Shall the Circle be Unbroken?

So much for the first Monday of Advent this year.

I had hung our usual Christmas wreaths on our house last Friday.  One on the front door, one on the brick post between the garage doors, and a big one - about five feet wide - between two front windows.  The big one has about 400 white lights on it that look elegant at night.

Except that as I drove away to a dinner party Saturday evening, I noticed that one section of the lights on the big wreath were off.  Creating a black, gaping chunk in the circle of elegant white dots, like an incomplete "G".

Rats!

So this morning, assuming the fix would be as easy as replacing a burned-out bulb, I went out with some spares and found what I believed to be the miscreant bulb.  And replaced it.

No good.  Half of the strand still wouldn't light.

Two hours later, and about a dozen of those itty-bitty fuses that I'd popped in the process, I managed to get the lights working... as much as they had been before I started my little project.  Along the way, I'd managed to short out half of the wreath, and had to figure out what fuses I'd blown where to get back to the functionality I had two hours earlier.

I'd also cut wires around what I refused to admit might not even be the miscreant bulb - could some other short somewhere be the culprit? - and spliced together the wires in several combinations before managing to find something that wouldn't pop even more fuses.  In retrospect, I suppose I should be grateful that along the way, I didn't take my neighborhood off the grid for a little while, although I did touch live wires more often than was probably good for me.

But hey - they were only little jolts.

So after two hours and only just managing to salvage the project to the point where I'd begun, with only the short section not working, I figured that my only available option would be to unwind the section of lights from the wreath, buy a new strand at the hardware store, and replace the lights.

Except that when I started unwinding the existing strand, I discovered that little green clips were holding each light in place.  Did I mention that this wreath was pre-lit, or pre-strung, or whatever they call it?  Back when I'd been employed, several years ago, I'd paid about $100 for this pre-lit wreath, figuring it would save all the hassle of trying to string lights on a large wreath by hand.  Considering how planned obsolescence is built into everything these days, maybe the several years we've enjoyed this wreath has been longer than its manufacturers had hoped it would last anyway.

But getting back to those little green clips.  Each one was doing its noble job exceptionally well - keeping the wires for each light tightly bound to its fake evergreen branch.  Even though they were plastic, they were surprisingly sturdy, and before long, I realized I was stripping most of the flimsy, fire-retardant evergreen leaves off of the branches as I wrestled with removing the clips.

Who'd have thought de-lighting a wreath would be so destructive a process?

I ended up getting my clippers and snipping the electric wires around those lights I'd been working on, so as to minimize the overall damage to the wreath.  Forget the lights, I figured; we'll save money on electricity, and the wreath can still look nice for anybody who sees it during the day.

Plus, my father has never liked Christmas lights on houses.  Reminds him too much of tacky Coney Island, he says.  And quite frankly, from my many memories of Christmases spent in Brooklyn, I know what he's referring to.  Row houses boasting garish displays of blinking lights and cheap plastic illuminated ornaments in each window would line the streets, assaulting passers-by with a dizzying spectacle reminiscent of the midway at Coney Island or even Times Square.

Not that my one large wreath could mimic those gaudy Brooklyn displays.  In fact, compared with the light displays some people here in Arlington pay professionals to install each Christmas, it could almost be considered insignificant.  So, I guess this year, when darkness falls each evening, and my three wreaths become shrouded by night, passersby won't have a clue that they even exist.

That's not the worst thing in the world, is it? At least, with all the lights off, the circle is unbroken.

I was never interested in giving the legendary Clark Griswold any competition anyway.
_____

Tuesday Update: A neighbor with whom I shared my plight took it upon herself to purchase some new strands of white lights for me when she was at a hardware store last night! So yes, the circle will be unbroken yet again.

Over Rivers and Through Woods

The rivers were stern and steely.

The woods dark and bleak.

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house in Maine was never as enjoyable at Thanksgiving time as it was in the summertime.

Granted, we usually didn't visit Maine during the summers, since the weather then was conducive for my grandparents driving to upstate New York, where we lived when I was a boy.

And isn't there something genuinely American about spending this very New England of holidays in, well, New England?

So my parents would excuse my brother and me out of school on the Wednesday of Thanksgiving week, and we'd spend the day driving down the New York State Thruway from Oneida, across the Hudson River somewhere either above or below Albany, through the quaint New England countryside, to the sprawling Piscataqua River dividing New Hampshire from Maine, and on into the lonely, remote Pine Tree State.

By then we'd be approaching dusk. Maine's namesake trees, lining the state's Turnpike like weathered warriors standing at attention, would seem even taller when my father turned off of the freeway - our last link to modern civilization - and onto the even more rural roads leading to Sedgwick, along the rocky Atlantic Coast.

Those spindly, oblong triangles in their shadows of dark greens and grays rushed alongside our car as we bounced over narrow, poorly-maintained roads, pock-marked and rutted by freezing winters and incessantly wet summers.  My grandfather worked for the state's highway department, and it wasn't until I was an adult and I realized how poor Maine was, and how brutal its climate, that I appreciated how the hard work my family claimed he put into his job really was hard, dreary work.  Just to keep the roads as good as they were!

By the time we reached my grandparent's tidy, tiny house between Sedgwick and Sargentville, the sky was inky black.  There were no streetlights, and if there was no snow, the landscape would be as black as the sky, so you couldn't tell where earth ended and the heavens began.

Morning's light - what light there was at this dreary time of year - would reveal a splendid view of the reach, the wide body of water between the mainland and Deer Isle, a couple of miles away.  Even though my grandparents lived across the road and up a broad field from the shore, the view aways captivated me, the rhythmic lapping of the waves and tides almost soothing in their dependability.

Of course, my grandparents did have electricity, but otherwise, visiting them always seemed an exercise in Spartan living.  For years, they didn't have a television - not even a black-and white.  I remember they used to have a party line telephone, which meant than whenever somebody along their line got a call, everybody knew it.  One ring was so-and-so, two rings was Mrs. Somebody down the road, four rings was that family that ran the home heating oil company.  Grammie and Grampa's was three rings.  We had to wait and listen for the number of rings to know if you had to answer the phone, and everybody was on the honor system regarding each other's shared privacy.

We'd have a feast for sure on Thanksgiving day, even if my brother and I were quite bored with those early years of no television.  But then, my own parents didn't buy one until I entered Kindergarten and came home one day, asking them who Mr. Rogers was.

My grandfather had a large tool shed reeking of musty age, with virtually every board built into the place looking like it was older than Moses.  This being near the salty sea, all the iron - from nails to infrequently used tools - were rusty.  But he had fascinating stuff in there, illuminated only by ancient windows with wavy glass that people prize today for its historic aesthetic.  Some of his tools were certifiable antiques, stacked in corners in the dark, where even in the middle of a sunny afternoon, you couldn't really make out what lurked in the shadows.  There's a fine line between intrigue and spooky, and usually it didn't take me very long to let the latter win out over the former, and I'd leave my father and grandfather to their guy talk inside that shed.

A narrow, shallow brook came down from the hills behind their house and meandered over past the side yard, eventually ducking under the road and dipping down along the meadow across the road down to the reach.  Along its course through my grandparent's back yard, I could sometimes stand on its icy top while still watching the water run freely below me.  Every now and then, the ice really wasn't thick enough, and my foot would slush through, sinking to the sandy bottom of the brook, usually a mere six or ten inches down.  Enough to get my foot and leg wet up to my knee, yet without getting dirty enough to make my Mom really mad when I went indoors.  There was a simple bridge, of course, that I could have used to cross the brook, but what fun would that have been?

Relatives and family friends would stop by to see us, since back then, a lot of people in town knew my Mom and her family.  There were only about 500 people in an area almost the size of Brooklyn.  Nowadays, everybody except about a dozen people is a stranger to Mom, since most of the homes owned by the old-timers have been sold to summer residents and people "from away."

Since we'd be going to my Dad's side of the family at Christmastime in New York City, we'd celebrate Christmas with my grandparents on Thanksgiving night.  The presents my brother and I received from them were never tremendously exciting, contrary to the loot we'd haul in from my Dad's mother and sister in Gotham.  No, my grandparents not only had little money, they had little choice in terms of stores to shop. 

Back then, as now, Sedgwick managed with just a small village store for the bare essentials.  The next-closest town, Blue Hill, about fifteen minutes away, had a venerable dry goods shop, plus a drug store.  After Blue Hill came Ellsworth, another fifteen minutes away, which boasted a Dunkin' Donuts and a few medium-sized stores. Nevertheless, this being Maine, even their selection tended towards the practical, not the fun or luxurious.

One year, my brother and I each got a brand-new metal wastebasket.  Another year, we each got a used steel toolbox with some equally-used screwdrivers and wrenches in them.  Yet somehow, my brother and I never seemed too disappointed with the austerity of those Christmases.  Partly, probably, because we knew we'd be spoiled rotten the next month in Brooklyn.  But maybe also partly because my parents would give us a strict lecture at some point on that boring drive into Maine about understanding Grammie and Grampa weren't made of money and we need to be thankful for whatever we received.

It wasn't like they gave us coal, either, was it?  I mean, a wastebasket isn't glamorous, but every time I threw something away in my bedroom back home, I'd remember my grandparents.  Sometimes I'd even second-guess whether what I was throwing away couldn't be repurposed somehow.  Like my grandparents themselves would do with a lot of things.  And I still have the toolbox, minus most of those original tools, here in Texas.  It was certainly one of the more masculine gifts I've ever been given, even if any hopes Grampa may have had that I would become a handy Mr. Fixit were wasted.

Demanding physical labor was a hallmark of my grandparents' generation, particularly in impoverished places like Maine. Neither men nor women there, even if their tasks fell along gender-specific lines, enjoyed many of the innovative employee benefits other Americans won from the Industrial Revolution.  What days off and vacations Mainers had were rarely filled with recreational pursuits.  In the spring, there were vegetable gardens to be planted, and then weeded in the summers.  In the fall, there was wood to be cut, and in the winters, snow to shovel. From the roof. Not to mention fishing, clamming, and hunting - not for sport, but for food. And that was for people who didn't own farms.  Farmers had even more work.

Nobody had new cars there except the summer people.  Store-bought clothes were status symbols.  Yet houses were usually crisply painted, yards neatly trimmed, and the food incredibly delicious.  Grammie made the only soup I've ever really liked - a chicken broth with rice and vegetables that my Mom, Grammie's daughter, has never been able to replicate.  Grammie finally got a gas stove, but she always relied on her old, black, cast-iron monster of a stove that squatted menacingly next to a well-worn dining table. Tiny squares of thick glass in its oven door glowed from orange fires that raged nearly constantly inside.

The warmth from that stove - heat, actually - could make you sweat even while a blizzard raged outside, with wind whipping snow and pellets of ice against the windows, and electricity - one of the few truly modern amenities in the house - flickering in fear of the maelstrom.

And my grandparents, well-worn Mainers seasoned by decades of such weather, serenely listening to music on the radio, playing board games with us, or waiting to hear from my grandfather's supervisor at the depot if roads needed to be plowed.  Three rings on the phone, and Grampa almost didn't need to pick it up to know his answer.  Grammie would instantly furnish a lunchbox with coffee and a hearty meal lovingly wrapped up inside, and off he'd go, into snow and ice and blackness, until the storm moved off to sea.

Grampa died during one of Maine's spectacular summer days, after he'd retired, sitting with Grammie in their set of hand-crafted Adirondack chairs, looking out across the road, down the meadow, and across the sparking reach.  The state's bitter winters are made tolerable by those few yet perfect summer days God bestows on the hardy folk of coastal Maine. Grammie had gone inside to get themselves something to drink, and she glanced out the kitchen window over the sink to the side yard, where she saw Grampa's head quietly, softly bow forwards.  And she knew he wasn't napping.

I still have those hand-crafted Adirondack chairs, still wearing their same old baby-blue-colored lead paint.  And whenever I see them, like whenever I saw that cheap metal wastebasket, I think of my grandparents.

I think of those dreary rides on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  I think of Grammie's delicious chicken soup, and that fearsome black stove on which she cooked it.  I think of my Grampa faithfully trudging off to plow deserted roads during yet another blizzard.

And I am thankful.
_____

Old Fashion Retailing

"There's no such thing as a short-sleeved dress shirt."

Years ago, I worked my way through college at an upscale mens' clothier called Jas. K. Wilson.  As you can tell, even its name was old-fashioned: "Jas" with a period is the old-English abbreviation for James. And it's not pronounced, as some people think, "jazz;" but voiced as the complete word, "James."

Being a traditional full-service store, we had such features as custom gift-wrapping, on-site tailoring, and full-time cashiers - things hardly any retailer offers today.  Our store staffed a full compliment of sales people on the floor, so customers didn't have to hunt for assistance.  We sent out thank-you cards to customers, and were expected to follow the old retailing mantra that "the customer is always right."

Even when they're wrong.

Okay, I added that last bit myself.  Except actually, when it came to the subject of short-sleeved dress shirts, we could point out the error of the customer's ways.  For years, when anyone erroneously assumed we'd carry such a garment as a dress shirt with short sleeves, we were allowed to politely advise him or her that truthfully, a dress shirt only comes with long sleeves.

Anything that looks like a dress shirt but has short sleeves isn't officially a dress shirt. Not even here, in our Texas heat.

Shopping is a Sport in Dallas

Jas. K. Wilson was eponymously named for a Dallas entrepreneur who'd built up a small chain of gentlemans' clothing shops, before selling them to Hart Schaffner and Marx, the Chicago-based manufacturer of handcrafted business suits.  Wilson rode an early wave of Dallas' population boom after World War II, and even though their original flagship location on Dallas' Main Street had long since closed before I started working for the firm, their location at north Dallas' NorthPark Center, one of the world's pioneering enclosed shopping malls, ran neck-and-neck consistently with the corporation's top stores in New York and Chicago.

In fact, when one CEO of Hartmarx, the corporate entity for Hart Schaffner and Marx, left to head luxury toy retailer FAO Schwarz, he contrived to boot the Jas. K. Wilson store at NorthPark from one of the mall's most coveted spaces for FAO's new Dallas emporium.  At the time, it was a big scandal in our local retailing world.  I remember offering to help move the entire stock of our NorthPark store from its prized, sprawling location to a hidden hole in another part of the mall - the only storefront available on such short notice.  What a ludicrous mess that was - trying to cram so much merchandise into so much smaller a space.

And such a slap in the face to a retailer with the legacy it had enjoyed for years in the Dallas area.

I started working in their Arlington store when I was still a junior in high school.  Back then, even though everybody else already had computerized cash registers, we wrote up every bill of sale by hand.  It could take forever!  And then we would turn around and peck the sale into a cumbersome, monstrous cash register. 

We had a dapper, elderly black man who worked as the porter, making sure merchandise from our daily deliveries arrived onto the selling floor so we didn't have to get ourselves dirty in the stockroom.  When the elderly gentleman retired, he was replaced by a part-time college student, just a few years older than myself.  But that didn't last very long - the college student, a gregarious, fun-loving guy whose only flair for traditionalism was his conventional collegiate binge drinking, didn't last too long.  And when he left, so did the position of porter in our store.  After that, we had to take turns wrestling with boxes and racks in the stockroom ourselves.

We all wore suits in those days - even the female employees.  These were the heady days of newly-empowered career women, when ladies of the office began wearing stern black suits to announce the cracks in corporate America's glass ceiling.  We even had a small department off to the side of the store called "Corporate Woman," which featured these dark suits, tailored with the same craftsmanship as the suits we sold to men.  But we men weren't allowed to sell in the Corporate Woman boutique, although several female customers wanted one of our particularly handsome young salesmen to. 

Actually, that guy ended up dating country-western siren Tanya Tucker...

Mall Wars

Speaking of celebrities, I once got to utter those immortal words, "How may I help you?" to actor Charles Bronson when he wandered into our store one afternoon.  His wife had been undergoing treatment at the renowned Arlington Cancer Center here in town, and I guess he'd decided to see what our local mall looked like.  He didn't buy anything, but then again, when your wife is suffering from cancer, clothes shopping is not especially a priority for a man.

Our mall wasn't anything to wow an A-list Hollywood actor, anyway.  It was nice enough, for Arlington, as 1980's suburban malls went.  It was called "Six Flags Mall" after the six national governments Texas has had:  Spain, France, Mexico, the republic of Texas, the Confederacy, and the United States.  It boasted all the national chain stores along one level, a subdued southwest design motif, and lots of palm trees and other plants that malls just don't spend the money on today.  We also had live plants throughout our store, professionally tended every week by a florist.  They added an appealing ambiance, nestled among racks of clothing, or decorating the opulent billiard table gracing the center of the store.

Unfortunately, as nice as Six Flags Mall was, it wasn't alluring.  So as Arlington continued to experience explosive growth, another mall was built several miles away.  And since new construction always draws a crowd, shoppers immediately flocked to the new mall from the day it opened.  Six Flags Mall's owners scrambled to construct a new wing and refurbish everything else, but it was too little too late.

Short-Sighted Selling

Our own store was caught in the fate that comes from failing to keep up with the new, too.  For all of the money Hartmarx spent on salaries for MBA-degreed buyers and executives, first at our divisional offices in Dallas, and then at our corporate headquarters in Chicago, they all failed to catch the increasingly popular business-casual phenomenon sweeping offices across America.

We salespeople heard about it from our customers, who were buying up our sportswear far faster than our suits, but our corporate bosses thought it was simply because suits cost more than khaki pants and golf shirts.  It was our fault for not selling more suits.

That's the way things typically went at Jas. K. Wilson.  If we had a good month, it was because corporate had done things right.  If we had a bad month, it was because the sales staff had gotten lazy.  Never mind the fact that nobody I ever met from corporate had ever worked on a retail sales floor in their life.  They all assumed that their college business classes provided better insight on how customers buy than actual, personal experience.

I vividly remember the Saturday one of our local executives, Mr. M., a short, brusque man who never smiled except in condescension, came to our store to show us how to sell.  We staffers all hovered around like cowed schoolboys after one of our spitwads had accidentally hit the teacher.  And Mr. M., with his gruff, no-nonsense voice and stiff mannerisms, aggressively pounced on each and every soul who had the misfortune of walking into our store that morning.

He spoke so fast that customers couldn't understand him.  And he was deaf in one ear, so when customers asked him to repeat what he'd just said, he'd scowl, cock his head, and shoot back, "What?"

Mr. Marcus may have sold a shirt or two that morning, but not nearly enough to prove that he knew more than we did about selling stuff.  He left quietly and quickly at lunchtime, and when we'd realized he'd gone, we staffers felt like running out into the mall to invite our scared customers back into the store so they could now shop in comfort!

Don't Worry, Be Happy

By the time corporate realized the tide in office apparel had turned, and that business-casual was here to stay, it was too late for Jas. K. Wilson.  Our once-mighty NorthPark store had died an ignominious death in yet another shell of a space.  Our new mall in Arlington had pretty much decimated customer traffic at Six Flags Mall, and several of our sister stores in the area were closing because of demographic shifts, as affluent customers continued to move further out into newer suburbs.

However, the last straw had nothing to do with completely botching the business-casual trend, or not moving to newer malls in newer areas, or us not knowing how to sell shirts, ties, shoes, suits, and womens' blouses.  It came, as we understood it, from two top executives at Hartmarx up in Chicago.

To avoid filing for bankruptcy protection, Hartmarx put all of its stores up for liquidation, so its legacy suit manufacturing division could be salvaged.  By then, none of us were surprised at that development, but we were stunned to hear some scuttlebutt a few days later that those two top executives had absconded to the Caribbean after allegedly looting the company's coffers.

How much of that is true we could never determine.  But it seemed to fit a pattern of irresponsibility that had been emanating from the exclusive Wacker Drive skyscraper Hartmarx leased in Chicago's Loop.  And it evaporated what morale was left after learning our stores were being dumped from underneath our feet.

In the end, I wound up being the store manager at Six Flags the day it officially shut forever, which was indeed a somber event.  What few staffers remained filed out of the back door, I followed behind them, and gave the keys to the representative of the liquidation firm handling the closing.  The liquidators would return later and finish removing whatever hadn't already been sold off.

The next day, I drove to another store nearby and helped do the same thing with their liquidation.

What an inauspicious way for the revered Jas. K. Wilson legacy to end.  Not that being a clothing salesperson would ever have been my dream job.  Looking back, however, it's been the longest single period of employment I've had in my life.

And it wasn't all a waste.  It got me through college.  It trained me in selling, and even in the intricacies of how a proper silk tie is constructed - and tied.  Regular readers of this blog probably don't believe me, but working at Jas. K. Wilson taught me the art of diplomacy, the respect one can earn from simple hard work (and that I shouldn't expect respect from folks at corporate), and how to think on my feet.

Some Things Don't Go Out of Fashion

One of the elderly gentlemen with whom I had the privilege of working, Coy Garrison, would repeat himself often, and was just as hard of hearing as the younger Mr. M.  He also didn't see very well, despite his extraordinarily thick glasses.  Even after a customer would make a decision on, say, a shirt and matching tie, Coy would linger beneath a nearby light bulb, straining to check and see if the two items really did go together. 

Because of his age, Coy assumed the position of elder statesman on our sales floor, and when business was slow (and even when it wasn't), he'd often hold court along the dress shirt wall, with its white stucco arches, and rows and rows of glass display cubes, sharing bits of wisdom from years in the business.

Of all the bits of wisdom he'd share, he'd repeat his unwavering belief that if they didn't do military service, every person should spend at least a year in retail after they left school.

In retail, Coy argued, you meet all sorts of people, both as customers and co-workers.  And especially managers.  You have to learn how to make your own way, how to educate yourself on the merits of a product, and how to share what you've learned with a person who may have had, until that point, no interest at all in what you wanted to sell them.

And, perhaps most importantly, Coy taught that you weren't going to sell everybody what you wanted to sell them.  But selling or not selling wasn't as important as how you did it.  Whether you sold them or not, Coy would always preach that you should conduct yourself with enough integrity so that you could go home with a clear conscience, get a good night's sleep, and get up the next day to do it all over again.

Maybe not the most profound words anybody's ever said.

But no less true than there being no such thing as a short-sleeved dress shirt.

The bottom of an old advertisement I found online.
Merritt Schaefer & Brown and Frank Bros. were sister Hartmarx stores in our division here in Texas.

From Zuccotti Park to Sixth Avenue

Almost two months to the day, and Occupy Wall Street may be sputtering to a close as strangely as it began.

Back in September, it took a couple of days before most of the mainstream media picked up on the fact that somebody was trying to hold a demonstration in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park. And then once the TV cameras arrived, it seemed every 1960's radical and their grandchildren wanted a slice of the hippie drum-and-chant action. Juxtaposed ironically enough with the staid, blue-suited businesspeople who slave away in the concrete canyons of the Financial District.

It made for great street theater. For a while, at least. And then New York's ubiquitous homeless people started moving in, blending with the rapidly-grungifying occupiers and enjoying free gourmet feasts from liberal-leaning restaurateurs.

Then New York's famed con-artists and pickpockets started moving in, stealing everything from cots to $5,000 Apple laptops.

And then the tide began to turn. What once was just the latest tourist attraction, in a city known for letting anybody speak their mind regardless of validity, became just obnoxious. Not only to the so-called One Percenters who work Downtown, but to everyday New Yorkers, growing increasingly irritated that their hard-earned money was going to prop up security and sanitation for protesters who'd come from across the country to celebrate slovenly bohemianism.

It wasn't even like these new bohemians ever even managed to come up with a purpose statement, or a list of demands, or even a rallying cry. No logo, no tagline, no clear and consistent message. Besides the grunge and the noise and the filth, that is. And the stolen $5,000 laptop. From a group of people claiming poverty.

Now they're threatening to stage a massive protest near Wall Street on Thursday, then spreading out via the Subway to the outer boroughs.  They've already inconvenienced plenty of Manhattanites and ruined what little success they had at wooing native support.  So now they think going into the poor and middle-class ethnic enclaves of the city's first-generation immigrants - people who've chosen to live in America, because it's better than where they came from - will help their cause?

The Only Thing Occupiers Have Taught Me

Honestly, about the only thing I've learned from Occupy Wall Street is that New Yorkers actually do now call the former Liberty Park by it's post-9/11 name, Zuccotti Park. Back when I worked in Lower Manhattan, the black-granite strip of a park near the World Trade Center hardly even had a name. It was where people ate lunch and waited for commuter buses after work, but it had no real identity.

While doing some research about the World Trade Center's reconstruction last year, I learned that the park's name had changed, but I thought it was something like what the city did with Sixth Avenue during the 1940's.  In those days, most of Sixth Avenue, which runs uptown from Greenwich Village to Central Park, was dangerous and dirty, so New York's leaders thought a quick way to try and enhance its image would be to re-name it "Avenue of the Americas." 

Yeah... what you're thinking is what most New Yorkers thought - and still think - about "Avenue of the Americas."  So the grandiose nomenclature never caught on.  Sixth Avenue is still Sixth Avenue.  Not helping the new name's fate was the fact that its honoree, the Organization of American States, remains an association of which few people have heard, and about which even fewer people care.

The fact that Sixth Avenue has metamorphosed into a steel and glass canyon flanked by block after block of corporate skyscrapers has nothing to do with the street's unfortunate name change.

So now Liberty Park is called Zuccotti Park.  But this name change isn't another Sixth Avenue re-branding attempt.  John Zuccotti was a former planning commissioner for New York City, and is currently a co-chairman of Brookfield Office Properties, a real estate management company.  Brookfield owns the black metal tower, One Liberty Plaza, which used to be the headquarters for US Steel, and is the park's northern neighbor.

Brookfield got to re-name the park after cleaning it up after the attack on the World Trade Center because, well, they own it.  US Steel originally created the park in the 1960's so they could build a taller skyscraper than would have otherwise been allowed on the site, and Brookfield got the park when they took control of the office building.

Which is why they could authorize Mayor Michael Bloomberg to clear out the protesters' squatter camp after nearly two months of indulging their petulant drain on city resources, not to mention the neighborhood's patience.

Occupiers Have Damaged True Reform Efforts

I probably won't get a lot of push-back from right-wingers when I say that I'm more open-minded about socioeconomic concerns than many conservatives. But when I say that the only thing I learned from Occupy Wall Street was that the name Zuccotti Park had really caught-on amongst New Yorkers, that's a severe indictment against what was supposed to be an earth-shaking movement.

A movement to do what, we don't know.

Which may have just made all of the other problems we think Occupy Wall Street wanted to highlight that much less legitimate in the eyes of people who, as the Occupiers claimed, control the purse strings in our country.

In other words, the real issues of persistently high unemployment, declining living standards for America's middle class, taxpayer-funded bailouts to companies with refreshed profit margins, the offshoring of jobs, and ridiculously high executive compensation standards may have become, by the Occupiers' quixoticness, much more marginalized in the eyes of people who didn't believe these were problems to begin with.

Meanwhile, the drumbeat of ominous statistics purportedly proving the shrinking of our middle class continues, with a report in today's New York Times of a new study showing how low-income and high-income areas have mushroomed in over 100 of America's largest urban areas.  Both poor and rich folk appear to be taking over neighborhoods that in 1970 were considered predominantly middle-class.

Many conservatives scoff at the notion that our middle class is shrinking, preferring to consider the numbers liberal politicians and the media use to make such claims as statistical aberrations or manipulations to bias the masses against the rich.  My question to these nay-sayers is this:  what harm is it to monitor and bolster capitalism's efforts at preserving our middle class, since we all know our middle class has been the economic engine that's fueled America for the past sixty years?

Besides, the news in this newest report isn't all bad for wealth-driven conservatives.  Indeed, the suggestion that rich neighborhoods are growing could be interpreted as an economic success story.  At least if you ignore the additional detail that those burgeoning rich neighborhoods aren't densely populated with rich people.  At least not as densely populated as the also-growing low-income neighborhoods.

This means that not only has the middle class experienced the reallocation of some within its former ranks "to the East Side," as the iconic theme song from the 1970's sitcom, The Jeffersons, phrases it.  This also means that many people who used to be middle class are neither that any more, nor rich.

They're poor.

Which means we could be moving towards a two-class economic system in the United States.  A scenario that does not bode well for economic growth, or even economic stability.

Unless you think it's a good thing that we'll soon have lots more poor people whose only hope is to somehow bounce back into the middle class.

Anyway, should conservatives who balk at claims our middle class is in decline automatically assume that the possibility refutes their robust version of free-market capitalism?  What are two of the things I join with conservatives in complaining about?  Big government and government waste, right?  And to the extent these two suffocators of middle class vibrancy are the result not of conservative policy, but liberal, shouldn't we be working hard to prove that the demonstrators in Zuccotti Park need to see reality for what it is?

Our economic reality isn't all corporate greed and inhumanity: two things anybody not on the Koch brothers' payroll knows are real problems.  But our problems include plain old government coddling of overpaid union labor, government complicity in generational poverty, unreasonable government regulations which restrict small business profitability, and government intransigence in adopting an equitable tax code.

Making Zuccotti Park Mean Something

Let's face it:  the rich hardly ever win in the long term against the poor, because there are always more disgruntled poor people than rich ones.  The benefit of having a majority of the population enjoying the middle class is that rich autocrats have a pacified buffer between themselves and the low-rung rabble.

So even if the One Percenters have no altruistic interests in preserving the middle class, they should find one key benefit in making sure you and I don't slip into poverty.

In a capitalist society, we save their necks.

Yes, these past two months in Zuccotti Park has been a complete waste of time and taxpayer resources.  And conservatives can be excused for not engaging in dialog with the Occupiers because we've not known who they want us to talk with, and even what they would want to talk about.  That's their fault.

But it's our fault if we just mock them and assume the resentment and indignation they've demonstrated is pure piffle and liberalistic extravagance.  If as I suspect, their invasion of the outer boroughs tomorrow meets with the outrage and contempt of even more ordinary New Yorkers, the Occupy Wall Street movement will likely crumble in a heap of ignominy.

Instead of letting these protesters limp back home even more bitter than they were two months ago, however, Republicans should take the initiative to rally around grievances that our middle class has already identified as being near and dear to our collectively conservative hearts.  In our presidential candidacy debates, let's focus on issues and solutions, not soundbites and personalities.  In our public dialog, let's remind America why big government can't fix our problems. And let's put Democrats in Washington on the defensive when it comes to claiming valid compromises for cutting government spending, reducing our debt, and removing trivial business regulations.

Zuccotti Park is owned by a multi-national corporation with Fortune 100 clients.  Brookfield has bent over backwards to let Occupy Wall Street run its erstwhile course.  That's a pretty good message about capitalism being more than just ruthless profits, isn't it?

Why aren't we claiming that message for the country?

Maybe conservatives should Occupy Avenue of the Americas.
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Reviewing "The Baker's Wife"

Have you ever read a Christian thriller?

Neither had I, until last month, when my editor at Crosswalk.com asked me to review a book by Christian suspense novelist Erin Healy.

Somewhat dubious about the genre, I gamely said I would, and surprised myself by actually reading it all the way through without laughing out loud.  I even found myself flipping page after page, having become so engrossed in the story that, as the saying goes, "I couldn't put it down."

Amazing.  Especially for somebody like me, who "doesn't do new well," as one of my best friends is fond of saying.

My review came out today on Crosswalk, and while you might not be thinking you'll want to buy the book, see if what I write about it changes your mind:

Review of The Baker's Wife by Erin Healy
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Penn State Crimes Compel End of Others' Silence

Giving a voice to all the victims of sex crimes, whose legacy the Penn State travesty has brought to the fore, a courageous friend of mine wrote an op-ed piece for today's Washington Post.

I don't do this often, so you know I'm serious when I say you've gotta read it here.
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I'm Jealous of Steve Jobs

I have a confession to make.

I'm jealous of Steve Jobs.

I'd love to be able to love only my loved ones, and freely express contempt for the people I don't love.  I'd love to be able to bully my way into projects, boardrooms, and design studios and dazzle everybody with my wonderful ideas, while I push people to depression and divorce like a slave driver.

I'd love to have billions of dollars in the bank and not have anybody complain about how I'm not spending any of it on charity.

I'd love to create products environmentalists love so much that they can't bring themselves to complain too loudly about my suppliers in China who are fouling their countryside while manufacturing those products.

I'd love to have the time to dither away on inconsequential decisions and abstract concepts, foisting my opinion of aesthetics on others and claiming it's simply superior to anything they could have imagined themselves.

I'd love to be able to get away with all of this, and at my death, be held in admiration and sheer awe, rather than pity and shame at all my faults.

Because Jobs created so many good things, his life apparently has been indemnified from all of the bad things he perpetrated on other people.

Yeah, he was a miserable person, but a fabulous genius, whose temperament and petulance can be waived in light of all the ways he changed our society for what we consider to be the better.

When I make mistakes, and complain too much, and think my ideas are better than somebody else's, people feel free to say I'm wrong, that it's not my place to point out other people's faults, and that my opinion is only worth the same as anybody else's.  And my detractors believe they have the legitimacy to put me in my place because I'm not creating fun new toys for them to play with.

In our consumeristic society, I suppose that's to be expected.  After all, I'm not generating wealth, or providing employment, or re-imagining new processes for accomplishing tired tasks.

I'm not even always right!

Not only, however, do I lack Jobs' obvious marketing prowess, I've got the same sins he had - just not on as public and visible a scale.  Our society has far more people like me in it - people who could be just as belligerent and horrible as Steve Jobs if we had his influence and charisma, but who've never been blessed with his ingenuity.

So he got away with stuff you and I could never get away with.  That's why I'm jealous of Steve Jobs.

Except apparently, according to his own biographer, he committed the one unpardonable sin:  he denied God's deity.  So in the end, what did he really get away with?

Great people come and go.  Jobs will be remembered throughout our generation - and likely beyond - as one man who was able to change how we use computers and telephones, select and listen to music, and read books.  He's a historical figure because nobody else had these ideas, or the ability to ramrod his version of them onto our culture's mainstage.

And I suppose it's to my discredit that I'm more jealous of him than I am willing to silently sit by while others praise his accomplishments and shrug off his frailties. Yet to the extent that our society celebrates achievement without acknowledging the price of that achievement, I feel compelled to go on the record, for what it's worth, and point out the reality of Jobs' legacy.

I repeat: he got away with stuff you and I could never get away with.  Why?  Because hardly any of us consumers ever had to work with him.  Or, rather, for him.  Quite simply, there was no grace in his life.  I admire his products and his ability to personalize technology just like you do.  But at the end of the day, or in this case, at the end of life, that's not what counts, is it?

Call me a flawed human being if you like, because that's what I am.  I'm jealous of Steve Jobs, yes, but at the same time, I'm thankful that I've not had to struggle with what must have been the enormous burden of ignoring the pain I was inflicting onto people around me as I charged through life on my own terms.  You might find this hard to believe, but I want to be gracious, even when I'm not.  I want to help other people, even when I'm frustrated with them.  I want to accept what other people can't be, just as I want other people to accept what I can't be.  I don't want to shut off my connections with other people, for the very same powerlessness over mortality that drove Jobs to hate on-off switches.  So I try being gracious, and I ask God to help me because I know that my jealously of Steve Jobs could easily manifest itself in trying to be and act like him.

Instead of Him.

Jobs appeared to have relished the self-glorification he and his admirers labeled as perfectionism.  People appeared to have been expendable in the pursuit of products.  We like to think that encouraging your loved ones and your co-workers to operate at their full potential is a good thing.  And it is.  Expecting them to operate at their full potential on your own schedule, however, is not.

If Jobs achieved greatness by flattering people with the former and wasting them with the latter, and society doesn't mind that formula, then I guess I'll never be great.  Even if I ever do come up with a clever idea to sell.

But... as God is my Help, I think I can live with that.
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Fabricating a God Complex?

Maybe it's not Nero and his fiddle.

But by all accounts, our proverbial Rome is burning.  Yet Christo still insists $50 million worth of fabric draping a river in Colorado is good art.

Christo is the flamboyant, mononymous artist who borrows his name from my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  So when I first learned of his audacious stunts, like ringing whole islands with fabric, and erecting fabric gates in Central Park, I confess to already having been somewhat prejudiced against him.

Yeah, sure, Christ's name has been incorporated into a lot of personal pronouns, but never in such a singular fashion as flaunted by this egocentric fabric foister from Bulgaria.  I've tried watching video of him - and his late wife, Jeanne-Claude - explain their artistic altruism, and his narcissism simply made me wince.

Not that I don't have my moments of egocentricity, but if I ever get to sounding like him, somebody please slap some sense into me.

Going Over the River and Through the Woods

Meanwhile, The Artist Whose Name Is Borrowed From Our Redeemer has managed to secure an essential authorization from the United States Department of the Interior to install a new project entitled "Over the River."

He wants to hang a fabric roof over southern Colorado's Arkansas River.

You'll likely remember Christo's 2005 exhibition in Manhattan's grand Central Park, in which orange fabric curtains (or, in Christo's parlance, "gates") marched along pathways through the world's most famous urban Eden.  My aunt, then living in Brooklyn, and a friend took a cab through the park to see what everybody in town was talking about.  Their cabbie had already driven other fares through the park for the very same purpose, and readily affirmed my aunt's disappointment and boredom with all of the orange sheets flapping in the winter breeze.

How Much Fabric Can $50 Mil Buy?

Okay, so maybe art appreciation doesn't run in my family.

But appreciating the value of $50 million does.

Granted, it's a drop in the bucket compared with our national debt.  Or what President Obama raised last month for his re-election campaign.  But with unemployment anchored to nine percent, America's standard of living losing ground, and Greece and Italy threatening to bankrupt our planet, does spending this kind of money on this kind of whim - the whole installation is temporary, after all - really give Christo any bona fides as a rational human being?

After all, draping $50 million worth of cloth along six miles of a remote river doesn't do a lot to feed the hungry in Somalia, promote literacy in Sierra Leone, or pipe in clean water throughout Bangladesh.

Six miles?  Is that all $50 million will get Christo?

So let's agree that Christo isn't a very logical human being.  But then, how many artists are?  Even Christo himself calls his work "irrational and absolutely unnecessary."

Still, since this isn't an argument about the definition of art, just because I don't see the artistic merit in this project, does that mean it's a waste of money?  Besides, the $50 million is coming out of Christo's own pocket, so who am I to complain that the guy seems to have more money that sense?

For all I know, Christo may give away that amount and more every year to charity.

Even though something tells me Christo can't raise the kind of money he's spending on "Over the River" by giving stuff away.

Don't Think You and I Aren't Paying for Some of It

And speaking of giving stuff away, what's up with all of the bureaucratic government cow-towing towards his artistic pursuits?  Christo professes to enjoy the grueling process of eliciting support for his wild schemes from government agencies that should have far better things to do than make sure miles of cloth get wrapped around the public domain.  Christo has said that the pursuit of bureaucratic approval and public support is part of his art.

And you thought this was all his money!  Who do you think pays for the resources our various government agencies expend on Christo's ideas?  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is quoted in the New York Times gushing about the $121 million in tourism dollars they predict "Over the River" will generate. What he won't point out is that your tax dollars paid for a four-volume Draft Environmental Impact Statement, completed in July 2010 by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, in preparation for Salazar's ruling this week.

Four volumes.  Full of government-speak on the merits of stretching cloth over six miles of the Arkansas River.

This isn't the only Christo project that's demanded excessive government review.  For example, back in the 1980's, no fewer than eight local, state, and federal authorities had to conduct their own impact studies before Christo could wrap fabric around eleven islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay.

Perhaps the fact that Christo's team hauled off 40 tons of garbage from the islands before floating their fabric around them compensated as a public service effort.

But how much public service comes with Christo's drive to improve nature with... man-made fabrics?
Granted, his stunt of wrapping Berlin's famous Reichstag was kind of cool, and even somewhat symbolic, considering the building's bitter history. He's also wrapped a bridge, which helped give him the idea for his current Colorado exploits.  But isn't there a big difference between shrouding in white fabric a building that millions of Jews despised, and stringing fabric along a rugged waterway in the Rockies?

What the World Needs is Fabric

Christo constantly crows about aesthetics and art, even when he insists on foisting human foibles of fabric onto some of the prettiest natural environments on Earth.  In addition to the eleven islands near Miami, Christo has strung his orange cloth across a Colorado valley, along hilly fields in California, and against part of Australia's rocky coastline.

As if fabric makes the whole world prettier.  Natural topography is nothing without draperies.  And rugged shores Down Under need a bit of softening-up.

He may not believe this, but Christo's Namesake made these valleys, hills, and shorelines as elaborate testaments to His mastery of creativity.  Can they really be improved upon?

If Christo is so keen on aesthetics, why does the beauty of nature elude him so?  Or does his own ego - and the infatuation of his ardent fans - propel him on flights of fancy?  It wouldn't be the first time an artist becomes consumed by their own supposed importance.

Remember, this is not a debate about the definition of art.  In actuality, might this be a lesson in real time about the Tower of Babel, and mankind's insatiable desire to be their own god?

To the extent the lesson of our own hubris can be reflected in Christo's appetite for the absurd and belief that mortal confections trump natural grandeur, then perhaps his latest attempt at bridging reality with contrivance provides a provocative metaphor for human life.

I believe the term is called "gilding the lilly."

Which means that if I went down to Calloway's Nursery and bought a live lilly, and melted down some gold jewelry to use as paint, I could probably accomplish - for far less money - what Christo thinks he will.

Because after all, I feel pretty confident in saying that considering all the things our world genuinely needs right now, it won't be a better place with either my gilded lilly.

Or Christo's.

I wonder if he plays the violin?
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What's it Worth to Ya?

"You get what you pay for."

That truism has been brought home to me today as I've spent several hours trying to figure out how to apply a new URL to my current blog.

Hopefully you've noticed that I've come up with a new title for my little collection of essays, which hopefully is a bit more attention-getting and - gasp! - trendy, called "Life is a tool."  And as it happened, "LifeIsATool.com" was available!  From my years in IT customer support, I know it's a relatively simple process to get a new website name and stick it onto a current site.

Unless, apparently, you're using free software from Google.

Getting Googled

Granted, I paid a premium for the new URL - twice the going rate at other domain companies.  But I paid the extra bucks because I assumed getting it through Google, which hosts my blog for free, would mean that all the back-end stuff would be synchronized, meaning it would be a simple matter of pointing my new Google-procured URL to my Google-hosted site.

But no, that's apparently not how Google works.  They tell you that's how it works, but in reality, you get sent in circles, bombarded with tech-speak in poorly-worded instructions, and just when you think you're getting somewhere, your computer freezes up.

Twice.

At least you're not paying for all of this lack of service.  The blog is free, the template and graphics are free, the hosting is free, and if I wanted it, the e-mail and calendar applications are free, too.

Customer support is even free, if I have the time to scroll through countless pages of how-to's from other bloggers who've already fought through the kinks and black holes of Google's vast interfaces.

I did find a phone number, which I'm going to call just as soon as I reach the brink of utter futility; that point being somewhere between realizing I'm even less of a tech world denizen than I've already resigned myself to be, and seething with resentment that Sergey Brin and Larry Page seriously don't like me.

But hey - I'm getting what I paid for.

What You Don't See When Watching Pro Football

Meanwhile, however, I came across an article on the Wall Street Journal's website about "All-22" footage that kinda made me chuckle.  Not being a sports fan, and certainly not a fan of professional football, I'd never heard of All-22 footage, but apparently it's the exclusive birds-eye video view of the entire playing field recorded during every National Football League game.

Twenty-two refers to the number of players allowed on the field at any given time.

It's never been made fully available to the general public, and even today, NFL executives who want to watch them in their entirety must travel to a private NFL facility in New Jersey to do so - no streaming video over the Internet for fear of hackers.  The reason?  Ostensibly, since the videos capture every play and what every player is doing on the field, proprietary team strategies could be purloined for nefarious purposes by opponents, the media, and, most dangerously, the fans.

Consider, for example, the value Lonnie Marts, a former linebacker for the Jacksonville Jaguars, ascribes to the secretive All-22 footage.  "If you knew the game," Marts claims, "you'd know that sometimes there's a lot of bonehead plays and bonehead coaching going on out there."

And Charley Casserly, a former general manager in the NFL, told the Journal that if the league's legions of television fans had access to All-22 footage, who knows what damage that could do to the reputation of owners, managers, players, and even the league.  Ignorance on the part of fans is bliss, compared to how tens of millions of couch-potato fans would react if they were able to watch everything taking place on the field, in all its glory - or mayhem.  After all, sports talk radio dishes out enough vitriol against the league and its teams as it is.

Which brings me back to getting what you pay for.  If you're like me, and you have rabbit ears and a new-fangled digital converter (hey - don't knock it; if there weren't a market for these gizmos, Best Buy wouldn't sell 'em), you don't pay anything to watch the NFL on television.  But even if you have cable, a dish, or satellite TV, and pay for enhanced sports programming packages above your basic rates, you're still not paying what the NFL's best seats in each stadium are worth.

After all, being at the game in person would mean that you'd have a better chance of seeing where all 22 players are on the field, and what they do during each play, than if you had to rely solely on network TV.  No, you probably still wouldn't have the vantage point All-22 cameras have, but if you're a football fan, how much more valuable is witnessing the game in person is compared with watching it on a glassy screen in your living room?

So, when you watch professional football for free - or nearly free, you really are getting what you've paid for:  all the plays, yes, but limited views of them.  All four quarters of a game, yes, but not the full spectacle, warts and all.  Which means the fans with the most credibility are the ones who were in the stands.  Which also means all the water-cooler banter, tweeting, FaceBook posting, sports talk shows, and verbal sparring matches during commercials might actually be worth about as much as I'm paying Google to host my blog.

But then again... you haven't paid anything to read this essay today.

So how much is what I've written really worth?
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For All the Saints

Halloween I do not like.

We established that yesterday.

But All Saints Day is today. And it is indeed a commemoration worth observing. In fact, if believers in Christ observed All Saints Day as much as they observed Halloween, my suspicions of Christians being more interested in fun than principle would be far less raw.

Basically, the purpose of All Saints Day draws on the victory Christ secured over death by His resurrection, and how that victory translates to our own mortality. Since everyone who is saved will, upon their death, be automatically in the presence of our Lord for eternity, what fear should we hold about dying?

"Death, where is thy victory," remember? "Grave, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin, and sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ!" (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)

Granted, "how" we actually die is still something of which I'm apprehensive. And you'd be hard-pressed to find Scripture that tells us the process of dying is something we should anticipate, or we shouldn't fight against. Doctors and medical science have been gifted by God to honor life, and the advances in prolonging life our researchers have been able to achieve come not at the hubris of mankind, but the kindness of God in the form of Common Grace.

Still, when our time comes, I think we'd all prefer drifting away to heaven while in a deep sleep, although few of us can hope to die that way. Nevertheless, the point is that no matter how we die, where we end up is not in dispute, or a dreadful place. Even if the streets weren't paved with gold, simply spending eternity in God's presence would certainly be far better than anything we could possibly experience down here.

Which brings us back to All Saints Day, where the emphasis isn't on a morbid bunch of corpses, but on the reality that life is not confined to flesh. Life continues regardless of what happens to our bones, skin, and organs. That's another reason why giddiness over Halloween is so unBiblically tainted, in my opinion. It's not the residue from human expiration that should fascinate us, but the fact that just as the grave could not hold Christ, it has no hold on us, either!

So don't let the over-Catholicised term "saints" throw you. If you've been bought by the blood of Christ, you're a saint, whether you always act like one or not. Saints exist to worship God and enjoy Him forever, which is exactly what those saints who've gone before us are doing in real time right now, in Heaven.

Paradoxically, while we look back at the example of the "Church Triumphant," as dead saints are euphemistically called, we also look ahead to our own glorification with the end of our journey through sanctification to the feet of Christ. In heavenly bodies. Forever!

I have to admit, though, that I really don't understand how this will all work out. But I'm in good company, because nobody else down here really does, either. Which doesn't matter, because God hasn't told us everything about how we'll transition from earthly bodies to heavenly bodies because we're supposed to trust Him to accomplish it.

Faith. Remember?

That's why observing All Saints Day can be so helpful, since faith is "the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). Honoring those saints who've already won their battles against flesh and the principalities of evil here on Earth helps us put into perspective the merits of God's love for us and the sacrifice of His Son. And helps remind us of the eternal reward for us saints, and all who follow after us.

A common hymn at Presbyterian funerals is "For All the Saints," a wonderfully appropriate tribute to the life God provides each of His children in their walk towards their Heavenly home. Consider its text here, and think about the saints in your life and family who've gone on before you, and the example you're setting for your loved ones as you continue your life journey even now.

After all, if the Lord tarries, someday, the church may be singing this song, and thinking about you as they do.

For all the saints who from their labors rest,
who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy name, oh Jesus, be forever blest. Alleluia!

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might!
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight.
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light. Alleluia!

O may Thy soldiers faithful, true, and bold,
fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
and win with them the victor's crown of gold. Alleluia!

The golden evening brightens in the west.
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest.
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blest. Alleluia!

But, lo! There breaks a yet more glorious day;
the saints triumphant rise in bright array;
the King of Glory passes on His way! Alleluia!

From Earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Alleluia!

For All the Saints - text by William Walsham How, 1864
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