Smells You can See

This essay was originally written and broadcast on Tuesday, May 3, 2005

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.
--Helen Keller

Isn’t that an amazing statement?

Of course, some of the most profound thoughts were expressed by Helen Keller… born without the senses with which most of us are equipped, and yet despite those physical shortcomings, she developed an incredible capacity to perceive, understand, explain and express herself, in many ways far better than “normal” people around her. I think Helen Keller is one of the most inspirational personalities in American history.

Isn’t it funny how a smell can transport you to another time and place?

Fried chicken does that to me. Crispy, crusty, salty, crunchy fried chicken from my grandmother’s stove top in the house my grandfather built with his own hands. I can still see that kitchen--the splashboard behind the sink trimmed in white and black ceramic octagonal tiles, and a floor that creaked and squeaked when you walked across the flowered linoleum. Grandmother Clanton's kitchen always carried the aromas of Sunday dinner cooking, supplied by a pantry brimming with home-canned jellies and jams, and usually a quick treat to bribe me to leave.

Patchouli is another fragrance that can send me spinning back to high school in the ‘70’s, with the rich, warm musky smell of a gentle girlfriend’s perfume, daubed at the nape of her neck, and sweetly wafting from her hair with the feathered bangs.

I can still hear the slam of the locker doors, the echoes of voices shouting, laughing, and calling out to one another in the commons before classes. Remember the sharp tang of the mimeograph machines? Purple on white pages, lined with fill-in-the-blanks, multiple-guess questions, and essay challenges. We’d take one and pass it back, pressing the stack to our faces to inhale the traces of whatever it was that made that machine work.

Today they’d throw you in detention for that—isn’t that like sniffing glue? What did we know then?

Do you remember what a newborn baby smells like-- just home for the first time from the hospital, all swathed in yellow flannel: The smell of clean linen and baby oil. Picture that memory, and you can also hear the gentle sound of unencumbered slumber, see the subtle flickers of the eyes beneath the tiniest of eyelids, not yet accustomed to seeing light.

Sometimes I can see my children as I saw them for the first time—each one—and all it takes is the lid left off a box of baby powder. The smell of innocence and promise, hope, and perfection.

There is an overpass on the highway I drive each day that passes behind a candle factory. I never knew this until I took a detour one afternoon, when the freeway was clogged in a rain storm, and I discovered the wholesale candle factory outlet store, tucked away on a street still boasting a rounded asphalt surface, and lush, green bar ditches on either side, brimming with rain water run off.

In the early morning hours as I passed by on my way to work, I would drive through a zone of air so rich with the aroma of the previous night’s candle making, that it would drive my senses wild: seductive roses, warm and friendly vanillas, and sweetly thick magnolia scents. Each one a flavor of a memory, unlocked in my subconscious until resurrected by a unique twinge in my olfactory…the smells of childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, and last year--just a delicate sniff away from instant recall.

You’re passing through a memory right now—what is it?

Roll down the window: whether it’s a newly-mown field on the outskirts of your commute, fresh tar poured over a new stretch of pavement down town, or a new batch of doughnuts popping out of the machine at the corner... savor the smells. Savor the moments, and someday, years from now, when that chemical combination again tinkers with your nose, you’ll remember what you were doing, right about now.

May the new experiences you share in 2006 be the foundations for wonderful memories in the years ahead.

Happy New Year!

Doubly-Dared

This morning I mentioned today's show conlcuded the third week of originating from The Studio at The Clanton Hacienda, and that I would shortly be cleaning up the room before my Bride decides to trade me in on a less-messy model. Somewhere in that soliloquy, I made a vain promise to publish before and after photos of how this remote broadcasting outpost could really be tidied up.

Silly me.

Someone actually dared me to put up or shut up. So, I am putting up on the site for your viewing pleasure the ugly inside look at the scene behind the scenes here each morning. This is what my Bride wakes up to--except it's worse: I am usually sitting before these glowing screens, unshaven and be-robed. I usually need breakfast, she is gently reminded. This goes on each weekday morning.


Today after the show, I did follow through on my promise to tidy up, and here is the photographic proof you demanded. I realize the rig on the left ain't no piece of Queen Anne furniture, but hey, it is an improvement over the former, don't you agree?

I don't think anyone is going to be hiring me as an interior decorator anytime soon. Which is why I will see you on the Radio!

Happier New Year

This morning we backed into a discussion about the merits of education and its impact on levels of success. A University of Chicago survey published this week suggested We the People are a bit more stressed and a little less ebullient about our prospects in the coming New Year.

It is not surprising that the number of those reporting at least one significant "negative life event" since 1991 jumped from 88% to 92%. The storms this past summer alone would account for that. September 11, 2001 also fell into that window, so the jump in negativity is plausible...

But wait, there's more.

The U of C survey provides several interesting metrics about the people who answered their phones to participate, including the fact that 15% had been unemployed for a month, four points higher than in 1991. That might be an inherent flaw in the survey: Who better to answer the phone than someone who's not at work?

The part of the poll that got me really cranked up on education was the observation that troubles were greatest among those with low income, poor education levels and among unmarried mothers. I think that the first two factors are defintely connected, and reversing the second factor is a key to solving problems for those in categories one and three.

Education.

Education is the key to a better income.
Education is the key to a better way of life.

A listener sent an e-mail to share that she teaches at the inner-city campus of a major state university, and she sees a pervasive attitude that students feel they are owed a diploma if they've paid the tuition. She wrote that mind-set is even more pronounced for those who are attending on someone else's tuition dollars--i.e. through state or federal programs paying their way by virtue of their "disadvantaged" social status.

Anyone getting their college paid for by someone else is at no disadvantage, unless, of course, they squander the opportunity by failing to apply themselves. But that's not the mentality, according to our listener, who's in a position to know: she is in the college classroom, where the rubber meets the road, or in this case, where the chalk scrapes the blackboard.

Not happy with how 2005 panned out for you?

Make 2006 the year you do something about it...and if your path to success leads through a classroom or two, more power to you! You'll pay for the priviledge to learn, you'll work for the recognition of your achievement...and you'll be a richer person for the experience.