The Oppenheimer Report 11/30/15

The American Thanksgiving has come and gone, and while I miss the experience of congregating in Buffalo for the Oppenheimer Festival of Bird, I’m getting used to the changes. As Joni Mitchell once wrote, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got 'til it’s gone …”. Generations of kids in my family grew up attending the Oppenheimer Thanksgiving supper, and it was always a joyful, well-attended event. The little kids sat at fold-up card tables and, in time, graduated to the grown-up table. I was recently in contact with my cousin in Oregon, who is about five years my senior, and he remembers sitting at the kiddie table for Thanksgiving dinner, at our first house in Kenmore, N.Y. Those family gatherings made for wonderful memories. Of course, there was always one crazy aunt or uncle, who would get sloshed and do something foolish, but who doesn’t have one or two of those in their family?

It is slowly soaking in that nothing lasts forever, and I have addressed this, ad nauseam, in past reports. As I mature (hah!), I am learning to recognize and to be thankful for all my good fortune thus far, and I strive to focus on this as I move forward. Now officially a sexagenarian, I still embody a trace of the irresponsible twenty-something, who drank too much, let chaos into my life, and took for granted all that was given to me. I am slowly letting go of that guy. It’s a natural process, but no change comes without some sacrifice. At some point, we all lose our moms and dads, and for those of you who have had a hard time letting go of the past (like me), one day it hits you like a brick. We grow up and we grow old. The former is our choice. It is only fairly recently that I have begun to appreciate what once seemed like a boring, uneventful life. Singer/songwriter Trace Adkins had a great song entitled, “You’re Gonna Miss This”, about all the joy we ignore when we fool ourselves by focusing on the “greener grass” of the future.

As I sat in Huntsville’s Family Restaurant last Thursday night, sober as a judge and eating a turkey club sandwich, (I know, pathetic right?) before heading in to the station to do my radio show, I was reminded of how life-changing it has been to have had all those happy Thanksgiving celebrations. Luckily, I have known great love. Some people have lousy parents, and/or completely dysfunctional families. From what I can see, it’s not that uncommon, and never is it more glaringly obvious than around the holiday season. There has been much discussion about Black Friday, that symbolic starting gun for the retail Christmas insanity, which will now litter our consciousness for the next four weeks. The tradition has recently bled into Canada. The other night, I watched a video of two men engaged in a fist fight, presumably over the last discounted Play Station in a Black Friday sale. Every year, I see some variation of the same video. Religion and Christmas are two things that should not inspire violence and pain, but somehow, they always do. Go figure. It’s easy to focus on this nonsense, but I am starting to turn away from all this. I reached out to some friends and family with whom I had shared past Thanksgivings. I taped and watched the Macy’s Day Parade, because for some reason, I never tire of watching an enormous floating Snoopy balloon sail down the main drag of New York City. Finding contentment is a journey, and while I realize it should be easier for me than for people who are less fortunate, that’s not necessarily the case. Rich or poor, we all struggle with the same demons, and, to paraphrase Firesign Theatre, I’m just another bozo on this bus. To me, the best part about this time of year, is that it provides an opportunity for family and friends to help. What the American Thanksgiving has been for me, I hope this holiday season can be for all of you.

 

And if Uncle Ralph throws up on the rug after a few too many Manhattans, try to capture it on video … believe me, those moments get better with time.  

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/23/15

Rwanda 1994

I am troubled today. The wind is tearing across the lake, and the day is cold and forbidding. Sometimes the weather up here parallels my state of mind. Shauna reminds me to focus on all that is good in my life, and I know that I am one of the most fortunate men in the world. Of late, and especially in the past month, I have been beset with drama, much of it out of my control, which leaves me feeling anxious and at odds with myself. Certainly, the recent attacks in Paris are high on the list of contributing factors. I’m having trouble sorting it all out, but here are some random thoughts. Please forgive my self-righteous rant.

Terrorism is a sad fact of life, but terrorism and zealotry have been around for a long, long time. I’m part way through a very long but interesting article, published in The Atlantic, entitled What ISIS Really Wants, which attempts to shed light on what the Islamic State is and what it hopes to accomplish. The answers are unsettling, but what is most unsettling to me, what keeps me awake at night, is the profound ignorance of most Westerners, myself included, as to what these people, and many others believe. One can hate one’s enemy, but it might be helpful to know who the enemy is. In my opinion, hatred and zealotry are the enemies.This particular group of Muslim fundamentalists believes that the end is near, and they are, in the words of a character in the movie Pulp Fiction, ready “to go medieval on our asses.” They are medieval in their interpretation of the Koran and they intend to wipe out all apostates. That, by the way, represents the majority of the world’s population. To most westerners, these are just a fringe group of crazy religious fanatics which can be exterminated, but aside from the fact that the media is doing a great job of promoting their agenda of fear and terrorism, they seem to be attracting a larger and larger following. When followers are willing to blow themselves up or embark on suicide murdering sprees, for whatever misguided cause, this becomes, at least in conventional terms, an indefensible “war.” The only possible solution, short of annihilating an entire race of people, is to try and understand and perhaps marginalize the ideology that promotes this violence. We can ignore the warning signs, as we sip our five dollar Starbucks frappamochachinos while watching Ballbuster Housewives of Newark, but the canary is choking, and nobody has really been paying attention. There are a lot of desperate, hopeless people in the world. Right now the spotlight is on Syria, but there are dozens of other countries where the violence that occurred last week in Paris happens just about every day. Without giving the hopeless hope, how do we win this war?

I watched a documentary dealing with the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, and it was eerily similar to the Paris attacks. Although law enforcement authorities completely dropped the ball during the Mumbai attack, and a handful of unspectacular foot soldiers were able to wreak havoc on a city of 18 Million, somehow intelligence did intercept cell phone conversations of the killers talking to their central command unit. The conversations (over 200 cell phone calls were intercepted) were chilling. One of the killers was captured alive and it became clear that the foot soldiers were simply young, brainwashed followers doing exactly what they were told to do. Fear, hatred, and the absence of hope can spread like wildfire, and they are dangerous motivators.

We are whipped into a frenzy of fear by reports of Muslim fanatics torturing and murdering innocent civilians, but we ignore the much greater threat that the disconnected, impoverished, and mentally ill in our own North American countries will fly off the handle. Look at the recent race riots sparked by police brutality in America. Look at all the gun violence in North America. Religious fanatics in The Middle East are not, contrary to popular opinion, our biggest concern. “We have seen the enemy and he is us.” I am concerned we North Americans, and again, myself included, are losing our souls to fear, hatred, ignorance, and mistrust. We humans never seem to learn from our mistakes. Figure out how to be charitable of heart and the problem eventually solves itself. Desperation and poverty breed more desperation and poverty. There are wonderful people everywhere in the world. Some of them need our help. Find them, embrace them, love them. It seems to me that one can’t keep “out” what is already entrenched in our culture. Help someone who needs help. If you have had good fortune, pay it forward. Do more good than bad. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? Well it’s not, and I have struggled with this for most of my life. Not in my backyard. While I am more charitable than I was, I have a long, long way to go. My heart bleeds for every casualty of the Paris attacks, and also for the Tutsis of Rwanda, the blood diamond victims of civil war in Sierra Leone, the victims of the Pol Pot massacres in Cambodia, the Armenian genocide, the 6 Million Jews who were exterminated by the Nazis, the PTS plagued North American veterans who feel that suicide is the only viable solution to the demons in their heads, and for the millions of other casualties of the evil we all feel so helpless to counteract.

 

Learn something about your (perceived) enemy. Don’t burn down a mosque, but if you can, maybe try to change a troubled mind.

You can start with mine.

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/16/15

I began writing this report before I learned of the Paris attacks. I am including the first paragraph because I think it is eerily prescient…

Friday, 10:45 A.M. - As I begin this week’s missive, it is the morning of Friday the 13^th, and while I am not a superstitious man by nature, I am feeling a little strange today. There is a weird energy about me which I cannot explain. I’m not even sure if it is negative or positive, simply that it is a feeling things are ripe for change. I consulted Wikipedia, my oft-referenced source of misinformation, to gain some insight as to why Friday the 13^th might be considered unlucky, and came up with a myriad of possible reasons. Dating back to The Last Supper, there are plenty of examples why the superstitious might rue this day. If my readers are so inclined, they can research this for themselves, but I found two so-called statistics noteworthy. According to a stress clinic in North Carolina, it is estimated that as many as 21 Million Americans are terrified of this day, and will go out of their way to avoid normal routines in order to circumnavigate bad luck. Elsewhere in the article, it was estimated that as much as $900 Million in revenue is lost on Friday the 13^th because people are avoiding their normal activities. I think when your number is up, it’s up. Certainly one can stack the deck, and as the Darwin Awards clearly remind us, fools tend to remove themselves from the gene pool prematurely. Is Friday the 13^th really unlucky?

 

Friday, 4:30 P.M. Just turned on the radio for the first time today and heard the news about the terrorist attacks in Paris. Is this what I felt earlier? After learning about this Paris attacks, I had the same desperate feeling that I had when Shauna and I watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center on 9-11: utter horror and disgust. When it became apparent that there had in fact been several concurrent attacks on U.S. soil, I was filled with the competing emotions of fear and rage. These attacks, born out of religious zealotry are nothing new, but it is discouraging to see a growing number of religious fundamentalists bent on destroying the status quo. Good people practice their religions to find peace and harmony in a world that is often confusing and frightening, but a few nut balls can turn the world upside down. Myopia and zealotry seem to be on the rise, and I don’t think this is a hopeful sign for humanity. Apparently, it was ISIS this time; last time, it was al Qaeda, but does it really matter? I googled “Muslim terrorist organizations” and came up with a list of close to one hundred different groups. This is not a war we win with bombs or by “putting boots on the ground.” The new enemy is a shadow society whose ideology is inconceivable to us. It targets civilians, and there are no rules of engagement. The new world war will be a battle of intelligence, communication, and technology … does anyone else find this ironic? How many other attempts were thwarted? French intelligence was outmatched this time, and I suspect there are a lot of other major population centers equally vulnerable to the un-detectability of these threats. I suspect that the planners will be systematically hunted down and killed, like that recently exterminated monster featured in all those internet beheading videos. Still, others will spring up in their place, like Whac-A-Moles, and the circle of violence will continue to feed on itself. How many times must history repeat itself? Hatred cannot be exterminated with violence. Yesterday, I read some online comments about these attacks. I was distressed to see that so much hatred has been directed towards the Syrian refugees. Somewhere near Toronto, a mosque was burned down. Revenge, or finding scapegoats, will not solve the problems.  Should we now treat every Muslim like the Germans treated every Jew in WWII? Though a Syrian refugee was allegedly involved in the Paris attacks, so were French nationals.

At the risk of sounding naïve, I believe love, respect, and compassion are the only things that can eradicate this cancer on mankind, and it’s not just our enemies’ hearts and minds that need to be changed. The enemy already lives among us. Absolutely, root out the bad guys. Marginalize this blight on mankind and stop them however we can, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, or we are as bad as they are.

 

We have just celebrated Remembrance Day. I was a day late, but I drove to the Burk's Falls Legion and made a donation towards their purchase of a new furnace. I wanted to do some good for the people we should be hailing as our heroes. With the approach of the American Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, I am thankful for so many things I once took for granted. I am thankful for my (somewhat eroding) freedom, for my beautiful wife, for my good parents, and for the good friends I have made thus far. I am also thankful that I have not given up on mankind. It’s a choice, and I hope my readers feel the same.

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 11/9/15

My Gratitude To All Our Veterans 

 

When we settled up here just north of Huntsville, one of the things we did not anticipate was that, not only is electricity really expensive up here, but the service is not always reliable. No one has really been able to explain to me why our electricity costs substantially more here than it does in other rural communities, but the “Delivery Charge" is astronomical. My instincts tell me that somebody is making money at the expense of the ratepayers. When I hear news reports of the political scandal which ensued after a power plant project in Oakville, Ontario was scrapped, a blunder which, by some estimates, will cost taxpayers close to $1 Billion, I begin to wonder if something is rotten in Ontario. If ever there was an example of a government mishandling taxpayer money, this is it. In my humble opinion, when someone screws up this badly, a public disemboweling is the only suitable punishment. As for the reliability issue …

During the construction of our log house, our electrician strongly urged us to install a propane-fired generator in case of power outages. At the time, I thought this seemed like an enormous, elective expense. As with many building projects, our house construction had gone well over budget, and the added expense of a large propane-fired generator seemed unnecessary to me at the time. Thank goodness we ultimately listened to our electrician! Since we installed the generator around seven or eight years ago, we have had a lot of long term power outages, some during the dead of winter. That generator has been a life saver.

Last Friday morning, around 9 am, a cold front blew in off Georgian Bay, gathering steam over the open waters of Lake Huron, and by the time it reached the mainland, the winds were gusting to 75-80 Km per hour. I’ve heard people describe tornadoes as sounding like a freight train, and while far from tornadic, the winds roaring in off our little lake last Friday morning were as loud and powerful as anything I've heard before. Our generator kicked in before the storm passed, indicating that power lines had been downed in the local area, but we did not know the extent of the damage until later in the day. The powerful straight line winds had downed trees and power lines all over Southern Ontario, and I am told some people in Huntsville are still without power. Hydro crews from as far away as Niagara Falls were called in to assist the over-burdened local crews in restoring electrical service to many thousands of customers. Our local supermarket has a small backup generator, but nothing large enough to run the refrigerators and freezers. When I drove into town to get some supplies, I found supermarket employees standing guard at the freezers and refrigerators to ensure customers did not open the doors. Power outages remind us of what we take for granted.

Random final notes - Newly elected Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced his new cabinet last week, and it represents a much more diverse mix than the previous government had, including a lot more women. President Obama nixed the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline, scheduled to run oil from Alberta to Texas. This appeared to be an environmentally sound decision, until I heard that the U.S. has well over 10,000 miles of similar pipeline under construction right now. I just read a disturbing article about the devastating environmental damage caused by fracking. Google “fracking” and you will be appalled. Massive fresh water contamination is, I think, the biggest threat. We listened to the Canadian Folk Music Awards live on the internet last night, and that was cool. Heard a wonderful song by Maritime artist Dave Gunning called “These Hands,” which I will play on my weekly "Lyrical Workers" show on Hunters Bay Radio this Thursday night. Though I have yet to embrace the internet as my preferred medium for radio and video, I have no doubts that, at some point,  network television will become obsolete, and everyone will do their listening and viewing thorough the internet. It will likely be long before we develop a safe, plentiful, and renewable energy source. There’s nothing like a long power outage to remind me of the extent to which I am dependant upon non-renewable sources of energy. It’s time for Big Oil and the Whale Huggers to kiss and make up (yeah, when pigs fly).  Remembrance Day is in two days, and herein I express my gratitude to all the veterans who have made the ultimate sacrifice for my privilege of freedom. Thank you.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 11/2/15

Last Friday night, I attended the legendary Hassard Halloween jam session in nearby Bracebridge, hosted by an accomplished keyboard player and friend Jamie Hassard, along with his significant other, Lauren Power. Regrettably, Shauna did not feel well enough to join me, but she insisted I go. Had the pleasure of listening to some excellent musicians let their hair down (half were wearing Halloween wigs) and was even invited to play a couple of my original songs. It was exhilarating to play with such accomplished musicians, who are able pick up a song melody in four bars, and  play along as if they’d rehearsed it a hundred times. Juan Barbosa is like that, but we rarely have the opportunity to play together when we are recording. It being Halloween weekend, this was, of course, a costume party, and there were some very creative attendees. My favorite costumes involved a couple doing a Breaking Bad theme. The man was dressed as the meth-producing Walter White character from the show, and the woman was a bag of crystal methamphetamine. Her costume was hilariously inspired and she handed out little plastic bags of “blue meth” candy. I love it when people get into the Halloween spirit. My last minute costume was as the ghost of a Cornell Alumnus, which consisted of my dad’s Class of ’32 Cornell reunion hat and some blackout for my eyes. Hey, at least I did something. By the way, fun fact: fake blood does not wash off so easily.

Have you ever heard of “nutscaping” ? I had not, until Shauna apprised me of the practice after seeing a post about it on Facebook. As your cultural correspondent, I feel it is my obligation to pass on this information to my readers. Nutscaping is the art of photographing one’s testicles, using a beautiful landscape as the background. Photographing one’s balls in vacation settings; now there’s a new low! Forget the wife and kids, I want a close up of my balls, with the Washington Monument in the background. I am at once amused and appalled. When I started writing this report in 1992, I was sometimes accused of exercising bad taste in the things I discussed. It used to bother my dad, the veteran humorist, because he thought I was always going for the cheap laugh. In retrospect, I guess he was right. What I find fascinating is the profound slide society seems to have taken in the bad taste department over the past four decades. Forty years ago, comedian Lenny Bruce was vilified for using obscene language in his comedy routines, and last Saturday night, I listened to comedienne Amy Schumer do an opening monologue on SNL which, albeit devoid of swear words, would have made Lenny Bruce blush. These days, the internet is the Wild West of bad taste.   

A week ago, singer / songwriter Jon Brooks did a performance in Huntsville, Ontario and he stopped in the middle of one of his gallows humor songs to embark on a funny tirade about the internet. This particular rant concerned the preponderance of internet narcissism. He was talking, among other things, about the explosion of “selfies” on Facebook and other forms of social media, and he lamented the degradation of selflessness and altruism in favor of rampant self-promotion. I am as guilty as the next Facebookworm/narcissist of posting the odd selfie, but I draw the line just short of photographing my balls in front of the Grand Canyon. Having reluctantly, and a little late, crossed over psychologically into the second half of my life, I am amazed by how culture and technology are pulling away from me on the speedway of life. Everything from the change in language and communication skills, to the (my) perceived decay of cinema, literature, and music, makes me wonder where we will be in thirty years. If I live that long, cars will most certainly all be equipped to drive themselves, a loaf of bread will cost $30, genetically modified food will be omnipresent, people will rely on technology for everything from turning on their house lights to wiping their butts, and G-d only knows how our infotainment will be “reported” (directly off a feed from Uranus, I’d imagine). If we don’t incinerate our planet in an ill-conceived nuclear war, or become extinct because of our reluctance to adapt to the inevitable changes in our environment, we will likely end up very much like those aliens from War of the Worlds, who were so advanced technologically, but whose Achilles heel was their intolerance to oxygen.

 

Have we lost the forest for the trees, and the real question, will there be a comprehensive databank of nutscape photos? I suppose a portion of every generation of elders looks to the future with the same trepidation. Sometimes I feel as if I am just another lemming about to run off the cliff. I continue to make the same mistakes, and ignore the same danger signs as do so many other people on this over-taxed planet. Collectively, this does not bode well for the future of mankind. While a little more mindful of my indiscretions than I used to be, I still largely ignore my sasquatch-like carbon footprint. I am haunted by this weekly when I take our garbage to the local dump. Now, when I look in the mirror, I see one of those grumpy old guys who grumbles about the younger generation. I am beginning to understand why my parents just shook their heads in disbelief when I was younger. Nothing really changes does it? Looking back over the past three or four generations, it does seem that, with every successive generation, the gene pool is getting a little bit more watered down. Unless I completely lose my mind, the one thing I don’t think I will ever do, no matter how much I strive to embrace the here and now, is photograph my testicles and post that picture on the internet.     

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED