First blood

USA Today carried an article two days ago of a survey taken.  I need to read the full survey before making too many comments.  And, a survey is the softest kind of statistical data to base too many predictions on, but I do want to comment on the direction the percentages suggest.

The article was about companies' hiring practices in the U.S.  Companies are still hiring people in the baby boom generation over younger generations for two reasons: 1) they are more reliable, and 2) they don't have to be reeducated to have good communication skills.  That's not as surprising as the pecentages given for reason 2.  Companies had to retrain 5 times as many younger workers as baby boom workers in the area of communication.

On one hand the percentage is surprising.  It is not often that the business world opts for older workers over younger workers.  On the other hand, it was predictable.  Jane Healy's book Endangered Minds was one of the first to speak of young people's "fuzzy grammar" in 1991.  Many people then and since have noted the effects of teaching to tests in favor of presenting a non-uniform, robust curriculum transferable to unpredictable situations.  Over the last decade, that fuzzy grammar group has begun and is continuing to come of age.  That's good news for baby boomers... at least for the moment.

The other side of the coin will take place soon, but certainly no later than the death of most of the baby boomers.  Communication will adjust itself to whatever the younger generations want it to be.  And that is the point of this blog.  The survey supports the idea that the major forms of communication are about to change.  Judging from the amount of You Tube activity, even for education, the amount of video consumption from TV to cell phone, the format of tracking one's life through pictures and short video clips through many formats including Picaso and Facebook, and the advent of holographic transmission, communication form has no choice but to be transformed.

Reading and writing are being phased out.  It's beginning to show up now in statistical data, not anecdotal data.  Soon more quantitative studies will surface showing the same trends that the survey showed.  Dinosaurs take note.  The KT boundary is now being put in place separating the Old World from the New. 

Quantifying satisfaction

In baseball, many a batter has envied a batting average of 200 or better.  Pitches come in fast and low, sometimes fast and high.  Pitches curve from left to right and from right to left.  Balls come straight for the corner of the plate, then tail off.  Sometimes the pitches change up and come in more slowly than anticipated.

That's why it is enviable to hit more than 200.  Every ball a batter hits, counts.  It increases the average by a small fraction of a point.  That translates into about a point and a half for each hit a batter is lucky to connect with.  An average of 250 is even harder to achieve.  Batters would love to have that average and work extremely hard to achieve it.  Not many actually do.

200 is written as .200.  It's a percentage - 20%.  That's not much.  Such an average fails in school.  One would expect a professional who gets paid millions to do much better than hit and become a base runner 20% of the time or even 25% of the time.  Occasionally, amazing players come along and put 250 to shame, hitting 3 out of 10 pitches.  A person in a business who showed up for work everyday but only was productive 30% of the time would go bankrupt or be fired.  An accountant who only made right decisions about numbers 30% of the time would retain no client.

But, context is everything.  3 out of 10 is what I am shooting for right now. I will come by all I've wanted if I but only achieve 300.  I'll outstrip the 200s and 250s by excelling to 300.  30% and I'll be the most satisfied person alive.

Savoring the flavor

Among my vices is good ole fried chicken.  I call it a vice because it is not really the best food for me to be eating.  It raises my cholesterol level immediately and adds three pounds to my weight.  Working out removes the effects well enough, but it takes twice the number of exercises or daily walks to accomplish that removal.  So, I don't eat it often, certainly not as often as my taste buds create the craving.

Fortunately, I can spare an extra cholesterol spike or a couple of pounds on the body every once in a while so that deprivation doesn't drive me completely crazy.  And fortunately, in life I have a hint enough of fried chicken experiences to keep me from wasting away with the diet that is required to keep me getting up in the mornings.  Just that hint of beautiful visuals in my mind's eye sets my mouth to watering every time.

Non-plused

Headlines about education in today's newspaper were supposed to be sensational - and would have been if the year was 1990.  The Secretary of Education announced that the day of the physical, bound textbook would be over with the next adoption of any subject's textbook.  In 1990 for sure that would have been absolutely sensational.  In 2000 the announcement would have been notable and admirable.  But, in 2012?

In my world in the last week alone, I never wrote one word other than my signature.  I typed everything I sent or used.  The files I typed were either saved to a resident hard drive or to a drive in the cloud.  I transferred money and checked balances at three different banks electronically.  Everyone I needed to contact for some reason or another by written word was sent an email or a text.  I made a presentation to a group of people during which I projected a YouTube interview, typed live feedback into a Power Point program, then showed pictures for ideas from a website suited for that purpose.  I read correspondence from my doctor and saw a table detailing results from blood work done on a website the hospital uses for all of its patients.

And, of course, last week I used the handiest device yet invented.  The news I receive daily was not on my driveway in the mornings, but on my phone whenever I had time to read.  I also took a poll from my phone for USA Today and a split second later saw the results of voting from my city, state, and nation.  I received pictures of people important to me by phone and attended a song writing session via Skype with my cousin.  When I picked up prescriptions from the pharmacy, I knew they were ready because I had received a text message saying so along with the amount.  To pay for them I signed an electronic pad authorizing insurance coverage.  I had to buy a motor for my dryer this week also.  When I paid the amount at the end of the service call, the repairman took out a white square card reader, attached it to his phone, swiped my card, had me sign his screen, and sent an sent a receipt automatically to my email account.  A little later, my granddaughter sat in my lap, and we watched my phone screen as I streamed in an episode from Disney's Snow White.  And, I did use my phone  to make a phone call, but I never dialed a number.  I touched the name or picture of someone or pressed a linked phone number. 

I'm pretty sure the good Secretary lives in the same world.  So, he knows that his announcement today is really an announcement that is at least one decade late, two in my opinion.  So, his words were not even important or relevant for 2012.  Now, if he had said that the new textbooks would be readable from an app on a phone or a television, then I might have taken notice.  If he had remarked that the schools would be required to make teaching videos available like the ones called Kahn Academy, then I would have applauded him.  If he had announced a partnership with Exxon Mobil to to fund the use of the new 3D Google Maps for geography, holographic, virtual labs in STEM courses, and 3D manipulative software for reading the stratigraphy of the Earth in geology courses, I would have loved his forward thinking.  If he had acknowledged the existence of online high schools and that brick and mortar schools would be phased out in favor of funding for new digital tablets for students to attend the online schools, then I would have been ecstatic.

But he didn't.  He announced the use of technology available in the last decade of the 20th century.  Electronic textbooks have been available for more than 10 years, widely available for more than 5 years, and most school districts already have them available to both students and parents.  Even RSS feeds from a teacher and school are as old as electronic textbooks.  So, Mr. Secretary, once again you are acknowledging the state of ill repair for the public schools you oversee.  Apparently, you want the nation's students to continue their slide into new depths of failure and ignorance, distancing them behind more and more developing countries.  Our country's higher education schools have world class status.  But, our lower education schools are second class rather than second to none.  Our nation is full of students who would like to use today's tools for information that will prepare them for tomorrow rather than see themselves forced to use yesterday's tools for information that prepare them to maintain what is already known.

The little we know

I have stopped being amazed at the enigmas ancient civilizations pose to us modern people.  Out of the jungles of Mesoamerica emerges a metropolis that has a temple with a square base that is the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza.  The base held a half pyramid but the size was the same with tunnels dug throughout (just like the Egyptian pyramids).  It  was amongst other great stone buildings which were configured after part of a constellation (also like the pyramids of Giza).

It's also pretty symmetrical that they are half a world away from each other and date back to roughly the same time.  If the two happen to be connected, then there is one site for the side of the planet facing the sun and one for the side in the dark at any given time.  One notable difference is that the stones used to build the Mesoamerican city contained mica and transparent quartz throughout it all.  Mica has properties of withstanding heat from radiation, the kind used for spaceship reentries through the atmosphere.

Perhaps, the explanation of such phenomena includes alien help in our ancient history, or perhaps, it merely means the humans had access to much more than we know about, that they were very advanced and then, for some reason, they were destroyed and humans lost some prior knowledge and had to start over again.  Either way, the history books need revising.

Life gives us wonder and beauty if we but look hard enough, and sometimes those two elements are not at all found in what we expect but derive from what is surprising.  We end up playing the "what if?" game to see if the surprises could be true.  I like the taste of the "what if's" that have surfaced and they tantalize me to keep looking for what could underlie our simple understanding of times gone by.

When success smiles

J.K. Rowling just released her first novel written for the adult audience after achieving a phenomenal reception from the younger audience for her Harry Potter series.  I wish her success in her newest venture because I love her story.  The new book is supposed to reflect much of her story with a character that lives at the bottom of society's classes and tragically dies at the end.  Rowling's own story contains a twist that the character's storyline in the book doesn't experience, though, since Rowling is now wealthier than the queen of England and Oprah Winfrey.

It's hard to believe that Rowling was receiving social welfare and facing the challenges of single parenthood when success smiled on her.  In a recent interview, she recounted those days with great pride saying that that series of events had to happen for her to be where she is today.

That's true for all of us.  Our lives' events shape us and get us to the next step.  Sometimes our next steps leave us rather lacking in some facets of our lives.  But, even the Sahara Desert is on alternating cycles between lush green jungles for a while and windswept sand dunes for an equal amount of time.  The goal is at least once to have achieved some part of the dreams we have had.  Then, contentment is possible.  My hat is off to J.K. Rowling.

Smarter about the allure

The Middle English period in the history of English had to be some hard times for the people of England.  The Danish clans had spent 500 years populating their new-found island and learning to live alongside each other.  Their clans had all come from an area that feuded,warred, and killed each other for about the same length of time.  But over the last 500 years in a new land full of opportunity, the clans finally learned to live together.  Their leaders were rough and rugged.  Their storytellers told of times when they had to conquer or be conquered.

Then their world changed.  The Anglo-Saxon clans had valiantly fought off Viking marauders for over 100 years, but an invasion and subsequent victory by the French allowed them the entrance to the throne in London.  From that point, all the royal names, events, and documents were written in a tongue quite foreign to the inhabitants.  However, the farther from London one went, the more resistance to French one found by the very traditional landowners of the countryside.  Near Scotland, the people said they would never learn the new language.

From this resistance, compromises were made with the language that resulted in a blend of French and English.  It could have been called Frish or Englench, but the people of the countryside were determined to retain the basic elements and name of their language.  So, English (after the Angles version of German) stuck as the name.  During the 500 years that followed, the blended language of French and English refined itself partly due to a very French idea.

The development of ecclesiastical authority and its associated language of Latin coexisted with the French invasion and subsequent blending of French with Anglo-Saxon.  So the word tempt came in simultaneously with the French idea.  But tempt was too benign for the French speakers (and so religious sounding).  They wanted to show all the intrigue, trickery, chicanery, and Machiavellian intent behind people's actions.  The French were such a devious lot after all.  They introduced the idea of tempting someone through great efforts at manipulation with the word allure.  So, the leaders of the nation began to allure the people into better ways of living to show a distinction between what they had been used to and what was possible under the new regime.  And it truly worked on several levels.  At one level, feudalism lost its grip first in England because of the allure of having more for their families.

The ploy worked of course on more than one level.  Allure came into the language as a verb (lurer=to entice, to seduce) but comes to us today in both verb and noun forms.  Over time, the noun form has supplanted the verb form as the most common use of the idea for allure, but that just means that we've become more passive and turned the action into the name of a sporting event (turning skill into a craft).  We know this because allurement is a noun form also found today.  The expansion of a noun into a second noun changes naming an action to the naming a general class of events (-ment).

From the rough and tumble world of the first English speakers to the more passive modern world we live in now, the action of "go and conquer" has evolved into the name of "come and see the benefits of the house that desire built."  I have to admit to falling prey to the allure of the American Dream.  But, that turned out to be just a dream.  I am now a whole lot more selective in what allures me - really only one thing.  But, I'm waiting for the noun to turn back into a verb.  That might be a while.  Reversion in language doesn't happen very often.

Backstory

Everyone has a story.  It doesn't take long in life to realize that everyone has faced adversity and overcome some kind of obstacle.  Adulthood makes seasoned veterans of us all.  The beauty of getting to know others is learning the backstories that season them. 

I spoke with a young man today who told me of his life outside the U.S.  It's quite a tale.  The first 17 years of his life were spent evading drug cartels just to stay alive.  Even after migrating to the U.S., he had quite an adventure.  He's lucky to be alive.  I learned more today about the tenacity of the human spirit.  I gained an esteem for someone I didn't know before.  I learned a little more how my own story fits into this world of billions.  I learned more about what kind of face I have put on and want to put on for others.  And I learned a little more appreciation for the events that combine to form the present for people, the backstory that doesn't get presented very often.

End of days

The kitchen, dining room, and study lights are off.  A low light in the living room casts shadows down the entryway.  The guest room doors are shut, but it is dark behind them.  Night set in three hours ago on the outside of the front door.  The day has wound down along with all its activities.  Tomorrow begins early; the work day starts at 8:00.  Sleep will last the customary 6 hours.  The day has been as productive as it needed to be and was restful enough for rejuvenating from the day before it.  Another day has ended.

But it is the time of day for smiles to linger because of some the beautiful moments during the day, for time alone to enjoy mental pictures of really important and pleasurable times that need to be seen again, and for a moment to look into the mirror of review for the day so that the next one can be at least as good as the last one.  Then oblivion comes.

Accidents of fortune

Being at the right place at the right time has proverb status in America.  It usually is used when something good financially happens, but it is also true of other happenings.  Tonight I want to reflect on the good fortune of right place and right time showing up as inspirational signposts on the road I have taken in life.

My first encounter with inspiration was with a Greek scholar.  I sat in his class for a semester and a half before he died of a heart attack.  Anything I may have gained in translation principles and language acquisition after that point, I attribute to the inspiration from this man.

Fifteen years after this man another man appeared who taught me about language behavior in society.  I had thought all along that language behaved by a strict set of rules.  That, I now see, is a far cry from the truth.  The person was not inspiring in and of himself, but he presented all the literature I had never read about language as it is spoken by people in societies around the world (as opposed to language presented in grammar books) and fascinate me with personal stories of his own work with people in various societies.

Eleven years later, I found myself once again in the class of someone world renowned for his knowledge of language and translation.  I loved every single second of his classes.  They crowned what I had learned a quarter of a century before.  He lent the expertise I needed to carve out a niche of my own in the language world.

Then, a couple of years ago, through an accident of fortune, I had a chance to spend several dinners and a few days with two of the nation's top historians, one on world history, one on U.S. history.  I loved being around them because they reminded me in all our conversations of how open to interpretation everything is that happens.

I'm sure I would be meekly minding my P's and Q's if I had not had these four chance encounters with five men who changed my philosophical viewpoint and inspired me to always consider as many factors as possible for what I see in life - even things that appear counter-intuitive.  Reflections of my experience with them serve as markers along the way to drive my performance to the highest levels I am capable of.  I thanked each of them at the time of our encounters, but my true thanks will be with the work that I have left to do in life. 

Off - by more than a little

Before the turn of the century, the NFL players decided to hold out against the owners for a season.  The league's answer was to have replacement players.  The season was pathetic, but there was a certain appreciation by the fans for having a season even if it was pitifully played by the replacement players.  Here we are a great number of years later and this time the referees are holding out for the season.  Again, the NFL has supplied replacement people - college referees who want to call on Sundays, basically.  The attitudes by the fans are different this time.  Many comments are being made about the chaos and disorder being allowed on the field.  Brawls are breaking out among players.  Balls are not being spotted on the correct yard lines.  Consistency from one call to the next is absent. And even if chaos is not reigning, incompetence is.

In business, if incompetence exists for very long, profits are lost and heads roll or doors are shut.  In law enforcement, incompetence costs lives.  In education, incompetence of the system causes a whole generation to have to be reeducated as adults, costing taxpayers millions of dollars unnecessarily.  In government, incompetence leads to stalemates, global weakness of perception, and reversion to "glory days."

That's why I love being around those who are efficient, informed, thrifty, and straightforward - competent.  It's tiring to be around those who act incompetently, but so refreshing to mingle with those who are competent.  Refreshing and desired.

Reminders along the road

Whew, that was close!  I was sitting at a dead stop on a rain-drenched freeway at night.  Two lanes over a car parallel to me was also at a dead stop.  Unfortunately, the car behind the stopped car two lanes over didn't notice in time that the car ahead of him was stopped.  I heard the scraping of the locked tires along the wet surface as the car behind slid into the car parallel to me, not at a fast rate of speed, but fast enough to make a crashing noise and see the front car slide down the highway about 3 feet.

Fortunately, the accident didn't occur in my lane and include me.  Since that time - only two weeks ago - there have been 3 more wrecks in the same stretch of road.  The last one was severe.  Such scenes make me think, of course.  When will my turn come?  When will my time be up?  Life can be going along so normally when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the end happens or something devastating happens.

Well, I've been down the road before with a good number of people who are no longer walking the Earth.  One day they are alive, the next day they join the billions of people who have come and gone from the face of this Earth.

I'll never forget driving through a small town about 9 years ago and thinking of a friend who lived there.  She had had cancer for about a year.  I drove through the town, but felt a nudge to turn around and call her house from a pay phone.  (This was before cell phones were so available and coverage wasn't everywhere).  So I turned around and talked to her about 4 or 5 minutes.  Then I continued the trip home.  The next day I learned that she had passed away.

I'll never forget seeing another friend of mine in the hospital.  She had come to my town from another town pretty far away to have surgery.  Something told me I needed to go see her, which I did on two occasions during her stay in my town.  Two weeks later, I received a text that she had died.

There are a number of other instances.  But, I am constantly reminded that every day when I wake up and breathe air, I should be grateful to call my friends by name, to enjoy the sun, to enjoy the rain, to kiss my daughter, to smile every time my granddaughter looks at me, to celebrate someone's special occasion, to enjoy feelings for the ones I love, or to make a call to someone who needs encouragement.

Someday, the call will be to my next of kin rather than a call to me.

Tribute to the different drummer

Archaeologists have found a great number of bones that date back a really long time, in excess of 20,000 years.  What do we as modern humans make of these bones.  Some of us deny that our methods are good enough to discern how old the bones are and say that the Earth cannot be that old.  Some of us cautiously approach the findings by saying that dating something that old needs corroborating evidence and look to artifacts and ancient settlements for further proof.  Others embrace the methods and results and construct a story that reads much differently from the myths, fairy tales, and ancient holy books.

There's a correlation of these three responses to people's world views, of course.  Those in the first group "look at things as they are and ask why" while those in the third group "dream of things that never were and ask why not" (Robert Kennedy).  Those in the first group find joy in meticulously following the rules in place, while those in the third group are driven by visions of the results of questioning everything.  The second group vacillates, naturally, with the prevailing winds.  They find themselves not understanding, so they make up things like the world is flat and the Earth is the center of the universe.

All kinds of people populate our globe, so it is really six and a half billion combinations of the varying degrees of the above three positions.  But I do know I am not a part of the "safe not sorry" group.  And, although I find myself at the mercy of a number of mysteries about life, I don't like to linger in the blissful world of ignorance if I can help it at all.  There's a beauty in "hearing the music of a different drummer, no matter how distant or far away" (Henry David Thoreau).  Viva all the kindred spirits of group three!  Where would we be without them?

That suitable score

"Game-changer" is a term to tell how something is going a certain way, then all of a sudden, the direction is changed or the momentum is changed.  So, routines are developed to keep people on track. Because life has a lot of routines in it, it's easy to keep going the way we are headed, even to drift aimlessly without direction.  But routines are not good when they don't allow us to always see what's best for ourselves.  That's when a game-changer is needed.  Most game-changers happen when they are not invited and are least expected.

Only twice has a game-changer happened to me that I wanted or invited.  They changed the way I thought and acted a whole lot more than the ones that occurred without warning or invitation.  I'm certainly amenable to a third wanted game-changer.  The score of the game I'm in right now needs a turn-around.  It's time for that "changer" to happen along to make the score more suitable!

Silent punctuation

Silence can mean a number of things.  Sometimes silence means approval, sometimes disapproval, sometimes ignorance, sometimes the stroke of brilliance.  Silence can be diplomatic or it can be the greatest snub.  It can mean that no information has been transmitted or that someone doesn't know what to do with information that has been received.  Silence interpretation always depends on context.

One thing is for sure, though.  No matter what the context is, silence always has a meaning.  People use silence when they want to noticeably make a loud statement.  My publishing side has spoken out of its silence; it wants to be resurrected.  I will accommodate that soon. 

And, other areas of life have been deathly quiet as well.  There is an interpretation for each of them.  Like punctuation gives tone to a sentence, so silence adds to the tone of these life areas.  But, the tone is troubling, so in my mind, words echo down hallways disspelling the brooding tone.  And I smile because those echoed words come from a time before the quiet, fill my head, and give me rest for the night.

Snap, crackle, pop or ho hum?

December 21, 2012.  The day will start, but it is not supposed to end.  The Mayan calendar is specific.  There are no days beyond December 21st.  Specials on the history channel have touted the day as if the calendar is certain.

But as the world spins closer to the end of humanity, I don't see a lot of concern on the faces of the people I meet every day.  The Mayans are no longer with us, but they were so advanced in their knowledge of the stars that some have given credence to their calendar.  In fact, their empire is being dug up a little at a time, and the places being found are numerous, organized, large, and advanced.  And, no one can say with certainty what happened to them (although speculation is in no short supply).  One of the possibilities is that they all disappeared  at once.  Now, that contains some fascinating options.

Well, whatever happened to them, they surely left an intriguing piece of information behind.  At the very least, a new epoch is supposed to start.  And, at the most, it's over for humans.  I look forward to seeing what is going to happen.  The next epoch of human history, which is my favorite interpretation of the calendar, should be outstanding, maybe something in science is about to happen to send us to the next level of civilization.  That couldn't be bad.  This particular level has run its course.

In the event that the Mayans disappeared out of ignorance of dealing with Nature (so they starved in a drought unlike any they had ever seen, which is suggested by studying ice cores), December 22, 2012 will dawn like any other day.  The Mayans just didn't plan well and couldn't predict a catastrophe beyond what they could handle.  That makes their calendar a bit of a fantasy table.  It was a good novel in their culture.  I'll go to work like any other December 22nd.  And I'll enjoy the rest of my days because every day is a good day to live and holds enjoyment either in reality or in memory.  And that's worth a daily note of celebration.

Loving what's next

In 1974, I made a trip to the local drug store to buy a couple of items.  The store was a mom and pop drug store.  There weren't any signs in the aisles to let me know where to get the items, so it took me a couple of minutes to find them.  I paid by check, so I had to write out by hand the six items required.  The cashier punched actual push buttons with numbers on them on the register.  When the cashier had finished punching in the prices of all the items, (s)he would punch the total button and a bell would ring for the cash drawer to be pushed forward from the bottom of the register ("ringing up the item" was the phrase used).  The total due showed on metal tabs in a window at the top of the register.  Time inside the store was about 10 minutes.

This morning I made a trip to the local drug store to pick up a couple of items.  It was a national chain store, so when I entered, I knew to look over each aisle where the signs were located telling me what the aisle contained.  I spotted the aisle with the items I needed quickly and proceeded to check-out.  The cashier hit a red square touch field on the register monitor, scanned the bar code with a laser gun, touched the square on the monitor labeled total, and was finished with her part.  I swiped my debit card, entered my PIN, tore off my automatically printed receipt, and left for home.  Time inside the store was about 4 minutes.

My goodness what  a different world I live in 38 years after my 1974 trip to the drug store.  Going back in time or living in a previous era absolutely has no appeal.  I look forward to the advancements of the next 38 years.  I may not even have to go to the drug store at all then.  I will probably order with a device much like the smart phone.  My bank account will be automatically debited, and a delivery robot will ring my doorbell with the item within a few minutes of purchase.  Life should be so good! 

And when teleportation of items materializing in front of me is possible... Oh my...  shopping might just take on a whole other dimension.

Underlying meanings

Recently, I was with a couple of young men and a young woman from El Salvador, a middle-aged, privileged man from Ecuador, a young mother from Mexico, and a hard working middle-aged man from another region in Mexico, an up-and-coming electrical engineer from Columbia, and a young man from Costa Rica.  We were together in the United States where everyone is currently living.

The group had several occasions to talk about both the U.S. where they're now living and the country of their birth.  Most didn't want to move back, but they all brought a perspective that let me know that the U.S. didn't measure up in some way or another to the various countries represented.  Most were from very large cities, the equivalent of New York, L.A., and Chicago.

Interestingly, the group thought that the best way to understand the people of the U.S. was to learn their language.  Then, they might understand the attitudes they had encountered while here.  That is not the only way to learn about a culture of another country, but it is one of the most thorough ways to learn why people act the way they do.

One of the great hypotheses of language learning is that the way a language is structured determines one's outlook on life and how life should work.  At least one linguist (Pinker) has sought to disprove the hypothesis.  But, after listening to the group mentioned above speak of the questions they have about the English language, the hypothesis appears to have some merit.

One example is from the group's difficulty with supplying nouns or pronouns to go with the verbs they used.  In Spanish, the ending of the verb contains the pronoun (as do all Romance languages).  So, they were not in the habit of having to supply the referent for the action.  Semantically, then, action and people are fused in Spanish, whereas action and people are fragmented in English.  The cultural connection is that the people of the group see their families as close knit and families of the U.S. as loose knit.  When asked why, they answered that it seemed the people of the family worked all the time and didn't see each other much.  Activities in the U.S. catered to the individual rather than to the family as a unit.  The sentence structure highlighting this fragmentation is the necessity to use nouns or pronouns separately from the verb.   

Well, that's certainly one viewpoint, and maybe it is accurate.  The argument for the hypothesis has more support for it than this one example, but this example is representative.  Attitudes certainly show through a person's phrasing of an utterance.  The whole field of semantics is about revealing underlying meanings.  Analyzing what people say is fun and revealing.  And, although the semantics producing people's utterances can be a hard deer to hunt, when the deer is killed, the venison is delicious.

Hurricane season

It's hurricane season again.  I remember when they would hit without too much warning and radar was primitive.  Scientists then figured out what caused them and they could track those tropical depressions a little better.  Then they noticed the patterns of waves of storms coming across the Atlantic from the shores of northern Africa.

Now when it's hurricane season, data are fed into software that calculates how many hurricanes will form in a season, predict the destinations of the strongest ones, and track each one on its journey from Africa to the shores of Latin America and the Gulf of Mexico with a pretty good degree of accuracy.  No big deal.

I also used to wander my way through a blurry life.  The prediction patterns are much clearer now.  It's old hat.  I know that the hurricane season of life will start in about 6 weeks and last for about 3 months.  My list of names for them is already prepared.  There should be fewer than last year, but the intensity of the ones that do form might be greater.  I'm watching the monitor for that this season for sure.

Figures of life

A Cliff Dwelling

There sandy seems the golden sky
And golden seems the sandy plain.
No habitation meets the eye
Unless in the horizon rim,
Some halfway up the limestone wall,
That spot of black is not a stain
Or shadow, but a cavern hole,
Where someone used to climb and crawl
To rest from his besetting fears.
I see the callus on his soul
The disappearing last of him
And of his race starvation slim,
Oh years ago - ten thousand years.

Robert Frost

Someone today used the phrase poetic license in reference to wanting to take some liberties with modernizing a well-known ancient story.  That got me to thinking about what all is meant by poetic license in a literary analysis.  The Frost poem Cliff Dwelling illustrates beautifully what is meant.

Usual sentence order is out of kilter.  The first two lines are good examples.  "There, the golden sky seems sandy and the sandy plain seems golden," become stacked stanzas so the reversal of terms is much easier to see as it is written:

There sandy seems the golden sky

And golden seems the sandy plain.

The reversal of terms is both on a single line and across two lines, so it is unmistakable and it serves as a visual where earth meets horizon.  It also is said twice to signify the two times a day when earth and horizon meet - morning and night.  Sandy and golden are synonymous terms since they refer to the same basic color so that even though earth and sky are different in nature, their sameness of color makes them seem as one.  There is a play on words then if the sameness of color blends earth and sky.  They become seamless, which is a thought triggered by the double use of the word "seem" which appears in the two lines one above the other.

In the fourth line from the end, "I see the callus on his soul," the poet is seeing something that no one else sees.  One cannot see into another's soul.  That means the poet has power that others don't and can make remarks full of insight.  For example, callus is a physical hardening of the skin, but callus has been turned into a metaphor for the meaning of hardening.  A hardened soul brings to mind how stoic a person's face may look when considering he is part of a vanishing race.  So the metaphor is then turned into metonymy, that is, something representing another thing it is related to or a part of, the soul representing the person housing the soul.  Frost also achieves contrasting ideas with this metonymy.  He uses soul for flesh and blood.  Flesh and blood are usually separate and distinguishable parts of a human.  But, by metonymy they are the same.  Soul is also ghost-like, something invisible, so the next line referring to a race's extinction, "disappearing last of him," allows the reader to see the invisible past in the cliff dwelling, helping her or him to understand a whole lot more than the physical cliff before her or his eyes.

Much more could be said about the poem, but the 4 lines used are an illustration of how much more a poem contains than normal prose.  So, poetic license doesn't mean merely to take liberties with the grammar, it means to hide images in figures, use words that create images and have multiple meanings at the same time, and rhyme in order to make the ideas memorable.  Poetry is rich because it is so compact, succinct because grammar has another dimension to its semantics, beautiful because its contours are presented in melody, rhyme, and syllabic control.  Poetic license and poetic punch are synonymous phrases.  

So, when my life rhythms come out as prose, I retreat into the inner sanctum of my mind and draw from the rich store of scenes that semantically, figuratively, and melodically have enriched my existence and meaning here on the Earth.  For a period of time, I get lost in the poetic license of life as it should be.

Cut the gyrations

Gyrations is a lovely word.  Its meaning can be applied to a number of situations.  Game playing is among them.  By game playing, I mean that people don't really say and do what is in their best interests or the best interests of those entrusted to them.  Instead, image is everything.  So, people present pictures of themselves or their children that don't match any sort of reality (or only partially match).  They go through such gyrations to throw people off the real track or to enhance the unauthentic picture.

Recently, I was around someone who has known me since college.  The person decided to make some statements for image's sake that didn't fully represent what I stand for.  In the past, I would have merely stood by and let this person say things, but time was up.  I reacted by saying that the person's statement was inaccurate and gave a fuller accounting of what I represent.  The people witnessing the reaction became immediately uncomfortable when a spade was called a spade because they too have let this other person's rants go unchecked.  So, they acknowledged their discomfort level about the interchange and switched the subject.

It is the better part of wisdom to pick battles carefully, but sometimes one has to dismantle the gyrations going on and speak undiluted words about a matter so that a false image does not result.  And it's refreshing to me to be liberated from or to thwart the propaganda people use to further themselves or to denigrate me.  So totally liberating.  And the other person knew to speak truth when continuing to comment about others.  You might call that a win/win.

Journey of 1000 miles

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres
Gaul is all divided into three parts

 Julius Caesar penned his famous first line in Gallic Wars almost 2200 years ago.  I encountered them 41 years ago.  Latin was the first language I learned, so these words are burned into my memory.  I learned a great deal about a second language for the next two years.  I learned how different words were, sentence structures were, concepts for time were, culture was, and that some words and sentence structures could easily have two or three ways to be expressed in English.  I remember spending much time in poring over translations.

The Chinese have a proverb: A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.  Yes, these two years of Latin were my first steps.  I didn't know it then, but the journey's destination was to study several ancient languages and a modern language and to study all the principles in the science of all languages.  Who would've guessed!  But, the journey to that destination was the product of many, many, many steps after the first ones.

I don't know how many steps I have taken, probably about 950 miles worth.  I know I am not through taking steps and accumulating miles either.  But, there is a notable difference between the early steps of the first 500 miles and the later steps of the last 450 miles.  The first half of the journey contained tremendous amounts and bursts of work.  The second half contained mechanical ease from repetition, conclusions about limitations of expressions, and manipulation of facts in constructing theories.  Applying information from other fields to the science helped in seeing a larger and ever-growing picture.  Now operating within the discipline is not work, it is enjoyable and familiar.  Like family, I have grown up and grown older around this science.  Now it's time to smile.

I wish all of life would be like this particular journey.  But, life doesn't work that way.  It's not a series of unilateral decisions, but made up of bilateral or multi-lateral decisons.  Relationships developed have many contributing factors as to how strong they become.  Jobs have many people and circumstances to interact with.  My own birth family stretches its horizons beyond the family I knew and grew up in.  Beliefs are tested against reality and change their shape or break altogether.  Acceptance of values into one's own philosophical view is based on proven track records rather than their ideal or theoretical worth.  All in all, life is messy..  The destination of life is not well defined and evidently has so many different paths leading to its success, that even the proverbs of a society have to change if it lasts long enough.

The saving grace is that there is a degree of familiarity, ease, and enjoyment in the second half of life like there is in the formal training and experience that a person chooses... Golden years to be sure.

About halfway

Today someone asked me to keep a lookout for reading material and/or texts for 9th graders.  It was hard to slow my head from nodding "No."  It's an old subject, but here goes the 200th verse of the same song.

In the year 2000 a friend and I began a book that we never finished.  The chapters were to detail the demise and lack of need for the ability to read and write.  I know that people have decried the sorry state of affairs for both abilities, but I wanted to herald the disappearance of reading and writing.  Since that time on this blog I have tried to warn people of a struggle that would break out in society that would go way beyond poor scores in reading and writing on standardized tests for public school students.  The struggle would last 10 years and end with the unmistakable next stage in transmission of information, including storytelling.

My favorite analogy is to the striking of the meteorite in the Yucatan that killed the dinosaurs.  Dinosaurs were kings of the world and the top of the food chain for millions of years.  But they were unaware up until the time of the strike that not one single dinosaur would make it out alive after the series of devastations set off by the meteorite's crashing into the Earth.  The event is marked by iridium between layers of the Earth's crust called the KT boundary.

 The death of reading and writing will be marked with a 10 year tug-of-war between those who advocate the need for reading and writing forever and those who are bringing in a much more efficient and a quantum leap faster mode of relaying information.  The war would begin in 2007 and end after 2017.  The need to read and write would disappear after 2017, and when people recognized the new path being forged, they would hasten the dying forms for transmission of knowledge and entertainment that has lasted for so many centuries as the paramount mode for perpetuation.

When December comes and goes, the struggle will be halfway over.  From every sign I see, everything is right on schedule.  Other voices have joined mine in warning others of the impending doom of two of the three Rs.  Two of the important signs can be capsulized by two commercials and two innovations.  The first commercial is for a speech to type device so that people can speak their words and type will appear on a page.  The ability to create information on a page from a voice command will not be limited to type for long.  Creating visual logs from speech is next.  The second is for the Iphone's ability to speak a question and get the answer in a matter of seconds or utter a command and the task will be performed.  Since visual information can be archived also, it is a matter of time before that kind of information will be commanded.  The first innovation is the smart phone, complete with its myriad number of apps that can control lighting and temperature in houses, count the number of calories eaten, recognize information coded in bars and other encryption codes, and "read" notes in a song and tell you its title among a thousand other useful tasks.  The second innovation is the ability to be somewhere virtually, without travel and without loss of dimensionality.   The appearance of two other inventions will sound Taps for reading and writing: holographic virtuality and invisibility (cloaking) in matters of stealth.  Both are right around the corner - probably about 5 years away.

I hope to see the years after 2017.  There will be remnants plenty of the age that has just passed.  But there will be a layer of iridium separating the two epochs.  Readers and writers won't fare well in the new world.  The currency of the educated will be different.  Those who know how to organize electronic data and format what people visualize will conduct the funerals of those whose pens, pencils, and typing keys only make the runes of sentences and paragraphs.  R.I.P.

A color-filled cloud

It was a cloudy day three years ago, and in the western sky a beautiful rainbow occurred.  I had seen one just the day before too.  Those were the best days, and I remember writing a blog about those two rainbows and how they represented my reason for living.

Tonight, I stepped outside to view the sky.  Dark clouds had formed a half-hour to the east.  A beautiful, brilliantly colored arc filled the sky.  So, I stopped for a minute or two to let my mind wonder again about what it represented... the source of my life.  And below that rainbow tonight - my greatest treasure.

Insanely harsh at 112

Parked in the sun for only an hour and a half, the car had a temperature reading of 122 degrees.  This was at 5:00 PM.  The car's gauge did fall after hitting the road and having a little wind blow against it.  But, the temperature only dropped 10 degrees.  So, at 5 it was 112.  A couple of hours later the measurement was 106.  Even at 10:00 at night, the news reported a temperature of 98.

That's the second time this summer it has been 112.  I could feel the heat radiating from the driveway, and it felt every bit as hot as the heat pouring across my face when I open an oven door.  112 is a different level of hot.  Last summer set a record for the most number of days in a year above 100.  But, never did it reach 112.  Last month was the hottest July on record in the United States.  It was also the hottest 7 month period on record (January through July).  The record was last set in 1936 in the throes of the dust bowl and depression era.  Now it's hotter than one of the bleakest, driest, most drought-ridden time periods in recent history in the USA.

Hemingway wrote a short story called Hills Like White Elephants (1927), in which the setting was a place in Spain that was dripping hot.  The heat-driven setting controlled the story, its characters' conversations, and its actions.  It was the backdrop for forbidden topics to be discussed and extreme reactions to surface.

Extreme is the operative word.  At 112 degrees, I was ready to react more harshly to conversations today than normal.  And, I was subjected to some harsh, bleak, and drought-ridden conversations today.  Tomorrow is supposed to be only 104.  I look forward to the cool down in both outside air and topics of conversation.

Failure culture

NASA did it!  And I love them for the story they tell.

Exploration on Mars has been a long, desolate road.  The planet has beckoned to Earth's inhabitants ever since people have been gazing at it through telescopes.  After rocket power was discovered, attempt after attempt by the USSR and the USA failed to either reach Mars or operate properly.  Europe and Japan have also tried reaching Mars.  Finally, several probes from the USA managed to snap pictures of Mars' surface.  Then came the landings.  Most were successful, but landing on Mars and completing the mission successfully has only had a collective 47% success rate for all countries that have tried it.

That sounds a lot like the missions I try in life.  Some of my missions have not reached Earth's orbit.  Some have malfunctioned while making the trip.  Some have crash-landed on the surface.  And some have performed like they were supposed to have and have added much quality and knowledge to my life.  But, just knowing that some of the bravest, most expert scientists in the world have collectively not done very well in meeting their objectives makes me feel better about my own failures.

I think of Edison when I think of failures in life.  Time after time after time he tried this chemical and that, this shape and that, this thickness of filament and that, this size of bulb and that, this strength of current and that, this type of material for bulbs and filaments and that.  I have never tried to do something 1000 times, but I think I would probably drop experimentation after the 300th attempt.  But, Edison and space programs have something in common.  They knew that landing and light could happen with the right combination of knowledge and time.  So, they settled in for the long haul... and they will be remembered for all the quality they have added to human existence.  I will not be remembered by history for anything major done for society, but I can add to the quality of human existence within the sphere allotted to me.

Failures have happened for me in life and have occurred more often than not... over half the time (just as for attempts to land on Mars and discovering the light bulb).  But, how sweet it is when everything happens properly, and success is achieved.... sweet and long lasting, memorable and flavorful.

Following the trail of sweart

Sweart was a word from Anglo-Saxon meaning dark.  It was used when two items were being compared.  It also meant black and was used in describing skin color and sky color.  As time passed people began to only pronounce the a in the word, as in the word father.  So, lo and behold, the spelling changed to swart.  Apparently, some of the peasants of the country didn't know much grammar and thought the word was a noun instead of an adjective.  So when they wanted to say the adjective form of the word, they added y.  By the time Edward DeVere was writing plays under the pseudonym William Shakespeare, the word swarty was popular.  Then, the pronunciation became a function of where a person lived around London.  The ever-popular d alternation with t in words like hearty (pronounced hardy) became both a glottal stop (swar? i) in some outlying regions and an eth sound (voiced th, swarthy) in some other outlying regions.  By the time England began colonizing America the eth version of the word fell from the lips of the sailors and pilgrims making their way across the pond.

That is the microscopic version of a word journey from about 500 ACE to 2012 ACE.  It shows that change happens in language over time.  In fact, language change is the rule for words and grammar rather than stasis.  The change principle of language helped me see that life was like that too.  Things change.  A person's environment changes several times over one's lifetime.  A person's tastes in clothing and food change.  One's personal orientation changes from being single to include a partner and children.  One's attitudes toward others and important issues change from staunch to mellow as years pass.  Beliefs change either by addition or by deletion.  And, physically, one's body changes.  Ear lobes and noses elongate, skin loosens and eventually sags, bones compact, and hair thins.

I can't help but reflect on my own journey of change.  I have learned to expect it.  Life comes in phases.  I can tell you about a certain time in my life by referring to where I lived, what job I had, or whether it was pre-children, with children, or post-children.  Many types of phases and milestones mark a person's journey.  Mine is no different.  I have some interesting phases in my life, several beautiful phases, and yes, a few swarthy ones. I might have 3 or 4 phases left, but I look forward to them.  They'll be different from the ones that came before.  I will make the same journey from sweart to swarthy.

When I seek harmony

The scenery was like few other places on Earth.  I still have the pictures.  The mountain top was 14,000 feet high.  It really wasn't the tallest mountain in the world, but it was for me that day.  Peaks surrounded the summit I was on, but I was looking down on all of them.  Clouds hovered, suspended on most of them.  They drifted by me in the thin air.  I saw valleys carved by glaciers, and pools of deep alpine water dotted those valleys.  Others walked around on the summit, but I could hear nothing but silence.  14,000 feet in the clouds of the sky, but total silence draped the mountain sides all the way to their valleys.  Stupendous moments indelibly printed their time-stamps in the recesses of my mind.

On occasions when I need total peace, I retreat to this mountain top.  I breathe in again the cool, soothing air.  The intoxicating landscape takes me from any worry that has crossed my mind.  It revives in me the faith I have that once again life can rest in such breathtaking beauty. 

Then, I can make the descent to the mountainside floor for harmony with the flow of regular life.

Doubling what I know

My college roommate came to town last week, so we met for lunch.  We were comparing some of the experiences we had had with our children and some of our philosophy on raising them, given certain situations.  I made some comment, I don't remember what it was at this point, and he just laughed and said, "You really only know something about one thing in life and this is really not it."  We both just laughed.

But I get to thinking how true his comment really was.  And the irony is that that one thing I know something about has rarely appeared on my agenda in life.  It was not something that I really knew about until my 40s (so most of my life, I didn't know something about one thing.  I guess I knew nothing about everything), so I have spent most of my life knowing nothing.  I guess that is a point of humor.  I probably shouldn't have laughed about knowing nothing.

Of course, my roommate knew me before I knew anything at all, so he's qualified to make such an observation.  And, he has never wandered onto the one subject I might know something about.  So, it's only hearsay to him that I might have gained knowledge of one thing.  There's a comfort being around him.  He has known me in every stage of life from college onward, probably through 5 distinct stages.  But, he's knowledgeable about one thing in life too (it's a different thing).  So, we're even and it's no wonder that we were laughing about raising our children.  We didn't really know what we were doing.  Now, I have two things in life I'm relatively sure about.

Water for my heart

The earliest human records with any meaning come from Sumeria and Akkad, the birthplace of civilization (not human settlement, but civilization).  Water was important to the people of Sumeria, which is why they had settled along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the Persian Gulf. Water was something they had depended on for life, and something they could not create themselves, so they assigned a supernatural origin to it.  That deity filled river beds and dry inlets with life-giving water.  A temple to this deity has been found in Eridu.  He had other attributes as well, but he was named for being responsible for the life-giving water he made sure humans had.  So they called him The One Who Presides Over the Earth, or Enki.  Later, the priests who represented Enki took the title En (the equivalent of lord).  Enki's personal number was 40.  His symbol was the fish at first (he allowed them to flourish since he was the provider of water).  Later, he also was given the symbol of the goat since that was the plentiful meat that was the source of life-giving food from the earth.  When people looked to the sky and imagined the zodiac, the goat was named among the stars and given the name of Capricorn.


It's a story that resonates with me.  On nights when I need to listen to my heart, I look skyward and see the stars of Capricorn, the sign of Enki, the one who provided life-giving water.  But, I don't think in terms of goats and fish, but in terms of laughter, smiles, cheer, and generosity... attributes of the one who has given my heart life.

What's the right measure?

How much does a person really know?  A lot or a little or somewhere in between? 

It's virtually impossible to know.  Tests  have been designed to attempt the answer to that question, but they fall very short in measuring what the human mind uses as knowledge and have no predictive power about how a person will create or react in given situations, under duress, or in relationships. Love in the Wild, Survivor, and  Bachelorette are as good a test for measuring these ideas as specially designed tests are.

I suppose a person could say that one should check her/his grades in school.  That suggestion is the most laughable of all solutions.  If you are talking about college, everyone knows that professors have to give grades according to a Bell curve.  In addition, only about 25% of the population graduate from college, so the comparison is not how much one might know against the general population, but how much memorization or  knowledge from practicum one can reproduce in comparison to others who want to mortgage their futures in pursuit of a certain level of a quality life.  It is even more absurd on the high school level.  Teachers are forbidden to give less than a 50, so automatically the grading field is reduced to 50 points from 100.  That means a 70 isn't 70% any longer, but is the 40% marker in a 50 point grading field.  Students graduating with a 70 (or a 65 that teachers magically turn into 70 to move the student through the grade level) are really, really subpar.

One could compare financial income assuming that the people who know more make more money.  But knowledge doesn't work like that.  Given that hard work can substitute for knowledge in the workplace, or connections to the right people can substitute for knowledge, it is impossible to look at the tax return and determine how much a person knows.  There is also the lack of equivalence among work fields.  If one works in a "hot" field such as computer programming, natural language analysis, geophysics, petroleum engineering, actuarial tables, medicine and the like, then (s)he makes much more than public servants with the same experience, education, number of connections, and desire.

Life experience is a pretty good teacher, I would have to say.  So maybe the best way to know how much one knows is not to compare oneself against people but against previous experience.  How much better does one react to life's situations?  How much better does a person create, preparing for potential situations?  How much fear or courage does one have in making it through unknown situations?  Then, maybe one can know how much knowledge has been gained.

If true, I would like to think that experience prepares one to make great decisions given cumulative effect.  So, instead of grades, money, or tests, a much truer measure of how much a person knows is performance after a catalyst.  That (catalysts) is what makes people creative, or determined, or courageous, or failing, or recovering, or contented, or happy.  Catalysts come in many, many forms.  Sometimes a catalyst is a difficult time.  At other times a catalyst is having a simple conversation with someone because the way becomes clear after talking.

I have a good idea of how much I know because I can predict now what catalysts might be lurking around the next corner when I used to be surprised a lot.  Some catalysts I have imagined and never had to face.  Other catalysts have repeated themselves a few times, so I know what to expect and when to expect them.  Some catalysts are even hoped for.  I have one of those catalysts.  It's more of a craving.  If it happens, I would be the most knowledgeable I have ever been in my life... and the most satisfied.

Old word - new application

Ancient Greek has a word for setting things aside because they are special.  I like this word because it allows me to express the very special place a group of pictures has for me.  I have albums and albums of pictures.  Some are important because they are old and contain my college experience.  Some are put in albums because they represent firsts in life, such as first child or first birthday or first bike ride.  Some have been kept because they simply chart the journey of life.  But, there is a group of pictures totally set aside for special remembrance.  If I spoke ancient Greek, I would apply this word for setting aside something special in this circumstance.  The group of pictures is not a closed set.  I just added a few more to it in the last couple of days.

Religion has translated this word as either holy or sacred.  Their translation and subsequent application of the Greek word takes it out of its natural context and distorts its meaning, or at least specializes the meaning to an extent not intended.  The semantics might include the idea of "special" and "other," but not the many other attributes conjured by religion for holy and sacred.

But misuse of the principles of translation doesn't deter me from assigning this Greek word to my very, very special pictures that I have placed in their own category.  Agios works for me whenever I ponder, gaze, study, and otherwise simply enjoy looking at these pictures - over and over, time and again.

Oh, to be 4!

It's that special day again.  She's 4 today.  She will grow up using technology like it is first nature, not second.  She will demand to know more until she is satisfied.  She is determined and won't stop till she gets to her goal.  I know this because her amazing mother is the same way...  Happy Birthday... I hope you never outgrow your beautiful bows.

Stifling heat both inside and out

The temperature set a record today.  The old record was reached in 1939.  The new record exceeded the old  by 3 degrees.  Heat waves literally could be seen rising from the concrete on sidewalks and roads.  I can count on two hands the number of times in my life I have been in a place of 112 or more degrees, the hottest being 118.  The heat is stifling past 110, so today was 2 degrees above stifling.  Sweat appears without any movement.  Add tiny movement and it feels as if one has run a marathon.  I am more than thankful for the taste of refreshing water on days like this. 

Some days my soul hits record high temperatures when it is bereft of the laugh and smile that made it quite an oasis once.  Fortunately, the refreshing taste of a picture satisfies the soul's palate and allows one to move past the empty space creating such stifling heat.  I am more than thankful for such images.

What informs us?

I was speaking with a man who taught Spanish in a high school not long ago.  As we talked about his job, he spoke of the "Natural" method for learning language.  It's not a new method.  It's been around for a great number of years.  In fact, it may be the original "method" assuming the word means a systematic order by which to learn something.  The thinking is that babies have to go from 0-60 in a quarter mile.  Since many babies begin speaking by around 9 months and continue learning language at a very rapid pace until around 5, then the stages through which they pass in piecing together language must be the proper sequence for all learners to acquire a language.

I can't believe the method is still around.  I thought it had been reasoned that the onset of reading changes the language dynamic.  Most 8-year-olds can read, so that would preclude the "natural" method from being followed for people 8 and above.  Puberty also changes things.  Cognition, especially how thought is organized, is fundamentally different after puberty than before.  That would certainly prevent the "natural' method from being followed by teens and those older.

But, here I was in the summer of 2012 talking with someone who had been presented the "natural" method and had accepted its premise.  I thought that maybe someone had reworked the idea and used an old name for a new method based on current research.  But, alas, this was not the case.  Wherever he got the notion that the way young children learn a language is the correct way to learn a language should be the last place ever to offer this method as viable.  Children learn their first words as a result of a caretaker modeling the language.  Nowhere in the public schools is this modeled no matter what the grade level, particularly not high school.  Children go through an identifiable two-word utterance stage.  Teenagers and above don't even come close to thinking in these terms.  Children experiment with sounds for the nine months they are in waiting for language to spring forth from their mouths.  That is not the case for older learners. 

Brain studies alone over the last 10 years obliterate the "natural method."  There are two periods of time when the brain prunes its organization of connections, one at around 10 months, one at around 14 years.  After each of the "prunings" the brain advances in its organizational capacity and structure.  There is no way a person after the prunings could return to the stages of a previous organization after it takes place.  And after the first organizational restructuring, the brain learns according to exposure to a child's environment and internal impressions such as interest, motivation, personality, and utility.  By age six, children are set on a learning track unique to themselves.  By age 10 the corpus callosum thins and allows more nerve endings to develop to connect the two hemispheres of the brain.  Language learning is totally different after this stage than before.

I could go on.  The idea is obvious.  The "natural" method has no basis for modern language learning because it has no truth in its learning principles.  This is also a good corollary for life.  Basing one's lifestyle and habits on some notion that life should be lived according to principles we learned as children or as teenagers (even young adults) is probably flawed.  Just as the best method for language learning is probably the one that pays closest attention to the state-of-the-art research, the best way to live life is to do so according to our latest wisdom based on experience and knowledge of our own personality in the situations we have encountered.  Then, we won't be trapped by youthful ideas that go awry in the face of true situations, teachings that were supposed to guide us through childhood but that were never intended for adulthood, or missteps that cost us in time, energy, money, and love along our journey's way.

Turning the performance

Once in a while the opportunity arises to perform the thing for which you have been formally trained to do, the craft which you have worked so hard to perfect.  Not that it is appreciated; it is just an opportunity to perform it.  I have often wondered what it would feel like to do this.

It comes so naturally that it doesn't feel like work.  Your mind feels so totally at ease that the manipulations required to perform the task are automatic.  There's a lot of energy in doing it.  It's not tiring, but synergetic.  Had I been able to make a job out of doing this for most of my life, I think I would have had a whole different outlook on life.  The only thing left is to turn performance into something people have to have and can't live without.  That would be the apex of reward for two reasons: people would appreciate the performance and my life would have buoyancy.

Once again

One of the smallest yet most influential linguistic centers in all the world is nestled in the hills out of the way from a heavily trafficked interstate just a couple of miles north of it.  I took a course there once.  My professor was a visiting professor for the summer from Brown University.  It was one of the best courses I have ever taken.  He had a knack for guiding one into large amounts of knowledge in a very short time.

Today when I visited the campus and meandered among the offices of the esteemed instructors, I couldn't help but notice the great diversity of the faculty there.  One office had a sign "Wild-eyed bibliomaniac" on the doorpost, another had "Second Language and Culture Acquisition."  These teachers have all been in the field for a long time before they ever wind up in the halls of academe here. But, that only enhances the intrigue they bring to the place.

The teachers do have one thing in common.  Every single one of them has had to go to various groups, individuals, and corporations to raise their support.  The university doesn't pay them at all.  They have lived such sacrificial lives (in that they have sacrificed prestige and a certain level of prosperity for the passion of working in the field and trying to impart that knowledge later in life to those who come behind them).

I am always impressed with their knowledge, but inspired as well.  I am inspired that the professors there, some of whom I know and have gone to school with, know so much, work hard at transmitting their knowledge to others, and act so humbly as if they are regular people.  I am inspired by their discipline in the midst of austerity.  I am awed by their wit and humor because I am very short in both of these categories.  I am so aware of the tiny little niche I may fill compared to the vast array of opportunities for learning the average student is exposed to there.  But, that inspires me to do well in my little space in the world.

I needed the trip to this private, backwoods, semi-hidden, tranquil environment to be around such an assorted crew of individuals.  I needed to be prodded and to be inspired once again, for I had lost a step in getting to the top and staying there in a very specialized field.  Inspiration is such a positive feeling.

Lord of the Flies

I passed through Colorado City not long ago.  As a person enters the town from the east side, a billboard still carries the image of Hailey Dunn with contact information if you have seen her.  Travesty, sham, and farce are three words that come to mind whenever I see that sign.  The sign has been there for a year and a half.  Of course, no one has called the number on the sign in recent history because no one has seen Hailey.

The local police decided early on not to press the disappearance because they knew not to delve too far.  It wasn't for ineptitude.  They have investigated other crimes with some forensic skill.  The FBI decided it was a minor case and let local authorities handle it.  Given limited resources, no leads, and the location and size of Colorado City ( a really small town in remote West Texas), one could have predicted their quick exit.  The Texas Rangers stayed somewhat longer.  But they did so only to make the community think they were doing something.  They are understaffed with more to police in a  large state than a missing girl in her early teens.  So, other than entertaining cold tips, they were never really a factor.

Hailey's mother was on the fringe of society, popping a few pills, having a good time in life, subsisting on very little money (which is why she was selected in the first place by a third party), so the police found it very easy to ignore the real issues.  They knew that Hailey's mother didn't have the background or the means to resolve this crime.  Instead of focusing on finding Hailey, they arrested the mother a couple of times for her drug use.  Her interrogations yielded little because the police deliberately questioned her about murdering Hailey or being an accomplice to her murder.  Of course, they fully realized that murder wasn't involved.  But, they had to deflect attention from themselves since their every intention was to look good in the beginning and let the case fade with time.

It's beyond comprehension that the one who knows what happened to Hailey and has been laughing in the background every time he goes to the bank was never pursued.  The lies this person has told to satisfy the smoke and mirrors put up by the detective in the case only show the depth of corruption involved in not finding Hailey.  The legal system wasn't ever allowed to kick in because of Hailey's mother's status in the town.  The townspeople eventually ran her out of the town.

What a travesty.  A young teen was whisked away from her roots and replanted in an evil environment far away from everything she knew and loved.  What a sham.  Local authorities from law enforcement to school officials, from the mayor to the mother's attorney have turned their backs on someone down a few rungs on the prestige ladder in the community.  What a farce.  All the searches that were encouraged, but that were of no use even from the beginning, and the total lack of reliance on any true forensic techniques that could have been brought to bear on finding Hailey shout to the heavens that a miscarriage of justice has happened.

But, as the sun sets tonight in Colorado City, someone knows about Hailey Dunn.  It's hard to imagine a human being so calloused and emotionally detached that he reeks from the smell of his singed soul still smoking from the sulfurous flames of the Great Inferno!

The grass is greener...

I have a friend who goes on a semi-regular basis to a close casino to play his games.  He rarely loses money.  One could call him lucky.  He has a certain knack for slowly building his gains and an uncanny will power to be able to shut it down once he hits his goal.

I could use his luck in the routines of life.  I really don't know how to slowly build on anything life dishes out.  Life seems to give, then take away as if the odds were stacked in favor of the house.  I have tried to build on some really important things only to have them vanish as if my hands were sieves for important things to filter through, then vanish.  I would like to once hit my goal and walk away with my gains in hand.

It's ironic that if you talk to him about the routines of life, he'll tell you he'd rather have stability (which he says I have in life) than the ability to win at betting.  He considers himself to lack that.  I think it's a matter of perspective here.  He would trade luck for stability, but I would trade my routines for the ability to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em.  Perhaps my friend is right and I'm stable.  Or perhaps, I should still strive for knowing when to make a bold move and walk away happy.

Love the green

This year I water the grass about every other day to keep it green.  Heat is high, so without the water, the lawn turns brittle brown.  Even with watering it pretty often, cracks appear in the ground below the grass.  And the bald spots of the edges of the lawn don't have those creeping runners to help spread the lawn.  Fertilizer has not even greened the lawn like one would expect.

Keeping a lawn is reminiscent of how things turn out over the long haul.  High heat, high maintenance, cracked ground, and no spreading.  That's just how life is, isn't it.  I will say, though, that when the patches of green turn the lawn in its entirety to green, there is jubilation, and sometimes it is jubilation that lasts till the next greening event.  And since life happens in cycles, jubilation of a once green lawn gets a person through till the next greening event.  That makes jubilation that much sweeter.