The Oppenheimer Report 3/25/19

Jeff Carter, Managing Director of CKAR (Hunters Bay Radio A/K/A The Bay 88.7FM), turned 60 last Friday. I and many of my fellow volunteers at this little community radio station called or sent him a message to wish him a happy birthday. I’m not sure everyone knew it was his 60th. Shauna and I had a phone conversation with him yesterday, and all three of us shared our 60^th birthday experiences.

My 60^th birthday fell on a Thursday, and I was in no mood to celebrate. I spent mine broadcasting my Lyrical Workers show at the station. Unbeknownst to me, some local friends and musicians, in coordination with my wife, were waiting outside the station to surprise me after my show. I think the surprise was on them, because I was late finishing, and they were all shivering out in the cold fall evening to ambush me when I left the station. Still, they managed to drag me out of my curmudgeonly mood, and it was a lovely way to finish off the day. Shauna’s 60^th was by far the worst; she spent it in Toronto Western Hospital after a bizarre neurological attack partially damaged her left eye. She was there for about 2 weeks, and on her 60^th birthday she actually had a spinal tap. I have amusing photographs of her, high on pain medication and adorned with silly birthday paraphernalia. Make due with what you have. Thanks to our friend, and ET’s caregiver, Andrea Yolanda Reyna, who provided that moment of levity during a somber time. It was, of course, a work day for Jeff, and he spent the day dealing with the omnipresent hassles of running a small, under-funded community radio station. Silver Lake Joe Thompson, a volunteer and host of the live show that precedes my show on Thursday nights, treated him to some wings and beer at a local brew pub. When Jeff got back to the station to lock up, he discovered that the toilet was backed up. Some stranger had come in during the day asking to use the lavatory, and had deposited an un-flushable turd. On his 60^th birthday, Jeff’s last duty of the day, as Managing Director of Hunters Bay Radio, was to plunge the toilet.

Managing a not-for-profit community radio station is not a glorious job. Absent the big budgets of our competing commercial radio stations, Jeff is chief cook and bottle washer at The Bay. He’s part computer tech, volunteer coordinator, event promoter, public relations director, program director, news desk, host, grant writer, bookkeeper, mediator and, last but not least, philanthropist. Since Hunters Bay Radio began to broadcast its weekly radio BINGO game, the station has contributed tens of thousands of dollars in BINGO profits to local charities, and funded numerous local concerts, many which are free to the public. The reason I volunteer for this station is because Jeff recruited me, as he has done with most of his volunteers. I became a volunteer because of the great music they were playing, and because they have given me and other local musicians and songwriters a voice in the community. He was the one who suggested I do a show about songwriting. Four years later, I’ve met some remarkable artists because of my show, and I've learned volumes about their music. Featuring two live radio shows per week, as well as the odd impromptu live interview, Hunters Bay Radio keeps the artistic flame alive, and that includes all forms of art. I think in many ways it represents and fosters the inclusiveness, creativity, comradery, and goodwill that any community strives to achieve. Admittedly, building this station up has been a team effort, and the contributions of all paid staff and volunteers are invaluable, but this station has been, in large part, Jeff’s vision.

Running a community radio station in a small town can be a thankless task. Jeff is the lightning rod for any controversial decision the station makes, and he takes a lot of heat daily. I for one appreciate the sacrifices he makes for his community, because what he does is a 24-7 job.  Welcome to your 61^st year Jeff, thanks for keeping the lights on at Hunters Bay Radio, and yes, thanks for plunging the toilet!     

 Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 3/18/19

Last week, I made reference to an interview with a Stanford University biologist/neurologist who had done research indicating that the human brain is hard-wired to create an “us and them” mentality. In other words, we are hard-wired to mistrust certain people who seem different from us. There’s a scientific reason for hatred! Is it a sign of the times that we are rationalizing our bad behavior? Let science work for you. We’re wired to mistrust, so maybe it’s just human nature to become hateful and discriminatory. I heard a statistic on the news this morning (and cannot attest to its veracity), that about 70% of the terrorist attacks in the United States after 9-11 were carried out by white men. The Orange Emperor would have us believe the greater threat is from Muslims and Mexicans, but the white supremacists appear to be the bigger problem here in North America. This past weekend, the nonstop bad news was that some right-wing white power extremist nut ball slaughtered fifty innocent Muslim worshipers at a mosque in otherwise peaceful Christchurch, New Zealand. Last October, it was a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Whether it’s Muslims, Christians, Jews, Tutsis, Rohingya refugees, or just a bunch of country music fans in Las Vegas, there seems to be a lot of hate-filled murdering going on. Of course, the issue of gun control crops up again, but there has also been a lot of discussion in the past week about how social media has fanned the flames of hatred.

How crazy is it that we live in a world where any lunatic can video stream his or her murderous rampage and post it in real time for hundreds of millions to potentially see on Facebook? I love watching Facebook videos depicting zipline adventures through the Amazon jungle, but the same medium that allows me to do this also broadcasts a lot of moral pollution. While this may be the golden age of information, it is also the golden age of disinformation. The internet takes the crowd mentality and pumps it full of steroids, and it can stir up a hornet’s nest faster than Donald Trump can hoover a Big Mac.

I watched an interview with a reformed skinhead, who now fights for the hearts and minds of the vulnerable and alienated, radicalized by well-organized hate groups who spread their filth on the web. This guy works to turn vulnerable souls away from hate, and he warns that the bad guys are getting stronger, amped up by the vast marketing potential of social media. I see an ever-widening cavern between what people will believe and reality. Hell, I’m getting confused. There are so many conflicting agendas, it’s hard to know what the truth is anymore. I understand how a guy like Rump could get elected, in a world where reality television is anything but, he can say whatever he likes, and the disenfranchised want to believe him. I might not understand how misguided people might choose to hate a group about whom they know nothing, but people see their quality of life eroding, and they want a scapegoat. History is full of examples of propaganda-inspired hatred, it’s just getting easier to incubate.

I wish I could change people’s minds, but when I look at the big picture, I am as overwhelmed as the next man. How do you eradicate hopelessness and poverty, how do you make governments accountable for their failures, how do you teach men and women the benefits of trying to understand and love each other? The very religious institutions that were supposed to instill these qualities in their believers have been turned into weapons of divisiveness. Maybe stupidity is contagious. I heard Republican strategist Rick Wilson, author of the book “Everything Trump Touches Dies” say that Trump had the IQ of a room temperature cup of yogurt. That was the best laugh I had today. The Orange Emperor isn’t really the problem here, he’s just an overweight canary in the coal mine. I suppose that the best I can hope to do is set a good example in my own community. Hatred is as old as the hills. I can’t make it go away, but maybe I can help the people in my community, and maybe  that’s a start, even if we are all  hard-wired to hate.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 3/11/19

Rather than rant, as I often do on a Monday, about a segment on Fareed Zakaria's show yesterday, wherein a Stanford biologist/neurolgist described his study suggesting the human brain is hard-wired to adopt an "us and them" mentality, or about the tornadoes that just ripped through Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma,  or about my propensity to form run-on sentences, I thought I would inject a little levity into the day. Below you will find a reprise of the Oppenheimer Report I wrote while we were still living in Toronto, in the year of Y2K:

 The Oppenheimer Report - 1/9/00 ...

I watched a commercial for one of those Medieval Feast places

the other night, and by golly  I want to go. For those of you

who don't live in a large metropolitan area, with a glut of

entertainment options,  you probably  don't even know what a

medieval feast place  IS. This is basically a fun-filled

evening for which you pay an all-inclusive admission fee to

sit in an auditorium, eat meat with your hands, and watch men

on horseback  try to spear each other in a mock jousting

match.  Occasionally, there is the odd hand-to-hand skirmish

and  maces and balls and chains are called for, but mostly

it's just skewering. Picture yourself tearing apart an

unmanageable slab of cheap, underdone cow meat (heaven 
knows from what part of the cow), as  you watch  chainmail-clad

horsemen try to impale each other with giant pool cues. If

that isn't enough excitement, their galloping horses fling

large gobs of mud and saliva  up into your food as they race

by. You have a front row seat for all the feudal carnage and

savagery you can stomach.  Relive the good old days  for  one,

very reasonable,  all- inclusive admission charge. Fun per

dollar, I don't know how you can do better than this.

Call me a testosterone-choked moron, but I love crap like

this. It's not that violence turns me on,  it's more that this

is simply such a ludicrous concept. It makes about as much

sense as watching the Foot Surgery Channel on TV  as you sit

down to your spaghetti dinner.

I am reminded of a funny experience I had a long time ago,

when I spent a  semester studying abroad in Dublin, Ireland.

I and my classmates were taken on a field trip, as part of our

cultural experience, and one of our stops was dinner at a

place called Bunratty Castle.  It was a genuine, ancient stone

castle, dating back to Celtic times, which had been

transformed into a rather bizarre restaurant. First, we were

served mead wine by real wenches, and then, once sufficiently

lubricated, we were led into a large banquet hall for a good

old-fashioned throw-the-bones-over-your-shoulder medieval

feast. They BRAGGED about this.The feastitorium seated about

two or three hundred, but on the night we were there it was

only about half full. The tables were long, seating between

forty to fifty diners, and each place setting consisted of a

serrated knife and a  plate, but no other utensils.  For the

tour group of geriatric bible thumpers from Iowa, this must

have seemed quite a primitive feast, but to my study  group,

made up in  large part by scoundrels of questionable  Irish

decent, armed with their somewhat muddled interpretation of

what was proper medieval decorum, this was a green light to

party.

After several more  tankards of mead wine,  we realized that

the folks at the next table were a rugby team visiting from

England, and that they too were getting into the spirit of

things. Once our slabs of animal flesh had been served, it

wasn't long before the mother of all food fights broke out.

It was instant mayhem, the likes of which I doubt the managers

of Bunratty Castle had ever anticipated or even imagined.

Entertainment during our feast was supposed to be a quartet 
of musicians playing music from the period, and they were  all

dressed in those balloon  pants and  those funny hats with big

feathers.  I'm sure they felt silly enough dressed like that,

but no words can describe how silly they must have felt

fending off  projectiles of beef  with their lutes and drums.

Amidst the chaos - and let there be no mistake, this was

CHAOS, there sat the Iowans, calmly eating their meals with as

much dignity as they could muster, (remember they have  only

knives with which to eat), ducking occasionally to miss the

odd incoming roll or slab of meat. 

Needless to say, we, the School of Irish Studies and the rugby

team, were summarily escorted out of Bunratty Castle before we

could finish our medieval desserts, but not before leaving our

indelible mark on the patience of these tourist trap

imposters. Covered with food, we were bussed back to our hotel

where we spent the next four hours drinking even more and

embellishing what was already a slam dunk in the "memorable

experience" department. By the way, I grudgingly admit that

the rugby guys won the food fight.

Now, whenever I see an ad for one of these Joust-O-Rama

places, it triggers fond memories of that Bacchanalian  orgy

in which I was so blessed to have participated.

                                

As I  approach that stage in my life  to which I loathingly

refer as "approaching respectability" ... that point where I

would never in a million years dream of behaving with such a

careless lack of decorum,  I look back on my Bunratty

adventure as one of the high points in my Irish  experience.

Sometimes, while eating dinner with my wife at a fine

restaurant, I'll toss an olive at her, just for old time's

sake . In response, she  will look at me as if to say "I

married a single cell organism" ....  or, worse yet, she'll

simply ignore my token nostalgic gesture. That hurts. In my

mind there can't be enough of these medieval feast places to

satisfy the base needs of men all over the world.  It's in our

nature to be this way, and all this rubbish about the rules of

civilized behavior is totalitarian hogwash, foisted upon us by

prudes like Emily Post and Miss Manners.   

Oh, to be medieval again! Honey, do you know where I put my

good feather?  It's time to feast!

             

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2000 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 3/4/19

A long time ago, when I was a little boy, my mom sometimes visited a lady who lived alone in a little bungalow near Crystal Beach Amusement Park, not far from our beach house. Mom would stop in and bring her a meal, or just sit and talk with her for an hour or two. Sometimes I was with her when she visited this friend, and I never thought much of it at the time. I just assumed Mom did this because she was an old classmate from high school, and because the woman lived alone. I thought it was weird that Mom always asked her if she’s been eating. Many years later, I learned that the lady had had a difficult life, and that she had become an alcoholic. She seemed nice enough to me, and always seemed happy to see Mom, but even as a young child I thought she seemed desperately lonely. My dad used to do something similar, visiting several men who were, it seemed to me, very strange. I never knew what their problems were, perhaps mental illness, perhaps alcoholism, I only knew that Dad felt obliged to visit them. I didn’t understand it at the time, and sometimes felt uncomfortable in the company of these odd people. I never did learn the nature of my parents’ connection to any of them, only that many of them had had something to do with the horse show and/or race horse circuit. All of them had stumbled into the netherworld of addiction, obscurity, and/or silent pain, and my parents were the kind of people to give comfort to the downtrodden. There are a lot of diamonds in the rough out there, people who by their odd behavior may cause them to become alienated from the general population. The lesson my parents quietly taught me, and I think the reason they sometimes brought me along on these visits, is that everyone has worth, and that sometimes there are heroes and heroines hiding inside the alcoholics and downtrodden. Everyone has a story, and all stories deserve recognition, and sometimes respect.     

One of the results of these childhood experiences, is that I try never to take for granted a random act of kindness, large or small. The other day, our pharmacist in Huntsville hand-delivered one of Shauna’s medications to me at the radio station while I was broadcasting my show, so that I would not have to make a special trip into Huntsville later to pick it up. Years ago, at Laguardia Airport during a big storm, I remember a lady at the ticket counter going out of her way to help Shauna, when Shauna was obviously in great pain. With angry travelers all around her, yelling because their flights were delayed, this woman took the time to make Shauna more comfortable, and she helped us through that chaotic situation. I have never forgotten it. I remember thinking I’d write a letter to her supervisor, to let him or her know how much we appreciated what this woman did, but of course, I never did. What I did do is try is remember that kindness, and to return the favor, albeit for someone else. Sometimes, not always, I’ve paid it forward, but more important, I’ve tried to remember the good in people. It’s a sometimes challenging but rewarding exercise.

The other day, I watched a bit of the partisan nonsense during Michael Cohen’s appearance before the House Oversight Committee last week. It’s very easy to lose sight of the heroes and heroines in the world, when we are constantly bombarded with the worst mankind has to offer. The good people who have touched my life are in my heart forever, random angels who came to visit when things got tough. They are gentle reminders that humanity is alive and well, and thriving in the strangest and most unlikely places. We’re all on the same train, and regardless of our intended destination, and the best we can hope to do is enjoy the ride. From time to time, I don’t mind giving my seat to the smelly guy talking to himself. I keep thinking he might have saved someone’s life once. Thank you Mom and Dad, for at least suggesting that possibility.

  

 -       Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED