Newsletter!!!: Went to an Isolators Anonymous meeting but I was the only one who showed up; Buddy Holly and other Nerd Rock heroes; My ‘80s Part 1
Intro: Happy Gobble Gobble Day! Got any plans coming up for today, and the rest of the holiday
season? A few zoom meetings with friends and family? Yes, it is a tough time right now and the holidays do make it a bit more sad and strange.
What else is new?
—Just started my new job in mid-October. Very interesting, at age 57, being the oldest there with mostly 20-to-30-somethings in the group. We do manage to set aside our pop culture differences and do team assignments and exam study sessions. More on this job later.
—I’m hearing more about folks missing rent and house payments and what that will mean going into next year. It’s rough out there for those without work, or who’ve had their hours cut way down, without any clear end in sight. There may be some more relief funds coming from the federal government, but then again, there may not be any.
—It was nice to finally take the Covid-19 test and find out it I tested negative. I do know people, directly and indirectly, who’ve tested positive, and they’re waiting to hear what will come next with medication and treatment that could take some of the severity away from it.
—The election appears to be coming to an end. Glad that’s over, but what’s next?
—I think we do enjoy hearing a few sliver linings in the gray skies (or sometimes, the calmness at the center of the hurricane). A few people have shared how they’ve been able to piece together a vacation out of all this, with much needed rest.
Isolators, Isolationists, and those of us bummed out by social distancing
One of my friends wants to start a support group for isolators. From his own experience, and that of many people he knows, being isolated from others is a deep and longing drive — free from all we don’t like
I know an interesting social commentator, who is far from famous on being a social commentator. Not long ago, he said to me after walking around the neighborhood I live in, how sad and pathetic it is that people are not out in front of their houses anymore. He said that when he had grown up in a similar suburban neighborhood, people were out all the time. You might see some kids playing kickball out in the street, three old men sitting up on a porch lecturing each other about the meaning of life, a few housewives in the driveway gossiping about somebody else's kids, and a cute teenage couple going on their first date in a family wagon.
Now he says you just don't see that anymore. Walk around these streets and maybe you see an Amazon driver dropping box off a package in front of a house. Maybe there's somebody walking their dog, and maybe somebody just pulled up got out of their car, and went straight into their house. These are different times, he said.
Another scenario: I'm driving up this morning to get my breakfast at McDonald's. The woman at the payment terminal asked me what my plans were for the day. I told her we’d be putting the turkey in the oven around 3 o'clock. Then she said that she was very irritated that she was gonna have to go to her sister's house again. Her sister is always controlling and had to do it this way every year. I wished her well and a happy holiday. But I also knew that she was glad that she was gonna get to hang out with family on this holiday, even while wearing masks. Otherwise she'd have to be alone.
As Americans we do live in a country where we have an intense belief in our own freedom as individuals. We get to speak our opinions, make our own choices, and we get the opportunity to move far away from our family and our hometown gang. We get to start over. Some of us even dawn completely new identities.
In the last 50 years or so we've been given even more freedom, where you can be whoever you really truly are and want to be. We expect people to judge each other less for being we are. But with great freedoms come great challenges. We also are living in a country where we don't have as much contact with each other, that’s for sure. We are working a lot of hours and chugging along from one thing to the next. It is easy for us to go to work and come back and turn on the TV, and look at the phone, and read something for an hour before realizing that another hour’s gone by. It could also be the case for students; and somebody (usually a woman), staying at home and raising cute (and occasionally annoying) little children; and an aging person coming into the last years of their lives in an assisted living home — or in that house they refused to leave.
Deep down, I know we do long to be close to others. With that comes the great challenges of accepting ourselves and others. What if we can be difficult at times? What if that person is still doing the things we asked him or her not to do? What if somebody is continually being dark and dreary, and attempting to take along a few hostages? What if we're just exhausted burned out and we don't have anything to give to others — so we really like to be alone? What if we want to eat the worst junk food you can imagine and don't want to be judged, and maybe do other dumb things? Isn’t that our right as Americans?
We do have rights for sure, but we're human and just like flocks of birds, a school of whales, or a pack of wolves, we do have to be together and it’s a matter of life and death. Have you ever watched a National Geographic special on meerkats or other bands of animals living together? If one of them is injured, the others will huddle around to protect him or her, with another one licking the wound to clean it out. Others will bring them food. They do tend to live out Benjamin Franklin’s saying, “We either hang together or hang separately.”
The isolationist movement in the 1930s is when I heard first hear about the idea — in history classes. It was something big in America for a lot of people who wanted to stay out of the wars and the brutal competition for land, resources, and riches, to rule the world. We stayed out until Pearl Harbor was attacked, and then we had to band together or fall apart. Then the 1950s hit and the social and economic trends took off — where we moved farther and farther apart.
While I have to watch out for the isolated, isolationist preference, I have tended to fall in line with those who believe in some sort of balance in all of it — that we really have to have all of it. We all need periods of respite and solitude to rejuvenate energy and escape the crowds — but then we yearn for good times with others, full of laughter, love and support, adventure, and a few good stories to tell.
A good start to the day, for me, might be when I go out and walk someplace I enjoy, like down by the beach, and nod hello to a few fellow travelers. A good time to meditate, then write when I get home. Then spend time with my partner, cats, and maybe check in with friends and family. Pretty damn good!
Isolationism and living in isolation isn't enough, and it will eventually drive you nuts. That’s been made all the more true by the Covid-19 pandemic and the social distancing restrictions we all live with. Nobody wants to live this way forever.
Buddy Holly, Devo, Talking Heads, and other Nerd Rock heroes
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
They want what they're not and I wish they would stop saying,
Deputy dog dog a ding dang depadepa
Deputy dog dog a ding dang depadepa
D, world destruction
Over and overture
N, do I need
Apostrophe T, need this torture?”
“Don’t Let’s Start” — They Might Be Giants
Released in 1986 by alt-rock band They Might Be Giants, “Don’t Let’s Start,” sums up a small music trend that I’ve enjoyed for quite a few years. Band members were fine looking strange and out of the
norm, and writing about subject matter and using verbiage outside of what you were expecting to hear on the radio. The band’s name also summed it up. In an interview, John Linnel said his band’s name came from a 1971 dark comedy film with the same name starring George C. Scott. The “Patton” star played Justin Playfair, a judge who retreats into fantasy after his wife's death, imagining himself to be Sherlock Holmes, with his deerstalker hat, pipe, and violin. He spends days in a homemade criminal laboratory obsessing over plots hatched by his archenemy, Professor Moriarty.
I've always been a big fan of nerd rock. Being a nerd (aka geek, uncool, outsider) myself, not being one of the cool football players, James Dean-type rebels, or top students, I immediately related to a lot of this. We’ve heard a lot about how tough high school is for everybody — with the body taken over by hormonal imbalance and the priorities and desires of the child being set aside for the priorities and desires of the soon-to-be adult in many an extreme way.
One of my heroes was Buddy Holly. The different-looking guy with big glasses wasn't really good looking, sexy, and mega-cool, but boy could he rock 'n' roll. Just listen to “Rave On,” “Well Alright,” and “Peggy Sue.”
I suppose his tragic end — a plane crash — gave him a bit of romanticism. But he ended up being way cool. The song from the 1990s, “Just Like Buddy Holly,” by Weezer, was perfect — as was the band’s name.
These artists have been very good at admitting life isn’t easy — and that being an outsider was something you could say, “well alright” about. Sort of like the way Holden Caulfield came across in J.D. Salinger’s classic novel, Catcher in the Rye.
Who are some of the other Nerd Rock giants I’ve enjoyed?
Elvis Costello, who I’ve seen live twice. Here are lyrics from one of his classics, “Allison.”
Like those other sticky valentines
'Cause I don't know if you are loving somebody
I only know it isn't mine
Allison, I know this world is killing you
Oh, Allison, my aim is true”
Devo. I’ll never forget hearing about this strange new band called Devo, which came from the word “de-evolution.” Then in 1978, I saw them on Saturday Night Live and was blown away. They came out in yellow hazmat suits with giant sunglasses covering their faces. One song had the band crying out, “Are we not men? We are DEVO!”
Their second song was a complete makeover of the Rolling Stone’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” When they got to the part where the singer talks to the woman who says to maybe come back next week, lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh (his real name) goes on an endless rant and ramble, “Maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe come back next week……..”
Talking Heads. Just watch 1984 concert movie Stop Making Sense, and see lead singer David Byrne in his massive suit, to get sense of what I’m saying. We’ve all heard “Once in a Lifetime” many times, with the famous line, “My God! What have I done?“
Here’s another set of lyrics from the 1979 song “Cities,” which looks into how you can find yourself a city to live in.
Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks
Do I smell? I smell home cooking
It's only the river, it's only the river.”
I would also include Weird Al Yankovic, Frank Zappa, Barenaked Ladies, Sinead O’Connor, and Parliament Funkadelic. They are fun to listen to, and the videos are great.
My ‘80s, Part 1: Reported on a Nazi death camp commander
What did you do in the 1980s?
If you were to watch a "What Happened in the ‘80s" special, it might look like we’d spent our decade watching Molly Ringwald movies, choosing our outfits and hairstyles from MTV videos, playing Dungeons & Dragons and Simon, and figuring out how to get our very first home computer. My experience was a bit different, though I did love Pretty in Pink (and the Psychedelic Furs song it was named after), and did my share of time watching MTV and The David Letterman Show. And then there was being in the disco-like dance club with New Order’s “Blue Monday” blasting out through multi-colored lights, darkness, and all.
Of course, all of this assumes you were born by at least 1975, and you remember experiencing some of the memorable moments of the 1980s — such as the shocking explosion of the 1986 NASA space shuttle Challenger and the loss of its crew.
But my memories are likely quite different than yours. Here’s a few other things that happened, at least in my life — at least the ones that stick out in my memory.
Interviewed the son of a Nazi death camp commander
During the summer of 1985, I worked as a reporter for the Seal Beach Journal, which mostly consisted of basic reporting on the city council’s public meetings. I’d just finished college and was waiting to take off for law school, something I’d declined to mention during my job interview with the managing editor.
Nearly all of the reporting was lightweight and a bit dull, such as interviewing a local resident on what it was like being one of the Pageant of the Masters painting images during the annual Festival of the Arts in Laguna Beach. But one day, all that changed.
One of our residents was being sent back to his home country by the US government for heading up a Nazi death camp during World War II.
Andrija Artukovic, the highest-ranking Nazi extradited from the US, later died in a Yugoslav prison hospital in January 1988. He died at age 88, for reasons unknown, though he had become quite frail in the years before it. In April 1987, a Yugoslav court announced that his death by firing squad was being postponed because he was too frail. He’d been convicted by a Yugoslav court for a few horrific decisions and for running two dozen concentration camps in the early 1940s. The verdict had found him responsible for running two dozen concentration camps where 700,000 to 900,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and other prisoners were tortured and put to death. He was identified as the “Butcher of the Balkans” by the Yugoslav press.
Artukovic had been charged with serving as interior minister of what was considered to be a Nazi puppet regime in Croatia during World War II. He later spent about half his life in the Orange County community of Seal Beach. He’d been admitted to the US after the war under an assumed name. He’d been able to hide out for a few years living in Seal Beach working as a bookkeeper for his brother’s construction company. It wasn’t much later after moving to Southern California that he became the focus of an on-and-off legal fight for about 35 years. The extradition did take hold in 1986, when he was sent back to Yugoslavia, a country that would soon be having its name changed again.
I got his son on the phone and interviewed him for a news article. He swore his father was falsely accused.
Radoslav Artukovic, said he could not believe his father was a war criminal, and that he would fight for his vindication as an historical figure. His father had been a cabinet minister in the independent state of Croatia, but he certainly wasn’t a death camp commander, his son said.
I would next drive to the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles for the hearing on his father’s extradition. It was there I saw Irv Ruben, one of the prominent leaders of the Jewish Defense League, sitting in the audience. He was scanning the crowd and seemed to be interested in me writing down notes on my reporter’s pad.
I recently visited someone in the chic, gated community of Surfside, where Artukovic had lived in the 1980s. I wanted to ask them if they’d ever met him, but I didn’t find it appropriate to bring up the subject matter during that meeting. I guess your neighbor could be doing something quite unexpected.
Got any stories of your own to share? Let me know — you can leave a comment at the end, or email me at jlesage378@gmail.com.
Freelance writing tips that have worked for me
I'm no expert on making a really good living as a freelance writer. Go see Bob Bly or Gordon Burgett's websites and information products if you are that interested in it. And there's plenty of other great resources out there. What I know about is making good consistent side income through freelance writing. It seems to work best if you enjoy what you're writing about.
Here are a few tips I have for those interested in going this route:
1. What are you fascinated about? Write about subject matter that you have some passion for, or at least a lot of interest in. Freelance writing on a newsworthy topic is a great way to stay updated and informed on it. You can also find more online resources to tap into for fact checking, citing experts, and looking for statistics and numbers on changes in your industry or field of interest.
2. Follow their instructions. You'll be able to find some recommended sources for pitching freelance articles to, and it's probably best if you go directly to publications that you are the most connected to. Something you’ve been reading regularly and you feel like you could make a contribution to their readership is a good starting point. So find out if they give instructions on how to pitch freelance. It might be just to a generic email address, or it might be specifically to a managing editor or someone like that. See if they are clear about any of the specifications, requirements, and deadlines. See if it can work for you, and if you can deliver it by deadline.
3. Customize your pitch. Read through the publication carefully and see what they're most interested in. Sometimes you can see the number of people who’ve read the article, or the number of comments at the bottom of it. That'll show what the readership is most interested in. Another thing to look for is how much they’re publishing on the subject matter and where it ends up, such as lead stories; just don’t over do it.
4. Keep your word count in check and hit the target. If you promise to get them that 800 word article by 3 o'clock on Wednesday, then don’t send them that 900 word article six hours late.
5. Pitch that same editor another story soon. I like to keep an active file on the subject matter, and other topics that are of interest in the publication. I will consistently pitch to an editor such as once a week. I tap into the resources and the expertise I’ve accumulated on the subject matter, and on what has gone well for what I've given them in the past.
6. Work with your advocate. Maybe it's that managing editor, or the publisher of the newsletter. If you've got something that gets in the way, like an article you sent them a week ago that's yet to be published, contact your advocate and tell about it and ask for help. The will be the colleague who gets it done. I don’t like sending them tough requests, such as getting paid on time or somewhere near it. Try asking them who would be the best person in accounting or administrative to contact for payment. But stay up on it, and speak up for your rights as a freelance writer.
7. Look for new opportunities. Maybe there's another publication you could pitch to with your expertise and that subject matter that’s also owned by the company you’ve been working with; or one of their competitors. Maybe there's a book in the works where you can take some of your articles, edit and update them, and put them in your book. There might be an excellent article to pitch from your book that could also promote it once it’s ready for publication.
8. Pay attention. Always keep your eyes open for your next opportunity, according to my grandfather.
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