College’s physical plant condition can reveal a lot

One of the concerns atop the national consciousness these days is the rising cost of higher education. I do not intend to analyze most of the costs contributing to these rising costs. In fact, I will not mention most of them. Many of those I won’t mention suffer from snotty insider arguments and petty disputes over the proper direction of education, and while they are worth fighting over, they are not worth boring you with them today.

However, one of the costs of doing business these days centers on constructing and maintaining buildings, sidewalks, roads, and so on. Universities have a lot of these. This is where I say some awfully nice things about my former employer, the University of Southern Indiana (USI). My friends will wonder about me, concerned I might need to tweak my medication. I have plenty of beefs with USI, but it gives me a peculiar pleasure to compliment the university where it richly deserves it.

And that is how it handles its buildings, grounds, and pretty much anything inert and responding to gravity. As a university, USI cropped up in an unlikely place in Indiana, and thereafter its cheer existence irritated other state universities. So, in its defense, the university must consistently present itself as one of the best buys in higher education. USI also must impress stingy legislators as the best place to invest taxpayer dollars if they want voters to believe they are fiscally responsible. These are the same legislators, of course, who stumble over each other bequeathing millions to Indiana and Purdue universities.

 

USI designed new buildings as the best possible blend of good looks, efficient usage of space, and low maintenance. Professors helped determine the need and design of classrooms. When a new building opens, things work. Ceiling mounted projectors operate. Screens descend quietly. Light switches dim. Toilets flush. Thermostats work. Internet flows. Doors fit. If something failed to work, someone fixed it. Its entry to the flow of campus activity is nearly seamless. Even better, you can walk through the building 10 years later and still marvel at it.

The same attention to detail rules outside. If a sidewalk cracks, workmen replace a section. Door jammed or bent? It will not suffer long. Streets and parking lots get new pavement or sealant as needed. Security lights never seem to fail. Trees – the university, unlike too many places in the state, actually likes trees – get trimmed regularly and replaced if needed.

Overall, USI spent money on its physical plant as though it may never get another dime. We could only wish more public institutions approached spending in a similar manner.

While I saw most of this over the years, my students began to see it when we visited other universities. For example, as we stumbled along a sidewalk nearly destroyed by heaving tree roots, students began to wonder out loud how Western Kentucky University could brag. We had just left an assembly hall the university was damned proud of, though it was five years old. On the hall’s front floor were two dusty large speakers. They did not work. They had yet to be mounted on the wall and connected to wires poking grotesquely two feet into the room. I wonder if they still adorn the hall’s floor. The students wanted to “write this up” for our student newspaper, but I suggested kindness. WKU might not host the regional Society of Professional Journalists conference again if we offend them.

One more thing helps USI as it would any regional college. I was helping erect the outfield fence at a girls’ softball field a couple miles outside Evansville. I asked the other guy why it had been so difficult to schedule our work. Well, he’s an electrician, he reminded me, and his company was wiring the new Liberal Arts Center. He said they were taking considerable pride in their work because USI was our university, and they wanted the work to be the absolute best they could do. I had to smile.

The main point can get easily lost. Some colleges and universities spend wisely on their physical plants while others act as though everything is temporary. Taxpayers seeking a fiscally healthy institution for their children should examine parking lot care and the hallway floors in classroom buildings. An institution ignoring upkeep might use a similar approach for faculty recruitment and development.

Gadgets spying on you – is it benign? An invasion?

I am learning – with more irritation than surprise – that corporate America is keeping track of my life and yours, too, chiefly for the purpose of lifting money from my wallet.

A few months ago, for example, my daughter and ex were driving to Michigan from Kentucky, and for reasons I now forget, they had to leave late. In a peculiar moment of cooperation, I got on the computer and found the address, phone number, and rates of a Red Roof Inn about two-thirds in this direction. I sent this to my daughter in a text, offering to make a reservation.

My reward? I endured a month of web ads all devoted to Red Roof Inn. They appeared top right on many sites I frequent, such as Yahoo and Intellicast. They disappeared, a bit to my surprise, after I ordered a cordless drill from Harbor Freight Tools. I then suffered a couple weeks of advertisements for the very same product I ordered, which seems like idiocy on their part. I already had the damn drill. How many am I likely to buy?

The whole idea that my Internet usage triggered an annoying commotion of ads, however, bothered my sense of privacy. It still does, though I know the notion of privacy today is as outmoded as eight-track tapes. The aggravation with linking me to various products eventually morphs into something akin to apprehension when you come to understand that, given enough broad information, someone could put together an interesting profile. Add some clever and insightful work – read this “work” as software – and corporate America can generate something better than a sketch.

This is nothing new. Guesswork does not initiate those store-based coupons your grocery provides at checkout. The store’s computer keeps track of what you buy with your credit or debit card. The store might know your shopping habits better than you do. If you regularly buy cans of dog food, for instance, you might get a coupon for $2 off a specific brand of dry dog food. Enjoy donuts but only buy two? The store makes more money if it provides a $1 coupon for a dozen from the grocery’s bakery. This is not guesswork. It is judicious marketing expanding on the already existing thread of purchasing.

While it is nothing new, it is growing. Today we learned the smartphone you carry around records everything you type into the keyboard and the time, duration, and location of every phone call you make and receive. It sends the information nowhere, they say. Sure, the gadget’s makers say this information makes the phones work better and the system smarter because it can anticipate what you do and save time. They probably mean that. For the most part, these companies cannot use this information well enough yet to profit by it on a mass scale.

But that is now. What about the future? I am not talking about 20 years; I am talking about a year or two. All this pent up information in smart phones combined and mixed with all that pent up information in your laptop and web browser providers soon will be a minable commodity. You can bet your Tea Bag membership card someone has already figured out how to excavate that digital ore and fashion useful marketing tools – again, to rescue money from your wallet.

The problems are these: Today you have no choice in the matter. You cannot tell your phone to lose its memory. The digital tools available to most of us do not control what your Internet browser and site visits can tell potential marketers. Although much of what you do today cannot be held in strict privacy, you have every right to limit these encroachments on your life and maintain some sense of privacy. Corporate America, as it has for well over 100 years when the “mass market” first emerged, will tell us that its marketing procedures are benign and merely an innocent part of doing business, if not also a Constitutional right of free speech. These nice, sweet people – church deacons in their communities – just want to send us ads that interest us. Sure they do.

It is one thing for me to voluntarily leave clues about my buying preferences or to directly provide my inclinations. It is another for corporate America to use incidental or accidental information.

The last thing marketers want is to sell you something based chiefly on the product’s merits. That’s the old way of selling, and it is so yesterday. They would rather cheat, in a sense, and sell junk to you based on your inclinations, not the product’s value. That’s so tomorrow.

Think small — challenge of the 21st Century

I grew up in a small house. Once a cottage, the expanded house was still small. My sisters and I slept in the same room until I was about 16 and took over one of the other small cottages. Our house had no basement or central heating, and for years only the bathroom had a real door. I can still hear the reassuring, peaceful rumble of the oil burning space heater.

Do I feel deprived? Never did and do not now. The house provided warmth, a coziness you simply cannot find anywhere in 4,000 square feet. We were with family most of the time. We learned to provide space for one another, to get along. No one had to teach us how to share. No one could rush away in a sniffling huff and slam a door for emphasis. Want to be alone? Go walk the Lake Michigan beach. Oddly, anyone who did that returned in a near spiritual stillness.

The house was the product of two people who had just survived the Great Depression, and for me I believe it fundamentally prepared me for the 21^st Century. After all, the last 40 years of the 20^th Century failed to prepare us for what we face today, which, in essence, is a growing need to expand our lives within littler spaces (contradiction intended).

I feel sad for those who are “making do” or “doing the best we can” within “reduced” circumstances. Oh, the misery, the shame, the blushing humiliation. They need to get over it. If their self-definitions hinged upon the size of their homes – which is the case for too many – then they must find authentic substance for their personal meaning. Imagine the emptiness of a life based on floor space, places to avoid interacting with others, and personal space measured by the yard.

Besides, a large house must have multi-door garages, kidney shaped swimming pools, lawn care contracts, security systems, and fences intimidating enough to discourage intrusions – the costs of which further reduce your circumstances. Do you really need a “conversation” corner? How about the “sitting room?” If you have an agonizing need for a sitting room, well, you might consider extensive mental health therapy. What you are avoiding may not be that scary. On the other hand, perhaps you just opened the insurance bill for the backyard pool. Zowie.

While sitting, consider your many alternatives to the lifestyle shackling you to an empty idea.

Reduced circumstances may well be good for us. All of us. Reduced circumstances force us to examine our lives and explore our many options. Maybe – now pull your seatbelts tight – maybe space mortgages our futures and prevents choices which might be more eloquent. Just for starters, interaction with those we live with could be better than subsidizing our inability to relate to others. At a very critical level, we might begin to realize that spending money on things prevents us from acquiring and absorbing experience. What a concept. Experiencing the sitting room is a poor substitute for getting more education or seeing the pyramids.

The ultimate self-insult has become the rented storage garage. All the booty of our self-absorbed lifestyles that we cannot part with (but no longer serves us) goes into an out-of-sight aluminum alloy hidey hole. There the stuff no longer burdens our consciousness. It steadily pecks at our checking account and diminishes our options.

The strategy to exploit, to explore small space is universal. Most of us face the same challenge: How to live and flourish with less. Alas, you are not just surviving or managing your lives; you are designing lives and discovering ways to thrive.

Even today, when our family gets together, we crowd into a small space and talk. We can reach out and tap someone without getting up and reaching. Getting someone to pass the mustard is a challenge only because you must interrupt a long conversation to get a word in there somewhere. Only my mother will see you need mustard without being told. Mothers are like that. The intuitive notice comes equipped with a warning not to put mustard where you do not want it. It stains.

Alert! Alert! Alert! Don’t panic, just watch

Here’s a chance to watch something happen and learn something, too. Learn what? Well, that’s it. We don’t know what we’ll learn, but we will learn something about people, the media, and a bit about government.

At 2 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9, the government will conduct its first national test of the national Emergency Alert System (EAS), and there is some concern on the part of government that people might take the test seriously, grab the family Bible, and drive the rusting pickup truck deep into the woods where presumably they will hide until the aliens leave the planet.

If you think that’s a joke, it is. Sorry. Perhaps I overstate it. However, you should remember the public’s reaction to Orson Welles’ 1938 Mercury Theater of the Air’s broadcast of War of the Worlds. People did jump out of buildings. They did report large, creeping dark smoke approaching their homes. They did grab the family Bible, the shotgun from over the door, and drive into the woods. People were assaulted. About two weeks later a posse had to trek into the Rocky Mountains to convince a few to come home.

You might imagine the possibilities here.

“EAS participants provide a critical public service to the nation as the resilient backbone of alert and warning when all other means of communication are unavailable,” says a FEMA web site. “EAS Participants include all broadcasters, satellite and digital radio and television, cable television and ‘wireline’ video providers who ensure the system is at a constant state of readiness.”

Readers with questions should visit the FEMA site. Lots of blah, blah, blah awaits. I do not know what a “wireline video provider” is.

Other than the obvious, there are essentially two concerns. First, the government has not publicized the test very well – I have not seen or heard anything about it, for example – and, second, there seems to be confusion about how it will be presented, how long it will last, and what, if any, warning it will provide.

“This system test is the first of its kind,” says an email to federal employees. “It is designed to broadcast a nationwide message to the American public. Nothing like it has been conducted in the history of the country. There have been tests in the past but none to all parts of the nation at the same time. The test will run concurrently on all radio and TV band and the message will run for three minutes. Most messages in the past were anywhere from 30 seconds to one minute.”

Please note the 30 seconds versus the three minutes.

“There is great concern in local police and emergency management circles about undue public anxiety over this test,” the email report continues. “The test message on TV might not indicate that it is just a test. Fear is that the lack of an explanation message might create panic.”

What will we learn? One TV station can visually present it in a different way than the next one on the dial. I can guarantee confusion. And among radio listeners and television viewers out there, especially at that time of day, people will react differently. Someone will panic. The media’s countless ways to publicize or explain it offer lots of uncertainty.

Not far below the surface, I am a social-psychologist. I watch people, constantly trying to learn how people respond to unusual or unexpected stimuli.

I add one bit of experience here, and that is the media knows if you warn people too far in advance, people forget it. If you tell the public a day in advance, they remember it, especially if you remind them again on the right day. This applies to everything from a special city council meeting to a rescheduled football game. Let’s see if it applies to a nationwide alert.

Regulation easy target, but aim with care

Republican candidates have said little in the past week about the government regulations they want to abolish. That won’t last.

 

They cannot go two weeks without harping about regulations without pointing to any offensive regulation. It is such an easy complaint because no one gives a crap until a regulation saves their butts. People truly know nothing about regulations. They just know the Tea Party people gripe about “too many regulations” and recite the mantra “get government out of the way.” Most of the Silent Majority remains uneasy with the TPers. They’re armed.

 

Let me help you with the processes, bad regs, and good regs.

 

First, one or two legislators propose a bill and turn to an office filled with political science graduates and interns. Here, in the first major process, they write the bill. The legislature might quibble over some wording, add some here, delete some there, but it’s important to remember that bills – in this case bills which will create regulation – start with someone trying to put an idea into a few words and perhaps a few regulations. You can sometimes trace awkward regulation right back here. Future journalists might remember this is a handy place for a trusted college friend to work. After all, if lobbyists can participate, why not journalists? Stay in touch.

 

After the legislature passes the bill (and declares the world now in balance), the agency designated to enforce it tries to twist the law’s wording into regulations that make sense. (Lawyers often step in and make regulations incomprehensible. This is an unfortunate necessity in many situations.) Then the agency publishes the new regulations, holds hearings, appoints oversight committees, and rewrites some of the proposals. Eventually we have a new set of regulations that may or may not solve or even address the original problem.

 

What must be pointed out is those who want to influence the ultimate regulations should focus on this agency/hearing process. Lobbyists get seriously involved because they can recommend “little” changes, tiny tweaks, that ultimately make the regulations hard to enforce or impossible to get through court. For example, inserting the word “knowingly” makes a rule nearly impossible to enforce. Now you have to show, in court, the violator broke the law and “knew” he violated the law. Otherwise, the judge will declare the incident a “regrettable” mistake, not a crime.

 

Gosh, Your Honor, we didn’t know.

 

About half of government regulation of businesses – reasonable people would disagree where to draw the line – was sought by business. Hard to imagine, right? Not really. A good way to succeed in business is to make it knotty for competitors to join the field. Enter regulation. Convince the state that what you do is so complex and so dangerous that left in inexperienced hands the state should license these people – after passing frustrating tests.

 

While this applies to many professions and technical skills, it is easier to show in everyday work. For example, why does a state license flower arrangers? What catastrophe could an incompetent flower arranger pose to the public? How about “interior designers?” Well, okay, perhaps a poor color scheme might lead to intense anxiety. That would be sad. Also, states license hairdressers, and I scratch my head over that. In fact, why license barbers? Sure, a razor in the hands of an incompetent barber could be an adventure. You are not to worry: If we make all barbers pass a test, no one will ever get cut. All bad regulations.

 

And while this is not among bad regulations, some states used to prohibit eyeglass retailers advertising their eyeglass prices. They defended it on the basis of preventing fraud. Fraud? The truth was this tiny little law discouraged competition, the kind of competition consumers should enjoy. But it was not about consumers; it was about keeping your competition discouraged.

 

Good regulation begins with the kinds of quiet and daily inspections completed by weights and measures offices. They make sure a pound in your town is the same as a pound in San Francisco. They make sure you get a gallon of gasoline, a full gallon of gasoline, and that the scale your butcher uses in fact gives you what the label says. Weights and measures people also make sure that commerce among wholesalers and retailers is honest. Imagine a world where no one had faith in the accuracy of merchant scales. Well, as governments go broke, we will begin to explore some of that turmoil.

 

People do not oppose regulation they do not see it in everyday life. They just listen to and echo the complainers, even though most of them are poorly informed, too. However, people would see the lack of regulation immediately. Airline maintenance would plummet – pun intended – and cars would come off the assembly line running as well and as safely as the typical Russian vehicle. That two-liter carton of milk might be a little short every day. The cockroach sprinting across your restaurant table? Reporting it would not summon a health inspector, so you may as well fork it and dip it in gravy.

 

Stairs – the height of which we take for granted – would be constructed at whatever levels the contractor found convenient. Even TPers would stumble awkwardly. Some might even break their stupid necks. We could hope.

Wear pink and pretend to make a difference

Pink is a nice color. You see it everywhere these days, too.

 

Some buildings have been splashed with pink lights so they can inspire and awe from miles away. Professional football players took to wearing pink shoes and shocking pink do-rags. Many players even sported unmanly pink gloves. Cute little pink sticker ribbons adore the backs and sides of millions of cars and trucks, even SUVs. Cottage industries in pink T-shirts, scarfs, hats, hoodies, and various sticky decorations sprout damn near every day.

 

My favorite is the simple pink ribbon on the backs of cars.

 

You would have to be living under a large rock not to know these pink happenings address an evil, that of breast cancer. Wearing or sporting pink, the strategy goes, informs others we are standing up against breast cancer, standing up for a cure, supporting women who have battled it, supporting the idea of being against breast cancer, and enthusiastically promote variations therein.  Breast cancer is an awful thing, and it should happen to no woman.

 

Do you know anyone who favors breast cancer? Me, neither. So what’s going on here? This does not make sense to me. I am either consistently missing something in all this or I simply do not comprehend the power of mass disapproval of a medical condition.

 

To me, the only ways to truly do something in this situation are obvious. You fight breast cancer by sending money to researchers trying to identify cures and treatments. You fight breast cancer by either helping those with breast cancer get through their daily lives or giving money to others who do. If a company gives a percentage of a sale to breast cancer research, then buy that product. Pledge donations through credit cards, phone calls, and Internet sites. Surely I do not need to offer dozens of adaptations of these ideas because you must get the drift.

 

On the other hand, this whole mass condemnation of breast cancer thing baffles me as much as the “support our troops” ribbons for cars and banners for buildings. Supporting troops can take various courses, of course. I believe that supporting our troops might begin with bringing them the hell home, and soon. Others think we support our troops by sending more of them in harm’s way. Still others champion the troops by backing the Veterans Administration’s programs, propose higher wages for troops, or some such action. Supporting troops is less clear than supporting the breast cancer battle.

 

What is clear, however, is the difference between passive and active ways of doing things. Most of these modern pink ways to fight breast cancer require you to do nothing more than buy a ribbon, if that. Wow! You can only hope that hefty purchase did not exhaust you. Fasten that ribbon to your blouse or stick it on the car and – presto! – you can now imagine yourself a 21^st Century warrior or a knight crusading against evil and battling gallantly, too. By any reasonable standard, you do not need to do anything at all to bolster your self-image as slayer of malicious beasts. Passive condemnation of cancer might appeal to those who shun, too. It requires such little effort, sunning is almost passive. Shunning people might earn reasonable success – especially since most people believe their self-image is vulnerable – but spurning cancer has no effect.

 

In the end, you can win a PC battle. You can do nothing and castigate friends who are being politically incorrect when they decline to do the same thing. After all, today’s high standard requires you merely to do nothing against cancer to enable you to claim you stand at the cutting edge of the battle against cancer.

Prepared, organized, standing by, ready

I like to be ready.

I keep my car in a condition that allows me to toss in a few already prepared bags and drive 200-300 miles. I seldom let the gas tank fall below half, especially in cold weather. I prefer full. I change the synthetic-blend oil every 3,000 miles, but I could drive it to 5,000 miles or so without compromising maintenance. The windows inside are clean, the brakes superb, and the tires balanced, properly inflated, and show plenty of tread. The idea is to be ready to go and stay going if required.

I tuck a compact tool set in the trunk, too. Riding a motorcycle around the country, particularly in the mountains, prompted that tool kit. On an extended camping expedition, you carry everything you need on a machine limited in space and methods to carry stuff. It teaches preparedness. Somehow you manage to pack everything, including some redundancy in clothing, rain/snow gear, and tools. Specialization gives way to multi-use. Often it is an adventure.

Meanwhile, my car console holds only enough quarters to wash the car. That is my lone car cache.  I know people who have $500 hidden in their cars. The amount could be higher, I suppose, but my friends are everyday people. Still, to me $500 hidden in a car seems like a lot of risk. I like my money in my pocket or, when I’m on the road, a hidey-hole in the trunk.

My preparation does not apply to every personal task. Indeed, a few clothing drawers in my bedroom seem relatively organized. My shirts hang facing left. Blame the army for that. In my kitchen, spoons lie together in one place and the knives and forks in their places. The rest of the kitchen, however, needs a plan, and I have casually pondered a plan for maybe 20 years. The ambition seems overwhelming.

My desk remains disorganized and cluttered, as a friend recently noted. I must admit I like it that way, despite an occasional delusion that I should unify, give structure, or wage restraint. Such aberrations often make me want to take a nap. Yet, I can find things in and on my desk without assistance. In addition, organization appears gratuitous, and it might be a precursor to a wearisome mental illness.

I acknowledge a difference between being ready for the unpredictable and permitting disorder to rule daily matters. This restates the old adage that one should prepare for the worst and let hope otherwise reign. I embrace hope, but I am not that comfortable relying on hope. Hope does not fill my gas tank when I have neglected to do it myself. Hope does not select likely-needed implements and assemble a tool kit. Experience selects the tools, and I build the kit. Hope is a naked partner in the world of the dressed.

Boomers familiar with being swindled

This chatter about trimming “the fat” out of Medicare or “finally” shaving the benefits of Social Security – if not just chucking the whole program into the stock market cauldron – might turn my stomach, but it does not shock me one bit.

You see, I am a baby boomer, and we boomers are used to it. We have been the target of all kinds of governmental decisions since we first cast a shadow on the horizon 65 years ago. We are old hands at this (ha, ha, ha). We baby boomers know well the impact of differential treatment, though we might not always enjoy it.

That treatment was the most pronounced in school. We were the largest class our crumbling elementary school had ever handled. To compound matters, the three or four years behind us began to echo our size. By the sixth grade, our class moved into the high school. There was nowhere else to put us. The school board had to bring a teacher out of retirement to teach us, and I can tell you without hesitation she should have stayed in retirement.

Next year, as the school system maneuvered to manage the coming wave, the high school building became the system’s first junior high school. We meshed with seventh graders from five other elementary districts, and we finally began to grasp the situation. Administrators struggled to manage our sheer size, to say nothing of new dilemmas.

One of those dilemmas followed the Russians’ launch of Sputnik. This instantly drew scrutiny to the quality of American education. Since the boomers were not yet in high school, the corrective focus fell on us in junior high. More science classes. More math. Closer inspection. Longer days. No more Mister Nice Guy.

Gee, thanks, folks. We did not ask to be this lump of people. As a cutting-edge boomer, born almost precisely nine months after World War II ended, I was the most frustrated.

Our joyfulness followed us into high school and college. In high school we assembled with a expanding cadre of new teachers from afar to enlighten our little minds. Some of them were barely older than us, sans that boomer designation. They were mid-war exuberance. To the school system’s credit, the high school itself was nearly new. The addition was even newer.

At Michigan State University, housing assigned me to a brand new dormitory, this one not yet finished. Large piles of dirt and sand stood guard at nearly every door and parking area at Fee Hall. The snack bar, which eventually became a larger than life meeting place, was inaccessible. The campus had three such dorms, each holding 1,500 students in modern, never-before-tested suite rooms housing four scholars each. We were special, so special we had to ride Michigan’s second largest bus system to classes a mile away often scheduled in make-shift classrooms.

The Having-Fun-with-Boomers amusement emerged in the military, too. I was drafted – not given a final prospect of freedom in some wussie lottery – into the first training company at Fort Knox that was more than half college graduates. We were 62 percent college grad, as though that should mean something to us boomers.

Wow. Gosh, how unexpected. How do you figure that happened?

And, guess what? There’s more. That nearly-all-your-life GI Bill your father enjoyed? Well, golly, guys, there are just too damn many of you for us to keep that promise. That would be costly! Congress transformed it to a 10-year, limited GI Bill. You are not to fret, however, because once the Vietnam War hacks a mean swath through your generation, you will just feel lucky to get home.

Today the Republicans want to slice away at our Social Security and Medicare and god knows what else. Yeah, right. We are all shocked.

Help teach your children ‘how to think’ — please

Editor’s note:  For the five or six people who have been waiting for the next column, I apologize for my disappearance. I will not explain the details because they involve another, but we confronted a sudden serious illness, and we continue to face it.

How can parents help their school-age children?

Here is the topic that scares all sorts of people for foolish reasons: Teach your kids how to think. Before some of you get your shorts all in a wad, realize I said “how to think,” not “what to think.” It has been my experience that parents who teach their children what to think do not get around to teaching those kids how to think.

This is a great place to encourage those little minds. You do not have to take time to have teaching sessions. Problems emerge all the time. Sit down with your child when he or she has a problem to solve. Help them identify the parts of the problem, especially the parts you cannot see but know lurk in the next step. You will likely see the child’s focus narrowing, the wheels beginning to spin. Often the solution is right there, and the child will spot it.

Lesson learned, and it is available for numerous other predicaments.

Some problems require a more complex attack. You might need to apply the scientific method or help your child weigh values. You know the scientific method – testing alternatives to discover those that work. The lawn mower will not start, for example. It needs air, gas, and electricity. Test to make sure the engine gets each of those. Involve the child in every step. Try not to blow up the garage or visit the emergency room.

Thinking about values and learning how to address troubles involving values presents the stickiest challenge. Values dilemmas are probably the challenges that come up the most often with children. Before you defeat your new mentoring before you get started, find or arrange the situation so that you are talking with the child, not at him. Picture the two of you sitting casually on the front steps and tossing ideas into the air. Just two people chatting, passing the time.

Begin by having the child explain the problem. Draw out details. (What happened?) You are half way home now and do not know it because sometimes the problem evaporates when spoken aloud. However, if not, know value problems come with multiple layers. Sort them out. For instance, are you hurt or embarrassed? If it is the “principle of the thing,” then what indeed is the principle? How important is that principle considering the friendship that might be in jeopardy? Finally, where do we go from here?

People get a little nervous about this teaching how to think business. First, they fear the teacher will be teaching the child what to think. Sometimes they do. However, sometimes learning how to think clarifies the issues so well that the child challenges some traditional values others have told him to believe. Do not worry so much about it. The kids will not run into the streets and become godless heathen or barbarians. They will be kids. Some of them will become scientists, others political leaders, and maybe a few of them professional baseball players. Give them a better chance by teaching them how to think.

Frankly – and this is where you can picture me looking furtively to the left, glancing sneakily to the right, and then dropping my voice – getting parents to sharpen their own scholarly skills while also helping their kids is at least half the battle.

Years from now we will look back at this decade as the time we finally confronted the dilemma so colossal and central to our culture that we nearly lost it all – letting it smash to the floor and explode – before we began to actually see what was at stake. No, I am not talking about the national debt. I am talking about public education in the United States. Education is a mess. A miracle will not save it, at least not in a timely fashion. As we run out of money for everything, that everything includes our schools and our teachers. As I just said, if you are waiting for a miracle, find something more useful to do, such as picking lint from your bellybutton.

Or – and here’s a useful idea – help teach children to think and sort through problems. I cannot think of any better gift.

Parents: Help kids enjoy, finish school

Earlier this week, while getting a new crown on a molar, I chatted with the dental assistant on the dismal quality of public education today. I was not preaching my customary sermon on the subject. In fact, I avoided most of the substance, making sure confusion would not be taken out on my molar.

Together we noted education in Michigan today does not enjoy its traditional position atop the ladder. Class sizes are swelling while school administrations fire most classroom assistants, she said. I noted the new governor’s hatred of teacher unions and benefits. The question came down to what we can do to help these schools.

Biting my tongue to avoid suggesting recalling the new Republican state office holders, I said the most important action and the too often overlooked element in education has always been the parents. Mom and Dad can make sure education works. I tried to say, “It’s a slam dunk,” but with various pieces of chromed equipment in the way, I think it sounded more like, “Is a slickam dun.”

My dental assistant said she has a son completing his first year in high school. What could she do?

I am not totally disorganized, but my advice flowed with the conversation, such as it was. I summarize it here so it makes more sense:

            Start a daily routine.  After he comes home and after you have discussed and discarded the day’s news and dramas, ask him what he learned today. The first few times will be awkward. His eyes will roll meaningfully. He will offer smart-ass remarks and get up to leave. He has such a busy life, you know. Be patient. In truth, he wants a life where he can discuss these things with his parents. He just doubts it will ever happen, and he does not want to get interested and then forgotten. Eventually, he will offer something. Listen and comment. Ask what else he learned. Shoot for maybe three items. If all are from one subject, ask specifically about another. Do that every day. Be genuinely surprised when you learn something you did not know. It is OK. Just do not make a habit of being the idiot. The idea here is to teach your children how to be self-reliant.

Perhaps I should mention here you might be one of those repulsive “this-is-not-my-job” parents. No, it is your job. It has always been your job. You might have to brush up to do it well. Take it seriously. Read a book. Watch the History Channel. Cancel Netflix and subscribe to a newspaper. You might get interested.

            Meet the teachers. This process can be uncomfortable, especially in high school where students think it not cool to have parents asking questions. Attend the early orientation sessions and “meet and greet” with the teachers. All schools have them. It is in the Modern School Management Philosophy Manual. Be nice. The time to be serious will be later if at all. Shake their hands. Ask a few questions about course content. Look them in the eye. If you want to intimidate, ask where they got their degree and the major course of study. Ask this only if you will understand the answer. Otherwise, just say “wow” and move on.

Your kids will point out their teachers at other events, such as football games, band concerts, plays, and so on. That means you have to attend them. If you begin to reveal a bona fide interest in your kids’ education, your kids will identify teachers, classrooms, administrators, jerks, and troublemakers. Take this parental role seriously, once you embrace it. Do not let the kids down.

            Be there. Again, do not be one of those parents who drop off the kids and drive to the mall. Do not do that. Stick around. If the kids are attending band practice, stay awhile. Return well before practice ends. Stay if you can. The band director, football coach and play director know the value of parents. They will gush some. They mean it. The presence of parents boosts the value of everything.

I got to really enjoy these events because I could chat with other parents and exchange observations. It was fun. Sadly, it was always the same group of parents.

High end of the power curve – avoid it

He was right, of course. But how do you free yourself of such a demanding cycle?

It was years ago, and I was sitting in front of Brian, a psychologist. Brian had been talking with me weekly for perhaps three months, and he would talk with me for another three months, give or take. I was the Dayton Consumer Advocate, the man who ran a 15-investigator office which enforced a fistful of laws. It was a public and stressful job, but I loved it. I also was good at it.

Like me, Brian was a pilot, and he used the process of taking off as a metaphor to explain my life. He said I lived at the high end of the power curve – when the engine runs at full tilt as always on takeoff. Instead of patiently waiting for the proper speed (when lift would be swift and not burdened with extra drag), I try to pull it off the runway early. The higher you pull the airplane’s nose, the more awkward a presentation the plane makes to the air. This increases drag, a force acting against thrust.

          The worst part of this madness occurs at the high end of the power curve. The drag and thrust fall into balance. The plane does not climb, but you soon run out of runway.

          “And there you are, in your impatient life,” Brian said, as best I can remember. “Holding the yoke with sweaty hands, you pull it off the runway too early, pulling the plane up before it wants to. Push, pull, push because you can fix anything, right any misdeed. Hell, you even defy the laws of physics. You’re the consumer advocate.”

That’s when I learned Easy Hands. Easy Hands helps you keep some sense of calm while learning to be independent in this frustrating world. If you want to become self-reliant, you must first learn to control yourself.

Chill out, relax, calm down, take it easy, settle down, calm yourself, take it easy, take a breather, take five, time out.

Returning to the airplane … if you keep a tight grip on something, such as an airplane yoke, you won’t fly well. You’ll tire out, build stress, and get irritable. Worse, you won’t enjoy flying, which is vital.

          Many situations call for Easy Hands. You must use Easy Hands riding a motorcycle, for example. Hold it firmly enough that you do not lose your control at the next bump but easily enough so your hands, wrists, and arms do not become weary. That’s how you enjoy the ride, too. You let your sense of balance, your mental ability at quick geometry, and your instincts take over.  Enjoy it and stay safe.

          Many approaches to living call for Easy Hands, too. You cannot lead or influence others if you cannot inspire confidence and calm within yourself first. After all, would you want to ally yourself with someone who nearly flaunts stress and irritability? Over management builds on itself and drains you of willpower. The more you try to control something, the harder it becomes to exercise that control. Eventually you squander whatever personal progress you have made.

          Easy Hands applies to love, too. If you control and manipulate your mate, you will lose her. Your mate seeks self-definition, too, and that definition should not be passive. Build self-sufficiency and confidence within yourself, and your strengths will give her good reason to remain at your side.

          Easy Hands should be your only guide when you face big decisions, stressful choices, and vital friendships. Even hate.

Fear of authenticity lurks among us

I was talking to a bookstore manager as she took care of another customer’s purchase.  A fairly quiet woman about my age, she and I had been talking about the authors of various books, especially the political and cultural analyses of the last few years. I “sort of” apologized for being straight-forward. Most people don’t take it very well, I said.

“I wish people were more blunt,” she said quietly so as not to be heard beyond the cash register. “We could use it these days.”

And there it was, a glaringly contemporary illness most of us suffer, an illness designed to shut down the exchange of sincere versions of the truth. In other words, we teach one another to keep our mouths shut. If we must talk, and I suppose we must, then we instruct one another to at least take the edges and perhaps the meaning out of our comments.

Why? We don’t want to offend someone, make someone feel uncomfortable, or engage in meaningful dialogue. We desire to deceive one another. How else can you define this brainless, laughable way to communicate with one another?

            This fear of authenticity has burdened us for a long time. Remember that cute, mindless comment from Thumper? “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”

I doubt most of us desire to live in a world where truth is cast aside in favor of The Thumper Principle. I picture a grey-haired, wrinkly old, old woman promoting Thumperness, but that’s unfair to my late grandmother. She might offer a brief reprimand for bluntness, but then the former suffragette would have a plenty to say that would make fragile weenies uncomfortable. I come from good stock.

            As a newspaper editor, I received an occasional complaint about the direct coverage of some news stories, such as bodies floating around following a tidal wave.  One woman said that dampened the dinner table discussion. Just what should an editor say to these people? “Oh, gee, madam, I’m so sorry. I’ll reshape our news coverage so you need not fear being uncomfortable. Thank you for bringing this concern to my attention.” Nope. I said she should not read the newspaper without first having two fingers of whiskey. I transferred her to the circulation department and said she should consider dropping the newspaper.

            You can imagine how a modern editor would not appreciate a Roat response when newspapers can barely pay the light bill. On the other hand, people in the paper today still “die.” They don’t pass on or pass away or somehow get caught up in any other euphemism for death. The newspaper is one of the last bastions of lucid reporting.

            All of this is important to you. If you become a carrier of the Thumper virus, do not fear hospitalization or prolonged illness. Instead, fear your slow loss of self, a loss of a speaker of truth as you see it, and an eventual submission to those around you who desire to control your point of view.

            But, alas, grandmothers, children, and weenies will adore you for being painfully nice.

Privacy? Not for administrators of public agencies

Recently a former journalism student told me about the trouble he’s having with university officials who are shocked – shocked – when a reporter calls, gets some information, prints it, and then quotes the university official. Shocked? Yes, they are shocked their accurately spelled names appeared right there in the paper, right there with the information they provided without objection.
What an outrage! Administrators accurately quoted in the newspaper! Alarm! Alarm!
While that seems a bit odd for 2008 – I thought we were working on a more transparent culture – the layer of this observation that rattles my cage is that administrators’ defend their shock by telling reporters they have the right to privacy.
Privacy?
Yes, I know, though the right to privacy is not in the U.S. Constitution, we believe the roots of privacy grow there and subsequent court decisions have added wordage.
But let me examine this from another perspective – our expectations of state-funded college administrators. We create universities so our youth can be educated (another series of topics coming soon). We hire administrators to manage these schools, which are dear to us as well as expensive for us. These managers are public servants in state institutions. Their weighty decisions can enhance or degrade the college academic offerings, make everyone look silly for hiring them, and threaten the financial bottom line.
Give me a reason they should not freely identify themselves. They work for the public and do manage millions of dollars, our universities, our hopes, and our future.
Privacy? No. Too much is at stake. If you want privacy, work for a private company and build a big fence around your suburban house.
Better defenses for hiding their public-funded identities might include incompetence, fear of attention, and a general need to be cuddled before being revealed. But my general sense as a journalist and professor is this unfounded public administrator “privacy” thing is already out of control, and, worse, it suggests a larger cultural error in navigation. Eventually, we will not know who does what on our behalf.

Please let them grow up and experience their own lives

During a recent class exercise, a middle school teacher told an acting out student that he was being childish. In fact, she told him he was a “child.”

You should be able to predict the 2008 reaction since most of you are products of the last 30-some years of socializing. The kid and his parents said he ran home (I’ll bet he got a cab) and , with obvious emotional distress, said his teacher called him a child. He felt embarrassed and “uncomfortable.”

In the 1960s you could tell a child he was a child, even with some emphasis, and no one would have cared. In 1960, children were supposed to be embarrassed, confused, and uncomfortable. They were children. If the middle-schooler continued to whine about it, parents sent him to his room to experience his own drama without dragging in others.

This was true even into the early 1970s before the Nurturing Culture zealots claimed to know much more than the rest of us about emotions. When they assumed protection and management of our emotions, everything fell in line.

One zealot posse, worried about embarrassment, slipped away to write complex political correctness rules. Another zealot subcommittee, convinced their interpretation of the Constitution was correct, created lists of things people can no longer do to others. The main thing people can no longer “commit” upon another is make someone uncomfortable.

Oh, gosh, the shame of it all. Imposed discomfort.

Can you imagine a world where we made one another uncomfortable without a klatch of volunteer humanitarians arriving suddenly to share feelings, seek consensus, form support groups, and try to make the “offender” appear criminal?

The largest do-gooder cluster of the 1970s takeover decided to reshape American education where “uncomfortableness” (if there is such a word) lurked everywhere. Kids were uncomfortable because other kids pestered them. No more of that. We’ll suspend you and threaten your completion. Kids were uncomfortable because their teachers physically got too close, used anxiety-generating red ink on their papers, and told them things they did not want to hear, like the difference between a classic novel and a comic book. After all, teachers should not be instructing. They should be guiding students or searching for potential sexual harassment possibilities.

Higher education had a different set of discomforts, and we’ll discuss that set another time.

Meanwhile, back to the wicked middle school teacher. Her situation forced the Nurturing Culture to “take specific measures” to make sure this outrage would not occur again. They held late afternoon meetings filled with passive acts: The acting out student was identified but ignored, notes were taken, the offending teacher assessed, an apologetic letter to the parents drafted, a memo to the teacher’s file assigned, and a new rule written. Does anyone really want to work in that environment?

All this activity occurred because parents — brought up during the Nurturing Culture’s formative years — believe that robbing children of their own experiences, reactions, and emotional growth is preferable to letting poor Johnny work a few things out for himself. They choose to forget that we learn more when things go wrong than when they go right.

Sure, let’s make sure to protect little Johnny’s inflated view of himself. Let him run into the real world later where mommy won’t be there to rescue him, his emotional collapse will amuse some and disgust others, and he will try to recover from an adolescent conflict while an adult. Right. Yeah, let’s do one more thing: Keep them home, living in the parents’ basements, for fear they must fend for themselves out there and pay their own bills.

No, here’s a better idea. Think of your children as people to teach AND protect. Educate them on the pitfalls of growing up, then coach them how to handle the tough ones. Do not shield them from their own mistakes. Help them learn the difference between casual, irrelevant affronts and those with substance.

Otherwise, you perpetuate 2008.

Socialism? Think it through at least once

This has been an ugly presidential campaign, especially here in the last week. Almost everyone knows that. But I have been surprised at one relatively new charge that has been floating around for months but currently more intense.

And that is members of the John McCain campaign, as well as some idiotic television news interviewers, “accusing” people of being socialists. I’d make fun of that because it needs a lot of poking, but what surprises me every time is that most Americans have no idea what socialism is. This is especially true among those making the “accusations” on the subject.

 

These people are very poor at remembering. Anybody remember Lockheed? That’s a fine example of two-country socialism at work saving an aircraft company from facing free market capitalism. Another is the U.S. Government loan to Chrysler Corporation to keep the company alive and well rather than let free market capitalism decide the company’s future.

 

Those are giant events. Ongoing examples – Medicare, Social Security, farm price supports – should keep most Americans honest on the subject. But, alas, these people are unaware of how socialism economic philosophy has helped us. I am particularly surprised when farmers, for example, tell us all about the benefits of free enterprise when most of them would have gone broke were it not for government-managed subsidies. That’s called farmer welfare.

 

Many corporations, when moving from City A to City B, request or get something called “tax abatement.” That is the process of eliminating taxes like property taxes to encourage the company to land in City B. That’s a form of government assistance to corporate America that doesn’t fall under capitalism or free market.

 

When my students would decry socialism – and I encouraged vast discussions in intro to mass communication – I’d casually ask how they got to the university. You could see on their faces, The highway, stupid. Who built it? Did you have to pay a few tolls to cross the city on private roads? No. Was your tuition here like those of private colleges? No. Do you object if Indiana taxpayers help pay your tuition or would you prefer to leave higher education to supply and demand of the market? No.

 

We should not decry socialism when, in the past 30 days, the U.S. Government has bought massive shares of banking, investment, and insurance companies in order to save them from bankruptcy. Now who is a socialist? All American taxpayers.

 

Stay tuned. It’s about to get a lot more interesting. But I am only talking to those who think for themselves, not those who have tune into talk radio to get their instructions. It’s important for all of us not to fall into lock-step stupidity designed by the dogmatic for the weenies.

Economic decisions reflect our values

 

I’m teaching again, in this blog this time.

This time it is about the coming choices we, as taxpayers and voters, will make to get our economy back to where we like it. What’s significant here is that you can learn a lot about a culture and a country by the choices it makes during times of stress and chaos. It reveals our values.

Trust me, sociologists, economists, political scientists, and journalists all over the country are watching us closely and taking good notes. Also, advertising researchers are finding ways to sell you things you don’t need when you have even less money to spend. And they’ll find those ways.

 

We will make our own choices in many areas and in numerous ways. Each of us might be aware of our personal decisions – or maybe not. Because of the increase in gas prices (now falling, soon to rise again), we make fewer trips, drive fewer miles, and vacation closer to home. We might turn the heat down, replace old bulbs with green bulbs, and finally add insulation to the attic.

 

Researchers already know a lot of that, but they keep weekly logs of mileage, heat bills, and such. They also know, to the tenth of a cent, how much we spend on shoes, diapers, cleaning fluids, oil changes, and a thousand other things that indicate how we respond. Do we as Americans seek a dozen or two simple changes in our lives and hope for the best? Or, do we sit and discuss permanent changes in lifestyles, and what changes do we contemplate?

 

All these activities define our values better than almost any other test.

 

Researchers are also monitoring governments – local, state, and federal. What programs do our leaders – remember, we elected them – let go, what do they keep, and why? How will that change our lives?

 

This is a common example, but I’ll use it anyway. Many of us condemn local school boards when, in tough economic times, the boards decide to drop fine arts, theater, music, and the band/orchestra but keep the losing high school football program. I think the boards exercise stupidity when they do that. However, don’t forget we elected them (in most states), and the boards had to cut some program because local taxpayers voted “no” on school tax increases. Where’s the responsibility?

 

A few years ago, Michigan voters elected a governor who promised to cut taxes. He cut taxes, and everyone lived happily ever after. No, happily ever after didn’t happen. State services declined. Highway cracks became potholes. Eventually some roads crumbled, and the governor had to look for other employment opportunities.

 

Taxpayers got exactly what they voted for, but few of them connected the original vote to reduce taxes to the declining state services. The situation just seemed unfortunate to them.

 

Anyone compiling those votes can make on-target observations about the taxpayers’ values.

 

So why should I write about this? First, your decisions reflect you to others and, interestingly, to yourself. Hard times might force you to focus. Second, pay attention to the world around you. As others make decisions, those decisions reflect their core values, and if you use that stuff between your ears, you’ll discover patterns that will help you soon be a step ahead of those around you.

We’ve waited patiently for this day 40 years

If you know anything about ethics and journalists, you know journalists try to be objective. But it is difficult and a topic for another day, perhaps. Nonetheless, ethicists frown when reporters, for example, have political bumper stickers, wear campaign pins, or serve on a local political committee. No political sign in the front yard, either. The same is true, more or less, with professors, who should avoid politics in the classroom. But,as you might guess, some of us find that stressful. Even so, I have been trying to moderate if not hide my political point of view for more than 40 years.

 

Enough is enough.

 

I have political signs in my front yard as I type this. I detest wearing pins (I hate most hats, too, in case it matters). My motorcycle features an Obama/Biden sticker, and the sticker has only gotten me into one argument, that with a very old hunter waiting for me to return from the grocery store. He used the “n” word, among some others, and I should have stopped him and discussed not politics but how many brain cells he has left, did he create his own political stance or get it from Rush Limbaugh, and can he survive the political change coming down the tracks?

 

No, I’m trying to be nice more than I used to be. I just told him he was going to loose the election despite his insights.

 

A newspaper editor interviewed me about two weeks ago and asked my political view, as though she needed to be told. I said I live now where conservative knuckle-draggers rule and think everyone is afraid of them. I don’t want to get into arguments with people too stupid to understand what they say. Nothing to be gained there. But I told the newspaper editor that Republicans and conservatives (the same thing since Ronald Reagan’s pronouncements) better pull their seat belts tight because they’re in for a hell of a ride. The pendulum Reagan pushed to the right has stopped. As it comes back, it will go even further left and longer than FDR’s push 75 years ago.

 

And I can’t wait.

 

For 40 years I’ve had to listen to clean cut, self-righteous Republicans point a finger at me and call me a “liberal,” as though I should tremble and scurry into the dark. That usually sparked nasty discussions, if you can call such a thing a discussion, and ended with hurt feelings – their feelings. I had a lot of fun with them because they expect everyone to become terrified of being called a liberal – as McCain and Palin tried to do this recently – and are not prepared for someone with confidence, a brain, knowledge that eclipsed their talk radio instructions, and a disinclination to be stampeded by their scare tactics and threats.

 

But I admit it was work and a waste of time. The power? Simply decline to be bullied.

 

Nonetheless, pompous right-wingers have not sensed yet we’ve not only been organizing and waiting, but they, meanwhile, have been pissing in their own yard so often even their friends hesitate to play. Republicans started by tossing moderates and liberals out of the GOP, and then demanding a dangerous political partition among Americans. Young people today believe that division has always been there. Nope. It was a Reagan stroke of preeminence.

 

Then they invited into the “big GOP tent” all evangelicals and those who believe they found god. I have not missed them for a second. Has anyone missed them? They included many southern Democrats, anyone who likes war, most people who believe godliness is a litmus test to be human, and particularly people who made a lot of money. They formed a posse and began to look for people to abuse. They raised taxes on the middle class, reduced taxes on the rich, pushed religion on communities, built a mighty military, ruined our relations with dozens of friendly countries, and set up meaningless tests for school children. The GOP reduced entitlement programs, tried to put Social Security into the “safety” of the stock market, and legislated against business regulation. Instead of helping people, they talked endlessly about “empowering” people (while sifting their pockets). They talked loudly about the evils of big government while building the largest government we’ve ever seen.

 

But here’s the best part. We gladly thank George W. Bush for being such an idiot from the very start that he knocked down his own walls. He started an unnecessary, expensive, tragic war with a country no threat to the United States. Meanwhile, he avoided the right war in Afghanistan. He wiretapped Americans. He started lists of suspected traitors (I made the academic sublist early). He made Richard Nixon look like a misbehaving choir boy. So, thanks George, for being the best thing that’s happened to the conservative movement. You ended it. We would have seriously considered impeachment were it not for the scary, sinister man who would replace you. Bush’s final salute was never understanding economics and pushing bankrupt economic philosophies. Thank you again.

 

Normally I’m not all that concerned about people who scare easily and consistently. If they decide to spend their lives running from GOP bogymen, perhaps they should run. I like how the mere mention of socialism or Muslims or taxes or – you name one – panic these slow-thinkers. It would be hilarious were it not so serious.

 

But even they have become reluctant to spook again. They’re not scared anymore. They’re hurt, insulted, and pissed. Telling us our taxes will be increased doesn’t work. The invented threat of Muslims under our beds died from lack of fear. The GOP threw bullshit all over us, but not much stuck. Americans have changed. They’ve acquired backbone right on time, just before America’s national election, an event which will prove America can run an intelligent voting process to show the world.

 

The country’s future does not belong to the scared, hurt, or antagonistic. It belongs to the the self-reliant, the confident, the visionary. It belongs to leaders who see less money on the horizon than they do human opportunity.

 

We insulate ourselves from our lives

It’s hard to tell how our Founding Fathers would have responded to the idea of political correctness. But we can suspect our Founders’ reaction would be a combination of confusion and outrage. All the trouble they went through to create a free environment and we trample it because someone’s feelings might get scratched.

Their reaction to free speech zones would have been a total flabbergast. In the 1790s they insulted one another with the most contemptuous phrases. They held nothing back, accusing each other of thievery, skulduggery, having sex with animals, being doddering old fools, conniving with the country’s enemies, and having been parented by agents of the devil.

Then they would meet, have lunch, and build the most powerful democracy the world has ever seen. They didn’t worry much about their feelings. Instead, they worried about accomplishments and results.

Today many of us fuss over feelings. We know that words hold power and can hurt. Psychologists and political correctness officiants believe if we change the language, we can transform the people who speak the words as well as soften the blow on those who hear it.

It’s all part of the growing “nicyniceness” trend of the Nurturing Culture. We must become sensitive to the difficulties and drama the people around us seem to have all the time. We make sure there are only winners. No one, apparently, should feel bad about losing. We’re told to cut back on the insults. We make sure job descriptions do not cause people to feel badly about their jobs and self worth. We make sure even our soldiers, who are trained to kill people, will not experience undue stress in their jobs. What an awful thought.

Many schools today are so sensitive they toss red grading pens away and replace them with “friendly” purple pens so as not to aggravate the failure some stressed students complain about. I can barely write these words without having to push back the tears. In some parts of the country, not to anyone’s particular surprise, parents sue school systems because the schools’ practice of posting good grades and praising accomplished students is making their precious children feel badly about themselves. Elsewhere a group of American school teachers want the word “failure” removed from the grading system and the phrase “deferred success” inserted. So, even when schools try to do the right thing, weak-minded parents and weenie teachers loudly complain their dolt kids feel bad. To prevent the lip quivers of intelligence-challenged kids, school boards buckle.

OK, now we can stop holding back. Go ahead and laugh.

This stupidity would be funny were it not so mindless. Actually, it is funny. Instead of guiding and helping their children to become adept, these parents and teachers reward children for falling short just like getting a trophy for losing a T-ball game. They shield the children from the effects of their action or inaction (spreading “nicyniceness” everywhere). They are not doing their children a good turn.

Today each of us lives in a cocoon designed to protect us from harm and insult. Instead of making us better people, the cocoon has made us emotionally fragile and intellectually feeble. We fear the marketplace of ideas and all its unpredictable twists and turns. (Why not just accept intellectual direction from the local evangelical minister? It’s a lot easier.) We dread a world of stress. We avoid the responsibility of our own actions by doing away with the outcomes, our best instructors. Discipline and the structure it provides us has been the main casualty of our worry about feelings.

We may build our cocoons to make the world a better place, but the cocoons’ skin has prevented us from experiencing our lives. It is long past time to poke holes in our crusty shells and breathe the sweet air of existence.

Higher education hip deep in minaūtiae studiī

 

Communication researchers yearly produce an array of useless research, and that process tells us plenty about higher education in general.

Scholars and disinterested parties can buy copies of these papers at the annual gathering of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication held in late summer or early fall. Often an Associated Press or Reuters’ reporter wanders through the “research room” to pick up copies of these reports for a possible story about them. These news stories do not get many readers, but in many newsrooms, the stories earn plenty of laughter. Research of trivia might as well be about another planet. It would make more sense then.

This is modern social science research, the product of thousands of graduate students in the social sciences. This group includes communication researchers.

The foundation philosophy of this activity goes like this: If you can’t measure it, then you can’t count it. If you can’t count it, then you cannot verify that it exists and to what degree it exists. If you cannot verify it, then it doesn’t exist, at least in the world of modern scholarly research. If it doesn’t exist, scholarship cannot address it, and if scholarship cannot address it, then professors will ignore it. If professors ignore it, they won’t write textbooks about it or teach it. Instead, they teach basically what can be measured or counted and made into graphs.

Unfortunately, the critical focus of education should be creativity and insight, two ideas impossible to measure or count. The modern American academy, however, focuses essentially on topics professors can measure, count, and corroborate. If they study those topics, their study and “important” writings will get them advanced degrees, professional recognition, and good teaching positions. As a colleague professor recently told me, “Those things which can be measured and tested get rewarded (by the university). So those things indeed get done.” Good riddance to everything else, it seems.

So, instead of teaching, these research professors write penetrating analytic papers for “refereed journals” and present them with elaborate charts at conferences. Their colleagues nod approvingly and become agog with jealousy, even though hardly anyone will read these cutting-edge papers on media trivia. Each professor’s research shows him to be a leading educator worthy of promotion and perhaps deserving university-paid assigned time to further explore the depths of this astonishing discovery. The dean might even reward him by cutting teaching hours or eliminating them altogether.

After all, this is all about the academy projecting an image to potential students and anxious donors. This research makes the university appear to be a house of knowledge, a cathedral of scholarship, a worthy place to send our brightest children to be taught by someone other than the Great Scholars.

Meanwhile, it is bizarre this professor wanted to be a teacher but avoids teaching. Even more peculiar is the university hires him (or her, of course) to attract good students, then rewards him by rescuing him from the classroom. With some skilled overwriting, the scholar might convince a foundation to offer a large grant so the scholar can continue his “critical work,” add his work “to our great body of knowledge,” and never burden himself with teaching again.

If you can’t measure it, then you can’t count it. If you can’t count it, then you cannot verify it exists and to what degree it exists. If you cannot verify it, then it doesn’t exist. Or does it? If it did exist, where would we look for it? How would we detect it? Students might find these questions more useful.

In defense of Sarah Palin

 

Silly me, I take my profession seriously. I’d like it to take itself seriously, too, and not abuse people with its power.

 

So it is with some concern I’ve watched the national media – particularly cable news channels – abuse the hell out of a relatively short piece of video showing Sarah Palin blathering on and on and on a few moments after rescuing one large turkey from hundreds being slaughtered for Alaskan dinner tables. Palin was just performing her gubernatorial duties, but she sought the spotlight a little too long. Her unprepared “speech” just happened to be videotaped against the backdrop of turkeys being beheaded, drained, and moved off stage. The contrast between Palin’s words and the turkey slaughter became a way to make fun of Palin’s sincerity and naiveté.

 

However, this is not journalism. These reports offer us what new insight? What valuable information emerges when the video is run on television time after time with quaint chuckles and patronizing groans? Nothing. This is the same American press which lost its balls to perform its duty when President George W. Bush declared war on the wrong country and justified it with baseless information. Where were the knights of commentary then? I would hate to think men and women of my profession would rather pick on someone less compelling than report on an Administration that falsely sent Americans into harm’s way.

 

No, I do not write this in support of Sarah Palin. She stands nowhere near my political point of view. But American journalism in general and cable television, in particular, is showing its tendency to pile on when it should be double-checking the obvious and initiating changes of substance in its own backyard.

In a crisis, you need advice from genius

 Occasionally – before the foreseeable catastrophe or more likely during the melee itself – we seek good advice, the reliable wisdom that might help us navigate through the impending nightmare. I’ve been in that spot a ridiculous number of times. Why? At my age, for instance, I’ve survived lots of ugly moments, sometimes because I jump into more “situations” than I jump away from, and occasionally because I’m the sort of man who wants to be able to connect the dots before all the dots appear.

 

In such situations, I frequently have turned to the wisdom of Bugs Bunny. He’s been around a long time, and he’s found himself in difficult spots – up against an inner city mob, on the moon with no apparent help, a constant target of that pesky short guy with the blunderbuss, and others too absurd to believe. So, it should be obvious Bugs is some kind of counselor god.

 

Just through a surface examination, we can assume Bugs has some interesting approaches to life. He goes where he wants to go. He goes where he’s often not welcome to go. Bugs Bunny is autonomous, self-directed. He asks advice of no one we can detect on how to run his life. He operates alone. He’s seldom seen in a situation where he must protect himself and also commit time and resources to watch over slackers as well.

 

He knows the limits of his own resources and takes measures not to step outside of those margins.

 

Bugs Bunny speaks clearly and abruptly. “Ahaaaa, what’s up, Doc?” How clever this simple line can be. He uses it in various situations, but usually when he shows up unexpectedly – having survived a terrible incident – in an incongruous pose. Bugs’ line immediately pushes the encounter into his opponent’s lap by asking a question to which there is no logical answer. “What’s up, Doc?” is genius.

 

How can anyone forget Bug’s archetypal comeback when confronted by a pompous challenger. He shifts the criticism to the other by offering a seemingly uncultured if not also innocent wisecrack: “What a maroon!”

 

 

What he tells you about his own action philosophy offers no insight into his mysterious ways. It is a straight forward analysis of his own abilities and how his adversaries acquire only a shallow appreciation of those abilities. Following a typical encounter with his antagonist, he’ll turn to the audience and say, “He don’t know me too good, do he?” And then, as we cartoon fans know, he acts on that disconnect. The lesson for all of us might be to permit or encourage others to underestimate us in a shallow manner, and then strike when our enemies are blissfully ignorant of what’s heading their way.

 

Brilliance.

 

Yes, I have been a student of Bugs Bunny for as long as I can remember. When I need timely and simple advice, I know where to find it. I’ve moved all my self-help books into a box in the garage. Martin Heidegger? Why are his books there? Also gone are Descartes, Buddha, Marcus Aurelius, and Oprah.

 

Now you know who to consult in times of trouble. Bugs Bunny.

Like many, I want our country’s honor back

My students and friends can tell you I’m a sappy patriot. Whenever I discuss the Constitution or the uncanny wisdom of our founders, I get a little choked up sometimes. I feel so small and overwhelmed and very, very lucky to be able to call this country my home. I did not get shot at during the Revolutionary War. I’ve given no blood for this country’s continuing survival. But I have not failed to appreciate the genius in the Constitution.

 

That’s why I am outraged over the chief issues involving the Bush Administration I am afraid will be swept under the rug or quietly forgotten. The Bush Administration created a backdrop of fear. Every American citizen was to look into every other person’s activities. We were told to look for terrorists among our friends and neighbors. Under the direction of this administration, thousands if not millions of American citizens’ phone calls were tapped. Our troops tortured captives, sometimes to the point of death.

 

We have imprisoned, not detained, a couple thousand men we believe are our enemies. For much longer than necessary, we declined to give them much of the due process of law that the United States nearly regards as sacred. We denied them our Constitutional right to confront their accusers or the evidence against them, which authorities often said was secret. For months they could not retain lawyers. In time, though, even military lawyers defended them and openly protested their clients’ imprisonment. Those lawyers have my respect. When they held up their hand to take the oath, they meant it.

 

The issue? The unrestrained violation of our own integrity, our honor, our sense of decency, though it sounds sappy writing it down. We should never have to write them down. Our founders created a nation which reinforced freedoms from the very start, a nation that would say liberty with every step, a nation that would become the world’s democratic champion, a beacon for every person or country wanting to live under the rule of law, not men. People would not have to wonder if it was possible. It was here.

 

Then the Bush Administration and like-minded disciples trashed much of that hope and darkened the light. That’s the real sin, though there’s no law against squandering your virtue. But to detect terrorists, we showed the world we are not the guardian of goodness. We guard it only when it serves us. Do you have any notion how long it will take us to recover that respect?

 

We know what we did and why we did it, but that does not get us off the hook. The country was outraged, shocked, and scared, and we leaned in a direction very much not like us. Still, we should have given more thought to what we stand for. I have a ridiculous amount of faith in our justice system, perhaps enough faith to make me suspect we could hunt down the bad guys and bring them to justice in our own courts. I don’t know how you feel, but I would not want the FBI after me. I am sure they could find me without tapping phones, interrogating people, or torturing anyone. And as a reporter I’ve watched U.S. District Court judges do their work, fully cognizant of federal protections, of nailing criminals to the wall.

 

I want that faith back. I do not want our sins forgotten – forgiven, perhaps, but never forgotten – until we’ve come to understand that we can use the rule of law, freedom, and the might of our military to do what’s right, not bully others. I want my country’s honor back.

This is a column, not a ‘freakin’ blog

 I got clobbered during the weekend. She said she distinctly remembered in class I ranted over this new “blog” business and said I would never write a blog. I’m a columnist, I allegedly told the students. I write columns, not blogs.

 

She said I write the blog just like I would write a column, but now I call them blogs, not columns. She made it sound like I’ve sold out. She laughed and gave me a mischievous, clever look. It’s just so much fun beating up your former professor (though she never hesitated to do it in class, either).

 

Julia was not out to hurt me, but she was trying to knock her professor and advisor back on his original course. Many, including Julia, have told me I have softened some, and I lost sarcasm and some sense of humor. I just don’t seem to be the irreverent, insightful bastard many former students remember fondly. Considering this “blog” business, they suggest I need some reprogramming.

 

They are right. As of today, I’m renaming my files “column,” such as column13 for this one. That’s just a first step. I’ll try to think in terms of columns, not blogs. Thinking “column” instead of “blog” helps direct what’s left of my brain to delivering observations and information, not silly, badly written drivel we so often find in the unedited, almost adolescent blogs.

 

A “column” has a history. Early newspapers had eight to 15 “columns” of type, and printers often printed newspapers in small type. Their papers were massive, sometimes five feet wide. Eventually papers settled to eight or 10 columns, and then in 1984 the newspaper industry settled on a standard paper size and standard width columns. Most newspapers today still abide by the 1984 SAU (Standard Ad Unit) size with six columns, but papers might alter the width of columns in certain pages or sections.

 

The length of a “column,” including the space necessary to write a headline, is about 425 words. That’s your standard length today of a newspaper “column.”

 

A column traditionally appears on the editorial, or opinion page. We expect columns to contain the writer’s point of view while he or she analyzes an event or policy. We read them because we believe certain columnists offer solid insights. Truly good columnists earn a living offering these observations. Paul Krugman and Thomas L. Friedman, for example, also write savvy books. Both are New York Times columnists.

 

A blog, or “web-log,” presents the writer’s ideas more casually, and the blogger can do so in bursts or in a long analysis, depending on the issue and the audience. And the real advantage is that you can write it right now from anywhere in the world. I’m sitting at home, for example, looking out at the expected eight inches of snow falling atop an already documented 23 inches. I have my own fresh coffee, a small notebook, and dry feet. I know my column will be “posted” very shortly, as soon as I stop blathering on and on and give it one last examination.

 

But as of now, this is a column, and my expectations are higher. I need an editor to cut it. It is about 540 words long.

‘Trickle up’ economics works faster, better

 

There is nothing like an economic pre-collapse bailout program to help us find some clarity elsewhere in the economy. Sometimes – such as today – when the country gives billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to bungling, slick, filthy-rich global bankers and insurers, we might begin to wonder why we ignored small but consequential businesses. After all, the bankers admitted screwing up (actually, they said it passively, Mistakes were made). Meanwhile, small American businesses provided health care, a 40-hour week income, and honest products.

 

These large bailouts are consistent with “trickle down” economics, the favorite tool of free-market partisans and Republicans. This requires money be given to those on top. They put our money where they lost everybody’s money, and eventually the money trickles down to the rest of us. In other words, if you give the rich untroubled global bankers $700 billion of our money, some of us might see a dime or two a couple of years later.

 

I’m surprised so many Democrats were enthusiastic about that. Perhaps they got caught up in the excitement.

 

A fairer, perhaps more effective method to help the economy might be that suggested by Frank Nicastro, a Connecticut state representative. He wants the state to help some small newspapers because they’ll soon die, according to Reuters. The idea is that the press, especially small newspapers, are important to this culture and its democracy. They cover everything large newspapers and television stations ignore, which is considerable.

 

I like this idea. I’m a veteran newspaperman. For instance, I have always been peeved at people who want to “save” the family farm, whatever that is, at the expense of everyone else. It saves classic America, they say. Why did these people not include mom and pop grocery stores? How about small, adept car repair shops? Small town and country newspapers?

 

Nicastro does not want to lose the state’s small newspapers, especially those in his district. It’s hard to tell if he has some personal agenda in this, but he seems sincere. He seems to know that healthy newspapers are good for the democracy. He might be the last non-newspaper person to believe that. Nicastro might have recalled where people went for months to get news in depth following 9-11.

 

The main point here is that so far our government leadership has ignored small businesses, where we generate 90 percent of our jobs, in favor of saving global banks and automakers. I like the newspaper bailout loan idea, even though it generates plenty of ethical questions. How can you objectively cover government if government, in its wisdom, saves you financially? But there are thousands of small businesses which generate no ethical questions.

 

Still, the most sensible solution should be obvious. Want to kick-start our economy? Divide $700 billion by the country’s population, roughly 300 million. Give us the money. I guarantee you that 90 percent of it will be spent within a month at local banks, pizza shops, grocery stores, pharmacies, barber shops, car dealers, Internet marketers, and so on.

 

Now that’s trickle up economics. It trickles much, much faster and stimulates everyone.

 

 

Take heart, our ‘president for the world’

Often you get a more accurate sense of history in your own country when you see how citizens and leaders in other countries see that history.

 

I speak here, obviously, of the inauguration of Barrack Obama. This country has pretty much adopted Barrack Obama, his family, his hope, and his charm. Every day since Obama’s election, his approval numbers have risen, particularly among those who voted against him, and he is not yet president. Our support and faith in a new leader has led to a solidarity that is global.

 

BBC, the powerful, government supported radio and television network in England, decided only recently to give the incoming American president five straight hours of uninterrupted coverage in England. I hope I do not sound like I’m indulging history here, but England devotes a bit less time, I’m told, to critical activities of the crown. That’s interesting given that mother-child relationship we share with England.

 

A BBC reporter on BBC satellite yesterday described Washington as it welcomed thousands of visitors for today’s event. The reporter’s excitement expanded as he talked about the Washington Monument “rising high into the sky,” he said in a slightly shaky voice, to the Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson Memorial and the capitol building. He had to cease talking for almost a minute. I shared his pride as it reminded me of when I taught there five years ago. They seldom admit it, but they adore this country. When they speak of our first president, it is “General Washington,” much as they say “President Jefferson” or “Mister Madison.”

 

Two travelers visiting the inaugural this morning are citizens of the Bahamas, and they spoke through a delightful accent as citizens of the Western Hemisphere when one said they traveled to Washington to witness the inauguration of “our president.”

 

But what got me was a brief phrase in an Australian newspaper this morning about why it seems the whole world is watching our president. The newspaper said Obama is the “president for the world.”

 

 

 

How to lose elections? Well, let’s see

 

We have been through one hell of a presidential election process – primaries, conventions, advertising campaigns, speeches – so before we forget that series of events , we must glean lessons from it. What can political spin doctors learn to avoid next time? Or, to put that differently, What can a presidential campaign do to assure his or her own defeat?

 

 

Working from the second version of that question, let’s start with major decisions that foil campaigns. You want a candidate that enhances your campaign, creates lots of good buzz. So, instead, select a vice presidential candidate who, on the one hand, makes your candidate look dull, moth-worn, and desperate, and on the other hand your VP makes your average gas station money-changer sound like a genius. The VP candidate should appear confused, just like the presidential candidate, about the party’s goals and where countries are located. It would be a nice touch if the VP candidate eventually becomes news on irrelevant topics so your candidate’s political overtures are dumped to the hemorrhoid ad page or to last five minutes of national news.

 

 

Then there’s public speaking. The public expects presidential candidates and their side kicks to be able to speak to large crowds, inspire the uninspired, be clever, sound energetic, stand poised, and raise intelligent points. So, if you want to handicap your duo, nominate people who cannot find new ways to say the same thing and sound worn out when they fail. A constant cough or hack would be a nice add.

 

 

Advertise irrelevant and often erroneous points. Have old people standing in corn fields talk about courage and love of country. Squander your advertising dollar. It would be inappropriate in modern times to accuse your opponent of having sex with goats, but you can accuse him of having friends with strange ideas. Your opponent might be godless! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Hell, most politicians pretend to be so religious that god might be taking notes. So in the case of your opponent, make the “godless” thing stick. Toss in the word “heathen” occasionally. Christians are standoffish with heathen people. Besides, voters usually aren’t smart enough to know the difference.

 

 

Steal your opponent’s slogan. Bewilder voters. Try to make it work for your team. It won’t work for you, of course, but it will make your man to look foolhardy and, if you’re lucky, a bit dangerous. It will leave everyone wondering. Mystery is a plus. Make sure anything the candidate does stand for is hard to nail down and perhaps a conservative cliché.

 

Debates offer fantastic opportunities to lose an election. First, argue over what a debate is and isn’t, then agree to debate forums which make your guy look clumsy. Here’s a good example: If your candidate cannot answer questions, walk among the audience members, know camera locations and where he is – all at the same time – then beg for those encounters. Make the other candidate appear the wise adult.

 

The idea in an American election is to surround your candidate with American flags, right? Make sure flags adorn the airplane, the podium, office doors, advertisements, and so on. At some point, the number of flags works against you. Find that point and exceed it, but issue plenty of American flag pins. People love that.

 

Deny your link to your own party and the previous candidate of your own party. Postpone engagements. Look frantic when unsuspecting cameras appear. Frantic is better than organized and calm. Frantic says you’re working out a problem, such as, “What is the Internet?” or why your staff scheduled the big turning point speech in a town owned by the other political party.

 

Republicans become the ‘no way’ party

 

 

Not one Republican voted to support the Economic Stimulus bill. Not one. All that GOP whining about not being appreciated got President Obama to remove billions of dollars of stimulus expenditures, including upgrading and seeding the Washington mall, and replace them with tax cuts so Republicans could feel warm and cuddly.

 

Somehow, this does not surprise me. Despite all the requests Republicans made for participation, they decided instead that any stimulus bill would fail – or at least appear to fail – so they can claim later that it was all a mess and they valiantly avoided it.

 

These politicos are so, so brave.

 

Let’s look at this from a better angle. It was the Republican mantra – the uncontrolled, unregulated, never challenged, free market economics – that made the economy violently implode. And those fearless Republicans, who freely criticized the market just before the election, who now stand shoulder to shoulder in opposition to the facts. Instead of participating in fixing the situation for the future and taxpayers, the Republicans step back in unison and wrap themselves in their almost bankrupt ideology.

 

Adam Smith would not allow us to deviate.

 

The problem is, to get more focused, the Republicans do not get it. They simply have no gut sense of the immensity of the situation. They believe that if we cut some taxes here and there, all that “extra” moola will jump-start the economy and move all of us back to “spendability.” They deny their own government research shows tax cut money produces only its own weight in spending while stimulus spending gains 35 to 50 cents more than one dollar.

 

But all that is unimportant to the GOP. That political party lives in its own world where Leave it to Beaver was nearly a religious show.

 

OK, Republicans, it is a good thing I do not have any say in this. It is good that President Obama is a patient man. What I would do is never invite House Republicans to help me construct an important bill. I would remove all the stuff from the bill you wanted, and I would put back the good things I removed. Next time I had to write a powerful bill, I would tell the country precisely why. If we stop wasting time with the dishonorable opposition, we can get these economic stimulus packages finished more quickly.

 

Good idea, but we’re all thankful Roat is not president.

Culture conflict: Today’s D.C. politics

 

We sit back these days and angrily watch Washington’s swirling mess, becoming impatient and defeated. Just when things looked better, the snarling hostility spewing from our nation’s capital emerged right on time. Democrats push for change and the Republicans resist anything like it. If we can set aside the day-to-day hostility and take the longer view, we detect a struggle far more enduring than mere political merrymaking. What we see in Washington is a collision of cultures, one fiercely emerging and the other battling against its own obsolescence.

 

 

The nature of the second culture, the one that has dominated for a long time, materialized over the centuries to fill our growing need for strength and power. These people built and operated our banks, our military, our finance system, and fill many lesser managerial tasks. Eventually they managed nearly everything and assumed they should dominate the culture. For a long time, they were the chosen. They polished their presentations to the world, subtly softened their image, redefined the concept of greed, and assumed dominating roles in politics.

 

 

These are the people who moved to the suburbs and built starter-castles which include a lawn crew and a pool maintenance man. Most drive at least one European car. They speak of their “cottage” on the lake, their power boat, stock profile, and their children’s opportunities at trendy colleges. They politely discuss the need for diversity. They visibly volunteer to help the less advantaged at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They practice civility, consideration, and politeness. They distrust new ideas but adore “newish” clothing and adornments. Accordingly, they like coal-fired, reliable, traditional power plants.

 

 

Oddly, they assume kinship with very old, conservative religions and new evangelical sects, religions which firmly define power and obedience. Though they do not discuss it this way, they adhere to religions that divide and control. Members dress well. This group, the Wing Tips, is composed of people whose power, which is considerable, comes from identifiable links to shaping, manipulating, and delivering money. They believe themselves, their friends, and their families to be entitled. This is an important word here, and more on it later.

 

 

Before I get to the newer, emerging group, I want to help find the Wing Tips in the news. These people run our largest finance institutions. They compose the larger portion of the Republican Party. They dominate country clubs, high-end restaurants, and first class airline seats. They know people who can get good tickets to tomorrow’s game. Overall, they are older than any other identifiable group. The true power brokers are at least 60.

 

 

The emerging group is obviously different, and it tends to include people of all ages. It has an overwhelming patronage among baby boomers and echo boomers. While they often speak of the 1950s as dull, the 1950s were the years when Americans were more equal than ever before or since. Social Security helped the old, and a heavily graduated income tax created immense opportunities. It was the beginning of the modern middle class. There existed a sense of fairness and genuine care for one another, which they dragged into the 1960s and 1970s. They believed in community. Consumer protection surfaced, giving the seller more responsibilities and worries. They believed in working together to shoulder society’s duties. They called those who protected the established order “The Man.” Many despised religion, seeing it as a divider and likely false, but they remain interested. They often stepped out of line. The Delinquents are uniters. They are “tree-huggers” and hope to reduce global warming. They share, want to solve disputes, and see connections among all countries. They like power-generating windmills.

 

 

The conflict between the Wing Tips and the Delinquents began in the 1960s and continues, not in the streets, but in the House and Senate for control of our nation and its future. Baby boomers have grown up and become very pushy.

 

 

Look at the current disputes. Why did Congress fail to put requirements in the first bailout bill to permit citizens to trace where the money went? Wing Tips trust one another. They are among the select, the entitled. They are brothers. So the treasury secretary, for example, did not even think of that. How can anyone, such as the Delinquents, question that relationship? After all, Wing Tips know they are Master Managers of All Things Economic. And what about those bankers who take billions of taxpayer dollars then schedule big, expensive parties to celebrate their incompetence, astronomical bonuses to reward their mistakes, and brand new business jets to fly comfortably? Well, again, these managers are entitled to these rewards. They are the Wing Tips. They have rewarded themselves for decades. It is a given, a default cost of doing business. Right?

 

 

How could anyone misunderstand the relationship between the rulers and the rest of us? The point here isn’t that these bankers and finance officials treat others like ants. The point is they are the masters. They never, ever thought about how others view their activities because those interpretations, including this one, are irrelevant.

 

 

The Delinquents no longer wait for the day they will be permitted to make the big decisions and set a course for the sort of world they envision. They’re going after it, pursuing it, narrowing the Wing Tips’ options, and gathering numbers and strength from our diverse culture and the flourishing college audience. Interestingly, the Delinquents, who are a very compassionate, warmhearted group, have risen to the current level because it has learned aggressiveness and power brokerage from Wing Tips.

 

 

Each group is angry, not understanding how anyone could believe the other group. Each warns the populace that if the other group wins, the country and perhaps the world will collapse into vulnerable irrelevance. Wing Tips say Delinquents will simply build a larger government, ignoring their own existing monolith, and that is supposed to be bad. Ironically, the only two presidents that reduced the size of federal government are Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and neither said he would. Maybe that’s how it works.

Let’s create right to confidentiality

We should consider creating a new right in the United States by combining an existing Constitutional right with another right honed within 220 years of court decisions.

Please consider. Each of us has the First Amendment right to speak freely in this country. Though we often debate the limits of this right, it remains fairly secure. Even better, the millions of Americans believe in it, honor it, and find themselves rather comfortable with its benefits. We also have the idea of privacy, and that you have a right to your privacy, though it is not specifically set into the Constitution. Years of court decisions, however, have built a presumed right of privacy based on, among other items, your right not to have troops take over your home without permission, a government search warrant is necessary to search your home or car, and your right to silence in court where the state must prove you guilty without your help.

 Meanwhile, you can talk with a lawyer, doctor, psychologist, or preacher with the presumption of confidentiality. A doctor, for example, could tell others what you told the doctor in the medical center, but doing so would be a serious violation of medical ethics. A doctor would rather face the wrath of the court than the rage of the medical profession. Obviously, to provide the best medical treatment, a doctor needs to know the truth and know it immediately.

Journalists have been trying for decades to establish a right to confidentiality for whomever they interview, and in states with strong “shield” laws, they have more or less succeeded. But all shield laws have limitations.

We have firmly established your right to privacy when you speak to a host of people, in fact, but there is no general presumption to privacy anywhere. If two people share a secret involving one or both of them, they share confidentiality until a prosecutor thinks investigators need that information. Your lonely battle against the prosecutor will become a public shame to many. Misinformed (and perhaps dim-witted) bloggers will rake you over. And a whispering campaign will destroy your reputation. You MUST be hiding something. Unless you are willing to be locked up for “contempt of court” or fined for the betterment of mankind, then you’ll provide the information and make prosecutors blissfully happy.

 That’s wrong. If two people share a secret, they should be allowed to maintain that confidentiality. It’s up to them to decide. Sure, investigators might need it and try to get it, but in the end you must be able to maintain the honor and integrity you established with the other. You should not be bullied through force and legal threats. An American citizen should be able to bare his soul, so to speak, to someone with integrity and not fear legal punishment. We all recognize such conversations as the beginning of healing.

I do not expect legal scholars to dash to their law libraries and craft a law on this subject. Lawyers seem to be too busy suing people to consider this. But you and I should start thinking about it, and soon.

California needs water and a reality check

 I just returned from a three-week visit to California.

 

Here are the benefits I see of living in California: Lots and lots of sunlight, dry air, the Pacific Ocean, orange trees, regal mountains, fascinating Mexican-American grocery stores, and the fact that cars from the 1950s retain their beauty if you do not soak them in salt. The smaller, fashionable cities along the shore, such as Malibu, are very nice but only five miles long and about 500 feet wide. These towns must be full of very important people. Overall, everyone appears to be on good behavior. Not once did I feel anxious about my surroundings or the people in it. I hope I mentioned the sunshine, or this list would be shorter.

 

Though lots and lots of sunlight remains a positive reason to live in California, let me first enlighten you about other observations. All the major highways, especially the four-lane variety, become parking lots at daybreak and stay that way past sunset. It is insane to outsiders, but Californians seem to like it that way. I doubt they know anything else. Thousands of cars and trucks clutter most other streets. Every Californian has a car. You are nothing without a car in California. If there were ever a state needing a high-speed mass transit system, it is California. But where would they build it? All usable space has disappeared. That’s why many of the well-heeled live on hillsides and hope for drought.

 

The state sales tax is 10 percent. Just imagine that for a moment because, based on how rapidly states are going broke, your state might need to impose the same tax soon. Everything you buy in California could be had for 25 percent less in the Midwest. Gasoline is consistently 30-40 cents higher than at Midwest stations.

 

A very elderly man of Chinese dissent told me he must complete some family business in Europe, but he hesitates to fly to Europe because he might get caught in a Midwest winter storm. Yeah, that’s what he said, and he meant it. He has lived most of his life in paradise. No winter storms. Stable temperatures. He lives in a desert that Mother Nature will return to a desert if Californians do not find more water. His concept of the Midwest involves fear and wariness.

 

Water has been California’s problem for decades. Remember Chinatown? Not only was it a good depiction of the water shortage, it portrayed miles of orange groves in the valley. Those groves are largely gone now replaced by miles of 40-year-old homes on Lilliputian lots. Californians believe those homes are worth $350,000, but you can buy the same house with more property, better insulation and real furnaces in the Midwest for $150,000 or less, very scary winter storms included. Midwest folks do not fear their neighbors, but Californians know if they water their lawns, someone will call the authorities. Until more water magically appears, lawns might dry up.

 

Twenty-eight years ago I rode my motorcycle through central and northern California, but I didn’t stay long. I was on my way to Oregon State University to be a scholar. I enjoyed a one-week visit 20 years before that to watch a Rose Bowl game. We were undefeated, but lost by two points to the same team we beat in the first game. Yes, I’m old but still a football fan.

 

Maybe I’ll visit Oregon soon. Oregonians are not as full of themselves and have no shortage of water.

Destroy education’s bitter subtext: Passivity

 

The problematic health of America’s education system sits high on President Barack Obama’s fix-it list. The president should be worried. Far too many American schools are a mess – underpaid and/or under performing teachers, confused administrators, buildings in poor condition, rising drop-out rates, and students unable to pass simple but comprehensive reading, writing, and math tests.

 

Over the past two or three decades, this concern has prompted a lot of activity, most of it well intentioned but poorly aimed. The federal government’s “no child left behind” law set higher test standards but, as usual, offered no money to help. States, meanwhile, tweaked their own standard curricula (they’re on the Web, if you want to look). States fear curricula has fallen behind cultural needs. It has fallen behind, but that is only part of the problem. However, state education departments do know how to demand reports and point fingers. School boards seem focused on new roofs, AC systems, janitorial contracts, sports programs, elimination of arts programs, and avoiding clashes with state guidelines.

 

Real improvement remains off the table.

 

Most critics of modern American education take the school curriculum – what schools teach and how they teach it – for granted. Critics do not challenge it for reasons unknown to many of us, but it is likely we all have nurtured some kind of awe or respect for those who make those decisions. We just bitch about the result.

 

But let me point to a rather complex array of educational goals we must reexamine. They evolved from a set of social engineering “improvements” someone had embraced and then steadily applied them to everyone, particularly defenseless school children. These improvements were well intentioned, but that is part of the problem. Intentions have nothing to do with it.

 

• First, there’s this political correctness philosophy. Most of us agree we need to discourage the use of many very damaging words, particularly those insulting gender or race. But political correctness has become part of a school’s curriculum equipped with punishments and an expanded list of “bad” words and phrases. Not only does this appear a bit outside education’s boundaries, it is an obvious discouragement to free speech. No longer are we encouraged to debate if we can control behavior by limiting words. Some obscure group made that decision for us.

• Second, today’s educators are afraid someone will be uncomfortable. If red marks on a paper makes a student feel uncomfortable, school boards ban red pens. We cannot permit a student to confront his or her failings, of course. We become uncomfortable at such thoughts. No, we make red a “bad” thing. This lack of comfort can get even further out of control if “comfort” authorities do not act quickly. Students used to be uncomfortable by design. Not today. We encourage students to be weenies and believe discomfort with the world is not their burden but someone else’s problem.

• Which brings me to the next educational misstep. Have you noticed the change in words educationists use to describe objects and people? A student is not a student, he is a “learner.” She goes to a “learning center” (a “school,” you slow learners) in a carefully designed “learning environment” (classroom) free of bad words and discomforts and where a “learning facilitator” (teachers are no longer wanted) creates an opportunity for whoever sits in the chairs to be learners. It gets confusing, but imagine how the learners feel. This new learner vocabulary has not caught on thoroughly yet, but it’s just around the corner. It is already in state guidelines.

• Students – or learners – are not encouraged to use their brains, good sense, and dedication to answer questions, turn in great papers, or be the first to talk in class, either. No, they have learned that everyone in the “learning environment” should be permitted to answer questions before bright students can offer their thoughts. This encourages “sharing.” Today we do not seek clarity, intelligence, or insight.

• The last item – I could go on – is what students write about in today’s learning centers. In the past we had to “react” to what we read by assembling ideas, quotes, insights, and our own experience and write something that challenges, supports, or explains an idea. Apparently that was way too much work. People must have become uncomfortable. Educators simplified that old baloney and encouraged students to write about their feelings. How to you feel about Shakespeare’s play? That keeps everything effortless and basic. When these kids go to college, of course, many professors will require a response more relevant, but many college professors are falling into the “feeling” trap, too. That’s a whole column for later.

 

 

Education has become a program without an educational theme. Fixing the roof, tweaking the “no child left behind” tests, and rewarding teachers whose “learners” do well on tests may keep us all busy over the next several years, but it won’t advance education or prune away these bad ideas. This absurdity has become the subtext to today’s education: Reward mediocrity, focus on a person’s feelings, elevate sharing above making clear decisions, instill the notion that you have a right never to feel discomfort, and turn learners into passive “units” rather than encourage the students’ creativity, insight, or diligence.

 

New ships could offer world more Hope

 

Dear Mr. President,

When I was a teenager, which was some time ago, the United States had a special ship that acquired the imagination and respect of the American people. No, it was not a U.S. Navy ship, though it was originally designed for the Maritime Commission. The U.S.S. Consolation, launched in 1944, was a hospital ship, and it served very actively until 1955 when it was decommissioned and held in reserve. It floated there five years when it was renamed S.S Hope and outfitted with a full cadre of civilian doctors and modern medical equipment, and it served in that capacity for 14 years.

“The good ship Hope,” as she was identified during those final years of service, traveled the globe on 11 voyages where people needed a hospital ship. It was one of the finest ideas someone in this country ever envisioned, and I can only guess what that ship did for this country’s image during those years. Superior medical care is one of the services this country can offer others.

I would love to see this country do this again and this time with perhaps two hospital ships. Surely we have other ships in reserve which can be overhauled and refitted for the duty of offering superior medical care to the poor, the diseased, the disabled, and those suffering from poor sight, broken bones, shock, and a myriad of unanticipated ailments. Just picture a glorious white ship with immense red crosses fore and aft and bristling with scalpels, operating rooms, and hospital beds. This time I suggest these ships be owned and operated by the U.S. Navy, not leased to civilians, and occasionally be escorted by swift warships able to deal with today’s scattered but global evils.

 I would hope that one or two medical schools would supply training and oversight and work these activities into the schools’ curriculum. Two years later another set of universities will pick up those duties, providing their graduates with some of the best on-site experience they could ever find. Some older civilian medical personnel might decide that a one-year “vacation” on these hospital ships may revive their spirits and desire.

Think of it as a new Peace Corps able to do what others cannot offer. Think of it as new foreign aid. Think of it as the right thing to do for both the Third World and the United States. Think of it as more audacity of hope.

Watch for worn phrases, abused words

In the beginning of the United States space program, we sent a high-speed object to the moon. It had no purpose other than getting there to prove that using our technology we could send something to the moon. Every 10 or 15 seconds it would send us a picture as the object closed the distance. Millions of Americans perched in front of TVs so they could watch America’s first “visitation” to the moon.

 

Then the narrator – odd we must narrate virtually everything on TV – said, as the screen went black (the big moment), “We impacted it.”

 

I knew from that day on the narrator had invented a new word, a word I would never like. It continues to annoy me. The narrator had turned a wonderful noun, impact, into an ugly verb. Because this was NASA, which also gave us “A-OK” and a few other more techno-space contributions, people with limited vocabularies decided to verbalize “impact.” They needed to fit in. After all, NASA used it.

 

That was more than 40 years ago, when “impact” had a rugged, no-nonsense sound to it. Today is sounds gentle and smooth. We lost an impressive word. What sounds more serious than impact? Impact is a good word for a bullet hitting its target.

 

We have a lot of word melting going on today, too. It’s not television’s fault, but you tend to hear it a lot while watching. Here are a few words and phrases that once had a nice sound to them but now sound like punctuation:

• How many times do you hear something like this? “We’ll now have more troops on the ground in Afghanistan where they are dreadfully needed.” Where else would they be? Floating around in dirigibles? We could eliminate the phrase altogether without changing the meaning. But, no, we’ll hear this probably for years to come. If you or I used this stupid phrase at the grocery store, people would take notes and start to avoid us. The smart ones would laugh at us. Toss that phrase into the box labeled, Think outside the box.

• Two politicos disagree on some point when one, with a tone meaning the chat needs to end soon, says, “Well, at the end of the day, the legislature still needs to leave that alone until it gets more information.” Essentially it means “at the end of the process,” whatever the process is. But you can barely make a potty trip without missing yet another mention of “at the end of the day.” Most of us can’t wait that long.

• Recently I began to hear “segway,” as in, “Let me help you with a segway.” The speaker meant he would help the other to transition from one subject to another. This was on MSNBC, my favorite political news site. The announcers (they would prefer “journalistic air personalities”) worked all day at offering segway to one another. But I have heard others using that term, as if the rest of us know what it is. I found one or two references to it on the Web, but I’ll leave that one to you.

 

I really like our president, and so do the American people. Because he is so popular, President Obama can manipulate the language and we’ll adopt it instantly. Until now he’s tried to wear out moving forward, a popular political metaphor. Only Republicans want to move backward, and they call it “returning to core values.” Today, in his announcement about Chrysler’s next move, Obama said, “I don’t stand with that.” Just watch that phrase start bouncing off walls everywhere.

 

While you’re at it, watch for “surgical bankruptcy,” too. What the hell is that?

Policy? POLICY? Word covers all evils

I stepped right up to the window, my papers in my hand, and announced myself. I said I was to be at the Procedure Center at 8:30. I was 20 minutes early. She typed into the computer and seemed mesmerized by what it reported to her.

“May I have your birth date?” I gave it to her.

“Can you confirm your address, please?”

I considered answering “yes” to the straightforward question – I can confirm my address – but instead I gave her my address. Then I explained I’d driven 520 miles for the enjoyment of this procedure and I could not imagine why anyone might sneak up behind me, knock me on my head, steal my identity, and arrive here today pretending to be me so he could get a colonoscopy. She should simply take me at my word I was and remain myself.

She forced a laugh, showing she did not understand anything, not even the funny part.  “Well, yes,” she said, “but we need to make very sure who you are, so our policy is we must check.” Then she asked if I had insurance, and I handed her my cute little card with blue writing on it.

“That information is in your system,” I said. “My policy is to remind you of that fact in order to confirm I am me and that I’m in the right clinic.”

That little interchange earlier this week confirmed what I’ve always known and often taught to my journalism students: People heap all sorts of make-believe authority on what they call “policy,” intending us to follow their directives or understand at least why the company cannot in any way be generous or cut us some slack. Policy sinks down through officialdom’s many layers to the bottom where a minion announces it to the intended object to be handled, subdued, and sometimes ridiculed.

“Oh, well,” we’re trained to say, “since it is your policy, then, gee, I guess I should not object to being treated this way. It’s The Policy.” We should indeed be on the watch for idiots wanting to steal someone else’s colonoscopy even though that sounds more like lunacy than sound management.

Many policies confront us. I once had to sign a release form to permit my daughter to play softball. In simple terms, it said that no matter what happened to my daughter, it was my fault, not theirs. I simply could not find blame elsewhere. I declined to sign it. The league’s potentate called me that day and told me a lawyer had written it. I told him I felt my bowels getting loose now that I knew a lawyer had written it. He understood the sarcasm but said if I didn’t sign it, my daughter would not play. It was the league’s policy. So I signed it but also included a letter outlining my objections to the release, even if (maybe especially) since a lawyer wrote it. I believed then as I do now that I had established an argument for an objection later if needed. Screw the policy.

The theater ticket policy tells you that it is not the theater’s responsibility for anything you leave there or is stolen while you are there, or any harm that might come to you while there. It is all bunk. The theater’s policy is to appear oblivious to activity within its walls. However, if it has not acted prudently to protect the safety of its customers against obvious hazards, then the theater is indeed likely responsible. That’s the law’s policy.

The clerk behind the fast-food counter asks if we want cheese with that even though we’ve said nothing about cheese in our brief conversation. He says the restaurant’s policy is to ask. After all, we remember, damn near everything comes with a 40-cent layer of cheese in order to get more money from our pockets. It’s the company policy to put something into the meal to force customers to tell them to remove it or pay for it, an act that apparently requires various jabs at the cash register often performed with obvious impatience.

A moving company tells you that the moving industry’s policy is to require a third down on the estimate. Every company follows the policy. That’s another way of saying that trucking industry abuses its customers – all its customers – in the same way and, therefore, every company is virtuous and above ridicule.

That’s bunk, too. Equality in mistreatment does not forgive or erase the exploitation even if the mistreatment is “industry policy.”

Good reporters don’t take shortcuts

A former student directed me to a Web site where a reporter had asked the public to identify nearby General Motors car dealers that did not receive the “nice” letter from GM and rat out those unlucky dealers. You remember this mess last week: General Motors would no longer supply them cars or honor their franchises as the giant corporation marches toward bankruptcy.

 

The reporter wanted to talk with them. With the public hunting down those dealerships – doing the reporter’s job – the reporter could multi-task in full efficiency by not tracking them down himself and, instead, spend more time on the phone with sorry and sad dealers.

 

My former student couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she suspected this was not good journalism.

 

She’s right, of course (she was well taught), but it is not obvious, especially in these times. While reporters should hunt down their own news sources – and a series of quick phone calls from a phone book would do the trick – news rooms today are not overstaffed. Reporters are getting hard to come by, and those are probably overloaded with fascinating, deeply penetrating stories about new creative ideas from the chamber of commerce or jolly insights addressing spring gardening. Besides, a story about painfully upset car dealers hurts the town’s booster club image of a thriving, American dream community. In that environment, who would blame him for shoving this small duty upon the public?

 

Me, of course. One of the fundamentals the public wants from news outlets – and the public probably could not identify this fundamental were it asked – is that the reporter make his or her own selections of sources. It’s part of that objectivity thing the public hopes the reporter follows. Though it is not an “always” thing, a good reporter will search widely when looking for good sources.

 

The cool thing here, from my experience, is that it is always a rewarding experience to call and find a new source. The source gives you a response different enough from other sources that you, the reporter, look like a genius by finding him. Good reporters want varied responses for news stories. Editors love it. Readers get more interested. Varied responses make people ruminate. Love that word, ruminate. I like ruminating, too, and I miss it.

 

It is difficult to imagine that reporters have a “hit list” of dealerships they want to punish, keeping those secret lists under their desk calendars waiting for such an opportunity. Oh, boy, now I get to get back at that nasty truck dealer.

 

Well, I would like to go on about journalism’s objectivity, but I just heard that the recent American Idol vote may have been rigged. What an outrage! This development has so upset and hurt me that I can hardly think straight or stay awake.

Consumer protection? Really? Don’t kid me

Dear Mr. President:

 

This week I sent Bank of America a $30 check for a credit card account I closed last month when I sent those folks a check for $142.03, my complete balance. A bit put off by the interest rate, I intended to close the account. But, as I should have predicted, my payment arrived a day late.

 

Oh, dear.

 

Bank of America must have been deeply distressed by this, what with all the drudgery bank personnel would have to endure given my tardiness, so they added a $29 punishment late pay fee to $1.50 interest. A bank must make money somehow, especially after it accepted handouts from the United States just to keep a heart beat. Consumers always compose a handy repeat target after already mismanaging their money. Yeah, I know. You’re right. I also feel suitably grief-stricken for the troubles I must have put this bank through being a day or two late. Sure, perhaps it required overtime.

 

This is why I am very pleased you suggest a consumer protection division be added to the new official financial regulation program you outlined today. We need such an office almost everywhere, but let’s stick with this one right now. I’m sure you realize that consumer protection has been out of fashion for quite a while. It’s possible no one in Washington these days has much experience with it. Look outside Washington. You’ll need two or three years before any consistent evil surfaces, and in the meantime the Republicans will be anxious to close protection offices. They’ll say those do-gooders are making life difficult for our delightful and friendly bankers, so we should close consumer protection offices.

 

Do not listen to them. Don’t compromise with them. Don’t invite them into the tent for coffee. They really do not like protecting consumers. I know this from professional experience. They see it as the ultimate menacing regulation and a waste of taxpayers’ money. On the other hand, remember Elizabeth Dole? She was in Richard Nixon’s Administration and did some good work on consumer protection. Nixon was a bit distracted at the time.

 

I’m sorry I waxed on here, Mr. President. I wanted to keep this short, but the subject – a rather new one considering the subject’s infirmity – caught my attention. American consumers truly need protected. We are an unpretentious, trusting lot. We simply desire a decent product or service for a reasonable price. We like it when contracts make sense in few words. We feel cheated when advertising lies to us. And we hate it when businesses, such as banks, take advantage of us. I know these customer yearnings present obstacles to vibrant businesses, but let us hope the enemies of consumer protection do not suffocate these efforts for at least four or five years.

 

Good luck creating such offices. Opponents are already taking aim at you for this.

 

Sincerely,

Ron Roat

 

P.S. By the way, I mailed this new payment to the bank late, too. It would be worth it if I thought for a second some overpaid banker had to cut lunch short just to handle my tardiness, but I’m sure it’s just one of those things.

 

Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke helped

On this 40^th anniversary of the moon landing, one of the coolest things I remember of that event was a discussion Walter Cronkite set up. He invited the three greatest science fiction writers – Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke – to a round table chat about the meaning of man’s first journey to another celestial body.

 

I sat completely absorbed. I knew these men. I had spent much of my growing years reading everything written about World War II, the best science fiction, and the great writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck. It was unusual to see me without a book or two, even in the Army where I reluctantly sat in 1969 spellbound by Apollo 11.

 

Once assembled, the three men talked as though no one else was in the room. They had no peers, except perhaps Ray Bradbury and maybe even, in a stretch, Walter Cronkite himself. The writers knew Apollo 11 was the first step in what everyone at the time believed to be many, propelling us to other planets and eventually out of the solar system. What would take us there? Our imagination and desire to know. Science would provide the means. Wernher von Braun’s brain may have designed the team and science that put men on the moon, but these three men could tell us why we did it and where we go next.

 

These men were not just writers, they were thinkers. As you know, Heinlein wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land, two books I need to read again. Asimov wrote more than 500 books, but today’s readership might know him quickly by mentioning he wrote I, Robot. The questions he raised in his robot series remain pertinent. And Clarke, who died about a year ago, is best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Few remember that in his spare time he proposed, designed, and promoted a satellite communication system. It seemed a reasonable goal to him. Of course, that was 1945, and we didn’t begin to put it all together until the 1970s. Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles.

 

They’re all gone now, the three science fiction writer-thinkers as well as the god of journalism, Walter Cronkite. And I know we have lots of problems to solve here on Earth, and we have people to heal and diseases to conquer, but, yes, I’d like this country to start thinking seriously about going to Mars. It will be totally cool.

New decisions, rules face young adults

It is increasingly difficult to find our way in the world. That’s true especially for younger adults. I’m not talking about finding a book store or where to can get a massage. Any GPS gizmo can help with that, though an addiction to GPS creates a dependency that will disable a person’s innate ability to self navigate.

 

No, I’m talking about how many of the rules have changed, leaving today’s college kids, for example, more than a bit confused over how to decide education, professions, and jobs. While these are not necessarily “rules” — we can always do as we wish to do – there are patterns in life that help us decide what to do. Such as:

 

• Until recently a junior college said you need “training.” A four-year college said you need “an education.” The first is the how-to approach – how to be a police officer, nurse, computer technician, or auto mechanic – and the second steeps you in writing, math, social science, and languages. I have always urged the second approach, “an education,” but today much of that is up for grabs. Training will help you to simply “get a job” faster than liberal arts will show you how to think and give you intellectual depth. What are the rules today? More important, what do you want.

• While we’re at it, we all face the question of whether to prepare for a specific job or profession or, instead, gain a breadth of skills and knowledge about the working world. Again, I still believe the second will serve you better, but in this economy, few know for sure. Make sure that job will still be around when you get out of college. Today this is a frequent nightmare. Find someone who has his or her head on tight and get that person’s insight. Not me, folks. I don’t even like you people.

• So many students and young people in general want to stay “near home and family” when they graduate or enter the working world. Most of them are dolts. They sacrifice their freedom to determine their potential in order to stay close to family and “close” friends. If that works for you, great. Don’t complain about how limited the jobs are. I urge students and even high school graduates to pack a bag and go where the jobs are. You’ll never be that free again. Give yourself a chance to make something of yourself without meddlesome family “advice.”

• How long should you work a specific job? It used to be two or three years. Today a year or so. How much should you invest in that employer and that town? A six-month lease might be appropriate, and don’t buy a new car there.

• Speaking of investing, the short stay alters your loyalty to your employer and his loyalty to you, among other things. If you keep commitments short, that may work against you in the future. Why should a future employer invest in training or rewards?

• What about that work ethic thing? Questions abound since it appears the work ethic is on the ropes. Until recently, a worker felt a defined responsibility to show up on time, work reasonably hard, and not whine about just being one of the workers. Today many young workers see the need only to work hard enough to survive and move on. They feel abused if the employer does not commend them for showing up. Visualize party hats and monthly banquets.

• I could never understand why people right out of college worried about health insurance. What catastrophe is likely? What a waste of good money. But today, since Washington struggles everyday about how to build a health care system that makes sense, you might wait longer to buy. On the other hand, an increasing number of employers are dropping their expensive employee health care insurance plans. Almost everything has changed. The rest is about to change.

 

Millions of young people face simple but potentially catastrophic decisions about who to listen to. Their wise parents and family members will tell them to stick to the old rules because those rules served generations well. To me, that view presents an unsupportable sweeping generalization as well as poor memories. They did follow those rules, but the rules only served an empowered minority.

 

Those paying attention to the current situation and its implications will suggest other approaches to life decisions. More to the point, they might remind those listening the rules are evolving. Period. Pay attention. Also know you are not indispensable.

 

‘Home security’ means a lot to Americans

The recent incident in Cambridge, Mass., where a white police sergeant arrested a black university scholar in his home, continues to fester a little in this country for various reasons. One of those reasons has roots in the American Revolution.

 

As you might recall, colonists became irritated when British troops would move into town. The troops would often walk into civilian homes without notice or warrant and tell the occupants to leave. Rather than pitch tents or build barracks, British troops would then take up residence – billet – in these citizens’ homes. Worse, the troops were there not to protect the colonists but to subdue them.

 

Especially as the mid-1770s approached, the British also believed it unnecessary to seek or use warrants to barge into American homes, arrest one or more of its occupants, and take the arrested away to mock courts, King- appointed judges, and counterfeit justice. Debate leading to the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration itself give you a fairly clear picture of American concern. Court decisions since then have added to an American sense of privacy in our homes, particularly against the intrusion of authority.

 

Simply put, Americans do not like any part of that. We like to believe we are safest in our own homes and that any aggression beyond the door must come with additional and appropriate justification. We also believe that whatever we might say to those in authority, within the bounds of our own homes, requires greater indulgence on the part of that authority.

 

To take a step back, most of us now understand Officer James Crowley to be a good man and a competent police officer. He arrived at Henry Louis Gates’ home ready – though not anxious – to put himself in harm’s way to enforce the law. That is his job. As a seasoned officer, however, he also must be ready to back away from insults and verbal jabs from a man being pressured in and rightly within his own home. Many state laws specifically state you can say some ugly things to police officers as long as it is not in public.

 

This sense of personal freedom is part of the American character. You may be black, Asian, white, or whatever, but you believe you have more latitude in your home, and you do. This is why some of us out here want to hear, before this completely disappears from the front page, that we retain that sense of guarded autonomy in our homes.

 

 

Who’s winning? Health insurance companies, the GOP, and the proud public relations profession

Having fun yet? How much do we love this twisted version of democracy brought to us by health insurance companies and their Republican beneficiaries?

You cannot turn on television without viewing slick commercials designed to scare the crap out of senior citizens. Even on the Weather Channel. If not those commercials, television instead presents videos of middle-aged operatives derailing intelligent discussions. They yell, scream, interrupt, override, and distort, all within the instructions sent to them by deeply moneyed interests.

You got to hand it to the health insurance companies. With their backs against the wall, they engaged the best public relations confidence men corporate dollars can buy. Rather than join an intelligent and overdue discussion on health insurance, these shysters designed a plan to push the entire discussion off the table. That’s the only way they will survive.

The plan is now apparent: Persuade Middle America those impostors in the White House aim to turn America into Russia. Tell senior citizens they will wait in line to die in the dark without doctors. Yeah, that’s it. And they will be cold, too. Convince all Americans some nameless government bureaucrat in Washington will decide if they receive tests or operations, where the tests will be provided, and how long pitiful Americans will wait to get them. Do not, through any means, remind them that a nameless health insurance bean counter now makes those decisions not based on improving your health but on whether that decision makes the company more money.

Overall, the public relations con men say, splash around phrases like “socialized medicine” and “socialism” at innocent Americans. Most citizens are too misguided to know what you’re talking about. Then when you get good ol’ Americans in a lather, tell them they must stop the “government takeover” of their personal health care. “Takeover” is a scary, sinister word, providing the delusion of conspiracy and violence. Again, do not, by any means, remind Americans they do not now control their personal health care. Corporate America controls it, and Corporate America intends to keep it with the help of misguided Americans like you.

In the end, Republicans will have campaign million$, Americans higher health care premiums, and the public relations profession another notch on its time-honored code of ethics.

Hunkering down in foreboding Michigan economy

            After about three miles, the road goes from paved – crushed stone poured on fresh tar, affectionately known as “tarvee” roads around here – to gravel, but it doesn’t matter all that much. Crews do an adequate job keeping gravel roads level and durable, which is saying something. Winter is seldom gentle here, though always magnificent, and the occasional 50-year rain can heartlessly destroy roads, as it did early last year.

            In this slice of the Midwest, you look skyward for hints of the future, good or bad. In one way or another, we all live within the weather’s margins.

            I had picked a beautiful day for this spur-of-the-moment urge – a crusade of sorts – to reintroduce myself to the back roads of Western Michigan. It’s not that I had forgotten Michigan. I grew up on and near Lake Michigan, its beaches, and its sand dunes, but 40 years ago I ventured elsewhere for jobs, eventually working in six other states. I returned recently and moved into a small house near Round Lake in Mason County. Here cable remains a tedious analog and the telephone too sluggish for DSL. Cell phones and wireless Internet counter that shift back in time, for which I am daily grateful.

            My reintroduction to the back roads does not tell you much. I know the roads. I know this part of Western Michigan fairly well. I spent way too much of my youth prodding and poking the woods, fields, and roads around here, an undaunted boy searching for a mystery to examine or malevolence to fathom. Pure of heart and anything but innocent, he feared only not knowing. That fear guided him the rest of his life.

            Today, I am due no purity or innocence, but I cannot help feeling the woods and fields entrap the unpolished purity and knowledge I seek. With that indefinable goal, I drove into the Manistee National Forest no longer guided by fear. One cannot find what I’m after if you are afraid of it before you find it.

Money and no money

            Detroit isn’t the only place suffering from unemployment. When the auto industry gets a cold, people all over Michigan start sneezing. You cannot drive 25 miles in this state without passing at least one company, large or small, supplying parts for cars and trucks.

            As the auto industry rolls into the abyss, people in all corners of the state discover they were living paycheck to paycheck. That reality finds its way into every restaurant, resort, dry cleaners, hardware store, and hair salon. Grocers close. Gasoline stations turn to gray and rust as grass materializes from cracks in the concrete. Small town pharmacies become junk shops.

            This part of Michigan, 250 miles northwest of Detroit, is best known for its almost pristine Lake Michigan beaches, fruit trees, a few dozen inland lakes, and forests. Those benefits do not obstruct financial collapse. As you drive around north of U.S. 10 and east of U.S. 31, you cannot help but see the deepening recession. Near our many lakes, every third cottage nears “shabbiness,” it’s homemade “for sale by owner” sign occasionally obscured by tall grass and weeds. It’s the same for residential homes sprinkled in lush fields along the road. An occasional house-in-progress has been halted with a roofed over basement. This basement “home” is almost a Michigan tradition of hunkering down and taking cover. Foliage covered piles of bull-dozed top soil and scrap wood concrete frames await better times. An increasing number of people offer campfire wood for $3 a bundle on roads used by people who gather their own wood in the backyard.

            You can’t spit out here without hitting an inland lake or a taxidermist. Sometimes both. Michigan has more than 11,000 lakes, not including the Great Lakes, and nearly as many rivers and streams. A man becomes very fond of these lakes not because most states do not have them but because we are all drawn to clean water. Our ancestors crawled from it. We were born in it. Our DNA demands it. We cannot live without it. With a little snickering, Michigan natives watch big city tourists flounder in it.

            Here, we also play in it. From a very young age this water philosophy becomes imbedded in our psyches. People around here own lots of boats – from canoes to Coho salmon fishing party boats – and talk about water activities so casually it sometimes takes you by surprise. Kayaks today are fashionable, too. Everybody swims, and nearly everyone fishes. You learn to bait a hook before you’re 7. Friday all-you-can-eat fish dinners serve deep-fried Great Lakes catches.

            But the tourist business – based mainly on this water – has truly suffered, especially in these back-country areas. Though originally the summer gathering places of the city well-off, these areas have become vacation spots for the working families, people who bear most of the weight of our economic malaise. Thus, the small town café, which expanded five years ago, no longer opens everyday and has not hired help in months. The bait shop stays open only because the owner has no idea what else to do. The corner laundry closed two years ago. After all, some businesses pull the short straw sooner than others. The auto industry has been staggering for years.

            People can endure the loss of a part-time job or reverting to an old wardrobe and driving the clunker for another year or so. What truly weigh on people are the vanished dreams. The kids may not go to college. The new house will not be. Doctor visits drop to only emergencies. The economy has robbed them of their visions and replaced them with delusions.

The anger

            Change is in the air, and so are fear and anger. Most people around here are hanging on, but many already seek out people and ideas to blame. I hear it often and stay clear for fear of unleashing even more anger and frustration – theirs and mine. You can see it in their sneers and smell it in the clothing fatigue. An old farmer in the produce section of the local grocery told two businessmen global warming is “bullshit,” a story made up to scare people and make them manageable. The international conspirators don’t scare him, though, he said. He says he’s ready for them, and I’ll bet he is.

            In the fast food “dining room,” a tall, long-haired late 50s man saw me reading Time magazine and sipping coffee. I had barely sat down. He raised his voice to cover the distance and informed me newspapers have gone into the toilet and news magazines will soon follow. It’s all part of the general demise of America, he told whoever would listen. Two others looked up at him and glanced at me, the target of his salvo. Keep all of us poorly informed, the man declared, and you can do anything in this country. I ignored him, as he started to tell someone passing him with a tray that he was about to eat Argentine beef. American beef is history.

            The man’s assessment of newspapers and magazines hits the mark. I agreed with everything, but I did not tell him so. I know more about that than he’ll ever know.

            I stopped for breakfast recently at what was then one of my favorite home-style restaurants. About 10 local men in their 50s had three tables end to end and talked brashly about their worries. I listened. They picked at their breakfast remains as one man loudly declared it was all the fault of “those damn niggers” in Washington.

            I could not ignore this. I slowly turned around to put a face to the comment. Everyone saw me and grew quiet, as though I’d somehow splashed water over the table or would start a fight. I had his face for memory, and he has mine, too. His face remains familiar just in case it appears over my shoulder or in the grocery line.

            I have not been back to that restaurant, and two friends asked why. The food is good and it’s a great location. Why punish the owner? He tolerates that kind of raucous hate and stupidity in the middle of his establishment, I explained. He’s one of them.

            The anger comes from fear of change they do not understand and, so far, feels like a threat to their way of life. Right Wing politicians toss gasoline on this fire almost daily. This cultural transformation emerges as un-American, foreign in initiation and content, so it becomes easy to talk about on the street. We would not do this to ourselves, right? We should have seen it coming. By God, we will see it next time, if we survive this.

 

            Much of it seems unfair. I like these people. They work hard. The Protestant Ethic surges through them. Over the years they have worked hard and steady and not gotten rich and endured some pretty harsh winters, but what is their reward? This experience challenges their trust. They have seldom trusted government – the institution constantly meddling in people’s lives – and now they are losing trust in almost everything else.

Survival

            Increasingly, it is all about riding out the economy, identifying bogus political ideas, trusting in the Lord, and surviving everything else.

            I visited a gun show some weeks ago to see if it is just like evil news media depict. The newest vehicle in visitors’ the parking lot was three or four years old. Most were pickups. A group of five stood smoking just outside the entrance doors and eyed those coming in and noting those leaving. They were friendly, though, suggesting I get a jacket. It was colder inside than out.

            They were right. The air conditioning ruled. About 60 people strolled through the largest field of handguns, shotguns, rifles, and ammunition I have seen since the army discharged me. Much of the display was military or pseudo-military. It would only require a smile, some small talk, and a pocket full of cash to buy one or two rifles capable of taking out people from a mile or so.

            The customers did not adorn fatigues or camouflage. They looked like people you might meet in the pharmacy. When you talked with them you did not conjure images of skin-heads and the final battle. But you could feel the uneasiness, their sense of an approaching unknown, the mystery that tomorrow always holds but this time may also be holding back its clues. They would not call it fear, but it has made them anxious. When civilization shakes violently, nothing good follows.

            “I don’t know how it will happen or how it will start,” one gun shop owner told me. “But you can feel it coming.” These people will be ready, and in being ready, they likely will become part of the problem we all must face. Some of us can peek far enough over the approaching horizon to see some of what they see. It sends a chill through you.

My abode

            I have been lucky enough to find a repossessed house the bank wanted off its hands. Isolated and in need of love and work, the house had languished long enough to drop thousands more in value.

            Such a house – somewhere between shabby and fragile – requires a learning curve. Today I know how to put up drywall, fix some plumbing, seal concrete, find a septic tank, calk cracks, install 12X12 tiling, and be grateful for clean well water and a rebuilt pump to deliver it. A nifty 300-gallon propane tank rests out my kitchen window, and an ancient, wall-mounted antique gas furnace blasts me regularly with hot air.

            Worse, I look forward to finding worn but recoverable book shelves, though I am likely to build my own. Boxes of books, remnants of a career of reporting, writing, professing, and thinking, remain in piles here and there. They will adorn my walls soon enough, I figure, and meanwhile they can hold the Earth in place until the snows come.

            A pile of Sunday New York Times and Wall Street Journals also await my attention, as well as a few items a friend sent to me. I am likely the only guy in the neighborhood with such a reading list. An optimist at heart, I hope to find two or three people I can argue philosophy with over plenty of coffee. Only a strange group would welcome a man who can explain “M Theory” well enough that members could point out its flaws. Now that’s a discussion.

            I do not see many people out here yet. A school bus passes by on the nearby tarvee road about 4 p.m. The UPS truck thunders down that road shortly after that but the driver seldom glances down my gravel road. Though I already suffer from too much reading, I might get big brown to come down my road if I found yet another book I need.

            As it is, three or four cars going by on the gravel road constitutes traffic which may need monitoring. Any more than four vehicles will require a stop light. I then would have to petition Mason County and get my neighbors’ signatures, if I had neighbors.

Paranoia? No, they’re out there

          I pulled the mail from the mailbox. As I walked to the house, I read from an official looking envelope. Warning: $2,000 fine, five years imprisonment, or both, for any person interfering or obstructing with delivery of this letter. U.S. Mail TTT.18 Code.

          The envelope had removable sides to be folded and torn to reveal contents specific to the receiver. It’s a “security” envelope. It appeared and felt official. It reminded me of my draft notice’s appearance and impression. Tax notices feel the same. Courts send similar commands. The next letter was from the Social Security Administration (Official business: Penalty for private use, $300) and the next letter was something from the Michigan Secretary of State.

          I stopped a few paces from the door. Surely all this mail was innocent, the product of my just having moved here. It added up to an interesting, coincidental mixture of mail, or it pointed to impending doom of some sort. I do not believe in coincidence. I glanced over my right shoulder — nothing out there except a concrete slab soon to be a garage floor. Beyond that rested the edge of the Manistee National Forest. Any thing could be out there.

          Or any one.

          To my left, more trees. Down the gravel road sat a single trailer with a shed and a boat covered in a blue plastic tarp, a summer fishing and hunting “cabin.” Or was it? That’s what my neighbor told me, and he is a former police officer. Former? I remember he was reluctant to tell me about that guy from Detroit. Maybe he made it up on the spot. Maybe he has been sworn to silence. He’s just like the rest of these people. Very hesitant to discuss private matters. All of are certainly concealing something.

          I stepped toward my front door and then stopped. I did not want to appear ready to bolt. There may be cameras. But I have a right, do I not, to go in and out of my own home? Of course I do. Still, I was beginning to put the pieces together. Surely the statute of limitations applies here. Maybe some federal sleuth had uncovered that military thing, those foreign events! Damn, I should have demanded written orders. I was so trusting. That was, what, 40 years ago?

          Still, I wondered. Maybe the feds had finally figured out I did not have real engine trouble when I landed on that narrow Florida road. You would think it was a federal crime or something with all the constabulary arriving from various jurisdictions. Lots of guns and lights and questions. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I grinned, thinking about it.  A perfect landing even with a cross wind. Perhaps someone that my reporting exposed or hurt or insulted was on the trail of revenge. It could be almost anyone since I was a reporter for a long time.

          Wait! What was that sound from over there? It is hard to mistake the sliding bolt of a powerful military weapon. Maybe a B.A.R., though it is a rare piece of equipment today. No, it would be more like an M-14 or maybe even an M-1 carbine. Once presented that sound once or twice, you know you will recognize it if you must.

          But why would the shooter be so sloppy as to make noise? It was a warning, that’s what it was. That metallic clatter designates the last prominent way to tell Roat he must duck and run. I have a friend out there.

          One thing I must do, I concluded, was to open the top envelope and perhaps discern the nature of the opponent. With fumbling fingers, I tore off the ends and folded it out.

          Notification that your dealership warranty is expiring or has currently expired! Call us immediately at … Those fake warranty people! They waste my cell minutes and send e-mail, too. My warranty expired five years ago, not last week. Could they now be armed and in cahoots with the feds? I went inside, but not without scanning the forest and roads one last time before quietly shutting my door. The warranty people are up to something.

Join us conservatives – easier than it looks

           I have decided to become a conservative. I prefer to be a classic conservative, the kind Edmund Burke might have appreciated, though the word “conservative” had little to do with politics in his time. Alas, the classic conservative might be rather rare today. So, I must aim at becoming a “neoconservative,” which is easier because “neo” political philosophies demand very little of believers.

          This might require considerable time, however. We conservatives do not move quickly. When we do move, it’s to duplicate how we remember the past and project that image upon the future. That’s not challenging. Neoconservative approaches to politics and leadership require less exertion because – I may as well admit I am a neoconservative – we have no real memory of past conservative surroundings and no interest in studying Edmund Burke. Our world view is limited, and we like it that way.

          We neoconservatives dedicate ourselves to detesting government, tolerating prejudice, waving the American flag often, loathing new ideas, blaming foreign “influence” for all sad developments, loving The Lord Almighty, and saying “no” to anything that looks, sounds, or smells like activism. The world is complicated enough without those self-appointed do-gooders, academics, and interveners mucking things up. Would Jesus be one of those people? Good Lord, no! He’d be in church where he belongs.

          Becoming a neoconservative simplifies a lot of things. As a misguided liberal, for example, I appreciated Newt Gingrich’s intellectual prowess, but I found his proposals dangerous. Now I salute him as a visionary and ignore his creepy scholarly proficiency. And Sarah Palin? Again, I used to chuckle and mock her, but now I applaud that woman’s every thought. I display a life-size poster of her in my office. Instead of snickering about her disbelief in dinosaurs, I scoff at the entire idea of dinosaurs. I am with her. Who made all that up, anyway? The Holy Bible does not mention them even once. Take that, science goons. Put that in your calculator and compute it. And take that global warming fairy tale and shove it. Has anyone been outside lately?

          Dick Cheney has consistently made me nervous. I considered him a threat to all that is good and an insult to reason. Besides, I got drafted, and he had several military deferments, an odd sequence of events considering his military view of damn near everything. Update! Mister Cheney must have been one step ahead of most of us. I thought getting a deferment in 1968 would be hailed only by progressives and hippies, but it turns out that conservatives like Mister Cheney knew someday it would be the mark of a powerful manly warlord. Who would have foreseen that? You must admire the man’s insight and cunning, even if he still makes you a tad nervous.

          Then there’s that whole God thing. Problems with that entire story have burdened me since I was 15. Being a neoconservative has alleviated my doubt. Now I know the Lord made the world in six days and chilled out for a day. I know the world is only 6,000 or so years old, and dinosaurs never walked the Earth. He hears my prayers, He’s on the American side of all wars, and He expresses himself through modern Country and Western Music. All ambiguity retreats. At night He speaks directly to me and tells me what to do to my enemies.

          Amusingly, I recently became an ordained minister of the Remedial Academy Tabernacle. I have the framed diploma to prove it. I can marry people, bury folks, and conduct general spiritual discussions. Really. However, given my new political view of the world, I must set that aside. In fact, I must denounce myself as an unprincipled, foul smelling, sinful heathen. I feel better already.

          Another area where the light of conservatism shines more brightly is that of economics. In my previous, heathen life, I found myself more concerned with the less fortunate, the poor schmucks at the bottom of the downward trickle. I supported means to put more money in the hands of the Average Joe. That, as the postal commercial says, was complicated and difficult for evangelicals and members of the Moral Majority to comprehend. Didn’t Jesus say we must always have poor? Well, my epiphany put things in order. The poor are not our downtrodden. They compose the foundation, the necessary fodder. The downtrodden are Wall Street bankers, stockbrokers, CEOs, and their misunderstood lobbyists. The economy has victimized these fine people. I lose sleep at night worrying about them, their families, and their bonuses.

          Health care? Don’t even start with me. Don’t start.

Snow, eggs, milk, and bread, and more snow

I lived in southern Indiana for more than 20 years. There Hoosiers apparently define a blizzard as more than five snowflakes in the air at the same time. A forecast of two inches of snow prompts thousands of people – the same people who cannot deliver their children to school – to drive to the grocery where they sweep the shelves of bread, eggs, and milk. Even though experience shows that 18-wheel trucks (certainly a miracle) will defy the blizzard and fill the shelves before morning, droves of people remain certain starvation itself might come before morning.

America’s recent experience with snow, and much of that where serious snow is a rarity, makes me think about this snow thing. I lived in West Virginia for two years. They drove like maniacs, and I was impressed. Cars would slide around ice-covered mountain roads with nary a mishap. Worse, you stood a decent chance of being passed by a full coal truck if you slowed down to, say, Hoosier speed.

Oregon drivers know a mere 2,000-foot rise in road elevation will draw a heavy line between summer and blizzard conditions. That difference also draws a line, they surmise, between Oregon drivers and those from California who got lost.

So with some humor I have viewed news clips of people in Texas or Alabama or Georgia careening out of control, slamming into one another, spinning their tires in either frustration or stupidity, marveling that people in other states get through these experiences without visiting hospitals and body shops.

The difference is experience, of course. Hoosiers, for example, experience most winters only two or three real snow days, and they avoid them. I sympathize to an extent since road crews seem reluctant to do anything other than throw salt at snow, making it more slippery. Worse, most Hoosier roads – at least in southern Indiana – have no shoulders.

In northern Michigan, “snow flurries” amounting to perhaps two or three inches are so common that television weather forecasters do not dwell on them. A two-inch forecast won’t close schools unless we expect winds to form drifts across county roads. Even then schools likely will remain open unless more snow is expected. Cars do crash into one another here in the winter, but we’re more apt to hear about snowmobile accidents. Recently two middle-aged women went out “for a ride” late one evening, for example. A search party found their bodies the next morning at the bottom of a cliff. Gravity always wins.

My daughter, who was born in southern Indiana, remains terrified of the day I showed her how to do donuts and four-wheel skids in an Expedition. Not every father would teach such a thing, but I felt it necessary for the same reason some flying instructors teach students how to recover from a spin. Someday you might need to know you can control many of a car’s skidding antics much as a pilot can wrestle control of an airplane plummeting toward Earth, screaming through the air at speeds exceeding the “placarded” aerodynamic limits. Use your experience and hang in there. Screaming does not help, though it might relieve the building pressure in your ears. Drive safely.

Bayh suffered from loss of balls

Many years ago a tall, good-looking guy named Evan Bayh, essentially then known as the son of former Indiana U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, spoke to a group of Democrats and well-wishers in Frankfort, Ind. He was not running for any specific election then, but he was being groomed for big things.

More than anything, he sounded like the kind of fresh progressive, forward-leaning Democrat the party desperately needed in those early Reagan years. He talked about social issues and working men and women, not tax breaks for the wealthy or infusing religion in the classroom. His family was stylish and beautiful. Evan Bayh was the product of authoritative, enlightening dinner discussions in Washington D.C. He was ready. He was perfect, and Indiana soon embraced him for eight years in the governor’s mansion and two terms in the U.S. Senate.

That was then.

Now before I say more, you must appreciate Hoosiers’ nature. They do not like progressive ways of doing anything, unless perhaps it is a new way to grow more corn from the same earth. They do not like spending money, especially for things they do not yet have. They hate taxes, though those taxes pay for their roads, schools, bridges, and police. Unlike most states, for example, Indiana ratepayers do not have to pay utility companies for power plants not yet completed (I like that).

And, to the state’s credit, Hoosiers are all behind balancing the budget, and they always do. The state knows almost two years in advance when it might go broke and acts on that knowledge immediately. A few years ago a powerful tornado tore through southern Indiana, killing two dozen. The federal government took quick action to direct rebuilding, but the governor, a former bean counter in the Bush Administration, said thanks, but Hoosiers take care of Hoosiers. A check would be nice, though. He got one. Indiana is not Louisiana.

All that said, it’s a tragedy that a brilliant, charming, successful political leader such as Evan Bayh lost his balls. I have no better way to put it. There he was, sent to Washington D.C. to lead, negotiate, guide, assess, and take action on behalf of his proud country, particularly the Hoosiers who elected him, and he decided it is too hard and aggravating. Washington politics does not compose the friendly, patriotic activity it once did. Bayh gave up.

I was a Hoosier for more than 25 years. I voted for Bayh every time his name appeared on the ballot. I admit I also voted for Richard Lugar, a Republican. Frankly, two finer men could not represent any state. Either man could give three speeches during an election year and remain in office until he died. But has Lugar given up? Lugar is no more hard core Republican conservative than Bayh is hard core Democrat liberal, and he has more reason to be frustrated than Bayh. I cannot imagine Lugar giving up and going home.

What I am talking about here to some extent is a way of life in the Midwest, a sort of mantra out here in flyover country. We believe in that Protestant Work Ethic even though it means, for the most part, we’ll work hard for very little money. We show up on time and give it our all. We appreciate having jobs. We love building things, and we particularly value doing it fast and first. We take pride in just slugging it out on a job. It’s not perhaps the best example, but how many Big Ten teams remain in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament most years? That ethic rubs off everywhere. We do not quit.

But Evan Bayh quit. When the job got frustrating and difficult, he decided he would go home and find something else to do. Aren’t those the situations for which we send people to Washington? If the job were easy, we could send anybody. But we all try to elect men and women who can duke it out together and get the job done.

We know it is a tough job. Democracy is hard. We thought Evan Bayh had the stuff for it. We were wrong.

Consumer protection does not need lawyers

I know this sounds like some kind of societal madness or at least legal blasphemy, but I hope our leaders in Washington don’t let the lawyers control the financial consumer protection agency they are considering. Lawyers would make a mess of everything. Worse, they could not do their jobs.

I learned this lesson many years ago when in Dayton, Ohio, where I applied to be the city’s consumer advocate. I was told later three or four lawyers had applied, too, but as a matter of policy the man making the decision truly had no intention of hiring a lawyer. He hired me, thoroughly a non-lawyer, because most of my thinking was outside the law books. I was hired to protect and advocate for consumers, not generate silly, costly, and ultimately failed court cases.

Most lawyers are fine people. I count a few among my best friends. I’ve been known to travel with them, camp with them, and even ride motorcycles with them. But good or bad, they all have been versed in one collective mantra: The law is all-embracing, the law is just, and the law must be followed. A philosophy like that will provide you a lot of disappointment in life. Ultimately they wonder why good, honest, common Americans get economically screwed in both politics and the courts. Their worry has its counterpart among religious fanatics who eventually admit doubt when good, virtuous people suffer anonymous, painful deaths.

A lawyer sees a misdeed in the marketplace and immediately sorts through “the code” to see what law has been violated, what evidence the good guys need to prove the bad guys are bad, and what previous cases may have produced precedents. The lawyer assumes, as part of that process, a law exists to cover the current situation. If not, the lawyer assumes a comprehensive law – a law that addresses fraud, for example – will speak to the current rip-off. A lawyer becomes a little discouraged when most of that law fails to deal with the situation.

It’s like that commercial where the slick, gray-suited guy, whom we all want to see dead, deceives and cheats the children with ponies, bicycles, and eggs. We know in our gut that slick bastard needs to be publicly embarrassed, beaten for a while, and finally placed in the stocks to be spit upon by common citizens. A real consumer advocate goes after him using publicity, proposed laws, questioning his employers and suppliers,  a public hearing or two, an offer of patience and cooperation, and finally helping the bad guys sever their contracts with utilities and landlords and move elsewhere. In Dayton, we usually suggested they move to Indiana where consumer protection laws were a joke. Nice city, Indianapolis, we’d say. You can make a good living there.

A lawyer, approaching the same deception and cheating, thumbs through the legal code to see if the guy has violated the law. It’s like quicksand. Let’s see, now, he has indeed deceived the children, God bless their little hearts, but has he done so for his own financial gain? Thumb through a few more pages. The law says to be guilty he must have intended to cheat the kids for his personal gain. If he didn’t intend to cheat them but mistakenly allowed the children to deceive themselves, then, well, he’s innocent under the law. The lawyer closes his law book and frowns upon the world.

How in the hell can I prove he intended to deceive? I can’t get into his head! Well, says the law, that’s the rub. Without interviewing all his employees, suppliers, and relatives, and sorting through his e-mail, letters, and advertisements, you cannot prove a thing. Besides, no judge worth his re-election pin will authorize those search warrants on a political contributor and possibly a church deacon, too.

The world of consumer crime is not filled with law-breakers, it’s filled with deception, naïve consumers, reliance on legal loopholes, and confidence that busy people will look the other way. So, go after the crook’s public credibility and show patience but no mercy.

Measuring education: Well, get out more than a calculator and test scores

Since the middle 1970s – it’s not important exactly when – business and industry has assessed itself through a system of measuring. Called Management by Objectives, American managers created a system which encompassed that idea and proceeded to sell it to most of America.

I do not intend this column as an advertisement or denunciation for that system. In fact, I found myself teaching it years ago to employees of the City of Dayton, Ohio, and later in a small newspaper chain. Why? In both cases I seemed to have enough of a grasp of it to explain it to my fellow employees to at least get them started. I like to give the AMA credit in this area even though there are dozens of pretender programs operating in much the same way.

Stay with me here. I’m coming through the back door on this topic.

The major problem with this system is not that it seems to work in business and industry but that I do not believe it works at all well in government or education. Yet, much of government and education has embraced it because this is the business world’s gospel. Business has great influence on how government and education functions.

Here is how it works, more or less. A company – let’s create the XYZ Widget Company – wants to double its product in the next two years. That is to say the board of directors wants that expansion. That becomes the goal. To do that, the company must muster its cash and personnel to get that done. The company president and his or her department heads sit down and put together a plan. Then they figure out perhaps 100 tasks which must be done in an orderly fashion over the next 24 months, and these tasks fall under one or more of the department heads.

Fred Schmotts, one of the department heads, finds that all matters concerning acquiring additional machinery, refitting old machinery, and training the workers now compose the gist of his job. To play this management strategy, Schmotts must sit down with the president and work out a time table and measuring scheme to determine how well he is doing. An example might be ordering new machinery by Aug. 1. Another could be establishing a one-week training session to teach employees how to use the new machinery. Under the second one he finds that he has to contact similar companies and manufacturers to create a workable training program and put it into full operation. His boss, the president, thinks it can be done by Aug. 30, but Schmotts has done a little homework and believes December might be more realistic. They settle on Nov. 1. Schmotts will be judged on his success or failure on that one item Nov. 1.

Schmotts is not the end of the chain. He sits down with his middle managers and uses the same system to assemble workable individual contracts. He will judge their performance on those deadlines and accomplishments. And so the system functions.

Each manager should make sure that he or she agrees to specific goals that he can control and can in fact accomplish. This is crucial if it is going to work. A middle manager, for example, does not have the authority to order new massive widget-making machinery, but one of his agreed-to items might be to examine all such machines from all known manufacturers and preparing detailed written recommendations. In turn, his boss agrees to have travel and search money available by June 1 so his underling can do his job. Such money might have been a stickler the last time they wrote such a contract.

The system seems fairly straight forward and works reasonably well as long as each contracted item does measure something important to the company and managers, and is doable. Make sure you measure something you can control and you can accomplish.

However, when we apply this measuring system to government and education, it presents major flaws.

A police officer cannot control the number or severity of crimes on her beat. She cannot control the number of arrests, investigations, or convictions. She cannot determine the nature of her assigned beat or the people who live there. Neither can her superior. This lack of control affects fire, waste, house inspections, health inspections, and street maintenance. A worker might be able to control time spent on each task, but that might affect work quality, something everybody wants to remain the same or improve. And if you settle on measuring items or tasks everyone can manage, are you actually measuring anything that will reveal the employee’s workmanship?

From what I can tell, this system performs even less well in education. Think of a typical teacher’s situation. Legislatures establish education’s goals and often set the standards. Taxpayers define the economic bottom line. School boards, in their wisdom, determine the curricula. Administrators try to interpret federal and state mandates and inject them into their schools.

Teachers? Yeah, we’re finally to teachers, the people we love to blame for poor school performance. Few teachers can affect the number and quality of students in their classrooms. They certainly cannot control the number, condition, or quality of teaching tools (books, chalk boards, projectors, computers, and so on). Most decisive, teachers cannot choose the parents. Oh, what a wonderful world that would be for teachers. Good parents and what they teach their children can make up a lot of ground against stupid school boards, disaffected administrators, and mediocre teachers.

None of this offers a solution to these rather large and troubling problems in education. How do we in fact measure performance in our schools? We certainly must address that rather overwhelming problem as it seems to get worse and worse.

Don’t think I intend this column as protection of teachers. I can’t spit in my family – if my mother ever permitted such a thing – without hitting at least two teachers. I’ll soon write a column correcting that notion. But we aren’t going to make meaningful progress in American education if we continue to believe we can measure teaching performance using this or a similar system. More than likely, that will offer false results, and that we do not need. We have plenty of that around already.

When you and I pay for the bodyguard

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s latest clash with the fairer sex involves off-duty police officers – bodyguards for this apparently vulnerable big athlete – protecting him and perhaps working with their boss to collect women.

I am not going to get into the details of Roethlisberger’s encounter in a bathroom with a 20-year-old college girl who had too much to drink. We might never know what happened in there. She says this, he says that. We’re not supposed to wonder what she expected to happen in the company of that football player. That would be impolite and insensitive. Meanwhile, he does not seem to have an abundance of common sense – and I thought everyone knew that – and he is assembling a series of roughly similar events. However, although the NFL will punish him, does anyone want to bet he won’t play football this fall?

In the midst of this entire he-says-she-says stuff lurks a tiny sticky dilemma involving the use of off-duty police officers. The permissive policy of using official police officers in situations like these has become so commonplace no one stops to consider if this is smart or the right thing to do.

It is neither the smart nor the right thing to do.

I’ll keep this simple. First, police agencies should not assign police officers to fill the role of routine bodyguards for celebrities, athletes, or similar non-essential people. Second, police agencies should not permit police officers on their off-duty time to “hire out” as bodyguards, especially in uniform.

The first instance – assigning officers as bodyguards – wastes taxpayer money and wastes that money when all government agencies are short of money and personnel. It also places the officer in potential conflicts of interest. Does the officer owe his allegiance to the government agency or to the person being protected? Does he deliver a good whack on the head to anyone who gets too close to the celebrity or does he exercise objective judgment on behalf of his real employers, you and me. It gets murky when the celebrity, such as a football quarterback, tells the bodyguard to help round up some lovelies or even something simple as getting him a couple of drinks.

The second case gets less smart. An off-duty police officer remains a police officer in the presence of a felony, and some jurisdictions require the officer to instantly act as an officer of the law with the full backing of the police department. That means the celebrity – store, credit union, football hero, liquor store, whatever – has hired a real police officer, not a rent-a-cop. Guess who pays that officer’s medical bills and backs all sorts of other liability. You and me. It is anyone’s guess to whom the off-duty officer gives allegiance in situations where she has witnessed more than she is supposed to see or provides (through her very presence) some concealment of questionable activity.

Today nearly every community and county complicates the issue by allowing – or assigning – officers to take police cars home and park them conspicuously in driveways. I pass three of them almost everyday.

Police officers should not find themselves in those situations. Most who hire out off duty do not anticipate any serious conflicts of interest. Hey, nothing bad’s going to happen, why should I worry? They should know the risks and who carries the responsibility when something goes wrong. And while they are just trying to bring extra money home, we should take care officers do not carry that too far.

Ernie Harwell knew, built The Moment

Ernie Harwell could fill the moment with drama.

It was the early 1960s, and I was waxing a 1955 Oldsmobile Super 88. The Detroit Tigers were in a fight with the New York Yankees, and I listened to the game on the car’s radio through opened windows. The Yankees and the Tigers never did like each other, so any game with the Yankees was significant. In this game, the Yankees had a commanding 4-1 lead in the 9^th inning, so all across Michigan, Tiger fans prepared for an agonizing defeat. Darkness loomed on every horizon.

The critical situation contained a bit of hope, especially for knowledgeable Tiger fans. Though two men were out, the Tigers had managed to load the bases. At the plate was Charlie “Paw Paw” Maxwell who regularly hit about 40 homeruns a year, nearly half of them on Sunday.

“Two men are out with the bases loaded,” Harwell began. “The score is 4 to 1 with the Yankees in the lead. It’s a 3-2 count to Charlie Maxwell.”

I stood next to the Oldsmobile, polishing towel dangling from my hand, hair rising on the back of my neck. I could feel thousands of Tiger fans across the state also rising to their feet, picturing Maxwell at the plate in Briggs Stadium, feeling the weight of The Moment.

“Hang on to your Stroh’s,” Harwell said, his voice rising. “It’s Sunday! Here’s the pitch.”

Maxwell, the thin left-handed batter and outfielder, of course, had not been part of Ernie Harwell’s theater drama. He had no knowledge of the thousands of loyal, hopeful fans sensing The Moment’s approach. Or perhaps he did. This was the guy who once fooled a base-runner into thinking he had fallen asleep way out there in right center field only to abruptly move 10 feet to catch the ball and throw out the shocked base-runner, too.

Maxwell delivered the next pitch well into the upper deck in right field. Tiger fans across the state suddenly knew there is a god. This divine man originated from Paw Paw, Mich., and he played baseball in the Motor City.

Ernie Harwell was the other hero. He would go on to broadcast Tiger games for decades with his mellow voice and composed reassurance. More than any other, Harwell’s voice was known in every crevice and corner of Michigan where a radio was tuned to the Tiger game. In his almost patented, unruffled manner, “Ernie” became the voice of baseball through the glorious 1968 World Series and the more glorious 1984 World Series. People spoke of Harwell with adoration and reverence. If Ernie said the sky was purple, then the sky was purple.

The love of Michigan sports fans became obvious in 1991 when the uppity and misguided upstairs management fired Harwell to put in a younger voice, someone who would not let listeners hear the birds and who would shout and get agitated over routine plays – you know, a modern sportscaster. The legislature debated a bill on the firing. Fans abandoned the Tigers. The world returned to balance a year later when Mike Ilitch bought the Tigers and promptly asked Harwell to return to the radio booth.

In Michigan, Ernie Harwell was – and remains today – synonymous with baseball. He died of cancer this week in Detroit, his wife, Lulu, of 68 years at his side. The world immediately shifted out of balance again. One true gentleman was gone.

Not our guilt, but our accountability

Sometimes – actually, too often – we cause many of the global catastrophes and lethal confrontations covering the front pages and consuming the first 15 minutes of a 30-minute news report.

Though it is true, I am not suggesting we all breakdown and succumb to the ravages of guilt. Guilt is the most powerful instrument to manipulate someone else. Meanwhile, guilt is the most life-threatening baggage we knowingly or unknowingly use against ourselves. So, I do not intend to provoke guilt. Instead, I seek to create a sense of responsibility, of accountability. Sometimes we can all be smart enough to make better decisions about tomorrow when we grasp the foundation and depth of yesterday’s screw-ups.

For example, everyone reading this amplifies the pressure to find oil safely or unsafely in the Gulf of Mexico. We do this each time we reach for the light switch or drive to the grocery. We add to the weight when we sail down the highway in large gas-suckers that provide room for six people who are not there and 500 pounds of gear we seldom carry. When we leave chargers and DVRs and various electronic gizmos plugged in, we add to the aggregate demand.

We all know this, of course. We’re not stupid. Even children come home from school these days primed to lecture us about our wasteful life styles. Yet, as though we cannot see or feel the presence of the two-ton elephant in the room, we ignore it. That animal is someone else’s problem. Somebody should do something about it. Can’t someone just do something about it?

We discount our own footprints.

We might also look a bit harder at all the grief in the Mideast. No, I do not believe those militants who blow up children and ravage their own cultures deserve any latitude. But the cultural anger has roots, and unfortunately many of our leaders tend to fertilize those roots. The Crusades, we should remember, remain foundational lessons for many in the Mideast. Those lessons do not teach understanding and mutual appreciation.

And what did Western civilizations do with the Arab world earlier this century? I reflected on that recently when I watched the original Lawrence of Arabia. Considering the limitations of the motion picture – even a sweeping portrayal stretching beyond three hours – it provided a fairly objective view of T.E. Lawrence’s attempts to unit the Arabs in their Ottoman Empire. He succeeded only briefly, of course, and the English, with allied support, divided it up into countries which had not before existed, such as Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Who knew then the long-term implications?

We might see some of them more clearly today.

I am not suggesting we dash to the video store for a history lesson, but does anyone remember the ultimate lesson in Charlie Wilson’s War? As you recall, Wilson collected support and money to give the mujahedeen a fighting chance against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan. Stinger missiles turned a Soviet romp into an embarrassing, catastrophic financial disaster. The Soviets left Afghanistan. But the United States, burdened by narrow-minded, almost religious aspirations to fight communists, declined to help desolate burgeoning countries left behind in such brawls. So we abandoned Afghanistan, a broken country which staggered into the hands of newly armed and trained militants.

And guess who they fight today?

Mr. President, show feelings, drama – forego accomplishments

I knew this day would come. I knew eventually one or more national leaders would be held accountable for their ability to focus on critical matters at hand and converge on solutions. It is no longer important for leaders to just do well. Leaders must also learn to wring their hands.

I knew it would happen, but I did not see it happening to the President. Sure, other political leaders have probably faced similar Nurturing Culture pundits on the local scene. I may have missed that.  In fact, I did miss that. My feeling detectors were not on full alert.

But now our leader’s shortcoming rests right there on the table in front of us. Instead of working on the problem, President Obama should engage in handwringing or we simply will not believe he is whole or human. As President Clinton said, our leaders must feel our pain. How can we believe he is indeed working to solve problems unless he shows emotional strain? And drama.

Various political commentators have noted this over the last 18 months. The President seems focused, almost stoic, they said, and this single-mindedness appeared to be a failure on his part. But now it’s on the table, as I noted, and on a colossal scale because of the spreading oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. He visited Louisiana a third time largely because people down there said the President does not seem outraged. He does not vent. He does not feel our pain as the crude oil destroys professions, communities, wildlife, fish, and lives.

Apparently, this is a serious emotive matter.

Obama might take a cue from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. On the one hand, Jindal rants over what he perceives as slow if not incompetent action from the federal government over the oil on his beaches and the destruction of the fishing industry. Then he also feels the pain of the oil industry and says we need more deep-water oil wells and soon. He has managed to be emotional for both sides, and people who demand emotional responses have yet to see the contradiction. After all, Jindal wrings his hands in public, so he must be OK. The contradiction is irrelevant.

His Nurturing Culture political star steadily ascends. The stars of those actually working on the problem decline. I know I’m old and, by choice, disconnected with today’s emotional hanky culture, but I don’t give a crap what someone’s emotion-meter indicates as long as he works on the problem. In fact, I don’t want him wasting time wringing hands and feeling the crowd’s pain. Keep his shoulder to the wheel.

But, as I said, I’m old, and I was born before the Nurturing Culture, not in it.

Wackos out in force spreading fear

I needed postage for my 9X12 envelope going to Chicago, but the postman and two late middle-aged guys talked quietly at the only counter. Focused on post office box fees at that tiny post office versus those at relatively nearby towns, they examined price sheets and mail route advantages and shook their heads uncertainly.

The postman, though, welcomed an interruption long enough to take my money. Instantly the better dressed patron – equipped with a full, trimmed beard and a wool suit – told me he had the evidence to prove “the government” intends to inject computer chips into every citizen within two years. That will facilitate the health care conspiracy, he said, by enabling the government to trace each of us through our digitized ID chip.

The chip, he said, would be inserted into our wrists. I examined my wrists and, with a chuckle, proclaimed “we aren’t chipped yet.”

He tittered knowingly. If only I knew the disturbing inside intelligence he committed to memory.

I asked if he had a cell phone. He reached into his pocket to get it.

“They already know where you are, whoever they are,” I said and headed for the door. At least the postman grinned.

This must be the season. Someone opened all the doors and let them outside where they can exchange rumors, obstruct conspiracies, spread their gospel, be on guard for black helicopters, praise their lord, and form political movements.

Much of this begs simple questions: Who wants to locate these two buffoons, for example, and for what sinister purpose? Are we to conclude these guys carry critical information and, if exposed or captured, might spark the collapse of American civilization?

We should be very concerned about that, I suppose. But, their camouflage is rock-solid stealth. One was doing the late Orson Welles guise. The other might be trying out for a Richard Petty look-alike contest, including hat, sunglasses, and teeth. Good job, guys. No one with authority and brains will mistake you for hostile adversaries. You’re safe.

I see these people everywhere, of course. They pull up to the fast food restaurant in big cab, rusty pickup trucks, dismount and pull up their belts much as they imagine John Wayne did it. Before sauntering into the “dining room,” they take a look around from beneath their country hats, yell at their under-sized pooch barking from the back seat, and then block traffic as they mosey in a loose gathering across the expanse of asphalt toward the saloon doors.

A predictable collection of bumper stickers garnish their truck windows and bumpers, an anthology of hate and fear. They address the normal tea bag themes – taxes, patriotism, freedom, firearms, gay marriage, immigrants, god, and occasionally how guns can only be taken from their cold, dead hands.

These are the people who lost the last election and are obsessed with bringing all things political back into balance. They might.  However, their main obstacle is that these are the very issues that failed last time. This time they believe Americans – real Americans, we are told – will “stand up,” “step up,” “be counted,” and vote. They tell us to hate socialism, though most would not recognize it if they fell face down on a state highway. We are told we must fear those who say every American citizen should have access to fundamental medical care, which returns them to the socialism matter. They see the world through very narrow goggles. They remember the world they used to enjoy and want to target those who they believe stole it from them.

Every day, they tell us, we must fear our fellow citizens. The enemy lurks within us. A foreign-trained band of socialists are conspiring through lies and deception to take over our state and federal government. Groups of drug-crazed thugs and robbers will soon take advantage of waning law enforcement forces and terrorize the populace. Alien workers already take our jobs, and the government is letting more and more past the borders to undermine American labor. Schools teach godlessness and disenchantment. The news media ignores the real threats and focuses on what the government tells them to cover.

I am considering visiting some of the area’s political events, particularly those where term-limited state politicians who now run for Congress. Their advertising paints all of them as “proven” job creators, experienced decision-makers, honest, creative, state government “re-inventors,” and concerned with their fellow citizens’ plight.

The general electorate is a bit dubious of these politicos, which is the only thing they and I agree on. But I need to listen to more of them, not just the buffoons at the post office.

Young voters will solve ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

Some years ago I asked a student in my Editorial Writing class to read his latest column to the class.  I considered it thoughtfully written and included a touch of mystery, which is often good.  It was his coming out column revealing to the world he was gay.  When he had finished reading to the students seated in a big square, he looked about the room for reaction.  Finally someone started talking about his use of pronouns and how it added to the piece’s flavor.

He interrupted immediately.  The newly self-outed gay student wondered why no one reacted to his being gay.  This was a big day for him.  He seemed genuinely surprised.  He thought his fellow classmates would respond to this news with some drama, perhaps also an insult or two.

No, a few students explained.  We always knew you were gay.  It was no big deal one way or another.  But one young man, known for his witty irony, said we could take him outside and ruff him up a little if it made him feel better.

The resulting laughter led quickly to a discussion of being gay in today’s world and how that played within cultural norms and politics, just the sort of discussion I expected in that class.  These were bright, interesting, clever young men and women studying Liberal Arts, and we pretended most days that the class formed a newspaper editorial board which thrashed out the day’s news.

That is why I am having a difficult time understanding the paranoia about repealing “don’t ask-don’t tell,” the military’s current brainless policy on the subject.  What’s the big deal?  Who is afraid of what?  Just how will this “knowledge,” unleashed among modern soldiers, destroy moral and camaraderie?  I would expect a klatsch of church ladies to interrupt quilt-making and wring their hands in dismay and fear.  That’s what they do best and have always done best.  But a modern soldier, citizen, or taxpayer in 2010?

Republican politicians and Pentecostal enthusiasts today fabricate suspicion and mistrust for us.  They prosper on fear.  If something does not appear to threaten us but will benefit these depraved modern bloodsuckers, they will make you afraid.  They will invent a fairy-tale lifestyle, place you in it, and raise illusory questions about the threat to your happiness and God-given right to live with your head thrust in the dirt with tea bags dangling from your butt.

Granted, my example fails to scare you.  The student was a bright, fun young man who offered insightful comments on modern, telling issues, and he made these comments among students seeking an understanding about today’s divisive issues.  He and his fellow students today scare the fear mongers because, burdened with open minds, they no longer run from the boogey men with nice suits, slick hair, and an American flag on their lapels.  Boogey men now wonder how to worry the newly educated.

Church underground does it right

Imagine a young family of four in a 20-year-old sedan making their way to Pittsburgh or some other city where they hope to temporarily move in with the wife’s sister.  They have slept in the car the last three nights, if you don’t count living in it after being evicted from their grungy apartment. They have eaten so many happy meals they cannot look at a French fry without revulsion. One of the kids is sick, and the other cries himself to sleep several times a day.

Just as they cross a state line, singing a nursery song to keep up their spirits, the car starts to cough and run rough. It won’t make it much farther. They need gas anyway. They turn off the expressway and try to find an actual service station, let alone one still open at 9 p.m. They can sleep in the car until morning. The real hard part will be paying for the repair, whatever it is. She counts the remaining money, hoping she missed a couple $20 bills, but she has known for 150 miles they could not buy another meal.

Sound too sad to be true? You know better. On any given day, dozens of destitute, frantic families drift along the country’s highways heading somewhere they hope will provide refuge and a decent chance. This country does not have a public service hotel chain to shelter and care for desperate travelers. We should.

What we do have are underground church organizations which are far too familiar with the hopeless. Now, let me explain here that I am, as many of you know, about as religious as the average fence post. In fact, fence posts are noted theologians compared to me. What you are reading is not a puff piece from the National Council of Churches, either.

However, we need to credit those who deserve it, especially since they want no press coverage and do not seek the public’s attention.  You don’t see them pictured in newspapers. Television cameras cannot find them.

But a phone call from the right person sets in motion a versatile structure machined over centuries. The family finds itself in a nearby motel. Children see a local doctor before noon the next day. Clothes are secreted away to get washed and the family tours a church sponsored clothing exchange. Take what you need. A pharmacy delivers medicines. The car, which has disappeared for hours, returns running smoothly and sporting four used low mileage tires. It needed new front brakes, too, and got them. Brakes are important.

This is the church underground. From my point of view, it’s the main thing churches do right. They provide help without demanding birth certificates, loyalty statements, religious oaths, or a lien on the car and children. They just help. These people know most of us stand unsteadily along the edge of becoming homeless and destitute. They know if you help people, others will help you. They believe in the adage, “What goes around comes around.” Somewhere in the religions many of them serve lies the story of unwanted travelers, and many swear travelers will not be abandoned on their watch.

Two mornings later, the family resumes the trip to Pittsburgh. They have enough gasoline to almost complete the trip. They also have some “pocket money” to help along the way. Most important, they have a small list of names, phone numbers, and addresses of people along the way who will help. At the foot of the list is a local number: “Call and tell us you are safe.”

These are tough times, and we can all learn something from these activities, which must remain hush-hush to succeed. While most of what we’re up to could use a good public examination, public scrutiny or praise would ruin this institution. But the underground is everywhere, and we could learn something basic, something essential from these activities. We all benefit when we care for one another.

The good, the bad, and whatever’s next

Welcome to jackboot America. You elected them, not me.

Tea baggers ought to make interesting additions to our government, providing plenty of entertainment. Tea baggers, who occasionally call their opponents Nazis, are either angry and superficial or stupid, with stupid being more likely. After all, they show general idiocy when it comes to knowledge about the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (among other founders), and how government operates on a daily basis.

Several things bother me. First, while I do not trust most politicians, most of them know a great deal about the Constitution as well as the general history of this country. They ignore what they don’t like and praise the rest, but they seldom dispute the facts. You can talk with them, argue a point, find some areas of agreement, and start working on what’s left. It’s instructive and fun. They don’t stand dumbfounded to learn the Constitution bars government involvement in religion. It’s right there in the first line of the First Amendment.

Conscientious politicians do not bring thugs along to stomp on my head or put handcuffs on me. They don’t threaten to “take me out” when I ask a question or disagree over some point. In fact, they might be nearly as willing as I am to defend each other’s freedom to speak and freedom to worship or not worship. And, finally, to my knowledge, they don’t brag about dressing like actual Nazis during weekend get-togethers with the boys. We might disagree about what fun is, but dressing up as Gestapo heavies is not likely to come up.

In this new era of inclusiveness, perhaps we should embrace politicians who have fun in Gestapo uniforms, call others Nazis, and read only U.S. Constitution for Idiots.

Second, there is this overall sense these tea baggers weren’t the cream of the high school class. They exhibit a wide range of senselessness, often the sort of people we would not even nominate for school boards, unless they run for the Texas textbook board. In the end, they would embarrass us even on school boards, so we save ourselves the humiliation.

So why put them in the U.S. Senate? Wasn’t it dysfunctional enough already?

Third, all politicians tend to be anxious about their relationships with the news media. That’s natural. The press does not work for politicians nor is the press necessarily hostile to them. The press’s job is to find the most accurate version of the truth available today, to bend a definition coined by Bob Woodward, and that means asking prickly questions. Most politicians struggle with this process while some become skilled specialists. Knowing they must face the press’s questions, smart politicians prepare. They do their homework. They anticipate likely questions and groom answers for them.

Not the tea baggers. Oh, no. They start right out convinced the press composes a covert arm of socialist or communist organizations or agents of the devil. Therefore, they run away from reporters and cameras. Run, not walk. They lecture reporters who ask good questions about the impropriety of asking good questions. They hire meaty thugs to push reporters away. They threaten to sue news organizations who have successfully interviewed them, as Christine O’Donnell recently did. They announce they will talk only with FOX News or any Christian station or network, take your pick. “Reporters” at these networks issue softball questions, such as, Can you give us an example how the Lord God Almighty helps guide your life?

What they fail to do is address relevant questions about running the country, the kinds of questions everyone else is handling. You know, stuff about two wars, fiscal policies, improving education, and fighting terrorism.  In their view – they have no qualms about articulating this – the press is required by the Constitution to serve political aspirants. Among other tenets of this view, politicians (read, Tea Party politicians) can tell reporters what to report, and reporters must perform as ordered.

Where do you begin to debate such misinformed absurdity?

And last, anyone with a brain should connect the control dots we will see fleshed out more fully in the near future. It’s a little unnerving. It’s been a long time since an American political group has flaunted physical violence, but the tea baggers see no problem with this. They hire muscle to knock down young women and stomp on their heads. They tell newspaper editors “I’ll take you out” unless you stop asking questions. They threaten “Second Amendment solutions” if things do not go their way. One brought a baseball bat to his concession speech. They encourage their own political enthusiasts to show up with guns and parade around as self-important goons.

The mysterious character of ‘value’

When I was a consumer reporter many, many years ago, I wrote a daily consumer column while being a full-time, aggressive, world-changing reporter. The column addressed rip-offs, news, market quirks, and questions readers offered.

One question and my answer stuck with me because it challenged and absorbed me. I don’t remember my answer word for word or even its organization, but a reader said he had a 1928 standard Royal typewriter in good working condition – he wrote the letter on it – and asked if I could reveal its value.

I should not have been surprised. The longer I worked in newspapers the more I learned the public thinks newsrooms know everything. The public suspects we have rapid access to all kinds of knowledge. It would probably disappoint the public if we told them we just do what people should do – call an expert, look in an encyclopedia, or ask the copy desk. Most of the time we called people who know things. They, in turn, got caught up in the inquiry and burrowed into facts until an answer surfaced. We all learned something.

I had no one to call on the Royal. The typewriter was worth what he could get someone to pay for it. Sure, I could call two or three antique dealers and get their take, but overall they would say the same thing. There’s nothing like an antique dealer’s familiarity with the maxim that something is worth only what you can get someone to fork over for it.

In terms of monetary value, the buyer determines value, and that’s what I explained in the column which I attempted to write as another, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause.” People quoted it here and there. At one of my talks, a woman praised it because that’s what she was trying to explain to her spouse who was trying to unload “priceless antiques” in yard sales. He could not understand how people could walk away from his heirlooms.

Much of the value in our lives works the same way. Here in Michigan, for example, a couple of turbine windmill operators proposed elaborate schemes to erect windmills either in Lake Michigan or in the public access area of the Manistee National Forest. This is a windy area, especially near the lake. But one county after another held hearings and kindly declined the offer. Why? People here put a high value on viewing the lake, especially in the evening when sunsets can almost change your life. People simply could not see windmills as improvements to that view.

Besides, as someone pointed out, we have enough problems with drunken summer tourists smashing boats into the piers without littering the lake with more targets. The proposal for the forest apparently ran into so many objections, the company dropped the idea entirely. Can you imagine how excited we were to have giant windmills placed in the middle of campsites? I like to think my objection had a little weight in that dismissal. I value the hiss of wind through pine trees, the hush of distant waves, and birds and chipmunks when I am trying to escape civilization. The “whoosh, whoosh” of windmills does not enhance the experience.

Besides, to continue the value discussion, these developers were looking to erect windmills in public properties because they value profits. When they have to erect these revolutionary machines on private property, they have to pay landowners for the privilege. Of course.

Advertising bristles with value examples. One of my favorite TV ads convinces a few saps they’re actually getting a $49.95 “value” for a mere $19.95. If it was worth $50, they would sell them for $50. Instead, they are saying they tried to sell them for $50, and an insufficient number of customers stepped forward. But, alas, they can now say it is a $50 “value” because they once said that.

Shoveling snow in fly-over country

We in the Midwest enjoy weighty news reports these days about snow storms driving up the East Coast. We don’t enjoy it because the East Coast deserves a snow storm or that we are vengeful people.  I would have no idea how to assess either of those views.

We are interested because the storm – a low pressure center born way out in the North Pacific Ocean – has bullied its way across most of the 48 states and caused grief of various sorts pretty much everywhere.  First the moisture-heavy storm dumps lots of rain from Seattle to Los Angeles. That primarily spawns dozens of mudslides and floods in Southern California. It’s a grim scene. Alarmed television reporters show us pictures of hillside streets-become-rivers and interview fashionable people in pricy SUVs who admit it was inevitable but remains bothersome nonetheless.

Then the storm crosses the Sierra Madres and moves east. It picks up ample residual desert heat and mixes that with moisture it continues to pump from the Pacific and takes aim at Utah and Colorado. Snow falls, highways clog, ski resorts rejoice, hikers get lost, and television viewers are reminded, again, that the Donner Pass earned its name from a similar storm many years ago. Then the storm moves from the Rocky Mountains to the High Plains and strands hundreds of truckers on their way somewhere and families on their way home. A television news chopper videos cattle marooned in blowing snow. National Guard units – those not bogged down in Afghanistan – swing military helicopters into action to rescue stranded people.

This seems agonizingly familiar, of course. That’s part of the point. Please bear with me just a touch longer. I’m on a rant.

Finally off the High Plains, the storm broadens and deepens. Sucking Caribbean moisture from the south and drawing a continent-sized mass of frozen air from the north, the colossal tempest plunders the south with record-setting downpours, ice storms, and eerie thunder-snow. Thousands of trees fall, roofs collapse, power lines fail, and children unaccustomed to snow days learn how to make snowmen. Damage totals in the millions in each state.

Meanwhile, accustomed to winter’s misfortune, the Great Lakes states brace for more snow as that warm, southern air meets the glacial blast from the north pole region. Snowplow crews “winterize” popular intersections and highways and then begin using plows well before the snow gets deep enough to be challenging. It’s an unpretentious knack honed over the years:  It’s bad to fall behind. Besides, the real work waits until the storm passes east and is replaced by a nagging, icy north wind.

Lake-effect snow just keeps on delivering. Ask South Bend how much fun they had last weekend. Actually, South Bend residents likely did not have the time to learn about the East Coast’s misfortunes because they were busy managing their own.

And finally, the storm swings northeast, sucks in North Atlantic moisture and moves its way into the national news again. No, we of the Midwest are not bitter about all of this. OK, perhaps we are now and then. But overall we’re amused. We’re amused initially by a storm which, for the most part, threatens the well-to-do of southern California who generate media compassion and national condolences. Their plight saddens all of us and amuses many of us. Here in the middle of the nation, if I were so obtuse as to build an expensive house on the side of a pile of clay and mud, I would deserve all the laughter soon to follow. But not in southern California. Oh, no, we should be alarmed and concerned such a thing could happen (damn near every year).

That same storm will demand attention over the next few thousand miles. Denver will rightly generate a few reports about the happiness of the ski resort owners and the dilemmas concerning the stranded motorists on I-70 near Kansas. The storm will produce a few reports from Chicago – a city with big shoulders and lots of snowplows — but those reports won’t have the end-of-civilization flavor California generates. We might be concerned by distressing reports from the South where ice storms remind people how rapidly our civilization regresses when electricity stops flowing.

When that storm moves up the East Coast, however, news reports remind us how irrelevant most of us are. Television networks’ national news coverage spotlights the crisis: “Storm grips East,” “Snow strands thousands,” “New York under siege,” “Martial Law pondered,” “Nor’easter’ takes command,” and so on. Sweaty and obviously exhausted mayors and street crew department managers tell us how rough it is out there. Even The Weather Channel, which knows better, gets weepy over the northeast’s pain.

It’s not that the northeast deserves attention. It does. The incongruity stems from the fact the same storm trashes much of the country but it is chiefly when it gets to the vicinity of Washington D.C. and New York that it gains its notoriety. To put this bluntly, the northeast counts and the rest of us do not. Another blunt view suggests the northeast cannot handle simple, predictable, commonplace, saw-it-coming-for-a-week snow while most of the rest of the country fails to see the big deal.

Editor’s Note: I will soon be changing the appearance and direction of this column. Much of it will be subtle, but overall I believe you will see a column noticeably different and focused more on education and cultural changes. It will be a weekly column. If you have ideas, thoughts, or even unwanted assessments, please feel free to pass them along.

Cut military families a little slack

Sgt. Jeffery McAllister was a fair man, and that fairness remains my most lasting memory of him. If you found yourself on KP and he was in charge of the kitchen, you would work hard, but he would not waste your time and everyone would work the same hours.

One hot summer evening, following a short burst of aggressive shouting, a drunken fistfight erupted between two soldiers in the dirt outside the day room. Neither the bully or the victim was a friend, and I could barely care who won as long as this did not disrupt my life. I was returning from a long day on the road and wanted nothing more than sleep. All too quickly, however, the larger, meaner of the two got the upper hand and began severely beating the smaller one.

I am happy I did not jump in and play hero. Unlike in the movies, engaging these situations in the military never benefits you. If you choose to spend Sunday with a loud drunk, you probably in some way merit what follows. Most military tips on social situations finish with the maxim, “so stay the hell out of it.”

But McAllister’s sense of fairness overruled his common sense. He simply acted. He appeared from the direction of the CQ office, picked the larger man off the other and tossed him about 15 feet where he landed poorly in the gravel. The bully came to rest face down and stopped threatening people for the evening.

That’s the reputation McAllister earned and why he earned it. It is also how his last day in the military became a poignant tragedy.

As I understand it, the sad story went something like this. McAllister took his aging car to a local repair shop because it needed work.  He could not drive it from Pennsylvania to near New Orleans without some repairs. He had saved up for this. The buck sergeant had a restaurant job lined up at home.

The repair shop estimated the repair and maintenance at around $400, a lot of money at the time and about what McAllister made in a month. The next day he returned to the shop with $500 cash in hand and was told the repair was nearly $1,500. The car was ready to go. McAllister did not have anywhere near $1,500, and the car probably was not worth that anyway. The repair shop, through the power of a mechanic’s lien, basically had McAllister by the short hairs. He could not pay, he could not take the car, he could not order the car be returned to its previous condition. In short, he was screwed. All he wanted was to go home after four years in the army, including nearly 18 months in Vietnam.

Later that day McAllister and the repair shop owner found themselves in a nearby worked-out rock quarry. McAllister then drove to the base where, we’re told, he waited patiently. The car repairman lay dead in the quarry with his head bashed in. Police arrived as the sun went down, and Sgt. McAllister sat handcuffed in the back seat as the police left the base.

No one I knew then or know now has defended McAllister. He had killed a man. He did not deny it. The victim may or may not have tried to take advantage of a soldier’s situation. I’m inclined to believe he did cheat McAllister. It was a common practice. Cornered by military rules, a lack of money, vague and seldom-mentioned family obligations, race, and the general weak cohesiveness soldiers have to a local community, McAllister believed he had no useful option. He felt cornered, and he lashed back at the world that had cornered him.

I am not a bleeding-heart liberal. Not every day, anyway. My friends know a mean libertarian streak runs through me. The idea is not to produce support for killers. This is not a political statement of any sort.

I simply wish whoever reads this to understand soldiers and sailors in your neighborhood are not there for you to abuse, cheat, denigrate, or generate incomes for you. Your country, for whatever reason, put them there as parts of a large defense system intended to protect all Americans. I support various efforts to help military families enjoy as much balance in their lives as the rest of us supposedly enjoy. Military families tend to be in transit, tend to originate from somewhere else, tend to dream of futures in another location, and go to other cities and states at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Military families do not stay long enough to establish life-long friendships, local credit, be members of the PTA, or buy homes they cannot sell quickly later.

Cut them a little slack. They deserve it.

Oh please, don’t hurt us or our feelings

Now that the football season is over – Midwinter Dimness until March Madness sheds light on the world again – we can probably reveal some truth about the game as it is played in the 21^st Century and how this activity perfectly mirrors modern American culture.

Let us start with Chicago Bear Quarterback Jay Cutler, a fine young man from southern Indiana. We have all seen him play impressive football, throwing the ball in an unspoiled spiral 60 yards to the waiting arms of a well-guarded receiver. It is a very pretty thing. What we need to focus on here is his late playoff season hurt. You know, the injury, whatever it was.

There was Cutler, a big guy, Mister Strong, muscular, hairy-chest, tough man, shuffling along the sidelines because he had some pain, some impairment, and couldn’t play professional football any longer that day.

Now, before we get our feelings hurt and get our shorts in a wad, I am not singling out Jay Cutler as a lone wussie. He might actually have wanted to play. Hard to tell.

The National Football League has decided to protect quarterbacks at all costs. If two mean, aggressive defensive linemen descend on a quarterback these days and hit him a split second after he tosses the ball safely away, the defense is penalized about 25 yards and must send flowers to the quarterback’s wife or main squeeze (his choice).

We live in a world of wussies.

This is not how I remember football. In high school, I could not find thigh pads for my freshly washed uniform. I asked the coach what to do. He said I should steal thigh pads or prepare to be a cripple the rest of my life. Then we went outside and practiced.

If he said that in today’s world, “concerned” citizens would drag him before the school board. A posse of do-gooder citizens would erect a gallows. Mothers would weep before TV cameras. The coach’s ill-fated image would float around the world to scare children and furnish the faint-of-heart cause to form support groups. Church leaders would cite his transgressions at the next candlelight ceremony.

Me? I “acquired” pads from the coach’s office after they left the building.

Those of us who can remember the bloodied figure of Y.A. Tittle, smashed to the turf, know what I am talking about. Yes, perhaps the man should have stopped playing the game. Tittle played every game that season, however, and you have to respect that. Remember Terry Bradshaw? Before he was a jokester and insightful sports analyst, he was a Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback surgeons reassembled with duct tape and chicken wire before each game. There are others, of course, including Joe Namath. He should have walked away before his knees gave out. But Namath, like Bradshaw and Tittle and Joe Montana, were football players who refused to quit. They played football, and they played among the very best.

We should not pick on professional football quarterbacks.  It is simply their turn in the defendant’s box. This enlarging gutlessness, unassertiveness, our constant anxiety about what could happen – I struggle to find the right word – appears to be the norm today; I challenge anyone to argue otherwise.

This new “wussiness” loiters everywhere. We teach it, enforce it, write it into law, and are shocked when it oozes from places we thought only housed strength and courage. Remember T-ball? We live in its long shadow. We are its consequences. Every dear little child learns in T-ball that each of us is special, each of us is a winner, and each of us has a right not to face failure. Every dear little child – winners and losers – gets a trophy at season’s end. Should we indeed even try to win? It is no wonder an entire generation now cries foul, files complaints and seeks emotional support whenever the possibility of embarrassment or failure lurks in the uncertainty ahead.

My next thought is so agonizing, so gut wrenching, I fear putting it in writing before your eyes. My God, our feelings might get hurt! It could go that far!

Church shrinks in house and revelation

Readers: Please be advised sections of the following material might offend some readers who cherish spiritual beliefs and do not tolerate those who do not. These sections might lead to critical thinking, shortness of breath, and nightmares. While it remains unlikely those readers will need medical attention, they could use the rapid application of similitude or comparable unguent. Keep these readers quiet and clear of libraries and bookstores until their reactions subside.

A friend moved to California recently to become the pastor of two measurably shrinking churches in the process of uniting. Each church looked prosperous enough. One had a parochial school and schoolyard. One sat in a neighborhood showing signs of growth. The two boards of directors seemed earnest, enthusiastic, and cautiously learned.

My friend, however, never asked to see the books. He should have. A glance at the financial landscape would have revealed so much.

Together, the churches consumed money much like incinerators burn garbage. Each church subsisted on an open loan from different banks, the credit based on the optimistic value of their properties. Neither church could pay its bills. Though the school was plausibly professional and successful, it was losing money and ultimately losing students as well. The church made up the difference.

The church elders did not worry very much at all about financial shortfalls, which is why my friend failed to ask. No one seemed apprehensive. God would provide, they explained, just as the Almighty had provided healthy churches and growing congregations for almost 100 years. Parishioners need merely be patient and ready for guidance.

If you chose the short view, this might be a progress report about the health of many of America’s established churches. Money is tight. As experienced during previous recessions, churches confronted most of the same financial calamities households, barbershops, and banks face. When economic situations eased, church bank balances improved.

However, today’s church quandaries have been a long time incubating, and while many of them are mere fiscal difficulties – intrusions from secular realities – many stem from substance. As frightening as financial difficulties might be, it takes only money to solve them. Problems with substance emerge from religion’s core product – it IS religion’s core product – and money cannot ease these afflictions.

The end is nigh

There is no arguing this. Many of America’s oldest, most magnificent structures are its churches with their spires reaching upwards, grand trussed roofs covering and protecting sanctuaries with spacious balconies and ceiling mounted crystal lights. At full volume, the organs could mimic earthquakes within three blocks. Carpenters finished these structures in solid quality American oak you cannot find anywhere today.

Today many of these same structures visibly struggle. Decades of leaking roofs cause trusses and heavy ceilings to decay. Roofs sag. Housing inspectors are reluctant to close the buildings before anyone gets hurt, but various maintenance problems lead to these moments. The plumbing went south years ago, but splices, plumber’s tape, and special repairs have held it together for decades. The electrical system was great in 1930, so why should it not remain serviceable today? Church owners are lucky the building never caught fire, and they know it. The volunteer “electrician” shakes his head every time he plugs something new into a socket.

Often the congregation is old, lives reasonably near the church, and shrinks through natural causes. While their lives and incomes often built and maintained the church, they often refuse to “save” it from time itself. Potential new members take a short look at the building and disappear into the wind hoping no one saw them.

Meanwhile, some congregations moved to the suburbs while they still had active bank accounts. Professional architects spread these churches generously over a couple of acres with well-surfaced parking lots and very green, well-kept lawns. These structures have futures because that is where the families went – especially those with children – and designers considered the automobile in the plans.

Then there is substance

In such a blog, this is where it becomes very subjective. I have tried to keep it to the observable, financial, and practical because at heart I am a reporter. I observe. I take notes. I ask questions. As a typical reporter, I am often the only person in the room who sees the obvious because others cannot see past their own arguments as they try to sell an agenda. Reporters are often the only people still listening at the discussion’s end.

Previous generations worked very hard to construct these structures and adorn them with bells made in Massachusetts, organs built in Germany, and the best workmanship throughout. They invested every week and gathered others into the congregations. This was important to them, a visual symbol of their faith.

What happened? No, I am sorry. You cannot dismiss such a simple question with practiced looks of shock and righteous indignation.  (I love indignation responses … “Why, you have no right!” Well, yes I do.)  What happened? If your church is so important to you, how could you let it collapse? Why did you decide not to maintain it? Will you admit that new snowmobile was more important to you than tithing for building repairs? It all comes down to choices.

And as for my right to ask, I live in a country which asks very little of churches to give them tax exempt status. That means billions of dollars of taxes on what are often prime properties were never requested and never paid. No, that is not in the U.S. Constitution. Look for yourself. While I am not suggesting we review this, we should not forget that bargain, especially since churches acquire that status by agreeing not to propagandize and lobby in political arenas. (Interesting, eh?) So, as I watch these properties fall apart, I might have a civic duty to ask about their decline.

To offer an aside, if that “propaganda” thing fails to earn a knowing smirk from some of you, then all of you are reading the wrong column. As for the political arena, perhaps Kansas might review the Westboro Baptist Church’s tax exempt status since that stupid, hateful church is literally all over the U.S. map proposing and lobbying and fighting in court. Does anyone think Kansas has the guts to do that?

Gentle decline

Finally, declines in church maintenance and structure might parallel another more disturbing decline. Fewer people in America attend church. Every year more people forsake church attendance.  Simply put, this chart does not have any good news in it, and the best theologians and public relations people have looked.

An attendance decline represents the 800-pound gorilla in the room and does not respond to easy blaming. Who is responsible for this sacrilege? Church leaders intend to shun and denounce those responsible – if they can identify them – because the fault cannot lie within the religion, teachings, leadership, scriptures, or canons. Who or what, then, is Piety Enemy No. 1?

If you glance through the Web, the church leadership’s beguiling reaction to this will captivate you.  Possible problems:  Too much church; too little church; Christians do not hold each other responsible for their sins; congregations not committed to church; people in general not properly committed to church; too little prayer; “soft” churches; permitting same-sex marriages; inadequate scorn of gay people; growing number of “unchurched”; improper dressing at church; boys in dresses at church; alcohol excess; long hair on boys; and short hair on girls. Possible solutions include more church, more prayer, better prayer, more services per day, condemnation to hell for sinners, well placed people in church groups to report about those not being serious, and so on. If they looked any harder for solutions, they would hurt themselves. It is apparent they truly are not looking.

Some of these sites, to their credit, offer comments from people who rejected church and religion. Frankly, folks, those interested in arresting the decline might look for direction in these comments and not in moving The Handmaid’s Tale from fiction to the local church group. But you and I both know that is not going to happen.

To church leaders, the message is infallible.

One former church member said Christians “preached hate and intolerance against the weakest members of our society” and the message of love and compassion has been buried “in favor of support for a neo-con fascist rule.” Another said she left the church when she was pregnant and had to consider “whether the innocent I was about to bring into the world was really damned because of original sin.” She said this dogma was “the single most evil, perverted doctrine ever invented in the mind of man.” Last, someone said the world was trying to find God but could not because of all the churches “in the way.”

Why we do not hear about it

I am embarrassed but not surprised I do not read about this situation in our local newspapers or see the topic splashed into the 11 o’clock news broadcast. The embarrassment comes from the fact today this is an obvious economics story spilling into every corner and street of town. Reporters notice. Most if not all churches have had to tighten their belts. Congregations in older churches face disquieting dilemmas. The message, perhaps, is losing its audience.

The Associated Press stylebook (the United Press International stylebook was no better) has about 40 pages in total about making religious people exultant. Capitalize “god” here but not there. If you say “divine,” capitalize it if … and Almighty, well, why would you use it were you not referring to a deity? These pages include dozens and dozens of citations about how to use ministerial titles. It is enough to urge you to avoid the subject entirely forever and for all time. Perhaps that was the wisdom behind the style.

Journalism almost religiously avoids the subject overall. You write a satisfying story about one church doing something good and unusual and your e-mail overflows with other churches and denominations to write about, along with an occasional comment about the reporter. Any real story must to be so painfully balanced it reads more like lumpy oatmeal than the crisp, meaningful report you had in mind.

Let’s get real here. The religion page was not the top beat assignment in the first place. Nobody really wants to get into a story about the content of religion. People are likely to picket the news media, and the publisher will fire the reporter as the first solution. What you end up with are religion “pages” splattered with announcements no one reads and Sunday service schedules clipped from last week’s paper. The reporter will not be fired, and the publisher has avoided the subject for yet another week.

 

 

Spring is more than green grass and flowers

It happened today.

People visibly crawled from their homes, stood without coats in their yards, and looked above the trees into the blue sky. They held an occasional hand to their brows to control the brightness. The sky contained a few Canada ducks and immeasurable inspiration.

For me it started with my neighbors across our muddy street. For the most part out here in the National Forest, they are my only real neighbors. They were in their yard by 9 o’clock. They pulled and carried everything from their massive garage out to the large concrete apron where they arranged it in a pattern to prepare the goodies for high-pressure cleaning. He is very industrious and works a lot in his workshop. He has constructed several heavy-duty low carts to move the heavier objects easily, such as a snowmobile and a large garden rotor-tiller. Equipment stood nobly in rows for passers-by to covet.

My neighbors’ actions annoyed me just a little bit and challenged me not at all. I watched furtively at first through a crack in the curtains, but soon I shoved the curtains boldly aside and stood indifferent to their exploits. I sipped my coffee – good coffee, I should add – and offered a few seconds thought to the possibility I had missed a week in some kind of catastrophic, personal coma.

No, my world remained the same. Six inches of thick, slushy snow covered nearly everything outside, including some of his concrete apron. Snow still protruded above some equipment in his pickup truck bed. That would change soon, courtesy of his two-wheeled, five-horsepower, high-pressure water squirter-sprayer thingy.

We are veterans of a long winter, a winter that twice showed hints of ending only to bury us in a foot or more of snow and chill us with sub-zero temperatures. So if a couple wants to emerge from the darkness and wash their cars and various pieces of stockpiled equipment, who should care?

I do not care. At least so long as this hullabaloo does not become a neighborhood contest starter, I care not. My cars are nearly always cleaner than their cars because I wash mine occasionally on nice days elsewhere using high-pressure rinse to remove salt. I garage them every night. My neighbor’s cars do not rate garage care. Only snowmobiles, motorcycles, tools, water sprayers, generators, a trailer, and bicycles warrant such treatment. I tried to supply the dirty garage implement state of affairs some extra thought, but I failed.

On the road, I spotted people to the left and to the right standing in their yards, assessing the situation. They seldom do that in the summer. They were not addressing the serious need of unclean garage hardware, but it is a good bet they are planning the next move against the winter. Yards laden with scattered yard furniture, fallen tree limbs, garbage cans arranged by the wind – not to mention an occasional vehicle on concrete blocks – propose spring projects worthy high places on most lists.

Approaching the intersection, the school bus pushed through growing puddles and streams of melting snow to cast a wide splashes. Children’s arms waved through the open windows on both sides. Exiting the bus, children showed off their coats wrapped around their waists or over their shoulders. No more winter confinement for them or anyone else around here for that matter.

Spring has arrived.

Is that report right? Or how wrong is it?

Rachel Maddow said the other night on her MSNBC program she respects the United States Navy. When the Navy decided to move the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan and its aircraft carrier task force from one side of Japan to the other while decontaminating helicopters used over Japan, those acts alone, she said, told us as much as any other newsmakers told us. She also said it was important to note the Navy willingly let everyone know these things, especially when various experts and authorities in and out of Japan were being less certain about the growing radioactivity.

This report was not a backward criticism of the Navy from this very left-leaning television pundit. It was a compliment. It was her way of telling the Navy thanks for being honest with us in such a routine and casual way while others have yet to clarify the serious problems at the earthquake stricken nuclear power plants.

A day later – meanwhile, back at the ranch – Maddow said she just learned of a very old U.S. military capability. From very high altitudes, specialized American military planes can take extensive, detailed measurements of radiation on the ground. The U.S. specialized planes flew over the Japanese nuclear plants and took recordings.

As an earnest journalism professor, I make note of three things:

• Despite historic reasons to distrust what the military tells us, Americans believe the U.S. military. We respect their capabilities, including their technology, partly because those are our capabilities, too.
• Americans like it best when we Americans get our own information and not rely wholly on anyone else. In fact, it is in the American DNA to avoid relying on anyone else at pressure moments. We simply do not like it.
• This is an example of a good reporter examining the scene, identifying those pieces that normally would not be there but are there now, and then deciphering the picture’s meaning.

Since Maddow’s initial reports, many of the ship’s 5,000-sailor crew scrubbed the soapy flight deck of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan to remove radioactive material. That gigantic deck is very vulnerable to settling dust, and the U.S. Navy does not want that dust finding a home there. This is further evidence of the Navy’s concern.

Meanwhile, we just learned Japan’s estimate of radiation levels inside the power plants is wrong to an extreme, further adding doubt to that country’s information.

The United States and its citizens do not want to criticize Japan in that country’s worst nightmare since World War II, but we also do not want inaccurate information as we decide what to do for the Japanese as well as Americans there and here. Good decisions made on bad information seldom portend constructive results.

Not so famous last words? Or not?

I wonder what that doohickey does.

Got to be the red wire. It’ always the red wire.

Poisonous snakes don’t venture this far north.

Can I try that?

Look!  No hands!

Pork chops have a bit of a bite tonight.

Idiot!

I hate to admit it, but I need to look at those directions again.

Hold the wheel while I check under the seat.

Ready?

Let a real man show how it’s done.

Maybe we’re doing it all wrong.

He’ll never recognize either one of us at this distance.

I couldn’t be more sure of myself.

I better go below and take a look.

The cheap one is every bit as strong as the expensive one.

Hey, Jerk, can I help you with something?

The water isn’t deep here, it’s deep over there.

I’ll find a shortcut.

These biscuits aren’t the regular recipe, are they.

Get a’ hold of yourself.

Stand back. Give me a little room here.

Well, that’s a $100 bill down there.

I’ll be standing right here when you come back.

Don’t worry, he’s wagging his tail.

You told her what?

I wonder how much that’s going to cost me.

Get real, it’s just a tiny crack.

Quick sand? You godda be kidding me.

No one is perfect.

Guess what!

Do these tacos taste funny to you?*

*This is from Supernatural, but I couldn’t resist including it.

I am trying to learn to appear to care

I live in fear people eventually will discover I do not care. I remain unimpressed by most of their inconsequential problems. Their dire announcements about urgent matters float right by me, no matter how vital, and I submit nary a twitch in response. Surely there is something deep and essential wrong with my view and me.

It does not matter where I am. My shortcomings emerge nearly instantly. Though I feel in my bones I am failing, particularly as I drive and have time to think, there seems to be nothing I can do for it. It is an itch without a matching scratch. I just do not give a crap.

I have changed, of course. I used to not care, and I did not care that I did not care. I perceived no personal fault. In fact, I would occasionally laugh at activity that now floats past me. Then, realizing I might offend someone with my politically incorrect amusement, I would cover my mouth and look down, shamefully. But, predictably, with the very next breath, I would laugh louder, often spewing a healthy guffaw. I did not care that the other might decide to act offended by my failure to care.

No more. I am a changed man. I know it is my fault I do not feel like most others. I feel guilty about it all the time. This is a weighty guilt. It is a failure, looming larger than my other failures – which are many and wanton – and goes deep to my worldview. I even put a note on the refrigerator.

It ain’t funny. Really!

My last bold, decisive step over that funny/not funny line occurred just over a year ago. For reasons no one has yet identified, a neighborhood dog got loose from her owner’s house and ensconced herself a few feet from my bedroom window. She barked all night. I went out once in the snowy night to see what the hell was the problem – a snagged leash, perhaps – but she ran into the forest until I returned to my bed. The next day I discovered the neighborhood, such as it is, was abuzz with talk about shooting the dog or at least burdening the financially struggling county dog shelter one more time.

The woman who owned the dog soon showed up at my door. She was in a sweat. I do not know how she knew to come to me. She mumbled about fearing night break-ins, loving her dog eternally, scaring her daughter to death, more about loving the dog, and so on. As she talked, she babbled faster and faster and worked herself into a crying fit. Her yellowish, grayish puff of hair jutted from a deep red coat and wagged side to side. She had come to me straight from the “Pathetic” section at Central Casting. Did I give her a hug and say “poor dear” while patting her gently on the back?

Are you kidding me? Did you forget who is writing this?

I held up my hand and spoke loud enough to override the weeping rant. “Does this crying fit work on other people? It is not working on me. You should go home and have a good cry, and then find your damn dog before someone else does.” Instant silence. She pivoted and returned to her car. She spun her tires angrily on the packed ice. I almost snorted. How predictable a passive-aggressive demonstration.

People have concluded since that day that I abused that “poor” woman. They felt a need to instruct me how I must reconcile my failure with my new appreciation for wretched women. I failed to be concerned, they said. I also fell short in recognizing the need to rescue a fellow human being. I failed to give that poor, widowed woman (a part discovered later) the slack that a single woman deserves.

Since then I have sought counseling in these matters and armed myself with the gift of knowledge. For example, I try to be an active listener – you know, repeat in new words what someone says so they know I am listening. Dismal people lap that up. I insert remarks like, “That must have been an awful experience for you.” That is very good, counselors tell me. It suggests I am a caring, concerned fellow traveler in life.

Mainly, I am simply listening more, giving the other person the impression I am hanging on their every word, riveted. This seems to give weight to what they are saying because rather soon they perk up, beginning to imagine their words contain clarity and wisdom. They seldom do, of course, but I am learning that is an unfair, incorrect assessment. It is perhaps irrelevant anyway. I should not say those things even though it is obvious I am at heart a failure for even thinking that way. What is important here, I am now appreciating, is to nurture self-esteem in others, especially when there seems no substance to it.

Oops, there I go again, giving the impression I do not give a crap.