Views From the 14th Floor

Moved On

2010-11-01T08:47:00.003-05:00

Dear friends and dedicated readers. If you are at this site, you are at the wrong place. Views From the 14th Floor has moved to therealrexray.com New look.
Thanks.
RDR

What Ever Happened to Respect?

2010-10-01T17:52:00.008-05:00

It is Friday and I had a rough day at the neighborhood high school where I teach. Yes there are gangs in the building, but that's not the overriding problem here. The problem is that in certain sectors of society, or perhaps society as a whole, there has been a serious breakdown in the idea that one needs to show respect to one's fellow human beings. The idea that elders and people in positions of responsibility need to be shown respect is all too often found laughable. How did we get here.

Let me take you back to the jumping off point with a couple of anecdotes. I teach a senior level political science class during the second period of the day. The students vary from one child who dyes her hair green and made a 29 on her ACT test last year (If you don't know, that's really good.) to students who still read on an elementary school level and chafe at being made to sit in a classroom and do anything constructive, like learn about how your country is governed.

Today, two largish 17 year old boys were sitting in the left rear corner of the classroom while I was taking attendance and tending to basic administrative tasks. They were a little louder and more boisterous than I would like, but it was Friday and I was taking care of business. Then there was a loud crash. A desk was knocked over. Inwardly I was saying "What the fuck?" Outwardly, I let slip, under my breath, "Goddammit!"

I stopped what I was doing and told the young man in the corner to stop playing and pick up the desk. His reply was "I didn't do it. He did." I looked at the other kid seated near him. He didn't say a word so I asked him if he was responsible. He denied it. I was becoming annoyed. I needed to get the class back on track. "One of you needs to pick up the desk. I don't care who. Just pick up the desk." There was no response. No one moved. I had to repeat, this time in a more severe tone, "One of you pick up the desk or both of you will have to go. I really don't want to go there."

The two of them looked at each other and the second kid picked up the desk. The first kid made some smart remark. He has a history of smarting off in class. He likes to make remarks that have nothing to do with what we're discussing and trying to be funny at all times in that adolescent I'm a smart-ass and everyone thinks I'm cool kind of way. I told him to pick up his things and move to the front row. He said "Why?" I replied, "Because I asked you to do so and I'd appreciate it if you got up and moved to the front. He decided that he didn't have to move. "I'm not going anywhere. Go ahead. Call security. I'll go to detention."

So at this point what do you do? Cave in to the teenagers and you lose control of the room. They can and will do whatever they want to disrupt the class. I had to call for security and stop the class to a standstill while I filled out the paperwork. I turned my back to write something on the board for the rest of the class while I waited for security to show up and someone hit me in the back of the head with a small piece of paper. Shrugged it off and made a snide comment about seniors in high school behaving like 12 year olds.

Security came and took away the first kid. I looked at the second kid and told him to pick up his things and move to the front of the room. This one chose to swear at me and stalk out of the room. He tried to slam the door as hard as he could on the way out, but they recently put new hinges and springs on the doors so they close slowly and can't be slammed. Tsk! Tsk! Had to call the office and ask security to return to the third floor to pick up the paperwork on the second kid. Had to take the time to fill out the paperwork on the second kid. By the time all of this was over and I'd finished with the attendance report and basic b.s. somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes had flown the coop.

This afternoon I had to lecture a Freshman about his tendency to talk non-stop in class and disrupt the class. He was amazed for some reason. He had to argue with me. He told me, "You're crazy man. You're acting like I was......on and on." The point is that these kids have to know that they've done something wrong. It's not as though I never did anything wrong when I was their age, but I had the respect for the institution of education and the people involved to accept it when they dressed me down. Take the fall. Swallow the pill. Admit that you screwed up and move on. When did it become the norm for people to rail against their superiors? When did it become the norm to think that you could swear at people, call them names, throw things at them, and this would be acceptable behavior?

It is very tempting to write this off to the fact that I work in a neighborhood that most would call ghetto and the behavior of many of these kids is often called "acting ghetto." The trouble is that some of this sort of thing has permeated our entire society. A Congressman shouts out "You lie!" when the President is speaking. Tea Party ralliers shout racial epithets and throw things at African-American members of Congress. Glenn Beck and right-wing media routinely make up false statements about the President and sell it as the truth. Say something to another human being about how they've acted badly and they threaten your life.

People have learned to act and react with a sense of self-entitlement that is unjustified. If you screwed up, own up to it. There is structure to our society and rules for civilized behavior. When these rules and their sanctions disappear we might as well be living in an anarchy where life is, as the philosopher said, "nasty, brutish, and short." A little respect for your fellow humanity goes a long way, and in the long run results in more successful lives. That is all I wish to convey to the kids I encounter at times like these. We don't have to like each other. We don't have to hang out together. We do have to exhibit a modicum of respect for one another, however. Not doing so, has disastrous results.

Are We Just a Bunch of Cavemen, or What?

2010-09-28T18:30:00.003-05:00

I was seriously prepared to comment on the upcoming Mayoral election in Chicago and the fact its devolution into a race-based free-for-all. Speaking of devolution, however, there is something else that has been pressing on my mind for a week or so now. It needs to be addressed, and odd as it may sound coming from a 59 year old white male, I am thoroughly appalled and annoyed by men's attitudes toward women, their expectations, and their assumptions. We're talking about male-female relations worldwide, not just in areas we might think of as backwards. America and the so-called developed world have their problems as well, in this respect.

Let me start from the beginning of my current annoyance about this issue. A short while ago there was a feel good story in the Chicago news about a man who rescued a woman from a rape attempt in a public bathroom at the Foster Avenue beach house. While it is admirable that the man in question had his head in the right place and responded to the screams from the bathroom, the other side of the story is that a man, an American man, followed the woman into the bathroom, punched her repeatedly, beat her head against the cinder block wall, dragged her into a stall, and was trying to get his pants and hers down to consummate the deed when he was dragged off by the rescuer. He punched the rescuer and ran.

The attempted rapist in this scenario was arrested and identified in a lineup, by the victim. Now here is where this story gets really sordid. In a statement to police, the perpetrator of this crime said, "She wouldn't fuck me, so I beat on her..." Now it occurs to me, "What kind of sick sucker just expects a woman to fuck him because he's a man who wants to fuck and she's a woman and she's there?" The trouble is that this attitude is all too common in many sectors of society.

Let me relate just one more little anecdote of this ghetto mindset to bring the point home. I teach in a public high school in a not so good neighborhood and a couple of years back one of my students was arrested for sexual assaulting a woman at gunpoint. When arrested, his statement to the police, in some apparent attempt to justify his actions, was something on the order of "My girlfriend is pregnant and won't fuck me. I ain't had none in a long time. I just couldn't stand it no more, so....." This is the thing. In some sectors of American society you take what you want from women. That's what they're there for.

Noted that these are extreme cases, but we need to take a long look at how male-female relations in general are structured on this planet Earth. When you take a long look at the more conservative societies of the Islamic world, you find that women are, as a rule, relegated to second-class status. The whole thing about women covering themselves head to toe is just mind-boggling. Are we to believe that men are incapable of restraining themselves when confronted with a woman's sexuality? Just looking at a woman who even remotely resembles a woman in shape and form is enough to cause a man to rape her? Is that what this is about?

Several years ago Babs and I were in Morocco on a train, in one of those cars that have little compartments that hold 6 people, 3 on each side facing each other. Babs was obviously with me, but was not wearing a head scarf or one of those "cover it all up" outfits common in that part of the world. Several Moroccan men got on the train in Rabat and entered our compartment. The Moroccan woman who had not felt it necessary to cover her head when she was alone in the compartment with Americans made a show of covering her head. Then one of the guys sat down next to Babs and proceeded to put his hand on her leg. Babs was indignant and he removed it, but the assumptions and the assumed right to do this were appalling.

This is just a drop in the bucket when you consider that women in Iran are threatened with stoning for adultery. Women in Afghanistan are routinely intimidated to keep them from going to school. Women in Saudi Arabia are prohibited from driving cars or from going out of their homes without the accompaniment of an adult male member of their family. Women in parts of Africa have their clitoris removed to prevent them from having any pleasure in the sex act. Apparently the males in that part of the world feel that females who have pleasure in sex are sluts and impure.

Mind you these examples are pretty extreme, but even in so-called civilized corners of the planet male-female relations are not exactly the relationship of equals. As I recall, there are various Christian groups that press the idea that the man is always the head of the family and it is a woman's duty to obey him. No less of a mainstream Christian group than the Catholic Church disapproves of any form of birth control. They press the idea that sex is for procreation only, and women have no say in whether they should give birth to a child if they opt for having sexual relations.

Then there is the thing about women in modern industrialized societies doing the same jobs as men and making significantly less than men who do the same job. There is the thing about women being pointed toward vocations "more suited to women" and away from traditionally male-dominated professions like engineering and science. On and on and on ad infinitum. It is 2010 A.D. We can clone body parts, but religions don't want us to. We can send humans to destinations beyond our planetary boundaries, yet men around the globe cannot grasp a concept so simple as "women are our equals, just made sexually different so we as a species can reproduce." Is that so hard to grasp, really? Or are we still just a bunch of glorified Cro-Magnons?

Republican Politics and Reality

2010-09-24T16:25:00.007-05:00

The mid-term elections will be coming up in just a little over a month and the TV attack ads are ratcheting up. All manner of Tea Party rallies are out there raking in money to finance assorted right-wing craziness and the personal spending habits of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. And now the Republican Party has unveiled its "Pledge to America." I have perused it and frankly it reminds me a lot of Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" of a few years ago. As I recall, a lot of us referred to it, more realistically I'd like to think, as "The Contract On America."

Just for the sake of clarity, let's review what is included in the Republican "Pledge to America."

1) The Republican Party pledges to keep tax rates absurdly low on the richest 1% of Americans. That would be millionaires and billionaires. This is despite the fact that doing so will increase the national debt by several hundreds of billions of dollars.

2) The Republican Party wants to roll back regulations on big business and Wall Street. This is despite all evidence that points to the fact that lack of regulation is part of what caused the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930's.

3) The Republican Party is in no way, shape, or form prepared to insure the future of Social Security or Medicare. This is despite the fact that millions upon millions of elderly Americans are dependent on both to insure their health and livelihood. Apparently, if you're rich you don't need either, so therefore you don't believe anybody else should either and you damned well don't want to pay for their retirement or healthcare. Tell it to my grandmother.

4) The Republican Party is in denial about any links between fossil fuels and global warming and are not prepared to do anything to stop or slow down the process. This is despite real scientific evidence that we are creating eco-disaster.

5) The Republican Party is not prepared to pay for repairing or updating our crumbling infrastructure. That would mean tax dollars, and they are against paying taxes. This is despite the fact that investment in our infrastructure is necessary and doing so means creating jobs for our citizens.

6) The Republican Party is apparently against any government spending whatsoever, unless it is for salaries for Republicans and for any and all military projects. They seem to have never met a military expenditure that they didn't like.

7) The Republican Party wants to repeal the recently enacted health care laws. This is despite the fact that millions of ordinary Americans are benefitting from affordable health care because of this reform.

8) The Republican Party would like you to believe that returning to the same tired old Trickle Down Economics nonsense and corporate giveaway policies will benefit America. Sure they will benefit America, but only a small part of America, really rich America. Everyone else will continue struggling.

To be sure, what the Republican Party is advocating is the same ideas that were expressed in the 1920's as "Trickle Down Economics." Those policies famously led to the Great Depression in the 1930's. For the record John Maynard Keynes recommended that government invest in creation of jobs so as to create a cash flow and get the economy moving that time. Remember the WPA, the CCC, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and scads of other projects that helped put Americans back to work, and built roads, bridges, and public buildings? Remember that? The Republican Party was opposed to that too.

To be sure, what the Republican Party is advocating is the same ideas that were expressed in the 1980's as "Supply-Side Economics" or "Reaganomics" or as George H.W. Bush called them, "Voodoo Economics." Mr. Reagan and company argued that we could actually create more tax revenue by cutting taxes and stimulating the economy. He also was known to pretty much oppose any government expenditure except, you guessed it, military projects. He created the greatest budget deficits in U.S. History, to that point and a 6 trillion dollar national debt.

To be sure, what the Republican Party is advocating is the same ideas that were promoted by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney during their 8 year fiasco in charge of our nation. While Bill Clinton left office with a balanced budget and a shrinking national debt, G.W. Bush, through his tax cuts, ill-advised wars, and total gutting of all corporate regulation managed to leave office with an even bigger national debt than was created by Ronald Reagan and with the worst economic disaster in history since the Great Depression.

As Joe Friday would have told us, "Just the facts Ma'am." Let's get real here. The current administration hasn't totally changed the world, but they did save the country from certain economic disaster when they gave assistance to the banking industry and the auto industry and they began a process of oversight of corporate America. The Republican Party has, despite opportunities to do good for all Americans, become the party of "NO!" They have become the party that uses any legal means possible to obstruct anything that might be good for average Americans. They have become the party of "Let's make up facts or twist the real facts any way possible to make the other party look bad." They have, to a large extent, become the party of liars.

There is so much more that can be said, but we, as Americans, need to know the truth. We need to seriously consider the consequences of our vote. We need to recognize the fact that this country is going to become a backwater nothing of a country if we turn it over to the Republican Party. We run the risk of becoming a nation that people want to leave to go somewhere else where there is opportunity instead of the "Land of Opportunity" that we have historically been. Just remember that voting Republican is irresponsible and bad politics and do the right thing. Remember, "Friends don't let friends vote Republican."

So When Is the Autumnal Equinox (First Day of Fall) Anyway?

2010-09-21T18:38:00.006-05:00

Today is the Autumnal Equinox, or at least it should be. Having Googled the equinox, I found out that some say it's on September 22 this year, and some say it's on September 23. Traditionally, the Autumnal Equinox has been September 21 and the Vernal Equinox has been March 21 and all of that scientific fact is just getting in the way I tell you. Does anyone really care that the suns rays cross the equator at exactly 9;43 AM EDT on September 23? Just made that fact up, so don't quote me on it. The Naval Observatory tells me it occurs at exactly 11:29 PM on September 22. Another source assures me that it occurs on September 23. Google it yourself if you're so insistent on being to the minute scientifically correct for goodness sakes. September 21 is close enough and traditional enough for me.

If the truth were known, everyone would know that my wife's birthday signals the beginning of Fall for me, and that occurs on September 20. Happy birthday Babs. Happy beginning of Fall. Equinox Schmequinox. The trees are beginning to change colors. The days are getting shorter. Let's not get picky. Next thing, you're going to tell me that summer doesn't actually begin on the day that school's out.

What's that? The Summer Solstice. Yes I know a Solstice is a Pontiac. Yes I know Pontiac's are not being made anymore. Can we get back to the point? Yes I know the summer solstice is when the sun's rays are northernmost in our hemisphere and this occurrence can vary from June 20 to June 23 from year to year. Once again, who cares? As a kid, my summers always began precisely when I picked up that last report card of the year and went home until September. As a teacher, my summers begin when I have handed out that last report card, turned in my keys to the school office, and when I head out the door with the idea of going home and changing into shorts. Actual solstice dates be damned. Got nothing to do with real summers.

Vernal Equinoxes? Okay I know that they occur somewhere between March 20 and March 23, but let's get real. This has nothing to do with real spring. Hours of sunlight be damned. In the city of Chicago, right next to Lake Michigan, it is cold and wet until sometime in late May or early June. Spring lasts maybe two days and then someone flips the switch and it's mid-summer temperatures. Fifty one day. Eighty-five the next day. There are some in the City of Chicago who think Spring is a myth as elusive as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Just something you teach your kids. Doesn't really exist. Of course there are those who say the same about Jesus and religion as well, but that's a topic for another day.

Now I've gone through both equinoxes and one solstice, and that leaves one lone seasonal marker that I haven't mentioned. That is the Winter Solstice. Yes we know that it is traditionally December 21 (in the Northern Hemisphere) and can vary from December 20 to 23. And we know that in my mind it is not likely to be quite that scientifically exact. Yes I know all about the sun shining its hardest on the opposite end of the planet and circles around said sun and days getting longer after that, but when does actual winter set in in my mind, in your mind?

This brings to mind a serious digression. If you think the days get seriously short in the Northern U.S. in mid-December, try going to Iceland at Christmas sometime. Did that. One word to describe most of the day, dark. The sun comes up for a few short hours somewhere around 10 AM and goes down shortly thereafter, at about 2 PM. The sun never achieves any serious brightness, but has that late afternoon yellowish slanting light look that you get in late afternoon, only it's like that all day, all 3 or 4 hours of it. Got to see the Northern Lights up close and personal though.

Anyway, I was trying to decide when the Winter Solstice (First Day of Winter) actually is. You know, living in the Upper Midwest of the U.S. it gets crappy cold somewhere around the middle of November. I could make those last couple of weeks of November the last gasp of Fall and December 1 the actual first day of winter. Makes sense to me. I could make the first serious falling of the snow the first day of winter and that varies from year to year, but it's usually somewhere in December. (This is not to be confused with winter in Minneapolis. I lived there for a while and it snows from the end of October to the beginning of May. I defy you to tell me that Fall or Spring have intruded on that long-assed winter.)

Of course winter sometimes signals its beginning by the beginning of Winter Vacation from school. We could go with December 25, Christmas Day, as the beginning of winter. The Christians made it a holiday so they didn't have to take the winter festival away from the pagans. That could work. All in all, though, the beginning of my winter is pretty loosey goosey. When it gets cold and crappy, it's winter. Has nothing to do with hours of sunlight. Has nothing to do with actual scientific solstices. So when does winter begin this year? Don't know yet.

All of that being said, I guess the seasons of the year are a state of mind, and right now it is Fall, Autumn, whatever you want to call it. Forget the fact that the scientists are telling you to wait a day. Forget the fact that it was 88 degrees today. It's Fall now. Drive north and look at some leaves for goodness sakes. Enjoy it. Embrace it. It's part of the cycle.

Scatalogical Interests

2010-09-18T15:55:00.001-05:00

Go figure. Here I bust my hump day after day trying to well-reasoned and pertinent posts on this blog and only a few of my closest friends pay attention. When I write about education, my fellow teachers read and applaud. When I write about politics, my fellow lefties read and applaud. When I write about religion or social issues, likewise a limited audience shows their appreciation. Through it all a dedicated few friends and relatives read most of what I write, to show their support. I don't think even my wife reads all of it, though.

Then I endure an incident with a bozo on the running and biking path on the lake front and label it, "How to Piss Off a Dumbass," and oh my god the hits at this site go through the roof, so to speak. I have spent nearly two years now cranking out this blog and trying to get the world to take what I say seriously, with well-written, socially relevant posts and the odd bit of satire now and then, but apparently that's not what the world really wants. They want dirty words. They want scatalogical prose. They want to be entertained.

That is to say that a large number of people are not much entertained by well-reasoned arguments or by satiric views of the world. They are entertained by poop. Want to get rich in publishing? Write dirty books with lots of sex and dirty words. Want to get really rich? Don't write anything at all. People don't like to read. Make dirty movies with lots of sex, violence, and dirty words. But I digress. Want to write socially relevant stuff? Don't quit your day job.

The point is that while I have my regular readers, after my last post about "pissing off dumbasses" I was suddenly getting hits from Maine to California, from Texas to Michigan. I was getting hits from New Zealand, India, the UK, Venezuela, South Africa, and even one or two from the Middle East. Who knew? Don't work at writing well. Just swear a lot. Had I embellished the story a bit and added actual violence and a little sex to boot, maybe I could have gotten so many hits that Google would be overwhelmed.

If I had included a link to a video showing actual violence and/or sex while all parties are swearing at the top of their lungs, I could've maybe been a You Tube sensation. Trouble is I'm not that guy. I'm a 59 year old guy, soon to be 60, with a long history of intellectual artsiness. Not the kind of stuff that makes you an overnight sensation. Maybe I could change though. Maybe I could do just enough of that to make me rich and famous. Probably not, but it might be worth a try. Got that you ignorant m****r f*****s?!!!

How to Ps Off A D***s

2010-09-15T17:45:00.006-05:00

I am a person who runs a great deal, and spending an inordinate amount of time on the lake front running and biking path I sometimes have occasion to encounter some people who are less than civil. This is the story of one of those encounters. If you are a person who is easily offended by less than civil language, please read no further. If you really don't give a rat's ass, read on. In this little story I will make reference to: 1) Being pissed off, and 2) Someone being a real dumb-ass. Okay, perhaps not as bad as you anticipated, but still not the kind of talk for more sophisticated society.

So anyway, I was out running a little 5 mile Wednesday afternooner and I was on the lake front path that is shared by runners, bikers, roller bladers, various gawking tourists, and mothers pushing strollers. I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 1/2 miles into the run when I found myself approaching the North Avenue biking, roller blading, pedestrian, gawking tourist, and mothers pushing strollers bridge over Lake Shore Drive. On this particular day I was planning a trip over the bridge into Lincoln Park proper and not to proceed directly up the lake front. I looked briefly over my shoulder, turned, and took a step to the left to head across the path to the bridge.

This is where it turned ugly. Excuse me. I had to visit the bathroom momentarily. So where was I anway? Oh yeah. It turned ugly. When I had turned my body to the left and taken one step, I realized that there was a bike closing in on me quickly. I stopped dead in my tracks. The guy on the bike whizzed by about two feet in front of me. I recall thinking to myself, "Oops," somewhat cheerfully. Then the guy on the bike slowed down, turned gave me a really dirty look, and made a rude gesture, suggesting that I had done something really wrong and he was terribly put upon.

He pissed me off. I responded. "So say something dumb-ass, like on your left. How am I supposed to know you're there?" Okay so I shouldn't have included the term dumb-ass in the retort. It leaped unbidden from my lips. So sue me. Well turns out the guy wasn't the kind of guy who wasn't into suing me. He was pissed. He turned his bike around and came back to where I was off on the path heading to the bridge. He rode up and stopped his bike right in front of me.

So now this guy who was looked to be in the neighborhood of 30 years old, 6 feet tall, and possibly an abuser of steroids was right in my face. The first thing out of his mouth? "Don't call me a dumb-ass." Oops.

So anyway, discretion may be the better part of valor, but my mouth wasn't into too much discretion or valor at that time and this ape on a bicycle was really annoying me. I replied, "Well you are a dumb-ass." Oops. I thought for a moment of adding, "So what are you going to do, beat me up?" Then discretion kicked in. I thought that maybe I didn't want to put any of those kind of ideas in his dumb-ass brain. He might follow up on the suggestion.

Anyway, the guy got really flustered when I insisted that he really was a dumb-ass, and at that point, he of the crimson face began spitting out his reply, "Yeah, you know what you are? You're a fat old man. You're a fat, disgusting old man. You are just disgusting and ..........." on and on infinitum.

At this point I elected to roll my eyes and continue my run. Instead of continuing straight up the lake front in the direction he had been riding, he followed me over the bridge, all the while screaming, "You're a fat, old, disgusting man and......." Who knows what other insults he chose to hurl at me? I tuned him out and ran on.

On the other side of the bridge he hurled a few last insults at me, "Fat! Old! Disgusting!" Yada! Yada! Yada! I continued my run through the park. He rode his bike ahead to a water fountain about 200 yards up the path and stopped for a drink of water. I kept on running at my usual 9:30 pace.

Then he turned around and began riding back up the path toward me and as he neared, he purposely swerved to his left so he was riding directly toward me. When he got close enough to hear me what came out of my mouth was, "Now you are really acting like a dumb-ass." I kept running. He swerved back to his right and went around me, shouting as he rode into the distance, "Fat! Old! Disgusting!"

The odd thing was that he was obviously trying to intimidate me and I didn't feel very intimidated. If he had actually gotten off the bike, perhaps I would have, but basically all I could think was, "Jesus what a dumb-ass prick!" He rode off into the distance and I ran the rest of my 5 miler, smiling and enjoying the day.

Now as for the accusations of being fat, old, and disgusting, well the truth is that I will have my 60th birthday in a couple of weeks. The truth is that I stand 5'8" and I currently weigh 205 lb., a bit too much for a guy my height. Trouble is that after you reach a certain age your metabolism slows down and it gets to be a bitch to keep the weight off. I've been running 30 miles/week for the past 3 months and though the weight is easing off, it's not exactly melting away. As for the disgusting part, well that's a value judgement and my wife, family, friends, and work colleagues don't seem to share that view, unless they're just being nice and not saying it. Who knows?

The thing is that when I was this guy's age I weighed 165 lb. and even though I weigh significantly more now, I'm in better shape. Resting heart rate in the neighborhood of 50 beats/minute. My blood pressure is good. My cholesterol is good. I suspect angry dumb-ass guy is on the road to high blood pressure and an early heart attack.

The thought occurred to me that maybe I was out of line and this guy was so angry about being called a dumb-ass because he really is mentally challenged and it was like called a kid who is mentally handicapped a retard. His reactions suggest that he certainly is emotionally stunted. If this is the case, I certainly apologize. I was way out of line. It is just unconscionable to be taunting a mentally handicapped individual with calling them a dumb-ass.

Do I believe that? Nah! It is altogether likely that the guy is just a Type A dumb-ass prick, and he needs some serious anger management. Don't guys like this have anything better to do than harass 60 year old men who are just out for a run to try and keep themselves healthy and to enjoy a warm sunny afternoon? I guess not.

Tea Parties Should Have Tea and Scones, Not Right-Wing Politics

2010-09-13T17:34:00.003-05:00

Although I'm in a reasonably good humor this afternoon, it has been several days since I put up my last post, and it is Monday, and Mondays are associated with the color blue, and they're supposed to be a time for crankiness. Therefore, I have elected to spend some time bitching about the Tea Party and maybe if I have room, bitch a little bit more about the core of Republicanism, "Trickle Down Economics." It is past Labor Day and November elections are just around the corner. Electioneering and silliness are cranking up to their silliest.

Apparently, the core of the Republican Party is in the throes of trying their damnedest to stop Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party set in general from taking over the party. So what's the difference between the two? Well I do believe we're talking about the difference between right-wing and righter-wing, between conservative and radically stupid about downsizing government.

The Republican Party has always been, in my lifetime, the party of less government, and the party of big business. More recently they have taken on an infusion of social conservatism as well, i.e. anti-abortion, pro-religion, and anti-gay. Now the Tea Party set have added a whole new dimension to this. Their stances are somewhere just this side of anarchy. They believe whole-heartedly in declaring this to be a Christian nation and one that speaks English, by gosh. Needless to say, this doesn't sit well with the big business, Country Club Republicans who like to keep a low profile and keep the buckolas rolling in by gutting the government's ability to regulate business and tax it. Let's just all have another martini and chill out a little, shall we?

I did a little bit of research and found out a few of the things that the Tea Party stands for and a couple of things they seem to be against:

1) They are against all pork barrel spending, and by their definition, just about anything could qualify as pork barrel waste.

2) They oppose the 2008 Wall Street bailout, despite the fact that the entire world economy would, in all likelihood, have experienced a serious meltdown and precipitated a serious depression, not recesion, had the government not acted to bail them out. I might add that their opposition is despite the fact that none other than G.W. Bush championed these bailouts.

3) They are opposed to any sort of climate change legislation. A lot of Tea Partiers seem to be in denial about global warming and the need to act to stop global disasters.

4) Tea Partiers, on the other hand, are for keeping God in the Pledge of Allegiance, despite any possibility that this might run contrary to the Constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state.

5) Tea Partiers are for massive spending cuts, not tax increases to balance the budget. Apparently, no one in the Tea Party has a father or mother who need Medicare or Social Security. Apparently no one in the Tea Party needs government assistance in seeing that they or someone they know and love can receive healthcare. Apparently no one in the Tea Party sees the need to spend money on educating our population so they can become productive citizens and can function in a 21st century job market. Apparently no one in the Tea Party cares about funding the military to protect us or cares about building roads or overseeing airports or upgrading the train system so our nation can claim to be one of the advanced nations of the world. Perhaps they would rather we continue down the road to becoming another backwater with a wealthy elite and huge uneducated poverty stricken underclass.

6) Tea Partiers believe in personal responsibility, not handouts and in unfettered capitalism, not government oversight. All I can say to this is Oh my God. Have these people not been paying attention? Have they no idea that poverty breeds poverty and wealth breeds more wealth? Have they no idea that ethnicity, social class, and educational level of parents are big time determinants of how children grow up and function? Have they paid no attention whatsoever to the history of the past one hundred years? Unfettered capitalism got us into this mess. Government oversight is necessary to protect the rights of the many from the excesses of the few.

This brings us to the intersection of mainstream Republicanism and that of the Tea Party. They both are pushing the idea that getting government out of the business of regulating business will benefit the entire populous. They are both promoting the idea that less taxation of the wealthy means those wealthy invest that money and create more jobs for the not so wealthy. There is a word for this. It is bullshit. This is the same tired idea of "trickle down economics" that has been promoted by the Republican Party since the 1920's. It was recycled by Ronald Reagan as "Supply-Side Economics" and was better known by the general public as "Reaganomics." No less a Republican than George Herbert Walker Bush (Bush, the elder) called it "Voodoo Economics."

You cannot cut taxes and create more tax revenue. You cannot cut taxes and fund endless oversea military adventures. You cannot keep the big business community from screwing the American people by gutting the government's ability to oversee and regulate business. You cannot rid the country of dire poverty by asking everyone to just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and accept responsibility for themselves. Doesn't work now. Didn't ever work.

Part of the hue and cry of the Tea Party is to take the government back, to get back to what made this country great, to get back to the principles that are embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As a teacher and student of history and government, all I can say is that these are a lot of people who weren't paying much attention when they were in history and government classes. I'm not sure that any of them have spent much time in a Constitutional Law class. If they had, they'd have a much better grip on reality.

A great deal of our governmental foundations are based on the Enlightenment Principles set forth by John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu, among others. Governments exist by the will of the people. It is government's job to protect the innate rights of their citizens, i.e. "Life, liberty, and property." Separation of powers protects the citizenry from having one group gaining too much power and screwing the others. All of that being said, what is allowed by the Constitution is open to interpretation of what protecting the rights of the citizens means. Many things are permitted, and a graduated income tax is a much more just system of paying for what is necessary than are sales taxes and such that are regressive, costing poor people larger percentages of their wages than wealthy people.

Protecting the rights of the citizens sometimes means protecting some groups within society from other groups. That can mean government oversight of business. Sometimes that can mean giving a little monetary assistance and healthcare to the elderly when they can no longer contribute to society. Sometimes it means giving a little assistance and counseling to those who cannot take care of their families. Sometimes it just means paying a little from your own pocket to assist those less able to fend for themselves. It means having compassion.

To gut government and make it continually smaller, is to set large sectors of society adrift to fend for themselves against a tide of forces much more powerful than they are. It brings to mind yet another Enlightenment political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who said that "in a state of nature mankind's life is nasty, brutish, and short." Personally, I'll take a compassionate government over the dog eat dog state of nature, law of the jungle life.

Goodbye Mr. Daley. America Will Miss You.

2010-09-08T18:17:00.005-05:00

Richard M. Daley announced that he will not run for re-election yesterday. Babs and I moved to Chicago 25 years ago and Daley has been Mayor of this fine city for 21 of those 25 years. His stewardship has pretty much shaped my Chicago experience these many years. I have to admit that I'll really miss him. I worry about what will come of our city now. It's big. It's unwieldy. The racial politics are alarming. Rich Daley's shoes are some big mothers to fill. Let's hope someone worthy steps up to the plate.

I saw some Chicago Sun-Times interviews with local citizenry on what they thought about Daley's 21 years as Mayor and there was a lot of negativity. People have very short memories. People often have skewed views of reality. Recently, to meet a budget shortfall, the Mayor pressed the City Council to sell the parking meter franchise to a private corporation for a substantial sum of money. Now parking rates have gone up. Now places that never used to charge for parking are suddenly charging. People are pissed. This is the one big thing that a great many people remember when they badmouth the Mayor. Truthfully, it may not have been his most far-sighted decision, but there are a lot of other events in Chicago in the last 21 years that far outweigh that one questionable decision.

Oh and there was that one time that the Mayor wanted to get rid of Meigs Field and turn it into a public park. For those of you who do not know, Meigs Field was a small air strip located right on the lake front in downtown Chicago. The only people who used it were corporations with their jets and super wealthy individuals who didn't want to land at Midway or O'Hare and have to taxi into the center of the city. It was a perk for the bigwigs. Rich Daley remembered the promise from a hundred years earlier that the entire lake front would be public space for the use of all Chicagoans. Resistance to getting rid of Meigs? Tough! He had it bulldozed in the middle of the night so the next morning the runway was useless. Now there are outdoor concerts held there. I have to admit that, as an ordinary citizen, I am a great deal more likely to get use of the arena at Northerly Island than the air strip at Meigs Field. Some think this was an arrogant power play on the Mayor's part. Most of them are Republicans. This was a victory for the little guy. Thank you Rich Daley.

There are people who like to grumble about Daley engaging in union busting and various and sundry crimes against the Working Joe, but honestly life is better here in Chicago for the Working Joe than it was in 1985 when I arrived. The unions have always supported him in elections while sometimes bad-mouthing him in the interim. Complex situation that. There is less crime now than there was when he became Mayor. The city looks a lot better now than it did when he became Mayor. The city has become a serious international destination since he became Mayor.

What, specifically, has come to pass in Mayor Daley's tenure? Navy Pier went from wasted space and eyesore to the number 1 tourist destination in Chicago. The "Bean" became the crowning glory of Millennium Park. Oh, and Millennium Park became a reality. Flowers and trees went into the medians of Lake Shore Drive and beautification projects all over the city turned the entire city into a much nicer place to live and look at. And the guy likes to ride bikes and has made a city of 3 million people pretty much bike friendly. I could go on.

Before Rich Daley, there was Harold Washington, and Harold Washington was a great man, make no mistake about that. He led this city, united it, and healed old racial wounds like no one before him was able to do. Tragically, he died far too soon and the dog fight to fill his position became a circus. The yoke fell upon Alderman Eugene Sawyer, a nice man, but not the man to fill Harold Washington's shoes. In retrospect, Eugene became Mayor pretty much because a black man had been Mayor and a lot of people thought the person to fill out the rest of his term should also be a black man. Not particularly sound logic, but it carried the day. Eugene was so lackluster that he didn't get re-elected. Rich Daley took over.

Before Washington, there was Jane Byrne, who got elected because Michael Bilandic's administration did a positively crappy job of removing snow from the streets after the snow storm of the century. Bilandic got the job because Richard J. Daley died and he was Daley Sr's chosen one. Too bad. He was really a crappy Mayor. The city suffered in those Bilandic and Byrne years. The City Council was seriously divided along racial lines. Jane Byrne tried to prove that she was a Mayor of the people and that the "projects" were safe and moved into Cabrini Green. Jesus Jane! What are you, goofy? A great many people came to call downtown politics "Silly Hall."

Say what you will. Life these last 21 years has been pretty darned good. Now there is a plethora of noise in the press from those who want to be Mayor and those who somebody wishes would be Mayor and those who have a pipe dream of being Mayor. It remains to be seen who will step up. Whoever it is, really should be a serious player. The job of Mayor of Chicago is a powerful position. People give up jobs in the United States Congress to step up to the job of Mayor. The Mayor of Chicago has historically been a person who can deliver the State of Illinois in Presidential elections. The Mayor of Chicago is a person who can satisfy a lot of different racial and ethnic constituencies. The Mayor of Chicago is a job that calls for someone who is bigger than life. This is a nuts and bolts city and the Mayor don't have to talk pretty. He just needs to know how to get shit done. This is "The City That Works," "The City of Big Shoulders." This is the city that produced the first black President of the United States of America, and the Mayor has to have his finger in every little pie seeing that all of that keeps on plugging along. Okay, we didn't get the 2016 Olympics. Get over it. And go out and find somebody really good to fill those big-ass shoes that Rich Daley has been wearing for 21 years.

College Ain't For Everybody, But Everybody's Gotta Work.

2010-09-06T18:35:00.000-05:00

Today is Labor Day and in honor of labor I have to say that our nation is not doing it's level best at providing opportunities for labor for all, at least not opportunities that pay a decent wage and allow people to live a decent middle class life. There are a great many factors that play into this scenario. A lot of manufacturing has been outsourced to cheaper labor pools overseas, leaving a great many Americans searching for work that does not require a college degree. A huge chunk of the available service sector jobs pay pitifully low wages and their accompanying benefit packages all too often do not meet the needs of the employees. Then there is that factor that I, as an educator, know most about. The public schools are not doing their jobs in preparing American kids for their futures.

Just this last week I was subjected to the platitudes of one more career administrator who put forth the proposition that we need to prepare all students in our high schools for college. While this sounds great on the surface, it simply is not realistic. Not all students want to go to college. Not all students have the ability financially to go to college. Not all students have the innate academic talents to go to college. We need to be thinking about how best to meet the needs of these kids who will never graduate from college. Continuing to pretend that college is best for all kids is doing a disservice to the kids of America, and to America itself, a sprawling nation of 310 million with needs for citizens who are very real rocket scientists to garbage collectors.

Let's get real about this college thing. A full 40% of all students who begin college never complete a 4 year degree. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of Americans have at least a B.A. Advanced degrees fall into the 10% and less category. What this means is that fully 70% of our population does not have a college degree and in all likelihood will never possess one. What about these individuals? What about the 70% of public school students who will never get a college degree? What are we doing for them?

What would happen if every high school graduate went on to college? Honestly, that would mean that a 4 year degree is meaningless, and to get a good job you would have to have an advanced degree. It would mean a lot of dropouts or it might mean that there would be massive grade inflation to assure the graduation of scads of kids who don't have what it takes to realistically complete a B.A. or B.S. as we know it. Come to think of it a lot of that is already in progress and 4 year degrees have become devalued already. Makes me really glad that I have an advanced degree.

To be honest, America needs people to repair cars, to work as carpenters, plumbers, electricians. America needs people to work in technical capacities in healthcare and electronics. America needs people to do any number of things that do not require a college degree. So why are we insisting that every child should go to college? Why aren't we training kids to do all of these other things and reserving the college prep programs for those kids who really want to go to college and have the ability? We're setting these kids up for a lifetime of struggle instead of training them for careers that will pay a reasonable wage and allow them to live a middle class existence.

Truthfully, America needs to be finding ways to bring industry back to America, instead of farming it out to foreign countries and foisting unemployment on those who staked their lives on factory labor with a living wage. Even if we bring back manufacturing, though, it will need to be higher tech. Lower tech manufacturing will continue to be a place where 3rd world nations can provide jobs for their citizens while their nations develop. Instead of low tech manufacture, we can focus on green technologies, on high tech technologies.

Changing our focus in education to one where not everyone is college bound will mean providing vocational and career training to some on the high school level and providing further technical training in 1 and 2 year programs beyond high school. Community colleges are perfect venues for such a thing. Furthermore, industry could provide internships and apprenticeships to give kids the skills they need while on the job. This could assure us of continuing to have a viable middle class in America. Should we not adapt, America will continue to widen the gap between rich and poor and continue the process of moving citizens out of the middle class and into the lower classes. Unless we do this, we risk becoming another 3rd world nation with a small wealthy class that lives in gated communities with armed guards and a huge underclass living in squalor.

In a Secular State of Mind

2010-09-02T18:03:00.004-05:00

Labor Day is this weekend and the traditional back to school date arrives next week. With the arrival of a new school year comes a lot of silliness in the back and forth between liberals and conservatives about what schools are doing wrong and what needs to happen to improve public schools. If the dialogue involves how to do more to educate kids I'm for the dialogue, even if I don't happen to agree with what some people are saying about what's wrong and what will fix it. This means that people are thinking about it and perhaps we can sort through it all, separate the wheat from the chaff and move forward.

The one thing that comes up year after year, however, is the quest for some sectors of our society to include their religion in public school education. Their ranges from demanding prayer in public schools to denial of evolution and claims that the Earth is only 40,000 years old. Let's face it. Religion and science have no place in the same classroom. Religion is based on faith and faith is, by definition, something one believes in that cannot be proven. Science is that which can be proven by observation and testing. Belief in God or gods is an article of faith. Evolution is a proven scientific fact. The Earth is billions of years old. This too is scientific fact. As for prayer and acceptance of Christianity as the one true religion, well these too have no place in a public school classroom.

A great many people in this country posit the idea that this is a Christian country and the founding fathers accepted this principle. Sorry fellas. This is just not true. It is true that most of the early colonists were Christians. Puritans in New England exiled anyone not loyal to their brand of Christianity. To live in most Southern colonies, one had to belong to the Church of England. Catholics in Maryland allowed any denomination of Christianity and accepted Jews. In Pennsylvania the founding Quakers accepted pretty much anybody. They were, for the most part, Christians though.

By the time the founding fathers of our nation showed up, however, they were all heavily into the prevailing thought of the Enlightenment. Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were definitely Deists, not Christians. Evidence points to James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine all being Deists as well. Deists believed in a supreme being who created the universe and set in motion, but who did not take any more interest in human activity afterwards. Some believed in an eternal soul. Some did not. They believed in the power of human reason to understand the universe. They rejected organized religion. They rejected prayer and miracles from God.

These Deists of the late 1700's definitely did not see this as a Christian nation, and rejected the notion of tying religion of any sort to the state. Separation of church and state were considered a vital part of the Constitution. Really? So what about "In God We Trust" on our money? What about "one nation under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Where did that come from?

Turns out "In God We Trust" first appeared on some coins in 1864, almost 100 years after we became a nation, and long after the founding fathers had died. It did not appear on all money until 1956, at the height of the Cold War and was being fed by propaganda against the godless Communists. The Pledge of Allegiance never included the phrase "under God" until 1954, also during the Cold War, and suggested that God was on our side since the evil Communists believed in no God. Even in these instances, nowhere was Jesus or Christianity mentioned, just a belief in God.

It is true that, historically, the majority of the population of this nation has espoused Christianity as its religion. It is also true, however, that institution of separation of church and state has made this a nation where all religions, or none at all are accepted. The government officially recognizes no religion as the truth. To state otherwise is contrary to fact, just as to deny scientific facts such as the sun being the center of the solar system and the Earth being billions of years old are contrary to fact. Want to believe otherwise? Our nation allows you to do so despite the fact that you will be wrong.

In nations such as ours, most people are brought up to believe that Jesus was the son of God and his teachings constitute the true faith. Jewish people are brought up to believe that the Messiah has never come and Jesus was a teacher, nothing more. Muslims are brought up to believe that Jesus was a prophet, not the son of God, and Muhammad was God's final prophet. In India, a majority of people are brought up to believe in Hinduism and reincarnation. Large numbers of people in Asia are brought up to believe in the teachings of the Buddha. On and on. During the extremes of the Cold War, the Communist world unilaterally rejected all religion, as the opiate of the masses, and millions upon millions of people were brought up to believe in no religion at all. What you believe is generally a product of where you are born and where you grow up, a local norm.

The great thing about this nation is now and has been, historically, is the ability of people from anywhere on the globe to bring these belief systems with them and yet fit in in a nation that allows all religious beliefs, and embraces by law, none of them. In a society that is global, our children must be taught this fact. To succeed in a global society, you must be tolerant of many different beliefs. To do otherwise is divisive and creates conflict. That means that religion belongs in churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples of all sorts, not in a public school, not as a manifestation of our government.

Of Light and Dark

2010-08-30T14:45:00.010-05:00

In a few weeks I will be having my 60th birthday. It's very easy to joke about someone else's 60th, but somehow when it's your own it's different. At age 60 you've already been getting AARP materials for 10 years. The fact is inescapable that you're getting old. Unless you turn out to be a miracle of a human specimen and live to be 120+ years old, there is less life before you than there is behind you. When you take stock of yourself, you realize that you can't put things off any longer if you really want to achieve them. It's time to crank it up and get it done if you haven't managed to do it already.

What it is is a not so subtle reminder of one's mortality. Now you're a senior citizen, even if the Social Security and Medicare don't kick in for a few years yet. Even if you can't afford to retire for a few years yet. In society's eyes you're old. In your insurance company's eyes you're becoming a liability. In your employer's eyes you're becoming one of those big salaries to be urged out as soon as possible. In your wife's eyes, you're one step closer to biting the big one and leaving her all alone to try and make ends meet and suffer through the rest of her days alone. Ask Babs sometime about her fantasy regarding after my death. It involves being dirt poor, living in a ratty little apartment, and having a skinny German shepherd for company.

As if this state of mind weren't bad enough, one of my cats is on his last legs and we're going to have to "put him to sleep," to euthanize him. Who knew you could get so attached to a 15 year old mass of fur? Talk about your reminders of mortality. His kidneys are failing. We've spent the last few months giving him Lactated Ringers solution subcutaneously and trying desperately to get him to eat something, anything. Mostly he likes to drink water and lactose free milk. Now he's beyond skinny and somewhere in the realm of gaunt. He's gotten weaker and walks very slowly, with the gait of the old and fragile. For the last couple of days he's pretty much holed up in the guest bedroom and on the rug in the guest bathroom.

I made the call today. I called the veterinarian's office and told them the story and requested an appointment to euthanize him. I got choked up and had a hard time speaking with the clerk in the vet's office. I feel complicit in bringing about the death of a friend, albeit a very sick old friend. How do you say good-bye to a friend when you asked the vet to put the needle in and give him the sleep from which he will never wake.

Then that brings me back around to my own mortality. How will I feel when I too walk the walk of the old and fragile. If it is hard to face the death of an old friend, of a close relative, how then does one face one's own demise? How hard will it be to go to sleep at night, knowing that any one of those nights could be the sleep from which you will never wake? How do you say good-bye to those with whom you shared a lifetime? Talk about being choked up.

It is times like these when I remember Dylan Thomas and his urging to "not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." As humans we have that option. As cats and dogs, our old friends of the feline and canine variety do not. They generally just give up and let you know it's time. They seem to know that at some point it is all futile. The cycle must be completed. The old must make way for the new.

There are those, perhaps wiser than I, who would advocate a similar resignation for human deaths. They are, however, people with religion. Whether one believes in heaven and hell, in reincarnation, or in becoming one with Mother Earth, it gives one a reason to not dread the end. How I wish it were that easy. Unfortunately, logic and a lifetime based on reason tell me otherwise. When the darkness comes, it comes. There is no relief. There is only wishful thinking, in that respect. One must make one's own peace with death, or one can fight it tooth and nail until it finally is able to overtake you.

There are people with painful, terminal diseases who welcome the coming of the darkness, the release from the pain and misery. There are those who live very long productive lives who make peace with their end, having squeezed every ounce of living out of their lives and are ready to go. We can only hope that we are not reduced to the former. We can only hope that we are fortunate enough to qualify for the latter. In the meantime I am still in full-blown "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" mode, and I plan on squeezing a lot more life out of my remaining years. I'll miss my cat greatly, though. Sammy, we salute the short little fuzzy life that was yours.

Summer Fades Away.

2010-08-23T17:59:00.007-05:00

It's 6 PM on a Monday in late August. The sky above is a light blue, untouched by clouds. The lake below has taken on that dark blue of late afternoon on a sunny day. The sun itself is slanting lower in the sky and the light it gives off is not as intense as the midday sun that beats down mercilessly. When last I checked, it was 78 degrees at the Mini.

A couple of power boats are in The Playpen. Out beyond, in the deep water, there are a handful of sailboats drifting slowly, their white triangular sails crisp and white in the afternoon sun like freshly laundered sheets hung out to blow in the breeze. There are runners, bikers, roller bladers, and assorted tourists on rented bikes out on the lakefront path.

At the beach there are still young people in swimsuits, playing volleyball, throwing frisbees, splashing in the water that has grown warm from the heat of the sun over the summer. The chess pavilion is full of chess aficionados. The rink has roller blade hockey in the mornings. The tennis courts had disabled people playing today, including some in wheel chairs. Damn, that one guy was good. One has to wonder how good he would be if his legs worked and he weren't dependent on a wheel chair.

All is normal in Streeterville and on the Gold Coast. Yet, something is different. The air is just that little bit cooler. The sun is retreating a wee bit sooner. Its rays are beginning to come from a more southerly direction. The combination of heat and humidity has subsided enough that I feel comfortable running 9 minute miles now instead of the 10 minute miles that are more comfortable in July and early August.

This weekend is the last weekend in August and then comes Labor Day. Teachers and students are busily making purchases in preparation for the new school year. Looking in the shops on Michigan Avenue, the mannikins are displaying items with fur, long sleeves, and features that enable one to remain comfortable in cooler temperatures. Gone are the retail signs of summer. Retail America has moved on. The fall selling season is here, soon to be gone itself, traded in for the Christmas and Winter push.

Although the beaches and parks are still brimming with people in warm weather attire, their activities have taken on a late summer desperation, a push to squeeze every last drop of summer out of the tube. People find themselves trying to squeeze activities in that they planned on for summer but never got around to, affirming that they didn't let summer entirely slip away. In that vein, I find myself traveling to Traverse City, Michigan later this week, to enjoy the dunes, to enjoy the lake, to enjoy the country air, to enjoy a bicycle on a country road leading to a winery. Last gasp, for next week is September, time for autumn and sweaters and yellow and red leaves in all their splendor.

Just a warning boys and girls. Summer is about to end. Soak up what you can of what is left. Then prepare yourself to shift your gears. Put away your shorts and t-shirts and get out your sweaters and coats. Begin to think in terms of warm drinks in mugs instead of cool drinks in icy glasses. It's okay. It's just different.

Elections? I Just Love a Good Clown Show.

2010-08-20T14:49:00.005-05:00

Election years have always brought out the worst in some candidates, and the open mouth insert foot syndrome is all too familiar to any of us who have endured very many elections in America. Following the election process, though, can be a huge source of entertainment. The entertainment varies from the sexual escapades of politicians with campaign workers, gay-bashing Congressmen being caught with their pants down, so to speak, soliciting sex in public restrooms, and the implosion of those who just can't figure out what not to say in public.

This year's crop of Republican candidates across the nation have been an especially entertaining bunch in the "You can't possibly mean that," category. The party has tilted so far to the right this year that it appears in danger of falling over. And not all of these "let's just abolish government" sorts hail from the ranks of the Tea Party. Some are just legitimate Republican wing-nuts. The campaigning process has devolved into something like a circus, only in this circus it's all clowns, no wild animal acts.

It should be noted that both Democrats and Republicans have emerged this silly season, running as pulled myself up by my bootstraps outsiders. Most are millionaires and billionaires. Well that's certainly outside the experience of most Americans. That much is for sure. One of my faves in this category is Linda McMahon, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut. She pulled herself up by her bootstraps by running the World Wrestling Entertainment corporation. Now there's some good training for the U.S. Senate.

The State of Colorado has produced an exceptionally goofy and entertaining group of Republicans this season. Ken Buck, running for the U.S. Senate has gone on record as supporting the repeal of the 17th amendment (Direct election of U.S. Senators. Suppose he's got a friend in the Governor's office who might appoint him if it weren't for that nasty direct election thing?) He also has gone on record as saying the separation of church and state is too strictly enforced and he wants to eliminate the Energy and Education Departments.

Not to be outdone, the Republican candidate for Governor in Colorado, Dan Maes, went on record as saying the Denver bike sharing program was converting the city into a United Nations community and is one step in the ongoing conspiracy to take over the U.S. city by city. Last I heard, getting more people on bikes and out of their cars does only good for traffic congestion, air pollution, and fossil fuel consumption. Apparently Mr. Maes thinks that congestion, pollution, and burning oil are the foundations of our society and not to be tinkered with. Go figure.

No list of election year nut jobs would be complete without Rand Paul of Kentucky (Son of Ron Paul, famous Libertarian.). Rand has criticized the minimum-wage law and civil rights and fair housing laws. He doesn't like unemployment insurance and Medicare either. Just more examples of socialism creeping into our system. Mr. Paul wants to nip that in the bud. Really, why should we be funding lazy do-nothings with unemployment insurance and why should we be cutting into the profits of companies by making them pay people $7 or $8 per hour? And while we're at it, who out there really thinks Grandpa and Grandma need healthcare? Let em die off like nature and God intended. More room for the rest of us. That Rand, he's such a card. He really needs a show on Comedy Central with material like this.

Then there is Sharron Angle, U.S. Senate candidate from Nevada. Doesn't believe in same-sex couples adopting kids. Doesn't think the U.S. should be in the United Nations. Doesn't believe in government run Medicare and Social Security. More of that socialism stuff. Are we seeing a pattern here, among these Republicans? Ms. Angle goes further, though than most. She has suggested that if she does not defeat Senator Harry Reid in the election, the people maybe should consider other more drastic means of ridding this nation of Democrats. What means you might ask? Well ask Sharron. It might be an interesting answer.

Then there is Mike Lee, the U.S. Senate candidate from Utah. Mike thinks we should do away with the progressive income tax and we should put a really low limit on liability for oil companies that cause damage to the environment. Pollution! It's your constitutional right as an American, right along with making obscene amounts of money and not having to give any of it away to the government to pay for stuff like armies and navies and roads and health care for Grandpa and Grandma. Oh, and he wants to change the 14th amendment to prohibit American-born children of illegal immigrants from being granted U.S. citizenship. Naturally.

Okay, there has been a lot of focus on the idiocy coming from the Republican Party, but let's get this straight. There are others out there who can quite entertaining with their idiocy as well. Let's take the case of Ieshuh Griffin, an independent candidate for the state legislature in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin people have a pretty good idea what you stand for if you're a Democrat or Republican, but if you're an Independent people don't always know. Therefore, the State of Wisconsin allows Independents to add 5 words below their names on the ballot, so as to inform the public what it is you're basing your candidacy on. It seems that Ms. Griffin, of Milwaukee, wanted the 5 words, "Not the white man's bitch," placed below her name on the ballot. Somehow Ms. Griffin has convinced herself that this message is not racist or offensive or obscene. Darned election judges wouldn't let her put her little message there, however. Now she wants to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court. She also wants to serve as her own lawyer in this case. Don't hold your breath Ieshuh. Print it in your campaign literature. Say it in stump speeches. Ain't gonna show up on the ballot, though. Won't get you many votes either, I'll wager.

While Independent, Ieshuh Griffin, is a most entertaining sideshow this election year, it is the Republicans that carry the weight of this Clownarama. Just one thing really puzzles me. While all of these Republicans are basically saying that we should dismantle the government, why is it that they all want to work for the government? Apparently, all government expenditures are bad unless they are government expenditures on oneself and one's friends.

Finding Nits to Pick For Elections

2010-08-18T17:47:00.010-05:00

By now the entire state of Illinois and a largish number of citizens from the rest of the country know that former Governor (He was impeached.) Rod Blagojevich of Illinois was convicted of lying to the FBI. On 23 other counts the jury was hung. Apparently one or two of the jurors couldn't find it in their hearts to convict Mr. Blagojevich on corruption charges just because he was on tape blatantly demanding money for his campaign fund in exchange for favors rendered. Now Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois is planning for retrying the other 23 counts, hopefully with better results next time around.

Rod Blagojevich was elected as Governor of the State of Illinois after the previous Governor, George Ryan, a Republican was convicted of taking bribes and was subsequently sent to prison. (I suspect a dedicated Illinois wing of the Federal Correctional Facility in Terre Haute, Indiana is in the works for all of the convicted politicians.) Now he certainly face the same fate as his Republican predecessor, even if the process is taking a little longer than expected. The Illinois Republican Party is positively salivating. (Foaming at the mouth? Only a few of them.) Now that Blagojevich's very public trials will be extended well into campaigning season, this can and will be used as evidence against the Democratic Party so the Republicans can attempt to retake the Illinois legislature, Governorship, assorted Washington Congressional posts, and maybe even President Obama's former Senatorial post.

This is how politics are played in America, Home of the Brave, Land of the Free, and the place where attack politics play out in 30 second commercials on TV in between sitcoms, reality shows, and yet more shows where cops try to stop violence and mayhem while occasionally creating more violence and mayhem. Find something your dumb ass opponent did that is very embarrassing to himself, his family, and his political party and exploit it for your own personal gain. Take a guess as to which American political party excels at this kind of politics? Hint: Starts with an R-e-p-u-b-l-i-c-a-n. Know who we're talking about? Good.

On the national stage the Republican Party is busy making hay from xenophobia, racism, and general hatred of all things Muslim. The proposed Islamic Center to be built two blocks from the sight of the 9/11 attacks have become a lightning rod for every right wing nut in the country and the Republican Party is using this as leverage for the upcoming national elections, in an all out effort to regain control of Congress. Our President, in a reasoned response, said that Muslims have a right, as do all religions, under our Constitution to purchase property and build houses of worship wherever they wish. This includes Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and even Wiccans.

Sadly, a large number of Americans fail to differentiate between the moderate group of New York group of Muslims who are proposing this Mosque and the radical Islamists who perpetrated the 9/11 bombings that precipitated a worldwide emergency. Now America is being split into liberal and conservative camps, based on your response to what is being called "The Ground Zero Mosque." The President and by extension, his political party and all citizens of a liberal persuasion are being branded as anti-American by a media lynching party headed by, hmmmm, who would that be? You guessed it, the Republican Party.

Then there is the immigration issue, brought to the public's attention by the passage of a law in Arizona that basically legalized racial profiling. Fear of illegal immigration running amok and specifically Hispanic illegal immigration has reached epic proportions in America recently. Why? The Republican Party is pandering to the cultural conservatives in their ranks who, despite real facts, insist that illegal Mexican immigrants are living large at the expense of American taxpayers. These same cultural conservatives seem also to be convinced that hoards of illegal Mexican immigrants are at the core of a massive crime wave in America. Recent data show that all of those states along the border with Mexico are experiencing a very low crime rate compared to other areas within the U.S.

Across the border in Mexico that's another matter. If you check closely, you'll find that the Mexican government is busy blaming Americans and their demand for illegal drugs and their easy access to high-powered weaponry for the shootouts in Mexican streets. It is not in America that these shootouts are occurring. It's in Tijuana, Juarez, and assorted other cities on the Mexican side of the border, but the money and means to carry out these shootouts, murder, and mayhem are coming from the American side of the border, not the other way around.

And then there is the issue of gay marriage. The Republican Party has also enlisted the faithful in the "Homosexuality is a Sin Against God" campaign. A Federal judge in California recently overturned Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage. A large portion of conservative America is opposed and appalled by homosexuality in general and the idea of gay marriage specifically. They are outraged and want to Just one more issue being dredged up by the Republican Party to unite as many ill-informed and bigoted citizens as possible against the rest of us.

The bottom line is that the Republican Party in America is willing to unite all of the most extreme conservative elements in America in any way it can to benefit itself. They are willing to exaggerate, invent facts, and pander to the most racist, xenophobic, illiterate, and ill-informed sectors of our society to get votes, votes that ultimately benefit a wealthy minority of Americans, a group that continues to live by their own rules despite the image they project to get the votes needed to further the process of giving all of America's wealth to the 1 or 2% who currently control 90% of the money.

This is, of course, nothing new. It is of concern, however, because the furthest left elements of the Democratic Party are also busy picking apart the current efforts by the Democratic Party to repair what was thrust upon us by the previous 8 years of Republican stewardship nationally. No our President and our Democratic representatives in Congress, our Democratic Governors and Representatives in various state governments have not gone far enough to the left for me either. But sometimes in a democracy, it is necessary to compromise. Sometimes the tenor of the entire society, taken as a whole, makes it necessary for a group to temper their, perhaps just impulses, in order to make any progress at all. If we wish to make further progress, it will be necessary to once again unite all of those progressive elements in American society to offset the unity of the nuts, the unity of the right. Don't kid yourselves. Vote Democratic if you want to benefit all Americans.

End of Summer Pleasantry and Wistfulness

2010-08-16T17:47:00.006-05:00

I'm going to have to depart from my usual political, educational, and social commentary today. I just returned from a day in Michigan City, Indiana over by the Indiana Dunes. A friend has one of those 32 foot boats that sleep 4 comfortably and 6 or 8 if they're really close friends. Cruised the lake. Grilled out. Enjoyed good company, good food, good wine. Drove home down wooded 2 lane highways through the Indiana Dunes State Park. A cooler, drier air mass moved through bringing temperatures in the low 80's and a very manageable degree of humidity. (Thank you Canada.)

My pleasantometer is reading off the charts just now. Speaking of which, if you plan on buying a pleasantometer, don't be fooled by some fast talking salesman who wants to sell you a European pleasantometer. Those things are metric and for most Americans they're a major pain in the butt. Every time you read it, you end up having to do a lot of complicated mathematical conversions which inevitably lower your pleasantry reading. The other option is buying an adaptor, and European-American pleasantometer adaptors will end up costing you more than you paid for the original pleasantometer, resulting in, you guessed it, lower pleasantry readings.

This afternoon, after having caught up on errands that went undone over the weekend, I went for a little Monday afternoon run along the lake, soaking up the warm but not too warm temperatures, the pleasant humidity levels, and the let's get some last beach time in before school starts up again and the weather gets too cold crowd. It was overall quite pleasant, but somewhere in the back of my head there was something nagging at me, intruding on all of the pleasantry.

I had to think very hard about what it was, but then I realized what it was. It was wistfulness. If I had a wistometer, it would have been reading about 9.75 on a 10 point scale. Why? Chicago's annual Air and Water Show is over. This is an annual signal that summer is almost gone and return to the working world of educators is imminent. Running under the trees between the Chess Pavilion and the North Avenue Boat House, the sound of cicadas in the trees gave me another clear signal that summer is in its waning days. The very fact that a Canadian air mass had brought cooler, dryer temperatures in itself revealed itself as a signal of the end of The Dog Days, if not summer itself.

Looking out my window, the water is a pleasant blue, reflecting the color of a cloudless sky above. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun have begun to color Navy Pier and the water crib in the distance in late afternoon yellow. A few stray boats are anchored in The Playpen. A couple of kayakers are paddling their way across the water. Further out, in the deep water a barge plies the waters southward to the steel mills in Indiana. The entire picture is off the charts pleasant, but the overriding wistfulness makes it clear that everyone and everything involved is trying desperately to wring that last bit of pleasantry possible from the few remaining days of summer.

What are these last remaining days, these pleasant but wistful days, but the last opportunity for sitting outdoors and enjoying a glass of wine while weather permits, the last opportunity for watching a symphony under the stars, the last opportunity for a long weekend of wine tours, bicycling, and staying in a nice hotel on the water. It is time to make hay while the sun shines, assuming one does not suffer from hay fever.

Personally, I have two weeks of this pleasantry offset by the intersection of wistfulness. It is a time of year to embrace. All too soon it will be gone. Then it will be time to plunge into autumn with a sense of abandon that will make one forget the pleasantries of summer, and indulge in sweaters, football games, warm drinks, and crisp temperatures. For now, though, the cicadas are singing to me.

Gotta Have A Job If You Want Me To Buy Stuff.

2010-08-12T15:36:00.005-05:00

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is regularly above 10,000 again, but the national unemployment rate still hovers around 9.5%-10%. There are those who claim that it is actually worse than this, that there are large numbers of people who have given up looking for work and thus do not figure into the statistics any longer. All across America state and local governments are laying people off, cutting services, and in at least one case turning off the street lights, to save money.

So let's get this straight. Corporations have returned to profitability but they are not hiring and they continue to cut benefits and demand more of their workers for less. What they are not seeing is that without employment people cannot pay taxes. Without tax revenues governments cannot provide basic services. That means policemen, firemen, teachers, garbage collectors, and road crews who fix the potholes. This drives up the unemployment further and increases the numbers of people who are not paying any taxes.

Furthermore, when people are unemployed they do not make any purchases beyond the basic necessities, food, clothing, shelter. When they are unemployed long enough they may cease making even these basic purchases. Want your company to sell products. We need people to be employed. Then they buy air conditioners, televisions, cars, and houses. With a job, they are less likely to default on a mortgage and end up in foreclosure.

Then there are the retirees and future retirees. 401(k)s are tanking. Public pension funds are in danger of defaulting and leaving their membership out in the cold. Again, let's get something straight. Retired people without money neither pay any taxes, nor buy cars, televisions, or any of the other things that keep the economy humming along.

So what's up? How do we get out of the current economic morass? Part of the answer lies in one of President Obama's favorite topics, creating new industry via green technology. This country needs to create new sustainable industries that will employee people for the long haul in real jobs that create and sell things, not in more service sector low-wage employment. Recognizing that we live in a world where the economy is global, we have to recognize that certain types of manufacturing will continue to be done overseas until the standard of living in China, in Indonesia, in other Third World nations improves to the point that it is no longer profitable to send your work overseas. We need to be working toward worldwide minimum standards of living and wages.

Part of the problem lies, however, with corporations that had a 2% decrease in profits and promptly laid off 6% of their labor force, resulting in soaring profits. These same corporations cut benefit packages to those who were lucky enough to keep their jobs. Profits soared. Executives reaped huge bonuses to their already extravagant salaries. Stock holders cheered because their stock values bounced back. The trouble is that corporations need to recognize some middle path between enormous profits and low labor overhead and that of no profits and shutting down operations. If corporations employ more persons, there are more persons to pay taxes, keeping the roads paved, the garbage picked up, the streets safe, the fires put out, and the country's students educated. The more people who are employed, the more profitability there is for corporations that sell products, because now people can afford to buy them.

So what am I saying? Employ people you rich schmoes. Quit stuffing all the damned money in your owned already overstuffed pockets. With high employment (and I'm not talking about a nation of Wal-Mart greeters and Starbucks barristas here.) everybody benefits. Maximizing profits for the benefit of a few? Well, I have to think that's going to eventually result in social unrest and the overall standard of living in this country sinking to Third World status. So take your choice ladies and gentlemen.

And What's Wrong With Having a Pension?

2010-08-09T17:51:00.006-05:00

My father was a route salesman for a bread company. He drove a bread truck and sold bread, buns, and cupcakes to grocery stores and restaurants. He worked hard, and in return the company he worked for rewarded him and people like him with a pension plan. He paid in some money from each paycheck. The bread company matched his contribution. In time he was supposed to retire with a regular paycheck and would be able to live comfortably in his declining years.

Then the company he worked for was bought out by a larger company. He was a valued employee so the new bread company kept him on after the sale was complete. His pension did not survive the buyout. The new company's bottom line was more important than rewarding long-time employees. The money that he had in the pension plane was given to him, and he used that money to pay off some debts, but the prospect of having a regular pension check in his retirement was now history.

As a result, my father worked as long as he could, and when declining health forced him to retire, he put together a meager living as best as he could. He took his Social Security checks and added a few dollars here and a few dollars there from anywhere he could. He picked strawberries. He bought truckloads of watermelons that he sold from the back of his pickup. He did odd jobs at a warehouse that stocked gimme hats, Arkansas Razorback blankets, and assorted odds and ends that I usually dub "useless crap." He survived, but he worked until he absolutely could not work any more. Then his health went into a rapid downward spiral and he died. This was his reward for a lifetime of dedication and hard work with a company. He was loyal. The company was not.

Now I am the adult and I have spent the last twenty years of my life working in education. I am a teacher. I hold two BA degrees and a Master's degree plus 57 hours of additional graduate work. In the business community that comes with monetary rewards. In education, it means you make a little more than the run of the mill teacher, but still it is not as much as someone with similar credentials would be paid in private industry. In return I have been promised a pension. I pay a percentage of my paycheck into the pension every payday and the school system and the school system matches this with their own contribution. As a teacher and public employee, I do not pay into the Social Security System. The public pension is to be my retirement.

The trouble is that now there is a movement afoot to do to me and my colleagues in public employment what that bread company did to my father. They want to take away my pension, or at least reduce it seriously. Why? It's considered too expensive. Why? Nobody in the public sector gets this, why should you? Why? Part of it is funded through taxes and nobody wants to pay their taxes to fund somebody else's comfort. Frankly, part of it is a misery loves company impulse. We've gotten nothing from life and you shouldn't get anything either.

Ron Lieber, in a recent New York Times piece, calls it class warfare. Mr. Lieber, taking a cue from the Republican Party playbook has framed his argument by using Marxist terminology, only turning it on its head. Instead of the working poor as the have-nots and the bourgeoisie as the haves, he refers to all government employees with their pensions as the haves and the private industry sorts with their tanking 401-Ks as the have-nots. He goes further to suggest that it's about time that all of us overpaid and over-pensioned government employees should just suck it up because the politicians are going to shove smaller pensions or no pensions at all down our throats. He suggests that those of us who elected to take smaller salaries, who expected a retirement reward down the road are asking too much of the public to follow through on what they promised.

Let's get to the meat of the matter, though. A lot of what has precipitated this crisis is the shortfall in funding in government pension systems due to large numbers of baby boomers suddenly retiring coupled with a recession that has caused a shortfall in tax revenues. What caused this shortfall in funding of the pension systems? First and foremost, let us not say that it is because it was unrealistic in the first place. Everyone knew that there were going to be a lot of boomer retiring. The problem resulted because of massive mismanagement on the part of governmental units that did not hold up their end of the bargain. In the state of Illinois it has been routine practice to raid the money that should go to pension funds every time there is a fiscal crisis. Raise taxes to meet the budget shortfall? Heavens no! Legislators might lose votes in the next election if they did that. Instead, they chose to use money that was supposed to go to pension funds. And now, duh, there's a shortfall in the pension funds. Whose fault is that? That of teachers and other government employees? Not on your life. It's directly the fault of pandering legislators and of citizens who feel no responsibility to the society as a whole.

Now a whole generation of teachers, policemen, firemen, and various other government employees are in danger of losing their pensions because they entered into a contract with the government, and in most cases they won't even have the little income that Social Security offers because as a public employee who pays into a public pension fund you do not pay into Social Security. These are employees who worked their entire adult lives in good faith that if they did their parts, the government, representative of the public at large would do their part when the time came. Well now the time has come and the politicians and large numbers of people in the general public want to renege.

Mr. Lieber in the recent New York Times article from the business pages suggested that we, as public employees were not thinking about the public at large and were being litigious. Well, Mr. Lieber, we contend that it is the public at large that is not thinking about us. We teach your children. We protect your streets. We put out the fires. We pick up your garbage. We manage your society. We gave of ourselves. We gave up the possibility of higher pay for a delayed reward. Now it is your turn to pay up. This was not a gentleman's agreement. It was a contract. We have rights and protections under a constitutional government. Should the government as a representative of the public at large choose to negate that contract, we will exercise our constitutional rights. We don't have 401-Ks. We don't have Social Security. What else can we do?

An Informed Populace Votes in Their Best Interest. The Others Aren't Paying Attention.

2010-08-06T10:11:00.003-05:00

Funny how democracy works. There is the theory. There is the reality. In theory, informed citizens will vote in favor of their own best interest, based on facts. In reality, people vote for candidates based on sound bites on TV, based on bias, prejudice, and misinformation. People vote on the basis of ill-conceived notions of reality and dare I say it, ignorance.

Let's face it, anyone who has been paying any attention at least since I was born, and I was born in 1950, should know that the political party most likely to pursue policies beneficial to working class and poorer Americans is the Democratic Party. For all their foibles, the Democratic Party are the party of the majority of Americans, if you vote based on facts and an informed vision. We should also face the fact that the vision of the Republican Party is one that best represents the interests of money, big money. They are the party of less government, less regulation, less taxes, and less money in the pockets of working class Americans.

Social Security is designed to be a safety net for working class older Americans and for Americans who are unable to care for themselves. Wealthy Americans typically do not need Social Security and the Republican Party routinely tries to gut this program as being too expensive. They try to privatize it. Do you really want to trust Social Security to the Stock Market and the Wall Street types who precipitated this latest financial meltdown? They try to make it optional. Of course they do. They don't want to pay into a social safety net that benefits poor people and not themselves. Many of the people supporting the "Do away with Social Security" politics are also those who have stripped working Americans of their pensions to foster higher corporate profits. Let's see, the Republican Party, on the whole supports no Social Security and no pensions, and in many cases no minimum wage. What that suggests to me is that these are individuals who want to use ordinary Americans in the work force until they are used up and then discard them like so much trash going to the landfill.

In the latest clash between those who would help working class America and those who would help the minority of really wealthy Americans, there is the fuss over universal healthcare. Who benefits from universal healthcare legislation? Working class Americans. Wealthy Americans can afford their own health insurance. Who opposes universal healthcare? Republicans, the party of wealthy America. They don't want to pay to see that everyone can receive reasonable healthcare when they personally won't benefit from it.

The Republican Party likes to speak in terms of "class warfare created by the Democratic Party," as if we were one unified America, all equal, and engaged one big group hug. Class warfare? Of course there is class warfare. The Republican Party promotes it. They declared war on working class America a long time ago. The shameful thing is the pretense that what they propose will actually help all Americans. Please explain to me again, how cutting taxes one more time for the wealthiest Americans will shrink the budget deficit, create more jobs, and help all Americans. Somehow the logic escapes me.

So how is it that large numbers of working class and poorer Americans continue to support the Republican Party when they are so obviously making every effort to screw working class America? In my lifetime, the real trouble with the Republican Party started with Ronald Reagan. He brought back the idea of trickle down economics (Very popular in the 1920's until the stock market crashed in 1929.). More importantly, however, he brought in an element of jingoism. Make America safe from all enemies. Spend enormous amounts of money on the military and just kick anyone's ass that disagrees with us. Then he also allied himself with social conservatives.

As it turns out, those most likely to agree with a militaristic foreign policy and domestic policies that oppose abortion, gay rights, civil rights, women's rights, immigration reform and any number of other hot button social conservative issues are working class Americans. The Republican Party sold its soul to the devil and forged an alliance of the super wealthy, busy grabbing larger and larger portions of the pie, and the social conservatives, busy trying to return us all to a world that was in place before 1950. The sad thing being that these social conservatives support the Republican agenda wholesale, disregarding the fact that the Republican ideal screws most of them economically while pandering to them on social issues.

The founding fathers had an ideal of a republic where an informed populace would vote in its own best interest, and the great issues of the day would be debated, not just on the floors of Congress, but in the press, and on the streets of America. Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia with the idea that the best and brightest would be able to go there and receive a world class education regardless of income. He had that informed and competent citizen thing in mind. Competent governance requires competent citizens. If ever there were an argument for public education, it is this. Now if we could only get Americans to take their education seriously, and take time out from obsessing over American Idol and what's up with Lindsey Lohan long enough to read some serious news, and think about it.

I guess my advice to the American people at this point can be summed up in two short words, "Pay attention!" If you're paying attention, you're less likely to have the wool pulled over your eyes. Have a wonderful weekend.

Where Have All the Teachers Gone?

2010-08-04T14:35:00.003-05:00

Once more into the breach it would seem. As a teacher in a public school in a large urban district I find myself routinely annoyed at the bad things said about us in the press, on the TV, by the politicians (federal, state, and local), by the local Board of Education, and most often, by the administrative officials who oversee the schools in the district. So I read something. I get annoyed. I write something in response. Seems as if it's a never ending cycle, a cycle informed by underlying political motives and misinformation.

There are a lot of factors that go into this ongoing argument. The American people don't want to pay the taxes necessary to legitimately support public education. A lot of the people with power to make things happen in America really don't care about the fate of public education because poor people's kids go to public schools. Rich and powerful people send their kids to private schools. It becomes a sort of "Let them eat cake," kind of situation. "We pay out of our own pockets for the education of our children. Why on earth should we pay for the education of their children. Let them pay for the education of their own."

Public schools are now, as they traditionally have been, funded by property taxes. Some communities rake in more in property taxes than others. Some school districts have more to spend per student than others. All districts are not equal. By the same token, some students have more advantages than others. Some have parents with college degrees and kids benefit mentally, socially, and economically. All of these factors play into how well the student does in school. Some students have parents who dropped out of high school, some have disabilities, and some have to deal with gangs, crime, and ghetto mentalities run amok just getting to and from school every day. Some of them are successful in spite of all this. A great many are not, and are condemned to life in the neighborhoods that are seen on the news when there has been another shooting.

To make things more complicated, school districts like the one in Chicago offer magnet schools, schools for the gifted and talented, college preparatory schools, and schools for kids with special interests. The best and the brightest are siphoned off from the neighborhood schools to attend these special schools. They are held up in the press as shining examples of how to achieve success in education. Well duh! Give me a school full of kids in the 99th percentile and I suspect they are all going to succeed. The kids left in the neighborhood schools are kids who never did particularly well academically. Then the teachers get blamed for the failure of these kids when in reality they are working their butts off trying to help these kids succeed.

With the constant budget crisis, and the so-called crisis of failing schools, there is a lot of pressure placed on school districts to improve success rates and to cut costs one way or another. Everybody has an idea about how to improve schools and how to cut costs. Very few of these people with ideas have ever worked in a school. A great many, for whatever reason, hold up the American business model as something to be emulated in public education. I'll go on record here as saying this is insane.

This is an American business community where corporations go broke, but executives get million dollar bonuses and golden parachutes. This is an American business community that responded to responded to a 2% shrinkage of profits by laying off 6% of their workers and telling the remaining workers that there would be no raises forthcoming in the near future and by the way, you have to take care of your own healthcare and retirement henceforth. Profits soared. Stockholders benefited. Unemployment remains at 10% for the nation, and with that many people out of work purchases of things that keep the economy chugging along lag. Eventually the whole thing comes tumbling down. As my mother always said, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." The American business model would appear to be a recipe for civil unrest, not a shining example for school systems to emulate.

This brings us to the efforts to "reform" the schools. Frankly, a lot of the reforming of the schools involves "reducing expenditures" not any real reform that could result in more students being successful and becoming productive citizens. A lot of the efforts have actually tried to emulate the business model. They have tried to squeeze as much as possible out of the educators with as little cash as possible. Charter schools and privatized schools partially funded from public coffers are both business answers to public school problems. What has been discovered is that charter schools that have selective enrollments (much like the magnet schools mentioned above) achieve wonderful results. Others do not. They all save money, however, because they operate outside the normal union restrictions on hours, salaries, and benefits. What? They pay people less, require them to work extra hours for no extra pay, and they slash benefits packages. Are these better schools? No, just cheaper, with employees who are left to fend for themselves when it comes to vital issues like retirement.

Now the current worldwide economic crisis has shrunk tax receipts significantly and the money available to operate public school systems has shrunk with those tax receipts. The answer to the budgetary woes is to fire more teachers, replace experienced teachers with inexperienced teachers who won't have to be paid as much, and to raise classroom size. In the ongoing clash between teachers and administrators, the mantra of the administrators has routinely been "If you were a good teacher, you could teach a class with 40 kids." Really? I dare you to try. The simple truth is that kids learn better when the student to teacher ratio is lower. The Chicago Public Schools recently made a big deal about the rising standardized test scores. Now they want to can experienced teachers, replace them with less expensive, younger teachers, and make them teach classrooms with 35 kids/class.

Is this a recipe for continued success? I think not. Kids are not a packaged, mass-produced product. A school is not a factory. The success of the kids depend on well-trained, caring educators who are not so overtaxed by sheer numbers of students that they have no time for individual students. The success of schools depends on appropriate management of those schools, and that means that the lean and mean model of the business world should not be followed. This is the future of our nation and the world. Write your Congressman. Call your Alderman. Descend on the Board of Education at their next meeting. Let them know that there is a crisis in education. It is a crisis of vision, of management, and of money. Want better schools? Save teachers' jobs.

Whatever Happened to Civility?

2010-08-01T14:29:00.005-05:00

When I was a child my mother taught me a few things about behaving civilly when interacting with others. "Always respect your elders. If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all. Don't swear in public. Don't swear at all if you don't absolutely have to. Never hit a girl. Open doors for ladies. Be polite with others. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Admittedly, over the years I may have had trouble at times with the "if you don't have anything good to say" thing, but for the most part I internalized these life lessons and have spent a lifetime being civil with other human beings. Most people I grew up with did likewise. It made life easier. It made co-existence with others more tolerable. Treat others well and with respect and they tend to reciprocate, though not always.

The trouble is that as time has gone by, it appears that the number of people who live by these rules and behave by basic rules of civility have declined drastically. Examples of very public conflict and egregious disrespect abound. Whence the source of this breakdown?

Yesterday afternoon Babs and I went over to a public tennis court a couple of blocks away. You hang a racket from two posts marked even or odd and reserve a court for yourself in hour increments. We had the five o'clock (odd) time slot on one of the courts. Somewhere about 15 minutes into our hour some guy with an oversized ego and a seriously oversized sense of self-importance comes in the gate and interrupts our game. "Are you going to play the entire hour?" He was very impatient. Admittedly I am not very good at the game, but who the hell is this pushy guy coming in and tacitly suggesting that we should wrap it up early so real tennis players could have the court? Babs informed him we would indeed be using our entire hour and he could come back at six o'clock.

Not to be picky but the guy and his partner came waltzing through the gate at 5:59, walked over and started unpacking his gear. Hey I have another minute here buster! Taking Mother's lesson to heart Babs and I picked up our tennis balls and before we could even get everything packed up and ourselves off the court this guy and his partner are on the court. (And it still was not six o'clock by my watch, by a few seconds.) Pushy, presumptuous, self-involved, and absolutely sure his time was worth more than that of the old guy and his wife. Remember that "if you don't have anything good to say" thing? I had a really hard time with that one about that time.

On another occasion, a few years back, Babs and I were going to a video rental store in a very busy strip mall. One usually had to wait your turn for a parking spot and a rent a cop patrolled the area for those who dared park in a spot not designated as a parking spot. One end of the lot was clearly marked ENTRANCE. One end had a sign clearly marked EXIT ONLY! After waiting about 5 minutes for an open parking spot, someone came out and left. I started the car and began pulling toward the parking spot. At this point, some guy in an SUV swerved in the EXIT ONLY opening and gunned it, trying to get the parking spot I had so diligently waited for.

I would like to say that my mother's lessons in civility kept me on the higher ground at this point, but the truth is I put the pedal to the metal and beat the guy into the parking spot while mouthing "No way asshole." Apparently the asshole was really good at reading lips. He slammed on the brakes, stopping right behind my car. Babs and I exited the car, locked it up, and started toward the video rental store. Meanwhile this guy, who stood all of 5'5" on a tall hair day comes right on our heels screaming at the top of his lungs, "Asshole! Asshole! You're the asshole! Hey mother fucker! I'm talking to you!" He followed us, engaging in this tirade all the way to the entrance to the store. Where was the rent a cop when you needed him? Taking a break I guess. Certainly nowhere in sight. I did show some restraint. I ignored him rather than confronting him and making the situation even worse and possibly violent. Not sure, but I believe being ignored made him even more belligerent and uncivil. As Babs suggested at the time though, "A man that crazy probably has a gun in his car." Point taken.

Life is full of these little stories. There are the women who walk right in front of you when you've been waiting in line patiently for 5 minutes at Starbucks. These sorts seem somehow convinced that being young and pretty means never having to wait in line. They usually seem convinced that all the men in the world owe them free meals, free drinks, and endless attention.

There are the people, both male and female, who in rush hour traffic on the expressway cannot wait their turn. You know the scenario. There is a line of cars slowly merging into one lane and most people patiently, or not so patiently, waiting their turn. Inevitably there is some clown much too important to wait like everyone else so he or she drives down the breakdown lane on the right and at the last possible moment cuts in front of someone else, causing everyone in the line to stand on their brakes. Very uncivil behavior that usually elicits some uncivil behavior (although warranted in my humble opinion) from the people who were cut off. Usually this consists of words your mother told you not to say, and the ubiquitous American one finger salute. This scenario also plays out at stoplights where a driver who wants in front of you pulls up on your right in the parking lane, waiting for the light to change so they can gun it and cut in front of you before hitting the parked car looming ahead. Hitting your brakes, screaming obscenities, giving the finger usually ensue and then you end up at the next light immediately behind this person.

There are the herds of people in groups walking down a busy city sidewalk oblivious to the fact that they are but a few of the millions who need to traverse this sidewalk so they spread out 3, 4, and 5 abreast making anyone walking the other way step aside to let them pass or step out into the street risking life and limb from taxis, buses, and assorted drivers who think they're in the Indy 500. Share the sidewalk people. You're not the only persons in the universe nor are you the most important. Believe me. You're not. If your were, you'd get a police escort. I've met the important sorts before. They're usually a great deal more civil.

Six billion is the number of people currently residing on this planet and that number grows by the minute. There's not a lot of room for all that incivility. It tends to cause confrontation and violence. It makes people stressed out. It invites eventual heart attack. On occasion it causes death by road rage or just plain old, "You pissed me off so I'm shooting your ass." On a larger scale nations go to war over incivility on a large scale. There is a lot to be said for civility. It makes life a lot calmer. It makes life a lot safer. It invites life to last a lot longer. Next time you find yourself in a situation where incivility has run amok just remember your mother and imagine what she would say. "Just keep a civil tongue in your head young man (young lady)."

Racism, Here, There, and Everywhere

2010-07-28T16:47:00.003-05:00

Racism is a very ugly thing and having grown up in the American South, I have seen some of it at its very ugliest. Let's face it, Southern rednecks can display some of the most in your face stupidity regarding race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and various lifestyle choices and not think a thing about it. Then I moved north. I thought maybe I'd escape all the conservative b.s. but what I discovered was that there are ignoramuses everywhere you go.

The point is that racism and bigotry are always based on ignorance. There is a lot of ignorance everywhere and the moment you think you've escaped it, it will seek you out to smack you up the side of the head and remind you of its presence. Furthermore, in my travels about the country of my birth I soon discovered that this ignorance and bigotry is not confined to one racial group. Ignorance, racism, bigotry, discrimination, and prejudice are facts of life that know no boundaries. Black people are as likely to be biased toward other races as are white people. Latinos, ditto. Asians, ditto. Gay people, ditto. People of differing religious inclinations, ditto, ditto, ditto. Let's get that straight. We cannot go pointing fingers at one particular group and lay all of this at their feet. There's plenty to spread around.

For a long time it has been popular in the African-American community to claim that they cannot be racist because racism denotes power of one group over another. In this nation, the center of the capitalist universe, money is power and as a poverty-stricken group the African-American community has none. There is a gaping hole in this argument. Not all African-Americans are poor. This nation has given rise to a black middle class. We have a black President, black Supreme Court Justices, black Congressmen, black CEOs, and highly placed African-Americans in every walk of life. Furthermore, there is poverty aplenty in other racial groups as well. I'm not just talking about Latinos. There is a plethora of Spanish speaking people living in poverty in America, but the fact that gets swept under the table is the size of the poverty-stricken white community in rural America.

What we have to recognize is that often class and socio-economic status are bigger problems than race. Believe me that rich white guy across town does not want his daughter having anything to do with the son of a truck driver, even if he is a white boy. That wealthy black man living in a wealthy suburb does not want his daughter hooking up with a young black boy whose residence is in the seedier parts of the large city.

However, I digress. It has been fashionable in other parts of the industrialized world for a long time to deplore the racist element to American society. Honestly, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Have you ever checked out how Japanese treat Koreans who immigrate to Japan for work? Have you ever checked out how the Chinese treat ethnic minorities? I don't even need to mention the ongoing ethnic warfare that continually plagues Africa.

Instead, let's look at Europe. It is in Europe where many of the most egregious acts of blatant racism have occurred and continue to occur. I may disagree with conservative Muslims penchant for putting women in a secondary role and keeping them there. I personally think women covering themselves head to foot and showing nothing but their eyes in public is a pretty dumb custom. It is, however, their custom and if you think it is necessary I don't find it too threatening, on the whole. Now there are movements across Europe to outlaw this practice. The French have been the most vocal on this point, though Belgians are not far behind.

In the U.S. ethnicity is an obsession. You can't apply for a job, do your income taxes, or fill out any minor survey without divulging the ethnicity you identify with. We have African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans. Ask any white person of European derivation what they are and they don't tell you American. They tell you Italian, Irish, English, Russian, or whatever. Meanwhile in France, they are in denial. Everyone is just French if they live there, possess citizenship, or work permits. As it happens, they once had a colonial empire that included a lot of Islamic nations and well have experienced a lot of Islamic immigration as a result. They're all just French, and the French expect them to look, act, and dress French. Learn fluent French while you're at it, non? They use statutory law to enforce this. To not live up to the whole package is not French and deserves discrimination, apparently.

Now, in the latest assault on ethnic minorities, the French government has made moves to make it legal to expel gypsies. The French government claims that large scale immigration of the Roma from Eastern Europe has occurred and is illegal and that these illegal gypsy immigrants are causing crime, child abuse, prostitution, you name it. The legal standards being used are reminiscent of the recent laws passed in Arizona that allow anyone's legal status to be questioned if you fit the profile. Just in case you thought this anti-gypsy sentiment was new, let me remind you that during the Vichy French governance during World War II, the French rounded up gypsies for extermination just as enthusiastically as they did Jews.

Does this end here. Ever heard of the British pastime of Paki bashing? What about German antipathy for Kurdish immigrants? The list goes on and on. The U.S. certainly has its litany of problems regarding racism, but it is certainly not alone. Coca Cola once had an ad campaign in which they expressed the desire to "teach the world to sing in perfect harmony." Well I think I'd like to take the whole world to an extensive ethnic sensitivity workshop and teach everyone how to behave sensibly toward one another.

How Green Is Your City?

2010-07-26T17:12:00.004-05:00

For a long time now I've had a love affair with cities. I grew up in a suburban environment and it just didn't suit me. It's not a place that truly encourages a creative life. People drive down the block to the grocery store. Restaurants are located in strip malls and in the big parking lots of really big shopping malls. People live on streets that are lined with houses that all look the same and there's a lot of pressure for everyone there to act the same, live their lives pretty much the same, and yes, think the same. Never was for me. My life doesn't adhere closely enough to the middle.

My wife Babs grew up in a small town in Iowa with a population of 1,000 people. Oh my. What do you say about places like that? Everybody knows everybody else. Everybody talks about everybody else. It's perfectly safe to walk anywhere in such a place, but nobody does. Because these places are so small, there isn't much to offer in the way of restaurants, entertainment, or culture. You have to drive long stretches of highway to get to places that do. Go to the grocery store in these places and the selection is extremely limited. Once again you have to drive long stretches of highway to get to someplace that has a good grocery store. Want entertainment that isn't available on TV? Get on the highway. Do something the least bit out of the ordinary and people begin to wonder "What's gotten into him? Thinks he's better than the rest of us. Hrrmmmphh!" Norman Rockwell may have made it look lovely, but frankly most kids with a little smarts and drive can't wait to leave. Exceptions? Sure. Your father may own the local bank or a major business in town and you're going to inherit that if you stick around. Otherwise, see you later alligator. And as for me, I don't think there small town America can afford to support the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed. They pay me more in the city and I don't have to spend all my time driving someplace where there are things I want.

When I was in college I met a few kids who came from serious rural areas. I knew a few kids I'd grown up with who fantasized about "getting back to the land" (Did I say that I grew up with the Woodstock Generation?) and decided to live a more natural life in rural America. Build your own house. Grow your own food. Be self-sufficient. Fall off the grid. Frankly, that's a lot more hard work than it's cracked up to be, and even more difficult to sustain. Not really economically viable in modern America. For the record, the USA is the largest agricultural producer in the world, but most successful farmers are Corporate Farmers. Do I need to repeat that? Go big or go home. One other thing about rural America. There's a lot of poverty. Ever wonder why most of the crystal meth in America is produced in rural areas? At any rate, most kids who grow up in farming leave it. A measly few get big enough to survive. Big brain drain here just as in small town America. And when you get really rural, a lot of wing nuts go there so as not to be noticed by the cops, FBI, and other assorted enforcers of law and order. Not a place for such as I.

At any rate, I migrated to a city, and then a larger city, and then an even larger city. Turns out now there is one more reason to like the city. Your carbon footprint is, for the most part, smaller in the city. What's that? Yes, cities, for the most part, are greener than are suburbs, small towns, and even rural areas. How's that possible? Well hang tight a moment and I'll tell you. And for the record, global warming is real! Deny, deny, deny all you corporate interests who benefit massively in dollars and cents from policies that allow you to raise global temperatures and melt the ice caps. Still doesn't alter the fact that it's real. We recognize that your competing scientific studies are funded by your corporation and the facts are a bit skewed.

Turns out people in the city are closer together and generally occupy fewer square feet. Lots of people like to move out of the cities because you can buy a bigger house, but that bigger house costs more to heat and cool and uses more energy per person. Turns out there is easy access to public transportation in the city and fewer people need to drive their own vehicles. They can get anywhere they want using buses and trains (that are electric, for the record) and end up polluting the air by fewer parts per million than those persons in non-urban areas who have to drive everywhere. Just need a car every now and then? There are companies that specialize in renting small, energy efficient vehicles for use on an as-needed basis. Then there is the fact that, in the city, it is possible to walk most places. Neighborhoods have sufficient numbers of businesses to support the surrounding populace and people walk to stores, to restaurants, to parks, and sometimes just to enjoy a summer evening. Let's get real. There are a lot of people who still drive in the city, but because parking is at a premium and gasoline is expensive more people in cities drive small energy efficient vehicles. They just make sense expense-wise and they're easier to park.

In another case of "I forget just where I read it" I read an article last week about a study that showed that life in the suburbs was actually more expensive than life in the city. People in the burbs pay more for their houses' upkeep, utilities, and energy because they are generally larger. They have to drive more and end up paying more in gasoline and upkeep on their vehicles. Large numbers work in the city and have to spend inordinate amounts of time driving or taking the train into the city and back. That cheap house with the big yard ends up costing more in the long run.

There are obviously cases where people in suburbs, small towns, and rural areas reduce their carbon footprint by installing solar collectors, by taking any number of steps to make themselves concerned citizens who wish to preserve our planet. They are the exception rather than the rule. A lot of people are scare to death of the large cities. There are an awful lot of Americans who glorify the cleaner air, the space to move and breathe, the lack of crime. Yet I enjoy a lakefront with miles and miles of freedom to run, to bike, to swim. I live within blocks of the greatest restaurants in the world and walk to them. I still use more energy than I should and have a carbon footprint that is too big, but I daresay I'd put my footprint up against that of 98-99% of Americans. Chicago or the North Woods? No contest. I'll take Chicago and pollute less in the bargain.

Of Education and Jobs and the American Dream

2010-07-23T16:14:00.006-05:00

So I was reading Babs Ray's Blog about the Invisible Class and as it turns out only 30% of Americans have a 4 year college degree, and with the disappearing manufacturing base in this country that means that a lot of people are disappearing from the middle class. In addition, I was reading somewhere, that escapes me just now, that of 36 advanced nations the U.S. is #12 in college degrees held among citizens. Then I read an article by Hanna Rosin, in The Atlantic Monthly, called "The End of Men" in which she notes that more women are receiving degrees than men in America today, and are beginning to outstrip men in the job and earnings market.

So what's up with education in America? Is the country going to hell in a handcart? Is the future of this country one where a minority of educated Americans are living the high life in gated communities while the rest fight it out for what they can get on what is paid in jobs at McDonalds and Wal-Mart? Let's face it, this country needs some serious adapting? Our cultural values need some adjusting. Our economy needs some adjusting.

For one thing, there is a largish stream of thought in America that is anti-intellectual. We've all heard the stories someone tells about the genius who could think great thoughts, but who couldn't tie his own shoes. This is usually followed by a remark about "good common sense." Well let's all face it boys and girls, good common sense is called logic. Mr. Spock would be proud of you for preaching its virtues, but for the record I know a lot of really smart people and they all possess "good common sense." They can all tie their shoes. They change light bulbs and furnace filters and use screw drivers and wrenches as well as the next guy. It's just that if their jobs focus more on mental activities they don't get as much practice with the physical stuff and guys who do it all the time are a little better. Likewise, guys who don't use their heads for anything but a place to hang their hats don't do too well with the reasoning thing either.

The point is that there are a lot of guys out there who think it is somehow less manly to be a good student. It's OK to repair cars, fix broken chairs, and do things with your hands, but necessarily less macho to do things that require the use of the head instead. Speaking as a guy who has spent most of his life working in jobs that are dominated by women, i.e. healthcare and education, well I have a job and it pays OK. A lot of those guys who are anti-intellectual and want to work with their hands somehow, instead of working with their heads, well their jobs have disappeared and are continuing to do so at a rapid rate. It's OK to be smart Bozos. And if it motivates you, remember, guys with more money attract more girls, or for you gay guys, you'll attract more guys.

That being said, the age of women's liberation helped create a new woman, able to compete in the labor force and they have no problem with being smart and doing mental work and making more money as a result. Now they are finding themselves in a position where they don't really need you guys. No B.A.? No job? No woman? Or for the gay guys, see the above reference. Same thing. Somewhere down the line there has to be a cultural shift that allows boys to focus on being the smartest in addition to or in lieu of being the strongest and the fastest.

That being said, with manufacturing jobs being shipped by the millions overseas because corporations would rather pay someone in Asia $.30 per hour than pay an American $15.00 per hour plus benefits. What are all of those guys going to do who used to take factory jobs? Well we need to adapt, come up with new high-tech and green industries that can be done right here in America. Thing is though, most of these kind of industries will require fine motor skills and a little thinking skill rather than the brute force kind of labor we used to rely on in America. True, not all will require a college degree, but most will require some kind of training after high school. We cannot support a nation with all service industry jobs. Learn to operate a few computer programs, learn to use some basic algebra, learn what it takes to get and keep a job.

Into the mix is the fact that this country has the notion that keeps getting passed around that every kid can go to college. Every kid cannot go to college. Fully 40% of the kids who start college don't end up with a degree. So it's not just the attitudes of the guys in this country that have to change, it's an educational system that needs to adapt to give valuable job skills to those 70% of Americans who don't get a college degree. It's an economy that has to adapt to making things here in America that can keep us competitive in the world market, so all of our money does not continue to flow overseas where people do make useful things. The good news is that America still has the largest economy in the world. Overall we still have a high standard of living. The bad news is that if we continue on the track we're on, we risk becoming a poor backwater with a wealthy elite and a huge poverty stricken working class with no in between. Which do we prefer?

Culture Wars, Which Side Are You On?

2010-07-21T19:18:00.001-05:00

There is a great deal of conflict in the world. There are the age old power struggles that pit rich and powerful nations against those nations with little power or wealth. On national levels these struggles usually play out in the arena that puts political parties representing the wealthy and powerful up against those that represent the working classes and disenfranchised. This is the struggle that Karl Marx referred to as the struggle between "the haves and have-nots."

It is important to note, however, that in the early stages of the 21st century there is another powerful struggle afoot in the world. It is the struggle between the traditionalists and the secularists. It is a culture war. Mass communication, mass education, and the melting of boundaries between nations and cultures have resulted in a new class of people who reject the old ways, the old rules, and the old traditions as outdated and useless. The clash between these persons and the ones who hold to the old ways have divided the world.

In a large part of North Africa and eastward all the way to the Philippines a struggle between Islamists who want to institute Sharia and those who wish to obey only the secular law of the state. In Africa there are those traditionalists who believe Sharia includes what they call female circumcision, and what much of the world calls female genital mutilation. In traditional societies such as in Saudi Arabia it means women wear veils and cover themselves from head to foot. It means women may not drive cars, work, or even go out of the house without being accompanied by an adult member of the family. It means a woman can be brought before a religious court and subjected to whippings of sometimes 100 lashes for illicit actions. In Iran women are condemned to death for adultery.

Notably, there are secular societies in the Middle East. In Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria the wearing of veils that cover everything but the eyes are outlawed in universities and many public spaces. In European nations where there are large numbers of Islamic immigrants similar laws have been passed recently. In most Islamic majority nations we see an ongoing struggle between those elements of society that represent "modernization" and education and those who wish to retain the traditional society. Furthermore, many of the extreme traditionalists wish to stop the advancing forces of globalism from further tainting their youth and their societies. This makes the U.S., the EU, Japan, and most industrialized wealthy nations a target for their ire.

Mind you, in many cases the traditionalists and the "have-nots" are one and the same. The educated and wealthy are the "haves." The nature of becoming one of the "haves" involves exposure to advanced education and liberalizing Western notions. Take the boy out of the village and send him to a Western university and the next thing you know he's hanging out in bars and pubs and drinking and dating Western women who dress in suggestive attire and often have pre-marital sex. Take the girl out of the village and send her to a Western university and the next thing you know she doesn't want to come home. She wants to stay in the U.S. or in Western Europe and marry some guy who doesn't even belong to the same faith. Both seem to like Western clothing, ways of life, and owning big cars and houses. A threat to the traditional culture? Well, duh! It throws up a bit of a conundrum. Keep the kid at home and ignorant and you remain poor. Send him or her to a Western university and they may have the opportunity for more wealth, but reject the ways of life they were raised in.

None of these things are news. They are the fodder of TV, newspaper, magazine, and online news day in and day out. What a great many of us who reside in the secular West do not recognize is that these culture wars between traditionalists and secularists play out here as well. The Islamic extreme, notably produces terrorists who wish to attack "The Great Satan," but in the U.S. members of the Christian right regularly feel justified in attacking and sometimes killing OB-Gyn practitioners who offer abortions. This too is a form of terrorism. It is founded in the idea that those who disagree with me disagree with God's commandments and therefore deserve to die. When they find themselves too terrified to go against God's commandments they will fall in line and behave in accordance with God's will. Forget the fact that what any one person perceives to be God's will may be at odds with any other person or group of persons.

The Red State-Blue State phenomenon was brought to the attention of the American public a couple of election cycles ago. Because it affected the outcome of elections, it was framed as a Republican-Democrat thing, essentially political and more of the "haves vs. have-nots" thing. It should be noted, however, that a large segment of the Republican Party has been hijacked by Cultural Traditionalists who want to make this a Christian nation, adhering to Christian principles, and eschewing what they see as flagrant ventures into the world of anti-Christian behavior.

There are a great many behaviors that are a part of the debate between the traditionalists and the secularists, consumption of alcohol, sex without marriage, interfaith marriage, etc., etc., etc., but the two major hot button issues in the U.S. are abortion and homosexuality. Traditionalists tend to oppose both vehemently. Secularists embrace both, as rights of individuals, and often just as vehemently. It creates conflict. Notedly, the Red States are generally rural, small population places and Blue States tend to be states with large population centers. Red States tend to have fewer jobs and wealth. Blue States tend to have larger concentrations of jobs and people with wealth. Once again that "haves vs. have-nots" thing. A rule, but with notable exceptions. Red States like Florida tend to have large concentrations of rich, hang on to our wealth and screw the poor conservatives, but not so many moral, religious conservatives.

To anyone who pays attention, it's no secret that money and changes in culture tend to accumulate in large cities. The largest concentrations of secularists who wish to move society beyond religious restrictions are in the largest cities. In the U.S. that means that New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago hold the largest numbers of people who wish to liberalize society as a whole, the largest concentrations of people with university educations, and also the largest numbers of people with a lot of cash. Small town and rural America hold concentrations of traditionalists who are anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-anyone who doesn't look like me, act like me, and believe the same thing as me.

It is a worldwide struggle. It is very real. It will move us into a new era globally or thrust us back into the dark ages. It's a question of where you stand. Many people in the enlightened sectors are accepting of all cultures and all ways of life. The trouble is that many of those cultures and ways of life will not accept you if you accept gay friends, if your ex-girlfriend had an abortion, if you live with a sexual partner without marrying them. As in any war, this war of cultures demands that you choose sides. I make no secret that I am an individual with an advanced degree who lives in a major Blue State city, who has gay friends, who believes in the equality of women and in their right to choose whether to have children or not, and who does not believe in gods or afterlife. Which side will you choose?

A Mosque Two Blocks From Ground Zero? What Are You Thinking?

2010-07-19T16:13:00.010-05:00

There has been a great deal of noise in the press about Sarah Palin weighing in on the proposed mosque to be located just a few blocks from the Ground Zero site. In addition, to asking peace-loving Muslims to "refudiate" the proposed mosque she also tweeted that it is an "unnecessary provocation." Ordinarily I find nothing to agree with Sarah Palin about. In this case, I have to look past my lefty leanings and say that the woman has a point.

To their credit, The American Society for Muslim Advancement has never been one of those fringe Islamic societies proposing death to the infidels. They are a moderate group that tries to foster a more modern, more moderate Islamic faith that can exist side by side with other faiths. They propose interfaith cooperation and to that end have proposed a center to promote that end. Their center, in addition to the mosque, would include a swimming pool, an auditorium, shops, and art exhibitions, something for the community to enjoy and to promote a dialogue.

On the surface this is a great idea. The trouble is with the location in lower Manhattan and its proximity to the site of the World Trade Center tragedy. Let's face it. We live in America, and despite the claims of the religious right in this country, we are not a Christian nation. We are a nation where the majority of its citizens are Christians, but we are a secular nation that has enshrined in its Constitution the right to "Freedom of Religion." A person has the right to practice any religion they wish, as long as that religion doesn't require it to take away the "unalienable rights" of other citizens. You know what those are, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

That being said, in such a free nation, any religous entity, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or even Wiccan has the right to purchase property and build a center dedicated to its particular faith. The Constitution guarantees that right. The American Society for Muslim Advancement has the right to do that. Their stated goal of promoting healing between religions and peace for all is an admirable goal. The question is, "Is it wise to place that center in a location that speaks of Islamic aggression to many Americans?" How will that move be perceived by middle America?

In Texas there are those who will forever "Remember the Alamo." In the Deep South there are those who still run around in t-shirts with a picture of a crusty old guy in a rebel uniform, with a gun in one hand, a Confederate flag in the other and with the cartoon bubble that says "Hell no! I ain't forgettin'!" Whether you believe either of these sentiments is right or wrong is beside the point. The reality is that a large group of people are still angry about these situations from the 19th century and another large group of Americans is not about to forget or forgive the actions of 9/11.

The fact that there are huge numbers of moderate Muslims running around out there with no desire to bring "Death to America" does not dissuade the notion from their minds that it was Muslims who brought down the Twin Towers. It was not Christians. It was not Hindus, Buddhists, or Wiccans. It was not Communists from China or North Korea. It was not crazed anti-government extremists like Timothy McVeigh. It was Muslims, plain and simple. To many of these individuals, the placing of an Islamic center mere blocks from Ground Zero is like rubbing salt in the wounds. It is adding insult to injury. It is asking, begging homegrown extremists from America to attack that center, regardless of the fact that it is dedicated to peaceful purposes and healing old wounds. It's a bad idea.

Do we really need to be playing this drama out in the national press? Probably not. It brings out the worst in everybody. In this case, a voice of reason from within the New York City bureaucracy probably needs to speak to some people in private and let them know that they have a really good idea, but it would be a better idea to locate somewhere uptown instead, or better yet over in Brooklyn. I bet if someone checked there might be some zoning problem with the center, or something with permits that's throwing up a roadblock. Keep up the good work you moderate Muslims. Just don't do it right next to Ground Zero and rub people's noses in the fact that it was people from your faith who brought down the towers and killed thousands of people. A great many are not very forgiving.

As for Sarah Palin and her Tea Party compatriots, well I still disagree with you on everything else, and for goodness sakes, "refudiate?" Get an education if you want to be a leader.

Teach For America, A Good Idea Or Not?

2010-07-14T17:39:00.012-05:00

Those who believe that the current way we train teachers has been unsuccessful have thrown restructuring, privatization, and charter schools at us as ways to bust unions and supposedly create more successful education experiences for students in our "failing schools." In the process, teachers have been demonized as selfish, lazy, unionized fat cats just waiting for their fat cat pensions at public expense. Now there is Teach for America. Well trained, experienced teachers not getting the job done? Let's put a bunch of kids straight out of school, with a 5 week crash course in teaching under their belts, into the classrooms in ghettos across America. That'll turn things around. Right.

This past Monday Michael Winerip had an article in The New York Times regarding Teach for America. It turns out that Ivy League graduates and graduates of elite colleges all over the country are competing to get into Teach for America and it's more difficult to get into than many elite graduate programs. The assumption among those who promote Teach for America and programs like this is that our schools are failing so let's get the best and brightest into teaching and turn this thing around.

Then those who are accepted are given a 5 week crash course over a summer and are put into classrooms in "failing schools" to give kids that boost that all of those bad teachers couldn't. First of all, the assumption that because a kid went to an elite university somehow makes them a better teacher than someone who went to, say Illinois State University, is totally fallacious. What school you went to, what brownie points you received for making the Dean's List, what IQ you possess is no indicator of whether you will perform well in a classroom with kids from economically, socially, and/or criminally challenged backgrounds. Smart guys from good schools sometimes perform admirably. Sometimes they crash and burn. Same for guys from Illinois State University with average grades.

To his credit, Mr. Winerip notes in his article that it takes time to master the skills that are required to teach under these circumstances. Most Teach for America kids treat it like an equivalent of the Peace Corps. That is to say that it looks good on your resume when you're moving onward and upward, but it's not something you want to do for an extended period of time. Most leave Teach for America long before they have the opportunity to develop those skills that make someone a good teacher, someone who can reach kids and make a difference.

Furthermore, one of the assumptions that goes into a program like this is that just because you want to make a difference, doesn't mean your commitment will make it possible for you to make a difference. Wanting to change society doesn't make you a good social worker. Wanting to teach kids doesn't make you a good teacher. Mr. Winerip tells the tale of a young enthusiastic Teach for America teacher who finds herself in an inner city school teaching summer school so failing kids can make up failed classes. The young woman in question has a good idea for a lesson for kids that is thwarted by A) a broken overhead projector (Good teachers improvise and write on the board. Chalk has its uses.) and B) disruptive kids who really don't want to learn (Welcome to the world of teaching in so-called failing schools. Seasoned well-trained teachers often take years learning how best to deal with disruptive influences in the classroom.).

The thing is, the assumptions and money that are poured into programs like this are an overt insult to hard-working teachers everywhere. They are a slap in the face for those individuals who studied hard and got degrees and advanced degrees in education only to have some snot-nosed kid from an Ivy League school with 5 weeks training come in and think they are going to do a better job. Teachers work and train for years with few resources, for little money, and with kids who come into their classrooms reading 4 and 5 years below grade level and who struggle their damnedest to overcome home situations where the Mom has a new boyfriend in the house every week and the Dad is either unknown or in prison. These are dedicated teachers who struggle to reach kids who belong to gangs and believe that their only ticket to wealth is through illegal means.

It's time America took a long serious look at education and put some valuable resources into these schools by helping the people who trained hard to do the right thing, not by calling them losers and bringing a fresh crop of rich kids who will be gone the next year. One thing I know is that actual caring and showing some tough love can make a difference with some kids. Being there for a kid, not just one year but from the time they show up in your school until they graduate, means something to them. Often they come back years later and apologize for their actions when they were your student. They know you care. They also know that rich kids who come and go in a year or two don't really care about them as individuals.

Linus from Charlie Brown said, "I love humanity. It's people I can't stand." Often these students who join Teach for America are like that. They love humanity in the abstract. They want desperately to do something for humanity, but when faced with the actual face of poverty it's a little daunting and ugly. They move on and soon forget about all of those kids who need someone who cares. They need more well-trained teachers who are committed to making a difference, and often those well-trained ones wash out as well. It takes a special person to teach under extreme circumstances day in, day out, year after year. Teach for America is not providing that.

Do Unto Others, Or Not

2010-07-09T16:41:00.010-05:00

Over these past couple of years I have not made it any secret that I find a lot about religion distasteful. There are those who think that morality would be lost without God. It seems pretty darned clear to me that morality as we know it is a manmade invention. It's a survival mechanism. Frankly, the enlightenment ideal of natural rights makes a lot more sense to me. Do anything you want as long as it doesn't infringe on other people's natural rights, i.e. life, liberty, and property.

Another simple rule of morality to live by is known as the Golden Rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A great many Christians attribute this concept to Jesus, and it certainly appears as something he said, according to the Bible. However, this idea also appears in a lot of other places, many pre-dating Christianity.

Admittedly, Hammurabi's Code, dating to 1780 B.C., was more of "Don't do unto others or we'll do unto you," but it more or less got the point across, "If you don't want people to do that stuff to you, then don't do it to them." There are ancient Egyptian references to a version of the Golden Rule when talking about the concept of maat sometime in the Middle Kingdom about 2000 B.C.

All of that being noted, several ancient Greek philosophers advocated versions of The Golden Rule. Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, and Taoism, just to name a few of the various religious and philosophical schools from around the planet, have all advocated the Golden Rule. It would seem that this is a pretty universal concept on Planet Earth. Trying to live by this simple rule tends to keep down the conflict, murder, and mayhem. Good for the survival of the species, so to speak. One would think that we're all on the same page.

And yet there are any number of religious extremist groups, and not so extremist groups who are thoroughly convinced that if you don't believe exactly the same thing as I do, then it is quite alright to treat you as a second class citizen, ostracize you, and subject you to all manner of verbal abuse. Then there are those extremist groups who feel that if you do not believe exactly what I believe, then you deserve to die. Definitely not the Golden Rule.

Upon further examination, most major religions on the planet put women in a second class role in society. Questioning this role, puts them in danger in many cases. It is incredibly mind-boggling that the male-d0minated theocratic leaders of a nation (Iran) feel justified in condemning a woman to be stoned because after her husband died she had sex with somebody she wasn't married to. It is further mind-boggling that all across the Middle East there are conservative Islamic nations that force women to cover themselves head to foot lest they be brought before religious courts.

Jews and Muslims are at each others' throats in Israel. Hindus and Muslims blow up each others' Holy sites in India. The ongoing wars in the Middle East begin to look like a second round of Crusades between Christians and Muslims. It is easy to point a finger and note that the common thread in all of the aforementioned episodes in violence and war is Muslim. Duly noted that Jihad is an Arabic word, invented by Muslims. All of these religious groups share some of the collective guilt, however. They all believe they are the one and only true faith, and have the market cornered on sanctity.

Let us all take note of the fact that whatever religious faith one has is largely an accident of where you were born. Grow up in Europe or the Americas and you are likely a Christian of some sort. Grow up in North Africa and the Middle East and you are likely a Muslim. Grow up in India and Hinduism is the homegrown faith. Buddhists dominate the faith market in Southeast Asia Japan and Korea. All believe theirs is the one true faith.

When you examine the basic teachings of all of these religions, they all believe basically the same things regarding morality, and yet they spawn religious wars and conflict with those others who dare to differ in small ways. And God forbid (to coin a phrase) that you should have the nerve to not believe in any of them. Every last one of them will condemn you then. So who is right? So where is the morality in attacking every person on the planet who believes basically the same thing as you do? Where is the morality in condemning people whose lifestyles and beliefs do not conform to a set of rules that a few ultra-conservative individuals claim is God's will, or the gods collective wills, or the interpretation of a Pope or a Mullah or any other religious leader who claims to have a hotline to heaven?

I have news boys and girls. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you has no part in this kind of approach to life. When religions deign to be the big authority on morality and then deign to punish anyone who doesn't live up to their personal interpretations of morality, they have given up on morality. They have moved into the dictatorial. Persons as diverse as Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-Il all would understand how this manipulation of human life works. They understand it all too well. They're just a little more blatant than the Pope, though only a little more blatant than the Mullahs who advocate murder of all the non-believers.

Misanthropic Musings of a Maladapted Mister

2010-07-07T18:49:00.001-05:00

Have you ever had one of those words that you read and kind of get an inkling what it means but you really don't know what it means and you never get around to looking it up because it just doesn't seem that important on your list of important things to do? Well today I finally looked up misanthrope. And don't take that attitude with me. Half of you don't know what misanthrope means and the other half have your own words that you don't know the meaning of. So lose the high and mighty act.

Anyway, I looked up misanthrope and saw that it means a person who dislikes people, in general. Well, now I knew what it meant and when I thought about it, I wasn't quite so sure that it was an insult to the person being called a misanthrope. It might very well be a sign of intelligence. I began to think about Linus in the Charlie Brown cartoon and his famous quote, "I love humanity. It's people I can't stand."

All of this musing about misanthropes soon set me to musing on a more personal level and pretty soon I found myself wondering aloud, "Babs, do you think I'm a misanthrope?" Babs got a very surprised expression on her face and by the way she held back her answer and looked at me with that "Oh you shouldn't have asked me that," expression on her face, I knew the answer before it was even uttered. Then she very carefully said, "Yes," and she looked at me to see if I were offended, and qualified her "Yes," with a "Well borderline."

For the record, I wasn't offended. I sort of already knew the answer to that one before I asked it. Just needed a little confirmation from the outside. Got it in short order. Of course, then I had to obsess about it and question whether I were really a misanthrope or not and what were the implications if so, etc., etc., etc.

Turns out it's not so much people that I don't like as stupidity. Trouble is that a large portion of humanity is stupid, or at least they do lots and lots of stupid things. So when you dislike stupidity and the majority of humanity does really stupid things and you dislike those stupid things, it appears as though you are down on humanity (misanthropic) when in all truth you are down, not on humanity, but on stupidity.

This reminds me of Forrest Gump who famously said, "Stupid is as stupid does." Thought about that and came to the conclusion that there is a lot of stupid folks out there because they surely does a lot of stupid stuff. You are no doubt wondering at this point "Just what makes this sucker think he's so all-fired smart, calling the majority of humanity stupid and all?"

Oh no! I didn't mean you per se. You are obviously a really smart person who doesn't engage in stupid acts on a regular basis. I was talking about all of those other people out there, the stupid ones, the ones who run around doing stupid stuff day and day out. You know who I'm talking about. You're one of us, the ones who are well read and smart and who people really should listen to. There's a word for people like us. It's misanthrope.

Being Tired and Retired

2010-07-05T14:25:00.008-05:00

Here it is the 5th of July and the 4th is over. Watched the fireworks and cooked brats on a charcoal grill like a good American. Listened to Bruce Springsteen sing "Born in the USA" and Satchmo sing "America the Beautiful." Of course I also watched a Spaniard beat a Czech in the Wimbledon tennis final in England followed by a little watching of bicyclists from all over the world racing across Belgium in the Tour de France. Got to the baseball thing in the afternoon and had the lump in the throat when Wayne Messner sang "The Star Spangled Banner." Also got a lump in the throat when the Cubs went on to lose 14-3, but that was a lump of a different sort altogether.

On the 4th of July most Americans come together to celebrate that which makes us a nation and to be proud of it. Then on the 5th of July we have all gone our ways again and that which divides us becomes apparent once again. Our nation and our world have been in a serious financial downturn for more than two years now. The unemployment rate in the U.S. continues to hover just below 10%. The stock market continues to make people, dependent on its health, wonder if they'll ever be able to retire and public retirement systems wonder how they're going to pay for the retirement of a generation of aging citizens who are expected to live very long lives. The Baby Boom generation is becoming the Retirement Boom generation.

In the U.S. the age for full Social Security benefits has been raised to 67. You get a bump in benefits if you wait until you're 70. In Germany, the age for state pensions has been raised to 67 as well. In the UK the traditional age has been 60 for women and 65 for men. Now the age is being raised to 66 for all workers and there is talk of raising it to 70 eventually. Meanwhile the French public is up in arms because their retirement age has been raised to 62. What a hardship.

There are a number of issues here. At one time a person could expect to work for a company for most of their adult life and that company would provide a pension check for the rest of their lives. Mind you, most people only lived until their early 70's and so the burden wasn't as large as it currently is. Then companies, intent on cutting costs, set up 401K plans for their employees and the burden for providing for eventual retirement began to shift from employer to employee. Didn't put enough into your retirement savings? Better hope the Social Security system remains solvent, and the Republican Party doesn't manage to privatize Social Security or allow opting out or doesn't do away with it altogether. For that matter, does anyone actually believe that you can survive in a reasonable fashion on what Social Security pays?

There is much ado in the press recently about the outsized pensions of government employees and how they are sucking up the resources of the states, counties, and municipalities of America. A sizable number of these government employees who are receiving these pensions are educators who dedicated their lives to teaching other people's kids, for peanuts, compared to what they would make working in private industry. Part of the package used to attract people to the profession has always been the reasonable retirement package. Now it turns out that huge numbers of people don't want to fund these pension systems. Some of them are on the verge of bankruptcy, and a lot of the people who paid into these systems, depending on them did not pay into Social Security. If their pensions dry up, they have no Social Security coming in to fall back on.

Social Security, government pensions, school teacher pensions all are partially funded by employee contributions and partially by employer contributions. In the case of the latter two, the employer is the government and so that means taxes pay for at least part of these pensions and that seems to stick in the craw of a lot of Americans who don't want to pay for someone else's retirement. In the case of Social Security there are a good many wealthy Americans who don't worry about their own retirement and it seems to stick in their craw that they are subsidizing Social Security for the working class through their own payments into the system.

What we're talking about here is that an awful lot of Americans have a "What's in it for me" approach to life. People are perfectly willing to contribute to their own welfare, but the idea of a societal welfare that must be subsidized through taxes makes people angry. It brings out a "Screw you. I got mine. Get your own" kind of response. Frankly, unless the rich are willing to wall themselves off in gated communities while the masses of elderly are tossed out in the streets to fend for themselves this is a bit of a short-sighted approach to life.

Furthermore, the less able people are to retire and exit the workforce, the fewer jobs will be around for the younger citizens to acquire in the workforce. Jobs are finite. This in turn begs the question, what if companies didn't export all the jobs to third world countries in order to increase their already massive profits? Would there be more people to buy stuff, thus providing more jobs to produce stuff, more people to pay into the system, and thus more funding to allow people to retire at a reasonable age?

Perhaps it is just the old liberal in me, but I have to think that a society has to provide certain basic necessities in order to thrive. It has to educate its citizens. Everybody has to help pay for this. An educated society is in everybody's best interest. We have a duty to see that every citizen can receive adequate healthcare. Everybody should help pay for this as well. The alternative is paying for the unhealthy when they are no longer able to care for themselves due to lack of healthcare. Finally, we have a duty to see that contributing citizens can be assured of a reasonable standard of living when they are no longer able to contribute, due to advancing age. We all have a duty to see that this is funded as well. It's called civilized.

Is the Supreme Court Partisan? Of Course It Is.

2010-07-02T13:35:00.010-05:00

The Senate Confirmation Committee has been grilling Elena Kagan this week. The Democrats on the committee just want to make it as easy as possible for her. The Republicans want to do everything they can to put obstacles in her way on the way to becoming the next Supreme Court Justice, the replacement for Justice John Paul Stevens.

Every time someone is nominated for the Supreme Court the debate begins between the concept of strict constructionism and loose constructionism, just interpreting the Constitution and using the court as an activist perch from which to advance an agenda. Currently the Republicans in Congress are railing against activist agendas and using the court to change society. Apparently, these Republicans were not against activist agendas when the Supreme Court saw fit to nullify ballots in Florida, thus assuring a Presidential victory for George W. Bush. Apparently, these Republicans have not been against an activist agenda when a Right leaning Supreme Court has done everything in its power to strike down attempts to limit the number of guns we have on the streets of our cities. Apparently, these Republicans have not been against an activist agenda when the current right leaning court has time and again upheld restrictions on a woman's right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy or not.

So now when a Democratic President nominates a woman who has similar beliefs to his own, the Republican Party disingenuously claims to be taking the high road in opposing her nomination, in the name of strict constructionism of the Constitution and neutral judges without a political agenda. What a crock of b.s. Looks to me as if they define "activist agendas" as any idea that is in opposition to what they believe. Agree with me? That's neutral and well-reasoned. Disagree with me? That's radical activism designed to re-engineer society.

Let's face facts boys and girls. The U.S. Supreme Court is now and always has been partisan. Presidents always look for opportunities to pack the court with those who agree with themselves politically. When Justices die or retire, this always offers a President an opportunity to restructure the political makeup of the court so as to affect policy for years to come. Remember that Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life and can go on affecting policy in America long after the President who appointed them is gone.

Throughout history this battle has gone on in Washington. John Adams and the Federalists sought Supreme Court Justices who would uphold their vision for a more centralized national control while Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans wanted justices who would uphold their vision of a federated society with devolving to the individual states. Abraham Lincoln and the newly formed Republican Party sought justices who would cement federal supremacy, hold the union together, and stop state efforts to thwart abolitionism. FDR tried to raise the number of justices on the court so he could get a majority on the court to support his New Deal policies. The Republican Party of Hoover fought this move so they could keep intact a court that would thwart the New Deal. Partisan battles one and all.

The battle goes on. The sad thing is that the Republican Party's current efforts to install another Democratic, left-leaning justice on the Supreme Court makes it look like their vision for America is to invent a time machine that would return us to 1950. Between Senator Sessions of Alabama and Senators from Oklahoma and Texas the confirmation hearings this week began to look like an inquisition from a bunch of pre-civil rights, pre-abortion rights Dixiecrats.

Let's face it. All Supreme Court nominees are political. All are partisan. All have a view of the universe that ties in with the current President, who nominated them in the first place. The confirmation and subsequent placement on the actual Supreme Court is a political move made possible by the party of the President and a sufficient number of votes in the Senate. The Democrats currently control the Senate and Elena Kagan will be our next new justice on the Supreme Court.

For the record, Ms. Kagan's position on the court will not do much to alter the voting composition of the U.S. Supreme Court. There are a number of conservative justices who will have to retire or die before the court becomes a bastion of liberalism. We have a few years left of Right-wing "Conservative Activism" on this court before it begins to seriously swing left. So all of you who worry about Ms. Kagan's ascendancy to the court, rest easy because nothing much is going to change.

Searching For Paradise

2010-06-30T18:27:00.001-05:00

I've just returned from a week in Florida. Over the past year, I've spent several weeks in Florida. I have driven the Gulf Coast from Tampa to Naples. I have done reconnaissance on real estate from Miami to Jupiter, just north of Palm Beach. I have driven the width of the state from the Gulf to the Atlantic and from the Atlantic back to the Gulf. I have seen more of Florida than 99% of humanity and that's not even counting driving the Panhandle and the Keys on earlier excursions or travels to Orlando, Ocala, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine from times so long ago that they seem to be from another life.

The funny thing is that I've spent the majority of my adult life in the City of Chicago, and I love it in Chicago. Somewhere back there, however, Babs and I decided that we'd like to retire someplace a bit warmer. Chicago in summer is lovely. Winters along Lake Michigan can be quite another matter. "Winter. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." I believe the turning point came when we spent two years on a tropical island in the Western Pacific, Guam. Got ourselves a wee bit spoiled with that experience. Began to plan for a permanent move someplace warm.

The trouble with our life on Guam was that A) It was definitely not paradise. B) It was so darned far away that no one ever came to see us. C) It was really expensive. We began to consider other options closer to home. Mind you, Sydney, Australia is a lovely and not too expensive place, but see the above remark about distance from everyone and everything you know. Sydney was out of the question.

Having ruled out Australia and islands in the tropics, we began searching diligently within the borders of the U.S. for the ideal spot. Turns out Southern California has a wonderful climate, but everyone and his brother know this and have driven the price of real estate there somewhere into the stratosphere. Alas we were not destined to be Californians.

There are a lot of people who seem enamored of the desert Southwest and move to New Mexico or Arizona. Did I say someplace warm? In those places you either live in the mountains where it's cold and snowy in the winter or you live in the desert where it's 120 in the summer. Babs can't abide mountains. We're both trying to escape snow and cold. 120 degrees is way beyond warm into the ridiculously hot.

I have family in Texas. I tried living in Austin for a time. Turns out I don't have an affinity for Texas or Texans. From Louisiana to Florida along the Gulf Coast is just redneck. Seems to me that I left Arkansas when I was a youngster to avoid that. Nope, won't be moving to Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama.

At any rate, by process of elimination, we arrived at Florida as a likely destination. We began to seriously search the state for possible places to land. Here is what we have learned. The Panhandle of Florida is commonly known as "The Redneck Riviera." It's just Alabama with a beach. Won't be going there. We considered Key West. Turns out a lot of really rich people also like Key West and have priced us out of the market there. We turned to Florida proper.

Turns out Northern Florida is, well for one thing, still prone to having some winter, and is pretty much Southern culture complete with accents and all. Go down both coasts and into places like Orlando and Ocala and there are huge numbers of people from elsewhere and it's that other Florida, the one of retirees and immigrants who come for the weather. This is where we were drawn.

The middle of Florida, including Orlando and Ocala were clearly out. They have no beach of any sort and being in the interior are just hot, humid, and full of orange groves, alligators, bugs, and the occasional large wild cat. Not my cup of tea.

We went to Miami and found a lot of overpriced condos and people who expect you to pay outrageous prices to live in little bitty places and like it. If I liked that I would have lived in Manhattan instead of Chicago. Didn't happen. Lovely place Miami, but a wee bit overpriced in the real estate market. Thumbs down.

Drove from Tampa to Naples on the Gulf Coast side. Tampa is a good sized city, but a wee bit on the Southern side and not quite the cosmopolitan mix that places south of there tend to be. Had to rule it out. Went all the way to Naples and it turns out that it is really white, Republican, and with my gay, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Jewish, and African-American friends I might not really fit in.

On the Atlantic side we ruled out Fort Lauderdale and everything between there and Miami. On the Gulf Coast side we ruled out everything except a stretch that included Sarasota, Venice, Siesta Key, Longboat Key, and Anna Maria Island. We looked at more real estate than you can shake a stick at.

When it came down to it, we were deciding between a place with a pool and tennis courts and three or four blocks from the Gulf of Mexico on Longboat Key on the Gulf side and a place with a pool and tennis courts three or four blocks from the beach on the Atlantic side. We drove back and forth across the State of Florida, looking at both places.

For the record, the interior of Florida down around Lake Okeechobee is a sad place. There are long stretches of nothing North of the lake that are interrupted by cattle ranches and the occasional prison. There are long stretches of nothing but sugar cane and the occasional prison on the south side of the lake. The towns are little pockets of poverty with rows of concrete houses side by side with trailer parks full of old beat up mobile homes. Then you get to the coasts and there are people with money.

As it turns out we're probably making an offer on a place in Jupiter, Florida, about 10-15 miles north of Palm Beach. It had everything we were looking for, including a long stretch of beach and sea turtle nesting areas and a sea turtle rescue center. The price is right. The assessment fees for the community are lower than the place on the Gulf Coast side. It seems a little less fussy than the community on the other side where we were warned about people who complain about people trespassing on "their stretch of beach" and where it is rumored to be mostly deserted from June until November.

Is it paradise? Not likely, but the price is right and the weather is warm and we can afford to keep it up for a few years without actually living there full time. Saves a lot of time and worry about where to go on winter vacations. Gives us options for the future. Funny how life's decisions are made when all is said and done.

On Vacation

2010-06-27T19:27:00.002-05:00

Views From the 14th Floor has been in Florida on vacation and will continue to be so for a couple more days. Will be back on Wednesday. Enjoy yourselves. It's summer after all.

RDR

Non-Parenthood: The Choice That Surprises Everyone

2010-06-21T11:56:00.007-05:00

Yesterday was Father's Day. The clerk at the bagel shop wished me a Happy Father's Day. The homeless guy selling Streetwise wished me a Happy Father's Day. Very nice of them. Trouble is that I'm not a father. Just didn't get around to it.

When Babs and I first met she used to have this t-shirt that had a picture on the front showing a man and a woman driving down the road in a convertible. Both the man and the woman had big grins on their faces and their hair was blowing in the breeze. The thought bubble above the woman's head said, "I can't believe I forgot to have children."

Turns out that t-shirt was somewhat prophetic. As mentioned above, just never got around to it. Oh there was a brief flirtation with parenthood once, but when the pregnancy thing didn't happen right away, it was soon forgotten. We took in a foreign exchange student for a year one time and a year with a teenager seemed to satisfy any latent longing we had for parenthood. With the foreign exchange student we were able to send her back to Europe after her year was done. Now we get e-mails, Christmas cards, and all of that other stuff that parents get from their real kids and we did it in one easy year.

In the meantime, Babs and I have traveled around the world and taken all of that money that would normally go to child rearing and put it into a comfortable existence that we probably would not have been able to afford otherwise. We have grown comfortable with our existence. It is others who are not comfortable with our existence.

When Babs tells other women that she has no children, the usual reply is "Oh. I'm sorry." Sorry? Why? Babs readily admits that she prefers it that way. Not every woman is cut out to be a nurturer. There are children aplenty in the world without contributing more when you don't really want to.

Often my students at school ask me, "Mr. Ray, do you have any children?" When I tell them no, they inevitably ask "Why not?" Puzzled expressions ensue. Puzzled explanations follow from myself. Not really sure why not, but it doesn't bother me. Not every human being is cut from the same mold. Not every life has to follow the same pattern.

And then when my gray haired self in the company of my lovely, not gray wife go wandering into a shop, when we wander down the street, when we go into a restaurant, or check into a hotel, or hop on a flight to somewhere everyone who sees us quietly assumes that a normal looking couple in middle age have children and possibly grandchildren and they smile little knowing smiles at us. And then we smile knowing little smiles back at them in return and quietly smile at each other, knowing how little these people really know. We smile at one another knowing how great 25 years together and the prospect of 25 more can be, without children, and yet so very very normal.

The Politics of Education: Who's Going to Pay For All of This?

2010-06-16T18:12:00.005-05:00

The Chicago Board of Education just voted to approve raising class sizes to 35, and subsequently eliminating teaching positions, numbered in the thousands. The Republican across the hall at work came into my classroom today and asked facetiously, "So do you have 35 desks in your classroom?" Also, facetiously, I turned and counted the rows of 5 in my room, "Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty....." I paused at this point because I was frankly surprised. Then I said, "Thirty-five." With the one extra desk by the wall, not in a row, the total came to thirty-six. Mind you, I was surprised. I have had thirty-one desks in my room for the better part of the year. At one time I had thirty-two, but one disappeared mysteriously. Now, just as mysteriously, an extra row of five desks had appeared in my classroom overnight.

It would appear that CPS has made their decision and the administration of my particular school has begun to comply with that decision. Oddly, the guy across the hall did not have thirty-five desks and I did. Makes a guy begin to wonder whether administration has it in for him or not. "Congrats Mr. Ray. In light of the new classroom size guidelines, you have been chosen as the first recipient of an outrageously oversized class. Thought we'd try it out on you first. See how it flies." What the @#&*(!?

Meanwhile I have seen reference in the Chicago Sun-Times for two days running that this is a power play. It seems that the downtown people have agreed to give all teachers the 4% cost of living raise that is in the current contract. There will just be a lot fewer teachers to receive said raise. The suggestion is that if teachers are willing to forgo the 4% raise, jobs will be saved. On the other side a hardass no budge woman was just elected President of the Chicago Teachers Union and judging by her stance, a strike could be imminent come fall. I believe this is the point where references to rocks and hard places usually come in.

Then there is the money that comes from the state. Just last week I was part of a group of teachers who were chosen to meet with the Assistant Secretary of Education, Carmel Martin. This guy is Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan's right-hand man, and the "go to guy" on promoting the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Mr. Martin specifically mentioned that as a part of the revamped, reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act, money would be included to help avoid the sort of mass layoffs of teachers we are talking about here.

Of course this money has to be approved by the Congress of the United States and we all know how lightning fast they move to approve money for such projects. There will be Republicans decrying the downfall of the republic due to money being given to lazy-ass, do-nothing teachers who are failing our children and deserve to be fired. With a sizable Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, some watered-down version of this bill will be passed, eventually. Then the money will be filtered down to the state level for distribution. Before it can be distributed the state General Assembly will have to wail and gnash some teeth, going through a process similar to that that was described on the national level. By the time any actual money reaches the Chicago Public Schools, a couple thousand teachers will have been relieved of their employment, and if the central office administration can play the public sentiment correctly, the remaining, employed teachers will have to forgo their 4% cost of living raises to boot.

In a best case scenario, the extra money from the feds will be filtered down to CPS and the Board of Ed and the Teachers Union will work out some reasonable compromise. This would probably look like, oh I don't know, maybe a 2-3% raise instead of the usual 4%. Classroom size will be increased to maybe 30, instead of 35 and both sides will be able to crow about how the other side was being stubborn and intransigent, but hard-nosed sticktoitiveness from their side (Choose one.) averted near disaster.

All of that being said, I anticipate returning to work after the summer and finding that I will make a little more than I did this year, but not that much. I anticipate that a larger class size will be de rigeur, but I already had two freshman classes with over thirty kids in them this year. Officially we had a twenty-eight max this year, but I had 33 and 32, respectively, in two classes. So much for the union watching my back.

What we have here is a lot of posturing for the press and for the public on both sides. The reality of how it will play out is basically predictable. Can we just cut to the chase and get it over?

End of the School Year Blues: To Pass or Not to Pass? That is the Question.

2010-06-14T17:48:00.008-05:00

The school year is winding down. I entered my final grades on the computer today. As a teacher, no matter how hardened you think you have become, you always agonize over the grades. Was the kid actually trying? Will he or she benefit from summer school? Should you fail a borderline kid who was a jerk and wasn't really trying, but actually knows more than some of the kids who are busting their butts? What criteria do you use with special education students, those with IEPs (Individual Education Plans)?

Within the general heading of Special Education there are a great many labels that are applied to kids. The most common is LD (Learning Disabled). Theoretically these kids have some disability that can be overcome by the IEP and the child can then achieve at the same level as kids in general education. In reality, LD is a dumping ground for kids that we used to call "dumb." Very few of them actually achieve anywhere near the level of general ed kids. There are levels of disability in this class, LD1, LD2, LD3, etc. that tell you the degree of severity of the disability. If you're paying attention, it tells you how low the IQ goes, that is to say it goes lower with the rise in numbers attached to the LD label.

When you get beyond the LD label, you get to EMH (Educable Mentally Handicapped). This is what once was referred to as "mildly retarded." Then you have TMH (Trainable Mentally Handicapped). I think that is more or less self-explanatory. These kids will need care of some sort or other. They can be trained to dress themselves and brush their teeth and bathe, but little else. They have a severe mental handicap.

Of course the really frustrating kids are the ones labeled ED/BD (Emotional Disability/ Behavioral Disorder). Lots of these kids are actually pretty smart, but they can't learn anything for cursing out and threatening teachers all the time, having constant fits of temper, and generally disrupting the entire learning process for themselves and everybody around them. A real barrel of fun these kids are. Think it ever occurred to anyone to put these kids in a structured environment where they don't destroy everyone around them's learning experience? Nah, too expensive. Put them in the regular classroom with everybody else and expect teachers to deal with it. A real barrel of monkeys.

At one time special education students were segregated in small classrooms and teachers who specialized in certain kinds of disabilities taught them, based on their abilities and lack thereof. Then lawsuits from parents who didn't like having their children ostracized changed all of that. Along came "total inclusion" in the classroom. So as not to discriminate against any student, no matter the ability, every student of every level began to be included in the regular classroom. Teachers now had to balance their time between students who are gifted and learn at a rapid pace, students who are average, students who learn at a very slow pace and have difficulty with academics, and the odd kid in the corner swearing at the top of his or her lungs and trying to start a fight. As a result, the teachers are torn every which way and often no one's needs are met.

There are a great many people who think that because a child is labeled Special Ed they cannot be failed, no matter what. So many people believe this that a great many special education students are passed along year after year with no effort whatsoever. They learn that they cannot be failed so they fail to attempt to pass. Doesn't matter. They'll pass anyway. What I have learned over the years is that this is a false assumption. All students must show up for class. All students must attempt the work that is being assigned. Certain accommodations must be made for Special Education students, but they still have to try. Document the lack thereof and they can be failed.

I was one of a group of teachers who were chosen to go to a meeting with the Assistant Secretary of Education (from Washington D.C.) last week. One special education teacher mentioned in passing that special education students cannot be failed, and the Asst. Secretary of Education was thoroughly baffled. "Why would you do that? You're certainly not preparing them for the future. You're sending entirely the wrong message." Well of course you are. When you do that, you graduate kids from high school with no skills, or ability to cope with the realities of the adult world. After school, there are no special ed labels, no accommodations, no IEPs. Do the job or fail and get fired.

Let's face it. A lot of these kids are not going to graduate from a 4 year college. A lot of these kids need basic math and reading skills, not British Literature and Advanced Algebra. A lot of these kids need vocational training for a job that will pay the bills, not an unrealistic belief that they are going to become a degreed professional. Our schools need serious revamping. Do we have to wait for the parents of the advanced students to get litigious because their kids' needs are not being met while they are sharing classrooms with kids who do not have the ability or are unmotivated or both?

There are a lot of do-gooders out there who think it is a disservice to track kids according to ability. Based on a lot of years spent in real classrooms where kids of all levels are mixed in, I think we are doing all of them a disservice by expecting them to suffer through "total inclusion." Get real people. A teacher cannot give a gifted child what they need while at the same time providing for the needs of a child who can barely read, and while trying to control the negative and disruptive behaviors of an emotionally disabled child. This is not "no child left behind." This is all children lagging behind except those who get lucky and are removed to a school that actually segregates by ability. This is the result of a lot of well-intentioned, but pretty ill-informed adults trying their best to do right by every child, and in the process doing right by none of them.

So who passes this semester anyway? What are my criteria? For whom should I fudge that criteria? How far should I fudge it? Awww heck, pass them all, right? Wrong!

Responding to Anonymous

2010-06-10T19:03:00.006-05:00

When I wrote my last post, lauding the wonders of large cities and thanking my lucky stars that I do not live in a small city I also, in passing, mentioned the suburbs. I knew that there was a strong likelihood that I would offend someone. Someone who reads this will live in a small city, or in a suburb and will take exception to the fact that I think these places are for those who wish to be safe and not experience the adventure that is the large city. Did it happen? Well yeah. It was anonymous.

Anonymous opened with this "Easy to criticize from your perch overlooking the lakefront." I might add that it is also easy to criticize someone's earnest writing while remaining anonymous. You can say what you want but never fear having that coming back to bite you in the butt. I, on the other hand, put myself out there. If you read Views From the 14th Floor, you know who I am. You know what I think about things. I pull no punches. I say what I think (to a fault sometimes, agreed). You even know where I live.

Anonymous went on to note that a great many would love to live where I do, but financial reality will not permit. The implied in this statement is that people live in small cities or in the suburbs because they cannot afford anything else short of "the slummy dangerous areas where their kids would be at risk in a number of ways." To this I must reply that I moved to Chicago in 1985 and I did not arrive in my "perch overlooking the lakefront" until 2005. I busted my butt and lived in a few less desirable spots, and none of them were what I would call "slummy" or "dangerous areas where" the kids might be at risk. There are a great many safe places within the city.

Anonymous also saw fit to note "you've worked hard and had some lucky breaks." This suggests that anonymous may just be someone I know who lives in the suburbs or in a small city and is just pissed off at me and doesn't want anyone to know that they are the one who said what they said. Que sera, sera. This made me start thinking about what lucky breaks I've had, though. Hmmm.

Admittedly, I have had some lucky breaks. I was born with the appropriate genetics to function well in an academic environment. I spent a lot of time in school as a result. Society has rewarded me for my academic diligence. More education=more money. Lucky break. If anonymous is a person who does not do well in school and could not parlay schooling into a rise in income, well I'm sorry. Anonymous has, no doubt, done quite well with his or her innate abilities.

In yet one more example of a lucky break, I had the good fortune to be born into a family who valued a strong work ethic. Things do not come to you just because you are a nice person. It generally takes a bit of hard work and effort. I took this lesson to heart. My family was poor. I paid for all of that above mentioned education myself. I hold a Master's degree plus 58 semester hours of education and I got all of that graduate education while working full-time. As mentioned above, society has rewarded me for that hard work with more money. If Anonymous was not raised in a family that inspired hard work to achieve goals, well once again, I'm sorry. Reality sucks. Got to work hard to get anywhere in life. Nobody just gives it to you.

Now there is one truly lucky break that I got in my journey to my "perch overlooking the lakefront." When I bought my first house, I bought it in an up and coming neighborhood where real estate values shot through the roof shortly after I bought. In a nine year span my property value nearly tripled. I sold that place and took the money and rolled it into my "perch overlooking the lakefront." Wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. Yes I now live in a famous landmark in a respected neighborhood of the wealthy, partially because I got lucky and a lot because I worked my butt off my entire life to get here. My previous experience in the big city, before arriving on the 14th floor, was not so godawful, however. Never been mugged. Was able to walk around the neighborhood at all hours of the day or night. This is admittedly nicer, though.

There are those who like to complain about "the system" and how it's rigged to help certain people. There are certainly a lot of things about this system that I would love to change. The Beatles got filthy rich and even they said, "We all want to change the world......We'd love to see the plan...." Thing is, short of starting a revolution and probably coming to a bad end, you have to recognize the system for what it is and learn its rules. You have to play it to the best of your ability with the abilities and inclinations you're given. When I was 9 years old my family lived in a house with heat in the bathroom and kitchen only, and with cardboard over the broken out windows in the bedrooms. When I was 19 years old I lived in cockroach infested apartments that were rented out to students while I lived off rice and beans.

Now I am 59 years old and the journey has taken me around the world. I didn't always embrace the rules, and often I fought against them with a vengeance. Eventually, I learned the rules and played the game as best as I could. With a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck I landed here in my "perch overlooking the lakefront." I have no apologies for that. Nor do I have any apologies for the fact that I do not choose a life in a small city or in the suburbs because they are viewed by Middle America as better places to raise a family. That's not me. Perhaps, Anomymous, it is you. Embrace who you are. Don't make excuses. Make the most of it, and don't get all up in arms by those such as I. I have an opinion, and as we all know "Opinions are like....., everybody's got one," protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

Small City, Big City. Safety, Risk.

2010-06-08T16:51:00.011-05:00

I was recently struck by an online article that touted "The Top 5 Places to Raise a Family." My curiosity was piqued. I looked. I was appalled at what I found. I was appalled at the assumptions that are routinely made. I was appalled at what mainstream America values and expects of a place to raise children. It appears that I have very different values and expectations than do most of America. I grew up in the suburbs. I left and didn't look back.

Let me just preface this with a look at the cities on the list. They all qualify as cities, albeit small cities. All have a population of 100,000-200,000 and metro areas from 500,000-1,000,000. Of for goodness sakes, this is where I grew up. I couldn't wait to leave. Safe? Check. Cheap? Check. Reasonably good schools? Check. And as Garrison Keillor says, "The women are strong. The men are good looking. All the children are above average."

The list? 1. Des Moines, Iowa 2. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 3. Rochester, New York 4. Syracuse, New York 5. Provo, Utah. Let it suffice to say that I would no more consider moving to any of these places than I would consider moving back to Little Rock, Arkansas from whence I emerged in the 1970's. Of the top ten cities on this list, only Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania actually qualifies as a real city in my mind, and it's pretty small. At least it has professional sports teams (Major league, not minor league) and a little grit to its character.

The thing is that the criteria for being on the list are as following: 1. Cost of living. That pretty much leaves out New York, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, or any of a hundred more interesting places than the basic vanilla small cities on the list. 2. Crime Rate. Guess what? My neighborhood in Chicago has a low crime rate too, and it has as many people as some of the cities on the list. Chances are there are bad neighborhoods in the listed cities as well, just not as large as the bad neighborhoods in big cities. You still want to steer clear of them, though. 3. Commuting distance. Well, duh. These are small cities and thus have short commutes. I live in the middle of the City of Chicago and I have a short commute. It's those people who opt for the suburbs who have to commute long distances. 4. Household Income. Cost of living in Chicago is high. So is household income, at least in those neighborhoods where the professionals live. I do better here than I would in any of those cities on the list. 5. Home ownership. Well, high percentages of the population owning homes just means that there are very few poor people. You can find that in certain suburbs and gated communities as well, even in large cities. So what's going to happen the first time one of these kids raised in an ideal community actually encounter a poor person, a person of color, a person who is very different from themselves? 6. Homeowner cost. Well yeah, homes cost more in interesting places. More people actually want to live there. Demand drives up the cost. Make more money, as I do in Chicago, and you can own one. Don't have to move to Des Moines to own a home. 7. Level of education. Well, once again, it just depends on where you live in a large city. Some neighborhoods, very few people have a high level of education. Some neighborhoods are full of professionals with degrees out the wazoo.

I guess the question is, "If you are actually looking for a great place to raise your kids, what do you want for your kids?" An awful lot of people in America shy away from the big cities. They think the schools are better. They think the neighborhoods are safer. They think the big cities are a great place to visit, but they wouldn't want to live there. They flee the big cities for smaller cities and towns or to the suburbs, seeking that ideal life. People such as myself flee to the big cities searching for diversity, culture, art, opportunity, and diversions that Des Moines and Provo can only dream of.

Honestly, I have no children, but if I did I believe I would be presenting this same argument. Children benefit from exposure to diverse stimuli. Despite all the negative publicity about failing schools, in the neighborhoods where I have lived these last 25 years, there are good schools where kids graduate and go on to good colleges. Children of the cities are exposed to every possibility and have opportunities not available elsewhere.

And yet children of the big cities do all the same stuff that kids do everywhere. Ride their bikes? Ever seen the lakefront bike path in Chicago? Play ball? There are parks everywhere. Indulge their imaginations? There is so much to imagine in a big city. It is to big cities that big imaginers go, from Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and his glass and steel buildings, to Pablo Picasso and his 50 foot metal sculpture that he gave to the City of Chicago as a gift. Writers, artists, musicians, and business men seeking their fortunes. They take risks. They dare to dream. It is in the small cities, the "Safe Places to Raise Kids" that men go to be safe, to dare to be middle American, and forget dreams of greatness. I am sure that most are quite happy with this, accepting their lot, but it is this that I flee.

Was That Racism? You Tell Me.

2010-06-04T16:49:00.006-05:00

Let's face it. Racism is ugly no matter who it's coming from, no matter who it's directed at. I'm sure some of you are wondering just what a white guy who lives on Lake Shore Drive really knows about racism. Ever been a white guy working in schools on the Southside of Chicago for 15+ years? When you have, come back and tell me about racism. Ever been a liberal with black friends who grew up in Central Arkansas? When you have, come back and tell me about racism. It's ugly and every time I think the U.S. may be improving some ignoramus comes along and proves me wrong. Racism is still out there lurking behind every corner, just waiting for the unsuspecting and the unprepared.

Just yesterday a student of mine who has decided that she can do whatever she wants, say whatever she wants, and do whatever she wants without consequences was wandering around the classroom willy-nilly, folding paper airplanes, and generally disrupting the class. So I, the white guy at the front of the room, had the unmitigated gall to tell her to sit down, be quiet, and complete the assignment. She refused and continued to disrupt so I had to call security to have her removed from the room. It was at this point that I heard her mumble something about "mother fucking cracker." When I took issue with this she went ballistic and started screaming "Cracker, cracker, cracker!" Followed by "White mother fucker. I'm gonna smack you up the side of the head with this," and she hefted her book bag.

At about this time the Special Education teacher in the room grabbed her by the arm and tugged her out the door. By the time security arrived she was long gone. I had to take time to document all the b.s. and give it to the security guard. What happened to the paper work? Who knows? One would think that a student screaming racial epithets at a teacher and threatening to "smack them up the side of the head," would be enough to get a student suspended at the very least. I saw her in the hallway today.

Was there racism involved? On the student's part, of course. The security detail who are almost all African-American, seemed to find the whole story about an African-American girl screaming racial slurs at a white teacher just too hysterical. The Dean of Students (Disciplinarian) is also African-American. The Principal is African-American. If a white student screamed racial slurs at an African-American teacher, I suspect that student would be out the door before the echoes of the yelling stopped. Yet this student was allowed to act in this fashion without consequences. Was there racism involved on the part of the African-American staff who deal with disciplinary issues? You tell me.

Putting the shoe on the other foot, once when I was a freshman in college at Arkansas State University, I found myself playing poker on a Saturday night in the dormitory. That night I got the shit kicked out of me by some racist good old boys who took issue with the fact that I took issue with their calling a friend of mine "that nigger down the hall." Got quite a few stares that time I went to dinner with an African-American female friend at TGIFridays in Little Rock. Nobody got beaten up that evening, however, just stared at real hard and seated off in a corner. Racism? You tell me.

To put the shoe on yet another foot, let us move beyond my personal experiences and talk about the gubernatorial race in South Carolina. Let us take time to note, at this point, that it was South Carolina who first seceded, fired on U.S. troops, and ignited the Civil War. It was the State of South Carolina who a couple of years back refused to remove the Confederate flag flying over the State Capital. Well, in some circles things haven't changed very much. Still a lot of racial animosity and bigotry running around loose in the government.

Apparently there is a woman, Nikki Haley, who is running for the Republican nomination for Governor in South Carolina. Ms. Haley's parents are Sikhs who immigrated from India. She has converted to Christianity. Ms. Haley is the local darling of the Tea Party and has been endorsed by Sarah Palin. Tea Party sorts endorsed by Sarah Palin are not my cup of tea, so to speak, but I have to stand up for the woman in this instance. One State Senator, Jake Knotts, was campaigning for her opponent and went on a radio talk show. In the process of an interview he was heard to say, "We already have one raghead in the White House. We don't need one in the Governor's Mansion." Just in case you are the only person in the U.S. who doesn't know what a "raghead" is, it is a racial slur that is used when referring to those of Arabic ethnicity, and by extension, to all Muslims. I believe that is what I think of as "Redneckese."

Need I remind people that President Obama is a mixed race American who belongs to a Christian Church and that the lady in question is Christian, and her parents hail from India and are Sikhs, not Muslims? And all of this is beside the point. Even if Ms. Haley and President Obama were Muslims, so what? A) All Muslims are not terrorists. B) All Muslims are not terrorists. and finally C) All Muslims are not terrorists. What can be said is that State Senator Knotts and I suspect many of his friends and supporters are indulging in some very ugly xenophobia against anyone who is not just like them, i.e. people with too much pigmentation in their skin to be dubbed "white guy." Is this racism? You tell me.

I could go on about the Haley case and how Republican operatives also began spreading ugly rumors about her being a slut. That, however, is a blog for another day. I don't care if the racism involves whites hating blacks, blacks hating whites, both whites and blacks hating all people from the Middle East, or any other group hatred that humanity manages to concoct, it's all ugly and stupid. It just makes a guy want to gather up all his friends, men, women, whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos, people with religions, people without religions, artistically inclined, business oriented, gay, straight, and thoroughly confused, and take them all with himself to an island where we could all start over in a society that accepts people as individuals.

So you may be asking yourself about this point, "Is there anybody you hate, Mr. Self-Righteous?" And the answer would have to be "Yes. I hate people who hate." So there you have it. I'm bigoted against the haters. So keep that stuff to yourself. I really don't want to hear it, and frankly there are a lot more of us out there who don't want to hear it either. It just makes you sound stupid.

Driving to Iowa

2010-06-01T18:24:00.005-05:00

Drove to Iowa and back this past weekend. I know many of you are asking yourself, "So what's the big deal? Iowa's only a 3 or 4 hour drive from Chicago. Not a bad drive." Are you kidding me? Where I go is technically in Iowa, but if it were any further north it would be in Minnesota. Where I go is so far into Central Iowa that if I went any further I would be in Western Iowa and verging on Nebraska. Where I go is a two hour drive directly south of Minneapolis. It is home to my in-laws and Grain Millers, the largest oat processing plant this side of the asteroid belt. They make oat stuff for Quaker and other assorted oat product companies. We're talking about Saint Ansgar, Iowa. Who knew that Norwegians had so many saints? Just when I'd learned about Saint Olaf, along comes this Saint Ansgar dude.

Anyway, I have been married to Babs for 23 years now. We've been living together for 25 years, but that's another story. What that means is that I have driven to Iowa so many times that I could do it in my sleep. Come to think of it I probably have, any number of times. Not only do I know the primary route to Saint Ansgar, Iowa, but I know a fairly sizable number of alternate routes for those times when I'm feeling just a little tired of driving down that same highway one more time. I know how to get there by going through Wisconsin and Minnesota. I know how to get there by leaving Chicago on I-90 or I-88. I know how to get there by going through the Quad Cities, through Dubuque, or by going through LaCrosse. I know how to get there by at least 3 different routes leading from Minneapolis there.

This, my friends, is love. Oh it is not love of Iowa. It is not love of little St. Ansgar, population 1000. This is love of a woman who hails from this town and must return periodically to renew her Iowan credentials and family obligation checklist. Oddly enough, I do not return to my own home town in Arkansas nearly so often. Last time I was there, I attempted to show my lovely bride around the area, and it had been so long that I scarcely knew where I was going. Everything looked different. I hadn't been there in a very long time. Whatever for? Babs and I have carved out a perfectly lovely life in Chicago, and have traveled the world. My Arky credentials have lapsed, I fear, and I have no desire to renew them. My mother and father passed away many years ago, and I have no reason to go anymore.

Babs's parents, on the other hand, just keep on going and going and going, like elderly Energizer bunnies. We return to Iowa again and again, at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, on July 4th, Memorial Days, Labor Days, odd birthdays, when there are assorted family crises,........ I know the major players in St. Ansgar by name. I know them better than I know the people I grew up with and have seen once since graduation, at a 40 year class reunion. I do not keep up with them on Facebook. I see them face to face, at least once a year, usually more often.

St. Ansgar is quintessential small town America. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone knows everyone else's business. Everyone talks about everyone else, incessantly. Walk down the street when visiting, and even if someone passing by doesn't know you, they wave. Why? Because they know everyone and they think they should know you too, even if they don't. Wave back. It's the friendly thing to do.

People hold small town America up on a pedestal, as the model for the good life. It's a place where it's safe to raise children. It's a place where America is at its best. Right? If you can find anyone. Babs and I live in Chicago and we walk all over the place all the time. There are people everywhere. Go to St. Ansgar and walk around the streets and its deserted. Nobody is outside. Nobody is on the streets. It took me several years and many trips to get accustomed to, but it's actually possible to walk down the street, not on the sidewalk mind you, but in the middle of the street, literally. No one will run over you. There's nobody there. Where are they? Inside their houses hiding behind the curtains looking out at the weirdos walking down the street enjoying themselves, and wondering all the while, "Who the hell is that? Why are they outside walking around instead of staying inside and watching '60 Minutes' like everyone else?"

Driving to Iowa is a Midwestern experience. One can drive across Illinois and Iowa. One can drive across Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. Still, one has to drive across stretches of America that are all rural, that are all farmbelt. What does one see? Corn, soybeans, hogs, dairy cattle, and the occasional dead deer on the side of the road. If you get off the beaten path, you may also see an emu, a llama, a bison, or maybe an elk. In Wisconsin you can see some hills and the occasional landform that might qualify for a smallish mountain. In Western Illinois, you might see President Grant's home and a lot of antiques and touristy stuff. For the most part, however, what you will see is miles and miles of flat farmland and straight roads.

While driving to Iowa on the most recent trip, the following occurred to me:

Flying down a two lane blacktop on a straight shot highway.

Railroad tracks along the side heading western, my way.

Ditches, trees, and stands of bushes separate roads and cornfields.

Two story white farmhouses overlooking farm yields.

Moving past. Moving fast.

Road is flat. Road is where it's at.

Flying down a two lane blacktop on a straight shot highway.

The road is mesmerizing. The drive is straight and flat. There is more to the poem and there is music that will go with it. There is more to the drive, and there is more to the visit in St. Ansgar. This, although, is my little immediate impression of the experience, driving to Iowa. Take it for what it's worth.

Guns and Ammo, Guns and Roses, Guns and More Guns

2010-05-26T18:12:00.004-05:00

George Bernard Shaw wrote a little thing called "Arms and the Man." I read it in high school. I was just dumb enough to be surprised that the arms he was talking about were not the appendages attached to the upper part of one's torso, but arms, as in guns used for killing other human beings. Mr. Shaw wrote about war. I too am concerned about man's penchant for killing other men, using guns, knives, crossbows, or even blunt objects. War is awful. Yet it is ordinary life in urban America that I am concerned about.

Men are violent and stupid, for the most part. Men need to be protected from other men. Thank you Thomas Hobbes ("Life in a state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short...") Got news Mr. Hobbes. In the unnatural state of urban life in the 21st century life is equally nasty, brutish, and short for a great many Americans. (Not even talking about 3rd world countries here. Talking about America, "Home of the brave. Land of the free.") The reason is partially social and economic. America needs to address these social and economic ills that create disaffected youth who run the streets with guns. So let's recap. The reason is partially guns, easy access to guns, dumbass kids with guns, and hmmmmm, more guns.

I work in an urban high school in a neighborhood where very few of the persons who read this blog would choose to live. In almost every school year, one or more of the students from my school is shot by another teenager. Gang violence? Certainly. However, gangs alone do not create the mayhem that takes lives numbered in the hundreds per year. Remember West Side Story? The gangs of New York of 50-60 years ago. They were gangs. They did not take lives numbered in the hundreds per year. They carried knives and blunt objects and assaulted one another with the same. They did not shoot each other from a distance with automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

Yet the National Rifle Association lobbies ad infinitum and promotes easy access to weapons from .22 pistols to Uzis to AK-47s. They constantly bombard us with propaganda that tells us that the government is trying to disarm us and ordinary sports hunters would not be able to pursue their hobby and outdoorsy love. Get real! Nobody! Nobody is seriously advocating that we take away the guns from sport hunters. Gail Collins, in a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece noted that Chuck Schumer has appeared in pictures holding up a bunch of dead pheasants from a hunt. Hey, and he actually hit the pheasants, unlike Dick Cheney shooting a fellow hunter. Question! Who would you trust with a hunting rifle, a Republican who wants everyone on the planet to have unrestricted access to guns or a liberal Democrat who wants reasonable restrictions on gun ownership? Hmmmm. I think you get the point.

The thing is that there are gun rights extremists out there who advocate guns for everybody, everywhere, every time, and without any restrictions. Let me note right here and now that I have spent the last 30 years of my life in large urban environments and I have never owned a gun and I have never at any time needed a gun. Yet there are legislators in Georgia who advocate for gun owners carrying their weapons on them into airports. There are legislators in conservative states across this nation who are advocating that gun owners be allowed to carry guns into restaurants and bars. Gail Collins noted in her recent Op-Ed piece, "Even in the Old West, saloons made patrons check their guns at the door." Read any newspaper articles recently about people being shot in an argument? Was alcohol involved? Well duh! And not all of the shooters were NFL or NBA players or their body guards, for the record.

Bob Herbert, another New York Times columnist, pointed out that 150 Chicago Public School students were shot in the last school year. Not all of them died, but many of them did. Mr. Herbert noted that when he was at a meeting of about a dozen men and boys who were violence outreach workers, he asked how many had been shot? Of the dozen, five raised their hands. When he asked how many knew someone who had been shot and killed, all raised their hands. This is what makes the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times.

I asked those same questions the first year I went to work in a school on the Southside of Chicago. I received similar answers. I recall not being able to convince students to stay after school for a Drama Club because it gets dark in the winter and it's not safe to walk home after dark in those neighborhoods. I recall that when the sounds of fireworks went off in the neighborhood many of my students ducked under their desks out of reflex.

This is not Baghdad or Kabul. This is America. There are guns that are for hunting game. There are guns that are for killing other human beings. There is no rational reason on Earth that this country should make it so easy for a teenager in a gang to gain access to weapons of the latter category. 99% of the paranoid people in America who think they need a weapon to protect themselves never need that weapon. The drug gangs in Northern Mexico are armed to the teeth with easy access weapons purchased in the United States of America. Enough is enough. Get the guns off the streets. Save our children so they have time to grow up. Limit gun access. Some of them will still be violent individuals, but not nearly as many will die.

When it all comes down to it, think I'd rather listen to "Guns and Roses" than read Guns and Ammo, and when it comes to the final accounting I'll take my chances against a 6'6" thug with a knife or blunt object rather than a 5' 2" wuss with a Glock.

A Bad Case of Flummoxation, An Olio of Ideas

2010-05-24T17:48:00.006-05:00

I often find myself flummoxed these days. Views From the 14th Floor has always been simply an outlet for myself. It was never intended to address any one issue or theme. At times I talk about education because I work in education. At other times I talk about political issues because they affect us all, and I care. At other times I talk about societal issues because things catch my attention, or more likely annoy me. Sometimes I reference the fact that I'm attempting to write a murder mystery, and the troubles that arise when one writes a full-blown novel. I believe this constitutes what some would call "being all over the board." How does one realistically fit all of this into one blog? There are people who read for one reason and others who read for quite another. Switching gears so often runs the risk of alienating potentially regular readers.

Because my ideas for blogging don't just come to me when I sit down, and I have a tendency to forget them if they come to me at times when I'm not blogging, I write notes to myself. I save newspaper clippings. The trouble is that when you go back and read the little notes, they often don't make a lot of sense, and that great idea about what to do about that germ of an idea seems to have just gone away. I'm seriously in the mode of deciding what to do about this "all over the board" stuff and have been cleaning up the notes and looking at the newspaper clippings. It is all quite varied. Let me just share some of this with you.

Sitting here looking at a page of notes that varies from notes on ideas for blogs to notes on real estate in Florida to stuff that needed at some point to be bought at the grocery store, I find this little note to self, "The lake is slush." It got into the low 90's today and that note obviously was written several months ago. What does it mean? I haven't a clue, although I do remember that slushy quality it had in January, and how it sloshed around and made you just a little disoriented from the movement.

Then there is the note "women at Victoria's Secret." I know what that is about but I'm not sure it's worthy of an entire post all by itself. Perhaps that is why it never got crossed off as used. All it's about really is the image that the Victoria's Secret commercials on TV project versus the reality of the women who come out of that store. Whoa! Quite a disconnect there. For the record Victoria's Secret isn't so very secret at this point. The store sells soft porn dreams to a public hooked on sex appeal.

This page of notes is a veritable plethora of ideas, I tell you. Next up is the note to self "What not to buy, CD's, land lines, brown sugar...." I believe this came in a moment of clear thinking as regards marketing in America. There are things that become obsolete. There are things that just aren't needed. As regards CD's, I found myself in the CD section of a large bookstore one day about a year ago and it occurred to me that only old farts buy CD's any more. They are going the way of 8 track tapes and 33 1/3 LPs. Why buy CD's when you can download the music online and ensconce the music on your IPod and it will hold your entire collection. Well for one thing I still don't have satisfactory IPod docking in my car. I need the CD's. Okay? As for land lines, I'm perfectly willing to give mine up and just use the cell, but I am told that sometimes you need a land line because those expensive smart phones drop calls despite having several thousand apps. The brown, unrefined sugar I've changed my mind about. I like it and will continue to buy it even if it doesn't make sense to you. So there.

I dispatched that last page of notes, having exhausted every possible word I could from it, and moving on to the next page I just have to cheer. Let's face it, I'm pretty far to the left politically. I'm an atheist. I have gay friends, African-American friends, Latino friends, and even some who are Muslim. I grew up in the South and didn't fit in with redneck culture, right-wing bigotry, and denial of basic science. My next page of notes begins thusly, "Morons on the Texas Board of Education." Seriously, I don't think I need to say another word about that. That note says it all.

The follow-up note reads "Christopher Hitchens: Opening a can of whup ass on religion." Oh yeah! Whoop! Whoop! Not quite sure which particular op-ed piece inspired that note, but I read Mr. Hitchens on a regular basis and he "opens a can of whup ass on religion" on a regular basis. Truly inspiring. One can get really tired of religion dictating what one can and cannot say, what one can and cannot do, based on social dictates of thousands of years ago, and total denial of the scientific and social progress that has occurred since. For the record, the Catholic Church has finally allowed Copernicus a church burial. The nerve of that guy, to say the Earth went around the sun and was not the center of God's universe. God? If you're out there, would you return my calls? What? You're a Luddite? No voice mail, no e-mail, no personal appearances?Hey, get a Facebook page.

Having cleaned up my list of notes to myself, and run on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph I suppose it's about time to give it a rest for the day. I've reduced my backlog to one note on education that will, in all likelihood make me a pariah, and a couple of newspaper clippings on guns. Tell you what, I'd seriously like to avoid pariah status for a couple more days so next up will be guns and the NRA. Like that won't make me a pariah in this country. Anyway, enjoy your day. Summer's a coming.

The Education Omnibus Blog, Part IV, What Are We Preparing Them For?

2010-05-20T17:01:00.006-05:00

In a world that for years has been obsessed with the idea that every child should go to college, a significant number of researchers have recently begun to note that maybe college is not right for every child. Some kids may need some preparation in a vocation instead. That is to say that some high school vocational training in lieu of a college prep track might be a good thing.

Instead of trying to send every child off to a 4 year college, community colleges and technical schools could be used to provide kids with vocational skills that will give them a solid foundation for their adult years. Apparently, some businesses are providing on the job apprenticeships for certain jobs like pharmacy technician. Let's face it, Associates degrees that aren't tied to certification in some specific vocation are absolutely useless. Babs Ray discusses this in depth in one of her recent blog entries.

On the other hand, Bob Herbert, in the New York Times, recently talked about a high school in New York City where highly motivated kids were being given the opportunity to earn an Associates Degree during their last two years of high school. Mr. Herbert argues that, with the high cost of college today the opportunity to get those first two years of college out of the way is a good idea that will save many thousands of dollars in tuition and prepare them to enter directly into their majors as soon as they grace the college campus, without having to waste those first two years in college with the general curriculum that is required of all students, regardless of major. Is this a good idea? I'd have to say yes, if that student is highly motivated and capable.

The problem is that with a great many students they are not highly motivated, and they are not sufficiently sophisticated in their academic and intellectual abilities. Great! Give those really bright kids the chance to move ahead at a pace they can handle and will embrace. That is what Gifted and Talented Education has been about all along. However, we also have to meet the needs of those kids who may need the first year or two of high school to do remedial work to bring them up to a level that is appropriate for high school work.

The reality of working in an inner city school in a neighborhood where 99% of all students qualify for free or reduced lunch (That's educode for "These kids come from families that are poverty-stricken.") is that less than 10% of the kids arrive in high school reading on grade level. Teachers often get to the point where they consider the kids who read on 6th grade level in 9th grade as the normal ones. Are these kids going to be successful in a college preparatory curriculum? Will they be prepared for a program that provides them with the basic courses required for an Associates Degree when they reach their Junior year in high school? What do you think?

In every such school there are a small number of kids who didn't make into the magnet schools and schools for the gifted and talented. These kids shine and even manage to successfully navigate Advanced Placement courses and go on to complete a 4 year degree. Every once in a while, one rare student from this mix shows up and astounds everyone by managing a 30 on their ACT and get into a major university instead of the usual state supported university. For the largest portion of the students from these schools, however, some sort of vocational training in high school and a 2 year program afterwards is what is called for. This allows them to make a decent living and become productive members of the community without condemning them to minimum wage only types of jobs.

What we have to ask ourselves is, "What is it we are preparing these kids for, realistically?" Some deserve that shot at college and the upward mobility that goes with it. Others deserve to have a shot at a good job that can be had without a 4 year degree. If we insist that all of them pursue that 4 year degree, large numbers of them fail, due to lack of desire, or lack of ability, or lack of preparation. Then they drop out with tuition bills owed and no marketable skills to see them through the rest of their lives. How about we do the right thing for all kids, not just for some of them.

The Education Omnibus Blog, Part III, Send in the Clowns

2010-05-17T17:35:00.012-05:00

Happy Monday. I thought momentarily about stopping the extended rant that is The Education Omnibus Blog. I honestly thought for a moment that I had just about hit all the major points and had ranted myself out. Then I realized that I had not even scratched the surface when it comes to addressing the ills that beset the public schools in America today. There are layoffs and firings looming all over America. There are budget cuts resulting in larger classrooms and fewer resources. Meanwhile administrations of large school districts still function in bloated states with copious numbers of people doing who knows what for salaries in the 6 figure range.

Apparently the entire country is in financial distress just now, and the answer, as always, seems to be to get rid of teachers. As has been noted before in this space, the feds have cut funding that is going to the states. The states have cut funding that goes to the local school districts. The local school districts are cutting funds to individual schools. The schools are cutting back on the numbers of teachers. This results in fewer teachers teaching the same numbers of kids, and subsequently increased class sizes. The Chicago Public Schools is proposing a classroom size of 35 for next fall.

I don't even have 35 desks in my classroom. How about we do away with desks altogether and sit them all on the floor. I already have a shortage of textbooks. What will happen in the fall? How about we do away with textbooks and have the teachers create all lessons from scratch, except for those that will involve students using computers to do research on topics. Oh wait! There aren't enough computers for all students, and certainly not computers that would be accessible to students who are sittting on the floor.

Better yet, we could just do away with school buildings and teachers and have all students get their learning online. Oh wait! We don't have enough computers for all kids to take home with them. This is not to mention the fact that without teachers to monitor most kids all they'd do with the computers, even if they had them, would be to constantly e-mail each other, play video games, and check their Facebook or My Space pages.

And then when you think it cannot get any more absurd, there are the central office administrators who seem to be hiring more administrators every day. Apparently, in the minds of those who oversee the schools, the need for actual teachers, books, computers, and assorted accessories of education are not nearly as important as overseeing the operation of the schools and their mission. Just this last week I saw advertised online, among others, job openings for College and Career Preparation Officer. The salary range is from $118,700-$169,000. Got news for these people, I am a college and career preparation officer. I am a high school teacher. What exactly is it that people think I do? Hey I could stand to double my salary. Maybe I'll apply. Of course, not being politically connected and a loud-mouthed blogger might be disadvantageous to attaining such a position.

Okay, just one more of these administrative postings, for your perusal. They also advertised for a Management Support Director (MSD), salary range $78,700-$111,000. The MSD's "duties allow for the successful development, coordination, implementation, and maintenance of educational programs designed to improve student academic achievement." Anyone got a clue what this sucker does? Want to coordinate, implement, and maintain some educational programs? How about you hire some teachers to teach.

Meanwhile the state and local governments are claiming that they can't possibly meet the required payments for teacher pension systems. This is despite the fact that, in many cases, the payments are mandated by law. Let's see, someone passed a law that said if I served the community for X number of years I could pay into a pension system and the government would pay a certain matching amount into said system and I would be rewarded with a decent living wage when I retire. Now the government wants to renege. Let's see, this was put into law. I break laws and I get fined or imprisoned. The government breaks laws and teachers lose their pensions. That sounds fair, doesn't it?

Let's face facts boys and girls. Despite all the tea party grumblings, all the griping and moaning, we are going to have to raise taxes to meet our obligations. And we're not talking about property taxes. We are talking about the federal and state governments following through on what they promised. We are talking about meeting fiscal obligations so that America's children can have an education that is not on a par with some backwater 3rd world country. America still has the largest GNP in the world. We can afford to pay for education, and the sad thing is that if we do not fund our public education we will pay. We will pay through the nose by having unprepared citizens trying to compete with the citizens of nations who do invest in education.

And yet, when I think about the deplorable state of education in America today, I hear one little voice in the back of my mind. When I listen very carefully, I can just make out what the little voice is saying. It is singing, "Send in the clowns......."

The Education Omnibus Blog, Part II, Vouchers

2010-05-13T18:18:00.007-05:00

As promised, I intend to cover all the varied issues in education that keep popping up in the newspapers, at least the ones that really tick me off. Did the charter schools thing last and I have to pat myself on the back for being fairly civil overall. Mind you that becomes difficult when the very point of charter schools is that America believes teachers are lazy do-nothing assholes, busy milking the system for their hard-earned taxpayer dollars. Somehow they convince themselves that privatizing the public schools and turning the system over to people who will do the same job I do, only for less money and fewer benefits is going to turn the system around. If only Mr. Spock were here now to inform them how grossly illogical they are being. But I digress. I did that argument already. It's time to take on the voucher nuts.

For quite some time now there has been a movement afoot in America to provide taxpayer dollars to parents so that they can send their kids to private schools. Are you with me here? Taxpayer dollars to send kids to private schools, any private school, schools for rich kids, schools for Catholic kids, schools for Baptist kids, schools for any old thing you could imagine. The proponents are pushing this issue in the name of "school choice" ostensibly to give ghetto kids the option of getting out of ghetto schools, get them into better schools so as to give them a better chance at success in America.

There are a couple of major flaws in this thinking. First of all, those rich kid college preparatory schools only have so many openings and I'm here to tell you that the boards of those schools are not taking boatloads of kids from the ghettos into their schools that are preparing rich kids for a life in the board rooms of America. Got that? They don't want their polished little princes and princesses hanging out with kids for whom "mother fucker" is a major word of choice. Those vouchers are not going to get very many kids an option in these schools. Furthermore, most of these schools have academic standards that a lot of the kids in question will not meet. Those who do will eschew "mother fucker" and will probably dress a little better and will be a bit more aware than many. They will be accepted. These are the elite, 1 in 100 or maybe 1 in 1000. So what happens to the other 99 or 999?

Now the other option for the many who will not get into the elite "rich kid schools" are the Catholic schools. This is just wrong in many ways. First of all I have to oppose this on Constitutional grounds. The U.S. Constitution guarantees us "separation of church and state" and paying for a kid's tuition to a Catholic school out of taxpayer dollars is a violation of that separation of church and state. It is using tax dollars to promote a particular religion. I use this example because the Catholic school system is the second largest school system in America behind the public schools. I know there are other church schools out there representing any number of Christian denominations and any number of other religions, monotheistic and otherwise. I do not favor supporting any of those religions with my taxes. I am one of those who is willing to take this to the Supreme Court. I am a card carrying ACLU member and this is just a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Furthermore, studies show that large Catholic school systems in the major cities do not do a whit better at educating kids than do the public schools. How is this judged? Why by the same criteria that public schools are judged, by standardized tests. And the Catholic schools have the option of kicking out the students who become a behavioral problem. The option? They regularly expel their problem students, who consequently become a part of the public school system.

And where do the problem students at public schools go? Duh! They go to public schools. There is nowhere else for them to go. And when our tax dollars go to pay tuition to Catholic schools, or Baptist schools, or Islamic schools, or Hindu schools, or rich kid schools, these are tax dollars that are not being put to use in the public schools to deal with those problem kids that kicked out of the other schools. They are also dollars that are not being put to use for good kids in the public schools who deserve all the resources they can get.

For the record, the Illinois General Assembly recently considered a bill to legalize school vouchers in the State of Illinois, a bill sponsored by State Senator James Meeks, an African-American activist from the Southside of Chicago. Senator Meeks's efforts were misguided. He is one of the people in Springfield who routinely deny the Chicago Public Schools the money they desperately need from the state while trying to find further ways to cut into the funding that they already receive. He seems convinced that the public schools are somehow cheating minority children of a decent education.

Having worked in schools on the Southside of Chicago for the last 15 years, I am here to tell you that the educators employed in those schools are hard-working, dedicated people and the communities they serve are dysfunctional. The children who attend the schools in many of the communities of the Southside are in serious need of more than the schools can offer. The issue is much larger than the schools. It is a social issue, not an educational one. Reverend, excuse me, Senator Meeks is either seriously misguided or is schilling for religious schools. And Steve Huntley, the resident right-wing voice of the Chicago Sun-Times, should really give it a rest. Mr. Huntley routinely argues for anything that could lead to the eventual dissolution of the public schools, to the dissolution of government in general, and for policies that might be called anywhere from right-wing Republican to Libertarian, to downright anarchic.

That, dear friends is my vouchers rant. The Education Omnibus Blog goes on yet. I still have to address teacher pension shortages, firings, budget shortfalls, and any number of ill-conceived plans thrust upon the public schools by numbskulls in government at the beck and call of an ill-informed public. Oh my gosh, I have just called government officials numbskulls and the American public as a whole a bunch of ill-informed persons who do things because they believe b.s. that somebody just made up. Woopsy. Gotta say it anyway. Have a nice day.

Much thanks to Bill Sanders and The Milwaukee Journal for the cartoon that I used for the illustration of my point, at the top of this blog entry.

The Education Omnibus Blog, Part I, Charter Schools.

2010-05-10T18:32:00.010-05:00

I've been collecting articles from the newspaper that piss me off as regards opinions about the state of public education. I've been writing notes to myself about things I should comment on regarding the state of public education and the opinions of others about it. I have been doing this for about the last three weeks and somehow there has always been something more important to write about and all of this stuff has just piled up on my desk, creating a good bit of clutter. In an effort to clean up the mess and at least make my desk look a bit neater, if the inside of my head looks not one whit neater, I have chosen to attack every single issue that is pissing me off in one fell swoop. Thus, the Education Omnibus Blog cometh!

First thing on the omnibus agenda is charter schools. Those who would gut the public schools routinely push for charter schools, in the mistaken belief that charter schools do a better job of educating kids than do traditional public schools. There has been a push for many years now to open more and more charter schools and give kids a choice, so they don't have to attend those "failing neighborhood schools." Finally some realistic research has come to light that shows this simply not to be true. In an article in the New York Times on May 1, it was noted that 83% of all charter schools in the U.S. are no better than regular public schools.

I might suggest that if you were to separate public schools into categories, you would find a significant segment that does better than the normal public schools. A lot depends on the neighborhood and socio-economic status of the students who attend said public schools. A lot depends on the selective nature of the public school. Same with charter schools. The New York Times article noted that in charter schools, 55% of students are Hispanic or African-American (They actually said black, not African-American, but I changed this because my African-American students no longer wish to be called "black.") They noted that 1/3 of all charter school students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Guess what? In a great many of the schools that are considered "failing" 99-100% of all students are African-American or Hispanic. In a great many of these "failing" schools 99-100% of all students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Yet the charter schools don't do a damned bit better at educating kids than do the public schools.

More recently, on May 5, none other than Charles Murray weighed in on charter schools on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. Mr. Murray argues that kids are better off in charter schools, but the fact that all the judging is being done on the basis of standardized test scores is what's wrong. Mr. Murray argues that going traditional is better, and charter schools give a more traditional form of education in smaller classrooms, and that in and of itself is better. Mr. Murray argues that choice is good and test scores are something that doesn't matter. So how are we to measure the good that these schools are doing kids who otherwise would be attending public schools?

There are a number of people out there who also argue that kids in charter schools are simply safer, and thus better able to focus on learning. There are smaller classes. There is more focus on discipline. Their kids are better off. Guess what? That's true. However, the truth is also that those kids who cause trouble can be thrown out of these charter schools and end up back in the old neighborhood schools. The neighborhood public schools have no choice. They cannot just throw kids out into the streets. There is often no choice of where to send the worst and most disruptive kids. That is the public schools. Want to improve public schools? Don't fund charter schools. Fund alternative schools for disruptive, criminal, and seriously challenged public school students. The other students would benefit greatly, I guarantee, and we wouldn't need those charter schools for the good kids.

The bottom line here is that research shows that charter schools do no better than public schools, on the whole. Most of those that do, do so on the same basis as the better public schools. They have selective enrollments. Even within schools that have 99% minority and free and reduced lunch students there are a select group who are motivated and willing to do what is necessary to succeed. Teachers love these kids. Take all of those kids and put them in charter schools and of course the charter schools succeed.

What we are talking about is taking needed resources from the public schools and giving them to private concerns who do it cheaper by requiring longer hours and lower pay of employees. What we are talking about is giving employees lesser benefits. What we are talking about is taking the better students out of the neighborhood schools and leaving the worst students in the neighborhood schools. I'm sorry, but this is just the wrong approach to improving our public schools. First of all, we have to improve our society. There are huge stretches of every major city in this country where poverty is run amuck. Gangs and anti-social biases are the norm. If we truly want to fix the schools, we need to fix what's wrong with society that creates this urban blight and the blighted culture that occupies it.

Advanced Placement. Oh How You've Changed.

2010-05-06T18:19:00.006-05:00

AP testing in Back of the Yards is not what your suburban upbringing may have led you to think of when you think of AP tests. We're talking about a whole different experience here. That other thing that people think of still exists in places like New Trier High School on the North Shore, but we're talking about a school in one of the ghettos of Chicago. It's a miracle that an Advanced Placement program exists at all, and that any of the students are successful in such an endeavor. Yet they are.

For the record, I'm that teacher with an administrative certificate who somehow can't seem to get hired for a full-time administrative job. I have my opinions on why this is so, but I shall remain mum on that point. Nevertheless, I serve as a boon to the full-time administrators in my school. I can be counted on to teach a full load and then when there is a need for someone with administrative expertise for special projects, I can be counted on to follow through. When they needed an evening school program, I started it and ran it until the funding ran out. When they needed an AP program I built it from the ground up and have administered it ever since.

As it happens, in the first year of my newly minted AP program, I taught AP U.S. History and took care of the administration of said program and ran the testing, a one man band. I talked an English teacher into the preparation necessary to teach AP English Lit and voila we had a second course. I talked a math teacher into the prep necessary and next thing you know we had an AP Statistics course. Been working on the science department for going on 4 or 5 years and we still don't have a commitment to an AP course from that corner of the building. Did I mention that the ACT scores in science in our building are dismal? Anyway, I eventually talked another history teacher into taking over the AP teaching load in U.S. History and I became simply the Coordinator for the program.

I've been trying to get an AP Spanish Language or Literature program at our school for the last three years. One teacher who did the prep got mad at the Principal and took a job at another school. One teacher who said she'd do the prep didn't. One teacher who is the head of the ESL and Language Department has done the necessary preparation, but administration can't commit to giving him the A.P. class because they don't know if he'll be needed to teach nothing but ESL when downtown cuts teaching positions next year, due to budgetary concerns. Two-thirds of our student population is Spanish speaking. This is a "Duh Factor" class and yet school administration and downtown administration can't seem to get on board to make it happen.

And that's just administrative woes. Let's talk about the actual testing. First of all, 98-99% of all students in this high school in Back of the Yards qualify for "Free or Reduced Lunch." What that means is that these kids come from families who qualify for Federal Poverty Guidelines. The College Board gives a fee reduction for kids from families who meet poverty guidelines. The State of Illinois picks up another chunk of the cost of AP testing for these kids. They're usually late with their payments and in one year we were denied the right to give tests because the College Board hadn't been paid from the previous year. Okay it wasn't all on the State of Illinois. The Chicago Public Schools arcane payment system was partly to blame as well.

At any rate, after the fee reductions from the College Board and the supplements from the State of Illinois, the school itself picks up the rest of the cost of the exams for the kids. They pay zero. Rich suburban kids are paying the full fee themselves, but then most of them can afford it and an awful lot of them have parents with college degrees. We have parents who are high school dropouts and a number of new immigrants from Latin America who speak little or no English.

Meanwhile a small cadre of students who navigate the gang infested streets and communities of the Southside of Chicago manage to survive and thrive despite all odds. They work hard. They get good grades. They manage to position themselves to take AP classes and get scholarships and move up and out. So let the testing begin.

Well, we do run into some problems. I had to order late testing for one student because it turns out she was 9+ months pregnant and had labor induced last weekend. The new mother was not able to make her AP exams, but hopes to be primed and ready during the late testing period week after next. Because we had ordered an exam for her, the school pays a $12 fee for the returned test and a $40 fee for the late test that will be given. Five other students who suddenly realized they don't know squat about statistics neglected to show for the AP Statistics exam. 5 X $12=$60 in additional fees for those tests not taken. Many of us shrug at the prospect of say an additional $100-150 dollars tacked on to the school's bill for exams not taken. I often spend that much in a single night at dinner with my wife, but when it comes out of a school budget in a system in economic crisis every penny counts. Do we have the extra money to pick up the tab?

Meanwhile, the school rented a bunch of folding tables to be placed in the gym for PSAE testing last week and I was able to use some of those for the first day of AP testing this week. The Principal decided we couldn't afford to keep the necessary tables for the rest of the week for the AP tests. We're the poor stepchild of the school, apparently. With an hour and a half left in the test in AP Statistics on Tuesday the school engineer suddenly appeared in the gym. He told me that the guys "were here to pick up the tables." After some stern looks and much consternation, he understood that I damned well wasn't turning over any tables until these kids were finished testing, and the "guys" could come back tomorrow to pick up said tables. The engineer left and calculator button pushing, pencil twirling, and the odd nose picking continued.

I had to find enough tables within the building to replace the rented tables. This involved coaxing, cajoling, and pleading with the engineering and janitorial staff at the school to get a bunch of rickety old junk tables moved into the gym. As I understand it the janitorial staff got a few boys from a class with a substitute to actually move the tables, with a promise of "Service Learning Hours." Today we tested on tables covered with gang graffiti while sitting on chairs that I pray will last the duration of the test. The fans in the gym blew at gale force for the entire duration. Then during Division (Homeroom for non-Chicagoans) the P.A. system blared the day's announcements. Meanwhile 26 kids tried desperately to concentrate on analysis of fiction and poetry in the AP English Lit exam.

Yes boys and girls, this is not your mother's and father's AP exams. This is not your mother's and father's school. This is not your mother's and father's neighborhood. This is not your mother's and father's world. This is Back of the Yards in 2010, and some of our kids survive and turn out pretty damned well despite it all. Just another example of overpaid, lazy-ass teachers wasting the taxpayers money, right?

The Fine Art of Blundering Into the Future

2010-05-03T18:28:00.012-05:00

I was well armed and prepared to write about the lack of success of charter schools today, but then I read Babsray's Blog, and my head went off in an entirely new direction. So much today depends on how focused a kid is and what planning and action goes into their lives from early on. So much of their ultimate success depends on how their parents help them into their futures. Perhaps this has always been so to an extent, just more so today.

Then there are people like Babs and myself. Our parents raised free-range children. We were given some basics in human behavior and a work ethic at home. We were given some overarching basics at school on the American way and its ideals. Then we were cut loose to figure the rest out for ourselves. We were given very little direction. We were allowed to choose whatever we wanted as long as it made us happy and it was considered socially acceptable. We often hid those things that weren't socially acceptable from our parents and did them anyway.

Babs grew up in rural Northern Iowa and I in central Arkansas. We both had a degree of innate intelligence and were both reasonably attractive so we were both popular in school. Neither of us had a clue who we really were, nor who we really wanted to be. We both left high school with high hopes and a burning desire to get out of Dodge. We both ended up, kerplunk, at a university about 2 hours drive from where we grew up. Then life got complicated. Didn't have a clue what we really wanted from life and had to muck about for a while to discover what it was that was eating us up from inside.

I didn't know if I wanted to be a rock n roll star or a nuclear physicist so I got a degree in political science, went off to Illinois to graduate school, and somehow ended up doing improv comedy shows in bars. Paid the bills doing everything from loading trucks to clerking in bookstores to being a pharmacy technician. Did some acting, writing, directing, sang with garage bands, and hustled pool on the side. Moved around a lot and never got rich and famous. Somehow managed to get an education degree, an advanced education degree, and a certificate saying I could be an educational administrator. How'd that happen? Still not sure to this day.

As for Babs, she definitely muddled about a bit as well. She got lost in the immensity of the University of Minnesota, did a two year program in commercial art, sold car stereos, clerked in bookstores, eventually got a 4 year degree, and set off on a pattern that included proofreading, editing, writing for newspapers and magazines, writing for academics, and writing and writing and more writing. Guess what? She became a professional writer.

Along the way Babs and I have seen the world, the Arctic Circle, the Sahara Desert, and the remotest parts of the Pacific Ocean. We have transformed our lives from one of total lack of direction, just this side of poverty, to one that apppears to have substance and direction and has taken us to the Gold Coast in Chicago. Now we appear poised to move ahead one more time and find a comfy retirement in a warm climate, with swimming pools, tennis courts, and beaches. Sounds like we've done pretty well. It's just not the way anyone would advise you to do it. It has been a meandering path with lots of very interesting twists and turns and that is what makes us who we are.

My hope is that America will remain flexible for our children and our children's children's children. May it always be so that a person can meander and muddle and take every odd turning that presents itself and become a better person for it and have lots of wonderful stories to tell. May it always be possible for the unique individual to come through all of that unharmed and able to die in comfort, if not wealthy. Otherwise, what will become of our writers and musicians and artists of all ilks? Our society is enriched and better for it for allowing at least some of us to blunder into the future, rather than planning it all from the time we are in diapers.

Moving to the City to Start Again, American Migrants

2010-04-30T17:41:00.008-05:00

The thing about moving to America to start again and get a new life is that a lot of people who gripe about all of the immigrants don't recognize how many of their own have done the same thing, only within the country. This is a large country and it is entirely possible to migrate to another place, start all over, reinvent yourself, and become a smashing success in a new location. This is speaking from experience, my own, a great many people I know, and a great many more I'm related to. Not to say that I don't know the people I'm related to, but......well you get the idea.

A great many people come to America from other countries because there is economic opportunity here and there isn't in the place they are from. The same thing happens to some people if they happen to be from, say Arkansas, or Montana, or South Dakota, or West Virginia, or a host of other places that are primarily rural and small town. The motivated go to school and leave for larger cities with booming economies and more opportunity. The difference between themselves and the immigrants from other countries is that they don't have to learn a new language. If you happen to be from someplace like Arkansas or West Virginia you might want to leave the accent at the door, though. It sometimes gets in the way, just as that Mexican accented English can do for the immigrants.

The thing is that in America, a lot of this internal migration is regional. People from Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana tend toward the City of Chicago. People on the East Coast, depending on where exactly you're located, go to New York City or Boston. There are Los Angeles and San Francisco migrations out West, or Portland or Seattle migrations in the Northwest. Where I come from most people end up in the economic powerhouses of Dallas-Fort Worth or Houston. Some go to Austin and some end up over in the Old South in Atlanta. And of course those with a government bent always hold out an eventual destination of Washington D.C. Opportunity abounds in a thousand different ways in a hundred different places.

I've even known some who grow up in large metropolitan areas who migrate to small towns and reinvent themselves as small town outdoorsy sorts. It happens, just not as often. There isn't as much economic opportunity there. Some become entrepreneurs. Some commute to larger cities to support their more rural lifestyle. Just not my cup of tea. Don't want rural or small town. Don't want suburban. My internal compass is drawn inexorably to cities and the bigger the better.

Bearing all of that in mind, I tried on a number of cities before I found one that fit. Went to Austin, Texas. Nope. Went to Minneapolis. Not quite. Even spent two years on a tropical island in the Western Pacific. Tropical? Yes. Paradise? Nope. Finally landed kerplop in the City of Chicago, the third largest city in the U.S., the largest city in the middle of the country, and arguably the capital of the middle of America. Chicago been very good to me. I started in a ratty little apartment, subsequently moved to ratty larger apartments, bought a house in an upcoming neighborhood, and somehow managed to land downtown with a place overlooking Lake Michigan.

Success boys and girls. Yes it is still possible in America. The key? Education, even if it isn't an Ivy League School or the University of Chicago or Stanford. It is possible for someone with education from state supported universities to put together a successful life with good choices and a nose to the grindstone kind of approach. State supported universities? No we're not talking about an MBA from Michigan or UCLA or UC-Berkley. We're talking about Arkansas State and Northeastern Illinois University. Okay I, personally, have to throw in a stint at Loyola University Chicago, but all in all a pretty modest educational background.

However, education is the key. No college? Quite often no job. The jobs that are available for the non-college educated are drying up and with them go the opportunity for a middle class existence for the high school only kind of person. Go to your local college or university and invest some time and money to get a Bachelor's degree and your prospects rise. Get an advanced degree from the same kind of college or university and they rise even further. Of course we're not talking stratospheric success like the elite who go to the elite universities. We are talking about a pretty comfortable existence and the prospect of being able to retire comfortably in a warm climate with swimming pools, tennis courts, and golf courses abounding.

The point here is that the American Dream still exists. It's just necessary to know the rules. A lot of immigrants from other countries endure incredibly low paying jobs and terrible poverty (by American standards) in order to get the opportunity for their children to play by the necessary rules and grab that American Dream. For those of us born in America, it is possible to move from poverty to that nice house and car and plasma TV in just one lifetime. It just means that you might have to migrate, which brings up another dilemma. The best and the brightest in small town and rural America leave. Those who stay behind are either part of the local economic elite or are the ones who will struggle to keep their heads above water the rest of their lives. The opportunities are not there. The ability to see a new way and create their own opportunities are all too often sadly lacking.

Meanwhile small town America loses population at an alarming rate and the cities and surrounding suburban areas grow at an increasing rate. One hundred years ago we were a country that was primarily rural and a person with little education could strike out and become a success. Fifty years ago a person with little education could achieve that American Dream by working in a factory or any of a thousand other blue collar jobs that paid a good wage. Today it is still possible to grab the ring, but you darned well better have some education and a salable skill that is useful in the 21st century.

Coming to America to Start Again, Part I

2010-04-27T18:34:00.008-05:00

There is much ado on the right about how government regulations and taxes are going to totally screw up anyone's ability to achieve the Great American Dream. There is much ado on the left regarding how unbridled capitalism has run amuck with little or no oversight from the government and monied interests have benefited at everyone else's expense. As my mother used to say, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

Frankly, I have to think that this country needs a bit more regulation of business. Unbridled profit motive does tend to yield some really ugly results. On the other hand, not everyone is getting totally screwed by the wealthy elite. Let's face it. It is still possible to start with nothing and end up with a lot in America. The American Dream lives.

Just ask any immigrant. Doesn't matter where from, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australia, Oceania, or Europe. People come to America because it's still possible to succeed if you work hard and prove your capability. Why do you think we have so damned many people trying desperately to get within our borders? Not all of them are Islamic terrorists looking to blow up the infidels. Most are looking to make a decent life for themselves, including a large number of Muslims from the Middle East.

Much has been said in America about the illegal immigrants from Mexico. Frankly a lot of the Latino illegals are not from Mexico but from Central and South America as well. Why do you think they come? Because it is possible to work hard and get a nice house, an education for your kids, and a big American car and a 50" TV to boot. Can you fault them?

For that matter, a lot of Americans are missing the fact that there are illegal immigrants from all over the globe entering this country all the time. They just seem to focus on those from Latin America. Living in Chicago I've noticed an awful lot of illegals from Ireland working in construction, working in bars and restaurants. Nobody seems to make a big stink about these guys. They're white, European, and speak English. I've noticed a lot of women from Poland cleaning people's houses. Nobody seems to care if their cleaning lady may not really have a green card.

There are Chinese immigrants who pay outrageous sums to get here whether they have a legal visa or not. Many of them are abused, ripped off, and entered into a state that nears slavery. Most Americans become outraged at how they are taken advantage of, not that they are in the country illegally. How does this compare to the fate of Guatemalan immigrants who come into the U.S. via the coyote smugglers? Same shit. Different ethnicity. Yet Americans are all too quick to condemn these immigrants. They are Spanish speaking brown people and there is a prejudice there that goes back a long way.

The point here is that unless you belong to one of the Native American tribes you are an immigrant too. The Cherokee, Choctaw, Sioux, Pawnee, Apache, Ojibwa, Hopi, Navajo etc., etc., etc. all feel that we are all a bunch of uninvited illegals. Same shit. Different ethnicities. At some point all of our families came here to start again, to make a new life. It has, historically, always been possible to raise your status in life in America if you were willing to put your nose to the grindstone. It still is.

We are a nation of immigrants and refugees. We live in a nation with an abundance of resources, natural and human. There is creativity in the air. If you want the country to stay the same as it always has, please step aside. It is a living, breathing, growing, changing entity. Try to stop its growth and progress and it will swallow you up. Hold it back by force and other parts of the world will pass you by. What America has always had to offer is its endless possibilities. Embrace that.

A Cause Plus B Cause Equals C The Cause?

2010-04-25T17:05:00.009-05:00

This morning I was looking out the windows from my perch on the 14th floor and I noticed a large number of people out walking in the rain on the path next to the lake. When I say a large number, what I mean is a couple of thousand. The walk had all the earmarks of a walk for a cause. People walk to raise money for cancer research, for zoos, for children's hospitals, for AIDS research, etc., etc., etc. In my experience there are two kinds of causes a causes and b causes. All of the above mentioned subjects of fund-raising are a causes.

I went walking in the rain today as well. However, I went walking for a b cause, b cause my wife's prescription had run out and she needed her thyroid medication. I often run in races, 5K races, 8K races, 10K races, 10 mile races, Half-Marathons, and Marathons. Now I'm certainly not in danger of winning any of these races, although in shorter races I sometimes place 2nd or 3rd in my age group. Frankly, most people who run in these races do so not because of any chance at winning the race and the money, but for their a causes and b causes. Most people run these races for a cause, the research foundations, the hospitals, the zoos. I, however run them for a b cause, b cause I tend to get fat. Running the races give me the kick in the seat of the pants to train for them so as not to embarrass myself. The training means I run several days per week and b cause I do that my weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels stay down within an acceptable level. I like this b cause I plan to live to a ripe old age and not have all sorts of debilitating conditions.

I do not fault those who spend their time and energy in the pursuit of a cause. I find that admirable. It's just that I, like many other people, spend so much of my time and energy taking care of my b cause, I really don't have the energy or the desire to spend more time and energy in taking care of a cause. What I am talking about is the b cause many of us share. B cause we weren't born rich we work diligently trying to assure ourselves of a comfortable retirement. In my own case, I have managed reasonably well, but I would really like to retire someplace warm (Miami Beach) in comfort. B cause I grew up poor and not so comfortable, I have done the nose to the grindstone thing in order to secure that future. I share this b cause with a great many other people of various races, ethnicities, religions, non-religions, professions, and persuasions.

This is where lies the rub. A great many of us have dedicated our adult lives to educating other people's children in public schools. The pay is low. The stress is high. The day does not end when you go home for the day. A large sector of the public is convinced that teachers are lazy, overpaid, and not worth their tax dollars. You often end up working in bad neighborhoods where at least one student per year is seriously injured due to gang confrontations and illegal activities. The payoff is that, as a teacher, you get a couple of months off in the summer, a little time off at Christmas, and a Spring Break to boot. You pay into a pension fund that is, by law, also paid into by your school district and your state. In the end, if you have been wise in your monetary decisions, you can retire with a reasonable pension and live 30-40 years pretty comfortably and without having to work. B cause you play by the rules, you get rewarded....., unless the state legislature plays fast and loose with the pension money.

Mind you, this scenario has been playing out in states all over the nation, but being a Chicago resident and a Chicago Public Schools employee, we shall use the state government in Springfield as our shining example of how not to treat loyal employees. It seems that b cause the legislators down in Springfield are unwilling to make the hard decisions necessary to properly fund a state, they have been borrowing liberally from money that was supposed to go to fund teachers' pensions. B cause they are afraid of alienating those on the right who don't want higher taxes or those on the left who don't want programs cut, they have taken millions upon millions of dollars annually from that which is earmarked for pensions, just to pay the regular bills. "Nobody will notice, right?" Wrong.

B cause of the recent downturn in the overall economy, there are more people unemployed. There are more people who have lost their homes. There are more people who are in financial distress, and as a result, tax revenues have dropped drastically. The downstate Illinois Teachers' Pension Fund is in serious poo. The Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund is in distress, but not going out of business yet, b cause the Chicago Teachers' Union has stood firm when really serious efforts to cut the Chicago Teachers' Pension funding even further. Nevertheless, this has created a situation where a great many teachers all over the State of Illinois may end up living in poverty for the duration of their retirement b cause of a lack of spine by legislators who are afraid of losing votes by doing something that is unpopular yet rational.

Let's recap for a moment. B cause teachers played by an agreed upon set of rules, they expected to retire comfortably. B cause legislators wanted to get elected again and again and use their legislative positions to enrich themselves, they made very bad choices that may lead to the demise of teachers' pension funds. B cause these legislators made those decisions, the teachers who played by the rules will suffer in poverty. For the record, when you pay into the Teachers' Pension Fund in Illinois, you do not pay into Social Security, so if your pension fund tanks, you won't even have Social Security to count on, and we all know how small those payments are.

So what should teachers do? They should damned well start finding some new legislators who will have the stones necessary to do the right thing. They should damned well throw out the present batch of ne'er do wells who have been enriching themselves at public expense all these years. Otherwise, we face a public shame in this state and many others. The people who educated your children, the people who gave of themselves for so little remuneration will be literally condemned to an old age of poverty b cause we have a state and a nation that does not care for their own b cause they're too busy caring about a cause to worry about caring about their neighbors and public servants who are in distress.

Teachers Aren't the Only Ones Whose Pay Isn't Linked to Performance.

2010-04-19T17:23:00.009-05:00

The front page of the Chicago Sun-Times this morning had a headline writ big, "Teacher Pay Not Tied to Success." This would appear to be just one more example of teacher bashing, a favorite national pastime in the best of times, and in the current economic climate an even more rabid pursuit. It also comes off as part and parcel of a concerted effort to discredit teachers' unions and bust them. Apparently routine 6 figure salaries for anyone associated with the business world is okay, but $75,000 for a teacher with a degree, and in many cases an advanced degree is just too much to ask.

This brings to mind the old saying, "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." As for paychecks not being tied to success, the same could be said for bankers, as is evidenced by the large scale meltdown in the fiscal sector and resulting in the current state of affairs in the larger economy. Apparently, executives of major auto manufacturing companies in this country are not being paid according to success either, or the government wouldn't be bailing their sorry butts out so that we could save jobs for working class schmoes.

Speaking of auto manufacturers, engineers must not be paid based on success either. If they were, Toyota wouldn't be the major mess it currently is in, and ponying up major fines to the government. For that matter, what about Congressmen? Based on what's been coming out of Washington D.C. what can we say about the relationship of success to their salaries? State and local legislators? See above statements. The same thing applies at the state and local level. A great many of our state and local governments are going broke because of mismanagement. How much are they being paid, at taxpayer expense?

Better yet, how much are newspaper executives and editors being paid? Is this based on their massive success? Are any of them receiving bonuses for that success? Last I heard, large numbers of newspapers, including both large dailies in Chicago are in Chapter 11 restructuring because of their great success. Based on this logic, it seems to me that the people living in glass houses and throwing stones here must also be stoned.

For the record, I actually read the above-mentioned article and lo and behold, they admitted that funding for schools and subsequent pay is based on property tax, primarily. This means that districts with the largest tax base/student also pays teachers the highest. Live on the North Shore? Your kids' teachers are being paid well. Then again, due to all of the benefits associated with being the children of North Shore, well-educated, well-heeled families, your kids also achieve at a pretty high rate. Live in certain Southern suburbs of Chicago with a lot of poverty and low tax revenues? Surprise! Surprise! Your teachers don't get paid diddly. They'd get paid more if they went to work in the inner city schools of Chicago.

But more to the point, even in the City of Chicago all teachers are paid by the same pay scale regardless of what school they work in. Is this bad? Should teachers in schools that succeed be paid more than teachers in schools that have chronically bad results? Let's look at the facts, shall we?

In the Chicago Public Schools, teachers in those schools with the best students, i.e. Whitney Young High School, Northside College Preparatory High School, Walter Payton High School, LaSalle Language Academy for you elementary school buffs, etc., etc., etc. work on the same pay scale as teachers in schools like Collins High School, Chicago Vocational High School, Hirsch Metro. High School, and my very own Richards Career Academy. Is this fair? The first list of schools produces a majority of students who succeed. The latter produce a majority of students who do not.

Well of course they do! The Whitney Youngs and the Northside College Preps, just to name a few, cull the best of the best from the student population of the public schools in Chicago. They are schools for the gifted and talented. Then there are other schools like Morgan Park High School that are, in name, neighborhood schools, but they have gifted and talented programs within their walls. They raise their percentages of successful students by including some gifted and talented students.

The Hirsch High Schools, the Richards Career Academies, etc., etc., etc. are schools that serve the students who didn't get into the gifted and talented schools. These are schools that serve large Special Education populations. These are schools that serve students who aged out of the elementary schools and had to be sent to a high school. These are schools that serve kids who can't read or speak English. These are schools that deal with gangs and violence and anti-social behaviors on a daily basis. Do we really expect these schools to produce four star shining examples of academic success? What planet do you live on?

Frankly, the teachers who work day after day in these battle zones, should be paid extra for the work they do. They care. They work hard. Kids routinely come into these schools reading years below level and unable to do simple math. Yet a great many of their students manage to live successful lives, become productive citizens, and they all know that their teachers busted their butts for them and honestly cared. Who says teacher pay isn't linked to success? Spend a week or two with one of them sometime. Check out what it is that they do for their students, and for society as a whole. Then come back and tell me about how overpaid they are, how unsuccessful they are. Then let's look at all of those other people who get paid much more to produce less than spectacular results.

The Dignity of Labor. The Indignity of Laboring.

2010-04-11T17:59:00.010-05:00

I find it pretty interesting that the people who are most likely to crow about the dignity of labor, and the redemptive qualities of hard work are generally those least likely to do any real hard labor. Garrison Keillor showed up in Salon in an online essay last week. In his essay Mr. Keillor touted the positives of labor and earning a paycheck. He actually calls it redemptive. I daresay if you talked to any of millions of individuals in America who draw a small paycheck from doing mind-numbing, hard physical labor they would be glad for the paycheck, but would label the actual work anything but redemptive.

To his credit, Mr. Keillor did suggest that America needs a jobs program, such as the Depression Era works projects, the WPA for instance. We do need something that will put millions of Americans back to work. Unfortunately, well-heeled Republicans oppose such a program en-masse. They say we can't afford it. It would either cause a rise in taxes or it would cause the national debt to grow even larger. Gotta wonder where these clowns were when G.W. Bush and company were putting two major wars on the buy now pay later plan.

At any rate, more jobs for Americans, doing things that are good for the infrastructure, is a good idea. It would fix a crumbling infrastructure that no one seems willing to pay to fix. It would provide jobs for unemployed Americans. Those now employed Americans would then go out and spend money, thus creating jobs for more Americans, and fewer Americans would find themselves facing foreclosure on their mortgages. Still, very few of them would describe their labors as redemptive. Paychecks redemptive. Labor not so much.

Mr. Keillor went on to talk about how he briefly held a job, in high school where he fed dishes into a dishwasher. Oooohhh, the hardship. Did he have to wash them by hand? Did he have to continue doing this job everafter so he could pay the bills? Not! Mr. Keillor has lived a life writing for newspapers and magazines, with the odd book thrown in, while hosting a nationally syndicated radio show. Not a lot of hard redemptive labor there.

At one point Mr. Keillor pointed out that he could have chosen to make a career out of manure spreading, but did not. The key word here is choice. There are those out there who have no choice but to take on that career in manure spreading, and anyone who calls that sort of labor redemptive is a lunatic. I graduated with a liberal arts degree in 1972 and spent a large part of that decade doing manual labor. I did not find anything about it redemptive or dignified. I found eating somewhat rewarding, however, so I continued to engage in such activities until something better came along.

There is a certain Republican anti-handout mantra that goes something like, "People feel better about themselves if they know they earn a living and don't have it given to them as a handout." People feel even better about themselves if the size of the paycheck will keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Frankly, if handouts are larger than what you get when you are actually laboring at a job, I doubt anyone finds themselves feeling good about earning a living instead of taking a handout.

Frankly, if America were so taken with the dignity of labor and its redemptive qualities, the lottery would not be such a boom industry. We've all heard the comments from lottery winners who say they won't change a thing about their lives. Then they proceed to quit their jobs, buy a big car and a big house, and live like the millionaires they've become. Redemptive schmemptive, people work because they have to. If labor were so redemptive, we'd find Rockefellers paving roads and building bridges. If labor were so dignified and redemptive, there would be no Paris Hiltons and her ilk filling the pages of the "Who did what to whom and with whom" columns.

That being said, I begrudge no one who doesn't have to work and thus doesn't. I often find myself being a wee bit jealous of these people. If I didn't have to work, I probably wouldn't. Then I could find time to do things that I really like doing, like writing and reading, and playing tennis and running, and traveling, and singing and playing my guitar. If I were able to make a living doing any of those things, I might find that redemptive. Just don't try to hand me a load of b.s. about the redemptive quality of the sweat of your brow and the dignity of callouses on your hands. Been there. I know better. I am not owned by the job. My job does not define who I am. Nor does it for the millions upon millions of men and women who work a great deal harder than I do every day. So let's all celebrate paychecks, instead. They make life possible, even if coming by them is a real bitch.

Nukes? Who Needs Nukes?

2010-04-07T17:21:00.006-05:00

Recently, the owners of the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world, the U.S.A. and Russia agreed to reduce the number of nuclear warheads they possess. In a followup, President Obama announced that, in the future, the U.S. will not hold the threat of nuclear retaliation over the heads of non-nuclear nations, even if they attack us with biological or chemical weapons. Mr. Obama went on to explain that this is an effort to assure that U.S. nuclear weapons are strictly for deterrence and we have no inclination to wipe nations off the face of the planet with them. He further noted that rogue nations, specifically North Korea and Iran, who are trying to develop nuclear weapons despite international efforts to contain the spread of nuclear weapons are at risk of nuclear retaliation.

This has provoked a massive outcry from the right-wing, claiming that President Obama has just made the U.S. less safe, and has encouraged terrorist elements to attack us because they no longer have to fear getting their butts nuked. Wrap your heads around that claim, will you? Since when have terrorists worried about getting nuked? Since when has the U.S. nuked an entire group of people, say Afghanistan, because they have sheltered terrorists who attacked the U.S.? The claim is entirely ludicrous. And this is beside the fact that we have enough high-tech conventional weaponry to erase a nation from the face of the planet without engaging in nuclear war, if we are so inclined. Let's get real here.

What we need to do is to applaud a man who recognizes that more nuclear weapons on the planet make it a more dangerous place. Currently there are nuclear weapons in the U.S.A., Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and South Africa. There are ongoing efforts to develop nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery systems (long-range missiles) in both North Korea and Iran, both on the U.N. list of crazed fanatics. The larger number of nations possessing these weapons, the greater the likelihood that either A) some nation will try to wipe some other nation out and start a nuclear exchange that will result in humanity going the way of the dinosaurs, or B) some fanatic terrorist group will get hold of a nuclear weapon and start a nuclear exchange that will result in humanity going the way of the dinosaurs.

Did it ever occur to anyone on the right-wing fringes that the only country in the world that has had a nuclear weapon of any sort used on it refuses to develop nuclear weapons, and their national security has not been threatened even once in the last 65 years? Has it occurred to anyone that the country that originally spawned nuclear scientists has gotten along marvelously without nuclear weapons. (That's Germany boys and girls, not the U.S. or Russia.) Has it occurred to anyone that the country that invented smart bombs may not need nukes? Frankly nukes, as a weapon, are just ridiculous overkill. Who needs them when you have the technology to obliterate individuals with a drone and leave the bystanders to gawk? Who needs nukes when we have missiles and bombs that will level entire cities and satellite guided missiles and stealth bombers to deliver those explosive devices?

Maybe it's time we took note of the fact that nuclear weapons are obsolete. Ever since the Reagan administration the U.S. weapons labs have been working on anti-missile defenses. Reagan called it "Star Wars." When, during the first Persian Gulf War, the Iraqis shot Scud missiles at Israel, the U.S. provided the Israelis with anti-missile missiles. They weren't very accurate, at that time, but that was almost 20 years ago now. In the meantime the U.S. has continued work on these defenses and on laser defenses as well. How serious should we take these efforts? Why do you think the Russians have been so adamantly opposed to U.S. development of anti-missile defenses? They're worried that we will have the ability to hit them with a nuclear strike and shoot down their reply. That's why. It's in their best interest and ours to agree to a nuclear reduction treaty, and to pressure the rest of the world to stop the nuclear stupidity as well. Let's get real. Any serious nuclear exchange would result in the annihilation of every living creature on this planet, or at least on a couple of continents. If anyone survived such a catastrophe, it would be "Welcome to the stone age."

All in all, I am reminded of a discussion I once had with one of my brothers. This older brother is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and decidedly more conservative than I on a great many issues regarding the government and the military. At this point in time I forget exactly what it was that we were talking about, but I remember his reply distinctly. He told me, "Do you really think that the U.S. government would get rid of some deadly weapon if we didn't already have something that is even better and more deadly?" Think about that boys and girls. It's a scary proposition.

Holidaze!

2010-04-05T17:37:00.009-05:00

I just returned from Spring Break, so-called because A) It is spring, and B) My employer gave me a break for a week, a paid break. This break is not to be confused with other sorts of breaks that are sometimes given by employers. If, for instance, your employer gives you an unpaid break this is generally known as a "Layoff," not a break persay, even if it does occur in the spring. Let's get that straight. Sometimes employers may use euphemisms for these "layoffs," such as "Furlough" or "Downsizing" or "Early retirement." Still, they are not what we might think of as legitimate breaks. Mind you, if your employer uses the "Furlough" term, it may mean that there is hope of actually returning to work at some future date, "when the numbers look better." Still not a legitimate break, though.

Once upon a time, Spring Break was known as "Easter Break," and Winter Vacation was known as "Christmas Break." Then, for those of us who work for the government in some capacity or other, it occurred to the legal department that there is this constitutional concept known as "separation of church and state." Turns out a public entity shouldn't really be giving paid holidays to celebrate religious holidays. In a society that touts "freedom of religion" that's a really slippery slope. Then you have to give Jewish people paid holidays for "Passover" and "Channukah" and "Yom Kippur" and who knows what else. Then you know the Muslims are going to demand holidays and probably shut down the cafeterias from sunup to sundown during Ramadan, and well you get the picture. I don't even want to get into the Hindu and Buddhist celebrations, and don't get me started on the Wiccans, although they might have some pretty cool paid holidays, if they were given them. I could kind of get into that dancing naked around fires stuff, or at least a bit of ogling thereof.

It does seem pretty odd to me, however, that "Winter Break" magically occurs right at the time when we used to have "Christmas Break" and "Spring Break" always occurs at precisely the time when we used to have "Easter Break." Turns out that's pretty handy for the Jewish folks as well because for some reason Easter and Passover take place at just about the same time of year. Everybody benefits, unless of course you're Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or Zoroastrian or Wiccan or Rastafarian. Of course, if you're Rastafarian life is a big holiday, isn't it? (Note to self: Check out possible connection between Easter and Passover. Coincidence or not? Hmmm.)

The funny thing is that even though they've taken away our Christmas Break and Easter Break and replaced them with innocuous sounding Winter Break and Spring Break, life goes on. Hey, I have one atheist friend who prefers to celebrate the winter solstice and vernal equinox. I keep telling him that maybe he should check out the Wiccans and maybe the Greek celebrations at the Rites of Dionysius. Fertility, wine,.....What's not to like there? But I digress.

It is true that I personally do not espouse a religion, but I sometimes worry that with no religion I may lose, no not my soul...There is no heaven or hell, but all of my holidays. All of the holidays seem to be tied to some religion or other. Turns out that even when I was a kid, they weren't really about religion for me. Oh hey, I knew that Christmas was supposed to be about the birth of Jesus, the founder of Christianity, the Son of God, etc., etc., etc. It's just that Christmas was really about getting time off from school and getting a bunch of presents. Cool! Santa Claus and reindeer and bags of presents. Now that was a religion that every kid I knew wanted to belong to.

When it came to Easter, I never really dug that one. Never mind being reminded about some dude being crucified by the Romans. Really ugly way to be executed, that. For me and most other kids, it was all about bunnies and colored eggs and stuff. Ohhh, back to the spring fertility symbology again, huh? Okay, I get that stuff now, but as a kid, it was just about the Easter Egg Hunt and that really sucked for a kid who hated boiled eggs. Why in the heck would I want to get involved in a hunt for icky crap like that? Prize eggs? Well there was an incentive. I always liked monetary reward. Still, Easter was always something of a snooze. Had to get all dressed up to go to church to sing, "Up from the grave he arose! He arose!....." Then you went and did the obligatory egg hunt. Lord I was glad when I got too old for that. The only good thing was the big obligatory ham that you got every Easter. Could've called it "Ham Sunday" as far as I was concerned. It was sad to learn that Jewish people don't get ham for Passover. Matzoh just doesn't have the same pizazz, in my estimation. If I were Jewish, I'd probably start a movement to have ham declared kosher. Or then again, I'd end up where I am now, as a non-religious sort who decides his own what to eat and not to eat list. If there were a god, he or she should definitely put kimchi on the "Do not eat under any circumstances list," however.

Not really sure where I'm going with this, but after all is said and done, "Everybody deserves holidays." Everybody needs a break, a paid break, every now and then. The thing is, I think everyone should be allowed to pick and choose their holidays regardless of religious convictions. Even if you believe in nothing, some religious holidays, celebrations, and breaks have some pretty cool traditions. You ought to be allowed to participate. After all, I'm not even remotely Mexican, Irish, or French, but gotta love Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick's Day, and Bastille Day. But then those are American Bar Holidays, aren't they? So anyway, enjoy your holidays and breaks. I'm counting the days until Memorial Day.

Vacation Time!

2010-03-27T17:41:00.003-05:00

Views From the 14th Floor is on vacation for a week. See you guys in April.

RDR

Majority Rule, Minority B.S.

2010-03-24T18:58:00.004-05:00

After eight years of G.W. Bush, Darth Cheney, and company, America spoke up loud and clear. They elected a man of mixed race to the White House, a man who stands pretty clearly in the center left of the political spectrum. They elected a pretty large majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives and to the Senate. The economy was in a shambles. We were at war in two separate countries with little hope of resolution of those wars. We had developed the largest budget deficit in history and subsequently the largest national debt in history, eclipsing that massive debt acquired during the Reagan-Bush years.

America wanted an end to the wars. America wanted the economic mess straightened out. America was promised health care for everyone, and they decided that they wanted that too. That is to say that a majority of America voted for that. Then when the duly elected President, House, and Senate took their places in Washington, the right-wing, the decidedly minority right-wing, erupted. Apparently the idea of democracy and majority rule didn't appeal much to the right. They began doing everything they could possibly do to thwart the desires of the majority of Americans.

Being vocal about your opposition, even if you are obnoxious, is a part of democracy. Solemnly swearing to defeat the people who did what you didn't want done is a part of democracy. It happens. You're welcome to speak your mind. Enlightenment ideals and freedoms are part and parcel of our system. Threats, abuse, and attacks in order to frighten and intimidate are not. Unfortunately, I find ample evidence in American history of other groups who have used the same tactics. The KKK is just one.

As Congressmen went about their business this past weekend and tried their level best to vote their consciences, tea party protestors hurled racial epithets, anti-gay slurs, anti-semitic slurs, left swastikas and threatening notes, and in at least one case spit on a respected Congressman. After they were unsuccessful in scaring Congressmen into voting the minority line instead of the majority line, they have resorted to throwing bricks through windows of Congressmen's offices, leaving threatening phone messages, and in one case cutting a propane line at the brother of a Congressman's house, falsely believing this to be the residence of the Congressman. This goes beyond free speech and loyal opposition into simple criminal behavior.

Then there is the Republican Party's Congressional delegation trying to do anything they can to put a stop to healthcare reform after the fact, using any procedural trick they can pull from their hat. Various states have threatened to stop healthcare reform in their states by passing state laws that stop the federal action. I have news boys and girls. This already was tested in the late 1850's and early 1860's. There were the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and an idea known as "nullification." It had to do with "states' rights." A Civil War was fought over the issue. The federal government has supremacy and individual states do not have the right to override the actions of said federal government. It has been deemed unconstitutional. That's the difference between federation and confederation. Remember confederation? They lost the Civil War. Slavery was outlawed once and for all.

Here's the thing people. The right-wing ascendency that started with Ronald Reagan is over. The right-wing is going to have to accept it. The idea of less government, less taxes, and less oversight of all things has been proven to be a bogus concept. The era of less social safety net and unrestrained military buildup has come to an end. It produced the biggest national debt in history. It produced the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. It produced the biggest international backlash to American foreign policy in history.

It is time the minority stopped trying to intimidate the rest of the population into accepting the same policies that got us into this mess to begin with. The majority has spoken. It is time for sanity and reason. It is time to end the ascendency of racists, bigots, and those who somehow think that those with different skin pigmentation are lesser beings. It is time to end the ascendency of those who think that people who grow up speaking a language other than English are lesser beings. It is time to end the ascendency of those who cannot accept those with different religious views, or those who have different sexuality. It is time to end the ascendency of those who have scads of money and who don't give a damn about what happens to anyone else.

And while we're at it, it's time to remind Rush Limbaugh that he promised to move to Costa Rica if healthcare reform passed. And it's time to remind him that Costa Rica has universal healthcare. He's welcome to take Sarah Palin and all of those tea party set people with him. Let's see how they like Costa Rica, and how Costa Ricans deal with them.

Crisis in Education, Part II

2010-03-21T17:02:00.004-05:00

There has been a great deal said recently about the root causes of our crisis in education in America. One of the prime causes consistently trotted out by those on the right is that the teachers' unions protect bad teachers, thus promoting bad education. They also claim that teachers' unions drive up the cost of providing education to our children and have exacerbated a bad financial situation. It's no surprise that those making these claims are those who advocate more privatization of public schools and who also oppose universal healthcare in America. In short, we are talking about those who take it as an article of faith that less government is better, and less government in your schools is also better.

In a recent Op-Ed piece printed in the Chicago Sun-Times conservative activist, Star Parker, basically made the argument that unions in general are bad, and unions in our schools are especially bad and the result of all this unionization of our public schools is a bad education for minorities. She then goes on to argue in favor of more charter schools and vouchers to send kids to private schools.

What this is advocating is, in essence, dangerous. There is only one pot of public money and taking money from already underfunded public schools to give it to private schools and charter schools denies yet more funding to public schools already in need of more funding. Yes unions fight against this trend. They fight to preserve the viability of public schools. The movement toward more charter schools and funding of private schools through vouchers, if taken seriously, will eventually lead to the total destruction of the public school system.

There is an argument that private schools and charter schools do a better job of educating children, despite paying their teachers less. This is very selective fact finding. Now that the charter school movement in America has been a reality for a decade or more, the real facts are in. They do not provide a better education for our children. Those charter schools, and private schools that practice selective enrollment have better results. Well, of course they do. They cherry pick the best students, those who were already doing better than the average public school student, and voila they have success.

The truth is that public alternatives also do better. There are college preparatory high schools in every large city in this nation, and they all have selective enrollments, and they all have better success than do neighborhood schools that take any kid, regardless of ability, regardless of behavior issues, regardless of any number of personal and social issues that cause charter schools and private schools to exclude them from their ranks. I will put graduates of Northside College Prep and Whitney Young in Chicago up against the best and brightest from any of the elite private schools in the city.

The real truth is that there are not enough charter schools and private schools in existence to handle the load from the public schools, if we wish the total demise of the public schools. The real truth is that only the best students from the public schools get into those schools and the students who are struggling are left behind in neighborhood schools that constantly have more resources drained from them by sending those resources to private enterprises that don't operate by the same rules. Kids are violent and disruptive and display criminal behavior? Expel them...., unless of course you are a neighborhood public school. Then you educate them as best you can. You can't just rid yourself of them because of the detrimental effect on the rest of the students. They are the public. These are public schools.

Public schools deserve funding. Most of the kids in America can't go to private schools or charter schools. Furthermore, we need a well-paid, well-educated, well-trained force of teachers in those schools. Arguments against unions because they get reasonable salaries and benefits for the teachers, while keeping classroom size down are spurious. Why would any reasonable person with a college degree, a Master's Degree, a PhD want to work in a school that pays them pitifully low wages and scrimps on the benefit package? Plain old good sense will tell you that most people will go elsewhere to someplace that rewards education and competence with remuneration. How can teachers be expected to provide a world class education to students when they are asked to teach 30-35 kids in a classroom. Data shows that the larger the classroom, the more behavior issues occur, and subsequently the teachers have less time to actually meet the needs of individual students.

So let's just stop this "Unions are ruining our schools nonsense." Unions look out for the job security of teachers, yes. However, they also look out for the best interests of the schools, by ensuring that quality teachers can afford to work in education, by ensuring that teachers can reach the individual students in classes of reasonable sizes. They are looking out for, not just the best and brightest students, but also the students with challenges and disabilities. In short, teachers' unions are looking out for the education of America's children, all of America's children. Efforts at destroying unions and privatizing our schools are misguided. A great many dedicated to doing their best to provide quality educations for all, despite overwhelming odds. Walk a mile in their shoes sometime. Go to one of these so-called poorly performing schools and follow a teacher around for a week or two. Then tell me that they and their unions are ruining education in America.

Crisis in Education

2010-03-16T17:30:00.004-05:00

All travelogues at this site are suspended temporarily. I repeat, all travelogues at this site have been suspended temporarily. There is a crisis in education and it is much too important, dire, and seriously annoying to be ignored. Oh my goodness, where do I start?

As I see it, the crisis has 3 main points: A) Asinine fools like those on the Texas State Board of Education are trying to hijack the public schools and make them propaganda machines for the right-wing, i.e. Ronald Reagan was the greatest President in history and Thomas Jefferson was an asshole who had the unmitigated gall to coin the term "Separation of church and state." Let's leave that Jefferson clown out of the curriculum. Or try this on for size, "Forget about what objective historians have to say about many of the founding fathers being Deists and not really Christians at all. This is a Christian nation and we need to put the 10 commandments and prayer back in the public schools." Or better yet, "Evolution and global warming are mere theories and questionable science at that. Let's teach creationism and delete all reference to human impact on the environment from science textbooks." Oh my god! Would you send your child to a public school in Texas? Are you aware that this nonsense is spilling over into other states and your state's public school curriculum could be next?

And that's just the first critical point of three. B) The feds are short on cash and they're cutting the amount of funding they give to the states. The states are short on cash and they're cutting the funding they're giving to local school districts. The local school districts are short on cash and they're firing people, closing schools, and eliminating vital programs. C) Most of America just doesn't give a shit. They could care less about the public schools. America doesn't value education. America doesn't want to fund education. America thinks privatization of the public schools will be a good thing. America thinks teachers are all a bunch of lazy schmucks who are paid way too much, and the teacher's unions are keeping them all from being fired and are mostly responsible for ruining America's schools.

One thing at a time, though. The cash issue? Kansas City, Missouri has closed half of the schools in the district. The second largest school district in Illinois, Elgin, has just laid off over a thousand employees. 732 of those employees were teachers. 24 were administrators. I am a teacher, but I also hold an administrative certificate, and I sit on the Instructional Leadership Team for my school. I was called to a meeting at 8 AM this morning by my Principal. She went to a meeting with Ron Huberman, the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools yesterday, along with all of the other Principals in the district.

Here are some of the highlights of what Mr. Huberman has suggested, in order to cut back based on the projected budget shortfalls for the coming year(s). 1. Increase class size in both elementary and high schools to 37 students/class. Reduce Special Education and bilingual program spending, and thus teaching positions in those areas. 2. Cancel academic enhancement programs 3. Cut teaching positions not supported by the numbers (1 teacher/37 students). 4. Reduce funding for gifted and talented education programs. 5. Cut all funding for credit recovery programs like evening and Saturday school programs. 6. Encourage retirements among those who are getting long in the tooth and are being paid way too much. Then don't replace them when they retire. 7. Fire all of those teachers who are in violation of residency requirements for employment by the City of Chicago, and live outside the city limits. Then don't replace them. 8. Fire employees who have allowed their certificates to lapse, and thus are not legal anymore. Then don't replace them. The fun just goes on and on.

Now I see an offer for early retirement coming down the pike. This would reduce payrolls by eliminating some positions and by hiring younger employees with lower salaries in other cases, but the question remains, "Who will pay for the pensions for all of these new retirees?" Just as the feds have been borrowing from the social security fund to pay the bills and it is now time to pay the piper, the State of Illinois has been borrowing from teacher pension funds for a number of years and now they will have to fund them or the funds are in danger of coming up short. The downstate pension fund is in worse shape than the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund, but both have been underfunded to some degree for a number of years.

This brings us to Point C. America just doesn't give a shit about public education. They don't want to pay taxes to support it. In these pages, I have time and again gone on about how public education is the key to America's future. We have to fund it, or risk becoming a 3rd world nation, a backwater akin to Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, or, dare I say it, Mexico. How much is a one way plane ticket to Australia?

In the State of Illinois we have a reasonably low income tax. Just raising the income tax by 1% will go a long way toward alleviating the Draconian cuts in school budgets. Yet people, primarily Republicans, resist. In my own case, this would mean paying out an additional $700-800 over the course of a year. At the outside, this would mean an additional $30/paycheck in taxes. And it would save thousands of jobs, and the quality of education for millions of Illinois students. How can anyone, in good conscience, oppose this move? If you are a citizen of Illinois, I urge you to call your legislators. If you are a citizen of somewhere else, call an Illinois legislator anyway doggone it. Okay, don't. Your own state is, in all likelihood experiencing a similar crisis and it has to be dealt with. This is big. It's nationwide. Do we let the current financial crisis get the better of us, or do we look to the future and start fixing things right now? There's an educational crisis in America, and it's time we all did our part to fix it.

Did the Northern Lights, So How About Starlit Nights?

2010-03-13T16:35:00.007-06:00

I'm really itchy to tear into those morons on the Texas State Board of Education who brought right-wing politics into the social science curriculum, but it's late and I haven't time for it today. I'll be back to that anon. Meanwhile, my numerous fans are clamoring for more travelogues. Okay it was one person, but she was convincing, so let me tell you about the time Babs and I decided it would be a good idea to go to Morocco.

It did sound like a good idea, so we flew into Casablanca and on the first day we were there, Ramadan began. For those of you who may not be familiar, Ramadan is a monthlong Islamic observance where everyone fasts from sunup until sundown. Mind you if you're a non-Muslim and a tourist, it is possible to get something to eat or drink during the day, but if everyone else in the country is observing, they get a little cranky when someone doesn't observe the fast. Besides, it's just a little rude to be eating when everyone else is starving and cranky. Found out along the way that smokers are prohibited from smoking sunup to sundown as well, and there were some really irritable hotel employees.

The upshot is that we, for the most part didn't eat from sunup until sundown for the entire time we were there. How long were we there? Well, let's see, we saw Casablanca, Essaouira, Marrakech, the big dunes in the Sahara Desert, Fez, and a lot of territory in between. We were there for most of a two week Christmas vacation. Christmas vacation? How about that? Spend a Christian holiday in an Islamic country with a bunch of cranky Muslims.

Frankly, Casablanca wasn't much, a big business and industrial center for the country. We moved on to a quaint little place on the Mediterranean called Essaouira for Christmas Eve and Christmas. Essaouira was lovely and while we were there we learned the ways of the medina. We bought a couple of rugs. Tourists in the medinas (old walled cities within the modern cities) almost never travel alone. The medinas are confusing and winding, and you almost always pay a guide to show you around. For the record, they're all the same, with the same crap that people try to sell you. Some are just larger than others. This is based on seeing the medinas of Casablanca, Essaouira, Marrakech, and Fez.

Anyway, you get some local guy who speaks English to show you around, and he shows you all the usual touristy stuff and takes you to see very specific shops because he gets a kickback from the shop owners if they make a sale. We had been to Thailand already at this point in our travel careers and we thought we had seen aggressive sales people. Yikes! In one shop that specialized in decorative tiles we walked out, not happy with the price. The shop owner came running out of the shop and chased us down the block to offer us one last lower price. Yes we bought the tile.

There is a very ceremonial aspect to every visit to a shop in Morocco. Can't just walk in and browse like you do in America. The shop owner has to offer you the hospitality of a cup of tea. We're talking tea poured from big teapots into little cups or glasses and all of the tea has a bunch of mint and sugar in it. The locals jokingly refer to it as "Berber Whiskey." Anyway, once you walk in and sit down and the tea pouring starts and the hard sell begins you begin to feel like a fly in that spider's web, a bit helpless. Had to wonder at the time how this tea drinking was jibing with Ramadan. Well, they recognized that we were Americans, and not Muslims, and anyway, "Commerce is commerce and religion is religion and never the twain shall meet."

So to get anywhere in Morocco, a pretty cheap way is by Grand Taxi, usually a beat up old Mercedes with a stick shift. They'll drive you from city to city for a pretty reasonable price. Trouble is, going over the Atlas Mountains they tend to fly along at pretty fast clip and I'm reminded of a line from Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcyle Song." ...."On one side of the mountain road was a mountain. On the other side there was nothing....." So these taxi drivers go flying along these winding mountain roads and the dropoff on the one side looks like about 5000 feet, and you meet a Coca Cola truck going the other way. Something's gotta give. We had this one driver who was seriously religious enough that he faithfully says his prayers 5 times a day. He's driving along the mountain road at about a million miles per hour and suddenly pulls off to the side of the road. He reaches under the driver's seat and pulls out a prayer rug, gets out of the car, goes to the edge of the cliff where he unrolls his prayer rug facing Mecca, and gets down and says his prayers while Babs and I sit in the back seat of the taxi twiddling our thumbs and hoping we can convince him to slow down a little. Who knows? Maybe with all that praying, he's convinced that Allah will protect him, no matter how crazy he drives down the mountain roads.

We caught a jet to Fez from the nearest airport to avoid more of this insanity. Spent New Year's Eve in a really fancy hotel in Fez, and at the New Year's Eve dinner they had some French lounge act playing pop music, and they appeared to be a French take on the Partridge Family or something, Father, Mother, and teenage son performing for the tourists. Cheesy lounge act in cheesy lounge act outfits. In a bit of side interest, a waiter at our table was sporting Chicago Bulls socks with a big #23 conspicuously stitched on them. Michael Jordan worship was international at that point.

Took the train from Fez back to Casablanca. Sitting in a 1st class in one of those semi-private rooms with room for 6 people sitting on seats facing one another. A woman got on and came in and sat across from us in Rabat. Seeing that we were Americans she took the head covering off. Then 3 local men got on and came in and sat with us. She immediately put the head covering back on. I believe one of them sat next to Babs and tried to rub her leg. No international incident ensued, but seriously nasty looks were exchanged. Let's just say that Islamic men and their ideas about treating women need some serious examination.

All in all the trip was not what we had hoped, but there was one bright spot. We went all the way to the South of Morocco to the Dra Valley and arranged a trip into the Sahara to see Les Grand Dunes. Somewhere I have some wonderful pictures of the parking lot at the hotel with Land Rovers sitting aside a bunch of camels. When arranging the trip into the desert, we had the option of hiring drivers in Land Rovers or taking the traditional route on camels. Let me just say that I do not ride camels. Big, stinking, ugly, cantankerous creatures. Not my idea of a good time. We hired two young men in a Land Rover and off we went in search of the Grand Dunes.

The desert is a strange place, with its own rules. Periodically you come to police checkpoints and necessary bribes take place to ensure your further progress. What bribes? The odd thing we discovered was that in many instances the bribes consist of 2 liter bottles of water. Water, the currency of the desert. When our young drivers arrived at the last town before entering the serious desert, we stopped at what was a Moroccan version of a 7/11 Convenience Store. They emerged with two necessary things, Marlboro cigarettes and candy.

Almost as soon as we got out of the town and into the desert, we encountered a group of nomads, complete with camels and goats. We stopped and cigarettes were distributed to the adult men. Candy was distributed to the children. We were then allowed to go on our way. I have no clue how these guys knew where they were going. We sported no fancy GPS devices. There were no clearly marked roads to drive on. We were just heading out across the desert and up and over the small dunes and past the occasional oasis, and they apparently knew exactly where they were going.

These young men spoke not 3 words of English but they had some Annie Lenox club mixes they plugged into the tape deck and we listened to that while we navigated the desert. Apparently they had seen some old American movies about the Desert Fox and there were scenes of jeeps jumping over the top of these dunes. Every time we headed up one of these little dunes and came over the top going airborne momentarily, they would look at each other and yell, "High action!" This was apparently the blurb from the Preview of the movie and the only English they knew. Every time they yelled "High action!" they would burst out laughing and it was contagious. We were flying across the Sahara Desert and listening to Europop and referencing old American movies about the desert and having a ball hanging out with two 20 year old Berber guys.

After a couple of hours we arrived at the campsite and there they were, big golden sand dunes hundreds of feet high. We were assigned a tent with cots to sleep on and with hand-woven rugs thrown over the sand for a floor. There was one toilet set up for the camp to use. Dinner was to be served after dark and until then we were on our own. Babs and I trudged to the top of one of those dunes and watched as the sun began sinking in the sky. The endless stretch of mountains of sand stretching to the horizon was golden. For the record, most of the Sahara Desert is not mountains of golden sand but sandy ground and a lot of rocks, sort of like one of those Martian landscapes you've seen pictures of, just not red colored. It's really brown.

That evening Babs and I shared dinner with a French couple and their eye-rolling, attitude laden teenaged children. The camp crew provided us with all the tajine and couscous we wanted. Wine was extra. The crew drummed on overturned buckets ala bucket boys on street corners in any major American city while singing nonsense in Arabic. We went to bed with a million stars overhead.

In the middle of the night I had to go to the bathroom and when I emerged from the tent I looked overhead, seriously, for the first time. The air was so clear that stars, normally obscured by city lights and pollution were visible. There were so many stars that were visible that constellations one would ordinarily recognize were lost in the crowd of billions upon billions of stars. And the difference in the sky between the time I had gone to bed and the rotated sky of several hours later was like looking at a sky where someone changed the channel. It was a moment of beauty, and silence, and like nothing I have ever experienced before or since. It was the Sahara Desert at night.

Morocco, not a place I care to go back to, but the desert? Well, it was one of the top 3 experiences of the natural world that I have ever experienced. Give me Iceland and the northern climes. Give me the Sahara and the isolation and beauty of the desert. Next up, Palau and giant clams and lion fish and jelly fish without stingers.

Northern Lights and Starlit Nights and Jellyfish Without Their Stingers

2010-03-10T17:09:00.008-06:00

On days like today, it's easy to recognize why I live where I do. I've been off work for a couple of days because of a really nasty cold and the early March weather has cooperated with the nasty temperament emanating from the runny nose, sneezing, and coughing. It has been gray as my mood. Today both the fever and weather broke. It turned sunny and the temperature rose to 60 degrees. The water in the lake is a lovely color of blue. The lakefront path is full of runners, bikers, walkers, and those just sitting around soaking it all up. Now, as I look at the yellowing rays of late afternoon sunlight on Navy Pier I realize why it is that people work their entire lives to get to a place like this.

You can't live every moment here though. It wouldn't resonate the same with you. It would begin to take on the aspect of the ordinary. You have to travel and see things, some of them pretty spectacular, so that you can come home again and really appreciate what you have. Know what I mean? Been away on a vacation, a very nice vacation, for a couple of weeks, but you've been sleeping in hotel rooms and eating restaurant meals for so long that when you get home and open that door you just breathe an audible Aaahhhh. Your own shower. Your own bed. Meals from your very own kitchen. And in my case, my very own views from the 14th floor.

The travel bug bit me but good a long time ago, and I have been a lot of places, some of them pretty nice, some not so nice. Every one of those experiences, though, are a part of who I am. They all have value, even the ratty little motels in the middle of nowhere that smell musty and bring to mind Norman Bates. Of the good places, I sometimes wonder which were really the best, which were my very favorite, and it's hard to pick them. Sometimes you try going back to the favorites and they aren't so nice anymore. You wonder why they appealed to you at the time. Good travel experiences sometimes lie at the intersection of place and time. Change the time, but go to the same place, and it ain't the same.

In the same place, different time category lies a hotel on the Left Bank in Paris. In 1988 Babs and I arrived in Paris without a hotel reservation and stumbled into a lovely little hotel with an elevator barely big enough to hold the two of us and our suitcase, The Hotel Claude-Bernard on Rue Des Ecoles. The clerk clucked at us when we told him we had no reservation, but found a room for us nevertheless. Two single beds were pulled together for us and made up as one double bed. The bathroom was almost bigger than the room. The windows looked out over the street and we had a birds eye view of a candlelight march of students from the Sorbonne. It was lovely really. Went back a few years later after we had become accustomed to travel and nicer things and the hotel seemed, how shall I say, ummm, a little on the seedy side.

Without going back to try to relive them, I do have a couple of favorites, however. One Christmas when we were on our way to Belgium for a visit, we got a great deal on airfare by flying Icelandic Airways. For the special fare, though, we had to stop over in Reykjavik for a couple of days. What can I say? The sun came up at about 10-10:30 in the morning and went down about 1:30-2 in the afternoon. Walking around at night (Night was most of the day as well.) we stumbled upon a small lake in the middle of town. Walking around the perimeter, we looked up and saw the oddest green lights that looked like something out of a laser show at a rock concert. I actually looked around for the source before realizing that I was looking at the Northern Lights up close and personal, so up close that they were directly over my head, not somewhere in the distant North. Kind of an Oh my god, factor there.

On that very same trip we signed on to take a day trip to the top of a glacier, an adventure quest. We headed off on our trip in a 4 wheel drive Nissan something or other with two other paying customers and a driver and navigator. We headed down a 2 lane blacktop through the moonscape that is rural Iceland. At some point we left the blacktop and headed down a gravel road. Then our driver pulled over at a gate leading into a field covered in snow and boulders. The navigator got out and opened the gate, and the driver got out and let some of the air out of the tires. It seems that with less air in the tires, you get more surface area and better traction. Off we headed over the snow and boulders to the foot of an immense ice and snow covered mountain. Duh! The glacier. Our guides stopped and got out again. This time they let out all of the air in the tires. Hike up a glacier? Whatever for? We drove up that sucker.

When we got to the top of the glacier we stopped. Time to get out and run around a bit. I have no idea how deep the snow we were walking on was, but the top layer we were walking on was made up of crunchy crystals that reminded me of quartz crystals I had found in creeks when hiking in Arkansas. We found ourselves looking over the edge of a big cone that was covered in ice, the top of a dormant volcano. The guides explained that the ice layer over the cone was about a mile thick. Looking to our north we could see the Arctic Ocean. Looking to our west we could see the North Atlantic. I was just hoping that frigging volcano didn't decide to get undormant all of a sudden.

When it came time to go back down again the driver didn't go back the way he came. He relied on his GPS to get us down another way and once or twice took a wrong turn, at which point he had to back up and turn right or left to avoid going off a cliff. All the while he was regaling us with the story of how his best friend had held his wedding on the top of this glacier. The guests arrived on Snowmobiles. A hearty outdoorsy wedding for a hearty outdoorsy group of native Icelanders. Anyway, we arrived at the bottom and got on a small dirt track through a farmer's fields.

At one point we crossed a small stream that was frozen over. We stopped and everyone got out. I believe it was at this point that the driver used an air compressor to refill the tires on the vehicle. Because there are volcanoes in Iceland, all the water is a little bit tainted with sulfur. Taking a bath or a shower is smelly. Because of the sulfur content in the water, when it freezes it sometimes forms what our guide called snow roses. Down on the surface of the ice on the little stream were the most exquisite little frozen formations that looked, for all the world, like little roses. Never seen anything like it before or since. The rest of the trip back to the hotel was pretty innocuous, and completed in the dark while driving along the edge of a fjord. The stay in Brussels with side trips to Waterloo, Brugge, and Antwerp was nice, but when we got home again, it was Iceland that really stuck out in our minds.

I hope you've enjoyed my little travelogue, but I'm just getting wound up. Tomorrow? Morocco and the Sahara Desert. If you're really nice, maybe the day after I'll get into the sea kayaking trip in Palau that led to Jellyfish Lake, and snorkeling with giant clams, and lion fish, and well let's just see where this thread takes us, shall we? Meanwhile, Reykjavik in winter is etched on my brain. Someday maybe I'll return at the solstice to see what it's like when the sun doesn't go down.

Selling By the Season

2010-03-07T17:36:00.007-06:00

I was walking through the dairy aisle at the grocery store this afternoon and turned a corner. Jutting out from the top of a large refrigerated case was a sign that said, "Sports Drinks." When I looked into the case, it was full of Bass Ale, Guinness Stout, Harp Lager, Killian's Irish Red, Smithwick's Ale, Bailey's Irish Creme, and assorted alcoholic beverages commonly associated with St. Patrick's Day. Sports drinks? Well I suppose drinking is considered by many to be a sport on St. Pattie's Day.

This is just one more example of the all-out marketing that is done in America to maximize sales of various products. Every product has its season. In a capitalist system, selling is what its all about. If there is a particular time of the year when you can sell boatloads of your product by pushing a special occasion, you can maximize your profits. Why not?

Now we all know about the Consumer Fest between October and January that is the Christmas Shopping Season. Retailers selling everything from clothing to toys to video equipment make out like bandits playing on the idea that every good Christian in America is supposed to celebrate the birth of Jesus by spending copious amounts of money on presents.

Of course the grocery stores make out like bandits at Thanksgiving, focusing on turkeys galore and assorted side dishes. At New Year's and St. Patrick's Day the booze people market the heck out us and make a fortune off of what regular drinkers refer to as "Amateur's Night." This is not to mention sales of goofy hats, noise-makers, and assorted fireworks at New Year's. This is not to mention the odd Hallmark card, goofy leprechaun hats and paraphernalia at St. Patties.

Then of course, Easter sells a lot of ham, Easter baskets, eggs, dye for said eggs, and brand new Sunday church clothes for the little ones. If you happen to be Jewish, check out the ethnic food aisle in the grocery store about Passover time. July 4th has its barbecue push and fireworks. Hey, summer all by itself has a push for warm weather gear and beach crap. How many bicycles, tennis rackets, golf clubs, and accompanying clothing are sold at the beginning of every summer, only to be used once or twice and stored away. And of course assorted beach crap as aforementioned, and sunblock and insect repellant.

And these are just the major holidays. President's Day? Mattress Sales and Car Sales. Memorial Day? Ditto. Plus summer kickoff items. See above paragraph. Labor Day? Ditto. Plus summer's end items. See above paragraph. Then there is Valentine's Day and the push to sell love via Hallmark cards, roses, candy, candlelight dinners, and weekend packages at expensive hotels. (Ever stay in the Jacuzzi Room at a Country Inn and Suites? Long story, but you haven't missed a thing.)

Someone you know have a birthday? You owe them a gift. Someone getting married? You owe them a gift, and they have a particular store to buy it at, and a list of what they want. Anniversary? Gift. Death? OK no gift here, but an expensive bunch of flowers is expected. Does it never end? Hmmmm. No.

Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder what I've been doing wrong all these years. Babs and I got married at City Hall on Christmas Eve and surprised everyone. No big wedding. No registry. No wedding presents. Her brother had 2 big weddings complete with gifts. On the third time he went away for a quiet nuptial at his own expense and without the gifts and hoopla. Funny thing is I think this time it's going to take. I think this one will last. At any rate Babs and I feel a little cheated about that and have considered getting remarried so we can get the cool stuff given to us. Trouble is we've been married since 1986 and we bought most of the cool stuff for ourselves already.

What I think I'd like to do is to add a newly marketed holiday to the many, many already in existence. Who the heck ever heard of Sweetest Day twenty years ago? Anyway I'm not famous enough to command a real live national birthday celebration like Dr. King and Abe Lincoln and George Washington. Not even a local or regional celebration like Casimir Pulaski. What we need here is some serious marketing. Within a year or two, "Buy Rex Ray a new BMW Z4 Day" might just catch on. People all over the country could just send small amounts of money. It all adds up. Sort of like political fundraising and NPR Pledge Drives.

If that works out we might just try "Buy Babs Ray a condo in South Beach Day." The Rex Ray BMW Day will be October 6. The Babs Ray Day will be September 20. Cash, checks, credit cards will be accepted. A Pay Pal account is in the works. Phone lines will soon be open. The Rex and Babs Days Website will be there for all who want to wish us well and receive good karma in return. Damn! Sometimes I think I should've been a politician or a televangelist. There's good money to be made in huckstering. Welcome to America, home of the brave, land of the free, and American Express.

If You Don't Have Anything Bad to Say...Wait! That's Not How It's Supposed to Go.

2010-03-05T17:19:00.004-06:00

Did you ever have one of those days where you just didn't feel like you had anything to say? The sun is shining. The work week is over. Thinking about going out for dinner and a pleasant evening. Just kind of feeling like a big stupid grin.

Part of the problem is with blogging, and sometimes with life in general, the general run of conversation is negative and when things are going great, people tend to shut up. Lousy day? Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Never hear the end of it. Good day? Silence.

Think about the evening news. In a 30 minute news program there are usually 24 minutes of bad news, 5 minutes of commercials (Some would say that's bad news as well.) and one heart-warming "Aww, ain't that sweet, ain't that cute, story." People are drawn to bad news like gapers slowing down on the expressway to see the accident. "Ooooohhh! Can you see any blood and gore?"

Think about the TV schedule. How many murder and mayhem shows are there on TV, compared to feel good shows? Not only is there Law and Order, but Law and Order SVU, and Law and Order CI. Not only is there CSI, but CSI Miami, and CSI New York. NCIS and NCIS Los Angeles. Then there are the really creepy ones like Criminal Minds with a new serial killer every week. On cable channels one of the biggest hits of the last decade has been Dexter, about a serial killer who kills serial killers. Need some uplifting? Whatever for?

The Academy Awards are coming up on Sunday and check out which movies win the awards. Think there will be any comedies that win? I think not. Movies that convey serious messages and are movie equivalents of bad news are generally the big winners. Movies about how badly people treat other people are usually the big winners. Oh sure there are movies with uplifting messages, but to qualify for the big awards, someone has to go through some serious trauma while getting to the uplifting part in order to qualify for serious enough for an award.

What's up people? Can't we just feel good about stuff every once in a while? Can't it just be OK to feel good about feeling good? Enjoyment keeps the blood pressure down. Enjoyment helps you live longer. I know it feels good to bitch about work, bitch about the government, bitch about the morons on the expressway, to bitch about stupid people in general, but when you start looking at it from the outside, all of that bitching gets a little old. How about a feel good day once in a while. What do you say? As the old saying goes, "Smile. People will wonder what you've been up to." OK, so a lot of them will wonder if you're lacking in mental faculties or a candidate for the asylum, but know what? Just feeling good and letting people know it is, how shall I say this, hmmmm.....just pleasant I guess.

National Feel Good Day has been declared, so go out there and say something nice. Enjoy yourself and your day for a change.