tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23633440602691981982024-03-05T02:14:40.095-08:00Kentucky Wonder-erAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-66747437184364649292017-10-23T08:08:00.003-07:002017-10-23T08:16:51.955-07:00<div class="MsoNormal">
I am re-reading books from the past, some that influenced
me, some that pissed me off, and some that created movements that piss me off
today.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Today’s book fits the latter category. As I was browsing
through used books a few weeks ago, I came across a paperback anniversary copy
of Ayn Rand’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Atlas Shrugged</i>, so I
picked it up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Atlas Shrugged</i> is
a 1032-page unreadable novel, in which Ms. Rand misrepresents ideas from some rationalist
philosophers, mostly of the 19<sup>th</sup> Century variety, without
attribution (probably a good thing), adds the wonder of solipsism, ices the
concoction with a dollar sign, and brags about inventing a new political philosophy/religion
called “objectivism”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The capitalist god Ms. Rand uses to present this “objectivism”
is John Galt. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The “nut” (pun intended) of the book is found on pages 927
through 984, which comprises God Galt’s rant to the public. My favorite part of
this condescending soliloquy:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 13.5pt; margin-right: 63.0pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
…. With the
sign of the dollar as our symbol—the sign of free trade and free minds—we will
move to reclaim this country once more from the impotent savages who never
discovered its nature, its meaning its splendor. Those who choose to join us,
will join us; those who don’t, will not have the power to stop us; hordes of
savages have never been an obstacle to men who carried the banner of the mind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 13.5pt; margin-right: 63.0pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 13.5pt; margin-right: 63.0pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
Then this
country will once more become a sanctuary for a vanishing species: the rational
being.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It is worth noting that “rational being” is one divorced
from any belief in higher beings—God.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On page 984, God Galt states: “I swear—by my live and my
love of it —that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another
man to live for mine.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ayn Rand, God Galt’s creator, atheist evangelist for
selfishness (her word), preacher against anything smacking of “welfare”, and
heavy cigarette smoker, found herself, as she was facing death, becoming a “welfare
queen”. She considered Medicare a form of welfare. She had no choice in the end
but to ask for help from “another man”—the state.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This atheist author, and this novel, with its ill-conceived
ideas and poorly constructed paragraphs and sentences, became a bible for the
likes of Ronald Regan, Ron Johnson, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Clarence Thomas, Gary
Johnson, etc. It became an integral part of the tea party and today’s
Libertarian Party, and a sizable sect of today’s Republican Party.<o:p></o:p></div>
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These “Christians” cheery pick from Ms. Rand’s novels, as
they do from their Bible, what they want to believe, and what they want to use
as cudgels with which to mold this country to their ideas.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wonder where the rational beings are?</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-69002045159610532572016-04-28T07:46:00.000-07:002016-04-28T07:50:22.899-07:00Game of Thrones<style>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Game of Thrones</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">It was an
ugly building</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">No matter
the attempts to dress it up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Rough
lumber formed sides and door.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tin on the
roof, sometimes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Surrounded
by flies in Summer,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And poke
berries for color.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Winter
brought frost. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Ice and
snow found the wall’s cracks</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And covered
the seat</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Which had
no lid.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Scraping
was required</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Before
business conducted.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
building </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In winter
taught self control.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The path
was not trod unless</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">There were
no other options.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In summer
it taught tolerance</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">For odors,
textures, and flies,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And snakes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
building</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Was
educational,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Housing
reading material</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">That served
multiple purposes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I learned
about the latest </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In bicycles
and toys,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And ladies’
undergarments.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
building </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Had one
hole.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Churches in
the country had two.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I marveled
at the fact.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Rich people
may have had two, too.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Perhaps.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
building</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Was my
hideout,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Separated
by the three-rooms</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">By twenty
feet of scrub grass.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I owned
this three-by-four feet of space.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">This was my
building for years.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Until it
disappeared, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And
four-by-six feet of warmth </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And comfort
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Was brought
into my house on Ice Plant Hill.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">We now
share special,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Porcelain-endowed,
spacious rooms, indoors.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">We now, in comfort
and privilege </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">With time on our hands,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Devote
ourselves to wondering who</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Used these special
places before us,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Who occupies
them with us now,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And whether
or not these imagined people </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Are worthy
of us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">They scare
us, these imaginary people,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">More than
the flies and snakes,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The ice and
snow,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">That used
to greet us each morning</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the
building that sat outside in the cold.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-15399577145255573802016-03-01T13:10:00.000-08:002016-11-17T07:09:30.102-08:00Lying Again, Again<style>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I did a
blog post on April 10, 2012 called “We are Lyin’: Are we Dyin’?”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is an update of that 2012
post.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In 1978,
Sissela Bok published a book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lying:
Moral Choice in Public and Private Life</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On page 19 of the Vintage paperback sitting on my desk, Ms.
Bok invites us to: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“Imagine a society, no matter how
ideal in other respects, where word and gesture could never be counted upon.”</span></b><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I do
believe that, in politics at least, we are there. In 2016, politicians have
become brazen about lying—saying things they know are lies, knowing that people
will know that they are lies, and knowing that people won’t care because they
expect to be lied to. So as long as the lies reflect what people want to
believe, the lying politician will win votes. It is happening today. When
caught in a lie, they lie about having lied, win more votes, and are praised
for “telling it like it is”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In fact, in
2016 not a small number of people are <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">asking</b>
politicians to lie to us. The larger the lie,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the more we support them. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Evidence,</i> the 2016 GOP primaries.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">We have actually
codified the legitimacy of lying. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Evidence</i>:
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(1) As a result of U.S. vs. Alvarez,
I may lie with impunity about my war record (sic); (2) This week, an Ohio law
that prohibited false statements about a candidate for office bit the dust. The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6<sup>th</sup> Circuit stuck it down, using the
Supreme Court’s money-is-free-speech decision to support their decision. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And we just elected a man whose lies are documented, blatant, and loved by his followers. He in turn has chosen an expert in propaganda as his chief advisor.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Lies are now
legally considered a part of self-expression, politicians who lie to us cannot
be held legally accountable for those lies, and we the people beg them to tell
us bigger and more bodacious lies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Bok says,
again on page 19, “Deceit and violence—these are the two forms of deliberate
assault on human beings,” and “society could scarcely function without some
degree of truthfulness in speech and action.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: 10.0pt;">And I again wonder if
anyone is grieving for our loss. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-50170446644607001292014-12-29T12:23:00.000-08:002015-06-23T06:58:16.279-07:00Guns again<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another senseless killing involving guns, which have now become religious symbols in the U.S. This killing was "inspired" by another favorite U.S. religion: racism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So here I go again, re-publishing this same old piece I wrote several years ago.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On hot Saturday afternoons in Kentucky, in the 50s, my
sister Betty Zane would give me fifty cents to take my niece Karen Lee by the
hand and go “uptown” to the Lido Theatre. Karen and I would watch a few
commercials, a cartoon or two, an episode of a serial, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash Gordon</i>, and at least one
movie—sometimes it was a double feature. Usually the movies were westerns with
flashy guns figuring prominently. I lusted after pearl handled toy six
shooters.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I remember how I felt when we walked out of the cool, dark theater into the heat and glare of a late afternoon. Surreal and high. In the
two or three hours inside, I had become Flash Gordon, Whip Wilson, Lash LaRue,
Gene Autry or whoever the hero happened to be. Being the older uncle (I was
maybe 9), I kept these feelings to myself as Karen and I walked home. When I
got home, though, I’d head for the woods with my imagination for a horse and
fingers for guns and kill the bad guys or Indians with the appropriate gun
sounds and death sounds coming out of my mouth. I was transported into another
reality, and I enjoyed it a lot. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I got older, I enjoyed driving nails from as far away as
possible with my daddy’s .22.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The only part of the Army’s basic training that I enjoyed
was the rifle range. The M-16 was light weight and accurate and fun to fire. I
was good at it. I have a medal to prove it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Guns, real and imagined, have been a part of my experience
all my life. I currently own several real ones; fewer imaginary ones as time
passes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In 1992, my son was a precocious 16-year-old student in a
small (300 student) private college tucked away in the woods of Western
Massachusetts. Christmas was approaching. One of his fellow students bought an
assault rifle and ammunition and killed a professor and a student and wounded
others. Luck (or God or fate or Karma or….) intervened on my family’s part and he
was not physically injured. We still deal with it psychologically. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Every time there is a new tragedy involving a
school or mall or street corner, or whatever, it gets dragged out again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The incidences are increasing. Blame is placed at everyone, except for one major U.S. group, who manages to shape public policy, using fear and money.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I sit in Colorado on a cold December day, I wonder why:</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
pledge allegiance to the flag “and to the Republic for which it stands,” BUT</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
believe that our founders believed that the elected “government” of this Republic
might someday take our guns away and subjugate us</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We,
therefore, believe we have the right to own as many guns of whatever kind as we
want—not the smart bombs, drone planes, tanks, and dirty weapons owned by our “government”,
but GUNS—with which to protect ourselves from the smart bombs, drones, tanks,
and dirty weapons our government might throw at us in order to subjugate us</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our
elected representatives (those same government people who might come after us
one day) pledge allegiance to The National Rifle Association to act on our
behalf against the government that we fear is going to enslave us—themselves</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
NRA (the largest lobbying group in the country) collects boatloads of money from
us, which they use to support those representatives (the people who might
subjugate us) in their continued reelections. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I admit I’m not all that smart, but I wonder where the logic
and reason went. "Guns don't kill, people do." "God (via the first amendment brought down from the mountain) gave me the right to bear arms." </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Think about that. I wonder if people would worship the same mantra if it read:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1. Atomic bombs don't kill, people do</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2. I have the God-given right to bear arms</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3. By all definitions, the A-bomb is "arms"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4. Therefore I have the God-given right to my own bomb</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I find myself feeling that same sense of the surreal I felt leaving the Lido Theater all those years ago. Without the high.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I make no
judgment about my friends who continue to hunt, shoot for sport, collect, and
love guns. God bless you. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I do hold some ill will toward the NRA (not the rank and
file, but the “NRA government” that controls the organization). I also hold ill
will toward cowardly politicians who support the NRA government over that of the
U.S, and pass laws that fly in the face of reason, humanity, and love of
country, in the name of guns.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wonder if these people think I’m calling them ignorant and
un-American. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I sure hope so.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-63357136168884968102013-07-14T08:48:00.001-07:002013-07-14T08:48:40.123-07:00Search for Decoder Rings
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the mid-1950s I was very active in the Methodist Church
in my hometown in Kentucky. It was the hub of my social life and provided some
grounding for me as I tried to figure out who and what I was.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In college in 1962, the Wesley Foundation, also affiliated
with Methodist Church, became the hub of my social life. The grounding shifted.
I started reading at Tillich and Kierkegaard and Bonheoffer and their ilk as a
result of my involvement with the Wesley Foundation. I say “read at” because I
was not equipped to read and understand these guys, but it seemed they had
important things to say so I kept plugging away at them. I also got tuned into Hoffer
as well as the beginnings of liberation theology and social justice.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, in my Freshman English classes I started reading at
Transcendentalists and Existentialists, and going to movies that I did not
understand. I did understand that they held messages that, if I could decode
them, would be important.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also spent some time in college reading at the Bible (not
in Aramaic or Hebrew of course—I did not have the languages), knowing there
were messages there as well, if I could decode them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Several of my friends, the ones who weren’t majoring in
philosophy or accounting, were looking into Divinity School, so I learned about
Vanderbilt, The University of Chicago, and the crown jewel of the genre, as
determined by the elite of Western Kentucky State College, Yale.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since college I have read at other philosophers, the Qur’an
(not in Aramaic of course), Zen, Taoism, and such, looking for codes, or at
least decoder rings, while fantasizing about spending a year studying things
mystical at Chicago, in Kyoto, cruising the Greek Islands, and, most
importantly, spending time at Yale.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the years passed, religion gave up on me. I maintained a
belief in a metaphysical power, but its manifestation in temporal organizations
created by humans ran counter to my understanding of that power. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In plain English, I fell out of love
with the religions created by preachers, priests, and theologians.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I became a management professor in the early 1980s, put
aside fantasies of studying the metaphysical through the lenses of the temporal,
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and focused my attention on management
literature, some of which purported to contain wisdom and answers. The good
news was that this literature was easy to read and understand. The bad news is
that is was easy to read and understand, and contained no decoder rings.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last week I spent two days at Yale University’s Divinity
School, attending a conference on “Practical Wisdom” as it relates to the
application of things spiritual to the practice of management. In attendance
were international CEOs and business school faculty and administrators
representing fundamentalist Christians, Catholics (including Jesuits and
Benedictines), Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and a couple of
Humanists. I served on a panel discussing the notion of “timeless leadership”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The conference did not last a year, and only involved Yale,
not Kyoto, Chicago, or Vanderbilt. But it was Yale. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The really important thing is that this two-day experience tied
an earlier me (the searcher of the 1960s) to a more recent me (the management-professor-turned-cynic
of the 21<sup>st</sup> Century) in some satisfying ways. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are people over the world, not just theologians and
philosophers, but business people and professors as well, who continue to look
for decoder rings, to search for meaning in the world into which we have been
thrown. This encourages me because I believe that search forms the essence of
being human.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In September I will mark 69 years on this earth, this time
around at any rate. I wonder how many people live to see pieces of their
earliest fantasies, especially those we have discarded, realized in their old
age as a part of a pattern. I am worried that most do not. I am giddy about the
fact that this kid from Kentucky did. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-14450575593308300912013-02-09T12:59:00.000-08:002013-02-09T13:11:09.341-08:00Sensuality and Weather<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the late 1950s I sang in the Methodist church choir.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wednesday night was choir practice
night, a night when Tobby Burklow, Edd Hust, Edna Earl Vilines, and others
would get together to practice songs for Sunday’s service. I was the youngest
singer, and under the tutelage of Tobby Burklow learned to sing church tenor. This
was my social life on Wednesday nights.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Choir practice never lasted more than an hour and a half.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what frequently happened afterward
became much more important, and memorable to me over time. The night that
greeted me on these nights was inviting and demanded my attention. I remember
these winter nights being cold and dark, the air thick with humidity, driving
rain and sleet. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In those days my winter coats were never a match for the
winters they faced, a result of my lack of money to buy good heavy coats, and my
teenage need to look better than I thought cheap weather-efficient coats
offered. I also owned one pair of shoes, bought for looks rather than service. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So generally I was not prepared to exchange the warmth of
the softly-lit church for the darkness and damp that awaited me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rather than being put off by the weather, however, I
remember embracing it, being in no hurry to walk home. The rain and sleet
caressed my face, dripped off my nose, crept up my pant legs, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and soaked my feet. Shivers greeted my
body and joined with the tenor line to “Holy, holy, holy” (number one song in
the old Methodist Hymnal) rolling around in my mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At my house, when it got dark, my daddy went to bed. When my
daddy went to bed, everyone in the house went to bed as well. In the winter,
darkness came as early as 5:00. So, when I got home on those cold Wednesday
nights my momma and daddy were asleep, the coal stove banked for the night
hours earlier, the un-insulated three room house wrapped up on the outside with
a coating of ice. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember opening the front door as quietly as possible,
the task made easier by the fact that we never locked the door. One did not
make noise in my house. If Big John were awakened, I was in trouble.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dripping and shivering, still enjoying the feeling, I would
quietly make my way through the living room to the kitchen, where I slept. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We didn’t use sheets when I was growing up. I slept between
heavy blankets. My bed sat against a window. I would quietly open the window
just an inch or so and slip between the blankets. The sound of the rain
outside, but at my fingertips, complemented the experience of my shivers
warming the bed, and consequently me, as I lay in my dry warm nest.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was pure innocent sensuality. And it has shaped me
considerably over the years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I own several pairs of good shoes now and my winter coats
are well made for the weather in which I find myself. My house is warm and
comfortable. I sleep in a bedroom.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But when it is cold and rainy and dark, as it was one night
last week, I will grab a drink and a blanket and go sit on my deck and feel the
damp cold creep into my consciousness, welcome the shivers, feel the water drip
off my nose, and wallow in my now not-so-innocent sensuality. Occasionally, the
tenor line from that first song in the Methodist Hymnal will join me. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wonder at the early sensual experiences that shape our
lives.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-79106985676531042872012-12-03T17:59:00.000-08:002012-12-03T17:59:29.703-08:00Santa Claus
<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the early 1950s my father lost his last job in the mines.
He was in his early 50s and unable to find work. He picked up odd jobs here and
there, and that, plus money my mother earned in a factory, kept a roof over our
head (we did have a few holes in the walls and windows) and basic food on the
table. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Money was hard to come by.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For several Christmases during that time, around the first
of December, my daddy would say, “Well, things are really tight this year; if
Santa Claus don’t come, we won’t have Christmas.” He said this seriously. I
took him seriously. I was ready to get nothing. It was OK. The Methodist Church
provided me the songs and festivities, and the religious trappings were
emotionally and spiritually stimulating. I can still smell the pine and candle,
and can still feel what it was like to put on white robes and sing Christmas
songs with the choir. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My parents did not go to church so we did not share these
experiences. My parents did like Christmas, though, and we had a tree,
decorated with old trimmings that brought tears to my momma’s eyes as she
remembered Christmas with her parents and brothers and sisters and with my two
older sisters.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But money was always a problem, and Santa Claus was always
seen as the answer to the problem.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every year, sometime around December 23 or 24, my father
would go to Household Finance and borrow money. Every year he’d go to a
bootlegger and buy a couple of half-pints of whiskey for his own spirits and
our entertainment—I’ll leave that to another day. Every year he’d tell my
sister to figure out what it was that I wanted (as well as her two kids, Karen
and George), take the HFC money, and go buy the Santa presents, or as close as
possible, given money constraints. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It never was much, but I still appreciate the idea, even
though I understand that my father spent the next year paying back the money he
had borrowed, resulting in him and my momma having to scrimp on other things.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every year Santa Claus came to my house, and to Karen and
George’s house. And it was always magical.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, I never admitted to “not believing” in Santa Claus until
I was about 10 years old.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As these memories come to mind, I’m wondering about Santa
Claus. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Last Saturday I attached a pillow around my waist (pillow
gets smaller each year), donned the famous red suit, hair, beard, boots, belt,
hat, glasses and attitude and went to Zahn Financial Services in Golden,
Colorado. I have been Santa there every year for the past five years or so.
There are a few kids who have shown up each year, so I’ve watched them grow
over that time. Each time I dress in that costume and sit by the decorated tree
handing out small gifts, I see the magic expressed in the eyes of the young
kids, and the very real desire of the nine and ten year olds to bring back the
magic.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2363344060269198198" name="_GoBack"></a>I wonder if most of us who grew up as
I did have spent their lives trying to recreate the magic brought on by Santa
Claus. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wonder how much money Christian zealots have made trying
to convince us that they have the keys to this magic. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I wonder how much money fathers and mothers have
borrowed and spent trying to keep the magic alive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But mainly, at this time of the year, particularly, even as
I wonder about these things, I am grateful to my parents, and my sister, for
showing me the magic of Santa Claus, and the gift of giving that embodies <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the season of Christmas. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-17700404355381401622012-08-12T13:47:00.000-07:002012-08-12T13:47:36.516-07:00Put the Damn Blog Down and Do Something<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I was a young teenager in the 1950s, I spent a lot of
time reading. I was, and still am, an introvert. My daddy would frequently
worry about me, and would tell me to “put the damn book down and go do
something.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I have found this to be good advice on several counts, not
the least of which is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that reading is
dangerous</i>. For example, I actually have read Ayn Rand’s novels and articles.
They “scared the pee wadding” out of me. Now I see that other people have read her
as well and have built empires in this country, having been born-again into
her religion. I have read the works of her disciples, leaders in the political
arena, and see that they are serious and espouse a philosophy that is absolutely foreign
to everything I’ve been taught in books and church during the last 68 years about what it means to be human. That is beyond pee-wadding fear.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also, I have actually read the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bible</i> (Old and New Testaments in several translations) and, having
been in similar situations a time or two, can relate to the acid trip John
experiences in his “Revelation”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
I also have read the writings of the prominent leaders of the Catholic, Protestant,
and Mormon religions, and can’t relate to these Christians (sic) who have made
careers out of the worship and evangelism of hate, self-aggrandizement, money,
and power.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve read too much I think.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The second count upon which I think my daddy’s advice was
good is that reading leads to writing, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">which
is even more dangerous.</i> Putting one’s words out into the marketplace of
words (I would say ideas, but they are in short supply these days) is to invite
either disapproval or condemnation. Or worse yet, promises of “I’ll pray for
you”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or worst, silence. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I may have written too much.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of course my father also meant that I should be actively out
in the world as opposed to what he saw as being passive—sitting in my back yard
reading. At the time I thought this was good advice, so I moved out of the
back yard and into church, school, and the world. I was still an introvert, but an engaged one.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m heading to Kentucky next week to commemorate my 50<sup>th</sup>
high school reunion. In a month, I’ll be celebrating my 68<sup>th</sup>
birthday. In honor of these two events, I’ve decided to once again take my
daddy’s advice. This introvert is leaving the back yard of my books and blogs
and going back out into the world to do something. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ll be back when I have done whatever it is that I will
have done.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wish all y’all peace, love, and the presence of good people in
your lives who are not out to shoot you for disagreeing with them (or knocking
on their doors, or walking in their gated communities).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And the absence of Ayn Rand evangelists and dangerous Christian
fanatics disguised as leaders of the faith.<br clear="ALL" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-51505465753174330162012-08-03T14:56:00.000-07:002012-08-04T13:11:14.229-07:00Rich People and Dirty Boots<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My daddy used to frequently remark that you could tell the
folks who actually had money from those who wanted to have money but weren’t
there yet by listening and looking. If they bragged about their money, they
didn’t have any. If they had shit on their boots, they probably had a bit of
money, but wouldn’t go round bragging about it. As a kid, I found this
observation fascinating and wise.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve been reading the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Holy
Bible</i> and Aristotle’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rhetoric</i>
this week, thinking about my daddy, and wondering about rich people.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Where and when I grew up, it seems to me the people who had
more money than most of us went to some length not to rub our noses in it. For
example, the folks who paid for me to go to summer church camp did it without fanfare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christmas baskets were put together for
the poor and delivered matter-of-factly and neighborly, without explicit or implicit judgments
made toward the giver or receiver.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of course, we all know what Jesus is noted to have said on
the subject of money and wealth—"the love of money is the root of all evils"l </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(1 Timothy 6:10)</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">,
and “</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24) remind us of two
passages.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jesus was a kind and gentle soul. Aristotle was not. On most
subjects, Aristotle, most certainly not a Christian (Christianity had not been founded yet), held positions that were
about as far away from Jesus’ as could be. However, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle</i>, as he talks about what one
needs to know about wealthy people in order to persuade them, what he has to
say is strong:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wealthy
men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of wealth affects their
understanding; they feel as if they had every good thing that exists; wealth
becomes a sort of standard of value for everything else, and therefore there is
nothing it can’t buy.… Rich men also consider themselves worthy to hold public
office; for they consider they already have the things that give them a claim
to office. In a word, the type of character produced by wealth is that of a
prosperous fool. There is indeed one difference between the type of the
newly-enriched and those who have long been rich: the newly-enriched have all
the bad qualities mentioned in an exaggerated and worse form—to be
newly-enriched means, so to speak, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no
education in riches</i>. The wrongs they do other are not meant to injure their
victims, but spring from insolence or self-indulgence, e.g., those that end in
assault or in adultery. (pp.127-28)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The people of means that I remember in Providence, Kentucky,
those from “old money” and from “new money” did not fit Aristotle’s description.
For that I am thankful.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I sure as hell see evidence to support his view today in
the U.S. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Despite our Western Cultural religious and philosophical
traditions and underpinnings, I wonder what happened to us, and why it is that
today we have come to worship wealth and wealthy people? Especially when they
flaunt their wealth and rub our noses in it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I hear rich folks bragging about their money and possessions,
but despite my best attempts to find it, I ain’t seen no shit on any of their
boots yet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wonder if today’s world is making Aristotle look like an
even more brilliant man.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And making my daddy’s wisdom obsolete.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-60181345991136178382012-07-29T14:11:00.000-07:002012-07-29T14:11:17.242-07:00Raccoons and Conflict Management: A Case Study<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was Two A.M. on a dark morning in suburban Denver. I had
been in conflict with a family of five raccoons. In formal conflict management
terminology, what we had was a conflict of needs. They needed my plums. I needed
them to be gone. I tried reasoning with them: “When you eat my plums, I feel
put upon, because they are my plums and you steal them”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This had not worked. So, on this dark morning, I heard them
chirping away with that happy, full-bellied chirp for which they are
notorious.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I live next to a large piece of open space, thriving with
foxes, coyotes, owls, geese, hawks, exotic water birds passing through, AND RACCOONS.
The law is clear. Humans may not kill these residents. We may harass them,
however, if they invade our tax-paid pieces of property and irritate us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The point needs to be made: I like raccoons. They are
intelligent, playful (mostly), industrious, family-values kinds of animals. They
are also not aggressive, unless rabid or cornered. I thought.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">They also taste good, if cooked by Danny “Stick” and/or
Tanya Thomason. Stick has passed away and Tanya lives in Kentucky, so even if I
broke the law it would be a waste.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But on this morning I had had enough. I jumped out of bed and crept down the
stairs, careful not to wake my cat—he’s a grumpy SOB when awakened—and grabbed
my weapon of choice. What I figured was that the sight of me sans pants, shirt,
or toupee, holding my trusty Daisy-Red-Ryder-BB
gun-with-the-compass-on-the-stock would cause this family sufficient harassment
as to cause them to go elsewhere. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With gun and flashlight in hand, I crept onto the deck.
Neighbors were all asleep, or light-less anyway. I saw a big raccoon in the
tree and shot three shots. At least two offended him enough that he scampered
down. Noise of others following suit caused me pause, but I just kept cocking
and shooting at large objects in the tree, and bright eyes lit by my
flashlight, then at large objects and eyes on the deck. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then the large objects disappeared. The raccoons were now
under the deck.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">OK, now what? I had visions of little hand-like claws
reaching up through the deck cracks to get at my toes, but brave Kentucky
hunter that I am, I stood my ground, quietly, with toes upturned.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then, at the end of my flashlight’s beam I saw five raccoons.
A little chill went up my spine. My deck sets close to the ground. The raccoons
were standing on this ground, so what I really saw was five pairs of eyes and
five pairs of front paws gripping the edge of the deck. The five had spread out
down the short side of the deck, and around the corner onto the long side. Yes,
these non-aggressive family-values animals were trying to surround me. They
seemed pissed, and poised to take care of this plum-eating-interruptus-fool.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I quickly cocked and shot as fast as I could, expecting the
worst, and escaped through the sliding doors back into the safety of my
suburban middle class home.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wonder if my daddy, Stick, Tanya, and my Kentucky hunting
friends, and their hounds, are laughing. I know I heard what sounded like
laughter from my deck, through the plate glass, as I reached for a shot of
bourbon to calm my nerves. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In conflict management theory, conflicts of needs may be
resolved when one party’s needs are shown to be more important than the other’s.
It was clear to me in this instance who’s needs were greatest. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I don’t like conflict.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-60049610190249088662012-07-26T18:46:00.000-07:002012-07-26T18:46:09.759-07:0050th High School Reunion<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the Spring of 1962, 40 of my friends and I set out from
Providence High School to make a place for ourselves in the world. In the
Summer of 2012, some of us will gather, as we have gathered every five years
since 1962, to celebrate one another, catch up, tell stories, and remember the half a Century that has passed since we left P.H.S. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I do wonder why people go to their high school reunions. I have friends who have never been to one and vow never to go to one. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I know why I go. It’s a life marker for me. I really don’t
think about Billy Wilson, for example, as I go through my normal everyday life,
year after year. However, every five years, he, and Dorris Burton, and several
other people who I really liked in high school, seldom saw after high school,
and who I will never see again because they have passed away, come barreling
into my consciousness, full-blown, in 3-D and color, as they were in the Spring
of 1962. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Over the years I have watched the folks who did come the
reunions grow and develop, and become successful in that world into which we
were thrown in 1962. I’ve also watched them suffer the pains of divorce, death of loved ones, and debilitating diseases. Every five years, this group of
people gets a snapshot of our friends living their lives. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We knew each other when most of us had outhouses, and we
remember those cold, cold winter mornings that taught us about bladder control
if nothing else. We remember coal: having to get the clinkers out of the stove
in the mornings, take the ashes outside and bring in new buckets. Many of us had coal miners as
fathers. At least one of us had a coal mining mother. Several of us made
careers related to coal.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We now share memories of people. All of us remember Mrs. Hooks,
and Mr. Lane, and Mrs. Crowe, and Mrs. Rayburn, and Mrs. Dorris. We remember
the old gym into which we were packed to watch old black and white movies, hear
recitals, attend pep rallies. We remember football, basketball, baseball, and
track, at which several members of the class of 1962 excelled.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We remember band teacher Joe Allen, who came to town and
became a real-life Music Man, transforming the school and the town, generating
excitement and parental involvement on a grand scale.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These are people with whom I spent significant time from
about 1950 through 1962. Hell, that’s longer than some marriages last. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I find that I don’t have much in common with most of my
classmates anymore. What we do have in common, however, I believe is important:
memories of a time shared during those formative years of our lives. I use the reunions to review my
current life in light of those memories. It's sort of a present-day reality check using a shared rear
view mirror. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This time we will be reviewing memory snapshots in a rear view mirror that spans
half a Century. </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When all is said and done, I
go to high school reunions because I like these people. I like who they were and who they have become, and spending a day or so with them every
five years makes me feel good. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">That is why, in the Summer
of 2012, I will drive back to Kentucky, and back in time to 1962 and the twelve
years before that, to share stories and memories with people who were there
with me “in the olden days”. <br clear="ALL" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" />
</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-4518178268184088022012-07-16T12:33:00.000-07:002012-07-16T12:33:22.324-07:00Kentucky Poetry: Portrait Exercises<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">My Eyes 2012</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Look into my eyes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do not look at the wrinkled skin,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The sagging muscles,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The stained teeth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Look into my eyes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Remove the layered curtains.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Can you see the young man in there,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The idealist,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The true believer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Can you see that glow</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That comes from the belief</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That time is on his side?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I look into my eyes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From the inside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I turn thin time layers </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One by one, like plastic overlays</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On some old biology textbook</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fan my life out
behind me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Saturday Afternoon, Kentucky
1949</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gooseberries, green with curious veins.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sweet and tart.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like childhood scenes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My grandfather swinging his cane.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mad with dementia.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He chasing old man demons,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And me. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Me running, unafraid of demons or him, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But aware of the cane.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An old lady sits on a porch, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Churning butter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Behind her sets an icebox.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Big chunks of melting ice smelling cold and fresh.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With a hint of cigarette smoke.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Church Sunday Morning,
Kentucky 1950</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Orange flowers filling ditches.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sunny and bright,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The weather and me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gravel crunches beneath my new shoes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In my Sunday go to meetin' clothes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am beautifully alone</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For a mile or so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fellowship begins in the basement</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the small brick church. </div>
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Coffee and cigarettes</div>
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Not for me, yet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Upstairs, organ music gently blends with</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The rustle of cloth as people settle.</div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-7316885435051059982012-07-07T13:56:00.000-07:002012-07-07T13:56:31.346-07:00My Daddy, Uncle Clay and Dinner Buckets<style>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the mid-1950s, my father and his brother, Uncle Clay,
used to sit around in the yard and talk about the world, the old days,
politics, and their work in the mines. Both had spent decades working underground,
mining a seam of coal that ran from Southern Illinois through Western Kentucky,
Southern Indiana, and Southern Ohio.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of their mining themes had to do with dinner buckets,
those aluminum containers that held their drinking water and a tray, that fit
into the bucket like a double broiler, that held their lunches. They would look
at me and say,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at various times in
various contexts, “When your buddy empties his dinner bucket water, you empty
yours too, don’t ask questions, just leave the mines. You find out what’s the
matter when you get out of the mines.” </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">They said this with pride, and to them it was a matter of
pride. And solidarity. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These were United Mine Workers of America people, for whom
John L. Lewis was a small-d deity. Union people who believed strongly in the
“rank and file”, not in Capitalism, not in union bosses (except for Lewis of
course), not in company bosses. They believe in themselves, united. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My daddy and Uncle Clay were not Socialists. Coal miners are
as close to being those U.S. “rugged individualists” that personify Capitalism as
you can get. But they did realize that they were not alone; they had
responsibilities, obligations, and allegiances to one another, even if they did
not particularly like some of those “anothers”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wonder if this “us” attitude still exists in the
workplace, or anywhere else in this country for that matter. For decades, our
churches, priests/preachers, politicians, schools, and media have encouraged
“me” generations. I wonder if this is good for folks like my daddy and Uncle
Clay.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve been a management professor and consultant for over 30
years and certainly know that companies/corporations are not inherently evil.
Business owners, executives, and boards are not inherently evil. However, they
all have a natural monetary, social, and psychological stake in their
businesses that shape their perceptions and guide their behaviors. In addition,
they have industry colleagues with whom to pool resources and perceptions. And
they still think of employees as costs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I also know that employees of these companies/corporations
are not inherently evil. Unlike their management colleagues, however, they do
not come to the workplace with shared perceptions; they do not have natural
monetary, social, and psychological stakes in the businesses in which they find
themselves. And they still think of employers as bosses.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">I am not a defender of capital-u unions. Labor unions, even the UMWA, have </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">over
the years</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> become business organizations themselves, with
executives driving them. Members frequently find themselves having to deal with
two sets of bosses—company managers and union managers—and two sets of
political influences.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I do know, however, that a person like my daddy, one man,
not well educated, standing by himself, no matter how good, strong, or God
fearing he might be, cannot hold his ground against a billionaire business
owner who thinks of him as a cost. Only by joining with his colleagues, whether
he likes them or not, does he stand a chance of predictably being able to feed
his kids, keep them in school, and stand up for his political convictions,
whatever they may be.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, I wonder how the “we” gets re-ignited as a concept in
the workplace and in communities. I wonder how we erode the notion that working
together is un-American.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But most of all, I wonder who I trust well enough that when
she throws the water out of her dinner bucket, I will throw mine out too and
follow her out of the mines?</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-20815132661505816802012-06-28T10:47:00.000-07:002012-06-28T10:47:50.568-07:00A Conversation<style>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I vividly remember a night, sometime in the late 1950s,
sitting in a school bus, by the window, gazing out at the stars. I had just
read some damn thing or other about space and time travel and was trying to
project myself—trying to be myself at some distant point in time looking back
at myself sitting in the school bus. Trying to imagine that self looking back
at myself at that point. Of course I told no one what I was doing. They still
had mental asylums back then, you know.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And here I am, sitting at my desk in my middle-class home in
my middle-class suburb in Colorado over 50 years later, connecting with that me
in that bus on that two-lane highway running from Murray State University to
Providence, Kentucky, on that winter’s night.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are talking about the future and the past. I’m telling
him about the things that happened to him after that night, about the things he
saw, the things he did, the people he loved, the worlds in which he lived. He’s
appreciative of what I have to say. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then he asks me questions that I don’t want to hear. “So,
did I do what I intended to do?”, he asks. “Was I honest?” “Was I caring and
loving?” “Who did I become?” He doesn’t know what authentic means yet, but
that’s the question he’s asking.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I think of authenticity, I used to think of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> a commitment to
something larger than themselves. Not in a subservient way, as the case with
most organized religious folk, but in an “egoless” way, more akin to a Zen
notion. As I talk to myself through time, it is that ambition I hear from that
teenager-that-was-me. At that time I fantasized about living authentically, focused,
clear, and uncluttered, looking at the world through larger-than-life and
beyond-life-as-I-know-it eyes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Compromise is a dirty word these days, yet we humans, in
real life, face compromises every day. The only way around it is to literally
“get off the grid” emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and physically.
Some people do that. Those of us who choose not to do so are faced with
dilemmas and compromise. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As a kid, I did not think in terms of dilemmas. As an old
man, my life is a dilemma. To me as an old man,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>living authentically means making decisions in the face of
dilemmas, acting on them, and taking responsibility for those decisions and
actions. And compromise.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wonder how many people experience this phenomenon of
trying to live up to expectations set in our youth. I wonder how many of us
forgive ourselves for not having met those lofty goals. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">I am not the person
that kid-that-was-me envisioned. I have made a lot of compromises, many of
which I regret. I have faced dilemmas and done the wrong things. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I’m asking that kid in that bus that night to cut me
some slack. He is a forgiving kid. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I think. I'm still waiting for an answer.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-20409839906038899442012-06-23T16:06:00.000-07:002012-06-23T16:06:04.319-07:00Learning About Piece Work and Labor: Kentucky, 1963<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the summer of 1963 I worked in my hometown
plastics factory, housed in a cinderblock building with a
corrugated metal roof, filled with cardboard boxes, machinery, and plastic. It
was often 120 degrees. This was my first on-the-job business course, an
important one in which I learned about the concepts of “labor” and “piece
work.” </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I worked as a supply boy to about 15
women. My responsibility was to provide them with bundles of plastic garment
bags on which they, using heat machines, sealed the shoulder sections. The
ultimate product was the bags which enclose our dry-cleaned clothing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These women worked piece work, hunched
over hot machines in a furnace. I learned very quickly that all plastic was not
created equally. The slipperier the plastic, the more shoulders could be
sealed. The more shoulders sealed, the more money was to be made. Good plastic
was prized. Bad plastic was to be shared, making sure no one women got all of a
bad batch. I screwed up only once, and gave a bad batch to only one woman. She
stood up, threw the plastic at me, called me a motherf**ker, picked up another
batch, sat down, and resumed work. I was not offended. I had screwed up and
knew it. So, I picked up the bad batch, threw it into the re-melt barrel and
resumed my work. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These were smart, strong women, who
needed the meager money they earned from back-straining, finger stressing work eight
hours a day. There were no official breaks, so the small bathrooms were always clogged
with smoke resulting from the quick unofficial breaks taken. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here’s what I learned about piece work.
It sucks. It does not motivate people to work harder, it causes people to get
pissed off, cuss, and throw things. It does not improve productivity, it causes
shortcuts to be made, decreasing quality. This has been proven time and again,
but I saw it in action. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Most importantly, however, I learned that it is
demeaning to the people who work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here’s what I learned about “labor”.
When the word is used as a broad term to discuss people as opposed to money
(labor and capital), it disguises the issues. To think of Edna Dunbar, Castella
McDowell, Dean Wood, Nora Belle Holt, Reba Walker and all the women who worked
as hard as they could, in lousy conditions, as “labor” makes it easier for the
factory bosses to blame them for the companies’ shortcomings. It’s easier for
owners to convince themselves to move further and further south, then to Asia and other off-shore locations in search of cheaper “labor” without having to say,
“We’re looking for people who will work for nothing in lousy conditions while
we continue to make the business mistakes that drive down our profits.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These jobs were not held by
“labor”—they were held by people like my mother, who used her pennies to pay for my coronet
lessons as a kid, bought the white shirts I wore in the band, and paid for the
food on our table. The factory provided vital jobs in a small town that was
struggling to stay alive. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The company moved away in search of
cheaper labor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Since 1963, not much has changed. Laws
in the U.S. have been passed that require companies to provide periodic breaks
for employees. Laws in the U.S. have been passed that require working
conditions to be safe and conducive to work getting done. But we continue to
use words like “labor” to talk about how expensive people are—we have to cut
“labor costs”—and how restrictive U.S. “labor laws” have become as we continue
to look for places outside the U.S. where we can find “cheap labor” in places
"friendlier to business". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wonder how many political leaders and
“job creators” had mothers and fathers who worked in sweat shops. I wonder how
many job creators are creating sweat shop jobs today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">I wonder if they consider miners,
teachers, fire fighters, police officers, factory workers, and other folks who
work long hours to support their families and communities as “labor”, or if
they, like I in that factory in1963, have had some sort of learning experience.
For all our sakes, I wish for them epiphanies.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-91512111481996935962012-06-18T06:57:00.000-07:002012-06-18T06:57:14.367-07:001968 and 2012: Musings of an Old Man<style>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the summer of 1968 I had finished a master’s
degree, and was commuting from Athens, GA to Clemson, SC to teach a
UGA course to teachers in Clemson. During that commute,
my first experience of the phenomenon, with no obnoxious talk shows spewing
their venom to distract me, I had time to think. I thought about the times in
which I lived, and dreamed about the future. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Vietnam War was one of three very
hot issues during that summer of youth and passion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The U.S. was involved in an unpopular
war to which we sent thousands of draftees, reluctant patriots who found
courage, fear, drugs, mental and physical disfigurement, and death in the
jungles. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">People were demonstrating in the streets
against this war. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was engaged. I
brought the president of the Athens chapter in to speak to my persuasion
class—probably have a file because of that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kent State had not yet happened. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Race and racism was the second passionate
issue that summer. Dr. Martin Luther King had just been assassinated. The Black
Panther Party was in full swing, taking up arms to end what they saw as extreme
oppression. Some white preachers in Georgia and South Carolina were preaching
the Biblical support for the proposition that black folks were inferior, cast
aside by the Old Testament God. Some black preachers in Detroit and Chicago
were just beginning to preach the same message, using the same scriptures,
against white folks, the ice people, the blue eyed devils. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was an election year, the third hot
issue. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was scheduled for later in the
summer. Robert Kennedy had just been assassinated. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My Quaker, Methodist, and UCC friends
and other activists were in the streets passionately fighting against
injustice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the summer of 2012 I am retired, do
not commute but am still teaching, and continue to
think about the times. Passion is in short supply as the U.S. Tea partiers
chant tired, middle-class, white slogans sounding like robots, looking like
robots. Occupiers try to find traction with the working class and minorities,
but their tires keep slipping. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Racism is as prominent as it was in 1968,
but has taken on new forms. Instead of President Obama being called the “n
word” in public, as were Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and other leaders, he is
called “a socialist” by people who do not understand what the word means, but
do know it’s another “n” word. The percentage of unemployment and
underemployment in the U.S. is debilitating. For people of color it is embarrassing, to them and us. The number of black people we legally kill each year should be
embarrassing, but instead it is seen as a badge of honor by some governors who proudly
proclaim themselves as pro-life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are now engaged in at least two wars
to lesser or greater extents. Unlike Vietnam, people aren’t being drafted to
fight these wars. I wonder if that’s why it is easier for us to ignore them.
Also unlike Vietnam, these wars were declared “off budget” and “unfunded” by those avid
supporters of fiscal responsibility who argued for the wars, and we now struggle to figure out how to
pay for them while our economy has crumbled in part because of them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As in Vietnam, our current troops are
finding courage, fear, disfigurement, and drugs. Unlike Vietnam veterans, many of
whom died slow deaths connected to the war, these troops are committing suicide
at alarming rates. We struggle to figure out why.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And there is an election coming up in
the fall. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are still activists working
within and outside the system with unflagging attention to issues of war and
social injustice. Some are young activists fighting the good fight, like my
Libertarian-with-a-conscience politician friend in Colorado. These people give
me hope, and to them, and those in 1968, I humbly say thank you for your
service to our country. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But as I sit in the summer of 2012, as
wars and injustices continue to multiply, and as many of us whimper about our
taxes and sinful women who use contraceptives, I wonder what happened to those
changes I dreamed of in the summer of 1968.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-27904948080633000252012-06-08T11:43:00.000-07:002012-06-08T11:43:43.020-07:00Money, Politics, and My Self-Esteem<style>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sometime in the mid-1950s, I rode
around on the trunk lid of Wanda Whitfield’s car in Webster County Kentucky,
with my Sousaphone wrapped around my middle, heading for pep rallies for Happy
Chandler. In my memory, Chandler, who was Governor of Kentucky and later became
Commissioner of Baseball, was the quintessential Kentucky politician, a
charismatic, “glad handing”, baby kissing, sort of pudgy, “go to” guy. These
pep rallies, plus pep rally organizers like Wanda Whitfield, and probably some
smoky backroom deal making, comprised the campaign strategy for politicians, as
far as I could tell. Campaign messages were mostly delivered in stump speeches,
“town square” debates, and by word of mouth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was thinking about that experience as
I listened to newscasts the past few weeks telling me that another new
fund-raising record will be reached this election year, which made me wonder
about money and politics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Specifically, what I wonder is, who do
politicians think I am that they think they it takes that much money to buy me
off?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It seems to have become a given fact
that those who raise the most money win. Now I know the contest is not about
amassing piles of money, then measuring the piles, and the person with the
largest pile, or greatest piles, wins. That would make for interesting races
though, and would allow us to use metrics and rubrics in assessing the worth of
candidates, always a good business school model, and God knows what’s good for
business schools is good for America.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anyway, as far as I can tell, the current
formula is to raise as much money as possible in order to buy as many
television advertisements, Internet banners, and robocallers as possible. The messages
come from two sources, the candidate, and the candidates’ political action
committees. The messages embedded in those media are made to be as nasty as
possible, without regard for facts or truth—in fact the “big lie”, the more
dramatic with the most loaded and scary language, is preferred. These messages are
aired as often as funding makes possible to as many people as possible twenty
four hours a day, seven days a week. The more money you have, the more you can
air. The candidate with the most air time wins.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The theory is that if you bombard your
audience with your message, from a variety of media sources, your audience will
believe you, no matter what you say. Consequently, the candidate with the most
messages bombarded wins, because people will believe the group that they hear
from the most, or the most recently. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wonder who these messages are created
for. I get them, so they were created implicitly for me, right? If so, I wonder
whether I should be depressed or angry. The picture created of me, the voter,
is just about as demeaning as it possibly could be. I, as a voter, am seen as an
ignorant follow-the-crowd “mark”, who will believe whatever I’m told if I hear
it often enough from my phone, my computer, and my television. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wonder if that is not a variation of
the notion that my vote can be bought. From analysis of elections the past few
years, the answer is yes, votes are being bought, with a potential billion
dollars in bribes being raised and spent this year.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">I don’t know whether to
laugh or cry, but miss the days of Happy Chandler pep rallies and stump
speeches, where votes were sometimes bought, but were bought the old fashioned
Kentucky way, one half-pint at a time, with hand shakes and eye contact made. Much
more honest and much less demeaning to all concerned.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-71206438315685342152012-06-04T10:39:00.000-07:002012-06-04T10:39:20.264-07:00Wisdom and Vanity<style>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I was in high school, Rice
Sutherland, my Methodist Youth Fellowship guru (no they did not have words like
that in Providence, Kentucky at that time, but she was my angel, and I thank
her), gave me a Revised Standard Version of the Bible with my name embossed on
the cover. Her instructions were, when I was troubled or down (we also did not
have words like “stressed” or “depressed” back then), I should open the book to
random pages, and look for passages that spoke to me. When I found them I
should circle them and write a date.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I still have that Bible. I’ve had to
have it re-covered (kept my name on it), but I still have it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are a lot of circled passages and
dates written, all from the early 60s. As I analyze (that’s what old professors
do, you know), I find two themes to wonder about. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">First there is “wisdom”. I
circled and dated<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a lot of
passages over several years that dealt with the importance of seeking wisdom. I
can remember meditating (sort of) on the notion of wisdom as opposed to
knowledge as I wallowed in ennui and angst in the basement of my house on
Normal Drive (loved that address) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The questions—what
is wisdom and how do I get some—still rattle around in my consciousness as I
wonder about my place in the universe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The other theme is “vanity”. Ah,
vanity, thy name is (what was that, again?). All is vanity. I still believe
this is important. I can criticize the Catholic Church for taking Jesus’
teachings and turning them on their head to create a super structure that would
make the Pharisees<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of Jesus’ time
blush. But to do so is vanity. I can criticize a man who got caught with his
pants down and created a church in which it is valuable to have multiple wives,
in the U.S. , in the 19<sup>th</sup> Century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to do so is vanity. I can poke fun at all manner of
frivolity and foolishness, but when it all boils down, to do so is to feed my
vanity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I write blogs. Vanity, thy name is me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">I criticize the Catholic Church,
yet am smitten by the Latin Mass, and the ne’er do well Jesuits. I criticize
Baptists and Methodists, yet understand the good that they do to people in need
(and love the fried chicken dinners them Methodists cook). I criticize the
Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hindus, yet know that I’ve been in this world before in
some form or other and will be here again in some form or other after I’ve left
Lakewood, Colorado and am cremated and rolled into joints and smoked by my
closest friends.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The ultimate in vanity is for a human
being like me to believe that I can know the nature of my creator. The ultimate
in vanity (times infinity) is for a human being like me to try to persuade a
human being like you to believe that I am right and you are wrong and my god’s
greater than your god, and therefore it is right for me to make fun of you and
yours. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But as I study those old circled passages, I wonder if the ultimate in vanity,
period, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>would be for me to decry Sharia
Law while taking up arms to enforce my particular version of Christian Law. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">While wisdom hides in the
corner.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"> </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-69837228772393353192012-05-29T12:15:00.000-07:002012-05-29T12:15:15.518-07:00Memorial Days Past and Present<style>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">MEMORIAL
DAY 1957</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">White sky, shimmering as it salutes the
day of commemoration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Decoration Day, 1957</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Begins at the court house in Dixon</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With Taps and an echo.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Old men and young men,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Proud men and broken men,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sit with their families and friends,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sweltering in the early morning heat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">They gather in thankfulness,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Or sorrow,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Or both.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Memories of the Great War are carried
with pride.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Memories of the Not So Great War are
carefully tucked away,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In secret pains that no bottle can
erase.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But they try.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I long to see a maple tree leaf turn
inside out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I pray for a storm as sweat drips into
my eyes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Carefully, my lips meet the mouthpiece</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And I begin to play Taps.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">MEMORIAL
DAY 2012</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An old man sits alone,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Eight thousand feet above sea level.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Appreciating white-framed peaks</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Seen through pine tree filters.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Crisp breezes temper the sun’s heat.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sixty-eight years of memories</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Spread out against the rocks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Good memories and painful ones,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Examined with white gloved care.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">High country silence,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Accompanied by an occasional Mountain
Jay,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Frame his celebration of peace, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">His celebration of solitude,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">His celebration of his life so far.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-49222029753942986522012-05-25T13:19:00.000-07:002012-05-25T13:19:41.461-07:00Memorial Day and Memory Books<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I wonder if funeral homes still have those Memory Books at
the door for people to sign. I know Jackie Einstein had a couple of books—one
for names and addresses, the other for messages anyone wanted to leave to her
and the rest of Walter’s family. I also know that there are
virtual books for people at a distance to sign and leave messages. I’ve come to
appreciate the importance of these artifacts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Holidays prompt me to think about the old days, which
prompts me to rummage around in my boxes of pictures and keepsakes. This
rummaging caused me to find a Memory Book from Tapp Funeral Home in Providence,
Kentucky, dated 1954.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">My oldest sister, Retha Dare, was born in 1927 and passed
away in September, 1954. She died in childbirth, delivering her fifth child. I
was ten years old at the time and remember the occasion vividly. She was so
young. After her
fourth child she was told she should not have any more children; to do so would
almost certainly endanger her own life and the life of the child. </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I remember being at her house frequently over the years. </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I was a nosy
boy; still am. I remember seeing a sort of workbook filled with pictures and charts; she was trying to calculate
her menstrual cycles. I now feel inextricable pain at what she must have gone
through. It was 1954. We knew almost nothing about birth control. She got
pregnant. She died. Fortunately her child lived. But five children, the oldest
being 10 (10 days older than I), were left without a mother. They scattered to
the wind.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As wrenching and anger provoking as this is, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>given recent arguments about birth
control and women’s choice, that’s not what I’m wondering about right now. It’s
the Memory Book that has captured my imagination. And of course, given my
mother’s penchant for taking pictures of folks, tucked away in the back of the
book I found a picture negative of my sister in the casket. Blew my mind.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m looking at the names and remembering the people filing
in, viewing my sister, sitting quietly for awhile, going out back to smoke,
talking quietly, paying their respects to my family. Their names, faces, and
voices pop out at me like old black and white movies: Nellie Rinehammer,
Amanthus Lloyd, Mason Guess, Sidney Webb, Lindy Cullen, Strauther Harvey, Doy
Lovan, Pearl Lovan, Grady Lovan (my grandmother) Virginia Clevenger, Don
Ferguson, Les Gobin,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Teenie
Stevens, Curtis Yarbrough, and on and on and on. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">These faded signatures offer a testament to
the fact that these people existed in that place at that time to mark the passing of my
sister. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As an old man, I’ve come to love small towns, especially
that small town of Providence, Kentucky, and especially as it exists, fixed in
my memory, as jogged by such things as 60-year-old Memory Books.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-5503643066267924102012-05-16T09:54:00.000-07:002012-05-16T09:54:18.068-07:00Professors, Food Stamps, and Stories<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I read an article recently about a
number of professors who are receiving food stamps. My first reaction: Them
damn liberal professors are at it again, feeding at the public trough. Then I
thought, no, what this means is, like some of our military folks, there is
another group of people who cannot make a living at their chosen profession. The
proof is that their salaries are low enough for them to quality for the stamps.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">While I’m appalled at both
situations, it’s the professorial one that I’m wondering about right now. And
this started me thinking about professors I have known.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At the University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth I served as dean of Continuing Education for a spell. One evening I
noticed a forty-something-year-old man sort of wandering around the reception
area and looking uncomfortable. I struck up a conversation and found that he
was a successful businessman in Southern New England. The man wanted to prove
something to himself. Years ago, he had started college but never finished, and
now wondered if he really had what it took to do college-level work. I
recognized him as we talked, and knew him to be politically conservative with a
strong sense of self-confidence, and a sense of humor. He ran a right-leaning morning
talk show out of his diner—one of my favorite diners in the area. So, I suggested
that he just take one course and see how it went. I suggested a rigorous
course taught by a professor who was respected by students. He took my suggestion, and agreed to
check back with me on the progress of the course.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A month later, the businessman
walked into my office with a big smile on his face. “The professor is out of
his mind, the course is great, I learned a lot, and thank you,” he said. Although he decided not
to pursue a degree, the decision was made with confidence and for the right
reasons; he knew he could handle whatever the University had to offer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">To me, this story epitomizes the
best of what a professor can do. This professor, a left-leaning friend of mine, was a
practicing Irishman, president of the American Federation of Teachers union at
UMassD,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>who took me on several
Irish drinking tours of Fall River, Massachusetts—wonderful experiences by the
way; he was a master story teller and politician in the best sense of that word.
He was witty, engaging, and loved to challenge his students. His long career
provided for a marginal retirement income.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">There are lots of these people out
there. A friend of mine grew up in South Boston, the son of factory workers. I
watched him engage freshman English students, students who had difficulty
reading and writing, students who had not survived in college elsewhere,
students for whom this college experience was their last hope. This professor
could relate. They learned. He is now Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, still
teaching, now at Goddard College. His income has never been anywhere near
commensurate with his status, but he is a professional who does what he loves.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Two friends retired from a major
pharmaceutical company and now are professors at a large community college, he
teaching mathematics, she English. Both teach at what used to be called a “remedial”
level, and although the adjective has changed the reality has not. The students
come to the school with serious issues of all kinds—physical, professional,
personal—and professors charged with helping them do not stop at the
mathematical and reading/writing concerns. It’s impossible. So, these
professionals from the “other real world” of corporate America now are
professionals dealing with the “real world” of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>higher education and changing peoples’ lives. They do not
dare calculate how much money they earn per hour, but they are professionals
who love what they do.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Lots of stories. Not every
professor is on food stamps, but I've never known a wealthy professor. Of course, I've never been allowed to know ivied professors--wonder if they are rich. Not
every professor will take you on an Irish drinking tour of Fall River, either, and that's too bad indeed. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">But they all
have stories to tell. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">I’m wondering if there is a need to start a new blog, something
along the lines of “Fears, Tears, and Beers: Professors’ Stories” to chronicle
these stories. Friend John LaNear and I are planning to do so soon, and will be
looking for real stories from real, underpaid, overworked professionals who
love what they do and want to share some stories from their “real worlds”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Stay tuned.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-53925924691293527142012-05-12T14:13:00.000-07:002012-05-12T14:13:47.381-07:00Ode to My Momma<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rough and calloused fingers,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tobacco stained and strong.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eyes that hinted of stories</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Past and present.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Twinkling eyes that promised</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dirty jokes, joy, and warmth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My mother was vibrantly alive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She never told me a dirty joke.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was her floating tumor,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or so the doctor had promised,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When late in life she found herself</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Accidentally with child.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Her only boy </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Was not to be told dirty jokes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Iced tea was the only vice she practiced.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Except for her Pall Malls, of course.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She stored the others away</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the same reason she never sat down to supper.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She was the giver. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She was the server.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Never the taker.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Never the served.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was not a good son.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She was a good mother.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Seeing the barriers I erected,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Seeing the barricades I constructed,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Seeing my crossed arms and eyes,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Accepting my behavior without blaming</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Herself or me,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She continued to give and love.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She lived to see her floating tumor’s baby boy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Her first airplane ride, exciting and fun,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Created good stories, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Incidental to holding her son’s son.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My mother passed away </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Too soon afterward.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cigarette in one hand, phone in the other.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dirty joke singing in the phone lines.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-53742788585918238562012-05-07T18:06:00.000-07:002012-05-07T18:06:13.732-07:00Organizations, Jobs, and Careers<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I was talking to an old man in a
bar the other day. He is a retired engineer from a major corporation in this
area. He spent his life in the this company and has many fond memories of that
life. He now is back in the company as a consultant and wonders what happened
to that company he loved so much, as he celebrates the fact that he is no
longer an employee there.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
This started me wondering, as I
prepare to teach two graduate courses this week, both on the topic of how to
build effective organizations. What constitutes an effective organization?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The man with whom I spoke talked
of the days when the owners of this large company would routinely make the
rounds of work stations and talk to employees. The owners knew the names of
most of the people and called the folks by name. Many employees had worked for
the company all their lives. There seemed to be mutual respect. The company did
well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The company was doing so well that it
was sold. The new corporation is managed by young, ambitious
business-school-graduates who came with new ideas, most revolving around
production metrics and formulated motivation tools. They made no effort to know
the people. The working people have jobs to do and are expected to their
jobs and continually increase production. Levels of mutual respect have
declined. Employees who could have retired. Turnover for the rest increased
dramatically. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But the company is doing well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
These two organizations (company before
sale/company after sale) point to two different ways of organizing to do business.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In the days of Frederick Taylor,
and the concepts of “labor” and “capital”, organizations were designed so as to
facilitate smooth running humans-as-replaceable-cogs-in-the-machine called the
organization, thus decreasing the “cost of labor” as much as possible.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
W. Edwards Deming thought organizations should be designed so as to capitalize the best performance of human
beings, defined as thinking, talking-back, important partners in the execution of an
organization’s business, through the development and implementation of
effective processes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In Taylor’s idea, individual people
were expendable. In Deming’s way of thinking, individual people were important
and, rather than being seen as costs,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>should be seen as worthy investments. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I wonder that if people are replaceable and
appear on the “cost” side of the ledger, companies focus on creating jobs
within their organizations. If people are investments, I wonder if companies focus on
creating careers within their organizations. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In talking to working people as I
wander around the country, I wonder if we (companies and the U.S. in general)
have moved away from Deming’s idea and toward Taylor’s in defining what
effective work organizations should look like. I wonder what effect this might
have on the economic health and vitality of the country.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-40049007981188714332012-05-01T15:53:00.002-07:002012-05-01T15:53:31.286-07:00Professors and Students<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There was a time in which
societies put teachers on a par with warriors, philosophers and mathematicians.
All were highly respected by the societies in which they practiced their arts. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In the society in which I
practice my art, only the warriors seem to have survived with their virtue
intact. I wonder if this is because, in the case of teachers anyway, at one
recent point in our history, persons like me, from outside the walls of ivy
were allowed, thanks to GI Bills and the like, to become initiated into this
once-sacrosanct ground?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I worry about the future of this
business we call higher education. Professors are not viewed as professionals
by most people, in the U.S. at least. We are viewed with suspicion as being
left-leaning slackers who do not add value to society. Colleges and
universities are viewed as providing tickets for employment at best, and as
extensions of high school at worst. University and college administrators are
grasping at business fads and metrics to try to save their institutions.
Entrepreneurs, believing there is money to be made (and there is), are swarming
like flies over the weaker of the colleges, buying, revamping, dumbing down
when necessary, and focusing on next quarter’s bottom line.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
My worries are offset by almost
40 years of experience with students, that entity that defines the industry. I
still teach. I have not seen a substantial change in skills levels, motivation,
or abilities in my students over these years. When I hear that “they don’t make
students like they used to” comments, I smile a bit, cringe a bit, and think of
a freshman English class I took in 1963. Dr. Obojski was intent on making us
ignorant hillbillies less ignorant, not only about English, but about the world
in general. One day he gave a current events quiz. At the next class, he strode
into the room, put down his pipe, took out his pocket watch and threw it on the
desk (it broke), and yelled at the top of his voice, “Pablo Picasso is not a
god-damned tennis player” (professors could smoke and cuss back then when it
served to make a point—it did with me since I may very well have been one of
the folks who said this on the quiz). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Some students do in fact see
their first year in college as grade 13; some did when I started school in
1962. Some students do in fact see undergraduate and graduate education as
providing employment tickets; some also did in 1962. What actually happens to
the students, after they enter college is the crucial issue, and one upon which
professors have the most impact. I reflect with pride on my former students, watching
their eyes light up, being present for “aha” experiences, and watching these
bright students excel, not only academically, but professionally and
personally. Most professors have these same reflections.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If professors behave as though
students are cogs in the machine that produce the professors’ paychecks; if we
get so caught up in our own stories that we forget why we exist professionally;
or if we are depressed because we never became professors at one of those ivied
institutions, to the point of ignoring the students we serve, everyone loses. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Most professors don’t. Students
are why professors exist. They—the students and professors—provide me with an
optimism about the future that offsets my pessimism related to the business of
higher education in general, with its social engineers, managers, and bevies of fools. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2363344060269198198.post-69455678121255817902012-04-27T13:02:00.000-07:002012-04-27T13:02:45.252-07:00Politics and Metaphors<style>
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<br />
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
I’ve
been on a reading binge. A friend of mine, Tom Isbell, gave me a book written
by George Lakoff called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Whose Freedom?:
The Battle over America’s Most Important Idea</i>, written in 2006. It’s a good
read for my old brain.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
I’m
wondering about one of his notions in particular. We use a lot of family metaphors
to talk about our country (e.g., Founding Fathers, Daughters of the American
Revolution, Homeland Security, Family Values). Dr. Lakoff thinks this is not
accidental, but reflects a fundamental view of the country-as-family that in turn points
to a way of understanding, metaphorically, how the “right wing” conservatives
view the country as opposed to how the “left wing” progressives see it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
One
way of providing the context for this, according to Lakoff, is to define: </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
The
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">nation</b> as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">family</b>,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
Its
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">citizens </b>as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">children </b>(not pejoratively but in terms of relationship in the
family), and </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
Its
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">national leaders</b> as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">parents </b>(again, not pejoratively but in
terms of relationship in the family).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
In
U.S. culture, according to Lakoff, there are two polar opposites in terms of defining
parenting:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
The
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">strict father </b>model as exemplified more
generally by conservatives, and </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
The
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">nurturing parent </b>model, exemplified more
generally by progressives.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
Lakoff
believes that neither is better, and effective parenting (and nation governing)
may include both approaches, each used for different situations.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
But
he thinks that, if I sit down in my easy chair on a Sunday evening and think
about which of these approaches <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">to parenting</b>
(strict father/nurturing parent) I might <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">prefer
in general as a model,</b> I would probably choose one over the other as my
ideal approach. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
Similarly,
if I were to sit in that same chair and think about which of these approaches I
would prefer as a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">governing principle</b>
and ideal approach in this homeland I call the U.S. of A., I would probably
choose one over the other—strict father or nurturing parent—which would put me,
theoretically, more into either the conservative or progressive political camp.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
I’m
wondering if this metaphor works as Lakoff thinks it does as a means of
explaining the current “right wing” conservative and “left wing” progressive
approaches to politics.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
If
the metaphor did work, wouldn’t the alternative views (recognizing they don’t
exist purely in the world) be that either: </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The nation demands strict adherence to a
set of codified rules for its citizens, enforced by strong father figure leaders,
or</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The nation provides guidelines for rules of
behaviors of its citizens, loosely enforced by nurturing leaders</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
I
wonder which of these choices reflects conservative thinking and which reflects
progressives. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
Makes
me swimmy headed. Maybe my example was not put together well.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
I
know! How about Transactional Analysis, with its Parent/Adult/Child metaphors.
Remember that? Maybe, using the same language as Lakoff, I could explain politics with TA like this:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">We progressives communicate, always, as responsible
adults; conservatives communicate, inappropriately, as children; and our
leaders are those always-critical parents who need to be kept in line by
responsible adult progressives. </b></div>
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That
metaphor is more fun, and certainly ought to start some fights with my
conservative friends (says my child).</div>
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Lakoff’s
book is good and I recommend it. But not for light summer reading.</div>
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Thank
you Tom.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18221726639921622594noreply@blogger.com0