By Bob Gaydos

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” John Lennon famously, and ironically, wrote. You’re driving along on cruise control, daydreaming about the future and wham! Suddenly you’re in a Coen Brothers movie.

If only you had turned left instead of right. If only that idiot hadn’t run the red light. If the klutz had jumped over you instead of landing on your ankle.

Life happened to Hosni Mubarak last week as he was, perhaps, contemplating whether to remain as president of Egypt a few more years or pass the job on to his son, what with elections in his country being foregone conclusions. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians were in the streets demanding that Mubarak resign. Three decades of autocratic rule apparently was enough. That, plus the lack of any meaningful work for young people in the onetime jewel of the Arab world.

Mubarak could be excused for not seeing this revolt coming because neither he nor any other Arab leader has spent much time paying attention to Tunisia, a poor neighbor to the west of Egypt, with an even more repressive leader and even fewer job opportunities for young people. What happened in Tunisia is the stuff of grand movies, and history.

One afternoon, a young man who helped support his family by peddling fruit was stopped by a female government inspector and asked for his license. Not having one, he offered to pay the $7 fine (a day’s earnings) if he could go on selling fruit. This was not an uncommon practice. The inspector not only said no, she reportedly spit on him, slapped him in the face and confiscated his fruit cart. Angry and humiliated, he went to government offices to appeal his treatment. No one would see him.

So the next day he returned to the street in front of the government offices and set himself on fire. With his death in the hospital, a martyr was born. Huge mobs took to the streets protesting against the government. More self-immolations followed. Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee the country. Egyptians followed it all on television and the Internet. Heck, if Tunisians could do it, why not Egyptians?

Indeed, with the nascent government in Iraq being the only semblance of democratic rule in the Arab world, why not Jordan or Yemen or Libya or Lebanon or  Syria or …

And so, life also happened last week to Barack Obama, on the other side of the world and trying to figure out how to create jobs and revive the economy of the United States, the most powerful nation on the planet, which had plunged into a recession because everyone was too busy planning their retirement homes while banks were selling worthless mortgages. Suddenly, everything our president knew about the Middle East was meaningless because Arab citizens had never risen up so boldly against their repressive governments. Seeking stability through support of dictators has been SOP forever for the State Department, even though it backfired in Iran, a Persian, but Muslim, country. The downfall of the shah caught Jimmy Carter looking elsewhere.

And now everyone it seems has advice for Obama on what to say, what to do about Egypt, even though there is no history for this set of circumstances. “Does he want to be seen as the president who lost Egypt?” a talking blonde head asked on (of course) Fox News, while the rest of the world was still trying to make sense of what was happening and hoping things wouldn’t turn violent. Already producing talking points for the ill-informed opposition.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s the primary question on Obama’s mind right now. Of course he doesn’t want to “lose” Egypt. Nor does he want other Arab nations to fall under the control of militant Islamists. But he has to figure out exactly what he and leaders of other free nations can actually do to have a positive influence on events in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East.

That klutz in the second paragraph landed on my right ankle. Shattered it. Touch football. I was 35, athletic, divorced and out of work. Not a care in the world. Two operations and a right leg a tad shorter than the left later, I long ago stopped dreaming about running. No tennis, basketball or baseball, at least not in any competitive sense. I eventually got another job and, later, a wife and two sons. Life happened in ways I had not planned. Along the way, a friend introduced me to a prayer (I confess I am not a religious person) that I see as the companion piece to Lennon’s line (and it’s even more famous): “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

I eventually got Reinhold Niebuhr’s drift: Don’t get all worked up over stuff you can’t do anything about. Life happens. You can fuss for awhile, but focus on doing the best with what you can control; that’s where the rewards are. For me, that meant doing a lot of coaching of my sons from the time they were big enough to swing a bat or throw a ball. I could still move well enough for that and it was loads of fun for a lot of years. They turned out pretty good, too.

As I see it, Obama needs the wisdom part in this crisis. He can’t control what happens on the streets in Cairo or any other Arab nation. What he can do is speak forcefully and eloquently, in public to the world and in private to Mubarak et al, about what the United States of America stands for and hopes for and will support in any country whose people want it: freedom, human rights, dignity, opportunity, equality and justice for each and every citizen.

That message always has and always will resonate around the world. And it will survive even a fruit peddler being slapped by a bureaucrat in Tunisia.

Bob@zestoforange.com

By Bob Gaydos

I blame it all on the stars. The ones in the sky, not on reality television. If they could have just stayed where they were supposed to stay, where they have been for billions and billions of Carl Sagan years, none of this other stuff would be happening.

You know, thousands of birds dropping dead out of the sky. Dead crabs washing up on the shore of Great Britain. Rightwing blowhards being dropped by conservative radio stations. A leftwing bloviate shown the door by a leftwing TV station. Republicans muttering not so much under their breath anymore that they wish Sarah Palin would just shut up.

Just when we had the sides all chosen up for the game, someone went and moved the stars and suddenly I’m a Taurus, not a Gemini. But hey, I don’t feel like a Taurus. I have been Gemini-like pretty much since I became aware of the signs of the Zodiac. Charming split personality, that’s me. Keep your bull to yourself, Parke Kunkle.

What kind of name is that anyway? Parke Kunkle. Who names a kid Parke when he’s already got Kunkle to carry around? Kunkle is an astronomy instructor at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, which sounds like a great place to get lost for your career. But with the Internet, nobody need be lost forever. So when Kunkle sat for an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune to help fill their Sunday paper, the stars were already aligned for his moment in the sun. (Please don’t tell me how to mix my metaphors. It’s my blog.)

Kunkle told the Sun that the stars had moved. Well, the Sun didn’t know anything about it, so it ran a story about how the Zodiac was all messed up and those signs people follow in the paper every day to help them plan their lives were, how to say this delicately, wrong.

OK, I can feel the scientists out there getting agitated about the stars “moving” references. That’s just a writer’s conceit, see? I know the stars didn’t really move, but it makes it easier to get people into the story than telling them the earth actually tilted on its axis thousand of years ago, altering its alignment with the stars and, of course, altering the signs of the zodiac, which were conceived about 5,000 years ago and are based on the earth/stars alignment. See how boring it can be explaining science? Call it the Fox news approach.

But here’s the real deal: Good old Parke tells us that scientists knew about this starry shift 2,000 years ago. Wow. How come WikiLeaks couldn’t find out about this? Not content to leave it there, with Pisces now Aries and Virgo now Libra, he also tells us there are really 13, not 12 constellations.

The scientists have known about this a long time as well, he says. Apparently they kept Number 13, Ophiuchus (Nov. 29-Dec. 17), secret because 12 signs fit neatly into a calendar year and Ophiucus is a yucchy name to say, much less have to admit to being one.

So there you have it. That’s why the birds dropped dead in Arkansas and Louisiana. It wasn’t the weather or bad food or poor navigation skills. It’s also why we’re having all these snowy days in January. I’m convinced it’s why Andrew Luck, the best quarterback in college football, decided to stay at Stanford for another year instead of coming out to be the first draft choice of the worst team in the National Football League, the Carolina Panthers, who (I could not resist this) truly have no luck at all.

It’s why WOR Radio in New York and WPHT in Philadelphia have dropped Glenn Beck, not because his ratings were falling and advertisers were leaving. It’s also why WPHT also dropped Sean Hannity, who had previously been dropped by KSL Radio, a Mormon station, in Utah. It has nothing to do with Beck ranting about crime around Independence Hall or KSL’s mission statement which calls for advancing “integrity, civility, morality, and respect for all people.” Its just Aquarius and Capricorn not knowing what’s what or who’s who.

Same goes for Keith Olbermann, the brightest and loudest star in the MSNBC galaxy, getting the quick shuffle out the door to even the sides. Here’s your money, Keith; keep your mouth shut.

The wacked-out zodiac (and what do you think the zodiac killer is thinking these days?) may well be responsible for the recent strange conversation between the president of the American Atheist Group and Bill O’Reilly, who still has a job at Fox news, but who has been told by his boss, Roger Ailes, to “shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually.”

The atheists had posted a billboard calling religion a scam. O’Reilly said he could prove them wrong: “I’ll tell you why it’s not a scam in my opinion: Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that.”

Atheist: “Tide goes in, tide goes out?”

O’Reilly: “See, the water, the tide comes in and it goes out … It always comes in, and always goes out. You can’t explain that.”

Now, had the stars not been out of alignment for thousands of years, O’Reilly may have known, intellectually, that tides rise and fall due to the combined gravitational effects on the Earth caused by the Moon and the Sun. That what the scientists tell us. For thousands of years, how these celestial bodies are aligned has determined the daily rise and fall of sea levels. It’s a scientific fact. You know, the same way that how the stars are aligned with the Earth has determined what happens in our personal lives for thousands of years. …

Actually, it’s all Parke’s fault.

bob@zestoforange.com

By Bob Gaydos

I’ve spent the past few days rummaging through cardboard boxes and those old post office mail crates (tell me you don’t have a couple stashed away) on a search for some personal stuff long ago relegated to the archives, AKA the walk-in closet. I do this kind of stuff when I’m avoiding writing for this blog or, as is more often the case, when the only stuff to write about is seemingly the same, old nasty crap. Sorry for the bluntness, but that’s the way I feel about it.

My co-bloggers, Jeff Page and Michael Kaufman, bless their ever-acerbic minds and hearts seem to have no difficulty rising to the challenge of commenting on whatever may be the controversy du jour. They continue to call out the bad guys and thank God for that. I pretty much agree with what they write, but to me it is all part of an endlessly recycled argument in which nobody ever listens to the other side. It’s the stuff that ends marriages and divides nations. At some point, it’s pointless.

So I wasn’t going to write about the shootings in Arizona because I didn’t think I had anything new to say and, more to the point, it wouldn’t make any difference. And then, as I’m rummaging through the boxes, discarding old memos and scanning old editorials, I come across a copy of the Times Herald-Record from Dec. 22, 2006. Why am I keeping this? I flip through to find out and suddenly it hits me in the face: “ ‘Final’ thoughts of an editor.”

My last editorial at the Record. The one they let me sign. The one that expressed exactly what I talked about at the top of this piece and that still holds true more than four years later. I wrote about my worries. To wit:

“I’m worried. Not about Iraq, or global warming, or terrorism, or even urban sprawl. Well, sure, I’m worried about those things, but, truthfully, they’re mostly out of the control of any one of us. It requires collective action, a meeting of the minds, — compromise — to do something positive about complicated issues. What worries me is I think we’ve forgotten how to do this — all of us, not just Congress and the state Legislature. … I think our society has become coarser and, in many ways, less tolerant. This is evident in our culture, our schools, our political debate.

“Honest differences of opinion over the most mundane issues now routinely degenerate into personal attack and shouting matches. You hear a lot of this on TV and radio. The internet puts no filters on any opinion, however hateful or unfounded in fact. It is ‘buyer beware’ and pretty much free of charge. We have abdicated debate to the extremes. We complain about politicians who can’t work together, yet constantly return to office those same officials because they delivered some money for a favorite cause. …

“Here’s where the stuff comes in we don’t want to hear, the stuff we call hokey or lame or naïve. Sorry if you feel that way. Complain to the next guy.

“We have to stop whining and yelling at each other and listen for a change. We need to stop looking for someone to blame and accept personal responsibility. That doesn’t mean ignoring the liars and charlatans in our midst. It means expressing in clear, no-nonsense, non-threatening terms what we expect of each other. It means respecting those who mean us no harm but may disagree with us. It means recognizing our common roots and dreams, as individuals and neighbors. It means teaching our children by deeds as well as words. It means fessing up to our mistakes and honestly trying to fix them.”

Yeah, that’s how I still feel. Nobody is trying to fix things. Well, almost nobody.

My 16-year-old son, Zack, came home from school Thursday and said, “Obama’s speech was really moving last night.”

“Really?” I replied, confessing with some embarrassment I hadn’t known the president planned to speak and never bothered to listen to him later.

“Yeah,” Zack said, “I was going to watch ‘The Office,’ but Obama was speaking so I listened. It was powerful.”

Well now. I was reminded. Yes, Barack Obama, someone I have criticized for not facing down his hypocritical critics on the right, clearly understands the need to find the solution rather than living endlessly in the problem. It is in his DNA as well as in his books. It’s why I and many others were thrilled when he was elected president. Persistently trying to bring people together, to disagree civilly, to compromise, is often seen as a sign of weakness, but it’s what I was looking for when I said goodbye to the Record.

Now, I will still have trouble rising to the challenge of the controversy du jour, so don’t expect a flood of harangues and harrumphs all of a sudden. But Zack reminded me that the future may not be as bleak as I had thought. You have no idea how good that made me feel.

bob@zestoforange.com

Coach Coughlin berates punter Tom Dodge after the game.

By Bob Gaydos

A few lingering questions to ponder before the end of the year:

WHO’S TO BLAME? Is there anything sadder and more frustrating for a football fan than seeing an old, humorless, rigid coach berating a 22-year-old player on the football field, on national TV, immediately following that player’s failure to kick an out-of-bounds punt with 14 second left in the game, that failure leading to a winning touchdown for the other team on the last play of the game?

Actually yes. It’s that same old, humorless, rigid coach stating at a press conference after the game that he took “full responsibility” for the botched punt and in the next breath saying the kicker (who was reportedly in tears in the locker room) didn’t do what he was told.

Pretty big bus you tossed the kid under, Tom Coughlin. Way to demonstrate mature leadership. Way to make other young football players want to become a New York Giant. Gee, maybe some day I can miss a tackle and have Coughlin chew me out on Fox or CBS so that everyone knows he wasn‘t the one who missed the tackle. That’s not a particularly effective approach with your own kids and it’s highly unlikely to motivate professional athletes.

Yeah, Tom Coughlin has to go as Giants coach because for all his emphasis on discipline and stability, his teams have been among the most undisciplined and unstable on the football field over the past few years — even when they won the Super Bowl. But it’s more than that. He has gone from being a cranky-but-talented coach to a cranky, old man who seems to spend most of the game shaking his head on the sidelines and looking like he has indigestion. Those are generally signs it’s time get out and let someone who can demonstrate leadership, not annoyance, take over.

If there are lessons to be learned from a crushing defeat — and there always are — in this case it might be that teams win and lose as a unit, not as individuals, and that, as a rule, coaching and disciplining and blame-placing should be done in private, not in public. You can make occasional exceptions for spoiled professionals who think the rules don’t apply to them (Hello T.O., Ochowhatever and Mr. Moss), but never for amateurs and youth league athletes. (Coaches of said athletes, take note.) And if you say you take “full responsibility” as a coach, make sure you damn well mean it.

WHICH DUCK IS LAME? The midterm election, which delivered the House of Representatives back to the Republicans, was supposedly a referendum on how poorly Barack Obama had performed in his first two years as president. After all, he had only pushed through a record stimulus bill to stabilize a free-falling economy, managed passage of health care reform (something presidents had been trying to do for decades) and engineered banking reform, simplified college tuition loans and put protections in place for credit card users. He even got a bill passed on child nutrition. Oh, and he started pulling American troops out of Iraq.

This record was considered a disastrous failure, mostly by Tea Party members, who look on Obama as a Socialist and would apparently prefer that there be no government at all, and ultra-liberals, who thought Obama should bludgeon Republicans into saying yes once in awhile even if their DNA prevented them from doing so. But the man is nothing if not persistent and consistent.

Having been chastised and humbled by his “defeat” at the polls in November, the president has since signed a bill extending Bush era tax cuts for all Americans and extending unemployment benefits for millions. The bill does include tax cuts for the wealthiest, which will increase the exploding national deficit (which Republicans also kept saying was a very, very bad thing), but it also includes so many other benefits for the middle class and businesses that ultra-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer has praised Obama for outsmarting the Republicans, calling it the bill that ensures Obama’s re-election.

But there’s more. For all his liberal supporters, Obama somehow got Congress to repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law, which will allow gays to serve openly in the military, and gained approval of an updated nuclear arms treaty with Russia, despite efforts by some Republicans to hold it hostage if Congress approved DADT. He also got approval of a health bill for 9/11 responders, a bill Senate Republicans inexplicably rejected several times in their desire to punish the president. Some strategy.

I have not been immune from criticizing Obama for not occasionally slapping around just-say-no Republicans for refusing to work with him, even on legislation they support. But Mr. Bipartisan just may be smarter than all of us as he wears out his left arm signing new laws in the wake of a resounding Republican victory that doesn’t give them more power until next year, when they can start being bipartisan for real.

SAY WHAT? George Orwell made my 20 Most Influential Thinkers of the 20th Century list because he saw so many things others did not and put his insights into writing. One of his observations popped up on my iGoogle page the other day: “In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.”

A couple of days later I thought of old George when I read the following (yeah, I read art stuff!) in The New York Times Arts section: “In her sculptures over the last several years, Ms. Bhabha has created a highly distinctive visual universe, one that is most gripping when its various cultural references are fully absorbed and altered. This absorption feels only partial in some of the new figures, and the images in some of the photographic pieces feel simply layered rather than integrated and complicated.”

Geez, I dunno, the stuff looked kinda, you know, integrated and all, to me.

Happy new year.

Bob@zestoforange.com

Cher

By Bob Gaydos

A collection of random thoughts that piled up in my brain as I was figuring out my list of the twenty most influential thinkers of the 20th Century:

• It’s hard being a McCain. It must be. After all, look at poor John, the onetime war hero, prisoner of war, and principled maverick Republican senator from Arizona, the man who never marched in lockstep with his GOP colleagues and never sold his soul for anything as crass as a vote (that savings and loan scandal notwithstanding). I don’t know when it started, maybe when he got his butt kicked in the 2000 primaries by that draft-evading Bush kid, but McCain hasn’t been the same since. He sold out in South Carolina to the Righteous Right — the same ones who pilloried him in 2000 — to get the 2008 GOP nomination and then developed such a crush on the governor of Alaska that he asked her to be his mate, er, running mate. Taking his lead from her, he then forgot everything he ever knew about principled governing and opted for doing and saying whatever was likely to gain him votes. Meanwhile, his actual mate, Cindy, who is the wealthy wind beneath John’s sails, finally dared to be herself and came out publicly against bullying of gays and for repeal of the military’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy, which John adamantly opposes. Or so it seemed. A day after her public service announcement appeared, Cindy tweeted the world that she supported both the anti-bullying of gays message and her hubby’s position on DADT. Yes, that is literally impossible, even for the best of wives. Adding to the McCain household holiday spirit, their daughter, Meghan, is quite vocal about repealing the military ban. Meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill, the senator was saying that, while surveys showed a majority of military personnel in favor of repeal, as well as the Joint Chiefs, McCain was rejecting the conclusion of a report — which he requested — saying the change could be made with no harm to military effectiveness. As for the support for repeal by the defense secretary and commander-in-chief, the man who graduated near the bottom of his class at Annapolis said he considered neither of them a military leader. Imagine if he had become president and someone said that about civilian control of the military. As disappointing as Obama has been, we could have had McCain. So I am grateful.
• The uptight City by the Bay. San Francisco banned Happy Meals. Once upon a time, it was the place everyone went to get happy. Playing Big Brother is unbecoming its reputation.
• The Bristol stomp. Bristol Palin, who dances about as well as Sanjaya sings, mercifully did not win the Dancing with the Stars competition. After weeks of being kept afloat by a rightwing write-in campaign, the Sarah Palin offspring lost to Jennifer Grey, who actually can dance. Bristol and her baby sister responded to the defeat and to criticism of her “talent” with an ungrammatical, profanity and gay-bashing laced assault on Facebook. Mom was apparently too busy discovering Alaska for her TV show to provide parental guidance. Again, forever grateful.
• Snap out of it! Cher is back in the movies. Who cares if “Burlesque” is good or not, it’s just great to have her image dominating the screen again.
• We love you, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Beatles are now available on I-tunes. I don’t have an I-anything, but it seems only right that the lads’ tunes can now be downloaded along with Miley Cyrus and Diddy, or whatever he‘s calling himself these days.
• Sloooooowly, I turned, Step by step … The pope said it may sometimes be acceptable to use condoms. Arright, arright, don‘t get too excited just yet. Pope Benedict XVI said some people, specifically male prostitutes, using condoms could be justified because the intent was to reduce AIDS infection. While this is huge, he did not suggest using condoms as birth control, which is banned by the church, or mention the use of condoms by female prostitutes, suggesting to some that, perhaps, their infection is OK with the pope. Benedict said he wanted to start a debate on the topic of condoms. Oh to be a fly on the wall in the Vatican.
• Hit the road, Jack and don’t come back. Some football coaches finally stood up to high-priced, whiny-baby star players, telling them to pack up their gear and take their act elsewhere. Randy Moss got cut by the Minnesota Vikings, the Tennessee Titans told quarterback Vince Young they were tired of his prima donna act and the Washington Redskins showed the sullen Albert Haynesworth the door. That’s three down and about 50 more to go in the NFL.
• “Shut up, Jon Gruden! Nobody cares if ‘they blitzed the A gap.’ ” The preceding was a message from my son, Zack, a 16-year-old football fan who knows his stuff and can spot a Monday Night Football blowhard when he hears one. Got to admit, the kid’s got a way with words.

Bob@zestoforange.com

Bob Dylan

By Bob Gaydos

The time has come, admittedly much to my chagrin, to wrap this thinkers thing up and return to the real world of Rand Paul, Bristol Palin and Jersey Shore. Lord, what fools we mortals be. (Yeah, I lifted it.)

Sigmund Freud

By Bob Gaydos

The popular TV show “Big Brother” is a virtual hot house of Freudian slips. And that should make it easy for you to figure out the next two members of The List of Most Influential Thinkers of the 20th Century.

Bravo to “the lady in the balcony” as Dr. IQ used to say on the radio. Yes, hats off to two Europeans whose influence on contemporary thought and culture has not waned even as their ideas came under increasing criticism following their deaths: George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) and Sigmund Freud.

Orwell died 60 years ago, at the height of his writing career. He was 46. Do you have a TV show named after a phrase you created, a phrase so familiar around the world that it tells you all you need to know about the show before you watch it? Rhetorical.

Orwell’s most famous works, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm,” have sold more than 11 million copies each and are still widely read by students today. No other writer has produced two books that have been as successful.

From “Animal Farm’s” “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others,” to Nineteen Eighty-Four’s “Big Brother is watching you,” Orwell’s memorable critiques of the failure of totalitarianism have become part of our everyday language and shaped how we regard government efforts to control our lives and the tendency of revolutionaries to abandon their core principle of equality once they gain power. Fiercely anti-fascist, then anti-communist, he was a wealthy Englishman with socialist ideals. His strength was the clear, crisp, incisive way he expressed his views.

Think of “Newspeak’’ (deliberately simple but confusing language designed to discourage independent thought) and “Doublespeak” (holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously)” and you have Orwellian ideas. Thanks to Orwell, we recognize them for what they are when we hear them today. (Well, some Tea Partiers may be the exception.)

Orwell was not only a novelist. He also virtually invented the free-wheeling social commentary column (today we call them blogs) and wrote hundreds of essays. Any serious writer would do well to follow his six rules of writing, as presented in an essay, “Politics and the English Language.” To wit:

• “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.”
• “Never use a long word when a short word will do.”
• “If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.”
• “Use the active rather than passive voice.”
• “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”
• “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

And if you dare to disagree with any of this, the “Thought Police” will get you.

And who better to police our thoughts, conscious, unconscious or preconscious, than Sigmund Freud? The so-called father of psychoanalysis was by far the most influential 20th century figure in the study of how the mind works and how it shapes what we become. He believed the unconscious part of our brain, where we store all the stuff that happens to us, including the really nasty stuff, plays a primary role in this.

It’s true that a lot of his ideas have been challenged, but a measure of Freud’s unmatched influence is that even the vigorous debate in the field of psychology has revolved to a large extent over whether he was right or wrong. He dominates the conversation.

Freud introduced new ideas on how we think about memory, identity, sexuality, childhood, the meaning of dreams. He gave us the Oedipus complex and unconscious guilt. He introduced the therapist’s couch and lying-down talk therapy, which has evolved for the most part into sitting-up talk therapy. Dozens if not hundreds of movies, plays and novels have been influenced by Freud’s work.

Other forms of therapy have gained prominence since his death, but anyone asked to free associate when the word “psychologist” is uttered is odds-on to respond “Freud.” Sigmund make The List. His mama would be proud.

* * *

So here’s where we stand with the list of 20 (in no specific order):

1. Albert Einstein

2. Gandhi

3. Henry Ford

4. The Wright Brothers (count as one)

5. Thomas Edison

6. Picasso

7. Nikola Tesla

8. Mark Twain

9. James D. Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin (DNA trio count as one)

10. Winston Churchill

11. Philo Farnsworth

12. Rachel Carson

13. George Orwell

14. Sigmund Feud

Bob@zestoforange.com

By Bob Gaydos

There is a statue in the Capitol Visitors Center in Washington, D.C., part of its Statuary Hall collection, that contains this simple inscription: “Philo Taylor Farnsworth: Inventor of Television.”

Need I say more?

For better and worse, Philo Farnsworth’s vision, and subsequent inventions, changed the world we live in. There’s no way he is not one of The 20 Most Influential Thinkers of the 20th century. At the delicate age of 13, he came up with his idea for television and at 21 made the first electronic transmission of television, which became the basis of all we take for granted today, from “Jersey Shore” to “Meet the Press.” His wife Emma’s face was the first human image transmitted via television.

As with many inventors, what he envisioned is not necessarily what developed. After fighting and beating RCA over patents, he hoped television would become a tool to bring education, news, and the arts into the living rooms of ordinary Americans. By the 1950s he had banned the use of TV in his own house, although he did make a guest appearance in 1957, as “Dr. X,“ on the popular quiz show, “I’ve Got a Secret.” The panel couldn’t guess his secret, but there‘s no mystery as to why he‘s on The List.

Similarly, Rachel Carson, marine biologist and nature writer, called by many “the mother of environmentalism,” surely had no idea of the profound impact her book, “Silent Spring,” would have on the planet she so wanted to preserve for the rest of us. Her research and elegant writing on the negative effects that the widespread use of synthetic pesticides to kill insects had on all life on the planet not only resulted in a ban on the use of DDT (which she never advocated, by the way), but it gave rise to a different way of looking at the interconnectedness of all organisms and the need to protect and conserve nature’s resources.

She died of cancer at 57, only two years after publication of her most famous book, but her legacy lives on in thr Environmental Protection Agency and in every environmental debate, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Marcellus Shale. She’s on The List.

So here’s where we stand with the list of 20 (in no specific order):

1. Albert Einstein
2. Gandhi
3. Henry Ford
4. The Wright Brothers (count as one)
5. Thomas Edison
6. Picasso
7. Nikola Tesla
8. Mark Twain
9. James D. Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin (DNA trio count as one)
10. Winston Churchill
11. Philo Farnsworth
12. Rachel Carson

The two guys who started me on this quest both added suggestions last week. I think I’m not taking any more after this, but here’s what they offered:

• Tim Shannon: After visiting the Roosevelt Memorial in D.C. last week, I really think that Franklin and Eleanor should be on the list as a team. The ideas that they put into practice certainly revolutionized social consciousness of not only the USA but the world. Two people from the Upper Class trying to help the struggling average Joes. Reading the quotes from these two remarkable people brought tears to my eyes. I’m thinking that they really should be there.
• Bob Ladanyi (who is still computer-challenged: Daniel Ellsberg was very influential, not just for releasing the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the truth about much our military was hiding in Vietnam, but because he changed the way military intelligence analysts did their job. (Hope this is an accurate paraphrase.) Ellsberg, by the way, is still doing his thing.

Here are the remainders from my original list of 29: Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Khalil Gibran, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.

And here are other names suggested: Billie Holiday, The Beatles, Ken Wilbur, Vivekananda, Bob Dylan, Thomas Merton, Groucho Marx, Clarence Darrow, John Ford, Ted Williams, Al Gore, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Jon Stewart, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Benjamin Spock, Oprah Winfrey and Diaane Ravitch.

Only room for eight more.

bob@zestoforange.com

By Bob Gaydos

Before I put my thinking cap back on, it seems like a good time to take inventory on The List of Most Influential Thinkers of the 20th Century (and beyond). When last we met, I offered my suggested list of the first 10 candidates, sort of like the undeniable introductory class of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Here it is:

• Albert Einstein
• Gandhi
• Henry Ford
• The Wright Brothers (count as one)
• Thomas Edison
• Picasso
• Nikola Tesla
• Mark Twain
• James D. Watson and Francis Crick (again, count as one)
• Winston Churchill

Typically, that abbreviated list brought some interesting comments. On Winston Churchill, Edward B. Godwin offered this personal remembrance of the British PM’s far-reaching influence:

“Glad for the inclusion of Winnie! In January 1966 I came for a Saturday morning interview for a position in the English department at Orange County Community College. It was a good year for getting a job in my field as candidates with Master’s degrees in English were few compared to those in education. Enrollments were up.

“I had interviewed at other community colleges. Some were over the telephone – truly a surprise. I had not anticipated that experience. I had visited Adirondack Community College. I turned down both offers. Then I came to Orange’s interview.

“Now the relevance: Unexpectedly during the interview I was asked if I were given the opportunity to structure a course, what figure in the 20th Century would I chose and why. No other interview or experience prepared me for that question because I was a new teacher and did not expect that I would be creating a new course. As my mind almost went blank, Winston Churchill came to mind because of his use of language. However, I was weak in the knees and grateful I was sitting as I explained and defended my choice.

“At the end of the interview that involved many questions including a defense of textbooks I had used in teaching, I was offered a job. In later years I came to understand that it was the process of my thinking and use of language and materials that was being examined that day. Some of the contemporary authors mentioned in the interview I had to acknowledge I hadn’t read. However, I had read much of Churchill and history then and throughout my life.

“Language of our time reflects our time. The painting pallet of denotation and connotation has gone back to just the primary colors. No need to learn how to mix colors to create shades. F*** you and other grunts and farts have replaced real discussions about war and peace.”

Amen to that.

Linda Mangelsdorf had a strong argument on another of the top 10 list:

“Hey, Bob, as long as you are counting 2 for one, why not make it 3 and give Rosalind Franklin the credit she deserves for the discovery of DNA? Today most sources do acknowledge her somewhere in their articles (the quote below is from waaaaaaay down in a Wikipedia story), but at the time of the Nobel, she was already dead from cancer – work-related, no doubt, and therefore ineligible for recognition. Just a thought …

“From Wikipedia: ‘… Their mistake was partly based on Watson having misrembered a talk by Rosalind Franklin where she reported that she had established the water content of DNA by using X-ray crystallographic methods. But Watson did not take notes, and remembered the numbers incorrectly. Instead, it was Franklin’s famous ‘photograph 51’ that finally revealed the helical structure of DNA to Watson and Crick in 1953.’ ”

And finally, Kathy Garvey, who obviously had not seen my initial list, offered this: “Where, for heavens sake, are FDR, Benjamin Spock, Dorothy Day, Bill & Melinda Gates (counts as one), or for that matter Oprah Winfrey, who is as fine an example of stewardship of great wealth as I can think of. Oops! I ended with a preposition; Winston would not be happy.”

Actually, Kathy, Winston would be thrilled since it was that rule up with which he would not put. And actually, Bill (but not Melinda) Gates is on my list of possibles, as is Dorothy Day. I hesitated on Spock and FDR and eventually left them off. Oprah is a force to be reckoned with, but I’m not sure how much she has influenced others in dealing with wealth. No one else is giving away cars.

One other suggestion was offered, by Roseanne Sullivan: “I finally thought of a “thinker” for you and whether you agree or not, you should really read what she’s got to say.  Name — Diane Ravitch: Discovery – NCLB and Charter Schools ain’t all that!!  Diane Ravitch was a strong supporter of No Child Left Behind when it was first introduced into the political educational realm. Recently, she’s had a reawakening.  You can read about her experience and her thoughts on the subject in an article she wrote titled “Stop the Madness” in the Aug/Sept. issue of NEA Today. She’s an expert on education and thought of as a key historian on NCLB issues. I agree with everything she says in this article  and its about time somebody said it in layman’s terms.”

I second the applause for her reawakening on NCLB and her insights on education, but I fear the influence barometer doesn’t measure up.

So here’s the upshot — Rosalind Franklin is in the top 10 with Watson and Crick with an asterisk for now, awaiting final judgment. That would make her the only woman in the first 10. Here ae the remainders from my original list of 29: Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rachel Carson, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Khalil Gibran, Philo Farnsworth, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.

And here are other names suggested: Billie Holiday, The Beatles, Ken Wilbur, Vivekananda, Bob Dylan, Thomas Merton, Groucho Marx, Clarence Darrow, John Ford, Ted Williams, Al Gore, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Jon Stewart.

I’m thinking Rachel Carson and Philo Farnsworth have to be in there, but this is already way too long. Until next time then.

bob@zestoforange.com