The Opinionator
I am a family man with several grown children and many grandchildren, all living on the Cape. They are the future of everything and I want to leave them a world that I have done my best to improveArchives for: 2006
Auld Lang Syne
As we race down the runway toward 2007 my mind turns to all the rotten times I have had on New Year's Eve over the years. It seems to be a question of expectations exceeding reality and a dose of "trying too hard" to make merry. As a young parent this night out was always chilled a bit by the specter of having a big headache in the morning, trying to stay awake until midnight and the continuing obligations of getting the kids up and out regardless of the hangover.
Often plans just seemed to go wrong. Invariably it will be the coldest night of the year, the car battery will fail and the jumper cables will be in the other car. The restaurant menu may be restricted to New Year's Eve fare only, or maybe it's a case of reservation clerk incompetence. A partying friend arriving at the gathering already three sheets to the wind can change things fast. My daughter's personal disaster recollections include going out, being forced to leave early because of an unhappy partner, and celebrating Auld Lang Syne on the car radio.
When I was younger I liked to party in restaurants and dance halls. In later years I settled for Dick Clark and watching the ball drop in Times Square. Today, my wife and I just go to bed at the normal time and maybe watch the midnight celebration if we are awake and in the mood for TV. I can say that the older I have gotten the more fun I have had on New Year's Eve.
As the kids were growing up, New Year's Eve became a time of terror and prayer lest they kill themselves or get killed by partying drivers trying to create the time of their lives. I recall lying in bed breathing a sigh of relief when I heard the cars return to the driveway with my kids after the First Night.
Ah yes, First Night. I have in my mind the image of frozen Chamber of Commerce types grinning into TV cameras through sleet beckoning me to come to the city warmly dressed to watch interpretive dancers on the Common or to listen to madrigal singers.
The more we came to grips with the need not to party, the more enjoyable the holiday was for us. We seem to have tried it all, starting with a wine and cheese celebration on my mother-in law's couch, to a date in a tiny restaurant in central Vermont when nothing was happening, to a wild and crazy dance at the local armory at which a man jumped around so much that he dropped dead. That can halt a party quite quickly, to watch rescue EMT's haul your hully gully partner out of the place on a gurney.
In later years we had some great times at private dinner parties where the main feature was creative desserts, not booze or waiting for the clock to strike the bewitching hour. Sometimes people would go home before midnight and that was not even considered strange. We would leave our party hats and noise makers on our kitchen table when we finally got home and the next morning the kids would interrogate us on how crazy we got.
Midnight kissing on New Year's can be unpleasant and even terrifying. I swear there are people who look forward to the clock striking twelve so they can smooch. My wife and I feel the opposite and although we kiss, we also engage in games of extreme "dodge face" lest we be confronted with the boozy lips and breath of someone we just as soon would have liked to avoid. Suffice it to say that my New Year's Eve experiences have not been enchanted evenings when you lock eyes with a beautiful stranger across a crowded room. They have been more like encounters with Bloody Mary.
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and days of long ago?CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
for days of long ago.And surely you'll buy your pint cup !
And surely I'll buy mine !
And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
for days of long ago.CHORUS
We two have run about the hills,
and pulled the daisies fine ;
But we've wandered many a weary foot,
since days of long ago.HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM THE OPINIONATOR
Farewell President Ford
The death at age 93 of President Gerald R. Ford, the 38th president of the United States, and the longest living one, conjures up memories of the short 28 month tenure of this decent man who was our "accidental president."
He was the nation's rehab counselor, conferring a pardon on President Nixon so the country could get on with business. He taught us that it was possible to forgive malfeasance by the powerful and still have faith in the goodness of people. He piloted us through perhaps the gravest constitutional crisis in American history.
He and his handsome family brought new faces to the White House. We wanted goodness there so much that the photo of him toasting his own English Muffins for breakfast like an ordinary person was a lead story on the news throughout the world. He proclaimed to the world that he was a "Ford, not a Lincoln."
He was also an outstanding college athlete, one of the best football players at the University of Michigan, and probably could have had a career in professional football.
While there were no lack of critics of his pardon of Nixon, he was resolute in this act, for which, years later, he received the Kennedy Foundation's "Profile in Courage" award. He regarded this honor as one of his most important achievements.
When he came to the microphone in 1974 and announced that our "long national nightmare was over" we all knew what he meant and we all breathed a sign of relief.
He served during troubled times, survived two assassination attempts, and came at a time when a president and a vice president had resigned in disgrace, the nation was embroiled in a quagmire war, rampant inflation was stealing dollars, and cold war "détente" was a new and comforting concept. Who can forget the "WIN" buttons (whip inflation now) of the era? I still have mine.
President Bush hailed President Ford's common sense and kind instincts and affirmed the nation's gratitude forever to this great president.
Above photo credit: Photo by David Hume Kennerly, courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Library.
Christmas in Space
Christmas Eve, 1968
Who can ever forget the historic event on Christmas Eve, 1968 when Astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders became the first humans to orbit the moon as part of the historic Apollo 8 mission.
As the spacecraft passed over the lunar horizon, the crew somberly and majestically read from the book of Genesis in one of the most watched television broadcasts ever. For those of us on earth, it was an inspirational moment, a culmination of the national interest in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. We had lived through sub-orbital flights, earth orbiting flights, and the fiery loss of life on Apollo 1 in 1967.
Here are the words which froze us earthlings in front of our televisions on that Christmas Eve 38 years ago:
To all the people on Earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth."
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE OPINIONATOR
Midnight Mass Memories
Recollections of a Liturgy
For a 10-year old altar boy in northern New Hampshire, midnight Mass at Christmas occupied a central place in holiday memories. The solemn chants and carols, the smells of candles and incense, and the colors of red and gold all make up the collage. Surely the bishop's cathedral or St. Peter's in Rome could not impress a young boy more.
There were 18 of us, and the pastor wanted us all on the altar. The older boys had special jobs assisting and even directing the priests through the complex ceremony. For those in the younger ranks, the main job was not falling asleep. It is an extraordinary thing for a 10-year old to reflect on being awake and out of the house at 1:00 A.M. Adrenalin would not let me nod off, and glares from my father, third pew, front right were there if the adrenalin failed. All the altar boys wore red cassocks instead of the black ones, which were used on most Sundays. Lace surplices were distributed a week before Christmas, and our mothers laundered and starched them.
It was high drama to arrive at the church at 11:15 P.M. and to walk down the main aisle to the sacristy carrying your white surplice on a hanger- something like seeing David Ortiz arriving early at Fenway Park carrying his uniform on a hanger over his shoulder.
The whole town turned out for midnight Mass. You'd see people there who only came at Christmas and Easter. There were also many strangers who came to enjoy the music and the pageantry. Many who came were wearing new Christmas clothes, and you would also see a few nuns and uniformed servicemen who were visiting their families for the holidays.
25 cents admission
It cost 25 cents to buy a ticket for midnight Mass, a practice that never ceased to horrify my Protestant mother and grandparents. The priest said he sold tickets because there were never enough seats to go around. That seemed reasonable to me.
When the service was over, we would go home and my mother would prepare a snack of hot chocolate, crackers and peanut butter. The door to the living room was always shut, just in case Santa had come while we were gone.
Although the exhilaration of a childhood Christmas sweetens all the memories of midnight Mass in my church, it was all very clear when the pastor placed the statue of the baby in the manger why we were at church and why we had Christmas. The presents the next morning were wonderful but their meaning came from the night before.
The Cattle Chute
I spent a couple of hours today in a cattle chute at the local bookstore, waiting in a line that snaked around the store.
It was cordoned off by velvet ropes and gold stanchions like they used to have in movie theaters in the 1930's and 40's and the purpose was to contribute order and fairness to the process of me buying a book for $35.00. There were many people in the chute. They included two or three grumpy old men like me, a young mother with a screaming two year old, a teenager engaged in a cell phone conversation and an older lady using a walker.
Every once in a while we would shuffle forward a bit, heartened by the fact that we were making progress and feeling lucky that we could not be counted among those newcomers to the chute who stood with panic when they realized the ordeal before them.
Initiation of a Bookstore Cattle Chute Virgin
The initial introduction to the chute is always the hardest part, because you are incredulous that so many people are waiting patiently to make a purchase. At first you thought you just walked up to the counter and plunked down your money. You do get used to the system, however, and after you have been in line awhile you develop "waiting room face" a not unpleasant look of day dreaming while the world revolves around you. At least we are not in the line that waited two or three days, often outdoors, to get a shot at the Play Station three doors down.
Waiting in line like this you get a chance to think. There are six cash registers but only three cashiers and one of those three cashiers is inevitably coming from or about to go on one of their coveted "breaks." If it is a lucky day, no telephone messages will interrupt the working cashiers allowing them to cater more directly to shoppers who are unwilling to participate in the waiting game unless they are sure you can get the book at the store.
You can't help but wonder that if the store could spring for an additional couple of minimum wage cashiers, they might find that the extra expense was more than covered by additional sales. Supply and demand, you know, the late Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman taught us that.
I know it's Christmas and we should have more charity, but are there any alternatives to this kind of customer abuse?
Brooklyn Bridge
you can always tell which one is the Brooklyn Bridge because it has two,
not one; pointed Gothic arches through the passageways on its towers. The road on the
main section of the bridge is 135 ft. above the water. Someone has attempted suicide by jumping from the bridge almost monthly. These attempts are usually successful.
It opened on Thursday, May 24, 1883, a bright and sunny day which found the city decorated in flags and bunting and many shops closed to celebrate the occasion. Special trains from Philadelphia and points on Long Island brought in an estimated 50,000 spectators to the city. President Chester Arthur was there, along with the mayors of New York and Brooklyn, bands, and marching soldiers.
On opening day 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed the suspension bridge, the longest one in the world at that time. Many boats decorated with patriotic colors observed the celebration from the river. The New York Times reported a huge traffic jam when the day of celebration was over.
The bridge cost $15.1 million dollars and 27 people died while it was being built. Presently it has six lanes of traffic and a center walkway for pedestrians and bicycles. No trucks or busses are allowed on it and the bridge imposes a three ton weight limit. A fascinating account of its construction, The Great Bridge, was written by David McCullough in 1972. In 1980, Ken Burns produced a PBS television film about it named Brooklyn Bridge.
The foundations of the bridges' towers consist of footings the size of football fields. Dry space to dig these footings was provided by pneumatic caissons at a depth of 44ft on the Brooklyn side and 78 ft on the Manhattan side. Workers could contract "the bends" by moving too quickly in the compressed air pumped inside the caissons beneath the river.
The bridge has provided a target for terrorist mischief in recent years. In 1994 a Lebanese born man fired on a van carrying members of a Jewish sect. One person was killed, and although the incident was originally thought to be one of road rage, the FBI re-classified it in the year 2000 as a terrorist attack.
In 2003 an al Qaeda plot was uncovered to cut through the suspension cables with blowtorches and in 2006 a fall-out shelter cache containing food and medical supplies was discovered by a maintenance crew. No one can explain where that came from.
Geography Lesson
Geography can be a neglected subject in school and many of us are in the dark when considering the meaning of international events. This blog is a geography lesson on the size of Middle Eastern countries compared to our more familiar understanding of the size of our own fifty states.
In terms of square miles of land and water, Iraq is about the size of Alaska and Iran is similar to California. Afghanistan lines up quite closely with Texas. Tiny Israel and Lebanon are like New Jersey and Connecticut, while Syria is about the size of the state of Washington and Jordan is about the size of Maine. Looking at it another way, you could fit all of Syria in New England or Jordan, Israel and Lebanon could just about fit in Maine and Massachusetts.
The population of major cities in the Middle East includes the following stats: Tehran and Baghdad are the largest, with about 7 million each. New York City, at 8.2 million, is bigger than both of them. Boston is a tiny place at 600 thousand. Damascus weighs in at 4.5 million and Amman has 1.6 million. Cairo is about the biggest city over there with a population of 15.2 million. Kabul in Afghanistan has 3 million.
Square miles say nothing about population. Comparing populations in these countries to our states, yield the following approximations: Israel and Massachusetts are comparable, as are Jordan and Indiana, Lebanon and South Carolina, Syria and New York, and Afghanistan and California. Iraq has about as many people as Massachusetts and Texas combined and Iran combines the population of California, Texas and New York.
Middle Eastern travel is another consideration. Tehran is 431 miles from Baghdad, about the same distance as Boston is from Washington D.C. The journey from Baghdad to Tel Aviv is about 566 miles, about the same as going from Boston to Pittsburgh.
Germs, Politics and Church
I saw a news story the other day that said that Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico once shook 13,392 hands over an eight hour period at the New Mexico State Fair in 2002. The item was reported because Richardson is not a believer in using hand sanitizer when shaking hands. He thinks it gets in the way of "touching" humanity. He boasts that, "I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty." He is not alone in this belief. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, a physician, says that if you have children you are immune to everything and don't need to bother with hand cleanser. His view is shared by Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, who is also a physician.
Other politicians are more careful. For them, the dirty part of political campaigns is not limited to negative ads. At a fund raiser in Topeka a couple of months ago, the crowd lining up to shake Vice President Dick Cheney's hand was asked to rub their hands with Purrell, an antiseptic goop that often makes it way along the political stump. Following the meet and greet, the Vice President stole away and rubbed his hands with the stuff which an aide squirted on him. President Bush told Barack Obama about Purrell and he now carries it in his toilet bag. According to an account in Obama's new book, President Bush said, "Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds." Sometimes President Bush prefers to "bump knuckles" instead of shaking hands. That's probably a bit more sanitary.
John McCain keeps Purrell in his brief case and even President Clinton, who used to like to devour Big Macs and pieces of pie held in his hands, has taken to using hand wipes and lotions on the advice of his doctor. One of the biggest sources of handshaking germs is children. One can only imagine the perils of politicians kissing babies. They say that children carry many more germs than adults.
This germ danger is not confined to political hand shaking only. Consider church, when at the "Kiss of peace" almost everyone shakes hands or at least waves at each other. Sometimes we drink from the same chalice at communion or if we receive communion as bread, the bread is placed in our hand which has just exposed itself to everyone in church at the kiss of peace. It is beyond comprehension to think of an acolyte carrying around disinfectant to rub out germs on the faithful before they expose themselves to each other. Although many are made squeamish by this, others would shout, "O you of little faith." It is quite a test to ponder why you should feel nervous about catching someone else's germs at church. After all, we are dealing with religious beliefs that considers hanging around with lepers a virtue.
Medieval monks may have had it right. They did not exchange the kiss of peace. They grabbed each other by the elbows and bobbed toward each other. They had other sanitation problems though. The castles and monasteries in the 1500's didn't do much with dry cleaning, and the smell of body odor among these men was known as the "stench of holiness."
I recall thinking about all this as a ten year old altar boy more than fifty years ago at a Good Friday service as the faithful processed forward, genuflected, and then planted a kiss on the feet of Jesus who was mounted on a giant cross held by me and another altar boy. One of my jobs was wiping the kissed spot with a white linen altar cloth. It occurred to me at that time that that white cloth probably had more germs on it than the dirtiest rag in a hospital medical ward or at the town dump.
Comic Books
rainy afternoons and read them, trade them, talk about them and act out plots. They even had a unique smell of printer's ink. If they had been stored in the cellar or an outdoor garage they would pick up a moist and musty odor which gave them a unique character. My friend Tim used to get so lost in reading his comic books that he would be incapable of hearing anything while reading. You would have to slap or nudge him to get his eyes off the book. Auditory stimulation did not work. These tattered magazines and their characters were our friends and playmates. How I loved the clean sharp color of a brand new Little Lulu or Little Audrey. For some reason, I loved the Andy Panda comic book; my mother would sometimes buy these for me when I lay sick on the couch with a sore throat or an ear infection. She would call these "sick presents."
In those days, Disney was coming into his own and we enjoyed Donald, Mickey and stories of the movie heroines Snow White and Cinderella. I particularly remember the colors; they were my kind of art, something I could create myself with a simple box of eight Crayolas. My favorite Disney character was Uncle Scrooge. There was something about him squandering millions of dollars on the damndest things that really entertained. His spoiled nephews, Huey, Louie, and Dewey were perfect foils for this old codger's greed and extravagance.
And the superheroes were quite ubiquitous, just as they are today with my grandsons who get so much stimulation from tiny plastic figurines or TV cartoons. One of my favorites was a guy named Sparky Watts who could take a pill and make himself very tiny. I can still see him riding in someone's shirt pocket or peering through leaves of grass as if they were giant ferns growing in a jungle. I had the normal devotion to the regulars like Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel. Shezamm! He would say as he took off to fight crime. Who would have guessed that a first edition issue of one of these books could bring a couple of thousand dollars from the right collector?
In those days the woman's movement wasn't very far along, but I do recall admiring the deft moves of beautiful Wonder Woman with her shiny black hair and the work of the reporter Brenda Starr, who always managed to get rescued from the bad guys.
Classic comics were nice as it is quite empowering as a 10 year old to realize you understood the plot of "Ivanhoe" or "A Tale of Two Cities." Later on, in junior high and high school they became quite an aid when scrambling at the last minute to finish a book report. We read the assignments of course, but the comics, like today's Cliff Notes, were a way of making sure we understood what we read.
I also had my own separate close relationship with the Sunday color comics. A guy on the radio used to read them to us and I was quite involved with Nancy and Sluggo.
SAT Scores Becoming Less Important
These stories about the SAT's give attention to the growing number of small colleges in this country which are known as "SAT optional" schools. Seventeen million Americans are college students and how they acquire this status, whether by tuition money, test scores or alumni connections has an enormous impact on what our nation will look like in the future.
The trend started about 10 years ago at Bowdoin and Bates College in Maine when the admissions people decided there was not much to be learned about potential success in college by examining SAT results. Since then, more than a fourth of the top 100 liberal arts colleges (serving about 250,000 students) listed by US News and World Report have optional admissions exams. This group includes Mount Holyoke, Middlebury, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
It is estimated that about 700 liberal arts colleges have test-optional policies. Officials argued that personal interviews, high school grades and activities and admissions essays are more reliable predictors than admissions tests. At Bates college, a 20 year study of the college achievement of admissions tested students versus non tested ones revealed a difference in graduation rates of less than one tenth of one percent.
If Only We Could Let People Know...
"A small amount of knowledge can cause people to think they are more expert than they really are" - Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in An Essay on Criticism, 1709
A curious human trait is the tendency to believe that if only we can educate people better, they will come around to our point of view. In my life I have seen much of this when groups of advocates for certain policy ideas sit around and try to develop strategy for educating the public, or "getting the word out." There doesn't seem to be much space inside heads to concede that that some people just do not agree and that all the information and attitude adjustment in the world will not have much of an affect.
If I believe that my taxes absolutely can never ever go up any higher, all the bumper stickers and leaflets in the world will not change my mind. Much time, energy and money is spent trying to change minds which will never ever change. I suppose the argument can be made that these campaigns are neither for the total nay sayer nor for preaching to the choir. They are for the person in the middle who could go either way. My experience tells me that this middle zone of the undecided is (1) often confused with the apathetic and uninvolved; and (2) is usually a much smaller population then our passions for a cause would like to admit.
I was reading the other day an interview a reporter was having with a Catholic bishop. The discussion turned to the issue of whether the church will ever ordain women as priests. The prelate wistfully conceded that the church had not done a very good job of educating people on this matter and needed to work harder at getting out the idea that women could never be ordained because Jesus was a man. I could not see anywhere in the discussion that he was open to the idea that women could be ordained priests, he was putting his intellectual powers, all of them, into telling the rest of us why they could not. In a similar manner, the Cardinal who heads the Vatican's Council on Christian Unity recently announced that there would be no hope of the Catholic Church working cooperatively with the Anglican Church if the Anglicans ordain women. That was his starting point...not exactly conducive to collaboration or listening to the view of the other side.
So we come to the negotiations table full of absolute positions and belief upon which we think there can be no compromising. That is a very effective formula to guarantee failure. I had a friend who used to say that this country was built on "Three C's:" Compromise, compromise and compromise. You see potential opportunities for compromise in geopolitics all the time. All we seem to get are standoffs. Take the clash between the Judeo-Christian West and Islam. See any evidence of people backing down or backing off? Of course references to "appeasement" and "cut and run" do not help. These often memorable but cutting expressions are dreamt up by true believers who often seemed more interested in expressing and upholding their positions than in solving problems. We do this to ourselves. It may explain why the demonization of Kim Jong il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not conducive to working out world problems.
The Theocons: Secular America under Siege
Theocons are first cousins to neocons. These are neoconservatives who emphasize the importance of religion and morality in society. Theocons are against abortion and same sex marriage and support what some call the "family values" agenda. They would like to see prayer in the schools, which they feel are not doing well largely because of too much relativism and secularism. They prefer families in which at home mothers nurture children. They rail against "activist judges" primarily because of the United States Supreme Court decision on Roe vs. Wade. They also tend to support the invasion of Iraq based on the theological construct of a "just war." Many in the theocon movement include those who would choose to deny the sacrament of Holy Communion to John Kerry and other public supporters of abortion. This view may be the one currently held by Joseph Ratzinger, the present Pope Benedict the XVI.
The book The Theocons: Secular America under Siege by Damon Linker was recently published by Doubleday. Linker, a former editor of "First Things" a flagship theocon journal, argues that three individuals, Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel have collaborated to impose their deeply held religious beliefs on the White House and the political agenda of the United States. These beliefs, basically Catholic ones, have forged coalitions with evangelical and Jewish groups.
Neuhaus is a Catholic priest and has written several important theology books and articles, Novak is a layman and theologian who has published his thinking for years. Weigel is also a Catholic layman whose most notable publishing achievement has been a comprehensive biography of Pope John Paul II.
Linker believes that every faith based incursion into the public square is unacceptable and downright terrifying because it undermines the motivations of our founding fathers who saw a world of competing and self-checking religions as the answer to the church state abuses which have been so frequently experienced in old Europe and the Middle East. He cites the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, signed by George Washington and unanimously ratified by the Senate that," the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
The website of Random House, Inc. offers seven questions to the reader to determine "What do you believe about America?" They are as follows:
1. Do you believe that the Catholic Church should be actively intervening in American politics on the side of the Republican Party?
2. Do you believe the federal government should be channeling billions of tax dollars a year to churches and other religious organizations?
3. Do you believe a microscopic clump of cells in a Petri dish possesses the same rights that you possess?
4. Do you believe a doctor who performs abortions - and a woman who chooses to have an abortion - should be arrested and charged with murder?
5. Do you believe the public schools should actively teach children to doubt the scientific theory of evolution?
6. Do you believe legally available contraception is producing a "culture of death" in the United States?
7. Do you believe that the United States should be a Christian nation?
According to Random House, the theocons answer yes to all these questions.
To those who are unable to say yes to all seven and may be questioning their religious faith, they should consider the 1864 observation of John Henry Cardinal Newman, a 19th Century Catholic apologist, that "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt."
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, the father of the theocon movement, had this to say about doubts and difficulties. He wrote this in an essay in "First Things" magazine:
"Given a decision between what I think the Church should teach and what the Church in fact does teach, I decide for the Church. I decide freely and rationally - because God has promised the apostolic leadership of the Church guidance and charisms that He has not promised me; because I think the Magesterium (the teaching authority of the church) just may understand some things that I don't; because I know for sure that, in the larger picture of history, the witness of the Catholic Church is immeasurably more important than anything I might think or say. In short, I obey."
Mayflower
She was about 100 ft long and 25 ft. wide and required a crew of 25. She left Southampton, England on September 6, 1620 and made the voyage to Cape Cod, via Newfoundland, in 66 days. They had left for the New World about a month earlier with a companion ship called the Speedwell, but this ship acquired a leak so the voyage was scuttled and the expedition was forced to return.
The Mayflower carried 102 passengers, most of them members of the Separatist religion and the plan was to arrive in the area near the Hudson River and Long Island. Weather and winter changed plans however and they ended up landing in today's Provincetown Harbor. About a month later they dropped anchor in Plymouth.
Of the 102 passengers, there were ten children and two dogs. Another child, Oceanus Hopkins, was born during the voyage and a baby named Peregrine White was born on the ship after it arrived in Plymouth Harbor.
During the first winter in the New World, the Mayflower colonists suffered greatly from diseases like scurvy. Only 53 people were alive to celebrate the first Thanksgiving, only four adult women out of the original 18 were left alive. This festivity was a three day celebration put in place by Governor Bradford. Many Wampanoag Indians were in attendance because they had helped the Pilgrims survive that first winter with the help of harvested corn fertilized by the plentiful alewives in the area.
Tens of millions of people (one in seven) are direct descendents of Mayflower passengers, but very few of these descendents know it. Eight US presidents are among the group plus a variety of celebrities and famous people such as Bing Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, Alec Baldwin, Cokie Roberts, Richard Gere and Dan Quayle. The Mayflower Society, founded in 1897, exists to honor the memory of the Pilgrims and to bring descendents together. There is a chapter in each of the 50 states and in some foreign countries. They can be reached on-line at http://www.mayflower.org/ .
Check out the History Channel on November 19 at 8 p.m. for a special called "Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower." The following blurb is taken from the history channel's web site:
"Most of the people whom we now know as "the Pilgrims" made their way from England to the city of Leiden, Holland, a place of religious tolerance. They found religious freedom, but faced extreme financial hardship. A bold decision is made to move to America. In the late summer of 1620 The Mayflower sets sails carrying 102 English settlers and 30 sailors. Over the next four months, about half of the settlers and sailors die of scurvy and weather-related illness. An English speaking Indian, Samoset, visits the settlers and his visit leads to the signing of a peace treaty. By the Fall of 1621, the English decide to celebrate their harvest with a feast which is attended by at least 90 Wampanoags. That peace will last 40 years. This show features elaborate dramatic reenactments from original source material written by eyewitnesses and participants in the actual events of the early 1600s. "
Ramping Up for 2008
It behooves new members of Congress to realize that the 2008 presidential campaign has begun. Now is the time to define the footings and lay the foundation for the big election in just two years.
Among other things, it means avoiding the mistakes which helped defeat candidates this time around. It means keeping the tough cowboy machismo talk at a minimum, downplaying the role of fear and anger, and pushing off the constant advances of K Street and its ilk. It challenges all politicians to handle dissent in ways which do not demonize the opposition or make them look like traitors.
It means not getting rich if you are in Congress. Congressman should be able to ask themselves in two years if they are any better off financially than they were two years ago. If they are, they should perhaps choose not to run, to go to confession, or to give stuff back. No one should ever get rich because they been fortunate enough to win an election to Congress. If you go to Congress without a boat, plane or an extra house, you should leave Congress in the same shape, as should all your relatives. That is not a difficult or strange idea; one wonders why it might terrify and infuriate so many.
Politicians need to examine carefully the idea of arrogance as they set in place the ramp up to the election of 2008. Arrogance can come in many forms from false humility to excessive throwing around of weight. It often is connected to those who openly, even loudly, espouse specific religious and moral values, suggesting that others do not. I once knew a guy who boosted that he had never, ever, told a lie. I thought this was an appealing and disarming piece of honesty until it occurred to me that this guy was making a big deal of it because he thinks the rest of us tell lies. That was arrogance on his part.
There were other forms of arrogance which surfaced in these elections. Negative campaign ads said a lot about the character of candidates on all sides. The pundits say these attacks work, but it also is a fact that people like a fair fight. Everyone knows that there is nothing wrong with going to a Playboy club, writing a steamy novel, providing legal representation for rapists, or having a relative who is convicted of a crime.
Arrogance happened a year or so ago when politicians flew around the country trying to save the life of Terry Schiavo. Most people felt great ambivalence about whether or not to remove the feeding tube. We didn't need our political leaders pandering to family members and extreme religionists in a well publicized effort to save her life. This exercise went bad because these politicians looked arrogant. They looked arrogant because they acted like they knew what God wanted them to do. That doesn't set very well with voters, to be given the impression that their leaders think they speak for God. That may be a major problem for the mullahs of Baghdad.
A Trip to the Registry
Years ago I took a management seminar which discussed "Perceived Customer Service" as a cornerstone of any program in which a member of an organization is expected to work with and try to fill the needs of the public. In other words, you have to act like you care about what people need and want, and you have to do this in such a way that the people you work with can see that you feel this way. How many times at a reception desk or in a cash register line have we encountered employees who have never heard of this or might be aggressively pursuing a formula to destroy any remnants of this which may exist in the culture of the organization.
I recall a trip I recently made to the Registry of Motor Vehicles in which I had the misfortune to deal with a clerk I shall call Joe.
My problem was turning in my handicapped parking placard for my old license. I had gotten the special status when I was ill and could not walk well. I had to turn in my license to get it. Now I was better, my doctor had said that in writing, and I needed my license back.
Now Joe, is a busy man. He is paid to help people through the process of getting whatever they need from the Registry. He apparently reads minds and believes he knows what you need before you get to his window, because as you nervously slide up to it, he starts barking what you need to do. The first thing you need is a number and if you do not appear with the correct one, you are hurled back to the benches among the huddled masses waiting to be chosen.
When you finally get to go before him with the right number he starts telling you, without looking up, why you are there and what you need, He is only programmed for two or three answers and they don't include restoring licenses to formerly handicapped people.
As he talks I am doing a slow burn, trying my best not to turn into a grumpy old man or a smart ass anti-bureaucrat. Don't argue, I tell myself. Let him run himself down and then humbly ask some questions.
I do this, very carefully I might add, lest he shut me down and send me to the huddled masses again where I could have to start all over at another window, or worse yet, have to go home and get something and start over. It has been my experience that trips to the Registry always come in twosomes or threesomes.
I try to fortify myself. I earned a graduate degree at Boston University, and if I could navigate that labyrinth of red tape, proposals, oral exams, comprehensives, forms, waivers, vouchers and government grants I can conquer anything.
It slowly penetrates with Joe that my request is different and he looks in a puzzled way at my paper work. I know he is contemplating telling me I cannot do something because of a technicality. At this point, the odds are even that he will either try to solve my problem or push it back at me. It must be my ability to show great humility and restraint, he seems actually to be trying to help me.
He leaves his chair, walks across the room, and huddles with another clerk who looks more confident and experienced. He returns and announces that he is going to call the state. He leaves the room for 20 minutes, comes back, and says that the state will be in touch with me. I ask how? He says by letter or telephone. I say they don't know my phone number. No answer. He walks away and a month later I get a letter from Boston giving me the green light to apply for a license. I will set aside three or four mornings for this activity.
I promise to take a number and to be appropriately humble at all times, resolving to make multiple trips back to the window for as long as it takes.
When Will Returns Be In?
If you want to watch a blow by blow accounting of election returns all over the country this evening, John Fund of the Opinion Journal of The Wall Street Journal did a nice piece today about when you can expect results, hour by hour. You can read it at:
Judge Not
I fail to understand all the excitement about Pastor Ted Haggard admitting that he bought methamphetamines (but didn't inhale) and ran about with a male prostitute. While we all hate hypocrisy and can't understand why he would lead the war on gay marriage if he is gay, the fact that he screwed up, stepped in it, so to speak, should come as no surprise. It certainly doesn't to me because Pastor Haggard is a human. No matter how many trips he makes to the White House, he is human and capable of really blowing it just like Mark Foley in his text messaging and John Kerry's botched jokes.
I remember a few years ago when Rev. Jimmy Swaggert was caught with a prostitute and cried for forgiveness on TV. I recall Rev. Jim Baker's indiscretions at about the same time. Since then, many priests I know have been caught molesting altar boys. It is surely disgusting, but believe me, it is not surprising. This is sin we are talking about and we all commit sins, even those who make a career out of telling us not to. Why does this seem so difficult for people to understand? Do you steal office supplies from work or cheat on your income taxes? How about all those on-line purchases which evade the Mass income tax?
Now, I am thankful that adultery, homosexuality and drug abuse are not my particular sins at this time of my life, but I do have other areas of offending which I have no intention of confessing in this blog. We all have areas. How about Mel Gibson? Now his sin is in another direction. Or the Enron thieves? They will rot in prison for their sins. Recently the pope fired the Rev. Marcial Maciel the saintly founder of the world wide Legionaries of Christ because he was apparently fooling around with young men. If the pope himself was caught in flagrante delicto, I think I could handle that by saying, "So what?" He is human.
The lesson I take from this is to be careful of moral judgments we make about others. That does not mean we reject trying to lead a moral life or setting high standards. You just don't judge others, lest when you fall others will judge you. I guess it boils down to the Golden Rule. Now that's something we all understand but practice in varying degrees.
Holiday Management
If I could design a course of study for principals and other school administrators, I think I would put quite a bit of thought into developing a unit called "Holiday Management."
This is a 21st Century kind of problem caused by the great diversity among the student body in our schools and the lack of willingness for these diverse populations to assimilate the American culture. There is a perspective which screams "adapt or leave" to these citizens, but things are not that simple. Natavism and xenophobia are alive and well in many quarters of American, but it seems inappropriate to inculcate these values in the public schools. Rather, the stress is on acculturation, in which ethnic diversity is celebrated and encouraged. It is the difference between a melting pot and a tossed salad. Today's students are in a tossed salad and have very well defined and specific needs involved in celebrating their culture.
This causes school administrators to have to rethink the school calendar. Some states close schools on certain Muslim holidays. The New York legislature has passed a law which prohibits state mandatory testing on religious holidays. Baltimore, with 47.8 percent of its students minorities has recently approved a day off for Rosh Hashana but none for Muslim holidays. In Tampa Bay, FL the Hindu community has discussed whether they should push for a holiday. In New Jersey there are 76 excused religious holidays.
The problem is more involved than the issue of deciding what religious holidays to have off. The Fox News led "war on Christmas" last year was connected to fundamentalist Christians who resented the secularism of Christmas and felt entitled to change that because they believed that the majority of Americans agreed with them.
For at least two generations the issue of what songs to sing at Christmas concerts has been a big deal. Some are incredulous that "Silent Night" and "Away in a Manger" are not allowed at some school concerts. These people are usually not Jewish.
It is necessary to factor into these decisions the lines between the rights of minorities and the majority. One area of important consideration is the concept of "captive audience." Children at school during the school day are something of a captive audience. When they voluntarily choose to attend a school concert in the evening it is different. Another issue is defining "classics." A steady diet of "Frosty the Snowman" and "Winter Wonderland" can be seen by some to neuter Christmas. Is there a place for "Handel's Messiah" or "Silent Night" in a public secular concert?
Public school problems with Christmas have been around for years. Thanks to fire inspectors, most schools no longer have to deal with Christmas trees in classrooms. Some folks have tried to feature Hanukah celebrations at Christmas time. They call this the "holiday season" and sometimes bring ridicule on themselves because Hanukah does not carry the same religious importance as Christmas. Many are accused on caving in to "political correctness" and even giant corporations like Lands End and Wal-Mart have felt the sting of this.
Halloween brings its own set of problems. Some see it as a pagan thing or a strictly Catholic feast. Some very young children are scared by skeletons in the classroom or a steely eyed and toothless witch staring down on them from a picture on the wall.
Some school districts have made arbitrary decisions never to cancel schools because of religious holidays. The patchwork quilt of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and other religious holidays make it impossible to defer to all, so no holidays are honored. It is a real problem in some places.
School Pictures
My cellar is full of old photo albums and the albums are full of school portraits of the kids for which my wife and I must have paid a small fortune over the years. We rarely look at them anymore; I imagine they will end up as part of a giant yard sale when we are gone. If not carefully regulated, the school portrait business can become a major fund raising scam, taxing the parents and friends of school attending children, for revenue they are often the least likely in a community to be able to afford.
Consider this: Christmas is a few weeks away and we face dozens of problems about what to buy for gifts for family members and friends. The fund raising companies are not unaware of this huge market demand. Principals and parent leaders have full mail boxes this time of year with fund raising ideas. Interested in overpriced gift wrapping paper? How about expensive candles or key chains?
Some school picture companies promise a percentage of revenue to the school principal's activities fund to use for field trips, Coke machines, and subsidies for a poor kid who needs a winter coat, or whatever. It is another issue to discuss the usually unaccountable ways these funds are administered. Most of them would not pass the muster of a school audit. It's not that people are stealing; they are just using the funds to do whatever they wish for "good works." Actually, sometimes people do steal. I knew a guy who ran away with the Little League money and you do hear on the news about thieves among us.
Other companies will promise the central office sophisticated data bases of the children photographed, complete with records folders and thumb print photographs of the kids.
Almost all of these benefits are honest and valuable assets in a school. The problem is that to get these gifts parents are charged more for school pictures than necessary. There is a form of deception and inflation going on here. I used to work for a school where they went out to bid for school pictures. The principals didn't like it, they lost some petty cash. The parents loved it, because they got the lowest costs packages available. There is no free lunch; the enticements or "bribes" which tilt you toward one school picture company over another are not free. The customers pay.
Same Sex Classes
There is some discussion lately about same sex classrooms as the latest educational panacea. A few years ago the big issue was making every student wear a uniform to school. President Clinton sent every principal in the country a book promoting it. The initiative must have failed, because today you don't see many kids in school uniforms and the issue seems to have dropped from the media radar screen.
It is the nature of much so-called educational innovation to capture the imagination with or without adequate evidence to support claims. People can intuitively agree that having same sex classes might help some kids, but when you look at what studies exist to support this, there isn't much.
Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 is the landmark legislation that bans sex discrimination in schools, whether it is in academics or athletics. It states:
"No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid."
This latest initiative appears to have started when the US Department of Education announced that Title IX restrictions would not apply to experiments in grouping students on the basis of sex. I can find no reason why federal law is being waived for this except that many feel that Title IX, the gender equity law, applies only to how much money schools should be spending on school sports.
In a Cape Cod Times editorial today they took the position that it was a good idea. Well, they didn't really stick out their neck; they said it is worth considering.
My feeling is this: Schools should try single sex groupings it and see who it helps without tooting it all over the place as the answer. Results, in terms of test scores and emotional output should be studied. Doctoral dissertations should be encouraged to examine it and survey research should be funded to see how much, if at all, it helps. Finally, the question must be asked if it is worth setting aside Title IX and possibly the culture altering woman's movement to do it?
We need to know these things before we get too infatuated with separating boys and girls at school.
Workplace Greed
The recent controversy over Massport fringe benefits gives one pause to reflect on what other kinds of government benefits lie quietly out there waiting to outrage ordinary people and turn them off forever in their ability to trust elected officials to do frugal and unselfish things in the name of the ordinary taxpayer.
The Massport scandals include someone at the top entitled to $400,000 in benefits just for staying healthy and not using up sick leave. I suppose the genesis of this practice of rewarding people for being healthy are the sick leave abuses that entice some workers.
I have known people over the years who have decided that they have 15 sick days a year coming to them. They will use them whether they are sick or not. There is nothing managers can do about this other than requiring a doctor’s letter from time to time and even these are suspect. I have received some satisfaction over the years when considering people for job advancement or promotion to scan their attendance records. Someone who manages to consume all their sick leave days every year never had much of a future in promotions in my eyes.
I shudder to think about the additional tens of thousands of dollars that are going to people because they are either unable to use their vacation days, don’t want to, or see unused vacation as a way of building a savings account. It is ridiculous. We ought to be vigilant and ask our school committees and selectmen about what they have regarding these kinds of practices. Do they even know?
In my career in public service I have always worked in jobs and overseen jobs in which if you don’t use all your vacation days in a year, they are gone forever. There is no building up these benefits for a rainy day. This is good business practice which all thinking people should follow. First of all, it avoids prohibitively large severance pay-offs when someone leaves. Secondly, it forces people to use their vacation. The whole idea of a vacation is to give rest and relaxation to hard working employees.
I once employed a manager who appeared to be hard working and unselfish. She would come in weekends without being asked, work many days off like a loyal soldier, and never resist going the extra mile. She was so good that I worked hard to help her advance and was instrumental in writing references for her to get another, better job, in another organization. As her final day on the job approached, I received a bill from her in excess of $10,000 dollars. The itemization was for those Saturdays and days off she unselfishly gave to the organization. She was salaried; she and everyone around her knew it. I had to turn her down, much to her rage and disappointment. She still persisted in trying to debate this until I threatened to report her greed to her new employer. She backed off. I felt very sad about this. She must have been bitten by some labor union virus and contracted an infection. Maybe I did or said something to make her mad at me. I don’t know. So sad.
The lesson for me in this last case and even in the vacation days and unused sick leave abuses is this: Make it very clear to people in writing, when they are hired, what the position of management is regarding these perks. Even the lag time between the first day on the job and the first paycheck can rear its head twenty years later when the employee departs. I have known people who believed, for years, that they were owed hundreds of dollars from their employer because of some quirky calendar thing that happened the first week they were hired.
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
There was an article in the paper the other day decrying that Major League Baseball seems to have lost some of its appeal as America’s national pastime. In June the Pew Research Center did a poll and found that just 13 percent of Americans see the game as their favorite sport, compared to 14 percent for basketball and 34 percent for football. Television ratings show that only one in six watched the World Series and surely the baseball interest of 50 years ago was far more than today.
When one looks at lucrative media contracts enjoyed by baseball, it becomes clear that the extra cash has been paid to athletes and park developers rather than passed on to ordinary fans.
Today’s fan often has to borrow money to take his kids to the park to enjoy the national pastime; it is no wonder that the interest in the sport has dropped over the last couple of generations.
Baseball is not alone in making it almost impossible for ordinary fans to go to games. The following table shows some interesting 2005 statistics regarding the cost of attending professional sports events in Boston.
Perhaps the column labeled “Fan Cost Index” is the most interesting, because it costs out the “whole shebang” including two adult tickets, two child tickets, two beers, four soft drinks, four hot dogs, two programs, two souvenir caps and parking for one vehicle. These figures come from www.teammarketing.com
Sport | Avg. Ticket Cost | Fan Cost Index |
Red Sox Baseball | $44.56 | $276.00 |
Bruins Ice Hockey | $53.05 | $309.00 |
Patriots Football | $90.89 | $477.00 |
Celtics Basketball | $55.93 | $316.00 |
Unless you are rich, win the lottery, know a team owner, or have a corporate connection that views game attendance as a job perk, you’ve got to be crazy to go to the games anymore. No wonder little boys and girls don’t dream about going to those wonderful games with their families today.
As a post script, a recent George Will column points out some interesting statistics: The payroll of the New York Yankees is 2.4 times the payroll of the Detroit Tigers. Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter earns about as much as the entire Florida Marlins’ team. ($20.6 million) The Yankee third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, earns $25.7 million. This is 68.7 times the salary of the New York Mets’ all star third baseman, David Wright. ($374,000.)
One of Our Kind
Christian Lending seems pretty disgusting to me
I am getting emails lately from Christian Lenders, apparently the name of some bank, which is attempting to trade on the fact that it is Christian and I am Christian to get me to re-finance my house. That seems pretty disgusting to me.
I have heard of things like Christian psychologists and social workers. Even that is a turnoff, but I can admit to myself that perhaps there are eternal verities in the field of mental and emotional health in which a shared religious perspective is of some help.
I have read ads before for “Christian” carpenters and plumbers. What does that mean? Are they trying to tell me that they will use religious principals when they give me estimates and bills? That they share the Protestant work ethic?
Maybe all it means is that they are kindred spirits and if I want to connect I am welcome. Kind of the same thing exists in my parish bulletin at church when individuals and companies, in little business card size ads, let me know in writing that they enjoy the status “parishioner.” I browse these bulletin ads during church services the way I read cereal boxes while eating my morning toast and peanut butter. Would something in today’s epistle inspire me to telephone a Christian Roto Rooter guy?
When I was a kid my grandmother used to refer to certain people in our town as “one of our kind.” That meant that they were Catholic, most probably Irish Catholics.
If you were hanging out with “one of our kind” you would go to the same movies, read the same books, and probably wouldn’t have any Romeo-Juliet repercussions if you were to marry each other. You might go on to the same type of colleges and bless yourself with the sign of the cross before you took a foul shot in the high school basketball game.
As I read more books and saw more movies, I discovered that “one of our kind” types existed in other cultures. This was big in the Jewish and Asian sub-culture. Greeks, Italians and Africans, too, had their own sense of acculturation to go along with assimilation. My childhood friend Andre’s family would all say the rosary out loud in French while I waited on the porch for him to come out and play. I bought a psychology book once written by a professor at Clark University and my parish priest suggested I not read it because he was not “one of our kind.”
I respect some of the thinking behind “one of our kind.” It is a simple and straight forward way to assert where you are from and it says something about your roots. When my dad married my mother, she was not “one of our kind” and although that cut down on the number of guests at the wedding reception, people got over it.
Similarly, I married a woman who was not “one of our kind” and I have no regrets whatsoever…particularly because I was not “one of her kind” and we had to build our own blended sub-culture over the years and try to instill it into our kids and grandkids.
So, the conclusion to all this is that I bristle a little when I hear about “Christian” professions and trades, as opposed to Godless ones. I do this because I know we are all the same kind.
Don't Stay the Course !!!
Iraq death toll 'soared post-war'
Civilians now 58 times more likely to die
How interesting the other day to hear Press Secretary Tony Snow announce that the Bush White House will no longer be using the phrase “stay the course.” They think this connotes inflexibility they do not wish to have. The expression is not original anyway, it was borrowed from something President Reagan said about his economic policies back in the 1980’s.
Iraqis are now 58 times more likely to die a violent death,
The UK Medical Journal Lancet >>>
Slogans may explain some of the problems we are having with the war. We seem to have been bullied too much by the bully pulpit with expressions like, “mission accomplished,” “stay the course,” “cut and run.” and “last throes.” A new one is what Vice President Cheney said to Rush Limbaugh last week, that the new Iraqi government was doing “remarkably well.” It takes me back to 1973 when General Westmoreland used to talk about “the light at the end of the tunnel.” (Why would a Vice President say anything to Rush Limbaugh?)
It may be that the American people just don’t believe the government anymore. They have been told for years that freedom is winning, that liberty prevails, etc. White House spokesman have squandered their credibility by overdosing us on good news while soldiers are getting killed. Even if we are winning this thing, no one believes spokesmen anymore because they have spent too much time in the pulpit. This political problem is real, win or lose.
When they write books about this war they should have a long chapter on building false confidence on the home front. It should be interesting because the war has been built on false information about WMD’s and a false connection between Iraq and 9/11.
See the BBC report on Iraq deaths here.
Obama-rama
We may be coming to the end of the era of political conventions in this country.
There is a new way to select candidates and it is all about celebrity, charisma and watching large amounts of television.
Senator Barack Obama (shown on right endorsing Deval Patrick) , the junior senator from Illinois, has been all over television and newspapers this week. The apparent reason for it is that Oprah said she wished her supporters would get behind him for president.
I suppose we need to give Oprah some slack here, since she has just come off a strong effort denying that she has a homosexual relationship with her friend Gail, and some west coast nut job has started a web site pushing the talk show queen for president herself. More than anything else, her political ascendancy was connected to that afternoon several months ago when she ripped a new one for that phony-baloney writer who made up a best selling set of druggie memoirs to con the nation.Anyway, Oprah anoints Obama, Larry King anoints Oprah, and the mainstream media takes it from there. Time magazine cover, Meet the Press, and so on. The handsome face of this young senator (a Benetton model, someone wrote) is popping up everywhere. ABC calls him the new “it” candidate for the Democrats and then the next sentence usually mentions Hillary’s chances.
He is seen as a Hillary alternative to the millions of Clinton haters who remember Monica Lewinski in a beret every time Bill or Hillary are mentioned. The haters don’t admit to revulsion with oral sex as much as they rail against Bill Clinton’s perjury before a grand jury. I still can’t figure out what all this has to do with Hillary, who, from all reports, has done a pretty good job as the junior senator from New York.
There has got to be a better way to pick a president than by watching Larry King or Oprah. Maybe they can enlist some help from Sean Hannity when he gets over being unhinged by the specter of Republican election losses this November. Or Bill O’Reilly. Perhaps the “war on Christmas” can be delayed and the culture warrior can help us look for a new president. If O’Reilly decides that Obama is a “Secular-Progressive, his chances for the nomination will vanish.
All Politics Are Local
There is an intriguing similarity between how people look at their schools and politicians. A consensus generally exists that the schools are failing, but many think their own schools, particularly the ones their children go to, are fine. The same is true for politics. The legislature and congress are generally regarded as full of corrupt idiots, but when it comes to our own congressman, senator or state representative, many of us think they are fine upright people.
Why are we like this? Perhaps the reason is that local schools and local politicians actively work at communicating the good news of what they are doing and the success stories in the institutions they represent. The same cannot be said of the urban inner city school where there was a shooting, or where a beautiful 23 year old female teacher in Florida raped a 14 year old boy. Likewise, we are not exposed to much of the story about the earmarked “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska except that it looks like a ridiculous boondoggle.
There seems to be a tendency in education news to report the bad news with far more gusto than the good news. I remember a story years ago that some idiot teacher was showing an assembly of high school kids how to put on a condom. Rush Limbaugh and many other education bashers couldn’t run fast enough with the story of that outrage. I remember the case of a religious proselytizer in California who was told by his school superintendent to avoid teaching the Declaration of Independence because he was using it to preach to students. It made Sean Hannity salivate to interview this poor misguided zealot who announced to the world that teaching the Declaration was banned. How about the school in Atlleboro which banned playing tag at recess the other day?
So part of the secret of maintaining a positive attitude about a school or a politician is learning about what they are doing right, not what they are doing wrong. This is a tall order in a culture which seems to be driven by negative political attack ads. It is perhaps a basic corollary to Tip O’Neill’s maxim that “all politics are local.” If the situation is close to home or at home, we are not as quick to decide it is bad for us. We want good things in our lives and try to work to support evidence of goodness when we see it. The other guys are bad; they don’t know how bad they really are, we are really lucky to have our schools and our politicians.
I saw a great case study in this a few years ago when a school critic stood up at a public meeting and ostensibly demonstrated by computer printouts that teachers were overpaid in the United States and that most students constituted a criminal class heavily involved in overturning authority and abusing drugs. Several teachers in the audience jumped all over this guy, challenging him point by point, confronting his misinformation. His response? Well, he didn’t mean our schools and he didn’t mean our teachers and students. He was really speaking about the problems “down there in the city” or over there across the river.
The state legislature can have a tendency to demonstrate through their behavior that all politics are local. Members get elected to “clean up” Beacon Hill. They charge up there and soon learn that what happens is a group effort and people need to learn to work together. Before long the new office holder is suspected of “selling out” which is motivation for him to act just the opposite when he is back in home territory. And so the problem compounds itself and we love these guys as individuals and often hate them collectively. It may be that you see less of this duplicity these days thanks to televised legislative sessions and the blogosphere. Transparency has a cleansing affect. Letting it all hang out reveals all the aspects of politics and the distinctions between what people say and do start to vanish.
Getting the School Advantage
I have friends who put all kinds of psychic energy into thinking about how to give their children every conceivable advantage at school. First and foremost, there is the issue of who should your child’s teacher be? Teachers, like rock stars and professional athletes, have 
reputations which precede them. Some teachers are seen as nurturing, others strict, others have a reputation of not ever giving up on any kid and still others can fly off and scold and scare.
When I was a little boy we all lived in fear of “getting” Miss Johnson, an elderly teacher about whom there were many stories about her meanness. The worst story was about the naughty fourth grade boy who was locked in a closet for his bad behavior. Miss Johnson went home at the end of the day having forgotten about her prisoner. He was discovered and released by a kindly custodian late in the evening who heard the boy sobbing.
I used to live in a town where many of us pulled up chairs on the sandy beach, formed a large circle, and chatted for hours while the sun browned our bodies and our kids played in the water. Invariably the subject of school came up and people compared notes about the teachers of their children.
Reputations were often indelibly shaped right there on the sand and images were formed which could never be erased, right or wrong. I remember the story, sworn to by several kindergarten mothers, of a very lovely teacher who it was generally agreed, chose to call a kid an “ass.” When the rumor was finally tracked down, it was discovered that she asked an unruly group of kids not to be “asinine.” So much for using words kids don’t understand. It was told in one of these gatherings that a teacher called a student a “son-of-a-bitch.” When that was checked out it became an adventure in first grade addition: “One plus one, the sum of which is two.”
So pity the poor principal who must process requests from anxious parents for the “right” teacher. Generally, principals ask for the requests to be made in writing and to give a reason why a particular teacher is desired or should be avoided. Generally people won’t put it in writing if the request is in the latter category. Principals, as a rule, quietly try to give parents what they want, but cannot always guarantee that before the fact. One of the easiest reasons for honoring a request is if the child in question had a sibling who had difficulty with the teacher in a year past.
Another way that parents will seek advantage for their children is by delaying when they will start school. This is a complex thing because there is all kinds of evidence to suggest that kids profit from early education.
A delayed start, while it will assure that a child is one of the older children in class, and perhaps more mature and ready to learn, risks the problem that a child may be bored and, during the delayed year often creates a daycare or pre-school need that could have been avoided. Sometimes those who want to delay the start have a misunderstanding that everyone moves in lock step in an elementary classroom. That is never the case.
Most schools around here enroll children in kindergarten if they are at least five years old on September 1. That means, by accident of the calendar, some kids will always be the youngest in their class and others will be the oldest. There are some who believe that status is an immense advantage or disadvantage to a child. Other say that the teacher meets the child wherever he is at, and individual differences are accommodated readily.
One of the biggest problems facing school committees is dealing with the enraged parent of a child who turns five the day after the enrollment cutoff.
These people sometimes petition for rules change and look incredulously at school committees which will not budge. There are usually letters from pre-school teachers and others submitted with the appeal. School committees, most of the time, won’t change because it really doesn’t make any difference anyway and could turn the kindergarten admissions process into some kind of an Ivy League admissions game. How about a version of the SAT’s for kindergarten students?
Cape Cod Vacation Hours
I wonder if Cape Cod is the only place in America where businesses use “vacation hours,” a tendency of some retail stores to be closed when the consumer could use them the most. The most egregious example of this is the hardware store that is closed weekends. There aren’t many of these today, but when the ordinary person is not shoveling coal during his 45 hour work week, he needs to crowd his non-work related chores into the one or two days off he has a week. These days are usually on the weekend and a few years ago, when we had a glut of hardware stores, paint stores and lumber yards down here, they had a tendency not to be open much on weekends. There are some, even today, that go home at noon.
The banks are starting to wise up and having week end hours for those who can’t get in there at any other time. Also the post office is trying a little bit harder on weekends but still has a ways to go.
This all shows an ethic that has no reservations about viewing time off for employees as at least as important as convenience for the public. Employees can’t be expected to work all the time, but this lining up of time off with everyone else’s time off creates inconvenience.
I always had jobs that allowed me to check out in the middle of the day and run errands like bank and post office and hardware store. My sense was that many people were not that fortunate.
While I am at it, I might as well sound off on a related subject that has bothered me for years. Is it necessary for school activities and youth recreational activities to be in business on Sunday mornings? I cannot imagine a better strategy for putting churches out of business. Most Protestant churches feature the high point of the worship week to be at 10 or 11 on Sunday morning. It is less of a problem for Catholics who can get to Mass around the clock and to Jews who worship Friday evenings and/or Saturdays.
I have mentioned this problem to my own adult children who usually attend church but who are sometimes part of these Sunday morning secular intrusions. Their answers are all similar: “Dad, you are the only person I know for whom this is an issue.” I don’t doubt that many are not bothered by this, but I think that has happened because we have let it happen. Where are the clergy and school officials to speak out about this? They can talk from the pulpit, write letters to the paper or just buttonhole people about it.
I understand that there is somewhat of a contradiction in my positions here. I want stores open on Sundays and holidays so it will be convenient to people. I also want a “hands off” approach by schools and youth recreation when it comes to Sunday, particular Sunday morning. I take refuge in Samuel Johnson’s nostrum that “Consistency is the hobgoblin of the unimaginative.”
My New Laptop
My New Laptop
The other day a pop-up ad appeared on my computer screen announcing that I had won a new laptop computer. I reacted positively to this good news as my computer is getting old and has its share of viruses, thanks to those other pop-ups which send me anti-virus programs whether I want them or not and make my computer whistle and burp as if it had contracted food poisoning.
As I waited for my new laptop, I considered sending a thank you note to my benefactor. “Oh thank, you, thank you,” I would write, getting the same feeling I had years ago when a telemarketer told me I had been “selected” for some study. I looked more closely at the pop-up and clicked, “next.”
Wait a minute; they were not going to just give me one. I would have to do something to get it. What? Just answer a few questions which do not involve taking on any financial obligations. Fair enough. “Next.” Would I like a catalog from the University of Phoenix? (Yes or No,), Would I like to get a Juris Doctor degree without leaving home or quitting my job? (Yes or No.) How about two cell phones from the best supplier in the country (Yes or No.) or a subscription for five years to Field and Stream magazine? (Yes or No.)
Three hours later I was still answering questions and pushing the “Next” button. I wonder if I should quit? Like the US in Iraq, I had invested too much simply to cut and run.
Then a change of pace. Are you a diabetic? (Yes or No) Now I could answer that affirmatively and not spend any money, so I said “Yes.”
That may have been a mistake; it sent them down a whole new street. Do I need no obligation information about health insurance? (Yes or No,) How about a free glucose testing kit shipped right to my home? (Yes or No,) and, if I am going to test my blood sugar, would I like to receive all my medicine and test strips in a small box in the mail? (Yes or No.) The questions continued as the marketing program gleefully pursued this new knowledge about my health.
At one point I think they were trying to tell me that I might “qualify for a government subsidized motorized red wheel chair with balloon tires” if I could only contract neuropathy which would impair my walking.
Back to the main set of questions. Would I like free recipes? A pair of shoes made of man-made materials? Pants that need no belt? Hundreds of vitamins? I was getting annoyed and somehow my new laptop computer seemed more or less like a tool which would allow me to answer these ridiculous questions into perpetuity.
With that insight, the keyboard started to lose its appeal and I thought maybe reading newspapers and magazines pointed to the direction of my future intellectual stimulation. So I started leafing through my new copy of TV Guide which I got at an introductory rate of $5.00 for a year. After that I plan to read the Cape Cod Times which I am able to receive for another week at the ridiculously low promotional rate of less than .15 a copy.
One of these days I will start getting my Christmas cards ready; I have about 30 beautiful spiritual cards I have put aside. I get them from religious orders which send them for no apparent reason. I will see that the envelopes containing these cards will be copiously decorated with seals from a variety of non-profit agencies. The return address will have a colorfully embossed sticker of my name and home address. The street is spelled wrong, but mass marketing computer print-outs can’t get everything right.
For Governor? (None of the above)
A pox on all their houses?
I have no particular racehorse in this gubernatorial contest, but I have opinions about some of the ads. I love the Christy Mihos ad where people are walking around with their heads in funny places asking why the Big Dig came in 12 billion dollars over budget. Shades of Beavis and Butthead. I guess Christy is finished down here on the Cape. He’s against Cape Wind. It will be hard for him to win, he is seen as a boat rocker and, as I follow some of the post debate II analysis, he plays a little lose with the truth. Why don’t his siblings support him?
Negative ads are ones which are critical of the opposition. Positive ads are ones when you boast about yourself. I think Carl Rove is the Godfather of negative ads. When you have skimpy things to boast about, negative ads become your weapon of choice; but as a blogger in these pages pointed out, if people don’t feel favorable toward you to start with, negative ads may not help that much. Nailing the other guy can’t hurt. Swift boating became an art form two years ago.
I have difficulty with the Kerry Healey ad in which a woman almost whispers the question, “Do we want a governor who defends rapists?” This made Ted Kennedy go ballistic and try to “Bork” Healey who he accused of “Swiftboating” Patrick. This ad reads like they are trying to hang the Michael Dukakis “soft on crime” albatross around Deval Patrick’s neck. It doesn’t seem to be working. Next thing you know there will be a tank driver’s helmet superimposed on his head. Of course Deval didn’t help much by dissembling a bit on his memory of the rapist. I am not sure he came across any worse than Condi Rice, however.
I guess Healey did better in the second debate than the first one. She’s absolutely right about the value of the state taking over the basket case of Springfield. Mihos was way off on that one. Healey needs to lose the “second banana” image. We’ve seen too much of her standing behind the governor, holding his coat, nodding agreement with what he says.
The “no taxes” stuff is shrill and they all say it, although the irrational fears of Healey partisans who think Deval will be sending us to the poor house, is enough to send my vote his way.
I have a real problem that all three of them are apparently multi-millionaires. None of it seems to be inherited wealth. While I know that means they have been successful in the world, I am looking for a leader who can relate to my meager financial circumstances. I know that means they probably can’t be bought, but then I remember that there are other mediums of exchange besides money.
300 Million Americans
Sometime this month the 300 millionth American will be born.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
When my mother was a school girl in the 1930’s, the number she heard cited was 110 million. In the 1950’s, when I was in high school I remember the number was 158 million.
Books have been written about overpopulation and the ultimate extinction of the human race. For a while in the late sixties there was quite a bit of concern about how we could injure the world by having too many babies. Then, probably with help from birth control and liberal abortion laws, the threat of over population seems to have disappeared.
Some countries pay families who have more than the minimal number of kids, other are contemplating plans to increase population and encourage immigration.
Many countries are realizing that in order to be competitive in the global economy, nations need growth populations. That is why the US’s present growth rate, one of the highest in the world, is good news.
Ben Wattenburg, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, sounded very positive about America’s population growth. He posits that we will need a large population to continue to solve problems and bring about economic growth. Over-crowding will not be a problem. Today, there is room enough for the entire population of the Earth to be assigned one acre of Texas each.
Here are the top ten countries:
- China: 1,378,827,643
- India: 1,103,371,000
- United States: 300,000,000
- Indonesia: 232,850,493
- Brazil: 187,287,330
- Pakistan: 158,283,500
- Bangladesh: 148,238,098
- Russia: 141,895,047
- Nigeria: 132,579,649
- Japan: 127,417,000
The world contains 6.5 billion people. The US represents about 4½ percent of the world’s population and ranks third. Iran is 17th, France is 20th, Britain is 21st, Afghanistan is 38th and North Korea is 48th. Although North Korea is way down the list, it has the world’s largest army, about one million strong.
When George Washington was president, the US had about 4 million people. 100 years later it was 63 million. In the 40 years from 1870 to 1910, waves of immigrants saw our population more than double from 39 million to 82 million. Those waves contained most of our ancestors.
Future projections say that the world’s population will crest at fewer than 9 billion in the middle of this century. That is largely because of decreasing birth rates. For an interesting review of world population, check out www.wikepedia.com.
Internet Abbreviations
I’m afraid I am a bit of a fuddy-duddy when it comes to tech talk and Internet abbreviations. I thought LOL meant “Lots of Love” until my son-in law set me straight and I discovered I was being ridiculed, not caressed. Even Cardinal Sean O'Malley writes a blog now and seems to know some of these abbreviations. We better get with it.
This is a partial list of “hip” expressions being used these days in blogs, on cell phones and Internet forums. If you know of others, how about adding to the list?
AFAICS
As Far As I Can See
AFAIK
As Far As I Know
BTW
By The Way
FWIW
For What It's Worth
HTH
Hope That Helps
IANAL
I Am Not A Lawyer
IIRC
If I Remember Correctly
IME
In My Experience
IMO
In My Opinion
IMHO
In My Humble Opinion
IRL
In Real Life
IYKWIM
If You Know What I Mean
LMAO
Laughing My Arse Off
LOL
Laughs Out Loud (or alternatively Lots Of Laughs)
ROFL
Rolls On Floor Laughing
RTFM
Read The Fudging Manual
TANSTAAFL
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
WTF
What The Fudge?
YMMV
Your Mileage May Vary
What can you add?
Merit Pay
The revelation that no one knows what constitutes good teaching should come as no surprise. To some, good teaching is closely connected to setting a good example in patriotism or religion. To others it is someone who emphasizes basic education, focusing on instilling facts ahead of critical thinking and building self esteem. To others, good teaching demands a nurturing and accepting mentor who can turn into a hardliner when the situation demands it.
It is naïve to argue that we must define good teaching before we can improve it. There is no single definition, just as there is no single definition of what makes a good artist or a good soldier. If we knew what made good teaching we could have merit pay and lift many teachers from their impoverished underclass status. This would be so much easier if teaching were a technology and trade schools could be opened all over the country. Unfortunately, that is not the way humans learn.
And yet we see many political campaigns which promise to introduce merit pay and to devise ways to better control teacher unions and/ or schools of education which are scapegoated whenever people get discouraged and frustrated about how kids are doing in school.
Contrary to much opinion, the resistance to merit pay is not the labor unions trying to protect the marginal. There is simply a belief that agreeing on what is good teaching is an impossible task, certainly one to be kept out of the hands of unqualified politicians who seem more committed to placating critics than improving schools.
Presently the world rewards teachers based on their years of experience and the level of education that they have attained. There is usually what they call a “career ladder” at work. When you start teaching you start on the first step, and if you are effective you advance, often annually, up the career ladder. Additionally, if you seek more academic credits such as moving from a Bachelor’s degree to a master’s or doctor’s degree level, you not only move up a rung, but move to a different “track” which is essentially another parallel but more lucrative career ladder.
There is a school of though which argues that teachers should be paid according to how well students score on some form of standardized test. This is usually not done; however, for fear that teachers will want to teach only the best students, not the more challenging ones.
There is another view that teacher pay could be differentiated on the basis of the work year. Teachers willing to do summer tutoring or to develop curriculum during school vacations would be paid more than others. This has met with limited acceptance because many teachers have entered the profession because of the attractive work year with school vacations and July and August off.
In this year’s Massachusetts gubernatorial race, Kerry Healey wants to spend $50 million giving raises to teachers of students who do well on tests. Beyond that, neither candidate has much to say about merit pay.
Perhaps that is due to the fact that Governor Romney had some proposals out there a year or so ago but chose never to pursue them with the legislature. Deval Patrick’s ideas about improving education focus on the early years. He advocates mandatory all day kindergarten, lower class sizes and more pre-school initiatives. Kerry Healey seems to focus on older school children. She supports twice yearly testing to measure progress and increasing the minimum age before a child can drop out of school from 16 to 18.
The reason for wanting to raise the age is to lower the drop out rate. One figure says the state average is that 14% of kids drop out of high school. Kerry Healey argues that this is low and could be as high as 20%. People cannot agree on what is a drop-out rate, but that is the subject of another blog. Healey’s idea of raising the age could cost about $70 million.
Regarding the reduction of class size, the Pioneer Institute, a Massachusetts educational think tank, estimates that it would cost approximately $140 million to reduce average class size from 20 students to 19 students per class. Mandatory all day kindergarten would cost about $73 million.
The Study of Obituaries
"Thus passes the glory of the world"
Every day I check the obituaries in the Cape Cod Times and the Boston Globe and reflect on lives and the sadness of death as the names of the departed scroll by on the computer screen. I recall the worn out and corny joke that, “I check to see if my name is there.”
Because I have lived on the Cape for many years, am getting older and gotten to know many people, I find, more and more frequently, that I know the deceased. I always notice how old they were and make the connection between their years and mine, trying to read my own future. Sometimes we see an obituary of a newborn baby or someone only one year old. It causes sadness and wonder about what might have been “only if.”
The obituaries of war casualties are the cause of special thoughts and feelings of appreciation. You think about a bullet or piece of shrapnel piercing and terminating the brave young soldier. You realize that the bullet has penetrated not only this person but his children and his children’s children. The dead hero will never ever know the experience of being someone’s grandfather or great grandfather, how sad. I am a 13th generation Mayflower decendent. If an Indian arrow had felled one of my ancestors I would not be here today.
Causes of death can be intriguing. Sometimes you just cannot figure out what took the victim, although old age is a frequent explanation. You look for evidence between the lines such as where to contribute in lieu of flowers, the deceased’s philanthropic interests, or comments from survivors. We have evolved from the days when it was taboo to mention cancer, but today’s death notices usually do seem to avoid words like HIV or Alzheimer’s. Sometimes you suspect HIV if the deceased has no opposite sex spouse, but a same sex “companion.”
Suicides and automobile accidents usually get short shift in obituaries, if mentioned at all. They may earn a subordinate clause in an introductory description of the subject, but that’s about it.
You can learn history from obituaries. These pieces, usually written by a loving friend or relative, use the story as a canvas to paint a picture featuring the high points of a life. I love to read about the lives of women who were WACs in World War II or models or actresses in the thirties and forties. Sometimes I fantasize about how beautiful they were then, particularly if the departed were nonagenarians residing in some nursing home.
One of the sad things is when a person appears to have died alone. They don’t list survivors and you get a sense that the deceased had stopped being connected to this world. Some obituaries of people who have died in nursing homes give you the same feeling. When survivors are listed, I find that I sometimes find people listed whom I know. I may send sympathy cards. Messages of condolence are also available through on-line guest books.
This introduces an ingenious concept of using e-mail and the Internet to send personal messages to families grieving over a lost one.
I recommend obituary study as a healthy reminder of our mortality...
The Horror of School Shootings
And three steps to take to stop them happening at your child's school
As we shake off the paralyzing horror and tragedy of the recent Amish school shootings (on right), it is time to reflect one more time on how to protect our school children from crazy predators.
First of all, there is no way to completely remove all risk. We could home school and build little cocoons around our kids 24 hours a day so no one could ever hurt them. We know that won’t work.
My fantasy is to live in a country where guns are about as rare as medieval catapults of hot oil or nuclear weapons. Assuming that the US will continue to be unable or unwilling to banish firearms, we must look to partial solutions focused on security and communications. We must do at least the following:
- Know where the doors are to a school and work to keep them all locked. This includes the loading dock out back and the classroom exit to the outdoors that teacher wants to keep ajar for ventilation or easy access for recess or nature walks. This seems obvious, but it is incredibly hard to do in schools with dozens of exterior doors and sets of keys distributed hither and yon. It must be enforced and particularly, the main doors should be monitored whether by a receptionist or a camera.
- Use technology to enhance communications in a school. There is no excuse any longer to have classrooms in any school which cannot directly dial 911 or warn other parts of the school if there is an emergency. This is an absolute necessity; the isolated classroom must become as extinct as the dinosaur.
- Develop strong open relationships with local public safety officials. We need outgoing and articulate public safety officials who are eagerly welcomed in schools, who spend time daily in these schools, who are regular members of the school community for children and teachers alike. They can tell us about drug abuse prevention, warn us about talking to strangers and conduct fire and bus evacuation drills. Some schools actually have a policeman on the payroll. There are school floor plans and lock boxes and fire alarm alerts wired into police and fire departments.
- Keep looking at the three preceding paragraphs regularly, with a view toward fine tuning and updating them. Many schools create standing committees or sub-committees to look at safety issues. It is not enough to have a plan; it must live off the shelf and be worked on much of the time.
In the next few weeks there will be a many news stories and journal articles about this. The president has scheduled a White House conference. If this is perceived only as another political problem for government to work on, we will not accomplish much. If we are serious about being safer, we must at least follow these four suggestions.
Test Score Season
Everything you always wanted to know about MCAS but were afraid to ask
These days are high season for the annual epidemic of test score fascination. The papers are full of MCAS score results, Cape Cod Today had a blog from Democrant about MCAS scores that elicited almost a record number of responses, statements are reported by school officials about how hard teachers work or how much harder they are going to work next year.
I remember one administrator a few years ago who announced he had a plan to “ramp up” 8th and 9th graders to get ready for the tests in 10th grade. You had a feeling that we were backing army trucks and tanks onto C140 flying boxcars in order to get them into battle in Iraq.
Resolving to work hard is better than looking like scared deer staring into the headlights of a collision bound automobile. That was sometimes the case when the testing movement started years ago.
Never mind that you have to have some kind of special creases in your brain to understand what this means, to understand the real difference between one school and another, or to even understand the difference between percentile and percentage.
If 99% of the kids pass at one school and 97% pass at another school, does that difference amount to anything at all? It depends on how many kids are in one percentage point. It tends to overlook the fact that if you rank order these things there can be ten or 15 schools between 99% and 97%, but that is fine because no one understands what goes into this anyway.
And consider this: One of the ways they do rankings is to list schools in terms of how much better they did than last year. So, a list of this year’s winners is, in a sense, a slightly disguised version of last year’s biggest losers.
Some of the more prestigious colleges aren’t allowing SAT’s play a role in who gets into college and who does not.
I have always been amazed at how people don’t seem to accept it when you say that test scores measure very little about human learning. I think some folks think we say this because we are captives of teacher unions, crazy left wingers, or maybe tested poorly ourselves or have children who don’t do well.
How many people do you know in business or in politics, or in any field at all who ever have anything to say about how they did on SAT’s or other standardized tests when they were school children? I remember taking the SAT’s but have no idea of how I did. No one seemed to care back then. I have a hard time finding people who can even remember the grades they got in college. For me, that proves the limitations of this statistical data we seem to enjoy.
Grief and Its By-Products
The incomprehensible grief and pathos of losing a loved one
Can anyone tell me how the families and survivors of the tragic Station nightclub fire three years ago are able to get any satisfaction whatsoever from hissing and spitting into TV cameras and microphones about how much they hate the Dederian brothers and the judge who is apparently choosing not to execute them for this accident? Is it that the thirst for justice trumps the need for satisfaction? That is the only explanation which comes to me, and that is a flawed one because justice and satisfaction should go together.
None of us can grasp the incomprehensible grief and pathos of losing a loved one among the 100 victims, but what kind of by-product is this hatred and screams for vengeance? It doesn’t say much for human nature, forgiveness and the ability to put things behind us. This is not the finest hour of these families and survivors.
Broadcasting Local Election Returns
Thankfully I have a television set in my bedroom and could watch some election returns crawl across the Boston and Providence television screens on the evening of Sept. 19th. after the primary elections. I don’t see many local returns nor have I seen any signs that it will be any different on the night of November 7.
Getting big city TV returns is preferable to telephoning every town hall after the polls close and repeatedly asking again and again if they know elections results or Proposition 2 ½ override successes or failures. The problem is, Boston and Providence can’t tell you what is going on until the next day, and by then even the Cape Cod Times has it. I’ve done it every way. Standing in a town hall lobby waiting for phones to ring and bothering town officials to tell me how things came out. Unbelievably, sometimes the town halls are locked and there is no one home and you wonder if anyone cares.
Sometimes you are just as well off to go to the local bar and ask around. With any kind of luck, you may hit a candidate’s victory party or a consolation party for the vanquished.
What is it with Cape Cod radio and television these days? In the evening it is usually pre-packaged, pre-recorded music, syndicated reruns, bulletin boards and Community access taped shows. This fare gives very little indication of being in touch with life out here on the peninsula. Google lists some good web sites for the 21 radio stations down here but they are generic with only small efforts at local programming. It is clear that the big boys have taken over Cape Cod radio and no one really cares after 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning about news down here. Even the coverage you do get often seems to be based on reading the Cape Cod Times or The Register out loud.
Years ago local radio news was filled with telephone interviews and other feeds from a variety of local sources. I was a public official back then and was being telephoned by reporters all the time. In those days I could go home from work and have a choice between Channel 11 news and Channel 56. I remember Mickey Broadhurst sitting at the Channel 56 news desk with the bearing of a CBS evening news anchor. I remember Martha Cusick and a channel 11 news photographer following me around for a news story. I remember news anchor Mark Mumford, who does a great job on radio morning news today, joining me for supper every evening with news of the day.
Last December 9 when a bad storm hit and power was lost all over the place, no one was at home at local radio stations because the disaster happened on a weekend. If the world ends on a weekend, no one will know what hit us. I had hoped that was an isolated incident that managers could learn from and never let happen again. I know there were letters of complaint written to newspapers and other letters offering excuses and suggesting that things might change.
In view of the absence of primary night local returns, I don’t think anyone has learned anything. Where are the opinions of some of our local political pundits? Where are telephone interviews with winning and losing candidates? Where are the exit polls? How about numbers from up and down the Cape continually coming in and being analyzed? I read that WCOD will be doing election returns this year and will also feature candidate nights leading up to the election. I wish them well.
I guess the answer to the question of why it can’t be like the good old days is supposed to be that it was too expensive that way. That would explain failures, mergers and sales. Still, I can’t help think that big business, besides gobbling up media outlets, have also done their work in other areas such as school bus companies, funeral homes and banks. I don’t notice a cutback of visiting hours at funeral homes or greater crowding of school busses. In the banking industry, probably with great help from technology, customer service has never been as good.
Getting Out the Vote
Is it money or safety?
Politicians try to get people to vote for them by offering money or safety.
- The money offer comes in the form of pledges to cut taxes, roll them back, or to at least not support new ones.
- The safety issue is embedded in “support our troops,” fight terrorism, or put sexual predators in jail.
You can count on all successful politicians pushing for the money issue, the safety ones or both. Some single issues cover both concepts at the same time. Fixing potholes will avoid accidents plus increase the life of your car. Windmills in Cape waters are another. Alternative energy sources will save money plus keep the world cleaner and safer.
When people run for public office they have a variety of motives. Perhaps the biggest one is wanting to help make the world better. There are other motives such as honoring the family name, fixing a wrong which needs to be righted, getting a job or simply spending a life in the give and take of politics. Whatever motivates candidates, it must be powerful medicine because campaigning is hard work. Even if you like hand shaking, kissing babies and walking in parades acting as if you know everyone you see, the job has got to be exhausting and thankless.
I see them standing and smiling, hold signs outside of election halls, at town dumps, and at heavily traveled intersections. A smile and a wave. It must work, or they wouldn’t do it. They also walk door to door passing out literature. I did that for a candidate once. Today I am too old and proud to go after votes that way and simply would not do it.
No politician ever won anything by saying he was going to raise taxes
Walter Mondale, running for president in 1984 said that both he and Reagan would raise taxes, but that he would tell us about it. A hell of a lot of good that did him. President George H.W. Bush said “read my lips” and then raised taxes. It probably cost him the presidency. Of course, virtually all politicians who want to win elections are passionately committed not to raise taxes. It’s as simple as that; it approaches a religious belief in New Hampshire. It is an easy horse to ride, and they all ride it. No new taxes.
And how about those campaign ads you see on TV? Can you learn anything at all from these? Can you even believe them if they do happen to say anything in 30 seconds? “Tax increases are off the table!” That’s a news flash. “We need creative ideas.” Another good one. I had a friend once who ran for school committee under the slogan: “Quality education at a fair price.” Wow.
Senator Danforth and the Religious Right
Faith and Politics
Former Senator Jack Danforth is an ordained Episcopal priest and has spent 18 years in the United States Senate as the Republican Senator from Missouri. This heir to the Ralston-Purina fortune has also been a United Nations ambassador and he is the man you saw sponsoring Justice Clarence Thomas before the Senate Judiciary committee when he was nominated in 1991. He has been on the short list for selection as a candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States.
Danforth believes that people of faith should be involved in politics but he is quick to point out that that involvement should be a reconciling, not a divisive force in our country. He went to Yale and earned a law degree and a divinity degree in the same year. He was a eulogist at President Ronald Reagan’s funeral.
He believes that politics is what should hold a nation together and he attributes some of the divisions and fragmentation is the United States today to the power of Christian conservatives, most of who are in his own Republican party. In his new book, “Faith and Politics,” which came out on Sept. 19, he says the final straw which inspired him to publish was the Terry Sciavo case in which he believes fellow Republicans easily abandoned their principles against government intervention to please the Christian right.
He feels that other religious wedge issues have been promoted by the Republican Party to advance a particular religious point of view. While he opposes abortion, he sees resisting stem cell research and support for a federal amendment banning gay marriage, and the matter of public display of religious symbols as three of these issues which partisan politics should avoid.
Senator Danforth believes that people need to be more humble and to realize that they do not speak for God. Other well meaning and well motivated Christians can differ on these matters and still try to lead faithful lives. He urges a Christian ministry of reconciliation and working together to solve problems like the budget shortfall, energy conservation and living in a post 9/11 world. He advocates religious moderation, not extremism.
When he was at the UN he brought together Christian and Muslim leaders in the Sudan. He wanted mediation, but the Christians rejected the idea. He has also tried to get mediation going in other countries but it has not worked because people have not wanted to add religion to an already highly charged issue.
He expresses concern about the divisive role of religion in the United States. He believes that religion is a reconciling force and that the US sets a poor example when it uses religious political wedge issues. He believes we cannot leave the debate of international geo-politics to militant and divisive religious activists.
The Man in the Arena
I suspect there are many politicians who feel badly about losing an election this week. This blog is for them and it consists of the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. He said these words on April 23, 1910 in a speech he was giving at the University of Paris:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Mid-term Elections
In seven weeks the people of the United States will select the members of the 110th Congress. On the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November (Nov. 7) we will elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, and 36 governors.
As in all midterm elections this presents voters with an enormous opportunity to comment on the work of the federal government and the directions being taken by the statehouses,
This year the experts are predicting that the Democrats have a good chance of taking over the House of Representatives. Presently there are 231 Republicans and 204 Democrats in the House. The Democrats need to take over 15 seats to get control. If this happens, it means a new speaker, 19 new chairmen of sub-committees and a whole new leadership team in the 110th congress.
The United States Senate is less likely to change majority parties. Presently it has 45 Democrats and 55 Republicans. Six seats would have to change party affiliations for the Democrats to take over the Senate. It could happen, big turnovers have occurred before, but it is less likely than the turnover in the House.
To tone is one of anti-incumbency, in spite of a decent economy.
There are many theories about this tone, including the natural urge for change, the war in Iraq, the lobbying scandals and lining things up for the big enchilada in 2008, the presidential elections.
Whatever happens, news watchers have an exciting few weeks ahead of them this fall. Comparisons are being made by some of the pundits. The Wall Street Journal asks if President Bush can avoid the war bullet which got President Truman in 1950. He lost the House that year, probably because his Korean War polls were lower than even President Bush’s. Others hearken back to 1994 when the Democrats were caught with their pants down and lost both houses of Congress. Republicans had been out of power since 1954 but a big anti-incumbent mood turned things around.
Kelly Ripa is Flat Chested
This is a review of the television show, “Live with Regis and Kelly.”
It is on for one hour every weekday morning at 9:00 on Channel 7 and I think a Rhode Island station carries it an hour later. The stars are Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa. Regis comes across as an urban wise gruff uncle or curmudgeon, a graduate of Notre Dame University, full of tales about his Catholic elementary school upbringing. Kelly is the proverbial “New Jersey Girl,” beautiful, the mother of three, married to a handsome actor and living in the Hamptons.
If you like chit-chat about articles in the New York Daily News, an almost daily update on Notre Dame Football and New York athletic teams, you may enjoy this show. It is a show about two New York millionaires, an old man and a young mother, talking to each other about life and their views of the world. Their skill is making this look like a conversation between two ordinary people who worry about things like parent open houses at school, waking up lame or not feeling well, the foibles of spouses, and walking the dog. Sometimes it comes out that they go to Broadway shows a lot and may be vacationing in the Caribbean on a regular basis, so you get the feeling that they are not all that normal.
There is a lot of sexual tension here. She is a beautiful blonde and he, although over 70, is handsome and always elegantly attired. She gives him back rubs and pedicures, she likes rubbing her shoulder against him and there is a lot of double entendre about beds and marriage etc. She enjoys removing slivers from his bare feet with a needle. She also talks almost daily about how flat chested she is. If it bothers her so much, she should use some of her millions to have surgery.
They interview guests on this show, usually actors promoting their movies and plays and, less frequently, authors promoting books. They will use reruns of interviews a lot, opening the show with a live “Good Morning” and then revert to taped interviews, even though it makes a contradiction of their show name and fools no one who doesn’t believe in 10 second wardrobe changes. Sometimes they will give awards to the guests who come on their show. These are known as “Rellys” (Regis and Kelly) and sometimes they give the awards to themselves. This is totally consistent with the image Regis tries to cultivate of an ego-driven old man. Sometimes he gives a Relly to the actor who can do the best impersonation of him.
The musical guests are usually not impressive. Sometimes they are B-list big names, but often the guests are unknown rock bands or rappers about whom we will never hear again. You get the feeling sometimes that these musical gigs are given to the lowest bidder; sometimes maybe the bidder even pays Regis. My personal least favorites are sexy female teenage singers who can shake their bodies beyond belief.
The show’s producer is a man named Michael Gelman who is the butt of many jokes, but someone who you can believe is making most of the decisions for the show. Gelman appears to be the guy who picks the guests, clips the news items, and decides when and how to change the set, etc. He is always standing with folded arms, usually just out of camera range. Regis and Kelly are quick to credit or blame him when things go well or awry.
I am not really sure if I like this show. I watch it daily because my wife enjoys it with her morning coffee. It can wear on you. For me Kelly does not wear as well as Regis. They play off each other and sometimes the annoying things Kelly does involves playing Abbott to Regis’ Costello. The show is kind of like my feelings for my Cocker Spaniel. It wouldn’t bother me that much if she disappeared tomorrow, but I probably would miss her.
Channel 2 Auctions
If only they didn't make it look like they face bankruptcy if we don't buy
I have always been a fan of those PBS fund raising programs you see on channel 2 and 44 and other channels from time to time. The hawkers who do the commercials can make you think that the whole station is on the verge of bankruptcy if you do not give a pledge by next Thursday. You get the feeling that the campaign is a one time thing and then, lo and behold, two months later they are doing it all over again.
I really enjoy Andre Rieux and his music and costumes as well of the wild exuberance of his usually European audiences.
I fell in love with the Celtic Women show they did a few months ago and from time to time get totally involved in the artistry of Ken Burns documentaries. A few years ago I couldn’t get enough of Les Miserables and Roy Orbison in black and white, backed up by Bruce Springsteen and Bonnie Raitt, is always a show stopper.
My family thinks I am a crazy old fool to watch these specials, but these same people can watch hours of defective Red Sox pitching or the Green Bay Packers.
I am less enthusiastic about the doo wop and other aging rocker concerts they have from time to time. There is a young promoter who often emcees these things and if you listen to him closely, you get the feeling that he sees his work as at least as important as that of a head of state or the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts. The problem with the old rockers is that they are all my age or close to it. They often look as if they have been temporarily released from some kind of de-tox unit and are being remunerated by having the young promoter rent a red tuxedo or something like that so they will look “hip.” I guess it's rank ageism on my part, but I would rather listen to younger more physically attractive artists, who have not developed post age 55 girths and need to wear long flowing clothes that hide their shapes.
I kind of develop relationships with the announcers who come on between segments and beg you to send money. These people, I think, are often executives at the channel 2 station and they project well an image of an Ivy League professor helping out the local cultural outlet for a few days. I watch closely the eyeglass frames and the neckties these guys wear. Sometimes they have a Boston Brahmin patrician aura which is attractive. The women are equally appealing. Always a little older than the sub 25 set, they offer a seasoned kind of grace and beauty which makes it fun to watch them. One of them, a pediatrician I think, from the North Shore is named Mavis. I like her as well as a woman named Ann who is always on the Channel 2 fund raisers.
Altar Boy Days
When I signed up the priest would assign older altar boys to work with the new ones on a regular basis, memorizing the responses and sharpening our diction. As I got a feeling for Latin, the curate, Fr. Casey, would help us practice. I recall walking around the church grounds with Fr. Casey reciting it… “ Suscipiat Dominus, sacrificium…” He wore a pork pie hat and reminded me of Bing Crosby in the film Going My Way.
When you were an altar boy you pulled turns serving daily Mass.. Your time would come around every six or seven weeks and I recall disliking it because you had to get up too early, but liking it because it helped you organize your day and gave you a sense of well-being. I would get up at 6:30 and ride my bike to the church, about a half mile from home. There were usually only two or three parishioners in attendance. One was an old man named “Johnny” O’Mara who was in his mid-nineties. I never knew him to miss morning Mass. He would sometimes whisper his prayers and if you listened carefully you could hear, in an Irish brogue, a soft, “Hail Mary, full of grace…” The Masses for the dead were sung by one of two local soloists. I would listen carefully to the words and thought they were so beautiful: “Requiem aeternam, dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.”
In the winter, morning Mass was in the “chapel” which was a small room in the cellar of the church. While you were in the room, on a cold winter dawn, you could hear the radiators hissing out steam. There would be the sparse congregation in the pews and me kneeling at the altar, with the old priest standing on the step above me, everyone facing the tabernacle and crucifix. At the preface of the Mass I can hear him sing, “Et ideo, cum Angelis et Archangelis...” I remember being moved by these sounds and thinking that surely God must be listening to such a performance. One morning, when I was 14, I was helping the priest put away the vestments after Mass. He asked me if I smoked before breakfast. I said yes and he said one should never smoke before breakfast. I was mortified and that was the end of me enjoying a cigarette before going off to church.
Before Mass started you sometimes stood around in the sacristy waiting for the priest to vest and say the appropriate prayers. There was a framed list on the wall listing all the former pastors of my church and the dates they had served. It started in the 18th century and went up to the present. Some served for many years, others had terms of only two or three years. I wondered if they died prematurely or were transferred because they got into trouble or didn’t like the church.
The “mother of all altar boy details” occurred early in the morning on the Saturday before Easter. It would start at 6:30 A.M. and sometimes run until 9:00. It included blessing the holy water and preparing the oils and ashes etc. that would be used in the sacraments during the year. There was rarely anyone in attendance except the priest and two or three of us altar boys who had been unlucky enough to be asked to do this. The Latin readings seemed to go on forever, interspersed with kneeling, genuflecting, standing, but rarely sitting.
The altar at church was beautiful. A large gothic structure with spires and balustrades, I would often focus on a decoration or candle in a near trance as I fought sleep while serving. I would frequently go behind the altar getting things ready and putting things away. It was full of gold candlesticks and candelabra to be used for different liturgical occasions. I remember the smell of candle wax. It was rich and sweet. There was always a bench with wax shavings, votive lights and a kitchen knife in evidence. Apparently, someone would scrape out the residues from votive lights and candlesticks and melt them down to make more candles.
My pastor died when I was 16 and was the first dead person I had ever seen. He lay in state in Mass vestments in an open casket in the front center aisle of the church. On the afternoon before his funeral, a pigeon was flying around inside the church. The funeral director was trying to shoo the bird out a window or kill it with a BB gun. He telephoned me to help him and we chased the creature around the church. The bird finally flew out an open window. What a surrealistic feeling, chasing a bird around inside my church with a broom while my dead pastor, in all his robes, rested in an open casket.
As I was getting to be one of the older altar boys, the next pastor would often press me into service at a solemn high Mass or other liturgical celebrations to be the Master of Ceremonies. I would move about the altar, a book under my arm directing the younger boys to go here and there and sometimes telling the priests where they were to stand or what they should do next. I was very proud of this role in my home church and feel that it had a lot to do with shaping my faith as an adult in the years to come.
Rateye and Hogjaw
Call me anything but late for supper
I was born and raised in rural northern New Hampshire and Vermont. We had a lot of idiosyncrasies, one of which was a tendency to give nicknames to many people. In my wife’s Vermont hometown this nicknaming habit was particularly rampant, helped along greatly by my wife’s large family which included her outspoken and colorful brothers and brothers-in law.
In my wife’s hometown, the representative to the state legislature was known as “Hogjaw,” and the local dealer in antiques and useless tourist junk was “Rateye.” My personal favorite was the name for a plumber who had lost several fingers in a plumbing accident. They called him “Thumb and Finger.” A friend who complained a lot that he spent too much time on the bench in softball games was known as “Sliver,” “the Goldfish Twins” were two sisters with thick lips and a person with an unruly Afro haircut was known as “Tumbleweed.”
I’ve got to go up there someday and talk with my wife’s relatives to get more nickname ideas. I can also look into why they call a little town nearby “Mosquitoville.” That probably wasn’t thought up by the local Chamber of Commerce.
I think maybe the Vermont twang has something to do with the birth of nicknames. Cousins Jeremy and Colleen when they were little, running around the barn with all the others, were known as “Germy” and “Clean.”
Often nicknames are tied directly to a person’s physical appearance, and the names can be cruel. I know of a “Gravel Face”, a “Pencil Neck,” “Rake Face” (two rows of upper teeth) “Flop Ears” and “Anvil Head.” A “Blooper” is a guy who can’t do anything right. There is a guy there with a cowlick whom they call “Burr Head.”
Letter to a College Freshman
Dear College Freshman,
In the next few weeks you will be joining about a million colleagues who are embarking on what could be the most defining journey of your life. Some of you are more ready for this voyage than others; these often are days of great homesickness and self doubt. Some of you have never before been away from home; others may never have left your home state. All of a sudden you are expected to assume adult responsibilities in a world which up to now has nurtured and even babied you. The heady days of high school graduation and the parties surrounding that are now behind you. This is where the rubber hits the road.
You will be expected to get up in the morning and to be places, like early classes, on time. You will be counted on to make food decisions which will not prematurely destroy your teeth and digestive systems. If you have not already done so, you will come face to face with the demons of liquor, drugs and sex. No one will be picking up after you or whispering “conscience thoughts” in your ears. You are on your own and inevitably, some of you will make bad decisions which could have a lasting effect on your entire lives. This is the scariest time of year for 18 year olders away from home for the first time.
Even those who elect to serve in the military will find that many decisions…like what to eat and what to wear…have already been made for them. Not so when you are in college. You are truly on your own and are expected to comport yourself according to some idea of what you want to be known as and seen as. For some, this is the time to make decisions about language. What will be the role of swearing and the F-word in your speech? It is a time to make decisions about friends. If you surround yourself with friends needier than you, you may turn into a full time counselor. If you surround yourself with friends less needy than you, you might encounter self-esteem problems or a tendency to follow rather than to lead. Of course, healthy friends are vital. You need the models and examples to follow and you can repay by making some good moves yourself.
Some cynics will say that when you go to college you will turn gay or decide not to go to church anymore. I am not sure it works that way. To my way of thinking the forces which cause these transitions began their work far earlier than the first year of college.
If I could distill my wisdom for college freshmen into a few short sentences, I would say the following based on my experience as a student and father.
1. This too will pass. Feelings of unhappiness and loss will go away slowly and you will look back and ask yourself what you could have been thinking to have been so restless and homesick.
2. A critical thing is the friends you acquire in the first few months. If you get in with the “wrong crowd” your chances of success will diminish considerably. By “wrong crowd” I mean drinking, partying, emotionally needy people who want company.
3. Learn to study. This means reading a lot in quiet places like the school library and getting used to working alone. This might mean saying no to trips home as often as you would like.
When my father dropped me off at college many years ago he gave me some very re-assuring words. He said, “Look, if you decide you don’t like it here, I can be here in three hours.” I knew he meant it, which is why I never ever considered making that call home.
The Opinionator
Outfitting Your Kid's Classroom
Before we get too far into the school year, parents, as consumers, need to pay attention to the dozens of notes, forms and requests that come home with children from teachers.
School nurses, for example, are perfectly able to drive everyone crazy with forms to be filled out and updated every single September for every child. When my children were little, we had five of them in school at one time and it would easily take my wife and I two full evenings to do all the paperwork involved in getting the kids started for the year. It seems unnecessary to tell the school every year for every child, who is to be contacted in case of an emergency. Do they all need to know every year, for every kid, where I went to college and my wife’s maiden name? Maybe it would be easier to hand over record keeping tasks in this area to some clerk.
The greatest potential area of abuse can be from the regular classroom teacher who, in a friendly introductory note to parents, might ask them to invest more than fifty dollars per child in supplies which many feel should be part of the regular school budget. There are state laws which say that the school is responsible for supplies. These requests can range from a request for a box of Kleenex to a set of colored felt tip pens.
It really is a disguised form of taxation, although notes are quick to remind us that this is a “voluntary” thing just designed to “give your child every available advantage.” My personal favorite is a request for a 3 by 5 spiral notebook for first graders. Most 6 year olders I know have trouble making letters small enough to fit on a 3 by 5 inch card. These requests often include requirements for one subject notebooks and a variety of folders or three ring notebooks. The more affordable supplies are things you can get at Job Lot and they last about a week before they break. Of course, if peer pressure fashion rears its head, even a week is a long time in the life of some school supplies. This may be the year that some kids will ridicule products from K-Mart. Beware.
Another dangerous area is requests for crayons, markers and felt tip pens and highlighters. These items can be expensive and can dry up quickly, particularly if caps are lost. When I was a school boy we each got a pencil and a box of crayons. We were expected to take care of these tools and replace them when they were used or lost. If my mother got a note home asking for sheet protectors she would have thought the teacher was crazy.
Many schools have dealt effectively with this urge to ask for two much from the parents. Some places require notes home to be cleared through the office of the principals and to be guided by some form of school committee policy on school supplies.
It could be worse. Some places expect tuition payments for kindergarten and I suppose the day could come when you get a friendly note to pick up a small computer or copy machine to give your child every advantage. No one wants to complain about this. We love most of our teachers and don’t want to look cheap or as if we are willing to shortchange our children. If it happens to you, I suggest a quiet word to the principal could put the brakes on.
Celebrity Just Desserts
Crusin' for a bruisin', but Shields had the height advantage
I am feeling kind of good lately about some of the celebrities I read about getting their just desserts. William H. Macy mentions that being late for work, like what his co-star Lindsay Lohan has done, is basically an unforgivable sin. He says that every time she is late it sends 150 people scrambling to fill in for the absence. He maintains that you just can’t apologize to 150 people for that. Lohan has also caught it from the CEO of Morgan Creek for acting like a “spoiled child” on the set of her latest film.
Paramount Pictures fires the couch jumping, shrink bashing Tom Cruise stating that they do not want him “on the lot.” Mel Gibson, recently canonized for “The Passion of the Christ” apparently is an anti-Semite and loses some contracts and potential contracts because of this.
Could it be that the giant cultural monkey that guides us toward right and wrong behavior has started to have it with certain celebrities? Maybe it will even lead to negative commentary about famous people having children out of wedlock. It is reassuring when the potential for box office influence looks like it might have a relationship to wacky and downright immoral behavior by famous people. Will Robert Downey Junior’s jail time and drug experiences eventually catch up with him? When I was a boy, the beautiful actress Ingrid Bergman was just about run out of town because she became pregnant from a man to whom she was not married. I hope it doesn’t come to that nor to the career destroying moves by “tail gunner” Senator Joe McCarthy of any Hollywood type who flirted with Communism,
My modest hope is that they learn to better manage their wealth and fame, do better at staying married, not have children out of wedlock, and stop shooting off their mouths as if being rich and famous pre-qualifies them to pontificate. The sanctions approach is already worked with Tom Cruise. He has apologized to Brooke Shields and their fight is over. Of course, she had the height advantage.
Homework Wars
As school starts so do the homework wars and parents across the land are readying the dining room table for its role as a war zone or torture chamber. For responsible parents, particularly those with multiple children bringing assignments home this starts a process of urging, shouting, being disappointed and proud which goes on all year. School vacations do interrupt this, but, there is no exaggeration in saying that that the one week respites at Christmas, February and April are almost literally, a vacation for parents as well as for students.
It is the wrong question to ask, “Have you done your homework?” When you ask that, you can guarantee a yes answer. But unless there is a second or third question you may never know that the homework was not done in written form as requested by the teacher, that it consisted of “look over the reading” and this took 20 seconds during the bus ride home, or that it really hasn’t been done it at all but there is a plan to do it before the due date.
A big question is “How much homework is appropriate?” That really depends on the grade and the child receiving it. Some of the experts suggest 15 minutes per grade per night. Others write books that say homework rarely is good for children; most certainly when it is busy work, not intellectually challenging and creative. Some say that there is scant research which proves homework improves learning. There is a school of thought that says teachers turn up the homework heat because there is political pressure from parents to do this. Of course all parents want their kids to do well in school, but a steady diet of evening homework can keep kids out of parents’ hair as well.
I have known kids who would work on a homework assignment all evening and stay up late crying and being scared that it wasn’t done well enough. I recall sitting at my kitchen table half a century ago crying because I thought I could never memorize 10 vocabulary words in preparation for a Latin quiz. Thank God for my father who would talk me down and patiently give me the confidence I needed to pass the test. Twenty years ago I would get up at 5:00 AM to tutor my daughter in US History. She could not understand the three branches of government. Today she is 35 and a Registered Nurse. I asked her the other day what she was thinking about during those early morning tutoring sessions. Her answer, “I don’t know.”
County Fair
It ran four days, from the Friday before Labor Day to Labor Day itself.
It was one of the biggest deals of my boyhood, rivaling Christmas and my birthday. My parents would allow my sisters and me to attend the fair all the time…morning, noon, night, every day for all four days. Often we would create a fifth day by going to the fairgrounds the day before the opening and watching the trucks and farm equipment and animals arrive. Because my father had friends among the directors and other officials he received admissions passes, tickets to rides, and a variety of other things. My mother, aunts and grandmothers would prepare baked good and crafts to enter in the fair. I was always amazed they would win so many ribbons. I recall wandering through the two exhibition halls that smelled of flowers and fresh varnish.
For small boys, the main place to be at the fair was the midway. Carousels, Ferris wheels, sideshows, eating-places and games all adorned the midway. Often the same barkers and vendors would come back each year. I remember “The mouse lady” who ran a roulette game which released white mice to run about the wheel deciding what numbered hole to enter. I recall riding on a carousel when I was less than five years old, while my young parents lovingly watched. The wooden horse on which I sat would gracefully rise and fall, rise and fall. The organ music gave it a majestic air and I thought everyone in the world was looking at me and enjoying the ride as much as I.
The food always tasted better there. The smells of French fries, candy apples and cotton candy were everywhere. My parents disliked candy apples because they dislodged tooth fillings. Cotton candy was always tolerated although the sticky fingers annoyed.
An important part of the fair was the vaudeville and aerial acts. There was usually a trapeze, high wire and “sway pole” set up in the track infield and we would hang around the equipment to catch a glimpse of the performers coming and going from their nearby trailers. The stage 
acts always had acrobats, trained animals, and musicians. On Fridays the venue included automobile smashing, crashing, leaping through flaming rings and rolling over. The master of ceremonies was a comedian and, since often the same acts and comedians returned from year to year, we felt we were part of their “following.”
I recall going to the fairgrounds early one morning with my cousin. We had some type of job assisting the cattle judges and felt quite important. I can remember the sweet aroma of cattle feed and manure. There was a building on the grounds which was used by the directors and when I would go by that building on afternoons or evenings, there were often adults enjoying a cocktail and chatting. These were the fair “insiders” and I was happy to be near them.
One of the fair highlights occurred on Sunday and Monday afternoons. It was officially called the “Grand Cavalcade of Prize Winning Stock” but we knew it simply as the “Cattle Parade.” It was a march around the half-mile race track by all the animals, farm equipment, local beauty queens, bands, new automobiles, fire trucks and just about anything else which was available. The governor usually was there to watch the parade from the reviewing stand. You could make $.50 if you agreed to lead a cow around the track, but you missed seeing the parade if you were in it. Parade spectators filled the grandstand, and lined the edges of the track.
When I was in the fifth grade, my cousin and I and two girls from the neighborhood produced a puppet show in the barn loft of one of the girls. We sold tickets and made a few dollars. Our mothers helped us make the puppets, my cousin and I built the stage, and we all worked together writing the script. At the end of the summer, our little show had gained such notoriety that we were invited to perform it in one of the exhibition halls. How proud we were to rush into the hall for the 2:00 performance and the 4:00 performance.
It was sad when my mother and father would take us home on the final night. We would look back at the lights one last time. It was late in the evening and a northern New Hampshire September chill would often make us shiver. The cool evening signaled the end of another year of a wonderful thing.
Gubernatorial Stalemate
I wish we could have candidates running for office who were not millionaires
It was interesting to read in yesterday’s Boston Sunday Globe the poll on the three
way race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
At this point it is virtually a dead heat among Patrick, Reilly and Gabrieli. Most of the TV ads are subtle but sometimes negative. Sometimes I think we learn from the tone of the ads. For instance, I get a good feeling from Gabrieli taking out the garbage and joking with his kids. I get a cold feeling hearing about Patrick being raised by his mother alone in a one bedroom apartment and seeing Senator Obama and President Clinton in the background of his ads. Reilly is a puzzle. He picks a deadbeat as his Lt. Governor candidate, says he is not good at politics, and lives in a middle class Watertown rental. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, “What is it with that Reilly?”
I wish we could have candidates running for office who were not millionaires. I’d like to send an ordinary person, not a rich aristocrat, to a position of political power. Making millions can mean special competencies, but it makes me jittery. The Kerry Healey crowd has a real problem with the wealth image. I heard her referred to as “Olive Oyl” on talk radio once, but to me her financial portfolio has her as Marie Antoinette. Apparently her husband can sell something or agree to a merger and they come out of it eight or nine million dollars richer. The fact that her mom was a teacher and her dad a disabled veteran helps offset that image, but it doesn’t really do it for me.
Christy Mihos’ main claim to fame is as a Big Dig whistle blower. That may not be enough to get him there. On talk radio he comes across like an average Joe trying to make the world a better place. That can’t hurt. He, like most of the others, is worth several million dollars.
I’ll make up my mind in the next few weeks. For me, I hope the new governor can relate to ordinary people and has the work ethic of a mule along with a desire to stay governor for as long as the people want.
Predator Priests and Public School Teachers
I detect a new trend in some Catholic papers and journals to discuss the belief that the predator priest problem is no worse than what goes on in the public schools. It came up in the Archdiocese of Denver when the bishop led an attack on the state legislature to kill an ill-advised proposal to extend the statute of limitations on offenses committed by priests. This seems to me to be a troubling form of denial which puts the truth at severe risk. The belief is that anti-Catholic prejudice is so strong that legislators, lawyers and social workers will not let go of this and use it as a way to lambaste the church they hate. They argue that people will give a break to public school teachers but not to priests.
As a serious Catholic all my life and as an ex-seminarian, I have only experienced anti-Catholic prejudice once. In the sixties, walking around Ottawa, Ontario in a cassock and a Roman collar, a man spit on the ground as I passed.
I am sure that other isolated instances of this hatred exist, but I read with skepticism the fiery press releases of Bill Donahue of the Catholic League and other who are committed to speaking out about bias against the church.
These advocates seem to confuse disgust with film and television sleaze with anti-Catholic prejudice. There is plenty of pornography which is not connected to anti-Catholic hatred. I am hard pressed to define Ron Howard or Madonna as the anti-Christ, and I am personally concerned when I hear this new charge that “public school teachers get away with it all the time”.
I am a retired school superintendent, having spent 35 years as either a principal or a superintendent in four school districts in three states. Some of my assignments have been in small rural schools, other have been in large suburban places. I figure that in my career I have overseen the public education of about 15,000 children.
I dealt with fewer than five incidents of adult sexual predators with school children, none of which were even remotely as egregious as the ones I have read about Catholic priests. I may have not known about all instances, but generally I was on top of these controversies.
Unlike what has been done by some Catholic bishops, transferring personnel to make the problem go away was never an option for me. It seems terribly unfair to the public schools to assume that this goes on a lot. It almost never happens, and if it does, it does not involve people who have made a professional commitment to spiritual perfection.
Catholics who believe otherwise seem to have a problem accepting the evil of predator priests. It has nothing to do with anti-Catholic prejudice, and serious Catholics would do well to carefully consider their position on this backlash phenomenon.
First Day of School Jitters
For the kids in our lives, New Year’s Day is just around the corner. In a few days school doors will be opening again and the big yellow busses will be lumbering down the street full of kids, some of whom are not tall enough to see out the window.
There are an incredible number of anxieties and concerns at loose in these small citizens as the bus rolls by. What might appear as a scene out of Norman Rockwell may well be better situated in a ward in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Consider this: When you are six years old and have to go to the bathroom, it is very important to know exactly how to get to one, and if you are tall enough to reach the urinal or toilet. If you are not, what do you do? Who do you tell?
I remember once in second grade I had a stomach ache. I whispered this to the teacher and she idiotically scolded me by explaining that I should say “belly ache” not “stomach ache.” What if you are hungry? All summer if you needed a snack you got one. If this is your first time at school, you have had almost immediate access to snacks all your life. Now food will not be there.
Schools are huge buildings. Particularly if you are going from a neighborhood elementary school to a middle school or stepping up to a high school. You might wonder, “How will I ever figure out how to get around in there?” or “There will never be enough time for me to walk that distance between classes.” On a personal level there are concerns such as, “Will my teacher like me?” “With whom will I eat lunch?” and “Will there be bullies on the bus or in the classroom? How about, “Will anyone care that I am here?”
There are a few dos and don’ts for parents who want to help their kids with first day jitters. If you can do it, a “lay of the land” school tour is always helpful. It gives child and parent a chance to see where places like bathrooms, cafeterias, nurse’s offices, and classrooms are. Possibly you might run into a teacher or an administrator who can ease the tension with welcoming words. These visits are also a time to get clear on where you might drop off your child in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. Some kids worry a lot about how they will get home at the end of the day. How can the bus driver remember where everyone’s house is?
Spare your child if you did not like school or had a bad experience. Horror stories about mean teachers or naughty kids can give a negative tone to what should be a positive experience. If you loved school, tell your children and be specific about what you liked. I always loved the smell of newly varnished floors, chalk and new books fresh out of their boxes. When you drop off your kids, get out of the way fast and let teacher take over. And please, if your child is off to middle school, no public displays of affection at the final parting. Sometimes a misplaced PDA can cause a kid to be ridiculed for years.
Parents and teachers need to send the same message to kids about to go to school:
1. This is important.
2. You can do it.
3. I won’t give up on you
How Long Do Razor Blades Last ?
There's never a dull... blade?
One of the greatest kept secrets is how long do razor blades last? I know it depends on the thickness of your beard or the frequency with which you shave, or whether your wife and daughters sneak your razor into the shower to do their legs and underarms, but there really is no consensus I can discover about how long a razor blade lasts or should last. I sometimes use the same blade for weeks. Then it dawns on me that I am getting rotten shaves or cutting up my face more easily than usual. If I replace too soon, however, I could be wasting hundreds of dollars.
Ordinarily, this would not be a big deal, but have you priced razor blades lately? I bought four for my Gillette Mach III razor the other day and they cost $8.99! That’s $2.25 a piece! I quit smoking when cigarettes cost $1.00 a pack! These items are so small and expensive that the drug store avoids shoplifting by carrying them behind the counter instead if in one of the aisles.
They practically give away razors so they can get you hooked on buying their particular blades. It is something like computer printers and ink cartridges. You can get a decent printer for as little as $50.00 but once you get it, you are condemned to paying about $23.00 a month for ink cartridges.
A friend of mine changes razor blades every Sunday morning. He has a well trimmed beard and usually looks neat, so perhaps I should use him as a guide. Better still, it would be good if the company would print on its package the recommended number of times their product could be used.
Years ago when I started shaving, razor blades, double edged Gillette’s, cost next to nothing. You used them two or three times and then stuck them in that slit in the back of the medicine cabinet and they fell to the razor blade graveyard between the studs in the bathroom wall. Then marketing started. It was not enough that the Gillette Friday Night Fights were almost an American institution on radio and television. There were specially lubricated blades, double blades which tipped over your whisker with the first one and cut it with the second, and even triple and quadruple blades which could make you feel that the whisker was public enemy number one. They started making razors in colors to attract the female buyer. I could never shave with a pink razor.
There were disposable razors you could pick up in a bag of twelve. I never thought they worked very well, and it seemed that if you really cared about your face you would not shave it with a plastic disposable razor, often a generic brand. There is too much of a ritual involved in a good shave to waste it on cheap disposables. The occasion calls for metal, shiny, rich looking. Hardware with some heft to it.
Some people get caught up in an electric razor kick. I wanted a battery operated one to carry in the car or brief case and shave on the run. Alas, it was an infatuation and lasted only for a few weeks. I missed too much the bathroom ritual, soap, hot water, sweet smelling lotion. Sometimes I even treat myself to lather made in a mug instead of in an aerosol can.
When my grandfather died many years ago, we discovered several straight razors in his stuff. The kinds barber use. If modern razor blades are so great, why do barbers still use straight razors? The public at large stays away from them because we are afraid we will slip and cut our throats. Strangely enough, we are willing to let a barber we may hardly know use a straight razor on us. These straight razors usually need to be “stropped” with a leather strap every few minutes. I never knew if that was to sharpen the blade or to heat it.
Get Ready to be Fleeced
There's nothing neutral about “Net Neutrality”
Keep your eye on the “Net Neutrality” issue which comes before the senate in September. It is a move to make cable companies richer than ever and K-street lobbyists are drooling all over the place about this effort to turn the Internet into a toll road instead of a highway available to everyone. If ever there was an example of high powered lobbying intensity trying to pick our pockets, take a look at this one. It is not simple. “Net Neutrality” is not a label that packs in all the problems in one word. Big cable is trying to make us think they are taking care of us. They are in bed with dozens of Republican lobbyists and law makers. Caveat emptor!
Read the Wikipedia definition here.
Read the Google explanation here.
Tax Cheats Steal from Everyone
Tax Cheats Steal From Everyone
We know people who are paid “under the table” or who take it as a matter of personal pride that aspects of their income are sheltered from taxes. There is a sense that if you are smart and daring, you may be entitled to give the government as little as you can get away with. The country was founded by people who were mad as hell about what they thought were unfair and confiscatory taxes. “No taxation without representation” was the war whoop they shouted at King George III. Well, today we have representation and still scream loudly about taxes. Everybody hates taxes. No politician ever got elected to anything at all by supporting increased taxes. There are people out there who sincerely hope for the day when all types of all taxes will be gone, banished, and verboten; just as slavery is today. These folks tend to see things in a pay as you go way.
If you are mugged and the police intervene, expect a bill in the mail. If you are unfortunate enough to have a fire, lending institutions will probably be generous about advancing you tens of thousands of dollars to pay for your fair share of the fire department’s rescue of you and your home. If you raised three kids and they went to public schools for the full 13 years, your fellow citizens have spent about $350,000 on your family in terms of today’s dollars. So why don’t we stop all that and have parents pay their own kids’ tuition every year?
Years ago when I was in the army we would all be assigned to different jobs taking care of trucks and jeeps in the motor pool. Working there it soon became understood that if you saw a wrench sitting on a truck fender which looked good to you, you could take it and keep it. Similarly, if someone had a Jeep with a heater in it, a highly desired commodity in European winters, you could come out at night and detach the heater and re-install it in your Jeep. It never occurred to any of us that this was stealing; our thinking was that everything belonged to everyone since it was actually owned by the government. This “motor pool morality” followed me through the service, and extended to stealing each others’ ponchos, tires, even highly technical pieces of radar equipment. Strangely enough, it never extended to weapons. Uncle Sam had a complex system involving serial numbers and signing in and out which defined the ethics regarding the care and handling of weapons.
Now motor pool morality is not the same as trying not to pay your taxes, but there is a connection. Both philosophies set up an entitlement mentality which seems to have no scruples about taking from, stealing from, the faceless entity we call “the government.”
A new 400 page Senate report states that high level tax avoidance schemes are so frequent and extensive that law enforcement cannot control them. According to the report, cheating counts for about $70 billion dollars a year, $.07 0n every tax dollar collected. The article mentions a couple of billionaires who are getting richer and richer by using offshore accounts. The idea is for these accounts to lose money, then profits from other ventures can be written off against them and the tax man is avoided.
One of these billionaires is Robert Wood Johnson IV who owns the New York Jets, and to buy the team had to sell assets in 1998 and pay 20% in capital gains. He appears to have ducked that tax by an offshore account and he blames his accountant. Another billionaire, Haim Saban produces the kids TV show Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. He sold his half interest in the Family TV channel for $300 million and sheltered it offshore. He paid the advisers who set this up $54 million.
The Wyly brothers of Texas were the 9th largest contributors to President Bush in the 2000 election. They made at least 190 million in stock options offshore and have yet to pay taxes on it. They too, blame an adviser and take the fifth amendment.
These shady characters are among the beneficiaries of the recent tax cuts enacted by the government and extended virtually to people earning more than $200,000 a year.
It's All About Marshmallows
Plodding is good, delaying gratification is the key
In my years as a school teacher I have noticed that the students who achieved the best were more often than not, the “plodders.” These were the kids who worked slowly and steadily on problems, staying with things until they were as close as possible to what the student felt was the ideal answer or solution. These students usually not the first to finish tests. Often they stayed until the time was up, working on their answers, polishing, editing, changing until the very end. The papers done by these students were rarely neat, erasures and rub out of all kinds took care of that. These kids used every minute they were allotted to improve their work, they were in no hurry, they could wait until the bitter end.
Thinking about this years later, I realize that what I was noticing in these top students was an ability to delay gratification. They rarely answered questions spontaneously or impulsively. They thought before they spoke or wrote. They could take their time. They might have wanted to give the answer as soon as they thought of it, but they had enough self control to ponder, to turn the problem over in their minds before they decided on an answer.
The other day I was reading about a social science experiment done by a man named Walter Mischel about 35 years ago. He placed a group of four and five year old children in a room with a plate of marshmallows. The arrangement he had with them was that if they rang a bell, he would come back to the room and they could eat a marshmallow. If they waited for him to come back on his own, without being summoned, they could eat two marshmallows. Some rang the bell within a minute. Others lasted 15 minutes until he came back. He videotaped the children as they decided to wait or ring the bell. He saw them squirm, hide their eyes, look at the clock and wrestle with the problem of ringing or waiting. He developed a variety of things to do with the marshmallows such as hiding them, and found that waiting was easier if the children did not see the treats. He helped them wait by suggesting things to distract them while they waited. His study was about the willpower of these children and how it fitted in with their intellectual and emotional drives and needs.
These children were followed as they grew older, and it was determined that the ones who had displayed greater self control and the ability to delay gratification were the ones who scored better on their SAT tests, got into good colleges, and, on average achieved better adult outcomes.
The kids who were the quickest to ring the bell were more likely to become bullies, or drop out of school. secured weaker parent and teacher evaluations over the years and were more likely to have drug problems. The students who were able to delay gratification were in later years better equipped to sit through boring classes and perform rote tasks to build math facts or to learn a foreign language. For those without the skills to wait for their rewards, school became more often a series of failures and unpleasant experiences.
This insight has powerful ramifications for how we might consider using resources to improve the schools. We know that self control and delayed gratification makes a big difference and these habits appear to be formed at a very young age. Promoting things like increased teacher salaries, small class size, charter and voucher schools, and standardized tests may be barking up the wrong tree by those who are trying to achieve educational excellence through structural changes.
As you might suspect, there is a correlation between children who can delay gratification and socioeconomic status and parenting style. Children from poorer homes might ring the bell quicker than children from a middle class homes. Kids from homes involved in marital discord, moving, or violence tend to think more in short term because they cannot begin to predict the long term.
Moral lectures or sheer willpower will not develop greater self control, will power and delayed gratification skills in children. These kids succeeded because they were able to resist their appetites and distract themselves with other things. They had an emotional and intellectual reservoir from which to draw. Children can learn over time that a predictable and stable environment in which good behavior is rewarded can pay off.
The big question for improving the schools might be “How do we develop these reservoirs in the very young?” The answer might be for parents to stop fighting and stay married.
Call Me Hoagie
Nana and Grandpa, Grammie and Pa
It’s fun to think about what we called our grandparents, what our grandchildren call us, and the reasons behind these cherished family appellations. I grew up around four living grandparents. Nana and Grandpa belonged to my mother and Grammie and Pa were my father’s parents. Sometimes we called grammie Moggy, the Gaellic word for “fatso” which is strange, because she weighed 90 pounds. Pa was what my father called his dad, so that just slipped over a generation. In fact, everyone in town referred to my father’s father as Pa.
My wife and I are known as Nonie and Hoagie by our 11 grandchildren. These names were invented by my oldest child who called my parents that. I think that Nonie was a bungled attempt at Nana by a one year old, subsequently embraced by my wife because it honored the tradition of Nonni which many Italian grandmothers are called. Hoagie is a lame attempt at saying Harold, my father’s first name. It just stuck on me as Hoagie.
Once my cousin and I, when we were 12 years old, decided it would be nice to refer to our grandmother, Nana, as Grannie. This mortified her, causing her to take us aside and explain that the reason she hated it was that years ago women dealt with their menstrual cycle with “grannie rags.”
I know some grandparents who have really had a difficult time establishing what their grandchildren should call them. I have a friend who felt, at the time, that she was too young to be called a grandmother. She said, “I would rather be called Auntie Mame.” Today she is in her eighties and her grandchildren and great grandchildren refer to her as “Mame.”
An interesting exercise is to see if all the cousins in the family use the same nicknames for a particular set of grandparents. I suspect that is usually the case, but as geography and divorce variables increase over the generations, the probability is there that grandparent nickname sameness will diminish.
I know a grandfather whose grandchildren call him Bumpa. All of this starts with baby talk. I love the Jewish names of Bube and Zayde although I don’t know any people who answer to that. If you want to have some fun, try Googling “Grandparent Names” and you will find international lists of colorful names. They are all short and seem connected quite often to baby talk.
The Passion of Mel Gibson
Offers to be circumcised to atone (see story)
I think I am having some problems with Mel Gibson. I have always seen him as a second rate actor and never thought much of his large epic movies. I always suspected that there were aspects of the funny farm in his presentation of himself.
Now we learn that when he is drunk he is an anti-Semite. “F---ing Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” This doesn’t exactly make him a soul mate of Hezbollah or Al Qaeda, but it doesn’t put much distance between him and them either. Jackie Mason, Bill O’Reilly’s favorite Jewish comic, says, “Let it go! The guy was smashed.”
I recall a few years ago Mel said something insensitive about homosexuals, like he was reluctant to go into acting because people might think he was gay. I also understand he may come by his wacky views in kind of a genetic way since his father, Hutton Gibson, is an extremist Catholic and writes books and advances views that Vatican II was a sham, the pope is phony and that the Holocaust was overstated. You can tell he is in the wing nut category.
Now Mel’s problems with alcohol and racism don’t mean that much to me. I spared myself “The Passion of the Christ” and my money did not contribute to his millions. (I chose to go to “The DaVinci Code” instead.)
What is a little more concerning is that I have acquaintances who say things like, “You know something? He has a point.” or “You’ve got to give him credit for speaking his mind!” I have to ask, are these people out of their minds? Mel was drunk when he spoke; other can’t use the same excuse.
Now Mel has issued apologies. He has sent himself to a recovery program (not rehab!) and wants to meet with Jews to do some kind of psycho-analytic thing. Skeptics about the apology wonder why it took four days to hear from him. I hope people stop going to his movies and making him richer.
Remember that scene in one of the “Lethal Weapons” movies when his partner was handcuffed to an about to explode toilet? That is the way this whole mess makes me feel.
Town Hall Art Treasures
If you were raised in small town New England, you probably have some exposure to the interesting variety of town halls and civic buildings which are sprinkled through the hundreds of towns in our six states. If you grew up in the twentieth century, particularly in the middle decades around the wars, you went to town halls as a school child either to be part of a Memorial Day exercise or to observe and/or participate in Annual Town Meeting.
Perhaps when there, you got a chance to observe some of the hand painted muslin stage curtains which often hung in these places. They often were romanticized landscapes of Venice, the Alps, or some fictional lake with nymphs in diaphanous gowns sitting or prancing about. Sometimes they were Main St. scenes. Many remember these as backdrops at local talent shows or senior plays.
Historians have speculated that most of them were made and used between 1890 and 1940, and were largely a New England phenomenon. In those days, movies, traveling acts and local productions occurred often in the auditoriums and on the stages of civic buildings. Towns bought these drapes, but the acts stopped coming, movie theaters opened and local performances started to shift to high schools.
The curtains were taken down, rolled up or folded into boxes and stored in town hall cellars and attics. Many of them are probably still there today.
In Vermont there is a program to find and clean and repair these old stage curtains, with a view toward putting them back into service in local halls and auditoriums. Most of them had been seriously neglected and damaged by dust and mold.
The Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance began in 1998 to try to inventory the curtains in all the towns of the state and have received about $500,000 in grants to repair them. Efforts are underway in New Hampshire to do the same thing.
Many local historians are very much involved in this project and serve as “curtain caretakers.” They are excited to give new life to these old artifacts and their goal is to have them last another 100 years. So far in Vermont they have found 170 curtains and volunteers have repaired 103.
The art on these curtains carry great memories. They also tell a vital story about our past. Check the attics and cellars of your town halls to see if the Cape can get in on this important activity.
The Theology of Golf
Golfing with Priests and other Religeous activities
I only played golf once in my life, and that was with two Catholic priests whom I suspect cheated when they kept score. Yet, I live in one of the golf capitals of America. My town has two public golf courses as do most of the towns on the Cape. Each of these towns might have three or four private courses as well.
Retirees move here to play golf all the time. They play in the early morning when the sun is coming up and the sprinklers are coming on. They play in the dead of winter using yellow balls on snow covered fairways. There are always conspiracy theories floating around the towns about the subtle manipulations which go on to assure town residents of prime reservation time on the links. It is a dilemma, because the town relies on golf tourist revenue, yet the residents see these facilities as something like their private clubs.
High schools in the area have a history of winning state championships with their golf teams. Probably the high schools of Cape Cod can boast of producing more professional athletes than any other high schools in the country. These professionals are usually golfers, not baseball or football players, but they are professionals none the less. I have not yet seen night golf down here, but I imagine it is around the corner, as may be golf for the blind.
At the Annual Town Meeting I have observed for years that the politics of golf assume as much space on the agenda as public safety or education. They debate intensely about golf revenue, fees, refurbishments, and land acquisition. You could fill a hall with hundreds of golfers to advocate for new sprinklers. If you were firing half the high school English department, I doubt you could match even a fourth of the turnout.
For many, golf assumes the trappings of a religion. The club houses can be a chapel; I saw a list of do’s or don’ts on the door of a club house in Dennis which reminded me of the Ten Commandments. Fellowship is stressed here, the ethics of scoring brings in a moral aspect and the role of tradition, and going back to Europe is an important part of golf heritage. Even the harried public administrators of golf courses are like pastors who work untiringly to respond to various constituents. They, like the pope, must provide leadership both for those with their foot on the brake and those with their foot on the accelerator. I haven’t seen music at the club houses to fill out the church analogy, but maybe it is there. I know there are golf saints like Francis Quimette and Jack Nicklaus.
My father-in-law loved to play golf. In the few years that I knew him, he would explain to me that its appeal was that the more you played, the better you would get at it. You could always improve your game. I liken that feeling to my involvement with writing. Practice can always improve it, editing upon editing yields better and better copy. That is a bit like the way some look at going to church and prayer.
We are not talking about sport when we discuss golf on the Cape. We are talking about church.
History is Bunk
The theory of "Intelligent Design" is neither intelligent nor a design
When the states decide to get involved in educational reform, particularly curriculum reform, they invariably get bogged down and run in circles when it comes to the history curriculum. This is because they are attempting to define what history is and they are attempting to choose facts and interpretations of facts to constitute what they call the content of history.
There may be minor skirmishes over the new math versus traditional math, but everyone can agree quite easily that addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are the basics of math. There will also be algebra, trigonometry, geometry and calculus but there will be little dispute about the facts. We can generally agree. The same hold true for science. There are true scientific facts and there are errors. Of course there are scientific theories but the only one from that area which seems to cause trouble is evolution versus intelligent design.
Curriculum decisions in English are more difficult. While people can generally agree on what is good and great literature as opposed to junk, there will be some debate on coverage, writing and grammar. New editions are generally developed without much conflict or fanfare. There seems to be a consensus.
One of the most intriguing questions in the Bible came from the lips of Pontius Pilate when Roman authorities were shuffling Jesus around prior to executing him. Someone asked Pilate if the things Jesus said were true. Pilate replied, in his best Clintonesque style, “What is truth?
The big trouble spot in curriculum development is history because it goes after Pontius Pilate’s question most directly. Some special interests have issues they want included and other special interest feel strongly about issues which should be left alone.
In the past 20 years much curriculum work has been done in Massachusetts. They have defined a common core of learning and developed frameworks on which to place elements of the common core. THen they have invented tests to measure how well students learn the content. In these efforts, hundreds of citizens and teachers throughout the Commonwealth have worked hard for years. The history effort has had the rockiest road. There have been panels, commissions, advisory groups and ad hoc tasks forces formed and reformed repeatedly to produce the documents we call the Massachusetts history curriculum framework.
Now comes a new law in Florida, signed by Governor Jeb Bush which attempts to say clearly what can and cannot be taught in American history. The new law ( known as Florida’s Education Omnibus Bill (H.B. 7087e3) seems to provide a reason why state legislatures can be the subject of ridicule. Legislators fear teachers who might teach the wrong thing, so they have prohibited the interpretation of US History and have insisted that only facts be taught.
The problem with this, however, is that they don’t do very well in saying whose facts. Will it be the facts as seen by Columbus or the Indians? There is some mention of the Federalist Papers, so the question comes as to whether the teacher who covers the anti-federalist sentiment which pervaded the country in 1776 will be in violation of the statute.
All history is interpretation. When authors and publishers choose the chapter headings of history textbooks they are interpreting historical fact. When a teacher who enjoys military history spends two days on the Viet Nam war while the teacher across the hall gets it in one day, that is interpretation of history.
When I was a young soldier in the Army we were told that the United States had never lost a war. Do they say that today, and if not, is someone trying to undercut the image of the United States? In the 1950’s, when I was in fourth grade I asked my teacher why it is illegal to be a Communist if this is a free country. She said it was because Communists wanted to overthrow our government by violence. That seemed good enough for me at the time. Would it be good enough for a fourth grader today?
These laws come into being because people fear revisionist history will be taught and that the American consensus will be weakened or will disappear. They fear newfangled theories of moral relativism or post modernism; some are comfortable with George Washington never telling a lie or the United States never losing a war. They do not want to hear about Thomas Jefferson owning slaves or, worse, possibly fathering a child with a slave. They certainly do not want to hear that the 2000 Florida presidential election resulted in the throwing away of 57,700 ballots supposedly because they were convicted felons and not eligible to vote. Later the fact was shown that 90% of the ballots were not felons, but Democratic leaning black African-Americans.
The Florida law directs teachers to instruct students “on the nature and importance of free enterprise to the United States economy” and then tries to legislate out of existence any ideas to the contrary.
There surely are apparent abuses of academic freedom. Lately in the news we read about college professors in at least two different American universities who have told students that they believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by the American government. People are screaming that these professors be dismissed. Academic freedom is not valued if the freedom in question reveals appalling positions. I personally think I learned the most from some of my wacky professors.
Some law makers are saying that their history is the best history. They fail to understand that history, like the law, changes and evolves over the decades. If they loved history more, they would understand this. Perhaps they don’t love or even understand history. Perhaps they agree with the American cultural giant Henry Ford, whose 143rd birthday we celebrate today. He once said, “History is bunk.”
Don't Feed the Poor People
And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? - Genesis 4:9
How about this in the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Las Vegas has passed a city ordinance making it illegal to feed homeless people in the parks of the city. Apparently complaints have arisen that this is going on, so the city council simply passed an ordinance. They say it is targeted at organized, not casual efforts. It may be the first law in the country that forbids feeding the poor.
They said they had spent a lot of money landscaping the parks and that families were getting afraid to go there. What will happen if you slip a munchkin to a drunk guy trying to sleep on a bench? Will you be deported? Let’s hear it for Christian values and law and order.
Read about it in today’s New York Times, FoxNews. or in the Bible's "The Parable of the Good Samaritan".
Art Fads
Art Update
It is interesting to watch fads find their way through the culture, coming and going like the wake of a ship or steam from a locomotive. How often today do you see one of those ubiquitous “Baby on Board” signs from 1984? Even the once famous “Cape Cod Canal Tunnel Sticker” is a vanishing species. Probably that is good, at least until we get the Big Dig ceiling panels fixed. My powder blue leisure suit and matching white patent leather belt and shoes sit locked in a trunk in my cellar. They will never again be used, although I see friends at church wearing plaid wool slacks. I do, however, have a Rubik’s cube downstairs (1981) on a shelf next to my pet rock (1975) Cabbage Patch Dolls (1983) were once a big hit. I bet I bought at least ten of them for my four daughters.
One fad I am watching is the proliferation of ornamental stars on the outside of houses. These decorations seem to have been around for about a year. As far as I can tell, they first became available in high-end gift shops and antique outlets. They made their way to mass distribution points beyond the small stores and started showing up on more and more houses, both inside and out. They will soon go out of style because too many have them. They will make room for the next trend.
Years ago, in my home area along the New Hampshire-Vermont border, a big thing was to install hex signs high up on the side of your barn, or, if you had no barn, over the garage door. These were a form of Pennsylvania Dutch folk art consisting of brightly painted stars, rosettes and tulip designs on 4ft, circular cut-outs. Originally they are said to have come from Germany to ward off evil spirits from barns. Today they are mostly faded but you can see them on barns off Interstate 78 in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
While these decorations became tiring the more you see them, they could never compete with other forms of schlock art which I used to see on lawns and houses.
Consider the copper tea kettles which for awhile were adorning many front yards in Vermont and New Hampshire. These “teapots” were made from an old tire, turned inside out and sprayed with copper paint. A wooden nozzle was spray painted copper and nailed to the side of the tire. You filled the teapot with potting soil and flowers, turning it into a planter.
Other interesting items made their way to front lawns. A milk can, often rusty and dented, would often be used to hold a post upon which you could sit your rural mailbox. And the mailboxes themselves spawned a whole new school of art. A favorite was a mailbox painted to look like an American flag or one fitted with a wooden bird’s neck and head so that it would look like a swan or a duck. You see a lot of birds painted on rural mailboxes, which is strange because it has been said that these are an omen of bad luck.
Religion also has a place in lawn decoration. You might find a statue of St. Francis of Assisi in someone’s garden or the Sacred Heart of Jesus blessing your hydrangeas and day lilies. My personal favorite is the Virgin you would see on a front lawn with a back drop of a concave plaster blue shadow box. I used to call that “Mary on the Half Shell.”
There are other manifestations of populist lawn art. Plastic flowers or an excessive number of lantana plants hanging from pots on wires screwed into porches are popular. When it comes to decoration, it does not follow that if one thing is nice, ten of the same are ten times as nice. A few years ago there was a fad of displaying on lawns brightly painted wooden cutouts of little girls with frilly panties bending over and watering flowers, my sister called that “ass art.”
I like St. Thomas Aquinas, an 11th Century scholastic philosopher and theologian. He said, “De gustibus, non disputanda est.” which means you really can’t argue about tastfulness.
There is a large ceramic fish, painted a beautiful green with a high gloss burnish at the Lemon Tree gift shop in Brewster. It is made to hang on a wall like a painting. I would love to have something like that. I’d put it in my living room or somewhere outdoors on the side of the house. My wife wouldn’t hear of it. And yet she keeps a rusty fake bumblebee tin sculpture in her beloved garden.
You're Fired !
I have never been fired but I have fired people a few times.
None of these times involved me rising from my desk chair and menacingly pointing toward the door and saying, “You’re fired!” I don’t know where Donald Trump ever picked up that habit. Perhaps that is how you do it if the victim is earning six figures. My firings often involved a box of Kleenex. I think that going through the experience produces a lot of feelings and insights which can be useful.
Years ago I knew a coach who used to say you learned much more when you were losing than when you were winning. I think he meant that when things do not go well, we are more inclined to reflect on what is happening and to assess more honestly the pros and cons of what is going on. Winning carries many rewards, one of them is not humility or a sense for one’s limitations. I have seen winning little league teams which genuinely believed that could give a major league baseball team a run for their money.
Losing a game, like getting fired, turns you inward to measure who you are and where you want to go and are able to go.
When you need to dismiss someone or even give them a bad evaluation, it is important to do your homework. This is especially important if the conversation turns angry or defensive. All parties to these conversations do terribly if emotion is driving the exchange so it is critical to be prepared.
People will want to know the reasons for the firing, so there better be a list. It goes without saying that many will attempt to debate every point in the conversation, pointing out that the manager has it wrong, is getting bad information, or the employee is being set up by a third party.
That is where the idea of a list comes in. If there are 15 or 20 reasons why the employee should go, the manager needs to be ready with these reasons. One might never go through the entire reasons but they should be available if needed. I have gone so far as to actually write down the problems I am having with an individual and then memorize the written list so I can site reasons, if needed, without referring to paper work. The employee, when they perceive how well prepared you are, may be more inclined to accept your judgment.
While you need to be prepared for the worst, the main thing a firing manager can do is to provide charity and a safe place to fall to the person getting fired. This means you never fire when you are angry or frustrated. As much as possible you try to control the process by helping the person leaving to conclude that it is not right for him or her to stay. If possible the dismissal decision can be a conversation about goodness of fit. The person leaving is in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It is sometimes advisable to do these things on Fridays, so the person getting fired will have limited time available in the break room and maximum time available to share the trauma of the meeting with spouses or family.
Certain kinds of dismissals can be smoother if done in writing instead of face to face. I have friends who boast that they have the courage to deliver bad news directly and would never resort to the cowardly and impersonal practice of writing a letter or memorandum. I think it depends on the situation. Sometimes a written message protects the employee by giving them time to reflect on how they might react to this bad news. There is a great danger if tempers are triggered that wrong and hurtful things will be said.
One final thought whether you are dismissing a person face to face or in writing. You will be nervous and full of thoughts and words. Be careful about saying too much or talking about how badly you feel doing this. The firing is not about you, it is about them. Brevity is as important as comprehensiveness. These are not mutually exclusive ideas. Every word, spoken or written, should have a purpose if it is to help you achieve what you are after yet not be held against you in whatever potential battles might follow.
Singing Beach and Other Nice Places
Discovering Massachusetts at 18
As someone who had never entered Massachusetts from New Hampshire until he was 18 years old and had only seen the ocean about twice in his life as a youth, I am easily impressed with things nautical. This piece is about the beaches I have known in my life. Their names can stir curious thoughts and fantasies in my soul…of Pilgrims marching along the sand, muskets on shoulders, of pirates slipping onto beaches in the moonlight to steal cargo, of ship wrecks and marine biology.
When I lived in Rockport we used to visit Front Beach or Back Beach. That is about as basic as it gets for those New Englanders, no time to think up romantic or colorful names. Sometimes, though, we would go to Cape Hedge Beach down the coast a bit or its next door neighbor, Pebble Beach where the many stones hurt your feet when you walked on the sand. Cape Hedge was a favorite beach, it carried images of wealthy homes strung out along the dune grass with picture windows and complicated decks attached. One of my favorite beaches was Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester. Interestingly enough, this beach is named for what it was not. Originally navigators called the harbor Little Good Harbor because it was so shallow. Over the decades the word Little was dropped so Little Good became Good. Another interesting beach, although I have never been there, is Singing Beach in Manchester by-the-Sea. This conjures up a wind in the willows thing to me or perhaps some eerie scene from a horror movie.
When we moved to Cape Cod in the early eighties, it opened our world to a cornucopia of beach names and images. If you were into commerce, you might like Cold Storage Beach or Corporation Beach in Dennis. The dark side of commerce is across the Cape. It is known as Smugglers Beach in Yarmouth. In colonial history, it is hard to improve on Mayflower beach in Dennis, and if you are looking at early 20th Century history, try Marconi Beach in Wellfleet. Cahoon Hollow Beach in Wellfleet sounds like someplace housing a whisky still. There is a beach in Eastham called First Encounter Beach. What a great name for posterity. It was the beach at which the Pilgrims first saw Native Americans when they sailed in from England. If you have an off road vehicle, take a trip out to Crowes Pasture in Dennis. That is a beach, conservation area, historic cemetery and estuary rolled into one. The image is one of chasing cows around rolling green fields in a Jeep.
Speaking of Native Americans, there is no shortage of Indian beach names. Consider Wingaersheek, Poponesset, Nauset (shown above), Skaket, Scusset and Mememsha.
It is not only beach names which generate exciting thoughts. Places near beaches carry colorful names. Have you ever been to Pigeon Cove in Rockport? It is quite near to those great flat rocks you can crawl on at Halibut Point. Buttermilk Bay in Bourne is another beautiful name. Massachusetts does not have a corner on these names. How attractive is the Hope Valley near Providence? You expect to see the Jolly Green Giant walking around down there.
When a family is young and lives near the beach, it becomes a member of the family. The beach is a baby sitter, a place to take visitors, the backdrop for family photos, and an outdoor dining room. Families get bonded to different beaches the way people bond to a church or a particular store. When daily beach trips with the children become almost a full time job, one gets to know the moods of the beach, the breezes, how the tides behave in certain weather, the effects of off shore storms, and the placements of boulders along the dunes. Depending on where the tide is, you develop knowledge of tidal pools that the kids like and you become skilled at putting your beach chair where the tide will make you move it the least amount of times. Certain beaches are wonderful at low tide because they give you up to a mile of clear line of sight supervision space as your children frolic on the shore. These children often acquire pet snails and periwinkles that live among the rocks and pails are usually filled with tiny crabs or disgusting jelly fish which sting.
The daily ritual of beach parking can be stressful and demanding. The basic rule is that you must be early if you want a parking place that will not get you a ticket or a scraped fender. Years ago I would drive my station wagon to the beach early to get a good spot and then would take my bicycle out of the rear end and ride it home, staying with the family until they were ready to come for the day later in the morning. Once we had so many children with us that I left my four year old daughter on the sand and drove home without her. When we realized what we had done, I rushed back to find her engaged in conversation with a couple of elderly tourist ladies and imagined that Joseph and Mary must have experienced the same relief when they discovered Jesus at the temple talking with the elders.
Dominus Vobiscum
Another generation of Catholics
My generation of Catholics remembers when women would not go to Mass unless they were wearing a hat, or at least a piece of Kleenex held to their hair by a bobby pin. Those were the days when the priest said Mass with his back to the congregation and wore oversized vestments which looked as if they were made of cardboard. People knelt at a “communion rail” to receive the Eucharist and everything was said or sung in Latin, a language almost no one understood although there were books with fine translations available.
We were taught not to be too close to Protestants, I was not allowed to attend dances at the Methodist Church in my town because it was a fund raiser for the Methodist furnace fund. My Catholic father married my then Protestant mother, not in a church, but in the priest’s house one evening and she had to promise to raise her children as Catholics.
Then, in 1958 Pope Pius XII died and was replaced by Pope John XXIII, the “smiling pope” who shocked and excited the Catholic world by announcing he was going to convene an ecumenical council, an official meeting of all the bishops in the world. It was the first one since 1870; there have only been 21 in history, and people knew drastic change was coming to the church. Pope John XXIII referred to the need for “aggiornamento” which means “spirit of change” and people settled in for a once in a lifetime experience. We were going to be part of a “kinder, gentler church.”
The ecumenical council, known as Vatican II, was held from 1962 to 1965. Boston’s colorful and beloved Cardinal Richard Cushing came out of the first plenary session and announced that he didn’t know what was going on because everyone was speaking Latin. Pope John XXIII died in 1963, before it was finished, and he was replaced by Pope Paul VI whose term lasted 15 years and implemented most of the changes wrought by the council. In those years following the council slow and steady change appeared and the ways Catholics worshipped and understood their church was altered forever. “Ecumenicism” which means cooperating with other churches was promoted and “collegiality” among bishops was code for taking power from the papacy and distributing it to the bishops.
The priest started facing the people when saying Mass, Latin was dropped and women stopped feeling as if they needed hats in church and even female “altar boys” appeared. A spirit of informality was encouraged; guitars, drums and trumpets were allowed to be used at church and some places even brought in dancers. A peak moment for me one Sunday morning was when the organ and the congregation started singing Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” From one Sunday to the next in those days, you never knew what you would find when you went to church. Sometimes we would join hands and receive communion in both species. Sometimes, if the priest knew you, he would address you by name as he placed the communion wafer in your mouth or in your hand. You never used to hear applause in church. Now they clap if they like a particular hymn or speaker.
The names of sacraments were changed. Originally there was Baptism, Confession, and Extreme Unction among the seven sacraments. Then it became the Rite of Christian Initiation, the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Sacrament of the Sick. The old terms could be used but they became out of fashion in many church circles. Limbo used to be a place of “natural happiness” to which the departed souls of unbaptized babies would go instead of to heaven. In 1968 the church announced that Limbo was never really a matter of faith but a custom and it might not be so.
My father was so scrupulous about the dietary rules that he would not eat baked beans on Friday because they were cooked in pork. My mother would accuse him of being “more Catholic then the Pope.’ Then in 1966 the church announced that no meat on Friday was an option rather than a religious obligation. People like my father felt a loss.
At the beginning of all these changes in the church my father, the most orthodox of Irish Catholics, complained that Pope John XXIII had “turned the altar into a picnic table.” I said nothing at the time, but felt he just didn’t get it. Little did I know that this feeling of “too much too fast” would permeate Catholic people for generations to the present time. The turn around has seemed to accelerate with the election of Pope John Paul II. His 26 year term, the third longest in history, resulted in an almost complete turnover in the bishops of the world. Some say these “John Paul bishops” have been less progressive than the bishops who were in office before them.
Presently the bishops of the United States have voted to change some of the language of the Mass to earlier English versions which are closer to the original Latin. This won’t happen overnight, Vatican approval is needed; these things take years. Of course the irony is that Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Latin, so the real original version almost no one would understand. There are many dioceses which allow the old Latin Mass again, something known as the Tridentine Mass from the ecumenical council at Trent. Some of the people who frequent these Masses are militantly devoted to turning back the church clock. While they would not say they are a rear guard action against Vatican II, they will say they are dedicated to removing the excesses which intellectuals introduced following Vatican II. For some Catholics, there is a fear that we are going back to the Latin Mass and a harsher church which will be more removed from the people. You can teach a parrot to speak Latin, but it will have no meaning. Many do not want to worship in Latin. And more importantly, they wish to distance themselves from the angry fundamentalist voices that want to go back to earlier days in the church.
We must tread lightly with this gift of faith cherished by millions. When the liturgy changed in the seventies it may have been too much too fast. When people went to Mass then, they didn’t know what to expect. Now they have gotten used to it and many love it.
Death Tax
Billionaire's benefice or tax dodge?
News accounts of Warren Buffett’s extraordinarily generous decision to give 85 percent of his fortune to the foundation established by Bill and Melinda Gates of Microsoft is impressive. He is making a charitable donation of about 37.4 billion dollars in company stocks.
Buffett, a 75 year old widower with three adult children, made his money as a stock market investor. He said he has never considered doing anything else with his fortune except give it away.
One has to chuckle when reading a piece by editor James Taranto in the “Wall Street Journal” that this philanthropy is some kind of tax dodge on Buffet’s part. Pro-life groups know that one of Buffett’s favorite charities is Planned Parenthood and that makes them wring their hands. Taranto mentions that Buffetts’ kids earn about $40,000 a year spending 30 hours a week administering a philanthropic arm of Buffett’s empire which will get a 6 billion dollar gift.
Taranto feels the need to tell us this because both Warren Buffett and Bill Gates favor the continuance of the inheritance tax, referred to as the “death tax” by Taranto and some others. I guess we are supposed to imagine the grim reaper dressed as Uncle Sam leaning over the death bed of a poor rich soul cheerfully waiting to grab money.
James Taranto has a curious consistency to his extreme heterodoxy. He has a knack for picking unusual things to bash. He never refers just to John Kerry. He always says, “French looking John Kerry.”
While we can only applaud the decision by Buffett and Gates to give away so much of their fortunes, their gifts raise questions not unlike those that confronted Andrew Carnegie a century ago. Is society served by permitting so much capital to be accumulated by so few? Should we have to rely on the usually unfulfilled hope that fortunes of this magnitude will be put to a good cause? What becomes of a society that must rely on "gifts" from a handful of socially conscious billionaires to save its schools, cure disease and alleviate poverty?
Does a society which creates billionaires have a problem managing wealth? Some want to keep the tax man as far away from this wealth as possible. Often the same voices oppose a minimum wage increase for American workers. Is something wrong with this picture?
Some ask that Gates and Buffett, on their way toward “earning” their combined 94 billion dollars might have scammed their success by overcharging customers for instantly obsolete software and mysterious arbitrage schemes that glaze over the eyes. They could have paid their help more. Maybe Gates could have hired union help instead of building plants in third world areas.
We are all grateful to Buffet and Gates for their willingness to “give back.” Is it fair to ask why did they choose to take so much in the first place? Unfortunately, our free enterprise system seems calibrated to wring as much as possible out of people and to pay them as little as possible for their work.
Something seems wrong with a system that pays policemen and school teachers $40,000 a year and at the same time grows corporations which can give away billions. No one wants socialism, but this “laissez faire” economy most certainly needs some work.
Don't Think of an Elephant !
Don’t Think of an Elephant!
George Lakoff is a noted linguist and the author of eight books. He is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and on July 4 had an op-ed piece published in the Boston Globe called, “Understanding the Meaning of Freedom.”
He writes that in today’s Culture War the nation is as divided as it was during the Civil War. He sees the battles as essentially about freedom and he thinks that it is about a notion of freedom which is quite distant from that of our Founding Fathers. Lakoff is a progressive, and he believes the conservative right wing idea of freedom flies in the face of freedom as defined 200 years ago. He sees all of us agreeing on a core meaning of freedom, but the value systems held by conservatives and progressives extend this idea in different directions. He has a way of summing up views which seems to define objectively the political extremes:
Government eavesdropping:
Progressives think this is a violation of freedom.
Conservatives think this is necessary to preserve our freedom.
Progressives think freedom of religion includes freedom from having a religion imposed on you.
Conservatives think it means freedom to spread the good news of the truth of the gospel which implies school prayer, “under God” in the Pledge, putting the ten commandments in court houses and teaching intelligent design.
Government giveaways:
Progressive think that universal health care and the minimum wage are ways to guarantee freedom from want.
Conservatives think giving people things they haven’t earned creates dependency and robs people of freedom.
Lakoff 's book was a New York Times best seller last year. “Don’t Think of an Elephant!” is a book about framing issues in ways which reflect your values and your fundamental views. His curious title tries to make the point that if you try not to think of an elephant, you will.
Richard Nixon said to everyone, “I am not a crook.” And from that point on everyone thought he was a crook. Lakoff credits the Republicans with doing a lot better job at framing than the Democrats. He cites the phrase “tax relief” as a powerful framed idea. People see taxation as an affliction and when relief comes, there is always a reliever for whom to vote. Lakoff says that framing is getting language which fits your world view.
When you think about framing you can detect deliberate attempts to slant and spin. “Cut and run Democrats” are ones who want to withdraw from Iraq. John Kerry’s missteps in 2004 brought him the appellation of “flip- flop” which conjures up a half dead fish flopping on a deck.
Here in Massachusetts 26 years ago the easily understood and powerful term “tax cap” made it easy to put a lid on our gushing tax rates with Proposition 2 ½. The word “reform” is a powerful frame. Earmark reform is what we want to avoid future Jack Abramoffs and Duke Cunninghams. All politicians embrace “educational reform” because they wants to fix things that hurt children. How about, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” and “Fair and Balanced” for news companies or “Peacekeeper” for a nuclear missile? Sometimes framing phrases can backfire and give us “blowback” (another great frame.) This was the case with the “Mission Accomplished” sign on the aircraft carrier three years ago.
When we speak of American history we often like to build on the frame of a family. We have “Founding Fathers” and “Daughters of the American Revolution.” We send our “sons” to war.
One of my favorite frames, something which I found to be quite pernicious toward the other side, is the description of people who believe in God as “People of Faith.”
Frames are everywhere. There is “gay marriage” and “same sex marriage.” There is “right to choice” and “right to life.” The immigration problem in this country is loaded with frames. Consider the term “illegal aliens” and compare it to “undocumented immigrants.” It depends on your point of view and the message you want to send. If you think the inheritance tax is unfair, you might consider calling it the “death tax.” There is condom “distribution” and condom “availability.”
Lakoffs’s views are progressive. The tip-off might be that Howard Dean wrote the forward to his book. The critics of Lakoff argue that there is more to a debate than the labels you choose to describe things. That may be true, but when two sides debate it is imperative that we not be caught up in the language of our opponents. (Unless, of course, we use the frame “loyal opposition.”
Brother Gauthier
When I was in my early twenties I wanted to be a Roman Catholic priest
I signed up with the diocese of Manchester, N.H. and was sent to the seminary in Ottawa, Canada. My years there filled me with some of the most meaningful and formative experiences of my life. I can tell hundreds of stories about my time there.
This one is about Brother Gauthier.
Brother Ernest Gauthier, was the doorkeeper of the seminary. When someone came to the front door of our “house” he answered the bell, received the visitor and got on the intercom and summoned people down to the parlor to greet their guest. He was bilingual and would make the announcement in French or English, depending on the person being visited. When he announced in French he would say, “Demande au parloir M. So and So.” I was in the seminary for several months before I realized “parloir” meant “parlor.” I learned this the hard way when I said to my French friends one day in the recreation room, “Gee, that Parloir sure has a lot of people dropping in on him.”
Like all sub-cultures, we had our own set of heroes. The brother was one of our heroes because he was alleged to be so saintly. There were stories about how he had large callouses on his knees, that he sometimes stayed up all night in prayer, that he was in the finest tradition of mystic contemplatives. When we went to him for haircuts, we sat in awe as he clipped. He was impressive because he was humble and friendly. His easy chatter was always kind and never vain. He had the most menial of jobs and seemed so contented. We would study all the time and dream of becoming bishops, but we envied this simple and happy man who had such peace.
One of the brother’s jobs was getting all 180 of us out of bed in the morning. It would start at about 5:25 a.m. If you were awake in your open-transomed cell you could hear the whole thing begin. First, three floors below, the door of the ancient elevator scraped open and slammed shut. Then you heard the cables pulling and squeaking. It was one of those cage-like elevators that Katherine Hepburn used in “Suddenly Last Summer.”
Finally, the elevator arrived at the third floor and the scraping and slamming sounds were heard again, only louder. This was followed by sounds of the brother moving into the hall. He had one leg which was shorter than the other and he wore a built up shoe of hard leather which thumped noisily when he started down the hall.
He began his long limp past our closed doors…thump …thump …thump. Then he would start his morning wake up call, singing in Latin with a French-Canadian accent, “Laudetur Jesus Christus…Laudetur Jesus Christus.” This Latin chant, “Praised be Jesus Christ,” signaled that we had to out of bed, showered, shaved and on the way to the chapel in 20 minutes.
The brother’s mother lived in Ottawa in a nursing home and he would visit her every Sunday afternoon. He brought her to the seminary once when we celebrated the 25th anniversary of his solemn profession. She was a lovely cheerful lady. She spoke no English and my broken French limited what I could understand about her. We regarded her as some sort of spiritual dynamo to have given birth to the brother. She died about a year after her visit and I was one of the pallbearers. None of us felt sorry for her or the brother. The way we saw it, she entered heaven instantly and was smiling down on us. There was very little sadness.
I have many other seminary stories. About Fr. Ducharme who taught metaphysics, had six doctorates and was easily the smartest man in the world. About Fr. LaTremouille whom we called “Tunc” because he included the word “tunc” between almost all his sentences. “Tunc” means “and then…” About Fr. Sebastiano Pagano from Italy who spoke no English or French and taught us Hebrew in Latin. He also ate spaghetti with butter and no sauce every evening for dinner. The sweetest memory is about Brother Gauthier.
An Extraordinary Coincidence
If you doubt the providential roots of American independence, think about this extraordinary coincidence which occurred on the Fourth of July, 180 years ago.
John Adams was the second president of the United States, born in Braintree on October 30, 1735. He died at the age of 91 in Quincy. Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States, born in Albemarle County, Virginia on April 13, 1743. He died at the age of 83 at Monticello in Virginia.
BOTH MEN DIED HOURS APART ON JULY 4, 1826. IT WAS THE 5OTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SIGNING OF THE AMERICAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
While both were acquaintances and rivals most of their lives, in later years they became particularly close, writing letters to each other frequently and sharing their innermost thoughts about life and politics. They knew each other was sick and Adams is said to have uttered on his deathbed that “Thomas Jefferson still survives,” unaware that his old friend had expired a few hours before.
John Adams was the first vice president of the United States and the father of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. Jefferson was the vice president during Adams’s four year term and then succeeded him. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Adams was the chief advocate of it in Congress. While church bells were ringing and cannons were firing in towns and cities honoring the 50th, the pen and the voice of independence passed away, the last two surviving signers of the Declaration.
A Fourth of July Patriot
He stands out because he was versatile, optimistic and energetic. He was a cowboy, war hero, cattle rancher, police commissioner, state representative, governor, asst. secretary of the navy, Nobel Peace Prize winner, naval historian, naturalist, writer, Vice President and President.
Twice married, he had five children. His first wife was named Alice Lee, a young woman from Chestnut Hill, MA who died of Bright’s disease on Valentine’s Day, 1884 at the age of 22 while giving birth to their first daughter Alice. On that very same day, upstairs in his New York City home, his 50 year old mother died of typhoid fever. These losses rocked him so that he never again spoke of Alice Lee. He did write these words in his diary two days after her death:
She was beautiful in face and form and lovelier still, in spirit; as a flower she grew, and as a fair young flower she died. Her life had been always in the sunshine; and there had never come to her a single great sorrow; and none ever knew her who did not love and revere her for her bright sunny temper and her saintly unselfishness. Fair, pure, and joyous as a maiden; loving, tender and happy as a young wife; when she had just become a mother, when her life seemed to be but just begun, and when the years seemed so bright before her – then, by a strange and terrible fate, death came to her. And when my heart’s dearest died, the light went out from my life forever.
Two years later, he married Edith Carow, a childhood friend, and they had four children. During his presidency the White House was full of pets and toys.
He was an exuberant family man, always willing to set protocol aside and have a game of “follow the leader” with his children around White House grounds or to engage in lengthy horseback rides. His oldest daughter Alice (on right i 1900) was a controversial public figure, a teenager in the White House who appeared on magazine covers and experimented with smoking cigarettes and shocking the Victorians of the era with her tendency to speak her mind. She was the darling of the media, not unlike the love affair our generation had with Princess Diana or Jackie Kennedy before her.Once the press asked President Roosevelt what he was going to do about Alice. He said, “Look, I can either be President or control Alice, but I can’t do both.”
In 1910 at the University of Paris he made a speech which has come to be known as “The Man in the Arena.” It is a political staple in the nation, used as words of encouragement for politicians for almost a century. President Nixon quoted from it when he resigned. It goes like this:
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly…who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.
The White House years of TR were filled with many important events in American history. He built the Panama Canal, opened national parks, and negotiated international peace treaties. His proactive approach to problems and reform brought us into the 20th Century and advanced the labor movement, curtailing the greed and exploitation of many corporations.
He was elected President once (1904) and because he didn’t believe in serving more than two terms, prematurely announced that he would not run in 1908. Instead, he hand picked William Howard Taft to be his successor. When Taft didn’t work out the way he wanted, he decided to run again in 1912 as a third party candidate, “The Bull Moose Party.” (“How do you feel Mr. President?” “I feel as fit as a bull moose.” He lost that election to Woodrow Wilson but while campaigning, someone shot him in the chest. The bullet, deflected by his eyeglasses case, did not hurt him. To the surprise of no one, he brushed off his injuries until he finished his speech.
Biographers love Theodore Roosevelt because he put so much in writing. The telephone was young in his day and he was the first president to have one in his home. He was also the first to own an automobile and to fly in an airplane. He talked continually, appearing to utter all thoughts as they arrived in his mind. He always had a book by his side and was often engaged in reading books to improve himself.
He was bright and crafty. He once said that the American people want their president to be smarter than they are, but not too much smarter. His hunting trips were followed closely by reporters and cartoonists. An encounter with a bear gave rise to cartoons about a “Teddy Bear” and millions of American children ended up sleeping with one of these stuffed animals.
A favorite biography of Roosevelt is David McCullough’s Mornings on Horseback. (1981) The book contains a picture of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession approaching Union Square in New York City. In the picture, peering out of the window of a brownstone on the route one can see two tiny heads. The building was owned by Theodore Roosevelt’s grandfather and historians believe the two children were Teddy Roosevelt and his older brother Eliot, the father of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Ground Zero
Larry Silverstein builds office towers in Manhattan.
As luck would have it, he leased the 16 acre World Trade Center site six weeks before it was destroyed on 9/11. Since then he has been at war with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey about rebuilding on these 16 acres which cover a little more than 12 football fields. The conflict is centered on money. How much will it take to rebuild at this site (7 billion) and can Silverstein raise the money? The problem is an interesting one because it has several dimensions, none of which fit easily into the liberal/conservative frame we often use to define problems and help us choose sides.
First, there is the memorial to almost 3000 victims whose grieving families have written books, testified before Congress, demonstrated in many places and been generally invested in how history shall regard and commemorate this tragedy.
Second, there are the economics. 7 billion dollars is an enormous sum and the mind boggles at the revenue which five office towers on Ground Zero will ultimately be able to produce. The tallest and most symbolically important office tower is “Freedom Tower,” which alone is planned to cost 2 billion. It will rise 1776 feet and will be the tallest building in the United States when it is completed in 2011.
You can find an article about Ground Zero in the New York papers almost daily. If you Google “Ground Zero” you will get a long list of documents telling about the difficult struggle going on to replace what we lost on 9/11. One way to look at the players involved in this process is to consider a table with four legs. One leg is Governor Pataki and the State of New York. The second leg is Governor Corzine and the State of New Jersey. The third leg is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bi-state agency which owns the site and has been around since 1921. The fourth leg is Mr. Silverstein and his company, Silverstein Properties.
It is hard to keep track of where plans are regarding the memorial. At one point, Donald Trump was weighing in on what he liked and disliked about the design. He might have smelled money. We haven’t heard much from him lately. Then we had Ann Coulter’s blistering book criticizing some of the widows for pressuring the government to do post 9/11 things. These widows, iconic victims of the tragedy and sort of national heroes, annoy Ms. Coulter because she can’t disagree with them without looking mean. (I don’t recall that looking mean ever bothered her before.) Finally we had the movies. Television movies and United 93 in the theaters causing hand wringing and “must see” advice from pundits everywhere.
We have two legislatures making laws and resolutions about this and two governors agreeing with or disputing what the legislators do and writing letters and making threats. A recent fight is whether the public will ever be charged to visit the museum. The New York legislature says “no way” and won’t release money until they have assurances. In the meantime, $25.00 will buy you a three hour walking tour of Ground Zero and surrounding areas.
Another fight is with the insurance companies. They are going to be covering about half the costs of this project and they won’t pay unless they receive certain assurances.
They laid the 20 ton cornerstone on the site two years ago and had to take it back to the factory on Long Island recently because design changes caused it to rest in the wrong place and who knows when they will be able to start building anyway.
We need to keep our eye on this. Gobs of money and all kinds of emotion can produce a strange cocktail.
Instilling the Basics
A friend of mine told me the other day that the way to get kids to do better at school was to instill the basics. Instill the basics? That was not the first time I have heard that suggestion from educational critics. I wonder how you instill? Do you unscrew their heads and pour the basics down their throats? Do you force feed them until they gag or regurgitate what you are trying to get across? How about soaking kids in the basics until our adult nostrums come oozing out of their ears and nostrils? Instill the basics. I wish I had thought of that years ago when I was trying to teach kids how to read. It would have saved me thousands of hours studying psychology and taking a mountain of education courses at the marginal graduate schools of education across the US.
Anyway, I offer here a modest proposal about what could happen if we simply instill the basics.
One of the latest ideas regarding improving schools in going on in New York City. The mayor there, Michael Bloomberg, is against “social promotion” which politicians take to mean passing a child from one grade to another whether or not they pass all the tests.
This philosophy presumes, for example, that there is a fifth grade curriculum well defined and documented built upon an equally well defined and documented fourth grade curriculum, and so on. But there isn’t. Much of what happens in a classroom is spontaneous and defies being reduced to writing. People would like to believe you could write the curriculum of a grade or a school on pieces of paper and put them in a binder. I suspect there are some who want to see it on a card they could carry around in their wallet. In response to political pressure, I have seen committees of overworked teachers put into written linear form about 10,000 expectations for particular content areas and grade levels.
Anyway, the mayor of New York, as he wages war against social promotion has decreed that you can’t get out of grade five until you pass a test. This has worked well for a couple of years but last year the instilling must have broken down because more than 8900 grade 5 students will not be promoted to grade 6. I shutter to think of what will happen if this occurs again and again. Like interest compounding on invested money, the numbers could hit the tens of thousands. We could have a city where everyone, regardless of their age, is stalled in grade 5. That would be alarming. Of course if a quarter of the population was stuck in grade 5, the politicians could eliminate the grade and decrease school expenditures by a fourth.
If that seems drastic, how about cutting out grade seven in a town’s school system? That is a difficult age, 12 year olders are often an unhappy bunch, discipline is difficult, they don’t eat, they hate their parents. How about wiping out grade 7 by administrative fiat; that would be tantamount to about an 8% budget cut. Not bad for keeping costs down to an affordable level. We would need to work harder at instilling things in the other grades, but if we hire enough no nonsense type teachers who are not distracted by things like student self esteem and have not been infected by graduate schools of education, that can probably happen. This is a modest proposal. All we want is quality education at a fair price.
The Base
Nixon called it “the silent majority” and the Bushites refer to “the base.” They define it as that group of people who will stand behind you even if you are wrong. They draw confidence because they claim to know how things will play in Peoria. Lest we fail to understand it, talk radio and Fox News is there to tell all of us what we want and where we should be going. When ideals become less popular it seems that this invisible sense of direction comes up. When all else fails, point to something we cannot see.
Some editorials scold President Bush for losing touch with his base. Many think he values the Hispanic vote more than cracking down on undocumented immigrants. Thunder from the right often castigated him for nominating his friend, Harriet Meirs instead of a distinguished pro life lawyer to be on the Supreme Court and those same voices became very cross with the White House on the Dubai ports deal. These interests are attracted to the thoughts of deporting aliens, wiretapping international terror suspects and straining American privacy rights in the interests of battling terrorists.
Probably more than anything else, the base is upset because government spending continues to grow at a rapid rate. Many people are nervous that bad things are happening, unworthy of politicians they believe they have put in office to pursue their often unspoken agendas. Sometimes it seems as if the only thing the President has done right is to give a 70 billion dollar tax cut to high income Americans.
Now we have this new field manual which has been written by Ann Coulter. One reason she seems to have written it to get even with people who call George Bush a liar. She ridicules 9/11 widows and a Gold Star mother to do it, but that should sell her book. It seems as if this is an effort to take the quiet base and throw some red meat to it, making it the non-silent majority which is proud to stand in line to get her best seller.
It probably will not work, because the human animal cannot sustain rage and hatred for a long period of time without starting to devour itself and others.
When I'm 64
With Paul McCartney turning age 64 yesterday, my mind turns to aging and the inevitable. When I was ten years old, I asked my 30 year old mother what did we mean when we said someone was “middle aged.” She said, “About 35 years old.” As I grew older middle aged became about 50 years old and it seems to stay there. Of course that is wrong, because if 50 is “the middle” that says we live to be 100. I do notice, however, an increasing frequency of the obituaries carrying more and more reports of departed octogenarians and older. That is reassuring.
When I graduated from high school I couldn’t get over the different feeling I had of being older, not so much my father’s son anymore. I never looked old enough to buy a drink before I was 21 so I never dared to try to put one over on the storekeeper or bartender. In graduate school when I was in my early thirties I noticed my age once when riding on an elevator with a pretty girl and she said, “Excuse me sir, could you tell me what time it is?” This was a girl I could have been flirting with in a bar a mere five years before.
Then a few years later I started noticing that key people in my life who had always been older than me were about the same age as I was or even younger. This included the doctor, the dentist, the parish priest. After getting used to that, the next shock wave hit when my parents passed away and I, my father’s son, was thrust into the “older” generation. I was raised in a family consisting of my parents and grandparents. I knew what old meant. Now, for the first time in my life, there were no generations around older than mine.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, in the year 44BC at the age of 62 wrote an article about getting old which he called De Senectute. The piece is used in teaching Latin as an example of beautiful writing. In it he takes the voice of Cato, an 83 year old man, who answers questions from two younger men. He says that aging appears to be an unhappy time for four reasons: (1) we are less active; (2) our bodies are weaker; (3) physical pleasures are no longer available; and (4) death is near. He discusses these four things and suggests that the quality of old age depends on what you invested years before. He stresses the importance of physical exercise and moderation in eating and drinking when young. He also thinks having good friends helps you age gracefully. As regards the loss of physical pleasures he promotes the intellectual and aesthetic pleasures in which an old man can still indulge. He emphasizes that to enjoy them you have to invest time in earlier years cultivating them. He didn’t have much to say about the closeness of death in old age except that it may open the way to something better.
I don’t often get inspiration from Cicero and the Beatles at the same time, but the universal problem of aging suggests that it would be appropriate to close this piece with the following lyrics which Paul McCartney wrote at the age of 16:
When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out 'till quarter to three, would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
You'll be older, too. Aaah, and if you say the word, I could stay with you.
I could be handy, mending a fuse, when your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside, sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?
Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wightif it's not too dear. We shall scrimp and save.
Ah, grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck, and Dave.
Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?
Corporal Punishment
There is never a lack of stupid and outrageous stories in the news. The latest one for me is a story I read about a big debate going on in the country of Kenya about corporal punishment of kids in school. It seems as if there has been a history of excessive corporal punishment. Apparently the Kenya version of caning is far more violent than what American teachers dish out. Kids have been injured, hospitalized, disabled and even killed at the hands of teachers wielding the rattan. In 2001 the government passed a law which prohibited all forms of school corporal punishment. This is what Massachusetts has although half the other states allow some form of corporal punishment.
Now there apparently is some form of backlash in Kenya to restore corporal punishment.
I know it is serious business, but somehow, adults arguing about the pros and cons of beating kids seems silly and embarrassing. Children have absolutely no power and from time to time will throw something or even let loose with a swear word. Should we beat them for this? Does it do anything but degrade the person administering the punishment?
I suspect that today very few adults would argue the case for corporal punishment. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” does better embroidered on pillows than as operating procedures in public schools. In most cases, the practice seems to have been crowded off the educational radar screen like spelling bees and excessive instruction in penmanship. There are other ways of dealing with naughty students such as withdrawing privileges, staying after school, turning the problem over to parents, and having conversations about behavior.
I was always proud that my father never spanked me when I was a child. If he had, I would have been mortified and sad that I had disappointed him. I never dropped out of school nor have I ever been convicted of anything. This may be connected to my father’s rearing methods, or, for that matter, to the wooden mixing spoon my mother used to wield to bat me around.
Jose Can You See
Nuestro Himno
The national debate about the “Star Spangled Banner” as an appropriate national anthem continues to make the news now and then. The latest appearance was in the context of undocumented Hispanic immigrants making up their own translation.
No one wants to sing “a la luz de la aurora” in place of “the dawn’s early light” at a ball game. Hearing of a Spanish version of "The Star-Spangled Banner," Senator Lamar Alexander introduced a resolution calling for the national anthem to be sung only in English.
One article I saw referred to the anthem as “Jose, Can You See.” The anthem is in trouble because no one can sing it very well. The fact that the melody is from an old English drinking song does not help. Pundits who like to bash the schools are fond of doing “man in the street” interviews and asking people, especially teenagers if they know the words. They don’t.
And so I have been shopping around for a new national anthem. I like “My Country Tis of Thee” but the melody is a paen to the English monarch and is therefore out. “America the Beautiful” or “God Bless America” are right up there on the list; I think I prefer the latter because Irving Berlin was an immigrant, hopefully a legal one. Congress declared that we had a national anthem in 1931 although the verses were written in 1814. Canada didn’t do it until 1980 but the beautiful song was around for a hundred years before they hit a home run by adopting “O Canada.”
I think we have to ask ourselves, “What would bring tears to the eyes of an Olympics Gold Medalist the fastest? I remember watching a Russian figure skater cry profusely as “The Internationale” was played at the height of the cold war. I thought at that time, that patriotism trumps political ideology.
The lyrics are as important as the music. My review of the anthems of other countries leads me to realize that blood and war are the story that most of them try to tell. The national anthem of France urges us to drench our field with the tainted blood of our enemies and the Danish version has the king passing his sword through a Gothic brain. Guatemala urges tyrants not to spit in our face.
We could do better here in the USA, but there is something inspiring about the flag still waving in the dawn’s early light after a dark night of bombing and smoke.
Net Neutrality
There may be mischief afoot in Washington with efforts to oppose net neutrality. The House recently voted 321 to 101 for the Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE) which allows telecommunications corporations to rig the Internet and make it kind of a toll road where one can travel on an electronics super highway or a dirt road, depending on how much you want to pay.
The “little guys” of the Internet and blogosphere are generally against this. An unlikely coalition of MoveOn.org, The Christian Coalition of America, AARP and the American Library Association oppose COPE and favor net neutrality. There is a “Save the Internet” group of 5000 bloggers and 800,000 individuals which hopes the Senate will shoot this down. Keep your eye on this effort to turn the Internet into a cash cow for big business.
Jerry Springer and ACTING!
Does anyone besides me see Dr. Phil McGraw turning into Jerry Springer? On almost a daily basis he lines up the wretched of the earth to sit with him and talk about why they hate their mother in law or the incident of sexual abuse years ago that no one will talk about today. How much does he pay these people? It’s got to be at least $1,000 plus expenses and a promise of some kind of psychological intervention. Phil is at his best when he is using Texas metaphors to ream out some impaired, drug addicted adulterer or wife beater. And the audience of attractive women cries at times and wildly applauds when he give it to them.
I should not be surprised, after all, Dr. Phil was discovered by Oprah and Oprah is claimed by some to be a great spiritual leader, right up there with Billy Graham, the pope, or Aimee Semple McPherson. Actually, both Phil and Oprah are trying to save the world. It makes me a bit nervous to get inspiration from an Academy Award winning actress. The other day she had as a guest Terri Hatcher who cried on cue about her abuse as a child. Then I learned that Hatcher had won some Golden Globe Awards and that made me a bit jittery at what I was watching. I kind of felt the way I did when Jessica Simpson announced that playing the role of Daisy Duke was important because she was playing an American icon.
Remember Jon Lovitz on SNL? His character was the “Master Thespian” and he would go on and on with some outrageous story and when challenged would make a great sweeping gesture with his arm and announce that it was ACTING!
"Quousque tandem abutere?"
*Cicero 's lesson for America
The reason why you don’t hear much partisan hell being raised over the discovery of $90,000 in the home freezer of Democrat Congressman William Jefferson is not that the Republican Congressman Randy Cunningham did his stealing a few months ago. It is because the Enron thieves Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted of taking millions of other people’s money the same week that the frozen loot was found. These corporate Enron robbers, it turns out, are presidential best friends.
While Enron gave about one fourth of its political contributions to Democrats, it is astounding to learn that over the years, Ken Lay gave $139,500 to President Bush and that the Enron PAC gave $113,800 to Bush’s races in 1994 and in 1998. You are not necessarily a thief if you take money from crooks, but when they give far less to your opponents and argue hard for your programs, then we all feel tested. This startling closeness to the President of the United States is reinforced when one realizes that the Enron crooks were involved in all kinds of energy lobbying skullduggery when they were stealing this money. It has been mentioned that Lay was in line to become the next Cabinet Secretary of Energy.
The American people are forgiving. We can get beyond the President for being wrong about WMD. Getting bad advice is not lying and the resolution of our president in the quagmire war is viewed by some as commendable. He has also stood up to nutty ideas like deporting 12 million illegals. He showed courage when he resisted the irrational terrorist fears in the Dubai ports fiasco. Although he has given 70 billion in tax cuts to those who can afford to pay taxes, and the earmarking scandals came to a head during his watch, he has presided at a time when the economy has been reasonably healthy.
A bright line must be drawn when it becomes clear that President George W. Bush was the number one political show pony of these greedy Texas robbers. Let TV pundits blither all day long about Bush being Lincolnesque and having grace under fire; he hangs out with thieves and they do well when he does well.
I am reminded of a Latin sentence spoken by Cicero when he was giving an oration against the corrupt Roman senator Cataline: *“Quousque, tandem, abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra?”
*(“How long, at last, O Cataline, will you abuse our patience”)
The Da Vinci Code Madness
Many in the Catholic community are upset about “The Da Vinci Code”
This overreaction to a make believe story has caused committees of bishops to issue pronouncements about the danger of this film, counter-films have been produced to off-set its effects, a museum of early Christianity has opened to tell the real story and I imagine that the Roman Curia has come close to condemning it. I understand some of the concerns. The movie makes the church look bad because it portrays the Vatican as working to cover up the story that Jesus was married and had heirs.
Ecclesiastical cover ups, in the eyes of many, are evident in the sex abuse cases and the ideas put forth in the Gnostic gospels discussed this Easter which basically said Judas has been framed by the church as a bad guy. Many believe that the movie is a slap in the face of the Catholic Church.
The conservative Opus Dei society, a group of genuinely committed Catholic religious and lay people, is demonized in the story line. The debate is not without its humor. Bill Donohue, the excitable and extremely conservative head of the Catholic League has found a British study which has announced that liberals are the most likely to have their religious beliefs changed by the fantasies of the film. Maybe Donohue means the same thing, but it seems to me that only stupid people will have their faith changed by The Da Vinci Code.
Coming soon to a Toy Store near you?
I don’t know how far the Sony Corporation is going to carry this movie thing, but look for tiny plastic superheroes in toy stores of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and maybe Tom Hanks. Then maybe there will be plastic priests and bishops who can do battle with heretics.
We can open up a veritable ‘Star Wars” industry with this film. Would you let your child take a Mary Magdalene lunch box to school?
When we were seven year old boys in my home town, my cousin and I would often go to the local movie theater. Sometimes the film would scare us and we would cry. We had to remind ourselves that “It was only a movie.”
Chewing Up All Your Data
I wonder if I am the only one besieged with junk e-mails. I don’t mean the rare arrivals about re-financing my home or improving sexual performance. I am referring to things I receive from friends. Without them I would feel lonely and neglected but many are still annoying. My favorite annoyance is the “inspirational” email which gives me a poem or an aphorism of some kind and then directs me at the end to pass it on to 12 of my best friends. How does the sender know I have 12 friends, and even if I do, how about giving me credit for deciding which emails to forward and which to delete on the spot? It is especially annoying if I am threatened with bad luck if directions are not followed.
Another problem is the e-mail forwarder who must comment on what they send. Messages like, “You are going to love this!” or “This is the funniest thing I have ever read.” fail to credit me with the ability to decide what I like or how funny it is. These annoyances are not as bad as the ones which come with attachments which, for some unknown reason, my computer cannot download. It is very frustrating to be unable to download the funniest thing someone has ever read or some kind of picture or video clip which they promise will amuse me greatly.
The warning e-mail is another type. Usually sent by a technology neophyte who wants to take care of all their friends, these messages contain terrifying communications such as, “this worm will creep into your hard drive and chew up all your data,” or “Do not, under any circumstances ever, download any attachment with the suffix “.xpt” any where near it if you want to hold on to your equipment.” My experience has taught me that these warnings are all false alarms, but I still try to obey them. It helps if you can invest about $50 a year in some kind of anti-virus protection. Sometimes warning e-mails have nothing to do with technology. They may be cautioning you about drug infested stickers you should not lick or some door to door scam which promises religious fulfillment if you subscribe to a magazine. Off-color jokes can be fun but every once in awhile they contain rank pornography so you have to be careful about reading them with your kids or your minister looking over your shoulder.
If we conquer the email inconveniences we are not home free. There are pop-ups which tell you how to find your old high school girl friend or offer you a free I-pod if you will give them a few hours filling out a questionnaire and inadvertently order a couple of cell phones and maybe some anti-virus spy ware. Some of the pop-ups won’t go away unless you buy what they are selling. You’d think there would be laws against this, but if we must tolerate 12 million illegal immigrants, why not put up with intrusive advertisements that you cannot kill off? At least the Sunday papers will allow you to weed them and throw away the commercial brochures before you let the paper into the house. I wish we could weed e-mail that easily.
Memorial Day Meditation
It is important to remember the war dead on Memorial Day because their heroism allows us to enjoy May greenery and the smell of lilacs. As we get further away from devastating wars like the World Wars, it is possible to take for granted the sacrifices made. Let that not be the case in 2006 when the record shows almost 2400 of our brother and sisters gone in Iraq.
All the school children and old uniformed veterans marching in all the parades Monday are doing it for the war dead. When we reflect on what has been given, it makes the small things like illegal immigrants, energy efficient windmills and lobbying reform look unimportant. We are the lucky ones, left behind to pursue our lives and get along with each other.
Being a military hero has nothing to do with where you went to college, the wealth of your family, the number of friends you have or your IQ points. It is only about being in a place in time and responding to a call to give it all to the situation. Some pass the test magnificently, and we owe them everything. The American teenagers who stormed the hill in Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg have something to teach us. Brave soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are giving their lives in exploding Humvees and helicopters. In their heroism, they have made a decision that some things are worth dying for. That is a very good way to live.
Kids Teach Us Much
I have 11 grandchildren, all of whom are below the age of 11 years and more than half of whom are not yet old enough for school.
They live nearby, so I get a chance to observe them and think about how they do business in this world they are discovering.
First of all, they are very sensitive. A loud voice or a hasty “don’t do that” can bring tears to their eyes or send them running to their mothers.
Secondly, they have short attention spans. Thirty seconds on my lap while I try to read a book to them is often the most time I am allowed.
Third, they are always hungry but often only for a limited number of things. Among my progeny, those little cheese and sticks packets make a great hit. They do not necessarily like to eat them, and appear to like handing them for a few seconds after some doting adult has peeled away the cello-wrap. They like to leave partially eaten cheese and broken sticks around for dogs to eat or people to step on.
A big thing is that all of them, all the time, love books. Not to necessarily hold and read, but to carry about, taunt each other with, stack and restack and remove pages from. Animals, also, appeal greatly. Baby animals, mother animals, farm animals, stuffed animals. We have baby lambs at a farm near my house and it is not unusual to visit these creatures a couple of times in one day.
These miracles are a rich resource and responsibility which needs great care and handling. It is an honor for a grandparent or great-grandparent to observe them and to refine better each day how to help good things happen and how it influences our own behavior. It helps me understand my own learning. I was sick for a long time and had to learn how to walk again. I remember watching my one year old grandson as he was learning to walk. His cautious balancing, stumbling and his ability to press on no matter how hard, was an inspiration for me. Think how hard it is to learn to talk or read. It takes uncommon patience and focus to send and receive words and letters. If children can do that, we can learn and use foreign languages, or, for that matter, build bridges to the moon as well as to other cultures.
Poets and theologians have urged us to be more like children for thousands of years. To me, a child gets satisfaction out of simple things, like jumping over the two inch drop from my hearth to the living room floor, or standing in the kitchen solo dancing to rock music by the Black Eyed Peas. Simplicity seems to be more elusive the older we get.
Our kids teach us much.
What's Your I.Q.?
Years ago I came across an article in a professional journal about an experiment someone did with IQ tests. I don’t remember the writer or the exact story but it gives me an idea which I will relate here in the first person as if it were my own. I am reconstructing the article from memory.
I taught a graduate course in psychology at Boston University and had picked up an abbreviated I.Q. test which took about 25 minutes to administer orally. Students had answer sheets and could bubble in their answers. There were 100 questions, enough to give a valid measure of general knowledge and aptitude.
I gave the test to my class of 22 students told them I would check them and announce the results in a few days. We spent time discussing psychometrics and the place of tests in our culture and their value in assessing learning and innate intelligence. We discussed ability and aptitude and achievement and tried to come up with definitions of these components of measured intelligence.
On the day that I brought the corrected tests back to class I explained the importance of the self knowledge that you can get from a test and the potential to use and abuse this information. I then passed out the tests asking everyone not to share their score with anyone else, because this was a private thing and we did not want anyone to be embarrassed. I announced that one of them had an I.Q. of 85, something which could be classified as mentally retarded years ago when we were not as careful about these things. I wrote the individual I.Q. score of each student on the upper right hand corner of each answer sheet.
I wrote the scores of the 22 students on the chalkboard. The 85 was there, along with a couple of 102’s, a 135 and the balance which ranged between 104 and 128. I passed out the results and you could hear a pin drop. There was no chattering at all about the results and everyone seemed focused on their scores. I asked the class if they would join me in a psychology experiment about the image and acceptance levels we have of others on the basis of intelligence. I asked those who had an I.Q. above the class average of 115 to move to the front of the room. There was a pause and people started shuffling about, some of them moving to the front. Then I asked those below the average to sit in the back two rows of the class. I reminded them that someone in the class, smart enough to have a B.A. and to be enrolled in a graduate course had an I.Q. which measured at 85. A few chuckled; a couple of wise cracks were made.
I then dropped the bomb. I said I had written “IQ-85” on every paper. People gasped, some laughed out loud, others scowled at me because of my deception. One student had to go to the bathroom. I said to my students: You were willing to lie and cheat in order not to be labeled a slow learner. The point was made. I told them not to use tests to label kids and to decide what they can and should learn. They quietly left the class, obviously moved by the lesson.
Mission Accomplished
This month marks the third anniversary of “Mission Accomplished”
Humorists are having a field day exercising hindsight when studying the reactions to President Bush streaking down out of the sky in a Viking jet, landing at 150 mph on an Aircraft carrier, and swaggering in a jump suit over to a microphone in front of a banner which said “Mission Accomplished.”
Some pundits are arguing about who put up the banner. They are having a hard time finding anyone to claim ownership. I think the White House probably learned something from this photo-op…but it took awhile. The Katrina speech in a city square under blue lights in New Orleans suggested that the virus was still around then. Who can blame them? It was really a search for the “Megaphone Moment” we all witnessed at Ground Zero shortly after 9/11.
Today, 300 billion dollars and 2,300 lives later, I have to wonder what Fred Barnes meant three years ago saying that winning the war was the hard part and that setting up a democracy in Iraq will be the easy part.
When I review the hubris of that day on the carrier I think my favorite quotes are from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who referred to the president’s performance as “an amazing display of leadership.” Later on, when commenting on Governor Howard Dean’s pessimism, he said, "What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over?"
The New York Times carried a piece by staff writer David Sanger: “…he hopped out of the plane with a helmet tucked under his arm and walked across the flight deck with a swagger that seemed to suggest he had seen Top Gun.”
Another favorite quote of mine comes from the ubiquitous Fox News consultant, Dick Morris, who used to work for President Clinton: “Over the next couple of weeks, when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing…I think it really means that the left is going to have to hang its head four three or four years.”
I have grown to admire President Bush’s resolve in the war and I am not among those partisans who shout for impeachment or abandonment of the war effort. I do, however, feel used and misled by reporters and pundits who all too often fail to bring to the table skepticism about how the government tries to influence us. They bore us with their opinions, confuse optimism with blind faith and see lack of patriotism in dissent. I even worry that I get too much information from Oprah, an Oscar winning actress. There seems to be no way of knowing with confidence what is truth, what are lies, and what is spin. I am mad as hell and don’t want to take it anymore.
Paying for College
I saw an interesting article in the paper the other day which gives me pause to reflect. The article presented a novel idea. Some parents are actually letting their children select the colleges they want to go to and then allowing their children to go into heavy debt to finance their education, which can be as much as $40,000 a year. What gets me about this is that it presents this idea as something new and different. I thought that was the way most of us send our kids to college.
It is almost axiomatic that you have your kid borrow as much as he or she can and that you make up the difference out of your own pocket, hoping against hope that the college or university will be generous with scholarship and financial aid. Now I know that we live in an age of million dollar homes and $50,000 automobiles, but am I so removed from reality not to know that many people actually have a choice about financing their child’s college education or letting the child go into debt? I always knew I was not a rich man, but I thought my resources were adequate and at least average. Is it a “best kept secret” how much parents of college age children really earn?
What is wrong with this picture? Don’t all kids who go to college have to borrow money?
Does Boycotting Work?
Today’s national immigration boycott presents an opportunity to measure the power of immigrants in the nation. The problem is, no one knows how to assess the results of this action. Spinners will be working overtime to tell us how the protest either surpassed expectations or did not measure up.
A few months ago we had the governor of Alabama asking us to boycott Aruba travel in order to squeeze the authorities there to do better in the search for Natalee Holloway.
When you have little or no power, when everything else is exhausted, you can always boycott. In many ways we citizens of the United States are relatively powerless in the face of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. When an extreme view is publicly expressed on the radio or television I sometimes would like to boycott the sponsors of the speaker. Bill O’Reilly on Fox News makes a habit of announcing lists of news organizations with which he disagrees or finds dishonest. His request is not to buy ads or support sponsors. I have heard mention on talk radio of citizens trying to organize a boycott of certain gas stations in order to send a message about prices. Remember the hell raised last Christmas because Lands End and Wal-Mart were engaged in the “War on Christmas?”
I have dreamed of boycotting the sponsors of media personalities when they consistently say outrageous things. I have gone so far as to list the sponsors of people whose viewpoints I opposed and then methodically engaged in non-support of these companies. My tiny protest made no difference to anyone but me, but I did get some satisfaction.
There is thinking which suggests that boycotts of sponsors would give publicity to first amendment abusers and in the long run improve rather than diminish their ratings. I think most people believe that would be the case, but we should not underestimate the sensitivity of corporations and politicians to public sentiment and the fear they can have of offending and thereby losing customers or votes.
Is the Conservative Tide Receding?
Interesting op-ed column in today’s New York Times by Paul Krugman.
He calls it “The Great Revulsion” and he says that the high water mark for the conservative agenda was the 2004 elections. The conservative tide is now receding, given Katrina, prescription drugs, the Iraq quagmire and the failure of the president to privatize social security. Fox News poll puts Bush at 33%, only four states approve more than disapprove of Bush. These states are Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Nebraska. They contain fewer people than New York City.
This suggests the Democrats may win in November, but don’t be too sure; the system is stacked strangely. The four remaining red states have eight senators for about eight million people. New York City, with the same number of people, has to share two senators with the rest of the state.
No Soup for You!
Sometimes I think about the soup Nazi in those ubiquitous Seinfeld reruns on TV. “No soup for you!” he shouts, if you do the slightest thing to annoy him or draw attention to yourself. This classic comic scene reminds me that the people of New York get no rewards for civility. If your cell phone goes off in the theater it will cost you $50.00 and if you are a Red Sox fan, be careful when you go to Yankee Stadium, you may be thrown out of the stands into center field or something might be thrown at you. Some cities are enacting by-laws and statutes to help people be nicer to each other.
I know friends who won’t take their kids to the bleacher seats at Fenway because of the drinking and bad language. The other day a lady outside Stop and Shop in South Yarmouth swore at my wife and me because she did not approve at the speed with which we were crawling through the parking lot. Once at Burger King I heard a guy tell off the clerk when she asked him if he was 55 and eligible for some kind of senior discount. I bet that regulars to the Cape Cod Mall could regale you with stories about parking space piracy by rude, blinder wearing drivers. And then the screaming and obscene gesture making which follows could be yet another tale.
Once I took a course in mediation and tried to learn the importance of listening and putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. Shortly thereafter I was in Boston when I pulled out into an intersection and inadvertently blocked a woman pushing a baby stroller trying to cross the street; she filled my ears with rotten invective unworthy of the dirtiest sailor, to say nothing of a mother with child. I listened, resisted the urge to give it back to her twofold, and then, in my best Francis of Assisi manner, rolled down my window, squinted at her, and said that I was sorry and I knew how she must feel trying to cross that busy intersection. She looked guilty.
I’d love to hear from anyone who has had experience either being a Soup Nazi or getting it from one.
Swift Boating Rummy
I think it is interesting that a group of retired generals is trying to Swift Boat Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
It is a tendency among about six of them to turn on their boss and tell everyone about it on cable TV news. They look great with their close cropped hair and steely jaws. The mainstream media sometimes likes to call it whistle blowing. Of course there is justice at work here, since Mr. Rumsfeld’s boss was victorious in 2004 partly because of Swift boaters. The charge against Rumsfeld is that he lacks interpersonal skills, and tends not to listen to advice and is a micromanager. One interesting question is how many retired generals are there? One article I read said there were about 4700 retired general officers, so we are hearing from perhaps one tenth of one percent. Another analysis counts 8000 general officers, retired and active. Six out of 8000 is not exactly a palace revolt.
These men can be dangerous people. Strong guys, who don’t like to be messed with. In the past they have run for President, endorsed candidates, petitioned the courts, etc. In some countries they have been behind coups. In my day, I have annoyed employees before and made permanent enemies in the process. I can’t imagine the mess I would be in if some of these disgruntled guys were West Pointers, trained at making war, with IQ’s of 180 or so.
Happy Easter
Was Jesus skating on submerged ice during a cold spell on the Sea of Galilee?
If he was doing that, then he most certainly could have courted Mary Magdalene, married her, and raised a child. Perhaps Judas Iscariot was his best man at the wedding.
There seems to be no end to goofy news about Jesus these days. I suppose we could pray for understanding of why this is happening, except that we know it has been scientifically proven by a silly study that prayer does no good. What is it about people that make them like nutty stories?
It is bad enough that Hurricane Katrina is seen as a form of divine retribution toward the people of New Orleans or that the school board in Pennsylvania has displeased an evangelist and now can’t look forward to blessings in the future? I think we like news about God wherever we can get it. When we don’t find it in ourselves we look around outside. Perhaps in books, on television, radio or in conversation with friends.
I don’t need it. I thank the gift of my faith for that, with lots of help from parents and the church during formative years. I try to pass it on; but not by proselytizing visits to your front door or grinning reminders that I missed you at church last Sunday. It is a lot more subtle than that.
Massachusetts Health Insurance: Real or Fictional?
The reports about Massachusetts health care reform leads you to believe that the governor and the legislature have pulled a rabbit out of a hat. I watched the April 12 press conference the governor gave on health insurance. He was almost giddy about this plan.
My reading suggests they do not know how they are going to pay for this and when the governor gets through with vetoing things he doesn’t like, it will be very thin coverage with all kinds of deductibles and co-pays. Still, it is rare to see Romney and Kennedy on the same platform in agreement on the same issue.
The speeches are filled with phrases like “there are flaws” and “we have hope” so maybe the important thing is that it is a foot in the door which will lead somewhere.
Governor Romney’s anti-tax credentials compel him to veto the $295 per employee fee for employers who deny coverage and the estimate of the cost of "adequate" insurance for individuals is about half of today's going rate.
The money for such a huge government commitment has to come from somewhere.It may not matter, as some critics see the plan as demanding high deductibles, and costing as much as $75.00 a week for the average consumer. It amounts to somewhat of a Hail Mary pass based on belief that government, business and individuals will all chip in to insure about 515,000 uninsured people. It is attractive to treat health insurance like auto insurance and make everyone have it; the problem is that health insurance is much more expensive than auto insurance.
A Primer in Educational Statistics
It has been my experience that critics of school spending like to review statistics in ways that advance arguments obtusely. For instance, we are told flatly, that a state or town has spent X million on education over the past Y number of years. That has limited value unless we are also told how much other states and towns spend and what is the comparative percentage of the annual increment in spending. Those who try to increase school budgets also wear blinders. They often confuse budget “cuts” with “cuts in proposed increases.” It is difficult to understand what people are talking about when they tilt their arguments to fit their thinking.
Critics sometimes assail teacher salaries, although the mainstream media generally accepts that teachers are one of the lowest paid professionals around. The average teacher in Massachusetts makes $49,568 a year. Assuming a class size of 20 students, and a school year of 1000 hours, that figures out to be approximately $2.48 per student per hour. That hourly rate goes down considerably when you factor in teacher preparation time before and after school.
Per pupil costs for the towns of the Commonwealth are announced every year by the Massachusetts Department of Education. It is not simply a matter of dividing each town’s school spending by the number of students in the schools. The Department of Education does not count some spending items in order to have a level playing field when making comparisons about dollars spent for education and instruction.. The results of these calculations have as their main use, the ability to compare the local effort for education spent by communities.
Because it is a per pupil effort, the population demographics and number of school age children are not a factor. Per pupil costs are surprisingly similar. Vocational education costs more and urban schools are dealing with urban problems, and this shows in the spending. It also costs to be a small rural school. Here is a listing of 2005 spending on a per pupil basis for the schools on Cape Cod as reported by the Massachusetts Dept of Education:
Barnstable | $8739 |
Dennis-Yarmouth | $8980 |
Harwich | $10464 |
Falmouth | unlisted |
Sandwich | $7051 |
Nauset | $9758 |
Cape Cod Tech | $14547 |
Chatham | unlisted |
Bourne | $8848 |
Mashpee | $8891 |
Orleans | $14747 |
Provincetown | $20441 |
Truro | $19470 |
Wellfleet | $14742 |
State Average | $9048 |
The voters of Yarmouth will be asked to approve the budget of the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District on Tuesday evening at 7:00 at the Mattacheese Middle School in West Yarmouth.
I've Got Mine: To Heck With You!
People have gotten so weary of paying taxes that they are running to the ideas of “fees.” Fees for the dump, high school athletics, the beach, golf, trash pick-up, afternoon kindergarten, glee club, music, etc…you name it. Will there soon be an electricity assessment for street lights? It’s a winner for local politicians. They don’t have to impose taxes anymore! And, it’s a nice way to punish people who vote “no” on all tax matters. I suspect there are many who would like to see a completely fee based economy. No property taxes whatsoever, pay as you go!
Be careful of a fire. A small fire could result in you owing the local fire department 10 or 15 thousand dollars. One of the more hideous fee schemes is expecting families to pay for their child to go to all day kindergarten. Half day kindergarten is a free public service, but if you want all day, I hope you can anti up maybe 2 or 3 additional thousand dollars. So, if you cannot, your child has a half day of school compared to others who have a full day. That’s fair, pay as you go. If you think that a trophy home or a BMW is more important than all day kindergarten, have it your way.
Let’s admit that this growing new system kind of mocks the idea of “Commonwealth.” It is now appropriate not to be your brother’s keeper. Hooray. Every man for himself. We are all turning into Archie Bunkers. It kinds of reminds me of Cape Codders standing on the overpasses thumbing their noses at tourists leaving the sand bar for the final time on Labor Day. I’ve got mine. To heck with you.
Illegal Immigration
Moral aspects of immigration law vs. The Good Samaritan
The moral aspects of the latest hub bub about illegal immigration open some interesting lines of thought. It is no small thing when the Cardinal of Los Angeles announces that he will instruct his priests to ignore laws which criminalize helping illegal immigrants.
Senator Hillary Clinton posits that even the Good Samaritan would be in trouble if some law proposals are implemented. One big question is: Does Christian compassion trump law and order? Some pundits ridicule the word “amnesty” and refer to it as the “A-word.”
Are we to believe that forgiveness is some kind of moral defect? Much of the debate focuses on the idea of the temporary guest worker plan. Some who don’t like this talk about the importance of illegal immigrants earning their citizenship. They feel it should be a rigorous process.
To these critics, I refer them to the parable in scripture of the workers in the field. Some worked all day, some worked one hour; they all got the same pay. If congress is not careful, the guest worker hurdles will accomplish nothing because they will be xenophobic and punitive.
President Bush states that America needs these immigrants because they do jobs that Americans will not do. I suggest that if we paid fairer wages, our citizens would be willing to do any job.
Gambling at Gettysburg?
“Now we are engaged in a great Civil War testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”
President Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863.
If the idea of windmills in Nantucket Sound turns you off, how about a large gambling casino at Gettysburg? According to a recent article in the New York Times, plans are moving along to build a 3,000 slot machine center three miles from the center of town and four miles from the Civil War battlefield and national cemetery. 43,000 Americans lost their lives there in July of 1863 when Gen. George C. Meade’s Army of the Potomac defeated Gen Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. A total of 3000 horses were killed. The site today includes a museum and two million people every year who often comment that it is like walking around in an outdoor cathedral.
y a new law has passed in Pennsylvania which will allow the state Gaming Control Board to issue 14 casino licenses. The project will bring about $1 million revenue to the town, but opponents believe it will desecrate a national treasure. The governor and state representative there oppose the idea along with several historical preservation groups. The process of securing permits and conducting hearings promises to be a second battle of Gettysburg. It is an open question whether the forces of economic development and tax relief will trump the interests of lovers of American history.
Bill O'Reilly: Former Cape Cod Newsman
If you are mystified and sometimes enraged by Bill O’Reilly I want to recommend a great article about him in the New Yorker Magazine dated March 27, 2006. The article is called “Fear Factor” and is written by Nicholas Lemann, the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. It riveted me by its treatment of O’Reilly’s history in broadcasting and the forces which have shaped his public persona. In the 80’s he was a reporter for CBS and while vacationing on the Cape, discovered that Provincetown was a gay Mecca. He took a camera man down there and did a piece on what a bad influence that was on teenagers. CBS would not broadcast it and he left the network shortly thereafter.
Lemann writes about the out-of court sexual harassment settlement with Fox News producer Andre Mackris two years ago, his hatred of Frank Rich, Keith Olbermann, Al Franken, the ACLU, George Clooney and many others. These days he can only get minor liberal luminaries to debate him, removing some of the color from his confrontations. The writer describes his “nimble” gift of coming across as a populist, decent, straight shooting American commentator.
The writer sees O’Reilly’s 10 years of longevity as uncommon in show business, referring to his “baroque” period. Lemann writes that he has risen to the top in ratings because of his ability to remind his viewers how much the left hates him. An interesting observation is that he defies description as liberal or conservative on many issues. He is, for instance, against the death penalty, for gay marriage and not completely against abortion. He may not be all that fair and balanced, but Lemann maintains that Fox viewers understand that means “the news the way you already see it.”
About
This is a blog about the observations and events I witness on this sandy peninsula after several decades of working, thinking, feeling and writing about the quality of life here. My biases will no doubt show, I am neither conservative nor liberal and have a strong interest in public affairs, local politics, schools and religion.
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