America – Have the Dreams Ended

“When the legends die, the dreams end.

When the dreams end, there is no more greatness.”

So said Tecumsah, leader of the Shawnee. Who better to understand this quote than the aboriginal peoples of this land? Tecumsah’s words returned to me after watching the poignant documentary, One PM Central Standard Time, a telling look at a period in American history. This film, cleverly structured, wove together the life of Walter Cronkite and John F. Kennedy when their paths irrevocably crossed on November 22, 1963. Cronkite was a king among journalists, the father of the evening news to Americans of several generations. We read him, listened to him on radio, and when television came in around this corner of history, we finally watched him, this epitome of a hard driving newsman set on being the first to voice every story he caught. The movie takes you into the old-time wire rooms where the news was gathered, and lets you relive the challenges with which the news industry dealt having no internet, no cell phones, but only pay phones to relay their stories. It introduces you to newsmen who honored their profession with
their adherence to a code that insisted on confirmation, not innuendo or speculation. At that time, we could trust the voices of the great newsmen, and in that world, Walter Cronkite was top of the mark. Like crawling up into your grandfather’s lap each night, America came to Cronkite for a voice offering the comforting assurance that the truth would be spoken.

On the other side of the print page of that era was a youthful, charming, handsome man, his intelligent and gracious wife and their young family—the Kennedy's— a symbol of vitality and possibility to which Americans warmly related. Like the sun of a new dawn, here was this president, beginning to reach his stride and take a heretofore inward-looking nation out into the world with a view toward peace and prosperity. We began to experience ourselves as charitable toward and curious about those beyond our boundaries. The love children, the hippie movement, the revolution in music were not agents of this change but an affirmation of the uplifting sense of well-being that existed in the America of those times. Our homegrown values of respect, taking responsibility, keeping one’s word and extending a helping hand were still intact, values that ensured citizens they could better themselves. Values which underpinned hope, created legends and engendered dreams. It was a beautiful time to be an American.

That ended at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and it placed Walter Cronkite in a moment of great decision. He wanted to be the first to break that news, but the lack of phones made it impossible to track down any voice of authority to confirm the story. The practice was that reporters would go to the nearest pay phone, call into the wire room and instruct the person who answered the phone NOT to hang up, thus keeping the line open for them. But that limited available phones even more. As much as he wanted to be the voice of that historic moment, he would not break the story because it had not yet been officially confirmed. His next challenge was that he couldn’t go live on TV as it took about a half hour to get those old cameras ready. So he delivered a radio-type message transmitted over the TV while the audience stared at a gray screen, listening. His voice echoed through their homes and places of work saying only that it was reported that John Fitzgerald Kennedy died at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time but it was not yet confirmed. He delivered this horrific message clearly and without sentiment. His tears came later.

And so ended an era. News quickly became a commodity that was bought, sold and traded without the ethics of the earlier time. It became a place to reach stardom rather than honor. The country became more deeply entrenched in a war that awakened the bully in American politics, instilling the notion we could rightfully tread onto foreign soil without invitation or a by-your-leave. The values that had retained this great nation’s capacity to re-balance itself when it leaned too far right or left, tottered toward greed rather than compassion, or avowed lies instead of truth began to disappear from the political arena, the newsroom and our families. Taking responsibility for our acts, the fastest way there has ever been to rectify a situation, lost favor as an American choice.

We of that generation saw the legends end with the death of JFK and our dreams end April 4, 1968 when the last great dream speaker this country had, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. So if Tecumsah was right, and I sense he was, our time of greatness may be over.

Watch One PM Central Standard Time and, in the face of this upcoming election, see what you think.

Psst, Listen Up…

In the modern-day writing idiom, authors are told they require, among other things, story arc and tension. So imagine your surprise if you were to pick up a book where the arc is low and wide and your shoulders never hunch with nervous energy. 

There was an author in the mid-20^th century whose novels epitomized this style of writing. Nevil Shute went a different direction in attracting people to his stories, for there is an equally fascinating approach in novels where the protagonist is not the object of emotional trauma. Instead, he or she enthralls us in a different manner – by being someone who, at all turns, does the right thing. Deep within us all is an intrigue with rightness. Not to be confused with righteousness, rightness brings out the best in us. The most honorable and integral parts of us surface, and we feel deeply satisfied with who we are and how we are living our lives. We are drawn to that feeling and love being in the company of those who live from rightness, for it engenders humility, integrity and honor.

When Nevil Shute wrote The Pied Piper, he crafted a story whose flattened story arc ran along the war torn roads and byways of France. We read about an elderly man attempting to get back to England before the war makes it impossible. He is accompanied by one child he reticently agrees to take with him in Switzerland, where he starts his journey. He is a man who’s never fathered a child nor raised one, and he is wrapped in the confusion of what to do with the boy, slightly annoyed at being put in this situation, yet concerned for the child who likely won't see his family for years if he can't get home now. The elderly gentleman then picks up several more children along the way, overriding his fear of how he will feed them or find their parents, because it is the right thing to do. That’s the story basically, a small mob of children clinging to an old man, walking. But the rightness of his actions draws a reader to it magnetically, for there is no place a human being would rather be then in the presence of rightness.

We have a contemporary Nevil Shute among us. Bert Carson writes books where his protagonists aren't in gut-wrenching situations, or terrorized or despairing. His protagonists, and

everyone else in his novels for that matter, are men and women- and in his latest novel, a young boy- who do the right thing. His stories wrap the reader in an experience of what it feels like when we are the best we can be. I believe in my heart there is no more deeply held need in us humans than feeling right within ourselves and no greater joy than being among a group of people, real or the characters of a novel, who live from that dictum.

The book I am referring to is The High Road by Bert Carson. It isn't published yet, but you can listen to it as a serial, narrated by the author in a voice perfect for the story. He writes short chapters, so you could listen on the bus, train or in your car going to work and start your day on a high note. You could listen to it with your children and mate in the evening before bed as a lovely family story telling session. After all, this book started when Bert and his twelve-year-old friend, Noah Charif began working together to write it.

Yes, Bert Carson is my husband, but if you know me, you know I can be disturbingly forthright. I wrote this not out of loyalty, but because someone needed to take the time to place this book high in the priority of readers, or presently listeners, to show that great books don’t necessarily have to follow the rules people say they should. What any memorable book must be first is a product of the integrity rightness spawns. The High Road is a touching story with the capacity to make doing what is right appear desirable, possible, in fact, necessary if we are ever to know the depths of our own goodness.

And while you have his site open, listening, you might notice a piece of software in the right column that ticks off visitations to his blog indicating where the visitor is from and what they are looking at. In the case of The High Road, you get see who is listening along with you, people from Romania, China, Ohio, Italy and places you might never have heard of. 

Humanity needs to walk a higher road these days, to know something other than our fears and defeats. Obviously many people are realizing this and have found a man who knows a great deal about doing the right thing, Bert Carson, and he shares what he knows through characters and their stories. Very quickly, you too will wish you had more friends like he introduces you to, people capable and willing to make the family of man a reality. But don’t take my word for it. After all, I’m just his wife. Listen for yourself, listen with your family and then tell others you love to listen too.

Now, click here, lean back and listen…

A Movie I Won’t Forget

by Christina Carson

Sometimes a movie comes along that should not be missed. Still Mine is one of those.

The setting is New Brunswick, a beautiful eastern Canadian province backed up against Maine, capped by Quebec’s Gaspé peninsula, toeing into Nova Scotia while the rest of her faces water, the most notable the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy.

Craig and Irene Morrison [James Cromwell and Genevieve Bujold] are the people who carry us through this story, a couple in their later years who are still very active and love one another with such frank honesty and open-heartedness that not a drop of sap drips onto the script that holds their lines. They own a large tract of land that they and some of their 7 grown children farm. But there is a cloud in their sky when the first signs of dementia appear in Irene. 

The theme of this story, however, is not about that sad decline but about the honor a life beholds when we do not compromise our integrity. It’s not that Craig Morrison is a rebel; he just won’t buckle to nonsense, and as he starts to build a new house that will accommodate Irene with her encroaching challenges, he meets up with the worst sort of nonsense - bureaucracy. His attempt at a simple solution becomes grounds for the fight of his life as he runs headlong into the insanity of rules, codes and petty people made seemingly important by a society that has granted them the power to run their lives. Craig and Irene, however, never reneged on taking responsibility for themselves and their lives, and it serves them now especially. With all the hoops he has to jump through, even though he is a master builder, Craig gets stopped dead in his tracks.

It’s a simple plot. That’s not the reason I’m mentioning this movie. What it really has to offer is a view of later life not commonly presented.  Aging is like any other part of life, it becomes the experience you expect. We in America, in particular, have been given a view of this period of our lives which frightens and repels us. We move toward it like the chain-dragging ghosts of Scrooge’s Christmas Eve terror. Craig Morrison does not. His life has indeed become problematic on many levels and at one point, his craggy face gentles as he looks adoringly at his wife of many years and says, “I’m worried our luck’s beginning to run out.”  This is where the movie gifts us with a high truth. Old age is not the problem. It is merely the repository of the unexamined conditions and beliefs we gather through our lives. Craig Morrison’s old age exhibits the power and stout-heartedness that accrue to a life grounded for 89 years in integrity and love. Watching what that looks like as he faces what he must results in a movie depicting the splendor that honor and engagement bring to our lives at any time, and how elder years can even magnify that glow.

Oh, and did I tell you…this is based on a true story.  Watch the trailer and get the DVD. It’s a movie that should not be missed.

Trailer for Still Mine

For those who cannot view the trailer for Still Mine on this blog,
click here