San Francisco Bay Area

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

Puppy Time

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

From Utica to Princeton

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

Other Educational Benefits

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

NCLB and the New School Year

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

Heinz Stadium Opener

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

Columbine

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

Out in the Silence

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

Another Trip to LA

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

Are We Still a Christian Nation?

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

Tolerance

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

Wedding Traditions

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

A Few Fourth Reminders

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

Venangoland's Housing Clutter

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

BP: My 2 Cents

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

Change

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

Hit the Outdoors

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

Want and Need

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

The Modern Sociopath

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

The Trouble with Stupid Rules

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