Mary Poppins?

I slapped this into MusementParking almost a year ago as a placeholder, on 4/17/13 to be exact. Fortunately my powers of recollection have not failed me, and I can share with you now, dear readership, just WHY dear Mary Poppins has been the voice of my blog over my hiatus.

I pulled this from a MOOC [massively open online course] lesson on reward in game theory. What? I have to realize that of the lot of you, several may not know what even a MOOC might be, let alone much about game theory....and even if you know all that, you might wonder what a good ol' English teacher is doing prattling around all that. Might as well take up spellcheck with an  ouija board.

And that, the paragraph above, is likely why all I did was paste Mary Poppins in to entertain you. I have a shorter answer as to her advice being my standing word here for a year....in my current role in faculty development, I've come to realize that customer service really comes down to her jingle. A spoonful of sugar really does make even the most jagged and bitter pill easier to swallow. I've had to share some very bad news with my colleagues, and I've given ear to even more unpalatable things than I could share here. It helps, so very much, to sing a little sugar into even the most badass message. Customer service, then, is about balancing good and bad news, good and bad vibes.

You find the fun, and SNAP, the job's a game!

This is truly why Julie Andrews has been greeting my readers for a long time now. Though her actual song and dance are more memorable, this adage is the golden nugget (or golden ticket if you want to go all Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on me)

Long/short of it is that we need the juice in all our pursuits. We need the dopamine. We need the challenge, surprise, competition, reward--we need the stuff of games to thrive. To the extent that we can game life, we can enjoy life. I am finding this so very true.

In the small ways here at first, I set a timer or make a goal, then knock it out of the park and rejoice. Example: I'm going to clear this inbox in ten minutes. When I have, then bippity-boppity-bacon! In my head I hear the jingle jangle tune of the Wheel of Fortune slot machine payout and I do the happy dance. (You might not even know all that was going on in my head if you were just to watch me at the computer. Then again, I might seem especially strange at that moment. I don't know.)

Of course, this has more immediate connectivity to "the job" and in my case, gamifying faculty development, but I'll save that for my other blog presence over at BCC's Faculty Development site.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Religulous--watch it again...

Inflammatory, but isn't that what we all need? a good jolting.

What do you think, gentle readers?

Character--built!

A couple of entries back, I was dreading a trip due to my deep-seated fears of cities. I can't cross that off the list entirely, but I can say I have had some insights....

1) we're all the same, really, just a bunch of insecure bags of water making our way

2) people of NYC were indifferent, not at all preying on my ignorance but more helpful than I ever expected

3) nobody approached me for anything (back to insight 2) = anonymity and invisibility which I often prefer

4)NYC (well, we were really mostly in Manhattan) is just iron and stone, brick and mortar, and a whole lot of people squished together

This last one seems silly, but 'tis truly an insight. Like when our iconic heroes are leveled to be mere actors, like when our flawless parents prove to be all too human--the emblem of NYC that forever loomed over me as some Thing that I am not is now...well a very big town that one walks in, rides through, navigates about like anything else. It is not impenetrable. It is not impregnable nor impossible to manage. People there are, indeed, steeled up for speed, chaos, crowds, crime--but they are also very much still juuuust people. (You could take someone off the streets of NYC and dress them like a Kansan and no one could readily see a distinction.) They watch the same shows [Warehouse 13] we do (well, and some there also watch $250 a night Broadway shows). They eat fast food, [Subway] same as me. Even the TV channels were very much like I'd watch in Ulysses. This last insight, this "sameness," really surprised me. I don't know what I'd expect them to watch and do....maybe to be constantly cosmopolitan or criminal--I don't know. I have found, at any rate, that traveling together on planes, buses, etc. levels the playing field, puts us all on the same page, makes us all 'mericans.

This also puts me on the cusp of something that I know to be true, yet in my schema have yet to prove to myself: that even people the world over are more similar than different. We may not all be Americans, but we're all people...basically good people. I know that's right, but I have many more hurdles to overcome before I'll ever be able to walk the streets of Jakarta or Tokyo comfortably.

Someday I hope to be that savvy.

Oil slimes coast--I've had ENOUGH!

We used to work for Chevron/Texaco, Pennzoil, Merrit, Devon, and other oil companies. It felt like dirty work, not only because it was a middle-man job doing accounting (which I hate), but also because we were billing farmers outrageous sums of money for natural gas coming from their own land. Worst of all, I just felt all...oily...because I did not like working for those multi-billion dollar conglomerates.

I know, I know, before I get all high and mighty, I'd better reckon with the fact that petroleum is what makes the world go around, from my pickup to plastic, from my shoe soles to my lip balm.

That said, here's my bitch: The staggering wealth of the oil companies makes them get absolutely no sympathy from me. I would not give them a ten cent break on cleaning up this oil in the ocean. BP's quarterly earnings could likely more-than-cover the entire cost of the clean up:

"Integrated oil giant BP reported that it lost more than $3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, down from an $8 billion gain in the prior quarter and a $4.4 billion gain in the year-ago period. It was the company's first quarterly loss in more than seven years. For the year, BP's profit was $21.16 billion, up from $20.85 billion in 2007. " Source.

I would never give them a subsidy for anything, greedy bastards. Yet we do:

"Greenpeace believes Europeans spend about $10 billion or so (USD equivalent) annually to subsidize fossil fuels. By contrast, it thinks the American oil and gas industry might receive anywhere between $15 billion and $35 billion a year in subsidies from taxpayers." Source.

Yes, it makes me sick. It makes me angry. It also emphasizes how helpless I feel. I know there are mega-giant corporate powers profiteering from the war, from big oil, from our lifestyle decisions to drive so much solo and eat processed food stuffs so obsessively. Knowing has not made me feel any better about it.

Trademark THIS

Greed and ownership drive corporations to new extremes. This topic would be a hot one for an issue-oriented essay. What am I writing about now?

Subway files a claim to trademark the word "footlong" and badgers small businesses currently using the term. On-ramp to the full-on debacle here, courtesy of an NPR blog.

Yes, as always, I'm late to the fracas, now raging since May 9th or so. Nonetheless, here's my opinion:

What grounds do they have to trademark something in such general use as "footlong" anyway?

Next we'll see trademarked:

Spicy

Hot and juicy

Cold (as in cold beer)

Good

For sale

What will be immune to trademarking if this goes through?

The issues of ownership, intellectual property, identity and brand are very engaging. I am no attorney, but it would seem to me that generic words could not be owned. I don't like it that any words are owned. I suppose I could see that a brand name concocted from a corporate punk's head might be okay if it were not in the OED or any other dictionary already...those words could be owned.

In fact, some like Polaroid, Xerox, and Kleenex have won battles in court for decades now. I agree with these guys, for the words did not exist prior to the inventions, ideas, etc. associated with the company that owned the trademarked term.

Leave it at that.

Subway, be a creative force instead of a monopolizing bully. Here, you marketing wizards, I'll give you some lingo to sling and trademark:

30.48 cm Sandwich

Eatcha IntoaComa Sandwich

SewerLog Sandwich

Want to keep that alliteration going? Five dollar Floater Sandwich

Friends don't let friends blog alone. Contribute your fresh ideas (oops, "fresh" is prolly a Subway owned word, too) in your replies.

Roughing It

I've never been for a ride in a Model-T Ford, but I have been in cab-less vehicles that had firm shocks, leaf springs front and rear...an old Willys Jeep (precursor of the AMC Jeeps we all know and love). I've been studying old cars for most of my life and know there are modern conveniences we take for granted:

1. comfortable, adjustable seats
2. automatic transmission
3. windows
4. music
5. gauges
6. power steering
7. power brakes
8. power windows
9. good exhaust
10. air conditioning
11. safety features
12. (nearly) rattle-free interiors
13. quiet rides
14. GPS systems

...and I could go on.

We marvel that people could drive such harsh vehicles, so brutal and inconsiderate. We also marvel that people used to leave food products out of the fridge between meals, that they used root cellars to preserve food, that they had the windows open and open fire places!

Once upon a time, you had to open doors all by yourself at grocery stores.

Used to be, you had to talk to a teller to get some cash.

We were able to write on little slips of paper to conduct business rather than use credit/debit cards...and we carried cash (real green stuff).

...and I could, again, go on.

The point of this entry (and I'm just warming up to it) is that we have so many modern conveniences and luxuries which we never reckon with [clean, running water--indoor plumbing!]. The one I am thinking of most right now is the humble computer.

Yes, I grew up on a typewriter. I was using the Internet when it was just a blue screen and white text (and we thought that was da'bomb).

I am sharing this because I realize frequently how very, very dependent I am on technology and how much of a wuss I am due to creature comforts. When visiting Mexico, I had a few reality checks, and when I revisit my homeland and farmstead, I again am reminded of my childhood and "roughing it" back then with black and white TV coming in via aerial.

I guess there's no turning back, but frankly, I'd like to. I'd go all the way back to the buckboard and kerosene light. My only issue would be medical care, but I guess we're likely to be reverting to that 19th century medical practice anyway, thanks to what's afoot.

I could go a week without a shower, use an outhouse, take cold showers (uhgh, starting to get into my sacred comfort zone now). I could stand only traveling 40 miles a day on horseback. I could sleep on the ground. About all I could not handle--dental care!!!!

Just one kid

Sometimes I wish I had just one kid.

If I'd read that 10 years ago, I'd be thinking, "Of course. If you must procreate, if you have to make another mouth to feed, stop at just replicating your self and filling your void. Don't go crazy breeding. After all, who wants to hassle and struggle and freak about a herd of kids?"

Now, however, the whole idea generally seems like blasphemy. If we only had one kid, we'd not have all the interest and intrigue magnified by the other three. If we only had one kid, then there would be too much down time. We'd be bored.

The reason I do, however, sometimes long for a single child is simple: any one of them could absorb as much love, attention and instruction as I could offer. Jax, our oldest, has a very fast working mind on overdrive, on crack or steroids! Like me, he has divergent, tangential musements that churn around his head 24/7. Like me, he cannot keep up with all the ideas that flash through. The difference between us is that I do not vocalize all mine. Jax shares his mile-a-minute idea stream freely, constantly. He would be diagnosed as ADHD in school, but we know he's just lively. I cannot listen to all of it. I don't respond fairly to all of it. I miss too much of it, when at work, eating, sleeping, etc. This is not really fair to him, for when he's not rambling, he's narrating his own stories w/characters he creates from toys or from his head. He has elaborate plots for plays and movies. He also has the ability to absorb movies--knowing more catch phrases and movie quotes than I do! I'm sure he's the same way with school and music. I am very full of remorse, for I don't give him enough attention. If he were the only child, like he was for nearly 3 years, even then he might not get enough attention!

Carson offers near-constant companionship. He is insatiable in his curiosity. He's always pointing out insects, mechanical devices, plants and animals--but unlike the annoying stereotype of kids just saying "Why?" a million times, Carson wants to know more. He is getting too smart, even at the age of 4, to settle for a pat answer like "Because the world's food chain depends on ants doing that." He dissects dead animals, studies decomposing mice, pulls bugs off the pickup grill... Carson is analytical, mechanical, and very, very tactile. He cannot be sated when it comes to how the world works or what it is made of. We have talked for hours about exactly that--the planet and what one would encounter if they were to dig it all up. Again, there are not enough hours in the day to satisfy his needs and interests, and when further divided by his siblings and my other obligations, I feel like a terrible parent who slights his children.

Edison is under development. We joke that he is obsessed with food and drink, but I think he's growing through that. He's into fitness, and he wants to compete with his brothers. He does push ups and lifts weights (everything is a weight, from pencils to fence posts). When he runs, his whole upper body twists comically, something I know he's going to outgrow too soon. As I have written previously, recently, Ed is someone I fear I don't know too well due to all of the above distractions, and again, if it were only Ed, then I might be able to give him enough.

Ellision, our almost-one-year-old, is just now becoming an individual on my radar. There's a stage in baby-ness that really starts to get my attention. From birth to about this age, they are just responding to stimuli like any other animal...but about this age, they all become intellectually interactive, making decisions and learning consequences of their choices. They become mobile and 'talkative.' Ella is just now getting there, and if everyone in the house wore a "mommy cam" I still think we'd miss things. This is all the more upsetting since she's the end of the line. No more babies. No more life from the perspective of such novelty and innocence. I am missing so much of it, and even if she were the one and only child, I don't think I could capture it all.

So, there you go....at least 4 reasons for an only child. Then again, in writing and reading over these, it's clear that they may compete for my attention, but I want to give them all my all.

Masks

from "What's under your mask?"

I have a long-standing fascination with masks.

One of my top ten spots to revisit would be the Museum of Masks in Zacatecas, Mexico. Not only does it have an awesome mask collection, it is also a reconfigured abbey, set carefully w/n ruins that are 100's of years old. (I've blogged about it before.)

One of my favorite school art projects ever was a mask I made in 7th grade art. It was a paper mache African mask featuring a hairpiece I constructed from broom bristles. (It's still in the attic in my hometown.)

One of my favorite holidays, second only to April Fool's, is Halloween. Not only have I had some swell costumes in general, I have made some masks that really wowed people.

Masks allow us to pretend with ease. They give us a simple way to role play. They offer a shelter in which to hide our true selves and let others make impressions. An artist came through Cowley 10-15 years ago and did some work with children and masks. I was amazed (back then, having no context of children) to see how they grooved on masks. Now, I would safely say my kids could punt about any toy except their costumes and masks.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not wax on about the metaphor of masks. The flesh encasing us does little to express who we really are. Facial works cannot really convey deep seated sorrow or absolute bliss. These are not the stuff of skin.

Masks can be our faces, but they can also be our ethnicity, our demographics, our titles. Masks can be stripped from us, sometimes, like moments of astonishment and surprise. When some shocking tragedy slaps us all around, like the Oklahoma City bombing (recently remembered), then we drop our masks, if even for an instant.

What would it be like to live w/o masks? to be true to ourselves and transparently ourselves, always?