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Monthly Archives: June 2017

Values.

June 25, 2017
Commentary.
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By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

My life is 70% over. Only 30% remains. WorldLifeExpectency.com says I will die when I am 73. I’m 55.

I know all the colloquialisms about “the best is yet to come”, “your best days are still ahead” and “70 is the new 40”. I’ve heard them. This is our way of establishing emotional distance from mortality with fable. We’re afraid to die, and we distance ourselves from its inevitability any way we can, so much so that we often forget to live.

Last night the arc of abundance in my life converged in a marvelous peak that reminded me of something very rewarding, very comforting, very valuable. I have friends. Good friends.

We met at my lifelong best friend’s house for a house warming party. I know it was the realization among us that our lives are finite and every rare opportunity to meet is precious that brought us together last night. It wasn’t someone’s new house. None of my friends took that for granted, and nearly all of us were there.

I could gush to you about my friends, they are incredible people. Collectively they are engineers, scientists, real estate brokers, writers, physical therapists, code writers. Those are some of their jobs. But who they are as people is friends. Friends to me, to each other, to the other people in their lives outside our circle. Friends to mankind who spread abundance and tolerance and understanding and wonder. They are a watershed of kindness and good judgement that is never ending. It has spanned decades. We met when we were teenagers. We have changed little since, and what change there has been is overwhelmingly for the better. These people made my life better, and they make the world better. I’m lucky to have them.

My reflection on last night is seen in the mirror of a textured life lived from one end of the human spectrum to another. I’ve dined with kings in the Arab desert, slept on the streets in California. I’ve been wealthy, and beyond completely broke. I’ve been the pinnacle of health and fitness, and struggled to remember my name after waking up from a stroke. And I’ve watched life pass from this earth before my eyes in ways both violent and comforting.

And through it all the consistent thing I return to for comfort, no matter where I am, delighting in abundance or comforting myself in the dark intimacy of looming death, I return to the comforting realization that friends are immensely valuable.

 

 

 

 

Hero Cyclist Saves Elderly Couple From Fiery Car Crash on Hines Drive.

June 15, 2017
Commentary., News
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By Tom Demerly and Jan Mack for tomdemerly.com

An elderly man and woman driving eastbound on Hines Drive under Telegraph Road in Dearborn Heights were rescued from serious injury or worse after a crash and vehicle fire on Wednesday, June 14, at approximately 5:15 PM by passing cyclists Nate Nalder, 41, of Dearborn, Michigan and friend Dave Taylor.

Nalder, an experienced road cyclist who frequently trains along Hines Drive, told us, “Dave Taylor and I were riding down Hines, going west. Just after we passed under Telegraph we saw a white, late model Ford Fusion driving across the lawn on the other side of the walking path. It was moving fast across the grass, maybe 45-50 MPH. It came back toward Hines, we heard a loud ‘boom’ and the car rolled three times.”

An unidentified male was driving the vehicle with a female in the passenger seat. The occupants of the vehicle were described as “elderly”. According to witnesses at the scene of the accident, a medical incident may have affected the driver. The cause of the accident has not been officially determined.

When cyclist Nate Nalder saw the accident happen he turned back toward the place where the vehicle came to rest. “I hurried and checked the traffic real quick and rode back to the car and dropped my bike and ran there to the driver’s side and pounded on the window.”

Nalder was attempting rescue from the driver’s side door, but heard a voice from the passenger side shout, “Help me, I’m trapped, get me out of here.”

The airbags in the vehicle had deployed and the interior filling with smoke. The vehicle began burning shortly after it came to rest.

“I said, ‘We got to get them out of here!’ said Nalder, directing rescue efforts of bystanders.  “I did not know the extent of his injuries so I asked him to undo his own seatbelt to kind of assess his condition. Myself and two others guys helped him out and walked him over and set him down.”

As the fire spread, and without regard for his personal safety, Nalder returned to the burning vehicle to recover the female passenger and move her to a safe distance. Another cyclist had arrived on the scene to assist Nate Nalder and Dave Taylor in the rescue. A passing motorist had stopped on the scene and phoned 911 for assistance.

It is possible that, because of the age of the vehicle occupants and the possible medical condition of the driver, the swift selfless actions of Nate Nalder and Dave Taylor at the scene prevented more serious injury from the fire or fatalities as a result of the crash and fire.

According to the account Nalder heard from the passenger of the vehicle, who was transported from the scene by emergency personnel, the driver lost the ability to control the vehicle, possibly due to a medical incident. The passenger was able to grab the steering wheel but could not control the pedals because the driver’s legs were in the way. The passenger steered the vehicle off the road away from other cars but could not control the speed of the vehicle. It struck a pole and rolled several times.

Cyclist Nate Nalder, 41, of Dearborn, Michigan and friend Dave Taylor rescued motorists from a burning vehicle on Hines Drive on Wednesday.

When we asked cyclist Nate Nalder what made him decide to respond by pulling the victims from the burning car and how he had learned to respond to an accident situation he told us:

“When I was younger in high school I was riding in the back seat of a Jeep and came over a hill and accidentally hit a friend who was walking across the street. I just jumped out and helped. It was the automatic thing to do I guess. I grew up being a Boy Scout, doing a lot of lifeguarding classes and learning CPR. Just learning how to take care of a person when they are hurt. Something just said, ‘Get over there and do what you can to help because no one else was’ I was the first person to that car I guess.”

The quick, selfless actions of Nate Nalder and Dave Taylor at the accident scene almost certainly prevented further injury to the two vehicle occupants once the car began burning.

The Story of an Owl, And Why I Am Afraid We Are Doomed.

June 8, 2017
Commentary., Uncategorized
5 Comments

By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com


 It was like the beginning of a favorite new song. It began quietly, and you could barely hear it. The soft cooing of a distant sound, a trilling that seemed reassuring and comforting. The world was safe. Everything was all right. It was home and warm and nature surrounded our little neighborhood. I listened to it in bed, shushing my girlfriend with our heads on the pillows, “Listen!” I whispered. There was silence in the dark. Then the gentle spring breeze carried the rising song. “It’s an owl! Can you hear it?” She did. “That’s a good sign. They trap mice and are good for the environment and the neighborhood. He probably lives at the end of the block down by the park.”

We drifted off to sleep to his quiet, lilting song. It made for an easy transition to dreams of rolling, wooded hills filled with friendly owls building nests, cooing their gentle songs while sitting on tree branches as wise, powerful sentinels maintaining the delicate balance of nature.

The Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio) is a relatively common small owl species found throughout the Midwest and into Canada. It eats mice, rodents, and has adapted well to a suburban environment.

Owls are oddly social and friendly birds to humans. One very early morning a few years ago in Mission Viejo, California I saw an owl swoop down, glance off the windshield of an SUV driving in the early morning darkness, then drop into the street. I walked over to him, he appeared stunned in the middle of the street but otherwise, hopefully, OK. I spoke to him for a moment, asked him if he was OK. His feathery owl head pivoted to my voice. He looked confused, stunned. I scooped him up carefully in my arms, his soft feathers delicate to the feel.

I don’t know how to take care of an owl. I figured I would bring him home, get him a drink and make a little nest for him and take it from there. He was large, the size of a small cat, and very beautiful. He was also exceptionally well mannered, riding in my arms comfortably as if he knew I was trying to help.

In only a block of walking he had composed himself from the brush with calamity. He spread his wide wings carefully even as I held him, then gently lifted off with a downward flap and flew out of my arms. He did one circle over my head, as if to demonstrate he was fine and say thank you for the help, then he flew east up toward the mountains on the outskirts of town. Helping the owl felt like religion. It was like being visited, and blessed, from another world. A kinder, fairer world.

When I heard the owl outside our window here in Dearborn, Michigan I was elated. This is a great omen, a sign that our neighborhood is blessed and safe and well looked after. That things are in balance and that nature and mankind have arrived at a reasonable détente.

But then reality smashed home.

The quiet song disappeared. The owl was found in the street, his eyes barely open, standing on the ground. Confused, sick, in deep trouble.

A Good Samaritan named Jamie found the owl in the street a few days later around 10 PM. She said he was half dead. She picked him up, called the University of Michigan Emergency Veterinary Hospital. She was on the phone with them, getting instructions for how to save the owl as she held him in her arms. He opened his eyes once and she spoke to him as she held him. Then he closed his eyes.

They never opened again.

The owl in our neighborhood died because someone put out rat poison to try to control mice. But the problem with poison is it doesn’t know to only kill mice. It kills everything. The mouse eats the poison, the owl eats the mouse. The owl dies too. And we are left in a world without the owl’s song. It’s a world different than intended. A world that is ruled by our poison, literal and moral.

Using poison to control animals is wrong and immoral. We learned that in the 1950’s and ’60’s with DDT poisoning, and countless times since. It’s also ineffective and short-sighted. The owl was in charge of controlling rodent populations and did an effective job. He maintained a manageable balance of nature. When that is disrupted the results are always different than we imagine, and never better. But our human, insatiable need to control things drive these short-sighted and selfish decisions like using poison to kill a mouse.

You can buy things and you can build things. A fancy house, a yard that looks like a golf course. It proves you are rich and fancy. But you are driving a wedge into the world that pries things apart and ruins what was here before us and will hopefully return when we are gone. We are not better or smarter or stronger or more important. We’re temporary participants in a complex process. When we upset the process we spread suffering, not only to animals around us but to our own lives, often without even know it.

When I think of the most important events in my life, the most extraordinary, the most valuable and lasting they are not the day I bought a car or a house. I actually don’t remember much about those things. But I remember the owl in the street in California. I remember the song of the owl down the block. These things had value. They reminded me that I am part of something bigger and that, if I care for it, it will care for me.

But when the owl down the street went silent I suddenly felt very alone.

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Why Are Social Media Arguments So Ugly?

June 3, 2017
Commentary., Uncategorized
4 Comments

By Tom Demerly for tomdemerly.com

This past Presidential election was one of the most divisive and closely contested in the past three decades. We’re still arguing about the outcome. It was set against a backdrop of new participant media. Everybody with social media has a voice of equal visual size, if not reach.

Because of this our closely contested and highly divisive election played out over the stage of social media. And now it feels like we’ve entered an era of rising hysteria.

Why?

From the printing press, the Manhattan Project, the Internet, stem cell research, and social media, we develop technology before we develop the ethics and conventions to employ it with moderation and reason. We just turn it loose, and hope for the best. We’re experiencing that now with social media and in politics.

We’ve entered an era of more polarized and less moderate opinion shared at louder volume than I’ve known in my 55-year lifetime, and maybe in the history of mankind. Author/philosopher Alan Watts once recounted a tour of the MIT campus where the vast and numerous science and engineering facilities were showcased with pride and grandeur, but when someone asked where the philosophy department was, the response was, “Oh, I think it is somewhere over by the library.”

Some of that may be good. But a lot of it isn’t. At least not yet.

There is an axiom that if you redistribute the collective monetary wealth of the planet equally between all people it will, over time, wind up right back with the people who originally had it, and away from those who didn’t.

But what if you equally distributed access to publishing media? To having a public voice? The same outcome might happen in contributory/social media, and for the same reasons. People may not use it responsibly and with reason. So, just as those who would not be good at managing monetary resources would fall victim to those who are, those who do not use communicational resources responsibly will stop getting listened to and lose their voice to those with more judicious use of media. But before they do lose their voice they raise the volume and frequency in one last, desperate attention grab.

We are at the leading edge of that redistribution of voice right now. Everyone has a voice now, and most people love using it, but aren’t quite sure what to say except that they should say something. And, in a new global room full of rising voices we continue to shout louder and louder to be heard above the rising din. And few people take the time to listen. I’m constantly reminded of that great axiom, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

The formerly mainstream news media is included in the rising number and volume of voices and opinions. In order to compete with Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, Snapchat, and Instagram attention grabbing, the formerly mainstream media has had to change to also grab attention. Much of that change isn’t for the better. That has influenced our own behavior, but mostly it has influenced theirs. For mainstream media now, it looks and reads like, the rules are, there are no rules.

So the shouting gets louder and louder, more and more frequent. And as the frequency increases the depth of insight seems to become shallower, more superficial. Sound bytes, YouTubes, hotlinks and infographics are batted back and forth in some new form of cyber argument that mimics a fast and loose version of the Greek forums, where debate raged between scholars in a public forum.

We’ve seen two examples of this in the ongoing, divisive political narrative. Some time ago an expired rock star, Ted Nugent, ignited rancor with radical right commentary that included inciting violence as a political tool. That’s wrong, no matter the political agenda. Every despot has proved that. More recently, an equally less relevant celebrity, Kathy Griffin, depicted the President’s decapitated head in a sensational lampoon that also suggested inciting violent response as a political tool, at least as commentary. That is also wrong.

Both are wrong. Both went too far. Both are a sensational attention grab for a waning career. And both sides argue some justification for each one’s bizarre and extreme political commentary. Both also illustrate our use- or misuse- of new access to media and our rising consumption of it.

One positive outcome has been the impetus to do more investigation into the media we see. That has been fascinating. It’s also helps shape opinions, hopefully to the more informed. And I’ll suggest a more informed opinion is likely to be more structurally sound.

Before the last presidential election I took an online survey that queries you on a long list of issues and, depending on your responses, prescribes who you should vote for. I got Bernie Sanders. I liked that, so I dug a little deeper into the ramifications of having Bernie Sanders as our President.

Voting for President is a little like going shopping without knowing any of the prices. The system tells you, “Pick out something nice, whatever you want.” But there are no prices and you may not even know how much you have to spend. You don’t get the bill until after you made it to the register. If you can’t afford what’s in your political shopping cart you either throw it on a charge card that has been maxed out since Nixon was President or you say, “The person in line behind me is paying.” Then they do that for the next person, and so on…

Increasingly, being in the middle seems to feel oddly isolated as the rising din to “pick a side” on social media gets louder and louder. It seems like the social media doctrine is to pick a side lock, stock and barrel- a political “Happy Meal” that includes a somewhat superficial acceptance of all or nothing from one side or the other. We only get a second to read, to decide, to respond. We may have learned something a long time ago in school, and we do remember part of that, so we quickly compare what we see to what we know and then we hit “post”. God forbid we should actually question, criticize, and inquire. And when we disagree, we need to be ready for the attempts to be shouted down.

I’m satisfied looking at the political and social landscape ala Carte though, and I’d like to know what it is I’m reading and where it came from- to the extent I can.

The outcome of this last election was about as wild a swing from one extreme to the other as you can get. The only way we could be farther from who we had as a former President would be to have elected an albino Margaret Thatcher with male reproductive organs. So things are pretty crazy right now.

The choice we have now is to make use of social media as a shield to paint our existing beliefs on and protect our entrenched views from the swords of new thinking, or as a mirror to reflect our own beliefs in the concern that we may have a big political booger hanging out of our nose.

I’m checking my own nose now. I suggest you do the same.

 

 

 

 

 

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