive an hour to see a dentist or get a fan belt for my truck is not a minor hassle. Any major life event comes with a level of uncertainty. Who has ever changed jobs, bought a house, got married, or had a baby without thinking, even fleetingly, that they were making a huge mistake? Never having a moment’s hesitation or always wanting to rush a decision solely to end the discomfort of having to decide is in itself a red flag. It indicates a lack of seriousness, which turns an educated decision where risk is at least understood if not mitigated into a gamble where risk is the only factor in play. Indeed, there are no “educated decisions” being made in a casino. The very long odds of striking it rich are the same for everyone in the place no matter how much they’ve all bullshit themselves into believing they have figured out how to game the system. Taking the same approach to real life issues yields the same chance results. As strongly as I feel pulled out of the suburbs, there is the counterbalance of good judgement telling me to be completely self aware that what I’m what I’m gaining is worth more than what I’m giving up.

As much as I belabor on about carefully thinking everything through, at some point it’s time to stop pondering and start doing. Or, conclude that it’s best to stay where I am and be happy with it. Either way, the cycle of beating my head against the wall cannot roll on forever. Life changes (relationship, baby, job, etc.) sometimes make these decisions for us. I am fully cognizant that I may someday make a big leap out to the country only to discover that even after doing all my homework and calculating the minutiae, the life is not for me. Sigh. It’s better to try and fail then to not try at all and spend the rest of my life wondering what if.

by: Chris Warren.

It’s an informal birthright for each generation to complain that the generation coming after it is lazy and unmotivated. It pops up pretty much everywhere that “kids these days” are not as principled as the kids of years ago. Debate over which generation is morally superior misses the point, though. I think it’s more meaningful to first ask how “kids today” got to be the way they are, and second, be fair minded enough to admit that it’s just as wrong to cast the wide net of stereotyping over young people as it is with any other demographic.

I’m not clear on the concept: Parents are responsible for the values their children are exposed to, which is is the main driver of what kind of adults the children will ultimately become, yet the parents complain about the content of kids’ character. So if the kids have an attitude problem, then where did they get it from? Isn’t it kind of like screwing up your own do-it-yourself home remodeling project and then complaining that you’re the victim of an incompetent contractor? The most common defense to this is that your offspring are darling angels and everyone else is raising wretched beasts. Good luck with that lame justification. All the other parents think the same thing, too.

The adults who whine about children who aren’t respectful, who are not capable of dealing with the slightest disappointment, who cringe at the language and attitudes of young people, are the same adults who will raise hell with any teacher who dares put a kid in his place, who think kids have the “right” to feel awesome no matter how mediocre they actually are, who insist that sports are for self-esteem and not winners and losers and every child should get a trophy even if they do, in fact, suck.

The other half of the discussion is if it’s even fair in the first place to cast young people as being lesser than their elders. Adolescent basket cases such as Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus are over the top media spectacles who make it easy to write off an entire generation. But for every one of them there are thousands of nameless kids who are level-headed and well grounded. Either in spite of or because of their upbringing, they are quietly going about their lives, getting good grades, accepting failures with grace, and respecting others. We never hear about these young people because focused, well behaved teenagers do not make compelling news stories. They are too busy being positive and productive to worry about who is paying attention.

Anyone who has ever met one of the “good” kids knows they all seem to have a common thread: They have parents who expect excellence and don’t put up with any excuses, nor do they defend failure. When Junior doesn’t make the team, dad does not call the coach and threaten a lawsuit. He instead tells his kid he didn’t make the team because he wasn’t good enough. Get over it; don’t be a crybaby. Practice harder and try again next season. Kids who turn to Jell-O over every letdown were trained to act that way.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I used to believe if a kid grows up to be a bum, it’s the parents’ fault. I don’t believe that any more. There are tons of people who had dreadful, even abusive childhoods with no encouragement or support yet grew up to be very successful and respected. And of course there are people who had every possible advantage: A loving family, a stable home, a good education…and ended up as losers, in some cases committing famously violent crimes. A parent has a duty to teach their children morals and values, but at some point the child becomes an adult and makes their own decisions. If the parents truly did their job and the kid chooses the wrong path anyway, that’s not mom & dad’s fault. We can’t declare parents guilty forever.

I know someone –I won’t even say if they are male or female or how I know them– who was raised in a warm home by two very kind parents. Though of modest means, they went to great trouble and expense to provide for the children. The family attended church, sent the kids to upscale schools…did everything right. This person is now a middle aged adult and by any measure is a disappointment. They are not a criminal or a gang banger or anything serious, but their character is not at all in line with what they were exposed to growing up. The long retired parents are often visibly distressed at how their grown child acts. I genuinely feel bad for them because I know they are sincerely decent and honorable people who worked very hard to equip their kid to be so much more. Incidentally, the other siblings have solid jobs, a family, are respectful towards the elders, and are someone any parent would be proud of. Same environment, completely different outcome.

When a kid goes wrong, there is a real good chance that behind the scenes is a parent who at least partially failed in their role. I realize this contradicts my theory that it’s unfair to blame the parents for everything and good parents sometimes produce rotten kids and vice-versa, but if we accept that then we must also accept that it’s not fair to label kids universally as overindulged little brats. A huge majority of them are capable of making good decisions and exhibit their maturity every day. It’s disingenuous to denigrate young people as if they operate in a vacuum and their elders had nothing to do with how the kids formed their beliefs. In modern society, stereotyping minorities, women, religions, or ethnic groups is generally unacceptable and in some versions is even illegal! All adults, not just parents, owe young people the simple dignity of being treated as individuals, looking for the best instead of assuming the worst.

by: Chris Warren

The justice system of the literary world is somewhat random, richly rewarding pablum not worthy of a greeting card while genuinely talented writers are condemned to being the obscure subjects of graduate school term papers that will be read once for grading, then time-capsuled on a shelf in a remote corner of the university library where they become mere stuffing to help make the library’s volume collection numbers look good. This concept can also be applied to lives and situations outside of the literary world.

Madison Cawein (CAW-wine) was born in 1865 in Louisville, Kentucky and died in 1914, after publishing thirty six books of over 1500 poems. In his time he was well known and for at least a while earned a respectable living as a poet before losing most of his fortune to bad investments. He was also a critical success, having his work featured in Chicago-based Poetry magazine (to this day still the top-tier international poetry showcase) and gaining the respect of Ezra Pound and other contemporary heavyweights.

So why does almost no one know who this guy is? A confluence of bad timing, the poet’s own stubbornness, and not being taken seriously by scholars in the years since his death relegated Madison to minor poet status. His backstory is one we of the twenty first century should pay attention to.

Cawein’s life began just as the Civil War was ending. In the years that followed, the United States was too culturally fractured for any meaningful domestic writing movement to take hold. The Romantic Period had fizzled out, and its replacement, the Victorian Era, was borrowed from Europe to fill the literary vacuum in the USA. Madison Cawein loosely adapted the Victorian style, and this would later contribute to his being largely ignored after his death.

Cawein’s father was a herbal practitioner who made medication from wild plants he picked himself. The young Madison often went along on these outings, and that was the beginning of a lifelong love of nature which became a central theme in most of his compositions. Nature themes written with a rhythmic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (known as iambic meter) were popular in Victorian literature. This style of composition became Cawein’s trademark:

The cricket’s cry and the locust’s whirr,
And the note of a bird’s distress,
With the rasping sound of the grasshopper,
Clung to the loneliness
Like burrs to a trailing dress.

Especially when read aloud, the deliberate sing-song pattern of this passage from Cawein’s Waste Land dances off the page. Had the Victorian Era lasted longer, Madison Cawein could have kept on doing what he was doing and likely become a legend for it. By time his writing career started in earnest, Victorian literature was falling out of favor to make way for the ascending Modernist movement which began in the late 1800’s.

Remaining true to oneself is fine when creating art for art’s sake, but to make a living at it and stay on the literary radar, one must be a little more practical. In Cawein’s time, anyone who was not on the Modernist bus was probably going to be run over by it. Resistance to change frequently comes with harsh consequences even in the otherwise gentle realm of poetry. Hindsight being always clear, we nonetheless will never know if Cawein by design or by accident sacrificed a professional writing career to maintain the purity of his style.

Literature is not a stand-alone entity that exists solely to look and sound nice. It has a deeper purpose of offering insight, to give the reader something to think about and ultimately teach a lesson that can be applied to ourselves. The lesson does not necessarily have to come out of the literature itself; it can and often does come from the author’s life experiences. This is the place of enlightenment Madison Cawein brings us to.

There is no set system to decide which writers become successful and which do not. Certainly, much lesser poets than Cawein received acclaim they did not earn. But isn’t that how it works for pretty much all of life’s pursuits? I want to believe we’re in a meritocracy, where everyone truly gets what they deserve and work for. Yet, let’s not kid ourselves: Success can often be attributed to personal connections, good old fashioned luck, and sometimes outright dishonesty. The literary world that initially loved Madison Cawein ultimately kicked him to the curb. The adage “life is not fair” has no poet’s exemption.

An unfortunate setback was that Cawein’s year of birth went against the Victorian style he adopted. He must have had some sense that his chosen genre of poetry was on the wane, yet he continued with it. That might have made him a devoted artist, but it was a poor career choice. Fast forward to today: It no longer applies, especially for young people, to “do what you love and the money will follow.” Not too long ago, a kid could pursue a passion for medieval history or bee keeping or dance and have a decent shot at finding work in their field. But like Cawein, anyone who now aspires to place their dreams first and thinks the bills will magically take care of themselves has the reality of the times beating them back. Imagine a modern day parent’s reaction if their son or daughter disclosed that they wanted to be a poet, much less a poet in a literary style that was near the end of its run.

We short ourselves by blowing off the words and writers of the past as having no contemporary relevance beyond grudgingly satisfying a high school or college language arts elective requirement. Those who break through the stasis and open themselves to the insights of these writers and the lives they lived will find a surprising connection to their own twenty-first century existence. In Cawein we have a guy whose professional career and legacy was stunted by a string of bad luck and bad decisions. Who cannot relate to that on some level?

The beauty and power of the written word is that it preserves the wisdom of others, becoming a keeper of thought reaching across the ages. Writers make me feel like they are always at my side: It’s a comfort to read words from hundreds of years ago and see myself in them and know that even back then someone understood me, someone “gets it.” Madison Cawine has been gone for a century but like all writers great and small, his words and deeds are worth listening to; the lessons of literature are ageless.