Back in the 80s it was common to see bumper stickers that read, “I ♥ [something].” That something might be a pet, an activity of some sort, a location, or a sports team. I mentioned in a previous post the humor I found in a ploy on this sticker that read, “I ♠ my dog.” (It might have been an ad for a veterinarian.)
Another popular sticker in those days read, “I’d rather be [doing some activity].” It might be wind surfing, rock climbing, motorcycle riding, sailing, horse riding, hiking, cycling, or some such activity. One I saw read, “I’d rather be doing genealogy.” Another common theme was, “I’d rather be in [some location].”
Some found these advertisements of what people were fond of or what they’d rather be doing to be tedious or obnoxious. I once saw a sticker that read, “I don’t care what kind of pet you have, what you love, where you’d rather be, or what you’d rather be doing.” I occasionally heard the comment that if people would rather be somewhere else or doing something else they should just go there and do it without pestering the rest of us about it.
Times have changed and so have personalized automobile decorations. In recent years I have noted a dramatic increase in cutouts made of white tape showing a family’s configuration. These are usually placed in the rear or rear side windows of vehicles. Most of these stickers show family members in order of age and by proportionate size. Most show the sex of each family member.
Some of these family stickers include the names of family members. Some show the family’s surname. Frankly, I have privacy issues with doing stuff like this. Do I really want everybody that looks at my car to know my kids’ names or even how my family is arranged? There are enough strange folks around to make me uncomfortable with turning my vehicle into a traveling billboard showing this kind of personal information.
When these family configuration stickers first appeared, most of them depicted fairly simple stick figures. That has changed over time until there is now such a broad variety of shapes, sizes, hair and clothing styles, positions, etc, to provide a very distinctive customization. I have seen a van around town that has a Boy Scout symbol on the license plate. The father and the sons depicted in the family stickers on the van are dressed in Scout uniforms.
Some people get carried away. An older couple I know has covered the whole rear driver side window of their van with figures representing themselves, their children, children-in-law, and grandchildren, along with all of the extended family’s associated pets. Some stickers are more casual. Yesterday I followed a car that simply showed a pair of flip-flops of various sizes; one pair for each family member.
Besides privacy concerns, I also wonder about putting something static on a vehicle when families are dynamic. Maybe it’s OK if you keep your cars for only two or three years. We tend to keep our vehicles much longer. Although we average about a decade for a vehicle, we have a van that is 17 years old. You might put stickers on your car showing the baby in diapers and the eight-year-old with a crew cut. Four years later, the kids look a lot different. 17 years later, the whole family looks very different.
Another sticker phenomenon I see in the area where I live is huge flashy words and symbols in the rear windows of tricked out 4WD trucks driven by guys in their 20s or 30s. These trucks are usually jacked up high and decked with lots of extra chrome. They’ve got stylish rims and beefy looking tires that will likely never leave the pavement.
The stickers on these fancy muscle trucks either depict some kind of skull design or near pornographic silhouettes of slutty females. (Women only look like that in real life after surgical enhancement.) My oldest son dismisses these guys, saying, “They’re trying to compensate for something, if you know what I mean.”
As I said in a previous post on this subject, I derive a certain amount of entertainment value from the stickers people use to decorate their vehicles. Our family’s vehicles are unadorned and rather plain. My wife has suggested putting some kind of design item in the rear window of the cars to make them easier to spot in a parking lot. I think they are already fairly easy to spot in a parking lot. I just look for vehicles that are sticker free. There just aren’t that many.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The Art of Storytelling
I first fancied myself a teller of stories when I worked on Boy Scout camp staff during my teen years. It seems that stories get told whenever people sit around a campfire at night. This common ritual predates recorded history and spans every culture.
But storytelling exceeds hearth and campfire settings. Indeed, it permeates our lives. We tell each other stories during breaks at work and around the dinner table. Some of the most popular songs encapsulate stories. The entire motion picture industry exists to tell stories. We tend to remember information better if it is attached to some kind of story.
It is true that we tell stories to connect, inform, entertain, educate, and convey moral values. But perhaps the main reason we tell stories is to transmit culture. This is particularly true of intergenerational storytelling.
Storytelling seems to be an innate part of us. We all tell stories. We all appreciate a good story. But sometimes we have difficulty telling good stories ourselves. What elements make for a good story?
Telling Good Stories
Delose Conner, who was my camp director when I worked at Camp Loll years ago wrote and self published two books about storytelling, the first in 1980 and the second in 1992. Eventually, he published both books bound into a single 136-page paperback titled Folk and Campfire Stories. He privately sells the book for $10. If you are interested, please email me and I will happily provide contact information.
Delose’s book includes 27 stories that range from comical to scary to inspirational. Some are tailored hand-me-downs, while others relate personal experiences. The stories are a treasure by themselves. But another great trove is comprised in the storytelling tips Delose provides. Only a few of these tips are contained in the book’s initial concise instructions. Many of the best tips are scattered throughout the book in copious footnotes.
I have learned a thing or two throughout my own years of storytelling. In my mind, there are two major things that make for a good story. Most other factors can, I think, be classed under these two headings:
A good story comes from inside the storyteller. That happens naturally with personal experience. But it is also fine to take someone else’s story and make it your own.
I need to qualify that last statement a bit. You need to know your setting and audience. There are settings (rarely around a campfire) where failing to give credit to a story’s source could be construed as plagiarism.
It’s usually fine to embellish, tweak, or filter story elements when you’re entertaining or when you make clear that you are merely using a partially or wholly fictitious story as a teaching tool. But you must never stretch or diminish accuracy when credibility is important. Otherwise, your personal trustworthiness could be permanently compromised. True and credible stories can be entertaining and/or educational. But not all entertaining/educational stories are true and credible.
To make a story your own, you need to internalize it. That doesn’t mean that it has to be in first person, although, that is an attention grabbing approach. Think through the details and be ready to drop these elements into the story as necessary. It is more important that you have the details internalized than that you actually voice them.
Think about the different characters. What is each feeling at any given moment? What does each notice in the scenes where they appear? What are their various perspectives? What kind of movements do they make? How does Charlie’s face feel when his friend embarrasses him? What is Charlie doing with his fingers at that moment? What is the hair on the back of the dog’s neck doing when it senses the snake?
Think about the objects in the story. What do they look like? What are they doing? How do the dappled shadows on the north side of the old shack look in the light of the last quarter moon? Is the glass in the shack’s windows thick and rippled? How does the smoke curling up from the fire inside the old chief’s tipi move? What is hanging from the chief’s lodge pole? How do the horse’s leather reins feel in your hand when you loop them around the saddle horn? What does it feel like inside your shoe when your foot sinks into the mud?
Little details like this add spice to a story and give it an air of reality. Even if you don’t voice all of these details, knowing them implies a sense of authenticity that helps draw your audience into the story. In effect, they become part of the story. They become invested in it.
A very important part of the art of storytelling is knowing just how much detail to give to an audience. Nothing makes a story better for a listener than filling in bits and pieces from their own imagination because your listeners’ imaginations are better than your words. Listeners themselves make the story funnier, scarier, or more inspirational, as the case may be.
Too much detail robs the listener of this experience. Too little detail prevents them from having enough to germinate the process. Getting it right takes practice and skill development. It may need to be tailored to the audience.
Delose says to picture an old master storyteller in your mind. What does he do that makes his stories so good? Focus on those points, and then become the old storyteller yourself by employing those factors in your stories.
Practice and Perform
Storytelling is performance art. A storyteller “performs” a story every bit as much as a singer performs a song. A good singing performance is usually preceded by a lot of preparation and practice. A singer will drill on general technique and will practice a song over and over again before performing it. Good storytelling requires the same level of preparation.
This will come across as strange to some because many swear that the stories I tell seem to come so naturally. I prepare to tell stories by “performing” them for myself in my office and in the bathroom in front of the mirror. When I am ready, I perform for a small audience, usually family members. Not only do I solicit critique, I find out during this telling how people respond to different points. I find things to tweak.
Stories as performance art are more than just words. How you say the words is important. When a character says something in an exasperated tone, you need to say it in an exasperated tone. When tenderness or harshness is expressed, the audience needs to hear it in your voice. If a character has an accent, mimic that accent. It also takes practice to deliver a subtle punch line with just the right inflection.
Facial expressions, hand motions, and other body language actions are a vital part of each story. Act out the motions of the man with his pants down around his ankles trying to run away from what he thinks is a ghost in the outhouse. When Jane slaps Tony, you can act out both the part of both the slapper and the slappee. When the tough guy realizes that what he’s got in his mouth isn’t berry pie, you demonstrate his facial expression. When the miner brushes away the rock chips to see if he has found gold, you act that out.
Another part of preparation is story organization. If you’re picking up a story created by someone else, this is likely already done for you. But even in these cases, you can choose how you will develop the story, which elements to emphasize, and which elements to soft peddle.
When creating your own stories, consider what you are trying to achieve. Are you going for a punch line that will draw laughs, a climax that will elicit screams, an eerie ending that leaves the audience anxious, a specific educational point, internalization of a moral value, or a soaring inspirational sense? Are the elements of your story laid out in such as way to achieve that goal and to get the most bang for your buck?
Don’t forget to plant seeds along the way to the conclusion of your story. If the punch line of a story revolves around a man eating his hat for losing a wager, drop little hints along the way. For example, you might give hints from different angles about how valuable the man’s hat is. Or maybe the thing is filthy and soaked with years of perspiration.
Setting is something over which you don’t always have control, but you should try to get the best setting possible for your storytelling performance. An evening around a campfire is often ideal, but even then there can be distractions that you have difficulty controlling. Just do what you can. And remember that a well told story can often overcome an imperfect setting.
Conclusion
Storytelling can be a lot of fun. But it can also be a serious matter in the right context. Even in these circumstances, practice helps to get your message across more effectively. This is so even for tales that are completely true. Good story organization is important, but the presentation of a story is at least as important as the plot.
Good storytellers rarely just happen. They develop their stories and hone their presentation skills. Chances are that you will have the opportunity to tell a story fairly soon. Maybe it will be around a campfire this summer. If you want to make the best of it, start working on your storytelling right now. You will enjoy the experience a lot more that way, and so will your audience.
But storytelling exceeds hearth and campfire settings. Indeed, it permeates our lives. We tell each other stories during breaks at work and around the dinner table. Some of the most popular songs encapsulate stories. The entire motion picture industry exists to tell stories. We tend to remember information better if it is attached to some kind of story.
It is true that we tell stories to connect, inform, entertain, educate, and convey moral values. But perhaps the main reason we tell stories is to transmit culture. This is particularly true of intergenerational storytelling.
Storytelling seems to be an innate part of us. We all tell stories. We all appreciate a good story. But sometimes we have difficulty telling good stories ourselves. What elements make for a good story?
Telling Good Stories
Delose Conner, who was my camp director when I worked at Camp Loll years ago wrote and self published two books about storytelling, the first in 1980 and the second in 1992. Eventually, he published both books bound into a single 136-page paperback titled Folk and Campfire Stories. He privately sells the book for $10. If you are interested, please email me and I will happily provide contact information.
Delose’s book includes 27 stories that range from comical to scary to inspirational. Some are tailored hand-me-downs, while others relate personal experiences. The stories are a treasure by themselves. But another great trove is comprised in the storytelling tips Delose provides. Only a few of these tips are contained in the book’s initial concise instructions. Many of the best tips are scattered throughout the book in copious footnotes.
I have learned a thing or two throughout my own years of storytelling. In my mind, there are two major things that make for a good story. Most other factors can, I think, be classed under these two headings:
- Own the story.
- Practice to perform.
A good story comes from inside the storyteller. That happens naturally with personal experience. But it is also fine to take someone else’s story and make it your own.
I need to qualify that last statement a bit. You need to know your setting and audience. There are settings (rarely around a campfire) where failing to give credit to a story’s source could be construed as plagiarism.
It’s usually fine to embellish, tweak, or filter story elements when you’re entertaining or when you make clear that you are merely using a partially or wholly fictitious story as a teaching tool. But you must never stretch or diminish accuracy when credibility is important. Otherwise, your personal trustworthiness could be permanently compromised. True and credible stories can be entertaining and/or educational. But not all entertaining/educational stories are true and credible.
To make a story your own, you need to internalize it. That doesn’t mean that it has to be in first person, although, that is an attention grabbing approach. Think through the details and be ready to drop these elements into the story as necessary. It is more important that you have the details internalized than that you actually voice them.
Think about the different characters. What is each feeling at any given moment? What does each notice in the scenes where they appear? What are their various perspectives? What kind of movements do they make? How does Charlie’s face feel when his friend embarrasses him? What is Charlie doing with his fingers at that moment? What is the hair on the back of the dog’s neck doing when it senses the snake?
Think about the objects in the story. What do they look like? What are they doing? How do the dappled shadows on the north side of the old shack look in the light of the last quarter moon? Is the glass in the shack’s windows thick and rippled? How does the smoke curling up from the fire inside the old chief’s tipi move? What is hanging from the chief’s lodge pole? How do the horse’s leather reins feel in your hand when you loop them around the saddle horn? What does it feel like inside your shoe when your foot sinks into the mud?
Little details like this add spice to a story and give it an air of reality. Even if you don’t voice all of these details, knowing them implies a sense of authenticity that helps draw your audience into the story. In effect, they become part of the story. They become invested in it.
A very important part of the art of storytelling is knowing just how much detail to give to an audience. Nothing makes a story better for a listener than filling in bits and pieces from their own imagination because your listeners’ imaginations are better than your words. Listeners themselves make the story funnier, scarier, or more inspirational, as the case may be.
Too much detail robs the listener of this experience. Too little detail prevents them from having enough to germinate the process. Getting it right takes practice and skill development. It may need to be tailored to the audience.
Delose says to picture an old master storyteller in your mind. What does he do that makes his stories so good? Focus on those points, and then become the old storyteller yourself by employing those factors in your stories.
Practice and Perform
Storytelling is performance art. A storyteller “performs” a story every bit as much as a singer performs a song. A good singing performance is usually preceded by a lot of preparation and practice. A singer will drill on general technique and will practice a song over and over again before performing it. Good storytelling requires the same level of preparation.
This will come across as strange to some because many swear that the stories I tell seem to come so naturally. I prepare to tell stories by “performing” them for myself in my office and in the bathroom in front of the mirror. When I am ready, I perform for a small audience, usually family members. Not only do I solicit critique, I find out during this telling how people respond to different points. I find things to tweak.
Stories as performance art are more than just words. How you say the words is important. When a character says something in an exasperated tone, you need to say it in an exasperated tone. When tenderness or harshness is expressed, the audience needs to hear it in your voice. If a character has an accent, mimic that accent. It also takes practice to deliver a subtle punch line with just the right inflection.
Facial expressions, hand motions, and other body language actions are a vital part of each story. Act out the motions of the man with his pants down around his ankles trying to run away from what he thinks is a ghost in the outhouse. When Jane slaps Tony, you can act out both the part of both the slapper and the slappee. When the tough guy realizes that what he’s got in his mouth isn’t berry pie, you demonstrate his facial expression. When the miner brushes away the rock chips to see if he has found gold, you act that out.
Another part of preparation is story organization. If you’re picking up a story created by someone else, this is likely already done for you. But even in these cases, you can choose how you will develop the story, which elements to emphasize, and which elements to soft peddle.
When creating your own stories, consider what you are trying to achieve. Are you going for a punch line that will draw laughs, a climax that will elicit screams, an eerie ending that leaves the audience anxious, a specific educational point, internalization of a moral value, or a soaring inspirational sense? Are the elements of your story laid out in such as way to achieve that goal and to get the most bang for your buck?
Don’t forget to plant seeds along the way to the conclusion of your story. If the punch line of a story revolves around a man eating his hat for losing a wager, drop little hints along the way. For example, you might give hints from different angles about how valuable the man’s hat is. Or maybe the thing is filthy and soaked with years of perspiration.
Setting is something over which you don’t always have control, but you should try to get the best setting possible for your storytelling performance. An evening around a campfire is often ideal, but even then there can be distractions that you have difficulty controlling. Just do what you can. And remember that a well told story can often overcome an imperfect setting.
Conclusion
Storytelling can be a lot of fun. But it can also be a serious matter in the right context. Even in these circumstances, practice helps to get your message across more effectively. This is so even for tales that are completely true. Good story organization is important, but the presentation of a story is at least as important as the plot.
Good storytellers rarely just happen. They develop their stories and hone their presentation skills. Chances are that you will have the opportunity to tell a story fairly soon. Maybe it will be around a campfire this summer. If you want to make the best of it, start working on your storytelling right now. You will enjoy the experience a lot more that way, and so will your audience.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Denial
We live in a neighborhood that was constructed in several phases over a period of about ten years. The oldest homes in our development are about a quarter century old. By my count, about 40% of the homes are still occupied by original owners.
We have watched each others’ families grow up. Our kids have played and hung out together in each others’ homes. We have taken turns working with each others’ kids as school, church, and community volunteers. We have shared each others’ joys and sorrows as we have seen neighborhood children grow up and embark on their own paths in life.
One of the sorrows we shared was when the high school aged daughter of one neighborhood family developed serious substance abuse problems. The dad worked in youth corrections. The mom was a registered nurse. Both had professional training in recognizing and dealing with substance abuse issues. But somehow they failed to see these symptoms in their own daughter until she collapsed in the entryway of their home upon returning from a night of partying.
Fortunately, once the problem became clear, these parents knew what steps to take. Their daughter went into a rehab program. After the initial treatment, she attended a school that was part of the treatment program for many months until she was able to graduate clean. Still, her adult life has been somewhat troubled, although, she is currently a fairly responsible adult.
A few years ago, I was able to have a long chat with the father of this family while we were together at Boy Scout summer camp. He explained that there were many warning signs that he and his wife had been trained to see. But both parents were blind to these symptoms because they were in denial.
After all, their daughter was popular. She had achieved a spot on the cheerleading squad her first year in high school. Her grades had been pretty good going into the school year. She was focused on her goals. Or at least, that’s how the parents perceived her.
The other side of the story was that the girl kept stashes of substances and related paraphernalia in the house. Her parents accepted her lame excuses about this. Her grades slid as she increasingly kept late hours. Her older brother didn’t want to get her into trouble, but sometimes made remarks to his parents of being concerned about her keeping bad company.
These and other warning signs made no impact on the parents. My friend said that there was no other explanation than to say that when it came to their own daughter, he and his wife willingly chose — perhaps somewhat subconsciously — to ignore the obvious. Seeing these same signs in any other family’s child would have caused them to take action.
I think this is a very natural human tendency. We want to believe the best about our loved ones. Sometimes it’s easier to avoid conflict than to bring up uncomfortable matters. At times we tolerate objectionable activities in the name of love, when true love can require these to be challenged. If we ignore problems long enough, we think, maybe they’ll go away on their own. We hate to see our own apple cart upset.
This principle probably has broader application as well. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see where else it applies.
We have watched each others’ families grow up. Our kids have played and hung out together in each others’ homes. We have taken turns working with each others’ kids as school, church, and community volunteers. We have shared each others’ joys and sorrows as we have seen neighborhood children grow up and embark on their own paths in life.
One of the sorrows we shared was when the high school aged daughter of one neighborhood family developed serious substance abuse problems. The dad worked in youth corrections. The mom was a registered nurse. Both had professional training in recognizing and dealing with substance abuse issues. But somehow they failed to see these symptoms in their own daughter until she collapsed in the entryway of their home upon returning from a night of partying.
Fortunately, once the problem became clear, these parents knew what steps to take. Their daughter went into a rehab program. After the initial treatment, she attended a school that was part of the treatment program for many months until she was able to graduate clean. Still, her adult life has been somewhat troubled, although, she is currently a fairly responsible adult.
A few years ago, I was able to have a long chat with the father of this family while we were together at Boy Scout summer camp. He explained that there were many warning signs that he and his wife had been trained to see. But both parents were blind to these symptoms because they were in denial.
After all, their daughter was popular. She had achieved a spot on the cheerleading squad her first year in high school. Her grades had been pretty good going into the school year. She was focused on her goals. Or at least, that’s how the parents perceived her.
The other side of the story was that the girl kept stashes of substances and related paraphernalia in the house. Her parents accepted her lame excuses about this. Her grades slid as she increasingly kept late hours. Her older brother didn’t want to get her into trouble, but sometimes made remarks to his parents of being concerned about her keeping bad company.
These and other warning signs made no impact on the parents. My friend said that there was no other explanation than to say that when it came to their own daughter, he and his wife willingly chose — perhaps somewhat subconsciously — to ignore the obvious. Seeing these same signs in any other family’s child would have caused them to take action.
I think this is a very natural human tendency. We want to believe the best about our loved ones. Sometimes it’s easier to avoid conflict than to bring up uncomfortable matters. At times we tolerate objectionable activities in the name of love, when true love can require these to be challenged. If we ignore problems long enough, we think, maybe they’ll go away on their own. We hate to see our own apple cart upset.
This principle probably has broader application as well. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see where else it applies.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
The Demise of One of My Childhood Icons
As a kid, we would on occasion go to McDonald’s. The drive-in, which was a couple of miles from my home is in my earliest memories of my town. I didn’t realize it, but that place was the first McDonald’s restaurant in Utah.
It was once a white building with a single-plane roof that slanted front to back. The sides of the building were graced with large trademark golden arches that extended above the roofline. The building contained only the kitchen and the retail/delivery counter. There was no indoor space for customers.
If my memory is correct, this McDonald’s was seasonal, so that it was closed during cold weather months. I do remember that they eventually installed outdoor heaters above the retail windows. This helped keep the customers nearest the windows warm in cold weather. A few years later, they added a mostly glass enclosure to shelter customers, but there was still no indoor dining facility.
Sometime during my adolescent years, the entire McDonald’s chain decided to change its look. The white buildings with prominent side arches were replaced with red-brown brick structures. Our local McDonald’s underwent extensive renovation to make the change and to add a dining room. When Ronald McDonald, the corporate mascot was joined by a host of other whacky cartoon-like characters, images of the characters began to grace the place. They added an outdoor playground too.
As a senior in high school, I went looking for work. I had gotten a food handler permit to work at a little joint that was started by the family of one of my Mom’s co-workers. After I went to work twice, it became obvious that these folks had been overly optimistic about the enterprise, so more than half the staff was cut. I applied at various food service businesses and ended up landing a job at McDonald’s.
By this time, there was another McDonald’s at the other end of town, and another one in the south end of the county. I enthusiastically began my short-lived career at McDonald’s, only to discover that working in fast food was not for me. After only a couple of months, I handed in my uniform and went in search of other employment.
During my brief tenure at McDonald’s, I learned several things. Employees at our installation were not permitted to stand around. “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean,” was a common refrain. Many things, even rather arcane matters, required strict compliance with corporate rules.
As far as food quality, the temperature of foods was strictly regulated, as was the amount of time between preparation and delivery of foods. The oil in deep fry vats was changed on a regular schedule to keep it fresh. Back then, we had two kinds of hamburger patties: 10-to-1 and 4-to-1, meaning one-tenth or one-quarter of a pound in a quick frozen state. (A fair amount less in a cooked state.)
I didn’t mind doing the work. I learned the rules fairly quick and rapidly made it to the esteemed rank of head shift cook. But I didn’t like the way our store’s owner dealt with employees. There were lots of other jobs available, so I quit. (The guy was later indicted for embezzling from the franchise.)
As the years went by, I had steadily fewer occasions to go to this McDonald’s store. (For one thing, there are now two stores closer to where I live.) The joint was renovated numerous times. They replaced the outdoor playground with an indoor play place. They expanded the capacity of the drive through. The place seemed to always have plenty of business.
Yesterday afternoon when I drove by the place, it had been demolished. There was a big tractor parked atop the rubble. One of the kids said that he heard that it had been closed for renovations. I have since discovered that they are completely replacing the structure, which was 50 years old.
I don’t mind the progress. But seeing this building torn down also leaves me with a kind of melancholy feeling. I’m not completely sure why. I rarely patronize McDonald’s nowadays anyway. Perhaps it’s because I kind of grew up along with the place and its demise gives me a sense of my own mortality. I’m sure that after the new structure opens nobody will miss the old place much.
It was once a white building with a single-plane roof that slanted front to back. The sides of the building were graced with large trademark golden arches that extended above the roofline. The building contained only the kitchen and the retail/delivery counter. There was no indoor space for customers.
If my memory is correct, this McDonald’s was seasonal, so that it was closed during cold weather months. I do remember that they eventually installed outdoor heaters above the retail windows. This helped keep the customers nearest the windows warm in cold weather. A few years later, they added a mostly glass enclosure to shelter customers, but there was still no indoor dining facility.
Sometime during my adolescent years, the entire McDonald’s chain decided to change its look. The white buildings with prominent side arches were replaced with red-brown brick structures. Our local McDonald’s underwent extensive renovation to make the change and to add a dining room. When Ronald McDonald, the corporate mascot was joined by a host of other whacky cartoon-like characters, images of the characters began to grace the place. They added an outdoor playground too.
As a senior in high school, I went looking for work. I had gotten a food handler permit to work at a little joint that was started by the family of one of my Mom’s co-workers. After I went to work twice, it became obvious that these folks had been overly optimistic about the enterprise, so more than half the staff was cut. I applied at various food service businesses and ended up landing a job at McDonald’s.
By this time, there was another McDonald’s at the other end of town, and another one in the south end of the county. I enthusiastically began my short-lived career at McDonald’s, only to discover that working in fast food was not for me. After only a couple of months, I handed in my uniform and went in search of other employment.
During my brief tenure at McDonald’s, I learned several things. Employees at our installation were not permitted to stand around. “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean,” was a common refrain. Many things, even rather arcane matters, required strict compliance with corporate rules.
As far as food quality, the temperature of foods was strictly regulated, as was the amount of time between preparation and delivery of foods. The oil in deep fry vats was changed on a regular schedule to keep it fresh. Back then, we had two kinds of hamburger patties: 10-to-1 and 4-to-1, meaning one-tenth or one-quarter of a pound in a quick frozen state. (A fair amount less in a cooked state.)
I didn’t mind doing the work. I learned the rules fairly quick and rapidly made it to the esteemed rank of head shift cook. But I didn’t like the way our store’s owner dealt with employees. There were lots of other jobs available, so I quit. (The guy was later indicted for embezzling from the franchise.)
As the years went by, I had steadily fewer occasions to go to this McDonald’s store. (For one thing, there are now two stores closer to where I live.) The joint was renovated numerous times. They replaced the outdoor playground with an indoor play place. They expanded the capacity of the drive through. The place seemed to always have plenty of business.
Yesterday afternoon when I drove by the place, it had been demolished. There was a big tractor parked atop the rubble. One of the kids said that he heard that it had been closed for renovations. I have since discovered that they are completely replacing the structure, which was 50 years old.
I don’t mind the progress. But seeing this building torn down also leaves me with a kind of melancholy feeling. I’m not completely sure why. I rarely patronize McDonald’s nowadays anyway. Perhaps it’s because I kind of grew up along with the place and its demise gives me a sense of my own mortality. I’m sure that after the new structure opens nobody will miss the old place much.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Tron: Old Technology, Some Quirks, but Enjoyable
My son recently showed me the trailer for the upcoming movie Tron Legacy, which is a sequel to the 1982 Disney film Tron. It had been many years since I had seen Tron, but I remembered it as being a pretty great movie.
Tron was the first movie to extensively use computer graphics in an age when green screen technology was in the stone age by today’s standards. Tron captured the interest of the video gaming genre that was burgeoning at the time. It was different, new, and exciting. But it only earned modestly at the box office. The video games it spawned produced more revenue than the movie.
Having been piqued by the trailer for the sequel (to be released just before Christmas 2010), we took an opportunity to sit down and watch the original film again. My oldest son said that he was just a kid the last time he saw it. I told him that he was born years after the last time I saw it.
It turned out that my memory of the movie was much better than the movie itself. Don’t get me wrong. We had fun watching the film. But some of the acting was lousy. Or perhaps some of the direction of the actors was lousy. And of course, the development of technology over the past 28 years makes some of Tron’s erstwhile awesome special effects seem poor, quirky, or even campy. (It is amazing to compare the 1982 Tron technology with what you see in the trailer for the sequel. We’ve come a long way.)
The constant black background in the computer scenes in the old Tron is wearying to me. The dark sets and re-colored monochrome faces sometimes make it difficult to tell which character you are seeing. Some of the film’s transitions are also rough.
The last time I saw Tron, I had not yet begun my career as a software systems engineer. I had to laugh when I saw the boxy monochrome screen computers that were state-of-the art back in those days, because I remember working on such machines. I also laughed at the klunky interfaces. Sure, these things were done for art, but they weren’t that far off from the real thing. My kids were amazed when I pointed out that no computer in the movie had a mouse. To them, computers have always had mice. Except for video games, the only input devices shown were keyboards.
I was reminded that once when my brother and I were in college, we managed to borrow a dumb terminal from a neighbor who had obtained it cheaply when a nearby hospital had shut down. We put this massive thing up in our basement. We’d dial the phone number of the college’s mainframe computer and then put the receiver of the old AT&T rotary phone in a cradle that attached to the monitor. After a series of tones, a login prompt came up on the terminal.
Once logged in, we could write and run our BASIC, COBOL, and Fortran programs from home. The transmission speed was interminably slow, but it was faster than driving to the college and waiting for a terminal in the computer room to become free. And by golly, it beat having to use a keypunch machine (like I did in my first two computer courses).
Back to Tron. As far as acting goes, David Warner does a fairly decent job as all three villains. He’s insidious and tyrannical, but he’s not completely ruthless. He is, after all, a Disney villain. As the human Dillinger, he finds himself unpleasantly subjected to the Master Control Program, a computer program he wrote. In effect, he’s the program’s stooge, but he must never let anyone discover this, lest his career be destroyed. As the computer program Sark, the MPC’s main agent inside the computer, Warner is cold and cruel.
I had not remembered how wooden Bruce Boxleitner (Alan/Tron) is when playing his real world character, Alan. Or how huge the lenses on his 1980s glasses are. At the very beginning of the movie when Alan walks into the bad guy’s office, his acting comes across as stiff as something I’d expect to see in a high school drama production. He’s better as the computer program Tron than as a human. Cindy Morgan’s character (Lora/Yori) is way too simple. She seems almost goofily willing at times. Jeff Bridges (Flynn/Clu) seems more believable, but he has some stupid lines as well.
Several transitions and plot devices in the film are odd. Flynn seems far too willing to tell Alan and Lora about his stymied attempts to illegally hack their company’s computers. When he explains that he is trying to get justice, Lora (who is a scientist with a PhD) immediately and without supporting evidence suggests that they break into the plant so they can infiltrate the computer internally. While they are sneaking around the place, Alan and Lora seem too little concerned with the idea that they could lose their jobs and/or go to jail for their activities. Perhaps the writers assumed that having a PhD doesn’t mean that one has good judgment.
When Ram is dying, the transition from a casual to an intense connection between him and Flynn seems too abrupt. Then the moment lasts too long. Flynn’s willingness to jump into the Master Control Program seems odd. Sure the computer programs he is interacting with have human features and tendencies (in fact they get more human throughout the movie), but even a computer geek isn’t going to kill himself to save bits of data. Maybe Flynn is supposed to know that jumping into the MPC will restore him to the real world, but I don’t think that’s explained in the movie.
Near the end of the film the computer prints off “evidence” that Flynn developed games for which the villain Dillinger has gotten credit. Anybody could print something like that. It hardly seems like enough evidence to result in Flynn becoming the boss of the company. Reportedly, original shots showed more of a database printout, but the film makers worried that audiences wouldn’t get the connection. So they simplified it. Too simple, I think.
The main plot device — man’s fear of technology — is older than history itself. The fear of technology has been a recurring theme ever since humans began to use rudimentary tools. Science fiction in the computer era has frequently focused on machines becoming tyrannically powerful. The hero is usually a fallible human underdog that exploits some hubristic weakness in the machine. Tron’s plot fits nicely into this story line.
As a software developer, I have to laugh at the ongoing superstition about the coming of omnipotent computers. I guess that most people don’t realize the lengths to which we must often go to get computer programs to do things most of them think of as pretty simple. While we are much better at getting applications and computers to communicate than in the old days, the idea of artificially intelligent computing omnipotence seems like extreme fantasy to me. Computers in the real world aren’t that efficient.
Tron has its flaws, but it is still a decent movie to watch. It captures a time a generation ago when video arcades were a popular social phenomenon; before kids could carry around dozens of video games on pocket-size devices. It was an important film in that it opened the eyes of the entertainment world to the possibilities of computer assisted film making. Since then, computers have become essential tools to pretty much all film making.
If you think you might want to watch the Tron Legacy sequel that comes out late this year, I suggest that you first watch the original Tron movie as a refresher. You too might get a few laughs from old technology. Just don’t expect to see any computer mice.
Tron was the first movie to extensively use computer graphics in an age when green screen technology was in the stone age by today’s standards. Tron captured the interest of the video gaming genre that was burgeoning at the time. It was different, new, and exciting. But it only earned modestly at the box office. The video games it spawned produced more revenue than the movie.
Having been piqued by the trailer for the sequel (to be released just before Christmas 2010), we took an opportunity to sit down and watch the original film again. My oldest son said that he was just a kid the last time he saw it. I told him that he was born years after the last time I saw it.
It turned out that my memory of the movie was much better than the movie itself. Don’t get me wrong. We had fun watching the film. But some of the acting was lousy. Or perhaps some of the direction of the actors was lousy. And of course, the development of technology over the past 28 years makes some of Tron’s erstwhile awesome special effects seem poor, quirky, or even campy. (It is amazing to compare the 1982 Tron technology with what you see in the trailer for the sequel. We’ve come a long way.)
The constant black background in the computer scenes in the old Tron is wearying to me. The dark sets and re-colored monochrome faces sometimes make it difficult to tell which character you are seeing. Some of the film’s transitions are also rough.
The last time I saw Tron, I had not yet begun my career as a software systems engineer. I had to laugh when I saw the boxy monochrome screen computers that were state-of-the art back in those days, because I remember working on such machines. I also laughed at the klunky interfaces. Sure, these things were done for art, but they weren’t that far off from the real thing. My kids were amazed when I pointed out that no computer in the movie had a mouse. To them, computers have always had mice. Except for video games, the only input devices shown were keyboards.
I was reminded that once when my brother and I were in college, we managed to borrow a dumb terminal from a neighbor who had obtained it cheaply when a nearby hospital had shut down. We put this massive thing up in our basement. We’d dial the phone number of the college’s mainframe computer and then put the receiver of the old AT&T rotary phone in a cradle that attached to the monitor. After a series of tones, a login prompt came up on the terminal.
Once logged in, we could write and run our BASIC, COBOL, and Fortran programs from home. The transmission speed was interminably slow, but it was faster than driving to the college and waiting for a terminal in the computer room to become free. And by golly, it beat having to use a keypunch machine (like I did in my first two computer courses).
Back to Tron. As far as acting goes, David Warner does a fairly decent job as all three villains. He’s insidious and tyrannical, but he’s not completely ruthless. He is, after all, a Disney villain. As the human Dillinger, he finds himself unpleasantly subjected to the Master Control Program, a computer program he wrote. In effect, he’s the program’s stooge, but he must never let anyone discover this, lest his career be destroyed. As the computer program Sark, the MPC’s main agent inside the computer, Warner is cold and cruel.
I had not remembered how wooden Bruce Boxleitner (Alan/Tron) is when playing his real world character, Alan. Or how huge the lenses on his 1980s glasses are. At the very beginning of the movie when Alan walks into the bad guy’s office, his acting comes across as stiff as something I’d expect to see in a high school drama production. He’s better as the computer program Tron than as a human. Cindy Morgan’s character (Lora/Yori) is way too simple. She seems almost goofily willing at times. Jeff Bridges (Flynn/Clu) seems more believable, but he has some stupid lines as well.
Several transitions and plot devices in the film are odd. Flynn seems far too willing to tell Alan and Lora about his stymied attempts to illegally hack their company’s computers. When he explains that he is trying to get justice, Lora (who is a scientist with a PhD) immediately and without supporting evidence suggests that they break into the plant so they can infiltrate the computer internally. While they are sneaking around the place, Alan and Lora seem too little concerned with the idea that they could lose their jobs and/or go to jail for their activities. Perhaps the writers assumed that having a PhD doesn’t mean that one has good judgment.
When Ram is dying, the transition from a casual to an intense connection between him and Flynn seems too abrupt. Then the moment lasts too long. Flynn’s willingness to jump into the Master Control Program seems odd. Sure the computer programs he is interacting with have human features and tendencies (in fact they get more human throughout the movie), but even a computer geek isn’t going to kill himself to save bits of data. Maybe Flynn is supposed to know that jumping into the MPC will restore him to the real world, but I don’t think that’s explained in the movie.
Near the end of the film the computer prints off “evidence” that Flynn developed games for which the villain Dillinger has gotten credit. Anybody could print something like that. It hardly seems like enough evidence to result in Flynn becoming the boss of the company. Reportedly, original shots showed more of a database printout, but the film makers worried that audiences wouldn’t get the connection. So they simplified it. Too simple, I think.
The main plot device — man’s fear of technology — is older than history itself. The fear of technology has been a recurring theme ever since humans began to use rudimentary tools. Science fiction in the computer era has frequently focused on machines becoming tyrannically powerful. The hero is usually a fallible human underdog that exploits some hubristic weakness in the machine. Tron’s plot fits nicely into this story line.
As a software developer, I have to laugh at the ongoing superstition about the coming of omnipotent computers. I guess that most people don’t realize the lengths to which we must often go to get computer programs to do things most of them think of as pretty simple. While we are much better at getting applications and computers to communicate than in the old days, the idea of artificially intelligent computing omnipotence seems like extreme fantasy to me. Computers in the real world aren’t that efficient.
Tron has its flaws, but it is still a decent movie to watch. It captures a time a generation ago when video arcades were a popular social phenomenon; before kids could carry around dozens of video games on pocket-size devices. It was an important film in that it opened the eyes of the entertainment world to the possibilities of computer assisted film making. Since then, computers have become essential tools to pretty much all film making.
If you think you might want to watch the Tron Legacy sequel that comes out late this year, I suggest that you first watch the original Tron movie as a refresher. You too might get a few laughs from old technology. Just don’t expect to see any computer mice.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Everything is Still Vanity When It Comes to Politics
In a comment on my last post, Travis Grant suggested that he’d like to see me do a political post again. In December, I wrote that I would be taking a break from political blogging for an indeterminate time.
During my hiatus from overtly political posts at this site, I have continued to be politically informed. On occasion I have made comments on other political blogs. But my commentary has followed more of a sniper pattern. I fire off a comment and then leave.
Over the past three months, I have spent more time doing things with my family. I have dedicated more time to family history work than in the past. And it has been pretty pleasant.
It takes time and dedication to write a decently researched political post. It is much easier to spout stuff off the top of my head while concerning myself little with referential linking. But such posts are less fulfilling. Besides, psychologists know that we all tend to use logic to support what we already think anyway.
As I noted in my December post, an important part of blogging is maintaining the comment stream. I just don’t presently have as much time for that as I used to. And frankly, I don’t care to respond to some comments. Taking time to respond to certain comments seems to cross the line of absurdity, as it often leads to meaningless pro-forma debates. And yet, it doesn’t seem quite right to leave such comments unrefuted. Ah, the dilemma.
Actually, I have written a handful of political posts over the past three months, only to end up tossing them. Most often, I have ended up muddling around when attempting to drive to a conclusion. Other times I have written conclusions, but on reflection have found them unconvincing even to me. It would be ridiculous to post such dreck.
Perhaps the root of the problem is my growing political cynicism. Rather than basing my thoughts on political arguments and posturing, I have started to pay closer attention to what politicians actually do. The result has been a drastic lowering of expectations of politicians and of the whole political system.
Since lowering my expectations, I have rarely been disappointed by a politician or by a political outcome. There has been an abundant supply of politicians that live down to my abysmal expectations. If I wait long enough, the seemingly rare exceptions to this rule often end up proving the rule correct.
But I have become aware that there is a healthy market for political saviors. Vast swaths of people exhibit with deep religious ferver their faith in salvation through politics, despite the abundant evidence that such a belief is based in something other than reality.
Of course, supply always pops up to meet demand. Thus, there is no shortage of political entrepreneurs that are eager to play the demanded role of savior. This would all be comical if the consequences weren’t so serious.
I suppose you could say that I have lost my faith in the religion of politics. I still observe politics and formulate theories about what is happening and why. But I feel as if I am outside of the congregation of political believers.
Still, I hold certain political principles to be true. But I am also aware of others that are deeply devoted to opposing principles. And I am aware that some of the principles that I cherish most dearly are broadly ignored — something that calls into question the validity of my beliefs. Or perhaps, it makes public statements of these beliefs seem like a futile exercise.
I don’t really have anything to tie all of this rambling together. But that is where I am with respect to politics at the moment. Maybe this helps explain my current aversion to writing political posts.
During my hiatus from overtly political posts at this site, I have continued to be politically informed. On occasion I have made comments on other political blogs. But my commentary has followed more of a sniper pattern. I fire off a comment and then leave.
Over the past three months, I have spent more time doing things with my family. I have dedicated more time to family history work than in the past. And it has been pretty pleasant.
It takes time and dedication to write a decently researched political post. It is much easier to spout stuff off the top of my head while concerning myself little with referential linking. But such posts are less fulfilling. Besides, psychologists know that we all tend to use logic to support what we already think anyway.
As I noted in my December post, an important part of blogging is maintaining the comment stream. I just don’t presently have as much time for that as I used to. And frankly, I don’t care to respond to some comments. Taking time to respond to certain comments seems to cross the line of absurdity, as it often leads to meaningless pro-forma debates. And yet, it doesn’t seem quite right to leave such comments unrefuted. Ah, the dilemma.
Actually, I have written a handful of political posts over the past three months, only to end up tossing them. Most often, I have ended up muddling around when attempting to drive to a conclusion. Other times I have written conclusions, but on reflection have found them unconvincing even to me. It would be ridiculous to post such dreck.
Perhaps the root of the problem is my growing political cynicism. Rather than basing my thoughts on political arguments and posturing, I have started to pay closer attention to what politicians actually do. The result has been a drastic lowering of expectations of politicians and of the whole political system.
Since lowering my expectations, I have rarely been disappointed by a politician or by a political outcome. There has been an abundant supply of politicians that live down to my abysmal expectations. If I wait long enough, the seemingly rare exceptions to this rule often end up proving the rule correct.
But I have become aware that there is a healthy market for political saviors. Vast swaths of people exhibit with deep religious ferver their faith in salvation through politics, despite the abundant evidence that such a belief is based in something other than reality.
Of course, supply always pops up to meet demand. Thus, there is no shortage of political entrepreneurs that are eager to play the demanded role of savior. This would all be comical if the consequences weren’t so serious.
I suppose you could say that I have lost my faith in the religion of politics. I still observe politics and formulate theories about what is happening and why. But I feel as if I am outside of the congregation of political believers.
Still, I hold certain political principles to be true. But I am also aware of others that are deeply devoted to opposing principles. And I am aware that some of the principles that I cherish most dearly are broadly ignored — something that calls into question the validity of my beliefs. Or perhaps, it makes public statements of these beliefs seem like a futile exercise.
I don’t really have anything to tie all of this rambling together. But that is where I am with respect to politics at the moment. Maybe this helps explain my current aversion to writing political posts.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Finances and Responsibility
At one point in my career, I worked as a bank branch operations manager. It sounds a lot more prestigious than it really was. I handled customer service issues that the tellers couldn’t immediately handle, made sure that each teller had appropriate amounts of cash on hand throughout the shift, helped tellers periodically balance out, managed safety deposit access, and helped with required reports. I didn’t actually manage anyone.
One of the main features of the bank where I worked was to supplement low salary with prestige. Lots of people that wore nice clothes to work, sat at nice looking desks, and had nameplates with important sounding titles really didn’t make much money. One of the things that caused me to search for other job opportunities was when I realized how little many of the bank’s long-term titled employees were earning.
One day a hot looking Corvette pulled into the parking lot. The driver climbed out wearing a black leather jacket, shades, tight jeans, and leather boots. I noticed some of the female tellers eyeing his build, chiseled features, and wavy dark hair as he sauntered into the building. Not only did this guy drive a Vette, he looked every bit the part.
He came to my desk complaining about nine bounced check charges that he said were erroneous. He said that merchants had piled on more charges of their own. I said that I’d be glad to help. I asked him to explain how he knew that the charges were improper. He showed me his checkbook register and said that his records showed that he still had money in his account.
I pulled up the guy’s account records and saw that he was dramatically overdrawn. In fact, it looked like he hadn’t achieved a positive balance for months. The balance in his check register bore no resemblance to the bank’s records.
When I explained the balance mismatch as diplomatically as possible, Mr. Corvette nonchalantly said that he had at one point written his overdraft protection amount in as a deposit. He simply considered the monthly overdraft charges to be acceptable fees. These monthly charges were pretty high. It had never previously crossed my mind that anyone would consider purposefully paying them month after month.
I pulled this man’s last couple of bank statements and asked him to show me where he felt the bank had erred. He became irritated and said that he had no idea where the bank had messed up because he hadn’t reconciled his checkbook for those months. Looking at his register, I said that I’d be happy to do the reconciliation for those two months, but I needed him to show me where he had completed the previous month’s reconciliation.
At this point, the fellow looked at me with contempt and said that he had never reconciled his account in the six years he had had it. But he insisted that his math was accurate and that the bank’s math wasn’t. I realized that the only way to find any possible error would be to reconcile the customer’s check registers against the bank’s records for six years running. The charges about which he was angry may well have stemmed from a miscalculation five years earlier. Unfortunately, the man no longer had his past check registers. So, even that avenue was closed.
I explained that without evidence, I had to consider the bank’s records to be accurate. Bank policy did allow me to reverse duplicate charges where some merchants had tried to submit the same check twice, resulting in two bounced check charges. But there was no way I would be permitted to cancel all of the charges.
Anger flashed in the man’s dark eyes. He said, “I have been a good customer of this bank for six years, but now I am going to take my business somewhere else!” I wanted to say that his statement would be true if he dropped the word good, but instead I said that I would surface his concerns to the main customer service department. He then said that he wanted to close his account. I explained that he would have to expunge the negative balance before the bank could close the account.
The unhappy customer grumbled something, stalked out of the bank, jumped into his Corvette, and drove away. For a long time afterward I wondered what I could have done differently to provide a better outcome. I finally concluded that I had done everything possible to help this man, but that his poor financial discipline prevented a happier result.
Life is like that. Sometimes we make poor choices that prevent good outcomes down the road. It is natural to be angry and lash out when the consequences of these unfortunate choices strike. But the path from that point will be much better if we accept personal responsibility for our choices.
One of the main features of the bank where I worked was to supplement low salary with prestige. Lots of people that wore nice clothes to work, sat at nice looking desks, and had nameplates with important sounding titles really didn’t make much money. One of the things that caused me to search for other job opportunities was when I realized how little many of the bank’s long-term titled employees were earning.
One day a hot looking Corvette pulled into the parking lot. The driver climbed out wearing a black leather jacket, shades, tight jeans, and leather boots. I noticed some of the female tellers eyeing his build, chiseled features, and wavy dark hair as he sauntered into the building. Not only did this guy drive a Vette, he looked every bit the part.
He came to my desk complaining about nine bounced check charges that he said were erroneous. He said that merchants had piled on more charges of their own. I said that I’d be glad to help. I asked him to explain how he knew that the charges were improper. He showed me his checkbook register and said that his records showed that he still had money in his account.
I pulled up the guy’s account records and saw that he was dramatically overdrawn. In fact, it looked like he hadn’t achieved a positive balance for months. The balance in his check register bore no resemblance to the bank’s records.
When I explained the balance mismatch as diplomatically as possible, Mr. Corvette nonchalantly said that he had at one point written his overdraft protection amount in as a deposit. He simply considered the monthly overdraft charges to be acceptable fees. These monthly charges were pretty high. It had never previously crossed my mind that anyone would consider purposefully paying them month after month.
I pulled this man’s last couple of bank statements and asked him to show me where he felt the bank had erred. He became irritated and said that he had no idea where the bank had messed up because he hadn’t reconciled his checkbook for those months. Looking at his register, I said that I’d be happy to do the reconciliation for those two months, but I needed him to show me where he had completed the previous month’s reconciliation.
At this point, the fellow looked at me with contempt and said that he had never reconciled his account in the six years he had had it. But he insisted that his math was accurate and that the bank’s math wasn’t. I realized that the only way to find any possible error would be to reconcile the customer’s check registers against the bank’s records for six years running. The charges about which he was angry may well have stemmed from a miscalculation five years earlier. Unfortunately, the man no longer had his past check registers. So, even that avenue was closed.
I explained that without evidence, I had to consider the bank’s records to be accurate. Bank policy did allow me to reverse duplicate charges where some merchants had tried to submit the same check twice, resulting in two bounced check charges. But there was no way I would be permitted to cancel all of the charges.
Anger flashed in the man’s dark eyes. He said, “I have been a good customer of this bank for six years, but now I am going to take my business somewhere else!” I wanted to say that his statement would be true if he dropped the word good, but instead I said that I would surface his concerns to the main customer service department. He then said that he wanted to close his account. I explained that he would have to expunge the negative balance before the bank could close the account.
The unhappy customer grumbled something, stalked out of the bank, jumped into his Corvette, and drove away. For a long time afterward I wondered what I could have done differently to provide a better outcome. I finally concluded that I had done everything possible to help this man, but that his poor financial discipline prevented a happier result.
Life is like that. Sometimes we make poor choices that prevent good outcomes down the road. It is natural to be angry and lash out when the consequences of these unfortunate choices strike. But the path from that point will be much better if we accept personal responsibility for our choices.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Reunion Aversion
I don’t attend my high school class reunions. I am very selective about attending other types of reunions. A few years ago I attended a reunion of missionaries that served in the mission where I served. (Those familiar with LDS culture in the Wasatch Front area know that mission reunions are commonly held each six months, timed to coincide with the church’s general conferences.) The reunion I attended was OK. But I note that I haven’t bothered to attend subsequent ones.
I do, however, attend my wife’s high school class reunions. She derives much more enjoyment from these kinds of events than I do. Since I love her, I go with her.
During two of the years my wife was in college, she was a member of a performing folkdance group at the LDS institute of religion adjacent to the college. She and I courted during her final few months as a member of that group. Although my dancing skills were and are limited, I often attended the group’s practices, performances (as a spectator/helper), and socials. The group performed dances at our wedding reception.
Last weekend that folkdance group held a reunion for all 670+ people that have been members of the group at anytime during its 32-year existence. My wife was on the reunion committee. That meant that I was an adjunct member of the committee. I found that my place was to help with setup and cleanup, which was OK with me. This was the third such reunion of the group, with the first being 20 years ago and the second being 12 years ago.
We arrived a couple of hours before the event to get things set up. That situation required more working than socializing. As the start time for the event rolled around, I looked around the large hall to see members of the reunion committee along with a handful of others. We were set to handle more than 200 people. I began to wonder if the event might be a bust, but the committee head assured me that at least 150 had solidly committed to attend. Within an hour the place was bustling. Almost every seat was filled, although, some people stood chatting and never sat down.
The chief purpose of the event was to socialize and renew acquaintances. I had the pleasure of rubbing shoulders with a few childhood friends, as well as friends made during college days. It is always amazing to see people a decade or two after having last seen them. It is surprising to see how little some have changed and how much others have. There were a couple of people I was able to recognize only after reading their nametags.
It’s like I’ve got a snapshot in my head of what each person should look like based on what they looked like the last time I saw them. It somehow seems like a shock to see that people have aged since that snapshot was taken. Besides, there were videos playing around the hall showing these people dancing back in their college days. So it seemed natural to make now-and-then comparisons.
It was good to catch up a bit with people that we hadn’t seen for a while. Most were just busy with their families and careers. Most seemed to be doing well. One friend that went through a painful divorce a few years ago attended the event with her fiancé, who seems to be a very nice fellow. I hope the best for them. A fair number came without his/her spouse, as some spouses sensed little personal connection to the group.
One feature of the evening was a performance by current members of the folkdance team. Another feature was when attendees were invited to step out onto the dance floor to try their skill at performing some of the dances they did when they were on the team. I watched, but did not dance. I was grateful that my wife was able to partner with a friend of ours whose wife is not a dancer.
When it came time to wrap up, several spouses of dancers joined me in cleaning up while dancers danced and visited with each other. It was still pretty late by the time the members of the committee closed up and left the building.
My wife has been somewhat self conscious in the past couple of years about the amount of gray showing up in her hair. But she has been reluctant to consider hair coloring. Once you start, she says, it’s constant maintenance. Besides, I think she looks great without coloring her hair. On the way home, she hoped that I wouldn’t think her too vain if she opined that her hair looks pretty good compared with some of her contemporaries.
I try to avoid reunions when I can. I am more likely to attend a rare or one-off reunion than an ongoing event. Part of me has moved on. I am busy with the present. My heart and head generally don’t live in that past realm, so why should I repeatedly go there? On the other hand, I have to admit that attending my wife’s folkdance team reunion turned out to be quite a pleasant experience.
I do, however, attend my wife’s high school class reunions. She derives much more enjoyment from these kinds of events than I do. Since I love her, I go with her.
During two of the years my wife was in college, she was a member of a performing folkdance group at the LDS institute of religion adjacent to the college. She and I courted during her final few months as a member of that group. Although my dancing skills were and are limited, I often attended the group’s practices, performances (as a spectator/helper), and socials. The group performed dances at our wedding reception.
Last weekend that folkdance group held a reunion for all 670+ people that have been members of the group at anytime during its 32-year existence. My wife was on the reunion committee. That meant that I was an adjunct member of the committee. I found that my place was to help with setup and cleanup, which was OK with me. This was the third such reunion of the group, with the first being 20 years ago and the second being 12 years ago.
We arrived a couple of hours before the event to get things set up. That situation required more working than socializing. As the start time for the event rolled around, I looked around the large hall to see members of the reunion committee along with a handful of others. We were set to handle more than 200 people. I began to wonder if the event might be a bust, but the committee head assured me that at least 150 had solidly committed to attend. Within an hour the place was bustling. Almost every seat was filled, although, some people stood chatting and never sat down.
The chief purpose of the event was to socialize and renew acquaintances. I had the pleasure of rubbing shoulders with a few childhood friends, as well as friends made during college days. It is always amazing to see people a decade or two after having last seen them. It is surprising to see how little some have changed and how much others have. There were a couple of people I was able to recognize only after reading their nametags.
It’s like I’ve got a snapshot in my head of what each person should look like based on what they looked like the last time I saw them. It somehow seems like a shock to see that people have aged since that snapshot was taken. Besides, there were videos playing around the hall showing these people dancing back in their college days. So it seemed natural to make now-and-then comparisons.
It was good to catch up a bit with people that we hadn’t seen for a while. Most were just busy with their families and careers. Most seemed to be doing well. One friend that went through a painful divorce a few years ago attended the event with her fiancé, who seems to be a very nice fellow. I hope the best for them. A fair number came without his/her spouse, as some spouses sensed little personal connection to the group.
One feature of the evening was a performance by current members of the folkdance team. Another feature was when attendees were invited to step out onto the dance floor to try their skill at performing some of the dances they did when they were on the team. I watched, but did not dance. I was grateful that my wife was able to partner with a friend of ours whose wife is not a dancer.
When it came time to wrap up, several spouses of dancers joined me in cleaning up while dancers danced and visited with each other. It was still pretty late by the time the members of the committee closed up and left the building.
My wife has been somewhat self conscious in the past couple of years about the amount of gray showing up in her hair. But she has been reluctant to consider hair coloring. Once you start, she says, it’s constant maintenance. Besides, I think she looks great without coloring her hair. On the way home, she hoped that I wouldn’t think her too vain if she opined that her hair looks pretty good compared with some of her contemporaries.
I try to avoid reunions when I can. I am more likely to attend a rare or one-off reunion than an ongoing event. Part of me has moved on. I am busy with the present. My heart and head generally don’t live in that past realm, so why should I repeatedly go there? On the other hand, I have to admit that attending my wife’s folkdance team reunion turned out to be quite a pleasant experience.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Boy Scout Hiking In Yellowstone Preserved
Last month I posted about the prospect of Camp Loll losing most of its back country hiking opportunities in nearby Yellowstone National Park. In my post, I asserted that this condition arose pursuant to a Sierra Club lawsuit. It turns out that this was a misunderstanding. I apologize for spreading this idea. Rather, the park service was working to respond to recent heavier use of the Bechler area of Yellowstone.
A number of Camp Loll’s supporters called or wrote to their congressional delegations, Yellowstone’s superintendent, and the chief of Yellowstone’s Concessions Management Division. I received a prompt reply from the park superintendent assuring me that a park delegation would meet with representatives of Camp Loll and Trapper Trails Council, BSA to address the issue.
That meeting occurred yesterday. Camp Director Delose Connor provides a brief report on the congenial meeting in this post. The rangers were very interested in accommodating Camp Loll’s hikers, but they also clearly outlined the need to limit impact to the Bechler area to preserve its wilderness quality. The rangers’ main concern was daily impact.
The rangers explained that the notification demanding that Camp Loll obtain a conditional use permit was meant for commercial entities and had been sent to the Scout council in error. The camp is, however, required to obtain a special use permit that is essentially an agreement on usage. Any other nonprofits with outdoor aims that want to use the area on a regular basis will need to do the same. The good news is that the park appears very willing to work with such groups.
At yesterday’s meeting, the ranger staff and the Scouting representatives worked together to craft a plan that would maximize Yellowstone back country hiking opportunities while achieving the goal of moderating daily impact on the Bechler area. Delose will provide more details when the agreement is complete and signed, but the gist is that it is a win-win solution.
The camp will be able to continue its current program for the 2010 season. Beginning in 2011, the camp will split its hike day across two days. During the season, half of the camp will hike on each Wednesday while the other half participates in the normal in-camp program. They will switch these activities on Thursdays. Camp Loll will need to hire a few more staffers to maintain its ability to run a competent in-camp program while a number of staffers are off hiking. But it is exciting to note that a couple of new hiking opportunities will be made available to the camp’s hikers.
All of this will work together to reduce daily impact on the Bechler area, while still allowing the camp to send roughly the same number of hikers into the park each week as they have for years. More hiking variety will be available. Units that go on shorter hikes and return to camp earlier in the afternoon will have the opportunity to participate in programs that have previously been closed on hike days. With fewer hikers going to Union Falls on any given hike day, hikers will be able to spend more time at Scout Pool.
I am breathing a sigh of relief. Not only will I be able to hike to Union Falls with my son and his Scout troop this summer, the new agreement between Camp Loll and Yellowstone will be an improvement for all interested parties and for the environment.
A number of Camp Loll’s supporters called or wrote to their congressional delegations, Yellowstone’s superintendent, and the chief of Yellowstone’s Concessions Management Division. I received a prompt reply from the park superintendent assuring me that a park delegation would meet with representatives of Camp Loll and Trapper Trails Council, BSA to address the issue.
That meeting occurred yesterday. Camp Director Delose Connor provides a brief report on the congenial meeting in this post. The rangers were very interested in accommodating Camp Loll’s hikers, but they also clearly outlined the need to limit impact to the Bechler area to preserve its wilderness quality. The rangers’ main concern was daily impact.
The rangers explained that the notification demanding that Camp Loll obtain a conditional use permit was meant for commercial entities and had been sent to the Scout council in error. The camp is, however, required to obtain a special use permit that is essentially an agreement on usage. Any other nonprofits with outdoor aims that want to use the area on a regular basis will need to do the same. The good news is that the park appears very willing to work with such groups.
At yesterday’s meeting, the ranger staff and the Scouting representatives worked together to craft a plan that would maximize Yellowstone back country hiking opportunities while achieving the goal of moderating daily impact on the Bechler area. Delose will provide more details when the agreement is complete and signed, but the gist is that it is a win-win solution.
The camp will be able to continue its current program for the 2010 season. Beginning in 2011, the camp will split its hike day across two days. During the season, half of the camp will hike on each Wednesday while the other half participates in the normal in-camp program. They will switch these activities on Thursdays. Camp Loll will need to hire a few more staffers to maintain its ability to run a competent in-camp program while a number of staffers are off hiking. But it is exciting to note that a couple of new hiking opportunities will be made available to the camp’s hikers.
All of this will work together to reduce daily impact on the Bechler area, while still allowing the camp to send roughly the same number of hikers into the park each week as they have for years. More hiking variety will be available. Units that go on shorter hikes and return to camp earlier in the afternoon will have the opportunity to participate in programs that have previously been closed on hike days. With fewer hikers going to Union Falls on any given hike day, hikers will be able to spend more time at Scout Pool.
I am breathing a sigh of relief. Not only will I be able to hike to Union Falls with my son and his Scout troop this summer, the new agreement between Camp Loll and Yellowstone will be an improvement for all interested parties and for the environment.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
A Journal is for ... What?
I first started keeping a regular journal when I began serving as a missionary for my church at age 19. Over the next several years I wrote faithfully, eventually filling two binders. In time I slacked off. Instead of writing four or five times weekly, I found myself writing several times monthly. That rate decreased to sporadic entries that were sometimes months apart.
Then in the dawn of the personal computer era, I began keeping my journal in electronic format. This was in the days before WYSIWYG was common. I once again kept my journal faithfully. But like many back in those days, I had a poor understanding of data security. My only copy was on a floppy disc.
I can still remember the desperation I felt when my journal file died. No amount of effort, even by my super geek friend, was able to restore the file. In the blink of an eye, an entire year of my ramblings disappeared forever. I was so upset by this that I quit writing for a year.
After repeated admonishments by church leaders to keep a journal, I made a New Year’s resolution 14 years ago to do so. I have kept that resolution to this day. I average about five journal entries per week. I keep my journal in word processing files, creating a new file for each month and keeping each year’s files in a separate folder. You can bet that I keep this stuff redundantly backed up. I don’t want to lose it again.
Recently I started working on bringing my older files up to modern protocols. Paper can deteriorate and ink can fade. But as long as it is kept from the elements, advancing technology usually doesn’t render your pen and paper writings obsolete. Not so with electronic files. No one can guarantee timeless support for old computing protocols. (Of course, it is difficult to do word searches using paper copies.)
Not only have I copied my old word processing files to new ones, I have been creating a composite file for each year, which I have then converted to PDF format. PDF used to be a proprietary format, but it is now an open standard. Hopefully that will keep it viable for some time. But even open standards drop support for older versions as they are updated. So I anticipate the need to repeat this exercise in the future.
I have long considered getting my journal printed. A local shop prints and binds long electronic documents for a fee. Of course, you pay extra for heirloom quality paper and printing. I do have some concerns about doing this. For one thing, I have realized during my project that I now have thousands of journal pages. Printing these would be somewhat pricey and would produce a number of volumes. What time period would be appropriate for a volume? Five years? Ten? Maybe it’s simply a function of size, say 400 pages.
Then there are privacy concerns. Although most of my writings are horribly mundane (and probably inane to others that might peruse them), there’s some pretty personal stuff in there. I’m not too thrilled about the idea of employees at the print shop having access to all of that.
During my upgrade project, I have begun to reflect on my purpose in keeping a journal. It turns out that there are times that my electronic journal has helped me find an important date or event. But that’s not really why I write. Is it for posterity? To be honest, I can barely stand to go back and read the glop that I record in my journal. It seems like gross fantasy to assume that any of my progeny might someday pore over thousands of pages of my routine daily events interspersed with mawkish musings.
A Romanian blogger named Ririan gives 10 reasons to keep a journal in this 2006 post. Most of Ririan’s reasons — stress reduction, improved organization skills, keener personal insight — focus on self improvement. Professional writer Jack Oceano gives eight reasons in this 2007 post. Some of these parallel Ririan’s thoughts. Others focus on the craft of writing. But Oceano’s number one reason is that journal entries are like snapshots that capture raw emotion in a way that photo snapshots never can.
I have just looked at a host of articles about how to keep a journal and have discovered that I have been doing it wrong all these years. Most articles suggest that your main writing emphasis should be your immediate thoughts and feelings. Humdrum details should be kept to a minimum.
My writings have this equation exactly reversed. I record what some would consider minutia. My personal feelings occasionally break through the particulars to spill onto the page, but even then they are often guarded and much less raw than Oceano proposes. I find that I am more likely to express my positive emotions in writing while being cautious about letting my negative emotions show.
I am not opposed to learning to do something different if I deem it to be beneficial. Positive growth entails (sometimes uncomfortable) change. But I am not certain that altering my journal writing to feature emotion above information would reflect me better than does my current tack. Nor am I certain I would find it as fulfilling. Details are important to me.
I guess that I write a journal for similar reasons that I exercise daily. It is a positive effort that requires a certain amount of self discipline and that provides certain psychological payoffs. I am not certain that anyone else will ever read from my journal. Frankly, I don’t expect them to. But if they do, I hope that they read enough to get a broader picture of who I am and gain some understanding of the growth process that led me to this identity.
Then in the dawn of the personal computer era, I began keeping my journal in electronic format. This was in the days before WYSIWYG was common. I once again kept my journal faithfully. But like many back in those days, I had a poor understanding of data security. My only copy was on a floppy disc.
I can still remember the desperation I felt when my journal file died. No amount of effort, even by my super geek friend, was able to restore the file. In the blink of an eye, an entire year of my ramblings disappeared forever. I was so upset by this that I quit writing for a year.
After repeated admonishments by church leaders to keep a journal, I made a New Year’s resolution 14 years ago to do so. I have kept that resolution to this day. I average about five journal entries per week. I keep my journal in word processing files, creating a new file for each month and keeping each year’s files in a separate folder. You can bet that I keep this stuff redundantly backed up. I don’t want to lose it again.
Recently I started working on bringing my older files up to modern protocols. Paper can deteriorate and ink can fade. But as long as it is kept from the elements, advancing technology usually doesn’t render your pen and paper writings obsolete. Not so with electronic files. No one can guarantee timeless support for old computing protocols. (Of course, it is difficult to do word searches using paper copies.)
Not only have I copied my old word processing files to new ones, I have been creating a composite file for each year, which I have then converted to PDF format. PDF used to be a proprietary format, but it is now an open standard. Hopefully that will keep it viable for some time. But even open standards drop support for older versions as they are updated. So I anticipate the need to repeat this exercise in the future.
I have long considered getting my journal printed. A local shop prints and binds long electronic documents for a fee. Of course, you pay extra for heirloom quality paper and printing. I do have some concerns about doing this. For one thing, I have realized during my project that I now have thousands of journal pages. Printing these would be somewhat pricey and would produce a number of volumes. What time period would be appropriate for a volume? Five years? Ten? Maybe it’s simply a function of size, say 400 pages.
Then there are privacy concerns. Although most of my writings are horribly mundane (and probably inane to others that might peruse them), there’s some pretty personal stuff in there. I’m not too thrilled about the idea of employees at the print shop having access to all of that.
During my upgrade project, I have begun to reflect on my purpose in keeping a journal. It turns out that there are times that my electronic journal has helped me find an important date or event. But that’s not really why I write. Is it for posterity? To be honest, I can barely stand to go back and read the glop that I record in my journal. It seems like gross fantasy to assume that any of my progeny might someday pore over thousands of pages of my routine daily events interspersed with mawkish musings.
A Romanian blogger named Ririan gives 10 reasons to keep a journal in this 2006 post. Most of Ririan’s reasons — stress reduction, improved organization skills, keener personal insight — focus on self improvement. Professional writer Jack Oceano gives eight reasons in this 2007 post. Some of these parallel Ririan’s thoughts. Others focus on the craft of writing. But Oceano’s number one reason is that journal entries are like snapshots that capture raw emotion in a way that photo snapshots never can.
I have just looked at a host of articles about how to keep a journal and have discovered that I have been doing it wrong all these years. Most articles suggest that your main writing emphasis should be your immediate thoughts and feelings. Humdrum details should be kept to a minimum.
My writings have this equation exactly reversed. I record what some would consider minutia. My personal feelings occasionally break through the particulars to spill onto the page, but even then they are often guarded and much less raw than Oceano proposes. I find that I am more likely to express my positive emotions in writing while being cautious about letting my negative emotions show.
I am not opposed to learning to do something different if I deem it to be beneficial. Positive growth entails (sometimes uncomfortable) change. But I am not certain that altering my journal writing to feature emotion above information would reflect me better than does my current tack. Nor am I certain I would find it as fulfilling. Details are important to me.
I guess that I write a journal for similar reasons that I exercise daily. It is a positive effort that requires a certain amount of self discipline and that provides certain psychological payoffs. I am not certain that anyone else will ever read from my journal. Frankly, I don’t expect them to. But if they do, I hope that they read enough to get a broader picture of who I am and gain some understanding of the growth process that led me to this identity.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Singing (LDS) Hymns of Praise
I have long had a deep appreciation for Latter-Day Saint hymns. I frequently sing hymns, play them on the piano, listen to them, or even just replay them in my head.
The messages of many hymn lyrics are spiritually profound. Hymn tunes alone often seem to carry a sense of the sacred. The combination of a hymn’s lyrics and tune can carry a spiritual message to the soul that exceeds the sum of the parts. Sometimes that can be a soul healing balm. Other times it may be a witness of truth or a motivation to do right.
One of my favorite hymn listening experiences is when a woman in our ward (congregation) and a man from a nearby ward team up to play a piano-violin duet hymn medley. Choirs can be enjoyable to hear as well.
But best of all is listening to my little daughter sing sacred songs. She has loved to sing since she was very young. She frequently spontaneously sings wherever she happens to be. Most often, her songs are children’s sacred songs. Almost every night you can hear her sing herself to sleep after bedding down for the night. It is a precious and sacred experience to be a dad listening on the other side of the door.
While I derive strength from listening to hymns, it is even more impactful for me to sing or play hymns myself. The action oriented, first person nature of this activity is soul enveloping.
While I love many LDS hymns, I must admit that there are a few that I find rather odd. At the beginning of family home evening each week, we sing a hymn from the LDS hymnal. We began years ago with hymn #1. Each week we advance to the next hymn number. Sometimes we repeat a hymn if the family has found it especially difficult. We have run through the entire book a couple of times, so we have sung every one of the 341 hymns in the book.
If I had to guess, I’d suppose that most active LDS adults that live in the most populous areas of church membership are very familiar with about 50 hymns. They probably have some familiarity with another 50 and can recognize more. But I’d bet that most of them would be very surprised at some of the songs in the book.
Every once in a while our family comes across a hymn that we’re certain is in the book only because it was written by a church general authority, a member of the church music committee, or a relative of one of these. Seriously, there is a reason that you never hear some of these hymns. Sometimes it may be due to the tune and other times the lyrics (or both in some unfortunate situations).
Conversely, we have come upon a few hymns I have never heard in any meeting that seem to be wonderful both in word and tune. Other decent hymns are seldom sung. My kids think that songs like Raise Your Voices to the Lord (two short two-line verses), Cast Thy Burden upon the Lord (one verse), When Faith Endures (one verse), and Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow (one verse) ought to be sung more often.
Not every hymn is intended for congregational singing. Some, such as What Was Witnessed in the Heavens? are suited only to talented choirs. You never hear some tunes because they are too complex for the average accompanist to play. (Some composers seem to have been competing to jam the maximum number of accidentals into a hymn.) Other hymns come from a musical era that has fallen out of style.
There are hymns that I am sure others love that I can’t stand. The tune to Come unto Him drives me nuts. The lyrics are beautiful. But I can’t listen to the tune without hearing it played on a circus calliope in my head. A friend of mine detests Who’s on the Lord’s Side? because the tune sounds like a seafaring ditty. He says that every time he hears it, he expects to see Popeye come floating by in his boat with his pipe clenched in his teeth. (Toot, toot!)
Another friend dislikes If You Could Hie to Kolob because it’s dreary and continually repeats the phrase, “There is no end to ….” She quips, “There is no end to this song!” Father, This Hour Has Been One of Joy is set to one of the least joyful tunes I have ever heard. In fact, there’s a whole section of dreary hymns that sound like music designed to induce depression. (Are those really necessary?)
Some hymns with nice lyrics but unpleasant tunes can be redeemed by singing them to the tune of another hymn. Each hymn has a meter. The tunes of hymns that share the same meter are interchangeable. Switching the tune and lyrics of two familiar hymns can add variety. For example, you can sing the lyrics of Sing We Now At Parting to the tune of Onward, Christian Soldiers. Look at the meter section of the hymnal and try mixing and matching hymn tunes at home. Even some hymns with mismatched meters can be mixed. You can sing the lyrics of Joseph Smith’s First Prayer to the tune of Jesus, Lover of My Soul.
While sacred matters should be treated with appropriate demeanor, I must admit that our family is not above occasionally poking fun at certain hymns. Truth Reflects upon our Senses is a running joke in our home for two reasons.
When I was a kid, every time we sang this song, the voices of two older widows in the ward could be heard above the congregation. These wonderful sisters probably had beautiful voices years earlier. But age had taken its toll to the point that they sounded an awful lot like cats in heat. Also, their vocal training had come in an age when sliding from note to note was popular. People singing like that are sure to hit the actual note at some point, albeit, briefly. I loved these ladies, but their singing grated. And it never grated worse than when singing Truth Reflects.
Then there’s the rhyming problem. The hymn’s lyricist, Eliza R. Snow was a renowned LDS poet. But even for a Massachusetts native, the rhyming of some of the lines of the third verse is strained beyond recognition. I’ve never been able to make “mote” and “out” rhyme. Likewise with “dim” and “beam.” It is not uncommon for members of our family to joke about having a bim in their eye or seeing a supporting bim in a construction project.
One recent Sunday when singing this hymn, my teenage son glanced slyly at me sideways along the bench and sang, “Once I said unto another, in thine eye there is a mote. If thou art a friend and brother, hold and let me pull it ote.” I held my composure. He then sang, “But I could not see it fairly for my sight was very dim. When I came to search more clearly, in mine eye there was a bim.” I chuckled right in the middle of the song.
I like some hymns better than others. I suspect that most other worshippers feel the same way. But I usually count it a blessing to sing even those hymns I don’t particularly care for. I am grateful for talented and willing accompanists. I have often taken my turn as music director, but in wards like mine a director is hardly needed. The congregation follows the organist.
The current edition of the LDS Hymn book was published in 1985, so it is a quarter century old this year. The previous edition came out in 1948/1950, some 35+ years earlier. A lot of sacred LDS music has been written since 1985, but given the track record, I assume that it will be quite a while before a new LDS hymnal is published. In the meantime, the hymns in the 1985 edition will continue to bring peace and joy to me and hopefully to many others.
The messages of many hymn lyrics are spiritually profound. Hymn tunes alone often seem to carry a sense of the sacred. The combination of a hymn’s lyrics and tune can carry a spiritual message to the soul that exceeds the sum of the parts. Sometimes that can be a soul healing balm. Other times it may be a witness of truth or a motivation to do right.
One of my favorite hymn listening experiences is when a woman in our ward (congregation) and a man from a nearby ward team up to play a piano-violin duet hymn medley. Choirs can be enjoyable to hear as well.
But best of all is listening to my little daughter sing sacred songs. She has loved to sing since she was very young. She frequently spontaneously sings wherever she happens to be. Most often, her songs are children’s sacred songs. Almost every night you can hear her sing herself to sleep after bedding down for the night. It is a precious and sacred experience to be a dad listening on the other side of the door.
While I derive strength from listening to hymns, it is even more impactful for me to sing or play hymns myself. The action oriented, first person nature of this activity is soul enveloping.
While I love many LDS hymns, I must admit that there are a few that I find rather odd. At the beginning of family home evening each week, we sing a hymn from the LDS hymnal. We began years ago with hymn #1. Each week we advance to the next hymn number. Sometimes we repeat a hymn if the family has found it especially difficult. We have run through the entire book a couple of times, so we have sung every one of the 341 hymns in the book.
If I had to guess, I’d suppose that most active LDS adults that live in the most populous areas of church membership are very familiar with about 50 hymns. They probably have some familiarity with another 50 and can recognize more. But I’d bet that most of them would be very surprised at some of the songs in the book.
Every once in a while our family comes across a hymn that we’re certain is in the book only because it was written by a church general authority, a member of the church music committee, or a relative of one of these. Seriously, there is a reason that you never hear some of these hymns. Sometimes it may be due to the tune and other times the lyrics (or both in some unfortunate situations).
Conversely, we have come upon a few hymns I have never heard in any meeting that seem to be wonderful both in word and tune. Other decent hymns are seldom sung. My kids think that songs like Raise Your Voices to the Lord (two short two-line verses), Cast Thy Burden upon the Lord (one verse), When Faith Endures (one verse), and Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow (one verse) ought to be sung more often.
Not every hymn is intended for congregational singing. Some, such as What Was Witnessed in the Heavens? are suited only to talented choirs. You never hear some tunes because they are too complex for the average accompanist to play. (Some composers seem to have been competing to jam the maximum number of accidentals into a hymn.) Other hymns come from a musical era that has fallen out of style.
There are hymns that I am sure others love that I can’t stand. The tune to Come unto Him drives me nuts. The lyrics are beautiful. But I can’t listen to the tune without hearing it played on a circus calliope in my head. A friend of mine detests Who’s on the Lord’s Side? because the tune sounds like a seafaring ditty. He says that every time he hears it, he expects to see Popeye come floating by in his boat with his pipe clenched in his teeth. (Toot, toot!)
Another friend dislikes If You Could Hie to Kolob because it’s dreary and continually repeats the phrase, “There is no end to ….” She quips, “There is no end to this song!” Father, This Hour Has Been One of Joy is set to one of the least joyful tunes I have ever heard. In fact, there’s a whole section of dreary hymns that sound like music designed to induce depression. (Are those really necessary?)
Some hymns with nice lyrics but unpleasant tunes can be redeemed by singing them to the tune of another hymn. Each hymn has a meter. The tunes of hymns that share the same meter are interchangeable. Switching the tune and lyrics of two familiar hymns can add variety. For example, you can sing the lyrics of Sing We Now At Parting to the tune of Onward, Christian Soldiers. Look at the meter section of the hymnal and try mixing and matching hymn tunes at home. Even some hymns with mismatched meters can be mixed. You can sing the lyrics of Joseph Smith’s First Prayer to the tune of Jesus, Lover of My Soul.
While sacred matters should be treated with appropriate demeanor, I must admit that our family is not above occasionally poking fun at certain hymns. Truth Reflects upon our Senses is a running joke in our home for two reasons.
When I was a kid, every time we sang this song, the voices of two older widows in the ward could be heard above the congregation. These wonderful sisters probably had beautiful voices years earlier. But age had taken its toll to the point that they sounded an awful lot like cats in heat. Also, their vocal training had come in an age when sliding from note to note was popular. People singing like that are sure to hit the actual note at some point, albeit, briefly. I loved these ladies, but their singing grated. And it never grated worse than when singing Truth Reflects.
Then there’s the rhyming problem. The hymn’s lyricist, Eliza R. Snow was a renowned LDS poet. But even for a Massachusetts native, the rhyming of some of the lines of the third verse is strained beyond recognition. I’ve never been able to make “mote” and “out” rhyme. Likewise with “dim” and “beam.” It is not uncommon for members of our family to joke about having a bim in their eye or seeing a supporting bim in a construction project.
One recent Sunday when singing this hymn, my teenage son glanced slyly at me sideways along the bench and sang, “Once I said unto another, in thine eye there is a mote. If thou art a friend and brother, hold and let me pull it ote.” I held my composure. He then sang, “But I could not see it fairly for my sight was very dim. When I came to search more clearly, in mine eye there was a bim.” I chuckled right in the middle of the song.
I like some hymns better than others. I suspect that most other worshippers feel the same way. But I usually count it a blessing to sing even those hymns I don’t particularly care for. I am grateful for talented and willing accompanists. I have often taken my turn as music director, but in wards like mine a director is hardly needed. The congregation follows the organist.
The current edition of the LDS Hymn book was published in 1985, so it is a quarter century old this year. The previous edition came out in 1948/1950, some 35+ years earlier. A lot of sacred LDS music has been written since 1985, but given the track record, I assume that it will be quite a while before a new LDS hymnal is published. In the meantime, the hymns in the 1985 edition will continue to bring peace and joy to me and hopefully to many others.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Our Scout Flag Fundraising Project
Our local Boy Scout troop runs a perpetual patriotic fundraiser that is employed by many troops in our area. Scouts sell subscriptions to place an American flag on the subscriber’s property on certain patriotic holidays each year.
I was serving in the sponsoring institution’s leadership at the time this fundraiser was proposed a number of years ago. Mine was one of the voices against the plan. But that turned out to be the minority opinion. So the fundraiser went forward.
The cost of an annual subscription must be minimized, while the net revenue from the operation must be maximized. This usually means getting cheap flags and poles. In our case, as is the case with every other similar project that I know of, cheap lightweight flags are permanently attached to 8’ pieces of ¾” diameter PVC pipe using plastic cinch strips. A short piece of rebar is pounded into the parking strip, and the end of the pipe is placed over the rebar.
One of my objections to this project had to do with the fact that it didn’t seem to teach proper respect for our nation’s flag. According to the U.S. Flag Code, §176(e), “The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.” Rolling the flag around a piece of PVC, and chucking it into the back of a truck strikes me as less than complete compliance with the code.
The way the project works in our troop, new subscribers pay $30 for the first year. Returning subscribers pay $25 annually. The $5 surcharge for new subscribers is meant to cover the cost of materials. Scouts put the flags up on 10 holidays annually. That’s a cost of $2.50 (or $3) per day. The proceeds are used to help defray the cost of the troop’s annual weeklong summer camp.
After my oldest son entered the troop, we got to where we started to hate certain holidays. The flags had to be put up around sunrise and then taken down around sunset on these days. It put a crimp on family activities.
We had a large troop back then. The practice was for boys to show up at the scoutmaster’s house early in the morning. The flags were usually divided between two or three vehicles, which ferried the flags and the boys around to do the setup. The process was repeated in reverse in the evening. Sometimes there weren’t many helpers. Families often go away on these holidays. My son/s was/were gone for 60-90 minutes each of these mornings and 60-90 minutes each of these evenings.
The scoutmaster divided the total amount of annual subscriptions (less the cost of new and replacement equipment) by 10 to get the amount allotted to each holiday. That amount was divided equally among the boys that showed up to do the work each time. Frequently this meant that my sons earned less than $5 for three hours of work.
That didn’t seem like a very good deal. With revenue that low, why not just put up the flags as a cost-free service? After all, my sons could earn better wages toward camp by mowing lawns and cleaning cars in the neighborhood.
The troop and the sponsoring institution have gone through leadership changes since then. There have been other changes too. The troop has half the number of boys, for one thing. The current scoutmaster only issues and receives flags. He does not participate in putting them up or taking them down.
This new method is far more family friendly. Each Scout signs up for a specific flag route that covers about 10 homes. The Scout and his family are responsible for picking the flags up the evening prior to the holiday, setting them up in the morning, taking them down late in the day, and getting the flags back to the scoutmaster.
(Yes, I know that a troop with a fully functional troop committee would handle this stuff so that the scoutmaster could deal with his central duties. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ideal situation?)
The process now takes about 20 minutes in the morning and about 20 minutes in the evening. Parents bear the cost of using their own vehicles, but there is no waiting around for others to show up. Each Scout has a stewardship over a specific route. This is much better than doing the setup and takedown en masse.
Given the number of subscribers, each boy currently earns $10 for setup and $10 for takedown. So each Scout can earn $20 per patriotic holiday. If it’s a holiday when lots of Scouts are gone, an enterprising boy might be able to pick up an extra route, thus earning $40 that day for a little over an hour of work.
One drawback recently came to light. The troop recently grew by three boys. No boys will move out of the troop until the end of summer. The scoutmaster believes that it would be counterproductive to rework the routes and pay rates for such a temporary change, when it looks like the troop roster will stabilize after that for a long time.
So, for the next few months, there will be competition between the boys to get a route. The scoutmaster says he will likely end up rotating the routes to provide for equal opportunity. That means that some boys will have to come up with more money on their own to pay for camp. I suppose that’s not such a bad thing.
Even though the scoutmaster doesn’t do the setup or takedown of the flags any more, administering the project can still be burdensome. Someone has to be there to distribute the flags, look to make sure they get put up, and then receive the flags back into storage. Ah, the sacrifices one makes to be a scoutmaster.
Regarding my fears about disrespecting the American flag, I guess I’ve learned that there is a tradeoff. You don’t want a boy to be casual about handling the flag. But having them put up and take down a number of flags 10 times annually over several years can instill some patriotic values that might not be learned otherwise. Still, I have noticed that in an effort to maximize profits, the troop is sometimes slow to replace flags that get worn or soiled.
Over the years I have learned that the Scout flag fundraiser can provide an overall good experience. Or not — depending on how it is handled.
I was serving in the sponsoring institution’s leadership at the time this fundraiser was proposed a number of years ago. Mine was one of the voices against the plan. But that turned out to be the minority opinion. So the fundraiser went forward.
The cost of an annual subscription must be minimized, while the net revenue from the operation must be maximized. This usually means getting cheap flags and poles. In our case, as is the case with every other similar project that I know of, cheap lightweight flags are permanently attached to 8’ pieces of ¾” diameter PVC pipe using plastic cinch strips. A short piece of rebar is pounded into the parking strip, and the end of the pipe is placed over the rebar.
One of my objections to this project had to do with the fact that it didn’t seem to teach proper respect for our nation’s flag. According to the U.S. Flag Code, §176(e), “The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.” Rolling the flag around a piece of PVC, and chucking it into the back of a truck strikes me as less than complete compliance with the code.
The way the project works in our troop, new subscribers pay $30 for the first year. Returning subscribers pay $25 annually. The $5 surcharge for new subscribers is meant to cover the cost of materials. Scouts put the flags up on 10 holidays annually. That’s a cost of $2.50 (or $3) per day. The proceeds are used to help defray the cost of the troop’s annual weeklong summer camp.
After my oldest son entered the troop, we got to where we started to hate certain holidays. The flags had to be put up around sunrise and then taken down around sunset on these days. It put a crimp on family activities.
We had a large troop back then. The practice was for boys to show up at the scoutmaster’s house early in the morning. The flags were usually divided between two or three vehicles, which ferried the flags and the boys around to do the setup. The process was repeated in reverse in the evening. Sometimes there weren’t many helpers. Families often go away on these holidays. My son/s was/were gone for 60-90 minutes each of these mornings and 60-90 minutes each of these evenings.
The scoutmaster divided the total amount of annual subscriptions (less the cost of new and replacement equipment) by 10 to get the amount allotted to each holiday. That amount was divided equally among the boys that showed up to do the work each time. Frequently this meant that my sons earned less than $5 for three hours of work.
That didn’t seem like a very good deal. With revenue that low, why not just put up the flags as a cost-free service? After all, my sons could earn better wages toward camp by mowing lawns and cleaning cars in the neighborhood.
The troop and the sponsoring institution have gone through leadership changes since then. There have been other changes too. The troop has half the number of boys, for one thing. The current scoutmaster only issues and receives flags. He does not participate in putting them up or taking them down.
This new method is far more family friendly. Each Scout signs up for a specific flag route that covers about 10 homes. The Scout and his family are responsible for picking the flags up the evening prior to the holiday, setting them up in the morning, taking them down late in the day, and getting the flags back to the scoutmaster.
(Yes, I know that a troop with a fully functional troop committee would handle this stuff so that the scoutmaster could deal with his central duties. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ideal situation?)
The process now takes about 20 minutes in the morning and about 20 minutes in the evening. Parents bear the cost of using their own vehicles, but there is no waiting around for others to show up. Each Scout has a stewardship over a specific route. This is much better than doing the setup and takedown en masse.
Given the number of subscribers, each boy currently earns $10 for setup and $10 for takedown. So each Scout can earn $20 per patriotic holiday. If it’s a holiday when lots of Scouts are gone, an enterprising boy might be able to pick up an extra route, thus earning $40 that day for a little over an hour of work.
One drawback recently came to light. The troop recently grew by three boys. No boys will move out of the troop until the end of summer. The scoutmaster believes that it would be counterproductive to rework the routes and pay rates for such a temporary change, when it looks like the troop roster will stabilize after that for a long time.
So, for the next few months, there will be competition between the boys to get a route. The scoutmaster says he will likely end up rotating the routes to provide for equal opportunity. That means that some boys will have to come up with more money on their own to pay for camp. I suppose that’s not such a bad thing.
Even though the scoutmaster doesn’t do the setup or takedown of the flags any more, administering the project can still be burdensome. Someone has to be there to distribute the flags, look to make sure they get put up, and then receive the flags back into storage. Ah, the sacrifices one makes to be a scoutmaster.
Regarding my fears about disrespecting the American flag, I guess I’ve learned that there is a tradeoff. You don’t want a boy to be casual about handling the flag. But having them put up and take down a number of flags 10 times annually over several years can instill some patriotic values that might not be learned otherwise. Still, I have noticed that in an effort to maximize profits, the troop is sometimes slow to replace flags that get worn or soiled.
Over the years I have learned that the Scout flag fundraiser can provide an overall good experience. Or not — depending on how it is handled.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Government Bureaucrats Aim to Keep Scouts Out of Yellowstone Back Country
At the age of 12 I made my first foray into the back country of Yellowstone National Park with my Boy Scout troop. By age 17, I was guiding Boy Scout troops into the Yellowstone back country as a member of the staff at Camp Loll, which is located about two miles south of the southern border of the park.
Throughout my adult life I have on various occasions hiked into the Yellowstone back country with Boy Scout groups. My oldest two sons have also guided troops on Yellowstone hikes as members of the Camp Loll staff. I have been looking forward to hiking to Union Falls with my #3 son’s troop this summer.
Now, thanks to a bureaucratic response to a Sierra Club lawsuit, my son and thousands of other young Americans may never get an opportunity to enjoy the back country of our nation’s premier national park.
Yellowstone National Park officials have worked closely with the Camp Loll staff for many years to train back country guides, provide marvelous back country experiences to thousands of young Boy Scouts, and help the Scouts minimize impact to this rare and delicate environment. The BSA has not only complied with all requirements, but has taken extra precautions to improve the back country and to minimize impact.
Despite this long and successful partnership between the BSA and the NPS, new rules were recently imposed that would essentially destroy Camp Loll’s back country hiking program. Under the rules, nonprofit group usage of the park’s back country now falls under the auspices of the park’s Concession Management Division (CMD).
With no warning or public input, the CMD has arbitrarily imposed severe limits on the number of Scouts that can hike to the destinations most popular to Camp Loll hikers. Under these rules, thousands of young Americans will be prohibited from experiencing the national heritage that has presumably been preserved for them (per the act that created the park service).
Delose Conner, director of Camp Loll, provides more details on this matter in his own blog post.
There are those that pose as friends of the environment that would turn our nation’s wilderness areas into private reserves for favored groups. In a day when many such groups complain that our youth do not get out into nature enough, some actively work to keep young Americans out of nature.
Our national parks belong to all Americans, not just those with an elitist mindset. It is wrong to prevent those that responsibly use and maintain the back country from enjoying its use. Fortunately, it’s not too late to prevent this tragedy. Timely letters and emails can remedy the problem in time for the upcoming summer season.
Letters should be sent to your congressional representative and your senators, to the superintendent of Yellowstone, and to the head of the park’s CMD. Delose provides addresses in his post. He also provides a copy of the letter he is sending in this post.
Were it not for my involvement in the BSA, I probably would never have ventured into the Yellowstone back country. I would never have experienced the natural wonders of Union Falls and Terraced Falls. I may never have learned proper conservation techniques. Countless others fall into this same category. Don’t let the elitists and the bureaucrats lock our youth out of areas that, as Americans, they have every right to enjoy.
Throughout my adult life I have on various occasions hiked into the Yellowstone back country with Boy Scout groups. My oldest two sons have also guided troops on Yellowstone hikes as members of the Camp Loll staff. I have been looking forward to hiking to Union Falls with my #3 son’s troop this summer.
Now, thanks to a bureaucratic response to a Sierra Club lawsuit, my son and thousands of other young Americans may never get an opportunity to enjoy the back country of our nation’s premier national park.
Yellowstone National Park officials have worked closely with the Camp Loll staff for many years to train back country guides, provide marvelous back country experiences to thousands of young Boy Scouts, and help the Scouts minimize impact to this rare and delicate environment. The BSA has not only complied with all requirements, but has taken extra precautions to improve the back country and to minimize impact.
Despite this long and successful partnership between the BSA and the NPS, new rules were recently imposed that would essentially destroy Camp Loll’s back country hiking program. Under the rules, nonprofit group usage of the park’s back country now falls under the auspices of the park’s Concession Management Division (CMD).
With no warning or public input, the CMD has arbitrarily imposed severe limits on the number of Scouts that can hike to the destinations most popular to Camp Loll hikers. Under these rules, thousands of young Americans will be prohibited from experiencing the national heritage that has presumably been preserved for them (per the act that created the park service).
Delose Conner, director of Camp Loll, provides more details on this matter in his own blog post.
There are those that pose as friends of the environment that would turn our nation’s wilderness areas into private reserves for favored groups. In a day when many such groups complain that our youth do not get out into nature enough, some actively work to keep young Americans out of nature.
Our national parks belong to all Americans, not just those with an elitist mindset. It is wrong to prevent those that responsibly use and maintain the back country from enjoying its use. Fortunately, it’s not too late to prevent this tragedy. Timely letters and emails can remedy the problem in time for the upcoming summer season.
Letters should be sent to your congressional representative and your senators, to the superintendent of Yellowstone, and to the head of the park’s CMD. Delose provides addresses in his post. He also provides a copy of the letter he is sending in this post.
Were it not for my involvement in the BSA, I probably would never have ventured into the Yellowstone back country. I would never have experienced the natural wonders of Union Falls and Terraced Falls. I may never have learned proper conservation techniques. Countless others fall into this same category. Don’t let the elitists and the bureaucrats lock our youth out of areas that, as Americans, they have every right to enjoy.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Social Studies
School was a difficult time for me — especially my elementary and junior high years. Each school has its own micro-culture. And just like any cultural microcosm, the first order of business is to determine the pecking order — the hierarchy of power.
For students, the process of doing that differs somewhat between boys and girls, but it can be fairly brutal for either group. Actually, I think it’s much simpler for boys. Everything is governed according to size, aggressiveness, and athletic ability. As you get older, there is some credit given for academic ability. But sometimes this can even work against a boy with his peers, as he can become regarded as a teacher’s pet — in effect, being labeled as a shill for the wardens.
The rule is pretty straightforward. The boys that win the size-aggression-athlete lottery intimidate, beat on, and treat as inferior and subservient the boys that come up short on this scale. It doesn’t take long for the boys entering Kindergarten to figure out the hierarchy. Move-ins, move-outs, and physical changes can alter the dynamics somewhat over time, but many are permanently relegated to the same approximate classification throughout their school years.
Just being big doesn’t necessarily push you up the scale either. A big boy that is shy and is poor at sports is likely to spend his school years as a member of the disrespected grunt class. From my earliest years, I knew a boy named Joey that was like that.
Being one of the youngest kids in my class — I was more than a year younger than many members of my class — I was perpetually way behind the average in physical development. Moreover, I seem to have come into this world athletically impaired. I was (am) lousy at sports and I was always one of the last to be picked for any kind of team athletic event.
Being good at sports can help overcome being small of stature. I went to school with Ray from first grade on. Although he was smaller than me, he was great at sports. So he ranked among the popular group in the hierarchy.
Early in life I developed an intense aversion to sports that continues to this day. I don’t know how much money you’d have to pay to get me to watch a whole football game from start to end. You’d have to pay me a lot more to watch a baseball game because I find the sport incredibly boring. Aside from the occasional Olympic event, I don’t watch sports unless one of my children is playing.
In some ways, I think girls have it much worse than boys. Their method of deriving a pecking order is far more complex and sometimes more insidious than the male model. There’s a reason that the word “catty” is used in the English language almost exclusively to describe interactions between human females.
There is also a reason that American politics is heavily dominated by men, some notable exceptions notwithstanding. Our nation’s top politicians are rank political amateurs compared to the average eighth grade girl wending her way through the political minefield that makes up the relationship hierarchy among peers. Why reduce oneself to a lower political status?
Boys can be friends one day, have a scuffle the next, and then be pals again the following day. But if girls that are friends have a falling out, they’ll often end up being enemies FOREVER. Boy fights and girl fights also differ. Despite all the stuff about finesse in boxing or martial arts, most boy fights come down to an exchange of a few clumsy blows.
I got in a few ‘fights’ during my school years. I was challenged several times by guys that, I guess, figured I was marginally wimpier than them. There was a lot of pressure not to chicken out of an after school fight, even if you didn’t think there was any reason for fighting.
The only time any of my fights actually came to physical blows was in the fifth grade when a boy named Ken challenged me to a fight with the warning that he and his friends would get me if I failed to show up. To this day, I still don’t understand what it was we were supposed to be fighting about — perhaps just to establish pecking order and nothing else.
Of course, there were other guys there to make sure it all went off. At first, I just kept refusing to fight. I wouldn’t even put my school stuff down. Then Ken came at me and grabbed me in what I guess was supposed to be some kind of wrestling move. In a panicked response, I brought the ukulele I was holding squarely down on Ken’s noggin. About a quarter of the back panel of the instrument broke off. Ken stood back, laughed derisively, and said, “That didn’t hurt!” But in his eyes I could tell otherwise.
Ken and his friends called out some insults. But the fight was over. I went home scared, angry, and confused. But none of those guys ever bothered me again. The broken ukulele still worked for another 10 years.
I still remember the first time I saw two girls at school engaged in a “catfight.” That turned out to be an appropriate name for the activity. I viewed the spectacle on the front lawn of the school as a girl named Cindy and another girl whose name I can’t remember screeched, scratched, hissed, ripped hair, and otherwise acted very much like two cats fighting. It wasn’t pretty, but it was hard to look away.
Being stuck down low on the school social hierarchy can be painful. Being one of the youngest in my class, I was also perpetually developmentally behind the average class member. I can remember sitting in math class in elementary school, watching others around me busily completing their tests, while I sat there without the slightest comprehension of what I was supposed to do on the test. I got used to being stupid in almost every subject.
The situation didn’t improve much during junior high school. But in the last two years of high school, it was as if someone flipped a switch in my head that suddenly made almost everything I worked on highly comprehensible. I earned top grades during those years while hardly ever taking homework home.
For me, school was a place I had to go that was filled with tasks I had to do. Although I occasionally engaged in extracurricular school related activities, I preferred to stay away from the place during off hours. I didn’t get into the social scene at school and I was always eager to leave at the end of the school day.
My wife, on the other hand, found tremendous social fulfillment at school. She still gets together several times each year with a group of women that were schoolmates back in the day. I tolerate attending her high school class reunions, but I avoid attending mine. I didn’t enjoy hanging out with those folks years ago. Why would I want to hang out with them now?
My graduation celebration was rather simple. After turning in our caps and gowns following commencement exercises held in the school’s gym, I went with some friends to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I then went home because I had to get up early in the morning to go to work.
Before going to bed, I looked through the yearbook. I was surprised to find myself crying and feeling something very strange. I had been engaged in compulsory public education for a dozen years and had endured what for me was a fairly unpleasant social structure. Still, it was as if I was mourning the passing of an era. It was like being at a funeral. How could there be any life worth living beyond what I had known for most of my young life?
But life teaches us some wonderful lessons. One of them is that life goes on even after major milestones. I spent that summer working at a Boy Scout camp in a remote area of the Tetons. By the time I returned at the end of the summer, I was preparing to begin college. Since graduation night those years ago, I have never had even a single moment of pining for my old school days. Of course, given where I was on the social ladder in that culture, there’s little wonder that I’m grateful that those days are long past.
For students, the process of doing that differs somewhat between boys and girls, but it can be fairly brutal for either group. Actually, I think it’s much simpler for boys. Everything is governed according to size, aggressiveness, and athletic ability. As you get older, there is some credit given for academic ability. But sometimes this can even work against a boy with his peers, as he can become regarded as a teacher’s pet — in effect, being labeled as a shill for the wardens.
The rule is pretty straightforward. The boys that win the size-aggression-athlete lottery intimidate, beat on, and treat as inferior and subservient the boys that come up short on this scale. It doesn’t take long for the boys entering Kindergarten to figure out the hierarchy. Move-ins, move-outs, and physical changes can alter the dynamics somewhat over time, but many are permanently relegated to the same approximate classification throughout their school years.
Just being big doesn’t necessarily push you up the scale either. A big boy that is shy and is poor at sports is likely to spend his school years as a member of the disrespected grunt class. From my earliest years, I knew a boy named Joey that was like that.
Being one of the youngest kids in my class — I was more than a year younger than many members of my class — I was perpetually way behind the average in physical development. Moreover, I seem to have come into this world athletically impaired. I was (am) lousy at sports and I was always one of the last to be picked for any kind of team athletic event.
Being good at sports can help overcome being small of stature. I went to school with Ray from first grade on. Although he was smaller than me, he was great at sports. So he ranked among the popular group in the hierarchy.
Early in life I developed an intense aversion to sports that continues to this day. I don’t know how much money you’d have to pay to get me to watch a whole football game from start to end. You’d have to pay me a lot more to watch a baseball game because I find the sport incredibly boring. Aside from the occasional Olympic event, I don’t watch sports unless one of my children is playing.
In some ways, I think girls have it much worse than boys. Their method of deriving a pecking order is far more complex and sometimes more insidious than the male model. There’s a reason that the word “catty” is used in the English language almost exclusively to describe interactions between human females.
There is also a reason that American politics is heavily dominated by men, some notable exceptions notwithstanding. Our nation’s top politicians are rank political amateurs compared to the average eighth grade girl wending her way through the political minefield that makes up the relationship hierarchy among peers. Why reduce oneself to a lower political status?
Boys can be friends one day, have a scuffle the next, and then be pals again the following day. But if girls that are friends have a falling out, they’ll often end up being enemies FOREVER. Boy fights and girl fights also differ. Despite all the stuff about finesse in boxing or martial arts, most boy fights come down to an exchange of a few clumsy blows.
I got in a few ‘fights’ during my school years. I was challenged several times by guys that, I guess, figured I was marginally wimpier than them. There was a lot of pressure not to chicken out of an after school fight, even if you didn’t think there was any reason for fighting.
The only time any of my fights actually came to physical blows was in the fifth grade when a boy named Ken challenged me to a fight with the warning that he and his friends would get me if I failed to show up. To this day, I still don’t understand what it was we were supposed to be fighting about — perhaps just to establish pecking order and nothing else.
Of course, there were other guys there to make sure it all went off. At first, I just kept refusing to fight. I wouldn’t even put my school stuff down. Then Ken came at me and grabbed me in what I guess was supposed to be some kind of wrestling move. In a panicked response, I brought the ukulele I was holding squarely down on Ken’s noggin. About a quarter of the back panel of the instrument broke off. Ken stood back, laughed derisively, and said, “That didn’t hurt!” But in his eyes I could tell otherwise.
Ken and his friends called out some insults. But the fight was over. I went home scared, angry, and confused. But none of those guys ever bothered me again. The broken ukulele still worked for another 10 years.
I still remember the first time I saw two girls at school engaged in a “catfight.” That turned out to be an appropriate name for the activity. I viewed the spectacle on the front lawn of the school as a girl named Cindy and another girl whose name I can’t remember screeched, scratched, hissed, ripped hair, and otherwise acted very much like two cats fighting. It wasn’t pretty, but it was hard to look away.
Being stuck down low on the school social hierarchy can be painful. Being one of the youngest in my class, I was also perpetually developmentally behind the average class member. I can remember sitting in math class in elementary school, watching others around me busily completing their tests, while I sat there without the slightest comprehension of what I was supposed to do on the test. I got used to being stupid in almost every subject.
The situation didn’t improve much during junior high school. But in the last two years of high school, it was as if someone flipped a switch in my head that suddenly made almost everything I worked on highly comprehensible. I earned top grades during those years while hardly ever taking homework home.
For me, school was a place I had to go that was filled with tasks I had to do. Although I occasionally engaged in extracurricular school related activities, I preferred to stay away from the place during off hours. I didn’t get into the social scene at school and I was always eager to leave at the end of the school day.
My wife, on the other hand, found tremendous social fulfillment at school. She still gets together several times each year with a group of women that were schoolmates back in the day. I tolerate attending her high school class reunions, but I avoid attending mine. I didn’t enjoy hanging out with those folks years ago. Why would I want to hang out with them now?
My graduation celebration was rather simple. After turning in our caps and gowns following commencement exercises held in the school’s gym, I went with some friends to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I then went home because I had to get up early in the morning to go to work.
Before going to bed, I looked through the yearbook. I was surprised to find myself crying and feeling something very strange. I had been engaged in compulsory public education for a dozen years and had endured what for me was a fairly unpleasant social structure. Still, it was as if I was mourning the passing of an era. It was like being at a funeral. How could there be any life worth living beyond what I had known for most of my young life?
But life teaches us some wonderful lessons. One of them is that life goes on even after major milestones. I spent that summer working at a Boy Scout camp in a remote area of the Tetons. By the time I returned at the end of the summer, I was preparing to begin college. Since graduation night those years ago, I have never had even a single moment of pining for my old school days. Of course, given where I was on the social ladder in that culture, there’s little wonder that I’m grateful that those days are long past.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Personal Greatness
In a church meeting I attended yesterday, the speaker asked the attendees to think of those few people they had known that they would consider to be truly great. It didn’t take me long to formulate a quick list. I was actually a bit surprised at the first couple of names that popped into my head.
The speaker then asked us to think about what factors made these people great. He then suggested a point that might be drawn from this exercise. I found that I had thought in quite a different direction. Not an opposing direction; just different.
As a side note, I find that I am less prone to single-threaded thinking than I used to be. It used to be that when I found myself drawing different conclusions than an instructor, I would immediately chide myself and work to correct the discrepancy. I have come to realize, however, that in some cases there is no single correct answer and that there can be value in exploring other thought trails.
I sat and mulled over what it was that made those on my list great. My first thought was that each of these people had taken a personal interest in me and had served me. That is, I had (at least at some point in time) a personal relationship with each of these individuals. Each had demonstrated individual concern for me. Moreover, each one engendered in me a sense of personal value.
But there was something more to it. I thought of others that didn’t make my list that had, nevertheless, helped me comprehend my personal value and with whom I had been close. I realized that each of the individuals on my list had helped me stretch to achieve and become more than I thought was possible for me. Sometimes this meant enduring uncomfortable situations. Each of these individuals had required me to try again when I failed and had been confident of my eventual success.
Still, there seemed to be yet another element that was missing, because I could think of a few for whom I could check both of these first two boxes but that were not on my list of greats. I finally concluded that each of my ‘greats’ had been devoted to a cause that was bigger than themselves. They weren’t sacrificing just to do their duty. They cared about the success of a greater cause.
There are probably other elements at play as well. But, in general I can say that the people on my list of those I have known that have demonstrated personal greatness:
My life has been blessed by association with great individuals. I doubt that any on my list would consider themselves to be possessed of greatness. But that’s just another point in their favor.
The speaker then asked us to think about what factors made these people great. He then suggested a point that might be drawn from this exercise. I found that I had thought in quite a different direction. Not an opposing direction; just different.
As a side note, I find that I am less prone to single-threaded thinking than I used to be. It used to be that when I found myself drawing different conclusions than an instructor, I would immediately chide myself and work to correct the discrepancy. I have come to realize, however, that in some cases there is no single correct answer and that there can be value in exploring other thought trails.
I sat and mulled over what it was that made those on my list great. My first thought was that each of these people had taken a personal interest in me and had served me. That is, I had (at least at some point in time) a personal relationship with each of these individuals. Each had demonstrated individual concern for me. Moreover, each one engendered in me a sense of personal value.
But there was something more to it. I thought of others that didn’t make my list that had, nevertheless, helped me comprehend my personal value and with whom I had been close. I realized that each of the individuals on my list had helped me stretch to achieve and become more than I thought was possible for me. Sometimes this meant enduring uncomfortable situations. Each of these individuals had required me to try again when I failed and had been confident of my eventual success.
Still, there seemed to be yet another element that was missing, because I could think of a few for whom I could check both of these first two boxes but that were not on my list of greats. I finally concluded that each of my ‘greats’ had been devoted to a cause that was bigger than themselves. They weren’t sacrificing just to do their duty. They cared about the success of a greater cause.
There are probably other elements at play as well. But, in general I can say that the people on my list of those I have known that have demonstrated personal greatness:
- Cared about and served me personally.
- Saw more in me than I saw in myself and helped me become better than I thought I could be.
- Were dedicated to a greater cause.
My life has been blessed by association with great individuals. I doubt that any on my list would consider themselves to be possessed of greatness. But that’s just another point in their favor.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Least of These
A few months ago, our family went on vacation to three national parks: Zion, Grand Canyon, and Bryce Canyon. I had never been to Bryce Canyon and none of our children had visited any these three parks. We enjoyed our trip and had the opportunity of interacting with a number of foreign tourists.
During the tourist season (from the beginning of April through the latter part of October), a shuttle system operates in Zion NP “to eliminate traffic and parking problems, protect vegetation, and restore tranquility to Zion Canyon.”
On one of our shuttle rides, I ended up seated directly behind the bus driver with some of the other family members to my right. We sat on a bench that faced a similar bench on the other side of the bus. Across from me sat a fellow that came across as the embodiment of a stereotypical good ol’ southern boy. His drawl, body shape, manner of grooming, and dress all lent to this image.
As the bus started to move, this southern fellow leaned forward and engaged the bus driver in conversation. He talked about how he was traveling around the west and sleeping in the back of his pickup truck. An older couple ended up seated next to this man at the next stop.
Throughout the remainder of the trip, our southern traveling companion went into great detail about his 1988 Toyota pickup truck, his truck’s shell (complete with details of its purchase and installation), his camping setup in the bed of the truck, and various ailments that had necessitated better padding to sleep on.
The bus driver was very kind and accommodating. The rest of us on the two facing benches sat quietly; being careful to avoid looking directly at the man for fear that we would be forced to become active members of his captive audience instead of just playing a passive role.
It was with great relief that I exited the shuttle at our destination. Given that this was an end terminal, almost all riders left the shuttle. We gathered our brood at a large 3D model of the canyon that was placed outside of a service building.
As we looked at the model and noted some of the places we had visited or seen that day, we saw the older couple that had sat across from us approaching in the stream of people passing by. The gentleman stopped and with a twinkle in his eye asked, “Do you now know more about 1988 Toyota pickup trucks than you ever wanted to know?” As we turned toward him, he feigned embarrassment and asked, “You’re not friends of Bubba’s, are you?” We all had a good laugh.
A few minutes later as we drove toward the park entrance, I made some kind of disparaging remark about “Bubba.” My wife didn’t take up my mirthful attitude. Instead, she said that she thought that the bus driver had been very kind. “Bubba,” she said, seemed like a very lonely man. By giving him a willing audience for a few minutes, the bus driver likely helped the man’s day along.
Duly admonished, I thought of the Savior’s teaching in Matthew 25:31-46. At the Judgment, He will send those on His left hand away because they failed to appropriately help Him. They will ask (v44), “Lord, when saw we thee … a stranger … and did not minister unto thee?” He will answer (v45), “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”
I realized that I had failed to render to “one of the least of these” aid that I could easily have given — in this case, a simple human kindness of caring concern that likely would have endured only for a short bus ride.
During the tourist season (from the beginning of April through the latter part of October), a shuttle system operates in Zion NP “to eliminate traffic and parking problems, protect vegetation, and restore tranquility to Zion Canyon.”
On one of our shuttle rides, I ended up seated directly behind the bus driver with some of the other family members to my right. We sat on a bench that faced a similar bench on the other side of the bus. Across from me sat a fellow that came across as the embodiment of a stereotypical good ol’ southern boy. His drawl, body shape, manner of grooming, and dress all lent to this image.
As the bus started to move, this southern fellow leaned forward and engaged the bus driver in conversation. He talked about how he was traveling around the west and sleeping in the back of his pickup truck. An older couple ended up seated next to this man at the next stop.
Throughout the remainder of the trip, our southern traveling companion went into great detail about his 1988 Toyota pickup truck, his truck’s shell (complete with details of its purchase and installation), his camping setup in the bed of the truck, and various ailments that had necessitated better padding to sleep on.
The bus driver was very kind and accommodating. The rest of us on the two facing benches sat quietly; being careful to avoid looking directly at the man for fear that we would be forced to become active members of his captive audience instead of just playing a passive role.
It was with great relief that I exited the shuttle at our destination. Given that this was an end terminal, almost all riders left the shuttle. We gathered our brood at a large 3D model of the canyon that was placed outside of a service building.
As we looked at the model and noted some of the places we had visited or seen that day, we saw the older couple that had sat across from us approaching in the stream of people passing by. The gentleman stopped and with a twinkle in his eye asked, “Do you now know more about 1988 Toyota pickup trucks than you ever wanted to know?” As we turned toward him, he feigned embarrassment and asked, “You’re not friends of Bubba’s, are you?” We all had a good laugh.
A few minutes later as we drove toward the park entrance, I made some kind of disparaging remark about “Bubba.” My wife didn’t take up my mirthful attitude. Instead, she said that she thought that the bus driver had been very kind. “Bubba,” she said, seemed like a very lonely man. By giving him a willing audience for a few minutes, the bus driver likely helped the man’s day along.
Duly admonished, I thought of the Savior’s teaching in Matthew 25:31-46. At the Judgment, He will send those on His left hand away because they failed to appropriately help Him. They will ask (v44), “Lord, when saw we thee … a stranger … and did not minister unto thee?” He will answer (v45), “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”
I realized that I had failed to render to “one of the least of these” aid that I could easily have given — in this case, a simple human kindness of caring concern that likely would have endured only for a short bus ride.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The Current Freedom Recession
2009 brought us the fourth consecutive year of a ‘freedom recession.’ So says Freedom House, an independent non-profit organization that “advocates for democracy and human rights.”
Freedom House has been producing reports on human freedom since the 1950s. It registered its first Freedom in the World report in 1972. The methodology behind the report notes that it is necessarily somewhat subjective, but employs a fairly rigorous framework. The checklist used helps provide an understanding of what lies behind the organization’s rankings.
Freedom House measures freedom “according to two broad categories: political rights and civil liberties.” The organization’s website states:
The continent that saw the most freedom declines was Africa. “…virtually all of the countries in the non-Baltic former Soviet Union continued to pursue a repressive course….” Latin America saw its share of problems too. The continent with the most freedom gains was Asia.
A perusal of the rankings of independent countries and the table of political rights and civil liberties by country are intriguing. (The lower the score, the more freedom enjoyed.) I note that some of the nations listed as most free suffered under intense communist repression a mere two decades ago. So there is hope yet.
46 percent of the world’s population is judged to be free. 20 percent is “partly free.” The rest; more than “2.3 billion people live in societies where fundamental political rights and civil liberties are not respected.” Moreover, it seems to me that we have entered into a phase where the freer nations of the world are content to let those billions languish in the name of maintaining a chimera of peace. No doubt this results at least somewhat from a backlash against the adventurism of the past decade.
Anyone can set up a standard to measure anything. No one is obliged to accept anyone’s judgment on a given matter unless agreement exists on the standard employed and its implementation. Some that earnestly promote human liberty would likely have a different system that would produce different results. Measured against a more exacting standard of freedom from undue coercive influence, many of the nations ranked by FH as best would rank as needing improvement. Some of these nations pursue serious anti-liberty agendas.
I suppose that most people in FH’s most free countries would agree, however, that the report at least provides appreciable levels of differentiation. For example, the average person in Micronesia enjoys more freedom than her counterpart in Ecuador, who enjoys more freedom than the average person in Oman, who enjoys more freedom than most in North Korea. Perhaps most citizens of FH’s least free nations would also agree, but that would be impossible to find out.
Freedom House has been producing reports on human freedom since the 1950s. It registered its first Freedom in the World report in 1972. The methodology behind the report notes that it is necessarily somewhat subjective, but employs a fairly rigorous framework. The checklist used helps provide an understanding of what lies behind the organization’s rankings.
Freedom House measures freedom “according to two broad categories: political rights and civil liberties.” The organization’s website states:
“The survey does not rate governments or government performance per se, but rather the real-world rights and freedoms enjoyed by individuals. Thus, while Freedom House considers the presence of legal rights, it places a greater emphasis on whether these rights are implemented in practice. Furthermore, freedoms can be affected by government officials, as well as by nonstate actors, including insurgents and other armed groups.”As noted in this press release, 2009 was the fourth year in a row where “global declines in freedom outweighed gains.” Some nations rolled back recent gains. Also, “the most powerful authoritarian regimes have become more repressive, more influential in the international arena, and more uncompromising.”
The continent that saw the most freedom declines was Africa. “…virtually all of the countries in the non-Baltic former Soviet Union continued to pursue a repressive course….” Latin America saw its share of problems too. The continent with the most freedom gains was Asia.
A perusal of the rankings of independent countries and the table of political rights and civil liberties by country are intriguing. (The lower the score, the more freedom enjoyed.) I note that some of the nations listed as most free suffered under intense communist repression a mere two decades ago. So there is hope yet.
46 percent of the world’s population is judged to be free. 20 percent is “partly free.” The rest; more than “2.3 billion people live in societies where fundamental political rights and civil liberties are not respected.” Moreover, it seems to me that we have entered into a phase where the freer nations of the world are content to let those billions languish in the name of maintaining a chimera of peace. No doubt this results at least somewhat from a backlash against the adventurism of the past decade.
Anyone can set up a standard to measure anything. No one is obliged to accept anyone’s judgment on a given matter unless agreement exists on the standard employed and its implementation. Some that earnestly promote human liberty would likely have a different system that would produce different results. Measured against a more exacting standard of freedom from undue coercive influence, many of the nations ranked by FH as best would rank as needing improvement. Some of these nations pursue serious anti-liberty agendas.
I suppose that most people in FH’s most free countries would agree, however, that the report at least provides appreciable levels of differentiation. For example, the average person in Micronesia enjoys more freedom than her counterpart in Ecuador, who enjoys more freedom than the average person in Oman, who enjoys more freedom than most in North Korea. Perhaps most citizens of FH’s least free nations would also agree, but that would be impossible to find out.
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Family That Laughs Together
I don’t know about your family, but there are moments when my family gets in pretty high spirits. This kind of thing never happens by design. It sometimes starts with some kind of wisecrack. Or perhaps someone happens to find something said by another to be particularly humorous, even when no comedy was intended.
Such was the case a couple of evenings back. It started with a comment by one child that was taken up by another child with a twist. This chain continued until my oldest son said something that was very funny, but somewhat crude. His brother, thinking it to be one of the funniest things he had ever heard, asked, “Where did you hear that?” The oldest replied, “Dad said that to me once.”
I was standing on a stool in the kitchen looking for something in an upper cabinet. “I don’t remember that,” I retorted. “I remember,” he replied. Another child chimed in, “I remember it because I was there.” The oldest then went on to regale the family with a brief tale of how I had uttered this phrase while meting out correction — when trying to get him to settle down for family prayer, no less.
This brief retelling cannot hope to capture that dynamics of the situation. By the time this interchange was finished, the whole family was in stitches. I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t get breath. I got lightheaded enough that I had to step down from the stool for safety sake.
I’m sure that the situation wasn’t nearly that humorous at the time the correction occurred. But it’s surprising how much comedy a decade of time adds to such events. I also note that something that hadn’t been terribly memorable for me turned out to make quite an impression on my young children.
Once my son recounted the experience, I too remembered it. In fact, one of the reasons I was laughing so hard is that in my mind’s eye I saw my younger self in third person uttering those words with sternness. It was such an incongruous picture that it was impossible to take the intended correction with any degree of seriousness.
I’m grateful that our family can laugh together. It’s part of the glue that binds us together. I hope that we can occasionally still have moments like this two or three decades from now.
Such was the case a couple of evenings back. It started with a comment by one child that was taken up by another child with a twist. This chain continued until my oldest son said something that was very funny, but somewhat crude. His brother, thinking it to be one of the funniest things he had ever heard, asked, “Where did you hear that?” The oldest replied, “Dad said that to me once.”
I was standing on a stool in the kitchen looking for something in an upper cabinet. “I don’t remember that,” I retorted. “I remember,” he replied. Another child chimed in, “I remember it because I was there.” The oldest then went on to regale the family with a brief tale of how I had uttered this phrase while meting out correction — when trying to get him to settle down for family prayer, no less.
This brief retelling cannot hope to capture that dynamics of the situation. By the time this interchange was finished, the whole family was in stitches. I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t get breath. I got lightheaded enough that I had to step down from the stool for safety sake.
I’m sure that the situation wasn’t nearly that humorous at the time the correction occurred. But it’s surprising how much comedy a decade of time adds to such events. I also note that something that hadn’t been terribly memorable for me turned out to make quite an impression on my young children.
Once my son recounted the experience, I too remembered it. In fact, one of the reasons I was laughing so hard is that in my mind’s eye I saw my younger self in third person uttering those words with sternness. It was such an incongruous picture that it was impossible to take the intended correction with any degree of seriousness.
I’m grateful that our family can laugh together. It’s part of the glue that binds us together. I hope that we can occasionally still have moments like this two or three decades from now.
Friday, January 08, 2010
So, Without College Football We'd be Stupider?
I have yet to find a compelling argument for public sponsorship of professional and semi-professional athletics. If these entertainment businesses are worth having, let the customers that are so enamored of them foot the entire bill rather than foisting part of it off onto the taxpaying public. (Incidentally, I’d say the same thing for opera.)
Conservative political pundit George Will takes a shot at defending college football in this article. His comments do not delineate between public and private institutions, so his arguments are not a precise match for my concerns. But there is enough there for me to consider the validity of what he has to say.
Let’s get one thing out of the way right up front. College athletic programs comprise a semi-professional sports industry. As Will admits in his article, the athletes are compensated, albeit; through somewhat indirect methods. Coaching staffs are well paid. Some are very highly paid. There is a broad spectrum of people employed in these programs. Those outside of the colleges that also make money through these programs run the gamut from equipment manufacturers to construction contractors to fast food companies to broadcasters to ticket resellers.
Will pooh-poohs the concerns of those that believe that institutions of higher education have no valid reason to be associated with semi-professional sports. Although I think the marriage of higher education and semi-pro sports to be an odd match, I have no problem with private institutions that don’t use public funding to support their sports habit.
College sports programs bring in a lot of money to many schools. While Will notes that forty percent of Division I football programs lose money, those at the high end of the sixty percent of profitable programs bring in a lot of money. After regaling readers with a list of ways money pours into these programs, Will writes:
Nowhere does Will express any concern over the public money that supports these programs. All he talks about is money from boosters. He suggests that without this money, many colleges would never have grown to their current stature. Educational programs, he seems to claim, owe their very existence to college sports. Will relishes the Bear Bryant quote, “It's kind of hard to rally 'round a math class.”
I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for public colleges and universities to have less stature and more educational quality. Will expresses no curiosity about such matters. He would likely retort that stature and educational quality go hand in hand, despite ample evidence that such correlations are ethereal. I also wonder how much of this fundraising is simply done to build bigger sports programs to raise more funds to build bigger sports programs….
Will is nevertheless correct when he suggests that football programs constitute a meaningful cultural ritual. Although I care not one whit for football, it cannot be denied that it has massive impact on American culture. Many follow it with more religious fervor than they follow their own religions. Perhaps separation of church and state should apply to football as well.
Getting back to my original concerns, it is important to note that sixty percent of Division I football programs are profitable only because of the way the books are kept. With rare exception, these programs never repay any of the public dollars they receive. If these programs had to repay all public money, only a nearly nonexistent fraction of them would be profitable.
The best argument that can be cobbled together from Will’s article in favor of public funding of educationally based semi-pro sports programs is that maybe some of these schools wouldn’t be able to offer the kind of educational programs they currently offer without the public support engendered by the cultural ritual of sports.
In other words, sans publicly funded athletic entertainment, we would choose ignorance over enlightenment. I’m not convinced.
Conservative political pundit George Will takes a shot at defending college football in this article. His comments do not delineate between public and private institutions, so his arguments are not a precise match for my concerns. But there is enough there for me to consider the validity of what he has to say.
Let’s get one thing out of the way right up front. College athletic programs comprise a semi-professional sports industry. As Will admits in his article, the athletes are compensated, albeit; through somewhat indirect methods. Coaching staffs are well paid. Some are very highly paid. There is a broad spectrum of people employed in these programs. Those outside of the colleges that also make money through these programs run the gamut from equipment manufacturers to construction contractors to fast food companies to broadcasters to ticket resellers.
Will pooh-poohs the concerns of those that believe that institutions of higher education have no valid reason to be associated with semi-professional sports. Although I think the marriage of higher education and semi-pro sports to be an odd match, I have no problem with private institutions that don’t use public funding to support their sports habit.
College sports programs bring in a lot of money to many schools. While Will notes that forty percent of Division I football programs lose money, those at the high end of the sixty percent of profitable programs bring in a lot of money. After regaling readers with a list of ways money pours into these programs, Will writes:
“Most of the money that flows into big-time football programs from individuals and corporations is tax-deductible for the spenders, and the universities' athletic programs are not taxed. Congress, however ravenous for revenues, will not dare to change this.”Will has no problem with the fact that many so-called student athletes manage to meet NCAA academic requirements in a somewhat less than forthright manner. This, he asserts, is just a symptom of dumb rules that should be dumped. I’m all for dumping the rules that provide a student façade to semi-pro athletes. Let the naked truth of the matter stand for itself. But I think that if that happened, people like Will would soon want the rules back to provide a chimera of educational legitimacy to cover the ugly exposure of reality.
Nowhere does Will express any concern over the public money that supports these programs. All he talks about is money from boosters. He suggests that without this money, many colleges would never have grown to their current stature. Educational programs, he seems to claim, owe their very existence to college sports. Will relishes the Bear Bryant quote, “It's kind of hard to rally 'round a math class.”
I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for public colleges and universities to have less stature and more educational quality. Will expresses no curiosity about such matters. He would likely retort that stature and educational quality go hand in hand, despite ample evidence that such correlations are ethereal. I also wonder how much of this fundraising is simply done to build bigger sports programs to raise more funds to build bigger sports programs….
Will is nevertheless correct when he suggests that football programs constitute a meaningful cultural ritual. Although I care not one whit for football, it cannot be denied that it has massive impact on American culture. Many follow it with more religious fervor than they follow their own religions. Perhaps separation of church and state should apply to football as well.
Getting back to my original concerns, it is important to note that sixty percent of Division I football programs are profitable only because of the way the books are kept. With rare exception, these programs never repay any of the public dollars they receive. If these programs had to repay all public money, only a nearly nonexistent fraction of them would be profitable.
The best argument that can be cobbled together from Will’s article in favor of public funding of educationally based semi-pro sports programs is that maybe some of these schools wouldn’t be able to offer the kind of educational programs they currently offer without the public support engendered by the cultural ritual of sports.
In other words, sans publicly funded athletic entertainment, we would choose ignorance over enlightenment. I’m not convinced.
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