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Facebook vs. Face to Face: Why School Reunions Will Endure

 






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A perspective from one writer's 40th

Mark Silva, the CEO of Great Unions, a reunion-planning company, noted a decline this year in attendance at 10-year high school and college reunions across the country. "There are a lot of people who say Facebook is good enough and they don't want to get together," he told NPR. Mindy Crouchley, 28, is one of them. "Anyone I've been remotely interested in keeping tabs on I have through this medium," she explained in her blog. "There's nothing a reunion could give me that flipping through my high school yearbook doesn't already provide."  

I am a huge fan of Facebook. But having just attended my 40th high school reunion, I can say to Mindy and others from the "good enough" crowd that Facebook is a poor substitute for the perspective-enhancing experiences you get at a reunion face to face and across a crowded room. They include: the sound of a once-familiar voice calling out to you; the pleasure that comes with recognizing an old crush or teammate after only a moment's hesitation; character in context; and revelations far too intimate to be shared en masse or on a screen. 

It's true, when you're young, that reunions tend to be an arena for networking and one-upmanship. (I remember the pressure I felt to posture at my own.) I can also understand why so many alumni are reluctant to pay to spend time with people they never really liked -- people they would never even think of "friending." But, by your 40th reunion, you realize that there's a therapeutic value in hanging out with the people who may have belittled or intimidated you in high school. You see their bad behavior for what it was: a manifestation of their own self-loathing, or a projection of your own worst fears -- and that realization can be liberating. 

Facebook is to a reunion what Mindy's yearbook is to a novel: the level of detail and nuance you get on Facebook can't rival the intricacy of plot and character development you find face to face. For instance, a classmate who had become a sculptor told me about a trip he had taken to see his dying mentor: it taught him the importance of telling people what they mean to you when they -- and you -- are still alive.  A former teammate recalled a no-hitter I had pitched in ninth grade. What struck me most was when he said, "I'll always remember the smile on your dad's face when you got the last batter out." That detail had not been part of my memory of the game. Now it is. 

Probably the most touching story came from a classmate I had barely known in high school.  He and his wife were scheduled to fly to Barcelona the next day for the fifth time in five years. Because of a chronic health problem, they had had to cancel their previous four trips I prayed that they would make it this time, and found their Sisyphean hope in the face of adversity inspiring. Had I stayed home and been content to connect with those few classmates who were my friends on Facebook, I never would have seen how the furious networking of our twenties turns into genuine tenderness as we age: All weekend I noticed how much we hugged each other, and how gently. The arm-hitting, back-slapping, high-five physicality of previous reunions was gone. 

Of course nearly half of the 70 students in our class didn't make it -- they were either too busy or too ambivalent about their school years to attend.  At the closing dinner, the guard on the football team expressed the sentiment lingering in the back of many of our minds. "Please raise your glass to the three members of the Class of 1971 who have died," he said. "I really miss those guys." 

Five and ten years from now, at our next reunions, the list of those to whom we raise a glass will be longer. We may hear about their passing through Facebook. But face to face, in a community of classmates who are part of each other's lives and personal narratives, something deeper happens: you are forced to acknowledge the precious brevity of your life -- of life itself -- which moves you to feel grateful for your blessings and to make the most of what remains.  

Click here to read the column Lee wrote before he went to his 40th high school reunion: "To Go or Not to Go: Is Your School Reunion Worth the Worry?"

Lee Kravitz is the author of UNFINISHED BUSINESS: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things (Bloomsbury)

Facebook vs. Face to Face: Why School Reunions Will Endure

 p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 24.0px Helvetica}p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 24.0px Helvetica; min-height: 29.0px}span.s1 {color: #010101}span.s2 {color: #ff444c}span.s3 {color: #000000} A perspective from one writer's 40th Mark Silva, the CEO of Great Unions, a reunion-planning company, noted a decline this year in attendance at 10-year high school and college reunions across the country. "There are a lot of people who say Facebook is good enough and they don't want to get together," he told NPR. Mindy Crouchley, 28, is one of them. "Anyone I've been remotely interested in keeping tabs on I have through this medium," she explained in her blog. "There's nothing a reunion could give me that flipping through my high school yearbook doesn't already provide."   I am a huge fan of Facebook. But having just attended my 40th high school reunion, I can say to Mindy and others from the "good enough" crowd that Facebook is a poor substitute for the perspective-enhancing experiences you get at a reunion face to face and across a crowded room. They include: the sound of a once-familiar voice calling out to you; the pleasure that comes with recognizing an old crush or teammate after only a moment's hesitation; character in context; and revelations far too intimate to be shared en masse or on a screen.  It's true, when you're young, that reunions tend to be an arena for networking and one-upmanship. (I remember the pressure I felt to posture at my own.) I can also understand why so many alumni are reluctant to pay to spend time with people they never really liked -- people they would never even think of "friending." But, by your 40th reunion, you realize that there's a therapeutic value in hanging out with the people who may have belittled or intimidated you in high school. You see their bad behavior for what it was: a manifestation of their own self-loathing, or a projection of your own worst fears -- and that realization can be liberating.  Facebook is to a reunion what Mindy's yearbook is to a novel: the level of detail and nuance you get on Facebook can't rival the intricacy of plot and character development you find face to face. For instance, a classmate who had become a sculptor told me about a trip he had taken to see his dying mentor: it taught him the importance of telling people what they mean to you when they -- and you -- are still alive.  A former teammate recalled a no-hitter I had pitched in ninth grade. What struck me most was when he said, "I'll always remember the smile on your dad's face when you got the last batter out." That detail had not been part of my memory of the game. Now it is.  Probably the most touching story came from a classmate I had barely known in high school.  He and his wife were scheduled to fly to Barcelona the next day for the fifth time in five years. Because of a chronic health problem, they had had to cancel their previous four trips I prayed that they would make it this time, and found their Sisyphean hope in the face of adversity inspiring. Had I stayed home and been content to connect with those few classmates who were my friends on Facebook, I never would have seen how the furious networking of our twenties turns into genuine tenderness as we age: All weekend I noticed how much we hugged each other, and how gently. The arm-hitting, back-slapping, high-five physicality of previous reunions was gone.  Of course nearly half of the 70 students in our class didn't make it -- they were either too busy or too ambivalent about their school years to attend.  At the closing dinner, the guard on the football team expressed the sentiment lingering in the back of many of our minds. "Please raise your glass to the three members of the Class of 1971 who have died," he said. "I really miss those guys."  Five and ten years from now, at our next reunions, the list of those to whom we raise a glass will be longer. We may hear about their passing through Facebook. But face to face, in a community of classmates who are part of each other's lives and personal narratives, something deeper happens: you are forced to acknowledge the precious brevity of your life -- of life itself -- which moves you to feel grateful for your blessings and to make the most of what remains.   Click here to read the column Lee wrote before he went to his 40th high school reunion: "To Go or Not to Go: Is Your School Reunion Worth the Worry?" Lee Kravitz is the author of UNFINISHED BUSINESS: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things (Bloomsbury)

Hard-wired for Compassion

Dear Friends: 

I am pleased to announce the publication this week of the paperback edition of my book UNFINISHED BUSINESS: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things (Bloomsbury USA). 

I could not be happier with the result.

This new edition features a foreword by Gail Sheehy, the author of PASSAGES and other deeply reported books that have changed the way we think about growing older.

It also includes a reading group guide, a selection of readers' stories, and a practical, step-by-step guide to tackling your own unfinished business.

What I like most about Sheehy's foreword is how she frames my story generationally. "After fifty," she writes, "the passages of our lives are largely unpredictable. They are often precipitated by a life accident -- a blowout in our infrastructure, an unexpected divorce, the sudden death of a parent or a contemporary, or the shock of a full stop in career acceleration."  That's precisely what happened to me at age 54 when I was fired from my job as editor-in-chief of Parade.

Sheehy notes how these "life accidents" and "brutal wake-up calls" can be a blessing in disguise, moving our focus from competitiveness and an obsession with outer success to an emphasis on our inner lives and what she calls "a broader sense of compassion." 

She cites recent research that validates Darwin's observation that "the strongest instincts in early man were sympathy and compassion" -- not greed and raw self-interest as so many social psychologists have claimed.

"Among our hominid predecessors, [Darwin] argued, it was the communities of sympathetic individuals who were more successful in raising healthy offspring to the age when they too could reproduce. That was the surest route to getting these genes to the next generation. . .Recent scientific studies of emotion by social psychologists like Dacher Keltner and the psychology lab at the University of California, Berkeley, are finding evidence that humans are hard-wired for compassion and caring. These are biologically-based emotions rooted deep in the mammalian brain."  

In the year since UNFINISHED BUSINESS was published, hundreds of readers have contacted me on my web site, through call-in radio shows, and during my book tour appearances with stories of their own unfinished business. I have included some of the most inspiring of these stories in the paperback edition of the book. You'll meet people who have lost jobs, homes and loved ones. Yet these "life accidents" have led them to re-evaluate their lives and re-order their priorities. And, in the process of reaching out and righting past wrongs, they have found themselves becoming more compassionate and caring, more appreciative and more whole.

When you shift focus as I and these readers did, you end up shedding the unfinished business that keeps weighing you down and holding you back. You are better able to move ahead in your life. You become energized by the vibrant human connectedness that enriches your life daily and helps humanity endure.

The Unfinished Business Toolkit in the back of the paperback is designed to help readers identify and address their unfinished business. It includes strategies and tips for facing your fears, reaching out to others and making amends. I encourage anyone who goes on a journey to address their unfinished business to reflect on their experiences -- and to share them with others in reading groups, through letters and online. 

Meanwhile, I will continue to blog about my unfinished business and yours at http://www.MyUnfinishedBusiness.com and http://www.PsychologyToday.com. Thank you for continuing to share your own stories here -- and for spreading the word about my book to people who might benefit from it.

Lee Kravitz is the author of UNFINISHED BUSINESS: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things (Bloomsbury USA). 

 

 

 

To Go or Not to Go: Is Your School Reunion Worth the Worry?

 






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They happen at five-year intervals -- from the time we graduate high school, college, graduate school and professional school until the end of our lives.

In many of us they provoke far more anxiety than they should, spurring wistful dreams and anticipatory nightmares.

They are fraught with concerns over how we look, who we've married, what we have or haven't achieved over the years and hurts real and imagined.

They can be hardest on those who are out of a job, just starting their careers, or not yet settled on who they want to become.

At the same time they can lead accomplished professionals, capable managers and respected citizens to become self-doubting Hamlets, debating for weeks and even months, with the help of friends, relatives, colleagues, therapists and anyone who'll listen, one torturous question: To go or not to go?

That is the question thousands of graduates of the nation's high schools, colleges and professional schools are facing this very moment as they wrestle with whether to attend their alumni reunions in the weeks ahead. I do not mean to make light of their burden, because it is rooted in some of our oldest and most familiar fears.

Fears that. . . 

. . .I don't measure up

. . .I haven't lived up to my promise

. . .I don't look as good as I used to look

Fears that. . .

. . .everyone who knew me back then will see me for the loser I really am.

My wife tells me that women are more prone to have these feelings than men, particularly as they age. But I know, from personal experience, that men aren't any less immune to the competitiveness and sense of being inadequate that reunions can bring, and that we're just as liable to turn this quinquennial chance to reconnect with old classmates into a referendum on our lives.

In truth, if you have the time, means and inclination to go, your high school or college reunion can provide a rare opportunity to gain perspective on your life and enable you to attend to some of your unfinished emotional business.

In two weeks, as inconceivable as it once seemed, I'll be going to my 40th high school reunion. My fifth and tenth reunions -- at ages 23 and 28 -- were dispiriting. My fellow alums and I circled each other like tigers, telling made-up stories designed to make us look more important, successful and glamorous than everyone else. 

My 15th and 20th reunions were even more discouraging. Because I had yet to settle on a job or mate, I found myself a decade behind the majority of my classmates, who were married and already well along in their careers.

I felt happier in my life -- with a wife, kids and a job I loved -- at my 25th, 30th and 35th reunions, and hence much more interested in hearing about the course that my classmates' lives had taken. I also found myself reminiscing more comfortably with them, remembering moments and emotions from high school that could help me better understand my own children, who were proceeding inexorably toward adolescence. 

Now, at the 40th reunion, I'm looking forward to having even deeper conversations with my classmates -- not about who we were and what we did back then, in high school, but about how we are dealing with the challenge of making the most out of our lives now and in the years ahead. I intend to report on these conversations in a future post.

Lee Kravitz is the author of UNFINISHED BUSINESS: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things (Bloomsbury USA). The paperback, out this month, includes a new foreword by PASSAGES author Gail Sheehy, a chapter of reader stories, and a practical guide for addressing your own unfinished business. 

To learn more about Lee and the book, go to www.MyUnfinishedBusiness.com

To Go or Not to Go: Is Your School Reunion Worth the Worry?

 p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Arial}p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial}span.s1 {text-decoration: underline ; color: #3100ee} They happen at five-year intervals -- from the time we graduate high school, college, graduate school and professional school until the end of our lives. In many of us they provoke far more anxiety than they should, spurring wistful dreams and anticipatory nightmares. They are fraught with concerns over how we look, who we've married, what we have or haven't achieved over the years and hurts real and imagined. They can be hardest on those who are out of a job, just starting their careers, or not yet settled on who they want to become. At the same time they can lead accomplished professionals, capable managers and respected citizens to become self-doubting Hamlets, debating for weeks and even months, with the help of friends, relatives, colleagues, therapists and anyone who'll listen, one torturous question: To go or not to go? That is the question thousands of graduates of the nation's high schools, colleges and professional schools are facing this very moment as they wrestle with whether to attend their alumni reunions in the weeks ahead. I do not mean to make light of their burden, because it is rooted in some of our oldest and most familiar fears. Fears that. . .  . . .I don't measure up . . .I haven't lived up to my promise . . .I don't look as good as I used to look Fears that. . . . . .everyone who knew me back then will see me for the loser I really am. My wife tells me that women are more prone to have these feelings than men, particularly as they age. But I know, from personal experience, that men aren't any less immune to the competitiveness and sense of being inadequate that reunions can bring, and that we're just as liable to turn this quinquennial chance to reconnect with old classmates into a referendum on our lives. In truth, if you have the time, means and inclination to go, your high school or college reunion can provide a rare opportunity to gain perspective on your life and enable you to attend to some of your unfinished emotional business. In two weeks, as inconceivable as it once seemed, I'll be going to my 40th high school reunion. My fifth and tenth reunions -- at ages 23 and 28 -- were dispiriting. My fellow alums and I circled each other like tigers, telling made-up stories designed to make us look more important, successful and glamorous than everyone else.  My 15th and 20th reunions were even more discouraging. Because I had yet to settle on a job or mate, I found myself a decade behind the majority of my classmates, who were married and already well along in their careers. I felt happier in my life -- with a wife, kids and a job I loved -- at my 25th, 30th and 35th reunions, and hence much more interested in hearing about the course that my classmates' lives had taken. I also found myself reminiscing more comfortably with them, remembering moments and emotions from high school that could help me better understand my own children, who were proceeding inexorably toward adolescence.  Now, at the 40th reunion, I'm looking forward to having even deeper conversations with my classmates -- not about who we were and what we did back then, in high school, but about how we are dealing with the challenge of making the most out of our lives now and in the years ahead. I intend to report on these conversations in a future post. Lee Kravitz is the author of UNFINISHED BUSINESS: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things (Bloomsbury USA). The paperback, out this month, includes a new foreword by PASSAGES author Gail Sheehy, a chapter of reader stories, and a practical guide for addressing your own unfinished business.  To learn more about Lee and the book, go to MyUnfinishedBusiness.com

One Step at a Time

A recovering alcoholic tells how she's been able to ease her burdens. Czarmommy wrote: "After years of alcoholism and drug abuse, I turned my life over to a 12-step program. I am 19 years, 10 months, 28 days clean and sober. I started small: calling a local car dealer 'Mr.' despite his insistence I call him Pat. I'd abused so many people, it was now my privilege to show them the respect they deserved. I went on to bigger things like returning items I'd 'borrowed' only never returned, then to money. My older brother had lent me $3000 at one time. I never paid it back, and it was the elephant in the room for me. At 13 years sober I did so (with interest). No more elephants! Going through some old picture albums, I found pictures of my ex-husband and his family, looked him up, and sent them to him, 30 years later, with a note wishing his life has been well. Now, I'm searching for an ex-boyfriend to right a wrong, lifting another burden, setting me free." Recovering alcoholics often find themselves with numerous amends to make. By starting small, Czarmommy was able to succeed at taking on bigger challenges. Would her system work for you -- or would you be more likely to start with the biggest challenges first?

I just put them on my prayer list…

How do you respond to people who won't forgive you? This one woman, the victim of an abusive marriage, had a novel solution. SpringSnow wrote: "I had no idea how deeply a 16-year-long abusive marriage had affected my life and relationships, even long after I left it. My unaddressed PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) exacerbated years after the fact, and I realized how many people I'd hurt for years with my defensiveness and fear. I called former co-workers, bosses, acquaintances, and relatives, apologizing for what I'd put them through and opening up about my illness. Nearly all of them had an 'aha' moment of understanding when I spoke of the PTSD. Most were understanding and forgiving. A couple of people were unable to let go of their anger toward me, and I decided to just put them on my prayer list. But, by far the most poignant encounter was with a former co-worker who'd just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. While she heartily agreed I'd been insufferable, it was humbling to have reached out to her in time and heal some of the hurt I'd caused." Has someone ever rejected your attempt to make amends? How did that make you feel? How did you choose to respond?

Kind Hearts and Kindred Spirits

 






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The Legacy of the Singing Cowboy

You run into kind hearts and kindred spirits in the strangest places -- for example, at 1000 Acres, a dude ranch in the Adirondacks, where Elizabeth and I had gone to see a rodeo show and get some shut-eye before visiting our 13-year-old twins at a nearby sleep-away camp. 

At the barbecue that night Ernie Sites and his wife Basia were going table to table singing "The Old Chisholm Trail,"  "Whoopee Ki-Yi-Yo Git Along Little Dogies," "Home on the Range" and other cowboy favorites. They were an unlikely pair. With his ruddy features, handlebar mustache and sturdy frame, Ernie was straight out of cowboy central casting. The movie Basia put me in mind of, with her slight accent, smiling eyes and round exuberant face, was "Sophie's Choice," about a soulful Polish immigrant living in 1940s Brooklyn. 

When they got to our table and asked us if we had any requests, I couldn't come up with a single song for Cowboy Ernie to play. But later that evening, when Elizabeth and I were the first two city slickers to show up at the The Red Dog Saloon, I found myself wondering whether Ernie could play something he had written himself. 

Now Ernie was the shy one. 

"How about 'Coyote's Howl?'" Basia asked. "I really love that song."

"I'm not even sure I remember the words," Ernie said.

"I do," she smiled.

Basia leaned her head on her Singing Cowboy's shoulder in case he needed help. Then Ernie started strumming the tune that's been playing in my mind ever since.Click here to listen to it, then I'll tell you more about this real-life cowboy hero and the song that's become this blog's Unfinished Business anthem. 

Ernie grew up on the prairie to the sound of coyotes howling;  I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, to the sound of lawnmowers whirring: It would seem that we couldn't have grown up more differently in terms of environment and culture. Yet, in "Coyote's Howl," Ernie expressed the exact same longings and unease that had motivated me -- at age 54 and after losing my job -- to spend an entire year tending to the unfinished emotional business of my life. "Or have I changed and rearranged my dreams of long ago?" It was the same question that I had been asking myself as I struggled to close circles and make amends.

Ernie was born in Idaho Falls in the same year I was --1953. His father, Ernie Sites, Sr., was a professional baseball player, mostly in the minor leagues but for a short time before World War II he played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and roomed with Hall of Fame shortstop Honus Wagner, then in the twilight of his coaching career. (In an interview at age 90, Ernie Sr.'s one recollection of "The Flying Dutchman," whose 1909 baseball card recently made news by selling for $262,000, was that "he snored loud.")  

To supplement his baseball income,  Ernie Sr. became a member of the sheet-metal union and took work wherever he could find it during the off-season. In 1960, he moved the family from Austin, Minnesota, where he'd been playing minor-league ball and working at the Hormel meat-packing plant, to Wendell, Idaho, where he bought a ranch at the edge of the desert. 

Ernie describes an idyllic childhood. He and his five siblings would help their parents with farm chores then venture off into the sagebrush and gullies where they'd practice target-shooting, search for arrowheads and other Native American artifacts and explore tunnels and caves that had been carved out millions of years earlier by flowing lava. 

Ernie's hero growing up was Will Rogers, the cowboy humorist who dispensed homespun philosophy and political opinion while doing rope tricks. Ernie was a pretty good roper himself --  "It's how you caught horses, calves, pigs, chickens and your little sister," he says -- but Rogers inspired him to set his sights on mastering the pop-over, wedding ring, flat loop, 60-foot big loop, Texas skip and other tricks that would later become part of his act.

Ernie's other heroes were his mother -- "a Mormon ranching wife with high moral standards and strict rules of conduct" -- and his maternal grandfather, who worked variously as a rancher, sheep herder and government trapper. "He never took delight in killing any animal he caught," Ernie says. "He had the same respect for the land."

Ernie began playing the guitar when he was eight. He was so good that his mother encouraged him to perform at church socials. His teacher, a tenor in the church choir, owned a barbershop in town and would give Ernie voice and guitar lessons while he cut hair. ( "I felt sorry for anybody who got his hair cut when I was  singing off-key.") Little by little, Ernie says, "my guitar became my best friend. I'd carry it everywhere, strapped to my back. It became part of who I was." 

When he was 17, Ernie began playing local saloons and pizza parlors for a root beer, slice of pizza and $30 a performance. That summer he traveled 80 miles north to Bellevue, where his mother had grown up, and to Sun Valley, the biggest tourist destination in the state. He still remembers the scent of the pine trees and the brisk mountain air, and the people who'd come to Sun Valley from Europe and elsewhere to fish, hike and commune with nature. 

"I'd go up into the hills with my guitar, write some poetry and sing my brains out to the river," he recalls. "Then I'd wander down into the town and talk to people from all over the world. Sun Valley fed that artistic part of me that needed to touch the world." 

Like so many kids in Wendell, Ernie got married right out of high school. Over the next 22 years he and his wife raised seven kids. To cobble together a living, Ernie hauled hay, cut firewood, did ranch work for hire and worked for the Idaho Fish and Game Department stocking steelhead hatcheries. He joined a union so he could become a journeyman carpenter.

Eventually Ernie learned that he could earn a lot more money singing at clubs and dinner houses and selling his own CDs, so like his father before him, he took to the road, entertaining at rodeos and music festivals. One gig led to another, and he ended up performing behind artists like Mo Bandy, Rex Allen, Patsy Montana, Bonnie Raitt, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Chris Ledoux, Gene Autry, Riders in the Sky, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and the Sons of the Pioneers.

You don't need to be a cowboy music fan to know some of these names. If you grew up anywhere in America in the 1950s -- from Seattle to St. Louis to Miami to Dallas to the Ohio of my youth --  you were raised on a diet of cowboy heroes and culture. Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone and Wyatt Earp; Bonanza and Gunsmoke; Jesse James and Billy the Kid;  Annie Oakley, "Buffalo Bill" Cody and "Wild Bill" Hickock; Hopalong Cassidy, Tanto,The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid. They dominated 1950s television. "Hi Ho Silver!" "Happy Trails to You!"

So Ernie and I had a lot more in common than it may have seemed. While I was riding my bicycle on paved sidewalks, and he was herding cows and roping his little sister, we were humming the same cowboy tunes and dreaming the same cowboy dreams and imbibing the same cowboy ethos that was shaping boys all across America. 

By the time we were teenagers, my suburban friends and I had left our toy guns and coonskin hats far behind.  We had begun dancing to the Stones and Doors and marching against a war that seemed to grow out of that ethos of guns and frontier-conquering violence. We found ourselves identifying with the spirituality and sacred rituals of the Native Americans who the frontiersmen had fought and displaced. 

Ernie, on the other hand, stayed true to his cowboy roots. "Cowboy music and culture is about a man's relationship with nature and animals, and the sense of freedom and independence you get in wide open spaces," he explains. "That was important to me. And I didn't want to see it die." 

Ernie has recorded seven albums of Western music: "Cowboy Classics," "Rage of the Sage," "Great American Hero," "Idaho Winds," "Saddle Bags and Wishes," "Trail Ridin'" and "Singing the Stories of the West," which is also the title of a book on cowboy guitar music he's written. He performs his songs and poetry at Buckaroo festivals and cowboy poetry gatherings all around the country. What he enjoys most -- what he calls his mission in life -- is to give workshops in cowboy history, music and culture in schools. 

The second he walks out onto the stage wearing his big cowboy hat, Bat wing chaps, and Jingle Bob spurs, and carrying a leather-braided Riata in one hand and a 30-foot horsehair Mecate in the other, the kids in the audience know that there's a cowboy in the house. To make sure he really has their attention, Ernie lassos the school's principal. Then, like Will Rogers, he does tougher and tougher rope tricks as he regales his mainly elementary-school aged audiences with tales of the cowboy West. He teaches the youngsters to yodel and recite cowboy poetry too. 

QUOTE TEACHER FROM THE AUTISTIC SCHOOL.  

The two most popular questions for Ernie are: "Do you have a gun?" ("I own several but I keep them locked up in a safe place and use them mostly target practice," he tells the kids. ) "What's your horse's name?" ("Tumbleweed. He's an Appaloosa quarter-horse, a breed famous to Idaho.") 

Because his goal is to break down stereotypes, Ernie doesn't go on  too much about outlaws or conflicts between cowboys and Native Americans in his assemblies because "so much of that was a Hollywood fabrication," he says. "For the most part, the relationship between cowboys and Native Americans was harmonious. The cowboys would give the Native Americans beef as they passed through their territory. It was the government soldiers that fought and killed the Native Americans in an effort to drive them from their land." 

Instead, Ernie focuses on the cowboys' rugged individualism and their love of the wide open spaces. "The cowboy is the Great American Hero," he says. "I want to inspire those kids to feel independent -- and to care." 

In the mid-1990s, Ernie co-wrote and starred in children's stage show called "Native American Indians and Cowboys too" at Queens College. It was there that he met Basia. "I was walking on campus with a couple of friends from the show and I heard this totally charming voice from behind saying, "What are you guys taking -- Cowboy 101?" 

His marriage, which had been falling apart for years, dissolved. And in 1999, he married the woman he describes as "my muse" and as "a marvelous spark of goodness who took on a cowboy singer with seven kids and introduced me to a whole new world and culture." 

Basia, a pianist for the Alvin Ailey School of Dance in New York, comes from a family of aristocrats who fled Poland after World War II after the Russians confiscated their estate. She has experienced considerable tragedy in her life -- both her brother and father died young and she is the caretaker of her ailing octogenarian mother. But she tries to perform with Ernie whenever she can and she's his biggest fan. 

Basia describes "Coyote's Howl" as "probably my favorite of Ernie's songs." 

When I first heard the song I presumed that Ernie had written it when he was 50. In fact, he wrote it when he was only 37 years old. The song had started out as a poem that "a very rich man had commissioned me to write for his wife's 50th birthday." Ernie set the poem to music  -- and when he sung it at the wife's birthday party no one, not even the rich man who had paid him to write it, stopped partying long enough to listen.  "I think it was too reflective for them," Ernie says. "But that really didn't upset me because I had really written the song for and about myself. I was 37 but I had already lived a packed life, raising up seven kids, with a failing marriage. It was a transitional time for me. I was feeling burdened by life. But I remembered how free and happy I was as a child out where the coyote run. 

"I found myself writing the line 'Or have I changed and rearranged my dreams of long ago?' because I wondered, 'What happened? Have I changed in some essential way? When you're a kid, there's this sense of freedom you have. It's just you and the vast expanse of sagebrush, the endless possibilities you see for your life. Your choices narrow as you age. But there's hope in this song. It's in the frozen river thawing and the fact that nothing changes even as everything does -- that the best part of you, the curious and caring part, remains, and that spring, the season of renewal, follows winter. That's what Basia got me to see." 

And that's why I consider "Coyote's Howl" a stirring anthem for this blog. Unfinished Business is about looking back in order to move ahead in one's life. It's about facing change and adversity with both self-awareness and grace. It's about creating a purpose for your life that involves serving others. And it's about sharing your life story and leaving a positive legacy for future generations, as Cowboy Ernie is doing with his music and mentorship each and every day. 

 

 

COWBOY 101 -- SOME TIDBITS EARNED TAUGHT ME

-- The cowboy's boom era was 1865-1885.  "After the Civil War, there weren't a lot of jobs back East, so the men went West." 

-- A cowboy's main job was to tend to the cattle: to keep them together, bring in strays and strugglers, protect them from rustlers, brand them, herd them to better grazing grounds and drive them along the cattle trails to market. 

-- A cowboy's horse was his most important possession. As one adage went: "A man on foot is no man at all." 

-- Cowboys prided themselves on their strength, bravery and physical skill. They worked from sun-up until dark, didn't get paid much, faced terrible weather and dangers, including prairie fires, storms, blizzards, stampedes, outlaws and Indians. They were loyal to their outfit but also extremely independent and wouldn't stand being reprimanded or bossed around.

-- There was little discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, the Chinese and Jews on the range, according to Ernie. The cowboy creed was, 'if you were here and could do job, we'll hire you.'" 

-- Yodeling plays a big role in cowboy music and lore because "You couldn't communicate with each other without hoops and hollers over the cattle's noise, particularly during the stampede."  Western cowboy yodeling was influenced by alpine yodeling. Ernie's favorite yodeling song is "Cattle Call." He loves "Old Chisholm Trail" because it demonstrates the use of hoops and hollers.  

-- The first known recording of "Home on the Range" was sung by Bill Jack McCurry, a black man who had been a cook in cow camps. He sang it for John Lomax, who recorded it in 1908, in San Antonio, Texas, on an Edison recording machine. "Home on the Range" was initially titled "Western Home." It is sometimes referred to as the cowboy national anthem.

 

COYOTE'S HOWL

by Ernie Sites

First Verse

I grew up with the coyote's howl/ in the hills around my home/where the sagebrush grows and the rabbits run/the gold eagles do fly free. . ./and the wind can blow right through your soul/Lord, where does it come from. . ./I was free and wild as a child/out where the coyotes run/out  where the coyotes run.

Second Verse

I never left this happy land/ the place where I was born/where the tumbleweeds run on and on/just like the days of yore/For fifty years and countless tears/all dried up by the sun/Things have changed, they're not the same/out where the coyotes run/out where the coyotes run.

Bridge

Or have I changed and rearranged my dreams of long ago/Like the rising of the morning mist, how quickly time can go/And the desert plains seem smaller now, the sagebrush not that tall. . ./and I miss the days of my youth/out where the coyotes call/out where the coyotes call.

Third Verse

Time has brought me age/added by the years/And the years have slowed me down, yes, the winter time is near/But like the thawing of a frozen stream/when springtime finally comes/the grass is green and life is new/out where the coyotes run/out where the coyotes run.

Repeat  First Verse

 

To learn more about Cowboy Ernie Sites, visit his website at www.erniesites.com.

To learn about this blog's unofficial film -- the remarkable "Home" by Richard Levine -- click here.

Lee Kravitz is the author of UNFINISHED BUSINESS: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying To Do the Right Thing (Bloomsbury). For a free Toolkit full of tips and strategies on how to tend to your own unfinished business, go to www.MyUnfinishedBusiness.com.

 

 

"I Loved Him, Too"

In response to an article I wrote for USA Weekend magazine about how it's never too late to make amends, Hugs and Cuddles wrote:

"Thirty-nine years ago, my fiancé drowned. I'd been very close to his parents, especially his mother. The minister had told them to take a vacation away from home, and I thought it strange that they didn't talk to me before leaving. I was told they no longer wanted to see me, that my presence, at church and in their home, would be too painful for them. I was also told I wasn't good enough for their son, which is why God took him away! Not wanting to cause them more pain than losing their son, I moved away without another word to them.

"At 58, I made a trip back to my hometown this past summer for a class reunion and decided to relocate there. My dead fiance's mother is now in a care center. Once I worked up the courage to do so, I visited her. The immediate response of hugs and tears proved to me that she never told me to stay away! Her love, gentleness, kindness and acceptance of me, all these years later, have healed so many old wounds!"

 

Have you ever avoided seeing someone because you were afraid that your presence would spark painful memories in them? I did. After my Aunt Fern was institutionalized with schizophrenia in 1995, my entire family avoided seeing her for nearly 14 years because her doctor had allegedly said that our visits could deepen her depression.  In light of Hug and Cuddle's story and the joy that accompanied my reunion with Fern (see "A Place for Me to Visit Her"), would you reconsider your fears about hurting that someone in your life? Why or why not?