Thoughts from Alaskan Cruise of 2011
Mountains have inspired writing at least since Moses returned from Mount Sinai with commandments written by God knows who and Moby Dick, arguably the greatest novel since Don Quixote, was in part about the ocean; so if you are like me and one who mulls over how to describe in writing everything he sees, a trip to Alaska by ocean-going ship beside all those mountains, is almost too much to take in.
The trip occurred between June 25 and July 2, Saturday to Saturday, this year, 2011, which meant we traveled north soon after the summer solstice during long days and less cold conditions. The temperatures on our trip probably ranged from a high of 69 or so in Juneau to a low of high 30s in Glacier Bay, but I say probably, because I did not pay that close attention to the readings, since thermometers are not the most interesting part of an Alaskan cruise.
Just as the best cities offer treasures to those willing to seek them out, so too do cruises, except that with cruises you have hidden treasures onboard as well as on land. If the ship is like a city, the land; especially in the case of an Alaskan cruise, is more akin to a walk in the woods. Moments of pleasure ashore are stumbled on like streams in a dense forest. You are not sure how you got there and there will be no finding it again.
Sitting inside our stateroom looking through the closed glass sliding doors over the balcony at choppy gray waters and Canadian mountains, I was reminded that a few weeks ago our daughter Stephanie drove across those hills on her solitary, but adventurous journey to Alaska. Our watery means of travel was considerably less of an ordeal, and afforded us all the food and drink we could hold, not to mention excursions at exotic ports of call and the diversion of being able to talk to or at least look at other people, as the occasion arose.
On Saturday evening, our launch day, I danced to live upbeat popular music with a group of maybe 70 others as the ship pulled away from Seattle, while Tanga took video footage from the deck above. We did the song that best highlights my inability to follow the simplest of choreography: “It’s fun to stay at the YMCA.” Seeing the footage since, I need to rethink my tendency to dance in public, given how poorly I do it.
Here are some of my thoughts recorded while we were on the trip, thus mostly written in a present progressive tense.
As I am writing this, we have been at sea nearly a day and only within the last hour or two have I begun to notice wavy walking and nausea-inducing gentle tilts of the floor. At lunch I said: “Not to be too dramatic, but my plate just moved as I was taking a bite.” To which Tanga said: “Your family is so dramatic,” to which I replied: “Your family is not observant enough to notice a plate moving.” And in that manner of speaking we enjoyed another lunch.
My veganism (sounds bad when I put it that way) has not been much of a problem, what with all the fruit and vegetables available. Sources of protein thus far have included kidney beans on a salad, and uh, well okay, so the sources of protein have not been that numerous, but I have protein bars and soy nuts enough to last the rest of the trip unless I get too desperate for protein and start eating them in rapid succession. [Later our m’ aitre d’ took me on as his cause and found some tofu on the ship and even presented me with an ice bed filled with sticks of carrot, pepper, zucchini, and asparagus.]
I met with Jimmy Lee, the cruise “choir master” on Monday, who was going to teach us to sing in unison as a group, six popular songs - rehearsals starting tomorrow morning, with our performance being on Friday afternoon in the Piazza, where other cruisers will be milling about. I was not the first one to arrive and when I walked in, he asked if I would like to do the first audition and I said, “Sure”, to which he said, “No, I was just kidding, there are no auditions, that was supposed to scare you”, which it obviously failed to do. My recent morning meditations have included breathing in fear and out courage, so I was prepared. I asked if participating in the choir would preclude my trying out for the star search later tonight and he said it would not. Alas, however, the time conflicts did not allow me to participate in either the chorus or the star search, the latter of which was late each night and I was in bed at a reasonable hour by Central Time each evening.
It’s a good thing most people on the cruise do not mind sharing tables during meals, or perhaps more aptly, it’s a good thing people have little choice but to share tables during meals; since there are few tables for two and not everyone could take a number and wait until a table for six was finally available for a couple. We have shared and been shared with thus far, having met BJ and Lisa from Souix Falls, SD, Clint and Geri from Las Vegas, Evelyn from Maryland and Carl from Arlington, VA, Becky and Rollin from Fresno, Rick and Julie from Chicago, Steve and his daughter Jessica , also from Chicago, the couple from Reading Pennsylvania who had paid for the third cruise for seventeen members of their family in the past six years (I should have asked if they were interested in sponsoring me starting a vegan restaurant in West Tennessee). We also met a couple from Houston with whom we did not exchange names, the wife of whom said: “You must be from the south, I noticed you ordered water with your lemon”. We said we were from Tennessee and that confirmed for her the theory that only southerners from the U.S. ask for lemon with their water.
We had our time with Stephanie in Skagway on Tuesday and it could not have been better. We drove into Canada, which is not far at all, less than twenty miles, I suspect; which sort of surprised me. Canadian customs is not right at the border so we turned around before we reached their booth, but we had to provide our passports to the guy at the American booth on the way back down. He had Steph roll down the window so he could get a better look at me, the old man in the back seat.
While we were on that drive into Canada we saw tremendous waterfalls and mounds of lichen and moss-covered rocks; and when we drove back into Alaska, it was those tall dark mountains with the White Pass Railroad line hanging off the side. The river far below was a bright green, what I would call pure cold. We had bought sandwiches, so we drove to Diyea for a picnic on the flats, and when we left, Stephanie said now that we are leaving I will tell you a number of my friends have encountered bears where we just ate. We saw no animals on our trip, not even the plentiful porcupine. We learned there are no raccoons or moose in Skagway, although they are numerous in other parts of Alaska, but the porcupines are as big as dogs, Stephanie said; and although it is not an animal, one of the six or seven stalks of rhubarb laying on the counter in her house could be used to kill a bear, they were so long, thick and hard.
On Wednesday we saw the Marjorie Glacier and while we were there it “calved” several times, sounding much louder than small sized chunks falling off, chunks no doubt much larger than they appeared from the ship. Tanga said some people call the roar, white thunder; making it sound like something an Inuit might have said. There was a glacier on each side of us where we stopped for about an hour, the one on the starboard (right facing the front) side was black and the one of the port (left facing the front) side was white. Tanga and I stood on the fifteenth deck on the port side until the captain turned the ship around, at which time we returned to our fourteenth deck stateroom on the starboard side so we could continue viewing the much prettier bluish-white Marjorie Glacier. I do not recall the name of the dark glacier, but it was said to be a mile and a half wide and the blue-white one about a mile wide and 250 feet above the water and about 150 feet below the water.
They played great music on the fourteenth, open-to-the-air deck on which we mostly “lived”. The fifteenth and sixteenth could be seen from our deck and hanging from the fifteenth deck was a giant movie screen, on which they played countless movies, providing blankets in the cool evenings for those lying in the lounge chairs watching the film. Everywhere you looked there were people walking with popcorn, ice cream, hotdogs, hamburgers and the pizza so widely acclaimed as superb. One couple said their grandson, by the fourth day said he had eaten 47 slices of the pizza.
I made notes on my phone for this journal as we spent quiet afternoons at sea, and on the way north, I made note there was little space between the mountains and the clouds and in some cases, the mountaintops were white and in others, not visible for the clouds. I noted it would have been a good place to “start a roller coaster”, a note which seemed much “smarter” at the time. There were no sandy beaches as we cruised north with the Canadian coast on our starboard side of the ship. In fact, the mountains rising to as much as several thousand feet straight out of the water, were covered with coniferous trees right down to the shore. When we got into Juneau, we did see a rocky “beach” and there was this couple on it in lounge chairs all by themselves, with the temperature around 60 degrees or so and clouds overhead. They seemed a little desperate from my seat on the bus.
Here are a few of my journal entries to give a flavor of what I was noting as we went.:
This must be how the earth was 10,000 years ago, just land and sea and animals with no design on making a buck.
Three layers of mountains, dark, lighter and lighter still in the rear.
Occasionally the ship seems to ever so slightly hover and settle.
Radio station on which our bus driver has a show: Alaskanscorcher.net NPR radio from Juneau
U of A southeast, 2800 Mostly study environmental sciences…someone asks whether the students believe in global warming and our guide simply says yes.
Black wolf Romeo in Juneau –this black wolf that befriended dogs and people alike was killed and a 10 thousand dollar award offered for the arrest. Arrests were made, but it appears they may get off light.
Jerry Jenkins our bus driver guide in Juneau, was the anti-tour guide guide, telling us lies we would hear such as the first hotel in Alaska variously said to be in Juneau, Skagway or other towns.
He told us to not book excursions on the ship because they would always be more expensive. He did not want to work for the ships because he could not tell the truth about how bad the Mexican food was in Juneau and how many of the shops were owned by ships.
He told of how Eagles would steal catch from ravens, but how smart Ravens were and how they would gang up on Eagles and return the favor, stealing their catch. Ravens can mimic a cat in heat, a car alarm and people screaming.
Cruises are primarily food festivals as far as I can tell. The fourteenth deck, our deck, had a buffet and grills, from which foods of all types were walked all over the ship. At Bernini's, on the fifth deck, the wait staff did their best to keep a relaxed atmosphere from breaking out. There were stuffier restaurants than that though, where you paid s $20 cover charge.
Our bus driver in Ketchikan stopped on a bridge spanning a swiftly flowing stream to the left of which was a manmade wooden box of width, depth and pitch allowing water to pass through at a less violent volume, which, as he explained, the smaller salmon would instinctively choose and thus pass safely.
The driver spoke in clear terms of what happened to the salmon starting around he second week of July, getting so thick in another stream over which we stopped, that "you could walk across the water on their backs". He said late in September and October you could smell dead salmon for a mile.
Married man's trail was the name of a street that led to brothels. One Spanish-speaking guy on our bus translated for all of us: "whorehouses".
They had a museum called Dolly's house in front of which stood a young lady convincingly dressed to play the part.
They get 180 inches of rain per year. We waited for our bus beside the giant rain gauge as tall as a two-story building, at the top of which was proclaimed the record rainfall of 1949, when they received over two hundred inches.
Our driver spoke as admiringly of the cruise ships as he had the salmon, saying how they docked sideways when they arrived. Ketchikan receives ships from May through September and in the middle of it all the salmon run, making Ketchikan the "salmon Capitol of the world", while doing pretty well in the cruise ship competition as well.
The instability of being on the top sleeping deck of a cruise ship at sea must be somewhat like that of being on the top of a tall pole in a windstorm.
On some days Stephanie is assigned to Diyea, the failed town in the beautiful flats at the start of Chulcutt Pass, where she is to offer her services for morning and afternoon tours to those not part of some already organized tour.
The music, so joyful on day two, seems sad as I walk the deck on day six. The seven days of a cruise are like the seven decades of a life, and after day five few references to days are heard.
The water temperature was said by our room tv to be 57 degrees before we got back to Victoria, and I recall them saying it was 47 in Skagway, and that at 47, a person could float alive in the water for about fifteen minutes. If it happened on a cruise, that fifteen minutes would do double duty as fame and the final quarter hour of the newly-famous life.
Wrapping it up
Once while we stood on the deck waiting for the glacier to calf, I detected the attitude Tanga only gets on vacation, the one that permits me to say anything all the way from the self-important to the adolescent, with impunity; and I thought of how many days she has spent driving to and from work for the last fifteen years, and what a release this must be for her. It also occurred to me she was representing her family on this cruise, two brothers who hate flying or being on ships and so will likely not cruise and her mother and other brother who are no longer with us but who would have thoroughly enjoyed it. They would be proud of how well she represents the family, with her easy, smiling accommodation of the new and unusual; noting it but never effusive. She is one of those people who are completely unable to hide it when they are completely relaxed, and since I know her so well, I know how rare it is. Neither of us are drinkers, but she seems calms way down on vacation without chemical assistance.
If the money and time are there for you, I would recommend a cruise, and the Inside Passage to Alaska in particular. If the money and time are not there, believe me I know how it feels. But I must say, and Tanga and I could not help but comment on it, it does feel nice to have reached a point when a cruise is possible. It sure was a long time in coming for us.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Let Me Tell You About My Friend Nathan Evans
While some people appear better suited for Mars or Venus, Nathan Evans seems perfectly at home on Earth and in the USA, owing perhaps to his singular genetics; for Nathan, and his sister Lindsey, had a paternal grandfather on the USS Tennessee, bombed in Pearl Harbor in December, 1941; and a maternal grandfather who served as a paratrooper in the 29th Army Infantry division that stormed Omaha Beach in June, 1944; so I suspect if you could check Nathan’s DNA, you would find a marker for courage on one of his chromosomes.
So, I guess I am saying it takes courage to be a good earthling, and of course, patience, creativity, and a willingness to get up every day and do what life asks. Those qualities sum up Nathan, who unlike many of us; is not too full of himself to let others get the limelight while he works in the background. Determined artists, like Nathan, who operate in the physical realm baffle me with their eye for detail, painstaking movements, and drive for perfection. But the greatest message they send is that the most we can hope for is to leave the best of ourselves in the works we produce.
Yes, Nathan had two brave grandfathers, but despite not being challenged to serve in a similar way, he passes the courage test given us all, to be steady during the storms of life. I have seen Nathan work way into the night on art projects after a long day of attending classes and mowing the University grounds, and it did not seem to matter if his day had gone well or not; if something needed done, he went about doing it. I wish I had more of whatever it is he has when it comes to pleasantly setting aside the trivial for the necessary.
On November 19, 2004, my wife Tanga had a severe car wreck in Brownsville, Tennessee, when I was on a work-related trip to Louisiana. Nathan was living with us at the time, while he went to a nearby University. The wreck occurred early in the morning, so by 9 am or so, Tanga was in the Brownsville hospital for observation. Nathan dropped what he was doing, drove the 60 miles round trip to bring her home, and then went to the pharmacy for her medicine. He impressed Tanga with his calm and resolved manner of caring for her. It’s at such times, people unwittingly yield up evidence of their true nature.
Tanga says Nathan’s brand of humor reminds her of comedian and actor Kevin James, which I believe is because they are both so likeable and refreshingly at odds with the normal view of the world. Nathan finds humor in surprising places, usually by turning something completely around, and using his keen sense of irony. For example, one night when Nathan’s favorite sports team, the Louisville Cardinals, were down by a large margin in basketball, he said: “We got ‘em right where we want ‘em.” For him, a strong reaction to a tight game, would be to get up from his green recliner, his chair while he was at our house; and go over to the indoor basketball goal and start firing shots.
If the game did not go the way he had hoped, he would not mope, fume or worse, the way I sometimes would; but he would simply go about his business or even on some occasions, head over to the University to work on an art project. Nathan, being the master of understatement; would say something like “Not so much”, if you asked him whether his team played well in a game they had lost. It’s not surprising then that after he had lived with us a while, he would leave the upstairs area all to me as I watched my favorite team play, knowing I might say rough things or hit the arm of the chair with a little too much force. I might have learned a lot from Nathan’s approach to being a sports fan, but I am not sure even he can help me when it comes to that.
Nathan has a unique take on the world. Most people will have an opinion either predictably right or left in politics, or they will evaluate things either as right or wrong or fair or unfair or momentous or insignificant, but Nathan invariably sees things somewhere between the extremes and in a way you would never have anticipated. The only thing predictable about his take on the world is its unpredictability.
If you like showy, Nathan is not your guy. If you want someone to flatter your wardrobe or your taste in automobiles, keep looking. If you prefer those out to win friends and influence people, Nathan will likely disappoint. If, on the other hand, your taste in people runs to the quietly humorous, sweetly sarcastic, and mildly enigmatic; you might want to give Nathan a test drive. Nathan has all the best qualities of the artistic temperament without the moodiness or explosive temper.
During his time of living at our house we had the enormous pleasure of playing host to he and his future wife Kathryn Johnson; cooking out on the weekends, eating the occasional weekday meal together, and, as I said, watching sports if it involved the University of Kentucky (our favorite team) or the University of Louisville (his and ultimately, their, favorite).
Many nights, sitting upstairs, we heard his key unlock the front door and knew what was coming, since it was his custom to walk heavily up the steps as if to give us ample warning someone else was in the house and then silently turn the corner with a sheepish grin on his face. Tanga would usually say something like: “There’s food on the stove if you are still hungry.”
Before he came to live with us, in 2003; I gave Nathan a small, faded, black and white photo of Tanga’s father sitting on a child’s rocking chair, in front of the TV in their old home place around Christmas 1965 (before he was to die in April, 1966); and asked Nathan to turn it into a painting for me to give to Tanga for our anniversary. The painting hangs in our living room as a reminder of Tanga’s father, our favorite artist and the fragility of life.
Nathan and Kathryn Evans married in North Augusta, SC in October, 2006 and the party afterwards was held in a textile mill turned reception hall in Augusta, GA, along the canal. They had a DJ and a number of us, not prone to public dancing, cut loose that night; in my case, due in part to a feeling of euphoria to see two such dear people, so clearly right for one another, make a public decision to become a couple.
For these reasons and so many more, Tanga and I would have adopted Nathan if his own family had not supported him so well (darn it).
Happy Birthday Nathan. Our house is your house, when you and Kathryn are ever in the area.
So, I guess I am saying it takes courage to be a good earthling, and of course, patience, creativity, and a willingness to get up every day and do what life asks. Those qualities sum up Nathan, who unlike many of us; is not too full of himself to let others get the limelight while he works in the background. Determined artists, like Nathan, who operate in the physical realm baffle me with their eye for detail, painstaking movements, and drive for perfection. But the greatest message they send is that the most we can hope for is to leave the best of ourselves in the works we produce.
Yes, Nathan had two brave grandfathers, but despite not being challenged to serve in a similar way, he passes the courage test given us all, to be steady during the storms of life. I have seen Nathan work way into the night on art projects after a long day of attending classes and mowing the University grounds, and it did not seem to matter if his day had gone well or not; if something needed done, he went about doing it. I wish I had more of whatever it is he has when it comes to pleasantly setting aside the trivial for the necessary.
On November 19, 2004, my wife Tanga had a severe car wreck in Brownsville, Tennessee, when I was on a work-related trip to Louisiana. Nathan was living with us at the time, while he went to a nearby University. The wreck occurred early in the morning, so by 9 am or so, Tanga was in the Brownsville hospital for observation. Nathan dropped what he was doing, drove the 60 miles round trip to bring her home, and then went to the pharmacy for her medicine. He impressed Tanga with his calm and resolved manner of caring for her. It’s at such times, people unwittingly yield up evidence of their true nature.
Tanga says Nathan’s brand of humor reminds her of comedian and actor Kevin James, which I believe is because they are both so likeable and refreshingly at odds with the normal view of the world. Nathan finds humor in surprising places, usually by turning something completely around, and using his keen sense of irony. For example, one night when Nathan’s favorite sports team, the Louisville Cardinals, were down by a large margin in basketball, he said: “We got ‘em right where we want ‘em.” For him, a strong reaction to a tight game, would be to get up from his green recliner, his chair while he was at our house; and go over to the indoor basketball goal and start firing shots.
If the game did not go the way he had hoped, he would not mope, fume or worse, the way I sometimes would; but he would simply go about his business or even on some occasions, head over to the University to work on an art project. Nathan, being the master of understatement; would say something like “Not so much”, if you asked him whether his team played well in a game they had lost. It’s not surprising then that after he had lived with us a while, he would leave the upstairs area all to me as I watched my favorite team play, knowing I might say rough things or hit the arm of the chair with a little too much force. I might have learned a lot from Nathan’s approach to being a sports fan, but I am not sure even he can help me when it comes to that.
Nathan has a unique take on the world. Most people will have an opinion either predictably right or left in politics, or they will evaluate things either as right or wrong or fair or unfair or momentous or insignificant, but Nathan invariably sees things somewhere between the extremes and in a way you would never have anticipated. The only thing predictable about his take on the world is its unpredictability.
If you like showy, Nathan is not your guy. If you want someone to flatter your wardrobe or your taste in automobiles, keep looking. If you prefer those out to win friends and influence people, Nathan will likely disappoint. If, on the other hand, your taste in people runs to the quietly humorous, sweetly sarcastic, and mildly enigmatic; you might want to give Nathan a test drive. Nathan has all the best qualities of the artistic temperament without the moodiness or explosive temper.
During his time of living at our house we had the enormous pleasure of playing host to he and his future wife Kathryn Johnson; cooking out on the weekends, eating the occasional weekday meal together, and, as I said, watching sports if it involved the University of Kentucky (our favorite team) or the University of Louisville (his and ultimately, their, favorite).
Many nights, sitting upstairs, we heard his key unlock the front door and knew what was coming, since it was his custom to walk heavily up the steps as if to give us ample warning someone else was in the house and then silently turn the corner with a sheepish grin on his face. Tanga would usually say something like: “There’s food on the stove if you are still hungry.”
Before he came to live with us, in 2003; I gave Nathan a small, faded, black and white photo of Tanga’s father sitting on a child’s rocking chair, in front of the TV in their old home place around Christmas 1965 (before he was to die in April, 1966); and asked Nathan to turn it into a painting for me to give to Tanga for our anniversary. The painting hangs in our living room as a reminder of Tanga’s father, our favorite artist and the fragility of life.
Nathan and Kathryn Evans married in North Augusta, SC in October, 2006 and the party afterwards was held in a textile mill turned reception hall in Augusta, GA, along the canal. They had a DJ and a number of us, not prone to public dancing, cut loose that night; in my case, due in part to a feeling of euphoria to see two such dear people, so clearly right for one another, make a public decision to become a couple.
For these reasons and so many more, Tanga and I would have adopted Nathan if his own family had not supported him so well (darn it).
Happy Birthday Nathan. Our house is your house, when you and Kathryn are ever in the area.
Let Me Tell You About My Friend Trent Ashcraft
When I was a young adult, I saw many of today’s young adults as babies and one of those is Trent Ashcraft, son of Phil and Denise (Holbrook), college friends. Trent’s parents, like my wife Tanga and I, met as a result of attending the Baptist Student Union (BSU) at Morehead State University. Our class of BSUers produced at least a dozen marriages and now Trent and his brother Jason have added two new sets of marriages from the next generation to that list: Jason Ashcraft/Jessica Gabbard and Trent Ashcraft/Erin Nowak.
Funny smart people are fortunate since humor makes their intelligence easier to tolerate. Trent Ashcraft is a funny smart person, gifted at the art of lively conversation and full of opinions, but always on the lookout for ways to keep from offending others, by employing his favorite conciliatory device - humor.
Trent is also cool. The coolest people are the least likely to be fawned over, because fawning is uncool and the cool person frowns on it, so the way to tell the cool how cool they are, is to pay them the respect they are due; which of course, means by coming right out and saying Trent is cool, I am officially, uncool.
I mean if you got on an elevator and there stood Chris Rock, would you blurt out, "Chris Rock, you are so cool?" Hopefully not right? To me, the cool person seems to always keep his balance, no matter the situation. If you put Trent on stage, as many of his friends know, and ask him to stand there and be funny, he will figure out a way to do it. I am sure he is a serious teacher, but I have a feeling his students get a pretty good dose of entertainment as well.
I have to admit, the way I think of Trent is based on recollections of him as a comic prodigy. Trent was born into the first generation to have VHS recordings made of their childhood and I hope someday, we can get our old tapes digitized; and when we do, we are going to shock the world with video clips of a five-year old Trent Ashcraft doing standup at parties where he had the adults rolling in the aisles. His specialty was telling stories originally told by Jerry Clower. When you see him next, just say: “I just want to make sure he knows I’m a bull too” and see if Trent smiles. Or say: “Pastor you’re kneeling on my oxygen hose, back up.” Or: “When I first saw that dog, I thought it was a lion too.”
One thing I've noticed about building people up in your imagination is that; sometimes when you are finally with them, you can think of nothing to say. It's as if the pressure is too much; you have often wished them to be near so you could trade witticisms and now you are together there is this stone cold silence.
It's sometimes that way when we all get together. We will be sitting on the couch, me and this boy I treasured watching grow up, now a grown man of his own; and the only thing I manage is: "How bout them Reds?"
But ever once in a while things will flow, someone will say something like: "How long did people think Lindsay Lohan could stay clean, anyway; it's no surprise to me." ...and Trent comes up with the perfect clip, such as: "I don't know, about anyone else but there are some people, and she's one of them, that just about never cross my mind, unless someone mentions her or something."
And I'm thinking, is nobody writing this stuff down? He speaks lines that should be in a Broadway play and we sit here shelling peanuts or yawning or looking at our watch or scratching our itches. The rest of us could no more speak English as craftily as he does than we could speak one of Africa's click languages.
Trent would be the counterexample I would offer to anyone of my generation who produced a Humvee full of frat boys as evidence of how the next generation of young men leave a lot to be desired, with their high regard for self and anything money can buy. Trent, like hundreds of other young people dedicated to learning and transmitting it to the next generation, followed his lifelong dream to do what his father did – teach young people history, social studies and what it means to be a citizen of the United States. These young people are the best hope to “keep our Republic”.
I read somewhere that a modern urban person is hit with as much information in a day as someone 100 years ago was in a lifetime. Of course we know being hit with information is different from absorbing and assimilating it. The young person of today, who seeks, processes and makes sense of the world; is potentially more knowledgeable than Thomas Jefferson and wiser than Ben Franklin. Trent is one of these young people, so not only is he cool like Chris Rock, he is Jefferson and Franklin rolled into one.
In Virginia Woolf's "To the lighthouse", Mrs. Ramsey is watching rooks (sort of like crows) she had named Joseph and Mary, cavorting in the air outside the window and brings them to her daughter Rose's attention, because: "One's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards." I agree with Mrs. Woolf, it is the primary purpose of the young to give your “perceptions a little thrust forwards”. But that is not all they do.
Here are some more things young people like Trent do for me:
They laugh at the things I still find funny but am not supposed to. They invent word play that makes everyone involved feel smarter. You can trust their instincts for what is cool when you can't trust your own. Their thinking is attractive and efficient, making others try to think like them and solve problems quickly, leaving time for fun.
And when you see them enjoy something you find childish or less than sophisticated, you indulge them, gaining insight into how the most patient and admired adults in your life must have felt when they abided your youthful fun and games. So with that in mind, let’s all think of the tune: “Pomp and circumstance”, and give Trent a hearty “Oh Yeeaaah”, in honor of his recently fallen hero Macho Man, and of course, his 26th birthday. Happy Birthday, Trent.
Funny smart people are fortunate since humor makes their intelligence easier to tolerate. Trent Ashcraft is a funny smart person, gifted at the art of lively conversation and full of opinions, but always on the lookout for ways to keep from offending others, by employing his favorite conciliatory device - humor.
Trent is also cool. The coolest people are the least likely to be fawned over, because fawning is uncool and the cool person frowns on it, so the way to tell the cool how cool they are, is to pay them the respect they are due; which of course, means by coming right out and saying Trent is cool, I am officially, uncool.
I mean if you got on an elevator and there stood Chris Rock, would you blurt out, "Chris Rock, you are so cool?" Hopefully not right? To me, the cool person seems to always keep his balance, no matter the situation. If you put Trent on stage, as many of his friends know, and ask him to stand there and be funny, he will figure out a way to do it. I am sure he is a serious teacher, but I have a feeling his students get a pretty good dose of entertainment as well.
I have to admit, the way I think of Trent is based on recollections of him as a comic prodigy. Trent was born into the first generation to have VHS recordings made of their childhood and I hope someday, we can get our old tapes digitized; and when we do, we are going to shock the world with video clips of a five-year old Trent Ashcraft doing standup at parties where he had the adults rolling in the aisles. His specialty was telling stories originally told by Jerry Clower. When you see him next, just say: “I just want to make sure he knows I’m a bull too” and see if Trent smiles. Or say: “Pastor you’re kneeling on my oxygen hose, back up.” Or: “When I first saw that dog, I thought it was a lion too.”
One thing I've noticed about building people up in your imagination is that; sometimes when you are finally with them, you can think of nothing to say. It's as if the pressure is too much; you have often wished them to be near so you could trade witticisms and now you are together there is this stone cold silence.
It's sometimes that way when we all get together. We will be sitting on the couch, me and this boy I treasured watching grow up, now a grown man of his own; and the only thing I manage is: "How bout them Reds?"
But ever once in a while things will flow, someone will say something like: "How long did people think Lindsay Lohan could stay clean, anyway; it's no surprise to me." ...and Trent comes up with the perfect clip, such as: "I don't know, about anyone else but there are some people, and she's one of them, that just about never cross my mind, unless someone mentions her or something."
And I'm thinking, is nobody writing this stuff down? He speaks lines that should be in a Broadway play and we sit here shelling peanuts or yawning or looking at our watch or scratching our itches. The rest of us could no more speak English as craftily as he does than we could speak one of Africa's click languages.
Trent would be the counterexample I would offer to anyone of my generation who produced a Humvee full of frat boys as evidence of how the next generation of young men leave a lot to be desired, with their high regard for self and anything money can buy. Trent, like hundreds of other young people dedicated to learning and transmitting it to the next generation, followed his lifelong dream to do what his father did – teach young people history, social studies and what it means to be a citizen of the United States. These young people are the best hope to “keep our Republic”.
I read somewhere that a modern urban person is hit with as much information in a day as someone 100 years ago was in a lifetime. Of course we know being hit with information is different from absorbing and assimilating it. The young person of today, who seeks, processes and makes sense of the world; is potentially more knowledgeable than Thomas Jefferson and wiser than Ben Franklin. Trent is one of these young people, so not only is he cool like Chris Rock, he is Jefferson and Franklin rolled into one.
In Virginia Woolf's "To the lighthouse", Mrs. Ramsey is watching rooks (sort of like crows) she had named Joseph and Mary, cavorting in the air outside the window and brings them to her daughter Rose's attention, because: "One's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards." I agree with Mrs. Woolf, it is the primary purpose of the young to give your “perceptions a little thrust forwards”. But that is not all they do.
Here are some more things young people like Trent do for me:
They laugh at the things I still find funny but am not supposed to. They invent word play that makes everyone involved feel smarter. You can trust their instincts for what is cool when you can't trust your own. Their thinking is attractive and efficient, making others try to think like them and solve problems quickly, leaving time for fun.
And when you see them enjoy something you find childish or less than sophisticated, you indulge them, gaining insight into how the most patient and admired adults in your life must have felt when they abided your youthful fun and games. So with that in mind, let’s all think of the tune: “Pomp and circumstance”, and give Trent a hearty “Oh Yeeaaah”, in honor of his recently fallen hero Macho Man, and of course, his 26th birthday. Happy Birthday, Trent.
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