Head Lights

There is a shift occurring in the way our children are being educated today.  Over the past several years, more and more online courses are being offered to high school and college students.  In fact, there are school districts around the country who are working hard to make online courses a mandatory component of their high school curriculums.

Since their inception, online courses have seemed like an efficient tool in educating a greater number of students and the arguments for their increased use in middle school, high school and college sound worthwhile.  Computers are part of our daily lives and students should learn to use them proficiently.  The internet, as a tool for research and knowledge has become de rigueur.  Administrators who support the growth of online classes add that they allow for wider educational opportunities to a greater number of students.  For example, the Early English Literature class typically chosen by only a handful of students would likely be cancelled due to lack of interest.  Now, that course can be offered online, providing those few students with educational enrichment they would otherwise not have been exposed to.  Everyone seems ready to add online education to the remarkable list of benefits drawn from perhaps the greatest invention of modern times – the internet.  Not so fast. 

I suspect the real motivation behind this shift to online education is money.  And that blade cuts in two directions - saving school boards and colleges money on teacher salaries and classroom space while still allowing them to collect ever higher taxes and tuition from us parents.  Can you blame them?  In this time of financial uncertainty and mounting deficits from statehouses to our houses, shouldn’t a cost effective way to educate our youth be celebrated?  The answer depends on how you define “educate.”

In 1978 as a college sophomore studying marketing and management, readying myself for what I hoped would be a high paying and successful career in business, I had very little interest or use for literature.  There was compulsory reading -  the Wall Street Journal for school and the New York Daily news for Yankee scores.  Beyond those, I couldn’t tell you if I had ever read a novel on my own outside of a high school classroom.

The next year everything changed.  That’s the year I met Dr. John Daniels and through him, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Dr. Daniels didn’t look like an English professor.  No beard, no tweed coat with suede elbow patches.  He had withering gray hair, a long face of the same color and a bulbous pink nose.  His ever present pipe jutted out of his jaw silently accepting responsibility for the brownish yellow nuggets that passed for teeth.  But when the old man read passages from Melville’s “Billy Budd”, he smiled an inviting smile and the wretched nuggets became invisible.  All I could see on his face was the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning showing his dad how cool his new toy was and begging him to try it too.  And I did try it and I loved it.  The debates over language, the use of words, phrases and their meanings, not a single meaning but many, open to the reader’s interpretation, the development of rich characters and a story by a creative mind that can captivate a reader, the classroom was a thicket of ideas and Professor Daniels the machete creating light.  I saw things I didn’t see before thanks to this ancient hardscrabble English professor.  Dr. Daniels and his classroom forced me to ask myself questions about my future.  I seriously considered a career change to professor of literature.  In the end I didn’t change, but I was never the same.

Suddenly every class I attended seemed different.  Marketing, advertising, philosophy, they all became a thrilling game I couldn’t wait to play in.  Professors and students, new ideas and viewpoints, questions with no answers, many answers.  The realization came that finding the answer isn’t always what education is about.  The goal of education is the exposure to and engagement of ideas and questions that expand our minds, make us think differently and ultimately make us better and more curious human beings.  A lucky few are disciplined and inquisitive enough to educate themselves through reading - Abraham Lincoln comes to mind.  But for most of us, whether in high school or college, the classroom and its confluence of student, teacher and subject shouldn’t be minimized.   

Asking our high school students to sit in front of already overused computers following a silent, static online curriculum, not to mention abstaining from the temptation to plagiarize from thousands of websites in an attempt to provide a quality education misses the most valuable element of education.  It may save some money and allow a few students read Early English Literature on a brightly lit screen, but that’s no education.  

A Place That's Always Safe and Warm

A few days ago, the son of two very dear friends returned home from a tour of duty as an Army nurse stationed in Afganistan. His arrival home, complete with "Welcome Home Captain Davis" signs and tearful hugs from his wife and family was something I have seen on the news many times but never experienced through close friends. When I saw the photo of the soldier hugging his young wife at the airport, a song immediately began playing in my head, Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm."

It wasn't long before I started putting this homecoming together with Dylan's song. But the song is four and a half minutes long and a simple idea became a bigger production.  And as so often happens in life, things that seem impossible suddenly and inexplicably fall into place; each image plucked out of the internet universe by its destined verse.  When it was done I thought that maybe it was a little overdone and indulgent.  Then I thought about where Captain Davis was and what he was doing for the better part of two years and I thought, maybe not.

Big Bang

In 2009, Paul Haggis, the Hollywood screenwriter with credits including such acclaimed films as “Crash” and “Million Dollar Baby” and a devout follower of the Church of Scientology for thirty four years suddenly left the Church.

After reading his story in The New Yorker this week titled “The Apostate”, I realized there could have been many reasons for Haggis to quit the Church.  First, achievement and growth as a Scientologist is directly tied to study or “auditing” which according to the article’s author Lawrence Wright, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Next were the alleged claims of forced child labor in Scientology’s “Sea Org” and the claims of physical abuse from some members.  Then there was the practice of directing its members to “disconnect” from family and loved ones who were considered by the church to be P.T.S. or S.P. (Potential Trouble Sources or Suppressive Persons) as well as the use of polygraph tests on aspiring Scientologists. 

Finally, if those weren’t enough, there was the unauthorized publication of the Church’s sacred scriptures written by the creator of Church and the author of its foundational book “Dianetics”, L. Ron Hubbard.  This one convinced me that Scientology was nothing more than a lunatic cult.

In 1985, the Los Angles Times printed the Church’s secret scriptures – which the Church allows only the highest ranking Scientologists to read because they could “cause severe damage if read by the uninitiated” – and described them as follows:

“A major cause of mankind’s problems began 75 million years ago when the planet Earth, then called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of ninety planets under the leadership of a despotic ruler named Xenu.”  Overpopulation was a serious problem so Xenu decided to take radical measures and shipped surplus beings to volcanoes on Teegeeack for destruction using H bombs on the volcanoes.  The Times went on to say that “this destroyed the people but freed their spirits called “thetans” which attached themselves to one another in clusters.  These clusters were “trapped in a frozen compound of alcohol and glycol” and were “implanted with the seed of aberrant behavior”.  Finally it said, “when people die, these clusters attach to other humans and keep perpetuating themselves.”

It seemed like there were a host of reasons to choose from in deciding to leave this Church and this lunatic genesis story was certainly at the top of the list.  But Haggis stuck around for twenty four more years.  He didn’t seem to have a problem with a religion based on despots killing excess people and causing spirits to be locked in antifreeze.  It turns out that he quit the Church because of a statement made by one of its California branches.  It seems that the Church’s San Diego office made a public statement of support for California’s Proposition 8 which called for a ban on gay and lesbian marriage.  Haggis asked the Church to renounce Proposition 8 and when it refused – claiming the comments by the San Diego office did not officially speak for the Church of Scientology – Haggis sent them his letter of resignation from the church.  High profile Hollywood celebrities are the heart of the Church of Scientology and when one of them leaves, it creates quite a big bang among Church leadership.

We expect great screenwriters to be creative sorts and you would have to be to believe the genesis story of Scientology wouldn’t you?  He could live with Hubbard’s H bombs in volcanoes on Teegeeack but not with his Church’s support for Proposition 8.  To Haggis, he was asking the Church to take a position on a moral issue not a political one.  His decision to quit was the personification of the highest ethical standards.  Haggis’s actions demonstrated that he had a firm grasp of his moral compass, if not his senses.  There was one fact that made his decision to quit the Church easier; two of Haggis’s daughters are gay. 

Considering the impact Proposition 8 would have on his daughters, tossing away a religion that Haggis had spent thirty four years studying had an air of righteousness. He had reached Scientology’s highest level of achievement – he was an Operating Thetan VII – and had spent over three hundred thousand dollars paying for the courses and audits to achieve that level and yet he threw it all away in a moral act of unselfish love for his children. 

I’m still left with the question of why Haggis and other celebrity Scientologists like Tom Cruise, Anne Archer and John Travolta didn’t run like the wind when they heard the Church’s genesis story.  Aren’t we all sure that if we heard such as story from a religious group that we would prepare strait jackets for all?  Imagine a religion based on a crazy science fiction like Scientology’s, say, a story of an invisible omnipotent spirit being named Elohim who resided in a black void of nothingness before time began who decided to wave his hand and create an infinite universe of fiery hot stars and chemical infused planets. 

Strait jacket anyone?

Mother's Holiday Warmth

It’s that time of year.  The holiday decorations adorn the family room with warm Christmas cheer; the garland glistening with fairytale tinsel; the promise of gifts under the tree and Nat King Cole enticing us to roast chestnuts on our own fire.  Summer is wonderful, but there is nothing quite like a family Christmas.

And is there anyone, besides Santa, who brings Christmas into our homes more than our moms.  Baking sugar cookies, wrapping presents, leaving carrots for the reindeer – yes, it’s mom that makes Christmas the warm family celebration that it is for all of us.  And to toast all the moms who work so hard to make the holidays so special for us, here is, well, a remembrance from a mom that I think we can all identify with.

Happy Holidays to all!

Easy Cocktails from the Cursing Mommy

by Ian Frazier

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Those high-priced bartenders in their red vests and white shirts who your caterers recommended to serve at your last party may know a thing or two, but for entertaining on a smaller scale—for parties of seven people, four, or even just one—a few simple steps to the perfect cocktail are all you’ll ever need. Take, for example, this drink I’m drinking right now. Where the hell did I put it? I just set it down five minutes ago. I had it when I was watching the news, I know that. Now what in hell could I have done with it? O.K.—I found it, thank heavens. I must have set it here on the stairs when I went to throw away the mail. Anyway, as I was saying, making this particular drink, which happens to be a vodka gimlet, is simplicity itself, once you know how. Plus, it’s so delicious! The tangy tartness of the lime juice combined with the antiseptic astringency of the icy-cold vodka—wonderful. 

Now, normally in this column the Cursing Mommy does not endorse any company, product, or institution, but just this once I’m going to make an exception, because, what the hell—I use Rose’s Lime Juice. It’s perfect for gimlets, so I always keep a few extra bottles in reserve in case I run out, as in fact I did just a few minutes ago when I mixed the drink I’m finishing now. The backup bottles, which are down here on the bottom shelf of the liquor cabinet—don’t tell me they’re not here. Please don’t fucking tell me the Rose’s Lime Juice is not fucking here. If Larry took my last spare bottle to use in his fucking Sno-Kone machine, by Christ, I swear I’ll—oh, thank God. Here it is, back behind the Kahlúa and the walnut liqueur. Whew. That was a close one. 

Anyway, you take your Rose’s Lime Juice, you take your favorite gimlet glass (which, for me, is the one I was just using), and—fuck. I have lost my drink again. Somebody please tell me I have not lost my stupid goddam fucking drink again! O.K., it has to be close by, because I had it right before I was hunting around on all fours in front of the liquor cabinet. Wait a minute—can this be it? Here on the counter behind the flour cannister? I don’t think this is it. I’ll just take a sip and—Phewww!! Gahhh! Disgusting! This must be the drink I couldn’t find night before last. Fucking ants in it. Drowned ants. Good Christ, what was I thinking? 

O.K., we have established that that was definitely not the glass I was looking for. In situations like this, the Cursing Mommy recommends that you take three deep breaths, concentrate inwardly on some attractive and relaxing vacation scene, and scream “Fuck!” at the top of your lungs. There—I feel better. Don’t you?  Usually at about this time of the evening I must begin making dinner. Larry and the kids will be home soon. Fortunately, however, tonight is Make Your Own Goddam Dinner Night, a recently instituted family ritual I shared with you in last week’s column. So basically I don’t have to worry about that. Instead, what I’m going to do is just close my eyes, wait until I regain a sense of calm, and when I open them again my missing gimlet glass is going to be right in front of me. 

Oh, fucking hell. Could I possibly have left it down in the basement? Of course not—that’s ridiculous. I haven’t even been down in the basement, not since I vowed I wouldn’t touch another piece of laundry today even if it meant the clothes already in the washer mildewed and rotted away. Regular followers of this column know that at about this point every week the Cursing Mommy flips out due to one problem or another and begins cursing a lot, throwing things, and giving people the finger. Somehow, however, I don’t think it’s quite appropriate to go to those extremes over a problem as minor as a misplaced cocktail glass. Instead, I will begin a systematic search, accompanying myself meanwhile with a sort of general, all-around cursing out of various deserving individuals and things. 

For starters, God damn to hell my father’s fucking girlfriend, who expects me to do all the food and the cleanup at his seventy-fifth birthday party, and then she’ll take all the credit for herself, such a fucking jerk. Fuck the township, also, for changing fucking Bulky Waste Day from Monday to Friday and now I have to haul all that shit that I carried down this morning back up from the curb or they’re going to give us a ticket, the fucking bureaucratic red-tape, petty, time-server assholes. And, just in passing, fuck the fucking Bush Administration—I know they’re not in power anymore, but fuck them anyway, because they’re such a bunch of fucks. And on the subject of stupid fucks, fuck the—
FUUUUUUUCK! OW! JESUS CHRIST! FUCKING SHIT! I STUBBED MY FUCKING TOE! OW OW OW! JESUS! FUCKING LARRY LEFT THAT FUCKING BOX OF ADAPTERS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DINING-ROOM FLOOR, THE FUCKING IDIOT! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT STUPID FUCKING BOX DOING THERE! I TOLD HIM TO PUT THOSE FUCKING ADAPTERS AWAY! FUCK! OW! FUCK!
(Pause.)
People say that when you misplace an object in your home, instead of tearing the place apart looking for it, you should just be patient, and the object you are looking for will eventually turn up. And now we see the accuracy of this saying, because as I sit here on the dining-room floor cursing and massaging my goddam stubbed toe, I notice that over there on the floor, just behind the door to the kitchen, is the stupid fucking cocktail glass I was looking for. And, thanks be to merciful God, there is still a fair amount of drink remaining in it, so I’ll down it now. What a fucking terrible day this has been.

Next week the Cursing Mommy will show you how to put up the decorations for a child’s birthday party all by yourself with no help from your fucking husband. Watch for her column, entitled, “God Damn This Tape Dispenser to Hell: Party Decorating Tips from the Cursing Mommy.” 

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/09/14/090914sh_shouts_frazier#ixzz18PO0f8Du

2 + 2

When I was 8 years old I struggled with 3^rd grade math.  I sensed that my father thought the nuns at school were a bunch of nitwits who didn’t know how to teach anything so he ventured to a place he had no business being within thousand miles of, he was going to teach me math. 

Of all the tools in the teacher’s toolbox, perhaps none is more important than patience.  This was a tool my father didn’t own and if given to him as a gift, he wouldn’t have a clue how to use it.  Deep down he was a good person and I loved him but his innate march to perfection was unshakable.  He suffered no fools and proved it with a temper able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.  

We sat at the dining room table.  This was the same location where he gave weekly performances in the art of humiliation while trying, with my mother, to balance the “books” from the pork store that bore his name.  Imagine a game show with my mother as the hapless contestant who never seemed to have the right answer.  Her parting gifts consisted of watching her children evacuate the scene and being screamed at for the rest of the night in two languages.

The next contestant is Paul and the category is math.  After a few minutes of listening to Dad explain how addition and multiplication work, my glazed expression brought smiles to my brother's face.  The first question was 2 + 2.  Fortunately, I had some loose grip on simple addition and the answer was as clear to me as the vein already bulging in my father’s deepening scarlet neck.  Then he asked me what 2 x 2 was and as I prepared to answer I simultaneously plotted my escape route from the high octane invective that was sure to follow while my brothers made book on whether I’d get screamed at in English or Italian.          

“Four” I whispered. 

“Right, see it’s not so hard” he said. 

My 3^rd grade brain seemed to have it figured out; multiplication is the same as addition! 

“OK, now what’s 2 x 3?”  he asked.

“Five” I shouted. 

It was a Vesuvian explosion in a heavily embroidered combination of Italian and words I hadn’t heard before.  Lesson over.

Who among us hasn’t come across at least one idea or concept that we just can’t grasp, its secret to understanding secured by a padlock.  And then there are the handful of colossal ideas of the mind that seemingly reside inside an eight inch thick kryptonite box capable of incapacitating any investigator with a massive headache of the ice pick in the temple variety.

One such idea is Einstein’s theory of relativity.  Its complexity makes it easy to ignore except that it helps explain some of the most profound mysteries of the earth and the universe.  It is true genius, born in our century and we desperately want to understand it.  

Here are two of the best and most easily understood explanations of the genius of Einstein’s theory.  Have a seat at the dining room table.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgsKlSnUO0k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpbGuuGosAY

Progress

Grand Canyon

The canyon demands your attention.
You stand on the edge for the first time and understand what all the fuss has been about.  

You will tell people about it but they won’t understand. 

You realize how quiet it is, not just because everyone around you is speechless, but because it is so big that it swallows sound.  

“How did this happen?”  

You are changed in some small way. 

Grand Canyon Walkway

The walkway demands your attention.  

You stand on the edge and can’t understand why we needed this.  

You will tell people about it but they won’t understand.  

You realize that someone thought this would make it better but you are unable to explain why it feels like a violation.  

“How could this happen?”  

You wish that some things were just left alone.

The Silence of the Lambs

Recently some registered Republican voters in Charlotte, NC were asked what’s happened to their taxes since President Obama was elected.  The majority of the group said their taxes had gone up.  After some actual IRS facts were put on the table, these folks had a sudden moment of clarity, “oh yes, that’s right my taxes did go down last year.” 

It’s true.  Attached to the $787 billion stimulus bill was a $115 billion tax cut that was felt by 95% of working families.  I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised when tax cuts by a Democratic President fall through the cracks of memory in Republican voters. What is far more surprising is that Democrats didn’t seem to remember it either.  

In the months leading up to the election the evening news was a symphony of Republican rhetoric laser focused on blaming the Democrats for just about everything with the intent of removing as many Democrats from the Congress as possible.  After all, the Democrats bailed out the Wall Street devils, they plan to cancel the Bush tax cut and they want to spend billions on Obama’s outrageous Health Care Reform bill which will push the country deeper into debt.  All the while not a syllable was uttered by the Democrats about successes brought about in the first 2 years of the Obama administration.  Surely this $115 billion tax cut, typically the air that only Republicans and Tea Baggers breathe, would be a Democratic bullet to be used in this fight.  As it turned out, this tax cut victory was as invisible in the election debate as Iraq’s WMD were in 2005.  

Face it; Republicans are tougher, quicker and smarter than Democrats when it comes to spinning their message of liberal failure and carpet bombing the electorate into believing that Democrats are to blame for everything that’s wrong with the country today including the current economic crisis which of course was the handiwork of W with some help from Bill Clinton.

For as long as I can remember, conservatives have been the punchers, the organized pack of attack dogs brilliantly editing the day’s news into carefully parsed sound bites to make the liberals look far more incompetent than they might actually be and certainly more culpable for whatever mess the country was in at the time.  How is it the successes achieved over the past two years by the Democrats remained so neatly tucked away in some dark closet of the American voter? 

According to an interesting piece in the Miller McCune newsletter reported by Tom Jacobs, there may be some interesting psychology behind the methods of these two groups.  The article cites 50 years of research as well as commentary by John Jost of NYU, a book written by science writer Wray Herbert and theory from Jacob Vigil, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico all of whom are quoted here.

I don’t agree with everything in this theory, but it would still make for some lively conversation over a pint at Pfaff’s Bar.  What follows is paraphrasing on a Homeric level.  

Fifty years of scientific research suggests that a person’s belief systems are developed partly by of the realities of their situation in the world but also by their psychological needs. 

This research shows that “conservatives tend to be more easily threatened and to perceive the world as dangerous in comparison to liberals.”

If you perceive the world as a threatening place, you’re more likely to cling tightly to those you trust and to warily eye those you don’t”. 

“People who are the most fearful seek safety in stability and hierarchy, where more emotionally secure people can tolerate some chaos and unpredictability in their lives.”

“The implication is that conservatives are somehow emotionally impaired, and vaguely inferior to the more open-minded people on the left.”

This obviously doesn’t shine a pretty light on conservatives.  So Dr. Vigil’s theory tries to explain this fundamental difference without labeling conservatives as abnormal. 

His thesis essentially says, “Conservatives tend to be more oriented toward dominance, tend to acquire a larger group of friends and associates than liberals and are more sensitive to potential threats because there are more people in their orbit, and thus the danger of their being hurt by a duplicitous person is greater. Liberals, being more inward-oriented, have smaller, tighter social groups and thus feel less threatened, which in turn allows them to be more open to unfamiliar experiences.”

“Humans are highly dependent upon one another biologically,” he notes. To foster the good will of others, he argues, we “advertise” either trustworthiness or competence.”

“The basic idea is that folks who have small social spheres are going to be demonstrating more trust cues, and those who have bigger social spheres, more capacity cues.” Liberals, in other words, are demonstrating trustworthiness as a way of attracting the social support they need, while conservatives are demonstrating power for the exact same reason.”

There’s more but I think you get the idea.

Recently some registered voters were asked to bet on which team would lead a candidate to victory in a national election – the Elephants led by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck or the Donkeys with Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow and Frank Rich. 

I know who I would trust but I also know who would win. 

Wolves manipulate by loudly showing competence and lambs manipulate by quietly showing trust. 

http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/a-new-take-on-political-ideology-24683/