Shooter Drill

In two hours, this campus will be chaos.

We're having a demo/drill for the worst-case-scenario, a gunman on campus. There will be live shots fired (blanks, of course, but indoors it's dramatic). There will likely be fire alarms, screaming and yelling, policia in full-on bravado.

I understand the purpose of the drills, and I know they help ferret out problems in our security and response systems. I am fully aware that the scenario has been a reality at far too many schools, and I know it could happen here as well as anywhere else.

We have tornado drills here. Fire drills, too. Now school shooting drills. It's hard to find enough time to get our jobs done amidst all this drilling. Speaking of which, at another building I may head for to avoid this shooter drill, there is a good deal of drilling going on, too. In this case, it's jackhammers and cement saws and such, for that place is getting a facelift. Thank goodness I have headphones and music to retreat to when I'm grading!

Maybe we should have drills "in the event of" other things:

• everyone shows up for class on time (less likely than a tornado)
• everyone submits all work on time (even less likely than a gunman)
• people stop to help one another out (a giant comet is more likely to hit the earth)
• commuters intentionally park as far away as possible, for exercise and to be kind to others (c'mon!)

In the same way the calamity drills help us become sensitized, prepared, and teach us to anticipate the worst, maybe my drills would have the same effect on the lighter side, and as we drilled, so we might become punctual, efficient, and kind.

We often need to go beyond merely expecting something; we have to practice as-if scenarios. I propose we do this for the bad (of course) but also to anticipate the best.

ANGER

The only broken bone I've ever had was in my hand due to punching walls. I destroyed a wall of an out-building with a big hammer once in a rage. I used to have anger management issues, to say the least.

My son, only six, sometimes gets mad beyond words. It looks silly on him.

I remarked recently in conversation that I'd not been truly angry, yelling-type angry, in years. Most people, especially those who know only this recent manifestation of myself, have no idea that I have this tendency to blow my stack. Every time it has come up, people just laugh and say, "You?"

Yesterday, however, I revisited my anger in such an excruciating, full-on outburst that I have aching muscles and a woeful heart today. At least I took it outside, away from everyone and every thing, burning off my angry energy by tearing down a corral w/a sledge hammer.

I wish I could get angry at someone other than myself, but that is the center of my s*storm. For me, it is very painful to be mad at me...but I guess it's better than burning bridges, hurting others, or owing anyone but myself an apology.

Now I'm mad at myself for getting so mad at myself.

GRRRRR!

Honestly, anger is right down there with guilt as an emotion that has no redeeming value. I guess there is a "righteous anger," but my vein-popping version is anything-but-that. Anger is silly, immature, and a waste of emotion. Actually, I guess I'm writing of RAGE...just being mad/angry has its place. I seem to just perk along, merrily, then skip from bliss to rage.

There's something to work on!

Library Litany

Today my classes are going to the library.

When I was young, going to the library was a real treat. We visited the scriptorium, filled to the ceiling with rolls of papyrus just waiting to be read. If we were on our best behavior, the librarian would dust off stone tablets for us to read!

Well, it was a treat, though not quite so old-fashioned.

I grew up in an era and area in which going to the library was almost like going to college. Few people went, fewer still learned from the visit. I, oddly enough for a farm boy, was among the few who would bury my nose in the books and come up educated. Trips to the library were reward for good behavior. Whenever we went to town, I was able to con my way into a library visit. (I still have my original library card, from almost 40 years ago!) I still have the four or five books I owned as a kid, but hundreds more went through my hands via the library!

When I was a child, I read everything I could get my hands on. I think this was due to my father's model behavior--he read a novel a day (very strange for a farmer) and had a den lined floor to ceiling with books. I can still remember giving my parents a book report on a biography of Ulysses Grant (I was scheduled to do this at school and was wigging out, so they had me practice with them.) It was that kind of modeling and support that kept me deep in the books.

When I went to college, my first job was...in the university library! This place was unfathomably huge, literally containing millions of books. While my hometown library was only one floor, this library was eight floors! One of my first observations, duly recorded in my journal from my first college experience, was that the libraries both smelled the same! I have since come to learn that virtually all libraries smell the same--some bookish smell that is a mix of musty paper and book binding glues, maybe.

Over the years, I have been a "Friend of" several libraries, been on library committees, and built up (and let go of) an impressive library of my own. Oh, I know what they say about libraries going away due to the Internet, but they said television would go away, too, and it has not. I recall the claim that movies would surrender to the home video, but that never happened, either. No, I think libraries are going to be with us a long, long time. They are evolving, becoming more multi-media and hip, but they are not going away.

During wars, libraries are special targets, either to be preserved, sacked, or burned--depending on the sentiment of the warring faction. Benjamin Franklin was a promoter of the modern American lending library, and we all owe him, in my opinion, a debt of gratitude greater than any owed to a president or political leader, statesmen or inventor.

I love libraries!

Really?

From time to time I'm asked by students, "What should we call you?" I know all the answers from teacher training, how a degree of distance is appropriate, how getting too chummy is certain ruination, etc. I pause and think of what I call people I should respect, say, like my doctor . I use his title, sure, but not "Dr. Boris Smartgui, MD. sir" when addressing him.

Their question always throws me into a tailspin, considering all the ramifications of the education system established as it is, with the Imparting of Knowledge in exchange for a Degree, a Rite of Passage into a Career rather than a Job. That whole thing.

Yes, I am in this line of business (and yes, Pollyanna, it is a business), and yet I question its validity. I know that in some small way I am helping people better express themselves and think more critically and all that. I know other classes advance students a bit here/there...but really, is it the best format in this day and age?

I am leaning ever-more toward what we call "blended" classes at my college. In this delivery format, the content is online; students are to read their texts and online content, then come to class to wrestle with it for comprehension, clarification, and generally get the face-to-face time that many still benefit from. I lean toward this, for it is how I learn. I don't wait around for people to tell me something in a lecture; instead I go find it online and soak it up, then return to someone local w/questions. It works for me.

In this age of aliases, avatars and alternate identities, I realize that one could become quite the poser online, even in education. Is this any different from a guy in a tie behind a podium? That is no more me than the text "me" of my online instruction. It's a uniform, a standard of performance and delivery that is expected and sometimes needed to convey content and build confidence.

Last summer I had a couple of college guys come work on my place. After a few days, one of them said, "You know, you're like a different person out here." I pressed, he added, "I mean, you don't even wear a tie." Regardless of how impractical a tie might be in any circumstance, it is just not the fashion accessory to accompany jeans, boots, and a t-shirt, to say nothing of the inherent dangers of getting it snagged in a PTO or weed-eater. His comment resonated throughout the summer, as he continued to marvel that I ate, slept, drank, spoke--like anyone else.

I wonder, as I am sure others do, just who I really am. What would I really like to be called? What's my true name? All other expectations and utilitarian standards aside, what would I really wear. Really.

I don't know the words...

My oldest son has a vast vocabulary. He's only 6, but he speaks well and knows even more than he can say (and trust me, he can say A LOT!).

Once in a while, however, he will be without the right words. Usually this is when he's in some extreme emotional state, most typically anger or sadness. He'll be crying or growling or throwing things in a tantrum, but when prodded, he can only apologize with, "Daddy, I don't have the words. I don't know enough words to tell you how I feel."

Now, we may say this when the words are slow-coming, or when we'd rather not articulate things...sometimes even grown ups have a hard time putting something into words, granted.

But when he says this, he means it. We've talked about it many times. "How come there are not good words for how you feel?" he will ask me, or "What is a word for when you want to [typically graphic violence] someone?"

I find it interesting that he has so many words and ideas, yet this is the limit of his language. For being such an expressive young man, he still struggles with verbalizing his emotion. Sometimes I wonder if kids have emotions that are off our charts, beyond our words. Maybe we all tend to pull down our person to fit societal norms, including our emotions? Maybe there truly are no words to articulate what he's experiencing, and for me to name it something mundane would be to rob it of its originality.

I know, some may read this and say, spank him and get it over with, he's throwing a fit. I may go there, but I likely take these many side roads along the way.

No ZIPPERS?

Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act = Utter Insanity



In this litigious world, I sometimes wonder just how safe we're going to have to get. I just learned from family that Goodwill and other thrift stores cannot sell clothing with zippers any more. Some law went into effect on Feb 1 that leaves vendors of zippered clothing liable for injury that might result from the deadly devices.



The CPSIA covers primarily lead paint issues, other related safety hazards. There are a great number of items to be pulled from the shelves unless they can be proven safe. Second hand stores cannot afford testing, processing, and propping themselves up legally like a mega-giant-big box retailer may. From everything I've read, it might just lead to the ruination of a great deal of small businesses resellers. Even if the CPS has let resellers off the hook, as I read allusions to, the word is not getting around locally.



Thrift stores in the Wichita area are taking wholesale safeguards. To prevent fines and litigation, they are ditching materials that even might be hazardous. (And this we have on good authority from a local thrift shop manager.) Thus pallets of perfectly good clothing is to be destroyed. Not given away. Not shipped to developing nations where people would enjoy the zippered clothes and have the good sense not to zip one's organ in the grinder. (And if they did, they would not sue someone for their own stupidity.)



Will there someday be a time when we are all wearing clothes fastened by velcro? Is there, perhaps, some inherent danger even in velcro?



Where does natural selection come in here, people? If someone is stupid enough to injure themselves with a zipper, do they not deserve it? Why should they be able to sue the manufacturer or vendor for a zipper catastrophe? How bad could it be, anyway? Have people died from zipper malfunction?



I know, I know, most of the hubbub is around lead that might be used in bangles, buttons and zippers...it's crazy that this even extends to children's books printed before 1985 which might have lead in their composition. Even libraries are affected!! I find this to be at the top of my 2009 list of STUPIDITY. I am a parent, and I'm all for the safety of my children. My kids aren't dumb enough to chew on zippers, buttons and books so very much they're getting lead poisoning. I'm sure I've even eaten my share of lead paint as a child, and ut dowuknd't uuufict mie yaaanni!



We should all just wear government-issue "safe" clothing and read only government-issued safe books.



Zippers were always too erotic anyway.

It took a long time to legislate them out!

What hurts a 3 year old...

(parental blathering, again)

I am protective of my kids, as most parents likely are...and when a bully gets to them or a television show scares them or...well, I'm there for them. Now sometimes my temper gets the best of me, and then I am the source of pain for my kids--that sends me into a tailspin of regret and gnashing of teeth.

The only time I get more angry is when some corporation (McDonalds, Wal-Mart, etc.) hurts my kids. They manipulate my kids all the time through ads, commercials, target marketing at knee-height, and so on. That, at least, I have learned to tolerate.

The other day, however, a large corporation that tours with Bob The Builder really chapped my hide. They were promoting Bob's big Wichita appearance, and that very day my wife liquidated my life insurance and bought us all tickets on row 2! Now, Carson, my 3 year old, loves Bob the Builder beyond measure. I think sometimes he patterns too much of his life around Bob, like those times when I find tools in bed with us...or times when he "fixes" things that do not need toddlers hammering on them. Bob, to Carson, is the icon of all things good and right with the world, and the chance to see Him Live--well, even Carson was speechless.

Alas, the corporate villains cancelled the show only a week later (thus, a week before the show) and my wife broke the news to Carson over supper. I have not seen him sob and weep like that EVER. (I don't think the other boys have ever been so distraught, either, for that matter.) It was terribly painful for us all.

So, what hurts a 3 year old? Broken promises. Cancelled appearances. Retracted offers. You should read my wife's blog to see just what the boys offered as their (violent) reactions and what they suggested for the show's promoters! This blog is too tame to list such things.

Dirt

I have found that I know next-to-nothing about dirt.

Every farmer/gardener worth his green thumb should know all about dirt. Even every-day folk who just have a flower pot on the porch ought to know a little something. Here I am, however, on a warm day in February and ready to get gardening--and I must admit I know nada.

Now, this is especially embarrassing as I did grow up on a farm. We had a large spread, however, over 3000 irrigated acres, and we tilled and fertilized Big Picture. I am not on that scale, and I do not want to use chemicals (herbicides and pesticides and fertilizers) unless I have to.

Thank goodness for the Internet.

I need to find an "ask stupid gardening questions" website. I have so many to pose...

For instance, yesterday my 3 year old and I discovered some very nice dirt, to my way of thinking. It was under leaves and decomposed branches and rot, altogether an area about the size of an average yard, I'd guess. The soil was black and what I'd call loamy (?). It resembled the stuff you buy in a bag, potting soil. I'm pretty sure it's The Good Stuff. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it.

We raked up a mighty pile of debris covering the Black Dirt. It seems like it would be good to help make my raised beds not so compacted. I'm thinking about doing a lasagna effect and alternating layers of the leafy decomposed stuff, the black dirt, some real bagged stuff, some top soil (I'm thinking to have a truckload delivered for multiple purposes) and maybe some of the grass clippings from the last 2 years...but I have no idea what order or how thick or if I'm making a bad mix...

...but I CAN read, and I WILL find out.

To me, this phase, the dirt, is the most essential. I really want to get it right.

I know real gardeners work on things year-around, but at least I've burned off an area in January and am now getting my dirt together in February...building raised beds in March (and likely starting to plant something maybe).

I cannot wait to get home and get raking/shoveling again today!

Virtual Victrola

...my internal iPod...

It annoys my spouse, I'm sure, and perhaps anyone else who's close enough to me to notice. I suppose I just Jones out once in a while, expressionless, maybe smiling. Sometimes I'm sure I hum...

Here's the thing. I always have music going in my head.

It's not like a voice in my head (though there are vocalists, so I guess...). It's not like I'm making things up, though I can take a tune, even a very complicated one, and twist and turn it around to recombobulate it, change the syncopation or the dynamics or the words or the instruments or...you get the idea.

At times I can get just a snippet of a tune I know, then I'm good for hours. Unlike my brother, the Rainman, I cannot tell you about artists, albums, eras--he can accurately recount all that for you. I cannot always recall lyrics with any shade of assurance. I can, most of the time, pull enough of a tune out that it keeps me occupied for a long while.

This is complicated by Jingles, which have more power over me than any other form of advertising, obviously. I can hear a Jingle once, and then be stuck with it all day. I can "accidentally" hear some song over a store's speakers, even elevator music, then find myself replaying it over and over, like it or not. I have to consciously rethink the tunes, change the mental playlist consciously, to over-ride the tune of the moment.

My music is also complicated by radio/channel changing friends/family. It hearkens back to Max Headroom's BlipVert issue. If someone is scanning through channels and I get just a clip of this, then that, then the other--eeesh. I may end up with a mash-up of it all going in my head. I can sometimes pick which one gets pulled to the front, or I can sometimes shut them all out with something more "popular" or well-known in my head, but other times I am simply overwhelmed.

Fortunately, that does not happen often. If I can attune myself to something else when the channel flipping is happening, then I'm okay.

I actually enjoy this bizarre "gift" of mine, most of the time. It allows me to wile away the hours and never be without a song in my heart. I worry, however, about getting older and losing more control of my head. I worry that songs may crowd out essentials (unless, perhaps, there is nothing more essential than a song in one's heart?). I agonize that I may get stuck on a Jingle, indefinitely. I wonder, more and more, if it's obvious to others that I'm listening to some soundtrack at the same time they are talking to me, that I'm having to consciously attend to them or let them be drown out my my music.

I worry, perhaps most of all, that I'm alone in this whole musical madness.

Clone my dog?

Headline on radio show today related a yellow lab was cloned in Korea for $150,000.

This is not the first instance of a pet being immortalized by being cloned. Apparently, this cloning generates a puppy that looks exactly like the original, even though it will grow up with a personality of its own. It truly IS the original, right down to the genetic makeup, but honestly folks, is there any being that's worth dubbing for $150,000? At my most arrogant, I would not want to be immortalized at any price.

I've been fond of some pets, sure, but I'd rather just go to the pound and save one from certain death. I'd rather just return to the kennel/breeder that brought me Roger , our beagle, than go to all the money, time and effort of having him cloned.

What's it say about our world when we're willing to sink that much cash into cloning a dog rather than feeding starving people or investing that money in education?

Jeepers!

Frank and Earnest

Before I was a parent, I would easily tire of proud parents yammering about their "special" children and gosh-darn cute things they'd say/do.

Now my wife and I grieve that we cannot capture everything. We want helmet cams to wear, and we'd like to wire the kids for 24/7 capture of those things they say, too. (Yes, even in their sleep.)

Something happened last Monday that inspired this entry: at the end of HomeSchool Group--a loose association of parents and kids who homeschool, getting together monthly for crafts and socializing--my son was saying bye to a buddy. The other guy hugged and kissed my son on the cheek. In that moment of embrace, when they were both so sincerely friends who'd miss each other, without a smidge of homophobia or reservations of public displays of affection, without any of the hands-off clutter that most of us in the USA are blocked by--they hugged and kissed.

Now, I could not do that with just anyone, no matter how much they meant to me, be they same sex/students, etc...there are Conditions on being old.

But for them, at that moment, being so frank in their friendship and feelings--beautiful.

Likewise, my boys are inclined to shout "Oh, Baby!" about the prospect of a bath or a walk on our trails...they are so excited, so earnest to live and move and Be...

...I've written in repeatedly, but we should all be more childlike.

I am utterly in Awe

In the course of this week, two folks sent me videos that astound me. Both of these give me cause to pause and marvel. The first is a floor routine that is like juggling, gymnastics, dance, and a whole lot of talent! At first I thought she was doing all this with a bowling ball!




This second video is exactly what I'd be doing with my time if I did not have any children depending on me for their future. What a trip it must be to "fly" like these folk! They are so very radical/crazy in what they do here! (I wonder if there is a military application for these suits, prolly so.)


wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Altogether, I am inspired. About all I can do is walk and chew gum at the same time.

Random holiday reflections

So, I've been offline a week or two. It's now xmas eve and not what I'd like to have happening. Instead, it's loud and chaotic, last minute shopping and wrapping, hectic house cleaning (hopefully yet to come)...

...I wish it were a commercial free holiday. Lots of family reminiscing over something significant, something like a Rockwellian holiday, seen through a filter that blurs the edges, candle-lit charm, xmas music in the background, sipping cider...but it will be nothing of the sort all through the holiday.

Yesterday, for a brief interlude, I was in a store I loved, a health food store that was connected to an independent bookstore via a non-Starbucks coffee shop. It was just the kind of place consistent with my true core values and beliefs. It was what I really saw my life being like, going to poetry readings, writing short stories, rapping with peers over weighty subjects. I always wanted to buy things from developing nations, like from 10,0000 villages, the store. I figured I'd have cultivated friendships globally, perhaps served a term or two abroad myself, known hundreds of kindred spirits through Volunteers through Peace, Peace Corps, etc.

I guess, rather than getting sad over it, I should instead realize life takes turns, and that somehow this must be the turn for the best. It reminds me of "It's a Wonderful Life," and more recently, "Click" or "The Family Man" (or whatever it is, with Nicholas Cage). Their lives went west of center, not south, and they had come not to value what they had. It was not what they intended, and thus, it was deemed mediocre. They learned through the movie, what was truly of value.

I know that my family and what we're working on here is truly of value and consistent with my lifelong goals. It has very little semblance to what I visualized it being, but I guess that's okay. In essence, this is it, even if it's in disguise.

Curious.

I hope in the next year to really get into my Mother Earth News and start gardening and building with gusto. I want to cultivate comfortably w/n my means and values, from crops to friends. I want to begin into livestock, but I'm still wondering about living more conscientiously with the animal world (becoming vegetarian?), and I don't like thinking of what it would be like to raise a calf or pig to just slaughter. It's not that I don't acknowledge that it happens daily on my behalf for shoes, belts, and tons of meat right now, but at least I'm not doing it, directly. Maybe being that involved in what we eat will make us more appreciative of it (see slow food movement and related posts). I hope to find my niche in my head that embraces who I wanted to be more comfortably with who I am (it seems) left to be now. I want to see how I can make it all work out together. I am likely to have to work more and more this next year, especially if we are to ever build on or build outbuildings--all these things take money. Then again, more work is not consistent with more family, friends, farming, etc...but I'll work it out.

I hope everyone has a happy holiday and gets to reflect over the year, plan ahead for 2009. I may not get too worked up about these next three years until I see what happens to 2012, the next year prognosticated as the End of the World. After that, well, then maybe I'll start saving money. :)

Viral Video Highlights

There's little I can add to this, other than to restate how wonderful the world is with the Internet!

Enjoy...

It comes

Building, like the pressure and the silence when I dive deep in a pool, that feeling I get is coming again. Like the tangle of too much bedding and a night sweat to boot, I feel it enveloping me, early this year. It comes without regard, without reservation. It looms large, like a pressure system change, like a massive thunderhead. I have known weightlessness, having been bungee jumping, and I know that I will feel that, too, so very soon. The weightlessness of gloom, the darkness that follows the lightening storm. The End of the Semester Blues is creeping up on me like a high tide acid bath.

At least I know it is there, behind every door, waiting behind this monitor for when I send in the last grade. I can steel myself up against it this time, maybe, and avoid the funk, but it will still get on my shoes, in my hair, and stuck in the corners of my eyes. I'll be blowing it out of my sinuses for weeks, shaking it out of my shorts and shoes, too. About the time I shed that skin, a new semester will begin, and then...and THEN! Ahhhhh....it all begins again!




I could use a smoke!

On the eve of "knowing..."

...I'm not sure I want to. Tomorrow, through the marvels of modern medicine, we will come to learn a small bit of information. About noon tomorrow, another life will come into a clearer focus as we learn if that peanut in my wife's belly is to be a boy or girl. While my boys at home think this only matters as to whether she will sit or he will stand to pee, the +/- of it all is everything at once.

Having never had a daughter, I find it daunting.



Just considering the sex of the child is so very vast, so epic to me. I am so very glad that genetic engineering is still in its infancy, for I would not ever feel confident-enough to determine someone's destiny by what to predetermine they pack in their pants.

I think even if I were an old hand at fatherhood, if I'd birthed a brood of boys AND girls, myself--I don't think that even then I'd have the nerve to pin the tail on the donkey. To hang a penis on one or carve a niche for another--that's the stuff of God.

About as close as I dare imagine is to have a role in naming new beings that are my responsibility. My wife and I spend hours, days, years planning something so seemingly simple as a name. Sometimes I don't care, so far as even to let our firstborn name our third-born...knowing all the while that the kid can always have a name change down the road. Besides, they're likely to get stuck with some nickname, Skippy or Sparky or something, so perhaps the Power of Names is highly over-rated.

I was noodling around about this very issue early this morning, worrying that if we were to have a daughter, just how very challenging it is to come up with her first and middle names, irregardless of how well they may sound with our last name, since she would be likely to take the name of her husband in just a couple decades. So in naming her, one must think up something that goes well with everything, yet is not inconsistent with the naming conventions already established in our clan. Oh, the agony! So very tricky to even entertain! (So, on this note, I hope the newbie will be a boy, again.)

Once we do Know, it seems a whole chain reaction takes place, from wardrobe to sleeping arrangements. Even now, well, tomorrow, I will begin to assemble a world for him/her that is in his/her best interests. I will align the planets, set the galaxies in orbit around that child...and oddly, to me, so very, very much of what is to be established is indeed related to what's between the legs.

That's a crass way of saying it, but really--men and women are as different as species, at times. This news tomorrow will be the catalyst of a lifetime of sexism and typecasting, like it or not. The pink or the blue? The dolly or the gun? Though we have always encouraged our boys to be themselves (yeah, they have dolls and nurture them, so eat THAT)....I must admit, even now, that no matter how fairly I intend to operate things, there will be assumptions, accommodations, etc. that will be less-than-equitable, should peanut be a princess. I guess all I can do is try my best.

...but maybe all this angst is just for nothing. There is no knowing until the sonogram, and unfortunately, I'll be in class issuing a final when my newest creation issues his/her barbaric yawlp into the embryonic fluid and the ear of the sonographer.

*sigh*

So...Snow!

Don't I have anything better to write about than the weather? Not today. It's the first true snowfall of the year here, and I'm giddy. While I welcome every season change (that's why I stay here) I seem to be especially nostalgic when it comes to winter snow. I suppose it's got something to do with all the holiday clap-trap. I'm sure there's more being made of it all in my mind and memory than ever in reality...

I can remember scaling a snow drift that allowed easy access to the roof of our shop. I can still recall watching the weather man (on a black and white television) moving felt stick-on's that represented fronts, high and low pressure--all very technical sounding stuff by today's standards--and waiting for him to even hint at a snow day. I've been in my share of snow ball fights, built many-a snow fort, made a few snow angels. Having grown up in the country, we also were known to ride old pickup truck hoods as sleds behind the tractor. We used to come in from the cold to stand (on one foot, then the other), dripping, shivering over a floor furnace--warmth never felt so good!

I've been fascinated with what wind can do to snow. I'm sure it can sculpt sand and even stone over time--but snow drifting is glistening, sparkly and temporal. In eastern Kansas, where the wind is wimpy, I've been amazed at how snow can pile six inches high on a fence post.

I'm documenting all these warm-fuzzies, for I know there will be days this winter when I will curse the cold and snow. Today, however, while it's all fresh in my mind and new for the season, I rejoice!

Health is Wealth

Last week I had to go to a medical specialist for an *ahem* issue. Since it was my first visit, I had reams of paperwork to complete. As I am not one to go to doctors, it is rare that I fill all this out.

After something like 40 potential ailments and more family history--all checked off duly as "no" "no" "no" I began to feel better already! I may not even have needed to see the specialist, for after it was clarified that I was not hurting from x, y, z...I felt downright healthy!

I think many of us need to acknowledge just how healthy we are. I know that I take it for granted far too much. I've never had a surgery, never a broken bone (save knuckles). I've not been hospitalized, ever...until my kids were born, I'd never even spent the night in one, other than my own birth.

My three boys are all models of health. Every time one gets the sniffles or a belly ache, however, I become a worry-wort for them. My in-laws dealt with losing a boy at the age of 13 to lukemia--I do not think I could handle that. I just need to continue to be thankful and aware of the good health given to us. I need to celebrate it daily! It's so great to be healthy (even if pathetically out of shape) that it should be a national holiday! Health happiness should get its own day of the week, like the sabbath.

Yee-haw for Health!

The Road

I just finished a James Patterson novel in about two days, and while it was fun and engaging, it's gone. On the other hand, I read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy just last week before Thanksgiving, and it continues to resonate.

Set in a grizzly post-nuclear war wasteland, the novel can be read as a father and son travel tale. "The man" never is named, we never know his former profession, height, appearance--the story seems void of most of the conventional trappings of character development. "The boy" likewise is universally undefined; not even his age is clear. It's hard to tease out exactly how long ago the world was torched, but I'm guessing about six or seven years. Throughout the book, the two encounter a few other people, a lot of corpses, bones and skulls.

They are on a march south, to somewhere that may be warm and not overcast (from what I interpret to be Nuclear Winter). Everything seems hopeless, except the goal, and even that seems more of a mindset than a reality. They seem to be gritty survivors more than victims, but the man's wife argues they are not even that:

We're survivors he told her across the flame of the lamp.
Survivors? she said.
Yes.
What in God's name are you talking about? We're not survivors. We're the walking dead in a horror film.

The wife's description sums up everyone they meet. No one is well, suggesting that radiation, ash, no health care--all the above--is wearing everyone left on down to the bone. Description and imagery like made the book so seizing to me: Wearing masks and goggles , sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined aviators.

I've read many post-apocalyptic yarns, but this one is getting a place on my shelf next to Jonathan Schnell's non-fiction nuclear war scare book The Fate of the Earth. It has a degree of credibility and sensation to it like few I've read before, and yet it's speculative fiction, describing a world I hope we never come to know. McCarthy's depth of detail and creativity astound me.

This was most evident to me in the way the man and boy value things that we take for granted: a shopping cart, a blanket, a tarp, a Kool-aid pack. Little details of their lives take on seismic significance, like when the boy accidentally leaves the gas turned on a propane lamp, a recent find they treasured for its heat and light. They find a smattering of cornmeal in a cabinet and carefully sift the mouse feces and dirt from it before making little corn cakes which they savor. The attention to scarcity, the MacGuyver-like resourcefulness, and the unique approach to survival--all incredibly imaginative.

Had I read this book seven years ago, before I started down the path of fatherhood, I would have missed a great deal of the novel's potency. I might have offered something like the blurb on the cover, that The Road "is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best of what we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation."

Now, however, I find the book is truly all about fatherhood, in the absolute most challenging situation one might imagine. The man wakes at night to put his hand on his son's chest to feel his heart and breathing. Sometimes he does this when the boy is terribly ill or cold, times when life would seem to be fragile. Other times he does this in reverence. The man, I gather, has taught this boy everything he knows, and I believe the boy knew no other life before the bomb (sad as that is, the boy, under his father's leadership, has values and a good spirit). Still, the boy comes up with phrases and ideas that surprise his father (just like my boys do, but they are surrounded by inputs). Their relationship is the heart of the book, and it's a must-read for any dad.

In fact, for anyone who's needing a hero, I suggest reading The Road. While the man may not act like Mad Max or that Kostner character from Waterworld, his small acts, like giving a last morsel of food to his son, make him a hero. He tells his son they are the good guys, the keepers of the flame, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Now I find, while looking for a book jacket image, that this novel has been made into (what appears to be a respectable) film. It is scheduled for release in 2009!

Tough Guys have Big Hair

see famous look-a-like faces

I need bigger hair to look really tough! Now I have a goal I can reach. What's it take to grow hair?

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