On Saturday, Jill and I went to yard sales with our friend Scott. Scott is the uber antiques lover and collects vintage Christmas ornaments and decorations. Every time we go out with him — usually to Pennsylvania — he finds something rare and wonderful. The appeal of antique hunting is just that, the hunt. It is a quintessential American pastimes because it underscores our can-do, anythng-goes spirit: who more than Americans can see treasure in trash? And who generates more trash than Americans? Let’s not forget that Antiques Roadshow is the most popular program on PBS.

Some of the most gratifying moments of Roadshow are when somebody has found something very valuable that he/she has retrieved from a Dumpster. Or bought at a yard sale for a dollar. What can any of us buy for one dollar any more? Antique hunting is like prospecting — panning for gold or digging a mine. You get dirty, you waste a lot of time, and, more often than not, you come home only with muddy shoes or a sunburn. But if you get lucky . . . .

It may be a sign of our waning Empire that, in this country, shopping — whether for old stuff or new — is recreation. My ex-wife used to love spending a full day in shopping malls. We once drove to a mega-mall for a weekend of shopping and stayed in the Red Roof Inn next door. I can’t do that any more but I will happily spend a day on the road, driving from yard sale to yard sale. Our friend Scott likes to drive north along Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River and pass through the many picturesque river towns. On this trip, we came upon a community flea market at a riverside high school. It was our first stop.

It is surprising what people think others will buy. I often see piles of old VHS tapes stacked on sellers’ tables. Cassette tapes too. Battered shoes. Broken vacuum cleaners. CB radios. Rusted chains. Boxes of baby clothes. And a lot of new crap from China. But, every once in a while, I come across somebody who has cleaned out an oldster’s basement or attic. At this flea market, Jill and I were pleased to find some fifty-year-old brass lamp parts and some old tools. I found some old toys too. Scott found a feather tree for one dollar. He was ecstatic.

A feather tree is a 70-100 year-old table-top, artificial Christmas tree designed to display ornaments. Its branches are decorated with feathers dyed to look like spindly pine boughs. It doesn’t look like much but it is rare and, when found in an antiques shop, costs $300+. So there we were, at nine in the morning, and Scott had already scored the find of the day. But, of course, one find just makes you hungry for the next. And here’s where the trouble begins. If you know the market for an item, you may be inclined to pick it up — even if you don’t want it — just to re-sell it. I collect old toys, for instance, and pick them up whenever I find them cheap. But, then, you have to ask yourself, How much am I going to stockpile for resale? Do I collect any and every good deal I  find?

When I watch Antiques Roadshow, I often shake my head in dismay when I hear the appraisers (antiques dealers)  award an item some outlandish value. It’s easy for the dealers to claim a high price when they have a stable of prospective buyers in the highest end of the market (i.e., New York, San Francisco, etc.). But the average Joes and Janes don’t have those connections and they don’t have high-profile auction houses to sell from. Jill and I have tried to sell antiques at our annual yard sale and have discovered that nobody — at a yard sale — wants to pay market value for anything. Why should they?

Which leaves you to sell in an antiques consignment store or on eBay. Antiques stores are closing like speakeasies after the end of Prohibition. It’s not just hard times. It seems that the antique boom has waned. And the demographics are changing. Generations X and Y are buying stuff from the 1950s and 1960s, which aren’t exactly antiques. As for online selling: the good thing about eBay is that it has leveled the market internationally so that nobody can claim something is rare and valuable when in fact it is not. The bad thing is that eBay has glutted the market. Think that little lobby card (advertising the 1959 blockbuster Ben Hur) you found at last week’s yard sale is a treaure? Check out eBay and, guess what, there are fifty of them just like it — listed for $3.99 each.

Scott told us of a friend who has become a hoarder of old stuff. It’s a scary story of how a collection overtakes one’s life. The man in question is has no place to sit in his house because of the piled-high junk and now pays  more on rental space for his treasures than he pays in mortgage for himself. It starts when you keep picking up “bargains” with the thought that you are going to resell them. Notable examples of hoarding include the Collyer brothers in Manhattan, who both died in 1947 buried under mounds of old books, newspapers, and other junk they had amassed for twenty-five years. 130 tons of junk. It fell atop one brother, then the next, trapping both until they died of starvation. The most recent example occurred just a month ago in Chicago, where an elderly couple was rescued from their junk-filled apartment.

Saturday, we came upon an antiques warehouse that was clearly a hoarder’s stash. There was barely room enough to edge yourself down the aisles of junk, which was heaped in piles that, at one time, had been more or less orderly. The good thing was that owner was selling it off, or trying to. There was so much to pick through, we just gave up on the yard sales. We didn’t have time enough to do it justice, though, and promised to come back. As we drove off, Scott observed that the key to sane collecting is that for every item you bring into the house, something else has to leave the house. It’s a yin and yang thing. Jill and I decided that it’s time to sell off our many extras and bargains we have been accumulating in our too-big house. If all else fails, Scott says, just take your treasures to an auctioneer, dump the load for any price, and don’t look back.

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For Father’s Day, my mother sent me an old photo of my father holding me and my two brothers. I was two at the time.  It breaks my heart to look at the photo because Dad was handsome and healthy and could not have  imagined that he’d be dead twenty years later, just as my brothers and I would be growing into manhood.  I’m lucky to have had a father for that long, I know. But his sudden death by stomach cancer when I was a senior in college was a blow that felled me for years.

I held my grief in abeyance for the longest time. In fact, the day after he died, I helped a friend move into a new apartment and, thinking myself brave, never said a word about my loss.  We call that denial. For the first several years after he died, I dreamed of him frequently. Most of these were dreams of reunion: I’d fall weeping into his arms. When awake, I was haunted by the prospect of seeing him in passing — across the street or a few aisles away in a department store. I knew he was dead, of course, but I couldn’t help but look for him. Once, on a city sidewalk, I did see a man who looked very much like him. Quickly I approached him. But as I got closer, I saw that he wasn’t nearly the man he should have been. Not my father. That was the theme of my loss: Not My Father. Nobody would ever be Dad. It’s useless to look and pointless to long for. But that’s what loss does to us, reduces us to senseless wandering.

Dad was a quiet man, a World War II vet who never talked of his military service. I never saw him shed a tear, though I know he was a feeling man. He was especially reactive to natural beauty and wild animals. I recall him crawling under our station wagon to coax out a spooked squirrel that the neighbor’s dog had chased under there. When I built a bird feeder in the back yard, he set up his camera at the dining room window so that we could take photos of them. He took us camping every summer. He was a big believer in self-sufficiency, so he taught us boys how to tune a car, use a hammer and saw, cook over a camp fire. His lessons settled me and my brothers in deep ways that we would appreciate only much later in manhood.

My brothers and I aren’t exactly fearless but we were the kind of boys who loved to break into abandoned houses and crawl into caves and get lost in the woods. Dad’s love of travel and trekking made us adventuresome. My oldest brother, who inherited much of Dad’s quiet demeanor, became a competitive sky diver for a time, then sold everything he owned and traveled around the world for a year. He and his wife still travel widely. For years, my middle brother sailed the world on a ship, laying communication cable. I fell in love with Jill in part because she’s similarly disposed to adventure. I could not have taken on (at her insistence) this trashed former frat house we now call home had I not been Tom Tanner’s boy.

Dad came from nothing. His parents were itinerant farm workers who lived in tents. His father was a hopeless alcoholic. Dad himself failed at farming but went on to earn a masters degree in electrical engineering. He was the all-American, self-made man. That’s why he was, and remains, a hard act to follow. I’m not sure that my brothers and I tried to follow him exactly. He wasn’t perfect. We had our share of differences. But there was no escaping the energy and ethics of his example. We owe him a great debt.

Will, the young man who helps me and Jill around the house, learned recently that he is the father of his ex-girlfriend’s baby. When the DNA test confirmed this, Will shook his head sadly. He’s in no position to be a father, he says. He doesn’t have a steady job and he’s recently out of rehab. I remind Will that he has an opportunity to make a huge impact on his five-year-old son. He can show the boy what it means to be a good man — to work hard, to treat others fairly and kindly, to appreciate what you have. Fatherhood is not an impossible task. Daunting maybe, but not impossible. Will says he is determined to try.

I never became a father — by choice. But I did become a teacher because a large part of me wants to nurture as my father nurtured, by teaching young people to be self-sufficient, if not fearless. Just today I conducted an advising session for first-year students at my university. They are so young and so full of promise! When I talk to them, I feel tremendous hope and a quiet thrill and I think this is what a father must feel, motivated by the conviction that what he has to say, the many things he might show them, could make all the difference in their lives.

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Lady Gaga, my god, I had no idea who she was, only caught her in glimpses, heard her topping the charts, but what’s another pop diva in a sparkly body stocking? Out of curiosity, I looked at ALL of her gone-viral videos last night. This 24-four-year-old (nee Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) gets 20-200 million hits on each of her YouTube music videos. Her rivals get 3 million, if they’re lucky. How can anyone generate that much heat?

It seems Gaga came out of nowhere, another manufactured disco queen in wild outfits. We’ve seen many like her before. Start with Madonna, circa 1989’s “Just Like a Prayer,” stir in a little Cher circa 1998, as Cher was getting her ultra-glam Liberace-like Vegas act together (and take a listen to her techno-hit “Do You Believe in Love After Love”), add a dash of Christina Aguilera — and a dozen other platinum-blonde sex kittens — and there you have it: Lady Gaga. Or do you?

How is it that Gaga is getting ten times the video viewers that Madonna’s getting, and a hundred times the viewers that the long-lived, sexy, (and still young) vocal powerhouse Aguilera is getting? Aguilera must be sweating blood. She’s got better chops than Gaga can dream of having. But Gaga’s not about chops, the critics have made clear.Critics point to Gaga’s melodies — her hooks. I agree, Gaga’s got some good ones. But good melodies alone don’t make a star.

Lady Gaga doesn’t have great looks either. She’s a narrow-faced, skinny kid, just this side of knobby-kneed. Her ladylike derriere and always-elaborate make-up save her from looking like a waif. But a good butt and fancy face paint aren’t enough to make her crazy-famous either.

Watching Gaga’s videos, I realized I’ve heard her hits often at the gym I frequent, where the music is always pitched to the 18-20-year-olds. None of it impressed me. Really, her music is forgettable. And her early videos, I’m sorry, are shite. Cliches of a white party-girl trying to sound black. Dog turds steaming on a summer sidewalk make better entertainment.

But wait a second. Her recent videos — especially “Bad Romance,” “Telephone” and “Alejandro” — are powerful entertainment. And they make her music powerful. And they make Gaga a very appealing entertainer. Why have viewers watched her “Bad Romance” video 226, 630, 136 times? Because it’s bizarre, other-worldly, mystifying, fascinating, funny, weird, and there’s nothing else like it on the internet.

Here’s the difference between Lady Gaga (now) and every other female pop star: Gaga’s recent videos don’t worship Gaga as a sex goddess. By contrast, look at Christina Aguilera in “Not Myself Tonight,” which has earned her a paltry 3,546,969 views since its April 2010 release. It’s all about Aguilera straddling and strutting and bumping and grinding. It’s conventional fare, really, the kind of dominatrix-themed quasi-porn pop that Madonna wore out in the 1990s. The camera is always leering at Aguilera and the story, such as it is, doesn’t go any farther than this Bad Woman pinning a sweaty partner in a big bed. It’s boring. That said, I like Aguilera and think she’s really talented (much more so than her former Disney-kids peer Brittany Spears). But Aguilera, like most women in pop music, is trapped in a one-pony sideshow. When that pony gets old, the show folds.

Girlish Gaga can’t compete in the same tent. She’ll never be a bombshell. I suspect that’s why her videos have changed. Look at Gaga in her newest video, “Alejandro,” which has earned her a staggering 16,794,408 views since its June 8, 2010 release — that’s one week ago. The video doesn’t start with Gaga herself, it starts with storm troopers in a mystifying, timeless, menacing place. The choreography isn’t particularly novel — Michael Jackson set the standard for ensemble steps like these back in the early 1980s — but the dancing is different enough, with its awkward squats and mincing marches and ersatz-Egyptian snakiness. The odd dancing suits Gaga because she’s like a kid at play. She’s not exactly a woman in these videos and, unlike Madonna et al., she’s never clearly defined as a sexual predator. The main thing is this: she’s always part of an ensemble. And she’s always in disguise. Her look morphs wildly in these videos. The message is clearly about performance — we enjoy watching Gaga play with these wild costumes and sets.

You’ll notice that Gaga’s recent videos are long — the longest clocks in at nearly 9 minutes. These are far more than songs, these are mini-movies. They seem to have introductions and epilogues. They do not try to make sense, though they do adhere roughly to thematic strands, as in “Alejandro,” with its storm troopers and dark Nazi other-world. Yes, we see Gaga stripped down and wrestling with muscled men on beds in this video but it’s not the main event and, in any case, it’s not particularly sexy. It’s mostly good choreography, pretty dancing, a good show – that’s the attraction. These videos are entertaining film and Gaga is nothing more and nothing less than the main actor in each. In other words, the story is far larger than the CFM fantasies that other women singers offer.

There’s one other element that seems to account for the unprecedented appeal of Gaga’s act. In these videos, Gaga assumes a martyred-outcast-heroic role (starting with “Paparazzi”). In “Alejandro,’ she’s asking to leave a relationship. As she puts it, “Don’t call my name [any more], Alejandro” The visuals suggest things the song never does, that Alejandro is a fascist lover, unforgiving and unrelenting. And Gaga is beseiged and conflicted by her need to get away from him. So, yes, she’s a victim of love but more than that. Her first wild costume makes her look like the princess of some snowy, high-tech, Tim Burton future-world. And she seems to get the upper hand (and dominant position) in many scenes. The suggestion, finally, is that this young woman prevails somehow against great odds and adversaries or, if nothing else, puts up a good fight, even as she is doomed. In other words, there is a vulnerability here that we don’t see in other women’s videos. There’s nothing vulnerable about Christina Aguilera wielding a riding crop, for instance.

Gaga herself isn’t a particularly strong presence in any of these videos and that’s a bonus because the production absorbs her in ways that productions do not, cannot, absorb stronger women, like Madonna. This too makes Gaga vulnerable and appealing. It seems Gaga knows that she is strongest when she lets herself be swallowed by costume and cast. In sum, it comes down to this: she owes a lot to her creative team, those who dream up and direct and choreograph and costume her recent wild and wonderful videos. And, yes, Gaga gets some credit too. In two short years, riding a rocket of fame, she has made and re-made herself. It’s a promising beginning and an act worth watching.

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A Great Blue heron glided like a pterodactyl over us yesterday as we sat on a friend’s back-yard deck. It was almost within arm’s reach, something huge and wild and as ancient as a fossil. Birds are dinosaurs, don’t forget. Wondrous and humbling, the Great Blue is a reminder of how small a link we are in time’s long chain.  Which is all the more reason why the Gulf oil fiasco devastates me.  We’re talking decades and decades of reparations. It won’t be done before I die.

So, sure, I despise BP Oil for its having made this happen. Apparently, it was working too fast, got sloppy, skipped some steps, and boom! a rig blew 11 men into oblivion. Now oil plumes as deep as the Grand Canyon carry their atomized remains to the rest of the world. I may never forgive this particular oil company for this particular failure. I can’t imagine how BP could have done worse. But, at the same time, I can’t help blaming myself too.

I drive a car. I heat my house. I want oil and lots of it. I am NOT a part of the solution. And I can’t be selective about the blame. I can’t say, I don’t my oil from BP, I get it from Exxon (Valdez, anyone?). I could pedal my bike to work but don’t because it’s inconvenient — I don’t want to get sweaty. I could live without air conditioning but don’t, even though generations before me did without it. And, well, you get the picture.

The sad thing is, despite this most recent disaster, I’m not going to change. Or, rather, I’m not going to change enough. I might buy a hybrid car (do these really make a difference?), I might buy more low-energy light bulbs (they have mercury in them, you know, and have to be disposed of in a specific way), I might do a hundred little things to reduce my sizeable carbon footprint, but that’s what most of us are doing as budget-minded homeowners anyway. The big stuff, the really hard stuff, I’m letting go because I’m not brave enough or tough enough to take it on.

What’s going to happen — I think we all suspect this — is that a number of crisis will compel us to make deep and drastic changes once and for all. But we’re not going to make those changes on our own. Like school children waiting for the teacher to call the punishment, we’re biding our time and, while we wait, making the best of what’s left. Every time I drive the freeway and (always) exceed the speed limit and still not keep up with my neighbors, I think: How much longer will I be able to do this? Our vast nation was built for waste, there’s no denying it. An episode from season two of AMC’s “Mad Men” captured that waste perfectly in a picnic scene where Don and Betty Draper fold up their blanket and leave all of their garbage in the grass. That’s America’s legacy and, alas, it’s hard to shake.

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I spent Memorial Day at a country auction. I’m a sucker for a country auction, especially one situated in the midst of rolling corn fields like yesterday’s, because it seems to guarantee that I’ll find a bargain. This auction advertised the sale of an old bicycle, called the Apollo, made by the Edward K. Tryon Company of Philadelphia. A quick internet search told me Tryon was the oldest sporting goods company in America, did business from 1811-1936, and sold guns, fishing tackle, and bicycles. One of the last things the company made, in 1935, was a Buck Rogers football that looked like a rocket ship. Their Apollo bike was the companion to the Vesper, their woman’s model, and was made in 1895. The popularity of bicycles in the 1890s was equivalent to the popularity of cars in the 1960s.

Thanks to 1) the invention of pneumatic tires, 2) steel bicycle frames (much sturdier than the original wood frames) and 3) a low profile design that allowed man, woman, or child to mount a bike easily (as opposed to the old high-wheel style that necessitated a ladder), biking became a sensation in the 1890s. Baltimore had no fewer than eight bicycle clubs at that time. Thumb through any late-1890’s issue of The Ladies Home Journal, the most popular women’s magazine of the decade, and you will see dozens of bicycle and bike accessory ads. One shows a woman phoning her chauffeur to tell him to bring around her bicycle instead of the carriage, after which the chauffeur muses: “This do beat all. The madam bought a Waverley Belle from the Indiana Bicycle Co. . . . for $75. and now she uses it ten times as much for her morning rides as she does her carriage and horses that cost $2500.”

But get this: the Victorian bike was such a new invention that it had not occurred to manufacturers to equip the thing with brakes. You will find all manner of biking accessories in the pages of, say, the Sears catalogue, everything from “tourists’ cases” to trouser clips for bike riders, but no brakes. Ironically, we have come full circle because today’s quintessential city bike — actually a track bike with a single gear and NO brakes — is again all the rage. Apparently pedaling without brakes in city traffic tests the rider’s wiles and reflexes. When all else fails, you apply your foot to the back of the front tire. Good luck.

Despite the high price of the late Victorian bicycle — which could cost $25 to $100, amounting to one-tenth the average annual paycheck — the bicycle was a good investment since it could last a lifetime and replace a horse or trolley in the worker’s daily commute. As the average commuter would make about 172 trolley trips annually at a dime each, a bicycle would pay for itself after only a few years. That’s probably why the Monarch Bicycle Company, just one of many, sold 50,000 bikes in 1896. Said one observer in 1899: “The ordinary ‘horseless carriage’ is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.”

The sudden growth of biking led to road reform — the end of cobblestone and the advent of smooth pavement — well before the demand created by drivers of the automobile, which didn’t enter the marketplace until 1896 (the same year that saw the country’s first automobile accident). Because the bicycle in America has long been reduced to a recreational toy, we forget that bicycle shops were critically important in developing and popularizing early motorized transportation: bike shops attracted the era’s best mechanics who began to manufacture some of the first motorcycles, automobiles, and more. The Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics, you may remember. In short, the Victorian bicycle was a technological revolution that made good roads and motorized transportation of every kind feasible.

But there’s more! The Victorian bike also advanced women’s independence — it allowed them to possess something of their own (men didn’t ride women’s bikes), it got them out of the house (if they were middle class or higher), and it allowed them vigorous exercise at a time when there was much debate about whether women should ride horses at a gallop (they were admonished to ride side-saddle, don’t forget). A woman on a bike was a bold image and could well be the defining symbol of the women’s rights movement.

Pretty cool, huh? So, yeah, I bought the Apollo at the auction. Cost me $95. I want to give this piece of history a home. But I’m not going to mothball it. I’m going to put it on the street again, with new tires, re-spoked wheels, and a tune-up (but leave the original, now-funky paint intact) and be amazed every time this ancient vehicle takes me from here to there.

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