Oblations and obligations

I ask my father what his mom was like. I'm curious because a childhood friend of his who hadn't seen me for a good decade once burst into a big grin to say, "Susan, you remind me so much of your Grandma Frieda!" Thinking the resemblance might be deeper than skin, I wonder what else I inherited from our clan's Swiss matriarch.

I have her obituary, a yellowed clipping from a country paper of the day. She was a church woman, she helped people and organized other people to do the same.

Mrs. Weber, having raised three sons of her own, was particularly interested in the religious welfare of young people and many times would go out of her way to see that some boy or girl had a ride to church or Sunday School. One of the last things she did was help to organize the Singing Club of the Dingman’s Ferry Methodist Church. Without her help, and that of her devoted friend, Mrs. Paul Schuepp, this Club would never have been started, since almost half the young people relied upon these two kind ladies for transportation.

Dad has told many a story about their early days in a New Jersey enclave of Swiss immigrants. His mother learned English, put up with cockroaches and kerosene lights after leaving a bug free, electricity emancipated life in Europe, raised three sons and buried her husband before he came to old age. Spinster sisters Lisa and Liny joined her at the homestead in PA adjoining Child's Park, a place of magic for the grandkids. The Swiss inflected voices of my grandmother and her sisters laced their plum and apple pies with a certain old world flavor.

As far as I know, Grandma Frieda published no words (her husband Theo and his father were the poets). She left us no recording, she never formed a band or went on tour. So what had she passed to me besides a strong chin and earnest eyes? What was she like?

My Dad, just rebounding from his own health imbroglio, spares few words about his mother. "People said she was serious. But she was friendly. And she was happy."

And if she left me these ingredients for my own swiss-english pie, I smell a rite of passage baking.

Squirrel traps

What fascinates me about the film, Capote, is the elusiveness of the protagonist's character. It's as though Capote is walking around in one of his books, not quite sure if he's the hero or the villain. Harper Lee, his friend and counterpoint, punctures the messianic bubble with her blades of integrity.

Business schools take a page from Harper Lee.

At Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, about half the grades are handed out for work that's done in teams; members of each team provide one another with anonymous feedback, and the school has hired counselors to help students absorb the lessons from this criticism. "In the past, you could go through business school and nobody would say you were coming across as a jerk," says Paul Danos, dean of the Tuck School. "But that might have been the most important factor in your future success as a manager."

Experienced sound engineers pay attention to the way a recording's inner workings come across to the listener. George Massenburg recently told a Sweetwater masterclass:

There are two types of balance with any kind of mix: internal balance, referring to the relationship of the sounds in a piece of music to one another, and external balance, which is how your mix relates to the outside world...

I see the internal balance in a mix as not being so technical, I see it as more musical. An external balance would be, "okay, when I play it in my car, I can't hear the kick." Or "I can't hear the cowbell," or the playback circumstance is such that it just doesn't work.

On the world stage, our I'm-the-decider president reminds us who's boss as Rumsfeld digs the mass grave in clueless spades, behavior coaches nowhere to be found.

Why we fight

Fear is the main reason. Hubris the second. Ignorance the limping third. Ironically, it all boils down to love, the milk and honey of desire.

What's the point of a loveless life? What if there is not enough love for you to get your portion? You can't make people love you. It's not a thing you earn. It's not a right. It's a gift. So you wake up in the morning, you don't feel particularly loved (or lovable?) and angst crawls in under the covers. Abandonment. Loneliness. Emptiness. Better fill the void. Stockpile ambition, ostentation. Erect billboards that tell the world, 'look! I exist! I've got all this stuff. I'm important! You gotta love me, right? Right?'

You're after love, you fall for pride instead. Ah, but hubris wears the tailored suit with a rosebud boutonniere. Hubris tips the maitre d' in twenties. Hubris parks the SUV in VIP garages. You think I'm talking rich people here? You can have your biggie fries and a chip on your shoulder, both. Vanity is classless, and clueless. From Donald Rumsfeld to Ronald McDonald, all you need is empty calories in your hungry gut to send you off to fight your wars. Once you're weaned of love by demon pride, respect is what you're after and nothing fills the bill like the cantankerous guns of Generalissimo Ignoramus.

Contrary to the staid annals of rational inquiry, thought is not well served by the passionless mind. Passion comes bundled with conscience. Love is a lubricant, if you will. Without it, heat and friction wear your brain to smithereens. You begin to think in riddles. What's the best way to signal Stalin we can crush him? Nuke the Japanese! How to tell jihadists we're the superpower here? Occupy Iraq! Terrorize civilians, here and abroad, in the wake of unmitigated angst, unconscionable ego, unfathomable ignorance.

As I watched Why We Fight, frame after frame of military-industrial-congressional-thinktanking crowded me, gasping, into the shadows. Eisenhower warned us not to follow love lorn weapons dealers to this monstrous state. We ignored him and now we are citizens of New Rome. Who am I, a serf, to stir the ashes?

If there is a merest spark of hope in this, it is to be found in the finest capacity of a human will. In a word, love. Not the smarmy pretense that got us here, blind and foolish, breathless at the sight of the headless maiden's breast. My countrymen and women can do better than swallow Caesar's vapid lies.

We can study the curves in the broad sands of compassion. We can liberate our flawed logic from a tendency to expect love, respect and wisdom to bore into us from without. We can fight with impassioned desire to create an empire of expansive beauty that emanates from within each unblemished being.

And when our children ask us why we fight, we'll have an answer. We fight for milk and honey, dear, we fight for you, we fight because we love.

Yellow submarine

On a dust plain, much is made of a hot air balloon the Beatles plan to ride. One by one the dear lads coaster in on parachutes, John and Paul intrepid, Ringo with a prone thud, George an afterthought. Their handlers herd them brusquely to the blimpish buggy. John and Paul go arm in arm, the sherpas. The airship owner sways and stokes the flame. Reporters ask him where he learned his trade -- he shrugs and says he never really learned it.

Beatles entouragers climb inside to party for the boys who can't be bothered. Someone's whisked them to a private berth. The crowd gets motleyer and louder as the hot air rises. At the last minute, a young man offers me the sky. "Sit on this platform, you can join the party once we're in the clouds." I don't believe him, really, but I'd love to meet the Beatles so I fool myself, pretending I can handle heights -- I do it in my sleep!

Cut to later. Amidst the mill of revelers, a sober woman dubious of entropy, a lighter and a kid anointing boxes that fall into the cosmos and explode.

Through a glass

Sometimes, in the studio, I forget the performance angels floating just beneath the skin of engineer, producer, session player, writer. But a strange thing happens when I listen back to a freshly minted song, like Wide Open, with a Hammond organ whirling its signature sound from intro through denouement. I remember watching Chris play the part, sideways to the keyboard, nonchalant and focused, both. But when I hear the finished song, I see a band in full regalia, pounding out the sounds, organ player juiced and joyful. My mind flips back and forth between these images of studio and stage, session and performance, focus and abandon.

To say there is a performance artist in every human is to recognize this flip-flop game of the mind we play out on formal and informal stages. Some of us never step beyond the studio -- kitchen, office, gym -- to serve our muse. Others of us leap onto stages at the least provocation, flashing our potential at the wide eyed crowds.

After all is said and sung and done in either sphere, there enters excellence. This is where the artist sheds her mortal skin and for some time bound eternity, reveals her muse's world. This can happen sitting sideways to a keyboard, it can happen under colored lights and amped up airwaves. Its requisite preamble is a passion honed to near perfection over years of unquestionable fondness for the muse.

Miracle road

Christian bikers did not spoil Walter's sound check last night, nor did the dog poop. When you book a rock show in a folkatorium on April 1st, I guess you take your chances. The bikers took their confab elsewhere and the next door neighbor's guard dog lost all interest in my bassist-manager and his freshly odoriferous loafer. Walter, the road warrior, spritzed his sole with holy water Fantastik and proceeded with load in.

Midway through sound check entered the Hendersons and Krista. Peter, having recently stared down countless health demons, looked terrific, though his smile-at-the-ready can often fool you. Ann and Krista settled him in and beamed their own beacons around the shipyard. One by one, the listeners -- weldor, therapist, contractor, teacher, chef, working mom, Marine -- docked at Scott's Folkatorium, dipped into Ann's meatless chile and Dottie-mother-of-Scott's potato salad and plopped down to feast on music.

A successful show feels to me like some kind of miracle. With theater, suspension of disbelief is to be expected, as stage sets, costumes and extra ordinary scenarios draw you in. Music, where imagination reigns, has neither bread nor circuses to prop up the puppet regime. You rely entirely on the integrity of your songs, the quality of your musicianship and the willingness of your audience (and you) to be transported. And inspired.

Last night's show seemed all the more miraculous because my laryngitis-laced voice was still recovering from the flu. It occurs to me at times like this how fragile is the borderline dividing earth and heaven. All the careful song craft and disciplined practice, in the end, brings you to a lover's leap where anything, from bikers' alleluias to canine skank to audience malaise might land you on the rocks below, hugging your broken bones.

As we tore down the set, Doris showed me some of her filigreed poems and one by Daniel, her son, as husband Kevin looked on and spoke of his sculpting muse. An artist family, honoring my art. The road to miracle is paved, it seems, with delicate invention.

Exocoetidae

Simple Machines describes his experience awaking from a dream. He discovers he can go to places in his subconscious that induce a childlike euphoria. The experiment has a surprise twist:

And then I "went" to one of these places (in my subconscious state, mind you) and it caused what I sensed as such an intense feeling of elation that it was too much, too intense, and not pleasurable -- so disturbingly so that it was enough to wake me up!

What is there about my mind that it allows me to experience a sense of well-being so intense that it was excruciating?

I wonder if our wiring maps our feelings in a continuous loop.

I once looked out from a 90 passenger tour boat scooting across the Caribbean where turquoise sun and flying fish are no surprise. My smile was nearly big enough to shade my eyes, impossible but not at all unlikely. When my brain arrived at Aphrodite overload, I realized later, I skulked away to our thrifty cabin by the engine room to ground myself in words on paper as paradise sped by.

Words on paper through the years have told me stories of tortured prisoners who reach a certain painless state beyond the agony. A woman told me once of running out her front door to a bleeding child who'd been hit by a truck. While she soothed and whispered him from this life to the next, he said it didn't hurt -- she saw a beautiful place reflected in his face.

I've written here before about the symphony conductor who suffered brain injury. Music that once charmed him was excruciating to his altered wiring.

Controlled euphoria, now there's a buzzword for the marketeers. Package a sound, a look, a taste, a feel, a scent that takes consumers to the crest of the wave but holds them back from Hades. Extravaganza makers accept the challenge. Arena rock shows take aim at the wonder bird, kick up the decibels, lay on the spectacle, song after song. Even after all that, the kids are OK, euphoria aroused and contained.

If you think elation's worth the gamble, race your wheels along the coast road, windows down, radio up. Belt the songs into fourth gear. The world is round, the ocean's wide, and even fish can fly.

Disambiguation

Vivid threads brush my thoughts since reading Memoirs of a Geisha. It's not her untamable yearning for a certain man that visits me, it is Sayuri herself, and the eyes through which her geisha culture asks me to see my world.

A geisha studies the art of filling the emptiness that haunts a man's unexamined impulses. She draws her clients out of their functionary minds with dance, music, ceremony, kimono, conversation, laughter and sometimes, if a man is worthy, the intimate touch.

Rock artist would seem as far from geisha as slug from silkworm, but look again. Performance rock elevates the listener to the region of complicit passion woven into existence, invisible to many. In the hands of the diva, her tools -- lyric, rhythm, sound, musicianship, choreography, costume -- dissolve into the audience's palpable pleasure. Like businessmen at a tea ceremony, listeners sip their own thoughts in the presence of the diva whose deference, like the geisha's, is to unquestionable beauty.

Peer review

Coldplay. Impeccable musicianship. Stunning visuals. Lush sounds. Infatigable energy. Flawless choreography. Expert production. Winning message (what was it again? -- oh -- right -- 'emotion - it's all good'). Friendly personas. 'What's not to like?' as I told the tipsy dancer to my right.

I liked it well enough. I liked my concert companion. I liked the spectacle. This morning when I went for the paper, I did a little Chris Martin scamper in the grass, so I guess it changed me. Got me lighter on my toes. What if Chris sprained himself doing one of his leaping knee slides? Ouch -- tour hiatus for sure. See how the show awakened my compassion? What if the fan behind us, beer in one hand, cocktail in the other, lost his equilibrium, or his dinner, in our laps? See -- Coldplay really got me thinking about intimacy and trust.

Quicken Loans Arena, the Q, is a well oiled pleasure engine. The rafters groan with techno borg enhancements, the cavernous UFO scoops up humans, snaps us into numbered pods, tranquilizes cerebellums with massive waves of light and sound until we're synchronizing nicely. Community. That's a good thing, no? So why do I feel like I just woke up from a funky dream?

The Coldplay boys are not to blame, they've earned their fame, the humanoids adore them. I'm the one who bucks the norm, likes a little warmth in all that playfulness. But hey, I'm an alien myself, guitar enamored troubadour who'd rather be the purple cow than see one.

Silver palaces

He eulogized the bad boys,
James and Jack,
but Marilyn was sacred.
Her sultry innocence
regarded him through tilted windows
hung on tacks
that pocked
the adolescent's lair.
A girl who breathed his air
and hoped for more
desired in vain.
She came no closer to his pen
than moistened hands
to sighs of platinum
in velvet seated night.
Mortality denuded him,
he burrowed in
delusions of the screen.

Every girl on earth
can bow to Marilyn,
her rival from beyond,
a feminist unblemished.
Once a daughter walks the halls
of headless boys
enamored of the goddess,
she is free.

To love the holy rites
of imperfection.

To offer them
unblinking
to a man.

Egret's brood

The furrows in her father's brow
who held the plow?
Botox he never knew ye.

Gott sei dank
with his beloved Jane to care for
doctors found recalcitrance's boney shadow
strangling his heart.
Just in time they told him
just in time
their science and the blade
would save him from arrest
and certain death --

Arrest for what
this Christian man
and why?

The temptress was cholesterol
his appetite desired her
Delilah to his samsonite
her time bomb peaceably begrudging him his days.

Good the surgeons pacified the terrorist.
Good the husband lived to tend his sweetheart to her grave.
Good the father's hand
implanted rows like wings
across the brow
as herons glide
from tree to tree
remembering
their path.

Emily

Wren of a girl in a gauze dress
tramps the wilderness
in the wry company of words

Beauty queens of boiler plated armor
serve her up on beds of ridicule

They ache and dine
on emptiness
to party out their feigned desire

In this age
a poet swathed in muslin
could be hallowed
but the paparazzi shutters
find her not

Diminutive Ms Dickinson
slips between
the misted evergreens

Boys with bras

Put a guitar in a woman's hands and let her play. If she gets good, damn her with feigned praise à la Patty Larkin's ditty, Not Bad for a Broad.

'Girls with guitars' sounds like 'bros with bras' -- not what you'd expect but, hey, kinky's cool, it's still a free country, man. Let 'er play -- she's not hurting anybody and it looks kinda sexy, no?

Pop culture says there's no such thing as bad press. Janet Jackson's name recognition got a respectable jolt when her body amour faltered on the football field. OK, maybe not so respectable, but the jolt was real, ask a zillion bug eye witnesses.

So, is the female guitarist blessed or cursed by the music writer's ubiquitous chant: gee, the dame's got a strat strapped around her gilded frame so what the heck, let's write an article about THAT!

More pop wisdom: sex sells. My elderly dad expressed amazement that a mini skirted glamour girl at the auto show knew all about transmissions and fuel efficiency. Huge convention hall, car lovers agog over white wall tires and shapely legs in good working order. Sexy makes the world go round, that's show biz baby.

Maybe.

Then there is art, and tools that fuel the art, hands and minds and guts that use the tools well. Listeners who respond to the depth of a performer's skill honed over decades thank the writer who plucks the genderless nerve with imagination and skill.

Last night at band practice I fumed, 'if I see one more 'chick with guitar' article I'm gonna puke! When you see a woman player, do you think Oh my God, I can't believe she's got a guitar in her hands?'

'It's just an angle for a story,' says the elegant bassist. 'It's a stupid angle.'

'When I see a female guitar player,' says the eloquent drummer, 'I prob'ly think I want that guitar.'

Thanks, amigos. I needed that.

Groundswell

A spine doctor's personal alternative to work induced stress is running.

The solitude creates an environment for quality thinking. I can't do anything else when I run.

The president of a design firm who works 70 travel heavy hours a week, turns to high speed biking for release.

Some people drink, some smoke, some carouse -- I keep myself active.

A musician I know has lost 30 pounds in 2 months keeping himself active with weight training, biking, swimming. He packs it in around a full course load, household duties and art projects, the latest involving digital photography, photoshop and paint on fabric.

When I work on something with my hands, I think about things differently.

I swim in water or in air. The air swim happens in performance when listeners have brought their solitude to bare. They come for the music, nothing less. Composition, practice, recording, marketing -- all this informs a moment of release that may last an hour or more. Intimacy gathers in a hall of strangers wrapped in the sweet sweat of a song, unwinding.

Fife n berry

Andy Griffith told The Associated Press on Saturday,

Don was a small man ... but everything else about him was large: his mind, his expressions. Don was special. There's nobody like him. I loved him very much. We had a long and wonderful life together.

I call her my giant begonia. Wing span one meter plus. Jolly green leaves veined in deep salmon. Every time I get near her with pruning implements, I see she's given birth to more pale bloom babies at the furthest reaches of her solar plexus; I leave her to nurse her young.

It started out innocent enough one spring when Barbara, my botanically gifted neighbor, plunked a pot stand of flagrant foliage on my porch like so much ripe squash. I carted the monstrosity up to my tree house, left it for dead. Goddess knows, the tooth fairy must have shed some star dust on the grand dame. She thrived in my abandon, thrust her downy petals into summer's watch. A wistful Barbara told me the lady had never blessed her former mistress thus in all the years they'd lived together. I began to understand the allure of the unlikely lover.

Don Knotts died last week. He was the hyper inflated underling, least likely to thrive, late bloomer cast on the shores of a sit com unaware of its destiny: to unfurl the pink extravagance of this comedic hero. Barney Fife transformed Mayberry into the best vaudeville stage TV itself might conjure. Perfect chemistry on a summer's night, fans held a flutter, laughter caught high in the rafters of somebody's chicken barn eight miles south.

My parents, especially Mom, loved the Andy Griffith Show. When I was too little for sit coms, I drifted off to the sound of laughter downstairs. Deputy Fife, blustery, insecure, homely, endearing fool that he was, held my mother spellbound and neighing in the palms of his gigantically scrawny hands.

Pray

fold the paper
fold the hands

Reporter in Baghdad
her deadline
is past.

Inmates, Kabuli,
have captured
Block Two.

Paris has kidnapped
and murdered
the Jew.

Sunni jihadis
have tortured
the mosque.

US extremities,
innocence,
lost.

fold the paper
fold the hands

pray

Macon's lament

George Will says conservatives are happier than liberals (he's got research to back him on this) because conservatives

acknowledge the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is: The unintended consequences of bold government undertakings are apt to be larger than, and contrary to, the intended ones.

Conservatives take comfort in this. Meanwhile, conscientious liberals deprive themselves of the simplest delights, even automotive ones, because

there is global warming to worry about, and the perils of corporate-driven consumerism, which is the handmaiden of bourgeoisie materialism. And high-powered cars (how many liberals drive Corvettes?) are metaphors (for America's reckless foreign policy, for machismo rampant, etc.). And then there is -- was -- all that rustic beauty paved over for highways. (And for those giant parking lots at exurban mega-churches. The less said about them the better.) And automobiles discourage the egalitarian enjoyment of mass transit. And automobiles, by facilitating suburban sprawl, deny sprawl's victims -- that word must make an appearance in liberal laments; and lament is what liberals do -- the uplifting communitarian experience of high-density living.

Will calls Liberalism

...a grim and scolding creed. And not one conducive to happiness.

Recently, foreign oil workers got caught up in bold government undertakings:

Macon Hawkins, who was one of nine men seized by heavily armed militants in the restive Niger River Delta a week ago, told reporters yesterday that U.S. President George W. Bush and the United Nations need to help resolve the standoff between oil companies and the people of the impoverished region.

"They get nothing out of the oil, and they produce all of the oil," Hawkins said as he sat on a small boat among hooded young men armed with machine guns and one rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "They're tired of it, so they're going to fight, and they're going to fight until death."

Despite his captivity, Hawkins appeared to be in good spirits:

Hawkins, who said he was from a small town in Texas, said he would turn 69 on March 1. Asked what he wanted for his birthday, he replied "freedom," and laughed heartily.

Hawkins' hearty laugh would seem to pose a conundrum to George Will's happiness theory. On the one hand, the Texas oil worker has a firm grasp on the consequences of bold government undertakings. On the other, despite his consequent capture, the man is laughing heartily. Both hands place him squarely in the conservative boat.

But then there's Mr. Hawkins' comment about giving Nigerians a piece of the action before they demand it, to the death. This is sounding more like the automotively conservative liberal lament, affability notwithstanding.

This is the beauty of research and statistics. Whether Hawkins or the Nigerians are granted independence anytime soon, they can be seen as the insignificant tail of the curve, hardly a challenge to the great Law of Unintended Consequences, flapping unperturbable on George's orwellian flagpole.

Ester's sister's wine casserole

Today I'm vacuuming -- first time in weeks. It brings me to tears. If I hadn't set out on the mindless chore, I might have forgotten Mimi, the woman I met yesterday when I told stories at Judson Park. Little kids and their moms sat on the floor, the elderly occupied couches and wheelchairs. Teddy and Kathleen could not be sure if my puppets were as intriguing as the ant colony traversing the carpet. The ants definitely got the staff's attention. Judson is a meticulously clean facility and proud of it.

While the young ones passed the cookies, I greeted the elders. That's when I met Mimi who looked as though, were she more agile, she would rather be pruning begonias. So I didn't expect her eyes, swimming behind thick glasses, to widen and shine into mine. 'So glad you could be here,' said Mimi as she must have said hundreds of times in her life, and just as true. Of course, she reminded me of my mom, who exchanged her wheelchair for wings over a year ago. The kind, quiet woman with a gentle hand in mine; I couldn't cry for Jane in the middle of the day room, though I'm sure Mimi would have understood. But here I stand the day after, wand in hand, poking at blurred lace and faded sills.

I bring this up because it's in vogue to debunk the routine. Creativity is hip, career trajectory is cool, networking on all fronts, now that's hot. Oh, really? Define exotic: excitingly different. Define different. Elaborate on exciting.

Drummer Bobby Sanabria grew up in the South Bronx. When Maestro Tito Puente showed up at Bobby's housing project with his Latin Jazz, the boy had an epiphany: here's how I will spend my life. He travels the planet, making music. Exotic? Excitingly different? Any musician will tell you, to be good enough to globe trot your music, you practice. A lot.

I have a theory. Routine's not the demon. The real challenger is choice. Every minute brings a slew of possibilities. Routine is just a choice you make to organize your day into a reasonable subset of choices lest you go mad. Kids and the elderly often have choices made for them. And we, the middle dwellers, do the best we can, sculpting our flutes from the tree of life.

So I wave my wand, make a choice, my epiphany c/o Mimi and Jane: to play the exotic instrument of graciousness every day. If I do end up being tended by strangers, as many of us shall, I plan to be so practiced in this skill that it never leaves me.

So glad you could be here. May I pour you some tea?

Burning bushes

The Institute of Medicine, federally chartered to conduct research requested by Congress, noted that service members are often exposed to prolonged loud noises -- from guns, rockets and other weapons, plus heavy-duty vehicles, planes and ships.... By comparing the hearing of those who had served in Iraq with the hearing of those who had not, researchers concluded that soldiers sent to battle zones were 52.5 times more likely to suffer auditory damage.

Ball players suffer chronic injuries. Miners get black lung; their dugout is deeper. And soldiers, if they survive, often come home to a less audible world.

As more is revealed about the selective hearing practiced by this executive branch that led soldiers to its war, I ask: can we the people tune in to reason and integrity, or are have we been permanently deafened by our leaders' raging fictions?

You say terrorism's real as coal dust, somebody's got to step up to the plate for the sake of the citizens? Terrorism is real. We are told not to question our government's motives or means in this conflict. Why? Because it is the government? If terrorists are lurking in the bushes, the best defense is prolonged loud noises -- guns, rockets and other weapons, plus heavy-duty vehicles, planes and ships of state?

You may be right about terrorism lurking in the bushes. And, just as plausibly, terrorism is the bush menagerie, perpetually aflame with black gold, imitating the gods.

Limping olympia

When that race was over, her coach Peter Foley covered his mouth with his hands and fell to the ground. Her friends and relatives stopped waving their American flags.

It had happened in 1986 when friends and relatives and the television public watched the Challenger explode. Victory roared up to an airless gasp in one millisecond of techno-phantasm, spiraling off into blue screen.

Fast forward 1.5 decades. You are living out the American dream: love conquers all and eco-military prowess conquers the agape holdouts. A co-worker murmurs in the hallway, they think we're under attack, two planes just rammed the twin towers in New York. Lips frozen mid greeting, brain torn up in impossible meanings, you follow the coach to his knees.

Lindsey Jacobellis was supposed to win the gold. For us! For all the non-snowboarding klutzes who love to stand on that top block with her, our white smiles and sculpted bodies quivering in the wind. It's a tradition by now which, Ms. Jacobellis has found, you mess with, you bring on the scorn of the masses. She has been grilled, psychoanalyzed, insulted:

Lindsey Jacobellis had gold within her reach. Instead she went for one last roar from the crowd, stupidly trying a flashy trick when all she needed to do was slide down the hill.

So say the pundits: All you needed to do, NASA geniuses, was get those O-rings seated right before blast off. All you needed to do, CIA honchos, was coordinate your vaulted intelligence with your potent mainframes. And all you had to do, Lindsay J, was slide down the hill... you robbed us of our gold with your last minute tricks, wounded us with your pride. And if there's one thing we can't stand around here, it's hubris.

Ask Jack. Ask Jill. Ask the Greeks. There's tragedy at the foot of that hill.