Hemingway wrote Hills Like White Elephants in order to show how hostile an environment had been created surrounding women out of wedlock having babies. In the short story, his main feature was the setting he created, that of Spain in the heat of summer at a non-descript, remote train station. The characters dealt with the heat by moving around and eventually to the inside of a bar and by drinking alcohol. Constantly, Hemingway narrated or put in the mouths of his characters how severely hot the day was.
What was the point of creating such a setting? It was, of course, to depict a hostile, harsh, and forbidding environment. The station was located at a crossroads, which symbolized the crossroads of a decision by the pregnant woman on whether to have an abortion or not. But, the setting overpowers the decision so as to show the harsh sentiment of society that drives the woman to opt for abortion.
As I write this blog at midnight the night has only cooled from 106 degrees during the day to a mere 92 degrees. It's really, really hot. There has been no rain in a month, the humidity is low, the grass in the yards is burning, turning green to brown. The forecast offers only more 106 degree, rain-free days. I think I am a character in Hemingway's short story.
My next thought was whether the deep heat was some symbol as to what was going on around me (as if I were a character in this story). I think so, society has changed so much, but its values have taken a rather flat track in many areas such as religion, education, interpretive history, and political policy. The device that has changed our way of doing business is again about to change our way of communicating altogether. Everything we see on screens, which are monitors mounted on a device for the moment, will now be moving as the person moves, that is, untethered visuals.
Such a change is as monumental as the young woman opting for abortion in Hemingway's era. Our values conflict with changes that must take place, away from incumbent methods of how to interact with the environment and each other. The current environment is harsh for moving in that direction. But people will have to deal with it. It's not going away. What's the answer? The same one that the woman made. She was driven to make a decision that progress allowed her to take. We'll make the same one. To fight it will be to die in the too oppressive heat.
There are pathways in life just as there are roads between towns and trails in the country or the mountains. There are actually many of them. The beauty of adulthood is that you get to choose which paths you want to take at any particular time. And, you can change to a different path any time you want to. You can't help but to notice that some paths are wide, some are narrow, or that the some are worn, others grown over.
Another parallel is that when you are on a path, or when you see a different path, you can see it for its present value, but you can't see the end of where it leads usually. You just have to trust the hints of the path as you see it or the information you have heard about it.
That's a pretty good parallel to the way life works. One great difference is that paths don't tell you anything about the people that have taken it. In life you get to see some of those people, their results and their personalities. That helps. Every hint helps because there are so many paths to choose from. Some of them come out at the same place, so it doesn't matter which one you take. You get to take one depending on your personality. But they don't all lead to the same place. That's what keeps the selection process interesting.
I'm sitting by dim lamp light at a table in a mountain cabin far away from the 100 degree weather of my hometown. I can hear the stream babbling by the cabin just 20 yards from the front door. Windows are open letting in the fresh mountain air that makes for good sleeping. The canyon I'm staying in is quiet. It's blue moon night, so I can really say that I was away in the mountains once, in a blue moon. The sides of the mountains on either side of the cabin are invisible because the darkness outside is so black.
I like being comfortable, relaxed, hidden, unbidden, and off the beaten path. Many people call it being off the grid. I wouldn't since I have internet access, but at least I don't access the internet unless I want to. It's not a necessity here.
My mind certainly clears when here. The last time I was here was 10 years ago. The English saying is "What a difference a year makes." Now if I extend that by ten times - what an immense difference 10 years makes. So, I have taken the time to review the last ten years while I have been here. The decade started in a desert area and ended in a metropolitan area. I am gainfully employed for only half the amount of time now than I was 10 years ago. My outlook on life has changed fairly radically. I had a middle of the road kind of philosophy that swerved to the left on most issues. My beliefs about religion, politics, and work day issues have mostly changed by almost 180 degrees.
The saying is that the only constant in the world is change. It's true. Raise any issue, such as marriage, raising teenagers, managing money, working, or vacationing, and I can tell you what a departure my words would be now compared to 10 years ago. Things solidified for me a little over 5 years ago. It hasn't been the same since. I have a good life, an acceptable life - not always what I have wanted, but what I can live with. The last 10 years could have been better, but they could certainly have been worse. The thing I wanted most in life didn't happen during this period, but wanting something and getting it are two different matters.
I need to live in both the literal and figurative place where waking up each morning is worth it. I have reached that place. And sitting here by dim lamp light at a mountain cabin table far away from 100 degree weather drives home these thoughts.
I have passed this road no less than a couple of hundred
times.I have passed it so often that I
know how to pronounce its name by heart.Finally, I drove down the road to see what this Wat was all about.The spire
is symbolic to the Buddhists for the reverence that should be shown to the
deity, the higher power.The design of
the temple courtyard and the temple itself is conducive to conveying a humble
spirit, a decent journey in life, and reaching as close as possible to Nirvana.
So be it.Such is
Buddhism.Any concept I have of Buddhism is only from what I
have read, not from experience.So, my
limited knowledge is not enough to make me an authority on Buddhist beliefs at
all.It seems like a really strange
religion.Its tenets are foreign to
the American way of thinking mainly because its eastern flavor of seeking takes time, seems to lack direction, and takes away
from the pursuit of making a living or becoming happy because of its total neglect of
anything material.The words Wat Buddharatanaram are indicative of how far away from American
idealism this religion is since they are written in a way that is unmistakably
NOT English.
I ponder the things that have happened in life more than I
should, trying to analyze them, thus to understand them.Many events defy my understanding.They are as foreign as the near-eastern words
are from English.I don’t stand for
them.I didn’t train to accept
them.They don’t represent me in any
way.Yet they happen.I can’t control their happening or the way
they happen.Anymore, I just refer to
such events as my Buddharatanaram events or moments. They make me a more accepting person to refer
to them that way.I sure don’t
understand them, but I have to live in the same country that they are in.
It's one thing to look at words and see whatwas said. It's quite another to look at words and see why something was said.
If someone were to say, "I enjoyed the trip. Nothing really happened other than I was a little cold most of the time," and then subsequently you came into knowledge that during the entire trip snow covered the ground, the cabin had only a wood stove in the main living area, and each night for two weeks the temperature fell below 32 degrees. It would be easy to see that what was said was either an understatement about weather conditions or that the speaker wanted to emphasize enjoying the trip even against nature's odds of trying to spoil it.
Why someone would say something this way is not so clear. This is the domain of pragmatics where context is important. For example, the words might be a part of a joke, so that understatement (a little cold) contributes to the humor being created. Or, the speaker is trying to spare the listener's feelings because the listener had paid for the speaker's trip. Or, the speaker is trying to brag about her or his prowess in extreme conditions. Or, the person speaking didn't want to ridicule the poor living conditions the listener has to endure regularly due to the listener's inability to pay for a better way of life.
But, given a context, why did someone use the word, "enjoy" if that were really not the case? Why would someone say, "Nothing really happened," if something happened "most of the time?" If the context is plain, it helps to understand the motive, but to ask why someone would use a circuitous way of speaking would yield information other than motive. Perhaps a person's style is round-about because of a self-esteem problem. Circuitous speaking means that a person has room for error in speaking since she or he is not assertive enough to speak with certainty. Perhaps a person thinks that minimizing the conditions enhances the emotions (s)he feels about the trip. Or perhaps the person wanted to lie about how (s)he felt about the trip for whatever reason by enhancing enjoyment and diminishing the cold.
The word choices definitely had a reason for being chosen. Establishing context is the first step in understanding the reason. Focusing on the semantics also helps to narrow in on the motive of the speaker. But the word choices are indicators of something more exact, the bedrock that produces motive, the logic behind the motive. One has to consider why "nothing really happened" instead of "nothing happened?" Does the word really strengthen the statement of fact?Or is the speaker hedging? The only thing that happened was in the speaker's mind, not in the real world. Why make a general statement, "Nothing really happened," and then negate, maybe refine, the statement with "other than" unless the speaker wants to highlight a negative quality? Why use the words, "the trip," which is inclusive of the whole time, then say that something was not enjoyable "most of the time" except to further highlight the negative quality of the trip?
The answers of course tell you about the personality of the speaker and the pattern of logic he has used. And that information is the well guarded secret most people want to keep from listeners.
I was speaking with a young adult tonight who mentioned in the course of the conversation that he had quit school very early in life. By the time he was 15, he wanted to return to school, but it was too late for him. So, he has paid for it with hard work the rest of his life.
He's not alone by any stretch of the imagination. Most young adults in the U.S. don't really like school well enough to choose more education after high school. Roughly 25% of young adults didn't really like education enough to finish high school, and about a third of that crowd decided to drop from school before that. The National Center for Education Statistics has a lot to say about education buried in the numbers it has compiled for over 50 years.
I feel for my young friend who is working so hard to make ends meet. But, he has made the best of life. Really, he has done quite well over the last 3 years. He is in business for himself and seems pretty happy with his family of 6. On both of those counts he has much on his educated counterparts. He works hard, but he plays hard and holds family time at a premium. In addition, he is currently learning to read and write in a second language.
I really don't know what the quality of life is for the vast majority of people without much formal training. But, if the people in that category are as industrious and resourceful as the man I spoke with, I think that I will gladly trust what comes for the last part of my life. I can sleep with that.
Sometimes I am reminded of an event that I was a part of by someone who has a clear memory of it. I try really hard to remember the details of the event, but usually to no avail. What has happened? Has my brain deteriorated? Is someone trying to plant a memory for an event that never happened?
Sometimes, if it's one of my family, the memory difference or gap is merely a matter of perspective or maturity at the time. But at other times, it seems that anything could have happened because truly I have no memory of that event.
Tonight one such mention was made of an experience my son had. I was with him at the time of the event that had been brought up. I didn't think that the experience happened in the way that was being told. I was there, though. I should have known. It's possible that the person telling of the event totally confused two events and told the wrong one, or that we snapshot the event from different aspects and so, in the retelling, only one aspect showed through. Maybe my memory of the aspect of the experience and the other person's perspective of the aspect could both be true.
Our judgment is only as good as our information - at least that is how the saying goes. But what if our judgment is wholly colored by the aspect our memories snapshot. That changes the whole game. And, if that's true, then all of life in our memories is not reality as a whole, but merely a slice of much more robust reality.
That makes me a little more understanding. And I also realize how arrogant I was when I was younger. My how youth is wasted on the young.
I received a call from my friend and scholar buddy today. It's always a pleasure to speak to him. We mainly talked about, as we do each time he calls, his endeavors in his field - his conferences, papers, courses, etc. So we talked today about those and his newest project.
Recently, I heard that one of the professors at a local theological seminary had dubbed my friend the best Greek scholar in the area. Hmmm, I thought. The next time we speak, I'll just check out whether I can keep up with him in a discussion or not. Today was this next time.
We talked about his newest project and his upcoming class in the Fall semester. In particular, we talked a while about the discourse structure of the Greek works he was teaching. Nice. I always learn a thing or two from such conversations. Once in a while, I get to throw in something so that it looks like I have a contribution to make. We differ mostly differ in the online tools we use and in the authorities that have been in our backgrounds. But, we mainly enjoy comparing notes from our different approaches to language.
By the time we finished, we had touched on the nature of tone in indigenous African languages, the Hasa language, the Pame/Xixuay language, Greek, Spanish, and English. It was a nice little trip... and, I didn't fare so poorly I'm glad to report.
In the middle of the desert, it's a little hard to do some of the basic things - walk for any distance, drink water, cook a meal, and orient yourself as to where you are headed.
People don't live in the desert for those reasons. People live where there is food and water aplenty, they can easily get to places they need to go for shopping, work, and play, and can establish themselves in their work and avocations. I have to admit that I have ended up in a place where all of the ingredients for living a full and more-than-adequate life exist everywhere around me.
But, being here is paradoxical like being alone in a crowd or being thirsty in the middle of the ocean. Why, you say? I'm in the middle of the desert where it's a little hard to do basic things...
Something's going on. I just don't know what it is. I hear various theories of what it is, but information is sketchy.
Fact 1: In 1989, a man named Bob Lazar had an interview with a reporter in L.A. in which he spoke of reverse engineering an actual UFO at Area 51. He was really lighthearted about what he did, seeming not to care about ramifications for revealing such classified information. 25years later the same reporter interviewed Lazar again, but this time Lazar was not so indifferent to the ripple effect of his actions. He was hesitant and said he regretted revealing the information he had recounted. Over the last 25 years, every record of his college experience and work record had been expunged. It's almost as if he never existed. Now, people just relegate Lazar to the looney bin.
Fact 2: One of the pieces of evidence Lazar offered in his original interview was that the UFO he worked on was powered by Element 115. He even gave the physics of how it worked. Was that unusual? Well... that element didn't exist, and officially still doesn't exist. In 2006, scientists began to theorize about the element, but only started experimenting enough to know that it could exist. They called it Upupentium. How did Lazar know nearly two decades ahead of the idea that Element 115 existed? Was he that good of a physicist? Of course, there's no record of his college career, so we don't know.
It's intriguing. The next thing you know, I'll be hearing about an alien base of operations on the dark side of the moon. Oh, wait. There is that rumor already.
The film is worth watching. It is very good at showing about how every family rolls. The characters are stereotypes of the kind of people one would find in every family.
The clip below I particularly like because it hits home personally. I have to deal with the same scenario on a recurring basis. The son shows how loving he truly is. His mother comes in and spoils it all by castigating him. The conversation following the incident between the dad and mom, starting at 2:40 is the one I could have any given day. It's so sad in a way. But it's also so typical.
I have a daughter I love very much. She shows how loving she can be regularly. But, she receives castigation on a regular basis. It would be good for me to have one of those "fat, Irish ass" moments with the perpetrator.
I totally can identify with the line saying, "I don't understand this meanness." I react by longing to be around someone who is cheerful and encouraging. I better understand these two attributes.
If you change the way you see the world, then you change the things you see.
It's a pretty incredible world that is available now. Many can't see what is being offered. That's more than a shame. Google Glasses are old news. The next generation of computing is now seamless with the real world. It will change the things a person sees - guaranteed. I plan for my granddaughter to be educated only in places that offer what is available now so that her future is not on the streets regretting what other children with parents of foresight provided for them.
Those in the field of education should demand to lead, to take this technology to the children and young adults who will take the seamless world of reality and irrealis to a whole quantum height above the world now.
The norm has been for education to lag about 10-15 years behind what technology has offered. It was fortunate that most people were in the same boat. But this time is different. Education will not be turning out what the business world has to have and has to offer if it lags behind. And that will make education irrelevant. It almost is already. The work force has dwindled. Fewer people are working full time hours. College graduates aren't working in their career fields. It is up to educational leaders, especially those who are experts in their field, to totally ignore the voices that tell them that schools are okay, change is gradual, schools will change with the times or that the school is already on the leading edge. It's different this time.
The educational application is shown in the video below from 11:15-14:15. It's simply astounding. Those who possess the skills of this kind of learning will indeed lead, change, affect, and innovate for all others on the Earth.
Five years in virtual time is the same as 25 years of real time. Schools will be divided in 5 years. The ones who prepared will lead. The ones who plodded will exist no more.
Town Square is usually a term to denote a one block area with a city courthouse in it from the 1920s through the 1950s, and around the four opposing sides of the street are lines of store fronts decreptoit from age. Town Square doesn't conjure up ideas like upscale, trendy, ungodly rich, or opulent.
Within a radius of 20 minutes from my house are 4 town squares. The closest is 8 minutes away. It fits the usual concept and is called historic Oak Street. It has restaurants and novelty stores down a street that ends at a courthouse. The buildings and houses are really old even though they have been restored.
Another town square is about 10 minutes away and follows the same pattern, the historic section of Main St. with old houses and restored brick buildings containing well established businesses and restaurants with a couple of novelty shops thrown in.
About 15 minutes away is a third town square, but this one is modern. The oldest shop is a little over 10 years old. It is located on a major thoroughfare, so it is heavily trafficked. It is a shopping center with 20 different eating places and double that number of places to shop. It's called a town center.
The town square 20 minutes away is much different from the other three. It is actually called Town Square. At its center is a courthouse, but it is fairly new about 20 years old. Unlike the historic sections, honeycombed modern streets weave in and around stores - all kinds of stores. But, they all have one thing in common. Let me explain.
In a recent visit to this square, I ate in a Mexican food restaurant. I split the food in the meal with another person, but I paid $40 for the one dish, $3.50 for teas, $8.99 for the appetizer, plus the obligatory tip of 20%. I do have to say we were waited on hand and foot though. We walked across the street to an apparel store. T-shirts started at $125. Polo shirts began at $189, and some of the silk shirts and other rare fabrics placed the shirts at above $350.
The ladies' store across the street had the same kind of offerings. I didn't try the jewelry store, but the costume jewelry store had the prices of a jewelry store selling the normal stock of diamonds. The cars in the two parking garages and designated parking areas bore the labels Audi, Infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes, Cadillac, and BMW. A person can stay the night in the Hilton in the square if need be. Businesses vary from Central Market and Whole Foods to Brighton, Sephora's, Soma's and Malouf's. There are two fountain areas with trees and benches (miniature parks) where live music plays during the summer months fairly often.
I come often to this town square. I particularly like eating at the Cheesecake Factory there and a hamburger place called Snuffer's. I browse and occasionally buy a shirt from Brooks Brothers and another locally owned men's wear shop. I have to do business there to register my cars and frequently use the postal services in the square. Investment bankers have offices there if a person wants that service.
It's really refreshing to go there. People are overly nice and easy-going. The many stores and park areas are relaxing. And I probably need to mention that this town square is different in another way. Of all the towns and cities in the U.S,, this town square belongs to the 6th wealthiest city in the entire country. I love going to my historic Oak and Main streets closer to my house to eat and shop on occasion. I even like catching a movie and meal at the town center a quarter hour away. But, there is nothing like the movie, shirt, or dinner from the Town Square just a short 20 minute journey down the road where the concepts of upscale, trendy, ungodly rich, and opulent are the norm.
The bigger patterns surrounding the questions of how people got here and how long have they been here fascinate me, I suppose because I don't accept very many of the answers that have been given to me in my life.
If I look to space, it seems plausible that another very advanced civilization from one of the billions of other planets around the Earth has visited and shared k nowledge of their existence with Earth's people. Seeding the Earth is plausible if the original premise is accepted.
If I stay on Earth for an answer, it seems that Earth through all of its phases of heating up and cooling down, forming land and breaking apart, and finally melting ice enough to allow civilization to flourish around the equator is what happened. Even though the last Ice Age diminished 13,000 years ago, it would appear that humans have been around in various places trying to find warmth to live for at least double that number, perhaps even 20 times that number.
One would think in all of those years that people would learn to live together in harmony. Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, makes the claim that humans are becoming kinder and gentler a millennium at a time. He presents good evidence that that is true. I hope so. Progress is so slow, though. One would also think that people would figure out how to make friends, pick mates, compose laws, and deal with society's rule breakers in some compatible manner to them. Somehow, it seems that there is a ways to go in these areas also.
If I live long enough I will, perhaps, see that the origin of life on this planet will become clear and that people will decide to be honest, hopeful, realistic, and a little less crazy and malicious. Our children could make quantum leaps in lifestyle if this comes clear soon.
This poster represents the person that can see you as you are, your essence. Nearly everyone I know, sees me in terms of my age and weight and miles. If someone were to say the words or even one or two of these words to me, I would appreciate that person above all others and say the same. Souls would blend.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 thanI 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
