The Way I See It - New Year's Day musings

The Way I See It
By Doug Dickerson
Staff Writer
December 27, 2006

The year’s at the spring and day’s at the morn,
Morning’s at seven’
The hillsides dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snails on the thorn:
God’s in his heaven –
All’s right with the world!
-Robert Browning

I joined some co-workers for lunch the other day at the Barony House. As we waited for a table, our conversation turned to that New Year’s Day tradition of eating Hoppin’ John. The saying, as I understand it is, “Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year. Rice for riches and peas for peace”.

I read up on my history of eating Hoppin’ John and it seems that it is supposed to bring good luck and wealth. It was the custom for children to gather in the dining room as the dish was brought forth and hop around the table before sitting down to eat. I also learned that a man named John came “a-hoppin” when his wife took the dish from the stove. An obscure South Carolina custom was inviting a guest to eat by saying, “Hop in, John.” The dish goes back to at least as far as 1841, when according to tradition, a crippled black man who was known as Hoppin’ John, hawked it in the streets of Charleston.

After reading the ingredients of Hoppin’ John (2 cups of dried black-eyed peas, cold water, 1-pound lean slab bacon or 1 pound meaty ham hocks, etc…) one might need the riches to help pay the cardiologist. One recipe I read said, “Before preparing dried beans, sort through them thoroughly for tiny pebbles or other debris.” I’m sorry, but it seems to me, the good luck one may have in eating this Hoppin’ John concoction is in not eating pebbles or debris or needing an angioplasty afterward.

I am not trying to slam Hoppin’ John or the people who eat it; I understand and respect the rich tradition and practice of such a custom. I realize most won’t believe me, but I was raised in the south, despite not having a taste for grits or Hoppin’ John. The only mental picture I come away with in regards to Hoppin’ John is poor old John trying to hop away from this heart attack stew and get to the good stuff – football, chips, dip, sandwiches and some cold drinks.

I don’t know about you, but New Year’s Day resolutions have always annoyed me. Yes, we all should strive to be better persons in the new year than we were in the previous. However, we make the same old resolutions year in and year out, and before we sing “Happy Birthday” to the Presidents in February, the resolutions have been abandoned or forgotten. The tried and true, “I am going to lose weight” resolution went out the door on day one with those two bowls of Hoppin’ John.

While resolutions serve a momentary purpose of trying to focus us on some worthwhile goals, life for most goes on as usual. Resolutions are made, life gets busy and before we know it, it’s time to make new resolutions concerning the things we didn’t resolve in the past year. The cycle perpetuates itself.

I googled the Top 10 New Year’s resolutions and what annoyed me the most is that out of the Top Ten resolutions, only two of them — 1: Spend more time with family and friends, and 9: Help others — was in any way related to anything beyond navel-gazing. It’s hard to make the world a better place when we have selfishly placed ourselves in the center of it.

Each of us faces the new year with time honored traditions and practices and hopes for the coming year. My hope and prayer is that in the coming year our resolutions can be replaced with purposes that propel us to causes greater than ourselves. My prayer for you is that you will have the health, family, friends, love and means to do it.
Happy New Year!

©Summerville Journal-Scene 2006

The Way I See It - Observing the Holidays

The Way I See It
By Doug Dickerson
Staff Writer
December 20, 2006

You can observe a lot just by watching
-Yogi Berra

If you are like me, the past few weeks have been busy with many festivities of the holiday season. From parties, musicals, and shopping, to all other sorts of functions and obligations, life can be all too busy during the season of “peace on earth, good will towards men.”

As my editorial deadline approached, I began to panic because things had been so hectic that I didn’t have a clue as to what to write about. Nothing to write about? Perish the thought! Someone once said, “A writer works alone and must, therefore, suffer the company of a fool.” Well, there you go!

However, inspiration began to flow as I considered the above-mentioned words of Yogi Berra. Observing others is a favorite pastime of mine. Just the other day, I was at a red light when I looked up in my rear view mirror to watch a lady apply lipstick, eye liner, and fix her hair all in about a two-minute span. I couldn’t help but wonder, if she could do that sitting still at a red light, what could she do while driving?

I was in Wal Mart the other day. As I walked down an aisle, I overheard a man say to his wife, “I don’t know what to buy, I am a man.” I wanted to slap him! However, that “peace on earth, good will towards men” thing all but snuffed out an otherwise tempting moment. Nothing gets my goat more than a man unjustly playing into the stereotypes that men are helpless at Christmas because we don’t know what to buy. Obviously, he does not have a teenage daughter to tag along with him while shopping to serve as a purchasing consultant to avoid such mistakes. We do know what to buy when pointed in the right direction.

My wife and I had just finished a little shopping at the mall the other night, when driving out of the parking lot, my wife, with a sparkle in her eye, looked at me and said, “I am glad you like to go shopping with me.” Stunned, I looked at her and asked, “What makes you think I like going shopping with you?” The excursion began with dinner at Jason’s Deli. The chicken wrap advertised at the counter looked good enough for a “last supper” for the condemned who was about to unleash money faster than the woman painting her lips at the red light. Thankfully, the damage shopping wasn’t so bad, and later I commented to my wife again, about how good the chicken wrap was. With a devious smile, she told me that the wrap was indeed a spinach wrap. Yuk! I hate spinach, and the thought that she knowingly let me eat a spinach wrap was about more than I could stand. In hindsight, I wish I had slapped that man in Wal Mart after all.

Will Durant, in his book The Story of Civilization, said, “Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing things historians usually record – while, on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happens on the banks.”

Yes, life is busy; especially during the Christmas season. So often, it seems, we are in the stream going nowhere fast and at times in streams not of our choosing. Instead of observing, we are reacting; instead of building up, we are tearing down. The stream can be a violent place even in Wal Mart or while eating spinach.

In the closing days of this Christmas season, let’s get back on the bank. Perhaps we can return to building our lives on the banks of what makes us strong – faith, family, love, the voice of a child, laughter, music, and the true meaning of the season. Merry Christmas!

©Summerville Journal-Scene 2006

The Way I See It - TV Land Top 10

The Way I See It
By Doug Dickerson
Staff Writer
December 13, 2006

I never knew how much I was loved and appreciated around here until my column (200 thousand words and counting) was published last week. In my column, I cited scientific research validating the notion that women really do talk more than men. My commentary provoked some reactions from some of my kind, charming, wonderful (no groveling here) co-workers that I can’t write about in this column.

Thankful to have lived long enough to write another column, I thought I would share with you the findings of the new TV Land Top 100 catchphrases covering 60 years of American television shows, cartoons and commercials and quotes from news programs.

Larry W. Jones, the president of TV Land said, “We have found that television is such a huge part of baby boomers’ DNA that it makes sense that much of America’s pop culture jargon comes from TV.”

The Top 10 greatest TV quotes and catchphrases chosen by TV Land are:
1. Heeeere’s Johnny! (Ed McMahon, The Tonight Show)
2. One small step for man…(Neil Armstrong)
3. You’re fired! (Donald Trump, The Apprentice)
4. Baby, you’re the greatest. (Ralph Kramden, The Honeymooners)
5. Ask not what your country can do for you…(John F. Kennedy)
6. D’oh! (Homer Simpson, The Simpsons)
7. Where’s the beef? (Wendy’s)
8. Whatchoo talkin’ bout, Willis? (Arnold Drummond, Different Strokes)
9. Yabba dabba do! (Fred Flintstone, The Flintstones)
10. I am not a crook (Richard Nixon)

The Top 100 List of quotes will be featured in a five-night TV Land special airing December 11 to 15. Many of the quotes bring back memories of a time and era far removed from us now. Yet, the long-term effects of TV upon society have significantly changed us.

See if you can guess when this paragraph was written: “Despite such network fears, some stronger form of program censorship may yet prevail. One possible way to bring it about: pressure on individual stations. In the (National Association of Broadcasters), individual stations outnumber and outvote the …networks. And in recent months, TV station owners have become increasingly jittery over the activities of suddenly rambunctious Federal Communication Commission.” If you guessed that it was written after the “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl with Janet Jackson, or any other modern event, think again.

The gist of the article that the paragraph came from is that the federal government, led by some members of Congress, wanted television to clean up its act. It comes from a 1969 edition of Time magazine. The story centered on that year’s broadcasters’ convention and on Rhode Island Senator John O. Pastore’s campaign to clean up television. Specifically, he was upset over a commercial starring the “Noxzema Girl” who told people to “Take it off. Take it all off.” How far we’ve come!

A recent poll commissioned by Zogby International found that Americans know a lot more about pop culture than they do about almost anything else, including their own government. The poll discovered, for instance, that 77 percent of those surveyed could identify two of the seven dwarfs, while only 24 percent could name two of the nine Supreme Court justices; 73 percent could name all three of the Three Stooges, but only 42 percent could list the three branches of government. The survey found that 60 percent of the people could identify Krypton as Superman’s home planet, but only 37 percent could identify the closest planet to the sun, Mercury.

The intent of the Zogby poll was not to show how stupid Americans are, according to a news release, but it shows “how powerful popular culture is in terms of communicating information, especially in comparison to government, schools and the media.”

The 1969 article ends with network executives being “content to argue that no method has reliably demonstrated what television actually does to people.” It concludes, “Critics urging censorship by seeking piecemeal suppression of scenes and words before studying the larger, long-term effects may be straining at gnats while swallowing camels.” Zogby, it would seem, has put that issue to rest.

So, the next time you experience that “dumbed-down” feeling of watching too much TV, grab the remote and tune in for another popular catchphrase, “This is jeopardy!” If all else fails, turn it off and find a good book!

©Summerville Journal-Scene 2006

The Way I See It - 200 thousand words and counting

The Way I See It
by Doug Dickerson
Staff Writer
December 6, 2006

London’s Daily Mail carried a news story last week that affirmed what many of us men have suspected for a long time. In my own defense, this is not a sexist observation, merely the reporting of scientific data. Women really do talk more than men.
According to the research, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman talking up to 20, 000 words in a day – 13,000 more than the average man.

I did the math on this. I am married with two daughters, so in my house I am daily out-spoken 60,000 words to 7,000. Here at the office, there are seven women who daily chime in for 140,000 words, which brings to a grand total of 200,000 words a day I am subjected to.

As I age, the more I have come to long for and appreciate quiet places. I suppose the study has helped me to understand the reasons why these longings for quiet places is at times so strong. When the wife and girls load up to go to the Mall or some place, and ask out of courtesy if I want to go, I politely decline and bask in the rare moment of quietness.

In her book, “Inside the Female Mind,” by Dr. Luan Brizendine, she says that the inherent differences between the male and female brain explain why women are naturally more talkative than men. Dr. Brizendine writes that women devote more brain cells to talking than men. And if that is not enough, the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals, which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high. So, I am around ten women a day who are tripping out on a total of around 200 thousand words, give or take a few. And the more they speak, the better they feel.

In addition, Dr. Brizendine says the differences can be traced back to the womb, where the sex hormone testosterone moulds the developing brain cell. The areas responsible for communication, emotion and memory are all pared back in the unborn baby boy. The result is that boys and men chat less than their female counterparts and struggle to express their emotions to the same extent. “Women,” says Dr. Brizendine, “have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion while men have a small country road.”On the superhighway of women expressing themselves, I have been steamrolled.

According to the research I also discovered that there are advantages for men being the strong silent types. It seems, according to Dr. Brizendine, that testosterone reduces the section of the brain involved in hearing, allowing men to become “deaf” to the most logical arguments put forth by wives and girlfriends. So when my wife says, “Why don’t you listen to me?” I can tell her that not only did I not hear her, I am in fact genetically not wired to hear anything she says. It’s not my fault.

The study also says that what the male brain may lack in conversation and emotion, it more than makes up for with its ability to think about sex. Dr. Brizendine says that the brain’s “sex processor” — the area responsible for sexual thoughts — is twice as big in men than in women, perhaps explaining why men are stereotyped as having sex on the mind. Or, to put it another way, men have an international airport dealing with thoughts about sex, where women “have an airfield nearby that lands small and private planes.” Naturally, you know what is going to happen when a man’s country road ability to communicate with an international airport size ability to think about sex collides with a woman’s superhighway ability to communicate with her airfield ability to think about sex. It is the prescription for a crash landing!

Finally, Dr. Brizendine says, “Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys. Their brains are different by the time they’re born, and their brains are what drive their impulses, values and their very reality.”
The many wonderful differences that exist between us is what makes life at home and work so entertaining, if I don’t say so myself.

©Summerville Journal-Scene 2006