The stuff of movies

Where was I?  I stood at the front door.  They were made of heavy metal and locked from the inside.  20 feet glass panels were on either side of the doors.  Through the doors I could see students eating at cafeteria tables.  They could also see me, but no one moved an inch to allow me to enter.  Faculty members with badges on lanyards around their necks also walked past the door.  I punched a button on the wall next to the door, and answered the voice that asked me what my business was.  Click. The door had been remotely unlocked.

I walked past the students eating lunch to a reception area, showed them my ID, received a lapel guest sticker for my shirt pocket and waited for my party to show up.  I accompanied him to a classroom but had to change buildings on the way.  The doors behind us in the first building shut,  and I heard the click again of the door locking.  Across a courtyard we had to enter the second building.  My friend whipped out his ID badge and tapped the scanner to show that we were authorized to enter.

We went to his office, unlocked the door for him to get a piece of paper he needed, then departed the building for his car, the door to the building locking behind us.  We left in his car from his designated parking spot, stopped at a gate that he opened with a remote opener, and left for about an hour to eat lunch.

Upon returning, we went through the gate using the remote opener again, parked in the designated spot, tapped the scanner with the ID badge to reenter, then walked to his second story classroom.  I visited the bathroom on the way.  I opened the bathroom door, entered, and the door clicked lock behind me.  It had all the automatic amenities - flushing toilet, water spout motion sensor, automatic towel dispenser, and something I had never seen before... but why not in this building.  To dispose of the towel, I had to wave it in front of the disposal receptacle so that its cover automatically opened for me to deposit my used paper towel and automatically shut after the towel was dropped in.

I joined my friend in his room and sat in front of the newest version of a smart board which  was the focal point on the wall at the front of room.  He and I visited, then left, but not without scanning our way through locked doors of two buildings, retracing our steps to the receiving desk where I had started my visit in order to check out, then leaving the building, the door clicking behind me to lock it remotely.
 
Where in the world was I? One would think that I was visiting my friend in a high security prison.  But no - it was just a good ole American high school.  It was renovated and parts of it newly built, but it was certainly a state-of-the-art, extremely high tech building.  I was informed that next school year the cafeteria was going to be converted into a technology court that would replace the library.

Easily this school could have been used in a science fiction movie for a future school.  I plan on returning to see this futuristic library next year.  I don't know that it is the most 21st century school in the country, but it might be.  For sure, it is one of the 3 safest places I have ever visited. 

How things have rolled

From time to time I get to see people after a hiatus of several years.  It's always interesting to catch up and see what has happened, how things were dealt with, and what the outcomes have been.

I ate lunch with a friend today that I have known since I was in 7th grade.  We have periodically kept in touch, so we don't have to catch up in ten year leaps, but it has been interesting to see how things have turned out for him after all these many years.  In the last two years his two children have both married, so he had to spend a whole lot more time with his ex-wife than was bearable at times.  Over the last 12 years he returned to what he wanted to do in life the most - coach basketball at the high school level.  And before that he owned several businesses after starting out from college as a banker.

One of his real talents is with investments.  So, he has done well over the years dabbling with different entrepreneurial ventures and putting money in building value with various instruments. Most surprising to me, however, has been to watch his philosophy of life.  In high school, I was raised in a more conservative home than he was.  Over the years, he and I have switched places completely.  Now, he has become really worried about society's values, and has opted personally for a devout religious life.  My bent has been to liberalize most of my views and to opt for a more open religious life.

Nonetheless, we had a great time talking about everything under the sun, parting friends, and pledging to eat lunch again soon.  These kinds of days are the way life should be rolling.

The best gift

Gifts are always nice to get.  It's the thought that someone cared enough to get you something that you didn't have that's nice.  The object being given is also nice because it's symbolic in nature if nothing else, but many times it's something that is useful or that you desired to have.  But then there's always that one gift that has a special quality - it multiplies itself.  It delights you when it is first given, but then you are able to use it again and again, in many instances for to help other people.

I was given a gift several decades ago, and it was something I had desired and worked for.  It blended with my personality, and lo and behold, here several decades later it still is giving me the thing that enchanted me about it in the first place.  I can see that it will give me quality of life until I die, so I am forever grateful for having it.  From time to time, I have seen others enjoy receiving the gift when I would regift it in a form useful to them, and I have been told by others who received it of benefits they have received.

I worked hard for the gift that keeps on giving and received it, but unwittingly didn't know it would be that way.  It is my hope that everyone can receive the gift of their desires and in return, shower others in her/his sphere with its benefits.  That's just how the world is made a better place.

One would think...

This is why communication is so hard.

Me: Thanks for the birthday wish.  I feel the heat from it coming from your place. (My cousin lives in Arizona) [I'm thinking of temperatures between 112 and 121.]

Cuz: It's not as hot as you think.  I don't live in the Phoenix area where they get hot temperatures. It's about 20 degrees cooler here. [She's thinking between 85 and 90 degrees.]

Me: 118-20=98.  Even so, that's still hot. [I'm thinking upper 90s and low triple digits. I'm thinking her next remark will be to say OK, you're right.]

Cuz: OK. Maybe 30 degrees cooler. [118-30=88.]

I have been talking to other people for several decades now, and it seems like communication has never become easier.  One would think...

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Look around to feel better

Some things feel bad at a particular moment.  They sometimes feel intense or hurtful.  We tend to compare them to the worst of times.  When this happens, comparisons are sometimes the balm we need to feel better or to know the severity of something.

A little lesson from the stock market illustrates the point.  Over the last two weeks the stock market has dropped a thousand points on the Dow-Jones, 500 of the points in a one-day slide, yesterday.  The market underwent a correction.  Everyone knew it was coming because historically, it was long overdue.  The  bull market run was longer than usual, so the correction was more severe than usual.  And how severe was it?

Yeah, 2008 was worse.  1932 was worse.  1928 was worse.  Black October was worse.

So, when circumstances around me seem more than a little bad, it's always good to compare.  It really could be worse.

Life's seasoning

The poster said that storms would come but not to be worried.  The storm would stop, and you would come out on the other side just fine.

Several different versions of this poster have surfaced over the last 50 years.  I think the gist is good in that one needs to maintain a positive outlook on life.  But the particulars of the poster don't reflect reality.  A storm is something that is not a soft, gentle rain.  A storm is something that has high winds, sometimes rotating winds, lightning, thunder, sometimes hail.  Storms in winter bring heavy, damaging snows or blizzards.  It's numbing cold.  Sometimes winds dump rain from hurricanes, or at other times leave sheets of ice for people to slide around on.

Storms change the landscape and lead to a healthy respect for the part of nature that isn't controlled by humans.  In our lives those two principles season us from the time we enter adulthood until we depart the Earth.  Storms come on us sometimes with warning, sometimes without, and they pound away on our philosophies of life, our core values, our relationships, and our direction in life.  They change the landscape around us and they change us directly.  They cause us to change directions, to meet or need new people, to redirect our steps, to challenge our beliefs, and to reevaluate our philosophies.

Storms come and go.  That part of the poster is true.  And the part about our coming out on the other side is true as well.  But, now whether we're fine or not is up to how accepting we are of the changes in us the storms bring.  They make us play the shoulda, coulda, woulda game.  They make us have regrets sometimes, only if temporarily.  They drive us to accomplishments, and proud moments.  They drive us to strive so we don't have regrets.

Experience tells me what the poster should read: Storms will come and we should prepare for them ahead of time and be accepting of the changed landscape after it leaves.  Respect every single one of them that hits your life.

Tracks everwhere

Tracking aspects of life is everywhere in the world around us.  As an example, one of my daily routines is to follow a graph of the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the British pound.  The graph tracks the value of each as it rises and falls yielding the difference in value between them.  It is really helpful to see the track so that one can make predictions about the currencies' future paths.

Every night when I watch the news, the weather report contains the track of several aspects.  Maps show where the drought is in Texas and how severe it is.  The series of maps shown show the growth or decline of the drought area and the severity.  The report also tracks a comparison of today's weather features to other years in the past.  Today, for instance, is the 43rd day since the last rain, that is fourth in the all time record's list of days between rains.  Ten more days without rain and it will be number one on the all time record's list.

Tracking is just helpful to put things in perspective.  Historically, it's good to track events too.  The naysayers of the current president's political decisions usually don't use history to form their opinions.  If they did, they would pipe down a bit.  The detractors say the president is giving amnesty to thousands of immigrants unnecessarily.  Looking back just about 30 years shows a president of the opposite party granting official amnesty to about 5 million immigrants.  Detractors say that the Affordable Health Care act is a terrible burden forced on the American people.  Following the track back through time shows a number of public programs forced on people, not the least of which was the income tax.  The income tax dates back to Congress' passage of the bill in 1909 and states' subsequent ratification in 1913.  Yes sir, the American people passed the onerous income tax themselves and made it an amendment to the constitution.

People are short sighted, though.  That's called myopia and it's caused by a lack of knowledge of the past or the lack of willpower to look back in order to see tracks in the sand behind.  If they would just look at the tracks everywhere around them, people would be happier because they would be better informed .

Connecting dots

I read the national news in several areas, sports and technology being two of them, avidly every week.  Today, a couple of stories from different sectors highlighted my reading.  First was a sports article that was telling of records established by the top 10 teams in the NFL.  About midway through the article, the author said that the "record books" would indicate his point.  But immediately following the words "record books" was a parenthetical expression "(kidding: what are books?)."

The next article was really an explanation of a specialized training school.  It began with "Wanna know how to code?"  It went on to tell about a school that offered only programming courses including to know how to write code for mobile apps.  It also offered classes for kids called "Coding for Kids."  The name of this specialized training center was The Iron Yard, and the article showed a map of about 10 training centers scattered throughout the states.

I had two simultaneous thoughts.  One, how appropriate at the beginning of another school year that I should see these two articles on the same day that tell the story of what education should be, not what many, many children will be receiving.  They will go to a liberal arts school to prepare to give answers on tests that don't resemble the world they will enter.  Two, further proof that the dinosaurs who want to continue with the current educational landscape are very shortly to meet their demise.

And that's the size of it.  A sports page sarcastically referring to books and a specialized training center for children and adults learning something to prepare them for being really productive and well paid.  The article for Iron Yard predicted 1.4 million jobs available in 5 years for mobile application needs and only 400,000 people to fill those jobs.

Two years separate us from the magic number 2017, the end of the ten year war for supremacy between the education of books, reading, writing, simple math and the education of algorithms, programming, general computer savvy, and holographic virtuality.  I think by now the dinosaurs really do see the meteorite streaking through the sky and know that they are about to be decimated.  But they seem to have accepted their fate.

Some do, some don't

I find that many people don't like history.  If I ever follow up on that sentiment, I usually find that the people don't know how to organize history, therefore they find it hard to understand.  At the base of organizing history is to know chronology.  Timelines are basic.  Those who can learn to put events on a timeline usually know how to categorize in other ways to.  For example, if one can put Sumer in ancient history (between 3500 and 2500 BCE), then it is also easy to know that there were three other civilizations that were similar under the category of River Valley Civilizations.   When learning the history of England, if you know that the Romans left England open around 450 ACE, then it is much easier to understand how the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes decided to inhabit the vacated lands, begin the Anglo-Saxon culture, and start the English language.  Pivotal dates are probably the next most helpful organizing method.  People don't know which came first, the Romans, the Greeks, or the Phoenicians.  Not knowing that doesn't really hurt anything in anyone's modern life, but it is evidence that probably the same person doesn't know if the Civil War happened before the Revolutionary War or World War I.  Which doesn't hurt, either, in the modern world, but they probably then can't tell you whether Roe vs. Wade happened before Brown vs. the Board of Educaton or The Affordable Health Care Act.

None of it matters in a person's daily life except that it is also an indicator of the organizational level. one has in general.  Of course, personality plays such a huge part of organizational ability, that at any given time there are more people who don't care a whole lot about organization as opposed to those who do.

Strangely there is some balance, a yin and yang, between those who can live in the moment, spontaneously, and those who need structure.  A word of caution is in order, however.  Those who get overwhelmed by life and meet their demise, more times than not, come from the camp of those who don't organize well in their minds.

Play the odds: If you start life not knowing chronology, it might become a rather random series of events, unconnected, and a little overwhelming.  That could spell u-n-d-e-r-d-o-g for a person and that's not a good position in life to be in.

You have to see to appreciate

I remember well a friend of mine calling me one Sunday afternoon 20 years ago to discuss a topic he had heard in a Sunday sermon.  The topic moved my friend and changed his understanding of one of Jesus' analogies.  The topic was found in the first two verses of John 15 about pruning grapevines.  The person in the sermon was saying the translations had not translated accurately, that the analogy was not to pruning grapevines, but in lifting them off the ground so that they could produce since they couldn't produce while lying on the ground.

Translation of any language to another is full of explosive mines, so it was credible that perhaps a new understanding of ancient Greek could change a usual translation, especially if new manuscripts had been discovered.  We talked about the topic, but I remember that the conversation didn't end with any kind of definitive answer on the accuracy of the concept of what was happening with the grapevine.

Today another person raised the exact same topic referencing the same author that my friend had called me about 20 years earlier.  It's strange how things keep getting circulated even it's a generation apart.  I've seen ideas being put forth before with how people deal in naming things that are indigenous to their area in sociolinguistic studies.  Outsiders don't do well when they translate without knowing the culture intimately.  I think what happened in this case is that the translators of traditional versions didn't know what was involved growing grapes.  On the other hand, it would appear that the man challenging the traditional concept of pruning didn't allow for or know the number of methods and reasons for trimming, so he overstated his case.

If I were to interpret the first two verses of John, I would use words more adequately depicting the "vinedresser" of verse 1.   The man you hear in the video below is a true "vinedresser."  He is deliberate in his descriptions, a slow-talking, country man who knows from vast experience what he is talking about.  What word or words would you use to describe him?  I'm fairly certain "vinedresser" would not be your choice.  And watching how and why he would trim leaves to make his grapes thrive would not call to mind the word "prune."  It would seem that the person tending the grapes knows how to make grapes grow by properly trimming in the right places at the right times of the growing season, not arbitrarily inspecting branches to yank and tear off the branches without fruit.

A person can watch the video and be able to discern more properly how to translate the two verses.  The cultural overlay of knowing how to grow grapes does help in knowing what Jesus said more than the just the words, more than attitudes of the listeners, and more than a narrow way of seeing how to trim grapevines.

The point of the analogy is probably not getting rid of those who don't bear fruit, nor is it in helping those who need lifting from the ground so that they can't grow fruit.  It has something to do with a holistic view of stimulating healthy, growing vines, like trimming leaves for sunlight, trimming clusters for large grapes, and trimming a certain number of stems so as to nurture the branches deriving from a main, or true vine, as a whole, which is the summary of the analogy found in verse 8.

Oh, the oppressive heat!

Hemingway wrote Hills Like White Elephants in order to show how hostile an environment had been created surrounding women out of wedlock having babies.  In the short story, his main feature was the setting he created, that of Spain in the heat of summer at a non-descript, remote train station.  The characters dealt with the heat by moving around and eventually to the inside of a bar and by drinking alcohol.  Constantly, Hemingway narrated or put in the mouths of his characters how severely hot the day was.

What was the point of creating such a setting?  It was, of course, to depict a hostile, harsh, and forbidding environment.  The station was located at a crossroads, which symbolized the crossroads of a decision by the pregnant woman on whether to have an abortion or not.  But, the setting overpowers the decision so as to show the harsh sentiment of society that drives the woman to opt for abortion.

As I write this blog at midnight the night has only cooled from 106 degrees during the day to a mere 92 degrees.  It's really, really hot.  There has been no rain in a month, the humidity is low, the grass in the yards is burning, turning green to brown.  The forecast offers only more 106 degree, rain-free days.  I think I am a character in Hemingway's short story.

My next thought was whether the deep heat was some symbol as to what was going on around me (as if I were a character in this story).  I think so, society has changed so much, but its values have taken a rather flat track in many areas such as religion, education, interpretive history, and political policy.  The device that has changed our way of doing business is again about to change our way of communicating altogether.  Everything we see on screens, which are monitors mounted on a device for the moment, will now be moving as the person moves, that is, untethered visuals.

Such a change is as monumental as the young woman opting for abortion in Hemingway's era.  Our values conflict with changes that must take place, away from incumbent methods of how to interact with the environment and each other.  The current environment is harsh for moving in that direction.  But people will have to deal with it.  It's not going away.  What's the answer?  The same one that the woman made.  She was driven to make a decision that progress allowed her to take.  We'll make the same one.  To fight it will be to die in the too oppressive heat.

Selection process

There are pathways in life just as there are roads between towns and trails in the country or the mountains.  There are actually many of them.  The beauty of adulthood is that you get to choose which paths you want to take at any particular time.  And, you can change to a different path any time you want to.  You can't help but to notice that some paths are wide, some are narrow, or that the some are worn, others grown over.

Another parallel is that when you are on a path, or when you see a different path, you can see it for its present value, but you can't see the end of where it leads usually.  You just have to trust the hints of the path as you see it or the information you have heard about it.

That's a pretty good parallel to the way life works.  One great difference is that paths don't tell you anything about the people that have taken it.  In life you get to see some of those people, their results and their personalities.  That helps.  Every hint helps because there are so many paths to choose from. Some of them come out at the same place, so it doesn't matter which one you take.  You get to take one depending on your personality.  But they don't all lead to the same place.  That's what keeps the selection process interesting.