The Great LIFE Photographers, by the editors of LIFE. Little, Brown and Company. 608 pages. $24.95.
Have you ever walked through a bookstore and been drawn to a book like a magnet? This happened to me a few weeks ago.
I was at the end of the book aisle at Costco, where they display the glitzy coffee-table books during the holiday season. Sitting on top of a stack, all by itself, was a copy of The Great LIFE Photographers, in a new trade paperback edition. Apparently it had been abandoned there by a previous shopper, and it appeared to be the only copy left in the store. I took a look at the front and back covers and almost before I knew it, the book was in my shopping cart.
I would recommend this book to anyone who cares about photography in general and photojournalism in particular. During its existence as a regular publication, from 1936 to 1972, LIFE magazine virtually defined photojournalism, and many of the great photographers of the middle years of the 20th Century were on its staff at one time or another.
This marvelous, 608-page book contains the best work of all 92 staff photographers as well as several others who were closely associated with the magazine. These are not just the best photographs to have appeared in the magazine. In many cases, they are among the greatest photographs of all time.
The founding editors of the magazine understood the power of a great photograph. In his introduction, John Loengard, one of the later LIFE photographers, showns a photograph of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist and close ally of Adolph Hitler, taken by Alfred Eisenstadt in 1933. Eistenstadt became the dean of the LIFE photographers and his photograph helped to shape the direction that the magazine would take. In public, Goebbels always tried to project a positive, benevolent image of himself, but this photo, which captures him in an unguarded moment with a malevolent sneer on his face, tells you all that you need to know about the evil man.
The editors who worked on the book devoted at least two pages to each photographer, including a portrait of the photographer and a short biographical note, and the best ones get as many as 10 pages. (There are two exceptions, Stedman Jones and Boris Paschkoff, each of whom joined the magazine in Paris in 1940 and left when France surrendered to Germany on June 28 of that year. Nothing more is known about them, and each is represented by one photo.)
Open the book to any page and you'll see at least one great photograph. In many cases, I was familiar with the photo but didn't know the photographer. Now I know.
The print quality is outstanding. The paper is a high-quality coated stock and the photos are printed at a high resolution. Costco has it for $14.95 and Amazon for a few dollars more. It's a bargain.
By way of background information, my own interest in photography goes back to the early 1960s, when I got my first single-lens-reflex camera. My first job after college, in 1965, was as a newspaper reporter and photographer. In the 1970s, I got to know Phil Douglis, a leading proponent of the use of photography in organizational communications, and learned much about photojournalism from his workshops, writings, and critiques of my own publications. I even managed to win some local and national awards for my work.
In addition, my then-wife was a photographer and artist, and when we were married she brought her collection of photography and art books with her. (They also left with her when we were divorced.) I spent a good deal of time admiring the work of great photojournalists such as W. Eugene Smith (my favorite), Robert Capa, and Margaret Bourke-White, all of whom worked for LIFE at one time or another, as well as Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and many other great photographers.
It's important for my younger readers to understand that in the time of LIFE magazine, there was no such thing as a digital camera and none of the automated features that we have come to take for granted, such as autofocus, automatic exposure control, or rapid multiple exposures. All cameras used film, and the film stocks of the time were very slow to respond to light.
The photographer had to do everything manually: Focus the camera, judge the amount of light on the subject, and select the best combination of aperture opening and shutter speed, depending on that light and the speed of the film. There wasn't much latitude for error. You either got it right or you didn't get the picture. Eventually, light meters became available, but the early ones weren't very accurate and could only give you an approximation of the proper setting. The great photographers didn't take photographs, they made them.
Most of the photographs that appeared in LIFE were black-and-white rather than color. The photographers who worked in black-and-white had to become expert in the effect of light in their photos. Turn to page 525 in the book and look at Gene Smith's photo of the Japanese woman bathing her deformed daughter, a victim of mercury poisoning. It's a masterpiece in the use of light, and as powerful as any painting that I have ever seen. It has been called photojournalism's Pieta.
Perhaps the most important quality that a photojournalist had to develop was knowing the instant when to trip the shutter--what Cartier-Bresson called "The Decisive Moment." Shutters were virtually instantaneous in those days but the shutter release button often had a fair amount of "travel" before it hit the release point, and every camera was different. You learned to depress the shutter button halfway, just short of the release point, and hold it there until your instinct told you to trip the shutter.
Later, the photographer or a darkroom technician had to load the film into a developing container in total darkness, process and dry the film, and make prints of the best frames after the film had dried. It took several hours for the film to dry, and if you tried to force-dry the film, you could damage it. Both developing the film and developing the prints involved the use of three chemicals--developer, stop bath, and fixer. The timing of the developer stage, in particular, was critical.
Things could go wrong at any step of the way, from exposing the film to pulling the print from the dryer. Robert Capa was one of the greatest combat photographers of all time. Most of his photos of the D-Day landing in France were lost because of a mistake made by a photographic technician. Based on the few frames that were salvaged, it was a great loss.
Let us also not forget that even the great photographs that we do have are not permanent. Negatives and slides deteriorate and prints fade over time. Today you can go to http://www.life.com/ and buy prints of many of the photos in this book. However, unless the negatives are properly preserved (which LIFE appears to be doing), our children and grandchildren may not be able to do so.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Dumb Deficit Reduction Proposals
The deficit reduction proposals recently suggested by the leaders of President Obama's deficit reduction commission, among other groups, once again show how out of touch the administration and its advisors are with reality. Some of these ideas are just plain dumb. Let's take a look at a few that have been floated:
Taxing High-End Health Insurance Plans
Some people want to tax companies that offer high-end health insurance benefits to their employees. I thought that the idea was to make it easier for everyone to get health insurance. Companies large and small have been struggling with the rising cost of health insurance plans for about 20 years now, and many of them have shifted an increasing amount of the burden of paying for health insurance to their employees or simply dropped their health insurance benefits altogether.
I was forced to enroll in an HMO at one point because my employer switched to it and didn't offer any alternatives. I've been in three of them since the early 1970s and all of them were worthless. This one was so bad that the employees insisted on going back to a preferred-provider plan the following year.
Taxing those few companies that still offer high-end plans will only cause them to drop those plans. What are the people who advocate this tax thinking?
It's the insurance companies that should be taxed, particularly those that are taking obscene profits. Supposedly, they adjust their rates each year based on usage by the participants, but the adjustments are always upward. Have you ever heard of an insurance company lowering its rates?
Most businesses would be happy to see a profit of 10 percent or so. Insurance companies should be forced to plow back some of their obscene profits into either reducing their rates or improving their coverage at no additional charge. In other words, give something back to the overcharged subscribers who enabled them to earn these obscene profits in the first place.
There could be something like the level-payment plan that I have with Dominion Power, my electric company. I have an all-electric town house so I watch my electric bills very closely. Every six months, Dominion reviews my use of power for the previous six months, as well as my anticipated usage for the next six months, and adjusts my monthly payment accordingly. Sometimes it goes up and just as often it goes down. The final bill for the six-month period is usually a make-up bill that is lower than the previous bills.
That's a fair system. If I use more electricity than before, the bill goes up. If I use less, the bill goes down. Why can't the health insurance companies do something similar?
Added on November 23, 2010:
Yesterday's edition of Capital Business, published by the Washington Post, reported that employer health benefit costs have increased an average of 6.9 percent nationally, according to a survey of 2,800 employers conducted by the Mercer consulting firm. The average cost for employers with 10 or more employees was $10,100 per employee. (See the Money Matters column, Volume 1, Issue 32, page 9.) I rest my case.
Eliminating the Mortgage Interest Deduction
I'm a member of AARP and I normally agree with most of its positions on issues, but Jim Toedtman, editor of the AARP Bulletin, made a really stupid statement in the current issue (November 2010). Perhaps I've misinterpreted it; I certainly hope so. He wrote:
"Should we address the mortgage interest deduction, which contributed to the explosion of household debt and the housing bubble we still haven't escaped?"
Huh? The mortage interest deduction has been around ever since I can remember, and I bought my first house in 1971. One of the purposes of the deduction, of course, was to encourage home ownership. Married couples, both homeowners and renters, lost many deductions when the tax code was revised in the 1980s. The mortgage interest deduction was one of the few decent deductions left.
Often, when a couple buys a home, they go through a nesting period, when they invest money into fixing up the house. If they are first-time homeowners in particular, they may also spend money buying furniture and other household items. In other words, new homeowners put a lot of money back into the economy. The mortgage interest deduction helps them. Furthermore, many people pay more taxes than they need to, then take their refund to buy major items for the house.
The mortgage interest deduction may have contributed to the current foreclosure problem, but only because unqualified home buyers, just like qualified buyers, wanted to take advantage of it. But many of these unqualified buyers who took on toxic, subprime mortgages have already lost their homes and are no longer benefiting from it.
Now there's a second wave of people who are losing their homes. These people have conventional mortgages which they could afford at the time that they took them out, and often have been in their homes for many years but are in danger of losing them because they've lost their job. Taking away their mortgage interest deduction will only make things more difficult for these people. Isn't the government supposedly trying to keep these people in their homes?
Eliminating Early Retirement from Social Security
The suggestion that we remove the early-retirement option from Social Security retirement benefits really strikes home with me. Most people who can afford to wait until they reach full retirement age--a constantly-moving target, to be sure--are not likely to exercise the early-retirement option. I strongly suspect that many people who exercise the option are much like I was when I reached 62 years of age. I desperately needed the money. In fact, I was about an inch from bankruptcy at the time, and if I had not been able to exercise the option, I would have had to file for bankruptcy.
Social Security may be a safety net but it is also an entitlement. I paid into Social Security (and soon, Medicare as well) as soon as I started to work full-time in 1965. The way that I see it, the money that I receive from Social Security is my money. I lent it to the Federal Government for many years, and now I need it. It's not a handout; it's the Federal Government paying me back the money that I lent to it. I have a right to that money, and if I need it when I turn 62 instead of being able to wait until full retirement age, I should be able to take it. I signed on with that understanding when I first started working and the Federal Government has to honor its part of the deal.
You know what? The next time the Federal Government needs advice on matters that affect the lives of average citizens, it ought to form a committee of average citizens. We'll give it to the government straight.
In case you're wondering, I'm a liberal Democrat, not a member of the Tea Party, and I voted for Barack Obama in the hope that he could turn his rhetoric into action. However, by and large, he's failed to do this, at least in my opinion, and I'm sick and tired of this country being run by people who are out of touch with the realities that our average citizens face every day of their lives.
Taxing High-End Health Insurance Plans
Some people want to tax companies that offer high-end health insurance benefits to their employees. I thought that the idea was to make it easier for everyone to get health insurance. Companies large and small have been struggling with the rising cost of health insurance plans for about 20 years now, and many of them have shifted an increasing amount of the burden of paying for health insurance to their employees or simply dropped their health insurance benefits altogether.
I was forced to enroll in an HMO at one point because my employer switched to it and didn't offer any alternatives. I've been in three of them since the early 1970s and all of them were worthless. This one was so bad that the employees insisted on going back to a preferred-provider plan the following year.
Taxing those few companies that still offer high-end plans will only cause them to drop those plans. What are the people who advocate this tax thinking?
It's the insurance companies that should be taxed, particularly those that are taking obscene profits. Supposedly, they adjust their rates each year based on usage by the participants, but the adjustments are always upward. Have you ever heard of an insurance company lowering its rates?
Most businesses would be happy to see a profit of 10 percent or so. Insurance companies should be forced to plow back some of their obscene profits into either reducing their rates or improving their coverage at no additional charge. In other words, give something back to the overcharged subscribers who enabled them to earn these obscene profits in the first place.
There could be something like the level-payment plan that I have with Dominion Power, my electric company. I have an all-electric town house so I watch my electric bills very closely. Every six months, Dominion reviews my use of power for the previous six months, as well as my anticipated usage for the next six months, and adjusts my monthly payment accordingly. Sometimes it goes up and just as often it goes down. The final bill for the six-month period is usually a make-up bill that is lower than the previous bills.
That's a fair system. If I use more electricity than before, the bill goes up. If I use less, the bill goes down. Why can't the health insurance companies do something similar?
Added on November 23, 2010:
Yesterday's edition of Capital Business, published by the Washington Post, reported that employer health benefit costs have increased an average of 6.9 percent nationally, according to a survey of 2,800 employers conducted by the Mercer consulting firm. The average cost for employers with 10 or more employees was $10,100 per employee. (See the Money Matters column, Volume 1, Issue 32, page 9.) I rest my case.
Eliminating the Mortgage Interest Deduction
I'm a member of AARP and I normally agree with most of its positions on issues, but Jim Toedtman, editor of the AARP Bulletin, made a really stupid statement in the current issue (November 2010). Perhaps I've misinterpreted it; I certainly hope so. He wrote:
"Should we address the mortgage interest deduction, which contributed to the explosion of household debt and the housing bubble we still haven't escaped?"
Huh? The mortage interest deduction has been around ever since I can remember, and I bought my first house in 1971. One of the purposes of the deduction, of course, was to encourage home ownership. Married couples, both homeowners and renters, lost many deductions when the tax code was revised in the 1980s. The mortgage interest deduction was one of the few decent deductions left.
Often, when a couple buys a home, they go through a nesting period, when they invest money into fixing up the house. If they are first-time homeowners in particular, they may also spend money buying furniture and other household items. In other words, new homeowners put a lot of money back into the economy. The mortgage interest deduction helps them. Furthermore, many people pay more taxes than they need to, then take their refund to buy major items for the house.
The mortgage interest deduction may have contributed to the current foreclosure problem, but only because unqualified home buyers, just like qualified buyers, wanted to take advantage of it. But many of these unqualified buyers who took on toxic, subprime mortgages have already lost their homes and are no longer benefiting from it.
Now there's a second wave of people who are losing their homes. These people have conventional mortgages which they could afford at the time that they took them out, and often have been in their homes for many years but are in danger of losing them because they've lost their job. Taking away their mortgage interest deduction will only make things more difficult for these people. Isn't the government supposedly trying to keep these people in their homes?
Eliminating Early Retirement from Social Security
The suggestion that we remove the early-retirement option from Social Security retirement benefits really strikes home with me. Most people who can afford to wait until they reach full retirement age--a constantly-moving target, to be sure--are not likely to exercise the early-retirement option. I strongly suspect that many people who exercise the option are much like I was when I reached 62 years of age. I desperately needed the money. In fact, I was about an inch from bankruptcy at the time, and if I had not been able to exercise the option, I would have had to file for bankruptcy.
Social Security may be a safety net but it is also an entitlement. I paid into Social Security (and soon, Medicare as well) as soon as I started to work full-time in 1965. The way that I see it, the money that I receive from Social Security is my money. I lent it to the Federal Government for many years, and now I need it. It's not a handout; it's the Federal Government paying me back the money that I lent to it. I have a right to that money, and if I need it when I turn 62 instead of being able to wait until full retirement age, I should be able to take it. I signed on with that understanding when I first started working and the Federal Government has to honor its part of the deal.
You know what? The next time the Federal Government needs advice on matters that affect the lives of average citizens, it ought to form a committee of average citizens. We'll give it to the government straight.
In case you're wondering, I'm a liberal Democrat, not a member of the Tea Party, and I voted for Barack Obama in the hope that he could turn his rhetoric into action. However, by and large, he's failed to do this, at least in my opinion, and I'm sick and tired of this country being run by people who are out of touch with the realities that our average citizens face every day of their lives.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Figure Skating: Worth Watching Again
I never thought that it would happen this quickly, but the artistry has returned to figure skating. Those of you who follow the sport know that the artistry that great skaters such as Michelle Kwan and the ice dancing team of Torvill and Dean brought to the sport had been largely lost under the new scoring system that was introduced five or six years ago. If you've given up on the sport because of this, as I almost did, come back to it. You'll love what you'll see today.
I have been a casual fan of figure skating since 1964, when I happened to be a student in Innsbruck, Austria, during the 1964 Olympics, and a serious fan since 2002. Around the time of the 2002 Olympics, I collected every video cassette and DVD that I could find, and a few books as well. I managed to obtain every Olympic highlight video from 1992 on, plus everything that I could find that showed great skaters from the past. I also began recording every important televised skating event and creating my own highlight cassettes and discs.
The reason for my growing interest in the sport could be summed up in two words: Michelle Kwan. I am a very emotional person, and I'm easily moved to tears by certain films and pieces of music. Michelle Kwan was the first skater that I had seen whose performances were so beautiful that they often moved me to tears. I also fell in love with the performances of the great ice dancers, Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean, who for me will always be the gold standard in ice dancing.
Unfortunately in many ways, the sport began to change dramatically in the early years of this century, as it went to a new scoring system that encouraged rapid accumulation of points. Instead of leaving room for artistry in their performances, skaters were focusing on jumps and other technical, or athletic, elements. There was no longer any room for artistic skaters such as Michelle Kwan or Torvill and Dean. The artistic side of figure skating, now called presentation elements, had definitely taken a back seat to the athletic side.
By the time of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, I felt that the beauty and artistry had left the sport completely. The judges were not giving the presentation marks the weight that they should have and the skaters were totally focused on racking up points. Figure skating had become little more than a jumping competition. When I wanted to remember how it used to be, I played Michelle Kwan's free skate from the 2004 U.S. Nationals on the Skating Through Time set and the video of Torvill and Dean's "Face the Music" tour from 1995.
I had concluded that the only way that beauty and artistry would return to figure skating would be if the skaters themselves decided that they needed to bring back the artistry, if only to satisfy their own need for creativity. The International Skating Union (ISU), which sets the rules, would eventually have to go along with them and give proper weight to presentation quality.
Amazingly, this seems to be exactly what has happened. Truly great skaters such as Evan Lysacek found a way to incorporate artistry into their programs. By the 2010 Olympics, artistry was back.
Now, as I watch the Grand Prix series of the 2010-2011 season--the sport's "regular season"--I'm happy to see that this trend is continuing. The number of required elements has been reduced, giving the skaters time to breathe, as it were. I'm not happy with the higher score now given to quadruple jumps (four rotations in the air), because it's forcing virtually all male singles skaters to add the quad to their repertoires. But by and large, I believe that the changes have been positive.
Looking back on it, the 2006 competition in Torino was probably the worst that I've ever seen. Typically, in each of the four disciplines, out of the final six skaters or teams, three skate below their best level, two skate competently, and one rises to the occasion. In a good event, two of them rise to the occasion, as happened in 1994 with Nancy Kerrigan and Oksana Baiul. The worst is when no one rises to the occasion. I call this a "last man standing" competition. Evgeni Plushenko won the men's event in Torino not because he skated well, but because he skated less poorly than the others.
On the other hand, the figure skating competition in Vancouver this year was without a doubt the greatest that I have ever seen. I feel that I was privileged to see it.
There were so many great stories. Yao Bin had dedicated hs life to creating and building the pairs figure skating program in China. In a great pairs competition, his life's work was vindicated when Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo won the gold and Pang and Tong won the silver. You just had to be happy for the man, as well as for the skaters.
The ice dancing competition was a revelation. Davis and White of the United States had make remarkable progress over the past two years and showed themselves to be worthy successors to Belbin and Agosto. Virtue and Mohr of Canada performed the most beautiful free dance that I have seen since the days of Torvill and Dean, and in fact Virtue and Mohr reminded me of the earlier team.
I couldn't believe the results of the men's short program. Three world-class skaters, each with scores of more than 90, led the pack. As I recall, Daisuke Takahashi fell behind in the long program, but Plushenko was up to par and Lysacek gave the performance of his life. Needless to say, I was disappointed in Plushenko's lack of sportsmanship. The video clearly shows that Lysacek beat Plushenko at his own game--the jumps--and left Plushenko in the dust when it came to presentation quality. Finally, Frank Carroll, perhaps the greatest figure skating coach that the United States has ever produced, had his Olympic gold medalist.
As good as these competitions were, absolutely nothing prepared me for the ladies' free skate, which surely must go down as one of the greatest single competitions in the history of the sport. All six of the skaters performed at their highest level, and several of them skated the performances of their lives.
Kim Yu-Na's performance brought me to tears. In my opinion, it was the greatest ladies free skate that I have ever seen at an Olympics and the equal of Michelle Kwan's performance at the 2004 U.S. Nationals. And how wonderful it was to see her coach, Brian Orser, who had lost out to Brian Boitano of the United States in the great men's competition of 1988, vindicated through his skater.
But it didn't stop there. I have always liked the Canadian skater, Joannie Rochette, but until this occasion she always seemed to choke in the free skate. Every Olympics has its story of triumph over adversity. Joannie's mother had come to Vancouver several days earlier and suddenly died of a heart attack. The entire country got behind Joannie as she decided to go forward with her competition. She fought back the tears and the tragedy of losing her mother to skate the performance of her life and win the bronze.
Somehow, all of these fantastic performances didn't faze the American skater, Mirai Nagasu, who closed the competition with the best performance of her young life. I have never seen a skating competition this good and I don't ever expect to see one again.
I have been a casual fan of figure skating since 1964, when I happened to be a student in Innsbruck, Austria, during the 1964 Olympics, and a serious fan since 2002. Around the time of the 2002 Olympics, I collected every video cassette and DVD that I could find, and a few books as well. I managed to obtain every Olympic highlight video from 1992 on, plus everything that I could find that showed great skaters from the past. I also began recording every important televised skating event and creating my own highlight cassettes and discs.
The reason for my growing interest in the sport could be summed up in two words: Michelle Kwan. I am a very emotional person, and I'm easily moved to tears by certain films and pieces of music. Michelle Kwan was the first skater that I had seen whose performances were so beautiful that they often moved me to tears. I also fell in love with the performances of the great ice dancers, Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean, who for me will always be the gold standard in ice dancing.
Unfortunately in many ways, the sport began to change dramatically in the early years of this century, as it went to a new scoring system that encouraged rapid accumulation of points. Instead of leaving room for artistry in their performances, skaters were focusing on jumps and other technical, or athletic, elements. There was no longer any room for artistic skaters such as Michelle Kwan or Torvill and Dean. The artistic side of figure skating, now called presentation elements, had definitely taken a back seat to the athletic side.
By the time of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, I felt that the beauty and artistry had left the sport completely. The judges were not giving the presentation marks the weight that they should have and the skaters were totally focused on racking up points. Figure skating had become little more than a jumping competition. When I wanted to remember how it used to be, I played Michelle Kwan's free skate from the 2004 U.S. Nationals on the Skating Through Time set and the video of Torvill and Dean's "Face the Music" tour from 1995.
I had concluded that the only way that beauty and artistry would return to figure skating would be if the skaters themselves decided that they needed to bring back the artistry, if only to satisfy their own need for creativity. The International Skating Union (ISU), which sets the rules, would eventually have to go along with them and give proper weight to presentation quality.
Amazingly, this seems to be exactly what has happened. Truly great skaters such as Evan Lysacek found a way to incorporate artistry into their programs. By the 2010 Olympics, artistry was back.
Now, as I watch the Grand Prix series of the 2010-2011 season--the sport's "regular season"--I'm happy to see that this trend is continuing. The number of required elements has been reduced, giving the skaters time to breathe, as it were. I'm not happy with the higher score now given to quadruple jumps (four rotations in the air), because it's forcing virtually all male singles skaters to add the quad to their repertoires. But by and large, I believe that the changes have been positive.
Looking back on it, the 2006 competition in Torino was probably the worst that I've ever seen. Typically, in each of the four disciplines, out of the final six skaters or teams, three skate below their best level, two skate competently, and one rises to the occasion. In a good event, two of them rise to the occasion, as happened in 1994 with Nancy Kerrigan and Oksana Baiul. The worst is when no one rises to the occasion. I call this a "last man standing" competition. Evgeni Plushenko won the men's event in Torino not because he skated well, but because he skated less poorly than the others.
On the other hand, the figure skating competition in Vancouver this year was without a doubt the greatest that I have ever seen. I feel that I was privileged to see it.
There were so many great stories. Yao Bin had dedicated hs life to creating and building the pairs figure skating program in China. In a great pairs competition, his life's work was vindicated when Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo won the gold and Pang and Tong won the silver. You just had to be happy for the man, as well as for the skaters.
The ice dancing competition was a revelation. Davis and White of the United States had make remarkable progress over the past two years and showed themselves to be worthy successors to Belbin and Agosto. Virtue and Mohr of Canada performed the most beautiful free dance that I have seen since the days of Torvill and Dean, and in fact Virtue and Mohr reminded me of the earlier team.
I couldn't believe the results of the men's short program. Three world-class skaters, each with scores of more than 90, led the pack. As I recall, Daisuke Takahashi fell behind in the long program, but Plushenko was up to par and Lysacek gave the performance of his life. Needless to say, I was disappointed in Plushenko's lack of sportsmanship. The video clearly shows that Lysacek beat Plushenko at his own game--the jumps--and left Plushenko in the dust when it came to presentation quality. Finally, Frank Carroll, perhaps the greatest figure skating coach that the United States has ever produced, had his Olympic gold medalist.
As good as these competitions were, absolutely nothing prepared me for the ladies' free skate, which surely must go down as one of the greatest single competitions in the history of the sport. All six of the skaters performed at their highest level, and several of them skated the performances of their lives.
Kim Yu-Na's performance brought me to tears. In my opinion, it was the greatest ladies free skate that I have ever seen at an Olympics and the equal of Michelle Kwan's performance at the 2004 U.S. Nationals. And how wonderful it was to see her coach, Brian Orser, who had lost out to Brian Boitano of the United States in the great men's competition of 1988, vindicated through his skater.
But it didn't stop there. I have always liked the Canadian skater, Joannie Rochette, but until this occasion she always seemed to choke in the free skate. Every Olympics has its story of triumph over adversity. Joannie's mother had come to Vancouver several days earlier and suddenly died of a heart attack. The entire country got behind Joannie as she decided to go forward with her competition. She fought back the tears and the tragedy of losing her mother to skate the performance of her life and win the bronze.
Somehow, all of these fantastic performances didn't faze the American skater, Mirai Nagasu, who closed the competition with the best performance of her young life. I have never seen a skating competition this good and I don't ever expect to see one again.
Monday, November 8, 2010
My Third Son, Stripes
Officially, I have two sons and a male cat. But as any cat lover will understand, in reality I have three sons--Joe, John, and Stripes.
Stripes has been part of my family for more than 12 years now. I adopted him and his brother (okay, his littermate), Tubbu, in the summer of 1998. (Tubbu developed a tumor when he was nine years old and had to be euthanized.)
At that time I was going through a separation and eventual divorce. As part of the agreement, my ex-wife got our three cats. It was a very difficult time for me, and I really needed a pet for companionship. At the time I had no idea that my relationship with Stripes would deepen and strengthen to the point where I now consider him to be an adopted son and not just a pet. Tubbu had a mean streak and I never bonded with him the way that I have bonded with Stripes.
When I was married, we lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. From time to time, one of our cats would get out. We would rush into the kitchen, grab a can of cat food, run outside, pop the can, and hope that the cat would hear it. If John or Joe were around, we'd recruit them to catch the cat.
Shortly after I adopted Stripes, I moved to a town house with a front door that faces the main drive in our community. Moreover, I was in no shape to go running after cats. I realized that I had to train Tubbu and Stripes to respond to my voice commands and hand gestures. In an emergency situation, I might not have time to run and grab a can of cat food. I also realized that I couldn't always grab a bag of cat treats every time that they responded the way that I wanted, so I had to find another way of rewarding them.
Finally--and this was the key to my success--I realized that I didn't know what it meant to be a cat, but I did know what it meant to be a young child, and I saw many characteristics of young children in both cats. So I began to think of them not just as cats, but also as young children who happened to be feline rather than human, and I began to treat them that way. You don't reward a young child by popping a piece of candy in their mouth every time that they obey you. Instead, you reward them with love, affection, and reinforcement, such as hugging them and telling them that they are a good boy or girl.
Much to my amazement, I found that this worked with both Tubbu and Stripes. Both had low-keyed, even-tempered personalities, didn't jump on anything taller than a dresser, stayed off the kitchen counter and stove, and didn't climb the curtains, so I only needed to train them to a few commands.For example, I trained them to go to their spot whenever I came through the door ("Tubbu, Stripes, go to your spot and stay"). Stripes would go half-way up the stairs. Tubbu would park himself in the hallway in front of the entrances to the bathroom and kitchen--right where I needed to go, of course, but hey, you can't have everything.
Tubbu never got out of the house, and Stripes has only done it once, even though I have left the sliding door to my backyard patio open by mistake a couple of times. One night, I went onto the patio to put out the trash and Stripes followed me out. I was worried because my new, motion-sensing patio light wasn't coming on. He walked along the bottom of the fixed part of the sliding door, decided that this was not where he wanted to be, turned around, and went back inside.
Every time that Tubbu or Stripes did something that I asked them to do, I would pet them and tell them that they were a good boy. Stripes has come to expect this as his reward. For example, when I am ready to go to bed, I find him and tell him "Bedtime. Time to come to bed with Daddy." More often than not, he will follow me to the staircase and start climbing the steps with me. Sometimes he stops and asks to make sure that we really are going to bed. I pet him and tell him to move on. When we get to the top of the stairs, I pet him, tell him that he's a good boy, and thank him for coming up with me. He has come to expect this and he waits for it.
Sometimes, of course, I have to indicate my displeasure, as when Stripes gets up on the dining room table and tries to eat my dinner. He has his end of the table and I have mine. I don't mind him being on the table while I am eating. In fact, I enjoy his company. But when he starts sniffing out my food, I hiss at him and tell him to go to his spot and stay. When a mother cat is training her kittens and they do something wrong, she hisses at them, so hissing is a good way of expressing your displeasure without hurting the cat.
There was one time when I did hurt Stripes, and I will never forget his reaction. It was about a year ago. By this time, we had become very close. I had purchased a new flea collar. The supermarket didn't have the usual cheap Hartz collar that I normally use, so I wound up buying a more-expensive one. There was no size marking on the package so I assumed that it was the same length as the cheaper one.
Well, it was an inch or two shorter. In fact, it was too short to fit around Stripes' neck easily, but I was so angry with Hartz that I kept trying. At one point, Stripes started to choke. I finally came to my senses and stopped, but Stripes immediately walked away and headed down the stairs. At every step, he stopped, shrugged his shoulders, and wimpered. I had never seen him do this before and I hope that I never see it again. If he were human, I would say that he was crying. It was as if he was saying to me "How could you do this to me?" He trusted me and I had violated that trust. It took a couple of days before he would come to bed with me again.
I've also come to understand that we can communicate with cats telepathically, and I believe that they communicate with us in the same way. My ex-wife had this ability. When I was getting new windows the next day, as Stripes sat next to me on the bed that night, I explained to him that people were coming tomorrow to replace the windows and that he should hide in one of his usual places if he got scared. I also drew mental pictures of the men changing the windows.
As I was doing this, I told myself that this was silly and wondered if there was any way that Stripes understood what I was saying. I felt stupid.
That night, instead of sleeping on the bed with me, he went under the bed (and probably into the box spring as well). This is one of his hiding places. The next morning, at dawn, he came out and went over to the floor-length window in my bedroom to see what was going on outside. I realized that he had understood everything that I had said except for the fact that it was going to happen in the future rather than immediately. (Cats don't understand the concept of future.)
I once worked with an animal communicator who told me to think of Stripes not as a one-year-old child, which I had been doing, but rather, as a twelve-year-old child. He understood a lot of things within his own frame of reference, she told me.
At that point, I started working even harder at understanding him. I try to understand his vocabulary. There are words that he says that indicate he is asking me a question. I ask myself what a twelve-year-old might be asking me. Generally it comes down to "What are you going to do now?" or "What are you going to do next?" I tell him and also pet him if I can. This seems to satisfy him.
Then there's his "I'm scared. Where are you?" cry. Generally I hear this when he is waking from a deep sleep or when I have gone to bed and he hasn't followed me up the stairs. I tell him where I am and draw a mental picture of something in the room. Usually he shows up a minute or two later.
Four years ago, following my triple coronary artery bypass, I was retaining fluid at a dangerous level. I had to go back into the hospital for several days and I didn't take the time to tell Stripes and Tubbu that I was going to be away. The night that I got back, I was in the bathroom. The door was open. Stripes came to the doorway and gave me a dressing-down that went on for a good two or three minutes. He used every word in his vocabulary plus a few that I didn't even know he had. His message came through to me loud and clear: How could I go off like that and leave them alone without telling him first?
Was I being unrealistic and reading too much into it? Perhaps, but I don't think so. I've come to the conclusion that if that's what came through to me, that's probably what he was saying.
After Tubbu died, Stripes and I grew even closer than before. We grieved together for several days, and he began to fill in the void that Tubbu had left in my life. Tubbu was a huge alpha cat who used to intimidate Stripes, and Stripes was very happy to be an only child. In the intervening years, Stripes and I have become so close that I can't imagine life without him.
Finally, I'd like to explain why I think of Stripes as my son. To begin with, I don't like the term "pet owner." A pet isn't something that you can put out with the trash when you don't want it anymore. Cats and dogs--and no doubt other animals as well--are living beings with intelligence and often a tremendous capacity for giving love. In fairness, because it's just me and Stripes, I have a lot more time to spend with him than people with families to raise, but the rewards of having a pet can be very rich if you are willing to work at it.
I don't even like the term "pet guardian." I think of myself as a pet adopter, or if you will, an adoptive parent. Having adopted a human child, I understand what that means. When you adopt a pet, you take on many of the same obligations that you do when you adopt a human child. (At least you don't have to put a cat through college!) If your adopted child is, shall we say, less than perfect, you don't send them back to the adoption agency. Instead, you do whatever you can to address the problem and help the child, just as you would with a biological child. If they get sick, you take care of them.
That's the way that it is with me and Stripes. He has a bad habit that I won't go into but that has cost me a fair amount of aggravation and money. When it first became a problem about seven years ago, some of my close friends and even one of my sons advised me to get rid of him. "You'll get another cat," they told me, "and it will be just as affectionate as Stripes." What they didn't undestand was that it wouldn't be Stripes.
Nevertheless I thought about it--perhaps giving him to someone with a farmette, where he could be an outdoor cat and his habit wouldn't matter--but because Stripes was also diabetic and required injections twice a day, I realized that this was not an option and that he would probably have to be euthanized.
Every morning he sits next to me on my bed while I put on my shoes and we adore each other. I couldn't look him in the eye and tell him that this was his last day on earth. Finally, I also realized one day that the thought of losing him was tearing me up 10 times as badly as his bad habit. That day, I decided to just accept and live with the problem.
Here we are, seven years later, and as I'm writing this, Stripes is stretched out in a chair next to me. He's been with me almost all day.
We've been thrugh some tough times together. This time last year, he sprained his hip and became ill at the same time. He couldn't hold down any food no matter what we tried. I was just about broke. There were two likely diagnoses--inflammatory bowel syndrome, which is treatable, and stomach cancer, which is ultimately fatal. I don't think that I could have afforded cancer treatments, but I managed to find the money to pay for an ultrasound test. Fortumately, it turned out to be inflammtory bowel syndrome, and by treating him for it, he's been able to have a good life.
I believed that I owed Stripes a chance to have whatever good years were still in store for him. You have no idea how glad I am that I made that decision. Just thinking about losing him makes me cry, and I'm crying right now as I write this.
In the musical Cats, there is a scene where the ancient cat goes to the other side of the heavyside mountain. I know that one day I will have to let Stripes go there, but please God, let that day be a long way off. I can't bear the thought of losing any of my sons.
Copyright 2010 Robert E. Simanski. All Rights Reserved.
At that time I was going through a separation and eventual divorce. As part of the agreement, my ex-wife got our three cats. It was a very difficult time for me, and I really needed a pet for companionship. At the time I had no idea that my relationship with Stripes would deepen and strengthen to the point where I now consider him to be an adopted son and not just a pet. Tubbu had a mean streak and I never bonded with him the way that I have bonded with Stripes.
When I was married, we lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. From time to time, one of our cats would get out. We would rush into the kitchen, grab a can of cat food, run outside, pop the can, and hope that the cat would hear it. If John or Joe were around, we'd recruit them to catch the cat.
Shortly after I adopted Stripes, I moved to a town house with a front door that faces the main drive in our community. Moreover, I was in no shape to go running after cats. I realized that I had to train Tubbu and Stripes to respond to my voice commands and hand gestures. In an emergency situation, I might not have time to run and grab a can of cat food. I also realized that I couldn't always grab a bag of cat treats every time that they responded the way that I wanted, so I had to find another way of rewarding them.
Finally--and this was the key to my success--I realized that I didn't know what it meant to be a cat, but I did know what it meant to be a young child, and I saw many characteristics of young children in both cats. So I began to think of them not just as cats, but also as young children who happened to be feline rather than human, and I began to treat them that way. You don't reward a young child by popping a piece of candy in their mouth every time that they obey you. Instead, you reward them with love, affection, and reinforcement, such as hugging them and telling them that they are a good boy or girl.
Much to my amazement, I found that this worked with both Tubbu and Stripes. Both had low-keyed, even-tempered personalities, didn't jump on anything taller than a dresser, stayed off the kitchen counter and stove, and didn't climb the curtains, so I only needed to train them to a few commands.For example, I trained them to go to their spot whenever I came through the door ("Tubbu, Stripes, go to your spot and stay"). Stripes would go half-way up the stairs. Tubbu would park himself in the hallway in front of the entrances to the bathroom and kitchen--right where I needed to go, of course, but hey, you can't have everything.
Tubbu never got out of the house, and Stripes has only done it once, even though I have left the sliding door to my backyard patio open by mistake a couple of times. One night, I went onto the patio to put out the trash and Stripes followed me out. I was worried because my new, motion-sensing patio light wasn't coming on. He walked along the bottom of the fixed part of the sliding door, decided that this was not where he wanted to be, turned around, and went back inside.
Every time that Tubbu or Stripes did something that I asked them to do, I would pet them and tell them that they were a good boy. Stripes has come to expect this as his reward. For example, when I am ready to go to bed, I find him and tell him "Bedtime. Time to come to bed with Daddy." More often than not, he will follow me to the staircase and start climbing the steps with me. Sometimes he stops and asks to make sure that we really are going to bed. I pet him and tell him to move on. When we get to the top of the stairs, I pet him, tell him that he's a good boy, and thank him for coming up with me. He has come to expect this and he waits for it.
Sometimes, of course, I have to indicate my displeasure, as when Stripes gets up on the dining room table and tries to eat my dinner. He has his end of the table and I have mine. I don't mind him being on the table while I am eating. In fact, I enjoy his company. But when he starts sniffing out my food, I hiss at him and tell him to go to his spot and stay. When a mother cat is training her kittens and they do something wrong, she hisses at them, so hissing is a good way of expressing your displeasure without hurting the cat.
There was one time when I did hurt Stripes, and I will never forget his reaction. It was about a year ago. By this time, we had become very close. I had purchased a new flea collar. The supermarket didn't have the usual cheap Hartz collar that I normally use, so I wound up buying a more-expensive one. There was no size marking on the package so I assumed that it was the same length as the cheaper one.
Well, it was an inch or two shorter. In fact, it was too short to fit around Stripes' neck easily, but I was so angry with Hartz that I kept trying. At one point, Stripes started to choke. I finally came to my senses and stopped, but Stripes immediately walked away and headed down the stairs. At every step, he stopped, shrugged his shoulders, and wimpered. I had never seen him do this before and I hope that I never see it again. If he were human, I would say that he was crying. It was as if he was saying to me "How could you do this to me?" He trusted me and I had violated that trust. It took a couple of days before he would come to bed with me again.
I've also come to understand that we can communicate with cats telepathically, and I believe that they communicate with us in the same way. My ex-wife had this ability. When I was getting new windows the next day, as Stripes sat next to me on the bed that night, I explained to him that people were coming tomorrow to replace the windows and that he should hide in one of his usual places if he got scared. I also drew mental pictures of the men changing the windows.
As I was doing this, I told myself that this was silly and wondered if there was any way that Stripes understood what I was saying. I felt stupid.
That night, instead of sleeping on the bed with me, he went under the bed (and probably into the box spring as well). This is one of his hiding places. The next morning, at dawn, he came out and went over to the floor-length window in my bedroom to see what was going on outside. I realized that he had understood everything that I had said except for the fact that it was going to happen in the future rather than immediately. (Cats don't understand the concept of future.)
I once worked with an animal communicator who told me to think of Stripes not as a one-year-old child, which I had been doing, but rather, as a twelve-year-old child. He understood a lot of things within his own frame of reference, she told me.
At that point, I started working even harder at understanding him. I try to understand his vocabulary. There are words that he says that indicate he is asking me a question. I ask myself what a twelve-year-old might be asking me. Generally it comes down to "What are you going to do now?" or "What are you going to do next?" I tell him and also pet him if I can. This seems to satisfy him.
Then there's his "I'm scared. Where are you?" cry. Generally I hear this when he is waking from a deep sleep or when I have gone to bed and he hasn't followed me up the stairs. I tell him where I am and draw a mental picture of something in the room. Usually he shows up a minute or two later.
Four years ago, following my triple coronary artery bypass, I was retaining fluid at a dangerous level. I had to go back into the hospital for several days and I didn't take the time to tell Stripes and Tubbu that I was going to be away. The night that I got back, I was in the bathroom. The door was open. Stripes came to the doorway and gave me a dressing-down that went on for a good two or three minutes. He used every word in his vocabulary plus a few that I didn't even know he had. His message came through to me loud and clear: How could I go off like that and leave them alone without telling him first?
Was I being unrealistic and reading too much into it? Perhaps, but I don't think so. I've come to the conclusion that if that's what came through to me, that's probably what he was saying.
After Tubbu died, Stripes and I grew even closer than before. We grieved together for several days, and he began to fill in the void that Tubbu had left in my life. Tubbu was a huge alpha cat who used to intimidate Stripes, and Stripes was very happy to be an only child. In the intervening years, Stripes and I have become so close that I can't imagine life without him.
Finally, I'd like to explain why I think of Stripes as my son. To begin with, I don't like the term "pet owner." A pet isn't something that you can put out with the trash when you don't want it anymore. Cats and dogs--and no doubt other animals as well--are living beings with intelligence and often a tremendous capacity for giving love. In fairness, because it's just me and Stripes, I have a lot more time to spend with him than people with families to raise, but the rewards of having a pet can be very rich if you are willing to work at it.
I don't even like the term "pet guardian." I think of myself as a pet adopter, or if you will, an adoptive parent. Having adopted a human child, I understand what that means. When you adopt a pet, you take on many of the same obligations that you do when you adopt a human child. (At least you don't have to put a cat through college!) If your adopted child is, shall we say, less than perfect, you don't send them back to the adoption agency. Instead, you do whatever you can to address the problem and help the child, just as you would with a biological child. If they get sick, you take care of them.
That's the way that it is with me and Stripes. He has a bad habit that I won't go into but that has cost me a fair amount of aggravation and money. When it first became a problem about seven years ago, some of my close friends and even one of my sons advised me to get rid of him. "You'll get another cat," they told me, "and it will be just as affectionate as Stripes." What they didn't undestand was that it wouldn't be Stripes.
Nevertheless I thought about it--perhaps giving him to someone with a farmette, where he could be an outdoor cat and his habit wouldn't matter--but because Stripes was also diabetic and required injections twice a day, I realized that this was not an option and that he would probably have to be euthanized.
Every morning he sits next to me on my bed while I put on my shoes and we adore each other. I couldn't look him in the eye and tell him that this was his last day on earth. Finally, I also realized one day that the thought of losing him was tearing me up 10 times as badly as his bad habit. That day, I decided to just accept and live with the problem.
Here we are, seven years later, and as I'm writing this, Stripes is stretched out in a chair next to me. He's been with me almost all day.
We've been thrugh some tough times together. This time last year, he sprained his hip and became ill at the same time. He couldn't hold down any food no matter what we tried. I was just about broke. There were two likely diagnoses--inflammatory bowel syndrome, which is treatable, and stomach cancer, which is ultimately fatal. I don't think that I could have afforded cancer treatments, but I managed to find the money to pay for an ultrasound test. Fortumately, it turned out to be inflammtory bowel syndrome, and by treating him for it, he's been able to have a good life.
I believed that I owed Stripes a chance to have whatever good years were still in store for him. You have no idea how glad I am that I made that decision. Just thinking about losing him makes me cry, and I'm crying right now as I write this.
In the musical Cats, there is a scene where the ancient cat goes to the other side of the heavyside mountain. I know that one day I will have to let Stripes go there, but please God, let that day be a long way off. I can't bear the thought of losing any of my sons.
Copyright 2010 Robert E. Simanski. All Rights Reserved.
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