Venangoland

Musical Service now digitized

2011-06-20T18:12:00.000-04:00

Musical Service: The Life and Times of the Franklin Silver Cornet Band is the book that I wrote about... well, it's self-explanatory, isn't it. The book is now available in digital (cheap) form for those of you so inclined. Here it is at amazon for the kindle:

and here it is at Barnes and Noble for those of you of the nook persuasion.

It's a good book-- really! Not just the band, but many bands and other varieties of local performance are covered in the context of small town life. I worked hard on this puppy, and I'm proud of it, and if the digital format puts it in front of a few more eyeballs, I'd be pleased.

And also

2011-05-21T16:32:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm going to leave this old blog up and open to the public as it has been. The new stuff will go to Venangoland 2.0, which will be a non-public blog, open to only a select few. Who knows -- maybe I'll put some of the stuff I can't use in the newspaper here. At any rate, I know many of you have been waiting on pins and needles to see how this all turns out. Now you know...

Changes to This Blog

2011-04-15T18:38:00.000-04:00

Local readers may be aware that the News-Derrick in its on-line version is now behind a pay wall. While I know not everyone has greeted this with shouts of joy and delight, it has become a fairly common practice in the world of newspaper publishing as newspaper folks search for new ways to not starve. We can argue the virtue of that decision some other time; the fact is that it's here.

In conjunction with that, my editor, who pays me very nicely for my work for the paper, has asked me to stop giving it away for free. I have to agree (did I mention that I'm paid very nicely) that this is a reasonable request.

So I am going to take Venangoland to private status. I know this will have an impact on the many handful of readers who follow me here on this blog. Those of you who are far away, related to me, and/or old college friends who will never be in the market for the newspaper in which I usually appear can get an invite to still catch what appears here.

For local folks, I'll point out that regular subscribers can add a cyber-subscription to the paper for a buck a month.

Admittedly, this requires me to let go of a small dream. I put this blog up so that my children could follow the column without my having to remember to attach and mail it to them every week, and later so that old friends could get the equivalent of a Christmas letter 52 weeks a year. But in the back of my mind was always the thought that by having these all on line and searchable, somehow traffic would be kicked up and I would make Venangoland (the place) a little more known and give the home territory that I love a bit more of a web presence. But I've seen my readership numbers and that dream belongs on the same shelf as the dream in which I wake up in the morning with a full head of hair.

It will be a few days yet before I finish sorting out the buttons etc, and then this will bump even further into the internet background. Thanks for all the fish!

Finding Bad Teachers

2011-04-08T19:54:00.002-04:00

(News-Herald, April 7) Periodically folks get their High Dudgeon on (that’s fancy talk for Large Hissy Fit) about Bad Teachers and the need to Weed Them Out. Contrary to some reports, you can find plenty of classroom teachers who support that idea, at least in principle.
With the exception of students, nobody suffers more from the work of a bad teacher than the competent teacher in the next room who has to live with the mess that Professor Numbskull creates day after day. We would be delighted to see him retire to Florida or take that job in Antarctica.
Even if we aren’t going to fire some lemons of learning, parents still want to be able to spot these potholes of pedagogy before their children smack into them. Unfortunately, identifying these educational examples of classroom clutter is harder than it looks. Currently, our leading educational experts, loaded down with big ideas and unhampered by any actual experience in schools, have come up with two definitions of a bad teacher.
1) A bad teacher is one whose students don’t bubble in the preferred answers on a government-designed test.
2) A bad teacher is one who gets paid more than other teachers.
These are not helpful; neither is focusing on age. I have known teachers who taught for decades and never stopped firing up their students. My Uncle Frank has taught high school history for over fifty years and his students still do things like dedicating entire sports seasons to him. But I have also known young teachers who were already burned out when they were straight out of the package. So here are some telltale signs that a teacher might not be as fresh as a didactic daisy.
The Big Countdown. A teacher who is focused on how many days are left in the year, how long till the weekend, how many minutes left in the day, is a teacher whose head is not in the game. Granted, a teacher who is so lazily comfortable that he doesn’t need a break, ever, may not be putting his back into it. And everyone has the occasional day that they simply want to be done with.
But a teacher who constantly observes how much he’d rather be somewhere else should do everybody a favor and go be somewhere else.
It’s Not My Fault. My old co-operating teacher Joe McCormick told me two rules of education. Rule number one is that some students will refuse to be taught. Rule number two is that there is nothing teachers can to change rule number one.
He may have been right. There are some students who aggressively resist learning, and others who are so distracted by the mess at home that they cannot focus on school. It is likely that some children would be better off being raised by wolves. Nevertheless, it’s a teacher’s job to try to find a way. We aren’t hired to teach the people they’re supposed to be. We’re hired to teach the people they actually are.
If a teacher bemoans how every lesson is scuttled by those lousy kids, if class is a noisy uncontrolled mess because of those lousy kids, if the teacher complains that he can’t get his job done because of those lousy kids, here’s a news flash—it’s not the lousy kids.
I’m Fine, Thanks. Teaching carries several sources of stress that they never tell you about in teacher school. One is realizing that no matter how hard and long you work, no matter how many years you refine your game, there are things you don’t do quite well enough.
Any teacher worth his chalk (or keyboard) can tell you where he’s weak, what he needs to fix. He may very well be collecting pointers from co-workers, doing more reading, experimenting with new ideas in his classroom. A teacher who doesn’t think he needs help or advice is a classroom disaster waiting to happen.
A teacher should be an expert in his field. If he isn’t a lifelong student of his subject, he’s little use to his students. If he couldn’t teach without teacher editions, he can’t do that much better with them.
There are other signs. A good teacher takes his job very seriously, but not himself. Bad teachers get it the other way around. Bad teachers hide from their students and community in their off hours. And bad teachers think It’s Just A Job, not a particularly large part of life. For that last point, unfortunately, many reformers agree.

Venango Primaries 2011

2011-04-01T16:15:00.002-04:00

(News-Herald, March 31) It’s primary season in Venangoland-- time for the usual rounds of cantankerous caterwauling about county commissioners. As usual, about 147 people have thrown their hats into the ring, and as usual, fuss is being raised.
For the casual political observer, or for the local who’s just not well-connected, it’s never entirely clear what political the fuss is about. What’s clear is that there is an awful lot going on that we regular civilians are unaware of.
So far we’ve had election board spats and a narrowly targeted petition challenge based on a technicality. Everyone involved claims that it’s not personal, it’s totally on principle, etc but out here in the cheap seats it feels a little like watching that couple who get into a savage argument about how to fold the napkins—you’re not sure exactly what’s going on, but it’s pretty clear that what’s going on is not a simple disagreement about napkin folds.
Most interestingly, there appear to be folks lining up against the local tea party—and not the expected liberal spendthrift godless Democrat types. If Venangoland is once again on the cutting edge (don’t laugh—we were all over bad defaulting mortgages before that crisis went national), this could foreshadow interesting times for the national tea partiers. At the very least, they may need to come up with a whole new set of names to call people.
There’s the old argument about full time commissioners. It’s a dumb argument. The question is not “What should we get from the current holders of the job?” The question is, “Who would want the job if it required full time commitment?” What successful businessman could leave his business for a few years (and take a pay cut to do it)? What successful professional could afford a multi-year leave of absence? Full time commissioning would be most appealing to people who aren’t busy doing anything else important. I’m not sure that’s a good deal for the county.
Put you ear to the Venangoland ground, and you’ll also hear the familiar charges of “old boys network” and cronyism. Time to get things done out in the open. Time to get out of the old smoke-filled back room.
So for all the folks who are penning garbled letters and running anonymous websites and making random accusations in meetings, here’s an observation, not meant to criticize, but to let you know how your message is coming across. From out here in the cheap seats, it doesn’t look like noble warriors standing up to the boys in the back room. It looks like a whole bunch of people in the back room together, squabbling amongst themselves.
If there’s a message you’re trying to get out, you’re doing a lousy job. Whether you’re in office, running for office, or imagining yourself a puppetmaster behind the scenes, you are communicating precious little that makes sense. Consequently what comes across is the message, “That guy over there really annoys the bejeezes out of me.”
People end up in back rooms sometimes because they imagine if people can see what they’re up to, the public will “get the wrong idea” or “the correct message” won’t come across. That’s why the sunshine law is a good idea; more public officials should pay attention to it.
A person can start to believe that because the people in the room with him are nodding their heads and cheering, EVERYBODY must be hearing him. This is not true, not even in a small town setting.
There’s another reason people end up in the back room in an area like ours. It’s the voters’ fault, and it relates to out other election season problem. Say you have an issue, and you want to share it with the giant auditorium full of people. You try to talk to them, but they can’t be bothered. They’re busy. They’re talking to each other. They don’t even show up. Eventually you conclude that it’s easier to finish the conversation in a smaller room with people who are actually paying attention.
Occasionally one of those uninvolved people beats on the door and demands to be included. Mostly they don’t.
For a moment, don’t look at the commissioner candidates. Look instead at the many positions, from townships to school boards, for which there aren’t even enough candidates to fill the empty seats. Our politicians should communicate better with the cheap seats, but those of us in those seats could stand up and try to get a better look.

Friday and Other Bad Songs

2011-03-27T09:27:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, March 24) Perhaps you don’t spend much time on the interwebs and so missed the latest contribution to American culture.
A thirteen-year-old named Rebecca Black received a special present from her folks—a two thousand dollar session with a production company that helped her create and produce a hit-ready pop song with accompanying video. The video was, of course, posted on youtube, where it had at first a few hundred hits, then several thousand, then a gazillion as carbon based life forms all over the earth lined up to experience what has already been called one of the worst songs ever. (To be accurate, as of Tuesday, March 22, Black’s video had 33 million views after less than two weeks. For comparison, Lady Gaga’s most recent hit video was up to just under 26 million views.)
Was the song that bad? Has it, as one iTunes reviewer claims, “ruined the meaning of music forever”? Hyperbole, perhaps, but, yes, the song is pretty bad. Black’s vocals are auto-tuned well beyond the range of robot singing, but there are far more famous singers doing the same. What sets the hit “Friday” apart is its special lyrical flair.
First, our young heroine wakes up and goes downstairs to eat a bowl of cereal (“Gotta have my bowl, gotta have my cereal, seein’ everything, the time is goin’”). By the second verse, she is at the bus stop where the approach of her friends in a car raises a more stirring dilemma: “Kickin’ in the front seat, sittin’ in the back, gotta make my mind up, which seat can I take?” Eventually she arrives at the climactic section in which she observes that yesterday was Thursday, today is Friday, tomorrow is Saturday and after that comes Sunday.
All indications are that this is entirely serious, but you can be forgiven for suspecting it’s a giant goof, because Rebecca Black’s “Friday” belongs to a special category of bad song. People have been trying to parody this insta-hit, but it’s simply not possible because the song is already its own parody, a song so dumb that nobody could possibly make it more ridiculous.
Not every bad song can achieve such invulnerability. “Achy Breaky Heart” may be an awful, awful song, but it is totally vulnerable to mockery (eg “Don’t play that song, that achy breaky song…”)
To mock something one must take its most notable characteristics and exaggerate them until they become silly. An unmockable song has been pre-ridiculified. Take “MacArthur Park”—what can anyone do to worsen a lyric like “Someone left the cake out in the rain, and I don’t think that I can take it, ‘cause it took so long to make it, and I’ll never have the recipe again.” (Plus, for good measure, “Oh noooooooooooo!”) And “Stairway to Heaven”—“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now”??
The first time I heard “Wanna put my tender heart in a blender, watch it spin around to a beautiful oblivion,” I actually laughed aloud because I thought someone had written a hilarious parody of overwrought emo-boy angstiness. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that “Inside Out” was a real song and a real hit.
Neil Diamond could be accused of having a parody-proof style, but that might not be fair. Still, I defy any Diamond fan to defend the lyrics of “I Am” in which our highly emotive singer declares his deepest feelings and moans that “no one heard at all, not even the chair.” Could anybody possibly make that any sillier? (Maybe, but “ottoman” wouldn’t fit in the line.)
(We could argue that nearly the entire output of the disco era is too ridiculous to be mockable, and I might have trotted out examples except that I don’t really want to revisit disco. Living through it once was sufficient.)
But before curmudgeonly elders start the old, “They don’t write songs like they used to,” I should point out that ridiculously bad songs have always been with us. Practically everything Mantovani recorded makes me suspect that he was giggling at the massive joke he was playing on the music biz. And for fans of the big band era, all I have to say is, “Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamsy divies.”
Even the classical music whiz Handel calls on a chorus to declare with great stentorian seriousness, “We like sheep.” So don’t feel bad for Miss Black. She has lots of company. Also, her song is making her about 24 thousand dollars a week.

Rex Mitchell

2011-03-19T12:56:00.000-04:00

I first encountered Dr. Mitchell when I was in seventh grade at Junior High District Band. He was the guest conductor, and while our home directors regularly made their peace with the motley assortment of musical abilities they faced, he was not so interested in compromise.
Most of us had never encountered someone who was so serious about music who wasn’t our regular teacher. It wasn’t that he treated making music as grim or joyless, but he treated it like it was something important. We played one of his newer compositions in that concert. It was “Song for the Young,” and like many of his pieces it became a popular standard of programming in the band world. For the next fifteen years I think I played “Song for the Young,” somewhere, every year.
Rex was not afraid of a tough crowd. He did guest conducting gigs, which have to be the toughest in the band director world. You walk into a building and for a few days take over a group of teenagers, many of whom are fiercely loyal to their regular director and his way of doing things, and who spend much of their rehearsal time thinking about lunch, homework, and that cute member of the opposite gender sitting over there.
Rex had to know all that—he had teenagers of his own—but he didn’t approach young musicians with the faintest hint of “Well, you’re only high school kids.”
Instead it was the students who asked (quietly, indirectly), “What do you want from us? We’re just kids!”
Rex’s reply (quietly, indirectly) was, “I want you to play as well as you possibly can, because it matters.”
Dr. Mitchell’s musical fingerprints are all over this region. For many years you couldn’t swing a western Pennsylvanian cat without hitting a band or choir director that he had trained. They were not only strong and talented educators, but also a network, like a group of people who had belonged to a select fraternity, a kind of Mitchell mafia. For years many of the players who had first worked together in his seminal Lab Jazz Band at Clarion continued to work together as a grown up dance band.
He was a talented performer in a small town setting, which meant that he could find himself working with other musicians well below his ability. He once hired three of us who were core members of a local Dixie band to work with him for a party at Rockmere. He told us to just use our usual arrangements and he would try to fit in, and then proceeded to play rings around us. He could have been a diva, and he could have shamed us by musically upstaging us, but he was gracious and classy. What could have been scary or intimidating for us ended up being a great deal of fun.
He was a solid composer of works for band—not an easy field to make a mark in. In 1971 he composed “The Silver Cornets” march for the Franklin town band. We still play it at our concerts every summer, and so do many other bands across the country.
And if none of that had been true, he still would have been the man who put together the Venango Chorus and the jazz band concerts in Justus Park. The chorus has given a great outlet to so many area singers. And very few people could put together a band of that caliber; very few performing groups could fill that park with so many appreciative audience members.
Venangoland is not always a nurturing environment for the arts. Some folks would rather take a football to the gut than sit through a concert or walk through an art exhibit. And even some of the same people who will sit and applaud a concert will go home and call the arts an unnecessary frill.
But men like Rex Mitchell (and Bruno Woloszyn and Ed Frye and Carl Brozeski and Bob English) single handedly improve the quality of life here for all of us. Rex gave us the beauty and energy and joy of his own music, and his energy and passion in energized others. His gift helped elevate the gifts of others, both musicians and listeners. We are poorer for his passing, but richer for his time here. He has left his community a legacy of music and musicians, and we will all reap the benefits for years to come.

Corbett's Budget Message to Teachers

2011-03-11T16:48:00.001-05:00

(News-Herald, March 10) My kids hate it when I write about politics. But Governor Corbett’s budget address this week hits too close to home for me to ignore.
Much of his speech I applaud. The Commonwealth has been cobbling together odd patches of federal handouts and stimulus money tacked onto one of the worst business and corporate tax structures in the country. PA taxes have managed to be both oppressive and ineffective, squeezing the blood out of some enterprises while other major corporations manage to profit from the pockets of Pennsylvania consumers without returning a single cent to running the state.
Pennsylvania needs to live within its means, and has needed to for a while. It also needs to stop nickel and diming its people into oblivion with new hair-brained schemes like turning I-80 into a toll road.
Some of his speech reads like same old, same old politics. A lot of the money doled out to various local projects has been cut and compressed, the wide and varied plethora of granting bodies trimmed down. Corbett says under the new system, “Instead of individual favors we're trying a market approach. Economic development agencies and providers will compete for taxpayer dollars. If you have a winning idea -- you'll win our backing.”
To which I say, “Um, yes, right, sure. ‘Winning idea’ is a completely objective measure, and I’m sure it will be judged on a completely level playing field. I’m sure places like Venango County will have just as good a shot as Philadelphia.” Corbett’s budget talk did not at all address the balance between rural Pennsylvania and the Big Two, the process by which Pittsburgh and Philadelphia regularly suck the blood from the rest of us. That was a little discouraging.
But nothing was as discouraging as Corbett’s prolonged swipe at teachers. I’m not exactly sure when in the past few weeks that teacher-hatred became the flavor of month; I’m pretty sure that only Charlie Sheen has kept it from the very top of the news cycle.
I absolutely agree that teachers should not be exempt from the sacrifices faced by most Americans (that is, those that are not filthy rich bankers and CEOs). But the sacrifices proposed for education are not on that order; they are proposals for gutting teaching as a profession and with it, public education.
The bill currently making its way through Harrisburg (HB 855) proposes the end of tenure and seniority. Under this proposal, school districts may declare themselves financially strapped. They don’t have to prove it, and they don’t have to make any other efforts to trim their budgets—just have a public meeting at which they declare their financial distress. Then they may fire whichever teachers they wish to fire.
Under these rules, people considering a teaching career face one of two possible trajectories. Either they will work for a few years and then be fired out of the profession, or they can work a full career at wage levels that won’t support a family. How many people qualified to do anything else will choose teaching as a career if it is, as budget mavens like to say, unsustainable? It is theoretically possible that school districts will say, “Damn the cost—we want to compete for the best teaching staff around,” but I wouldn’t bet my career on it.
Yes, others are struggling. But making more people struggle doesn’t build prosperity.
Corbett says the school system’s obligation is to child, parent and teacher—in that order. His answer is correct but incomplete. Once again, we’re discussing public education as if the public are not stakeholders. But even people without school age children have a need to live surrounded by, working with, and dealing with well-educated people. Public education is not a public-funded private school system run for parents; its benefits are as widespread and universal as roads. Corbett would like to see vouchers, further guaranteeing non-parents no educational voice.
Why the selective application of sound economic principles? Corbett is right to believe that businessmen and corporations will not do what they do if the state makes it economically useless and difficult to do it. How is that different for teachers? Teaching remains one of the best jobs in the world. If I won the lottery this weekend, I would still be in my classroom on Monday, but you can’t feed and clothe a family with job satisfaction. I hope that one day I’ll be replaced by someone who would also like to make it his life. It will be sad if nobody with real passion or ability can afford to do that.

Venangoland Politics On Line

2011-03-04T22:29:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, March 3) Like many fans of local politics, I’ve been surfing on over to the venangopolitics.com to see what the new political website has to offer to the local internet landscape.
One of the most basic purposes of the internet is to provide people with an opportunity to say things anonymously that they would never say openly (because doing so would probably get them punched in the nose). This site manages that quite well, though the mastermind behind the site backed off the more obvious slander and libel once he (or she) was called on it. But it still showcases a nice big pile of axes and a thick stone to grind them on.
There’s a type of poster that one finds all over the internet—let’s call him the Righteous Crusader. The not-brave-enough-to-state-his-name operator of VP fits the profile. Righteous Crusaders see themselves as being practically the only people wise enough to see the Truth, and they act a little paranoid about being hunted down by murky mysterious opponents. Mr. VP duly notes that there are people who probably won’t like what he has to say, and ominously reminds us that The Media isn’t telling us The Whole Truth. Mr. VP expects all submissions to come with a name and phone number attached. Mr/Mrs VP’s identity remains shrouded in mystery, though the drumbeat that is raised on the site is a familiar one that gives even the casual student of Venangoland politics a good idea of who is on the short list of authorial candidates.
There’s a place for folks to chime in; the first few posts there are to point out inaccuracies in the municipal information listed, some comment on the value of the site itself, and a few make observations (featuring random spelling) about local politics. So far only one of the 146 people running for County Commissioner has posted his info, but others may yet emerge. And so far VP has delivered its promise of weekly articles. The current one about the county pension fund is reasonably well-researched, if not particularly well-reasoned.
There are what supposed to be connections to local political groups on line, but these are exceptionally sketchy. In this, Ms VP is blameless, because Venango County political groups remain blissfully oblivious to the internet.
Venango County Republicans have a multipage site (www.republicanvenango.com), including a calendar of useful information about the election season. For 2010. The site has no actual content to speak of; certainly nothing that would pass for a statement of what local Republicans see as issues or proposed responses to them. The site itself has a cobbled-together look, perhaps because it appears to have been assembled on wix.com, a set of free website-building tools popular with many teenagers.
It could be worse. I was going to make a joke about Venangoland Democrats being so out-of-touch that their only web presence was an ugly old empty MySpace page. Then I went looking for them on line and found nothing but… an ugly old empty MySpace page. The Venango Young Democrats have a facebook page with no information and three “likes.”
In other words, in an age that gives organizations an unparalleled opportunity to communicate their message to the people, an historic chance to let voters know what they stand for, the two major parties in the county have used that tool only just enough to embarrass themselves.
The Libertarian and Green Parties—those great RC Colas of the American political grocery—provide nationally based web tools on which to hang local groups. And of course you know who is head and shoulders above the whole pack when it comes to making use of the web to get message out—the Tea Party Patriots of Venango County. If I were suddenly wanted to check out local politics, see whose views I sympathized with, and find a way to become involved, only the Tea Party Patriots provide any useful information at all, and what they provide is fairly thorough.
So while venangopolitics.com remains the biased and fuzzy-headed product of someone who hasn’t the guts to sign his/her work, I give it a big round of applause for trying to start the kind of open(ish) conversation about local politics that the major parties are completely failing to engage in.
If there’s something solid on line from the two majors that I’ve somehow missed, I welcome the opportunity to stand corrected. In the meantime, to Republicans and Democrats, shame on both of you.

Squeezing the Middle Class

2011-02-25T07:24:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, February 24) Miles of words have described how the middle class is economically strapped, squeezed between the filthy rich and the ever-poorer wards of the state. But the middle class is increasingly squeezed in another, more subtle vise.
Many Americans choose a middle class life with a middle class profession because it offers a chance to make a difference. Become a teacher, lawyer, doctor, manager, the dream goes, and you can use your education and training and smarts and character and professional judgment to make a difference for the people around you. But over the past few decades that dream has been grabbed by the neck and slowly strangled.
A professional life was many peoples’ answer to the question, “how can I make a difference?” At the end of their working life, they could look back and think, “It mattered that I was there, that I was the person filling that job. Somebody else could have done it, but not exactly as I did.”
We’ve celebrated doctors and nurses as heroes in countless movies and tv shows and the ways in which their character, personality and skills left a mark on the people they met. Dr. Manly would flex his stethoscope heroically and bark, “No, no, no—it’s not lupus! Get me an IV drip with Ringer’s lactate and call the ER stat—cancel my dinner date, because I’m gonna crack this guy’s chest. We’ll stay here all night if we have to—nobody dies on my watch!!”
Today, heroic medical personnel are instead required to bark things like, “We’ve got a call in to the insurance company—they’ll get back to us with how much treatment they’ll allow” or “We’ll get you the very best treatment that law permits.”
Teaching is another field where middle-class professionals are hemmed in. The state and federal governments are increasingly interested in telling teachers what they should teach, and how and when they should teach it. And of course the state will to give the final exam.
Those are, of course, only two areas where the feds (with enthusiasm unchecked by either party) are stepping in to regulate us into a better world. With every new bit of oversight, a bunch of middle-class folks lose the right to exercise their professional judgment.
The desire to make a difference has always driven some upward career mobility. Some people pursue that promotion because it means bigger bucks, but many believe that if they could rise a step higher, they could solve some of the problems that they see—a move up on the ladder would let them make more of a difference. But these days only ladders that lead to the highest levels of bureaucracy give that kind of view.
Middle class folks used to choose professional careers so that they could make a difference, but the push from the Powers That Be has been in exactly the opposite direction. The new ideal is that the results should always be the same; the matter of which particular person is doing the job should make no difference at all.
This is a hard issue to raise without seeming whiny. As with money, some people don’t want to hear a doctor complain about having less of what those people have never had at all. If you’re a chef who thought he’d be making gourmet steaks, and you discover you’ll only ever get to make fast food burgers, saying “This is not what I signed up for” isn’t very compelling to people who just want something to eat. Particularly in an era in which college-educated folks are called “our elitist overlords.”
The fear of a personal touch is not unfounded—nobody wants his kid to get the Bad Teacher or the Bad Doctor. But a bureaucratic straightjacket that keeps everyone on exactly the same page does not breed excellence. Make everyone cook and eat the same, and you don’t get universal filet mignon—you get endless tv dinners. You get soul-crushing, stifling mediocrity. And you get people who could have been excellent, who could have made a difference, leaving professions where their new, improved role is to be button-pushing faceless implementers of some stuffed suit’s canned spam.
It’s not just that the wallets of the middle-class are shrinking, but that their hands are increasingly tied. It’s one of the things people are trying to articulate when they call for smaller government. So many people are capable, caring and committed to making a difference for good. They want to live in a country where all that matters.

Grief

2011-02-18T20:04:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, February 17) Sooner or later, everybody dies.
Of all the universal truths, of all the inescapable pieces of cold, clear knowledge, this is the one we least like to admit. We might let it stand around in the lobby of our brain, but we rarely invite it to come in, sit down, and make itself at home in our hearts.
It’s almost impossible to ignore death, but we get pretty good at letting it become a background noise, like the tv in the next room tuned to a show that we don’t really follow.
And not all deaths are created equal; some are easier to cope with than others. William Cullen Bryant’s poem “Thanatopsis,” once a staple of funeral services, suggests that after a well-lived life, death is an opportunity to “lie down to pleasant dreams,” and I suppose sometimes death is like that.
But sometimes death jumps up and clubs us in the face. We are suddenly reminded of death’s finality, how completely it erases possibilities for the future both for those who pass and for those who love them. No more opportunities, no more shared joys, a future slate that will remain forever blank. It is gut-wrenchingly horrible to see someone swept up suddenly by that oblivion, even harder to see someone willingly embrace it with either a quick final choice or a slow steady spiral.
It’s a grief that renders us stumbling and mute, because there is suddenly so much that we want to say to someone to whom we can no longer say anything at all. There is so much that we want to have explained to us by someone who will no longer explain anything. And it’s just plain unfair.
The responses to such untimely death are such familiar clichés (be nice to others, don’t waste time, honor their memory with good work, blah blah blah) that is surprising how real and compelling they are when you really mean it. You can go through the motions of love or prayer for years, but when the day comes when you really do it, do it with your whole heart and intent and energy, the power of it knocks you off your feet and you whisper, amazed, “Oh, so that’s what it is.”
This is like that.
You grieve, sometimes a huge grief when the loss itself is huge. But there’s more. You carry forward the work of the departed, do for them the things that they no longer have the power to do for themselves and in so doing, you become a forward extension of their too-shortened lives.
That means you give love to the people they would have loved if they had been here to do it. And you work for the causes that they would have worked for had they stayed longer. You become their heart and hands in a world that they can no longer touch for themselves. You do the best you can for all the Jamie’s and Mike’s and Molly’s and Leslie’s and Chris’s who can no longer carry on for themselves.
And you remember that sooner or later, everybody dies.
It is so easy to slip into denial. People talk about just zipping through a day, as if, on the other side, there is an infinite supply of days. People make choices—or DON’T make choices—as if they are simply rehearsing for some infinite supply of opportunities ahead. Some people slip into the ultimate version of the old lie “If I don’t really try, I can’t fail”—“If I don’t really live, I won’t actually die.”
Our lives are powered by our passions and commitments; that flame which we carry forward has been fed by the people we have known and loved, and many of them are no longer in a position to carry their own flame. That’s our job now, and when we stop feeding our own fire, theirs dims as well.
Life can break people in places that no doctor can reach, and death can be cruel. Sometimes people lose their way, or their strength fails. But mostly human beings still get a choice about how to care for each other, how to use our time, who and what to hold in our hearts. It is not always a bad thing for us to remember to conduct ourselves with love and care, because we have an unknowable expiration date, and so do the people around us. Sooner or later, we are all going to die. But in the meantime, we live.

Tenure

2011-02-17T22:31:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, February 10) It’s time once again for politicians around the country to wind up the educational wind machine. And this time the big wind is trying to blow away teacher tenure.
Tenure, the argument goes, is no longer necessary or desirable. With tenure swept away, classroom teachers will be subject to market forces that will justly reward the strong and punish the incompetent. That makes a certain amount of sense, though I do have one question—will these be the same market forces that have been kicking many of America’s best workers in the teeth for the past twenty years? Or maybe the same market forces that have insured that the crooks who ran the megabanks into the ground stay fat, happy, out of jail, and raking in massive bonuses after doing their best to trash the US economy?
I cannot take people seriously when they start suggesting that teachers live on an insulated island, protected by a wall of fluffy bunnies and unicorns from the Real World Outside. This RWO, the story goes, is a survival-of-the-fittest meritocracy, where to thrive you must be excellent and the weak and incompetent are kicked to the curb. And yet, this is the world in which Snooki and Paris Hilton are famous celebrities and ER nurses are not. This is the world where the Herb Baum’s get to retire in rich comfort and the people whose jobs they trashed get to consider working as a Wal-Mart greeter. Surely we have higher aspirations for schools.
I would still concede the point if tenure really were a magical insulator that protected the most incompetent teachers, but it isn’t. Teacher tenure is not a guarantee of a job for life.
First, tenure is not automatic. Here in Venangoland, a teacher is not granted tenure until a few years in the classroom. Before the teacher receives tenure, the district can let him go for any reason. Districts have a window during which they can watch a teacher closely and determine if he is filled with promise or with something that doesn’t smell nearly as nice as promise.
Second, tenure doesn’t guarantee the teacher a lifetime job. What it guarantees is due process in case the district attempts to fire him.
Tenure is insurance that teachers don’t work in fear of being fired for reasons having nothing to do with competence. It is not hard to imagine a school board member asking a teacher out on a date or demanding more playing time for his child on a sports team. What happens if such complaints can be coupled with credible job threats?
Some guarantees of due process have improved considerably since tenure first appeared. Back then female teachers were fired for getting married or wearing pants. Today, as Cranberry Schools learned years ago, you cannot fire a teacher for being gay—and it doesn’t take tenure to provide that protection.
Like many legal processes, tenure has grown a variety of extraneous limbs and branches, particularly in big city districts with gargantuan teacher staffs. This can make getting rid of a teacher an expensive and frustrating proposition.
There is no denying that tenure is one of the perks of teaching. Teachers don’t get promotions, and we aren’t getting rich any time soon, but we have some job security, and we would be smart to recognize how enviable that is to many Americans.
Likewise, critics should recognize that good teachers have no interest in saving the jobs of their incompetent colleagues. A teacher who can’t or won’t do her job annoys to the teachers who must pick up her slack. But they don’t want to live in fear of an axe that may fall without warning at any time for any reason.
This is not a problem with a simple solution. Some folks would like teachers’ jobs simply tied to student test results, which is a great idea if you think you should pick your surgeon based on how nice his manicure is. Finding incompetent teachers isn’t always that easy (but we’ll discuss that another day).
Reform tenure, or pass new due process laws—either way, it’s still in a school district’s best interests to know that they can work to gather a top notch staff without a rogue board member or administrator becoming the capricious bull in the educational china shop.
All of the tenure debate sidesteps another issue. Few of the best and the brightest are drawn into teaching, and many quickly run right back out. After you fire a teacher, then what?

NW PA's Unloved Minority

2011-02-04T20:38:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, February 3) They live among us. Some keep their difference hidden as a secret, afraid to shame their family and friends. Others live defiantly, proudly out in the open. Some are accepted by their friends and family for who they are, while others find themselves ostracized, cut off from those around them. Many are pressured to change their lifestyle to something more socially acceptable.
I’m speaking, of course, about people who don’t care about the Super Bowl.
Maybe places exist where it’s not so big a deal. But this is a sports-intensive corner of the world. You may hear people complain about welfare recipients who spend money on fancy food or cell phones, but I’ve never heard a person in Venangoland question someone on the dole buying tickets for a sporting event.
Some non-fans will try valiantly to blend in this week. They’ve got a black and gold t-shirt somewhere, maybe a jersey that some well-meaning relative gave them for Christmas. They know how to nod enthusiastically at certain familiar names, and to glower menacingly at others.
The advantage of living in such a sports-steeped environment as Western PA is that even the densest book-wormiest couch-potatoest non-fan of sports has picked up the basics simply by osmosis (though there are always exceptions— what in the name of all things Pittsburgh were UPMC brass thinking when they picked for their new corporate color purple? Purple?!?!).
Any Western Pennsylvanian who knows a college student has heard first or second or third hand stories about Big Ben and his sorry record of off-the-field pass attempts, but they’ve also heard via every form of media up to and including smoke signals that we are all forgiving the New, Improved, Better Behaved Ben. We all know that Polamalu is more or less godlike, and that the team is gritty (just for fun, I googled “steelers” and “gritty” and got 824,000 results).
Take this basic knowledge and throw in some comments like “Well, that secondary will just have to do their job” or “I look for the offensive line to make things happen” or even just grunting “Seven, baby, seven, oh yeah!” and even the most apathetic non-fan can avoid attracting attention in a crowd. (It’s also best not to critique others’ comments by saying things like, “You realize that it’s mathematically impossible to give 110 percent.”)
Not all non-fans adopt protective coloration. In fact, some can be pretty aggressive in their non-interest. These anti-fans will be the ones at the party pointing out that one hard working nurse will not make as much in a lifetime of healing people as a star athlete will make chasing a bag of air up and down a field for half a year. They’ll try to inject fun facts into sports events, such as the number of people who have starved to death in third world countries in the time it took the Steelers to make one first down. Other hard core grumps may throw in little bon mots such as, “I wonder if the Chinese workers doing American jobs worry about spending a day watching football.”
This is simply mean-spirited. People are entitled to their entertainment, and while most NFL players have little real personal connection with the cities they are paid to represent, the city fathers of the burgh have certainly made sure that every citizen within spitting difference of the stadium has had a chance to help pay up. But “Of course they’re our team—we paid for them,” lacks a little something as a cheer, and that grit does have a Western PA blue collar feel to it.
Yes, some fans get a little carried away. St. Clair Hospital in Mt. Lebanon is wrapping all newborns in terrible towels this week, and I really don’t want to know more about celebratory tattoos. And despite the similar amount of coverage given each, the only thing that the Super Bowl and the fall of the Egyptian government have in common is that, sitting here in Venangoland, we can’t really do much about either one.
Closeted non-fans will eat the food, watch the commercials, and try to grunt loudly in the right spots. More Americans will watch the Super Bowl than voted in the last election. More Americans will watch the game Sunday night than will attend church Sunday morning. Non-fans could do worse than join in one of the last American community events, and fans could do worse than display the American virtue of tolerance. Also, Polamalu, gritty secondary, and seven, baby!

What Democracy Is Not

2011-02-02T10:35:00.000-05:00

It's a snow day, so here's an old column from June of 2003 (because the purpose of technology is to make me less bored) in honor of the mess in Egypt.

(News-Herald, June 2003) Now that we’ve completed the conquest of Iraq, we move on to the trick of helping them pull a new form of government out of their turbans.
This is no small feat, not just because our own form of government might not be well-suited to Iraq, but because we don’t generally understand, really, what kind of government we actually have.
For instance, I am unceasingly amazed at how many people have no idea what the founding fathers considered the actual purpose of government.
It is not “to keep people under control” or “force people to behave” or “to make life fair” or “to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t want.” The Declaration says we’re all born with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s the government’s job to see that these rights aren’t taken away.
That’s important to understand, because although we call our government a democracy, it’s less notable for the way it insures democracy than for the ways it protects citizens from democracy.
We cannot, for instance, change our constitution very easily. This is undoubtedly a good thing; otherwise we would be changing the laws every year to suit whatever current craze is making the rounds. We often come up with reasons to abridge various parts of the Bill of Rights; a month doesn’t go by that we don’t try to get rid of that pesky First Amendment freedom to say annoying, stupid things. If these rights were not set in a sort of institutional cement, we would have thrown them out ages ago.
And who protects this document that says the majority can’t change the rules every time they’re in the mood? Why, that would be the Supreme Court, the nine wise judges who, in our very democratic system, are elected by absolutely nobody. Democratically elected officials can go through the democratic process of concocting laws that the majority of citizens clamor for, and then be told by the Robed Old People Who Can Never Be Voted Out of Office that such a law isn’t allowed.
And that’s not always a bad thing.
We like to think that Democracy is a system that is the very opposite of tyranny. It isn’t. Democracy can accommodate tyranny quite easily. Democracy would have made it entirely possible to perpetuate the abomination of slavery forever. The Jim Crow laws were democratically produced; we sometimes forget that Rosa Parks was not bucking prejudice—she was breaking the law. Democracy in Iraq could make it entirely possible to legally, legitimately, democratically outlaw the kurds or the shi’ites just as effectively as any pogrom by Saddam.
Our legal system features similar protections. We could democratically decide to toss people into deep dark holes. We could democratically choose to strip people of every single right the moment they emit even a whiff of suspicious behavior. It is easy and human to decide that certain people do not deserve to have rights, and occasionally we do just that. It was perfectly democratic to lock up Americans of Japanese descent during World War II.
The glory of our system of government is not just our representative democracy (which is a good thing, since so many of us would rather complain than vote), but the restraints placed on that democracy. It’s not just that every citizen can have a voice, but that no amount of democratic process can take away any single person’s right to life, liberty, or that all-too-elusive pursuit, no matter how many votes the majority rounds up.
The problem in Iraq is not that citizens do not have a voice. Most citizens have both a voice and a semi-automatic amplifier to go with it. The problem (well, one of the problems, anyway) is that the Iraquis, like many folks in this world, are too willing to accept the notion that restrictions should only apply to people who are wrong (that would be you), but that people who are right (that would be me) should be free to do whatever the heck they want.
Democracy is not really the foundation of our system. Democracy (or our republican form of it) is simply our recognition that it goes against the laws of nature to deprive any human being of his voice, no matter how obnoxious, offensive, or just plain stupid that voice may seem. Our form of government is supposed to recognize that people do not exist to preserve the system; instead, the system is only valid as long as it protects the people. And as a citizen, I have to believe that compromising with opposition to have a stable country that works is better than insisting on having it all my own way, but creating an unstable powderkeg doomed to explode. That’s not an easy lesson to export.

Complain Well

2011-01-29T13:11:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, January 27) As much as human beings like to complain, you’d think we would be better at it. But there are many folks who remain remarkably ineffective as complainers.
There’s a script that seems to play in people’s head: I will tell him how outraged I am and horribly wrong he is. I will verbally kick him in the keister, and he will suddenly cower and declare, “Heavens, but you are so clearly right and I am so clearly wrong. I bow before your verbal mastery, and I will crawl on my knees to fix my terrible wrongness.” And yet, it never happens.
There are a few simple things that people can do to be better, more effective complainers (there are also things complainees should do, but we’ll tackle that list another week).
First, figure out what effect you want. There are times in life when you have a choice between saying what you really want to say and getting the result you really want to get. You can have one or the other, but not both. Before you start complaining, decide which one you want. If you just want to rant and rave and vent your anger, that’s fine. But you’re unlikely to end up with the result you want, so you can safely ignore the rest of this list.
This is why people are reluctant to enter local politics or school sports officiating—too many people who want to unload on officials like an angry drunken internet troll. These sorts of complainers never accomplish anything except making complainees very tired.
Own your complaint. There’s nothing less effective than the anonymous complaint. It is hard to convince somebody that you are standing in the courage of your convictions when you don’t have courage enough to say who you are.
Complaints are hard to dismiss when they come from real, live flesh and blood humans; they are easy to dismiss when they come from anonymous shadows.
Stay focused. What, exactly, are you complaining about? Stick to your point so that your message doesn’t get muddled. This is a good rule of argument in general—if you want to complain about the serving size of the gelato, it doesn’t help to observe that the server always has been a cheap jerk. If you want a refund from a business, don’t wander off into a discussion of how stupid and ugly the owner is.
Broadening your attack increases the collateral damage. In the midst of disagreement with me over a service being provided, a gentleman added the observation that I am a well-known Big Fat Jerk. The misunderstanding about the service was settled fairly quickly, but the observation about my disreputable character (accurate or not) was then impossible to retract.
“There’s not enough mustard on this hot dog,” is easy to erase. “I always have hated your mother,” is not.
Losing focus makes it easy to lose sight of your actual complaint. Once we’ve opened up the issue of how much you hate your mother-in-law, mustard serving size will quickly fade into the background.
Why should they care? County commissioners and city councils are often subjected to constituents who believe these officials should care about a pet issue. You can’t really address whether or not to start a meeting with prayer until you get people to see why the question even matters.
Know what you actually want. Many complaints are a burst of bluster followed by an awkward silence. The silence is because the complainee is too smart to say what he’s thinking, which is something along the lines of, “Yeah, so…?” or “What do you want me to do about it?”
Sometimes the complainer wants the impossible. “Get in your time machine, go back to last week, and say different words,” is not possible. “Die and/or get off the planet,” is not likely.
Knowing what you are complaining about matters, but simply sputtering, “That really bothers me!” invites the complainee to respond, “Bummer. Hope you feel better soon.”
What you want doesn’t have to be concrete. “I want you to understand that this was a real problem for us,” is good enough, perhaps even more motivational than, “I want you to give me a pile of money to improve my mood.” But if the complainee is on his A game, at some point he should ask you, “What can we do to make this right?” If you don’t have a reasonable answer to that question, all of your well-crafted complaining will have been wasted.

The World of Swim Meets

2011-01-21T19:07:00.002-05:00

(News-Herald, January 20) Sometimes love takes you into interesting new places. In my case, it has taken me to swim meets.
Swimming is not one of the bigger spectator sports. If the world of sports were a high school cafeteria, swimming would not be sitting at the table with the popular kids. More likely it would be back in the corner, sitting with just one or two other friends (all of whom packed their own lunch), laughing and carrying on and making fun of what everybody else was wearing.
Swimming as a sport is defiantly viewer-unfriendly. It makes no concessions to the uninitiated; if you want to watch, you really must bring an interpreter. I believe that swim teams could draw bigger crowds—they just don’t care to.
There is an announcer, perhaps one of the most futile jobs in sports, because the average pool-area PA system works only slightly better than an set of empty coffee cans connected by 100 feet of heavy yarn. It is easier to find recognizable English words in the off-screen teacher voices in Peanuts cartoons. Once interpreted, these announcements turn out to contain only tiny nuggets of info on the order of “Some people are going to swim a bunch for a while.” I have no doubt announcements in clear English with some actual informational content would help newbies settle in.
And settling in is the operative concept. I’m used to the habit of grabbing some food after a sporting event, but I have learned that it’s wise to eat before a swim meet. That’s because swim meets last anywhere between two and 147 hours.
Part of this is just a general lack of urgency. During actual races swimmers move like lightning, but between events the arena could be mistaken for relaxed open pool time at any Y, where some folks are just hanging out. This is what football would be like if coaches could call time outs for as long as they felt like.
And there’s diving, a sport that is unaccountably sandwiched into swim meets. There is nothing comparable in the sports world. It would be like pausing a football game between quarters for the golf teams to play eight holes. Because, after all, both sports are played on dirt and grass.
I hate to ostracize divers further, but they need their own separate event, on their own separate day.
Other issues are harder to address. For instance, telling the swimmers apart in the pool. Hard-core fans will tell you that they can identify Nathan swimming even though he is mostly under water wearing a scrap of cloth that you couldn’t write his zip code on. But these fans have been watching him swim since he was three years old and have memorized the pattern of freckles on his shoulder blade. The newbie fan’s best hope would be the swimmer’s name tattooed across his or her back. This may be too much to ask.
There are lots of subtleties to study. Before the meet even starts, everyone knows who is actually fastest. Swimmers need extraordinary mental toughness both to face opponents who they know are better, while battling the water and their own bodies, alone. And swim coaches need the minds of chess masters to place the right people in the right event, because there are points to consider for the team win (though until the muffled announcement at meet’s end, you will have no idea how that is going).
Much of this would be a concern for the casual swim fan, but making accommodations for the casual swim fan is like making accommodations at Leonardo’s for talking snow men or refitting the Venango Airport for landings by spacecraft from Mars.
Swim fans are a hardy and deeply committed breed, usually with a personal connection to someone down in the pool. Someone may decide to go see one Venangoland football game just for something to do; people don’t just wander into swim meets. The fans and swimmers belong to an elite group, and they don’t appear to be in a hurry to let any shmoe off the street just wander in and join the club.
Maybe they feel that they’ve never been invited to sit at the popular kid table, so they have realized they just don’t need it. Or maybe they like sitting in the corner where they can do things the way they like without apologizing to anyone. I’m just glad I have a native guide to help me enjoy it all.

New Years Exercise Place

2011-01-16T08:44:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, January 13)About 18 months ago, in a fit of household cost-cutting, I ended my membership at the Y.
I figured that with a bit of discipline and determination I could exert myself at home for free. I already own a lazy treadmill (it used to let you run to nowhere indefinitely, but now shuts itself down after twenty minutes). I even invested in a nifty stand that lets you turn your outdoor bicycle into a housebound bike that also doesn’t go anywhere. Going nowhere may seem like a boring way to exercise, but the advantage is that when I collapse from exhaustion, I do not have far to drag my weary carcass home.
I gave myself a year to try the home sweatiness plan. Then I gave myself another six months to convince me that my year trial hadn’t been an utter failure. And then I slunk back to the Y and became one of those people who started out the new year resolving to turn over a new leaf. A big, fat, heavy leaf that has to be turned over again and again until my heart rate is elevated into the fat burning cardio zone.
I’m not sure what to blame (well, other than me) for my home fitness failure. The big bike ride to nowhere did get monotonous, and this last summer I was somehow too busy too often to bike and kayak as much as I really intended to. Although I am to athletics what Twinkies are to fine dining, I don’t fear physical activity. Yet somehow, my exercise regimen slowly devolved from a daily routine to a grudging celebration of the first day of each new month. It was time to admit I needed help.
Not that the Y provides me with a personal trainer or a chauffer to drive me to the weight room. They do provide motivational programs (the Silver Sneakers are using their exercisial accomplishments to create snow men), and since my last membership they have filled up the gym—excuse me, I mean “fitness center”—with nifty new machinery.
The new machines have little attached televisions, so by rejoining the Y I have also reattached myself to cable tv. It has been over two years since I cut off the cable, and it turns out that I missed the exercise machinery more than I missed regular tv programming. But the shiny colorful things moving around on screen help distract me from the complaining parts of my flailing physique. It also turns out that Dr. Phil is much easier to take when I’m gasping and sweating and can’t really hear him talk.
Mostly, though, I think what I’m experiencing is the power of place. As much as we think of ourselves as self-contained masters of our domains, we are often slaves of location. As infants we are unrestrained impulse; we will do anything anywhere. But as we age and learn self-control, we also learn to associate certain behavior with certain places.
We like to have our own special places to live, and even sub-divisions within them. I write these columns every week sitting in my personally accoutered man-cave. Occasionally, I have been forced to write them in other rooms, even other buildings, and I can certainly do it—but I don’t like it, and it’s almost uncomfortable.
We build our own little nests for our various purposes, and even multi-purpose rooms rarely are. Parents of sleep-averse infants are advised to make bed only for sleeping—not playing or reading or snacking. Couples experiencing a lack of marital harmonious activity are given similar advice.
I associate my home with many things, but not working out, and I have no space assigned to that purpose. So part of what I have hired the Y for, again, is a place that is only for getting sweaty and winded. When I walk into my living room, there are many things to do. When I walk into the fitness center, there’s nothing to do except hop on a machine.
We don’t generally buy hardware in a restaurant. Businesses are designed to be places dedicated to certain activities, and new places for familiar activities can feel awkward. The importance of place is likely also why folks are suspicious of church-skippers who declare they can commune with God any old where. The importance of place probably also explains why folks who grew up in Venangoland find, even when they wish it were not so, that no place feels quite like home.

Christmas Retail Lessons

2011-01-08T17:49:00.002-05:00

(News-Herald, January 6) Some of the hard data is in for the 2010 Christmas shopping season.
Some of it isn’t all that useful. Super Saturday 2010 (the last Saturday before Christmas) shopping was way up over 2009, but in 2009 there was an East Coast blizzard on Super Saturday.
The narrative about how Americans have mended our spendthrift ways and are now huddling in our bedrooms, stuffing carefully preserved dollar bills under the mattress—well, as it turns out, not so much. According to the folks at MasterCard Advisors Spending Pulse, the pre-holiday fifty day spending total was $584.3 billion. In 2007, prior to the current crooked-banker-induced wave of financial debacle, the total was $566.3 billion.
Of that, $36.4 billion was spent on line (same source). That’s a 15% rise over 2009.
I was part of that trend myself. I came into a bit of e-money, so in addition to my usual local retail fieldwork, I did more-than-usual shopping in the cybernetic storefronts, and I’m beginning to understand some of the appeal.
It’s not just selection and the fact that many on-line stores can “stock” anything (or even something, since the bookstore chains have decided to get out of the bookstore business). That just makes it harder to browse. It’s not price. Once you factor in shipping and handling, an online purchase can be pricier. And bargain hunters have had their parties largely pooped by online retailers—online competition virtually guarantees that retailers all arrive at the same price point. But there are other lessons that Venangoland businesspeople can learn from the webland sellers.
First, no service trumps bad service. There are plenty of websites that provide no help at all. For example, Barnes and Nobles is a major book retailer, but trying to find anything on their site is like searching for a needle in the scrambled haystack in the dark uncleaned attic over your crazy aunt’s garage. There are many other selling sites that also leave it to the customer to solve the Mystery of How to Buy Something.
Traditional brick and mortar stores used to think they had an edge because they provided a warm human touch. But that edge only exists in stores where the human touch is actually warm and helpful. Unfortunately, too many Venangoland retail workers clearly wish that customers would stop asking for help, messing with the merchandise, and just generally intruding on the employee’s personal time.
It’s not that I don’t understand the source of many salesperson’s irritation, because that’s another things that makes online shopping attractive. I refer, of course, to other people in the stores. Most seasonal shoppers are perfectly fine, experienced, wise and considerate. But there is that ten percent, oblivious, inconsiderate, just plain rude, that make major annoyances for the rest of us.
When you click “proceed to checkout” on line, you don’t get stuck behind the person who wants to stop and chat for an hour with the checker, or the person who thinks store employees are stress-relief punching bags, or the person who is always apparently surprised when they’re asked to pay for the merchandise, or the person who wants to pay in check filled out with quill and ink. Nor do you find yourself in a store where management is trying to save a buck by hiring one tenth the employees they really need to handle the traffic.
The real irony about on-line shopping is that web-based retailers are spending big bucks to implement features that bricks and mortar stores can have for free. Online retailers hire people just to answer customer questions, investing in personnel, phone systems, and on-line chatware. In a physical store, the employees are already there—they just need to be trained, empowered and encouraged to help. It should be so easy for real stores to beat web stores at the human game, but many web stores are trying really hard, and many real stores are trying not at all.
I love love love many of our local retailers, the specialty shops, the places where there is a real personal touch. But the history of retail is the story of people who can’t afford to get comfortable. Franklin and Oil City downtowns ruled the roost, and then there was a mall. The mall thought it had a lock on the local market, and then there was Wal-Mart. Some folks adapted, and some folks folded, and we achieved a new equilibrium. But before anyone gets too comfy, they’d better take a look at the internet.

New Years Customs

2010-12-31T10:13:00.002-05:00

(News-Herald, December 30) Time for the finale of the holiday trifecta. We’ve had our day of enforced family togetherness and our day of enforced love and warmth for fellow humans, so now it’s time for the holiday of enforced merriment and partying good times.
Of course, just as Thanksgiving and Christmas are based on more substance than current custom might suggest, so does New Year’s have a history of being more than a mandate to drink deep from the pool of bad behavior.
Observing the start of a new year is almost as old as human history, though the ancients often had some arguments about when that first day fell. The current kickoff champ was only one of many contenders in the ancient world until Julius Caesar in 46 BC supposedly established the Julian calendar cementing January 1 as its starting date. (January was named for Janus, the god of doorways, entrances and beginnings. He was usually depicted with two faces, one looking forward and one backward.)
There have been a wide variety of New Year customs, some of which are still practiced and some of which have morphed into newer forms. The Scots give us two fine traditions. One is “Auld Lang Syne,” which was not actually written by the poet Robert Burns, but transcribed by him from its rendition by an old Scotsman. There are at least five verses, all of them fairly incomprehensible unless you have a hardy Scots-English dictionary, but all of which lament that time and distance now separate folks who were once close friends.
The Scots have also preserved First Footing, the notion that the first person to cross your threshold after midnight signals your luck (or lack thereof) for the coming year. There seem to be some differences of opinion about the details, but authorities agree that a tall, dark-haired man is the best sign for a fortunate new year. First foots should bring a practical gift such as coal or bread for the household. They may be actual members of the household, though they should still knock and be invited in.
John Wesley (founder of Methodism) liked the Moravian tradition of Watch Night and so appropriated it. These services start late at night and continue into the new year, giving thanks for the previous year and asking for more divine assistance in the year ahead.
Other traditions include letting nothing go out of the house on New Years Day—no deliveries, no presents carried out, not so much as taking out the garbage. This strikes me as a particularly tough regimen for folks with housepets; I guarantee you that the Labrador puppy that lives in my house will be taking something outside on January 1.
On the other hand, I can easily comply with the tradition that says no laundry must be done on New Years Day (apparently wash means that someone will die in the upcoming year).
Many traditions build on the notion that anything happening on January 1 will set a tone for the whole year. So crying, paying money to others, and breaking things are all to be avoided, lest you have a weepy year of broken poverty. On the other hand, some customs suggest that you succeed at a job related activity to guarantee a year of similar success. And obviously kissing someone pleasant and appealing makes a good trend-starter.
For the last century in Spain, folks eat twelve grapes at midnight, one on each chime, for each of the coming months. In many cultures hog is considered a sign of prosperity (as in “high on the”), so eating any forms of it is recommended. Black-eyed peas and cabbage should provide sufficient good luck for vegetarians. For people who want to be sure, I suspect that somewhere in Venangoland, pork and sauerkraut will be available, as well as grapes in one form or another.
Fireworks and noisemakers were intended to drive away evil spirits for the new year. Many cities have added modern touches, most famously in New York City, where thousands of tourists gather to watch the ball drop. I am told that this event is carefully avoided by all authentic New Yorkers, except for authentic New York pickpockets. And many American cities have embraced the notion of First Night as a means of creating memories one can share with his children instead of stories that need to be hidden from them.
Pick the custom you like. On a day for saluting the past and embracing the future, a buffet of traditions seems perfect. Just don’t mess with the Rose Parade.

Christmas Viewing

2010-12-24T12:00:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, December 23) Christmas is almost here, which means that homes throughout Venangoland are filled with the sound of joy and cookies and tradition and impending nervous breakdowns. At some point it may be time to sit in front of the tube and do your yuletide viewing. What to watch? I’m glad you asked.
You’ll have to watch somebody’s version of Dicken’s Christmas Carol. While there are many fine knock-offs and interpretations, most miss the point of this holiday horror story. The George C. Scott version does pretty well, but believe it or not, one of the most faithful versions is the Muppet Christmas Carol. And an earlier production starring Mr Magoo has become available again; it has some great songs in it. The book itself is short enough to be read in one sitting, and worth your while.
The indispensable How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Charlie Brown Christmas are both reminders of why you need to watch your own copy of these classics—both are so brutally trimmed when broadcast that they are barely recognizable.
Both manage to avoid the worst trap of Christmas programming, which is to create something so sickly sweetly treacly that A) nobody believes a word of it and B) anybody who does slips into diabetic shock.
These two classics also have the virtue of being undeniably about Christmas (what production these days would actually quote scripture a la Charlie Brown?). So much so-called Christmas entertainment is simply regular old entertainment with a fuzzy red hat plunked on its head. “Well, this whole bunch of stuff happened, and then this other guy did some stuff,” says the story-teller. “Oh, and by the way, it happened AT CHRISTMAS!”
Yes, beloved Frosty the Snowman, I’m looking at you. Yes, several hundred schmaltzy Lifetime-ish weepers with “Christmas” jammed into your titles, you, too. And how did It’s a Wonderful Life ever become classified as a Christmas-only treat?
The anchor of the Rankin-Bass animated Christmas empire, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, barely makes the cut. It’s really a kid’s adventure story that trots Christmas out for the grand finale, but, hey, there are elves. And immortal lines like “Let’s be independent together” and “That’s a mighty humble ‘bumble” are so awesomely and repeatedly linked with Christmastime that they provoke a Pavlovian drooling for candy canes.
Besides, there are works solidly grounded in Christmas turf that can be safely skipped. The Year Without a Santa is an open invitation to laugh at Mr. Kringle and his clan, and not in a jolly way. Real Christmas content is no guarantee of entertainment quality.
Many works tack Christmas trim onto ordinary material, but some modern classics make solid Christmas elements the foundation of stories that hold up year round. If you have avoided Elf because you usually find Will Ferrell obnoxious and annoying, now is a good time to rent or buy this flick which dares to pit sweet Christmas spirit against a recognizably mundane and harsh world (Miracle on 34th Street without the cheesiness). Likewise, you may have skipped Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas because it appears to be creepy animation. It is, but the sweetest, gentlest, hummably tuneful creepy animation you’ll ever see. Both are great reminders of Christmas at any time of year.
Any look at Christmas viewing must consider the age-old question—White Christmas or Holiday Inn? Fred Astaire makes a better partner for Bing Crosby than Danny Kaye—I love Kaye, but his hyperactive terrier clashes with Crosby’s laid-back hound dog. White Christmas, however, provides a more potent emotional punch at the finish. Inn has some culturally insensitive moments (blackface!!??) and Christmas can feel like it’s about twelve hours long. Both only use Christmas as a peg on which to hang Crosby’s classic rendition. Watch Holiday Inn, then switch to White Christmas for the last twenty minutes.
There are other lesser-known Christmas viewing treats. In particular, Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas, a Muppet special the Jim Henson created for HBO before he started making movies, is touching in a quiet muppety way. We haven’t even scratched the surface of variety programming (find Pee-Wee’s Christmas Special). And in the interests of full fake journalist disclosure, I must admit that I have never actually watched A Christmas Story all the way through.
There are plenty of riches available for a home video Christmas. Pass the razzleberry jelly, and if you end up watching Ernest Saves Christmas or Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Rand at Christmastime

2010-12-18T12:13:00.002-05:00

(News-Herald, December 16) Ayn Rand has been experiencing a sort of revival in popularity which, given the current currents in politics and culture, is not surprising. In all the twentieth century, there may be no other writer who so clearly distilled the demand that the whiners shut up, the sob stories dry up, and the strong individuals stand up.
Some of her observations can seem pretty pointed these days. For instance, her view of charity was that a society that values charity will end up rewarding people for being the most compelling and sad failures, rather than rewarding folks for success. Anyone who ever railed against the welfare state knows exactly what she was talking about.
There is appeal in Rand’s view of the world. Her philosophy of Objectivism was based in the belief that there is one absolute truth, one set and unchanging world, and that reason was the only way to perceive it.
In her breadbox-sized masterwork Atlas Shrugged she wrote, “There are two sides to every issue. One side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil." When an interviewer for Playboy asked her, “Isn't this a rather black-and-white set of values?” she replied, “It most certainly is.”
In Rand’s world there is only good and evil, and no excuse for choosing anything but the good.
For Rand, the worst evils were committed in the name of collectivism, the notion that the needs of the many can ever outweigh the needs of the few. Government was at its worst when demanding sacrifice, forcibly taking money and resources away from those who had rightfully earned them. For Rand, there was no greater good than the individual’s pursuit of his own self-interest. Rand didn’t consider selfishness okay—she considered it the only way to live a rational and moral life.
Her world, as laid out in Atlas Shrugged, is one in which great and brilliant men build and create, while the small, weak, puny scavengers that make up the rest of the population live off the sweat of the great few.
It is hard not to see some of Rand’s philosophy as a reflection of her experience. She lived through the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism, and that’s enough to make anyone leery of governments that ask for a few pints of blood so as to help the greater good.
She liked capitalism and reason, and she was adept at creating quotes in their honor. “Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.” And “The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.”
Libertarians might like “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” But Rand didn’t like Libertarians. And while some people of faith might find Rand’s absolutes appealing, Rand was an unwavering atheist who saw religion as one more attempt to rob individuals of their free will.
By the 1960’s she was noted for a variety of controversial positions. She supported abortion rights, opposed the draft (but also opposed draft dodgers), backed Barry Goldwater for President, said that European conquest of Native Americans was just. In 1964, she wrote the essay “The Virtue of Selfishness.”
One oft-repeated quote is “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” It sounds appealing, but not even Rand could manage to live by it in her own messy personal life. Later in her life, Rand took Nathaniel Branden as a lover, with the consent of her own husband and his wife. She set him up in business as the keeper of an early think tank devoted to her own philosophy (by this time she considered herself on par with Aristotle). Dissent and disagreement with Rand were frowned on, and when her lover moved on to yet another extramarital entanglement, Rand closed the institute and denounced Branden; he apologized for perpetuating a cult.
None of this has entirely healed. Branden’s wife still has a website presenting her side of the story for all the internet to see. The Ayn Rand Institute’s biography simply omits the Brandens and their work.
Why bring up Rand now, in a season that celebrates everything that she considered evil and wrong? Perhaps for a change of pace. Or perhaps to ask the people who do celebrate this season and yet revere her ideas… why?

The Threat of Technology

2010-12-10T23:59:00.002-05:00

(News-Herald, December 9) Recent removal of an old foundation at a noted European archeological site turned up an important work, which I’m going to reproduce in its entirety here:
My dear sir;
I have been told that you intend to drag our school forward, willy nilly, into the use of new technology, a technology that is unproven, undependable, and prone to enormous abuse. I fear that this new technology will seriously disrupt the work of both teachers and students, and I think we need to think long and hard about implementing this.
I am speaking, of course, about your intent to introduce the use of paper and pencils into our classrooms.
Let’s consider the impact of this new technology.
Paper is fragile, undependable and untrustworthy. It is easily torn and crumpled, and the simplest bit of mis-applied pressure pokes holes in it. If pencils are kept too sharp, they will jab right through the paper. But if the pencils become too dull, they will barely make a mark. The technology is therefore completely unreliable.
This means that students will have to be taught to maintain and protect the technology. They will have to be trained how to keep the paper flat and clean, and will have to learn special techniques for transporting it between classroom, home, and school. I foresee our students having to find and purchase special protective devices for their paper.
And what of the pencils? What if my students arrive with a pencil that is too dull, or they have simply forgotten one? When the technology malfunctions in these ways, will my classroom be forced to grind to a halt??
Adopting this new technology will play hob with our academic setting. I know that you foresee a system in which students are made familiar with paper and pencil from a young age so that the use of this technology is so familiar that students use paper and pencil without ever thinking of all the hundreds of ways that they must care for and maintain the technology. I believe you grossly over-estimate them. I envision a classroom in which learning grinds to a halt as students clumsily snap pencils in half as they mistakenly try to write upside down papers that, accidently moistened by tears of frustration, collapse into sodden clumps.
Furthermore, you realize that these students can use pencils to write anything on the paper. Anything at all!! They could write naughty words. The more talented ones can even draw naughty pictures. By passing papers back and forth, they can communicate with each other at will. At the very moment I need their attention focused on an important matter of verb conjugation, they could be passing notes back and forth about what Fiona said during the barn raising yesterday.
Since paper is malleable, they can easily hide these notes behind legitimate work, and unless I walk around and pay attention to what they’re up to, I have no way of knowing whether these students are on task or not.
Can you not at least provide specific instructions on why, when, where and exactly how this technology is to be used? Your insistence that we can just experiment, try things out, and use common sense to find the ways that paper and pencil can be helpful is too vague. What if a student tries to fold the paper into a hat? What if he tries to write on the edge instead of the flat side? The technology offers too many possibilities, and frankly, that scares me. Can’t we take some of them away. Would it not be better, for instance, to make one side of the paper black so that it cannot be written on?
Yes, I know that most of the adult working world uses paper, and yes, I know that students use paper and pencil as part of their daily lives. I see no reason that my classroom should not linger in the past. Let them deal with this unfamiliar and difficult technology on their own time. Our job as teachers is not to prepare them for the future, but to make them comfortable in the past.
This technology is scary, hard to master, and requires new skills that will never, ever become second nature. We will never ever learn to handle the problems that the technology raises. Our old technology is more than equal to the task, as this letter attests—I have carved it into these stones in less than a week, and that is fast enough for any man.

Venangoland in Nebraska

2010-12-03T20:26:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, December 2) You may recall that I have an interest in the name “Venango.” It’s short, distinctive and should be a great tool in branding and marketing the region. There are dozens of places named “Oil City” and a gazillion Franklin’s, but only four places on the planet that use the name “Venango.”
The village in Crawford County is nicely close to home, but the other two Venango’s are in Kansas and Nebraska. How did our place name, which is a mistranscription of a Native American term and therefore not really a real word—how did it end up out West?
The Kansan “Venango” is barely a place—a dozen houses next to the Venango Public Use Area set by the Kanopolis State Park and Kanopolis Lake. There’s a beach, a place that looks like an RV camp, and several roads with “Venango” in the name (as well as a Horsethief Road and Avenue Q).
It’s the Nebraskan Venango that really interests me.
It’s a small place almost on the western border of the state, with a population generally under 200 people. But if you have any doubts about its connection to Venangoland, consider the street names: Pennsylvania, Mercer, Dauphin, Allegheny, Washington, Fayette, Chester, Crawford, and Lincoln. There’s also a Ziemer Street—some digging suggests that it’s named for a family of long-time residents.
One source says that Venango was settled first in the 1860’s, spurred by the Homestead Act , but “the buckle of the wheat belt” didn’t seem to really take hold until the 1880’s, when the railroad came through. But the railroad cuts across one corner of the city’s grid at an angle, seeming to suggest that the town was there before the railroad. Across the tracks from the town are the grain elevators that dominate the landscape.
In its history the town had banks, several newspapers, schools, and a town band. Its World War I veterans formed an American Legion Post, and by the 1930 it had reached a peak population of 287.
The Depression and the Dust Bowl both took a huge toll on Venango, but over the following decades it reconfigured itself again. The school added a gym in the 50’s and a new music room in the 60’s. It celebrated its centennial in 1987 with parades and celebrations.
In 2009, it achieved a true 21st Century landmark—it was Google-Earthed. That means that visitors can now take a virtual walk through the streets of Venango.
There’s not much in Venango to suggest its history. The homes are mostly simple one-story constructions—certainly nothing to suggest a city over a century old. Google earth even captures the cars parked in driveways or on the streets (some of which are wide and paved and some of which are dirt tracks), and they are mostly pick-up trucks. Where Google indicates a car dealership, the photos show a vacant lot. There are some new buildings—most notably a church and an elementary school—but the real estate on what was once the main drag looks like a shell of the central street of earlier decades. The median household income is $24,444.
Most striking to an Easterner’s eye may be the edge of town. When you get to the edge of the grid, the streets curl back around into the town, but you are looking into a great big wide bunch of flatness. There’s no other structure or town within eyesight. Venango, Nebraska could be on the moon.
Still, the records suggest that families have stayed there for generations. The 2000 census lists 175 people, 68 households, 51 families. There is even a facebook group for present and former residents of Venango. The place looks hard, but not beaten.
So far, not much hint of how our name ended up out there. There’s a Levi Hafer who might have ties back here. There are plenty of people who left the right part of PA to head west, but landed in the wrong part of NE. Early settler names include Steinke, Watkins, Busch, Hopkins, Morton, Grothman, Strack, Wostenberg, and Fulscher.
Where is that guy who transplanted Western PA to the wide open wheat fields of the west? I’ve made a contact with a historian in Nebraska, and my brother has been poking around quite a bit, but frankly I’m hoping someone who reads this will know the story of what Venangoland ties connect us to this distant cousin of a community. Barring that, perhaps my bosses at the News-Derrick will decide to send me on a fact-finding tour.

The Thankfulness Thing

2010-11-25T08:05:00.003-05:00

(News-Herald, November 25) It is ironic that Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American holiday, because we Americans do gratitude so very poorly.
We love the idea of being self-made, self-sufficient, self-supporting, even though there isn’t one American in a billion who actually is any of those things. But we get our big steely squint and grunt on and declare, hands clenched before us, “I’ve made this life for myself with these two hands.” We have trouble setting aside pride long enough to pick up gratitude.
When looking for ingrates, people of faith will note non-believers who fail to honor the Deity which gave life and breath to all that we experience, and they have a point. It’s an easy step for people to slip from believing in no God to believing in themselves as the micro-God of their own mini-universe.
But people of faith can also fail gratitude school. Since a Pharisee first said, “I thank Thee, God, that I am not like other men,” religious folks have fallen prey to the prayer, “Thank you, God, for giving me what I so richly deserve.”
“I thank You that I am so awesome,” does not qualify as gratefulness.
So it’s not faith (or lack thereof) that gets in our way when it comes to gratitude. The road black is our tendency to believe that our successes and failure prove something fundamental about who we are. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we want to believe that bad things happen to stinky people while the Good are justly rewarded. Even when we see living proof that life doesn’t always work that way, we see it as a violation of natural law, not evidence that our ideas about natural law are incorrect.
If something good happened to us, we reason that it must have happened because we deserve it. We look at our good fortune and think, “I must be awesome!”
But it’s not as if life is a random roll of the dice. Good choices tend to lead to better results than bad choices. Sitting on the porch and waiting for your ship to come in doesn’t work for much of anyone. Work hard, be smart, choose wisely, pay attention, keep trying, and maintain good character—these are all likely to be the part of any success story.
So if you’ve done all these things, if you’ve done most things right to bring you to that good place that you are today, what should you be thankful for? If you are a do-it-yourself success story, where should you direct your gratitude today?
The people who raised you: No three-year-old is a self-made man, and there’s no grown human who doesn’t have a personal three year old tucked inside. The folks who raised you, even if they did a lousy job, shaped you. Be grateful that they helped equip you for success.
Timing: So many choices only look smart after the fact, because they are only smart at that moment, and you can’t know if the time is right unless you take the jump. Some folks got rich buying and selling houses; some are going broke. No doubt someone with a natural aptitude for computer math was born in ancient Egypt. Fat lot of good it did him. Be grateful that you came along at the right time.
Lack of consequences: Nobody is perfect; everybody makes bad choices. Sometimes a bad choice ends the story, but sometimes the piper never shows up to demand his payment. Think of your bad choice and be grateful it didn’t derail your life.
Health: There are plenty of diseases that do not care whether you’ve chosen wisely or not. Be grateful no such disease ever chose you.
Other humans: Walt Disney had a vision and drive, but he ran out of money every other month. Had other people not backed him financially, he would have been a glorious short-lived failure. Had his wife and brother not backed him personally, he would have flamed out before he was thirty. There are people in your life you have helped carry you over one pit or another. Be grateful they were there to stand by you.
It’s good to be grateful. It reminds us not to get snotty and full of ourselves, reminds us to treat others well, and reminds us of the debt we owe the world around us. Enjoy your day, remember you’re fortunate to have it, and be grateful.

Life and Personal Heroes

2010-11-19T21:09:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, November 18) Every year at this time I invite you to recognize your own personal heroes.
We ought to do it more than once a year, and it’s hard to see why we don’t. We complain that the news is all bad, that we ought to look on the bright side, but we miss the chance help solve the problem even in a small way.
Our biggest problem is that we insist our heroes be perfect. We are so insistent that we often fall for people who give us a bright glossy lie and step right past people who present a messy truth.
Yet when someone dies, we can suddenly see right past the less admirable parts to praise those qualities that we always loved and which we now must ever after miss. So every year I come back here to suggest that tell your heroes how much you value them at some place better than their graveside. If you can do it then, you can do it now.
In the past few weeks, I’ve heard numerous versions of the old “Life is _____.” Life is teaching. Life is football. Life is Frisbee. Life is a good peanut butter sandwich.
Well, life isn’t any of those things. It’s human of us to think so. We see people whose life is in their great driving passion, be it rugby, rap or rapelling, and we decide that if we just followed that discipline, we would discover that same great passion for life.
This is backwards. Life is energy, excitement, passion, power, focus, love and endless growth. But not a one of those things can exist in itself.
Life is like a billow of smoke, without shape or direction unless contained and directed somehow. Our pursuits, sports, arts, and vocations are the vessels into which we pour all the heart and passion that is a life. Life is our breath; our pursuits are balloons.
Some lucky people find the container that fits them best. Some are more suited to one form than another (Few things give me the zing of fatherhood or making music). The biggest mistake is to assume that our own form is the only form (as in “The only way a person can feel truly alive is through basketweaving—everything is just a waste of time.”)
My heroes include people who have taken this to the next level, people who have figured out that they can inject that same fire and drive and life and growth into whatever they do.
Take Al Shilling for instance. I have to believe there aren’t many people whose resumes include wrestling coach, phys ed teacher, and a long stint in musical theater. But there’s Al, whose successes span all three arenas.
I’ve known Al for years, watched him as a teacher, a coach, an advisor, a director, a performer, a father/husband/grandfather, doing it all with a drive and energy that is always admirable. It’s a life that never stops to wave and call attention to itself, but which simply keeps moving forward.
I associate that same sort of energy with my own parents. My folks are many things, but probably not the people who light up the room when they walk in. Yet they have devoted themselves to numerous projects over the year, treating each one like an important labor of love.
These are people who inject life into all that they do. They treat each project like it matters and each commitment like one that they’re serious about. And for that reason, they are heroes of mine.
We all know people like this, people whose energy and devotion we admire, whose life displays great focus and intent. They do everything like they really mean it. They don’t wait for activities to inspire them; they bring their inspiration to all that they do. They aren’t trying to get a life; they’re making one.
These are easy people to take for granted, which brings us to your homework. Take out some paper and an envelope, then write and send a note to one of your heroes. Don’t hedge or waffle—simply write “You are my hero because…” and add a few lines. Then send it.
People who put so much devotion and energy out into the world deserve to get a little something back. Don’t wait until your heroes are perfect (it will never happen) or dead (it will happen all too soon). Write a letter to your hero this weekend.

Secrets, Commissioners and Veterans

2010-11-12T06:27:00.002-05:00

(News-Herald, November 11) I’d like to be the first to announce that I am not one of the twenty-five secret candidates for County Commissioner.
Had I known someone could try for the job under cover of darkness, I might have. But I figured that being a candidate for a very public elected office involved the public knowing, publicly, what you were up to. Silly me.
This is a nifty new breakthrough in public (well, public-ish) service. I’m wondering if the new commissioner will remain secret, appearing at meetings with a bag over his/her head. Maybe this cone of secrecy will be extended to the new secret commissioner’s actions. I can see the headlines now: “Commissioner Baghead Votes To Do Something. Or Not.”
I understand the notion that, should the candidates’ names be known publicly, the people who have to make the selection will be subject to endless lobbying and pressure. After that decision is made, the unsuccessful applicants will be labeled “losers” and other children on the playground will mock them and steal their lunch money.
I agree that this would all be unpleasant. It would, in fact, be pretty much like the usual process of filling any other elective office.
I believe that some of the real journalists here at the News-Derrick have suggested that the process being used is illegal. As a fake journalist, I can go ahead and call it a less objective journalistic term like, say, dumb.
Nobody looks at this kind of secrecy and assumes that The Powers That Be are hiding something Really Good. The new commissioner, if he is not one of the people with the cojones to reveal himself in the newspaper, will start the job with baggage. The folks who want to do this selection in some smoke-filled back room are not doing Commissioner Baghead any favors.
The impulse to keep things secret is almost always a mistake, but the world is filled with managers, leaders, and politicians who are drawn to it like a moth to a blowtorch.
Some buckle when they make a mistake, like five year old hiding the pieces of the broken lamp. Trying to hide mistakes is, well, a mistake. You’ll still pay the price for the mistake, and the interest on that payment will be some not-too-flattering reflections on your character. People who try to hide their mistakes instead of dealing with them do not inspire trust or respect in others, ever.
Worse, some people will buckle before making a mistake. Faced with a decision, they will try to hide their choice or, worst yet, hide that there is even a choice to make. If they choose, someone may disagree or criticize, so they avoid any moment of decision at all. Faced with a situation that requires a response of any kind, they pretend that they see no such problem. To avoid the criticism or kibitzing of others, they try to keep even the need for a decision a secret.
It’s not so much cloak-and-dagger secrecy as it is the hope that we can get other people to ignore it until it goes away. And we all contribute because there are things that we often conspire to ignore. Take today, for example.
I am sure there are many practical reasons that we pay way more attention to Memorial Day than Veterans Day, but I tend to think our focus is backwards. The folks we honor on Memorial Day are gone. We can respect their sacrifice, but their troubles are over and we don’t have to think about them.
It’s easy to make noise about honoring the dead. Veterans are still here, and their problems still deserve attention. We are currently fighting the longest war in American history, but you would never know that to look at us.
When we think of returning soldiers, we like to think of the glorious parades of World War II, but that’s a glossy half-truth. WWI, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq—the story of our last several wars is the story of veterans who came home to a country that in many ways tried to make secrets out of them, to avoid noticing them, or their sacrifices, or the way in which their sacrifice for our country changed their lives.
When it comes to citizens, many, if not most, do our best to avoid thinking about veterans, allowing our treatment of them, both as individuals and as a society, to stay secret. Today, don’t ask if we should respect them—that’s a given. Ask yourself if veterans should respect the rest of us.

To Make a Difference

2010-11-05T17:34:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, November 4) I may have recently logged the one gazillionth time I’ve heard someone make the basic complaint about the allegedly tragic lack of things to do in Venangoland.
You know the drill: “Well, of course I’m going to go out and drink too much/eat too much/sit and be bored/jam a pencil up my nose/whack myself in the forehead with a ball peen hammer,” says the poor, disaffected soul. “There’s nothing else to do around here.”
I’m not going to get into the argument about what there is or isn’t to do around here. We can save that one for another day, and in the meantime I acknowledge that everybody has his own idea about what constitutes “something to do.”
But if your comment to me is, “This place/job/school/neighborhood/city/solar system stinks,” my response is, “Okay. What are you doing about it.”
That classic question, “What difference can one person make?” is not the real question. The real question is “What kind of difference do you intend to make?”
Every person makes a difference. In fact, no person can avoid making a difference. Every single time you simply walk through the same space as another human being, you make a difference. You might smile and say “Hi,” or you might grumble some obnoxious curse, or you might pass by as if the other person were non-existent. Whatever choice you make, it makes a difference.
Every circumstance presents us with choices, and every choice we make makes a difference.
Part of our problem is that we have confused “difference” with “earth-shattering changes that shift continents and throw a million lives into gyrating vortices of gasp-inducing drama.” People who suffer from this confusion should be encouraged to pay less attention to tv and more attention to the way actual humans live their lives.
Another part of our problem is that we forget how hard is to spot the choices that make the most long-lasting ripples in the lakes of our lives. My fifth grade music teacher Miss Gause chose to confront the boys in the back of the room and try to make them actually listen to musical pitches. When my father was younger, he decided to collect a few Glenn Miller albums. Neither was a large, dramatic choice, but together they influenced the trajectory of my entire life.
On the other hand, I watch plenty of teenagers get wrapped up in massive drama that, ten years later, has had less lasting importance than what color shirt they wore to the Homecoming dance.
So every single choice makes a difference. We just don’t get to know up front how much difference it will be.
The final fallacy that we fall for is the notion that since we can’t change everything, we can’t change anything.
When I step in a classroom, folks from the people in our central office through the suits in Harrisburg on to the bureaustocracy in DC back to my own students have made choices about my classroom that I have no power over. But I still get to—have to—make choices about how I will conduct myself, how I’ll treat my students, what kind of atmosphere I’ll try to create.
We live in a world where we have steadily decreasing power over our circumstances. But we always have choices. We always have the choice to treat other people well, or not. We always have the power to push for the things we want to see in the world, or to complain because they haven’t magically appeared on their own.
So don’t tell me “I did something stupid because that’s the only choice around here.” There are always other choices, and you are too old to play “Look what you made me do.” If you made the stupid choice, don’t try to blame it on your surroundings, because at the end of the day you are one of the co-creators of your circumstances. If you think your circumstances stink, check in the mirror to find one of the people responsible.
Certainly there are limits. You can only live the life you have, not the one you wish you had. And you will never have the power to create a world in which everyone else acts exactly the way you think people should act. On the other hand, you will always have all the power necessary to create a world in which you act exactly the way you think people should act. That’s a power that shouldn’t be wasted.

Halloweeniness 2010

2010-10-29T22:23:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, October 28) It seems as if Halloween is another holiday that has somehow lost its way.
It’s not that it has a clear and strong tradition. The holiday itself is most likely a left-over from a Celtic holiday that honored the end of the harvest season, a time when the barrier between this world and the spirit world was a little more porous than usual.
Trick or treating seems older. There was the Christmas wassailing of the middle ages which involved going door to door trading song for food. And there was also souling, in which poor people would go door to door on November 1st, offering to pray for the dead.
Jack O’ Lantern comes from an Irish folk tale that appears in many versions. In most a trickster named Jack manages to trap the devil and will only release him if he promises never to take Jack’s soul. When Jack eventually dies, he’s too wicked for heaven, but can’t go to hell, and so must wander eternally looking for a resting place. The devil gives him an undying ember to light his way, which Jack carries in a hollowed-out turnip. Yes, I know—turnips seem to lack a certain something, but they were apparently the Jack O’Lantern vegetable of choice for some time.
Keene, NH, where my mother went to college, for many years held the record for most pumpkins carved and lit. It was also the place with the lowest automobile accident rate in the US. I’m unaware of any connection between those two factors.
Trick or treating seems to have first really caught on in the US in the 1930’s. This sort of tricky extortion seems in tune with the general spirit of the holiday, though many modern practitioners don’t appear to have their hearts in the game. I don’t need to have every costumed child, pre-child or eternal child threaten me, but simply stumping up to my porch and extending a demanding hand seems lazy. Particularly if the applicant for sugary goodness is dressed in the costume of “The Way I Dress Pretty Much Every Afternoon.”
Not that I need to see every kind of costume available. I am not sure when Halloween became a Celebration of Sluttiness, but the Halloween store at the mall has a section of apparel that puts Fredericks of Hollywood to shame. These are costumes that a stripper would be embarrassed to go out in. It’s as if the fairly clear Halloween costume standard of “things that would scare children” has been broadened to “things children should not see.”
That said, I apparently also missed the point at which Halloween graduated from teen mischief night to another excuse for underage partying and drinking. But many of my students have informed me that they expect many classmates to be absent on November 1st after having stayed up all night drinking. Just like last year. When they were all in eighth grade.
Whatever happened to those carefree golden days when young people were content to simply vandalize private property. I assume that the egg-flinging adventures in Franklin Heights are simply the local version of a universal pastime. I don’t know where Oil City teens go to fling eggs at each other, neighborhood homes, and vehicles, but I assume such a place exists.
I’ve never been able to imagine what familial advice accompanies these outings. I can’t believe that any parents are so cluelessly unaware of what Junior is up to when he heads out the door carrying four dozen eggs. So what do they say as parting advice? “Remember, don’t vandalize the homes of people we like”? “Be sure to keep that ski mask on so you can’t be identified”? “Keep an eye out for the Man, and remember, Junior, always Fight the Power”?
But yikes! A quick google search of Halloween egg throwing turns up many scary tales. Turns out that in New York City, about one person per year is killed in Halloween egg throwing related violence. And medical authorities warn that an egg in the face can, and periodically does, result in eye injuries or even blindness. I thought egging qualified as god clean fun.
But evidently egg throwing on Halloween is a bad idea, and both I and the News-Derrick legal department want to be clear that this column in no way advocates such behavior. It’s a danger to cars and homes, not to mention all those poor women in their half-naked slut costumes.

Rethinking the Gay Marriage Debate

2010-10-22T06:53:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald October 21) The gay marriage argument is only going to get noisier, because it’s the last gasp of the battle that’s often the loudest.
Gay marriage is here. It’s already happening, and at a fairly regular rate. The only real question is whether it will be recognized by governments or not, and that change is just a matter of time. And not much time at that.
So let the final rounds of arguments commence. But I’m tired of the same old arguments; here are the things I don’t want to hear about during the fight.
I don’t want to hear the Biblical arguments. This scriptural cherry picking has been worn out by both sides.
I don’t want to hear the medical argument currently favored by Diane Gramley’s AFA. It’s an argument typical of the group, not fashioned out of genuine concern but designed to adopt a stance that can’t be attacked.
The argument that the homosexual life is inherently more hazardous to one’s health doesn’t work the way they’d like it to. For one thing, you can only label AIDS a homosexual disease if you ignore the disease’s history on, say, the entire African continent. Recent research does indicate that it’s the male brand of biology that best sustains HIV, so it appears that Gramley and the AFA are arguing in favor of what is clearly the safest, healthiest relationship choice—lesbian marriage.
I do understand the “changing the definition of marriage could lead to…” argument. When you start messing with the meaning of words, strange things happen. “Marriage” could come to mean “a union between a man and a cow.” It could also come to mean “a ham sandwich” or “a card game played with lettuce leaves.” These are all bridges we can decide not to cross if we ever come to them.
The argument that I find most odious is the one that claims homosexuality is just a choice.
There are certainly people who provide support for this. Homosexuals are the only oppressed group that you can “join” just by saying so, and there are certainly people who call themselves gay because they’re curious or they want attention or even because it might be a great way to take people to court and extort some money out of them.
It’s unfortunate that these faux-mosexuals make it easier to dismiss the issues that actual gay folks face, because anyone who ever sat with a person really struggling with the realization of their own homosexuality could never imagine that it’s a choice. Sometimes the person is not even the first to figure that she or he is gay. I’ve seen these moments play out a hundred ways, and none of them involved a young person heaving a giant sigh of relief and saying, “Wow, well, turns out I’m gay. Thank goodness.” And certainly not, “I’ve weighed the pros and cons and I’ve decided to choose Gay as my lifetstyle.” It’s hard to see why anyone would choose the challenges of truly being gay in a small town setting.
I can only assume that someone who claims homosexuality is a choice has never met an actual gay person. Opponents of gay marriage are heavily invested in the view of homosexuality as a choice not necessarily because they believe it, but because it’s an important linchpin of their argument. They’re simply wrong.
The Gay Marriage Will Erode Society argument also does not hold up. I’m actually surprised that more conservatives don’t support gay marriage. Society’s interest in marriage is in having citizens agree to make themselves each other’s problem and not the government’s. Stable family groups create a stable society. Stable marriages—gay or not—are in the government’s best interest.
Admittedly, the government’s best interests may not coincide with churches’. That’s why there’s an important lesson for religious conservatives in all this. Those who want to end the separation of church and state imagine that once church and state are handcuffed to each other, the state will go where the church drags it. But there’s a reason that church folks helped build that wall of separation in the first place—sometimes it’s the state that drags the church.
Marriage is one of the few places where church and state are still mostly handcuffed together, and the state has mostly bowed to the church’s definition of marriage. But I believe that’s about to change. Maybe instead of arguing fruitlessly, some folks should be looking for the key to the handcuffs.

Land O'Bullies

2010-10-14T17:47:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, October 14) October is either National Anti-Bullying Month or National Bullying Prevention Month, depending on whom you ask. That means that once again, Americans will focus their attention on a problem for a few weeks, talk a lot, and then move on to whatever shiny new bauble the media dangle in front of us (see also, BP oil spill, school shootings, flag burning, Lindsey Lohan).
Because I teach, people have been asking if bullying is worse these days.
Sure, bullying has always been a problem among school students. Strong bully weak, smart bully dumb, popular bully outcasts, outcasts bully the mainstream. And yes, some students have often been treated horribly while some have whined about one mean name.
But the answer is, of course it’s worse. Bullying is worse throughout our whole entire country’s culture—why wouldn’t it be equally awful in schools?
We can define bullying a variety of ways. Using physical or emotional abuse to dominate or coerce or silence someone. Overpowering people to confirm that they are small and the bully is big. Being mean to someone on purpose.
In our culture, it’s not simply that we fail to disapprove—we applaud bullying. Simon Cowell is only one of the people who have achieved celebrity by bullying. Viewers are sad he’s leaving, because they will miss, not his insights or his wisdom, but the way he could tear some poor contestant apart.
In politics, it’s even worse. Obama took heat from Democrats from day one because they wanted him to push the Republicans around to get revenge for all the years in which Republicans pushed them around.
Our political “information” comes from people who claim to be entertainers. Is their entertainment providing thoughtful analysis, carefully balanced research, or bridges between differing points of view? Naw, forget that stuff—they compete to see who can be the most unrestrained, obnoxious bully. Olberman, Maher, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter—all vie for attention by trying to heap the roughest insults, the most shocking slanders, the best use of the Big Club of media to beat on the heads of those they disagree with.
At times, we pay lip service to the idea “Bullying is not okay.” But mostly what we really mean is “Bullying is perfectly okay under certain conditions.” Those excuses include:
End justifies means. If we think it’s essential that somebody bow to our will and take a particular action, we can believe that anything that pushes them in the “right direction” is okay.
They were asking for it. What this usually means is, “That person annoys me and I have the strength to smack him up physically or emotionally. So I will.”
He started it. This is why the victim card is so highly prized—if I’m the victim then I’m just standing up for myself, not picking on someone. Hitler didn’t say, “Let’s get the Jews because we can.” He said, “The Jews are victimizing us. Let’s stand up for ourselves.”
I’m Right. Diane Gramley and Joe Wilson are a perfect match. The AFA has made a regular habit of using bullying tactics to get their way. Joe Wilson came to town and used bullying tactics to make his movie. I have no doubt that both will swear up and down that they are not bullies—they are just Really Really Right, and their opponents are Really Really Wrong, and Standing Up For What’s Right is not bullying.
All of these people are wrong. Frederic Douglass observed over a century ago that slavery was not only bad for slaves, but also bad for slave owners. When we treat other people as if they are less human than we are, we ourselves are diminished.
This is a rough and tumble nation and always has been. Ending bullying is about as likely as ending gravity, and while bullying should not be excused, it would be a smart use of time and energy to help young people develop the strength, support, and resilience to deal with it through means less radical—and permanent—than suicide.
In the meantime, if we adults want young people to deal with their differences and disagreements with decency, empathy and reason, we’d better take a look at our own world and ask where, exactly, they can see such behavior modeled. Young people reflect the culture they grow up in. If we adults don’t like what we see when we look at them, we’d be well-advised to remember that we’re looking in a mirror.

Be Nice To Wage Slaves

2010-10-08T22:13:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, October 7) Is it really that hard to be nice?
I don’t mean syrupy sweet gooey niceness. I’m not asking for fawning devotion to kissing backsides. I’m not even asking for dumped-on doormat behavior.
The vast majority of my Applefest interactions were pleasant, even more than pleasant. Perhaps I noticed the outbursts of unpleasantness because they stood out in such stark contrast, or because we ate out more, and eating establishments seem to be one of those places where people feel free to get their rude jerk on.
“Hey, we need some spoons!” barked the woman at the next table at one place, using a tone of voice that suggested that the spoon oversight was a personal insult and that a restaurant that didn’t respond instantly to her smallest need was borderline abusive. “Hey,” her attitude suggested. “If you think I am going to put up with this spoon-deprivation attack on my dignity, you can just forget it.”
My children used that same formula when they were about four. “I need a cookie,” they’d command. The usual reply was, “Well, then, maybe you should ask nicely for one.”
It’s not just restaurants. The world seems loaded with people who treat minimum-wage workers as if they are contemptible over-paid lackeys. I have lost track of the number of times I have wanted to tell someone, “Look, this man/woman is just trying to do his/her job. Give them a break.”
I’m not excusing bad service—lord knows there’s enough to go around—but one of the virtues of small town life is supposed to be a higher standard of kindness than one finds in the Big City. People are paid to do a job, frequently the mere pittance of minimum wage. When you ask them to go way above and beyond, the least you owe them is simple courtesy and kindness, and a basic awareness of when you’re being a pain in the tuchus.
Walking into a store five minutes before it closes? Especially if it’s just to look around with no real intent of buying something? You are being a pain in the tuchus.
Holding up the line while you fish for pennies in the bottom of your purse is being a pain. Asking a server to move eight tables together to accommodate your large party is being a pain. Asking the woman at the clothing store to fetch you forty-seven dresses to try on is being a pain (especially when you don’t intend to buy any).
These pains are no fun to employees, but they’re part of the normal wear and tear of the job, part of the reason that few people decide to make a career out of minimum wage work.
What is not a reasonable part is throwing a big bunch of abuse-sauce on top of the big bowl of tuchus pain. It’s inexcusable rudeness.
Calling the employee names because she doesn’t bring you the dresses you don’t intend to buy quickly enough is rude. Griping and complaining because the server doesn’t just clear the restaurant and seat your forty-seven guests RIGHT NOW is rude. Abusing any employee because she won’t change company policy for your personal benefit is rude.
And yes, there is a special corner of hell for people who demand extra service at a restaurant and leave a lousy tip. I don’t care if you’re on a fixed income or if that would have been a great tip during the Truman administration—if you can’t afford to leave a decent tip, you can’t afford to eat out, and you should stay home.
We make a lot of noise in this country about the value of good, hard labor and the importance of willingness to do an honest day’s work. We complain about welfare, and insist that Those People ought to go get a job, no matter how minimum wagey. And then we turn around and treat minimum wage workers like low life lackeys.
In an area like ours, where so much of our economy is carried on the backs of minimum wage workers, and so many of them are the young people that we also claim to value, that’s just really wrong. If you think a job is worth doing, how hard can it be to be nice to the person who does it?
Just treat people, including working people, with the same kindness, decency and consideration that you would like to receive. It’s not that hard, and I’m pretty sure that the principle has been brought up before.

Applefest on Foot

2010-10-01T17:41:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, September 30) New York City is, at all times, the city that never sleeps. Franklin is, at Applefest time, the city that never sits down (except to eat). I can’t think of any other holiday, however large or small, so totally devoted to tramping about on foot.
It is true that only feet really work. Every Applefest, you’ll find a handful of hardy humans trying to maneuver something wheeled, like a stroller or a shopping cart. Memo to those folks: you may be managing to get around, but you are not making any new friends.
It might be fun to try tooling through town on a segway, but I’m pretty sure that would end badly, and I’m doubly certain that there would be no place to park it when you wanted to get off and shop for classy cultural artifacts.
After years of trying to come into Franklin tourist style, I’ve very much enjoyed my decade of taking the shoeleather express uptown.
Mapquest tells me that it is almost exactly one mile from my front porch to the corner of 13th and Liberty. That’s an easily managed distance—I would gladly walk a mile for some Leonardo’s bread, some funnel cake, or a chance to look at some cool cars.
What’s perhaps odd is that I would not generally walk a mile to look at oddly painted scenes on roof slates, hand-dyed t-shirts, or hand carvings with an excess of character. But that is the magic of Applefest—set any one of the many tchotchke booths up on a corner and few people would bother to cross the street to see, but when you put a few hundred together and add a sense of occasion, it’s a special event that people will travel mile after mile to see.
Some folks scoff at the notion of Venangoland as a tourist destination, but Applefest demonstrates everything you need to know about how it works. Beautiful setting plus hundreds of attractions plus a tireless body of promoters and supporters equals a destination that people hate to miss.
Is it the same thing year after year? I don’t really think so. There’s something comfy about the many repeat attractions, both of the vending and performing variety, but at the same time much of each year’s special flavor comes out of the unique and unpredictable blend of people that you meet. Applefest really is homecoming in Franklin, and the surprises and treats that come with the meeting of returnees, visitors and residents is what makes Applefest so much fun.
If that’s not enough variety for you, you can always change up your personal approach to mass of artforms and lifeforms in the heart of Franklin. Over the years I’ve mostly gone stag to the Fall Apple Classic. On the occasions that I traveled with my kids, we’d usually separate with agreement to meet again sometime within the next forty-eight hours (my family represents the full range of Applefestering enjoyment—my daughter could stay there all day and my son could stay there all of ten minutes).
But this year I plan to spend some of my Applefenestration time with a date, and I’m wondering exactly how one makes date time out of the Apple-y onslaught.
Walking through the main boothal area while holding hands is at best mean and at worst asking for trouble. I suppose some of it could be handled like a sort of window-shopping date, and there are obvious date activities available (we plan, of course, to see Peter Pan at the Barrow). But a romantic stroll by the kettle corn? Dancing to the strains of the FHS marching band? Buying special mementos which we then carry around until the plastic bagstraps are chewing their way through our tired fingers?
Is there couples marketing being done for marketing? If there is, I’ve missed it. If there isn’t, someone needs to get on it because we’re missing a market niche, and I’m pretty sure that with a little effort we could squeeze forty or fifty more bodies into downtown Franklin. In the meantime, I have some planning to do, starting out with limbering up my walking shoes.
For those of you who dread this time every year—lighten up. It’s a big party, full of music and toys and all kinds of great people, and it’s all right here in our back (and front and side) yard. Things will be back to beautiful fall normal soon enough; right now, relax and enjoy!

San Francisco Bay Area

2010-09-24T21:43:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, Sept 22) Last weekend I cashed in a couple of personal days and grabbed some cheap tickets to Northern California.
The purpose of the trip was to finally visit my daughter and her longtime boyfriend. I’ve made a few trips out to see my son in the wild and wooly environs of LA, but this was my first visit to the more sedate San Francisco Bay Area.
My son’s Hollywood neighborhood is more familiar through pop culture; his school is next to the Capitol Records building, so every time that landmark is trashed in a disaster movie, my son’s school is also collapsing in ruins. Other parents may have their fearful imaginings about what’s happening at their child’s school, but my nightmares have been produced in Technicolor and THX dolby stereo.
But most of my prior knowledge of San Francisco comes from Rice-a-Roni commercials and an old Ray Harryhausen movie in which a giant octopus with six legs (it was a low budget movie) tears down the Golden Gate Bridge and rips up a pier. You’ll be relieved to learn that the damage has been repaired.
There are lots of great things to see in the Bay area, from big trees to a beautiful waterfront. Walking through redwood forests was a big hit with my travel partner. And while there wasn’t much time to hunt folks down, the representation of FHS grads in the Bay Area is a credit to Venangoland. In addition to Nate Byham out there seeing field time for the 49ers, the region also boasts alumni Mark (Special Projects Editor for Wired Magazine), Jason (Associate Dean at SF Conservatory), Nick (Project Manager at Microsoft) and Barbara (PhD candidate at Stanford). And those are just the ones I know about.
Stanford itself is as big and fancy as you’d imagine. Leland Stanford had risen from shopkeeper to railroad magnate (and as such was one of the buyers who made Miller and Sibley’s fortune). When his teenaged son died of typhoid, Stanford and his wife decided it would be easier to create their own university that try to get stodgy old Harvard to accept their money.
The very first student at Stanford was Herbert Hoover. Today a tower sits in the center of campus housing the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank (Condoleeza Rice works there) looking to solve all the problems of the world. If you were familiar with my daughter’s politics, you would appreciate the irony of her department being housed just a few feet away from the instituion.
San Francisco seems greener and cooler than LA. The famous fog really does hang in the sky much of the time, creating a constant sense of impending rain. If you climb up onto one of the surrounding mountains, the entire bay presents one of those massive sprawling vistas that no camera can do justice. We are so used to seeing our world through the filter of pictures in albums, on tv, in movies—it’s good to come face to face with some of the beauty that can only be experienced live and in person. There is music that will never be as impressive on a recording and some sights that the world’s best camera in the hands of the greatest photographer cannot fully capture. Metro LA sprawled out across the valley is one; San Francisco Bay is another.
The bay area of course is loaded with high tech companies. Some are kind of cute—the Googleplex looks, from the outside, as if it might be the world’s largest day care center. Many Google employees make use of the company’s fleet of free bicycles. Seeing a dedicated Google nerd tooling around on one of these colorfully decked out sets of wheels, one cannot help but conclude that somewhere, a clown is sadly walking home.
We spent part of a day traveling to Monterey. Monterey was once the home of a robust canning and fishing industry. John Steinbeck grew up nearby and featured Monterey and its industry in several novels. Cannery Row, the title street of one Steinbeck novel, was once the home of that industry, but by the early 1970’s the fishing way of life had completely collapsed. Monterey became a haven for a variety of artists and musicians, and now Cannery Row’s buildings house shops, restaurants, and one fairly awesome aquarium.
In other words, Monterey lost all its traditional industry, and, with no real assets except some nice waterfront property, reinvented itself as a thriving center of tourism and the arts. Imagine that.

Puppy Time

2010-09-21T23:15:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, Sept 16) After my old dog Midnight reached the end of his long canine life, I though I was done with dogs. Turns out you’re not always done with all the things you think you’re done with.
The new dog in my life is Mr. Big (his Significant Human is a fan of Sex in the City), who is not just a dog, but a six month old chocolate lab puppy.
All of my previous dogs were full grown when I met them; my previous exposure to puppies has been primarily through cute commercials that focused mainly on the more adorable puppy activities such as Scampering and Being Floppy.
Big can scamper with the best of them, but he’s a larger fan of the mad galumphing chase after Something Over There. He is a might scourge of wind-blown leaves, and the night he found himself in the back yard just as the dusk-hour fireflies came out, I believe he might have pounced and chomped his way into a state close to nirvana.
He is also a master of Slobbering. If you can judge a puppy’s eventual size by the larger extremities that he will have to grow into—well, Big’s tongue suggests that this dog will eventually be large enough to scare great danes and small livestock. On a warm day, his tongue unfurls like a roll of carpet waiting to be installed in the grand ballroom at The Commons and sheds enough fluid to fill up every municipal pool Oil City has ever had.
Big finds the bike trail and river and any large area of grass and any place that has sticks all VERY EXCITING (because if Big could type, he would use all caps, all the time)!! Having him around is almost like the company of a small human child, except that with a child you assume that if you explain things more loudly and slowly the child will soon comprehend—no, actually, it’s exactly like the company of a small child.
I don’t know why we believe that a dog can understand English, or even loud English, but I know that we resort to explaining things more often than makes sense. I’m sure that what he hears is, “Blah blah blah blah BIG blah” and what he thinks is “OhohohOOOH—You are paying attention to MEEEEE!!!!!” We can try to explain that chewing couch cushions is not approved, but I think a spirited explanation of quantum physics would be just as useful.
Doesn’t matter. I provide him with running commentary about washing the dishes, cooking a meal, sitting in a chair. He does not appear to be any smarter and he has not offered to either do the dishes or cook a meal (though he’s totally ready to take over on the whole chair sitting thing). But I think part of the appeal of having a dog around is the conversation.
I am told that he is the doggie equivalent of adolescence, and he does occasionally exhibit a rebellious streak, but his heart hardly seems in it. Outside he’s become a bit slack in the bringing-it-back part of fetch, but inside he will still insist on shoving his toy into your hand until you drag it from between his pointy teeth and give it a toss.
He is definitely what the canine toy manufacturers call an “aggressive chewer.” There is nothing made for dogs to play with that Big cannot reduce to its component atoms. Having a wasted more than a few dollars on pleasant and attractive doggie toys that quickly became small wisps of fluff and stuffing, most of Big’s extended family has resorted to empty plastic pop bottles. 1 liter bottles are best, with the cap still on. Big can just about get his mouth around it before it squirts free like short-range bottle rocket, providing Big with unequaled joy, because the only thing more fun than chomping on something is chasing it first.
Cats do not disturb the territory they occupy, and that’s fine. But a dog is like a small random event generator, creating a comfortable level of chaos that keeps things interesting. I am told that Big will eventually settle a bit, and that’s fine, too. Venangoland is nice territory for a dog, all warm homes surrounded by wide swatches of open nature, packed with reminders that even in a quiet settled place like ours, there are sweet surprises that unfold before us, sometimes like wild bottle rockets and sometimes like warm companion settled comfortably around our feet.

From Utica to Princeton

2010-09-11T08:40:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, September 8) This week, another column for people who are certain that nothing good comes out of the smaller corners of Venangoland.
Samuel Dodds was a professor of Physics, Chemistry and Bible at Grove City College. An ordained minister (Presbyterian, naturally), he lived with his wife Alice Dunn in Utica.
Their son Harold Willis Dodds was born in Utica in 1889. No slouch, Harold graduated from Grove City College in 1909. He taught high school for a couple of years, then added graduate degrees in politics from Princeton and Pennsylvania. He married in 1917 and went to work for the Food Administration. After the war he taught at Western Reserve and became known as an expert in problems of small government.
He became secretary of the National Municipal League, which may not seem like much of a coup, but that put him in the orbit of then-Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes. Hughes steered the Utica boy toward Latin America, where among other things, Dodds helped the president of Nicaragua create new democratic election laws.
By the thirties, Dodds was a respected scholar on the faculty of Princeton. He was apparently well-respected, because in 1933 the trustees elected him president of the university.
As president, Dodds was the picture of the proper university leader; pictures show a bespectacled man with a serious expression and a twinkle in his eye. An article in the 1957 Princeton yearbook refers to his tendency to rib his faculty members, in return for which, they had gifted him with the nickname Uncle Harold. “Dr. Dodds” seemed too formal, and “Harold” not formal enough.
He pushed his faculty hard to produce significant research that would establish Princeton as a university that contributed to the body of knowledge in the world, but at the same time he also required his professors to actually teach, and teach well.
He worked a seventy hour week and tripled Princeton’s endowment (the yearbook credited his inner strength to his “Presbyterian commitments”). He decided every year to hold Princeton’s graduation ceremony outside, and it never rained.
Under Dodds’ leadership, Princeton added a Music Department , the Office of Population Research, the Creative Arts Program, and Departments of Religion, Aeronautical Engineering, and Near Eastern Studies. All this despite the fact that, after taking the president’s job, he memoed the alumni “I hope the alumni will pardon me if at this time I offer no stirring platform.”
He steered Princeton through the Depression, World War II, and the cultural upheavals that followed the war. In 1948, the Princeton debating society invited Alger Hiss to speak, and many protested. Dodds, who did not approve of Hiss, refused to interfere, saying, “Education includes the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them.” In 1953, Time magazine profiled him, calling him “the Quiet One.” He kept a low profile, but Princetonians also enjoyed sharing the story of President Dodds helping an undergrad lug a large mattress from one building to another.
He believed strongly in the sciences and humanities, but he also admonished faculty and students “to look to religion for the truths that will not perish.” He Time, “Hitler, F.D.R., Conant [president of Harvard] and I all came into power at the same time, but I’m the only one still doing what I was.”
One of Princeton’s own histories credits the years of Dodd’s presidency as “the years in which Princeton became a real university.”
Dodds retired in 1957; Princeton’s policy required mandatory retirement at age 68. He went on to serve as director or trustee for the Carnegie Corporation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Brookings Institute, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower also appointed him to government committees. Princeton established an award in his name, still awarded annually to a senior who best embodies the values he represented, "particularly in the qualities of clear thinking, moral courage, a patient and judicious regard for the opinions of others, and a thorough devotion to the welfare of the University and to the life of the mind."
He settled in his home in Highstown, New Jersey. He passed away at home in October of 1980 at the age of 91. His younger brother John Wendell Dodds died nine years later, having enjoyed a career as a professor at Stanford.
So apparently it is possible to be born and raised in Utica and grow up to have a lasting effect on one of the world’s pre-eminent universities.

Other Educational Benefits

2010-09-05T11:20:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, Sept. 2) Now that school has started, it’s time for the eternal question—why do we bother, anyway?
I’m a big believer in public education. I don’t believe in public schools because I teach there—I teach there because I believe. But lets face it—the standard arguments in favor of school have been worn threadbare. Blah blah blah informed citizens blah blah blah responsible member of society blah blah get a good job blah.
Those are all fine reasons, but for many people they are background noise. Like the Pledge of Allegiance, they are often repeated but rarely listened to. In many cases, they aren’t even believed. Contract talks in Rocky Grove bring out one predictable argument, summarized roughly as “Who needs stoopid school and edumacation anyways? Teachers ought to be happy to get paid as much as burger-flippers.” There may be legitimate arguments against the teachers’ position, but “Teachers and the work they do are no more valuable than packing groceries” isn’t one of them.
But I will leave it to others to make the standard arguments in favor of public education. Let me offer some other benefits of time spent in school.
Build Brain Muscles. “When,” asks the eternal student, “will I ever need to find a verb, solve an algebra equation, or recite the year the Spanish Armada sank?” The real answer is “probably never,” but that doesn’t matter.
Look at it this way. Basketball players spend the off season lifting weights, and yet no basketball game ever once involved a head-to-head leg press contest. Why do players lift when their weightlifting skills will never once be displayed in a game? Because the muscles that they build will make them better at what they do on the court.
You’re certain you’ll never use algebra in your career? I don’t care—working algebra builds mental strength and discipline that can’t help but be useful in life. Ditto for every other discipline. That’s why music and art have been repeatedly proven to make people smarter—even people who don’t grow up to be artists or musicians use the mental muscles that these disciplines build.
Meet Difficult People. There are people who really really want school to be a perfectly fair place, where nobody is ever mean, unfair, unpleasant or unkind. That’s an admirable goal, and many many teachers pursue that goal for their classroom, and they should. But I still have to ask parents who demand this perfectly fair environment—exactly what planet are you preparing your children to live on?
Some people are always difficult. Some people are difficult in certain combinations. Some people are mean and others are ignorant. Some lie, some cheat, some steal, and some use the advantages or power that they have to make life harder for others.
Understand, I don’t defend any of that behavior. Nobody can. Treating people badly on purpose, abusing power—these are always indefensible and wrong. And they are no more common in schools than they are in the rest of the world.
I hate stupid government-mandated standardized tests. But are stupid pieces of government regulations and paperwork part of life in America—of course they are.
Everything, no matter how wonderful, comes with hard parts. Beautiful joy-of-life babies cry at 3 AM. The job you’ve always dreamed of will include parts that are very unfun, or even jerks for co-workers or bosses. Good people occasionally have their hearts broken. Nice people sometimes get cancer. Life, you may have heard, is sometimes unfair.
Everybody deals somehow. Standing up, fighting back, sneaking past, calling the cavalry—there’s a whole list of coping mechanisms for handling life’s unfair difficulties. “Insisting they just not happen” isn’t on the list.
School is a chance to practice coping in a place where the cavalry is always nearby, in case it’s just too much. Learning to deal with that jerk today will help you prepare for the day ten years from now when he’s your neighbor, boss or in-law.
More Jokes. The more education you have, the more jokes you get. The best contemporary example would be The Big Bang Theory. Hilarious show, but if you have some actual education, particularly in physics or engineering, you get several more jokes per episode than the average viewer.
It’s true that for basic slapstick, no knowledge is required. But for all other human, you have to know something to get the joke. The more you know, the more jokes you get. More education = more laughs in your life.

NCLB and the New School Year

2010-08-27T15:44:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, August 26) It’s time for school to start.
This fall many school districts will kick off the year with their own individual adventures, whether it’s a technological upgrade or continued attempts to settle a contract. But every school district in the country will have one challenge in common—further tightening of the anti-education vice that is No Child Left Behind.
Remember—every school district in the country has about three and a half years left to make sure that every last student is above average. Or to be more accurate, that every last student can get a high score on a single multiple-choice, bureaucrat-designed high-stakes test.
A change in administrations has not, so far, blunted the idiotic impact of No School Left Standing. All the Obama folks have offered is Race To The Top, a deal whereby individual states can sell control of their school districts to the feds for big bucks. This makes perfect sense because, clearly, a bureaucrat in DC is the best judge of how, say, third graders at Rockland Elementary should be taught.
NCLB creates a problem in professional ethics for all school districts. On the one hand, school districts in general and the people who lead them in particular face powerful penalties if they do not make their numbers. NCLB is the law, and education is filled with people who respect The Rules. On the other hand, stealing educational opportunities from a child in order to make him spend his days practicing taking a standardized test bears not the slightest resemblance to providing that child with an actual education, and there isn’t a person with an iota of sense who doesn’t know that.
Advocates of the testing will say, “No no no! Don’t teach to the test! Just learn them kids real good and they will naturally do well on the tests.” There isn’t enough room in this entire newspaper to show all the ways that we know that’s wrong.
NCLB creates enormous pressure on school districts to do things that we know are educationally unsound. And as we enter the end stages of this legislative disease, one more nasty side effect becomes apparent.
NCLB has the potential to turn the entire school-student relationship on its head. A student who couldn’t or wouldn’t or chose not to try to learn used to be just a challenge to schools. That student ought to be a customer, but instead that student is a threat.
Across the nation, you’ll still see districts that are led by people with vision and courage who say, “Let’s figure out how to give these students great educations and somehow take care of the test scores.” But you’ll also see districts led by people who simply say, “I don’t care what else you do—get those numbers up.”
The worst districts will simply become processing centers, unconcerned with whether students have been prepared to be citizens in the real world or not. As long as the paperwork is okay, the numbers are acceptable, and the kid finishes (because dropouts also count against a district)—well, what happens to him after school isn’t our problem. It’s just our job to process him on through.
Every school district has administrators, counselors and teachers who will continue to do their damnedest to give their students a quality education, even if there are days when it feels as if they’re working in a hospital run by people who have required that antibiotics be replaced with drano.
Those educators will keep fighting to do the job they signed on for, even though it will become more of a fight over the next few years. If you’re a parent, you’ll want to find these people and make them your allies, and they can use your help as well.
Why am I still in the biz if I think the picture is so grim? Because I love my job. All this NCLB mess reminds me that it’s not a chore, not to be taken for granted, and well worth working and fighting for. Sometimes things of great value cost a little something. Education is powerful, important, valuable, and exciting, and American public education, where everyone can come together and swim in that same exhilarating river, is even more worthwhile. I know there are some people who have forgotten it and others who never knew it. I feel a little bit sad for those folks.
But it’s time for school to start. And I can’t wait.

Heinz Stadium Opener

2010-08-21T08:02:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, August 19) Last Saturday I found myself in Heinz Field at the Steelers’ pre-season opener, despite my total lack of NFL fan credentials. This wasn’t just my first trip to Heinz Field, but the first time I’ve ever seen the Steelers play live and in person. We went down early, parked the car in a nifty garage, and strolled about before grabbing supper and approaching the stadium, where we were cheerfully admitted despite our shocking lack of black and gold clothing.
Heinz stadium is pretty awesome all by itself, complete with its view of the city skyline. The jumbotron shows all, though my game-viewing companion and I agreed that the special effect that involves ketchup pouring out of two giant bottles to cover everything in a thick red layer of what is probably meant to be ketchup, but could well be blood—well, that’s a teensy bit disturbing.
Of course, Heinz is only the most obvious product placement. On the big screen McDonalds kept insisting that they were loving it, “it” presumably being that last play. A bright display strip runs all the way around the stadium so that people who accidentally try to watch the game still have sparkling ad copy in their field of vision.
Not that advertising waits for the stadium. For blocks in every direction, folks selling black and gold paraphernalia compete for sidewalk space with more traditional beggars. “Game day hat!” “Veteran!” “Don’t pay full price inside!” “Need medicine for my wife!” My personal favorite: “Why lie? I want a beer!”
We had won tickets at the Barrow’s Casino Night for the fancy shmancy Club Level. Club Level seats are ordinary nosebleed seats, but through the door behind them one enters the Club Itself.
This area looks like a cross between an airport lobby and the food court of a large mall. There are a variety of food-selling spots, multiple bars, high-seated tables and big comfy chairs, with a television screen roughly every two feet; it’s a perfect place for people who want to go to the game without actually going to the game.
I was not going to leave without trying some stadium food, so we headed into The Club and promptly got in line behind the Worst Customer Ever. This woman and her two children arrived at the counter after what must have been a twenty-minute wait, but apparently it had not occurred to them to consider what they might order when the blessed moment of truth finally arrived.
So they proceeded to discuss their foodal options at length, with Mom assuring her charges that they should take their time to really think deeply about this weighty choice. At one point (I am not making this up), Mom sent the hapless counter person to fetch the bag that the nacho chips came in so that the family could peruse the list of ingredients.
By this time the rain had become serious and a few thousand people were pouring into The Club, but Mom was apparently determined to teach her children the life lesson that when you are trying to decide whether or not you want relish on your hot dog, other people shouldn’t mind waiting for you.
I may sound a bit ranty, but the couple behind us was ready to start throwing things, starting with colorful language. I consider it all part of what enhances the stadium experience and makes it superior to watching at home. Also, stadium fries taste like amusement park fries, which is good.
The unanswered question of the night was how the crowd would respond to Big Ben. We saw lots of 7 jerseys, but I have no idea how it compared to previous years. Opinion in our section was divided between a loud-mouthed guy who yelled, “We’ve got your back, Ben” and another loud-mouthed guy who that Ben was a [insert not very nice word here].
Getting into and out of the area was far easier than I expected (though at least a third of the 55,000+ people didn’t come back after the rain delay). I didn’t get to hang with any obnoxious drunks, though the Big Screen periodically gave us a number to call if other patrons were displaying “intolerable behavior.” The crowd was really loud, but not intolerably so.
Overall a fun outing, entertaining even if you’re not exactly a major NFL fan. Or as Ronald McDonald said as he was smothered in a sea of blood-hued condiments, “I’m lovin’ it.”

Columbine

2010-08-14T11:18:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, August 12) All people concerned about violence in schools owe it to themselves to read Dave Cullen’s book Columbine. Sure, everybody knows the story. Two socially outcast Goth kids who were tired of being picked on snapped and went on a shooting spree for revenge on the jocks who had tormented them.
But here’s the thing about that story that everybody knows—it’s wrong.
Cullen was one of the first journalists on the scene, and he prepared for this book with hundreds of interviews and extensive study of the tapes and documents that have become available in the decade since the attack. His book made most of the major lists last year, but it deserves more longevity than just one year’s hot read.
Here are some things you might now know about Columbine without this book.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not social outcasts. They had friends, dated girls, played some sports. They were both better than average students—brains. They were not gothic; there was nothing to see about them that would have suggested they were anything other than completely mainstream kids.
They were not members of the Trench Coat Mafia. That group had come and gone years before; they were not connected to those students.
They were not an interchangeable pair. Eric was smarter, sneakier, scarier. Dylan was less secure, louder.
There were plenty of signs of trouble, particularly with Eric, who was not above going after old friends who crossed him. The local police possesed (but concealed for months afterwards) previous complaints about Eric which they had not acted upon.
The attack that occurred was Plan B. The intended attack was far worse; Harris had built bombs intended to rip through the cafeteria and collapse the floor of the library just above it. The bombs were in place—the two simply carried them into the school in duffle bags. The only reason that hundreds more weren’t killed was that Eric had made some wiring mistakes. There was no “snapping” involved—the attack had been planned for months.
The attackers were not beaten down outcasts, and they definitely did not suffer from low self esteem. From his journals, it’s clear that Eric’s problem was the opposite—he felt that he was smarter and therefore better than all the other stupid useless sheep of the world.
Could the parents have stopped this? Eric did the bulk of the planning and preparation, and he was an accomplished liar, proud of his ability to snow anybody, including his parents (that was part of how he knew he was better than everyone else). His parents were not abnormal or abusive, but Cullen does make it clear that when Eric did get in trouble, they preferred to handle things at home, working to keep any blemishes off his record so that his college prospects wouldn’t be hurt. Generally he would fake remorse and promise to behave, and his father would run interference with the authorities.
Dylan’s parents were also “normal,” but hands off. Though Cullen doesn’t say it explicitly, one implication is clear—Eric Harris, probably a sociopath, was always headed for trouble, but had Dylan never met him, his fate might have been far different.
There are other lessons in the book. The press bungled Columbine badly, particularly in the way they used students as expert witnesses when many students only knew what they had heard from the media.
There’s also a lesson in how people will cling to fiction. Many folks have heard about Cassie Bernall, made famous as the girl who said yes when asked if she believed in God and was then killed for her answer. That story, based on one student’s scrambled memory of events in the library, turned out to be inaccurate fairly early in the investigation, but the Bernall family has clung to it as well as publishing a best-selling book about their daughter.
The real story is in some ways more inspiring than Cassie’s fictional martyrdom—Val Schnurr was the girl in the library who actually declared her faith, and Dylan spared her. Nobody has written a book about her.
Why read a book about events so far in the past? The police response provides that lesson. Police reaction has been criticized, but they did what they had been trained to do. Their response was appropriate for some other situation, just not the one they were actually facing. Understanding what really happened has helped police develop responses that actually help. It’s better for us to know what really happened.

Out in the Silence

2010-08-06T08:10:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, August 5) I finally watched Joe Wilson’s documentary, “Out in the Silence.” Today I’ll try to answer the question, “Should you watch it, too?”
Before I start, I should make full disclosure of the baggage I carry into this.
First, while creating and promoting the film, Joe has taken a lot of shots at the school where I work, and continues to accuse me, my coworkers, and my bosses of behavior that would be unethical, unprofessional, and even illegal. Several years of being on the receiving end of personal and professional attacks do not make me likely to join the Joe Wilson fan club.
Second, I’m a parent and divorced guy, and I’ve often said about both that if you haven’t been there, you just don’t get it, no matter how well-meaning you are. The same is true here; no matter how sympathetic a straight male I may be, I will never really get what it means to live as a gay or lesbian person in a small town.
Joe’s film jumps off from the point when the News-Derrick ran the announcement of his wedding to his husband and local letter-writers reacted as if the newspaper had shoved a hot poker up their noses. (Full disclosure: I thought the paper was right, the people who objected were wrong, and the people who launched into hateful attacks were really wrong.) From there the film goes on to follow three stories.
The most problematic is the story of the former FHS student who sued the district. This thread presents the young man’s view effectively; unfortunately, that’s all there is. Part of it is the nature of the setting. The school district and its employees are bound to silence when it comes to our students. If his story is completely accurate, we can’t say so. If he has left out large chunks of important information, we can’t say that, either.
But Joe doesn’t do anything fill in that gap. Joe doesn’t talk to any other gay students, any straight students, any other parents. It’s not simply a matter of balance; Joe seems to want to suggest that this is part of a larger picture, but we get none of that picture. Was he the only gay student at school? What do straight students have to say?
Considerably more affecting is the story of the women renovating the Latonia Theater. We hear a variety of voices and Roxanne Hitchcock and Linda Henderson (full disclosure: I’ve known Linda since 4th grade) are an articulate and touching couple on film, and the Latonia is a striking and compelling project.
This section is the most poignant; the two women are no longer together and the Latonia sits uncertainly because of it. I suspect that splitting couples and family spats have tanked more enterprises in Venangoland than economic troubles.
The gutsiest section of the film shows Joe reaching out to letter-writers who objected to his marriage announcement. One couple responds, and Joe’s interactions with Pastor Mark Niklos and his wife Diane is the most honest part of the film. Joe includes a comment of his own showing bigotry about small-town folks and allows Niklos to make the observation that stereotypes run both ways. He also gives Pastor Niklos the best line of the film: “There are people behind the issues that we need to be sensitive to.” Mark and Diane emerge from the film as models of Christian witness on the issue without sacrificing their conservative principles.
Oddly, perhaps for narrative simplicity, Joe leaves us with the impression that Franklin High School and the Barrow Theater are both located in Oil City and the city of Franklin does not exist.
More amazingly, Joe almost made me feel sorry for Diane Gramley. After sandbagging her on camera at various public events and getting her to speak, he follows her down the sidewalk after a church service. Having finally learned her lesson, she walks silently, head forward. On the narration, Joe accuses her of treating him like he doesn’t exist. It’s a cheap shot, and if he doesn’t know that, then he’s forgotten a great deal about small town life. For a moment I felt bad for Diane. Then I remembered the tactics the AFA have used through the years, and I got over it.
Gay and lesbian life in a small town is a worthy and potentially interesting subject. Joe captures his characters, but in 56 minutes very little of the flavor of the community comes through. The film is worth viewing just for the Niklos portion, but as a full, balanced picture of a complex issue, it doesn’t quite succeed.

Another Trip to LA

2010-07-30T22:20:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, July 29) I recently returned to Los Angeles—not because I love LA, but because it is where my son is. He is the main sight I go to see, and my daughter’s ability to get there for the weekend was an extra double bonus. But the trip was also an educational opportunity for me.
It has been a while since I’ve flown. The airlines are perfecting the fine art of nickel and diming people to death. If a restaurant ran like an airline, the waiter would take your order and then ask, “Now, will you be wanting plates or silverware? It’s a minimal extra fee. And during the meal, would you prefer to balance on this axe handle, or will you be upgrading to our deluxe three-legged stool?”
Sucking the last drop of blood from every airborne stone has probably not helped the other hazard of air travel—fellow passengers. Air travel is by far the best way to encounter many humans who apparently believe that rules are for suckers and consideration is for saps. I never see more people who believe that only they matter than when I am flying.
Once in LA, there were other treats to see. I was traveling with a devoted shopping enthusiast, so I made my first trip to Rodeo Drive. It truly is an awesome monument to conspicuous consumption. Can a dress be worth $5,000 even if it does not walk under its own power nor cure any major diseases? At one gallery, I was tempted to buy my daughter a piece of art—they were having a moving sale and some pieces were marked down a full 10 grand. But then to keep things even I would have had to buy my son a car (and not a Kia, but a Lexus with solid gold bumpers).
One of the things the rich consume conspicuously in LA is space; these shops flaunted their wealth by filling their stores with air, instead of trying to cram maximum merchandise in minimum space. Just about anything looks sophisticated and uncheap when it is flawlessly displayed. Many of these stores looked really cool.
LA is not a particularly great-looking place. The plant life is painfully thirsty and the grass is uniformly brown. But it still contains pockets of great beauty, much of it the result of the same sort of richness and privilege celebrated by Rodeo Drive.
Some is a tad silly. We drove past the edge of Beverly Hills, and there were the famous tree-lined streets and beautiful homes, but there also was a great lumpen silver sculpture that looked like the world’s biggest baked potato.
But we also went walking in Griffith Park. The public park includes an observatory and a tunnel that have both appeared in umpteen movies, but it also includes miles and miles of mountainside trails that provide absolutely amazing views of the city stretched out across the valley.
The park is there because in 1882, Colonel Griffith J. Griffith, having made a huge bundle of money in gold, bought over 4000 acres of LA land. In 1896 he handed over 3000 acres (that’s over five square miles) of that to the people of LA. His conditions for the bequest are worth quoting:
“It must be a place of rest and recreation…for the plain people. I consider it my obligation to make Los Angeles a happier, cleaner and finer city. I wish to pay my debt of duty in this way to the community in which I have prospered”
J. Paul Getty must have had something similar in mind when he created his museum. It is an awesome collection of art housed in a setting of buildings and land that are stunningly beautiful. You cannot turn in any direction without seeing something that makes you want to point or snap a picture or say, “Wow.” And it is completely free.
Neither man was exactly exemplary. Getty was unhappily married five times, while Griffith spent two years in San Quentin for shooting his wife in the head (she lived and was granted a divorce plus custody of their son in a record 4.5 minutes). But they are examples of how people can make lasting and valuable contributions to their communities. Neither contribution is central to LA life, but both make the place better. In that respect, Venangoland is no different from LA—if you want your community to be a better place, figure out how you can use your resources to help make it happen.

Are We Still a Christian Nation?

2010-07-28T00:02:00.002-04:00

(News-Herald, July 22) I saw it in the polling place where I went to vote- a t-shirt with the motto “This is still a Christian nation.” I’m never sure what to make of that slogan.
First, there’s that word “still,” meant to suggest that our founding fathers established the US as a Christian nation. This remains a noisy point of debate, and as with most such noisy debates, both sides rival Oscar Meyer’s way with b-o-l-o-g-n-a.
Those who insist that the US was founding as a religion-free zone are full of it. Many of our founding fathers (and mothers, too) were solid, devout Christians, many of whom had come to this continent for the express purpose of building a City on a Hill where God would be worshipped Correctly. Those of our founders who were not so religious recognized, at the very least, that the moral influence of Christianity would make for better citizens and leaders. The Christian faith, for better or worse, is an integral part of our history.
However, those who insist the founders intended to create a nation in which leadership and Christianity walked hand in hand, and the Christian faith would be woven into the very fabric of government are also slinging large slabs of lunchmeat. The founders knew their history and in some cases had seen first hand the unholy mess that came out of mixing religion and government, usually with bad results for both (Oliver Cromwell, Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials, etc…). They had ample opportunity to install Christianity as an explicit, official part of US government, and they very carefully and deliberately did not.
Many of them tripped over this question: what exactly is the term “Christian nation” supposed to mean, anyway?
The Puritans set Massachusetts up as a Christian nation, and as such they felt free to banish and execute folks who did not worship Jesus properly. And I’m not just talking about witches—Massachusetts executed PA Quakers who insisted on spreading the wrong brand of Christianity and banished members of their own congregation who failed to express the “correct” doctrine. I assume that people who call for a Christian nation are not demanding that the government start deporting and/or executing all non-Christians.
Does it mean “governed by laws based on Biblical statutes”? Because that’s problematic as well, particularly if we go Old Testament, which involves creeping socialism (Leviticus 19:9-10 instruct us to leave part of our crop “for the poor and stranger”) and strict payroll instructions not to hold onto someone’s wages overnight (Leviticus 19:13), just to name two trouble spots.
It might mean a country that recognizes and incorporates the generally agreed-upon principles of Christianity, which will work real nice right up until you have to agree on what, specifically, those principles are. Individual denominations get torn apart by such disagreements. 150 years ago the Baptists splintered over whether or not the Bible supported slavery; today the Episcopal Church is fracturing itself over the Bible’s view of The Gays.
Maybe it’s supposed to mean “a nation where I can express my beliefs without being contradicted or scolded,” but let’s face it—most Christians can’t even get that in their own churches.
Then we get to intra-denominational squabbles. Would a Christian nation recognize the Pope as an infallible voice of God as Catholics (sometimes) do, or would a Christian nation refer to him as the Great Whore of Babylon as some hard-core Protestants do?
Maybe a Christian Nation is one that is predominated by Christians. If so, the numbers aren’t helpful. Waves of studies show that Christians have the same divorce rate, suicide rate, unmarried pregnancy rate as everyone else. The way most Christians live is, apparently, not particularly different from the way everyone else lives.
Trinity College has released the latest results of its thorough and respected survey about religion in American life. The percentage of self-identified Christians was down to 76% in 2008. The center of Catholicism is now in the Southwest; apparently Arizona’s immigration policy will hit the Catholic Church. The fastest growing “religion” is pagan/wiccan.
If a Christian nation is one where Christians are free from oppression, persecution and the threat of death, we’ve done well. Comfy, cushy Americans don’t always appreciate that--the fact that a cashier didn’t say “Merry Christmas” to you does not make you oppressed.
Historically, a [your religion here] country is one where you never have to stand up for your faith because everyone is already pretending to agree with you. I can’t imagine why any Christians would want that.

Tolerance

2010-07-16T13:23:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, July 15) I’m not a big fan of tolerance. Mind you, intolerance stinks. I am inclined to expect the best of people, and I take a certain pride in Venangoland—I think that there is much to love and appreciate about life here. So I find it jarring and embarrassing to hear about someone yelling out a nasty racial slur in one of our neighborhoods. If you call someone the N word or the F word, you are simply dead wrong.
But tolerance is not much of an improvement. Tolerance too often comes with a pricetag. When people say “I’ll tolerate you” that’s shorthand for “I’ll stop giving you the message that you are wrong and bad if you agree to keep delivering that message to yourself” or “I’ll treat you as if you’re good enough as long as you show me you understand that you aren’t.” People who wouldn’t play by these rules are called, historically, “uppity.”
Unraveling the mechanics of intolerance can be tricky, because so many people handle their relationships with other people backwards.
We like to think that we look at someone, weigh his various qualities, and conclude whether we like and respect him or not. But more often, we jump to that conclusion, and then we weigh his qualities based on that. If we like him, we make excuses for all his supposed faults. If we dislike him, we look for particular qualities we can criticize him for.
So I call Pat, a person I really like, “free-spirited and fun.” But Chris, a person who annoys the heck out of me, is “irresponsible and immature.”
You can see this pattern in action in schools. On their way to call Chris a “four-eyed geek,” kids will walk right past six other kids wearing glasses without saying a word. They aren’t picking on Chris because he wears glasses. They’re picking on him because they don’t like him. “Four-eyed geek” is just the particular tool they’ve picked up to smack him with.
The school can create a special program to make students more sensitive to those who wear glasses. It can make rules against using the term “four-eyed geek.” But at the end of the day, that won’t help Chris. They will just pick out something new to insult him with.
All of us believe, to some degree, that there are some people who deserve to be the victims of intolerance. Even champions of tolerance can be vocal about not tolerating intolerant people. It’s not unusual for us to get lectures about not painting all gay or black folk with the same brush, and to get these lectures from people who talk as if all small-town folks are the same (ignorant redneck hicks).
It’s hard to address the roots of intolerance because we often don’t honestly know ourselves. One of the lines drawn in the Great Gay Cultural Debate is the argument that being gay is just not normal and shouldn’t be treated as such. Except that there have been gay people around through all of recorded human history, which means that from a purely historical perspective, gay folks are more “normal” than democracy, fast food, or pants.
One root of intolerance is… intolerance. If you watch school students, you’ll notice that one of the main reasons I decide I don’t like you is that I perceive that you don’t like me. We’ve seen a steady stream of groups claiming to be “under attack,” because, hey, if I’m just defending myself, I’m not being an intolerant bully.
In small towns, we don’t get the full bombarding of cultural messages about which groups we’re supposed to be accepting this week. But we do have the advantage of actually knowing most of the people we deal with. We know Chris—we don’t have to call him “one of Those.” We can do better than reducing folks to imaginary stereotypes. (Well, except for people who didn’t grow up in Venangoland—you know what those people are like.)
Perhaps part of the solution is to be more specific and accurate in our displeasure. Don’t call Chris a four-eyed geek; just say “You annoy the heck out of me.” We can understand Chris as the individual that he is instead of reacting to the characteristics we assume automatically go with his glasses. Things would go better for all of us if we took others as the whole human beings they actually are, rather than merely tolerating them as the people we imagine them to be.

Wedding Traditions

2010-07-11T18:49:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, July 8) Summer is not complete without weddings, and I had the privilege of attending a very nice one recently as a Plus One.
Plus One’s have all the fun at weddings—you don’t know any of these people, so it’s not necessary to sample that special cake that is one layer of class reunion plus one layer of family drama held together with the emotional frosting of fraughtness.
Weddings are loaded with traditions, old and new, official and unofficial, silly and sweet. All of these come with loaded subtext.
Sometimes the subtext is easy to figure out. The bridal subtext might be “Hey, Everybody! Look at Me! Me Me Me Me MEEEEEEEEEE!!” Any bride who starts a sentence with, “It’s my day and I’m entitled to….” just doesn’t understand the situation. Fortunately, it’s also traditional to forgive the bride for saying stupid things under pressure.
In the ceremony, fathers still “give away” their daughters, as if the wedding solemnizes a bill of sale. These days almost everybody gets that this is a teensy bit bizarre, but it’s one of those traditions that has such a powerful link to earlier generations (not to mention to the days when the bride was old enough to think about marriage, but too young to think about sexist patriarchy) that it remains irresistible.
For new traditions, I like the unity candle. Seeing the moms light the family candles is a nice piece of symbolism about the joining of two families, plus it gives the moms something to do while letting everyone get a good look at their outfits.
The only thing almost as obnoxious as self-involved brides are all the friends and family members who believe that the purpose of the occasion is for the bride and groom to publicly rank everyone they know in order of importance.
The correct offer for friends and family is “Whatever will help your special day go most smoothly.” But you have to really mean it, because often the true response to that is “We’ll just be happy to have you there.” In other words, come sit in a pew and be quiet.
Friends and family who insist on being given a place of prominence have led to all sorts of traditions from the made-up job (“Aunt Ethel, we would be so pleased if you would personally guard the punch bowl”) to the person who inserts himself into the reception (“Hey, everybody, listen up. Since I have always been a very important part of the life of my second cousin’s niece twice removed, I thought I should say something today…”). And the world would be a much better place if couples would stop buckling to pressure to lengthen their ceremony by including musical selections by relatives who don’t sing very well.
Divorced guests must behave themselves. When the ceremony gets to the parts about the power of love and the eternal nature of this bond, divorced guests may neither snicker sarcastically nor burst into bitter tears.
Some subtext is hopelessly garbled. Throwing rice symbolized fertility. Birdseed symbolized… small meals? Soap bubbles symbolize cleanliness?
At the reception guests may reveal their uglier sides (particularly if the wedding party takes six hours for pictures). Some traditions are a test—can the couple stand on their own two feet? The clinking glasses are just a way for folks to say, “Look what we can make them do! Dance, puppets, dance!! Bwa-ha-ha!” The cake cutting is even worse. Will you show everyone that your first loyalties are now to each other, or will you bow to peer pressure and entertain guests by demonstrating that your marriage, a few hours old, is just as layered with conflict and power struggles as everyone else’s. When new couples smash cake in each other’s faces, divorced guests get to react visibly.
The modern wedding reception is run by some combination of the photographer and the dj. Select your photographer for two qualities: speed and unobtrusiveness. Photographers can turn a reception into a massive photo op, and couples end up doing a series of things for no purpose other than taking a picture of it. Nobody gets out their wedding album to say, “Hey, remember that time when we posed for the camera?” Make your photographer chase you around.
A good reception dj can sense the mood of the crowd and is personal without trying to be the star of the show. And of course a good reception dj understands one simple fact—nobody is truly married until they’ve done the chicken dance.

A Few Fourth Reminders

2010-07-02T15:56:00.001-04:00

(News-Herald, July 1) For Independence Day, here are some reminders of some oft-forgotten notes about our country’s origins.
The French Don’t Always Stink. We like to talk about how we single-handedly secured our own freedom and independence as a nation. But if it weren’t for the French, we’d be singing “God Save the Queen” at the start of every ball game.
The French provided the critical political support of recognition and the practical support of military supplies and advice. The French took a bit of a political leap of faith with a tiny wanna-be country that smart observers expected to get crushed by the mighty British empire. This is particularly remarkable given that it had been barely twenty years since they had been at war with us. George Washington got his first military training fighting against the French, and his most important assistance from a French general.
Amateur Soldiers Aren’t That Great. Yeah, the minutemen grabbed their guns, left their homes, and headed off to fight for independence. Where they drove their leaders crazy. Many of those early volunteers stuck it out, fought hard, and learned to function like a real army. But in many cases, leading the continental army was like herding cats. Hungry, homesick, ornery, ADD-afflicted cats.
Washington’s heroic decision to cross the Delaware on that cold December night was forced, in part, because on January 1 a large chunk of his army’s term was up, and they fully intended to go home regardless of what George had in mind.
Many 18th century politicians disliked the idea of a standing army; professional soldiers had an unfortunate history of taking over countries. But the Revolution convinced many folks that the country would be best served by real, professional soldiers.
The Founding Fathers Weren’t Much Like Family. We often discuss the founding fathers or the framers as if they were a single unified group with one cohesive vision and intent for the country. They weren’t.
Many of them didn’t even like each other. Patrick “Give Me Liberty or Death” Henry thought Washington was a jerk. Pretty much everyone thought Thomas “Common Sense” Paine was a loon. Southern leaders thought the Massachusetts folks were priggish schoolmarms. Northern leaders thought the Southerners were morally deficient libertines.
And the founders themselves were (like real, live humans) changed by time and events. Nobody ever fought harder for a peaceful reconciliation with Great Britain than Ben Franklin, until he became convinced it was hopeless. Jefferson and Adams were best buds—except for the couple of decades when they hated each other and didn’t speak.
There isn’t a single aspect of our nation that we take for granted—a federal government with its own capital, national currency, a supreme court, every single line of the constitution—that wasn’t violently opposed by at least one “founding father.” And speaking of opposition…
Politics Have Always Been Ugly. We may imagine that modern politics are ugly, but if anything they are cleaner now than in the first fifty years of our country’s existence. Jefferson and Adams were slandered and libeled to astonishing degrees by each other’s backers, accused of everything from treason to moral turpitude. Members of Congress occasionally tried to physically beat each other up. And while everyone remembers that founding father Aaron Burr killed founding father Alexander Hamilton in a duel, we tend to forget that at the time Burr was the actual Vice President of the United States.
What they agreed on. What the founders did agree on and accept was that their opponents were Americans, too, and as citizens of the same great nation, they would often need to compromise, even on issues of considerable personal importance. Granted, their idea of citizenship was not exactly a big broad tent—mostly the founders thought that a citizen was a white male who owned stuff. But their political wrangles, ugly and difficult as they could be, were directed at the goal of finding a compromise that everyone could live with, not at obliterating the opposition or somehow making it go away completely.
We Americans are too often ignorant of our own history, too often proud of that ignorance, and too often willing to just make it up to suit our own agendas. It seems a waste to focus national pride on things that aren’t exactly true, when there are so many things to be proud of in our history. The first step is know about that history. July 4 is the perfect holiday to celebrate with a good, well-researched, legitimate history book.

Venangoland's Housing Clutter

2010-06-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, June 24) Why all this clutter in my house?
First, the things I can’t part with because I might want them some day. Cardboard boxes, pieces of wood, assorted doohickeys—they are all perfectly good and the day might come in the future when I want them. So they stay.
Then there are things that I keep because I’ve always had them. I have a small black desk that I bought at Dave Beals’ yard sale for five dollars sometime around 1970. I’ve had it with me every place I’ve ever lived, but it has been thirty years since I actually used it for anything. But it has always been in my home, and so I can’t quite bring myself to part with it.
There are things that belong to my children. This includes furniture that their mother gave them, stuff of mine that I imagine they might want some day, and their own memorabilia (in my daughter’s case, that means basically everything she has ever touched since she was an infant).
It’s not just people that can have a clutter problem. It can happen to cities, too, and for many of the same reasons.
For the last month or so, users of craigslist (the most ubiquitous of internet classified ads) have been offered a chance to buy an entire city block in Oil City. For $29,900, you can have four conjoined buildings, including the old Brody’s site. 35,000 square feet, 48 offices, and low taxes. Prospective buyers might be turned off by the condemned sign on the old Brody’s door, but perhaps someone will see this as a great opportunity.
It’s not just business locations, though Venangoland has plenty of those (the Galena building in Franklin, anybody?) When a population shrinks, it leaves a lot of excess housing. Let’s crunch some quick numbers from the US census.
2009 population estimate: 54,183. 2000 population estimate: 57,555. 2008 housing units: 27,267. Households in 2000: 22,747.
So, right now, we have 4500 more housing units than we needed ten years ago, back before the population dropped 3000 people. We have more than one housing unit for every two people. We have too much housing.
In no place is the issue more evident than in the metro Oil City area, where the most recent study found 500 “problem” homes. What do you do with these sorts of problems?
It’s easy to fall back on clutter rationale. My kids, or someone, might want it some day. This building has always been here; the place wouldn’t feel the same without it. And there’s another problem that household clutterbugs don’t have.
It would take bales of money to save the Brody block. But it would also take a lot of money to demolish it. Demolition is pricey anyway, but then you add the various regulations surrounding old building materials which often require special handling. We can thank, for instance, the lobbyists for the asbestos removal industry, who years ago got legislators to insure that every building that touched asbestos would become a ridiculous, expensive nightmare.
There’s only one low-cost choice for people who own these white elephants—stand back and let nature take its course. This is, of course, a lousy choice for the community. For commercial property, it means large, dangerous eyesores. For residential properties, it means not only eyesores, but free housing and business space for drug dealers and other blights.
There is one large city that has a plan. Detroit has now lost about two-thirds of its peak population, and their housing blight problems are epic. Their mayor intends to demolish 10,000 houses over the next four years. This has some broadbased support, particularly among faith-based groups who are tired of watching their neighborhoods descend into guns and drugs.
It’s tough to do that kind of urban purging. You have to make sure you don’t replace old ugly with modern ugly (yes, Franklin’s 13th Street, I’m looking at you). You have to get people to let go, and you need leaders who can articulate a vision of your destination beyond “knock down excess ugly buildings.” And government needs to help, not so much with money, but with clearing the many bureaucratic hurdles. There are cheaper ways to get rid of Brody’s-like buildings, but they require government permission.
The payoff? When you cut off a diseased tree limb, you save the tree. And when you clear out the clutter in your home, you make space for new and exciting things to take its place.

BP: My 2 Cents

2010-06-18T10:00:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, June 17) Since I’m sitting here in the region that birthed the oil industry, I figure I can take a shot at the gulf oil disaster, too.
First, folks should stop latching onto events to either prove, or avoid disproving, political stances. Offering this spill as “proof” that all deep-sea drilling should be shut down is dumb; if City Hall burns down, we won’t outlaw all open flame. (It is a good argument for drilling in shallower seas, though.) Claiming that an oil spill is no big deal and that nature will just fix this up in no time is just transparently stupid; the next talking head who makes the claim needs to be put in a dinghy and dropped in the middle of the afflicted area.
Beyond the various schemes to stem the suboceanic gusher, we’re hearing many ideas about long term responses. Most are unattractive. Shutting down the entire oil industry and living on nuts and berries seems unlikely. The government should either take more charge or back further away. And somebody, somewhere should be held responsible.
Several writers have made a convincing case that this is one more instance of a repeating theme—enterprises that are too large to succeed. The oil drilling industry, the housing industry, the financial industry, and the health care industry are complexes of massive interlocking pieces so hugely beyond human scope that they are destined to crash and burn over something small and stupid.
That last part is not new. Every so-called natural disaster has one thing in common—an exercise of really bad human judgment. The Johnstown flood, the Titanic, any number of catastrophic fires—all of them are the offspring of some humans who said, “Nah, don’t worry. That won’t turn out to be a problem.”
The spewing well did, in fact, have blow-out protection, the same protection that has functioned correctly in the past. Only it appears that this one had been damaged just a short time before the disaster. What do you want to bet that someone said, “Ah, just keep pumping till we get the parts in. It won’t turn out to be a problem.” Safety devices are covered, but there’s no safety device so fool-proof that some fool can’t mess it up.
More government regulation? I’m not a fan, but there are times for governments to step in. Processes that can potentially screw up on a planetary scale seem like an appropriate time. The problem with government regulations is that there are too many dumb ones. The government can’t tell the difference between protecting the habitat of a rare stripey snail and protecting the coastline of seven American states.
And with government, the Principle of Stupid Rules applies: the presence of any stupid rule on a list of rules makes people more likely to ignore ALL the rules, including the necessary ones.
Another part of that problem is that even a government that is too big may still seem smaller than a big multi-national corporation. Congress knows who its boss is, fellow citizens, and we aren’t it.
What would I like to see? I’d like to see some people in handcuffs. BP leaders ought to be ashamed to show their faces in public. At every juncture they have hidden or lied about critical information, and they have invested way too much energy in PR garbage when any decent humans would be too ashamed to do anything but fall on their swords or enter a monastery. How do you show your face in public when you have screwed up an ocean?!
Yes, we are only human, and humans make mistakes. But if you are running a nuclear power plant, operating on my child’s heart, or pumping a gazillion gallons of oil out of the ocean, you don’t get to use that excuse.
Governments should fine them. People should sue them. BP should end up penniless, along with Haliburton and the other involved corporations. Individuals linked to the chain of bad choices should become unemployable pariahs. The work and oil won’t end; other companies should buy it up, take it over, and run it while living in fear of screwing up this badly.
Of course that won’t happen. Even small oil companies here in Venangoland know how this works; if you get in big legal trouble, declare bankruptcy, escape making payments, and re-incorporate as a new company that can’t be held liable for the old sins. And someone will still have to pay to fix the mess…

Change

2010-06-11T15:15:00.001-04:00

(News-Herald, June 10) For the past two weeks, my regular desktop computer has been in the shop with am infection of some virus or other. It was returned to health relatively quickly, but in the meantime I had to get by with a laptop.
You would think it would be a minor adjustment to go from sitting at my desk to sitting on the couch, but I think I would just as soon try to write the column sitting on my roof while being attacked by screaming weasels—as long as I can use my regular computer.
I don’t always do well with change. In this respect, I know I have lots of company. My daughter would, I think, happily freeze the world in place more or less forever. She has adjusted admirably at every new stage of life—graduation, adulthood, new places—but she does it grudgingly, and I understand her reluctance.
Not everybody is like us. My son actually requires a little change on a regular basis, and he can adjust pretty quickly to new situations, though I think even he likes to know that there is a solid unchanging base somewhere in the world.
This is a season of change. It is graduation time in Venangoland (and that also means the opening of wedding season). And that means lots of folks coping with change.
Perhaps this kind of official, ceremonial change is easier, because you can see it coming and brace yourself for it. On the other hand, the waiting time may just mean more time to be tense and fretful. Maybe change that comes as a complete surprise creates less overall stress.
Why does change create stress at all? There’s no question that it does—psychologists Holmes and Rahe in 1967 created the life stress scale, giving each major life change a rating. Death of a spouse clocked in at 100. Losing your job rated a 47, but getting married scored a 50. The message of this list is clear—even changes that we think of as good news create stress.
Change is always a sign that we’re about to face the unknown. Something is going to happen and we don’t know what the outcome will be. And that in turn means that we don’t know how well we’ll deal with whatever we’re about to face. Will we fail? Will we look stupid? Are we strong enough, wise enough, or will change reveal our failings?
For that fear, many of us stick to changes that are well-traveled by many. If most people have come through this change without great damage, we probably can, too. It’s when we handle a transition differently than the crowd that we can really start to worry. If we don’t do it the “normal” way, we might get hurt.
Still, most of us are far tougher than we look. In fact, most of us are far tougher than we look to ourselves.
We also often tend to over-estimate the amount of change we’re going to face. Graduation and marriage are two examples of transitions that change everything—and yet change nothing at all.
Once you have that diploma in your hand or that ring on your finger, your circumstances have changed completely. You have whole new responsibilities, relationships, realities and some other R word to face. So everything has changed.
But diploma or ring notwithstanding, you are still exactly the same person you were before. You have the same strengths, the same weaknesses, the same desires, the same abilities. You are no wiser, no more foolish, no less broken, no more whole than before a piece of paper declared that you had entered new circumstances.
At Franklin High School’s baccalaureate service, senior Kyle Askins made a wise observation that I’ll now try to paraphrase: it’s good to believe that God will send us what we need to deal with challenges, but it’s also good to consider that He may have already given us what we need to handle our circumstances. Change and challenge are a chance to examine ourselves.
Change reveals who we are and challenges us to see what we can become. One of the exciting things about life is the constant process of bringing our strengths and passions and wisdom to bear on the world in ways that change lives and lift us up in strength and growth. But that can be hard.
Change can be uncomfortable, but too much comfort is the enemy of growth. Here’s wishing every Venangoland high school senior an uncomfortable graduation.

Hit the Outdoors

2010-06-06T15:42:00.001-04:00

(News-Herald, June 3)This is a great time of year to rediscover the beauty in Venangoland. There are many places in this country where taxpayers spend millions of dollars to create parks that offer a fraction of the beauty that we wake up with every day.
It is time to leap back into it, time to make your resolution to get active and outside.
Bike trail mileage gets extended a bit further every year. New places to go, new slices of our own great outdoors to see by pedal or by foot. But if you do some bike trailing, remember a few basics.
Traveling on the trail with a companion, whether it’s friend or family, is a great way to make the miles fly by. If you can just keep chatting, you can travel so much further. If you can’t keep chatting, it may be time for a rest stop.
But if you’re traveling side by side, please take an occasional look behind you and make sure that you’re not a traffic obstruction. People behind you might use some of the standard alert hails such as “Left!” or “On your left” or “Passing on your left” or “If you’re still on the left side of the track in a few seconds, we are going to have a potentially painful interaction.” Of course, the people behind you might be painfully shy or excessively polite or too busy gasping for breath to wheeze out a hail.
If your companion is a dog, keep an eye peeled. You may know that your adorable two-ton Doberman won’t try to eat the approaching bicyclist, but the bicyclist does not know that. And while the trail makes a great dog walk (there are so many things to sniff!!), please remember that others will be walking there, too.
And be friendly. It used to be that everyone you met on the bike trail said, “Hi,” and most folks still do. It’s a simple custom. You don’t need to break stride, exchange phone numbers or propose marriage. Just smile and acknowledge other peoples’ existence.
For those who would rather paddle than pedal, the good news is that watercraft rentals are once again easily available. OARS (Outdoor Allegheny River Service) has gotten a variety of custom trips going as well as the standard creek and river trips.
There is no better way to see Venangoland than by water. Geese, ducks, heron are all traveling about with their families these days. Sliding down the river and creek, valley and forest rising up on either side, is like going back to the days that Native Americans traveled through this territory, or the days when this was colonial frontier.
As regular readers know, I prefer kayaks to canoes. Harder to tip over, closer to the water, easy to travel even when you’re on your own. There are plenty of places to acquire kayaks—you can buy them off the rack or even order them through the mail. But I recommend a dealer who can help you try out a variety of craft to find the one that best suits you— my neighbors at Wiegel on the Water fit that bill nicely.
Kayaks come in a variety of space-age materials. My own is about ten years old and is just as healthy as the day I bought it. A kayak is an entertainment investment that can last a lifetime if you wish.
Whether by trail or waterway, you owe it to yourself to get into the outdoors in Venangoland. There’s no question that there are bigger, more spectacular vistas to view. The Rockies, the Grand Canyon, even b-list outdoorsiness like the White Mountains and the Badlands of One of the Dakotas, can suck the air right out of your lungs with their awesomeness.
That kind of awesome can remind you of how breathtakingly amazing the world is, the giant scale of creation. But next to that level of splendor, it’s easy to feel like a tiny intruder, overmatched and out of place. That kind of nature can feel outsized and out of reach.
Here in Venangoland, there’s plenty of beauty that is near at hand, nature that is close and welcoming, reminding us that all this is beautiful, that it is right here, and that we are part of it. Instead of grand opera, it’s your best friend sitting with you on the porch.
You meant to get out there last summer, but somehow didn’t quite. Don’t make that mistake again this year.

Want and Need

2010-05-29T12:49:00.001-04:00

It is human to confuse the distinction between what we want and what we need.
If things were free, we’d all live in mansions, drive luxury sedans, and watch giant HD televisions. We’d have giant tennis courts in every playground and basketball courts under air conditioned domes. Our children would go to the best colleges and wear perfect new outfits every day.
But things aren’t free. Things cost. And that raises problems.
First is opportunity cost. If I spend money on one thing, I can’t spend that same money on something else. Opportunity cost is easy to overlook; to see it, try this exercise. You’re about to spend a hundred dollars on a golden widget. Stop and ask yourself: if I suddenly found myself with a fresh new hundred dollar bill, what would I spend it on? If the answer is not “a golden widget,” your opportunity costs may be too high.
With a need, opportunity cost doesn’t matter. A need is something we can’t do without. If we’re honest with ourselves, that’s a very short list. I definitely need food, but I merely want steak.
We’ve had a growing national problem with the want/need thing in recent years. We define need based on what we used to have, or what other folks have. “Can’t live without” is defined as “not used to living without” or “nobody else is doing without it.” Many of us have convinced ourselves that we need things we can’t afford. Many businesses have made big bucks from enabling our spending spasms. And our leaders have set mighty bad examples.
No political side owns the high ground on this issue, though both like to claim it. DC has been spending money we don’t have on “essentials” for a while now, and the only thing that faux liberals and pretend conservatives disagree on is what we’ll insist is necessary. One decided that grabbing some big glob of government health care for (mostly) every citizen is necessary, no matter the cost. The other decided that a war for pride and oil was necessary, no matter the cost. And both decided that the US needed to own industry and banking. (And it’s not just as US thing—see Greece).
All parties concerned will offer the same defense—we absolutely needed the thing that we bought. And certainly that’s the judgment we all make—what do want to classify as a need. (Voters are part of the problem—no politician has ever won election by telling voters, “You don’t really need that, so stop asking for it.”
Setting priorities is fine. I decided years ago that books and music are more important to me than really nice shoes. I decided that paying most of my kids’ college costs was something I wanted more than any number of nicer toys. How much I wanted the nicer toys doesn’t matter, because here’s the second thing—there’s only so much money, and no amount of want nor need changes that.
That’s why it’s important to know the difference between wants and needs—because when the money gets tight, you can’t just get everything on both lists.
Sometimes a real need comes along, like a round of cancer or a giant exploding oil well. The irony with most so-called natural disasters from the Johnstown flood to the Titanic to the most recent coal mine deaths is that they are frequently the result of humans deciding that something (like, say, lifeboats or a way to plug up the sub-oceanic hole they were digging) wasn’t really necessary.
Sometimes it’s not our fault that we can’t afford the things we want. Nobody plans on losing their job or coming down with an expensive disease. Here in Venangoland, we’re insulated from most real estate sticker shock; if we lived in a metro area, most of us couldn’t afford the houses we live in now. Complain all you like about real estate tax rates; moving to a place where your house drew half the millage rate but cost six times as much would not save you money.
Whether it’s our fault or not, individually or collectively, we can’t afford what we can’t afford and we don’t need what we don’t need. I’m not saying it’s easy to figure out our limits or sort out our wants and needs, but a good first step would be to admit that we need to do the figuring and sorting. I need shelter; I don’t need the Taj Mahal.

The Modern Sociopath

2010-05-14T07:02:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, May 13) They don’t make sociopaths like they used to.
Sociopaths were dashing, charismatic liars, cheaters and manipulaters. They were dangerous, even if they were charming. To them, other people simply were not real, and therefore the sociopath felt no guilt or empathy when using others as disposable set dressing in the sociopath’s ongoing live-action play entitled “It’s All About Me!!”
Sociopaths appeared in pop culture as engines of death and destruction. A dozen slasher movies and their sequels are built around a soulless, relentless sociopathic killer. The psycho with a chain saw stood in for the unkind, unyielding grinding gristmill of the world. He was everything Out There that was out to get us.
But our cultural sociopaths have changed. Nowadays millions tune in, for instance, to watch the exploits of Gregory House, a character whose disregard for other human beings is monumental, and Bones, a scientist whose ability to connect with other human beings is virtually non-existent. These characters appear in dramas, but we have funny sociopaths, too. Sheldon of Big Bang Theory and Barney of How I Met Your Mother are characters who are shamelessly self-centered. Sheldon’s attempts to intellectually dissect the behaviors of friendship and Barney’s use of women with less regard than usually given for Kleenex—these are the source of weekly laughter for millions of folks.
These are the super-competent sociopaths. Dr. House would be completely unemployable, except that he’s the most brilliant doctor in the tv world. These characters provide fictional entertainment even though, in real life, we wouldn’t put up with them for five minutes.
The old scary sociopaths were our fears—take a wrong step, and something bad will get you. The new sociopaths are our fantasy—wouldn’t it be fun to be so smart and capable that you could treat people badly with impunity.
However, real-life sociopaths fit another mold. I call these guys the benign sociopaths, because most of the time they are relatively harmless.
Small town life provides some insulation from classic real-life sociopaths. These guys tell big, grandiose lies to create a scenario that celebrates their excessive awesomeness, but that’s hard to pull off here. We may remember the guy who touted his service record and claimed to be a famous celebrity’s personal pilot, and we’ve seen more than one boss who tried to manage various groups by telling each set of people a different set of lies. They’re gone; the short loop of small town talking short-circuits standard sociopathic smokescreens.
Not that the internet doesn’t add a new wrinkle. With an afternoon and some software, I can set up web pages to make me look like the heroic CEO of a massive, powerful organization. But it’s still the classic sociopath’s way to use people as props for the larger-than-life fantasy playing in his head, and once those people outlive their usefulness or stop playing their part, the sociopath will drop them like hot rocks. In a small town, it doesn’t take long to pile up enough hot rocks to burn you.
A benign sociopath is quieter, less obvious. He may not be all that bright, and so his dreams are not that big. Instead of being surrounded by the human and material props of great wealth and fame, the benign sociopath may dream of being good enough at his job that his underlings don’t question him and he doesn’t have to take any difficult phone calls.
The benign sociopath finds dealing with employees, customers or clients frustrating because he is literally incapable of grasping any viewpoint other than his own. When they try to express their concerns to him, they might as well be describing Mars in Greek. He becomes frustrated because he cannot imagine how anybody could see any view other than his. He doesn’t really have any idea what you just said to him, so he will just repeat himself until you go away.
The benign sociopath finds these interactions so bothersome that he will lie and manipulate to avoid them. He loves email, because you can’t talk back to him, and he’ll give you information at the last possible minute so you don’t have time to disagree with him.
How to deal with a benign sociopath boss? Like all sociopaths, he’s living in a personal fantasy in which he’s beloved, successful, and undisturbed by everyone else’s reality. If you can keep breaking down that fantasy, you might have a chance for change. Or he might just pick up a chain saw.

The Trouble with Stupid Rules

2010-05-07T16:04:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, May 6) Now that the school year is starting to wind up, I’m wondering how things have been going in Danvers, Massachusetts.
You may recall that a high school in Danvers banned all uses of the word “meep.” Students were gathered for an anti-meep-policy assembly. All parents of students at the school received a robo-call about the new rule, and the principal also informed folks that police were “being kept aware of the situation.” A lawyer who sent the principal an e-mail that said, in its entirety, “meep,” received a reply telling her that her e-mail had been forwarded to the police. Students organized a protest through facebook. The administration blustered some more.
The whole situation was a fine example of the Rule of Stupid Rules in action. The Rule says, in part (and I’m saying “in part” because I’m making this rule up now and I might want to add to it later), that Stupid Rules never solve the problem they’re created to solve and always do great damage to the institution that tries to use them.
Stupid rules are bad for the organization, whether it’s a school or a volunteer board or a municipality or an entire country. Here is why:
1) Stupid rules almost never actually address the problem they’re meant to address. Reports from Danvers suggest that the original problem was that students were using “meep” to harass a biology teacher. “Don’t harass the teacher” seems like a good rule, and more useful in this situation. They were yanking open his classroom door, popping into the room, and yelling “meep.” The four-letter word in question seems like the least problematic variable in this equation.
2) Stupid rules are usually painfully specific. In Pittsburgh, it’s illegal to sleep outside on a refrigerator. This devotion to detail means that
3) Stupid rules are hard to enforce and easy to mock. If I go to the burgh, may I sleep beside a refrigerator? May I sleep on a stove or microwave? What if I’m on the refrigerator resting my eyes?
If I can’t say “meep,” can I say “meet”? Or “eep”?
4) Stupid rules lead to major battles. Once I start mocking your rule, you and I both know that we are no longer really talking about the rule. By instigating a stupid rule, you create whole new ways for me to thumb my nose at you. Not only that, but to the casual observer, it doesn’t look like I’m being disrespectful, and if you go ballistic, you’re the one who looks stupid.
The principal at Danvers High created a situation where any student could easily mock his authority, and all he got for his trouble was yards of news coverage in which he looks like a dope.
5) Stupid rules don’t work. Want to bet that students in Danvers still say “meep”? Because stupid rules actually encourage people to oppose authority while giving them new and creative ways to do it, stupid rules actually create way more problems. I’ll bet when this mess started, the meepers were mostly just the students of that particular teacher. By the time the authorities were done, every student in the school was a meeper.
6) Trying to crack down just puts you in the wrong.
Seriously. Did that principal once consider what would happen when he was standing in a courtroom trying to explain to a judge why the first amendment does not cover the right to say “meep”?
7) It erodes institutional respect. When you’re in charge, you get a certain amount of respect for showing up, and after that you either build it or destroy it. The Declaration of Independence observes that all government takes its power from the consent of the governed. Give the governed enough reasons to stop thinking of you as a legitimate authority, and pretty soon you won’t even be able to get them to follow you out of a burning building.
Almost every state and municipality has some stupid rules on the books. Someone in uniform who insists on enforcing them as if they are essential to preserving civilization doesn’t increase respect for the rules—he just decreases the respect for his uniform. Likewise, the steady flow of stupid rules from big marble buildings in DC has not increased anybody’s faith in the Fed’s ability to save us all.
Danvers’ meepy international fame faded in about a week, but the t-shirts are still for sale and I’m betting that’s one principal who is looking forward to summer vacation.

Bullying

2010-04-30T07:01:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, April 29) Bullying is back in the news. Recently we’ve seen disturbing new developments, including bullying so extreme that it has driven teens to suicide. Bullying in schools is nothing new, but commentators are suggesting that we have turned an ugly new corner.
The problems of society have always leaked into public schools; a new wave of bullying is no surprise. Society has some bullying issues of its own.
The students in school today grew up with politicians and pundits who attack opponents with flat-out meanness. From Ann Coulter to Al Franken, political disagreement has been recast as a professional wrestling match, and political candidates at all levels compete to see who can deliver the most damning smear. Bullying is no longer simply a tactic; it’s the point, the purpose. The winner is presumably he who does the best job of pushing his opponents down.
It’s no wonder than many young people have learned that the best way to deal with someone who disagrees with you is to try to brutalize him into submission.
School bullying is complicated, often subtle, and now easier with internet anonymity. Sometimes one bully is goaded by a stealth agitator. Sometimes the bullied quickly becomes a bully. And let me be clear about this—nobody ever “asks for it” and it is never “his own fault.” But at the same time, there are students who keep feeding the situation that creates their bullying.
Over the past several years, school anti-bullying programs have proliferated with nice slogans like “no place for hate” or “no bully zone.” They mean well and probably don’t hurt anything (they’re better than rules designed to protect “different” kids from bullying by forbidding any students to be different). But I don’t believe they help much, either.
Bullying isn’t about hate. It’s about power. Strong kids bully weaker kids. Smart kids bully dumber kids. Well-dressed kids bully scruffy kids. The social elite bully the social inept. People with power bully people without it. Bullying is about picking a fight, on your terms, with someone who is not equipped to fight back. It’s about being bigger and forcing someone to understand that they’re smaller. It’s not always about hate; sometimes it’s not even personal.
A No Bully Zone is also largely futile because hardly anyone who bullies other people thinks he’s a bully. Tell him this is a No Bully Zone and he will look puzzled and suggest that you go scold an actual bully. To stop bullying, we have to understand what a bully is thinking when he’s making someone else miserable.
Some bullies believe that there are different rules for people who are Right and people who are Wrong. Right = big and Wrong = small, so it’s okay to beat Wrong people down, and keep beating if they won’t stay down.
The bully may see himself as a soldier for Order and Right. He’s not picking on people—he’s just trying to put Those People in their place, because if you don’t keep them knocked down a peg, they’ll start thinking they’re as good as Regular People. He may even see Those People as a personal threat. This is how some alleged Christians end up believing that it’s okay to bully gay folks, and how some gay folks end up believing it’s okay to bully Christians.
And now several Christians and gay people are getting ready to write me a letter explaining that what they’re doing is certainly not bullying—they’re just protecting themselves from Those People, who started the fight in the first place. That’s why people want to be on the losing side (so many people want to “take back the country” that I’m wondering who actually has it)—if I’m a victim, I’m just defending myself, not bullying someone else.
Those People is another tell-tale bully trick. Most bullies will tell you, “Of course I treat other human beings decently. But Those People don’t count because…” In any local school you can substitute another label—tecker, prep, jock, goth, other terms not fit to print—we all already know them.
The antidote is simple. (Not the Golden Rule, because the bully’s response is “If I was one of Those People, I would know to stay in my place.”) Let’s not argue whether to call you a bully or not. Just do this:
Treat other people well. Don’t be mean. To anyone, ever.
No passes, no excuses, no justifications, no exceptions. If we could manage to instill this in students (and their parents), we’d never have a bullying problem again.

New Music with Local Ties

2010-04-23T06:37:00.000-04:00

(News-Heralds, April 22) One of the marvels of modern technology is that anybody with some simple equipment can record music and sell it to the masses. It used to be necessary to convince some suit at some record company to give an act a break, in part to help fund the expensive business of studio recording. While the traditional route is still traveled, many artists can create entire discs at home. Of course, anybody can do it. Actually talent is not a requirement, and music buyers in the new digital age must beware.
But amidst this new wealth of great, nearly-great, and not-remotely-great music, some real gems often appear. Here’s some news about two singer-songwriters with both technology and talent at their disposal.
Ami Sandstrom Shroyer graduated from FHS quite a few years ago, but she was a musical powerhouse even then. Since those days she and her husband have embarked on a career in ministry, which includes (but is not limited to) her recent cd release 40,000 Days.
This disc collects unabashedly Christian music that showcases both Ami’s singing and songwriting skills (recordings of one of her previous songs garnered a prestigious Dove award). Her voice is bright and light, clear and clean as a bell. Several of the songs have a nice pop sound, and many use a piano-guitar blend familiar to fans of early seventies folky pop.
Some of the songs here (“I Lift My Hands,” “Holy God”) are ready for prime time as praise songs, easily sung along with by a congregation. That’s no small feat; it’s not easy to write a song that is both effectively moving and approachably simple.
The top song of the disc is “Home,” a song with sophisticated changes that are not only clever songwriting, but also powerfully evoke longing, release and strength.
While a few of the songs are peppy and upbeat (the title track is cheerily, gracefully optimistic, and “Your Secret Place” wants to be a 1971 radio hit, in a good way), the majority of the disc is soft, slow and meditative. Taken together, these performances give a picture of a loving and uplifting God who walks with the singer through marriage, parenthood and even death.
You can order copies of this cd by going to the Shroyers’ site, www.wideopenhome.org.
While Shroyer has been in the music biz for a while, Amy Porter (who graduated from FHS more recently) just released her first album. Love Will Come is a collection of six (seven if you act quickly) of the many songs she has written over the years. The collection is emotional and very well-produced, moving through a progression of the heart.
Porter opens with “Lament,” and dense and driving setting for the serenity prayer, followed by a trio of beautifully sad songs. “Favorite Wine” and “Dream” capture the essence of a yearning and broken heart, while “Grandpa” is a song in which Amy and her brother Mark share memories of the grandfather who has passed away. Unlike a more typical grief song, there is no pat relief in the final chorus. This trio of songs carries heavy emotional weight.
But next is “Love Will Come,” a song that promises relief for a variety of burdened people. One of my favorite Porter lyrics appears here: “When we see her face, we won’t believe the lies that say it’s too late.” After this song raises the Hope stakes, “Only” provides further encouragement, with a guitar-based hook reminiscent of “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” Act soon and you get a seventh bonus track, “Not With You” which offers an upbeat banjo-laced tune and Porter at her most Karen Carpenteresque. The closing trio of songs offers the promise of hope, love, and strength.
The set (an EP, not a full disc) is lushly produced with a mix that ably supports Porters smokey rich voice (she sounds most like Sarah McLachlan), complete with aching strings and crunchy guitars. These are personal songs, and that shines through clearly.
To order the set, go to www.amyportermusic.com . Half of the money made goes to the orphanage in Haiti where Porter works.
Both sets are easy on the ear, enjoyable to listen to, but with a bit more soul and substance than the typical top forty offering. Each of these exceptionally talented young women has produced some beautiful and rewarding music, and both have roots right here in Venangoland. Give yourself a musical treat and support some musicians with local roots.

Teacher Merit Pay: Why Not?

2010-04-16T18:42:00.001-04:00

(News-Herald, April 15) The nicest thing I can say about Obama’s education plan is that it isn’t any dumber than Bush’s, which is like observing that it isn’t any worse to be crushed by dead rats than by dead squirrels. I do give this administration credit for admitting that it’s not possible to make every single American school student above average by 2014. Or by 5014, for that matter.
Every politician comes equipped with his own list of favorite education ideas. In the political world, they call these Initiatives for Reforming and Revitalizing Education. In the teaching world, we call them Ideas That Could Only Come From People Who Rarely See the Inside of a Classroom.
Several of these classics appear in the Obama plan, including merit pay.
Let’s skip over the question of how to determine merit. Judging merit is tricky—everyone can name really good and really bad teachers, but most of us work somewhere in between those extremes. I expect that I can find former students who think I did a great job and others who think I stunk. And that’s before we get to people who define merit as “gives my child lots of playing time” or “always gives my child a good grade.”
But lets pretend we somehow solved that issue. What are the other problems with merit pay?
Budgeting is the biggie. The current pay scale system has its flaws, but as a budgeting tool it’s hard to beat—school boards can project exactly what their personnel costs will be years into the future.
Merit pay creates two possible scenarios. In scenario one, we decide what individual merit will be worth and let the chips fall where they may. “Sorry folks,” says the school board. “But our teachers did such a great job this year we need an extra 200 grand to meet payroll.” In this scenario, budgeting is a mystery and the taxpayers root for teachers to do a lousy job.
In scenario two, the board sets its total merit budget, and that pie is sliced thick or thin depending on how many teachers earn dessert. The more teachers who do well, the less they all get paid. In this scenario, teachers in the district fight each other for their paycheck.
Both scenarios promise fiscal challenges and serious damage to the school and community atmosphere.
Obama’s folks want to use merit pay to help push for higher-quality teaching staffs, and that’s a great objective. Nobody would like to see a school filled with top-notch teachers more than the teachers in that school. But I remain skeptical because, in the pursuit of excellent teaching staffs, so few districts use the tools already at their disposal.
Market theory would tell you that districts would compete to get their pick of the best teachers, offering incentives to attract the best people, then interviewing and screening rigorously to get just the right fit before they hire. But they don’t. They trust to luck, which comes through just often enough to make them believe it’s a plan.
Districts could watch new teachers extra-carefully. The first few years make all the difference in a teacher’s growth, but if there’s no sign of potential or growth, districts can fire pre-tenured teachers for any reason at all, nipping weeds in the bud.
Districts could also check for something other than a pulse before granting tenure; it’s not automatic. And once granted, tenure does not give incompetent teachers a free pass. Tenure simply requires districts to do more than say, “You’re ugly and expensive, so you’re fired.” Teachers who don’t stack up can still be pressured, retrained, disciplined and, yes, fired. It just takes some work.
One irony is that teachers have always been willing to give up big bucks in exchange for job security and other intangibles. Districts can easily reward their best teachers with other intangibles—praise, recognition, responsibility, a voice in decisions, just generally treating teachers like grown-ups.
Bad teachers are a small but powerfully annoying group; I’d love to see them get out. Like many teachers, I wish that PSEA and NEA were more aggressive about pursuing quality in the profession. But lousy teachers pay union dues, too, so I don’t look for too much help there. I don’t think the feds will help much, and Obama still hasn’t called me to consult.
However, school districts that are serious about pursuing teacher quality can do it today, with the tools already at their disposal, and without having to spend a cent on merit pay.

The Whiskey Rebellion

2010-04-09T20:06:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, April 8) Can you identify the correct decade for each of the following pieces of American political items:
Regional tension so great that many people expect the country to split in two. Politicians accused of violating the Constitution. Critics asserting that the government’s fiscal irresponsibility will bankrupt the country. Big city politicians dismiss the dumb hicks in the sticks, while rural folks say that the politicians just don’t get it. Debate so polarized that moderate voices duck for political cover. Activists in warpaint to show their sympathy with the Boston Tea Party and the patriots of the revolutionary war. Politicians charged with being tools of big financial interests. War profiteering. Oh, and throw in State’s Rights, too.
Of course, I’m talking about the 1790s, specifically 1790 through 1794 and the events known (but not all that well) as the Whiskey Rebellion. The following quick refresher/introduction courtesy of Thomas P. Slaughter’s excellent book, The Whiskey Rebellion.
In 1790, the American frontier is here. US citizens have pushed as far west as the Ohio valley, and their top concerns included Not Being Killed Horribly by Native Americans. The feds help back a militia raised in Kentucky and Pennsylvania; in October of 1790 that militia faces natives in “pitched battle” for the first time. The militia forces were completely defeated.
In that same year, the feds are looking to pay off the war debt that they have taken from the states. Alexander Hamilton pushes an internal tax, an excise tax on whiskey. It is a hard sell, and before the end its supporters have argued, among other things, that drinking whiskey is a vulgar habit for low-lifes and if a tax made them buy less of the noxious liquid, all much the better.
The tax passes in 1791, the same year as another military debacle and defeat at the hands of native forces. This time it appears that well-paid east-coast suppliers had provided shoddy and useless supplies and weaponry.
Fighting for their lives, feeling federally ignored, and facing a nuisance tax that they found insulting, illegal and unethical, many folks in western PA and Kentucky consider becoming an independent state. It was never a viable option, but it shows just how mad they were.
The next best thing is to fight the tax. Frontier citizens refuse to pay it, and threaten the men charged with collecting it. They hold meetings, dress up as Tea Party Indians, declare themselves the true heirs of the revolution and rail against the “elites” back East who are destroying the country. Many moderate politicians in the West face an angry mob and have little choice but to say, “Oh, I’m with you guys” and hope that a chance to soften the movement might appear.
Faced with open and loud challenges to the federal government’s right to do, well, anything, the feds strike back. First they use law, requiring distillers to face charges in Philadelphia—no small trip for westerners at the time.
The squawking grows louder. The whole frontier is flouting the law, but Western PA is special for two reasons. One is John Neville, one of Pittsburgh’s first wealthy successes; he was charged with collecting the tax, and unlike other men with his job, he was not about to back down. The other is George Washington; the President had recent history with the region, as he had quietly become one of the region’s major landowners. He is both familiar and fed up with the frontier attitude.
The Feds are standing up “for law and order.” The rebels are standing up “for freedom.” Rebel moderates tried to negotiate a solution that the radicals may never have accepted, but it didn’t matter because Washington and Hamilton had already decided to bypass negotiations and use force.
Were there battles? The rebels considered conquering Pittsburgh, which they called “Sodom.” The US army, dubbed “the watermelon army,” could barely hold itself together. What are sometimes called battles might as easily be called riots. The deaths are tragedy and farce; one of the first is caused by a man so unhandy with his weapon that in trying to uncock it, he fires and kills a man instead.
The army captured a ragged assortment of unimportant men who were too slow to escape. The angriest rebels headed west, and many moderates who had tried to soften the rebellion found themselves charged as radical ringleaders. Americans, typically tone-deaf to history, quickly forgot this episode though it featured threads that would be part of our political life for the next 200+ years.

Easter and Redemption

2010-04-02T09:59:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, April 1) I do not ordinarily get extra-excited for holidays. It’s not that I don’t like what the holidays stand for. Whether it’s the Fourth of July (“community and country are good”), Memorial Day (“people who in service of our country deserve respect”) or even Christmas (“Yay, Jesus” if you’re Christian or “Be nice and buy things” if you’re not), they all represent good and worthwhile concepts.
But really, if the sentiment is that important, I’m pretty sure it deserves more than one day’s worth of our attention. Sometimes I think some people use their single day of visible devotion to love or family or patriotism as an excuse for 364 days of slacking on those fine qualities.
Easter is different. Other holidays can be reduced to a single icon, an image that we can fit on a poster or a t-shirt. A flag, a star, a baby, a big smiling Santa holding whatever product he’s being used to sell.
Easter can’t be reduced. Yes, we try. An egg. A cross, empty or not. But those don’t do the job. Flags, stars, mangers, Santas—they all stand for the idea that we associate with the day. But Easter is not about a simple concept or frozen image. Other holidays celebrate concepts; Easter celebrates an event. The cross doesn’t really capture Easter—it’s just the place where something important happened.
Easter is about redemption, and redemption is an action. It’s something that happens, and so at Easter, we can celebrate the moment that it happens. Other holidays are chairs in which we can find ourselves sitting, watching the spectacle, but Easter is a door we have to stand up and walk through.
And what a door it is. The most powerful tool possessed by evil (Satan, bad vibes, whatever you like) is the idea of “Game Over.” We make a mistake, show poor judgment, give in to our lesser selves, or just plain behave badly. There is nothing more powerfully destructive at that point than saying, “Well, that’s it. I’m an awful person, and I’ll do nothing but awful things for the rest of my life. There’s no point in trying to do anything else.” Based on what we’ve done so far, we throw away everything we might ever do with the life that lies ahead of us.
Many cultures lack the idea of redemption. If you have made a mess of things, you have no options but death or exile. Everything good you ever could have done is snuffed out before it can even draw breath. Because things are dark now, we declare the future already dead.
So redemption and resurrection go together, because redemption brings our future back to life.
And it requires action, movement, a change in our own position and direction. You can sit in your chair and think, “Yeah, I am feeling patriotic/loving/reverent today.” You can’t just sit and your chair and think, “Yeah, I am feeling so very redeemy today.” You have to get out of the chair and walk through the door to find that new reborn future.
Now, the future we get may not be the one we were planning on. Messing up, darkness, defeat, bad mistakes—those can all put an end to the path we were on, and it’s a mistake to think that redemption moves us backwards. Easter morning found the disciples facing a future that was newly redeemed from the utter black defeat they had been contemplating, but it was also a future completely different from anything they had imagined.
The other nice thing about redemption is that, done right, it changes our view of others. Because if my future can’t be written off as dark and dead and useless, than neither can anybody else’s. There isn’t anybody so low and dark that redemption is impossible. It doesn’t mean that I give anyone a free pass for bad behavior, and it’s always smart to stay out of the way of dangerous toxic people. But it does mean that I don’t get to simply dismiss people because I see them as just Really Wrong today. No matter how dark it is right now, tomorrow is another day.
Easter is not about standing still; it’s about moving from the darkness into the light, from death to life, from lost to redeemed, from winter to spring. And it is one of the few holidays that does not ask us to sit and watch something happen, but to be the thing that is happening.

Time To Make the Donuts

2010-03-26T20:15:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, March 25) We take responsibility, act responsibly, encourage people to act like responsible adults. We have long, energetic discussions about who’s Responsible For This. We wait for people who have behaved badly to take responsibility for their actions. And we can’t really explain exactly what we mean by any of it.
I’ve arrived at the following operational definition of being responsible. You are responsible for something when you decide to make it your business to see that the matter turns out okay.
Responsibility does not whine and say, “Oh, I would work on that issue, but it would be hard.” Responsibility is part of the solution; whining “It’s hard” is part of the problem.
Responsibility never says, “Well, that’s not my problem.” The best customer service workers are those who consider themselves responsible for the customers that they deal with, who don’t just shrug and say, “Well, that’s not my table/department/area.”
“To see that the matter turns out okay” means that responsibility concerns itself with the outcomes. It is not responsible to say, “Look, I did what I was supposed to do. If that didn’t resolve the issue, that’s not my problem.”
The public and private sector are filled with bad managers and workers who do not see things through. They do what they think they’re supposed to do or what they think should solve the problem. If that doesn’t actually solve anything, oh well. “Look, I filled out the forms. What else do you want me to do?” or “The paperwork says everything’s okay and that’s good enough for me” are not responsibility in action.
You can’t be responsible for things over which you have no power. I can’t be responsible for the sorry state of American health care or the ridiculous state of Congress’s “solution” because, as an ordinary citizen, I have no say over any of it.
On the other hand, in areas where you do have power, you must be responsible or irresponsible, and you can’t duck the choice. If I’m behind the wheel of the car, I can’t try to claim that responsibility for steering lies with my passengers in the back seat.
Circumstances in life put us in the path of one set of responsibilities or another. We can face up to those responsibilities or deny them, but there’s no way to make them go away. Far too many young men try to pretend that they are not somehow responsible for the children they father, but they either face up to that responsibility or act like irresponsible boys. There are no other options. It’s the irresponsible who don’t come through, step up or see things through. “I was going to, but [fill in excuse here].”
When people accept responsibility for their misbehavior, they are acknowledging that it is their job, and nobody else’s, to make things as right as they can be.
Sometimes circumstances put completely unexpected opportunities for responsibility in our paths. It’s the Samaritan’s problem—do we stop for the folks who have been mugged by life?
The modern American response is to look at the problem and say, “Oh, that’s awful. Somebody really ought to do something about that.” Surely there is an agency, government program, community organization or some other outfit that will handle it. Asking someone else to see the matter through and walking away is not responsibility, either.
To check your own responsibility quotient, apply the definition that I’ve offered. What in the world are you, today, right now, making it your business to see through to the best possible conclusion. Not hoping it turns out okay, rooting for the people who will make it turn out okay, or trying to make it turn out okay ( “try” is a word used to pre-emptively excuse the failure you plan to have).
People love to complain about the quality of life in Venangoland. That’s another attempt to dodge responsibility. If you life Here (no matter where Here is) you need to accept some responsibility for what life Here is like. If you’re whining, you’re part of the problem.
When I think of responsibility, oddly enough I think of the man in the old donut commercial dragging himself out into the world because it’s “time to make the donuts.” No whining, no excuses, no figuring someone else will take care of it—Fred the Baker would just get up and make the donuts. Responsibility is as simple as that. What donuts are you making today?

James Murrin & The Great European War

2010-03-19T06:55:00.001-04:00

(News-Herald, March 18) Thirty-nine years ago this month, a notable Franklin figures passed away. James Murrin was a newsman, a man who devoted his life to the newspaper business and the community that supported it.
When Murrin graduated from high school in 1912, he immediately moved to Franklin to begin work at the News-Herald. He started out working for his uncle, James Borland, another great newsman and community leader in Franklin. Borland had dropped out of school to start his newspaper; presumably he did not hold Murrin’s diploma against him.
Murrin followed in his uncle’s footsteps, and not just by becoming a newspaper editor. He became postmaster, charter member of the American Legion post, a Rotarian, a life member of the BPOE, a city councilman and a member of the library board. He had a son, Ralph, and a daughter, Nita, who married Lutheran pastor Dr. Robert Thurau.
But before all of that, James Murrin fought in the First World War, and he wrote a book about it—With the 112th in France: A Doughboy’s Story of the War. Thanks to a publishing house (Shelf2Life) with an interest in publishing pre-1923 memoirs of the Great War, Murrin’s book is once again available.
Like many young men from Venangoland, Murrin served in Company F, 112th Regiment, 28th Division. In the summer of 1917, he enlisted. The order to mobilize the National Guard came on July 15. Murrin married Helen Wilson on July 20. He was 22 years old.
Murrin’s book is a testament to his background as a journalist. His reporting is thorough (sometimes too thorough—it seems that he is determined to make sure that each name of each individual makes it into the historical record).
After training in the South, the 112th shipped for France in May of 1918; they would return to the US almost exactly a year later.
The first part of their time there was spent in the time-honored game of Hurry Up And Wait. Murrin’s account is indeed a soldier-eye view of the war, often odd and unclear, cut off from any big picture that might be informing the commands the doughboys received. At one point the company is kept shuttling back and forth between two locations for no apparent reason.
Without whining or complaining, Murrin captures a sense of numbing drudgery, marching, waiting, sleeping, marching. The men pass the time with the simplest of activities, perhaps enjoying impromptu concerts by the regimental band.
The band of 112th gets its own chapter, a source of morale and pride in difficult times. The 112th Regiment Band would have a lasting affect here at home—many of these men (Coulter Hoffman, Major Olmes, Roy Miller, Harland Mitchell) would become important local musicians, and many would form the core of the celebrated American Legion Band of Oil City. Murrin lavishes considerable appreciation on the group.
He also shares a love and admiration for the commanding officer of the 112th, George C. Rickards. The young soldiers expressed great respect for Rickards, who by Murrin’s account was fifty-eight years old when he traveled to fight in France.
Ultimately the 112th ended up fighting in the battle of the Argonne Forest, one of the many incredibly costly battles of the war. It was part of a final offensive push that broke the back of the German army, and the cost was tremendous: the 112th went into the Argonne with 77 officers and 2892 men and finished with 10 officers and 533 men left on the front line.
The First World War should be better remembered. Not only was the war a study in the massive carnage that can be created by clueless leaders and aimless conflict, but a century later we still live with the effects. After the war, victorious powers decided to clean up the map by combining small countries into larger ones like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Iraq, and heck, we’ve hardly had any trouble in the Balkans or Middle East since then.
When the war is studied, it is usually in the large scale; it’s worth it to see how it looked to the average soldier, and in Murrin we have an average soldier who has above average reporting and writing skills. Some of the details are mundane (sleeping through the unit moving out) and some are surprising (discovering German faux tanks made of scraps of wood). The fact that he is a local, a man who would come home to be a pillar of this community, is a bonus. You can find the book on amazon.com or other reputable on-line booksellers.

Theater and Colons

2010-03-12T21:37:00.001-05:00

(News-Herald, March 11) From my mailbag:
Dear Fake Journalist Guy, What do you do with a bunch of ideas that are too small for a full column. Signed, Fake Reader.
Dear FR. By use of seamless transitions, we make separate ideas seem totally related. Watch. Sincerely, FJG.
Sometimes when a week is dragging on, you need a break from routine. For creatures of habit, it can be as simple as a different breakfast cereal. After a steady week of Cheerios, little marshmallow charms can create some excitement.
But sometimes that isn’t enough. So last midweek, I arranged to change up my routine with a colonoscopy.
This was a routine procedure, one of those tests one gets as a reward for being A Certain Age. It’s not the procedure itself that is the fun part. The night before, you drink four liters of a mix-it-yourself concoction made from the sweat of demons who have been roasted while being whipped with the rotting skunk skins and packed in blue cheese.
Okay, I may exaggerate, but when medicine admits on its own label that it tastes awful, you know you’re in trouble. Colyte’s label says, in part, “Keep this refrigerated because when it’s cold it will gag you less” and “Seriously, you want to gulp this down as quickly as possible.”
The stuff lived up to its press. Tastes rather like brine, with a relentless numbing saltiness that skips over the taste buds and heads straight for the gag reflex. I did try mixing this with cran-apple juice and quickly realized that A) it still tasted horrible and B) I had just made MORE of it.
But after a couple of hours, this magic fluid roto-roots your insides, leaving three feet of squeaky clean pipe where your gastro-intestinal system used to be. You would think that the subsequent fasting would be taxing, but by this time my weary innards didn’t care.
And here’s the thing. The next day I went to the ambulatory care center at the hospital, which is clean and friendly. Because this is Venangoland, my nurse was a woman who played in high school band with me and whose sister double-dated with my sister at their prom. My doctor explained everything to me, a nice anesthetist explained what was going to happen. Then somebody said something about injecting stuff into my iv, and the next thing I remember is waking up back in the room, more or less ready to be driven home by my sister-in-law, who deserves some sort of merit badge.
Was that it? Almost. Later comes the part where my doctor leaves me a message that the one polyp they removed was pre-cancerous. In other words, at the expense of the physical equivalent of a bad 24-hour flu bug, I get to not have a doctor tell me that I have colon cancer 3-10 years from now. There are worse things you can do than have a colonoscopy.
But there are also better things. For instance, the highlight of my week was attending Pump Boys and Dinettes at the Barrow.
The show (appearing Friday, Saturday and Sunday) deserves a larger audience. Pump Boys is a concert show, a la Forever Plaid and Nunsense, with just enough story to flesh out some fun characters and tie together a bunch of good music. The style here is what is traditional country; not glossy faux twanging, but the kind of folk-based music that can be readily enjoyed by people who don’t care for either modern C&W or typical musical theater fare.
There are some gorgeous vocal harmonies as well as some hilarious performances (hard to go wrong with material like “Farmer Tan”). Brett Sloan and Suzi Beach are, as always, total pros in their vocal awesomeness, and Richard Roberts’ skills as an entertainer are on full display. The rest of the cast is solid, but the new treat for Barrow audiences is Jim Helmetzi, a veteran bluegrass player who handles all manner of instrument and performs with relaxed, capable stage presence.
Some blues or gospel leaks in, too. The cast ably handles it all. The songs are fun, and treat small-town life with humor without dopey disrespectful cornpone abuse. You will hum many for weeks. It’s a relaxed, fun evening of good music, well-done and well worth your time.
On your way out, you’ll smile and think, “Well, that improved my week way more than a colonoscopy would have.” (Barrow, feel free to use that line on posters).
And that, Fake Reader, is how we do it.

How Managers View Workers

2010-03-07T21:28:00.003-05:00

(News-Herald, October 2003) I’m always interested in the fine art of management. First, teaching involves a sort of management, so I have a professional interest in understanding how it can be best done. Second, I think bad management is one of our top five biggest, baddest plagues. Others may lay the blame for the Imminent Collapse of Civilization on all manner of socio-psycho syndromes, but I think the biggest threat we may face is Management By The Incompetent.
One way to classify managers is by their view of the people who work for them. We’ll start at the bottom of the heap.
Workers are a problem. Somewhere under life’s black banana peels, we find those managers who feel that their subordinates are a problem to be fixed.
We can be talking about a wide range of problems. There are business and office managers who think that workers create problems by using stuff. Those darn workers—they want to use up supplies, they insist on having working equipment, and on top of all that, they keep taking the organization’s money for their salaries.
Or workers might be trouble because they insist on mentioning problems that the organization has. They might be rude enough to point out that the company’s fine new software doesn’t do what it was bought to do. They might insist on calling attention to some policy or procedure that keeps them from doing their jobs.
You can spot a manager who views his workers as problems because his managerial focus is on getting them to shut up and leave him alone. When the ship is going down, he’s the one up in the pilot house hollering, “Stop screaming—you’re making the boat all wet.”
The irony is that of all managerial types, this guy is least able to solve problems when they arise (and, yes, real worker-related problems exist) because he has no interest in finding, understanding or fixing the problem. In his mind, the employee is the problem, and said employee just needs to be straightened out, put in his place, set right, etc etc etc.
Workers are resources. Somewhere in the middle of the continuum lies this style. This manager sees his workers as resources to be used.
There are advantages to this. The resource manager would no more needlessly abuse an employee than he would drive a fine Porsche without oil in the engine. He takes care of his staff as he cares for all his belongings.
It’s vaguely unsettling to work for a resource manager. You can feel as if you’re in a Popeye cartoon where Wimpy is looking at you, but seeing a big hamburger instead. The prize turkey is well cared for, too, but eventually he’s just used and consumed. Not everyone’s dream for their work life.
Resource managers also have an unfortunate tendency to view workers as interchangeable cogs, building blocks to be discarded if they are defective (“defective” being defined as “different in any noticeable way”). And in the crunch time, resource managers are likely to view workers as far less valuable than the manager himself. Workers will often work well for a resource manager, but they’ll never trust him.
Workers as foot soldiers. These are the guys everyone wants to work for, because they get a few things that the other two do not.
For one, they understand who does the real lifting and carrying. A general may plan and inspire and lead and deploy, but in the end, it’s the soldiers who shoot and are shot at, who fight and create the victory for their army.
So the foot soldier manager knows that the ultimate success of the enterprise depends on his subordinates. He knows that they need to be supplied and supported and valued and given the material they need to do the job.
He doesn’t tell them that they can’t have guns because the budget was slashed and air conditioning for his tent is more important. He doesn’t court martial them for repeatedly asking for bullets, and he doesn’t put them in the stockade for pointing out that the enemy has broken through the lines.
He doesn’t let them run amuck, and he remembers that he’s the one in a position to see the big picture and set strategy. But he doesn’t throw them needlessly into a fruitless battle or treat them as if they’re expendable as Kleenex, because he knows that they’ll be most effective if he can fire up not only their blood and muscle but also their hearts and minds.
Treat workers like problems, and they learn to be sneaky and helpless and hopeless. Treat them like resources, and they learn to be cautiously cooperative. Treat them like valued soldiers on the front lines, and they will give more to the organization than you, or they, ever thought possible.

Curling and Cable

2010-03-05T17:16:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, March 4) It has been almost a year and a half since I gave up cable television.
I’ve been reflecting on this because I’ve had my first strong feeling of deprivation. It was tough to miss the Rose Parade, and I miss regularly watching the Daily Show.
But Winter Olympics time came, and I was not able to watch curling.
I’d never known about this sport until the last winter Olympics, during which the riveting act of sliding a slow-motion stone across ice captured my attention. I glanced briefly, and then succumbed to the sporting equivalent of the just-one-more-potato-chip phenomenon that allows television to magically erase untold hours of a human being’s life.
Curling—the only sport for which there is no slow motion replay because the sport is already in slow motion. Curling—where we see the perfect yin and yang of a hurler who seems almost frozen in time, flanked by the ice-squeegee guys (I may not have entirely absorbed the correct jargon) scrubbing the ice with feverish blurred intensity.
Despite this test of my resolve, cable did not re-appear in my home. I have learned too many valuable lessons in its absence.
Good shows are better in concentrated doses. I’ve been netflixing my way through many series, and they are much more fun this way. I’ve watched the first six seasons of NCIS in less than a year, the first two seasons of Big Bang Theory in just a few months. Turns out tv characters are like real people in one respect—the more often you see them, the more you enjoy their company.
Best part of dvd viewing? Every viewing choice is a deliberate choice, instead of sitting passively waiting to see what the cable might throw at your brain next.
Do you have any idea how many ads you’re watching? Seriously. If you are watching traditional television, about a full third of the time you are paying for is being spent trying to sell you stuff. It’s like hiring an encyclopedia salesman to interrupt your family’s dinner.
Old shows are fun. Okay, some are perhaps not as much fun as we remember. F Troop is still funny, but not as ribsplittingly hilarious as ten-year-old me thought. On the other hand, Moonlighting is actually better than I remember, particularly without the long gaps between new episodes (but oh those eighties shoulder pads and giant hairdos). Jack of all Trades, a vehicle for the awesomely under-appreciated Bruce Campbell, should have survived longer.
And television may not have been any better, but it was surely cheaper. Watching the Man from UNCLE chase bad guys around the same parts of the same back lot is cheesetastic good fun.
Words are so much better than pictures. I don’t mean spoken words, because my message to the talking heads on the tube is “For the love of Mike, please shut up!”
When a South American country gets all torn up and the international tsunami warning system is set at Freak Out, here’s what I need you guys to do: Point a camera at the pertinent images, put up a bottom-screen crawl that includes your two or three sentences of actual information, turn off your microphone, then go out for a hamburger and a round of golf.
News outlets have carried their unreasoning love of pictures and babble onto the internet, where it would be just as easy to post the pictures and the text of What We Know So Far. Some outfits get that (thanks, CNN) but others feel sure that I want to see the same thirty seconds of footage looped incessantly while some poor news reader finds 147 ways to say, “We don’t really know much more than that, so let me repeat it some more.”
Some times—most times—paragraphs of text that are regularly rewritten by people who have taken five minutes to check their facts and think about what they want to say—those old-fashioned paragraphs of text are way more useful than some pretty dolt doing babbling news improv.
It’s amazing what you can get done when you aren’t waiting till the exact hour or half-hour to start. In truth, the single worst thing about my relationship with cable was not the empty wasteland of its content, but the way it could make hour after hour of my life disappear and give nothing in return. That is the very definition of a bad habit. I miss curling, but it’s not worth a return of the monkey to my back.

The Tea Party Seeks Definition

2010-02-26T07:06:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, February 25) The President of the United States has announced that political factions are threatening the government’s ability to function. A group of dissatisfied citizens decides that the federal government has over-reached its authority and it’s time for citizens to stand up and take radical action.
The time is the 1790s, the President is George Washington, and the radical citizens of Western Pennsylvania are the heart of the Whiskey Rebellion. That rebellion involved actual shooting and killing, and in the end Washington became the only President in history to lead an army against US citizens.
For people who look at DC and the Tea Party movement and declare that Things Have Never Been This Bad, my point is this: from the very beginning of US history, it has almost always been this bad.
The Tea Party movement has interesting days ahead. As fractious a herd of cats as ever took the political stage, the Partiers have suffered a parade of wannabe leaders, some with a sincere desire to help and some desiring to harness power for their own purposes.
The Tea Party movement is a patchwork of dissatisfied Americans, many with widely divergent goals and beliefs. Often this adds up to a somewhat garbled message (the government does too much, except during the banking mess, when it didn’t do enough).
In particular, the movement offers another uneasy alliance of social and political conservatives. This match is less solid than a three-shotgun wedding.
If I’m a political conservative, I believe government should do as close to nothing as possible, including not telling my neighbors what they can or cannot eat, drink, smoke, sleep with, or worship.
Social conservatives fail to grasp one simple truth—a country with true small government is a country where bunches of people will be freely doing things that you don’t approve of. (Of course, some nastier folks believe that this will include freely beating on evil-doers until they behave and/or go away.)
It is easy to find ways to dismiss the Tea Party. It has cast a big net and drawn in among its supporters a variety of wingnuts, from defiantly anti-fact birthers to that guy protesting government-run health care while sitting in the wheelchair that government-run health care bought him.
Many partiers are hamstrung by a basic principle of factional politics: everybody On My Side is always right and everybody On The Other Side is always wrong. You have to agree with the dopes on your side. This is how you end up taking the position that the guys who flew planes into the twin towers are America’s enemies and the guy who flew a plane into the IRS building is an American hero.
Anyone who wants to dismiss the movement can cherry pick sound bites from Tea Partiers who are, in a word, idiots. This is also not new. I don’t care if your organization teaches blind orphans to sing the Hallelujah Chorus while rescuing drowning puppies—I can still find someone in the group who will make you look stupid.
But it’s a mistake to dismiss the entire Party. Many many many Americans are fed up with the federal bozos, and if some folks are about a decade late noticing that DC has its fat clumsy paws in too many pies, their lateness doesn’t make them wrong. There are plenty of reasonable people who would have voted for Barry Goldwater and now can’t see any good choices.
Locally, the Tea Party emerged last year with the AFA, infamous local social conservatives, apparently driving the bus. That wave waned by Thanksgiving, but the Venangoland Partiers have recently re-emerged as Tea Party Patriots. The “Patriots” signals sympathy with the Patriot movement, political conservatives who go back to the John Birch Society and include a few militia types, but who are also tied to the Contract from America, a political item attached to Newt Gingrich.
The Venango group appears to be loosely headed by Kent, a FHS grad I know of a Certain Age who is articulate, intelligent and reasonable in ways that some lefties don’t expect from conservatives (and some rightwingers don’t expect from liberals).
It remains to be seen what the switch from social to political conservative party labels may mean. I’m betting the Party is not done defining itself, splintering into various wings, and shedding the loons and opportunists. It may be more interesting than fun, but at least there’s historical symmetry in having a chapter here in the cradle of America’s first citizen revolt.

Basic Snow Driving 101

2010-02-20T12:02:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, February 16)I don’t know if the “snowpocalypse” was worse than any snowfall of the past, or if it was simply the worst blizzard to hit a large metropolitan area housing many journalists who haven’t spent much time in the North.
This doesn’t seem like a particularly overwhelming quantity of snow, but it has shown a striking level of relentlessness. I’m not sure it qualifies for the sort of adjectives (e.g. “crippling” and “historic”) that have been thrown at it. Our New England ancestors would have been unimpressed—not the ones that walked to school barefoot through the snow, uphill both ways, but the ones who didn’t see the neighbors for three months after the first big winter storm.
Some snow phenomena are strictly local. Regular winter travelers to Erie know that Carpet Barn and the Edinboro exit mark spots where drivers can expect Mother Nature to up the arctic ante.
Those who travel south from Venangoland can marvel at New Route 8, a candidate for the Worst Stretch of Winter Road in Western PA. I’d love to know why the Franklin-Barkeyville Turnpike is always winter’s worst roadway. Not enough traffic to keep the pavement clear? Last on the list for DOT’s attention? When the state went looking for empty land to pave, they didn’t realize that it was empty because locals always avoided building on that fabled stretch of snowy doom? All I know is that when the flakes are thick, I’d rather be almost anywhere else than on that lonely slick white ribbon.
Of course, for the last week or so Almost Anywhere Else has had its own problems. As factoids go, “snow on the ground in forty-nine states” has a nice punchy ring to it. Perhaps it even obligates us to offer snow-going advice to those poor freaked-out snow-averse Southerners, particularly about the problems of driving through the white stuff (or as Dave Dempsey used to call it, for some unknown reason, “the Hawk”). Listen up, y’all.
First, and most importantly, snow makes people stupid. You will see people attempt maneuvers in the midst of heavy snowfall that they would never imagine trying on a balmy summer day. But there they are, suddenly cutting in front of you, spiking the brakes, or careening across three lanes of traffic to lodge sideways in half a parking space.
About that parking. For some reason, snowfall negates all civilized parking rules. Granted, the painted lines are no longer visible, but other handy guideposts such as large buildings and a hundred other vehicles are still available for guidance.
I don’t expect everyone to demonstrate my OCD devotion to proper parking (line up my car with the stadium light post, look sideways, and sight along two bits of shrubbery until they are just the right distance apart in my view). But you would think that someone adding their own vehicle to many other cars in a parking lot would end up parallel to something—the building, the street, one of fifty other cars, SOMETHING!
But it’s as if some drivers are about to crack under the psychological pressure of staying within the lines, and a lifetime of rebelliousness finally erupts when snow erases that dreaded paint. And so ordinarily tidy parking lots end up looking as if someone dumped a sack of angry cats into a half-frozen pond.
Rushing is not allowed in snow driving. Once the snow is down and you have taken the car out, the die is cast. You cannot jam the pedal to the floorboard and shave a few minutes off your travel time. Once the journey has begun, you will get there when you get there—the only way to get there sooner is to leave earlier.
However, there is such a thing as Too Flipping Slow. Below a certain speed, you are simply an easy-to-hit obstacle, a pile-up waiting to happen. If driving in the middle of a snow storm scares you that much, stay home or call a brave friend. If you are driving on tires that are smoother than a baby’s behind (“it’s okay, because they’re radials!”), then you should stay home, too.
You should also stay home if you can’t afford gas. Don’t set out on a trip that may take an extra five hours if you’re running on fumes.
Finally, the legal department of the News-Derrick would like me to remind you that, as always, it’s a good idea not to take advice from fake journalists who write about topics in which they are not expert.

Clarity

2010-02-12T17:27:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, February 11) We humans have a complicated relationship with clarity, that sense of clear and complete understanding.
We make noise about wanting clarity. We “clear” our heads, “clear up” problems. Throughout history we have fasted, meditated, prayed, exercised and studied in hopes of finding clarity.
To see the struggle, one would think there was some outside force in the world that has nothing else to do but spread obscurity and doubt. Most religions’ bad guy is the one who spreads deception and confusion. But when it comes to clarity, we are our own worst enemies.
We put many things in the way of our vision, things that take us from real understanding of ourselves.
Sometimes our vision is blocked by the things we expect to see. We know what our lives “should” look like, what our feelings “should” be. So we see what we expect and not what is.
Sometimes our vision is blocked by the things we want to see. We want to believe that something is true, that someone else feels the way we want them to, that we are acting out our dreams and goals, that we are hitting the mark. So we squeeze our eyeballs into the steely-eyed squint of desperation and make ourselves see those things.
We may claim someone else’s answer. If that’s the view over there, I’ll make myself see it over here. But we’re not theater patrons all watching the same movie. We’re the proverbial blind men stumbling around the elephant.
Denial may be clarity’s greatest enemy.
We convince ourselves that a toxic relationship is not so bad, because the day we allow ourselves to see how bad things are, we will have no excuse not to leave. Or we convince ourselves that the choices we make aren’t hurting people, because the day we really feel how out of line we are is the day we have to fix it.
The escape from clarity doesn’t have to operate on a grand scale. Sometimes we tell ourselves we’ve done a good enough job on a small piece of work simply to avoid the clear understanding that we need to do more. I’ve fixed this well enough. That paint job will do. Those dishes are clean enough. This food is close enough to cooked.
It’s not that a clear view is necessarily scary. We aren’t always trying to hide from the boogeyman. But whether the news we’re trying not to receive is good or bad, the problem is the same—once we have a vision, clear and true, of where we actually are, we are compelled to do something about it.
Sometimes we shrink from the path before us because we know other people will disagree and disapprove. It’s a common human response; unclear and uncertain of our own path, we will nevertheless swear that we know exactly how others should live their lives. But it’s scary to move ahead when the crowd is booing.
For all our talk about and alleged respect for clarity and its related virtues (honesty, directness, straight-shooting), we often prefer to live in a haze of uncertainty and misdirection. It’s simple. It’s easy. And it doesn’t rock the boat.
It’s another one of our simple human struggles. We want to understand, and yet we fear the burden that understanding will bring. It is as old as a person turning to God and complaining, “Really? Seriously?? Are you sure this is what you want me to do? Can you show me something else? Don’t you want to give this path to someone else?”
I believe in free will. I don’t believe in fate, exactly. But I believe that something (God, destiny, whatever you like) always puts a path before us that we are best made to follow, and no matter what our circumstances, a right path is always available. And I believe that many of our troubles come when we try not to see what we see, to convince ourselves that the path before us is really a pile of potato skins, that our path is really through those bushes over there.
One of our greatest moral obligations is to help each other find clarity. To try to keep people from really seeing is wrong. To demand that someone hide or deny what they know to be true is an enormous evil. What clarity shows us can be compelling, exciting, scary, and challenging. But the up side is huge—the knowledge that we are right where we are supposed to be.

Big Fat Liar

2010-02-05T06:52:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, February 4) “Do you think I actually believe you?”
It’s one of those sentences that once in a while you find yourself wishing you could say to a certain someone.
It is one of the great curses of life in our day and age—lying directly to a person’s face has become commonplace, unremarkable, something as easily done as a handshake and a smile. But calling someone a liar is still rude.
Occasionally, the lie doesn’t reveal itself until later. We smack ourselves on the forehead and think, “Well, dang! He got me!” But I think it has actually become more common to meet people whose lies are evident the moment they open their mouths.
There was a time when a lie was teamed up with deceit, as in, “Gadzooks, man, but I am tired of your lies and deceit.” But deceit is retired, cooling its heels on the bench, because we aren’t even deceived all that often. The only person who is deceived is the liar himself, who imagines that because his audience did not actually laugh in his face, his lie must have been mistaken for the truth.
I believe the world would be a better place if we told the truth. I wonder if it might help is we also called people on their baloney. After all, it’s simple politeness to let someone know that he has spinach in his teeth or his necktie on the outside of his collar. So couldn’t we arrive at a place where it would be considered polite to say, “Excuse me, but I think a big fat lie just came out of your mouth” or even “I realize you are still talking, but I thought I should tell you that I don’t believe a single word you’re saying.”
Okay, probably not.
Rudeness aside, most spewers of colorful untruths would consider that an invitation to pile more implausible bricks of detail on top of the shaky straw foundation they have already laid. Liars often believe that if they wear down your brain to a nub of sheer exhaustion, you have to believe them. If you tell him his deal is too unbelievable to be true, he’ll just sell it harder.
Also, these spinners of improbable yarns are often in positions of power, and you can’t afford to annoy them.
So when the boss is claiming that “employees are our greatest asset” or “we really value your input” or “this restructuring will allow us to better serve the needs of customers,” employees smile cheerfully and nod because employees who want to keep their jobs don’t call the manager a liar to his face. And if we’re being honest, there are times when we are grateful we don’t have to face the ugly truth. A business projection based on fantasy can be more comforting than staring disaster in the face.
Those of us deal with bureaucracy often become resigned to the currency of uncalled lies. The state calls a meeting to go over some new policy, and not a person in the entire room believes what’s being said—not even the people saying it. Why point out that we’re knee deep in fertilizer; everyone already knows this deal is not for real.
Unchallenged lies have a real cost. In Mao’s China, an initiative to turn agricultural economy to industrial was clearly ridiculous. Nobody dared speak up. Once implemented, it was clearly not working, but nobody dared speak up. On paper China had abundant surplus food; in real life, millions starved to death. Selling the big line of obvious hooey has consequences down the line.
Why does he do it? He wants to feel important and powerful. He likes the way people show him gratitude when he promises something he can’t deliver. He is so focused on himself that he’s not paying that much attention to his audience; he doesn’t see the eye rolls and the smirks. And the rush that he gets from telling his story is so great that he never really thinks about the future fallout. And when that fallout comes, he’s not there.
Stay silent or speak up; either way you pay a price. When this person shows up, he may offer you a cheap deal or a real deal or and unbelievable deal. The one thing that’s certain is that in the end, there will be a big cost and when you finally see the bill, you’ll be seeing the real deal.

$ for On Line Newspapers

2010-01-29T07:03:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, January 28) This week, in what must be a journalistic first, the New York Times announced that it is going to follow the lead of the News-Derrick. Specifically, the NYT announced that it will start charging readers to look at its on-line version, a decision that this paper implemented last November.
Neither newspaper met much enthusiasm from its customers. The internet hasn’t been around that long, but it has some strong traditions, and one of them is that stuff is supposed to be free. People will pay to DO stuff on the internet (over 12 million people pay real money each month to play World of Warcraft), but to just look at content, folks expect free.
These are tough times for newspapers and magazines. Many print media (“old media” they’re often called) have folded, prompting hand-wringing reminiscent of the days when malls were extinguishing downtown shopping.
For newspapers to stay in business, they must make money. Journalists like to eat, too. The money has to come from somewhere. But many attitudes stand in the way of paying for an on-line newspaper.
One is quick and easy availability of content on line. Why bother with those fancy “journalists” with all their “research” and smarty-pants “facts” that have been “verified” when there’s so much more colorful coverage from a few thousand ranting bloggers?
If a guy is giving away free hamburgers on the corner, why would you go sit in a restaurant and wait to pay for steak? Certainly there are some people who would pay—they’d rather have steak and they don’t trust the corner guy or his hamburgers—but will there be enough of them to keep the restaurant in business?
Another factor is the old media’s own fault. They used to sell nice, fresh-cooked steak, but after a while they just started dragging freeze-dried processed beef slabs out of the freezer, microwaving them, and calling them steak. Many big city newspapers became fat, happy and lazy, and their steak really isn’t all that better than the corner hamburger.
Still another factor is an old one. We aren’t really used to paying for our own entertainment. Television and radio are free (ish). The old media model is a three-cornered transaction, and the audience rarely foots the bill. The tv draws a crowd, and advertisers pay to have a chance to address the assembly. Newspapers do the same. All these years we’ve been paying a token charge while advertisers buy the paper for us.
The internet upped the ante. We could suddenly catch the show without having to stick around for the pitch. Advertisers figured out they were talking to an empty room; they packed up, stopped buying ads, and now nobody is paying for the show.
Modern Americans hate paying our own bills, and in a sense the problems in media are part of a larger picture. We have someone else to pay our medical bills, someone to hire garbage collectors and policemen for us.
Why does the government insist in running up debts? In part, because we the people keep egging them on. Why do we egg them on? Because with the miracle of deficit spending, the government can take one of our dollars and buy us ten dollars worth of stuff. The pain that we are just starting to feel in Pennsylvania is the pain of government telling us, “Sorry, but we can only use your dollar to buy one dollar’s worth of stuff.”
We’re used to having invisible someones buy stuff for us, the illusion that folks are giving us things for free, from infrastructure to entertainment.
The deck is stacked against newspapers, big or small. What can they do? The biggest thing they can do is provide something unavailable anywhere else. That’s a challenge—many papers use wire service content, but that same content is available everywhere on line, for free.
What newspapers need is content that no one else has, and lots of it. This challenge requires nerve. A paper deals with people who want free promotion for their events, and it makes sense to charge for what is essentially advertising. I respectfully suggest that newspapers should not view these folks as people asking for free advertising, but people offering free local content.
However, the other thing newspapers need is reader/subscribers who can grow up and not expect someone else to buy their paper for them. Don’t ask someone to buy it for you or make it for you for free. If something is worth having, it’s worth paying for.
(Note: I do pay for my own newspaper subscription)

Appreciating PA State Troopers

2010-01-22T07:07:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, January 21) Here in Venangoland, we’ve had ample opportunity recently to think about the business of being a Pennsylvania State Trooper.
I learned several things at the service last Sunday for Pennsylvania State Trooper Paul Richey. I learned that troopers are unparalleled organizers, that they can take seemingly unmanageable logistics and manage them. Among their many talents, it turns out that troopers are the world’s best ushers. (As a choir, however, not so much.)
I have also learned that the Troopers do not wear a badge. This practice reminds the troopers that their authority comes from their conduct, not any badge. In other words, the state police do not demand that citizens respect the badge no matter who wears it. Instead, they demand that their troopers earn our respect by being honorable men and women.
In this area, it’s not hard to find people who have an automatic dislike for any and all manner of police. And there’s no doubt that putting on a uniform does not magically transform an average jerk into a hero.
But I don’t think it’s at all easy for an average jerk to put on the uniform of a Pennsylvania State Trooper.
Not all jobs are created equal. Some jobs are more tough, more demanding, more heroic than others. They require a level of guts and commitment that not many people have, and yet the jobs need to be done. Pennsylvania has always known it asks a great deal of its troopers. For the first few decades of its existence, the PSP didn’t allow its troopers to marry.
It has been noted many times that Paul Richey volunteered to go out to the Smith home, that he didn’t have to be there. That tells us a lot about his character, commitment and courage.
But here’s the thing. The same thing is true of every trooper, every day.
None of them have go out there. None of them have to put on that uniform. None of them have to stay on the job, and none of them had to take the job (a job that they had to work hard to earn) in the first place. Scott Mohnkern could be selling cars by day and spinning tunes weekends. Dave Wargo could live off his wife’s teacher salary while he worked as a blues singer. All the members of Troop E could hang up their uniforms tomorrow and the rest of us would have no excuse to complain, because the rest of us didn’t have the nerve to take on that job in the first place.
State Troopers belong to that select group of people who run toward the things that the rest of us run away from.
It is easy for us to forget the level of danger that troopers face in their routine days. On the 13th, after all, the troopers were only going out to talk to a guy with a bad tendency to smack his wife around. Today other troopers will answer similar routine calls, make routine traffic stops, step into routine situations where someone is needed to bring some peace and order. Today, like any other day, they will never know if they’re about to meet some dangerous nut with a beef and a gun.
The rest of us don’t have to think about the danger in such places because there are people in uniform to think about it for us.
Sometimes civilians are called to face extraordinary danger. I wonder, for instance, how well Nancy Frey-Smith knew that she was putting herself in harm’s way every day. But as civilians, we usually find ourselves in a dangerous place by accident or circumstance. Troopers choose it.
In 2008 there were over 50,000 violent crimes in Pennsylvania. There are fewer than 5000 State Troopers.
There is nothing good about the loss of a man like Paul Richey. But it does serve as a shock and a reminder that even here in one of the world’s quieter places, dark and dangerous events can strike, and that there are people who have chosen to stand between that darkness and the rest of us. They and their wives and children and families sacrifice so much, sometimes all at once, and sometimes day after day, year after year, so that the rest of us can rest easy.
PSP’s stated core purpose is to seek justice, preserve peace, and improve the quality of life for all. Paul Richey’s life and death remind us how seriously they take that, and how large a debt of gratitude we owe them.

A Message from the World's Slobs

2010-01-16T09:57:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, January 14) I’m here with a message from the messy people of the world to those of you who are Very Neat:
We are not the ones with the problem—you are.
Being neat wastes enormous amounts of time. Double amounts, really, because you are taking the time to put things away just so, and before you know it, you just have to get them back out again.
The entire Picking Up process wastes time and effort. The wise messy person consolidates work—in the course of a normal day, while traveling about the house for everyday business (eating, dressing, showering), we just pick up anything that’s not where it’s supposed to be and move it to an appropriate location. No extra trips, no extra effort, no time wasted.
You people with incredibly neat and tidy desks—who the heck has time to do that? If your desk is incredibly neat, I have to wonder what you didn’t get done today so that you could do maintenance on your paper clip collection.
Even more troubled are the secret slobs who keep a public pretense of perfect neatness. These people don’t waste time, exactly. Their desks are neat because there isn’t anything sitting out in plain sight that they actually use. The shiny stapler, perfect collection of clips, pristine pile of paper sitting on their desk—they haven’t touched any of it in three months. All the supplies they actually use are shoved in a big jumble in the desk drawers.
Neat freaks (yes, I called them freaks) like to think they are taking control of their environment when actually the reverse is true. Jumble your kitchen condiment collection into a disarrayed higgledy-piggledy (yes, I said higgledy-piggledy) and the slob will be able to walk right by it, still free to go about his business. But a neat freak will be at the mercy of that mess, unable to take care of anything else until the salt and pepper shakers are in proper harmony.
(To be clear, I am not arguing in favor of dirtiness. An entire collection of paperback novels stacked around the dining room table is messy. An entire collection of dishes, displaying a collection of food samples from the last month and covered with growing things that are quite possibly never seen outside of a science lab—that’s dirty, and we messy people of the world do not support it.)
Messiness preserves value. A neat person might jump to the conclusion that a plastic doohickey is not valuable just because he hasn’t had any use for it in the past seventeen years. Messy people understand that tomorrow could be the day that plastic doohickeys suddenly return to prominence in the world. A messy person is not surrounded by random junk, but by a possibly-valuable collection of potential-worthwhile stuff. We understand that someday you will be thanking us for holding onto that doohickey. Jake DeBence ran a messy museum, and Venangoland is now better for his legacy of valuable antiques at DeBence Music World.
Messiness is also more secure. Neat people believe in a place for everything and everything in its place. For the messmasters of the world, the rule is a pile for everything and everything in its pile. A messy person can find that valuable plastic doohickey just as easily as the neatnik can (if the neatnik hasn’t already thrown it away). The important difference is that in the home of a neat freak, anybody can find it.
A burglar can get in and out of a neat person’s house in less than five minutes, loaded down with valuables. A burglar who breaks into a messy person’s home will be found by police five hours later, trapped between the stack of National Geographics and the collection of boxes filled with cans filled with wrapping paper, still trying to decide if anything important is in there.
Mess protects important things. The urban planners who designed Washington DC laid it out as a deliberate, confusing mess, specifically so that invading armies would have a hard time capturing our leaders. Yes, messiness is part of what has made our country great.
Entropy, chaos, disorder—these are the strong natural forces of the physical world, which means that neat people are battling the very natural order of the universe, while we messy ones are in tune with the cosmos. Neatness is unnatural. Come on. Set down those big storage tub organizers and join us on the dark side.

Gossip

2010-01-08T12:28:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, January 7) Gossip has always been associated with small towns. I don’t think we have a lock on the sweet pastime, but I do think there is a special brand that flourishes only in small communities.
Big city gossip is not a pastime—it’s an industry. Entire magazines and cable channels are devoted to dishing the latest dirt about a variety of celebrities. This is not new. Opponents of Presidential candidate James G. Blain shouted “Ma, Ma, where’s my pa?” in reference to his alleged illegitimate child (the reply from his supporters was “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”) As long as there has been print, a certain amount of it has been devoted to gossip about the famous and successful.
Big city gossip has upped the ante by creating faux celebrities. We call them famous for being famous, but they are famous because they are fun to gossip about. In the big city gossip industry, people are willing to pay for dishes of new dirt.
This business model clearly does not work as well in a small town setting. At least, I don’t think so. Perhaps it is time for the News-Derrick to start a local gossip page. But small town gossip is a little like Christmas—it’s more fun to give than to receive.
Small town gossip used to come in more varieties than big city stuff. Small towns could gossip about general misbehavior, attributing all manner of rule breaking that, in print, would feed a flock of libel lawyers. During Prohibition, Chess Lamberton was picked up for an alcohol violation, but charges were dismissed weeks later when the evidence had mysteriously vanished. That much I know from newspaper accounts, but I’ll bet that a considerably more colorful story was traveling around town at the time.
Nowadays, malfeasance gossip is a lost art, mainly because people no longer feel much shame over being caught Doing Naughty Things (“Why yes, I cleaned out the pension fund. But let me show you our vacation pictures from Bermuda!”)
It’s not that gossip requires shame as fuel. It’s that gossip tends to shrivel up in the face of well-dispersed hard facts. If everybody already knows exactly how Floyd burned down his mother-in-law’s house, there’s no fun to be had conjecturing and nobody to pass the conjecture on to.
That’s why personal gossip will always provide entertainment. It’s not just that personal gossip is impervious to facts, but that solid facts will never be available.
The fastest way to get yourself on the small town gossip grapevine is to get a divorce. Divorce can be a matter of public interest (just how many businesses around here have been sunk because the owners went through a messy split), but mostly they provide drama surrounding a set of unknowable circumstances.
Regardless of a couple’s circumstances, nobody outside of the two people involved can possibly know what is between them. It’s fun to make guesses about why two people come together or fall apart, but guesses are all you can really have. As long as the guesses are entertaining, you can keep playing.
Guesses and gossip go together like peanut butter and jelly. And small town gossip can travel with a speed and vigor that the best big city tabloid can only dream of. Electricity seeks the ground, water seeks its own level, and gossip seeks the path of greatest entertainment. Gossip is only fun to know if you can tell another person. But not just anybody. You seek out the person who will be most entertained, whose face will register shock and surprise (or the jackpot—real emotions like joy or anger or pain or outrage).
In fact, passing on gossip to an entertained audience can be such a rush that many people just go ahead and pass on gossip about themselves.
Big city gossip has to hunt for an audience. Before you can be entertained by scoop about Paris Hilton or Heidi Montag, you have to know (and care) who they are. Even in a big city, that’s a small crowd. Because everyone knows everyone in a small town, potential audience is everywhere. The trick is not to find a possible audience, but to find it first, before someone else ruins your fun.
Is gossip bad? I’m not a big fan of Not Truth, but I suppose gossip, like the truth, can be spoken maliciously or kindly. Just don’t mistake gossip and truth for each other, and when you’re the subject, don’t confuse gossip with genuine concern.

Commitment

2010-01-01T09:57:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, December 31) New Year’s Eve is my least favorite holiday. Regret, disappointment, betrayal, sadness, disaster, stupid choices—too many of the ugliest snapshots of my life are time-stamped December 31.
But I like the idea of resolutions. I like the idea of renewed commitment to something, despite the fact that most of us don’t do commitment well.
We often approach commitment focusing too much on the end point. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that taking a clear-eyed view into the future is bad. The world includes too many people who are surprised that when they stick their metaphorical tongues in metaphorical fans, they suffer metaphorical hurt.
But commitment is not about “if.” Commitment is not about, “ I will look at the various obstacles and if I think I can beat them and if I think this will turn out okay, then I guess I will try to do it.”
There is no “if” in commitment. Commitment is more “of course.” “Of course we’re going to do this. There are some obstacles, so let’s figure out how to get past them.” We don’t say, “I’ll eat food today if I can find the time.” We say, “Of course I’m eating today. I’ll just find the time.” Commitment changes “Will I do this?” to “How will I do this?”
This is what people are complaining about when they talk about the fuzziness of modern marriage. Too many folks say, “Yes, I’ll stick with you if we can figure out how to beat that obstacle” instead of “Of course we’re staying together. Let’s work on how to deal with the obstacles.”
Organizations do the same. “Of course we’ll help you, valued customer. Let me just figure out how to solve this” is not “We’ll try to help with this problem if it falls within the list of issues I’m looking at on my computer screen.”
“If” is the enemy of commitment. So is “what if,” as in “What if the other job would be better” or “what if a different person would make me happier.” Making a commitment to Option A always means kissing Options B through Z goodbye. If you insist on keeping your options open, the only commitment you’ve made is to keeping your options open.
Other impulses get in the way of commitment. Keeping your choices hidden so that nobody can critique them is not commitment. Pretending you didn’t try in order to avoid looking foolish in failure is not commitment. That’s one more reason for marriage ceremonies to be held in front of friends and families—it’s what you do if you really mean it. And if your resolution is to lose ten pounds, but you aren’t telling a soul—well, you’ve already decided you’re going to have that piece of cheesecake. Your real commitment is to your goal of not looking foolish.
It’s not that commitment guarantees success. It doesn’t. In life, speed bumps and brick walls look much the same from a distance. Often you don’t know which is which until you try to get past it. If you make it past, it was just an obstacle; if you didn’t, it’s a dead end.
You have to make the commitment to find out. Standing at a comfortable distance making a judgment about which you’re facing, because if it’s going to be a dead end or even just plain hard, you aren’t going to go any further—well, that’s not a commitment. When you commit to go the distance, you don’t get to now how long the distance actually is.
Non-commitment has ultimatums (I won’t stay with you unless you serve me on silver plates); commitment has limits (I will stay here all week, but if I don’t get any food, I will collapse). Non-commitment says “I will try as long as I feel like it.” Commitment says, “I will keep going as long as I can.”
If commitment guaranteed success, everybody would leap whole-heartedly into the commitment pool. But committing guarantees either real success or undeniable failure— and that’s what many people don’t want to face. (As Yoda said, “There is no try. Only do—or do not.”) So they pick the luke-warm not-so-commitment and hope they get lucky.
Our commitments define us, both the ones we make consciously (I will walk five miles every single day) and the ones we make without thinking (I will stay safe and comfortable). Spending at least one day out of the year thinking about them couldn’t be a bad thing.

Boxing Day

2009-12-30T10:47:00.001-05:00

Yes, a few days late. I actually forgot I'd written something about this holiday...
(News-Herald, December 2002) Today, Thursday, December 26, is Boxing Day. Well, at least in some parts of the world it is.
Nobody knows exactly when Boxing Day began, and historians offer a variety of theories about why it developed.
Some say that because servants were required to work on Christmas Day, they would have the following day as their holiday. As they headed out to celebrate the holiday, their employers would give them gift boxes.
Another tradition says that it was the day on which churches opened their poor boxes and distributed the contents to the poor.
Both of these ideas fit reasonably well, as December 26 is also the Feast of St. Stephen. St. Stephen, for those of you who are not up on your saints, was the first Christian martyr, one of the original deacons of the church, ordained by the apostles to care for widows and orphans.
There is, in fact, a Boxing Day carol. Remember—“Good King Wencelsas looked out on the Feast of Stephen.” If you have ever actually sung more than the first verse of the carol, you might recall that the song tells the story of the good king rendering assistance to the poor.
Boxing Day is celebrated in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Canada. The tradition includes a variety of raucous sporting events and has broadened from helping the poor to giving a gift to any of those who have rendered a service in the past year—tradesmen, doormen, mail carriers, porters and others.
It’s not hard to see why the holiday never really caught on in the states. It is very much a class-driven holiday; the whole purpose is to set aside one day on which the upper crust folks deign to share a little something with the underlings of the world. It’s not at all in keeping with the idea of America as a classless society.
Still, I can see some advantages to an American version of Boxing Day.
First of all, any holiday that can be commemorated with a sporting event deserves our attention. Granted, some of the celebratory events, such as cold-water swimming, have a certain lunatic quality about them. But we already play more football games on New Years Day than we know what to do with. Another easily memorable holiday on which to schedule a pigskin romp or two certainly couldn’t hurt.
More than that, though, I support the idea of a holiday that requires us to personally honor the people who do all the grunt work. Labor Day ought to fill the bill, but most of us just enjoy the three day weekend without pausing to consider what the day off is about.
Besides, Labor Day is abstract. Boxing Day American style could be much more direct. There are many people on whom we depend for the daily maintenance of life. The city water doesn’t magically appear in the sink, the mail isn’t delivered by enchanted gnomes, and garbage doesn’t fly off the curb by itself (well, unless it’s left there a really long time). Our roads aren’t self-clearing, electricity doesn’t feed itself into self-repairing cables, and groceries do not grow on the shelves of stores.
All of these things are taken care of for us by real live human beings. We are able to go about our business, take care of the daily stuff of our lives because other people keep the wheels moving for us.
It wouldn’t hurt us a bit to say thank you, not in a vague, abstract way, but as a real gesture to an actual person. Do it not as a sign that you are so much better than they are, but because you appreciate what they do for you.
Sure it’s their job, but they could always do something else. And if nobody was willing to take on the job of hauling away your garbage, you’d be in a terrible mess.
If you can thank Aunt Grizelda for the matching puce and eggplant colored pot holders, you can certainly thank the guy who spent his day today slogging through the slush so that you could get the late Christmas cards from your cousin Beulah in Lake Tahoe.
So we’ll make this year the year we start the American version of Boxing Day. Start slow. Pick someone to thank today. Write him a nice note, or give her the extra fruitcake that’s sitting in your kitchen. Thank someone whose hard work makes your life a little easier. Happy Boxing Day.

Christmas Shopping Eve

2009-12-24T12:56:00.000-05:00

(December 24, News-Herald) I am done shopping. Seriously, I’m done.
I am one of those people who suffers from severs shopping disorders. I have trouble gearing up to shop, but once started, I have real trouble stopping. And I don’t improve with practice. So far this week I have made four trips to the grocery store. And I’m not counting the time I went to the store, realized I didn’t have my wallet, drove home to find it, couldn’t find it, realized it was in the car, and drove back to the store.
Meanwhile, my daughter is home and in baking mode, so I have been on ingredient patrol (since my home is usually only occupied by a single guy, it is ingredient-free). I take lists. I still have to go back. Four trips so far this week. And I am writing this column on Monday night.
It is the Christmas shopping that pushes me over the edge.
I work hard to shop locally. I do not think less of people who cruise to Pittsburgh or Erie to do some big time shopping. But every penny I make as a teacher comes out of some taxpayer’s pocket, so I feel an obligation to put back as many as I can.
This year a new national initiative emerged called the 3/50 project, tooting the horn for local independent businesses. Pick three local independent businesses you would like to see survive. Spend fifty dollars. It’s an excellent thought. Here’s a way to take care of our own without turning to big government for a cure. Lots of folks worry about the local economy, and this is a way they can put their money in the same neighborhood as their mouths.
But local shopping has challenges. In the later stages, I can make fewer trips because I have the stock of many stores memorized. Some stores have clearly tightened their belts by sending salespeople home (but no, I will not use the self-check-out—if you want me to work for you, then hire me).
And memo to local business operators: Nobody wants to support you more than I do, but sometimes you make me feel that I want to give you my business way more than you want to get it.
I shop only for family. My family of origin was once five people large, but continued expansion and recruitment has swollen the ranks. To me, that means an ever-enlarging list of people to get Just The Right Thing. A well-chosen present says, “I like you.” I want to make sure the gifts I give speak up clearly. If I start buying presents for every friend, co-worker, and Person I Just Generally Like, I will enter a prolonged anxiety attack, worrying that I shortchanged someone. Overlooking ALL my friends and co-workers lets me feel I’m at least being evenhanded.
I blame this gift-giving anxiety on my mother. She begins Christmas shopping in June. You would think that would make keeping the secrets difficult (our presents are traditionally unknown until unwrapped), but she rarely spills the beans. What she does do is call the beans names. She has already told me that she is giving me what she gives me every year—a Lousy No-good Present.
I have also stimulated the part of the local economy involved in package delivery. It’s not just the wonders of amazon.com—there are, for instance, lots of good books that are no longer in print, but luckily I’ve found alibris.com, a massive used bookstore on line. And I can present fret any hour of day or night.
I know there are people who find gift-buying heinous, viewing it with the same glaring eyes that our Puritan forefathers used when they banned the holiday entirely. Those folks can go sit with the people who carp about the imaginary War on Christmas.
I think there is something sweet and commendable about indulging the desire to do something nice for the people we love; the fact that such giving involves a sacrifice of ordinary mortal money is a fine echo of the larger immortal sacrifice that Christmas foreshadows.
I like getting people stuff, and Christmas is a fine excuse to do it. But I will be glad to sit back later tonight, take in a Christmas eve service, go to bed while my grown children have their traditional slumber party, sleep until my son harasses me into wakefulness, and enjoy a day tomorrow during which I need do nothing but enjoy the day.

The Race to the Top (Education reform #42187)

2009-12-18T06:55:00.002-05:00

(News-Herald, December 17) I’m sorry. I didn’t think we’d be talking about this sort of thing during the pre-Christmas rush. My cynical side suspects that certain people were kind of counting on that.
As part of the federal initiative to stimulate everything that walks, crawls and breathes by throwing money at it, a giant dollar pile has been set up to throw at education. It’s called “Race to the Top,” and apparently the first part of the race is to the top of that mountain of money.
States are being given the chance to compete for educational stimulus money—many are called, but only a few will be paid off. Only a few states can win a slice of pork pie by showing their willingness to scrap their own educational visions and do as Washington wants them to.
The feds have four goals they want to see states pursue:
1) Adopt super-duper standards and assessments.
2) Get big-time data crunching systems in place.
3) Recruiting, retaining and rewarding top teachers.
4) Fixing low-achieving schools.
Noble goals, though DC also has very specific ideas about how to pursue them. Goals 1 and 2 translate into more high stakes testing and centralized control of local curriculum, with lots of sophisticated bean-counting. In Pennsylvania, that will mean the PSSA, Keystone exams and PVAAS boondoggle will be given fresh coats of paint and set in cement.
Goal 3 would require some of the biggest shifts in local focus; there isn’t any school district in Venangoland that makes even a token effort to recruit and retain the tops in the teaching field. Most depend on a hiring technique known as “Hope We Get Lucky.” The troubling part of Goal 3 is that it appears the feds would like to see merit pay (and de-merit pay) based on student test results.
Goals 1-3 require camouflage and paperwork. Goal 4 has real teeth. In the Pennsylvania version, a school that is deemed too under par has three choices—replace the principal and at least half the teachers, convert the school to a charter school, or simply close the school and ship the students out.
This is particularly exciting when you remember that under current No Child Left Behind goals, every school in the state will fail (or cheat) within the next four years.
States will compete for free federal money by racking up points based on various criteria, most measuring how willing the state is to submit federal demands. One of the criteria is how well the state can guarantee that local school districts will go along, and so each school district is being asked to sign a letter agreeing to follow the state’s plan. The local school districts hand the keys to the store over to the state, who in turn hands them over to the feds.
Everybody remotely serious about education knows that accountability is absolutely necessary. We should be able to tell you what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how successfully it has been done. But everybody remotely serious about education also knows that the way to get there is not with one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter programs poorly measured by a handful of high stakes tests.
So why are so many people who ought to know better lining up to declare that yes, indeed, the emperor’s new clothes are beautiful?
You remember that mountain of money. Some of the promotional material for RTTT notes proudly that half of the federal money will actually makes its way to local districts. The rest presumably will stay in Harrisburg to buy really nice, shiny bean counting machinery.
The program is complicated and still-changing, but it is worth noting that many of its details are not supported by a shred of the sort of data these reformers claim to revere. Even if you think a bureaucrat in DC is the best person to design curriculum for our local school districts, I believe in my heart that some of what’s being pushed here is bad educational policy.
Harrisburg has been asked to sell off our schools and sell out its educational principles. The state could say no. So could local districts.
And while you may think that such a sweeping retooling of American public education might be accompanied by discussion, you’d be wrong. In the tradition of great Harrisburg initiatives (midnight pay raise, property tax “reform,” I-80 tolls) this is being handled like a greased pig in a wind tunnel. Your local district must make its decision and let Harrisburg know by December 18. Tomorrow.

Son of How the Church Lost Me

2009-12-11T22:06:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, December 10) Last week’s column about leaving the church generated more response than any column I’ve ever written, more emails than I can keep up with. So I’m going to break two of my rarely-broken rules—don’t write about the same topic two weeks in a row, and don’t discuss mail.
Many correspondents guessed that I would receive many invitations to various churches in the area, and they were correct. The invitations came with varying degrees of charm and concern, and while I probably won’t accept most of them, I sincerely appreciate each one.
Some folks will be surprised that I received not a single solitary note calling me names, speculating on how much I will enjoy roasting in hell, or recommending that I be thumped soundly for my wandering ways. Even people who mostly disagreed with me were kind and friendly about it.
It reminded me of something I’ve suspected for a long time, which is that people inside and outside of the church don’t generally understand each other very well.
These days, few people know how to discuss differences opinion without slinging mud and calling names.
Some folks object to being evangelized (i.e. “fixed”), and some believers can’t sit idle when they see someone who, they believe, needs their spiritual help. Unchurched folks can be overly defensive, hearing themselves called names and rejected even when it hasn’t happened yet, and might not happen ever. At the same time, some folks in the church sit silent while a wide variety of wingnuts wrap their personal political and social agendas in an ill-fitting suit of faux Christianity. Those wingnuts make it easy for intellectually lazy unchurched folks to dismiss the whole package.
Churched and unchurched folks are way more complicated than they give each other credit for.
I heard from a wide variety of drop-outs (and nearly-drop-outs) who shared that they felt a church had failed to meet their needs and felt that they couldn’t stay in a place where they were spiritually starving. And I heard from a wide variety of church people who wanted to remind me that the church is not a fast food drive-through where you motor up, order what you need, get it, and then drive away.
I agree with both. In broken relationships the blame, if we have to call it that, is usually shared by both parties. But here’s the thing—in this particular broken relationship, the church is the party that’s being left.
Imagine one spouse is walking out. Pat says, “Why are you leaving me?” Chris explains, revealing heart and hurt and motivations. “Oh,” says Pat. “Well, let me explain why you are wrong to feel that way.”
This conversation does not end with Pat saying, “Oh, well, since you’ve explained why I shouldn’t feel the way I do, I’ll just stop feeling that way and stay here.”
Last week was not meant as a personal plea. I am working through my own issues in my own way. But people who abandon the church rarely explain why, leaving the church to fly blind on the increasingly common issue of “Hey! Where did everybody go?” I wanted to add some data to the conversation; folks are free to use the info, or not, as they wish.
But my mail has led me to one more suggestion.
The most universal comment in my mail, from all sides of the pews, was that I was brave to write last week’s column. On the one hand, I get that. Talking about religion in Venango County is like complaining about the Pope in an Irish bar – some kind of argument will certainly break out.
But on the other hand—really??!! Is it really that hard to talk honestly about a subject that is so critical? Religion is one of the few issues that is so pervasive, so important to us as a society, that it shapes the lives of even those who choose not to be involved in it.
The emails, from believers and non-believers, churched and unchurched (need I really explain that those distinctions are not the same?), moved me and reminded me of how much I missed simple, honest discussion of the matter, with people sharing what they really think and not what they think they’re supposed to think. And I’m told that some of these conversations have spilled out into the real world. In this season, when it’s so easy to go through motions without remembering why, that can’t be a bad thing.

How the Church Lost Me

2009-12-04T06:45:00.001-05:00

(News-Herald, December 3) In the last few decades, large numbers of Americans have dropped out of organized religion. I may know a bit about why, because I am one of them.
I was raised in the church. Went to Sunday School and youth group regularly. I was a youth delegate to Annual Conference (the United Methodist equivalent of state government, with more praying and less money-grubbing), and when I outgrew that, I joined a group of activists who pushed for young adults to have a place in the church’s ministry. I’ve been an usher, a choir director, and a youth director.
I tell you all of this not to brag, but so you understand that I’m a true drop-out, not a never-was. So how did the church lose me and, presumably, people like me?
First, I have no beef with God. I’ve been blessed with a life far better than I deserve—sometimes way far better-- and not a day goes by that I am not grateful for it. And I am well aware that faith exercised without community is incomplete. But for years, I’ve wrestled with the following:
No attitude of searching. For me, it’s a basic part of life to be looking for answers. I am amazed and alarmed by the number of believers who are looking, not for understanding, but for confirmation that what they already believe is true. What is the point of trying to be open to the voice of God if you have convinced yourself that you already know exactly what He has to say?
It’s Finished Christian Syndrome. They’re finished, done growing, done searching. They don’t need anything except another coat of varnish and a little polish, thanks. I can’t relate. How can anything be alive and not be growing?
No room for the wicked. It is one of the oldest clichés in the churching world, the repeated reminder that we are supposed to minister to people who are dirty, grubby, unsavory or even (gasp) just plain wrong. And yet some church folks apparently did not get that memo.
Never mind the Great Commission (“Go ye into all the world etc ” which we memorized in Bob Shearer’s Sunday School class). Some believers think that a Good Christian should never consort with, talk to, work with, or share air with the Wrong Sort of People.
I knew a minister once who was happy to minister to anyone who was Right With God. But if you weren’t, he expected you to go off by yourself and work it out, and he didn’t really want to talk to you until you had Gotten Right. Never mind the arrogance involved in believing that you can judge who is Right With God; the total disregard for the Bible’s fairly clear instructions on the matter is disheartening. Too many churches have no more active ministry than a country club or a reasonably friendly bar. Too many churches spend too much time celebrating how their faith proves that they’re better than everyone else.
Tiny God. The Eternal Creator of All That Is, Was and Will Be has strong feelings about which political party to support in this year’s elections?!?! Seriously??
Traditions short-circuited. You know how upset Catholics become when the Vatican messes with tradition every hundred years or so? Protestant churches do that all the time. “That tradition that has always been comforting and meaningful to you? Yeah, we decided to chuck that last week.” I could go back to my old church, but beyond the bricks and mortars, it bears no resemblance at all to the church I grew up in.
Diversity? Pursuing diversity for its own sake is dumb. But in Venango County, if you don’t come as part of a complete traditional family unit package, many churches aren’t sure what to do with you.
My Own Fault. To be honest, I have to acknowledge my own role. I’m the one who put distance between myself and the church. It’s true that the last time a minister visited me was in September, 1979. But in all the intervening years, not one church has barred the door or refused to let me sit in a pew. Those of us who chose to walk away could also choose to walk back.
What might prompt us to do that? Hard to say. The shortest answer is for churches to be places that clearly offer something powerful and positive not found elsewhere. That might give churches and strays a reason to bother with each other.

Stuffing

2009-11-27T07:43:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, November 26) My daughter feels that I should write about stuffing, which she believes is the whole point of the turkey.
Personally, I rather like turkey, though the combination of turkey and stuffing is optimal. I do not have any special secret family recipe and so in the years that I have stuffed and cooked a turkey, I have started with a bag of herbified bread, some chicken broth, assorted onions and herbs, and a bunch of garlic, because everything in the world is better with garlic.
I dump it all in a big bowl and add ingredients till I like how it smells. Then I stuff it into the bird.
Well, after I finish defrosting the bird. I know there’s a formula that tells me when to put the frozen bird in the fridge so that it will safely defrost (weight times the cosine of the number of bags of leftover restaurant food taking up refrigerator space minus the size of the ice cube maker equals “put the turkey in the refrigerator shortly after the Fourth of July”). I live on the edge, sitting the brick-like bird on a kitchen counter roughly five minutes after I remember that I need to defrost it. On cooking day this is supplemented with a warm bath in the kitchen sink (the bird, not me).
I am aware that I am turning the turkey into a seething cauldron of dangerous bacteria, so I am telling you clearly here that doctors, dietary experts and lawyers for this newspaper all advise that you should absolutely NOT follow any of the turkey instructions I am offering here.
Nevertheless, I have always felt relatively safe from the consequences of my wanton recklessness because I do not eat, lick or otherwise ingest the turkey before I have cooked it an appropriate number of hours (weight of bird times age of oven equals half a day). Stuffing laced with enough garlic to kill all life-forms within a ten-foot radius also helps.
My son is a big fan of chicken, but not so much its poultry cousin. He is not a major fan of holidays in general, so I think he views holiday meals as gilt-edged potholes on the highway of life. He has no strong feelings about stuffing.
My daughter accuses turkey of being boring. I disagree, though I think much of the standard holiday menu makes a good case for the value of boring. Stuffing is as exotic as I care to get. I can appreciate the artistry that goes into a giant vat of sweet potato sculpted into the form of the grand canyon with little marshmallow goats and donkeys prancing around the whipped orange cliffs, but I don’t want to eat it.
I’m inclined to say that Things Made Out of Jello do not belong on the Thanksgiving table, and I think that vegetables that are good enough for everyday use shouldn’t be forced to dress up for the occasion with bread crumbs or nuts or other unfamiliar substances.
But I have to admit that my own Thanksgiving dinner is not complete without cranberry relish, a substance that nobody really eats on purpose. It’s traditional, and I am a creature of habit. Tradition is a useful part of holidays; it helps make them comfortable and relaxing.
Still, even the most traditional of us can bend. My tradition was to watch the Macy’s parade, and then complain about how present-day parades are invariably ruined by “hosts” talking incessantly throughout. Now that I have cut my cable television ties, I no longer get to watch the parade, or complain about it. That may be a loss for me, but it’s a win for anybody who ever had to listen to me complain.
Time eventually forces traditions to change. My son won’t be home, so I can only hound him about eating by phone—not quite the same. But some traditions are immovable. I will play tomorrow night in the Franklin Silver Cornet Band pops concert because I can’t imagine not doing it.
A holiday is just another day—same number of hours, no different air. And stuffing is just bread. In both cases we simply add something of our own to make it into what we would like it to be. It’s that ability to shape a day that we are referring to when we talk about making every day a holiday. Heck, if we wanted to, we could have stuffing every day.

Heroes 2009

2009-11-20T17:57:00.000-05:00

(News-Herald, November 19) Every year at this time, I ask you to honor one of your heroes. Not some big, grand hero that you know about from television news or a magazine, but someone who you know personally. Someone who is an actual part of your life.
We are always oddly reluctant to honor such people. Perhaps we’re just shy. Perhaps we feel awkward. Maybe our heroes also have some less-than-admirable qualities that we don’t want to be seen as approving.
There is something extra sad about people standing around a funeral home saying nice things about the deceased that they never told that departed person in life. The one thing sadder I can think of would be someone who died before he ever told the people he honored how much he admired and valued them.
But as a people we find it all too easy to criticize, complain and carp while never quite getting around to the more positive words. We leave people to stumble forward blind and alone, never knowing how much they mean to many of the people around them.
So let’s do it. Once a year, minimum, let’s tell them that they are our heroes. Even if they are people that we are already close to.
My children have become heroes of mine. They are certainly far braver than I was at their age. They have carted themselves to the other side of the continent to pursue their biggest dreams and aspiration. They have sacrificed much of the comfortable and familiar to pursue the fields that they are passionate about.
But it’s not just that courage that I admire. They have continued to show courage and strength in their personal lives, been smart about who to let in and brave about holding to those people, even when holding on was a challenge of one sort or another.
Because they are my children, I love them. But for all these other things, they are heroes of mine.
So are my parents. They got married when my father was in college—who does that? Surely someone must have tried to talk sense into them. Then ten years later they packed up three children and moved a day’s drive from their home and families to Pennsylvania, which also could not have been easy (my sister was only three at the time).
Not that this is a scary, awful place, or a hard place to settle in and make a home. But they had no way of knowing that when they headed down here.
I’m not talking about extraordinary leaps of unheard-of daring. People do similar things, take similar leaps every day. But people also shrink from doing similar things every day.
People who take the leap will tell you they didn’t have much choice, that once they knew what they wanted, they had to deal with the obstacles. Once you’ve decided to eat the banana, you have to deal with the peel.
But lots of folks find it hard to summon that courage. When they see what they have to do, they draw back and say, “But I don’t wanna.” It’s a story as old as Moses saying, “Go pick somebody else for this.”
So among my heroes are people like my children and my parents who find the nerve to go where there passions direct them, who summon the kind of courage which is ordinary in its application, but rare in appearance. My heroes are the people who do what they have to do, even if it is hard or inconvenient, even if, as is almost always the case, they have to take the leap not knowing for certain where they will land.
It’s a quality I admire because, at critical junctures in my life, I have lacked it. Every big mistake I’ve made in my life I’ve made because I lost my nerve, and so many of my heroes are the people who didn’t.
You may choose your own admired heroic qualities for your own personal reasons. The point is, if you want a world where these qualities flourish, you need to honor them when they appear.
So send a note—something real and physical that your hero can hold and save—and let him or her know. Doesn’t have to be fancy. You can start with “You are a hero of mine because…” and send. Do it now, this week, and enter the season of decorating knowing that you added a little point of light to the world.

The Dumbest Generation

2009-11-13T07:10:00.001-05:00

(news-Herald, November 12) I recently finished Mark Bauerlein’s best-seller The Dumbest Generation. It’s one more interesting entry in the genre of cranky “kids these days” screeds, but a couple of his ideas struck me as interesting. These types of books are as regular as dandelions. It seems you are not a certified grown-up until you have complained about Those Darn Young Folks.
In the 1970’s there were regular complaints about the bunch of scary young “hippies” who would gather in Franklin’s parks for all manner of nefarious purposes. In the 1930’s, the Franklin Band threatened to stop giving concerts unless parents got their children under control. [Insert tired old quote by Socrates about disrespectful younger generation here.]
There is one different factor in current complaints—the rise of the digital age. Media changes always add challenges. Find a culture that is adopting the use of writing and you will find a bunch of old-timers complaining. “Kids these days. They don’t learn the old stories and songs. They can’t remember stuff at all. They just sit around squinting at those funny marks on papyrus.”
Digital media is changing us in ways that aren’t entirely clear yet. I like to physically own my music and books; younger folks seem comfortable having these things in intangible and impermanent forms. And the internet allows my children to stay close and in touch in ways I would never have imagined.
This is my digital age story: I stopped at Sheetz and bought gas, then pulled out onto the street. My cell phone rang. It was my daughter calling from across the country to tell me that my gas cap was off. One of her friends had seen me pull out, called her on the cell phone, and then she called me.
Bauerlein’s point is that the digital age is making young Americans stupid. Some of what he says is not new. One generation’s historic essential gold is another generation’s trivial garbage. Boomers remember where they were when JFK was shot; they are lucky if their descendants even remember who JFK was.
But two of Bauerlein’s points struck a chord.
First is a simple observation. We’ve been hearing for a while now the prediction that access to the internet and computers and an infinite library of digitized information would put young brains into overdrive. The internet computer revolution was going to drop our next generation of mental saplings into a deep sea of brain-expanding fertilizer.
Well, the saplings have been soaking for well over a decade now, and there are no signs that the computer-weaned young are any brighter than their forebears, and at least a little evidence that they are actually dumber. It may be that computers don’t make folks smarter any more than the invention of the automobile made people better runners.
Bauerlein’s other interesting point is more subtle. Digital connection has made it possible to stay insulated from other people.
This is true for everybody. Folks who want to believe that Obama was not born in America can stay on the internet fully insulated from anything like facts or sense. Belief that the earth is flat also thrives on line.
But Bauerlein suggests that this effect is more insidious for young folks.
Back in the day, teens would spend just a portion of the day in Teenworld, a world of drama and angst, where cool mattered and smart did not. But at the end of the day they had to go back home, a place often (but not always) ruled by adults and subject to rules different from Teenworld. They needed permission to leave, or even to call out on the single landline in the house.
Experiences in home, church, work and other settings outside of Teenworld prepared young people for life in the adult world, a world where you have to pull up your pants, work for rewards, and listen to people who aren’t like you. When it was time to leave Teenworld, they knew how to acclimate to the Real World.
But digital media have ended that, suggests Bauerlein. With a cell phone and good texting thumbs, teens can stay immersed in Teenworld 24/7, living by nobody’s rules but their own. They stay dumb and immature and therefore often fail to learn how to take a place in the world of Grown Ups.
I don’t think Bauerlein’s book is the last word. In fact, I think he gets some things just plain wrong. But it’s an interesting place for a discussion to start.

Loved and Lost

2009-11-06T21:52:00.001-05:00

(News-Herald, November 5) Is it better to have loved and lost?
It’s cliché to call men commitmentphobic. There’s more to it than the picture of men as hungry buffet diners who won’t settle for just one food. Plenty of men, and women, too, fear commitment for the same reason some folks fear heights, water and pointy objects—something in their gut warns This Way Lies Danger and Hurt.
Hence the proverbial alternative to “loved and lost”—never to have loved at all.
Most of us would opt for choice three—to love and not lose. But that’s probably less likely. Not just because couples and love can fail; sometimes timing, circumstances, geography or courage fail. The only method guaranteed, the only way to be sure that you won’t lose, is not to love at all.
The benefits? Relative safety. Lack of danger.
Is that better than loving and losing? After all, loving and losing hurts. It stings. At its worst, losing leaves you reeling and torn open, betrayed by someone who had the keys to your heart (or your house, or bank account). You are left not only bereft of love, but doubting your own worth, your own senses, your own judgment.
But even the best losing leaves a curious emptiness, a place where someone once filled up a corner of your heart. Even if you are a happy, fulfilled person, a good love brings you happiness beyond what you can find for yourself.
Still, safety is way overrated. To begin with, it’s a lot harder to achieve than it seems in theory. And while “never love at all” could mean hiding in the basement, what it usually means is relationships that are safely half measures, a partner chosen precisely because they will never get close to your heart, or someone who is convenient and familiar. And that usually ends up creating a lot of hurt for which there is no justification.
Yes, losing love hurts. But if someone offers you a supremely delicious chocolate muffin, you’d be a fool to pass it up just because the experience of eating it will only last a few bites.
Love always risks loss, not only because things might not work out in the end (whatever “the end” is, exactly), but also because love, like everything else in life, costs.
It’s not just the time and effort that you put into it yourself. You pay costs in your relationships with other people, your availability, focus, attention. Commit to the person of your dreams, and you lose a little control over your own fate.
Love has an opportunity cost as well. Opportunity cost is an economic concept—spend a dollar on chocolate, and you give up the opportunity to spend it on pickles. Choosing to stay with one person means choosing to go without a whole bunch of other people. It takes a grown-up to make that choice, and some people grow up faster than others.
Once you’ve grown way up, you’ve accumulated much stuff in your life, and holding love can require a major rearrangement of the furniture. When you’re young, you don’t have much furniture, but you have a thousand future possibilities that have to be sacrificed to gain that one real, actual love.
So loving means you will lose something, and while the romantic ideal is that you’ll lose something you’ll never miss because you’ve acquired a priceless gem for the cost of a jar of pickles, it’s human to miss some of those things anyway. That’s why it’s wise to choose with your eyes open, fully aware of the cost, so you don’t second-guess yourself later and mess up the Good Stuff.
Love, at its best, makes you stronger and better, helps you grow, helps you become more yourself, teaches you how to help someone else do all that, too. That’s how you know it’s love, and not something smaller or uglier in faux-love mask.
Loving and losing stinks (just so we’re clear on that). But if you did the love part right, you are still stronger and better after it has passed, certainly more so than if you had never loved at all. And while losing is bad, the stupid stuff you do from fear of losing is far worse.
Love is not for the cowardly or the childish. In the end, death eventually does part us all. So there really is no question of whether we win or lose—only if we’re going to get in the game. Unlike some games, this one rewards the courage to risk losing.

For Monarch Park Fans

2009-11-01T19:33:00.002-05:00

William Passauer has created the definitive Monarch Park website, and I recommend it to all fans of local history.

As noted elsewhere on this blog, Monarch Park was a trolley destination park in Venango County during the first few decades of the 20th century. Today there are few traces left of this thriving amusement park that once served as Venangoland's playground.

This site features images (virtually every photo I've ever seen of the park is here) plus history, maps, and even modern views of the site. This is the best work of scholarship about the fabled park that I've seen to date. You should click on over and take a look.

Nearly Scary

2009-10-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, October 29) It’s that time again.
I don’t mean election time. This round of elections reeks of dullness. In Franklin most races were settled in primary season, except for the city council contest. We have two candidates running for three seats, which means the field is ripe for some sort of write-in campaign. I’m not sure if the seat is for a particular ward or an at-large, but I’m going to suggest we all write in “Christian Marshall” for councilman, because I think we could at least count on him to make council meetings more entertaining.
But, no. I mean that it’s Halloween time again.
There are lots of things not to like about Halloween, starting with its newfound role as the kick-off holiday for the Christmas season. When Tim Burton put Christmas and Halloween together for The Nightmare before Christmas, the result was one of the best movies ever. When retailers put creepy plastic skeletons next to fake Christmas tree displays, the result is just disturbing.
But for people-watching, Halloween can’t be beaten. Get a big vat of candy, sit on your porch, and the parade comes to you.
Incredibly Cute Children are the bread and butter of Halloween, and there is something pleasantly heartwarming about how they are usually part of a family field trip. I appreciate the ambition of families who spend the night piling in and out of the car after cruising for the next street filled with burning porch lights. And I’m always encouraged by the large number of parents who gently remind their children to practice basic courtesy. Most of the customers actually say, “Thank you.”
Of course, that’s only the customers who can actually speak. There’s something vaguely unethical about using around a trick-or-treater who can’t walk, talk or chew as a Halloween prop. I wait apprehensively for the year that someone comes carrying a stuffed or inflatable child as an excuse to gather sweets.
Halloween has lost a certain amount of its brand identity. Theoretically, it’s the holiday to be scary, but costumes both in the stores and on the streets don’t stick to the theme very closely. There are certainly many traditionalists who trot out the fake blood and creepy faces, but in many cases it takes extra effort to scan for scariness.
Small children generally stick with cuteness. Little boys dress up as super heroes, which is not at all scary, while little girls frequently turn themselves into princesses. The princess thing will eventually be scary to those super-heroes, but not for another couple of decades.
Grown men are encouraged to simply give in to our worst fashion instincts. Plenty of costumes look suspiciously like the clothes that many of us wore on purpose decades ago. I freely agree that lots of that is plenty scary, but somehow I can’t quite associate vampires with disco and tie-dyed vests.
Grown women—well, in the costume section of any store, you can see a certain pattern emerge as you walk down the aisle: sexy nurse, sexy maid, sexy raggedy ann, sexy nun, sexy grandma, sexy cable repairwoman, and sexy sexpot. Any character you can think of in the pop culture world exists in a “sexy” version for women; as God is my witness, a woman can buy a sexy Spongebob Squarepants costume this year if she wishes, and I have to admit—that is a little bit scary.
The tough costume demographic remains the teenaged crowd. Of course, many prefer the traditional ski-mask and dark clothes ensemble. (Question for grocery store managers—are more eggs sold just before Easter, or just before Halloween?) For those who hope to grab a little treat with their egg-flinging trickery, the choice is usually a little face paint plus A) something ugly, B) something torn, or C) the same sports jersey that you usually wear on game day.
Occasionally one finds teens who will commit to looking fully ridiculous, but most are torn by the tricky issue of trying to beg for treats while still maintaining their dignity. It’s a useful skill that many will need later in life; I suppose that’s a bit scary, too.
Perhaps Halloween has become a time to just sort of let loose and act a little silly. I can’t argue with that. It can be scary to get out of your box, but sometimes when you do the really scary things, you get the biggest rewards.
And that’s why I’ll be writing in “Christian Marshall” for city councilman in Franklin.

PSSA, PVAAS and More Nifty Help from the State

2009-10-22T21:35:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, October 22) This week I was schooled by the state about more awesomeness that is Pennsylvania’s System of School Assessment (the PSSA tests). This latest big vat of coolaid was served up, ironically, in the Hemlock Room at IU6. When the state lowers itself to send consultants to instruct the poor hicks who toil in local school districts, there is always lots to learn.
For those of you still following the PSSA’s, we are down to the crunch. Remember, No Child Left Behind mandates that in four years, every single American school child will test above average. Since this is only slightly more likely than pigs flying out of Ed Rendell’s nose, the ever-benevolent state has leapt to the rescue with—more statistical tools!
The number crunching is called the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System. “Value Added” is a useful term from the manufacturing world. Simple explanation: If I take a ten cent piece of sheet metal and turn it into a two dollar widget, I’ve added a buck ninety’s worth of value.
What that principle has to do with testing or educating students is not clear, unless the state means to suggest that students are the same as sheet metal and widgets. I was prepared to argue that point, but it turns out that the state’s meaning is something else; words mean whatever they want them to. And I can call my bicycle a stealth bomber.
PVAAS uses a thousand points of data to project the test results for students. This is a highly complex model that three well-paid consultants could not clearly explain to seven college-educated adults, but there were lots of bars and graphs, so you know it’s really good. I searched for a comparison and first tried “sophisticated guess;” the consultant quickly corrected me—“sophisticated prediction.” I tried again—was it like a weather report, developed by comparing thousands of instances of similar conditions to predict the probability of what will happen next? Yes, I was told. That was exactly right. This makes me feel much better about PVAAS, because weather reports are the height of perfect prediction.
It was hard not to well up with that sort of sarcasm during the indoctrination. We were there to copy numbers from websites onto papers, as if the zillions of tax dollars had suddenly crumped out before the developers could add the capability of printing reports. The consultant veered between trying to bludgeon us with jargon-filled gobbledegook and patronizing us with explanations of words like “excelling” and “improving.” And assurances that if we just taught what the state wants us to, everything will be great.
The fallacy at the heart of the PSSA remains. A bunch of multiple choice questions are a lousy measure of the reading skills of live humans. (The PSSA, we were told, is not a standardized test. Okay. I’ll think about that while I pedal my stealth bomber to the store.) You can run numbers through statistical models all day, but if the numbers are near-meaningless to start with, a massage doesn’t improve them.
The intent of the state has not changed much since they first launched the PSSA’s—Harrisburg wants to write the curriculum for every district in the state. What has changed is their tone. Ten years ago they were still trying to gently con us; now their contempt for local districts is beginning to shine through. They are really tired of talking to all these yokels; they would just as soon simply roll right over us and whip us into shape.
So prepare next for the proposed Keystone Exams. Students currently in 7th grade may face ten exit exams in order to graduate. And because the state wants to wield a big hammer, the exams will count for a full third of students’ final grades.
The process remains a two-handed slap in teachers’ faces. On the one hand, we’re treated as if we are the problem and that schools need to be rescued from us by brave bureaucrats and consultants. On the other hand, we are pushed to do things that we know are professionally unsound. Imagine suits going into hospitals and telling doctors, “You are making all these people sick. Stop using pointy scalpels and start operating with shovels.” High stakes multiple choice tests are bad education.
And the final indignity is that after these sorts of sessions, one on one in the hall, many of these consultants will freely admit that they’re selling poisoned punch, but hey, they’re well paid and they’ve gotten used to the taste.

More Bad Managers

2009-10-16T17:52:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, October 15) Show me a chronically bad employee, and I will show a big neon sign pointing toward a bad manager.
Please note—nothing that I’m about to say removes one iota of responsibility from employees. An employee who is not doing the job should be making improvements, not excuses.
But if I am looking at the big picture and I see an organization with employee performance problems, the blame lies with the managers in the system.
In the widget factory, managers are the guys who do not actually work on widgets. Managers are not in any way directly involved in the primary mission of the company, which is to manufacture widgets.
Instead, managers have one primary function, and that is to get the best very best performance out of the people who work for them. That’s their entire job. And the performance of their employees is the most important measure of whether they are good managers or not.
Most bad managers have forgotten this principle. It’s not that they choose bad methods to get the best work out of their people. It’s that they have forgotten that getting that best work is the manager’s job.
They believe, for instance, that effort is a measure of their own job performance. But if the dikes are collapsing, it’s pointless to claim that you plugged some of the holes and you were going to plug some more but it was difficult to figure out how and actually plugging those holes would have been hard. The fact that you tried as hard as you felt like trying is irrelevant when the waters are up around your armpits.
Management is like most jobs in that the job is not done when you’re tired of working; the job is done when you’ve achieved the results you need to achieve.
Many bad managers have their favorite techniques, Management by bullying. Management by email. Management by think-I’ll-hide-in-my-office-and-hope-it-goes-away. None of these get any useful results, other than to set up the moment when the bad manager tells his boss, “Hey, I managed the heck out of that situation. If it didn’t get any better, it must be a hopeless employee or sunspots or drugs in the water. It certainly isn’t my fault.”
This is a dumb career move for the bad manager. If he’s announcing that he can’t actually manage employees, which is in fact the very job he was hired to do, his boss should be wondering why the organization is still paying him. Well, unless his boss is also a bad manager.
Bad managers will also protest that their techniques of choice Should Have Worked. But “should have” means nothing. When your car stalls, you can kick the tires and kiss your St. Christopher medal, then get back behind the wheel and claim that the car “should be” running—but you will still be going nowhere.
There is no doubt that some employees are a challenge. Most come with some particular quirk that, under the wrong circumstances, can invite disaster and chaos. Getting the best possible work out of them can require skill, talent and diligence. And that’s why the widget plant managers get paid more than the widget builders.
If an employee needs help and direction, it’s the manager’s job to see that it’s provided. If the employee can’t be salvaged, it’s the manager’s job to replace the employee.
Of course, a manager who wants to replace employees because he doesn’t have the wit to manage them will not exactly inspire loyalty or optimism in the employees. That’s why it’s useful to have a variety of techniques with which to salvage problem employees.
An entire cluster of employee problems, hostility and poor performance is a sure sign that bad management is loose in the workplace. Part of insuring that you get the best work from your people is helping them work well together. Bad morale, infighting, and widespread non-performance are sure signs that a manager either can’t do his job or just doesn’t want to.
None of this excuses employee bad behavior. Every employee should be responsible enough to stay on track, behave himself, and do what he needs to do without being reminded. In a perfect world all employees would be self-directed professionals, responsible and selflessly working together to fulfill the organization’s purpose every hour of the day. And in that world the managers would all be out of work because there would be no use for them.

What Do You Want

2009-10-10T07:12:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, October 8) It seems like the easiest thing in the world to know what you want. And yet the world is filled with people who aren’t certain, don’t know, can’t decide. Even when we tell ourselves that we know what we want, our actions can suggest that we don’t really know what we’re talking about.
The grown-up dating world, for instance, is filled with people who “really want to be in a relationship.” Except that if you watch their behavior, their choices, the way they spend their time, it becomes obvious there are a hundred things more important to them than finding a mate.
Or parents who say that they want their children to grow up strong and independent, but who don’t allow their children five minutes of independent thought or action in a week.
Sometimes people grab what they don’t want and hold tight, because if their hands were free, they would have to risk reaching for what they do want. They might fail. They might drop it. Full hands keep their hearts safe.
Successful people say they want something and then behave as if they actually mean it. The Secret of Success isn’t much more complicated than that. Most of the people who are muddled and just getting by have missed some part of that formula.
They may “want” something only because they think they are supposed to. Shortly after college graduation the landscape is littered with couples getting married because they’re pretty sure that’s what they’re supposed to do next. It does not occur to them that they may not WANT to get married. Or rather, it doesn’t occur to them at that point—it often comes up later.
Some people discover that behaving as if they actually want what they want is hard. It may require hard work. It may require giving up things that, supposedly, one wants less than the Big Goal. Goals cost, and if you want them you have to pay. “I want a Lexus and I want to pay $1.50,” is no use. “I want this person as long as I don’t have to give up these others,” doesn’t buy you a functional relationship.
Some people are way too vague about what they want. “I want a better life” doesn’t really give you direction. It could mean a higher paying job or better hair.
Sometimes people want things they can’t have. It’s positively un-American to say, but people have limits and those limits affect what they can accomplish. If your IQ is 50 and you want to become the world’s top rocket scientist, you are destined for disappointment. A shlumpy, middle-aged guy will never become an NBA starter.
Some people want things that can’t go together. Then they have to decide which they want most. This can lead to whiplash-inducing waffling. It’s not just confusion; met needs do not motivate. You can be really driven by hunger, until you eat. You’re at the beach and you want to sunbathe and you want to swim in the water. While you’re in the water, you’ll really want to go lie on the sand. While you’re lying on the sand, you’ll really want to go dash into the waves.
Sometimes what you want comes in an unexpected package; if you’re not clear and alert, you may miss it. You may even reject it because you don’t like the wrapper. That’s why you need to know what you want—so that you can recognize it no matter what shape it comes in. “I want chocolate,” you declare. But if you only recognize chocolate when it’s bar-shaped, you’ll miss a tasty chocolate bunny while gnawing on a chocolate-colored bar of soap.
In Venangoland, we find lots of people who say they want economic resurgence. And yet. Some of them don’t want it badly enough to actually do anything about it. Some of them want it to happen by a rebirth of industries that aren’t going to be reborn here or anywhere else. Some want the region to somehow get “better.” Some want the region to get what it needs as long as they don’t have to sacrifice anything they want.
Too many people are more concerned about the package and not the actual economic improvement. Pushing economic development around here would work better if folks really wanted it—without a long list of Only If’s attached. The rule for regional success is no different than that for personal success. Know what you want, and then act like you really want it.

Applefest '09

2009-10-02T08:01:00.001-04:00

(News-Herald, October 1) This week I’d like to talk about a guaranteed path to true love and peace for all the people of the world.
Ha! Just kidding. The only thing I could possibly be writing about this week is the 473rd Applefest in Franklin. Crowds may not top one million, though a large turn-out is anticipated for the launch of a moon rocket containing the bones of Col. Drake, followed by the Beatles reunion concert.
Okay, still just kidding. Generally the only way to say something new about Applefest is to make stuff up. As a pretend journalist I’m certainly not above that, but I am reluctant to do so when 100,000 fact-checkers are expected. (Disclaimer: the above details were exaggerated for effect. The Beatles will not be at Applefest, as far as I know.)
Every Applefest brings small variations on past festivals, mild mutations that have allowed the original small celebration to evolve into a sprawling monstrosity in the same way that single-cell organisms eventually led to more complicated structures capable of sitting on a couch, eating pizza and hollering Jeopardy answers at the tv.
So, yes, there are some new wrinkles. There’s the wedding, some new musical offerings, probably some new tchotchke shops. But let’s be honest. If you wanted new things at Applefest, you’d start your festing by first visiting all the stuff you never got to last year.
Applefest is festival comfort food. There is something pleasant in the consistency. We look forward to the music, the pancake breakfast, the race, the show at the Barrow, the cars, our favorite shops, the carved stumps and the seashells painted with Jesus and Elvis—it’s so much like visiting with old friends that visiting with actual old friends seem perfectly suited to the occasion.
However, if you are a mildly wild soul looking to spice things up just a bit, let me offer some suggestions for new Applefestian adventure.
Franklin Pizza Challenge: Next to churches and bars, we have more pizza sellers than Dunkin’ has donut holes (and why can’t we have one of those again, huh?). So—can you eat pizza from every pizza place in town before the weekend is over? (Disclaimer: note that I asked “can you”—the question of whether you should is one I’m not going to raise. The moral, ethical and dietary issues of the pizza challenge are ones that every person can only answer for him/her-self.)
Create Marketing Ideas: The Chamber needs ways to market Applefest like I need hair ribbons. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good ideas out there. For instance, Pittsburgh folks might be interested to know that Applefest is going to be way more fun than the G-20 summit. No demonstrators terrorizing local businesses and citizens, no local police terrorizing demonstrators. “Applefest: No Tear Gas Here” may not seem like a natural slogan, but I bet once it’s on a few t-shirts it will grow on people.
Cell Phone Games: Years ago, I suggested cell phone tag. To play that game, you call your pursuer and give hints for finding you. Back then, cell phones were mostly for talking. Now, of course, cell phones can be used for texting, photographing, and performing minor surgery.
So, for modified cell phone tag:
Team I starts by picking a location and taking their picture there. The picture location can be easy (by the fountain) or hard (by the roof slates painted with pictures of fish). Send that picture to Team II, who now have to find the location and take their own picture there and send it. Then Team II picks a new location and sends a picture to Team I. Rinse and repeat until it’s time to eat another funnel cake (approximately 30 minutes). Time stamps on the phone and math skills will tell you who found the locations fastest. Winners pick the place to eat supper; losers buy.
Cell phone teams may also compete to collect the largest set of pictures of incredible Applefest sights, from the above-mentioned Jesus seas shells to a ferret on a leash. Each special sight can only be claimed once—first team to send a picture to other teams gets the point.
(Disclaimer: If you don’t know what I’ve been talking about for the last two paragraphs, you should not attempt to play these games. Instead, just move along the sidewalk at a leisurely pace and when you see someone using a cell phone, shake your head and mutter, “Kids these days!” Then go get some pizza.)

New Enterprises in Franklin

2009-09-25T21:26:00.001-04:00

(News-Herald, September 24) I took a quick trip through down town Franklin last weekend to get a peek at some of the new projects there.
First I made a stop at the Liberty Galleria. The newly refurbished space on Liberty Street has a small but interesting assortment of goodies. Chocolate from Foxburg, toys from Cochranton. Some pet stuff. A great assortment of heat-rendering ingredients for people who like to make food that bites back. And all the way in back a freezer loaded with baklava.
Most intriguing is a toy that is part building block and part marble track. The possibilities seem far more intriguing than the name (Block N Roll), and I was surprised to see that it’s produced by a toy company headquartered on Third Street in Franklin. I’ll do some research and get back to you on that one.
The Galleria also includes glass stuff, assorted jewelry, pet goodies, and a lot of empty air. There’s plenty of space left for fledgling entrepreneurs (if I had money to invest in inventory, I’d set up the Venangoland authors bookstore). And they’ve done a nice job of rescuing the building and turning it into something than any sort of business could happily locate into.
But I was just passing through the Galleria as an appetizer to the main course; Sandy Baker had agreed to give me a peek inside the old Franklin Club.
The club was originally called the Nursery Club; the actual organization dates back to the late 1870’s. But the Nursery Club didn’t buy its clubhouse until a decade later. That structure, previously a private home, was purchased for $8,000. Adding a ballroom and expanding some other facilities cost another six grand. Costs have gone up a tad during the 120 years the club has perched there.
The “Nursery of Great Men” slogan had caught on for a while in Franklin; it’s actual origin was Erie politician Morrow B. Lowry, who was trying to make fun of us. We took the line and ran with it, aggressively mocking him right back.
But eventually the attraction of the odd motto faded (as a school sports nickname, “Fighting Nurserymen” raises a variety of disturbing images). Eventually Franklin athletes became Knights, and the Nursery Club became the Franklin Club.
The Bakers have been busy inside the old building, though long-time club fans will not be alarmed by what they find. The first and second floors are newly recarpeted and wallpapered. The ballroom doesn’t get new wallpaper (thereby preserving what may have been the single ugliest feature of the club), but it is getting a reproduction tin ceiling. Most of the bars are being rebuilt. If you never spent much time in the club, things will seem largely unchanged when you walk in. It still gives an atmosphere of muted elegance and accessible class.
The biggest changes, ironically, are in the area that most local folks never saw—the exclusive basement rooms. This was the members-only bar and restaurant that ordinary civilians never got to see.
Now it will be McGinnis’s, an Irish pub. Basically, a three-room affair. One room will be the actual bar, one a genteel sitting-in-leather-chairs area, and the old restaurant will now house tables, bookcases, and a private corner in the back. The old carpet has been replaced with hardwood floor, the old ceiling with more reproduction tin ceiling. It is hard to imagine a more warm and inviting space. I don’t drink, but the picture of sitting in such a pleasant cave with a book and some good company—well, maybe I can just buy a glass of something and let it sit there for ambience.
For the pub project, the Baker’s have enlisted a co-founder of the popular Molly Brannigans pub chain, and they’ve hired their key personnel for the whole operation (I’m not sure what to call it now—it’s not a “club” any more, but “restaurant/pub/event center” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue).
The new name will be The Commons at Franklin (there’s a website). The bowling alley is still there, though not up and running just yet. The men’s room halfway down the steps to the bar is going to be a ladies room. A couple of wall displays will preserve and honor some of the Club’s early history.
I know many people have wondered what is happening, what we’re going to end up with. It appears that we’re going to get the return of an honorable old Franklin landmark, hopefully better managed and more accessible to the general public.

Goring Some Oxen

2009-09-18T18:53:00.001-04:00

(News-Herald, September 17) I have a whole library of subjects I’ve put off because, as much as I’d like to write about them, I know that I’ll just be asking for trouble. But this week, I’m clearing out that trouble file all at once, like pulling off a bandaid in one quick jerk (only this week, I’ll be the quick jerk). I can stop procrastinating and start collecting grumpy mail.
This is not the South.
Ignore for a moment the offensive things that a Confederate flag represents. This is Pennsylvania. Back when people waved that flag for real, they were trying to kill people from here. A Pennsylvanian with a confederate flag on a house or truck or t-shirt makes about as much sense as a black man in a pointy white sheet.
Cheerleading is not a sport.
Yes, cheerleading has changed over the decades. In my youth, cheerleaders stood in front of fans and led cheers (how else did we learn to spell “success”). Now they put on acrobatic displays and create giant sculptures made out of people. I do not blame cheerleaders for the decreased time spent leading cheers; modern sports fans are tv-trained lumps, and only the band will actually cheer.
But cheerleading is not a sport. I know it requires physical skill, and that cheerleaders have competitions. The same is true of dancers, and dancing isn’t a sport, either.
What bothers me most about cheerleading calling itself a sport is—why does it WANT to? Does cheerleading suffer from some sort of low self-esteem that it thinks it’s not good enough if it is “just” cheerleading and not a big old sport?
Do football players say, “Hey, we have a ball and we run around, so we are basketball players, too!” No. Why do that instead of just saying, “Basketball, shmasketball—we play FOOTBALL!”
I understand this is NW PA, and for many folks if it isn’t a sport, it doesn’t matter. And some school districts have finagled their way around various regulations by declaring cheerleading a sport. But cheerleaders should be bigger than that. Cheerleaders should be proud to be cheerleaders.
Toddlers should watch parades, not carry batons in them.
There is no reason to put a small child in a spangly outfit, stick a baton in her hand, and make her march/trundle/stagger through an entire parade. None. I cringe every time I watch a troupe of small children dragging themselves miserably down a street, surrounded by a staff of adults who act as though they are masterminding the Normandy Invasion.
I have heard all the arguments.
“The child is learning skills that she’ll use for years.” No, she isn’t. She’s mostly learning to hate the whole business, so that any hope she might have pursued it, enjoyed it, and done well at it when she becomes old enough is erased in the heat-addled haze of senseless parading.
“The child really loves it. Really. She wants to do it.” She’s a child. If Mommy sat in front of her and said, “Hey sweetie, you’d really like to roll in the mud with smelly pigs, wouldn’t you?” she’d say yes. If she did it once and received a giant wave of parental love and approval, she’d keep on doing it as long as she could stand to, or at least until she was old enough to understand big words like “emotional blackmail.”
“It’s fun.” Really? Because usually there isn’t a person out there who looks like they’re having fun. Not the miserable, confused little girls, not the harried over-serious adults, not the guy driving the vehicle with the blaring tin-can speakers, not the brother who has been forced to “come help out.”
End (Some) High School Sports.
The private sector is ready to take over. A variety of leagues, sponsored by the Y’s and the AAU, have sprung up. These involve some very fine motives (more playing opportunities for young athletes) and some not-so-fine motives (more Being In Charge opportunities for adults).
It was one thing when these programs augmented school sports, but now some of these private leagues are actually competing with school programs for athletes. Meanwhile, fewer school sports are actually coached by school employees, giving them even less connection to the school. One of these systems can go, and while I’m partial to school sports, saving some taxpayer money might be popular. So let’s keep the sports that are still truly school sports and get rid of the ones that are now duplicated.

Small People; Local Politics

2009-09-15T21:09:00.000-04:00

(News-Herald, February 2005) The old conservative-liberal division no longer makes sense; too few conservatives or liberals understand what their respective labels actually mean, though they’re certainly divided over something. There seem to be no politicians who believe in a pluralistic society; all our parties agree that the role of government is to force people to do the right thing, and everyone has a narrow view of what the right thing is.
Small town local politics are generally free of such ideologues. Instead, we get politics infected by the Small People. Sometimes the Small People are in power, and sometimes they’re hectoring elected officials from the sidelines. But the Small People always have certain tell-tale characteristics.
Small People have tiny vision, cramped and selfish spirits. They see themselves in battle against most of the rest of the world, a world populated by Those People.
The Small People have contempt for those beneath them socially or economically—Those People who live in the Arbors or line up at Community Services. The Small People believe that money = virtue, so people who don’t have money obviously lack virtue. Handouts are bad for them. (But Small People know their family and friends are virtuous, and anyway, what point is being in office if it doesn’t help you get your way?)
The Small People resent those beneath them. They resent it when Those People act as if they’re entitled to the same money or respect or shot at political post and advantage that the Small People have. How dare Those People act as if they have a right to hold an elected office without the Proper Connections.
Small People also resent the people above them. Someone smarter or more eloquent than they are makes them feel their smallness. People who have power over them enrage them. Small People can turn vicious in a power struggle, and bitter after losing. What right do Those People have to take control of this board/committee/group?
It’s impossible to move the Small People with an eloquent statement or well-reasoned argument, because they refuse to see anything larger than their own cramped aspirations or petty concerns. Every disagreement is personal; it never occurs to Small People that their opponents might have a legitimate point. Their response, whether to your face or whispered out of the corner of their mouth, will be cutting or condescending or cruel, to bring you down to size and to reassure themselves that there is no one in the world better than the Small People.
They refuse to imagine anything bigger than themselves, and assume everyone operates from the same selfish motives. A truth that disagrees with their own tiny view must be a lie. A person who makes a kind or wise gesture must be faking it to manipulate events for his own benefit.
Even their friends and allies are not immune to their withering sniping, because friends and allies must stay smaller than the Small People. Foolishly materialistic people may want to keep up with the Joneses, but Small People want to force the Joneses to stay down with them.
The Small People aren’t found just in elected office—church, volunteer group, school politics all attract Small People. Small People never see these positions as a way to serve or give back to the community. To them, politics is an avenue for putting Those People in their place (and making the Small People feel less small.) Sometimes they retreat from office because they sense that it will just highlight how Small they really are. Sometimes if they don’t get their way, they take their ball and go home to sulk.
We sometimes elect Small People because we think their definition of Those People matches our own. But we love some local politicians precisely because they are anything but Small. Guy Mammolite was an easy mayor to make jokes about for everything from his pageants and awards to his creative mangling of the language. But Guy was not a Small Person; he saw himself and his city and the people in it as part of something bigger, and he was always looking for ways to make it bigger still.
We’ve often been fortunate that way in Venangoland, though it irks the Small People to hear a Mammolite type praised. Whether in office or in the peanut gallery, Small People are the great bane of local politics, because they want to hold us all down to fit in their tiny, ever-shrinking world.