Notebook: Idaho Edition

Idaho Falls in the great state of Idaho didn't inspire any great insights into the problem of prophylactic circumcision. But whiling away the hours at my grandmother's house did provide me with the opportunity to catch a little C-SPAN. One program in particular caught my rapt attention for about an hour and a half.

I caught only a part of the program and at that, only Part II of the three part series. In the section I saw, George Lakoff, Frank Luntz, and Andrew Westen gave a panel talk at the New York Public Library on the science of communication in the political discourse of the United States. (I'm posting all three parts below.) This fascinating program, entitled THERE YOU GO AGAIN: Orwell Comes to America, goes straight to the core of how some ideas take off and others don't. Clearly, you don't have to be in politics to see this is a very important area of study.

Before we begin the show, I would like to share not exactly an insight, but a little insightful family history that I experienced anew while I was in situ, Idaho Falls.

My grandfather passed away some six years ago. In the basement of the house he occupied for half his life, he kept a small office. It was walled off from the rest of the basement by a small enclosure that he paneled in deep mahogany tones. There on the shelves he also built, books could be found on his many intellectual indulgences, including amateur radio, the classics, history, literature, alternative theories on just about everything and of course on the topic of his training and chosen profession, physics.

It was he who had not once but several times asked me in our occasional phone conversations between his office and my home in Texas whether I knew what the most common surgical procedure in the United States was. I of course did know, and with my grandmother on the upstairs phone, would proceed to tell my opinion on the matter. Eventually, my grandmother, who delivered my Uncle at age seven to the surgeon, would try to end my rant with, "Ok, we get it, ... moving on, moving on ... ."

I have no idea and did not ask, nor frankly was ever tempted to ask, whether my grandfather was intact ... although I wondered. He was born in 1910 in Michigan to a Dutch mother and a German father. So it is likely he made it through life just fine. He made it clear by the insertion of the word unnecessary in the question how he felt about it. But he was a patient man in a house run by a stern disciplinarian who raised her three children according to the dictates of her own upbringing that left no room for the tolerant easy-going acceptance of my grandfather.

So, standing in his small office, I looked around at the cleared shelf space once occupied by books and amateur radio equipment. The desk was a mess. The floor was scattered with records of long ago radio communications between amateur radio operators from around the world and my grandfather. Boxes of personal effects and records from nearly 30 years of retirement were scattered around haphazardly. A faded picture hung on the wall of the bell tower at my grandfather's alma mater, the University of Michigan. This was the inner sanctum, walled off from the rigid religious world of my grandmother, but which now was reduced to salvage by his surviving children and grandchildren.

This life is short. We all know that. Once we die, the book is finished. The story is set in stone. The pages will begin to fade. And there will be no more creating, legacy-making, or changing the world in the deceased person's unique way. And so, my grandfather leaves behind not the seed, but the encouragement that he provided by asking the question, and giving me the courage to challenge circumcision. It's a gift I cherish.

Outside, the sky dumped a foot of snow while I was there. And my grandmother, who I love very much, told me that she often thinks of my grandfather out there in the ground where he is buried and it is very cold. I told her that she shouldn't worry. He's not feeling it. I was thinking that, even as I was feeling his presence downstairs in that cold basement. And I felt very warm inside.

For your viewing pleasure, please click below to go directly to the program's page for a synopsis and the audio and video podcasts.

Live from the NYPL
THERE YOU GO AGAIN: Orwell Comes to America

Part I Propaganda Then and Now: What Orwell Did and Didn't Know

Part II Deceiving Images: The Science of Manipulation

Part III Soluitions: The Future Political Landscape

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