Unpacking Ideas

Of course I thought I understood everything in 1976. I was nineteen. C’mon, I knew everything, right? I understood everything, right? Truth is, that winter in 1976 I saw lots of things but understood very little. I can catalogue a long list of poor decisions I made in those days because I “saw” but only thought I understood the world and people around me.

Etzioni and others like him (more and more of them, fortunately) have long been convinced there is hearty middle ground where we can obtain a balance between a commitment to community and the pursuit of self-interest. They believe (me too!) there is hopeful middle ground where you and I can retain our precious personal rights while also remaining diligent in our pursuit of common good.

Of course, we can practice honest nostalgia at many levels. Personally, as a community, as a church, as a nation. The natural human tendency to filter out the bad and remember only the good is the same at any level. In short, I tend to prefer comfortable, though not always accurate, memories whether they are about me, my family, my community or congregation, or my country.

I like to remember rosy, but Janis Ian warned me. Be careful how you remember. Guard your nostalgia. Websters Dictionary defines nostalgia as a “wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to some past period or irrecoverable condition.” Irrecoverable or never there? Do we have a tendency to shine up (or modify) our memories to make them easier to carry around?

Nostalgia. Longing for an idealized past. Hmmm. It’s not that I want to be in the eleventh grade again. But I remember moments, comfortable moments. Jack Bogut in the morning while getting ready for school. Mom making oatmeal for Dad. Bogut and Farkleberry Tarts. Listening to Pittsburgh’s KDKA, hearing so many of those songs for the first time. Here’s one. Where were you when you first heard Dave Loggins’ Please Come to Boston? — the 1974 conversational ballad about a wandering singer. I was a junior in high school in 1974 and would not have admitted to listening to, much less enjoying, such a song.

[What's up with Jack Bogut?  I wrote this article almost a yearago and it still generates a ton of interest.  Go Jack!  Send me an e-mail to tell me what you liked most about Bogut In The Morning:  jeff@unpackingideas.org] Every morning I heard Jack Bogut’s voice.   Before school while Mom cooked Dad’s oatmeal, the radio would be tuned to KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh [...]