Animal Inquiry

I just finished the science lesson with my 6yr old son. Part of it was a graphic organizer based on scientific inquiry. The table asked us to list what he knows, what he wanted to know, and after the lesson, what he's learned.

We ran out of room on what he knows. We ran out of room on what he learned....but what's more interesting to me: his questions. They expected kids to ask if pigs fly or turtles swim, etc. He wanted to know if animals feel pain, like when we catch them with hooks when fishing or kill them for food (all this, mind you, was totally, completely unsolicited). He wanted to know if animals could be sad, like when Ruby saw Max get ran over by a car. Amazing.

The Natives are Restless....

Yes, it's that time of year when students are disgruntled with their grades. Here's some footage of them airing their complaints:

Haka from Ben Hall on Vimeo.

Actually...
Māori dancers of New Zealand perform a Haka dance.

Haka are best described as challenges. They are used to make a point and to vent anger… They are vocal performances involving rhythmic declamation in triple metre and aggressive or challenging facial expressions (pūkana, literally “glaring”), body movements and demeanour. The men make heavy use of foot stamping, body percussion, and grimace in an attempt to appear as menacing as possible.

"Where do you get these things?" http://thekidshouldseethis.com/

Simply amazing "horse."

Simply amazing "horse."

Light...(pant...pant) Tunnel (gasp...gash) End! (sigh)

Not with a bang but a whimper....

Seven days, four hours, and 15 minutes to go. Then grades are due and I am emancipated.

I have less than 100 essays on the docket, but finals every week day.

Regardless, I've got joy, joy, joy, joy....down in my heart.

It's been a good semester, but I'm so very glad it's almost over. I cannot fathom a job that might not be broken into 15 week, piecemeal segments that allow me to pace myself. Whew.

Puppies

I almost titled this one "heartbreak" but I thought that might be too much drama. Here's the way it is, anyway, at 7am on a Saturday...

Since we let them loose after Thanksgiving, every morning and night when I return home to my farm I have been greeted by our puppies, two six month old labs that are so full of energy and life! It's true puppies seem to never hold a grudge. They seem to always just gush with love and enthusiasm. They never fail to make me laugh out loud.

It's been challenging to keep them from jumping up on me, but it's especially important they do not when I'm wearing my work clothes (all go to the dry cleaner). It's been extra work to grab a dog biscuit or something to toss their way to buy myself time to run for the truck sometimes. Overall, it seemed annoying...

...until this morning.

This morning, the pups turned into dogs. Sure they greeted me at the door as I was coming from the house. Sure they wanted to share their love and enthusiasm. It was great.

Then, as I made my way to the truck, something new happened: nothing. The puppies just stood on the porch and watched me go. Always before they were my escorts to the truck, even trying to wedge their heads inside as I tried to shut the door. Often they tried climbing in with me.

Today, they just shrugged and sat down back at the house, watching me leave.

So this is what I'm in for, and I know it. Someday my children, too, will lose their enthusiasm for me, just like these puppies. It's been great to be adored, to feel like a rock star every morning and night. Now, I'm glimpsing the future and grimacing at the present with my pu-- with my dogs.

Sad.

Isolated

Sometimes I feel isolated. I know, it's ridiculous, since I am immersed with over 100 students every week, since I have a broad presence and reach online, since I am not altogether shy...but living where we do, the way we do, tends toward sometimes leaving us on the fringes.

Not that there's anything (usually) wrong with that.

We are unfortunately between towns, counties, districts and such that our services are helter-skelter. For instance, we live in Harvey county, but the closest town, 4 miles away, is in Butler county. We would be in a school district (if we did not home school) in Butler county, even though we live in Harvey. We attend a 4H club in Sedgwick (2o miles away) that we like, but the robotics club is in Newton. One of our kids goes to preschool in Benton (16 miles away). I work in Andover. Our kids participate in PE in El Dorado...

...and thus we are a people apart. We are a part of everything, but then again, nothing. We do not have a solid base of operation. We go to a 4H event where we know no one (or, we are at least lucky enough to know one family at one of the things we are involved in), but they tend to all know each other, to have grown up together in 4H, slugged it out at their county fairs together, sometimes in-bred. They go to the same schools, churches, etc. often. We don't really ever get to know anyone beyond a superficial level, and no one seems to extend an invite to anything, etc. to get to know us.

Sometimes it makes me want to either a) relocate or b) put all of our energy into one town/county, etc. The later has not been our choice to date, for we have found good programs, schools, etc. by shopping around.

Sometimes I think I should man-up and put lots more energy into being outgoing and invite people over to our place, build our own day care if not pre-school, something like that.

Anything would be better than whining about it, eh?

GNATS

Some people are worried about their next meal, their mortgage, their nation at war....I am bothered by gnats.

I so abhor gnats.

Cockroaches, stink bugs, slugs--none of these annoy me much. Even flies and ants are more tolerable than gnats.

Even the spelling of their name is stupid.

Nothing is so pesky as a gnat. Why? Perhaps it is because they swarm in clouds that I seem to have the misfortune of finding, always with my mouth open.

I hate gnats above all other insects because they tend to be more invasive, that is, they end up in my nose, my mouth, the corners of my eyes, even in my ears. Horrible little creatures, these gnats.

I need to find a good way to kill them, for I have been plagued with them now in my work environment. Nothing says "filthy" quite like an annoying gnat.

Ugh.

Boys on a Farm

Yesterday the weather was great, so the boys and I were outside all day. I was able to observe them as I worked on the pirate ship and milled about the property. Here's a few things they were involved in:

1. Riding the horse--their Papa bought one and gives pony rides on fair days
2. Playing with kittens and puppies
3. Brushing the beagle
4. Playing in a big mud puddle
5. Playing, swinging, swashbuckling on the pirate ship
6. Digging a fox hole--the recent rains renewed Carson's interest in digging
7. Moving muck to compost piles (7 gallons of old coffee grounds, in particular)
8. Building ramps to ride and jump over
9. Building a opossum trap
10. Tying one another up with rope (hostage situations)
11. Riding bicycles, trikes etc.
12. Rustling and herding chickens
13. Harvesting chicken eggs

...and most amusing:
One of the boys had a chicken lay an egg in his lap as he was holding and loving on the bird!

Whenever anyone asks me why I work double-load, why I go to work at 5am, why I have a blended household, etc. I should show this list. Farm livin' is the life for me, and it obviously enriches the lives of the kids living there (and I guess, honestly, I 'm just a big kid, too.)

Lust for Life

I got a lust for life.
Recently attended a funeral that was, for once, truly a celebration of life. The family and friends of the departed spoke of her true character, her true authenticity, and I had waves of epiphanies all through the service.

1) While sometimes some people strive for greatness and acceptance, try too hard with all manner of grandstanding and pomp, this individual was remembered and cherished for simply being kind and loving. While this might seem an easy accomplishment, she was so sincerely kind that it was unmistakably her trademark virtue. I am charged with a mad desire to be more real, more kind.

2) Live large, die humbly. This person lived so largely, on such a grand canvas, yet from any distance it might seem so 'normal.' By this I mean, she was large in heart, large and long suffering in love. She did not fly rockets to the moon or bathe in crystal springs in the Mediterranean, but she touched the life of every individual who crossed her doorstep. She left an indelible mark on we who were lucky enough to have known her. I am chastised for trying too hard to be Something, not trying hard enough to be human.

3) Just keep giving. Right up to her passing, this individual was concerned for her son, her husband, even for the nurses that cared for her. I have known the power of giving, but I've buried it under many layers of preoccupation lately. I am pressed to be more involved in the lives around me.

There are many more Take-Aways from that service, many things I'll be hoping to apply. I wanted to pen a few here, pin them down for posterity and accountability.

I'm a dad, always, for better or worse...

In the last 8 years, I've lived in 3 houses. I've cycled through 3 vehicles. I've used up countless pair of shoes, socks, underwear...I've lost two loved ones. I've spent innumerable hours in front of the computer. All that is gone. All that has left me.

Also, 8 years have passed before me. Time has been frittered, has flitted, has otherwise left the building. My hair is leaving me. My sanity is scouting the exits.

I am learning from all this. It's taken me a long, long time to get it, but as I was just looking at picture of my kids from these last 8 years, I realized something very fundamental (that I'm sure everyone else gets, upfront): My health, my life, my wife...all that may wane, but my children will be ever-with me. They will not divorce me or drop my class. They will not go away in foreclosure or be repossessed.

I find that both wonderful and alarming. It's wonderful that they will always be my progeny, my young'ns. They will always be little chemistry experiments with my DNA and creative ink. They will ever-be...me. On the other hand, it's frightening, for if I screw up on a grand scale (like, say, the 40 years of life prior to their arrival) what then? What if I am an utter failure? If they are to be ever-tied to this sinking ship, what good is that?

See why parents get wrinkles? We worry that we might be the Titanic, setting sail for an epic failure, bringing the kids down with the ship. Ugh.

Errrgggh!

Last night I was thinking of zombies. I had a pretty good idea for a story/novel, nothing innovative, I'm sure (but then, I'm not current on my zombie literature, so I don't really know yet). I'd like to write something first person, intimate, about the woes of a zombie in a world of pink, fleshy types. I don't know the premise as to why he'd be a zombie and those around him would be unaffected, but hey, it's a work in progress. I remember when keeping my hair out of my face was the thing. I had a habit of tossing my head back like a horse trying to keep her mane out of her eyes. If I were to do that now, my neck might snap. Like I have any reason to anyway--I struggle to keep the hair plastered down to the puss and scabs. One week I lost an eyebrow, a whole eyebrow! I was rummaging through a dumpster and lifted my head out of it too suddenly, lost my balance and raked my face from ear to scalp. That's just it. Pinks don't realize how hard it is keeping your footing when you don't have the blood pressure to even think straight. They laugh when I shuffle. They make fun of me for holding my arms out at my sides or in front of me to break my fall. Every fall takes another layer of turf with it. I saw one old gray a while back that had his elbow hacked open to the bone. Didn't even phase him, but I could tell his bicep was about to just slough off. I don't know. It's just (oddly) amusing to me to think like a zombie. Maybe it's Halloween coming. Maybe it's the way I feel as I roam the halls at work. Maybe it's the people that populate too many seats in classes.

Hey, where 'you at?

It's been too long since I've been here, about 2 weeks, in fact.

Frustration levels with students continue to rise; it seems to correlate with the effort I put in. I am less concerned on days I just generally prepare--much MORE worked up on days I put 3 hrs prep into things only to have people (mentally) dozing off.

Regardless, I love my job.
I love my family.
I love my life.

It's all good--just not too newsworthy right now. (And, I don't have a free moment to even BLOG).

*sigh*

Horse...water...drink

You know the old saw: you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

This is what I am resigning myself to this week when I am giving out what I consider to be my very best content lectures of the year. People are doing their nails, doing their other homework, doing time like convicts....doing anything to really keep from engaging in the content.

I'd say 1/4 of any given class did not even have pen/paper out to take notes. I consider this the greatest showing of disrespect, as if to say, "You're not even going to say anything noteworthy in these three hours."

The material was on research, and what I shared with classes has saved me literally thousands of hours of agonizing research. I'm offering them tips and techniques to have research automated, where search results are constantly piped directly to the researcher who bothers to set up RSS or GoogleAlerts. I told them how to use databases better, how to build a smarter search, how to outsmart Google itself. All of it was good stuff. I know it was all lecture, and I know the research paper is over a month away, but man....what a heart breaker to face such utter apathy for 3 full hours.

*sigh*

The '90's

IT'S THE 90S! from Everything Is Terrible! on Vimeo.

Discipline

Well, my best friend warned me of this. He said that my kids would turn on me. (He predicted this when kids strike the teens, however, and it's happening NOW.)

I am not prepared for this. Neither is my wife. No one is, I have learned. We all need more schooling on parenting. Why is it always considered to be a seat of the pants, trial and error enterprise? Why do we all just shrug and "do our best" when we can?

I want to get a degree in fatherhood. I want to learn from someone who's really good at it. Instead, I take time out of my free time to watch movies, work on the pirate ship, sleep...when The Most Important facet of my life, parenting, is neglected.

I know that every situation is full of variables, and I am aware that no two kids are the same, let alone parallel households. None of that should serve as an excuse, however.



I listened to a great TED talk in which a father set up cameras throughout his home to document how his child acquired vocabulary. It was a very intricate study over the course of a year. I wish there were MANY more such studies on EVERY aspect of child rearing. Sometimes I wish I were always on camera, always accountable, for it might make me a better parent. (I've had too many embarrassing outbursts in these 8 years, already, and I regret them all.)

How can I attend to my calling, parenting, when life is so cluttered with everything incidental? How can I find reliable resources, not some quack cashing in on anxious parents?

Right now my kids are needing discipline, and I liberally apply it, but I think it is not done well. A friend of mine never raises his voice (when he and family visit) and yet his kids are shiny-well-behaved. I want to know his secret.

I want all the secrets of parenting....NOW.

It's talk like a pirate day!!

So, you should check out the other blog I keep: PirateShipPlayground.

Meanwhile, here's some jokes I shared with me students:

1. What kind of ships do pirates have trouble with?
2. What do you get when you cross a pirate with a zucchinni?
3. What do you say when a pirate sloop runs aground?
4. Why does it take pirates so long to learn the alphabet?
5. A pirate walks into a bar wearing a paper towel on his head. He sits down at the bar and orders some dirty rum. The bartender asks, "Why are you wearing a paper towel?" The pirate replies...

Answers are below decks...

Ohhhhhhh, it's one of my favorite holidays, indeed. Everyone should get worked up over it. Years ago, I pointed readers to the best primer online for talking pirate, but just in case ye missed it:



Answers:

1. Relationships
2. A Squash-buckler
3. Ship out of luck
4. Because they can spend years at C
5. "Arrrr...." says the pirate, "I've got a Bounty on me head!"

Enjoy!

Darius Rucker

We were fortunate to be able to attend the State Fair concert Tuesday night performed by Darius Rucker. If anyone is unfamiliar, he's a country-western singer. I would offer, he's a great country-western singer. More than that, he's a great song writer.

People know him as the former front man for Hootie and the Blowfish. They also know him as "that black country singer."

That's what bothers me. Sure, it's novel that he crossed over from pop/blues to country. Sure, he's the only African-American since Charley Pride to make the c/w charts....but that's what's so bothersome.

I get tired of people giving him mention as the black guy who sings country.

My point is simple: Darius Rucker is a great musician in his own right, by his own skill, regardless of his background or race. I like his singing, sure, but his lyrics (that is, that he writes) are outstanding...yes commercial, but still, outstanding!

Too many pictures?

I have been divided on this for some time: can one take too many pictures?

I grew up in the days when one had to make quite an investment to purchase and develop film. (Developing pictures took a week, postage, patience...). In those days, I think people took pictures more mindful of the result, more attentive to the content. I have never been a photographer, but I was always frugal in my photography, snapping what I considered meaningful photos. (There was, I must admit, a period in my youth when I shot everything! I developed rolls of film from my little Kodak Instamatic yielding nothing much, just lots of cute girls spotted on my vacation, etc.)

I also respect those who by faith and tradition do not like their photos to be taken. See Aniconism. I think we need to be considerate of people who, for whatever reason, do not want captured on film, whether it is just vanity or because they are wanted by authorities. I am also worried whenever my children are photographed, knowing there are (literally) hundreds of their pictures on the Internet now. I fear stalkers, pedophiles, etc.

All that said, my wife is a shutterbug! She takes photography classes. She has a photo-a-day website. She has thousands of pics on facebook, etc. She probably has many gigabytes of photos on her hard drive. When people attend parties at our place, they are surprised if there are not pictures being taken constantly.

On the bright side, there are no gaps in the chronicle of our lives. Everything even remotely significant seems to be immortalized in (digital) film. Whether it's a new Lego castle some kid built or graduating from college, it's all there. Kyle back from the war-Snap. Disney on ice-Snap. Even my kids are in on the act. Chicken lays a big egg-Snap. Chicken poo looks like Italy-Snap.

Our eldest has had so many pictures taken, so many scrapbook pages made of him...he uses these to recollect days gone by. The others have not been forsaken, but they are surely not so thoroughly documented as the eldest.

This, then, leads me to the question I'm wrestling with. When Jax reviews these pictures, how much of what he rattles off is truly memory, and how much of it is reconsititued by pictures he's looking at? Is it memory or is it "photographic memory," pardon the twist on the phrase. I wonder sometimes if making it easy to "remember" by capturing everything in digital images might somehow make it harder to really forge memories.

It's the same information retrieval question I was working on a month or more back. In this era of electronic memory and information, how much content is going to find some traction, some stick, in our true meatspace memory? If it's so easy to access every cake, candle, and present ever received, why would one go to the labor of really remembering it, when it can just be retrieved on a file and reviewed.

I like fond memories and special pictures. I am not so partial to what I am considering an over-documentation of life.

Hmmmm.

Slideshow experiment

1. miss you two smore-eating fools
2. camp out fire pit
3. too many cameras dilute memories
4. ever get tired of hot dogs
5. birthday cake seems out of place outdoors
6. candid
7. we're watching animals, they're watching us at the zoo
8. beware of the wallaby
9. wrestling leads to carpet burns
10. Darth brooks
11. hit me with a noodle again, I dare you
12. masks...we wear masks
13. a bandanna makes the man
14. in this picture, he's only 4 (now 8)
15. before Afghanistan
16. face-off
17. I miss that house in Andover

Nothing meaty is coming of this, but here's the experiment: fire up your digital photos in random slide show mode and caption/comment on them. Mine are on a 5 second rotation right now for this venture. It's a good free-writing exercise, and after completed, one would mine the list for something worthy of elaboration.

In this case, I think my general thoughts on cameras (#3) might merit further study (but not now).

Some jokes from my students...

Why did the farmer bury all his money?
So his soil would be rich.

What did one wall say to the other?
Meet you at the corner.

What do you call lice on a bald man?
Homeless.

What do you call a dead parrot?
a polygon

THESE HANDS

This is a great exercise. I first did this at a workshop for Intergenerational service, for it works best at helping older people recollect some moments and skills...

These hands...
have shaken hands with presidents and senators
surprise me with creativity
are scarred and calloused
have built many model cars
once performed in a percussion ensemble
killed pets (in mercy)
visited the Atlantic and Pacific
have punched through walls in anger
grasped for meaning
shook many baby bottles
directed traffic
have applauded at over 50 concerts
have made beautiful music
have made armpit farts
are never idle
like to tickle the keyboard (computer, not piano)
built a pirate ship
helped sandbag against a flood
wrote award-winning grants
have pulled a calf
milked cows
cleaned rabbits
shot many, many guns
held hands with children and grandparents and all in between
win at rock, paper, scissors
wish they knew ASL
are good at building camp fires
know dirt and grease and work
have never failed me

Told'ya So

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

The pencil

SO, I recently attended a gala of techno-geek teachers and IT professionals from around the region. I was given the Innovative Teacher of the Year award (only my second trophy in my whole life). I also had to give a little presentation there to a full house crowd. It was altogether humbling and flattering and--well, it made me feel special.

I do a good deal with varied techniques and media in class. That's a fact. However, I have a little talisman on my desk, a touchstone to another reality...and it keeps me coming back to the basics.

In a little Altoids tin I have a two-inch pencil that has been sharpened down from both ends. I picked up the pencil in a grade school classroom in an impoverished part of Mexico back in 2000. (I was part of a Rotary, International, Group Study Exchange program, touring part of the nation on an exchange from my district and theirs....essentially an ambassador, even though I am not a member of Rotary.)

The pencil symbolizes how some people have such a hunger for knowledge and such an eagerness about them that any teacher would just love to encounter in the classroom. Those kids did not even have a steady stream of school supplies; they got the good out of every scrap, right down to the last inch of a pencil. It reminds me that education, learning, is not about all these bells and whistles, all these digital bangles and apps. Learning takes place when the learner is ripe for it, when s/he is receptive and the content is relevant. Anything else might be swapping knowledge, but it's not really transfer of meaning and significance.

Digital Hoarder

I am going to make a confession here: I am a digital hoarder. I discovered this yesterday, when I finally applied myself to an item that's been on my to-do list for years--tidy up digital files.

First, some context... I write, I teach writing, I spend lots of time online finding what I consider to be valuable content of every stripe (from composting toilets to social media in the classroom...sometimes these are much the same, I guess...from etymology to how to build a hen house). I have a shutterbug wife and thus several gig of digital pictures. I have five USB drives and a 500 gig external hard drive. I have thousands of mp3's of music and hundreds of podcasts I record for my online classes...

...and my desktop was something too much like my physical desk top, a catch all pile of clutter. It alone was the laughing stock of the computer staff where I work, for even those with decades of experience and exposure had not seen so much junk on the desktop.

In the past, when shifting from one machine to the next, from one classroom to the next, from one textbook to another...I would just bundle up files and shove them into some vaguely named folder (course files, oldlaptopstuff). Obviously, I've not done decent back ups, for they would simply take too long, be too inconvenient.

You'd think I'd know better, since at another job we had a data loss when my brother toasted a hard drive. Data recovery took days and would have cost thousands of dollars if done out of house.

To make a long story short (too late) I have so far purged over 20 gigabytes of digital diarrhea, and I'm not yet done. I have made many sensible folders and a good "tree" to mount all this new-found structure upon. I have a nifty synch feature that I am going to use, which will not only provide backup, it will also give me access to some of my classroom files "in the cloud" as they say.

Today I'm going to tackle the USB drives.

The King is dead. Long live the King.

Yes, you have probably heard by now, Burger King is retiring their creepy mascot King, planning to aim at a more mature audience than the King was supposedly reaching.

That's just sad.

It took me over a year to warm up to him, and now that I have a bobble head of him, several bookmarked sites of him, etc...he's gone. Like Elvis before him, the king has left the building.

*sigh*

Click here to review the 2009 Everyday King sightings. ...before they, too, evaporate.

Click here for the source story and some good Wake Up with the King video.

Seasteading

I heard on the radio that PayPal founder Peter Thiel has invested 1.25 million in seasteading, along with several other multi-millionaires. Wired ran the story here back in the 2008. Updated version here.

Stationed in International waters, sovereign colonies may some day feature:

• alternative energies
• abundant gardens
• unrestricted guns
• tiny houses (300 sq ft)
• no welfare

all in a tidy libertarian environment with less government overhead. The first colonies are to be on refashioned oil derricks, which I admire (re-purposing).

While I worry that these will again just be resorts for the rich, I do hope for something more equitable. I admire such experimentation in social systems, and I just don't understand all the cynicism. I'm keeping a weather eye on this evolving concept, at any rate.

I wonder if they need a good wordsmith?

Not Comfortable

So, I consider myself friendly-enough. I am at least amicable, I think most would agree. I get along with people in elevators, meetings, classes. People report they are surprised to learn that I have a temper!

Yet, sadly, I do not have a close cadre of true friends. I can enumerate a broad count of acquaintances and associates. I can draw an impressive diagram of my extended social networks, and hey, I have 500 friends on Facebook...

I'd trade them all for one good friend (my wife excluded, as her friendship comes with the territory).

I like the way friends are portrayed in the movies and on television. I never had friends like on Friends. I suppose the most close I had was when I was forced into close quarters with fellows on my dorm floor. We would go to the lake, hang out, generally hob nob.

But I do not have any go-to guys that I can call up to just go for a ride. There's not a soul who I know I can just dump on. I haven't any one in my inner-most circles whom I can ask to, say, help me build my deck or move a piece of furniture or babysit my kids.

I used to be in a loop of students and others who joined together for "School of Thought," which was a cool taffy-pull of the imagination, just a bunch of yokels jawing over the edges of the universe and the meaning of consciousness and the affects of substances and the significance of eternity and the like. Alas, they were students, mostly, and I always felt something of an intruder.

There's something to be said for intruding, but it's not something I'm good at. I suppose this reluctance has held me back from making true friends. My wife says it's that I don't invest enough in others. It's hard to do, with family and farm and work all taking priority. It seems, for me at least, like there's little time left.

I think I need to do a reality check, review priorities a little.

What spawned all this was a study reported on NPR about how those with work-related friends saw a 2% increase in their overall longevity. Those who also were active in the lives of others, through church or service (or maybe even in education) saw even greater gains in life expectancy. The study cited lots of other benefits of friendships at work and at large.

Thinking about this makes me skeptical about the status of "friend" on Facebook.

*sigh*

500

My dashboard reminds me that this is post #500. Jeepers, that's a lot of blogging. In truth, it's spread over five years, so it's not that impressive. I've done reviews before, so I will spare myself that (usually reserved for an end-of-the-year reflection). I could write about the Herculean effort or the unflagging dedication it has taken to get this far (but then, that would be hokum, for it's been easy).

500 posts, largely about me! I could turn a corner here, get excited about a focus or topic, turn this blog in a new and more constructive direction. I might change it up and make this a chronicle of something more important to the masses...but then, it likely wouldn't make it another 500 posts if I did.

I would like to make this blog more graphic, more multi-media, now that such things abound in this world of web 2.0. I could foresee an interactive, engaging environment, but maybe not on Blogger, maybe not even officially a blog, per se...On the other hand, maybe this blog has run its course, and I should retreat to my other private journals and blogs.

Regardless, 500 published posts is cause for pause.

Days out with Dad

[another gushing parent post]

Roughly quarterly I get the rare opportunity to spend a day with each of my kids. Now, I'm happily married, very entrenched in family, an attachment parent, all that...so it's not like some divorcee visitation program. The day out with dad tradition has been picking up steam for a year or so now, and the guys [and I, myself] really look forward to every adventure.

Jaxson typically hoards all his time w/me, and as is his nature, talks constantly from the time we get in the vehicle until he falls asleep. It's a great running stream of ideas for movies, things he finds funny on television, etc. For our day we went to the mall (it was over 100 out, after all) where he was able to do a tethered bungee trampoline jump, then miniature golf under black lights, then round it out with his favorite food [Subway] and a trip to a unique toy store. Then we attended a meeting for work 50 miles away and back to the west side of town for a movie, Rio.

Carson, who could care less about indoor plumbing, air conditioning, or any other modern conveniences elected to spend his day out at the lake. [Last summer we toured regional lakes, but this summer he wanted to spend his time IN one....as previously stated, it was over 100 degrees out, even on his day.] After 2 hours in the lake, he wanted to fetch his brothers, so we slowed down for some Long John Silvers then fetched the boys and some sand tools, then returned to the lake for another 3 hours of fun.

Edison is only 4, I know, but he's always a hard one to figure out. We ate breakfast at his favorite place [McDonald's] where he was also able to play on the play place. Then we went to Botanica to see the butterfly house and to play on the new children's garden and such. He also wanted to go to do everything his brothers had done. Instead, once on site, he wanted his brothers at the gardens, so we called them in, along with grandma and papa. Altogether a beautiful morning, despite some showers. I forced my hand at lunch [no more McDonald's please!] and pushed the family into a local delight: the Old Mill Tasty Shop which features an old school soda fountain. Eddie loved his milk shake.

Surreal summaries:
Jaxson really does have crazy-good script ideas. I may steal them if he doesn't write them down first. He also amazes me in his ability to befriend people of any race, any background, as he demonstrated on Carson's day, sharing the sand tools and his castle making skills with several kids he'd never encountered before.

Carson delights in such simple pleasures and loves to share with his brothers. He's going to make a great park ranger some day, for the outdoors is his little slice of heaven.

Edison asked me, "Are you going to come here when you're dead?" when we were at the botanical gardens. I said, "I think so, Eddie, I do think so."

Summer slipping away

Here it is, near the end of summer again, and I'm feeling that bitter bite of the calendar run out. Yep, summer's almost gone, and so is my relative freedom. It's the curse of my profession. I know, I've no room to complain. Workin' class folk think we teachers have 3 months off in the summer and a month off at Christmas. Truth is, I teach two of those 3 summer months online...yes, I know, it still afforded me the luxury of a week's vacation to the Rockies while I was "teaching." Yes, I know, that still leaves me free most of every day at my own pace, schedule, discretion. Yes, I know that leaves me one month still w/o obligation....

Regardless, when what I have had is slipping away, when I can feel the brain cloud of another 15 week semester and all the woes that go with it....I sigh.

At least I still have the first two weeks of August to whoop it up. No money, over 100 degrees, but I am dedicating myself to enjoying every day of that two weeks. I think I should keep a ledger here on the ol' blog about those two weeks. Keeping myself accountable might help me to be sure to make something of every single day....

We'll see.

Echoes of an empty nest

C'mon dad, let's rassle!
C'mon dad, let's have a water gun fight.
C'mon dad, let's build a snow man.

I do try to keep up. I really do. Three boys and a girl, all under 9 years, all over 2 ft. It's about all an old guy can do. I'm pushing 50, already, here.

Just reflecting on all the many times I've said no makes me sad, reminds me of that "Cat's in the Cradle" song. I fully realize that they are already starting to make their own fun without me. I know the three boys can get into enough mischief without the ol' man along. Sometimes I can feel the invites slipping into pity mode, or nostalgia mode, too--I can tell they invite me out of obligation or respect or just because I'm cannon fodder for their game.

Ten years has gone by in a heart beat, from the old days before kids, when I first was married....and thus, I know well that this next ten years will be the best ten years of my life--so I'd best be LIVING them to the max. I will never ever be able to get them back, not even as a grandfather. It's not like wanting to relive college years, when one can just enroll in another class. It's not like midlife crisis, easily averted with a convertible or another wife (jk).

When the nest is empty, it will echo.

If I were more current my my time travel theories, I could better express this: an echo of something that has yet to happen. I read somewhere of a theory of time in which the very sensitive traveler (and we are all travelers through time) can detect ripples or echoes of events that have yet to happen. That must be me in this moment, for I can feel the empty nest in full force, as if I were living it.

In ways, I guess I am, at this moment, when they are all sleeping and I'm being selfish. There are times I crave such time, but right now I'm tempted to go down with pots and pans, abruptly wake the kids, and have an impromptu band party with them all.

Note to self, here's a list of things they want to do. Get'em done:
dance night
music class
camp out
junk percussion
days out w/dad

On kids and freedom of speech

Poppycock!

Coop Scoop

I've been working on a chicken coop, a hen house, since April. As with most of my projects, a great deal of time is spent in on-the-ground, on-the-fly design. Why? is it that I'm lazy? Nope. Truth is, I have limited resources, so I have to be very creative with what I can find. Take a look at this coop:



I had other materials available (plastic panels, siding, etc), but I wanted it to look "authentic." I wanted the coop to look like it belonged at the farm, that it predated our arrival. The bones of this construct are the A-frames of wooden playground set, 4x4's that are rock solid. I bought lots of fasteners, maybe 8 2x4's, but almost everything else has been re-purposed, aka scavenged.

The way the build has gone, I'd be ciphering how to attach a piece of tin, then I'd find a bigger, better, often more rustic piece of tin. I'd have the frame skinned, then read up on ventilation, and then redesign to double the open air windows to have that swank roof over them. That roof also shelters the egg gathering doors, which will keep them more dry and cozy, even when we snatch their eggs. The south and east sides open up entirely for cleaning (which was a high priority). The north side is fully enclosed and pretty-much air tight (and I'd say iron-clad, for it's very sturdy tin panels from WWII era). The super steep roof-line will be great for shedding precipitation and increasing airflow, too. The chickens will have a ground-level that will be accessible to them year around, so they can scratch and take dust baths anytime. This will not only help them feel less "cooped up," but it will also keep the main level a little cooler, as there will be air flow below. In the winter, I can box the lower level in on the open sides with hay bales, making things uber-comfy.

I will be SO HAPPY to finish this project this week, for I've been dying to get back to work on my pirate ship playground.

Pooped Parent

It's hard striking a balance, being all things to all people. I had no idea how much harder that might be for an involved parent. I'm an engaged parent. I'm into attachment parenting. I guess I'm overly into my kids, but they are already showing signs of not-such-kidness. It's painful.

Anyway, today I worked from 7-11 on the hen house project. Then I went to the YMCA to chaperon the kids at swim lessons, then we did lunch and the play place. Then it was back to the hen house, then supper, now debriefing in all my accounts, etc.

The thing is, I don't find myself having much energy, ever, to be all I want to be to/for my young'uns. I wish I could invert my schedule somehow and work evenings or something when I was too pooped to care. Then I could give more prime time attention to those who matter most--family.

Meanwhile, I am thankful for summer, when there really are more hours in a day. When it's winter, days are so short, but in summer, we have much more elbow room...especially since we're not really into curfews.

Oh well. I guess I'll just try to do better tomorrow.

On Stranger Tides

All good things must come to an end, but I do not look forward to the last installment in the POTC franchise. I really, really enjoy the character of Jack Sparrow. I truly escape all else when watching Depp drift around, pirating his way through each film. Sparrow is easily my favorite film character, eclipsing even the Dude.

On Stranger Tides had me worried, without Bloom and Knightley, but it proved to be just what I needed. Bringing in Edward Teach (Blackbeard) was terrific. I really appreciate how the writers draw on pirate lore and history to make it feel a bit more authentic (even though we all know it's just goofy fun).

I watched it in 2d at a regular theatre, then again in 3d at the local IMAX. It's no eyecandy film like Inception, so I don't know if the extra $10 or so was worth it, but the sound and picture quality was top-notch, anyway. (It was worth it for me, but then...)

OST is full of laughs, action, intrigue, lore....what more could anyone wish for? Oh wait, I've got it: more!!!

One Second After

I just finished reading One Second After, and it brought back the shock. Yep, shock and awe. Shocked that I've been so lackadaisical in my preparation and stewardship. (Sure, I could hold my own, but...) Awestruck that the rest of the nation, especially the powers that be, have done virtually nothing in anticipation of the very real threat of an EMP attack.

This guy's letter sums up about everything I was just about to write. I'm steering anyone who reads my blog over to his, for there's lots of additional content linked from there. Observation: there's a whole industry revolving around survivalists. Who'da'thunk?

I am seeking out an easy on-ramp for those who have zippo in the pantry but know better. I am seeking out the step by step for morons (note, not Mormons, who have always been conservative and prepared). Heck, maybe I'll have to write one. It would include chapters/headings like:

• So, you don't have a budget for Armageddon?
• All good things come to an end--how 'bout this civilization we're experiencing?
• Start with toilet paper...no, maybe a gun...where to begin?
• They might laugh at your stockpile now...

I blame this newly rediscovered enthusiasm on my dad's ghost.

It is Finished

Yet again, another semester in the bag. As always, I have mixed emotions. I cheered for some at commencement (and wagged my head in astonishment as others walked across!). I rent my garments and gnashed my teeth at some in the grade book who just did not get'er done. I always feel responsible, and I always look for clerical errors again and again. I bet it takes me twice as long to enter grades as anyone else.

Ultimately, it comes down to the individual and his/her effort/performance.

However, who's to say exactly what points or percentages measure one's ability to communicate, to think critically? Sure, we can get a bead on how well people pay attention or take notes or retain terminology....but can we really, truly get an objective score to issue? I think my curriculum should issue A/P/F grades. If one is an exceptional writer, they might earn an A. (Even now in my classes, I have some earning an A b/c they are an average writer but exceptional at all the other point-earning ventures in the course.) If one is passable, but not exceptional, they earn a P...and if someone is just a screw up, well...

Otherwise, who's to say whether an 87.3 is a B or an A? What accounted for those points? Do they truly measure something meaningful? I'd like my entire grade book to reflect only writing, but my institution likes to balance the books a little. I think I'll push the line as far as permitted, leaning toward all-writing, all the time, for points.

Meanwhile, I just have to remind myself, as I do every term: be pro-active. Make sure people know, months before grades are due, that they are sliding. Don't let this grade report be guesswork or a shock to anyone. Be fair. Be honest. Be efficient.

Summer is calling. Bye.

Art and Kids

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

- Pablo Picasso

Every child's born an artist.

I wish I could nurture this in my children more. We signed on to teach art as an elective through our homeschool group. I dropped the ball.

The cool thing about kids and their art is, early on at least, they've had few influences to tell them their work stinks. There are few critics they will listen to, and thus, they create astounding, interesting, expressive works that leave the rest of us just wondering, scratching our heads.

If I had it to do over again, if we lived in a better world where art curricula are not always being cut, I'd be an art teacher (even though I am not really artistic).

Why? Because I really find my juice in inspiring kids to 'do' art. I wish I could cover every fridge in America with the artwork of children. (There should be a non-profit dedicated to that!)

This weekend--well next week--I'm going to spend quality time with my kids, and we're going to do some art, baby!

What's in a song?

Last night, while watching a silly Disney movie with my kids, Man of the House, I encountered this song again, "Return to Innocence" by Enigma.

It was somewhere in the mid-1990's, on a retreat to Rock Springs Ranch. We'd spent the night and day and night doing all-things VoLTS (that is, for you newbies, Volunteers Learning Through Service). We were, admittedly, sleep deprived. We were, I suspect, high on life and youthful vitality--I know there was no substance abuse, but you would not know it by our behavior.

Joe Swaba, an iconic figure in service learning, was leading us in a closing session. We were reflecting on the retreat, forecasting what we might do when we returned to the regular world. It was, for me, the first "camp high" I'd ever really experienced. I think through the session everyone was streaming tears and pouring out heart and soul. It was a very diverse crowd, one we likened to The Breakfast Club, with representation from about every clique and subculture of our college.

After days of planning and dreaming, of delving into our motives and our potential, I think we were a little bit afraid of ourselves and what we thought we were about to accomplish. We were united in love, in the spirit of service, dedicated to doing good, an army against apathy!

That was one moving moment.

Kind of sad to think back on it now, realizing that nothing much came of it all.



Viva la SLC.

We would have had a Luau this week.

No Joy

No Joy from Mike Petty on Vimeo.

Tragic. Almost as bad as Wild West World (see my previous posts on THAT fiasco!).

May 6

From Classics

So the last couple of days have been ones to celebrate. "May the fourth be with you," that is, Star Wars day. Cinco De Mayo, of course...and today, May 6th, is a day to remember. For over 60 years, it was a day to celebrate, for it was my dad's birthday. Unfortunately, he was cut down in the prime of life (really, for our longevity now extends more and more commonly to 100 years).

I've written about him before.

He was likely best known for his sense of humor. He collected jokes, memorized jokes, told jokes, and in general, looked on the sunny side, most all the time. Whether it was a trying time with farm or family, whether it was a parent's death or bankruptcy, dad always smiled on through.

Creepy as it sounds, that was my problem with his corpse. When I was asked to approve the undertaker's work, I wanted a smile on dad's face. It was not to be so. I guess it would have been unnerving for others, but to me, seeing him all staunch and stern was the most unnatural part of all the unimaginable things done to his body. I only saw that grim face a couple of times, and I'd earned the stink eye, let me say.

He was also enterprising. All the time, he was seeking ways to make it rich. He had an import business. He marketed a bumper sticker. He had an Elvis tribute plaque on the market. He diversified our dirt farm into a truck farm. He explored wind farms, and he sold the water rights to our property to pay off the land for us to later inherit.

I'll always remember the last real conversations I had with him. (The very last was over the phone, the day before he died, and it was pedestrian and truly a major source of regret). In October, less than a month before he passed, we sat in his office. I was sharing with him my utter disappointment in myself. (At that time, I was really on the brink of quitting life...and looking back now, I think that I was a stooge.) He was trying his best to give me a pep talk, telling me he loved me and all that a dad would do. He hugged me and teared up. It was the most sincere father and son moment ever.

Then he died.

But I am writing to remember him here. I need to write much more about him for my children, for none of them got to know their grand-dad. That sounds like a good summer project, right after I finish grading papers in the next 10:4:34:18.

Steve Martin Bluegrass!!!

No Re-do

I like speculative fiction. I like to sit around and speculate. One thing I've given some thought to: a re-do. Essentially this is the ol' time travel conundrum.

There are things said and done in my past which I really wish had gone otherwise. One was my last conversation with my dad. Another was not performing a play with my 4yr old yesterday when he asked.

Other screw ups, however, might be better left as-is.

Example: If I'd not laid out, flunked out, and dropped out before getting my wiring in order, I would never have been as sensitive and considerate of struggling students. I would always have wondered if I should have become a computer tech (dropped out).

Example: If I'd never gone back home to attempt to run the family business, I'd always wonder if I should have done it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. As it turned out, I learned you can never go back home, exactly. I also learned I'm the last man alive you'd ever want to run your accounting business.

Example: If I'd not be so consumed with my volunteer job, AmeriCorps and the like, [a screw up only because it did not leave me with anything of a life of my own for the better part of ten years] I'd never have met my wife, and that sets in motion a whole tailspin of things that woulda never.

I think, maybe, that every misstep is a good move maybe, so long as we are attentive to the dance.

I'm the oddball

INTERESTING things I'm hearing from students this term. Interesting and alarming:

In literature class, several claimed no one had ever really read their essay responses before, and they were pleasantly surprised that I had--even when marks were less-than-flattering.

More than a dozen times this term students have thanked me for commenting on their work, even if it smarted some. (One guy said I was "blunt," but he liked that.)

In a journal entry, someone said in 60 credit hours at this school, I was the first and only instructor to call him by name. (It's not like his name was challenging, either, like Ilir or Jehoshaphat. )

Altogether, this is peculiar. I always think I'm a bad teacher, for I never get it all covered, I never feel I've accomplished enough, I always fear they will sue me for intellectual malpractice or something. I am constantly comparing myself to my peers, wondering why I'm so remedial, so pokey. How is it they have a life and I do not? Sure, some of it is that I have to teach a double load to try to survive, but I've always felt there were other conditions, too, that I was just slow in the head, perhaps, or that I needed to grade differently.

Maybe I should just plow ahead and not look back so much. I know that when I literally was plowing, looking back would make my rows veer off at an angle. Stay the course. Straight and steady.

14.14.21.35 until grades are due!

Lucid Dreams

So, even if I were laid up in a hospital or prison (not that either is in the cards for me, I hope), I would be entertained.

In fact, I think one of the worst ideas ever was to put television sets in hospital rooms. If I am there to convalesce, then I don't want to be consumed by commerce...but that's another topic.

If I were reduced to little but a torso and head, I would find ways to be entertained, amused, engaged. If I could not even communicate with others, if my realm were no more than what was before my eyes and beneath my eyelids, I'd be fine.

How can I say such things? because I have an imagination. I pity those who do not. I just wag my head at those who boo-hoo about boredom. People whine about "needing" a budget for movies, bars, books, drugs, travel, etc...

I have something for those folk, but it does take effort: lucid dreams. I can drift in/out of consciousness so fluidly that the line can be blurred (on purpose, but also sometimes by circumstance). My life is Inception or The Matrix. (Maybe that's why I like those films so much!)

Almost any night, I can take the ephemeral reigns of my dreams and guide the coursers where I wish. Thus, I am my own production studio. I don't need CGI, for I have, again, imagination. While movies attempt to simulate the power of creative imagination and dreams, I am actually at the helm, the control panel, and I can tweak and twist one hell of a series of images, seemingly all night long. No, I don't have mastery of this, and I doubt anyone does. I do, however, have a gift at envisioning whatever I want and then actuating it in my sleep.

My sleep self and I are pretty tight buds. I know this is not the case for many people. They are astounded at what may bubble up from their dreams. They blush and burble over the intricate sensuality perking and lurking just behind the REM.

While I think of all this as a gift, the truth might be less glamorous. Some studies I have read just chalk it up to sleep deprivation. As has been proven already in my life (see the sleep study and apnea entries from last April), I am suffering from severe sleep apnea. That would mean, by default, that I am actually getting very little restorative sleep. That's the down side. On the up, however, those with my condition slip into REM much more efficiently than the average sleepy head. We milk the moment for all it is worth.

Wish I were so efficient in my waking life.

Thin Premise

Those who have gone
before the
here, after
all
a wafer
thin premise
the promise
on a cracker.

19:05:05:21

That's me counting the minutes until grades are due. It's motivational for me to have a countdown clock on my PC, for it helps me pace myself on work. At this rate, I only have to grade 15 essays daily, or roughly read 30,000 words daily.

Today is also 'hump day,' that is, of course, Wednesday.

I never used to keep track of these little milestones. I always thought people who clocked their time or needed hump days and weekends were just....well...sissies.

Now, I am almost as bad as this guy:



I really cannot account for it, this clock watching tendency I now have. I once was a work horse, a workaholic, a great salary man who would give you more than a bang for your buck. Now I do my job to the best of my ability, but I also strive to do my job within reasonable hours.

Some say it's old age, others that it's family. The best answer is probably simple common sense. Why did it take me over 20 years of working to figure it out? Where did my warped work ethic come from? It was not modeled at home.

Anyway, I'm whiling away the hours and whittling my way through the grading, but always with an eye on the prize: freedom. Family. Fun.

80's pop & random musings

What did I miss out on in the 1980's? Where was I? It's not like I was into country or something far afield, but somehow, I missed out on all the cheesy Madonna, George Michael, Michael Jackson...

I guess it was my classical music era.

Anyway, now it's refreshing, amusing, and surprisingly engaging music at times. I particularly like tuning it up when I'm grading. Most of it's chipper, which is important when slogging through the jungle of junior college freshman composition submissions....not that they're that bad, just that there's soooooo many to grade. *sigh*

Another Easter has come/gone. I remember some that were nothing but the eggs and the myth of the Easter bunny. I remember others that included sunrise services (some that I led, even). Now it's all about the kids, I guess, though like the Santa Argument, I have mixed emotions about all the Easter stories.

JC Superstar was such an influential album for me. It was the first vinyl I owned, likely some RCA record club special. I played the grooves off it. I learned every song, so very well that I can recite them to this day. That surprised me, when I called it up online last week, for after 10 years of ignoring it, the soundtrack still rings true for me. Surprising how deep some tracks are cut into my (otherwise fleeting) memory.

My Intro to Lit classes are surprising me, too. I took the cap off presentations, as advised by students last year who felt the 5 minute limit too constrictive. This term, I've had several that were 1/2 hour or more in length. Quality stuff, too. I had some very engaging multi-media presentations, using everything from a keyboard to Prezi software. I had a few in costume (though none can rival the girl who delivered her Dr. Seuss presentation in a Cat in the Hat costume, the entire presentation in Seuss-like rhyme and rhythm!) A guy brought a blow gun to class today. It's the same cat who caught his ex-girl friend's car on fire a few weeks back, then came last week with an elaborate hair fixin' for his rap presentation. The semester started with a bang with a 5 minute rap on Arthur Miller--accurate, entertaining, engaging. I am learning to step back and be amazed.

I like to be amazed. It is a good state of being.

Out.

Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really even care?

Apathy.

It used to be my arch-nemesis. That meant (though I'd not really thought it through) that I was action. That, in spite of my best intentions, was not always true...but for a decade there, it was the order of the day.

Does anybody really even care?

So, I read roughly 300 journal entries a week, when everyone's up to speed, and I read dozens of blogs and facebook posts...if I were to bundle them all up and strain out the governing concerns I encounter, I'm surprised to find it's largely economic and societal angst. Much of it relates to the future, at a very personal level (will I get the job? will Timmy still love me if I get fat?). A good portion has to do with plans, or a review of entertainments and amusements recently experienced. Some is family-oriented reflection.

Very little of it is congealed around the dynamic of social change. That is to say, in this webbed and interconnected powerhouse of networking ideas, where we can launch flash mobs and invite hoards to bars, very little of the potential of these tools ever comes to good. Sure, in some repressed countries social networking has led to revolutions. Sure, we could watch streaming CNN and hound our congress (if we cared, again). We have opportunity and potential, but we spend our words and time sharing pictures of puppies and babies and talking about our love lives.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think this is about the 500th post to this blog, and very little of it is dedicated to anything too profound.

I do have strange encounters with Those Who Should Care Most about the world: parents. These people ought to be up on news, up on the future, up on child rearing. They ought to be into Wow Wow Wubbzy and the Wonder Pets. They should be dedicated to educating their children (or at least reinforcing education).

I will have an encounter in which I get all bug-eyed talking about, say, nutrition, and how we're doomed, damned if we do, damned if we don't....how fighting marketing and HFCS, prepackaging and calories, is a losing battle. I rage against the machine for a while, then the parent shrugs and says, "Well, we came out okay." or "Yeah, but whaddya do?" Then they return to sports or their other regularly scheduled programming.

Parents should care.

Tomorrow is coming!

I am a student of the future, and I am always in awe of Ray's insight...er...foresight.

WATCH THIS NOW and reflect on it as it comes true:

Poetry

For a few weeks every semester, I get to teach poetry. I used to dread every encounter with the genre, from grade school onward. I have given a lot of thought to this, and I've pretty much determined what happened...

As a young child I loved word play. I would toss around rhymes just to hear them bounce off my tongue. I loved reading playful books with poetic verse that really rocked the house. I liked writing witty little ditties that made me feel good, for I was able to mesh together rhymes into statements, stories, etc.

Then, somewhere in middle school, I think, I was introduced to Poetry (note, with a capital P), and then all the joy and playfulness was siphoned away, replaced by scansion of lines, deeper Meaning, allusions to literary things I did not know (and thus, being ignorant, I felt stupid). All through school thereafter Poetry waggled a finger in my face (or more accurately, the teachers delivering it) and I was made to feel ever-more ill-prepared and uninformed. I was no match for Poetry, as it was shared.

Sometime in graduate school a light went on, when I was reading ee cummings. I hated him with a passion, for his work seemed the most opaque, cryptic, and challenging of all Poetry. Then I listened to it. Then I just played along with him and his words. I was re-introduced to poetry at play, and then the tidal flood of all that was good clean fun came washing back over me.

I have since learned to appreciate poetry for its potency, for its life and vitality. I can enjoy a string of words, a bandwith of images, a bevy of symbols....I can just roll a word around on the tongue like someone else might a fine wine, and savor the many flavors of it. (In class last week, I likened this to Skittles, encouraging them to "taste the rainbow" of poetry.)

I confess I don't always "get it." There are many (probably most) poems I encounter that are more dense than I am, more unyielding to me (unless I am willing to research, read the footnotes, really work at it). You know what, though? That's okay with me. If I want it enough, I can penetrate any poem, even a translation, given time and energy.

What I really love, however, is simply wordsmith-ing and spoken word. I love poetry that is pyrotechnic. I groove on language for its sound and substance.

I hope I don't scare away any of my students when I go off on a word's 'feel' or texture. I hope they don't get the impression that I'm right or they're ignorant. Instead, I hope just a few of them leave class for the day listening to the euphony of a word, like diarrhea or mammogram.

I'll admit it...

Guilty Pleasure, a confession

Okay, I liked Britney since she was on Disney. I turned a blind eye toward her, like one might a deer they'd hit on the side of the road, when she was in her slump.

Now, however, I am in her camp again. I have this thing for underdogs, for those who have been beaten down but rise up again to do great things. Robert Downey Junior comes to mind.

Charlie, are you paying attention? Someday I might be able to root for you, too!

Okay, I admit Spears isn't going to end homelessness or bring world peace...but hey, she's back on her feet, dancing, having fun, it seems. She's recovering from all that the media did to her (and all she brought on herself). Yes, she's still likely owned by corporate media, but as a person, I hope she's off on a positive, fresh start this time. I hope she eclipses herself, that she (somehow) makes Michael Jackson and Elvis seem like mashed potatoes and milk. I am her champion, now, and I guess I'm not too afraid to admit it (at least here on this little blog that no one reads). :)

Go ahead and watch her newest video....You know you want to!

Chickens

We're about to take the plunge. We've been reading up on them, asking everyone we encounter, generally learning like mad...

...and now, we're poised to order ours!

I started working on a hen house over spring break, building it (as always) of recycled and reclaimed materials. I think I spent 50 hours online just researching the design ideas for that! Ours is an A-frame design with exterior nesting boxes. The floor is elevated 20 inches off the ground. I am eager to finish construction, but I am still debating where to put it.

Chicken moat--see several previous entries on this. I've wanted to do a chicken moat since the 1980's. The latest hold up has been material costs, but I finally have a good supplier on chicken wire (cheap, used, industrial grade). I finally have a stock pile of utility poles. About all I'm waiting for now is confirmation we can get along w/o a tractor tiller--once the moat is built, it would be hard to get such an implement maneuvered around in the garden.

The chickens--my kids are crazy about chicks at every farm store. I know they grow up (both chicks and kids) but I think there's lots of opportunity there. I want to get the kids excited about some kind of animal husbandry, and chickens seem like a good starter.

We've shopped around locally, combed CraigsList, visited with some who own chickens...and it's always a different story. I think ultimately we'll just get'er done, buy some and start out. If it's a failure, we'll change up.

Last I knew, we were looking at an assortment of 'exotic' chickens to complement more traditional heavy layers.

Regardless, I want chicks on the ground by Easter!

Happy Birthday, Bill!

I missed his 80th birthday (spring break) and thus the 3rd annual "talk like Shatner day."

I just had to post this, anyway, for it's one of the better clips of him on YouTube. It's not a parody or spoof or in any other way bringing him down as an actor/performer. (There's plenty of that out there.) At any rate, you can surely hear and feel his classic Shatner delivery!




I wish I could meet him and have lunch. I think I'll add that to my bucket list!

Keeping up with the Joneses

I'm reviewing my blog here and realizing something--I'm not keeping up with my students! I've only written about 18 entries since the start of the term, while I'm demanding 3 weekly from students (about 27 to date). Fortunately, they aren't reading this journal/blog anyway, so they'll never know/care.

Keeping up with the Joneses is a problem. Comparing with others is always a problem. I suppose it can be argued that it can be healthy, motivational. On the other hand, it can be damning. One might see that someone has a shiny new house and Lexus, for example, and feel stepped on for they only have a hovel and fleet of broken-down vehicles.

The urge to keep up causes us to be rabid consumers of everything, rampant omnivores. I am guilty of this, even though I am very aware of it. Such insatiable need to feed creates in us this discontent, usually at first with our earning potential, but eventually general discontent with everything.

I have to fight to keep this in check. I'm losing the fight. My buddy is building a new house. Another one has a sweet home in a small berg nearby. Another is remodeling a groovy ranch-style home I am coveting for its efficient floor plan. Someone just tore down a cool farmhouse and homestead (see other entry) that I would have loved to have as my own...

...then again, I have a house with some history. (Part of it was built in the very early 1900's.)
It's on 11 acres, which gives us the luxury of campfires, cookouts, raging crazy parties on the property...we have the ability to raise a garden of any size we want. We can have livestock, burn trash, etc. We can learn of the prairie on the east side and develop the cropland on the west side. We virtually live on a park, a prairie reserve!

And it gives me space (without zoning laws and restrictions) to build composting areas, a hen house...even a pirate ship playground!

We also have the luxury and blessing of a multi-generational blended household, giving my kids an intimacy with their relatives that I never knew.

I need to remember such things. When the front door jams or the other door leaks rain and ants, when the vehicle breaks down (again and again), when an investment in triple A is a necessity just for the towing package, when we cannot pay all the bills for our craptaular house and fleet of beaters...I need to remember we have it good.

And I need to quit thinking of it as a competition.
That's just stinkin' thinkin' after all.

Sick at my Stomach

You know what makes me sick? (That's Earl Pitt's famous opening line, and I'm stealing it today.)

I cannot drive down my country road any more without being repulsed. I truly, honestly get nauseous whenever I pass by the spot where it happened. No, it's not where I hit a deer, nor where there was a grizzly accident.

Nope. Now it's nothing but more field. That is what is so disgusting to me. Now, down the road 10 miles these jokers have cut down and plowed up about 500 trees (not much of an exaggeration, if any) along a dry creek bed. They have had heavy equipment in to sculpt the land with new terraces, etc. I know what they are doing. I know why they are doing it. By eliminating the trees and creek bed they are hoping to gain a few more acres of ground to till, and by sculpting it as they have, they are likely to have a much easier time working the ground and harvesting the crops.

I say, however, that the best laid plans of mice and men Gang aft a-gley! That's right, I said "gang aft a-gley" dammit. When we first cut up the prairie with fences, it wreaked havoc with the migration patterns of many animals. This was further complicated with our infernal criss-crossing of underground petrol-product piping and blacktop roads. Now, as we bull-doze every stand of trees, what is left in the wake? Nothing but a field. That leaves little shelter for deer and other wildlife. It makes this beautiful part of the country look too much like western Kansas. Windbreaks are valuable! Here's what was offered in a KSU study, NON-AGRICULTURAL BENEFITS OF WINDBREAKS IN KANSAS:

"Windbreaks may provide recreational opportunities, scenic beauty, fuelwood, and wildlife habitat in addition to agricultural benefits. Quantitative studies demonstrate that windbreaks on the Great Plains provides important wildlife habitat for woodland edge species, substantial opportunities for recreation, a potentially important source of fuelwood, and enhanced scenic beauty."

And this is to say nothing of erosion control.

So, down the road, I am seeing farmers plowing up trees by the hundreds. These people are no longer stewards of the land but slaves of Monsanto. Yet, I digress.

What really turns my stomach is a former homestead now-turned into another field.

This place was easily 80-100 years old. It had an impressive stand of trees surrounding what was likely 4 acres of old homestead land. There were out buildings (a barn, a chicken house, a well house) and a very impressive two-level house with big columns out front. It looked like a small abandoned plantation house from the road.

I wish I knew the history of that old house and farm. I wish I'd known the people who'd lived there, who'd built the place. I wish I had some way to travel back in time and watch the property evolve. Hell, I wish I'd stopped and wandered the property one of the thousand times I have driven by and thought about it.

I grieve for this old place. To me, places hold memories, maybe even ghosts. To destroy them for factory farming is a heinous and criminal act. Where I grew up, every tree was rare and sacred. I'm not tree hugging fairy nymph, either; don't get me wrong. I'm just offering that by slaying 100+ year old trees we're disrespecting our elders. We're spitting in the eye of mother nature. We're pissing away some great shade, wood, possibly walnuts. To bull-doze it all with utter disregard for its worth is disgusting.

I am thoroughly disgusted....so on that, I shall return to my regularly scheduled programming.


__________________________


Details on the phrase, found here:

Meaning: The most carefully prepared plans may go wrong.
Origin: "of mice and men"
From Robert Burns' poem To a Mouse, 1786.

It tells of how he, while ploughing a field, upturned a mouse's nest. The resulting poem is an apology to the mouse:

...
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.
...

The poem is of course the source for the title of John Steinbeck's 1937 novel - Of Mice and Men.

Bombing

While I was ramping up for spring break and missing St. Pats parties, while I was troubled over the hardships of the Japanese and worried about the economy, something entirely new happened in the blink of an eye.

We declared a no-fly zone, chased by air strikes of Libyan 'strongholds.'

How is it that the UN arrives at such decisions, that the US is so heavily involved, and then it all happens in a heart beat? I need to pay much more attention to the news. I had heard that aircraft carriers were deployed a week or so ago, and that seemed puzzling then, but I shrugged it off. I'd heard people say that we seemed more responsive to Libya than we ever did to other parts of Africa where casualties were over a million! I'd come to understand that national sentiment regarding Libyan leadership was as unstable as their leaders....

...but another 'war front' just astounds me!

I am too uninformed to offer much more than my astonishment, but I am willing to go on record that I'm very, very troubled by it. I don't know that it was the right thing to jump ahead like this in Libya. I'm unsure of too much right now, and I imagine too many others range from unsure to "welp, the UN decided it, so it must be good." I would wager far too many of us are either ignorant or in denial.

Such people are an easy mark.

Parkour

Parkour (aka free-running) intrigues me. It seems to be mad running and jumping and traversing all terrains, in a no holds barred fashion. Growing up, we used to do this. We called it 'run like hell.'

I like it because it's non-competitive, it uses no gear(not even a uniform), it is an active sport (no spectators here), and it's a little edgy. (I guess in some cities, they are trying to outlaw it...of course.)

This video is a great look at it.


One could also watch the documentary Jump|London.

I'm thinking the boys and I are going to romp all over the farm with greater intention, now that it's recognized as a sport.

Bucket List

I cannot find a bucket list on this blog, and it's something that I've done a dozen times. For the record, I thought I'd share something of one, off the top of my head:

• become fluent in multiple languages
• take comparative religions course/study group
• skydive
• master harmonica or banjo or drums or something musical
• publish quality novels
• finish my pirate ship

Places to go...this is a big list by itself

• tour USA in RV
• vacation in Hawaii
• tour castles in Europe
• take kids to Disney land/world
• spelunking in Viet Nam
• see Victoria Falls, Africa
• visit the great pyramids of Egypt
• be Indiana Jones on some ruins in a rain forest
• tour some country I've learned the language for
• swim in every ocean

To be continued.

To Do List

So, friends, it's almost spring. For some, that means sweeping the porch or cleaning out closets. For me it means gearing up for gardening. We are mapping our garden out this year being conscientious of sun patterns, of irrigation, and of....chickens.

We are going to build a hen house, fence in parts of the garden to allow chickens, other fencing to thwart chickens from scratching up and destroying tender young plants.

I've long admired the full-blown chicken moat (promised to build last summer, but...chickened out). It's too ambitious and too expensive for me right now, I think.

I am all about using found/available materials, and it so happens I have many hog panels and a good long run of chain link fence (albeit, only 3-4 ft high) that I could employ. I have a great little out building that would make an awesome hen house and garden supply shed, but I don't know if it can be relocated (might be easier to build new).

So much to do, so little time.

I seem to be one of those people who's always overwhelmed, even when there's seemingly nothing to do. I recall a time in life when there was nothing undone, nothing to do, when I could just kick back and bask in the limbo of nothingness. I wonder if one ever, ever gets caught up any more. ???

My EG 102 course

Slowly, Intentionally

I admire my father-in-law, the Karate blackbelt. He knows how to sit, to meditate.

None of my kids know how to sit, period. They can squirm, and they can run, but they only stop moving to sleep (well, and sometimes to veg out in front of the television if I am not there to police their activity).

We watched a great documentary in my English class, PBS's Frontline piece, Digital Nation. One alarming claim of the film is that we are going so fast, so frantically busy, that we are not learning deeply and fully any more.



I wonder about this. I worry about this. I mean, here I am a proponent of all-things-digital, yet maybe I'm doing the students a disservice? Maybe I'm corrupting my own children, too?

Maybe I'm just enamored with all this digital stuff because it's shiny. Novel. Fun. It would be a terrible thing if I had fallen for the trap, fallen down the rabbit hole, and found myself swimming in the Kool-aid. (BTW: it was actually Flavor-Aid, for the record.) Ugh. If all these bells and whistles--which to me seem to streamline and improve research and writing--if they're really making us more shallow, then, like, wow.

Honestly, I do see the potential for immediately gratifying content to corrupt us. I know that I've even wanted to Google the whereabouts of my own keys (or on a true absent-minded professor day, my car itself). It's easier not to think, to just have access, but to really access the content I'm attempting to lead students into, one must think. One must be patient and diligent. I am now struggling with the question of whether or not this can be taught. Can one teach patient research to anxious youth? Can one teach a struggling community college student to let go of everything else and simply think a while? Can they let go of dollars and cents, familial woes, pressures of school, work, and family--just to entertain an idea? Can they feed that idea and take it for a walk? Can they roll around a word on the tongue just to feel it at play?

Some days I am not so sure.

75 hours

I ask that every student of mine to come and spend 30 minutes with me in the office this semester. By the time they all come through the door, I'll have invested about 75 hours into student appointments this term, the most ever I've attempted here at BCC. Back at the other school, I probably had more student face time than anyone there, but then I lived and breathed student engagement (maybe a little too much, since I married one, eh?)

But seriously, this has been an enormous undertaking, when it should be the simplest of things: "hey, let's jaw around about your paper, topic, life..." I've had many people ask me why I am dedicated to this, when I could just be grading (or for that matter, reading, surfing the net...writing a blog--ahem!).

I explain it like this: I think it's very, very important to know who you are learning with (and I intentionally aim this both ways, for we're both learning in a meeting one on one). I'm learning about them, their learning styles, interests, strengths and weaknesses academically, but even more, I'm learning who they are. I'm learning how to better serve them, I think.

I also require a journal of my composition students, 3 100 word entries per week, roughly. Sure, there's kicking and screaming, but it has tremendous dividends for the student (of course, or I would not assign it). It's also very valuable to me, to again get to know my clients, my students.

I cannot put a finger on how all this knowledge plays out in the classroom, in grading, in pedagogy overall. I could never write a paper about it or prove it empirically, but I am sure it's having a positive effect.

Can't have it both ways...

SO, I'm something of a person of extremes. Oh, I'm open minded about most things, not inclined to polarized rants much....but in lifestyle and pattern, I tend to run hot or cold. I am one to be all out, in deep, 100% into something.

I suppose that sounds good, as if it suggested a degree of focus, a mindset of discipline, a forthrightness that is all-Kansas.

On the other hand, the ugly misshapen hand of truth, here's what happens to me: I get so far to an extreme it's hard to switch it up, to regroup, to reconfigure, to clock out. If, for instance, I were a mercenary, I would not know my bounds, and I might knock some one off in expression of my road rage. If I were a person of the cloth, I would not be able to reach the level of purity and intimacy with my deity that seemed The Right Place to be.

And so it is with work. I can run white hot for work, burning the proverbial candle in a blast furnace frenzy of focused labor. OR, I can be unplugged at home, not even checking email for days at a time, just building stuff, playing with kids, loving home (this extreme has only recently been learned and appreciated, say, in the last 5 years).

Unfortunately, it is VERY HARD for me to switch gears. When the new semester starts, I am now finding myself like a bear coming out of hibernation (at least in the winter) or like one of those groggy people who are just not morning people (I still cannot understand them!). I go through motions, but it takes me days and days to get my game on, to charge up my workforce engines.

And, alas, now that I'm fully engaged, I'm finding it VERY HARD to go home at night. Oh, I know it's where I'd rather be, that all this work is just what I do so that I can have a home and pay the bills....but it's extremely difficult for me to disconnect, to let it go, to leave work at work.

Why is that?
Used to be, I had a job that was something of a calling, a Mission. I was leading people out of apathy, helping to do my little part to save the world through service, to burn as purely altruistic as I could. That job, of course, was impossible to leave at work, for it was a lifestyle.

But now? grading papers and designing course content? I have a hard time pulling back from it, for I know that if I do, it's just going to be that much harder tomorrow to get back up in the saddle again. I will lose hours to ramping up, when I could otherwise just stay at it a few more hours...

...but I'd rather be home (in my heart of hearts) regardless of the lost time and inefficiency of retooling and warming up to it again. The reward of home and hearth and loved ones is much more powerful.

So, I go.

George Washington's Teeth

In honor of President's Day, this passage from my favorite author:

Polysyllabic

Here are some of the polysyllabic words and phrases from my list of words (yes, I jot down words that tickle my tongue or otherwise have some added-value to me):
Licorice Limelight
Post bottom Water-logged
Wig-Wam Paddyshack
Tailspin
Circumference
Shanty town
Uber-goober
Groundswell
Earth-shaking
Hinterlands
Underbelly
Barn swallow
Bin-buster

Beat Down

Hat hair
Matted grass
Shelter/rescue dogs

I am likewise beat down.

It doesn't matter how hard, how many days, how many weekend hours--I cannot seem to scale the pile of work I have to do.

I know, boo-hoo, right?

I've no answer to the problem. I've written about it many times in the past 4 years, I'm sure. This time, however, it's really wearing on me. I'd go see a shrink but that costs more time and money--and that, again, is the root of this entire problem.

So, shrink--out.

Therapeutic catharsis by way of....

1. exercise (you must be kidding)
2. creative writing (at the same keyboard I should be grading from, so...no)
3. nature hike (winter, ugh!)
4. shopping (see money, above)
5. web-surfing (see creative writing, #4 above)
6. kids (guilty about not working)
7. grilling (guilty about not working)
8. sleep? ahhhhh, there it is!

Sleep, the elixir that calms my spirit. Sleep in bliss, in ignorance--alas, that's just denial, and when I wake, I know this and feel EVEN WORSE.

So, one might ask, what exactly am I doing blogging? How is this any better than 1-8, above? Well, it's not. In fact, maybe it's worse, because it's public. Dumb idea, huh?

Regardless, here I sit, beat down.
Stalemate.
Stagnate...

Ugh--I gotta do something!

This morning at 430 when I left for work, I was of the old school workaholic plan that led me through a dark decade past. My thinking: I will work through this (literally) by applying nose to grind stone until done. Enough pressure, over enough time, applied to said stone should smush it into submission.

I mean, surely it could all be done, right, even if for only a moment (like laundry or housework).
Maybe it would be different if it paid better. As-is, this job is too often paying about like laundry or housework! Oh well, at least I have a house, right?