Falling

The saying is, "Into every life some rain must fall."

Occasionally the rain is cold, in the form of snow, and it envelops you, soaks the hat you're wearing, lands on your face and nose, and slickens your hands making you lose your grip.  And, when you think you have slipped on ice for the last time and can't get back up, something beautiful happens...

because of faith.

A little proof

Today, while watching TV, I saw a commercial for Dragon software, a program that allows one to speak into a microphone for it to translate the spoken sounds into written words.  A grandmother wanted to help her grandson's written expression in school, so she bought the program for him.  The grandson then gave a testimonial.  He said that having to use pencil and paper distracted his thought process to the point that he couldn't focus on what to say.  Speaking words helped him to bring the process of thinking and "writing" (in this case, seeing the spoken words in written form as feedback) together again.  He could write without distraction.  [This is a commercial so even though the writing process has been grossly oversimplified, the bottom line is often true.]

This is the most apparent evidence yet that writing first, and then reading soon after, are in their dying throes.  One of the most asked questions when I make such statements is, "What will take their places?"  The statistics of the growth of YouTube illustrate phenomenal growth.  People use YouTube for everything from watching music videos to presenting concepts as a teacher would in a classroom.  Recently, my brother's daughter wanted to send a heartfelt message to my family, so she videoed herself playing a song she had played and sung on the piano and emailed a message and a URL so that we could watch her song.  So, I would suggest that the new format already exists for what the future holds in the place of writing and reading.

As far as format goes, perhaps the National Geographic Channel's series of programs presenting how the different land features were formed on the Earth is the new model.  The series was called How the Earth Was Made.  I reference here the episode called America's Gold.  In this 43-minute video, you meet several experts, you see actual mining taking place, you see explanatory graphics, you hear an easy, but very organized narration of how gold was formed in America, and you hear a recap of the important information at the end.

No one knows what format the ultimate form will take to replace the pen and page, but it seems to me that the visual is already on the screen (a parody of the writing is already on wall, ha).  All kinds of opportunities exist with this format.

I am so ready to welcome the easier-to-make and much-better-remembered formats of YouTube and NGC as the first wave of presentation.  And, I'm even more ready to say goodbye to the painful, time-consuming art of writing.  See ya runes. Good to see you pics.  You couldn't come soon enough.

A relative world

Growing up, I leaned that honesty was the best policy.  But, that value is only relative to what people want others to think of themselves.  "Honesty will get you nowhere" seems to be the active rule of the day.  It is the one people really live by.  If I have nothing someone wants, I am treated a little deceitfully until the person wants something, then I get a little honesty out of him/her.

I'm not saying it's the best way to be.  I'm just reporting what I see most of the time  Nearly every value is relative to the person's desire in a situation.  Yes, it's a relative world... relative values, relative truth. 

Almost there

There are, of course, the notable examples.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer and dissenter, was sent to a number of different labor camps from 1946 to 1956 for his crime of writing about Stalin in a less than admirable light and writing about the labor camp system in general.  He was stalked by the KGB for the next 13 years.  They seized most of his manuscripts during this time and discredited him whenever he wanted to publish something. The writer's union in Russia never approved his writings and expelled him in 1969.  He remembers thinking that his works would never see the light of day.  Life was utterly miserable for Solzhenitsyn.

No one knew that in 1970 life would change for Solzhenitsyn.  He was awarded the Nobel prize in literature for copies of his works that had been partially published in the West or had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union.  Influential political figures in the West put immense pressure to release him from his internal exile.  Finally, in 1974 Russia deported the world renowned dissident.

In 1974 on the eve of his release, unaware of any attempts by the West to gain his release, Alexander tells of thinking of trying to escape.  He felt like he would have been killed since he didn't have a real plan.  But, a person he didn't know came to him to talk, thus thwarting his plan.  A day later he was released, and his life totally changed for the better.

Nelson Mandela, the South African president, wasn't always liked.  At age 44 he was arrested for his activities against the British government.  He spent the next 27 years in a tiny prison cell off the coast of South Africa.  Unbeknownst to Mandela the world changed while he was locked away.  Dynamics between blacks and whites shifted.  Finally, immense pressure was brought by the U.S. and other countries to end the Apartheid policies of whites against blacks.  Mandela became the symbol of the end of the Apartheid because of his dissenting activity at age 42.  But, he didn't know any of this as he lay in prison.

He didn't know when he lay his head down to sleep on February 10, 1990, at age 71, he would be released from prison the next day.  Three years later he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize and a year later be elected president of South Africa.  Mandela later would talk of the mind games he played in order to remain alive to get him to February 11th.  On February 10th, he was a miserable, failure of a human being.  A day later his whole life changed.

There are, of course, the unnotable examples, people in every town who have stories of success by waiting for their their lives to be fulfilled or to be changed.  They don't win prizes or have positions of prominence, but they wait.  And one day, without notice, their path radically changes.

The two notable examples are inspiring stories for people who are not in the position they want to be.  No one knows really what will happen in the future.  But, for some, it is the day before their release.  They won't know it until tomorrow.  They lay their heads down tonight as failures.  But the message from the two notable men (and from the unnoted ones) is to have faith.  Release is imminent.  Wait just a tad longer... life will change in the morning.

A special case

I love anomalies.  They are nature's way of letting humans know that things aren't always neat and tidy.  Life has ragged edges.  Information has outliers.  Daily events aren't always consistent.  And, explanations for all of this untidiness are not always apparent.

Particularly, I love the anomalies of the English language because they stump and frustrate those who feel a sense of arrogance in knowing all the classifications.  They're those patches of word stickers that defy the class.  Verbal particles are one such patch.  Traditional grammarians say that verbs always follow the rules assigned to their category and are easily identifiable.  One such rule is that the last word of a verb must be one of its four principal parts.  The verb never ends with any other word.  Auxiliaries and principal parts are the only possible word categories permissible.  Even if a verb ends a sentence, the last word word of the verb is a principal part, not, say a preposition.  Sentences can't end with a preposition.  Traditional grammarians don't even recognize the term verbal particle because to do so would be to acknowledge that something doesn't really abide by the descriptions that they have spent years learning and feeling so knowledgeable about. 

Oops, what about that last sentence?  "About" is one of those apparent prepositions.  But, is the sentence not a natively formed spoken grammatical structure?  Of course it is.  But the grammarian is quick to point out that the sentence is a bastard sentence, a sub-par sentence, a non-standard sentence.   It has an easy fix: ...descriptions about which they have spent years learning and feeling so knowledgeable.  Oh, ok.  That change would follow the rules all right for both verbs and prepositions although nearly all Americans would be "wrong" when saying it their more intuitive way.

But then, there are those instances that don't have the "fix" available.  "I want you to shut up," is such an example.  "Up" is normally an adverb, but in this case, "up" doesn't tell how, when, or where to shut anything.  Sometimes adverbs double as prepositions (as in "the climbers went up the mountain").  However, changing to "up which to shut" is not a possibility.  The infinitive form is "to shut up" not "to shut" plus an adverb or "to shut" plus a preposition with a relative pronoun preceding the infinitive.  Now, there's your anomaly.

And how about "behavior you don't have to put up with?"  Is the grammarian going to tell you to fix it by saying, "behavior up with which you will not put?"  Not even they would be so foolish.  The infinitive of the verb is "to put up with," not "to put" plus an answer to how, when, or where, or a transformation of "with" to the beginning of a prepositional phrase ("with which you will put up" still strands "up" as a part of the verb).  Ludicrous!

And then there's the phrase, "rules to go by."  This is a synonymous expression to "rules to follow," right?  Well, if you take the traditional fix, "rules by which to go," then the synonymity vanishes because "to follow" does not mean "to go."   Instead, "to follow" means "to go by."  And how about "to do (something) over."  Is that the same as "over which to do?"  Never in a million years!  Is it the same as "to do" something and then answer the adverb question when? Over.  Perhaps, except that the native speakers have coined a noun to name the action (which occurs frequently, such as "to brand" becoming the noun "brand" or "to try" becoming the noun "try").  Natives speak of "do-overs" as a single word, a noun.  That suggests they see the term "over" as a part of the action.

All of the above is to reiterate that when anomalies occur, their explanations are meaningful and explicable even when not apparent.  One of my most cherished times is an anomaly on the landscape of my life.  It defies normal classification. Oh, an explication exists, just as there is an explication for words after verbs - a new way of thinking about verbs - a particle (part of another category) that attaches itself in a way that doesn't include the whole category.  The explanation is, though, special-ized, making the anomaly on my landscape special-ized as well.

A note about value

I have read a number of books and articles that explain the underlying theory of how the brain developed over time into what we have now.  The theory states that the brain developed in a way so as to help humans survive long enough to reproduce and ensure the survival of the species.  Such a view places great emphasis on environment, but even more emphasis on what is encoded into the DNA for the next generation.

So, in order for the brain to develop to another stage it has to know what is important as opposed to what merely happens and is routine or unimportant.  That means the brain also assigns value.  What is the value of anything that happens?  Is the event tagged with a rank order number, or is the value assigned according to a binary system of "This is important/This is not important."  If the former, then what is tagged with something less than most important has a probability of entering into a decision that is made for survival or reproduction at less than 100% (and could be as low as a single digit percentage).  If the latter, then everything deemed important is relative to survival or reproduction, but for the moment only.  Otherwise it has no value.  Each decision is relative to the event and the circumstances surrounding it.

That's when I begin thinking of our reason for education, and more to the point, education of the masses.  The curriculum does not relate to survival and reproduction by either type of value system.  Do children see that what they learn as having anything to do with survival of the species?  No.  Which means that they assign a low value number to the educational events in their lives (according to the rank order idea) as it relates to their survival.  Or worse, it means that they assign no value to the educational events in their lives (according to the binary system) as it relates to their survival.

School is supposed to prepare one for success.  First and foremost is the success as it relates to survival of the species.  So, curriculum will die (albeit a rather slow death) on its own because it is not related to the way the brain is constructed, or the species will shrink because survival didn't hold its a priori place.
Well... I am trying to do my part to pass on to posterity what puts bread on the table.  That's the universal bottom line.

(Or the theory could be wrong, of course, in which case our schools are performing magnificently since the curriculum now is better than it ever has been).

Why this time

Tomorrow will be a day of great activity.  Family will gather.  Conversations around a meal will keep everyone updated and informed.  It will be a great time, a ritual well worth the time and effort each member of the family who comes gives and.makes.  I look forward to it.

Right now, though, it is very quiet.  It's the time of day that I draw strength from because it allows me to rejuvenate my inner being.  I have time to go deep inside the caverns of my mind where laughter from previous great times are still echoing, where past happiness continues to resonate and bleed through into the present, and where unfaded writing of those recorded memorable events still graces its walls.

The silence of the deep night pours the new foundation for what tomorrow will build on it.  And, now I am ready for the ritual well worth the time.

Parallel tracks

Masquerade.  It's a verb and a noun.  Sometimes it's a way of hiding behind something; sometimes it's a way of showing off something.  Sometimes it's an event for all to participate in; sometimes it's an event in which just one person reveals.  I see the behaviors and know the events.  I loathe both, but can't cast the first stone.  Who can?

Manifest.  Wow.  A verb and a noun too.  Sometimes it hides one among many; sometimes it brings to light the several, the many.  Sometimes it's a record of participation; sometimes a mass in which one name is buried.  I know its uses and places.  I appreciate both, but won't brag that I always make the list.  Who could?

In for the long haul

In a sleepy town long ago, a man and his wife lived in peace.  At least, that was the outside point of view.  The man thought his wife, for no reason, was always on his case about getting more work, about shirking duty, about everything going wrong because of lack of activity, blah, blah, blah.  One day, the man decided to take a walk away from the house to give himself a reprieve from the constant hounding he received.  On the walk, he encountered some men bowling in the hills close to his house.  He participated, and all the while he was drinking their ale.  Soon, he fell fast asleep.

Of course, the tale is Rip Van Winkle written in 1819 by Washington Irving.  Most people know the next part.  Rip woke up 20 years later.  His wife had died.  His son by his same name was the official Rip Van Winkle of the small, sleepy town.  He missed the buildup to the Revolutionary War.  He missed the actual fighting of the war.  The picture of King George in the town's tavern had been changed to George Washington.  Rip was no longer recognizable because his beard had grown a foot longer during the 20 year interval.

 I think of this tale because some days I think on my rather simplistic childhood days and compare it to the present.  I grew up in my earliest years before color television had been discovered, before FM was a possibility on the radio dial, before interstate highways had made it from drawing board to reality, before the locally family owned soda fountains had been replaced by MacDonalds and Burger Kings, and before integration was the law of the land for schools and colleges.  Beatniks was a viable word; the non-party line phone had only been available a few years; an all electric house was as rare as central air conditioning; and power steering in a car was a luxury feature.

If I make the simple comparison between childhood and later adulthood, it's as if I have missed a forty year period of time.  Most of my food comes from a microwave or restaurant rather than the kitchen table, and everything else is controlled or accessible by my smart phone in place of going places and talking to people or doing things.  My own children don't recognize the words beatnik, party line phone, window unit, or soda fountain.  I could swear my beard is a foot longer and the space between Eisenhower's picture and Obama's has enough room for 9 other pictures.  What's that about?

The end of Irving's tale shows the townspeople finally recognizing Rip Van Winkle and being a bit envious of his luck in having missed a considerable period of time of taking a drumming by his wife and  the turmoil the Revolutionary War caused.  Thankfully, though, the time between my simplistic childhood days and my later adulthood are not unconscious years.  The turmoil of the years experienced have given me perspective in life which I would rather have than blissful ignorance.  And, I would rather have the pockets of months that have made life beautiful and given me vitality than trade them for a million years of sleeping.  As appealing as Rip Van Winkle is for some people, I am fully satisfied with being conscious for my life.  I even have faith that my future still holds some great enjoyment.

Beauty of recall

What a wonder it is to watch the night skies!  And what stories those stars do tell.  Tonight I am reminded of Pleiades, made up of 7 stars and located not far from Orion's belt.  Sometimes it is seen as a haze, sometimes as very distinct stars.  One of the 7 stars is called Alcyone, and it is around this star that the Mayans claimed that the Earth's solar system revolves.  As far-fetched as that sounds, astronomers have actually hypothesized that the Earth's sun has a twin star that it revolves around.  These scientists haven't been able to identify the twin yet, but who knows, it could be Alcyone.

Be that as it may, the Mayans claimed that someone from Alcyone gave them their knowledge of the stars.  That also sounds far-fetched until a person ponders the kind of precise knowledge the Mayans had, reflected in the alignment of certain temples to the cycles of Venus and the configuration of their temples to the Pleiades.  This precision gives one pause.  Consider that their calendar is built around three cycles: Earth years, Venus' alignment with the Earth and its transit schedule with the sun, and a 26,000 year cycle of alignment among Venus, Earth, the sun, and the black hole in the center of the Galaxy.  I stand amazed that they could understand the workings of the heavens without telescopes, spacecraft, or advanced mathematics.

I truly marvel at their understanding.  The Mayans depended on the cycles for their daily lives - for water, for crops, for beliefs, for community, and for travel.  I can appreciate that dependency in two ways.  I love its consistency, and I love its beautiful symmetry.  I identify also because my own well being depends on an alignment of sorts.  I need the beauty of pleasant recall to make it through the shorter cycles of my life: the cycle to combat troublesome times, to contemplate enjoyable times, to track the roller coaster times, and to laugh amidst austere times.  I do as the Mayans and celebrate once and a while those alignments at the beginning and end of cycles.  Many of the great visuals I have available in recall come from one great time period of vitality, that  once-in-a-26,000-year alignment.  It's my Pleiades, my Alcyone, around which my contentment revolves.

Reflection

"The question is, 'Does literature reflect culture or does it influence culture?'"  Those words were posed in my American novels class years ago to get the discussion started.  Since the 1700s in England, the people rather than the scholars began enjoying reading.  This was partly due to DeVere's popular plays with the commoners a century before (known as the Shakespearean corpus) and partly due to the rise in popularity of the newspaper beginning with the Tatler.  The Romantic Age writings of the time presented themselves because the people liked them 75 years before the name of the era was used and despite Alexander Pope's proclivity to use Greek and Latin classical literature.  Scholars have decided to name Pope's period Neoclassicism after the content he liked to write about, but the people read the authors who were writing Romantic themes.

However, the people prevailed... and for a long time (at least in literary age terms) Romantic themes continued. There was a bit of a shift in what Romanticists wrote about halfway through the period scholars have assigned to them, but even by the advent of the Victorian Age literature of the 1830s, Romanticism was still in the air of some of the writings.

Romanticism has been singled out because it was the historical point where the people read what they wanted to even though other literature was being produced.  Up to this point in history, literature had been the domain of the rich who had chosen to write what they wanted the people to read.  After the 1700s, people began to choose for themselves what they wanted to read.  Charles Dickens was a good example of the new power of the reader.  He is only known today because the people responded overwhelmingly to the nonromantic themes he offered.  He wrote under a pen name at first because he was embarrassed to try introducing a new theme not favored by the likes of Keats.  So, the new authors reflected the desires of the people.

It is still that way.  Schools may teach so-called great literature.  But, when all is said and done, it is the people and their consumer dollars that determine what gets read.  It was the people who supported the books of Hemingway and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald; they couldn't get enough of Poe, Twain, and Thoreau.  Readers of the 1800s and for three quarters of the 1900s chose what they wanted to read.  It didn't influence them, it reflected them.

In the 1970s, the format for storytelling began to change to viewing from reading, but even so, it was truly consumer driven.  Baby Boomers chose to end the pessimism of 1900s Postmodernism, opting to pay to see and read several new themes.  They loved the edge, the risky, the physical, and the real.  Following them, the next generation seemed to enjoy the real well enough, but wanted to add a touch of their own.  They liked themes of polar opposites: the elite and the underdog, the successful and the struggling, the glamorous rich and the despondent addict.

Reflection, not influence, is the rule of the day.  Modern storytellers follow the dollars.  They publish and produce stories that consumers will pay for.  No longer is the story in the domain of the wealthy or educated elite.  It is in the court of those willing to pay the cost of a ticket or to tune into a movie channel for a second run.

I know this is true of my own story.  What I choose to pay hard earned dollars to see (although I do read some) reflects my values... my hope that life will yield contentment... my faith that life will deliver its most enjoyable moments.

It'll be just fine

Inventions, discoveries, and resulting new philosophies change the world every so often.  People who lived among the saber tooth tigers, sloths, and woolly mammoths had to band together to bring one down.  Their artifact spears tell the tale.  But, then the ice age happened.  The big animals were wiped out.  So the people decided to not travel in tribes around the countryside looking for game, but to congregate up and down the banks of rivers.  Eventually, the population of the River Valley Civilizations outstripped the amount of space needed, so they spread out along the trade routes developed between the civilizations.  When writing was developed it seemed to help in making land transactions, recording epic tales, and in journaling the deeds or chronologies of their kings.  Math concepts were not far behind.  Then the heavens yielded their secrets.  Transmission of information, written and visual has most recently changed the world because paper is not necessary.  Records, therefore, are stored differently; anyone can see records with the right passcodes or if the author makes it public.  What's next?

The history of humanity has been exciting.  I would love to have been around right after the eruption of Mount Toba when the human race was reduced to under 10,000 people on the Earth's face.  I would have thought it fascinating to see how people moved about and cooperated during the last Ice Age.  I would have wanted to be present at the building of the Sphinx.  I would like to see one battle that a Roman regimen fought.  I would love to have watched King John sign the Magna Carta.  Meeting Ben Franklin would have been a pleasure.  Being a recipient of the world Steve Jobs touched has been a privilege.  Who or what will appear next?

Since the decades of my own life resemble that of humanity's ages, it means that something new and exciting is yet to come.  I would love that to happen.  I know those big changes happen only every so often.  But, surely over the next couple of decades...  I don't have a periscope, but anticipation tells me I might like it just fine.