Religion taunts church, state separation questions

Perhaps the time has come to take yet another look at tax emptions for churches.

Why? Well, with all this dialogue from religious leaders, the vast majority from the Roman Catholic Church, about where their purview ends and where the government’s dominion begins, someone’s tippy toes are pressing on the line separating the two. One side, led by Republican opportunists and Catholic leaders, claims President Obama has been tramping all over the church’s religious rights, as “spelled out” in the First Amendment. While this is difficult to imagine, let’s assume they mean it. The other side, led by a growing posse of women, says it isn’t about any religious right but, instead, about a woman’s right to medication.

This current confrontation emerged when the Obama Administration released its proposed policy under the new medical bill. It suggested that all American women, no matter their employer, should receive equal access to contraceptive medications, and the costs should be assumed by the various insurance policies or similar arrangements the employers choose, such as self-insurance. Well, Right Wing church organizations, which have admittedly been waiting for this confrontation, jumped up and screamed that freedom of expression was now in jeopardy.

I think we’ve all seen this in the news lately. You’d think the sky was falling.

As I said earlier, the “response” to the Administration’s policy was chiefly led by the Roman Catholic Church. (I’m not singling the church out here. It singled itself out.) Keep in mind this country’s traditional strategy on keeping national policy and church matters separate as you turn a critical eye on today’s “debate.” There is a difference between political leaders and candidates advocating specific alterations to national policy to align them with religious dogma and, on the other hand, actual church leaders, adorned with regalia and funny hats, thrusting themselves into a national policy debate.

To me, the bishops have stepped over the line, and perhaps we need a serious national debate about the rights of freedom of speech and the rights to worship as you choose. Just possibly we might settle for some kind of compromise that also allows governments to start taxing billions of dollars of church property which today avoids any real financial responsibility for armies, navies, highways, streets, police and fire protection, and God only knows what all. We could solve our national financial crisis, among other things, and go ahead and let religious leaders entertain us with their bemusement at the same time.

I believe even religious leaders might decide to back off. Why? Well, at base, a growing percentage of Americans have already abandoned that befuddlement. After all, were we to hold to the church’s “knowledge” refined only in the 1960s, we would be certain the world was flat. Imagine a flat world. What would that look like? Well, they imagined it, and over the centuries they imprisoned those who disagreed. Maybe some voters need to be reminded about the Inquisition and the Crusades. I prefer being able to talk about a round world without fear of prison.

Then, of course, there’s that freedom of speech issue. Where and how did the Administration step on that?  I’m beginning to think, sadly, I know more about the First Amendment than those church leaders do. They should read it sometime. That would be a debate I would encourage. You think watching basketball is fun. Try a debate like that.

Let me close this tirade – and I won’t be the last person to address this growing debacle – with three current political “issues” – one wise, one unwise, and one just stupid. We have noticed that Mitt Romney declines, nearly refuses, to discuss his relationship with the Mormon Church. Some pundits believe discussing it might transform him into a real human being, a warm and fuzzy person with blood in his veins. However, it is entirely possible that one of his sensible advisors has told him not to do that because there’s some kind of tenant in the Mormon Church that hints that once you are a teacher and leader in the church, you are in a ministerial role thereafter. Romney judiciously avoids raising questions Americans might have about putting someone so branded into the White House. So, it is wise he avoids this spiritual abyss.

Second, there’s the new Republican darling, Rick Santorum. Not only does he have as a chief financial backer someone who believes we should drag contraceptives back to the 1920s, but he flees reams of previous statements about religion and public policy that would have children absorbing religion in schools and combating a battery of public laws loaded with pious booga-booga. If I wanted to live in a country governed by religion, I would consider Iraq or India.

The third issue is Santorum’s declaration that President Obama practices a “phony theology.” In itself, that implies a lot about the man’s agenda. Oh, gosh, he says he didn’t mean anything religious. Then why use the word “theology?” It’s loaded. Santorum’s toes cross the line. Meanwhile, an increasing percentage of Americans – a fact which deeply troubles all religious leaders – sees all theology as a product of smoke and mirrors.

As for me, a Michigan resident, I will celebrate when the GOP wagon train saddles up and moves to Ohio or Pennsylvania – anywhere but here.

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.