Loss

(News-Herald, November 6) Many writers are busy picking apart election results. But other stuff has happened in the last week. Big stuff. Things beyond mere politics.

Sometimes when death comes, it comes with a bit of warning. It calls ahead, or at least clears its throat when it walks into the room. But it is in the nature of human tragedy that it can happen at moments that are not just unexpected, but seem just wrong.

Poe thought that there was nothing more awful than the untimely death of a young woman. I don’t doubt that his insight is true, but I’m not sure why.

Part, I suppose, is our tendency to search for narrative, to organize our experiences into stories that make sense. The death of someone who has lived a long and full life is a story we can understand. The death of someone who has made a mess out of his life is sad, but it makes sense. It fits a story.

But the passing of a woman still young, a life of promise ahead of her, doesn’t work. It’s a bad story. It doesn’t make sense.

You can hear it in the voices of people talking about it, struggling to force sense into it. It’s that struggle to make sense that invariably leads well-meaning people to say Really Stupid Things. You would be better off trying to explain the Mind of God to a six-year-old than to stand in line at the funeral home and try to explain to a grieving family member why their loved one’s death is Actually Okay.

Yeah, sure. In another thousand years, we’ll all be dust. In another billion years this planet will be dust in the cold depths of space. So what. We are people of flesh and the moment, rooted here, now, in this time in this place in the universe. And now we are here, and our loved one is not. Long-range perspective does not help.

God has a plan for all of us, and everything in that plan works for the best, even if it’s in ways known only to Him. That may be. I rarely make the mistake of confusing God with Santa Claus—sometimes God demands some pretty hard things of us. I believe we can accept that and still think that some of those things stink. Big time.

A relationship with God can be a big help in these times, but I have also seen it hinder healing, bending people under the weight of grief doubled by a load of guilt because of a mistaken belief that we are always supposed to think that God’s plan is great.

I think any good relationship has room for anger. I think anyone who has had a loved one taken unexpectedly is entitled to be angry at God. I think God gets that. I expect God is still right there after the anger has run its course.

Death is not something we deal with well as a culture. We don’t even like the word—passing, gone, departed, left us, and a dozen other gentle euphemisms cushion us from the subject.

It is oddly surprising, though, that the religious and the not-so-religious agree about the importance of death-- We only have so much time in this world, and we have no way of knowing how much, so we had better make the best use of it we possibly can.

If I were going to live a million years, it doesn’t matter one whit how I spend today. If I knew the people around me were also going to live that long, it wouldn’t matter how I treated them, what I said, what I did, what I paid attention to.

I remember words from Mort Teig’s funeral years ago, to the effect that we should not be sad for the days we had lost, but grateful for the time that he was with us.

Death stinks. It hurts. It is a thief that robs us of precious time with people that we love. But that theft serves as reminder for us to value and cherish the moments we still have. If I had a million todays, they would be as cheap as paper napkins, as common as dirt. But I might have only one more, and that makes it more valuable than gold. I’m not sure being reminded of that is worth the loss of one bright, beautiful, promising life, but if it helps us resolve to honor that life, it’s a start.

All Hallow's Election

(News-Herald, October 30) This time of year a weekly columnist has a tough choice—comment wryly on Halloween, or make trenchant observations about the upcoming election.

The cheap shot is to link the two with some lame witticism suggesting that the election is far scarier than anything on All Hallow’s Eve. I’d rather not. I find this year’s Presidential race more disappointing than scary.

I don’t find either of the candidates frightening; I just expected, somehow, a better race than this. There was a time when I really respected each of these guys and imagined that we would be spared the usual wretched campaign excess. Instead, the Obama campaign has spent enough money to rescue half of Wall Street, while the McCain campaign has slung enough ugly mud to bury it (and they should know better—one of the things I have never forgiven the Bushies for is their shameful smearing of McCain eight years ago).

Some members of the electorate have raised a level of hysteria that’s just silly. I don’t believe the election of either candidate will signal the end of everything good in the country.

As far as some of some of the “information” circulating—well, here’s a quick memo. This is to those of you who keep insisting that Sarah Palin wants to burn books and hunt endangered species, and those of you who keep insisting that Obama is actually a Muslim and terrorist: You need to shut up. You’re embarrassing yourselves, and the rest of us as well. There are some perfectly good reasons to vote against either candidate; manufacturing stupid ones is unnecessary.

I am equally saddened at some “local” races. Now that John Peterson has retired, awe-inspiring gerrymandering in the Commonwealth has guaranteed that Venangoland will be forever represented by total strangers who live over two hours away. (Gerrymandering, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is the process by which pinheaded yahoos in state and federal capitols redraw districts with no regard for actual constituents, but in order to guarantee certain seats will be safe for certain parties. Computers have greatly advanced this fine art of denying voters real representation.)

Halloween isn’t any scarier than the election, but at least it’s a bit more hopeful.

This, despite the earnest efforts of many well-meaning folks to stamp out or upstage the Great Festival of Junk Food Extortion. I have heard the arguments about the evils of Halloween, but I can’t take them seriously. If Halloween is Satan’s recruitment program, it is the most ineffective one since Uncle Sam started trying to interest young men in a free trip to Iraq. After decades and generations of trick-or-treaters in Venangoland, we should be positively waist-deep in middle-aged Satanists, and yet everyone I know somehow escaped unscathed.

Actually, as an in-town Franklin resident, I’m pretty sure that the “Harvest Festival” in the park has actually increased trick-or-treat traffic. Little masquers carpool into the city, glom up the free food in the park and then head out through town for the traditional non-wholesome stuff.

Beyond that, it should be a quieter-than-usual year in Franklin—the Friday night football game will cramp the style of the usual Franklin Heights egg war. Not so in Oil City.

There’s something a little bit triumphant about the return to evening trick-or-treating in Oil City. Sending the costumed kiddies out after dark is not just a harmless tradition—for Oil City it’s an act of courageous defiance, a night of pride and strength. It was right for the city to take a step back for many years, and now it’s right for the city to take back the night.

Of course, in the midst of all this there is an actual legitimate holiday (no, I am not referring to the new custom of using Halloween to kick off the Christmas shopping season). I’m referring to November 1, All Saint’s Day.

It’s an old holiday—the church first started festivals to commemorate all martyrs back in the late 200’s. Pope Gregory set All Saint’s Day for November 1 somewhere around 740 AD. Many modern denominations have moved it to the first Sunday in November and generalize it to commemorate all the departed faithful, a sort of Holy Memorial Day. It is an occasion that’s probably more deserving of attention than the pursuit of a juvenile sugar buzz. If your church is on the ball, you get to sing “For All the Saints,” one of best hymns in Christendom (take the time to sing all eleven verses).

Preventative Management

(News-Herald, February 2004) The best and most effective managers are those that see themselves as facilitators for their employees. They see their job as providing the front line workers with the equipment and resources to get the work done.

But there’s another type of manager who sees his job differently. This is the manager who thinks his job is to prevent the employees from doing things.

It’s not an uncommon phenomenon. For instance, you might think that the purpose of health care insurance is to help people pay for health care. Instead, the medical insurance industry is set up primarily to avoid paying for health care. And everyone has encountered one of those rare but scary librarians who wishes people would stop taking her books out of her library.

But let’s consider a hypothetical example. Say, a small company that provides drawings of industrial widgets. The purpose of the business is to make widget drawings. So a facilitating manager hires people who are good illustrators and makes sure that they have the paper and pencils that they need to create the widget drawings. His goal is to make it as easy as possible for them to produce the drawings that keep the business functioning.

A preventative manager, on the other hand, will focus on how to keep the illustrators from doing things. Keep them from using up pencils and paper. Keep them from doing anything that might cost money.

The facilitating manager does not writer blank checks. If the illustrators want to order special $3000 pencils, the facilitating manager sits down with them so that everyone can figure out how to make the realities of equipment needs match up with the realities of financial limits.

A preventative manager never has those conversations. Preventative managers usually have little understanding of how widget drawings are made, so they’re afraid that if they listen to the employees, they’ll be tricked into buying something they don’t really need.

A facilitating manager has few rules. There’s a clear job to do (make widget drawings); anything that helps do that job is good and anything that gets in the way of the job is bad.

A preventative manager has a long list of Do Not’s. Don’t use pencils with soft lead (they have to be replaced more often). Don’t fix more than two mistakes a day (otherwise they’ll wear out the erasers).

A facilitating manager has confidence in his workers. He hires people that he can trust to do the job. If he can’t trust a worker, that employee is either trained or fired.

A preventative manager is paranoid. She can never trust employees, because they are always trying to use supplies and spend money. Employees are sneaky and out to get me, she thinks, clutching her sack of gold coins.

It’s not that facilitating managers are nicer or more fun to work for. In fact, they often aren’t. If you are someone who doesn’t draw very good widgets or doesn’t much like drawing widgets, working for someone who judges you on your production of widget drawings can be a real pain. A preventative manager’s paranoid focus on everything but the real purpose of the business can make her easy to manipulate.

The real problem with preventative managers is that they do a lousy job. The steel and auto industries both suffered from preventative management in the last century; they resisted spending anything on new technology while their competition in other countries spent the money and breezed past them.

Preventative managers create a workplace that doesn’t much work. The preventative manager is focused on what doesn’t happen, instead of what does, so success is measured by a very crooked yardstick. If nothing Scary or Expensive has happened, then everything must be okay. This is not an atmosphere that breeds growth or innovation.

Bad widget drawers are rewarded because they’re not doing Anything Bad. Good widget drawers learn that if they try to hard and care too much, they’ll just be beaten down. Middle of the road widget drawers, who had the potential to become good, see which way the wind is blowing and get worse.

Customers can be initially attracted to a pitch like “We will provide the cheapest widget drawings in the industry.” But in relatively short time, they notice that they’re getting junk. “We won’t use resources to get the job done” is not a pitch that inspires confidence in the marketplace (remember those great cars of the seventies?).

Preventative managers have forgotten the organization’s purpose. Instead of “Make good widget drawings,’ their motto is “Don’t spend money. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t scare the boss.” But the gold medal rarely goes to those who do the least.

Unplugging

(News-Herald, October 23) I’ve decided to take the plunge, to cut the cord, to make a bold new life change.

Okay, not quite that drastic. But I’m getting rid of my cable television.

And no, I didn’t simply replace it with satellite dish. I do still have dvds and netflix. But I have detached myself from the stream of popular culture.

It’s not that I’m a television snob who sniffs at the common herd for lowering themselves to watch the “idiot box.” I have watched a lot of television in my life, filling my brain with a mass of cathode-ray mulch. I do appreciate the great things that tv has accomplished. I have fond memories of staying up to watch Neal Armstrong on the moon. Many of us know much of what we know about the rest of the world because we’ve seen it on tv.

Television comes with negatives as well. I think perhaps the worst is the dual curse of bad acting and bad writing. I don’t object to these twin scourges on artistic grounds, but because I suspect they’ve had a bad effect on our society. Generations of young Americans have tried to learn about life and human nature by watching characters who neither speak nor act like real human beings. It’s the equivalent of athletes trying to learn how to play football by watching a night of Bingo at the VFW.

There are plenty of reasons I’ve become disenchanted with tv. I never minded that it was stupid; I am not ashamed to admit that I logged many hours of watching Gilligan’s Island, a show with proven ability to suck the IQ points right out of a room.

So no, I don’t mind the stupidity of television. What has bothered me in recent years is the sheer meanness of it. Television has become a 24-hour-a-day celebration of what is worst about us.

Entire shows celebrate greed, selfishness and unkindness. Dramas compete to see who can present the most graphic portrayal of ugly violence. Comedy is about watching some character’s painful humiliation. In “reality” programming, cast members work to make a name for themselves. Behavior that people would once have been ashamed to reveal in front of even their closest family they now parade loudly for the entire world, in hopes that a shameless display of their ugliest selves will rocket them to some fame and fortune.

That bothers me, just as it bothers me that broadcast journalism is such a sad shadow of its former self. Once the images and words on the news would challenge us to expand our understanding of the world. Now we select the news by our preferred bias, choosing the network that comfortably confirms what we already believe. Election coverage is a bad joke. Once, news organizations were ashamed to be caught showing bias; now their skewed viewpoint is a proud part of their marketing plan. If I want real information, I’ll read it in print.

I have to admit that the party most responsible for ending my relationship with tv is—well, I’m in the clichéd position of having to look tv in the eye and say, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

I allow tv to suck hours out of my life. I’m about to head out the door to the bike trail or the river or just around the block, but first I’ll just catch the end of this show (which I only turned on to provide some random background noise in the house) and there I am, rotund posterior perched on the couch an hour later (an hour including at least 16 minutes of ads). I have every intention of sitting on the porch and reading a book, but then…

Television has become the other voice in my house, a cheap way to eat up extra time. And that’s the rest of it—a recent hike in cable costs reminded me that it’s not even particularly cheap any more. Since the nest has emptied out, I could be filling up some of the empty spots with things I love, but instead I’ve been filling up with really expensive packing peanuts. For what it costs to feed the box, I could feed myself at Leonardo’s many times over.

We’ll see if I can hold out. I’ll still watch, but only as a deliberate choice and only the things I really want to watch (House dvds, here I come), when I want to watch them (and without the 25% advertising).

A Different Kind of Las Vegas Tour

This has nothing at all to do with Venangoland, but I'm going to indulge myself.

My cousin Andy Taylor is a way cool guy. He and his wife and kids have lived in Vegas forever where he's an artist, cartoonist, journalist and blogger. One of his blog projects has been to capture the Stratosphere (the building, not the atmospheric layer) from every conceivable angle. After a year and 500 shots, he put together this little youtube featurette. Your eyes probably aren't fast enough to catch the building in every shot-- you can always go page through his blog.

Home Schooling Revisited

(News-Herald, August 2004) I have always had mixed feelings about home schooling. Over the past few years, those feelings have changed. Granted, they’re still mixed. But it’s become easier for me to understand the impulse to keep a child home.

We are living, after all, through a large scale assault on public education. As near as I can tell, No Child Left is intended to gut public schools so that some select folks 1) can get their children away from Those People and 2) can keep their money and avoid having to foot the bill for educating the servants’ children. At best, the government seems intent on creating schools where the point is not to educate, but to prepare students to take tests (the results of these tests will show conclusively how well those students have been taught to take tests).

We’re headed for a two-tier system in this country for both regular schooling and college education—one top-notch system for the rich and privileged, and another sorry beaten-down system for the rest of us. The No Child Left and school voucher folks would just like to get us there as quickly as possible.

Given that situation, I can understand a parent’s desire to get their own child out of the building before it collapses.

At the same time, I have misgivings, because I’m afraid that this sort of bailing accelerates the collapse.

The problem in many cases we’re losing the best students from public school. My objection to that is not based on any selfish desire to have the best kids in my classroom—the loss of the cream dilutes what’s left.

A while back, I watched an outstanding young local musician, and my first thought was, “What a shame he’s home schooled.” Not for him, mind you. His talent was obviously managing to grow well enough.

But as most musicians will tell you, the way you get better is by playing with other musicians. Particularly good ones. So there are dozens of other young musicians who will have a slightly smaller chance to grow because they’ll never have worked with this guy.

And music isn’t the only area that works that way. No matter what subject, classroom teachers will tell you (and the research will back them up) that the top students often drive the other students behind them, just like a runner setting the pace for a race.

So when the fastest runner is home schooled, the rest of the runners end up working to a slower pace, and they don’t do as well as they might have.

This speaks to one of the fault lines in our culture, the problem of balancing individual rights with responsibilities to the group as a whole.

If you have a talent, a skill, a special ability, an extraordinary level of drive, shouldn’t you be free to explore and develop that as best you can, without restrictions, without being held back by or for others? But if you have that kind of gift, don’t you have an obligation to use it for something larger than your own personal benefit? Do you owe it to society to share your talent?

I don’t have an answer for this one. I do know that if gifts aren’t allowed to grow and thrive, they can become twisted or stunted or simply lost. But I also know that all too often people look at a problem, say, “Hey, that’s not MY problem,” and then are later shocked and surprised that the problem was never solved.

This issue is a balance between serving society and being served by it.

Is the only value in a school what the student can get from it, or is it also important to weigh what the student can give?

The two questions are more closely related than they may seem, because the less some students give to the system, the less other students can get from it. If nobody chooses to play on the football team, then that team is not there to foster the gifted potential players that come along.

I don’t want to minimize for a moment the fact that parents have to try to make the best choices that they can for their children. But I think we sometimes fail to acknowledge that when a student is homeschooled, particularly one with a gift for art or music or athletics or writing or math, there is a collateral cost for all the other students.

The response may be, “Tough noogies. I’ve got to watch out for my own kid.” And parents have every right to take that stance. At the same time, when your neighbor’s house burns down, it’s the neighborhood you live in that’s damaged.

School Spirit

(News-Herald, October 16) School spirit matters a great to some folks; people in Venangoland often identify themselves by which high school they graduated from. Merging some of our school districts would streamline staffs, simplify transportation, cut costs and just generally make sense, but none of that stands up against peoples’ loyalty to the school that they graduated from.

At the same time, lots of grownups shake their heads at Kids These Days and wonder what ever happened to school spirit.

Well, part of what happened is the faulty memories of adults. There have always been plenty of teenagers immune to the charms of school spirit, people who don’t see any reason to owe loyalty to other people who happen to have been born in the same year and live in the same area.

But there is more to school spirit (and the dislike thereof) than coincidences of history and geography. School spirit, at its best, is about pride and investment in something larger than yourself.

Pride in your own thing is not the same thing as abuse of the other guy’s thing. “We’re number one,” is a perfectly good expression of school spirit. “You guys suck,” is not. First of all, it’s rude and classless. Second, it’s an admission that the other guy is better, that our only hope is to drag him down. Some sports fans at some schools in the region would do well to remember this.

School spirit is also about what a school district values. What does your school celebrate? What do school officials hold up as something worth getting excited about? Which students do we think deserve the recognition and admiration of their peers, and which do we leave to keep doing their thing without any special attention?

That special attention comes with a special responsibility, and it’s here where I think many schools fumble the school spirit ball. To build school spirit, we should hold up those special students with a message of, “Here’s a person who represents the whole school. This student is one of you, and represents what’s best in this school, and when this student stands up, it’s for everyone here.”

What tears school spirit down is to present those students who excel with a message of, “This guy is better than all of you guys. You should cheer him cause he’s so great.”

When students excel, there are two lessons to be learned. One is the lesson of respect for excellence in certain areas. The other is that those who excel and lead have a responsibility to their community.

School spirit decays when a school only celebrates certain narrow areas of expertise. If your school only celebrates the star tiddlywinks player, only the students who care about tiddlywinks will feel invested. Other students may feel that tiddlywinks is a pretty lame area in which to invest a school’s spirit.

School spirit decays when the excellent students, the leaders, go unrecognized or unsupported. And it also decays when they have no sense of responsibility to their school. Some high school athletes (and their parents) have come to believe that the school sports program exists to serve them. Their message: “Who cares about the school or the team? I’m in this for me!” Can they really be surprised that they don’t feel the backing of a spirited student body?

Oddly enough, I think the architects of No Child Left Behind actually understood this. Some envisioned schools with pep rallies for academics, a world where a school that won a Blue Ribbon Award would be celebrated and supported just like a championship football team. Well, it was a nice thought, anyway.

Schools that want to build spirit need to hold up a wide range of students who have achieved excellence in a broad range of arenas, so that every other student in the school can feel some connection to the many values represented. Let those leaders say, “I stand for all of us—yay, us” and not “I’m great and you don’t matter. You should clap for me.”

Imagine a gathering where every team captain, each class president, the top scholars, the homecoming queen, the top tech students, the best performers, and other student leaders all stood up to say why they were proud to represent their school. No, I’ve never seen it, either. And it may just be hokey and naïve, too. But a school is just a big stack of bricks and concrete. The only spirit it’s ever going to have will come from the people inside it.

French and Indian War

My apologies to everyone I faked out-- you will note the September 2004 byline on this column, which is one of my weekly reruns here on the blog!

(September 2004, News-Herald) This weekend a strange and varied assortment of people will converge on Franklin to mark the 250^th anniversary of the French and Indian War.

It’s a tough war to commemorate. To begin with, the start date is not entirely obvious. In 1749, Celeron claimed the Ohio valley with his infamous plates. The next year the British and French made their final attempt to carve up the continent peaceably. It failed.

Then the Marquis Duquesne was appointed governor-general of New France with instructions to chase the British out of the Ohio valley. To put some muscle where their mouths were, in 1753 the French built forts at Presque Isle and Le Boeuf; later that same year they evicted trader John Frasier from his cabin at the confluence the Allegheny and La Riviere aux Boeufs (roughly French for “the river of beef”—heaven only knows what possessed the French to pick that label for what we now call French Creek).

Here’s where young George Washington passes through to scout the French locations. On the way, he decides that the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela would make a dandy fort location. The British begin construction, but the French chase them away and finish the structure as Fort Duquesne. A battle between troops led by Washington and troops from Fort Duquesne in 1754 is generally considered to be the first actual battle of the war.

The British sent Major General Edward Braddock; his major achievement was to get many troops killed, himself included. The following year, 1756, the war, which had already consumed considerable human and financial resources, was officially declared.

In 1758, Brigadier General John Forbes recaptured Fort Duquesne from the French. In 1759, the French gathered forces here at Fort Machault in preparation to try to retake the fort; instead, in what some cynics would call a signature French strategy, they ran away.

The British had pretty well mopped up the French by the end of 1760, including the construction of Fort Venango, but not till 1763 was a treaty signed to conclude the business. By that time, native American tribes had decided that the British were lousy neighbors. Although Indians get equal billing in the war’s title, Pontiac’s uprising, which resulted in the total destruction of Fort Venango and which was not squashed until 1764, appears as a small separate footnote.

So why care about the war? If the British had lost, maybe we’d all be washing down croissants with snooty wine; then again, Napoleon might still have sold it all to Thomas Jefferson forty years later anyway. And that’s just playing “what if”, a game that’s a lot like “who cares.”

The war did train many future heroes; Washington not only made a name for himself, but learned a great deal from British generals about managing an ill-supplied army.

The war also set the stage for the revolution. The colonies moved to join together for their mutual security and protection. Ben Franklin’s famous woodcut of the disconnected snake captioned “Join or Die” was created for the French and Indian War, not the revolution. A congress of colonies at Albany convinced colonial leaders that a Union of the Colonies was needed to protect them all from the French. The Albany Plan of Union provided the basis for many of the ideas later considered in setting up a new country.

In short, for those of you with a more literary than historical bent, the French and Indian War is to the United States what The Hobbit is to The Lord of the Rings. To revisit it is to revisit the roots of who and what we are as a nation.

It is also, on a weekend with a fresher, more horrifying anniversary, a reminder of a time when war was very different. To kill a person you had to look at him. And despite the tension between the nations, Washington could gather intelligence about the French by walking up to their encampments and asking them. For his troubles he was invited in, fed a nice meal, and sent politely on his way. Not a trick you could try with Osama.

The encampment this weekend will be held both days in the parks from 9 till 5. Warriors of all sides will be represented, complete with close order drills and the firing of muskets and cannon. A variety of 18^th century crafts will be demonstrated and guests will discuss everything from the forests of the day to the old French Road from Franklin to Presque Isle.

Perhaps not even oil put Venango County in the thick of such major American history. We were the front lines of a great war for empire. This is a good weekend to learn something new about our home and see some cool stuff from another age.

One More Columnist Takes on the Financial Mess

(News-Herald, October 9) Like most other average Americans, I’m not sure what the heck is going on with the much-ballyhooed economic crisis. I’ve read about it -- I don’t think television is capable of doing any useful coverage of a mess this complicated. But it would be nice to know whom, exactly, I should be mad at.

I’m not too mad at all the people who acquired mortgages they couldn’t afford. I’m more angry at the shysters who pushed those mortgages. I know the buyer is responsible for his own choices, but in situations like this I think of my Grandmother Binmore, who would have fallen for this kind of thing. She would have been easy pickings, not because she was dumb, but because her generation grew up believing that official people from official organizations didn’t encourage customers to do something stupid. If a banker or a government official said it was a good idea, you could trust them. I’m much more angry with people who prey on that sort of trust than with those who exercise it.

But the bad mortgages wouldn’t have trashed an economy. The estimate I’ve seen is that 94-96% of all mortgages are still being paid on time. That’s not a collapse of the housing market.

No, I save my real ire for the financial bigwigs who invented a new kind of side bets on mortgages, and then sold side bets on the side bets.

In other words, one set of shysters sold Uncle Wally a three-legged race horse. Then another set of shysters placed bets on the three-legged horse with everyone else’s retirement money. And back in DC, the shysters who were supposed to make sure the horse race wasn’t fixed decided to let the other shysters run free to exercise whatever stupid thought entered their heads.

So we end up poised between a rock and hard place, the devil and the deep blue sea, paper and plastic. We could either watch the nation’s economy crumble, or watch the federal government wrack up unimaginable debt while gobbling up another chunk of the formerly-private sector (and we may yet get to see both).

Congress, given the chance to stand up for the nation’s best interests and use patriotism as its guide in difficult times—well, Congress blew it completely again. Instead of being a monument to extraordinary vision and leadership, the bailout bill is a bloated monument to self-serving pork. Under the pretense of guiding the firemen to the burning building, Congress started looting the place.

I don’t know if the bailout bill is a good thing. One commentator said that it was a horrible thing, the worst thing ever—except for doing nothing. That may be true. Maybe when so much of the public trust is threatened, Uncle Sugar must act.

The desire to federalize chunks of the private sector shows many things, not the least of which may be that Americans have simply become too soft and wimpy to tolerate the ups and downs of free market capitalism. But I think it also shows an understanding that the private sector holds a lot of public trusts.

Someone who owns a restaurant or a movie theater or a widget factory controls resources that are a public trust. Everyone who eats out has an interest in a good restaurant; everyone who works at a factory or depends on the taxes paid by workers—all of those people have an interest in that widget factory.

Private actions have public implications. The private individuals who continue using lawsuits to harass both the ORA and persons attached to it aren’t simply exercising their own personal right to hire lawyers and be a pain in the keister. If they win these lawsuits, they will spread the word that Venango County is not just reluctant about economic development, but is openly hostile to it. And that will be bad news for all of us.

When we see private individuals in any sector making choices that threaten the public interest, the urge is to protect that interest. But if we put every public interest under the protective hand of Uncle Sugar, we will ultimately hand over control of everything to the feds. And that is truly awful news for everyone.

So maybe the cause of this mess is a perfect storm, a long line of people acting as if they had nothing and no one to worry about but themselves. It’s useful to remember that, as citizens, we all carry a piece of public trust with us.

Drugs

(January, 2003) Yes, drugs are still an issue with teens. But talking to teens about drugs has long been a big challenge for baby boomer parents.

Pundits have offered a variety of explanations. One is that boomers are feeling too guilty about their own youthful drug-induced exuberance to scold anyone else. Another is that boomers don’t want to sound any more like their own parents than they already do. And some boomers supposedly feel a great deal like hypocrites.

All that, plus the lack of any clear, convincing speech to deliver on the subject. Most boomers seem to have a hard time with any argument that stands on phrases like “the right thing to do” or “against the law.” Boomers have spent a chunk of their generation rejecting these sorts of arguments in everything from politics to jaywalking, and they don’t know how to make the point sound convincing.

We remember all too well the sorts of materials that were brought to bear on us. The movies about people who touched one joint and became drooling drug fiends never convinced anyone; we all knew people who had touched lots of joints and didn’t seem very drooly at all. The people who did drugs were never like the raving sleazy menaces in the materials we were shown; they were the same people that we’d played four square with in the playground.

We know that some of the people who did drugs turned out just fine. We know that some of them also turned out to be a mess. And the difference is just as mysterious to most of us as the person who may or may not become an alcoholic after a few drinks.

The whole illegal and wrong argument is a wash these days. I’m not saying that drugs aren’t illegal and wrong. But for better or worse, we’ve come to accept as a society that doing things that are against the law is okay if you have a really really good reason. And news developments like recent Air Force assertions that using drugs to keep long-duty pilots alert just muddy the water further.

By all means, continue to point out that drugs are illegal and wrong. Just don’t be surprised when lots of young people look back at you and ask, “So…?”

My first objection to drugs, particular for teens, is that they don’t give anything back. A good hobby is one that gives something back to the person who practices it, makes them smarter, happier, stronger. Drugs just take. I have had plenty of students whose hobby was getting high. That’s what they put all the energy and planning in their lives into, all their spare hours, all their spare money, from which they get nothing.

Sometimes I’m amazed that they don’t see it. If the person a teen was dating said, “You must spend all your extra money on me, and every three hours, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you must call me,” that teen would dump the relationship like a hot rock. If a boyfriend or girlfriend demanded, “Go hold up a store for me,” they’d be kicked to the curb. Yet anything from tobacco to oxycontin can make the same demands and have suckers lining up to meet them.

Drugs often demand obedience and give nothing back. “But drugs help me cope and let me get away from all the junk in my life,” would be the argument many teens would offer. Which brings me to the other large reason that they should leave the drugs alone.

During the teen years, many young people develop the muscles that they will depend on for the rest of their lives. Not just physical muscles, but psychological ones as well.

If you don’t exercise muscles, they don’t get strong. If you don’t deal with the pain and challenges of life, you don’t become strong. And when it comes to strength (as with many other things in life) you are either moving forward or backward—there is no standing still.

A teen on drugs is like a child in a wheelchair. Spend too much time there, and pretty soon it’s twice as hard to get up out of the chair and locomote under your own power. Stay there way too long, and you become incapable of getting around on your own, taking care of yourself, navigating through the world without someone to help you.

There are plenty of things in life that can steal your strength and destroy your power. There are times when you have to bargain away a piece of that power in exchange for something else of value. Why chose to give it away and get nothing in return?

Applefest Visitors' Guide

(News-Herald, October 2) Welcome to Applefest, visitors to Venangoland! Maybe you’re here nice and early, or maybe it’s Friday and you’ve picked up yesterday’s paper. Either way, let me answer some of your common questions.

Where’s a good place to eat?

This is a tough choice. Presumably you’re not blind to the great variety of Fair Food available right in the main maw of Applefest. If you’re asking because you’d like to get out of the crush and eat a sit down meal like a grown up, pretty much everything on Liberty Street is good. We have nice coffeehouse food, classy dining at Bella’s, the world’s best bread at Leonardo’s, and sports grill dining al fresco at Oskies, as well as some other great options.

Thing is, the best part of most of these places is the atmosphere, which will be completely shot as long as you’re here. You can get in your car in the middle of the day to drive just a few miles out of town for other options (family, fancy-ish, Chinese buffet), but if you do, you might as well just leave your car in that parking lot and walk back to town.

What about the parking, anyway?

We have no idea—this mess traumatizes us locals as much as it does you. But we’re not good judges of this. You can drive down to the lower end of town and there will be lots of street parking. The distance back to the main stuff is what we locals would call “a long way” but any city dweller would call “just around the corner.” The only really practical choice is the option I exercised years ago—buy a house in town.

Can’t I just pull in over here?

No.

What about over—

No, really. And please don’t stop in the middle of the street to think about it. Just keep moving. Something will turn up eventually.

Goodness gracious! Why can’t I find accommodations that measure up to fine establishments I stay at in Pittsburgh?

Duh—because you’re not in Pittsburgh.

Fortunately, few Applefest visitors ask some version of this question. For that handful of cranky rich travelers, let me try to explain.

From ancient Egypt to modern metropolises, deluxe luxury accommodations depend upon one factor—a group of laborers who are willing to be paid peanuts in turn for devoting themselves to the comfort of their betters.

I suppose our problem here is that not many of us think we have betters (though we certainly have people who think they are betters). We’re not really up for treating you like visiting royalty. However, we will be happy to treat you like family (the part that we get along with). If that’s not good enough, may I recommend the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh.

Why don’t these people in front of me on the sidewalk MOVE already?

I don’t know, either. But, look—you wanted to come out to small town, get out of life in the fast lane, and enjoy the slow pace. Here it is.

I was imagining placid cow in peaceful field, not squished sardine trapped in tiny can. What else have you got?

Within walking distance (because, really, you don’t want to give up that parking space unless money is changing hands) you can find a peaceful riverfront park. Across the river there’s a very nice, quiet bike trail. Or step inside DeBence’s for a tour; it’s much cooler than you expect.

I don’t want to wander off too far. We might get lost.

If you can get lost in Franklin, you can get lost in your own home. If this is a real concern, it was a grave mistake for you to drive yourself here.

What about all the bags of quaint stuff I’ve bought?

I’ve said for years that someone could make a mint with a package-minding booth. Maybe this year someone will finally cash in. If not, I recommend a backpack, or a really big cart that you can use to clear a path for yourself.

What’s up with the one-way streets?

We prefer to only have to check one direction when we make sure you’re not going to drive over us while you search for a parking place. If you can manage Forbes and Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh, you can deal with Elk and Buffalo Streets. If that’s too tough for you, head upriver to Oil City and we’ll show you how to get real mileage out of one-way streets.

Sound of Music (Applefest edition)

This is one of those exclusive-to-the-blog posts, because I try to avoid using my newspaper space for plugging projects in which I have a personal connection, but I have no such qualms about indulging myself in front of the somewhat smaller blog audience.

I'm directing the Franklin Civic Operetta Association production of Sound of Music. It is not a show I'm naturally drawn to. It's a show that has become associated with sweetness on the order of a pancake covered with triple-berry syrup under a quart of ice cream soaked in chocolate good with a pound of sugar sprinkled directly on top. It would be an easy show to do without really thinking about what you're doing.

At the same time, underneath all of that, there's a fairly affecting story. Maria is a young woman, orphaned, and when we meet her, hiding from life in an abbey and about to lose that last refuge. Captain von Trapp has been adrift for years, still identified as a navy captain in a country that lost its navy two decades ago. They are a pair of characters who are trying not to face their own lives, but for whom circumstances no longer that luxury.

There is, I think, a natural tendency to want to oversell the story. In theater, as in life, that strikes me as a mistake, revealing a lack of faith in the audience to understand or appreciate the struggles played out before them. It is easy to make Maria so plucky that one can never imagine her defeat, her opposition (both nuns and nazis) so cartoonish that we don't ever feel a plausible threat. At the same time, the Captain's fiancee can be played as so extreme that we see her as a wicked woman and not a plausible choice for him. Max in particular requires a balance of charm and amoral pragmatism.

Like most of Rodgers and Hammerstein's best stuff (though they did not write the book for this), SOM includes some heavy themes without reducing them to simple two-dimensional conflicts (or allowing them to suck the show into a philosophical symposium set to music). How do you balance devotion to God with the need to get a life? How do you find your way back from a life that doesn't really fit you? How do you make difficult choices in dangerous times, and how far can political and personal compromise go?

Likewise, this score of standards is like the pledge of allegiance-- so often heard that it's rarely listened to. Robert Russell Bennett's orchestrations are genius, supportive without trying exaggerate or inflate the songs. "Climb Every Mountain" does not have to be a painful piece of bombast being beaten into submission by some over-ambitious soprano, and "Do Re Mi" does not have to be treacle.

If you only know the movie, the stage version offers other treats. Max and Elsa have two songs, one a brutally cheerful piece of pep about the necessity of compromising
with whatever horrid events the world may bring. The Captain's journey is far more fleshed out than in the movie, and Maria has the chance to be a real multi-dimensional character. The song that "Must Have Done Something" good replaced for the movie is a nice little piece indeed, rarely heard (our joke has been that somebody let Little Stevie Sondheim come out of the apprentice's room in the back to write it). And what music director Steve Luxbacher has done with the kids and the nuns is awesome.

Did we manage to pull all that off? I don't know-- I direct a show for six weeks and I undoubtedly lose a little bit of objectivity. I have never worked with a larger cast, and everybody has worked hard and done double and triple duty. This set features one of the most challenging and nerve-wracking mechanical gimmicks I've ever used (I loves me the unit set)-- think two giant 17-foot lazy susans-- but thanks to Ed Ramage and the stagehands, it works and keeps the show moving briskly. I was over-lucky in casting-- virtually every supporting actor in this show has, at one time or another, carried another show as lead. And in good community theater tradition, we have veterans and newbies, old and young-- and the young come from every school system in the county, plus home schoolers.

I aimed to mount a version of Sound of Music that would be pleasing to fans of the show, but which would also be enjoyable for people who have a visceral dread of R&H. I aimed to let the light and happy parts breathe and the dark moments be as dark as they could be, and all of it to play without pummeling the audience about the head and shoulders. Our crowds last weekend responded enthusiastically.

I am really proud of these folks, including the von Trapp children, who have worked hard, sing well, and act just like real siblings. The players are turning in some of their best work ever, and the nuns are, for many folks, a real revelation. The number of hands working behind the scenes is awesome. I wanted to really show people something and not just do one more paint-by-numbers version of this stage standard. Ultimately the audiences will have to judge how well we have succeeded; I'm confident that we won't be wasting their time.

Check Your Snopes

(News-Herald, September 25) The invention of e-mail is one of the great advances in recent human history. There is, however, one major flaw in the design. The guy who invented email should have a parade, but the guy who invented the “forward” button should be spanked soundly and repeatedly.

Some folks use these judiciously; I have two friends who keep me regularly supplied with the finest in internet humor. It is the people who feel the urge to forward things that are “interesting” or “informative” who give the world a big bandwidth headache.

But the internet has also given us snopes.com, a website that provides scholarly study and background checks for the flotsam and jetsam of the internet. The folks at snopes use actual research to determine whether the many threads in the tapestry of urban myths are true, false, or undetermined.

Snopes has a handy search feature, so you can log on and immediately determine that no, there is no group petitioning Congress to outlaw breast feeding.

If you like to browse through the many strange items that people have chosen to perpetuate, snopes offers categories from politics through science. There’s also a listing of the top twenty-five myths that people are checking up on.

The current top twenty-five subjects include political figures (no, Barack Obama was not sworn into office on the Quran and no, there is no real list of books that Sarah Palin tried to ban). For people with a real interest in political smoke and mirrors clarified, I recommend factcheck.org.

If we skip the politics, there are plenty of other fun subjects.

No, there are no verified reports of people being dosed by business cards soaked in date rape drugs.

No, your cell phone number is not about to be given to telemarketers.

No, Jay Leno did not write the positive attitude essay that “hits the nail on the head.”

No, the video clip about the Australian official and the tanker disaster (the front fell off” is not real.

And, no, neither Bill Gates, Microsoft, nor AOL are giving cash to people who help test their email forwarding system.

But (yikes) it IS true that the Chinese were discovered to be making hair bands with recycled condoms.

Certain categories can be tough to sort out. Promises that forwarding an email will bring rewards are almost always fake, but when it comes to prayer requests, Amanda Bundy and Brayden Hembree are fake, but Katie Fitch and Kevin Downs are real.

Even forwards that are meant to brighten and uplift someone’s day are not entirely trustworthy.

Charles Shultz did not write a quiz to show the importance of having people care about you. Mel Gibson was not the basis for the movie “The Man without a Face.” Maya Angelou did not write the poem “I Am A Christian.” There is no waiter named Stevie with Down Syndrome who received a large donation from a truck driver customer. The email about aging isn’t really by George Carlin, and Kurt Vonnegut did not deliver “wear sunscreen” as a commencement address.

Snopes is also a place to learn interesting tidbits of useful information. For example. Kentucky Fried Chicken did not change their name to KFC in order to deflect attention away from the friedness of their chicken. Actually, the Commonwealth of Kentucky trademarked their name, so that anyone who wanted to use “Kentucky” owed the state some money. Not only did this spawn KFC, but the Kentucky Derby became The Run for the Roses, and feed stores started selling Shenandoah Bluegrass.

We’re a little more sophisticated than we used to be about the internet (I think people have mostly stopped corresponding from the guy in Africa with the millions of dollars he wants to sneak out of the country), but it seems as if we could do better. After all, when you’re getting ready to forward that e-mail, the whole world of information is literally at your fingertips.

If snopes.com isn’t enough, I can also recommend straightdope.com and the ever-educational Mythbusters as places to encounter actual facts. The internet is great for helping Stupid spread quickly, but it can also be a powerful medium for real information as well. Remember to use it before you hit “forward.”

What Side Are You On?

(News-Herald, September 18) We’ve reached hard days in topsy-turvy land. It used to be that certain positions on the issues lined up with certain parts of the political spectrum, but it becomes increasingly confusing to figure who’s sitting in which cheering section.

This isn’t new. Being a political conservative used to mean that you believed in keeping government out of various aspects of American life while spending a minimum of tax dollars. But for the past eight years, the ranking conservatives in DC have not supported either of those things.

The nomination of Sara Palin has prompted such an epidemic of ideological whiplash that one begins to worry about political mental health. Conservatives like Phyllis Schafly, previously vocal in their opposition to working moms (“the flight from the home is a flight from yourself, from responsibility, from the nature of woman, in pursuit of false hopes and fading illusions”), suddenly think Mom should hire a sitter and get a job running the country. Liberals who previously opined that having children in no way obligates a woman to change her life a whit are suddenly shocked—shocked!!—that Palin would try to be VP when there are children at home who need her.

And at this point some people have changed their position on the matter of experience so many times that I’m surprised they can remember where they stand.

Of course, for all these people, the major problem is principles—they don’t appear to have any. One of the most insightful observations made by the old John McCain was that the Republican Party had lost its way by valuing power over principle. I do miss that guy.

It’s backwards, but it’s not unusual. Many people like Palin or Obama and want them to win (or dislike them and want them to lose). That judgment comes first, from the gut. After it’s made, political leaders and followers alike will twist their principles into any shape that supports the judgment they’ve already made. Yeah, you can insist that you’ve chosen your candidate because s/he so well represents your principles. Just excuse me if I start to laugh because I can remember what you used to claim your principles were.

That’s one of the great advances of modern politics. A politician can say one thing on Monday, reverse himself on Tuesday, even denying that he ever said any such thing, even though we have it on video. And nobody seems to much care.

Even if one has principles, sorting them out can be difficult. Take McDonalds. The home of the Big Mac used to be an easy target for left-wingers— low paid workers slinging beef that was harvested under non-PETA-approved conditions while making lots of money (never popular with the left) and peppering the American landscape with plastic cookie-cutter arch-laden temples.

Except that now the Golden Arches have crossed the political watchdog group AFA, who have accused Ronald McDonald of making too many friends with The Gays. Actually, the AFA, ever-improving their skills at press-release construction, has accused Micky D’s of “not remaining neutral in the culture wars.” This is a bit disingenuous as the AFA is not exactly noted for the clarion call to neutrality about the “homosexual agenda.”

But the AFA has deployed its political weapon of choice—a call for boycott, which means that tree-hugging vegan PETA fans are now stuck. Do they continue to avoid McD’s for all its alleged sins of the past, or do they break out some “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” bumper stickers and eat at McDonalds as a gesture of support?

At the very least, people who choose to eat or not eat at McD’s should probably fill out a form so that the poor corporate bigwigs have some idea of what kind of pressure each order of fries is meant to exert. Otherwise all of this economic posturing will be wasted. I picture some confused marketing suit poring over figures and emails and scratching his head. “I’m not sure, boss. I think the public wants us to set free all the gay cows.”

The pretzelicious twisting of principle creates many of these challenges. Will voters choose Palin because she has a uterus, will they run from Obama because he’s black, or will some stop to examine candidates’ policies and history? Will they do it with an open mind, or just look for justification for decisions already made? Do you want to make a statement, or are you just hungry for fries?

Politichristianity

(News-Herald, May 2004) The Franklin Ministers Forum is in the midst of 40 days of prayer to renew and revive county churches (you can find them at the First Baptist Church tonight at 7:00). The timing is good, because earlier this month, Barna Research Group released results of a survey looking at church involvement in the US. It includes a variety of statistics, but the bottom line is this—since 1991 the number of unchurched US adults has almost doubled from 39 million to 75 million.

How did the church lose so many people, particularly when preachers and televangelists and politichristians were so vocal about a resurgence of faith. Like everyone else, I have a few theories.

I am not, for instance, a big fan of politichristianity. This is the brand of faith in which I declare that God endorses my own personal political agenda. I think we’re on pretty shaky ground when we decide that God wants our country to reign supreme over other countries. When we declare that God supports this candidate or wants Congress to pass that bill, we’re just being silly. Politics is a human invention; to believe that God takes it as seriously as we do is foolish.

In fact, it’s worse than foolish. To claim that a victory for the Wrong Presidential Candidate is a defeat for God is human hubris, a self-important presumption that our political games will somehow change the fate of the Creator of All That Is, Was and Will Be.

So yeah, I think the politichristians drive people away from the church. Whether they’re insisting that God wants Bush II to give people a tax cut or claiming that the Almighty supports the establishment of refuges for rare Lithaunian iguanas, politichristians are so transparently hypocritical that it’s hard not to be turned off.

But I think a more damaging trend is the rise of anti-evangelism.

The traditional evangelical view is that Christians are called to go into the world, bringing the news of God to all people.

But the anti-evangelists would rather not go into the world, in fact do all they can to build a wall between themselves in the world, in the belief that the world is an evil, unholy place and if they’re not careful, they’ll get some on them.

It’s not a new view; the pilgrims were at Plymouth Rock to build a city on a hill, literally an ocean away from the evils of their world. That’s the ideal for the modern anti-evangelists—a place apart from the world and all the other people in it. The milder antis see the world as merely threatening and ungodly; the more virulent antis see the world as their mortal enemy.

They socialize only with people from their church (which they may have changed a few times because their old church was letting too many worldly influences seep in). They home school their children to keep them undefiled by the common herd.

At best, this is just plain lousy witnessing. They set no example because no one who doesn’t already agree with them ever sees them. For example, every home schooled Christian is one less person of faith that students in public schools will ever meet. “Oh, yeah. Christians. I’ve heard of them, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually met one.”

The anti-evangelists become too cliquish, exclusive and elite to ever meet someone who’s beneath them. They’re happy to talk about their faith—but only to the Right People. They may use technology like websites or tv broadcasts and consider that great outreach. But there’s no actual witnessing to live humans, and they’re kidding themselves about who’s really watching.

Of course, the virulent anti-evangelists don’t even want to pretend they’re reaching out. They’re more likely to talk about the need to gather the chosen few together (with a hint of impending End Times).

It’s not that anti-evangelists have forgotten the part of the message about love. They’re filled with love. For people who see things the right way. And while they probably won’t come right out and say it, the underlying assumption is that if you’re not right with God, that’s your fault and your problem. They’ll be happy to talk to you, once you’ve got your head on straight.

Even the least religious folks expect the church to be able to answer this question: how do we love and embrace and get along with people that we think are just plain wrong? If a church has no answer (or, worse, answers such as “Blow them up” or “Burn them at the stake”), people assume it has no more to offer than a country club or a neighborhood bar. And when that happens, the church will have trouble bringing people to the building, let alone to God.

Autumn Anniversary

(News-Herald, September 11) I’m not unaware of today’s date, the significance of this anniversary. I am. But I’m also aware that many real journalists and writers better than I will unleash a barrage of retrospective examination of Our Nation Today.

I don’t think I can add to that. But with each succeeding anniversary of that attack I find myself reflecting that despite the wars, the botched peace, the mis-steps and success, the changes in how we conduct ourselves as a country—despite (or because of) all that, I am still able to enjoy a fine life in a good place that remains undisturbed by much of the post-9/11 rubble. I live safely and comfortably in a beautiful corner of the continent.

Such reflection comes easily in the fall; if there is any better time in Venangoland than the fall, I don’t know what it could be. Winter weather is charming, but it would be a lot more charming if nobody had to go out in it. Spring is an ugly muddy mess. Summer is warm enough, but our heat always seems to come packaged with enough humidity to make mold and mildew grown on air. The best parts of summer are the ones that are like fall.

My favorite weather is shorts and sweatshirt weather. It’s comfy and cozy, nice weather for being active. But it can be easy to overlook the opportunities for fun while managing the excitement of a new school year, so I’m going to remind you of some of the things you should get out and do before things finally turn cold and ugly.

Do some local traveling. Tell the truth—you keep hearing about Foxburg and all the cool stuff that’s down there, but you haven’t gone yet. Check the schedule of performers for Lincoln Hall, or just head down to dine. What better time to be cruising through the hills and rivers than the fall?

And speaking of the river, you need to do that as well. One of the most beautiful resources we have, a massive park that we didn’t even have to build, the waterways of Venangoland are easily accessible and wonderfully enjoyable. Certainly basic safety precautions must be taken; the river deserves your respect as well as you’re appreciation.

My kayak is the best investment in entertainment, mental health and physical activity that I’ve ever made. Everybody should own one. And not only is it not too later to get out there this year, but fall waters are often the most tame and manageable (French Creek actually comes close to being a hiking path at this point). For someone just starting out, this is a great time to start learning the waters, and there are several easy and completely local trips that you can complete in just a few hours.

Equally accessible and rewarding is the network of bike trails. This time of year you don’t have to navigate swarms of bugs and the air is just cool enough to keep you from overheating. The trip south from Franklin takes you through some gorgeous wooded stretches (though I will admit that the old railroad tunnels get a bit on the frosty side as fall comes on).

On top of the usual pleasures of small town and country life, there are often new treats. Next weekend Oil City, Emlenton and Franklin will host a three-day festival of films by regional filmmakers and/or about regional subjects. The first two nights (Friday at the Crawford Center in Emlenton and Saturday at the Latonia in Oil City) will feature two different film line-ups. Viewers will choose the top films which will then go head to head at the Barrow in Franklin on Sunday. All three showings begin at 7:00 with a five dollar admission.

Who would ever have imagined that the region would have its own film festival? And yet here it comes.

There are other things to look forward to—not just Applefest in Franklin, but Oil City’s pumpkin festival.

We’ll be able to enjoy all of these things, these natural beauties and projects of our fellow Venangoland citizens, without a thought about our safety, without a worry about attacks, death, or destruction. Lots of folks will spend today considering the question of whether, seven years on, we are winning or losing. But if one measure of victory is the ability to enjoy the simple small pleasures of American life, victory must look a lot like Venangoland.

Pres 08: Everything but Substance

(News-Herald, September 4) If nothing else, the Presidential election has opened up chances to prod every single raw nerve in the American psyche.

The Democrats started things off by serving up race and gender. It has been a remarkable two-layer conversation. Hardly anyone will come out in public and say, “I won’t vote for Obama because he’s black.” And yet it seems almost everyone knows a person who has said privately, “I won’t vote for any black guy.”

But Obama, like every other raw-nerve prod in the election is two-fer—not only the tripwire of being a black American, but a name that evokes the Muslims that we aren’t quite sure how to address these days.

And he’s young. Like most folks, I define “young” as “younger than I am.” Which means I’m feeling like quite the fossil, because now we have TWO people younger than I am running for high office. How the heck did that happen? And how can we give leadership of this country to either of these children?

And Obama beat Hillary, who many people hate because she’s Hillary, and because her presence drags Bill Clinton, another raw American nerve, back into the public spotlight, leading to yet another tough American dialogue about whether it’s better new history to elect an African-American than a woman. Which of course brings up the issue of whether Obama is African-American enough. Or at all.

But give the Republicans their due. McCain calls up the specter of Bush’s incredibly brutal previous primary campaign (in which the Bushies suggested that McCain fathered an illegitimate black child). McCain is also a two-fer, at least, evoking the war in Iraq and the Vietnam war.

And he’s old. Really old. So now we can talk about how we feel about old people and how much we trust them. Since the first boomer was born, we’ve been beaten tired over the clash of generations; here it is again on our November ballot.

Family values? Where to begin. John Edwards was willing to risk the Dem chances on an affair that he’s definitely, probably, maybe, ended. More or less. What kind of politician would take up with another woman while his own wife was fighting terrible illness? Well, say some, that was McCain, too.

Don’t have enough to argue about yet? Here comes Palin with her daughter, brought up under the abstinence-only education that her mother championed and now pregnant at age 17. Lefties think this is reason enough to laugh Palin off the political stage, failing to understand that people don’t back abstinence-only education because they think it works. They back it because they think it’s right. So lets drag out sex-ed, birth control, and responsibility as topics.

Abortion is not an option for the daughter, as it wasn’t for Palin’s downs-syndrome baby. But that raises another issue—should a woman with so much on her motherly (and grandmotherly) plate be leaving hearth and home for DC? But isn’t it only fair to leave families out of this mess? But if that’s so, is it okay to hold children in the spotlight when they do admirable things like serve in the military? Exactly how much should family be a factor in an election?

The hot buttons just keep coming. How much experience is too much? How little is too little? Are we too racist or too sexist? Should women be expected to vote for a woman, no matter what her policies?

Or we can get into personalities. Is Obama too upperclass, or is that just code for uppity? Are we voting for the new McCain, savvy deal-with-the-devil politico, or the old maverick McCain, who was loose and open with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show (as opposed to Obama, who is only slightly less stiff than Al Gore)? Joe Biden opens his mouth and rambles. Palin is at least photogenic, a passable double for Tina Fey. But once we open those worm cans, we’re into a new discussion—exactly how much do we demand that our President resemble a television celebrity?

What’s most notable to me about this election cycle is how we have managed to shoehorn so many unresolved cultural issues into one simple election. Maybe that’s good thing in that it will spur a lot of thought and debate about significant issues (well, debate anyway).

But on the downside, we have an opportunity to argue so many issues before the election, without once talking about which candidate’s policies and plans would best serve the nation’s future.

Challenge for the New School Year

(News-Herald, August 28) If you’re a parent, you’ve prepared yourself for the moment next week when your child makes the big trip toward another year of education. But there’s still time to pick out some piece of Parental Wisdom to impart to your offspring. If you haven’t come up with anything, here’s my suggestion for the new year.

It’s simple, really. Accept the challenge.

We talk a lot about raising the bar, about making our students more competitive, about being the best. But that’s the generality, the broad picture. As parents, our more natural impulse is to make sure that our own children are never unhappy, never suffering, never pained, never disappointed, never feeling the sting of failure. And so, with the best intentions in the world, we identify the biggest challenge our child could face, and we help him avoid it.

No Child Left Behind is supposed to address this and push all children toward excellence. It won’t. Two important things to remember about NCLB:

1) Within the next six years (if the law doesn’t change) every school in America will fail.

2) When reports say that students are being better educated, what they actually mean is that students are doing better on standardized tests. You can get students to score well without educating them; in fact, educating them often doesn’t help. And in the end, all you’ve proven is how well they do on a standardized test.

So NCLB doesn’t address the challenge of challenge. Neither does the idea of school choice.

Proponents claim that, free to choose, parents will choose the best, toughest, most challenging schools. That, unfortunately, is not true.

Right now, the high schools of Venangoland already offer choice. Most students can choose classes that challenge them a lot, a little, or not very much. Some choose the big challenge. Some have parents who force them to accept the big challenge. And plenty avoid any sort of challenge like the plague.

If school choice became law, someone could make a fortune opening a school that promised students would never have homework and would always get B’s.

Why do students shy away from challenge?

Sometimes it’s that parental desire to protect. We want our children to experience nothing but success. We hope they never feel pain, disappointment, frustration.

But the only way to do that is to duck the challenge. Lifting heavy weights to build muscles is hard and makes you sore; lifting two pounds is easy and doesn’t make you uncomfortable at all. Running a mile in four or five minutes leaves you exhausted and breathless; strolling a mile in an hour or so is much less uncomfortable.

Sometimes it’s simple short-sightedness. We have students who can take the long view about practicing long painful hours at a sport because they believe the sacrifice will pay off in the professional career they imagine having ten years from now; these same students then blow off academic assignments because they’d rather be at the movies tonight. Students spend a gazillion hours worrying about how to get in to college, but no time at all worrying about how they’ll handle the demands once they’re there.

Challenge, with its discomfort and strain, always looks bad in the short view. That’s when the long view matters. Ten years from now, how likely is it that you’ll be thinking, “Thank heavens I skipped every Monday and ate KFC in front of my Playstation” or “I’m glad I prepared by the world of work by never showing up on time for school.”

The long view of challenge is one of the areas where young folks in China and India have us on the run—they’ll put up with almost any level of discomfort and challenge now in order to have a shot at a better life years from now, while Americans declare that reaching the ripe old age of 15 entitles them to kick back and take it easy.

Now, accepting a challenge is not the same as beating your head against a brick wall or trying to run a two-minute mile. Everyone has their limits, and a good part of wisdom is learning to stay within them. But you can’t find your limits without testing them. You can’t build the big muscles without lifting heavy weights. And you don’t get anything out of a year of school by trying to just ease comfortably through it (and that goes for teachers, too). Make this year count for something. Take the challenge.

Obfuscation

(August 21) Deliberative bodies in this region seem doomed to repeat the same basic mistake. Faced with a difficult decision, a hot potato likely to create a shower of heated spudly agitation, they decide to obfuscate, to avoid giving information or explanation.

It’s an understandable impulse. If you know the news you’re about to deliver will cause dismay or anger, you may want to postpone delivering that news as long as possible. Nobody wants to go through the drama of argument and agitation that accompanies difficult moments. People break up by letter, hide their report cards, “forget” to mention the bounced check until the spousal unit is on the way to work.

But this kind of obfuscatory bobbing and weaving is not helpful in the grown-up world. It makes for bad management and bad government.

I’m not talking about a moral imperative or idealistic set of Proper Rules. I’m talking about practicality; if you are a manager or a government official or a school board member, being a good manager also means reducing the amount of agitation directed at you.

When you have to make a decision that affects people’s work and/or lives, there’s no doubt that some folks will be upset. But you can’t avoid that, and trying to avoid it only makes things worse.

A certain percentage of folks will be okay (or just won’t care much). Another group will back the bosses no matter what. And another group will be really angry. Nothing you do will change the folks in those three groups much. But there is a fourth group, the largest group, that could become supporters or opponents depending on how you handle matters. These swing voters can make a big difference in the tone of public reaction.

When you have to make a tough call, a controversial call, swing voters want to know a couple of things.

First, they want to know how you made the decision. What were your criteria? Did you look for the contractor with the best price, the fastest tractor, or the cutest owner? Once you selected the yardstick for your decision, what were the facts that you gathered, and how did they line up with your criteria?

People want to know that you had a reason for your choice and that you followed some process more complex than flipping a coin or picking whatever made things easiest for you.

If you don’t tell the people how you made the decision, they will guess. They will rarely guess, “Although the process is apparently a secret, I’m sure it’s wise and fair and honest.” They won’t guess that because it’s hard to imagine a wise, fair and honest process that needs to be kept secret.

Second, they want to know that you heard and understood their feelings about the issue. Some bosses appear pathologically terrified of listening, as if the mere act of hearing a different point of view will somehow destroy their position.

Listening is a powerful tool. People want to be heard. If they don’t feel they’ve been heard when they are speaking, they will keep raising their voices until they are hollering. By that time, they’re angry, too.

Our deliberative bodies, our boards and bosses, only need to be able to say, “We understand what you’re telling us. But here’s what we’ve decided, and here’s why.”

Admittedly, this is a hard position to take if you are a governing body that has not done its homework. If you don’t have a good reason for a particular course of action, it’s pretty hard to make a public case for it.

But in Venangoland, we specialize in making what may be correct decisions in the worst possible way. Leaders who are afraid of facing the anger of a few people end up stirring up ten times as many irate citizens, taxpayers, and employees. (Insert usual references to hospital mess here.)

Economic realities will keep forcing tough decisions. The folks who have to make these decisions don’t have the option of choices that will make everyone happy, but they do have some control over just how many cranky people they will have to face.

You may have a lawyer working for you advising you not explain anything to anyone; the lawyer’s responsibility is not to make sure you’re doing your job, but to make sure you don’t get yourself in trouble. When you’re making decisions, talking can get you in trouble. But it may be trouble that you’ve earned. And not talking will create even more.

Taking Advice

(News-Herald, February 2003) “Hey! Your house is on fire!”

There are any number of responses that you might expect to get to this observation. Here are some of the less sensible ones.

“How could you possibly know that? I’ve lived in this house for years, and you’re just passing by. You just don’t understand how this house is.”

“You never liked this house. You’ve never accepted my living in this house. This is just a low cheap way of getting back at it.”

“You’re too young to know about fire or houses. Come back when you’re more wise and sophisticated.”

Taking advice is a real art, almost as difficult as giving it.

It’s a mistake to listen to everything that anybody tells you. Some people will look at the steam rising from the soup on the stove and insist that you dial 911. Some people are easily panicked; others will yell “Fire” just for the entertainment of watching you run around like a cranium-deprived chicken.

But there are many times when you should heed the advice you get. The trick is knowing when to listen.

For me, one sure clue that someone is giving me advice that I should pay attention to is that I am busy coming up with reasons that I shouldn’t have to listen to it.

There’s an old saying— even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I’m convinced that there is nobody who is so dense and dopey that s/he is never, ever right about anything.

So if I’m concentrating on why I shouldn’t have to listen to the messenger instead of taking a look at the message, that’s a good sign that I don’t want to take a look at the message because I don’t like it.

For instance, I still know people who can give earnest arguments about why the data about smoking is inconclusive. Is that because they are such deep, objective scientific-minded folks? No, they’re just people who don’t want to quit smoking, so they search for reasons to suspend common sense. They argue with the messenger, not the message.

This kind of advice-resistance is doubly damaging. On the one hand, there’s the obvious damage if the advice you’re ignoring happens to be right. You can argue with the surgeon-general all you want, but it’s very hard to win an argument with lung cancer.

The less obvious damage of this type of advice-resistant behavior is the wear and tear on the human spirit. When everyone who has ever loved you, cared about you, and invested in your life is telling you that the kitchen is on fire, and you insist on turning off the smoke alarms and coming up with reasons that these folks should be ignored, you pay a price in your relationship with them.

Now, sometimes the price is unavoidable. Sometimes you’re the one who sees the fire and it’s your friends and family telling you there’s no reason to bother the fire department.

But when you stake your self on believing that they are all ignorant, bad, insensitive, and incapable of appreciating why your house really isn’t aflame, that tends to weaken the bonds between you. “I really love you, you ignorant fool,” just doesn’t read well on a Christmas card.

And then once you’re invested in denying their advice, you drift further and further away from reality. “That’s not smoke,” you declare, gritting your teeth. “It’s a special atmospheric disturbance created by rogue aromatherapy saleswomen. It’s a very small fog bank. It’s the dust from dancing fairies.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re an elected official dealing with constituents, a boss dealing with subordinates, or an average human dealing with people who think of themselves as your friends. It is hard to keep your house well when you are more devoted to proving that your would-be advisors are wrong than to doing whatever the house needs to stay healthy.

The secret is to stop arguing with the messenger and start evaluating the message. Listening to what someone has to say, really listening, and considering what’s there costs you nothing. You don’t give up the chance to say, “I’ve looked all over the house, and I don’t see any flames anywhere; therefore, I’ve come to the conclusion that the house is not on fire.”

But by considering what they have to say, you build your relationship up instead of breaking it down. And as an extra bonus, sometimes you even keep your house from burning down.