We mainly just guess

Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist that has written extensively about the inner workings of the brain.  Part of his findings deal with the ability of the brain to fill in what we selectively want to see, hear, smell and touch.  In his book How the Mind Works, Pinker has a lengthy section about the eye's perception of what it is seeing.  He compares the process to the eye seeing things as a checker board.  The white squares are not seen, but the black ones are.  Even though the picture is not complete, the mind fills in what is not seen venturing a guess at what is being seen.

A conversation with my mom about two years ago proves Pinker's point.  She was driving on a street that she has driven on many, many times.  She pulled to the stop sign, looked both ways, then began to accelerate into the intersection.  A car whizzed by and nearly hit her.  I told her that she was not expecting to see anything because she normally doesn't.  So her vision was controlled by her expectation.  Mother didn't buy the explanation, but the incident exactly  illustrated Pinker's findings.

To illustrate further, I offer the video below.  People think of Disney as a company for children, so they aren't really looking for sexual innuendos in the animated movies Disney produces.  But our expectations control what we see.

The  same is true about how we hear language.   If we think someone is questionable, ignorant, or deceitful, then that's how the words are heard.  If we think that someone is being honest and trustworthy, then that also is how we hear the words.  Fortunately, forensic methods can overcome this "blindness."  The field helps in judging truth value with accuracy.  That's helpful on a number of fronts.  It cuts through the chase in the legal and law enforcement arenas for sure.  It keeps people from babbling dishonest statements at a rate of one every second because they know you understand the language they are using.  It's just nice to have equalizing techniques at your disposal.  It's like going into a battle with an equal number of weapons in your arsenal as what the enemy has.

We'll know more soon

Around the world are structures of stone that mystify the best archaeologists.  The stones are huge, made of granite usually, and bear some shape that required power tools.  Archaeologists have largely ignored the finds and have relegated them to anomalies that are as old as they appear to be.  About 10 years ago, people began finding more and more stone structures besides the standard ones, such as Stonehenge and the statues of Easter Island.

Now amateurs and experts alike have amassed such a wealth of stone shapes that they are obligated to start offering explanations.  Some of these stones are majestic because they are precisely carved like the perfectly round spheres, some 8 feet in diameter, and perfectly planed obelisks more than 30 feet high.  Others are roughly carved but monumentally heavy statues of faces.  Still others are found in out of the way places and require aerial observation to see them or educated guesses on how they would have been used.  Some seem religious in nature while some are definitely aligned with constellations or planets for reasons unknown.

More than one researcher has now come away from the "ignorance is bliss" approach and has begun to consider that civilization sprung up on the Earth a really long time before currently established timetables.  Some have gone so far as to hypothesize, seriously, that Earth had visitations from beings from the sky.  Many more conservative  scholars can't agree to radical theories such as these two, but still hint that civilization must have existed in some highly intelligent form before being wiped out by a catastrophic, global flood.

The most recent disappearance of the ice age some 11,000-13,0000 years ago remains a mile marker for archaeologists, and they pin events and human movement around those dates.  They should.  And, they should reconsider other milestones - genetic reduction of 70,000 years ago being one of them.  What exactly happened that only a few genetic types of humans exist now, but that maybe as many as 12 types existed before the 70,000 year marker?  The eruption of Mount Toba in the Peloponnesian Islands only 4000 years before is another marker.  Were humans alive at that point?  How did they survive when many other life forms didn't?

I look forward to the scientists and archaeological experts of tomorrow to bring us some informed ideas about the mysteries that elude us now.  Their answers will give us a much greater clarity and give our civilization a quantum leap into the next stage.

It's about going farther

Disney movies are highly metaphorical in nature.  They are called parables by some because they have a lesson to teach.  Their characters are not always human, but the characters all speak and have human conflicts, so in effect, they have the same approach as a parable in conveying a principle for life.  These movies are called allegories by others because of they tell stories that have symbols in them.

Tomorrowland  is one of the stories from the same mold as other Disney movies, but it isn't animated.  The reason for that is that the story writers want the viewer to have a more realistic interpretation of the symbols than if these representations were placed in an animated film.

The symbols are good ones.  The main character symbolizes the people who have the determination of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Elon Musk, and the hundreds of other determined leaders who have not been content with the landscape of current reality and have offered something more.  It gives the viewer hope that no matter what generation is trying to hand off the push to get better, that attempt will be successful because there are talented and willing young people to carry the torch.  It's a hopeful movie.

It's also a movie of reality because the main character encounters obstacles from both he people who might hold the future for them and those who simply live in the present.  Even the character who has experienced the same when he was young is hesitant to help someone in the next generation.  That's reality, for sure. 

Other symbols were used as well, such as the transmitter to recruit the next generation.  It's good to show the type of person that is needed to answer the call.  The archetypal villain is a great symbol of those who would pose the greatest setback to progress.  He manipulates both truth and circumstances to create the sense of defeat.  And the transportation used to transport the main character to Tomorrowland is a good symbol of the symbiotic relationship of the younger generation having to trust and depend on the older generation to provide a means for them to arrive at the city and the older generation having to trust that the younger generation will know what to do next "because they know how things work."

This is the kind of story that encourages people to do more, to do better, to reach higher, to go farther.  I am a great believer in using the allegorical form of storytelling to encode what we want the next generation to do.  I support Disney's great attempt to get the next generation off their rear-ends as they pass to adulthood.

Despite their best efforts

The Disney movie Tomorrowland has many meritable qualities to it.  Among them is the message about the resistance people have to what is coming in the next stage of civilization.  Change itself morphs rather naturally, so to glimpse something in the future without the benefit of the morphing transition is to glimpse something rather jolting and abrupt.

The clip represents this abruptness so well.  The main female character gets a glimpse of the future, but people try to keep her from getting to the world she has glimpsed.  Fortunately, in the movie she makes it despite the best efforts of people in the present to keep her from making it to the future.

There is a great message here for those in the field of education from the bottom to the top - from kindergarten to doctoral programs: glimpse the future and try with every fiber of energy to overcome the forces that would keep you from bringing the world of tomorrow to the world of today.  Most educators are much too like the robots who come to thwart the ones who are chosen to lead the way out of the present.  The forces are strong against morphing.  My hope and work is to help develop and help others to develop the way to get from today to tomorrow - that is George Clooney's character.

Tomorrowland is a great allegory for the truth of morphing from status quo to a better way of life in the vein of Plato's allegory, The Cave.  I stand with Plato and Disney.  We're way behind schedule. It's time to morph.

A date with destiny

Really, no one should have heard of Robert Ritchie.  He was born in a small town of 3500 people at the top of the U.S. on the thumb part of the "mit" of Michigan, not too far north of Detroit.  He wasn't monitored too well as a child although he wasn't the youngest of his family.  At age 15 he decided to run away from his boring little town to Mt. Clemens, Michigan, a bigger town (about 20,000) to him with more opportunity (and less supervision).  He found a job at a car wash, but it wasn't long before the local gang had him selling drugs from his car wash job.  He was a nobody, washed up before life even started for him.

In high school things changed for him slightly.  One can never tell where humble beginnings take a turn for the better.  A neighborhood adult decided to do something about the rotten and dangerous living conditions and organized a rap group for interested kids.  Robert had a great interest in that, so he joined.  A little later he was DJing for basement parties.  That's not the big times exactly, but it was Robert's start.  He continued performing his rap music and befriending locals also interested in rap.  It so happened that D-Nice, producer of Boogie Down Productions, was one of his local friends.  He was invited to open for this group and meet a representative of  Jive Records.  This led to a record deal at his tender age of 17.  But, this part is not where you know "the rest of the story."  This part is still the humble beginnings part.

Jive decided to give Robert the boot because his lyrics were laced with such offensive words and images.  A radio station in New York received the largest fine to date (1989) for playing his song Yo Da-Lin. A "7 years of famine" followed. He went through two other record labels who dropped him for lack of interest in his work.  He made one of his romantic interests pregnant, so a son was born to him.  He worked janitor jobs in order to pay for studio fees because he could not let his interest go. He learned how to play 5 different instruments so that he wouldn't have to hire others to play for him.  Instead, he could mix the music himself.  Days, weeks, months, and years were dark and turned darker with each one that passed.

But Robert had a date with destiny in Miami, Florida, in December 1998.  He was invited by MTV to perform with many other artists on the show MTV Fashionably Loud.  Jay-Z was also at the event and was upstaged by Robert.  That was his magic moment.  His music took off, his singles began selling, he began making the TV circuit.

The details of every phase of Robert's career show dogged determination on his part.  He was always aware of the constant odds against him on the path he faced in order to get his music heard.  He started early, never gave up, and was friendly to everyone he met.  Eventually his network came through for him.  Like nearly all the great musicians, his story is filled with failure and dark times.  It wasn't a stroke of luck that made him famous, it was his incessant, unwavering belief that he would be successful or die trying.

Never heard of Robert Ritchie, five-time Grammy winner?  Of course not.  His nickname since age 17 has come from others noticing how he rocked the crowd he played to.  At the time he was just a kid, so they called him Kid Rock.  Now it makes sense.

You can't know

More and more, brilliant people are coming to the conclusion that the past has a much more different existence than was known a mere 20 years ago.  The television show America Unearthed begins every show by mentioning "the history we were all taught in schools is wrong."  It cites many runes and artifacts as its evidence.  Ancient Aliens is also a program that poses the question of whether ancient humans were able to build the monuments we find with the tools that are known to have existed.  Recently, Planet Egypt raised the question of how many of the artifacts discovered over the years can really be made with the tools the Egyptians left behind.

Of particular interest in the most recent program was a core sample that seems to have been discarded after drilling it out of granite, the hardest rock known.  The only known drilling material we know that the Egyptians had is copper.  But cutting granite with copper is impossible.  So, how was it done?  No one knows.  The striations on the granite indicate that the amount of pressure put on the drill to form the number of striations appearing is more than is possible with today's drills.

I love mysteries like this one.  They show me that we don't really know what the past was like.  We see backwards into time so dimly that it is almost not worth the time to speculate.  Some day we will perhaps know, but not today.  Time continues to hold its secrets despite our best efforts.  And that is the gospel truth.  The only way to have a clear picture is to have lived through something ourselves.

I think about that sometimes when it comes to events in my life.  For those who were there, it's an open book, but for those who weren't, everything is hidden from public view.  For those who knew me at one time and now look at my life and say they can't believe this event or that happened, then I say, "Stand back, look and respect, or look and disbelieve, but you can't know the real events since you were not there."  That's a good thing, just like it is for society as we peer back into the ancient past.

In the path

I have never really been in the path of a hurricane on land or sea.  I intend never to be on the water at any time during a hurricane, that is certain.   I have been in the outer band range of hurricane winds and rain before.  When various hurricanes have made landfall, I have watched their paths to the east or west through newscasts and wondered how they differ from other storms.  But, today I'm sitting here in the middle of a hurricane that moved inland.

So, today I can tell you.  There's nothing in the way of bursts of winds, lightning streaking  across the length of the sky, or thunder sounding in the background like a drum  roll for half an hour.   Skies don't get dark, dark gray or purple.  None of that.

The wind is constant, not turbulent like tornadic winds, but straightline winds about 40-50 MPH. They blow without stopping.  The rain is just as constant.  It lightens, then pours, lightens again, pours, alternatingly.  It's been raining about 8 straight hours without stopping.

It's really pretty pleasant.  There is a saying in English, "Into every life some rain must fall."  Rain can fall from other types of storms, granted.  But, when this is the kind of rain that falls into one's life, then bring it.  Rain doesn't have to be bad or dreaded, nor do life's events.  I've actually had one of these "hurricane rain events" in my life.  It was really very pleasant.  Things didn't get destroyed, it was a pleasant change of weather, change of pace, a needed rejuvenation.  I didn't know how to categorize it at the time it happened.

So, let the good rain fall... and fall... and fall.

Change as it happens

I remember all too well a conversation I had with someone my senior by 10 years over a grammatical issue.  Her training was through an English degree.  Mine was from linguistics.  The topic was over the phrase than me,  as in the sentence, He had a bigger ice cream cone than me.

Her position was that the phrase was not grammatically correct.  That's because the phrase is an elliptical clause.  The word than is a coordinating conjunction followed by the subject of a verb, but the verb is implied.  In the sentence above, the elliptical clause is than I (had).  So, the sentence should have been spoken as He had a bigger ice cream cone than I.

My position was that the phrase was grammatically correct.  That's because the phrase contains two words and there is no ellipsis.  The word than is a preposition, so it is followed by the object case pronoun me.  Thus, the sentence in paragraph one is correct, He had a bigger ice cream cone than me.

The conversation happened about 15 years ago.  At the time, the woman I was engaged in conversation with responded to my position, probably sarcastically, maybe graciously, "Well, others are not as  malleable as you."  That's not true any more.  Dictionary.com presents the argument in a usage note even though it retains the notion of the traditional elliptical clause as the explanation for its occurrence in the officially listed definition.

The general rule is that the language has changed from a rule if a threshold of 75% has been reached for a use different from the traditional rule.  I can't even remember the last time I heard than I other than from an English teacher.  That means the threshold rule should apply.  I'm thinking the usage percentage of than me is more on the order of 95% acceptance as grammatically correct by American English speakers.

Dictionary.com should have already switched from presenting the argument in a usage note to putting the traditional explanation in a derivational note and including the current use in the definition.

Language is slow to change, generally, but once it has changed the only thing slower to change is the number of die-hards who won't change.  And, although this blog is about language change, there is a principle here that applies across disciplinary lines from language behavior to human behavior.  We're expected to change as we grow older.  We grow in knowledge, so our experience informs our behavior.  I find myself having little tolerance for adults over the age of 35 who have adopted wholesale what they were taught as children.  Not only are rules to bring you (like a tutor) to a fuller understanding of life's principles, the world changes so that the rules we learned don't apply so much to a different world.

Long live those who pay attention to change as it happens and to change as experience informs them.

Markings, everywhere and continuous

What gets marked in a language?  That's a question people ask (most of the time subconsciously) when they learn a new language or analyze the one they natively speak.  How people know when a noun is the recipient of the action of the verb, in English, is a matter of word order, the noun follows a verb.  But in Spanish it requires the word a after a verb and before the noun it marks if the noun is a human or includes a human.  Neither word order nor marking with additional words applies to ancient Latin and Greek, however.  They marked receiving an action with a case ending on the noun.

Nouns that receive the action or that are the result of the action are marked a number of different ways in the languages of the world.  And other parts of speech and functions of words get marked as well.  It's just the efficient way the brain has been set up to recognize functions and aspects in a language.

The brain is efficient in marking our experiences in life as well so that we can categorize them according to their function and aspect.  The events that happen to us are forgotten by default because there are so many of them.  So, we have to make markers for the event to stick for one reason or another.  Events that are pleasant are marked because we want to repeat them.  Events that are painful are remembered because of their dire effects on us.  There are other ways to mark events as well for our long term memories.

This Phillip Phillips song is a perfect non-scientific, very artful way of saying the same thing as the words above.  I have many markings in my experiences as I do in the languages I know.  And I will continue to have those markings.  I'm not done... so, I extend this song.

Indelible moments

Lady Antebellum sings the songs that I wish I had written.  They represent what I think about and often how I think about them.  She phrases the lyrics in beautiful symbolism sometimes and with vivid imagery at other times.  In this song, she captures so well the indelible link that exists between the way life is and the hope a person carries that something will trump life's bends and breaks, that something will happen to stop life from moving beyond the point of those bows and cracks.

There's something about a song that makes it live longer than its own lifetime.  It lives on in our hearts, the origin of heartstrings holding real events of two people deep in their minds, never to be forgotten, ever to be recreated.

What a work of beauty... timeless... true!

It's never "the thing" that drives us

I heard a speech today from someone who hasn't really ever studied psychology.  But his opening setup for his speech was on what drives a person.  I am assuming that he was talking of intrinsic motivation.  He mentioned that people make decisions based on their driving force.  He singled out one driving force of one individual and then went on to talk about how we all should adopt this one driving force.

That flies in the face of everything we know about the decision-making process.  One of the best descriptions of decision-making is from the book by Gary Klein called Source of Power: How People Make Decisions.  His book is based on ten years of observations and takes into consideration a great number of articles written by experts in psychology as he applied the principles found in these articles to his observations.

Another view of decision-making is given in this 3 1/2 video.  It shows the affect of stress on decisions.  Other views exist as well, but this is a good sample of the plethora of ideas that exist on the subject.

The bottom line is that someone's driving force for doing what one does is a misrepresentation of how people make decisions. Many factors contribute to decision-making not one driving force.  And, the factors that contribute to making one decision are not necessarily the reasons for making the next decision.  Even when a hierarchy of reasoning exists for decision-making, the hierarchy is flexible from one decision to the next and can change over time.  \

So, the premise of the speech I heard today was erroneous, the examples, though moving, supported only one factor in a hierarchy on one occasion.  That's too bad since one person's strong belief in what he spoke on wasted my time because of lack of knowledge.  I try to limit the times that waste mine.  But, today my decision to listen to this speech failed me.  I need to make better decisions.  There are a plethora of books on that topic you can be sure.  Using Amazon's search engine for their site will give you a good picture of what's available on that topic.

Bringing it till the end

When the chips are down has an obvious derivation from the world of gambling.  But, the analogy is a good one.  When a poker player doesn't have but a few chips, what does he do - continue to play or fold his cards and walk away from the table?

What I want people to remember about me is that I was in the game till the very end.  Not till I folded, but till the game ended.  I want Jesus' comment to Simon about the woman who brought her expensive perfume bottle, broke it open at his feet and then bathed his feet in it, to be true about me, Simon thought, "What a waste."  Jesus said, "The thing she had, she did."

When will this end?

Myths get started sometimes, and they seem so true that they stay around.  Popular notions, usually unsubstantiated, are very hard to change because of the sheer number of people that perceive it as truth.  One such notion is that men don't talk to their spouses (surveys of women's remarks saying husbands were uncommunicative) because they can't express their feelings very well.

I believe some of the fodder for such a notion came from the psychology sector.  In the 1980s and 1990s, some psychologists, particularly "Christian" psychologists, made an attempt to "fix" marriages according to the model of communication through expression of personal feelings.  The research behind this model turns out to be flawed because the studies were almost all qualitative in nature and many were designed to yield the evidence to support the model.  Subsequent linguistic studies, more quantitative in nature, produced different results presenting a much more complex picture of cross-sex communication.

In the 2000s, the idea of mapping communication ties (in fact, mapping of many ideas such as Facebook connections to track advertising in order to personalize it and mapping the effects of nerve trigger points to detect warning signs for various diseases) showed that communication is affected by a host of influences not merely by personal feelings.  It also showed that a person's method of expression is not influenced soley by sex, but by influences of region, teen networks while growing up, behavioral modification trends during childhood, and many, many other forces.

So, in the movie Aloha, when one of the supporting male characters had trouble in his marriage due to non-communication with his spouse, I was non-plussed to say the least.  It definitely showed how stereotypes are built on unsubstantiated, antiquated ideas and popular notions leading to years and years of erroneous thinking before discarding them.  The general plot of the movie was entertaining, but ignoring the terrible weakness of one of the characters dampened the enjoyment of good entertainment.

The movie trailer at 1:14-1:28 shows one of the 4 episodes in which the minor character is uncommunicative.  I get it. The character is an exaggeration (for humor's sake) of the type of man that doesn't communicate with anyone much less his wife.  The bad thing is that the movie is a reflection of a society that tries to denigrate men's ability to express themselves adequately in intimate relationships by perpetuating the misguided notion that expression of personal feelings with one's partner is the only, or at least the principal, currency of good, sustainable marriages.  That's simply not true.  The world of cross-sex communication will be better off as soon as this ill-founded whim dies.

Looking to the skies

It was an average work day in 1977 for Walter Alvarez.  He is an American geologist who was chiseling rock in Italy one very ordinary day, just trying to read the rock record of the Earth.  Scientists had noticed for years that fossils and bones appeared everywhere in the Cretaceous strata of the Earth, but the number of bones and fossils diminish by about 75% in the Tertiary layer above the Cretaceous and change in type as well.  How curious, Alvarez thought, so he had gone to these two geologic strata in Italy to investigate.

He did his usual chiseling and collecting and then sent off samples to the lab and awaited the results hoping there would be a clue to this apparent period of dying off on the Earth.  He didn't know that his average work day in 1977 was his lucky day.  It was the beginning of evidence that rewrote the world's history.  It challenged the crux of Darwinism because of the amount of time evolution has to have in order to produce multiple forms of life.  It challenged the geological theory of uniformitarianism because of the abrupt and fairly immediate effects that could be seen around the globe after a catastrophic event.  It challenged religious ideas of creation because of the proof it offered of an event that predated written history, in fact all of human history.

What he discovered on this very ordinary day was something quite extraordinary, a layer of iridium in quantities that can only come from space and the layer in the Earth was evenly distributed, meaning that something had happened at this place in Italy and everywhere else on Earth, not merely in one place.  Now, nearly all scientists believe or give credence to the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs and 75% of all the species of life on the Earth.  Over the last 37 years, the meteor crater has been located that verifies the event and corollary theories of the impact's aftermath have shown more exactly why there is a change in the fossil record.

It was just a normal reporting day for Marco Cava as he combed through technology stories to bring to USA Today.  He was merely reporting on the recent coding conference.  But, this day he decided to report on a Google device that would really change the whole way information is brought to the average person.  It was premiered as the Oculus Rift.  And what a change to the world it promises to deliver.

Everyone has heard of and experimented with virtual technology.  Sometimes the term virtual reality is used, but mostly only the word virtual is used, rightly so.  Virtual reality is something that actually happens in real time, and people interact with the transmission because it is in 3D and people see each other as if they were in the same physical location.  Holograms are the nearest description we have to virtual reality.  The Oculus Rift will change all of that.  Subsequent generations of this invention will allow things to happen from anywhere in 3D reality.

In a parallel story, Edward Baig reports from the same tech conference that GoPro will have on the market a type of camera that will take spherical pictures.  It can also be mounted on the growing market of drones that is projected to be as commonplace as computers in the next 10 years.

Now, I'm thinking that if spherical pictures meet Oculus Rift, then...  our world will be VERY different, to say the least.  2D screens will suddenly be 3D globes and resemble the 3D spherical planet we live on already.

This is the technology side of things.  The education that exists today will be part of the 75% of life forms that will not survive this technological impact.  There's a meteor coming that will change our lifestyle radically, as radically as the K-T boundary.  Education will survive, but not anywhere close to its current form.  Banking and currency will survive, just not as we know it today.  Business will survive, but it will be completely changed in how it employs people.

Change usually occurs slowly and over time.  Sixty-five million years ago the dinosaurs went to sleep one night, along with other species, thinking that they would exist another million years into the future.  Little did they know the next day was their personal last and the last for their entire species.  Tonight is an average night for us as well, but those who don't follow the tech world will find themselves in the same position that many 80-year-olds are in today.  They don't know how to work a smart phone; they don't use email or other electronic message delivery systems; they don't trust Facebook because the government uses it to spy on people; they have no clue how to order from Ebay or Amazon (so they still go shopping, believe it or not); and they think the idea of a virtual world is ludicrous because it is detrimental to "real communication."  Their fossils will not be a part of the geologic record of any year past 2030.

We ourselves could also wake up tomorrow (figuratively speaking, but not by much) and wonder what the big booming noise is, what the fires everywhere on the Earth are from, why the Earth is shaking, and what the reason for the tsunamis is as we drown in the crash of their waves, burn alive, or are blown to smitherines by the tremendous force of shock waves. 

But if we look to the skies to see what is coming...

You just can't see them

The science channel today was showing a special about the universe we live in.  The topic of the show was finding other planets like Earth.  As a part of the show, the commentator read that most stars in our universe are classified as red dwarves.  That means they have a lower level of light than our sun, and they can't be seen in the night sky.  Only stars as bright as our sun or brighter can be seen with the naked eye.

At that point, the picture showed the night sky as we see it with our own eyes.  The commentator went on to say that the stars we see were in a 1:2 ratio with the stars that can't be seen, the red dwarves.  Then, the screen changed to show the night sky as it would be seen if one could see the red dwarves.  The number of stars tripled in the sky.  It was a good visual for indicating how much of the universe goes unseen.
 

I'm thinking so much of what we do and think in a day's time goes without being seen.  Sometimes it is a very good thing that what we think is not enacted, thus goes unseen.  But, it's also lamentable that the good intentions that we have, the good actions - usually the little things - go unnoticed. I think if we could see the unnoticed actions and thoughts the ratio by which others could benefit and at least judge us by would triple.  I suppose we just need to be a little more communicative, more revealing, so that people can know that we are good at our core.

Records

I like being around for weather records  There was something special about 1981.  It was one of those extreme season years.  In the summer of that year there were 70 days of 100 degrees or more.  It was a pain to work outside in such heat.  Fortunately, my main job was inside in that year.  In 2011, 30 years later, I was lucky enough to be in the same area and when the summer posted 71 days of intense heat above 100 degrees.  Who would have thought lightning would strike twice on that record.  I remember both summers very well.

Last August was the wettest August on record out of 120 years' worth of record keeping.  That was the precursor to a couple of other extremes this year.  January was the second coldest month on average for cold temperatures (second to a 1929 record) and the wettest January ever.  April was the wettest April, and May is on track to be the same.  There have been 42 tornadoes this year, double that of last year, but only half as much as the record year, 1994, thankfully.

I like being around when history is made.  It means you were there in the hardest (at least the most extreme) of times and survived, which makes one special in some way.  These records in weather mirror the way life works.  Seasons of life cycle around and some of them are really extreme, both highs and lows.  I remember them.  They are special because they make me a survivor.  And they give character that speaks volumes about who I am.

A little blurry

The rain had been a nuisance but it was tapering off for the moment.  The windshield still collected a little rain against so I had to use the lowest intermittent rain setting on the wipers to clear it off.  About every 15 seconds the rubber of the wipers made a small squeegee sound as it hugged the windshield, swiping off the rain.

I was thinking, as the rain would collect on the windshield, that it wasn't so hard to see through the rain before it was wiped clean.  But, I couldn't turn the wipers completely off because about every 30 seconds or so the windshield was too blurry to see through.

That's about right.  Not enough to merit the wipers on even the lowest intermittent setting, but too much to turn them off completely.  And how like life that principle is when it comes to irritations, limitations, false starts, and failed plans... the rains of life.  Not enough of them for them to impede completely because you can always see through them, but just enough where you can't ignore them because they cause accidents if your sight gets too blurry.  There should be a proverb to this effect - something like, when rain begins to lighten, always have your wipers on low intermittent so you can avoid the accident that could easily happen as the heavier rains clear.

I absolutely hate the feeling when "smoke clears."  If I could have at least had my wipers on low intermittent, I could have seen the water on the road that made me skid off of it.  Ravishing was my word a few years ago, smoke is A Thousand Horses' word for the one who makes you better than your normal best.

"Accidents happen," people say.  But not if your wipers are at least on low intermittent.

There will come a day

The movie Contact (from 1997) was so very good for several reasons.  First, it was good entertainment.  It certainly helped you escape from the day-to-day grind.  Second, it had merit literarily.  One of the more uncommon ways to write character development is to have a "crossover effect between two characters.  The scientist and the man of the cloth in this film certainly followed lines of development that made their points of view trade places during the course of the movie.  The conflict developed in the plot occurred with different characters, not just the two main characters.  So, it was a more complex plot than merely having two characters or two forces that merely had many obstacles to overcome before one force beat the other or one character won over the other.  Third, The climax was both the culmination and the catalyst for change at the same time.  That is a really difficult feat.  The culmination of the plot was the catalyst for two characters to completely change their points of view.  Job well done.  Other reasons exist to like this movie.  It"s very symbolic of life, for one, and contains a good starting point to discuss religion versus science, for another.

The one scene that captures the essence of two principles close to my heart is the scene in which Jody Foster's character finally hears the signal from space she has constructed her whole professional work around.  She had gone to great lengths to set up arrays of satellite dishes to listen to signals from space hoping against hope to be the first one to capture a message from extraterrestrial life.  All of her efforts had failed.  Immediately before the video begins, she is lying on the hood of her car at sunset with her earphones on, as she had done on hundreds of other occasions, listening to static while falling asleep.

This clip represents so much.  First and foremost, it represents what our parents told us about our dreams, what Churchill is often quoted as saying to the British on some of their darkest days - never, never, never give up.  That is one of life's greatest lessons.  Second, it symbolizes what our preparation does for us in our chosen fields.  We prepare, but often cannot use all of our preparation in our daily affairs.  However, there will come a day - a moment in time when we realize that we have to summon our array of knowledge to accomplish a goal, to rise to an occasion, or like the main character here, swing into action to bring all of our training to bear on the moment we have been waiting for all of our lives.

It's a beautiful thing when such a moment happens in our lives.  More than beautiful, really.  It's magnificent and monumental.  It's what we live for.

Rains of the new year

Back in December I began driving over one of the area lakes going to work.  I remember seeing how low the lake was at the time.  The piers were totally out of the water as were the boat lifts.  Around the banks, a person could see where the water lines had once been, about 8-10 feet above the water level at that time.

I still drive that route to work, but these days the rains of the new year have dumped more than the average rainfall for this time of year.  Half of the year's rainfall has fallen ahead of schedule this spring, so the lake levels are back to normal.  Piers stick out of the water only about 3 feet.  Boat slips actually raise the boat a couple of feet out of the water like they are designed to do.  Water lines no longer ring the banks, but water is lapping the shores creating new water lines.

It's good to see.  Everyone was very tired of the 5 year drought that had dominated the area lakes.  It's part of the cycle of the Earth, seasons of drought followed by seasons of flood and rain.  I see that principle as part of the cycle of life as well.  I'm thinking it might be time to end that 5-year drought, too.  Something refreshing, more than average would be really nice.

Sky and mind

Last night, tonight, and every day next week I am going to have the symphony of the storm to sleep to.  Something about the big show of lightning, thunder, and wind make you sleep soundly, relaxed.  It also helps to focus one.  Often I use it to remember the tracks along my journey.  So tonight, in about 30 more minutes, I will be enjoying the big show in the clouds to the south.  The motherlode of rain will arrive in the morning as I wake.  Yeah, I'll be relaxed, and I'll be thinking of tracks, some of joy, some of sorrow.  But, either way, I'll be enjoying the show in the skies and in my mind's eye.

Really not kidding

Already people would rather watch a video any day than pick up something to read.  The world went this way starting with MySpace and YouTube.  Google has been pushing for a decade to make everything functional from a phone rather than a computer.  Facebook made public declarations to that effect beginning 3 years ago and made it one of their main goals when it decided to go public and sell shares in the company through the stock exchange.

Easily a person can see the trend away from writing and reading and toward viewing and presenting through video.  Evidence of this is everywhere, but for about a year, people have been answering or "commenting" on Facebook by placing emoticons or pictures in the comment space rather than words.

I'm not kidding about the next step in the evolution of how people will give and receive information. The holographic transmission and storage of files will transform the form, format, and length of what gets passed around and learned.  I'm really not kidding.  (Click here for the article.)  There's a KT boundary here.  I don't think anyone really wants to be a life form that doesn't make it through the boundary, the event that was so impacting that about 75% of all species didn't make it from one side of the boundary to the other.  But, a lot of people are not believers in what is coming.

Beginning at 5:30 of this video, you won't believe what is about to be available with Microsoft Windows 10 even on mobile devices.

Anyone, anyone!

I met a dinosaur last Wednesday.  Well, I didn't actually get to meet him in person, but I did see the work of his mind and the effect it had on a young man.

The young man labored, not looked at, reviewed, studied, or tried hard (although all of these are true descriptions), but LABORED over a set of study questions for a History test.  "Tell me about the test," I had asked the young man.  "It's 50 questions, multiple choice, short answer, and matching," he replied.

That's not just a method used last decade, that's a method used half a century ago when I was in school, and a method used in the 1800s, the 1700s, just keep going back.  I understated my true thoughts of a string of expletives a mile long by saying, "Holy mackeral," and shaking my head.

History is important to some people especially those like this teacher who excelled in it and received his Ph.D. in it.  But for others it is more of a boredom thing.  Especially, is it mind-dulling to learn the names of treaties, alliances, and small events when they have already happened and their impact on the world has already passed into oblivion.

There are not enough words in all the languages of the world to express how dull it makes a person to remember trivial information for only the blank on a test.  The young man told me yesterday that he was pretty sure he failed the test.  I'm pretty sure that he did and that whoever took the time to memorize the set of restrictions put in place in Germany in the 1930s  called Kristallnacht will not know what that information is the day his or her summer vacation begins.

Somewhere between this man's learning and awesome knowledge and the kind of teaching that affects and inspires people to reach for the stars is a total lack of awareness of advances in society, a total disconnect.  He's a dinosaur.  His days are numbered.  If he lasts past 2017, he will gasp a breath of air and want to die.  Reading reams of material (Yes, I have seen the articles he hands to his students) and testing it in writing is not even on the radar of study skills for this generation of students.  They're so far beyond this point, they could teach the teacher a thing or two about Kristallnacht - in 3D holographic scenes of reality from the time period.

The young man will survive into the generation of adults that take the world to the next level of medicine, space exploration, global reformation, and digitized economy.  The Dinosaur will join his species in the bogs and tar pits around the country for museum purposes.

Rats and racing

Glastonbury 2008 was a kind of Woodstock in England.  The crowds gathered for many artists and were ecstatic about them all.  At one point, Chris Martin from Coldplay introduced Richard Ashcroft of Verve and allowed him to sing Verve's biggest song while Chris played the keyboard.  In the introduction, Chris said he was going to let Ashcroft sing "the best song ever written."

You be the judge.

Ashcroft sang Bittersweet Symphony.  No doubt it is a good song.  He compares life to a bittersweet symphony.  In verse 1 the song takes you down the only road the composer has ever been down, the road called the rat race and getting off seems impossible.  In verse 2, he frees himself the race.  But you get the clear idea that nothing will change even with the  freedom achieved.  He repeats, "I can't change," and asks "Have you ever been down?" (meaning down on your luck).  The song ends with life still being a bittersweet symphony, and chants, "That's life" as the song fades out.

Life can easily be this way.  I have had this experience myself.  It's the human condition.  I do choose the other path, however.  I see the sweet even if the bitter is mixed in and mitigates the taste of the sweetness from its full effect.

Life is a symphony - beautiful - bitter - sweet.

Crystal clear

I had a great discussion last night with a man I met about a year ago.  It centered around a short story by Mary McCluskey called Before/After.  McCluskey is a really succinct writer.  Her comparisons are crystal clear and appeal to everyone's common experiences.

In our conversation, we talked of defining moments.  Both of us have had a few of those.  I have thought of this before and have narrowed mine to one a decade, but I only told of two.  He's a much younger man than I am, but his moments bore much similarity to mine.  That's partly due to McCluskey's genius in creating the universal nature of the human condition in the story.  But, partly it's due to similarity of personalities.

Each of us told two of the defining moments in our lives.  We spoke of someone we loved having to undergo cancer treatment and walking that journey with him (her in his case).  And we told of an experience in our younger years.  But we continued to talk and commiserate over a few other memorable moments without mentioning the specifics of the situations.

I enjoyed the discussion.  Afterward, I drove home under the cover of dark.  So, naturally, I had time for my mind to reflect on some of the conversation.  I couldn't help but think of the term we had used, defining moment, and link it to a sacred memory, sacred, sacred flashes across the mind's eye.  Sometimes I recall the time with a song that was popular then.

They drown me for sure.

But have they played the Red Rocks?

Ten miles west of Denver, Colorado, is an amphitheater not built by human hands (for the most part).  It's a natural setting in the rocks, which look red.  Being invited to play there has grown in popularity among bands who really want to be somebody.  Everyone has heard of U2, for example, but not in 1983.  Those in attendance the day U2 played at the Red Rocks Amphitheater say it was, still is, U2's best ever concert.  After playing the Red Rocks amphitheater, people began to spread the word about this great band called U2.  A band may be popular, but until they have played at the Red Rocks, then their stardom is not written in stone.

One of my favorite bands is Coldplay.  They sing songs with a message.  I'm not alone.  Many people enjoy their lyrics.  Of course, they're nobody unless they've been to the Red Rocks.

Oh, but they have!  Enjoy.

Homespun genius

The Zac Brown Band came to notoriety a few years back.  Whatever It Is was one of their hits.  I absolutely loved it.  The lead singer brings a homespun genius to lyrics that talk of everyday matters.

This song is about Sweet Annie.  How down-home is this idea.  How true for all of us.

Disruption and delay

Bank of America advertises in the lobbies of its many branches that one can become investment savvy by going to the internet and watching a short video of how to make your money multiply.  BOA has teamed with Kahn Academy to produce this video because it is in its best interest.  Because BOA advertises and provided funds for this video, it has a smarter clientele who will invest with it and make both investor and investee money.

There are many, many of these videos from BOA and Kahn from banking and budgets to understanding interest and investing.  Khan Academy is well known, and it caught the eye of Bill Gates as an investor shortly after it started.  It represents how current education can go from a very compartmentalized form of imparting knowledge to a rather seamless and non-disruptive way of helping people achieve the degree of quality of life that they desire.  People don't really want to go school 6-8 hours a day.  It gets in the way of making progress in life and becoming productive in order to enjoy life.  As it is, children take a hiatus of 18 years of their lives to "learn" how to become productive and enjoy life.  That is probably a whole decade too long.  Learn and learn well through Kahn's method AND get on with your life at the same time.

It makes sense to me.  I relish the thought of a productive citizenry instead of a forced daycare system that extends to an age well past its usefulness.  Teenagers could be productive consumers of society, not detractive consumers.  I'm thinking that education has an opportunity to go this direction.  In twenty-five years from now, I hope to see a whole segment of the population reaping the rewards of its labor rather than treading water until they can fulfill some antiquated notion smart people aren't productive until they've learned to be a cookie-cutter citizen.

People differ

Language capacity is innate, no doubt.  It's the phases that language goes through that make it less than predictable.  The idea is that as a human proceeds from infancy to maturity, language growth does the same.  Maturity is really easy to see and chart with the physical aspect of a human's maturity.  It should stand to reason that other human developments go through the maturing process in much the same way.

Here's the thing that schools refuse to accept, and in so doing, wreak havoc with young people's mental image of themselves.  The language people use is so diversified that it is impossible to project a trajectory for it.  People's accents differ.  People's jargons differ since choice of profession dictates the jargon learned to a great degree.  People's friends differ, thus their basic stock of words vary.  People's interests and personalities differ, so the words they choose will follow the lines of these two areas.  People's motivations, intrinsically and extrinsically, differ.  Thus, the number of words and types of words vary.  It's a ragged growth journey from infancy to maturity, physically, mentally, and yes, linguistically.

So, why people are so caught up in trying to make a cookie cutter system for language development is absurd, ludicrous, and otherwise ridiculously inane.  Making a standard for what young people should be saying, writing, and reading is cruel at best and unusually inhumane and unrealistic at worst.  No one really chides a child or adolescent for exceeding or underachieving an average weight or height for his or her age group.  That's unquestionably ridiculous.

People would do well to remember that language matures as people mature.  Because people are unique, their developments are unique in every aspect of growth.  That's what makes growth ragged. Just as healthy eating is good for a body regardless of how short or tall a person is, or what body shape a person has, so a system for good language input is important.  But the outcome of that system is not manifested in a uniform, standardized manner.

A popular phrase making the rounds

Sometimes a language phenomenon gets a name that someone mentions, and the name sticks for one reason or another.  The modern way of expressing action in English is sometimes to add an adverb to the verb and thus change or extend the meaning.  This can occasionally be done with prepositions as well.  We sprayed water on the house to put out the fire is an example.  

It's an unfortunate accident of someone unthinkingly talking about verbs that include an adverb and remarking that now a single word verb has changed into a phrase of words in order to express its full meaning.  The idea caught on with grammarians (who else?!), so they coined the term "phrasal verb."

Nevermind that  linguists (a very different group from grammarians) had  already used the term "verb phrase" to describe the words that make up the verb.  That's because much of the time people use auxiliary verbs with their action words to express tense, progression, reiteration, hypothetical action, or likelihood.  They use a verb phrase to express every negation of action, such as didn't sing, and most questions, like Have you given your dog a bath?

So, why grammarians thought that the term "phrasal verb" needed to be coined is a mystery to me.  It absolutely serves no purpose since a "verb phrase" already existed, and it serves to confuse the two terms by intertwining their ideas.  "Verbal extension" or "verbal addition" might have served as a better descriptive term.  "Pre-auxiliary" (for current auxiliary verbs like did, have, can placed in front of the main verb) and "post-auxiliary" (adverbs added after the main verb like in, out, down, up) might even be better terms.

Consider the sentences below.

We put the plates on the table. (standard meaning)
We put out the fire. (extended meaning)
We put down one of our friends unwittingly. (extended meaning)
We put up with a lot of noise from the children in the crowd. (extended meaning)
We need to put away $300 a month. (extended meaning)
We all put in our money for the donation. (extended meaning)

It's easy to see that the adverb extends the verb's meaning.  But, what grammarians don't do is analyze why that might be true or if it is actually true.  As an example, one has to ask what the noun is following the verb phrase.  Is it the direct object?  If so, it usually immediately follows the verb like plates does in sentence one.  If one moves out from its position of immediately following the main verb to a position after the noun, then yes, the noun is the direct object.  Indeed, that can occur in sentence one.  Since that is true, then out is really an adverb but is idomatically used.  It merely answers in what condition the fire existed.  Thus, out is not part of the verb phrase at all; it's an idiomatic use of an adverb.  That means there is no such thing as a "phrasal verb."

In addition, other adverbs already invade the space of two or three word verb.  For example, in the sentence, I have never seen the Swiss Alps, the verb have seen clearly has the adverb never between the two words of the verb.  Grammarians have never bothered to classify never by any other term than adverb.  It operates the same way as what they call a phrasal verb, however.  It shows an additional aspect to the verb, like all adverbs do because they answer the questions how, when, where, to what extent, and in what condition the action exists within.  So, to separate an adverb into another classification has no justification really.

Grammarians will not have the last word on this issue, nor should they, since they are not the language scientists.  Ask an English major (the usual field of those who claim to be grammarians) if they have taken a linguistics course, and their response is often, "Yeah, but just the introductory course.  Those courses are way too hard, and they focus too much on language."  Right. Grammarians don't have the tools to analyze changes to English structure over time.  They usually follow established rules for written English and don't analyze the more malleable usages of spoken English.

The next time you hear the term "Phrasal Verb," you can dismiss it outright.  It's not set in stone.  The last analysis has not been made.  As long as competing analyses are active, those who analyze language will continue to debate the phrase's structure, its descriptive term, and its effect on semantics.  Till that debate is over, the term is only a notion of a particular group of people.

Just on the other side

Living on a cul de sac has a lot of advantages.  One of them is that it is really private.  And after living on a street where many people traveled, it is a pleasant relief to have privacy.  Part of the pleasantness is that I get to lean against my car or sit on the trunk and look at the end of the street and see the natural park that runs the length of the housing addition.

It's virtually impossible to judge distances in the picture above.  It's about 20 yards from my driveway to the sign, about another 15 yards to the trees growing along the stream, and the green sloping hill beyond the trees is about 40 yards.  At the top of the hill is a street of houses.  100 yards beyond that street of houses is a runway for private small planes.  All the houses along that airstrip have hangars for the Cessnas and other planes.  It's been active this spring.

I can't see the runway just on the other side of the hill that slopes up from the stream that I sit staring at, thinking.  But, I know it's there because I see planes landing and taking off.  That keeps me thinking, of course.  I wonder who is in flying the plane and why they are flying.  I imagine a lot of things without really knowing.  But, I think that's why I like looking at this hill and wondering what exactly is happening just on the other side of my vision.

And, by application, I look ahead of me in time.  I can see only a couple of hundred yards in front, but I can lean against what I have already done in life and imagine.  I think of people that I might meet and that I have already met. For the latter, I wonder what they're doing, what their mission now is.  I know they're flying somewhere piloting their craft toward the good life they deserve.  For the former, I have a few more intersections to go through where I will meet people, and I wonder what they will be like and why they will be in my path.

I don't really like seeing only what is directly in front of me.  It's hard to judge the distances looking too far ahead, and then the scene disappears.  I can't see what lies just on the other side.

Leaving for work

I have one of the greatest gifts every spring, summer, and fall.  I didn't really do anything to deserve this gift.  I just get to enjoy it for three seasons of the year.  As I leave for work everyday, my front walk has two rose bushes at the end of it.  They greet me as I walk out the door.  And it's a beautiful, hearty "Good morning" because the bushes are loaded with red roses.

Then I get in my car.  On the corner of the garage is another red rose bush loaded with red petals.  As if "Good morning" were not enough, I get one more kiss to say "Goodbye."






I back out of the driveway, and start to make my way down the street.  I look to my right as I am leaving the shadow of my house behind, and there, on the corner of the house, as if waving to me, are the most outstanding yellow roses covering a tall bush, shouting to me, "Have a good day."



I love my rose bushes.  They start my days with color, fragrance, and eye appeal.  There is no better way to be sent off than with a Good Morning, Goodbye, and Have a Good Day.

They also represent the colorful memories I have of some particularly fragrant days full of my mind's eye appeal. Now if those days were to become a reality... again... there are not enough roses to tell the story of what that would be like!

Who you gonna call?

I am always amused at the English teacher establishment, those little ladies that run around in tennis shoes and ankle length skirts, usually short in stature.  I think they have little-man syndrome even though they are female.  They want to call the shots on what gets said and written by people everywhere.

Juxtapose that picture of a person against the one who wears Hawaiian shirts, shorts and sandals and who, with great swagger, says that a native speaker can't be wrong.  The two are polar opposites. 

Of course, no one ever controls language development, written or spoken.  Language just doesn't work that way.  About 88% of people finish high school, and only about 28% of people finish college.  So what kind of person is it that thinks knowing all the rules about language really gets them anywhere in life?  Yet, if I go to the website of Grammarly.com, I see all kinds of promises using the bandwagon approach of propaganda.  They even advertise that linguists have built their site.  While that may be true (because linguists have been working on making machines detect and use natural language), they make it sound as if linguists endorse the premise of this site with all of its rules, promises, and judgmental attitudes toward the average person who speaks English (which represents about 72% of the people if not graduating from college is the criterion).

Linguists know better.  They know how language works; they're the scientists of language. Grammarians, on the other hand, are those people who want to control language and judge rather harshly all who have inferior knowledge to their own.

The real kicker to me is the main boon of the Grammarly.com website.  The site claims to make you a better writer.  Are these people going to be surprised when in a few short years writing will be relegated to the world of captions and single word identifications!

While there will probably always be little ladies in long skirts and tennis shoes feeling good about trying to police the language they hear and see, people of that ilk will dwindle in the face of the need for using video to record and apps to transmit how real people communicate, the 72% who relate to working, making money, and using communication that meets their needs very adequately.  People aren't calling grammarians to help them - they're calling those who can write... in code.

The people in Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and sandals aren't surprised one bit about this!

What I have to know

Time changes everything and everybody.  Our genes are linked to time from the time they trigger development at inception in the womb to the last day of decay when the body's in the ground.  It changes us in stages both in body and mind.

My good friend and colleague from 12 years ago has been suffering from Alzheimer's disease for the last 5 years.  He's young, but something about his genes triggered this disease at that time in his life.  It has ravaged him, and he stands as a constant reminder that time does take its toll in one way or another on us all.

My recent bout with a leg joint disease reminds me too that time is going to take its toll.  I'm not immune.  I still bear some of the visible effects of this bout.  

And somehow, I still have to be comfortable in my skin or I go crazy.  Before my body descends any further into the stages of aging, I have to know that I have intellectually taken right paths, or at least good paths, paths that pay dividends physically, mentally, and spiritually, that bleed over into the next generation.  I constantly evaluate that.  So far?- so good.

Just can't compete

A recent online newsletter touted the forward thinking of Sweden's school system.  They were retraining their teachers to teach an integrated curriculum.  It seems their people at the top didn't like their students taking subjects in isolation.  The article thought this was a first in the world move on the part of educators.

Apparently, the writer ignored or was ignorant of similar movements in the U.S. that have been occurring on a regular basis.  The first wave came in the form of magnet schools, but the during the last 5-7 years Harmony schools and STEM academies have been popping up all around the U.S. with similar approaches.  I suppose the fact that Sweden was making this a system wide change in one fell swoop is a first, but then again, Sweden is only the equivalent of maybe five states in the U.S., so a change would be much easier to accomplish in a smaller environment.  If the truth were known, the same number of children in the U.S. and in Sweden are probably undergoing the same type of formal training.

I would say, however, the world is about to see a really large change.  It's not in the area of integration of ideas anymore.  That is yesterday's news.  The change will be away from building knowledge of what has gone before, in favor of being able to use collections of ideas to predict the future.  In math and science this is known as learning the algorithms that have produced results and being able to change the algorithm's constituents to yield different results.  Presentation skills will supplant reading and writing skills.  Knowing where and when to touch a screen will be as important as having a high level of vocabulary.  Having the right set or combination of apps to rely on will be much more important than being able to recount and recall who did something when.

Schools that can read the tea leaves of where the world is headed will produce the next generation's leaders and wealthy class.  When cyber hackers are one of the world's biggest problems because they can steal identity and cost businesses billions of dollars in theft and prevention of theft, then knowing facts, or even integrated ideas, can't compete with what is available outside of the educational circle.

As always, there will be those lone voices who lead the way.  My concern is that this time, the usual number of followers a few years later (the better-late-than-never crowd) won't be able to follow.  They won't be able to even speak the same language as those who lead the way.  They'll be left behind.  That has happened in history before, but during the most recent time that happened, the Middle Ages, the masses suffered greatly.  At one point, (the Black Plague) the world shed its population by somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3.  It saddens me to think that could happen again.  But when people willingly leave themselves behind...

The first order of things

I don't mind arrogance.  I recognize the strategy, especially for those who would lead a cause or try to become a symbol for change.  I also don't mind so-called arrogance in those whose confidence derives from higher levels of education, who have read widely about a subject and know the percentage chance of something being true or of something being plausibly true due to research.

The link here connects to a teacher's resignation letter.  It's one of the longest ones I've ever read because she was trying to lead a cause.  I think something got lost in translation, if her motive was to cause change, because of the blah-blah-blah effect of the length of the letter.  But more than the arrogance that comes from the righteous cause she wants to lead is the fact that she names her profession as an English teacher.  Now, my thinking is that if a person wants to name an area of expertise (in her case, only an area of experience) and then launch a tirade against "the system," then she better have her own craft of English in perfect order.  If not, she is no better than the system she claims is broken.  Her own area of teaching needs to have some additions to her own bank of knowledge.

My mother used to explain to me that I should not criticize someone else (implied something else, like a system) unless I had my own ducks in a row.  Otherwise, it would be the same as the pot calling the kettle black. That's a good saying to know.  It has kept me in touch with my roots.  I recall also some other good, even if ancient, advice from when I was young.  Why try to remove the speck from someone else's eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye?  I'm just thinking that this woman needs to apply these principles before she starts lashing out.

In this teacher's lengthy letter, she makes the following statement as she compares students she taught before the advent of NCLB with those she taught after the initiative.

... my students from five to eleven years ago still had a sense of pride in whom they were and a self-confidence in whom they would become someday.

Here's the log in her eye: in whom they were and  in whom they would become.  In whom of course is a possibility in English, but only if whom is the only word following the preposition.  In the case of a clause following the preposition, which is a noun slot, the choice for who or whom depends on the pronoun's use in the clause. In the two clauses this teacher uses, the choice should be who since on both occasions it appears as the predicate nominative after the verbs of being and becoming.

Because she wants to cast stones instead of focusing on her own craft, this woman's words fall on my deaf ears.  First remove the log from your own eye, then remove the speck from someone else's.  It's the first order of things.  Violate it, and you should know that people are seeing your lips move, but not hearing a word!

Changed but a better fit

I have had an opportunity to look again at a language I learned some 40 years ago.  At the time I learned it, I thought it was so special and did everything I could to learn it well.  Time passed, and I exposed myself to it less and less.  But recently, I have reacquainted myself with reading it.  I like the language.  By this time in my life, I am very comfortable reading it.

But, something has changed.  It's not on a pedestal anymore.  I see many more aspects of it than I used to and know how to connect what it says a whole lot better because it belongs in a bigger world than I at first had imagined.  I know a whole lot more about translation principles now and work with other languages as well.  I have also seen this second language translated into a third and fourth language, not only from a second language into a first language.  It's a really different experience now to read the language that at one time I had thought was so special.

If I apply that principle to the important things in life, I get the same effect.  The world fits a larger context now.  My world view has more experiences to make up its mosaic.  Translation principles of what is really important have changed almost completely.  Enjoyment and comfort have taken on a whole lot more meaning.  And love?  My whole definition for that word has changed.  I'm not even sure I would use it anymore.  It's such a misnomer.  I know it when I see it, though, and it has a whole lot more to do with enjoyment and comfort, and a lot less with commitment and determination.

Selling addictive happiness

Now if I were going sell a drink to the public that contained a drug that was addictive, I would find it hard to find many buyers for it other than the current market of drug users.  But what if I could create a jingle that had pleasant, modern music and appealed to the young crowd so that I could hook them for life and make money hand over fist.  People would surely call me the pied piper and strenuously condemn my agenda.

I think it has happened, though.

Yeah!!!  Open happiness.

You'll start and end your day with this drink.  You share it with friends... and more friends... and more and more friends.  It's a drink that has everyone's name on it.  It's for both genders and all races. You might even fall in love while you're drinking it.

And the best part... You'll keep coming back around.

Coming back (as in continuous)     around (as in continuous)    keep (as in continuous)     will (as in the future)

Right... addictive.  But's it's the best selling drink in the world.  And we're happy about it.  We love to open happiness.

Be careful, Poppy

I was walking out the front door for work the other day with my granddaughter right behind me.  She was wishing me a good day and was going to close the door behind me as I left.  It was one of those very cherished moments grandparents get once in a while.  She looked up and told me as I was heading for my car.  "Be careful, Poppy.  Don't step in the poop."  One day she had stepped in dog poop in the front lawn.  So, she was warning me about it.

I chuckled and told her I would be careful and then left.  As I reflected on that interchange, I chuckled again, but I also thought that it was a great metaphor for the day.  Every day there are times when I am not paying attention to the ground I step on, metaphorically, the time that passes by.  So, occasionally something is said or done that affects me that I should have seen coming or that I could have avoided if I had been paying attention.

So my granddaughter of 3 years had some good advice for me.  Whenever, I don't look down and step on gum or poop, I always just shake my head, offer one of those common expletives, and then comment on how I wished that hadn't happened.  Yep, it's great advice as I leave for the day - each day, as a matter of fact - Be careful, don't step in the poop.

10th verse, same as the first

It's an interesting phenomena.  People repeat themselves under certain circumstances.  I suppose the most recurrent circumstance for repetition of stories or information is from those people called the elderly.  They repeat the stories that happened to them so often that they become hard to be around. A person can recite by heart what the stories are as soon as the elder person begins to talk.  This happens for a variety of reasons, but one is that in their world they no longer encounter events that cause the brain to remember.  Their world has become narrow.  Some people like to blame the effect of age on the brain, but the last word is not in on the role that age alone plays in the memory process.

But today, a person who was half my age told me a story that he has told on two other occasions.  So, what is the reason he wanted to take up about 20 minutes of my time recounting something he was well aware of having told me?  Generally, people speak unprompted for the reason of selling themselves, of showing that they have importance and value.  They want to take up your time convincing you that something they did sets them apart from the crowd and you should be proud to have them as your friend.  I have told him of his value the first two times he told the story.  He apparently needed to have that verified yet again.

After the 3rd time, I usually find a quick escape from the scene, but if not, at least from the story.  You don't have to toot your own horn anymore.  If I am with you by choice, you have importance to me.  It's really that simple.  Save your breath, pipe down, and join me with the matters at hand.  We're friends already.