Hopeless Health Care Debate

(News-Herald, September 10) The health care debate highlights how hard it is can be for Americans to get things done.
Health care is a complicated business, a highly technical field with a vast body of knowledge, plus a complicated delivery system and an entrenched business model that has become only more convoluted with time. And of course the health care biz is now smothered in the health insurance biz, one of the most deliberately complicated businesses in history.
The chances that an ordinary civilian can navigate this tangle, let along trim, cut and re-organize it – well, that seems as likely as chipmunks building a thermonuclear device in my back yard.
This type of work requires experts, people with years of experience with the ins and outs of the industry. Trouble is, these people have a vested interest in the industry. Getting these experts to help is like consulting a wolf on the best way to guard sheep.
Americans love the idea of gifted amateurs. In the movie, “Dave,” a small town shlub takes over the role of President and brings in his buddy, a small town accountant, to fix the federal budget in a day or two. That makes a swell movie, but is as likely as somebody being able to rebuild an engine because he’s always liked cars and he’s a good person at heart.
At times like these, some folks like to turn to the academics. Call in some college professors or think-tank whiz brains!
I’m not completely opposed to that notion. Academics have produced some fine results over the years (the internet is a good example), but experience in my field makes me suspicious. Education is filled with collegiate “experts” who wouldn’t last five minutes in an actual classroom but who can always land a government consulting gig. Then again, I may be an education expert, but I am heavily invested in my field and job. It’s possible, even probable, that my perspective makes some things very clear to me and keeps me from seeing other things at all.
That same thing is true of health care, but more so. If we’re going to pick apart the health care industry, whom do we trust? Who is in position to have good perspective on this monster?
Certainly some things are obvious to the average shmoe. Denying people health care because they’re ill is backwards. Spending a gazillion tax dollars we don’t have is unwise. Many businesses that I deal with keep track of me with stalker-like devotion. Yet the health insurance industry repeatedly makes regular customers approach like strangers. Do not tell me in this technologically advanced era that health care insurers need a system that is slow, cumbersome, inaccurate, and paper-intensive; surely it’s no coincidence that this system guarantees that they will pay slowly, hang onto money longer, and encourage customers to give up entirely. The health care biz is unique as an industry in which the economic incentive is to avoid doing the job that it’s there to do.
Democrats and Republicans are both historically happy to hand over the regulatory writing instrument to the industry facing regulation. I don’t automatically assume this proves corruption—inside the industry is where you’ll find the people who know it best. But we also can’t give the wolves the keys to the pasture. The economic meltdown is a fine example of how badly that can end.
And this balancing act must happen against the backdrop of the public shouting match loudly led by all the folks who have been suckered into shilling for the health insurance industry, and reform boosters with a seemingly-endless supply of Really Sad Stories.
How to navigate this mess. More actual thought and less noise would be good. It’s probably costing us too much as a country to just leave the industry alone; the wolves are already feasting on mutton daily. Market forces? Market forces say that a lot of sick unwealthy people should just die. Legislate a “right” to health care? Quick—go plant the money trees now. Put the feds in charge? Why think they can run the health care industry—it’s just putting more wolves in charge, though maybe dumber, slower wolves.
We could hire the wolves to watch the sheep and slap a good set of leashes on them. Course, then we need someone dependable to hold the leash. Maybe we just look for altruistic vegetarian wolves. Maybe I’d better keep a closer eye on the chipmunks in my back yard.

School with a Purpose

(News-Herald, September 3) First week of school in Venangoland, and already I suspect many people are starting to feel their focus fade.

As the first day approaches, parents and students (and teachers, too) ramp themselves up. They buy new clothes, new school supplies, nice pair of socks, clean new eraser. Resolutions are made about how this year will be filled with achievement and growth. And for a few days, it actually is. And then the noble goals start to fade.

You plan to worry about Important Educational Goals and end up worrying about how to keep your pencil sharp and where to sit at lunch.

It’s like steering a car. Focus two feet in front of the car and you’ll weave over the road, threatening the safety of all around you and alarming those traveling with you (this is a good time to apologize to my old drivers ed teacher, Mr. Shreck). You have to stay focused way out ahead. Eyes on the goal.

Parental focus is challenging because we have so many kid-related worries, and sending them off to school means we can no longer control every aspect of their lives. It’s not that we want to be puppet masters. We just want to master the impossible art of keeping them safe.

Some parents keep trying. They want to be right there, contacting the school regularly to make sure that their child is never sad or hurt or disappointed or upset or forced to deal with difficult people.

I completely understand the impulse. Parents do not want to see their children suffer, not even a little. Our strongest instinct is to protect our offspring from any threat. And there is no question that a parent should be a child’s advocate. I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is to sit in a conference with parents who show no faith in, nor support for, their children.

Somewhere between abandoning the child completely and driving to school to cut up his food at lunch, there’s a wide gray area to navigate. When should you step in? When should you let junior takes his lumps?

For middle and high school students, I offer two guides: a three-month old baby and a cranky boss.

For every problem, take the long view. Each problem’s solution is a lesson in solving problems. Let’s assume that our goal is to prepare our children for life as grown adults, who may have to deal with a three month old baby and/or a cranky boss. Is my child learning an approach that will be useful then?

In school, students must sometimes deal with people who are demanding, unreasonable, and completely insensitive to what those students want. Lots of parents want to leap into these situations.

But who in the world is more demanding, unreasonable and insensitive to others than a three-month old baby? When your grandchild is crying and complaining at 3 AM, which of the following responses would you like your adult child to use:

“This is completely unfair. I really want to sleep. It’s unreasonable; I’m not doing it.”

“Mom, come here. I don’t wanna take care of this baby; it’s so haaaaaarrrd. Fix it for me. ”

“Well, this is inconvenient, but sometimes in life you just have to suck it up and do what needs to be done.”

How many times do you want your adult child to change jobs in a search for a boss who treats him like Mom always used to?

Some real research says that a major predictor of success, both in school and life, is resilience, the ability to bounce back from disappointment and defeat. Unfortunately, some parents are determined that their child should never experience disappointment or defeat. So when young people should be doing heavy lifting to build emotional strength for the years ahead, some parents are making sure Junior never grabs anything heavier than a twinkie.

A major cyberschool advertises itself with the question “Is your child happy in school?” I don’t think students should be miserable, but I don’t believe that the best preparation for adult life is a childhood without tests or sadness. The absolute worst reason to cyber- or home- school is to insure your child years of never having to do anything hard, deal with any difficult people, or experience disappointment.

This is the challenge—to make sure that we don’t get so worried that child’s life is so happy now that we forget to lay a foundation for the future.

Attention to Detail

(News-Herald, August 27) I love the stone skipping contest. It makes for such a finely focused afternoon (particularly in better-organized years like this one). I’ve judged the event basically since its Franklin inception, and I often hear the same question—how do you count all those little skips?

The big complicated answer is something about the audible tips, the little splashes, the rhythm, the patterns of ripples, but the short answer is simple: you pay attention. From a distance, a row of stone skips may just look like a line of splashy water. Everything looks different close up.

The common, simple image of a river is that it’s flat and flows steadily downstream. But even a kayak duffer like me quickly sees that’s not so. I’ve spent many hours out on the river this summer, and it is a beautiful place. But what looks like a large, flat rolling ribbon from a distance is considerably more complicated close up.

Sometimes the river really is a flat ribbon. But in some places it suddenly plunges into a deep hole or over a submerged stone step. There are places where ridges split the river lengthways and the water flows sideways, spilling over a lip almost too slight to measure. The river will stand with lake-like stillness until it drops, suddenly, and the water springs to life. It can race, cut through itself, even swirl in little pockets that hit the kayak as if it had landed on top of a big spinning ball.

Where French Creek and the Allegheny come together there’s always something interesting going on. Sometimes the river runs a bit higher than the creek, and the creek’s waters pile up against it. More often the river runs a bit lower, and you can see the slightest of mini-waterfalls at the creek’s mouth. As flat as we expect water to be, a river is filled with dips and rises and steps and hills.

Ditto for the bike trail. Certainly no one would mistake the bike trail for one of those alpine peaks in the Tour de France, but pedal up and down enough times with your gear cranked up to somewhere between “Wow—we’re zipping along now” and “Wow—I’m definitely getting older” and you can see (and feel) the trail dip and climb.

The same phenomenon is evident through many parts of life. It is probably the mark of true love for something to see all the little details and variations.

If you don’t like polka music, pretty much every polka sounds like every other polka. But polka fans know the differences, can hear nuances and changes and distinctions and can tell the difference between Polish and Slovenian polkas.

All parents who hate their children’s music are certain it all sounds exactly the same, even though the children who love the music are quite sure it doesn’t.

Pursuing and mastering a passionate interest often involves learning to see the small distinctions, the little details, and understand them. It’s the way a sports fan learns pages and pages of trivia. (I am proud to say that I am not a fair-weather fan of the Penguins; I maintained a steadfast indifference to hockey through the entire Stanley Cup proceedings.) Those who love the game can go on at great length about the details, specifics, techniques, strategies, and finer points (I know—I heard them all everywhere I went). But to me, hockey just looks like a bunch of guys on skates batting a puck around.

If you hate small towns, they’re all the same. If you hate cities, one urban mess is just like every other. Refusing to see those distinctions is how many people keep something at arm’s length and avoid developing interest or understanding. If you don’t let yourself really look at it, you can avoid learning to love it. Sometimes being forced to come up close to something is how you learn to love and appreciate it in the first place.

It is one of the benefits of staying in one place for many years. A good, long hard look shows you the patterns, the shapes, the intricate little details that are woven together. Sometimes it takes many years, many views to have that moment of discovery, the uncovering of unexpected beauty.

In a world where we demand that everything be scrubbed down to quick simple microbursts of experience, it’s no wonder that so little satisfies us. That scrubbing removes everything rich and interesting, the details that move the spirit and awaken the heart.

Monarch Park photo collection

Monarch Park photos on flickr.

Here's a batch of Monarch Park post cards, plus a photo of an original map.

And if you don't know what this is all about, you can look here for a brief history.

Car Shopping

(News-Herald, August 20) I hate car shopping. I try to arrange to do it as rarely as possible. But my old car, which had always displayed a certain amount of character, had lurched past “character” into “personality disorder.”
This was not my car’s fault. On our semi-annual jaunt to Maine I forgot to account for the car’s oil mileage (roughly 200 miles to the quart). On the way home, the oil light came on and clunky noises were heard. (In the interests of full disclosure, I admit that there’s a part of the story where I technically set fire to the engine, but while that was alarming to my daughter, I don’t believe it upset the car.)
In the following weeks we moved from subtle death rattle straight on to the sound of marbles in a washing machine. I could no longer avoid car shopping.
I was prepared neither financially nor mentally for my car’s unplanned expiration, so I had to do my online and car lot homework. I learned some things have changed since I was last in the used car market, a decade+ ago.
First, car manufacturers are all making the same car, a sedan that’s about as bold as tadpoles in the Allegheny. These identically boring vehicles come mostly in colors like Grey and Beige. I don’t care much about appearance, but if cars were meals, every dealer would be selling tuna fish salad on white bread. With extra mayo. There’s a handful of fun and exciting looking cars out there, but based on what I’ve read, I conclude that the auto industry has decided that a car may not both look good and work well.
Second. If you’re my age, you probably remember “energy crisis” and “gas rationing,” which led to “cars that don’t have lousy gas mileage.” It seemed for a long time that all automotive genius was aimed laser-like at the issue of fuel efficiency. Apparently the more recent word on the hunt for fuel efficiency is, “Never mind.”
Third. Every used car lot must include at least one Chevy Malibu. I have no idea why. Maybe it works like the box of baking soda in the fridge.
We learned other things. I say “we” because my brother, who enjoys this stuff, came along to keep me out of the weeds. (Together, we can play bad buyer/confused buyer.)
We learned, for instance, that car dealerships aren’t all that excited about cash for clunkers. “There’s a perfectly good car and I can’t even sell you a hubcap from it.” Cash for clunkers manages to combine two of history’s great lies so dealers get to be on the receiving end of “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you by sending you a check that is, I swear, in the mail.”
C4C has also caught the used car market in a giant vice, reducing inventory and driving up prices for those of us who can’t afford a brand spanking new tuna fish sandwiches.
Used car dealers remain cartoon versions of themselves. (At one dealership, the salesman in the next booth told his cellphone “Yeah, so I feel slimy. But it was one of those deals they force you to make.”) Pushy, manipulative, inappropriately friendly—what I hate about the car shopping process is that I start out feeling like a velociraptor’s lunch and end up feeling like a sucker. The best was the guy at 4yourcarconnection in Seneca, who talked with me like we were both real live human beings. But in the end, I did not buy a car from him. So while I enjoyed talking to him, I have to admit that he didn’t get anything out of it.
The place I did buy my car was in the classic vein. My salesman, clearly trained in a variety of sales “techniques,” eventually had to “go talk to the manager,” and when my brother began to whisk us out the door, the manager came to deal directly with us, acting as offended as if we’d claimed his sister was working in a Mexican brothel. So there was more posturing and totally-not-straight talk pretending, badly, to be straight talk.
In the end, I bought the car. I owe my brother one more large favor and I owe the bank a stack of money. I bought a Ford Taurus, respectable grown-up transportation, and while I don’t shop for color, I ended up with burgundy, so it’s a tuna salad sandwich with a slice of tomato.

Hildegarde Dolson: Final Thoughts

(News-Herald, August 13) I don’t often spend three weeks on one subject, but this month is the 101 anniversary of the birth of Hildegarde Dolson, hometown girl who made good, and I think she deserves the attention.
There are plenty of things to learn from her story, including the most obvious. Here’s a young woman who left the region, went to New York City with nothing but her wits and talent, arrived at the worst possible time, and managed to create a lifelong career as a successful writer.
It’s worth noting that her small town origins weren’t an obstacle to her success, but integral to it. Her small town girl in the big city voice was part of what created her success.
She appears as a character is most of her work, remarkably consistent in her self-view. A small, mousy woman, not physically exceptional (though she credited the character with nice legs), not always at ease, sometimes self-centered and frequently naïve.
Beyond the autobiographical character, certain other characters reappear. There’s the male artist, gifted and selfish, talented and undependable as a friend. And there’s the flashy woman—outgoing, elegant, drawing men like moths to a flame, but callously using and discarding them.
Flashy Woman is the closest thing to a Dolson villain, often stealing the man from the Hildegarde character. FW wants attention and victory in the field of amorous battle, suckering men who lack the insight to see the more sincere and heartfelt affection offered by the Hildegarde character.
But I oversimplify, and Dolson doesn’t. While Dolson can draw characters with brutal honesty and scathing detail, she also understands what drives them and what admirable qualities they possess. There are no truly evil people in Dolson’s world, not even in her murder mysteries; even when a character is not very nice, Dolson understands why friends and family still love that character.
I admire Dolson as a writer, combining the clear sharp prose of a journalist with the keen conception of a fiction writer and, as a bonus, an apparent fearlessness about mining her own life for material. But I admire Dolson the woman for her clear-eyed positive view of the world and the people in it. She did not ignore the flaws, and even saw pettiness and self-centeredness in herself. But somehow the flaws were not as important as other things.
Her resistance to marriage lasted most of her adult life (she once wrote an article entitled “Why I’d Make an Awful Wife”). It wasn’t that she didn’t like men; it’s clear that she did. But she was busy. She had work to do. She didn’t exactly reject the role of a wife—she had some clear ideas of what a wife was supposed to do and she knew she lacked time and, perhaps, aptitude for the role. She didn’t want to renegotiate the role; she just didn’t want to quit her job as a writer to take a job as a wife.
When she did finally marry, she was fifty-seven years old. She married author Richard Lockridge, a widower who was well-established mystery writer.
Lockridge wrote a must-read for Dolson fans. In One Lady, Two Cats he tells the story of convincing Dolson to marry him. Neither Lockridge nor Dolson offer in their writings a clear picture of how they fell in love, though it’s clear that it was somewhat unexpected and the onset was quick—two people who had known each other but suddenly found themselves in love. When they had to attend to separate business in separate places, she told him that had never known it was humanly possible to miss somebody so much.
In Lockridge’s book their wedding is a small formality in the midst of the story of an independent minded woman very much in love learning how to adjust to a man and his cats. Yes, he’s a man in love, but it’s hard not to feel what he feels, to be struck by how smart and understanding she is, how kind without being mush-headed she is.
Dolson died in January of 1981; she was only 72. It’s on my “if only” list—if only I’d discovered her back then, I would have written to her, asked to meet her. A reminder in the present to be alert for things today that could become “if only’s” tomorrow. Dolson seems to have avoided “if only” in her full and successful, if unconventional, life. She remains on the page, another fine Venangoland success story.

Hildegarde Dolson Reading List

(News-Herald, August 6) Last week I re-introduced successful Venangoland author Hildegarde Dolson. This week, I’ll offer a short reading guide.
This is not comprehensive. Local scholar Mike Dittman decided to tackle a comprehensive listing of Dolson’s works; this turns out to be one of those projects that starts out looking like a puddle and ends up more like the Grand Canyon, and I wish Mike all the best on his journey. For our purposes here, we’re going to stick to her books.
How About a Man (1938). A short breezy guide to acquiring male companionship. Frank and funny, some aspects are dated (gloves) and some are not (sex). Reminiscent of Thurber and White’s Is Sex Necessary?
We Shook the Family Tree (1941) Accounts of growing up in Franklin, attending Allegheny College, and starting out in Depression-era NYC, including her brief stint in vaudeville. Dolson’s most successful and best-loved work. Required reading for Franklin resident.
The Husband Who Ran Away (1948) Addison Stubbs is so henpecked by his wife and her mother in the small town of Bracklin, PA, that when he breaks his mother-in-law’s heirloom clock, he first hides under the porch and then runs away to NYC. The literary equivalent of a screwball comedy, this is probably the most over-the-top wacky piece that Dolson ever wrote.
The Form Divine (1951). Lucilla Webb decides that the best way to deal with her lackluster husband and her own skinny frame is to sign up for a beauty spa. Light comedy.
Sorry To Be So Cheerful (1955). The first of Dolson’s collections of short pieces. This really highlights her light, witty style. The account of her interview with Emily Post is worth the price of admission.
A Growing Wonder (1957). Dolson called this her favorite of her own works. The unnamed narrator is a single writer in NYC who comes from a small town in western PA, and she has front-row seats for a love triangle involving an artist, two very different sorts of women, and a small but talented boy who becomes collatoral damage. Still funny and sharply observed, but with more serious drama and depth than her previous novels.
The Great Oildorado (1959) (published in Britain as They Struck Oil). Required reading for all Venangoland residents. This book actually owes a debt to Herbert Asbury’s The Golden Flood, but Dolson’s breezy style, her sharp eye, and her familiarity with the area make this the most readable and enjoyable of any works ever written about the local oil boom. If you want a sense of what the fuss was about, this is where to get it.
Guess Whose Hair I’m Wearing (1963). Her other collection of short pieces. Also fun.
Open the Door (1966). A book editor, still smarting and isolated from a previous bad affair, is drawn back into life and love by two children of a family that moves in upstairs. There is a love quadrangle, an old adversary, and new love with an intriguing writer. Since Dolson herself had just married a writer, one suspects some biographical spin here.
Heat Lightning (1969). Here Dolson really uses her eye for the social patterns and interactions of life in the exurbs—the social ins and outs, the politics of committee work, the patterns of privilege—and applies it to another unconventional love quadrangle as a community tries to prepare a mammoth Fourth of July celebration. Truthfully, not a great deal happens, but her eye for the interactions and character is great.
Her keen eye for life in that Connecticut small town (like the place she had settled with her new husband) was apparently just getting warmed up for her four mystery novels. Written in the seventies, they feature Lucy Ramsdale (a sharp-edged illustrator and widow) and Inspector James McDougal, retired and bruised by life (his wife left him).
The mysteries are classic drawing room—in the first portion of the novel we meet a cast of interesting characters. Then one of them is killed; detecting ensues. Any one of these would make a Murder She Wrote episode, except that Lucy is more interesting than Jessica Fletcher.
To Spite Her Face (1971), A Dying Fall (1973), Please Omit Funeral (1975), and Beauty Sleep (1977) should be read in order to watch the arc of Lucy and Mac’s relationship. I will note that Dying Fall includes gay characters, and while those characters are handled well, the characters around them treat them in ways that might be a bit jarring.
Most of these can be found in local libraries or at on-line used booksellers.

Hildegarde Extra

Because I have spent the summer developing a massive Hildegarde Dolson crush, I've started a blog just of Dolson quotations.

I figure thousands of people will read them, become interested in her writing, start buying up old copies of her books, which will prompt publishers to re-issue her catalog, leading to a massive world-wide resurgence in her popularity. At least, that6's the rough plan.

I've started with How About a Man and The Form Divine because those are the two I don't own, and the library will want their copies back soon. I'll get to the rest eventually.

At any rate, you can get your almost-daily dose of Dolson right here.

Hildegarde Dolson

(News-Herald, July 30) Hildegarde Dolson would have been 101 this August; I’m ashamed to have missed her centenary. I’ll be correcting that oversight.
Dolson, born and raised in Franklin, graduated from FHS in 1926, then attended Allegheny College. She never finished there; instead, she embarked for New York City. She wrote that she arrived on October 24, 1929 (Black Thursday). Whether this is precisely true or not, her timing was certainly imperfect.
She worked as a copywriter for several big stores, lived in Greenwich village, and began scoring freelance writing sales to bigtime magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal and the New Yorker. Then, fewer than fifteen years after her big move, Dolson published We Shook the Family Tree. The book chronicles her youth in Franklin, and it became her most enduring hit; picked up by Scholastic Book Publishers, it stayed in print for over three decades, and generations of school children grabbed it as a TAB paperback.
I set out to meet her, figuratively, and decided I’d try to do it through her writing.
This seems appropriate because Dolson was such a personal writer. She was primarily a humorist, a story-teller who worked from her own life. She sometimes found herself in odd situations (e.g. hanging around the dressing room of a 17-year-old stripper), but events as simple as a trip to the store, a visit from a political canvasser, or reading a book could trigger a few hundred words of Dolson’s wry, observational wit. Her stories about interviewing Emily Post and Doctor Spock are more fun than the interviews themselves.
Dolson never left Franklin far behind. In addition to Family Tree other pieces covered topics as diverse closing up the family home after her parents’ death and finding herself rendered in egg (next to an eggy John Wilkes Booth) in a store window. She always and often referred to her home town by name. Never “a little burg I come from” but “my home town, Franklin, Pennsylvania.”
Her writing suggests that she was pleased to be from Franklin, but happy to live in the Big City. In her early comic novel The Runaway Husband, the main character runs away from his home in Bracklin, PA (a town near Oilburg and Titusdale) and ends up in Greenwich Village working for a major department store. “Bracklin” is portrayed kindly, but at the end of the novel, the husband has no epiphany that he needs to get away from the big city and return to his roots. Her later novels are set in a wealthy but small Connecticut much like the one where she settled with her husband, writer Richard Lockridge. In all of these settings, Dolson seems to find charm and humor.
Dolson stayed single for much of her adult life, a self-described spinster, yet a steady stream of men move through her writing. Her voice is an odd hybrid, a sort of discretely frank Presbyterian Bohemian. While there is never a hint of lewdness in Dolson’s writing, her characters are well aware of sex and occasionally have some, and not necessarily with the benefit of marriage. The heroine of Open the Door is a middle-aged book editor who has just ended a bad affair and is falling for a writer.
Dolson’s own singlehood was deliberate. She chose writing as a profession early in life and felt that the solitary, focused life of a writer left no room for looking after a husband. She reports her four-year-old nephew’s analysis: “I know why you don’t want to get married…It’s because a husband would talk to you and interrupt you when you wanted to think.”
Children appear in Dolson’s novels as agents of change. She manages to write about them as all her characters, without patronizing or idealizing them. I suspect that Dolson made an excellent aunt.
Her high school yearbook photo shows a young woman who’s not physically imposing (she described her hair color as “drab” and never gave a weight greater than 95 pounds). Her hair is cut in a stylishly wild bob, and she looks through her bangs with an unaggressive intelligence (reminiscent, somehow, of Breakfast Club Ally Sheedy). Her grown-up book photos show that same intent gaze with a hint of smile.
Dolson had the essential writer’s gift—a distinct and pronounced voice. She was the quintessential big city woman with small town girl roots. She was sophisticated and witty without becoming cynical or dismissive; she was able to see the ridiculousness of people and places without losing her love for them. Next week: Dolson reading recommendations.

Venango Museum of Art, Science and History

(News-Herald, July 23) In Venangoland, we are so soaked in oil history we sometimes forget that most communities are not. In most places “oil heritage” makes about as much sense as “weasel heritage” or “toupee heritage” or “spam heritage.” Except, of course, that weasels and toupees haven’t changed the course of civilization (you might make a case for spam).
To warm up for this week’s extravaganza of oil heritaginess, my daughter and I made a visit last week to the Venango Museum of Art Science and History. It’s been a while since I’d been, so I was interested to see what there is to see.
The first thing we noticed about the museum is how absolutely slick and professional its presentation is. It’s not unusual in such “small market” museums to find displays and signage that looks as if they were done by the curator’s niece with some magic markers on her kitchen table.
But the museum looks good. Really good. There are wall-sized illustrations that are eye-catching and impressive, and signage is completely professional. You can pooh-pooh these things as mere cosmetics, unrelated to the actual content of a place, but these design elements set a tone. The eyewash in the Venango Museum says, “We are serious about this stuff.”
Visitors to the museum are greeted by some nice graphics and a coin-fed arcade wizard (like the one in Big) who introduces himself as the “Wizard of Black Gold or Black Magic.” “Black Gold or Black Magic” is the title of the current exhibit; not exactly poetry, but it gets the idea across.
If you don’t feed the wizard, you’ll be greeted a few feet further in by another recorded voice. Warning: this voice is triggered by a motion sensor and people (like, say, middle-aged English teachers) who are being distracted by other exhibits might be startled into a loud reaction that invites teasing from other visitors (like, say, my daughter).
There are many nifty, informative exhibits. There’s a great display of memorabilia related to Rattlesnake Pete, one of the region’s most colorful characters. This is a great batch of stuff and may well be worth the price of admission all by itself.
For that matter, admission is worth the price of admission. If this big beautiful building were sitting there empty, it would be worth a few bucks just to tour it.
Also worth the price of admission is the 1920’s era Wurlitzer theater organ. The console is a beautiful piece of art in its own right, but the music it makes is also a rare treat. Be sure to ask to hear it when you visit; modern technology means that no actual organist is required in order to hear this gorgeous instrument.
Another display shows a mannequin version of Ida Tarbell at her desk, briefly explaining her importance in the history of both oil and journalism. It even underlines how deliciously ironic it was for Ralph Nader to own the Transit Building in Oil City.
There is a really nice car, a Cord Phaeton. The museum’s website says it’s a 1935 model. It also says that it’s a 1937 model. The notes I took from the sign in the museum say 1930, but maybe I made a mistake. At any rate, a beautiful car from 193-something.
There are displays about the oil industry itself; how informative they are depends on how little you know to start with. If you are hosting someone from outside the area who wants to know what the big oil deal is around here, the museum is a good way to get started. For locals, some of this is not exactly news, but some is kind of cool. For instance, they have a nice working mini-model of the pumphouse-driver-well set-up that we’ve all stepped over the pieces of in one section of Venangoland woods or another.
There’s also a giant dinosaur sort-of-skeleton and a gift shop with plenty of oildom memorabilia. Though it has “Venango” in its title, the museum is mostly Oil City-centric, but that makes it a good fit for the next few days of oily celebration. It doesn’t take a great deal of time to tour the museum, and it doesn’t take a great deal of money to get in the door.
The Venango Museum is certainly a facility we can recommend to visitors with pride as well as a place that locals don’t visit as often as we ought to. While you’re celebrating oil heritage days, make it a point to stop in.

Good vs. Great

(News-Herald, July 16) I am a big fan of excellence, of the pursuit of what is great and extraordinary. But at the same, time I don’t like it when that pursuit becomes extreme and unhealthy.
How can it be bad to pursue excellence?
There’s a saying about the good driving out the great; people’s willingness to settle for the merely good keeps them from pursuing what could be great.
I certainly see plenty of this in my classroom. Students routinely create essays that are okay, but if they had kept working and hadn’t settled for “okay” they could have produced some really excellent work.
But sometimes the reverse is true. In our desire to settle for nothing but the very best, we overlook some of what is really good. Some folks become so pathological in their quest for absolute perfection that they miss out on Very Good Experiences.
In severe cases, these people become perpetual dropouts, leaving homes, jobs, spouses in an endless search, fueled by the belief that somewhere out there is a job/town/person who is just so totally awesomely perfect that nothing else will do.
You can spot these folks by their use of the word “settle” as if settling were both tragic and contemptible. They say “I will not settle” in the same tone you’d use for “I will not stick my head in the septic tank.’
At its worst, this desire for Only Excellence leads to people bound and determined to convince themselves that what they’re experiencing is titanic, monumental, awesomely great beyond all cosmic levels of intergalactic awesomeosity. This inflationary appreciation cheapens everything.
I am a standing ovation scrooge. I stand and applaud only when I’ve seen something exceptional and extraordinary. If I explain this, folks look at me as if I am a big fat meany, as if it’s cruel NOT to tell a performer that he just gave the best performance in the history of the universe.
At what point did “You did a really good job” become an insult?
Overpraising not only cheapens the praise, but it calls into question the judgment of the person delivering it. Suppose I’ve just played a session of jazz trombone. If you tell me you really enjoyed it and think I did a great job, I’ll be pleased and flattered. If you tell me that I just played the most awesome jazz trombone you ever heard in your life, I’ll be thinking that you have A) a sad life and B) little knowledge of jazz trombone playing.
It really is okay to be “just” good.
The Franklin Silver Cornet Band has performed thousands of concerts. Only one of those could be the Best Concert the Band Ever Played. Franklin Civic Operetta has presented hundreds of shows. Only one of those can be the Best Show that Civic Ever Put On. Pride should come from a consistent level of excellence, not a focus on one single peak.
I’ve lived through roughly 19,000 days so far. Only one of those can be the Best Day of My Life. Now, I could focus on that single day, or I could keep crowning a new champion Best Day Ever, but either way, I’m passing over 18,999 perfectly good days (okay, maybe 18, 253 perfectly good days—some of them weren’t so hot).
I think those who constantly carp about our region suffer from a touch of this problem. If we can’t tout Venangoland as the Greatest This or the Best Ever That, the reasoning goes, then this place must just stink.
Well, there’s something to be said for settling. Still push for your best. Still strive for excellence. But people who refuse to marry anyone but the Most Perfect Partner will die grumpy and alone. Parents who insist their children be The Most Perfect Ever will drive those children away. People who think every day must be the Best Day Ever will have many, many bad days. People who must live in a Perfect Place will move a lot, and die either disappointed or deluded.
Sometimes Really Good is good enough. There is no shame in living a life that is just as good as you could make it, even if it’s not the Greatest Life On Earth. There are so many reasons to be proud of our corner of the world. There’s no excuse not to keep trying to move forward, make things better. But there’s also no excuse not to settle for a place that’s really good, even if it’s not the Greatest Spot on Earth.

Let Other People Be

We cannot make people act the way we want them to. Over this unexceptional log a gazillion men and women have tripped.
First, other people do not necessarily feel the way we think they ought to. This irritant reappears repeatedly in politics. For eight years, many Americans were certain that everyone should be appalled by George W. Bush and upset that he was acting like a war criminal and starting stupid wars and trampling on everything that made this country great. Nowadays, instead, we have people certain that all Americans should be appalled by Barack Obama instituting Communism and lowering our defenses and trampling on everything that made this country great. Both groups are certain they know how everyone should feel.
Or we feel hurt, and we think the people around us should feel hurt, too. And yet, often they do not.
Second, even when people feel the way we think they should feel, they don’t act out those feelings as we think they should. This is the source of a thousand lovers’ arguments that begin with the phrase “If you really loved me you would…”
We figure that this one action would show that these people feel the way we hope/demand they feel. Sometimes these are not unreasonable (“If you loved me, you would not sleep with lots of people who aren’t me”) and sometimes they are (“If you loved me, you would not be upset that I sleep with lots of people who aren’t you”).
Often they are oddly unique, sometimes based on our own experience (“If you cared about me, you’d put my salad dressing on the side”).
Most troublesome are those that come out of our own temperament. We’re all wired to react to high stakes emotional situations differently, from those of us who explode outwards to those of us who turn inward, from those of us who leap to the front of the fray to those of us who sit and stay still, waiting and watching.
These responses are so basic to our nature that we have a hard time imagining different ones. When I get upset, my urge may be leap up and Go Do Something; why someone would just sit there? Or my response is to sit and think things through; why someone would want to go off half-cocked. I may really need to talk about things, or I may need to really NOT talk about things—either way, I can’t imagine how people would feel differently any more than I can imagine why some people would enjoy being set on fire.
So people may not feel the way I think they should feel, or they may not act on those feelings the way I think they should. That’s only the beginning; my problems really begin when I start trying to explain the differences.
If they don’t feel what I think they should feel, I may decide they don’t understand. The Bush Bashers and Obama Haters are certain that if they explain How Awful He Is just one more time, everyone will finally Get It and howl in outrage. If they still don’t get it, I guess they can’t understand—people who don’t feel the way I think they should just must be stupid.
Or I may combine the problems—if you really care about me, you’ll just know the right thing to do.
If I don’t see the actions that would “prove” your feelings, then that proves you don’t have them. That leaves a blank for me to fill in with what I guess your feelings are.
It’s as if we’re speaking two different languages. I did something that to me means, “I care about you,” but to you it means, “I think you’re a big jerk.”
It’s worse in times of stress and struggle; then we’re least likely to stop and ask ourselves “I wonder how this comes across” or “Can I put myself in their shoes for a second?” Growing up we (mostly) learn a common language of actions and behaviors that (most) people (usually) (mostly) understand. But in tough times we often revert to the behavior and actions that were wired into us in childhood. At those times it’s really hard to make connections between each other. A good first step is to remember that each of us has a heart that speaks a language of its own. We can’t force it to speak our language; we need to listen and be careful how we translate.

On the water

sum09.38, originally uploaded by palan57.

I had a perfect night for shooting last week. I've inflicted these on facebook friends and you can see the whole set on flickr as well. But honestly, do I live in a beautiful place or what?

PA Budget Follies '09

(News-Herald, July 2) In our universe, “deadline” means “the point by which a piece of work must be done.” If my editors say “Your deadline is 3 am next Tuesday,” I know that I need to have my work in to them BEFORE 3am on Tuesday.
But when the suits in Harrisburg talk about the “budget deadline,” they actually mean “the point in time at which we’ll START to seriously work on completing a budget.”
The time before the deadline, the period in which you or I (silly political amateurs) would be trying to finish a real budget—well, that’s the time that the folks in Harrisburg get busy posturing and positioning for the real budget negotiations.
Negotiating is a refined art in the best of circumstances; two parties must work out a mutually satisfactory solution, and they begin this journey toward mutual understanding by sitting down and telling big fat bald-faced lies. I want to end up with one fluffy bunny, so I demand a truckload of weasels. You want me to end up with only one fluffy bunny, so you propose to kill every pet I ever have or will own. And then we begin a series of conversations to gauge how big the lies are that we are telling each other.
Political negotiating is especially entertaining because the goal is to scare not just your opponents, but also all the innocent bystanders (aka “voters”).
Our problem is simple. The amount of money we would like to spend is a much larger amount than the amount of money we expect to have available. And because we lack the federal government’s ability to make money out of air while using a time machine to pick the pockets of generations yet unborn, we have to find a way to make those two amounts Not So Different.
Everybody knows there are two solutions. 1) Take in more money. 2) Give away less money. For individuals, there are good and bad ways to do both of these. “Get a better paying job” is a more useful solution than “Knock over a Kwik-Fill” or “Take out a fraudulent mortgage” for generating income. “Stop buying things you don’t need” is preferable to “Cut back to one meal a week” or “Stop paying bills.”
Republicans have floated a budget that slashes a variety of programs. A variety of economic/community grants, support for tourism, and arts money, as well as (depending on who’s doing the analysis) state parks, environmental protection, and legal defense.
Various affected groups are already out beating the bushes and raising the alarms. I get regular e-mails of panic about cutting arts funding to zero, which trickles down just about everywhere (even into Venangoland). Other critics say cuts would close state parks, shut down health care, and blot out the sun.
Meanwhile, Smilin’ Ed is proposing a whole bunch of additional taxes on everything that moves. Oh, and “temporary” income tax hikes. Critics suggest this would make PA’s lousy business climate even worse, send rich people running to Barbados, and blot out the sun.
To the panicked screeching on both sides, add smoke and mirrors. Federal stimulus money is in there, but in some cases, such as education, maybe not really. Like when your Grandma gave you an extra five dollars and then your parents cut your allowance by five dollars that week.
To sort it all out, you need someone who is 1) knowledgeable and 2) not trying to sell you something. Good luck with that.
Short of some really creative solutions (Sell Philadelphia on e-bay) the commonwealth faces hard choices, and I’d like to blame just the dopes in Harrisburg, but part of the solution is for the electorate to suck it up. It may be unfair that the state is in this mess, but here we are. The long term health of the state may require many of us to bite some short term bullets.
Selfish solutions (“Get the money from people who aren’t me”) aren’t an answer. And both “We don’t care what you cut as long as you don’t raise taxes” and “Tax anyone and anything as long as there are no cuts” are stupid solutions.
Scare tactics won’t help. Political posturing won’t help. Serious consideration of the issues and an honest view of the state’s future would help. Now that we’ve actually entered budget season, maybe some brains and vision will emerge soon, and those Harrisburg geniuses can start doing the job they were supposed to finish weeks ago.

DeBence Museum: Local gem

(News-Herald, June 25) When you visit friends in some exotic far-off locale, they’ll tell you about all the sights they never see except when they’re hosting out of towners. Every place, big or small, has these underappreciated gems that locals never get around to visiting.
One Venangoland version of that is DeBence Antique Music World.
Don’t be put off by the name. At some point somebody convinced the DeBence folks that the word “Museum” is scary, so they became a “Music World.” Yeah, sure. They’re a museum, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Most locals know the story. In a barn just south of Franklin, Jake and Elizabeth DeBence assembled the biggest collection of Cool Old Music Stuff that anyone has ever seen. When Jake died, Elizabeth was so committed to keeping the collection intact and local that she passed up chances to become a millionaire several times over.
Local investors and fans raked up the kind of money needed to keep the collection and to house it, creating a showcase that also rescued one of the better old storefronts in down town Franklin.
The collection includes old Nickelodeons, band organs, calliopes, plus an assortment of other oddities (a mechanical violin player?). Under the watchful hands of talented volunteers, DeBence has over 200 of these musical devices operating. These machines represent an era in music, not mention mechanical wizardry and inventiveness (historical side note—player piano technology became the foundation for beginning computers).
Creating a large collection of such amazing antiques requires determination and a certain amount of vision. Before something becomes a Valuable Antique, it’s usually just Some Old Piece of Junk. Most people don’t hold onto their junk long enough to see it become a valuable antique.
Several things make DeBence a museum unique not just in the state, not just in the nation, but in the world.
First, beyond the sheer size of the collection, there are machines here that are the last of their kind, the only ones left on the planet. Some are merely extremely rare. At DeBence you can see things you can’t see anywhere else.
Second—well, my father likes to tell the story of how DeBence contacted the Smithsonian for some assistance and expertise. All the DeBence folks ended up doing was upsetting the Smithsonian folks.
The Smithsonian’s idea is that these rare and valuable instruments should be wrapped in plastic and sealed in amber. Then the public should be allowed to glance at them through three feet of plexiglass.
The DeBence idea is that these instruments were built to make music, and so they should be played. There are other places where you can SEE some of these rare instruments, DeBence is the only place where you can actually HEAR them.
You can also watch them. DeBence is not only great for music fans, but for gadget fans as well. If you love seeing how things work, you will find the innards of these beasts amazing. Most were not mass produced, but were created from basic plans which the builders “reinterpreted” for each individual machine. This makes maintenance and repair an adventure.
Behind the scenes, the second floor has become a workshop that has become the go-to repair resource for amusement parks throughout the Northeast. And on the third floor, they have re-opened the only intact top-floor ballroom in Franklin (with the assistance of the ever-resourceful Rotarians). Once a month you can enjoy a DeBence mini-event in the ballroom, a small, intimate musical treat presented for free. They usually have cookies, too.
Until the end of October, the museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11-4. On Sunday it’s 12:30 till 4. You can find information about DeBence online at www.debencemusicworld.com.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should acknowledge my stake in this; since my father’s retirement, he and my mother have been heavily involved with DeBence. Their children are pleased that they have found a new hobby (hobby defined as “job nobody pays you for”) that keeps them off the streets and too busy to fall in with unsavory companions.
Like most museums of its type, DeBence survives on copious volunteer hours and contributions. Admission fees cover a tiny part of costs; contributions and memberships are a more important source of support.
People come from all over the world to see and hear this unique collection. If you’ve never made the short trip to check it out, or even if it’s just been a while, this summer is a good time to enjoy this really cool collection.

Committee Reporting and Vetos

(News-Herald, June 18) Everyone who has ever served on any kind of board knows the process:
There’s a new project that needs to be handled, so first, you beat bushes, twist arms and otherwise pummel folks with clichés in an attempt to put together the committee that has to do the project handling. Then the handful of willing members (minus the ones who said they would serve but who will never actually show up) carve out time to meet, discuss, study up on their own, read old reports, consider alternatives, explore possibilities, etc etc etc and also etc. After many many many hours and perhaps more than a bit of soul-searching and heated discussion, the committee will finally come up with a plan.

At this point they will bring the plan back to the larger group, at which point they’ll get to field some questions. Some of these are legitimate:
“What were your criteria?” What yardstick did you use? Cheapest? Closest? Most gerbils per square hectare?
“How did your solution measure up?” Does this one provide, in fact, the most gerbils per hectare?
These are important and legitimate questions. A good committee presentation has already answered them; a bad committee can’t answer them. The worst illegitimate committee doesn’t know the answer. Instead, they picked their solution first, and then spent their time as a committee making a case to support that solution, the only solution they ever seriously considered.
They may try to hide their poor work by claiming that their solution is “just common sense” or “obviously, the only way.” All they’re really saying is, “We didn’t do our homework. We just picked the answer we like best.”
A legitimate committee can answer the criteria questions easily. But even if they navigate the legitimate questions, they’ll still have to deal with questions like these:
“Could you just walk us through the steps that got you to this decision” or some other question that basically boils down to “Tell me everything I’d know if I had sat through the hundreds of hours of meetings myself.”
“You really ought to consider Option X.” In this example, Option X will be something that the committee considered, discussed, and rejected two months ago.
“I don’t want you to do that.” This person just wants veto power over all decisions made by the group.
Maybe there’s no such thing as a stupid question. But there is still such a thing as questions that stupid people ask.
The people who ask these three questions will have one other thing in common—they will be people who had the opportunity to serve on the committee, and refused.
These are people who do not want to invest the time and effort in dealing with problems and issues, but they still want the power that comes with that investment.
They are first cousins to the people who take on a job, get someone else to do the work, and then come in at the end to pat everyone else (and themselves) on the back.
These are the folks who want veto power, who don’t want to help find solutions (that would be hard), but just want to be able to alter, edit or eject the solutions someone else comes up with.
(I’m not talking about bosses—actual bosses have the right and responsibility to alter, edit or eject. I’m talking about people who have not actually earned the right to take a hatchet to the work of their peers. Okay, maybe I am talking about one or two bosses.)
It’s tacky to try to cross the finish line when you haven’t run the race. It’s rude to make your premiere appearance at the theater on opening night and ask to play the lead.
And it’s the height of organizational obnoxiousness to avoid doing any of the work and yet show up to second-guess the people who actually got the job done. It’s a cheap way to avoid responsibility for the proposal while still claiming credit for involvement. It’s lazy. It’s cowardly.
The modern philosopher Stan Lee wrote “With great power comes great responsibility.” Power comes with a cost; if you aren’t willing to pay the price in time and effort, don’t try to swoop in at the last moment to steal it. Veto power is for people who have been involved in the journey, not for people who sat it out on the couch.

Cyber-lying in the workplace

(News-Herald, June 11) Saying that computers have changed the workplace is like observing that automobiles have changed people’s vacation planning. It’s more obvious than air.
What’s less obvious is exactly how computer technology has affected the kind of smarts needed in the workplace..
Sometimes what is needed is the ability to outsmart the computer. Last spring I made one of my semi-annual pilgrimages to Cedar Point. This trip was in the company of a group of high school students and upon arrival it was discovered that the computer responsible for issuing group discount tickets was having some sort of emotional breakdown.
In order to get us the appropriate discount, the sales rep had to tell the computer that we were not a high school group (I don’t remember exactly what we masqueraded as—a group of wheelchair bound girl scouts or geriatric hockey all-star team or something). The computer spit out some appropriately cheap tickets and all was saved.
This particular technique for dealing with reluctant computer technology is what we used to call “lying.” When you use this technique with humans, it’s generally considered Bad. But with computers, lying is often necessary, and also requires a fairly advanced set of lying skills. Every workplace needs at least one person who can lie to computers with a level of skill which, if used on live humans, would suggest some kind of sociopath.
A workplace without such workers can become even more ridiculous. I was at a grocery store a while back when the computers went down, and so could not give the usual card-swipy auto-discounts.
I watched a check-out person completely stumped by a buy one, get one free sales item. Without a computer to work out this tricky transaction, she was flummoxed, and she told the luckless customer that he would just have to pay the full price for both of his items. I don’t know if working out “get one free” manually was beyond her comprehension or her administrative powers, but it was still a sad moment to watch.
This wasn’t so much of an issue two decades ago. Back then, most software was still written by software engineers to be used only by other software engineers. Workplace desks included cheat sheets for when you couldn’t remember that getting the computer to add two plus two required selecting the drop-down menu under operants and then clicking on the base twelve tab and clicking through to the cgi bin sort descriptors and manually type in “xxC23g*vi\2.009”. You didn’t need someone who could lie to the computer so much as someone who could just talk to it.
Then workplace software evolved and software engineers learned to write software for purchasing agents. This software was also useless for the actual employees in the workplace, but it was generally much prettier. Sample conversation from this era:
Boss: How’s that great new widget software working out?
Employee: It takes me twice as long to complete the design drawings.
Boss: Yeah, but how about that cool alien ray gun effects that come with the screen saver?
In this era workplaces started needing someone who could trick the computer into doing what it had promised to do in the first place. The age of the gifted cyber-liar had arrived.
We already understand that by and large, lying to other humans is bad. Lying to animals is a bit fuzzier ethically—if I pretend to throw a stick and instead hide it behind my back, that counts as part of the game. If I trick Rover into going to the vet, that’s for his own good.
But a tool? I never had to lie to a hammer or screwdriver to make them work properly.
Of course, in my relationship with a hammer, there’s no question about who’s in charge. The new dilemma may not spring from any abilities of computers, but in the way we’ve given them authority in the workplace.
The Terminator movies imagine a future when computers become so smart and self-aware that they take over the world and start hunting down pesky humans. The scary face of the future, we’ve been told, will be Arnold Schwarzanegger coldly declaring “I’ll be back” and shooting up hundreds of hardened humans. It seems more likely that the real face of computer domination is a flustered cashier saying, “Sorry. The computer’s down, so I can’t give you your change.” Cyber-lying may be the next necessary survival skill.

Flaming Dead Possum followup

As a writer, you hope that someday you'll create something that will move others to their own special... well, after the column about incompetent bosses and flaming dead possums ran, this arrived from a fan of the column who works out at Polk, and words just fail me.

Graduation 09

(News0-Herald, June 4) I am a fan of Occasions. I think we are in danger of seeing every event as entertainment, but being entertained is not the highest goal humans can have.
Weddings, funerals, baptisms—nobody should walk out of these Occasions discussing if it was fun, amusing or entertaining. People should be moved, humbled, inspired, excited, saddened, touched by some sense of deeper human truths and beauty that surface in these moments.
Each of these should come wrapped in a Sense of Occasion, a series of cues that help us understand that we are witnessing a moment that is special, illuminating, a reminder of the grand trajectory of human life. That’s why we dress up, decorate, observe ceremonial acts that we can’t even explain.
Graduation is one of those Occasions. Why a funny hat and goofy gown? Why a long walk set to old music? Because they help create a Sense of Occasion. Our local graduates hear a lot of language about this big moment, this great transition, this complete change in their lives, and I believe wholeheartedly that every one of these homilies is true.
But I don’t think that’s the thing to remember.
Big Occasions are important, and it is right that we should honor them. But focusing on them too much leads some folks to imagine that these Big Occasions are sparkling islands surrounded by vast, flat, changeless seas.
We humans take comfort in routine, in the belief that between Big Occasions, things are Usually This Way or Always That Way. It’s just not true. I could talk about what I “always” do at Christmas. But I have only seen fifty-two Christmas’s and each one was different.
If you aren’t around teenagers, it’s easy to forget how quickly things change, how completely different ninth grade is from twelfth grade. Yes, the commencement ceremony marks a big change in their lives, but so has every single year leading up to graduation.
Decades ago in his book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler argued that too much change too quickly throws humans into a bit of an anxious tizzy, and I suppose he has a point. It may be comforting to believe that we are fairly stable people passing through a frozen and unchanging landscape.
It’s just not true. We are changing daily. The people around us are changing daily. The world around us is changing daily.
The advent of the oil industry created upheaval and disruption on the world. Whalers, once as much a part of America as apple pie and amber waves of grain, were thrown out of work. Later on, the invention of pipelines created a new industry and ravaged an old one.
The oil industry itself has never stood still. Pick any moment in its history—things were getting better or getting worse or some fundamental of the industry was changing forever.
When people make the oft-repeated comment that Venangoland must be revived by returning to the industry of yesteryear, I wonder exactly which year they mean. Do they want to return to a point when things were bad but getting better? When things were great but soon to turn sour? You can talk about the way things Always Were, but it’s just not true.
Every Utopia ever proposed assumed that a perfect society would remain locked in position, unchanging, unshifting. But no such static society has existed in human history. Not ever. Never.
It’s like watching a rock roll down a hill and saying, “Right there, when it was about halfway down. That was the perfect spot. I want it there.” You can’t have one moment without the whole trip down the hill.
We may fear change, want to avoid it, but it is the most unavoidable thing in life. We are in the car, and the engine is running and the car is in gear and we are headed up the road. We can try to steer, we can try to get someone else to steer, we can find ways to brace ourselves for impact. What we can’t do is stop the car from moving.
We’re continuously hitting a new stretch of pavement. We can celebrate Occasions to mark particular mileposts, but before and after that milepost, the car keeps moving and someone still needs to steer.
So yes, your Graduation Day is an Important Occasion. It is a unique once-in-a-lifetime day that may change your entire life. That’s is true. But here’s the thing—it’s also true for every other day that you’ll ever live.

Rewarding Incompetence

(News-Herald, May 28) One great workplace mystery: why do some people get punished for good work while people who do lousy work are rewarded for their slackness?
Ordinarily, it’s smart to make the most use of your best people. If Pat can build ten types of widgets quickly and Chris can only do two kinds at a moderate tempo, then the smart response to a new complicated rush widget order is to give it to Pat.
But in this scenario, Chris is less spectacular, but still competent. It’s when a weak manager and an incompetent worker enter the picture that the backwards rewards system kicks in.
One major rule of bad management is “Avoid problems.” Bad managers don’t know how to fix problems or deal with crises, so their management style is based on ignoring, waiting, hiding, or sweeping under carpets.
When Mr. Dimbulb considers his workers, he’s not thinking “How do I get the best work out of this person?” He’s thinking, “How can I get this person to create the fewest problems for me?”
For Mr. Dimbulb, the best workers are the ones who solve their own problems, or at least won’t pass them back up to the front office. If Mr. Dimbulb needs to hand a flaming dead possum to someone, he’ll hand it to the person least likely to squirt it with kerosene and throw it back.
So the best, most responsible workers get the flaming dead possums.
Pat may get tired and frustrated. Pat may go home thinking, “Can’t Dimbulb see that I’m killing myself putting out these dead possums? Can’t he see I’m staying late and starting early and wearing myself out? Can’t he see there’s a problem?”
The answer is, no, he can’t, because those problems aren’t Mr. Dimbulb’s problems. All he knows, all he needs to know, is that there is no flaming dead possum on his desk. And as long as he can make them go away by handing them off to Pat, Pat will be the flaming dead possum specialist.
But for Mr. Dimbulb, Chris is a challenge. If Dimbulb hands Chris so much as a slightly stuporous hamster, he’ll get yelping from Chris, calls from the customer and Chris’s supervisor, and complaints from all quarters about Chris’s mishandling of the little dysfunctional rodent. Not only will he not get rid of the hamster, but Chris will manage to turn it into an angry water buffalo.
From Dimbulb’s standpoint, the best job to give Chris is an assignment along the lines of “Go sit in the shady corner and take a nap.”
So for doing good work, Pat gets dumped on, and for being incompetent, Chris gets a cushy job that demands little.
A better manager than Mr. Dimbulb would follow a simple two-step process.
Step One: Help Chris Improve and Become Competent.
Step Two: If Step One Fails, Fire Chris.
A manager can skip step one in certain extreme cases (Chris is late every single day, Chris blows up workplace, Chris shoots colleagues). But generally the first smart move is to see if Chris can be salvaged or turned into something productive. It is, after all, a manager’s job to figure out how to get the best work out of his people.
Mr. Dimbulb will not choose this option. He is pretty sure it would be hard. At the very least it would require him to take on a problem, and this is where his fundamental weakness as a manager lies. You can only solve a problem if A) you acknowledge it exists and B) acknowledge that it’s your problem. And Dimbulb’s first priority is to make sure that he doesn’t have any problems.
And since none of the problems are his, he never solves any of them. He just keeps passing them on to the employees who, as far as he knows, make the problems go away. And he gets angry at the people who keep bringing him more problems.
Under this system, competent employees face a tough decision. They can keep enabling their incompetent boss, like the alcoholic’s wife who keeps telling the kids, “Daddy missed Christmas because the space aliens got him.”
Or they can step back and let the next flaming dead possum burn the place down, thereby running the risk of either getting themselves fired or letting the workplace self-destruct. Option #3 is to send articles like this one to Mr. Dimbulb, but this never helps, because the Dimbulbs of the world will never recognize themselves in this column.

Love Your Job

(News-Herald, May 21) When did it become embarrassing to admit that you like your job.
I ask because it is that time of year when schoolteachers are routinely asked, “Hey, are you ready for summer” in a tone of voice that clearly means, “Hey, are you just dying to get away from your horrible students and your miserable job.”
Some days I’ll admit that I resent this no-win question just a bit. One possible answer is “No, I’m not looking forward to summer vacation.” This is both silly and ungrateful. My summer provides me with great opportunities and not appreciating it would be like refusing to appreciate my paycheck.
But it seems the only other answer is, “Yeah, I’m so looking forward to getting away from my students and my job.”
Of course, that’s what lots of people assume is the truth, when in fact, I really like my job. Honestly. And yet I feel as I type that that it’s one of the more outrageous things I’ve ever written here.
Nobody says they like their job. Nobody tosses into a conversation that they really enjoy the work they do. Nobody goes on tv and declares, “I hope I never have to retire. I’d love to do this forever.”
Well, almost nobody. One of the beautiful things about the tv show Dirty Jobs is the people who really love what they do and aren’t afraid to show it. But the fact that this show is unique tells us something about our culture. I know people who love their jobs, but most are careful not to be too vocal about it.
It’s not like I’m blind to the annoyances of the workplace (and to be clear, sometimes a “workplace” is the home). Even great jobs come with an assortment of extraneous junk that interferes with the really best parts. Bureaucracy, paperwork, support departments that don’t, leadership that doesn’t—all work is loaded with these things. No workplace is a paradise.
But very few workplaces are located on the seventh level of hell, either.
We train our children early on. While people are prodding me to declare how much I can’t wait to escape my job, they are also asking schoolchildren, “Are you getting anxious for summer vacation” or “Aren’t you just so ready to be done with school?” We encourage young people to declare how much they want to get away from school, and then we’re surprised that so many young Americans don’t get excited about education.
Imagine if every “I bet you can’t wait to get out of there” were replaced with “I bet you learned a lot this year.”
Right. A bunch of you read that last sentence and laughed. Because these days it’s the height of ridiculousness to suggest that people should be excited about what they do for a living. We are way too cool to get up in the morning looking forward to how we’ll spend the workday.
I have certainly known people who apparently had to drag themselves, whining and complaining, to work day after day. That must feel awful. Life is too short. If your job is a terrible chore, you need a different job.
I like my job; I always have. I’m not merely lucky; I spent a lot of time and effort to get here, and while that time was sometimes unpleasant, I slogged through so that I could get to do what I do today. If I won a gazillion dollars tomorrow, I would not retire (I would, however, get a much nicer car).
And yet, I know it’s far more likely that I will be teased for writing this than will some guy who complains about his crappy job and how much he wants to retire.
I have an uncle in Connecticut who is still teaching high school history. He’s 75 years old. He’s one of my teaching heroes.
I think everyone should get that for themselves—work that they enjoy and value and look forward to doing so much that they feel a little sad when it comes time to retire.
And I don’t mean to be rude, but while I am grateful for summer vacation, but I will be sorry to be done teaching for a few months, and I am already looking forward to next September and the chance to do this teaching thing all over again. And if you are another one of us, the folks who actually love their work, be brave and bold and say so to someone today.

Prom Decorating Lessons

(News-Herald, May 14) It’s May, and that means Prom season. I started working with Proms way back when I started teaching. As with any large scale undertaking, there are lessons to be learned that apply in life as well as the project at hand.
*Planning matters. The more prepared you are, the better you can cope. It pays to take an early look at those instructions for making the working model of Mt. St. Helens out of cardboard and cream cheese. Preparing to do the job and having some idea of how it’s going to work makes doing the job much easier.
*However, once you’ve made a plan, don’t get married to it. Something will go wrong that you don’t expect, and something else will be ready to go right in ways you never imagined. You must be flexible enough to deal with both of these opportunities.
*Fear water. As a decoration, water is seductive, sensuous, and beautiful. But it is also fickle and capricious; it doesn’t go where you want it to, and insists on sneaking into places where it is not welcome.
*Clothes matter. Folks of my generation sometimes like to pretend they don’t. They do. Masses of teenagers really are better behaved in tuxes and gowns than in jeans and t-shirts. If you dress them up, it really is easier to take them out.
*There is only so much you can do yourself. It is not always easy to find people that can help, and yet another step to motivate them to do so, but you can only get so far on your own. After that, the road must be traveled with companions or not at all. However:
*You cannot hand something to someone else if you will not let go of it. You do not get help with, “I would like you to do this, but I expect you to do it exactly the way I would if I were there.” Find someone you trust, and let them do the job. (If you do not trust anyone, you should not be in charge.)
There are two reasons for this.
First, the only people really worth working with are people who know how to apply their own smarts, talent, and judgment to the job. The best way to motivate people with smarts, talent, and judgment is to let them use those qualities. The best way to unmotivate them is to forbid the use of those qualities.
Second, you are not there. You may have had a very specific vision for how the top of a cream cheese volcano should look. But only people who are actually there discover that high-stacked cream cheese tends to slough off in gooey chunks. (This is where not being married to your plan becomes important.)
*Know the difference between big, important details and little, piddly ones. If the cream cheese is canted at a 45% angle instead of 47%, the volcano will still look volcano-ey. If the entire volcano crashes through the gym floor, that may be more of an issue. (If you use water and it causes a short-circuit leading to fire and explosion, that’s bad; this is why you don’t use water.)
*Despite all the planning and fretting involved, almost everything is a little piddly detail. If you have a space where everyone can get together, music they can hear well enough to dance to, and a place to dance, you’re okay. Focus on the main point. Everything else is gravy.
Note to parents: Your child does not by any stretch of the imagination “need” to be flown by private jet to Paris for a catered meal while being serenaded by Celine Dion (okay—nobody needs to be serenaded by Celine Dion) followed by a private party in a hotel room with booze. If you are dropping a few grand on this elaborate high school dance, I shudder to think what Junior’s wedding will be like.
*Clothing, decorations, planning, the little extras—it’s all to help foster a sense of Occasion, to suggest that these three hours are somehow different, more vibrant and exciting than any other three hours. As an organizer, you learn how to prompt that sense. But attendees should remember that the more you depend on external cues to get that special sense of Occasion, the fewer Occasions you will have. When you learn how to create that sense on your own, you can have an Occasion any time you choose. This may seem like one of the smallest lessons of Prom, but wait till you get married.

Specter, the GOP, and robocalling

(News-Herald, May 7) So last week I returned home from work to find a message waiting on my answering machine. It was from “Jack” (no last name) who recorded it on behalf of the Republican National Senatorial Committee.
That struck me as odd, because I am a registered Democrat. But robocaller Jack explained that he was calling to help me welcome “your newest Democrat Senator, Arlen Specter.”
Jack followed with old sound bites from George W. Bush. “Arlen Spector is the right man for the U. S. Senate… I can count on this man.” George also said, “He’s a firm ally…when it matters most.”
Jack also shared sound bites from Senator Spector on “important issues to labor and Democrat interest groups.” Spector is then quoted saying he wouldn’t be an automatic 60th vote and gives an example of a pro-labor bill he plans to oppose.
Jack invited me to a website created just for the purpose of “introducing” Spector (www.nrsc.org/meetarlen). It includes various quotes in which Spector says he likes Bush, Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh. There’s also an old quote in which he accused Anita Hill of perjury.
I can’t quite figure out what the Republicans are trying to tell me. They agree that these are all awful things and therefore everyone should vote against Specter? They assume I automatically vote for any yahoo with a D in front of his name, so they want me to think of Specter as still an R?
Just as Senate Republicans are slamming Specter for being a Republican, other Republicans are stepping up their castigation of Specter for not being Republican enough (I thought I’d google a good quote, but a search on “good riddance Arlen Specter” turned up 42,000 hits). “He’s a RINO (Republican in name only)” goes the refrain. He’s not pure enough, not on the right side of enough issues.
This emphasis on ideological purity is a new GOP initiative, borrowed from the Democrats. For decades the Dems have demanded that their candidates pass ideological litmus tests; this has been enormously effective in helping Dems lose election after election.
Had they followed their usual procedure, Dems would have nominated Senator Clinton (an outcome so completely predictable that for months the Clintons simply couldn’t believe it wasn’t happening) and Specter would be reminiscing with President McCain about their boyhood adventures back before the invention of dirt.
Instead, the Dems went off script while the GOP pulled Sarah Palin out of a hat, a woman whose only qualification was her ideological purity. After she sent voters running away in waves, the party decided that what it needed was more of that voter-alienating purity. So now Republicans are the new Democrats; they’d rather be Right than win.
Why build a big tent when you can make the old tent seem larger by throwing more people out of it.
Specter claims this is why he left the party. I suppose that’s sort of true. But if you don’t think he’s trying to save his Senate seat, you probably also believe that Barry Bonds bulked up just by lifting weights and eating twinkies.
I honestly can’t tell how Republicans want us to feel about this. Do they want him to win so the Democrats will have to put up a not-really-a-Dem on their side? Are they really seriously using their own party label as a slur? Whether D or R, I expect Spector will do whatever he wants as he always has. When you’ve beaten cancer and been in the Senate longer than the furniture, you probably get feisty that way. One of the odd features of this is that I doubt that party label will make that much difference in Spector’s vote, so in some ways this is just a flap just about the labels.
Never mind what he’s going to do—what will we label him. Will Dems overlook all the things he’s done that they hated just because he’s now wearing their team jersey? Will Reps reject his assistance to their causes because he took their jersey off? Will he now be Smilin’ Ed Rendell’s new best friend?
Political decisions aside, I have always found it sort of inspiring that a man at Specter’s stage in life would want to stay in the Senate. But this whole flap seems to reveal more of the basic hollowness at the heart of US politics.
My buddy Jack Robocall is still making regular postings about Specter on youtube. I hope he’s not too busy to keep in touch.

The Rise of Wolverine and Fall of Marvel

This is "special" to the blog, i.e. my newspaper audience wouldn't be that interested, but I feel like the exercise. If you don't enjoy comics, you'll probably want to skip this one.

I haven't gone to see Wolverine and undoubtedly won't-- I barely tolerated the first X-men flick and barely made it through the second and wouldn't even rent the third one from Netflix.

For me, the ascent of Wolverine as Marvels leading character parallels Marvel's loss of most of what made it an important comics company.

Stan Lee's genius back in the 60's was to re-imagine comic book stories as metaphors. The DC universe was moribund, populated with characters so unimaginably perfect that teen sidekicks were introduced in hopes that young readers could see some character to identify with. What Lee figured out was that it wasn't simply age that made a character identifiable.

His first launch, the Fantastic Four, doesn't really count. It was a genius move of its own, a grafting of monster movie conventions into comics pages (Reed Richards did in fact make his first appearance in one of Lee's monster books). The scientist--man of action--damsel triad was augmented with the teen hot-rodder (think Steven McQueen in The Blob) to create a perfect team to fight the monster of the month. It was smart, but it wasn't what made Marvel great.

That was best personified by Spider-man. For Peter Parker, super powers became a metaphor for everything that sucked about growing up-- new responsibilities and a secret self that made it harder and harder to connect with the people around you. It became the Marvel formula to present a hero who struggled against personal issues (Jules Feiffer once smartly observed that Clark Kent was just Superman without his cape, but Spider-man was just Peter Parker in a costume).

Peter Parker was an unpopular skinny geek. Tony Stark had heart problems. Matt Murdock was blind. Bruce Banner, worst of the lot, had an uncontrollable, destructive secret self. All of them harbored love for a mostly-unattainable woman. All of them found that what made them special separated them from the people around them, made it harder to live a normal life. There wasn't a teenager who didn't get it. Clark Kent may have been the man we wanted to be, but Peter Parker was the guy we were pretty sure, sadly, that we actually were.

The X-men took that concept of the alienation of power and ramped it up. In their first incarnation, they didn't do well. For some reason (perhaps Lee didn't quite yet have a handle on scripting a large group) they had a rep as the talkiest book in the stable. Even some genius work by Neal Adams and Roy Smith didn't save them.

But the 1970's group, created by Len Wein and written thereafter by Chris Claremont, refined the Marvel formula to perfection. These were heroes whose abilities made them outcasts of the society they were sworn to protect.

The centerpiece character was Cyclops, Scott Summers-- quiet, sensitive, and certain that his unique self made it impossible for him to live among "normal" folks, he dedicated his life to his work. Like every other Marvel lead, he had a frustrated love for a woman he thought he could never have because of his nature, and their love story was the cornerstone of the book for decades.

But by the nineties, something was happening in Marvel.

Peter Parker, once a shy skinny geek struggling to get by was a hunky successful photographer with a smokin' hot model girlfriend/fiance/wife. Newer characters, like the Punisher, were simply acting out revenge fantasies-- people who crossed them got shot, a lot.

Marvel heroes had once been metaphors for the search for self and growth and a place in the world, but with a heavy twist-- "With great power comes great responsibility." Somewhere along the way the subtext became "With great power comes the chance to do whatever-the-hell you want to."

No long-standing characters showed this better than the X-men and Wolverine. In his earliest form he was a rough and insensitive bully, a thug who needed to learn to play nice. His crush on Jean Grey came early, and a scene showed him arriving at her hospital room with flowers, sure that he would score big points; instead he is surprised to find her room filled with many other people because it had not occurred to him that she had friends, and this is what friends do.

But after a few years, he was a new Wolverine, his signature line that he is "the best at what he does." He was a fantasy on steroids, able to beat anyone up, a colorful past, comfortable in any setting, man of the world, attractive to numerous babes. Fans clamored mercilessly for Jean Grey to dump that wuss Cyclops and pair up with Wolvie, and while the main continuity line stayed faithful, Marvel never passed up the chance to use alternate realities or mental planes to put the two together.

By the time the movies rolled around, Cyclops, the central character for years, the leader and linchpin and the identifiable character for a generation of readers-- well, he was reduced to minor status.

Once Marvel comics showed us who we were and who we might become. On their best days, they even showed us how we might grow into that person. Now Marvel, led by Wolverine, is simple wish-fulfillment fantasy. We don't want to know who we are-- we just want to imagine being the biggest baddest best mother on the block.

There's nothing wrong with that. Millions of comics have been sold on the promise of attractive fantasy, improbably physiology, and sheer escapism. But for me it has been a slow step backwards, and nothing personifies that regression more than the character of Wolverine, grown to become popular and successful and as perfect and alien as that amazing stranger from the Planet Krypton (it is ironic that as Marvel has become progressively less interesting, DC has become more so-- but that's a discussion for another day). The man of adamantium today is no more interesting than the man of steel used to be.

Growing a Conscience

Folks have called for a lot of things during the Economic Troubles, so much and so often that some days I think one more piece of news about economic downturn will produce a digestive upturn of my lunch.
What is scary about our economic system is that much of the power is in the hands of people who are not elected and over whom we have no control. We have no effective way of telling investment bankers, housing lenders or other ginormous financial institutions that we want them to making venal, stupid choices. It’s that impulse to get come grip on the slippery weasels that leads for calls for more laws and action from Uncle Sugar.
But what ails our system is not a lack of laws or oversight or regulation or deregulation. What we’re missing is what those elements try to make up for, but never can. What we’re missing is just old-fashioned conscience and responsibility.
A sense of responsibility and a well-developed conscience are no guarantee of behavior that everyone will approve. John D. Rockefeller was a serious churchgoer, but even as he economically crushed and manipulated the little guys in the oil region, there’s no reason to think his conscience ever bothered him a day in his life. All the good works he did (and there were plenty, from inventing modern corporate philanthropy to founding important colleges for African –Americans) were not to assuage any guilt he ever felt—they were just the actions he felt were his God-given responsibility for his God-given money.
But the other thing those earlier leaders didn’t have was a bubble. Charles Miller not only lived in Franklin within spitting distance of the men who worked for him, but in many cases he went to church with them every Sunday. And he wanted it that way.
People in power should live near the people that their decisions affect.
I’ve always said that public officials should live among the taxpayers that provide their salaries. Teachers and other school district employees should live in their district, both for of the economic impact and the accountability. If I make decisions affecting the life of your child, I shouldn’t be able to go home and hide from you. I should have to face you in church or the grocery store, and the knowledge that that meeting could occur should influence my choices. I should treat every student I work with as if I’m dealing with my neighbor’s child.
What we often call conscience is sometimes not so much the voice of little angels perched on our shoulders as it is the voice that reminds us that we might have to face the person we just hurt.
I have to believe that if this several-decade bonanza of business bozos had known from the get-go that they would have to personally take the money from individual human hands and flush it down the porcelain portal in front of that now-broken investor—well, I have to think that picture might have at least slowed them down.
It’s a sort of safety feature in humans—we can know something without really feeling the truth of it. I can sit in my corporate office and know, intellectually, that I just brought ruin and disaster on a bunch of folks. But they aren’t folks who live anywhere nearby; I’ll never meet them and I can’t even imagine how they will react.
That’s what’s so striking about moments like the AIG bonuses or the corporate jet trips to beg for taxpayer money—these are guys who have been in the bubble for so long that they have lost the ability to even imagine how people would react to their venal stupidity. They shop at a grocery store where only other fat cats shop, and they don’t know how other voices sound.
Men like General Miller made lots of decisions that were unpopular and unlikable. Certainly their proximity to other mortals did not make them perfect human beings. But there’s a reason that the mayor of a town lives in the town—every day he has to face the people, places and things affected by his decisions. He may make hard choices, but he can walk out his front door able to face people believing he did the right thing. There’s a difference between a clear conscience and an absent one.
There’s no way to give people a conscience implant. But it doesn’t always take the voice of God to fill the gap; sometimes the voice of a neighbor is enough.

Oil City Bicycling

(News-Herald, April 23) I have discovered one more reason to be jealous of Oil City.
I don’t mean merely their politics. Oil City has been on the move the last year or two, and I don’t think it’s because of any clever marketing. The growth of the arts initiative has been great and one or two other pieces are falling into place, but mostly I think Oil City has managed some interesting, robust politics.
I mostly blame the mayor. Small towns are at their best with interesting mayors. It’s true that interesting doesn’t always sweep or patrol the streets, but cities have paid employees for that. It’s a mayor’s job to keep the city interesting, to put a good public face on it, to give it a personality.
Goy Mammolite and Bob Olson certainly gave Franklin an interesting face in their day, and I suppose that I am bitter that none of the interesting people I suggested as mayoral material stepped up. We don’t even have a race for mayor in Franklin, and while our single candidate may be competent, I have no idea if he’s interesting. Certainly a one-man race is not interesting. I mention this now only because there is still time for a write-in campaign, if we can just come up with someone willing to be written.
But that’s my old reason to be jealous of Oil City.
I discovered my new one last weekend when I ventured out on the bike trail. The trail was, as always, a pleasure. The Allegheny Valley Trails folks have given us one of our greatest recreational assets, a long winding stretch of placid pavement that provides a window on some of the greatest scenic splendor in all of Pennsylvania.
I was so energized by the ride upriver that I decided to check out the marked extension of the trail that runs through town.
I do this kind of adventure carefully. I am not a Serious Biker. Bicycling offers a chance to get Really Serious by buying special accessories and toys and clothing in various shades not ordinarily found in nature. I don’t own any of that—I have reached a point in life where I have no illusion that any sort of athletic gear could ever make me appear either cool or hot. So I settle for comfort.
I have several friends who are Serious Bikers. There’s Steve, who rockets down the back roads of Venangoland at speeds that make me uncomfortable in a car, and Paul and Terri who have logged enough bicycle miles to travel to Peru and back 147 times, or Mike who uses biking terminology that sounds like space shuttle parts. They all have great biking stories, though I notice that many of these stories include phrases such as “and then I hit the yak” or “when I woke up in the hospital” or “the doctor said that with therapy I’ll be good as new in a year or twelve.”
So I’m not a Serious Biker. And I am happy to report that even a non-serious biker can navigate the Oil City bike environs with relative ease.
Unlike Franklin, which asks cyclists and pedestrians to battle it out on the sdiewalk, Oil City has actual bike lanes in the street. There are drawbacks to this—Oil City streets include potholes large enough to have their own zip codes—but for the most part it makes navigation easy and uncomplicated.
The signage is good, though in one or two spots it’s an advantage to already know one’s way around Oil City. And the bike paths provide a biker’s version of the Oil City one-way maze.
But (ignoring hilly parts) it is much easier to navigate through Oil City by bike than it is to pedal about Franklin. It may even be easier to get around Oil City by bicycle than to get around Oil City by car. (It should be noted, however, that in both cities your troubles begin when you decide to get off the bicycle and park it somewhere.)
The Oil City leg only takes you to the top of the North Side; the next adventure will be to orienteer my way to Oil Creek park and on to Titusville. This summer’s goal is a Titusville to Emlenton ride.
In the meantime, if you love the bike trail, too, remember to support the AVTA folks with some cold hard cash. Anything worth having is worth paying for.