Hoarding, Hallelujah, and Sassy Friends - Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

If you could see my office, with piles of books and cds I mean to review Real Soon Now, stacks of artwork that I intend to scan as wallpaper for my computer (some of the piles nearly a decade old), and all kinds of research material, model train equipment, gifts I forgot I had bought and now can't remember whom they're for, long dead or superseded electronic and camera equipment, Hint water by the case, and reams of notes -- some of it for projects I finished and published years ago ...

Then you'd understand why I bought the book Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee.

It's not that I'm a pathological hoarder. There are no goat-paths through tall stacks of junk -- though there are spots in my office that show promise. I haven't taken over other rooms in the house.

I sometimes allow other people to toss things while I'm away; I have never yet asked for or even missed a single thing they threw away.

My wife is the one who set the tone for us. When we moved from a rented condo to our present house nineteen years ago, she went to our storage unit and looked at the stacks of boxes we had never even opened since moving to Greensboro from South Bend nearly a decade before.

"If we've lived without this stuff all this time, then we've either replaced it already or we don't need it," she said. "I want to give it all away."

"Go for it," I said, and our safari into the land of hoarding was stopped in time.

I used to get review copies of most sci-fi books for free, and for a while kept adding them all to my library. Then it dawned on me that if a book didn't look interesting enough for me to review it, why in the world should I keep it on my shelves? I gave away all but the ones I actually read.

In recent years I've gone even further, coldly assessing books that I have not looked into in twenty or even thirty years. "Will there ever come a day when I'll stand here and decide to read -- or reread -- this book rather than a new one or an old favorite?" If the answer is no, the book is toast. Ed McKay, here I come.

The result is that instead of ending up with our shelves double-stacked with books and our floors gradually filling up, our house is more or less under control.

I am adamant that our garage is for parking cars, and storage is never allowed to interfere with that, not even temporarily. There are things we keep in storage units -- stage props, costumes, set pieces, and art that has cycled off our walls.

Yet as I read the heart-rending stories of the people trapped in miserable lives because they could not let go of their stuff -- and learned what Frost and Steketee have discovered about the motives and feelings of the victims of hoarding syndrome -- I kept saying to myself, "I know how that feels. I've done that."

This is because the impulses that lead to hoarding -- mostly fear -- are actually positive traits, unless they get out of control.

It's good to be careful with our tools -- and, when you think about it, almost everything that these hoarders hang on to can be considered a tool. So it makes sense that we have evolved, collectively, a strong need to acquire and hang on to useful stuff.

I might need this someday, the hoarders say to themselves. Is that pathological? I hope not, because I hang on to a manual typewriter for precisely that unreasonable reason. (Let's face it: If society ever collapsed to the point that I was reduced to using a non-electric typewriter, then nobody would be buying new fiction and I'd have to do honest work for a living -- not writing.)

Some hoarders are also pathological acquirers. If this is a good shirt that fits well, why not buy three? I do that -- because I know how rare it is for me to find good-quality stuff that fits me. When I found a source for Scrunges, which 3M stopped making a decade ago, I bought what I hope will turn out to be a lifetime supply.

It happens over and over that a product I really like is discontinued, so that whenever possible, I lay in a supply. Is that pathological? No, it's the result of bitter experience! The problem comes when you acquire, not things that are truly rare and important in your life, but everything you see.

I used to keep a full run of Atlantic Monthly and Scientific American. Then I realized that only once in all the years of hoarding them had I actually gone back and looked for an article -- and I couldn't find it. (We ended up locating it online, of course.) A few years ago, I jettisoned both collections and our attic roof breathed a sigh of relief.

Here's the point of this book: The behaviors that ruin these people's lives -- and the lives of their families -- are normal, even useful, until they run amok. The problem is that they're afraid to draw a line.

It's also highly instructive to realize that there seems to be a hereditary component to hoarding -- but heredity is not destiny. Some people's hoarding is triggered by a traumatic event. They didn't hoard, they went through something awful, and suddenly they're afraid to let anything go.

It's worth knowing and remembering that this is true of most dysfunctional human behavior. The triggering trauma only has its devastating result with people who are genetically disposed to react that way; but until the trigger came, the genetic predisposition was under control.

It's also important to recognize that forcible housecleaning does not work with genuine hoarders. It's devastating when people come in and strip the person of the "nest" that he or she has been working on -- and living in -- for years. It only increases their fears. It's a new trauma, after all! So they reconstruct their nest as quickly as possible -- and avoid letting anyone into their lives for fear of having it all taken away again.

The few who changed their lives in the process of Frost's and Steketee's research did so because they themselves chose to not let their fears ruin their lives. They themselves did the throwing away (though some of them couldn't throw or give things away fast enough to keep up with their acquisitions, alas).

Stuff is a moving, sad book, but also a truthful, informative, useful one. I'd like to say that it's a keeper, but ...

I have never watched the TV show about hoarding. After reading Stuff, it feels to me as if such a "reality show" is the exact equivalent of the people who used to go to Bedlam hospital in London to stare at all the crazy people as a way of passing an idle afternoon.

What does it say about us when we watch other people's genuine misery and mental illness for entertainment? I will never watch this show, whatever it's called. I'm sorry if you ever have. Let these frightened people not have to add public shame to their suffering.

This fall, the day before Halloween, shoppers in the huge atrium of Macy's Center in Philadelphia suddenly found themselves in the midst of Christmas.

Or, more precisely, in the midst of an almost-overpowering presentation of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah.

The Opera Company of Philadelphia had deployed itself among the shoppers throughout the atrium of the mall -- along with more than 650 members of choirs in the Philadelphia area. The world's largest pipe organ provided the accompaniment.

Imagine yourself there. All at once the people around you start to sing "Hallelujah" -- or rather, they sing the part of it that fits their vocal range. And, unlike the crazy people who do karaoke while listening to their iPods, these singers were good.

The acoustics in the atrium were like singing in the shower. The reverberations must have made it feel as if you were breathing the music into the body, as if it was pumping your blood.

Cameras recorded the civilians looking around, puzzled at first, but soon joining in the joy of the thing. Some may have joined in -- it would have been hard not to, if you knew the parts! -- while others recorded it on their phones.

At the end, as everyone bursts into applause and cheering, I was so moved that tears leapt into my eyes and I could hardly breathe. The climactic chorus from the greatest piece of choral music ever written, with a message of joy: imagining myself among them was overwhelming.

Then I opened the very next piece of email, and realized that I could be among them. Not in Macy's Center in Philadelphia, but here in Greensboro, with the Oratorio Society's annual presentation of The Messiah.

They're already rehearsing every Monday night -- singers who have paid $25 for the privilege of taking part. They will perform on Thursday, December 9^th, at the War Memorial Auditorium beside the Coliseum.

So mark that date on your calendar and make sure you're there. No, there won't be 650 voices, and no, the world's largest organ won't be in attendance. But it will still be a live performance of The Messiah, and you can breathe in all that glorious music as singers in the same room with you breathe it out.

Just in case you're about to commit to signing up with Audible.com in order to download audiobooks, and you're trying to decide what .mp3 player to buy in order to listen to them, I have two suggestions:

First, go with an iPod, if only because iTunes integrates extremely well with Audible.com's format.

Second, while I have friends who use the Shuffle (with the shuffling feature turned off), the new generation of this tiny player has its controls on the earbuds rather than the device itself -- and many of us can't get Apple's earbuds to stay in our ears.

So -- third -- consider the iPod Nano, with Sony's MDR-J10 earphones. These earphones' nonslip design is perfect if you're going to exercise while listening (though I urge you not to swim while listening).

(This advice comes from my experience with getting caught in a downpour on my bicycle two miles from home. I tried to shelter my poor Nano, but by the time I got home, the poor thing had drowned. No resuscitation was possible.)

The Nano, straight out of the box, has no obvious way to clip to your clothing. There are various third-party devices -- mostly armbands and such -- but the one I have found to be absolutely reliable is a leather one with a powerful clip.

At first it can be tricky sliding the Nano in and out (which you have to do to recharge and change content), but soon it becomes supple and there's no problem.

The clip is so strong that it can take a little effort to pry it open enough to attack it to your waistband -- but this strength also allows me to clip it to a pocket or the placket of a shirt. The leather is so protective that when I dropped it on concrete, the Nano sustained no damage at all.

If you enjoyed the snidely satirical website "Catalog Living," you'll get a similar kick out of "Unhappy Hipsters," which is devoted to funny or disturbing captions under pictures of people living in the midst of weird architectural coolness.

The URL is http://unhappyhipsters.com/ , but beware of leaving the "s" out of "hipsters" -- without it, you go to a site you probably don't want to visit.

Ophelia, jilted by Hamlet and grieving for her dead father, is about to walk into the river and drown herself. Up pops her sassy gay friend, saying, "What are you doing! What what what are you doing?"

Then he talks sense to her -- Hamlet's a loser, she should just write a sad poem in her journal and move on. She listens, and another life is saved.

If you like the Sassy Gay Friend version of Hamlet, then you'll probably want to go on to see him give uber-sensible advice to Juliet, Desdemona, the Giving Tree, and Eve.

Let me warn you right off, though: There's something in every sketch to offend almost everyone. For one thing, there are some seriously naughty words, occasional nudity (in the Eve sketch), and outrageous sentiments. For another, very prickly people might think that sassy gay men are being ridiculed.

They're not. What's being ridiculed is the way these classic stories really depend on characters reacting with despair instead of good sense.

Besides, I've had sassy gay friends who pour on the swish as a way to make hard truths palatable: "Wake Up and Smell the Coffee!" -- affectionate hectoring, funny the whole time. The act is designed to take the sting out of serious truth-telling, and it works.

If you can't take a joke without getting offended -- for either Left or Right reasons -- don't watch these videos.

This link is to the Ophelia video; afterward, look down and to the right on the page to see the other Sassy Gay Friend vids. (And beware of truly awful imitations farther down the list.)

Every Day Is Special

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.

Thursday, November 11 -- Veterans Day

Veterans Day was originally established as Armistice Day, in commemoration of the end of fighting in World War I (which was called "The Great War" at the time) at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

The holiday was observed on Nov. 11^th from 1919 to 1970; along the way, the name was changed to Veterans Day to include those who served in World War II.

Then the Monday Holiday Law, in order to create more three-day weekends (which promote tourism and travel, boosting the economy), turned Memorial Day, Labor Day, Washington's Birthday (Presidents Day) and Veterans Day into floating holidays that always fall on Mondays.

This put Veterans Day on the fourth Monday in October -- shifting it away from November and the coming Christmas season. Apparently November already had too many holidays.

The trouble was that, unlike Memorial Day and Labor Day, Veterans Day had always been tied to a specific event, and the "11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month" was a mantra that people were loath to give up. State after state moved its observance back to the fixed date, until finally, in 1978, the federal holiday was shifted back to November 11^th.

Poor Washington and Lincoln! They each used to have their own birthday holidays, as befitted the two greatest presidents in our history. But they were combined into one date, which floats ethereally between the two (the 11^th and 22^nd of February) without ever quite landing on either.

"God Bless America" was first performed on this day in 1938. Irving Berlin wrote the song especially for the massive voice of Kate Smith. The sustained notes of this anthem demand a powerful singer, and compared to Kate Smith, most who sing the song as a solo sound rather feeble.

Smith first sang it during her regular radio broadcast, and the song quickly became a patriotic favorite of the nation. It had a resurgence in popularity after 9/11. The simple lyrics are easy to memorize -- but are also, like the melody, rather shallow.

However, compared to "The Star-Spangled Banner," with its nightmare melody and warlike (and sometimes nearly incomprehensible) lyrics, commemorating a rather trivial event in history, "God Bless America" starts to look like a better choice for national anthem.

Fortunately, "America the Beautiful" exists, and I hope that someday Congress gets around to lifting from us the burden of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and letting us have something singable to open our baseball games.

This is the 125^th anniversary of the birth of George S. Patton in 1885. Patton was ambitious, brave, crafty, and talented as an American general in World War II, but his inability to restrain his rhetoric got him in constant trouble. He stoically bore the frustration of being put in charge of a nonexistent "invasion force" used to deceive the Germans into thinking that our D-Day invasion would take place in Flanders, on the Belgian coast, while Dwight Eisenhower led the real invasion. But Patton was soon in the field -- and continued to be the general that the Germans feared most.

Patton's life became the source material for the movie Patton, one of the three greatest popular war films of all time (along with Tora, Tora, Tora and The Dirty Dozen). George C. Scott was brilliant in the title role, and most people would rather think of Patton as Scott portrayed him (from a script by Francis Ford Coppola) than see him as the smaller, less charismatic man that he really was.

But then, wouldn't we all rather be seen at a heroic scale?

Friday, November 12 -- Spectacular Failure Day

On this day in 1912, the frozen bodies of Robert Scott and the four remaining men of his failed polar expedition were found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Not only did they die, but they did so after learning that Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition had already succeeded and reached the pole before them.

It is not coincidence that in this double failure, Scott became a national hero in Great Britain, with statues raised to him all over the country. One wonders how he would have been honored if he had actually succeeded -- i.e., if he had made it to the South Pole first and managed to return alive.

This is a day to think back on your most spectacular failures (assuming that they lie behind you rather than ahead) and think positive thoughts, such as, "At least I didn't die on the way home, the way Robert Scott did." If this is not enough to cheer you up, then list all the things you learned from your worst failure -- even if it was only how to blame other people for it.

French sculptor Auguste Rodin was born today in 1840 in Paris. Two of his sculptures -- "The Kiss" and "The Thinker" -- have joined the ranks of art that is instantly recognizable. Few artists achieve as much.

Saturday, November 13 -- Underwater Tunnel Day

The Holland Tunnel, which runs under the Hudson River, connecting New York City with Jersey City, opened to traffic on this day in 1927. Consisting of two tubes, each large enough for two lanes of traffic, it was the first underwater tunnel built in the U.S., and continues in service today.

Robert Louis Stevenson was born on this day in 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Most people know him primarily from the Authors card game, where four titles are memorized by all the players: A Child's Garden of Verses, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Treasure Island holds up brilliantly -- though it's worth remembering that Stevenson's title for the book was The Sea Cook. Fortunately, an editor saved him from this folly.

Stevenson, always troubled by ill health, died at the age of 44 in Samoa; he loved the Pacific islands and lived in or visited several of them. His brilliant poem "Requiem" was used, in accord with his wishes, as his epitaph. The entire poem -- a masterpiece of form and meaning -- goes like this:

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

In my considered opinion there is no more perfect poem in the English language.

Sunday, November 14 -- American Education Week

American Education Week has been observed since 1921, spotlighting the importance of providing every child in American with a quality public education.

When you look at the insane way public education has changed and deteriorated, with each new theory leading to ever greater failures, and with teachers' unions ensuring that teachers are paid more and more while accomplishing less and less, you can only conclude that American Education Week is a spectacular failure.

American composer Aaron Copland was born on this day in 1900 in Brooklyn, New York. Incorporating American folk music, he strove to create an American music style that was both popular and artistic -- and succeeded brilliantly.

From Appalachian Spring (which incorporates the melody of the Shaker Hymn "Simple Gifts" by Elder Joseph Brackett) to the ballets Rodeo and Billy the Kid, which have become the quintessential "western" music, Copland expressed the themes and moods of America better than any other composer. And his most perfect work, Fanfare for the Common Man, has lost none of its power and inspiration over the years.

Cartoonist, illustrator, and children's book author William Steig was born on this day in 1907. The New Yorker published more than 1,600 of his drawings, including 117 covers, and he wrote more than 25 books for children. He won the Caldecott Medal in 1970 for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and received two Newbery Honors, for Abel's Island and Dr. DeSoto.

Other favorites include The Amazing Bone, Brave Irene, and CDB. It was with CDB that I first became aware of him. I still quote from it, to the annoyance of those who must put up with such sentences as: "CDB! DBSABZB!" and "NQ"; "URLQM." (If you find these sentences baffling, try saying the names of the letters; if that doesn't work, then the translation is "See the bee! The bee is a busy bee!"; "Thank you"; "You are welcome.")

Officially, the book is for children ages 4 to 8. It came out in 1968, the year I turned 17, so clearly my fascination with it proves my continuing childlike innocence. (Or perhaps my ongoing commitment to immaturity.)

Oh ... and Steig also wrote the book Shrek! on which the movie was loosely based. The book has a much more repulsive Shrek than the movie, and he and his princess (who has no pretty phases) speak to each other in verse like this:

Said Shrek, "Your horny warts, your rosy wens, like slimy bogs and fusty fens, thrill me."

Said the princess, "Your lumpy nose, your pointy head, your wicked eyes, so livid red, just kill me."

Monday, November 15 -- National Bundt Day

No, I didn't invent National Bundt Day -- it's real. Almost everybody has a bundt pan in their cupboard -- which they never use! This is the day to pull it out, open the recipe book, and make a robust, delicious bundt cake from scratch!

If you're even more ambitious than most, there are many more-elaborate bundt pans to choose from. Here's a selection from Nordic Ware: http://sn.im/nordicbundt . (Full URL: http://www.nordicware.com/store/categories/browse/bundt-procast-bakeware--core-basics/B9D9797E-39EB-102C-96FB-00137233C6B0/page/1 .)

Oddly enough, CutleryAndMore.com actually shows a better selection of Nordic Ware bundt pans than Nordic Ware's own site: http://sn.im/cutlerybundt .

(Full URL: http://www.cutleryandmore.com/bundt.htm?src=Google&cam=Gen+Bakeware&sub=Bundt+Pans+B&kw=bundt%20pans&gclid=CLyahdrwlaUCFZFl7Aodzz0oMQ .)

And my favorite, the pan that makes a set of small train cars, shows up here:

http://sn.im/trainbundt . (Full URL: http://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Ware-Platinum-Collection-Train/dp/B000UXPCF0 .) My sister-in-law -- who is an ambitious cakemaker and decorator -- has made bundt cakes using several of these special pans, and the results are, in a word, wonderful.

This is America Recycles Day, to promote recycling and buying recycled products. But let's be honest about this: How much of the stuff we sort out to put at the curb as "recycling" actually gets recycled? In a lot of places, the answer is "none of it," because recycling is often not economically feasible.

Out in the middle of the Pacific, there is a vast swirling floating mass of plastic refuse; there's another in the middle of the Atlantic. Where once the Sargasso Sea was so thick with floating seaweed that sailors sometimes imagined they had found solid land, there are now plastic bags and jugs and other such material.

If recycling actually worked, this would be a treasure trove. Instead, it costs too much to pick it up for it to be economically useful in recycling.

The easy solution for most recyclables is to use the version of plastic recycling that completely reduces plastic to biodegradable carbon. The process is commonly called "burning," and the result of it is lots of liberated carbon. After years of being trapped underground as fossilized organic matter, it seems only fair to let the carbon roam free again. But alas, because of the hoax of global warming and the resulting fear of carbon emissions, we can't get rid of this ocean-strangling mass of plastic!

This is George Spelvin Day, in honor of an otherwise unsung actor who has appeared more than 10,000 times on Broadway. He first appeared in a New York performance of Charles A. Gardiner's play Karl the Peddler on this day in 1886.

Yet this hardworking actor has been singularly unloved. No one has ever gone out with him -- or either of his sisters, Georgette and Georgina. No matter how often he appears in theatre programs and playbills, there is never a soul waiting for him outside the stage door.

That's because "George Spelvin" is a fictitious name used to conceal that fact that an actor listed in one part is also playing a second one in the same show. If the actor's real name appeared in both roles on the program, then audiences would know from the start that the same person plays both roles -- suggesting that they are really the same character. Or there might be a character that is constantly talked about, but who never appears -- George Spelvin might be credited with playing that character as well.

Those audience members who know about the George Spelvin tradition will know that somebody is secretly doubling -- but they won't know who, so the plot's secrets are still protected.

This is I Love To Write Day, which officially encourages people of all ages to write a poem, a short story, or a letter to the editor, or to start or finish a novel.

Personally, I don't think there's any shortage of people writing things -- indeed, there's probably a surplus. What with texting and email, people are writing constantly -- and badly.

I suggest that the name be changed to "I Love to Write Well Day," in which you try to write a few paragraphs of narrative or explanation that actually make logical and grammatical sense.

Once upon a time this was a skill you were assumed to have learned by eighth grade. Now I find that it is astonishingly rare even among upper division students at the university.

So yes, do sit down and write something, if you feel like it. Then save it, and reread it a month later. See if it still makes sense to you. If so, then you're probably doing OK as a writer.

Tuesday, November 16 -- Manifest Destiny Day

The Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Pacific Ocean on this day in 1805. They had glimpsed the ocean more than a week earlier, on Nov. 7^th, moving Clark to write in his journal: "Great joy in camp! We are in view of the Ocean, this great Pacific Ocean which we have been so anxious to see. And the roaring or noise of the waves breaking on the rocky shores . . . may be heard distinctly."

But apparently the traffic in Portland was as bad then as now, and it took nine days to actually get to the beach.

Once America officially reached the Pacific, it was taken by many as a given that American should -- and eventually would -- claim all the land from the Eastern seaboard to the seacliffs and beaches that now mark the western edge of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Having grown up in California, I can attest that it is a Good Thing that we bullied England into backing away from Oregon and Washington, and whipped Mexico into surrendering the rest of America from Texas to California.

Wednesday, November 17 -- Homemade Bread Day

Use your sense of irony, and instead of plugging in the bread-making machine and getting that lovely frothy round loaf, celebrate Homemade Bread Day by going to Great Harvest Bread Company and buying a loaf of bread that is far closer to what your Mom used to bake than anything you can pull out of one of those machines.

Queen Elizabeth I -- the "Virgin Queen" -- acceded to throne of England on this day in 1558. After the chaos of the religious struggle between Protestants and Catholics during the preceding decade, Elizabeth was determined to bring England domestic peace -- and victory over the Catholic kings who were determined to destroy her and seize her kingdom in the name of Christ.

It wasn't Elizabeth who defeated the Spanish Armada -- it was destroyed by the weather and Francis Drake's fleet. Nor did she create the finest art ever to come out of England -- it was Shakespeare who brought that off. But they worked under her leadership and inspiration. Elizabath taught a whole kingdom to be loyal and brave in her service -- and the result was England's emergence as a dominant player on the world stage.

The Suez Canal formally opened on this day in 1869. It had taken a million-and-a-half men a whole decade to dig the 100-mile canal. It shortened the sea route from Europe to India by 6,000 miles. An Anglo-French commission ran the canal until 1956, when Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized it, on the principle that even though English and French money built the thing and it was mostly English and French ships that used it, they had parked their canal on Egyptian soil, and finders keepers, losers weepers.

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