'Just Free-Associating...

...from a name in the news to a book worth re-reading, with a few side-trips along the way.

The name “Lorenz” is in the news, and not in a good way. One Taylor Lorenz, a so-called “journalist,” is one of the leading voices conflating the actions of Daniel Penny (just acquitted of wrongdoing in the subway incident in which he stepped up and stepped in to subdue a mentally-disturbed person threatening to harm other subway riders) and the accused murderer of the CEO of a multinational health insurance company.

Lorenz paints both as “vigilantes,” but has more sympathy for the CEO’s shooter than for the former Marine. She is hardly alone in this. In the Bizarro World of Woke-ism, Penny (who is white) is a racist who was only too eager to put a homeless Black man in a fatal chokehold. Never mind that it wasn’t a chokehold, that many of the passengers whom Penny was protecting were Black, and that other Black men helped Penny restrain the troublemaker.

Lorenz and her ilk also opine that the healthcare CEO deserved to be gunned down because of the “tens of thousands of Americans” who have been “murdered” by health insurance companies denying their claims. And so she condones his assassination, or at least “understands” it. That’s reminiscent of the way that the late comic Sam Kinison used to say, “I don’t condone wife-beating, but I can understand it” (except that when Kinison said that, it was funny).

OK. I’ll admit to having mixed feelings about denial of claims by health insurance companies, but not to the point that I think that murder is the solution, because, as Jerry Seinfeld would say, I’m not a psycho. [More on Seinfeld in a moment.]

My view of Daniel Penny’s brand of “vigilantism,” however, is much clearer and completely approving. On several occasions in my life I have stepped into similar situations in which order needed to be restored.

I’m sure I was “imprinted” by an incident from my childhood. I was only about 7 or 8 years old when, returning home with me, my mom and my baby sister, my dad told us to wait while he strode across the street like a Texas Ranger to help break up a big melee on our streetcorner. It was none of his business, but he didn’t hesitate to do the right thing and step into the fray.

One of those times I stepped up was during my early years in Kansas City, when I witnessed an attempted abduction of a woman on the Country Club Plaza. It was certainly none of my business, but I chose to intervene, and I was later honored with a “Good Citizenship” award, part of which was a walnut-stained KCPD wooden baton, with gold braid and a metal plate engraved with my name and the signature of Clarence M. Kelley, the Chief of Police.

A little side-story: I kept that baton on the dashboard of my van during my hippie years, and once, on a Puget Sound ferry, a couple of cops took issue with my having a “weapon” on my dashboard. I pointed out that it was not a weapon but an award, and drew their attention to Kelley’s name, telling them “the man who gave me this award happens to now be the Director of the FBI; he told me to display it proudly to let people know I’m one of the good guys.” They decided to not press the matter.

Speaking of Seinfeld, fans of that show will remember that, in the final episode, Jerry and his friends were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to a year in prison for failing to intervene in a crime they were witnessing. Given the political climate that gave rise to Daniel Penny being prosecuted for his intervention, I wonder if that final episode of Seinfeld could be made today.

My main thought, however, on being exposed to the topsy-turvy “morality” of Ms. Taylor Lorenz, was to hope that she is in no way related to Konrad Lorenz, the late Austrian zoologist and animal behaviorist who observed and named the phenomenon of “imprinting” and who wrote, among other things, Man Meets Dog, which should be required reading for anyone who loves dogs and even for those who do not.

Konrad Lorenz notes, for example, that dogs and cats are the only two species that occupy our households without being literal prisoners, but while dogs have altered almost every aspect of their lives to accommodate living with humans, cats are essentially just as untamed as their ancient forbears.

This is a book which explains all aspects of the relationship between dogs and humans, from the ancient origins of the bond between them to the subtleties of dog body language and behavior.

I’m happy to say that, as far as I can determine, Ms.Lorenz the “journalist” is in no way related to Dr. Lorenz!

And so I will dismiss the opinions of Ms. Lorenz, and hope that they will gain no “traction” and have no “resonance” and that she and those who harbor and promulgate such opinions will soon fade into well-deserved obscurity.

But I will thank her for reminding me of Konrad Lorenz, and inspiring me to read his book again. I’ve already started, and, like many great works, it is even more satisfying and enlightening the second time around.

I do notice, however, that if I were Dr. Lorenz’s editor, I would make his paragraphs shorter. As a writer and editor, I’m a big fan of shorter paragraphing, and feel that most writers, regardless of topic, would be better served by striving to be more like Hemingway and less like Faulkner.

Man Meets Dog is a perfect book for me to re-read at this particular time in my life, because I have just about had it with people and have become even more dependent on my dog for companionship (an attitude that Dr. Lorenz addresses), and yet I can see that my dog’s days are even more numbered than my own, and I’m forced to contemplate life without even a dog for company.

I’ve been known to respond to people asking “Is that a service animal?” by saying, “Yes, he helps me maintain my sanity.”

While the presidential election and the prospect of a general return to common sense and sanity should fill me with hope, the attention paid to persons like Ms. Lorenz, plus the state of things around me, are immensely depressing. All around me, things are failing: the health of my home’s furnace, of my van’s transmission, of my dog and my own body. And what I thought was a shot at romance (which I’ve lived without for years, but the prospect still tempts me) proved imaginary. This winter bodes cold and lonely; the future looks bleak.

But, even as I confront the possibility of freezing to death in my own house, alone, perhaps without even my dog for warmth, at least I’ll have a good book to curl up with.

ST

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

— Groucho Marx