Things about me, part V (Myers-Briggs me)

This is my final day of navel gazing. While I was somewhat dubious about this whole process of revealing five things about myself, I actually had fun doing it and despite being less than 100 percent physically, I sucked it up and tried to give it the ole’ college try.

Hopefully readers found something worthwhile in checking out things that were more personal and probably not terribly relevant to most of what passes for life in the cultural fast lane.

Without much further ado, here is my final revelation.

#5 I am an INTP

When I took the Myers-Briggs, I was working at Unum-Provident, hating every minute of my 9-5 gig. I had taken this job, hoping I could put in four or five years, at least get my son through college and then maybe, bail.

I was deluding myself on this one, as I was barely six months into this job when I knew I had made a terrible mistake. For one thing, the “mentor” that I was assigned for training was a narcissistic 50-year-old woman, who was going through some type of mid-life crisis and more interested in looking at herself in her mirror she kept at her desk, than making sure I knew how to perform my stupid-ass job, screwing policyholders out of their benefits. She was receiving Botox treatments and was much too self-absorbed to be any use at all to me.

Long-story short—I realized quickly that I needed to do some serious work on myself if I wasn’t going to keep repeating this scenario, over and over again.

At the time, I was taking extended lunches and driving across town in Portland and spending an hour plus at one of the branches of Maine’s best library system. I began delving into the self-help section, in hopes that I might re-invent myself and possibly short-circuit my own personal “Ground Hog’s Day.”

In the process of reading several books, some good, some very good and a few excellent, like Gregg LeVoy’s Callings, I began doing a self-assessment and hence, I took the Myers-Briggs.

While I’m borderline between introverted/extroverted, with periods when I’m definitely gregarious and an “E,” while at other times, I prefer solitude and people just plain irritate the hell out of me, which I guess is my “I” phase.

INTP’s are “providers of clarity” and we always feel the need to provide understanding about issues and the news of the day—obviously why I’ve blogged for as long as I have.

While INTP’s run the risk of being over-critical, aloof and arrogant, on the whole, real arrogance is rare for us.

INTP’s enjoy independence—we don’t enjoy being just like everyone else. We don’t enjoy being pushed to do anything and will often resist when push comes to shove.

One thing about this particular profile is that INTP’s spend a great deal of time second-guessing themselves, due to an impending sense of failure.

Some famous INTP’s—Socrates, Descartes and Pascal. Bob Newhart was an INTP, as is Rick Moranis and former president Gerald Ford.

So, five things that I’ve revealed about myself—do you think you know me a bit better? I hope so.

Things about me, part IV (Music is life)

#4. Music gives my life meaning


If you’ve been a regular, or semi-regular reader, you’ll know that I have a passion for music. In fact, music is a thread that has continually informed my life and has served as an accompaniment to more than life's share of disappointments, missed opportunities, as well as joyful moments and important happenings, for as long as I can remember--I still often think of certain times in my life by a song, or a particular artist/band.

Over the years, I’ve acquired a solid understanding of popular music’s history, particularly as it pertains to the rock genre. While I’ve gravitated to rock, I’ve also dabbled around the edges of jazz, blues, folk and gospel. Granted, I'm not as well-versed in the history of the latter four, but one thing that has always brought a nod of recognition from me has been the presence of melody in the music I’ve come to enjoy and endeavor to listen to.

Since a lot of what I’ve written about the past two days speaks to formative structures and a rooted-ness of who I am, music fits well with that theme. I remember being around six, or seven-years-old and present at weekend parties at my uncle’s house. My uncle, at least when he was younger, was a lover of a good time. He had gatherings that brought together uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents, as well as assorted friends. The liquor would flow and there was always music booming from my uncle’s console stereo. A lot of the music was country, but I recall polkas, German beer hall songs and other forms, blasting forth on those sunny weekend afternoons.

It was at these parties that I experienced my first live music, as one of my cousins, along with a friend, would pull out the acoustic guitars and play Johnny Cash tunes and other country standards. I remember enjoying sitting nearby and hearing the rich sounds emanating from those instruments and thinking how much fun it must be to be able to provide enjoyment by playing music.

One of the best gifts I ever received was my first clock radio, which had both AM and FM. While as a pre-teen, I gravitated to the AM side of the dial and the top-forty tunes of the era, occasionally, I’d flick the switch and received my first taste of the free-form radio that ruled FM radio in the early 1970s.

When I first started buying music, they were 45’s of songs I’d heard on my local AM station, WPNO, out of Auburn. My mother would always pick up PNO’s top-15 hitlist every Friday, which I’d eagerly scan for my favorite songs, as well as the two or three up-and-coming tunes that often were “adds” later.

By the time I hit 8th grade, I was fully into the free-form, album-oriented music of the 70s. Because my best friend’s father owned apartments, we often had first dibs on album collections that tenants who skipped out on the rent, left behind. Obviously, many of these folks must have been influenced by the “Summer of Love” and the Haight-Ashbury scene, in San Francisco, as my friend and I got turned on to bands like Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, The Seeds and Country Joe and the Fish.

Later, I went through my KISS phase, as their Alive record rarely left my turntable in the latter half of eighth grade.

While most of our classmates were into the sounds of Molly Hatchet, Journey, Foreigner and the other big acts of the late 70s, I had moved beyond the meandering jams of the 60s and began checking out the short two and three minute bursts of anger coming out of the burgeoning punk movement.

On one of my Friday night excursions with my friends to Manassas Ltd., in Brunswick, for their Friday Night Record Massacre, I picked up The Dead Kennedy’s, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. My musical tastes were forever altered, not to mention my political understanding, also.

This was an exciting time for rock music, as the punk artists of that time were reacting to the over-produced, corporately-packaged, concept music that had taken over the mainstream music channels of 1979-80. Actually, my first exposure to punk had been a review of The Ramones first S/T record, which came out in 1976, via our local stellar arts paper, Sweet Potato.

As my friends and I shifted our focus to a more raw version of the rock that we had cut our collective teeth on, we began seeking out some of the seminal artists that influenced punk, bands like the MC5, Iggy and the Stooges (which I first heard in my neighbor’s bedroom, with his speakers feeding back and howling).

Another band that I got totally “lost” in was Thin Lizzy. This Irish outfit, fronted by bassist and lead singer, Phil Lynott, drew my attention for Lynott’s literate lyrics, rooted in the imagery of Irish history, love and the slice-of-life portraits of working class anti-heroes. Just as an aside, when I listen to former Lifter Puller and current The Hold Steady frontman, Craig Finn, I can’t help but hear strains of the late Lynott, in his lyricism and even vocal delivery.

Over my adult years, when so many people find more important things to focus on, I’ve maintained my passion for music and staying somewhat current on what’s “new” in rock music circles, particularly on the indie rock side.

I won’t bother to list my favorites—if interested, you can read the partial list on my own MySpace page. Some bands, however, have held a special meaning for a variety of reasons, bands like Silkworm, Guided by Voices, The Tragically Hip, Uncle Tupelo and Yo La Tengo, to name a few.

Even now, often when I’m putting together a post for Words Matter, I’ll be listening to music of some type. Recently, I’ve come to rely more and more on streaming radio stations such as WFMU and KEXP to stay current and also to supplement my own music collection.

As I grow older, I don’t get out to see live music as much as I used, or even would like to. Part of it is that I don’t have the patience to wait around for bands to go on late and play until the wee hours of the morning. Also, most times I attend shows, I’m one of the older people in attendance, if not the oldest and I’m not into the vibe coming from the “kids” in the audience.

Still, I’ll occasionally venture out, even now, to see a handful of bands and performers, like my trip into Boston in November to catch one of my new fave bands, Centro-matic.

While rock music was once the domain of youth, as the boomers and even Gen-X grow older, music is no longer limited by age, as it once was. Who knows, maybe when I’m old and residing in some assisted living center somewhere, I’ll be booking guitar-driven rock for Saturday afternoon mixers for my fellow geriatrics.

Things about me, part III (A gambler I'm not)

#3. I suck as a card player

Ok, so you’re getting a bonus here—two revelations in one day—yahoooooo!! Actually, while my nose is running like a sieve and the Sudafed’s made me jumpier than a night watchman at a morgue, I’m feeling somewhat better and my head doesn’t feel like it’s being squeezed in a vice (see earlier post about my annual cold—ok, so I’m also a big baby, alright, already!).

Since we are living in the era of celebrity poker and card games seem to be ubiquitous no matter what time of day you channel surf, I’m one of probably three people who absolutely suck at cards.

I don’t mean I’m a poor player and lose regularly—I can’t even fucking shuffle the deck and deal with any proficiency. A card shark I am not!!

As I was watching the Bruins game out of desperation (and my eyes can't take anymore reading), as the Celtics are off, there are no NBA games on and the only basketball is some college games by two schools I don’t give two shits about, there was this commercial for Foxwoods Casino.

There are four or five guys sitting around a table—I think they’re firemen. The guy dealing is trying to shuffle and the only way to describe his acuity is by saying he is “hamfisted.” He can’t shuffle, he’s awkwardly shuffling like no one you’ve ever seen (except me) and when he tries to do the fancy shuffle, the cards fly everywhere. The premise—head to Foxwoods instead.

I’m not a fan of legalized gambling and I think these casinos are just another form of regressive taxation, but damn, it was a funny commercial and so captured my own inabilities as a card player.

My point? Don’t expect to catch see me at an all night poker party any time soon.

Things about me, part II (Know Thy Class)

#2. I have a working class chip on my shoulder

Like my experiences in the Midwest having a lot to do with who I am today, even more of an influence on how I see the world and particularly, what I reflect on when I write, is due to being a child of the working class.

Class, for all intents and purposes, is the 500 pound elephant in the room that no one dares to talk about, or if they do, purse the topic in muffled tones and whispers. Regardless of whether it gets talked about, or not, it is more important than race, ethnicity and gender in how the affairs are carried out and the spoils get divvied out, in America.

I think politicians and probably more important, the elite who really control the economy of the U.S., if not the world, want us to keep our focus off class, because if we ever really understood the issue, it might piss us off enough to get up off the sofa and actually do something to change the way things are. So, how are things? Well, try this on for size—this study shows that whatever class we are born into, which for me is the working class (a term that has been subjugated by the more “egalitarian” middle class, btw), is the class we’ll die in, with little, or no variation of that. Only the UK has less social upward mobility than the US.

Granted, there was a brief window, particularly just after WWII, when, due to the explosive growth in unions during the Great Depression, as well as reformist policies, courtesy of the Roosevelt administration, introduced some upward mobility in the US. That window has closed, however. With current moves to dismantle most if not all of FDR’s legacy and New Deal policies, income polarization, between the super-rich and the very poor is returning to early 20th century levels. But I digress.

I was raised in a home where my dad, a high school graduate, was able to work in a paper mill and make decent wages, with benefits, which included dental insurance. Growing up in the 60s and early 70s, my mom, like many women of the time didn’t need to work and among many working class families, didn’t feel the need to have a career, or if she did, the societal emphasis was away from that. I tell you this, not to trumpet the “family values” of that era, but to say that this was the last time that non-college graduates could secure employment that didn’t necessitate two incomes.

My grandparents, on both my mother and father’s side of the family were first generation immigrants. My Nana and Opa (my father’s parents) were German immigrants, fleeing the post WWI economic collapse in Europe and my Mémiere and Pépé settled in Lewiston, a vibrant textile mill town, where thousands of Canadians, like my grandparents, came to claim abundant mill jobs in factories nestled along the banks of the Androscoggin River.

One of the lessons I learned at an early age was that good people worked hard. At a young age (eight, or nine), I was taken into the woods on weekends with my Opa, my father and my uncle, where I learned about cutting wood and that work had merit. I can’t say I enjoyed these mandatory work outings, which also included potato picking and haying, but I certainly knew what physical labor was about. These older men seemed to actually enjoy this, while I merely tolerated it.

Later, I was able to transfer this ethic, to sports, where I trained harder and pushed myself further than most of my teammates and my opponents. On the baseball diamond, this led to a lot of success. On the basketball court, mostly frustration because, while I worked hard, I wasn’t as physically talented on the hardwood—we also had bad teams and since I hated to lose, so I often found myself being overly aggressive, which led to a host of other problems, including a couple of ejections, a few fights and the reputation of a hot head.

I was proud of the town I grew up in. As I got older, I began to understand the differences between a mill town, like Lisbon Falls and a community like Cape Elizabeth. While the high school I went to didn’t have many kids with money, occasionally, through sports, or other social activities, I came face-to-face with people who had money and liked to flaunt it.

Later, at the University of Maine, I began to understand class in a way I never had before. I read Marx and other books that helped to put class into a context I had never been privy to. Later, I’d add Chomsky, Zinn, and others to my understanding of who I was and the importance of understanding class, rather than trying to disavow it.

So like religion, my understanding of class and self-identification as a member of the working-class, have contributed to who I am and how I see the world.

Things about me, part I (The Fundamentalist Years)

One of my favorite blogs and one of my longtime stop off points when I’m cruising about the blogosphere, is Delfina’s fine blog, Living on Less. One of the things that make me want to take the time to read her writing is her transparency and ability to cut through so much of the surface BS that most Americans assign importance to. She also manages to come off human and not elitist and I think this has to do with her ability to just be herself when she writes and not create some alter ego for the net.

Recently, she shared five things about herself, after being “tagged” by Durrutti, from Love and Rage. Called a meme, these types of posts are not uncommon on various blogs. Being a sucker for people’s stories and with an insatiable urge to understand what makes interesting people tick, I eagerly read her post, finding out at the very end that she had “tagged” me to share my own items of interest that most people probably don’t know about, at least people that I have a casual relationship with.

Normally, I’m not a huge fan of these types of things, but because of the respect I have for her, I decided, albeit belatedly, to take her charge to heart and work up five things about myself that I’d be willing to share with readers.

Partly because I want to be different, partly because I want to drag this out and get maximum mileage out of it and partly because I’m suffering from my annual winter cold that inevitably leads to the “walking pneumonia” and then, eventually, “the boogie-woogie blues,” my energy level is at its lowest ebb. This week, I’ve been relegated to basically dragging myself out of bed, willing myself through a particularly busy week (involving two presentations to employer groups, including one in Farmington, yesterday that I had to leave the house for at 5:30 am), so while my desire to blog has been there, the energy and follow-through to carry it out has been absent. BTW, anyone with any good homeopathic, naturopathic, or old mother's remedies for colds and dealing with congestions, I'm open to advice.

Since she tagged me last week, on Wednesday (my birthday, coincidentally) and I didn’t begin feeling ill until Tuesday night, while at a nighttime meeting in Skowhegan of all places, you can blame me for procrastinating, which has me feeling oh so sheepish that more than a week has passed on this.

Without any further ado, here are the first of five things that I hope to roll out over the next few days that I’m sure readers can hardly wait to read. Drum roll please….

#1. I once attended Bible College in Indiana:

In 1982, my wife and I packed up our belongings in the back of a U-Haul and headed to Crown Point, Indiana, where I would enroll at Hyles-Anderson College in the fall.

Hyles-Anderson, a fundamentalist school, with a strong Baptist orientation, was where I’d spend nearly 2 ½ years trying to follow the straight and narrow ways of the cult-like teachings and messianic ravings of Jack Hyles, before figuring out that maybe the worldview of he and his deluded followers weren’t as “Christ-like” as I had been led to believe by others, 1,500 miles to the east.

In what would be an eye-opening and really, life-changing experience for two young 20-somethings, our time in northwest Indiana provided my wife and I with an urban experience that we never would have gained back in rural Maine. While I think both of us look back on that time, nearly 25 years ago and shake our heads, wondering how we could have been so “narrow” in our thinking at the time, it also provided some formative experiences for both of us over the five plus years we were there that helped shape the people that we are now.

For me, having grown up in the whitest of the white places in the U.S., being one of only a handful of whites working at an Indiana correctional facility (Westville Correctional Center) allowed me to have an awareness of what minorities experience daily back here in Maine and elsewhere. I still cringe when I think back of how naïve I was and how patient most of these new African-American co-workers were with me, when they could have been much less supportive of a hayseed from Maine. Some even took me under their wings and taught me the ropes. How the heck do you think I learned about BBQ, chitlins and grits? It sure wasn’t growing up in Lisbon Falls, chummy.

The interesting thing about the whole experience in northwest Indiana (which was about 45 miles from Chicago) is that it gave me an entirely different perspective on the U.S. While the country has become increasingly homogenized, there are still distinctive regional differences and I’m glad I got to experience my time in this part of the country.

While I went to Indiana to get closer to God, ironically, the entire experience left me doubting his existence and I’d have to say that while I came back to Maine a lapsed Xian, I eventually began calling myself an agnostic and developed the term “post-Xian” to describe my religious state. I did make one brief foray back towards organized religion a few years ago, but like many organizational structures heavy on authority, it wasn’t a good fit and I ultimately began butting heads with those in power. This time, it was over the war in Iraq and after a number of unpleasant confrontations with both the leaders of the church and the folks in my small group Bible study, I just decided to forego the organized religious path for good. My revolutionary take on the gospels and my non-literal reading of most scripture makes me a pariah in most conservative congregations. Certainly, there are more liberal churches dotting the landscape and my wife and I have actually visited some, but at least in this area, there is something lacking for my taste—too sedate and respectful of the status quo, I think.

So, back in Maine, a practicing post-Xian, I find my life pregnant with meaning. I didn’t have calamity visit me, as Jack Hyles used to insist would happen, if we ever “left the path of God.” In fact, I’ve discovered the late Brother Hyles (as students referred to him), or “Bubba” Hyles, as I began calling him after I left the school, had his own share of “skeletons” dancing in his own closet. Like so many “men of God,” he fell off his high moral horse and yet, the mega church he presided over, as well as the school he founded continues on, as if nothing ever happened, with his former followers turning a blind eye to the same indiscretions that they would criticize in “lesser” mortals. In fact, when I look down the lineup of supreme potentates now in charge, most were there while I was a student, which in light of what I know about Hyles, speaks volumes about who they are.

Well, that’s revelation #1—I’m not even sure what I’ll roll out for my next four, but definitely stay tuned.