Today I got a Google alert that Lee Wochner had died.

That caught my attention, so I clicked on the link.

Here’s what I learned:

Leland R. “Lee” Wochner
DECATUR – Leland R. “Lee” Wochner, 80, Decatur, retired from Caterpillar Inc., died Tuesday (April 8, 2008). Services: 10 a.m. Saturday, Brintlinger and Earl Funeral Homes, Decatur. Visitation: 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, with 8 p.m. Masonic services. Burial: Salem Cemetery. Memorials: Decatur Masonic Temple Building Restoration Fund or Macon County Animal Control and Care Center.
Published in the Decatur Herald & Review on 4/11/2008.

You can understand my relief in seeing that I wasn’t the dead person. (Although, like Mark Twain, I was curious to see what people would have said.)

In one of the many wondrous examples of the fascinating adventures one can lead through the internet, I actually “met” (virtually) Leland R. Wochner about 10 years ago. Someone emailed me something thinking that I was he, which led me back to him. I remember him as rather crochety, but I also recall being impressed with his just getting started on the internet at age 70. Ten years ago, that was noteworthy.

My full first name, by the way, is Lee. Not Leland, or Leon, or Leeward, or any of those. My mother chose the name because she had three children before me all of whom got a nickname: Raymond became “Raymie” or “Ray,” Michael became “Mikey” or “Mike” (although we family members all still call him Michael), and Lorene got tagged with “Lorie.” So my mother looked for a name she didn’t think would result in a nickname, and here I am with it. And it worked.

Given the rarity of the combination of my first and last names — “Lee” not sounding terribly, well, German, and therefore an unusual choice — it was surprising indeed (and, as Freud would note, disappointing) finding someone else with the same name. I’m just glad I’m not dead as well.

I guess the April Fool’s joke was on me: Shortly after I posted a few things on April 1st, something took down this blog, corrupted a posting, and left us with a blank white page. A big thank-you to my business partner, Amy Kramer, for reloading the database prior to April 1st.

If you’re just tuning in now, here’s a quick recap of what transpired in those blog postings, now forever lost to the sands of time:

While at the state Democratic Convention, I did get to hear Bill Clinton give a speech that utterly convinced me I should vote for… him if it were possible. He certainly has a command of the issues, and plenty of good-sounding ideas of what to do about them. I did wonder what this has to do with his wife (translation: nothing), and I did wonder, um, just why he didn’t roll out these solutions when he was president. Oh, that’s right: He was too busy dicking around with, to name one thing, impeachment, which stemmed from his lying under oath. While I certainly preferred Bill to the current occupant of the White House — and, to keep noting it for posterity, at least one can say that Bill Clinton actually got elected and didn’t steal the presidency — I wish I could remember all the great achievements for which he will be remembered. (There was one: balancing the budget. That was a good one. That was also with a Republican Congress.) Even though ordinarily Bill Clinton could talk the varnish off prized antiques, no one was buying the thrust of his argument: “I can solve everything — so you should vote for my wife. I vouch for her.” As I said to a client that week, “You hire me for my skills. If I get hit by a bus, would you hire my wife?” Because, let us note, Hillary Clinton has precisely zero of her husband’s skills. And not a whole lot of others instead.

I blogged about a short play I wrote while at the convention. I saw something on MSNBC, went in to my hotel room bathroom to wash my face, looked in the mirror and then heard myself thinking, “But what happened after that…?” And there was the play. I went back to my laptop and wrote it and emailed it out and now it’s going to be produced his summer. More about that soon.

I also wrote what I’m sure at the time seemed like funny postings about forthcoming vacation trips to, oh, Mars and other places. It was April 1st, after all. Now it’s a week later and it doesn’t seem funny and I wonder if it was something I linked to that took down the blog.

Since then, I’ve been caught up in producing the 2008 USC MPW One-Act Play Festival, which previews tomorrow night and then runs Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at a beautiful mid-sized theatre in the Little Tokyo area of downtown Los Angeles. Here’s some info about it. (And there’s a link for tickets at the bottom of the page; Wednesday is sold out, but Tuesday has a few seats left.)

And that about brings us back to… now.

It’s good to be back.

My family and I are up in the mountains in a rented log cabin at an elevation of 6000 feet. We have no cellphone access — but there is WiFi somewhere around here, because I’m using it.

“Log cabin” doesn’t really do this justice. It’s a beautiful two-story house (that happens to be made out of logs), with a commanding view on all sides of… trees. Luckily, I like trees. We are also directly abutting a trailhead with hiking trail and thunderous stream. And although it’s about 50 degrees at the moment (perhaps warmer), there are large patches of snow on the ground. I take it to mean that there was a lot of snow here until very recently.

I’ll take some photos and may put one or two up. If we run into a bear, which we’ve been warned about, and you don’t later see a photo here, you’ll know what happened.

Today the chair of the California Democratic Party announced that Bill Clinton will be addressing us this Sunday at the Convention. When I shared this with various people today, the news elicited these responses:

“Ugh.”

“I used to like him.”

“I liked him better when he wasn’t campaigning for his wife.”

“(a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan.)”

Whether or not Bill’s having a positive effect on Hillary’s campaign, he’s sure not doing himself any favors lately.

Today in my playwriting workshop there were a couple of scenes that didn’t (yet) convey enough character desperation. Ideally, characters want things, and the more badly they want them, the more desperate they become, and the greater the impact. Just like real life.

At one point I heard myself talking about how desperation colors one’s perceptions. My example came from an experience I had last night.

After seeing the musical “The Dead” at Open Fist Theatre Company, I took my wife to Amoeba Music in Hollywood. I say “took,” because Valorie had never been there. When I told her where we were going, she asked, “Can we buy the new Gnarls Barkley CD?” And I said, “That’s why we’re going there.”

We parked in the underground lot and as we ascended a dank stairwell liberally spattered with band stickers and strewn with giveaway music rags, that feeling came over me again, that feeling I always get when I go to Amoeba. I was instantly reunited with the 16-year-old me who was desperate to get to places like this but had no way to get there. That feeling of my adolescence returned: that feeling that other, far more interesting things were nearly within reach — 60 miles away, in Philadelphia — but so far away, and that already I was missing interesting conversations about important things. I was desperate to get there, or to New York City, and looking back I’m surprised how often I was about to wheedle some way to get there. (Including getting on a bus by myself when I was about 12, for which I’ll always be grateful to my father.)

So last night I said to Valorie, “Isn’t this great? Just look at this!” As far as you could see, there was music — aisle upon aisle of CD’s, new and used, and LPs, and even, as Valorie pointed out, 45s — rock, hip hop, punk, soundtracks, wide swaths of everything from the popular to the obscure. I picked up the out-of-print “Datapanik in the Year Zero” Pere Ubu boxed set, new and unopened, for fifty bucks, as well as a David Bowie disk I’d never heard of, “The Buddha of Suburbia.” Discovering a “new” non-compilation Bowie album seemed astonishing. In fact, all of Amoeba seems astonishing to me. Paul McCartney recently played in the store, and Michael Eisner had to wait in line along with everyone else.

Valorie was less impressed. She was amazed by the presence of vinyl, especially 45’s, but to her it’s a music store. To me it’s something else: a personal achievement, a promise to myself that was delivered. I can go to Amoeba any time I want. I rarely do — perhaps twice a year — but it’s always there. It’s valuable to me because long ago I was so desperate to have it and things like it (book stores, and museums, and speaking tours, and art galleries, and music clubs, and concert venues, and theatres, and conversations with people who read books).

One day last week I left my office to come home in the middle of the day for an hour and sit on my lawn in the back yard with my shoes and socks off and my toes in the grass and drink a glass of chardonnay and eat a salad and read a magazine. It wasn’t the best use of my time, but it was. That also felt like a promise paid, the promise I made to myself when young that that I wasn’t the traditional job-holding sort and I wasn’t the routine 9-to-5 sort either. The flip side is that I couldn’t tell you what my schedule is without checking my Treo because it varies so greatly from day to day, but it isn’t routine.

There are lots of ill-defined goals of my youth that I haven’t achieved, and several things I have achieved that I didn’t set out to. But I still deeply feel the presence of that 14, 15, 16-year-old who wanted to be somewhere else, doing something else. He’s with me most days.

So I can’t help noticing that at this moment most of the sponsored links off to the right of this page are for the sort of hate-filled anti-immigrant screeds I’ve been condemning. My first thought was that I hate seeing them there, so I was going to block them. But I’m not the sort to so readily block opinions I don’t like, so I didn’t do that. Then I had a better idea. These are all pay-per-click sponsored links — so everyone who really dislikes them should just click on them and make these guys pay.

See? Capitalism does work.

I’ve gotten several private emails from others unhappy about the invidious comparisons between illegal immigrants and, well, burglars, kidnappers, filthy birds, animals, and the like.

That sort of gross distortion brings to mind this video.

I’m not sure how I got on the distribution list of people I know who are upset about illegal immigration, but there I am, frequently getting misinformed screeds against illegals.

Here’s the first of two I recently received (and please do read it):

Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration.

Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely. Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.

Let’s say I break into your house.
Let’s say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.
But I say, “No! I like it here. It’s better than my house. I’ve made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors. I’ve
done all the things you don’t like to do. I’m hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).”

According to the protesters:
You are Required to let me stay in your house
You are Required to feed me
You are Required to add me to your family’s insurance plan
You are Required to Educate my kids
You are Required to Provide other benefits to me & to my family
(my husband will do all of your yard work because
he is also hard-working and honest, except for that
breaking in part).

If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my RIGHT to be there.

It’s only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I’m just trying to better myself. I’m a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know, I did break into your house.

And what a deal it is for me!!!
I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of cold, uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and bigoted behavior.

Oh yeah, I DEMAND that you learn MY LANGUAGE!!! so you can communicate with me.

Why can’t people see how ridiculous this is?! Only in America if you agree, pass it on (in English ).
Share it if you see the value of it.

If not blow it off………
along with your future Social Security
funds, and a lot of other things.

If, like me, you receive lots of variations on this, you’ll note the consistent symptomatology:

1. Nameless opponents — in this case, “certain people.” Me, I’m always suspicious of “certain people” who use the phrase “certain people.”
2. Bad metaphor. No, breaking into a house and then refusing to leave is not like slipping across the border. The former is a home invasion, and police take it very seriously; if they get a clear shot at someone who takes hostages, they take it. They have not been known to shoot women, children, and men who cross the border, legally or not.
3. The supposed threat to Social Security — which I will address in a moment.
4. The “demand” that English speakers learn Spanish. In actuality, of its own accord, it goes the other way. Here are the facts: 1/3 of Latinos in the U.S. are Spanish-dominant, yes; but that means that 2/3 AREN’T — half are English-dominant, and half are fully bilingual. For second and third generation Spanish speakers, English becomes dominant.
5. Misrepresentations and outright lies, such as these: “Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration. Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders….” No one protested that Congress was addressing illegal immigration — they were protesting what they took to be proposed measures. From what I understand, almost everyone wants something done, they just don’t know what. As for being angry that “the US might protect its own borders,” again, I haven’t heard of anyone being angry about protecting the borders. I want the borders and the insides protected from all sorts of things, as long as we can retain some sanity about it.

But my real beef with this email is that the wrong people are being targeted. Why go after the iron filings drawn to the magnet, when the magnet is larger and easier to locate? Here was my response:

Let’s try this a different way.

Let’s say you want your house cleaned and painted and your lawn mowed. And you don’t want to pay $20/an hour. So nobody wants to do it. So you and the rest of the neighborhood invite people from far away to come do it for $5/an hour. But then you complain that there aren’t enough $20/an hour jobs to go around, and you try to wall off the neighborhood. Even though you go right on offering $5/ an hour to everybody who somehow gets over the wall.

Now who’s to blame?

I sent that to the entire distribution list and never received a reply.

This next one deals with the perceived threat to Social Security presented by illegal aliens. It helpfully includes a petition so that everyone involved can keep spreading misinformation and forwarding it around the entire internet.

SOCIAL SECURITY CHANGES

It does not matter if you personally like or dislike Bush. You need to sign this petition and flood his e-mail box with e-mails that tell him that, even if the House passes this bill, he needs to veto it. It is already impossible to live on Social Security alone. If the government gives benefits to ‘illegal’ aliens who have never contributed, where does that leave those of us who have paid into Social Security all our working lives?

As stated below, the Senate voted this week to allow ‘illegal’ aliens access to Social Security benefits.
Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires citizenship for eligibility to that social service.

Instructions are below. If you don’t forward the petition and just stop it, we will lose all these names.

If you do not want to sign it, please just forward it to everyone you know.

Thank you!

To add your name, click on ‘forward’. Address it to all of your email correspondents, add your name to the list and send it on.

When the petition hits 1,000, send it to comment@whitehouse.gov

PETITION for President Bush:

Dear Mr President:
We, the undersigned, protest the bill that the Senate voted on recently which would allow illegal aliens to access our Social Security. We demand that you and all Congressional representatives require citizenship as a pre-requisite for social services in the United States.

We further demand that there not be any amnesty given to illegals, NO free services, no funding, no payments to and for illegal immigrants.

We are fed up with the lack of action about this matter and are tired of paying for services to illegals.

There were just under 1000 names on the one I received. Some of them were names of people I know. I understand the seeming appeal of the argument, but it requires believing the facts presented (which I rarely do), and the conclusions drawn (which I almost never do). Here was my response:

According to Snopes.com, this thing has been floating around the internet since 2006. I can’t find any record of Congress (or even “the House”) passing this bill, which would of course require Senate passage as well. Moreover, if there were such a bill, I’m sure it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country and we would have heard of it. Rush Limbaugh would be banking further millions off this topic. Instead, the email furthers the perception that illegals are flooding our borders and stealing our jobs. Although of course we need immigration reform and no one should encourage illegal immigration — including every single one of us who indirectly is supporting illegal immigration, whether directly by unknowingly hiring illegals or indirectly by eating crops picked by illegals who are supported by an economic system that depends upon them — illegals are a net plus for the economy, as every single economic study has shown. We need to welcome these people into the system so that entitlement programs — like Social Security, ironically — can be shored up by the income derived by their children. I say that because, in case no one has noticed, in general well-off white people like probably most of us on this email list are not having enough babies to replace ourselves. Our economic well-being rests in the hands of those little ones with brown faces.

Lee

Again, I replied to the entire distribution list. In this case, I did receive one response:

Hi Lee,
Interesting perspective. It shows what happens when folks don’t have all the facts rights.
Take care.”

No, I’m not in favor of illegal immigration. I’m in favor of recognizing that we’ve got a very large labor force already here, and we in essence invited them here. We can try to keep them as a permanent underclass, keeping their kids out of school and forcing their uninsured into clinics and hospitals, or we can come up with sensible solutions that makes a better system for everyone. Either way, they’re probably not leaving. And the day they stop coming will be the day you know the economy is so bad that even George W. Bush has noticed. I vote for fixing the system in a way that makes the most sense.

Primarily, though, I always vote for using your common sense to sift baseless importunity from logic.

With reference to my previous post:

My wife left for work, but here’s the note she left for me to find when I came home: “Corned beef & cabbage in pot. Happy St. Paddy’s Day!”

I’ll have to check with Alanis Morissette to see if that’s ironic or just coincidental.

In a similar vein, it now occurs to me that there has been just one Irish superhero I can think of — Banshee, of the X-Men. And he was killed in action.

If you ever see me wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day, I assure you it’s accidental. That’s because, like 98% of the rest of us, I’m not Irish — but unlike the other 98%, I refuse to go along. I don’t have anything against the Irish — or any people as a group, except dangerous extremists — but I’m not Irish so I’m not wearing green for the occasion.

Last night when my wife was reminding our children what clothes they could wear today, I shared yet again my antipathy toward St. Patrick’s Day, one of those festive occasions that revolve around driving to a bar and getting hammered. She had a good response: “At this point, it’s a Hallmark holiday.” I can see where that would work for most. But given that I was never suckered by the cards-n’-kitsch company into, say, Grandparent’s Day, that just hardened my resolve.

This morning my little boy, aged five, put on a green shirt and green camouflage pants; I had a frisson of delight at the mismatch of that. My 16-year-old wore a green DTASC shirt; since “DTASC” stands for “Drama Teachers Association of Southern California” I could live with that. But then I saw my daughter in a green shirt with a large glowing shamrock on the front and my wheels started to turn.

“When’s Martin Luther Day?” I asked.

“That’s in January,” my wife said. Then she realized I didn’t mean the slain civil rights leader.

“Where do I get a shirt that says, ‘Respect me, I’m German’?”

Now I was on a tear.

The idea of “the luck of the Irish” really appalls me — if I believed in luck, I would point out that historically these are highly unlucky people. “How about a shirt that says ‘The Work of the German’?” At least work, unlike luck, can be readily identified.

And yes, given the history of the 20th century, I realize there is little sympathy for my point of view on this. But as I dropped Emma off at her school I couldn’t help calling after her as she headed inside aswim in a sea of green-kitted kids, “Remember! You’re not Irish and you’re not Catholic!”